Down Under January 2014 | The end of a long day -- but that was two days ago

We are able to post!

W are finally settled in to our not-so-hot motel in Kaikoura (the view is nice) and needing to catch up on our sleep. It's about 20 hours door to door: 16+ hours San Francisco to Christchurch and about a 2.5 hour drive to Kaikoura on the east coast just north of Christchurch. Immigration and customs is a lengthy three-step process in which they checked our hiking gear (no animal dung on my boots!), and of course I had a lot of gf supplies that I had to declare and dig out of my bag. It all adds up.

Between naps I was able to get my first glimpse of NZ (Americans will need to practice saying ZED, not ZEE). There are sheep, sheep and more sheep grazing but no sign of farm houses or sheep herders. The hills outside of Christchurch are beautifully green--a mix of groves and fields, especially the Waipara Valley. It's a spectacular oasis of vineyards and verdant hills. There are wineries lining the road so we stopped at Waipara Springs where we tasted our first local wines, a flight of Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, and Reisling, and shared an abundant lunch platter of meats and cheeses, local NZ salmon, fresh fruits, greens, olives, hummus and a tomato relish (not together!), and for me, some toasted gluten free bread. We opted for the Pinot Gris, but on the few hours of sleep we'd managed on the plane, and the drive still ahead of us, we took a bottle to go. It's already the 30^th here, so tomorrow night is New Year's Eve and it won't last long..

We are off whale watching tomorrow morning hopefully and for a hike. They had to cancel the last sailing of the day today due to weather, so there is no guarantee we will go tomorrow morning as planned. It's clear and sunny tonight, so let's hope so. I'm packing some warm things just in case, and hope to stay dry. According to the promotion you can expect to see the big five: sperm whale, Hector's dolphin, the dusky dolphin, the NZ fur seal and the bottlenose dolphin.

Not sure when I will get this posted as I can't access the wi-fi here at the hotel without paying (cheap-o) and I'm too tired to walk back to town to a cafe. Off to bed with a good book.

Down Under January 2014 | Itinerary

You can find our itinerary here.

Down Under January 2014 | How to comment on the blog

Lots of friends and family had trouble posting comments on the blog so I thought I would offer a few suggestions. Here's how:

• After you read a post, look for the redish ink that says comments (it's a link). Click on it.
• Now you are at the comments window. Type your comment in the space provided.
• Next, look for the direction "comment as". This is the important part. Well no, your comment is what is important, but if you get this part wrong I won't see it.
• There is a pull down window. Click on that and you will see a number of choices. I think only two of these will apply to most of you.
• IF you have a google account, choose google. If you are not logged in, you will be asked to log in to your google account. Log in, then click "Publish".
• IF you DO NOT have a google account, choose "anonymous" from the drop down menu. Then add your name to the end of your comment. Finally click "publish".

If you want to get a notice when there is a new post, click on the subscribe link at the bottom of the comments page.

Packing tonight, and off to dinner with Allan and Gene. We leave tomorrow at 7pm, but heading out from Santa Cruz at about 2pm, arriving in Christchurch late afternoon on the 30th.

Happy New Year!

Down Under January 2014 | Making a list and checking it twice

Christmas morning in Santa Cruz. Annie is resting her chin on my knee, waiting not-so-patiently for her morning walk. It's beautiful here in Santa Cruz: cool at night and warm during the day. It's not shorts and t-shirt weather for me, but lots of people are enjoying the warm by dressing down. It's been a week of lists: daily grocery shopping and Christmas dinner prep to-dos. Margaret is finalizing things for 11 guests; I'm thinking about getting away soon! We leave on Saturday, so I've got all the usual things to do.

The best news this week, is that we got a very cheap upgrade on Air New Zealand. We were given an opportunity to "go one-up" a week or two ago. It's a bidding process: put in your bid and see how you do. Despite our decidedly "poor" bid, and a second email encouraging us to bid up, we both got seats in Premier Economy (alas no business class for us) in the upper deck for $300. That will make the ride a whole lot smoother!

Breakfast time. Then off to West Cliff Drive for a beach walk.

South East Asia Adventure | Fishing and other craziness in Hoi An

This post was written by Margaret.
“Give a girl a fish; you have fed her for today. Teach a girl to fish; and you have fed her for a lifetime”

Hoi An was a delight – partly because of our very entertaining guide and part because we were able to participate in Vietnamese life rather than just observing it as you feel you do most of the time when you are a tourist. 

On our first day in Hoi An we took a trip on the river that started with a basket boat ride out to the fishing boat.

As you can see, Nguyen our guide – though vertically challenged or perhaps because of it – had a great sense of humor, and loved to entertain. (And his wife does laundry. Travel Tip: don’t send white clothes to a hand laundry!)

We loaded onto Captain Cook’s boat and were greeted by the captain (cook) and two crew members – that’s a 2:1 ratio of crew to client! Not bad service. Here is the crew and Carol on the boat.

Views back to the beach and of other boats in the harbor were wonderful: bright greens and turquoise, fishing boats of all shapes and sizes.   I think our first stop was to see a beautiful house constructed of bamboo and other local woods with all the furniture hand made by the owner. They served us tea on the porch  - using  a teapot and cups also I think of bamboo (was that right Carol?) then we walked through the village to another dock where the boat picked us up again. Our guides had made presents for us.

Then starts the fishing.

There are many ways to catch fish. Very large nets, tied to four large poles in the water, connected to an apparatus on shore that you climb on in order to pump these pedals that shorten the ropes that attach the net to the four poles, thereby raising the net from the water.  If you are lucky there are fish caught in the net.  You pluck them out one by one! and throw them in a bucket.

Then there is the net you throw from the boat. Harder than it looks!  

How it is supposed to be done.

Carol caught on very quickly to the net throw though we could not have survived on her catch that day.

But no problem, Captain Cook lived up to his name. Back on our own boat again we sat down to one of the best meals of the trip. Several kinds of shrimp, spring rolls of course fresh out of the pan, egg pancake also with shrimp, calamari, rice crackers, a great Larue beer, and a picture is worth a thousand words. It was just all so fresh – and the captain had brought all the ingredients with him in a cooler and cooked everything on this boat that didn’t even have an obvious galley. 

I can’t leave this post without mentioning the artistic talents of our guide who was with us throughout Hoi An, the trip over the pass to Hue including the marble mountain and around Hue. In addition to providing us with an impromptu ride to town with both of us on the back of his motorcycle, Nguyen loved (old) pop music and loved to sing and when we met he immediately began humming a tune that we thought sounded familiar but the words didn’t seem quite right.  Before he left us in Hue – which was several days after the fishing trip, we begged for a recordable rendition of the song, so here it is.

South East Asia Adventure | Rice papers and bomb craters - the Cu Chi Tunnels

The Cu Chi tunnels were not high on my list of places to visit – maybe its collective american guilt or something, but they were on the itinerary so we spent the hours on a bumpy ride to see them.  The park itself is a bit kitchy but you can’t help but take a shaky breath when you see the bomb craters and the innovative human traps and imagine thousands of soldiers running a war and living underground for months on end.  

The highlight of the park though was seeing a woman methodically and patiently frying rice water on an outdoor stove to make rice papers, rolling them off the pan on to something like a sushi roller, spreading them out carefully on bamboo pads and finally setting them out to air dry.  Just like making crepes I guess but these are tissue paper thin and so light they must float, attributes I have yet to find in the rice papers bought in Santa Cruz, and I've tried two different brands so far.

South East Asia Adventure | The long trek from Luang Prabang Part 2

Lee warned us that the long climb to the next village would be steep and hot. “We’ll just go slow”, he said. So with shirts off, hats on, and water in hand, we headed up the road that would take us on to Pha Peung. I criss-crossed the foot-deep ruts to get out of the sun, but there was no shade anywhere. The climb was unrelenting: this is when flat feels like downhill and you find yourself nearly running on the downhill from the effort you’ve been putting in on the way up. But I’ve learned, there’s only one way to conquer a seemingly impossible climb: left foot, right foot, left foot.... This pedantic, persistent mantra alternated with the sound of my YBR instructor, Pearl. Her voice in my ear was a constant “heel first, put down 5-4-3-2-- now your big toe, push off…heel first, now your baby toe-4-3-2 and 1…push off…But how do I push off when my steps are barely inches apart?  “Breathe”, I could hear her saying. “Inhaling is natural, emphasize the exhale”.  So I pushed that air out of my lungs as hard as I could (Thank you, Pearl!)…left foot, right foot.... The wide expanse of the valley lay before us and it was good to stop and take it all in, as we continued up, up, up step-by-exhausting step.

Ban Pha Peung looked more orderly up there in the high country and we found rest and relief on a bench in the shade outside a one-time homestay. I’m quite sure the visitors to this village normally come from the other end of the road; the way we would go down (and down, needless to say). They were obviously more accustomed to visitors and largely ignored us, except for these three young girls who watched us from afar.

Ladies' day at the community shower

Riding double

Women and girls took turns at the open-air community shower (water pumped from the stream, we think), while others wove bamboo roofs to replace the old ones on their houses before the rain comes. A young boy had fashioned himself a 3-wheeled go-cart of sorts and was tearing down the hill on his make-shift death machine; we were surprised later to see him climbing back up with his buddy, apparently unscathed (to tempt death once more?).

 

No, not what you think. Just getting a little respite from the sun.

Sometimes the way out from a long, arduous hike is as tough as the way in, and this would be no exception. When Lee pointed to our destination across the valley about two minutes in, we knew it would be 2 hours of knee-breaking pain.  We finally arrived at Ban Huay Lo, where after more pictures of giggling little girls, our driver picked us up and, despite our certainty that he was going to run someone down on the highway, we made it safely back to our hotel. Home, a shower, lattes at Jubo, dinner, the market…another day. We’ve put this one at the top of our top-10 list!

 

South East Asia Adventure | The long trek near Luang Prabang Part 1

The long trek began with a 2-hour gentle climb up to Ban Mokchong (midlands H’mong) and Pha Peung (highlands H’mong), both outside LP. Our guide, also H'mong, is from a village near the Chinese border and we concluded that he is very much a “country boy”. Young (“22 is coming”), dark skinned, with legs like bamboo sticks, he mainly guides trekking, cycling, kayaking, and, “when I have to”, some rock climbing. We were like a day off for him!

Lee helps me across the river

  As we trekked up, the river wound its way down, so that we had to repeatedly cross over. Each time. Margaret, who wisely wore Tevas, cooled off her feet in the stream, while I, in my hiking shoes, slid precariously on the mucky rocks, with Lee, Margaret, and occasionally a bamboo pole for balance. Although at times the rising temperature and my rapidly beating heart begged a cooling off, I managed to avoid an unplanned dip in its cool waters. 

We met an occasional villager and a tractor on their way down, but for the most part the hard-packed red clay trail was ours alone. The air was clean, and we breathed deeply as the mountains and expansive valley emerged from under the fog. Except for the occasional moan from water buffalo and laughter from children playing in the river, we reveled in the silence.



After perhaps 2.5 hours of gentle uphill climbing we arrived in Ban Mokchong. It was lunchtime, and we were ready for the picnic promised by our guide. (He’d picked up something on the street in LP before we left.) As we walked into the village we were greeted by a dozen or more children, three or four dogs and as many black snorting pigs, and of course, chickens.  While Lee prepared a place for us, and set out our lunch on freshly-cut banana leaves from a nearby tree, we visited with the women and children.

At first she wasn't sure about my camera!

An older woman, perhaps seventy (okay, not so old) immediately brought out her friendship bracelets for us to buy (3 for 1500 kip—about 4 USD). Then, having looked us up and down, tried on Margaret's sunglasses, to the laughter and gaiety of all. Of course then everyone wanted to try them! Our cameras soon became the main attraction. The children wiggled and squirmed like those fish in the tubs in the Mekong, to get into each picture.  And when they saw their faces in the LCD, the looks of amazement, wonder and awe was inspiration for the next photo! 

I think she's ready for the runway!

Is that me?

Lee served up a whole fish, crispy on the outside, and tender and delicious on the inside, wrapped in banana leaf. Individual styro boxes were filled with chicken fried rice, and there was hot sauce in a baggy. There were apples for dessert, and bottled water. We settled down at the three-cornered wooden table, neatly tucked into the shade of the trees, and while the dogs and pigs continued to mull around, the children politely backed away and watched until we finished. The barbecued fresh fish was delicious, and by the time we’d finished picking the bones with our chopsticks there wasn’t much left for the dogs. 

Sometimes it’s hard to see beyond dirty faces with runny noses, half-dressed babies, torn clothes and bare feet, ramshackle huts, and an absence of order and control to find instead the joy in moments like this. We were welcome visitors, and they spared nothing to get a close up view of us: two curious-looking, near-identical women with white hair, dark glasses, and instant photos. We were overwhelmed by their smiling eyes, curiosity, playfulness and laughter.