Photos, Superlatives, and Stats!

We are pleased to announce that all our trip photos are now available online. You can see them at the following link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zudnic/collections/

Way back when, we promised some superlatives. Here they are.

Hotels Etc.

• Best Meal: We splurged on a high-end meal at the Victoria & Albert Waterfront in Cape Town.
• Worst Meal: Something that appeared to approximate Kraft Mac & Cheese that we made in Kaikoura, New Zealand.
• Best Hotel: Tie, Park Plaza, Beijing; Cradog B&B, Ireland
• Worst Hotel: Cactus Jack's, Rotorua, New Zealand - cold and grungy.
• Best Bed: Cradog B&B, Ireland
• Worst Bed: Our first hotel in Xi'an, China. The Chinese for some reason insist on rock-hard beds, and this was the worst.
• Best Bathroom: Park Plaza, Beijing
• Worst Bathroom: Jolly Boys Backpackers, Zambia - someone needs to tell these folks that shower curtains need to be changed at least once a year. And some hot water would be nice too.
  
• Best Breakfast: tie, Hotel Rugenpark, Interlaken, Switzerland; City Lodge, Johannesburg, South Africa. Both these places had wide variety of breakfast foods, attractively laid out.
• Worst Breakfast: Il Fiori Napoli, Naples - at an otherwise very nice B&B, breakfast here is coffee and a croissant they may or may not feel like heating up in the microwave.
• Wierdest Hotel Room Feature: The ceiling-mounted heating element at our hostel in Launceston, Tasmania. Heat rises, people.
  

People and Experiences

• Best Locals: South Africa. The nicest people in the world, we swear. At Kruger National Park, they volunteered to teach us the local way of barbecue, braai. When we visited other parts of the country, including very poor areas, we encountered nothing but wonderful people.
• Worst Locals: China. People are unwilling to help clueless foreigners, not to mention the spitting.
• Most Overrated: Italy. It's not that pretty (except Capri) and the people there are very rude. We left a bit bewildered why so many people rave about it.
  
• Most Underrated: South Africa. Such a wonderful country, beautiful countryside, spectacular animals, and the aforementioned locals.
• Best Trains: Austria - leather seats and waiter service.
• Worst Trains: China. People spitting on the floor, grimy walls, and no space.
• Best Flight: Tough to say, but generally flights on Cathay Pacific and Qantas had the best food and service. Qantas had by far the best inflight entertainment.
• Worst Flight: The one that was made the worst by the Airline was from Krakow to Dublin, departing at 6:00 AM, the flight attendant wouldn't allow passengers to spread out to empty seats. Madrid to Cairo had the worst time, departing at 12:30 AM and arriving at 3:30 AM. Also our JetStar flight from Melbourne to Hobart, Australia, was delayed by 3.5 hours.
• Best Airport: The quick, easy ones that weren't under construction, had decent food options, didn't gouge you on departure taxes. These included Queenstown, New Zealand; Cairns, Australia; and Krakow, Poland.
  
• Worst Airport: Livingstone, Zambia. Four flights departed around the same time - and the check-in room is about the size of your average Starbucks.
  
• Most Chaotic City: Tie, Naples, Italy and Cairo, Egypt. Cairo doesn't even have traffic lights. And in Naples, Vespa scooters follow no rules and are everywhere. Cairo:
• Most Relaxing City: Kaikoura, New Zealand - at the foot of the mountains, but on the ocean, Kaikoura is as beautiful a town as you will ever see.
• Most Peaceful Spot: Cradog B&B, Freshford, Ireland. Satellite TV, rolling hills, and two friendly dogs.
  
• Scariest Place: Johannesburg, South Africa - the crime rate here is out of control.
  
• Best City for Eating: Bangkok. Everything is wonderful and cheap.
• Worst City for Eating: Yichang, China. Very few restaurants, we had to eat at our hotel, which was pretty abysmal.
• Best Surprise - Capri Island, Italy. We went there on a whim, after missing a ferry to Positano. Capri is nothing short of stunningly beautiful. Who cares that it's a tourist trap?
• Biggest Disappointment - Madrid. For a major European capital, it's pretty boring.
• Best One-Day Activity - Swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura, New Zealand; diving the Great Barrier Reef, Australia.
  
• Prettiest City: You can't beat Cape Town's stunning location, and the cliff-clinging towns of Italy's Cinque Terre region are postcard-perfect.
• Ugliest City: Yichang, China.
• Happiest Moment: Watching four lionesses attempt to make dinner out of a herd of giraffes; reaching the top of the Devil's Ladder while climbing New Zealand's Tongariro Crossing.
• Scariest Moment: When we took the "scam bus" from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia, the bus stopped 5 km from the border and the driver demanded our passports for "express visa service" - then sped away with them on a moped. We got them back, thankfully.
• Best Find: Just north of Kaikoura, New Zealand, we found an isolated pool at the foot of a waterfall, where we found dozens of baby seals playing.
• Coolest Nature Experience: The aforementioned lion strike, plus seeing the world's rarest species of penguin lumber out of the water and back to her nest for the night in New Zealand.
• Most Interesting People We Met: Jim and Sheri, who are driving their Land Cruiser around the world for five years, through some pretty godforsaken places. Their website is worth a read.
• Most Rustic Country: Cambodia by a long shot. A gas station:
• Most Eye-Opening Experience: Driving through rural Cambodia and seeing the crushing poverty; Sam's Cultural Tour in Cape Town, where we got to visit the townships.
• Lowest Moment: Duct-taping together a ripped plastic shopping bag because we needed it and we were out of spares.

You might also be interested to hear the list of things that were confiscated by airline personnel in various places around the globe: duct tape, cans of tuna fish, re-usable ice bricks, mustard. All of these things are serious security risks, obviously.

Also, in one of our first blog posts, we listed some stats on the trip. After actually going, the numbers have been revised.

• 44,521 49,420 flight miles
• Five continents and at least nine 21 countries (including the Vatican)
• 17 24 airports
• Five Nine airlines (American, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, JetStar, Hainan, Air China, Comair (South Africa), British Airways, Iberia)
  
• This is a map of all our flights:
• If you're interested, these are all the airports: Boston, USA (BOS); Los Angeles, USA (LAX); Auckland, NZ (AKL); Queenstown, NZ (ZQN); Melbourne, Australia (MEL); Hobart, Australia (HBA); Cairns, Australia (CNS); Ayers Rock, Australia (AYQ); Sydney, Australia (SYD); Bangkok, Thailand (BKK); Siem Reap, Cambodia (REP); Hong Kong, Hong Kong (HKG); Beijing (Peking), China (PEK); Xi'an (Xian), China (XIY); Yichang, China (YIH); Johannesburg, South Africa (JNB); Cape Town, South Africa (CPT); Nelspruit, South Africa (MQP); Livingstone, Zambia (LVI); London - Heathrow, UK (LHR); Cairo, Egypt (CAI); Madrid, Spain (MAD); Kraków, Poland (KRK); Dublin, Ireland (DUB).
  

European Wrap-Up

So the camera came in the mail today, so we can finally wrap up our what-we-did blogs.

The last blog was from Krakow, in Poland, but it was pretty much a rant on how much we hate transportation in Eastern Europe. We didn't mention much about Prague or Krakow.

After Budapest we made our way to Prague, which is a cute wedding-cake of a town. The Old Town is picture-postcard Europe, where all the buildings are impossibly picturesque. The downside is that it doesn't really feel like a city. We felt this way in a few European places - they are so overrun with tourists that no one lives there any more. All the shops are souvenir stores and all the cafes are more expensive than they need to be. It doesn't take a long walk from the tourist center to get into the real town, which we preferred.

Most people who visit Prague rave about it, and if you wanted to pick one European city to visit to see what the Continent might have looked like 200 years ago, Prague is it. For us, one day was sufficient, and we moved on to Krakow.

The purpose of visiting Krakow was solely to visit the concentration camp at Auschwitz. The magnitude of the place should be self-explanatory and we'll publish just this one photo, which shows the platform at Birkenau where the new arrivals disembarked the train and were sorted.

The thing that really got our goat at Auschwitz was how blatantly disrespectful the visitors were. For example, in the gas chamber, you enter and there is a marble sign that says in English, Polish and Hebrew (paraphrasing) - "You are entering a place where tens of thousands of people were murdered. Please show respect and refrain from taking photos."

You guessed it, people were inside snapping away. We saw this kind of behavior all through the trip, including people taking flash photographs of priceless Egyptian and Pompeian relics. At least Auschwitz was relatively free of names carved into wood, which was alarmingly common throughout the sites we saw along the way.

In Eastern Europe, there are some interesting relics of the not-so-distant Communist past. We visited a statue park outside Budapest, where they have collected a few flamboyant and/or bizarre statues left over from the days behind the Iron Curtain.


You can see concrete-block housing just outside the historic city centers of many Eastern European cities. This example is in Prague.

Not to mention Communist-era cars.

From Krakow, we flew on SkyEurope (worst. airline. ever.) to Dublin, Ireland, where we were set to meet our friends Sean and Ann as they started their own round-the-world trip.

We beat Sean and Ann to Ireland by a day, so we rented the world's smallest car (as necessary in Ireland, they have the scariest roads on Earth) and drove to the boonies for a night.

The roads are small, but it sure is fun to drive!
We stayed in a nice B&B and visited the ruins of a place called Kells Priory, an old monastery.

Back in Dublin, once Sean and Ann arrived, we struggled to find things to do other than drink. Dublin is a serious party town and there isn't much to do there otherwise. We took one day and drove to Northern Ireland, where we visited a unique geological formation called the Giants Causeway. It is made up of hexagonal rocks that look like pilings.

The Causeway is set amongst some idyllic scenery, but the most interesting thing was the lengths that Sean would go to in order to get the best photo possible.

We're home, but the blog isn't quite done. Coming up.. superlatives, updates on the re-immersion process, and a photo extravaganza!

Stay Tuned for Scenes From the Next...

We got home last Tuesday, but we have some catching up to do on the blog.

One reason for the delay is that we lost our camera in Northern Ireland. Happily, a good Samaritan turned it in and the local hotel was kind enough to post it to us. (Here's a happy and hearty plug for the Causeway Hotel in Bushmills, No. Ireland.)

Once the camera arrives, we'll blog about our last few days in Europe. We'll also have some superlatives and closing thoughts (a-la Jerry Springer). So stay tuned!

Tales of European Transport

We thought it might make a good blog subject to discuss the myth that public transportation, and indeed traveling in general, within Europe is easy.

Here are a few things that have frustrated us.

We bought a Eurail pass, which cost a ton of money right up front. It theoretically allows us to travel within Europe endlessly. But there have been a ton of hidden fees and surprises.

Most trains are "mandatory reservation" trains, which means that your fare is covered by Eurail, but not necessarily the fee associated with the reserved seat. These fees have ranged from a few dollars to 90 Euro ($125) each for a sleeper train from Madrid to Lausanne, Switzerland (near Geneva). So that has really added up.

Then there's the issue of scope. The pass provided a map, which shows routes across Europe, but the countries where the pass isn't valid are shown in gray. Thinking this accurate, we got on the train in Budapest, changed in Vienna and headed north to Prague. When the Czech conductor came by to check our ticket, he said that our Eurail pass was not valid in the Czech Republic and that we either had to pay an upcharge or get off the train. Lacking local currency, we chose to get off in the next town, where we had to buy a ticket on the next one. It thankfully cost just a few dollars because it was a local train, but smelled of BO and took three hours longer than it should have.

So all our tickets in the Czech Republic and Poland we had to pay out of pocket. This little deception on Eurail's part has cost us a few hundred dollars.

And that doesn't even include the subway. After arriving in Prague four hours later than expected, we tried to buy a ticket on the metro. But at 8pm, all the ticket booths were closed, and the machines only took coins. This does not make sense in the country's biggest train station, where arriving passengers are mostly from other countries, and lucky to have local currency, let alone small coins. Luckily in Prague they don't actually take tickets when you get on the metro, so we had to risk it.

Sometimes, even when you do pay, they find nice little excuses to extort you. Arriving in Krakow this afternoon, we bought a ticket on the streetcar (2.50 Polish Zlotny, or about $.90) We got on the tram, and a man came by to check tickets. We produced ours, but we hadn't stamped the ticket in the appropriate box when we got on, resulting in a 150 zlotny fine ($56). Welcome to Krakow. This fine went in the guy's back pocket as well. This episode really ticked us off, because we were obviously tourists who had just arrived, bags and all, and it wasn't like we didn't buy a ticket.

Anyway, I apologize for the rant, but we are honestly getting a bit frustrated at European public transportation, which is supposedly so "easy" and "efficient."

Excuse me, I Abfahrted.

Please excuse the blog title. Sure, it's a bit juvenile, but we have to admit seeing the German word for "Departure" about four thousand times a day in various train stations is a bit amusing. The other day, we abfahrted in about a dozen different stations. Cue Beavis & Butt-Head.

Anyway we last left you in Naples, which is in the South of Italy. The day after our last blog, we visited Pompeii, which was a bustling Roman town. One day in 72 AD Mt Vesuvius, sitting just behind town, blew, causing the whole place to be buried in about six meters (20 feet) of volcanic ash in a matter of minutes. No one had time to flee, and a lot of the people died right where they sat. The town was basically buried as a time capsule.

It is a bit freaky to be in Pompeii because a lot of the remnants of daily life are still apparent - political slogans painted on people's houses, graffiti, etc. A lot of the artifacts were excavated by the authorities so the town is essentially a bare shell now.

Freakiest of all, the ash managed to preserve the bodies of the victims in such a way that the archaeologists were able to create plaster casts of them and show the positions the people were in when they died. This person was particularly poignant, as she or he appears to be praying or begging.

From Naples, we headed north to Venice, which is so exorbitantly expensive we were only able to stay one day. But it really is all it's cracked up to be. The canals are cool, and there are gondolas everywhere (the most amusing of them including a stereotype Italian singer man, with accordion, serenading a gondola full of Japanese tourists).
We basically spent the day wandering the streets, which was cool - basically, just being in Venice is the reason to go.
The main square in Venice (Piazza San Marco) is known for pigeons.

After that we spent a very. long. day. getting to Innsbruck, Austria. The train left Venice at about 10 AM and was supposed to get in at about 4.30 PM, but due to the overwhelming wonderfulness of the Italian train system, we didn't get there until 10:30, and then we were stupid enough to get on the wrong bus, so we didn't get in until midnight.

But we have been riding the trains all over Europe. They vary widely in quality. The Austrian trains are by far the best ones we have encountered so far. They are very comfortable.
Long hours on trains means we've been reading a lot. That's not to say that we don't get bored.

That's our Platypus water bag on my head.

Anyway, Innsbruck is famous for having hosted the 1968 and 1972 winter Olympics. It's a pretty town.

We went to visit the recently refurbished Olympic ski jump, which makes you wonder who would be crazy enough to start way up there and then jump off the ramp. We went to the top of the ramp and mentally went through the motions of jumping off. Pretty scary stuff. This is the only picture we could manage that actually shows the scale of the thing. The jumpers start at the very top.
If you're wondering what ski jumping looks like, here's a video on YouTube.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UE31hCwYoMg&mode=related&search=

Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time in Innsbruck, so we headed off to Budapest, which is the capital of Hungary. Budapest isn't a place a lot of Americans would think to come, but it's got pretty much everything you would think of in an European capital. The architecture here is stunning, it's orderly, and clean. We like it a lot more than other cities that you might otherwise think of, like Rome.

Here I am being stupid with some souvenirs for sale on the street.
Hungary has some pretty cool money. It's called forint and it's got these great photos of the heroes of Hungarian history. Here's a picture:
http://www.davidpride.com/Europe/Hungary/images/Forint.jpg

We are on a mad dash to finish up our travels in Europe. We are in Budapest two days, then on to Prague for just one day, then one day in Krakow to see the Auschwitz concentration camp. From there, we are off to Ireland for a few days to visit with our friends Sean and Ann who are going to be there right at the start of their own round the world trip. Then home. We are leaving in just ten days! Time does fly.

By the way, you can click on most of our photos and they will blow up to a bigger size.

Pronto?....ENGLISH!!!...Pronto?...ENGLISH!!!

Sorry it has taken us awhile to get you a blog.. we have after 4 months discovered that if you buy a card reader you don't have to search for hours to find an internet cafe that has photo capablities... This is genius at work folks.. only took 4 months.. I would say that 's a record!

OK.. Onto blogging.. We last left you in Switzerland, happy and free and singing the sounds of music while spinning on a mountain top. Yah , now we are in Italy.. the only spinng we have accomplished now is getting out of the way of the masses of vespa scooters without being flattened . This is a task that you cannot take lightly.. your very survival depends on it!

We started in a very beautiful region called Cinque Terre. Lovely, touristy as hell, but very nice. The name literally means 5 lands, corresponding to five towns in the region. The houses all cling to a side of a cliff over- looking spectaular ocean views. Here is a nice example. The town is bigger than it looks and continues on the other side of the cliff.

The terrain from Cinque Terre proved rather difficult. We arrived in the first Cinque Terre town, Riomaggiore, at 8pm and was told that our room was given away.. but "not to worry we have another place for you to stay across the street" and up a million stairs. Hot, sweaty and overall annoyed, we settled into our room to find that our sink was out on the balcony and our bathroom was in another person's room... wierd ????
Here is a great photo of Bob doing his morning rountine out on the balcony.
The view is great though.. not sure what the women below us thought of our morning routine...
We walked a few of the trails that connect the towns. The area is beautiful and not to be missed for anyone who visits. Here was the beginning of our first taste of italian culture.We have learned while we are here that all of the italian stereotypes are true. They are loud, argumentative and love to flail their hands wildly.. to those of my wonderful relatives reading this... I wonder where we got it????

We also did a quick day trip to Pisa, this is all you need to know..This is not the nicest town we have been to. We went to see the leaning tower and left. The tower is an impressive structure and you fear for the people that spent their hard earned 13euros (yah thats alot, $20USD) to climb it. Here is a nice picture of it peeking out from behind the church to say, "hello".
ONTO ROMA!!!! (insert flailing italian hands while saying)
Spent the next 3 days touring around Rome. I am not sure what I was expecting but it lacks the "european feeling" that you get so well in Paris. There is a ton of grafiti on thousand year old relics.What there is to see is impressive. We spent a day in the Vatican museum and learned very quickly that we should of gotten a guide to help.- There is just room after room of priceless art. Far to much to look at all in one sitting. Honestly, you get tired of looking up after awhile. Take a look at this picture, you can see the complexity of the art on the ceilling.Exhausting. There is easily 100 rooms just like this one, and yes that's real gold. We were amazed at the amount of wealth at the Vatican.

The Pope's guard, who by the way are from Switzerland, have some interesting outfits. They haven't been changed in a LONG time, and it shows.
We spent the next day at the Coliseum and the Roman forum. We got a guide for this, which paid off in the end. The factoids of this place make you appreciate the niceness of modern day sports. Just as a spectator... women were expected to stand on the top deck. The Vestal Virgins, however, got a place of honor to sit. The Coliseum was decked out with all the modern conviences of a game today, it had food stands, bathrooms (this ironically was only for the men), etc. Of interest... the women because they did not have any bathroom facilities were given "doggy bags" which they then deposited their waste into... now a lady can't be expected to hold onto her waste for the rest of the match so she throws it over the side onto the walking crowd below. What a fun treat if you are having a nice stroll outside. Don't even ask me how they used the bags, under all the togas while standing up...Too bad they didn't let us in on the trick, it would make camping a whole lot easier. Sorry I disgress, here I am near the Coliseum.


Bob had a run in with a gladiator.. errrr
From Rome we headed south to Naples. Not the biggest tourist attraction. It is fair to say that we are the only ones. We decided to use this as a base to get to Capri and Pompeii. The area here is not nice at all. You are lucky on an hourly basis while walking the streets to not get killed by oncoming traffic. We keep thinking at each place that "this is the worst traffic".. but I think Naples has won the prize. You are not even safe on the sidewalks from the Vespa scooters, if there is a free space to ride on, it is their right to occupy it, apparently.

Spent today in Capri. It was nice to leave the hustle and bustle of Naples and head out into the ocean to the pretty island of Capri. The geography of the island is ridiculous. All hills and houses clinging to the mountain, makes you wonder how they live here. There isn't enough flat space for even a soccer field.
We took a boat ride to see the grotto's. Now, for those of you who don't know what a grotto is in this context; it is a cave built by the sea erosion. The reason people travel far and wide to see these is you can actually travel inside them. The cave entry is very small and the water is very deep, and the only light that can enter the cave comes in through the water. This makes for some pretty amazing colors. Here is a picture but the camera doesn't do it justice.

What you see here is boat coming in the entrance. The ride inside comes complete with your own italian singer\rower\tip grubber. (a very well rounded man)


This catches us up for now. We are heading to Pompeii in search of Mount Vesuvius, tomorrow. Hopefully, that will yield some nice photos. We are heading to Venice, after that.

In closing, the blog title. I have been trying to use my spanglish to communicate with the italians. This doesn't always work, you get to spend the rest of the time saying only one word to each other hoping that by the 7th time one of you will get what the other is saying or magically learn the other language. This usually means you yell louder after each time, thinking that surely by yelling this will help. I tried to call a hostel to get a booking for a room.. he said "Pronto" (I thought this meant, "faster"... I learned later this is means hello) I said "ENGLISH"... he said (even louder) "PRONTO"... so I said louder.. "ENGLISH"... ahh after all this time through evolution these are our communication skills. Then he hung up.


---Gina

Needs More Cowbell!!

We're in Switzerland at the moment. Suffice it to say that the words are hard to find to describe this place. It's impossibly beautiful. Everywhere you look there is a giant mountain with a cow (wearing a genuine cowbell) or a little village in the foreground.

We came to Interlaken, Switzerland, by way of Chamonix, which is just over the border in France. We rode the cable car on the opposite side of the valley from Mont Blanc, but the cable car summit was unfortunately socked in. We still got some great views of Mont Blanc on the way up and we were able to get a cool photo from the summit, which is high enough to be above the clouds. Here's a photo of us at the top of the cable car:

From our base in Interlaken, we have spent a few days on the train, tooling around the Swiss high alpine villages. They are unfailingly stunning. We were originally going to stay here for two days, but we're on our fourth.. and counting!
This is at the summit of a scenic cable car at 10,000 feet.
This is the highest mountain in this region, Jungfrau, at sunset. We took this photo from the balcony of the B&B we are staying at.
Here I am at th foot of Jungfrau. You can see the rail line in the background.

We love it here, the scenery is world class and the peo0ple are great. The only downside is that is exorbitantly expensive. But, as you can hopefully see from the photos, it's a truly amazing place to be - definitely worth the expense.

Sorry for the short blog but this computer is not cooperating!

Oh, The Glamour!

• 
  
  
  I know we´ve blogged very recently but it´s been an interesting day and I thought this would be a nice ¨day in the life¨story for those of you who wonder what it´s like being on the road like this.
  
  
  
  We´re in Madrid, here for three nights because our hostel requires that as a minimum.
  
  
  
  
  • 10:00 AM - stir awake, realize there´s nothing pressing to do today, roll back over.
  • 11:00 AM - again, stir awake and roll back over.
  • 11:30 AM - roll over for the last time, debate with Gina as to who should get the first shower. Gina offers, even though I usually take the first shower, and I´m happy to let it happen that way.
  • 11:40 AM - Gina calls from the shower - ¨Bob?¨ I stick my head in, and Gina informs me that the water has stopped. Simply no water. So I throw my clothes on and head downstairs to the street, to see if I can find the source of the problem. The room has a device that requires the room key to be in a slot for electricity to work, so I had to take that in order to get back in. So I left Gina in the shower, still soapy, dripping wet, in the dark. I go outside and find that the construction on the next block has bust the water main, and there´s water gushing down the street. I return to the room to find Gina toweling off. We tried the water again, and with luck found that it came out in a trickle, just enough for Gina to rinse out her hair and for us to fill up our 3 liter Platypus water bag for use later.
  • 11:55 AM - I shave with the water in the Platypus bag, and somehow manage not to cut myself.
  • 12:00 PM - throw on my dirty clothes from yesterday, figuring I couldn´t shower anyway. I looked at the underwear I had washed in the sink the night before, and not done a very good job of because there´s no stopper in the sink. Decided to wait on changing underwear until later in the day when I could shower properly.
  • 12:15 PM - left the hostel looking for lunch. Walked around for 15 minutes until we found a place that meets the two magical criteria - edible and cheap. (In Europe, unlike elsewhere, hostels do not provide kitchens.)
  • 12:30 PM - sit down at an outdoor table for lunch at a pleasant cafe near the Puerta del Sol, Madrid´s focal square. Order the most expensive thing from the sandwich menu, a triple decker of chicken, ham and cheese, and a cup of coffee.
  • 12:30 - 1:30 - linger over lunch and enjoy the peoplewatching. Spend most of the time avoiding the eyes of the drug addict woman singing and dancing to herself in the street. But the peoplewatching here is most agreeable - we really enjoyed sitting there.
  • 1:30 PM - leave the cafe and buy a ticket for the Madrid tourist bus, a double decker bus with an open air upper deck that drives around the city, telling you about the sights. At first, we took the historical route, and got to see a lot of the major sites here in Madrid. It´s a typical European capital with some really remarkable architecture and statues.
  • 3:00 - got off the bus tour to mooch the bathroom at KFC.
  • 3:10 - order sundaes at nearby McDonald´s and really savor them.
  • 3:45 - Back on the tourist bus, this time for the ¨newer Madrid¨route which isn´t nearly as fun as the other one.
  • 5:30 - Back from the tourist bus, sit down at the internet cafe to try to find accommodation in Lucerne, Switzerland, our next destination. End up booking a Formula One hotel, which is from a chain we know, because it´s cheap, but it´s a bit away from town which is frustrating. Also booked our room in Barcelona, where we´ll stop en route.
  • 6:30 - Return to the hotel room, hoping the water´s back. Good news: it is. Bad news: no hot water. So I took an ice cold shower.
  • 7:00 - off to do laundry.
  • 7:15 - arrive at the laundromat. It went out of business, but fret not, there´s another location, just 15 minutes walk away. Here is is, you all - schlepping across Madrid carrying my skivvies in a plastic bag. It took 45 minutes. In 90 degree heat.
  • 8:00 - arrive at the other laundromat. There are two other guys in there, using three of the four washing machines. We put our stuff in the fourth, thankfully the largest one, and spend 6 euros ($8) to wash it.
  • 8:30 - our washing´s done, but the two guys ahead of us took both the dryers.
  • 8:45 - our stuff is still sitting there, wet, waiting for the dryers to come free. The attendant drops in - closing in 15 minutes, please start to wrap up, she says.
  • 9:00 - the two guys ahead of us negotiate ¨ten extra minutes¨ to finish their stuff drying.
  • 9:20 - one dryer comes free, after these guys run the dryer twice, with the cleaning lady sitting in the corner staring them down. We hurredly fill the available dryer with our cotton clothes, leaving most of the stuff to dry later back at the room.
  • 9:40 - Our stuff is done, and the other guy is still monopolizing the first dryer. We leave the laundromat, the cleaning lady fuming that the ¨ten minutes¨she had spotted those guys were abused so bad.
  • 10:00 - get on the Metro with our wet laundry.

  

• 10:15 - get back to the room and put up all our wet stuff to dry. Hope it does, our train leaves at noon tomorrow for Barcelona.
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• 10:30 - leave the room and grab a quick kebab for dinner. So yummy, and so cheap.
• 11:00 - arrive at the internet cafe to make a quick call home.

So that´s a day in the life of - not to say that it´s a good day or a bad day, just an example of the stuff we do on a daily basis. Sorry, my internet time is running out, so no time to proofread!

African Escapades

Hi All,

We owe you all a big debt of apology because we have not been able to blog for a while. We´ve found that places like Zambia have internet cafes that mostly don´t have the equipment to allow us to post photos online, and since we´ve had a great time in Africa we wanted to make sure that our blog was appropriately illustrated.

We are now in Madrid, Spain, and we won´t be returning to Africa, sadly. We last left you in Cape Town, where we had completed a cultural tour and were headed off to a safari in Kruger National Park. Kruger is a massive tract of land, and a safari there isn´t quite what you might imagine - you basically fly there, rent a car, enter the park and drive around looking for animals. Our rental car happened to be a bright red VW Golf hatchback, which isn´t quite what you might think of as a safari vehicle.

In Kruger Park we spent a lot of time driving around ourselves, doing organized game drives, and we were able to get out on foot for a guided morning walk. For that, the drive leaves at 6am, but you do end up seeing some really phenomenal sunrises.

On one of our morning walks, we were able to see a pair of white rhino grazing. Mind you, this rhino is 100 meters away, but it´s pretty cool to be out there on foot, in the silence of the morning, watching such an amazing animal have his breakfast. This guy is a baby.

There is an amazing variety of wildlife in Kruger Park. Zebras and giraffes stick together for security purposes - each of them has a special skill for detecting danger (giraffes can see far, zebras can smell well). You end up with scenes like this around a waterhole.

Kruger is home to all of the Big Five of game - water buffalo, elephant (loads of those), hippo, leopard and lion. We were able to see all five, which was a treat. In one case, a pair of male lions was hanging out near a herd of Impala (a type of antelope). We hoped the lions might try for dinner, but they were being pretty lazy. We subsequently learned that only the female lions do the hunting. More on that later.

From Kruger we made our way to Livingstone, Zambia - made famous by the British explorer Dr. David Livingstone (as in, ¨Dr. Livingstone, I presume¨). Zambia is bona fide third-world, but we stayed at a backpackers there that was pretty sheltered. It was funny, it seems that there are a lot of British teenagers who come to Zambia thinking they´re going to save the world. Most of them, though, seemed more interested in lounging around in skimpy clothing and drinking too much beer.

We had gone there to see Victoria Falls, for which we had budgeted four days. Realizing that being in a third world town for four days with one days´worth of sightseeing to do would probably drive us nuts, we decided to do an overnight safari to Botswana. Livingstone is near the confluence of four countries - Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. In fact, en route to the safari, we were able to stand in one spot and see four countries. Here´s a cheeky photo of us straddling the Botswana-Zimbabwe border.

In Botswana, we spent two days in Chobe National Park, which was really great because the landscape was so different than that in Kruger Park. Chobe is actually in the Chobe desert, complete with desert sand. But there is still a good bit of vegetation - but it´s sparse enough there that you can see the animals really well.

On our first game drive, we really lucked out and were able to see four lionesses just waking up from their day´s slumber. (They sleep during the day and hunt at night.) A few giraffes were unlucky enough to be in the area, and we saw the lionesses rouse from their slumber and begin to quietly stalk the giraffes (remember, the females hunt). We were nervous, thinking the giraffes might become dinner, and the lions did indeed attack, but were unable to catch the giraffes. Our guide says that lions don´t often like to feed on giraffes, but they´ll scare them away in hopes that the giraffe will hit a tree or something and become easy prey.

The lionesses returned to the area where we had found them and had a bit of a siesta.

Here are some more photos we took in Chobe. There´s a ton of hippos. They´re very agressive and kill more people than all the other kinds of animals there combined.

This is a Fish Eagle. They mate for life. (aww.)

This herd of elephants lined up picturesquely for us. They then proceded to get in the water and swim a good 100m across the river to the Namibian side of the river, using their trunks as snorkels. This included the whole herd, including 6 week old babies. Who knew that elephants were such good swimmers?Finally, here we are at our campsite. We´re not this good at camping. The safari company set it up for us! It was a bit scary because the campsite was not fenced, and you can see the lamp in the background. Animals will not come too close if there´s light.Back in Livingstone, we went to visit Victoria Falls, which according to Wikipedia ranges from 90 to 107 meters high and is 1.7 kilometers long. Pretty impressive, really. Here´s a photo of us in front of it, but what you can´t see is that between us and the falls there´s a ravine as high as a ten story building.

We took the time to see the falls from the Zambian and Zimbabwean sides. There´s a famous bridge between the two countries, over the gorge, where you can bungy jump - but you have to have your passport stamped out of Zambia, and the bridge is before the Zimbabwe border post, so not only are you jumping a giant ravine you´re doing so without actually being in a country. A bit dodgy if you ask me. Maybe that´s why we were offered three jumps for $90. (We didn´t take it.)

Not sure if you are aware but Zimbabwe is a country in major disarray at the moment. Its president, Robert Mugabe, holds an iron fist on power. Inflation runs 4,600% a year and basics such as bread are simply nonexistent (the government forces stores to sell it at half what it costs). It was wierd walking into Victoria Falls town there, and seeing no tourists at all. The shoe stores had no shoes, the liquor stores had no liquor, and the people there were desperate for any kind of money - they tried to barter for your hat, your sunglasses, the shirt off your back. It was all very sad. Mr. Mugabe should be ashamed, but he won´t step down because he´s been murdering and torturing his opponents, and he fears being prosecuted for human rights violations or vigilantes. For more on the crisis, here´s a link - http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3535&l=1

It´s particularly sad because for a long time Zimbabwe was the jewel of southern Africa.

From Zambia, we made our way back to Johannesburg then onto Cairo via London, which we tell you, made for a long and exhausting two days.

If you could sum up Cairo so succinctly, you could say that it´s chaos embodied. The traffic is by far the worst we have ever seen (traffic lights are rare and almost never obeyed), people accost you at every corner, and it´s the scam capital of the world. Here´s a street scene.

Note that the women are all wearing Islamic headscarves, which was a bit of a problem for Gina. Not being Muslim she didn´t wear one, and whenever we went out into the city she was getting harassed pretty mercilessly. Surprisingly, this came mostly from other women. People we interacted with didn´t even acknowledge her existence. Pretty intense culture shock, to be honest. But the adherence to Islam means that Cairo is a very safe city, there is almost no crime and terrorism hasn´t been an issue for a decade now.

Most people don´t travel to Cairo independently so we had some trouble getting out to see what we wanted to see. In one case, we hired a driver to take us to the Giza pyramids (from a Hertz branded service), and the guy got in a fender bender and ended up in a fistfight with the other driver in the street. The driver we hired the next day to take us to the main city sights didn´t understand that we actually had done some homework and knew what we wanted to see - we had to yell at him to get us to take us to the off-the-beaten-path stops.

We stayed at a hotel near the Pyramids. It´s kind of surprising, but the Pyramids aren´t really in the desert as you might picture them. They´re on a reserve at the edge of modern Cairo. If they were in Boston, it´d be like if they were in Quincy. God bless the Starwood Preferred Guest program because we were able to stay at Le Meridien hotel right near the Pyramids on points. This was the view from our room -

Modern Cairo is right up against the ancient ruins. Here´s a view of the Sphinx from behind.

If you look closely, he looks out over a Pizza Hut/KFC franchise (the red signs). We spent a good bit of time near the Pyramids. Suffice it to say, it´s hot, and can reach 52 degrees centigrade there (that´s 125 F). We drank a lot of water.

We got to go on a camel ride, which was really cool. It brought us to some great views that we wouldn´t have otherwise gotten.

There are nine pyramids on the main plateau at Giza, but there are about 100 of them scattered around Egypt. None are quite as impressive, or have stood the time as well as the big ones at Giza. Here are some photos of us out and about in the heat.

We got to go to the Egyptian Museum as well, which is pretty amazing, but no photos were allowed inside (sorry). We did get to see some priceless stuff, like King Tut´s death mask. But the Museum is pretty amazing in how, well, half-assed it is. It feels like a warehouse. Lots of things you can just walk up and touch. You would think they would do a better job of preserving their artifacts. At Saqqara, a site south of Giza, there are some impressive tombs with original carvings and even original paint, that you could walk up to and touch if you wanted to. It´s sad that so little is being done to preserve these great treasures. At least you can´t climb the Pyramids themselves.

And we have to say that the Pyramids are amazing. It´s hard to find the words to describe how very immense they are - you can see them from clear across town (smog permitting). And they´re 4,500 years old.

Finally, here´s a photo of Gina with our bellman as we left the hotel. Note the quality of the cab, and that our bags are being lashed to the roof.

We have so much to say about each of these places. Southern Africa was nothing short of amazing, we loved it there and would go back in an instant. Cairo was a bit of an attack on the senses, and rivaled China for the most difficult place yet to travel, but we were really glad we made the effort to go.

-bob