travel
Bond, James Bond... Island
Bond, James Bond... Island
Wrong side of the island, wrong end of the beach! That would be the headline for the way our trip started this morning. We got off the ship with a group of 13 that had banded together through Cruise Critic to head off on a swimming, snorkeling and boating trip together. However, it was a bit chaotic at the start. While we could have anchored on the side of the island by the marinas we instead anchored on the other side of the island. And while our guide knew the beach we were supposed to tender into he was informed that we would be tendering to the other end of the beach. So when we got off and started looking for the sign that read “Jane Miller Group” we were suprised to not see one. One taxi driver that had wanted to sell us a tour ended up being particularly nice when he offered to let us use his phone to contact the tour company. They were at the wrong end of the beach which was a long long walk, so they said we should walk to the “family mart” and wait.
before we even got to the family mart one of our new friends said “Jane, here’s your van”. Sure enough there was a driver with a “Jane Miller” sign. Unfortunately he didn’t have enough room for all of us in the van. So Jane said I should go with the main group and she would wait for a car and ride with our new friends Mike and Karen. Mike is an old army vet who now works as a defense contracter in South Korea teaching war gaming, and Karen is from Austin MN. Although there is a bit of an age gap, we have a lot in common and they were fun to talk to and always up for an adventure.
It was forty five minutes later when we finally arrived at the marina and I had just pulled out my phone and turned on the international plan so I could text jane and find out where she was!? Before I could press the send button however I noticed that she and Mike and Karen were all waiting for us on the sidewalk! OK, mission accomplished, we are all at the marina we can get this show underway. After a short trip to the nearby souvenier store where we paid double the usual cost for our Thai beers and we were ready to board our pink carriage to the boat halfway down the pier.
In our pre-trip briefing, both the owner and our guide for the day assured us that we were going to be back to the dock in plenty of time because they didn’t want anyone to stress about making it back on time for the last tender back to the ship. Great! This sounds good. There is nothing I hate more than wondering if we are going to make it back before the ship leaves.
A half hour later we were at our first stop and in the 85 degree water. Very nice and warm for swimming especially after all of our rushing around this morning and then sitting close together (with life jackets on!! to appease the local authorities) for the first part of the journey. Life jackets were now stowed away for the rest of the trip!
Following the swimming we motored to a group of islands called Phang-Nga bay. These islands were beautiful and reminded us of our time in Halong Bay, Vietnam. We stopped at Ice Cream cave and went spelunking! It was really pretty and brought us through the island where we could see the other side.
We pulled up to a small beach at a national park for lunch. We had a fabulous Thai lunch. By the time we finished lunch it was after 2pm and our guide said we would see James Bond island, the floating village and then do some kayaking before making our way back to the marina at high speed but still an hour away. A few of us began to wonder out loud about the 4:00 return time. It turned out that the tide had gone out and the water was quite shallow to get to the floating village so we had to go slow. I think it was at that point that our guide finally re-did the math in his head and announced that we should choose whether we wanted to see the village or Kayak. None of us could see that Kayaking made any sense, given that we would have had about 5 minutes time to do so. In reality we should have headed back right after James Bond island.
In the end we arrived back at the marina closer to 4:30 and we could tell they were wanting us to really hurry to get to the vans and on our way back to the ship. Given that it had taken 45 minutes to get there in the morning I was wondering how this was going to end. fortunately our afternoon driver seemed to know a much better route than our morning driver and it really only took 20 minutes to get back, so all was well.
Days like today are my one knock against cruises like this. You just don’t really have enough time to do the things you’d like to do without the pressure of going right up against getting on board at the last second. This was true for us in Kuala Lumpur as well as there was a whole hour long drive from the port just to get into the city. When you do a land tour you don’t have those daily deadlines, and you can take your time exploring a bit more.
On the other hand, it was “white night” on the ship tonight and we got back in plenty of time to enjoy the sunset.
Progressive Trivia Champions!
Progressive Trivia Champions!
On our first day at sea we looked at the schedule of activities on board the ship and Jane said, “We should go take a bridge lesson.” Having tried to learn bridge before I thought it sounded like a fun idea, maybe it would stick this time. So we showed up at the appointed time of 10AM and there were a bunch of us. We were among the youngest but certainly not the only people in our age bracket. Our teacher was named Rhoda, clearly a longtime New Yorker. Also a lifelong teacher, she taught reading for most of her career. Most of the other beginners had never even played cards before so I have to give them credit for starting with Bridge. All our nights of 500 were a definite advantage in the playing phase of Bridge. We didn’t even start learning how to bid until the second lesson, but before we knew it we were adding high card points, learning about 5 card major openings, Jacoby transfers, Staymen, forcing bids, no trump responses, and the other conventions of American Standard bridge bidding!
After bridge I was off to check out the cooking class for Indian Butter Chicken, and Jane was headed to water color painting class. I turned out that I had misread the time for the cooking class, but at least I got to taste the result and get the recipe! I also wanted to check out the trivia challenge and then sing with the Highseas Choir. (get it high-C’s). I showed up at trivia at 12:15 and was invited to join a couple from Canada to see if we could form a team, we were soon joined by Beverly (a librarian!) and so it was that on our first day we had a team of four, which everyone else was at 8! Unsurprisingly we were second to last after the first day. However in this progressive trivia challenge the points double each day. So on the next day I made Jane join in, and little by little we grew our team, and our scores increased and we moved up the rankings. By the last day we were in second place! One part of our strategy was to make use of the fact that you can request categories. I requested computer programming and cooking. The “programming” question the next day was “What does HTTP stand for?”. Ha! Only two of us in the room knew the answer to that one. Its not really a programming question if you ask me, but I’ll take it.
Starting in second place on the last day, we knew it was still almost anybody’s game as the points that day were worth more than all the previous days put together. But after the questions were in, and they read through the answers we realized that we had only missed two and many other teams were not cheering too much as the answers were read. When it was all added up we won!
Jane made three watercolor paintings on the ship during her painting lessons, and I think she should keep it up. There must be someplace in Minneapolis to take some art lessons to keep improving.
All in all the days at sea went by very quickly, and we had planned really great meals in the specialty restaurants on board for most evenings at sea. After dinner we did enjoy some of the shows. Except for the hypnotist. I volunteered to be one of the 10 to be hypnotized but my brain is just way to busy to enter a trance in a situation like that (or maybe ever). I was quite convinced that I could not be hypnotized before I even walked up there which meant I wasn’t a good volunteer to begin with. So no surprise I was the first volunteer to be dismissed. He insisted on having 10 volunteers so I figure he is just playing the odds that a certain percentage of the population is susceptible/able to be hypnotized and some are not.
I also sang in the choir, which was fun, but at the end of it all we were not very good. You have to listen to each other to sing, and most people in the choir were not good listners. Still it does make me want to get my voice back in shape and join a choir back in Minneapolis.
Cooking with Pearly
Cooking with Pearly
Stand under the clock tower facing the roundabout at 9:00 and my husband will find you. Those were our instructions from Pearly, our instructor for the day. So we did, Jane and I plus our two friends Rob and Joan. Pearly’s husband was a bit surprised to find Rob and Joan with us, but there was room in the class and it was no problem. Just a couple of more things to pick up at the market.
Chanda, Pearly’s husband drove us to the market where we waited for Pearly to arrive with the rest of the class. Then our lessons started. She did a great job of showing us around the market introducing us to all of the Malaysian produce. She was particularly focused on educating us about the various health benefits of all of the different kinds of root vegetables. By the time it was over I actually kind of wanted to eat a healthier diet with more greens and veggies. You read it here first folks! We also had the opportunity to try some great street food, including some peanut pancakes and some rice hoppers that were made with noodles, cane sugar, and coconut. Delicious!
After the market tour we drove to Pearly and Chanda’s home where she gave us a tour of the garden and then brought us to our cooking stations. Since Jane and I were the first to sign up for the class we got to choose the dishes to make! We made three dishes:
- Curry Kapitan
- Sambal Goreng -- Prawns in Cashew nut sauce
- Ngor Hiang Lor Bak - 5 spice pork roll
None of these is the traditional Penang curry that we eat back home, but they are all traditional Nyonya dishes. Pearly is a fifth generation chinese living in Penang and they are the Nyonya. Over the years of cooking for the British they developed a style of cooking that was very flavorful but not as spicy as their Thai counterparts.
In each step of the work we washed everything thoroughly in a large bowl of fresh water at each of our stations. This was a little different than how I had cooked before, but the produce was all fresh and so whether it was to make sure we coaxed out any weavels hiding in the nuts or just to make sure we rinsed away any extra dirt or other nasty matter from the lemon grass or dried chilis or Galangal roots it seemed like a good idea.
When we first started it seemed like we might be in an episode of “worst cooks” as some of our classmates immediately knocked their ingredients on the ground and started cutting things up all wrong. But Pearly had pretty good humor about it and we spent most of our time laughing. She did go a little overboard at one point grabbing the spoon out of Jane’s hand in a misguided effort to “save her peppers” after her instructions about what to do were not entirely clear.
We didn’t finish cooking and eating until 2:00 in the afternoon, but the time went by very quickly.
Sunrise to Sunset in Bagan, Myanmar
Sunrise to Sunset in Bagan, Myanmar
One of the cool things about this Azamara journey is that the ship stays for three nights in Yangon (old Rangoon) which allows some of the more adventurous travelers the opportunity to do an overnight trip to the interior of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). Our friends Ann and Jerry got us very excited about seeing the temples of Bagan so this was the perfect opportunity to do that.
Jane worked with Trufflepig travel agency to plan our days to get the most out of the adventure. Which we definitely did as we were off the ship early on our first morning in port and were were among the very last handful of passengers to board less than an hour before we sailed away from Myanmar! Our first day was a fairly nice tour of Yangon. The main attraction is the huge gold covered Schwedagon Pagoda. They were in the midst of a project they do every five years to replace the gold plating on the dome of the pagoda. We saw families dressed in their finest bringing a 10 by 10 inch plate of gold to place in a small cart that would go by wire up to the dome where it would be put in place. This must be the most expensive pagoda in the world, as the very tip of the pagoda is encrusted with diamonds, rubies and sapphire gems worth millions.
The expense of the pagoda stands in stark contrast to everything around it. It seems that people are giving away their life savings to decorate this place. Its a part of the culture that I would definitely like to understand more about. I should also point out that Myanmar is also fairly well endowed with gold mines, diamond mines as well as mines containing rubies and sapphires. But like many of our other stops there is also a huge amount of poverty.
The flight to Bagan was about an hour aboard a propjet plane, and we were met by our guide, Mr. Htay, and driver for our time in Bagan for the short five minute ride to the Aureum Palace Hotel. A beautiful 5 star hotel where the bathroom in our villa was bigger than our entire stateroom on the ship! The dining and pool areas of the hotel overlook several smaller pagoda (pagodas? pagodi?). Although it was still only around 7pm we ate dinner at the hotel. The menu was a very international menu including burmese, Thai, Italian, and American fare. Our server recommended anything from the Thai menu as the chef was from Thailand and very good. I had the Pad Bai Kra Prao Gai -- something I’m determined to cook at home. its a bit similar to Laarb but spicy instead of bright and fresh. Its ground chicken mixed with spices and spicy basil served over rice.
After dinner it was early to bed, partly because I was suffering from a nasty cold and partly because we knew we had a 4:40 alarm set to get up for our balloon ride the next morning! I slept well until 2AM and then spent the rest of the night tossing and turning waiting for that early alarm to go off, and anticipating the balloon ride! See the gallery at the end of this post for a bunch of photos.
We travelled to the launch site in a Carbus! The Carbus is a vehicle that was made in Canada and used by the Allies in World War II. At the end of the war there were 206,000 of these vehicles in Burma but it was too expensive to ship them all back home so they were just left here. Over the years the burmese have restored them, replaced and engines, and used them for various purposes. The windows were open air, or you could pull up some wooden shutters to block the early morning breeze which we did since it was the first time since leaving home that we were a bit chilly. (it was probably 69 degrees out)
We arrived at the launch site in darkness where they had coffee and tea waiting for us and then it was on to our safety briefing. As the sky began to turn gray in the east the safety briefing was over and it was time to inflate the balloons! What a fascinating process, to watch them start up fans and then run around inside the balloon making sure everything was in place. After the balloons were about three quarters inflated they started the burners and started shooting flames into the balloon, which very quickly became upright and ready for us to board! There were sixteen passengers in four compartments of the basket. The pilot, Fernando, was in the middle with his tanks of fuel and his ipads to show the wind speeds at various altitudes. it took a lot of hot air to get all seventeen of us into the air, but it was so gentle and amazing that you didn’t even realize you were leaving the ground. Once airborn we were all just mesmerized by everything! temples in every direction and the sun just peeking over the horizon.
We were probably in the air for a little over an hour and I alternated between madly taking pictures trying to capture the experience and just leaving my camera hanging so I could fully enjoy the experience! There were 23 balloons in the air that morning and part of the beauty of the experience was seeing all of the other balloons around us. It was all over too quickly when we landed (on our second attempt) in the middle of a field. Our pilot had to hold a delicate balance between letting the balloon deflate a bit versus keeping it upright enough so that the basket didn’t tip and drag until the ground crew caught up with us.
After we got out of the balloon we celebrated our journey with an early morning champagne toast. The first balloon flight was in the Champagne region of france so apparently this is a tradition followed after all balloon flights. Our pilot got into ballooning when he got fed up waiting for parts for an ultralight plane. Now he owns his own company in Spain, and spends five months of the year in Bagan doing balloon rides and five months in the south of france doing balloon rides. Quite an interesting life if you ask me!
After the balloon we returned in our Carbus to the hotel where we cleaned up, had breakfast and then met our guide for our eBike tour of the temples of Bagan. the eBike was a great way to explore the backroads around the temples. We explored a few that were off the beaten path and getting a bit overgrown, and then we saw a few of the popular ones that we had seen from the air. It was really interesting to have a good guide for this part of the trip as the walls of the temples are like history books. The different paintings and the stories they all tell always make me wish I had done more homework before visiting.
After a few hours of “templing” we drove our scooters to a monastery and had a huge burmese lunch. It is said that one of the kings in Bagan never had a meal with less than 300 dishes. We had 30. The traditional meal is to have a main curry and rice dish and then many many side dishes. We had two different beef curries and one chicken curry. That leaves 27 different side dishes. From tofu to pickled bean sprouts to mashed gooseberries to spicy toasted nuts. We managed to try a bit of everything between us. Many of them we didn’t like at all because they were just too bitter for our western taste buds. I’m not sure that even my friend (JMS) would have cleaned up all the food they served us.
One of the best things about our guide was that he didn’t overdue the temples. After lunch he said we could continue if we wanted or we could go back to the room for some rest and refreshment before he picked us up at 4:00 for our carriage ride and sunset watching. We opted for resting and trying out the rum sour drinks from the hotel bar that our guide had recommended we sample. They were very refreshing all on their own.
The carriage ride was very peacful and the sunset was beautiful.
After sunset we were beat, so we had an early dinner by the pool and enjoyed the reflection of the nearby temples in pool. It was another early night to bed as we knew we were off to the airport first thing in the morning.
My one worry about the hole Bagan adventure had been that we were not leaving ourselves a very good safety margin for getting back to the ship at the end of it all. Our flight was schedule to arrive at 10:10 and the roads and traffic in Yangon are so bad that it takes at least an hour and a half to drive from the port to the airport. With our ship leaving at 1:00 I would have liked a bit more time. On top of that virtually everyone we met was flying back the night before for that very reason. Of course they all missed the sunset. So... when the time to board our plane passed and the ground crew told me that our flight was delayed by 30 minutes due to weather in Heho my stomach began to churn a bit. My internal safety deadline of 11:00 was getting uncomfortably close. Of course we knew that we had our passports and credit cards and more than a day to catch up with the ship in Phuket if we “missed the boat.” So there really wasn’t anything to worry about. But sometimes you still do even when you shouldn’t. Our plane landed at 10:50 and our guide was waiting for us. He joked that they had the privte jet all fueled up and ready to take us to Phuket, but we made it back to the ship before it sailed anyway.
Yala Safari
Yala Safari
Today we got caught up in a traffic jam in the middle of the Yala National Park in Sri Lanka! But it was for a good reason, a Leopard. After many hours of bumping around the jungle in a jeep and seeing lots of different animals we still had not seen a leopard. We really didn’t expect to as it was hot and the middle of the day. Most of the sane leopards were hidden away napping on tree branches. We knew that something was up as soon as our driver hit the gas pedal. We had learned over the course of the day that when he sped up and started driving like a madman it was because some other driver had seen something cool and it had come down their phone tree. How they tell each other their position out there is something only they know, I think, as there are thousands of paths and zero road signs.
After a few minutes of flying along we ended up at the back of a very long line of jeeps going nowhere. initially the word was that it was a crocodile, which didn’t seem all that likely as a croc would not attract this much attention. Eventually we learned that it was a Leopard! What a bonus that we were actually going to see one. After nearly a half hour of inching forward one car at a time we were pointed in the right direction by several of the guides who were standing by the side of the road trying to keep everyone moving. It was quite far in the distance but I did get a great view of it with the binoculars. Unfortunately it was too far away for any kind of recognizability unless you really zoom in like below.
Not everyone in the Jeep was so lucky and we learned a good lesson about traveling with tired and crabby people. The poor driver was just doing his job and following instructions. But after six hours in a jeep in 90 degree weather, it was a bit much for one couple who had been bickering with each other all day!
The following is a gallery of some of my favorite photos taken during the day. Enjoy! And if you ever get to Sri Lanka I recommend you plan a day like this.
Driving a Tuk Tuk in Colombo
Driving a Tuk Tuk in Colombo
This morning we had a morning at sea and we arrived in Colombo Sri Lanka noon. Jane had arranged a tuk tuk tour for us and several other people from the cruise critic message boards. We made our way off the ship and negotiated a taxi to take us to the hotel where we were to meet our drivers and tuk tuks. In case you’ve never experienced a tuk tuk it is a three wheeled vehicle with a motorcyle engine. The driver sits in the front and 2 or maybe 3 passengers sit in the back. These vehicles are all over in the cities of Asia and can drive in ways that cars cannot!
The first thing we noticed is what a different vibe there is in Colombo versus the cities in India. The driving is more orderly, the city seemed quite well maintained from the lack of garbage in the streets to the upkeep of the buildings. We visited a Buddhist temple, saw “the white house”, visited a Hindu temple, the national cricket grounds, and some of their national monuments.
For me the highlight of the day was when we were on a pretty out of the way street and our driver pulled over and asked if I wanted to drive. Now I’m not even a motorcycle driver, but that didn’t deter me from giving it a shot. Unlike a motorcycle the clutch is on the left and along with the shifting mechanism, the throttle is on the right hand along with the break. I made it into first gear without any trouble and then paniced when I heard someone coming up from behind me. I slowed down and forgot to engage the clutch. Wah wah wah... But then we started it up again and I was good for at least 1 kilometer.
The funniest thing was that as we were motoring down the road with me driving we were passed by a policeman! It was pretty clear to all concerned that I didn’t have a license, but he just smiled and continued on his way. Jane was in the back making a video and thought the whole thing was quite funny.
While we were at the national cricket grounds, I noticed that they had something called “Hoppers” on the menu. So I asked our guide about it. He explained that they were like crispy pancakes that you stuffed with different fillings and rolled up to eat. A few minutes later he was on the phone and arranging for us to have hoppers on our lunch stop! They were delicious. We had some spicy filling called pol sambola to use with one plain hopper and one egg hopper. Both were really good. Then we had a delicous chicken Kottu a mixture of roti and vegetables and chicken, served with a dark garlic curry. We were running a bit behind schedule but we were all so glad that we got to experience this great food instead of rushing back to the ship to make the dinner buffet! For desert we had some delicious buffalo milk curd with honey drizzled on top. Time to find a Sri-Lankan cookbook to see if I can recreate any of this at home.
Kochin: Houseboats and Driving
Kochin: Houseboats and Driving
I think that no blogging about India would be complete without some comment on the driving! It is a great example of both the chaos and cooperation present in the culture of India. It is utter chaos in that although there are line lines painted on the roads, very few drivers seem to care. Where there is only one lane you might find two or even three vehicles side by side depending on the size of the vehicles. Passing? No problem you can pull part way out of the lane to pass, the vehicle in front of you will probably move over a bit to the left and the oncoming traffic will likely move a bit to the right so you can get around! I don’t know what the statistics on traffic accidents or fatalities are in India, but amazingly we didn’t see any during our visit to either Mumbai or Kochin. I tried to make a video out the front of the bus as we were driving down the road and staring into an oncoming truck. But it didn’t turn out so you’ll just have to trust me on this one!
Our day in Kochin was mostly spent on a small bus studying the driving habits of the natives, but we did make two very interesting stops. The first stop was to do a two hour ride on a large houseboat that took us through the canals and waterways of Kochin. We got to see the countryside and the rice paddys. It was really good to get out of the city!
Our second interesting stop was at a small bridge where we could see the famous chinese fishing nets in action. These nets have been in use for centuries and it was fascinating to see them catching and hauling in the fish.
First World Problems
First World Problems
“First world problems eh?” We all use that phrase to acknowledge that when we are complaining about our iPhone being a little too slow, or our dinner selections not quite vast enough, we really do get that its not that important in the grand scheme of things. Today, we experienced life in the slum of Mumbai known as Dharavi, and it put into perspective the distance between our first world problems and real life. I don’t think I’ll use that phrase anymore as it feels like it doesn’t come close to recognizing the challenges faced by those living outside the first world.
Jane arranged our tour of Mumbai through a tour group called reality tours. They were excellent and I would highly recommend you use them if you ever visit Mumbai. Not only are the guides excellent but 80% of the proceeds from your tour dollars go straight into their community. Their community happens to be in one corner of the Dharavi slum. I was absolutely floored to learn that our tour guide for the day lived in the slum! I thought that slums were only for the very most poor and destitute, surely not for someone who was educated, well spoken and hard working! In fact we learned that many professionals such as teachers and policemen live in the slums of Mumbai. This reality runs straight against our American ideals, but we were not in America.
I’m pretty sure that we breathed som pretty toxic fumes on the first part of our tour today. The slum is divided into two parts, the commercial and the residential part. In the commercial part it seemed that recycling was a huge part of the economy, both lastic and aluminum. The plastic is broken down and then thrown into something that we Minnesotans would call a wood chipper, which breaks the plastic into smaller pieces. These pieces are then melted down and extruded into long strings and finally cut into tiny little lengths which makes little plastic pellets. These are then sold to manufacturers to be turned into who knows what. The dust and smell from the plastic can not be good for you. The same basic process is used for aluminum only that requires a lot higher temperatures. We saw a bunch of aluminum bricks that were so hot that people were cooking their lunch on them! In all of this we saw no hard hats, no safety goggles, and no shoes. We did see a lot of people working hard to earn money for their family.
In the residential area it was much different. The “streets” were so narrow that my shoulders stretched from one side to the other. The houses are quite small and for the most part families live together in a 10x20 foot room. Our guide was 30 and still lives with his parents and siblings because he cannot afford his own place. I learned that the average teacher’s salary is the equivalent of $200 per month, so it is no wonder that housing is hard to afford. Later in the day our guide took us past the most expensive house in the world a 2+ billion dollar home built overlooking the sea owned by an indian billionaire.
He explained that the government tried to clean up the slums and built hi-rise apartments next door for people to move into, but they were so expensive that nobody could afford them and most ended up moving back. Living in the slums is not free, people there pay taxes and rent and bills for water and electricity. Water only runs for a few hours a day, although electricity is pretty constant. Each home is metered for electrical use! Although the wires are run so haphazardly I can’t imagine how it is very accurate. We were not allowed to take pictures as our guide explained we are in people’s homes and want to respect their privacy. Everywhere we went, we were greeted by the children. They were all smiles and wanted to say hello to us, give us a high five or shake hands.
Another stop on our journey was the laundry. In a way this is similar to the slums in that people both live and work in the laundry. This is where the washing is done for hospitals and hotels and clothing manufacturers. We were able to take pictures inside here. Each of these large bins is one small business, doing the washing for someone.
Its all so strange and different, like a step back in time in some ways. Imagine that your hospital bedding was sterilized by throwing the sheets into a 50 gallon drum of water heated from below by an open flame!? Ironing? Of course they have ironing, have you ever seen an iron that is heated by coal? We saw some of them in use today.
So, although this part of the day was really sobering. We saw some fun and beautiful sites along the way too. The Victoria train station was very grand, and our stop at the cricket field was very entertaining. There must have been at least 100 different cricket games going on simultaneously. We watched as balls were hit across two, three, or even more other games. It seemed like total chaos to me, but it was clear that everyone was having a great time.
Our tour also featured a stop for some street food! We went to food stand at the beach owned by Bihm Singh, where we tried a number of different things. Pani Puri, Sev Puri and Dahi Ragda Puri. The Pani Pur and Dahi Ragda were both served in crisp little balls, where the cook punched a hole in the top and then filled the ball with delicious spicy ingredients. The Sev was more like a nacho in that it was a flat crispy bit of dough with the ingredients piled high. The way you eat these is to pop it all in your mouth at once. Jane got a fabulous photo of me demonstrating how to do this!
As far as I could tell the whole place was run on some kind of honor system. I never saw an order being written down, and yet people were eating all kinds of things chatting away and ordering and eating and chatting some more. like much of what we saw it seemed very cooperative and trusting amongst all of the participants. Such a different feel than you get in so many places back home.
I think the followup email from our guide sums up the day pretty well and since I’ve been struggling to put the day into words I’ll just quote him.
You have picked your way through Dharavi’s narrow, winding lanes, and witnessed first hand the communal, enterprising spirit that allows so many people to survive and thrive despite the many issues that they face. We hope you’ve left having had some of your perceptions about life here challenged.
To which I can only say, “mission accomplished.”
A Wadi Wadi tour of the Hajar Mountains
A Wadi Wadi tour of the Hajar Mountains
Our guide’s name was Oscar, He is a Masai from kenya, but immigrated to Dubai and works tours out of the port at Khor Fakkan. We picked this excursion because we wanted to get out of the city and into the country side. We were not dissappointed. We visited four different Emirates on our trip, but the main feature was when we got offroad and ventured through the Wadi. A Wadi is more or less a dry streambed most of the time, except for when it rains. And with less than 200 milimeters of rain a year that is not much rain.
The port of Khar Fakkan is not too developed yet. And is mostly for container ships. We had heard that it was a busy port but we were the only ship in port and there were not that many containers. We have a good alternative theory that the port that is busy is just around the corner and is the port for all the tankers. When we got a few miles away from the port we saw the oil tanks. They have a huge pipeline that brings most of the oil from the emirates to this storage facility. Its better to be here because the location is not as easily blockaded by Iran as other Emirate locations! Miles and miles of huge oil tanks, all storing oil for every brand you can think of.
We made a quick stop at the friday market. We were pretty sure that this market was just the best place they could find for a short stretch break on our way to the mountains! Our guide said we could get out and look but not to buy anything because we didn’t have any room in our jeep to haul it. He was right, although we were in a big Land Cruiser we had our guide and six passengers.
As we got to the offroad portion of the trip, Oscar became a bit upset because the lead car had taken a route he thought was sub-standard. It kept us inside the wadi instead of the better view by driving along side and above it. Finally when one car got stuck in a muddy rut (it had rained last week) he was not too happy, and both Jane and I were reminded of an earlier adventure when our airboat got stuck in the Everglades for three hours!
We also made a stop at a luxury hotel for lunch, and a very very short stop at the oldest mosque in the area. Made of clay and quite small. They were very strict about enforcing the clothing rules and since I had not heard about this part of the trip I was not allowed inside in my shorts. I could have borrowed a long traditional robe, but our stop was so short that the guides were hurrying everyone to get back in the trucks before we really figured out what was going on.
When we were getting back on the ship we figured out the reason why they were rushing us. We were in the last truck as Oscar was clearly one of the more experienced guides and was trying to keep the younger drivers in front of him. As we were going through security to get back on the ship one of the security guys was counting down. I was 8 and jane was 7 there were only six passengers (all behind us) unaccounted for before the ship could leave port.
Dubai: City of Contrasts
Dubai: City of Contrasts
I once listened to an interesting 99% Invisible podcast that said that Las Vegas was the petri dish for architecture in the United States. Las Vegas is also the city that keeps on coming to mind as I visit Dubai. The variety of architecture here is just amazing, especially in the new areas of Dubai -- where by new I mean less than 20 years and in many cases less than 10 years old! There are amazing buildings with modern architecture everywhere you look. This place is on a mission to make a statement on a global scale. But even after spending a couple of days here I’m not sure what that statement actually is. Update: on our tour to the Hajar Mountains yesterday our guide said “Dubai is the Las Vegas of the middle east, just without the gambling”. So there are two data points for you on that comparison.
To put a positive spin on it it might be something like this: Visionary leadership will get you everywhere. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum definitely had a vision and the people here have executed on that vision. Creating islands shaped like palm trees and soon home to two of the worlds tallest buildings where just 15 years ago there was nothing but flat desert.
A slightly more cynical spin would be. Dubai: we have more Guinness world records than anyone else, you should come shop here! The Mall of the Emeriates, The City Center Mall, the Marina Mall and of course the Dubai Mall, which is the largest mall in the world. The new area of Dubai hosts all of the worlds tallest hotels (at least the top three) there is the worlds highest swimming pool, the worlds highest observation deck, the worlds tallest building, with the worlds fastest elevator, which will soon be supplanted by a different building that will overcome the soon to be completed tallest building in Saudi Arabia. The worlds largest indoor ski area -- Yes it has real snow and operating lifts. This will also be replaced by another indoor ski area with a much longer run. The worlds largest man-made island. Its really exhausting to see and list all of these records.
So what is the reason behind all of these records? You might be tempted to say that it is all due to oil wealth. But Dubai is small and contains only 4% of the oil reserves in the UAE. A little research will quickly lead you to the same reason I gave above, vision. It was the vision of the leadship of Dubai that led to the creation of the infrastructure, mass transit, and tax systems that have caused massive economic growth. Foreginers are allowed to own propery and business in designated business zones. There is no income or sales tax which explains some of Dubai as a massive shopping destination. And some things, like a man made island in the shape of a palm tree are just to show off a bit and attract celebrities to area.
Our hotel was near the Dubai Creek which was dredged and extended as part of the massive building efforts. But the creek is also the reason Dubais is located where it is. It is a highly defensible port location which is still operating today. Ports in Iran and many other Gulf countries are fairly close, just a 4 hour boat trip to Iran. The Creek and the port are the intersection of the old and new Dubai as you can see clearly in the photo.
The Dhows are loaded with all kinds of goods from new and used electronics to fresh water and furniture to be shipped from Dubai to other countries. The crime rate is so low that these goods basically sit here next to a busy street unguarded, waiting to be loaded and shipped away.
You can also see the “taxi” that we used to get from the new side of the creek to the old side of the creek. The ride was just 1 Durham which is about a quarter. You simply walk up, hop on and pay the driver his money. Or a helpful local may grab your 5 give you change and pass on the bill to the driver!
The highlight of our visit was a middle-eastern food tour hosted by Stephanie of Frying Pan Adventures. Stephanie is an Italian-Egyptian native of Dubai. She took us around her old neighborhood where we sampled food from Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Iran and Iraq. Jane and I agreed that our favorite was the giant Felafel sandwhich from Sultan Dubai Felafel. Eaten outside in the company of new friends it was delicious. We then followed it up with Kunafa served in the kitchen of Qwaider al Nabulsi. Kunafa is made with butter, noodles, salty cheese, and sugar syrup. Cooked in a large pan to a golden brown and served fresh! It was awesome. We also were able to enjoy many different varieties of Baklava along with an amazing cream sauce made from Soaproot! The egyptian pizza known as Feteer was also very good. My least favorite was the slow smoked carp at the Iranian restaurant.
This visit to Dubai has left us with more questions than answers but we look forward to exploring much more of the middle eastern and southeast asian cultures as we begin the cruise portion of the journey.
Yosemite
Yosemite
The plan was to go to Napa. But we have been to Napa in fact we had been to Napa already this year. So instead we decided to try Yosemite. Its a lot further drive from Mountain View but we love our national parks and so this was a nice chance to take a long weekend break and visit someplace we had never visited before.
As with most visits to a national park words don’t do it justice and neither do my pictures, but here goes.
After a seemingly endless drive in traffic to get out of Mountain View and especially someplace called “Old Gilroy” we spent our first night in Oakville. We arrived late, but just in time to get the last Pizza of the night from the friendly proprietor of Sugar Pine Pizza. We were ready to set off for Mariposa grove in the morning to see the giant redwoods.
From there we drove out to glacier point where we had a magnificent view of Half Dome. This is definitely one of the highlights of Yosemite. It is truly amazing, and the drop off from glacier point to the valley floor below is really breathtaking.
We did a short hike at Glacier Point and then drove back and made a stop at the Sentinel Dome trailhead. This would be our good hike for the day. We wondered at first if we could really get to the top of Sentinel dome but we found that we could and the views were definitely worth it. We were really tired after the hike and more than happy to check in to the Majestic Yosemite Inn. Right there on the floor of the valley we had views of Half dome and El Capitan! Because it was early fall the waterfalls were basically dried up so now we have a reason to go back again some spring!
The next morning we planned on hiking to mirror lake to see the morning views of Half Dome reflected in the clear calm waters. Umm... Little did we know that mirror lake is becoming a Meadow. Its part of the natural order of things, but it was a little disappointing after hiking two miles to find no water! Usually we are so good at researching these things!
We had plenty of day left so we decided to make the drive to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. It has some good hiking too although we only did a little as it was super hot when we got there. The reservoir is beautiful and its amazing to think that this reservoir supplies drinking water to San Francisco.
My Life in the Computer History Museum
My Life in the Computer History Museum
Its been six or eight years since I’ve taken a group of students to the Computer History Museum, and am I ever glad that I made the stop this time. The museum has changed a lot over the years and this was by far the best visit ever.
The first part of the “ancient” history of computing (up to the late 1970’s) was really well done, but I noticed that I couldn’t stop myself from snapping pictures of computers from then on. I realized that I was in fact taking pictures of the machines that I have personally worked on or used for fun over the years.
Atari Game console
Did you ever play tank battle on one of these? I think its safe to say that this was the first game console I ever used. Notice the lovely woodgrain finish, and the switch to change between black and white and color TVs!
Apple II
The Apple II was the first computer I ever programmed. Lets face it, if you couldn’t write a little basic, the Apple II was pretty useless. I first encountered the Apple II in the AV room of my high school in the spring of my Freshman year in 1979. I never looked back. Hacking the Lemonade Stand game was my first stab at modifying someone else’s code.
TRS (Trash) 80
Of course this is the computer I wanted for my own. It was less expensive than the Apple, black and white and ran BASIC.
TeleType
Luverne high school, like many schools ofthe day, was connected to MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium) By 300 baud modem we connected to a big CDC computer running somewhere in the twin cities. We could play Star Trek against other high school students or use a primitive chat program where, even in 1980, every third high school girl went by an online name of “FoxyLady” Of course back than it was FOXYLADY as lower case characters were not invented yet. This particular specimin actually only ran at 110 baud and was pretty much out of use by the tie I got into high school Using this seemed like a huge pain, but at least I can say that I missed the card punch era! Beyond basic on the AppleII we could write programs in Pascal on the MECC computers.
The PET Trapezoid
When I got to Luther College and went to my first General Physics lab, these were the computers that greeted us. Programmable in basic, and easy to interface to simple lab equipment using the basic commands PEEK and POKE to set and read memory locations that were mapped to the I/O devices. We could also use the PET computers to do accurate timing, as long as you were able to convert from the unit of a “Jiffy” to seconds. As I recall there were 60 Jiffies in a second.
Data General - Soul of a New Machine
I never actually used a Data General computer, but during my first year of college I read Tracy Kidder’s book The Soul of a New Machine, this book had such a huge influence on me, it totally cemented my career path toward computer computer science. I loved this book so much that I kept it and had it in my office atLuther after I became a professor. When Kidder came to Luther to give the opening convocation speech a few years ago to talk about his latest book Mountains beyond Mountains, I was able to meet him and have him autograph my 30+ year old paperback. He actually looked quite surprised that I had a paperback that old.
PDP 11
Another early computer I encountered at Luther, in the MRI lab, was an LSI-11, this was the Heathkit replica of this PDP-11. The lab had an even older PDP-8 but the museum didn’t have one of those.
Commodore 64
What I worked on the most in the MRI lab at Luther was a Commodore64. We had a cartridge version of the programming language FORTH that I used to write a program to collect data from the Analog to Digital Converter. I remember being shocked that we were using this incredibly inexpensive computerto control a $10,000 data collection device.
Apollo
In the summer of 1985 I had the amazing opportunity to do an internship at Amoco research center in Tulsa Oklahoma. I was tasked with writing benchmarks to test various implementations of Lisp for the IBM PC. I remember that I had the first PC/AT in the building. But more interesting was my friend Jay’s Apollo. I think we called this mini-computers back then, today we would think of them as workstations. What I remember most about the Apollo was the speed of it, and the graphics capabilities! This was the very early days of windows and mice, and I recall that Jay had a program that he could start up on the Apollo that would make it look like chunks of your display were breaking loose and falling to the bottom of your screen. It was hilarious the first time it happened to us. That summer was also my first exposure to using a 3270 green screen terminal. Sadly I didn’t seen one at the computer history museum.
Apple Lisa and Macintosh
Jay also had a Lisa in his home office! I couldn’t wait to graduate and make some money so I could have one of my own. Of course by the time Jane and I got married just a year later the Lisa was a thing of the past and so we got a Mac Plus instead! I still have this computer in my office at Luther. It still boots from a floppy and runs Microsoft’s flight simulator.
The CDC 6600
When I started work at Control Data’s Energy Management Systems division in 1986 I was awed by the giant cooled computer room. There were lots of giant water cooled Cyber computers in there for the newer customers, but amongst all of those newere Cybers was this little old CDC6600 computer than was running an older version of the software. If it scares you that our electrical grid was controlled by one of these don’t worry, they were solid work horses for many years. What I remember most about the 6600 was that there was a little program that made the two CRT’s look like eyes, and then one of them would wink at you.
Symbolics Lisp Machine
After a couple of years at CDC I managed to manuever my way into an AI group. A lot of high-end AI programming was done in Lisp in those days and the Symbolics was the machine to have if you really wanted to do it.
Silicon Graphics
Shortly after the Symbolics we switched to running more general purpose Unix workstations. CDC was reselling SGI computers under the label of “Personal Iris” I taught myself some very early graphics in what eventually became OpenGL on these machines. This began a life long love of using Unix. I spent many extra hours on the Iris compiling emacs and other early open source programs.
The Palm Pilot
The last bit of nostalgia I captured at the museum was this first generation Palm Pilot! I remember that when Net Perceptions officially launched our product it was at the Agenda conference in Phoenix Arizona. They were also launching the Palm Pilot at that same conference. What I remember most about this was the brilliant marketing they did. First, they had preloaded a bunch of Palm Pilots with the conference schedule. Second, they had a bunch of “old ladies” demonstrating how easy they were to use. They showed you the Grafiti writing system, how to add meetings, and they took your credit card with the promise that you could use one for the duration of the conference and if you didn’t want it after that they wouldn’t charge your card. I’m pretty sure every single person kept theirs. This was the first of a very long line of PDAs that I have owned over the years. I could probably do a whole post just on those.
Visiting the Computer History Museum was educational, and a great trip down memory lane for me. If you are ever in Mountain View and have a few hours I would highly recommend you plan to spend couple hours exploring!
Spring Break 2017
Spring Break! Boy did I need one! With everything going on at the college, I really needed a few days away from school to clear my head and have some fun. What better way to do this than with friends Tim and Sandra Peter at their home in Florida!
Although our delta flight was full of Disney bound kids (young and old) we arrived in Orlando ahead of schedule and headed to the Peter house. I love thier house, its perfect Florida living with a beautiful covered Lanai and a pool that Tim heated up just for our arrival.
We didn’t have a very full agenda for our time with the Peter’s, sit by the pool, and visit Stetson were really the only two must do items on the list. The sun and the pool were awesome. So was the visit to Stetson.
We also had a great dinner out at Hillstone restaurant in Winter Park. I had great ribs, but Tim, Sandra and Jane all had Hawaiian Rib-eye steaks. These were so good that I had to go find the recipe for the marinade and use it the next night on pork chops! I’m really looking forward to trying this on steaks again on my Hasty Bake.
One big learning from the trip to Orlando is that we are bascially not theme park people at this stage of our lives. We enjoyed a few of the rides but mostly we though we would have more fun just hiking somewhere. I guess this is a fine place to be in, and if we have grand kids someday then the enjoyment will be back as we get to watch them experience things.
Bula from Likuliku Lagoon
With a view like that you would think I could write something really inspirational for this final post of our journey. Four weeks of travel with some absolutely crazy sights and adventures have wrapped themselves up here at the Likuliku Lagoon Resort in Fiji. To put it mildly the resort is amazing. A maximum of 96 guests, all adults, with a staff to guest ratio of about 2:1, maybe even 1:1 during the week here. All of them greet you with a smile and the Fijian greeting of “Bula!”
You have a few options for getting to the resort from Nadi: A ferry that makes the rounds of the islands three times a day, a private water taxi, a seaplane, or even a helicopter. But whenever and however you arrive you will be greeted on the island by a small band playing welcome music and many Bulas. Your luggage is whisked away and you get a cold drink and a quick orientation session on everything the resort has to offer. Kayaks, Standup Paddleboards, and sailboats are a few of the things you can do off the beach. Every guest in the over-water Bures is issued a mask, fins and snorkel. There is a ladder right off the deck so you can climb down and snorkel on the reef right outside your room! The floor in the room has two windows so that you can sit on the couch and look through the floor at the water and the fish swimming below! Or Jane.
By mid-afternoon, high tide, the water is practically bath tub temperature. The variety of fish we have seen just outside our Bure is astounding! We saw: Unicornfish, Clownfish, Angelfish, Parrotfish, Tang, Moorish Idol, Butterflyfish, Blue Sea Star, a Blue-spotted Ribbontail Ray, an Eagle Ray, a big old Moray Eel and many more. Many of these are also visible just standing on the deck and looking in the water! But cooling off with a bit of snorkeling is even better. At low tide you are not supposed to snorkel in front of your Bure as the water is shallow and the reef is protected. But you can still see some pretty amazing sights from the deck and the walkway. Check out the video of this huge school of sardines. Watch as the bigger fish (a Trevaly) swims though and leaves empty space behind. The Sardines are also a favorite snack for the Gar. Every so often as you are sitting out on the deck a school like this will go crazy and start jumping out of the water for a few seconds.
I really don’t think we have had better snorkeling anywhere in the world! Plus the convenience of snorkeling off your own private deck just can’t be beat.
Dinner time is really spectacular. You are seated right along the water and at 7:00 you have a fantastic view of the sunset as you have your appetizer. The menu is different every day and all the food is really good. This morning I had an omelette stuffed with mud-crab meat! For lunch we had grilled chicken with papaya salad and rice. The chicken was so flavorful. Our first night we had a feast of Indian and asian curries – prawns, crab, lobster, chicken, and lamb! Last night we had delicious steak. For lunch yesterday I had fried rice with at least a dozen big prawns with a spicy breading. I didn’t expect to be eating gourmet food for every meal here.
There are other activities you can sign up for, such as taking a wave runner for a spin to some of the nearby islands. You can go for a two hour picnic on a deserted island, you can take a tour of the island where they filmed Castaway. Or you can just relax, which is really the purpose of our visit. After going and going for three and a half weeks, these last few days are the vacation from the vacation! Today’s activities were as follows:
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Get up and have coffee on the deck with my iPad while watching the fish. I’m trying to avoid Facebook because all of the articles and discussion about lying Donald is really depressing. “Alternative Facts” for pete’s sake stop!
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Walk to the restaurant for breakfast – delicious
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come back and lounge around in the shade on the deck while reading a novel
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Walk to the restaurant for lunch
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Do some standup paddle boarding to work off the lunch
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Find a shady spot by the infinity pool
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Get in the infinity pool to cool off
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return to the room for high tide and snorkeling
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shower
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open a bottle of wine for happy hour and pre-sunset drinks
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Walk to the restaurant for dinner
I’m exhausted just listing all of these things! 😀
Tomorrow we will spend the day here at the resort, then take the 4:00 ferry back to the main island and catch a cab to the airport. Our Fiji airlines flight leaves tomorrow night at 9:40pm and we arrive 13 hours later, the same day (well before we leave) in LA. In fact we leave Fiji at 9:40pm on January 25th and we will arrive in Minneapolis at 9:00pm on January 25th. Teleportation anyone?
Is this Hobbiton or Nerdvana?
For as little as I wanted to go to the stinky spa yesterday, Jane wanted to go to Hobbiton today even less. She’s not a big Lord of the Rings Fan. But our guide told us that nearly 30% of the people who visit Hobbiton have never seen even one of movies nor have they ready any of the books. Having seen all of the movies more than once and read the books, I was at the top of my class for our tour group of around 30 people. I think there were two of us that admitted to loving Middle Earth that much. Do you recognize where I am standing in the picture above? If you said Bag End, you are correct! The home of Bilbo and Frodo. I swear that even though I was with a very unruly tour group I could almost convince myself I was “really” there at times. Oh, yes my vivid imagination. Only slight eye roll from Jane.
We got there early thinking we might be able to get in on an earlier tour, but as we listened to the people who had not pre-booked their tour in front of us learn that the next available slot was 5:00 this afternoon or tomorrow we realized that we were going to have an opportunity to enjoy our crackers and cheese that we had been bringing with us for the last couple of days. Crackers, cheese, meat and Ginger Beer, make a pretty good picnic. I went into the gift shop to kill a little time and other than a bottle of Middle Earth wine, I was pretty much ready to leave immediately. I was struck by the fact that they were selling “The One Ring” in multiple sizes! (what!?) for only $190.00. To be honest I knew this was coming because our tour guide, Robo, on the great ocean road told me he bought one.
Hobbiton is largely preserved as it was after it was rebuilt for the Hobbit trilogy. Its amazing to me that for Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit there was less than 4 months of filming here. Our tour guide told us several stories about how much Peter Jackson was obsessed with staying true to the book and keeping things logical. For example we passed by some apple trees in a small grove, in the books this grove was described as plum trees. So, Jackson made someone take all the apples and leaves off the tree and put on fake leaves and fake plums for a shot that got less than 5 seconds of screen time. You can only imagine the outcry of true fans who would remember that they were supposed to be plum trees but saw apples on the trees in that little segment instead!
Another example; in the picture of me at Bag End, the tree above me is actually fake! It was a beautiful old oak tree in the Lord of the Rings, but since the Hobbit was supposed to be 65 years earlier than LotR Jackson made the crew chop it down and replace it with a fake younger tree! Even worse, the company in charge of making the fake leaves did a bad job on the leaves and they had faded by the time filming was supposed to start. So, Jackson ordered someone to repaint all 200,000 leaves on the fake tree!
We also learned a bit about film tricks for making people look bigger and smaller. Some of the hobbit holes were made quite small so that when an adult human stood beside the door they looked very large. Others were built at full size so that the door would look fine when a hobbit was standing next to it. In other cases parts of the set were created special to create a perspective effect. For example the wagon that Gandalf and Frodo are riding in the wagon together the wagon was constructed to be 3 meters long. Gandalf rode in the front so that he looked very big while Frodo sat in the very back so that when filmed he looked very small, and like he was sitting next to Gandalf.
At the end of the tour we stopped at the Green Dragon for Ale! I don’t think this was where the scenes were filmed as every other structure here was created for filming from the outside in, or with just enough room for the camera crew to film from the inside out. All indoor scenes were filmed in the studio, but this is part of the process of making Hobbiton more interesting for visitors. We had a couple of choices of Ale, a cider, or a Ginger Beer. This was also a great place to get some pictures of the Green Dragon along with the Mill and the pond.
The tour really makes you appreciate camera angles! On the bus back to the gift shop we saw some video clips from the movie and its amazing how large everything looks compared to how it seems in person. I can’t wait to get home and watch the extended edition disks that Josh bought me for Christmas. Maybe with a few days off we will find time to watch them together.
Today was also our last day in New Zealand and marks the beginning of the journey home. Tomorrow morning we fly to Fiji! The Novotel airport is just 25 yards from the entrance to the international terminal, so one good thing is that we don’t even need a cab to get to the airport in plenty of time for our flight! I’m looking forward to a couple days of R&R on the water!
A Day at the Spa... or 45 minutes of Smelling Bad Gas
I woke up several times during the night, and each time I did I could hear the rain battering the metal roof of our condo. Around 5:30 Jane woke up enough to say, “I don’t want to go mountain biking on muddy trails.” Then she rolled over and went back to sleep. I figured she was probably right, even if the sun did come out this morning riding 20 miles on mud would not be a good first go at Mountain Biking. Especially knowing that at the end of the ride we had to get in the car and drive to Rotorua. After 3 plus weeks on the road we have lost our will to stop at any more charming roadside waterfalls, so todays trip was just a drive through the countryside.
So, we lazed around the condo and made a leisurely drive up the east side of Lake Taupo. We walked around the shopping area and had an early lunch at the Master of India restaurant in Taupo. It was quite good, I had the Vindaloo and Jane had Korma, we split an order of Naan and Basmati and some Ginger Beer. I’m going to have to talk to someone at Fareway about stocking Ginger Beer! After lunch we made our way North for another hour to Rotorua. We had nothing special planned here as this was mostly meant as a stopover night (in close proximity to Hobbiton) on the way to Auckland. However the Novotel here by the lake is quite nice, it is right next to Eat Street and we have a view of the lake.
Jane has been wanting to stop at a volcanic hot spring spa for a few days now, and I have been resisting. But the brochure for the Polynesian Spa looked pretty nice and they had either a private option or an adult only group of pools. So, I gave in. I’m 75% done with Jack Reacher #13 so I could easily have stayed in the room and finished that book. But that seemed silly. We decided to go for the adult option because that gave us a choice of 8 different pools and there was no time limit. We would have to wait for the private pool and then we were limited to 30 minutes. Anyway, communal bathing is certainly illustrative of many interesting cultural differences. The pools are constantly fed by natural hot spring water from right under the pools. There are two types of hot springs here: One that is good for your joints, and one that tarnishes the gold of your class ring. – Yes there are warning signs, and I took note and left my ring in my backpack. Jane now has a black 6 in her Luther ring. Hopefully it can be restored.
My only addition would be to say that the Sulfur and other assorted gasses were rather pungent. You may have guessed that already. As a reward for being-a-good-guy-and-going-to-the-spa-with-my-wife, the hotel left a complimentary bottle of Volcanic Hills Chardonnay by our bed. Its now two minutes past happy hour so I will post this, and see what we think. Its from the Hawkes Bay region and so far those have all been good. New Zealand is really good with their Chardonnays and their Pinot Noirs. No wonder I like this country.
Later we have a booking for dinner at a nice Italian place right on Eat Street called Leonardo’s Pure Italian.
No Mount Doom for You
The goal for today had been to bike the Timber Trail. But since the forecast was for lots of rain we arranged to postpone that until Friday. My next hope was that we would be able to see Mount Doom 
. But we didn’t get to see that version (thankfully!), I’ll just have to watch the Lord of the Rings again to see that one. We also didn’t get to see this version 
. It seems that the weather on the North island has been a bit unsettled. Instead we saw this 
. Mount Doom (Mt. Ngauruhoe) might be back there somewhere behind all the clouds.
Instead of hiking the Tongariro Alpine trail for seven hours we took the “easy way out” an hiked the 2 hour trail to Taranaki Falls. When we started out it was mostly just cloudy and misty. But just after the falls it got bad, really bad. The rain was coming sideways and even my mantra about good gear was not enough to overcome the chilling discomfort seeping through my pants and filling my shoes. The falls were nice but we have seen lots of falls like these in New Zealand.
More than anything this walk was to get us out of the hotel and doing something for a portion of our day. We can’t just hang out in our room all day. Although we have a really nice 2-bedroom apartment that we could enjoy. We had hoped that the forecast was wrong that that once we got to the visitor center there would be plenty of trails to hike and enjoy.
Thankfully, we have a washer and a dryer, so after today we will have enough clean clothes to make it all the way back home without washing again! Our shoes are going to require a bit of work to get dry. We learned a good trick on the Routeburn: stuff your shoes with newspaper to help them dry overnight. Our room is pretty short on newspaper though so we’ll see what happens. The dryer is pretty hot so I’m not very enthusiastic about putting them in the dryer and letting them tumble around.
As I write this, I think we might have gotten our day backwards! I’m looking out the window and at 2:00 in the afternoon the rain has stopped and we are seeing some blue sky. This is not out of line with the forecast this morning which showed a higher chance of blue sky and rain for this afternoon! There is a winery a few miles away… Pinot Noir Rose and wood fired pizzas!
Kayak Sailing
When Jane told me that if the weather was right we might be able to sail our kayaks I was perplexed. “How do you add a mast to a Kayak?” I thought to myself. So I had mostly put it out of my mind as an option until we were an hour into the first of two two-hour paddles today. But then “Captain Jack” told us to make a raft and he started talking about how we would sail the kayaks. The sail consisted of a big black square of fabric with big loops at each corner. We had four Kayaks so the women (Jane and Dani) sitting in the front of the two outside kayaks were instructed to put the loops around their wrists and hold on. The
men in the two outside back Kayaks (Brad and Michael) were instructed to put the loops around one end of their paddles. When we put the paddles in our laps and hoisted the sail we were off! Sadly Kayaking and photography do not go together very well so this is the best picture we have of our sailing adventure.
Kayaking made us both feel pretty old. about 5 minutes into the second 2 hour leg my arms started to cramp up. I’ve been having a little tennis elbow in my left arm lately and that really started to hurt for a bit, luckily after the initial flare up it worked its way out and I was able to paddle. After 30 minutes both of Jane’s hands started to cramp, fingers pointing in all kinds of unnatural directions that needed to be moved back in place manually. She wasn’t able to paddle for more than a few seconds at a time from then on except for a few key places where we really needed both of us to paddle hard. Incoming waves, outgoing tide, and a river flowing out make for some FUN kayaking conditions along the coast. I really wish we could have captured them on camera, but those moments will have to live on in our memories only!
By the time we finished our afternoon of Kayaking we were both done! Our final day gave us the option of hiking or kayaking and it didn’t take any deliberation for us to realize that we had reached our limit. six more hours of Kayaking was definitely not in our future. Looking back, we made the right decision, and we enjoyed our final day of hiking very much.
Only Mid Thigh
Estuary: the tidal mouth of a river where the river meets the tide.
The final leg of our hike today ended with an estuary crossing. We arrived about an hour before low tide so our guide, Jack, suggested that we just chill a bit and wait for the tide to go down before we started our crossing. So we walked around and counted the tiny little crabs and found some shrimp in a little stream. then we watched some of the other hikers standing in water up to their knees waiting doubtfully for the tide to ebb. At last Jack announced we would head out at 5:00, don’t worry he said it won’t be any higher than mid-thigh. OK, Jack was a bit shorter than me so I wasn’t worried.
The wider darker blue areas will be shallower he said, so aim for those if you are in doubt. At 5 to 5 Jane and I started walking. When we got to our knees we encountered the other hikers, still standing and waiting. I pressed and found a path that came just above my knees. “This way,” I said and just like that I’m a leader. A bit further on the water got deeper and Jane was nearly to her waist. I was definitely above mid thigh, and feeling the current of the tide heading out.
That was as deep as it got and so we made it to the other side of the estuary feeling like this was our adventure for the day. It was a beautiful 7km walk and totally different than the Routeburn. With the ocean on one side of you at all times and regular boat service to lots of beaches all day long you feel much closer to the “real world” than you do on the Routeburn. The scenery is also quite different with views of the bay rather than inland lakes.
Like our Routeburn adventure, the day ended at a lodge that has been part of the Wilson family’s land since the 1800’s, well before this land became a national park. We had a delicious meal of lamb and mash and salad, and had a good time getting to know the other 8 hikers on our 3 day trip. We had already met Teresa and Jerad from Melbourne on the bus. There was also a couple from Northern Ireland (Michael and Dani) on their honeymoon and a family from Adelaide (Ronnie, Jeff, Craig and Lisa). All were very nice, and once again we had several educators plus some Geologists in the group. Once again it was a very fine group to share an adventure with and we hope our paths may cross again some day.
Driving the West Coast
After two weeks of organized tours and bus rides we struck out on our own today in a rental car. New Zealand drives on the left and there are many helpful arrows painted on the road to remind the foreign drivers of that fact. As always, Jane took the drivers seat and I rode shotgun in on the passenger side. We left Queenstown after a nice breakfast at the hotel and headed toward the west coast. Our destination for the first night was Franz Josef. A small little town near the Franz Josef glacier.
A couple of observations about driving in New Zealand
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One lane bridges are everywhere! We counted twenty seven one lane bridges on our 280km journey the first day. I think this is part of the great environmental movement in New Zealand that they think really carefully before messing with anything in nature. Sure it slows you down a bit and occasionally you need to wait for a couple of cars to cross before you can take your turn but maybe a reminder to slow down is a good thing.
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They have these nice bullseye signs that say 100 its not a target, drive according to conditions. its pretty hard to drive 100km/hr anyway as the roads are very twisty. I would guess we averaged closer to 60km/hr.
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Cell phone coverage outside the cities is pretty much non-existent. I’m pretty sure this is again related to the environmental focus of the country. Don’t mess up the countryside by installing thousands of cell towers. This also impacts things like Google maps where the travel time estimates are wildly wrong. If they don’t get any feedback on the actual speed people drive the only thing they can rely on is the posted speed limits, which are way higher than almost anyone drives!
We stopped in the grocery store on the way out of Queenstown to pick up some meat and cheese, bread, and Ginger Beer, so we could do a simple lunch somewhere along the way. Once we reached the west coast, we drove in rain most of the day, and nothing we could see in a two minute walk from the side of the road could compare to what we saw on the Routeburn Track. Our lodging that night was at a small boutique B&B (The Westwood Lodge). It was super nice, just like the host who gave us a nice recommendation to go to Alice May for dinner. We did and we had a nice meal: Fish and Chips for Jane and I had a stuffed chicken breast with Brie cheese.
The next morning dawned sunny and clear, so we felt really great about our decision to postpone our visit to the glacier until the morning. On the way to the glacier it started to sprinkle a bit again, but by the time we had hiked closer to the glacier we were rewarded with nice sunny weather again! We were also lucky that we didn’t try to go the day before because one of the wooden bridges across one of the many creeks had been washed out in a downpour the previous day. 
we picked our way across the stone in the now-very-tame creek and continued to the glacier.
On the way back we noticed a couple of construction workers with their massive power tools standing around watching each other prepare to work. We assumed that they were going to excavate and rebuild the bridge. A project likely to take weeks at their pace. Yes, construction seems to move at the same speed everywhere in the world. But as we walked further we met up with a dozen cheerful red-shirted volunteers carrying shovels and pickaxes. They were headed to fix the bridge too. I recon they took care of it by lunch time.
After our glacier hike we continued our way north. We didn’t have far to go and todays destination was a small B&B called Breakers, just north of Greymouth. We were met by the owner, Jan, who was a very delightful person to chat with. She was amazed at how light we were traveling and suggested we may want to give lessons to some of her previous guests. We arrived in mid-afternoon, with nothing else on the agenda except for lounging around and enjoying the view of the Tasman sea. Huge wave after wave coming in from the west was mesmerizing. We didn’t even leave the B&B for dinner that night as Jan made us a nice homemade pizza to enjoy in the comfort of our room or on the nice back porch.
Our final day of driving was the longest, but we made some fun stops along the way to break up the driving. The first was at Pancake Rock. Once again great views of the Tasman Sea, Blowholes in the rocks and just really interesting rock formations to gawk at.
The second stop was a tourist trap, but we stopped willingly to wander across the southern hemisphere’s longest swinging bridge. Spanning the Buller Gorge it was a nice view, but not nearly so much fun to have to pass someone on the bridge.
Once we got closer to Nelson and realized we had plenty of time to spare before the rental car drop-off closed we decided to head into wine country and visit a couple of wineries in the hills Northwest of Nelson. We made a stop at Kaharunga and Neudorf wineries. This region is known for some pretty nice Chardonnays and rightly so. We need to figure out how to get some Neudorf delivered to the US.
