East Coast Australia

Nathaniel needed to travel to Sydney for a collaboration, so we took the opportunity to take our vacation in Australia this year, road tripping up and down the eastern coast.

Our first day, we took to the road and quickly adapted to driving on the left, which was easier than anticipated. We drove through the hairpin of Ku-ing-Gai Chase National Park, and then headed north to The Entrance, making it to the sand dunes of Birubi Beach before staying in Cessnock. On the way to our hotel, a wallaby jumped a gross the road, and we slowed to see several of them on the side, just staring at us. We saw another wallaby jump across the second day at dusk too, but most of out wallaby sightings were roadkill. Deer:EasternUSA::Wallabies:EasternAustralia.

We decided that the second day we would head directly up to the Whitsundays region, and make it there on the third day; that way, we’d get the chance to see a areas off the coast, get the bulk of the driving done early, and shave some drive time altogether.

Two things from the drive up will be forever locked away in my heart. One was racing alongside a train in the perfect road trip moment, a stream of uncountable rust-colored coal cars floating above a bed of grass; I felt the sort of freedom you feel when you know that you can do whatever you want, for a while at least. The second moment was watching a small flock of cranes slowly land on a weeping willow tree that stood at the edge of a pond. They perched there, looking like a perfect picture, but we were gone before I could have thought about my camera. I actually enjoy that about driving; it forces you to just enjoy the moment and lock things away in memory rather than with a camera. I like cameras too, but it’s nice to be restricted from using them sometimes.

We stayed at Isla Gorge National park, and woke up impatiently to slow sunrise, for which we did not wait. We drove through the sugarcane fields; I was sorely tempted to pull along the side of the road and run through them, but Nathaniel was against trespassing. We made it to the popular Arlie beach, where we stayed two nights, filling the day between with snorkeling out on the Great Barrier reef. For the snorkeling, we took a boat out to a permanent platform area, which had an underwater observatory from which we spotted “Chunky” the turtle who frequents the platform.

After Arlie beach, we took a slower journey back south to Sydney. Over the next three days, we walked in a rainforest where NWC swam in an isolated waterfall pond, visited the Etna caves, and rented bikes in the coastal town of Hervey Bay, where we accidentally witnessed some older white ladies performing some hybrid between belly-dancing and aboriginal dancing at a street fair. We ended that last day camping in the Rainbow beach area, where NWC tried his hand at fishing for the first time, and I sculpted the dense sand. When NWC was finishing up for the night, he was flanked by two huge pelicans (I'm talking chest-tall), anxious to eat his remaining squid.

In the morning, we did the same (fishing and sand drawing) and NWC caught a half-foot puffer fish with his las bit of bait. It was adorable and we threw it back, but not without some angst as to how to remove the hook. We also ran along the beach, since there had been a bit too much of sitting in a car. We spent the second half of the day in Brisbane, where we walked through the beautiful river park and visited the Queensland Museum. While wandering around, we noticed that ibis had near replaced pigeons as the common city bird, but pigeons were still to be found occasionally. In the evening, we saw a spectacular preview performance of Macbeth. On our way back to the hostel, we witnessed some giant bats perch in the trees; I’m guessing they were flying foxes.

From Brisbane, we drove through the Gold Coast, visited the 1899 lighthouse in Byron Bay, and explored the hinterlands a little. The town of Bangalow was beautiful, and we ate at the fabulous Utopia; we had a piece of macadamia nut cake with lemon icing that I’m hoping to reproduce. We browsed the shops before moving on to Belligen for the night. When enquiring at the local YHA, the receptionist might well have been high; an older hostel resident had to furiously ring the bell to bring him out, and when he arrived, he had to tap his wrists before saying left or right (I’ve done that too, just not several times in a row). My favorite moment was when we asked if there was wifi, and he just gave us the hang-loose gesture as a response. When pressed, he confirmed verbally, Of course, man. To which we recounted that another YHA on this trip had wifi so slow that we couldn’t even check email. That may or may not have to do with the bloke we saw playing WoW consuming all the bandwidth. Anyway, now I want to start a trend with the hang-loose sign meaning wifi.

We ended up camping in Belligen (only for financial reasons...the hostel was very appealing), and we saw a massive colony of giant bats emerging for the night a we set up the tent.  The next day, we did more rainforest walks in the stunning Dorrigo National Park, and drove along Waterfall Way. That night, we camped near Singleton, close to where we spent our first night, and we drove to Lilianfels the next day, where we showered and bathed to our heart's delight in the mist, had high tea, rode everything in Scenic World (the railroad was our favorite), and climbed the 900-ish stairs up the Three Sisters.

The next morning, the clouds cleared and we rushed out to see the Three Sisters, but my camera's memory card had a hardware failure at the end of that adventure.  I bought a new one for the final day, but I haven't yet been able to recover the photos on the old one--that's a whole other story.  Anyway, after savoring the relaxation of the hotel once again, we headed to Sydney.

There, we walked through the Royal Botanical gardens, visited the Art Gallery of NSW, and ended the day with an outdoor performance of Madama Butterfly, with the opera house in the background.  It was lovely.

All through the trip, we were amazed at the similarities between the USA and Australia, both historically and culturally. At other times, we were stuck by how British it was, but those moments were surprisingly rare. NWC’s favorite was the sign that said “Queued Traffic,” meaning that traffic jams frequently there. (My favorite sign was a Koala crossing graffitied to look like a monster.)

It's a huge and beautiful country, and I'm glad we got to see so much of it, even without much photo documentation.

02042014 update: This was picked up for an Australian travel and souvenir blog by a bloke I met at the airport on the way home.

Nepal and India

This post is waaaaaaay overdue.  We came back in June; it's now November.  Forgive me if some details are fuzzy, though I did use a journal sporadically on the trip and wrote half this post soon after returning.  I'm currently suffering from hiccups as punishment.

Before I left for India, my labmate told me that India was an assault on all your senses, and the experience was true to his words.

N and I left at the end of May, flying nonstop into Delhi to catch a night's sleep before continuing onto Kathmandu in Nepal.  There, we instructed a taxi driver to take us to the Suzuki dealership in a certain part of town, where we met up with another couple--good friends from our Berkeley days whom I will mysteriously call Petra and Mike. Magically, nothing went seriously wrong, and we found them waiting for us.  We stayed at Petra's extremely generous aunt's house and explored Katmandu before heading out to Pokhara to begin the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek the next day.

The trek itself was lovely, but the story is much like any traveller's experiences there in late May/early June: beautiful mountains playing hide-and-seek among the clouds, rainfall, prolific flora, and welcoming tea houses with hot food, decent beds, and the occasional hot shower.  I became obsessed with omelettes for whatever reason--my body probably craved the protein.  The really unique aspect to our trip was the adventure involved in obtaining and then ridding ourselves of a guide and porter.

In Pokhara, we hunted around for a guide and porter, mostly because we wanted to support the local economy (Petra and Mike were the enlightened ones in this respect). We were also looking forward to seeing some of the incredible feats of strength--I had heard stories of porters running up the mountains with packs, the strong-for-their-home-elevation tourists lagging behind with nothing on their backs.  N and I were won over by an older gentleman named Lale, who ran a shop and told us that he was a guide, and that his wife looks after the shop when he's trekking.  Petra and Mike didn't like him as much, but he was willing to agree to our demands, specifically that the guide carries a pack and that we could push the schedule.

Making group decisions is hard (especially in retrospect when things go badly), but I'll freely admit that I pushed to go with him.  We made a deposit for 7 days, him thinking that we would take 10, and us thinking that we might well take less.  I'm fairly certain that he agreed that we would get money back if we returned early, but it's hard to remember.

The next morning, we came to meet Lale, and he said that we were waiting for our guide and porter.  Aren't you our guide?  No, it would be his nephew.  Feeling a little deceived, we waited, and waited.  Eventually the guide arrived, and we caught a taxi then a bus, and we picked up our porter somewhere along the way--our guide's friend.  At some point, the bus broke down and we had to transfer to another one.  Given that the first bus was full, it was crazy crowded, so we sat on the top with the luggage and food being transported, which is illegal.  When we passed the police, they called up, and the guide and driver said we're tourists, and he waved us on.  Apparently tourists get to bend the rules.  Given that tourism is the nation's largest industry, this almost makes sense.  Regardless, the grumpiness from being lied to and the guide being late lifted, and we enjoyed ricocheting through the mountains, ducking under power lines and branches, and seeing the spectacular views of tiered farmland.

When we finally got started on the trek, we had to walk through a town.  The guide and porter started to carry our packs, and we walked leisurely.  N bought a hat, and we waited for the guide and porter, who took their time.  Perhaps they're just saving their strength.  They'll toast us on the uphill and in the higher altitudes.  We waited, walked ahead, waited, walked ahead, waited for directions, walked ahead.  The road turned into a trail, and got steeper.  Eventually it became clear to us that they're just slow.  Okay, still manageable.  The trail is clear, and we can just tell them where we'll stop for lunch and the night and they can go at their own pace and we'll meet them there.  We discussed plans with them, and they offered resistance, but eventually we got our way.

Fast forward, and everything came to a head that night.  I'm the least confrontational of the four of us, and so I opted out of the epic discussion that evening.  Apparently Mike offered progressively easier options, but still with a fast itinerary.  There were angry phone calls with Lale, and I could head voices from where I was trying to sleep.   The guide and porter simply claimed that it was too hard and that they had never carried packs before.  Again, I wasn't involved much in this, but by morning, we set out without them, intent on visiting Lale and asking for a partial refund of our deposit when we returned.

The rest of the hike was stunning from the tiny flowers to ginormous mountains.  We played cards wrapped in heavy blankets, read next to windows framing cloud-filled valleys, and I got to take steroids for altitude sickness.

When we got back to Pokhara, Lale refused to refund us, and said that if anything we owed him more money. We got the tourist police involved; we told them we were happy to pay for the two days time that the guide and porter actually worked (one day up with us and one day to return by themselves). Then the tourist police laid the smack down (our guide was probably not licensed) and we got our money back.  I have no problem giving money to people, but A) if I'm going to donate money, I want it to be to a good cause and not because I'm being ripped off and B) it's not okay to allow the precedent that might hurt future travelers.  We think Lale tried to follow us afterward, but we savvily ditched him by getting in a cab.  It's sad because Pokhara was really beautiful, and I think we would have stayed there longer had we not been worried about Lale doing something stupid.

Petra taught me that everybody's got a water buffalo.

Superhero shot.

Baby goats!!  Oh, and, you know, gorgeous mountains.

After recovering from the trek, we had some more fun in Kathmandu, and then settled on doing a land crossing to India.  The bus ride was a little tedious, but I got a fair amount of reading done.  Our first real stop was Varanasi.  There, we indulged in food, showers, and air conditioning.  We found Lonely Planet's recommended Blue Lassi and Brown Bread Bakery, which were as good as the book described.

The next morning, we took a sunrise boat ride on the Ganges, where we saw the docks in full action, as well as a the body of a deceased holy man floating down the river.  After more eating and rest, N and I opted to head out to a tiger park while Petra and Mike stayed in Varanasi for another day before heading off on their own adventures.

Himalayas to Varanasi: opposite extremes in almost every way conceivable.

We didn't see any tigers at the park, but we got plenty of AC, decent food, showers, flushing toilets, and rest.  This was all especially important because both N and I were having stomach issues--this was probably my fault for going for some sketchy street food.  We were also burnt out from numerous scam attempts and logistic issues during the trip.  I won't detail them; it's just a hazard of travel.  We ended up resigned to just spend a significantly more money on drivers in the second half of the trip to make things easier--we wouldn't have been able to see the Taj Mahal otherwise.  We also splurged on a fancy hotel in Dehli that had mood lighting settings; we considered it and the tiger park to be our three-year wedding anniversary gift to ourselves.

People washing and playing in the Ganges (left).  N at the Red Fort in Delhi with the longest beard he's ever had (right).

Sunrise on the Ganges.

Guatemala and Belize

In August, N and I went to Belize and Guatemala.  Well, first we went to California for my Grandma's 90th birthday party, which was awesome.  My family is full of so many great people, whom I got to hang out and catch up with, but Grandma especially is a hero of mine (that's a water gun at a wedding, gracias a Rachael).

Anyway, so we flew out from California after the fam-tastic party.  Immediately after we got off the plane, we got in a taxi (which was some guy's old van with a tag hanging from the rearview mirror), and then to the bus station, where we boarded a minute after we got there and a minute before it left.  It was as if everything had been planned to the T, but really there was absolutely no scheduling involved. Bussed inland to San Ignacio.

The next day, we went to Actun Tunichil Muknal, which is an incredible cave.  To get inside, you have to swim through water with skin-nibbling fish, then it's 3 miles alternating between swimming, squeezing through narrow passages, and ogling at huge crystal-covered caverns.  Then there are ceramic artifacts and mayan skeletons.  You have to go barefoot for the very back part, where a cave-crystal covered skeleton called the "crystal maiden" resides.

Then it was off to Guatemala the next day to see Tikal.  All the while we had been seeing interesting birds and other critters, but Tikal had an excellent assortment, including a toucan! There were also some huge trees, crazy mushrooms, and brightly colored insects that flew a little to close to my face for comfort. These things, however, is not what Tikal is known for.  No, Tikal is one of the largest archeological sites of the Mayan civilization. There were dozens of structures we were allowed to climb, a handful of hugely scary ones we were not, and a plaza with a bunch of school children playing like it was central park. When we were there, a thunderstorm rolled in, putting on quite a display as the backdrop of these ancient temples, making my mysticism-loving self very happy. We also got very wet.

Tikal was used as a filming site in Star Wars IV--this is the famous angle.

After Tikal, we stayed at Flores, a touristy island in the middle of a lake.  There, I had my first experience with a tuk-tuk, which I insisted were really just three-wheeled lawn-mowers without the cutting blades.  The next day we made it down to Finca Ixobel, where we went horseback riding up in the mountains, and lounged in hammocks.

The finca has a really interesting history involving drug wars, American spies for the CIA, and gunning down the owner at the entrance to the finca.  We talked to the horseback riding guide, who was only a kid when it all happened, but it was a crazy story with the moral that places like this in Central America are really safe, but are struggling financially because of the drug war reputation.  Before and after the trip, everyone was asking about how safe it was, which felt strange to me.  I felt more safe in Guatemala than I did in Greece, and no one asked about my safety for that trip.

After our time at the finca, we took a bus down to Rio Dulce, where we got on a boat ride to Livingston, the only moderately sketchy place in our journey.  The boat ride was stunning, as we rode through a gorge with crazy amounts of green on each side.  It was obviously intended for tourists, though, as the boat driver stopped at all the right places to let us get pictures.

Livingston was a dump.  We were harangued by Belizians as soon as we got off the boat--Livingston is still in Guatemala, but it's a common stop on the way to Belize.  Not wanting to stay the night, we got something to eat, got the immigration paperwork taken care of (also very sketch), and waited for our boat.

When we got on the boat, we went south for one more stop in Guatemala before heading to Belize.  The boat driver told us what time to be back at the boat while he went off for a bit. So we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  About an hour after he was supposed to be back, the two kids who helped with the boat starting getting antsy--there would be a fine for getting into port after curfew.

One of the ministers for Livingston was in our boat, and N chatted with him about tourism. We speculated about the driver having a girlfriend, watching the soccer game that was on in the bar next door, etc.  When he finally got back, he explained that he had been trying to sell his chicken frier.  N turned to the minister and said, "If you really want to improve tourism, don't let things like this happen."

The driver then proceeded to take our tiny little speed boat and take the shortest path possible to Belize, cutting through open water with a thunderstorm on our tail.  It was like Disneyland, with bigger and more frequent drops than the Indiana Jones ride.  But for a half-hour straight and no seat-belts.  Our rumps were really sore afterward.

We spent the night at Punta Gorda, and took a bus back up to Belize City, were we caught a water taxi out to Caye Caulker, the most beach-bummy place I've ever been.  There, we loafed about the white-sand beaches, ate very fresh fish, and made friends with some crabs.

We spent a day snorkeling, seeing a sea turtle, a moray eel, a barracuda, a spotted eagle ray, and petting small sharks and rays at (unsuprisingly) "Shark Ray Alley."  There was one dude who grabbed a shark for a photo, which was appalling.  On the other end of the spectrum, a woman from New Zealnd didn't touch the animals out of respect, which I found admirable.

It was beautiful and exciting, but when the time came, we were both ready to go home.