Another update

It looks like last time I wrote anything here was after spending a day at Carlsbad Cavers in New Mexico.  Right now I am in a hotel in Charlston, SC.  Here's how I arrived there....

The day after Carlsbad Caverns, we planned to hike up Guadalupe Mtn, the highest in Texas.  As we were about to get on the trail a ranger stopped us saying that the trail was closed due to a forest fire.  We hung around for a few hours, and luckily enough they determined that the trail up the mountain was the only safe one in the park that day.  We went for it, and was rewarded with wind and great views.

Wind

 

Great Views

Then we headed on to Las Cruces, with first stopping off at the White Sands National Monument.  Its a day trip sort of thing, but really cool!  The sand is white as snow, and was a ton of fun to run up and down the dunes.

Jumping off sand dunes

From there we spent 2 nights with Raimey and Ben, a couple fellow couchsurfers with 3 awesome dogs who kept me entertained constantly.  It was great to spend some time with folks from the area, and interesting ones at that.  They are also rock climbers and told us about a few places nearby that we should check out.  One of them was Franklin Mtns. state park back over in Texas.  There was some nice sport leading there, and it just felt great to get on rope outside and climb some rock.

Then we head into the Gila Wilderness in Western New Mexico.  There are these cliff dwellings there from people who lived in them about 700 years ago.  They have a great story, told by Chuck the volunteer, but most of it is a mystery as to why they built so much and then only stayed 25 years...

Being that it is a national forest / wilderness, we got to camp anywhere and even have fires!  It was also the coldest nights we've had so far (down to 18 deg) so it was really great to hang out by the fire until bedtime.  We did an overnight hike down to the Gila river which is in a canyon with at least 300ft cliffs.  There was also hot springs there that required 15 river crossings to get to each way.

Yay for ice cold water!

Following that mini adventure, we ventured into Arizona - home of the saguaro cactus.  (pronounced sa-wa-ro)  These are the iconic cacti from cartoons, but they actually exist!  and so do roadrunners!  They are also quite interesting, growing up to 50ft tall and hundreds of years old.  They even have woody stems within to keep it upright and can weigh over 15000 lbs.

This one isn't even the largest in the area.

We finally left the Tuscon area after a couple days.  Saguaro national Park is right outside it, and its ugly urban sprawl.  Defo didnt like it there as much as I would have thought.  Only an hour away though is Cochise Stronghold, a climbers dream.  It is a chain of mountains with climbable areas all over.  We went to only one small area that housed 3 crags, and was only a teenie tiny taste of what is there.  The climbing is great too on some nice granite, and this area was well bolted for fun sport leading.

Sweet Rock - our afternoon crag

From Cochise, we head straight to Joshua Tree.  You hear about tons of climbing there, and there is, but  it is all trad leading which we do not have the gear for.  We did manage to find one area with a couple bolts on top that we could toprope off off for half a day.  Then of course there are all the hiking trails too.  And Joshua trees, another crazy plant that looks like it came from a Dr. Suess book. 

Sunset from Key's view

And finally we moved on to something out of the desert!  It is a fascinating landscape and each one is a bit different, but it is really nice to get at something that is not all brown and deserty.  Also, interesting thing we've noticed about the national parks.  They are certainly in our American style of being able to drive up to something, get out of the car for a couple minutes to look at something cool, and then drive on to some other cool thing.  Sure, you can just go wander off up that mountain that is 7 miles from any road or trail, but there seems to be a lack of something inbetween.  Well, there is some, but just not as much as we thought.  Hence, we've kinda been jumping around from park to park spending only a couple days in each cause that is all it takes.  Being that it is desert, we are still limited in how far we can go without a ranger station with a water source.

As we drove towards LA, it was great to get up in the San Bernadino national forest and Big Bear lake, where it is high enough that there was snow on the ground and pine trees and water and colors other than tan!  We did a hike there up to the Pacific Crest Trail and up a mountain close by.  It actually closely reminded me of the adirondacks.  We also happened to be in town to volunteer to help them do a bald eagle count.  So we sat by the lake in our spot and actually spotted one of the 3 Eagles living around this lake for the winter!

So that brings me to LA.  Now Charlston?  Yup, I'm doing a little bit of work with Vertical Access.  Inspecting the Cooper River Bridge.  Its a really sweet one and I get to hang 500ft above the freeway tomorrow!

Nico silhouette - I just like this picture

Rain in Istanbul

About 5 days ago, Nico and I made another overnight journey from Kapadokya to Istanbul.  Finally we are arriving at what was meant to be our original and most looked forward to destination in Turkey.  There is so much history in this city which is the crossroads of Europe and Asia... Ottoman Empire... and all that which most likely you know more about it than I do.  I really didn't like my world history classes in 9th and 10th grade.

Anyway, the first day we booked a hostel to have somewhere to crash.  And that is pretty much all we did that first day.  Nap, went out for a walk down to the water (Golden Horn and Bosphorous Straight), and then bought some veggies.  For the first time since leaving New Zealand we actually have a kitchen.  It was really nice to put something together, not to say that I don't like going out for Turkish food (which is really really really good) but its also a bit on the expensive side.  Especially when coming from Nepal and SE Asia where I'd complain about paying $4 for a meal.

in the archaeology museum

Next day we went to meet our couchsurfing hosts, Efecan and Duygu.  They are students, into film and photography, and showed us some awesome videos that they've recently made.  Although, also cause they were students and its near then end of the year they were a bit busy.  These few days we did a bit of wandering around, although it really was not all that nice since it was cold, windy and rainy.  There is so much to do in Istanbul... if you feel like paying.  The cheapo's that we are, we ended up skipping out on much of it.  We still did go into the Blue Mosque, check out the AyaSofia, and go to a couple museums.  Yea, the weather was that crappy that I willingly went into two museums that were totally non-science related.  The archeology museum was actually kinda cool with loads of tombs and sarcophagus' from up to 5000 years ago.  Many of them were amazingly well preserved too which was kinda neat.

Blue Mosque by Night

marble slab in the hamam

Probably the highlight of my time in Istanbul and the high point in experiencing Turkish culture was our visit to a Hamam on our last day in the country.  Efecan told us of a good local one on the Asian side of the city that very few tourists go to: Çinili Hamam.  Yea, I paid 37 Lyra to have some really large Turkish man scrub me down.  It was gender separated, so Nico and I just planned to meet at a certain time.  I walk into the building (which is about 400 years new – for a Hamam) and about 10 men who work there look at me, then one gives me a key to the changing room and give no instruction.  One guy comes up and asks, “massage?”.  I ask how much, “Kach para?”, and then they all start laughing.... Looks like I am getting the massage too.  I am really glad that I did a little bit of reading on how these things work, cause no one there speaks any English.  I drop trau, put on the given towel and go sit in the 137ºF sauna in order to get warmed up.

I wasn't totally sure if that is what I was supposed to do since no once else was in there at the time.  After about 10mins I could no longer stand it and went to sit in the main room which has a big marble slab in the middle and is surrounded by a few benches and individual partitions with wash basins in them.  A few minutes later the big Turkish man in nothing but a towel comes in, pulls me to one of the basins and motions for me to sit down.  He then rinses me down, and pulls out what looks like a big mitten shaped brillo pad.  An immense amount of grossness came out along with maybe a layer or two of skin.  He then pulled me over to the giant marble slab, laid me down and started rubbing me down with soap.  I guess this part was the massage, since he rubbed with quite a bit of force.  Then once or twice kinda just pounced down on me with all his mass, cracked a few things, smiled, and said, “extra!”  We went back to the wash basin, and not before determining that I was a tourist from America, he quoted the price for the hamam, 27 Lyra, and then basically told me that I was also paying a 10 Lyra tip.  I wasn't really in a position to argue, so 10 it was.  He then washed my hair, rinsed me down one more time and showed me the way out.  I still had about 50 mins before meeting up with Nico, so I relaxed, cooled off and took a nap in the private changing room.  It was overall a really interesting experience and I might even agree that it was worth it to clear out the grime from traveling in dirty developing nations for the past 5 months.  I really do feel so much cleaner.

From the ferry across the Bosphorus

Anyway, once the rain finally stopped and the sun came out on the last day it was really pleasant there and nice to just wander around.  I think I've realized that for me, a city is just a city, and there are some nice things to do but nothing that I am super excited about.  Now get me in the mountains somewhere, or the canyons of Kapadokya, and I just want to explore everywhere and climb up everything. :)

SE Turkey - Off the Tourist Trail

Our "tour guides" in Diyarbakır

Exactly one week ago now we made it to the first new country in 10 weeks - Turkey.  Obviously everyone goes to Istanbul, then most stick to the western part of the country.  Naturally, we decided to not even leave the Istanbul airport (or we might have never left the city), and fly straight to the city of Diyarbakır in SE Turkey.  From the moment we got to the airport it was clear that we were no longer on the tourist trail.  There was no English signs in the airport, and no one there even spoke any English.  We managed to get on a bus that was headed for the city center.  As soon as we stepped off the bus with our large backpacks, lots of heads were turning.  Tourists are not something they see very often.

We wandered into the old city which is a maze of small alleys.  Within 15 minutes, 3 older schoolkids came up to us and was trying to help us get to where we were going.  Only slight issue here, was that they spoke almost no English, and we speak no Turkish.  Amazingly though that was not too much of a hindrance, for us to spend the next few hours together walking around the city and drinking tea.  We would try to communicate using the few words we knew, hand signals, and other such grunts and gestures.  It was actually quite funny and interesting.  What was also truly amazing is that they were not at all trying to sell us anything or get any money from us.  They were just genuinely interested in us as people and wanted to spend some time with us.

Looking through some ruins at the Tigris River

Then when it was getting time for us to go find our couchsurfers (Serhat's) apartment, they offered to show us the way and walk us there.  Along the way, we had to stop and ask someone directions.  He knew the way and walked with us the rest of the way.  As we were there a little early (before Serhat got home from work), he called Serhat and organized that we'd just go to his house for dinner.  This was all done in Turkish, so we had no idea what was going on.  Muhammed, who also speaks almost no English, brought us back to his house, we met his Mom and sister, and had a wonderful meal.  We then spent the next couple hours in front of the computer talking to each other through Google Translate.

Fish Ponds in Şanlıurfa

We spent the next day wandering the city of Diyarbakır and the next day we went to Şanlıurfa, another city in that region.  These days were full of wandering around the cities, eating loads of wonderful food, and having so many random encounters with strangers, young and old, who just wanted to talk and have some tea.  NONE of them were doing that just to try to sell us stuff.  In Şanlıurfa we did get a small Turkish/English dictionary which was really worthwhile.  Cause again in Şanlıurfa, we were walking around with our big backpacks until it was time to go meet our couchsurfing host, and we ended up being shown around by a group of schoolboys (ages 11-13) and conversing slowly - them practicing English with their dictionary and us responding in Turkish.  They walked us all the way to this fish pond park, when some guy came up to us and asked us if we were couchsurfers!  Turns out Adam was also a host, not ours, but I guess most people would drop their bags off at a hotel if they had one so he correctly assumed we were staying with someone.

Having tea with Adam

Entrance to Abraham's
birthplace

Şanlıurfa is another really cool city, and in fact one of the oldest in the world.  Its history goes back some 6000 years.  There is even this one cave there that is presumed to be the birthplace of Abraham - yea, that Abraham from biblical times.

It was really great and refreshing to finally get away from the tourist trail in order to have the opportunity to have some genuine experiences with the local culture and people.  It seems one thing that had been really unsatisfying about our travels all through SE Asia and Nepal for the past 5 months was being in really touristy places.  Unfortunately in these countries, the grooves are worn so deeply that it is nearly impossible to break out unless you have a lot of time, money, and previous knowledge of the language and culture.  When people deal with thousands of foreigners a year, you are just another chance for them to make some money.  These are mostly poor countries, so you cant blame them for trying to feed their family, but it does prevent any genuine encounters with people.  The culture also begins to revolve around tourism and whatever festivals and local ways of life are adjusted so that tourists can watch and take pictures, and of course pay some money.  Now that we managed to get away from all that for a little while, it really opened up the possibility to meet "real" people and genuinely enjoy each others company.

Şanlıurfa by night

Taman Negara and Kuala Lumpur

Goodday.  I've been saying I was going to write about Taman Negara... so here it is:

First off Taman Negara is a national park here in the middle of the peninsular part of Malaysia (as opposed to the part on the Island of Borneo).  It is a 130 million year old rainforest, which they claim is the oldest in the world... To get there, we took a minibus from the Cameron Highlands and then a boat up the Tembeling River.  The boat ride was pretty cool as we were in these long thin boats and it was over 2 hours of cruising along the sides where I enjoyed looking at the jungle and seeing monkeys and some of the Orang Asli (natives).

Eventually we got to Kuala Tahan which is the little village that is probably only there because it is the main gateway into the park.  You actually had to take a river taxi to get across and into the park.  All the restaurants there are literally "in" the river - floating.  It was kinda cool to be eating in these floating restaurants, although the food was basically a bastardized version of Malay food that they think the westerners like.  But in fact every single one of the 10 restaurants or so had the same crappy food and there was no other options.  But check out the pic below - this is of the restaurants and of Kuala Tahan from the park headquarters.

Hiking in the jungle was cool.... and really hot at the same time.  The first morning we did the main touristy walks which was up this one little hill to get some views of the park and then this canopy walkway.  I really liked the walkway as you are up to about 150 feet above the ground.  This reminded me how much I want to live in a tree "when I grow up".  I'm gonna have to make that happen some day.

Overall, there were not so many main points of interest in the jungle to hike to, but what I really liked was seeing all the different plants and bugs and other animals there.  We came across vines with huge spikes, monkeys, pigs, leeches (got 2 bites!), huge ants, and ginormous termite colonies where you can hear them chewing on the sticks on the ground.  We even found an elephant footprint on the ground!  But after 2 days of wandering around in the jungle sweating our faces off, it seemed we kinda saw what there was to see there.  Of course there is always the tours where they boat you off to see a cave or a village, but that stuff is way overpriced and we've realized that it never works out to be a very good experience anyway.

So the next day we made our way back to Kuala Lumpur to get our Thai visas and head out of Malaysia.  Unfortunately there is not a whole lot to do here that is of much interest to me.... which is why we've been in the food court of the train station just hanging out until we can go pick up our passports.  Only one more hour to go!  We spent one night in Chinatown right after we got here, and then contacted a couchsurfer and stayed with him for the past couple nights.  This has been a bit of a different couchsurfing experience.  This guy is a doctor, and is out until 9pm every night, but his apartment is full of couchsurfers.  It is almost like a little hostel - he lets you in shows you around, and then leaves you to be and sleep on the floor until you get up and out in the morning.  We did at least get to chat a bit with the 3 russians, peruvian, german, taiwanese, and two polish people who were there at the same time as us.  It was much less family like and more do your own thing than other times we've couchsurfed so far.  He did live on the top floor of his apt building and had some great views of the city though:

Jakarta: a life Experience

Holy Crap.  I have never experienced such a dramatic change in culture and basically everything (except climate) in just a 90 minute flight.  First of all, couchsurfing is amazing.  Nico and I are so lucky to have had the change to really experience how people live in Jakarta and learn so much about it.  We stayed with a 24 year old math teacher named Rheden, who lives with his family in a modest little house in South Jakarta.  His whole family were amazing hosts as they were so happy to see us and talk to us and constantly feed us new Indonesian foods.  About the only thing that was normal to me was rice.  For them it is not a meal unless it includes rice (breakfast, lunch and dinner).  But everything that goes with it and how it was prepared was different and equally new and delicious every time.  They believe that when they have guests they really take care of them.  They made every meal (and lots of snacks) for us when we were around and would not let us clean up at all even though we tried every single time.

This is Rheden's family at 6am on the day we left.  Rheden is in the picture below.

Jakarta is not much of a tourist city.  This has made for some totally unique experiences here, especially having locals as hosts.  First off, when we first took a bus into the middle of town, we were constantly surprised by the people.  It seemed that they all wanted to sell us stuff cause we were foreigners.  But once we actually listened to what they were saying, the ones that have some broken english are all trying to help us get to where we need to go by pointing out directions.  And everyone else just wants to say “Hi Mister!”  That's it... not begging, or selling crap, they just want to say hi.

The second day that we were here, Nico and I went with Rheden's Mom and Sister to go pick up his 6 yr old nephew from school.  Now in this small school, most of the kids had never seen a white person before, but it is part of their curriculum to learn some english.  We kinda walk in and all the kids are just looking at us, and following with some distance.  Apparently they all love photos...  I take out my camera and say “foto!” and they all get super excited and pose, and then I get in there with them.  Then they all want to talk in English with us.  Next thing we know, a path is cleared and the teachers are ushering us to the front of a classroom with 40 super excited 9 year olds.  So here we are trying to teach some english words.  We'd say something and then they would all repeat it.  I have never seen so much excitement in a classroom.  Then after a few minutes we tried to leave, but then every single kid wanted to shake our hands.  They also do this thing where they bring your hand to their forehead and sometimes kiss it to show respect to elders.  I felt like some celebrity being there with everyone doing this to us.  Crazy that it is all just because of the color of my skin.  Then we were ushered into the headmasters office to meet with the people running the school and sign their visitors book.  This morning was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life for sure.

Later that day Nico went into the middle of the city and went to the national monument (Monas) and to  Masjid Istiqlal which is the third largest mosque in the world.  This city is something different.  To continue with the craziness of being white from before... Wherever we went people would want to take their picture with us.  About 10 times that day we took photos with strangers, probably so many times cause I have a really hard time ignoring people.  I am constantly saying “halo” to people on the side of the road.  The bus system here is also very different.  The buses have no set stops.  You just wave one down as it goes by and then tap the ceiling when you want to get off.  The driver will stop (or just roll slowly) in the middle of the road; not even necessarily on the side of the road – so you wander through traffic to the relative safety of the sidewalk.  The doors are always open and there is a guy who hangs out the door hustling people to get on the bus and collecting money.  Then when we stop at a traffic light people with guitars get on and play a song or two, collect some money and then hop off and wait for the next bus.

It is a really good thing that Nico and I studied a little bit of bahasa indonesia before we came here.  Unless they deal with tourists, which is not many people, very few people speak any english.  Our broken Indonesian has saved our butts a couple times especially when we first got to where we were to meet Rheden for the first time and we borrowed someone's phone to send him a text saying we made it.

Now we are on a train (this will probably be posted sometime later...) to Jogja.  It was an amazing experience being in Jakarta, but also very tiring.  You always need to be “on” and paying attention.  Also Jakarta has awful air quality.  There is smog from the tons of cars and motorbikes and traffic that does not end even in the middle of the day.  And everyone smokes all the time.  So I am happy to be moving on, although I am not sure what we are moving on to.  We hear that it is kind of the cultural center of Java, and there is a big Buddhist temple nearby.  We might have to actually spend the $30 for a lonely planet travel guide, cause there is so much in this country and we are only allowed 30 days here.

getting a tour in Istiqlal

I think that is it for now, I feel like I could write pages about all we've seen in just these past few days, but maybe I'll save some for later. Phew.

A Week of Australia

G'day.  Its been much more difficult to get some internet time when doing this kind of travel, but now I am hanging out in my hostel in Singapore avoiding the heat of the day.  So here is how it was in OZ:

We got to Sydney back on July 5 (after sleeping the previous night in the Auckland airport).  It was kinda strange being back and seeing the city after not being there since I studied abroad there in '04.  There was no where to ditch our bags, so we just wandered around the opera house with everything until about lunchtime when we met with Yash (a friend from UNSW).  That afternoon, more wandering around until at one point we saw a bunch of people huddled around something.  Oh; a free ferry.  So we hop on, and it was not until we were going somewhere that we found it was off to an art show on cockatoo island.  So random, just like the picture on the right...

Then we hung out with good ol' Fidel on his deathbed.  See?

Anyway, that night we hung out with some couchsurfers, Cherie and Tim.  The next morning, it just so happened to be that my cousin Jess was vacationing in Sydney and so we met up and wandered around until it was time to head to the airport and head off to Darwin.

With a 5 hour layover in Melbourne, we get to Darwin at 3am, and head downtown, and hostels are still open and there are tons of drunk college kids wandering around.  This is quite different than NZ where everything is closed by 9pm.
So why Darwin?  I dont know, but it was a sweet time.
We spent the next night with Rob, someone who we met on couchsurfing who lives on his yacht.  He is all off the grid, does not own land or a car, and just sails all over the place.  We had some great conversations and was gently rocked to sleep by his boat.

Thats us, Rob in the middle, and Christophe (another couchsurfer) on the right.

After that night we head back into town to pickup a rental car - a twin cab ute (a.k.a pickup truck).  We found 2 foam pads in a tree (yea we're good like that), got some food and a mosquito net and headed out to Litchfield national park.  There were all sorts of short walks to waterfalls and swimming holes and termite mounds and that good stuff.  Below are the magnetic termite mounds who orient their nests north-south to have the least amount of sun on them.  Oh yea, and did i mention, it was really f'in hot there.  About as hot and humid as the hotter days in NY's summer, but this is the cool and dry season.  I cant imagine what the summer is like.  Yikes.

For each of the three nights we had the ute, we just set up the net in the bed and fell asleep looking up at the stars.  It was actually quite a sweet setup.  We did have a bit of a scare on the first night when we were eating dinner under the net with our headlights on and then found a ton of bugs under our legs.  Oh shit, what if these mats were dumped cause they had bedbugs?  We almost packed up and left right there to go burn all our clothes... but instead used our scientific thinking to find out what they were.  Neither of us knew what bedbugs look like, but we had some itchy bites.  With shining some light on random pieces of clothing laid out, and then on the mats, with some additional steps and details in there and an hour later, we eventually decided that the bugs were from the area, attracted to light, and small enough to fit through the holes in the net.  All wee needed to do was not have any light inside the net.  And luckily we were right!  Check out this luxurious pad:

Then on our last night in Darwin when we thought our adventures in Australia were over.... haha.  We were staying near the ocean somewhere (beautiful sunsets and sunrises by the way) and just when all the cars left the parking lot at dark and we got settled, 2 cars pull out and a bunch of kids and adults get out and start wandering all over the place with garbage bags and flashlights.  We kinda do our thing for a little bit, but then go over to them to ask what they were doing.  Toading!!  Apparently the cane toad is an introduced species that is eating the local hermit crabs there.  So they were gathering up all the cane toads that they could find (which turned out to be about 200 by the time we finished there).  When I asked what they do with them, they said "take 'em to the dump so they can turn them into fertilizer".  And no, they were not joking.  So it seems Nico and I cant get away from randomness (which seems to go along with travelling, I like it) and also conservation work.  So I got some latex gloves (yup they have poison on their backs), and Nico got a bag and a flashlight and we started catching the toads too!

Now we are chillin in Singapore for just 2 days before heading to Indonesia for an unknown amount of time.  Singapore is an Asian city unlike all the rest as it is actually very clean and safe and everyone speaks English.  And there was even some pickup ultimate last night!  It felt so good to finally play a bit and then hangout and get some dinner with the locals.

Dont know when I'll have interwebs again... but I'll leave you with this nice picture from Litchfield - gotta watch where you walk! (I was within inches before I noticed this guy)