Just to finish off, here’s a (heavily abbreviated) list of some of the highlights of our honeymoon…
- Watching the mists swirl in the wind and finally, in the end, reveal Machu Picchu (Peru) early in the morning of our last day of the Inca Trail
- Having the hike to Condoriri (one of the peaks in the Cordillera Real, near La Paz) base camp all to ourselves and watching the spectacular Andean landscape change as the snow laid down overnight melted throughout the day
- Watching red flamingos go about there business at the red coloured (and aptly named) Laguna Colorado (Bolivian Altiplano)
- Catching a glimpse into the crater from the rim of Vulcan Lascar (near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile) at 5480m and looking up to get an incredible view along a chain of other vulcanoes stretching off into the distance
- Having the stunningly varied hike around Refugio Frey and Refugio Lynch (near Bariloche, Argentina) all to ourselves on a beautiful sunny Xmas day
- Watching the sun rise over a cloudless Cerro Fitz Roy (anyone who’s been to Los Glaciaros NP in Patagonia can attest to how hard it is to catch a glimpse of the peak through ever-present clouds, let alone catch it on a cloudless morning)
- Walking into the natural amphitheatre formed by the peaks at the end of the (wind-swept) French Valley, having passed cascades, sliding waterfalls, crystal-clear streams, beautiful forests and dramatic (and regularly calving) hanging glaciers (Torres del Paine NP, Chile)
- Glacier walking at the base of Cerro Torre (Los Glaciaros NP, Argentina) on a beautiful sunny day
- Watching a deep red sunset envelop Manhattan, and in particular the Empire State building, from the top of the Rockefeller centre (New York)
- Waking up to find snow falling on the balcony of our guesthouse in Lower Pisang and walking through a stunning winter wonderland for most of the morning (Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)
- Early morning ascent up to the Thorung-La (pass), the highest point (5416m) of the Annapurna Circuit (Nepal) and and afternoon descent into Muktinath, on a perfect (and very bright!) day. Actually, the whole week from Manang to Marpha was pretty hard to beat. Spoilt for choice of highlights, I had to pick one
- Watching our plans for a walk up Bessho-san disappear under two inches of snow (laid down in about half an hour!). Very scenic though (near Fukuoka, Japan)
- Walking through a snow covered gorge with crystal-clear streams and waterfalls called Sandan-kyo (near Hiroshima, Japan) on a beautiful sunny day
- Staying at a secluded and ancient monastery (with sleeping quarters just out the back of one of the temples!) on Emei Shan in China (although had mixed feelings about being woken up by the chanting monks at 4am )
- Watching the sun rise over the rice paddies and karst limestone peaks in Chaolong (near Yangshuo, China)
- Lazing about on a picture-perfect beach on Koh Samui (Thailand)
- And last but not least: sharing all these highlights (except for one or two of the sunrises perhaps, a bit too early for some ) with Justine, who every day makes me feel like I’m the luckiest man alive
And, of course, just as important, our food highlights:
- Asado (barbeque) lamb in El Calafate, Argentina
- Some salmon dish prepared by our friends in Vancouver, Canada
- Cup Cakes in New York (somewhere close to the Library)
- Cold Stone Creamery (icecream) in Times Square, New York
- Some pork dish prepared by our friends in Groningen, Holland
- Sushi in Kyoto, Japan
- Okonomiyaki in Hiroshima, Japan
- Hida beef in Takayama, Japan (apparently similar to, but less established than Kobe beef)
- Steak in Hong Kong (after 4 weeks of trekking in Nepal )
- Some fish dish in one of the restaurants in the Muslim quarter (Xian, China)
- Most of the food around the Sichuan province… spicy! (Chengdu, China)
And finally, yes, I’m working on posting the photos… house- and job-hunting just might have to come first unfortunately
As the more observant readers (both of you) would’ve noticed by now… we’ve actually been home for a couple of days now. Thailand was great, but we didn’t do much touristy stuff. And by “much”, I mean “any”. Pretty much exactly what the doctor ordered, topped off nicely with catching up with some good friends who live there or were passing through. On the other hand, definitely a place we want to go back to and do it justice, from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot to see there.
So I guess that’s it. Best thing is that we’ve been gone from Australia for so long, I almost feel like a tourist here. Everything feels new or different, and therefore exciting again in my mind . I guess they always say a change is as good as a holiday!
Always figured it would be a bit tricky to get my hands on some english magazines while travelling around China, but wasn’t sure how tricky. So, after having a pretty decent look around Xian (with 8 million people), and Chengdu (with 13 million people) and not being able to find much more than some out of date National Geographics, I was a little disappointed but not overly surprised.
In Japan for instance, English magazines were freely available, but could only be found in a few select bookstores due to the lack of demand (simply not many English speaking customers). In China’s case though I’m thinking it’s not just the lack of English speakers, but its famous control over all media including the entire Internet, aka the Great Firewall of China (see eg. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060112_434051.htm).
Then again, looking at my “magazine wishlist”, I might have been able to guess the outcome…
- The Economist May 3rd 2008, with special Feature called “Angry China” (http://www.economist.com/printedition/index.cfm?d=20080503)
- National Geographic May 2008 “Inside the Dragon” (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/table-of-contents)
Then again, The Economist I have founds generally provides a strikingly balanced view of events in China especially the latest involving Tibetan protests. We also definitely saw the National Geographic in question in a few spots, but in Chinese. Perhaps it is just a lack of demand after all…?
I’m sure everyone has heard of earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale that took place in Wenchuan, 92 kms northwest of Chengdu on Monday 12th May. Going by current estimates it has killed over 60,000 people, injured many more and made over 5 million people homeless.
We first heard about the earthquake as we were floating down the Li river near Yangshuo (in southern China and obviously at a safe distance). Interestingly enough though, we were in Chengdu no less than 24 hours earlier. If our flight had been delayed by one day, we would’ve pretty much been taking off during the earthquake.
A friend of mine remarked afterwards that if we had still been there, it at least would have been a life-altering experience. I would agree, but it does assume that at the time of the earthquake you weren’t stuck in some dodgy building put together by a less-than-scrupulous Chinese construction company. There are unfortunately quite a few Chinese (school children in particular, sadly) who were.
I guess sometimes you just get very, very lucky.
Our travel style that is. But we’ve managed to get away with it once more :) In other words, we were able to get our China visas. On the other hand, I’ve had more relaxing stopovers…
As I mentioned in an earlier post we accidentally managed to leave the application for our China visas until the very last minute (at which stage the application process had of course become far tougher due to recent protests in Tibet), so we had to reroute our trip through Hong Kong for a few days. Fortunately, Hong Kong is as efficient and modern a city (with a Chinese embassy to match) as we’ve come across. 48hrs after arrival (and 24 hrs before our flights to Beijing) we were the proud owners of a one month visa to China and able to continue our trip as planned. Phew… I’m going to need a holiday when I’m done with this trip. Apparently Australia is nice this time of year. (btw, on a slightly different note, not long till we’re there!)
Not quite in the What The category, but thought I’d share them anyway. Safe to say the Japanese do things differently than some and one of the reasons this is a cool place to visit…
- This place is clean. And by clean I mean spotless. Trains, buses, public toilets, footpaths, you name it and you could probably eat off it. Especially the hordes of cleaning ladies in matching pink uniforms that attack the bullet trains at each end destination to ensure it’s spotless for the next trip are a sight to behold.
- These people are polite and very friendly (to tourists anyway ). Manifested in never-ending bowing, thanking (I’ve barely heard anyone say sayonara, ie goodbye, because they are always too busy still thanking you), offering (help or little gifts), it does make for an interesting experience and one that a lot of other nations could learn from.
- This place is small. Small cars, small trucks, small buses, small rooms, small chairs, small beds (my feet always seem to hang off the end) and doorways (I can’t remember ever having hit my head on things so many times in such a short time span), small slippers (come about halfway up my foot), small urinals (I quite regularly have to be careful not to pee on top of them… and no, I’m not using the kids’ urinals), small meals (fortunately sushi just keeps coming out as you order more), etc, etc. The idea of quality over quantity definitely rules here though, so not all bad.
- This place is full. This might be one of the causes for everything being small actually. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, you can never go to far without bumping into people (literally, when on public transport) or infrastructure of some kind. On the other hand, it’s incredible to see the use of space around here.
- This place is religious. Europe has a few churches but I have never come across a similar pervasion of temples, shrines, gates, etc as I have here. It makes for quite a varied landscape or cityscape along the way and in our brief stay here we’ve probably only just touched on how much day to day life must be influenced by religion. Good for the photo opportunities regardless of your views on this
- Plastic bags rule. This probably partially comes back to the clean thing they have going, but for instance go to your average bakery and they’ll put each item in a little plastic bag, after which all the items go in a paper bag which is then put in a large plastic bag to allow you to carry your two items more easily.
You get the picture. Some of it a little annoying, some of it quite refreshing, but all of it quite interesting and very different to anything we’ve come across so far and probably will on the rest of our trip. As a tourist, you just can’t go wrong here really.
Visiting London (for a weekend) was a little odd. Arriving at Heathrow, catching public transport into Camden (where we were staying with friends) and going out in London was all so familiar. Yet in the back of my mind I knew that it was only for three days and that I was sleeping on a fold-out sofa at a friend’s place. Very odd and I guess similar to the feelings (sort of) that I get these days in Melbourne: you know the place back to front and it kind of feels like home, but you know you don’t live there. I guess the only difference now (between London and Melbourne) is that for Melbourne this won’t be the case for much longer…
Either way, it was great to catch up with a few of our friends who were in town at the same time. Hope to see them again some time, but it might be a little while now we don’t live down the street any more…
Well, it’s safe to say we’re no longer hot any more… Looking out of the window right now Buenos Aires seems like a very distant memory. Funny what sitting on a plane for a day or so will do to you.
Been in Vancouver a few days now and all settled in. Have eaten and drunk too much (hmmm… salmon and applewood smoked cheddar) while catching up with friends (likely to be continued over the next few days) and have used the bad weather to help us get motivated to do some homework, so all good stuff. Things still on the To Do list: shopping (some things you just can’t get in South America, I don’t care how up and coming Argentina and Chile are), organising some photos (loving the internet connection here…) and doing some research as to the next part of our trip (New York and Japan) so we can book some accommodation at some stage (might come in handy). If it stops raining we might even go do some touristy stuff!
All up a good break from our holidays so far
Well, I´ve been diligently (kind of ) maintaining this blog for a little while now, just in case anyone´s interested in what we´ve been up to. But… I have to admit I haven´t had too much traffic (email, facebook, etc) coming the other way. Of course some people do have their own blogs, so they´re off the hook. And other people keep their facebook pages up to date, so they are too. But that still leaves a few people whom we´d love to hear from… basically we´re just curious I guess
Anyway, I completely understand that these things might take a while (I´d say we have a bit more spare time than most others at the moment ), but no matter what the news is or however long it takes, we´d love to hear from you…
PS For those in Vancouver, London or Holland, never mind… we might bump into you over the next few weeks anyway
Well, all done walking around Patagonia. A combined 97 kms of walking in 6 days in Los Glaciares NP and 136kms of walking in 6 days in Torres del Paine NP (80 kms in the last 3 days… phew!). Fortunately there were a few rest days in there somewhere :)
Now we have a few days off here in El Calafate before we go to Buenos Aires, after which we move onto our “social part” of the trip, visiting friends in Vancouver, London and Holland. Looking forward to it. Might have to have a few cold ones though at this end in preparation.
Also moving into a room of our own tonight for the first time in a little while so looking forward to some spreading out and sleeping (in). Should also be able to sift through some more photos and post some more previews over the next few days.