Alex & Danika's 2010 Adventures

The UK

2010-12-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

We're still playing the catch-up blogging game :-) Right now I'm writing from Hong Kong, which we're leaving later today for Bangkok, and there's a lot in between that's been going on!

Nik's last blog finished as we were leaving Paris for Bonny Ireland. We flew into Dublin and had a relaxing afternoon, braving the cold weather for a quick walk around town to buy some food for dinner and a pint in a pub, listening to live traditional Irish music. The following day we started a 5 night 6 day “Paddywagon” all Ireland tour – if it sounds rushed, it was! When I was traveling with Adam in 2005 we did another tour with this company and enjoyed it, so thought we'd use them again. Perhaps I'm getting older, I don't think I'd review them quite so well this time around!

Regardless, Ireland is an amazingly beautiful place, with a rich history and culture, all things we thoroughly enjoyed. The itinerary took us to Belfast first, where we were confronted by the history of the last 40 years. It feels weird for such a modern, western country such as England to be having a civil war in its own back yard, within our lifetime. The following day was on to The Giant's Causeway (an amazing place, our photos probably don't do it justice), then Derry, also in Northern Ireland for more history delivered by a Derry local, allbeit on a walking tour in the dark (at 4pm) and rain. I found it a fascinating place, full of pretense.

We continued in our anti-clockwise route to Galway, on the west coast. Each day usually involves half a dozen stops at sites (churches, monasteries, castles, natural wonders etc), lunch at a pub (the only thing better than an Irish Pub is an English Pub) then dossing at a hostel, all the while being entertained and educated by our crazy tour guide/driver Joe. Galway had Christmas markets (most places seem to :-P) and Nik bought some 6 euro ugg boots, the answer to days of cold feet :-)

The cliffs of Moher (aka cliffs of Insanity?!), and a cave tour were highlights for day 4, where we had 3 hours on a different tour because our bus broke down (5 buses in 6 days!). We stayed in a tiny little town called Annascaul in County Kerry where Carly & Nik opened the evening's karaoke proceedings. Day 5 was more exploring of County Kerry and the Dingle peninsula – very pretty with beautiful beaches and rolling hills. Our last night on tour was in Killarney where the girls did a horse and carriage ride through the National Park.

The day back to Dublin included a visit to Blarney Castle where we each kissed the Blarney stone, then had a bit of a drive back to the Guinness factory in Dublin. It really does taste better in Ireland, although Danika still isn't a fan, Carly less so :-) Dublin was covered in snow when we arrived back, all slushy and icy. Over all we really loved Ireland; its people, stories, scenery, culture, music, dancers (we saw some from the Riverdance troupe) Another night in Dublin before an early morning trip to the airport to fly to Glasgow.

We'd arranged a hire car for 10 days (cheap!) which we collected at the airport. The snow quickly set in as we drove north, apparently Glasgow airport was shut later in the afternoon. We were heading for a loch and castle near Crianlarich, somewhere we'd had recommended to us, but after driving for hours at 10 or 20 miles an hour, then sitting stationary for prolonged periods of time, we turned around and headed east instead. We enjoyed the amazing scenery all around as we went, it'd been snowing for weeks up there, so there was plenty of snow on the ground. We stayed in a little B&B above the Thistle Pub in Milnathort, a tiny little village 45 min from Edinburgh. The next day was clear and sunny (still minus three or 4), which made for stunning driving; unblemished fields covered in snow, avenues of frosty trees, empty laneways to idle down. Edinburgh was darker, colder and wetter, and with parking at £19.50 overnight... we almost wondered why we came! We did meet up for a couple of beers with Jonno, a mate from our Middle East trip who's studying over here at the moment.

On again for a long drive day, through Newcastle and Durham to Sheffield. Nik had found a great little B&B on some website – we stayed in a houseboat right in the middle of the town! It was cosy (warm and small :-P) and we enjoyed a night in eating in and watching TV under a doona. The following morning as we left there was a good 30 to 40 cm of snow that had fallen overnight! The little canal port we were moored in was nearly all frozen over, and we trudged to the car park with snow up to our knees :-) We headed to Norwich to stay with Pippa and her family, also an overland trip friend (from Africa). Carly was feeling pretty sick again (once she arrived home she discovered it was sinusitis) and it was so lovely to be in a big family home, being looked after. There was less snow as we drove south and east, but still enough ice on the roads to make things hazardous and slower than normal. We stayed two nights with Pippa, and visited a bit of Norwich during the day, then met John & Elizabeth Rayner in Bungay who are family friends of Danika's mum & dad. Adam and I also stayed with them in 2005 when we were here, it was lovely and odd to catch up again!

On the 3^rd we drove down to London to drop Carly off, but not before meeting Brent and Elizabeth Weightman in Hammersmith for lunch. It really is a small world :-) We continued on that night to Bristol (yes, zig zagging our way across the UK) and stayed with Clara, an Italian friend from our Africa trip and her Welsh boyfriend Vinnie. They took us out to see a bit of Bristol the next day before we kept on for a brief visit the Motherland (sort of): South Wales. I know Armidale's been pretty wet these last few months, so we have at least that in common with our namesake; miserable, damp, windy. We checked out Barry, the setting of Gavin & Stacey, a UK/Welsh TV show we've taken to this year, then drove back through Cardiff (and became thoroughly lost, even the GPS had trouble getting us where we wanted to go).

We had three nights with George & Ruben, 2 Kiwi friends who are working on a dairy farm in Wilcot, about an hour East of Bath. We had a great time reminiscing and catching up each evening over dinner, as well as being educated on X-Factor and Coronation Street (it's its 50 year anniversary this week, there's stuff on about it everywhere – and it's still terrible!!!). Nik & I did a day trip to Bath, which is a very pretty little town with great Christmas markets, but the main reason for going was to meet up with Ben & Linzi, two friends from our South America tour. They were being sneaky though, and also brought 5 other friends from the same trip: Josh & Hayley, Becky & Ed and Tommy Gun – it was such a nice surprise and we spent a good afternoon together and playing PUNO. A South America reunion of sorts!

Another day trip took us to Oxford with George & Ruben, where it was bitterly cold. We wandered the streets admiring the cool architecture before going on a self tour of Christ Church (masquerading as law students :-|) before taking shelter in the Eagle and Child, a pub JRR Tolkien & CS Lewis (amongst other writers) used to frequent. There's a letter on the wall from them to the publican saying they have “drunk to his health” - how quaint.

We also enjoyed walking around the farm with George, along the frozen canal and through frosty fields. On our way to London we went via Stonehenge (smaller than we anticipated) for a cheeky photo over the fence, and Salisbury to see the cathedral. Then on to Heathrow to drop off the car, before spending 2 nights at Beth and Cam's again. It felt like only yesterday that we were there in July, and yet so much has passed so we swapped travel stories for hours on end. Also had dinner with Hannah & Nick (boyfriend, not brother :-P), it was good to finally meet :-)

Then a day of catching up: Ben from our Africa trip for coffee (at Monmouth in Convent Garden: they have the best coffee I have had anywhere in the world – sorry Goldfish Bowl!), Shiona from South America for lunch and a beer at the Ye Old Cheshire Cheese pub (an interesting rabbit warren of a place!), then dinner with Mel, Tony & Lette from the Middle East tour. We crashed at Mel & Tony's for our last night in Europe, then we go for a brief visit to South East Asia!

So the UK for us was busy, with lots of catching up with friends, old and new. I added them up and came to meeting 24 existing friends, which would be an effort at home let alone half way around the world, we're crazy! It was a really nice way to end our backpacking though, at the same time as seeing some of the UK's beautiful countryside, lots of snow and a bit of history.

We're nearly home, it feels very real now. On the same day a few weeks ago Danika and I independently had the revelation that we really were ready to stop traveling for a while, so I think we've done about the perfect time for us. Not to say we don't have a million new places on our lifelong itinerary, but we're ready for some time at home! Not long now, see you then!

Belfast

Giant's Causeway

Irish Coast

Driving in snowy Scotland

Houseboat in Sheffield

Wilcot

Awesome... but what is it?

2010-12-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

Hi!
Paris seems a long time ago, but it was really only a couple of weeks ago.

We stayed with my Auntie Kerry and Uncle Greg, who looked after us extremely well. We got there by a very long train from Barcelona, and were greeted at the bustling Paris train station by Kerry. She took us home to a delicious meal of Beef Bourguignon and lots of swapping of stories.

We had some delicious French pastries for breakfast the next morning and headed off for a tour of the city. Kerry was our guide and we walked by most of the big sights and got hassled by most of the big scams. "Do you speak English?" means let me distract you long enough to pick your pocket, "you dropped this" means pay me and ill give this to you, or if you don't want it I'll distract you and try to pick your pocket, "can you sign this" means give me money, and if an old beggar woman is seen and looks like she may be on her death bed, she can often be seen having a wine with friends after a hard days work (and of course if she's good and makes a lot of money, she pays her taxes so she can get free medical). Everyone in Paris (maybe France?) who pays taxes gets these cool vouchers worth 8 Euro each, equaling five a week. This is because businessmen used to go home for lunch and they wanted people to stay in the city and support the restaurants (as if tourists don't do that enough) so they get 8 Euro toward their lunch every day! I wish...

The next day Ryan, Alex and I headed off to Bruges in Belgium for a night which you can read all about our adventures on the previous blog named Tyncot... We had a great couple of days.

We got back on Friday evening which is traditionally nibbles and champagne night in the Hunting household. So we had some real champagne from Champagne with a spread of all other delicacies and were glad that we would still be around for the next Friday's evening. Carly had a lovely girls time with Kerry wandering around looking at all things Art Nouveau, and getting over her cold by lying on the couch and reading.

Greg has the weekends off so it was nice to spend some time with him. Saturday morning we all headed off to the Museo D'orsay. It was full of lots of great work some very famous (Van Gough, Renoir, Monet, Manet and many, many more) and some not so famous but all really amazing. The museum is not huge (it was previously a train station) but it had such a concentration of great works. A quick coffee/hot chocolate finished up our time there and we were off home...

Just in time for the boys to sit down and watch Australia get beaten by England in the rugby, and the time trials at the F1 in Abu Dhabi. Greg had given up a very exclusive invitation to Abu Dhabi to be in on all the action so that he could spend time with us so we only thought it fair to at least let him watch it on TV, very kind of us isn't it :-)

Sunday was bacon and eggs (possibly the best bacon I have *ever* had) and we explored the Jewish quarter. We had Falafel and bought pastries and had a lovely meandering morning. The boys went back to catch the final Grand Prix. Carly and Kerry and I explored further looking in some art shops that we could never afford to purchase from but very much wanted to. Us girls got home to the sound of the Doppler Effect going over and over, very, very loudly, with the occasional sound of crumpling metal. We had tea and ate the pastries. Soon enough it was time for drinks and dinner, which was something delicious with lots and lots of cream...

Monday we fulfilled one of my life long dreams... to go to Disneyland! It was great! Just as I would have expected it, cartoon characters walking around and some really great rides and areas. Although I still think Australia does theme parks extremely well... the rides were fun but not really scary and your tummy didn't feel like it was about to come out your mouth very often. We had bad fish and chips for lunch, as you have to at these places and got home tired and exhausted but very excited. Alex had made delicious pumpkin soup for dinner so with more wine and fresh baguette it went down very well.

Greg told a story that when he was getting a medical for his job in Paris, he was asked by a Frenchman "do you drink alcohol?". He said yes, my wife and I will drink a bottle of wine between us most nights. The Frenchman repeated "do you drink alcohol?". Greg repeated and tried to be a bit clearer, yes most nights I drink about half a bottle of wine. The Frenchman looked at him and repeated "yes, but do you drink alcohol? Like whisky, rum, gin...". See in France wine is what everyone drinks, and everyone drinks A LOT, no matter what time of the day it is. It isn't rare to see two businessmen drinking wine over a meeting at 10 o'clock in the morning. This really is my sort of country!

The rest of the week was filled up with climbing the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Musee l'Orangerie, visiting Greg's office that overlooked Place de la Concorde, Saint Chaplle, Arch de Triumph, Champs Elysees, Montmatre, Sacre Coeur and wandering the lovely streets of the city.

We went out for a delicious dinner of duck one night (which had been soaked in its own fat for about 8 months and cooked for about 8 hours that day... no words to express just how good this meal was), and Thai another (at Kerry's favourite Thai Restaurant) and enjoyed eating fresh baguettes, cooking with lots of cream and drinking sometimes a bit too much wine, especially on my part!

It was a lovely 10 days or so and Paris is definitely a city I can see myself living in.

We left Ryan to catch a train to London where he was going to spend a few days and then fly home, and Alex, Carly and I left the city of love very early on Sunday morning with a few more souvenirs, a lot more memories, a desire to come back and live there one day and weighing a few more stone each, to catch our flight to Dublin... But more of that next time.

Au Revoir

Danika

The EIffel Tower

Being gargoyles outside Notre Dame

Kerry and I at Disneyland

The four of us atop the Eiffel tower

Stained glass window inside Notre Dame.

Tyncot

2010-11-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

Didn't think I would ever decide that two days of our trip should be privileged to have a blog to itself but here goes...

Private Herbert Henry Soars... 2nd Bn, Australian Infantry, A.I.F., Killed in action 8 November 1917. Age 32. Son of Alfred and Elizabeth Soars, of Gloucester, New South Wales.

A man unknown to me whose grave my Dadda (Len Clapham) asked if I could visit. I was told his grave was at Tyncot Cemetery, Passchendaela, Flanders, Belgium.
I thought "Sure, that sounds easy"... We left the safety and warmth of Kerry and Greg’s Paris apartment at about 8 yesterday morning, intending to catch an 8.30 train to Brussels, stay the night in Brugge in Belgium and then visit Herbert Soars' memorial the next day. We went to the counter to reserve our ticket (as it should have been free on our 'Eurail' pass) but we were told that all the trains were either booked out or would cost us around 30 Euros each, as the train company wasn't compatible with our pass. After pressing and saying that we had booked accommodation and needed to get there we were told there was one possibility but it left at 12 midday and took about 5 and a half hours instead of 2.
Well we said sure if that's what it takes. The plan was to go to the cemetery the day after and then head back to Paris in the early afternoon. But on a whim we decided we should book the train for the next day in case the same thing happened... and it did, but the problem was that the only train we could get back to Paris was leaving at 11am. So this meant we would get to Belgium at 5.30 pm and have to leave again the next morning at 11am.
Well... we had already booked the first tickets so thought "why not spend 20 hours in Belgium" but it still meant we would not have enough time to visit Herbert Soars.

I was desperate to visit Herbert's grave not only for my dear Dadda but also for myself, so I started looking on the internet for a way to visit him and get back to Paris. And I found a way. It would take a while and be a bit of extra money but we booked it and all was well until...
We turned up at Ieper train station where it was necessary to catch a bus to get to Tyncot cemetery. The bus was there and just about to leave which was perfect, but you wouldn't believe that between the three of us (Alex, Ryan and myself) we didn't have enough money to pay the 3 euro fare each, and the next bus was an hour later. The bus left without us and we went to find an ATM. We now only had a turn around time of about 2 hours to get to the cemetery, find the tombstone and get back for our train. Angry, frustrated tears were flowing and ATM's were scarce, all the while the clouds had decided to erupt and we were getting soaked.
But... We got the next train got to Tyncot and started to look around with about half an hour to scour the hundreds of headstones for Herbert Soars. Luckily I had looked up a grave reference. I asked a man who appeared to be a school teacher if he knew how the numbering system worked. He said he had a map somewhere but not on him. Later he chased me down with a wet map in hand and said "Here I don't need this anymore, hope it helps". Oh the warmth one feels when someone is kind in a time of trouble!

Speed walking wildly around a cemetery isn't the most respectful of things and slipping on mud felt very un-lady-like, but i was determined that I had got this far and I was going to find and pay my respects to Mr Soars.
And you wouldn't believe it but we found him! Right near the front, emphasised by lovely yellow flowers. Although the rain was pouring my spirits were soaring as I looked at his name and the inscription under it:

"Too sadly missed and dearly loved to ever be forgotten"

I would hope that when I am alive I will be dearly loved and that when I am gone I will be sadly missed and never forgotten... But I suppose one day we will all be forgotten.
Yesterday was Remembrance Day. I remember being annoyed at school when we were interrupted and had to stand for a minutes silence. But a minute isn't much to remember those who fought for the freedom of their future generations and who gave their lives so that we might be free.

Today also helped me to remember and thank the One who gave his life for our freedom. Jesus. We are dearly loved by Him and we will never be forgotten by Him. No matter what it takes its important to remember that.

So today I thank Dadda and Herbert Henry Soars for these reminders. That it is important to be thankful, no matter how awful or frustrating or wet or cold or stressful a situation is.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

George Santayana.

Tyncot Cemetery

Herbert Henry Soars.

Cinque Terra to Paris

2010-11-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

Hi!

The end of our trip is getting closer and closer! Today we are on our way to Paris which means we are almost to the end of our Europe adventures. But to go back a bit and fill you in on what we've been doing...

We left the cold, snowy landscape of Switzerland to have a lovely three night stay in Cinque Terre which is Italian for five lands or villages. It's a picturesque little area right on the ocean surrounded by a national park. The villages vary in size but average about 1000 people in each. The towns are linked by a train which makes it easy to get from one to the other or you can walk between them all which takes about five and a half hours. We stayed in Riomaggoire the southern most town out of the 5. We arrived late afternoon to our dorm/tiny apartment. It had the steepest set of stairs connecting the kitchen and room upstairs you felt like you needed a safety harness! After settling in we took a walk up the many tiny, winding, step filled streets to a little church overlooking the water. We made it just in time for an amazing sunset and then headed out to look for some dinner.

Being a little fishing town we we decided on a seafood restaurant who boasted “fresh off the boat” seafood. Carly got the Red mullet spaghetti (although we were hard pressed to find or taste any red mullet), I got the mussel spaghetti, and Ryan and Al both got the fried fish which came out as a massive bucket load of deep fried prawns, calamari, whole fish, and little octopus which Carly bravely tried for the first time, tenticles and all!

The next day we bought a pass that allowed us to walk from town to town. We walked from Riomaggoire to Manarola, then caught a train to Corniglia (because the path was closed) and walked to Venazza exploring the three towns as we went. The next day we went to Monterosso and spent the day lazing on the beach and exploring the town. That night I made amazing risotto (if I may say so myself) and the next morning we were off! So pretty much it was a few days of sleep ins, gelati, foccacia, wine and soaking up the dwindling autumn sun.

We then set off to Nice where we spent 2 nights. We stayed at a really nice and backpacker friendly hostel, with cheap washing, massive included breakfast and beers for €1. It rained the *whole* time we were there! We walked down to the beach which was nice but would have been nicer in the sun and walked up to a lookout to get a good view over the city and ocean. We walked through a food and flower market and bought a very big slab of Brie for lunch for a very minimal price. We bought fresh baguettes and saw that Nice was very nice even though it was rainy. We also went to Monte Carlo, Monaco for a few hours. All we did there was visit the casinos and get the feeling that it really was an extremely rich country. We had Chinese take away for dinner (not very French but good :-)) and the next morning we were off again to...

Carcassonne. All we had was a flying visit, but it was good to see the old city that the game is named after. You can see the walled citadel from lots of places in the city (including our apartment window), it's huge and consequently impressive! Inside is just more of the town, although nearly 100% touristy – cafes, gift shops, accommodation, restaurants etc. We had an overpriced cappuccino (which apparently is a cup of very bad black coffee with cream on top) and then were off to the train station to go to Spain!

And isn't Spain wonderful! We stayed two nights in San Sebastian in a lovely clean hostel. We hired bikes for the day and biked all around the city and along the beachfront and Alex and I polished up and practiced some of the Spanish we learnt in South America. The tide was coming in when we were cycling and we all got very wet on separate occasions by the massive waves exploding over the sea wall. Everything is very cheap in Spain so we ate too much food for dinner. Carly and Ryan, tried sangria but both politely declined a glass, so Al and I had to finish off the 1.5L bottle by ourselves.

The next day we were up early to spend the whole day on a train to Seville in the south of Spain. A really nice city. And we stayed in a fun hostel for 2 nights. It was like a family and we were welcomed from the start by being asked to join some people upstairs for a free dinner. We made some good friends. In the morning we went to a little town half an hour away that Ryan was recommended and checked that out and in the afternoon we went on a free walking tour. It was 3 hours long and was really interesting. We found out a lot from our guide (some things true, some old myths) but we really enjoyed it all. We were invited by another of the guys from the hostel to participate in a dinner he was cooking for “just a few special people”. It cost €7 to cover costs and boy was it worth it! We started eating nibbles at about half 8 or nine and didn't finish eating until 12. The wine was flowing the whole time. We had bread and salsa and fried potato patties and pasta and fried vegetables and fresh battered and fried fish and prawns and whole squid and to top it all off ice cream! We had a lovely evening and went to bed very content indeed.

The next day we had half a day before the train so we went to a palace which was beautiful with massive gardens and rooms. As we were walking around we were planning what we would do with it if it were our house. After a few hours Al and I went to see an archive museum which had some old maps and things (some that Christopher Columbus drew) while the others shopped for dinner/lunch. Then we were on our way to Barcelona.

Barcelona was an amazing city! We spent 3 nights there and had a really good time. We saw parks and museums and just took in the wonderful culture the city has. I fell in love with Gaudi an artist from the early-mid 1900's who designed quite a few buildings and parks in the city as well as a church that has been getting built since the 1800's and is still in the process of being finished (they predict 2020). He has a great style and all his stuff reminds me of something out of Willy Wonka or Cat in the Hat. He also uses lots of mosaics.

I had seafood paella, a traditional rice dish and yesterday we ate at an all you can eat buffet... it turned out badly, but on the plus side that was at 3 yesterday afternoon and here we are at 11.30 the next day and I'm still not hungry :-) Last night we went to see a flamenco show which was really good and that brings me to now, sitting on a train to the city of love, Paris. We are staying with my aunty and uncle which will be really nice! More on that later but for now...

Adios amigos!

Nika

Cinque Terra

Vernazza

Nice

Carcassonne

San Sebastian!

Italy & Switzerland

2010-11-05T00:52:00.000-07:00

Sooo... more length between blogs :-) Again it feels like forever ago that we were in Greece, and that we've had many adventures to share.

After arriving in Italy from Greece by ferry, we went straight across to the Amalfi Coast (West coast, south of Naples & Rome) to a little place perched up in the hills called Agerola. Getting there wasn't easy, but it's only a few km as the crow flies from Amalfi, about 700m above the sea. We were in a tiny chilled out little hostel, and enjoyed doing not much, especially when the rain set in on our 2^nd day. We did manage to walk down the 3000 steps to Amalfi one afternoon, our legs were complaining for days. Besides that, lots of Take 2, cards and catching up with a few people with Skype.

From there we went to Rome, where we stayed at a place on the outskirts in a camp ground (nice and cheap!). We met Amie, a friend from our Africa overland trip and explored Rome for 2 very full days. We happened to be there on a Wednesday, when the Pope makes his weekly public appearance – he arrived gliding through a sea of people, standing in his little Popemobile. We caught 2 minutes of the shenanigans before we cleared out of St Peter's Square and went to the Vatican Museum, where the queue had gone from around three corners of the block to nothing, so we went straight in. It's an amazing place, full of so much art you could live there and see something new every day. I guess that's what the popes did!? It's crazy when the ceilings of the hallways contain more amazing art than most small art galleries in Australia :-)

The rest of the afternoon was filled with wandering the Forum, walking to Trevi fountain where we tossed a coin in over our shoulder (apparently they make 3000 euros per day!) and then some backpacker-style shopping for a picnic-in-our-room dinner. Day 2 we woke up early, said goodbye to Amie, and went to St Peter's nice and early, arriving pretty much just as they opened, again missing the crowds. A big difference from yesterday when the Square was packed! St Peter's Basilica is remarkable, cavernous and full of artworks, sculptures and marble everything. Nearly all of the little chapels had some sort of service happening, we paused to observe a few.

Then lots of walking over the remainder of the day – Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, a handful of churches including the one with the Month of Truth, Circus Maximus, then the Colosseum where we explored inside. Several more churches (one of which was the girls Rome highlight: the Capucin crypt which is decorated with bones from hundreds of human skeletons), the Spanish Steps, then a nice walk through the Borghesi park to the villa, which was shut for the installation of an exhibition. Piazza del Popolo was packed with some event honouring public servants, but we stopped at Santa Maria del Popolo to see 2 Caravaggio paintings before home for another cheap dinner.

We'd planned to go back to Gallaria Borghesi on our way to Bologna the next morning, but not being able to book tickets the day before meant we turned up without reservations and they were sold out. We instead went into town to the Capitoline museum for a quick walk through, seeing the famous Romulus & Remus suckling the she wolf, and Medusa. Then a wait at the train station for a train to Bolonga.

Bolonga will remind us of many good things, we really enjoyed our time there. We rented an apartment for a week, because it's central enough to be able to do day trips out on the train. That meant a place to ourselves to come home to every evening, home cooked meals and not lugging our bags around every day! We washed everything we had, including our backpacks – I didn't know mine was that white! Our first day trip was to Parma, a little place NW of Bolonga. The rain's still following us so it was a short trip, but nice to explore the historic centre, have a hot chocolate and buy some fresh bread. It was still raining on Sunday, and Ryan Ferguson was due to arrive at some point, so we stayed home – drinking tea, watching tv and doing more washing. Ryan's joining us until late Nov, it's been really good having him – amongst other things it rounds out our number for 500 :-)

Monday was a day trip to Venice – nothing in particular to note, just hours of wandering the canals, little streets and markets. It's really cool, everything you imagine plus a slightly unpleasant odour ;-) Tuesday we went to Verona. We didn't really know what to expect, but really liked it. It has an ancient arena in the middle of town, more intact (and maybe impressive!) than the Colosseum. We walked all over town, crossing the big river that winds its way through, then up to a lookout spot at some sort of palace where we ate out home made salad rolls for lunch :-) A gelato stop seems to work itself into our itinerary each day, not that we're complaining.

Wednesday was a briefer-than-expected trip to Florence. We left Bologna in the dark, not really knowing what the weather was doing, only to find cold drizzly rain in Florence. Arriving early did mean we didn't queue for long at the Uffuzi Gallery, where there's a huge collection of Renascence art – Michelangelo, Botticelli, Caravaggio to name a few. The Duomo is a massive cathedral topped with a big dome, which you can climb to the top of for views of town. The rain paused for 15 minutes while we were outside up the very top – by the time we were at the bottom it was raining again. We would have stayed longer and seen more but our flimsy umbrellas weren't the best, and we were happy with what we'd seen so we took a train back. Of course, as we pulled out of Florence the blue sky appeared through the now clearing clouds :-P

Seeing as we'd been in Bolonga for a week and hadn't really seen any of it, we put aside our last day to wander around, as well as to make final use of the valuable washing machine! Bolonga has a lovely centre – its famous covered walkways, beautiful old buildings, numerous squares and some big churches. The main basilica had an exhibition on the life of Mother Teresa – it was perhaps more interesting than it sounds :-P A last Italian coffee/hot chocolate (Ryan & Carly have rated their hot chocolates the best) then home to gather our stuff back into bags from all edges of the apartment.

We'd been in contact with a friend of a friend who has a chalet in Chateau d'Oex in Switzerland, who had kindly said we could stay. We took a train from Bolonga up through Milan to Montreaux on Lake Geneve, through some really beautiful areas with lakes and mountains. It's well and truly autumn, so all the trees are different shades and there's a decent amount of snow on the mountain tops. We had no idea what we were in for when we arrived at our “Chalet” - it was the most amazing house! 4 stories, 100% timber inside and out, countless bedrooms and bathrooms, furnished with quality everything - it was so nice. Then there's the location of Chateau d'Oex with plenty of snow-capped mountains surrounding it. In summer it's known for hot air ballooning, in winter it's packed with skiers, with access to the lifts from right in the centre of the tiny town. We were a 10 minute walk from the half-a-dozen shops that make up down-town, most of which were shut :-)

We had 5 days there, with mixed weather. We spent the first beautiful sunny day relaxing at home and looking around Chateau d'Oex. In the evening we went to a classical string group performance at the church - how very cultured of us, listening to classical music in the Swiss Alps! The following two days were unexpectedly wet, cold and rather miserable, but we still headed out. We caught the train up a few villages to Shönried, where we visited a local dairy farmer. On the way it started snowing, which was kinda cool, unfortunately in both senses of the word. Klaus showed us to a few of his 20 or so paddocks, which were just blocks of land randomly placed around town. We met some of his 80 cows, all of which are named, are super tame and spread around his different blocks. Rather different to Australian cattle or dairy farming! Due to the snow he had to move some back into the barn, so his wife took us up to their house and showed us the cheese they make, some of which we bought. 18 Swiss Francs for 900g (about A$18), but boy it was good! In summer they make about four 40 kilo wheels per day, not bad money!

Another day we went to Gstaad and took a bus to les Diableretes, in the hope to go up to Glacier 3000. The weather was pretty bad still (heaps of snow in the higher altitudes) so the view would have been of grey-nothingness, and the lift pass to the top was A$77 so not cheap :-P Our last day was mercifully sunny (still cold) and we went all the way to Speiz on lake Thun. That's a really pretty place, quiet now the summer lake crowd have left, with more impressive mountains surrounding it. Nik was not feeling so great so she and Carly went back home (after another hot chocolate) and Ryan and I waited for what turned out to be a non-existent ferry to Interlaken. We went instead by train for a quick trip, it seemed much larger, touristy and busy than the other places we've visted in Switzerland, but still beautiful. Other Swiss experiences for us were having fondue (cheese and chocolate), indoor fires, buying Swiss Army pocket knives, going to a traditional church service (in English), watching Dexter season 4 and attempting to speak French :-)

From there (about a week ago) we headed back south again to Italy, but I think that can wait for the next blog! We're currently in Spain and will be for a few more days before we head back to France. We're feeling like the end of our trip is close now, even though the reality of living back home again hasn't hit us. Still lots to look forward to before then though, and lots of reasons to want to get home too!

Alex

The Amalfi Coast

With Amie in Rome, at the Trevi Fountain

The Pieta in St Peters

Venice

Chateau d'Oex

Munich to Greece

2010-10-10T03:37:00.000-07:00

Hi!!!

Long time no write (again). I've been told we last updated after Copenhagen... that feels like ages ago.

Well, we took the rain with us from there to Munich to meet Carly. We stayed with her friend Amelie and her family (Carly had been there for two weeks) which was an absolute delight. We were made so welcome, arriving just after 7 in the morning on a Saturday and being picked up from the train station (Yes we had what Carly would call a “train station moment” when Carly and I ran toward each other and hugged). We had a traditional German breakfast and then were taken on a tour around some of the city, including going to the top of Olympic tower to take in the amazing view of Munich.

Home for lunch also traditional, funny white sausages and HUGE pretzels! We went down to see Oktoberfest by night, the next morning saw the Oktoberfest parade and went on to see Oktoberfest by day and have a good old stein... One litre of beer went down quicker than I thought it would!

After lunch we said goodbye, took Carly with us and took a train to Salzburg.

The train ride was short which was different to what Al and I had been experiencing and the hostel we stayed at was one of the best yet. Carly and I went to a palace (Al had already been last time he was in Salzburg) with lovely gardens and the all famous rotunda from Sound of Music. We then met up with Al and went to see the back of the Von Trap family house, a really big nice church that has nothing to do with The Sound of Music and Mirabella Platz, where some other part of the movie was filmed. It was a short but good time and then we were off to...

Bled, a tiny gem of a town with only 5000 people surrounded by the beautiful mountains of Slovenia. Slovenia by the way turns out to be a gorgeous country and if ever in the area visiting is a must! We only spent a night in Bled, and after waiting around for more than an hour late at night for our hostel to be opened for us we were happy to get to bed. The next day explored and took a walk around the massive lake. There is a little island in the middle of the lake with a church on and we hired a little row boat to go out to it. We caught a train that night to Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia) and that night Carly had her first dorm room experience, loud snoring and very smelly!

We stayed here for two nights. A lovely city, we went on a free walking tour to learn some history and then went exploring ourselves. We climbed a very steep hill to a castle (every city in Europe seems to have its own castle) and walked through the food markets, buying deliciously fresh fruit and veg as went. The kitchen at the hostel was well equipped so we cooked for ourselves (such a treat from Kebabs and bread, ham and cheese) and enjoyed a bit too much ice cream! The day we left we strolled around a massive park and walked to the train station to change countries for the fourth time in about as many days.

To Croatia, another beautiful country. Zagreb was our first stop, the capital. Our hostel was nice but a bit out of the way, but the tram system was really good so it didn't matter too much. We stayed only one night here, but spent more money than we should have on things like sun glasses, watches, shoulder bags, earphones and chocolate with the brand name “Nika”. Although Carly did get a banana for free because the man didn't have change. We left very late that night for an overnight train (another first for Carly) and it had free water, croissants, soap and hand towelettes... The things that get us excited.

This train took us to Dubrovnik, Where we still had the pleasure of rain, although much more than before. Dubrovnik is a city set up the side of a very steep hill. So when the rain comes the city literally turns into a big waterfall. We arrived and called our hostel to ask them to pick us up, and got a very angry man on the other end telling us he had waited up until 1.30am the previous night for us to call him... for the first time we had accidentally booked the wrong night. He turned out be a very nice man after telling us 100 times how angry he was and how we should have called and us saying how sorry we were. He got us settled in and after realising we were nice people and really were sorry, he said sorry for the email he sent us, which we hadn't received because we had been on an overnight train. When Al checked his emails the email said that when we reserve somewhere we should actually turn up and ended with the line:

“You are not guests, you are.....”

So insert what you will, we thought up a few ideas but mainly just laughed, because he apologised a million times and told us how nice he thought we were.

Anywho, the city was nice but laden with tourists, who Alex will not associate himself with and tells me we are travellers not tourists! One lady even had a backpack for her dog...

We mainly just walked around read our books and ate ice cream. The man from the hostel, Ivan, took us down to the port, apologised one last time (except for the email he sent us after we left) and let us be on our way.

We had a very long night on a ferry with people screaming, and being sea sick, that took us to Bari, Italy, where we spent the day waiting for our next overnight ferry to Patra in Greece. This ferry was much nicer with escalators and all. We had a pretty good sleep to make up for he lack of the night before, and turned up tired in Patras to wait for our bus to Athens. While waiting at the train station Carly and I went to grab some food, and my small backpack with my shoulder bag inside was stolen. Not anything too bad stolen just some really annoying things. We spent that afternoon at the police getting a report and took the train the Athens for a short stay. We went to the Acropolis, not as impressive as some ruins I've seen and wandered around the big market.

Another ferry that night took us to Santorini, where we stayed four nights! We had a few troubles with the hotel but all in all it was lovely, walking around the little streets and hiring a scooter and quad bike to explore the whole island. Watched a beautiful sunset in Oia over beers (a smoothie for Carly) and had a lovely relaxing time. We ferried to another lovely island Paros, for three nights where we did pretty much he same thing but had a much nicer hotel, and hotel manager. Alex helped him install Skype and he made sure we had everything we need. He has the life; 6 months of the year in Greece over summer and the rest in the Philippines where his wife is from doing nothing! The rain only caught up with us on the last day in Paros so we had lovely blue skies, just like in all the movies and postcards! We took another ferry back to Athens last night, and tried to see Corinth today but with a mix up of trains it didn't work out.

So now I'm writing from another overnight ferry (the nice one) from Greece back to Italy, to start out Italian adventure. Who knows, Carly might find an Italian Stallion and Ryan Ferguson is meeting up with us in Bologna.

Also, we have started watching a show called United States of Tara, with Toni Collette. It is the most brilliant show and acting and we love watching each new episode.

So, for now Calamara (that means good morning but it's the only thing in Greek I could remember), and hope whoever is reading this is loving life on the other side of the world.

Much Love.

Nika

Prost

Carly having a taste of beer.

The back of the Sound of Music house.

Bled

View of Ljubljana from the castle

Sunset at Dubrovnik

Nika chocolate

Greek flag.

Santorini

Europe from South to North

2010-09-17T00:38:00.000-07:00

Istanbul to Copenhagen – Europe from South to North!

We've had a whirlwind few weeks as we make our way to Munich to add Carly to our number :-) Lots of trains, not as much sleep as usual, but on top of it all we've been to some great places and enjoyed lots of experiences.

We took an overnight train from Istanbul to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where we more or less had to stop there on our way North. The overnight trains are reasonable, especially if you get a sleeper – we did on this one, three bunks in a tiny little room. We stayed in Sofia a single night, where we took our selves on a walking tour of the city to see nothing super spectacular, just loads of old architecture, parks, statues etc. Free dinner and beer at the hostel, and breakfast in the morning, super friendly and helpful staff made this one of the best hostels we've stayed at.

On to Brasov in Romania the following day, a long day spent on the train. 12 hours or so and we were at Bucarest which we skipped in favour of the smaller medieval city of Brasov, another few hours up the line. Our train was late and after cruising through the empty city in a taxi we arrived at our hostel, only to get no response when we rang the bell and banged on the door – slightly alarming for 5 minutes until we finally roused someone! Again only one night here, but crammed a lot of stuff into the next day. We took a tour to Peles Castle, the summer residence of the Romanian royal family. We were impressed by it from the outside – and then we went in! Unfortunately it cost an extra 32 Levs (A$32) to pay for a photography permit inside, so we can't share it with you but it was unreal! Something like 160 rooms (30 of which were bathrooms), all decked out in amazing fashion – carved wood panels, tapestries, weapons decorating the walls, suits of armour in the hallways, beautiful furniture – it looked like a palace, I suppose because it was! When we came back into Brasov we walked around the centre and up to the Black & White towers that are ancient city defence points. There was a medieval festival on which we wandered around, unfortunately we missed the jousting :-P We also happened upon an APT Challenger tennis comp of which we watched a couple of sets whilst having a beer – these are the random unexpected things I love finding while you're travelling :-)

Later in the evening we headed back on the train, this time to Budapest. This was one of the least fun experiences on our trip. Due to a super full train and perhaps some misunderstanding at the ticket reservation office, we didn't have a sleeper ticket as we were under the impression we could get it from a conductor on the train. Not only were there no sleepers, there were no seats either – not the most exciting prospect for a 13 hour trip. We sat/lounged with our bags in the isle and attempted sleep fairly unsuccessfully until the wee hours of dawn, when a whole lot of people cleared out at a stop and we secured an empty seat for the last 6 hours. We were glad to see a bed in our hostel/apartment after stumbling out of the train station and around the surrounding streets trying to find it for half an hour! Not much more happened on our first day in Budapest, we left our exploring to the next when we took a great free walking tour for 3 hours. They gave a good historical overview of Hungary and Budapest, and took us around to or pointed out all the major sites. For lunch we went to one of the market halls, where we had a traditional Hungarian meal (no, not goulash); a kind of thick deep fried pancake with sour cream, cheese and ham on it – exceedingly fatty but yum! As it started raining we chilled out in a great little cafe with interesting décor (see the pics).

The following day we had a short trip to Austria. It was at that point the most expensive place we've visited so we changed our plans and cut our visit to one night instead of two. The rain followed us, but we still went out in it to have a look around Vienna. I didn't love it when I visited in 2005, and it still isn't our favourite city, but it is pretty impressive. So many great buildings with nice architecture on every corner, and parks aplenty. We wandered for hours and finished our afternoon with a coffee and cake at one of the traditional Vienna coffee houses, complete with a live pianist :-) We went out for breakfast the next morning, picking a random stop on the underground system. Nik had a schnitzel for lunch the day before, we'll need get a strudel when we go back to Saltzburg in a week or so with Carly in order to tick off traditional Austrian food :-)

Some friends from our Middle East trip had recommended a little place in the Czech Republic called Ceske Krumlov to us, so we altered our plans and skipped Prague in order to chill out for a few days in the much smaller Ceske Krumlov. It's a beautiful little town with only 15000 people, a medieval place with cobblestone streets, a winding river, a castle, church – everything a small tourist town wants! We stayed in a great little hostel right on the river in the middle of town. We loved just wandering the streets in search of something to eat (supermarket shut at 5:30 on week days and 11:30 on Saturday – forget Sunday!), or just looking around. We went around the castle; over the moat with the bears, up the tower for great views of the town, and up to the royal gardens – amazing! Again it was a bit wet off and on, we're fast running out of dry clothes. One morning we hiked out of town a few km in search of a chapel on a hill which was unsuccessful but nevertheless a nice couple of hours. Lunch in the park, naps in the sun, cheap pastries & ice cream. There was some sort of disability awareness event on one afternoon, we watched a jazz/funk/soul band for a while. More unexpected niceness.

We'd made another spur of the moment decision to change our plans again and go to Auschwitz Poland to visit the concentration camp. That meant an overnight train (3 actually) to the town, on which I managed to leave my phone when we left at 5 am in the morning. Including a few hours sitting at stations waiting for trains it took a good 14 hours before we arrived on a sleepy Sunday morning.

Everybody knows something about Auschwitz, concentration camps and the holocaust but it was still a very educative experience. Probably the most sombre, most awful place we'll ever visit, but also so memorable and important. Like everywhere we go, actually visiting somewhere replaces your imagination of it with reality, usually giving it context and making it feel more normal. What happened in Auschwitz was in no way normal but it gave us a feeling for the reality of the millions of lives that were lost. We had a tour of Auschwitz I where a maximum of 20000 prisoners were held at once. The Nazi's used existing Polish army brick barracks to house initially Polish political prisoners and then later anyone on their list of enemies of the state. The first gas chamber extermination experiments were carried out there and led to the construction of purpose built gas rooms and incinerators. Most of the buildings are still in good condition and house various displays and information. There are rooms full of thousands of kilos of human hair (the Nazi's wasted nothing except lives), prosthetic limbs, spectacles, dishes, shoes – and this is all only the stuff they didn't have time to distribute to where they could make use of it. Today Auschwitz I is right in the middle of a town, it feels bizarre.

Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is a much larger site (380 acres?) built after the “success” of Auschwitz I. A much smaller percentage of the buildings survived, mostly because as the Nazis deserted the camp days before it was liberated they destroyed a lot of evidence and buildings. There were rows upon rows of brick and timber huts with up to 130000 people crammed into the whole camp. Here were the two main gas chambers and incinerators, capable of burning 5000 to 7000 bodies per day. There were times when they couldn't cope so they just burnt bodies in the open. The ashes were poured into the nearby river or dumped into a pond. Here's where the trains with cattle cars with 100 people in each pulled up for people to begin their “new life”. 75% were deemed unfit upon sight and with the flick of a wrist were sent straight to the gas chambers after being stripped of all their belongings and later their clothes. Most of the remaining people eventually also died from over work, malnutrition, execution or the gas chamber. This was the oppression of people at an elite, professional level. Realising the reality and truth of Auschwitz was depressing, sick and harrowing, but also good for us I think. In the words of the memorial “Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women & children, mainly Jews, from various countries around Europe. Auschwitz – Birkenau 1940-1945”

We only spent until 4 or so in the town, and left on another overnight train to Berlin. Arriving in the morning we checked in and went straight on another 3.5 hour free walking tour. I'd done this when I was in Berlin in 2005 and remembered it was good, so the same this time plus more rain :-) We visted Pariser Platz, the Brandenburg gate, the holocaust memorial, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, various squares and important buildings, Museum Island, all the while being fed history and relevant information. Nik made the comment that we've learnt more history in the last 2 weeks than 2 years at school! The following day we ventured out again, still in the rain. We walked through the Tiergarden and around the fence of the zoo, getting some free glimpses :-) We arrived at the Reichhaus intending to go inside to climb into the big glass sphere that sits on top of their parliament. We did end up going in, but only after 1.5 hours standing in a queue in the blustery rain. That took us right up to the time we needed to be on our way, so a few quick trips on the subway had us to the hostel and back to the Hauptbanhof and on our way to Kiel.

In September last year we had someone contact us though a couch surfing group asking if she could stay at our place in Armidale for some time over the UNE mid semester break. Consequently we met Claudia and greatly enjoyed having her stay with us for a few days. Now she's back home in Germany and was kind enough to return the favour and have us stay with her in Kiel right in the North of Germany on the Baltic coast. She treated us very well, feeding us and taking us around town. In the evening we stopped at her little local pub on the corner around from her apartment for a beer and to watch a live band, that turned out to be from Sydney. They were really good and we were sad we only caught the end of their set. The next day before we continued heading North we headed into the centre for a bit of retail therapy. I also did a quick walk up to the harbour and yacht docks then back through some picturesque parks.

Next we were on to Copenhagen, in expensive Scandinavia :-) Our train was 5 hours, some of which was on a ferry where they drove the train on, we all hopped off, sailed for an hour or so then hopped back on and went on our merry way. Gives you an indication the size of the ferry! In Copenhagen we're staying with Anders, a friend we met on our Africa tour. We really liked the city; great architecture, lots of bicycles, parks, canals etc. We did our own walking tour from home to Tivoli (a famous fair/park), the town hall, the amazing university library (complete with sliding ladders), a couple of churches, Kings Park, the National Art Museum, an old fortress which is still a military baracks, past the “Little Mermaid” statue (although she's currently on display at the world expo in Beijing – along with 1 million litres of Danish sea water she's sitting in :-P), through the courtyard of the royal palace, around the colourful and often photographed Nyhaven, down to the houses of parliament (old royal palace) then back home for home cooked dinner; a long day! The rain's still following us, but we managed to do a few loads of washing and now have dry clean clothes again. We've been cracking out the warm stuff too, it's max 13 degrees some days. Perhaps our endless summer is coming to an end!

Out again the next day to do a tour by boat of the harbour and city. Everything here's expensive it seems, except this one tour which was only 30 Kronor (A$6) for an hour tour, the same price as a coffee. This tour was good, more sight seeing than informative, but we had a nice surprise when we were told the Royal yacht was out on the harbour and we had a chance of seeing the Queen. We were checking out the yacht when there was a commotion from the royal house and we saw the Queen coming out, down the red carpet and into her little transport boat, then sail across to the big royal yacht and board. Exciting! No sighting of Princess Mary though. We were hoping she'd take us fellow Aussies out for drinks, maybe next time.

We also went to the Church of Our Savior, which has an amazing tower you can climb inside and then later outside as a staircase winds around. It was super windy and the view over the city awesome. We went for a quick tour around Christiana, an infamous suburb where people took over some apartment buildings a few decades ago and turned the whole area into a big alternative scene. Little cafes and shops are dotted around, and there are plenty of musos, skaters etc making it feel like a cross between a ghetto and Bellingen. There's blatant drug dealing; shops that only sell marijuana which is freshly grown on the side of the streets. Different!

Back to Ander's place and then onto another overnight train to Munich, where Carly joins us on our travels :-) Looking forward to that!

We're having a great time, although this part of the trip with moving every few days and having to organise transport and accommodation is a little more straining. We knew that would be the case, but the amazing places we're seeing are far outweighing the cost!

Until next time,

Alex

Cathedral, Sofia - Bulgaria

Seles Castle, Brasov - Romania

Budapest - Hungary

Vienna

Ceske Krumlov - Czech Republic

Auschwitz Birkenau - Poland

Holocaust memorial, Berlin - Germany

Visiting Claudia in Kiel

Copenhagen

Nyhaven, Copenhagen, Denmark

Syria and Turkey

2010-09-05T09:48:00.001-07:00

Hi!

We have been quite slack in our blogging and have so many adventures that we couldn't possibly fit them all in, but I'll do my best...

Landing in Syria from Jordan our first stop was Damascus. We spent three nights there and had a really good time. We saw the alleged house where Annanais lived and had fun walking the streets that Saul/Paul would have walked. Other than that most of it was spent walking around the souq (a massive market a billion times bigger than Amidale's) and trying not to spend all our money. Some other excitements were watching an old story teller tell a story in Arabic, visiting an amazing mosque, Al went paintballing and many crazy and sometimes scary taxi rides. We left about half of our tour there and gained another 3 friends.

Next we visited some old Roman ruins and a had a bushcamp.

Now to the 17^th... Alex's birthday (although his silly wife forgot until about 10.30... oops!). We drove Krak de Chevalieres an old castle which was at one time occupied by Richard the Lionheart and his Crusaders. This was followed by a lovely all you can eat lunch.

From there we went to Allepo. We did a day tour of the city with a crazy little tour guide named Ahmed, who gave out bon bons (lollies) when we answered his questions correctly. He was a character and very insightful. Saw the inside of a bath house, old mental asylum and the citadel.

Al and I also accidental saw the inside of a brothel... I mistook it for our hostel and barged inside and I couldn't figure out why the man was so pushy and cranky at us for coming in... little did I know!

Onto Turkey, my favourite country of the tour! The instant change in landscape was amazing, from desserts and dry barren land to Mountains and green trees and rivers!

Our first stop was in Cappadoccia where we slept in caves. For the first night literally Al and I slept in a cave that we found and the two nights after that in a dorm room, still in a cave but nicely furnished. There are caves everywhere people just decided to build houses in the rocks and dug a few rooms out. Very cool.

We had a lovely dinner at a shop that sells carpets and spent an hour or so being walked through different types of carpets. Did you know that for a very fine carpet a lady can spend up to 2 years just on that one piece? Again we pushed away the urge to spend copious amounts of money and said no.

The next day we did a tour, highlights being funny rock formations that look a lot like penises (sorry but it's true) the an underground city which was amazing and exploring some of the caves.

That night was Turkish night, the bestest mostest funest night of the tour. We started out with dinner all you can eat and drink three courses, pretty much any drink you want and with amazing entertainment. Belly dancers, Turkish men dancers, story dances and a little dancing of our own, followed by more dancing and pool at a pub. The next day was very relaxed ready for a big drive to mount Olympus.

We stayed here in tree houses near the beach. The main reason for going was to see Mount Olympus, with its never ending fires that are always burning... very strange but cool.

Oludeniz was a relaxing few days at the beach. Volleyball, swimming, bowling, dancing, sitting and reading took up most of the time. Some of the group went paragliding which looked to be lot of fun.

Next was a big highlight... Ephesus. We stayed at a caravan park (lots of the older folk got their knickers in knot when they saw a big yellow truck full of young people pull up, but after they saw that we were very responsible they got over it) and explored the ruins of Ephesus the next day. By this time in the trip chess had become a major time consumer and there was always a game going on.

From here it was sadly our last bushcamp and then a drive to Gallipoli... An amazing experience and day. I never imagined I would feel so emotional being there. We had a great guide who knew a heap about it. The landscape was so beautiful it was hard to imagine the absolute horrors that went on there. It would have to be right up the top of trip highlights. I strongly recommend it to anyone who has the means.

To Istanbul where the tour officially finished. We had our last beers and dinners and dances and said our goodbyes. In amongst this was the saga of the camera lens which Alex can tell you in detail on request...

We saw the Blue Mosque which was definitely a highlight, beautiful interior.

We saw our first rainfall and 5 weeks and I shot my first ever gun... A hand gun. It was exhilarating and I'm considering giving up my idea of nursing to join the police force :-)

It was very sad to leave so many great friends, but promises of catching up later in the year made it easier.

So after that very long winded explanation (which probably left out half the things we did anyway) I will say that's all for now.

Al and I are doing as much of eastern Europe as we can before we meet Carly in two weeks and we are catching lots of trains and have lost a lot of sleep but are having a really nice time.

Egypt to Jordan

2010-08-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

The Middle East... what an adventure! It's kinda a long blog, we've covered so much ground in the last 3 weeks. From London we flew straight to Cairo, where we had a couple of days before we joined our Oasis overland tour to Istanbul. The heat was oppressive, mid 40s every day. We didn't find Cairo terribly compatible with pedestrians (our favoured method of exploring cities), and didn't really know what or where to go, so our wandering was limited to the suburbs near our hotel. Otherwise we enjoyed the A/C in our room :-P Our impression of Cairo is a big, dusty, dirty, polluted, sprawling concrete jungle. High street street fashion labels can be in a street with a laundromat on one side, and a kebab shop on the other. Traffic is crazy (that goes for the entire area), and the call to prayer rings out 5 times a day. It's ramadan at the moment, which is interesting to experience.

We joined our group of 21 others, and spent a day in Cairo/Giza visiting the Pyramids and the Cairo Museum, which houses many treasures and archaeological artefacts from the area. The highlight of these was Tutankhamen's head-dress, coffin, sarcophagus and burial boxes (can't remember their official name), which really were amazing – such famous items but seeing them in the flesh! Then later that night we boarded an overnight train South to Luxor.

Luxor, like Cairo is on the Nile, and we enjoyed a few excursions while we were there: to Abu Simble where the mightily impressive, relocated temples of Ramses the something are, the Greco-Roman Philae Temple (also relocated by UNICEF from one island to a slightly higher one), a Nubian village visit and meal, a quick visit to the Botanical gardens and then a wander around Elephantine island. Swimming (in the Nile), meals at local restaurants, wandering the markets, yet again hiding in our A/C room.

A very lovely and relaxing part of our trip was our two days on the felucas (sailing boats), where we meandered slowly down the Nile (35 km in 2 days :-P) stopping for meals and swimming. 2 days with no agenda, lots of reading, Mafia, Puno and numerous other games, refreshing dips and great food. We have a great bunch of people on this tour, probably half Kiwis & Aussies (which we're loving), a few Poms, Canadians, Americans and for the first time some Croats and a Pole. The 23 of us were split over two felucas, but we were always within cooee of each other. We slept on deck, in the balmy night air.

Then a brief visit to Ko Mombo temple ruins, before driving North to Luxor. We slept at a campsite, under the stars, visited the Souq (market), ate cheap falafel and shwarma, and lived in the pool during the heat of the day. On our only full day there we caught an early morning coach to the Valley of the Kings, where around 20 Kings/Pharaohs of Egypt had their tombs built and were subsequently buried. The tombs are all varying in size, with many open to the public (for a fee of course!!). We visited three, and saw some elaborate artwork, tunnels and tombs. Tutankhamen's tomb was the last one discovered in the 1920s, and is the only one that was fully intact with all its treasures. There's nothing there now (it's all on display at the museum), only his mummy.

In the afternoon I visited the huge, sprawling site that is Karnak Temple. Each king added a section to it, so consequently it has a wide range of styles. So far the most impressive of all the ruins we've seen, it has a huge hall with columns, a big sacred lake, statues etc. See the photos! Travelling northwards we hit the Red Sea and swam in the rather salty water, but in mid 40 degree heat, it was worth it! Arrived at a bush camp, outside St Paul's Monastery. Apparently there was a monk in around 300 AD who lived in a cave for 90 years, living on bread delivered by a raven. Now there's a huge Coptic monastery, which obviously has lots of money pouring in because they're building a great big church specifically for visitors. We didn't get much sleep, 2 or 3 bus-loads of tourists turned up at about 4 in the morning, and we learnt some new things about Arabic culture. Anything we'd left out (towels, clothes, mats etc) were “borrowed” by people to sleep on, the kids ran around, groups of women sat by our feet having loud conversations, the buses sat with their engines ticking away. When we woke up we couldn't leave our stuff unattended at all – in two minutes some guy would be playing with your torch and pinching your pillow. Pretty different to how strangers treat each other in the West, it's testing for us to get used to!

The following day we arrived in Suez, and drove through a tunnel under the canal. We legged it to St Katherine's Monastery at the base of Mt Sinai, where we had dinner and played soccer with some locals. At 8 we started walking up the mountain with our Bedouin guide, who broke up 3 hour walk with stops where he gave the story of Moses and a bit of local history. By midnight we arrived near the top, hired mattresses and crashed out for a 5 our sleep, waking up just before dawn. Then we walked a few minutes up the hill and found a spot to watch the sunrise. That was pretty awesome, sitting huddle together, listening to a group of Jewish Spanish (?) guys singing in Hebrew – goosebump material for me!

Back down the mountain, then cooked breakfast at the bottom and a quick visit to the monastery and on to Dahab for 4 nights. This was a little oasis of pure relaxation amongst lots of site seeing and travelling. Dahab is the little sister to Sharm el Sheikh, a 100% tourist town. Dahab is much smaller, with pretty much a strip of cafes and shops along the coast. We did lots of chilling at bars and cafes, overlooking the Red Sea across to the United Arab Emirates which disappeared depending on the the haze :-P One day we spent snorkelling at the Blue Hole, which is an amazing geographical feature a 120m deep hole and 50m wide, just metres off the coast. The visibility in the Red Sea is amazing (30m), and the coral and fish life is up there with the best in the world. The next day Nik & both went diving, doing our Deep and Drift Dives that count towards our Advanced Diver course. Dive 1 was at the Canyon, a 33m deep canyon in the ocean floor, so narrow it's almost a cave at some points. Lion fish, eels, octopus, loads of fish life. Dive 2 we entered at El's Bell's, which is is another hole where we dove down 30 odd metres and came out off a huge wall that disappeared upwards to the surface and downwards to the floor hundreds of metres below. An amazing dive, it felt like we were flying, being surrounded by endless blue on 5 out of our 6 sides. We drifted down to the Blue Hole. The following day I had a huge day, up at 3 to drive to Sham el Sheik, then catch a dive boat 3 hours out to the Thistlegorm, a WWII wreck in 30m of water. This has been rated as the 2^nd best wreck in the world, and was totally worth visiting. Dive 1 we circumnavigated the wreck, seeing tanks, anti-aircraft guns, artillery shells and train locomotives amongst other things. Dive 2 we entered the hull, visiting the Captains Quarters and saw his private bath, then 2 decks; Bedford trucks, motorbikes, gumboots, batteries, electrical equipment, and loads more. Dive 3 was at Ras Mohamed, where we did a drift dive around two reefs, seeing lots of bigger fish, and around a wreck of a timber ship that was carrying a cargo of toilets – it's bizarre to see the sea floor covered with hundreds of toilet bowls :-) Because we'd done so much diving at depth, we had to wait a while before we drove over the range back to Dahab. Slept very well that night! Nik had a relaxing day with all our new friends, chilling at the Hilton, utalizing their nice pool :-)

Northwards again, we spent an entire day crossing the boarder to Jordan. We drove to an Egyptian port, where we moved from one queue to another for a number of hours, then waited till our huge ferry sailed. It was due to leave at 2, hence our arrival mid morning for processing through immigration etc, but we didn't board the ferry until around 3:30, and didn't depart til after 7. TIA! Disembarking took some time too, then processing through Jordan customs and immigration. Finally just after midnight we pulled into camp. Our visit to Jordan is for two major places, Wadi Rum & Petra. Wadi Rum is an impressive area of huge rock formations in the middle of the desert, and is one of the places Lawrence of Arabia hung out. Stinking hot, we attempted sand boarding again, to moderate success. The 4WD jeep safari was really just cruising around the area, it wasn't bush bashing through sand dunes. Our bush camp nearby was one of my favourites anywhere, in the middle of the desert, nobody in sight. Amazing stars, reminded me of being at Dad's in Armidale, with no big cities nearby. Fell asleep watching shooting stars. We became stuck in sand on the way out, which resulted in half an hour of sand shovelling to get the truck out.

I'd seen pictures of Petra, and had an idea of what we were seeing – a city carved into rock. What I didn't understand was the scale of the place – it's enormous! We arrived at the site very early in the morning (just after 6) and had the place more or less to ourselves until the late morning when buses and buses kept pouring in. Overall we walked for 10 hours, exploring all over the place. There are some great hikes up to high points, overlooking areas of the city, and one up to the Temple. Lots of it is just ruins or restored ruins, but there's also plenty of buildings that have been carved right out of solid rock and are still in pretty good condition. You're pretty free to walk around wherever you want, climbing up rocks and into caves. We're going through so much water each day, on days like this one when it's over 40 and we're on our feet we might go through 3-4 litres each. Some in our group are going through 6 or 7 though! It was a really good day, highly recommended!

We had one more day in Jordan before we arrived in Syria, which was spent travelling to Mt Nebo, where Moses is supposed to be buried. First stop was at the Dead Sea, where we all went swimming – a most surreal experience! It's evaporating and an alarming rate, consequently it's getting saltier each year. You can float with your body vertical, and it's a struggle to swim 'cause your body is so far out of the water, you feel like a cork! Any little cuts sting like nothing else, and you get out feeling so crusty and gross. Thankfully our next stop was at a canyoning place where they had showers (of sorts :-P) where we could get cleaner. From our bush camp we could look out over the Dead Sea, across to Syria and Israel, where we could see the lights of Bethany, Jericho and Jerusalem. So close, yet so far! We're hoping to visit Lebanon and Israel on another trip, one day.

That takes us up to Syria, where we are at the moment (although we're leaving tomorrow to enter Turkey :-P) We'll catch up about that next blog.

We're both well, a little browner and skinnier than before, and really enjoying our new bunch of tour buddies. At the moment we have another 2 weeks on this trip, then a few weeks in Eastern Europe before we meet Carly and explore some more. That all requires lots of planning and moving around, so we're trying to soak up all this pre-organised stuff before there isn't any left!

Shalom,

Alex

Plenty more photos on Facebook, but here are some:

Giza Pyramids

Swimming in the Nile

Feluca

Hyrogliphics

Diving in the Nile

Mt Sinai

Sunrise from Mt Sinai

Diving in Dahab

Dahab

Wadi Rum

Petra

Dead Sea

Bush camp on Mt Nebo, overlooking Israel & Syria

London

2010-08-01T02:41:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone (...who is still bothering to read our blogs :-))

Plane ride to London wasn't so great but London was fantastic! Lovely Beth had to chase us around the airport and through a few tube stations thanks to bad phone connections but we found each other eventually. We stayed with Beth and Cam Shaw and Hann had just moved out of their flat when we got there.
It was the perfect time of year to go (in my opionion) it was warm and the days stretched on forever. We found ourselves eating dinner at 9 or nine thirty most nights while it was still light. Our first two days were Beth, Cam and Hannah's days off. So we went for the walk that Beth takes all her London first timer friends on, and went out to dinner and on Sunday Beth cooked us a roast while we explored Primark... A very cheap clothes store.

The rest of the week was work for most of the world, so Al and I explored London. Monday was Sommerset House, a few small churches that we found while walking and Tower of London for the afternoon which was really intersting. Saw the Crown Jewels amongst other things.

Tuesday we met up with Tommy Gun a good friend from our South America tour. He walked around with us for the day. We went to the imperial war museum in the morning which was amazing but quite sad. A must do for anyone going to London (plus its free!) We then caught up with two others from our South America tour, Sabrina and Shiona. Had a few beers and a delicious sandwich and chatted for a few hours. We went to St Pauls that afternoon and also The National Gallery.

Wednesday we walked around Notting Hill and its markets, but the big event was watching Wicked, an excellent play with excellent actors and voices and a really good time. Then on to Abbey Road and finshed the day watching Cam play in his final Twenty20 game of the year.

Thursday was spent walking around different famous places including Harrods, Hyde Park Oxford St, then meeting the guys for dinner in Brick Lane after dashing through the Tate.

All of these things were amongst good meals and fun times with our hosts and watching lots of "Gavin and Stacey", a show we now love.

London!

The lovely Shaw/Hoskins

Tea anyone?

Emily, you weren't picking up!

The Big Ben clock tower (remember, Big Ben's inside)

Namibia & Cape Town

2010-07-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

We have had a most lovely last couple of weeks! It was especially nice to hang out with Armidale friends in Nambia, an unplanned pleasantry really :-) David & Alisan Greeff with their two kids Ettienne & Caris have been working with CMS there for about the last 4 years, and Nicky Brown has been over there since March helping to home-school the kids. While we were there Amy Gow & Heather Gant came holidaying/visiting, so it was a full on Armidale reunion.

They had been working up in the North of Nambia, but were right in the middle of moving to Walvis Bay right when we arrived. We'd bussed 30 something hours from Johannesburg to Walvis, and stayed in a B&B our first night, then met them when they arrived in town the next day. Our week or so with them was fairly relaxed, and mainly involved helping unpack and settle in, adventuring into town for shopping or coffee, watching soccer, walking around the lagoon waterfront and playing with the kids. Nik commented more than once “it's nice to just be in a home and be able to make myself a cup of tea whenever I want :-)

Walvis Bay is surrounded by the Namib desert on one side, and freezing Atlantic currents on the other. Along with Swakopmund which is about 30 min North, it's the area of Nambia where Nambians go for summer holidays. There's a big German influence, especially in Swakop. I know the North is different to this comparatively wealthy, touristy area, but Nambia isn't how I imagined it. It's much more like South Africa than the Eastern African countries we visited, with decent infrastructure, Western cities and services.

We enjoyed going to church on Sunday, after which Nicky took us to Swakopmund to look around. There was an amazing sunset we watched from a bar at the end of the pier at Long Beach, with seals playing in the waves – talk about picturesque! On Wednesday we went with Amy, Heather & Nicky to Dune 7, where we attempted sandboarding with home made boards they girls had bought from a service station for A$6 each :-) After climbing up the first dune we thought there was no way we'd have enough energy to board down more than once, but after a few attempts we did get the hang of it and had lots of fun and laughs as we hurtled down (and sometimes into) the dunes. Rather than walking back down to the car park I thought I'd board down; this proved to be a not such a smart idea as it was steeper and much longer than the other dunes we'd been going on. My thought processes went something like “going too fast, must use feet to brake.... feet are now burning, maybe going fast wasn't so bad after all.... nope, going this fast really not good, must use feet again” and resulted in ripping some skin off a couple of my toes. Silly boy! After heading home for much a much needed shower we went up to Swakop again for more exploring and dinner.

Wednesday we said goodbye to the girls as they headed North for some more adventuring, while we enjoyed a couple more days with the Greeffs. David took me to visit the local gaol where he will (hopefully, Lord allowing) be involved in some ministry stuff, although our 3 trips out there didn't eventuate into actual face-to-face time with inmates, but did prove to be useful and interesting. On Friday we flew straight from Walvis to Cape Town, for our last few days in Africa.

Cape Town is a most beautiful city, certainly one of our favourite big cities we've visited so far. Table Mountain is amazing just sitting in the middle of everything. We found a cheap (and nice!) hostel just 500 metres from their flash new stadium, and about a half hour walk from the city centre. We did a good amount of walking while we were there; in and out of the city, down to the waterfront, down along the beaches and from Table Mountain back into the city. The “Waterfront” is kinda like Darling Harbour, on a slightly smaller scale. Our walk on Sunday morning from Green Point down through Sea Point, Bantry Bay to Clifton Beach was very pretty, with plenty of dream houses filling us with ideas :-)

We caught a taxi to the Table Mountain cable car base station, and rode up to the top, 1060m above sea level. It's an unreal view, you can see all the way down the cape, the city spilling around the base of the mountain, and beaches stretching away up to the North. We had a slightly eccentric tour guide at the top, who matter-of-factly confirmed deaths were not uncommon and that an American had slipped to his death just last week.

As we walked back through town to our hostel, streams of people were already heading to various official Soccer World Cup outdoor fan fests, decked out in crazy Spanish or Dutch supporting clothing. We walked into the city later in the afternoon and met up with Harry, a friend from our South American tour. He conveniently convinced the security guard on the door of the Irish pub he was at to let us slip past the queue of people waiting to get into bar that was already at capacity, where we squeezed in and watched the what turned out to be rather scrappy final. The streets were awash with partying Spanish supporters afterwards, pretty cool to actually be in South Africa for it!

The next day we walked down to the waterfront early and took a ferry to Robben Island for a tour. It ended up being free because they left two hours late (for a three hour tour!), and enough irate customers complained. Being late was a bit of a shame because the whole thing was subsequently rushed, but still was a great thought provoking tour. Robben Island has a long history, including being a leper colony a couple of hundred years ago, and more recently the home of a high security prison where many political prisoners of South Africa apartheid regime were housed, including Mandela. Still confronts me the stuff that was going on here within my lifetime.

Our last day we spent down in the “richo” suburb of Camps Bay, with its very pretty beach. Brunch, walking, reading, napping in the sun :-) We filled up on greasy fish and chips before our 21 hour bus back to Joburg, the left overs of which we gave to a couple of homeless guys who we got chatting with. Cape Town seems to be the town of refined beggars, who have honed their spiel to something believable :-P We bought for a lady who'd been kicked out of home a couple of loaves of bread (being 6 months pregnant's a good story and hard to fake), a lame guy (waiting on compensation – with a folder complete with police reports etc :-P) the same, and gave someone asking for money half a bag of carrots.

Back to Joburg for another night with Ans (thanks again!), then flying up to transit Entebbe on our way to London. That's where we are at the moment, after spending another night in an airport, somewhat unexpectedly. We'd booked a hotel but found out our previous visa wasn't still valid, so would have needed a new one for the less than 12 hours we'd be spending out of the airport.

So, we're looking forward to a good sleep in London, where we're spending a week with Beth,Cam & Hannah. Then on to Cairo for the start of a 5 week Middle East tour. We hit the 5 month mark today, pretty much exactly half way through our trip. Some days we still wake up amazed that we're actually wherever we are, so far away from little old Armidale :-)

Shalom!

Nicky, trudging to the top of a dune

Amy, beginning a decent!

Armidale united in Namibia

Table Mountain - Cape Town

One of the ships used to ferry the last political prisoners to the mainland from Robben Island

Camps Bay

Dar es Salem to Johannesburg

2010-07-03T13:24:00.001-07:00

Since we last wrote we have made our way to the coast of Tanzania to a city called Dar es Salem. We spent a night in a bungalow that opened right out onto the water. The next day we caught a taxi and two ferries to the island of Zanzibar... What a great place!
96% of the people are Muslim and other religions make up the other 4%. We spent one night in a hotel in Stone Town (first hotel room in about a month). We had a yummy lunch in a local restaurant, and then went exploring. That night after watching the sun set over the ocean over a few beers we went to the night market which is one of my favourite experiences so far (oh how I love food!). There were over 50 stalls in a small square all selling different types of food, and heaps of seafood. We tried Zanzibar pizzas, which aren't really pizzas but a mix of ingredients covered in dough and fried. We had a couple of savory ones and a banana and chocolate one.... YUM!!! Tried lots of different foods and drinks and then went to a pub for soccer and a glass of wine.

The next day we went on a “spice tour”. First our guide showed us around Stone Town and told us a lot of history, especially about the site of the first Angilcan Church, where the huge slave market used to be situated. It was the last slave market to be abolished in the world. He took us to holding cells where they would keep up to 70 slaves, and the 15 of us in there couldn't believe that it was possible.
We then went to the government spice farm where we walked around for a few hours trying different spices from the plants and seeing that spices don't come from small plastic packages in Coles. It was interesting to see the plants that they come from and try to guess all the flavours and smells.
We then had a traditional lunch to end the tour and headed up to the northern beaches, said to be some of the best in the world. They were lovely, although nothing much can beat Aussie surf. They were white sand and turquoise water and the weather was lovely.
We did not a lot for three days, ate, lay on the beach, snorkeled, went for walks on the beach, did gymnastics with the locals, watched soccer, drank beers, ate more, played beach soccer, bought some amazing paintings and Alex had a cooking class with a real character of a chef.
Needless to say it was a lovely relaxing time. I would love to spend a nice long holiday there!
We made lots of good friends on our Africa tour, so it was very sad to have to leave them.

We caught a ferry back to Dar es Salem and explored for the afternoon. The next morning we flew out at 5.30am to Johannesburg. Ans, a CMS missionary worker from Joburg picked us up from the airport and graciously let us stay with her for 4 nights. It was lovely to spend some time in a home and Ans was like a mother. We went to church and helped at a kids club and saw some of the city. The main event was the World Cup. Sunday the 27th we headed off to Soccer City, arrived about 3 hours early and watched Argentina and Mexico go head to head. The atmosphere was amazing and it was wonderful, even though it was very, very cold! We never felt unsafe, contrary to many warnings and can't wait until Brazil 2014 :-)

Now we are in Namibia staying with the Greeff's and Nicky Brown. It took us a very long 30 hour bus trip to get here from Joburg but its lovely to be here. Nice weather, bike rides, cafe's and walks, and lots of unpacking as they moved here the day after we arrived. Hopefully onto Capetown next but we will tell you all about it in our next post.

Much love.
Danika

City centre, Dar es Salem

Sunset from Stone Town

Stone Town night food markets

Despite this picture, Mosques were more common than churches in Stone Town, 30 to 1

Paradise Beach, Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Sunset over Hillbrow, Johannesburg

Uganda - Tanzania

2010-06-17T00:54:00.000-07:00

Three weeks since we blogged... it feels more like three months! We were in Kampala when we last updated, where we'd traveled to from North Kigezi to meet our four week East Africa tour. Kampala seemed (from our limited exploring) to be a big, dusty, noisy, busy African city – I'm sure whatever picture that conjures in your mind isn't far wrong :-)

We met our tour group (only three others!), and on our first night went out to an African comedy club, which was an insightful time. Half the punch lines were delivered in the local language, after several minutes of the build up in English, so it didn't all sink in, but it seems it's still quite appropriate to pay out people without then countering the negative humor by paying out yourself or other targets. Political correctness still has a way to go in Uganda!!

The following morning we collected another two travellers (making 5 Aussies, 1 American and 1 Dane) and headed south (back down to the area we'd just come from) and drove all day to Lake Bunyoni, our base for the next 4 nights. The lake very beautiful, the deepest in Uganda (over 6000 feet apparently!), with many small islands scattered around it. The camp's set right on the shore of the lake, with great views from out our tent door. We spent a good few relaxing days there, interspersed with a few activities, such as visiting a pygmy village on the other side of the lake and an orphanage/school with heaps of little preschool aged kids that danced and sang for us :-)

The highlight of our time there (and real purpose of the visit) was trekking to a family of Mountain Gorillas in the Bwindi National Park, part of the Impenetrable Forrest. We left very early and drove for a few hours, met our guide and hiked for only 20 or so minutes before we met the guides who had proceed us and tracked the gorillas from wherever they'd been seen the previous day. The family we met had 12 members, 11 of which we saw, which was a fantastic result. We had an hour with them, observing as they tramped around us, they often encroached on the 7m maximum distance we were supposed to keep from them – not that we minded! There was a mix of silverbacks, adult females, black backs, juveniles, and infants. They are so gentle and majestic, quite amazing to watch. Expensive but an unforgettable experience!

We then had another long drive back to Kampala and on to Jinja at the source of the White Nile just near Lake Victoria. Here we declined the crazy grade 5+ white water rafting, but enjoyed a few days relaxing. Then we crossed the boarder into Kenya for a night near Endorat, on our way to Lake Baringo. Lake Baringo is a fresh water lake in the Rift Valley, with lots of hippos and crocodiles. We took a small boat tour out and saw lots of both – hippos were pretty exciting :-) The camping area is right the edge of the lake, so our night was interrupted by loud hippos grazing all around us; a little daunting when you see how big and powerful they are!

The next day we went to Nakuru, where we collected some more people (now bolstering our numbers to 11 including a Chinese, two Italian girls and another Dane) and went to Kembu Camp just outside the town. The camp's owned by a 6^th generation white Keyan, who has his own adult kids, which is pretty impressive given Kenya's history. They were a lovely family, Kaya showed us some tiny little chameleons that live in their hedges.

From Kembu we did a day trip to Lake Nakuru for our first Safari game drive, and wow, what a first impression! A note on the side; as I'm writing this, a tiny little hedgehog (guinea pig size) came scuttling up and sniffed my bare feet, they're so cute!! Although the day didn't start the best with a flat tyre as we drove the park gate, we were thankful half an hour later when not 2 minutes into the park we saw 2 female lions and 4 or so little cubs, eating half a zebra. Welcome to Africa huh!

Nakuru is famous for its millions of pink flamingos, which we saw in abundance. Over the course of the day we also saw black and white rhino, hundreds of baboons, vervet and columbus monkeys, gazelle, impala, zebra, water buffalo, water buck, many different birds (Kenya has the world record for the number of species of birds spotted in 24 hours; close to 300), giraffe, hyena and warthog. It's a fairly small park, so each corner we turned around seemed to have another group of animals waiting for us to lap up their uniqueness. The day was topped off by being tipped off about a group of 4 adult and juvenile lions sitting in a tree. Amazing, unforgettable memories, it like living in the Lion King, with quintessential pictures burned into our minds. So pleasing!

Next to Lake Naivasha, after picking up another American girl briefly joining us. The ever changing composition and of our tour group is quite a different experience to our overland trip in South America. Our driver Henry is a character not quite as professional as Nick and Tracy our Oasis crew! He's Kenya and lots of fun, but often we feel like things are left unexplained, and we're much more responsible for our activities rather than being led as such. No major complaints, just different. Again we've had a great bunch of people traveling with us, and have spent many hours sharing stories, life experiences, laughter and red wine together.

This lake (Naivasha) has more hippos (which you can observe after dusk while sitting on the deck of the bar), and is surrounded by various - (the hedgehog's back) - national parks and other interesting attractions. On the full day we had there, Nik and I went with Amie (one of our compatriot travelers) and hired bicycles and cycled through Hells Gate National Park. There aren't “dangerous” animals here, which meant we could make our own way through by bike, a 35ish km round trip. More zebra, giraffe, antelope, gazelle, warthogs. Hells gate also has interesting landscape, with big rocky cliffs and towers. We hired a guide and went on a gorge walk for an hour, down through limestone gullies and waterfalls, with hot springs (hot enough to cook an egg) and great views. The cycle out of the park yielded less wildlife than on the way in, instead we were greeted with more hills and geothermal power plants belching stinking odors, but all in all a great day.

Onwards to the Masai Mara, which was a fairly long painful day of “African massage” from terrible Kenyan roads. Compared to the parks we'd already visited, the Masai is quite different – much more sparse with a lower concentration of animals. It's exactly how we imagined the African savannah, proving it's not just a Hollywood creation, it's a real place! We drove for 4 hours through the park, then camped just outside and began the following day driving again from sunrise to mid afternoon. Here we added Silver Jackal, elephants, ostriches, a solitary cheetah, wilder-beast, many birds including guinea fowl, bustards, secretary birds and hornbills to the list of animals we've seen. Also plenty of game, giraffes, monkeys and more things we'd seen in other places. One highlight was a little nursery of lion cubs – about 9 of them sitting under some bushes with no adults in sight. I'm sure they were nearby, but they were happy not revealing themselves to us. Our Masai trip ended on a more unfortunate note; getting bogged for three hours. Much digging and jacking was done before we eventually all piled out and pushed the truck enough for it to get out. Not so fun at the time, but a great memories I'm sure; Sitting on top of the truck on “lion patrol”; boiling the kettle for cups of tea; the girls doing their best find some sort of cover in the middle of a grassy savannah for a wee :-)

Then back to Lake Naivasha for another two nights, this time more relaxing. The second night was the first of the world cup, so we had a great time packed into the bar watching South Africa draw valiantly against Mexico. The place fairly erupted when SA scored :-) We've subsequently been watching lots of soccer whenever we're not occupied with something else and are near a TV. We've become: pro any African team; embarrassed Aussies after the Socceroos' poor performance and conduct in their 1^st game (although I thought Germany were supurb if that's any consolation to us); proud of our Tasman Sea neighbours; even supporters of the Azzuri in deference to our new friends the Italian fellow travellers :-P It's loads of fun being surrounded by the atmosphere. Just now as I'm blogging I'm watching the Uruguay v Bafana Bafana game (the SA keeper was just red carded!), in a nearly empty bar with 2 Tanzanian guys who are dressed in semi traditional Masai attire.

Back to our travels though; last Saturday we left Naivasha and headed south a few hours to Nairobi, where we changed trucks and drivers (now with English Drew who's younger than I!) dropped of 3 of our number and collected another 10: Irish, Canadians, Brits, Chinese & Swiss – we're now a very multicultural group with complicated soccer allegiances! We arrived in time to go to a rugby union match, Kenya playing Zimbabwe. It was a pretty small affair - I think I've been to bigger events in Armidale – but good fun and whilst not fantastic rugby Kenya came back from behind and beat the Rhodesians towards the end so the home crowd was pleased.

On Monday we drove another long day, from Nairobi to Arusha in Tanzania where we are now. The main reason for the tour stopping here for 4 nights is to go on a 3 day trip to the Serengetti and Ngorongoro Crater, but as it's pricey (US$430 ea) and we've already done a decent amount of game drives and seen so much, the core group that started in Uganda decided to opt for a smaller one day drive just in Ngorongoro for a quarter of the price. So that was yesterday's adventure. We were hanging out to see a man lion, and within 15 minutes of being on the crater floor Ngorongoro obliged us with 2 males with their glorious manes. Again we saw lots of animals we'd seen in other parks (rhinos, elephants, hippos, game) but the highlight of this park for us were the lions. Over the course of the day we probably saw a dozen, including some extremely close and some stalking game (alas, no blood :-P). We searched in vain for a leopard, but had to make do with two cheetahs. With over 2 hours driving each way and an early start, we were pretty exhausted by the days end, but another good day, sampling what the “8^th wonder of the world” has to offer. No one park is like another, and although we saw many of the same animals and things at all of the parks, each place has it specialties and special experiences. Sometimes the coolest times are like what happened on the way back from Ngorongoro where I was jolted out of a dozing state by the car braking – out the window on the side of the road were a dozen giraffes and some zebra. Outside the park, just like we might see kangaroos in Australia. You don't often forget you're in Africa when you're here!

Today we tripped into Arusha town (we're camping at Snake Park, 20km out of town) and seemed to spend most of the day attending to our affairs. Good internet is still very hard to come by, making everything we try to do just that little bit harder. We think we've managed to finally dupe South African Airways into changing our flight to Johannesburg for us (after they said they can't because of a blackout on changes during the world cup), which means we'll be on Zanzibar for longer. That's where we head to next, we can't wait for a real bed after 4 weeks of straight camping!

There are/will be loads of new photo albums up on Danika's Facebook page, I must point out a special thank you to Jeanne Newman for the loan of a couple of her lenses off and on during some of our game drives, after my all purpose 18-200 decided to completely stop working. I really appreciated it, thanks!

Shalom,

Alex

Lake Bunyoni- Uganda

Gorilla... We were about 2 metres away from this one!

Drinking Nile on the Nile!

Crocodile on Lake Baringo

Flamingos on Lake Nakuru

Rhino at Lake Nakuru

Alex Amie and our guide at the gorge in Hells Gate NP

Women selling their wares outside Masaimara

Classic African landscape in the Masaimara

Lions at Ngorongoro

Ngorongoro Crater from the top

A hedgehog!

Uganda- North Kigezi

2010-05-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

Well, so much has happened in the last 3 weeks that I don't think a lifetime of conversations would do it justice, let alone one blog post. We have experienced so many different things, and have been very blessed and challenged.

We're more or less here because of the sister-link relationship the North Kigezi Diocese shares with the Armidale Diocese, which is what our church at home belongs to. The diocesan youth worker (Rev Enoch Karamuzi) visited Armidale in Jan 2009, where we met him, and expressed our desire to come and visit during our travels this year. We'd been communicating back and forth, but nothing would prepare us for what lay in store!

Uganda is a beautiful country, very green with rolling hills and valleys. Very fertile, with lots of plantations, crops and animals everywhere. The population's something over 30 million, and was one of the first things we noticed. South America had done a lot to educate us about poverty, but just the sheer number of people here is amazing. It also seems to be a step down developmentally compared to other countries we've visited.

After 8 hours on a local bus we arrived in Rukungiri from Entebbe/Kampala. Rukungiri is the main city within North Kigezi, with about 17000 people, although it feels much, much smaller than Armidale. While we were on the bus, Enoch breifed us with the plan for the next 3 weeks. We'd seen a itinerary showing a number of different villages we were visiting, but what we didn't know was that we'd be speaking to the pastors and youth leaders at each of the Arch Deaconaries – in sessions up to 4 hours! We had nothing prepared, so after getting the basic topics Enoch wanted us do discuss, we spent the following day feeling a little overwhelmed, nervously preparing lots of notes :-)

Everywhere we go we are treated like royalty, to the extent we feel embarrassed! We were always given seats of honour at meal times, in church services and driving in the car (no riding shotgun in the back of the ute for us!). Each day's schedule was usually breakfast at the hotel; travel up to two hours on poor dirt roads (no more than 50 km); morning tea; a session with the pastors and youth (3 hours); lunch; return travel then dinner at the hotel again.

At each of the Archdeaconary Centres, the pastors and youth leaders from all the parishes and sub-parishes had been invited, as well as various other church figures. This usually resulted in somewhere between 20 and 40 people each day, from up to 11 parishes. Nik and I shared with them our thoughts on the biblical foundations of youth ministry, our experiences, and explained about the different groups at St Pete's. Nik also shared an encouraging message with them, usually regarding hope. Q&A sessions taught us a lot about the issues the youth here face.

We were also very pleased to visit 8 Compassion Child Development Centres, that are usually on the same site as the ADCs. Compassion has 13 centres in North Kigezi, with over 4000 kids involved. We can't speak highly enough of them – they're doing a wonderful work in all areas of their mission: spiritual, educational & physical.

Here are the places we visited:

Bwambara Arch Deaconary Centre

Bugangari ADC & Compassion Child Development Centre

Kashenyi ADC & CDC

Nyakisoroza ADC & CDC

Rubirizi ADC & CDC

Rujumbura East ADC

Kakinga ADC

Kyamakanda ADC & CDC

Nyakagyeme ADC

Kakinga CDC

Kinyasano CDC

Rwerere CDC

Word seemed to spread that we were here and visiting these places. Initially we hadn't planned on speaking at the Compassion Centres, but we were invited to do so at one, and then proceeded to speak at most of the rest. I was also asked to speak (as in give the sermon!) at All Saints Rukungiri, Emmanuel Cathedral Rukungir and Rwerere Church on the three Sunday's we were here, and we spent Saturday at a “youth convention. I was able to use some of the same messages on different occasions, but I'm indebted to Danika who worked hard with me preparing. John 15 and James 1 both received a good working over :-) This was all topped off by speaking to up to 5 million people this morning via Radio Rukungiri.

We spent one Saturday visiting people involved in the Mosaic Project, which directly assists child headed families. These kids are often AIDS orphans, where a 13 year old might be looking after 4 or 5 younger siblings. Mosaic help them by finding live in carers, repairing or building housing, providing school fees etc. It's very encouraging to see the progress families that have been assisted for a few years have made.

The Ugandan people are very welcoming – we've never shaken so many hands or received so many greetings! Everywhere we drive, kids point, jump up and down, smile and shout “mxungu!” which is kinda like Gringo but basically means “whitey!”. I've been offered 100 cows as dowry for Danika, we've been promised many plots of land, and so many people have asked us to come back for longer. We feel very loved!

The food here's amazing, and we thought we were eating a lot before! Loads of rice, maize, potatoes, sweet potatos, some other root vegetable, boiled eggs, bananas, beans, “greens”, “eggplant” (which is nothing like ours), millet bread, beef, chicken, goat, paw paw, pineapple, Matoke (savoury baked banana mash), chapati (which is like naan bread) and ground nut sauce are new favourites. A high carb, low vege diet.

The internet in Uganda is pretty hard to come by. No access at the hotel, and the modem at the Anglican Diocese office which we were most welcome to use was hit by lightening in our first week here :-) Add to that it being nice and slow, intermittent power supply and us being flat out, we have lots of updating to do! It made managing our affairs at home in Aussie much harder also, thanks to everyone who's been help us! We're now in Kampala (briefly), where we're meeting our 4 week Uganda/Kenya/Tanzania tour. Hopefully we'll blog again soon!

Alex

OH and S isn't a big priority... This was holding up a bulldozer!

One of the Mosaic children

Not sure how they do this. They must have very strong necks

Means of transport

Rolling clouds

view from Prayer Mountain

Alovely landscape

Compassion

Cute Compassion children

The groups we spoke to with the bibles our church provided

Chile & Argentina

2010-05-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

Chile & Argentina

Being in Rukungiri means the internet is much harder to come by, so it's been a while since we've blogged, and probably will be a while before we do again. But, we haven't described the end our our South American adventures yet, so here they are!

After flying down to Santiago from Quito in Ecuador on the 21st (a good 2 weeks ago now), we caught a bus straight way to Valparaiso, a town 90 minutes from Santiago on Chile's coast. Note to those flying into Santiago – Aussie's are hit with a US$60 arrival tax. Pretty exhausted from flying and not sleeping much, we crashed at our hostel for good few hours. Valparaiso has around 300 000 people, so it's no coastal village, but we found it quite charming. We enjoyed catching a funicular up to Bellavista and walking around its surrounding neighbourhoods, with quaint cafes, interesting architecture, great views and odd graphiti. Chile's probably the most expensive South American country we visited, so we opted for cheap dinner; shopped at a supermarket and made pasta at the hostel.

More exploring the following day, before catching a bus back to Santiago in order to catch another bus to Mendoza (Argentina). So far we'd been mightily impressed with their bus services, but then a small nightmare involving 1 bus leaving without us, the bus we did catch breaking down half way back to Santiago, getting lost when they delivered us back to a different bus terminal than we expected and our printed internet receipt for the next ticket not being good enough for their liking. Thankfully the bus driver himself accepted it, and we finally were on our way! Their buses are pretty luxurious, with big comfy leather seats that recline, meals & snacks and movies. We managed to sleep ok (it was an overnight bus), and after being interrupted at 2am for the Argentinian border crossing, we arrived in Mendoza on Saturday morning.

Mendoza is famous for being in the middle of a wine producing region, and Argentina is famous for its amazing steaks, so that was all that we set out to achieve while we were there. We had a pretty chilled time the first 2 days; eating out, walking around the city, exploring parks, avoiding the street scam artists (the same deal as the guys in Venice for those of you that know), and celebrated ANZAC day with a quiet (1L) beer. We went out for a nice meal at a fancy restaurant one night, after which we could tick off both of our goals. Argentinian steak = very, very good.

On the Monday we checked out of the hostel and caught a bus 45 minutes away to a wine area, where we hired bikes and cycled from winery to winery. As well as tasting a number of wines we also visited another place that made liquors, condiments, chocolate & olive oil, all of which we sampled. We probably cycled 20 km along nice flat roads, though avenues of trees lining roads that are flanked by vineyards, surrounded by snow capped mountains. Picturesque indeed!

As it turned out, it was a good thing we headed back when we did; we were sitting in a restaurant, had just finished our meal when I happened to notice that the clock on the wall was an hour later than mine. Turns out Argentina's an hour ahead of Chile, and after 3 days of being there, no one had pointed it out, and we had no reason to notice! So instead of being an hour early for the bus, we were 5 minutes.

Bus to Buenos Aires was very similar to the previous one, although about 14 hours long. BA probably rates as my favourite big city we've visited so far. It reminded me of Sydney lots (in good ways), with lots of parks, giant old buildings and statues. They have crazy roads though, 14 or more lanes of traffic which is quadruple carriage way (if that's what you call it). Makes crossing the road a whole new experience!

Over the 3 days we spent there we explored a lot of the city on foot, or caught the metro for A$0.30 a trip :-P The hostel we were at had bikes for free rental so we braved the previously mentioned roads and set off exploring. We ended up in the huge nature reserve that lies between the city and the Atlantic, and cycled our way around that, joined by sweaty, hairy, shirtless Argentinan men jogging on their lunch break – delightful!

We also kept seeming to end up walking down Florida Ave, a big pedestrian mall with stacks of street vendors and artists. My pick of the street artists was a headless man (major points for effect, I haven't seen it before – see photo), although I think Nik may have preferred the Tango demonstrations. Also enjoyed the best value-for-money buffet ever, a Parilla (BBQ grill) with huge salad, side dish and desert bar, complete with self-serve ice-cream freezer. Yes, I am putting on weight :-)

The morning of our departure I went cycling again, this time by myself. I went way up through the North of the city, finding little suburbs that had quite a modern European feel to them. Along through parks, up around the zoo, Plaza de Italia and around the famous cemetery which seemed to be shut when I was there.

Another overnight bus took us back to Santiago, where we only had 1 night before we flew out to Uganda. We packed it in though; a funicular up the top of the hill to see all of Santiago and its smog spread out before us, squeezing in with all the uni students grabbing a beer on a Friday evening, cooking dinner and enjoying a bottle of wine, and then a great “free” 4 hour walking tour of the city the next day. The tour was pretty good, definitely recommend it for anyone visiting Santiago. Being May Day and therefore a public holiday, everything was shut and the city empty, except for the Plaza de Almas, which was packed with security because half the Chiliean parliament seemed to be attending a church service.

So that takes us up to our journey to Entebbe, which was a journey indeed. 13 hours to Madrid, 2 hour stop over, 2 hours to London, 4 hour stop over, 8 hours to Entebbe, where we met Enoch (our host for the next 3 weeks) and an 8 hour bus ride to Rukengiri. More about Uganda later, but safe to say it's amazing, we're busy and loving it!

Blessings,

Alex

Valparaiso - Chile

As above

More Valparaiso

At one of the wineries we visited

On my morning cycle in BA

And you though Danika was short!! Wait til you visit South America!

The statue of the virgin Mary highest point in Santiago

Looking out over smoggy Santiago

Otavalo and Quito

2010-04-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

Hi all!
Long time no post. It has been a while since we've been up north of South America but I'll blog about our last little bit.

After our amazing adventures in the Amazon and white water rafting we had a few days of "down time" in Otavalo and Quito.

Otavalo held delicious breakfasts (included in our accomodation, even better!), lots of markets to catch up on some birthday shopping, an amzing pie shop and potential danger.

Breakfasts were feasts of fruit and pancakes or fruit, yoghurt and granola.

Markets were brilliantly coloured and never ending with beautiful scarves, beads, delicious food, ponhos, blankets and everything in between. It took a lot to stop me from buying copious presents for myself :-)

Pie shop was cheap but massive pieces of pie with ice cream. If you're ever there, "The Pie Shop" is a must do.

Potential danger... My bag got slashed while walking through the markets. Nothing was stolen because there was nothing in the bag besides a jumper but it was still a shock to get back to the hostel and find a massive split in my bag through both sides. The scariest thing is that someone did that and was that close to me with a knife and i didnt notice a thing! Warning, keep your bag in front of you not behind!

We spent two nights there and then headed to Quito with a stop at the equator.

The equator was quite fascinting. We saw water spin in opposite directions on either side of it (although Alex went on to prove it was wrong via the internet... spoil sport), we stood eggs on a nail (well Al did I wasn't so successful), learnt about native Ecuadorians, saw an actual "shrunken head", a 7m Anaconda skin and had fun saying "Southern hemisphere, Northern hemispher, Southern Hemishere..." etc while jumping from one side to the other.
It was an interesting few hours. One thing has stuck with me, the only 3 rules that native Ecuadorians had... "Don't steal", "Don't lie", and "Don't be lazy". Good rules I think.

We then stayed 3 nights in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. This is where we left our tour and many good friends so we spent a lot of time hanging out with them. Lots of Puno was played and lots of drinks and dinners attended. We also did some sight seeing. The statue of the virgin Mary on top of El Panecillo, a wonderful view of the city.
Couldn't get into La Compañía (a church said to have some crazy amount of 'tonnes' of gold inside) but did go into and climb up many towers of the Cathedral of Quito, a huge and beautiful church.

We flew out of Quito on the 21st of April to Santiago... about which you will have to read the next blog to find out :-)

Lots of love.
x

A wheelbarrow *full* of stawberries at the Otavalo markets

Danika's the real Southern-Hemispherian in this pic... Alex is visiting the Northern :-)

A no-so balanced egg

Inside the Basillica in Quito

Not a good excercise for anyone vaguely afraid of heights - amazing experience though, and great view of Quito

Rio Verde & the Amazon

2010-04-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

Well we've had a most enjoyable and busy week since we left Punta Sal, the beach and Peru. We crossed the border (which involved 2 immigration and 1 customs checkpoints) and continued to drive all day until we pulled over on the side of the road, just on dusk and set up a bush camp. As soon as we crossed into Ecuador, the difference in the terrain was most notable - suddenly green, tropical and hot.

The following day we continued on, and after stopping for lunch in a little town that seemed to only sell jeans we arrived at our hostel just East of Rio Verde. It's owned by a Scottish guy who used to drive overland trucks (including for Oasis) for 9 years. He and his business partner bought a block of land 14 years ago (for US$6000!) and have built the hostel on it. It's the kinda place I'd love to own and run one day... maybe that's ambitious, but it was really cool. We were there for 3 nights, and despite it being fairly rainy, we thoroughly enjoyed exploring the area.

Our first morning we headed into the nearby town of Banos (30 mins on a bus), where I had my first OK cup of coffee since we've been away. We wandered the picturesque centre and went for a swim in the natural hot spring baths, right at the base of a little waterfall. In the afternoon we went with some others from our tour for a "bridge swing". Basically there's a big long rope (25m) tied to a bridge, and then the rope is passed under the bridge and up to the other side, forming a big loop underneath. You then are attached to the rope, climb over the railing, stand on a tiny little platform and launch yourself off for a quick exhilarating freefall, before the rope picks up the slack and you swing to-and-fro under the bridge. Crazy fun!! I videoed some of us jumping, so I'll try and post that sometime.

After that we went for a walk down to Pailon Del Diablo, or Devil's Cauldron, which was absolutely unreal waterfall and apparently one of the top 10 in the world (however you measure these things). You can pay the grand sum of $1 to climb right up under the falls, which after all the rain Ecuador's had was a very wet experience. It's a tight squeeze, at points we even had to crawl, but to be standing underneath and be able to put your hand in the water (mind you it felt like it was going to get ripped off!) was fantastic.

The following day we went for a walk with Tommy and Asa up on a path that led to a whole lot of little waterfalls. After yesterdays experience they seemed a little underwhelming, but walking through primary rainforest with loads of flowers, butterflies, fungi was worth it, even if there hadn't been any waterfalls. We caught another bus up the road to a cable car that strings its way across the valley and back again. Again the $1 fee was happily handed over, although we weren't feeling so sure of our safety after we saw the guy who was operating the lift running what looked to be not much better than a converted lawn-mower engine :-P We arrived back safe and sound, and the view was great, so we'd definitely recommend it. Plus it was topped off with a fruit skewer run through a chocolate fountain (another dollar) :-)

After leaving the now much loved Rio Verde, with its hammocks, fantastic food (thanks for the apple pie Nick!) and serve-yourself beer fridge, we went on our way toward Tena. Tena's the white-water-rafting capital of Ecuador, but on this occasion we just stopped for a great lunch before driving an hour (30km :-P) into the Amazon. We parked the truck and caught a little motorized canoe up the river to the Arajuno Jungle Lodge, our home for the next 3 nights. Tom Larson is an American guy who's been living in Ecuador for decades, and about 10 years ago bought his own section of rainforest for conservation purposes. Originally involved with the Peace Core, he now runs the lodge as an Eco-Tourism project, and also works with local communities to help introduce environmentally sustainable practices, particularly in regard to fishing.

Again we had a blast while we were there, doing various activities. The river we were on feeds into a major river, which in turn feeds into the Amazon itself. It rained a fair bit the first night we were there, and the river came up a good couple of metres overnight. That didn't curtail our morning activity, which was a guided tour through the primary and secondary rainforest. Octavio was a most interesting guide, telling us stacks of information about everything we came across. He caught a poison arrow frog (pretty red, blue & black) for us to look at; we also saw a prehistoric looking centipede, a weird yellow bull spider, leaf cutter ants (they're amazing!), fungi, lots of plants that the indigenous use for medicine, cocoa, vanilla and cinnamon trees to mention a few things. We ate lemon ants and tasted a sap that forms part of the poison that's used on the tips of the poison blow darts.

The whole way we were accompanied by Mona, a 2 and a half year old Woolly monkey orphan that Tom came across somewhere, and who quickly became part of his family. She was loads of fun to have around the whole time we were at Arajuno, she's very playful and crazy. She seemed to take to the guys, and liked to just lie over our shoulders. She fully launches herself through trees (and out of them), and we had to be wary of her thieving hands during meals.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon hanging out in hammocks, napping and reading, before being fed an amazing meal (actually breakfast lunch and dinner were always great feasts) and playing cards and chatting late into the night. The next day we traveled 45 minutes down the river to Amazoonica, an animal refuge. There are lots of monkeys and birds that are ex-pets that will never be released back into the wild, but there primary purpose is caring for injured or orphaned wild animals with the intention to release them back in to protected areas of rainforest. We also saw wild cats, capybaras, cayman, turtles, pigs, loads of birds - some with stories that sound promosing, others that were more sad. Can't help but think if there's no hope of being released to the wild, no hope of establishing a breeding program, and no hope of them living a happy life in captvity, then they'd be better off spending their money and energy elsewhere. That afternoon after lunch we headed up the river in the canoe for about half an hour and floated down in tyre tubes. Lots of fun :-)

On our first night there we were woken just after midnight by one of our tour friends banging on our door shouting for the tour leader "quick, Sadie's fallen out of the top bunk, we think she's broken her arm!". That sort of problem is never easy to deal with at the best of times, so trying to deal with it in the middle of the jungle with no roads, mobile phones or decent hospitals made it even more fun :-P Turned out she had cracked the top of her humeorus, as well as semi-discloacted it. Two days, one metal plate, a couple of hours of surgery and US$5000 later, problem solved! And that's why we have travel insurance...

We had an early start as we headed back to Tena where Nik and I went white water rafting with 4 others from our tour. Certainly one of the highlights of our trip so far, we had a full 8 hour trip including lunch. We were in the water for probably 3.5 hours, enjoying grade 3+ rapids. Due to all the recent rain they were on the high side of normal. We all fell out at some point, although sometimes that was due to the guide giving us a helping hand. We paddled down 27 km of river, stopping a number of times to enjoy the scenery. Our penultimate stop was at a place where a little stream flowed out between some cliffs - we swam through the opening and it widened out to a sandy bed surrounded by rainforest, complete with little waterfalls. Looked like we'd stepped onto the set of a shampoo commercial. Our guides painted us up with coloured clay mud, it took more time to wash it out than it did to apply :-P Thanks to Asa for the photos. We ended up meeting our guide in the evening, and he took us out to a local Ecuadorian restaurant for a $2.25 set menu. Gotta love the price of food here!!

We're currently in Otavalo, more of what's happening will follow in our next post. Love to all!

Dining room at Rio Verde hostel. Nik & I were camping just off to the left of this photo

Hot spring pools in Banos

Me getting ready to jump

Underneath the waterfall

Orchid's on our 2nd walk

View from the cable car

Dining room at the Amazon lodge

Our cabin in the Amazon

Mona helping herself to a banana

Poison dart frog

An Ocelot cat, she's so pretty! No wonder they're poached for their furs.

Doesn't look quite as scary as it felt :-P

One of our stops along the way

Lima to Punta Sal

2010-04-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

Just a quick blog. We haven't done a great deal since we last wrote but we have some nice pictures to post:-)
We left Lima quite early on Easter Saturday and had an 8 hour truck day. We got to a nice little beach to spend the night. Slept on a concrete slab outside, got a little wet by some rain and were kept up till quite late by another party drinking and then got woken up by more drunks at 3am... so an eventful night.
Left early the next morning, and by lunch time we were at the Chan Chan ruins. It is the biggest remaining site of a massive city built by the Chimor people. They were conquered by the Incas in 1470. It was very interesting and some of the decorations they used were amazing. We then shopped for dinner and headed to a hostel on the beach. Camping again but had lovely hot showers...
Left early the next day again for another 10 hour truck day to get to Punta Sal where we have spent the last two days lazing on the beach. There is nothing really around and the water is lovely, the weather is lovely and the food is brilliant! we've had great fish and chips, prawns and on tonights menu is fire baked potatoes and spit roast chicken...
Beach volleyball has been played, many beers have been had and the sunsets are amazing! So here are the pictures!
Lots of love.
Ps. crossing the equator soon and nearly in Equador!
(This was written at the beach but not posted there...oops)

The first beach camp.

Sunset

Chan Chan Ruins

Chan Chan

The boys playing with the boat, great shot of Alex about to kill himself :-)

Nick catching some fully sick waves

Volleyball

Punta Sal (taken from the waters edge)

Sunset at Punta Sal

Nasca, Huacachina and Lima

2010-04-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hi!

We left Arequipa early on the 29th of March with a promise of an 11 hour truck ride. We got to a campsite in Nasca and set up camp for the night. The next morning some of our tour buddies went on a flight to see all the famous Nasca lines and pictures. We had tossed up whether we would do the flight but it was very expensive so decided not to do it. Also our tour company isn't allowed to recommend the flights as a small plane crashed there in February and killed all of the 9 passengers on board. The rest of us who didn't go had a lazy morning by the pool and after lunch packed up to head to Huacachina. We did stop on the way at a tower that allowed you to see a couple of the lines but it wasn't amazing.

Huacachia is a town built around an oasis (small natural lake) in the middle of the desert. And when we got there boy did our adventures start! We arrived about 4pm and after buying beer and ice from a local restaurant for the trip got into our dune buggy's... Racing car looking things with a big cage around them seating 9 people. Then off we went into the desert. Some of the sand dunes were massive and very steep and there weren't a shortage of "catch your breathe" moments. It was like a rollercoaster without the security that the car wasn't going to slip out from under you. VERY FUN!
We stopped about 5 times on this crazy ride to go sandboarding. Alex hired a more advanced method of going down the dunes... like a snowboard, but I stuck with lying on my stomach... you go much faster! I don't know if there are many pictures of this as we were having too much fun to snap a lot.
We got to our campsite (a sheltered area at the bottom of a couple of sand dunes and a fire was going with our dinner sizzling on top. They handed around a lot of Pisco (not the nicest spirit ever) in the form of Pisco sour, Pisco cola and Pisco as a shot with a squeeze of lemon. Between this and the beer we brought with us a few people were a tad tipsy to say the least... These people included Alex :-) He hadn't had *that* much to drink so I was surprised when he suddenly said he had to go to bed. I didn't know he was sick until I saw his silhouette up on yonder dune hunched over. Lets just say the sand got a good fertilizing that night, poor thing. I had a good night though, having wrestling wars on the dunes, sitting around the campfire and sleeping under the stars. By the morning needless to say we had sand *everywhere*! We left early for another dune buggy ride back to the village for breakfast. Then it was on the bus for an hour ride to the ocean where we went on a boat tour to Ballestas Islands, called "poor mans Galapagos". It was quite amazing seeing the masses of bird life and sea lions lazing about in the sun. We saw a few penguins and Alex still not feeling 100% fed the fish. Then it was a drive to Lima.
5 of our tour friends were leaving the tour at this point so we all went out for a night of bowling. Alex did very well but I did not, lots of fun though!

After a big couple of days (it's amazing looking back to think we did all this in such a short period of time) we had a couple of days to relax in Lima. Yesterday we walked around the city and had a lazy afternoon. Went out for birthday drinks and cake for Lorna, one of the girls on our tour. Today we went to a museum about the Spanish Inquisition but couldn't understand the Spanish guide or the Spanish writing explaining the pictures so we were out of there pretty quickly. It's Good Friday so there were masses of people in the main square going to church. We also watched the change of the guard outside the parliament palace (yes palace) which I can only gather is a very silly tradition where they walk around playing music and doing walks from the Ministry of Silly Walks just to change over who guards the building... Strange. Tonight will be a night in I think and tomorrow we head off to the beach for a few days and then Ecuador... But we'll tell you about that when we get there.

We hope you have a great Easter weekend. I for one am missing family and friends and wish I could just pop back for the weekend... Oh well, I really can't complain can I?

Much love
Danika

Most of the view on our 11 hour truck day.

View of "the hand" from the Nasca tower.

Dune buggy's!

Our tour group

Alex sandboardng

We sat on the dunes and watched a gorgeous sunset

Ballestas Islands

Penguins!

Crabs on the Island

Daddy sea lion with mummy sea lions (one male has around 25 females!)

Changing of the guard

Inside the Cathedral

Lima square

Cusco, Chivay, Colca Canyon & Arequipa

2010-03-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Hi!

We've been busy and moving around the last few days. After our trek we had a full day in Cusco, which we took fairly relaxedly. Nik wasn't feeling so crash-hot with a funny tummy, so that was another reason to take it slow. After lunch on the balcony of a nice little restaurant we both had an hour long full-body massage, at a cost of 15 soles ($A6) each - very enjoyable. Mexican for dinner, then I left Nik at the hotel and joined the rest of the tour group at an English pub celebrating a couple of birthdays' of people on our tour.

We spent the next day nearly entirely on the road, stopping only to pick up some groceries and for lunch. We had our first "bush camp" experience, we pulled over on the side of the road in a huge stone quarry for the night. Big dinner, then marshmallows around the campfire. Nik was up sick lots in the night which left her feeling completely exhausted for the next day as we travelled to Chivay.

Chivay's in the Colca valley, and is the gateway to the Colca canyon, which until recently was thought to be the deepest canyon in the world (they discovered another one close-by that's slightly deeper :-P). After stopping in the snow at the top of the pass (which itself is 50m higher than Mont Blanc - the highest point in Europe) we had amazing views of the valley as we decended down into it.

The following morning I left Nik to catch up on some sleep while I went on a tour to the canyon. Not exactly what I expected, it's really just a big, deep, steep valley. All the same, amazing views, and I did manage to see a Condor or two. The pictures tell a better story, see below or Facebook! Also sampled some cactus fruit, some of which was quite tasty.

After returning to Chivay we climbed back out of the valley on our way to Arequipa. Arequipa is Peru's second largest city with a population of a million. The terrain as we drew closer to the city changed again (it's a diverse landscape here!) - harsh and arid, almost looking like hard sand dunes. The outskirts gave me a bad first impression, I couldn't imagine what would posses anyone to live in such a barren place. However, as we drew closer to the city centre it's beauty and charm grew, and now after spending a few days here we've come to quite like the place. The main square definitely has a colonial, almost European feel to it.

Yesterday morning we had went on a "reality tour" of Arequipa. We visited a quarry, a cemetery in the shanty suburbs, an orphanage, a community restaurant and the markets. Each family leases a 50m section of the quarry for S/50 per year, which they are then entitled to mine. They work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, hand carving stone bricks out of the side of the quarry, using 2nd hand car axles as tools. At 1.5 Soles per brick, that's about S/450 per month (A$182), when it's estimated to cost about S/700 per month to live. Yet it's necessary to provide building materials at such a cheap price because otherwise the poorest class (60% of the population) couldn't afford to build. What a cycle...

The cemetery was equally as depressing to me, although I think I was mostly saddened by the emphasis people put on ensuring "blessings by the gods" by building elaborate gravesites and offering food, drink and music, basically as a sacrifice once a year. There are seperate sections for "religious" people, those who are "unbaptised", and those that committed suicide. Part of me felt like it's so sad that even in death people are discriminated against, another part of me felt like none of it matters anyway so it's a shame that people care about it so much.

The next stops were more encouraging; children always seem hopeful and bright :-) The "orphanage" was basically a family day-care centre set up and run by single mums for single mums. Each mum takes a turn of a year of looking after 10 kids, 6 days a week in her home. This is in order for the other mums to seek daily employment. It's partially government funded, and our tour also supports the program, as it does all the projects we visited. The community restaurant is based a similar idea; efficiently providing low cost meals to a community. Kids whose parents are working can get a cheap feed at lunch and dinner, it also provides discounted or free meals to pregnant women, the elderly and disabled. Again it was run by a roster of women who take it in turns to cook for a week at a time.

The market was amazing, again pictures speak louder than words (see below). All in all, the reality tour proved to be a thought provoking experience. During the tour we also discussed why democracy isn't always good, how corruption is a bigger problem than lack of education, why it would be economic suicide for Peru to get serious about cracking down on the cocaine industry, marriage, divorce, illegal workers... three and half hours full of thoughts.

Today we went out for brunch to a little cafe overlooking the Plaza de Armas, where we spent several hours journaling, eating and people watching. Then we wandered the city, found some ice-cream and lazed at our hotel. Also said goodbye to Becky & Ed as they left for home today. This was after a final crazed hour of Puno, which everyone seems to have taken a great liking to :-)

Tomorrow we're driving 11.5 hours (yuk!) to Nazca, and then on to an overnight desert adventure before Lima. More adventures await!

Blessings,

Alex

Cusco main square

Colca valley

Condor (in the clouds below us)

Colca Canyon

A dad climbing up to get the next big slab of rock to make bricks from

A kid at the orphanage - wearing an Incredible Hulk T-shirt :-)

Arequipa markets, from top left: Pig's head, cheese, veges, fish, processed meat, dried frogs (for making soup!), potatoes, kittens (for pets, not eating - at least I think :-P), grains, bull's testicle and penis, bread, fruit, llama fetuses (superstitious charms), herbs and potions, fresh flowers, hats.

Trade wasn't going so well for this fellow :-P

Plenty more on Facebook.

Choquequiraw

2010-03-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

We left Puno about a week ago and travelled all day to get to Cusco. We spent a full day just wandering around Cusco and getting everything ready for our 5 day trek to see the Inca ruins at Choquequiraw. We found a lovely little restaurant not far from the main square for lunch and for 8 Soles (about 3 Aussie dollars) each, we had a starter of bruschetta followed by a big bowl of lovely creamy soup and a main of pasta with a glass of wine... Amazing value!

Day 1. Then at 3.30am the next morning our big trekking adventure started! We got up and met the bus and our guides (Ricardo, Jimmy and Maguell) at 4am and had a 5 hour bus ride to the start of our trek. We had breakfast (massive, as were all our meals) and headed off for 7 hours of walking. The first 5 or so hours were quite flat, with a bit of "up and down" and the last part went down quite steep. We had a late lunch (which every day was a soup and a main) and made it to our campsite around 5.30pm. The tents were up and all we had to do was turn up for dinner. Every night before dinner we had "Happy Hour"... Not the traditional sort with beer and peanuts, rather with hot chocolate, popcorn and bikkies. Dinner each night consisted of soup (we didn't eat the same soup twice) a main and dessert. We were impressed to say the least at the amazing meals they whipped up in a tent with only what their horses could carry up the mountain.

Day 2. We were woken at 5.30am to "Hello. Good morning. Cocoa tea?" coming from outside our tent. And yes they did deliver (every morning even in the rain) tea to our tents to help get us going. After breakfast we set off, leaving the washing up and tent packing up to the lovely porters. Today was downhill for a half hour and then after crossing a raging river uphill for what seemed like forever (about 6 hours). It was a rainy day so everything was wet and muddy. But dinner was again warm and delicious and we had the ruins to look forward to the next day...

Day 3. We weren't travelling today, just walking to different Inca sights. We we're granted a sleep in (7am) and then walked up for a good half hour to visit the sight where the royal Inca family lived before the Spanish killed them off. It was surreal. The Incas were very sophisticated and great at building things. Their walls still standing are built better that a lot of houses today and the thought that went into where they positioned everything is brilliant. We saw a religious site (literally a mountain that they had cut the top off) and almost got lost in what was left of the royal family's palace. Back down to the campsite for lunch and after a siesta we wandered down to the terraces. Little ledges built into the steep mountain and beautiful stone steps. Pictures will give better pictures than words :-)

Day 4. Very steep downhill for a few hours and then very steep uphill for an hour to get to lunch. Quite flat for the next few hours to get to our campsite (no toilet at this one, real bush camping). I might pause to mention that "Take 2" and "Puno" are big hits and we play most nights.

Day 5. Last day and very happy about it. The plan was to walk for 3 hours, get to luch and at about 1pm leave on the bus for a 6 hour bus ride home. Walk was alright lunch was great, but the bus didn't turn up at 1. So we got some soccer games going with the locals. The local women won the girls game( I was on their team:-)) but our boys beat the local men. We found out that there had been a landslide so the bus couldn't get through and it finally arrived at about 4.30pm and we were off by 5, to the sadness of the local children. Got back to Cusco at about 11pm. warm shower and shampoo were gladly welcomed as was a yummy Hamburger from a street vendor for 2 Soles (less than 1 dollar!)

Before I go on I just have to say that the things we saw we're indescibable. The mountains and waterfalls and views... I've never seen anything like it in my life. The only problem was that you have to make an effort to enjoy it when your so exhausted from walking :-)

We woke up quite early this morning to get our very dirty clothes to the laundry and had a lovely breakfast at a little old lady's restaurant. Very home made and delicious. This afternoons plan is lunch and a massage (15 Soles for an hour) and a few drinks tonight with the whole group.

We're loving South America so very much and recommend it to anyone. Everything is so cheap (We got a litre bottle of rum today for 18 Soles... Like A$6.50) and the food is divine!

Sorry this has been so long... I hope the pictures do a better job at explaining than I have.

Much love.

Our view on the first day

Som of the kids we played soccer with.

Our trekking group.

Dinner tent.

Our corn we picked from the sacred Inca sight for dinner!

Big strong men carrying big pumpkins for dinner.

An Inca wall with a Llama

Us overlooking the ruins.

Terraces from afar.

This one is especially for Brent Weightman!

Lake Titicaca

2010-03-15T18:45:00.001-07:00

Lake Titicaca!

2 blogs in one day I know, but we've been busy and the internet is free here! We're heading to Cuzco and hiking to an ancient Inca city over the next 8 days, so we probably won't be blogging any time soon.

About a 20 minute boat ride from Puno there's a community of people who have built practically whole villages on man-made islands made from reeds. They harvest the reeds for everything; eating, building islands, building houses, ropes, burning, it's amazing! We stopped there on our way to an overnight adventure on an island in the middle of the lake (Amantani). Our guide explained some of their customs and traditions, we explored the tiny little island that we were on and even rode in a reed boat! They farm fish and grow vegges all on their islands which are layers and layers of reeds (a new layer each month) supported by a porous floating root stock. Very cool.

Two and half hours on a very slow boat took us to a port on Amantani, where pairs of us were matched up to a local family to be hosted. Nik and I were with an older couple – Felix and his wife, who's name was complicated and not easily remember (how slack of us!). The language barrier was fun, they spoke a local language and only “picca espanol”, which ended up being just enough to match our little Spanish :-) Their little house is fairly humble, but bigger and more sturdy than places we saw in Nicaragua. Their kitchen/dining room is a separate mud brick building with a dirt floor. They fed us amazing veggie soup and potatoes and rice for lunch, so much food! They let us help do their dishes (cold water, squatting on the floor), and we made friends with their cat, but not their donkey. Then we headed up to the village soccer field, maybe half way up the island. Locals v Tourists... eventually the tourists won, but I think we had lots more subs than they did :-P Nik & I trekked up to the island's highest point, which is at about 4100m, 300m above the lake level. A pretty steep climb, certainly proving that we aren't fully used to the altitude yet! The view from the top was well worth it, and we caught sunset on the way down. Dinner with the family (soup, potatoes, rice & pasta... carb central!), then we dressed up in the traditional dress of the island natives and headed up to a hall for a traditional dance with all the others on our tour. Lots of energetic stomping and twisting, not a whole lot of structure, but a fun experience.

This morning we traveled to another island (Taquile) and hiked 35 minutes to the plaza. Same people group, different traditions (dress, customs etc). Here the guys knit long hats that have special meanings depending on the way you wear it, and when you decide to get married, you have to then live together for a year as a test... that's new! Amazing trout for lunch, accompanied by a not-so-crash-hot pipe musician.

Adios!

A little reed island village

Two Peruvian guys, the one on the left turned out to be our host "Papa"

View from the top of the island

Nik & I in traditional dress with our Mumma

This lady was herding sheep

Harry (one of our tour mates) was teaching this guy gangster handshakes :-)

Walking down to the dock on the way back to Puno

La Paz

2010-03-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

After Nicaragua we flew back to Miami and had a 6 hour wait until our flight to La Paz in Bolivia. The flight landed just on sunrise, so we had a great view of the city as we arrived. La Paz sprawls out over the plateau where the airport is, down into the steep valley with houses packed onto the sides. We were staying in a hotel fairly close to the centre of the city, which we were delivered to by taxi.

We checked in and then walked up the 3 flights of stairs to our room... at which point it hit us that we were now at 3600m above sea level. Breathing was remarkably difficult! We'd be warned, and I guess we expected it, but to experience it is a weird feeling. Even walking up a small rise left us breathless. Consequently, we crashed for most of that day, except to duck out for some super cheap food: 2 bread rolls, packet of crackers, and 2 hot pastry things for 8.5 Bolianos (A$1.20) for dinner. Bolivia wins the prize for cheapest country so far.

Friday, feeling mostly over the altitude, we spent wandering the city – wow! So many markets, with everything South American you can imagine. Each little stall sells one specific style of things, like stationary, shoes, fruit etc. Some of the small stalls might just sell one thing; zippers, door bolts, rubber gaskets. It's hard to appreciate this whole different way of shopping, I have no idea how you'd know where to go for what you wanted! The people are really gentle and friendly, although we're getting pretty good at saying “no, gracias” to everyone that offers you something. Lots of felt hats to be seen! We walked around and saw few sites, but mostly just enjoyed the atmosphere.

Saturday was our first day as a part of our 37 day Peru & Ecuador tour. Primarily we spent the day travelling from La Paz to Puno (yes, Puno all you Armidale folk!) in Peru. There are 23 of us, and we all sit in the back of a custom built truck/bus when we're driving. Still getting names down, but so far really enjoying everyone's company. Mostly Brits, 2 Kiwis (our Southern Hemisphere buddies!), a Finn, South African and Dutch. Most of them have been on the tour for either 2 or 10 weeks, there were 4 others that joined it with us in La Paz. Ages are from 18 to 60, so there's some diversity :-)

We crossed the border into Peru, and stopped for lunch on the side of the road. The roads are pretty good, better than in Southern Bolivia apparently. We followed lake Titicaca around the Southern side until we arrived in Puno, which is where we are now. It's a smallish city, it doesn't talk long to walk the main strip. Our hotel is great, hot water (not always guaranteed), good included breakfast, free wifi, and a TV with a remote and a channel list (a first for anywhere we've stayed). We've just spent 2 days out on the lake, but more of that to come later.

Coming into La Paz

Lady at a stall in the street

Government building in the old city square

This gives a bit of an idea of how hilly La Paz is, and that it's surrounded by mountains

Our tour truck on the way to Peru

Kids coming home from school in Puno

Yep, Puno :-)

Sandy/Andy

2010-03-13T14:33:00.000-08:00

Whilst in Nicaragua we visited one of our beautiful sponsor children, Sandy. We found out from her mother during the day that in fact her name is Andy and Compassion had got it wrong. Oh well, she said she laughed every time she got a letter from us saying "Dear Sandy..."

We got picked up by our translator at about 1.30, and then she took us shopping to get some groceries for Andy's family (rice, oil, oats, bikkies, sugar etc) and then we went to the Compassion Project where Andy attends three afternoons a week. No one spoke english so the translater had a big job. We met the teachers and classes. They were celebrating women that day and all the boys had made gifts for the girls which was nice.

We then went to Andy's house... Wow! It was amazing and humbling to see how she lives and made us sponsoring her seem so important! The previous week they had been kicked out of Andy's grandmothers house (which was one room really with 12 kids plus adults living in it) and are now renting *a* room to live in. 2 adults and three kids in a room the size of my living room. No bathroom, a small barbeque for cooking, a double bed and a double bunk was pretty much all it had. But she was lovely and apologised that her house was so messy. It was the most amazing experience (even though it only lasted a little over an hour and a half) and made me glad that we could help this little family out!

The next day we went to a town about an hour away from Managua named Granada. Got a bus there for a dollar each. It was more "touristy" than where we'd been staying. We climbed a bell tower in a church and got some great views, sat in "central park" (a big cemented area), had lunch and a beer each for 10 dollars ($1 beers, yhes!) and just had a nice relaxing day.

So thats about it for our Nicaragua travels. Will update soon on La Paz.

At the Markets in Granada.

Gross dead frogs and turtles for sale.

Hammock making

Cute man in Granada!

Alex's new thongs!

From the Bell tower

Us with Andy

Andy with her mum and little sister in their home.

Nicaragua

2010-03-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

Managua... our first venture into something quite a bit different. We had a quick flight straight from Miami to Managua. A taxi driver accosted us as we exited the terminal and once he worked out where we were going, quoted us US$20 for the trip, about what we expected... except that he already had 2 other customers in the cab :-) Made for a slightly fuller car, but all was well.

Managua's set inland on a large lake surrounded by lots of volcanic mountains. It's really hazy, I'm not sure if it's pollution or smoke or both, although we could smell smoke in the air when we arrived. We saw lots of little ramshackle building on our way from the airport to our hotel, and not much in the way of infrastructure. Indicators seem to be optional, and lanes on the road (when they're painted) are more of a guide that actually important :-P Horns are used when you're cutting in on someone, or overtaking in a narrow two way street. It's dusty, poor, hot and busy.

I read a few travel blogs on the internet talking about Managua which generally spend as little time here as possible, or that it's not the most exciting place to visit as a tourist. That said, we're here to experience the real culture and visit one of our Compassion sponsor kids, Sandy (on Monday) which we're pretty excited about.

Our hotel is kinda a cross between a hostel and a caravan park; lots of single story bungalows surrounded by rain-forest. We've had some communication issues (there's far less English spoken here than in Mexico), such as the restaurant that was advertised as being open until 10:30 at night not really being a restaurant at all. There are a whole stack of people staying here from a college in Virgina who are visiting an orphanage all week, so the restaurant is being run more like a camp kitchen, which is fine, except when we arrive and there's *no one* else there! No menus, no self service, no guest kitchen (which was also advertised), so for the first night we ducked down to the supermarket 500m down the road and bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter :-) It's been better since then, although each meal seems like a bit of a battle!

Today we asked if we could tag along with the group from the US to go to church. They were more than happy, so we caught the hired bus with them to the little orphanage. The church service was great, (albeit in Spanish except for the sermon which was translated), it was exciting to spend time being a part of another group of Christians. A little surreal when as background music at one point was a midi sort of version of A Whole New World from Aladin... bizarre! After the service we stayed for lunch (hotdogs :-P) and then a few hours hanging out with the kids. They're the most cute kids, so many smiles. It's beautiful to seem them without inhibition attaching themselves to all the US crowd (who they met the day before), they just revel in the attention. They had some board games - Twister transcends language and culture... one of the US students was trying to find the word to explain what it was, but as soon as she pulled it out of the bag some kid said "ah, Twister!" - and I played 6 a side soccer with some of the bigger boys (they're too good!). The girls enjoyed nail painting and beading, such simple things keeping them happy, it was a joy to see.

Here are some photos, as usual there are more on Nik's Facebook.

Our unit is the left half of this building

This is actually in the middle of the city, it's a big water reservoir.

Church service

Chalk sticks were simple pleasures

One of the US students with orphan attached

Our departure was delayed by an hour, so we all got off the bus, but half the kids were content just play on it :-)