Geeks Abroad

AmsterDamn That's Cool! Pt. 1

2011-09-01T21:26:00.010-06:00

Cologne gave us a nice, relaxed start to our trip. Our next stop, Amsterdam, kicked it into high gear.

Seriously, this city is COOL. Many, many, many travelers already know this. It isn't exactly a well kept secret. Amsterdam is, after all, the city of a gillion bicycles, legalized marijuana, crazy early 20th century artists, and retail-style prostitution. Seriously, how much cooler can you get?

We rolled the dice on accommodations when we headed from Cologne to Amsterdam, and really weren't sure what we would be able to find. Happily the tourist info drones were able to find us a hostel along a canal (which really isn't optional) just a stones throw from the Red Light District. Classy!

Okay, so this isn't a picture of our hostel, but the hostel looked exactly like it. Canal in front, narrow tilty houses on either side, bicycles everywhere, squinty Glen glowering at the camera...

The thing that struck us immediately as we started walking around were the columns of buildings. Amsterdam embodies the concept of vertical living. The flats are crammed together, one butting immediately up against the other, with hoist beams at the top so that large objects like furniture can be lifted in through windows instead of through the impossibly narrow staircases. I love those hoists. I wish we had hoists here just so that I could say "hoist" more often.

Hoist!

The houses tilt into the street and away from the street. They lean against one another for support. To hell with building codes! These houses are going to sway in any direction they see fit, and the humans can just work around them. There is something clausterphobically charming about it all, as though the city crammed as much cuteness into as small a square footage as possible. They're positively Falstaffian, drunken and merry and smiling.

Be wary, lest a house fall on you.

Really, the whole city evokes that lovable, complex character. It's smiles and oddities make no effort to conceal its equally cheerful radicalism. This place has been a brewing vat of economic, social, and artistic reform for much of its history. They embrace the gritty along with the elegant, a fact that was visually apparent while we were walking the canals in the evening. Nighttime windows in the Red Light district were as likely to reveal a beautiful apartment with crystal chandeliers as they were a gyrating prostitute.

Really, the best place to get a feel for these weird juxtapositions was the Red Light District. Marked off from the regular streets by knee high posts with red lights around the top, this largely pedestrian area is remarkably clean and polite. Yes, there are sex shops all over the place. Yes, at night the ground-floor windows open to reveal scantily clad women selling their...*ahem*...wares. But there were also sights like this:

Not half bad, eh? It was a remarkably nifty place to be in, with more of an easy going boho feel than a sexually seething stewpot.

That being said, the prostitutes in windows were hilarious. Most of them were in bikinis or lingerie sets with furry boots (!) or strappy heels. Some of them were putting on a little pouty performance for potential customers. We walked past three side-by-side windows, each with a girl sporting a typical "naughty XYZ" type outfit. They were tapping on the glass to attract attention and waving at passers by. It made me think of a fishbowl, and I wanted to see if there was some way of sprinkling nibblies through the top of the glass panes. Funniest of all were the Ones Who Don't Give A Damn. These ladies lounge about in the most unflattering poses, chain smoking and yammering on their cell phones or to one another. I imagine that the ones who put in more of an effort got more customers.

In about 90% of the prostitute windows you can see an industrial type bed, usually with a satin spread in some lurid jewel tone, and the hip-height sink used to wash the customer's junk prior to servicing. We did see the occasional transaction - a customer would go to their door, words would be exchanged, then the lady would yank the curtains shut. Yup, that's right folks! The deed is done about five feet away from the sidewalk. You can't hear anything - those windows are as sound-proofed as they come. One evening we even got to see a customer being rejected! He was at the door talking with the prostitute, who looked supremely unimpressed. She leaned with her elbow against the door jamb, pursing her lips and shaking her head "no no no". Eventually the rejected customer shrugged and walked off, and the lady returned to her window. I would love to know what his business proposition was.

The tourists' mental picture of the Red Light District is usually intimately (har har) tied to legalized marijuana sales. This is somewhat misleading: there are many stores outside the Red Light District where you can buy weed as well. Indeed, the whole of central Amsterdam is peppered with "Coffeeshops" where you can pop in for an afternoon pick-me-up of a cappuccino, a joint, and maybe a hash brownie if you are feeling peckish. Seriously. Coffeeshops are NOT to be confused with Cafés, where your frothy latte will be accompanied with a regular scone-with-jam, with nary a bong in sight.

During our second day after a rather afternoon of sight seeing, we were walking along one canal that had about six coffeeshops along a stretch no more than 100 meters long. People were hanging out on the coffeeshop patios, chatting amicably. We peered in through windows hazy with smoke scum to see remarkably pleasant little establishments, and [POST EDITED FOR ADULT CONTENT].

Needless to say we were really hungry. Although Amsterdam now has a reputation for being the destination for the finest Indonesian food outside of South West Asia, we were hoping to find more typically Dutch-type fare. Our search took some time, however this was not due to any difficulty in reading the menus; being in prime tourist territory, there were more signs in English than in Dutch. There were also more western themed bars, Indian restaurants, and Argentinian steakhouses than eateries with the fish-and-salt packed Dutch fare. We prevailed, eventually settling on croquettes and really good beer. But really, if you want to find traditional Dutch food, head to the towns outside of Amsterdam. It's worth the bus fare.

More Amsterdam to come!

Redux: Köln - Part 2

2011-07-24T12:42:00.010-06:00

You really didn't think that I'd stop at Köln Part 1, did you?

You did? Well, I suppose I can't lay any blame after taking so long to get this post going. But posts shall be delivered, and this is part of the delivery.

Cologne is known for its cathedral. It appears, however, that it is not known for much more than its cathedral. This is a shame, because it is a lovely, chilled out place in which to spend a few days.

Glen and I attended an evening mass at the cathedral, to get an even better feel for it, and afterwards wandered out in hunt of food and drink. You see, in Germany, you are allowed to drink openly on the streets.

Allow me to repeat that: German laws permit people to drink on the streets.

For Canadian prairie-born travelers, this is a novelty that bears noting. How often have you been out on a walk, or on a pick-nick, or at a similar event in a public place and thought "it's such a lovely day/evening! A nice glass of wine/beer would be excellent right about now! It's a shame we can't have a responsible drink out in public." It seems, however, that the prudish, puritan spirit of our pioneer forbears is still alive and well as our legislators feel there is no way for people to be allowed to have a drink out in public without becoming slavering, foolish, drunken hooligans.

Do you know what was distinctly absent in Cologne, and just about everywhere else in Germany*? Slavering, foolish, drunken hooligans. This may be because the German liver is capable of filtering massive amounts of alcohol and rendering the booze to an inert state. It may also be because they often drink to enjoy the taste of their fine brew rather than to get staggering drunk.

Anyway, back on topic: we went questing about for food and drink, and did a bit of sightseeing while we were at it. Cologne has a beautiful riverfront where the general population goes to relax.

We came across many open-air restaurants, street musicians (including a particularly wonderful jazz band with a New Orleans feel playing in a square next to a fountain), and our first sample of lovely European buildings.

They're so narrow! And tall! And pink!

The city was conspiring to make us feel like we belonged there. We even found gnomes. Gnomes! Gnomes in stone!

And if that wasn't enough, there are also remnants of Roman colonization in the form of a beautifully preserved mosiac dining room floor (peered at through the museum's windows), and this gate arch which is on the same square as the cathedral:

Among all these fantastic sights, we did find our street food and drink. In fact, we found much better than that - we found an entire wine festival!

We started off with food - Glen had his first wurst of the trip and I tried frickadeller. The latter often translated as 'meatball', but it's more of a beautifully spiced and fried ground meat patty. We rinsed our hasty and tasty food down with wine (of course). Being in Germany - and at one point in history, in the Roman Empire, we did as Germans/Romans do and hunted through the stalls for some sweet white wine. We found it. We drank it. It was heavenly; sweet without being syrupy, tooth-achingly cold, and served in a proper glass. The stalls all had a wine glass deposit system which ensured that we could enjoy our vintage in a nice fluted glass instead of a plastic cup. The abomination of the plastic cup is usually what you can expect in any sort of outdoor beer garden in Edmonton. This was much classier.

After wandering around the wine stalls for a bit, we decided to meander back to the hotel via the riverside walk. Glen felt it only appropriate that we do this while sipping our first Beer Out In Public. A quick stop in a convenience store provided said beer, and the nice fellow at the counter was quite amused that we found drinking on the street to be so novel. We chatted briefly about our trip, and he told us that "Cologne is where you find real Germany. Laid back, know how to relax...not as busy as Berlin. People there rush around to much. People here just like to sip a beer and relax by the riverside."

They do indeed. So did we. Next time we find ourselves in this town, we'll take a little longer, wander a little more slowly, and spend a couple more days poking about and enjoying the riverside.

That night we slept solidly, ate another fantastic breakfast in the lovely little grotto room, and attended the guided English tour of the cathedral (detailed in the previous post). Afterward, our packs went back on our backs, and we hopped a train out of town.

On to Amsterdam!

*With the exception of the nightclub areas of larger cities. Predictably, there were a few revellers staggering out of the bars, but not nearly as many as there are on Edmonton's Whyte Avenue on a Thursday night.

Redux: Köln - Part 1

2011-07-07T22:02:00.004-06:00

It is true: I have already blogged about Köln, aka Cologne. This time, however, I can put in our own photos! This is sufficiently monumental to warrant revisiting the Cologne post, so here we go:

Cologne was our first stop after landing in Frankfurt. As soon as the airplane landed, we bee-lined to the airport train station, avoided getting ripped off by some random guy trying to sell train tickets he "couldn't use", and had the nice man at the DeutchBahn (DB) help us with purchasing our tickets to Cologne. We were far too confused to figure out the train ticket booth at that point, so standing in line and waiting for a human being to process the transaction was worthwhile.

Two and a half hours after getting off the train, we were in Cologne. It was there, in the bustling Cologne hauptbahnhof, we first encountered a singularly intoxicating thread that wound through our entire trip.

Bread.

The Germans, like most Europeans, treat bread with the love and respect it deserves. They have bakeries everywhere, and in that train station alone we ran into at least three, all pulling fresh loaves, buns, pretzels, pastries, and other dough-based wonders out of their ovens. We were very hungry. The sandwiches at the third bakery didn't stand a chance.

Our B&B was only two blocks away from the train station. We passed two more bakeries on our way there.

The B&B (called 'pension' in ze deutch), was a delight. It was quiet, comfortable, clean, and the staff were helpful. The delicious and ample breakfast was served in this delightful, grotto-like room which had an equally pretty garden patio out the back door:

We arrived in Cologne in the early afternoon, and after a power nap (and some blank, frog-eyed staring at the wall) to fight off jet lag, we headed out to explore the city's main attraction: the Cologne Cathedral. It is one of the best examples of gothic architecture in Europe, Glen had studied it in art history, and we were determined to do it justice.

The cathedral, just off of the main square and smack outside the main train station, is huge. From the exterior it is an imposing mountain of black stone that dominates the centre square. Ancient stone weathered black contrasts sharply against new stone used in restoration. It creates an odd, mottled look with the occasional white stone against the black, and new white statues flashing alongside their original patinaed mates. It is a marvel of columns, spires, statues, and stone lace.

Did I mention that it's huge? Our impression of the outside was as follows:

Oooooooohhhhhh....

Impossibly, it feels even larger from the inside. We had quite a bit of time to explore the interior, as we attended mass there that evening and the following morning took a guided tour of the church (thoughtfully provided in English). This place is a marvel of architecture. It was started in the thirteenth century and was not completed until the late 1800s. When the construction on it began, the architectural innovations being developed at the time allowed it to accommodate huge windows that flooded the interior with light. The delicate columns and arch ribbings soar up and up and up, making you feel like a tiny inhabitant of an immense, light-filled forest. It is beautifully meditative.

The art on the interior is just as magnificent. We were fortunate enough to be there during the exhibit of the Rubens tapestries, which are only on display three weeks out of the year. I found the medieval statuary around the central nave and altar to be the most interesting. The ones nearest the congregation look grayed and somewhat dull, which is due entirely to the pancake-like layer of dust on them. Apparently the previous building master was concerned that any dusting would remove particles of original paint, and simply let the dust build up. Fortunately, the current building mistress has more sense. All of them are being cleaned and restored. The statues that have been properly dusted glow with beautiful, lifelike tones and ornate details on their robes, which are just barely distinguishable under the dust on the statues that have not yet been cleaned.

The remainder of the cathedral was bursting with the expected stained glass, tombs, statues, and mosaics. The item that attracts the most attention, however, is the reliquary holding the supposed Bones of the Magi. This sucker is big and gold. Really gold. The majority of the reliquary is made of gold plated silver, studded with precious gems:

The faceplate, however, is not gold plated silver. It is solid gold. A big, big hunk of solid gold (with the exception of the bits which are covered in MORE precious stones):

Really, you can never have enough precious stones.

We spend a considerable amount of time crawling around the interior and exterior of this place, and loved every minute of it. You'll simply have to wait until the next post to read about it!

Necessity creates a change in format!

2011-06-29T21:35:00.004-06:00

Oh, isn't that just the most nonsensical and exciting title you've ever read? It is true, however. We are now back at home and barely posted a single thing in this blog while we were away, but I promised travel stories. So help me god, I shall deliver on that promise. It will just be a little different from the way I originally intended.

Originally, I meant to post updates and photos of our travels while we were traveling. That was what I did while we were in Australia and New Zealand, and I wanted to do it for Germany. In New Zealand, we brought Stowaway (our laptop) with us. Even when I was not able to get a WiFi internet connection, I was able to compose blog posts and then publish them once I was online. Stowaway did not get to come to Germany with us, as we were not about to lug around a laptop for a trip less than a month in duration. This naturally resulted in a limitation of the frequency and ease of blog posting.

As Western Europe is generally well-connected, I figured this would not be much of a problem. Sure, I would have to pay for internet access in cafes and at hostels, but it wouldn't be overly expensive. Sure, I probably wouldn't be able to upload many photos, but I could fill in many of the gaps with links to other websites. Moments of blogging could be snatched here and there in the wee hours spent awake thanks to hostel snorers, and we could hit internet cafes while doing laundry or waiting for train connections. It seemed like a good plan.

It seemed like a good plan in theory.

In reality, we did not have as much spare time for blogging as I anticipated. Despite hostel snorers, we jammed so much into each and every day that sheer exhaustion (usually) resulted in an okay night's sleep. Thanks to a large supply of underwear, we didn't need to do laundry as frequently as anticipated, and the German train system is so very efficient that we spent hardly any time waiting for our train connections. All of this cut into the time I anticipated having to update the blog.

Most surprising, however, was that internet access was not as readily available, as cheap, or as reliable as I thought it would be. While most hostels, B&Bs, and hotels did have WiFi, you needed your own device to use them. If hostels had computers available for use, there were precious few of them. In general, internet access was remarkably expensive. One euro would get you anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes (a couple internet cafes were cheaper, but more difficult to get to on our squeezed schedule). Moreover, the connections were usually terrible. In our Amsterdam hostel the connection was so bad that in 15 minutes I was able to send out a grand total of one email and pay off my Visa via online banking. It was a complete waste of a euro!

So the end result was one ridiculously sparse blog. Excuses, excuses.

Now that we are safely ensconced in my mother-in-law's basement (bless her for putting up with us while we move into our new house), we have constant access to good, fast internet. Our photos have been downloaded, and I again have the occasional spare moment in the evening to think about the trip.

So I have decided to blog the trip, but as a retrospective. Really, all travel blogs are retrospectives of recent activities. This will just be more retrospectivy than usual.

It will be fun, though. I can provide stories with context! I can add colour and foreshadowing! I can write posts while sitting around in my underwear while listening to Captain Tractor and drinking entire pots of coffee!

So let the retrospective begin, reader. Even though I did put in a couple of posts about our activities, I shall do it all again. We start at the beginning, my friends. Next stop: Cologne!

Dresdin love!

2011-06-09T10:24:00.002-06:00

I love Dresdin!

This affection was started even before we arrived, as we started off with a two-hour canoe ride through the charming canals of Lübbenau in the Spreewald region. It is very genteel - calm water covered in ducks, bordered by the garden lawns of residents who frequently set up stalls to sell beer, wine, sandwiches, and strawberries to those paddling on the waters. It was gorgeous (all credit for this side trip goes to my brother and his wife, who suggested it to us).

That afternoon in the Spreewald meant that we were happily relaxed when we arrived in Dresdin. Dresdin is lovely; we found a wonderful, spotlessly clean hostel in a super-funky district that is just a 20 minute walk from the historic centre. The historic centre itself is a marvel of reconstruction considering how thoroughly it was bombed in 1945. The place is once again beginning to drip with Baroque. As you may have figured out, neither Glen nor I are fans of Baroque style architecture and decoration. We do acknowledge it to be very impressive, however. The Grünes Gewölbe (Historic Green Vault) is worth every penny of the 10 euro entry. We also had a look at the Volkswagon Transparent Factory, which was quite cool. It did not, however, make me want to purchase one of their Phaetons, which carries a price tag of over 101,000 euro.

The area immediately around our hostel is really nifty. There are hidden couryards all over the place, each with wonderful independent shops on the street level and apartments above them. There are a large number of Turkish immagrants here, so there are also a representative number of Shisha bars. At night the scent of the shisha wafts out of the store fronts to smack you in the face as you walk by.

Incidentally, we are likely walking by with a beer in hand. You can drink on the streets in this marvellous country. A nice bottle of wine is about 3 to 4 euro. It is going to be difficult to accept the cost of booze back at home.

Today is our last full day here, so I'm hammering out posts while waiting for our washing to be done at the laundromat. If you plan on heading to Dresdin at any point, stay at Hostel Louise20. It is very reasonably priced, quiet, and spotlessly clean.

Enough blogging for now. Time to shove the laundry into the dryer.

Classical ruins and tropical islands

2011-06-09T10:05:00.005-06:00

Berlin is one of those huge cities where owning a car would be like having a giant albatross around your neck at all times. It is bustling, crowded, and under the operation of traffic laws that would stymie any Edmontonian (hell, any Canadian) driver.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

The place is packed, and I mean packed, with classical treasures from Rome, Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and other locales. The Pergamon Museum contains several rooms in which major archetectural features have been reconstructed, including the Ishtar Gates, the Pergamon Altar and the full-size frieze that surrounded the Pergamon temple, a Roman gateway, and a Hellenic courtyard. The scale of these exhibits is mind-boggling. That is in just one of the five closely-spaced museums in this area. Another one houses the famous Nefertiti Bust. She causes a great deal of trouble, as there is such a fuss of visitors around her that you have to reserve a time to enter the museum itself, lest the building be mobbed around the clock.

There were other sites we visited - the Marienkirche being one of our favourites, as well as the Berliner http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifDom (which is an impressive and rather revolting Baroque contrast to the cleaner medieval lines of the Marienkirche. We dragged our karate buddy Sean on walks that spanned several hours. That is the standard type of touring that Glen and I do, but it appears to be tortorous to the uninitiated. I think that Glen and I have simply grown accustomed to it. The walking isn't much of a negotiating point or a matter of stubborn cost-saving for us, it's just what we do.

Berliners seem to have an ongoing obsession with beach culture. As a way of paying homage to this, as well as to give our heads a break from non-stop sightseeing, we stayed overnight at Tropical Islands, an ultra-cheesy and somewhat overpriced holiday trap about an hour south of Berlin. It is the ultimate expression of brainless entertainment - utterly devoid of anything that requires you to think, and quite enjoyable for it. It is an escape in a manner similar to how Las Vegas is an escape. Just turn your mind off, boggle at the weirdness of the architecture, and let yourself drop into the fantasy. While marinating ourselves in the various pool yones, we also discovered that we rather like the Sauna treatments. Being hotboxed for 15 minutes in a room that reaches a hellish 80 degrees celcius while strange, minty scents are distributed by a towel-whirling attendant is surprisingly revitalizing. So too is the procedure of dousing yourself in cold water and then rubbing yourself down with handfuls of ice after you emerge from the slow-cooker. As an added bonus, your skin is baby-soft afterwards.

And before you ask, the answer is yes - I do still like to eat lobster.

Interlude

2011-06-05T00:58:00.002-06:00

Crivins, is getting internet access in the hostels ever expensive! I have exactly two minutes left to type this, therefore content will be sparse.

To sum up:

I like raw herring with onions.

Berlin is covered in monumental archetecture and is obsessed with ice cream.

Hostel bunkmates often fight nocturnal battles that cause the beds to rattle fiercly. They cannot help this.

20 seconds left...

Their sandwiches are superior

2011-05-30T12:49:00.002-06:00

It is true. German and Dutch sandwiches are far superior to ours. Simple sandwiches served at train station kiosks would make the so-called "chefs" at any Earls-esque chain restaurant weep. Here, they slap a couple of beautiful, fresh fillngs between beautiful, fresh bread and the result is hand-held food heaven.

We just arrived in Amsterdam from Cologne. The Cologne cathedral alone could have entertained our archetectural and medieval religious art loving eyes for a week. It is covered in stone lace, a massive, hulking black mountain from the outside, and a brilliant, coloured glass palace from the interior. It's breathtaking, and we were able to take in both an English guided tour as well as attend mass (it doesn't matter whether or not you're Catholic - attending a mass in a place like that is worth it just to hear the acoustics).

Not much yet to say about Amsterdam, as we have only been here for a few hours. I can tell you that their sandwiches are amazing, that their cyclists are terrifying, and that their houses are wonderfully crooked, leaning against one another for support.

We are just about to head out to do some exploring. Here's hoping we don't get mowed over by a cyclist.

Packs on Backs

2011-05-28T09:12:00.014-06:00

IT'S GO TIME, KIDS!

In about 5.75 hours, we shall be willingly entering a pressurized tube that will send us hurtling through the air at ungodly, unnatural speeds, destination Frankfurt.

I don't like flying. But I do like packing!

When we wend on our New Zealand/Australia odyssey, Glen and I each had a large hiker's backpack which faithfully held our gear for close to seven months. They were spacious, they were very comfortable to wear, they were sturdy and emenently useful. They were also very big. After seven months on a relatively limited wardrobe, we both found that we usually rotate between the same two preferred pants and shirts*. With that in mind, we've decided to go the carry-on only for this trip, a la Rick Steves. It really is all we need.

First, here is my backpack fully loaded:

I shall break down the contents for you:

Pants - one pair black yoga pants, one pair grey capris, one pair PJ bottoms
Tops - one longsleeved SPF top, two t-shirts, two tank tops
Outerwear - One windbreaker, one zip-up black yoga jacket
Underwear - One regular bra, one sports bra, 5 pairs underwear, 5 pairs socks
Toiletries - The usual assortment. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deoderant, bandaids, prescriptions, pepto-bismol, tylenol, etc. My favourite thing in the toiletries bag are the solid bars of shampoo and conditioner from Lush. No bulky bottles, no threat of the stuff leaking all over the bag. I've already given both the shampoo and conditioner a try, and they're brilliant.
Bikini
Hat
Travel Clock
Sandals
Towel
Highly squishable packable daybag
Guidebooks, maps, book for reading.

On the airplane I shall be wearing stretchy jeans, longsleeved shirt, fleece, bandana, hikers, and, needless to say, undies etc (whewh!).

I do need to add a little notebook to my bag, which I shall do when I run out to pick up a couple last minute toiletries sundries. Glen has a fairly similar packing list, minus the bikini and bras, and he also has our camera, batteries, etc.

Needless to say, I am extremely excited. I have been informing Glen every four or five minutes of the fact that WE ARE GOING TO GERMANY.

He is a very patient husband.

I'll try to post as regularly as possible while we are away. Seeing as we aren't bringing Stowaway the Laptop (sorry, buddy) I will be somewhat more limited in my blogging activities than I was when we were in New Zealand. Reports shall come, however, and I will post photos as often as is reasonable. Stay tuned, armchair travellers!

*No, we weren't sharing one another's clothes. We aren't THAT wierd. That being said, I do steal Glen's scrubs on a regular basis.

Countdown: 10 days remaining...

2011-05-17T15:04:00.003-06:00

Less than two weeks to go!

Every now and then I realize how little time there is left before we leave. Then I panic, as I am uncertain what remains to be done. I'm sure there's something that I'm missing.
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I know what I am going to bring. I have purchased new capris that don't fall off my backside and aren't covered in paint. Glen purchased hikers without holes in them. We bought that little Eddie Bower packable daypack. It squashes down to the size of a sausage, which makes me happy. Glen has even completely packed his backpack, which now sits waiting at the bottom of the closet. We have our guidebooks, maps, passports, and airplane tickets.

The question of accommodations is a little more nebulous. We haven't booked anything yet because we don't want to be locked in to a hard-lined schedule. We should be able to find a room or at least a hostel bed at our various destinations with little fuss. At least, that's what the guidebooks tell me. We shall see if they are right or not.

Here is our itinerary thus far:

May 29th: Arrive in Frankfurt. Attempt to get our bearings despite jet lag. Get the hell out of there immediately and head to Cologne. Squint at the cathedral there and force ourselves to stay awake until a semi-normal bedtime. Overnight here.

May 30 - June 1: Amsterdam. Get high and ponder Van Gogh, herring, and prostitutes in windows.

June 2nd - 5th: Fly to Berlin, spend 3 nights there. Avoid Checkpoint Charlie like the plague.

June 6: Tropical Island. This is a psycho wacky fantasy resort south of Berlin, built in an old Zeppelin factory. It came highly recommended by my brother and sister-in-law as an overnight stop.

June 7th: Spreewald and surrounding area. Drink beer while paddling a canoe through the canals. Overnight there OR catch a late train to Prague.

June 8th - 10: Prague. I don't have a hope in Hades of understanding a word in Czech, but the city is pretty, pretty, pretty. Discover the finer differences between Czech beer and German beer.

June 11th - 12: Dresdin. Jam with my sister-in-law's rad German friends. Get Glen's hair cut.

June 13 - 14: Rothenburg. As Rick Steve puts in, revel in "German medieval cuteness."

June 15 - 17: Fussen (for Ludvig's castles) & Munich. Develop grandiose renovation plans.

June 18 - 19: Black Forest and Schnapps trail with our karate buddy. Cycle from Schnapps farm to Schnapps farm, sampling as we go. Pas out in Nordrach, then carry on to Baden-Baden to nurse our hangovers at the Roman baths.

June 20 - 22nd: Rhine and Mosel. Chill out for a day on a Rhine cruise, count castles, drink white wine, then catch a train to Cochem in the Mosel valley. Visit the penultimate medieval castle, near Cochem. Possible side trip to Trier.

June 23: Flight from Frankfurt back to Edmonton. Boooooooo!

I've built in some leeway between each stop, and we will be spending two nights in most places. I've planned it so that we get at least two full days of casual wandering around at our destinations of choice. We do have to be much more organized with this schedule then we ever were with New Zealand/Australia, as we actually have a finite period of time on this trip. Pity!

Tagged and (mostly) bagged

2011-04-21T10:57:00.002-06:00

The packing project has been progressing more slowly than originally intended. Glen has his bag packed and sitting in the living room, with the knowledge that there may be an item or two swapped, added, or deleted before our departure date. I have yet to get anywhere with mine, although I have a good idea of what I will be bringing. Packing up the contents of our now-sold condo has been taking up most of my time, and has left me with little desire to pack a travel bag.

We do need a good, highly compressible daypack. Right now I'm waffling between the Eddie Bauer Packable Backpack and Rick Steves' Chivita Day Bag. Both of them pack down to next to nothing. I'm slightly inclined towards Rick Steves' bag, as the pocket design looks a little more functional and the microfibre material strikes me as being a bit more durable, but I would have to order it online. The Eddie Bauer bag claims to have a bit more carrying capacity, but I'm uncertain about the durability of the nylon material. I'm not too sure if Glen and I should each have one, or if one would be enough between the two of us. Really, there's only so much gack one needs to carry around on a typical day, so one would likely suffice.

In other purchase-related news, we finally bought our flight tickets! I've been eyeballing the flight options for some time, and noticed that the sales centres had already started to post promotional prices for September. Plus, the fancy flight options for the period of our travels had started spiking. I managed to land tickets on beautifully scheduled flights as one of the most reasonable prices I've seen. The total tab came to $2,700 (taxes included) for return flights for two people. It may be possible to locate cheaper tickets out there, but I didn't want to take the risk that we would pay more for lesser flights.

Part of the flight will be through Lufthanza. Apparently they provide complimentary booze!

Everyone has Baggage

2011-04-05T14:31:00.006-06:00

Travel means baggage. Our Australasia adventure taught us that it is indeed possible to comfortably carry all the clothes and gear you need for several months' tramping on your back. Our trusty, well-weighted, comfy-hip-strapped, shoulder-padded backpacks were quite large, however. Even though we had no trouble carting them around, they did require checking at the airport. Any form of pack large enough to need checking will also be far too large to tote around little shops, comfortably stash in train station lockers, or shove under a table in a restaurant.

During our last trip, out large-but-portable bags did not pose a problem. We usually stayed in one place for at least a week, and in the hostels either had our own locked room or a large luggage locker. In New Zealand we had our sleepmobile and locker-on-wheels, the Subaru Legacy station wagon dubbed "Sparklypoo." Germany, will involve a great deal of bouncing from place to place to place. The less space we take up, the easier this will be. It will also prevent unfortunate happenings involving backpacks sweeping breakables off tables.

This means we will be going the carry-on route, a-la Rick Steves. Yup, one piece of carry-on luggage each. Glen was skeptical at first, but then we came across a lovely box of Swiss Army brand backpacks in Costco, similar to this guy:

Glen liked its look, its fit, and its pockets. He wanted the backpack, but needed a reason for the wanting; our trip was the perfect excuse. At a mere $40 each, we walked out of there with two ideal packs for the trip. Over the next few months, he became gradually more accepting of the idea that we can indeed make those bags small enough to fit the carry-on luggage requirements.

This week's task is to tackle our packing plans. Normally we wouldn't be doing this so far away from our flight date, but we've also just sold our condo and need to pack up everything and move out by the end of April. We'll be back in Glen's Mom's basement for a little while while we hunt and/or wait for possession of our Yet-To-Be-Located New Home. Trimming our wardrobes down to the bare minimum has therefore become a necessity, and we need to make sure we don't inadvertently put something we need for travel into storage in some nameless bin at The Shop.

The Great Baggage Planning Session will appear on these pages, complete with photos. I don't think it will be that difficult of a task. After all, when we were overseas, I only wore about 1/3rd of my clothes on a regular basis.

Countdown

2011-03-29T13:39:00.006-07:00

Restless Leg Syndrome is the bane of many insomniacs. You lie in bed, willing your body to relax and drift off, and suddenly your legs begin twitching and kicking of their own accord. We don't want to be still, they insist, we were built to move and move we shall! They tingle and burn, constantly drawing you away from unconsciousness with their thrashing

The travel bug is much the same. It twitches and burns in your brain, telling you that you need to move, move, move. Glen and I appear to have a maximum tolerance of three years between major travel expeditions. Year one is tolerable, as we are still fresh with the glow of our most recent trip. By year two, we begin to fantasize about jumping in the car and driving away for a few weeks. By year 2.5, we begin to say to one another "we don't really need a condo...we can always find somewhere to live." We start eyeballing our possessions with an appraiser's eye, wondering how much we could get for it on Kijiji and how many nights at a hostel that desk and cabinet could fund. Major renovation projects are undertaken solely to deal with travel-related restlessness.

By the start of year 3, both destination and time frame are selected. This is good, because by this point there is nothing left in the house to renovate and no other outlet for our nervous energy. We proceed to squirrel away cash to fund the adventure, and the upcoming trip takes over three quarters of our brain.

It has been nearly three years since we came back from our adventures in New Zealand and Australia. It is time to go.

This time, we're going to Germany to take advantage of their hospitality for one month. This odyssey will not be the same length as our last, but the intensity will likely be greater! The bulk of the trip will take place in the southern half of Germany, with side trips to Amsterdam and Prague. We shall do battle with large pretzels and even larger steins of beer. We shall contemplate all forms of wurst, including the dreaded blood sausage. We shall hunt castles and cathedrals and men in leiderhosen. We shall drink wine on the Mosel and schnapps in the Black Forest. Every form of indigestion will become familiar to us, and our legs will ache with excessive walking and cycling.

Germany! You are ours for the taking! Sound the sirens - the geeks shall again be abroad!

NEIL!!!

2008-02-28T21:45:00.003-07:00

Warning: This post may contain foul language

I interrupt the regular chronological flow of blog posts to bring you this update.

Neil has returned. After several months of dormancy, Neil has found us at the Auckland YHA hostel and is carrying on his campaign of irritation.

This time the little asshole stole my book.

The YHA kitchen, dining, and common area is set up with many, many cubbyholes in which to store food and other items. Usually, people label all their food items and stick them in one cubbyhole, and occasionally add more items to that same cubby. Glen and I had put out books in the cubby that also contained our bread, tea, peanut butter, jam, and travel mugs. Everything was labeled.

When we got back to the hostel from our morning walk, Glen went to get the laptop and I went to get my book. I am was reading Colleen McCullough's Caesar, part of her Masters of Rome series. It was an engrossing read, I was quite happy with it and had the delightful anticipation of having at least two thirds of the book left to read.

I poked around in the cubby for the book, moving aside the tea and travel mugs that I placed in front of our books in the morning and that were still in their original places. Glen's book was there. Some dilapidated old novel about some sordid love tale was there. That was not my book. My book was missing. Keeping an optimistic frame of mind, I checked my room. Nope, no book. I went back to the cubby wall. Definitely no book.

SOME ASSHAT STOLE MY BOOK. And as a snarky little slap, they replaced it with an old and infinitely inferior bit of trash that they probably stole from the book exchange shelves in the basement entertainment room.

I informed the staff at reception of the theft. Of course they aren't able to do anything, and it has nothing to do with them, but there are security cameras in the cubby area and it is good to inform them of such things in case there are other problems. The girl at the desk sympathized with me, and then looked at me quizzically and said in bemused disbelief "they moved your stuff back to where it was before? And they replaced the book with something else??"

Man, am I ever pissed off about this one. I wanted that book, it was going to carry me through a good two weeks of hardcore reading. Neil was a bastard when he stole our food. Now he's a downright asshole, and that wee modicum of faith I built up after the Australia episodes that maybe hostellers aren't such a bad, thieving lot after all has been completely eradicated.

Jerks.

Wellington: Boom or bust, but mostly bust

2008-02-26T12:53:00.001-07:00

We arrived in Wellington full of hope. We arrived at the only hostel with free off-street parking in Wellington slightly less full of hope after seeing the manky neighbourhood where it was located. We looked around our dorm room and had all hope vanish. The room smelled of mildew and vomit, there was food and trash all over the floor, and the beds had clearly not been changed since they were last occupied. We went wandering around the central business district to look for the ‘help wanted’ signs that have been in nearly every café we’ve come across and lack of hope descended into downright dejection. Help wanted signs were few and far between, and most wanted experienced staff only. That night we went to a restaurant for supper as we didn’t want to cook in the hostel’s filthy, filthy kitchen; after dinner, we got lost in the side streets of Wellington’s downtown district. Glen became nauseous from his greasy meal and we went back to the hostel. I slept on top of the covers that night, wrapped up in my pyjama bottoms and fleece jacket. It was cleaner that way.

The next morning we attempted to find a different, cleaner hostel to stay at. Parking was the problem. No one had any parking, and everyone’s beds were ludicrously expensive. At least the dirty hostel where we were at had an option to camp either in one’s tent or in a car, which knocked the cost in half and significantly decreased the grossness factor as we wouldn’t have to sleep in their beds. After completely striking out on the parking and alternative accommodations front, we went for coffee. One brief conversation we decided that we a) didn’t want to stay in Wellington, and b) didn’t want to find work there either. It seemed completely pointless; we could waste huge amounts of time looking for jobs that, with the exchange rate being what it is, pay us peanuts and eat up all our time, and then we would have to go and spend all – or possibly more – than we earned on dorm beds in overcrowded, drunk-filled hostels. Why stay? Why bother?

The problem of work and accommodation therefore being solved with a surprisingly abortive solution, we were prepared to enjoy our next day or two in the city. We went wandering around the waterfront and the central business district, we ate pre-packaged salad for supper, we slept in the car. The next day’s primary activity was me going to a belly dance class – huzza! – and us being adopted for the following night by one of the lovely ladies I met at the class. She and her husband run one of the downtown motor lodges and offered a room in their home (which is a private section of the motor lodge) for the night. Naturally, we jumped at the offer and after spending the day chatting and socializing and sharing the Kaikoura Crème, and then going to see a belly dance performance at a Turkish restaurant in the evening, we slept solidly in a warm, comfortable, very clean bed.

The next morning we left Wellington to carry on with our northwards journey. We left behind notions about working while traveling, quality of time over quantity of time spent, and ideas about finding travelers accommodations in the city. Alas, we also left behind the remainder of the Kaikoura Crème. It was an entirely accidental oversight and we are still licking that wound, but the nice people from belly dance seemed to really like it and after their hospitality I think that one bottle of booze is not amiss.

Still…no more Kaikoura Crème…

Speed Through Pt 5: Christchurch Northwards

2008-02-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

As it seems to go on the south island, we found ourselves back at trusty Cousin J’s house with a vehicle that we weren’t sure we wanted to keep any more. We were concerned that there could be further issues with Sparkleypoo and wanted to ditch her while she was still functioning. The idea was that as we would only need a vehicle for a couple of weeks once we go back to the north island, we might as well rent one of those backpacker vans with the fold-out bed in the back. It would be a nice, worry free sort of situation. So in the grand tradition of hard-working backpackers cars, she was tarted up on a home-made flyer and posted as a free agent on all the Christchurch hostel notice boards. We also investigated the possibility of selling her via Turners Car Auctions, but due to her low value and their cut of the sale price, we decided that such a measure would be taken as a last resort.

After several trouble free days with her (and limited purchaser interest, and re-consideration of the high price of renting a van) we reneged on our original thought. If someone in Christchurch wanted to buy her at full asking price, than we would consider the offer; but for all intents and purposes, Sparkleypoo was off the market.

The rest of our time at Cousin J’s was spent quietly. We walked around a bit, we went clubbing one night with Cousin A, and then another night she took us up to “make-out point”, which has the best possible night time view of the city’s lights. Yes, the view was spectacular. No, we did not make out.

Investigating the work situation in Wellington was the next step. The plan was that we would head up to Wellington, find work such as tending a café, and rent a room in the city for a month. To do this, we needed our IRD tax numbers, as all workers require tax numbers so that the government may remove their pound of flesh. When we attempted to call the Inland Revenue Department to get the IRD numbers which we had applied for at the beginning of November, we were informed that our names were not on file and that we had no numbers. Really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. We were warned by one of the workers at the first hostel we stayed at that the IRD office is notorious for misplacing application forms. We decided that it would be better to re-apply in person and hoofed it down to the Christchurch Tax office to bother them face-to-face. It would take a couple of weeks for our numbers to be processed, but that should still be in time for us to find work in Wellington.

After all this kerfuffle, we felt it was time to leave the south island behind and seek our fortunes northwards. We hit the road again, making very few stops (save the Kaikoura Winery, as we had to pick up another bottle of Kaikoura Crème – note: this is a had to situation, not a wanted to) and trotting up to the Picton ferry terminal nice and early. The ferry crossing was as uneventful as our drive; no waves, no seasickness, no puking Glen.

Speed Through Pt 4: Otira Valley killed my car!

2008-02-26T12:31:00.002-07:00

Before we get to the Otira Valley part of this saga, let me fill you in on the rest of the West Coast:

-Greymouth: Adam was right. There is nothing there. It is an ugly blight on the landscape, although not quite as hideous as Bluff. Got savaged by sandflies.

-Hokitika: Cute little place. Good window shopping, although not a lot of it. There was an extremely odd sand sculpture festival going on and a few of the sculptures were quite hilarious. Got savaged by sandflies.

-Westport: Didn't leave much of an impression. We kept on driving north after Westport, just to see what was at the end of the highway, but there wasn't much. Nice drive, lots of pretty coastal scenery. Got savaged by sandflies.

-North of Westport back to Arthur's Pass: The west coast truly is a stunningly beautiful place, even if it's towns hold little interest. We enjoyed the drive. We really enjoyed being in the car and not getting savaged by sandflies.

And now we come to Otira Valley. This is the western portion of the Arthur's Pass highway route that provides the most direct connection between Christchurch and the west coast. It is a notoriously long and hilly stretch that travels through a mountainous land nearly desert-like in it's bleakness. As we were travelling up the Otira Valley portion, I saw many cars pulled over on the side of the road. Hm, I thought, not much here to take pictures of.

Then, towards the very top of the climb out of Otira Valley and right before the Arthur's Pass village site, Sparkleypoo registered her severe disapproval of the road. She started to steam and she started to slow (which is alarming when you can't really get much above 40 kph due to the grade anyway) and we pulled over to have a look. There was still water in the cooler tank, but we added more, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. Then, right at the top of the very last hump that would take us to the downslope and Arthur's Pass, she bucked. Once, twice, thrice she bucked while I muttered "just a few more meters, just a few more meters...". We got over the hill and rolled into Aurthur's Pass, and figured that it would be wise to stop for a drink and to let the car cool down. It was a brutal climb out of that valley and a hot day to begin with. We would give the car a rest.

Sparkleypoo evidently wanted a little more than a rest. She wanted to die. And she made a valiant attempt at doing so. When we went to start her up again, there was nary a 'click' from the engine. The battery was working, but the engine wouldn't even try to turn over. A few other cars were also parked around us, with drivers staring forlornly at flat tires or vehicles that simply wouldn't start.

Arthur's Pass being in New Zealand and New Zealanders having strange ideas about matters of practicality and service, there was - of course - no service station in Arthur's Pass. There was one, and signs indicated the direction to said service station, but it had shut down a good five years ago. Funny, considering that Otira Valley apparently kills cars all the time for fun, that no one had bothered opening another one. We needed to get a tow truck to haul us in to the closest service station at a town called Springfield, a good 100 kms away.

Needless to say, the tow bill hurt. Actually, the tow bill hurt more than the replacement starter motor (which was fried, which was why the car wouldn't start) and the labour to install it. Placated by the sacrificial offering of a new starter, Sparkleypoo was willing to run perfectly once more.

We, on the other hand, were completely fed up and decided that upon our return to Christchurch we would attempt to sell her immediately. The starter motor incident meant that we had to spend one night at the hostel in Springfield while the car was attended to, and once we were up and running again we were all to happy to return to Christchurch and back to the hospitality of our Kiwi Sweetie, Cousin J.

Speed through pt. 3 - Dunedin to the West Coast

2008-02-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

This part of the road trip proved to be a series of abbreviations and dissapointments. On our way out of Dunedin, heading for Oamaru, we sere going to make a detour to the Otago Peninsula, which was supposed to be very pretty and harbour a albatross and yellow-eyed penguin colony as well as the Larnach Castle.

We drove to the peninsula, making a mental note to gas up somewhere along the way. The drive was indeed very pretty, and our first stop was Larnach castle. We figured the entrance fee would be $10 to $15 each, and we were okay with that. We were not okay, however, with the $25 admission fee that we discovered upon arriving at the gate. I'm sure the castle is cool and interesting and all that, but it isn't worth a total of $50 for us to walk around it for an hour. Besides, I suspect that it is similar to Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria, BC, which Glen and I have visited before. Both castles were built around the same time by similarly melodramatic individuals. Sparkleypoo was hauled into a quick turn and we immediately left.

The drive towards the peak of the peninsula (where the bird are) carried on, but we started to get worried as the gas needle inched further and further down and there was no gas station in sight. When we finally did find a fuel stop in one of the little villages that dot the area, we still managed to come up dry. Quite literally. There was no gas at the gas station. We knew that we still had enough gas to get back to Dunedin, so we turned around and headed back to the city. It would have taken quite a bit more driving to get to the albatross colony; it was still late morning, and as the birds don't come in until the evening and we weren't really interested in them anyway, we decided that we didn't want to waste the gas doubling back and headed off immediately for Oamaru.

Other travellers and kiwis had told us that Oamaru was a sweet little town, and the presence of grand Victorian limestone architecture ensured our interst. We arrived slightly past four in the afternoon...

...and found a ghost town. Seriously, there was hardly anyone in the streets, and all the shops were closed. We walked around and saw their gorgeous white limestone buildings, but for some reason we were both rather dissapointed with the place. The Victorian architecture was pretty nifty, but the rest of the "Victoriana" tourist trappings that filled the place just seemed phony and overdone. We dawdled around a bit and then left. There was a very lovely beach that we passed on the way to town, and as we needed to go back down that road to get onto the highway that would take us to the West Coast, we decided to camp there for the evening. It was a gorgeous little location, and as an added bonus there was a fancy breed rooster wandering around the site, screaming at the top of its lungs and harassing the seaglls.

The drive back through central Otago was just as brown as the first time, but once we hit the mountains around Haast pass, things got gorgeous. It seemed somewhat pointless to stop for the night in Haast itself, so we kept driving north until we came to a nice place to sleep. Along with the clear view of the Tasman Sea (that particular lookout boasted nothing in the water between it and Antartica) came hordes and hordes of sandflies. It was a trend that would continue during the remainder of our time on the coast.

Next time: the rest of the West

Speed through Pt. 2 - Slope Point to Dunedin

2008-02-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

(Again, none of the photos in here are mine, as I can't upload my photos at the moment. But we were at all locations pictured here, so it's still legit!)

After our nighttime drive through a rather uninteresting portion of the Southern Scenic highway, from Bluff to Slope Point, we slept at the dirt road carpark right by the Slope Point access area. Behold, the magnificent directional signage!

There is no road to the point, rather you need to walk across a sheep pasture - closed from September to November for lambing season - for about 15 minutes.

After the walk, in which it is a great deal of fun to yell at the sheep and dart towards them when they become too complacent, you arrive at this sign:

It was a nifty spot to visit and made for a good early-morning walk. The trees around this area are incredibly windswept and their branches all point in one direction. Due to the force of the wind, everything on an exposed side of the tree clusters is blasted and dead, with all the leaves being on the sheltered side. I've no idea how they survive the wind, it's brutal.

We carried on with our drive along the Catlins Coast, driving a combination of the Southern Scenic highway and the Catlins Coastal Heritage Trail. We made stops at a few points of interest, such as the Curio Bay petrified forest, Nugget Point (we didn't see any penguins, but it was the wrong time of day to be looking for them) and various little rainforest walks.

The we finished at Dunedin, where we planned on staying for three evenings. Thanks to the traveller's networking service CouchSurfing, we had made arrangements to stay with a lady who had an available guest room. We got along splendidly with her and her son, and spent a very nice three days investigating the city, focussing, as usual, around the downtown area. We took the Speight's Brewery tour, which was great fun and ended with a rather lengthy beer tastig session. Incidentally, we also tried their specialty malt ice cream, which is surprisingly tasty with a caramelly like flavour.

Next up: Omaru to the West Coast!

Speed through pt. 1

2008-02-04T14:42:00.000-07:00

Due to internet limitations, the slowness of dial-up, and the incompatability of a dial-up modem with our laptop Stowaway's modem, this shall be a personal-photo-free post. Any pictures here have been shamelessly filtched from other websites. But at least you will know what we have been up to since leaving Queensland.

Our activities have been primarily focussed around driving, stopping for a walkabout, driving some more, finding somewhere to park the car for the night, and dodging sandflies.

First major stop after Queenstown was Milford Sound. We strung out the drive from Queenstown to Milford to an overnight affair, and slept at the foot of the Kepler track. This wouldn't be a particularly noteworthy event, except that it was here where Glen caught a glimpse of a kiwi foraging in the little tree-sheltered dirt parking lot.

The following night we stayed at a campsite in the Fiordland (yep, that's how they spell it) national park. The evening was quite enjoyable, we built a fire and made bannock, and accidentally left one of the lights in the car on all night. The end result was that Glen had to find a German - they're everywhere here - to hitch a ride back to Te Anau so that we could get a service man to boost our very, very dead battery. None of the campers in the site had jumper cables, so we were left with little option other than footing the bill for having a serviceman come all the way out to our campsite to give us some power. And thanks to the time all this took, we had to cancel our day cruise through the Milford fjords and re-book for the next day.

Spending an extra day in Milford wasn't exactly a hardship. The place is staggeringly beautiful, and due to the rain that we got during our visit there were hundreds of waterfalls pouring down the mountains. The drive through the Homer Tunnel was very, very cool. There's nothing else like it - you drive right through the base of a mountain via a tunnel that's about 1.2 kilometers long. Once you get to the Milford side of the tunnel and look back, all that can be seen is a huge, impassable, horse-shoe shaped wall of mountain. Driving through the tunel is creepy and surreal and very fun!

There is virtually nowhere to stay in Milford and no food stores, but we did come across a hostel where we could park and sleep in the car for a small fee while getting access to their showers and kitchens. The hostel also boasts that they are "the only store in Milford Sound", which is quite true. They have a small stock of canned food, just-add-water meals, basic cooking supplies, and snacks. The prices were outrageous, of course, but as our supper supplies were basically limited to peanut butter and jam sandwiches with apples for dessert, we decided to buy some soup anyway. We were dying for a hot meal and this point. I definitely think that the hostel's price for using a parking space is ludicrous ($15 per person), but the hostel itself was very nice, and it was great being able to have a hot shower, a hot meal, and hang out in the very comfy lounge while the sandflies hurled themselves at the exterior windows. Plus, we got to see our first kea - they're the world's only alpine parrot. They are a very intelligent and have a fondness for stealing food and ripping rubber window linings and windshield wipers off cars.

Our cruise through the Milford fjords was magnificent. We took the Milford Sound Red Boat Cruises "Discover More" cruise, which lasted three hours and included lunch and a visit to the very, very cool underwater coral reef observatory located in the fjord itself. The trip was fantastic, we got completely soaked by waterfalls, and watched huge bottlenose dolphins jumping and coursing alongside our boat. The Milford bottlenose dolphins are known for being particularly large because of their sheltered environment, and they were smack alongside the boat, probably about 10 feet down from where we were leaning over to gawk at them. Happily there were no sandflies out on the water.

We headed back towards Te Anau after our Cruise, and drove along the Southern Scenic highway coastal route from Te Anau to Invercargill. We didn't see anything in Invercargill that made us want to stay overnight, but we did stop for dinner. Afterwards we went south from Invercargill to Bluff, which has been called the arsehole of the universe, and for good reason. That was, without a doubt, the most butt-ugly place I've ever seen. The drive in was depressing, and there was little else to look at other than dilapidated houses along the roadside and huge industrial plants and sulphur piles in the harbour. Once we got into the town itself, we turned right around and left immediately.

The remainder of that evening passed uneventfully. We drove in the dark for some time, unable to find a suitable rest stop to park the car for the night. Eventually we made our way to the very, very isolated Slope Point, which is the southernmost point on the south island of New Zealand. It was pitch black at this time, so no walking to the actual point itself. We were far too tired to do any walking anyway, so we bedded down for the night and went straight to sleep.

Road Rage

2008-01-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Note: Just to illustrate what the woodcutting at Brew Moon did to Glen’s leg, here is a photo of the damage. It really does look like he was attacked by a crazed rabbit:

I lie somewhat with the title to this post. There is no road rage. There is, however, a lot of road. Glen and I have officially been on the road trip portion of the south island for close to a week now. It started with a night of camping near Oxford. We tried to find breakfast in Oxford, and the only place that was open was very pretty and had very good coffee and very, very expensive breakfasts. As we refused to pay $10 for toast and jam or $17 for bacon and eggs, we stuck to our coffees. The morning was rescued by the appearance of a tiny little micro-cat who would suck up to the diners and even share a table with them:

The restaurant also had the best bathrooms ever with a big pile of clean and very fluffy facecloths, so we made use of them and managed to clean and refresh ourselves pretty thoroughly before moving on.

It only took a couple hours of driving way under the speed limit and taking a lot of unnecessary detours to reach Methven, where we spent a couple of days at a very nice motel to celebrate our anniversary. A word about Methven: there is nothing there in the summer. The town exists almost entirely on the nearby Mt. Hutt ski fields and when there is no snow, there is no reason for anything else in Methven. The only restaurant that was open on our actual anniversary date was the local pub, so we made our own dinner and had wine in our motel room. After discovering that it is possible to tour the town in less than an hour, we did several day trips out to some of the surrounding lakes.

Unfortunately, the lakes aren’t that interesting either. To be honest, they were little more than icy puddles with rocky beds in an interior mountain landscape so depressingly brown that we found the road side rest stops on the main scenic highway to be preferable to the campsites by the lakes.
Not to say that we didn’t have a good time – it was just a little on the quiet side. We did go on one of the national walkways around Methven, which was quite pleasant. Despite it being close to sunset, it was very hot and the sun was blinding:

My eyes were watering with the effort of keeping them open.

A good portion of the walk occurred along a canal, which had curiously coloured water:

Methven is square in farmer country, and while I’m not too sure what crop these purple fields were producing, the effect was rather pretty:

Just to make sure you understand how quiet things were in Methven, here is a picture of the most exciting sign in the whole town:

YES! PATHOGEN TESTED POTATOES!

While in Methvin we decided that the driving distances are simply too short to try and drive directly to Dunedin. We would need to waste eight days on the road if we were to keep to the schedule of our free accommodation in Dunedin, and so decided to head to Queenstown first. We drove way below the speed limit to string things out longer. Hell, even the cows overtook us:

The next town we stopped at was Geraldine, which is definitely a good pit-stop area and had quite a few fun artisan food shops. Here we decided to head towards Mt Cook, as we would need to detour significantly to see it at one point or another anyway. There is only one road into Mt. Cook and one road out of it, so there was no reason not to take that road now. We breezed past Lake Tekapo – which is indeed very blue – and Lake Pukekai, and arrived at the Mt. Cook park area within plenty of time to bed down before the sun set. Behold, our mobile bed!

Glen slept fairly solidly, while I slept fairly fitfully. At one point I was startled by a great deal of chatter out side and the relentless BEEEP BEEEP BEEP of a large vehicle’s reverse signal. The light of a thousand suns then flooded into the car, damn well near blinding me. Where was this light and noise coming from? Why, the Sunrise of course! Namely the gigantic Sunrise bus that has parked smack beside our car with one of it’s multi-gigawatt headlights pointing squarely at our heads:

I’ve got no idea how they managed to wedge themselves in beside us like that, because their front fender was about three feet away from us while their bumper was three feet away from the big campsite info kiosk.

In the morning we went for a walk up the trail to the lake at the base of Mt. Cook. The place was swarming with other tourists, mostly large group of Asians although we did come across a large group of French as well. They obligingly took a picture of us:

The water in those glacial lakes is really, really muddy, giving just about everything there a slate-grey appearance. It’s very pretty, though. Again, food is very expensive. We again decided to forgo breakfast in the overpriced restaurants in Mt. Cook village, and after our walk headed onwards towards Queenstown.

The countryside north of Queenstown is just about as brown and depressing as those brown and depressing mountains by the Methven-area lakes. Happily, Queenstown itself is downright lovely. We’ve been in Queenstown for a few days now, and it is a very nice resort-type place. It reminds me a great deal of Banff, with 5.3 souvenir shops per capita and overpriced everything. Poking around in the various shops is great fun, and at one point we climbed up to the Skyline complex (we decided that we would rather walk up the mountain and see the forest than fork over $20 each for a five minute gondola ride to the same destination). At the top of the Skyline complex is a luge adventure, and we decided to give it a go. It was heaps of fun, despite the dorky-looking helmets:

The views from the complex were awesome – this is a shot of Queenstown from the Skyline complex's café where we had a post-luge coffee:

Today we are heading off from Queenstown and will make our way up to Te Anau and Milford Sound in the Fiordland area. We’ve booked ourselves in for a three hour nature cruise through the Milford Sound fjords, which by all reports is a spectacular activity. Stay tuned!

There and back and there and out and onwards again

2008-01-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

We've been bouncing all over the place for the past week, and it seems as though that is a trend that will continue for the foreseeable future. After a nice, relaxing Christmas at the flower farm, the cousin of the flower farm matron kindly invited us to stay at her place in Christchurch for a few days. Never being ones to turn down invitations from nice people who we like, Glen and I jumped at the opportunity and stayed with Cousin J for a few days over New Year's. We wandered around Christchurch city centre at our leisure, went punting on the Avon river, and checked out the many artists markets that are scattered around this charming downtown area.

New Year's Eve was spent at Cousin J's place, being entertained by the antics of her daugheters who were hosting a racuous party. We danced and laughed and Glen drank and I made sure the house didn't burn down. Cousin J joined the party towards the end of the evening; the night was, on the whole, a hilarious success.

New Year's Day saw Glen and I heading from Christchurch to the nearby town of Amberly, where were were to WWOOF with the owners of Brew Moon brewery and cafe. Although there was only enough work around the proprieters' farm for us to stay for four nights, we still enjoyed ourselves. There were sheep to heard, dinner to cook, and eleven hours of splitting logs. Evenings were spent with our friendly hosts, who plied us with their excellent beer (the husband is the brewer for Brew Moon) and excellent wine selection; as the wife is the wine-maker for Muddy Waters label, both our hosts had excellent knowledge of wines which they readily shared with us, much to our delight.

After our bief stay at Brew Moon ended, we called Cousin J again and are now back in Christchurch to further enjoy her hospitality and the company of Cousin J and her daughters. We have been attempting to make more arrangements for further WWOOFing endeavours, but alas! it has been in vain. Despite contacting a large number of WWOOF hosts, we haven't been able to schedule a single engagement. The ones we did not contact are not really options - it wouldn't be worth us spending precious travel time at those locations or with those hosts.

In light of our unintended but not unwelcome unengaged status, we are throwing plans to the wind and in a couple days we will hit the open road again. The present idea is that we will start driving to the various areas of the country that we want to visit and enquire at local hostels if they need workers for a few hours a day in exchange for accommodation. This isn't an unusual situation at hostels, so hopefully we will be able to take advantage of it. If we can make such an arrangement, then that's great, and if not we will carry on with our road-trip, alternating camping in the car for a few days at a time with spending a night or two in whatever hostel is on our route. Things should be interesting and exciting.

We will be in Christchurch for a couple more days, so we are about to head off for some more wandering around the city. It really is a very pretty place; if you have the opportunity to take some leisurely walks around this city, I would highly recommend it.

Not-So-Fine-Dining

2007-12-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

A little part of December that I forgot to address in the above post is as follows:

Glen and I decided to go for a nice lunch in Akaroa on our last day of flower picking. First up, you must be filled in on Akaroa itself. It is a very cute little town situated right by our flower farm that, sometime during the 1950’s, discovered it’s French colony roots – and the marketability thereof. So it is the quintessential sea-side tourist town further coloured with cheesy, grammatically incorrect business names, including:
-L’Essence (the Shell gas station)
-L’Hotel and Le Restaurant
-C’est Bon Boutique
-Le Bons Bay
-Le Bon Accord
-Le Mini Golf

In the spirit of tourist township, everything in Akaroa is really, really expensive. We knew we’d be paying through the nose for our lunch, but decided that it was all part of sampling the local flavour, no pun intended. Our original choice of restaurant was closed for a private function, so we went to a nice looking place called Ma Maison, which was relatively un-crowded and was situated smack on the harbour. The place smelled tasty, has great views, and we would actually be able to get a table. Score.

We ordered coffee, which came in tiny little mugs and cost around four dollars each. We ordered an appetizer, fresh baked bread served with a hummus dip and a smoked cheddar dip. There was about two tablespoons each of dip and five small pieces of bread. Cost: eight dollars and fifty cents. Glen ordered a chicken sandwich - $18.00. I decided that we wouldn’t spend all this time living on a harbour and not have fresh fish at least once. So I ordered the catch of the day, which was a grouper served over what they described as a mash of some description. Cost: $22.00

'That had better be bloody good fish,' Glen and I said to each other.

The food came out. The dip and bread was over priced and delicious. Glen’s sandwich looked and smelled delightful, although the chips served alongside it were the Mcain’s frozen shoestring variety instead of proper house chips. My muchly anticipated fish arrived…and it was a little triangle about the same size of a small Captain Highliner fishstick perched on top of a round of potato salad – not mash – that was about an inch thick and two inches in diameter. And over all this bounty was poured about a cup of viciously flavoured mayonnaise. One cup of mayonnaise for five small mouthfuls of food. It was revolting.

I attempted to scrape the mayonnaise off the fish and then off the potato salad (didn’t work particularly well), then tried to lift the potatoes out of the mayonnaise (that didn’t work either, the little potato round fell apart). I sampled a tiny bit of the potato salad, and was horrified to discover that it was made with Dijon mustard; I hate horseradish, and can detect it in dijon mustard from a mile away. Had I read on the menu that the “mash” contained Dijon flavouring or horseradish, I never would have ordered it, but such information is apparently not a worthy menu addition. I honestly wouldn’t have been able to choke down that salad, which meant that three quarters of my meal was inedible. I tried a very, very small bit of the fish. It was light and would have been quite tasty if it weren’t for the mayonnaise that slathered it. The meal was substandard, poorly designed and constructed, of stingy portion, and not worth the price.

So we tried to send it back. I politely gave the waitress my reasons (leaving out the fact that it simply wasn’t worth the price) and she went to talk to the chef. When she returned she cheerfully informed me that the chef could re-make the fish without the mayonnaise, but not the potato salad, because I had eaten some of it and it doesn’t contain any horseradish, just a special kind of mustard. I replied that I had eaten about one small potato square, not even a forkful, and the “special mustard” that it contains is Dijon, which contains horseradish. Besides, the fish was the most edible thing on the plate, now that I had shovelled off the mayonnaise, but the potato salad was simply beyond reconciliation. I said that I would rather just be made another dish, preferably the same sandwich that Glen was eating as it was quite good. The waitress went back to the kitchen, and came back out saying that the fish had already gone through on the bill so they wouldn’t be able to deduct the four dollar difference between the fish and the sandwich, and that I’d have to wait a few minutes to get the new order. That’s fine, I replied. I had ordered the fish and there wasn’t anything wrong with the way it was cooked, just that it was so far from what the menu described that I wouldn’t have ordered it had I known what it was, and besides, I fully expected to have to wait for my new order, just like everyone else. She went back to the kitchen again, and came out to inform me that this would be acceptable and that while the charge for the fish meal wouldn’t be deducted from the bill, they wouldn’t charge me for the sandwich.

Had they charged us for the sandwich, Glen and I would have simply walked out, then and there. Sorry, kids, but if you want to play with the fancy restaurants and charge an arm and a leg for your food, it had better damn well be perfect. And if it isn’t perfect or it isn’t as you had described it in the menu, you’d better be willing to alter the order when the patron realizes that the food is completely unacceptable.

I got my sandwich, and it was good, and I thanked the waitress for being so accommodating. She did do a lot of negotiating with the kitchen to fix the problem, and I was grateful for that. But I don’t think we’ll be bothering with any of the Akaroa restaurants again – they are uniformally overpriced. We shall save our coin for the larger city restaurants.

December: In Summation

2007-12-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

We have spent the entirety of December WWOOFing at a flower farm in the Banks Peninsula. First, I need to say that the Banks Peninsula area is one of the closest approximations to heaven on Earth that I could imagine: verdant green hills dropping straight into harbour waters that vary daily from slate gray to turquoise blue, and weather that changes at the drop of a pin.

The farm where we were working was such a fantastic find that I don’t think I could say enough good things about it. The family of four (the mom, dad, and two teenage sons) usually have WWOOFers around at any given time, and are cheerfully welcoming of those who come through their doors. There was a host of WWOOFers present during the month, with the total count going as high as seven at one point. As most of the orders of cut flowers need to be gathered and sent out in the week following up to Christmas, the family very much needs the help from the travellers, and so the house was bustling with representatives from Britain, Japan, Malaysia, and of course, Canada. Glen and I, being the only couple among the WWOOF crew, got the honours of being given the main guest room, complete with a queen sized bed and closet. We had our clothes out of the backpacks and hung in the closet within 15 minutes of getting our room. These sorts of things are exciting after living out of backpacks for three months.

As a point of interest, the flowers we were picking are called Lucospermum, and they are a variety of protea. The farm grows three varieties:

Highgold

Tango

Harry Chittick

The aren’t that difficult to pick, provided that the picking efforts don’t disintegrate into a snowball-style flower fight. The flower heads make excellent missiles, especially if the flowers haven’t opened completely. They also cause massive hayfeaver (the Japanese guy got hit the worst, and I made good use of the anti-histamines that I brought from Canada), and are filled with bees. No wasps, mind, just bees.

Here is one of the flower fields. The hill is deceptively steep; no need for squats when you've got flower farm hills to climb:

The work was similarly very good. Weather permitting, we made as early a start of the day as possible so that we would be finished picking before the sun got really hot. At the start of the month we had a few days off, and we were given time off when the weather was too bad to go out picking. We were usually in the fields at 7:30, and would often be finished both picking and grading (done in the packhouse, which is quite temperate) by noon or one o’clock.

Here is where we grade the picked flowers - picking off bugs and bird poo, cutting the stems to the proper lengths, etc. The packhouse is wonderfully cool, so we were out of the sun and the heat by the time things got really toasty. Plus, you can flick the cut-off ends of the stems at other people really hard if you get the wrist motion and timing of the stem snipping just right. If you aim is really good, you can bounce the stem ends off people's foreheads.

Once the final flower orders were sent out on the 23rd, we were given several days off until the family clears out the house on the 28th to make room for some visiting friends. We all spend a fabulous Christmas here, eating entirely too much food on the very sunny patio, which overlooks one of the harbours.

Christmas breakfast - the start of a day of gorging:

This is what the weather was like all day, as viewed from the patio. Are you jealous yet?

We’ve done quite a bit that wouldn’t make for a particularly interesting post, so I shall give you something of a point-form summary of a few of the highlights:

-meeting the family’s three legged cat, who drools everywhere when cuddled.
-having an entire travel mug of freshly boiled tea dumped on me by Glen, who felt that the tea would look better on my leg than in the cup. I swore extremely loudly and startled a conservationists’ meeting that John (the resident patrician) was hosting. Yes, it hurt. Yes, there are still burn marks.
-Doing large batch cooking with the most adorably hilarious Japanese girl ever (the food was prepared in advance and then frozen for the busy picking days when we would be too buzy/tired to want to cook dinner for 12 adults).
-Getting nailed squarely in the eye with an unopened and rock-hard Highgold head during a vicious flower fight. Much to my irritation, the eye did not bruise, despite staying slightly swollen and tender for a couple of days.
-Glen getting stung by bees twice in the space of 20 minutes.
-Making and distributing massively rich, creamy, fatty, boozy egg nog for a whole bunch of people who have never before discovered the delights of homemade egg nog – home made, not that vile store-bought stuff, which you can’t get here anyway.

We leave here tomorrow, and will be staying in Christchurch for a few days with Julie’s (the resident matron) cousin, who has kindly extended visiting invitations to the WWOOFers to stay with her while in the city. Indecision and procrastination has led us to be uncertain as to where we will go afterwards; we do have an offer at another WWOOF place, but the more we review it, the less pleasant it sounds. We’re hoping to find somewhere else to WWOOF at in this area, and afterwards we will do a road-trip, sleep-in-the-back-of-the-wagon style tour of the south tip of the island. Maybe we’ll spend a day or two here and there in a hostel so that we can get cleaned up and have a proper meal. There aren’t too many WWOOF places in that area that we are interested in, so we may or may not bother trying to set something up.

And now, in order to make you even more wildly jealous, a few pictures of our lottery-win December situation:

This is the view from the living room and TV room:

A bunch of us trooped off to an isolated beach one afternoon. The resident heard of cows took a keen interest in the vehicle, and surrounded the truck, poking their runny noses inside. They were skittish and backed off as soon as we came up, but they may have very well attempted to steal the radio:

We went to Christchurch during one rainy day. While inspecting the Christchurch Cathedral, we discovered that there was no way to escape the flowers - the Harry Chitticks had followed us to town and took up residence on the pulpit:

Our rainy day trip also took us to the Christchurch art gallery, which was great fun. There was a display of knitted bonsai trees that were particularly ticklish:

There was also a weird exhibit that was basically a big cardboard tube with a gentle suction. We didn't realize what it was until I looked into it and it sucked my hair right up the tube:

Glen wanted in on the vacuum action:

In Christchurch there is an import store that supplied all sorts of foreign items. The store is teeeeeeeeny, doesn't seem to be organized in any sort of recognizable pattern, and is possibly one of the most delightful stores we've ever walked in to:

December was fantastic, and this was due in no small part to our wonderfully hospitable hosts, who went above and beyond to make us feel at home, and the other WWOOFers who we chummed around with. We'll be stopping in again some time to visit on our way back up the island, to say hello and share whatever wine we pick up along the way. We had a blast, we made friends, we struck gold!

Road Trip Canterbury

2007-12-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

We have come round to our December establishment, faithful readers, and I am pleased to announce that it is a wonderful establishment indeed! After finishing up at the Swedish Cow-Shed, we took a couple of days to do a relaxed drive around some of the highways of the lower Nelson and upper Canterbury regions. Our first evening was spent attempting to find a good place to park the car and sleep in the back. The first attempt to bed down was thwarted by a huge swarm of sandflies that occupied the car as soon as we had pulled over and opened up the doors. We got them out by piling back into Sparkleypoo and driving as fast as we dared down the highway with the windows open. It did work, most of the flies got sucked out, but it was unfortunate that we had to abandon that sleeping spot. It was tucked away in the trees by a river and a swing bridge and was quite pretty, especially compared with the gravel-pile occupied "picnic area" we slept at afterwards.

The following morning was wonderfully sandfly-free. We stopped for breakfast at the Maruia Springs hot pool resort at Lewis Pass, and were so delighted by the prospect of enjoying the stunning and quiet mountain scenery in the peace of a traditional Japanese hot spring that we purchased two guest passes to the pools and stayed there for most of the morning. I would highly recommend stopping there if you are ever passing through the area, and the room prices seemed quite reasonable too.

From Maruia Springs we drove to Hanmer Springs, and wandered around the tourist down before having a late lunch/early supper at the springs restaurant. The food was decent, but aspired to too much and delivered too little, flavour-wise. The bold-as-brass sparrows, on the other hand, were a riot. They would fly right into the restaurant and perform elaborate begging routines at the feet of the diners.

After finishing up at Hanmer Springs, we drove along one of the less-travelled and more-windy section of the Alpine Pacific highway, and found ourselves at Kaikoura. Kaikoura is quite the recreational area, complete with the best whale watching in New Zealand, a sizable fur seal colony, plenty of random shopping, and the Kaikoura Winery. We went for a tour of the winery and their underground cellars, which of course came complete with a rather extensive wine tasting. For the record, I was the one who spat out the samples this time around, while Glen got pleasantly buzzed. We came away from the winery with a bottle of their Kaikoura Cream, a crème liquor similar to Bailey’s Irish Cream, but made from wine instead of whisky. It goes down like slightly boozy liquid milk chocolate. Irresistible.

From Kaikoura we elected to follow south highway 1 straight through (or around, as the case may be) Christchurch and spent the night at a scenic picnic site not too far away from our destination of the Banks Peninsula and our next WWOOF destination.

The Banks Peninsula area is breathtaking. It is a coastal caldera formation and is composed of steep green pastured hills dropping sharply into very, very blue ocean waters. The roads themselves are somewhat hair-raising for someone who did not learn how to drive on them, and while I’m certain that we infuriated many drivers by going much slower than the posted speed limit, we don’t regret going that slowly. The roads were steep and narrow, and the scenery was just too go to want to hurry through.

The road trip ended at Akaroa, the closest town of any size to our WWOOF location. Akaroa is, like so many of New Zealand towns, picturesque and touristy, and that is just fine by Glen and myself. It is an easy place to spend several days in, despite it’s tiny size, and is only about an hour away from Christchurch. There are plenty of harbour-side cafes at which one may soak up the sun, and plenty of scenic hikes and drives in the immediate vicinity. It practically forces one’s spine to unwind. The abundance of fresh fish is a bonus. Despite us having been in the area for a couple of weeks already, there are a few attractions in Akaroa that we’ve yet to investigate. But we will investigate them, and I shall forward you a report when we do.

This map more-or-less plots out our exact driving route. Find Lewis Pass on highway 7, go to highway 7A to Hanmer springs, take highway 70 up to Kaikoura, then highway 1 to Christchurch. It’s a great loop to make, and well worth the time taken:

Up to our necks in...

2007-12-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Right, so here is a mighty attempt to get our adventure stories back on track and all caught up.

The last two weeks in November were spend in the Nelson region, close to a little town outside Nelson called Wakefield. This is a significantly drier area than much of New Zealand, and there was hardly a drop of rain to interrupt the scorching temperatures during our entire stay.

We stayed with a family who operate a permaculture hobby farm, with two donkeys, two goats, a cat and dog, a flock of chickens (significantly less interested in humans than the chickens at the Grampians Halls Gap YHA hostel), and a lovely dark brown Jersey cow. As this was a WWOOFing expedition, we traded a few hours of work in the morning for room and board. It was awfully nice to be able to look at a kitchen with a reasonably varied compliment of ingredients and know that there would be no need to wonder what sort of single-meal food items we would have to purchase. Our accommodation was a specially constructed - and comfortable - shed, complete with two twin slat beds, a TV and DVD player, and a composting toilet; we had uninterrupted views of the night sky, as the shed was at the far end of the property, away from the main house in the rear of one of the pastures:

Our host was delighted to learn that Glen is a sculptor, and immediately suggested that he make them a few art pieces for their eclectic garden as his WWOOF work. Both Glen and I thought this was a fantastic idea, as it would mean that he would be able to dedicate a good four to five hours a day to working on his sculpture technique and play around with different materials than he usually uses - materials which our host would provide.

Behold! The artist at work:

And so Glen sculpted while I weeded/watered/composted the garden, oiled verandas and doors, and cooked. Both of us took part in the most common activity: collecting donkey poo. The poo collection occured every couple of days and took a good hour. Fortunatly it doesn't stink and is relatively dry - something that cannot be said for the cow poo, which was also collected and frequently mixed with sawdust to make a garden fertilizer. The donkeys were a bit of a nuisance, as they liked to stick their noses on our backs to beg for attention as we collected their leavings.

The place was very quaint. We learned how to cook on a wood burning stove, ate freshly laid eggs from the chickens and drank fresh milk from the cow. That cow must be one of the most sedate bovines around. She liked to be scratched, fed treats, and would aggressively trumpt her displeasure if she wasn't let out to her daily grazing pasture at the proper time or if it her daily milking was late. She also liked to lick Glen's leg, which was far from ticklish and resulted in the removal-via-sandpaper-tongue of a patch of leg hair and probably a good layer of skin.

But she loves people so!

Other activities included a couple of trips into nearby Nelson and Richmond. We dined at Harry's Bar in Nelson, and became acquainted with the reasonings behind the multiple awards the restaurant has won. Damn, they've got some fine cocktails there... I managed to take in a local belly dance class, and we went to a lovely fundraiser market event at one of the nearby vineyards. The market was great fun, and the views from the winery were simply lovely:

We enjoyed our time at the farm, but were ready to move on when our two weeks were up. Glen kept very busy and produced some pretty darn good work, if I do say so myself. So for your aesthetic enjoyment, I shall close with a little show of the fruits of his labour:

Male torso, constructed in separate muscular groups. Chicken wire and cement.

Female torso, classical position. Chicken wire and cement.

Sneering face. Chicken wire and cement, coloured with red paint, white paint, house stain, and grass.

Male face in tree. Wood, carved from a still rooted stump.

And finally: Lauren, encased in duct tape. (It was an experiment to make a mould for a cement cast torso figure. It...uh...didn't really work.)

Mussel Country

2007-12-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

Leaving off from Picton, ferries, and nausia, now, and heading towards our WWOOF engagement in Wakefield, just outside of Nelson. The drive was very pretty indeed, taking us along gentle mountains and a coastline more rugged than those in Hawke's Bay. We stopped in Havelock and as neither of us had really eaten since 10:00 that morning (it was now around 6:00 pm - the ferry was over two hours late getting into dock due to the weather conditions) and still had a good hour long drive ahead of us, we stopped for some food.

Havelock is a very small place and mostly caters to a summer tourist crowd in search of prime seafood and giant green mussels. Indeed, every year it hosts a mussel festival. Small towns focussed entirely on mussles become veritable ghost towns after five in the afternoon, and our quest for food was looking rather futile as there was nary an open food store or cafe in sight. There was, happily, a small restauraunt open called The Mussel Pot. It serves mussels and is decorated with mussel shell art. There was little on the menu other than very expensive mussels, and we decided that we'd go for the cheapest thing available - a $10 bowl of chowder each and a $4 basket of plain bread (non-refillable).

The bowl of chowder was very big and the soup itself was absolutly delicious; it is worth trying, but I honestly just can't reconcile myself to the prices there. There was a nice big green mussel served as garnish, and the beastie inside the shell was so large that the internal organs were clearly identifiable. I've never stared at the mussel equivalent of a liver before, and I hope I never do again. Determined to keep an open mind about the mussel - the soup was, after all, very good and I've eaten this mussel's smaller cousins before - I yanked the creature from it's home, popped it in my mouth, chewed a couple of times, and swallowed before I could taste more of it. Glen thought it was delicious. I thought it was disgusting.

The remainder of our voyage to our WWOOF hosts was uneventful and mostly occurred in the dark, so I won't bore you with details. But there is a side note about The Mussel Pot. We had sent in a job application to them as they were in need of staff during the busy mussel festival and summer months of January to March. The restauraunt manager was there when we visited and we chatted briefly with her. A couple of days later, we recieved a response that they would like to hire the two of us for those months. After a great deal of investigation as to our accomodation options in the area, we declined their kind offer. We didn't want to be stuck in a hostel for over two months in one go, and any other feasable option was far too expensive to make working there worth our while. So we remain free, unemployed agents (aside from our WWOOF endeavours), and shall continue to look for jobettes that suit our requirements.

And the ship goes up, and the ship goes down, and the ship goes up...

2007-12-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

Apologies to all those faithful readers who have been wondering were Glen and I have dissapeared to for the past couple of weeks. I shall pick up this missive where the last post left off, for our woes with the ferry are well worth mentioning.

After our one pleasant night at the Barnacles YHA hostel, we hoofed it for the Wellington ferry terminal to catch our 1:00 ferry to Picton on the South Island. Being but a few dozen kilometers from Wellington, we thought that our 10:15 departure would leave us plenty of time to fill Sparkleypoo's gas tank and grab a few snacks for the road. It would have been enough time, too, had it not been for the wrong turn Glen made into a Wellington suburb.

Wheeling our way through the suburb made us appreciate how very, very confusing the British-style traffic planning system is. With the clock creeping ever closer to our final reserved check-in time for the ferry - noon - we started panicking that we would lose our spot on the boat (if you have a reserved ticket and arrived late, your spot could potentially be given to a customer purchasing a last-minute ticke). I called the ferry company and asked them if they could make a note not to surrender our spot on the ferry as we were indeed on our way but would just be a few minutes late. They said it would be no problem, as the ferry itself was late and had not yet even docked. Relieved somewhat by this news, we found our way back to the motorway and continued on to Wellington.

The ferry dock was within sight when we hit the traffic jam. And what a jam it was! Traffic was moving at a snail's pace along the motorway for several kilometers, and we sat in frustrated futility, watching the clock tick past 12:15...12:30...12:45... Glen noticed that the ferry was still in the process of getting into the harbour as we were tied up in traffic, which was definitely some comfort. Apparently the very rough harbour waters was holding everyone up, not just us. Eventually we got past the bottleneck and rolled into the correct terminal at about ten minutes to one. At this point I was still convinced that we had quite literally missed the boat, and therefore forfeited our fare and tickets (no refunds for late-comers).

Normally we would have been far too late to board the ferry, however due to the weather conditions, the boat hadn't even yet unloaded it's previous load of cars and passengers. We got into the boarding line-up, handed over our ticket, and waited. Somewhere around 1:30, the ship was unloaded, we drove into the car bay, and abandoned the vehicle to find a place to hole up for the voyage.

Happily, we discovered a little reading-room type area that had electric jacks for laptops, so we settled in there and I pulled out my book* while Glen cracked open the laptop and our games. The reading room couches filled with other passengers shortly thereafter, and while the boat pulled away from the dock the shipwide announcements cheerfully proclaimed that it was going to be a "rough ride".

A pair of passengers who had taken this journey many, many times, looked around with surprised expressions and tremulously said "they've never said that before."

Being as I was the one who got seasick while asleep on the ferry from Tasmania to Melbourne, it would be safe to think that I would also be the one to get seasick on this significantly choppier journey. The boat heaved and rolled and the passengers heaved and rolled, and despite being somewhat alarmed at the first few rises and falls of the prow, I happily read my book and chatted with whoever was feeling up to chatting. One hour into the voyage, people were falling silent and were attempting to find some comfortable way of lying down and quelling their rising gorges. I was still feeling as right as rain.

Glen, however, was not. He stood up from his laptop nook, delicatly removed his headphones, and calmly made his way to the bathroom. I assumed that the Man with the Iron Gut was simply going to the bathroom for normal reasons. Ten minutes later, Glen not having reappeared, I decided to leave my book for the time being and play some computer games. As soon as I saw which game Glen had been playing, I knew what was up.

He had been playing Unreal Tournament.

For those who are familiar with this game, you will immediately understand the implications of playing it while on a boat that is pitching so badly that even the crew are having problems. For those who are unfamiliar with it, let me say that it is a first-person shooter with extremely fast-paced visual effects, lots of blinking lights and explosions, lots of movement, sound effects, and everything else that is bad to stare at when susceptable to motion sickness. I immediately understood the situation, turned that game off, settled in for a nice long round of the much slower-paced Baulder's Gate, Shadows of Amn, and left Glen to his misery in the men's loo.

He came back much later, looking awfully green and sickly. Once the cruise had ended and as we were disembarking, he reassured me that while he may have left half his guts in the toilet, the guy dry-heaving in the stall next to him was far worse off.

*Note: In case you are curious as to whether or not the slowest-reading librarian in the world had been using this opportunity to actually get some reading done, I am proud to state that I have. What's more, I've been exclusively reading fiction, which takes me much longer to get through than non-fiction. Some books have been long and some have been short, but so far I've completed Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome, two Terry Prachett books: Guards! Guards and The Last Continent, and am currently working on Jane Austin's Emma.

Wine Trail

2007-11-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

After a quick drive to Napier, a lovely little town renowned for it’s amazing Art Deco architecture, we decided to stay there for a couple of nights and see if we could pick up some WWOOF work on our way to Christchurch.

For any New Zealand travellers in the audience, I would highly recommend the Napier Prison Backpacker’s Hostel. It’s a great place to spend a few nights; good clean facilities, very comfortable beds, and a whole lot of fun. Spending a night or two in the cells is pretty entertaining.

It only took a couple of phone calls for us to secure a WWOOF appointment at a really cute sounding place; we will be at a small hobby-type permaculture farm shepherded by a Swiss lady with a voice and accent that could immediately conjure boxes of Swiss chocolates wrapped with grosgrain ribbon. I’m quite intrigued by the presence of a hand-milked cow.

We left Napier a couple of days before our scheduled arrival at the WWOOF farm, as the farm is on the south island and it will take us at least a day’s travel to get across on the ferry. The Hawke’s Bay region is renowned for it’s wineries, and there were plenty of wineries along the Naiper-to-Wellington highway. We planned on stopping of at about eight or so wineries, but by the third winery I was completely hammered and Glen, despite diligently spitting out every mouthful of wine, was worried that if we visited any more cellars he was going to end up absorbing too much alcohol to continue driving. The first vineyard’s wine was nothing to write home about; pleasant but not particularly interesting. The second vineyard was quite a bit of fun; the woman conducting our wine tasting was a hoot, the wine was delicious, and the samples were generous. There were a couple of reds that I would have liked to purchase, but they were very costly and well outside our budget. At the third vineyard we came across a really fantastic dessert wine – the first dessert wine I’ve actually enjoyed – and a lovely Shiraz, so we bought a bottle of each.

Wine purchased and safely stowed, we stopped for lunch at a highway eatery known as The Chook and the Filly. If you are ever driving the South Highway 50, stop by this place and have a meal. Actually, if you are planning on driving the SH2, change your plans and take the SH50 instead just so you can stop at this place. The food is mouth-watering, the prices are reasonable, and the proprietor is a great man to talk to about the wines you have (or are about to) sample.

The remainder of the drive was quite uneventful, and we spent the night in Paraparaumu at the Barnacles Seaside Inn YHA hostel. This is another place that I will add to my list of recommended accommodations. It is very, very homey and comfortable. The kitchen is a little small, but the delightful dining room/TV room more than makes up for it, and it meets my cleanliness standards.

Abort! Abort!

2007-11-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

After forking out for our muddy yet refined adventure at Hell’s Gate, Glen and I were feeling the effects of living on a fixed budget and a high cost of living for two months. Taking advantage of the unsecured wireless internet connection we discovered in our motel room, we scoured the New Zealand seasonal backpacker’s work websites for some temporary employment.

We weren’t expecting much in the way of results from this job hunt, as we would only be available to work for one week at most. Nevertheless, one of the employers responded. He had advertised needing workers for squash weeding, and if we could make our way to Hastings, in the scenic and very fertile Hawkes Bay area, he would have work and accommodation for us.

We drove down on a Sunday. From the multiple phone conversations Glen had with him, we believed we would start work on Monday. Our contact would meet us in Hastings and escort us to the farm, where we would have beds at the modest price of $80 each for one week’s stay. Upon arriving at the arranged meeting point, we called our contact and he said he would be there in ten minutes. One hour and twenty minutes later he arrived, hardly acknowledged either of us, said absolutely nothing in regards to his extreme lateness, and led us on a ten minute drive to the farm and hour housing.

To say that the place was a roach motel would be putting it politely. I’m well aware that there are cockroaches in New Zealand, as there are in 99.7% of the world, but to have so many crawling around in such a filthy excuse of a bunkhouse was disgusting. I personally prefer my food cupboards to be relatively cockroach free, wheras these roaches used the food pantry as a thoroughfare. The beds were stained and boasted crusty patches on the mattress coverings, the garbage in the kitchen was completely infested with ants, and the bathroom had no toilet paper.

Our contact said that there wouldn’t be any work available for us on Monday (which was supposed to be our starting date). There would probably be no work for us on Tuesday either. We might be starting on Wednesday, at the earliest, but he explained that there were some German backpackers waiting for work and they would be given priority as they have staying there for several days on the farm. We might only have two or three days work a week, our fine fellow explained days, maybe four days at the most. He promised to call us with more information the following morning, and would drop off a key to the accommodations.

After we resigned ourselves to the general grottiness of the place, we hauled our bags in and wandered around the multi-winged backpacker’s complex. And who did we come across in one of the wings? One of the travellers we had been hanging out with at the Auckland hostel! He had been at the farm for a week already, had only worked a couple of days, and was spending most of his time twiddling his thumbs waiting for more work. A large number of the other people staying there were in a similar situation. Some of them did have work, but the impression we were given was that working days were few and far between. This bleak outlook, combined with the cagey, vague information given to us by our contact, the disgusting accommodation, and the sheer number of people who would be giving priority for work over us, led us to the conclusion that there was no work to be had, and that it would be a waste of time and money to stay.

So we did a runner! Early the following afternoon, after neither seeing or hearing from our contact, we flung our backpacks back into the car and took off before anyone could ask us to pay rent for our one night’s stay. So long dodgy work contractor! So long roach-filled backpacker’s shack! So long prospectless days of thumb-twiddling!

POOF! Gone with ninja-like stealth!

A Stinking, Scalding Tub Full of Goodness

2007-11-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

Rotorua is well known for its geothermal wonders. The entire town is built around these natural hot springs and geysers, and holy smackers do the locals ever make good use of it. Every place of accommodation lists natural mineral pools among their amenities, and despite the purveying reek of sulphur that blankets most of the town, the town is one of New Zealand’s top tourist destinations.

Our own motel had a mineral pool, of course, which we decided to try out one evening. I’m not entirely certain if my intestines were completely poached by the end of our brief dip, the arteries in my legs certainly were. Glen managed to submerge himself up to his neck in the scalding water, while I only managed to get in up to my waist. It took us about ten minutes of ginger, inch-by-painful-inch entry to get to that point. I believe that the water was around 43 degrees Celsius, and our skin was a blotchy lobster-red for a good hour after we got out.

A much more gentle experience was had at the Wai Ora Spa at the Hell’s Gate Geothermal Reserve. We were signed up for a combo package, which included our entry fee to the geothermal reserve park, a private mud bath, and a soak in the spa’s sulphur pools. I would like to add that the park has a complimentary shuttle bus for visitors. It might be wonderful to have our own car again, but it is delightful to have someone else do the driving and thinking for us.

The walk was defiantly nifty; despite having seen natural hot spring sources before, the violence with which the mud and water bubbles up from this area is surprising. The smell is sometimes eye-wateringly pungent, but after a while one’s nose deadens somewhat at it becomes more bearable. All cliches aside, 'alien' would be the best way to describe the landscape, as it is a blasted, pitted place marked with pools of black mud that says "gloop gloop" and shockingly yellow sulphur crystal formations.

The spa was delightful. The properties of the hot springs create marvelously silky mud that is excellent for one’s pores. Both the spa’s mud and sulphur baths are sourced directly from the geothermal reserve, so it’s a thoroughly local indulgence. All snooty expounding upon the curative properties of the mud aside, it was darn fun to wallow in it and get completely filthy.

After we rinsed off (in a freezing cold shower, I might add: the water came straight out of a garden hose set-up and promoted severe testicular retraction) we went to the sulphur baths. The water was smelly but extremely soft. Happily, the temperature of those baths weren’t nearly as hot as the mineral pool at our hotel, so we were able to get in up to our necks quite quickly. I’ve begun to wonder, however, if the pools were designed to extract human energy and use it to power the facility; we were completely drained after getting out of the sulphur pools. A word to the wise traveller: don’t make any plans for the evening following a day at Hell’s Gate/Wai Ora. You will be useless for any activity apart from blobbing in front of the television and occasionally drooling.

Sparkleypoo the Magic Wagon

2007-11-15T01:43:00.000-07:00

We are now in Rotorua. How did we get to Rotorua?

IN OUR CAR.

Yep, we’ve bought ourselves a higher class of crap-can than is normally iconic of self-driving backpackers. It is a 1995 Subaru Legacy station wagon, automatic, with a sunroof and a moonroof, and a very temperamental air conditioning control system.* The price was cheap (you've got to love the promise of a quick cash sale for negotiating a lower purchase price), the timing was perfect, and the vehicle is in good condition. It contains a great deal of concrete chips and dust, as the previous owner was a construction worker and put his work stuff in it. It is definitely in need of a vacuuming, which will happen once we find a self-serve car vacuum place. There is room for us to bed down in the back and plenty of space for hauling our gear. We have named it Sparkleypoo.

We left Auckland on the very same day that we purchased the car, and headed to Rotorua to enjoy the sinus-cleansing sulphuric smells and the fantastic natural wonders of the geothermal hot-spots. We will be taking in the natural beauties, the natural geysers and hot water boiling up from the ground, and the mud baths. Thanks to a wonderfully budget-friendly choice of motels, we have our own suite, shower, and kitchen for three days at the same rate as a double room in a hostel would cost us. It is a fat time, a time of plenty (despite the initial cost of getting the car, which will quickly pay for itself due to the cost of bus fares), a time of personal space and self-determined mobility.

For the record, driving around in Aukland's central downtown area is terrifying. I was behind the wheel on the first two very short excursions, and as it was my first time driving on the left in a left-oriented car, it involved a great deal of cursing. All cursing was done at the top of my lungs. Needless to say, Glen's been doing the driving ever since.

In other news, Glen’s hair is now red:

*Note: The air conditioning works just fine, it is just that it takes some very persistent prodding to get the buttons to recognize your commands when you first turn it on. The easiest way to deal with it is to simply not turn it off, but to adjust the fan, thermostat, and intake until it maintains a comfortable cabin temperature.

Between a Rock and a Whorehouse

2007-11-08T03:10:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the salesmanship efforts of a backpacker’s travel agent at the Peterpan’s Adventure Travel shop and against the express recommendations of a dear friend, Glen and I booked our first few nights in Auckland at the Nomads Fat Camel hostel. We were lured by the enthusiasm of the backpacker agent, the promise of free meals every evening*, the availability of a double room, and the hostel’s habit of refunding traveller’s their airport shuttle transfer fee (which ended up being about $30 for the two of us).

The room was reasonably clean and the bed comfortable. The hostel itself is divided into multiple floors, two communal areas on each floor, and each communal area divided into dorms or twin/double rooms. There is an interesting apartment-style communal set up in every room cluster, one kitchen for every 20 or so hostellers, a 24 hour manned reception desk, travel agent, and a bar on the main floor.

And for the frisky, there are two massage parlours and three strip clubs flanking the hostel walls!

Right next door to the hostel is Cleopatra’s (yep, that's the entrance awning to the Nomads Fat Camel hostel in the picture).

Just in case you were mistaken as to the nature of the establishment, Cleopatra’s has kindly placed a sign advertising their services in the front-entrance stairwell:

If Cleopatra’s isn’t exactly what you are looking for and you wanted something with slightly less class, you can go one door over and visit Lipstix. Lipstix has a seedier, naughtier flare than Cleopatra’s. They can’t afford a fancy printed sign in their entrance, so they opted instead for a more budget-friendly chalkboard.

Should you be wanting something a little more – ahem - energetic, just walk to the other side of the hostel. On the other side of the hostel, right beside the hostel’s bar, is The Mermaid Bar (yes, they actually have a website), where there are "enchanting mermaids performing for you nightly."

Once you have piqued your appetite at The Mermaid Bar, you can head next door to The Moon Gentleman’s Bar. On a grocery shopping expedition during our first night in Auckland, we passed by The Moon and found that some kindly nurse had positioned herself right in front of the door. I believe that she was present to help out with any men who may have been experiencing a spike in their blood pressures. I’m surprised that no one offered her a coat, however, as she must have been very chilly in that little uniform. She needed a larger size, as she couldn’t even zip her top fully closed!

After sating one’s thirst for scantily clad nurses at The Moon, you may stagger next door again for our final stop, The H.Q. Club Gentleman’s Retreat. At this point, you should be relatively exhausted from your night on the town, so the upper-class genteelness implied by the exquisite signage and the fact that this is a "gentleman’s retreat" should be something of a comfort.

Truthfully, it seemed that the people coming out of the strip clubs and massage parlours were far less rowdy than the people spilling out of the Fat Camel’s bar. As one of the hostel staff put it, "having whorehouses for neighbours just means that there's that much more security people around." Phew! And I thought that we might be dealing with something serious!

*Note: The free "food" was atrocious. When I say that it was nearly inedible, I mean it; one evening I was actually unable to chew the beef. The chewed-up piece was indistinguishable from the non-chewed pieces. The meals were, in general, drowning in salt and grease containing meat of such low grade that it would gag a goat. Fortunately we were able to get our free portion "supersized" for free, because Peterpans has a deal that you can get your food at the Fat Camel upsized for free upon presentation of the yellow rubber Peterpans bracelet - otherwise it would cost $4. While I would have shrunk away in horror at the idea of even larger portions of that dodgy food, upsizing the meal usually meant that you got some vegetables as a side dish. We ate it because it was free, but I'm still not entirely certain if the indigestion and cramping was worth it.

Welcome to New Zealand! Go See Canada!

2007-11-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

One short flight and in-flight screening of Live Free of Die Hard brought Glen and I to Auckland, New Zealand. Guess what we found when we got through customs!

Mounties! Doesn’t everyone find representatives from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when they get off the plane in New Zealand?

Granted, their hats were wrong and the uniforms weren’t exactly regulation issue, but they were unmistakably Mounties. Apparently Air New Zealand was running a promotional campaign for their new direct-to-Canada flights, which were being launched that very day. Do you think we could get hired by Air New Zealand to pose as Canadians?

We Found Orientalism. It Threw Up All Over a Restaurant.

2007-11-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

One final note before leaving Brisbane: we went out for a nice light dinner at a restaurant, and chose Ahmet’s, a Turkish-themed joint on the South Bank. This was the restaurant with belly dancing on Friday and Saturday nights. There would be no performance that night, but we thought it looked like a fun place to have a bite anyway.

It was…entertaining, to be sure. The service was terrible, we nearly had to trip up our waitress to get her to even look at us. Glen had a beer, while I ordered their "Turkish Apple Tea". It sounded nice. It smelled nice. It tasted nice. It wasn’t tea. All it consisted of was heated apple juice. It was tasty, but one would think that to have something branded as “Turkish Apple Tea” as opposed to “Hot Apple Juice”, there would be something, oh, special about it. Maybe the juice could be heated with a couple of cinnamon sticks simmering in it. Just a thought.

The food was good, albeit a little slow. The waitress forgot about our dessert, but that didn’t make the baklava any less delicious.

The décor was – ah – Turkesque. Orientalism at it’s finest and boldest was splashed everywhere. Jewel-toned sheer fabrics were draped all over the ceiling, every inch of furniture was upholstered in some fantastically clashing pattern, and there were bad fresco-style murals all over the walls. Here is a little visual tour (the photos are a little dark):

This was our table. With food. And upholstery.

This is the mural beside the table.

The mural worried me. The painted women were watching our every move.

Here is one view of the restaurant.

Here is another view of the restaurant. Behold the magnificence of the ceiling drapery!

And finally: a turban shelf, for all your turban needs!

I can only marvel at the bipedal weaving skills of the dancers who perform there on the weekend. Those tables were mashed together very, very closely. Besides, the orientalism in that place is so thick I’m amazed the diners don’t get choked by the faux gold threaded drapery.

In the Lap of Luxury

2007-11-01T01:32:00.002-07:00

Ah! The joys of a private shower! Ah! The splendour of personal space! What could possibly cause these paroxysms of joy? Why, dear reader, Glen and I have temporarily cast aside the communal living arrangements of hostel life and indulged in the rental of a more upscale place.

We decided that our last two nights in Australia would be spent in a nice hotel. As we need to catch the train to the airport at 6:30 on the morning of November 2nd, we wanted a hotel that was in easy walking distance of the CBD main train station and transit centre. After much hunting around for a hotel and consulting the tourist information booth in one of the major outdoor malls in the Brisbane CBD, we landed upon Abbey Apartments, a hotel/apartment building featuring completely self-contained apartments geared to business travellers. The location couldn’t be better – it is literally across the street from the train station, which will allow us to roll out of bed and stumble to our airport train with minimum time and fuss. The rate was very reasonable – a heck of a lot better than the Holiday Inn hotel that is attached to the train station. And really, I prefer the apartment setting. The building still has a pool, hot tub, and sauna, but now we have the niceties of single-bedroom apartment sized space, and a full kitchen. We were able to simply move all our groceries right into the apartment fridge, and don’t need to blow our budget and guts eating all meals at restaurants for two days. To add delight upon delight, this apartment has in-suite laundry washers and dryers! I shrieked with happiness when I asked the receptionist how much the coin laundry cost and she told me that we would have our own laundry facilities and washing powder in the room. I’ve never been so excited to do the laundry, but I suppose that is what you get after nearly two months of hostels.

We checked in as early as possible – in case you are curious, it was at 10:05 am, precisely ten minutes after we checked out of the YHA hostel (which is only two blocks north of the apartment building). Basking in the glorious privacy of our little suite, Glen and I started the day with some lazing about, computer games, and cable television at a moderate volume. After a while, we wandered down to the CBD outdoor mall, went souvenir hunting without much luck, and purchased groceries for lunch. We came back to the apartment for a leisurely late lunch (how’s that for alliteration?) of kangaroo steak, pasta, peas, and Aussie shiraz. The steak was to die for, I sincerely wish we had picked up kangaroo steak earlier into our holiday and ate more of it. We went for a soak in the hot tub, made a brief evening excursion to find some Hallowe’en bar action. Finding no action of interest – Hallowe’en here is not a big event, so the party was basically just louder-than-normal music and a few guys taking the opportunity to cross-dress – we went back to the hotel to eat salad, bake cookies, and drink Australian wine.

The wine in question is well matched to supermarket just-add-egg-and-butter cookie mix. At this moment we are finally slugging back the strawberry wine we purchased in Tasmania. It smells like strawberry jam and has a liqueur like taste to it. It goes down very, very smoothly and I could easily see a gaggle of women getting hammered off it at a hen party. It is delicious and extremely sweet. I honestly didn’t expect it to be this good! You can’t drink a lot of it at once, as it does get rather cloying, but it is unmistakably strawberries and I’m quite enjoying it. There is also some free entertainment occurring out on the street below our apartment balcony. There is some sort of altercation out by the train station, with a few young fellows running around and train station guards shooing them away. The Paddy Wagon just drove by, and the guard directed the cops to where they could pick up the young rowdies. The Hallowe’en parties at nearby bars must be ending, as there are a few drunks weaving their way past our building. It appears that most of them are drifting up to hostel row, which is not surprising.

As you can tell, we are more than enjoying our purchased moments of privacy; we are positively basking in them! And we have another full day of privacy basking, a nice trip to the art gallery and museum in the early afternoon, and an evening at whatever South Bank restaurant strikes our fancy for our last meal in Australia. Then it shall be off, off to New Zealand!

See you there!

Bob Dole Wants His Peanut Butter!

2007-11-01T01:32:00.001-07:00

We’ve been back in Brisbane at the trusty Brisbane YHA hostel for all of one night, and Neil has made another appearance! This time the asshole stole our jars of peanut butter AND jam. They were in a labeled cubby shelf! The jars themselves were tagged with our names! He again had to go looking through all our other food to find those jars! I was going to make peanut butter and jam sandwiches for our afternoon trek, but that is now out of the question.

FURTHERMORE, this time Neil was not satisfied with nicking food from just one place. This time Neil has raided the communal food shelves in addition to taking our food! He made off with a nearly new bag of sultana raisins (it was on the communal food shelf when Glen and I arrived, and we opened it and used a cupful in our oatmeal), a tub of butter, and a bottle of pancake syrup. Clearly he is on a condiments rampage!

Conclusion: hostellers are jerks. Also, Neil is stalking us.

More beaches, more surfers, more shopping

2007-11-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

That is essentially what Gold Coast is. After our break-from-noise in Murwullimba, we went about half an hour north to Coolangatta. The YHA hostel there promised free breakfast, and we are not ones to turn down free food, so there we went.

In addition to the free breakfast, the other advantage of Coolangatta is that the city runs into Tweeds Heads, and Surfer’s Paradise, and every other little party suburb that populates the Gold Coast. It is beach after beach after beach after beach. Glen and I aren’t exactly interested in beaches. There are also markets after markets after markets. Glen and I do like markets quite a bit.

The first market we hit was the Surfer’s Paradise night market. It involved a half-hour ride on their excellent public transportation to get from Coolangatta to Surfer’s Paradise, and it was worth the trip. What little we saw of the beach lived up to its name – the waves looked like a surfer’s dream come true. The night market had plenty of random artisan tents, and some of the items were quite lovely:

After we strolled up and down the market purchasing absolutely nothing at all (as usual – although I still think we should have gotten a basket of those really fragrant strawberries), it started to rain quite heavily. We dived into one of the many pubs that lined the open air mall behind the night market. We nursed a beer for about an hour while waiting for the rain to stop, and had an uproarious conversation with a Scottish ex-pat who was feeling chatty.

The next morning we headed to the Carrara open-air markets. Advertisements and fliers for the market were all over the hostel and it declared itself to be smashing good family fun, so we figured it would be worth checking out.

To say that it was a flea market would be polite. To say that it was a flea-bitten, Chinese knock-off filled, crap strewn thieves den would be more accurate. It was grody, there were knock offs of every conceivable super hero, and most memorably a kid’s toy cell phone shaped recording device titled something to the effect of "Uninteresting Girl". I believe that the original toy name was completely different but the meaning got lost in translation. After about half an hour we gave the place up as a bad job and headed back to the city.

We didn’t to much the following day, as it was pouring rain all afternoon. That night there was a massive thunderstorm that woke up the entire hostel, fried some of the hostel lights, and blew out the nearby traffic control lights. It sounded like a cannon was being shot off the hostel roof.

Three days in Coolangatta were enough for us. It is a great place if you are into surfing and did a great deal of visiting with some really nice hostellers, but there wasn’t much else to do. Had we been 18, full of booze, and eager for the bar scene we may have stayed longer, but we decided we would rather spend the remainder of our time in Australia back in Brisbane.

Murwullywoolambubby-something-or-other

2007-11-01T01:21:00.000-07:00

Four nights in Byron Bay and we were ready to head onwards. We chose to head slightly northwards and start making our way back up to Brisbane, so the next place that appealed to us was a hostel in the town of Murwillumbah (I have no idea if I spelled that correctly) at the base of Mt. Warning. Mt. Warning is the center of the largest volcanic caldera formation in the southern hemisphere, and so has excellent hiking, lots of wildlife, and as there isn’t a single beach in sight the hostel is a damn sight quieter than anywhere else on the Gold Coast. We were ready for some quiet nights and real sleep. Besides, the hostel in Murwillumbah serves free ice cream every evening at 9pm!

There wasn’t much to see or do in the town itself, but the hike up Mt. Warning was fantastic. There are three distinct zones of vegetation: sub-tropical rainforest at the bottom, temperate rainforest in the middle, and heath vegetation at the top. Plenty of wildlife roams around the walking track, mostly lizards and birds. As far as lizards went, we saw big fat skinks, various unidentifiable lizards, and a teeny little juvenile snake. Most frequently sighted are the bush turkeys. They are everywhere, males and females alike, and are excellent scavengers. We had a male follow us up the walking track for some distance, and two males were waiting for scraps at the very top of the mountain.

Ugly sucker, ain’t he?

There are also flies. I’ve become convinced that every fly around the Gold Coast decided to host a reunion on the lookout decks at the top of the mountain. The noise from the buzzing was incredible, it was as though we walked into a swarm a million flies thick, but we could only see about 20 of them at any given point in time.

The flies couldn’t compete with the views, though. They were exceptional – from the peak of Mt. Warning you can see the full caldera formation all around. It feels like you are at the top of the world, only there’s no snow and you don’t need a respirator to breathe. Provided, of course, that you don’t keel over after reaching the top. It takes about 2 hours of good, quick paced hiking to get up the mountain, and the final 100 meters is a vertical scramble aided by rough rock formations and chains. Believe me, you need the chains.

It’s really, really, really freaking steep. On the way back down, Glen decided that we needed more undignified pictures of my ass:

So I yelled at him:

Back at the hostel, we were spending our time eating ice cream, feeding water dragons (the resident hostel dragons will take bits of apple right out of your hand, and apparently one of them got so bold that it would climb onto the laps of people eating on the deck chairs), and chasing various forms of local wildlife. The highlight of this urban wildlife bits was the advent of a magnificent carpet boa that was slowly wending its way around the hostel ground, shedding it’s skin.

Isn’t it magnificent? And we were able to watch it shed its entire skin, in two pieces. Carpet boas are really lovely creatures and are quite harmless to humans. They’re great to have around houses, though, because their primary source of food is rats and mice, so they are excellent for pest control.

The Return of Neil

2007-11-01T01:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, either Neil followed us to Byron Bay or he has sent his agents after us. Someone has gone rummaging through our LABELLED food shelf in the hostel kitchen and has stolen all our fruits and vegetables!

NEIL!!

Beach Hunting, 2nd Attempt

2007-11-01T01:17:00.000-07:00

After getting a good night’s sleep, we struck out again in search of a hostel on those fabled Queensland beaches. This time, however, we had the people at the YHA reception desk call other YHA hostels and book our room for us. Our first attempt was Surfer’s Paradise (seriously, the town is actually called that), but they were full up due to a big NASCAR race being held there that weekend. Upon the advice of the guy at the tour desk, we booked in at Byron Bay, which is approximately 2 hours south of Brisbane, in New South Wales.

Byron Bay is the quintessential spring break/surfer town. It is very beautiful, extremely touristy, always busy, and contains more new age shops per square inch than anywhere else in the world. I defy even San Francisco to have more new age stores per yearly capita than Byron Bay.

The YHA hostel there is crowded and noisy but well laid out with a big patio, a nice pool, and a great pool deck area for lounging. This is a very, very good thing because I managed to get sick (again) on the bus ride to Byron Bay. Just about the only comfortable position I could assume that didn’t leave me nauseated beyond all reckoning was doubled over with my head on my knees and my arms clamped across my stomach. I have no idea what sort of illness it was – a small touch of stomach flu possibly – but I think I was as nauseated as I could get without actually vomiting. It didn’t let up for a minute, eating was impossible, and moving around just exacerbated it. I spend most of my time hunched over a picnic table on the deck with my book trying not to think about bile, while Glen explored the beaches.

I was laid up for about two days, unable to get comfortable, and sleeping at night was next to impossible for either of us thanks to the noisy, noisy, drunk British kids who were sharing our dorm. Our dorm had a rather odd configuration; there were two levels, the main floor had two bunk beds while the loft where we slept had a double bed. We could easily forgive a bit of noise at night – after all, it is a hostel, so we do expect more night time partying than your average holiday accommodation. This group, however, took it to a whole new level. The guys yelled at the top of their lungs whenever they opened their mouths, the girl screeched as loudly as the guys, they slammed the door as hard as possible whenever they entered or exited the room, and they spend their entire stay in various stages of crapulence.

Glen and I agree that they could have been quite entertaining to hang around with had they not been making so much noise. They were very nice kids and we chatted with them frequently, but they were so phenomenally inconsiderate when it came to piping down at night that we were very irritated by their presence. According to their conversations, which were impossible not to listen to, they had been kicked out of most hostels they stayed in and were making arrangements to find work in Byron Bay. How they expected to find work when the lot of them were on permanent hangovers was totally beyond us. They must have looked and sounded like hell at their interviews, because when they came in at night the reek of alcohol coming off their breath and their bodies was so thick that it stank up our loft area as soon as they walked through (and then proceeded to slam) the door.

Noisy hostellers aside, Byron Bay is beautiful. It is fun being in such a touristy area, and once I was well enough to eat and walk around, we had the biggest, greasiest burgers we could hope for and thoroughly enjoyed the window shopping. The beaches were lovely and the water was an ideal temperature for wading. There were quite a number of jellyfish washed up on the beach. At least I suspect that they were jellyfish. When I poked one with the toe of my boot, it was rather firm. It is entirely possible that the firm clear blobs all over the beach were silicone breast implants that one of the many boobified bathers had managed to lose when their bikinis fell off in especially hard-hitting ocean surf. Or maybe the implants simply fell out when they were sunbathing topless. There are lots of topless sunbathers in Byron Bay, and no one seems to mind or even really notice.

Oh, and there enough anorexic women in teeny, teeny, teeny bikinis to give anyone a complex. For the first time in my life I felt self-conscious in my very flattering one-piece bathing suit because I was not showing enough skin. I must have been the only female on the beach under 48 years of age who:
a) wasn’t wearing a stringy little bikini, and
b) didn’t have a cocoa-bean tan.

Then again, I was also the only girl there not to be running the risk of skin cancer and sun damage related premature wrinkling. So there!

PS: I know that I mentioned this already, but the window shopping was really good. At several points I was rather tempted to blow a couple hundred dollars picking up some really fantastic clothes. Fortunately for our budget, my willpower is stronger than any temptation thrown up by a nice, floaty, waist defining, funky-print dress!

No Room at the Inn

2007-11-01T01:10:00.000-07:00

As our gnat-sized attention span had us tire of Maroochydore and surrounds relatively quickly, we headed back to Brisbane and moved immediately onwards to Stradbroke Island. "Straddie" is located about an hour outside of Brisbane, on a very large sandy island. It promised wonderful scenery, wildlife, forests, and stunning beaches. So we forked over entirely too much money for public transport to the ferry and then ferry transport to the island, and confidently walked to the hostel at about 7:00 pm to get our beds.

Now this is how fortune and circumstance can lead to sheer stupidity: we had been having such luck with our hostel accommodations and heard so many hostel owners say "Crowds? Nah, no crowds, not at this time of year," that we didn’t bother calling ahead to see if any beds were available. Conversation impaired by the din created by the huge throng of youth populating the hostel kitchen and common room, we inquired about beds for the night. The hostel staff on duty looked at us blankly, asked if we had a reservation, and nearly snorted as she told us that there wasn’t anything available – no point in even looking at the room rental book. Try up the road, she said, as she unceremoniously ushered us out.

Undaunted, we walked up the road to a nearby hotel. There were no signs indicating no vacancies, but there wasn’t anyone at the reception desk either. Their reception closed at 2:00 in the afternoon. We walked up further, discovering that there wasn’t so much of a town at Amity Point, just more of a collection of houses and the occasional resort splayed alongside the highway. Oh, and every single place of accommodation (and there weren’t many) was closed. The town shuts to close down between 2:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon, no exceptions.

So what does one do when stuck in a town with no room, no tent, and no where to sleep? Simple! Why, you wander over to the nearest campground, find a high school group chaperoned by several teachers, chat with them for a while, and then sleep on their campsite, of course! The teachers thought our predicament was hilarious, and welcomed us readily.

The above picture is a lie, actually. We didn’t get any sleep at all. Between the intermittent drizzle and my own paranoia about the security patrol catching on to us, I ended up awake the entire night and Glen only caught snatches of sleep here and there. After the third bout of drizzle, we went inside the campsite’s covered barbecue area, and Glen snoozed while I read my book. Security did drive past, but I believe they assumed we were part of the high school group.

One of the teachers was up early the next morning, so she took us for a walk around the beaches, which she knew quite well, and talked about the local flora and fauna. It made for a lovely morning, despite our exhaustion, as the teacher was very nice and was a good conversationalist.

At about 7:30 we left the campsite and started to walk around the town itself. Our first stop was back at the hostel, to see if they had any newly-vacant beds that night. No such luck, the place was booked solid throughout the weekend. Then we went back to the hotel that closes at 2:00 pm every day. They only had a room available for that evening (it was a Thursday), and it would be about $175 for the room. We decided not to take it because we knew full well we would spend the entire day sleeping, and would then have to leave the next day, probably without seeing much of the area or the island. The receptionist there called around to some other resorts, but there was nary a vacancy anywhere.

Finally, we went back to the reception building for the campsite where we illicitly stayed the previous night. There were no campsites - much less any cabins - available at all – in fact, there wasn’t a single campsite anywhere on the whole blasted island. We finally found out that we had managed to find our way to North Stradbroke Island on the one busy weekend outside of peak season. That weekend the island was playing host to both a surfing competition and a folk music festival, so every surfer and hippy in Queensland had invaded the island and snapped up any available space.

So we said, in the words of Eric Cartman, "Screw you guys, I’m going home."

Or, in our case, back to Brisbane. We found ourselves back at our trusty YHA where we again secured a twin room, and proceeded to fall asleep for a good 5 hours. Then we got up, had our first meal of the day (at this point it was around six o’clock in the evening), and went back to bed.

That’ll learn us not to call in advance.

Maroo-something-or-other

2007-11-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

We only spent a couple of days in Brisbane before deciding to carry on to Maroochydore, which is further north along the Sunshine Course, and spitting distance to the Australia Zoo. We weren’t going to be in that area and not go visit the late Steve Irwin’s stomping grounds, so we got beds at the Maroochydore hostel, ate loads of the complimentary breakfast (continental, of course) that is provided for the hostellers, and took the courtesy bus to the zoo.

The zoo is lovely and a great deal of fun. It costs an arm and a leg to get it, but we weren’t about to let that deter us. The habitats are brilliant, demonstrations occur throughout the day, and the dedication to conservation is evident. Oh, and if you want gadget xyz with Steve Irwin’s madly grinning head on it, you can find it there. The gift store is a little creepy, like his ghost is watching you in the guise of spoons, t-shirts, and bobble heads. His message and his passion goes on undiluted, though, so it’s all good.

As for the rest of our time in Maroochydore, we spent it walking the beaches, which were very nice and covered in white sand and surfers. There are a few shopping centres to take a peek in, and as expected everything is wildly expensive. The same goes for the restaurants. There must be more restaurants and cafes in three blocks along those beaches than there are in Times Square. There are also water dragons everywhere.

Somewhere between the six dollar lattes and the two hundred and fifty dollar string bikinis, we succeeded in finding squishable wide-brimmed hats. As our lily-white complexions and sensitivity to heat (more on my part than on Glen’s) doesn’t exactly jive with the dominatrix that is the Australian sun, hats were necessary. All efforts to find suitable hats either in Edmonton or abroad failed miserably. This is partially due to the apparent scarcity of responsible sun wear that doesn’t make one look like a hippy, and partially due to the fact that any reasonably shaped hat had some sort of tourist patch or brand name logo on it. As Glen put it, we would not demean ourselves to being "Australia’s or Billabong’s bitches".

So up until our third day in Maroochydore, we were going about heads uncovered. No sunburns or illnesses resulted, but this is because we haven’t been going out during the worst heat of the day. Happily, we came by a hat shop that contained good, wide-brimmed sun hats that didn’t make us look like complete gits, were reasonably priced, could be crushed into a backpack friendly size and still return to its original shape, were certified by the Australian Cancer Society, and didn’t sport a single place name or brand logo. So now we have our hats, and can enjoy both greater visibility and greater protection from sunburn. Incidentally, both of us have yet to get sunburns, which says a great deal about the strength of the sunscreen cream we’ve been using.

As a side note, it appears as about a quarter of the towns along the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast bear a name that starts with “M” and ends in something completely unpronounceable. Maroochydore is relatively easy, but the tongue-tiedness carries on with name such as Mooloolaba, Murwillumbah, Mullumbimby, and so on. I’m sure I would have had the hang of these names were I a local, but trying to stutter through them is awfully embarrassing from a tourist point of view. I feel like a complete git whenever I attempt to pronounce any of them.

Brisbane, Round One

2007-11-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that our hostel in Brisbane was significantly cleaner than that in Auckland. One half of the hostel is brand spanking new, while the other half is slated for demolition in a couple of months and a new wing of the hostel, complete with rooftop pool, shall be built in its stead. The hygiene of the bathrooms in the to-be-flattened half is somewhat questionable, but no where near the disgusting factor of the YHA Montgomery’s in Hobart. The newer building is impeccably clean.

Brisbane itself is certainly bustling, and has its lovely bits. We were delighted with the discovery of the day-glow purple flowered trees that dot the city. They are not a native species, but they are awfully pretty:

The city also has a wealth of botanical gardens, which we explored quite a bit. The trees there are deadly, and I ended up getting stuck in one of them:

The shopping is excellent, especially in the CBD (that’s downtown to you North Americans) and quite a lot of street performers and buskers. So far our favourite find is the South Banks area, which is touristy, I’ll admit, but very lovely. The archway that runs along a large portion of the South Banks stretch is yet another example of the excellent modern architecture that Australia seems to take so naturally to:

There are outdoor markets and cafes galore, and some lively looking restaurants. We passed by a Turkish restaurant that has Friday and Saturday night belly dance performances, and while we were not able to take in the performance that particular night, we’re hoping to be back during an upcoming weekend night so we can get a drink and watch the dancer. From what we could see, she’s very good.

The array of wildlife within Brisbane itself seems to be comprised mainly of the regular sort of urban birds, such as various sorts of corvids, hundreds of swallows, gigantic fruit bats (I actually shrieked with delight the first evening we spotted the fruit bats flying overhead), and ~~garbage birds~~ ibis. There are lots of ibis. I used to think that ibis were lovely graceful birds worthy of being immortalized in Egyptian art. Upon closer inspection, they are surprisingly ugly things that are considered quite a nuisance by the locals. Why are they a nuisance? Well, let me show you.

First the ibis decides to strut around downtown, enjoying the sun and appearing innocent enough:

Next, the ibis finds a likely looking garbage can and hops on for a quick peek:

Then the ibis reaches in with that great long beak, pulls out a fast food bag (usually McDonald’s), and spreads the contents all over the street:

They are commensurate pickers and eaters of garbage and strew the stuff around everywhere. They are perpetually rummaging around garbage bins and are more effective at trashing an area than a pack of seagulls.

Back to base camp

2007-10-29T01:29:00.000-07:00

Upon arriving back in Melbourne, we spent three delightful days kicking back with our Mel and Damien, our friends from the Grampiens. They kindly put us up for several evenings, and we had some very enjoyable dinners with them, including a memorable meal at Melbourne’s Moroccan Soup Bar. The restaurant was a little closet-like venue, packed with atmosphere and serving up a set four-person multi-course banquet of phenomenally good food. Our days were spent doing things like baking, doing laundry, and figuring out where we would head to next. We also spent a great deal of time coughing, hacking, and blowing our noses, as by this time Glen was getting over his cold, which I had just caught.

Due to the cost of train tickets, we decided to skip Sydney and flying directly to Brisbane instead of taking a multi-leg train journey north. The plan is to use Brisbane as a launching pad for small side trips around that area. We will stay along the Gold Coast and the southern part of the Sunshine Coast until it comes time to fly to Auckland.

The Ugly Side of Hostels

2007-10-29T01:22:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned earlier, I am now going to give the not-so-proverbial dirt on our Hobart hostel.

We elected to stay at Montgomery’s. In the YHA advertisements, it had billed itself as being "Hobart's most luxurious YHA" and promised a lively hotel atmosphere that would be good fun and good value for money. The rooms were more expensive than I would have normally liked, but the price of a dorm bed wasn’t too dreadful and I figured that it would be worth the cost due to the hostel’s convenient downtown location. Truthfully, luxury doesn't particularly interest Glen nor I. Cleanliness, on the other hand, does.

The hostel managers evidently feel that convenience of location outstrips the requirements of any good hostel to keep a reasonably clean, well-appointed place for guests to stay. The place, quite frankly, just isn’t up to scratch.

One would expect a hostel billing itself as "luxurious" to have kitchen accommodation that could reasonably provide for the 40+ guests that the hostel could hold at any given point of time. In the case of Montgomery’s, one would be wrong. This picture shows the kitchen in it’s entirety – it has one stove-top range, one functioning microwave, one broken microwave, two tables, a whole lot of dinner plates, and a whopping four bowls for stuff like soup or cereal. And as you can see, it was a considerable squeeze to fit six people in the kitchen at once:

The kitchen is on the first floor of the hostel, and as we mount the stairs to the floors containing the rooms, dorms, and TV/internet lounge, we start to witness the strange phenomenon of drywall holes:

The next stop we shall make on our tour is the TV/internet lounge itself. Mouldy old couches aside, we were rather aghast at the state of the ceiling. The paper, paint, plaster, or whatever the heck is covering the ceiling is bubbling up and flaking off in large areas:

Really large areas.

Next up is the dormitory. Funky smell aside (which I blame on the re-breathed sleep air of twelve people as opposed to negligence on the part of the hostel), I am left wondering what sort of pollutants are near this window, whether the pollutants are a result of interior or exterior air, and whether or not the hostel ever intends on actually cleaning said window:

And now, for the finale: the bathroom. In my option, hostels can be rated almost solely on the cleanliness of the bathroom. Soap and hand drying systems, be they blow-dryers or towels, should be available. Toilets should be properly cleaned. Shower stalls should be properly maintained and relatively free of serious mildew or mould build-up. As you can see, such was not the case:

Here’s a close-up:

The pictures don’t really do the mould justice. It crawled up the wall from the floor to at least chest level, a good five feet for sure. It was also thick. It was thick and furry, like a caterpillar. And the mould wasn’t just limited to that one line of grout – it was on the opposite side of the shower stall and around the grouting of the floor basin. Oh, and the toilets were not properly cleaned. Nor were there ever hand towels or dryers. As for soap, one would be lucky to find one of those tiny bars of soap that hotels leave in their guest suites for complimentary use. Usually, there was no soap at all.

Is it any wonder that Glen came away from the Hobart hostel with a really, really nasty cold? "Luxurious" my ass!

Launceston, Devonport, and beyond

2007-10-29T01:18:00.000-07:00

After our tour had ended, we found ourselves with about four days to kill before heading from Tasmania back to Melbourne. To be honest, there wasn’t a whole lot we felt like doing in Launceston. It is a cute little city, with a few nice areas to walk and some interesting shopping districts, but we were feeling somewhat frustrated by our lack of transportation options. After two days in Launceston, we headed up to Devonport, where we would be catching the Spirit of Tasmania overnight ferry back to the mainland.

The day we left was, like most days in Launceston, raining steadily. The rain did bring about some form of amusement, however, as it heralded the apparition of a rare and noble creature, namely the Humpbacked Glen:

Devonport was similarly a pretty but somewhat dull pace to visit. There are beaches, but I would frankly recommend staying away from them. If the warning signs speak the truth, the Devonport beaches are out to kill you:

I think that the many days of non-stop driving and touring was finally getting to us, and we were wanting to be able to kick back and shut our heads off for a little bit. Happily, our Devonport hostel was completely devoid of other visitors save us, and we found an unsecured wireless connection in our room. As our room was a private double bed with the luxury of its own sink and television, we basked in the relative glory of our newfound electronic access and did little more than sit around, go out for groceries, cook and eat for two days. We did take some walks here and there, but there wasn’t much around to really grab our attention. The fact that Glen was in the throes of a nasty cold he picked up in Hobart didn’t exactly help our energy level either.

The Spirit of Tasmania voyage was quite lovely. We had gone with the budget-friendly option of ocean-view recliners that were on a promotional sale, and enjoyed a nice on-board dinner (the first nice dinner out we’ve taken since arriving in Australia), a shared bottle of wine, and an evening screening of Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix. As a result of entirely too much rich risotto, too much wine, and a very choppy sea, my night’s sleep was redolent with dreams of being seasick and throwing up overboard. Happily, such nastiness didn’t actually occur in real life, but it did make for an, uh, interesting night. Glen, on the other hand, slept like a rock.

The Grand Tour, Part III

2007-10-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

The third day involved a transfer to a different tour company and a drive up to Cradle Mountain. Cradle Mountain is a much scrubbier, rougher place than the rest of Tasmania, or at least the rest of the areas that we had seen. It’s fairly similar in nature to the Rocky Mountains around the Jasper area, although Cradle Mountain is covered in these weird patchy clumps of grass called "Button Grass".

Cradle Mountain is also covered in wombats. We probably saw over a dozen wombats foraging around, much to the delight of one of the families on our tour group. They were obsessed with wombats, and were inevitably the first ones to see one waddling around. During the tour, the family encountered a wombat on a walking path, and as the daughter was standing very still, taking a video, it waddled up to her and gave her leg a bit of a taste. The family was ecstatic at this – the wombat didn’t bite, per say, as it didn’t puncture jeans or skin and just left her with a bit of a bruise. They got it on video and couldn’t stop talking about the wombat love bite. They decided that their daughter would become "wombie girl", and when the tour guide took them to the ranger station to have the bite looked at, the rangers had a good laugh at the incident.

On our way back to Launceston, the bus driver suggested we go past a farm cheese factory and have a look at their farm gate store. There would be many samples to try, and for those who don’t like cheese, there would be many varieties of honey to taste. So we stopped at the Ashgrove Cheese farm and stepped off the bus and into a sticky, cheesy heaven. As the farm operates their own dairy and honey production, everything was as fresh as you could possibly hope for.

There were about ten varieties of cheese produced on that farm, eight varieties of honey, homemade ice cream, and oodles of wines and meads. Glen and I bought two bottles of braggot (mead ale) to try. In addition to the mead, we picked up two different kinds of cheese and a bottle of strawberry wine. It was a dangerous, dangerous place to be in, and now I shall regale you with photos in order to make you, dear reader, wildly jealous. I give you:

The cheese wall!

The honey stand!

The wine wall!

Personally, I think we held off reasonably well, only coming away with two small bottles of mead, one small bottle of strawberry wine, and two kinds of cheese. That would be the sort of place to visit if you were looking to put together the best Christmas stocking ever, because they had sample size variety packs of everything and the prices were extremely reasonable. Like I said: it was a dangerous, if delicious, place to visit.

Ah, and for the curious among you, the cheeses we bought were both Lancashire, regular and smoked.

The Grand Tour, Part II: Devil bites

2007-10-29T00:51:00.000-07:00

Day two involved a morning trip to a wildlife park and Tasmanian Devil sanctuary. This was yet another place where you have the opportunity hand feed kangaroos and other various wildlife. Glen had it out with a black swan:

It was rather odd how many people in our tour group were nervous about feeding the kangaroos. These suckers were so hand-fed I suspect I could have saddled up one of the males and chucked a four-year-old on its back and it wouldn’t have blinked.

The Tasmanian Devils weren’t part of the hand-feeding extravaganza, of course, as their disposition wouldn’t exactly endear them to accepting nibbly treats out of someone’s outstretched palm. The park did, however, have a couple of hand-raised devils they use as part of a feeding demonstration. The devils, a pair of females named Danger and Delilah, are very fond of their handlers, and lap up any amount of attention he gives them. The handler picks one up so that visitors can give her a pat on the back, and as soon as he scooped up the devil, she chomped down on part of his sleeve, closed her eyes, and went blissfully limp. The other devil, meanwhile, had chomped down on his pant cuff and was dragged around the enclosure as the handler made his way among the visitors. Apparently the devils latch on to the handler’s clothes as a sort of happy/security gesture, as they would similarly latch on to their mothers in the wild. It’s a bit like a cat kneading a cushion (or belly, or whatever). And it’s darn cute:

The rest of the day was spent driving to more lovely locations, namely the Bay of Fires and a couple of spectacular waterfalls. There was pastoral countryside and dairy farms galore, and we ended up in Launceston for the evening.

The Grand Tour, Part I: Ovens and cracks

2007-10-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

Our grand solution to the "how on earth do we get around Tasmania" question was to sign up for a tour that would take us from Hobart to Devonport. About four days after we landed in Hobart, Glen and I left our manky hostel and hopped on the tour bus, along with the American girl we had met (she decided to take the same tour as us after we told her about the itinerary).

The tour was, as I suspect all tours are, a whirlwind exposure to a few of the tourist highlights in that part of the state. We boarded the bus, hopped off at a couple stops, boarded the bus again, stopped at a hostel, slept, boarded the bus, and so on. It was a good choice for our transportation dilemma, but defiantly reinforced the fact that if you want to make the most of Tasmania, you really do need your own vehicle.

On the first day we made a very brief stop over at the town of Ross. Ross is one of those nauseatingly picturesque towns that you would see in postcards and visit on long weekends for the sole purpose of staying at that adorable little bed-and-breakfast where they have a blind dog and two goats. It was more of a pit-stop than anything else, but oddly enough Ross has a bakery, cleverly known as the Ross Bakery Inn in which most Japanese tourists have a keen interest, as it is one of the sites in the anime movie Kiki’s Delivery Service. I had no idea it was an actual place, but apparently the oven in the bakery is quite a feature in the anime movie.

The exterior of the building in question:

And the interior, including the famous oven. It's difficult to see the workers, but most of the women were wearing what I can only describe as a Scottish tartan "Miss Muffet" costume:

Glen and I indulged in a couple of desserts while we were in the bakery, and shared a Lamington (I think that’s what they call it), which is a sponge cake sort of confection with jam and coconut shavings around the outside, and an absolutely heavenly vanilla slice – perfectly flakey pastry, excellent custard. I shall have to attempt to recreate the vanilla slice when we get back home.

Next we found ourselves heading to Wineglass Bay, a lovely white-sanded, blue-watered bay nestled among a whole pile of other smaller bays. The tour group did a hike up to the main bay lookout point, and the view is indeed picturesque and spectacular.

Even better than the view, however, are the huge cracks in the cliff face around the lookout point. The tour guide pointed them out, so Glen and I scrambled around them for a while.

Pretty cool, eh?

Possibly the event that gained popular interest among our fellow tour groupies was the appearance of a couple of female wallabies, complete with joeys in their pouches, near the Wineglass Bay parking lot. These suckers were so accustomed to visitors and so very, very good at begging for handouts that they would actually allow people to pet them.

Behold the ferocious beast and its spawn!

We spent that night in Bicheno, a small town on a particularly windy harbour. The hostel was freakishly cold, as the wind kept howling right through the exterior wall of our room. Happily, Glen and I had a dorm room to ourselves, which meant that we could squish onto a single twin-sized bed and huddle together for warmth. All newlywed jokes aside, it was necessary to do so to get any sleep. The wind made a hell of a racket, screaming around the outside of the hostel and wailing through trees and boat masts. I could have sworn that there were banshees outside trying to kill us with their howls.

On to the next stop!

(The chair upon which we are lounging is located on the hiking trail to the Wineglass Bay lookout - it is surprisingly comfortable!)

Devil the Convicts

2007-10-08T23:14:00.000-06:00

About a 1.5 hour drive away from Hobart is the Port Arthur Historic Site. Port Arthur was one of Australia’s more notorious convict camps. The history is broad and very interesting, the website that this post references has loads of info that you can read. There were lots of ruins to wander around, and lots of restored buildings and exhibits to explore.

Originally, Port Arthur wasn’t on our list of things to visit. For some weird reason the tour company we were booked with had to remove the Port Arthur leg of the tour from the itinerary. One of the girls in our dorm room, however, had rented a car and was heading to Port Arthur with a different girl in our dorm room. Snapping up an opportunity to tag along with them, we joined the American girl and the Aussie girl (who
had rented the car) and went to Port Arthur.

This is the ruin of the old flour mill / prisoner dormitory. There is a great deal to see there, but this is one of the more dramatic shots.

The cheery fellow photographed below stands in one of the interpretive exhibits at the Port Arthur visitor's centre. Glen took a liking to him.

"PULL MY FINGER."

We had a great time there, both on the visit to the camp and on the hour long detour we took we took on the way back to Hobart when we missed the correct highway turn-off. It was defiantly a good side trip to take; I’m quite glad we met up with those two girls and was able to pal along with them.

Devil the City

2007-10-08T23:10:00.000-06:00

Tasmania is very, very, very pretty. Tasmania is also very, very, very windy and astonishingly cold. The chilly weather shouldn’t come as such a surprise, considering the state’s proximity to Antarctica. Still, when we arrived in Hobart, the blast of cold wind that met us upon leaving the airport just about left us breathless. We would come to learn that the wind is relentless and, similar to houses in Melbourne, it would be next to impossible to warm up. Once again the Canadians were left shivering and whimpering, revealing the truly sissy approach we have to being persistently cold.

Our flight landed in Hobart at 10:30 in the evening, and we took the airport shuttle to our hostel, a YHA by the name of Montgomery’s. I will ~~wax poetic~~ crab about the hostel later. Creeping into our 12-person dormitory at nearly midnight, we tiptoed around and went to bed fully dressed to avoid waking everyone up.

In order to make our way around Tasmania we elected to sign on for a multi-day bus tour, as transportation around the state was difficult and expensive. This left us several days in Hobart to tool around and take in the sights. So we wandered and we looked at a very pretty city on a very pretty harbour. Getting blown hither and thither, we explored their shops and landmarks, namely the open-air Elizabeth St. Mall and the Salamanca area.

The Salamanca area is downright fun. There are strange little shops located in alleyways, cafes and polite bars galore, and on Saturday there is a huge open-air farmers market on the main street. One of the cutest places there is The Faerie Shop, a pink-and-purple lined dreamworld for any little girl. There are beads and fairies hanging from the ceiling, a story corner where there are regular story-telling session, costumes everywhere, and anything else that could possibly be related to fairies and fantasy. It is adorable, tiny, and will leave you with a sugar-induced toothache.

Another primary attraction of Hobart is the Cadbury chocolate factory (actually located in nearby Clairmont). People at the hostel were freaking out about the Cadbury factory, people at the tourist information shop were freaking out about the Cadbury factory. Touring the Cadbury factory would have cost over $40 for the two of us, and we really couldn’t justify that cost to go and inspect vats of waxy cheap chocolate. In case you have never encountered Cadbury’s chocolate, it’s pretty typical of all cheap "chocolate" candy available in any store you walk into. So we didn’t bother going. The fact that all tours of the factory were booked up for the next two weeks also might have affected our decision.

In the evening, we had a beer in the karaoke bar located smack underneath our hostel dorm room. As the howling coming from below didn’t allow for any sleep whatsoever, we figured we may as well check it out. Good fun, but not really our thing. It was still awfully amusing to watch the drunks stagger around, spill their drinks, and howl at top volume into the microphone.

Devil the Planning

2007-10-06T19:07:00.000-06:00

Next up comes Tasmania. Mel and Damien played kind host to us the evening we returned to Melbourne from the Grampians, and the next evening we hopped onto a last-minute flight for Hobart, Tasmania.

Oddly enough, not a single part of our entire trip – from getting passports and visas and vaccinations to deciding where and when to go – was as big of a pain in the ass as figuring out the Tasmania leg of our voyage. It started off in trying to figure out how we were going to get down there. We wanted to take the Spirit of Tasmania ferry from Melbourne to Devonport, as it is an all-night sailing and would make for a more interesting trip than just flying (plus, we would have sleeping quarters, namely ocean view recliners, and our accommodation for the evening would thus be taken care of). The regular priced tickets for the ferry are quite pricey, but they had a spring sale on which reduced the cost by 40%, placing the tickets into approximately the same price range as a flight, with the added bonus of including our place-of-sleep. Unfortunately the seat sale only applied to a certain number of seats on the boat. Once the sale seats had all been bought out, the other remaining seats could only be purchased at full price. The only sale seats yet unpurchased weren’t available until a sail date of a week and a half later. We decided to investigate how long we wanted to stay in Tasmania, and would call the ferry back to reserve seats when we decided on a return date.

After getting frustrated with the ferry seats, it came time to be frustrated with methods of transportation around Tasmania in general. Our original plan was to focus entirely on the more rural northern parts of the state, as we liked the look and price of the hostels there. Needing to fly in instead of taking the ferry, we now had to include the state capital Hobart into our plans. Hobart is one of the most southerly cities in the state, so we would need to figure out how to get up to the northern port town of Devonport if we wanted to take the ferry back to Melbourne.

We looked into renting a car, but that would have completely blown our budget for the following two weeks and then some. Besides, we still aren’t too terribly accustomed to the whole left-hand-driving thing to want to spend our time white-knuckling a steering wheel on the tiny, winding rural roads of Tasmania. Of course, we immediately thought that we would leave it up to public transport, as we had done in Victoria. After being thoroughly spoiled by the Victoria state public transportation system, we figured that most placed in Australia would have good, expedient, reliable, and reasonably priced train/bus systems. Such is not the case; Tasmania’s busses are nearly all privately owned and operate on strange schedules, incomprehensible routes, and pricey tickets. Plus, we would still need to figure out where we would be sleeping during the evening.

With much hemming and hawing, we took the advice of a YHA hostel travel agent and booked ourselves in for a multi-day bus tour. We wanted a tour that would take us in one direction from Hobart to Devonport. YHA recommended the Under Down Under tour company, and we found a four day tour that would take us to various highlights along Tassie’s east coast. It sounded good and the price, while more than we had intended to spend while in Tasmania, was as reasonable as we could expect. We asked the YHA agent to book it for us. He called back and stated that the first day of the tour was, for some indefinable reason, ‘unavailable’. So we could either do the two day tour or the five day tour. We felt that the two day tour was entirely too short to make it worth our while, and the five day tour was on a loop circuit that would bring us right back to Hobart, and therefore was no good. The YHA agent called the tour company back and managed to dicker them into giving us a three day tour, wherein the first day’s trip would simply be wiped off the agenda. Good enough. The tour would end in Launceston, which is about 100 km south of Devonport. The tour circuit, however, indicated that we would pass through Devonport on our way back to Launceston, so we hoped that we would be able to ask the driver to simply drop us off in Devonport, and therefore avoid the hassle and expense of yet another bus ticket.

All that rot being settled, we needed to book our passage from Devonport back to Melbourne. A quick call to the ferry company and we secured our sale seats on the first available date. Tasmania was rapidly becoming the most expensive leg of our trip, so we decided to stay just the 10 days we needed to in order to see what we wanted instead of the two-plus weeks we had originally intended on spending there. We would need to bum around Launceston or Devonport for four additional days between the end of our bus tour and the departure of our ferry, but we figure we can keep ourselves amused for that length of time.

It took us about four or straight hours of calling, investigating, and bartering to get all this figured out. Thanks to our new friends’ kindness of letting us stay at their house and use their telephone and internet, it actually got done. Otherwise, I doubt we would have been able to figure out Tasmania at all. But we have our flight, we have our tour and transportation, we have places to stay, and we have our boat ride back to Melbourne (which seems to have become our launching pad for Australian adventuring). It all got done in the end.

Neil!

2007-10-05T06:47:00.000-06:00

We have encountered a hiccough in the perfection of the Grampians YHA Eco-Hostel, and it comes in the package of Neil. Neil has come to embody every irritating characteristic a hosteller can possess.

It all began with the free food cupboard. There are usually such cupboards in hostel kitchens, where guests who are leaving can abandon leftover food that they do not wish to carry to their next destination. Glen and I avail ourselves fairly regularly of the free food cupboards. We’ve had pretty good pickings – peanut butter (which is a rather expensive commodity here), bread, pasta, pasta sauce, milk, butter, seasonings, etc. It has become a habit of ours to check the free food cupboards before every meal, we take what we need for that meal (and only that meal) and leave the rest for others who need it.

The free food cupboard at this hostel had a few goldmine items appear in it one morning. There was a nearly whole loaf of rye bread, a nearly full bottle of canola cooking oil, a full bottle of mango soda type beverage, and chicken bouillon cubes. We were planning on using some of these supplies, particularly the canola oil, as everything we’ve been cooking has been cooked in butter and proper cooking oil would be a nice change. The bottle was practically unused, so we figured that it would take people quite a few days to get through it all. You can imagine our surprise, therefore, when the bottle went missing.

The disappearance of the loaf of bread was to be expected – get a few people making a couple pieces of toast each and presto, a loaf disappears. Nor were we shocked at the missing bottle of mango soda; get a few people having a glass or two each, and presto, a bottle of pop disappears. The bouillon cubes were a little odd, as we couldn’t think who could consume seven bouillon cubes in one meal. But the bottle of canola oil, well that was just plain odd.

Early next morning, I noticed that the loaf of bread and bottle of oil hadn’t simply vanished, they had migrated. To a different cupboard. To Neil’s cupboard. How did I know that it was Neil’s cupboard? Why, because the little turd had re-labelled the bread and oil. A quick inspection of one of the fridges revealed that he has also re-labelled the mango pop. While I couldn’t locate the chicken bouillon, I suspect that he had similarly nabbed that as well.

It isn’t the fact that someone else had dared used the food that irked us, it was that he had the nerve to re-label something that he hadn’t even used yet. It defies the definition of the communal free food cupboard. Communal food is supposed to be available to whoever needs it at that time. Take what you need for that meal, and leave the rest: that it how it works.

A few days later, Neil’s food cupboard was empty, and the loaf of bread (unused) and the bottle of canola oil (unused) re-appeared in the free food cupboard. Neil had vacated the premises and left behind food he nicked and then didn’t even have the courtesy to use! I could see the bread – had he used it. But the bottle of canola oil completely flabbergasts me. If he didn’t think he could get through an entire bottle of cooking oil in a few short days, why did he feel it necessary to re-label the blasted thing?

There was another item missing from the hostel that morning – the contents of the sugar canisters. There were two reasonably large sugar canisters that sat at the tea stations (the hostel had two honour-system tea stations: $0.20 per cup, and sugar was available). Both canisters were empty, but Glen and I assumed that they had run low the night before. We thought nothing of it at the time and set about getting our breakfast.

Shortly after we started breakfast, one of the hostel managers seemed a bit flustered. They were short handed that morning; being without a housekeeper at the moment, they’ve had some hostellers helping out with the housework in exchange for their accommodation. One of the people helping, who had done housework in trade for accommodation with them in the past, just picked up and left that morning for a different job. “So now Neil’s gone,” he told us.

Neil!

Then he noticed the empty canisters of sugar. His wife came in and also noticed the empty canisters of sugar. That’s odd, they mused, because they had filled them the night before. Apparently sugar, along with teaspoons, tea bags, and instant coffee, is one of the most common items nicked from hostels. But why would someone take the equivalent of about a kilo of plain sugar? And who took it?

I can tell you who Glen and I suspect.

NEIL!

So henceforth, should we come across some hosteller who behaves in a thoroughly annoying manner that flouts conventions of hostel etiquette, he or she shall be dubbed Neil.

La Dolce Vida

2007-10-05T06:37:00.000-06:00

We stayed in Hall’s Gap a total of six thoroughly enjoyable and laid-back days. We went on many hikes in the mountains, and saw a great deal of wildlife. In particular, we saw a lot of little black skinks, which like sunning themselves on the warm rocks.

As you can see, they would pose obligingly until we snapped a few pictures.

Glen attempted to stare one down. Eventually, the skink squibbled back into its rock crevasse, and Glen declared victory.

We also crawled around town a great deal, and found Glen Street.

In case you’re wondering, he still hasn’t gotten over the discovery.

Most delightful of all, we managed to make a few friends. There was a very nice girl from Kent, England who came on a very affordable three hour bus tour around some of the remoter areas of the mountains. She was kind enough to get what is quite possibly the most atrocious picture of my arse that shall be captured on this entire trip:

Behold the magnificent Visible Panty Line! I was ducking my head into the bottom pool of the MacKenzie Falls. Our bus tour guide assured me that to do so constituted some form of initiation, so I was the first to stick my head in. Most of our group followed suit. The water wasn’t as cold as I expected!

Glen opted for the spread eagle post when dunking his head:

For the record, MacKenzie Falls looks like this:

To our very great delight, we met a positively wonderful couple who hailed from Melbourne. They were up for a few days of relaxing at the Eco-Hostel, and we met by having them explain how Aussie rules football works while watching one of the semi-finals matches in the hostel TV room. We hit it off and continued hitting it off over several days. Marathon conversation periods that spanned entire afternoons and evenings ensued, fuelled by generously shared wine and lovely nibblies. Our Kent girl joined as well, and I’ll risk sounding overly cheery by saying that we had several merry evenings by the fire in the hostel common-room.

Mel and Damien – the couple in question – invited us to stay with them when we passed back through Melbourne on our way from the Grampians to Tasmania. We took them up on their offer and had another enjoyable evening of excellent company. As we need to pass back through Melbourne again on our way back from Tasmania, we’re hoping to hang out with them some more. I was hoping to make some firm overseas friends on this trip, and I consider it a very good omen that we made such good friends so early into the expedition.

I cannot recommend the Grampians and the YHA Eco-Hostel in Halls Gap enough. If you have the opportunity to visit the region and enjoy both the area and the hostel, it would be well worth your while to do so. The managers are delightful, the hostel is spotlessly clean and eminently comfortable, there is loads to do for people of all athletic abilities; challenging hikes for those who want the exercise, pleasant strolls and guided bus tours for those looking for more gentle activities. The town is a bit pricey, but the hostel is more than reasonable and it is very possible to visit Halls Gap on a modest budget. If all you want is a place to kick up your heels, read a book, and have some really good wine, the Eco-Hostel can provide that too. All in all, it is a great region to visit and a great place to stay. And the friends are a definite bonus!

Wines and Bones

2007-10-05T06:19:00.000-06:00

It seems fitting that the first foray Glen and I made into a taste of la dolce vita (as far as our budget allows) involved a tourist town and a great deal of wine. After getting tired of the bustle of Melbourne we headed out to Halls Gap in the Grampian National Park. We were attracted to that area because the YHA hostel looked beautiful and they had a nice deal where if you booked three nights the third night’s stay is only $10. We hopped on a train and a bus to the hostel and found ourselves in a beautiful little touristy nook in the Grampians at a delightful eco-hostel that boasts its own free-range chickens and is close to a winery.

Here is my best imitation of a chicken:

After harassing the chickens a great deal – they are very tame and will pursue you around the yard if you indicate that you are willing to feed them table scraps – we went off in search of dinner and groceries in the little tourist town. We found both, and paid exorbitant amounts for both. Food in Australia is very expensive in general, and in Halls Gap is even more so, because tourists will fork over just about anything for goods and services. As we were exploring the grocery store, we learned first-hand about Halls Gap’s unpredictable weather, and got stuck waiting in the store for the hail to stop falling.

On the way home, we encountered something very surprising to our North American eyes. We were hoping to see one wild kangaroo on our trip.

We saw a whole lot more than one. That place was hopping (har har har) with the beasties. A few of the ‘roos in the above picture were play-fighting, which was quite interesting to watch. And once we saw that herd, we started seeing them everywhere. They wander freely through Halls Gap, lolling on the hillsides and strolling around the town. I wandered into the hostel kitchen early one morning and found a kangaroo munching the grass about eight feet away from the window, and one evening Glen and I watched as a big male ‘roo sauntered into the hostel courtyard for a look. The big, beefy boy sat around casually scratching himself as Glen and I gawked.

Sit in this kitchen and you'll have many dinners with kangaroos, neon-coloured parrots, cockatoos, and kookaburras:

You need to watch out for the kookaburras, as they are very bold when it comes to food. We were having coffee inside a shop at a little cluster of touristy cafes and shops in town. Outside was a couple eating their lunch on the patio, and a kookaburra. It was waiting on a lamp post, ever so patient and innocent, when it suddenly dive-bombed their plates, flying right over the table at about chest-height. The couple managed to jump back with their sandwiches, but the kookaburra merely flew back onto the lamp post and watched other diners with it's beady, beady eyes.

Our second day (the same morning that I had breakfast with a kangaroo) had us walking to the nearby winery – The Gap Winery - for some booze. We encountered more ‘roos on the way there, although this time they were in a markedly different state. Thinner. More skeletal.

Literally.

There were several kangaroo skeletons littering the side of the rural highway that leads to the winery. There were reasonably intact, too, and had been picked clean by scavenging birds and bleached white in the sun.

Glen got grossed out by a skull

While I got grossed out by some bone I couldn’t possibly begin to identify. At first we thought it might be a pelvis, but that looks way too small and delicate to be a kangaroo pelvis. When we got to the winery we asked the woman running the cellar shop about the skeletons, and she said that a lot of kangaroos get killed on that highway because they jump out in front of cars so suddenly. And if there is going to be a fight between a ‘roo and a car, the car will always win.

The Gap Winery is lovely, highway skeletons and all. We were treated to a free tasting of their wines, and the cellar-sales lady gave us detailed descriptions of the region, the wine, the history of their winery, and other tidbits of info. In addition to the wine, we got to taste some excellent gourmet olive oils. Glen gobbled down the olives (also cultured in the Grampians), and I became quite enamoured with a light olive oil that was infused with basil leaves. We came away from our tasting somewhat light headed and toting two bottles of excellent wine, a pinot gris and a shiraz.

Next stop was a local wildlife park, which has branded itself as being “the friendliest zoo in Australia” and came with heavy recommendations from the lady at The Gap Winery. And indeed it was friendly! It is actually more like a glorified petting zoo, and was all the more fun for it. In addition to the modest entrance fee, we each purchased a bag of animal treats and went off in search of creatures to feed.

We quickly learned that the animals in that zoo were very bold about getting their handfuls of treats. We had the opportunity to feed and pet wallabies and kangaroos galore. The wallabies in particular were insistent food-moochers, and would reach up to grab your hand in order to drag the food closer.

The deer in the zoo were beyond persistent. They’d pursue you through the park in order to get their goodies, and were something of a nuisance. If you didn’t hold the bag of food close to your chest, they’d rip it right out of your hand.

I tried telling them to go away, but they didn’t listen. One especially feisty wallaby would actually punch them in the head if they attempted to interfere with his treat-begging.

The wallabies are so darn cute!

There were other critters in the zoo as well, such as monkeys, emus, dingos, among others. Glen was quite taken by the marmosets, which shared a nice enclosure with several guinea pigs, which were actually bigger than the marmosets. It is my suspicion that the marmosets use the guinea pigs as mounts in much the same manner that humans use horses.

The various fowl running around the zoo grounds were also well aware that human visitors bear treats. This peacock would flare up this spectacular display of tail feathers whenever a human walked by; I think that he’d been rewarded for his displays with treats so often he figured out that it was the best possible manner of begging for goodies.

Or maybe he was just looking for attention, as all males are wont to do.

Melbourne: Final Call

2007-10-05T06:14:00.000-06:00

Melbourne worked very nicely indeed for our first stop. It was friendly, convenient, and there was plenty in the downtown core to keep us busy. There were other diversions in addition to the gardens and architecture, of course. There was a great deal of shopping available (which we completely avoided) and nightlife (which we also completely avoided). We did play with living statues living and non-living.

This lady was soliciting coins with carefully and slowly blown kisses to those who deigned to place a coin in her hat.

I am assuming that these gentlemen are anxiously waiting for a bus, so I joined them.

After four days, however, we were ready to move on. If our attention spans with all our locations is as short as was with Melbourne, we’ll be back home by the end of the month. At any rate, we were ready to get out of the city and find something more gentle, more rural, more national-parkey. The YHA hostel where we were bunked had an advert for a lovely looking YHA Eco-hostel at the town of Halls Gap in the Grampians National Park. Mountains and eco-hostels sounded perfect, so we packed up and headed out.

As we needed to travel to the Grampians via train, then bus, then bus again, we started out at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station for our first real taste of travel-by-rail. We liked the station, and we liked travelling by rail even more – it is genteel, soothing, affordable, and generally very pleasant. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to do it some more.

See you there!

Cows in Trees

2007-09-25T23:27:00.000-06:00

Melbourne has spectacular modern architecture, plain and simple. Edmonton has ugly modern architecture, plain and simple. A hike through the Docklands area of Melbourne left Glen and I gawking at the best modern residential architecture we’ve ever had the delight of seeing.

The Docklands consists mostly of ritzy, upper-class condominiums that would cost the gross national products of most African countries; but they are beautiful. Large marvels of colour coordinated glass and tasteful abstract sculpture. There is enough absurdity mixed in with these proud, airy buildings to make one aware that the Docklands site planners do have a sense of humour.

We got some good pictures of the buildings and the absurdities, and so I shall pepper you with them. Little commentary shall be provided, as little commentary is needed.

But what of the absurdities I mentioned earlier? Simple: I present to you, as it stands in the middle of the Docklands area…

…a cow in a tree. Huzza!

Churches Galore

2007-09-25T23:19:00.000-06:00

Melbourne loves its churches. At least, I am led to believe that Melbourne loves its churches due to the sheer number of really, really nice church buildings dotting the cityscape. As in any big city, these churches are of numerous denominations, but nearly every single one we saw was beautifully built in very medieval styles. Glen and I love church art and architecture, and unfortunately there is not enough of it at home to sate our appetites.

We visited to particularly magnificent churches in downtown Melbourne. The first was St. Paul’s Cathedral, a large Anglican cathedral with a classic rough-stone exterior that is a smart juxtaposition with the very avant-garde construction of Melbourne film institute centre immediately across the street. Our excursion into St. Paul’s was made doubly nice by the symphony orchestra playing in the nave. They were warming up for a free Beethoven concert that was being given that afternoon.

The features of St. Paul were in a very typical grand Anglican style. Lots of stained glass windows, a beautiful choir screen that featured twelve medieval English kings, and lovely tile designs on the floor. There were some geckos (or lizards of some description) winding themselves around pillars, which we liked in particular. The pictures are far too dark to warrant putting them up in this post, but I trust you to believe that they were darling.

The batteries in the camera were dying, so the shutter speed on the camera was really low, and most of the pictures turned out blurry or dark. One of the few pictures of St. Paul that turned out was of this series of arches, which was part of the front entry:

There was also a very interesting feature on the walls behind the altar. I’ve seen many upright pentacles in church designs, but never before have I seen inverted pentacles. The picture is blurry, but you can still make them out. They are in the circles at the top of the lower archways:

We also paid a visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a massive Catholic cathedral that would qualify as the granddaddy of all churches in Melbourne. You can see the church spires leaping up from behind the government buildings almost anywhere in the downtown area. It is beautiful, and reminded me of the grander cathedrals I saw on a short school trip to Quebec.

The grounds of St. Patrick are gorgeous, and one of the side entryways features an extremely long sloped path, down the centre of which runs a waterfall feature during the summer months. It wasn’t turned on when we visited, but I imagine that it is very pretty.

There was enough sculptural features covering the exterior to make one’s head spin, and the interior of the church was equally breathtaking. Glen had a fit and took over seventy photographs, only a couple of which I’ll post here. The grounds had splendid statues of St Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Sienna, as well of a couple prominent Melbourne figures.

There were a great number of windows, and around each window were decorative heads. Each head had obviously different features, no two were alike; I’d love to be able to find out who these people were, because I am certain that each one represented a very specific person. There were more heads gargoyles decorating the spires and the drainpipes, or clinging to various architectural precipices.

Looking straight up at the cathedral from the front gave both Glen and I a huge slap of vertigo, which is understandable considering the scale of this Goliath-like structure. I’m not too sure just how many spires there are around the front and rear of the buildings, and the sides of the cathedral are supported by fantastic flying buttresses – all as heavily detailed as anything else on or in the building.

To give you some idea of the vastness of the construction, we took a photo of the model of the cathedral. This shows the detail around the rear of the building, including some of the flying buttresses and a dense forest of spires.

It really would be impossible to go into detail about the degree of decoration around every single window, cornerblock, or archway. Vines and faces and florets and foils were everywhere. Moving into the cathedral was equally dramatic. Every window is stained, and if it isn’t stained with images and art, then it is stained an amber colour. At that time of day, slightly before noon, the sun was slanting in through the amber windows, which literally bathed the entire cathedral in a gold glow. It is like stepping into the inside of a piece of amber.

As one would expect in any major cathedral, artwork was everywhere. The organ pipes themselves were something to wonder at, and took up the entire rear of one of the side apses.

Around the rear of the sanctuary were are series of niches, each with it’s own unique dedicated altar and heavily decorated glass windows. We spent a great deal of time attempting to decipher the symbols that littered the area; each niche had a specific story that revolved around a specific religious figure, and while we couldn’t figure them all out we were able to get the gist of most of them. It was a great deal of fun. Adding to that are the accessible records of the building of the cathedral. Nearly every pillar has a brass plate on it stating who ‘built’ (read: paid for) that particular pillar. There are dedication plaques everywhere, and a detailed account of one parishioner who died in 1900 and left 50,000 pounds in his will for the completion and decoration of the cathedral. There is as much history lesson as religious experience available in that place, and you need to take your time to go do it any justice.

There is art up, there is art down, there is art on each floor stone and ceiling mosaic tile. There is a huge rose window at the front and massive glass triptychs at the back. It is a staggering place, defiantly worth the time spent there.

You can Take the Librarian out of the Library…

2007-09-25T22:31:00.000-06:00

*Note: I will warn all readers in advance – the following post essentially amounts to library porn. It is entirely possible that any of you who are not either librarians or fanatical about library buildings will find this post, at worst, incredibly dull, or at best, amusing in an "oh, those silly little geeks" sort of way.

One would think that two young adults in their mid-20s would arrive in Melbourne glassy-eyed with thoughts of joining the thriving and unguarded nightlife. In this case, one would be entirely wrong. Where did we spend a large chunk of our first day touring Melbourne? At the Victoria State Library, of course.

Yup, I’ve left behind the library world only to immediately glom onto the first large library we came across. Granted, the building is particularly beautiful, so it was nigh impossible not to go in. After waking up ridiculously early (approximately 5:30 in the morning – jet lag lives on!), Glen and I decided to spend the day touring the downtown area. There is a free tram that circles the main city centre during the day; it moves slowly and has a recording that points out areas of interest, so it really is the idea way to become familiar with Melbourne’s downtown district.

After spending a good three-quarters hour on the tram with our coffee, we hopped off at a station that was central to some magnificent government buildings. As it happens, that stop was smack outside the Victoria State Library, and there were several very beautiful statues out front of a very beautiful building.

Glen, ever the sculptor, immediately began snapping pictures of the statues. Our favourite was St.George defeating the dragon:

Followed by the sphinxes on the base of the lampposts:

Sphinxes! On library lamp posts! I find this incredibly fitting.

There were also sculptures of Jeanne D’Arc, and LaTrobe, for who one of the main downtown streets is named, and some big judicial fellow who had a statue erected in his honour in the late 1980’s.

There was an exhibit of some nice pictures of big celebrities inside the library’s lobby gallery. It was a lovely display, but I hardly think that we need to expound upon artsy shots of Emminem, Fifty Cent, or Bill Clinton here.

The library is chock-a-block with pretty things. We had to pay entirely too much for the use of a locker, as library rules did not allow us to bring in our day-pack with us, as it was considered too large. Near the locker room is this lovely staircase with stained-glass windows. Glen was compelled to photograph these as well:

Being a state library, there are several state galleries within the library, affording a free view of many Victorian era portraits of important people who could afford to have portraits painted of them. There were also landscapes of Australia that looked remarkably like landscapes of England, which is no surprise considering that the majority of the artists were British ex-pats with a fondness for pastoral subjects.

The library was quite packed with university students starting up their spring term studies. Considering the beautiful reading rooms, freely accessible internet, and amazing rare books collections, it is hardly unreasonable that this place is a haunt for the studious. One of the rare book collections that we came across is devoted to books that are important to the development of children’s literature. Unfortunately all the rare book collections are restricted access and appointments are necessary to even enter the rooms. It was all Glen could do to keep me from storming the rare children’s literature collection.

Here I am in the first reading room where we found the rare children’s literature collection. A couple of the students were poking fun at me as I attempted to pose for Glen. They simply didn’t understand…

This is the second reading room. The circular floors around the perimeter of the room house some more excellent exhibits, including a fabulous display of the history of the book. This exhibit showcased many of the library’s most prized rare books, dating back to Celtic illuminated manuscripts and medieval hand-written texts. It carried up right through to modern printing; some of the most interesting modern pieces were the laptop upon which a particularly famous modern book was originally "penned"(alas, the name of the book and author escapes me), and an original Kelmscott Press printing.

As you might imagine, the entire gallery and reading room were stunning, regardless of the level from which you looked at it.

At the top of the gallery levels, right where we took the above birds-eye photo, we found a stained glass window that likely doesn’t get viewed as frequently as it should due to it’s somewhat backroom display. It is a lovely glass rendition of Shakespeare, but what makes it really nifty is the number of times it has been broken and the absolutely masterful was it has been restored.

Unfortunately the picture could not capture the numerous breaks and cracks that spider across the window. They are barely discernible unless you are looking for them, and looking very closely and carefully at that. The conservator who restored the window defiantly knew what he was doing. I can imagine that he probably went blind labouring over the fumes from the glue and molten lead needed to piece the window back together.

What was likely the most personally satisfying in an "I KNEW IT!" sort of manner was coming across a room in the library dubbed "Experimedia". This place is a wonderland, a library games room with computer games terminals - console and PC - scattered around the room as well as additional ports to multimedia and experimental media information and entertainment formats. I just about had a conniption when I saw this beauteous wonder. None of my library cronies reading this post will question why, knowing mine and Glen's obsessions with computer games. I wanted to bark with laughter when I saw that room, saying a bit HA! to all those tosspots who are under the impression that games have no place in a library.

As you can see, it is indeed a thing of beauty!

Melbourne: The Lost Day

2007-09-25T22:12:00.000-06:00

I had embarked on the flights to Australia with the smug idea that due to the timing of our departure from Vancouver and our arrival in Melbourne, Glen and I would magically escape the effects of jet lag. Alas, such was not the case. On the cab ride to the YHA Melbourne Oasis hostel, Glen fell asleep and I may have actually had an out-of-body experience; then again, perhaps my brain simply shut down. At any rate, we fell into the hostel at around 10:30 Melbourne time, and immediately dragged ourselves to our room.

The room was as we expected it – small, serviceable, and clean. Personally, I find it rather amusing that 8 months into our marriage we are already relegated to tiny separate beds and alarmingly unromantic and celibate bedrooms. But such is the rule of the hostel. We did have a room to ourselves, and the hostel facilities were well-appointed and quite tidy (the pillows were exceptionally flat, I must add – any flatter and they would have been concave). As soon as the beds were made, we fell into them and proceeded to sleep for a good three hours.

Upon waking, we decided that food was in order. As we wanted to establish our own supply of groceries in the hostel refrigerators, we asked the receptionist where the nearest grocery store was. She directed us to a little neighbourhood supermarket, but said that we would do much better to walk to the Queen Victoria Market. Being a farmer’s market, the produce and meats would be far more varied and superior in quality.
Taking her advice, we hiked the two kilometers or so to the market. Our first sight of it prompted a rather embarrassing squeal of delight from me – the first stall had live quail, ducks, and chickens for sale, all ready for laying eggs. Melbourne is one of those enlightened municipalities that allow for homeowners to keep a couple poultry in their backyard for the purpose of gathering fresh eggs. I’m currently harbouring an obsession with backyard chickens, so this discovery was quite delightful. This same stall also had an excellent selection of very fresh free-range eggs, of which we bought six.

Once we passed by this egg stand, it started to sink in just how enormous this market is. We had landed in the produce section, which was enough to make any vegetarian’s head spin. The variety and price of the produce was exceptional – avocados were three for a dollar, local pineapples were two dollars apiece, mushrooms came in dozens of varieties. The strawberries were a little tired looking, but we came across ‘sweet honey’ oranges that smelled so delicious that we bought four for immediate consumption. And joy of joys, the oranges were full of seeds. These are not the seedless variety that populate Canadian grocery stores – those sterile, unnatural globules that are transported a ridiculous distance and taste of nothing except pure citric acid and water. These oranges were bursting with seeds and were so flavourful and juicy that we drooled quite shamelessly as we snarfed them down.

We mainly bought fruit and mushrooms, and a chunk of very savory cheese. Tomatoes were, alas, out of the question as recent weather conditions have caused most of the tomato crops to fail and the prices to skyrocket. All over the produce market the voices of the vendors could be heard shouting, shouting, shouting their wares and prices to anyone walking by. This was somewhat overwhelming for both Glen and I, who are accustomed to the relatively non-aggressive farmers markets of Edmonton. It was quite interesting, though, to hear the goods being advertised at the highest lung capacity the vendors could muster. Next to the produce was the clothing section, of which we had little interest. Crossing the street, we came upon the meat and seafood section, which is housed inside a long, low building to accommodate the need for meat coolers.

If we thought the noise in the produce section was surprising, it was nothing compared to that of the meat market. In here the vendors didn’t just shout, they bellowed, holding out large trays of meat and thrusting handfuls of sausage links over the tops of their counters. The vendors yelled, the customers yelled, and the entire place swarmed like a hive, making it difficult to wend our ways down the aisles. As it was nearing the end of the market day, many vendors were dropping their prices extremely low to ensure swift sales and screaming the sale prices at peak volume; clearly the end of the day is the ideal time to purchase meat at the Queen Victoria Market. We came across one silent stall that bore the proud sign "We don’t yell to sell" – they must have been the only ones. After making a loop of the entire meat section, we went back to the first stall we saw and bought a kilo of lamb cubes.

From there we went to the deli/sweets/breads area. We found a butter vendor and got some really excellent butter, then attempted to find a bread vendor. Bread appears to be the one item in the Queen Victoria Market that is in relatively short supply. It is possible that we missed the main strip of bread sellers, but we only found a couple of stalls that had anything to offer, and they were busy shutting down. We did manage to nab a loaf of dark rye that looked remarkably similar to a big loaf of chocolate cake. Chocolate cake and any other variety of cake was far more accessible than bread; apparently Aussies have a well developed sweet tooth.

Having purchased what we needed, we wandered around the market for a few more minutes than headed back to the hostel. Now here is one of the most remarkable peculiarities of Melbourne that we have encountered: once we got away from the marketplace, the city appeared to be deserted. We could have counted on one hand the number of people we passed during the entire walk. It was like a ghost town and was actually rather unsettling. I half expected to see a zombie staggering down the street in quest of fresh brains.

Upon our return to the hostel, we had a pretty basic late lunch consisting mostly of rye bread and cheese. And then we lost the remainder of the day. How, you may ask? By going to bed at quarter to five in the afternoon with the intention of having another short nap and not waking up again until three thirty in the morning.

Yes, folks, a mere three hours after a three hour nap, we succeeded in clocking another 10 hours of sleep. When we woke up at 3:30 am, we grumped a bit about waking up so early, rolled over, and fell back asleep until 6:00.

It does seem reasonable that after nearly two days of flights and very little sleep we would be in need of a few extra hours of shut-eye. But 16 hours in a 20 hour period? Where did the day go?

Geeks Disconnected

2007-09-21T00:01:00.000-06:00

Rightey-o: for those amongst you wondering why there has been a prolonged silence from the blog-end of things, this is not due to Glen and I getting kicked to death by a kangaroo. We are currently in Halls Gap, a little touristy town in the Grampians National Park (for the Albertans: think Jasper, now make the townsite smaller and you've got Hall's Gap) and the internet resources here aren't exactly contributing to our blog activities.

I've got posts written about Melbourne, and I've got the pictures to back them up, but they are all on Stowaway the Laptop, and the computers at this hostel - which is absolutly paradisial in every other way - don't like speaking to their own USB ports. Add to that a lack of word processors or picture downloading equipment on the hostel computers, and presto: we are unable to post our travel journal writings.

We'll be here for a few more days (probably another four evenings). After that we should have much better internet access, so you can expect a veritable deluge of posts, possibly even several in the same day. If you are mildly frightened by the prospect of slogging through that many posts in one go, you should be. I've managed to turn a lack of internet access into a five hundred word philibuster - just imagine what I've done to our going-to-the-market story!

Homeland Security Threat Level Orange!

2007-09-16T15:49:00.000-06:00

It has been a recent discovery of ours that there are many kinds of airports. Glen and I, being relatively unseasoned airborne travellers, have only encountered a couple. They contained restauraunts and duty-free shops with remarkably overpriced goods available for purchase. Our flight to Melbourne had us experience no less than four airports – Vancouver, San Francisco, Auckland, and Melbourne. We spent approximately 24 hours on planes and in airports and while it must be said that both the aircrafts and airports were far more comfortable than the buses and stations of the Greyhound bus line, they had their own peculiarities.

Actually, there were only two airports that struck us as having anything really peculiar, but we shall get there in time. Photo evidence of some of the airport shenanigans has been provided for your amusement.

First up was the Vancouver International Airport. This is a rather nice airport with an alarmingly confusing flight ticket-wicket area. It took us a while to figure out where it was we needed to go to pick up our tickets, as the rows and rows and rows and rows of wickets are somewhat befuddling. Eventually we made it through and had to fine ways of amusing ourselves for the next two hours.

As with pretty much every airport worldwide, the Vancouver International Airport is jammed with retail spaces devoted to hawking kitschy souvenir crap.

I found the largest piece of Canadiana I could find and said a wretched goodbye to my home country.

Afterwards, Glen and I acquired some free Starbucks coffee (gotta love coupons) and my already jangling nerves were put on high alert thanks to a Venti portion of caffeine. Being utterly unable to sit still, I proceeded to harass Glen by stacking stuff on him.

It started with a coffee cup…

and quickly escalated from there.

At this point we went for a walk. It was either that or I would have chewed off the headrest of the seat in front of me.

The flight from Vancouver to San Francisco was brief and uneventful. As we had a three hour layover before our plane for Melbourne-via-Auckland left, we were hoping to find some form of diversion.

We found it about two minutes after disembarking from the plane. The public announcement system crackled into life and a female voice boomed:

Attention passengers: we are at homeland security threat level orange. Keep your luggage with you at all times. Should you see any suspicious persons or packages, call 911 immediately.

Cheerful, no? This ringing endorsement of pointless ~~vigilance~~ paranoia repeated itself every ten minutes. I kid you not – we must have heard these words no fewer than twenty times while we waited for our next plane.

As we were hungry and bored, we went in search of something to eat. The Japanese restaurant – which was my initial pick as you can usually expect reasonably fresh ingredients and a fine portion of veggies from these establishments – had a nightly “special” of four pieces of sushi and one piece of maki for $15 USD. This was clearly daylight robbery, so we tried to find sandwiches. The average price of a limp and anemic panini was $12 USD, so we avoided the sandwich stops as well.

The final choice was a Mexican restaurant. The space looked pleasant enough and the entrees were a reasonable price, so we settled for that. Glen and I each decided to order a burrito platter, as they came with a side salad. Wanting more veggies than the salad provided, I elected to get the grilled veggie burrito. Glen and I discovered something strange almost immediately after I cut into it. Here’s a clue:

Did you spot it?

WHERE ARE THE VEGETABLES? I’m sorry, but a couple pinky-nail sized squares of bell peppers (not present in the photo), some burnt corn, and a few slivers of zucchini lost in a half-ton of black beans and refried rice does NOT a "grilled vegetable" burrito make! Nor does the absence of meat immediately imply the presence of vegetables! I ate the salad and about a third of the burrito and abandoned the rest. The remainder of our time was spend listening to the repeated howling about orange security threat levels and wondering where the nefarious "persons or packages" were.

The flight from San Francisco to Auckland took 12.5 hours and was punctuated by two meals, each of which managed to contain about fifteen times the vegetables as that burrito. There was an 1.5 hour layover in Auckland, where we discovered our second airport peculiarity: the multiplying duty-free shops.

Truly, folks, you will never see the same number of duty free shops anywhere in the world as we saw in Auckland. They were so densely populated that you could touch two at one time. And each different brand of duty free shop had a clone somewhere else in the terminal. It was bizarre. But there was some good stuff to be found, if we were in the market to purchase overpriced airport goods. The MacGregor sweaters (containing merino and silk wools) were beautiful and wonderfully soft. And you had your choice of at least five identical stores to buy them at.

We then spent about four hours flying from Auckland to Melbourne, where we were inspected by the most cheerful customs officer ever. Fearful that our two chocolate bars and one camping knife would get us into trouble if we didn’t declare them at customs, we filled out the customs cards truthfully, meaning that our bags needed to be searched. Neither of us had a problem with this – if the stuff got confiscated, it was no big deal. But the prospect of slipping up and getting into trouble for having stuff we weren’t supposed to was scary. Improper customs declaration = substantial fine + possible time = early and pathetic end to adventure. I’m certain I was acting with a fine helping of paranoia, but it’s better safe than sorry. At any rate, the customs officer was relentlessly cheerful and we had a splendid conversation with him, wherein he told us his own favourite places in Australia (namely Tasmania, which is where we are headed to once we are "done" with Melbourne).

From there we took cab to our hostel. I wanted to take a picture of us leaving the airport, but Glen said the picture would be a lousy one.

He was right.

Stay tuned for more Melbourne adventures!

The Geeks are Drifting

2007-09-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

AND LO, did they bid farewell to loved ones and mount the steps to the Greyhound Bus, thus declaring themselves to be officially homeless for the next several months. And the bus did rumble and rattle its way through the night with its many passengers, stopping at every unmarked Albertan town along the way to pick up parcels of unknown contents. The passengers did sleep fitfully, confused by a bad Tom Cruise movie and jarred by the perpetual sensation that the bus was about to tip over.

As you may imagine, the overall epic quality of a bus trip requires some embellishment. We jammed ourselves into narrow chairs and I bawled into Glen's shoulder for a good five minutes as the bus started to leave the station. Then we watched Collateral and Antz on the tiny on-board bus TVs, attempted to ignore the odd personal odours emanating from several of the passengers, revelled in the bus driver’s occasional rebuking of drunk passengers or people having nicotine withdrawal crankiness, and made small talk with other passengers. We met a fellow from Suriname, South America, who was taking a holiday in western Canada. We spend a good hour and a half listening in to a rather soap-operatic conversation between two passengers sitting in front of us. They were both in their early 20s, and after they met on the bus they quickly discovered that they shared a lot in common, namely a penchant for drug-fuelled recreation and relationship drama. It was one of the most amusing conversations I have listened to in a long time.

Catching any sleep on the bus was next to impossible, as the chairs don’t really allow you to rest in any position save for bolt-upright. Glen attempted to get creative with his positioning and succeeded in wedging himself into a bastardized version of a full-foetal curl, with his head on my lap and his knees under his chin. A note to all you would-be bus travellers: those travel pillows that are actually small zippable cases stuffed with blankets are a god-send. I’m using a Eddie Bauer travel pillow stuffed with a down blanket that Glen’s mother bought me for Christmas, and it is delightful. Perfect size, good loft, very comfortable, and can be mashed down to the size of a hoagie.

We elected to take the bus because thanks to Greyhound's companion fare discount (buy one full priced adult fare, and your companion can ride for $20) taking the Bus from Edmonton to Vancouver saved us around $300. That represents quite a few nights in a hostel. If it weren't for the companion fare, however, it would have cost around the same for us to fly to Vancouver. It pays to do one's homework and cost-compare.

As we approached our destination, we said hello to the clouds of smog hovering over the Vancouver-area cities like a nicotine coloured blanket. After arriving in Vancouver we had lunch with a dear friend who we can hopefully stay with for a few days when we return. From lunch, Glen and I succeeded on getting separated on the greater Vancouver sky-train. Those doors slam shut hard and fast, and basically slammed shut on Glen’s hand as he was following me onto the train. This left me speeding away while clutching two overpriced fare tickets, watching Glen disappear into a tiny dot on the platform. I got off my train car at the next station and simply waited for his train to turn up, still holding on to his ticket. When his train arrived, I found that he had purchased another overpriced ticket, just in case there was a train attendant checking. The rest of the journey was marked by an incredibly squealy and rattly ride over the Vancouver housetops. The people-watching was only semi-interesting, although we did see a young man with a Beretta gun tattooed onto his neck. Clearly he is a very hardened gangsta and I’m certain he has an enormous penis. Or not.

We are how bunking at my cousin’s house in Vancouver and enjoying their enthusiastic hospitality. It is always lovely being able to visit them and is giving us a good jumping off point for our adventure. We leave for Melbourne on the afternoon of the 13th, and have yet to actually make a hostel reservation for our first night in Australia. I believe I shall do that immediately, as I have the very handy Hostelling International Australia hostel guide at had.

Next stop, Melbourne!

Note: Stowaway the Laptop is a fantastic traveling companion.

And the beat goes on...

2007-09-06T06:30:00.000-06:00

Glen and I had another goodbye yesterday, this time to Glen's dad. We'll be saying farewell to the rest of his family sooner to our departure date. Hopefully we'll be able to throw a final little party with our friends so that we can see them once more prior to leaving.

This week is hellishly busy, and preparations combined with general fretting meant that I have been remiss in my updates. On the weekend we helped build a garage and prep a house for sale, and so did not get a whole heck of a lot done, Monday was pretty much a write-off, and Tuesday was just plain awful - a bunch of irritating paperwork and insurance purchasing that culminated into a huge melt-down on my part. I felt much better post melt-down, though, so I suppose it was a good thing.

At any rate, my cheerful optimism is back, and I rather enjoyed yesterday's endeavors, which involved clearing our crap out of my mother-in-law's basement. She has that space more-or-less back now, although there are still a few more things that need tidying, and our worldly possessions are now in storage at my father's shop. Today we will be taking another load of goods to the shop, and spending money on backpacks and various other travel gear and clothing items. It'll be fun, especially as we tonight we have a free room at the very beautiful hotel where we had our wedding (there was a mix-up with the hotel rooms on the wedding night, so they gave us a free evening by way of apology). It is close to one of our shopping destinations, so we shall tote our prizes straight back to the hotel where we may inspect the purchases, go for a dip in the pool, enjoy the hot tub, and chill out in the hotel room.

These reports aren't particularly interesting at the moment, and for that I beg forgiveness from you, devoted reader. As we are departing Monday night, however, you won't have long to wait for some real news to come up.

Oh, and here's a thought for all you needing travel insurance: Don't assume your bank or insurance broker has the best deal out there. We got a far better deal for more comprehensive coverage through the Travel Cuts Bon Voyage insurance. It's for travelers under 50, and you don't need to be a student to use it. There are plenty of other travel insurance providers out there, too, such as automotive clubs like CAA. Shop around, there are good deals and good insurance plans lurking around many corners.

Not all preparations are comfortable

2007-09-03T09:40:00.000-06:00

The past weekend has been rather exhausting. As Glen and I are approaching the final countdown to our departure date (we leave for Vancouver on the evening of September 10th), the round of good-byes has begun.

The first farewell was from my workplace, at noon on Friday. Generally speaking, saying goodbye to work itself isn't difficult, but doing so to co-workers who I genuinely like is. I did choke up, but not so much to cause much in the way of embarrassment for the parties involved.

The second farewell was to my belly dance group, on Friday evening. My instructor, the ever-fabulous Aurora Ongaro of the edVenture Arts studio, with the help of a few dedicated (and incredibly energetic) students, had put together a Hafla complete with the spectacular Arabesque Orchestra. The musicians came in all the way from Toronto and there were a number of Alberta's best dancers in the show, including a particularly moving performance by Aurora. After the performances the floor opened up for the audience to dance, and dance we did. Music played until 1 a.m., and it was both exhilarating and rather emotional. The girls from the studio are really exceptional individuals, and I've made a number of friends in a short period of time. I will miss chatting with them, I will miss dancing with them...but what a way to spend my final evening in their company!

The third was to my parents, at the airport on Saturday morning. As they were leaving that day for a cruise, this would be the last time I see them before our departure date. As anyone who has a good relationship with their parents may imagine, seeing them off prior to an extended absence is quite difficult.

And now we have started staying goodbye to our friends, as we manage to visit them during our last week in town. We will be having an informal going-away party or two, but of course that doesn't make the process any easier.

All Hail Stowaway

2007-08-24T11:38:00.000-06:00

Our traveling laptop has arrived! A brand new Dell Vostro 1500 with international wireless capabilitie, a 15-inch widescreen, 85 hour battery, Windows XP (no Windows Vista troubles for us, thank you very much), NVIDIA FeForce 8600 GT graphic card goodness, and various other treats.

We have named the laptop Stowaway, and it will provide us with means to hopefully do a little freelance work, keep up with our personal professional development projects - of which there are several, act as mobile entertainment for rainy days, and provide video games for evenings where we just can't handle going out for more discovering and would rather huddle around the warm glow of the LCD screen.

It has already been loaded up with the necessary firewalls and anti-viruses, and of course with the all-important World of Warcraft. Now we must decide how to ration the precious hard drive space and what other programs need to go on there. Glen needs his graphic design programs, whereas my requirements are a little less resource-heavy. I need a word processor and the NeverWinter Nights Aurora Toolset for game development. Hopefully our new beastie can handle such demands.

Our date of departure is edging ever nearer. We've encountered some rather unexpected costs in the past couple of weeks that I am not entirely happy about, namely certain dental procedures that my dental insurance and benefits do not cover. At least our teeth will be relatively healthy and patched-up for the trip.

The first week of September will be a flurry of activity - both Glen and I will have finished work and are going to be spending regular business hours running around and getting our personal affairs in order. We need to change our car insurance to basic 'parking' type coverage, change our cell phone plans to a contract maintenance scheme as there is no point in paying for a phone plan that we cannot use for the next year, get our driver's licenses updated, move our possessions into storage (god bless parents with warehouses!), and run various other tasks.

Wish us luck, it is going to be a busy couple of weeks!

And my brain goes poof!

2007-07-24T19:33:00.000-06:00

Great heavens above.

I just bought our tickets. We fly out of Vancouver, Canada on Thursday, September 13 and arrive in Melbourne, Australia on Saturday, September 15.

It's really, really real now! At the moment of this writing, the freak-out-spazz level of my brain is approximately 5.7 out of 10. I expect this will increase to a full, rip-roarin' 10 in a few hours.

Strange - I'm scared, but I'm grinning!

Necessary Geek Gear

2007-07-19T10:42:00.000-06:00

“Necessary” may be an overstatement here, but I’m trying to decide which nerdy indulgences Glen and I should pack along on our trip. The laptop (which plagues my thoughts on a regular basis) is coming, according to Glen, and he intends to fit it out with a computer game or two that is easy on the system requirements. The availability of a computer game will ensure that Glen and I do not resort to staring, poking, and eventually boxing in order to amuse ourselves when we get a bit squirrelly. As the laptop is more for work and professional development related stuff, however, I shall leave it out of this discussion.

What I am wondering more about is what small, space-and-weight friendly diversions can we bring out when spending the occasional “night in” at a hostel or kicking back with particularly interesting or friendly WWOOF hosts. At the moment, the three most practical nerd diversions I can think of are:

1) A couple sets of gaming dice (the infamous D20, as well as its friends – the D4, D6, D8, D10, and D12). For the uninitiated, the ‘D’ stands for ‘dice’, while the numbers refer to the number of sides each dice has. These are crucial for any tabletop role-play game, and it would be fun to scratch up an impromptu D&D game and teach some people how to play. There are few things quite so satisfying as playing pretend while drinking bear and throwing around dice to see if your character can beat up a horde of goblins. Furthermore, they only occupy about a square inch of space when bundled up.

2) Our Munchkin card game. Cards are a good thing to have, but Glen and I don’t play normal card games, unless it is the occasional poker night with Glen’s buddies. And this is one of those stupid games that you can whip out anywhere, teach the rules in about five minutes, and have a rip-roaring good time. We bring it with us when we decide to line up for absurd periods of time to see movies of particular interest. It is slightly larger than a regular deck of cards.

3) My zills. As I am going to be keeping up with my belly dance practise while down there, I want to have my zills with me. I also want to have them because I can make a great deal of noise with them, thereby producing hours of amusement on my part while annoying the snot out of everyone else. They are very small, light and easy to pack despite feeling like a couple of dinner plates strapped to my fingertips when being played.

I’m rather concerned about over-packing (a classic rookie long-term traveller’s mistake), so picking amusements requires considerable deliberation. Truthfully, I think that Glen will be naughtier than I in the over-packing department. I’d like to be able to pare our stuff down to one carry-on sized bag each, but he is insisting on bringing a 70 L pack. I’m guilty of large capacity packing as well, as the best bag I’ve found so far is a 60 L fellow. As long as we don’t carry too much weight, the large bag size shouldn’t present a problem, comfort wise. Live and learn, I suppose. We don’t be able to really figure out what is best for us until we try it.

Partially fledged

2007-07-18T16:23:00.000-06:00

Now that the visas have been acquired, impatience to 'get stuff done' has increased. Today’s thing-that-got-done was to become a member of WWOOF New Zealand. We should receive our “Wwoof Book” sometime in August, and we are therefore able to actually make inquiries to hosts and make a list of the places that seem the most enjoyable. I’ve already got a few marked out for possible inquiry. The main problem appears to be that there are many, many intriguing sounding hosts and – as cheesy as it sounds – we won’t have time to visit them all!

Great Scott Kiwi!

2007-07-17T13:01:00.000-06:00

Are you sitting down?

I have experienced governmental efficiency.

But don't get excited, fellow Canadians. It isn't from our government. Rather, it is from the New Zealand government. Be proud, hospitable Kiwis!

The efficiency occurred thus: on Sunday, Glen and I submitted our online applications for our New Zealand Working Holiday Visa. We were fairly certain that there was still space left for incoming Canadians, as the website's new section did not indicate that all the WHV spots for Canadians had been filled. There are set quotas for various countries as to how many working holidaymakers they will allow - Canada's allotment is currently set at 2,000.

I was not expecting immediate processing of our applications. Indeed, the conservative estimates that I had came across (which include some of the NZ governmental websites) led me to believe that we would be waiting about two weeks for the acknowledgement of our applications, and another two weeks for the applications to actually get processed.

Our applications were received, processed, and approved in two days. A mere two days! I am quite delighted. Now we can get our WWOOF New Zealand membership and start plotting which places we would like to WWOOF at and where we might like to work for actual money. Now I feel comfortable booking our flight tickets.

Now it feels absolutely, insolubly real!

Weekend Lessons Part III – Drunken hedonism

2007-07-16T12:09:00.000-06:00

The following tidbits were gleaned directly from the experiences of our friends who visited New Zealand a couple of years ago.

5. New Zealand has really good vineyards and wine tours. ‘Nuff said.

6. New Zealand also has a great deal of very good cheeseries. Cheese is, of course, the natural ally of wine. Other natural allies of wine and cheese include: Laurens, Glens, artists, and librarians. Our bases are therefore covered.

7. The humidity in Fiji is absolutely oppressive and may potentially short out electronics such as the laptop we are planning on toting with us. Appropriate cases in which to keep the laptop safe and dry must be located.

8. The best place to stay in Fiji is (according to our friends’ experiences) Caqali island. The best way to approach Caqali is to to to Leluvia island first. Bring stomach remedies for nausea and constipation.

9. Zorbing is overrated. It is fun while it lasts, which isn’t long, but is not really worth the price. It sounds sort of like the overpriced inflatable innertube ice slide that an Edmonton ski-hill runs; quite fun, but they charge entirely too much for the single brief death-slide down the hill.

10. The Rotorua mud pools and thermal activities, on the other hand, are defiantly worth the time and money. The mud and thermal spas were recommended to us, and I intend on taking up those recommendations. Glen and I do love our hot springs.

Full Metal Panic

2007-07-13T10:03:00.000-06:00

It seems that every time I become anticipatory about the trip, I begin to get excessively nervous. With a sort of frenetic anxiety that borders on compulsion, I begin checking flight options and comparing travelling by one-way and last minute deals versus multi-destination passes. Prices come up, and impossibilities arise in my mind. I refuse to go into debt for this trip, but I don't want to completley deplete my savings account either. I am able to accept that the seperate investment fund we set up for the trip will be gone - that I can stomach. I can even deal with Glen's comfort in draining his chequing account for our expenses. But airfare costs so very, very much. How long can we afford to stay? What if we are unable to get working holiday visas?

These are the sorts of nagging fears that continually pop up in my mind. Truthfully, this is part of the reason why I feel as though I should go - to get over the sorts of security anxieties that may keep me from trying anything off the scale of complete predictability. Yet it is extremely difficult to simply ignore the nagging voice in my head that insists that Glen and I are being irresponsible, that we are on a wild goose chase for an experience that will ultimately be a dissapointment due to uncertainties over where we will be sleeping that night, how we will eat the next day, and whether or not we should just pack in and go home.

Granted, the logical side of my brain is aware that this Henny Penny worrying is unreasonable. Others have done this before us, and others will do these trips afterwards. We will be able to get a work permit, even if we need to wait until January to apply. At the absolute worst, we will need to cut our losses and come back home. In the end, that is better than not going at all.

And yet I am still frightened. We've invested too much time into this endeavour to stop it now, but I am still terrified despite all the bravado that I claim to have. Adventure should never be easy. That statement was posted at the top of this journal not as a claim to the world at large, but rather as a personal reminder. If this was easy, what would the point be?

All this fretting has had the effect of instigating a roaring headache. I may leave work early today to get some of these issues sorted out. We shall see how the afternoon goes.

Weekend Lessons Part II - A working, flying, smelly mess

2007-07-11T16:12:00.000-06:00

2. Glen and I may not be able to get our New Zealand working visas before January, as they are doled out in limited numbers from the start of each year. Our friends recommended that we do not let this delay our departure, however, as we can apply for the visa while we are down there. I was curious as to whether or not having a visa would affect our plans to participate in some WWOOF activities, so I did some digging on the WWOOF New Zealand and the WWOOF Australia websites.

As it turns out, WWOOFing in New Zealand is considered work and requires a work visa, however in Australia it is considered as a volunteer activity and may therefore be done without a visa. As we are now thinking of starting our travels in Australia and then heading to New Zealand, we may spend a little longer ‘Down Under’ to take advantage of the budget friendly travel options that WWOOF affords. Ultimately, we will just have to keep a flexible mind-set when it comes to working, our visas, and our itineraries.

3. Multiple destination flight packages can save a whopping amount of cash. Originally we were planning on booking our own flights as we went along, but now we will talk to a travel agent in regards to multi-destination deals. Hopefully we can find some with flexible departure dates so that we are not roped into specific timelines. If not, I believe that we may just book the one flight from Canada to Australia (our first stop), and keep an eye our for last-minute deals to the other destinations. It will allow us to fly more by the seat of our pants (no pun intended) and with fewer restrictions on our whims.

4. Apparently sunscreen and shampoo is expensive in New Zealand, so we should bring our own. This will necessitate the deployment of several dozen plastic zip-close bags to contain any potential leakages. I’m rather paranoid about toiletry bottles exploding.

Weekend Lessons Part I: Lobster Red and Loathing it

2007-07-10T10:46:00.000-06:00

On the Canada Day long weekend (first weekend in July, for all you non-Canuck readers), Glen and I visited our friends in rural Alberta for a few days of fishing and brain-tapping. They had both been on extended sojurns to New Zealand only a couple years ago, and we wished to learn from their experiences. Fuelled by large amounts of food and wine, travel stories and suggestions flowed long and fast. There were several things that we learned that weekend, not all of which came from our friends’ travel stories.

1. SPF rated clothing is a good thing; actually, for me it has become necessary. I learned this after obtaining a very nasty burn during the weekend’s two fishing expeditions. Despite my liberal application and frequent re-application of SPF 30 sunscreen on my body, SPF 55 sunscreen on my face, and a thick long-sleeved t-shirt, I succeeded in catching a sunburn on my shoulders, face, and hands. One of our friends was quite aghast, exclaiming about the impossibility of the burn, as she watched my frequent re-applications of the sunblock. I also caught one whitefish and four walleye, but that did nothing to relieve the sunburn.

Seeing as the New Zealand and Australian sun is much more intense than what my pasty white skin is accustomed to, I need to up the ante when it comes to battling sunburn. As I cannot resort to covering my entire body with opaque zinc sunblocks (mountain resort skiers from the 80’s and early 90’s will undoubtedly remember the neon coloured stripes of zinc on noses and cheekbones that were oh-so fashionable at the time) Glen and I came to the conclusion that actual SPF rated clothing will be the way to go. This is not to say that my entire travel wardrobe will be kitted out with pricy sunproof duds, however I did go to Mountain Equipment Co-Op the next weekend and purchased one long sleeved shirt with a very small collar, and a v-necked t-shirt, both of which claim to have sunblocking powers. It may not be the SPF 45000 that I seem to require, but every little bit helps.

With an odd sort of timeliness, the local paper then ran an article about summer skin care and the complexities of sunscreen application. Apparently most people do not use nearly enough sunscreen – the article cited dermatologists suggesting that people use approximately one teaspoon of sunscreen on their face and around a shot glass worth of sunscreen on the rest of their body. I personally use around two or three teaspoons on my face and neck, and a hell of a lot more than a shot glass on the rest of my whiter-than-white flesh.

Furthermore, higher SPF numbers doesn’t necessarily mean better protection. Formulas with SPF factors of 60 are intended for people with very pale skin that burn easily and still need re-applying every two hours. You can’t just slap on an SPF 60 and assume that it means double the length of protection time of SPF 30, thereby justifying your four-hour UV ray brazing session. SPF 30 should be considered the norm for most people, while SPF 15 is now considered to be a bit on the low side. Also, apply a good half hour before going out into the sun or applying insect repellent.

But what about those lovely new spray-bottle sunscreens that promise easy, simple, spritzable, non-greasy application? The commercials declare that sunbathers may mist themselves with a refreshing burst of protection, while parents can conveniently hose down their children from afar instead of having to perform a rub-down on the squirming, protesting beastie. Unfortunately, the convenience of these products outstrips their effectiveness. The Edmonton Journal article linked below states that the sunscreen is too thin and the distribution too patchy to really be effective. What you should really be using is the thick cream type sunscreens that you need to rub into your skin.

And a note to the budget-conscious: those cream sunscreens are a heck of a lot cheaper than the excitingly new and ineffective spray-on sunscreens. You may need an extra minute to rub the goo in, but you’ll save more than a few pennies.

For the informationally suspicious among you who require sources to back up my claims (I applaud your wisdom, by the way), here are a couple of articles corroborating the info I’ve supplied above:

Is 30 the new 15? (CanWest News Services)

Sunscreen: Answers to your burning questions (Mayo Clinic)

Passports and Pincushions

2007-07-04T16:07:00.000-06:00

There is a necessary trial that every internationally bound traveller must endure at some point, a trial that bonds all such travellers with the friendly chains of irritation and bitterness: acquiring a passport.

As neither Glen nor I have – or have ever had – a passport, we went through this tradition a couple of weeks ago. While gearing up for this integral part of our overall travel adventure, we were inundated with a great deal of advice and tips from well meaning family and friends. They warned us about the passport office line-ups, about the lengthy period prior to the passport actually arriving in the mail, and about the fiddly passport application forms that are binned unless filled out with exact compliance to excruciatingly strict rules that govern those documents. Ultimately, we were given the impression that applying for one’s passport is about as invasive, uncomfortable, and interesting as an anal probe.

While the process for passport application will undoubtedly vary from country to country, I imagine that several of the more general, if not the specific, aggravations are reasonably consistent. One must gather several proofs of identity, fill out forms detailing your various goings-on over the past few years, describe nose hair growth, and get a photo that makes you look like a hardened criminal. At the time of this writing, Canadians must also get the signature of a 'guarantor' - an individual of an approved profession who you have known for at least two years – to sign the mug shot and affirm that it is indeed a valid likeness. Obtaining this signature was not terribly difficult for Glen and I, as two of our brother-in-laws are of the approved professions. For people that are not in such a happy situation, getting the signature of a doctor, lawyer, chartered accountant, school principal, or other individual that requires a consultation appointment made over a month in advance is a royal pain in the backside. The reasons for needing to have the signature of someone in an approved profession apparently hearkens back to old class systems and ideas of nobility and trustworthiness (please to not ask me for a source on this one – I truly cannot remember the online resource where I read this tidbit). Happily, the government has recognized that the system is somewhat antiquarian and frankly stupid, and so will be easing the guarantor requirements in October 2007.

There are other ways that the Canadian government is attempting to make the passport application process a little easier is to provide printable online application forms, eliminating the need for a trip to the post office to get pre-printed forms, as well as to provide the option of filling out and submitting your application via the miracle of the internet. Before getting excited about the prospect of avoiding the passport office line-up, however, one must bear in mind that you need to register for the online services, wait a few weeks to get your username and password snail-mailed to your home address, submit original documents such as your birth certificate via standard post, and assuming that the original documents do not get lost in the mail or at the passport office itself (we have heard first-hand horror stories about misplaced birth certificates), wait an additional nine weeks for your passport to be mailed to you. Doing the application in-person requires you to stand in line for a couple of hours, have your documents reviewed by a clerk, be scolded for not filling out a couple of the fields properly, and then wait two weeks for your passport to arrive in the mail. So much for online efficiency.

Following the advice given to us by my parents, Glen and I both took a full day off of work arrived at the passport office at the wee hours of 7:15 am, an hour and fifteen minutes before the office opened. I was expecting to encounter a considerable line-up and was not surprised at the crowd that had already gathered. Glen, on the other hand, was quite shocked at the number of bleary-eyed travellers already standing patiently along the wall. We had some fun conversations with several people in the line, and joked around a lot with a Newfoundlander who needed to pick up his express-delivered passport, a friendly lady who had a gift for conversation, and a really nice guy who sounded like he had moved here from India (I couldn’t accurately place his accent beyond a vague idea of what land mass it was from).

Behind this fellow was a woman who I can only describe as a complete red-neck, the sort that give Albertans a bad name. She looked offended whenever the guy moved to talk to her, would only scoff through her nose at what other people said, and basically behaved in a thoroughly rude fashion. At one point the Indian guy asked Glen and I if we thought it would be okay if he left the line for a minute to grab a coffee, and we assured him that it wouldn’t be a problem. The red-neck woman only gave a curt nod, and once he had left the area, snorted and said something to the effect of being worried that he would shoot her if she said no. I will admit that I was very surprised at hearing that from her, as it is a level of rudeness that I haven’t often encountered. I replied in what I hope was a sufficiently icy tone that I’ve no problem with people wanting to duck out to get a coffee or go to the bathroom, as I hope that other people in line wouldn’t mind it if I did the same. She gave her little nose-snort and goggled at us, not making much of a reply. Eventually the guy came back with his coffee and we carried on the conversation we were having before he left.

Once the passport office opened, the line progressed fairly quickly. It was marshalled by a very small woman with a very strident voice who would march up and down the lines, barking procedural directions at the applicants. Eventually, my ticket was called, and my form was processed very quickly by a chipper and friendly woman. Glen’s form took a little longer, as there was a discrepancy between the home address on Glen’s drivers license and the address on the passport application due to an immanent move. Glen was roundly scolded for holding up the line, had to find me to get a couple of postal codes, was irritated with the unnecessarily brusque manner of the clerk helping him, and was thoroughly annoyed by the time we left the office. However our overall documents were in order, we had the correct signatures, and both our applications were readily accepted in the end. It didn’t take nearly as long as our friends and family foretold and all dire predictions of hassles and hang-ups came to naught.

After our applications were submitted, we headed straight for the University of Alberta’s student health centre for our travel vaccinations. As our approximate date of travel is rapidly approaching and several of these vaccinations require boosters, we needed to get them done pronto. As Glen is still a student at the U of A, we could enjoy the walk-in services that are even faster during summer hours due to the absence of a large number of students. Instead of having to make an appointment, get prescriptions, and then wait hours in a provincial travel health clinic, we waltzed in unannounced, and were seen by a doctor within minutes.

The doctor we saw was quite entertaining, although I doubt it was his intent to amuse me so much. He was very dry in his manner of speech, and frequently punctuated his statements with grumbles about people who don’t vaccinate his children. He went through the necessary checks to determine what sort of immunizations we needed, and then went on to sell us on getting an additional pertussis (a.k.a. whooping cough) vaccination as a "public service" to prevent unintentionally passing the illness on to vulnerable children. After that, we went straight downstairs to the university pharmacy, got our vaccinations at the discounted student rate, went back upstairs and about ten minutes later received our shots. I only needed one, while Glen received two needles. As the pertussis vaccine had to be ordered in, we returned a couple of days later to pick up that prescription and each received another needle.

For the potential traveller or medically curious among you, the immunizations that Glen and I were prescribed were based on travel to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and other areas near there. We figured that those areas would cover our bases as far as vaccinations go, as we are defiantly not heading much further abroad than that. The immunizations we received are as follows:
-Hepatitis A
-Hepatitis B (Glen needed this one, but I had already received my full course of immunizations when I started university and so didn’t need to get it again)
-Typhoid
-Diphtheria
-Tetanus
-Pertussis

Glen and I will both need to get Hep A (and Hep B, in his case) boosters in one month, as well as again while in New Zealand. It will be pricier to get it while travelling, but such is the cost of health. I did not get a rubella vaccination as it was included in my Grade 9 boosters, and we were advised to get malaria pills while travelling only if we actually go to an area where malaria is concerned.

A great many countries do not allow you entry without record of proper immunization. Aside from this requirement, I’d rather spend a few hundred bucks ensuring mine and my husband’s health instead of farting and vomiting our way through our vacation. For a full list of current travel health concerns and recommended vaccinations, visit the Public Health Agency of Canada: Travel Health website. The info on the diseases is valid world-wide, but most countries should have their own specific government website that covers the same subject.

Tottering Under The Pack

2007-06-22T17:52:00.000-06:00

Sunday, June 17, 2007 saw Glen and I traipsing off to our second travel gear shopping expedition. As neither my husband nor I are especially enthusiastic shoppers, we have already decided to take our time with buying gear. Items will be researched, tried on multiple times, and reviewed with an eye not just for reasonability of price but also for suitability, serviceability, and projected usefulness.

The current focus of our shopping expeditions is the hunt for The Pack. The Pack is that almighty piece of necessary luggage, the shell in which backpackers turtle their precious few belongings from one destination to another. While I did not expect to find an idea Pack on the first shopping expedition, I didn’t think that there would be so much variation and so much aggravation involved in trying to find one.

There are men’s backpacks and women’s backpacks, day packs and expedition packs and alpine packs and travel packs and hydration packs and book packs. There are cheap packs and expensive packs. There are internal frame packs, external frame packs, soft frame packs, hard frame packs, and frameless packs. Presumably, there is a pack out there that will fit me, and one to fit Glen. Finding them, however, is proving to be something of an experience.

We have been focussing our initial searches around Mountain Equipment Co-Op, a Canadian travel and sports gear shop that is more commonly and fondly known as MEC. Glen and I like the store, their product, and their business policies, so we have been looking forward to getting the majority of our gear there. We also like the fact that there are travel-wise store people wandering around in there who are able to give you advice on topics such as pack fitting.

The first time we went in, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, we centered our search entirely around the expedition pack section, anticipating being won over by the robust suspension systems and dense strap padding. Glen tried on many men’s and unisex packs, while I tried on packs exclusively on the ‘Women’s’ wall. I’m not thrilled to report that there was not a great deal of selection, but to be perfectly fair, there are not a great number of packs manufactured specifically for women.
Let me tell you, ladies, that the make of the shoulder straps on the women’s packs is sheer genius. They come in far enough to give you a snug fit, accommodate shoulders that are usually not as broad as our masculine brethren, and manage to swoop away cleverly at the boob area, giving our girls some space instead of mashing them into uncomfortable new forms. I shall admit, however, that I was not entirely thrilled with the price tag attached to them. It appears that wedding merchandise and women’s pack manufacturers share the same belief that it is acceptable to jack the price up considerably merely because of the specialness of the product. Be that as it may, I am certainly keeping women’s packs in mind on our hunt; I’m just hoping that I can find something that more approaches the cost-effectiveness of the men’s packs.

Alas, there was nary a women’s pack that seemed to fit. Glen was having better luck in the men’s and unisex packs, and I tried on a few of his as well, but the shoulder straps were invariably quite uncomfortable, even with unloaded bags. Eventually one of the shop people found their way over to us – we had been trying packs on for some time – and offered some assistance. He didn’t seem particularly interested or knowledgeable, though, and while some of the advice was good, his suggested packs weren’t exactly what we were looking for.

We decided to load up the two packs he eventually recommended for us with weight sacks and lugged them around the store for a while. This was fun enough on it’s own: MEC has a big bin with bags of varying poundage available for loading packs with, as it is much more realistic to fit a weight-bearing pack than an empty one. Of course, once the pack is loaded up, one’s centre of gravity seems to shift dramatically. Glen took immediate advantage of this and started spinning me around by the pack itself. As I am a naturally clumsy person, I nearly spun right into a rack of packs, but managed to recover. We then spend a few minutes tussling with each other’s packs and trying to use our newly enhanced weight to shove the other off balance.

By the time we stopped our in-store wrestling match and meandered, packs still on backs, over to the shoe section to find Glen a good pair of light hiking shoes, I noticed that it felt as though I had to duck my butt out a considerable degree to support my pack. As I have no intention of wandering around New Zealand sway-backed for twelve months, I groused to Glen about this newfound discomfort. The staff woman manning the shoe section happened to be an avid backpacker, and after showing Glen her shoe recommendations, took us over to a mirror and gave a much more thorough type of pack fitting than her colleague had. After pronouncing Glen’s pack to be well fitted, she looked at mine and tutted reproachfully, then stuck her entire arm in the gap between the pack and the small of my back.

“See this?” she demanded, withdrawing and then re-inserting her arm into the pack-gap several more times. “This is bad! This bag does not fit!” I bit down the urge to reply “Bad! Bad Pack!”

Needless to say, I was quite pleased at having my complaints confirmed by someone who knew what they were talking about. Glen and I finished our pack hunt there for the evening, as I was rapidly getting frustrated at not finding a women’s pack that fit and at having been told that I fit a pack that was so clearly not at all suitable for me. We got several pack recommendations from the shoe lady, got her name for future reference and consultation, and went home.

When we returned again on June 17th, the lady who helped us on our previous trip wasn’t there, but a fellow that Glen’s father recommended as the almighty pack guru was. As our actual intent for this particular trip was getting the shoes that Glen had found on his last visit, we got the shoes first before returning to the Pack Hunt. This time, we looked at the travel packs, while the Guru helped out another couple fit some packs. Again, we went through the loading and toting process.

If I was a more self-conscious person, I would undoubtedly be rather embarrassed by my inability to put on a loaded backpack without some kind of full production. I mentioned earlier that I’m quite uncoordinated, and it is here that it comes through in public demonstration. My attempts to struggle to put a loaded pack onto my back looks something like this:

-Load 35 pounds into the bag (this is the most weight I think I should carry at any point on my trip)
-Attempt to heave pack one-handed onto left shoulder. Drop pack.
-Attempt to heave pack two-handed onto left shoulder. Drop pack.
-Squat down, attempt to put pack onto back in a kneeling position. Drop pack, fall over.
-Rotate squatting position slightly, try again. Lose balance, fall over.
-Pick up pack and place onto the weight back bin, attempt to put left arm through while swinging pack onto back.
-Get arm trapped in the shoulder strap in a chicken-wing position, wedged firmly between the pack and my own body. Squawk in alarm while attempting to heave the pack off my shoulder and back onto the floor.
-Get Glen to hold up the back while I stick both arms through at once. Success!

It isn’t that I’m incapable of lifting 35 pounds. I am actually quite strong and can comfortably toss around a good bit of weight fairly easily. It is that lifting the pack and putting it on in one motion requires a degree of co-ordination that I simply do not possess. It is this inherent clumsiness that once caused me to noose myself in a seatbelt while exiting the back of a car, and it is why it is so much easier just to get Glen to hold up the back while I put the pack on. The Pack Guru did give his customers a demonstration on how to properly put a pack on, and I watched intently. It involves hoisting the pack by the shoulder straps with both hands onto your knee, and then using the knee to support the pack while you sling it onto one shoulder, then putting the free arm through the other strap. I will definitely give it a try, although I suspect that I might chicken-wing myself on the attempt.

After much waiting, the Pack Guru was still occupied with his current customers, and we decided to call it a day. I may have found a pack that fits, the MEC Pangea 60 Travel Pack, which comes complete with zip-away daypack, a feature I really like. Glen found a couple other travel packs that he rather liked. Hopefully, the next time we go back, we can grab hold of the Pack Guru and acquire his pack-fitting wisdom.

For the curious, here is MEC’s advice on Choosing A Backpack, as well as Fitting Your Backpack and for my fellow females, Fitting Packs for Women.

Introduction - Part III: Get Up and Go

2007-06-17T11:05:00.001-06:00

Having addressed why it took me so long to accept going on this trip on my own terms, we are brought around to the ‘simple’ aspect of this decision. Simplicity was delivered in the form of a metaphorical kick in the ass. A career opportunity came trotting down my garden path, and as I was certainly professionally and temperamentally qualified for it, I decided that I would apply. Glen and I had been talking about planning our much desired New Zealand excursion, but I wanted to snap up this job opportunity while it was available – an excellent example of the stalling tactics I mentioned in the above paragraph. I thought it very likely that I would at least get an interview, while many of my supporters thought it very likely that I’d get the job; in the end, neither happened.

Furthermore, I was rapidly descending into a funk brought on by the housing crisis in my hometown. Thanks largely to the oil boom and sudden economic growth spurt, housing costs in Edmonton, Alberta were rising at what felt like exponential rates. Despite my reasonable income, Glen and I were looking at having to transition from the house we were renting from my brother while he was working in Germany to an apartment or basement suite that would cost us around double what we were currently paying. The idea of attempting to negotiate a housing market that would not allow us to save or plan for the future in a reasonable manner was depressing, and as I am a worrywart about money, I found myself dwelling on this unfortunate business quite frequently.

After experiencing such a high level of frustration over my own apathy that I was practically in tears, my brain snapped into gear. I was putting off both mine and my husband’s life goals because of unreasonable levels of finance-related fear, and we no longer wanted to live in a city that was rapidly becoming one of the most expensive living locations in Canada. I had simply had enough. It was time to go, and I told Glen that I wanted to go in September.

Bear in mind that while many of the sentiments that had led to the desire to leave behind reality for a year had been boiling up for some time, I arrived at the point where I had mentally accepted the trip was very, very sudden. Going from being interested in the possibility of stalling a New Zealand trip and actually hammering out a firm time of departure was quite literally a matter of hours. I didn’t need to slowly convince myself that it was time Glen and I put our desires into practice. Fortunately, circumstance did all the convincing for me. While it took me several more weeks to get over my money-related worries, resolving not to let fear get the better of me and commit to going happened with what seemed to be a crack of a whip. It is time; time for us to move on, time to take a plunge, time to take risks, time to have our adventure.

Now that this somewhat self-indulgent (and admittedly rather whiny) introduction to the circumstances leading up to our trip is over, I would like to thank those who have had the patience to read it. Let’s start having some fun!

Introduction - Part II: Stalling Tactics

2007-06-12T15:14:00.000-06:00

Making the decision to leave for a year presented an interesting paradox – it was at once one of the hardest and simplest decisions I’ve made. Now granted, I was not the only one involved in this decision – Glen, of course, was similarly involved in this. But decisions are not only made in practise, but must also be made in one’s own head; if the resolution is not made in the head, then stalling tactics will be employed to great effect.

Fear is the primary motivation for stalling, and unfortunately I am not exactly the bravest person in the world. It isn’t the idea of being in a strange place among strange people that frightens me, but rather the idea of the financial instability of such a trip. It is in my nature to save rather than spend, and while I’m no miser, I like having a decently sized emergency cushion. Not knowing where the next paycheque is coming from is the height of anxiety. This is not a new fear – throughout childhood I was inordinately and unreasonably anxious about family finances. I’ve no idea where these fears originated, as I had no reason to think that we were headed to the poorhouse and my parents taught me good money management. Dealing with this tendency towards worry-warting over financial matters is one of my goals for this trip. I won't let money fears prevent me from going, and I am determined to get a grip on this ridiculous behaviour.

Glen and I are in a suprisingly good situation for this trip. We are not bogged down by any debt, we have saved for a trip such as this, and I have already made my registered retirement savings plan contribution for the year. We are also going to be acquiring a work visa and picking up what jobs we come across, and are looking forward to everything from fruit picking to physical labour to possibly finding work in our professional fields. Costs will be further cut down through some participation in work exchanged for room and board programs. Either way, we will be earning funds and participating in work exchange while travelling, and therefore should not need to eat into our regular accounts to supplement the travel budget we have established. We will not be returning destitute to Canada; we are ready and able to practise some strict budgeting once we get back and begin re-establishing our regular work lives.

Yet with all these provisions, the financial insecurity still terrifies me. The idea of putting off my career development for a full year is appalling. These sentiments, however, are utterly ridiculous as they are unfounded and verge on illogical paranoia. As illogical as they are, however, they present a very convenient method for stalling any sort of decision that involves taking the slightest bit of financial or career-related risk. Unfortunately, the consistent refusal of any sort of venture that may involve a financial or career risk means that good opportunities are passed by or lost altogether. I’m tired of allowing my insecurities to hold my husband and I back. I might be afraid of what going to New Zealand could potentially do to my bank account, but I’m going all the same – and I’m going to get over my fears.

Introduction - Part I: Over the Edge

2007-06-08T16:24:00.000-06:00

Travel is not an uncommon interest. “I like to travel,” people say, and then usually follow up the statement with a list of places they have gone, the places they would like to go to, and the means by which they have travelled or would like to travel. I’ve had travelling listed as an interest on many of my online personae. And every time I included that term in my profiles, I’ve felt as though I was lying, just a little.

This uncomfortable sense of deception is due to the fact that I have done very little travelling in my short life, and none of it is what I would consider “serious” travel. Certainly, I’ve been to locales other than my hometown in Alberta, Canada – a few days in Las Vegas with my parents, an Alaskan cruise, a school trip to Quebec when I was in middle school, ski excursions, and visiting in-laws in Ontario, among other things. Of course, I must include the penchant my husband and I have for road trips. We have been exploring around the Rocky Mountains in summer and winter, taken road trips to the west coast of Canada, and had a memorable bus-ferried jaunt around Portland, Oregon.

These trips, however, do not fall into the realm of serious travel. For us, travel has generally consisted of relatively short excursions, most taken in childhood when we still enjoyed the luxury of having our expenses covered by our parents. Now that we are all grown up, we have swapped parent-chaperoned trips for mooching lodging off of our out-of-town friends. While I always enjoy any sort of travel holiday immensely, I don’t exactly equate my little trips with the sort of backpack toting pilgrims who make travel a large part of their life for a significant portion of time. When my husband and I sacrifice our feather top mattress and down duvet for a hotel mattress and duvet, (or a friend’s inflatable bed and kitchen facilities) we aren’t exactly drowning ourselves in the experience of travel. Rather, we’re indulging in a sanitized, watered-down version of it. Luxury travel is enjoyable, yes, but doesn’t challenge. Those who know me know I enjoy certain amount of challenge – it keeps my brain functioning at reasonable speeds.

The above missive may have given the impression that Glen and I have to date accepted nothing but the finest that holidaying may offer. Although the image of the indulgent silk-wrapped travellers suddenly exchanging their seaweed wraps for blistered feet and backpacks with chest straps would make for a far more amusing read, such is not the case. We may have not trekked across an unknown country yet, but we have travelled on the cheap and enjoyed every minute of it. We like hostels quite a bit, prefer buying our food in markets to eating in restaurants, and have a particular fondness for using my little Pontiac Sunfire as our mobile bunk. Once you drop down the car’s back seats, it can fit the pair of us quite nicely provided that we sleep at a slight diagonal, with our heads by the front seats and our feet in the trunk. Keep in mind that as I am a bit over 5’8” and my dear husband is 6’2” with a body that pumps out heat at the same rate as a coal burner; getting out of the car and scraping the accumulated fog and steam off the inside of the windows can be a stiff, awkward endeavour.

So we have travelled on the cheap, we have travelled on the fly. We have never travelled long-haul. We have never completely uprooted ourselves and lived away from the comforts of family and old friends. We’ve played around with the idea of adventure, but have never actually had one. That is about to change. We have made the decision that, barring the unlikely event that Glen should land a dream job in the next few weeks, we will be leaving in September for New Zealand and are planning on remaining there for the upcoming year. In order to fuel this exodus and not be completely destitute when we return, we shall be applying for Working Holiday visas so that we may earn a few coins while there. We are hoping to find work in our respective fields – I am a librarian with an accredited Master’s degree, and Glen is a graphic designer and developing sculptor. Being able to further our careers in a different country is quite an exciting prospect for both of us, and we would like to take advantage of it while we have the opportunity.

However, the availability of career-type work will not be a determining factor as to whether or not we go. We’re looking forward to doing sheer grunt work as well – picking fruit, tending vineyards, pushing cattle, bartending and waiting tables – in order to add to our travel budget. Such work is part of the backpacking experience, and I truthfully don’t think that either of us would be entirely satisfied if we did not shred our hands on at least a few fruit trees. Grunt work is part of any really good adventure.

At this point in time, we are in the planning phase. We will be applying for passports within the next couple of weeks and likewise applying for visas as soon as we get our passports. While I had been planning on establishing a travel blog to record our actual travel time, it occurred to me that the preparation is playing a significant role in this entire experience. Any sort of travel begins with the necessary preparation, which is proving to be a sufficient enough head-spinner for me to want to document it. The adage that every journey begins with a single step is very true, but you still need to get your shoes and water bottle first.