1000 Miles from Nowhere

Morocco

2007-08-11T13:03:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

Morocco is an interesting country in that it is less than an hour by boat away from Spain, and as such has a heavy European tourist influence. But there is no mistaking the fact that you are in an Islamic country the minute you land at the airport. Most of the women still wear full dress in the form of djellabas when they go out, a loose fitting, hooded gown. The call for prayers will echo through the streets five times a day and there are camels weaving through the traffic of downtown Marrakech. All the larger towns and cites have a walled medina (or old Arab quarter) in the centre built of reddish coloured sandstone. In general, it would be pretty hard to think you were still in Europe.

One thing that you do have to be very careful of, as a woman travelling in Morocco, is your state of dress (or undress as they would think). While they are very used to seeing Western women clad in shorts and tank tops, to do so is to invite harassment and comments from men. Even wearing pants can be provocative, so buying a long skirt, carrying a scarf to cover your shoulders and your hair and walking with a man can help make your visit more enjoyable. In one city I was wearing shorts when I walked to an ATM by myself just after we got off a bus and had some kids throw rocks at me!

Our very first impression of Morocco was that it was bloody hot! July is not the optimum time to visit this country (notice the thermometer reading on the upper part of the watch), with the average tempurature in Marrakech hovering around 38 degrees celsius. Rooms in general were fairly expensive, but if you wanted an air conditioner so you could sleep at night, costs double. We put up with no air conditioner for the first four nights, then realized that we really weren't going to get any sleep unless we splurged, so went all out every 3 or 4 nights after this.

Our first stop was Marrakech. We went out that night to enjoy the live entertainment at Djemaa el Fna, Africa's largest square. During the day there are a few juice stands and some sellers, but not much else. At night the place is jammed packed with a series of open air restaurants that seem to spring up out of no where and a variety of street performers, everything from snake charmers to story tellers and traditional dancers. There are, of course, an awful lot of pickpockets and beggars out as well, so keep a good hold on your wallet. And, if you're Gilles anyways, you will be having to constantly turn down offers of "top quality hashish", or "Vitamin H" as one enterprising young gentleman termed it. Morocco is actually the world's largest exporter of cannabis, most of which is turned into hashish and seems to be readily available everywhere. I would like to point out that I was not offered drugs once on our entire travel (I'm not sure if I should be offended about this or not), though Gilles must look like a real pot head to the dealers, as they didn't seem to believe him even after he turned them down a few times and would trail after him on the streets trying to convince him they had good stuff to sell!

Morocco is, however, a teetoller country and it is very hard to find any alcohol for sale, except in some of the more upscale restaurants that cater to tourists. Instead of bars there are cafes everywhere that are filled with men drinking gallons of "moroccan whiskey" or mint tea flavoured with mounds of sugar. While there are no Moroccan females present, they don't seem to mind a Western woman sitting down for a drink, probably because they don't really consider us proper women anyways. Just as well they don't drink as the younger Moroccan men seem to spend all their time hanging out together at these cafes, from early morning until late into the evening. Women you actually don't see that much of as you will not find them working in any of the shops, restaurants or cafes.

The other cool thing about Marrakech (and most other big Moroccan cities) is their souk, or market place. Marrakech has one of the biggest souks, split up in to a confusing array of alleyways and tiny little nooks. If you're looking for something specific you can ask for directions to the Souk Bradila (pitchers), Souk Smarine (clothing), Souk Kebi (leather) or Souk Zrabia (carpet) to name a few. Just be prepared - if you ask someone for directions, they will usually insist on taking you there themselves, then will demand an outrageous tip for the "help". Sometimes you will even just be walking in the same direction as someone who has come up to you on the street and pointed in a direction with no prompting, but will then claim they "guided" you to a mosque, souk or street corner. Having said this, Morocco is famous for its hospitality. Often this will take the form of being offered mint tea when you go into a shop, though at times this ploy is used to make tourists feel obligated to buy something (and the shop keepers certainly know how to lay on a guilt trip, be ready to just walk away from them, and sometimes even get nasty as the occasional place can be very aggressive about insisting you buy things). We did however have several great encounters with locals, who invited us to lunch with them, showed us around the Kasbah area of Marrakech and didn't pressure us to buy things from them. We usually did out of politeness sake anyways, but felt that even if we were overcharged a bit it was worth it for the opportunity to talk to local people without having to undergo a big sales pitch.

The food here was great, a welcome relief, and is likely our favourite "new" food type with chicken tajines (chicken cooked over charcoal with vegetables, spices, olives and marinated lemons in a conical earthenware pot) eaten with fresh bread coming in at the top. As well, fresh sqeezed orange juice, excellent cappicinos and, of course, mint tea, meant that most meals were a pleasure to enjoy.

After Marrakech we took off to Rabat to go to the Canadian Embassy. I wanted to double check that my passport would be good enough to get through three more countries - Spain, Egypt and London - and possibly get a new one. Unfortunately it takes at least 4 weeks to get a new passport, time we didn't really have, and the embassy seemed to think I would be okay. It was good that we stopped in, though, because Gilles actually saw an old Canadian friend, Jan, who had married a Moroccan woman after converting to Islam. He offered us some advice on places to go and see, plus it was good to see a familiar face.

We caught a train from Rabat to Fez and decided to actually pay for an official guide to take us through the medina in this city. Fez has an impressively ancient and confusing medina which is considered the largest car free urban area in the world. It is a veritable warren of streets and a guide is highly recommended so that you can get your bearing. Official guides in Morocco have to be licenced and the tourist police will check any local taking you around for an identification tag that proves such. This is because of all the problems that tourists had with "unofficial" guides robbing them, and getting them lost in the medina, then demanding outrageous sums to get them back out. The guides are generally quite inexpensive (we paid about $20 for a 5 hour tour) but only because part of the tour involves them taking you into a variety of stores where they get a commission when you buy something. It is always better, if you are really interested in purchasing an expensive item, to go back the next day on your own as guides can get as much as a 40% commission, which is, of course, passed on to the consumer. We were very upfront with our guide saying we had no intention of buying anything, but that we'd be happy to go to a carpet makers, leather workers overlooking the tannery and an antique store just out of curiosity. I don't think he really believed us, as by the end he was kind of upset that we really hadn't even shown interest in buying anything. Still, it is interesting to see how the handmade carpets are produced and learn how to tell a good carpet from a bad one. The tannery was an experience, and a really smelly one at that. It is fascinating to see that they are still using the vats that were built here centuries ago. The stiff, foul smelling skins from goats, cows and camels are soaked in vats of pigeon dung and urine to loosen the hair and soften the leather. Then all the excess flesh and hair is scraped off the skin and they are dyed a variety of colours or dried and softened into a natural shade. The job here is considered one of the lowest on the social ladder and is a hereditary position, passed on from father to son. We also saw the University of Al-Karaouine, the world's oldest institute of higher learning, established in 859 AD. There was also mosques, an ancient water clock and impressive mosaics to visit.

After Fez we proceeded onto one of our main destinations in the country, which was the Sahara desert. In spite of the heat we felt we would be remiss in not taking the opportunity to do a camel trek in the desert (after all, when are you going to get the chance to do so again). We proceeded by bus to the town of Merzouga where we negotiated a deal for a 3 night stay at a really nice hotel right on the edge of the desert, including breakfast and dinner, an overnight camel safari and (thank god) an air conditioned room at night. The hotel luckily had a pool, because we managed to record a high tempurature of 54 degrees celsius one afternoon while hanging around outside. The camel trek itself was fascinating, if incredibly uncomfortable (not recommended for those who think riding a horse is tough, this feels a hundred times worse). I think they call them the ships of the desert because you can get sea sick riding one. The camp we had was set amongst the sand dunes with small tents made out of hand woven carpets. Since we didn't leave until after 5PM the tempurature wasn't too bad, but we did encounter a pretty viscious sand storm, meaning that there was grit everywhere - in the food, your hair, under your clothes. Interesting yes, comfortable no...........

We begged a ride back to the main town of Er Rachida from a couple who had a rental car at the hotel. From here we planned to catch the bus back to Marrakech. Unfortunately we had missed the only bus in the early morning, so were forced to stay overnight. This turned out okay as we met some great guys who, upon seeing Gilles carrying his guitar, insisted we go to a cafe with them. They called a few of their friends out, including one guy who was a fabulous musician. He kept us amused for hours playing everything from traditional Berber songs, to the Cranberries, to little spoof songs that made fun of the people wandering around us. In return Gilles gave him his electronic LED tuner that he had found incredibly fascinating (and he outright asked for, there is no shyness about the Moroccan men).

In Marrakech we caught a bus to Essaouria. We had almost a week left in Morocco and were getting VERY tired of the heat. Essaouria is on the coast and is boasted to be one of the world's best places for wind- and kite-surfing. It also happens to be at least 15 degrees cooler than anywhere else in the country. Without the need for an air conditioned room we managed to get a cheap place to stay and wandered around for several days. I indulged in some shopping, which I had held off doing for most of the trip, too lazy to carry anything, and we hung out at cafes and watched the large local population of stray cats make themselves at home. You tend not to see stray dogs as most Muslims consider them dirty (if a dog touches something you have to wash it 7 times for it to be considered clean again), but have no problems at all with cats, though after one pissed on my backpack while we were at a cafe I tended to disagree. We actually managed to find a small restaurant there that had a satellite dish and would allow Gilles to watch a little of the Tour de France, which is his annual July ritual.

So three weeks in Morocco made us appreciate cooler weather, less aggressive touts and beggars, a glass of wine with dinner and cheap accomodations in Asia. On the other hand, the shopping was fantastic (as long as you know how to bargain), people once they realized you weren't going to buy stuff from them could generally be pretty friendly, and it was like no where else we've ever been. So come on out, just make sure you don't visit in summer unless you really enjoy hot weather, and you may want to bring padded pants for your camel ride.....................

Mozambique and Swaziland

2007-08-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

Written by Lynn

As a break from all the hustle and bustle of our wildlife viewing in Kruger National Park we decided to go Swaziland and Mozambique. This plan was fraught with danger. Not because of internal strife, civil war or guerilla activity, but rather because I was running out of pages on my passport. South Africa requires that you have 2 completely blank pages when you enter the country, and I was a long way from that! But with plenty of blank corners in the passport, the knowledge that if all else fails bribery was an option, and the strong belief that no one at the borders actually cares, we decided to risk it.

Our first break involved going into the incredibly friendly, relaxed country of Swaziland. This land locked country is one of the smallest on continental Africa, and is ruled by a monarchy whose roots stretch back to the beginning of the 19th century. Traditionally the king rules the country in concert with his mother, the Indlovukai or Great She Elephant. She is considered the spiritual leader of the country, while her son is the administrative leader. Succession is a bit of a complicated affair as the king himself does not choose who will take over the throne once he passes. Instead the royal family elects one of his wives to become the Indlovukai and her son automatically becomes king. The new monarch must be the only son of a royal wife of upstanding character, who is not one of the "ritual wives" (spouse assigned by the government to a newly elected king, born of one of the two main royal lines). Once a king is crowned he has virtual autonomy in the country and puts in place his own Prime Minister as well as most of the cabinet. The present king, Mswati III, has been heavily criticized for living a luxurious lifestyle in a very poor country.

Swaziland's main export is cane sugar, and the country actually has one of the highest GDP's per capita in Africa. Unfortunately, over 40% of the land in Swaziland (and the majority of the arable property) is owned by foreign investors, leaving most native Swazis existing on less than $1/day. As well, Swaziland has the dubious honour of having the highest rate of HIV infection in the world, standing at 38.8% of the population being positive for the virus. In an attempt to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, King Mswati imposed the rite of UMCHWASHO, or chastity ritual, in 2001. According to traditional belief, during a period of umchwasho unwed maidens are supposed to wear coloured tassels denoting their status as virgins, and are to stay such for the next 5 years. Those under 19 years of age are to have no contact at all with males, while those over 19 are restricted from having sexual intercourse only. Should the rite be broken, the girl's family would be fined, usually the outrageous sum of 1 cow. Due to the outcry from young women who said that their suitors would be unwilling to wait 5 years for them, the ban was lifted one year early in 2005. There was also a bit of a scandal when the king, in 2004 broke the ban himself by taking a new wife, though he did make sure to pay up with a nice bull calf for the honour.

King Mswati, at the present time, has 11 wives and 2 fiancees. His latest fiancee was chosen during the 2004 UMHLANGA (or "reed dance") festival. During this festival, held usually in the month of August, 20,000 to 30,000 maidens voluntarily participate in a 3 day ritual that ends with a dance in front of the king, local Swazis and, these days swarms of tourists. The king will give a "state of the union" speech prior to the dance, and has the option of choosing for himself a new wife from among the maidens present. King Mswati's father took full advantage of Swaziland's tolerance of polygamy, having accrued more than 70 wives in his lifetime, many of them chosen during the reed dance ceremonies.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with polygamy and an absolute monarchy, it is hard to not appreciate what Swaziland has to offer tourists. As soon as you cross over the border it seems that everyone is smiling a little more and is a little more welcoming. The land changes almost immediately from wide open lowveld plains into rolling, majestic hills. As you drive through the country you pass many roadside stands offering a variety of handicrafts, and often vendors will attempt to draw you in by having young children dancing on the sides of the road.

Our destination was the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary. Not for the wildlife viewing which, quite frankly in comparison to Kruger, is very sparse, but for the Sondzela Backpackers. This much talked about hostel has the well deserved reputation of being one of the most relaxing places on earth to hang out at. The staff is all from the local village, just outside the borders of the sanctuary, and are immensely pleased that you would consider driving so far off the tourist track to visit them. Every night they make a traditional feast over the outdoor fire pit and invite guests to join them. Our first night we had impala stew with roasted squash, beetroot salad and rice. Surprisingly, impala tastes pretty much like what I remember moose is like. The young man running the "front desk" (you actually just kind of wander onto the site and look around for someone who would be willing to take your money, there are no locks on the huts so theoretically you don't really need to pay) was very interested in hearing about the types of animals we hunt and eat in Canada. He didn't think that garbage eating black bears were to his taste, however. After dinner you can relax by the fire, play pool in the open air bar area, go for a swim or just wander back down to your rondawel that is set overlooking the Mhlanbanyatsi Valley where warthogs seem to rule supreme. It is strongly recommended you don't leave any food lying outside your hut as the hogs are pretty pushy about stealing what you don't watch carefully.

We did spend one day at the Mantenga Cultural Village where you enter the traditional living area by shouting out "yebo nkosi" so that someone can come an ritually welcome you to their home. We were treated to a tour of the village (which people still live in) by the chief, Albert and then took seats in the ampitheatre to watch a traditional story dance performed by the local youths. In it a young girl who was betrothed to an evil old man falls in love with a handsome warrior who saves her from a lion. Torn between love and honour, she turns her back on the handsome warrior to fulfill her obligations. But in the meantime the old lecher has caught wind of the two lovers and has accused the young girl of infidelity. The witch doctor steps in just as the girl and the warrior are about to be executed and uses magic to prove their honesty.

Beyond this we really didn't do much, a few short walks in the park (no lions or other dangerous animals, so very safe to wander around inside the gates as opposed to Kruger) and a whole lot of watching the world wander by. Refreshed after a few days we returned to South Africa (no problems at the border) and spent a few more days in Kruger Park before the rental on our car ran out.

The hostel we were staying in outside of Kruger, the Kruger View Backpackers, is only about 5 minutes from the Mozambique border. So we had our host, Dave drop us off at the immigration office. Our reason for going to Mozambique was simple - whale sharks. Apparently Mozambique has some of the largest concentration of whale sharks in the world. These guys are the largest fish in the ocean. The peaceful creatures are actually filter feeders, sucking up tons of nutritious plankton a day. It's a good thing they have not an aggressive bone in their body, because these guys are HUGE! The largest recorded whale shark was 41.5 feet long, but there have been anecdotal reports of them ranging up to one 75 foot monster that dwarfed the fishing boat that pulled up beside it. Their mouths stretch open to over 3 feet, and are filled with 300 to 350 small teeth. They are actually very tolerant, and apparently sometimes even playful, with human snorkellers.

All sounds great, really cool, a "must-do". This is, of course, easier than it sounds. We had to get to Tofo Beach in Inhambane, Mozambique. The first challenge was crossing the border, where line ups during the week can take at least 3 hours, double this on the weekends. So we did something we had never done before and played the white tourist, paying someone to hustle us through immigration. He also put us on the right mini van, loaded to the gills with locals, heading to the capital, Maputo, 2 hours away. By the time we got there our butts were pretty numb from having been shoved in the back of a van with our backpacks resting on our knees. Our next challenge was getting to Inhambane, which consisted to a 6 hour bus ride to the town of Xai-Xai the next day, then a ferry crossing to the town. Then another mini bus had to be caught to Tofo Beach, where whale shark snorkelling tours could be had. Whew, another exhausting day. We stayed at a nice hostel called Fatima's in a grass hut with no floor and only mosquito nets protecting the beds (no bedding actually provided, which was too bad since it was winter and we had no sleeping bags). Tofo Beach is a quiet, idyllic stretch of sand where, apart from diving and snorkelling with the whale sharks, there isn't much to do. It seems that an overabundance of young, 20-something Europeans were hanging out there, which led to an awful lot of late night partying and drinking for two old timers like us, who retired almost as soon as the sun went down.

That's okay, though, we were here for only one reason. The next day we were off in the zodiac boat in search of whale sharks. The dive centre gives everyone a snorkel, mask and fins. They zip out in the tiny boat amongst 10 foot tall swells. When they see a large dark shadow just below the surface they yell "out of the boat" at which point you foolishly obey and throw yourself into the ocean. Close to drowning due to his inability to swim (not really sure why he went in the first time, I think we forgot he was a land lubber), Gilles managed to have a close encounter on his one and only time out of the boat, almost landing on top of the hapless whale shark as he enthusiastically plunged into the ocean. After this we managed to find another 3 whale sharks and have a reasonable time viewing them. My advice, however, to all would be whale shark snorkellers is to not go with a boatful of teenage boys. They just couldn't seem to understand that if they dived around the whale shark trying to touch her, she would just sink down away from us to avoid contact. So sadly, my visions of spending half an hour lazily paddling along side one of these bohemoths didn't come to fruition, but it was still an incredible experience.

Anxious to avoid another night in Maputo we left the hostel the next day at about 4AM and headed back to South Africa. Luckily it's a lot easier to get out of Mozambique than it is to get in, so we managed to be back at our favourite hostel, Kruger View, by supper than evening. With only a few days left in South Africa, we decided to rent another car and spend our last bit of time doing what we loved best - safari driving in Kruger Park.

South Africa - the Good...............

2007-07-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

Written by Lynn

I loved South Africa. I mean, I REALLY enjoyed it. There was so much to do and see, the people that we met were unfailingly friendly and helpful. But there is a bizarre duality of the society there that may take you awhile to see, and it is tragically easy as a tourist to close your eyes to the problems that are present in this beautiful, vibrant country. This being said, I decided that I should divide the entries on South Africa into two different parts - one good, one bad. I think you need to read both of them to get a feeling for what being in South Africa was like. To read only the good would send you rushing to pack your bags to head off in a flurry for Cape Town armed with only your guide book. To read the other would mean that nothing short of flat out torture would get you to enter the country, meaning you would miss one of the greatest places we visited this year. This being said, consider going to South Africa, just be aware that there is very real danger and a lot of less obvious problems to be had there.

Visually South Africa is just as stunning as New Zealand with its dramatic cliffs and ocean scenery, to its wineries and then on to its amazingly vast lowveld plains. It has the fantastic advantage over other places in that it is teeming with unbelievable wildlife viewing opportunities. From whales to lions, sharks to giraffes; this country has it all.

To start with we flew from Hong Kong to Johannesburg and then caught our connection to Cape Town. Surprisingly, not being very good planners, we did take the unexpected step of booking ourselves into a hostel prior to landing in the country, a little too freaked out by horror stories in South Africa to just catch a bus downtown and look around like we usually do. First surprise - it was COLD. Not "really-should-have-worn-a-long-sleeve-shirt-with-my-shorts" type cold; more of a "we'd-better-go-buy-some-fleeces-and-hats" type cold. It is, after all, winter in the southern hemisphere. But still, it's Africa for God's sake. Anyways, we took care of the mundane clothing issue easily enough with a little shopping at an African type Walmart.

Our second surprise - we really liked Cape Town. The day we arrived it was sunny and bright making the drive into town quite spectacular (except, of course, for the part where you drive by the collection of ramshackle huts that make up the local township). From the airport you loop around the edge of Table Mountain and can see Table Bay spread out beneath you. Our hostel was clean and safe, being run by a couple of Canadians actually. We were located just off Locke Street, a vibrant road filled with shops, restaurants and bars. Being far enough off the road to be quiet, we could also easily get there in the morning for a cafe au lait and fresh baked muffins at one of the cafes.

The next day, unfortunately, the wind picked up, meaning that Table Mountain was closed. It's apparently too dangerous to be up there when the winds are high, so the cable car closes down. So instead we took the ferry out to Robben Island.

Robben Island is infamous for the fact that Nelson Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment here. It is a small oval of land, only 1km wide, that sits about 12 km off shore. It was originally a leper colony from 1836 until 1931, and in 1954 became a maximum security prison. During the apartheid years almost 3000 men were being held here, many on charges of treason. The different classes of prisoners were treated to a varying degrees of comfort. Beatings during interrogations were not unheard of and the with holding of already limited food rations was a common punishment. The political prisoners were classified as "D" prisoners, and were considered of the lowest class. They had to do hard manual labour in the limestone quarry and were prevented from mingling with other prisoners. All the D prisoners lived in drafty, damp cells with only a small sleeping pad, one blanket and a pail in their posession. They were allowed to send and receive only 2 letters a year, but these letters were censored by the prison. Any mention of politics, the prison, religion or pretty much anything but family would mean that these sections would be cut out, or the letter thrown away. Often prisoners would receive letters that looked like paper snowflakes after having "sensitive" material removed. The prisoners were also only allowed 2 visits a year from family members who had to apply months ahead of time to be given permission to make the trip.

When you step off the ferry onto the dock of Robben Island you are met by a guide that hustles you onto a bus for a tour of the various facilities and buildings still standing, including the leper graveyard, the quarry and the church built for the wardens' families. There is also the local penguin colony to greet you. The real part of the tour begins when the bus drops you off at the gates of the prison and you are met by a former political prisoner, who takes you through the prison itself and explains what the daily life was like when he was living there. His dignity and obvious respect when he was showing us the cell Nelson Mandela lived in is reflective of the quiet suffering the man himself had that made him such a powerful figure during the fight against apartheid. Several times in the 1980's Mandela was offered release from prison on the condition that he speak out against violence on the government's behalf, and always he refused, once stating, "What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts." It was a moving moment.

Turns out we were lucky to get to the island when we did, because the winds blew in a storm that lay trapped over Cape Town for the next 2 weeks, a not uncommon occurence. Cape Town is well known for its bad weather, that tends to linger around for days on end, making life generally miserable there. We were warned by the hostel that all the things we were interested in doing around town, short of visiting museums, would be a no go until the weather improved. Undaunted we rented a car, and found that the rumours we had heard were true. Less than two hours away, once beyond the influence of the cloud trapping Table Mountain, the weather was beautiful. With no real plan in mind we drove along the coastal highway admiring the view and feeling like we were back in New Zealand, which we had greatly admired. That is, of course, until a troop of baboons ran across the highway to remind us that, actually, we were in Africa.

We stopped for lunch in the town of Hermanus, reputed to be the world's best place for land based whale watching. Starting in late June, through to October, hundreds of Southern Right Whales, along with a few Humpbacks, fill the bay for months of cetacean speed dating sessions.
As well, many of the calves from last year's successful matings are born here in the warm waters before undertaking the arduous journey to the feed rich waters of the Antarctic for the summer months.

While here we took the advice of a friendly South African couple who saw us pouring over maps in a cafe trying to figure out where to go. They directed us to a small town called Franschoek, in the heart of the winelands. The mountain passes we travelled through on the way there did not disappoint, and that night we stayed at a wonderful hostel called The Otter's Bend. While sitting by the fire we helped ourselves to a bottle of the local vintage. The owner of the hostel was also very helpful with suggestions of things to see and do along the Garden Route (a commonly travelled highway for tourists), then even went so far as to reserve us a safari tent at the Addo Elephant National Park, which he himself considered one of the nicest parks in South Africa.

Well, he was right. We spent two nights there getting our first taste of the "African safari". It should be pointed out here that almost all of the wildlife in South Africa is now confined to game reserves and national parks. Any animal unlucky enough to stray from these ares will very likely end up as someone's supper, poaching being a common local pastime. On the up side, over 6 percent of the land in South Africa is dedicated to formal conservation and if you include private nature reserves the protected land is equal to about 1/3 of the country. The controversy now lies in the courts where various tribes are seeking compensation after being evicted from their traditional homelands to allow for the creation of these same areas. The focus now is to promote the economic benefits of having these preserves in order that they will continue to be an important resource for the new South Africa. Traditionally big game hunting has been viewed as the only way be bring in large amounts of money. In 2006 South Africa earned almost 105 million dollars from hunting revenues, almost 1/10th of a percentage of its GDP. Sounds impressive until you realize that in 1995 tourists brought in over 6 billion dollars in revenue, most of it for wildlife viewing opportunities, and the numbers continue to rise. It is estimated that over the course of its long life, a single elephant can be responsible for earning 1 million dollars in tourist bucks, a lot of it distributed to the local communties rather than just the big corporations that own the airlines and hotels.

Addo is a relatively small game reserve in comparison to bohemoths like Kruger, with a dense population of animals. So you are almost guarenteed to see elephants, kudus, zebras and ostriches. We even got stopped on the road by a large family group of elephants, that milled around the car for a half hour before moving on. With this unique opportunity we managed to see how all the elephants interacted with each other. The babies play, while the teenagers engage in mock charges and battles, and their mothers look on indulgently. The adults will occasionally move in to break up the fights that are getting a little out of hand, and the babies wander around the car to get a closer look at the can of camera toting humans. While it may be anthropomorphising them a bit, you can't help but see all the human characteristics in the way they act.
Which is why the situation for the elephants in both Kruger and especially Addo is so distressing.

In recent years there has been a surge in the population of elephants in several national parks. In Addo it is easy to see the effect on the vegetation, where large swaths of the lowveld bushes are crushed and completely denuded of any leaves. A decade or more ago a similar situation occured and nothing was done. A severe drought followed and resulted in the death of not only most of the elephants, but also several thousand other animals who died of malnutrition. So now they are stuck trying to come up with a solution. Decades ago the glut of elephants would result in a migration to a less populated area. Now, with the populations fenced off and seperated by miles of urban civilization, this is no longer possible. It seems that in Addo they have decided to cull some of the elephants. But the tragic thing is that this does not mean just going in and removing the older members of the herd.

Researchers who spend a lot of time with them tend to refer to an elephant herd as a single entity rather than a group of individuals. Watching a group of elephants you will see extaordinary teamwork as they co-operate in group defence, child rearing and decision making. Elephants communicate with over 70 distinctive vocal sounds and 160 identified visual and tactile signals, expressions and gestures. Using low frequency rumbles, they can communicate with other elephants over a mile away, who pick up these signals through special sensors in their padded feet. When one of the members of the herd dies, the elephants will go into a period of mourning, standing vigil over the body for up to a week and ritualistically covering it with branches and dirt. For years afterwards the elephants will return to the site and with their trunks, rub the lower jaw bone of the skeleton, much in the same way elephants will greet each other by touching trunk to cheek. Since an adult elephant has no natural enemies, most will die of starvation at 60 to 80 years of age, as the last of their teeth fall out. The young elephants are very dependant upon the guidance of their elders as they mature, a baby never straying more than 15 feet from its herd for the first 8 years of its life. Removal of older members of a herd causes a delay in the proper social behaviour development for the young. This was shown to be true during a previous cull of older bull elephants in Addo. The remaining young bulls started to exhibit extreme aggression towards each other, so much so that there was an increase in mortality with 90 percent of deaths as a result of inter-male fighting, rather than the usual 6 percent seen in a stable group. The re-introduction of a few older bulls quickly restored order and normalized the death rates.

Young elephants who have been exposed to the traumatic and violent deaths of cargivers in the herd have been shown to exhibit symptoms of what is likened to post traumatic stress disorder - hyperaggression, abnormal startle response, insensitive mothering and asocial behaviour. Cases like this have been documented in Kruger Park where, up until 1994 when public protests stopped the practice, yearly culls of older animals took place. What this all amounts to is that should a cull be deemed necessary, an entire herd - matriarch to newborn - will be taken out all at one time, a job I envy no one.

Slightly distraught over this prospect I questioned several field guides and game wardens that we met about alternatives. It seems that it is too late for birth control measures, even if there were some effective and economical means of contraception for elephants presently available. Fortunately in Kruger they are working on an innovative solution. Presently the governments of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are working to create the world's largest nature preserve that would incorporate three protected areas that share borders - Kruger National Park in South Africa, Coutadal 16 in Mozambique and Gonorzrou in Zimbabwe. This would mean that 60,000 square miles, approximately the size of Florida, would be opened up for migration purpose. Because of recent wars in both Zimbabwe and Mozambique, there are virtually no elephant herds left in these areas, all of them having been poached for bush meat and ivory. The plan is to translocate entire herds at the cost of $2500 an elephant into these recovering ares. A noble, if outrageously expensive, plan.

Anyways, three days of driving around Addo and sleeping in a very comfortable safari tent overlooking the park is highly recommended to anyone. We were even blessed one night by a visit from a small spotted Genet on our porch where we were BBQ'ing our dinner. Nicknamed "Bob", our friend spent the night crouched on the edge of the stairs; not quite trusting us, but lured by the promise of chicken.

We rushed back to Cape Town after this, only to find that in our absence the weather hadn't changed much. So we decided to base ourselves in Hermanus. There was a few reasons for this. As it was the beginning of whale watching season I spent many hours walking along the extensive Cliff Paths the town has. Here, come September/October, you can often see whales less than 100 metres from shore. In early June the best I got was being able to watch a few early arrivals for the season breaching through my binoculars, but still a breath taking sight. As well there were several penguin colonies in the area, these ones being much easier to see the birds from than the ones we had been at in New Zealand.

The real reason we were here, though, is because Gilles had became taken with the idea of diving with Great White Sharks, an activity available no where else in the world. Just a few kilometres off shore is Shark Alley, one of the most densely populated shark highways on the globe. Their reason for being here - easy, take out lunches. Cape Fur seals breed by the thousands on Dyer Island and Seal Island (about 50,000 at last count!) meaning the sharks stop in here on their annual migration to eat (though little to nothing is actually known about where they migrate to and from). The large amount of natural chum created by the carcasses of the seals, sea birds and fish in the area, as well as all the feces and urine put up a horrible stink that the sharks apparently cannot resist (yum, I know).

So to address the various concerns about shark diving. First off, Mom, we're in a metal cage, so as long as you are smart enough to keep your toes and fingers inside, you should be pretty safe. Secondly - the impact on the sharks. Well, we did have some legitimate concerns regarding this, so asked several questions. There are a limited number of companies that are engaged in shuttling tourists out for this activity. All of them are restricetd to carrying 25kg of chum a day. This translates into about 4 to 5 tuna heads. Once this is eaten, the tour is finished. So it is in the company's best interest to not allow the sharks to feed. Instead the chum is used to attract sharks to the area, and then pulled away. Almost all of the sharks who show up are juvenilles, the adults being too smart to bother with dead fish when there is fresh seal meat so close. And because this is a migratory pathway, none of the sharks are here for more than a day, meaning the effect on their natural hunting behaviour is limited. Maybe not an "ecofriendly" adventure, exactly, but it certainly increases your respect for these amazing animals, a fact that the companies tout as a big reason for allowing shark diving. Knowing and respecting these guys a little more means people are less likelly to be unreasonalbly fearful of them.

This being said it was an AWESOME experience. We had to wait a few days for the weather to clear and the seas to become calm enough to go. We saw several sharks, the longest of which was a mere 12 feet long (adults can reach up to 21 feet). It should be pointed out that the most impressive thing about seeing these guys, what really blows you away, is not just the length, but the massive girth of them. You visually have trouble taking it in. The immense strength in them is obvious too as they casually glide by, then with a small flick of their tail propel themselves through the water. Gilles was "lucky" enough to have a close encounter when the crew did not pull the tuna heads in fast enough and shark crashed into the cage.

Replete with our animal viewing we left Cape Town to fly to Johannesburg and go on our actual safari in Kruger National Park. I will confess that we were a little concerned that we wouldn't be impressed by Kruger, after everything we had seen. And going on an organized safari is very expensive, in spite of us booking the cheapest one we could find. As well, to be perfectly honest, we were a little afraid of Jo'burg (reasons for this to be discussed in the next post). So we booked a room at a hostel just a few miles away from the airport and flew in the day before our safari. This meant by 5AM the next morning we were gone from the city, with never even having seen it.

The good news was the safari was anything but a disappointement. We had a great group of 5 "kids" with us (all less than 25 years old), from Brazil, Ireland and Scotland, and spent 2 nights at a wonderful camp on the edge of the park. The first day we drove out there the 6 hours from Jo'burg, then we had a night drive where we saw, well, nothing, unless you count a glowing bird's eye as exciting. But after a very cold night (it is winter after all) spent in our tents we loaded up in our open safari truck and entered the real Kruger park.

Wow. Enough said. This place is amazing. Within the first hour we had seen rhinos, impalas, giraffes and zebras. Over the next several hours we managed to catch sight of a leopard slinking away from its kill (an unfortunate impala wedged in the crook of a tree); a large bull elephant playing in a mud hole; buffaloes and countless birds. And the great thing about Kruger is this is all in the animals' natural surroundings, completely unspoiled. Its kinda like someone coming into your living room and watching you eat a pizza while watching a hockey game. The animals themselves are so accustomed to people that they basically ignore you, fully expecting you to stop as they amble across the road. You can't be guaranteed to see anything of course (except impalas, the little antelopes that the guides call "lunch on the run" because they are so numerous), but we were exceptionally lucky even the first day.

We were then temporarily sidelined when our truck got a flat tire. Well, maybe it was a little more serious than temporary, since our truck was without a tire spanner, so our guide couldn't change the flat. Since you are DEFINITELY not allowed to exit your vehicle in Kruger (I can give you several unsubstantiated stories the guides shared with us of dumb tourists who did just that and didn't live to tell the tale; these are, after all, WILD animals) we were stuck there. It turned into a five hour delay in our schedule, while the safari company tried to track us down. Turns out for us this was a good thing, as it meant a highly illegal night drive through Kruger Park (the gates close at dusk and you need to be OUT or face a large fine and a lifetime ban). We saw a lion pride, another leaopard and elephants galavanting in the setting sun. It wasn't so great for our guide, who was sweating bullets because being caught meant the loss of his job. But we made it out ok, if a little cold, and bought our guide a beer to calm his nerves.

The next day we left the park to do a scenic drive along several look out points, then headed to a four star hotel built right beside the brand new Jane Goodall Chimpanzee Rescue Centre.

Chimps are not native to South Africa, but as the political climate and access to veterinary care is more ameniable here, the rehabilitation centre was set up and opened less than six months ago. There are presently 17 adult and juvenille chimps housed here, as well as a few babies. They are all resuced from various parts of Africa, the deal being that once rehabilitated, they will be returned for release to their native country. This may eventually create problems as the centre demands that they be released in protected areas that are monitored for poachers, but it will be years before any of this becomes an issue. The rehabilitation is done in a series of steps that take the chimps from an isolation pen to an outdoor cage where they are fed, to one where they have to hunt for the food provided, then finally to an enormous fenced in area where they are monitored with no human contact and they have to fend for themselves. Time to full rehabilitation is dependant upon how the individual chimp functions, but it is expected to take years. The stories of how they ended up here are varied, but almost all are very sad. Chimps, being incredibly social animals, tend to not do well on their own. Most of these guys had grown up without the benefit of interaction with other chimps. They were pets, novelties, tourist draws; that is until they came of adult age and turned destructive and angry. An adult male chimp has the strength of 7 men, and these guys are so much bigger and stronger than I expected them to be. Often, once they display any aggression, they are just shot, and a new cute baby chimp is obtained.

Nikki had been chained up in a bar, where he was taught to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. Amadeus grew up in a private home, where his owner shaved off his body hair, dressed him in human clothes, taught him to eat with a fork and even had him sleep in his bed. Xena's story was not so tragic, but touching in its own way. She was owned by a Saudi family that loved her dearly. When they took her to a vet for a health check up they were informed that not only was it illegal to have a chimp as a pet, but that without interaction of other chimps she could never develop normally. So the Saudi family paid out of their own pocket to have her brought out to the rescue centre, a whopping $10,000, in the hopes that she would one day be released back into the wild to live a normal life.

So that was the end of our organized safari. Not being satisfied with our limited Kruger experience, we got dropped off in the town of Nelspruit, just a half hour from the gates and rented another car so we could go back into the park on our own. In total, between the safari and our own driving time, we spent 6 days, dawn 'til dusk, driving through Kruger. One of the advantages of Kruger is that it is never the same from one day to the next. It has an amazing variety of landscape. Everything from watering holes, river valleys, lowveld plain and thickets, it's all here, and all the variety of animals that inhabit them. After the first few days of staring around looking for the "big" five - buffalo, elephant, lion, leopard and rhino - you start to notice the smaller and less common stuff. We were lucky to see 2 cheetahs (there are only 200 in the park), secretary birds, monitor lizards, black backed jackals, hyenas, leopard tortoises and mongooses (is that "mongeese"?) to name a few things. And big or small, we loved it all!

Of course we didn't spend 6 days in a row in Kruger, I don't think anyone can concentrate for that long (there are many hours you spend just staring at blowing grass). In between visits we went to Swaziland and Mozambique, but we can discuss those later. We also varied it by at first staying in the park, then at a great hostel, called Kruger View, in the town of Komatipoort. It was less than 10 minutes to the gate and owned by a great guy called Dave, and guarded by his two vicious pups, Choc and Sandy. We'd highly recommend it to anyone thinking of going to Kruger.

Well just rereading this post I am exhausted and exhilirated. We spent 5 weeks in South Africa and they were probably the most action packed of our trip. I would emphasize again that this was a great country, BUT (ain't there always a but) you might want to read the next post..........

................the Bad, and the Ugly

2007-06-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

Written by Lynn

As I said in the post you read just before this, I loved South Africa. It may have been the most action packed 5 weeks we had on the road, with so much to see and do. To clarify things however, this is not to say that South Africa is without its problems. First and foremost, anyone thinking of visiting South Africa has to be aware of its outrageously high crime rate.

Just before we left Johannesburg I was reading the newspaper with my morning coffee and they were reporting on the 2006 crime rates. There was almost 20, 000 murders last year in this country. Sounds high, but what does it really mean. To put things in perspective I looked up some stats on Canada. There are, annually, 2.1 murders/100,000 people at home. In South Africa it is 50.8/100,000 (I even saw reports as high as 414/100,000, though I think these were greatly exaggerted; at least I hope so). Even more disturbing is that South Africa is considered the rape capital of the world, with a ridiculously high rate of child abuse. Some say this is because of the all too common urban legend that sex with a virgin can cure you of AIDS. With a HIV infection rate that was estimated at 21.5% of the population in 2003 (recent stats put the rate of infection of pregnant mothers admitted into hospitals at a staggering 33%) there is no getting around the importance of this disease in the developement of the mindset of imminent death amongst the South African poor (ie. black). This feeling has a direct effect that leads them into lives of crime in an attempt for short term gains. Other violent crimes, such as car jackings and home invasions are also rampant. Every day in South Africa there are 50 murders, 150 rapes and 700 serious assaults.

Well, I will say categorically we had no problems what so ever, even though we walked around Cape Town after dark a few times (only because our ferry from Robben Island got back late). So we were feeling pretty complacent. Those that promote South Africa as a tourist destination (and it needs a lot of promotion, tourism rates are dropping and almost entirely because of the fear of crime) say that the majority of is confined to urban areas, mainly the poor black townships, and that almost all the violent crimes are committed by people known to the victims. We just figured you had to be careful and everything would be fine - don't walk around alone at night (especially if you are a woman), lock your car doors when you are driving in the city (prevents someone from pulling you out when you are stopped at a red light) and don't flash expensive jewellery and cameras around. ALL the hostels we stayed in had locked gates and even security guards at some. The car rental company was very clear that not only were we to take everything out of the car every night, but that we should leave the glovebox open and the flap to the hatchback up so that anyone looking in would know for sure there was nothing to steal. We don't tend to engage in risky behaviour, like going out drinking at bars, so we felt pretty good about the situation.

That is until we stayed at our last hostel in Jo'burg. There the owner took me to a local restaurant place to pick up some take out pizza and I bought him a beer while we were waiting. Constantly curious about what different South Africans think about the situation in their country, I always try to subtly ask questions about it, trying to be careful to not offend anyone. Some just politely ignore the questions, or give very brief answers, but not this guy. Wow, once the flood gates opened even I wished I hadn't asked. He had grown up in the house that we were staying at, then had been in the military during the apartheid uprisings, and now was retired and running a hostel. He said that up until a decade ago he had never had any problems in the neighbourhood, but in the last 5 years there have been 21 attempts to break into his house. He described in great detail about how he was mugged at gunpoint and said he never carries a gun himself because it just gives someone a reason to shoot you in order to steal it. We sat at the bar and he pointed out various people and described to me how they had been victims of crimes. He scoffed at the numbers that were given in the papers saying that, the rapes in particular, were probably only reported half the time so the stats weren't even close to being accurate. He figures about 10% of the backpackers that stay with him have been mugged and almost none of them bother to report it to the police. He said a lot of other things too, much of it mind boggling because in any other country or situation it would be considered naked racism, though it sadly seems here that he was only voicing out loud what a lot of people are thinking. By the time my pizza came I was just sitting there with my mouth hanging open, the vitriol I induced by a simple question leaving me (uncharacteristically) speechless.

Well, this brings us to a HUGE problem here - racism. We all know about "apartheid", but I think, in my case at least, I was under the impression that the release and election of Nelson Mandela in the 1990's had brought about great, positive changes for South Africa and that, while there were still hurdles to overcome, things were on the road to recovery. A truly naive veiw point as it turns out.

It's a strange society here. 75% of the population is black, 11% white and about 14% "coloured" ( a term used in South Africa to denote people who are oriental, Malay or Indian; though a notable exception during apartheid were the Japanese who were considered honorary whites for trade reasons). It is said (and I believe it) that about 90% of the money in this country is in the hands of the white population. It is probably true to say that the problems are between different economic levels, rather than different colours, but here it amounts to the same thing. And the real issues began decades before, though "apartheid" (meaning "seperateness" in Afrikaans) is what most of us remember.

The organized, and greatly reviled, institution of apartheid began in 1948 when ethnic seperation began to be enforced. A cynical person may say the white government looked around and realized that, even though they controlled the country economically, the numbers were against them, so they began to take steps to correct the problem before voters could be rallied to vote them out. The black populations were assigned to one of ten bantustans (homelands). Some may never have even been there in their lifetimes, but as a citizen of one of these "sovereign nations" (none of which were ever recognized by the UN) it meant that no black person had a vote in South Africa. The bantus themselves made up 13% of the land in South Africa, and were placed in the most desolate, least productive areas possible. The government then went on to pass laws that prevented blacks from moving from one district to another without written permission. Complete segregation was impossible as white owned farms, factories and homes needed the cheap labour the black population provided. So apartheid was introduced. In 1950 the Population Registration Act had all citizens of South Africa assigned a race based on superficial and often arbitrary characteristics such as size and shape of the nose, curliness of the hair and skin tone. The races were assigned different residential and business sections using the Group Areas Act, many people, both black and white, being forcibly moved from their homes. In some cases families were not able to live together as certain members could be deemed to be of different races. In just Johannesburg area over 60,000 black people had been relocated to Soweto, their businesses and homes stripped from them. Many of the designated black residential areas were so far from their places of work that people had to travel 2 hours each way to get home.

A series of edicts enforced by the government followed. In 1950 the busy government officials also created the Immorality Act (which made sexual relations between races a criminal offence), and the Suppression of Communism Act ( which banned any political parties the government deemed to be "communist" which, not surprisingly, included the black run ANC). In 1953 it was the Seperate Amenities Act (creating different hospitals, schools, beaches and buses for the different races). By the end of 1954 only 10% of the population controlled 95% of the land and all its resources.

What followed were years of persecution of the black population. In 1955, as an example, Sophiatown, the oldest and most economically viable black township in the country, was levelled and its entire population relocated to make room for the white town of Triomf (which means "triumph" in Afrikaans). Passports were denied to black South Africans as they were not officially considered citizens of the country, and pass laws became more rigidly enforced, restricting the movement of the black population severely.

In 1955 the Freedom Charter was declared by the black run African National Congress. It stated its goal as being as follows:

We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authroity unless it is based on the will of the people; that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality; that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities..................

The main focus of this document, and the reason it was considered so dangerous to the ruling parties, was its focus on a non-racial South Africa. It was immediately declared a communist act and the document became restricted material. As such, almost no one had ever read it prior to the 1990's, and it was a commonly held belief amongst the white population that it was calling for the expulsion, by force if necessary, of all Afrikaaners from the country. The declaration of the Freedom Charter led to the Treason Trial, where 156 activists, including Nelson Mandela, were tried. The trial lasted over 4 years and resulted in no convictions. Many of these defendants were re-tried and convicted in 1964 during the Rinova Trial. This trial was denounced by the UN and political sanctions instituted by many European countries.

By 1962 the ANC and other black political parties had reached the point where they deemed violent acts of protest to be necessary. When questioned as to their motives they held up the example of the Sharpville Massacres, which occured on March 21, 1960. During a peaceful protest against the pass laws 300 police opened fire on the crowd, killing 69 people and injuring 186. This convinced the ANC to take up armed resistance. In retaliation, Prime Minister Verwoerd declarecd a state of emergency which allowed the police to retain people without trial, resulting in the arrest of almost 18,000 black activists, several who were sent to Robben Island as political prisoners.

By the 1970's the resistance movement had gained force. External pressure from other countries continued to mount against the South African government, but they refused to change their policies. Instead, in 1974 they introduced the South Afrikaans Medium Decree, which was to be used to force black schoools to use the Afrikaaner language, which many blacks considered to be the language of oppression. Said the then Deputy Minister of Bantu Education: "I have not consulted the African people on the language issue and I'm not going to. An African may find that the "big boss" only speaks Afrikaans or English. It would be to his advantage to know both."

On April 30, 1976 the Orlando West Junior Shcool in Soweto refused to go to school in a form of non-violent protest that was strongly encouraged by the South African Students' Organization, run by Steve Biko, who was influenced by the ideology of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi. The strike spread to other schools, and on June 16th there was a mass rally, at which the police again opened fire on school children. By the end of the day there were 172 blacks dead and 439 injured. Pictures of a 13 year old child being gunned down by the police made headlines across the world. At this point, even Steve Biko began to call for more strident protests, though he strove to be a voice of reason in a boiling cauldron of violence.

In 1977 Steve Biko was arrested for being in a restricted area without a pass. Following his arrest, he was badly beaten and left untreated for 3 days, prior to being driven over 700 miles in the back of a truck to the Pretoria hospital where he died a few hours later. His death was ruled a suicide in spite of the massive head injuries recorded on the autopsy report. His death rocked the nation and his funeral was attended by 1000's of mourners and several international delegates, ambassadors and diplomats from Europe and the United States. What followed was an increase in international protests against apartheid - investors were pressured to not invest in South African companies, sports teams were banned from international events and South African tourism boycotted. By the late 1980's the USA, UK and 23 other countries had imposed trade sanctions on South Africa.

Internally, from the late 1980's and into the 1990's the ANC and the PAC began to use violence to prevent blacks from buying goods or using businesses owned by whites. Black on black violence escalated, resulting in a murder rate increase on 100 deaths/month up to 259 deaths/month by 1993.

Finally bowing to international and internal pressure, Nelson Mandela was released on Feb. 11, 1990, 27 years after his imprisonment. This came only a few weeks after the election of a new, more moderate Prime Minister, Frederik de Klerk. He would eventually share a Nobel Prize with Nelson Mandela, awarded in 1993 for putting an end to apartheid.

In 1994 Nelson Mandela was voted Prime Minister as head of the ANC, with 62.7% of the votes, in the first time blacks were allowed to vote in South Africa. His government put into place a new constitution which used the Freedom Charter as its basis, and began the long struggle to restructure the country after the damage caused by decades of apartheid. Unfortunately, it seems that even with the best of intentions, life in South Africa has developed all sorts of new problems.

Among other things done they instituted a policy of Black Employment Empowerment (BEE) in order to try and obtain equity targets. Even today government contracts are only given to companies with good BEE ratings. This has led to what many say is open discrimination against whites, increasing the "us vs. them" feeling so obvious to those willing to look. In addition the unemployment rate in South Africa hovers around the 25%, with over 50% of the population living below the poverty line. An influx of people from both Mozambique and Zimbabwe are only compounding the problem of urban crowding and lack of jobs. As these immigrants enter illegally (many from Mozambique crossing through Kruger National Park, which is why it is estimated that 78% of the lions in the park have tasted human flesh!) they remain jobless, homeless and desperate. The result is frustration, rising crime rates and a further division, both physically and emotionally, between black and white South Africans. As the rich whites move into gated communities, the townships continue to grow and spill over into the surrounding cities. In some places you can see shacks made of cardboard and plywood seperated from million dollar mansions by only a concrete wall topped with barbed wire, the ever present security company logo emblazoned on every available surface. There appear to be no solutions, no way for things to become more equitable for everyone. And while it is easy as a tourist in South Africa to only see the good, any effort at all will show you something different. If you probe beneath the surface of the face presented to the world of a country on the brink of recovery from years of oppression it will bring you up against the harsh and ugly reality.

So here's the other side of the story in South Africa. Massive crime rates brought on by unending poverty, despair that things will never get better, and a conviction that life is short (average life expectancy of a black South African is only 42). Throughout this post are scattered pictures of all the great things we saw in South Africa, and I would emphasize again that we really enjoyed ourselves. But after rereading this post, maybe I can ask you to do me a favour and read the first one again, just so I don't leave you with a bad taste in your mouth................

Hockey Night in Hong Kong

2007-06-10T04:26:00.000-07:00

Written by Lynn

From Bangkok we flew into the country of Macau, then took a ferry to Hong Kong. "Why?", one might ask, go to all this trouble (we set a new personal record, having been in Macau less than an hour, but still having to get exit and entry stamps). For those of you planning on travelling to Asia, a heads up. There are several incredibly cheap airlines, our favourite being AirAsia. For about $20, plus taxes, you can get to most places in South East Asia if you plan ahead of time. Oh, except Hong Kong..............had to go to Macau for that. But the ferry ride is less than an hour, and gives you a great view of the habour coming in and in the end was cheaper than paying for a visa to go overland through China.

In Hong Kong we got a very small room in a little rabbit warren of guesthouses called Chuking Mansions (the "mansions" part being a bit of a euphamism). Fifteen stories of itty bitty rooms, all managed in various stages of cleanliness, make up this backpackers haven. On the bright side, it's not very many places you can go in Hong Kong and stay for under $25 a night. It was clean and relatively safe (except I didn't exactly trust the staff not to go through our stuff, so we had to lock up every time we left). The worst part of the place was the miniscule elevator that serviced the building. While waiting in the line up for the elevator to descend you could watch the uncomfortable occupants on a closed circuit tv mounted in the lobby, just before entering the crush yourself (god forbid you have backpacks with you!).

Here our main goal was simple - we HAD to see a hockey game. God knows it ain't often a Canadian team makes it to the Stanley Cup finals, much less the Ottawa Senators. So with steely determination we set forth to seek out the only Canadian owned bar in Hong Kong, which necessitated a ride across town in the extremely well designed Hong Kong subway (not near as arduous as I make it sound). Getting there 2 hours before game time, we secured our coveted seats (it's a VERY tiny bar) to watch the taped game. This means we had to nurse our very overpriced beers (most things in Hong Kong seem overpriced after Vietnam), and, hey, who said bar peanuts can't constitute a full meal when push comes to shove. Here, with about 100 of our fellow Canucks crammed into the bar, we watched the Sens go down in flames in Game 2, a 1-nothing debacle that apparently was stretched out to a mere 5 games. Sigh............it was worth it though. Our one and only hockey game of the 2006-07 season.

While in Hong Kong we also went up to The Peak, a peice of pricey real estate that overlooks Hong Kong harbour. The tram that goes up there was built in 1881 and ascends a 1364 metre long slope that reaches a 48 degree angle in some spots. Originally only non-Chinese people living in Hong Kong were allowed to live on top of the peak, social status being measured by the altitude of your home. The tram was used to ferry these Europeans down to the city. This ordinance was finally overturned in 1930, though most of the houses up here are still well beyond the means of us ordinary mortals.

We also headed out to Stanley Market, a touristy little spot that is recommended more for the bus ride out there than the actual place. Hong Kong public buses are huge, double decker affairs that cling to the side of the cliffs overlooking the habour far below as they races around hairpin curves.

Back at "home" we admired the Avenue of the Stars (even though Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee were the only ones we recognized) and Repulse Bay up close. We wandered through the stores and went to our last Asian markets, filled with the usual assorment of cheap knock off designer clothes, sunglasses, bizarre food items and "rolex" watches. Hong Kong's big push when it comes to street sellers is for fake purses and watches, so if that's your thing, this is the place to come.

The day of our flight to Africa, which left at the inconvenient time of 11:30 pm, saw us lugging our backpacks around town post check out (most hotels will let you leave your bags behind the counter at no extra cost for a few hours, and ours was no exception, but we didn't really believe the bags would be completely intact when we came back, so we took them with us). Fortunately Hong Kong is designed with the international traveller in mind. Even though the airport is a 30 minute train ride away, they have a convenient spot downtown where you can check your bags in with your airline up to 24 hours before your flight. Thus relieved of our burdens we headed out to our last destination in Hong Kong. Chatting with some ex-pats living Hong Kong the night before at the bar Gilles had discovered that we narrowly missed not going to his favourite restaurant - Krispy Kreme! Ah, so few people that I know are able to sit down and eat a half dozen donuts one right after the other and look at themselves in the morning without regret. Thus fortified, it was on to South Africa.

Good Morning, Vietnam

2007-05-31T01:46:00.000-07:00

Written by Lynn

After spending the better part of a couple weeks in Cambodia, we headed into Vietnam. We had gone back to Phnom Pehn after Angkor Wat with the express purpose of getting our Vietnamese visas. This took a couple days, only because when we went to the embassy I wasn't really paying attention and didn't turn away while one of the officials was accepting bribe money. This meant that all the other tourists there got their visas the same day, we were told to come back in three. Oops..........

We caught the bus into Ho Chi Minh City when we finally managed to get our visas together. HCMC sits in the southern region of Vietnam in the Mekong Delta. Also known as Saigon, HCMC was renamed in 1975 after the Vietnam war was over. I could go into some detail here regarding the war and the high esteem the Vietnamese people hold Ho Chi Minh in (affectionately called "Uncle Ho"), but Gilles is a lot more passionate about this subject, so I will leave this to him.

HCMC is basically another big city in SE Asia, nothing on first appearance to hold your attention. But what you have here is a city that has managed to recover in less than 2 generations from almost complete destruction during the Vietnam War. While here you can take in a lot of history, and from a perspective we aren't usually party to in North America. The war museums and other monuments are DEFINITELY not pro-American. The most important museum to visit is the War Remanents Museum. It has a large number of photographs and memoribilia collected from the war, as well as a few tanks and fighter airplanes. There is also an exact replica of the "tiger cages", a series of tiny cells that was used to house suspected Viet Cong while they were being questioned. Great detail is given to describing the types of torture used to extract information. One of the hardest things to see include a group of photographs of Americans slaughtering Vietnamese. There is one photo of an US soldier moving a body, which he holds up with one hand. There is basically nothing left of the body but the head and an empty bag of skin. You can also see here several human feti preserved in formaldehyde that were aborted due to deformities caused by the spreading of Agent Orange in the country side of Vietnam.

Agent Orange was herbicide used by the Southern Vietnamese Army and their American allies as a defoliant. Since the Viet Cong (elements of the communist Northern Army) were skilled at guerrilla fighting, and the main advantage the US had during this war was air power in the form of helicopters, removing ground cover was deemed a strategic advantage. 42 million litres of dioxins, including Agent Orange, were sprayed over sections of Vietnam from 1961 to 1971, devastating pristine forests and creating wastelands and rice paddies that could no longer produce rice. Agent Orange is the most notorious of the defoliants used due to its proven nature as a carcinogen. Exposure to it dramatically increases the risks of Hodgkin's Lymphoma, non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. There has also been a multitude of other diseases that have causitive links to Agent Orange, which is to say that exposure to it means you have a better chance of contracting any of the following - Type II diabetes, prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, spina bifida, skin lesions, renal cancer, testicular cancer and the list goes on. Here in Vietnam one of the most dramatic effects of Agent Orange is as a teratogen, meaning that the DNA of exposed victims is deformed and causes birth defects in the next several generations. Surprisingly it seems that the birth defects are getting worse. The children of Vietnam vets would often only be missing fingers or toes, their grandchildren are often born without limbs. Part of the reason for this may be that Agent Orange continues to be present in the environment, so that levels in successive generations are higher now than they were in the people originally exposed. In the area of Da Nang, Vietnam, Hatfield Environmental, a Canadian company, found in 2006 that the levels of dioxin were 300 to 400 times what would be considered acceptable. The companies responsible for producing Agent Orange, including Dow Chemicals and Monsanto, are still embroiled in several law suits of veterans and their families claiming for compensation. In 1984 there was a settlement worth $180 million, which entitled the most severely affected US soldiers to a whopping $1,200 each to help with their medical costs. In 2005, the Brooklyn Federal Court threw out a lawsuit filed by Vietnam victims of Agent Orange seeking financial compensation from the US government and the companies responsible, saying they had no legal claim.

After the museum the next stop is to go out to the Cu Chi Tunnels. Over 200km of this underground network was created by the Viet Cong for the purpose of hiding from the Southern Vietnamese army and the US military, a good majority of it located just 70km away from Saigon at the terminal end of the important Ho Chi Mihn Trail. The importance of these tunnels to the resistance force (the National Front of Liberation of South Vietnam) can not be emphasized enough. It was begun in 1948 as a way to hide supplies and rebels from the occupying French forces. The series of tunnels dug labouriously in the hard clay were gradually expanded to include housing, hospitals, communication tunnels and supply huts. By the early 1960's the tunnels housed 100's of people literally right beneath American troops. The NLF exhibited incredible levels of ingenuity in both hiding and protecting the tunnels, disguising air holes as termite mounds and setting up a series of booby traps around entrances. These traps, which composed mainly of pits that were hand dug, contained everything from sharpened bamboo stakes, to vicious looking metals wheels designed to rip apart the legs of any soldier hapless enough to fall in. The tunnels themselves were extremely narrow, often too small for the average American to fit into (the picture to the left shows the actual entrance to one of these tunnels). Life within the tunnels was horrendous, exposure to mosquitoes, malaria, cholera, scorpions and rats a constant issue. On the other hand, other than intensive blanket bombings undertaken in the late 1960's for the express purpose of destroying the tunnel complex, soldiers housed in them were safe from most forms of US military attack. The tunnels themselves became such an important and successful tool in the NLF resistance that the American commanders had to design a specially trained group, the so called "tunnel rats", to try and combat their effectiveness.

These days a small section of the tunnels has been turned into a museum where you can transverse just 900 metres (more than enough) in the low lit tunnels that have actually been expanded for tourism purposes. At 5'5" I could barely squeeze through bent over at the waist, Gilles at 5'11" had to bend almost double to make it through. Gilles also took the opportunity to try firing an AK47, though he decided against spending the $60 to fire the hand held rocket launcher.

I think the most incredible thing about Vietnam is that the people are so friendly and welcoming to tourists. Only 30 years after the war, in a country that is still suffering from the effects of what happened, we found that most were happy that we had decided to come and appreciate what is truly a beautiful country.

After HCMC we headed up the coast, visiting the beach towns of Mui Nhe and Nhe Trang. These places are famous for their kite- and wind-surfing, though the weather wasn't so good for this at the time we were there (as evidenced by the following picture that demonstrates how hard it was raining). In Nhe Trang we met up with a couple of other tourists, Wolfgang and Stefan, and embarked on a decidedly ill advised trip to the local bar where we indulged in a horrible drink called a "bucket". Basically you get a plastic bowl filled with ice, place several shots of whatever you have at hand, usually rum, then top it up with red bull and sell it to unsuspecting tourists. So for the first time in 7 months we had a bit of a rough time rising in the morning. More surprisingly it was me who had to usher Gilles home, who happened to be more drunk than I have EVER seen him. Next day - straight to the beach for some recovery time............

From here we took an overnight bus to Hoi An. First off, the buses here are NOT designed for sleeping on, so getting in at 5AM after a restless 12 hours of upright snoozing is not my idea of a good time. But Hoi An was worth it. A beautiful town in its own right, with a UNESCO protected "old town", you can also rent bikes to ride around out to the lovely beach and the surrounding villages. Secondly, the town is famous for its tailors. You come here to buy, buy, buy. For a little over $100 I got 4 pairs of tailored pants, 4 tailored shirts, 3 dresses (one in silk) and a pair of shorts. Gilles likewise indulged having several spectacular dress shirts created. We found a good tailor, and were very sad to leave our new friend, Thuy, who helped us out. While here we also rented a scooter to go out to Marble Mountain, a surprisingly lovely place with enormous caverns created into temples with carved buddha statues adorning hidden little nooks and crannies. We bought some incense sticks to help us ensure good luck on our future travels from some of the older ladies (obvious betel nut addicts from the pictures) at their insistence (as in they followed us around sticking the bundles into our faces until we decided it would be easier to buy them than to put up with this for the whole day).

From here it was an overnight train (immeasurably better than the bus, being that we had sleeping platforms, though since we were in the top ones we were unable to sit up for the 12 hour journey) to Hanoi, the last stop on our Vietnam tour. In Hanoi we booked our tour of Ha Long Bay and spent a few days wandering the streets while waiting for this to depart. Our big outing was to see the Ho Chi Minh Masoleum and Museum. The museum is basically a shrine to the life of Ho Chi Minh, the downstairs being taken up with photos, letters and various memoribilia from his life. The upstairs is a bizarre, but wonderful, Dali-like extravaganza that highlights Vietnam's struggle for independence and the underlying socialism that formed the basis for "Uncle Ho's" life long quest for nationalism. You can also line up with literally thousands of Vietnamese that are here to file past and view the preserved body of Ho Chi Mihn, which is set up Lenin-style in the corresponding building. Before entering all of your cameras, cell phones and other electronic equipment is confiscated to prevent photo taking (this photo was "borrowed" from another website), and then you file past a number of guards (a total of 3 who searched my purse for smuggled camera equipment) and signs cautioning you to be sober and respectful. When you get to the room housing Ho Chi Mihn absolute silence is enforced, and you are to briskly walk past the body, pausing only to pay homage briefly before being ushered onwards. I think the experience of seeing so many locals overwhelmed by the presence of the great man was more impressive than the body itself, which resembles a figure from a wax museum, though in remarkably good condition, considering he died in 1969.

From here it was on to Ha Long Bay, the Bay of Descending Dragons. The bay itself has more than 1900 limestone monolithic islands topped with jungle vegetation, which rise from the surrounding ocean to tower over the boats full of tourists travelling beneath. Over 95% of people who come to Vietnam participate in a outing in the bay, and rightly so. Staying overnight on a boat so that you can watch the sun set over the bay was definitely a highlight of our trip. And for $45 for a 3 day trip, how can you complain?!

Well, Vietnam was a beautiful country and a wonderful experience. It is apparently the least expensive country to visit in South East Asia (which is really saying something) and they love their foreigners here, being well aware that the tourist industry is responsible for a large part of their national gross income. I'd highly recommend it to anyone, though I would suggest that you try to get out to Sapa or further into the Mekong Delta than we did, as a trip along the coast basically means going from one hectic city to another. From Hanoi we flew back to Bangkok to visit with our friends Tracey and Michel before taking off to Hong Kong, our final stop in Asia.

GO SENS GO!!!

2007-05-25T05:35:00.001-07:00

Coming soon..............the Ottawa Senators, winners of the 2007 Stanley Cup

Angkor Wat

2007-05-08T01:36:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

Angkor Wat is just one structure, though arguably the most well know, in a complex of ancient temples found just outside of Siem Reap, Cambodia. In the 9th century, Jayavarman II united warring factions within ancient Cambodia and declared himself a god-king (I was thinking of doing the same..........) He was the first in a long line of 39 rulers that controlled the most powerful kingdom of South East Asia at the time, the so called Angkor Era. During the following centuries much time and resources were invested in building a series of inspirational temples, majestic palaces, a complex irrigation system and a series of walled cities. Much like what happened on Easter Island, it seems that the rulers of Angkor became so obsessed with building grander and more imposing temples to dedicate to the gods, that they developed tunnel vision and seemed to forget about the other aspects of ruling. Repeated incursions from neighbouring Siam became harder and harder to repel, and finally the great Kingdom of Angkor fell in the 15th century and was abandoned to be reclaimed by the jungle.

It wasn't until a French botanist "discovered" the ruins in the 19th century (the Khmers in the area had always known of its presence) that the West became fascinated by these structures. After years of work reclaiming the area from the jungle and restoring some of the more dilapidated structures, Angkor complex opened to the public. It is, without a doubt, Cambodia's most famous and well known tourist attraction, and recieves over 1,000,000 foreign visitors a year. Cambodians are so proud of Angkor Wat that its distinctive silohuette has become part of their national flag, the only building seen on a flag throughout the world. There are over 100 Angkorian monuments spread over some 3000 square kilometres to visit when you come to Siam Reap. The most famous include Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and the jungle ravaged Ta Phrom, which was featured in the Tomb Raider movie starring Angela Jolie.

Most of the early temples were dedicated to Hindu worship when they were first constructed, and this is reflected in the extremely detailed bas relief carvings that adorn many surfaces. Many of the later designs also show elements of Vishnu worship, though most of the temples were dedicated Buddhist ones by the ends of their usage. Most are built with a large, imposing upright temple in the centre, representing Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu mythology. They are then surrounded by a walled compound and, in the case of Angkor Wat, a protective moat.

Many of the artifacts that decorate the temples are not the originals. Theft had always been common, though the process accelerated rapidly in the 1990's when peace, and therefore foreign trade, came to Cambodia. Because the Khmer Rouge valued the importance of the site, thefts were relatively rare until after they were overthrown. Some of the more valuable peices have been moved to the National Museum in Phnom Pehn to protect them. Sadly though, through out all the temples it is easy to see areas where carved statues have been dug out of the walls, leaving behind crude holes.

Interestingly, none of the structures built after the 13th century survive today, as these ones were built of wood, rather than stone. The type of stone used can help to date a temple (eg. sandstone was not used extensively until well into the 10th century) as well as the evolution of the decorations carved into the walls. A few of the temples, including Ta Phrom, have been left in the original condition they were discovered in (this is to say, overgrown and collapsing), while others have been restored to their former glory.

Angkor Wat in particularly has drawn much lavish praise over the past century, mainly for its detailed stone work and architectually pleasing symmetry. You approach the wat by passing over a large stone bridge that traverses the protective moat, then going through the outer walls. From here there is a 300m long causeway that leads to the temple itself. Sunrise and sunset at the site are the most popular times to visit, as the lighting casts the buildings in a reddish glow. Once inside the main temple you can tour the Gallery of Bas Reliefs, a truly amazing site of stone carvings that cover a wall 2 metres in height and over 700 metres long. Throughout the entire temple complex you must take extra care to look into corners and up high above graceful columns, as there are extrodinarily detailed carvings to be seen everywhere.

Angkor Thom was actually probably my favourite site. It's 2km north of Angkor Wat and was the last and greatest capital of the Angkor era, dating from the late 12th century. At this time quantity seemed to be more important than quality, so the extremely detailed bas releif carvings are missing. This is not to say that the stone carvings that make up the Terrace of the Elephants, or the Terrace of the Leper King are not magnificent, however. At the time of its glory, Angkor Thom was home to more than a million inhabitants, though most of the wooden buildings people lived in have rotted away. The Royal Compound remains intact, and is composed of a series of temples and palaces, all enclosed by a moat. The causeway over the moat is decorated with 54 carved gods and 54 carved demons, locked in an eternal struggle. The most impressive of the temples, Banyon, has 54 towers, with faces adorning all 4 sides of each. Though, in comparison to Angkor Wat, the workmanship is a bit shoddy, the smiling faces looking complacently down on you seem to be amused to be the object of so much interest.

Gilles on the other hand was more impressed by Ta Phrom. Still being gradually and systematically taken over by the surrounding jungle, it invites exploration amongst its ramshackle ruins. I imagine that the fact Angela Jolie wandered its corridors in the not too distant past helps too.

We stayed in Siam Reap for 4 days, 3 of them dedicated to visiting temples. For the first 2 we had hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around, but when he decided without warning that his price had increased for the third day, we told him to not bother and rented some bikes instead. Turns out this is a very leisurely and fun way to view the temples. Since it was rainy season you had to time things right to miss the afternoon showers, but on the bright side, it was not as hot as it could have been. The down side is that our "sunrise experience" at Angkor Wat just meant we woke up at 5AM to see a cloudy morning with thousands of our closest friends. We also had clouds and rain for sunset at Phnom Bakheng, the temple set high up on a hill and a "must see" in the late afternoon, early evening.

In a lot of ways, Siem Reap was like Cusco, very tourist driven, with plenty of nice hotels and European restaurants. Prices were a bit higher than the rest of Cambodia (which still means dirt cheap), but I think this will go down as one of our highlights on the trip, just by the sheer impressiveness of it.

A Brief History of Life in Cambodia

2007-05-08T01:34:00.003-07:00

Written by Lynn

When the horrific word "genocide" is used, most people will think of the internment and incineration of European Jews by the Nazis in WWII, or of the slaughter of the Tutsis by Rwandan Hutus. While these events are heart wrenching, and inspire a deep despair in one faced with the depravation of the human spirit, somehow what happened in Cambodia cuts deeper. Somehow, the thought of a country destroying 20% of its own population makes an already horrendous word seem worse. We're not talking about an ethnic minority being ruthlessly cut from a conquered country's land or even soldiers caught up in a religious zeal. This was about neighbours killing neighbours because they had worked for the government, or drove a fancy car, or even just because they wore glasses. This was children being tortured into confessing that their parents had spoken against the ruling class, then being forced to execute them. This was simply a tragedy.

Perhaps one of the hardest things I had to face here was the fact that this had happened in my lifetime and that I knew NOTHING about it. I had heard of the Killing Fields, I think I may have even seen the movie of the same title. But I didn't really understand or comprehend what had happened in Cambodia until I came here to see it for myself.

Even with the benefit of hindsight and the clarity of time it is hard to peice together the "when", the "how" and, most importantly, the "why". So what I write here is a attempt to understand what I have gathered together from the information and books I have read. I realize it is just part of the puzzle, so I apologize for any inaccuracies or questions I leave unanswered.

The fervour of the Cambodian people to be completely self reliant is likely rooted in the French occupation of their country for over 100 years starting in 1863, and the constant incursions by Vietnamese and Thai military forces. Except for a brief period when it was occupied by the Japanese Imperial troops during WWII, Cambodia remained as a French colony and suffered under their rule, constantly concerned over the loss of their country's identity.

In 1953, with UN support, Cambodia officially declared independance and became a monarchy under the rule of King Norodom Sihanouk. For the next few decades King Sihanouk walked a fine line of neutrality, not willing to side and accept aid from either communist China and the Soviet Union, or the United States. He struggled to maintain the independance of his country while trying to establish a stable economy, not an easy task in the boiling cauldron of what would become the second Indochina War and that would eventually escalate into the Vietnam War.

Then in 1970, while King Sihanouk was in England, he was overthrown in a military coup by General Lol Nol and Prince Sirik Matak. The new government was openly pro-American and anti-communist, allowing US troops to station in southern Cambodia to make forays into neighbouring Vietnam. From his exile in Bejing, King Sihanouk aligned himself with the communist Khmer Rouge party, which automatically gained the political group a lot of support from the lower castes in Cambodian society. Civil war had come to Cambodia.

Pol Pot (french for "politique potentielle") was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. In the territories he controlled he began instituting small changes that would eventually snowball into a genocide of unimaginable proportions. He declared that the working class was the lifeblood of the revolution and that Cambodia's "bourgeois enemies" would have to be cut out of society in order to purify the people. His army consisted mainly of young men and women from peasant families and his goal was to reduce the people in "liberated" areas to feudal peasant equality.

By 1973 he controlled over 2/3 of the country side and enjoyed significant support in much of the remaining territories. In these areas he instigated restrictive policies, such as forbidding the ethnic Cham minorities from wearing traditional dress. He also started moving the population of conquered urban areas into the country side as an attempt to achieve enforced socialism. Pol Pot wanted the "parasitism of urban life" uprooted. Land reform was instituted, and all large properties confiscated then redistributed with the goal of making all holdings of similar size. All means of private transportation were reallocated for military use.

On April 17, 1975 the troops of the Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Pehn, capital of Cambodia, with barely a whisper of resistance. The populace celebrated in the streets, cheering the conquering army and the end of war. The Khmer Rouge had finally achieved power.

Under the guise of the threat of American bombings, the Khmer Rouge immediately emptied the entire city of Phnom Pehn, some 2.5 million people. They were allowed to take only what they could carry and abandoned the rest, being promised they could retrieve their possessions once things were safe. Even seriously ill patients in the local hospitals were forced to leave. It is estimated some 3000 citizens died in this evacuation alone. The population from urban centres were termed "new people" (as opposed to the "old people", or rural peasants) and subject to the harshest treatment by the Khmer Rouge as their political inclinations and professions of patriotism were not to be trusted.

People sent to the country began enforced labour for the good of Cambodia. All forms of outside aid were refused, for fear of becoming indebted to another super power (the reason for the original occupation of Cambodia by France). Religion was abolished and a rule of communal property was instituted. Families were seperated, males and females living apart, their children taken from them. The children were instead raised by dedicated members of the Khmer Rouge, and indoctrinated into their way of thinking. They were considered the "pure souls", the only ones without past sins against the ruling government, whether by thought or deed.

Pol Pot developed an ideal of ruling that combined Marxist and Maoist principles. His goal was to return Cambodia to an agrarian society, based on agriculture and completely self reliant. His ministers once boasted to King Sihanouk "we will be the first nation to create a completely communist society without wasting time on intermdiate steps". The Khmer Rouge banned all modern technological contrivances and ordered the people to begin the back breaking labour of establishing dike and transport systems that would increase production and distribution efficiency within the country. All of this was done by hand. Many people spent 16 hours a day in hard labour. The food was limited as war had managed to destroy or prevent production on arable land, and no foreign aid was accepted. Medical supplies, and those trained to use them, were not only in short supply, but considered unpatriotic to use. Use of traditional therapies was encouraged, though none of the required material was provided. People began to die in the thousands from malnutrition and disease, but the government seemed to not care. If anything, they seemed to encourage the wanton destruction of the populace. People were executed for such minor infractions as not cheering revolutionary slogans loud enough, or not having developed callouses on their hands (indications of "soft lifestyles"). Killings were done with hammers, axe handles and spades in order to save on bullets.

Pol Pot estimated that only 1-2 million people would be required to build his utopia. Based on this his decisions regarding how to deal with dissenters within the country seemed to be influenced. As he stated "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss." He began a campaign to weed out all "undesirables" from his new envisaged community. Former government workers, educated professionals, intellects, ethnic Vietnamese and Chams, Cambodian christians and Buddhist monks became the dregs of society in the new Cambodia, renamed the Democratic Kampuchea. "Re-education" of these selected groups began in earnest. Many were forced through torture to confess to pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes. Any previous contact with foreign agencies, such as missionaries, international relief organizations or even tourists was grounds for execution. Starting in 1976 people began to be classified as either those with "full rights", "candidates" or "depositees". Depositees were marked for destruction, and had their rations cut even further, down to a mere 2 bowls of rice soup a day.

While life for the average Cambodian continued to deteriorate, war with Vietnam continued. Thousands of refugees fled to the Thai border with their horror stories of torture, abuse and starvation. In January 1979 the Khmer Rouge was finally defeated by the Vietnamese army. Pol Pot fled with his supporters to hide out along the Thai border and continue their resistance. Vietnam used this as an excuse to leave a military force within the Cambodian territory. As a result the UN refused to recognize the new government, which was under Vietnamese control. This left Pol Pot as the leader of Cambodia who was officially recognized on the world stage, meaning the country could not begin the process of rebuilding itself. It was not until Pol Pot's death in April 1998 that the Khmer Rouge army was finally declared defunct, leaving an opportunity for the renewal of life in Cambodia.

From 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge, with Pol Pot as their leader, ruled Cambodia with an iron fist, attempting to create their vision of a perfect, independant, socialist country. In their fervour to acheive this goal, they slaughtered untold millions. Official estimates place the number dead somewhere between 1.5 to 3 million people, in a country with a population of a mere 7 million at the beginning of the 1970's. Pol Pot himself admits that his Khmer Rouge party was resposible for about 1 million deaths, an obviously grossly low estimate.

So with this as a barely understood history, we flew into Phnom Pehn to visit the "killing fields". The first question that should be asked from a pure interest perspective for future travellers, is "why fly". We were coming from Bangkok with our purpose of going to Cambodia two-fold. We wanted to visit Angkor Wat, a mere 7 hour bus ride east from Bangkok, then head south to Phnom Pehn. But the border crossing into Cambodia at this point is notorious in South East Asia for how incredibly common it is for tourists to get extorted. Hark and Tod, from Jakarta, had crossed here just a few weeks before and they strongly advised against it. The bus trip was delayed by 5 hours at the border while they negotiated with the Cambodian "taxi mafia" who insisted they would have to pay extra for another bus as the one they had booked was "delayed". The visa prices are doubled and the border guards insist that you must change your Thai baht into US dollars there, giving extortionist rates of exchange. The road from the border to Siem Reip/Angkor Wat is hellishly maintained, some say at the insistence of Bangkok Air, the only airline that has flights in and out of Siem Riep (hmm, interesting, and the cost of this flight just happens to be double or even triple any other in Asia). All in all, way too much trouble. Instead we caught a cheap flight into Phnom Pehn, with the plan of getting a bus ride to Siem Riep afterwards.

One thing to understand about Cambodia is that it is NOT Thailand. Up until 1999 there was minimal to no economic growth in this country that suffered from continual cival wars, internal strife and government corruption. Since then they have had a steady increase in general prosperity, their main sources of income being textile exports and tourism. Over half of the tourist who go to Cambodia go only to Angkor Wat, then leave as quickly as possible. People here are poor, and on a scale we haven't seen since Bolivia. This means that the rich white tourists are prime targets for beggars and schemes designed to wrest their precious dollars from them. The touts will appear in an almost constant stream to harass you when you are sitting at restaurants. Many of the beggars are children dressed in dirty rags, carrying babies and begging for change. As heart wrenching as they can be, NGO's working in the area strongly recommend not encouraging them by adding change to their begging bowls. Children who are successful beggars often become a family's only source of income, meaning they will not go to school and be educated, thus perpetuating their impoverished state. Other, more subtle ways of making money involving overcharging tourists for EVERYTHING, usually meaning there may be two different menus at small local restaurants, one for Cambodians, one for others. Hotels will ask for one price, which is usually grossly inflated, and you then have to bargain downwards. People wander the streets selling everything, common items being post cards, jewellry and photocopied books. What they charge depends on whether or not you look like you just stumbled off the bus. Sounds cruel, to complain about being overcharged what would amount to $2 or $3, when that money goes to someone who is desperately poor, and there were many times when we just didn't worry about it too much. But it does become a big struggle here, having to constantly be on your guard and wondering how much you should be paying. Gilles did overpay by about 500% for a book on Angkor Wat to these three girls who were the smartest, funniest group of teenagers we had encountered in a long time (their french was better than mine, and they got an extra dollar out of Gilles when they beat him at tic-tac-toe).

Phnom Pehn itself is not a city that inspires you to linger. It does have the Royal Palace and the National Museum, which are interesting, but brief stop overs. What people are really here for, and what they want to try to understand, is the Killing Fields.

Choeung Ek, the most well known of the killing fields in Cambodia, sits 15 km outside of Phnom Pehn. Here, between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge executed 17,000 Cambodians. Some 8,900 of the bodies were discovered in mass graves after the fall of Pol Pot from power. A Buddhist stupa was built on the spot to commemorate the tragedy. In it there is a fibreglass case containing some 5,000 skulls from the victims found here. You can also walk through the back fields, where large pits bearing signs that indicate the number of bodies each contained cover an area almost 1 acre big. On the dirt paths that traverse this area you can still see the occasional shin bone or scrap of shirt poking out of the dirt. Near by I could hear the singing of children at a local school, making the experience all the more surreal.

After Choeung Ek, most will move on to Tuol Sleng, also called S-21. This former highschool was converted into a dentention and interrogation centre in 1975. It was used mainly to hold former Khmer Rouge members and soldiers who were suspected of treason. Often high ranking officials that Pot Pol feared were fomenting plans for a coup were detained here and occasionally their whole families would be brought in to be executed. There were also about 79 foreigners executed here, most of them of Thai and Vietnamese descent. However, 11 of the victims were western, being from the UK, France, Australia, New Zealand and the States, most of them journalists in Cambodia to investigate the rumours of what was happening.

Upon arrival at the prison, all prisoners were photographed and forced to give a biography of their lives, which was closely examined for evidence of a lifestyle deemed undesirable. The prisoners were often interrogated over and over, in an attempt to find descrepancies in what they had originally writen. It was not uncommon for torture, such as partial drownings and beatings to be employed. Should evidence against them be produced (and it almost always eventually was), the unfortunate prisoner would then be shipped to Choeung Ek for disposal.

When you first walk into the prison you encounter row after row of black and white photographs of the prisoners. Some appear afraid, some resigned, occasionally one or two is actually smiling. There are photographs of the emaciated bodies found by the conquering Vietnamese army, as well as the corpses of people still chained to beds. Other pictures taken at the time of discovery show corpses with flies collecting on their eyes, or with head wounds from large caliber guns. Some of the bodies had had their throats slit, others were covered with bruises from beatings, all were skeletal in thier appearance. Small, windowless, wooden cells line the rooms that used to hold students, each only big enough for a person to lie down in and have a bucket in the corner. The following sign is posted, which outlines the rules a prisoner had to obey, or face execution, upon being brought to S-21

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

Of the 17,000 prisoners who entered S-21, only 7 survived.

It was a hard, heart wrenching day, trying to put yourself in the place of these people. While it seemed awful to me that the only reason that Phonm Pehn was a stop on the backpacker trail was this tragedy, I think skipping it and remaining ignorant of the facts would be worse. After our visit here, suddenly we viewed the people begging for our spare change in a new light. These people, many of them our own age, deserved our respect because they had survived through something we never could and are now struggling to make themselves a place in a world that can quickly forget that this ever happened. Once again, I am humbled by how lucky I am to live the life I do.

Ayutthaya

2007-05-08T01:34:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand for over 400 years starting in the 1300's. It sits a mere 2 hour bus ride from downtown Bangkok (or 1 hour if you are squashed in a sardine can-like minibus). It was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 1981 because of its unsurpassed collection of ancient Thai wats.

Here there is evidence of the creativity and beauty seen in ancient Thai architecture. It seems that every king that ruled ancient Siam was determined to leave his mark in the capital with a series of ever more impressive Royal Palaces and temples. Most of these buldings were constructed somewhere between the 14th and 17th centuries. Considering the time that has passed, the wats are in amazing condition. Several are in the process of being restored, while others need little to any work on them.

Jose Santen, a Dutch trader, was one of the first European's to visit the capital of ancient Siam in the 1400's. In correspondance home he wrote the following description:

"Pra Nakorn Sri Ayutthaya is the capital city in which the king lives, and so do the nobles, officials, and all administrators. The capital city is situated on a small island in Chao Praya River. Its surrounding area is a flat field. The stone wall was constructed to surround the city with 2 Dutch miles circumference. So it is a very big capital city. Its vicinity consists of many immediate Buddhist monasteries. The population is dense in the capital. There are long, wide and straight aligned roads. There are canals that are converted from Chao Praya River to the capital. So it is very convenient for transportation. Besides the roads and canals, there are also small ditches and alleyways. So, in the rainy season, people can easily travel to houses. The houses are built in Indian styles but roofed with tiles. Ayutthaya is therefore a luxurious city packed with over 300 Buddhist monasteries exquisitely built. There many are pagodas, topes, molded figures, and statues that are coated with gold brightening the whole area. The capital city situates on the riverbank and the city plan was orderly planned, so it is a very beautiful city. Its location is good, its population is dense, and it is a good trading area both domestic and foreign trade. As far as I am aware, there has not been any king in this region has ever reigned the beautiful and prosperous city as Ayutthaya. The city is on a very good location, regarding the militarily strategies, so it is very difficult for the enemy to impregnate because the surrounding area will be flooded for 6 months annually in the rainy season. The enemy cannot stay for a long time, so they will eventually retreat."

The first ruler of Ayutthaya, King Ramathibodi I, made the official religion of Siam Theravada Buddhism. This choice influenced many of the building structures, and as a result, shows a wide variation from the temples built by the neighbouring Hindu Angkor kingdom (see later posting regarding this).

The history of the royal family that ruled Ayutthaya is long and complex. It involves delicious intrigues of assassinations, military coups, and fraternal bickering. The shortest reign was a mere 7 days before Prince Thong Lun was killed by his prodigal brother. In total 33 kings ruled in Ayutthaya. During these 4 centuries there were a number of wars fought with neighbouring Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia. Many of the altars are dedicated to the brave elephants that the warriors and kings used as war steeds, fighting hand-to-hand from their backs. Finally, in 1767 the last of the great kings of Ayutthaya was overthrown by a Burmese army consisting of 1,500,000 soldiers and 6,000 of these elephants. He fled the city and died a mere 10 days later of starvation.

Many of the temples, statues and other irreplaceable artwork were destroyed by the conquering Burmese army. The victorious Burmese king was so appalled by the wanton destruction created by his soldiers that it is said he wept in sadness and had an enormous temple built as an act of contrition. Still, in spite of being partially demolished many amazing structures remain and are open to the public for viewing.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of wandering through these ancient temples, meandering between the dilapidated structures and staring in wonder at the imposing buddha statues, where many people still worship. Somehow the crumbling stone makes it all the more impressive, especially in comparison to some of the relatively new wats we had visited in Bangkok. But this was just a taste of what was to come. Our next destination - Cambodia and Angkor Wat.

Bride Over the River Kwai...........oh, and tigers!

2007-05-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

Written by Lynn

From Bangkok we caught a bus to the town of Kanchanaburi. This area has been immortalized in the 1960-ish movie "Bridge over the River Kwai". The real deal is here.

The actually story is a lot less romantic than the movie makes it out. During WWII, the Japanese Imperial Army needed to have a railway built to link Thailand and Burma. Previously they had taken supplies from the east to the north of Asia through the Straits of Malacca, but this route was now vulnerable to attack by allied forces. In 1943 they began the construction of the Burma Railway to connect Bangkok and Ragoon. It was over 400 km long and it was scheduled to be built in just over 12 months at the cost of thousands of lives. They used pieces from a disassembled railway in Java and forced labour consisting of Asian workers and Allied POW's. In total it is estimated that anywhere between 110,000 to 160,000 prisoners and civilian labourers died during the construction of this "Death Railway", the large majority of them Asian. Exact numbers are impossible to obtain as the Japanese did not bother to record the deaths of the "coolies", many from Indonesia, China, Malaysia and Burma.

Today it is possible to visit the reconstructed site of the bridge (which is actually built over a tributary of the River Kwai) and the Kanchanaburi graveyard where 6,982 POW's remain buried, their bodies having been dug up and relocated from the mass graves randomly dug beside the tracks they died building.

The real story here is about the treatment of the POW's and the Asian labourers during the years it took to build the bridge. Many who survived the ordeal and have seen the movie say that it doesn't even begin to bring home the cruel reality of the camps. Over 25% of the POW's who died did so as a result of malnutrition and diseases such as malaria, diptheria and cholera. Building this railway meant hacking through dense jungle by hand and breaking apart rocky cliffs and hills with sledgehammers. Food was limited and the work unrelenting. As one survivor put it.................

"The only food available from the jungle was wild bananas, about the size of your finger and full of black seeds, the young leaves of the banana palms, the red banana flowers and bamboo shoots. Our rations per day for the month of May 1943 were 537 grams rice, 12grams onion, 1 gram towgay, 1 gram dried whitebait and 1 gram of beef per man. Hardly sufficient to maintain anyone let alone men working up to 16 hours a day."

In addition to the unrelenting hunger, the unsanitary conditions and the threat of disease, many of the POW's recall vicious treatment and punishment meted out by the Japanese guards for minor infractions. One sign in the museum we visited posted just such an example. As punishment for stealing a tin of fruit from a red cross package, and that therefore theoretically belonged to the prisoners:

"I was propped against the tree, my arms pulled back and tied together with barbed wire and secured to the tree trunk. After a few more punches in the face they left me alone. The pain lashes your body after awhile. I must leave it to your imagination. When morning broke they put a bucket filled to the brim with water in front of me and left me to it. A sophisticated torture if ever there was one."

The bridge itself is rather unremarkable, you can take a short ride over it in an open aired tourist train. Afterwards the best thing to do is take yourself over to the JEATH war museum to have a look around at this quirky collection. JEATH stands for Japanese, England, Australia/America, Thailand, and Holland, the 6 countries who participated in the building of the railway. Here they have several first hand accounts of the experience of the POW's as well as collections of everything from guns and artillery used in WWII, to stamps and currency of Thailand dating back to the early 1900's. They is also an elephant skull and a monument containing several human skulls found alongside the railway, identity unknown. Several descriptions and displays outline the various torture and punishment methods that were used on the POW's in the camps. Most moving are the photographs, paintings done by the POW's and hand written letters to loved ones on scraps of paper. Many articles in the museum have been donated by the POW's or their families.

We, through pure unplanned timing, landed in Kanchanaburi on April 25th, the Austrlian ANZAC day. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and this is the day they celebrate the bravery of their fallen comrades. Because of the large number of Aussies buried in the Kanchanaburi cemetary, this day is also commemorated here. There were many families and members of ANZAC in town while we were there and on the morning of the 25th several ceremonies were held in their honour.

Our other reason for being here was to visit a temple, Wat Pha Luang. This temple is infamous for its work done rescuing tigers. Since 1999 the abott, Phra Acharn Phusit, has been saving abandoned tigers. Many of them come from private homes, where people who adopted a cute little kitten soon realized that having a full grown, 800lb tiger in your backyard was not conducive to quiet living. Others were young ones brought in after their mothers were killed by poachers. In total the temple houses 11 tigers, all of whom are imprinted on humans and non releasable. Some of them were born here.

The temple does have in the works an ambitious project. They are presently building a "Tiger Island" that will be surrounded by a moat. There they will raise the tigers born at the temple with little to no interaction between them and humans, in the hope of eventually being able to release them back into the wild. Perhaps a bit unrealistic, but never the less, lofty goal. More importantly this island will provide a place for the tigers to spend their days and nights when not on "display" in a fairly natural environment, rather than the sad little pens they are now housed in.

There has been some recent criticism of this temple, fearing that they are "commercializing". They have moved from the realm of asking for a donation to help feed the tigers to charging an entrance fee of 300 baht (about $9). When you get to the temple the first thing you have to do after paying is sign a waiver that says you won't hold the temple responsible if you get eaten, though they are quick to point out that no visitor has ever been injured. The next thing you have to do, if you're Gilles anyways, is buy a new t-shirt. This is because he forgot the warning we had read when looking up the temple that says you are not allowed to wear red for fear of inciting the wrath of the apparently red hating cats.

After changing you go through the gates into a large compound that houses all sorts of beasts from water buffalo to pigs of all ages and sizes to some stray dogs, peacocks and chickens thrown in for fun. Apparently they all live here, or in the land surrounding, and have free rein to come and go. Everyday at 4:30 the monks and volunteers will feed the animals, rolling out a big truck filled with squash and other vegetables that they throw on the ground in order to break them open. A friendly feeding frenzy results, and as you weave between cows and pigs on your way back to the parking lot you can see the monks going around the helping to open up unbroken gourds for the animals. It makes it hard to begrudge them the few dollars you donated, and I truly believe they are doing good work here. As of now it is a fairly "off the beaten track" tourist spot, but I have a feeling this will change quickly as word gets out (we heard of it when watching a Lonely Planet episode on Thailand, though it wasn't mentioned in our guide book).

But back to the tigers. After a short walk through a dusty field you head down a hill into a canyon, where about 10 tigers are lounging about. All of them are leashed and have at least one handler with them at all times. You can give your camera to one of the volunteers and another one leads you over to a tiger, making sure to approach from the rear. You can then sit or crouch down and have your picture taken. As an added bonus, if you stay until 4:30, the tigers are then taken back to their pens and you may get a chance to help walk them there.

The down side to this little adventure is that the temple was about 40 km from our hostel. We had rented a scooter and set out just after lunch (1:30-4:30 is the best time to be there as the tigers are out relaxing in the canyon, and playing in the water, all under the very close supervision of their handlers). Unfortunately, it was likely over 40 degrees and zooming down the black asphalt was hot work. Even more unfortunately, our gas gauge didn't work, so when we turned down the dirt road leading to the temple and the scooter stuttered to a stop, we knew we were in trouble. But as a testament as to why we love the people here, a guy stopped his scooter when he drove by about 10 minutes later and saw us pushing ours back towards the highway. Unable to speak a work of English, he managed to quickly understand out problem. First he tried to figure out how to get some gas out of his own scooter, but was unable to accomplish this. So instead he abandoned his plans, turned his scooter around and rode back into town to get us a pop bottle full of gas. We managed to get him to accept money for the gas plus a little extra for his time, though I'm sure he would never had asked if we hadn't insisted.

Overall, Kanchanaburi is a worthwhile side trip from Bangkok. Not only the sobering history is here, but also a chance to touch a live tiger. As well there are caves, temples, and waterfalls to see. All in all, never a dull moment here.

Soi Dog Revisited

2007-05-03T23:53:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

My last trip to Thailand was planned around a stint volunteering at a spay/neuter clinic run by the Soi Dog Foundation, on the island of Phuket, Thailand. There were a total of 5 vets, 4 of them from England, and myself, as well as 1 RVT. We were travelling around to different villages to set up our "hospital" where ever possible, school auditoriums being a popular choice. We'd then "surgerize" everything we could get our hands on. Stray dogs were darted, feral cats from the local shops absconded in burlap sacks and the locals cajoled into bringing in their own pets. Soi Dog's ultimate goal was to sterilize 75% of the local strays, a magic number at which the population would actually start to fall.

A day of down and dirty surgery in barely sterile conditions would follow. The animals were kept under with topped up injectable anesthetic, the instruments were scrubbed quickly then briefly dunked in rubbing alcohol before being used on the next patient, and hands were washed with diluted betadine in buckets of blood tinged water.

This time back I found that things have changed for Soi Dog. First off, about two months after we left the island, Phuket was slammed by the tsunami. The small hotel where I had stayed in 2004, then again this year, was devestated, but has been mostly rebuilt since then (though you can see from the picture how badly the huts had been damaged).

As a side note, after leaving Phuket the last time we headed up north to the town of Kho Lak in order to stay at a beautiful resort. This was probably one of the nicest places I've EVER stayed at. It had a pool that was over 4000 square metres big and stretched for more than a kilometre around the entire hotel. Since then we had heard this resort was no more, though we had a hard time understanding how a concrete building could be completely destroyed. Turns out Kho Lak was one of the hardest hit areas in Thailand. Talking to one of the locals, John, he explained that he had gone up to Kho Lak just after the tsunami to help with body retrieval. He knew exactly the resort we were talking about, based on the description of the pool. Apparently when the first wave hit the sand under the hotel was ripped out, causing the foundation to crack. The power of the water then pushed several people under the hotel. The second wave buried them by refilling the hole with debris and sand. According to John, you could smell the decay all over the hotel, but just couldn't get to the corpses........

With the world's social consciousness raised by the unrelenting images of people being swept away in the waves, money poured into areas like Phuket. Donations to organizations like Soi Dog increased by a hundred fold. The government of Thailand was understandably overwhelmed by the humanitarian crisis, and had no time to deal with the numerous stray animals that had previously been fed and cared for by the local populace (interestingly, almost no animals were killed in the tsunami, some sixth sense telling them to get out of the way long before the first wave hit).

So Soi Dog Foundation took over the island's dog pound. They worked in conjucntion with the local government employees and a barrage of foreign vets who showed up to volunteer. Together, amongst many other amazing stories, they managed to spay and neuter the feral cat population (as in every single one) of PhiPhi Island, whose entire human populace was either deceased or relocated. They distributed over 2000 pounds of dog food a week to various volunteers who fed the local strays. By the end of 2006, Soi Dog had managed to sterilize over 15,000 dogs and cats in less than 3 years. For its efforts in the tsunami, Soi Dog Foundation was honoured by the Humane Society International.

Even driving into town I could see the difference. There were no longer the obvoius numbers of mangy looking strays on every street corner, but rather several well cared for, contented dogs hanging out in much smaller numbers.

This time Soi Dog was housed in a permenant location, having taken over the care of the local dog pound for good. The present compound houses over 400 dogs in various stages of health. But the tsunami funding was running out, and the last time they had a volunteer vet was over 2 months before I showed up.

Theoretically I was there for the week to sterilize dogs. The reality is that my time was more valuable to them trying to get things organized. Recently they had been having several dogs die suddenly of unknown causes. My first day there saw four deaths.

Several dogs had runny noses and eyes, coughing and were having problems breathing. A lot of the pups and older dogs had bad diarrhea. The worst though was the ticks. A very wet year meant a population explosion. Bad enough these buggers are so gross, but they also carry lots of nasty diseases. Several of the dogs were anemic looking, some running fevers, others just wasting away.

Without a staff vet, the people running Soi Dog do their best. Any dog with pale gums or general ill thrift was put on doxycycline for "blood parasites". Any one with diarrhea or weight loss was dewormed with Drontal. If they managed to catch the really sick dogs before they passed away, they would take them into the local vet for treatment. But this not only costs money, it was at times unrealistic as the number of animals meant that a dog had to be pretty far gone before anyone realized it was sick.

So on my first day the first order of business was to do an autopsy on one of the recently deceased dogs to try and determine a cause of death. An otherwise healthy 8 month old, he had been found collapsed that morning, having looked perfectly fine the previous day to the best of anyone's knowledge. On post mortem (PM) the only problem was the poor pup's lungs, but what a mess! Of the 6 lung lobes, 4 were an unappetizing meaty texture (rather than squishy like they should be) and obviously bruised looking.

Next we randomly chose three sick dogs and sent off blood work on them to the local laboratory to try and figure out what was happening. I also begged and pleaded for more money from the coffers of Soi Dog to have the lungs of the autopsied dog sent for histopathology (meaning they would be fixed in wax and examined under a microscope) and to have some fecal samples sent off.

While waiting for results we went through the pens and pulled out any of the 400 dogs that seemed to have anything wrong with them. Some were truly sick and were placed on medications. Others, who had been losing weight, we decided were doing so because they were unable to survive in a high stress pack situation where they had to compete with other, more dominant dogs for food and shelter. These ones we made better just by feeding them seperately and assigning them extra people cuddling time.

With the help of my 16 year old "nurse", Nong Malee, we also managed to get a few surgeries done. We did a couple tumour removals, including one maggoty one, which those of you who have worked with me will realize didn't go over well as I have trouble being around maggots without feeling nauseated. We spayed one very pregnant dog that accidently got mated to a male much bigger than her. We neutered a few escape artists in an attempt to curb their enthusiasm, and even did a bit of a cosmetic surgery on a dog with a droopy eyelid (severe entropion complicated by distichiasis).

The facilities were certainly better than last time around, with an autoclave to sterilize equipment and even an inhalant anesthetic machine. But (as you can see) my recovery area still left something to be desired.

We made sure to run some distemper tests on various dogs as well. Fortunately they all came back negative. Soi Dog can only afford to vaccinate the puppies for distemper, so it is a constant fear that this virulent virus will get into the population. There was a bit of a time crunch to get the distemper tests and run them as soon as possible. We had all agreed that should the tests come back positive that we would cull ALL the sick dogs (possibly as many as 100 of them on initial estimates). Being a buddhist society the local vets would be very reluctant to do such a deed, meaning the task would be left to me and Ena, Soi Dog's manager who hailed from Germany and would have to be done before the end of the week when I left. Happily this turned out to be unnecessary, but it was a source of major stress for us for a couple of days.

Other laboratory tests came back and it was discovered that the dogs were suffering from a variety of diseases. The pneumonia seemed to be bacterial in origin and many of the dogs were doing quite well after only a few days of antibiotics by the time we got the results. Diarrhea seemed to be being caused by Giardia present in the unsanitary water. And finally, perhaps most importantly, we found out that there was blood parasite, called Babesia sp., being transmitted by the ticks. This was particularly important because the parasite was not sensitive to doxycycline, which they had been treating dogs with. Happily, the treatment effective against Babesia was both available in Thailand and not too expensive.

By the end of the week, things were a little more under control. We had lost a few of the very weak puppies, but everyone else seemed to be back on track. We sorted through the medications and instruments that Soi Dog accumulated over the years from various volunteer vets and dumped a bunch of stuff that was outdated or even down right dangerous (like the big box of Ibuprofen they had been using for pain relief!!). And we had figured out a lot of what was going on in the compound. Tick control and closer monitoring of the dogs was going to be the new game plan.

Final note - what can you do? If you're interested, check out www.soidog.org . These guys are doing good work with what little resources they have. They are actively working to find homes for adoptable dogs. They have volunteers that come in to work daily with the dogs in obedience and to give them a little one on one time, attention that they soak up. They've even managed to build an agility course for the dogs that the local employees use daily with several of the enthusastic ones.

They desperately need, well, everything. Money would help, long term corporate sponsors would be better (any ideas out there?!). Any vets who want to spend a few days working their asses off while their travel companions relax on the beach, feel free to sign up. And you don't have to be a vet to volunteer. While I was there a girl from Sweden was just finishing up a month long stint and had proved herself invaluable to them.

While I was stressing and returning grimy every night to the bungalow, Gilles had rented a scooter and was bombing around the island (the first day he had dropped by the compound and due to his real distress over seeing dogs sick I suggested he might not want to hang out there). He wandered from beach to beach, with little forays into the towns of Phuket and Patong in between (ie. by the end of the week he was pretty bored). So after a week in "paradise" we headed back to Bangkok.

Bangkok, one night is never enough

2007-05-03T23:52:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

Having previously visited Bangkok in the fall of 2004, we knew we were heading for a city that we really enjoyed. Many people have expressed concern about the recent political upheaval in Thailand, and it's true that there are problems. But by and large these problems are confined to a small region in the south where there is presently a militant separatist group that is causing significant upheaval. The military coup in September 2006 which saw the then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra ousted was apparently all very low key, and barely caused a ripple in the lives of the average person living in Bangkok (except, of course, for the tanks in the street that they had to drive around).

It is hard to define what makes this such a great city. It's certainly easy to get around for such a big place. There's the Sky Train, the underground Metro, the cabs, the river taxis and the ever present tuk-tuks drivers. All of them competing for an opportunity to take you where ever you want. Then there is the food - whether its a street vendor, a high end restaurant, or a small family run place, the food in Thailand is unbeatable.

Incredibly, one of our new favourite places to eat this time round was a mall food court, which sounds horrible, but theis place has to be seen to be believed. Located in the basement of an upper class mall, Siam Paragon, the food court must cover 5 acres (seriously!) and contains about 100 different food stalls and restaurants. There was everything from mango and sticky rice, to penang chicken curry, to spicy satays and delicious spring rolls. And of course, if you wanted, you could go for the usual assortment of Starbuck's and Subway, or choose from many of the international restaurants if your hankering was for Vietnamese pho, Japanese sushi or Indian vindaloo. The vast choice meant we could eat there almost every day and never have the same thing twice. And the other upside - it was cheap the average supper being less than $6 including drinks and dessert!

Of course for price we couldn't beat the little Indian restaurant we found on a back street by one of the canals, where for less than $4 two couples could eat a incredibly delicious meal. Sadly, in spite of trying numerous times since we have not been able to find an Indian place that comes even close to the food produced in this rather scungy looking alley way.

We passed back and forth through Bangkok a few times, it being a great central hub for all of Thailand. On our first stop we spent the better part of a week there. The first few days were on our own, and then we were joined by Harkiran and Tod, who were just finishing up a three week holiday before returning to Jakarta.

While here we made the obligatory tours of some of the wats and temples, including the Standing Buddha, which was built in 1867 AD and stands 32 metres tall. Apparently bringing the head of a mackeral, a boiled egg and a lei of flowers to the temple will ensure a blessing of success on your ventures. Sadly we couldn't find a fish head, so will have to continue to rely on dumb luck!!

We also saw the Black Buddha and the Reclining Buddha. Like dumb tourists (you'd think we'd know better by now) we fell for a scam. we were told that because it was a national holiday, the tuk tuk drivers were obligated to offer a special deal on the tour of all the important sites. For a mere 20 baht (about $0.60) we would be ferried around all day if necessary. What the trick is, is that between all these beautiful and ancient temples, the tuk tuk driver will take you to various stores - a tailor, a travel agent, a jewelry store - where he gets money for getting you in the door. Once inside you will be exposed to high pressure sales. Luckily most of these stores quickly recognized us as a lost cause. Getting a bit peeved about all the stops and the massive traffic jams (an endemic problem in Bangkok, but hard to handle when stuck in a tuk tuk exposed to the toxic deisel fumes), we aborted the mission and insisted our driver drop us off at the guest house we were staying at. Without tipping. This is unusual for us as we're happy to tip, sometimes very generously in a relative sense, though giving someone who charges you a buck a whole extra fifty cents doesn't seem like that much. But we'll only do so if we feel our driver has been friendly AND honest with us, a situation more rare than you'd wish. So it was back to relying on our usual mode of travel, our own two feet.

While here we also managed to take in a few of the markets, including the Lumphini night market, the MBK and the awe inspiring Chatachuk weekend market.

Held every Saturday and Sunday, this massive market covers 35 acres and houses over 9000 (!) booths. Here you can purchase everything from t-shirts for less than a dollar to exotic hand woven silk bed coverings, to hand carved wooden statues and even small fluffy puppies (I don't THINK they were for eating?!). Bargaining has been raised to an art form here, and is carried out in a friendly, competative fashion with lots of sad head shaking on the part of the shop owners as they let you get away with "much too little price". Sadly, the size of our packs, combined with the emptiness of our wallets, meant that the massive shopping spree we had embarked on our last time in Bangkok was not to be repeated. It was, however, a good time to replace well worn t-shirts and shorts with new stuff.

We were also lucky to land in Bangkok for the annual Songkran Festival, the Thai New Year. For this festival, local Thai people will clean their entire houses from top to bottom, to remove the previous year's bad actions so that they can start over with a clean state. Traditionally water is poured over a family member or friend as bad luck will flow away with the water. What it boils down to here is a three day water fight involving thousands of people. Woe the person that is foolish enough to ride in a tuk tuk on these days, they are guaranteed to be assaulted with bucket fulls of water from locals camped out beside the road.

We tried to sneak down Kho San Road (backpacker heaven) without getting wet, but had to give in after about 100 metres once we realized it was a lost cause. Not only do you get SOAKED, you are also blessed by the local populace as they spread a muddy mixture of talculm powder all over you face and wish you "best luck in new year" with a big grin on their faces (they love getting the farang.....that's a foreigner to all you whiteys out there).

We also celebrated Gilles' 36th (!!) birthday with Harkiran and Tod. After a dinner out we took him to a cafe where he managed to consume the largest brownie sunday I've ever seen.

Otherwise, one of the highlights was the Jim Thompson house. Jim Thompson is singlehandedly responsible for resurrecting the silk trade in Thailand and creating a world wide demand for the product. For his services to the kingdom he was awarded the Order of the White Elephant, an honour reserved for foreigners who have rendered an exceptional service to Thailand. While residing in Bangkok he built a house that was made up of 6 traditional Thai huts joined with a unique hallway. The grounds are a lush garden full of tropical plants and orchids, as well as a friendly Koi, called Oscar, who actually seems to enjoy being petted.

As well, when in Bangkok we visited a snake farm where they raised the snakes in order to milk them for the production of anti-venom. We happened to get there on the 114th anniversary of the founding of the Red Cross in Thailand, which meant, not only was it free to get in (always a good thing), they had some interesting demonstrations on showing us the various snakes and how to extract venom from them.

A lot of our time here was spent basically doing nothing - sitting in cafes, reading books, going to a few movies. As mentioned, we used Bangkok as a rest stop between many other places we visited in the rest of Thailand...............

Singapore, It's a "Fine" City

2007-05-03T23:51:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

Great food but don't spit in the street! Oh, and chewing gum is illegal to sell here too.

Hey, what do you want, we only spent one night here.......................

Sepang Formula 1

2007-05-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

Written by Gilles

With just missing out on the Australian GP in Melbourne by a week I wasn't about to let the Malaysian GP slip through my hands when we were so physically close to it. All it took was a quick phone call to the ticket agent and short Air Asia flight from Borneo to Kuala Lumpur to achieve it. We arrived at the airport in Sepang at 8:30 Sunday morning of the GP, Lynn headed directly to KL and I went straight to the track to pick up my tickets for the day's races. I split a cab with some big fella from Holland and after some searching we got our tickets. The ticket I bought was 50$ Can for a covered hilltop section, I was happy to pay it since in Canada you can't get the single day passes anymore and the tickets are quite a few more dollars. I arrived at the track in full admiration of the size of the complex. I've watched the F1 and MotoGP from Sepang before on television so I had some previous knowledge of the track but being there obviously is much different and the size of it all is intimidating.

The F1 circus as it's called was in full swing leaving you wanting for nothing, T-shirts, headsets for listening to the race, die cast cars and the the all important Ferrari Flags! I didn't buy anything. I took a shuttle bus from the F1 village to my ticketed area and to be honest for 50 dollars I wasn't expecting much in terms of viewing or comfort as anyone who has purchased general admission tickets before knows they usually leave you stuck in a corner without seeing or hearing whatever event you paid for. But the surprise was on me since the viewpoint from my area was outsanding, allowing me to see almost half the track and get very close to it as well. I was pretty happy about the whole situation, I had purchased a small chair the day before that came in handy and had plenty of snacks to last me the full day, the only problem was that it was 10 am and the race didn't start until 3! It was going to be a long day but with the Porshe 911 Cup at 12:30 and then the F1 parade of vintage cars it helped kill the time.

Most of the people started to arrive at the track at around 1pm and my area started to fill up with both foreigners and locals. The stadium style seating on the grass gave you a good look at the race from no matter where you sat or however many people sat in front of you, and the big screen across the way was sure to keep you in the loop of what was going on. It doesn't take long to get excited when you hear the F1 cars finally light up there engines, even from the other side of the track you can hear them clearly. You can also follow the TV helicopters in the air to gauge where they are on the track. They come around for an opening warm up lap and the crowd goes nuts and the tension starts to build, then the drivers lineup in the grid positions that they qualified the day before to start the race.

Once the race starts it's easy to follow what's goin on for the first couple of laps but once that first set of pit stops come you really do start to loose track, and if not for the TV monitors I really wouldn't know what the hell is goin on. Being at an F1 race for me is more about the noise, the smells and the crowds then the actually race itself anyway, so not really knowing what's goin on doesn't bother me the least. One of the other benefits of my ticket was that during the race I was able to walk around the huge section I was in and get photos from different areas and get closer and closer to the track to where you can actualy feel the awesome power of the 1000 plus horsepower cars( insert Tim "the tool man" Tailor grunt, arrrgh, arrgh, arrgh!).

(Scottish accent required)
It's eh grrrreat day forr motorrr carr rracing- Jackie Stewart always says and in Malaysia on this day it certainly was, cheap ticket, beautiful sunny day and 100 000 of my closest F1 friends, you really can't ask for more. And oh yeah, the winner was Fernando Alonso with Team McLaren.

Sweatin' to the Oldies in Borneo

2007-04-06T23:22:00.002-07:00

Written by Lynn

Kuala Lumpur, affectionately known as KL, is the capital city of Malaysia, and is located on the peninsular mainland. For us it was a convenient spot to hook back up again, me coming from Jakarta and Gilles from the Palau Perhentian. As for what there is to see and do in KL, the guidebook recommends, of course, the Petronas Twin Towers (tallest twin towers in the world, the top floor being 1273 feet off the ground). KL also has one of the top 10 largest shopping malls in the world (watch out West Edmonton!) containing the biggest Border's bookstore ever built. There's the usual assortment of museums and architecture, but nothing to really grab our attention. So after a few days of wandering around the markets in Chinatown where we were staying, we headed out to Borneo.

Borneo is the third largest island in the world, in terms of land mass. It is divided up between the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Borneo is actually an antiquitated term from the time of Dutch colonial rule and is known as Khalimantan for Indonesians and Western Malaysia for those sitting in KL. Borneo is land that is unbelievably rich in biodiversity, which is why it held such an interest for me. The island was originally made up of a mixture of dipterocarp forests, peat bogs and mangrove swamps. It contains the only remaining natural habitat for the endangered Bornean Orangutan, as well as a list of endangered plants and animals that includes, but is not limited to, the following: Sumatran Rhinocerous, Bornean Clouded Leopard, the Borneo shark, the pygmy elephant and 3 species of pitcher plants (over 30 of the world's 76 known species of pitcher plants are found on this island).

Interestingly, the dipterocarp trees, which form the majority of the canopy forests in Borneo, have evolved to synchronize their reproduction with the 4 year cycle of El Nino. In a process called "masting" the dipterocarp trees will burst into fruit on El Nino years, many trees producing over 4,000,000 blooms. The cyclical increase in food sees a corresponding increase in indigenous animal populations, as 96% of the fruit produced falls to the ground to provide ready nutrients.

Presently Borneo's landscape is being denuded by aggressive logging, which has sees one half of the world's annual tropical timber production being produced here. Presently, Khalimantan produces more tropical lumber than Latin America and Africa combined. 56% of the lowland forests no longer exist. In 1991 the average acre of dipterocarp forests produced 175 pounds of seeds. In 1998 this had dropped dramatically to a mere 16.5 pounds per acre, even though 1998 was a major El Nino year. The lack of forest canopy, which allows the undergrowth to dry out, has dramatically increased the risk of forest fires, and in 1998 an area bigger than Costa Rica burned to the ground, taking with it an estimated 9 billion dollars of forest products. If the rate of logging continues, the World Bank estimates that the lowland forests of Khalimantan will be completely gone by 2015.

This has placed great time pressure on scientists studying the area. Since 1996 over 360 new species were discovered in Borneo, and in an 18 month period from June 2005 until December 2006, 52 new plants and animals were identified by the World Wildlife Fund on the island, an unheard of feat. While we were there it was decided through DNA testing that the Clouded Leopard found on the island was genetically distinct from the one on mainland Asia.

I was hoping to spend some time with a Dr. Birute Galdikas, who has been studying orangutans in Tanjung Puting Reserve since 1971, meaning she is responsible for some of the lengthiest continuous research on a mammalian species. I was lucky enough to be put in contact with Dr. Galdikas through some people I had met at the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta, Cindy and Dom. Unfortunately for me, Dr. Galdikas was in Los Angeles for a few months during the time I was going to be in the area.

So my dream of hanging with the orangutans shattered, I was unwilling to give up the opportunity to go to Borneo when we were SO close. Unfortunately, time was limited, but Gilles agreed to be dragged along on a brief foray to the island. We flew into Kuching, the capital of Sarawak province of Malaysia. Kuching, in bahasa Malaysia, means "cat", and they are everywhere in this city. Cat statues adorn various parks and cat fountains litter the sidewalks. There is even a cat museum, which Gilles refused to visit on the grounds that until he had a subscription to "Cat Fancy" he wouldn't be caught dead at something like that.

Sarawak was actually ruled for 100 years as a personal fiefdom of the Brooke family after being rewarded to James Brooke in 1841. It was given as a reward for the help Mr. Brooke had given to the Sultan of Brunei to prevent an uprising in the region. In 1941 Sarawak was invaded by Japanese forces and was held for 3 years and 8 months until their defeat. The third "white rajah", Sir Charles Vinyar Brooke, ceded Sarawak to the British crown at this point and it remained a colony until 1963 when Malaysia was formed.

While here we took the opportunity to visit the Sarawak Cultural Village. At the village were 7 different types of long houses, which represented the traditional way of living for the major tribes that reside on the island. Borneo, as well has having immense ecological diversity, also has 30 distinct ethnic groups, some containing no more than 100 living individuals at the present time. Amongst the ethnic groups is the Iban, one of the most well known tribes of head hunters. Amongst this tribe a young man would have to obtain the head of a revered enemy prior to being allowed to marry. Once the head was taken and ritually displayed, the young man would get a tattoo on his hand and wrist, showing to all his warrior status.

In addition to the traditional long houses, there was an area set aside to demonstrate a Chinese farm that would have been common in the late 1800's on the island. Here a young lady demonstrated to us the extraction of the jelly like saliva of the swiftlet bird from their nests. This saliva, which is formed into a small elliptical patty, is some of the most expensive animal product consumed by humans, and sells for about 52€ for 32 ounces. It is used to make the traditional chinese dish of bird's nest soup. The soup is supposedly good for improving digestion, raising libido, relieving asthmatics and a whole host of other problems. The nests are gathered from off of small niches set high up on cave walls in the area. Gatherers put themselves at considerable risk by climbing rickety bamboo ladders hundreds of feet off the ground to get them. Supposedly the gatherers are supposed to take only old nests, that the fledglings have already left, but given the high prices many are collected randomly, causing a recent decline in the swiftlet population.

After wandering through the various long houses and getting demonstrations of traditional crafting, such as the making of blowdarts and basket weaving, we sat down in the theatre to enjoy a 45 minute long show that combined the various traditional dances from the major tribal groups. Afterwards we made the short walk out the beach of the nearby Holiday Inn to enjoy a little R'n'R before heading back to Kuching.

The next thing we did was catch a boat out to the isolated Bako National Park. This is Sarawak oldest national park, and is made up of a mere 27 square kilometres, and can be reached only by sea. There are a few cabins to stay in and 16 well maintained walking trails varying from 2 kilometres to 15 kilometres long. This park (for the fans out there) was the final pit stop of "The Amazing Race 1". Here you can see the endangered probiscus monkey (Gilles thinks they look like drunk, old men passed out on Parliment Hill, so wasn't inclined to really enjoy photographing them), bearded pigs, tree vipers, monitor lizards and DOZENS of macaque monkeys.

These guys, while incredibly cute on first glance, would be holy terrors to live with. They are fast, intelligent and numerous. Put anything edible down for an instant and it is gone. Some of the older monkeys are bold enough to try and grab things right out of your hand. We saw a group of them manage to rip open an upper window vent in someone's cabin, get into their kitchen, and make off with pretty much all the edible food they could find. Another monkey got locked in a neighbour's cabin when a staff member kindly closed a window they had left open. The poor trapped monkey, a young one by the look of it, was throwing himself at the window trying to get to the rest of his group, which was sitting on the porch. The resulting mess of monkey pee and less nice solid substances required a second cabin cleaning for the poor staff members, who first had to fend off angry monkeys with broomsticks from the porch.

While here for 3 days we spent several hours a day hiking the trails on the look out for probiscus monkeys and other more common animals. But it was HOT, HOT, HOT, HOT!!! I think this may have been the most humid place I have ever visited in my life (my expectations for what I can survive in terms of heat and humidity are constantly being tested on this trip). You would literally be soaked with sweat within 20 minutes of being outside. A true rain forest, there was also monster rain storms most nights, making your trip through the jungle muddy and slippery along with the heat. Still, it was an interesting side trip. My only regret, those orangutans.................

Soon it was back to KL. Our reason for returning so quickly................Sepang, Formula 1.

Mucking Diving Heaven

2007-04-06T23:22:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 islands and stretches almost 5000 kilometres from one tip of the archiepeligo to the other. In total Indonesia has over 80,000 kilometres of coast line, which is equal to about 1/3 of the world's circumference. Off the coasts of the Indonesian islands the warm waters of the Pacific and Indian Ocean converge, creating a vast melting pot of marine life feeding on the nutrients carried in by these warm waters. In the seas surrounding the islands, over 1220 species of fish and a staggering 600 species of coral (there are only 400 types found in the enormous Great Barrier Reef) thrive, making this section of the Western Pacific the richest marine habitat on earth.

I decided to go up to Manado in Northern Sulawesi to go diving on the advice of some avid divers I met at the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta. This area is home to the world reknowned Bunaken Marine Park as well as the fairly recently discovered, and much lauded, Lembeh Straits. There are over 120 dive sites in this area, including 40 wreck dives, the majority of them less than 30 minutes from shore.

Bunaken is best known for its unbelievable wall diving. These steep, pristine coral walls start less than 3 feet below the surface and plummet down for up to 150 feet, covered with a huge variety of coral and inhabited by countless species of marine life. The bulk to Colin's right (my dive partner for the week) is the coral wall, and the spots to his left are just a fraction of the fish you can see. You slide out of the boat and descend and can spend an hour just going up and down over a small area peering into crevasses and under bits of coral. There are literally millions of animals to be seen here, and you would have to be blind to not appreciate the unparalelled beauty of these reefs.

Lembeh, on the other hand, has been dubbed the muck diving capital of the world. Lembeh Straits are found right by the very active port of the city, Bitung, in Kungkunan Bay. The port itself is full of boats with oily deisel films floating on the water around them and people randomly throwing garbage into the bay. Doesn't sound very attractive I know. It is true that muck diving involves slowly swimming over black, apparently lifeless sand, with your head pointed downwards and you legs way up above you (an ass over tea kettle type position). This is an attempt to keep your fins from touching the bottom and stirring up silt which obstructs your view. Your nose in about 6 inches from the bottom, and your eyes are tired from the strain of staring and not blinking enough. Occasionally you'll see a plastic bag, or peice of shoe leather bob by, and the floor of the ocean has half buried coke bottles and juice containers all over the place. Really makes you wonder why there is such a hue and cry about this place. Believe me, I wondered when I first got in. But if you move really slowly, and really pay attention, what you find is an underwater Lilliput.

Lembeh Strait is the Holy Grail for underwater macro photographers and marine biologists. It seems to be the drop off spot for all the strange and ugly under water denizens that the gods just didn't want to put in the beautiful coral reefs for fear of spoiling the ambience. New species are being discovered here all the time. Now I'm a fairly inexperienced diver, so just getting underwater and seeing something as common as a sea anemone with its protective herd clown fishes (these little buggers will actually take a run at you and nip you on the finger if you are so foolish as to put one out there) is pretty cool to me. Lembeh Straits tends to draw in the really experienced divers who have become blase about the oh-so-easy to see parrot fishes and groupers that occupy most tropical reefs. Here, on the other hand, you get to see species most divers will only get a glimpse of in glossy diving magazines, as one new and exotic creature after another casually swims by you. We saw, in the 3 dives I was there, multiple frog fish (hairy little creatures that walk along the bottom rather than swim), mothfish (that look like birds flying through the water), pygmy seahorses (about the size of my baby fingernail), ghost pipefishes, nudibranches by the dozens (like technicolour sea slugs), decorator crabs, mimic octopuses and many, many fish I can't begin to describe as I have no idea what they were. It is a veritable critter safari that was probably a little wasted me as I had no idea how lucky I was to see these animals. That is, until we got out of the water and the other people on the boat started to RAVE about all the things we saw. The other three divers had a lot more experience than me, being rated as dive masters, two levels above my lowly open water PADI licence. The vast variety of marine life, combined with the shallow waters leads to very long dives (we had one that was almost 78 minutes, which is an incredibly long time to be under) and is well worth the trip.

BUT, not to be a spoil sport (because Lembeh was incredible), I'm more of a fan of the ostentatious, in your face, beauty of the Bunaken Islands. I'm still enough of a new comer to the underwater world to be wowwed by the sea turtles, moray eels, black tipped reef sharks and enormous groupers that I saw. On my last day there I rented an underwater camera to try and capture just a bit of the experience, though I have to apologize for the poor quality of the shots as there was no flash on it. On the bright side, the many, many blurry shots of coral and fish I took were edited out.

When I got to Manado I booked in with Thalassen Divers to take me out on my dives. These guys are great. They are very professional and safe, and do EVERYTHING for you, including loading up all your gear on the boat every day and rinsing it all off at night. Because it had been a while since I last dived, they assigned a dive instructor to me to do a free refresher course and to go on my first dive with me. For the following 3 dives I always had a guide assigned just to me, which not only made me feel much safer, but was great because he was able to point out all sorts of bizarre things I would have missed otherwise. The boats were generally empty as it was low season, usually just one or two other divers, the guides and a few helpers. Once we got to release a sea turtle that had been bought off a local fisherman to save it from being eaten (a highly illegal, yet common practice in the area).

Rather than stay at the expensive hotel associated with Thalassen, I got a room in a guest house in the village of Buhawo only a few kilometres away. Buhawo Guest House is run by a couple of expats from the UK, Phil and Paula. Its situated in a small village of only about 400 people. Phil and Paula have done a tremendous amount of philanthropic work here, helping to raise funds to expand and improve the local school and have recently completed building a medical clinic. Out of their own pockets they will be paying to have one of the local women go to school to become a nurse, who will then staff the clinic daily, a doctor only being available 1 to 2 days a week. It seems all the expats in the area are doing their part, not only by providing jobs for the locals, but also in other more obvious ways. Thalassen, which is run by a Danish woman, is presently building a highschool for the children of the four local villages, so that they won't have to take the 45 minute bus ride into Manado every day. As Phil put it, "You don't come here with the thought in mind that you want to do all this, but when you get here and realize just how much of a difference you can make to these people's lives with so little effort, how could you not............."

Anyways, it was quite a trip, both relaxing and exciting at the same time. While here I got to do 10 dives, 4 of them muck dives, ate some great food, got to visit the local school and meet some of the kids and even went out the the building site of the new high school. I also went out to a local Indonesian bar, that appears to have been made out of cardboard and two-by-fours (apparently it burned down last year and was rebuilt, looking exactly the same, with in a week). At these bars individual girls are assigned to each table to encourage you to drink, fetch your beer and dance with you (whether you're a girl or a boy) as Indonesians always dance in pairs, the dance floor being covered with two long lines of people facing each other, and god forbid you ever stray from the lines. Your girl will immediately shepard you back in. This was off set the same night by visiting an upscale night club that had a huge dance floor with strobe lights and dry ice being pumped onto it, a live band complete with 4 back up girls singing and dancing behind them and expensive blended drinks rather than cheap shared bottles of beer. BUT.............still those 2 lines of dancers!

From here I went back to Jakarta to spend a few days with "just the girls". Harkiran, Tika and I hung out by the pool, did a bit of shopping and generally relaxed prior to meeting back up with the boys. Harkiran was flying to Ha Noi, Vietnam, where Tod and five of their friends were. I was heading to Kuala Lumpur to find Gilles, hidden somewhere in the streets of Chinatown

Bali and Palau Perhentians

2007-04-06T23:21:00.002-07:00

Written by Gilles

Coming Soon

Selamat Jalan, Jakarta

2007-04-06T23:21:00.001-07:00

Written by Lynn

Indonesia is one of the countries that when you think of visiting it you instinctively get that little tight knot of concern in you belly, even if you don't know why. When you look at the Canadian government travel advisory, they just say, "You are advised against non-essential travel to Indonesia, including Bali". And I suppose on the surface of it, there is good reason. Recently there have been terrorist attacks in Indonesia, including the bombing of a tourist resort in Bali in October 2005, and the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August 2003. More significantly, it seems the only time we in the west hear about Indonesia is when they are in the grips of some awesome natural disaster - tsunamis, earthquakes, unending rivers of boiling mud. So the overall picture from the outside seems pretty grim. But I would have to say that after having been here that you are doing a wonderful country a great disservice by dismissing it as a travel destination.

Having said that the truth is we probably wouldn't have stopped in at Jakarta (and realized what we were missing), except that we were visiting friends of Gilles', Tod and Harkiran. Harkiran works for the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta in the economic development branch and was sent overseas almost 2 years ago. Tod tagged along and ended up working for Unicef as a communications officer with regards to Avian Influenza in the area (a huge problem, Indonesia having just recorded its 74th official death due to Bird Flu). They left Canada just after they got married in the fall of 2005 and haven't been back since. But don't feel too bad for them, they have a great place in Jakarta and are situated at a central location that allows them to fly around South East Asia at dirt cheap prices. This means they can spend one weekend on the beaches of Bali, then next shopping in Singapore, and the one after that visiting ancient temples in Thailand (of coures they are way too busy to take much advantage of this, but at least the opportunity is there). Happily, they were willing to throw open their doors to welcome us into their home.

Jakarta is a city that is hard to define. Many hate it because it is crowded and dirty, full of traffic jams and deisel fumes, and in many places rampant poverty. On the other hand, the public transport system is great, there are many high end and bargain shopping centres and the people are unfailingly friendly and helpful. One thing we can certainly recommend Jakarta for is pirated DVD's, the cheapest and best quality we've seen so far (about $0.80 a disc). We went a little crazy and bought everything from "The Queen" and "The Last King of Scotland" to "Talledega Nights" and "The Number 23". We also indulged in DVD's of tv series, including "Entourage", "Lost" (Gilles' new obsession, he managed to watch 2 full seasons in about 10 days), "House", and "Scrubs". Gilles also managed, to his delight, to find a Krispy Kreme donut shop and became a regular customer.

When we got to Harkiran's and Tod's place it was my first chance to meet them. Incredibly friendly and welcoming, we instantly felt at home. We also got to meet their new puppy, Tika. Tika was a mere 8 week old street dog when Harkiran and Tod first found her abandoned in a parking lot. Full of ear mites and other itchy bugs, hairless patches and bony little ribs, she's a lucky puppy that they could look past it all and see the beauty beneath. By the time we met her a month later, she was an outgoing, happy little thing, full of piss and vinegar (the piss sometimes ending up on the carpet, much to Harkiran's dismay). Spend a little time with her, though, and you're in love. She's smart and independant enough to make you feel like she's being nice to you when she lets you play ball with her. Not exactly the best protection against the HUGE rats you see when walking her after dark, but since she might be smaller than them, I guess we won't hold it against her.

Our first day in Jakarta we made it to the bargain basement shopping centre, Mangga Dua. A bohemoth 7 stories of tiny shops covering most of a block greet you when you get there. There's everything from cheap t-shirts, to (of course) pirated DVD's, to electronics (surprisingly not all that inexpensive in comparison to North America). To offset this we then went to Senayan City where the predominant shops are Gucci, Prada and Boise.

Harkiran, Gilles and I also went to the Imperial theatre to see the movie "300". Now why would we spend all the money to go see a movie in a theatre, when the DVD can be had so cheaply? Well, it's because going to a movie here is an experience. You get reclining lazy boy seats with blankets provided (this is because the air conditioning is set just below freezing) and your food and drink, which you order before hand, is served to you by waiters during the show. The sound is loud enough that most people bring ear plugs, or stuff thier ears with kleenex (no, I don't know why they don't just turn the sound down a little) and the screen is HUGE.

While in Jakarta we crashed a party at the Canadian Embassy (Harkiran and Tod had been invited and we weren't, though I believe this was a gross oversight). There was a jazz duo from Montreal playing there, and we got a chance to meet lots of Canadians (a surprising number really) who were working in Indonesia in various levels of government. The ambassador and his wife, who are new to the area, were very gracious and seemed quite interested in our travel plans.

We also got to go to a St. Patty's day party, held at a real Irishman's house, where the buffet dinner consisted of foods only green, white and orange (including the jello shooters). The beer of the night - Guiness, of course, with Kilkenny's for those of us unable to down too many of the "liquid breads". The night would not be complete without an Irish trivia contest, which my team should have won handily (admittedly because we had the only other native Irish person on our team), except we refused to stand up and sing Irish ditties out loud.

The next day I was scheduled to leave for diving in Manado. Because it was my birthday, Harkiran and Tod took us out for an ENORMOUS brunch at the Four Season's hotel. Only brunch I've ever been to where you have to decide if you want the stir fried lobster, the cold tiger shrimp, the raclette, the sashimi or the foie gras (never had it before, turns out I don't like the stuff) amongst piles of other stuff. Well, tough choices all around.

Barely able to walk after eating so much, I said my goodbyes and hopped in a cab to the airport. I was off to Manado on Sulawesi island to go scuba diving. Gilles was heading to Bali with vague plans to meet up with Tod and another friend, Jay, who were starting a 3 week holiday later that week. So for the first time in almost 6 months we were actually travelling on our own - scary thought, isn't it....................

G'Day, Mate!

2007-03-27T22:02:00.000-07:00

Written by Lynn

Okay, pretty cheesy title, I admit it, but I just couldn't resist..................

As many of you have guessed, our next stop was Sydney, Australia. Sydney is a great city, definitely on my "I-could-live-here" list. While here we stayed in the questionable area of King's Cross, a backpacker haven, also well known as a drug- and prostitute- infested borough. Remarkably similar to East Hastings in Vancouver (well, maybe not quite as bad!), it was cheap and within walking distance to the much higher priced down town.

In Sydney we did the usual - visited the Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney Opera House and walked George Street. We also splurged on a visit to the world famous Sydney Aquarium, where you can walk through tunnels constructed of clear fibreglass as sharks, seals and a variety of fish swim above, under and around you. Since it was the Chinese New Year, we also had a chance to watch the of dragon boat races and other celebrations. The best thing we did, though, while we were in Sydney, was visit the local Quantas office (we are soooo easily amused at this stage).

To explain this better to those of you who are curious, we are presently travelling on what is known as a "One World Alliance" ticket. Depending on the number of continents you are visiting and the mileage you cover, it ranges in price (cost is also dependant on where you start, it being about $1500 less per person to start in the UK than in North America, not sure why). Because we are heading into South America and Africa, we are classed in the highest category. With each continent you get a certain number of stops and the miles within each continent are added up to make a total. Because you can only reserve seats about 11 months ahead of time (and we booked these tickets back in July 2006) we were responsible for rebooking dates for destinations after May 2007. In the Quantas head office we met up with the most helpful agent, called Caroline, that we could have hoped for. Several hours, a few cups of coffee and a thank you card with an accompanying bouquet of flowers later we had finalized our plans. Turns out we had a lot of mileage unused on our tickets and stops that we could have used in Asia and Africa. So we booked ourselves a little flight from Singapore to Bangkok in order to jump over southern Thailand due to political unrest and we also picked up a stop in Cairo, Egypt at the very end of our trip, so we can see the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings, which I am very excited about. All in all, a very satisfactory morning.

As a preemptive warning for the rest of this posting, I would have to explain that our plans in Australia were pretty vague. So if this blog seems like we were rambling around with no firm plans, that's only because that was exactly what was happening.

We were scheduled to fly into Sydney February 23rd and out of Perth (on the opposite coast) on March 11th, and that was pretty much the extent of it. We had originally thought that what we'd do was rent a car and spend the few weeks transversing the country, an romantic vision of outback experiences, kangaroos and koalas being the driving force. EVERY Australian we talk to, with out fail, told us this was a retarded plan, the distance between the two cities being daunting and the landscape monotonous in the extreme. Not to be dissuaded, we went around to the various car rental agencies and quickly realized that not only would it take DAYS to get to Perth, the cost because of one way drop off fees was quite prohibitive. So instead we re-evaluated and decided to rent a car for a week and do a loop through New South Wales and down through the province of Victoria. It was decided to go this way, rather than north on the more popular Gold Coast Route, due to a life long dream of Gilles' to drive the Great Ocean Road.

Once again we visited the local Salvation Army Store (you gotta love Sally Anne) to gather up cheap camping equipment and set out on our adventure.

For those of you not aware of it, Australia is presently in the grip of one of its worst droughts in a 100 years. Many regions, including the ones around Melbourne were suffering through their fifth year of well below average rainfall, and water restrictions were fully in force in most town we drove through. As a dramatic example, the Murray-Darling river system that we drove through, which recieves more than 4% of Australia's water run off, was 54% (!!!) below its record minimum at the end of 2006. Climate change, which is blamed as a major causative factor, is a hotly debated topic here.

Well, you wouldn't have known it. Our first day on the road it POURED. In less than 24 hours there was over 96mm of rain in the Gippsland area we were driving through. At one point there was a staggering 35mm in less than an hour. So our drive through NSW (New South Wales) was pretty unspectacular, wet and not conducive to camping. So rather than spend the night in one of the many national parks scattered through out the area, interacting with wallabies and other campers, we hunkered down in a cheap highway motel room (which, by the way, started to flood around 11pm) and ate pizza. Not exactly an authentic Australian experience.

Once the weather dried up a bit, we continued on our way towards the infamous, oft talked about Great Ocean Road.

Turns out the Great Ocean Road that is pictured on ALL the travel brochures of Australia is a bit of a disappointment. Only about 40 kilometres of it actually follows along right beside the coast. Having just spent 10 days being blown away by ocean views in New Zealand, this section of the trip lacked a little something for us (makes you think we might be getting a bit spoiled).

What was overwhelmingly impressive, though, was the 12 Apostles. These 8 (yeah, apparently 4 of them have succumbed to erosion, the most recent in 2005) huge limestone projections jut out of the ocean, carved out over 20 million years ago by the relentless pounding of the waves. They rise over 45 metres out of the water and are enhanced by the presence of other nearby peices of natural rock art, such as the Loch Ard Gorge, Mutton Bird Island and the London Arch. The arch used to be London Bridge until part of it collapsed in 1990 stranding two tourist on the sea side rock out cropping, who then had to be air lifted off. Would of thought the nursery rhyme would have warned them this was going to happen!

Even better for us was a chance to see koalas in the wild. On an unlabelled dirt road just off the Great Ocean Road, in a small town called Kennett's River you can drive up away from the crowds and park. You get out of your car and you think your standing in a pretty deserted section of a eucalyptus forest, looking a little scraggly because of the drought. But if you hold still for a bit and look really closely, you'll start to distinguish these furry little gray lumps resting on the eucalyptus tree's branches. If you wait long enough, one of these lumps will turn its head towards you and give a lazy yawn. Voila - koala bears.......

These lazy little marsupials (they aren't actually bears) sleep up to 20 hours a day to conserve their energy and keep their metabolism rates low. This is because they consume only eucalyptus leaves, which are limited in calories, proteins and basically any usable nutrients. Being confined to one food group also severely limits their range to certain parts of Australia. Koalas have 2 opposable thumbs, which enable them to grip the trees more securely during their extended naps. They also have fingerprints that are remarkably similar to humans, an unusual trait in the animal world. Best of all - they are just goddamn cute!!

Not to be outdone, the kangaroos and wallabies showed up during our journey in impressive numbers. Actually kangaroos are considered a bit of a pest in Australia as they graze on valuable farmland and are so plentiful that there are grills on the front of most cars to prevent damage when you hit them. Car rental companies generally warn their customers to not drive after dark, just to avoid this complication. Most camping areas we stayed in had a few of these fellas hanging around, some more tame than others. We also managed to see an elusive echinadae (kind of like a really big hedgehog with a pointed nose - of course you can't see its nose here because its managed to roll itself into a ball AND bury itself in the dirt), wild emus and about a million different bird species, none of which I can identify.

After the "O.K." Ocean Road we headed inland towards Grampians National Park. Grampians is a well known holiday destination for the outdoorsy folks that live in Melbourne. It covers a huge range in Victoria province and is best remembered for is beautiful forests set amongst extensive limestone mountain ranges. Many of the trees are centuries old and help to provide breathtaking scenery. It also is infamous for its aboriginal rock art paintings, many of them thousands of years old. This area was the range for the Koori Aboriginal Tribe who recorded their dreamtime legends and ceremonies on the recessed walls of caves throughout the park, making it a valuable historical site.

Unfortunately a huge forest fire ripped through the park in January 2006, destroying almost half of the Grampians' old growth trees. Some 62,000 sheep in the surrounding farmlands were burned to death, along with 120,000 acres of bush and farmland, destroying several homes along the way. Today there are several roads and hiking paths in the park that are still closed. Of the ones that are open, you can still see burned trunks of destroyed trees. The park makes a big deal of having a unique opportunity to view a forest springing back to life after a mammoth natural disaster (which is, after all, only a part of a natural process of renewal), but it does seem like we missed out on seeing something grand by not getting here ahead of the bushfire.

Fortunately the fire did not make it to several of the aboriginal rock art sites, including the Billimina shelter and the Gulgurn Manja shelter, which we visited. They also have a fantastic visitor's centre that is set up detailing the history of the aboriginals in Australia. You, like me, probably have a vague idea that in the war of the worlds, the Australian aboriginals didn't do so great. As a matter of fact, the entire population was almost decimated.

For 25,000 years before the arrival of Europeans in the 1770's, the population of aboriginal Australians remained stable. Estimates placed the population at around 500,000, maybe as many as 1 million. By the 1860's almost 98% of the aboriginal population was decimated due to a combination of disease, violence against them inflicted by Europeans, and starvation after being driven off of traditional hunting grounds. By 1883 only 1000 pure blood aboriginals were left in all of Australia.

Convinced that the population would die out, the European government attempted to integrate the aboriginals, particularly the mixed raced children, into their society. With supposedly the best of intentions, aboriginal children were taken from their families and placed in missionary schools, some hundreds of kilometres away from their homes (great movie about this is one called "Rabbit Proof Fence").

As the aboriginals began to develop resistance to diseases, their populations stabilized and began to rise again. Unfortunately, racial stereotyping and discrimination continued. It wasn't until 1963 that aboriginal Australians were actually given the right to vote. Today many in the indigenous community continue to struggle with alcohol and drug addictions. Less than 40% will finish highschool, and their average household income is a 1/3 less than that of Australians of european ancestry. Their life expectancy is 17 years less than that of other Australians and they are 11 times more likely to end up serving a prison term.

Regardless, the aboriginals here have a proud and extensive history and are working hard to not lose their heritage. In the area we were camping in, aboriginals could claim ancestory going back for 1600 generations!

After the Grampians we just touched on the edges of the outback's eastern side up by Mungo National Park. We then turned our car to the right and headed back to Sydney. On the way to town we passed through Blue Mountain National Park. It is called this due to the bluish mist that hangs over the area because of the large number of eucalyptus trees excreting an oil that vapourizes. This vapour is highly flammable, making the area particularly vulnerable to bush fires. During extreme heat, the volatile oils have even been known to explode.

We made sure to take in Govetts Leap and take a quick trek out to Wentworth Falls, though part of the trail to the bottom of the waterfall was closed due to unstable conditions. After this we headed north of Sydney to the town of Port Stephens.

In Port Stephens we had a day to wander around and decided to take a "marine explorer's" day trip. Port Stephens is reknowned for its pod of gregarious bottlenose dolphins. About 80 animals make up the pod that inhabit the harbour here, and are a large tourist draw. Strict measures to protect the pod have been enforced, and no boat is allowed to approach closer than 50 metres or entice the dolphins with food, though the dolphins quite regularly come right up to the boat with no urging, strictly out of curiosity. There is a popular viewing area called The Boulders in Port Stephens where the dolphins will arrive daily in order to push themselves amongst the millions of river smoothed pebbles to clean any lice or dirt they have on them off.

We were lucky enough to have a mother and calf join us for most of our boat trip, riding on the bow wave close enough to almost touch. We were heading out to Cabbage Tree Island, the only place in the world to find the endangered Gould's petrel, which has had a recent population come back due to intensive conservation efforts. Here we put on our snorkels and fins and got into the water to have a little look around. Unfortunately, this is an area dolphins don't come into, so we weren't able to swim with them. But what you could see was thousands of little translucent jelly fish of varying hues, bobbing along in the waves. As well there was some impressive kelp beds and a large grouper that the boat operators fed some sea urchins to in order to entice it out from behind its protective rocks.

After this, we continued on to the Stockton Beach Sand Dunes. This is a 32km long beach covered with massive sand dunes, many over 30m high. We were here in order to track down the wreck of the Sygna, a bulk carrier that was capsized in 1974 less than 100 metres off shore. The ship's captain foolishly decided to try and sail during a storm with gales of 165km/hr and had his ship forced sideways into the shore, where its stern settled into the sand, water breaking the 53,000 tonne ship in half.

By now we had managed to fill up a week of aimless wandering around NSW and Victoria and headed back to Sydney to return our rental car. We then FLEW to Perth, having given up on the idea of driving there. I was quite excited by the idea of seeing Perth, having not made it there the last time I was in Australia and having heard many good things about the city. Well, the city itself is quite nice - lots of green space, good pubs and restaurants, very clean, friendly people - but, oh my god.............it was 42 degrees the day we got there and it never really got much cooler. We had hostels refusing to rent out rooms because they had no air conditioning, which meant we had to stay in a more expensive hotel and hunker down in the heat of the day watching tv. We did manage to go out to a wildlife reserve one day when it was a bit cooler, but its really hard to enjoy it when all the animals are hidden in the shade trying to avoid the sun. We also went to Freemantle Beach to take in the annual modern art sculpture festival. Otherwise we stuck to air conditioned movie theatres, cafes, restaurants and hotel rooms until we could make it to the airport and fly on out to Jakarta.

So all in all, our experience in Australia was expensive (much more so that we were used to after South America) and not as fun as the last time I was there. I think that Australia is a fantastic country to visit, but you have to go willing to do a lot of flying around because the distances are so vast, and the main sites are widely spaced out. We didn't make it to the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru or Kakadu National Park, which means we missed out on the some of the best that the country has to offer to visitors. Next time, I think a totally separate trip is in order for this country..................

Motorcycles in NZ

2007-03-15T21:54:00.001-07:00

New Zealand, biker Heaven?

Written by Gilles

As a motorcycle enthusiast (me, not Lynn) being in NZ is pretty good for the soul, that's assuming you have one? The roads alone on the South Island are enough to convert anyone with a cold heart towards motorcycles into a hard core biker. The scenery, mountains, river, glaciers, ocean, it never really ends and lack of traffic makes it a top destination to ride in. Of course it goes without saying that the kiwis friendliness is unsurpassed and their accents aren't too shabby either which only adds to the already charming NZ landscape.

The Kiwis have a passion for all things mechanical, and actually everything non mechanical as well, but they are especially fond of their motorbikes, new and old, and even more fond of the creators of two of the most famous rides that ever came out of NZ . These two bike creators are known globally for different but equally impressive reasons, one is John Britten and the other Burt Munroe (played by Anthony Hopkins in the movie The World’s Fastest Indian). They are definitely proud of these two New Zealanders and they both are a testament to NZ ingenuity and that never give up attitude.

Trivia-Oddly enough the two gents from different eras share a common link- John Britten's motorcycle company built the bikes used in the The World's Fastest Indian movie, and well I guess the other thing in common is unfortunately they both have passed away.

Good on ya mate!

“John Britten was a visionary, a genius, a motivational legend who created the distinctive home-built bright pink and blue Britten motorcycle that achieved iconic status world-wide”.

It's hard to explain to a non Motor head the significance of both Britten and Munroe, Britten especially. John Britten was able to produce a world class one off motorbike working out of his garage with only a small team of helpers and friends. The Britten bike was capable of not only competing with the best that the Japanese corporate machine could offer but actually beat them on occasion!! Today, that would be compared to you or me building a Formula One car in the backyard and beating the likes of Team Ferrari or Team McLaren on the F1 circuit, it's unheard of.

It was John's technical genius and his dedication to his belief that he could build such an advanced machine to compete on the world stage that sets him apart from most men. It wasn't just a pipe dream to him, it was to become reality. Where most fail to even conceptualize their dreams, John put his together from plan to product in a very short period of time and now had is own offering to the God of Speed.

Britten built a radical 300kph+ V1000 twin using carbon/kevlar composite for the top chassis ( there was no frame per se) carbon/kevlar rear swing arm and front girder style forks that used only one shock. He also designed and built the engines in his back yard, molded and casted. The whole bike was designed with speed in mind and with John's theories of aerodynamics he did just that, go fast! ( There's too many features to go through right now and there are plenty of websites about him if you want to take a look go to http://www.britten.co.nz/) . His bike was capable of over 300kph and produced at least 166 horsepower at 11,000 rpm so I'd suggest if you're gonna ride it that you hold on for dear life, and make sure your insurance policy is up to date.

Team Britten scored a number of wins, they hold land speed records and international track records as well, but what really put them on the map was placing 2nd and 3rd against all the factory machines in the 1991 Battle of the Twins in Daytona, Florida.
Britten only built a handful of his hand and home built bikes, 10 or so in the short while that he was alive, it's unfortunate for the motor heads out there that Britten died of a brief illness related to skin cancer at the age of 45. Who knows what the future of bike racing could have been.

As fate and luck had it this day, while waisting time waiting for our rental car in Christchurch I walked around the corner to the many local bike shops one by one looking at some vintage and classic bikes from side car racers to old cafe racers that they had on display and the selection of bikes was fantastic. The street had a good mix of hole in the wall bike shops and the big factory shops. I walked over to the Harley Davidson shop but it was closed for the day so I ended up next door to the Honda shop instead and you couldn't get luckier if you tried, I walked right into where one of only ten of the Britten bikes was on display and had just arrived from Auckland!
Here's a couple of pics of me with the legendary bike at Christchurch Honda.

“If you’re a Buddhist you go to Tibet,
If you’re a Motor head you go to Bonneville”.

"The Ol' Speed Demon lived until he was dead" Gilles' original quote, feel free to use it!

Burt Munroe's story is much better known to the average Joe than John Britten's thanks to the movie "The World's Fastest Indian" starring Anthony Hopkins. If you haven't seen it you really should give it a look, the movie is more about his obsession, determination and quest to achieve something out of the ordinary then it is about a simple motorbike.

"All my life I've wanted to do something big... something bigger and better than all the other jokers"...Burt M

Burt was born in 1899 (died in 1978 of a heart condition) in Invercargill, NZ, the southern most part of the country, an ol' coot by any standard and there were more than one who thought he may be a little too old to be playing speed demon. But the likable character that he was he won people over easily on both sides of the pond and his spirit for living was indeed contagious making it extremely difficult not to rout for him. Burt bought his now legendary Indian Scout new in 1920, (1926 Scout shown above) manufactured that in Sprinfield Massachussets. He raced and modified it for close to 44 years, he also built a fiberglass aerodynamic body for it that made it look and ride like a missile.

At age 68, he risked everything, including his own life, taking the bike to Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to break the world land speed record. He did so in 1967 posting a record breaking speed of 183.586mph that still stands to this day for a bike of its class. Burt went to Bonneville nine times in 11 years, running his V-twin 1920 Scout, and he would leave the bike there but take the engine back to New Zealand every year to work on it. He was unfunded and without team support .

It wasn't just the speed of his machine that captured the peoples imagination, but his ability to tinker around with his machine, building parts out of scrap metal, forging his own pistons, heads, cannibalizing old ford car parts to build cam rods, cutting the treads off tires to make them faster, you get the idea, the man could make something out of nothing, a real MacGyver. Burt's life may seem a little absurd and obsessive to some but I'd be pretty sure he didn't care, he was a man searching for something, hoping for something big to happen to him, to accomplish something great and even though he did, it may have been the journey he took to get there that he was actually looking for.

Burt, the colorful character that he was had many quotes attributed to him such as..
"You live life more in five minutes on the back of a motorbike than you can in an entire lifetime."
"It is better than being a cabbage watching television all the time. And having a nice couple of pretty ladies around can help a lot."

"Once you're dead, you're dead. You never come back. You're like a blade of grass and you just blow away. So you may as well enjoy it."

"If you don't follow your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable".

"If you don't go when you want to go, when you do go, you'll find you've gone".

Anthony Hopkins on Burt and the movie .

Burt Munroe- "At the Salt in 1967 we were going like a bomb. Then she got the wobbles just over half way through the run. To slow her down I sat up. The wind tore my goggles off and the blast forced my eyeballs back into my head - couldn't see a thing. We were so far off the black line that we missed a steel marker stake by inches. I put her down - a few scratches all round but nothing much else".

At the time Burt was traveling at close to 206 mph! Hopkins said about the role:
"I started laughing when I read the script for The World's Fastest Indian," he says. "I thought, this is no way for a 67-year-old man to behave!

"It's been the best film I've been in and Roger Donaldson is one of the best directors I've worked with. "I originally got the script and thought it was just terrific. It was just well written, very very well written, beautifully written, and so refreshing. It’s not the bang bang, of big Hollywood movies.

So as you can see read it is a must see movie with a little something for everyone and who's to argue with Hopkins about what is good and what is not..

Anyway once again I was lucky enough to stumble upon the Southland museum in Invercargill that was holding and exhibiting original "The World's Fastest Indian" movie props, motorcycles, car and trailer, they also had some of Burt's personal items, story boards and the full mock up of the tool shed Burt lived in. I snapped a couple of shots of it although technically wasn't supposed to. With help and information from the curator of the exhibition he lead me to "E Hayes and Sons" the local hardware store, the owner is one of Burt's old friends and sponsors that now has his bikes on permanent display for all to see...and it's free!

Kia Ora, New Zealand

2007-03-08T00:44:00.001-08:00

Written by Lynn

I love this country....... I was here once before, in 2001, to visit my friend Alison. She was studying the weta (a endangered cricket the size of a mouse - feel free to correct my description, Alison) at a university on the South Island. My memories of New Zealand are filled with beautiful green landscapes, amazing animals and friendly people. Well, the second visit didn't disappoint.

We flew into Auckland totally exhausted from our marathon session of airport squatting in Tahiti. Our first stop was (hate to admit it), MacDonald's for breakfast. Here we met a retired American couple, ex-pats for the last 20 years. They couldn't rave enough about "their" country, and were full of suggestions of things for us to see and do. They even went so far as to offer to drive us back to Rotarura with them, a few hours west of Auckland. Sadly, given our limited time in New Zealand, we had already decided to spend most of it touring around the South Island, so had to decline their friendly offer.

For those of you who have never been to New Zealand, first off - shame on you! Secondly, it should be explained that New Zealand is divided into two main islands - North and South. The North Island is the most heavily populated, where over 70% of the estimated 4 million Kiwis live. The South Island has a much smaller population, but has most of the estimated 40 million sheep residing here. This number has dropped dramatically from the oft quoted 70 million sheep (or 20 sheep for every 1 Kiwi) that was true in the 1980's. Since then dairy has become a major industry and New Zealand has become the 5th largest dairy exporter in the world. As well, New Zealand has a thriving wine industry and forestry is becoming a more and more important contributer to the country's economy. But it's #1 industry, without a doubt, is tourism!

Almost 2 million tourists a year touch down in New Zealand. This number has increased dramatically since the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, filmed mainly on the South Island, produced by New Zealand's own, Peter Jackson. Since then millions of fans have visited to see the amazing landscapes made famous by these films. Rightly so, Mr. Jackson said no other country would be able to provide the awe inspiring vistas Tolkien had envisioned for Middle Earth.

After a few days in Auckland, spent mostly wandering the city and admiring the tall ships and sailboats docked at the habour, we flew down to Christchurch. In a fine example of our advance planning abilities we had not booked a hostel or as of yet rented a car. Unbeknownst to us, we had landed in New Zealand at the tail end of high tourist season. This meant that cars and camper vans, if you could find them, would be three times as expensive as other times of the year. But there really is no other way to tour the South Island. While there are several bus companies that can take you to the major cities and tourist destinations, part of the charm of this island is how "accessible" the remote and isolated areas, such as beaches, mountains and treks, are. If you have a car that is. So after a few days of concerted effort we managed to find a beat up old Subaru Legacy wagon to rent. We raided the local Salvation Army for camping gear and cooking stuff, rounding out our trove of treasures with a camping table/chair set from Christchurch's local pawn shop.

While waiting for our car we explored the charming city of Christchurch, set on the Avon river and modelled after a historical English city. There is a large (30 hectare) botanical garden filled with exotic and native trees and plants. In it there are some impressively enormous trees, many of them over 100 years old. The main square has a trolley station that can ferry you around the city and a nice craft market and the town's museum has some impressive displays on Antarctic expeditions. Though not my cup of tea, we did spend the weekend in Christchurch during their annual flower and garden show, which meant the whole city was decorated with beautiful floral arrangements.

While here we also (to my extreme excitement - yeah, right) by sheer chance got to see one of John Britton's bikes (in reality it's a racing motorcycle, I just like this picture). I actually have to admit that I had no idea what this means when I say how lucky we were to see it. As a result I will have to leave the motorcycle enthusiasts in anticipation for Gilles' later post.

Once we gathered up the car and all of our acquired camping gear we set off on a 10 day exploration of the South Island. We started by crossing the Southern Alps through Arthur's Pass. The Southern Alps run down 2/3 of the island, close to the west coast. Once over the amazingly twisted and scenic pass we were on the west coast. We turned south and started to make our way towards the tip of the island. Hugging the coastal road, which dipped in and out of the surrounding forests, we were treated to many visual treats. The weather was perfect for us, barely raining at all (a minor miracle for New Zealand where areas on the island have an annual rainfall of 6 metres!!). Our first stop was to enjoy the beaches around an area called Knight's Point just north of a town called Haast. Here the you can look down onto white sand beaches from towering cliffs and catch the occasional call of the sea lions. We camped beside a lovely stream in a wooded area that was INFESTED with mosquitoes and sand flies (which I would compare to rabid black flies), driving us into our tent by 8pm that night.

A short aside here to say that camping in New Zealand is fantastic. Not only is the country non-stop natural wonders, camping involves just pulling off on a track leading down to a beach and setting up your tent. If you have a camper trailer you can just park where ever it suits your fancy, though you do have to be careful not to get stuck. We helped push out one camper that got a little to far onto the sand one night. Our Canadian winter background came in handy as no one else really understood the value of "rocking" a stuck vehicle.

The next day we continued on with our journey, making the requisite stops at the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers. These glaciers are the world's most accesible, and are presently in the process of retreating at a blistering rate of of 70cm/day since 1984 (about 10 times faster than a typical glacier). Glaciers in general are in a constant cycle of advancing and retreating, a pattern driven by the differences between the volume of meltwater at the terminal face, and the snowfall at the "neve". The two glaciers here are over 13,000 years old and together make up the heart of the Westland National Park.

The next day we headed out to Te Anu, our jumping off point for Milford Sound. The sound is more appropriately labelled a fjord and is one of New Zealand's most famous tourist destinations. It sits on the south west coast at the end of a long road through the Fjordland National Park. Here there are several wonderful treks and you can visit with many gregarious KEAS, the world's only mountain parrots. These birds are well known for their extreme curiosity and intelligence, which has been compared to that of a monkey. They are a bane to the unsuspecting car owner who can return from an hour trek only to find a gang of keas has removed all the accessible rubber from their vehicle's windshield wipers and windows. Due to their extreme adaptability and varocious appetite, the Kea has been persecuted in the past for their supposed attack on sheep. While it is true that during the harsh winter months, when food is scarce, keas will turn into scavengers and rip open carcasses with their sharp beaks to get at meat, it has never been proven that a kea has attacked a live sheep. They are well known, however, for eating the hatchling mutton birds that hide in small nests along the coast while thier mothers are off fishing for them. They are seemingly completely fearless and will approach you as soon as you exit your car, looking for a handout.

Once you get to Milford Sound you can take a tour on one of the many available tourists boats to get a first hand view of the towering cliff faces which loom over 1200m above the water. Milford Sound has the dubious reputation as one of the wettest places on earth, receiving over 6m of rainfall annually. We were lucky and got there on an overcast day, but had no rain. This does take away a bit from the many waterfalls in the area, but made for nicer boat ride. Unfortunately, the marine life was a little scarce when we were there and we were unable to see any dolphins or whales. We did catch sight of several fur seals sun bathing themselves in the welcome heat of the day though. And what we did see was an amazing landscape of dominating rock faces that loomed over our tiny boat. Thumbs up to Mother Nature for being able to continuously amaze me.

After another night in Te Anu, we headed off for Queenstown. This is New Zealand's self proclaimed adventure capital of the world, and here you can do just about any crazy outdoor activity you can think of. From bungee jumping, to zorbing, to white water rafting, to helikayaking, it's all available here for a price. Sadly, the price is pretty high, though that doesn't seem to be affecting their business as the town is over run with adrenalin junkies. What we came to see (aside from the fact that it was right on our way) was the mountain that was used as Mount Mordor in the Lord of the Rings. Not quite as impressive or scary as in the film, and no orcs to be seen..................

From here we headed down to Invercargill. For those of you not in the know, it is one of New Zealand's most southerly cities and was the home of Burt Munro, the man made famous by the movie, "The World's Fastest Indian" (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins). We made our way to the local museum where there was an exhibit on Burt and the making of the movie, which was done mainly here in his home town. Gilles paid the extra money to go in and see this exhibit (and will tell those interested all about it in the next post), while I hung out and talked to the curator of the tautara display.

Tautaras are reptiles that are the only surviving relative of dinosaurs that roamed the earth over 225million years ago, and not much has changed for them in this time. They are only found in New Zealand and are the slowest growing reptiles alive today. One of the males at the museum was over 120 years old and weighed about 1kg. The female tautaras will only lay eggs once every 2-5 years, this slow rate of reproduction making them vunerable in the wild. Fortunately they are fairly easily bred in captivity and this museum has managed to have quite a success rate over the years in hatching the babies in a controlled environment. If you're interested, you can read more about them at www.southlandmuseum.com.

I did get to see the original Indian motorcycle that Burt Munro raced, as well as the ones used in the movie, as they were on display at the local hardware store, rather than at the museum, the owner of the store having been a good friend of Mr. Munro.

After Invercargill we made our way to my favourite stop of the tour, Porpoise Bay. Here, on the very southern tip of the south island, I went for a swim with a girl from Austria. Now, rightly so, you should think I'm crazy, because that water is COLD (as in can't-feel-your-toes-after-5-minutes cold). But it was worth it, because if you're really lucky (and we were) a group of dusky dolphins will come on in to see what the foolish swimming humans are up to and play in the waves with you. This was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and though the pictures don't really show you very well (shame on my photographer!), the pod of dolphins came within a metre of us, and I probably could have touched them, had I wanted to. Amazingly, it was totally free (the Kiwi's have perfected the art of providing a tour/entrance fee for everything from sheep shearing to beach combing), though I would have happily paid for the experience. Since there were only the 2 of us in the water, we also were the centre of attention for our new friends, and managed to stay out there with them for almost a half hour, before the cold drove us in.

After this our next stops included the lighthouse at Nugget Point, which is very popular and probably where we saw the most tourist congregated in one place since we had left Queenstown. About 400 metres below the trail, at the bottom of a 90 degree rock face, you can just barely catch a glimpse of sea lions frolicking among the waves. Not completely satisfied with this long distance encounter, we made our way to the practically deserted Cannibal Bay where you actually have to carefully pick you way around the sea lions as they bask on the sand. We apparently weren't very interesting, as you can see from the pics of the yawning beasts (I'll try to crop one to include a close up of the greyish slime stuck between their teeth - yum!)

From here it was on to Dunedin on the Otago Penisula. The best thing about this area is the wildlife, and you can spend days exploring the many sandy beaches looking for encounters with sea lions, elephant seals and penguins. Here you have a unique chance to catch a glimpse of the yellow eyed penguin, the world's rarest penguin, whose population has been decimated by the increasing numbers of introduced dogs, feral cats and rats on New Zealand, along with habitat reduction. While very graceful in the water, these guys are VERY clumsy on land. But there's nothing quite like the site of a penguin rolling up onto the shore in a wave, then staggering to its feet and waddling up the cliff to a safe resting spot. While there is a rehabilitation area that you can tour at dusk (the best time to view penguins as they come in from the sea for the night) we elected to return to a beach that I had seen with Alison and Brian 5 years ago. Here, at Sandfly Bay, you have to descend down an enormous sand dune to get the the protected beach. You then hide behind a constructed blind and wait quietly for the feathered friends to head to shore. While a bit more difficult to get to, it was much less busy than the rehab centre and (best of all) free!

After a few nights in Dunedin, my favourite city on the South Island, we headed back towards Christchurch. Given that we had the time, we decided to visit Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest peak that peaks at 3754 metres. We weren't expecting much, being pretty cocky about having topped over 4200 metres in South America, but were pleasantly surprised by the impressiveness of the landscape. It's pretty much summed up in the following quote.......
“I am not sure that Mount Cook is not the finest in outline of all the snowy mountains I have ever seen. No one can mistake it. If a person says he thinks he has seen it, you may be quite sure that he has not seen it. The moment it comes into sight the exclamation is ‘that is Mount Cook’, not ‘that must be Mount Cook’. There is no possibility of mistake.”
Samuel Butler

This is definitely not a mountain to be taken lightly. When we first got there we hiked up to the Alpine Monument, which has plaques for the various mountaineers that have died scaling the peaks of Mount Cook. The most recent was in 2003, and a plaque from the 1960's list a climber from Calgary, Alberta.

After a night spent camping at the base of Mount Cook we took the morning to do the more mundane and very safe Sealy Tasman Track that takes you up to a look out point over the Southern Alps and lakes in the Mount Cook National Park. Turns out all the driving around in a car has seriously impacted my fitness levels and the 4 hour hike that went straight up, then right back down caused some significant leg pains for the next several days!! But the view was worth it and I'm happy to say that the detour to Mount Cook was well rewarded.

With only a day left before we flew out from Christchurch we decided our last stop would be to go to the town of Kaikoura. This small village turned tourist destination is becoming increasingly well known as a place go on whale watching tours, mainly to see sperm whales. They also offer whale spotting flights, chances to swim with dolphins and/or seals and several hikes. We hooked up with a couple of Canadians from Montreal, Alex and Alex, who were touring the South Island as well. They were members of the infamous Cirque de Soliel that had just finished a show in Auckland, and were on the way to Canberra. The 4 of us decided against the whale touring, partially because we were not convinced that we liked the idea of approaching whales in boats.

Whale watching as a tourist activity has increased dramatically in recent years (apparently the numbers world wide rose from 2 million people in 1990 to 9 million by 1999 and has continued to increase in popularity since then), and some tour operators are less scrupulous than others about how they monitor the interaction with the whales. Most whales only approach land during important stages of their life cycles, such as breeding, calving and nursing. Many rich feeding grounds also are close to land. The concern is that an over enthusiastic tourist industry will negatively affect these animals and drive them back out to sea. Regulations of the industry are patchwork and not enforced, so it is pretty dependant upon the company what your experience will be. On the up side, cetacean touring provides an economically viable alternative to hunting, a practice I have no qualms about voicing my opinions against. Questioning the tourist office in Kaikoura, it seems that they are well aware of potential problems and work hard to provide an eco-friendly encounter with these amazing beasts, and are very selective about which companies they will actually recommend and book tours with, which was nice to see. Still, a combination of expense, concerns over the practice, and timelines, prevented us from going out on a boat. Instead we toured some seal colonies, had some fish and chips from a landmark restaurant and wandered around this charming seaside town.

The next day it was back to Christchurch to catch our plane out of New Zealand and onto Australia. Overall it was once again an amazing experience here, and one I hope to repeat over and over again in my life. I don't think I can emphasize enough how great a country New Zealand is to visit. Very friendly people, beautiful landscapes, cool animals to see everywhere you turn...........if you haven't been, start planning your trip as soon as possible, I may even meet you there!

Easter Island!!! (oh, and Tahiti)

2007-02-09T20:00:00.000-08:00

Written by Lynn

For probably the first time the title of this blog is truly apt - we are a thousand miles from nowhere. Welcome to Easter Island, the most isolated piece of land on earth. Standing in the centre of its largest (and only) town, Hanga Roa, you are 3700km to Chile, the nearest populated land mass, and 3800km to Tahiti. The island itself is takes up a mere 64 square miles amongst the huge South Pacific ocean. The land here is rolling and covered with waving grasses, inhabited by herds of feral horses and is floating on an ocean that is so dazzlingly, eye watering blue that you can't believe it's real.

Easter Island was "discovered" by a Dutch explorer on Easter Sunday, 1722. Until the arrival of Europeans to the island, the people of Rapa Nui (dubbed so by Tahitian sailors) had believed that they were the sole surviving humans on earth. They had landed on Easter Island (or "Te Pito O Te Kainga" - ie. navel of the world - as the natives had referred to it) sometime between 400 and 800 A.D. Where they came from still remains a bit of a mystery. It is a commonly held theory that they come from Polynesian islands in two waves. One brought the HANAU MOMOKO and the next the HANAU E'EPE, erroneously referred to as the "short-" and "long-ears" due to a misinterpretation of the word E'EPE to mean ears (EPE is the actual term for ears). Much of the art and culture of the island reveals a distinct Polynesian influence, though over the centuries it became highly evolved and unique to Rapa Nui.

The most amazing and recognizable aspect of Easter Island are the massive MOAI, or statues, that dominate the landscape. These megolithic peices of art stand anywhere from 1 metre to 10 metres tall, all of them placed on the edge of the ocean facing inland. The largest statue remains unfinished in the quarry and measures at over 21 metres and would have likely weighed 160 tonnes upon completion. Some moai even have large red coral "hats" placed atop of them.

The question that continues to baffle archeologists and laymen alike is "How?" How did the Rapa Nui people move these massive statues, some up to 25km, over rolling hills? Other cultures have created and moved large stone icons, but nothing on the scale of what is seen here. And the lack of trees that would normally have been used to transport such statues also creates a puzzle. As you stand next to a MOAI and gaze up at it, you can not begin to imagine the amount of focused community willpower it must have required to complete and move.

An equally puzzling question is "Why?". Certainly the Rapa Nui people are not the only culture to develop an extravagant and time consuming way of expressing their devotion to the gods and their ancestors (think of the pyramids of Egypt, or even the stone temples of the Incas). But usually these high cultures are developed under favourable conditions, where the excess of natural resources mean that minimal work is required to feed and cloth the people, leaving the time to develop creatively. Here on Easter island it seems to be exactly the opposite. In all direction is nothing but dry, scrubby grasslands, relatively flat other than three inactive volcanoes that dot the landscape.

It is told by the Rapa Nui that the original settler of the island was the king, ARIKI HOTU MATU'A, whose grandfather had dreamed of a land to send the people to in a time of great need. When their country, HIVA, began to sink, Hotu Matu'a went forth and found the island his ancestor had foretold. The original settlers brought to their new land several useful plant species, such as the banana, tubers, sugar cane and pineapple. They also brought in chickens (known as MOA), that became their staple source of protein, and were therefore carefully guarded. Prior to this it is believed that there were very few edible plants on the island, and minimal to no land fauna. The lack of reef surrounding the island meant that the natives could not easily access the ocean without sea going vessels (requiring trees to build), though some species of fish such as tuna could be caught from shore.

Recent core samples show fossilized pollen proving that at one time there was a forest of palm trees, many of them now extinct, that would have once grown on the island. This at least partially answers some of our "how" questions. But it seems that the massive numbers of trees that would have been required to assist in the movement of the Moai caused the Rapa Nui, in their obsession, to eventually denude the landscape.

The limited natural resources, combined with a burgeoning population (estimates place the peak numbers at about 9,000 people, though the numbers had declined to about 6,000 by the time Europeans discovered the island) created many warring factions. This is likely at least somewhat responsible for the second great mystery of Easter Island. You see, several decades before Europeans arrived at Rapa Nui, work on the Moai just suddenly stopped. Today when you visit the quarry at RANO RARAKU you can see half finished statues, ones that were just beginning to be sketched out and completely carved moai that they had begun to move, but were abandoned and allowed to sink in to the earth. In total 397 statues remain here. The have been 883 Moai identified on Easter Island, 288 which had made it to their final destination and were mounted on AHU, large stone altars, and had their eyes carved open and defined with ellipses of carved coral and obdisan. It was believed that until this was done the statue was just stone. Once "awakened", MANA would infuse the Moai in the form of a spirit of the ancestors to watch over the villages. All of these Moai were toppled and had their coral eyes removed. And no one knows why.........

Certainly the Rapa Nui people were an advanced enough culture that they had developed a written language, called RONGO RONGO, which likely documents at least some of the history of the island. Sadly a combination of disease brought by the Europeans, inter clan warring and slave trading had reduced the population of Easter Island to around 100 people by the end of the 1800's. Unfortunately, no wise men survived and rongo rongo is now a dead language. As well, the introduction of christianity to the island meant that many of the rongo rongo tablets were destroyed at the behest of priests. Many attempts have been made to translate carved tablets that have been found, but have been for the most part unsuccessful. Without the benefit of a verifiable historical account, only theories can be raised as to what happened.

One commonly held theory is that there was a upheaval in between the ruling and conscripted working classes, resulting in an overthrowing of the people ordering the construction of the Moai. Another possibility could be several consecutive years of environmental stress, such as drought. It is estimated that even as little as 5 years of poor crops would have forced the population of such a resource limited society to the brink of collapse and created a crisis that would have precipitated such a sudden turn in religious practices.

All that is known for sure is that the Rapa Nui suddenly stopped creating Moai and instead began to revere the birdman, MAKEMAKE. Much of the worship of the birdman centred around the religious sanctuary of ORONGO, situated high up on the edges of the volcano RANO KUA. Every year a competition would be held where the chosen men of each tribe would have to descend from Orongo down to the sea and swim out to one of three islands through shark infested water. Once there, the young men would have to collect a MANUTARA, one of the first eggs of the year laid by a sooty tern. This egg would have to be brought back, unbroken, and placed in the hand of the competitor's clan leader. The first to recieve an egg then became the ruler of the island, called the TANGATA MANU, until the following year. All over Orongo are stone petroglyphs of the birdman, and several can be found on other areas of the island. This culture was still alive even into the 1800's, and it appeared that the population of the island itself was recovering from what ever massive upheaval had caused their reversal in religion.

Cannibalism was also practiced on Easter Island, many people having the dubious claim of having ancestors who were KAI TANGATA (man eaters). It is also true that cannibalism was not practiced for religious or ceremonial purposes, but rather just because of a simple liking of human flesh as there was no other large land mammals available at the time. The ultimate insult for someone would be to say "your flesh between my teeth" and in ancient times was enough to incite full scale clan wars.

These days, of course, Easter Island is a peaceful oasis, where you can sit before the re-erected Moai for hours on end contemplating the enormity of the task the Rapa Nui had accomplished. The people here are incredibly friendly and are truly happy that you've chosen to visit their home. There is also opportunity to go out and wander on ocean side cliffs, amongst the generally uninhabited fields filled with cow and horse herds, some branded to show ownership, others feral, but unafraid of people. There is the two beaches and various popular surfing spots to go to, and scooters and cars can be rented to motor out to the various historical moai sites.

When you first get to the Easter Island airport the first thing you realize is just how small the island really is. Presently there is only about 3800 permenant residents, though it is visited by almost 40,000 tourists a year. These numbers have multiplied rapidly since the first commercial flight actually landed on the island in the 1950's (using a dirt runway the islanders built themselves). These days Easter Island is a common stop over for people coming from Santiago or Tahiti. Several cruise ships will make one day stops, ferrying the passengers around to the more important archeological sites before they load them back up on the ships and take off. Many group tours fly in and fly out again within 24 hours, staying at the large, Chilean owned hotels. My recommendation - wait until you get to the airport and find a family to stay with. Everyone there knows everyone else and can direct you to a place to bed down. We stayed at "Chez Oscar" and everywhere we went, when asked where we were staying for the purposes of scooter rentals or just out of curiosity, people automatically knew who Oscar was (of course he was a bit of a flamboyant character, but still, it was great to see how close knit the communty is). We also, just by chance, landed on Easter Island the day before their biggest festival of the year, Tapati Rapa Nui, began. This festival, celebrated since 1975, is used to help maintain and highlight many of the traditional dances, sports and cultural skills of the Rapa Nui. It draws in a large number of tourists and is held annually during the first 2 weeks of February. During the next 17 days there would be daily shows of dancing, singing, wood- and stone-carving, and various sporting events. The sporting events would include everything from regattas to a traditional triathalon (involving swimming, paddling on a homemade reed float and running around a lake carrying a pole with banana bunches balanced on either end). There is also spear and fishing competitions, and the making of MAHUTE (barkcloth). One of the most amazing and unusual sights is the HAKA PEI - a race involving men dressed in HAMI (loincloths) and body paint sliding down the side of a volcano on the trunks of banana trees. During this suicidal run the competitors can reach speeds of up to 60km/hr, and the one who flies the farthest is declared the winner. All of these events are used to collect points for various clans. Each clan has a beauty queen contestant, and the one with the most points at the end of the two weeks is declared the winner. The entire festival is then closed with a massive carnivale style parade.

We were lucky enough to see song, dance, carving, regattas and the not to be missed Haka Pei. Were it at all possible we would have stayed to see the carnivale. We were also unfortunate enough to see the local accordian competition, but, hey, they can't all be winners. I think one of the most amazing aspects of this competition was the fact that the talent pool was drawn from such a small population and, for the most part, was excellent. If you're planning on visiting Easter Island, I would highly recommend coming in February so you can catch at least part of this festival, and I usually avoid tourist high season like the plague whenever possible!

During the day, between performances, we rented a scooter to motor around the island and see the various highlights. These sites included not only the ones previously mentione, but also
PLAYA DE ANAKENA - the red coral beach, site of AHU ATUNE HUKI, some of the first Moai re-erected in 1955 by an American anthropologist, William Mulloy, who dedicated his life to reviving the dead culture of the Moai
AHU TE PITO KURA - the largest of the complete Moai, never re-erected

AHU TONGARIKI - 15 Moai stand here, re-erected in 1992 by a Japanese crane company. These ones were particularly hard to stand upright as the toppled statues had been shoved inland by a tidal wave in 1960.

TAHAI COMPLEX - one of the closest to the city, showing the different stages of developement in the facial features of the Moai

RANO KAU - a volcanic crater on the edges of the sacred village of Oronga

We also took one day to take a "bitty" trek around the south point of the island, recommended by our host, Oscar. Too bad for us we got a bit lost and ended up wandering for about 5 hours in the wide open fields, in the hot sun, with not near enough water to drink. Luckily for us, it is impossible to get completely lost on this island as it is so small. While on our little walk we did see many horses, cows, beautiful ocean vistas and several partially or completely decayed livestock corpses. Curious, I asked a few locals what the deal was. Turns out, in a fine example of human interference with a pristine environment, the problem lies with a noxious plant, called Cho-Cho, introduced onto the island.

In 1982 the plant, Crotalaria grahamiana (cho-cho), was introduced onto the island to help prevent erosion. A few years later a large number of cattle and horses began to die from a wasting disease that progressed rapidly into a stumbling, neurological deficiency and then onto death. Due to a lack of veterinary care on the island, it was assumed the animals were undergoing an epidemic of mad cow disease, and farmers were resigned to losing much of their livelihood. In 1998 it was discovered that the actual culprit was the cho-cho plant, which contained a natural source of pyrrolizidine alkaloids. These alkaloids were hepatotoxic (killed off liver cells) and potent carcinogens (caused cancer). Most of the livestock were dying of cirrhosis (liver failure), the neurological symptoms related to a consequence of this called hepatic encephalopathy (brain dysfunction caused by the build up of toxins in the blood). Unfortunately, by the time this was realized, cho-cho was a widespread invader of the island. Measures taken since then to limit the exposure of livestock to the plant have reduced fatalities, but not completely eliminated them. There also remains come concern about whether or not human consumption of animal products (such as meat and unpasturized milk) on the island will result in an increase of liver cancer, though not enough study has been done to support this theory.

Back on happier topics I can say that I completely enjoyed our stay on Easter Island. Never have I had such an amazing 5 days, filled to the brim with amazing history, beautiful scenery, awe inspiring sights and a festival that was completely fascinating. It was sad to leave Easter Island, but the time had come to pack up and move on to Tahiti.

Now most people were a bit jealous when they heard we were going to Tahiti, and I'm sure that for some the experience is amazing. For us, not so much. First off, Tahiti is one of the most expensive tourist destinations on earth. The "cheap" rooms on the main island cost around $150 a night. We landed on the island at 11pm, and were through customs by midnight. Given that we were planning on catching the 6AM ferry to another island, called Moor'ea, we decided it would be easier to just sleep in the airport. So with about 15 of our fellow backpackers we pulled up a peice of marble flooring (sadly no soft carpeting or sleepable chairs) and got what sleep we could. The next day we were off by bus to the ferry.

The town of Papeete, the capital of Tahiti island, is a bustling, overcrowded and dirty place, surprisingly. Many people go to Moor'ea, first off because it is cheaper, secondly because it is more untouched with pristine natural beauty. One of the nice things about Moor'ea is that about 200m off shore, encircling the entire island is a reef. Within this protective circle the water is calm and only about 4 feet deep in most places. Abundant coral grows here and a variety of tropical fishes abound. Just off the shore of our hotel we went snorkelling and saw many vibrant and colourful coral and fish. Unfortunately, visibility was not that great as it was rainy season, which brings me to the second problem we had with Tahiti - it rained, and I mean poured, for about 48 hours straight during the 3 days while we were there. Confined to our the porch of our little cabin for the most part we just chilled out and made quick trips to the grocery store between down pours. We couldn't afford to eat out (meals at restaurants costing anywhere from $25-50 a person), and many of the activities were not only overpriced, but would not have been particularly enjoyable in the wet (eg. dolphin watching, touring Cook's harbour, scooter rentals). So we hung out with the hotel's cat, read a lot, caught up on some sleep. Two days later it was back onto the ferry to Papeete. We had to take an early afternoon boat to make sure we got back on time (ferries stop running at 4pm), but our flight didn't leave until 3AM the following morning. Faced with another typhoon like downpour, and burdened down with our full backpacks and empty wallets, we decided to pass the hours at the airport - all 14 of them................

Conclusion - Tahiti would be great if you had enough money to afford one of the fancy resorts, but all in all we wish we had just spent the extra days at Easter Island enjoying more of the Tapati festival. The one thing that I am very sorry I missed was the Tahiti Marathon, which ran just 2 days after we left on Moor'ea. Not, of course that I would have run it (are you crazy!), but it would have been great to see. Nice flat course, beautiful scenery. Pretty hot, but it starts at 4:30AM, which would help with that (though would be a major deterrent to spectators). Oh well, maybe next year.

Stella

2007-02-09T19:59:00.000-08:00

Written by Gilles

Cruel twist of fate--Stella

Who knows why our paths crossed that day, surely the gods knew that Lynn and myself were not the kind that would just keep on walking by and do nothing to help this poor animal, or maybe that was his "plan" after all.

As we were walking towards the Mendoza Zoo I spotted a dog in the corner of my eye sitting awkwardly in a ditch of cold fast running water. You could tell something was wrong with her right away, she had the saddest little eyes and that "I don't know what to do now" look on her face...I had the same look on my face. Lucky Lynn was there and took a little better control of the situation while Stella and I sat with our stunned faces. Lynn checked for broken bones which apparently there wasn't any but Stella's breathing was laboured and a little worrisome. We wouldn't be sure about her condition until we got her to the Vet Clinic a block away from our apartment for X-rays. Stella's rear legs wouldn't support her and she yelped and stumbled as Lynn picked her up to put her in the cab. At this point I'm reminded why I'd never make it as a Vet (apart from the obvious--brains!) I don't have the internal fortitude that Lynn does to even watch this poor little pup suffer without wincing from the uncertainty of her fate. Perhaps my lack of animal medical knowledge explained my complete uselessness at that point.

We got Stella to the Vet Clinic where we met Juan Carlos, a Mexican born and trained Vet who is just the kind of person you'd want to meet in this situation. Helpful, kind, caring and most importantly working on the case of getting Stella adopted asap. Juan gave Stella a couple of pain shots to get her through the night but unfortunately his clinic didn't have an X-ray machine on site so we would have to wait till tomorrow until the mobile X-ray machine showed up. We still weren't really sure what we were going to do with Stella, we were hoping to take care of her at the apartment for a couple of days then send her to her new home. Juan did come through with someone to take her in a couple of days but we still didn't really know all there was to know about Stella's condition until we got her X-rayed.

At this point I guess you should know where the name Stella comes from, with all our running around and worrying at the time the money for her pain meds cost 40 pesos and for that money in Argentina we could have bought 20 beers!!! (originally it was Heineken but that proved to be to masculine so we called her Stella after the Belgium beer Stella Artois).

Obviously the money was better spent on her....

So we carried her home, built her a bed with a blanket and covered it with garbage bags since she still was a dirty slightly smelly street dog. Now she was in our intensive care 24 hours a day until we could deliver her to Juan Carlos who had indeed arranged an adoption for her but the adoptee could only take her on the weekend...no problem for us. We made her as comfy as possible, we feed her all sorts of good little treats, rice and sausages, leftovers and of course puppy food. She was really sore still but seemed to be getting better with each hour that passed, she'd whine a little bit and struggle to try to get up when she had to pee. We had to lift her up and support her around the yard for the first couple of days until she started to get up on her own. I slept downstairs with her for 4 nights with one eye open getting up when she need to go out or wanted some water and food, sometimes she'd sleep inside by the door and other nights I'd put her outside where she seemed more relaxed.

By day 3 she seemed to be getting much better, and I was at least thinking things would be all right for her. Her demeanor was good, she wagged her tail every time she'd see us and respond with a friendly look, we were petting her constantly and calling her by her name, she was going outside and enjoying the sun like any good hearted street dog would. She was even trying to flip over for a well deserved belly rub. She was eating and drinking well and even going to pee by herself standing up which I took to be a great sign of recovery.

We had to find another clinic to get X-rays since the mobile machine didn't show up at Juan's clinic, it wasn't too far but carrying little Stella around was hard on the arms after 10 blocks of walking. Finally in to get X-rays and they were pretty cheap about 90 pesos for 3 X-rays, however they didn't give Stella anything for the pain and laying her out on the table for the photos was a bit painful to watch as she was still really sore. Lynn started to think at this time that something more serious might be going on with Stella, her breathing was still laboured and she thought she probably had a diaphragmatic hernia, which I guess is common with animals that get hit by cars.

The X-rays proved Lynn's assessment to by right, she did indeed suffer from a tear in her diaphragm as well as a fractured pelvis. We were definitely caught in a dilemma and a bit off guard, she would need an operation and intensive care for a couple of weeks after and we were leaving in a couple of days. At first we had just decided although we didn't want to that the best thing to do since no one would be there to take care of her was to euthanize her. By this time our attachment to her was growing and the thought off having to put her down just because we couldn't sort things out due to lack of time to sort out all the details of her operation, post op care and adoption wasn't really acceptable to me but the reality was saying otherwise.

Unfortunately and fortunately for Stella, Argentina had just passed a new law that states you can only euthanize animals if there is an existing medical condition. We thought for sure that Stella would have qualified but the attending Vet didn't seem to think so! Surely Stella could not go on without medical intervention but apparently he had some ethical problems with putting her down. He did however give us a number for the society for protection of animals in town but we'd have to call and make the arrangements our self. We didn't get the warm and fuzzies from this clinic and hoped for a little bit more from them since we were doing everything we could as tourists for the little girl.

We carried Stella home once again and consulted with Juan about her medical problem and the remaining problem of what to do with her. At best, Mopra (animal protection) would take her, we'd pay for the surgery and they would have someone do post op care for her. At worst Juan Carlos had said he would not having a problem euthanizing Stella since she would be suffering and needed the operation to survive.(Juan's clinic didn't have the equipment for such a surgery but once again Juan was most helpful and patient with us and our poor Spanish).

We finally spoke to Mopra that night and had arrangements put together for Stella the next day all we needed was a price for the surgery from the Vet that we agreed to pay for and everything else would be taken care of, Thank God, finally!! By now it was Thursday night and we were leaving on Monday morning to go to Santiago, it couldn't have been any closer time wise.

After another night on the couch and being woken several times by Stella's whimpering and need for some attention, and food of course the morning came and my shift was over. Lynn came down from her lovely large air conditioned bedroom and comfortable bed I might add to relieve me of my dog duties and Stella went outside to enjoy another beautiful sunny day in Mendoza.

I went up to bed upstairs and what only seemed like minutes when Lynn came up to tell me that Stella had just died. I couldn't believe it and needed to see for myself but unfortunately it was true. Stella died outside in the hot sun, on the green grass, where she felt the most comfortable.

She lived a good last week with us, she got off the streets and knew what it was like to have a home, what being completely spoiled was like, to actually have a long overdue bath and to finally have people to care for her. It was a long week with her and we did the best we could, of course our attachment grew over the days as were our high hopes for her recovery and a positive outcome: it was cruel ending for out little story. We poured what we had into her and her recovery and she repaid us plenty with a wagging tale and a happier face then when we found her.

I still wish we could have saved her......

Mendoza, Argentina

2007-01-25T15:38:00.000-08:00

Written by Lynn

The city of Mendoza is situated just on the Chilean border, seperated only by a thin strip of Andean mountains, visible from the town square. It is the heart of wine country here in Argentina, and every other shop is a bodega advertising fine wines and tours. The wines here are world famous, made special because of the "terroir" of the area. Of course, I have no idea what this means, but did have it explained to me.

There is a combanation of factors that makes Mendoza the perfect wine growing area. The first is it´s high altitude. Most of the grapes here are grown at an altitude of between 3000 to 5000 feet. This allows for a wide variation in tempuratures from day to night. The cool evenings stop the grapes´growth, which allows the flavour to mature and sugars to concentrate. The next special feature is the desert soils, whose low organic content actually increase vine yield. They also allow for proper drainage of the fields, promoting deep and vigorous root growth. Finally, the area is actually quite arid, averaging only 8 inches of rain a year. Initially this appeared to be an obstacle for many of the European wine growers that immigrated here hundreds of years ago. It was overcome by the building of a complex system of irrigation channels that can be seen running along side the roads in the area. This allows the vineyards to control the amount of hydration the vines get, preventing the grapes from becoming "watery and fragile". Because of the low humidity and rainfall, in combination with the higher elevation, it means that most fungi and parasites that are the bane of other wine areas are not viable here, meaning all the grapes are grown organically. The end result - a wide variety of wonderful wines. Apparently they are also amazingly healthy for you! Comparison to a selection of red wines from France, Spain, Italy, Chile and Australia show that the wines grown here contain 6 times more polyphenol, meaning they are even better for your heart.

On top of the large number of high class drunkards running around the streets, there is also an inordinate number of mountaineers. The reason being that Mendoza is the jumping off spot for those interested in climbing Aconcagua - the highest mountain outside of the Himalayans, topping out at almost 23,000 feet (Mount Everest is 27, 000 feet for comparison). Being that it takes 14 to 21 days to summit (including acclimitization) we decided against attempting it (oh, and we are NOT climbers and people actually die doing this trek!).

We did decide to go for broke and rent a car to get out to the town of Uspallata, right in the middle of the mountain range. Uspallata and the surrounding area were the site of the filming of the 1997 move "Seven Years in Tibet", starring Brad Pitt. This means that everywhere you go in this small village you see pictures of Brad (pre-Angelina), and there´s even a pub called the Tibetan Bar.

While out in Uspallata we went out to see the Rock of Seven Colours (I only counted 5, but it depends on whether or not white and off-white are two different ones) and met some university students that were heading out there as well. The difference being we were in our crappy car, and they were on foot. It should be noted that the Rock of Seven Colours is about 7 km outside of town on a dusty "road" in the middle of nowhere, with no signs giving you an inkling of where you are going. Feeling a bit bad for the trio we stopped and picked them up in our fancy rental Chevy Corsa. Turns out the three - Fredirico, Paula, and Christina - were final year law students on their summer break. Given our new found auto freedom, we promised to pick them up the next day to take them out to the moutains with us.

So bright and early the next day the 5 of us set out to see the sites. The first stop was the Puente del Inca (spanish for "Inca Bridge"). This is a naturally formed, bright yellow, rock bridge spanning the Rio Mendoza. It is believed that it was formed because of the unique meeting of frigid mountain run offs and hot thermal springs, which allowed for sulfurous water to collect and settle on top of ice dams. You used to be able to walk across the bridge to reach a now defunct Thermal Resort and Spa, but recent evidence that the bridge was starting to shift meant that this was no longer possible.

After stopping here for a bit, we made our way to the El Christo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer). This 8m tall statue was erected at the border of Chile and Argentina on the old border road. It sits at an elevation of 3800m and is accessible either by hiking along 9km of a sinuous dirt road that climbs up the mountainside, or can be driven in a 4WD in the summer. Happily it was summer, sadly we had no 4WD. But that didn´t deter us from taking our poor little car, loaded down to the axles with 5 adults, on the road anyways............the things the car rental companies don´t know won´t hurt them.

The last stop of the day was Aconcagua National Park. Here there is a small hike that leads you through an alpine valley and, on a clear day, offers an amazing view of the peak of Mount Aconcagua. It is where the serious mountaineers begin their long trek to the summit, and was quite busy this time of year as the mountain is best climbed from mid-December to end of February. The 5 of us just stuck to the smallish hike, content to watch the "real deal" start out with their massive packs.

After parting ways with the "kids", as we called them (I feel so old) we stayed another night in Uspallata then headed back towards Mendoza, a 1.5 hour drive away. We were looking for an inexpensive place to stay amongst the wineries on the edge of town, but were unable to find anything. What we did find (quite exciting) was a Wal-Mart!! How embarrassing, we actually stopped and bought some new cheap t-shirts as we were getting tired of seeing the same ones day after day.

Unable to find a suitably priced place outside of town we went back to Mendoza and got a cheap room. We had arranged to move into an apartment the following day where we had planned to spend a couple weeks relaxing, doing nothing and just generally trying to lead a more normal existence. We did not return the car, as it was due back the next morning at 10AM, and we thought we´d be smart and use it to move our packs the next day, saving the trouble of us dragging them the 10 blocks to our new home. Sadly, this was a mistake. That night the window on the passenger door was smashed and Gilles´ hiking shoes stolen. On the bright side, it only cost us $40 to have the window fixed, on the down side Gilles still has to figure out what to do for shoes.

Our new landlady, Viviana, felt so bad for us, and shocked that this would happen in Mendoza, she upgraded our accomadations. We had originally rented a 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen and living room for 90 pesos a day (about $30). Instead we ended up in a 4 bedroom condo with 2 washrooms, huge kitchen, living room, dining room, internet, cable tv, air conditioning and yard, all for the same price. Viviana said no one was using it anyways.

Turns out it was a good thing we had the yard, if nothing else. The next day we went to walk to the local zoo. Along the way we found a puppy lying in a ditch that had likely been quite recently hit by a car. We called her Stella, for the number of beers we could have drank had we not had to pay vet bills (I know, all you non-vets are laughing your ass off at me, suddenly on the other end of the stick). She looked pretty dejected, a 4-month old german shepard pup, sitting up to her haunches in dirty water. So we pulled her out, flagged down a cab and went to the vet just down the road from our apartment.

For all the vet-ish people out there (and others that care), the following is Stella´s problem list from front to back - tick infestation (I removed about 50 of the buggers - gross); goopy eyes; mandibular canines were growing in base narrow requiring the extraction of 704 and 804 (that´s for you MVH!); moderately sore left foreleg; wet coughs with dyspnea (problems breathing) with an abdominal effort (gums were nice and pink though); tachycardia (high heart rate); abdominal guarding on palpation but no fluid wave (sore belly, but no sign of internal bleeding); mild stress diarrhea (yum); initially unable to support any weight on her hind limbs but with good proprioception, withdrawal and conscious urination, no obvious fractures or dislocations (sore back legs, but no obvious nerve damage or breaks); puppy vaginitis; and a bit of a skin infection, likely from sitting in dirty water.

Well, the rest of this story I leave to Gilles, and is in an upcoming posting. Kinda like a blog cliffhanger......................

Enough said about that. We had put all our plans on hold this week as we didn´t want to leave Stella alone at the apartment. With 3 full days left until we went to Santiago, we decided that it would be a shame to not get out to see some of the winery bodegas. Originally we had planned on paying to do a full day tour, but had scrapped that idea when we thought we would have no time. But in the meantime we had discovered a company that would rent us bikes and provide us with a map of wineries. So we headed back out to wine country and wandered around for the day. The first winery we visited was partially set up as a museum and walked you through the differences in how wine was first produced in the area centuries ago (grapes crushed in large leather vats by stepping on them and the juice then buried in clay containers to ferment) in comparison to now (picture a highly scientific and strictly controlled environment in which measuring pH, tempurature, and sugar content is performed twice daily; in combination with traditional time tested methods of oak aging wine). After this we went to see a few other wineries and a chocolateria then staggered our bikes back to where we started.

After a few more days of relaxing, required to recover from our winery tour, we got back on a bus and headed to Santiago. Apparently I lied when I said the Bolivian-Argentinian border took a long time. It was a 2 hour ordeal to process our bus when we crossed into Chile, the biggest problem being an extensive search through bags for fruits and vegetables being spirited into the country. When we finally made it to Santiago we rented a room in the historical district of town. We spent the night wandering around town and wondering at the enormous number of hotdog stands - apparently Chile´s national dish - served literally dripping with mayonaise, guacomole and ketchup. Yuck!

Then next day we went to the "world famous Santiago zoo", or so our guidebook labelled it. Now, it´s been a number of years since I´ve gone to any zoo, and this trip reinforced why. The zoo is quite small and built on the side of a hill, further restricting the size of the pens. Some of the enclosures, such as the one for the monkeys and the aviary, were quite well done, and in their defence the zoo was in the process of remodelling the chimpanzee area as well. But the poor elephants were standing in a small fenced area with nothing but a dead tree and a shallow pool of water. The jaguar was locked out of his resting area so he could be more easily seen. Worst of all were the polar bears. Now imagine walking around and sweating your ass off because it is just plain HOT out. You come around a corner and there are 2 polar bears. One is lying beside a small pool of water on cement in the shade panting, and the other is locked in a different area with no pool and is just pacing - back and forth, back and forth. Poor bears. I think it will be another few years before I make it to another zoo.

The following day it was finally off to the airport. We are leaving mainland South America and I am very excited as our next stop is Easter Island, a place I have always wanted to visit.

Don´t Cry For Me, Argentina

2007-01-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

Written by Lynn

It was a reverse culture shock...........

We left Uyuni in the dead of night on a train that by the morning had delivered us to the Bolivian-Argentinian border. After waiting for an hour in the slowest passport line yet, we crossed into Argentina, home of the gaucho cowboys and of Eva Peron, Madonna´s character in the pop rock musical (first written by Andrew Lloyd Webber), listed above. Our first shock was how much more expensive buses were, as we booked our tickets to our first stop, the colonial city of Salta. The tickets were three times as expensive as any we had bought in Bolivia, though, admittedly, it could be argued that the bus was three times as nice (and EVERYONE actually had a seat assignment, no one in the aisles!).

When we got to Salta, it was our second shock. We had come from a very indigenous town, with the traditional markets, the less than clean streets full of children begging and what we North Americans would consider to be often "sub-standard" restaurant and lodging facilities. What we arrived at was a town that could have easily been mistaken as being European in origin. The main square was ringed with small, intimate cafes surrounding busy streets crowded with well dressed people. Other travellers had told us that Argentina was much more "european", but we weren´t really prepared for the immense difference between the two countries - Bolivia so poor that most people struggle to put together an evening meal, to Argentina where the day´s biggest concern is what outfit to wear to the club that night. And the two widely varying lifestyles seperated by a minor 12 hours of travel.

But far be it for us to complain. We had been looking forward to making it to New Zealand as a way to get back to more "normality" so were a bit shell shocked to have it happen sooner. The biggest problem turned out to be the Argentian accent, that slurs all the spanish words together, making it almost impossible for us to understand anything. Happily, however, we managed to settle into our air conditioned hotel room with private bath, hot showers and maid service quite quickly. We also found out that the food was everything that had been boasted about, and more. Red wine and more red wine, enormous steaks and other assorted meats done as a "parrilla" (grilled over aromatic woods), croissants dripping with butter and served with espresso - wow! All that weight I had lost during my starvation periods in Venezuela and Bolivia seemed doomed to find me again...............

In an effort to stave off complete and utter indolence we rented bikes and did a trip out to a small community just outside of Salta, called San Lorenzo. Here there are million dollar homes set on acreages with in ground pools, horse barns and private wineries - no $200 a month salaries for these people! We checked into house prices and found that for a mere $500, 000 US we too could live with the rich and possibly famous. Of course, being that we had to quibble over the price of a bike rental for an afternoon, this didn´t seem like it was going to happen any time soon.

The next day we took a trip to the Museum of High Altitude Archeology of Salta. We were drawn there to see an exhibit of mummies that had been discovered a mere 7 years ago in the mountains surrounding the town. There are over 200 high altitude shrines and archeological that have been discovered in the Andes, with 40 of them in the region of Salta. In March 1999 an archeology team, headed by Dr. Johan Reinhard, an anthropologist from the United States, discovered the "Llullaillico" children - 3 frozen mummies, the oldest only 15 years old, found at 6700 m (about 20,000ft) near the summit of the Llullaillico mountains. These children who had lived over 500 years ago at the height of the Inca empire just shortly before the Spanish conquest, had been sacrificed to the Incan gods. Along with the mummies, over 146 artifacts that made up their burial troves were also uncovered.

Human sacrifice was a rare event amongst the Incas and performed on only the most important of occasions, such as the death of an Incan ruler. 1 or more children from each of the suyas (aka. "communities") were chosen and taken to Cusco for a ritual ceremony. These children were usually born into royal or ruling families and chosen for their physical perfection and beauty. After a number of animal sacrifices the children were joined in symbolic union to others from different communities, thus sealing alliances. Following the ceremonies, the children (some just babes in arm) returned to their suyas along with their attendants and priests, ritually travelling a straight line rather than using throughfares, forcing them to overcome often huge geographical obstacles. Once home they were greeted with great joy and celebration, dressed in their finest clothes and taken immediately to the offering site. Here they were plied with chicha (corn beer) until they fell asleep and then buried with an assembled treasure trove. It was the Incan belief that these children did not die, but rather were reunited with their ancestors and protected the village from the peaks of the mountains where they now lived.

The three mummies were all in an amazing state of preservation when found, naturally mummified by freezing. The first mummy, called the Lightning Girl, was about 6 years old. At some point after her death her body was struck by lighting, leaving significant burns on the left side of her face, neck and shoulders. She was seated with her legs bent and facing west-southwest. Her skull had been deformed into a conical shape when young, indicating nobility. The second girl, known as the Maiden, was estimated to be 15 years old and had her face painted with red pigment. It was believed that she was an "aclla" (Virgin of the Sun, a woman gifted to the inca ruler, who then lived in the House of Chosen Women). CT scans performed on her body revealed that when she died she was suffering from sinusitis and bronchitis. The only boy discovered at this site was 7 years old and sat with his head facing the rising sun. He had the largest trove of artifacts with him, including slings and groups of miniature statues arrayed to appear in a diorama as finely dressed men leading caravans of llamas. He was also apparently a member of the ruling class, having a short hair cut, a white feather head ornament and a deformed skull.

All of these mummies are present in the museum available for viewing, though contained in atmospherically controlled display cases. During the study of the mummies it was decided that minimally invasive techniques would be used to study them. CT scans, odontological survey radiographs and punch biopsies to obtain DNA were all done in limited 20 minute time frames to prevent thawing of the bodies. The mummies today appear pretty much as found, even their clothing still intact.....or so we heard. After building up the anticipation by going through the various rooms and religiously reading all the English literature available, we arrived at the room containing the mummies - only to find it was closed for maintenance. What an incredible disappointment. So as a warning, all the pictures of the Llullaillico children you see here, they´ve been stolen from another website :(

After hanging in Salta for a few days we decided that we HAD to see Iguazu falls. Unfortunately, it´s not the easiest place to get to. Situated on a small finger of land that makes up the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, it is in the proverbial middle of nowhere. But having recently seen "The Mission", with Robert DeNiro (fine movie, check it out for a better understanding of the history of the Jesuit mission in the area), it seemed like it would be worth the effort. So after 2 days of back to back travelling (with an overnight stay in the incredibly boring town of Corrientes) we made it to Puerto Iguaza. My first impression - oh my god, is it hot here! It was easily 40 degrees celsius with humidity ratcheting that up another 10 degrees or so. Sweat just starts when you leave the air conditioning, and then has no where to go. I am not a heat person, so suffered a bit, but it was worth it to see the falls.

The word "iguazu" come from the local Guarani language and means "big water". The falls are made up of a series of 270 cascades that are up to 82m in height. The most impressive is the Garganta del Diablo (or "devil´s throat") that is a U-shaped behemoth that is 150m wide and 700 m long. From the Brazilian side (which we didn´t make it to) there is apparently a perpetual rainbow during daylight hours that is created from the amount of spray sent up. As a comparison that you can relate to, Iguazu falls have a peak flow of over 400,000 square metres during wet season, in comparison to Niagara´s piddly 180,000 square metres. To its credit, however, Niagara´s overall yearly output is apparently higher than Iguazu´s as it is not subject to seasonal variation (apparently, had we shown up 6 months from now, it would be barely a trickle).

To get to these falls and many of the others you take a small train out to a series of well kept trails that meander through the jungle ecosystem of the surrounding national park. While on these trails you can view a huge variety of birds and over 50 species of butterflies, the occasional reptile, and, if you´re really lucky, even a monkey or two. Collared anteaters are all over the place, apparently the raccoons of South America, often seen with their long striped tails hanging out of garbage cans. You also have the pleasure of viewing these marvels with THOUSANDS of other tourists. Considering how remote this place was, it was truly amazing the number of people to complete this pilgrimage (though it is the summer holiday season here in Argentina).

Since there wasn´t much to do in Puerto Iguazu other than see the falls and sweat a lot, we left the following evening on an overnight bus to the capital - Buenos Aires, where 45% of Argentina´s population of 38,000,000 live. Here we managed to get ourselves into a hostel right down town so we could wander around and enjoy the sights. We also decided (as we had never taken one before) to pay for a city bus tour. What an incredible waste of money!! It was almost 5(!!) hours of driving from one souvenir booth to another, with a few stops in between at the football stadium and main squares. Suffice it to say we will never do that again. The advantage of the bus tour was that it did show us the various districts of Buenos Aires, including the infamous La Boca, a colourfully painted neighbourhood infamous as the original site of Tango.

We did manage, while we were in town, to take in our first movie on the big screen in months. We also went to the infamous Cemetery of th Recoleta. This enormous "city" houses over 6400 family masoleums, many of them works of art, adorned with life size carved marble statues. Should you want to buy a plot here (if you can find anyone to sell it to you) it would cost you a mere $20,000 per square metre to lie with the presidents, general and Argentinian "royalty". In this cemetery you can even view the grave of Eva Peron, also known as Evita (or "little Eva"). She was the beloved wife of Juan Domingo Peron, president of Argentina from 1946 until 1955 when a military coup unseated him. From 1946 until her death in 1952 at the age of 33 from cancer, Evita was incredibly active in politics. She founded the Eva Peron Charitable Foundation (which stills handles over $100 million dollars annually in charitable donations) and the Female Peronian Party (the first large scale female political party in Argentina that won the right for women to vote in 1951). Just prior to her death she was declared the Spiritual Leader of the Nation. Interestingly, her body is buried 8 metres underground in order to prevent it from disappearing as it did in 1955. After Juan Peron was overthrown, he fled into exile and Evita´s body was spirited away. It was not until 1971 that the Argentinian military revealed that it was buried in Italy under an assumed name "Maria Maggi". In 1974 her body was finally returned to Argentina and now lies in her family´s tomb protected by several layers of marble and metal.

As we had only a few days in Buenos Aires, it was with great regret that we missed out on a tango show. Happily there is an almost constant parade of street performers in many districts, so we did manage to see a little bit of dancing. After a few days we continued on to our final destination in Argentina - the city in the heart of wine country, Mendoza.

The World´s Most Dangerous Road

2007-01-04T13:38:00.001-08:00

Written by Gilles

The World´s Most Dangerous Road--La Cumbre to Coroico, Bolivia.

What you need is 64 kms of paved and unpaved road, cold, rain, hail, dirt, mud, 1000 meter drop offs, lots of cross´s commemorated the dead, some traffic and a change of underwear.

An hour outside of La Paz starting point for this so called "Danger ride" is a place called La Cumbre, at an altitude of 4670 meters (14260 ft)!! it feels like being on the moon, a bare landscaped and this particular morning it was blanketed by a thick fog that added to the ambiance and.....DANGER!!!

We are high in the Andes, high enough that when I tried to ride up a small hill with my newly rented Rocky Mountain (Canadian made bike) that within 25 meters I felt like my chest was being crushed and my lungs and legs were begging for oxygen!!

Not a good start, but lucky for the 7 of us it´s all down hill and requires very little pedalling, or so we hoped. A couple of minutes warm up and off we go down the paved section of the road for 30 kms of cold, rain and hail. We are all a bit frozen by km 10, toes and fingers have no feeling left and all we can do is keep descending towards the warm jungle of Coroico in hopes to regain sensation in those parts. It´s a pretty simple descent snaking it´s way down the mountains, the views are spectacular and the altitude of course breathtaking. It´s a very uneventful and safe 30 km descent that most people could do quite easily. We did however manage to hit about 65 to 70 kph on these clunker bikes which added to the fun. After a quick snack we stop at the dirt section of the road and where the "official" Worlds Most Dangerous Road begins and listened to some wise words from our tour guide.

In 1995, the Inter American Development Bank (?) christened it the most dangerous road in the world, there have been many articles written about this road and one of the most recent was in the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6136268.stm.. It paints a pretty grim picture of the road which we just paid to ride down for fun doesn´t it?

Aside from the BBC article, riding the road on a bicycle is a complete other story. A story which of course includes DEATH!, so I guess it really isn´t all that different. Anyhow, according to my guide at Down Hill Madness over the last 5 years or so, 6 or 7 deaths on bikes have occurred. Different types of people have lost there lives to the road from a young 21 yr old Israeli girl who just rode off the cliff, not paying attention, to a section of the road that is now called Italian Corner for two Italians racing down the hill and not making the turn completely, the bike stayed up but one of the riders did not..there´s a cross bearing each of there names there now.

Being an ex racer, the road is pretty easy to descend while riding at a controlled pace and a good guide keeps everything in check and the riders safe especially in the blind corners. One can certainly understand how accidents happen, it doesn´t take more then a second of not paying attention in the wrong area and you can go flying off a cliff of a 100 meters or less. It´s easy to be distracted by the beauty of the surroundings and getting caught rubber necking at the carnage left below of the cars, trucks and buses that have driven over the edges. I´ve caught myself a couple of times day dreaming about how easy it would be to fly over the edge and corners coming up at you fast. Our guide makes us stop every 20 odd minutes to regroup and to tell us the horror stories of the road. You actually get to a point where you don´t want to stop anymore in order to avoid the gruesome details of the roads victims, like this next one!!

3 months ago was the last big accident on the road, of course exactly at the spot where our guide chose to stop and tell us about it. A bus carrying around 60 passengers drove right off the cliff, 30 some odd died and 20 some odd managed to live by jumping out the windows while the bus plummeted to it´s final resting spot. As we look down we see the remnants of the bus and can only image the horror of the descent. We thought that was the end of his story but no, he proceeds to tell us in his non chalant Bolivian manner that the very next day he had to guide a tour down this road and where the bus had met it´s maker (GOD if you´re wondering) and all the decapitated bodies where still on the road because it took rescue teams more than 2 days to retrieve the dead!! He said the group he was guiding was horrified and that it was a slower (and SAFER) ride down than usual. No kidding.

What makes matters worse on this road is that we the bikes have to ride on the left side of the road while the cars and trucks have the right of way closest to the actually mountain hugging it as tight as possible. But now that the new road is open just of last week the traffic is insignificant and not really a hazard at all. It takes a way from the Danger aspect and it looks like "The Road" will lose it´s title in the end to some other road in Tibet.

A rank it high on beauty, adreneline and horror stories..glad I survived.

Gilles Champagne reporting, live from Coroico, Bolivia- Good Night and Good Luck!

Salar de Uyuni

2007-01-02T15:30:00.000-08:00

Written by Lynn

The Bolivian Salt Flats (aka. Salar de Uyuni) are the biggest in the world. At a staggering 10,500 square kilometres they are approximately 25 times the size of the more well known Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah (see the movie, The World's Fastest Indian, if you've never heard of these ones). They contain about 10 billion tons of salt, in some spots 10 metres deep, of which 25,000 tons are extracted annually. The local townspeople will even cut blocks of salt to use as bricks in making their homes, or carve tables and chairs from them.

Right on the edges of this amazing vista the landscape makes a sudden and dramatic change, as it is ringed by chains of volcanoes and colourful, briny lakes. At times, groups of wind carved rocks reminiscent of a Star Wars landscape burst out of from behind massive sand dunes. Because of its bizarre and varied landscape it also happens to be a must see on the Bolivian tourist trail.

The first challenge is to get yourself to Uyuni, a small dustbowl of a town on the edge of the salt flats surrounded by a lot of nothing. It's a 6 hour bus ride on yet another incredibly bumpy road, only difference being that during Christmas and New Year's there is even more travel than normal, which means not only are all the seats sold out the day before, but there is standing room only in the aisles. If you've never driven 6 hours with an old man using your shoulder as a stool, you really should try it. It suddenly makes you appreciate the Toronto subway.

In Uyuni it is possible to arrange to take a tour of the salt flats that last anywhere from 1 to 6 days, even longer if you wish. We were lucky enough to be able to hook up with some friends we met while touring Los Llanos in Venezuela. Daniel and Kay, from England, happened to be travelling in the same general direction as us, though we missed them by less than a day in Cusco. Since there were 4 for us we were able to modify our tour a little, though we had a pay a bit of a premium price for it. First we asked that they limit our group to the 4 of us. Not because we're antisocial, but because most tours will try to stuff 6 or 7 tourists in a Land Rover, not fun for 4 days on a bumpy road. Next we asked that we detour off the normal gringo trail to visit the Mirador Volcano, where we wanted to do an easy 2 hour trek up to a look out point over both the salt flats and the now dead volcano. As an added bonus we found out that along the way we were going to get to see some mummies found in the local hills.

The next day at a very civilized hour of 10:30 we headed out on our tour. The four days are jam packed with one after another awe inspiring sites. I don't think we drove more than 2-3 hours at any time without seeing something different and, at times, very freaky. Our first stop was the Uyuni train cemetary. Piles and piles of rusted metal litter the abandoned tracks here. Having never seen a real steam engine up close before, it was quite an interesting half hour spent climbing in and out of all the trains.

After an hour on the dusty roads we reached the very edges of the salt flats and were already amazed. As far as the eye could see stretched an endless sea of blindingly white salt. It was a challenge for us to convince ourselves we hadn't been dropped off in Iqualuit on the edge of the frozen ocean, though the fact we were wearing shorts and t-shirts really helped. Amazingly, because the flats are so extensive it creates an optical illusion that eliminates all depth perception (notice me holding up Gilles and Daniel in minuature).

We made a few stops right along the edges of the salt flats. Once was to see a salt processing factory, where the local women, assisted by their children (sort of, the kids spent a lot more time building salt castles than helping), bag the fire dried salt to sell at the local market for 8 bolivianos ($1US) per kilogram. We also went to see the infamous Salt Hotel, which no longer is allowed to rent out accomodations because of thier inability to handle all the waste created. We stopped to dig salt crystals out from pockets where the salt continues to bubble through to the surface. The flats are actually the remnants of a 40,000 year old ocean, and underneath the surprisingly thick crust there still remains an unknown depth of water that continually renews the salt that is harvested. Salt crystals form on the bottom of this crust, probably because of electrical currents when there are lightning strikes on the flats (amazing electrical storms out here!). After this we headed to the northern edge of the salt plains where we were being put up in a local village just below the Mirador Volacano. Right along the edges of the salt plains water was collecting, creating an enormous mirror that reflected everything with crystal clarity. Sunset and sunrise were both unbelievable as a result.

The next day we started our trek up to the overlook by the volcano. We climbed up approximately 1000m, topping out at 4300m, with lots of rest stops on the way. The first was to view some mummies. There was a family of 4, including 2 children, who were found in the cave we went into. They had apparently died there of either exposure or starvation, likely in a period about 100BC. The cave was then expanded and used to house 3 other mummies along with these ones. The new mummies were buried in a traditional fetal position, the ligaments of their legs having to be severed to allow for it.

After lunch it was onwards to the Isla Pescado (or fish island; a bit of a misnomer for a chunk of land covered by cacti in the middle of an enormous pile of salt, but apparently from above it looks like one?!). This might be my worst possible nightmare of a island to be deserted on. There is nothing but dead coral making up a rocky landscape covered by cacti, some as tall as 8metres. The only upside is the fact that I got to try cactus fruit, which is delicious!

On day 3 we spend hours travelling across high altitude deserts, seeing active volcanoes from a safe distance and a variety of lakes that are a haven for flamingoes. There are apparently 3 different types of flamingoes that make this area their home (the Andean, James and Chilean), feeding off the algae rich waters. In addition to the flamingoes we were also lucky enough to see an indigenous fox, several types of ducks and other waterfowl, wild llamas and the elusive vicuna (though this one was obviously not that elusive as it was standing at the gas station begging for cookies). There was also a wide variety of plants not seen anywhere else. The most interesting of these was the yareta, that looks like a big green brain. It only grows at 3500 - 4000 metres and is used as a source of fuel by the locals. We also saw several very interesting rock formations created by centuries of blowing sand, including the Arbol de Piedra (or ¨tree rock¨).

This worked out to be New Year´s eve, spent on the edges of Laguna Colorado. All sounds lovely, except that we had to be up at 4AM the next day, so we celebrated the UK New Year´s Eve (happened at 9pm Bolivian time) and were off to bed.

At 4AM in the middle of nowhere Bolivia, the stars are amazing and the big dipper is upside down (surprised me for some reason). We loaded up the truck so we could make it up the mountain, topping out at 6000m this time, in order to catch the sun rise by the Sol de Manana geysers, an awe inspiring example of the earth´s crust being unable to contain the power of the magma beneath it. After this we drove to the hot springs and had a quick swim before breakfast.

After this it is a VERY long day getting back to Uyuni, thank god there were only 4 of us in the truck so we could sleep comfortably. All in all it was likely one of the most impressive tours I´ve ever taken, and completely unexpected what we saw. Bolivia - it´s cheap, it´s amazing, it´s worth the trip!!

Bolivia

2007-01-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

Written by Lynn

Bolivia is an amazing country. I am pretty sure God was taking an acid trip when he created it, but in the end he did a pretty good job..........

Unfortunately, Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, second only to Haiti in terms of amount of people who live in poverty. In terms of history, the people of this country have pretty much got the short end of the stick. There have been a staggering 192 military coups in Bolivia in the 156 years they have "enjoyed" independance, averaging one every 10 months. Since the 1980's there has been relative political stability, though economically most Bolivians are still struggling to survive. The vast majority of people here are indigenous and most of the women are still dressed traditionally in knee length skirts poofed out with petticoats, hand knit sweaters and tiny little bowler caps perched precariously on top of thier braided hair. If the braids are tied together it means the woman is married.

We only spent a few more days in Peru after our Machu Picchu trek before heading off to Bolivia. We did manage to meet up with Chip and Drew, our new American friends, for dinner a few times. They, however, put us in their debt by paying for our dinner not just once but twice, curse them! We promise to track them down when we get back to North America (oh, and actually get jobs so we have money) and make sure to pay them back.

We were in a bit of a rush as the holiday season was fast approaching and we wanted to stay at a nice place for Christmas. So we by passed Lake Titicaca and went straight to La Paz, Bolivia's capital city which holds the honour of being the highest city in the world with an altitude of about 12,ooo feet. Even after Machu Picchu, the altitude is noticeable when you are tramping around. Just going out for lunch feels like you're running a race! It is an unfortunate truth that La Paz has a bad reputation along the gringo trail because of a series of tourist kidnappings. Apparently there are several unauthorized taxi cab drivers who will pick up unsuspecting people and then hold them for several days while emptying their bank accounts after forcing them to give up their ATM pin numbers. The problem is serious enough that all the hotels have posted signs in their rooms warning their guests about this scam. Ourselves, we didn't have any problems, though we did get a police officer to point out a licenced cab company to us upon our arrival at the bus station.

Once in La Paz we spent a day wandering around the various markets and getting a feel of the city. The most interesting was the witch doctor's market which we discovered, after the fact, was just down the hill from our hotel. The most striking thing found here is mummified llama fetuses that are used as offerings to PachaMamma (the Mother Earth). People bury them at the 4 corners of their house foundation to ensure a blessing on their home. Being that it was less than a week before Christmas the booths were all decorated for the season with tinsel hanging off of the feti (which, by the way, makes the whole block adopt a distinct and peculiar smell). You could also pick up carved fetishes, various unknown dried herbs, and stuffed frogs with red glass eyes and glitter covered bodies.

From La Paz I took a bus out to Coroico to spend a couple of nights at a great hotel called Hotel Esmeralda. It had a pool and sauna, and my room had a balcony overlooking the mountain canyons. Gilles met me here the next day after doing a mountain bike trip on the "World's Most Dangerous Road" (I'm going to leave it to him to describe that trip; since I´ve never mountain biked it seemed like a bad time to start). We spent another night in Coroico, then went back to La Paz to get bus tickets out of the city before Christmas.

Christmas itself we spent in the small town of Potosi. It is best known as the highest city in the world of this size (at 14,000ft) and for it's silver mines that the Spanish excavated for years after conquering the Inca empire. The mines themselves were first discovered in the 1500's and have been exploited ever since. It is said that you could build a bridge from Potosi to Madrid with the silver that was extracted from "Cerro Ricco" (ie. Rich Hill, the spanish name for the red hill that acts as a backdrop to the city), but that you could construct a road there and back with the bones of the slaves that died obtaining it. Since 1545, when the mines opened, it is estimated that 9 million people (mostly Incan and African slaves) have perished inside the hill. In it's hey day in the 1670's Potosi held the honour of being the largest city in the world, supporting 150,000 people (this likely doesn't include slaves), more than the cities Paris, Rome or even London, at this time.

These days the mines are still operating, but are pretty much empty of silver. The town has a population of about 120,000 and there are presently about 200 mines in operation. There are about 4,000 men and boys who work daily in these mines, and the rest of the town is pretty much supported by mine related industries.

While in Potosi we stayed at a nice hostel called the Koala Den, where we shared a Christmas dinner with a group of about 12 other traveller's, from Australia, Holland, Costa Rica, USA and France. Unable to find turkey we settled for roasted chicken (bought at the local Chinese restaurant, the only one open on the 25th) and made our own roasted and mashed potatoes, salads and even an apple crisp for dinner. Not exactly home, but better than a hotel room all on our own.

The Koala Den also arranges tours of the mines, so we made sure to take the opportunity to see them. Our guide, Efra, once worked in the mines himself, just like his brothers, father and grandfather did before him. He had the foresight to teach himself English by talking to the foreigners who were touring the mines, creating a better life for himself and his family. In low season and on occasional weekends, however, he will return to the mine. He says that, at times, he misses the comradery that he had when employed there.

All the mines are "co-operatives", owned by the miners themselves. They pay 20% of what they make to the government in the form of taxes. The miners get paid based on production, which means that many of them work 7 days a week. They work in groups of anywhere between 6 to 25 men and split the proceeds evenly. Though the government officially monitors for human right abuses in the area, many boys will start working in the mines at as young as 13. Given the average lifespan of a miner is only 45 (most die of lung disease), many will leave behind young families with an average of 4 children, forcing the oldest ones to drop out of school and to start earning money the only way they know how.

The mine we were visiting, called the Candelabra Mine, was actually producing quite well at the time. This combined with the fact that mineral prices in the world market are quite high now means that the miners we were talking to were being paid quite well by Bolivian standards. They made on average 1000 to 1200 Bolivianos a month (a take home pay of about $125US). Others make a lot less. Some travellers we met from France had gone up to the mines on their own and had found an 11 year old girl who offered to show them around. Her mother worked as a security guard at the mines, making 200 Bolivianos a month, only a quarter of what "her miners" were taking home. Her father had died several years ago, and the family (which included 3 brothers, 1 of whom was already mining) was struggling to survive.

The miners often work 12 to 15 hour days in the dark pits. Before going into the mines they will stop at the local market to pick up their lamp batteries (they pay 1 boliviano to have them charged overnight), pop, coca leaves and dynamite as well as to eat an enormous breakfast of soup and rice (the one I had was llama based and very filling, if not particularly tasty). After this the miners won't eat again until night, as eating will often cause vomiting and diarrhea from the combination of exertion and altitude. Instead the miners will consume upwards of 30 grams of coca leaves a day to suppress their appetite and help give them energy. Most miners have a large cheek bulge and green teeth when they smile because of this habit. The miners will also bring in offerings to "Tio" (Spanish for uncle), aka the Devil, who they actually view as a benevolent figure who protects those who dwell in his realm.

Once they descend into the mine, the various groups split up and head to the levels they are working on (there were 4 in the mine we visited). There they will start to collect the ore they dynamited out of the rock face the day before. The ore itself is called "completo" and is 70% useless, the other 30% being composed of minute quantities of silver, along with lead and zinc. The minerals are extracted at another location using chemicals such as cyanide and copper sulfate. After this, the waste water created is dumped in the local river, contaminating it. Just recently they have started to take steps to clean up, or at least limit, the pollution of the water table, though many feel it is too little too late.

The miners will push enormous carts full of ore weighing approximately 2 tons along tracks and through tunnels that were built in colonial times. The ore is dragged up manually from the lowest levels to the first level, then loaded into trucks using shovels and rubber containers. Once all the ore is cleared the miners will begin drilling holes to place dynamite in at the end of the day so that the whole process can begin again in the morning. At 5pm everyone lights the fuses for the dynamite sticks (made up of nitroglycerine, ammonium nitrate and a gunpowder fuse) and run from the mine.

The work is dirty, depressing, monotonous, back breaking and dangerous. About 35 miners a year die in cave ins, many more succumb to lung disease. When we were in the mines our group wore surgical face masks, but I still found it impossible to breath at some points, and for a day afterwards you find yourself spitting up gobs of dusty phlegm. By the lowest level, which you reach by crawling on your hands and knees through tunnels and climbing down rickety wooden ladders, the tempurature reaches upwards of 30 degrees. Climbing up from one level to the next requires 10 to 15 minutes of rest to catch your breath, the effects of altitude being exacerbated by your inability to draw a deep draft of oxygen through all the dust. After a mere 2 hours in the mines it was a huge relief to see the sun again. All in all, my overall impression is that I am glad to have not been born as a miner's son, and I suddenly miss my job back home (wait a sec, I don´t have a job). The entire tour was a bit sobering, especially considering the time of year, but an unmissable experience.

While in Potosi we were also lucky enough to meet a Bolivian family, the Ortiz´s. Alex and Shirley along with their son, Juan Fernando went way out of their way to make us feel at home. Alex had spent a year in the United States when younger, and now teaches English at a private school in Potisi that he runs. He was kind enough to strike up a conversation with us when he heard us talking on the street. In the true spirit of Christmas the Ortiz´s not only invited us to their home for dinner, they also took us to the local hot springs and made sure we had a chance to try a local Bolivian dish of spicy beef that is traditionally served at Christmas. We want to extend our warmest gratitude to them for helping make our Christmas a little more like it would have been at home.

After a restful 5 days in Potosi we headed off to Uyuni, the jumping off point for the largest salt flats in the world and a great example of the biodiversity Bolivia possesses............

Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail

2006-12-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

Written by Lynn

I have a book at home that is packed away in a box (meaning that is it either in Edmonton, North Bay, Hamilton or Ottawa) entitled ¨The World´s Greatest Treks¨. Someday I plan to do them all. But we decided to start with the most well known - The Inca Trail.

It´s definitely not for the faint hearted or the out of shape (though the altitude makes everyone feel a little breathless). Day 1 starts out pretty easy, leaving from Cusco where you just spent several days of enforced rest at 7500 ft altitude in an attempt to get used to it. Cusco itself is a great little town with lots of shops and restaurants, and hotels ranging from the dirt cheap to the vastly overpriced. The city of Cusco, founded in 1100AD, was the centre of the Inca Empire in the 12th to 16th century. The empire itself was spread out in 4 distinct directions (north, south, east and west) called TAHUANTINSUYUS and connected by paved pathways along which runners, called CHASQUIS, travelled immense distances to deliver orders and information - ie. the infamous Inca Trail.

To start our small section of the trail, we rode out to a town called Ollantaytambo, where you can still find some intact Inca ruins. This is one of the few Inca fortresses that was successfully defended against the Spanish invasion. You can appreciate the trapazoidal shaping of the buildings, all of which are built with the walls slanting inwards in order to with stand earthquakes. In this area there is supposedly a devestating earthquake once every 50 years or so, the last one being in 1984. This one was mild in comparison to the 1650 earthquake which levelled the town of Cusco.

We were blessed with a great group of 10, along with 2 guides (Balario and Duska) and 11 porters. We had people from USA (Chip and Drew, who were kind enough to carry enough candy to support all of our sugar cravings), Spain (Carlos and Eva), Belgium (Stinj and Nikolas) and Australia (Drew 2 - note the stunning wool sweater vest - and Jess), as well as the 2 honourary Canucks, which made it permissable to sing several renditions of the South Park song ¨Blame Canada¨ over the next 4 days. Interestingly (and those of you who are thinking of doing this trek, take note) there was a WIDE range in what we paid for this tour. The cheapest prices were fenagled by the Australians who went to Cusco first and then negotiated for last minute deals. The highest were paid by those who booked on line months ahead of time (you know who you are!). Costs ranged from $220US to $450US for the EXACT same tour (we were happily just below the median cost). Price shopping in Cusco won´t usually work in the high season (from May until August) as the tours book up months in advance, but negotiating is always possible. The number of people to start the Inca Trail is limited to 500 a day, including porters and guides. This number was dropped from 700 a day four years ago because of the concern that over use was ruining the trail. It is quite likely, even in the rainy season we were trekking in, that the numbers are maxxed out daily, as there were LOTS of people everywhere you turned. There has been a major push in recent years by indigenous groups as well as UNESCO to force the Peruvian government to take more drastic measures to protect Machu Picchu and other Inca historical sites. As a result, in 1999 a plan to install a cable car to Machu Picchu was put on hold, but not official shelved. But in the past 10 years the number of tourists visiting the site have climbed drastically from 200,000 a year up to 500,000 and there is no end in sight. The costs associated with visiting Machu Picchu are obviously aimed at tourists, which makes the site inaccessible to the Inca's descendants, thereby disconnecting the region's indigenous people from an important spiritural and cultural centre. Recently a group called the YACHAY WASI was formed to try and push for an indigenous voice in the determination of management policies for this and other historical sites. This didn{t stop the Peruvian government from allowing a company to film a beer commercial at one of the sacred temple sites in Machu Picchu. During the filming one of the cranes being used to hold the cameras went out of control and chipped a rock altar.....oops.

Day 1 was a deceptively easy hike up to the first camp site. Even though it was raining, the views were already impressive of the surrounding mountains and the gorge we were hiking along the edge of. That night we camped in a soft, grassy field surrounded by mountains after a simple but tasty meal of rice and chicken.

Day 2 dawned clear and very cold, though this quickly changed as the tempurature rose steadily, having us all strip down to shorts and tank tops. After a breakfast with lots of coca tea (coca helps to prevent altitude sickness, as well as being energizing and suppressing hunger; most of the porters walks with a ball of coca leaves stuffed in their cheek for these reasons) we started the hardest day of the trek. In the first 4 hours we went from about 7500 ft up to almost 12,500 ft to cross the first pass called WARMIWANUSKA (Dead Woman´s Pass). At the top we waited for the team to regroup (except for the porters who RUN to the next stop in order to set up the tents and prepare for dinner). It was cold enough that it we had to put on basically every peice of clothing we brought with us (the only time we would use our fleeces and gloves, though thank god we had them). Unfortunately, the higher we got, the mistier it became, until we were basically standing in the middle of a cloud. The last 500m up to the pass were breath taking, mostly because the altitude forced you to stop every 10-15 steps to try and force some oxygen to your leg muscles and slow your heart rate.

After a short break for picture taking, we walked down for about 2km on stone steps that were put in place about 500 years ago as part of the original Inca Trail. Our second night we were so tired that no one objected to the 8PM bedtime. We usually ate at 7PM, then had to clear out the dinner tent shortly after since the porters used it as their sleeping area, a fact the guide forgot to tell us the first night, which made us feel terrible for hanging out in the tent until 9PM.

These porters are unbelievalbe! Most of them weight about 120 lbs and stand at only about 5´4¨. About 10 years ago a porter´s guild was formed to improve their working conditions. Now they are only (!!) allowed to carry 25kg each and have a weigh in station at the beginning of Day 2 to make sure this is not exceeded. One of our porters had been doing this job for about 15 years, and can remember when he used to carry upwards of 45kg! We were carrying our own sleeping bags and mats, along with a change of clothes and could barely make it. The porters carry everything from the food, to the tents, tables and chairs, eating and kitchen tent, cooking supplies and even a propane tank. And they RUN! It´s their responsibility to make it to the lunch site and the camping ground before us ¨touristicas¨ and to have everything set up and ready to go. They are wearing sandals made out of recycled tires, and in most cases only eat whatever is left over after we scarf our dinners down. Once our group realized this we were a little more careful to not overeat, just taking enough to feel full. On the bright side, the porters get paid decently for the area, earning 145 soles (about $45 US) for the 4 days, and our group tipped each of them an additional 40 soles each. Doesn´t sound like much (mostly because it isn´t) but men are fighting for these jobs. Most of them are subsitance farmers in the area surrounding Ollantaytambo, and acting as a porter 3-4 times a month will often elevate them into the middle class, allowing them to buy decent clothes for their families and furnish their homes. I guarantee it is not a job many of us could do! It is most important to question the company you book with regarding the treatment of their porters. The easiest and most invisible way of cutting costs on a tour are by shorting the porters - not feeding them properly, making them sleep in the open, maxing out the weight they are carrying to cut down on the numbers of porters (one trick they will use is to get the trekkers to carry their own packs past the weigh in station, then give them to the already overloaded porters; everyone in our group decided to just carry their own).

Anyways, the porters are up at 4:30AM preparing our breakfast and wake the group up on Day 3 at 5AM. Today we have to go over one more pass, then down 2000 (!!) steps to the next campsite. While not as hard on the lungs, the knees do start to ache from the strain. During this day we pass several archeological sites and stop at each to explore and appreciate the fine craftmanship that went into the building of each. Often they are TAMBOS, or resting places along the Inca Trail for the messengers. These are generally built with what the Inca would consider shoddy workmanship - small stones mortared together and covered over with mud to hide the imprecision. We do go to WINAY-WAYNA, a religious site, that shows more of the intricate stonework the Inca are famous for called ASHLAR. Enormous stones are carved with bronze or stone tools and rubbed smooth until they fitted together without mortar so carefully that a knife can´t be passed between two blocks. Some of the ashlar in Machu Picchu has as many as 30 corners on them, all precisely fitted. A site we visited just outside Cusco before we started the trek is called SACSAYHUAMAN and is one of the finest surviving examples of this stonework. Some of the stones are estimated to weigh over 130 tons and are used to make up 3 parallel walls that go on for 360metres. This site is believed to have been a sanctuary and temple of the sun, hence its intricate stonework. One of the big mysteries remains how the Incas could have moved such massive peices of stones as they had not developed the use of wheels. Unfortunately, because they had no written history, there remains nothing to answer these questions.

Just before the end of Day 3 we also had a chance to visit an ancient agricultural site. The Inca farmed on terraces that covered the hillsides. The lower terraces were used for crops such as maize and other vegetables, while the higher ones grew potatoes. In Inca society all the land was communally owned. 50% of the produce from the farmed land went to the community responsible for it, 25% went to the government (who stored food in large structures called COLLPAS for times of shortage and famine) and 25% was for the gods. Terraces surrounding the temples, traditionally set at the highest point of land, were used to grow aromatic plants and colourful flowers.

Gilles missed these terraces as he met up with a Norweigan who was slightly crazy (and it was apparently contagious). The two of them decided they were going to try and race the porters for the last 6km downhill to the campsites. They were apparently doing just fine, keeping up anyways, until the porters (wise to what the gringos were up to) veered off the Inca Trail onto ¨porter only¨ paths. Being the smart (and possibly over competative) fellas that they are, they followed the giggling porters down a series of vertical inclines that cut across the switchbacks the rest of us sane folk were using. The end result - they got the the last campsite 2 hours ahead of the rest of us, but still miles behind the porters, who had themselves a good laugh and a story to tell that night.

When the rest of the group caught up with these guys we were greeted with a wondorous sight - hot showers and cold beers! This was surely the ugliest campsite of the 3 we stayed at, but it did have the advantage of running water. Keeping in mind the number of people who use the Inca Trail daily, combined with the fact that there must be a lot of people with upset digestive tracts from a combination of unrefrigerated food, high altitude and extreme exertion, the toilet facilities are easily the LEAST attractive feature of the Inca Trail.

Day 4 started extra early as our group was determined to be the first through the gate to get to Macchu Picchu. So at 4:45AM we had our packs strapped on and were at the locked gates ready to go. The gates themselves opened at 5:30AM, and then we had another hour of uphill hiking to get to INTIPUNKU (the sun gates) but boy was it worth it. Because of the time of year, the sun is up much too early for us to catch sunrise over Macchu Picchu, but as you crest the hill and go through the ancient stone gates you see spread before you an ancient city that must appear almost exactly as it did 500 years ago. Ringed on all sides by mountains with the HUAYNA PICCHU towering over it, and the URABAMBA river flowing below it, you are blessed with the sight of the last Inca stronghold. It is awe inspiring enough to make the last 4 days worth all the sweat and burning leg muscles.

It is believed that this site was chosen for its geographical features, which show the side view of a face of an Inca gazing at the sky, the highest point being the silohuette of his nose. One of the most amazing aspects of this site is how the architectrue is integrated into the surrounding landscape buildings melding with hillsides and huge rock features incorporated into temples and walls. Macchu Picchu, or "old mountain", was believed to have been built by Sapa Inca Pachacuti starting in 1440 as a country get away for the Inca nobility. It is composed of over 140 structures, including staircases, terraces, temples, palaces and towers, along with its most infamous structure, the INTIHUATANA, or hitching post of the sun. Here on winter solstice (June 21st) a priest would tie the sun to the earth to ensure its return. The 2metre high block of stone, it also has 4 points showing north, south, east and west, and was used as a calendar of sorts and to help keep track of seasons. The highly advanced irrigation system is believed to have carried water from a sacred spring to all the individual dwellings in town. The remote location of this town is one of the few reasons that it survived the Spanish invasion, while many other structures, and most intihuatanas were destroyed.

After about 1/2 an hour, the rest of the groups started to catch up with us, so we moved on to Machu Picchu itself. It is impossible to get to the site prior to others as there are buses and trains arriving from the near by town of Aguas Calientes as soon as the gates open, but getting there prior to noon will ensure relative privacy. After a brief history lesson our guides gave us a tour of the main sites within Machu Picchu including the Temple of the Condor, the Sacred Rock, the Sun Temple, the Funerary Rock and the Temple of the Three Windows. After this we were free for a few hours to explore prior to catching our train back to Ollantaytambo at 4pm. We chose, along with 4 others, to climb HUAYNA PICCHU to a secondary set of ruins that overlook Machu Picchu and give you an amazing panoramic view of the valley. The trail up to HUAYNA PICCHU is steep and narrow, with drop offs on one side and an unforgiving cliff face on the other. Once you get to the top there is a series of about 100 steps that are only about 50cm X 15cm (ie. only about the size of your foot fit sideways on them) to get to the temple. There are NO handrails or any other form of safety. This is about where I turned back, my fear of heights being justified by the sight of several guys sliding down these stairs on their backsides, too afraid to look down. Afterwards we found out that about 4-7 people a year fall and die off of this peak every year - too bad our guide forgot to tell us about this!

After wandering around the site for another hour or so we caught the bus down to Aguas Caliente for dinner before the trains left for Ollantaytambo. A collectivo, full to the brim with tourist, locals and drunk farmers, managed to get into Cusco by 8:30 that night, just in time for us to regroup at a local restaurant for beer and a bite eat.

All in all we had an amazing experience here and would strongly recommend that anyone who has a chance come to see Machu Picchu. If the idea of 4 days of hiking, camping out on rocky ground and a lack of showers does not appeal to everyone, there is always the option of staying overnight in Aguas Caliente and riding the bus up to Machu Picchu in the morning. But I would warn you that part of the whole experience was the Inca Trail. Somehow having to work so hard to get to the Sun Gate, and that first sight you get of Machu Picchu spread out before you eliminates 500 years of history in the blink of an eye. I can easily imagine what a sense of awe Henry Bingham must have felt on July 24 1911, when he crested that hill and finally discovered his long sought after Machu Picchu.