TravelStream™ news feed for member jacobandkirsty on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/jacobandkirsty en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:39:03 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210855620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210855620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210855620/tpod.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:39:03 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Kuta, Bali, Indonesia

After an uneventful flight, we landed at Denpasar airport in Bali. We were at the front of the place, in seats 1A and 1B, so we were first off and reached immigration ahead of the crowd. They wanted money for visas before we were allowed in. The fee was quoted as US$25, which wasn't much use to us as we don't carry US dollars around with us. We're British, don't you know. Everybody, it seems,&nbsp;wants dollars, and the more the travel guidebooks tell people that, the more people will carry them as their general purpose currency, and the more they'll thus be accepted around the world, which can't be good for the already weak local currencies. If the Indonesian Rupiah is&nbsp;not used, how will it get any stronger?Actually, whenever you talk about money to Americans you meet travelling, they exclaim about how good the Pound is on the international markets, and how minted we must therefore be. A double kick in the teeth there: the ignorant assumption that we must be rich because we have Sterling (just because it's strong doesn't mean we own much of it!); and the fact that those native to the currency the rest of the world wants all think ours is better anyway! Call us old fashioned, but we prefer to use the official currency of whichever country we're in at the time.Having found out what it would be in the local currency, Kirsty was allowed through to the land-side section of the airport to withdraw money. At 18000 Rupiah to the pound, the price of our visas came out at something&nbsp; ridiculous like&nbsp;half a million. Really, how hard would it be to just knock off a few zeros?Having cleared immigration and customs and claimed our bags, we went to the prepaid taxi window to get ourselves a taxi to our hostel. We'd wanted to stay in Kuta, as we had heard that it is a nice place with lots going on. Originally, we had thought that we'd have to stay a night in Denpasar before moving on to Kuta the following day. Fortunately, we had found out before we left Australia that Denpasar airport is actually closer to Kuta than it is to Denpasar. We'd booked ourselves into a cheap hotel, at which our taxi dropped us off after a chaotic drive through the traffic-jammed streets of Kuta.The hotel seemed really nice. We were checked in and went and lay on our bed under the fan to cool off. After a while, we decided to explore a little, so ventured out towards the sea front for a walk, before returning to the hotel and to bed.The following day, we hit the plentiful shops of Kuta. Jacob was looking for board shorts to replace the cheap pair that he had bought in Fiji and had since left in Darwin. They didn't fit him very well, were quite uncomfortable, but had been dead cheap so he didn't mind abandoning them. Having binned them, he noticed them being worn by 'Pirate' at the hostel as we were leaving. Good to see them getting some use.Kuta is one of the surfing capitals of the world and has a plethora of surf shops as well as an even greater number of local shops selling fake surfwear. It seems, however, that board shorts with an integral lining (more comfortable if you want them for swimming) are pretty rare. After a frustrating morning searching through hundreds of pairs of shorts and finding the odd one with a lining (usually in extra small), we stopped for food at a place called Nasi Bali. We had the 'Nasi Bali menu', which was a selection of Indonesian foods, including a soup, various satays, some rice, some salady things and a black rice pudding, which was exceptionally sweet. After a bit more shopping in the afternoon, we went to a few surf equipment rental shops to ask about getting some surfing lessons. A place called Tubes, down the pleasantly named 'Poppies II Lane', had been recommended to us, but when we spoke to them, the staff gave no recognition of the hotel and bar ever having included a surf school. Strange.We spoke to various people, settling in the end on a company called Odyssey. They arranged to collect us from our hotel the following morning for our surfing lesson. We walked back towards the hotel, stopping at the Food Court, a large collection of stalls selling Indonesian and other foods and all vying for our custom. Jacob had Mie Goreng ('Mie' = noodles; 'Goreng' = fried) and Kirsty had a type of Ravioli. Back at the hostel, we had a few games of pool and a couple of drinks at the bar before bed.The following morning, after a pretty reasonable breakfast that was included in the price of our room, we were collected by the surf company. Johanna, another girl staying at the same hotel, accompanied us.We were taken to the surf school and given shorts and vests to wear. None of the shorts came close to being big enough for Jacob, so he had to wear his own. Once we were kitted out, we were taken up to the roof of the building, where we were taught how to lie on a board and more importantly, how to stand up.Then, it was time to hit the waves.We were learning in the little waves that had already broken, but they were still moving pretty fast. The first wave we caught, we just had to lie on the board and lift our upper bodies with our arms. We all managed that pretty well.Next:&nbsp;trying to stand. Kirsty managed on the next wave, to her great surprise. It took several attempts for her to manage it again - every time she stood up, she was so surprised that she fell off. Still, after a bit, she was doing pretty well.Jacob had a far harder time. He couldn't seem to master the standing up bit. As soon as he started to get upright, his board would unbalance in one direction or another, pitching him off into the sea. A little bruised and scraped, with a nose full of salt water and a slight sense of humour malfunction, he didn't see what more he could do.We all went back onto the beach for another lesson in how to stand up. Jacob did it perfectly. We went back into the water and he spent another hour failing to really master it. Oh well, it is pretty rare that Kirsty is better at something sporty than Jacob, and we both felt well exercised after our morning of splashing around in the sea. Kirsty had a great time, but Jacob was less than convinced. As he put it at the time, "Honestly, you could torture people like that. Stand, on a plank, in the moving sea...no? Dammit, get back up, do it again, do it AGAIN!" To be fair, the instructor was nothing like that, but as far as Mr. Centre-of-Gravity was concerned, that's how the morning felt.We went back to the shop, where we changed and bought copies of the photos that had been taken of our efforts, then were dropped off back at our hotel.After hanging up our wet stuff, we went to some of the markets to resume the shorts hunt. We thought we'd buy a cheap pair of the gym shorts things that seemed to be everywhere, remove their lining and sew it into any pair of board shorts that Jacob liked the look of. We easily found a shop selling the nasty gym shorts and bought a pair. After stopping for food - a seafood basket to share - we found another market and Jacob bought some shorts and a Bintang vest. Bintang is the beer of Indonesia and the vest makes him look as classy and debonair as you may expect.We bought them both at the same stall, knowing how everybody here says "You buy one more I make you good price!" Seemed like a reasonable plan: start the bargaining and then offer to buy a vest. No, no, no. Having finally selected the two items, the stallholder held up the shorts and said "So how many pairs you want? Buy more I give you good price" as though to justify her ridiculous markup. If you don't want half a dozen pairs of shorts, I can't be expected to be reasonable, now can&nbsp;I?Now, if you don't obviously own what an Indonesian market trader is selling, they'll yell at you in the street, offering you whatever they may have. If you <i>do obviously own something they sell, then you are marked out as&nbsp;the sort of person&nbsp;who buys their sort of wares, so they scream and holler at you in the street, enraged with furious indignation that you, a proven consumer of their goods, should dare not to buy&nbsp;duplicate items from them. "Hey, Bintang Bintang, you Mr. Bintang you want more boardshorts want one more Bintang singlet Mr. Longhair?" If you're wearing a watch and sunglasses, God help you.Back at the hotel, we had a little siesta. We went out again in the evening and Kirsty found a couple of dresses that she liked the look of in a shop near to the hotel. Neither quite fitted, but she thought she could probably alter them without too much hassle, so ended up buying both, spending just under £4 in total.We found a nice looking place to eat away from the main beach front street and settled in to watch the world go by as we sipped our beers and waited for our food. We had ordered Nasi Goreng and Nasi Campur (Indonesian noodle dishes), both with fish, and Aneka Sate, which is pieces of satay chicken on sticks.While we were waiting, a man came along peddling massage oil. The bottles contained some sort of root, which, he informed us, were capable of curing just about anything that might be wrong with you. Once the oil had all been used up, the bottle could be refilled with any oil - preferably a massage oil, possibly almond, but vegetable would do - which would become infused with the root and take on the 'healing properties'.In an attempt to sell us this stuff, he rubbed us both with some across our necks and shoulders. Jacob also got a lower back massage. The massage was quite nice, but the oil came in little glass bottles which didn't look like they would travel too well, so we politely declined.Not long after the guy left, the oil started to work its magic. Actually, all it did was get really, uncomfortably hot and caused our clothing to smell of cloves for months.After our meal, which was very tasty, we made our way back to the hotel for a quiet evening chilling out before bed.In the morning, Kirsty worked on fitting the lining from the nasty gym shorts into Jacob's new board shorts. Stitching a lining butchered from one cheap rubbish garment into another, by hand, with no means of measuring, all the while having to account for cutting slits here and there to attach to bits that weren't in the donor garment is no mean feat, especially when sitting in a hot sweaty room whose only cooling mechanism is the fan which constantly blows everything onto the floor. So, the lining wasn't <i>quite straight, but it was barely noticeable and could be corrected. In the meantime, Jacob, very impressed, donned his newly lined shorts and we went out.We went to speak to a company called Perama, who offered transport between various parts of Indonesia. The plan was to go and visit the Gili Islands, to the north of Lombok. We got an idea of prices, returned to the hotel to pick up the guidebook and then stopped off for a meal of lamb wrap for Jacob and Gado Gado, a salad with peanut dressing for Kirsty at the 'Munching Inn'. We tried to make some plans about where we wanted to go in Indonesia, but the waiter, Agus, wanted to chat.Next stop was an internet café where we tried to organise a place to stay in the Gilis. The booking site which we usually use didn't have much to offer and the places listed in our guidebook didn't have websites or email addresses. Instead, we tried to call them. Jacob spoke to someone, who said that they could reserve a room for us, but that there was no guarantee that it would be kept available until we arrived. It seems that they had a different definition of the word 'reservation' than the one we were used to. We weren't able to get a more sensible reply than that, so in the end resolved to just turn up and see what we could find. After popping back to Perama to buy tickets, we went to get out some money, having learnt that there are no ATMs on the Gilis. We had to visit a few cash machines, as each could only provide us with fairly small amounts of cash in fairly small denominations, leaving us with a wedge of notes with the approximate dimensions of a house brick.Having locked our cash away in the hotel safety deposit box, we went out in search of food. We were hoping to find a local speciality called Babi Guling - roast suckling pig. Unfortunately, although we found a few places that offered it, in general you had to buy the whole pig and order at least 24 hours in advance.Instead, we went to a little restaurant called The Coffeepot, where Kirsty ordered ribs and Jacob got steak. The drinks menu included Balinese Cider, so we ordered a couple of bottles.The steak was alright, the ribs were a little disappointing, but the cider was terrible. It tasted a bit like Appletise, but with a strangely medicinal taste, almost as if antacids had been dissolved into the mix. Maybe that's the secret. Not recommended.After our meal, we went back to the hotel and packed up our bags, ready for a relatively early departure the following morning. In the morning, after breakfast, we were collected from our hotel (a service which had cost us an extra 50p) and taken to the Perama office. After a bit of a wait, the bus arrived and we all piled on.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211460600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211460600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211460600/tpod.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:38:02 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Senggigi, Indonesia

The boat to Lombok left Gili Trawangan at seven in the morning, and we had to be at the harbour thirty minutes beforehand. Bleurgh. The late night to celebrate Kirsty's new qualifications seemed like less of a good idea in the cold, still quite dim, light of day. Oh well. We made it to the harbour with time to spare, a little boat turned up a while later and we waded out to it and climbed aboard. The vessel was similar to the boats which had shuttled us between the shore and the ship on our previous crossing, but we couldn't see any ship. This, it turned out, was because there wasn't one. We were going to be making the forty five minute crossing from Gili T to Lombok in a heavily laden bathtub powered by a very small outboard engine.Nonetheless, we eventually reached the port of Bangsal, where we splashed back off the boat (thankfully, we had worn sandals in anticipation of all of this wading) and walked through the port to the bus, which would be taking us on to Senggigi. Bus found, boarded and snoozed on, we arrived at Senggigi without much further ado. We found ourselves a reasonably cheap place to stay, dug out our swimwear and headed for the beach.Senggigi has very distinct on and off seasons as far as tourism is concerned. The major ramification for the tourist who ventures to Senggigi in the off season is that every tout, driver, salesman and beggar in town descends on the white faced newcomer and hassles them relentlessly, and there are fewer tourists around to dilute the harassment. Having refused various offers of - amongst other things - taxis, necklaces, rooms, sarongs, beach toys, motorbikes, carvings, massages and pineapples, we finally reached the beach.The 'quiet and secluded' beach.You could barely see it. All of Lombok seemed to be there. The sand and the sea were full of people, mostly still fully clothed, swimming, splashing and lounging. The fully clothed swimming phenomenon is an odd one. Cheap swim and surf attire is available at every turn here, and is worn a great deal as casual clothing. While board shorts can be worn both in and out of the water, jeans are not usually, in our experience, aquatic.Brief pause for some clever bugger to point out that "actually, jeans were originally worn by sailors from Genoa, known as Gênes by the French, hence the name 'jeans', I think you'll find, so really, they are aquatic." Finished? Thank you. Moving on.Incidentally, the market in fake western brands is enormous here, with - alongside the ubiquitous Adidas - surfy stuff from Oz and the States being very popular. The names transcend their original products and become status symbols with which to adorn any item: Adidas motorcycles, O'Neill taxis and, in the case of the beach at Senggigi, giant tractor inner-tubes with Billabong crudely daubed across them in white paint.We carried on around to the next beach, where we sat down, ate the pineapples that we had ended up buying from the extremely persistent "You wanna pineapple?" bloke who had followed us about the place since we arrived, lay down and tried to relax."Hey Mister, you want...." every few seconds does not, in any way, promote relaxation.The best defence we could come up with was to pretend to be asleep. This worked for a while, but eventually we gave up. The beach was nothing special, the sea had a fair amount of rubbish floating in it, we weren't feeling the chilled out vibe...We walked back through town, stopping for a bite to eat and to check email, before making our way to the Hotel Lima for drinks on the veranda as the sun set. This was more like it.Our guesthouse had mentioned that they would be cooking some very good tuna that evening, so we went back there to give it a go. We sat at the only table, along with a French guy from the next room and were given plates of fairly middle-of-the-road fish and rice.Senggigi had failed so far to inspire us, but we thought we would hire a bike and explore the surrounding areas the following day. The morning started with a series of power cuts as the fuse box kept shorting with a loud pop and a shower of sparks. This also meant no water, as the water pump was electrically powered. We gave up on the idea of a shower and went for breakfast, which included ridiculously sweet coffee, brought to us with a little jug of milk and a little pot of sugar. The owner was very apologetic about this and explained to the waiter (as far as we could work out) that white folks are funny like that and prefer to ladle their own sugar into their coffee.After a little bit of admin, in which we organised our onwards journey, we found a reasonable sized motorbike to hire. Well, it was pretty dinky really, but Jacob could just about remain seated and change gear without having to break his left ankle first. Just about.We were provided with helmets. The one which fitted Jacob had a terrible visor, whilst the other didn't really fit Kirsty at all and the straps were operated by tying them together under the chin. This bodes well. Apologies to the various parents (mostly ours, really) who are undoubtedly shuddering at this.We tried to find a petrol station, as the bike was pretty low on fuel, but despite the directions we had been given, couldn't locate it. Never mind, just about any shed by the side of the road sells petrol in Indonesia. We stopped at one and got a couple of litres, which were siphoned into glass bottles and poured into the tank with a funnel. Kirsty also learnt that it is better to get off motorcycles on the left. She briefly caught her right leg on the exhaust pipe as she hopped off the back, causing a bit of a burn. As we write this, two and a half months later, she can still see the mark. Bugger.We took the road north out of town, following the coastline. The road was undergoing some fairly heavy duty roadworks, so it turned out to be a bit of a challenge both for Jacob to get the bike up and down the hills and for Kirsty to stay on the back whilst he did so. We found a nice secluded little beach, which, as far as we could work out (our map wasn't great and there are a lot of beaches) was&nbsp;called Malimbu, where we stopped for a while and went for a swim. Lovely. Back to the bike, we pushed on a bit then made our way back south through the Monkey Forest.Unsurprisingly, the Monkey Forest is home to....well, monkeys. We parked up and took a load of pictures, watched them clambering around and generally monkeying about, then carried on as it was starting to rain.The rain got pretty heavy but was easing off as we arrived in Mataram, the capital of Lombok. We bought some snacks, including a variety of strange crisps and some garlic peanuts then spent a while eating them and pondering how you can make a monkey nut taste garlicky without shelling it first.Onwards to the last stop in our magical mystery tour of Lombok. Just outside Senggigi is the Pura Batu Bolong - an ancient Hindu temple (whose name literally means 'Temple of the Hollow Rock') which is built on the cliff face right over the sea.Entry is free - it is a church after all - but we needed to borrow blessed sashes, in return for a small donation, from a one armed wizened old crone at the gate. We wandered around for a while, watching all of the worshippers and trying to understand the rituals taking place. Much bowing and scraping and wafting of incense from various families who gave us huge grins as we pottered about. We're none the wiser as to what it all meant, but it was intriguing to see.Back in town, we dropped off the bike, got changed and went to 'Square', a fancy bar, for pre-dinner drinkies. The place was pretty swish and wouldn't have looked out of place in a big UK city. The bill wouldn't have either.Tea that evening was at the far less swish 'Warung' across the road. Warung is the Indonesian word for cheap, basic food places which, for some reason, we have been calling Nobberias since Mexico. Nobby little places to eat, maybe? Anyway, they'll always be nobberias to us now. They're generally reliable for good, local food - nothing special, but the best place to eat the local food and experience the local ways.This particular warung was made from a large tarp, several bamboo poles and some string to lash it to the neighbouring fence. A little generator in the corner, a few plastic tables and <i>voila. We had Mie Goreng (fried noodles) - Jacob's with beef and Kirsty's with shrimp - and it was one of the best meals that we ate in Indonesia.Now, that bill at Square. The cost of our accommodation, breakfast, motorbike hire, petrol, snacks in the capital, entrance to the Hindu temple, evening meal and internet fees combined came to less than the drinks bill. The drinks bill was somewhere in the region of £11, so not outrageous, but, when put in perspective like that seemed a little extravagant.We had a reasonably early start again the following day, so went back to the guesthouse, which had by now sorted out its electricial issues. This was useful, as packing by torchlight just seemed unnecessarily difficult. Next stop - Bali again.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210910160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210910160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210910160/tpod.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:34:40 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Padang Bai, Indonesia

The journey to the Gili Islands took quite a while. As we left Kuta, one of the large suitcases that had been stowed behind a seat fell into the staircase, smacking into Kirsty's ankle on the way. She was alright, but not exactly pleased, especially as it was the ankle that she had injured in Queenstown. The bus took us to the port town of Padang Bai. We were all herded off and told that we would need to be back at the bus by 1pm. Everybody trooped into the nearby café. We had some sandwiches and iced lemon (which, having been made with boiled water, somehow managed to still be hot at the top), then it was time to get back on to the bus to be taken around the corner to the port.At the port, we were shepherded on to a jetty, where we stood and waited for a good half hour. Eventually, a small boat arrived, bringing people and bags from the slightly larger boat that would be taking us to the Gilis. After a couple of trips back and forward to unload the previous passengers, we were taken in the tender to our vessel. The ship was a shonky little thing which looked as if it was made out of plywood. As we docked alongside it, a large jet of water spurted up between the two boats, soaking Kirsty and the guy sat next to her. It clearly wasn't her day.We got onto the boat and found a place to sit on deck. Once everybody was on board, we set off. We were given some banana fritters and bought drinks - Strawberry Fanta, which is extremely popular over here. Some time later, it was announced that the buffet dinner, which was included in the ticket price, was being served. We had a bit to eat, then sat on deck for a while longer.Eventually, we saw the approaching Gilis. There are three Gili Islands - Gili Trawangan is the largest and is thought of as 'the party island', although it is still very laid back. The smallest and quietest is Gili Meno while Gili Air is the middle one, both in terms of size and activity levels.Although it was supposedly the busiest and noisiest, we decided to go to Gili Trawangan as there seemed to be more to do there. Neither of us are particularly good at just lying on beaches, and we had decided that we wanted to do some diving as it is known to be pretty good around this area. Gili T seemed to offer the best opportunities. Plus, it was the first Gili that the boat landed at and it was already dark. We didn't much fancy searching around the quieter, less&nbsp;touristy islands after nightfall, looking for a place to stay. Another little boat to the shore and we were there.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211287680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211287680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211287680/tpod.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:32:29 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Gili Trawangan, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

We had been due to arrive at Gili Trawangan at approximately 5pm. It was now after 7, which is about par for the course with any transport in Indonesia. We wandered up the main street, looking for places to stay. First of all, we checked out Warna Homestay, the place that we had tried to make a reservation with. They had a room available, which seemed nice but a bit pricey. We decided to check out a few other places and see what was available.We looked at a number of other rooms, but none were that much cheaper or as nice. One man took us to see a room which was well behind the main street. As we walked there, he asked where we were from, so we gave him the standard answer of "The UK - northern England". He asked where exactly and we told him Harrogate and started to explain where that is in relation to larger cities."Oh, I know Harrogate" he said.Suspecting that this was a line that he used on all prospective guests, we raised our eyebrows and said "Really?""Oh yes. I used to go out with a girl from Harrogate. Do you know the Old Bell Tavern? That used to be my local."Fair enough then. Jacob not only knows the pub, one of his best friends from school worked there. Small world.Unfortunately, his room wasn't as nice as the one at Warna and frankly, it smelled a bit, so we didn't opt to stay.We checked in to the room at Warna, dumped our bags and went out to explore. There were some guys relaxing outside their bar ('Tattoo Bar') who had greeted us a couple of times as we looked for a room and now hailed us again."Hey, time for a beer, no?"Quite right.As well as beer, this bar offered a variety of other...lets say 'relaxants'. As you walk down the main street on Gili T, you notice many blackboards outside the bars advertising 'Mushroom Shakes'. Just about everywhere you go, someone can hook you up with something interesting to smoke. Now, the thing about the Gilis is, there is no Police presence. There are no Indonesian authorities of any description - if there's ever a problem, the village elders sort it out. So, a long day, a bar, Bob Marley on the stereo, a bloke with a bag of greenery, no coppers anywhere...Well, what do you reckon we did?After a few drinks and a natter, a pizza to share at Manta Café, we wandered back to our room to sit on the porch and relax with some tunes.The following morning, over a breakfast of banana pancakes, we agreed to go and speak to local diving types to see what we could organise. We stopped off at Manta Dive, the first one we came to, and had a chat with the staff there.They seemed pretty friendly and discussed options with us. As Kirsty didn't have any qualifications, any dives she did would have been accompanied with an instructor and would have been relatively expensive. They also mentioned that they could qualify her. She discussed the course and decided to have a think about it.As all of the dive operators on Gili T have fixed prices and Manta Dive seemed pretty professional, we decided not to bother shopping around. Instead we went to the beach, which is a far nicer way to pass the morning. We had a swim in the ridiculous current, lazed around on the beach for a while and went for lunch.Kirsty got a chicken sandwich and Jacob ordered one of the worst Caesar salads the world has ever seen. Although topped with a sprinkling of bacon and croutons, it primarily consisted of shredded lettuce swimming in a bowl of mayonnaise soup.Kirsty ordered watermelon juice. After some time, the waiter came back to say that they had no watermelons. She ordered strawberry Fanta, making sure to specify that it had to be strawberry, not orange. The waiter came back with orange Fanta. She refused it and tried to order Sprite, which the waiter didn't understand. She tried Coke. The waiter went away. He came back a few minutes later and said "Watermelon?". By now quite confused, Kirsty agreed and was presented with a glass of watermelon juice.We went back to Manta Dive and Kirsty arranged to take her Open Water qualification. Kirsty's course and a few dives for Jacob booked, it was back to our room, where Kirsty boned up on diving theory and Jacob watched some DVDs. In the evening, Kirsty went back to Manta to start on the theory section of the course and met Corrado, her instructor, who was Italian and known, therefore,&nbsp;as Spaghetti, Spags to his friends. She also met Mike, from Swansea, who was to be qualifying as well. They managed to watch a couple of videos, then there was a power cut.Power cuts were to be relatively common throughout our stay on Gili T. There was nothing to be done, so Mike left and Kirsty went to join Jacob, who was sitting chatting with some of the other divers who were hanging around at Manta, including another member of the Welsh Blokes Called Mike SCUBA Club, this particular one being from Neath.After a while, it was time for food, so we went to see what we could find. As we walked, we heard something which would become the bane of our existence for the remainder of our stay in Indonesia. Once or twice, a few of the traders and cabbies trying to ingratiate themselves had called out "Long hair, long life!" at us. Well, at Jacob, probably. Women with long hair aren't really news. Tonight, a waiter hollered the already familiar refrain and then, after an admittedly very well timed pause and with a wicked grin continued "Long banana, happy wife!" His delivery was excellent, and we actually raised a snigger. Every couple of paces for the next couple of weeks, it got pretty old.We walked on to a&nbsp;bar called Beach House towards the opposite end of the town, who were doing a fish and seafood barbeque. Kirsty had a seafood kebab, which was OK but nothing special, whilst Jacob ordered tuna, which was very good. We walked back, being assured of our hirsute longevity and fruit based contentment a few times more.The following morning, Jacob was diving at Manta Point, where he didn't see any Mantas. He did however see a White Tip Reef Shark and its baby - who was hanging out under a big table of coral - as well as a turtle and loads of reef fish. He had a great time and was grinning from ear to ear when he got back. Kirsty, meanwhile, after a later than planned start due to Mike turning up late, had spent the morning in the classroom and was just about to get into the pool to do some basic skills such as clearing water from the mask and the regulator. Not as interesting as shark spotting.Jacob went and had a lazy few hours and got himself something to eat before his next dive. In the afternoon, he went out to Shark Point, where he didn't encounter any sharks, but there were hundreds of turtles. The Gilis are known for their large population of turtles (green and hawksbill) and they were out in great numbers today. Again, he was feeling pretty happy when he got back, although he had a suggestion or two to make about the naming of the dive sites.Kirsty had spent the afternoon in the classroom and the pool again, where she had come close to drowning. Corrado had made her laugh underwater, pointing out a pube floating by them. Nice. Despite Mike's tardy return from lunch, they had got through most of the theory and the rest of the necessary skills in the pool. They were on target to go out and dive in the sea the following day.That evening, we went out and had food at another sea front bar. We sat at a low table on a raised platform, lit by candles and watched the boats out at sea bobbing up and down. Jacob had a sort of mixed grill thing, which wasn't really up to much. Kirsty got a mini tumpeng, which was a collection of Indonesian bits and pieces served on a plate made from woven banana leaf, complete with little compartments for the different dishes.We popped over the road to Tir Na Nog, the obligatory Irish Bar and had a drink there. The staff from Manta had said that they might be there later, but weren't about when we arrived. Ben, one of the Manta crowd (known by Spags as Fish &amp; Chips or 'Fishy'), popped in and said Hello, indicating that they were going to be along later, but to be honest, the place wasn't exactly replete with atmosphere, so we pottered back to the guest house to relax on our balcony and listen to music.Kirsty happily spent the following day underwater, completing her first two qualifying dives. She arrived at Manta and set up her kit, then Mike turned up, late as usual, only a few minutes before they were due to be departing. Corrado was not impressed - a sentiment that he expressed in his over the top Italian manner. "The Boy, always so lay-teh! Why you so late, eh?"Out at Meno Bounty, Mike had some trouble equalising the pressure in his ears, so had to be taken back to the surface. Kirsty hung around at about 9 metres for a while with Carolyn, another instructor - useful buoyancy control practice. Having deposited Mike and his problematic ears on the boat, Corrado joined them and they went to explore. Meno Bounty is the site of a sunken jetty, now claimed by the coral, making an artificial reef, which is home to large schools of reef fish. As well as these, Kirsty saw a turtle, lionfish and a strange, unusual thing called a frogfish. Frogfish are a rare kind of anglerfish (fish with a luminescent lure which they dangle by their mouths to attract prey), and are pretty well camouflaged. This one was a sort of dingy colour, and looked like the result of a whale sneezing. Ugly little thing, but quite interesting.The second dive was at Hannes Reef, home to smaller species, with less in the way of the so called 'exciting' sights such as turtles, sharks and the like. There was, however, a large group of fish called Bumphead Parrotfish, which was pretty exciting. Parrotfish graze on the coral and this particular type, a large species, tend to turn up only at the full moon and munch their way through a prodigious amount. The current was pretty strong and Kirsty and Carolyn ended up separated from Mike and Corrado. Reunited a little later, it was time to resurface. As it turned out though, the current had swept the rest of the divers on the boat down the other side of the island, which was where the boat was, collecting them all as they surfaced.The boat searched for Kirsty and her group for a while on the wrong side of the island, so it was about forty five minutes before they were picked up. It was unusual for this sort of thing to happen - Corrado had never been 'lost' before in his many years of diving. Still, they were all safe and the water was quite warm, so there was no harm done.Meanwhile, Jacob had spent a lazy day on the beach and at the hotel, reading and generally taking it easy. He was just heading out as Kirsty was getting back. He had arranged to go out on a night dive. A nice small group - just six including the instructors - went out to Meno Wall, a big flat expanse of coral full of little caves and pockets, which is a great sort area for poking around at night. All the little snails, worms and many-legged things come creeping out of their holes and scuttle about feeding. There definitely seemed to be two camps among the divers at Manta: those who could spend ages hanging in the water watching two hermit crabs fighting over a shell, and those who thought there was no real interest in anything less dramatic than sharks and rays. Jacob quite happily bridged the gap between the two, and the night's dive was, apart from the company, fantastic.He was buddied with a guy called Lucas, who despite being an instructor was not a great buddy. He was into underwater photography and had a tendency to go off on his own or lag behind the group quite a lot, plus he wasn't paying attention to his gauges, which were hanging down and bashing into the coral, about which he seemed not to care when Jacob pointed it out. Despite all that, he had a very high opinion of himself. All in all, not too likeable a character.There were loads of little shrimps, a bright orange crab and an enormous turtle, plus some pretty shimmering phosphorescence. When the group returned, they found Kirsty at Manta, chatting with Alice, Jacob's dive master from the previous day. Jacob and Alice had been fascinated by loads of little nudibranchs (flatworms): frustrating and bewildering in equal measure to Mike, who was far more excited by taking photographs of the sharks.We sat around for a while, chatting and sharing a few drinks with Alice and some of the night dive crowd. Eventually, the group dispersed and we went to get a bite to eat. Cajun fish burgers and chips from a nearby café, then back to our room for the evening.The following day was Kirsty's last as a trainee. Hopefully, by the end of it, she would be a qualified diver. She was going out to the same dive sites as Jacob had been to on his first day's diving, so she was hoping to see some of the same things.In the morning, she went out to Manta Point. She got to see the baby White Tip Reef Shark, but the mother was nowhere to be seen. Until she looked over her shoulder. The mother had been hidden behind some rocks and the group had managed to get between her and her baby. Kirsty, who has a particular interest in sharks and studied shark biology as part of her Zoology degree, noting the exaggerated body movements of the mother, got out of the way. A shark pointing its lower fins down and swishing from side to side in a deliberate manner is saying "Grrr." Back at the dive centre, it was time to sit the exam. No worries there - Kirsty passed with flying colours.Meanwhile, Jacob had been having another relaxed day. Although it would have been nice to get in loads of dives, it's not free, and there's only so far our budget would stretch. So, he'd spent a chunk of the morning sorting out the indexing on our iPod (he gets terribly picky about such things), reading and sunning himself on the beach. Nice. We had a bit of a natter, updated our diary, then Kirsty went back out for her final dive.She was going out to Shark Point, where Jacob had seen hundreds of turtles. As the dive boat went out, several of the instructors were commenting on the low visibility and how the current seemed to have picked up.Indeed, once they got underwater, the visibility was very poor, coupled with a strong current. Despite this, they still managed to see quite a few turtles and a moray eel. Kirsty spent a lot of the time swimming straight down: it later turned out that she had been given insufficient weights so couldn't sink. Ability to sink is quite important when you're diving.So, that was that - Kirsty had now completed her course. We have another diver in the family.After a celebratory slap-up feed (what the hell is a 'slap-up' feed anyway?) at Tir Na Nog, we set about the three dimensional jigsaw ritual that is the packing of our rucksacks - something we enjoy oh, so very much - ready for an early boat to Lombok the following morning.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211719980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211719980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211719980/tpod.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:27:59 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

The journey to Ubud began with a bemo (little pickup truck taxi thing) to the transport office, where we were shepherded to the beach and ordered to line up our bags by a small man who had been given a loudspeaker and an overblown impression of his own importance.We were taken by little boat to a big boat and once all of the passengers were aboard, we were given breakfast. The crossing was a bit rough, so Jacob took his usual line of defence against sea sickness and went to sleep. This worked well for him - he woke up feeling fine and he didn't get to witness an elderly German lady throwing up over the side. Actually, she failed to quite manage that, resulting in her neighbour abandoning his now rather moist book when we all got off the boat. How lovely.Back at Padang Bai, we got onto the bus to Ubud, our next destination.The buses arrive an irritating distance from the centre of Ubud, so we negotiated ourselves a ride in a taxi. The driver didn't know of Masih Bungalows, the hotel where we were planning to stay, so dropped us off next to the nearby football field marked on our map. We walked up and down the street, eventually finding the place. It was well camouflaged - the sign was almost non existent. This, it turned out, was because the hotel <i>was non-existent. It had closed several months previously. Hmmm. Time for Plan B. There was no Plan B, as such, but some bloke in the street asked if we were looking for a room, so we followed him. As it happened, he had a really nice place ('Darta Homestay'), with little individual bungalows, each with its own little verandah, for a very reasonable price. He brought us tea, we sat on the verandah and drank it, and all was good with the world.After doing some laundry and hanging it out on the verandah, we went to explore the town a bit and Kirsty invested in some nice, unusual, Balinese silver twirly earrings. In the evening, we found a warung, where we had some very tasty food and one of those interesting conversations in which the English speakers can't really understand what the non-native English speaker is talking about, but it has become apparent that further questioning is unlikely to make it any clearer. The following morning, after breakfast on the verandah (how very civilised), it started to rain. The rain continued, pretty much unabated, for much of the day. We went to explore the market, which was full of potential souvenirs, but were driven away by the rain to find shelter.This seemed as good a time as any to go and try <i>babi guling, the suckling pig we had tried but failed to get in Kuta (you had to order an entire pig a day in advance). It's something of a speciality in Ubud however, with one little warung, the Ibu Oka, devoted entirely to it. They roast a whole pig every day, but it's very much a lunchtime only affair, principally because it's so popular that they're all sold out by three.It's fantastic. The menu has precious little choice, what choice there is being pretty much unfathomable. Pig; Special Pig; Pig Surprise; Pig, Pig, Pig, Pig, Egg, Chips &amp; Pig... The only difference between them all seems to be the order in which the bits are dumped in the bowl. So, you get a chunk of pig, some rich savoury fried rice stuff, some sort of salad and a huge chunk of crackling. Really, really good crackling. There are various little pots of <i>sambal (chilli sauce) with which to adorn it all, ranging from the really quite staggeringly hot to the thermonuclear.Our stomachs were muttering warily as we chewed. We were about to feed them salt, oil, chilli and roasted pig fat. There was liable to be something of a backlash later, but for now, we savoured. We had a brief pause to leg it under the pagoda-like canopy (Ibu Oka is basically a courtyard, its big shared tables rather inadequately umbrellaed) as the rain strengthened still further. Then, we resumed savouring. Oh, how we savoured.So, all troughed out (troughed! Pig! Did you see what we did there?!), we figured that given the state of the weather and the anticipated need for some 'facilities', spending the afternoon at the hotel would be a plan.It was.The rain continued.Hooray for the tropics.On the up side, Kirsty finished her sewing of Jacob's shorts, and Jacob got a load of writing done, so all was not, as they say, lost.By late afternoon, the rain had slowed down. We really couldn't be bothered waiting any longer for it to stop, so went out for another walk. Ubud is quite a centre for arts and crafts, with a lot of wood carvers and artists plying their trades. We poked about the little artsy shops, vaguely thinking of souvenirs and presents - Jacob's eye was rather caught by some big carved stone and horn earrings - but mostly it was just poking about.At the bottom of the hill down which we were ambling is a monkey sanctuary, entry to which is charged...except when the office is closed. There are no gates, it wasn't yet dark, so we went off a-monkeying. Kirsty squatted down on her haunches opposite a monkey who was doing the same, for a spot-the-difference photo, whereupon the monkey screeched and leapt at her, teeth bared. Kirsty screeched and leapt backwards, continuing the spot-the-difference theme. Presumably it thought she was after its coconut.So, having encountered a load of monkeys, going about their monkey business, we were walking back through town when one of the many, many "Hey, you want massage? Traditional massage? Good price!" women thrust a price list at us. Most of these places do massage, hair and beauty treatments, waxing, that sort of thing, but this one offered shaves too. Intrigued, Jacob thought he'd give it a go, never having let anyone near his face with a blade before. It was only about a quid or so, so what - apart from his face - was there to lose?He envisaged a Sweeney Todd-esque old-school razor, a lathering of the face, and a bloke in a white jacket offering him something for the weekend. It was a masseuse with a Bic and a smearing of jasmine oil. Ten minutes later, reeking like one of those things grandmothers put in wardrobes, a rather disappointed but admittedly smoother of cheek Jacob accompanied Kirsty to a nearby warung for noodles and meatballs.Next morning, as we breakfasted on the verandah (in our white suits and pith-helmets), one of the neighbours, a lanky Essex boy, introduced himself."I'm Jake," he enthused."So am I," countered our resident Jake, much to his surprise. He proceeded to tell us about his girlfriend Apple and their life in Thailand, and invited us to an expensive jazz bar that evening where a blues guitarist friend of his was playing. We remained non-committal, as we already had plans for the evening, and weren't sure how late we'd be. We had tickets to the intriguingly named Kechak Fire and Trance Dance. We can see blues guitarists at home, but how often do you get Kechak Fire Dancers in Harrogate?The day looked set for more rain and as such, we'd written off the idea of going on a mountain bike tour of the rice paddies and farming villages surrounding the town. It had sounded quite interesting, but in driving rain, it wouldn't have been that much fun.There was more poking about in town (Jacob succumbed to the lure of the big twisted carved earring thingies) and onward travel arrangements were made for the following day. Lunch was at a fantastic little warung just along from the travel office. We called in, were asked if we wanted food, and upon saying yes, were asked simply "How many?" before each being presented with a plate of 'food'.The day's food was Nasi Goreng: fried rice with whatever odds and sods of protein you can scavenge together. It wasn't half bad, although Kirsty's chicken did seem to involve a beak, which is a tad unorthodox. Well, most chickens involve beaks, but they're generally removed prior to serving. Still, cheap as chips (well, quite a bit cheaper, really) and very filling.Predictably, it was now chucking it down, so we scurried from shop to shop back to the market, stopping en route to get Jacob some loud trousers. TROUSERS!Tee hee hee.After further huddling under hastily rigged tarpaulins in the town market as we perused further souvenir and present potential, we retreated to the hotel, got waterproofed up to the eyeballs and went out to see what the hell a Kechak Fire and Trance Dance might be.It goes something like this.Dozens of blokes, stripped to the waist, run in and wave their arms about, then eventually arrange themselves, seated radially about a vast many-wicked lamp in the centre of the floor. They chant something along the lines of "Kechak kechak kechak achak chak chak", varying the rhythm and intensity, with little pockets of syncopation arising here and there about the group.A call and response melodic line joins in from time to time, all against a rolling background of more Kechaks. Throw in some standing and Mexican waving, and you're well on your way. After quite a bit of that (well over quarter of an hour), two girls in very traditional oriental makeup and costume wind and writhe their way into the centre, with lots of slow, deliberate curved finger twisting business involved. A few more characters join in, taking turns to appear and interact somehow with the girls, usually with one or both sides seeming quite antagonistic, with either the girls, the Kechak blokes or some combination of the above chasing away the newcomer.The characters were all in the very stylised, formulaic, symbolic costume and make-up typical of a lot of oriental theatre, and were largely unfathomable to us.The second act saw a lot of women take the stage as well, the Kechak men clustering themselves out of the way. Two younger girls enacted some form of ritual dance thing again, this time involving a lot of fainting and being revived by some of the women. A few rounds of this later, they continued to pass out regularly, this time being revived by more of the over-the-top costume blokes with little pots of water, some of which they drank, some rubbed through their hair. Again, largely indecipherable.After that all seemed to be over, a large blazing mound of coconut shells was lit in the middle of the floor, and, accompanied by further Kechaking, a bloke with a hobby-horse danced through the flames. Barefoot. Then he hoofed the burning husks across the floor and proceeded to leap around in the embers. A chap with a badly fire-damaged broom followed him about, sweeping the fire back together, whereupon horsey boy would stamp barefoot through it and boot it all back across the stage.It ended with this rather unhinged looking bloke sitting on stage, his hobby-horse cast aside, out of breath, staring exhaustedly about with smoke rising from the blackened soles of his feet.As you might imagine, we didn't really grasp the deeper meaning of this final segment of the show either.We didn't go to the jazz bar.Noodle soup and <i>lumpia (spring rolls) at a warung just up the road from our hotel, then bed and dreams filled with Kechaking nutters.The following morning, after breakfast, we realised that there was no way that the washing we had done upon our arrival was ever going to be dry enough to pack, so bundled it up in a dry bag and packed it anyway.We made our way up to a café called Nomad, where we were due to be collected and taken to the bus office. Once the lift was a good fifteen minutes late, we started to get concerned - our bus would be leaving in fifteen minutes. Five minutes later, the minibus that was supposed to be collecting us drove past without stopping. That was quite a concern. We negotiated ourselves a taxi to the bus station, arriving just as the bus was due to depart.We had a bit of a pop at the driver who had driven past and ignored us, who had the cheek to be annoyed with us for getting a cab at the eleventh hour rather than continuing to wait for a lift which we had seen come and go, twenty minutes late, without collecting us. He seemed to think we should somehow have known that a second, unmarked vehicle would be along to get us shortly. It was utterly beyond him that we should think there was anything amiss with the situation. "What's the problem? You're here and the bus hasn't left yet!" For him, that was the long and short of it. Idiot.Ultimately though, despite the best efforts of the bus company, we made it onto the bus - honourable mention to our cab driver who grasped the urgency of the situation and blocked the bus into the yard to ensure it wasn't going anywhere without us. We were on our way back to Kuta.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211892900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211892900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1211892900/tpod.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:26:21 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Kuta, Bali, Indonesia

The journey from Ubud to Kuta was pretty uneventful. We were dropped off and made our way to Sayang Maha Mertha, where we had stayed before and with whom we had a reservation. As we arrived and checked in, there was a fair amount of furtive whispering going on. It turned out that the basic room which we had reserved had been double booked. We only found this out once we were shown to our 'room' - which turned out to be a far more expensive suite, which we would be getting for the price of the basic room. Nice.After rewashing the laundry which had remained damp throughout our stay in Ubud and now smelt musty, hanging it out on our balcony and using the stove (in the kitchen downstairs in our apartment - we really did very well out of the double booking) to make a cup of tea, we went out into Kuta. Kirsty needed to drop in to the offices of Manta Dive in order to collect her qualification certificate and card, then we went to a very basic warung for a bite to eat. There was a display cabinet thing in the window, filled with numerous bowls, each containing a different foodstuff. We were each presented with a bowl of rice and were offered spoonfuls of the bowls. Clearly, this could be hygienically dubious - who knows how long the bowls had been sitting in the display? - but it was pretty tasty and our stomachs didn't seem to rebel.We spent the afternoon at the hotel, swimming in the pool and generally lazing about, then had a meal at a rather more upmarket warung (Brasil Bali), where we ate soup and spring rolls and 'invested' in a bottle of arak.Arak is the local 'spirit' of Indonesia, distilled from rice. It tastes pretty rough but isn't too bad when mixed with lemonade. It can vary in strength from around 20% up&nbsp;to 70% ABV (the labels don't often give very obvious clues either) and costs somewhere in the region of £2 for a litre, so it wasn't long before we were feeling fairly silly.The rest of the evening disappeared in an arak fueled blur.The following day, feeling surprisingly clear headed, we went for a last look around the shops of Kuta, where Kirsty bought a new bikini. We had also decided to see what all the fuss was about with Indonesian massage. There was a massage place that we had walked past quite regularly who were offering a full body massage for under £2 each, so we got ourselves rubbed down.Rubbed, pounded, stretched, slapped, pummeled and&nbsp;prodded. Isn't massage supposed to be relaxing?Feeling more like we had been beaten up, we went to the beach, where we spent the rest of the day. We swam in the sea, despite the strong waves - there's a reason that Kuta is so popular with surfers. Kirsty realised that she had lost one of her nice new earrings - presumably swept away by the ocean. Bugger.After a fairly mediocre meal, we spent the evening with a couple of beers and a game or two of pool at the hotel before bed. We got some odd looks from the barman when Jacob ordered a whisky of some description...with no ice. As there was nothing more than the booze to put in the glass, it was served in a shot glass. Sipping from a shot glass makes a body feel very, very silly.The following day, we packed up and checked out. Next stop was a nearby post office, where&nbsp;Jacob spent a while making sure that&nbsp;our parcel was securely sealed with plenty of parcel tape.&nbsp;Once he&nbsp;had finished,&nbsp;the member of staff took the parcel and bound it up in tarpaulin like material sewn up with heavy cord, ready for its journey by sea to the UK. The resulting package was a work of art. You don't get that sort of service&nbsp;from Royal Mail...The hotel offered&nbsp;a taxi shuttle to the airport, so we availed ourselves of the service and arrived in plenty of time to check in and secure seats with good legroom for the flight. The airport security was, if nothing else, thorough. Very sensibly, the main doors from the street had metal detectors and bag scanners - if you want to blow up an airport, why bother with all the hassle of trying to get airside? The queue for check in was headed by security guards with explosive detectors. That's detectors for explosives, not detectors that blow up. That would be silly.Our bags were searched briefly as well as being scanned. Checked in, we then needed to pay a departure tax. As was by now routine, we had run down our currency so as not to have to change it, so Kirsty had to go back outside to the only ATM, then come back in through the metal detectors and bag scanners again.After departure tax, there was the standard going-through-security thing that every airport has to get airside. We poked around duty-free for a bit, wondering how to use up our change. After much agonising, we decided to spend our last few thousand Rupiah on a bag of peanuts and a bag of the local version of M&amp;M's as buying the&nbsp;real ones&nbsp;would have meant we couldn't have the peanuts. Turned out to be a wise choice - the M&amp;M-a-likes were indistinguishable from the genuine article.The flight arrived, we boarded, through another bag search at the gate,&nbsp;and finally, extremely securely,&nbsp;we were on our way to Singapore.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210423500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210423500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1210423500/tpod.html Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:01:11 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

The bus&nbsp;dropped us off in the centre of Darwin, where we quickly found an internet café for one last check to see if any of the CouchSurfing people we had contacted had replied. We were out of luck as far as that went, so the next priority was to find a hostel. We were pretty close to where our guidebook told us that the tourist information centre was located.&nbsp;The only problem with that was that it wasn't there. A signpost directed us to the building where it was supposed to be, but no, there was no tourist information office here.&nbsp;We tried to call them, but there was no reply. We gave up and rang around hostels in our guidebook instead. The first one was full, but the second, 'Frogshollow Backpackers',&nbsp;had space in a dorm and was doing a cheaper rate on stays of one week. We reserved two beds and walked over there.&nbsp;Having checked in and bagged ourselves the bunk bed in the corner of the room, we said hello to Alex, a German guy who would be one of our roommates for the next few nights. Then he went out to work, which was something we noticed a lot of folks doing over the ensuing week - Frogshollow seemed the place of choice for travellers who were taking a month or two to earn some more cash.Our plan for Darwin was to chill out for a few days, do some repairs to the various clothes and bits of kit that had gradually started to fall apart over the last few months and get down to some serious writing to catch up our woefully out of date blog. We settled down with the computer next to the plug socket and tried to sort out compressing the files that we had created when backing up our iPod. They were currently using pretty much all of our spare memory and&nbsp;the computer was now grinding along as though powered by an elderly arthritic vole on a treadle.&nbsp;Hours later, it became apparent that they wouldn't compress very much at all.&nbsp;We gave up and having had a bite to eat, hit the town for a night out. We had a drink and watched the world go by from one of the streetside tables at one bar, then decided to give the Irish bar (there is always an Irish bar) across the road a go.&nbsp;That's where it all started to go wrong. We got chatting to a couple of guys at the bar. They introduced themselves as Brett and Zeb, then explained that Zeb was short for Zebulon. They bought us drinks and continued to do so for a large proportion of the evening, although we did buy the odd round ourselves. We were presented with a sort of depth charge - a shooter, whose ingredients we cannot remember, dropped into a glass of Smirnoff Ice - that the barmaid friend of theirs had invented.We bounced around to the covers band and talked rubbish for a while, noticing eventually that Zeb had disappeared.&nbsp;Some time later, we decided that it really was time to leave. Zeb was lying in the gutter with his head propped on the kerb, but he seemed quite content.&nbsp;Jacob made us both peanut butter sandwiches until we couldn't eat any more, then Kirsty went off to bed. Jacob sat and chatted with some of the long term guests and members of staff of the hostel, most of whom seemed to have names that you'd more usually expect in a children's film. Pirate, Cookie...nobody just seemed to be called Chris or Dave.&nbsp;The following morning, we availed ourselves of the free breakfast provided by the hostel (cereal and toast) and had showers before venturing out into Darwin in search of a WiFi connection. We tried Roma Bar, which advertised having WiFi. However, being a Sunday, it was closed and the signal was turned off. After phoning the tourist information office to find out where they were, we went to ask them. They didn't know. They were able to tell us that the council had not yet got round to moving the signpost which still points to the site of their old&nbsp;office. They moved three months ago. Things, apparently, happen quite slowly in Darwin.At least we got to see some of the town. Darwin is a bit of a strange place. It has been pretty much&nbsp;completely rebuilt -&nbsp;twice - after a Japanese air-raid in World War II, then&nbsp;again after&nbsp;pretty much the whole town was flattened by Cyclone Tracy in 1974. Darwin, therefore, is largely composed of 1970s architecture - an aesthetic which somehow suits it. Incidentally,&nbsp;the town is named after <i>that Darwin -&nbsp;Captain John Clements Wickham of the HMS Beagle, which sailed into Darwin harbour in 1839, named the port after his famous shipmate from earlier voyages of the Beagle.&nbsp;&nbsp;We gave up and went to the supermarket to get some bits for the next few days.&nbsp;Jacob suggested Caesar salad, which surprised Kirsty somewhat. He's really going to town on this whole cheese eating thing. We bought the ingredients, choosing a salad dressing that already included parmesan. This was a bit of a concern - if he didn't like it, he couldn't just pick the cheese out. Oh well, nothing ventured...&nbsp;We walked out to the sunset market in the evening. Darwin has a twice weekly sunset market at Mindil Beach. There are lots of stalls selling the usual handicrafts, clothes, toys, artwork and other touristy souvenir paraphernalia. There are also a wide range of food stalls, selling gastronomic delights from around the world. Jacob had some noodles and Kirsty got a burrito.&nbsp;We made our way back to the hostel and spent another frustrating couple of hours trying to do something with the iPod backup files, decided that we may as well just&nbsp;buy&nbsp;a few&nbsp;discs to&nbsp;put them on,&nbsp;and went to bed.&nbsp;The following day was a bank holiday Monday and&nbsp;nothing was open, so we spent the day sitting in the park opposite the hostel typing. We took a break to recharge the computer and eat some Caesar salad, which we both found very tasty. Another victory for the tastebuds. After more writing in the afternoon, we cooked up a lazy meal of beans on toast, then watched some more of The Mighty Boosh before bed.&nbsp;The following day was more of the same. In the afternoon, after another Caesar salad, we went to Roma Bar and got ourselves iced coffees - really pretty good iced coffees -&nbsp;and sat outside&nbsp;making use of their WiFi signal. Soon after, we noticed the waitress clearing away the condiments and suchlike. It turned out that they closed at 4pm, just 45 minutes after we had arrived. We decided that we might as well stay until they turned the signal off. Some time later, we realised that it was well after 4 and the signal was still on. Haha! We thinks we spies a freebie...&nbsp;We stayed until early evening, when we took a break to go to a nearby sushi place for tea. It was another sushi carousel and the food was pretty good, but then sushi generally is. Mmmm, sushi...&nbsp;Afterwards, we went back to Roma Bar, where we were able to connect to the WiFi again, so stayed until quite late in the night getting entries online.&nbsp;More of the same the following day. This time though, we cunningly waited until after closing time to arrive at Roma, so we could use the WiFi without having to buy anything. In the evening, we cooked up sausages and mash at the hostel, which we washed down with some of the box of wine that we had bought, served in the plastic mugs that the hostel had provided us with. Very sophisticated.&nbsp;Then, for no good reason,&nbsp;a buckle on&nbsp;Kirsty's sandal snapped. We superglued it back together and went back out to Roma&nbsp;to burn some more midnight oil. We both seem to work better late at night so we got quite a lot done. Kirsty's sandal snapped again on the way back. Bugger.&nbsp;The following morning, with Kirsty's footwear held together with a cable tie, we sat outside the hostel and did some more writing, pausing for another elegant repast (leftover sausage butties) around midday.&nbsp;Laundry,&nbsp;a swim in the hostel pool, then&nbsp;off to Roma Bar again for more scrounged internet.&nbsp;That evening, we went back out to Mindil Beach for the Sunset Market. Much the same deal as&nbsp;before. We got curry wraps and Kirsty explained to the stall owner how to add up - he had tried to overcharge her and when she had corrected him, he gave her the wrong change. We went back to a stall where we had previously got tasty fresh juice.&nbsp;It was quite nice, but not as good as the first&nbsp;visit.&nbsp;Back to...go on, where d'you think...you'll never guess...it's...Roma Bar!&nbsp;Lots more TravelPoddage.&nbsp;The position of the few plug sockets&nbsp;put us very close to a Japanese girl who was listening to music on her computer while she worked. This would have been fine if it weren't for&nbsp;her only having&nbsp;four songs, which she played in a continuous loop for hours. After numerous cycles, Jacob interrupted "Close to You" by the Carpenters&nbsp;to ask whether she could possibly play anything else, as her short play list was sending us insane.&nbsp;She turned it down, but we could still make out occasional strains ("Aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaa-aaa-aaah! Close to You!"). It was such a cliche: whenever we went to Roma after hours, the tables were awash with young Japanese folks clattering away at&nbsp;their shiny&nbsp;tiny laptops. Of course, in the case of the girls,&nbsp;the shininess&nbsp;was covered up with&nbsp;fluffy pastel cases. We were routinely the only caucasian faces there.Jacob went&nbsp;off foraging and came back bearing a large pizza, which we set about hungrily. We stayed pretty late again, then made our way back to the hostel.&nbsp;The following morning, we packaged up some things to send back home: assorted bits of dead weight we no longer needed to carry. We ended up with a pretty large parcel, wrapped up in a bin liner and tape. This was all done very quietly (ever tried operating bin bags and sellotape quietly?) as, true to form, lots of people were sleeping in the dorm, despite it being late in the morning. At pretty much any time of day, the dorm could be found in darkness with at least one unconscious body in bed. Jacob had taken to calling it the Narcolepsy Ward.The Post Office lady&nbsp;clad our parcel in further reams of&nbsp;tape and sent it on its way, by sea, back to the UK. It should arrive home at about the same time as we do. Some more utility errands run, we tried to organise an airport shuttle. The&nbsp;hatchet faced baggage&nbsp;behind the desk just asked for our names to stick on her form&nbsp;when we asked about the prices, and scoffed with ridicule when we repeated the question. "Well, there's no other way to get there, sweetheart!"&nbsp;Aye, right, that sounds likely. We booked a shuttle through our hostel.&nbsp;After a bite to eat at a bar called 'Hogsbreath' (nice), we went over the road to the cinema and watched the Painted Veil, which was really good.&nbsp;Back at the hostel, we nattered&nbsp;to Tom, another of the people in the dorm, about the film. He'd seen it&nbsp;as he was a huge Somerset Maugham fan, and had loved it, so we had a good chinwag about movies and books and...well, the stuff you talk about with folks you meet in dorms.&nbsp;Roma Bar again!&nbsp;We'd got some DVDs so started doing the file backing up thing as we worked. We also spoke online to&nbsp;our bank, who, as you may remember, had told us whilst we were in Santiago that our cards would suddenly expire before we got home. It seems that we weren't the only customers who had complained about this problem. The call went&nbsp;suspiciously smoothly.&nbsp;Simply order new cards once we get back home and&nbsp;once they are activated, only then will the old ones&nbsp;expire. We have access to our own money until we get home! It's a sorry state when&nbsp;something as fundamental as that is cause for celebration.&nbsp;The following day was our last full day in Darwin.&nbsp;Tying up a&nbsp;few&nbsp;loose ends and another stint at Roma took care of most of the day,&nbsp;but we had quite a good evening planned.&nbsp;Darwin is home to the 'Deck Chair Cinema'.&nbsp;Darwin Film Society opened the Deck Chair Cinema in 1994 to show short runs of films which&nbsp;would otherwise not&nbsp;be shown to the&nbsp;audiences of Darwin. It was originally only intended as a temporary measure as several cinemas and drive-through movie places had closed as a result of the 1980s affair with home video.&nbsp;&nbsp;Entertainment options were pretty limited in&nbsp;Darwin. However, the Deck Chair Cinema&nbsp;concept was&nbsp;so popular&nbsp;that it quickly outgrew its original location and is now based by the waterfront,&nbsp;attracting audiences of over one thousand people per week in peak season.&nbsp;It tends towards contemporary films, often Australian made, with some classics thrown in for good measure.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was great.&nbsp;Off we went,&nbsp;armed with&nbsp;a picnic, and sat in deckchairs in the open, watching movies. We saw '2 Days in Paris', followed by 'Eastern Promise', whilst possums snuffled around our feet looking for scraps and bats flitted about overhead.The signal at Roma wasn't running - irritating, as we had got so used to internet on demand that we had arranged to call&nbsp;our friend&nbsp;Gareth at home that night. Instead, we rounded the evening off back at&nbsp;the hostel and chatted with Cookie, one of the few&nbsp;folks on the staff who seemed genuinely friendly.&nbsp;The following morning, we checked out and stowed our bags in the hostel cupboard and&nbsp;made a final visit&nbsp;to Roma, where we treated ourselves to a cooked breakfast.&nbsp;The week's devotion to stealing free internet had resulted in&nbsp;several new TravelPod entries but suddenly, the WiFi signal died before we could send them out. Good-O, the two times we rely on being able to use the connection, the bugger dies. In the dead of night, fair enough, but when we're actually paying customers? Grrr. We found another internet café and paid - paid, dammit - to send out the entries.&nbsp;Back to the hostel, where we collected our bags and sat outside waiting for our airport shuttle to arrive. Meanwhile, we nattered with Neil, a Scottish guy from our dorm who we had chatted with a few times. He was due to be going out on one of the fishing boats - a job that many of the hostel residents seemed to do - and would be at sea for 10 days. The work was hard and the pay was a proportion of the value of the catch, but a lot of people make a reasonable wage and spend a couple of months working in this way to fund further travel.&nbsp;The bus arrived and we were whisked away to Darwin airport. It was time to bid farewell to the land down under. We were off to Indonesia.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209539280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209539280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209539280/tpod.html Sat, 09 Aug 2008 08:45:22 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia

With Ayer's Rock receding in our rear view mirror, we stopped to take pictures of&nbsp; Mount Conner, another big large red lump of rock in the middle of nowhere. A car full of Australians had just arrived, whose conversation we overheard.&nbsp;"Wow, it's stunning!""Yeah, pretty impressive huh?""I've been waiting my whole life to visit Ayer's Rock and finally....it's just as spectacular as I'd imagined!""Ummm, that's not Ayer's Rock. It's Mount Conner. Ayer's Rock's another 60km or so""Oh. Shall we go then?"&nbsp;It's a shame that it gets so readily dismissed, as Mount Connor is at least as beautiful as its more famous neighbour.&nbsp;Anyway, onwards, to a petrol station with slightly cheaper prices than those being charged at Curtin Springs. We filled up the van, then queued for ages behind a bus load of Aboriginal folks who were giving the staff of the fuel station/café lots of hassle.&nbsp;It is obviously unfair to assume that all people of a particular race share a characteristic. There's a pretty good word for that sort of behaviour. Clearly, we hadn't met every Aboriginal person, but the ones that we had come across did uniformly seem to be causing some sort of trouble - either shouting at one another or at someone else, fighting, spitting or just lying in the street drinking some sort of beer or wine. &nbsp;This particular group were buying food from the café, eating some of it, throwing it back at the staff and refusing to pay, shouting, screaming and tearing lumps off each other. As they were all getting back onto their bus, we noticed a sign bolted to the bus door.&nbsp;"We have the right to search your bags for grog. Anyone found with grog will not be allowed on the bus".&nbsp;This was another reason that taking alcohol into Aboriginal lands was discouraged - a fairly significant proportion of Aboriginal folks have something of a problem with alcohol. &nbsp;It seems unfair to assume that all Aboriginal people behave in this way, but those who we encountered were not exactly the best representatives. This is unfortunate, as public opinion of the Aboriginals, who are generally reluctant to mix with non-native Australians, will be based on exactly these sort of encounters with them. Add this sort of bad publicity to the&nbsp;resentment&nbsp;felt&nbsp;by those who get a raw deal from the pro-Aboriginal 'equality' movement, and&nbsp;there's a fair degree&nbsp;of tension.&nbsp;Anyway, back on the road, we drove on up to Alice Springs, which, geographically speaking, is pretty much dead centre of Australia.&nbsp;In 1861-2, an expedition led by John McDouall Stuart&nbsp;established the first route from the south through to the north of Australia and passed to the west of what would later become Alice Springs. The settlement at Alice Springs came into existence in the&nbsp;1870s as a result of the construction of a telegraph station in 1872, although it wasn't until&nbsp;the discovery of gold in Arltunga, 100km east of Alice, that any significant settlement occured.The telegraph station was sited near what was optimistically thought to be a permanent spring in the normally dry Todd River.&nbsp;The waterhole was named Alice Springs after Alice Todd, the wife of the former Postmaster General of South Australia, Charles Todd, after whom the river is named.&nbsp; The name was chosen by the head surveyor, presumably in an attempt to win favour with Charles Todd. There is no record as to how successful that bit of sucking up was.&nbsp;Until the 1930s, the town was known as Stuart in honour of the explorer. In 1933, it was renamed Alice Springs.&nbsp;Apparently there was much debate amongst the 400 residents of the time about the whole thing, but we haven't been able to find any explanation as to why anybody thought to change it. Stuart&nbsp;lost his namesake town, but the&nbsp;highway from Adelaide to Darwin is still named in his honour.&nbsp;Alice was a strange place. We hadn't been sure what to expect, but the reality is that it is just another city. It is in the middle of nowhere, but you get no impression of that at all. We hung around for a while, found an internet place and checked our email, went to a supermarket to restock the van and bought pizza for lunch.&nbsp;We went back to the van, opened all of the doors and windows in an attempt to cool it down and sat outside under a tree to eat pizza. The next task was to try and find a water source to refill the van.&nbsp;We had asked at tourist information, who had directed us to a public toilet block across the road from where we had parked. We went to investigate but there was no sign of any tap. Back to tourist information, who told us that a fuel station nearby probably had some. Sure enough, they did, so we were able to fill the van's reservoir again.&nbsp;We decided to move on, but opted to pay a visit to the telegraph station. The place seemed interesting, but closed. We looked at the buildings, admiring the kangaroos which happily roamed the grounds. We also walked to the empty River Todd which 'flows' past the telegraph station. Apparently, people can be counted as a local of Alice Springs once they have seen the Todd River flow three times. Not as easy as it sounds - the river is dry for the majority of the time and it can take at least 20 years to achieve 'local' status by this definition.Every spring, the Todd River is the location of the Henley-on-Todd Regatta. This ironic event started as a joke in 1962 when Reg Smith and his colleagues at the Alice Springs Meteorological Bureau proposed a 'regatta' in the style of the famous Henley Royal Regatta. The irony, of course, is that the river never has any water in it. In fact, Alice Springs is 1500km from the nearest major body of water, but the people of Alice don't let a little thing like that get in the way of planning a boating festival.The whole event is very silly - grown men and women ('rowers') run, carrying the hulls of 'boats' (complete with holes in the bottom for the legs of the crew) along the dry, sandy Todd River - which has 'no fishing' signs erected along the banks for the festival. Most of the boats are made from beer cans, and tradition dictates that the crew must consume the contents of the cans used in the construction. The Henley-on-Todd Regatta is the&nbsp;only dry river regatta in the world - it's also the only regatta ever cancelled because it rained and there was water in the river. Rain, even if it falls miles away, can turn the Todd into a raging torrent. This happened in 1993, when the event was cancelled for the year due to flooding.&nbsp;The dry river bed is also the site of the (dry) springs after which the town is named. The 'springs' are not in fact a spring, they are a waterhole.&nbsp;&nbsp;A waterhole is essentially a reservoir - a deep hole or depression in rock that has filled with water, in this case from the periods when the river is running. A spring is a point where groundwater flows out of the ground. All in all, the nomenclature of this place is a little suspicious. Technically, the 'Springs' are a waterhole, and 'Alice' Todd never came to Alice Springs.Onwards again, we drove about 100 kilometres further before stopping for the night in another rest area. This one had a group of lads sat around a camp fire, playing music from their van. We wandered over, but they didn't seem that keen for us to join them, so we wandered off again. We ate the remains of the previous night's soup and watched some of the copy of 'The Mighty Boosh' which Renae had given to us,&nbsp;then it was time for&nbsp;bed.&nbsp;The following morning, Kirsty did some laundry and hung it from a poorly rigged washing line. The layby that we had chosen for the night came equipped with few places to string a line from. However, the baking hot sun meant that the washing was pretty much dry by the time we had eaten the sausage, scrambled egg and spring onion breakfast that Jacob had prepared. We hung all of the laundry from the curtain strings inside to finish off, then got on the road again.&nbsp;The first stop was Wycliffe Well, a tiny little settlement which is&nbsp;famed for its regular UFO activities.&nbsp;Quite why, if super-intelligent beings from another planet were visiting earth in order to check out what humans are up to, they would choose a tiny roadhouse in the middle of the desert as their main point of reference&nbsp;is a question to ponder, but apparently, if you were to stay up all night watching the skies, you would be considered unlucky not to see something. &nbsp;We stopped for fuel, bought a couple of beers from the rather extensive selection (the presence of which may go some way towards explaining all those alien encounters), put them in the fridge to have with our leftover pizza later and tried to chat to the owner and UFO enthusiast Lew Farcas, who owns the garage, cafe and attached holiday park, all of which are 'alien themed'. Lew turned out to be a particularly surly and unpleasant character and didn't seem willing to speak to us at all. Clearly he hadn't completed his customer service training yet. We tried to top up our water supplies and were directed to the tap by a different member of staff, but Lew had turned off the water supply and gruffly informed us that it would be $5 for any water. We weren't low, so we left it and left Wycliffe Wells.&nbsp;We drove on to the Devil's Marbles, where we sat in the back of the van and ate our left over pizza washed down with the beers. We then wandered around looking at the strange boulders.&nbsp;The Devil's Marbles are natural formations of&nbsp;round and oval shaped boulders and the site is considered by the Aboriginals to be sacred and is shrouded in legend. Apparently, the Kaytetye people (the&nbsp;indigenous people of&nbsp;that area), believe that the boulders are the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent, who passed through in Dreamtime. The Rainbow Serpent&nbsp;is seen as the inhabitant of permanent&nbsp;waterholes (an&nbsp;geographical feature which understandably is afforded a&nbsp;lot of importance by Aboriginal people) and&nbsp;controls water availability. Dreamtime is a fairly undefinable concept. Aboriginal people believe that there are two forms of time - the day to day stuff and another kind,&nbsp;described by some as 'everywhen' as it is a kind of confluence of past, present and future all rolled up in one woolly edged package. This form of time is called dreamtime or the dreaming, and is&nbsp;considered to&nbsp;be&nbsp;"more real than reality itself". How is that possible exactly? Not&nbsp;sure.Anyway, the rocks themselves are pretty interesting. Scientists believe that they are the result of granite, which&nbsp;had been under enormous pressure from the sandstone layers above it, suddenly being able to expand after folding of the earth's crust released the pressure. The expansion caused the granite to crack into lumps, which have been eroded by the actions of water and wind, which in the middle of the desert also carries a fair amount of sand.So there you have it. Two theories - they are the eggs of a serpent who controls water supply, or they are lumps of rock which have resulted from geological processes. Either way, they're quite photogenic.Onwards again. As we left the Devil's Marbles, the temperature gauge in the van was reading 40°C. Jesus, but it's hot.&nbsp;We drove on, stopping briefly to use a toilet at a rest stop. A man was reversing his vehicle towards us. Jacob noticed that he had no reverse lights, so Kirsty tried to inform him of this as she passed to go to the toilet block. His response threw her completely.&nbsp;"Oh, no, I don't have any reverse lights on this car."&nbsp;"Umm..OK then. Bye." &nbsp;What else can you say? Jacob had a few choice suggestions, but by then it was a little late.&nbsp;We pitched up for the night in a layby around 20 kilometres north of Elliot. We had stopped at a fuel station in Elliot to ask for advice on the possible whereabouts of laybys, due to the sudden lack of them for the past 100 kilometres or so. The guy there told us that there was a nice one in about 20 kilometres. The odometer measured it as 20.1. Them's pretty good directions.&nbsp;The following day, we drove on to Mataranka, stopping en route at Fran's Pies, which, our guidebook suggested, it would be a crime to miss. The choice was camel or spicy camel, so we had one of each. They were alright, but nothing to write home about and quite pricey.&nbsp;Mataranka is home to some hot springs, to which we paid a visit. The hot springs consist of a series of waterholes, fed by underground thermal springs. Apparently, the water originates in Papua New Guinea and bubbles to the surface at a rate of 30.5 million litres per day. The river has been canalised and the natural pools have been lined, with tiled walls and steps with handrails to allow people to get in safely. Overall, although this makes the pools accessible to everyone, it results in a very sanitised experience. If it weren't for the trees overhead, you could just be in a public swimming pool. The water was pretty warm (34°C), but having experienced the heat and the natural surroundings of the thermal pools at Rotarua in New Zealand, we were a little underwhelmed.&nbsp;After a bit of a soak, we left and hit the road again, stopping briefly in Katherine. Katherine is located approximately where the tropical region starts and there is a marked difference in the vegetation. In fact, the transition from red dusty nothingness to green lush foliage is unnervingly rapid.&nbsp;We stopped to stretch our legs and explore Katherine. A country music festival was advertised, but nothing much seemed to be going on at the time. It was Friday afternoon and we assumed that the festivities would be kicking off in the evening.&nbsp;Neither of us are the most passionate fans of country music and we were, by now, reaching the end of our time on the road. We opted to push on and get some more miles under our belt so that we could reach Darwin easily the following day.&nbsp;We stopped for the night at a small layby between the towns of Douglas Daly and Adelaide River and made ourselves an omelette for tea. The following morning, we had beans on toast to use up the remainder of our food supplies and donated most of our remaining apples to a couple of guys in a nearby van. &nbsp;We cleaned as much red dust out of the van as we could and made sure that it looked as spic and span as was viable, then drove on to Darwin. On the way, we passed a large blaze a little way from the road, with no visible bodies in attendance. It could have been a controlled burn with the controllers obscured by smoke, but it looked pretty severe, so Kirsty phoned it in to the Fire Brigade. They didn't know anything about any controlled fires, so said they'd take a look. No idea what became of it, but we may have helped prevent something nasty. Speaking of something nasty...We eventually managed to find a place to empty the toilet waste water - the least pleasant bit of van hire - and returned the van.&nbsp;We waited at a bus stop and chatted with a Dutch guy who had also just dropped off a van. An hour later, after Kirsty had been trying in vain to hitch a lift, the bus finally arrived to take us the last few miles into central Darwin.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209453540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209453540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209453540/tpod.html Sat, 09 Aug 2008 08:18:14 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Ayer's Rock, Australia

Leaving Coober Pedy and its strange opal mining machines silhouetted against the setting sun behind us, we pushed on for somewhere to stay for the night. The opal blowers, designed in Coober Pedy, are huge great Meccano-esque vacuum cleanery, conveyor belty things, mounted on the back of flatbed trucks, used for sucking the 'mullock' (stuff that's been drilled) out of the ground. The columns of dust&nbsp;can be seen for&nbsp;miles. In shadow, with the dying orange sun behind them, they look like a swarm of&nbsp;giant alien mantis.It got dark pretty quickly and it wasn't long before we had our first encounter with the wildlife.&nbsp;A fairly sizeable kangaroo bounded out ahead of us. Millimetres further than the stopping distance of the van ahead of us. Jacob hit the brakes, whilst the kangaroo stopped and looked at us quizzically. It bounded on its way and we continued - somewhat more slowly and cautiously with our noses pressed against the windscreen scanning for errant wildlife - on ours.&nbsp;It turned out that one of the fences that edge the highway was down, so a higher than usual count of stray cattle, kangaroos and other miscellaneous beasties could be found wandering and bouncing around. The petrol station man who informed us of this also mentioned that this happened quite frequently, which may go some way towards explaining the quantity of road kill (mostly of kangaroo origin) that we passed. &nbsp;We finally found a layby around 120km north of Marla and stopped for the night, fed ourselves with sausage and bean stew, entertained ourselves with card games and then hit the hay.&nbsp;The following day, we took a detour from the main Adelaide to Darwin highway. The kilometre allowance that we had been given had obviously been calculated to allow this particular detour - it seems unlikely that many people would agree to drive all the way from Adelaide to Darwin if they weren't allowed to take in Ayer's Rock on the way.&nbsp;Guidebooks may well tell you about the skyline being dominated by the magnificent and solitary red lump of Ayer's Rock in an otherwise flat landscape for miles and miles before you actually reach it. God knows what route the writers of these guidebooks are taking to get to it however, as the view from the main road to Ayer's Rock is dominated by the magnificent and solitary red lump of Mount Conner in an otherwise flat landscape. It is only once you get past Mount Conner that you start to be able to make out Ayer's Rock - along with the nearby Olgas, which are pretty big and magnificent themselves - rising dramatically out of the admittedly otherwise flat landscape.&nbsp;We stopped for diesel before getting as far as Yuluru, the nearest town to the Rock itself, assuming that the fuel there would be obscenely expensive. Turned out that the place that we had stopped was actually the most expensive fuel station in all of Australia, at $2.25 per litre. Yes, we know that fuel prices in the UK are worse than that, but by local standards, that's pretty damned obscene. &nbsp;We put in the minimum amount we could get away with to get us to the Rock and back to the more reasonably priced fuel stations on the main highway. Our wallets considerably leaner, we drove on. &nbsp;Reversing back (yep, there's that siren again) to read the sign that we'd just passed, we thought we both must have made a mistake. It looked like it said that it was not permitted for us to drive through the tribal reserves with alcohol in our possession. &nbsp;Turned out that the sign said that it was not permitted for us to drive through the tribal reserves with alcohol in our possession.&nbsp; &nbsp;Right, so we'll leave it here at the side of the road and collect it on our way back, shall we? Don't be silly. We can understand that the people who lay claim to this section of land believe that the place has spiritual significance, so would prefer people not to be drunk and disorderly on it. They may even like people not to drink whilst on the land. To object to us owning alcohol which we had no intention of drinking in the reserve seemed a little precious though.&nbsp;To be on the safe side, we packed the whisky into the bottom of a rucksack, which we were storing in the least accessible of the many lockers anyway. We intended to claim to have forgotten about it being there in the unlikely event of the vehicle being searched. The gin, which was icy cold through being kept in the freezer, would have been a bit more difficult to explain, so we hid it behind the other contents of the freezer and hoped that a searcher wouldn't think to look there.&nbsp;Predictably, we weren't searched or questioned about the contents of our van at any point. &nbsp;As we neared Ayer's Rock, we pulled over and climbed a nearby hill to take some photographs. We wondered briefly if there was much to be gained by paying to go any closer, but decided that it would be a shame to come all this way and not go and visit properly.&nbsp;We bought our entrance passes and parked at the visitor centre. A member of staff there gave us some information on the walks around the rock and the climb up to the top of it.&nbsp;Ayer's Rock, in case&nbsp;you haven't heard of it, is a large red sandstone rock in the middle of Australia. It is 348 metres high and masures 9.4km in circumference. It is thought that the majority of its bulk is underground.&nbsp;It is what is known as an 'inselberg', which means 'isolated mountain'. It is an isolated remnant left after the slow erosion of an original mountain range. It is unusual as it is one lump, with no joins or splits. This means that scree slopes and soil do not readily develop. It is this which led to its survival, while the surrounding rocks were eroded.It was 'discovered' by Europeans in the 1870's, when British explorer&nbsp;Ernest Giles sighted the range in 1872, then the following year, William Gosse, another British explorer,&nbsp;mapped his discoveries and named Ayers Rock in honour of the then Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers.Ayers Rock is now more frequently known as 'Uluru', which is its aboriginal name.&nbsp;Its official name is, however, Uluru/Ayers Rock,&nbsp;to which it was changed from Ayers Rock/Uluru a few years back. It was one of the first places in the world to officially have a dual name. It's sort of frowned upon now to call it Ayers Rock, but as it's officially both, and our native language is English...well, we'll use its English name.&nbsp;When we went to Easter Island, nobody would have expected us to call it Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua, for example.The&nbsp;native people of Australia have been, over the past few centuries, treated in a thoroughly disgusting manner by European settlers, and now the tide has begun to turn. Unfortunately though, as with any backlash against oppression, things tend to swing a little too far the other way.&nbsp;The recent 'apology' delivered by the Australian government&nbsp;to the Aboriginal tribes was huge news, but really, were those guilty of the crimes apologising to the victims? No, of course not. People&nbsp;with the same job titles as those who committed the crimes were apologising to descendants of the victims, so what, beyond politically correct crowd-pleasing, was achieved?Herein though lies the heart of the problem: to&nbsp;voice the sentiments of the previous paragraph is to automatically label yourself as a morally bankrupt,&nbsp;closed minded, ignorant racist thug who 'just doesn't get it'.&nbsp;This sort of "Ah, no,&nbsp;I'm the son of the son of the downtrodden and&nbsp;you're the white guy, so&nbsp;my concerns are paramount" attitude&nbsp;seems to garner a lot of sympathy from all quarters - everyone&nbsp;either unthinkingly goes along with it, or&nbsp;just&nbsp;nervously keeps quiet about their objections. In this climate, open discussion and consequent movement towards genuine equality is terribly stunted.Obviously, we have no time for&nbsp;any sort of racist opinions and their consequent actions,&nbsp;and that's sort of what we're saying really.&nbsp;It would be nice if everybody could be treated equally, and 'everybody', much as we shudder at the thought of having to point this out, includes white caucasian Europeans.&nbsp;The reverence with which the rock is treated by the tribespeople is given this similarly inflated legal importance. There are areas which are&nbsp;off-limits to visitors, because they are 'sacred'. There are explanations in the little interpretation centre thing about how certain areas can only be visited by elders because of their spiritual significance - "Please try to understand that this is important to us, not just a great big rock to climb on". Well, OK, but if the next line&nbsp;of text points out that they cannot explain the significance to visitors - "it is secret&nbsp;because it is&nbsp;so sacred" - then how, precisely, are we to understand? Why, after such patronising treatment, would we want to?Ultimately, it's a rock. In some cultures, it has religious significance. In others, it inspires people to clamber up it. Neither is a more valid opinion&nbsp;regarding how it should be treated than the other, as both are the opinions of people who didn't build it, they just found it in the desert. The argument that the original 'owners' have more of a claim than the Europeans is both unfair (nobody gets to claim what is 'right' for a rock) and flawed when you consider these 'owners' had no concept of land ownership until it was introduced to them by the Europeans!"We would prefer you not to climb the rock as it is important to us. Also, some people have been hurt whilst climbing the rock. If you got hurt, we would be very sad, and your parents would be very sad too. They would cry a lot." &nbsp;Just who do they think that they're addressing? Whilst we don't doubt that our parents would be sad if we got hurt, we appreciate being spoken to like adults, not toddlers.&nbsp;All things considered, we decided to climb.&nbsp;The first section was pretty steep. However, a chain handrail is cemented into the rock to assist with the ascent. Once you reach the top, there is a path marked out across the surface with a dotted white line, similar to the one that you would find down the centre of a road. Oh, how very sacred. It seems to us that if they were serious about not wanting people to climb up the rock, they wouldn't go to such efforts to make it so accessible. &nbsp;The light was just starting to change in the prelude to sunset, so the shadows and colours of the rock close up were quite impressive. We decided to get back down and go to the 'Sunset Viewing Area' ready for the colour changes that occur when the sun sets.&nbsp;Again, guidebooks can be very misleading. The sunset was pretty. The rock did&nbsp;change through red to orangeish and then brown before getting quite black. At no point did we feel compelled to 'gasp in awe', as our guidebook seemed to think we would at this spectacle. It was very nice, very pretty, but not exactly 'awesome', although, inevitably, there were some Americans about who said that it was. Mind you, they thought that their bottles of Coke were awesome, so it seemed that they were quite easy to impress. It is possible, to be fair, that standing amongst all the other tourists at the designated Sunset Viewing Area detracted from how awesome it otherwise may have been.&nbsp;We joined the line of departing vehicles and headed back towards the free campsite at Curtin Springs, where we had stopped for expensive diesel earlier in the day. The sun having set, it was pretty dark again so we were both looking out closely for wandering beasties. &nbsp;Just before we reached the campsite, Kirsty got to say something that she's never said before and is unlikely to say that often in the future.&nbsp;"Watch out for the camels!"&nbsp;Camels successfully avoided, we got to the campsite without further event, made ourselves potato soup and bedded down for the night. &nbsp;
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209364440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209364440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jacobandkirsty/round_the_world/1209364440/tpod.html Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:55:01 -0400 Heading West till we get home

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Coober Pedy, South Australia, Australia

We didn't leave Adelaide until the afternoon, so we didn't get particularly far on the first day of our great journey north. Also, we were pretty tired as we had got to bed late the previous night, so we stopped at a roadside layby, climbed into the bed above the cab and had a snooze. Aaah - the benefits of having your bed and your means of transport in the same compact package.&nbsp;Actually, this thing was far from compact. Once we awoke from our doze, it was Kirsty's turn to take the wheel - a prospect she was far from pleased about. She drove us to our first fuel stop (the van would prove to be pretty thirsty), where she got terrified by the extraordinarily loud alarm that went off when the van was put into reverse. A lot of large vehicles, when reversing, produce a beeping warning sound from somewhere near the back of the van. This van had that. In addition, there was a siren just behind the driver's head, the urgency of which seemed to signify that the end of the world was approaching at the very least.&nbsp;Having filled up, it was time to leave the fuel station. The problem with that was that the only exit route was closed due to a road accident, which meant further reversing (with attendant sirens) then driving the wrong way out onto the dual carriageway, hooking the van around so that we were facing in the right direction. &nbsp;Jacob is an expert at this sort of manoeuvre. He calls it 'Steve McQueen-ing' ("This calls for a quick Steve McQueen") and it has got us out of many a tricky position on unfamiliar roads in the past.&nbsp;Unfortunately, Kirsty was still driving.&nbsp;Still, with a bit of coaxing and reassurance, we made it safely back onto the main road and drove on for a while. About one hundred kilometres north of Port Augusta, we decided to call it a night. We found a layby with a few vans in, parked up and went outside. &nbsp;There was no light pollution from anywhere. The stars were incredible - we could see the Milky Way swirling around above us. It is rare to see so many stars. However beautiful it may have been though, there was no denying: it was cold.&nbsp;For the first time in a while, we dug our jackets out of the bottom of our rucksacks, used the toilets - complete with metal seats - then settled into the van for the night. We had a gin and tonic, complete with slices of Gordon, the Ramsay Street Lime, who turned out to be a lemon. Gordon is a deviant.&nbsp;After a meal of corned beef hash - the quintessential camping repast - we played cards and sipped at whiskies before climbing up the little rickety ladder into bed.&nbsp;The following day, we reached the strange town of Coober Pedy.&nbsp;It's an odd little place, which owes its existence&nbsp;really to the discovery of opals here in 1915. Nobody would want to live here otherwise. Temperatures get to well in excess of 40°C, with less than 20% humidity,&nbsp;so a lot of the town's very small population live in holes in the ground. Houses can be bored out of the hillside for about the same price as building&nbsp;them on the surface, and underground, you don't need air conditioning. There's even an underground church.The conditions are so inhospitable that the first tree ever found here was welded together out of scrap iron, and the Coober Pedy Golf Club&nbsp;members play at night,&nbsp;with glow-in-the-dark balls on a completely barren course, carrying around a small piece of turf from which to tee-off. You&nbsp;wouldn't survive eighteen holes in Coober Pedy during the day.&nbsp;As you may have gathered, the centre of Australia is&nbsp;very, very dry. Coober Pedy is one of the last places that it is reliably possible to fill up with water before - well, just about as far as Darwin. We made use of the public water dispensing thingy on the edge of town, which provided high pressure water at 60 litres for 20c, or, if the hose that your van comes equipped with doesn't attach to a high pressure nozzle, from a small tap at 15 litres for 20c. Guess what kind of hose attachment we had.&nbsp;The van restocked with water, we restocked on supplies for us. 'Hot Pop Offer' the sign informed us. We picked up the requisite two bottles, then noticed a fridge full of the same brand, so swapped them for two cold bottles. At the till, however, the pop didn't go through as being on special offer. When we questioned this, we were told that the offer only applied to 'hot' pop (rather than being a 'hot offer', as we had assumed), not bottles from the fridge. Cheeky buggers. We bought the 'hot pop' (actually merely tepid - even Coober Pedy isn't <i>that hot) and put it in the fridge in the van.&nbsp;Outside Coober Pedy is a place called the Moon Plains. It is down 16 kilometres of unsealed road. Our contract for the van advised us that we shouldn't take it on unsealed roads. The leaflet that they had given us advising of interesting places to see advised us that we shouldn't miss the Moon Plains. What to do?&nbsp;We took the unsealed road. The scenery was deserted and full of nothing - but so had a lot of the highway to Coober Pedy. Then suddenly, just after a line of trees, it was even more full of nothing. It did look kind of moon like. Apparently, they used it for filming Stark, Pitch Black and&nbsp;other films that require strange, otherworldly moonlike landscapes - although Stark was set in a desert in Australia, so the use of the Moon Plains wasn't exactly stretching the truth very far at all. &nbsp;To be honest, although it looked a bit more empty and desolate than the scenery that we had driven through to reach it, it probably wasn't worth the risk to our deposit of breaking the terms of our contract. Plus, the van was now covered, inside and out, with red dust.&nbsp;Hey ho. The whole of central Australia is red and dusty. By the time we get to Darwin, they wouldn't be able to tell that we'd taken an unsealed road. At least, that's what we were telling ourselves.
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