Marcus and Kev's World Tour

One Year in Uganda

2009-11-10T01:10:00.000-08:00

All good things must come to an end, and for me that end is on Friday when I pack my meager possessions and get on a plane bound for London. I originally came to Uganda for a four month volunteer stint and have ended up staying nearly a year…

But first a quick re-cap…

A lot has happened since I last wrote on here. Four of my best friends managed to find their way to Uganda in August from where we spent three amazing weeks tripping around the country (see below post). We had an awesome time and it was great to share the place I’ve come to call home with others.

Preceding the above I had a small drama, namely I nearly got deported a week before everyone turned up. Due to my status of volunteer-come-employee I never bothered with the palaver of obtaining a work permit and hence paid some fun-filled visits to the Immigration Department every couple of months. On my August visit I returned to collect my application, only to receive my forms back with some illegible writing across the top.

Note: Some of the pictures are just random to break up my ramblings

Upon asking what this meant I was informed I had been here too long and needed to get a work-permit or residency permit by the next day (even though this is impossible!). Upon asking if there were any alternatives to this I was referred to a sign on the wall advertising the current rates for deportation (contrary to popular opinion, deportation is not a free flight home!). Seeing as I was only here for a few more months and the application for a permit takes longer than that I was in somewhat of a pickle. Fortunately I knew a guy who knew a guy, and to cut a long story short, after three days of stress, chain smoking and sitting in a hot car outside immigration; corruption worked in my favor and I managed to “buy” myself another 3 months visa for the tidy sum of $400 (probably more than an entire month’s salary for the kindly individual who processed my visa!).

Problem A solved. Problem B: I no longer had a job, seeing as the government had successfully removed the Jane Goodall Institute from the chimp trekking site. This was good in the respect that I had free time to spend with my mates, bad in the respect that I was relying on using my company truck and employment in a National Park to save us all a whole lot of money on our trip. Fortunately I managed to cash in some brownie points at work to have use of the truck and the guys at the park gate weren’t any wiser to the fact I was no longer employed in there and we got in for free anyway!

Upon re-reading this it sounds as if I have turned into a rather dodgy individual, bending to the whims of corruption that I frequently vilify… What can I say? When in Rome…

The New Job

So. Holiday over I still had a couple of months left in Uganda. Luckily I managed to score a job working in the same National Park, this time up on the Nile River. I worked for a company called Wild Frontiers who run fishing trips, game drives and boat safaris on the Nile. I was originally contracted to do some financial spreadsheets but ended up doing a whole lot more from being the accountant to driving game safaris in a 1970’s model ex-army truck!

I never got round to taking a picture, but it looked a bit like this!

This really was a dream lifestyle. I worked with two awesome guys from Zimbabwe and Sweden, and if it was quiet in the afternoons we’d take a boat out and go fishing. The best spot to go was up at Murchison Falls itself. I’ve been to numerous beautiful places around the world, but I have to say that up in the gorge, surrounded by lush jungle with the falls powering down on one side and the sun setting on the other, has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. To be able to go and fish there whenever we felt like it was a privilege I still don’t fully appreciate.

Now with all this fishing I felt confident that I could beat Geno’s record of a 34kg Nile Perch that he caught on our trip (see below post again). However during the full tenure of my employment, while people around me pulled in fish that weighed more than I did, I failed to catch anything more than “bait fish”. There were even some opinions floating around that I was just a bad fisherman! So on my last day of work me and some guys went out determined to get some fish.

As my luck would have it, ten minutes after we set out on the boat we encountered one of the worst storms I’ve seen in Africa, forcing us to pull the boat into the bank before it capsized. For the next hour we stood in the downpour, managing to catch some small bait fish (little fish you put on the hook to catch bigger fish), while watching the river turn a nice shade of mud, not the best conditions for catching big fish!

Enter rain.. Stage right!

The rain stopped and we motored out, finding the clearest bit of water possible. For the next half hour my bad luck from the last 6 weeks changed. Geno, your record stands; but I wasn’t unhappy with these three in thirty minutes!

War cries

Numero 2!

The Hatrick!

Of course life is never that easy. I had to contend with sleeping in a leaky tent during a wetter-than-usual wet season. Some nights I had to pull my mattress into the middle and sleep with all my valuables on top of me to keep them dry. Also, one night in what I would nearly call a typhoon, my tent decided to lift off and fly a few feet! Needless to say I installed some rocks around the sides the next day! Not to mention that with the wet season came the mosquitoes and my old nemesis the Tsetse fly… I’m all for the preservation of life, but with these two beasties, I make an exception!

Andy, a.k.a "Boss" doing his party tricks

The best thing on a hot day!

So a great couple of months, and to say thanks the company gave the missus and I a trip out to Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Lake Victoria. This is a place where chimpanzees rescued from the illegal pet trade get taken to rehabilitate. Even though I prefer to see them in the wild, it’s a great opportunity to see them up really close during feeding time, not to mention the idyllic location on a remote island on the lake!

Now gainfully unemployed, I’ve spent the last week doing the rounds and saying my goodbyes. Being low on cash and a bit retarded I decided to do another one of my walking missions, covering 70kms in 3 days, again to the bewilderment of the locals. However this time I took some water and had a good chance to think…

Kev Junior!!

Conclusion, Emotional Stuff and My Take on it All…

Winston Churchill visited Uganda in 1908 and called it “The Pearl of Africa”, a line now milked dry by every piece of tourism marketing material. Due to personal financial constraints and my torrid affair with the Immigration Department, I havnt actually traveled over the borders. I daren’t say that the rest of Africa is a pile of oyster gunk in comparison, but Winnie was pretty spot on when he came up with that one.

Uganda, geographically, really does have everything, from snow capped mountains to savannah to rain forests to the Nile to Lake Victoria. It’s one of the best countries in the word for primates (the main reason I came) as well as savannah animals like elephants, giraffes, lions and the rest.

As I mentioned earlier, I came here as a volunteer which would have meant quite a bit of time doing token work on a computer in the head office. Fortunately though, I was in the right place at the right time and found myself, from my perspective anyway, working in paradise; first in a tropical rainforest with chimpanzees, then on the river next to the savannah.

However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. I worked in an isolated location, 30kms from the nearest town and 300kms from any decent medical care, shops or my unsupportive head office. If I was awake, then I was at work, which during peak season led to some pretty long days! It was a steep learning curve in autonomy; if something went wrong or broke I had to do my best to fix it. Also, living in rural Africa there are always complications: the petrol station is out of petrol, the road’s blocked by an over-turned lorry, the one cash machine in town is out of cash!

Driving a vehicle here has been an eye-opener. I reckon I’ve driven about 20,000kms in various vans, trucks and motorbikes, around 85% of that on dirt roads. A heavy rain can change a road completely, so you never know exactly what’s round the next corner. Among the various hazards on the road such as potholes, livestock and rogue people, the number one danger is Ugandan drivers. Driving on the left appears to be a formality, most cars are in bad condition and speed along with worn brakes that don’t exactly stop on a dime! It’s not un-common to drive down the highway and see a lorry on its’ roof. To validate my point, during my employment I was issued two company vehicles, both were rolled and written off within a week of me returning them to the office! A decent driving school wouldn’t go amiss in this place!!!

Yet, the most challenging aspect was working with Ugandan people. Coming from a completely different culture to myself, they have different perspectives on timeliness, common sense, honesty, quality of work… I wont go into detail, but lets just say that as a usually rather calm person, there have been times in this country that I’ve lost my rag completely! Being part of a local village community I’ve had to deal with some tricky personnel issues including: witch-craft, AIDS, malaria, child death, tribal clashes, just to mention a few! Fortunately the staff at my place were a fantastic bunch, and Im going to miss them!

The future for Uganda? From my perspective it’s a bit grim. A couple months ago there were riots in the capital. Over 50 “innocent” people died (that doesn’t include the undisclosed amount of rioters shot by the army). I daresay that as no white people were hurt this didn’t make much of a splash on the world news scene. Especially if Madonna was getting re-married or something equally as important happened. The riot (luckily I left town 12 hours before it broke out) was mainly a political protest against the government and is seen as a precursor to the elections in early 2011. On top of that, oil has been discovered in the west and there are already rumblings between the local tribes and the government over who gets what.

On a side note: one of the proposed drilling locations is on the delta in the National Park I worked in! All game drives are being re-routed, however no-one has figured out where yet!

In fact the drilling rig is going right about here...

While I don’t like to say it, I can see the proverbial shit hitting the fan by the time elections roll round in 15 months time. For the sake of all the fantastic friends I’ve made here I sincerely hope it doesn’t, but as the saying goes: TIA – This is Africa, we’ll just have to wait and see.

So that’s it. One year in Uganda. It’s been the hardest, most challenging but best year of my life. That sounds contradictory but it’s true. There are things I wont miss, but they’re far out-weighed by the things I will miss. All the amazing people I’ve met, the landscape, the sunrises and sunsets, the jungle, the river, the wildlife, the year-long summer, the freedom to live my life. The question everyone’s been asking me the last few weeks: Am I going to come back?

Definitely.

Uganda - The Tour Continues!

2009-09-22T02:21:00.000-07:00

Not long after Kev moved to Uganda, talk of teaming up again for some travels began. Six months later, with a packed Land Cruiser (kindly loaned from Kev's old employer), a full tank of diesel (this from a similar sponsor) and three other Kiwis in tow, we set off. On board for this adventure was Trav (coming from Eygpt, who also joined me for the USA road trip), Joel (carrying on from Ghana) and Gene (who is currently working on oil rigs around Africa). Let the games begin!

Actually first, a quick catch-up. Seeing as Kev has had so much cool stuff to write about over the last year or so, I've been a bit slack on the blog updates. Somehow I don't think my comparatively mundane European excursions would garner quite the same interest as Kev's adventures in the middle of the African continent! So first up a quick summary of the few trips I've made since I last contributed to the blog.

Living in the middle of Europe means there's no excuse not to head away any time there's a long weekend or some holidays available. Since the start of this year I've tried to make the most of this with some skiing in the French Alps (seeing as Frano and the Columbi were living down there), some spring skiing in Norway (with the ever-hospitable Magnus and Gry), a nice week in Scotland (with the newly engaged Graeme and Tamara), a massive boys trip to Berlin, a couple of trips to Poland and several trips around Sweden (for cross-country skiing, snowboarding, kayaking and camping). Rather than get into any detail, I think I'll just say it's been good times all round and here's a few photos.

Ok, on to the African adventures! In an effort to dispel any myths or stereotypes that may hold true for other parts of Africa, I'd like to start by saying that the Ugandan people as a whole were incredibly friendly and the country felt quite safe for the most part. Uganda has certainly had its fair share of unrest over the years, most notoriously perhaps during the Idi Amin years. Unfortunately, successive regimes proved to be no better off for several years following his downfall and subsequent departure to the safety of Saudi Arabia (who were only too happy to accept him for his contributions to the spreading off Islam through Uganda). Thankfully though, the last couple of decades, with Museveni as president, have seen Uganda make good steps towards stabilising and progressing.

So with this in mind (and with the opinions of several expat locals who have lived in the region for years), it was perhaps extremely unlucky that Gene, Kev and I got robbed at gun point less than an hour after I arrived in the country! We were having a quiet beer at a local outdoor restaurant when we heard shots being fired just the other side of a hedge in front of us. Initially we weren't sure if they were fireworks or bullets. It soon became obvious though. We jumped down onto a grassy slope/garden beside the outdoor seating area and stayed put. Before long we had a gunman in front of us. It was several seconds before we were sure this wasn't security coming to help. I think the gun pointed at my face was the giveaway. So of course he asked us to empty our pockets and hand it all over. As we had come straight from the airport, almost everything was still in my luggage in the car. All I had was my mp3 player and I wasn't about to hand that over. Desperate for something to give him that wasn't my mp3 player, I gave him my watch and then continued to pat my pockets in earnest. Kev meanwhile had his wallet out, which was basically just full of receipts. Luckily he dropped some of them so I picked those up and pretended I was giving the guy money since it was very dark. Kev did the same with his wad of paper. Gene actually had some cash so he handed that over too. And not long after that the three muggers disappeared off into the night and it was all over. I had just spent £3 putting a new battery in my 15 year old Casio and Kev dirtied the knees on his freshly laundered pants. So we were angry! Actually, our relative good fortune was somewhat overshadowed when we found out that the idiots had unfortunately shot a guy who later bled to death.

That little episode cleared out the bad luck though. After that it was only good luck from there on in! Starting with our adventure portion of the trip, in Jinja. We came here to visit the source of the mighty (White/Victoria) Nile River (at Lake Victoria) and then to raft some of the biggest rapids that can be commercially rafted in the world. Luckily the guy that runs the place is a Kiwi and Kev had met him last time he was there. So we got discounted rafting and free bungee jumps! The rafting was a fun-filled day of awesomeness with several Grade 5s ensuring that we spent plenty of time upside down. Check out the video below (that's us standing 25s in)!

After that we headed north-west to Murchison Falls National Park. Here we saw the monstrosity that is the Nile forced through a 7m gap in the rock and then down a 43m drop. Mighty impressive. Then we continued further into the park to kick off our first game drive of the trip. Despite having visited plenty of zoos over the years, I still wasn't quite prepared for just how amazing it would be to see elephants, giraffes, lions, buffalo, antelope, warthogs, hippos, crocodiles, birds, monkeys and more, all together in their natural habitat. That night we camped in the game park sans the requisite armed guard who stays up all night to stoke the fire and let off warning shots if any animals get a bit too curious. It seemed like a good idea during daylight hours. However, about half an hour before bedtime, the sound of bushes being crushed caused us to think otherwise (and caused one of us to jump up onto the truck)! Shining our pathetic torches into the distance soon revealed the biggest elephant I've ever seen having a midnight snack only 20-30m away. Needless to say, a couple of the boys didn't sleep so well that night.

After another game drive in the morning, we left the game park and hit the boats for an afternoon of fishing. On the way up the river we came across one of the strangest sights I've ever seen; a dead hippo, bloated and floating upside down, with crocs trying in vain to tear it apart. One of these crocs had recently gone a bit crazy and grabbed a ranger off the back of a boat so we didn't hang around for too long. An enjoyable afternoon was had by all (and again, at hook-up prices), especially Geno, who reeled in a 34kg Nile Perch!

Nice work Geno!!

The next couple of days were spent in the amazing spot Kev has called home for the last eight or nine months, Budongo Forest. And to keep the trend going, it was practically free. Here we relaxed in the beautiful jungle surrounds and did what people go there to do; chimpanzee tracking. For several weeks prior to our arrival, they had had a fairly poor hit rate with finding the chimps on the daily treks. However, we struck it lucky and after only 10-15 minutes we had come across a group of seven or eight in the treetops, eating jackfruit and just chilling out. The noises were amazing (as seemed to be the case with most of the animals we saw on this trip) and their antics and actions were so human-like it was unbelievable. Before long they climbed down and made their way deeper into the forest, but not before one stopped and posed for some photos on a nearby branch. Magic.

Unfortunately, Gene had to leave us and get back to work at this point. But the rest of us continued on down across the equator (where we did the water trick and watched it spin different ways just metres either side!) to Lake Bunyonyi, where we relaxed for a couple of days after the hectic schedule of the first half of the trip. This was an absolutely idyllic spot tucked away in the south of Uganda. We paddled around in dugout canoes, read and swam (luckily it's one of the few lakes in this area that doesn't have bilharzia).

The guide book says this lake is 43m deep.

The relaxation prepared us nicely for our next highlight as we continued south to climb Mt. Muhavura, a dormant volcano in the Virunga Mountains. After ascending 1800m in around four hours, we reached the summit at 4137m. The climb wasn't actually a particularly difficult one but we still felt the beers were well deserved that night.

After deciding that we didn't have enough time to warrant a trip into Rwanda, as originally planned, this was our turnaround point. So we headed back north in our trusty steed, on to Lake Mburo National Park (via another couple of days at Lake Bunyonyi). This park is renowned as the only place in Uganda to see zebra and impala and it didn't disappoint in this regard.

Three weeks, 2200kms and two sunburns later, we found ourselves back in Entebbe, just south of the capital, Kampala (where we also spent a few days here and there throughout the trip). I was extremely happy to finally have seen a bit of sub-Saharan Africa, especially in such good company. There is certainly a different way of life than we're used to in the middle of that enormous continent. Time doesn't really exist, at least not in the rigorous, predictable and constant concept that we are familiar with. Here you may find that 40 minutes after ordering your meal, they are actually out of fish that day. Or that an invite somewhere will tell you the day but not the time. Consistency is also an unfamiliar concept in these parts. During the four days spent at Lake Bunyonyi we ordered the same thing for breakfast each morning, from the same waiter. Yet each time, as he slowly wrote down our order, he looked at the menu as if it was the first time he had seen it! The expats living here have a saying that covers these daily occurrences; T.I.A. (This is Africa). The number of times this phrase applies is unreal! Luckily, this kind of thing is simply amusing and somewhat interesting when you're only there for three weeks. However, after several months it has been known to turn normally relaxed, tolerant and patient people into fits of rage when having to deal with it on a daily basis in everything they do!

The rare Shoebill.

Huge thanks to K for all the hookups and excellent tour-guiding and to all the boys for joining us on this magic trip into the Pearl of Africa...

Buses, Boats, Bicycles and Babies (and Gorillas!)

2009-07-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

Gorillas on a Shoestring

There’s only one place in the world where you can go and see mountain gorillas in the wild, which is a small area in the south of Uganda that intersects the borders of Rwanda and DR Congo. Because of this, gorilla trekking is often the highlight or sometimes even the sole purpose of a person’s trip to East Africa. It was something I thought I’d never do, not that I didn’t want to see them, but the price of a trek is $500 US (soon to go to $1000) for a walk up a hill and an hour with the animals. Why is it so expensive? Let me just say its run by the government and leave it at that.

Anyhow, knowing a few people now in the industry, I managed to pick up a “spare” pass for a more palatable price. The trekking on the Uganda side is done in Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest, right down the bottom of the country. In a different hemisphere even! As I was doing it on the cheap (or “Being a Jase” – to use the parlance of our times) I decided to get public transport down there.

Bwindi Forest in the background

I got up at 4: something AM to get a Mutatu (public taxi van thing) from our office in Entebbe to the bus station in Kampala. This in itself was quite amusing as it was Sunday morning, so we picked up a rather drunk individual, who from what I could make out was being rather rude to the conductor and his fellow passengers. Anyway, halfway to Kampala he did a Dan Nicholson, forcing the taxi to stop so he could throw up out the door. Clearly having had enough of him at this point, the conductor leaned back, put his foot into the backside of the puking man and left him in his own mess as he slammed the door and we drove off.

To summarise the next 15 hours, I sat in a dusty, crowded bus with less than ample leg-room that broke down twice (which was actually fortunate as they don’t do toilet stops!). About 9:30pm that night after catching a lift on a motorbike the last 17kms into the park, I met my friend who was sorting me out with the pass. To further my cost savings I slept on the roof of his overland truck, which was nice but a little chilly and didn’t do much for my already sore behind!

Bright and early the next day, after the usual formalities and safety rules we headed up a rather steep hill to find the gorillas. Nearly at the top, our guide informed us that we now had to go off the path into the bush. It was real, proper thick jungle, the guides at the front hacking a path with machetes, I think it took us an hour to cover less than a kilometer. Alas, it was all worth it, as they brought us out right next to a group of gorillas.

Even though I live right next to chimpanzees, the gorillas really were something special. The group we visited was small, only 7 individuals, yet they had a huge silver-back, a black-back (younger than a silver back), a large female with baby and some youngsters. Up close gorillas are fricken huge, especially the large male silver-back!

Perhaps a distant relation Saunders?

However they appear incredibly gentle, and these ones were very used to people which meant they weren’t too shy. You’re supposed to keep a distance of 7 metres, which we did, yet at one point the black-back walked right past us, close enough that I could have touched it! They really don’t do a lot apart from sit, eat, fart and occasionally climb a tree (to eat more), but still twas an awesome experience, one I would really recommend if you can see past the dollar signs.

This is some pretty shoddy photography, but to give you an idea how close they got - this is how I saw it (focal length of 70mm for you camera buffs)

Seeing as we finished our walk around 1pm, I decided to walk the 17kms back to town that I had hitched on the bike the night before. Sometimes I have these ideas, which even at the time I know in the back of my mind are not so good, but I seem to go ahead with them anyway. For lack of a scientific term for this condition I’ll call it “Stupid Kev Syndrome”. The reason I decided to walk was that it is so unbelievably beautiful down there. With tea and banana plantations stretching literally as far as the eye can see, it was probably the greenest place I have ever been in!

The walk started out well, I turned down a number of lifts and was the main attraction for the countless hordes of children, whom I imagine have only ever seen white people staring out the windows of a moving vehicle. At one stage I had an entourage of about 12 kids and a couple of rouge dogs. However, a lack of fore-sight meant I only had half a bottle of water and no food. After a couple of hours in the mid-day sun the novelty had well worn off and I was happy to take a ride if it came by. As fate would have it, there was not a vehicle to be seen. Fortunately I met a nice local guy on his bike who walked the last 45 minutes with me into town, the conversation keeping my mind off thirst and heat-induced Dr Seuss hallucinations. Did he like green eggs and ham? Would he like them from a pan? He did not like green eggs and ham, they’re not Ugandan, Sam I am.

However… I made it in the end, checking into the only available accommodation with a luxurious cold bucket bath, some beautiful bunker-style concrete décor and gourmet rice with boiled goat for dinner. The ride home; see above. It was pretty much a replica trip, just in the other direction. So a bit of an effort, yet considering I saved around $900 had I gone through the usual channels, I’m very satisfied.

Local people hand make bricks from mud, stack them, cover them in more mud and set a fire in the middle. Hard work but cost effective!

This was pretty much all of the town I stayed in!

A segue to all this. The craze amongst kids in the local town was to show off their “Commando Moves”. It started with a couple of them flaunting their style, yet once the camera appeared I was inundated by a horde of miniature African Jackie Chan’s. One can only question why…

Baby Kev

I have learnt by now, that if I’m at work and the phone rings around 7-8am, it usually means some-one’s sick or in trouble and requiring assistance in some way. Not to disappoint a few weeks ago, one of the guides on his day off called to say his wife was in labour and if it wasn’t too much trouble would it be OK if I took her to the hospital in town? So polite, I couldn’t say no. So I whizzed out to the village to find she was indeed very much in labour, so much so I was scared she might actually drop it in the truck!

If I don’t say so myself, it was a pretty nifty piece of driving, getting to town in record time whilst avoiding most of the contraction-inducing pot-holes. We got to hospital with-out any water breaking in the back-seat and Im happy to report that the baby popped out just fine.

So, in recognition of setting the land-speed record between Kingaragara Village and Masindi Town Hospital, I have a child named after me. Behold… Kevin Kibwota!!!

Me and K-Dogg Junior with Mum (Irene) and Dad (John)

Delta Camping

Last weekend some friends and I went for a game drive further up in the park, about an hour from where I live. I’d done this before yet this time we decided to go camping on the Delta, on the side of the lake overlooking the DR Congo. If anyone is wondering why I keep saying DR Congo it’s because there is a country in West Africa called Congo, the one bordering Uganda is called the Democratic Republic of Congo (formally Zaire).

As camping in the park isn’t that popular, we got the ferry across the Nile around 4pm and had the whole park to ourselves. The viewing was excellent, last time I came I only saw about 3 elephants, this time it was more like 300!

After setting up the tents we tried to do a dusk game-drive but without a flood-light it was rather average. Getting back to the camp at last light we had a good view of the hippos coming out of the water for the night and a whole lot of giraffes walking past.

The night was uneventful, yet there were some rather large sounding beings walking past the tent! In the morning, another advantage of camping was that we got going at 6am, an hour and a half before anyone else would be across on the ferry. So we got to see things like this…

Ahhh maneepiaaaaa ommewaaaaaaa

We also saw a pair of leopards running on the ground, which is incredibly rare, however you’ll need to take my word for it as low light and a sloppy lens change while trying to drive meant I didn’t get any good photos.

After the drive I met up with my mate Andy who runs the boat trips and went for a wee cruise to the bottom of Murchison Falls. This was nice as I got to see crocodiles and fish eagles for the first time as well as the falls from the most impressive angle…

The Hero

I’ve been thinking lately about buying a bicycle. Not that I really need one, but I miss riding and the roads here look kinda fun. Your options though, for procuring such a machine are rather limited. A “nice” bike is what would pass for a “hack” back home (or a classic, depending how you look at it). Yet these are rather impractical as many gears and cables mean higher maintenance costs, and their load bearing capabilities are somewhat limited, which we shall see below is rather important.

That is why Africa has… The Hero, the African super bike!

Where I come from, a bicycle is usually for getting yourself from A to B. Whether that be from home to work, from the top of a hill to the bottom, or to show the world your choice of lycra on the way to Coffee Culture in Cashmere.

Anyway, here you not only need to move yourself, but quite often your possessions too. Common loads that I have witnessed with my very eyes include: Couches, beds, 2 x 50kg bags of sugar, 5 x crates of beer, friends, wives and children, 3-4 metre lengths of timber or steel tubing, sheet metal, a pig, a goat, once a freshly killed cow… the list goes on.

In fact from this I feel it would be entirely plausible to move house using only a Hero. There’s nothing you cant do on this thing, (apart from go uphill, do skids or get sweet air without breaking your shins!) But what kind of machine, you may ask, could possibly do all this day-in and day-out without breaking down?

Some of the more "pimpin" models that will take you round town for a fare

For the bike geeks reading this, let me give you some technical specifications…

Frame Construction: Steel
Rims: Steel
Carrier: Steel
Tyres: Industrial Rubber
Weight: Approximately 33kgs (72.6lbs if you live in a backwards country)
Gears: Single Speed
Brakes: 2 x Horseshoe (with a solid steel brake cable!)
Suspension: Under-seat steel coil
Colour Options: Black
Optional Extras: Pedals, Arsenal FC Sticker, Handlebar Grips, Bell
Price: $60US (give-or-take depending on your bargaining ability)

Is anyone from Fisher Outdoor reading this? I’m feeling a new product category here!

I’ve tried to find out who makes the Hero. Religious scholars believe the Hero was created by God on the 7^th day of creation for Adam to cruise round Eden. Archeologists believe the Hero was forged in the fires of Mt Kilamanjaro around the end of the Cretaceous Period. Others say it was a gift to the Bantu King by early Portuguese spice traders. However it came to be, the original design of the Hero has remained unchanged through-out the eons and looks set to stay for millennia to come.

OK. So it’s called a haka. You start with “Komate Komate”…

Bush Rantings

2009-05-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

Before we begin… Up to this point, the 41 previous posts of “Marcus and Kev’s World Tour” have been predominantly travel themed. Unfortunately it’s been a bit of a weird month, which has prompted me to be rather opinionated about certain things, which I guess makes this post a bit more of an opinion blog. Opinion-based blogs are the lowest form of blog, the realm of the outspoken nut-case whose opinion no-one really wants to hear. But if you’ve made it this far you should read on, and to make it more palatable I’ve interspersed it with some nice animal pictures.

The rare Shoebill Crane

Local Grooves

Sometimes, when it’s been a long week in the bush, I meet up with some mates in the local town for a drink. We all live in reasonably remote locations so it’s always good to sit and talk schmak without having to use “Ugandlish”. On the most recent occasion there was a concert on in town. Seeing as nothing interesting ever happens round here (this place is the Oamaru of Uganda) we thought we’d rock on down for a boogie.

The guy playing was one “BeBe Cool”, who even I had heard of from my frequent readings of the Ugandan tabloid. As Uganda only have about four “celebrities”, when someone like Mr Cool goes to the shops for milk it’s “scandelicious” front page news.

The concert started about 10pm, but seeing as “His Coolness” is always pictured hiding under designer hats and glasses, we were never sure if the act that came on was the man himself, or another opener. The opening acts were all, let me say “below par”, but it was interesting to note the various differences between this concert and ones Ive been too in the west. For a start, there were more people there than I thought actually existed in town, from grandparents to grandkids. Unfortunately the speaker set-up was no better than you’d find in the lounge of a typical student flat, and if this wasn’t exciting enough, it appeared that the local way to enjoy hip-hop is to stand/sit quietly and take it all in with a straight face.

The Crested Crane, national symbol of Uganda

By the time BeBe came on at 1am we’d all indulged in enough beer to dance to anything. So the four of us (the only white people at the concert) were “cutting some shapes” with a few extroverted locals that we knew. One of the guys was giving me a rough translation of the lyrics as we went; songs varied from “Jesus is the way”, followed by “I love girls with big asses”.

A novel aspect was that anyone could get up on stage and dance with the performer (something that would probably result in a hasty and rough removal if you were to try it at say a Foo Fighters concert). If you hand Mr Cool a tip (he clearly doesn’t charge the same appearance fee as Dave Grohl) you can give him a high five, or if you are a female, present your behind for some grinding action. A behavior I have also observed in chimpanzees and baboons.

Whoever coined the term "pissing like a horse" clearly had never seen a rhino do its thing!

Sadly, one of the few let downs in this country has been the music. Apparently for that quinisential African sound one really needs to go to West Africa (Cameroon, Ghana etc…). All the local stuff here sounds the same, and 90% of the songs sung in English are Jesus themed. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Christianity or religiously themed music, but to God rockers around the world I must say this: GET SOME NEW MATERIAL PEOPLE! If you read the bible (as one does when they have exhausted their Harry Potter supply), there are some brilliant stories about a guy facing lions, dudes killing giants, getting swallowed by a whale… I am well aware after five months of local radio that Jesus is my savior and the Lord is very mighty, but a bit of variety here and there really would not go amiss!

Stay in Skool

I went to a community meeting at a local primary school the other day. I drive by all the time but this was the first time I actually read the sign outside. Where I come from schools usually have mottos that are somewhat wanky, but none-the-less inspiring. Things along the lines of; “Aspire to Greatness” or “Students of today, leaders of the future”. Anyway, here’s what you get when you walk into the local joint:

Hardly motivational, but if you make it inside, more good advice is coming your way…

Primary 7 is like Year/Grade 7, it means you would be about 11 years old!

This is a Primary School!

Now lets have a look at a typical classroom.

The only good thing about this place was the school bell, which is an old lorry wheel hung in a tree. I have never heard a louder school bell in my life, especially if you use your truck as the ringer (uh, if you hypothetically were to do that of course….).

If the Ministry of Education is like any of the other government departments I’ve had dealings with here, then Im willing to bet that the Minister and his various unnecessary underlings will be driving round Kampala in new Jeep Cherokees having expensive lunches while teachers go unpaid and the schools are left without money to buy chairs or equipment. I know for a fact that in schools where my aforementioned friends are volunteering, most teachers haven’t been paid in at least four months!

Which brings me to my next point, a section I am borrowing from the ever-impressive travel blog of Travis Gloyn, yet I feel it’s justified…

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

A few things here grind my gears, for instance British GAP year students who come over on a programme with Mummy and Daddy’s credit card, spend a couple hours a week “volunteering” in a school and the rest of the time getting ridiculously drunk, showing no respect for anyone or anything, cruising the country on an all expenses paid safari and complaining about how there’s no McDonalds! I can only imagine that they’ll go home and tell everyone how they’ve “done Africa” and “like, really felt I made an impact man!”.

Well, that grinds my gears a bit, kinda like a sloppy gear shift, but what really sends cogs flying out the transmission is thus:

I work for the Ugandan section of a global conservation foundation called the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). However, the chimp trekking site were I work is owned by a government department, the National Forestry Authority (NFA). A few years ago JGI signed a contract with the NFA to take over the management of the site and to develop it into a world-class tourist facility. In that time JGI put in all the current buildings and infrastructure, hired and trained staff and generally made it into a successful venture. To give you an idea, we turned over more money in the Easter Weekend than the site did in all of 2004!

All the money we make after operational expenditure goes to doing something good in the name of conservation. We pay the salaries of 22 Forest Rangers (who if on the NFA payroll don’t usually get paid for 6 months at a time). During the school term we bring 500 kids a month through our conservation education centre at my other site. We give training and grants to local community groups so they can be more self sufficient and therefore less reliant on the forest for their livelihoods.

However, the aforementioned management contract expires in June this year. To cut a long story and two months of frustratingly fruitless meetings short, the NFA have decided to cut JGI loose, sell off the accommodation/restaurant side of the site and take over the chimp trekking. What this would mean is no more community programs, no more education, half my staff would be on lower and less frequently paid NFA salaries and the other half probably replaced by whoever buys the other side of it. No conservation work means the illegal loggers and hunters come back into the forest and eventually it’s goodbye to all the nice chimps and the rest of the eco-system. Oh, and no job for Kev either.

Why on earth would they do this you may ask? Well, the driving factor behind most evil deeds: Money. NFA have just sold off most of their forestry sites so now have pretty poor cashflow. It would appear that they need a decent amount of cash to fund their Jeep Cherokees and fancy lunches, hence this move. While on paper they pledge to continue all the current conservation work, everyone knows that without JGI around there would be no-one to facilitate it. Also, the big guns of NFA have a history of illegal logging, which is currently the biggest threat to the chimps and forest!

Fortunately, we’ve managed to call in a few big names, such as the donors who fronted the money for the development to put a bit of pressure on. Although the fruitless meetings are continuing it seems that JGI will retain the chimp trekking part for the short term, but the other half is still going to be sold. It also seems that my job is going to be replaced by someone from NFA (I imagine someone who isn’t so fussed if the profits don’t go towards conservation) which is a bit stink for me as Id planned to stay on until the end of the year.

Fortunately, things never move quickly around here, so by the time anything happens it will probably be the end of the year anyway. It is however, slightly unmotivating as I (used to) love the fact that for once I have a job that is ultimately doing some good, not just making some faceless shareholder richer than they need to be. So for the next six months I aim to a) hang in there until the boys come for their trip in August, b) sneak through pay rises and new gear for all my staff, and c) get as much conservation and community work done/approved before it potentially dries up.

...And that folks, is what grinds my gears.

I don’t wish to drag the negativity any further, but one last thing. If you are, or are considering donating money to any organisation in Africa, good for you. Seriously, well done! A lot of people talk about it but not many do it.

However, I can not stress enough the importance of first checking where that money is spent. Im not just talking from my own experience, but also from people I know and have met who work in organisations throughout Africa, even people who work for well-known aid companies that you see advertising on the TV. Unfortunately, corruption is rife in most places. If there is any government involved, Id either stay away, or have a really good look first.

Please don’t get me wrong, there are some really good aid organisations here, especially those that work with HIV and displaced persons, and also some very honest and dedicated local people working in them. As with any populance, there are always some bad eggs. Unfortunately here those bad eggs are the ones that hold the power.

So, a bit of a moan this time, sorry about that. Hopefully this month Ill get myself into some more bizarre situations so it’ll all be a bit more light-hearted next time! Speaking of which, they’ve just put a new sign up on the road near me. It is a steep hill, yet I do love the graphical conveyance of what may happen should you attempt it too fast!

Oh, also a few peeps asking for a picture of my Uganda mullet. Here it is, primed for a night on the town...

"The one that got away"... and other clichés

2009-04-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

Before I crack into this one, a quick update on the “Obamarama” situation. Currently, the number one song in Uganda is “Obama, Real African Hero”. It’s an awful reggae-pop song, yet so sickeningly catchy I cant stop singing it! Maybe it’s some kind of subliminal-brainwashing propaganda, or maybe not. All I know is that he really is an African hero…

Nile Fishing

My closest neighbor (50kms away!) is Andy, a mad Zimbabwean who spends his days running fishing trips on the Nile or roaring round the national park on his dirt bike. The nice thing about having a friend with a boat is that I got to go out fishing for free!

One of the many things I love about Africa is that you can do regular things as you would at home, like fishing for example, but it’s always a different experience. The two of us went out for the day on a dinghy boat armed with a full cooler of beer, some rods and a can of sweet-corn. That’s the regular part. The difference was the fact that the boat was usually surrounded by hippos (which were twice the size of the boat!), gigantic crocodiles, and the fish we were trying to catch were literally sea-monsters!

We started out fishing for “bait”, which consisted of using small rods and the sweet corn and pulling in some Tetra. Tetra are nothing special; grey, standard fish shape, about yay long. Once we had enough of these in the bucket, we hooked them whole onto the big rods, dropped a few lines and pulled up on the bank.

After testing a few more bottles of beer, the line on one of the rods started whizzing out. Andy gave me the honors, so I took the rod and started doing battle. I’ve never really caught a big fish before, and this thing was a fricken monster! Once it realised that the tasty tetra in its mouth was attached to a fishing rod, the line started flying out and the rod bent double. The fish jumped a few times and it really was gargantuan, Andy reckoned at least 20kgs. At this point I would love to show you a photo of me with a beaming grin, struggling to hold the weight of the big fish I had caught. Unfortunately after about 20 minutes and just when I had him closeish to shore, he got away… Dang.

Funnily enough halfway through my aquatic escapade there was a big splash about 10 meters down the bank that I didn’t really register at the time. Afterwards I asked Andy what it was. “Just a croc goin’ in mate”. Bloody ‘ell, crocs scare the shit out of me! I am very glad I didn’t see that one!

So, the one that got away… Fortunately later in the day I got “a small one”, but I was still stoked (note the beaming grin)…

"Goooood Fiiiish"

I love hippos, they make this snorting laugh sound across the water, kind of a “Ha Ha Ha Ha Haaaaaaa” it’s like they’re laughing at you when you’re struggling to catch fish!. So, because Im a bit short on content this time, Im going to bombard you with some happy happy hippo pics for a bit.

So that's why it's called "The Wet Season"

I hardly saw a drop of rain in my first three months here. This was because the weather gods were saving it all up for one big drop. It became apparent the other day when I got caught in a flash flood in the van and ended up sliding backwards down a hill that the wet season was indeed upon us! I’ve been in the monsoon a couple of times in Asia, but even that was nothing compared to the rain here. It comes in at pace, it can be sunny one minute (Warning! Cliché Alert!), then day turns to night, quite literally and the sky explodes. You can walk outside and be drenched in a second, there don’t seem to be rain drops, just a sheet of water coming from the sky. I have also never heard thunder like this. When it’s overhead, it doesn’t bang or rumble, it just makes this horrific ripping sound that... cuts to the bone!.

With the wet season comes a whole new army of bugs and beasties. My current nemesis is the Tsetse Fly.

They work on the same principles as mosquitoes, they want my blood. If one was to compare mosquitoes to Ninja Warriors, flying in stealthily, landing quietly and sucking your blood. Then that would make Tsetse Flies Kamikaze Bombers. There’s no discretion involved. They pick their target and come in full-speed, teeth first. They hurt like buggery and like to go at your face and neck. If that’s not bad enough I’m sure they have some racist streak in them as they seem to like me much more than the local lads!

Also with the wet season I’ve had a few “guests” taking refuge in my cabin. I used to remove all the creepy crawlies, but now as long as they don’t jump in bed with me I don’t really mind. In fact I’ve grown kinda fond of some of them…

Stanley

Stanley’s been here since the start. He likes to hang out in the toilet which is a little disconcerting, but he keeps to himself and controls the bug population. The other night I awoke to the sound of my guitar playing itself – which was a little creepy until I got a light on and realised that Stanley had decided to take a walk along the strings!

Hendrix

Hendrix prefers to hang in the shower. For a long time Hendrix had a buddy called Hagrid, until last week when I found Hagrid belly-up in a bucket of water. I blame the global financial climate.

Paco

Paco has been living in my verandah roof since it started raining. I figure he must go out to eat at some point, either that or he’s eating all of Stanley’s potential mating partners.

Esmaralda

Esmaralda only really dropped in for a day, but I thought seeing as she was so damn pretty she was worth a mention.

The Evil Cobra

This guy doesn’t get a nice name. What I can tell you is that it is a highly venomous black cobra, about 8 feet long. I was back at the house in Entebbe and first saw him as I walked out the back door with an armful of washing. He was up on his belly, hood out with his tongue flicking. I only stopped to see what the dog was growling at, peered round from behind my pile of clothes and saw this guy about 2 meters away. Fortunately I think he was just as shocked to see me, and by the time Id gone in to get my camera he was trying to make a quick exit around the side of the house.

So that’s that for this month. If you actually read this far you’ve probably concluded that all I really did was go fishing once and spent the rest of the time doing rain dances, talking to lizards and paying homage to Lord Obama. What can I say? Beats living in the real world!

Without a paddle...

2009-03-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

According to my soon-to-be-expired entry visa, I’ve been here for three months now. To be honest it feels more like a year. I’m not quite sure what to put that down to, long days, new stuff to learn, some type of “Africa Effect” maybe? I really don’t know.

The view from the balcony in Entebbe

A re-enactment of the nightly "bed invasion" at the Entebbe Office

The last month has been a bit more “business as usual,” yet I’ve still managed to do some new stuff and come back with a few stories. Achievement for the month is the fact that I am now a certified chimpanzee tracker, which means I can take people into the forest to find the chimps. I did have to sit through a week of training run by Disney (yes Disney… we even watched The Lion King!), but as they say – “no pain - no gain”.

Funnily enough, the first day after my training when I got some time to go on a full-day habituation patrol, the chimps nearly had me twice! First was in the morning, it had rained hard all night and I was sitting under a tree with another guide watching some of the chimps feeding. One of them must have put its weight onto a log which was dead and weakened by the rain, because it snapped and fell towards us. I’m talking a proper big ole bough here, something you could make a canoe out of!

It’s amazing sometimes what you can do in certain situations. Before I had even thought about it Id put one foot onto a tree stump and pushed off into some kind of spinning dive backwards. A move I could never hope to replicate under normal circumstances. Fortunately, Justin, the other guy had rolled sideways, also avoiding death-by-squishing, so we both sat in silence for a minute while the chimps in the tree shrieked and screamed about it all.

If that wasn’t enough, throughout the day we were watching a male called Shaka, who is known for being a bit of an “angry man”. On this day he was constantly getting shut-down while trying to mate with one of the high-ranking females. Unfortunately for us, we walked straight into him and his home boys on one of the paths.

"Shaka" having a wee sulk after lucking out with the ladies

The chimps in the forest have never attacked a person, but they do charge now and again if they are startled. Shaka, who was clearly having a bad day, stood, picked up a branch and started screaming at us. When these guys get angry their hair stands on end making them look enormous. They’re also 5-8 times stronger than humans! Justin was whispering to me “Get down, be small”. In this situation you’re meant to crouch down, not make eye-contact and put your hands in your armpits (otherwise they might rip off your fingers!). My heart was thumping and it took all my will power not to turn and run. After that I had to concentrate my energies into not wetting my pants. I’m serious, it nearly happened!!! Fortunately for us, Shaka’s posse wasn’t in the mood to back him up, so after a bit more screaming and stick waving he hurled the branch into the forest and ran of screaming. ..

Nile Rafting

I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for the last ten minutes trying to think up some superlatives to describe how amazing this was. I can’t really do it justice with one so I’m going to have to make up a new word to encompass a few. It was RANG’n (Radical, awesome and gnarly).

I should also mention at this point that all the rafting photos below I have taken from the Adrift Rafting website, as you couldn't carry a camera and I was too cheap to buy the trip photo CD. But I can honestly say they are a fair representation of the trip I was on.

Actually I did take this one, it's the view from the bar at the camp

I went out to Jinja by myself, but fortunately there was a massive group of people doing the two-day trip so there was a good crew. The rafting is done just after the mouth of the Nile and the rapids are the largest commercially rafted anywhere in the world. After the usual safety run-down we jump in our boat with our guide Tutu, who was “The Man”. As the rafting company is run by New Zealanders it was kind of amusing to have a Ugandan guide who constantly came out with lines like: “Sweet as bro” and “No worries mate”. We did a few warm ups, back paddling, turning, and then practiced flipping the raft and not panicking when you get sucked under a rapid. At this point it might all sound a bit dodgy, but it’s a really professional operation, we were accompanied the whole way by a safety raft and fifteen or so guys in kayaks.

We get to the first rapid, which from our vantage point in the boat you could see the river drop away into a roaring cesspool of froth and waves. We paddle up to the rapid with Tutu yelling in the background “Forward! Forward! Right Side! Forward! Harder! Get Down! Get Down! Hold On!!!” We drop into this rapid, the raft bucking beneath us and all I could see in front is a wall of white water! Next thing the raft is thrown in the air, sideways, onto another bit and then we’re off – all still in the boat. As I said, RANGn!!!

The only photo of me in a boat

We hit a few more rapids in this way, and then we went for our first “swim”. I figured that when we did flip the raft Id be tossed in the air, hit the water and float for a bit. Well. Pretty much one second I was in the raft, the next I was underneath it. I tried to get out from under it, but the old sense of direction wasn’t really happening and I kept popping up into the boat. Fortunately, just as my lungs were starting to question my brain on the sudden halt in oxygen flow I popped up alongside the boat, still in the rapid. Tutu at this point had recovered the upside down boat and is standing on top of it. Once he was happy that everyone was floating and accounted for he starts whooping and doing back flips on the boat. Nutter.

After 30kms of river we got to the camp where we stayed the night, then the next day, got right back into it. The second day had a few long sedate stretches which meant we could lie on the raft, sun bathe, swim and take in the scenery of the Nile… but it also involved a few more wild rides and crazy flips along the way. At the end we get to a rapid which has a continuous standing wave. First the guys brought out a whole lot of body boards, so we could jump into the rapid and ride for as long as you could hold on for.

There's always one...

Then we let some air out of the rafts and took those into the wave. This was awesome; it was like being on a rollercoaster with the raft jumping about but staying in the same spot. All up it was one of the best weekends of my life and something I’m planning on doing at least once more before I leave Uganda!

Flip and Flop – R.I.P

Sometimes, the most simple of possessions can take on a sentimental value. This happened with Flip and Flop, whose obituary follows:

In memory of Flip and Flop, who sadly perished in the jungles of Africa on February 24^th 2009. Flip and Flop were purchased in the Beijing Silk Markets, June 2007. Mainly by Marcus as he is better at arguing with people than I am. Originally one pair of blue and one pair of brown flip flops, an “altercation” over who got what colour, followed by some throwing of said flip flops, resulted in us both owning one of each. Flip and Flop have pounded pavements, climbed mountains and generally kept my feet from mankiness in 55 cities throughout 19 countries over 4 continents. Guys, you’ll be missed.

A New Messiah?

Uganda has a rather strong Christian presence, many people are very religious. It seems to be the fad to name your business or taxi with certain religious quotes. Some of my favorites are: “Jesus-Loves-You Stationary – for all your school supplies” and “Praise-The-Lord Dry Cleaning”.

It’s also interesting here that Jesus appears in many forms. Sometimes he comes in classic white;

Sometimes in cool black;

In reality, being of Middle Eastern decent – he probably bore more resemblance to the guy on the right…

But I digress.

Now there’s a new kid on the block;

Obamaaaaaaa!

Even though I’m willing to bet that 95% of Ugandans wouldn’t know the meaning of the words “Democrat” or “Republican”, as far as most people here are concerned there’s an African guy in charge of America now! Slowly we are beginning to see signs of this new messiah. The ever popular Jesus calendar for sale in the markets is slowly being replaced with Obama calendars. New businesses are springing up, painted in red, white and blue with names like “Obama Beverages and Dry Goods”.

In Barrak We Trust. All Rise.

Game Drives, Bike Rides & Police Bribes

2009-02-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

Month 2: Still happy, still healthy, still breathing, visa extension granted – all positives.

For everyone that’s been asking, I’m glad to inform you that nothing else (that I know of) has laid eggs in my body and spawned out of my pores. In fact my body appears to have “Africanised”, I’m able to eat and drink all the dodgy local stuff, and my dust induced cough seems to have subsided. I’ve even aclimatised to the heat – the other morning our weather station recorded the lowest temperature this month. It was 22 degrees and I was bloody freezing! Spent the morning walking round in a beanie and a hoodie!

Mentally I’ve become desensitised to a few things that probably would have shocked the old Kev a bit. Had another two deaths this month. First was the small daughter of one of my trail cutters. I got told about her one morning, rushed her in to hospital, but she died a few hours later. Kind of depressing as I think she had a severe case of dysentery, which may have been cured had the family acted earlier. Problem is that no-one has any money to do anything about these types of things, so they’ll either leave it, or pay the local witch-doctor a chicken to dance about and blow some smoke. You can imagine how effective a cure that is…

A typical house in the local villages

Second death was a few days ago when someone’s mother died. It was weird. I went to the house and actually sat next to the dead body and talked to the family for a while. It wasn’t until I left that it actually registered I had been sitting next to a corpse.

Same goes with firearms. Especially back in Entebbe/Kampala, any shop worth robbing has an armed guard (the video shop for example). My friend was in the bank yesterday, and as I was waiting outside I started talking to one of the guards. Once again it wasn’t until I left that I even thought about the fact that the guy I was talking with about the local bar scene, was standing there holding a semi-automatic machine gun.

But anyway…enough about me…

Chimpanzee Rescue Squad!!!

I got a call one morning from my boss, who is a wildlife vet (how cool a job is that!). Someone in a village about 80kms from me had reported a chimpanzee that was caught in a trap. Peter (my boss) was coming up from Kampala but he needed the tranquilizer gun and medi-kits from my site. So I loaded up and went out to meet him.

Some dickhead had set a bear trap right near the edge of a village, they mean to catch bush pigs or duiker in these, but where they had put it I’m surprised a kid didn’t stand in it! The chimp had sprung the trap on its wrist, and by the time we arrived, had dragged it a wee way into a swamp. After finding and sedating the chimp it took three people, all physically straining, to actually get the trap back open!

Miraculously no bones were broken (about a third of all chimps found in these traps need amputation) there were just a few abrasions on each side of the wrist. Peter and his team cleaned out the wounds, checked the rest of the body (all OK), then gave her (it was a young female) a shot to wake her back up. We spent the next hour watching this chimp come out of a sleep, which kinda reminded me of getting up on a Sunday morning and finding an extremely drunk person waking up on the lounge sofa. The other day I ran into one of the guys who is a ranger up that way who told me that the chimp has joined back up with the local population and is even using the hand again. Nice

Dirt Bike 101

It recently came to my attention that our site has a dirt bike; it’s been on loan for a while and is now back. After a couple of days of looking at it, my inner child (who frequently hijacks my rational thought process), and peer pressure from some Swiss researchers, convinced me to have a go.

I did get my motorbike learner license in New Zealand, yet this consisted of me riding round some cones in a garage and proving I knew which lever worked the brake. So, after checking with someone how to change gears I jumped on and managed to get out onto the road without stalling. Unfortunately the road outside is on a slope and kinda narrow, and I didn’t have the confidence to slow down and turn around. The only option was to keep going so I ended up riding the 30kms into town instead. By the time I hit town I felt pretty confident on the bike. I had a few people to see; by the time I finished the clouds that had been building for the last week had gotten very dark and ominous. I had no money to stay in town and you don’t want to get stuck in the dark out here, so I didn’t have much choice but to head back.

This is Seamus the local rock lizard

No sooner do I get on the road, does the first proper rain in months decide to fall! When it rains here, it rains (the other day we had 60mm in 20 minutes!). Sometimes I wonder if god/buddah/yoda/whoever is messing with me, surely they could have waited til I got home?

It’s a simple equation: dirt road + rain = mud slide. It was not fun, it was long, it was cold, it was stressful, and my “I-am-a-super-awesome-dirt-bike-superstar” attitude quickly dissolved. But after slipping, sliding and stalling all the way, I somehow made it home “sans-crash”.

After this experience I’m deeply grateful to the New Zealand licensing authority, who tested my knowledge of “minimum parking distances from a school crossing” before they let me ride one of these things.

Murchison Falls

Last weekend under the guise of “market research” I took the work van and a few friends and drove further into the national park. About 40 minutes from where I am are the Murchison falls, reputedly one of the most spectacular falls in Africa, where the entire Victoria Nile crashes through a narrow cataract on its way to Lake Albert. The sheer volume of water moving through this thing every second is indeed worthy of a few superlatives (insert your own, I’m tired), and the sound of water on rock is deafening.
Some bright spark in the 19th century tried to build a dam across the top of the falls, which you can see in some of the photos. A great concept, but sometimes you just can’t mess with nature and it got washed away pretty promptly.

Now and again whilst traveling you come across things that are just impossible to do justice with a few photographs (unless your name is Marcus Tillson of course!), but here are a few anyway…

Game Drive

After the falls we stayed the night at a backpackers and got up at “I’m-to-hungover-to-be-up-this-early” AM to get the ferry across the Nile to the game reserve. This has to be one of the coolest things I have done in my life. You take your car on the ferry, and then have a couple thousand square kilometers to drive wherever you want.

Going early in the morning ended up being a good idea, as you get this amazing morning light from the sunrise, and of course all the wildlife is a bit more active too. As you begin the drive you see an abundance of antelope: Hartebeest, Waterbuck, Ugandan Kob, Bushbuck and Oribi – if anyone’s interested.

There are also a good number of buffalo and warthogs around too.

After a bit we came across our first elephant, standing nonchalantly next to the road. People have been killed in the park by charging elephants so if you see one you just have to stop and wait it out. It took a good 40 minutes of eating and scratching its bum on a tree before it moved on, but as I’ve said before – seeing something like this in its natural environment is amazing, and doesn’t even compare to seeing one in a zoo.

Driving down to the delta next to the lake we saw quite a few of giraffes, and then in the lake a massive herd of hippos. We also saw some crocodiles in a river (no photos sorry, I was driving). Funnily enough, somewhere in the middle of the lake is an invisible line which marks the Uganda/Congo border. On a clear day you can see the Blue Mountains of the Congo. Also interesting is that the other shore of the lake is LRA rebel territory.

The 'ippo is 'appy!

That's Congo on the other side. No sign of Kony...

Whilst stoked with the day it was a tad disappointing that we didn’t see any lions or leopards. Apparently in the dry season they keep themselves well hidden, I suppose this means I’ll just have to go up there again!

Why not hang out with your wang out?

The reason for some animal scarcity is that the park, while amazing, is still recovering from un-restricted hunting in the 60’s and 70’s and heavy poaching in the 80’s. Where you may now see 4-5 elephants, you used to see hundreds. But now with proper protection from the Wildlife Authority, numbers are coming back slowly.

I also found it cool that not even one hour away I work in a tropical rainforest with chimps and monkeys, yet up here is a completely different savannah environment with a totally different sub-set of animals. Good diversity Uganda!

When the van breaks I get the Land Cruiser - Im trying to help it on its way...

Pineapple Bribes

I was driving back down to Entebbe the other day when a traffic cop waved for me to pull over. The traffic cops here are a bit of a joke as apart from the odd motorcycle they don’t have any vehicles. So if you are speeding past, they wave you down and you don’t stop, there’s really not much they can do about it.

Anyway, I was in a good mood, so foolishly I stopped the van. It was a “routine stop” but it all got a little complicated when it came to the matter of identification. Id left my international license in the other truck. As mentioned earlier, my New Zealand License is for a car and a learner motorbike. So while having a full car license, I also have the word “Learner” emblazoned above my ID photo. As far as the cop and most Ugandans are concerned, New Zealand could well be a former soviet state – my point being that; here having a NZ license is about as effective as holding a weight-watchers meeting at McDonalds.

To complicate matters, my visa (in my British passport!) is a tourist visa, and I was driving a van with NGO (Non Government Organisation) license plates, meaning that this was obviously a work vehicle, and I’m not meant to be working.

I tried to explain all this best I could. The cop was pretty relaxed about it all, but told me he’d need to take my details and then Id have to take my international license and work permit (which I said I had) to the central police station in Kampala. I was informed that there would also be a fee that I would have to pay. I suddenly clicked where all this was going, so I asked if the fee was payable to him. He gave me this look that quite clearly said “How obvious do I need to make this? Just give me some money and you can go!”

Fortunately most of my cash was in my bag so I pulled out my wallet and gave him the 15,000 shillings (about US$7) I had in there. This clearly wasn’t quite up to the accepted amount for a no-license bribe so he asked me what else I had. Next to me on the front seat was some fruit Id just brought and a packet of cigarettes. He told me that if I gave him the smokes and the pineapple then I could be on my way.

Now this is when things turned serious. Id spent a good while selecting that pineapple; it was near perfect and had a scheduled appointment with my belly later that evening. I tried to negotiate with a few mangoes and an avocado – but the cop had also realised the power of the pineapple, so finally I reluctantly parted with it. I did eventually buy another pineapple, but it just wasn’t the same.

The moral of the story: Don’t stop for the cops. Always hide the pineapple.

That’s all for this month, in next month’s edition – well who knows, I’m sure something will happen between now and then!

Kwa Heri!

Welcome to the Jungle!

2009-01-07T08:05:00.000-08:00

Kev’s 2008

Looking back it does appear that I haven’t written anything on here for a year or so, seems Marcus has been having all the fun!!! So, a brief re-cap of 2008…

After traveling nearly consistently for 12 months it became apparent that my savings were not going to foot the bill for much longer. I needed to earn some cash. So I moved to London, lived in a great part of town called Camden with some very awesome flat-mates, and luckily got a wicked job as a Product Manager for a bicycle company.

In October I flew back to New Zealand to surprise my family for my brother Dan’s 21st birthday, and to catch up with the remaining crew there. It was great to go back and made me appreciate what a wonderful place New Zealand really is.

He used to be my little brother!

Then flew back via a month in Thailand. Had the time of my life destroying my liver on the beach and met heaps of top people. Got “stranded” on Ko Phi Phi with the Bangkok airport occupation and had to go overland to fly out of Malaysia

...two days later after an express stop back in London to re-pack my gear I landed in…

Uganda

If your geography is anything like mine was a year ago then you may only have a hazy idea where this country is. Basically it’s on the edge of Lake Victoria bordered by Kenya, Sudan, D.R. Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. Smack on the equator.
What an earth am I doing in Central Africa? Well, a year ago in Barcelona I met a girl who had volunteered for the Jane Goodall Institute, who work mainly to protect chimpanzees. She gave me a contact email and long story short; here I am a year later. I was originally coming over to work on the marketing and development of eco-tourism projects. But due to a sudden departure of a staff member and my convenient arrival, I’ve ended up as the manager of a Chimpanzee Trekking Eco-tourism site!

Kaniyo Pabidi

Kaniyo Pabidi is a forest inside the Murchison Falls National Park, but for some reason outside the protected conservation zone. Within the forest are around 600 chimpanzees whose habitat and livelihoods have been seriously under threat from, among other things: illegal logging, snare traps and poaching.

The site I run has 5 cabins and a 16-bed dormitory built in-between the trees for visitors to stay. In the daytime our guides take people into the forest to view chimpanzees in the wild. The place is awesome, all the power is solar and all water is gathered via rain-catchment. There are around 20 staff including tracker/guides, trail cutters, chefs, house-keeping, security and maintenance. All the profits made are used to pay the 50 or so rangers who patrol the surrounding forests and to provide grants to local community groups to set up small businesses. Many of these businesses work in partnership with the site, selling us produce, washing the linen or making merchandise for the shop. It’s a bit of a change managing Ugandan people, among other things I’ve never had to factor witchcraft into a decision before!

My cabin, not exactly roughing it...

The forest is a fantastic place. Apart from the chimpanzees there’s an abundance of birds, monkeys, baboons, bugs, plants and the occasional lion or leopard! I get in there as often as I can get away from the day-to-day running of the place. It also smells fantastic, kind of a cross between incense and fresh fruit.

My best experience so far was catching up with a group of chimpanzees who had just caught a colombus monkey. It was actually the first time I had gone in the forest, (and Im still kicking myself for not taking a camera!!) the sound of them shrieking and hooting while hunting was something else. Nothing like you hear in a zoo, it was so loud it scared the crap out of me! We watched as three of them sat in a tree and literally pulled the body apart like it was a bread roll (an adult chimpanzee is 5-8 times stronger than a human!). This story sounds a little sick, but when you see something like that happen in the wild it is truly amazing!

Chimpanzee chewing gum

My worst experience with wildlife has been the baboons that come around the site looking for food. One day I was walking down by the staff kitchen when I saw four of them really close to the building. I was carrying a couple of jerry cans which I banged together as I yelled at them. Three scampered away, but a big male turned around and just looked at me. I foolishly looked it in the eye and banged the cans again. Next thing I knew this thing opens its mouth showing off these massive teeth, barks and runs straight at me! In a situation like this you’re meant to stand your ground and they’ll back off… F*** that, I was out of there! Sprinting back up the path I broke both of my flip-flops and cut open my feet! By the time I reached the Visitor’s Centre it turned out the thing wasn’t chasing me at all and the guides were all laughing at their crazy Mzungu boss!

Note to self: Start wearing shoes

Lion Rock: Where the lions go to roar and where I go to chill/get cell phone reception. No scheduling conflicts thus far...

When I’m not skiving off in the forest one of my main jobs is to do the “shopping” in Masindi, the closest town which is about 30km away. It’s great fun, I sit there and literally argue over the price of fish in the market. The butcher consists of a shed with a carcass hanging in it. If you ask for 5kg of beef the butcher turns round and hacks at the carcass with a machete and you’re away.

Driving

Driving in rural Uganda is a bit like an old-school spacies game. You’re constantly dodging things: potholes, livestock, people, other vehicles… There are also some rules:
* Hit a chicken. Stop and pay the owner 5,000 shillings.
* Hit a goat. Stop and pay the owner 25,000 shillings.
* Hit a person. Don’t stop, don’t pass go; just get the hell out of there!

Ugandans are big on mob justice, if you do hit someone and stop there is a high likelihood that a crowd will appear and proceed to beat the living sh*t out of you

My African Super Van!

The Funeral

One night after a long, hot day of doing the supply run and then the weekly accounts I got a call around 6:30pm from one of our guides. The 2 year old child of another one of the guides had died. As no-one has a car in these parts, they wanted me to drive the parents and the body back to their home village! Even though I was buggered I could hardly say no, so I got in the van and drove out of the park to the nearby village.

When I got there it was like a scene from a war documentary. Women were wailing, screaming, crying – men drinking, it was chaos. The father and some of my other staff who live in that village came and spoke to me and asked if some others could come in the van. “Sure”, I said. Next thing I know people are piling in, there was even a fight that broke out! The van has 13 seats, I’m pretty sure there were around 25 people in the vehicle that night!

The road in the direction we were heading is infamously bad, rutted and full of massive potholes. With a full load it was a nightmare, an 80km trip in 2nd and 3rd gear! Not to mention the fact that it was my first time driving at night over here! We finally turned off the main road onto something that resembled a recreational 4WD track. If that wasn’t enough, all the women, seeing as we were close to the village kicked off with the wailing and screaming again! We then got to what was literally a goat-track that led to the village. I drove down it in 1st gear all the way, grounding the chassis a number of times. When we got to the village there was no light, everyone piled out, more wailing as the body was taken somewhere and then all the men stood around and talked. After a couple of hours everyone bar the family got back in and we went back home the way we had come.

These monkeys are extraneous to the funeral story

Health and Safety

It seems that since I’ve got here that my immune system has packed up. I perform minor surgery on myself every few days, pulling things out of my legs or cleaning out infected jungle wounds. The “highlight” so far was a small itchy bump that came up on my forearm. I didn’t really worry about it, but after a week it just got bigger and bigger! I was sitting out the back of the restaurant with a couple of the staff when they saw it and said “You have mango fly!”. Next thing I knew one of them grabbed my arm and another started squeezing the wound with her finger-nails. A bit of blood and puss came out, then all of a sudden this live, writhing worm thing popped out! It was like something out of the movie Alien! I was so shocked a let forth a mighty stream of profanity which scared the guys a little (Ugandans don’t swear!), then they pulled this creature out. It was a white larvae type thing, all up about the size of a cigarette butt that had grown from an egg in my arm!

Clearly this is a stock image, but it looked a bit like this!

Apparently what happens is mango flies (which look a lot like common house flies) lay their eggs in damp clothes. Then when you wear the clothes the eggs burrow into your skin and the larvae starts to grow. Gross man. Problem was that afterwards I was paranoid that everything on me contained a mango fly! Fortunately I haven’t had another, yet.

Entebbe and Kampala

I work for three weeks out at site then come back to the main office/house in Entebbe for a few days rest (aka - office work and getting stuff fixed in Kampala!).

Kampala is the capital, and like most large cities in the developing world it has a few nice parts but is generally a chaotic mess of traffic, dust and noise. Driving in rural Uganda is one thing, driving in Kampala is another... The general idea is to get where you’re going any way you can using whatever means possible. Some good tricks are creating your own lane and using size to bully smaller vehicles out the way.

On the contrary, Entebbe (30kms from Kampala) is a beautiful, relaxed town on the shores of Lake Victoria. Our office/house looks over the lake and is close to the Botanical Gardens which are a great visit to go see exotic birds and monkeys! It even has a couple of good bars and restaurants which are nice after a few weeks of isolation in the forest.

A water plume on Lake Victoria

Jinga

I managed to get to Jinga for a couple of days with my mates Ash and Charlie. Jinga is at the source of the Nile River. It’s a pretty chilled out place and is famous for white-water rafting. Incidentally the main rafting company is owned by a kiwi guy I met out at KP, so next month I’m hoping to get back out there and do some Grade 5 white water!

Like this!!!

The source of the Nile

Xmas in Lira

My boss Peter, who is a top dude, invited me to have Christmas with his family in Lira – which is in the North. It was stinking hot but I had an amazing time, everyone was really hospitable and I tried a million new foods (his Mum couldn’t stop feeding me!). The highlight was barbeque pork ribs Ugandan style! (they slaughtered a pig on Xmas morning and we cooked it that arvo). The “low-light” was the three hours we spent in church on Christmas day. The service (mostly preaching) was in the local Lu’a language, it was stifling and I was hung-over. All-though it was the first time I’ve seen a live chicken go in the collection basket!

Step 1: Place ribs on barbeequeStep 2: Drink beer for a few hours and occasionally turn the meat Step 3: Talk about how good it looks and how good a chef you all are

Step 4: Eat it!!! - It was fantastic.

After Christmas we went to Peter’s home village in a place called Apach, where I slept in a typical African banda, which is a mud hut with a thatch roof and a floor made of dung! It was a really cool experience sleeping with the chickens, goats and other miscellaneous wildlife!

Incidentally for New Years I was working, it was quiet and I went to bed before mid-night!

So to finish…

All in all, I’m absolutely loving it. Even though some busier days I work from 7:00am to around 10:00pm and finish the day covered in sweat and red dust – I probably couldn’t be happier. The people here are great. Everyone is generally happy and friendly, even though many of them are shockingly poor, they will always greet you with a smile and go out of their way to help you. Funny how people here with not much, seem a lot happier than most people in a place like London.

It's considered a good omen to have twins in Uganda

Mmmm... Unprocessed chocolate!

Next update will probably be in a month or so when I’m back in Entebbe with a half decent internet connection! In the next month I hope to spend a lot more time in the forest, play rugby for Entebbe, learn some more Swahili and hopefully explore Murchison Falls and see some big game!!!

Laters!

Kev

Loving Life in Sweden!

2008-11-16T06:56:00.001-08:00

Well after four months (I have no idea where that time went!) settling in, I'm long overdue for an update. Read on to find out about life in Stockholm; the city, the job and the good times...

The City

Rewind to the start of July and I was probably lying outside in a park somewhere in Stockholm soaking up the sun and the heatwave that came along with it. Still unemployed at that stage, there was plenty of time to enjoy the long nights (sunset around 10 or 11pm) and the cloudless days. Slight change now with the onset of autumn and the imminent arrival of winter. To give you an idea of what these seasons are like up here around the 60th parallel, autumn is essentially an NZ winter. And winter... well there is a certain date that everyone is required to have winter tires (with metal studs) on their car by and it gets cold enough that you can drive on some of the lakes. Bring on the snow I say!

Luckily the Swedes know how to build their houses though, so the cold stays outside. My apartment is pretty old but it's still double glazed and centrally heated. I rarely need more than just a tee on, despite near freezing temperatures outside. And best of all, I don't pay for heating, water heating or clothes washing/drying. Trust the super-efficient Swedes to incorporate this all into a central location in each apartment building. At just 38sqm (almost all Swedes know the exact size of their apartment for some reason), my apartment certainly isn't big, well not to non-Swedes anyway. But it's plenty big enough for me. As it turns out, I actually got really lucky with my apartment, completely unbeknown to me. Before coming to Stockholm, a friend of a friend offered me the apartment and after a quick search on Google Maps, I decided the location was sort of alright and the price was kind of ok. Since arriving I've probably had over 90% of the locals I've met ask how the hell I managed to get an apartment where I am and how come it's so cheap! Apparently there's up to a five year waiting list in this area! The location is perfect for me, it's close to town, parks and the water. I live on one of the few hills (really just a bump in the otherwise flat landscape) in Stockholm. My window overlooks some sports fields and there's a path leading straight down to one of the numerous waterways that wind through Stockholm and the surrounding archipelago. There are running and walking tracks all round here and all are very scenic for the middle of a capital city.

My apartment is in the upper right.

This is my bedroom/lounge/living room/bike storage area. Looks different now though as I have a proper bed and a tv (both freebies!). I also have a couch made out of mattresses. Gold.

Stockholm itself is a fantastic city I reckon. It has all the advantages of a major city but is still small enough to include plenty of nature and a relaxed atmosphere. People here seem very happy wherever you go and it's rare to hear people complaining, arguing or yelling. There are bike paths almost everywhere and the traffic is very considerate to both cyclists and pedestrians. Even bus drivers! When a bus pulled forward too far the other day, forcing me to (shock horror) ride in the pedestrian lane instead of the bike lane, he hand signaled a sorry and looked all apologetic. In most other countries, bus drivers also frequently use hand signals, but normally more along the lines of a single finger extension! And to top it all off, it must be one of the safest major cities in the world, there just doesn't seem to be any crime.

I can't help but wonder if all this happiness and friendliness is due to the fact that they have so much holiday time. One thing I can tell you though is don't try and do anything business related during June, July or August... like attempting to get a job for example. Unfortunately I learnt the hard way. Everyone takes at least a month off during this period and heads to their summer houses or away somewhere. I don't mean it just gets quieter either, whole businesses just shut down and cities become ghost towns!

The Job

So because of the summer shutdown I was fairly happy when I finally got a job, a month after arriving. Given that I'd had a year and a half off, I figured it would take a while to get the career back on track. The plan was to get back into engineering and then work my way into a technical sales position within two years, either here or elsewhere. Turns out I got lucky here too but I'll take it! It's probably since I'm an NZer and I done learned to talk Englandish good.

So I'm working for a Swedish medical device manufacturer called Perimed (check out http://www.perimed.se/ if you want to know more). We sell our products worldwide but the US is our biggest market. Initially I was only meant to be part-time for a couple of weeks, so I had a spot in the corner of the lab doing donkey work. Then this changed to full-time for a couple of weeks, then full-time until the end of the year and some proper engineering work. I even got moved out of the lab and given a desk in another engineer's office, woohoo! A couple of months in they asked if I'd be keen to gradually move in a sales and marketing direction over the next year or so, which of course I was. Then, as luck would have it, two weeks ago one of our main salesmen handed in his resignation. So my schedule got pushed forward and I move into his old office on Monday. My engineering career is officially over already! I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into the new job though. There's a lot to learn and they're more than happy to throw me in the deep end... but that's where I like it! My territory will mainly include parts of Europe and Asia but also several other countries here and there. At this stage they plan to train me up here and eventually send me over to the US. Sound familiar!?! I'm starting the cycle all over again!

The Good Times

I thought it would be relatively quiet once I settled in up here but that hasn't turned out to be the case at all. A couple weeks in, Travis (who was staying at the time) and I ended up playing in the world's biggest international rugby 10's tournament, right here in Stockholm. We had a blast and met plenty of cool people over the weekend. Swedes are fairly easy going folk so meeting new friends hasn't been any trouble at all. I haven't been on any big trips since being here but have had several smaller ones. One highlight was a weekend in Uppsala (uni town 70km north, with about 40,000 students) for a party. As you can probably imagine, being a uni town, the place goes off. They also have a funny tradition up there; each night at 10pm everyone opens up their windows and screams and yells for a full minute to vent the frustrations and pent up energy from sitting inside studying. It's crazy when you're not expecting it! I've also had plenty of visitors up here (about 15 so far, including Kiwis, Swedes, Frenchies and Norwegians) and several more booked in, which is always good times. There's a decent crew of Kiwis heading this way for Xmas too. So if anyone's contemplating a trip up here, feel free to hit me up for a place to stay!

Well, that pretty much sums it up. Well done if you've managed to get this far! Other than a possibly a quick Xmas post, that'll be all from me for a while. I'll be sure to update again when the adventure continues. Hej då...

Coast to Coast!!

2008-05-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

Pacific to Atlantic, Cali to NYC, coast to coast... we made it! And apart from a warning for speeding and a tire shredding at 75mph, it was basically incident free. And to be honest, the only reason we got pulled over is because our van looks dodgy, as do the three dirty moustache sporting lads inside. It was Texas, we were 8 minutes into the night time speed limit (it drops 5mph, 30 mins after sunset) and only 3mph over that. Come on!

Don and Trav have been fantastic companions on our journey across, each bringing their own brilliance to the party. So it's sad days indeed to see the end of Dodgey and the dodgy trio. We've managed to cram a lot into the last six weeks, yet it never felt too rushed. Read on for the final chapter or just check out the US summary at the bottom...

Finishing Up the Southwest

Before leaving Arizona we had one last stop, Pima Air and Space Museum. It's a great museum with plenty of aircraft but the highlight there is being able to go through the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) grounds. They have over 4,500 planes, in various states of (dis)repair, sitting out in the desert! Amazing sight.

In New Mexico we visited White Sands National Monument, which is right next to one of the major US missile test sites. It's gypsum sands are incredibly white and vary rare worldwide. And we just couldn't resist getting our fill of Americana with a visit to Roswell. That's a unique place for sure.

As we blasted our way through the middle, we stopped for a steak in Texas and to see Cadillac Ranch. I decided against the challenge of a free 72oz (2kg) steak, if you eat it in an hour. Figured it be a crap piece of meat and probably half gristle so went for some quality instead. I know, I know... the old me would've just shut up and dominated it. Maybe next time. On the way to St. Louis we stopped in to to see the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, which was very nicely done.

Chi-town!

Then it was off to Chicago where we had the biggest/best two nights of the road trip. It was a Wednesday and a Thursday, yet the place was going off! Cheers for the local hookup Chandon! In between hangovers we also managed to check out the city and head up to the 103rd floor of the 520m (including television antennae) Sears tower. Great view from up there.

Back Where I Started

The last few stops were essentially the first few stops of my American leg, just in reverse. Had one night in Columbus (with the ever hospitable Vetricks again), before checking out DC for a few more days and then ending up in NYC. I managed to get to a few new things and also revisited some old favourites. The second part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (out at Dulles Airport) was a real highlight, with plenty of cool stuff. And we caught a Mets game in NYC. $5 tickets and the view wasn't even that bad!

USA Wrapup

Well it isn't a continent (despite what a few locals might think) but it sure is a massive country and I spent a fair bit of time here, so I figured a wrapup was in order...

Distance travelled (road trip only): 11,300kms

Amount spent on petrol: US$1685

Most expensive petrol: US$5.20/gal (~NZ$1.81/L)

Cheapest petrol: US$3.34/gal (~NZ$1.16/L)

Nights in van: 15

States visited: 20 (plus we could see Kansas but didn't actually cross the border!)

Best city: Chicago, IL

Worst city: Kayenta, AZ (seriously, don't go there, it's crap)

Best National Park: Bryce Canyon and Zion (too close to call)

Best value booze: shop - Canadian Club 1.75L @ US$18, bar - US$1 domestic beers

Best food: lunch at Barcelona's in Columbus (cheers Tom!)

Worst food: blandest sludge I've ever seen pass as Mexican, or food for that matter (see worst city)

Highest altitude: 3,852m (12,637ft)

Lowest altitude: -86m (-282ft)

Highest temperature: 37°C (98°F)

Lowest temperature: -32°C (-25°F)

Most crazies: LA

Most beggars: NYC

Craziest beggar: "I'm collecting money to pay for karate lessons because ninjas kidnapped my Grandmother." in LA

and finally...

Best dumb question/statement: You decide because I just can't pick a winner.

1) scene: Buying beers at an ice hockey game in Columbus, I have just handed over my NZ licence (complete with English writing on it) to verify my age.

vendor: So where are you from? (yes, that's bad enough on it's own but that's not even it!)

me: I'm from New Zealand.

vendor: You speak pretty good English.

me: (after a long pause, I'll be honest, I was in shock) Thanks.

2) scene: Again handing over licence, this time as ID to enter an Air Force base facility.

ticket agent: New Zealand's a state right?

me: (dammit, this one got me too) Ahhh, no, it's a country.

Well the US has been absolutely fantastic, from coast to coast and back. It was great catching up with so many familiar faces and meeting so many new ones. Huge thank you to everyone that helped out along the way! The country is so diverse, in every respect. It really is an ideal place to explore, with something for everyone. I've met some of the nicest people in the world and also some of the worst, seen some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the biggest dumps and had some delicious food and also some terrible stuff. And that's why I love the place.

U.S.A. Road Trip!!

2008-05-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

The last month or so has been jam packed with good times, alongside my travel buddies for this portion of the trip, Don and Trav. This blog probably should've been split into two or three but time has just flown by. While spending a week or two checking out L.A., we managed to get everything sorted for our road trip east. And what better way to travel across this country than in a big V8 van! Let me introduce you to Dodgey (complete with four captains chairs and a back bench that folds into a double bed) and the adventures of Team NZ...

Fast Times in Tahoe (and the other cities we've visited)

After the initial down time in L.A., most of our time has been spent outside of cities, but here's a quick rundown of the ones we have visited and what we got up to...

During our time in L.A., we visited the usual suspects, like Hollywood, Rodeo Drive and the famous beaches. It's all pretty much what you'd expect, except perhaps even more of the filthy rich and just plain filthy. In between our days in L.A., we also spent some time in Ojai (Spanish styles, so the 'j' sounds like an 'h', unlike our pronunciation when we asked a local for directions! Damn tourists.) catching up with an old mate from home. Cheers for the good times Shearer! Ojai is a nice little town away from the Big Smoke, so we kept ourselves entertained with bike rides and running in the picturesque hills.

Next up was San Francisco for a couple of days. This was quite a nice city, with it's steep streets, great restaurants and seaside vistas. Unfortunately tours to Alcatraz were booked for several days in advance so we didn't get the chance to go out there. Managed to do everything else that we wanted to though.

The last city we visited in California was Tahoe, to see a friend of a friend. We went from singlet/shorts weather, to a dusting of snow the night we were there, all in a day's drive. Nice ski village at Squaw and cool to be amongst the mountains. Dodgey especially loved it because it meant donuts in the snow.

Then it was off to Vegas baby!! We got a good deal on a nice room at the Palms, which ended up costing us about the same as a hostel. Vegas is all about the money, as I'm sure you're well aware. Everywhere you go just screams money... often at the expense of taste. Great city to spend a few nights in though, with plenty to do. We went to Mysteré by Cirque de Soleil, gambled a bit and plowed our way through our fair share of booze.

Into the Wild

Over this side of the States a lot of the best sights on offer are miles from any city. Indeed some of the best sights I've seen anywhere in the world can be found in the treasure chest that is the National Park system. So here's what we've seen so far outside the American metropolises...

In California we visited Yosemite, with it's towering Giant Sequoias, beautiful rivers and huge rock faces (we climbed as far as weather would allow up Half Dome). The barren salt flats, desert and sand dunes of Death Valley (where we stood at the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at -85.5m) were certainly a stark contrast to the lush and differing landscapes of Yosemite.

On our way into Utah, we stopped off to see the Hoover Dam. Disappointingly, the only way to get a really good view of it is to take a tour, which we were too late for. Still, it is an impressive sight and is absolutely massive. The National Parks that Utah has to offer are the cream of the crop. To come to this part of the world and only see the Grand Canyon would be a real shame, as the likes of Zion and Bryce National Parks are the best we've come across. Unreal landscapes packed full of natural beauty. Finished off the magic of Utah with a drive through Monument Valley.

We've only touched the corner of Colorado and New Mexico at this stage. Literally the corner of New Mexico actually, at Four Corners, where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona meet. In Colorado we visited Mesa Verde National Park, right in the southwest corner of the state. It contains several ancient Indian abandoned villages. The coolest part is that the villages are actually built into the walls of the surrounding cliffs and caves.

Arizona is also full of great parks to visit, not least the mighty Grand Canyon. Petrified Forest National Park offers a very different landscape, as it is covered with masses of petrified wood. They range in size from chips to whole trees and are incredible to experience first hand. The colours and the weight of the wood that has turned to rock is amazing. We also visited Meteor Crater, the site of the best preserved large crater. And, at 1.2km across and 170m deep, it sure is large! Last but certainly not least, we (well 2/3 of us anyway!) climbed Humphrey's Peak. The views at 3,852m (for all you Kiwis out there, you can compare with Mt. cook at 3,754m) are incredible to say the least. Unfortunately, the wind at the summit was also some of the most incredible I've ever experienced and was trying it's hardest to fling us off the mountain!

That's all for now folks, we've covered about 5,000kms already but there's plenty more to come...

NY to DC to Ohio to... Mexico?!?

2008-04-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

That's right, somehow I got lost on the way to Michigan and ended up in Mexico. But more about that later. First I'll rewind a bit and start off with where I left you last...

Finishing Off Ohio

Not long after arriving in Columbus, a massive snow storm hit. We got covered under half a metre (20") of snow, which was 5" more than the previous record from 1910! It was awesome to see, well for me anyway. Maybe not so much fun for the people who were attempting to live out a normal life in it.

Dublin was the name of the particular suburb I was staying in. So, as you can probably imagine, St. Patty's Day was huge. The whole place was going off, with a massive tent set up at one of the bars and a heap of live acts inside. There was plenty of Guinness flowing that day.

There was plenty of booze flowing for most of my stay in Columbus actually (nice work Justin and Tom). A couple of times we went to this cool Greek restaurant/bar called Tria's. The food was great and the bartender was even better. He'd charge us hardly anything to drink there all night. He was also a big fan of a game where everyone involved names a drink (alcoholic or otherwise) and he chucks a bit of each in a shaker and pours out shots for everyone. My choice of Tabasco Sauce didn't go down too well for some reason. And to top it all off he hooked us up with free tickets (and they were good ones) to one of two ice hockey games I managed to get to while I was there! Cheers Jimmy!!

I was also lucky enough to get a personal tour of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the museum there, from an ex-employee. The museum is massive, five hangars, each filled with different types of aircraft. There was stuff from all through the years, right up to modern day experimental aircraft. One hangar also had old Air Force One presidential planes that you could walk through.

Next came Upper Sandusky. It's a pretty small rural town, where everyone knows everyone else. But don't let that fool you, I had a great time here too. This is where I spent an enjoyable Easter weekend with old family friends, the Logsdons (thanks guys!).

Being a rural town in America, it's perhaps not surprising that guns (actually anything that'll make a bang) are pretty popular here. There's even a gun factory in town, busy reviving the Ithaca name. And I had an absolute blast (no pun intended) making stuff go bang! The pistol and the AK47 were on the more common side of things. But the potato gun (which we made) and the mini cannon certainly weren't!

The first night I arrived in Upper was a Friday so Isaac took me out to a poker evening with the boys. A few beers and a few hands later, things escalated ever so slightly. And after an incident with some fish and one with some cleaning spray, an LCD tv was chucked out of a second story window onto the pavement below! Anyway, it was on this crazy and highly entertaining night that I met Dave.

Deep Sea Fishing Extravaganza

And it was four days later that I met Dave's family, while on holiday with them in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Despite not knowing any of them (and hardly even knowing Dave), they were more than happy to have me along for a week of sun, beer and deep sea fishing. How cool is that?!

As far as deep sea fishing goes, this is one of the premier spots around the globe. Not only that, we were doing it in style. Dave's Dad has a 50ft boat with 1500hp of Detroit diesel power sitting below deck, and it's all set up for one thing and one thing only, fishing. Rods and reels of all different shapes and sizes, live wells and a fighting chair are all there for business.

Every day but one was a fishing day. We'd head out early with a chilly bin/cooler/eski (look at that, I even translate for you bloody Aussies!) full of beer, live wells full of fish and a boat full of people (including the top notch Mexican crew). Depending on whether we were looking for tuna or marlin determined in which direction we'd head off. And then it was all on.

It was awesome when we'd run through a school of tuna and all four reels would go off. Everyone would jump up and grab a rod, eager to fight in what ever was on the end of it. After a bit of a battle and another fish for the take, there was, inevitably, the sound of another few beers opening from the seemingly never ending stash (thanks Dave Sr.)!

The best day of the lot, however, was the day we ventured 47 miles from the harbour, in search of marlin. It was yet another beautiful, sunny day. The ocean was flatter than most lakes. And, most importantly, the marlin were biting! This was the day I had my first ever battle with a marlin. It's such a rush sitting in that fighting chair trying to reel in a 170lb fish! They jump and dive and fight all the way to the boat. Then when you think you're finally there, they'll take off again and it's back to square one. Unfortunately mine also managed to jump out of the grasp of the deck hands as they tried to bring him on board (no gaffing as we were catching and releasing that day). Oh well, I'll just have to do it again some time! I think Billy Joe said it best when he said 'Welcome to Paradise'!

Needless to say, we also ate fairly well down there. Not only did we eat our fair share of the 60 tuna, eight marlin and three mahi mahi (aka dorado or dolphin, and no, not the mammal, the fish!) that we caught. We also had some fantastic (and huge) shrimp and some delicious steaks as well. Yup, I'd go back in a second.

Other activities included swimming, shopping and even a cockfight! One of their Mexican friends took us to a cockfighting arena in the middle of nowhere. There certainly weren't any other out-of-towners there. It was pretty interesting to see, certainly a different form of entertainment!

Thank you to all the Dlubaks for one of the best weeks of my trip (and therefore my life)!!

Stars and Stripes

2008-02-20T14:28:00.000-08:00

After a decade away it's nice to finally be back Stateside. So far it seems pretty similar to how I remember it... just bigger. Even though I remember everything being supersized, I had forgotten the shear enormity of everything here. The cars, the houses, the portions, the people, the roads and the country itself, for the most part, are all massive!

I've been having a great time here so far. Huge thank you to everyone (and there's a lot of you!) that have put me up, taken me out or otherwise helped me enjoy my time along the way. So read on to see what I've been up to for the last month or so...

Wanna bagel with yaw cuppa cawfee, dawlface?

Ahhhh... the distant relative of the English language that's spoken in NYC. Gotta love it. Of course you're just as likely to hear Chinese, Spanish or any number of other languages in this melting pot. And that's half the reason this city is so cool. A day's walking around Manhattan sees you cross through Chinatown, Little Italy, the Jewish quarter and everything from the arty SoHo and TriBeCa, to the powerhouse Financial District, to the laid back atmosphere of Central Park. And don't forget The Bronx. This place has it all.

Of course, there's plenty to see outside Manhattan too, especially if you take to the water. Liberty Island, Ellis Island and Staten Island (it's free to get the ferry to this one!) are all close by, off the southern tip of Manhattan. So an Aussie that I picked up somewhere along the way and I decided to do some exploring one day. Unfortunately the day we chose was absolutely freezing. I don't mean it was chilly and my toes got a bit cold. I mean almost -30C, including the wind chill! Kind of hard to describe but picture this. I bought a bagel with cream cheese (mmmmmm) and a coffee from a street vendor on the way down to the ferry terminal. By the time I had almost finished the bagel, the cream cheese on it was beginning to freeze, it had gone crispy! By this stage my fingers were protesting too, by refusing to bend...

Of course, there's always a silver lining, and in this weather there weren't too many tourists stupid enough to head out sightseeing. So we didn't have much of a line to get up the Statue of Liberty, didn't have to deal with many visitors at the Museum of Immigration on Ellis Island and didn't have to wait long to get on the ferries. And despite the temperature, we did get a nice blue sky the whole day. Can't complain really.

New York at night is something else entirely. The hustle and bustle of the business districts die down and places like Times Square turn on their lights and come alive. Broadway actors are jumping around outside, trying to get people to fill the theaters, hawkers are trying to get rid of their tickets outside Madison Square Gardens and the multitude of eateries are all vying for your business. But the madness is great!

Capitol Hill

After NY/NJ, I booked in at a really nice hostel (carpeted, big bunks, huge kitchen, but still cheap!) for a few nights in Washington DC. With the primary elections in full swing over here, it's quite an interesting time to be here. And of course DC is the epicentre for all the action, so there was plenty going on. Walking around The Mall (the central strip of DC) is impressive and a little bit strange. There are so many iconic buildings and renowned memorials, it's like walking through a Discovery Channel documentary.

When I was planning my stay in DC, I thought a day or two to check out the Smithsonian Institution would be adequate, despite the fact that it's made up of a series of museums covering just about everything imaginable. So on the first day of museum wandering, I planned to go and see the Air and Space Museum in the morning, then check out the Natural History Museum during the afternoon. By closing time, I'd made it about half way around Air and Space. Apparently I underestimated the time I'd need... by about a week. The museums were brilliant and best of all, they were free!

End of the touristy stuff...

Well, that pretty much sums up the usual destinations so far. The one touristy thing I'd hoped to do in Cleveland was visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Somehow I ran out of time and didn't even manage to accomplish that! Too many people to see and other things to do. However, I did make it to the Cleveland Auto Show, which was a great day out.

Before getting to Cleveland, everyone I met asked the same question when I told them that's where I was heading... "Why?!". Well obviously the main aim was to catch up with old friends and once again explore the land of my childhood. But I also wanted to see some proper snow again. And snow I got!!

Mo'roccan Roll

2008-02-01T09:33:00.001-08:00

Marrakech

With a name like Morocco, it seemed only natural that we grow a little facial decoration for our time here. So I opted for some handlebars and Kev grew some Ali Baba influenced finery. Joined by our travel buddies, Fran and Chris, and with our mo's shaved in, we headed out for our first full day in Marrakech.

It's a crazy cool place, full of tantalising smells, vibrant colours and noise galore. At the centre of it all is Djemaa el Fna, a massive square bordered by stalls, restaurants and shops. Running off the square is a maze of winding streets and a seemingly endless trail of souks (markets), which sell everything from spices and dyes to clothes and handcrafts. The craftsmen making the various metal, textile and leather goods can often be found hard at work down little alleys in the souks.

Around dusk each night the square really comes alive. As the sun begins to set, dozens of restaurant stalls are set up next to the dried fruit stands (the dates and figs are amazing!) and the fresh orange juice stalls. Groups of people surround the storytellers, snake charmers and musicians that crowd the square. It's a great place to find some delicious food for dinner or just enjoy a mint tea and some people watching.

Sahara Expedition

We really wanted to get into the desert and decided the best way to do it would be an organised tour. So we booked in for a three day trip and headed off the following day. There was a lot of driving but some fantastic scenery and interesting stops on the way to our hotel in the mountains for our first night. It was freezing up that high and there was no heating but they did serve us a great dinner.

Not long after setting off early on the second day, our van got a puncture. No worries though, we put the spare on and were back on the road before too long. At the next village we had to stop off to fix the spare wheel carrier (and possibly a tire, we're not too sure) but soon enough we were off. Twenty minutes later, the same tire blew again! So our driver got on the phone and got the tire guys from the village to come out and get us on our way. An hour later, in the middle of nowhere, the van gave the telltale dive to the side... yet again. We couldn't believe it, three punctures to the same wheel in one day! No spare still for some reason so it was a bit of a wait while the other van turned back to get us a new one. By this stage we had had to skip two of the planned stop offs for the day and were still late getting out to the desert. Turned out alright though, as we got a starlight camel ride to our camp for the night. The following morning we got up in time to see the stunning sunrise, nestled amongst the dunes of the Sahara. It was an absolutely magic spot. Such a shame to leave it but there was a day of travel ahead to get us back to Marrakech.

Essaouira

After the hustle-bustle of Marrakesh we took a bus out to the coast to a small port town called Essaouira. The place is fast developing into a resort town, but for the moment it has a really nice chilled-out feeling to it, which was nice after Marrakesh. It was the middle of winter, yet people were still out surfing and swimming in the water and it was nice enough weather to just sit around and soak it all up. Which, apart from a fairly tame boat ride round the harbour, was pretty much all we did. One of the highlights was the fish stalls, where you select your own fish (freshly caught) and watch it grilled for you on the barbeques. Delicious!

This ended up being our favourite place in Morocco, unfortunately we only spent a couple of days there.

Rabat

If you go to Morocco you could probably skip Rabat. There were some cool waves. And some good fruit shakes in the medina. That's about it.

Middle Atlas Monkey Mayhem

Possibly one of the best days of my life, we took an excursion into the Atlas Mountains, our ultimate destination: Snow Monkeys. The trips are done by local taxi drivers who you can hire for the day. Our driver had obviously been a contestant on "Pimp My Ride - Morocco". The late 80's Mercedes sedan that is the standard for taxis in Morocco had been kitted out with tinted windows, racing seatbelts, stereo system, video screen and to top it all off, a strobe light!

So we drove into the mountains listening to some compilation CD that I can only imagine had a title along the lines of "Annoying Dance Anthems of the mid 90's - Vol 4". We stopped along the way at some villages and so forth, but screw that - I was there to play with Monkeys!

Finally we reached a spot up above the snow-line, got out of the car and were immediately greeted by a huge Monkey who obviously knew that tourists meant an easy feed. We'd brought some bread so spent the good part of a next hour feeding monkeys of all shapes and sizes. Awesome!

Fes

Fes is the religious capital of Morocco, the highlight being the huge Medina which apparently has over 9,400 streets. The locals warn you that you must go in with a guide because otherwise you'll get lost. But that's half the fun, so that was what we did! The area was huge and impossible to navigate and within minutes we had a fairly limited idea of what direction we were heading in. Our goal was to find the tannery where all the leather is dyed. It wasnt exactly obvious or sign-posted, we suspect partially because a lot of the locals make their money by guiding tourists to go and see them.

We saw some people walking along with dyed leather on their heads and spent about an hour trying to figure out where they were all coming from. Finally when we were close Fran brought a scarf from a nice guy who took us to a spot that overlooked the dye pits. It was really cool, all the dye is made from natural materials, one of the treatment substances being pigeon shit!

End of Part One...

Well after a year being around each-other pretty much 24-7, sharing money, beds and pretty much everything else, we're going our own ways for a little bit. Marcus is heading to the U.S.A to travel and spend time with friends/family while I'm going to stay in London for a few months to find some work. This wont be the end of our travels, not by a long shot, so stay tuned and hopefully in a few months we'll start on Part Two!

¡La Vida Loca!

2008-01-03T07:41:00.000-08:00

Road Trippin'

Before leaving Alicante, we decided to go for a road trip down south to see a bit more of Spain. With the the car packed, the tunes pumping and the sun shining, we headed for Albuñuelas, just outside Granada. After a pretty uneventful journey, we found ourselves in the coolest little Spanish village. It was just like we’d imagined Spain to be, white-washed buildings nestled up the side of a valley, with steep and narrow cobbled roads heading off every which way. The surrounding slopes were covered with olives, almonds and oranges and the view down the valley was fantastic.

We had no worries filling our days with activities while down there. Went for an 18km trek in the hills surrounding our village. Spent a day out at Almuñécar, on the coast, enjoying the sun and taking in the sights. Then from the warmth of the coast, to the snow of Sierra Nevada, where falling of sleds and snow fights were the order of the day. Also had a day wandering around Granada, which is a really nice old city and not just because you get free tapas with your drinks!

The most well known highlight of the trip was Alhambra, the famous palace in Granada. Ancient and impressive, it easily filled in our activity for that day. The grounds contain several fascinating buildings and the surrounding gardens make for a great place to stroll through afterwards...

And Fran also managed to hand squeeze eight litres of orange juice! It also cost us nothing, since we just nicked a few bagfuls of oranges from the masses of trees around the place...

Christmas / Navidad

We spent a good part of December with at least four or more people in the Alicante appartment, which was good times, unfortuately though it emptied out a bit towards the end until somehow it was back to just the two of us. While we're fairly used to each others company by now, Christmas just isnt a two player game, so we packed in Alicante and headed up to Barcelona to hang with Fran, Elen and a nice young Australian guy who turned up somewhere along the way... For an Xmas away from home we did pretty well, we all managed to buy presents, make Xmas crackers and as we had hired an appartment with an oven, Marcus proceded to whip up an amazing Christmas dinner! We even made it down to Church in the morning, but couldnt quite follow what was going on, something about this guy called "Hey Zeus"??? Then we went to the zoo on Boxing Day.

New Years / Años Nueva

We were contemplating staying in Barcalona for New Years, but had the offer to go up to Pamplona to meet some dutch friends. So we did. Pamplona is famous for the running-of-the-bulls, but outside of that there isnt much to see as a tourist. It was a nice city however, lots of "old world charm" as they like to say, and the people there were noticably much more polite than other Spaniards we've met. We spent New Years in a small village nearby called Tafalla with only 11,000 people, staying now with friends of friends who made us feel very welcome.

Now the drill for New Years Eve for the last few years in NZ has consisted of champagne for breakfast, eating and drinking for a good part of the day/night, making it to midnight then partying on for a few more hours. It's a bit different in Spain however. Nothing much happened unitl around 9pm when we sat down for an awesome dinner of Spainsh meats followed by Stam-pot (basically pimped out mashed potatoes) made by the dutch contingent. The Spainsh family we were with also put some wine on the table that was older than I was! The tradition in Spain is to eat 12 grapes with the 12 chimes of the clock at midnight - this brings you good luck for the next year, and having completed this I feel confident that absolutely nothing can possibly go wrong for me in 2008. Nothing.

We rolled down to the bars at 1am, which were pretty quiet... beacause we were early! By 1:30am the place was packed and going off. For a tiny town we managed to crawl through six or so bars (and there were plenty we missed), all packed to the gills with young people. Madness. For those of you from NZ reading this, imagine trying to do that in a town the size of Oamaru, I just cant see it happening. Im not sure what time we got home, but we got out of bed mid-afternoon so...

¡Un Poco Loco!

2007-12-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

Barcelona

Well we’ve been looking forward to Spain for a while and we finally made it, first stop Barcelona. The first hostel we stayed at was madness, felt like a massive Saturday night every night of the week. No wonder really, since a litre of beer was €1.50 during happy hour at the hostel bar. Spent a few days in an apartment (for hostel prices!) after that so we could get some chill out time.

Barcelona is one of the least Spanish cities in Spain but it’s a great place all the same. It’s been the food highlight of Europe, a great place to party and perfect for strolling round the many sights. The jamon (basically the Spanish equivalent of proscuitto) here is phenomenal, as are patatas bravas (slightly spiced fried potatoes covered in allioli). It’s popular in Spain for restaurants to offer a “menu del dia”, which is a set menu that often changes daily or weekly, depending on what is available. They’re great value as they normally include a starter, main, bread, dessert or coffee and a glass of beer or wine for under €10! The best part is that the food is amazing at some of them, especially one we found in Barcelona.

A lot of the popular sights are architectural works by the renowned Antoni Gaudi, whose style is a weird mix of Disney and the Bible. The most impressive and well known is La Sagrada Familia, which was begun in 1882 and is planned to finally be finished in 2026! Unfortunately, it’s surrounded by cranes and lots of other building equipment so it’s hard to get a decent photo. Other places of note were the 1992 Olympic Village, the main street (touristy but still quite cool) and the two ports. We also had a great couple of days with Loic (Frenchy in UK) and his mate from France. Chériiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Valencia

Next stop on the “can’t wait for Alicante” journey was Valencia. This city had a great feel to it and lots of cool things to see. It’s full of a range of really nice architecture, some of it as weird as Gaudi’s stuff but a lot nicer to look at. The “City of Arts and Sciences” has the coolest buildings around but the more traditional stuff in the old town is also pretty impressive. Checked out the bull ring too, which is quite a cool building.

We visited the science museum, which is one of the amazing buildings in the “City” I just mentioned. It was full of interesting info and aimed at kids so everything was interactive. Kept us entertained for hours! We also went to a special exhibit on the Titanic in the same complex. All good stuff.

We spent a day down at the waterfront too. Wandered down the nice beach and checked out the headquarters for our failure to regain the America’s Cup. What a great year for NZ sport! The Cup Village was quite nice though, must’ve been going off when the racing was on. Unforuntately we didn’t get down here in time for that and we were a week early for the final round of the Moto GP so we didn’t get to see that either. Next time, eh…

Alicante

This is where we finally stopped travelling (for now anyway), and have been living for just over a month. It appears to be one of the few places in Europe that still has sunshine and beach weather in the "Winter", and has some of the cheapest wine and beer on the continent - we´re pretty happy with that. The main part of the town is actually pretty small, towering over it is this hill with a medieval fortress on it with some pretty mint views of the area. There´s also (of course) the beach and a marina with some pretty expensive looking gear in it. For nightlife there is the infamous "Barrio" which is a maze of streets in the old town which is jam packed with bars - from hazy memories this is usually pretty fun...

Our apartment is pretty mint, only a stones throw from the seaside and not more than 5 -10 minutes walk to anywhere in town. After 9 months on the road it's been pretty good to have our own rooms and a kitchen and a bathroom and a washing machine... - all the things we took a bit for granted back home. We also have an awesome balcony that looks out over the street and gets uninterrupted sun for most of the day. Two weeks in we were joined by Fran and Ellen from home, and since my birthday party have picked up one more flatmate in our old pal Scotty.

The downside is that while this place is pretty touristy in the summer, there´s not a lot of work in the down season, hence we are all officially unemployed, bar Marcus´s few hours a week teaching English! In fact a typical day goes as follows:

9:00am - Get up and go for a run, then a swim in the sea, followed by some "Maori Gym" at home.

10:45am - Make breakfast, by this time the sun has hit the balcony so sit out there, drink coffee and read a book/do sudoku/play guitar.

12:00am - Leave the apartment and do some activity that justifies our existence (e.g. go to the beach, do some emails, go to the supermarket)

2:30am - Think about lunch, have lunch, talk about how good lunch was, think about dinner, more reading/sudoku/guitar, have a siesta if last night was a big one.

6:00am - Start talking about dinner, maybe go for a stroll down the marina, go down to the shops to buy some more beer.

8:00pm - Watch Walker Texas Ranger (in Spanish) and cheer for Chuck. If you are Marcus go to work.

8:55pm - Watch Family Guy (also in Spanish!).

9:30pm - Have dinner followed by cards, misc games, drinking

Midnight - Go to bed, it´s been a busy day.

Benidorm

This place really sucks. Dont go there.

Madrid

Because we figured out how to ride the French rail system for free (email us if you want to learn how) we had a few trips left to use on our Eurail pass so decided to go to Madrid for a few days. In fairness I think Madrid was a pretty nice city with a lot to see, but it was $*%&&% freezing! We left our cosy wee beach side apartment and 25+ temperatures, for daily highs of 8 and overnight lows below freezing! Not cool man. In fact we were so cold (we dont own many warm clothes), and our hostel was so unexciting that in the two days we were there we watched three movies at the cinema, just to get out of the cold! When we did venture out we saw some pretty cool old churches, the royal palace and the train station which has this cool indoor jungle. Then we went home.

Birthday Surprise!

Well, as most of you probably know, Kev is now 25!! Happy Birthday buddy!! Somehow he didn’t manage to find out that I’d organised a surprise party for him. So he was in an absolute state of shock for about 30 mins after opening the lounge doors to find a room full of Kiwis and Norwegians! Top notch. Big thanks to those that made the trip, it made for an awesome night. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a great memory for Kev too… at least up until the Aquavit came out! Any guesses for who was first to bed!?!

Sacre Bleu!!!

2007-10-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

Belgium in Brief

After Holland, we headed south to check out Belgium for a few days. Brussels and Brugges were our only stops here and both towns seem like there was a bit of an architect battle going on back in the day. Each amazing building looks like it's been built to outdo the one next door or across the street. Not much happening in either place really but the cobbled streets and interesting architecture made for a nice bit of wandering round. Bit of a shame about the grey skies and cold temperatures though.

Being a nation of foodies did make for a few tasty treats as well. We had a goose pate with a fresh baguette that was phenomenal. A couple of the local specialties, steamed mussels with pommes frites and, of course, Belgian waffles really delivered too. Surprisingly, we didn't actually sample many of the local brews however.

Nice Times in Nice

We were originally planning on touring around the north of France for a bit after Belgium, before meeting up with a few mates in Paris. However, the cold weather really wasn't agreeing with our preferred attire of shorts and jandals. So instead, we shot down to Nice for four nights to get our first look at the Med.

The weather down there was brilliant, as was the hostel we stayed at, so it turned out to be a great choice. One of our days was spent strolling around the old town and along the beach front, just taking in the sights and enjoying the warm sun. Went for a swim just round the coast at Cap 'd Ail too. The water was so clear and nice. The good food also continued, no surprises really. Lots of different cheeses and treats from the multitude of boulangeries and patisseries made for good eating throughout our time in France.

On another day we caught the bus to the hilltop village of Eze to check out the view and the cool little winding alleys up there. After that we continued on to the mega rich playground that is Monaco. The boats, cars and other obvious displays of serious cash are mindblowing. We managed to spend an hour just wandering around the harbour. Took me a while to pick out the one I want.

Also had a couple of good nights on the booze since our hostel had 500mL beers for €1 and cheap wine and sangria too. The hostel was actually a few kms back from the center of Nice so instead of heading out, everyone just stays there and gets on it. Good times.

Paris

Well Paris was pretty amazing, it has to take the award so far for the city with the most things to see and do. Most European cities might have a couple of impressive churches and a museum or two but Paris just kept on giving! On our first day we probably set some sort of walking record, walking around the city from 9am to 9pm with only a couple of stops to eat and to go into places. Although it felt like it was nigh on freezing outside it was an awesome day weatherwise so we got round most of the main sights like Sacre-Coeur, Notre Dame, Champs-Elysees, Saint Michel, Arc de Triomphe... I wont go on about each one but they were all awesome, spectacular and any other adjectives that come to mind. On another day we went to the Louvre which was also verycool, you could literally run round that place and it would still take hours to see everything.

Im no art critic, in fact I think I was officially the worst in my class in 4th Form art, but Im going to have to say that the Mona Lisa turned out to be a bit overated. Yes it´s a lovely painting, prehaps has some mysterious message and certainly puts my faunicating stick figures to shame, but at the end of the day its probably the smallest painting in the Louvre and personally I think there were some much nicer paintings in the main galleries. Same goes with the Venus de Milo, nice but it doesn't stand out any more than the rest. Shows what I know about art I spose...

Le Rugby

The main point of being in Paris at this time was to watch the All Blacks win the Rugby World Cup. But as most of us know all too well that didnt eventuate, so on the night of the final we went with Scott and Fran to watch it on the big screen by the Eiffel Tower. We were cheering for South Africa but were probably out numbered 20 to 1 by English supporters. It was a good atmosphere but turned a bit crazy after there game, as you can imagine after thousands of drunk Englishmen watch their side go down. The riot police came out in full kit, someone somewhere has a good photo of us just about to wear a batton in the face. There was also a 100+ man game of drunken rugby that started nearby that we got involved in. Good times.

Sex, Drugs and Fast Cars

2007-10-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

Deutschland Part II

A trip to Germany wouldn't be complete without a stop in the capital, renowned for its mixture of history, tourist attractions and massive parties. Of course, we couldn't pass through Stuttgart without paying homage to the world's greatest car manufacturer. So on the way to Berlin we stopped for a few hours to check out the Porsche factory and museum. (Feel free to skip the next paragraph for you strange people that aren't car nuts!)

Porsche are in the process of building a new museum but unfortunately it won't be finished until sometime next year. So we had to settle for the old one, which didn't really matter since it's the cars that we came to see. And they were all there, with the highlights probably being the 356, the 959 and a couple of Carrera GTs. I even got to hear one of those bad boys start up! So that was my two hours of heaven for the day...

Anyway, on to Berlin. The weather didn't really cooperate with us for our stay here, being grey and occasionally rainy. No worries though, still able to see and do plenty. We did all the usual tourist stops (many obviously associated with the war); Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag (which houses parliament), Potsdamer Platz, the TV Tower and the two major intact sections of the Wall. Also had a couple of nice meals out and one big night on the booze, Berlin really does have a lot to offer.

We also spent a day in Potsdam, a few kms south-west of Berlin. This was the residence of the Prussian kings until 1918 so it is decked out with palaces, gardens and monuments. Clearly there was no expense spared, as each building just seemed to more impressive than the last. Luckily, despite several buildings being damaged in the war (and later torn down), there were still more than enough to see.

Last thing about Berlin that we couldn't help but notice, was the green man (walk signal at intersections). It really doesn't look like it's his arm sticking up! At first we thought it was just our dirty minds seeing this unfortunate perspective. But then we noticed shops devoted to selling everything from mugs to t-shirts with him printed on it. Anyway, we've included a picture so judge for yourself...

Amsterdam

So I know what most of you are probably thinking, Amsterdam is the worlds R18 amusement park, and we spent our week there high as kites, going to sex shows and ogling at prostitutes. But there's so much more to Amsterdam than that... or so someone told me. Lucky for us we got the sweet hook up from our good buddy Jacco and his cousin Jeron who let us crash at their place for the week (Thank you Gypsies!!!). Not only was it good having somewhere to stay but we got to see the city with locals which meant we were not subjected to the tourist sex shows or hash cafes (apparently they dont even let you in to those places if you are Dutch!).

Now it doesnt matter if you are interested or not, every visitor to Amsterdam ends up walking through the Red Light district. Just in case you live under a rock Ill explain quickly that this is the part of town where the streets are lined with windows, behind which sit women (in various states of undress) that you may purchase for a short period of time for your own personal use. Possibly the most amusing sight here however was the bus loads of middle age Asian men running round like excited school boys. "Ahhhh ,herro radies!"

On Jaccos days off we went to his parents house near a small town called Zutphen, we didnt get up to much out there but it was nice to escape Amsterdam for a couple of days and chill in the beautiful dutch countryside.

We've drunk our share of beer in the last few months so it was only fitting we should go on a tour of the Heineken brewery. Naturally we were quite excited about this yet it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The information and history was minimal, instead they've filled the place with several mildly amusing, brightly lit gimmicks and you only get three free small beers. Compared to the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen that was much cheaper, kept us entertained for hours and had more free beer, Heineken was just a bit shit, and in all honesty you're probably better off using the 11 Euro entrance fee to buy a whole crate of the stuff and a bag of chips from the shop. I know what you're thinking, "too cool for school"? Damn right, and unashamedly so!

International Wheres Wally

Recently we've noticed various consistencies in the places we visit. It doesnt matter if you're in South East Asia, downtown Japan or in Europe's most medieval city, there are some things that are always there (and Im not talking about McDs or Starbucks either). We've started to make a game out of it, if you look hard enough you can find at least one or more of the following in every city:

1. An Irish Pub
2. A Kebab shop
3. A greasy looking man of Turkish origin with slicked back hair and a gold chain.
4. An Asian tourist with a huge camera (usually found near a fountain)
5. Pigeons
6. A picture of Che Guevara
What does this tell us? One theory is that the Irish, Turkish and Japanese are planing a global socialist revolution and are communicating their secret plans via carrier pigeon. Or... we have a global love of cold beer and munching a kebab served to us by a greasy Turkish man, and Che is just so hot right now!

Achtung Baby!

2007-09-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

After a one night stopover in Paris, we headed for zee land of zee Beer and zee Bratwurst, Deutschland. First stop Munich. Normally when we visit a new city, we hit the streets running and manage to see a good portion of it before leaving. However, despite having almost four days in Munich, we didn't end up seeing that much of it. Something got us a little sidetracked...

The Beer Festival of All Beer Festivals

We made a bit of a late call to come to Oktoberfest and since accommodation starts getting booked out about a year in advance, we struggled to find somewhere to stay. With more than enough "sorry but we've been booked for months" email replies, we decided to just rent a station wagon and sleep in the boot. Worked out pretty cheap and not that uncomfortable so it was a good option really. Plus we had a car to cruise round the autobahns in! Not just any car either. A free upgrade from the rental car company saw us kitted out German-style, in a brand new 5 series BMW with leather, sat-nav and a decent engine to boot.

On the first day of the festival we wanted to make sure we had a seat at a good tent, so we got in there not long after 7am. The doors finally opened at 9:30 and it's a minor miracle that no one had to get carted out on a stretcher after the stampede to get in. About 80% of the seats in the good tents are prebooked so it really is a mad dash to secure a table (and we had a big bunch of Kiwis so we needed two). Then, at noon they finally tap the first keg and the place goes nuts. It took about 45 mins before our beer wench managed to get us our first round of one litre steins. After that the beer arrives a bit more easily and the consumption continues long into the night. Well, long into the night if you can make it. For the festival, each brewery serves up a special batch of beer, which is actually stronger than their usual brew!

We ended up having two massive days at the festival and also a quiet walk around on our day off. The main tents are massive, seating up to 5,000 people. Over six million litres of beer are consumed over the course of the festival! It really is an impressive sight, especially seeing as it's all temporary. The place is huge and there is a never-ending sea of people (lots in lederhosen too!) jumping on the rides or downing pretzels, beer and bratwurst. Good times.

Dachau

For a bit of a break in between two days of madness at Oktoberfest, we decided to do a bit of sightseeing. So the majority of Sunday was spent beneath a cloudless sky, exploring yet another example of the only species on earth that continually aims to destroy its own kind. Situated northwest of Munich and opened in 1933, the concentration camp at Dachau was one of the first to be opened by the Nazis. It was also one of the first to be liberated by the Allied forces but not for another 12 years.

The list of atrocities committed during its existence is appalling. Prisoners of this camp (and the others that Dachau served as a model for) were malnutritioned and over worked, and that's assuming they were deemed fit enough to work. If not, they were either left to starve to death, given a lethal injection, gassed, shot or otherwise killed. As if that's not bad enough, the unluckiest prisoners of all were used for medical research purposes. The research (which often ended in death) included tests to see how the human body was affected by things like g-force, air pressure and various chemicals. Of the 200,000 prisoners that were housed here, about 35,000 didn't survive (although this was also due to disease outbreaks). Despite having four ovens in their on-site crematorium, they often still had piles of bodies just lying around. They really were killing on a grand scale and yet Dachau was small when compared with Auschwitz.

More From Bavaria

After the shenanigans of Oktoberfest we thought it would be a good idea to spend some quality time in the Bavarian Alpine region. Fortunately for us I spent a year here when I was a wee fella so had some old friends to visit. On Tuesday morning, feeling rather less lively than normal we got on the train at Munich and headed in to the hills where we met Frank and Cilly Peterhoff(cheers for everything guys, it was awesome!). When I was four years old my family did an exchange with the Peterhoffs, we lived in their house in Gaißach, Bavaria and they lived in our house in trendy Lower Hutt. I found out from Frank on this trip that the year we were living there was just after the Chernobyl disaster, a mere 2,000kms away, the effects of which were present in Bavaria - this explains a few questions I had about myself... Anyway, that evening we went and saw some more friends, the Lechners, who not only filled us up on tasty Bavarian food and beer, but hooked us up with some tickets to watch Bayern München FC the next night...

So the following night we rocked back to Munich to see our new favourite football team in action. Fortunately Bayern are the top team in the league and were playing FC Energie Cottbus who are the bottom team, no surprises that it was 5-0 in favour of Bayern so we got to see a lot of goals. Half the fun was also sitting in the rowdy fan zone, so we got to learn all the chants and songs, it's pretty amazing to see and hear 70,000 people all getting in to it! Neither of us have ever been huge soccer fans, but it's a whole lot better when you can see it live.

On our last day in Gaißach the Lechners took us up to their mountain hut just over the border in Austria (tick another country off the list!). It's a cool we cottage built into the hill about 1,300m up, where they managed to fill us with even more good food and beer!

Road Trippin' Round Abbaville

2007-08-21T01:53:00.000-07:00

Well, a lot of people have been very good to us on this trip, and right up there are Christer and Lilian Fors for lending us a kitted out VW Combi van for a week! (Many many many thanks guys!!!). The day we left Trollhättan in the van it really felt like the quintessential road trip, sun was shining, rock music was pumping on the stereo and the van fridge was soon to be full of beer. It was the first time for both of us driving a manual shift on the right hand side of the road, but you get used to it pretty fast.

Driving hint for Sweden: If you do happen to make a mistake on the roads here we found the best thing to do is to squint cross eyed, look mildly confused and frustrated. Everyone just assumes you're another *&#%+ German tourist, rolls their eyes and lets you away with it...

Our first stop was Gävle, Marcus's birthplace. It was the last night of the city festival and the party was in full swing when we rocked up that evening... [insert a very good night of partying and drinking about here]. The next day the city looked like a bomb had hit it, rubbish was everywhere, I spose that's evidence that we werent the only ones having a good time!

What do you have to do to get arrested around here?!

The following day we tripped out to Sandviken (another town on the Marcus Tillson-childhood-timeline) where the alternator belt in the van decided it was time to snap. Fortunately we managed to get hold of a new one and repair it (OK, so it was mostly Marcus, I tightened one bolt - apparently poorly, was banned from the engine bay so played some encouragement guitar and made lunch instead). We had planned to be in Stockholm that day, yet the mechanical misfortunes meant it was rather late so we went to see our friend Karin in the nearby bustling metropolis of Tierp (population of 32 give or take...) for the night.

Finally we made it to Stockholm, we had heard about some cheap boat rides across the Baltic so went to check them out...

Latvia? Where the hell is that?

So it turned out that for very little money (about $35NZ) you can get a 2 night return cruise from Stockholm to Riga (the capital of Latvia). I cant say Latvia was one of the countries we planned on going to, in fact we new nothing about it and spent half the trip over trying to figure out if Riga was actually in Latvia or Lithuania! The trip across the Baltic leaves Stockholm at 5pm and gets to Riga at 10am the next day. You then spend a few hours in Riga and get back on the boat at 4pm the same day for another over-nighter back to Stockholm. It was a real ''I came, I saw, I brought a T-shirt'' style trip a la Mike Saunders and Graeme Wills.

The trip is so cheap because they expect you to spend a lot of money on the boat, in the bars and in the duty free shop. In fact you could tell when the duty free shop opened, there was a sucking noise as air rushed in to fill the vacuum left by all the people that piled in to buy alcohol at a third of the price that you can get in for in Sweden (oh, but there is a limit of just 10 litres of spirits, 200 litres of wine... ah the EU!).

Riga itself was a very nice place. We sorta expected lots of dark buildings and angry looking communists in trench coats with moustaches. In actual fact the city was full of gorgeous women, luxury cars and some very cool medieval architecture. Latvia is one of those countries that have really got a bad dose of oppression and general nastiness from Russia over the years, not achieving full independence until 1991. The two red stripes on the flag represent the blood spilt over the years, and the willingness to spill some more! O..K... Yet from what we saw it looks like they've got over the hard times and are pretty quickly catching up with the rest of Europe in regards to standard of living and all that. It was a stunning day in Riga so we spent most of our 6 hour excursion just wandering the old city looking at all the buildings and um... other sights, I really wish we could have stayed a few days there, but Stockholm was a calling...

Answering the Call of Stockholm

What is it about these Scandinavian capitals that keeps calling our names? It could be the beautiful old towns with their cobbled streets and interesting architecture. Perhaps it's the friendliness of the locals or the cool, relaxed atmosphere. It might be the warm, sunny weather we've had and the nice parks to relax in. Or maybe it's just... oops, sorry, lost track there for a second... another one just walked by...

Yes, Stockholm is yet another Scandinavian capital that has it all. Just like Oslo and, even more so, Copenhagen, we found we could walk round for hours on end without getting bored. Gamla Stan is the Old Town and is an especially nice part to wander round in. It's home to the Royal Palace (which also happens to be the largest palace in the world with 608 rooms), masses of amazing buildings and winding, cobbled streets to explore it all by.

There are plenty of other sights to see varying from the old and majestic, to the funky and new. Stockholm also has an amazing array of toys around the place! Huge luxury yachts loaded up with jet skis, boats and widescreen tvs surround the harbour. There are even more nice cars here than in London; Lambos, Ferraris, Astons, Bentleys... are everywhere. Other things to keep the tourist busy include a multitude of museums, boat trips through the archipelago and several markets. One of the markets, Östermalms Saluhall, was awesome. It was crammed full of local and imported meats, cheeses, seafood and more. I couldn't resist a few local treats, including a few different types of salmon (smoked, marinated and in a roll with caviar, dill and cream cheese) and some smoked eel. A few fantastic morsels in yet another fantastic city...

Got the Van Back... and in One Piece

After the excitement of the road trip, it was time to return the VW back to it's home in Trollhättan. To Christer's delight, we even managed to return it all in one piece. However, the excitement was not yet over, as there was a booze up organised for that night! Not ones to turn a big night down, we headed out for a great one in Trollhättan.

The Fors' have made sure we've had plenty of other trips to keep us entertained as well. One night we went to a weekly car show down at the locks near where they live. We were there at the right time too, as we got to see a boat, that only just managed to squeeze into the lock, get lowered down to the water level of the river below. And we also saw plenty of cool, old cars and bikes.

On another day we drove out to a coastal town called Smögen. It's renowned for it's interesting, rocky coastline and fishing heritage. The thing to do there is grab some fresh shrimps, a crunchy baguette and some wine and then head down to the rocks for a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine. Afterwards we enjoyed an ice cream while walking around the picturesque (and stereotypically Swedish) fishing village. It's a tough life.

While on the topic of food and all things Swedish, I will endeavour to describe a local delicacy, Surströmming, to you. I'm not sure if it was the cold, a diet of magic mushrooms or perhaps the lack of sunshine hours in the winter, but for some reason, some crazy Swede came up with the idea of putting herring in a can with some other ingredients in order to get it to ferment. And then eating it. You can tell it's fermented for several different reasons. The first being that when you have it, those who have had it before will give you the "honour" of opening it. Secondly, you have to open the can slowly and carefully, to allow the putrid gases to escape without causing a small geyser. And thirdly, as soon as you allow the first molecule of gas to escape from the near-exploding can you can smell nothing but the overwhelming stench of the rotting fish inside. Mmmmmmmm, no wonder they only ever eat it outside. However, after the smell subsides and you prepare it properly (take out the fillets, put it on a special bread, with potato, red onion, tomato and sour cream), it actually tastes pretty good (to some people anyway). You'd never want to eat it on it's own but once it's mixed with everything it's a different story, a bit like anchovies but with a tad more flavour.

Well, that about sums up the Scandinavian leg of our journey. Something tells me it certainly won't be the last time we visit this part of the world though....

Isn't Norway a Funny Shape?!

2007-08-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

That's for you Don!...

OK, so I told myself I wasnt going to bitch and moan about the price of things in Europe any more, but Im going to have to quickly say that Norway gets the award for most expensive country thus far, yikes! We left Malmö, Sweden one morning and got a ride (Tack Frans!) up to Helsingborg, the closest border crossing to Denmark. From there I took the ferry to Helsingor (it's very confusing isnt it) in Denmark and returning with 6 bottles of alcohol (and Marcus's birthday present, hahahaha!) which is the most cost effective option when going to the land of the $100 bottle of Smirnoff. We then got a bus up to Oslo, fortunately passing straight through the customs checkpoint! We were met by our Norwegian friends Magnus and Gry, who Im just going to say were absolute champions (Thanks so much guys!), letting us stay at their place, feeding us some excellent food and organising basically everything that we are going to talk about below!

The Mighty Canoe Trip

Every year, for the past 12 years or so, Magnus and a few of his mates organise a canoe trip somewhere in the Norwegian lakes. This year we were lucky enough to get invited along, so there was no way we were going to turn that down. A couple of days after arriving in Oslo, we packed up Magnus' car with booze and food (and a few less important things, like tents and clothes) and headed north for about four hours, to Lake Femund. Here we met up with the rest of the crew, jumped into three canoes and a kayak between the seven of us and headed off into the wilderness.

First up I'll give you the stats. Over the next eight days we covered 56km (biggest day: 18.2km, shortest day: the closest we got to the canoe was to use it as a windbreak). We paddled in Lake Femund and Lake Isteren, using little canoe trolleys to walk the couple of kms between the two. Due to the weather, we only ended up paddling every second day so we set up camp at four different spots.

As it turned out, we chose the wrong summer to go, weather-wise. Last year they were paddling in shorts and a t-shirt most days. This year we had a half day that was an absolute stunner (even had a brief dip in the chilly waters) but the rest were a mixture of just about everything except snow. We had massive winds, perfect calm, pouring rain, clear skies and everything in between. While it would've been fantastic to have scorching hot days for the whole week, it was actually quite cool getting what we did. Both of us thought it made the trip feel a bit more outdoorsy and a bit more of an adventure. We're just glad we had warm sleeping bags with us.

One of the main things we were looking forward to about the trip was the fishing. We spent a lot of time casting into the beautiful, clear waters around us, trying a selection of lures and bait, both from shore and from the boat. Despite that, well... let's just say it was lucky we'd brought plenty of food with us. We did at least manage a fish each (one of which was a delicious bass) and we also both now have a one-that-got-away story but it wasn't exactly what we were hoping for! Apparently it was the wrong year for fishing too, as some years they've caught plenty. Still a great way to pass the day though.

There were a few highlights on the trip:

- The best meal we ate (and those of you that have been freezing and wet out in the bush after a day of exercise will understand what I'm talking about) was a steaming hot, massive pot of cheapo two-minute noodles in a spicy Mexican tomato packet soup. Words cannot describe just how good it was!

- Being able to dip your cup into the lake for some crystal clear water whenever you're thirsty was surprisingly satisfying.

- It's always fun walking into the forest, chopping down a tree, then bringing it back to camp and making a fire. Must be some residual caveman in us.

- And of course the Norwegian scenery was stunning and very similar to NZ actually.

Big thanks to all the lads on the canoe trip, we had a fantastic time. And an even bigger thanks to Magnus for organising our canoe and all our gear so that we could actually go.

Happy 25th Marcus!

So the day after canoeing was Marcus's birthday, and we couldnt have been in a better place for it! Fortunately the bad weather of the canoe trip had subsided and it was a cracker of a day and a warm night. We had the party in the bbq area outside the apartment with about 30 people that Gry and Magnus had invited (we only knew a few of them from previous excursions but everyone was really cool) .

The Touristy Stuff

The day after Marcus's birthday Gry took us around Oslo to see the sights. Up on the hill is a massive ski jump that you can see from almost anywhere in town, it's huge! I've seen the sport a few times on tele but when you're standing at the top if the jump you can appreciate the balls you need to actually do it, typically you have a good 5 seconds in the air and travel at least 100 metres!!! There's also a good museum up there with a whole lot of stuff on Arctic/Antarctic exploration and a pretty good history on skiing. Because Im a cheap bastard Im going to mention the fact that we accidentally walked into the museum for free, ha ha, take that Norway with your expensiveness, you're not getting my 70 Kronas!!!

Following that we went to the Viking museum. They have three original viking boats, two of which are in really good nick and very impressive considering they were built 800 or so years ago. They must have been a tough bunch as there's no shelter on the boats and they used to go on massive journeys through Arctic waters in them. I guess that's why they managed to thrash everyone else in the area and take all of England's good looking women for themselves!

Finally we went to Gustav Vigeland Sculpture Park in the city. Every city round the world has a park but this was one of the better ones. This artist guy (Gustav) designed hundreds (actually 192) of statues, all of people doing things in the nick. It's pretty cool and is capped off with a huge monolith in the middle made up of human figures, very cool. For once I actually did some research for the blog, here's a link with more info if you are interested...
http://www.fortunecity.com/westwood/arch/769/Vigeland/
As it was another corker day we just chilled in the sun for a couple of hours on the grass, niiiiiice!

Sweden - Round One

2007-07-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

Hej hej! Our entry into Sweden was across the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe, the Oresund Bridge. It's actually a combined tunnel and bridge but at just over 7.8km, it's certainly in the big bridge category. We brought as much alcohol over as we thought we could get away with (and carry), since Denmark has way cheaper booze (still not cheap though). Turns out there was nothing to worry about. Not only did we not get checked for booze, we didn't even get passports checked, since we're now in the EU.

It's great to be back in my country of birth, especially as that means we've got hookups galore here! First few days were spent in Malmö, checking out the local sights and catching up with old friends. Then we headed over to Brantevik, on the east coast of the south of Sweden to see some more family friends. This is a very small village, where a lot of people have their summer houses, so it was a nice place to relax. On the way there we stopped off at a beach, the southernmost point of Sweden (words can't even describe the excitement there!) and a couple of incredible car dealerships (for all you car nuts out there, this included a Porsche 959, a McLaren SLR and several other rare and expensive beauties).

Sweden, and Scandinavia in general so far, has a really nice vibe. We've met quite a few locals and had a couple of good nights out (booze prices severely limit this part of the travel experience!). Everyone is friendly, relaxed and helpful. And they're all good looking!

There are a few things on my to do list for Sweden and we've made a start on getting through them. We've had some delicious gravlax (there's nothing quite like Swedish salmon), falukorv (a tasty sausage) and good, strong Swedish coffee. A few days ago we visited Ikea! That place is brilliant, nice, clean Swedish design and everything's cheap (well for here anyway). Still got a few things to tick off the list but we'll be back here for a few weeks after a stint in Norway.

Old Zealand

2007-07-23T04:42:00.000-07:00

Copenhagen

We always thought Denmark would just be a stop-over point for bigger and better things in Scandinavia but it turned out to be a bit of a gem! Everyone there is pretty relaxed, the emphasis on life in these parts seems to be on living, not working which is kinda nice. Our hostel was next to a lake near the city centre, which is mainly pedestrian only streets, so was a perfect place to just wander round and look at stuff. While we where there the weather really turned it on, making it a nice wee stop-over. Incidently, Copenhagen is on an island called Zealand, yet the resembalance in shape or character to New Zealand eluded us!

Carlsberg Brewery

This was a bit of a hike from where we were staying but the weather was so nice we walked it anyway. En-route we had to pass through the red light district which consists predominantly of tattoo parlours and sex-shops of various persuasion with some, uh, interesting window displays. We were really going to the brewery to score some cheap beer but it was a pretty interesting place too! They had a mint beer bottle collection (13,000+) of beers from round the world and had restored heaps of the old steam powered machines they used to use to make the beer. There's a lot of history behind the company, I wont go into it but look it up if you are bored, is worth a read. And of course at the end of the tour we got to sample some of the beer...

Stop drinking all our beer New Zealanders!!!

Christianhaven and Christiania Freetown

Christianhaven is an area of Copenhagen which is kinda on an island in the harbour. It's pretty funky and in the middle is a church on which you can climb right to the top point of the roof and look out over the city, cool. At the edge of Christianhaven is Christiania Freetown. Christiania was formed in the 70s by a bunch of hippies as an independent society. It's self governed and has it's own flag, but not quite an independent state. The place is famous because you used to be able to buy drugs openly and legally on the street there, but the Danish government has since cracked down on this. The place is pretty much a hippie commune, street stalls with rasta hats and designer bongs, but was pretty cool to walk around, quite relaxed as you can probably imagine, even the dogs there looked stoned! Unfortunately you cant take any photos inside so we cant show you what it looked like.

Worlds Best Small-to-Medium-Sized Fountain

We were walking down to the harbour to look at this big boat that we'd spotted from the aforementioned church tower. The main attraction down here is the Little Mermaid, which Copenhagen is apparently famous for. It was so shit, it was just a statue on a rock by the ocean, it's even less impressive than that stupid cone in the square back home! But near there we found this Mac Daddy fountain which wasnt mentioned in any of the tourist material but was awesome! The pictures dont quite do it justice but the way they've desigined it makes the chariot look like it's moving. We went back the next day to see it again as it was so cool!

Warm Beer Anyone?

2007-07-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

Actually the beer isn't warm here. It certainly is expensive though! Instead of getting change from NZ$10 for a big night out, like in China, you're lucky to get change from that for one beer at a pub! Probably a good thing for our livers though. And having said that, we still managed to have a few good nights out without completely blowing the budget, the biggest of which started at a cheap byo curry place.

It's been a while since I've been to the land of pubs, punks and Poms. Quite nice to be back though I must say. Although, thanks to the state of the world nowadays, it was a solid four hours between touching down and actually passing through customs. On this particular day it was a bomb threat causing one of the terminals to be shut down. Unfortunately, this is by no means rare either. All around the UK, and London in particular, terrorist scares cause constant disruption to daily life. Bit of a shame really but everybody just gets on with it.

The rolling, green countryside was a welcome sight after the lack of just that in Asia. And how strange to hear everyone speaking English! At first, I kept expecting every readable sign to not make any sense at all. It does make ordering off a menu a tad boring too, since you know exactly what you're getting!

This was probably the quickest ten days of the whole trip. As well as having all the London sights to see, there was also half of Christchurch to catch up with over here! It was great seeing so many people that we haven't seen since leaving home and several that we hadn't seen in years. Several of the lads managed to get their trips to coincide with ours too so we were able to spend a bit of quality time together, which was great. Expecting the same from the rest of you boys while we're away of course! Managed to see a lot of London with Saunders and Willsy in particular and still find plenty of time to get on the booze. We even bought walkie talkies, purely for practical reasons of course. Awesome. Thanks to the the UK Clifford contingent (Ballantines, Hays and Cowans) for putting us up too. Pretty happy that we didn't have to hand over any of those bloody expensive pounds for accommodation!

Being England we weren't expecting much weather-wise. However, the first few days were stunners, bright blue skies and decent temperatures. It went a little bit downhill after that, just to remind us where we were but, still, it's better than the weather in NZ at the mo!

Cheers Mum!

Yep got to see Mum again, maybe the first and last time for a while! Big ups to you and David for spending the last day of your holiday waiting for us in an airport and hooking us up somewhere to stay for the first night, it was awesome to see you again!

St Paul's Cathedral

Whether you believe in Jebus or not this place is mighty impressive! From the outside it's by no means a small building yet nothing overly impressive. Yet inside the main chamber (after a cheeky 9.50 pound fee) it's just amazing! I'm going to put it out there and say it was more impressive than most of the temples we saw in Asia. The artwork and detail on the walls and ceilings is extremely detailed and ornate, all the big names from the bible are there. You can go up some stairs (433 of them!) to a gallery overlooking the main chamber. It's called the whispering gallery, because you can whisper into the wall at one point and if someone is listening further along the room they can here you. Not quite so effective when the place is packed with other tourists though! From here you can climb even further and get out onto the roof where you can see pretty much all of London. After that we went down to the crypt where there were some pretty famous people such as Lord Nelson are buried.

The London Eye

Even though it's a hell of a rip off it's one of those things you have to do while in London. There's not a lot to tell really, it was pretty much what you'd expect. Queue, get on, go round, make faces and ruin the souvenir photo for everyone else in your capsule, get off. The views were good though and we managed to get up there on a corker of a day.

Le Tour de France

Among the myriad of things happening in London the weekend we were there was the Prologue of Le Tour de France (the time trial stage to determine starting order of the race). The course was in a great place, running through Hyde Park past Buckingham Palace and other relevant landmarks. We got down there early with the promise of free biking gear, but ended up being showered with crappy hats and lollies from various French sponsoring companies. We managed to stake out some good vantage points though and watched each cyclist thundering past (average speed of the winner was 54kph over 9km!). It was a stunner of a day in the sun and it was cool to be at the start of such a world renowned event. Finished off the day with a beer in Covent Gardens watching the buskers. Nice.

Other London Stuff

We made a few visits to Hyde Park, this was nice. There's a cool wee memorial to Anzac soldiers with a bit of goss on NZ, apparently rugby was first introduced to New Zealand in Nelson! Buckingham Palace, probably not as pretty as you would expect I think Kensington Palace is the show pony, but cool all the same and the surrounds are nice. Didn't see the Queen though, she must have been busy. Harrods, probably the ritziest supermarket I've ever seen, as well as every designer clothing label, rinding boot and polo stick brand you can think of. Half the fun is looking at the ridiculously expensive and luxurious cars parked out the front! We brought some pies there. Big Ben, or Medium Ben is probably more accurate. It's an impressive looking structure, just not as tall as I imagined, maybe the same as a 7-8 story building.

Well that was London at first take, we'll be back!

We Ate Dog!!

2007-07-04T06:25:00.000-07:00

That's right folks, we ate dog. And we liked it, tasted a bit like a cross between bacon and beef actually. Since being here in Beijing we've also dined on such delights as donkey, snake, cockroach, scorpion and silk worm. We had the dog and donkey at a restaurant just down the road from our hostel and both were tasty. The rest of the interesting morsels we tried at a night market a few minutes taxi away.

The night market was quite cool, really vibrant with a lot going on. There a was a guy making edible figurines by blowing up and shaping liquid sugar blobs. Another lady was demonstrating Chinese opera, which is really not a pleasant experience. Chinese opera is not even remotely related to Italian opera, or singing for that matter. Instead they warble and screech at the top of their lungs with an ear splitting yell. At the end of the night market there was a long set of stalls and this is where you find all the strange stuff. The only thing we actually liked were the scorpions, they weren't bad at all. The silk worms, on the other hand, were absolutely disgusting, texture, taste, everything about them was horrible.

The Wall

Well you cant go to Bejing without going to the Great Wall. We fortunately met some people at our hostel who were heading out to one of the more remote sections of the wall, as you can imagine the main sections are somewhat of a mass tourist trap. The drive out took a couple of hours, made entertaining by our driver who drove in typical Chinese style: fast, dangerous and irrational. The wall was amazing, it just goes on and on and on (and on) and to think that there is about 6,400kms of the thing is pretty mind blowing, they really didnt want those Mongolians coming in! The part we walked on has been restored, but still looks very authentic. We did a 10km trek which was pretty steep in places but the views were amazing! Unfortunately the weather was a bit average and there was some mean thunder rumbling above. About halfway through the walk lightning started hitting the wall. One bolt of the stuff hit the wall a few cms from my foot. A spark came off my toe, it felt a bit like kicking an electric fence, exciting times! I was hoping for the onset of some mystical super power after an incident like this, but it's yet to reveal itself... After this the rain started coming down pretty hard which put a bit of a damper on the rest of the walk, but still definitely one of the coolest things we did in China.

Forbidden City vs. Summer Palace

As a lot of you will be aware, one of the major highlights of Beijing is the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, for the second time this trip we ended up feeling a bit disappointed. To be fair, it wasn't so much the Forbidden City itself that disappointed though. Like a lot of places in China (and especially Beijing), they are building, renovating and refurbishing everywhere. As a result, most of the place was covered in scaffolding and netting. It was also a crappy day weather-wise, with grey skies, fog and rain. The other annoyance, which is to be expected of course, were the masses of tourists as far as the eye could see. All this aside, the Forbidden City was still impressive and yet another testament to the Chinese desire to build everything as massive as possible. The huge walled area is a collection of large, open squares, decorative halls and manicured gardens. There were also some interesting collections of artifacts in the surrounding anterooms. But unfortunately it just wasn't enough...

The following day we headed out to a lesser know attraction that Beijing has to offer, the Summer Palace. To start with, the rain of the previous day had cleared the smog from the skies and during the night the clouds had all disappeared. So the sun was shining and the skies were blue as we headed out on our rented bikes. The Summer Palace is set on a large lake, with walkways and parks surrounding the water. We headed towards the palace via the west side of the lake. The views were fantastic and the whole atmosphere was quite relaxed. The actual Summer Palace sits up on a hill that looks out over the lake so we wandered up there for nice views and a short climb. In the palace there were quite a few tourists but the walk up had been much more pleasant than at the Forbidden City. This was the definite winner of the two and I'd recommend it to anyone going to Beijing.

The Silk Market

Despite the name, there wasnt a lot of silk on sale here. Instead it's a massive six story complex full of small shops selling every type of clothing available. We walked in there not intending to buy much but ended up coming away with: 2 T shirts, 2 shorts, 2 pairs of shoes and 2 pairs of flip flops between us, meaning we had to jettison some of the older clothes from our packs to make room. The fun part of these markets is the bargaining. The Chinese in their shrewdness will give you a ridiculously high starting price, usually about 5-6 times higher than they are expecting. To reach a decent price involves a certain amount of faux anguish from both sides, walking away, coming back, screaming, pretending to cry... But in the end though we got some pretty good bargains! Good times!

Other places we've visited around Beijing include Tienanmen Square, The Temple of Heaven, The Yellow River and numerous bars and restaurants (of course). Tienanmen Square is unbelievably vast and the building at its centre apparently contains Mao's actual head (although we didn't get it see it because it too was being refurbished, the building, not the head). The Temple of Heaven was nice but we were nearing our temple limit by this stage so we didn't spend too long here.

The Yellow River was crap. For a start it was brown, and the Chinese have attempted to create some sort of theme park out there which just ruins everything. There was quite a big bar street in Beijing, which was a bit dead during the week but good times come the weekend. As for the restaurants, we made sure to try the local dish, Peking Duck, a couple times and it didn't disappoint. It comes as a set, the skin is fried crispy, with the meat on another plate, then these are rolled up with cucumber and scallions in thin wraps and dipped in a soy-based sauce.

Shaolin

We just finished the blog and realised we forgot about this! En-route to Bejing we stopped at this city called Zhengzhou. We had never heard of this place before but its a city of 6 million people, on a Chinese scale this is just a "town". A few hours from here is the world famous Shaolin Temple and the Shaolin Monks. We tripped out there one day for a wee looksee. The temple grounds are really tranquil, set in amongst these really nice hills. This tranquility however is somewhat ruined by the 10,000 odd tourists who come through here each day. Most people come to see the performances by the Shaolin Monks which is very impressive. These guys are trained from the age of 4, there isnt a scrap of fat on them and they are extremely disciplined. These guys can do a back flip as easily as the rest of us can snap our fingers. The shows consisted of a ton of acrobatics, sticks and swords spinning at high speeds, kung fu and and loud yelling. Unfortunately we couldnt take any photos....

The Beards

Well the beard growing contest is over, and to be honest Im going to have to give it to Marcus for superior facial coverage. However, growing a ginger beard is just plain wrong - Marcus, you're disqualified.

The Marcus and Kev Travel Awards - China

Best Beer Category - 1. Tsingtao, 2. Hahn, 3. Baiju

Best Food Category - 1. Muslim BBQ'd Lamb, 2. Chilli Chicken, 3. Explode the Donkey Casserole (actual name!)

Most Impressive Category - 1. The Great Wall, 2. Shanghai's Architecture, 3. The view from the top of Hua Shaun

Worst Experience Category - 1. Trying to swallow a silkworm, 2. Waking up in a puddle, 3. Baiju Hangovers

Best Value Category - 1. Alcohol and Food, 2. Shoes and Clothes, 3. Trains and Buses

Best City - 1. Bejing, 2. Shanghai, 3. Xi'an

The Stats

Days: 21

Money Spent: 7,000RMB ($1270NZ) each

Beer Consumed: 40.5 litres each

Distance Travelled: 3042kms

Photo requests from Chinese: 38

Days of Rain: 15

Different Types of Animal Eaten: 11

Shampoo and Shaving: 0

Cars built before 2001 (excluding taxis): 0

Made in China

2007-06-22T19:24:00.000-07:00

Xi'an

About a week ago now we arrived in Xi'an. We've been staying at a really cool hostel, they have free internet, cheap beer and a cool cafe/bar were we've had many a good night teaching a number of people the "Gravy Train" drinking game. Our first day we did the usual wander around the central city which is surrounded by a 14km wall (they like their walls here). In the centre are two towers, the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. As the names suggest one has a huge bell in it and the other a number of large drums. These used to have some practical purpose but now the only people ringing the bells/drums are paying tourists. The views however were pretty good as they are situated right in the centre of the city.

There's a fairly significant Muslim population here, and the Muslim Quarter is right next to the Drum tower. They have a big flea market selling dried fruit but the highlight is the street barbecues. The food is cooked out on the street and served in a basic restaurant. The best thing on the menu is the half kilo of bbq lamb (which was sensational) and a bargain at $4.50NZ! They dont mess around with side veges or breads just half a kilo of cooked animal on a metal tray, brilliant. Needless to say we've frequented that place a few times since being here!

One night we went to the "Goose Pagoda" to see a light show that's on every night. It was really impressive, they light up the pagoda and out the front they have a huge area where jets of water shoot up and around, all choreographed to music and lights. On another day we rented some bikes and biked around the city wall, there wasnt a lot to see but it was fun having a burn and pushing the cheap rental bikes to their limits!

Terracotta Warriors - Are they a hoax!?

The main reason people come to Xi'an are to see the Terracotta Warriors. These were built by the first Qin Emperor (same guy that built the Great Wall). The idea was that when he died he would take an army as well as servants etc... to the afterlife with him. These were represented by the life size terracotta figurines buried with him in his tomb. The Chinese claim these to be the 8th Wonder of the world, and the main pit is a hell of an impressive sight, over 1,000 warriors standing in formation and apparently another 4,000 or so still to be excavated. The problem I think though is that it is so hyped up and there are souvenirs/replicas everywhere in town that when you finally see the real thing it's a little disappointing. This is the general consensus among other travellers too, and hence a conspiracy theory has sprung up that the warriors may not be as authentic as they appear. For a start there are a number of factories around the city churning out life size replicas of these warriors. You could replace the actual warriors with the replicas and I dont think anyone would notice. Also, before the discovery of the warriors only 30 years ago, it seems no one knew anything about them, surely someone would have made a record of such a huge event?

So the theory is that someone planted these warriors (created at the many factories around the place) then "discovered" them. This would have been quite possible as the site is in the middle of no-where about an hour from town. Also all the current restoration and digging work is done at night when the facility is closed to the public. Around the warriors there is a ton of infrastructure going in to house souvenir shops and restaurants, it seems in preparation for the crowds that will come with the Olympics next year. The whole place appears to be a huge money spinner. Even the kind-faced old shepperd who apparently discovered the whole thing, sits there signing autographs, but only signs things that are purchased at the official souvenir shop!

Going Bush on Hua Mountain

After checking out most of what there is to see and do in Xi'an, we felt the need for something a bit more adventurous. So we decided that going bush on Hua Mountain for a couple of days would be the way to go. Another guy that we'd been hanging out with at the hostel, Iain, was also keen, so we packed some food and some wet weather gear and headed for the hills.

A couple hours on a bus got us to the base of the mountain, which would probably have provided us with a stunning view of the peaks beyond. Only problem was the low cloud enveloping just about everything. At least it wasn't raining though... yet. We headed off up the mountain, expecting an old trail or an unpaved road at best. Instead we found a wide, stone path winding its way up the valley. Turns out they paved the whole path up the mountain! After the first few kilometers the path became narrower and consisted mainly of steep steps (some were just ladders cut into the rock with a chain to hold on to). Only the country that gave us the Great Wall would even think about doing this, let alone actually carrying it out.

The hike up was enjoyable, despite the limited visibility and the rain that settled in after a couple of kilometers. Most of the difficult parts of the climb are after the 4km mark (and they certainly get the heart and lungs working!) and before you get to the North Peak. For this reason, they've installed the soft option cable car to get all the tourists to the North Peak (1680m). So after this point the trails get a fair bit busier. From here we had another couple hours ahead to get us to our goal, the South Peak, which is the highest at 2160m. The trail is quite amazing in parts, with a section of the ridge being only 3m wide and sheer cliffs all around. Upon reaching the South Peak, we were greeted with more of the same, a complete white out. It was quite eerie knowing that there were massive drops and deep valleys all around us but not being able to see any of it. Annoying too.

There are food/drink stops the whole way up the mountain and several places to stay as well. It's quite a set up that must require a lot of walking for some people. Especially these amazing, wiry old guys that ferry supplies up and down the mountain. They scale steep, wet stairs with a piece of wood slung over their shoulder that's got anything from LPG bottles to watermelons attached!

Of course, the whole idea of the trip was to go bush. The paved trails (and Chinglish signs telling us to stay on them) were making this a bit difficult. There was also a good reason for the signs, as most of the mountain side was actually fairly steep and uninhabitable. After a few off-trail missions we found a clearing flat enough and large enough to set up camp. And since we were wet through and starting to get a bit cold, this seemed like a very good idea indeed. Turns out we had bought enough tarpaulin for about two people. Of course, we now had three so it was even cosier than expected. Our rudimentary bivvy was keeping the rain off us though and that was good enough for us.

At about 5am, the fun of our adventure was starting to wear off a bit. I was freezing my nuts off and a bit of shifting in the night meant that Kev was now lying in a puddle. Iain was fine at least, since he had a sleeping bag (smart man) and the middle spot! So Kev and I decided we might as well get up even though the weather was going to be crap. As we made our way to the East Peak, in an attempt to see a sunrise, the clouds began to clear. By the time we were at the peak, we had an unimpeded view in every direction. The dense white clouds had sunk into the valleys, leaving exposed mountain peaks and rock faces all around. It was absolutely stunning. After just 30 or 40 minutes the clouds began to float back in and before we knew it the white out was back. But it didn't matter now. So we wandered back to the tent to tell Iain all about it!