Alick and Tess' Travelogue

A Final Note

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 05:43:00 +0000

…and then we were ‘home’. It’s taken us weeks after our return to Melbourne to finally get the previous blog post up. Partly because we’ve been busy re-connecting with some friends and family (with many still yet to see!), frantically house-hunting and jumping straight back into work routines. However, perhaps the main reason for the delay in getting the final blog post up has been to hold onto that final bit of our trip for as long as possible! The realisation that our trip was over has certainly hit us hard and there have been the inevitable moments of ‘post-holiday blues and grumpiness’ over the last few weeks - all those years of dreaming about doing a ‘big trip’, spending weeknights scouring through Lonely Planet books, maps and online forums, the excitement of the 6 months of travel…and now back to reality with no upcoming holidays in sight and a seemingly endless amount of bills and debts to pay.

Though after a couple of weeks of letting all of that settle, it’s certainly starting to become clearer that the learnings and experiences from our travels can be carried with us for so many years to come – hopefully for a lifetime. Firstly, there is the predictable travel realisation that the world is ENORMOUS with so many corners to explore – and rather than coming back with our travel desire satiated, we are returning with an extensive list of future travel dreams and a burning desire to get back out there. We are also returning with a huge amount of ‘traveller’s debt’ – not the financial kind, but instead a bank of favours and acts of kindness that were shown to us throughout our travels that we can hopefully repay to travellers and visitors who cross our paths in the years to come. We have a huge sense of gratitude and optimism for the future; everywhere we went – whether it be tiny villages in Malawi that we passed through on the back of a Matola, or the beautiful home of our new friends Dawn and Keith in Kelowna (to name just a few!) – we were greeted with open arms, huge smiles, and the most amazing generosity and openness. It is wonderfully life-affirming to share a connection with so many people, from so many walks of life, all of whom gave of themselves to help make our journey unforgettable.

The last 6 months has been an incredible experience – made all the more so because we shared it together. As we now move on to the next stage of our lives, it is something that we will continually look back on with much fondness. This blog has proven to be a really useful way for us to capture our experiences on our travels and we are excited that we can ‘re-live’ the experiences over again by reading back through it. We did also share our blog with others interested in our travels, so for those of you reading this final post – it seems appropriate to sign off with a huge thank-you for following our journey.

Alick and Tess xx

USA Road Trip - The Final Two Weeks: Austin, Texas to Aliso Viejo, California

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 05:41:00 +0000

Monday March 11, Lafayette, LA to Austin, TX & Tuesday March 12, Austin TX

Our east-bound route through Austin Texas during their famous South by South West (SXSW) festival was proving to be both a blessing and a curse. We had heard so much about the buzz of Austin – particularly around the food and music scene – and were so excited about being there when it came to life for the festival, though accommodation options were limited and prohibitively expensive – with even the budget ‘Super 8’ hotels charging upwards of $US250 per night. Fortunately we had allowed ourselves to turn to our trusty friend, Air BnB a few days earlier and had managed to find a more affordable option camping in a guy’s backyard a few kilometres outside of town. We weren’t quite sure what to expect and arrived to find no one was home and there was no answer on the mobile phone number we’d been given. We spent about 20 minutes wondering what to do until a lady eventually turned up and, despite not having any knowledge of our booking or how long we were planning on staying, guided our car through various sculptures, machinery, caravans and other paraphernalia to a spot in the backyard where we could camp – in between 4-5 tents, an open air outdoor shower and composting toilet purpose built for visiting campers. It was quite a bizarre place but the proximity of the property to the main bus line suited our needs well and we headed into town.

Austin, Texas

In the absence of tickets to the actual South-by-South West festival, we set about exploring some of the many side performances around town. Without much knowledge of any of the local bands, it was difficult to know where to start so we started off by heading to ‘T-Bird and the Breaks’ performance – the Austin band we had seen a few nights previously in Lafayette. The show was fantastic once again and we had a great night wandering between venues and being in absolutely heaven with all the delicious food trucks around the streets (we had heard that Austin was the original home of food trucks and it certainly didn’t disappoint in that regard!). Austin was absolutely packed and buzzing with a really friendly, spontaneous vibe - ie. on one occasion the traffic come to a standstill when two strangers heading in opposite directions across a pedestrian crossing decided to have a dance-off in the middle of the street!

Making the most of advertising space! Austin, Texas

The next morning, the mundane but, by then, somewhat urgent task of doing a few loads of clothes washing proved rather fruitful as we found our neighbouring washing machine-user to be a wealth of information on Austin eateries. We walked out of the laundromat happy in the knowledge that we not only had clean underwear but also an extensive list of where to go to graze throughout the afternoon! Perfect!

The highlight of these eateries by far was a place called Hopdoddy – specialising in burgers, shakes and craft beer using all local, organic and free-range produce. Right up our alley! Following the recommendation of our laundromat friend, Tess ordered a salted caramel shake, which was just ridiculously good!!! We spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening wandering between different bars and the multitude of private and commercial properties that had been converted into live music venues during SXSW until wandering the streets started to get difficult as the crowds thickened with people looking for late-night raves and we, feeling our age and the effects of being on our feet all day, decided to retire to our backyard campground to get some sleep.

Hopdoddy Burger, Austin, Texas

Wednesday March 13 & Thursday March 14, Austin TX to Big Bend National Park

Tess was unable to leave Austin without another salted caramel shake from Hopdoddy, so dragged Alick kicking and screaming in for a quick slurp and a bite of Bison Burger (yum!) before farewelling the craziness of SxSW and hitting the road – with the best intention of heading to Barton Springs for a soak in the hotsprings (and hopefully a bit of exercise too). Both having forgone a morning bath at our campsite, our attempts at ‘getting clean’ were foiled time and again, as we discovered that not only were the hotsprings closed for renovation, but our second option (the swimming pool at Lockhart State Park) was also closed until May! It seems that in Texas 25c isn’t quite warm enough to warrant going for a swim! After this minor frustration, we decided that the best way around it was to eat some more, so made a bee-line for the small town of Luling where Alick had had a recommendation from the local Budweiser rep to try the BBQ. We rolled into Luling City Market BBQ with much anticipation – unfortunately only to find that they had sold out of everything except sausages! We had a quick sausage and decided to wait the 25 minutes until the ribs would be ready, and in the meantime make a few calls to book in some accommodation for our nights at Big Bend National Park…

Texas BBQ, Luling City Market, Texas

This was the first point during our trip where we started to feel as though our ‘no planning, arrive without a booking’ policy may have fallen foul… It turned out that all this week in Texas is Spring Break, so all schools and universities have a week off…resulting in all of the campsites all over the state being pretty much full up. Big Bend were clear that all of their sites were full, and none of the State Parks between Luling and Big Bend were also full… With mild anxiety in our bellies (quelled a little by a brace of huge and delicious BBQ ribs), and no idea where we were staying that night, we set off westward once again… We soon found ourselves whizzing through beautiful hilly countryside, teeming with rivers and birdlife everywhere. So amazingly different to both the marshy swamps of Louisiana, but also the desert landscape of northern Texas…

Old mechanic workshop, Texas

After a few hours driving, we stumbled upon what has to be one of the most quintessentially American experiences of our trip so far. Shortly before reaching our psychological goal for the day (the town of Junction), we saw a small truck-stop on the side of the I-10 and decided to pull in… On driving around the side of the fuel pumps we saw a sign reading ‘Free showers & parking, good food, and pretty (old) waitresses’. We knew at that moment that we were going to stay there that night! It was an amazing experience – complete with a real route-66 style diner (burritos and lemonade all round), showers with a huge sign stating that only truckers were to use them (thankfully we managed to put on our best trucker faces to get into the showers and no one questioned us), and the constant growl of semi-trailers rolling in and out of the car-park… Despite the noise, we slept very well and were back on the road by 8am, continuing the drive West.

Route 66 Truck Stop

Having spent the last 6 or so days in Louisiana and southern Texas, we had become very accustomed to being surrounded by lush greenery – either the swamps of LA or the Texas hillcountry – but as we went further and further west, we began once again to see the table-like shapes of mesas rising out of the desert – in many cases capped with hundreds of wind turbines, spinning in the hot southerly breeze. Turning south off the I-10, we passed through numerous ranches, and the temperature continued to climb… Eventually arriving in Big Bend National Park, we were thrilled to hear that one of the campgrounds had 5 spaces left – which would be allocated on a first-come first-served basis. This campground was over 60 miles from the park entrance, so without further ado, and with a few butterflies in our stomachs, we decided to take the risk and drive through the park in the hope that one of those sites would be still available. Soon into the drive we realised that it didn’t really matter if there were no sites – the scenery made the drive worthwhile as an end in itself. We soon found ourselves winding over switchbacks and being dwarfed by towering mountains on all sides, with turkey buzzards circling overhead as though waiting for us to become stranded easy pickings for them!

Our nervousness and spur-of-the-moment decision making paid off in the end, as we rolled into the Cottonwood campground to find a beautiful shady site available… It was quite a relief to know we had a place to stay, but was also a nice validation of our no-planning approach to the trip (which as many of you will know is very far from our comfort zone!). To cool off we headed down to the Rio Grande, and had a lovely swim in the cool waters, looking across to Mexico on the far side of the river. Refreshed and very relaxed, we headed back to the campsite and chatted with other campers, watched the gentle Javelinas (massive guinea pig-like animals) graze around the tents, and listened to the woodpeckers (and myriad of other birds) go about their evening business. We went to sleep with the amazing star-lit sky in our eyes, reflecting on how lovely it was to be back in the bush…

Swimming in the Rio Grande River, Big Bend National Park

Javelina, Big Bend National Park

Friday March 15^th, Big Bend National Park

Waking up Friday morning Alick had been hit by a bit of a cold, so we took it a little easy and didn’t get going as early as planned. Making it out of the campsite at around 10am we drove the 30-odd miles from Cottonwood campground up to the main Chisos Basin visitor centre, from where we planned to do the South Rim hike (around 20km). After buying a map and checking out the suggested route with a ranger, we set off into the rapidly warming day… As we joined the trail we were given some pause for thought as we passed big signs warning that both mountain lions and bears had been sighted in the area, and that hikers should take care… Of course they also gave information on what to do if we found ourselves face to face with either animal – don’t run, don’t lie down, make yourself look large – these seemed OK; it was the “don’t look scared” advice that we were most worried we wouldn’t be able to follow!! Needless to say we didn’t need to worry, as for the next six hours we found ourselves walking through beautiful mountainous terrain hardly meeting any other hikers, let alone bears or mountain lions…

Big Bend National Park

It was a stunning hike, once again reminding us of the incredible beauty of the US, and certainly stretching our expectation of what Texas would be like. As we hiked up through the valley the flora around us changed with the altitude, and then changed again as we crossed over the ridgeline – making so clear the impact that the sun has on vegetation in such dry parts of the world. The views from the top of the South Rim were simply breathtaking – looking down over the Rio Grande and across to Mexico was incredible.

Big Bend National Park

After finishing the hike we once again made the beautiful drive down to the river, and had a lovely refreshing dip before going back to the campground, having an early dinner and heading to bed….

Saturday March 16^th, Big Bend to El Paso

We set off from our campsite mid-morning and with minimal fuel in the tank decided to take a ‘shortcut’ along an unpaved road to get to the exit on the north-western edge of Big Bend, which would take us to a town called Terlingua – famous for having a sister ghost town a few miles down the road. Again going off the beaten track was highly rewarding, with us enjoying a beautiful drive but also an interesting stop at a long, low house that an old man and his family of 14 children had lived in in the desert until he was 106. It was incredible what respite from the heat of the day we found on stepping into the low, wattle and daub structure – the effectiveness of good design before air-conditioning!

We made it to the gas station in Terlingua, and then set off to explore the ‘ghost town’…which didn’t prove to be so ghostly, but had a great little coffee shop that made delicious breakfast burritos, iced coffee and had free wi-fi! It was a lovely opportunity for us to stop, recharge and quickly jump online and check out what our next stop would be…

Cemetery, Terlingua Ghost Town, Texas

One of the things that we had been trying to do on this trip was to go to a few places that we had never heard much about, but which sounded intriguing (or at least looked it on a map!). For this reason we were both quite keen to check out the Texan bordertown of El Paso. So after getting our fill of burritos and jumping online, we hit the road West, taking the scenic State Route 170 along the Mexico border to the town of Marfa. If anyone reading this blog is planning a route West from Big Bend, and are thinking about taking the 170, we can firmly say DO IT! The drive was one of the most memorable that we have done on this trip. A times perched seemingly on the edge of a mountain, the road twists, turns, humps and dips its way along the Rio Grande, with so many amazing vistas and views that it is impossible to describe. Arriving in Marfa is also a fascinating experience, the town holding a slightly strange identity as essentially a ranching town, but dotted with small art galleries after a group of New York artists decided to establish an artists community there during the 1970s. Indeed, around 30 miles out of Marfa as we passed through the tiny town of Valentine (population 271), which with its dilapidated houses and tumbleweed-strewn streets certainly looked to have had better days, we were surprised to see what appeared to be the Marfa outlet of Prada just on the outskirts of the town! It turns out that some artists from Marfa had built the faux-store (it contains pieces from a mid-2000s collection of Prada) as a comment on consumerism; the ‘store’ will never open, and serves as a luxurious juxtaposition to the harsh country and hard lives lived by those ranching in the fields around Valentine.

After an uneventful drive north we eventually met Interstate 10, which was to be our main route west almost all the way to Los Angeles from that point on. Eventually rolling into El Paso at around sunset, we made our way to the #1 Urbanspoon recommended eatery, Crave on Cincinnatti St. Indeed it was very good and after a michelada and some ceviche, we left tightly clutching a recommendation from the bartender of another good place in town and headed off into town… Unfortunately that was when we discovered that El Paso essentially only seems to have one decent restaurant, and we had already found it… We rolled up to the recommendation to find it was a cavernous Mexican chain restaurant, with no atmosphere and even less attraction to us. We promptly moved on and found a small shack in a car park where we got some decent tacos, before heading back to the Cincinatti St area, finding a place to park the car, and heading into a little bar for a margarita… Before long we headed back to the car (which we had surreptitiously parked on a residential street) and bedded down for another night of hoping not to be woken by local police wondering what we were doing sleeping in our car….

Sunday March 17^th - Wednesday March 20th El Paso to Tucson, Arizona

Waking early in the morning in the streets of El Paso, we decided to move the car straight away to avoid residents noticing our car and headed to McDonalds to spend the morning on some long overdue online catch-ups before grabbing some lunch at a much-talked about local café (L&J’s) and jumping on the road towards Arizona. As we again found ourselves in dire need of a shower, we decided it was more than time to stay in a real bed that evening so called ahead to make a booking at the Road Runner Hostel in Tucson.

Soon after leaving El Paso (and passing through yet another US Border Protection checkpoint) we found ourselves driving through scrubby tundra and desert. The wind was picking up significantly, blowing Jemima around quite a lot – making overtakes of trucks quite a challenge! Around 50 miles out of El Paso a sign by the side of the road with flashing yellow lights warned us to tune in to the radio for updates on road hazards and dust storms… It was a worthy warning. The further west we drove, the wind became stronger and stronger, picking up lots of dust with it. We soon noticed cars all around us with their lights on, trucks flashing their hazard warning lights, and the speed slowing significantly. Warning signs on the side of the road advised drivers to exercise caution, and the voice on the radio continued to warn us that visibility may drop to ‘zero’; and to under no circumstances stop in the driving lanes… We soldiered on, driving as gently as possible (many of the trucks didn’t seem so slow down, making it quite scary as they kept overtaking us!) and after a few hours emerged out of the desert, into clear air and mountains to the north… Needless to say we breathed a big sigh of relief and kept on driving into Arizona…

Arriving in Tucson after the dusty drive was a welcome relief and we found the city to be absolutely beautiful. The hostel staff at the Road Runner were really friendly and we quickly settled in, showered and wandered up the road to a pizza (and craft beer) restaurant for dinner. After a good night sleep we woke early and stretched out our post hiking pains at a local yoga class, before spending the arvo wandering around the Sonora Desert Museum (really more of a zoo) amongst the incredible backdrop of the Saguaro cacti on the desert landscape. A particular highlight of the desert museum was a raptor free-flight session where we were able to see a Barn Owl and a Peregrine Falcon show their agile hunting styles, followed by a group of Harris Hawks which had learned to hunt as a pack – typical of Harris Hawks in this area, but unlike almost all other raptors around the world. Other highlights of the museum were the rattle snakes, coyotes, humming birds and the otter!

Mountain Lion, Sonora Desert Museum

Barn Owl, Sonora Desert Museum

Lizard, Sonora Desert Museum

Desert Landscape surrounding Tucson

Heading out for dinner that evening, we found the Tucson streets to be slightly sleepy on a Monday evening – though we were able to find some delicious mussels and cocktails alongside lots of recommendations of some new restaurants that have opened up in the city – that we discovered are open every night except Monday!

After checking out of the Road Runner hostel on the Tuesday morning and hitting the road with full intentions of heading towards California, we got somewhat distracted by a local brewery – Thunder Canyon – and, after Alick got talking to the manager, we soon had an appointment to meet with the head brewer at their main brewery just of town. Kyle, the head brewer, was incredibly generous with his time and in addition to showing us around the brewery, shared his background and story on how he came to be in the industry. Next thing we knew it was 5pm and, realising we hadn’t been remotely successful in our efforts to leave Tucson that day, headed back to the Road Runner hostel to see if we could re-check in! (All private rooms were booked but we managed to get a couple of dorm room beds). The staff at the hostel thought we were absolutely crazy but were most amused.

That night we treated ourselves to an amazing dinner at ‘Penca’ – one of the restaurants that had been recommended to us the previous evening – and were once again blown away by the awesome food and wine scene in Tucson. So delicious!

Wednesday March 20^th & Thursday March 21^st – Joshua Tree National Park

We proved to be much more successful in our attempt to leave Tucson on the Thursday morning – making an early exit from the Road Runner hostel (leaving as the staff were calling out ‘see you again this afternoon!’ after us), crossing the California state border and working our way to Joshua Tree National Park…

Our drive to Joshua Tree national park was overall uneventful; taking a route that avoided the Phoenix traffic took us through some great countryside, before we found ourselves crossing the Colorado River, and the border into California… Mountains soon began to appear on either side, as we whizzed along the interstate on the southern border of Joshua Tree National Park. On arrival in Joshua Tree we were lucky to find a campsite at the Cottonwood Springs campsite, and decided to spend the afternoon hiking up to Mastodon Peak. We inadvertently ended up taking a longer loop walk than we had originally planned – which turned out to be beautiful and well worth the extra mile or so! While there are no Joshua Trees in that southern part of the park, the many cacti and other desert shrubs continued to impress us with their beauty (and their resilience against the harsh, dry conditions!). Returning to the campsite that night Alick set up the BBQ and grilled a Bison steak that we had bought the day before in Tucson – a delicious way to end our first day in California…

Alick's delicious camp cooking - Bison steak, Joshua Tree National Park

Enjoying dinner, Joshua Tree National Park

The next morning we woke early and set off on the 11.6km hike down to the Lost Palms Oasis. As we passed other hikers on the trail, we soon realised that we were in a National Park much nearer to a major city than other National Parks we’d visiting on the trip– and a major Californian city at that! While we were kitted out in our usual hiking gear (complete with poles, hydration packs, boots and long pants) we met other ‘hikers’ in short shorts, singlets, bright running shoes and sporting an overall designer look! Despite this we were once again lucky to have the trail pretty much to ourselves, with our only company the ubiquitous birds of prey, lizards and cacti….

Joshua Tree National Park

Following our morning hike we packed up the van and drove north, crossing everything that we would find another site in one of the campsites in the northern area of the park. We had met a lovely family early in the morning (who had incidentally spent lots of time in Australia and actually named one of their daughters Sydney!), who had warned us that given it was Californian Spring Break, there were not many sites available – but also gave some great recommendations on which campsites to try first. Driving north into the park we soon found ourselves surrounded by the famous Joshua Trees – technically overgrown yuccas, and now deeply reminiscent of Dr Seuss books! We learned that the Joshua Trees had for many years been classified as a giant member of the Lily family, but had recently been reclassified into the Agave family, after the Lily family had been split into 40 different plant families due to its size. The Joshua Trees were reputedly named by Mormon pioneers, who thought the arms of the trees were representative of the outstretched arms of the biblical figure of Joshua, guiding them on their journey westward.

Joshua Tree National Park

Again we put our faith in our good fortune and made our way to the Ryan campground, first on our new friends’ list. On arrival we realised that there were only 20-odd sites in the whole campground, and pretty much all were occupied… We found one which had a tent pitched in it, but no booking chit indicating it was booked for that night. Taking a bit of a punt, we went ahead and booked the site, thinking that it was likely that the owner of the tent may have left it up for the day to dry out and was returning to pack it up and leave later in the day… Of course there was always the risk that this wasn’t the case, and that we had muscled in on someone else’s campsite, but we decided to cross that bridge when we came to it…

With our accommodation for the night sorted (albeit a little precariously!) we set off for an afternoon hike on the Lost Horse Mine trail. Setting off in the peak heat of the day, it felt a times as though we were walking into a furnace – the sense of which was heightened further by the fact that we were soon surrounded by blackened stumps of Joshua Trees and scorched hillsides all around. Walking through this harsh landscape, passing deserted mine sites and the remains of miners cottages, we found ourselves reflecting on how tough life must have been for the fortune-seekers who came to the Californian desert searching newfound wealth…

As we drove back to Ryan campground, having been a little apprehensive in case we found ourselves in a confrontation over the site on our walk, we both started to feel positive that everything would work out fine. We’d been so lucky to have been met with nothing but hospitality and smiles on our whole trip, it felt really unlikely that we would find ourselves in strife on our final night… Indeed our gut feeling was right. We returned to find the owner of the tent still there (it appeared there had been a mistake made by the rangers who had removed his chit from the booking pole), but also very open to sharing the site with us. It was very typical of our whole trip that what could have been a slightly tense and potentially uncomfortable situation turned out to be an enriching and thoroughly enjoyable experience. The owner of the tent was a man in his late 40s who, having been working at a bank for the past 15 years, had decided to take a ‘pre-retirement’ year off, and travel around the USA by road – being joined at various points by his sixteen-year-old son. His aim was to visit every National Park in the country by the end of his year off, before returning to South Carolina and following his dream to become a paramedic. We found our conversation with John, and hearing his stories about life and his adventures so far, truly inspiring and exciting. It really cemented our conviction that as we move through life, we want to do everything we can to continue to travel, meet new people, and share new experiences. If you want to read more about John’s adventures, he is writing his ‘Out Of Office 2013’ blog, which you can read here:

http://www.2013ooo.blogspot.com.au/

Friday March 22^rd –Sunday March 24^th: Joshua Tree National Park – Aliso Viejo, California

On Friday morning, we were packing up our little van one last time, and were approached by yet another curious fellow-camper attracted by the bright colours and lurid decals… After chatting with him for a few minutes it turned out that he was a musician, who had come to Joshua Tree for some inspiration (describing it as ‘one of the most beautiful places - in fact probably the most beautiful place in the world’!). He has a band called The Co-Op, and gave us one of his CDs (called Winter Sun), which has been on high rotation ever since…

After one last hike in Joshua Tree National Park on Friday morning to see the stunning views from the top of Ryan Mountain, we made our way towards the coast, via a quick stop off in the Desert Hot Springs to account for our lack of showers during the previous three days! The Desert Hot Springs proved to be quite a bizarre experience as the springs were located inside a big hotel where we had to work our way around dozens of highly primped, leathery bodies who appeared to have taken up permanent poolside residency, in order to get ourselves immersed in the lovely warm pools. It was late afternoon when we eventually arrived in Aliso Viejo - a cute new suburb on the outskirts of Laguna Beach and home to Tess’ extended family Aly and Christine MacGregor and their adorable 2-year-old Abbie – who greated us with a warm smile and immediate demonstration of the functions of various objects in her toy box. Abbie quickly grasped some concept of the extended family relationship (referring to Tess and ‘Uncle Jo-Jo’s sister’ and Alick as ‘that man’) and we commenced a delightful few days exploring Aliso Viejo and the surrounding areas with the MacGregor family – including delicious home-cooked tacos, sampling local craft brews, experiencing the different cultures between Huntington, Newport, and Laguna beaches, receiving some much-needed clothes shopping advice and assistance from Christine, getting our first tastes of both buffalo wings and Peruvian cuisine and being introduced to the game of Mexican dominoes (a highly competitive contest with the MacGregor household).

Alick and Abbie

Our arrival in Aliso Viejo also meant it was time to return our trusty campervan Jemima to the Jucy rental office – a slightly sad farewell after all the fun and adventures she’d led us on across the South West of the country over the previous month!

Huntington Beach, Los Angeles

The beautiful MacGregor family, Aliso Viejo

Before we really had a moment to process what was happening we were in LA airport boarding our plane to Australia and a strange sensation came over both of us that we had blinked when boarding a Doha-bound plane in Melbourne last Melbourne and all the moments since had flown by in an instant. We seriously couldn’t believe our time had gone so fast (though thankfully had arranged to fly straight to Byron Bay to give ourselves ten days in the sun, surf and Blues and Roots festival to adjust to the shock that our trip was offer and start to process and reflect on some of the amazing adventures we’d had).

USA Road Trip - The Second Week: Taos, New Mexico to Lafayette, Louisiana

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 04:11:00 +0000

The second week of our unplanned USA road trip was one filled with much celebration – starting off with spoiling ourselves on our first wedding anniversary in Santa Fe and ending with us being invited along to a surprise birthday party in Lafayette, Louisiana and meeting lots of new friends along the way! The week also saw us enjoy some quality time with extended family in Texas and test our road trip limits during our first overnight stop in a roadside truck stop. On reflection (given that we’re slightly behind with our blog posts and are actually writing this from Byron Bay!), this second week was the point where we realised that we really could achieve what we set out to do on this road trip – have a brilliant time travelling across the country without advance planning and making the most of all opportunities and challenges that came our way!

Sunday March 3: Taos – Santa Fe, New Mexico

We awoke in Taos on the morning of our first wedding anniversary and headed straight back to the Rio Grande bridge to enjoy breakfast and a walk while overlooking the last moments of sunrise over the canyon. It was a lovely moment to reflect on the achievements and adventures of our first year of marriage, and share our excitement for the years yet to come.

The sun rises on our first anniversary overlooking the Rio Grande Bridge, Taos NM

We spent the morning driving the ‘Enchanted Circle’ scenic loop to the north of Taos, continuing to be blown away be the exquisite scenery at each turn – from abandoned mining shacks to huge snowy alpine desert tundra, to towering rock formations...

Farmhouses in the shadows of the mountains, Enchanted Circle, Taos NM

Jemima and towering rock formations on the Enchanted Circle, Taos NM

Santuario de Chimayo, High Road to Taos, NM

In the early afternoon we made our way down the ‘High Road’ from Taos to Santa Fe, with a stop at the Santuario de Chimayo, where the earth is reputed to have spiritual healing powers). Alick had booked us into an adorable bed and breakfast, where we had an opportunity to have long hot showers and get properly dressed up (each of us wearing our one ‘good outfit’) for the first time since starting the road trip. Alick had sneakily made both a pre-dinner drinks and dinner reservation in town – the first being at a bar called La Casa Sena which had a grand piano in the corner with a range of solo singers (who also happened to be the wait staff) taking it in turns to sing Broadway numbers. Just perfect! Dinner was at La Boca – a cosy Tapas bar which was featuring a range of special dishes as part of Santa Fe’s restaurant week, where the staff surprised us with glasses of sparkling for the occasion. While all the food was delicious, the somewhat surprising highlight was a flat iron steak with salted caramel sauce… Delicious! (Little did we know that salted caramel was also to feature as a highlight later in our trip – more on that in our week three post though!) All in all, the day was such a lovely celebration of an amazing first year of marriage...

Monday March 4: Santa Fe – Tucumcari, New Mexico

Following a delicious blueberry waffle, bacon and maple syrup breakfast feast at our bed and breakfast, we set off for a day exploring Santa Fe. Following on from our fun night out the previous evening, Santa Fe pulled out all stops for us and it was incredibly easy to fall in love with the beautiful, laid back atmosphere of the city and its residents as we wanted between market stalls, street side food trucks, shops, restaurants and breweries. As late afternoon rolled around we reluctantly hit the road again, with a view to edging a hundred miles or so east to reduce our travel time to Dallas the following day, in order to arrive at Alick’s cousin Ally’s place at a reasonable hour the next day. Driving fatigue started to kick in as we approached a town called Tucumcari just west of the New Mexico/Texas state line, where we stumbled upon a very lively ‘Flying J’ truck-stop (a unique cultural experience in itself!) where we pulled into the parking lot, set up the mattress and tucked in for what we thought would be a very noisy and disruptive night’s sleep, but actually resulted in us both sleeping incredibly soundly! We before our departure we saw some weird and wonderful things pulling through the truck-stop – including a car towing an aeroplane on a trailer!!

Our first USA truck stop experience - Tucumcari, New Mexico

Some of our company for our overnight stop in the Flying J....

Tuesday March 5 – March 6: Flower Mound, Texas

After an early departure from the Flying J truck stop, a fairly uneventful drive into Texas and a very random lunch stop in a town called Henrietta, Texas (where the locals were so surprised to see tourists from Australia they loaded us up with souvenir calendars from the local burger joint and gave us a free serve of fries with our burgers!), we made our way to Ally and Luke’s place in Flower Mound (just outside of Dallas).

Fun times with the Stokes Family!

Finley and Rafe

It was great fun to catch up with them all and Ally and Luke’s boys Finley and Rafe had grown so much in the nearly 4 years since we last saw them. The two days and evening we spent with the Stokes family was a really special opportunity to catch up on their news, see their life in Texas and enjoy spending time with them and with their beautiful yellow lab Bill in their home. Our time with the Stokes’ was spent being introduced to geo-caching, visiting a delicious Texan lunch spot, organising garden beds in their community garden, making s’mores on a backyard campfire, satiating our cravings for delicious home cooking, sampling local craft brews and generally hanging out. Tuesday evening was climbing night for Ally, Finley and Rafe so we also joined them at the local climbing gym (where the three of them put us to shame with their climbing skills – and our complete lack thereof!). A lovely couple of days with family whom due to the tyranny of distance we don’t see often enough…

Our first geo-caching experience, Flower Mound, Texas

Thursday March 7, 2013. Flower Mound TX to St Francisville, LA

Leaving Ally and Luke’s mid-morning we made our way (not altogether without incident) through the labyrinthine freeways of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and onto the highways south-east toward Louisiana…

Leaving the Dallas area it was striking how quickly the scenery changed from scrubby desert to greener, wooded countryside as we approached the TX-LA border. We saw fewer and fewer buzzards circling, and instead started to notice herons, smaller marsh harriers and kites wheeling overhead. A couple of hundred k’s after crossing into Louisiana, and turning south off the Interstate freeway at Alexandria, we decided to follow the smaller roads for the remaining few hundred k’s through Louisiana towns such as Marksville and Effie, en route to St Francisville. As the sun sunk in the sky and the shadows grew longer, we really started to get the feeling that we were in the south. Suddenly we found the road on an elevated causeway, with low swampland on either side, and ramshackle cottages dotted between weatherboard mansions ringed with wide verandahs. Even the air changed, becoming denser and warmer, and taking on a slightly musty-muddy smell… Such a great change from the cold, crisp dry air of northern Arizona where we were only a week ago!

It was fascinating to drive through the farmland; going past the many disused and derelict houses, overgrown farmyards and abandoned cars we found ourselves reflecting on the history of this particular part of the south. Characterised by loss, resistance and displacement, we traced the human history of the area through the colonisation of the Native Indian people, to the Acadian diaspora re-located from Canada (from whom the Cajun identity arose), to the arrival of slaves – and their liberation following the Civil War – and great changes in fortune experienced by the plantation owners in the years that followed. The complexity and depth of historical experience that has shaped this region of the USA is so visceral, and continues to influence the identity of the people who live here, to this very day… (Unfortunately we were both a little too weary to get many photos of this - but the images are certainly in our heads!)

We experienced this first-hand on our arrival in St Francisville, when we went to the Magnolia Café for some much-needed sustenance after the long drive. Perching up at the bar eating grilled pork chops and steak, we had the most fascinating conversations with a whole raft of locals, all of whom were regulars at the bar. From workers at the local nuclear power plant for whom the battles of the Civil War seem to still hold much relevance, a retired and ailing tow-truck driver and his real-estate magazine owner friend, to a lobbyist for American citizens over the age of 50 whose daughter-in-law was an senior advisor for the democrats during Hurricane Katrina, we learned so much about the experience of living in Louisiana, and certainly have got a great feel for the timbre of the region. Feeling very full (and very lucky to have had such amazing conversations), we set up camp in the car park of the café, and crossed our fingers that the local sheriff wouldn’t disturb us during the night….

Friday March 8, 2013. St Francisville, LA to New Orleans, LA

Well the good news is that we didn’t have a visit from the Sheriff during the night in St Francisville! We’d been thinking about what to do with our day around St Francisville and had noticed the day before that there was a wildlife reserve just out of town called Cat Island, where we drove out to have breakfast. It was our first taste of the famous Louisiana swamps, and gave us a great opportunity to develop an appreciation for their unique charm and beauty (as well as their unique smell!!). We saw many beautiful birds (egrets, cardinals, kites) as we drove out, and while we ate breakfast, but didn’t see any Louisiana Black Bears (not sure if we were sad or relieved about that!!). We did find it interesting that we were in a nature conservancy area that allowed hunting (with permits) and were pleased that during our time there we didn’t hear any rifle shots close to hand!

Historic House on Royal Street, St Francisville LA

We spent the rest of the day driving around the many historic sites and plantations from the Indigo, Cane and Cotton boom-times in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It was a fascinating experience, highlighting again the way in which histories can be told and retold in many different ways when recounted through different lenses. Having visited a couple of plantations and looked through the St Francisville Museum, we were feeling a little like we were only getting one side of the story; that of the plantation owners, and their descendents. We’d been brought a little into the world of the slaves by the (very good) guide at the Myrtles plantation, as he told the horrific story of slave girl Chloe, who it is believed still haunts the plantation to this day, but still felt that we wanted to hear a little more from the slaves perspective…

After walking around the stunning grounds of the Myrtles Plantation, we drove down to Donaldsonville, where we found the River Road African American Museum. We were lucky enough to meet the founder of the museum, Kathe, and had an absolutely fascinating tour from her around the various exhibits. We were both really moved by the experience, which told the stories of the millions of men, women and children who were forcibly removed from West Africa and transported to Louisiana (and surrounding states) from the early 1600s through the mid 1800s (and the American Civil War). The museum is very well curated and captures in a very powerful way the experience of slaves being ‘owned’ and traded amongst plantation masters. It was a fascinating visit, and we both felt that we had gained a much more holistic sense of the history of loss, belonging, trauma and pride that characterises the area.

House in Donaldsonville, LA

From Donaldsonville we drove on down the road toward New Orleans. Again we took the scenic route, which while taking longer also enabled us to avoid much of the Friday afternoon NOLA traffic! Arriving at the accommodation we had booked through AirBnB we were greeted by our friendly host Will, who proceeded to give us fantastic tips on where to go to eat, drink, listen to music, and everything in between! We headed out to the French Quarter, starting on Frenchmen street with some Bluegrass at the Spotted Cat Café, before moving on to Apple Barrel for a one-man blues guitar show… Awesome! Our third bar looked like a bit of a seedy nightclub (neon lights and the whole works) but we were lured in by the sounds of a big horn band, who proved to be very entertaining, and we spent the next hour jiving to their big sound and entertaining lyrics… We then decided it was time to sample a Sazeraq, the famous NOLA cocktail, and headed to Bar Tonique on the northern fringe of the French Quarter. Having accidentally found ourselves on the famous Bourbon St en route, we were relieved to find Bar Tonique to be a nice haven from the madness a few blocks south!

We eventually made it back to our place (a classic New Orleans ‘half-shotgun’ house) in St Roch at around 3am, having had a couple of drinks on Bourbon St and feasted on food-truck fare on the way home, and fell into bed, very satisfied that we had given the NOLA nightlife a good go!

Saturday March 9, NOLA to Lafeyette, LA & Sunday March 10, Lafeyette

After a somewhat slow moving morning after our late night, we wandered down to the highly recommended restaurant ‘Elizabeth’s’ for a recovery breakfast (where Tess enjoyed one of the best meals of the entire USA leg – fried green tomatoes – and Alick worked his way through a classic hearty NOLA breakfast of smothered steak and grits). From there we headed down to the ninth ward where Andy and Will – our hosts from the previous evening – had suggested we go to make sure we had an understanding of a different side of New Orleans – the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Katrina (Andy and Will had both come to NOLA as volunteers post-Katrina and have lived there ever since). Visiting the ninth ward was one of the most confronting aspects of this leg of our trip – with entire streets completely decimated and completely untouched in the 8 years that have passed since the devastation. In some cases, handwritten signs had been posted to indicate street names and house numbers in the absence of anything remaining on these streets. At one end of the ward, there were a series of new developments built, as part of Brad Pitt’s ‘Make it Right’ project. Given the strong emphasis that was prominent in the French Quarter about NOLA’s recovery from Katrina, the complete contrast of the ninth ward had a very strong impact on us both.

House in ninth ward, NOLA

House plot, ninth ward, NOLA

Abandoned house, ninth ward, NOLA

House plot, ninth ward, NOLA

Makeshift street signs with Make it Right project houses in background, ninth ward, NOLA

After seeing the ninth ward, we found ourselves somewhat conflicted about heading back into the French Quarter and, remembering the recommendation we’d received from Thomas, the fellow traveller we met in Albuquerque, decided to make our way to Lafayette instead to check out music at the Blue Moon Saloon. The drive across to Lafayette was another experience to remember. On leaving the immediate environs of New Orleans, we soon found ourselves driving across a dual carriageway built on a causeway suspended over swampland below. This in itself wasn’t particularly striking, as we had experienced a number of bridges similar to this on our way into NOLA; what was amazing was the length of this causeway. We must have been driving over the swamp for 40 or 50 miles, pretty much dead straight. We certainly started to understand why the swampland of Louisiana is such a pervasive theme throughout the local music, art, food and other culture…

Swampland home, LA

We made it to Lafayette by 4pm but arrived at the Blue Moon Saloon to a sign stating the venue was closed for a private function – so disappointing! However, the sign didn’t state whether the private function was just for the day or extended into the evening so we decided to temporarily ignore the sign and walk on in… We started chatting with two women who were sitting on the verandah, who turned out to be sisters – Bubbles and Judy – and explained they had the venue booked for the entire evening as a birthday party for Bubbles’ daughter Dawn and her partner Brandon. After a great conversation with Bubbles and Judy about where we were from and our travels, they insisted that we mustn’t leave, and had to come along to the party!!! We couldn’t quite believe their generosity, and agreed to find somewhere to go and change and come back for the party later on.

No sooner had we found a park around the corner outside a deli (where we planned to spend the night in the back of Jemima) were we approached by a young family asking about our travels in Louisiana (with the brightness of our car again being a great conversation starter). On hearing we had just arrived in town, they recommended we followed them into town to an event called ‘Art Walk’, which was a monthly event that involved the galleries across town opening late into the night, with free admission to view local art works and listen to local musical talent. We took up the suggestion and walked into town, checking out some great contemporary art – even including a short preview of a new musical called ‘In His Grace’. With free champagne flowing, we spent a couple of hours at ArtWalk getting a sense of the musical and artistic vibe of the city and mingling with the locals before making our way back to the party at Blue Moon Saloon.

From that point on, the remainder of the evening was a blur of people filled with pure warmth, friendliness and genuine hospitality and who really know how to party!!!! We were so touched by how everyone welcomed us with open arms and were so happy for us to completely gate crash the party.

The moment we walked in we had full bowls of gumbo placed into our hands (so delicious!) and were introduced to the entire extended family. There were two bands playing during the party – ‘The Mike Dean Band’ from Lafayette and ‘T-Bird and the Breaks’ from Austin, Texas – both of whom were just brilliant and really got the whole party dancing. After making quick friends with two women named Melissa and Blyss – whose husbands, Buck and Mike, were playing in the Mike Dean Band – Melissa invited us to come and stay at their place in Cow Island the following evening – a generous offer we happily accepted.

Tess with Melissa and Blyss

The women who insisted we gate-crash the party - Bubbles (Kathryn) and Judy

At one point during the party, we were asked where we were staying that night and, on mentioning that we had a mattress in our car, there was a flurry of action to arrange us alternate accommodation. In the end we had two offers made – one from Dawn (the host who had arranged the surprise party for her partner Brandon and booked out the entire house) found us a bed in the Blue Moon Saloon, while Judy (who initially invited us to the party) insisted that her daughter Chanda and husband Mike had plenty of room in their guest house… On their invitation (and on the recommendation of their daughter Kayla who told us with much excitement that the house was ‘amazing’) we followed our gut instinct that they were good people, took them up on their offer.

There is little that we can put in writing to describe how amazing Chanda and Mike’s place was – from the guest house that is as nice than any hotel room we’ve ever stayed in, the amazing pool (complete with swim-in bar), the full size home gym or electric fireplace within the walk-in robes – it was absolutely as Kayla said – amazing! Above all, however, Chanda, Mike and Kayla were such kind, genuine people and we ended up sitting around the pool with them, drinking whiskey and wine and talking about life until we suddenly realised it was 5am and we should probably get some sleep!

Room with a view at Mike and Chanda's

After a slightly slow start the next morning, Mike and Chanda took us out to Don’s Seafood Shack – a restaurant owned and managed by Chanda's first cousins the Landry family (Dawn, whose party we had crashed the night before is the manager and part-owner with her brother) - to sample some more of Louisiana’s incredible food – starting off with BBQ oysters before a massive crawfish, shrimp and crab feast. We don’t think we’ve ever seen so much food in our life and when we got to the point where we couldn’t fit in another bite, Kayla (who was working in the restaurant that morning) set about filling up our car fridge to get us through the next few days on the road.

At Don's Seafood Shack with Kayla, Chanda and Mike

BBQ Oysters for breakfast - delicious!

After farewelling Mike, Chanda and Kayla with hopes to someday see them again either in Lafayette or Australia, we set off to have a look at Avery Island – where we got our first glimpse of some small alligators and the site of the Tabasco Sauce factory (which was unfortunately closed by the time we arrived). After a relaxing arvo in the Avery Island gardens, we then worked our way across to Cow Island to take up Melissa and Buck’s kind offer of having us to stay the night their place.

Alligator, Avery Island LA

Blyss and Mike had also come over for the evening, as had another couple named Kelly and Troy – so with all of us it was quite a gathering. Melissa and Buck’s house sits alongside Buck’s grandparents crawfish ponds and Melissa had cooked up a delicious crawfish ettouffé for us – yum! Melissa and Buck’s two young sons Cody and Gabe were a delight to be around and so polite (it was quite an adjustment for us to get used to being called ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’!) and Cody, being a massive Steve Irwin fan, was so well informed about Australia and shared many tidbits with us about Australian wildlife that we had no idea about! We had a lovely restful sleep in the Verret household that evening (with Cody generously giving us his room for the night) and before we knew it, it was time for more farewells the next morning as we set off in the direction of Austin, Texas.

Hanging out with the Verret's - Buck, Cody and Gabe (shame we didn't get Melissa in the picture too!)

Out of all of our travels in the USA, Lafayette was definitely the hardest place to leave – farewelling our new friends who had so generously opened up their homes and hearts to a couple of random Australians. Above everything else, we left Lafayette knowing that everything said about ‘Southern hospitality’ is completely true. If we ever return to the USA, Lafayette will certainly be at the top of our ‘must return to’ list and we truly hope that some of the new friends we met there make it to Melbourne some day so we can return their hospitality.

USA Road Trip – The First Week: Vegas to Taos, New Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:27:00 +0000

A small introduction to our roadtrip ‘challenge’…

As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, setting ourselves some personal challenges was one of the key goals for us on this trip. Those of you who saw our extensive travel planning, preparation and spreadsheet development in the lead up to our departure from Melbourne will know all too well that our comfort zone sits clearly within the confines of a well documented travel itinerary. So it seemed only fitting that the challenge we should set for ourselves in the final month of travel should be to throw caution to the wind and travel around the United States without a firm plan. To set some parameters around this travel (so we didn’t feel completely out of control!), we allowed ourselves to pre-book a one-way campervan rental to pick up in Las Vegas on February 23 and return to Los Angeles on March 23 – the day before our flight back to Australia. We had also pre-booked a hotel in Vegas and arranged accommodation with extended family in LA to ensure the campervan pick-up and airport departure went smoothly. Apart from that, we had no firm plan or bookings other than a visit to Alick’s cousin Ally and her family outside of Dallas, Texas – which helped us come up with the rough idea to try to make it as far as New Orleans and back...

As our departure from Vegas approached, we realised we had also attracted a few add-on challenges to the trip;

1. Our campervan (named Jucy Jemima) turned out to be the brightest vehicle we’ve ever seen, covered in advertisements for the car hire company – attracting attention and very strange looks everywhere we went. There was no hiding the fact that we are not locals!

2. Our rough dates would see us passing through major touristy areas without accommodation bookings at peak times (ie. US Spring Break week and the Austin South by Southwest Festival).

3. In approaching the end of our trip, our finances had reached the point where we had no option but to stick to our fairly modest budget for this leg of the trip – which didn’t allow for staying in pricy hotels in the event no other accommodation options were available.

So, with the challenge set, after two suitably tacky yet fun days in Vegas, we woke up on Feb 24, grabbed the keys to Jemima and hit the road!

In order to keep these posts at a manageable and readable length, we have decided to post updates about our road trip in installments... So here is the post covering the first week of our trip, which saw us travel from Las Vegas, Nevada, through to Taos, New Mexico - just over 1,000 miles...

Sunday Feb 24^th, 2012. Las Vegas, Nevada to Grand Canyon, Arizona

We rolled out of Vegas around 9am with a plan to camp in the Grand Canyon that evening. We quickly found ourselves needing to reload the map on the iPhone and had to draw on one of the two lifelines we’d been given by fellow travellers – the fact that McDonalds has free wi-fi (the second lifeline being that Walmart carparks offer free overnight parking - which we didn't need at this early stage!). As the trip progressed, we have become experts at accessing McDonalds wi-fi without the need to actually eat McDonalds (ie. one of us would gaze at the menu with painful indecision while the other loaded relevant maps – after which the menu-gazer would decide nothing on the menu was of interest). However, as it took us a few days on the road to master these skills, that first morning saw us loading the Arizona maps while biting into our Sausage and Egg McGriddles.

It was a beautiful, if a little chilly and extremely windy, morning as Jemima cruised along the freeways through the desert. Around 20k’s out of Vegas we began to climb, and continued to do so steadily up through 3,000 and 4,000ft, with the temperature dropping by at least a degree for each 1,000ft that we climbed. The landscape changed from a parched desert (complete with tumbleweed and cacti) with mountains in the background, as we neared the mountains becoming rockier with more substantial shrubs. Soon we were whizzing along with snow on either side of the road, and signs warning that we were entering ‘Elk Country’! We were lucky to see quite a few elk and mule deer ferreting around in the snow.

After stressing we would arrive to find the Grand Canyon campsite completely booked out, we were amazed to find the grounds near empty – a phenomenon that was promptly explained when we found the campsite covered in snow and the temperature at -2 degrees (let’s just say we were relieved to still be carrying our Kilimanjaro climbing gear)... Needless to say after nearly freezing solid while watching the sunset we returned to camp and cooked dinner on our external gas cooker with remarkable speed before bundling ourselves into the car to eat with as many extra layers as possible!

Monday Feb 25^th, 2012. Grand Canyon National Park

After waking to find the inside of the car covered in ice (frozen condensation) and the temperature gauge indicating it was -14 degrees, we were keen to start our hike into the Grand Canyon as soon as possible to ensure we still had blood circulating to all limbs, though made a brief pit-stop to enjoy breakfast at the Hopi lookout point – simply beautiful!

We decided to attempt the 19km Plateau Point walk along the Bright Angel Trail, going down the canyon wall 1000metres in to the canyon wall and, thanks to the recommendation of the visitor centre, went in equipped with ‘yak-traks’ attached to our hiking boots (essentially snow-chains for your shoes), given that the first section of the track was completely covered in snow and sheet-ice. We doubt we would have been able to complete the walk without these.

It was an absolutely stunning hike down. The early morning sun was really painting the canyon the most incredible colours, and every time we looked the scenery had changed, with the rapidly shifting light. We descended steadily for around the first 4 or 5 miles, before passing by the ‘Indian Garden’ campground, and out onto the plateau after which the lookout point we were heading to takes its name. The landscape and vegetation changed rapidly as we moved deeper into the canyon; from small conifers surrounded by snow at the top of the canyon, to huge cottonwood trees at the Indian Garden, and then into a scrubby tundra complete with cacti as we walked out across the plateau…

After reaching Plateau Point and having our lunch perched high on a rock looking down over the Colorado River, we began the long trudge back up the canyon… Needless to say the hike back up was equally as beautiful as coming down, but was a little more strenuous!! We were pleasantly surprised, however, at how we had retained some of the fitness that we must have had four months ago for Kili, as we didn’t find ourselves completely exhausted…

After dinner (and introducing Tess to campfire s’mores!) we set off for a walk back up to the canyon ridge, to see the canyon in the light of the full moon. It was an absolutely beautiful, clear night and on arriving at the ridge we were treated to the most incredible moonlit vista of the canyon yawning beneath us. Simply breathtaking to see – and made even more special by the fact that there was no one else there… How lucky we were to have the opportunity to walk along the ridge of the Grand Canyon on a full moon night, and to have it completely to ourselves….

Tuesday February 26, 2013. Grand Canyon to Canyon de Chelly, Arizona.

After a gentle morning enjoying some final viewings of the Grand Canyon, it was time to hit the road again.

We realised that we needed to make a decision on where to actually go next. The choices were seemingly endless! We eventually made the decision (when presented, quite literally, with a cross-roads) to head pretty much straight east from the Grand Canyon, along Arizona Highway 264 towards a place called Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

Our route took us right into the heart of Navajo country, as well as through the Hopi Reservation, an American Indian nation that sits right in the middle of the Navajo lands. It was an absolutely fascinating drive and very thought provoking. The experience really made us think about the many complexities experienced by first nations people all over the world. We had heard quite a lot about the Indian Reservations from Scilla, Alick’s Mum, who has been lucky enough to form a strong connection with native peoples in North and South Dakota, however this was the first time that either of us had experienced the reservation lands first hand. We both hope that throughout our future travels we will be able to develop a stronger understanding of Native American history, spirituality and continuing sense of community.

We found ourselves a camping spot at ‘Spider Rock’ at Canyon De Chelly (which was again, near empty given the extreme weather conditions) and enjoyed more spectacular sunset viewing. The temperature plummeted as soon as the sun set, and we decided to snuggle up in bed and have an early night (nursing our stiff and sore muscles from yesterday’s hike down into the Grand Canyon!), with the most beautiful array of stars starting to be bleached out by the rising almost-full moon.

Wednesday Feb 27^th. Canyon de Chelly to Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah border.

Wow. The coldest morning wake-up yet! The ice was about 5mm thick on the inside of the windows, and even our water bottle (which was next to the bed) was frozen solid!! Despite the cold, however, we got up and drove out to the Sliding House Overlook at Canyon de Chelly to watch the sunrise – and enjoy breakfast (once we got over the small issue of the water freezing on the bottom of the saucepan while we were trying to make tea!) The changing light on the rock-faces was really stunning, and a great antidote to the freezing cold.

We spent the morning trekking the White House Trail - the only hike within Canyon de Chelly that visitors are allowed to do independently, without a registered Navajo guide. Given that we had limited time and wanted to get up to Monument Valley by that afternoon, we opted not to take a guide for the day and to do this quick hike instead. We really enjoyed getting out in the early morning air and stretching our legs. It was a fairly easy 3 mile hike, going down about 700ft into the canyon along to the ruins of an Anasazi house from around 1200AD. All through Canyon de Chelly are the ruins of dwellings from around that era, all of which are either perched on ledges, or sit directly beneath the towering cliffs around them.

We opted to avoid the major interstates en route to Monument Valley and take some of the smaller roads instead, and were rewarded with the most stunning scenery and pretty much empty roads. On arrival in Monument Valley (a tribal park managed by the Navajo people), we did a small hike around one of the butts – again quite breathtaking! Walking between the giant stone monoliths we found ourselves marvelling at how they had come to be, and thinking about how long they will last into the future. Quite humbling stuff really! The Monument Valley campground was under construction so we camped across the road (which took us into Utah) at a place called Gouldings – named after the farming family credited with getting John Wayne movies filmed in Monument Valley. The campground offered showings of John Wayne movies each night – and we welcomed the opportunity to watch ‘Stagecoach’ indoors both as respite from the cold and to see the area we had just hiked on film. As fairly common with watching movies from that era, the demonization of Native Americans within the film was quite unbelievable, and tinged with significant irony given we were in a Navajo controlled and managed park!

Thursday Feb 28^th. Monument Valley to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

After getting up early to watch the sunrise, we made our way down the highway, out of Arizona and East to New Mexico. By this stage we were both craving a ‘real’ (and warm!) bed, so decided to make our way to Albuquerque and treat ourselves to a hotel. Feeling like different people after nice hotel showers (and with Alick having discovered that Albuquerque was a hub of craft brewing activity), we headed out on the town – wandering between Marble Brewery, tasty food trucks and a micro-bar of a brewery called Chama River – it was at the final place where we came across a fellow traveller called Thomas – who was working his way West from his hometown near Lafayette, Louisianna doing a ‘tour’ of US National Parks. Thomas encouraged us to ensure Lafayette was on our travel itinerary and to go to a live music venue called the Blue Moon Saloon there – this advice turned out to be quite fortuitous later on in our trip...

Friday March 1, 2013. Albuquerque – Taos, New Mexico.

We spent the following morning exploring Albuqurque’s Old Town, including a visit to the Rattlesnake Museum, before making our way north to the beautiful town of Taos, New Mexico – where we very quickly decided to base ourselves in an RV park for the next two nights. We found Taos to be a lovely change from both the secluded parks that we had been in for the previous week, and the big city of Albuquerque where we had spent the previous night… After a quick dinner at a literal hole-in-the-wall taqueria (amazing ceviche!) we were feeling the effects of the late night the previous evening (we can’t quite recover as quickly as we used to!) and headed back to our campsite for an early night…at the grand hour of 7pm!!

Saturday March 2, 2013. Taos, New Mexico

After a great sleep and a slow morning, we made our way gently out across the Rio Grande river once again, to check out the highly recommended ‘Earthships Biotecture’ community, about 20 miles out of Taos itself. This community of homes is designed and built to have minimal environmental impact, and aspires to reach a point where it can operate completely ‘off the grid’. Earthships aim to take the 'off the grid' notion a step further than simply being energy independent, by also building the dwellings oriented to catch the sunlight (more in winter, less in summer) both to heat the house, but also to provide optimal growing conditions for indoor fruit and vegetable plots – which in turn use recycled water from sinks and showers for irrigation. As such, in a perfect Earthship world, a family living in one of the dwellings would not rely on commercially produced food, would be energy independent, and would be efficient enough in their water use (and re-use) to only need what they collected from the roof. Overall we found it a great concept, and are already talking about how we might be able to integrate some of the design features into any future home that we may live in!

On the way to the Earthships we had noticed a small brewery by the side of the road, so on our way back to Taos itself, Alick persuaded Tess that it was a good idea to check it out. It turned out to be a fantastic experience, and the folks at Taos Mesa Brewing proved to be not only really good people, but also very inspirational in how they had managed to bring a long-held dream to fruition. It was great to see their set-up, which they had built from scratch from the ground up, and hear about their plans for the future as well as how they were managing the day to day operations of a fledgling brewery. Above all, the beers were delicious, and on hearing they had a band playing that night we decided to return later in the evening!

A day in Taos would not be complete without a walk in the hills, so after our lunch we headed back through town and went for a short hike up behind the town itself.

We spent the evening sampling more delicious New Mexican fare and headed back to Taos Mesa Brewing to watch the band later that evening. We felt it was particularly fitting that we were spending the eve of our first wedding anniversary ‘back where it all began’ so to speak – in a small, warehouse-like brewery, drinking good beer and enjoying each other’s company. The only thing missing was all of our friends and loved ones!!!

So came to an end the first week of our road trip! We'll try to post another update soon on the subsequent weeks - more photos on the way soon too...

Three weeks of snow

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 15:50:00 +0000

Our decision to spend nearly three weeks of our trip at the Big White Ski Resort was one that we second-guessed many times over prior to arriving. Would there be enough terrain to keep Alick interested over that length of time? What if Tess absolutely hated learning how to ski or snowboard? After moving around so much over the last few months, would we find ourselves completely bored being in one place for so long?

Luckily, our doubts didn’t result in us changing our plans as Big White was a great experience in all aspects.

The Big White resort is set on a truly picturesque mountain, famous for the ‘snow ghosts’ (trees completely covered in snow). Unbeknownst to us when we arrived the resort was originally owned by an Australian family and I think we heard more Australian accents than any others while we were on the mountain. Being a seasonal resort, the majority of staff and visitors were doing one-off trips to Big White, though through Dawn and Keith, we also discovered a lovely local community who had grown up spending winters at Big White. To our delight, a major contributor to the homely, community feel of Big White was how dog-friendly the resort was – with nearly every local we met being accompanied by a dog wearing a season pass!

Big White 'snow ghosts'

In terms of the skiing and boarding…well, suffice to say that it was amazing.

Tess’ confusion over whether to attempt to ski or snowboard was very quickly resolved, after witnessing some very painful snowboard falls in the first few days while in her beginner skiing lessons. It became pretty clear that skiing it was! While making good use of the skiing lessons on the mountain and enjoying many mornings skiing with Deb (thanks for your patience Deb!), Tess’ skiing progress was slow but steady, with only a few hiccups along the way - including accidentally knocking over a little kid, getting somewhat stranded when the mountain experienced a complete white-out and one unfortunate case of getting wrapped around a tree. Thankfully all injury-free for all parties involved! In between all of that though, the enjoyment of skiing certainly kicked in, particularly when Tess found herself finally being able to generate enough speed to not feel like she was holding Alick back... For Tess, this newfound enjoyment of skiing was definitely an unexpected bonus given that the experience of learning how to ski was taken on as a personal challenge rather than an expectant future hobby – and Alick is certainly very happy that Tess seems to be about as addicted to the mountains as he is now!

Tess skiing at Big White's 'Gem Lake'

Alick also took a couple of lessons, which really helped to tweak his technique – as well as meet other people on the mountain (including having the opportunity to go riding for a morning on a powder day with his instructor from the day before – the best way to find all of the chutes through the trees!! Thanks Duncan!!). We both really enjoyed being on the mountain, and particularly toward the end of our time when we were able to ski together a little more. Alick in particular was thrilled to wake on our final morning to a fresh dump of ~10cm across the resort, and clear skies to boot. Having trialled some demo snowboards the day before, and had his stance professionally aligned, Alick was happy to be back on his board and able to cut a little loose for our final morning at Big White – including a run in the Cliff area, which he had been eyeing off for the previous three weeks, but had not ventured in as the conditions or snow hadn’t been ideal.

Alick at Big White's 'Black Forest'

We hired an apartment on the mountain for the duration of our stay and the luxury of having a place where we could completely unpack and cook for ourselves didn’t wear off…so much so that we very quickly developed an evening routine of coming in from the mountain, jumping in the hot tub, cooking dinner, usually being in bed by 8.30 – 9pm so that we could be awake for an early start on the mountain. While it may sound very boring and unsociable, we can’t quite describe how blissful this ‘home life’ was! Of course, as mentioned in our previous post, this was also aided and abetted by us developing a continued obsession with the TV series Homeland, which also kept us indoors on a number of nights!! Now that we have finished Season 2, we’re not sure how we’re going to survive the wait until September for S3!!

We were however lured out of our cosy abode on a few evenings, joining Dawn and Keith or Deb and Nig in their cabins for dinner, spending an evening ‘tubing’ and going night-skiing (with Alick strapping some skis back on for the first time in 15 years).

Our lovely skiing companions - Christine, Deb and Dawn

We were totally blown away by the hospitality and generosity of people at Big White; and in particular our friends Dawn and Keith who went above and beyond anything we ever imagined, and we are so so grateful to them for all of their support and hospitality. We also had a great dinner at the Gunbarrel Grill, complete with the famous ‘Gunbarrel Coffee’ (a coffee laced with cognac and Grand Marnier, set alight during the serving) constructed and served by the maestro Keith himself!

Keith whipping up his 'Gunbarrel Coffees'

After a slightly eventful journey down from the mountain to Kelowna, we had a lovely night with Dawn and Keith before boarding a bus to Vancouver, to stay in the Victorian Hotel – where we had stayed six years before with Tess came to visit while Alick was living in Canada. We had a great couple of nights in Vancouver, characterised by good food (the amazing sushi and a brilliant sandwich shop called Meat and Bread being a couple of notable highlights) and great catch-ups with friends from both near and far…

Once again, our experiences in Canada really tied in with the overall themes of our journey – to provide us with personal and physical challenges, to enable us to reconnect with friends and loved ones, and to provide opportunities to meet new people and have new experiences… We write this post from a plane en route to Las Vegas, where we commence the final leg of our journey. For the next month we will be driving around the southern states of the USA, hoping to journey from Las Vegas to New Orleans, and then back to California in order to catch our flight back to Australia at the end of March. It is a bitter-sweet feeling to be embarking on this final component of our trip; we have had the most amazing and unforgettable experiences, met wonderful people and thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company. As we embark on our road trip, however, we are also now enjoying being able to start thinking and planning in earnest for the next chapter of our lives in Australia, and are very much looking forward to seeing friends, family and loved ones when we return in just over a month’s time!

For now, however, Viva Las Vegas!!!

January

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 05:09:00 +0000

We seem to have fallen slightly behind with this blog – the result of a jam-packed month of January and the fact that we have become completely addicted to the TV series ‘Homeland’, which has taken over quiet moments that would have previously been dedicated to blog writing! We will do our best to catch up now though - we apologise in advance for the length of this post!

January saw us very much on the road again – travelling to Scotland, returning to England, heading over to Ireland, spending a week in New York, flying to Seattle and bus-ing up to Kelowna, Canada.

Throughout January we were so fortunate to continue to connect with many extended family members around the UK and Ireland. It was such a pleasure to have some individual time with family who we generally see during major family events, as well as having the opportunity to really get to know the newer additions to our family networks; the families of Neil and Denis (Tess’ sister’s partners) - the MacGregor’s in Edinburgh and Ryan’s in Cork.

We remember with particular fondness the three days we spent with Granny Mary at both Troon and Dalry, Scotland in early January. After two quite wet days, the rain finally gave way to the sun on the final morning we were there, allowing the three of us to walk along the Troon shoreline having brilliant conversations about life, hopes and dreams. Sadly, some three weeks later when we were in New York, Granny Mary passed from this world and, although it’s very sad to lose such an extraordinary family member, there is definitely some sweetness in farewelling a woman who had lived life to the fullest and was ready to move on. We count ourselves so lucky to have been able to share those early moments of 2013 with Granny Mary.

Alick and Granny Mary in Troon

Scotland

In addition to seeing Granny Mary, we were also lucky enough to have three great days with Luke and Lina (Alick’s Uncle and Aunt), who live in beautiful Ayrshire. We enjoyed long walks through the Blair Estate with their doggies, as well as great food, company and conversation. We are so thankful to Luke and Lina for sharing their space with us and for enabling us to also have some really special time with Granny.

Beach walk in Portencross, Ayrshire

From Dalry we headed south, through Aviemore (where Alick had memories of family ski trips many years ago!) to Inverness, where we were lucky enough to stay with some old family friends of Jo’s husband Neil. Miche and Quintin were amazingly hospitable (particularly given we had only met them once before, at Jo and Neil’s wedding!), and we had a lovely time, with much delicious food, wine and great company. The next morning we went Nessie-spotting around Loch Ness (we didn’t see her, in case you were wondering) and had a beautiful walk through the Scottish countryside.

Loch Ness

Inverness was the ‘gateway to the Highlands’ for us, as we set off to drive over the highest road in Scotland, destination Kerrimuir, where we were to visit James and Annabel at Lednathie, a long-held family estate on Alick’s Mum’s side of the family. It was a very beautiful drive, taking us through some simply stunning countryside. The last couple of hours of the drive were in darkness, winding our way along tiny country lanes, arriving at Lednathie to a warm welcome and yet another delicious meal! We had another lovely taste of Scottish countryside walking through the heather the next day, before setting off south once again, destination Edinburgh…

Lednathie

Our arrival into Edinburgh started with a delightful afternoon tea with Alick’s old family friend Cathie and her daughter Hester, which gave us a lovely opportunity to catch up on all of their news. From there we drove on into Edinburgh and were warmly greeted by Lorna and Robin MacGregor, Tess’ brother-in-law Neil’s parents. Lorna and Robin were amazing guests; as well as giving us free-run of their lovely home, they also helped us map out an itinerary for our time there, were a wealth of info on Edinburgh history, and made sure that we certainly didn’t go hungry! While staying at Lorna and Robin’s, we celebrated Alick’s 31^st (!!!) birthday with a day-trip out to East Lothian, where his mum Scilla grew up, and Granny and Grandpa lived for many years. It was really special to visit so many places that held strong memories for Alick – including a climb up North Berwick Law, a walk along the beach near Scilla’s childhood home, and a visit to Grandpa Jamie’s grave in Dirleton. The day was finished with a delicious dinner in Edinburgh at a restaurant of Lorna and Robin’s recommendation – overall a lovely way to usher in Alick’s 32^nd year! The memories of that day are also particularly poignant now, given Granny Mary’s passing last week; we will cherish the memories for years to come.

At the summit of North Berwick Law on the morning of Alick's 31st birthday!

Bass Rock from North Berwick Law

One of the many picturesque closes on Edinburgh's Royal Mile

After staying a day extra than planned with Lorna and Robin (such good hosts they were!) we once again headed south, farewelling Scotland and making for the small village of Great Tew, in the Cotswolds. On passing through the area earlier on our trip we had found a lovely little pub there called the Falkland Arms, and thanks to Cathie’s wedding gift to us, decided to break the journey between Edinburgh and Norfolk (our next main destination) with a night there. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, complete with a delicious pub dinner and a completely unexpected bottle of French Champagne gifted to us by the pub! We went to bed with tales of the ghosts who live in the building in our ears, but were comforted that one of the famous ghosts is an old dog who used to frequent the pub and now lies in front of the open fire of a night… Needless to say, we slept well and were not bothered by any supernatural visitors!

Falkland Arms, Great Tew

From Great Tew we drove across country to Norfolk, the county of Alick’s birth. We had booked a room in a house in Norwich through Air BnB, which turned out to be a great success, thanks to the hospitality of our host Lucinda. Norwich surprised us both with its youthful vibrancy, interesting food scene and significant history – as well as a brand new craft beer bar which had over 20 different British beers on tap – Alick was in heaven!

Lucinda’s place gave us a great jumping-off point to explore the North Norfolk coast, where Kif and Alick grew up before moving to Australia in 1990. We started the day with an early morning visit to the Old Vicarage at Briningham, where the Weber’s lived in the early mid-late 80’s. The house was much smaller than Alick remembered, but it was lovely to re-visit and great for Tess to hear all about how hard Scilla and Simon worked to renovate the old house. The next stop we made was at Gunthorpe Hall, where Scilla, Simon and Kif were living when Alick was born. Gunthorpe was an old country estate, which had been bought by a couple from London who created a community of people to work on and renovate the property, which was quite derelict at the time. Simon project-managed the renovation of the property in the early 80s, during which time Alick was born! We were thrilled when, on chatting with the gardener, we learned that Jeremy and Marie, the owners of the property when the Webers lived there, still owned and ran Gunthorpe, and in fact were there then! We had a lovely cup of tea with them, and reminisced on the (patchy) memories that Alick had of his childhood there. It was amazingly kind of Jeremy and Marie to open the whole house and gardens up for us to explore, as they prepared for a large party to arrive for the weekend. The remainder of our day in East Anglia involved long walks on the beach, quiet pints in a local pub, and reminiscent drives through many parts of the countryside that hold memories for Alick…

Gunthorpe Hall, Norfolk

Our final stop in England was once again with Bec, Mark, Ava and Florence in Winchester, where we returned the trusty ‘Minty’ (Simon and Rosie’s VW Polo that we had had for the previous month) and once again had a lovely evening with Bec, Mark, Ava and Florence – amazing hosts they are! As Bec drove us to the airport the next morning, the snow started to fall – little did we know that this would become a theme for the next three airport trips we were to make!

Bec, Florence and Alick

Ireland

As our trip to Ireland approached, we grew more and more excited about seeing Tess’ sister Fi again after so many months, and spending time with Fi and Den. What a fun week it was! Such a lovely combination of doing touristy things, partying, having some real ‘veg-out’ time and just relaxing – with our full itinerary for the week mapped out by Fi and Den (such a treat after many months of carefully planning our itinerary in each previous destination). Thanks to Den’s admirable driving efforts (being the only one insured to drive) we practically circum-navigated Ireland heading from Dublin to Galway, being treated to a lovely evening in Glengarrif, heading to Cork for two nights with the broader Ryan family and back to Dublin. Throughout our Irish travels we had ready samples of typical Irish fare, with Guinness, potatoes, black and white pudding being regular staples (yes, even Tess developed a love of pudding once she stopped thinking about what was in it!). With Fi and Den’s recent decision to relocate back to Australia over coming months, our week in Ireland was a timely opportunity to get an understanding of the everyday details of their life together in Ireland – their cute little apartment, their favourite houses in the surrounding streets and of course their favourite local Thai restaurant – yum! We are so grateful to Fi and Den for such an awesome week and also to Denis, Agnes, Katie, Joanne and Jack Ryan for being such accommodating hosts in Cork– such a pleasure to meet you all.

Alick, Den and Fi in the pub where Den and Fi met in 2010!

New York

The sadness of saying goodbye to Fi and Den in Dublin was certainly tempered by the fact they will be in Melbourne when we return to Australia, in addition to the fact that we had a week in New York ahead of us! New York was an absolute whirlwind…an absolutely freezing whirlwind that took some getting used to (opening the door to -12 degree Celsius weather) but a whirlwind nonetheless!!! We rented an apartment for the week in Williamsburg, Brooklyn through Air BnB (thanks for the tip Owen and Bec!) and it was such a dream location. The atmosphere in Williamsburg was so much fun it was sometimes difficult to motivate ourselves to head across to Manhattan (though the very chilly walk over the Brooklyn bridge was a much-needed antidote for the previous month of eating and drinking in the UK and Ireland!).

Our week in New York was a combination of eating, drinking, seeing Broadway shows, brewery visits and sight-seeing – we’ve outlined a couple of our favourite moments below:

Food - While we had so many incredible food experiences in New York, particular highlights were ‘St Anselm’ in Williamsburg, ‘Beauty and Essex’ and ‘La Esquina’ on the Lower East Side – as well as many other delicious places on both sides of the Hudson...
Breweries – We did a tour of the Brooklyn brewery which gave us a great insight into the history of one of the USA’s most iconic craft breweries, while also giving us a chance to sample some of their beers! It was a very good tour, and certainly got Alick’s creative juices flowing…
Broadway (and other performances) - We saw three shows on Broadway; Newsies (possibly the most amazing musical performance we’ve seen), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (thanks to our friends the Bards – highly recommended and Scarlett Johansson was brilliant!), and Evita (surprisingly Ricky Martin just blew us away. He was so good even though some of the other aspects of the show left a little to be desired). We also spent a night at the Upstanding Citizen’s Brigade comedy club on the Lower East Side (very funny, if a little close to the bone at times, stand-up), and caught some live music at the New York City Winery, where we had a great night at the bar watching the Ryan Montbleau Band
Sight-seeing – Even one full day didn’t feel like enough time in the Metropolitan Museum of Art - we made good use of the guided tours there, and would recommend others do the same if you only have one day! We also really enjoyed visiting the Highline park (such a brilliant use of public space) and it was very interesting seeing the September 11 memorial site which had changed significantly since we were each last in New York. Of course, a walk in snowy Central Park was fantastic, and generally just walking around in New York you feel like you are constantly on a sight-seeing adventure! We topped off the week with a College Basketball game at Madison Square Gardens (complete with oversized hot-dogs and beer!).

Central Park, New York

While in New York we were also fortunate enough to spend a delightful evening with our friend Zak’s dad Roland and his partner Nelly. It was such a pleasure getting to know them both a little better after so many years of hearing so much about them (though Zak and Dani, you were both very much missed that evening!).

On Sunday, our final full day in New York, we awoke to the news of Granny Mary’s passing, and there seemed nothing more appropriate than to head to a gospel church service in Harlem in her honour. The music was so beautiful and, for us, such a fitting tribute to an incredible woman.

Seattle to Big White

From New York we flew across to Seattle – a pleasant transit stop over in a city we had so much fun in during our travels in 2007. Rowan Miller, a friend of Alick’s from Tasmanian pony club days, now lives in Seattle with his wife Athelie and their gorgeous bub Asher, so our evening in Seattle proved to be a fantastic opportunity for dinner with the lovely Miller family.

Dinner with Rowan, Athelie and Asher

Our planned bus trip to Canada the next day was somewhat hindered by the fact that Greyhound had cancelled the service they had sold us tickets for the week before (?!) and, once the Greyhound staff managed to negotiate our passage with their sister bus company instead, the bus was held up at the USA/Canada border crossing as part of the filming of a ‘Border Security’ episode with the customs staff being particularly vigilant ‘on camera’ and the bus waiting for an hour for a clearance outcome of a fellow bus passenger (who was eventually denied entry).

We finally arrived in Kelowna, British Columbia some 2 hours later than expected and were greeted by Dawn and Keith Taplay (family friends of our friend Andy). Dawn and Keith have been just amazing to us and so incredibly hospitable, having us stay in their beautiful home; cooking us a delicious dinner (and waiting to eat with us given our delayed arrival time); giving us a ride up to the Big White Ski Resort the following day (where Keith works); facilitating a supermarket shop en route in the considerably cheaper supermarkets in Kelowna; and having us over for dinner at their cabin at Big White last Saturday night where we met their friends Deb, Nigel, Christine and Gary.

In our first few days on Big White, Alick has well and truly managed to find his snowboarding feet once again and, after a few lessons, Tess is making progress on the beginner slopes but finding a surprising level of enjoyment in skiing. With the lapse of Tess’ initial ski rental period, our debate of whether it will be more economical to continue renting or purchase skis for the remainder of our three weeks at Big White has been negated by the extreme generosity of Deb and Nigel who have leant us skis, poles and boots (which miraculously fit Tess perfectly!) for the duration of our time here. We continue to be amazed and touched by the kindness of friends we have just met.

Our apartment at Big White is in a dream location – right on the slopes, so convenient to all amenities and a wonderful space to be able to completely unpack and settle in for our adventures on the slopes over the weeks to come.

Our first night on Big White was much cause for celebration when we learned of the birth of our beautiful little niece Lucy Maree MacGregor. We are so excited and happy for Jo and Neil and can't wait to cuddle Lucy the minute we get home to Melbourne in early April.

Our niece Lucy

Lucy's arrival is a beautiful reminder to us of life's bookends and, as we publish this post, we are sending much love and thoughts to Scilla, Angus, Lina and others who are making the final preparations to lay Granny Mary to rest in Dirleton tomorrow. We will never forget the many happy times we have had with Granny, and feel so thankful for the friendship, love and wisdom that she shared with us through her life.

Tess and Alick xx

Family, Friends and Festivities in the UK

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 17:23:00 +0000

As we write this blog post, Australia is already a few hours into the New Year and we are just 7 hours away from it in the UK. So, in the midst of all of the best wishes and positive thoughts for 2013 being sent to loved ones here and abroad, we felt it a timely moment to jot down a few words about the family and friend catch-ups and festivities we’ve been enjoying since touching down in the UK.

On arriving in London in mid-December we each felt we could let out a deep breath after the wonderful chaos of the past 11 weeks and we very much needed a 24-hour break to stock up on much needed supplies, do some washing, let our hair down a little and rest (not to mention adjust to the weather and light conditions!). Since that time the past two weeks have been wonderfully jam-packed with catching up with much loved family and friends in Cambridge, Hampstead, Chelsea, Winchester, Somerset and Worcester. Tess’ Mum Julie joined us for 6 days of this time as part of her overseas travels – which proved to be a great opportunity to catch up with her after nearly 3 months, as well as introduce her to our UK family and friend contingent. Being in the UK has also provided us with an opportunity to touch base with family back home and it’s been so lovely to see and hear some much-missed voices and faces on Viber and Skype.

Alick spending time with Barnes and Magnus in Cambridge

Tess and Julie at King's Cross Station

Alick and Irene on Hampstead Heath

Alick and Peter

For Christmas this year it just so happened that a large number of the extended Weber bunch found themselves together at the East Chinnock home of Alick’s Grandma, Uncle Nick and Aunt Ros. The wonderful result of this was a week-long series of celebrations and catch-ups over the Christmas period (though with many thoughts and well wishes being sent to the remaining Webers in the Southern Hemisphere - Simon, Rosie, Kif, Anna, Poppy and Theo).

Christmas morning

Grandma Jean and Katherine - Christmas lunch

Ros and Alick - Christmas lunch

From Somerset we grabbed a night to ourselves to explore the Cotswolds (and sample a few local craft beers!) before heading to Whitbourne (near Worcester) where we are spending a few nights. We were lucky to snatch a few minutes with Alick’s cousins Douglas and Joannie (including wishing Joannie a belated Happy18^th Birthday!) and are currently preparing for New Years celebrations with Angus and Gillie (Alick’s Aunt and Uncle) – we’re looking forward to the evening ahead!

Alick and Angus - Whitbourne

As we farewell 2012, it’s lovely to look back on a year filled with so many happy memories – most notably for us with our marriage, 30^th birthday celebrations and much anticipated travel adventures. Amongst our close friend and family networks, we’ve also felt so privileged to share in Jo and Neil’s wedding celebrations, welcoming new bubs Darcy, Eleanor, Lily, Barnes and Jack into the world, loving our Aunt and Uncle role in spending time with Poppy, celebrating Theo’s arrival and counting down until the arrival of our first niece on the Jenkin side in just a few weeks time!

2012 also saw Alick’s Grandma Jean and Granny Mary celebrate their 90^th and 88^th birthdays respectively, and we are constantly thankful for the opportunity to cherish the adult relationships we have developed with these wonderful women. We are making the most of the opportunity to spend time with them and draw on their wisdom and experience during our visit.

After such a wonderful year, we can’t wait to see what 2013 brings! For the first day of the year we plan to head north to Scotland, starting off with a visit to Granny Mary in Troon and a few nights with Lina and Luke (Alick’s Aunt and Uncle) at Blair. We will post an update of our Scottish adventures over the next few weeks.

Tess and Alick xx

Egypt

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Our two weeks in Egypt have been nothing short of amazing; it is hard to capture the essence of our experiences with a simple chronological account, so for this post we have chosen to write about some of the key aspects of Egypt that have struck us as we have travelled through…

People & Politics

If we tried to sum up the Egyptian people in one word, it would have to be ‘proud’. Overwhelmingly as we have travelled through this country, every person’s pride in being Egyptian – or in some areas their pride in their regional identity – has really stood out. This pride manifests in so many ways.

Firstly, almost every person we met in Egypt greeted us with a big (often toothless!) smile and a “Welcome to Egypt!” Similarly to Jordan, we felt that these welcomes really came from the heart, and are rooted in a deeply-seated pride in their country. Even the touts at the major sights such as the Pyramids or Abu Simbel would, once they realised they weren’t going to convince us to ride a camel/buy a fake-soapstone trinket/pay them to take a photo for us would smile broadly, ask where we are from and wish us an enjoyable time in Egypt, “in ‘shallah”. We found this such a lovely surprise, as we had been warned by many other travellers that the constant touting grew tiring – and while we admit that it did, we found that a firm “La shukran” (no, thank you) and a big smile were the best ways to deal with the demands. As we navigated the public transport systems across the country we were also a source of much fascination for children - including this group of schoolkids who were on the ferry with us in Luxor...

Tess being shown how to eat dried sunflower seeds in Luxor

Schoolkids in Luxor

Secondly, being in Egypt during such a complex and fraught socio-political time really highlighted to us the passion that people here feel for their country. We spoke with many people about the political situation and the diversity of views, as well as the strength with which these views were held, was striking. From the taxi driver in Alexandria who was adamant that “Morsi is a good man, and good for this country; his constitution will strengthen our culture” to the hotelier in Upper Egypt who expressed strong concern that the new rulers of Egypt planned to implement strong Islamic laws reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban; everyone has an opinion. We were also surprised to hear quite a number of people say how much better things were under Murbarak, particularly tourism. It seems that while he was tyrannical and dictatorial, many feel that at least there was relative stability under his rule, and for some of the people we spoke to the date of the revolution is the date at which they mark the downturn in their business, which has still not picked up. We will be watching with interest what unfolds in the referendum, and simply hope that whatever happens it remains peaceful. One thing seems certain through it all, is that Egypt is going through a time of profound change as the people look hopefully toward a future characterised by stability, democracy and self-determination.

History

In another manifestation of national pride, as we walked through the airport on our way to the gate to fly out, we saw a poster quoting a world leader (presumably quoted at the time of the 2011 revolution), which stated “There is nothing new in Egypt. The Egyptians have been making history for millennia; what is happening now is simply another example.” This quote rings very true for our time in Egypt. The people who have inhabited this land over the past 4 ½-thousand years (or more) have left behind some of the most incredible examples of history-making that we have ever seen. From the ubiquitous Ramses II, whose narcissism resulted in so many monuments we lost count (from Abu Simbel in the south to Cairo in the north), to Nasser and Murbarak who indelibly left their mark with the dams and cataracts on the Nile, the people of Egypt seem to have forever been ruled by determined, innovative and often ruthless leaders.

The Temple of Hatshepsut

Abu Simbel

As we walked around the various Pharaonic monuments across Egypt, we found ourselves time and again marvelling at the seemingly unwavering self-obsession that seems to have characterised the existence of the ancient Egyptians. We had to acknowledge how successful they were in their exploit. Take Ramses II as an example; he built the mighty temples at Abu Simbel as a way to immortalise the deified image of himself and his favourite wife Nefertari and provide a spectacle for his people to witness his ascension to God-King. Not only was this successful in the 13^th century BC, but there we were, 3,500 years later, marvelling at the images on the wall describing his ascension to the level of the gods.

Similarly at the Pyramids around Cairo, the experience of climbing inside a 4,500-year-old tomb and marvelling at the precision and accuracy of the construction was evidence of the determination of the ancient Egyptians to realise their dream of everlasting life. Indeed, if everlasting life is conceived as a person’s continued presence within the common consciousness, through building these breathtaking structures that have survived so many millennia, the Pharaohs appear to have achieved this better than any civilisation to date. Let’s hope that the Egyptian people are able to continue to preserve these treasures for future generations to continue to marvel at.

Food

We had expected Jordan and Egypt to be great food destinations, and we weren’t wrong. Egypt followed up a great week in Jordan, and indeed gave Jordanian food a run for its money! Breakfast of fuul (stewed broad beans) and tammiya (falafels) each morning was amazing, and was often followed by a glass of mango, pomegranate or sugar cane juice. Lunch (when we found the time to have it!) was more often than not a fresh salad of tomatoes and cucumber, washed down with fresh lemon juice and mint. Dinner was equally delicious on most occasions; in Aswan on our arrival at our hotel they prepared us fresh Nile river fish with ‘all the trimmings’; in Luxor we had amazing moussaka and shakshouka; and the highlight (for Alick at least) was an amazing BBQ chicken from a street-stall in Siwa – delicious!

Meals were often a great time for conversation with other travellers, hotel managers and locals, and again were an opportunity for the fiercely-proud restaurateurs to assure us that their version of an Egyptian staple was the best! One of these memorable moments was in Siwa Oasis, when after a stall-holder in the street had helped us with directions, he offered to close up his shop and take us out to his desert camp and have some tea around the fire. Given our recent scam experience in Alexandria (when we’d been lucky to get away with only ‘losing’ around 400 Egyptian Pounds to a couple who claimed they spent the day with us ‘for friendship’) we were a little suspicious, but after he assured us that we didn’t need to pay him anything, and gave us his tour-guide card, we thought we would trust our intuition and go out with him. After a cold 30-minute at-times hairy ride in his tuk-tuk, we were relieved when we arrived at his camp and he lit the fire and prepared tea. The next two hours were spent drinking strong sweet tea, playing cards and talking with our new friend Osman about life in Siwa. It was a wonderful experience, and that evening spent under the stars will certainly stay in our memories for years to come. We were also both relieved that we had not completely lost our capacity to trust people after our Alexandria experience! Experiences such as this really typified our time in Egypt, and there were so many others that we simply can’t fit in this blog post – but we have tried by summarising a few of them below….

Other highlights, lowlights, and memorable moments!

Feeling like we were in a computer game as we swerved, dodged and whizzed through Cairo’s traffic at 100km/h with our slightly crazy driver, who insisted he ‘needed to drive like this to stay awake’.
Shivering our way through a night without proper duvets in Siwa Oasis as they experienced some of the coldest weather for ten or so years – we had to pull out our Kilimanjaro gear!
Marvelling at the longevity of monuments such as the Collosi of Memnon, which have been attracting tourists for around 3,400 years.

The Colossi of Memnon

Being once again horrified at the treatment of horses at the Pyramids of Giza. We won’t go into it so much this time, but suffice to say that everything we said about Petra holds true for Giza also, sadly….
Finding ourselves warmed by the caring relationships between young men and their donkeys in Siwa Oasis as we rode a donkey cart from the bus to our hotel (there are no ‘taxis’ in Siwa, although donkey carts are increasingly being replaced by motorbike tuk-tuks).

Siwa Oasis

Sharing tea and discussing Myers-Briggs and Jung with a fascinating fellow-Australian who had moved to Siwa as an escape from her high-flying corporate career.
Drinking mint tea, tea with lemongrass, strong Siwan tea, hibiscus tea, and good old Lipton tea – all heavily laced with sugar – in markets, shops, restaurants, houses, deserts and train stations. Tea certainly drives Egypt!
Being perpetually laughed at whenever we tried to cross the road in Cairo – we often had to use locals as human shields, which they thought was hilarious!
Alick changing his name to ‘Ali’ and Tess using Tessa (and at times wondering if she should adopt a completely new name) when people we met struggled to get their tongues around our usual names.
Seeing cats (and quite a few dogs) at every turn wherever we were in Egypt, all of which Tess insisted on giving water and/or food to whenever possible!

Contemporary resident at Abu Simbel

An Alexandrian cat

Being asked for baksheesh (tips) for everything from being given hand-towel in public toilets, to having blatantly-obvious monuments pointed out to us, to having our tickets checked at the entrance to a pyramid! It certainly made us appreciate the advantages of having plenty of small change handy…
Rushing to get to Luxor railway station for our 10 am train, then being told that our train was the ‘next one’ until 1pm, when we finally boarded and made our way to Aswan.
Crossing the River Nile in a tiny motor-boat in the pitch dark at 3am en route to the mighty temples at Abu Simbel.

A Nile taxi...

Perfecting the art of crying ‘You break my heart with your prices’ as we played the game of haggling with stall-holders in souks all across Egypt.

A souq in Alexandria

Jordan

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 05:44:00 +0000

Without a doubt, the most outstanding and memorable parts of the 8 days we spent in Jordan were the friendliness and generosity of the people and the delicious Jordanian food. That is not to detract from the spectacular sights and scenery around Jordan – which certainly lived up to their reputation. It was just that we were not expecting to find ourselves in a country where locals would fall over themselves to welcome us to their country (often crossing major roads and chasing us for many blocks to simply say “Welcome in Jordan!” [sic]), invite us into their homes to share in their home cooking and go so far out of their way to make sure we reached our destinations without issue. We’re certain that the beautifully trusting environment of Jordan was particularly heightened for us given that we arrived while still carrying a level of security consciousness suited to Southern Africa, and it did take us a couple of days to adjust to the safety of the street and the optional nature of car and hotel door locks!

Meeting Sami, the owner of a Jordanian roadside cafe - complete with Sami's headscarf gift to Alick

In planning our Jordan itinerary, it felt like the 8 days we allowed ourselves was more than sufficient to take in some of the highlights of a country that is little more than 300kms in length. We could not have been more wrong – our time in Jordan allowed us to take in a tiny sample of what Jordan has to offer and we are already hoping to be back at some point in our lives to experience (some of) the rest.

On arrival in Jordan, we picked up our hire car and headed south to Madaba – getting a quick crash course in the local roads rules, or lack thereof, in the process (thankfully without any actual ‘crashes’!!). The most important things to remember about Jordanian roads is that lane markers, indicators and a large proportion of traffic lights are purely for decorative purposes; looking at the road is always a secondary priority to texting and reading, and why bother finding a car park when you can just stop and leave your car in the middle of the road (often with the drivers-side door left wide open)?!

Madaba is a sweet little town, famous for its mosaics and churches – which we had a good potter around. The five hotels in town are each managed by a cousin of a local family and Odeh, the manager at the Black Iris Hotel where we stayed, was a wealth of information about the area – including pointing out all the best local eateries (particularly the local falafel places – yum!) and making sure there was a fresh pot of cinnamon tea brewed for us on our arrival back to the hotel. On our first night in Madaba we wandered into a local sweet store, and we obviously looked so confused that one of the other customers promptly told us that we needed to wait five minutes to get what he ‘knew’ we wanted to order. He wasn’t wrong! Before long, the shop owner brought out a steaming tray of a dish called ‘kanafe’ – a layer of goats cheese, topped with a sweet cake and covered in sugar syrup. It was just incredible and has resulted in us trying to seek out kanafe whenever opportunity presented itself throughout the rest of our travels in Jordan.

We used Madaba as a base to float in the Dead Sea (such a strange feeling – you simply can’t swim!) and see some of the local sites – which included many biblical sites. Although we’re not guided by any particular religious affiliation, it was fascinating to see these historical sites. Our experience visiting Jesus’ baptismal site was however rather bizarre, as we arrived in the car-park to a full tourist bus with a conductor yelling at us to get on quickly so they could depart. We jumped on the bus and didn’t realise until after departure that the guided tour was optional and we could have self-driven! The guide told us we need to listen to the individual audio guides we were given when buying our tickets, with the audio divided into different ‘chapters’ for each site. The problem was, the audio tracks were significantly longer than the distance taken to drive between each site and we fell terribly behind with the guide shouting out that we were listening to the wrong track! The comedy of the tour continued as the bus was primarily filled with older tourists and it took a bit longer than usual to get off the bus at each stop, so by the time we got to each site, the guide was telling us we were too late and had to leave! Notwithstanding all of this, it was a fascinating experience to arrive at the River Jordan, with Israel no less than 10 meters away from us on the other side, to see those who had made the pilgrimage to bathe and/or be baptised in the ‘Holy Water’ (those who arrived with our group to do so were under strict instruction from our guide that they could take four steps in, duck their head under three times and then get out straight away). Bathing in the water was obviously a deeply spiritual and emotional experience for some visitors, causing some to seem to speak in tongues or collapse – all of this under the watchful eye of the armed army servicemen stationed at the site to oversee the Jordan/Israel border. It was quite a profound experience overall.

Floating in the Dead Sea - such a strange sensation to not be able to swim!

From Madaba, we made our way south to Wadi Musa (the village next to Petra)–with the driving conditions and occasional gaps in street signage making the journey somewhat longer than anticipated. We arrived after the gates to Petra had closed for the day, though, in noting our disappointment, the manager at our hotel suggested that we instead spent the remnants of the afternoon wandering around ‘Little Petra’ instead – a smaller collection of monuments located about 15 minutes from town – which proved to be a fantastic introduction to Petra proper. At the far end of Little Petra was a steep set of stairs, leading to a gorgeous viewpoint where a local Bedouin man named Awad was packing up his stall for the day. After chatting to Awad for a while, he invited us back to his house in the village for dinner with him and his wife, Sina – a Danish woman who converted to Islam prior to marrying Awad. Awad explained that, like most of the Bedouin in the area, he had always lived in the caves around Petra, though three weeks prior to our arrival, he and Sina had made the move into one of the properties offered by the Jordanian government to the local Bedouin as an incentive to move out of the tourist areas. From what we could gather, Awad and Sina’s move to the village was also driven by Sina’s desire to live with electricity and plumbing following many months of adjusting to life in the cave! It was fantastic to spend the evening with Sina and Awad, sharing their delicious food and hearing about their lives. Their generosity with two complete strangers was so touching.

After just an initial peek at Petra proper we quickly realised we wanted to spend more time than we had planned in Wadi Musa and made some changes to our itinerary to allow us an extra day and night. Over the course of the next two days we were able to experience many of Petra’s nooks and crannies – and were fortunate to have many moments of getting the major sites of Petra all to ourselves! In all the pictures we’d seen of Petra, we’d fallen into the trap of thinking that the iconic ‘Treasury’ building (or is it a carving?!?) was the major attraction, and the sheer size of Petra in its entirety blew us away. It’s estimated there are over 800 ‘sights’ to see in Petra (with more still being discovered) and it would take over a week to see them all. One of the other things we hadn’t realised were the distances to be covered in Petra – which saw us walking at least 20 – 25 kms each day (more than we did in any one day on Kilimanjaro!), often up very steep, winding tracks – and that was to see just a fraction of the sights.

The distances within Petra and basic level of fitness required of tourists seemed to be a fairly common underestimation, resulting in a massive donkey ride industry within Petra’s walls. The impossibly steep and treacherous routes these donkeys were required to walk up many times each day (often bearing the load of some very large tourists) was absolutely heartbreaking and it was common to see donkeys with gaping wounds rubbed raw by the girth and the chains often used as a halter. Alick in particular had to turn away when we were passed by donkeys and horses being ridden in a particularly horrible way, or being kicked by their handlers from the ground, or when we passed people screaming with delight when a donkey stumbled on a steep step shouting ‘this is just like an amusement ride!” Pretty disgusting we thought. At the entry gates to Petra, there were signs about a welfare organisation called ‘The Brooke’ who advocate for the welfare of the working donkeys and horses in Petra, providing information on how to make reports about witnesses of maltreatment. We are looking into this though given the volume of donkeys within Petra it’s very difficult to know exactly what to feed back. In the interim though, we only hope that the demand for these donkey rides in Petra is soon reduced – either through increased awareness about the level of fitness required to get around or more humane forms of assisted viewing.

On a more positive note however, it was quite humbling to walk through the wadis and siqs of Petra, reflecting on the skill, not to mention the idealism and narcissism, of the Nabatean royals. Most of the monuments at Petra, while given monikers like ‘The Treasury’ and ‘The Monastery’ to tourists, are in fact tombs for the kings and queens of the ancient Nabatean people. Many of these tombs were being built before the Romans had even conceived of the Colosseum – indeed later in its life Petra was taken over by the Romans, and many of the monuments were modified to reflect their aesthetic preferences. The diversity and sheer scale of the site was astounding, and some of the most impressive components of the site were the water storage and channelling, which enabled the city’s citizens to have drinking water, as well as bathing pools and fountains! The best-preserved monuments were those carved into the rockface of the mountains; we marvelled time and again at the workmanship involved, not to mention the manual labour that must have been required. Compared to some of the ‘monuments’ that we build today, the relics of antiquity really shine!

The famous first sight of Petra's Treasury. (Indiana Jones memories anyone?!?)

Tess getting friendly with one of the many cats that live at Petra.

Beautiful sandstone cave....

The magnificent 'Monastery'.

The Monastery

A tomb near the High Place of Sacrifice.

During our first day at Petra, while we stopped for lunch in the theatre of the Great Temple, we also received the exciting news from home that we have a new nephew! Alick’s brother and sister-in-law Kif and Anna had been expecting a baby in late November, and Theo was born on November 26^th. We were absolutely thrilled to hear that both Anna and Theo were happy and healthy, and Kif and Anna’s 2 ½ year old daughter Poppy was excited about meeting her new brother! We can’t wait to meet the wee man, and must admit that the news did make us feel a little far away! Given that we were on the other side of the world, we thought it only appropriate to memorialise the moment with a photo…..

Welcome to the world Theo Weber!!!

Following our stay in Wadi Musa, we made our way south to the Wadi Rum desert. There, we met our guide Rhadi, and spent the next few days hiking and ‘scrambling’ to springs, across natural rock arch formations (which certainly tested Alick’s fear of heights!) and up Um Adaami – Jordan’s highest peak with spectacular views over the Saudi Arabian border. The Wadi Rum desert was just beautiful – at times reminding us of a slightly more precipitous version of the central Australian desert. On the first evening we were joined by four other tourists at a desert camp – great company and a perfect way to get lot of tips for our onward journey.

Middle Arch, Wadi Rum

Burdah Arch, Wadi Rum

On the second evening, following the departure of the other tourists, Rhadi kindly invited us to have dinner and stay the night in his mother’s tent, near the Wadi Rum village – it was such a privilege to be asked, that we jumped at the opportunity. Being a Thursday evening (and therefore the start of the weekend) Rhadi’s broader family had all come in from the village to share in a meal, and were also joined by cousins from neighbouring tents, so it was a real family experience with more people around than we could count! Rhadi’s mother’s tent was divided into two sections by a cloth wall – with one side for the women and children and the other for the men. The men were very welcoming to Tess, as a Westerner, being in the male area, although Tess was also fortunate enough to be able to sit with in the women’s tent while the women prepared the evening meal on the fire – a traditional Saudi/Jordanian chicken and rice dish called ‘Kabsa’. For Tess, this was one of the most unique Jordan experiences. The women in Rhadi’s family spoke minimal English, and the five or so Arabic words Tess knows only stretched so far, however language didn’t really matter while watching the preparation of the dish. It was incredible to watch the constant instructions given to the younger girls in the tent, so they would remember how to cook the dish in future, and the involvement of everyone in the process (most notably, in holding iPhones over the pot so the dish could be seen given the lack of electricity in the desert!). Once the meal was prepared, Tess was sent outside to eat with the men - we were both so grateful the communal dish was placed in the dark, on the dirt outside the tent, as it meant the massive chunks we dropped while getting used to mushing rice into a ball and tearing off chunks of chicken with our right hand weren’t quite as noticeable!!!! Dinner was followed by much sweet tea and conversation with Rhadi’s brothers, before everyone left and we slept in the men’s side of the tent next to the fire. Beautiful! In the morning, we experienced our first camel ride to get back to the Wadi Rum village and made our way up north to Jerash. In stark contrast to the use of donkeys in Petra, we were really touched by the sensitive and caring relationships between owners and their camels in Wadi Rum - possibly aided by the fact that one camel costs more than a small car in Jordan!.

Heading back to Wadi Rum Village

The drive to Jerash was much easier than our previous trip along the length of the country, and notwithstanding some ‘missing’ directional signage through an extended road-works zone around Amman, we arrived in Jerash with no incident. Having checked into our hotel we headed out to explore the Roman ruins for which the city is famous. In 15 minutes we found ourselves walking down colonnaded streets, with ruts in the pavestones from the many Roman chariots which were driven along the streets over 1500 years ago. The ingenuity of the Romans was incredible – complete with ‘singing’ colonnades to warn of earthquakes, underground cold food storage chambers, and ornate fountains. The site is being progressively restored, and there was a wonderful juxtaposition between the modernity of the cranes, and the antiquity of the building blocks that they were moving.

After returning to our hotel we headed out to explore the town centre of Jerash, with a view to getting a small bite to eat and heading back for an early night…. Little did we know that this would be out of the question!! We bought a delicious shwarma from a street-stall (and had a bizarre conversation about gloves with a guy on the street – long story, you’ll have to ask us), we walked past a small juice-bar with three or four guys sitting around smoking sheesha. They sung out to us, and Alick popped his head in to say hi and check if it was OK for Tess to come in (we had read that in some parts of the middle east it is not appropriate for women to go into places where men are smoking). They assured us that we were most welcome, and we told them that we’d be back in five minutes (we had a craving for some kanafe from a sweet store). On our return, they greeted us with much excitement, and ensured that we had tea, water and a narguileh pipe all to ourselves (what sheesha is called in Jordan). The next three hours were an absolutely quintessential Jordan experience… The group of three young men grew over the evening to five (six at times!), and we had great conversations (albeit in often-stilted English and with much gestured communication) about all sorts of topics. One of the young men was going to Syria the next day to get married, so we realised that we had inadvertently crashed a bucks-party of sorts – but it seemed that we were something of a novelty, so we didn’t feel too guilty! On hearing that we had only had a shwarma for dinner, one of the young men dashed out to his car and brought in a dish piled high with chicken and rice. He re-heated the chicken and proudly presented us with the plate of mensaf, which is a traditional meat and rice dish eaten in Jordan on Fridays. Despite being quite full from the shwarma and the sweets, we managed to make a good dent in the mensaf, which was delicious – especially when washed down with an apple-molasses flavoured narguileh pipe! In the end we didn’t leave the little bar until around 11pm, when one of the boys drove us back to our hotel. It was an amazing experience to spend a few hours with a group of young people in Jordan, and to hear their views on the political situation in the region, to learn about their working lives and dreams, and to share much laughter and stories.

Crashing a sort of buck's party in Jerash

Our time in the bar with the group of young men was a perfect way to draw our time in Jordan to a close… It epitomised the experience we had had across the country of a pround, open and welcoming people, with strong values and deeply seated loyalties, but a gentle approach to the complexities of life in one of the most turbulent regions in the world. We left Jordan much feeling enriched by the history, the fresh air and exercise, but most of all the amazing people that we have been lucky enough to meet and share our time with.

Five Days in Cape Town...and Farewell Southern Africa!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 08:36:00 +0000

The first thing we were told whenever we mentioned to anyone that we were heading to Cape Town was how beautiful it is – and we can certainly see why! To mark the end of our travels around Southern Africa, we booked an apartment in an area called Tamberskloof (a locality that came recommended by Tess’ sister Jo and brother-in-law Neil). It was a really sweet little place underneath a gorgeous old house which had been converted into a little self-contained space by it’s owners, Renier and Alec. From the front of the house we had views right over table mountain and it was in a safe area which meant it was really easy to walk around at night. So nice to have a space of our own spread out in for a full five days and night and we even had the first proper sleep in we’ve managed to get since leaving Tanzania.

We were unashamedly tourists during our time in Cape Town – sampling some of the many nice bars and restaurants along the Long Street strip (which was only a ten minute walk from our apartment), climbing Table Mountain (which is actually quite a hike up!), hiring a car and driving down to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point (where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet), and visiting some of the city’s famous museums – in particular the Cape Town Holocaust Centre. All of these were fascinating experiences which we thoroughly enjoyed (or, in the case of the Holocaust Centre, were very moved by).

We were also incredibly spoilt in Cape Town with two very different, though unforgettable experiences given to us by Tess’ sister Maddy and brother-in-law Greg, and Jo and Neil.

One of our goals for this trip was to set ourselves some personal challenges – and Maddy and Greg decided to take that to the extreme by sending us swimming with sharks off the coast of Gansbaai. It was terrifying though we’re both very glad we did it (and especially glad that we still have arms and limbs attached). We have both come away from the experience with newfound respect of the power of these magnificent creatures. We think the pictures speak for themselves on this one….

A little nervous as we get in the water!

As those close to us will know, good food and wine is a pretty big part of our lives and Jo and Neil made it possible for us to experience an incredible culinary experience in the stunning Delaire Graff winery in Stellenbosch. It was so special and we were able to make a day of it by also attaching visits to a number of neighbouring wineries along the way. The pictures from Delaire Graff go some way to highlighting the beauty of the area but even they don’t really do it justice.

Lunch at Delaire Graff

In Cape Town we also had a truly unique experience of doing a township and gospel tour with a company called Camissa tours – who were just fantastic. Unfortunately, we got the strong sense that the value of their work is at risk of being undermined by some less responsible tour operators, and so thought we’d share a little more detail of this as an example of the importance of careful selection of tour operators and doing a bit of background research.

Our first full day in Cape Town was a Sunday so we booked ourselves into a tour of a local township of named Langa (population approx. 50,000) that included attending a gospel church service. Camissa is run by a husband and wife team – Khonaye and Samantha – who both grew up in the Langa township, and maintain a strong connection with the Langa community. Their tours are structured in such a way as to support the local community, and Camissa are passionate about showing off the vibrance and positivity of daily life in Langa, rather than offering ‘poverty tours’. Ours was a group of five, lead by Samantha, who provided us with fascinating insight into the history of the forced displacement of previous inhabitants of the Cape Town area of District Six into the townships. Within Langa itself, one of the local guides, Ziggy, showed us around and talked through his experiences in Langa (he has lived there for 22-years, having moved from his rural home over 1,000km away looking for work as a teenager); we were so moved by Ziggy’s sense of pride in his community, and his honest, raw yet refreshingly un-politicised account of his life experiences.

The experience of visiting the Langa Baptist Church was one which we won’t forget, and the voices sent goosebumps up our spines. It was such an absolute privilege to be there! Samantha explained that the Langa Baptist Church has always been one of the more progressive congregations, whose deliberate efforts to support and involve a diverse range of people is reflected in it’s membership of some 3,000 people. Samantha explained that, having been involved in the church for many years, she and Khonaye approached the church 6 years ago to see if they would be open to Camissa bringing in some tourists to the gospel service (in exchange for a contribution from tour fees). Despite some initial hesitation that the church services would turn into purely tourist entertainment, church leaders eventually agreed on the basis of the support provided through Camissa and increased awareness of their work – hence the tour that we were on.

Sadly, the popularity of the tours at the Langa Baptist Church has now become known and there are a number of other tour operators who have started bringing in tourists by the truckload – without seeking permission from or giving any support to the Langa community. Samantha expressed to us that a number of regular church go-ers are starting to become very concerned that their services are becoming a ‘zoo’. For this reason, while we can’t speak highly enough of the experience of going to a gospel service, we strongly recommend that anyone thinking of doing so select a tour operator that supports and gives back to the local townships (such as Camissa in Langa Township).

All in all, our experience in Cape Town was a fantastic combination of relaxation, sight-seeing, fear (in relation to the shark cage diving) and being incredibly spoilt. It has felt rather sad to farewell the Southern African leg of our journey though we are also very excited about the next step. We write this post from a transit stop in Doha airport where we are about to board our flight to Jordan. Will update you about our time there at the next opportunity.

Love Tess and Alick xx

Self Drive Tour - Victoria Falls to Windhoek

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 16:23:00 +0000

Well, for those of you who expressed some concern about the safety and potential difficulties of completing a self-drive tour across Zimbabwean, Botswanian and Namibian borders, we’ll cut straight to the chase – we made it without serious incident (save for the odd flat tyre and getting sand bogged) and had an absolutely brilliant time in the process! In fact, we couldn't more strongly recommend hiring a car in this part of the world; it provided us with such flexibility and autonomy – particularly in National Parks where we could do our own game drives and in the areas of Namibia where public transport is next to non-existent and car hire is the only tourist alternative to group tours.

We had organised this leg through a company called Discover Namibia – who made all arrangements with the car hire company, plotted out a route that showed off some incredible aspects of the countries we travelled through and made all the relevant campsite reservations. It was all very easy and an experience to remember! We are so thankful to Tess's Mum Julie for making this leg of our journey possible.

Alick and our hire car 'Heidi' in Vic Falls at the start of the journey

We have included below some detail on our experiences in each destination, starting off with our experiences with roadside ‘requests’ along the way. All in all, it makes for a rather long blog post though we wanted to make sure we got these memories down so we don’t forget them later on! We hope you enjoy reading them too….

Roadside requests

At the roadblocks and border crossings along the way, we had our first experiences of the ‘additional’ (aka bribe) requests that we had been forewarned about. It really was quite comical and, over the course of the next two weeks, we certainly came to expect that the general flow of these conversations would be as follows:

Us: Hello, how are you?

Official at Gate Post: I’m not good at all today. I haven’t had any (Insert drink/food item) today. I’m very (thirsty/hungry). In fact, I think that if I’m not able to find some (drink/food item), I will be so unwell that I will not be able to continue doing my job and open this gate post!

In fact, much later in our self-drive trip, a worker directing traffic through roadworks didn’t even bother with the ‘I’m not good’ song and dance – coming straight over to Alick and very casually stating ‘Just give me your sunglasses’. We both started laughing at the bluntness of this request, as did the roadside worker who, on realising it wasn’t going to happen, followed up with ‘Well, maybe next time then. Have a good day!’

Another classic stop was at the foot and mouth disease control post just before the Zimbabwe/Botswana border. There was a massive sign that said we couldn’t bring milk (or milk products) into Botswana, in order to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease. We hadn’t realised this and promptly disclosed that we had an open container of milk in our car fridge. However, on opening our fridge to get it out, the quarantine officer decided that actually, the milk would be fine to take in (he wasn’t a big fan of milk), though he did see that we had a block of cheese and some limes – both of which he would have to take off us before we entered Botswana. As we drove away from the quarantine post, we had a lovely vision of him unwrapping and biting into the confiscated cheese in our rear view mirror! All of these experiences were in essence harmless, and certainly gave us some good amusement as we passed across borders!

One of the traffic hazards on the road from Victoria Falls

Chobe National Park, Botswana

The two nights we spent in Chobe Safari Lodge really highlighted the benefits of having our own car so we could spend as much time as we liked driving around looking at animals – the campsite was filled with other 4 wheel drives doing the same thing and there was a lovely sense of camaraderie amongst the cars, and whenever we passed on the roads, the drivers would wind down the windows and share where they had seen game and tips on where to look (and, it turned out to be a good thing that we had built up a friendship with some of the other drivers seeing as we needed to call on them one morning when an over-active car fridge saw us wake to a flat battery!). It was at Chobe that we were so lucky to see two lionesses right beside the road, resting under a tree while carefully guarding an impala carcass from a kill earlier that morning. Seeing our first lions in the wild, dozing after ‘breakfast’ really brought home to us the power of these beautiful creatures!

On our second night in Chobe we did a sunset game cruise through a company called Chobezi (who were recommended by a guy we met in Vic Falls). The Chobe River (around which the Chobe National Park centres) was absolutely teeming with elephants, buffalo, hippos and crocodiles that evening and we couldn’t quite believe how close we were able to get.

Crocodile, Chobe National Park

Camp Kwando, Caprivi Strip, Namibia

After crossing into Namibia, we stopped along the Caprivi Strip, camping at the beautiful Camp Kwando. One of the great things about this stop was that we were able to self-drive in the nearby Mndumu National Park – which is slowly regenerating its wildlife populations after they were nearly wiped out by poaching in the 80’s. While re-establishing itself, the Park currently has a very relaxed attitude to letting visitors drive around of their own accord with no instruction, and we did find ourselves in some rather hair-raising situations with a large herd of elephants! Thankfully we could draw upon the information from Liwonde National Park about the bull always being behind his ‘wives and children’ and to never place ourselves between the bull and herd, so we could keep that in mind when determining when to proceed after elephant herds crossed the road in front of us. The roads in Mndumu were rather difficult and after a few hours we came across a lady who had been bogged in the sand since the previous day. Luckily Alick was able to tow her out, though we were certainly on lion and leopard lookout when getting out of the car to tie the ropes on (even though we wouldn’t have had a clue what to do if we had seen one!).

The conservation efforts at Mndumu National Park include a partnership with the Lianshulu local community – as a means to both maintain cultural traditions and local awareness of conservation strategies. One of the ways this is done is through a kind of ‘living museum’ where visitors can learn about traditional village life, customs and hunting – it was a very interesting tour.

N’Kwazi Lodge, Kavango, Namibia

After we left Camp Kwando, we had an overnight stopover in the Kavango region to break up the journey to Etosha. N’Kwazi Lodge was a beautiful setting looking over the river to Angola (we worked out this was our seventh night in a row where we were camped by a river with a different country on the opposite bank!). We had the camp completely to ourselves that evening, which was lovely though the staff were very quick to assure us that the night guard would remain on shift throughout the night.

N’Kwazi Lodge funds a local pre-school which we visited with one of the N’Kwazi staff members Isaac the next day. It was great to see the school and meet the teacher and kids, though the highlight of this visit was the conversations we had with Isaac on the hour-long walk to and from the school about his life in Kavango, and Namibia more generally.

Alick and Isaac, Kavango

Namutoni and Okakeujo, Etosha National Park, Namibia

From Kavango we made our way to Etosha – where the wildlife was unlike anything we’d seen on our safari adventures yet. We stayed in Namutoni camp for our first night there and on going for a quick afternoon drive before setting up camp were lucky enough to see a leopard right next to the road! Amazing to see another big cat at such close quarters, although we felt a little bad as we were sure that the few cars that had pulled up to gaze at and photograph the leopard had interrupted her (or his!?!) plans to stalk and make dinner of the springbok grazing across the road… At this point, we’d also not seen many zebras or giraffes in Africa and that certainly changed as soon as we hit Etosha, with large herds of both animals (in the case of zebras HUGE herds!) frequently crossing the road in front of our car as they made their way to water sources across the dry plains of the park.

On our second and third nights in Etosha we stayed further west in Okakeujo camp – which had a floodlit waterhole right on the camp for night-time viewing. We sat there for hours each evening while the wildlife soap-opera of elephants, rhinos, lions, springbok and giraffes played out before us. Late on the first evening in Okakeujo we even saw a lioness kill a springbok at the waterhole just a few metres in front of us; such a unique experience to see the lions in action though so brutal at the same time.

On our final morning in Etosha we went for an early morning game drive, and while initially kicking ourselves that we had overslept a little and had not made it out of the camp until 7am, we were amazed when we approached one of the furthest northern waterholes in the camp, and watched as a pride of around 15 lions (including heaps of very playful cubs) made their way calmly from the waterhole, across the road about 10m in front of our car, and into a nearby thicket. It was fascinating to watch the dynamics in the group as ‘senior’ lionesses watchfully tolerated the antics of the cubs – who relished the opportunity to play, clubbing each other and rolling around in the grass, and to hold up the tourist cars by lying down for a quick rest in the middle of the road! It was an incredible gift to see on our last morning, and made us thankful for our laziness! All of a sudden our timing for the moment felt perfect!

We really don’t know how else we can go about fully describing our Etosha experience, so hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves when we are finally able to get them onto Flickr (hopefully in the next week or so!).

Mowani Mountain Camp, Damaraland, Namibia

As we left Etosha National Park and headed to the Damaraland desert we found ourselves with a flat tyre, literally 2km after hitting our first real gravel road for the drive. We were so thankful this had occurred after we had left Etosha and we were at least able to get out of the car without risking being eaten by a lion (or trampled by an elephant)! With the tyre changed (thanks to Alick!) we were able to continue enjoying the stark Damaraland landscape and mountains, which we found very reminiscent of our time in Central Australia a couple of years ago – just with springbok and oryx, rather than kangaroos and emus, roaming the plains! We stopped off for a look at the petrified forests surrounding the area and spend the night at Mowani Mountain Camp. This was by far the most picturesque of any of the campsites we stayed at on our journey and was so beautifully set up with a private bathroom including a stunning outdoor shower (interior designers take note!) and kitchen sink. For anyone heading to the Damaraland area, we highly recommend staying at Mowani. Simply stunning.

A picturesque place for a flat tyre!

View from our campsite at the beautiful Mowani Mountain Camp

In the morning, we had a tour of the rock engravings at Twfelfontain (Namibia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site), with our tour guide Raymond providing some very interesting insights into Namibia’s (and more broadly Southern Africa’s) current political and financial situation. We also visited the Living Museum of Damaraland where we had a bush walk tour of the medicinal plants in the area.

At the Living Museum we did get an understanding of how remote the facility was, and how difficult it was to get medical attention in a country as sparsely populated as Namibia (the second-least populated country in the world, with an average of two people per square kilometre!) when one of the staff asked us if we had a band-aid we could give to the cashier who had fallen on a rock earlier that morning. The cashier had her hand wrapped in a bit of plastic, however on removing the plastic, we could see that her fingers were shredded, with huge chunks of skin hanging off – clearly in need of stitches, however the girl explained that the closest hospital was over 100kms away and wasn’t an option for her anyway. All we could do was give some alcohol swabs and bandages and were grateful that the girl’s friend took responsibility for applying them, given we were both very cautious about the amount of blood involved. Not for the first time on the trip, we both felt we were really lacking in some practical nursing skills (where were you when we needed you Fi!?!).

Swakopmond and Walvis Bay, Namibia

From Damaraland we made our way relatively uneventfully south-west to Swakopmund on the Atlantic coast – into a completely different landscape and climate once again. We felt absolutely freezing on reaching the ocean, after the heat we had become so accustomed to inland. We found Swakopmund to be quite a bizarre experience. The town itself is completely flat with wide open streets, which though surrounded by coast on one side and colossal dunes on the other and covered in fog for the majority of the time. The Lonely Planet describes Swakopmund as ‘more German than Germany’ and we certainly did feel that in the majority of places in Swakopmund, German was far more widely spoken than English or any of the local languages. On arrival in Swakopmund we checked into our guest house and were actually quite relieved to have the opportunity to sleep in a real bed for the first time in over a week!

While in Swakopmund we did a tour called the Living Desert Tour, which provided us with a huge amount of information about this section of the Namibian desert itself and it’s inhabitants (known as Namibia’s ‘Little Five’). The founder of the Living Desert company was instrumental in petitioning for the desert surrounding Swakopmund to be re-zoned into the Dorob National Park in 2010 (the area was previously known as the West Coast Recreational Park and was suffering from the impact of unrestricted walking, horseriding, 4 wheel driving, quadbiking and sandboarding activities). The tour guides were passionate about the desert ecosystem, and showed amazing skill at being able to track and find the various different lizards, beetles, spiders, snakes, geckos and chameleons that inhabited the dunes. It was a fascinating experience that really brought the dunes to life, and demonstrated to us how many unique species were supported by such a seemingly desolate environment.

One of Namibia's 'Little 5', Dorob National Park, Swakopmund

Following two nights in Swakopmund we headed down to Walvis Bay as our great friends Owen and Bec had kindly arranged for us to do a seal kayaking tour – thanks so much guys!! The tour itself was at a place called Pelican Point – about 40 minutes drive out of Walvis Bay itself along the sand in what really felt like travelling through a moon-scape. The unique scenery took us through the fog, with salt mines and flamingos being the only really visible figures (except for the very strange encounter of us stumbling across a film crew and Charlize Thereon who were filming a scene for Mad Max 4 in the area – so random!). On arrival at Pelican Point we passed an old lighthouse and port control building (which is now being converted by a wealthy Belgian businessman into boutique accommodation), and kept driving for about another two kilometres before reaching the point of the peninsular. We were puzzled as to why the lighthouse was so far from the end of the point, and our (very knowledgeable) guide Francois told us that Pelican Point was continually accruing more sand, and was growing at a rate of 25m per year!

The seal kayaking was absolutely amazing; we were able to paddle right up to seal colonies numbering in the hundreds (if not thousands), and float in the bay with countless seals playing around our kayaks – complete with playful splashing and barking! Given that it was mating season, there was quite a lot of noise from the shore as large males battled to protect their harems of females, fighting with much gusto with any potential usurpers! It was wonderful to be able to see these beautiful creatures from water-level, and we’re sure we were the envy of the people crammed onto large sight-seeing boats that made their way into the bay to also see the seals!

Seal spotting, Walvis Bay

After our seal experience we returned to Walvis Bay and after a quick stop to restock and check our tyre pressures, we were off on the 5-hour drive through the desert to the famous dunes of Sossusvlei, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park.

Celebrating the milestones along the road!

Sesreim, Sossusvlei, Namibia

We arrived at the Sesreim campsite quite late in the afternoon with just enough time to head out to one the closest dunes to the campsite (Elim Dune) to watch the sunset. It was a beautiful view though we underestimated how long it would take us to climb to the top so we ended up watching the sunset from the half-way point – which was still incredible all the same.

The next morning we made sure we were in the park as soon as the gates opened at 5.15am in order to be at Dune 45 (45 kilometres inside the gate) by sunrise. This was our first experience driving in the dark in Africa and we were greatful that nearly everyone else in Sesreim campsite had the same idea about getting in early so we could drive in convoy to deter the springbok’s from crossing the road infront of us. The climb up Dune 45 was actually rather big (though definitely worth it for the views from the top) and we were both amazed at how quickly we seem to have lost our Kilimanjaro fitness!

After breakfast we wandered around the dried up lakes of Dead Vlei for an hour or so until the sun was almost unbearable and we realised how knackered we were. Just before leaving we met some other tourists who had just gotten bogged in the sand on the 4-wheel-drive track coming into Dead Vlei (we’d found the road somewhat difficult coming in) so we were quite wary on the 5km drive out and sure enough, about half-way along we found ourselves completely stuck. The worst bit was that after a few minutes, a safari truck full of tourists came past and the driver though he’d do the kind thing of coming over to tow us out – however he also managed to get completely bogged before he’d even reached us. So there was now about 20 people all stranded, trying to dig the sand out from under the wheels of the two cars! Eventually, another vehicle approached, driven by a National Park Guide who asked if we needed help. He then got in our car and, with a little bit of pushing, managed to manoeuvre it out of the sand – luckily Alick didn’t have too much pride invested in his 4-wheel driving after he’d already made so many failed attempts to do the same thing! The worst bit was, once the car was out, he instructed us to keep on driving so we maintained the movement (actually what he said was ‘you need to go on ahead so that when I come past later I can help you when you get stuck again up ahead!’) so we had to drive past the other vehicle who were still trying to get out. We felt absolutely terrible!

Sossusvlei

After more incredible sunset and sunrise viewings over the following 24 hours (including having a massive area called ‘Hidden Vlei’ completely to ourselves the following morning), we farewelled Sesreim and started the trek back to Windhoek – via an incredible bakery called Moose McGregors in a town called Solitaire (approx 100kms from Sesreim).

Windhoek, Namibia

Following a short overnight stay in Windhoek, Namibia where we returned the car and prepared for the next leg, we boarded the 22-hour Intercape bus to Cape Town where we are currently enjoying our time in the sun. We will post another update from our time in Cape Town shortly.

Love Tess and Alick xx

Blantyre to Victoria Falls

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 07:44:00 +0000

There’s something so refreshing about staying with friends in a home while in the midst of a holiday – getting a sense of the realities of life in a particular place as opposed to just getting the touristy highlights. After leaving Liwonde National Park we were so privileged to have been staying with Kate and Dom at their place in Blantyre, Malawi. During this time, we have thoroughly enjoyed such simple things - like being able to make ourselves breakfast and lunch, recoup and enjoy some real rest and relaxation, run around the backyard with Kate and Dom’s ridiculously cute Labrador puppy Shula, and catch up on all of our washing (though that one was all thanks to the lovely Linus who works at Kate and Dom’s place. We were very spoilt). We were able to experience day-to-day life in Blantyre through everyday tasks such as finding the local supermarket and navigating the fruit and veggie shopping at Blantyre market (with Alick getting his first taste of driving on Malawian roads!). Kate and Dom gave us brilliant instructions to accompany each task before we embarked, and were so patient with our constant questions while we tried to make sure we were prepared (ie. What’s the best driving strategy to avoid hitting a goat? Are we supposed to pick one of the young boys surrounding our car to show us around and carry our bags in the market? How do we choose which boy? How much do we pay?’). All in all it was a great experience and we had such a ridiculous sense of achievement on returning from each small venture!

Most notably though, Kate and Dom generously provided us with loads of opportunities to visit and find out more about the community projects they support through their business, the Responsible Safari Company. We were able to join in project site visits where Kate and one of the Responsible Safari Company staff Chimwemwe discussed potential volunteer placement opportunities for future clients, and developed a greater understanding of a number of both well-established and still-developing social enterprises near the Blantyre and Mulanje area – in particular, Friends of Mulanje Orphans (FOMO), the Nancholi Youth Organisation and the Nchima Trust. We were both so impressed at the careful consideration given to appropriate placements and tasks when discussing volunteer opportunities, and the emphasis placed on supporting local businesses and social enterprises that helped communities to help themselves, rather than become dependent on outside aid. We’re struggling to find a decent internet connection that will allow us to upload our photos from this time though will put them onto Flickr over the next couple of weeks.

Toward the end of our time in southern Malawi, Kate and Dom treated us to a weekend away with them at a tea estate called Lujeri, in the beautiful foothills of Mount Mulanje (the tallest freestanding mountain in Central Africa – no, we weren’t tempted to climb it – at least not this trip!). The Lujeri Tea Estate is a huge expanse of tea plantations, workers villages, drying factories and everything else that goes along with a large-scale team operation – including a sumptuously appointed Estate Manager’s residence, which has been converted into self-contained accommodation. The house itself is beautiful, surrounded by lush gardens and a wide balcony (perfect for daytime reading and late-night card games), and a pool in the front garden completes the picture. We were also joined at Lujeri by three of Kate and Dom’s friends who are living in Blantyre: Alex (a water engineer working for a firm over here installing water systems in towns and villages) and his partner Millie (who volunteers at a Blantyre orphanage called Samaritans), and Emma (who is teaching at an international school in Blantyre). All three were great company, and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them all throughout the weekend. Overall we were thoroughly spoiled over the weekend (self-catering in this case meant brining our own food and then having two cooks prepare, serve and clean up after us – amazing!), and would highly recommend an escape in the tea estates to anyone visiting Malawi. Kate and Dom were so amazingly generous throughout the time that we were with them, and the weekend at Mulanje will definitely go down as one of the (many) highlights of our trip so far.

It felt quite sad to leave Kate and Dom’s place given how comfortable we felt there – we said our farewells last Monday morning and started the 3-day trip north to Livingstone (the Zambian side of Victoria Falls) – with two overnight transit stops in Lilongwe (Malawi’s capital) and Lusaka (Zambia’s capital) along the way – and experienced many more memorable African transit adventures along the way! We have absolutely loved spending three days taking in the wonders of Victoria Falls on both the Zambia and Zimbabwe sides – truly breathtaking! We’ve had a wonderful combination of wandering around the walking tracks and enjoying some of the tour options that are only available in the current low waters –the Devil’s Pool (where you can jump into a small pond and sit on a ledge at the top of the falls – thanks Jo and Neil for the recommendation!) and whitewater rafting (which really got the adrenalin pumping!). Again, we will upload photos from both onto our Flickr account in the next few weeks.

From here the next chapter of our trip begins! When we arrived in Zimbabwe we picked up our hire car (a dual-cab Hilux with a roof tent – named ‘Heidi’) and this morning we begin our two week self-drive tour across Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia – today’s destination is Chobe National Park in Botswana. As we write this post we are in the final stages of packing and provisioning, having had a toast over breakfast to the conclusion of our first month of our travels. What an adventure it’s been so far and we can’t wait for the next five months to come!!!

Will provide further updates at our next possible internet stop – which we anticipate may be in Windhoek, Namibia in approximately two weeks time.

Tess and Alick xx

Bushman’s Baobab – Liwonde National Park

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:39:00 +0000

We’re not really sure how to begin describing the three days and nights we have just spent in Liwonde National Park in Malawi….our first African safari experience feels quite surreal and truly magical and we are only too aware of just how lucky we have been.

Sunset at Bushman's Baobab

We have spent our time just outside the small town of Liwonde at a place called Bushman’s Baobab, which sits right against the border of Liwonde National Park on the banks of the Shire (pronounced shiree) River. The owners of Bushman’s Baobab, a Malawian man named Pious and a Zimbabwean woman Sarah, have done a spectacular job creating a welcoming and relaxing environment that acts as an extension of the National Park. Bushman’s Baobab consists of a small number of beautifully simple, open-air huts (some tented, some solid structure) with grass-thatched roofs; a dining hut and recreation hut. We were booked into a Safari Tent, however on our arrival Pious and Sarah let us know that they had upgraded us to one of their new Chalets – the height of African bush luxury!! There is no electricity on site though each evening a central campfire is lit, as well as many hurricane lamps, to provide some lighting – though walking around at night is not encouraged as the camp is often frequented by herds of elephant and hippo grazing beyond the National Park (the poor mango farmers in the nearby villages don’t often have much luck keeping fruit on their trees for this very reason!). We have been amazingly well fed across three meals per day, have felt so welcomed by all of the staff and had many interesting conversations with other guests. On our last night, we were the only guests remaining at the camp – we felt so privileged to have some quiet time to ourselves.

At first light on each morning during our stay, we were taken on safari tours of the National Park by jeep and canoe where we witnessed baboons, impalas, elephants, warthogs, hippos, crocodiles, waterbucks, buffalo and sables in their natural environments – amazing! Here's a few snaps to share with you though we've also uploaded further photos from our time at Bushman's Baobab onto our Flickr page.

Warthog on the banks of the Shire River

Hippo, Shire River

Buffalo, Liwonde National Park

Waterbuck, Liwonde National Park

Each day, as the morning sun reached full strength, we were then taken back to Bushman’s Baobab to spend the day reading, eating and snoozing and experiencing more of the local wildlife. On our first morning at Bushman’s Baobab we had just got comfortable with our books in the shade outside our huts and were just starting to doze off when Alick heard a branch breaking behind us. On looking up, we found a herd of about six elephants had settled into graze in the reeds about 20 meters from our hut. This became a regular occurrence over the next three days and our afternoons have involved wandering over to have some ‘me-time’ observing the elephants grazing along the banks of the river at regular intervals.

Elephant across the river from our accommodation

More elephants!

Lying in bed during the evenings we were treated to a chorus of elephants and hippos coming by to graze, grunt and otherwise converse. On our first day here we were warned that if the elephants approached our open air huts during the evenings, the most important things to remember were to not scream or use flash photography so as not to alarm the elephants – thankfully the elephants didn’t come close enough during the evenings for us to need to heed that advice!

Bushman’s Baobab has also recently partnered with an organisation called IFAW (who work to conserve the Liwonde National Park and deter poachers) to fund the Chinguini Trust Mchire Children’s Centre, an early childhood centre for the local villages just down the road from Bushman’s Baobab. On Monday morning, after our canoe safari, we spent some time at the Children’s Centre talking with the manager, Gilbert, some of his volunteers and singing with the children. The Centre has been operating for nearly three months now, though the biggest challenge is the student numbers - the Centre was based around funding for 30 children under 5 years old, however between 60-70 children turn up each day. We spent some time talking to Gilbert, and were really interested to learn more about his views on getting further support from the local communities and church groups to ensure the centre’s sustainability at a local level, rather than being dependant on international aid and donations. As a local man with a passion and educational background in HIV awareness and support, it is also Gilbert’s aim to have the centre’s teachings grounded in student education about HIV prevention and promotion of social inclusion strategies for children who are HIV positive. We were both incredibly inspired by Gilbert’s interactions with the children and approach towards the children’s centre and are keen to be updated about future developments with the Children’s Centre.

Mchire Children's Centre

All in all, our time at Bushman’s Baobab has been a truly unique experience and one that will be sure to stay with us for some time – we are so thankful to Alick’s dad Simon, and of course Kate, for helping to arrange such an unforgettable few days.

From Liwonde we made our way to Blantyre where we’re now spending a few days with Kate and Dom and getting and even greater sense of the work they do (having now experienced their fantastic destination recommendations in Nhkata Bay, Cape Maclear and Liwonde). As ever, news from home is welcomed and thanks to everyone who is commenting on our posts – apologies we’ve not yet had a chance to respond given our intermittent internet access over the past week or so!!!

Transit Tales

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:44:00 +0000

When planning for the Africa leg of our trip, we made a very conscious decision to do our internal travel independently by road, rather than flying or through organised group tours. Apart from the significant budget savings, we also viewed this as an opportunity have a very ‘real’ experience of travelling in Africa in addition to giving us the challenge of navigating local transport systems. During the last 5 days, we have well and truly had a decent taste (or rather buffet!) of African transport systems as we made our way across the length of Tanzania and into Malawi via commercial bus, local mini-bus, motorbike, walking, shared taxi, private car, hitch-hiking and on the back of pick up trucks. In some steps we feel we negotiated the local systems wisely and fairly and are rather proud of ourselves. In others, our experiences have considerably increased our awareness about local systems and the marked inflations on tourist prices (though in the scheme of things the odd $10 here and there means very little to us compared to how far that can stretch here).

Thanks to the expert advice and bookings from Alick’s step-sister Kate at the Responsible Safari Company, our journey has been suitably broken up by a two night stay at Mayoka Village in Nhkata Bay and two nights at Cape Maclear, Lake Malawi – from where we’re currently writing this post. We have learnt to never estimate journey length by kilometres – it can take 6.5 hours to drive 240 kms; to never again think a car is full just because there’s a person in each seat; to never take loo stops for granted; that we foreigners (Mzungu) are a source of utter fascination, and sometimes fear for small children, to always be prepared to resort to a plan B for mode of travel and above all, that the transit journey is often just as much of an experience as the destination we are trying to get to. So in saying that, we thought it worthwhile to jot down some notes about the last five days as we are now sitting safe, sound and well rested by the water in Cape Maclear.

Moshi to Mbeya - 1,180km

We set out at 6am from our hotel from Moshi to catch the 7am Hood bus from (in Tanzania’s north) to Mbeya (in Tanzania’s southern highlands) – an anticipated 15 hours which was meant to see us arrive in Mbeya at 10pm; and perhaps that would have been an accurate estimation had our driver not gotten into a fight with a neighbouring bus driver a few hours down the road related to a very near miss which saw us waiting on the side of the road for quite some time while the two drivers vocalised their frustration with one another. Being the only white people on the bus, the other passengers exchanged many kind glances with us during this time when it was very uncertain when, and if, we would ever resume our journey. When we eventually did resume our journey, our driver was definitely a little subdued, with the overall pace noticeably more gentle.

One of the highlights of the journey came shortly after a stop at the Hood bus headquarters in Morogoro in central Tanzania. As the sun started to set, we entered the Mikumi National Park, in the mid-south west of Tanzania. Not really sure what to expect, we were both very happy to have the opportunity to have a ‘safari from the bus’ as we drove along. First spotting antelopes (we think probably Impalas) and a couple of warthog, we later saw lots of elephants, giraffes, zebras and a couple of monkeys! It was amazing to catch our first glimpse of African wildlife from the windows of a rickety old bus hurtling through the countryside! Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures (being very cautious about bringing out cameras in front of fellow bus passengers), but it is one of those memories that will stay with us.

We eventually arrived in Mbeya at 1.30am. We had previously called ahead and booked a room at the ‘Rift Valley Hotel’ in Mbeya, and luckily their reception was still open when our cab dropped us there at about 1.45. Having been shown to our very basic room, we hit the single bed for a few hours rest before the border crossing into Malawi the next day...

Mbeya – Nkhata Bay 428km

At 6.15 the next morning, we made our way back to the bus stand. Having been descended upon by a mob of touts, we were whisked to a booking office and sold tickets for the border (which we later found to be at a markedly inflated price!). We reached the border crossing at about 10.30am and with the help of a fellow minibus passenger, boarded motorbike taxis from where the bus dropped us to immigration control.

After an uneventful border crossing (having dodged all of the touts offering money exchange) our passports were stamped and we were into Malawi! It was amazing how different the tone of two countries can be; from the frantic, slightly edgy feel of Tanzania, it was quite a relief to move to the very relaxed, almost lackadaisical attitude of people in Malawi. We shared a taxi with our the guy we’d met on the mini-bus to Karonga, which looked to be a good idea until we were stopped at a customs border post, and one of the other people in the cab was asked to pay additional taxes on the goods she was bringing in – interestingly they didn’t even cast a glance at our bags, and appeared only interested in things that could be used for trade purposes. We eventually covered the 40-odd km to Karonga in around an hour, and boarded a minibus to Mzuzu, the main town in the northern region of Malawi.

On departure of the minibus, it was clear quite early on that this was going to be a longer trip than we expected. Our friend had advised us to expect to reach Mzuzu at around 4.30 (it was midday when we left Karonga) – we couldn’t really see how it would take 4 ½ hours to cover the 220km, but accepted that we were in Africa and things just ‘took longer’. It seems that we had boarded possibly the slowest minibus in Malawi! That, combined with the bus being stopped at another customs post and again two people being hauled off and asked to pay hefty duties on their goods, made the trip probably the longest 220km that either of us has ever endured. At one point, as we heaved our way up a long hill, there were baboons and monkeys trotting alongside the bus – and then running past and overtaking us!! It was quite laughable, although Alick did lose a little patience with Africa when, after 4 ½ hours of travel, it was clear that we still had over 70km to run into Mzuzu. Tess calmed Alick down, and eventually we rolled into Mzuzu at around 6pm. By this time we were utterly exhausted, and just wanted to get to Nhkata Bay – another 45km west, on the lakeshore. We had previously read that minibuses from Mzuzu to Nkhata Bay took around 1 ½ hours; we simply didn’t have the energy for this, and resorted to a taxi – which while being significantly more expensive, felt like a much more manageable option.

We had our first experience in this taxi of a problem that has gripped Malawi for a number of years – the continuing fuel crisis. There was a queue of probably 15 cars lined up outside one of the petrol stations in town, which we joined with our driver Francis. It was really something to witness – people pulling up in their cars and filling not only the fuel tank, but also every kind of container imaginable. We eventually reached the front of the queue, and having put in just enough fuel to get his car from Mzuzu to Nkhata Bay and back, Francis was on the way. It was probably one of the most nerve-wracking taxi rides either of us have ever done. Francis freewheeled down hills in neutral to save fuel and not wanting to brake around corners in case it killed the momentum. In the end, Francis willingly delivered us safely to the gates of Mayoka, and helped us with our bags down to the bar to check in. That bar was a real sight for sore eyes!!

Mayoka Village, Nhkata Bay

The beer was possibly the sweetest thing that either of us had ever tasted, and after only a couple we both passed out in the four-poster bed in our lovely Banda, sleeping for around 10 hours! Lovely! The next day, we treated ourselves to a bit of a rest - reading books in the sun, swimming at the beach, walking through town and chatting to some of the locals (in particular, three guys called Sunshine, Happiness and Fresh Potato).

Nhkata Bay to Cape Maclear – 448 kms

The advice we received in Nkhata Bay about the trip to Cape Maclear seemed very straight-forward compared to our travel two days earlier – catch the 6am bus from Nhkata Bay to Salima, mini-bus from Salima to Monkey Bay and cab or pick up truck from Monkey Bay to Cape Maclear by mid afternoon…and we’re sure that plan would have worked well had the bus not experienced some ‘technical difficulties’ about an hour and a half down the road which saw the engine overheat and the entire bus fill with smoke. We have never seem 60-odd people move so quickly, scrambling for personal belongings while jumping off the bus – we’re sure that most of the passengers were sure the whole thing was about to go up in flames! After about 30 minutes waiting on the side of the road, the driver stated that everything was fine now and we could leave again. There were three young American Peace Corps volunteers who had also been on our bus, and between the five of us, we were slightly hesitant about jumping back on the bus but in doing a quick weigh-up of our options, didn’t really seem to have much choice. So we go back on the bus and sure enough, 15 minutes later the engine overheated again! Thankfully, the American girls were quite comfortable with the African hitch-hiking systems and managed to flag down a car who was happy to drive us a further 100kms down the road into a town called Nkhotakhota (which was then only 100kms short of Salima – our original bus destination). On reaching Nkhotakhota, the American girls found a mini-bus headed towards their destination of Lilongwe, while our only option to get to Salima was on the back of a pick up trip – so we climbed on board and hung on for dear life! On that pick up truck, we were seated next to (or rather, on top of!) an elderly woman named Serema who explained that she was also on her way to Cape Maclear with her friend Ivy. That was music to our ears and at that point we decided that we would be Serema and Ivy’s shadow for the rest of the trip! About an hour down the road, the pick-up truck stopped and we were all moved onto a different pick up truck (the driver said that us Mzungus should ride in the cab with him – we think he either took pity on our white skin in the full sun, or decided that with our need to hold onto the edges of the truck at all times, we couldn’t make ourselves as compact as the locals and therefore they could fit a lot more people in the back if they moved us into the cab!).

Regardless, we made it to Salima in one piece, followed Serema and Ivy into a local minibus (travelling with locals meant that we could easily deflect the many touts trying to sell us bus tickets!) which got us half way to Monkey Bay, and from there, it was simply a matter of following Serema and Ivy into a further two pick up trucks and cab until we got to Cape Maclear at around 7.30pm (Serema and Ivy thought we were hilarious and kept on bursting into laughter each time we pointed out to people that we were going wherever they went. During the length of the final pick up truck, Ivy steadfastly held and patted Tess’ hand, just saying ‘Tess, Tess’ over and over again). One of our favourite moments from the pick up truck journey was around 30kms outside Monkey Bay. There were around 40 people crammed onto the back of the pick up truck (and that’s excluding the babies, chickens and goats!) and one of the guys was travelling with a double bed frame – which was strapped onto the back of the cab and was working as a much needed handrail during transit. He was unable to make the journey from the drop off point on the edge of the main road to his village while carrying his bedframe so the driver agreed to take him all the way into his village (all in all about a 45 minute detour in our trip across very bumpy dirt roads!) By the time we drove past a couple of houses, kids started running out screaming at the tops of their lungs ‘Mzungu! Mzungu!’ (Foreigner! Foreigner!) and then, after seeing the both of us on the back of the truck the cries changed to ‘Azungu! Azungu!’ (Two Foreigners!). Within five minutes of being in the village, we were swamped with kids – with everyone wanting to point, wave at us and shake our hands (even though when we said hello, some of them were so embarrassed they had to hide behind a tree!). The others on the back of the pick up truck thought it all most amusing!

Cape Maclear

Cape Maclear is an absolutely stunning place and our accommodation is literally right on the beach. We have spent another relaxing day in the sun swimming and paddling kayaks out to some of the nearby islands where we snorkelled with the gorgeous electric blue fish. Pure bliss! We'll put some photos from both Cape Maclear and Nhkata Bay on the Flickr account shortly...

From here we’re making our way down to Liwonde National Park tomorrow for a three-day safari – which we are so excited about and will be sure to update you on our adventures from there shortly...

Tess and Alick xx

Kilimanjaro!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 02:43:00 +0000

Wow, what a lot has happened since our last post! We had the most incredible time climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, culminating in achieving the summit very early on the morning of October 12th.... It is hard to describe what the experience of the trek was like, but we've gone through on a day-by-day basis below, for those interested in reading along...

We've also uploaded a bunch of pics from the climb to our Flickr photostream - you can find the set here.

Day One - 7th October 2012. Machame Gate (1828m) to Machame Camp (3020m) - 10.8km.
Having had a thorough briefing from Manneseh (Tanzanian Operations Manager for Hidden Valley Safaris, with whom we were climbing) the night before, we were met by our guide, Harold, at our hotel at around 7.30am. A quick stop in Moshi town to finalise any rental gear, and Tess, Alick and five companions from various parts of the world set off toward the Machame Gate of Mt Kilimanjaro. Spirits were high, although there were also butterflies in all of our stomachs!!

We had decided to climb via the Machame Route (also known as the Whiskey Route), over 7 days, to give ourselves the maximum opportunity to acclimatise to the altitude before we attempted the summit. You can have a look at a map of the various different routes below:

Having signed in and registered for the climb, met the assistant guides Allen and Godfrey, and ensured that our gear wasn't too heavy for the porters, we set off up the hill for the 10-ish kilometer climb from the Machame Gate to the Machame Camp, our first overnight stop.

Our climbing group, from left Alick, Jess, Veronica, Jess, Julio, Tess and Ania.

Day one was a slow, gentle walk, albeit on a steady incline - but left us in good spirits that we were capable of achieving the climb; it was a long, uphill push, moving from lush rainforest (complete with monkeys) through to mid-alpine scrubby woodland by the time we reached Machame Camp.

A section of the trail en route to Machame Camp

We also became aware of two things that would characterise the rest of our climb; first, we learned the true meaning of the Kiswahili saying 'pole-pole' - basically it means slowly or gradually, which is exactly how we climbed. Second, we discovered (much to our delight) that the quality of food that we were to be served over the course of our climb was incredible... Lunch consisted of cucumber soup, fried chicken, avocado sandwiches fruit, muffins and salad - delicious! Our lunch was set on a table with camp chairs around it, off to one side of the walking track - we were treated like royalty, and it was a sign of things to come!

On arrival in Machame Camp we were shown our tents, given fresh popcorn and tea in the mess tent, and recommended to rest until dinner. We took the opportunity to have a look around the camp, get to know some of our crew, and take a few pictures, before dinner and bed.

Day Two - 8th October 2012. Machame Camp (3020m) to Shira Camp (3847m) - 5.2km.
Day two saw us being woken by one of the waiters, Charles (who was to become a very welcome and familiar face over the course of the week) with steaming fresh ginger tea, to have in our tent before we got up for breakfast. We also got our first view of Kibo (the main peak of Kilimanjaro) this morning, looming in the distance...

Kibo in the early morning sunshine from Machame Camp

Each day before breakfast we needed to pack all of our sleeping gear (and anything else we didn't need for the hike that day) into our duffel bags for the porters to take to the next camp, and head to breakfast with our day packs ready to go. We both felt a little strange packing things up and just leaving them for the porters, but we realised quickly that the mountain provides significant employment opportunities for people living in the local area; to give a sense of this, for our group of seven climbers, we had a crew of 28 guides, cooks, waiters and porters...

Our chief guide Harold (in blue) and one of our Assistant Guides Allen, resting on the climb to Shira Camp

Day two was a tough day; the first 3/4 of the climb was a very steep and rocky trail, taking us up into more of an alpine tundra landscape. It was a very scenic trek, winding its way along a ridgeline to Shira Camp, which looks out over the Shira Plateau (one of Kilimanjaro's three main peaks - the others being Mawenzi and Kibo). We were served lunch at the end of our climb, at Shira Camp - which worked as a good incentive to get there!

From Shira Camp we had beautiful views out over the Shira Plateau, until the clouds rolled in in the early afternoon, and the temperature dropped rapidly; we took this as our que to have a short nap before dinner to recoup some energy. We were lucky enough to wake up to clear skies and an amazing sunset, looking out over the Shira Plateau and Mt Meru in the distance...

Shafts of sunlight piercing the cloud before sunset at Shira Camp

Sunset at Shira Camp

We were served another delicious dinner (zucchini soup & beef stew) before heading to bed; it was noticeably colder on the mountain this night, and we awoke on day three to find our tents iced up - both inside and out!

Day Three - 9th October 2012. Shira Camp (3847m) to Lava Tower (4642m) to Barranco Camp (3984m) - 10.7km.

Day three was an important acclimatisation day, which saw us starting at Shira Camp and climbing up around 800m to the base of Lava Tower (which sits at the foot of the main Kibo peak), and then descending again around 600m to Barranco Camp. This 'walk high, sleep low' altitude profile was supposed to help our bodies get used to the reduced oxygen in the air at higher altitudes; and we all felt it on our way to Lava Tower. It was a long and steep climb up to Lava Tower, and we stopped for lunch with the rock monolith visible across the plain...

Lava Tower (4,600m) from our lunch break on Day Three

Most of the group developed slight headaches and mild nausea on the way to Lava Tower, but were assured by Harold that this was perfectly normal... It was clear that it was not only us feeling the effects of the altitude, as we saw our porters taking the opportunity to rest while we lunched...

Porters and cooks resting as we had lunch just before reaching Lava Tower

As we reached Lava Tower the clouds rolled in in earnest; the temperature dropped and freezing rain started to fall - but we were all very happy to be on the way back down to thicker air at Barranco Camp. Tess felt quite awful at Barranco Camp, with the nausea and headache really taking their toll, but an afternoon nap fixed that and we were both able to enjoy the beautiful location of the camp at the base of the Barranco Wall, and to spend some time in the kitchen tent discussing a range of things with our guide, Harold - who is a very intelligent and interesting guy. It was particularly interesting talking with him about the porters, given that we had both seen a porter fall with his load that day and hurt himself (one of our Assistant Guides stayed with him to make sure he was OK, even though he wasn't with our crew), and we had also noticed a female porter for the first time - which Harold confirmed was a slowly increasing trend amidst fears by some guides that this may result in the introduction of prostitution on the mountain.

Our climbing group at the foot of Lava Tower

The clouds rolling in en route from Lava Tower to Barranco Camp

After another delicious dinner, we were early to bed, in preparation for climbing the Barranco Wall the next morning....

Day Four - 10th October 2012. Barranco Camp (3984m) to Karanga Camp (4040m) - 5.8km.

The trek from Barranco to Karanga starts with a steep ascent 300m up the 'Barranco Wall', a rocky cliff face that involves scrambling and short sections of climbing. It was a pretty tough way to start the day, and once again caused us to marvel at the skill of the porters, balancing their loads up the steep incline (except for one poor guy who lost his load around half way up, and it fell all the way down into the valley - he had to go back down to collect it and start all over again).

Starting the climb up the Barranco Wall

We had a great view from the top of the Barranco Wall, and really felt for the first time as though we were getting close to the base of the huge cone of Kibo...

Tess and some of the climbing group at the top of the Barranco Wall

This was another day of ups and downs, however, and from the top of the Barranco Wall we descended again to a lower altitude than we began the day... We finished the day with a long climb up the Karanga Valley to Karanga Camp. Again we joined some of the crew in the kitchen tent and as well as marvelling at what the chefs were able to produce from that tiny kitchen, we also spoke more with Harold about the state of things in Tanzania (such as house prices - US$6,000 for a block of land, US$20,000 for a nice house - but still very much out of reach of most people, given the low wages and high rate of unemployment). It was fascinating to hear his insights into the challenges facing his country, and really put things in perspective for us.

Rajab, the chef, preparing dinner at Karanga Camp

Harold, our Head Guide

The camp kitchen

It was a beautiful evening, with another stunning sunset enjoyed by climbers and porters alike...

Porters enjoying the sunset at Karanga Camp

Day Five - 11th October 2012. Karanga Camp (4040m) to Barafu Camp (4680m) - 3.4km.

Having gone to bed as a rainstorm hit Karanga Camp, we awoke to a snow-capped Kibo in the background, with snow having fallen to around 4500m overnight.

Snow-covered Kibo, from Karanga Camp

It really brought home to us how unpredictable the mountain could be, especially given that we were now less than 24 hours away from making our summit attempt... The climb from Karanga to Barafu (which is the base camp for around three different routes up Kilimanjaro) was very steep and quite difficult at times, and required us to hike through snow and ice by the end.

Hiking from Karanga to Barafu through snow and ice

Once again, our respect for our porters increased further when we learned that there was no water at Barafu camp, and thus having taken all of our luggage and tents and set up camp, they were required to hike back down into the Karanga Valley to refill with water, before lugging it back up the hill to Barafu camp. Incredible...

Having arrived at Barafu at around 11am, we went to our tents to rest and prepare for the summit attempt later that night. We were woken for meals (lots of carbs!!), but otherwise left to rest in our tents to retain energy for the night ahead. Shortly after dinner we all had our blood oxygen levels tested by Harold, to check that we were well enough to make the climb. It was clear that the acclimatisation process had worked quite well, and none of us had dangerously low blood oxygen levels, and were not really feeling the effects of the altitude as we had at Lava Tower.

Just as we retired to bed after dinner, a huge storm rolled in, bringing thunder, lightning, wind and snow...needless to say, none of us slept very much in the ensuing few hours....

Day Six - 12th October 2012. Summit Attempt: Barafu Camp (4680m) to Uhuru Peak (5895m) 4.5km one way.

The storm set in hard, blowing our tents around the covering everything with around 6 inches of snow. We were all waiting to see whether our guides would change the plan for the summit attempt because of the weather, but at around 10.45pm the wind suddenly eased, the snow stopped and the storm moved away. 15 minutes later, right on schedule, we were roused by the crew and told to get ready for the summit.... At 11.30 we were brought hot ginger tea and ginger snap biscuits to eat in our tent as we got ready, and emerged at around 11.55pm, ready to start the ascent at midnight.

When we stepped out of our tents we could see how much snow had fallen, and really felt the cold as we set off into the night. Our first target was Stella Point, at 5753m, which we expected to reach around sunrise; from there it was only 1.2km and 143 vertical metres to Uhuru Peak, the summit of Kibo. Given the terrible weather conditions, in addition to our three guides Harold had asked a further three porters - Bwana, Yone and Rasheed - to join us on the ascent to provide additional support (and escort us down if we weren't able to make it)- without their help we really would have struggled to make it up the mountain.

It is hard to describe the experience of climbing to the summit through the night, but suffice to say that it was the most physically, and in many ways psychologically, challenging thing that either of us has ever done. We lost one of our party at around 2am, when she felt that continuing on was risking her health; she was helped back to camp by one of the guides, and the remaining six of us trudged on through the night, one very slow step at a time...with our guides singing a constant stream of Kiswahili songs to keep our spirits up.

Another one of our party fainted around an hour later, but was able to get herself together enough to continue (amazing!), and I am sure that all of us at one point or another considered giving up and turning back. It was around -20C, with wind gusting at what must have been 30-40km/h, in six inches of fresh snow, at over 5,000m. Very very tough. Alick made the mistake of looking up the hill every now and then - it felt like the stream of headlamps zig-zagging their way up the mountain was never-ending - a truly disheartening feeling! To top it all off, Alick's pants (which we had hired in Moshi) kept falling down, so he had to borrow Tess' belt to hold them up, and Tess' headtorch (with brand new batteries) died at around 3am; both of which made things a little more difficult.

We finally reached Stella Point (named after the first woman to climb Kili, who sadly passed away on reaching what is now Stella Point) at around dawn; Alick cried with relief on seeing the sign, but we were given no time to celebrate and were quickly ushered on toward Uhuru peak.

Around 45 minutes later we arrived at Uhuru peak. It was a totally surreal experience - a complete white-out blocked any view that we might have had of the surrounding countryside, although we did catch glimpses of amazing ice-cliffs from one of the glaciers on our left, and the soaring rock spires of Mawenzi on our right. There were probably 15-20 other climbers at the peak at the same time as us, and our guides efficiently ushered us in for photos, before gathering us together to start the descent. We couldn't have been on the peak for more than 6-8 minutes, but the sense of achievement, after such a long and hard slog up, was incredible.

Our climbing group at Uhuru Peak

Day Six and Seven - The Descent!
And then the descent.....which proved to be quite difficult with the rising sun quickly turning the snow into ice and slush. Tess in particular found this to be incredibly difficult having used every last inch of energy. However between Harold, Rasheed, Yone and Bwana, she had a constant stream of crew to hold her hand while making the slow (and painful!) descent from the summit. From there we had a short break for lunch and over the next two days made our way back down the mountain - followed by a celebratory dinner with some of our porters and guides back at the hotel on Saturday night.

We'll try to add some more posts soon, but for now we have to go and catch our bus to Mbeya, en route to Malawi!

Bye for now, Al & Tess x

The First Few Days

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 20:21:00 +0000

Well, we’re in Moshi, Tanzania in the final stages of packing and preparation for the start of our Kilimanjaro climb tomorrow – so we thought it timely to provide a bit of an update on the first few days of our trip – which in some senses have flown by though when thinking about what we’ve seen so far, our departure from Melbourne feels like so long ago…

Our transit was broken up by a 20 hour stop-over in Doha, Qatar – so we took the opportunity to see a few sights. Doha itself was an absolute maze of construction and development – with much of it in preparation for the 2022 World Cup– interspersed with beautiful Islamic architecture. It was difficult to get around – partly because of the heat (some 38 degrees) while we were wearing full-length dress and partly because of how scared we were of crossing the road – pedestrian walkways and lights were scarce and the Doha driving was an experience unto itself! We did manage to experience amazing food at the Souq Waqif (Gold Market) and venture to the Villagio Shopping Centre– which was like stepping into Vegas – complete with ice skating rink and rollercoasters. One of my favourite moments from our time in Doha was the 5am taxi ride to the airport when the streets were filled with people out for morning prayer as the sun was rising – a spectacular sight.

Between the Doha stop-over and some last minute re-routing of our plane from Nairobi to Dar Es Salaam, we had all but convinced ourselves that our bags would not arrive in Moshi at the same time as us. Fortunately we were wrong - our arrival into Moshi could not have gone more smoothly and our bags were some of the first to come onto the carousel. We were met at the airport by Moses from Hidden Valley Safaris (the company we are doing the Kilimanjaro climb with) who brought us into Moshi. We had booked our first two nights in Moshi independently from Hidden Valley Safaris – partly due to the cost but also because the accommodation used by Hidden Valley is a way out of Moshi’s centre and we wanted to give ourselves some time to get to know the place a little. We are both so pleased with this decision as our time in Moshi gave us some wonderful insight into the place – and what a place it is!

Our friends and family who have been to Africa before have told us there’s nothing quite like it – we completely agree, though can’t even begin to describe it and won't try here as we won’t begin to do it justice. This place is an absolute whirlwind….

During our walks around Moshi yesterday morning, we came across the office of the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project, who provide training and advocacy for porters and loan basic climbing equipment. It was quite distressing to hear about the conditions some climbing companies place on porters. KPAP’s push for particular employment conditions for porters seems to be a sensitive and political topic – made all the more complex by the fact that KPAP is an initiative of a USA-based non-governmental organisation, advocating for conditions within Tanzanian-run businesses. Nonetheless, our visit to KPAP provided us with greater awareness of the conditions of porters on Kilimanjaro climbs and some practical things we, as climbers, can do and look out for in relation to the treatment of the men who are working as porters on our climb.

It appears that, apart from the Kilimanjaro Climb, Moshi tourist activities are mainly comprised of day trips to coffee and banana plantations or local waterfalls, and the Moshi streets are filled with tour guides touting their business – some of whom are connected to a tourist office, some working independently and others who seem to jump behind the desk of any office in town, with a small payment to a office manager. One of the most admirably persistent such guides was a young man called Abuje – to whom we stated that we were not interested in a tours but invited him to have a drink with us instead. Abuje is a bright young man with such a gift for storytelling and shared with us stories of his upbringing, life with his girlfriend Barbara and one-year old son Hillsun, and his work establishing an out of school hours program for kids in his township next to a rice field a few kilometres outside of Moshi. Alick and I agreed to go with Abuje that afternoon to see the work that he was doing there – and the afternoon truly was an unforgettable experience. The out-of-hours program was not actually on (someone had forgotten to turn up with the keys?) but it was such an amazing opportunity to see the community, meet Barbara and Hillsun and spend some time with the gorgeous kids who had turned up to attend the program. The program Abuje has been involved in is called the Kilimanjaro Youth Skills and Talent Centre and the project sponsors (I think they’re from Germany?) have set up a website at www.kystc.com.

This was also really the first place we've been to where we have felt it appropriate to take photos (the kids loved the camera!). The first picture is of Abuje and Hillsun.

Getting home from Abuje’s community proved somewhat difficult, however thanks to Abuje’s assistance it did mean that Alick and I got the opportunity experience our first Dala Dala (local mini-bus)!

This morning we checked out of our Hotel in the centre of Moshi and have moved to the resort booked through Hidden Valley – Sal Salinero. It is a different world from the Moshi we have been in – it is absolutely vast with beautifully manicured gardens, swimming pool and more space in our hotel room than we know what to do with. We were warned by many friends and family to be prepared for the African culture shock, yet as strange as it sounds, it feels like that culture shock has only really hit us since being at Sal Salinero and seeing the direct contrast from where we have been over the last few days and just how out of reach our lifestyle is for so many, sending many thoughts and conflicts churning in both our heads at the moment….

This evening we met the other four travellers in our climbing group and received our pre-departure briefing from Manneseh, the Hidden Valley Safari Director - who has assured us that the climb should be very relaxing (?!)…we’ll see. The nerves about the climb are certainly kicking in for both of us about now. We are travelling with another Australian, two women from the States, a Colombian man and there is also a 7^th group member arriving before the morning.

And on that note, we’d best head to bed and get some sleep before day one of the climb starts! Last night the clouds cleared enough for us to get a view of the top - so this is where we'll be from tomorrow.

Our Itinerary

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 13:59:00 +0000

For a number of years now, we have been talking and dreaming about taking a break from work to travel, take on some personal and physical challenges and spend time with our much loved family and friends who are based in various places around the world....and after many years of talking about it, we're finally doing it! We've each taken a 6 month hiatus from work from October 2012 to April 2013 and will spend this time travelling between Eastern and Southern Africa, Jordan, Egypt, the UK, Ireland and North America.

During this time, we'll periodically be putting up some photos and updates about our travels on this site so feel free to check in every now and then if you're interested in hearing what we've been up to.

In the meantime, here's a quick overview of our plans:

October 2012
We fly out of Melbourne on October 2 and head to Moshi, Tanzania via a short Doha stop-over. We'll have a few days to get our bearings and explore some of our surrounds before commencing the Mount Kilimanjaro ascent on October 7 (we're attempting a 7-day climb on the Machame route). Wish us luck - we'll need it!

Following our Kilimanjaro attempt we'll make our way down to Malawi - where we'll have opportunity to meet up with Kate and Dom (Alick's step-sister and her husband) and experience first hand the work they do through The Responsible Safari Company. Thanks to Kate and Dom's recommendations we will have a few days to enjoy the scenery of Lake Malawi, take in a 3-day safari in Liwonde before staying with Kate and Dom in Blantyre, seeing the surrounding areas and visiting some of the community projects they support.

From Malawi, we'll head up to Zambia and take some time to explore Victoria Falls on both sides of the Zambia/Zimbabwe border.

November 2012

From Victoria Falls we'll pick up a Hilux with a roof-tent and commence a two-week self-drive tour from Zimbabwe to Windhoek, Namibia -stopping at various game-viewing sites and other points of interest along the way.

From Namibia we head to Cape Town where we can soak up the sites and sun before flying to Amman, Jordan.
Once in Jordan, we'll make our way south to Petra and experience a few days trekking in Wadi Rum.

December 2012

December will see us fly into Egypt and spend the next two weeks seeing the sites of Luxor, Aswan, Cairo and Alexandria before heading over to Siwa Oasis for some rest and relaxation.

From Egypt we will head to the UK to catch up with our lovely family and friends based there. Christmas will be spent in Somerset with Grandma Jean (and various other family members!) before dawdling up the West Coast of England and into Scotland to visit Granny Mary.

January 2013

After some further touring of Scotland and England (giving Alick plenty of opportunity to point out places of significance from the 'Mother Country'), we'll duck across to Ireland to visit Tess' sister Fiona and her partner Denis and spend time with them in their new home in Dublin.

After Ireland it will be time for North America - starting with a week in New York (where Tess can be in Broadway heaven and Alick can find more micro-breweries than he could dream of!)

February 2013

By February we will head to Big White in British Colombia, Canada - for Alick to refine his snowboarding skills and Tess to fall over a lot trying to understand the basics. At least three weeks or so should be a long enough time to give skiing or snowboarding lessons a fair crack.

March 2013

From Canada we'll make our way to Vegas for a few nights, pick up a camper-van and spend the better part of the next month road-tripping to New Orleans and back to Los Angeles.

April 2013

It wouldn't quite feel like Easter without our annual trip to the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival and we felt there was no better finale to our trip than to fly back into Brisbane and straight to Byron Bay for the festival, before returning to Melbourne in early April 2013 and catching up with our much-loved family and friends.

We look forward to sharing our travel adventures with you on this site!