Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

Before I forget and they become completely out of date…

• stands everywhere along the Inca Trail selling beer (called chicha, locally brewed along the track). Just what you need at the start of a casual walk up several thousand steps up a 4200m hill…
• a religious ceremony in Copacabana in Bolivia involving the local clergy blessing people’s… cars. Not just cars of course… cars decorated with flowers and covered in champagne with the hood open (so the engine could be blessed too)… who needs road-side assistance really
• dried Llama foetuses for sale at what is known as the Witches Market in La Paz. Not sure what they’re used for. Not something I figured I needed to at some point in time…
• soccer pitch at 5040m above sea level at a pass we drove over in the Altiplano in Bolivia. I was almost out of breath just sitting on the bus, would be interesting to see how long the people last that get together for their weekly runs on that soccer pitch…
• a rocket launch style count down from 10 to 0 as the Perito Moreno glacier (in Argentina) came into view… from our bus. It was a big glacier, but we weren’t exactly heading for outer space.
• wearing our goosedown winter jackets in mid-summer in Ushuaia. Apparently they were having a good spell of weather when we were there.
• celebrating New Years Eve in daylight (admittedly fading somewhat, but still) in southern Argentina. Could definitely make out the fireworks, but had the event been one hour earlier, there would’ve been some disappointed customers…
• British phone booths (you know, the red ones that everyone takes photos of in London) in… Buenos Aires. Apparently the Brits occupied the place for a bit at some stage (not sure when that was with the whole Spanish occupation, but anyway) and built some infrastructure as the Brits tended to do during their colonising days.

Anyway, not that many for two and a half months around South America. I guess they just don’t have as much originality as the Japanese when it comes to these things…

Yup, doesn’t take long, but I figured I’d mention a few “interesting” things we’ve seen so far (which reminds me, I should probably do the same for South America too… only issue it was such a “normal” place compare to Japan!):

• Vending machines at some restaurants: think a candy vending machine near the entrance of an otherwise normal restaurant, but instead of a bunch of chocolate bars, it has pictures of meals and you after you’ve paid and pressed a button, a ticket comes out which a waitress then takes once you’ve sat down. Not that hard in hindsight, but try working that one out in Japanese.
• Bowing of train conductors to the entire carriage when entering and exiting the carriage. I thought the Canadians were polite…
• You pay for bus rides at the end of the trip. Reason is that your fare is worked out down to the last yen based on the number of bus stops you’ve gone past (each additional stop incurring a higher cost). Fortunately a big board at the front of the bus will tell you the fare so far for ANY of the stops you could have started at so far. Our 2 hour trip to Sandan-kyo included 57 of these, but it still dilligently displayed all 57 separate possible fares! And once you know the exact amount, you have to pay the driver in cash as you leave, which is another story…
• Cosmetics being sold under a Manneke Pis name and logo. For those unfamiliar with this Belgian (that’s right) national symbol: Manneke Pis is a statue of a little boy pissing in a fountain. Great image that conjures up when trying to sell cosmetics. I’m guessing I’m not the target audience envisioned by that marketing strategy.
• Walking around in general (bewilderment) it becomes very easy to notice English signs in amongst a sea of Japanese characters. Especially for instance at a train station where this seemingly random room had been labelled the “Excellent Room”. Didn’t have time to check what was going on in there. Or this rather posh looking hotel in Hiroshima which had called itself the “Grand Intelligent Hotel”. Maybe something was lost in translation. Maybe the name was compensating for the marketing people behind it.
• I have now, in two days here in a hotel far from the most touristy areas of Japan, seen more NBA basketball on TV than I did in Canada or New York in two weeks. We only have 7 channels, all with the usual weird shows, etc, but one feels the need to show an hour of NBA every night! Giddy up! But I won’t mention the commentary…

I’m sure more will follow over the next few weeks…

Japan is turning out to be quite an interesting place. Which is pretty much as expected. In as far as the unexpected can be expected. You get the point.

So, interesting: not just the things we’ve seen, but particularly daily logistical activities. A good example: imagine going to the supermarket where you pretty much have no idea what’s on the inside of the packets of stuff you’re buying (pretty much all writing is in Japanese characters). Unless the packaging is transparent of course, but most of the time all you have is shape, weight and perhaps some funky drawings on the outside (ah, takes me back to trying to guess what my Xmas presents were before being allowed to unwrap them). Another example, ordering at restaurants: an instant give-away of a cheap and often nasty eatery in western countries, the good old pictures of meals on offer out the front of the restaurant, have suddenly become our saviours and a not to be underestimated factor in deciding where to dine for the evening. Some marketing strategies will never be the same.

However, the confusion that is caused by the total lack of understanding of any kanji on signs, menus, timetables, labels, television, etc are sometimes surprisingly offset somewhat by the complete efficiency with which some things are run (like trains, trams, buses, hotels, supermarkets, etc) and the easy availability of anything you could need (supermarkets, department stores, restaurants, etc). (As an aside: kanji is one of three sets of characters the Japanese use. Fortunately Justine has been able to translate the hirigana and katakana ones from her highschool days… mind you this is only of limited help: being able to translate a Japanese character set into a western one only gets you halfway as it still doesn’t help much with translating the Japanese in western characters into English!) After puzzling together how to pay for buses or trams and how to work out where your next train is leaving from, public transport has become a breeze (some aspects of it are pretty impressive actually) . Supermarkets aren’t so daunting any more once you work out where everything is and that the check-out persons don’t actually expect you to reply to the torrent of gibberish (uhm, I mean Japanese) they bombard you with. All as expected really

Anyway, interesting places we’ve seen so far. Day 2 saw us training 1150km in 8 hrs to the other side of the country to the island of Kyushu (gotta love the shinkansen, or super express, trains) and we’ve been steadily working our way back towards Tokyo ever since:

• started in Fukuoka (aka Hakata) with sidetrips to Kumamoto castle and Hiko-san for a walk (cut short somewhat, very short actually, by the two inches of snow it piled on us during the 20 min bus drive from the station to the starting point of the walk… I guess winter is not officially over yet everywhere
• then off to Hiroshima, with sidetrips to Miyajima (floating torii) and Sandan-kyo (very scenic gorge, but also cut a little short, this time due to long travel times, some snow and construction… we did pretty much have the place to ourselves though, strangely enough!)
• currently in Takamatsu (on island of Shikoku), with a sidetrip today to the Iya valley (unfortunately the bits you can visit by train and bus, such as Oboke gorge and the Iya vine bridge are HIGHLY overrated… the bits you can get to by car are probably less touristy and overhyped, but we can only guess) and to Kompira-san (in Kotohira), an amazing temple complex situated on a hill. Think lots of temple buildings surrounded by forest, linked by stairs. Lots of stairs. All good practice for Nepal next month is what I was thinking (and that we should’ve drunk less beer and kept up our walking since leaving Patagonia…)

The next legs should see us going to Kyoto, Takayama, Matsumoto and Tokyo, so although probably a bit more touristy than what we’ve seen so far, we’ve still got plenty of Japan to see…

Alright, have been promising this for a little while, but they’re now all up (as always on www.dylanav.com). And by “all”, I mean approx. 1900 highlights (out of approx 7000 photos so far). Hmmm. Sorry about that. I haven’t brought the number down any further because we’ve just seen a lot of stuff lately.

Note: I haven’t done ANY editing of the photos (so yes, I know there is room for improvement with quite a few of them), but I plan to at some stage pick a couple of dozen really good ones, do the usual postprocessing (levels, cropping, etc) and put them up somewhere separate. Maybe in June

Some of the (scenic) highlights of the trip so far:

→ Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, Peru: Day 1, Day 2 (incl. Dead Woman’s Pass), Day 3 (incl. Second Pass), Day4 (incl. Sun Gate, Machu Picchu and Wayna Picchu)

→ Walking through the snow to Condoriri base camp, Cordillera Real, Bolivia

→ Looking out over the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt flats) from Isla de Pescatores, Bolivia

→ Flamengoes at Laguna Colorada, Altiplano, Bolivia

→ Climbing Vulcan Lascar to 5480m, Chile

→ Refugio Frey circuit walk (incl Refugio Lynch and Cordon Catedral), Nahuel Huapi NP, Argentina

→ Laguna de los Tres, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina: Take #1 (incl. hail coming in horizontally and Piedras Blancas) and Take #2 (incl. almost perfect weather and Laguna Sucia)

→ Watching the sun rise over Cerro Fitz Roy on a perfectly clear day, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina

→ Glacier walking on Glaciar Grande at the base of Cerro Torre, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina

→ Valle des Frances, Torres del Paine NP, Patagonia, Chile: Take #1 (incl. hanging bridge near Campamento Italiano) and Take #2 (incl. perfect weather around the amphitheatre near Campamento Britannico)

→ Los Cuernos and Las Torres, Torres del Paine NP, Patagonia, Chile

→ Watching the sun set over Manhattan from the Rockefeller Center, New York, U.S.

Off to Japan, Nepal, China and Thailand next week. Should be good for a few more highlights

These two places are in Holland by the way, just in case not everyone’s familiar with them.

The first is the place where our friends who we have been staying with live. Not far from where I was born and lived for 18 years, it’s always interesting coming back here (especially after a previous post where I just mentioned how I now feel like I’m coming home – but not quite – when visiting London or Melbourne… seem to have collected a few “homes” around this planet…). Again it’s been great catching up with friends and a good chance to catch up with some homework (didn’t quite get around to organising that whole second leg of our journey around Japan, Nepal, China and Thailand before we left). I imagine it won’t be too long before we’ll be sorely missing knowing some good friends and being in countries where we speak the langugage and know where everything is. Oh well, plenty of that in Melbourne coming up.

The second place is a place not far from where we’re staying: to add a little touristy flavour to our otherwise social agenda, we went to a reconstructed fortress village called Bourtange. Not sure how to describe it really, it’s not exactly a fortress, but far more protected (with moats, drawbridges, etc) than your average village (was in 1742 anyway). Not a bad day out, but I’ve decided it’s definitely more interesting from the sky than it is at ground level: check out the google map from the Vesting Bourtange homepage.

Oh, and did I mention all the food? Gotta love stamppot met rookworst, snert, stroopwafels, pannekoeken (at Het Pannekoekschip of course), koek, Jonge Goudse, Fries suikerbrood, etc. Me thinks it’s time to go for another hike… soon.

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…

Next stop was New York. Time for some shopping, walking around and as turned out, some even chillier weather.

First day it was -5 degrees Celcius and snowing pretty hard. Pretty cool for those of us who still get excited about walking through snow (read: Justine).

Second day it was much warmer (ie just above zero degrees)… but that just meant that the snow turned to rain. Doh. From Battery Park we could hardly see the Statue of Liberty and most of the tops of skyscrapers were hidden in clouds. Shows indoors (Spamalot musical and a comedy show at Carolines on Broadway) during these two days made up for the weather and come highly recommended (although if you know Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail a lot of the jokes in Spamalot are going to sound familiar). Ice cream from the Cold Stone Creamery… well, let’s just say we ate it inside.

And then there was the third day… Perfectly clear day, sun, etc. Couldn’t have asked for a better (Valentine’s!) Day. Walked around Central Park and finished it off looking at the sun set over Manhattan from the Rockefeller Center (aka Top of the Rock). This is incidentally the building during the construction of which the famous picture was taken of the construction workers eating lunch on a steel beam tens of stories above the ground (just do a Google image search for “construction workers rockefeller” and you’ll see what I’m talking about).

Highlight of the last day before we flew out was definitely a shop called Crumbs which makes cupcakes. Apparently they started the “cupcake rage” a few years ago. Whatever, but I have to admit that it’s the best cupcake I’ve ever had so they’re probably right.

We managed to time our visit to Vancouver so that it coincided with a parade held to celebrate the Chinese New Year (completely coincidentally… we all know all our trips are organised around hiking seasons). Great little bonus as it was quite a spectacular affair with the various types of dragon costumes, colourful flags and other types of costumes on display.

Of course it did rain, but that was apparently supposed to be that way in order to give it that Canadian touch.

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