The Story So Far ...

We said farewell to our work friends at the RSPCA and BBC on 14 September, farewell to our families on 3 October, and set off for Africa to save cheetahs, decorate school buildings, and look around a bit. After a trip home for Christmas, we headed for South East Asia on 6 January -- where we were stunned by Qatar and Cambodia, taught novice monks in Laos, and acted as security guards at an Elephant Festival. It was back home for four weeks to look after John's dad, before we tangoed our way through five South American countries in fifteen days. We then snooped our way through New Zealand, dipped our toes into Fiji, drove-thru California and were home from home with family in Vancouver.

Now, we are home itself. Fulfilled, happy, and ready to earn the respect of our friends and family by knuckling down and earning some money once again ...

Thursday, 28 April 2011

A Dry Autumn Easter Day

Going Up

The mountain views would be some of New Zealand's finest in the autumn, we were told, so how we longed for a nice dry Easter Day for our 12 mile peaktop hike.

Our breakfast at the hostel just south of Lake Taupo brought pregnant cloud.  The chirpy woman on the bus that took our small group to the trailhead inspected our boots and warned us we'd be getting wet.  So we glimpsed the burgeoning blue that emerged an hour later with disbelief, and gulped down the crystal views, painted bright and white, with deep gratitude.  It was a dry day after all, thank heavens, and we returned from our exertions having earned the bottle we set off to buy to accompany dinner.

Up

It was a dry day, indeed.  As we entered the supermarket, had there been some terrible accident in the wine aisle?   Row after row was draped in police-style emergency blue tape.  Alas, the signs attached didn't appeal for witnesses, they reminded us that New Zealand Law Prohibited the Sale of Intoxicating Liquor on Easter Day.  Panic mounting, we sought reassurance at the checkout.  There was none: this law applied to restaurants too, and pubs would be shut, of course.

We ate a microwaved Chinese take away meal in our hostel kitchen that evening, drinking down fine memories and a bottle of sparkling apple juice instead.

Coming Down.  With disappointing news ahead. 
John

The Uru-guy

As you may know, I got to spend a week on my own in Uruguay before John followed on. Travelling solo was a refreshing challenge, not least while trying to use my long-forgotten O-level Spanish (The exam wasn't my finest hour - I got an' E', before you ask.) And having hastily devoured a pocket Spanish phrasebook on the flight over, it turned out that much of the vocabulary is South America is very different from elsewhere anyway. But as I should have guessed, a little effort, a bit of kindness and a big smile can get you a long way - and help you make some new friends.


Uruguay is a small country squashed between two South American giants,
Brazil and Argentina, so a visit to the local museum provided a good briefing,
as well as a fun photo. 


Despite it's passionate neighbours, the country has its own sedate character,
and nowhere was that more evident than in the sleepy seaside town of
Colonia del Sacremento. It's a wonderful place to relax and unwind...


... and it's steeped in history. In the old town, little has changed in 200 years..


... and I was certainly there 'out-of-season'.
A few classic cars sat idly around many of the deserted cobbled streets...


... and no-one was going anywhere...


(well, almost no-one)


... so there wasn't much to do but sit and contemplate.


Even the town's art museum attracts a different sort of motorist.


Staying at a local hostel, I was lucky enough to make friends with Jocelyne
(a fun and lively psychologist from France) and Nicola (a kindly teacher from Germany).
Although we all spoke five languages between us, we didn't actually one in common.
So as you can imagine, our conversations involved much gesticulation,
poor pronunciation and comical mistranslation.


The next stop was was capital city Montevideo...


... which on many a street corner has a reminder of times gone by.


Since Jocelyne was still in tow, we both decided to share
a roof-top hostel room with great views...


... and there we hooked up with new Portugese friend Rita
who, frankly, was even madder than Jocelyne. 


And although our hostel was in a pretty rough area of town, the night we arrived
there was a political rally outside about women's rights, gay marriage, and a
range of other issues which I unfortunately couldn't quite decipher.
But after all the solemn speeches...


... everyone had a chance to join in with some singing and dancing...




 ... and as the singing and merriment continued long into the night, I decided
it was definitely the most fun and colourful protest I've ever been to.


 But it was time to move on, and when Jocelyne and I had to part company,
we were both sad to say goodbye. It had been a very interesting week - testing
but great fun, and another reminder of what travelling is about.


Henry



Monday, 25 April 2011

Not our Night

I bet they'd have found the place easily enough.
We found them in a tango cabaret bar in San Telmo

It wasn't to be our night.

It was a Saturday night, in fact, so we thought we'd have a pre-dinner drink in a Buenos Aires bar warmly recommended in our guidebook.  I memorised the spot marked on the map, but not the actual address.  We never found it.

Henry had chosen the restaurant, a Turkish place.  We spotted it easily enough, and that it had closed down.

We tried a vegetarian place we'd noticed the day before, and took our seats.  Oops, no alcohol served, so we moved on to an Indian cafe around the corner.  No credit cards, on an evening when we'd run out of cash.

I headed for the cashpoint (hard to find, in this part of Buenos Aires.)   A message in Spanish appeared to tell me it, too, was out of cash that evening.

It was about midnight when we finished our dinner in the restaurant we eventually fell into -- walnut pasta for Henry, pork steaks for me, a bottle of local Malbec for us both, paid for on AmEx.  But we'd discovered that it is true what they say about South America.  At that time on a Saturday night the place isn't winding down, it's waking up.  So maybe it was our night, after all.

Lovely Argentinian family owners of B&B we stayed in in Buenos Aires.
Their English was better than our Spanish. 

John

Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Parag ... why?




Five reasons NOT to visit the city of Ciudad del Este, a tacky heap of skyscrapers in Paraguay across the river from Brazil:

1.  It's a bit tricky getting there and back from our hotel in Argentina.  Five buses, four border crossings and three currencies.
2.  Not many people in Paraguay speak English.  Not many at all.
3.  There are no lunchtime menus, laminated or otherwise: just the dish of the day with rice.
4.  The woman at the money exchange place in denim hotpants and high-heels looked tarty and menacing in equal measure.
5.  As a tourist, you're on your own.

Five reasons TO visit the city of Ciudad del Este, the Pride of Paraguay on its border with Brazil:

1-5: see above.

We only had three hours for our lunchtime visit, and I wanted three weeks.  For perhaps the first time in five months' travelling, I felt I was truly exploring a place that very few others had explored before me.  No, it wasn't Antarctica and there wasn't a heartbeat of bravery involved, but I did find myself amongst people who seemed puzzled to see me, and I found that puzzlingly exhilarating in return.  So if you do decide to visit, please let me know -- I'll need to get in ahead of you.

John

Bordering on the absurd

Santa Diana

Eva Peron: still centre stage

I blame the media myself.  But when the late Princess of Wales died, I was given the distinct impression that the weird week that followed was a new phenomenon.  All those people laying flowers at Kensington Palace, and then shrieking as the hearse rolled past: a nation in a state of collapse, and rather embarrassed about it afterwards.

Half an hour at the Evita Museum in Buenos Aires provided evidence aplenty that it wasn't a new phenomenon at all.  They play you a video of her funeral, you see, all grainy in early 1950s black and white, and quite a sight.  Hordes of people lining the streets in dazzling sunshine.  The coffin, draped in a vast flag.  Photographs of a beaming Eva Peron tied to the railings, "Santa Evita!" scrawled across the top.  The flowers -- the flowers! -- piled up high and wide at the gates of a Cathedral.  And in the flickering eyes of the Argentine crowds, that muddle of genuine sorrow and I'm-rather-enjoying-this that London generated that sunny September Funeral Day back in 1997.

It must be because Eva was our dress rehearsal for Diana.  Both women were a national treasure and a lucrative international export.  Both were young, both became beautiful and (to quote the lyrics of Tim Rice) both were dressed up to the nines, at sixes and sevens.   Evita hit the West End about twenty five years after its subject's death.  Keep an eye out for a new musical -- Queen of  Hearts, perhaps? -- in about ten years' time.

John

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

A Photo Shoot at the Falls

We rounded a corner just as the sun came out, and there they were before us.  Beautiful women beaming at the camera, Latin men looking Latin as they clutched their girlfriends before the lens, children held close for the family photoshoot.  Yes, we´d arrived at the Iguazu Falls, one of the greatest natural wonders on this earth, and half the people there were looking in the opposite direction.

I´ve banged on about this to Henry for longer than the Falls have been falling, but please bear with me while I bang on a bit more.  Digital photography is destroying delight in the moment.   One picture won´t do any more.  There need to be dozens, just in case.  "Over here, the light´s better; no, she´s in the way; would you mind taking a snap of us both, thank you so much ... ooh, we´re a bit small in frame, could you possibly do another ..."   One Korean woman asked me to take her photo, and then instructed me to retake it twice.

I don´t know why it bothers me so.  I have no right to complain.  I have the luxury of a talented photographer partner, which leaves me smug and free to absorb the present without a moment of worry that it will soon be the past.  But the past it soon will be, and no on-line photo album will transport you back to that rainbow spray sparkling on your cheek.   Soak it up now, I say, and gaze upon the indigo while you can.  You´ll probably find it´s out of focus when you download it later.

We did it too

John (with apologies to Henry)

A Bit of Argie Bargie in BA

Manana, manana ... 

Argentinians like to protest.   I´ve been curious about this country since the early eighties, when I remember watching, on the news, the swelling crowds in Buenos Aires demanding the return of Las Malvinas.  A year or two later, in flickering black and white, during a performance of Evita, I was strangely stirred by 1940s cinefootage of Eva Peron rousing the crowds from the balcony of the Casa Rosada.

So I should not have been particularly surprised at what I saw developing before me in the Arrivals Hall of Terminal B at Ezeiza International Airport last week.  The queue for passport control was a 35 minute eyebrow-raiser, but the subsequent line to take your collected bags through customs was simply absurd.   Round the newspaper stands it swept, on past the after-shave counter of the duty free, back past Carousels 4, 5 and 6 on on towards the bored looking men by the three luggage scanners that weren´t broken.   I stood in line glumly.  So did everyone else.  And then, it began.  A slow hand-clap, which became louder, and louder, until a good thirty or forty Argentinians (all women, I think) had joined in the jamboree, with one slightly self-conscious chico inglese lending a helping hand.

It made no difference, of course.  Just as the weekly protest by groups of elderly mothers, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, appears to have had no impact whatsoever.  They´ve gathered in Buenos Aires´answer to Trafalgar Square each Thursday afternoon at 3.30pm for more than thirty years now, demanding to know what became of their sons and daughters who disappeared during the Military Dictatorships of the late seventies.  Something worth protesting about, I thought, that makes my small hand-clap seem very quiet indeed.

John

Thursday, 7 April 2011

In pictures... Vietnam


"Ok, enough with the photos..." I hear you cry.  Don't worry this is the last set.
Then you'll have to start getting used to stuff about South America and New Zealand.
But before all that, here's a snapshot of our travels in Vietnam.


We started with a grand old dame, Hanoi, whose streets used to be
crowded with bicycles, but now motorbikes are all the rage.
Crossing the street as a pedestrian is an interesting experience: you  just step off
 the pavement, look determined & keep moving. Somehow, the traffic just flows around you.


Confucius - and long facial hair - is still in style...


... and John could still get a decent haircut on the street.


In Vietnam, old ways of life are still ever-present,
but the life of a street seller is very hard...


... and you take whatever rest breaks you can,
wherever you can.


Early morning exercises around the city's Hoan Kiem Lake
are a joy to watch, with many people, mostly of middle-age and above,
taking part in routines that vary from delicate gymnastics... 


... to something resembling the Vietnamese equivalent of line dancing...


... and even ballroom dancing.


The country's conflict-ridden history is re-told at Hanoi's war museum...


... and the city's excellent Women's Museum is a
useful reminder that everyone played their part.


But for all Ho Chi Minh's anti-capitalist fervour, he's the one wrapped in
 plastic at the soda-sponsored gift shop, and it's clear now the dollar is king.


Our next stop was an overnight junk boat tour of Halong Bay...


... whose name literally translates as ''Descending  Dragon Bay', named after
the thousands of karst mountains that jut dramatically out of the sea.

We also visited the wartime tunnels at Vinh Moc...

... which makes for a head-bumping and claustrophobic experience.


Heading south, our journey continued by
 overnight train, on the 'Reunification Express'.


We both love train travel, particularly for its romance, which thankfully
wasn't too evident given that we shared our compartment with a honeymoon
couple from Hanoi. We did share a beer with them to celebrate though... 


... while we all enjoyed the passing views of life in the countryside.  



We sojourned (doesn't that sound posh) for a few days in Hué,
a beautiful old imperial city, with a historical citadel at its heart...


.. as well as beautiful shrines...


... and elegant funereal temples where emperors were laid to rest...


... to be watched over by eternal guardians...


... or kindly others who are just getting on a bit.


In Hué, there is history and colour everywhere....


... as well as a timeless sense of style.


I mean, really, this woman was sweeping the street
dressed neck-to-toe in golden silk for goodness sake. 


We did our best to find time for tea...


... as well as a beer or two. Believe it or not, this a funky floating bamboo bar,
seemingly one of Hué's best-kept secrets, hidden in the heart of the city.


A scene from Saigon which sums up Vietnam - always on the go, but always in style.