Mark and Bridget

Costa Rica

2012-01-21T14:49:00.000Z

I'm writing this on a bus again - clearly I find the elbows to the head (because there is no such thing as too many people on a bus here), small children being deposited on my lap, the sounds of the bad spanish love ballads and reggaeton, and extreme bouncing (the suspension probably died in the mid 70s) inspiring. That or it's the forced inaction...

So, setting aside comments on chicken buses (which I actually do enjoy), what can I say about Costa Rica? Well, it's probably the number one Latin American destination for people in the US. I've heard it's there number 5 destination globally, but I can't google that while on a bus, so no quoting ok :).

With green tropical forests, blue oceans, mountains, volcanoes and an abundance of wild life results in a stunning country. That influx of tourists from the US means you don't have to go far to find English speakers, menus are in Spanish and English and there is a huge, well oiled tourism machine running in the country.

Unfortunately it was raining pretty much constantly for the seven days we were there*. And when a country is geared up for outdoor activities, this kind of sucks. Costa is THE place to go zip lining across forest canopies, hit the rainforest trails, cling to canopy rope bridges, hike to volcano tops, sit on a beach, surf and go animal watching. Not really something you can enjoy in torrential downpour. And I'm not even slightly exaggerating with the torrential bit. Since my foot was still 'wobbly' I wasn't so keen on slipping, landing on my butt and damaging my foot even more.

The other problem with Costa was all of the tourist activities were WAY out of our budget. Want to hike in the national park - that'll be US$25 thank-you. Hit the hot springs - US$40 please. Without a government run tourist office information on the very few free activities wasn't easy to come by. Considering it was raining anyway, we really didn't do much.

Now you may have never been around Mark when he's bored and unable to do the ten or so activities he's decided to do that day. I have, and it's not pretty. Honestly we couldn't leave fast enough.

With sunshine and many many $$$ Costa would have been amazing. We had neither which sadly killed it a bit for us.

We did manage to find one free hot stream (hot springs are so passé) which, accompanied by the others) we enjoyed in the evening, complete with candles and some cheap vodka and ginger ale. In the spirit of true Rican entrepreneurship tour companies where running US$19 trips to the hot springs - without the vodka.

We also had a day or two without rain so hit a beautiful pacific beach up near the board of Nicaragua. It had black sand, which was kind of cool.

Photo's for Costa can be found here, here and here.

* by all accounts it was doing this everywhere in Central and resulted almost universally negative opinions for pretty much whichever country you happened to be in.

Feed me - brief synopsis of life since Panama and what next

2012-01-19T18:21:00.001Z

On an early morning bus in Honduras and have just realised (horror upon horrors) we've left the vegemite behind. Me - I could care less about the putrid stuff. Mark's a little less blasé.

I am quite bummed about the rest of the food we left behind - my stomach is getting more and more insistent in reminding me it's breakfast time. Also that bag of mixed nuts, olives, apples and hard boiled eggs would have made a pretty amazing backpacker bus breakfast. Agh stop thinking of food Bridget!!!!

So other than a loudly growling stomach what is news?? I can walk sans hobble. We had our friend Allen join us over the Christmas, New Year break (bringing the much loved vegemite). We've crossed seven borders and been to five countries. Milestone birthdays have been celebrated and Maya step pyramid visited. We've taken numerous chicken buses and seen a multitude of men dresses in cowboy regalia complete with seriously cool Texan style cowboy hats. At 5 hours we've had our slowest boarder crossing yet and if I ever see rice and beans (gallo pinto) again it'll be too soon!!!

We've also finally made our decision on what we do and where we go and the end of our traveling circus. With just six weeks* left of a three year traveling adventure we'll be hitting London for two weeks and then downwards towards home, Perth. It wasn't a terribly easy choice, nor particularly fun for Allen to watch as we made it, but it's done and personally I'm looking forward to heading back to Australia after over six years travel and living abroad.

Mark being the clever dickens that he is, has a job lined up back in Perth, amusingly enough with a group of lawyers that I once worked with.

I've started actually writing out a list of meals I plan to cook as opposed to just day dreaming about them. We're staying with my folks who have about the best kitchen I've ever seen!!

I think I'll write a separate blog each for Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras. We spent about 3 hours in Guatemala catching buses between boarders so there really isn't too much to share.

I'll leave you with a photo from this current bus journey. As you can see three years of travel has matured me nicely :)

*slightly shocked at tht. It feels like our leaving drinsk in London were just a few months ago.

Hammocks of Panama

2011-12-13T18:05:00.000Z

We're on a bus to Costa Rica now and I'm slightly concerned because everyone keeps on talking about how overwhelmingly expensive it is. At this point in the trip (two and a half months to go) the funds are running low. I don't think we'll be like some backpackers we've meet who've finished on a USD10 a day budget in somewhere like Brasil, but we aren't feeling flush.

We're probably only going to spend a few days in Costa, enough time for me to hit the old 3 - 0, but Christmas will be in Nicaragua and New Years with Allen (a friend from home) on Corn Islands. Hopefully diving with Hammerhead sharks. I love my life right now.

So since my last, complainy complainy pants post what has happened. Geographically we haven't moved a lot. We ended up spending 10 odd days in Bocas del Torro hanging out with the lovely Sam and Sarah. Then onwards to Boquete.

As for activities, well in Bocas Mark would hike to one of the more amazing tropical beaches we've seen on this trip, I'd hobble from our room to the hammock and wait for my foot to improve. Mark would catch a small boat to one of the outlying islands go body surfing and drink beer at a beach bar, I'd hobble from our room to the hammock. Mark would go check out an organic coffee and chocolate cafe situated at the highest point on the island surrounded by jungle, I'd (you've guessed it) hobble from our room to the hammock.

Don't think he abandon me - not at all he also spent a fair bit of time keeping me company. And with Sam and Sarah, and then Henrick, we cooked up a storm including but not limited to amazing Bolognese (thanks Mark), the best stir fry I've had in months (nice work Sam), amazing toasties (kudos Henrik and Mark) and with the help of the owner a pretty fine Caribbean chicken stew.

After ten days and a very careful hike to that amazing tropical beach for me (slowly with hiking poles) I deemed myself ok for the stress of moving to Boquete. So we said good-bye to lovely friends, I strapped up my foot and Mark heroically carried my backpack (13kgs), his mega pack (18kgs) and his 'daybag' (8kgs) between bus stops, on and off boats and to hostels. Without complaint! That's love!

So what happened in Boquete? Mark went on a gruelling day hike to a small town, I sat in the hammock. Mark hiked to a hot spring, I sat in a hammock.

Good news is, I like hammocks, I have lots of books to read and often had good company. Better news is, my foot's getting good enough, so I should be able to do a few short hikes myself.

If you're wondering why there is so much hiking planned in a beachy part of the world, Mark's a wee bit obsessed with hiking right now. If this all sounds right up your alley (the hiking) he swears by, and will happily talk your ear off about, a website called www.besthikes.com. As for me, I'm hanging out for Nicaragua which will involve a whole lot of white sand, blue sea and maybe a cocktail or two.

Foot update and photos

2011-12-05T21:26:00.001Z

We're still in Bocas del Torro eagerly awaiting a fully functioning left foot for me. I can hobble now, but I think Mark will be carrying my backpack around for a while. I'll have to get a photo to show you how impressive a feat that actually is.

Since it's been raining here a fair bit, he's been slogging away on photo's and has posted a few new albums on his picasa site.

Check them out here https://picasaweb.google.com/mark.bridget.

I may just be a wee bit biased, but I think there are some beautiful shots there. If you're feeling lazy, here are a few of my faves

Panama hates me

2011-12-01T14:25:00.000Z

We're in Bocas del Torro (Mouths of the Bull) in Panama having spent a few days sailing from Columbia through the San Blas islands to Panama and then sightseeing in Panama City.

Now you may wonder why I said that Panama hates me, it all started out nice and happy sailing through the San Blas Islands on the Gypsy Moth, an English owned charter boat. Sym, Amy and little Halley sail tourists back and forth between Columbia and Panama through the tropical and somewhat deserted islands of San Blas. Think perfect blue seas, coconut plants and white sandy beaches. We were also promised fresh coconut rum, but alas on an island full of coconut trees the tiny little bar couldn't find any coconuts... I guess that’s where the bad luck began.

Gypsy Moth dropped us of near the San Blas Islands, and from there we took a 4WD to Panama City.
Unfortunately it was POURING with rain and my backpack - on the roof - was soaked completely through. We arrived in Panama City to find every single hostel was completely booked out, bar one with rooms that were closer to something you'd expect to see in a mental institution. But that was ok, because it was soon decorated with every item of clothing we own as well as sleeping bags, mosquito nets, silk liners and all that miscellaneous stuff you don't realise you cram into your bag. I had exactly three items of dry clothing and a room that resembled a chinese laundry.

But that was ok, Panama City is beautiful, and everything is better in the morning, so we wondered around, dodging the occasional downpour and taking in the sites and sounds of Panama City. We stopped off back at our hotel room , where the next bit of bad luck struck

I'd recently seen a fellow backpacker go past on crutches and thanked our lucky stars that we'd not had that problem, nor had we had any serious injuries. Stoopid woman. In our room I slipped and landed on my foot - which is pretty pathetic way to injure yourself really. I now can't walk without limping, can’t carry my bag or traverse a distance of more than 5 metres without pain. Poor Mark's now my bag boy, occasional crutch and general 'fetch it boy', which he's taking with remarkable good grace.

Thinking that some time spent sitting on a beach would we good and wouldn't involve a lot of movement, we caught a bus with some friends from the boat trip, Sam and Sarah, to Bocas del Torro. This involved an amazingly horrible night bus, and then two very wet boat trips. This resulted in a migraine for me :(.

I'm not going to lie after everything else, I cried and sobbed. I then took a lot of drugs, passed out and waited for the sunshine to come out.

But everything is always better in the morning….

Cartagena, Colombia and good-bye South America

2011-11-15T15:57:00.000Z

We have one week left in South America, and 3 and a half months left for the entire trip!?!?! Where have the three years gone!

We're in Cartagena at the moment, the sweat capital of South America. Having spent the majority of the last 8 months complaining about being cold (traveling through the Andes, the cold shouldn't have come as a suprise really) it's a bit of a shock to hit the tropical humid heat that is Cartagena. What has softened the blow has been meeting Brian and Marcelle in San Gil while paragliding (which will go down as one of the best experiences of the trip for me). They work at an international school here, and Brian kindly offered to let us stay in his flat while he was still in San Gil. His flat has air-conditioning. His flat also isn't a hostel. His flat has ocean views and the most amazing breeze. His flat has a shower with water pressure and a kitchen with a sharp knife! His flat has really good internet connection. In short his flat is amazing. But Brian (and also Marcelle) are easily much cooler than his flat, and made our stay in this town so much 'more', when they returned and we got to spend time with them.

Today we catch a bus to a small beach inTayrona NP where we camp on the beach (they provide hammocks) and spend our time snorkling and hopefully letting our livers recover! In a week we take a small sailing boat from Cartagena for five days through the San Blas islands to Panama. Which means we will begin our exploration of Central America and the last leg of our trip.

As always, if anyone wants to join us, let us know when and we will tell you where we'll be.

amazon photos

2011-11-08T22:22:00.000Z

as always, you can find Mark's photos here

However here are a few highlights from our trip

Bus travel

2011-11-08T15:39:00.000Z

Ahhhh!!! Last year when a friend joined us for a few weeks in Greece I may have mention that Mark and I had reached something of a state of Zen when it came to bus travel. I take that back.

Maybe it's South America vs Indian buses (we'd just come from India at that point). In India, bus connections seemed to work, the distances weren't so huge and there were trains to mix things up. People were genuinely excited about helping us make sure we got onto the right bus and they were reasonably priced. Also bus food in India was generally a lot better - I miss samosas!!

In South America admittedly buses change from country to country but(!!!!) the distances are huge (we've easily spent 48 hours on buses), bus food options tend towards being a bit bland and unhealthy (with the exception of the ever present banana). There really isn't much in the way of alternate travel at our teeny tiny budget - you an fly but low coast airlines don't exist here. Oh and driving this rant = we're in Colombia where everyone lies to you! About the quality of the bus, the size of the bus, the time it will depart and the time it'll arrive. Sometimes about whether they even have seats!!! No seriously recently a bus company was going to kick an old couple off of the bus and give us their seats!!!

Hmmm. It's actually kind of nice to have something nice to say about India - I did like it, I also really didn't. Also to not be raving about how amazing Colombia is - after all this is the land of banana and kidney soup - it's certainly not as perfect as I make out!!

B

Colombia, the only danger is not wanting to leave

2011-11-05T00:29:00.001Z

We're currently on a bus in Colombia heading towards a town called San Gil, which is meant to be South America's answer to Christchurch or Interlaken. Apparently you can go tandem paragliding for 20USD.

So what's been happening? Horse riding, elections, failed salsa dancing, street protests and of course the inevitable all day bus rides!!

We carefully timed our visit to Bogota (Colombia's capital) around a weekend so we could hit the fabled amazing nightlife, salsa clubs, and art galleries. On the South America backpacker circuit Bogota has a reputation for amazing museums, parties and beautiful people. Unfortunately we got an election. Which means no alcohol, no parties, museums and art galleries closed. A whole lot of police on the streets a few low key protests. Can't win them all, and certianly the place felt a whole lot safer than the time we managed to hit Bangkok during elections!!

A couple of people have emailed and asked if Colombia is safe. I have to say, and hope not to jinx things, but so far we feel really safe. It doesn't hurt that the government has decided it wants to encourage tourism. With this in mind a lot of towns have at least three police stationed outside tourist sites as well as a policeman station at the corner of ever block on the walk between attractions. We've also been told that anyone convicted of a crime against a tourist has their sentence increased three times. The amazing thing is that this is all to stop anything that may happen as opposed to addressing an existing problem of violence towards tourists.

Also, people keep on walking up to us on the streets to welcome us to Colombia and have a chat, which is great except my Spanish is awful and I spend most of the time either smiling and nodding looking like I'm missing a few or saying 'I don't understand'.

Tragically We're still in rice and potato land as in ever meal your plate consists of almost entirely only rice and potatos and if your lucky you might get a quarter of a slice of tomato!! Also it seems like the national dish is a banana and kidney soup - it's about as tasty as it sounds too!

Oh and if you have any interest whats so ever in horse riding - Lucy I'm looking at you - Colombia seems to be the place to go what with horses you an rent from £3 a hour to take to some amazing sights through some beautiful vistas. My some what limited experience says they are well trained as well!

Ok I'm off to listen to some Spanish tapes so that hopefully I spend a little less time looking confused!!

Whoops

2011-10-27T17:21:00.001+01:00

Meant to mention, for those that are interested our trip will come to an end in four months, which means we'll have made our goal of 3 years of solid non-stop traveling.

Go team

From Columbia we make our way north through Central America to Mexico. We're going to have to miss the States and Canada - waaaay to expensive.

Ecadorian amazon and Columbia

2011-10-27T17:15:00.001+01:00

The amazon was amazing!!! I was going to wait to post a blog with photo's but I can't wait for Mark to finish editing them, so I guess that will be a separate post

The amazon was sooo much better than we thought it would be. We managed to see anaconda, pink dolphins, toucans, five types of monkeys, poisons frogs, stinky turkeys, kingfishers, giant hairy spiders and a zillion bugs. We stayed in wooden huts and had a giant bird watching platform to while away the hours. And did I mention the hammocks.

We also met some great people.

On the downside, there were a whole lot of sand flies and I now look like I have small pox or something.

We're now in Columbia and I think I'm a little in love! It seems to be reasonably priced and everyone is exceptionally friendly. They really want tourists to start to visit again and really go out of their way to make you feel safe. Also the taxi drivers seem amazingly honest. One slight shock is that you have to bargain for you bus tickets which is something completely new.

Off to the amazon

2011-10-21T04:23:00.001+01:00

We're about to catch a dreaded Ecuadorian night bus to head to the Amazon.

We're booked a four day tour which should include piranha fishing, jungle walks, swimming with pink dolphins, and more mosquito's than you can zap with bug spray.

Wish us luck.

Bird watching in a cloud rainforest in Ecuador

2011-10-19T16:39:00.001+01:00

Mark and I are in a town call Mindo in Ecuador which is situated in a cloud rainforest north east of Quito.

We've started our day drinking tea watching 100s of humming birds. Just about to have breakfast which includes milk straight from the cow.

Life is good!!

Where we've been

2011-08-28T19:53:00.000+01:00

To celebrate reaching the two and a half years of travelling mark, Mark has put together a map of where we've been. Ok, actually a few of those US cities he went to without me, but still, it's pretty impressive I think.

Create your own travel map or travel blog.
Find the best vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Poor Mark

2011-08-05T14:25:00.001+01:00

Bit of not so fun news, poor Mark has come down with food poisoning and is in a clinic for the next few days going slightly nuts.

If anyone wants to email him to help starve off death by boredom he'd love to hear your news and I'd love to pass on the details.

Bolivia - salt, spanish, rafting, horses and altitude sickness

2011-08-03T19:48:00.000+01:00

Hi All, I haven't written a blog post in a while (I think that's how I'm starting all blog posts these days). But we're in Bolivia, which has been amazing, so I thought I'd update you.

We're in the capital of Bolivia at the moment, in La Paz, waiting for two friends to arrive from London. Unfortunately this town sucks, it's really high altitude, so we've both been getting really sick (I've lost a fair bit of weight, and perhaps not in a good way). Also, it's kind of boring here, with the exception of the food. Which is good, because I'm trying to gain that weight back, hello chocolate cake, cheesecake, chips and junk food all round.

We started Bolivia in Salar Uyuni on a three day tour. It's famous amoungst backpackers for the amazing perspective photo's you can take as well as the flamingo lakes. We were really lucky and were given starwars figurines to use in our photographs which made it extra fun. Unfortuanately the Salar is high altitude, and it's winter here so it was extra cold and the altitude made things like digesting food properly, sleep and a clear head kind of hard. The not digesting food bit was my favourite!

It was so cold over night that our driver had to start a fire on and below the engine every morning.

From Uyuni, we then went to a small town called Tupiza which involved taking the single worst overnight buses I've be on - ever. Despite being told it was semi cama (semi bed seats), with heating and a bathroom (not that you ever want to touch those things, they are pretty gross) the windows didn't close, it stank like hairy armpits and I think it was a reject bus in the 1920s... Since it was -25 degrees that night, things got cold! Fortunately Tupiza is really cool. We went on a seven hour horse ride with a really lovely German girl and Isreali guy. Everything hurt afterwards. I'm not quiet sure why all of my back muscles were in such pain, but oh well...

After that we headed to a town call Potosi where Mark did a mine tour. He also had his birthday while we were there. We managed to celebrate with some friends we meet on the road including Susan (an Aussie) and Philipe (an Austrian), and then some friends from home, Luke and Jacinta. Bolivia is really high altitude, and so alcohol kind of blows your socks of here. Perhaps the bottle of wine each with Luke wasn't such a great idea, but we all had fun.

this is actually a good photo of Mark, but he does look kinda stoopid as well

In Sucre (next stop) we went a did spanish classes. I actually did two weeks, while Mark went ahead and meet Luke in La Paz for some hiking (his spanish is a lot better than mine). Sucre was AWESOME. Really beautiful colonial former capital of Bolivia, with a great ex-pat scene that doesn't overwhelm the place. It was really aussie though, which was unexpected. Susan and Philipe were both there, which helped continue the party from Potosi. Sucre has an amazing food market, so Susan, Philipe Mark and I (and then Jamie, when Mark left) went slightly cooking crazy at our hostel. We ate like kings!

Philipe cooking dinner

Mark's favourite vegetable stall

From Sucre I headed to La Paz with Susan and Jamie and Philip to go on a six day rafting, tubing and river canyoning adventure with Mark as well as a group of Isrealies who were also on the tour. We had to make our own rafts, camped on beaches by the river sat in inner tube tires floating down the rapids trying (unsuccessfully) to avoid getting ripped to shreads. We hiked through up smaller rivers and on one day saw a little rat like creature. Our guides told us it's a really delicicy and tried to catch it to eat, but it got away, to the joy of some of our group...

We (the Aussies and Austrian) headed back to La Paz, and while Mark and I stayed our friends went back to Sucre to do more study. Now Mark and I are waiting for friends to arrive and we are leaving, quick smart. Altitude sickness really really sucks!

Iguazu photo's

2011-05-19T01:54:00.000+01:00

As promised, here are some photo's. More can be found here

Anne, there are photo's of spiders at the very bottom - just a heads up.

Iguazu Falls

2011-05-14T14:41:00.001+01:00

I've decided against writing things in a linear fashion, mostly because I'm struggling with what to write about Patagonia, but that's for another blog post.

Right now Mark and I are in Argentina, at Iguazu Falls.

It's considered one of the great waterfalls, up there with Niagra and Victoria Falls. I think it's classified as biggest by volume, but then I couldn't be sure, there are a million ways of measuring these sorts of things and tourist sites love to claim to be the biggest, the best, the tallest, the widest, ect. While in Europe we came across three of the biggest ports in Europe. My personal favourite was a statue of buddha in Hong Kong whis was 'the biggest statue of a copper buddha lying down in a building' (or something like that).

Meanwhile, Igauzu was pretty amazing, with lots of waterfalls that spread between Brazil and Argentina (much like Niagra and Vic Falls funnily enough). We didn't go to the Brazilian side, less to see for the same price, and we're becoming poorer and poorer by the day. I don't expect sympathy.

We were both really really impressed, apparently 'negative ions generated by waterfalls make people happier' and despite extreme humidity we loved it! With loads of walks and spots to sit and listen to the roar of as tonnes of water cascads down the side of cliffs while a million little butterflies swarm you, attracted, I assume, to the salt of your skin, how can this be anything but one of South America's premier attractions.

Mark hasn't organised his photo's from the falls yet, but I'll post some once he has.

Buenos Aires

2011-04-28T02:01:00.000+01:00

I have (very politely) been reminded by a friend that I'm long due a blog post, and since we have been in South America for almost two months I thought I'd better get onto it. This blog is about Buenos Aires, and Carnival.

We arrived in Buenos Aires and spent about 10 days there, taking spanish lessons and generally having fun. I fell a little bit in love with BA. I guess we've mostly spent time in rural areas or small towns and villages, so it was nice to spend time in such a cool city. It has a great weekend market, amazing art deco architecture and the best steak restaurant in the world. Apparently BA also has some of the most lax laws (or rather enforcement) on graffiti which means that there is some of the most amazing the street art I've ever seen. We spent hours walking around looking at it all, and we are talking seriously artistic stuff here, not some kid with a can of black spray paint sticking his name up everywhere.

Something we finally got around to doing in BA was couch surfing (can you believe it took us two years to get involved in free accommodation, we're slipping I tell you). Apparently we picked the right city to do it in as well, because the couch surfing community in BA is meant to be the most active in the world, organising a whole lot of activities during the week Some photo's can be found here, here and here

With friends from our spanish course we went to a small town a few hours out of BA for Argentina's biggest Carnival festival for the weekend. I think most of the worlds ostrich and peacock feathers were on display. The floats were amazing. I was pretty glad a brought tissues to wipe the drool that was coming from Mark and the other guys we were there with. Yikes!

Some of Mark's photo's from carnival click here. You'll notice he jumped the fence a few times to get up close and personal with some of the women. You'll also notice I'm far too classy to grope strange men wearing very little!

We ended up having to smuggle ourselves into a camp ground, as the camping spaces filled up rather quickly, and then found that our group became minor celebrities as we were the only foreigners around. This meant we had a lot of offers to try Fernet (the local liquor) and were invited to join in quiet a few parties and bbq. I don't think any of us complained, Argentinans are really friendly, and they know how to bbq what is easily the best steak I've ever had. I've included below a couple of photo's from the weekend, including some that feature women wearing not too much, you have been warned!

It was really really hot so when we went to the southern most city of Argentina straight afterwards which was FREEZING cold we had a bit of a shock to the system. Our travels through Patagonia will form the basis of my next blog.

Thoughts on the Philippines

2011-01-27T05:38:00.000Z

Mark and I are in the Philippines at the moment, having just said good-bye to family and friends in Perth, a full fridge, a functioning shower, a couch to chill out on, free windsurfing gear for Mark (thanks Annika and Jesper) and all of the other joys and comforts of home.

Good-bye extreme food and booze orgy, hello noodles and rice, tropical beaches and cheap beer because that’s all we can afford (I don’t think you feel sorry for us though, do you!)

We had a one night stopover in one of my favourite cities, KL. First things first, off to the central markets to get Mark’s feet cleaned by miniature fish. We spent a few hours wondering around, ate noodle soup (hooray we’re back in Asia) and then passed out to wake up (again) at 2am to catch our flight to Manila.

I love the mystery of heading to a new country, will we be harassed at every step with offers of food, booze, drugs, women (for Mark really, I don’t get offered women very often... sexist really), transports, cowboy hats (never understood that one). What will the food be like? Are the locals mercenary, will we have to haggle for everything, will it be a total bank breaker or will everything be reasonably priced. Do I have to wear a burka, or is it acceptable to run around in a string bikini. Are the local women likely to grope poor Mark at every step?

We’ll, we’ve fallen in love with the Philippines. It may just win favourite South East Asian country, and become one of the easiest, friendliest places we’ve been. Why so good?

Low hassle, an absolute highlight was the singing dancing boy who followed us for about 2 meters begging, and when we said no, wished us on our merry way with a ‘ok, bye have a nice day sir and ma’am’, taxi drivers leave us along for the most part. Prices quoted are reasonable. Sure there’s always a bit of haggling, but prices start somewhere reasonable. Accommodation (so far) has tended to be decently priced, and CLEAN!!! The food’s tasty and the local beer good. Since I tower over the local women, who tend to come up to my belly button, the men leave me alone. Dress code is – normal.

Poor Mark is complaining though, he’s not been gratuitously groped nearly enough.

A couple of photos, taken on my itouch, so excuse the quality

Old woman selling crabs at a bus stop, wish we had a kitchen :(

little kids on the street of Manila

Mark and I at a resturant in Sugar Beach, Negros island

Mark taking a sunset photo on Sugar Beach

Cape Town and the Western Cape of South Africa

2010-11-22T15:42:00.000Z

We arrived in Cape Town and stayed with Tamara Ridley and her boyfriend JP for almost a week of a luxuriously comfortable bed, a fully functional kitchen and way too much alcohol. Tam is a family friend, her father and my father went to University together. I had last seen her in 1996 when she came out to visit my family in Australia with her father. Honestly I was a little worried about staying with someone for that length of time when I hadn’t seen them in almost 15 years. Fortunately both Tamara and JP (both featured in photo's below) were lovely and we had an amazing time staying with them.

I think, if we were to live anywhere in Southern Africa, I’d pick Cape Town. Firstly cities situated on the West Coast are always cooler (think Vancouver, think Perth, think Lisbon). There are vineyards within and 30 minutes from the city centre, some amazing diving, Table mountain to hike, and a very unique food culture with seafood galore and a great nightlife, as well as seal and penguin colonies and hiking on the Cape of Good Hope.

We managed to do almost everything above, except for the kelp forest diving. Mark had been given for his 30birthday money towards this from friends in London; unfortunately the weather wasn’t amazing while we were there, so he couldn’t. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he spends it on something cool. J

From Cape Town we hired a car and headed to Stellenbosch for three days of wine tasting and amazing food. We also caught up with Rob Brown, a gentleman we had meet in Kariba Zimbabwe. We left Stellenbosch with lighter purses, clinking bottles of wine in the boot of the car, and a few extra pounds in weight from the food. Lovely!

Right now we are in Prince Albert and have managed to really fall on our feet. Yesterday it was Sunday and with everything closed except the local bakery/ cafe we spoke to the owners who have rented us out an entire amazing old colonial three bed house for £16.50 (less than the price of a camp site in Namibia).

From here we hit the Garden route, followed by the Wild Coast and then Lesoto

Namibia

2010-11-22T15:37:00.000Z

I think I’m not going to write so exactly sequentially for Namibia. Why? because Mark was in charge of the planning so we did A LOT. I’ll try to restrict myself to the highlights, but firstly about Namibia. Starting with the negatives because then you finish reading on a happy note. It was EXPENSIVE. Accommodation was more expensive that most European capital cities, camping pricier, and the food hurt the budget, this was something we heard a lot of people bemoaning. Not great for travellers, but can you imagine what it’s like for a local. Also, and this was more based on the time of year of our visit, but wow it was hot. 42 degrees, and we had no air-con in the car. Which leads my nicely to my next point, very poor transport system, you have to hire a car to get around, get on board a overland truck or sell a kidney to pay for the very expensive in country tours, we were told that even hitch hikers were expected to pay a huge fee to get picked up. And finally, it is basically all dust!

What was interesting was how usual the country was. The cleanest cities in Africa, with German architecture (Namibia was Germany’s only colony) in a very dusty dry country. Also, the landscape; or as one fellow traveller told us when we first arrived, ‘you’ve never seen so many different types of nothing’. The supermarkets stocked with German produce like sauerkraut and rye bread and then typical African dishes like pap and biltong. Massive, modern cattle farms in most of the country contrasted with the northern small rural tribal farms with foot and mouth and anthrax troubles.

So what did we do in Namibia? We headed north first to Etosha national park for some desert game viewing. What makes Etosha so amazing is the quantity of game, but also the environment. Flat landscape with not much in the way of trees to block your view of huge herds of game wondering the plains, and a desert with just a couple of waterholes with guaranteed amazing game viewing. Mark picked a great rest camp with a waterhole that with flood lamps lit overnight. Mark got up at about 3.30 each morning to watch leopards, lions, elephant, hyena, rhino’s and more buck that you could braai* in a life time come to drink the water. Hopefully he’ll be able to post his photo’s of this soon.

I also feel in love with Spitzkoppe, where we camped on a giant kopje (a hill or rocky outcrop set in an otherwise flat plain) in an area with no light pollution and watch the stars while toasting marshmallows and cuddling around the fire. Again, once he’s edited them, Mark will post (what I think) his amazing photo’s from the evening. We climbed the world’s biggest sand dunes by Swakopmund and explored a dead lake complete with dead trees. We hiked to 3000 year old SAN bushman paintings. Helped fellow travellers whose campervan had a flat tire (the whole time feeling incredibly happy that it wasn’t us this time) and then fixed our own flat tire the following day, thinking we shouldn’t have been so happy the day before. We went wine tasting in Namibia’s only winery. And finally I really enjoyed watching just how extraordinarily excited Mark was about the different varieties of barren nothingness that passed us by in the window.

We spent ten days in Namibia in all and while it is beautiful I’d suggest to all travellers to not go in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, pack a warm sleeping bag and only hire a car with aircon. Also a stuffed wallet would help.

We left Windhoek, the capital on an overnight bus for Cape Town on one of the most comfortable buses I’ve ever taken, the InterCape. Tragically they too make us watch terrible terrible movies played so loud my ipod set at full volume wouldn’t drown out the sound. Sigh.

*Southern African for bbq

Botswana

2010-11-22T15:27:00.001Z

We didn’t have a lot of time for Bostwana, and hiring a car wasn’t cheap, so we limited our stay to visiting the absolute highlights, Chobe National Park, and the Okavango Delta. While both were amazing, perhaps most memorable will be how we got from Chobe to Maun in the Okavango, but I’m getting ahead of myself; I’m trying to be sequential here.

We crossed the boarder with a minimum of fuss, and arrived in the small town outside of Chobe National Park to stay the night. Chobe proved to be the quickest tour for a national park, but also one of the most impressive. We booked ourselves onto a sunset boat cruise which covered a tiny area of the park, but the boat allowed us to get the closest to game and see more than anywhere else.

Without a hire car, to move from Chobe to Maun consisted of two very squishy local buses (fortunately with no movies). However all was not lost because two very nice French Canadian’s happend to be going the same way as us, so we had someone else to talk to, always nice. Even better, while waiting for the second bus, three crazy Russians approached us, said they felt sorry for us, and offered us a lift. Yes the car was a seven seater so technically we would all fit, but we were all travelling, so you need to account for bags. Mark’s backpack is 90 litres. He can fit a small couch into it. His ‘day bag’ is the size of most people’s backpacks. While I have a small backpack, and a medium sized day back, together they take up more room than we do. We ended up with bags at our feet, sitting on bags, bags on our laps, bags on those bags and a tiny air circle. Our driver also had a lead foot, so we tended to move at about 180km/hr. It was uncomfortable! It was also the best road trip I’ve been on in ages as we attempted conversation with various English levels, and various abilities to breathe. That evening in Maun proved to be equally entertaining; Russians can party.

Feeling slightly worse for wear, the next morning with Geneviève and Kevin (the French Canadian couple) we set off on a Mokoro trip into the Okavango. A Mokoro is a canoe like boat that was used to get around the Okavango Delta, a swamp in the northern part of Botswana. We piled our bags, camping gear, cooking equipment and enough food to last us three nights and set off.

What to say about the Mokoro trip. Well it was HOT in the Okavango. This meant we basically found whatever shady spot we could, and lay in it between 10am and 4pm. Also we were really roughing it, so no showers and a proper camp toilet consisting of a hole in the ground. Also because it was so hot, we were drinking about 5 litres of water a piece. That wasn’t something we’d catered for, so we ended up having to boil swamp water (ok the swamp water was pretty clean, but there were still bits in it).

Having said all of that, it was a great deal of fun. We’d go fishing in the evenings; we’d laze in the water during the day (hoping no croc passed looking for a tasty morsel); we ate some pretty amazing meals, including the fish Mark managed to catch; we’d go on game walks in the mornings and evenings spotting herds of zebra’s, elephant, buffalo, warthog, baboons and millions of birds.

We discovered new and wonderful uses for dried elephant poo as well. Too many mozzies at night? Burn elephant poo and smoke them away. Monkeys try to steal food from your camp? Throw elephant poo at them (burning poo optional). Herd of elephants walk through your camp over night and worried about getting squished? Throw aforementioned smoking poo at them. Husband needs to be put into place? Elephant poo fight!

While I think all four of us enjoyed the Delta, the feeling of opening the eskie (cooler box) of the boat taking us back to Maun and finding ice cold bottles of water, beer and soft drinks was pretty euphoric. So was stepping into the shower and washing that swampy water, smokey-elephant smell from my hair!!!

From Maun we went to Windhoek in Namibia with another lead foot 180km/hr driver. Yes Mum we wore seatbelts!

Zimbabwe (Harare to Vic Falls)

2010-11-22T15:25:00.003Z

Since I’m not re-reading the last blog for fear of dying of shame I’ll assume I left off in Harare where we stayed with the lovely Smits and went to watch my uncle perform in a stage version of ‘Ello ‘Ello which featured a painting of the Fallen Madonna with the big boobies...

We caught a bus from Harare to Bulawayo which was actually remarkably comfortable if you could excuse the incredibly bad, incredibly loud movies played for the entire trip. I couldn’t. I think Mark struggled to get past my incredibly loud and incredibly constant complaining.

We stayed with Caroline and Jeff Fenwick, Caroline is the sister of some family friends of mine from Perth, her brother Leo actually drove me to our wedding, so while I’d never meet the Fenwick’s, I know Caroline’s brother and grew up with her nieces and nephew. However meeting and receiving amazing hospitality and care from people who’s relationship to you is tenuous at best seems to be par for the course in Zim as well as the rest of Southern Africa. Their son, Justin took Mark and I on a tour of the Matopos Hills which were pretty amazing. They also gave us contact details for John in Vic Falls which was where we headed next... on the same bus company we used to get to Bulawayo.

Fortunately the bus turned out to be a lot smaller, so there wasn’t a tv screen, instead we read and listen happily to our own music while watching the world go by – how civilised!

Vic Falls in Zimbabwe’s premier tourist spot and in many respects it shows. While in the rest of Zim there are rolling blackouts (be it to electricity for three days of the week, or electricity for half of the day) it’s very rare for Vic Falls to have a black out. And roaming Vic Falls where a lot of tourist police, whose jobs were financed by local hotels and task was to protect tourist from some fairly aggressive touts. Mark and I being jaded, backpackers we are seem to have gotten much better and politely getting rid of aggressive touts quickly (and politely mum), but I did watch a lot of people really struggle, so this was a great initiative that I hadn’t really seen elsewhere.

About the Falls. Well they are beautiful. Simple as that. They’ve been listed as one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, and while I don’t always agree with these lists (the Colloseum as one of the 7 modern wonders of world??? Where’s Ankor Wat??) Vic Falls should definitely be there. We also spent a day white water rafting which was AWESOME!!! To say I was petrified about doing this does not cover how scared I was. I didn’t sleep the whole night before, waking poor Mark up at 3 in the morning telling him I couldn’t do it. Fortunately I did, because it will probably go down as one of the best experiences of the whole trip. That night we were treated by the Smits in Harare to a dinner at what is considered one of Zimbabwe’s premier restaurants, the Boma, which serves game (think Warthog, Kudu, Ostrich or even Croc) and includes drummers, dancers, fortune tellers, and face painting. What a day!

Following the advice of John (a friend of the Fenwick’s) we decided against spending extreme amounts of money trying to leave Vic Falls, and hitched our way to Botswana...

Zim was always going to be pretty amazing for me. It’s the second time I’ve visited since I emigrated to Australia with my parents in 1983 and the first time visiting without them to guide the way. What I found was a beautiful country that is recovering from a difficult few years, populated with a very kind and generous people. I would warn however, that if you don’t have your own transport, maybe wait a year or two to visit. The transport infrastructure isn’t so great.

Story since Harare

2010-11-22T15:24:00.000Z

Ahhh, I’m having serious writers bloc. I have many tales to tell, but seem to have a complete inability to write it down. Yuck. Also I’ve been a bit slack, but then I’m never sure who reads this apart from Mum and Joel. Actually I finally worked out how to look at reader’s stats and apparently more people read this blog in Canada than anywhere else, but then that probably isn’t interesting to many people beyond myself. Blogging is a selfish pursuit isn’t it?

So since the last blog (which was posted while drunk, so I dare not go back and reread) we’ve finished up in Zimbabwe, and then went on to Botswana, Namibia and are now in South Africa. I’m going to try and break things up by country and post a blog for each

Trillionaires in Harare, Zimbabwe

2010-10-24T20:09:00.000+01:00

Whoops, I wrote this blog a whiile ago, but then the electricity in died (normal in Zim) and it didn't happen.

Mark and I have been given over 20 trillion dollars! Yeap we're trillionaires. Unfortuantely this doesn't mean drinks are on us, because we're talking Zim dollars so that 20 trillion wouldn't buy us a match stick! Or the letter a!

We're in Zimbabwe at the moment, and have been absolutely blown away by how friendly and welcoming everyone is. Of everywhere we've been I honestly think Southern African's are some of the most welcoming people we've come across. Complete strangers, having spoken to us for ten minutes, have offered to let us stay with them, and people are so very kind. It's also amazingly beautiful here, particularily the Eastern Highland region, which was where I was born.

So what have we been up to, we went to Kariba Dam, and had a slightly frustrating time trying to get onto the river (which is HUGE). Unfortunately a lot of business (particularily those that deal with tourists) closed down during all of the troubles in 2008/2009. However we did go to the awards night of the annual tiger fishing competition and proceded to have a great time partying with locals, and drinking way too much!

We've spent a few days in Harare with old family friends of mine, the Smits, who are lovely. It was with their sun, Anton, Mark and I went on our camping trip in Norway with. In Mutare we stayed with the Bridget and Keith Hollands, and also saw a lot of the Phillips. We managed to go play 9 holes of golf at what the PGA calls the second hardest golf course in the world for the sum total of USD25 Now given this was my first time playing golf, and I was soooo unbelieveable amazingly terrible, I thought the caddy was pretty kind not to laugh everytime I tried to hit the ball.

Family photo's from South Africa

2010-10-03T17:54:00.001+01:00

Here are a few photo's of family from our trip in South Africa so far - look Anton, a couple of KT (my cousins daughter, she's amazinly adorable!!!)

Photo's from Mark's 30th surprise

2010-10-03T17:46:00.000+01:00

While in London, I managed to organise a surprise party for Mark, even he did spent the time leading up complaining about how badly I'd organise our weekend in London, and why was Saturday night not spent catching up to all of our friends - whoops!

Photo's from Scandinavia

2010-10-03T17:27:00.000+01:00

Eating dark chocolate with toasted marshmellows in Norway

Talking to Anton, pull a stupid face :S

Fjord in Norway

Mark overlooking Fjord in Norway

Mark with his Danish family

Animal Orphanage and Kruger

2010-10-03T08:13:00.000+01:00

Mark and I are at Daktari, which is just near Kruger Park. It’s a wildlife orphanage as well as a school for local, underprivileged children to learn about the environment and to help the orphaned wild animals. They've got a leopard, meercats, goats, donkeys, ostrich and lots of other animals. It's run by my Aunts brother in law, Ian, and his wife Michelle. You can find out information here www.dakaribushschool.org, but basically people can volunteer here to help teach the local children and also look after the animals (as I write someones hand feeding a squirrel who's too young to eat solids).

Before we got here we'd spent 6 days in Kruger Park and managed to see all of the big five (lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo and leopard) as well as almost everything else. We hadn't realised it but we were in Kruger over the local school holidays so when we went to book everything was completely booked out. So out tip to anyone planning on heading to Kruger is to book in advance on this website www.sanparks.org.

Due to our tiny little budget, Mark and I camped, and in South Africa, they take there camping seriously. Everyone seemed to have 6 man tents closer to size to an English flat, with fridges, and satellite dishes, with as well as full bbq kits (or braai's as they call them here). We had a small two man tent and a tiny little table and chair set. Clearly we looked pretty pitiful compared to these luxury tents, because pretty much every night we were adopted by some local who would see our very basic camp set up and lend us gear. One family even gave us steaks, sweet potato and damper to cook on a braai along with a cutlery set and plates and condiments (ours were no where near as nice). South African's are amongst the kindest, most generous people we've meet on our trip so far.

I'm going to cut this short, because breakfast is coming, including strawberry and white chocolate muffins and bacon and eggs (they also eat really well here!), but Anton, I promise to write a blog soon talking about probably the cutest little girl in the world, KT.

Mark's updated his photo blog, you can look at some here.

Whiteriver South Africa

2010-09-03T21:04:00.004+01:00

I’m sitting in Whiteriver, South Africa with Mark, Mum and my aunt Frances playing card games, drinking too much wine and eating biltong with Mum making me feel bad for not updating the blog. Whoops, one of those things that get away from you, or I’m lazy... Yeap, I’m lazy.

So what has happened since the last blog update. Wow it was sooo long ago. We left India and parted ways. Mark spent 2 months hiking in Nepal, for a while with Chris and Allen. He hiked up to 6500 feet, did some of the hardest hikes you can do without equipment and guides and managed to finish weighing FIFTY THREE KILOS!!!!!!!!! (That’s 116 pounds for you strange imperial people).

I went to South East Asia for a month, enjoying Kuala Lumpar, Bangkok and then Laos, which has to go down as my favourite country ever! I managed to time it so that I hit their new year festival, which is basically a giant water fight that included the entire village for 10 days!!!! While I was there some friends we had made in India, Ollie and Ben as well as Will, Cameron and Paul where in Laos at the same time so I had friends to run around with attacking locals with water guns. I shared a room with another friend met in Laos, Allison, who helped cut the testosterone a little.

After Asia I went back to Perth for a month of guaranteed comfortable bed, working shower, no bed bugs, fridge full of food, plus my mum and dad and my baby sister. Perth was great it was so nice to spend time with my family and enjoy some stability. I also managed to be there for my youngest sisters 21st, I don't think she would have forgiven me if I hadn't been there.

I left Perth and meet up with Mark in Delhi. Poor Mark had his camera stolen on the way to meet me so our happy reunion was somewhat marred as he’d lost some of his favourite Everest photos.

We spent two days in Delhi and then flew to London for a short trip to see family and a very few friends, and then flew to Rhodes, Greece to spend two months sailing in the Greek Islands with Mark’s parents on their boat. It was soooo nice. I was left in charge of the galley (happy days) while we both helped on the deck. Mark managed to catch a fish (singular, tehehe). It was great to spend time with Mark’s parents as well as the visitors who came to join us, including Mark’s cousin and a couple of friends from London. While we were there Mark turned 30, so we made sure to get a few photos of him in stupid party hats.

After Greece Mark and I flew to Stockholm to see his Swedish family, which is always great because they spoil us rotten. This time we were there for their fresh water small lobster season, so ate more seafood than most people see in a year! Yum!

We said good-bye to Mark’s family and met up with Anton, whose family has known my family in Africa forever! We hired a car for ten days, filled our car with cheap food from Sweden (by Scandinavian standards anyway) and drove through fjords, and amazing Norwegian scenery for 10 days. We finished in Lund, in Sweden, where Anton studies, and caught a train to Copenhagen to meet one of Mark’s Maltese aunts and her children which was fantastic! I’d not meet Josianne, and was happy to find she was one of those people who just made you feel welcome and at home!

We said good-bye to Copenhagen and flew to London for a few days of some more family and friend action including a surprise 30th party for Mark and plenty of dim sum and noodle time!

Yesterday we arrived into Johannesburg to spend time with MY extended family and are now on an indepth tour of my maternal family history in South Africa. Poor Mark, his eyes do seem to glaze over a fair bit after a few hours of stories of which cousin married which person and where they lived and how many children they had, and the the types of plants they grew... but I’m excited!!)

So now we have three and a half months in Southern Africa, which should include South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia. I promise to not take so long until the next blog update!!!

(is anyone reading this apart from Mum???)

After India

2010-03-26T07:17:00.000Z

Well this is my last night in India. Due to new Indian visa laws Mark and I are going separate ways for two months. In December, India changed visa rules so that if you leave the country, you aren’t allowed back in for two months and have to reapply for your visa, even if you’ve still got 6 months left. The plan had been to head to Nepal together, where I would become a yoga guru while Mark hiked for three odd weeks with some friends.

Since I didn’t really desire to spend two months waiting to Mark to hike the length and breadth of Nepal in a place which is all about trekking I decided to head back to fly over to South East Asia and spend the time on a beach in and then head to Laos to spend time in my favourite country. When I mentioned this to my parents, kindly offered to fly me back to Perth for the second month, so guess what I’m going home for the first time in four years with the exception of our whirlwind tour wedding. Poor Mark has had to listen to me talk about all the food, wine and friends I’m looking forward to. Fish and chips on the beach, Mum’s lamb roast, actual salads, red meat, good white wine, bunnings hot dogs, meat pies, good breakfasts YUM!

We’ll meet back in Delhi on the 31 May because we already had flights booked and then we head to Greece to hang out with Mark’s parents there. The year just keeps getting better.

India tips

2010-03-26T07:15:00.001Z

What to bring to India

Mosquito net and some rope to hang it up
Mosquito repellent
Padlock and chain for your doors and to lock up your bag on the train.
Silk liner (seriously sometimes the sheets are disgusting and they are great at stopping bed bugs)
Sleeping bag (it gets cold in winter especially in the north), warm socks and warms clothes as well.
Open toed shoes Shoes with high rim so if you do end up stepping in that's cows stinky present you don't get it all over your feet

Trains

We booked all of our trains ourselves, we’d recommend trying to book some of the trains ahead of your trip. This website will tell you how to use the complex Indian booking system www.seat61.com and this website is where you actually book the train www.irctc.co.in and this website is where you can find availability www.indiarail.co.in. When using a foreign credit card the best bank to link through to is Axis Bank. We wasted about 4 hours working this out. Also the irctc site is pretty crap, it crashes a lot! Book tickets in advance, we found a train booked out of good seats a month in advance on a more popular line. We mostly took sleeper, but women travel without a chaperone should probably go 3AC or higher.

Women

You are married! Make up a story of a husband if you are travelling on your own
You have to cover up, less so in Kerala and Goa is even more liberal, but otherwise cover your shoulders and no low cut tops, skirts or trousers to your ankles.
Take sunglasses
Take the top bunk on the train where you can hide and are less likely to get groped in your sleep
Sit at the front of the bus which is reserved for women anyway.

Otherwise you get to talk to a whole half of the population that men don’t ever get to interact with. I spoke to an America guy who in 4 months of India hadn’t spoken to more than 3 women, all older who ran hostels. School children on buses will adopt up and bus conductors will make sure you get a seat.

I always wanted to buy a water pistol to squirt water and annoying men, I really regret that I didn’t.

Hampi to Varanasi

2010-03-26T07:07:00.000Z

Ah I’ve been a bit lazy, no blogs for two months. Mark tells me people have emailed to complain about the lack of news, but I don’t actually believe him, I think he’s just trying to guilt me into getting my butt into gear, and also showing off because he’s uploaded a zillion photo’s onto his blog page.

What have we been up to? Well, since Hampi we’ve been to Kerala, the bottom of India, through Tamil Nadu to a place that is sooo amazing we aren’t actually going to talk about it because we think we deserve one secret spot, and then Kolkatta, Bodhgaya (the place where Buddha found enlightenment) and finally where we are now, Varanasi.

What can I say. Kerala was a real highlight for me. It’s meant to be the most educated state in India, and it certainly felt like the most sophisticated and the cleanest state. It really did offer in one nice neat package a good taste of India from spice and tea plantations to beautiful beaches, safaris (though it’s still India so you don’t actually see anything). We went canoeing through the backwaters and took boats across half the state. If you didn’t have much time in India but wanted to get a really good taste minus a lot of the hassle, for my mind, come to Kerala.

The tip of India was, frankly, terrible. Don’t bother.

In Tamil Nadu we went to Madurai to visit the biggest temple in India. WOW! This was our favourite temple even before we stumbled across a festival for Kali the destruction goddess which is held every four years. The temple had a statue for every hindu god (which we seem to remember being around the 10,000 mark). It was beautifully decorated and the people were typically India so very proud of their culture and religion and very keen to share information on everything. For the Kali festival all of the local women made some sort of weird rice flour, sugar and butter concoction. Poor Mark was force feed about a kilo of the stuff, while I hid in the corner to avoid a food baby.

The secret place was amazing, and if you email us, we may just tell you where it is. All I’ll say was it’s heaven on earth.

Kolkata was kind of cool, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of sights to see which always sends Mark bananas and the men were pretty aggressive which I don’t love. In fact at one point I had to flag down a police officer to get rid of some men for me, but had beautiful old colonial architecture and a fun vibe.

Bodhgaya was really cool. It’s basically a huge town set up around the sight where Buddha found enlightenment. Buddhist countries from across the world each had a temple there and we had a great time going from temple to temple checking out the various types of architecture and giggling at the ‘no sleeping in the temple’ signs until we realised that the area was so poor that homeless people would sit in the temples to hide from the heat or the monsoon.

Now we’re in Varanasi but I’ll save that for another day because I’m running out of battery and you’re probably a bit bored!

Hampi, India

2010-02-05T14:26:00.002Z

We’re sitting in along the banks of a river in the middle of a town called Hampi drinking mango lassis and watermelon juice as the sun sets. This is the life!

We’ve left Goa, and wow was I a bit gutted to leave. Goa ended up being a little mini holiday from the insaneness of India. We had expected a bit more of a party, but the bars shut at 10pm, so instead we spent our time recharging batteries (and my patience levels) while enjoying the ocean and sunshine. In fact, we found accommodation right on the beach, waking up to the sound of the ocean (as well as dogs howling, and the dreaded chicken) both in Ajuna and Agonda.

We also hit Old Goa and Panijin, with its beautiful Portuguese style architecture and some amazing fish curry.

Because of the number of westerners in Goa, it was really liberal for India, but also, and way more excitingly for me, less leery, no sneaky gropes, and generally hassle free.

After Hampi we head to Kerala where we’re going to go hunt for spice and teas.

Central India

2010-01-19T09:47:00.002Z

Here's a post from Mark -

The three weeks since NYE have been largely been spent touring through Central India from Agra to Mumbai searching out some of Indias most famous ancient monuments and trying to flee the plunging Winter temperatures of the North. It has been an interesting though exhausting trip, with whole days spent on some combination of taxi, bus, train, train, bus, taxi, bus between our stops, and 100km trips stretching on up to 10 hours. But in between we’ve seen the whole breath of Indian history in this region which almost every great Indian civilization held at some point.

First up were the Mogul forts at Agra and the ancient Mogul capital at Fatepuhr Sikri, both were replete with mosques, palaces, gardens and harems for up to 5000 women. Next up were the ruined palaces and temples of a Hindu prince at Orcha, a tiny garden filled island in one of North India’s (many) sacred rivers, which resisted the Moguls for some decades before finally falling to their armies. This will stand out in our memories though, for its raucous NYE festival celebrating Rama the King, and for the consequent crowds of Indian country town teens chasing us around trying to get photos of us tourists.

Next up were the erotic temples at Kujarhoo, an interesting juxtaposition of ancient erotica and modern Indian social mores. Lets just say that the seemingly all male population here were a little sexually frustrated, surrounded as they were by carvings of every conceivable sexual position and proclivity (several of which required quite a bit of imagination to figure out what was going on, and how this was physically possible at all) but not able to so much as hold hands with a local girl. You haven’t lived till a 14 year old boy chases you down the street trying to sell you copies of the karma sutra.

Next up were the oldest Buddhist structures in India at Sanchi, where the great emperor Ashoka covered a hill in Buddhist stupas following his conversion as a penance for his bloodthirsty conquests. Then it was bus, bus, hike up to the cave paintings at Bhimbetka, where the original Indian people lived among the rock caves and filled them with remarkable paintings showing their lives.

Heading further South we made it up (eventually) to Mandu, a striking plateau covered with Afghani ruins. The highlight here was not so much the ruins, though these were captivating, but the fact that the villages had grown up in and around them. We hired bikes for 30p for the day, and went off on a ride through the paddy fields and villages to seek them out. The town was tiny and a bit obscure, so we lodged in the local Shiva temples’ accommodation for pilgrims and got familiar with the temple bells and the bucket showers.

Last stop were the rock cut temples of Ajanta and Ellora, both a series of temples (the former Buddhist, the latter representing Buddhist, Hindu and the Jain faiths) cut into riverside cliffs from the living stone. These places are for me the highlight so far of “tourist site” India. I’ll let the photos at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/mark.bridget do the talking for me on this one.

Goa

2010-01-19T09:46:00.001Z

Mark and I have arrived in Goa and wow this is a different India!!! I’ve seen female tourist’s knees*! I’ve seen Indian women’s knees! In fact, I’m currently wearing a sun dress!!! They serve meat here, people here are more relaxed and the locals (as opposed to the India tourists) don’t stare!!! AMAZING

It is still definitely India, there are cows on the beach!!!

Hopefully the rest of the south is like this, but if not, I’m going to enjoy my time in Goa while I can!!

Prior to arriving in Goa, we went to the Taj Mahal in Agra, which was everything everyone had said it would be while the town of Agra wasn‘t as evil as it was purported to be. We also went on a Tiger safari, and despite our best effort, didn’t manage to see much more than tiger traks.

Mark has promised to write a blog about what we’ve been up to, and since it will be filled with more information that I could ever possibly conceive of including, I’m going to end here.

*Have I mentioned the conservative dress code in India, girls have to cover from shoulder to ankle, and absolutely no plunging necklines!!!

Photo's from the came safari

2010-01-03T15:13:00.002Z

Here are some photos from the camel safari. Don't forget Marks puts more photos from the trip here.

Camel Safari, Rajasthan

2010-01-03T14:14:00.000Z

Just before Christmas Mark and I went on a three day, two night camel safari with an Irish friend called Keith.

It’s important to note that Camel’s stink and are extremely uncomfortable!!!! They are also very ugly! Thirty minutes on these fiends from hell is enough for a lifetime! Three days was torturous.

On the plus side (on this occasion), we’re in India so they weren’t that enthusiastic about making sure we went far, saw much or did much. We were quiet happy to sit in the shade away from stinking camels for most of the day, and our guides were happy to sit in the shade and not do any work just as much!

Which is fortunate, because most of the time our guide, Issac, would disappear to go to friends weddings, or take another group on a safari and leave us with a 12 year old boy Keith (the iris guy) called Sticky Fingers on account of Issac’s the stories of his theft from other tourists. We did a thorough stock take before we left.

Being poor backpackers we booked the cheaper tour which involved sleeping under the stars. Unfortunately it is freezing in the desert in the winter!!! Amazing to sleep under the stars away from light pollution, but probably a few extra blankets wouldn’t have gone astray! At one point I did actually think I was going to loss toes, and Issac was absolutely hysterical when it started to rain on the first night, telling us we were probably going to die!
All in all a real adventure, but no need to repeat I think.

Christmas in Rishikesh

2010-01-03T13:45:00.003Z

Over the Christmas week we were in Rishikesh with my Aunt, Adrienne. She spends about four months a year there at her Ashram, and we thought it would be good to spend Christmas with some family. The people at Adrienne’s ashram are very friendly and it was so nice to find such a welcoming community to spend Christmas with, even if the dinner was served in buckets (see photo to the right).

The town was also a little haven from the usual hassle you find throughout India. The week certainly recharged our batteries! Mark managed to get some white water rafting in (though it wasn’t very good) and some hiking to boot. I found a nice yoga place and helped out in building the Ashram’s new garden. As this town is basically Adrienne's second home, she was able to take us to all of the good restaurants. I think that was our best food week in a long time!!!

Adrienne also introduced us to a fantastic school orphanage called Ramana's Seva Samiti, run by an American lady. She started up a school for the untouchables in the town, and it ended up developing into an orphanage. The orphanage houses children from about 5 to 15, and includes children where both parents have died. Staggerinly some of the young girls were former prostitutes that she managed to help. We were incredibly impressed and inspired with what she manages to do on a shoe string budget. She also had a little restaurant attached where we ate one of the best salads I’ve had in my life.

If you're interested in more information on the orphanage or are heading to Rishikesh and want a really good salad, this is the website www.sayyesnow.org

Mt Abu, Rajasthan

2009-12-11T16:45:00.001Z

We're up in a hill town at the moment, and oh wow, I'm in love with this town. Sure people come and ask you if you want a rickshaw/horse ride/ food/ hotel/ rickshaw/ clothes/ chai/ tour/ magic show/ popcorn/ rickshaw but when you say no thank-you, they leave you alone!!!!

It all feels like the twilight zone of India, couples walking down the street holding hands, people don't stare, no hassel. We even saw an India women sunbathing topless today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I almost fell over when I saw! What's more she wasn't surrounded by a million men trying to take her picture.

Still all good things come to an end, we head to Jodphur tomorrow (which is meant to be horrible), and then on to Jaisalmer, where we are going to go on a camel safari and will celebrate my birthday, which is nice.

If anyone wants to send me presents, let me know :)

Udaipur, Rajasthan

2009-12-11T16:26:00.000Z

India is turning into a love hate affair for me. In the last couple of days it’s a bit more of a love affair, but really, seriously, at the beginning, I was quiet happy to hide away in our hotel while Mark went exploring. People can be so friendly, and it can be quiet spectacularly beautiful.

However, and it’s a big however, it is also chaotic, dirty, smelly and loud. The men can be grabby (I find my butt is a tempting target, poor Mark has been feeling a little unattractive, no one has grabbed his bum!), the rickshaw drivers frustrating and haggling every day for everything tiresome. Did I also mention it was loud, smelly and really really dirty!!!

The things I have really loved is meeting other travellers (a real step up from the isolation of a campervan) the food, the price of everything (except beer which is more expensive than Europe in this state), how colourful everything is, and absolute sense of fun and joy you can get from a place as loud, smelly and really really dirty as India.

I guess the best example for that last statement, is that we’ve timed our arrival to hit India’s wedding season. Over here, a wedding starts at the crack of dawn with (from what I can work out) the groom heading to a temple and praying (very loudly through a PA system). This is followed by extremely loud parades through the streets with a drumming band (very cool) and a dude playing a keyboard badly on an incredibly loud, distorted, tinny PA system. The groom is on horseback, while his party dances on the street in front of him. He often looks like he’s about to panic and bolt of on the horse, while his friends and family (the women dressed in the most amazingly colourful saris) are having a great time. This will go all days until sunset, when the real festivities begin. I haven’t seen a wedding, by I’ve heard them, they are loud, and carry on until 3am, sometimes 4. You don’t sleep. Not even Sleeping Beauty sleeps through these parties!!!! The best news is, you finally get to sleep at 3/4am, only to be woken at 5.30 when the next groom preys at the temple you didn’t realised you were next too when you booked your room the night before!

Rajasthan is famous for palaces and forts. So today, with two lovely Swiss girls, we hired a taxi for the day and drove out to an absolutely beautiful fort, and then an amazing Jain* temple.

On the great filtered water saga, I’ve become a little less fussy about the taste of water, mostly it’s find, however it this town it’s just plan horrible, so it’s bottled water until tomorrow when we leave for Mt Abu.

*An India religion where members are forbidden from eating meat, but also root vegetables because insects may have been hurt when they pick them. It is a step up from Fruitarians, who only eat fruit and vegetables when they have fallen from the tree/ plant, so as to not injure the tree. Wikipedia probably explains the Jain religion a lot better than I could.

Delhi, India

2009-11-24T17:36:00.000Z

We arrived in Delhi today, the first day of our 7 month adventure on the sub-continent.

Wow this place is crazy, while Mark went out looking for accommodation, I sat with the bags and watch the teaming masses walk past. Every single cliche possible passed by my little corner of Delhi in the space of 45 minutes. Amazingly beautiful saris, crazy hippies, beggars, cows and some seriously amusing drivers. At one point the police decided to stop traffic moving in one direction (I couldn't really work out why) and the sound of the horns was insane.

While in London I'd basically bullied Mark into getting a water filter (a UV light that kills the DNA of all bugs in the water) to prevent contributing to the plastic bottle landfill of India, and I'm now wondering if I'll regret it. Sure, the waters perfectly safe to drink, but oh my god it tastes terrible. Though if you know Mark, you'd know that he'll make me suffer in my jocks and drink the foul tasting stuff!

We've decided to try going on a vegetarian diet, because you are less likely to get serious stomach problems this way. Still, this didn't stop us indulging in London and Malta (where we saw Bjorn and Chris* for the first time since we got married) to help create a fat belly buffer. However, in all of our travels, to all sorts of strange and wonderful places like jungles in the middle of Laos with no running water and electricity, I've never been so paranoid about eating the food, and think my lack of appetite will do more to get rid of that belly buffer than anything else.

Today we haven't done too much other than marvel (Mark very excitedly, and my more apprehensively) at the madness of the one single street we've seen, and book tickets for our next destination, Jaipur. The ticket booking took about one and half hours, and many calls to various banks before we finally had them organised (I guess we're in India). We leave on Friday morning, and will be making our way around Rajasthan for a month.

Anyway, our body clocks are seriously messed up, it's late and we should go to bed. I know I should probably fill people in on how much of a great time we had in London and Malta. It was great, much time was spent with family and friends, and taking a break for touristing. We managed to sell our second van (the good one) the day before we flew out to Malta, and it looks like we MAY be coming to some sort of resolution with our Insurance agency over the Pig. But I'm not holding my breath!!!!

Internet is cheap so hopefully I'll be able to put up more updates and will do some photo's soon.

Miss you all, if anyone's bored and wants to join us in India, let us know!!!!

*the crazy Inlaws, Hi guys :)

Home in a week

2009-10-23T10:28:00.000+01:00

Well we book ferry tickets last night, and will be back in London on the 30 to help Guy (my brother) celebrate turning 30.

For anyone based in London, I think we'll be going out in Camden on the 31st, probably without the crazy halloween costume. Ok Kel, you can wear one if you want. Otherwise, I'm sure there is dim sum to be eaten!!!

Aachen, Germany

2009-10-22T12:17:00.001+01:00

Whoops, drank way to much Limoncello, and cheap Italian wine last night, with friends in Aarchen, Germany. So now you are going to get the ramblings of a fairly hung over girl. Since Poland, Mark and I have been to Slovak Republic, Hungary, then back to Germany via Czech. From Germany we meet some friends in Amsterdam, and then to Belgium to see the lovely Philippe, Jeroen and Klaas. We are now back in Germany hurting our livers with Agnas and Tomas.

Since Philippe told me off for not posting enough I thought I'd put something short on and then update you on the happenings at each place.

Today we are off to explore the sites of Aachen with Tomas, who is feeling even worse than I am, and Agnas. After that we say a final good-bye to Germany and head to France to see Sophie and Marion and meet Sophie's baby. After that, home to London.

Zacopane, Poland

2009-09-24T16:47:00.002+01:00

Ahhh I've been so lazy, it's been soooo long since I wrote a meaningful post that to write all of the cool stuff we've done mean such a long post then even Mum would fall asleep. So since Mark isn't hear to tell me I have to put everything down I'm just going to do the absolute highlights, or my top recommendations (which usually amounts to the same thing).

Since Slovenia we've been to Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Austria, Hungary (very briefly), Czech, Slovakia and are now in Poland. So here's some info on my* favouties, in no particular order.

Bosnia

Wow, so much history, which you can really see every where you walk. We certainly saw the ottoman influence in the shisha bars and turkish pizza shops we visited. Also stood on the bridge where Franz Ferdinand was shot thus starting World War I. Drove past the Holiday Inn where the foreign correspondents during the wars lived and of course saw all of the bullet holes and scars in the buildings. But it isn't just the history that makes this place so special. The food (this blog is written by me) is fantastic and cheap!!! The people are friendly and there's enough to do to fill a couple of days. We also went to Mosta, again beautiful, but probably only a day trip.

Poland

I can't enthuse enough about Poland. IT. IS. AMAZING! And I'm not saying this because our Polish friend is sitting across from me! However, it may be influenced by the sheep cheese toasted sandwich that I'm currently eating!!! It's really stunning, and with most of eastern europe, really cheap. The cities we've visited (Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw) remind me a lot of Paris and Prague, but without the killer prices.

In Poznan we visited our friend Klaudyna where we were thoroughly spoilt with traditional polish food, leaving with a little hamper of home made booze and jams and polish goodies!

In Krakow Kelly and Allen joined us for much vodka! We toured Auschwitz and Birkenau, which were moving to say the least.

In Wroclaw we went Gnome hunting which would have to be one of the coolest things we have done!

We are currently in hiking Zacopane to Mark's delight, it seems to have enough trails to keep someone busy for a couple of weeks. Also the people are SOOO friendly. I'd say Poland is probably going to make one of my top Euro countries!

Cesky Krumlov, Czech

This is a cool little town south of Prague where you can drink a glass of wine under a beautiful castle and kayak through forest. Prague was great because we caught up with some friends - hi Anges and Tom - but otherwise expensive and over touristed (and I hate to go on about how touristy a place is, but this was SERIOUSLY over touristed).

Just so you know, since everyone raves about Croatia, I've skipped it. It's cool, but not one of our top destinations. If anyone wants tips on other places we've been let me know and I'll probably overwhelm you with recommendations.

With five weeks left of holiday until we get back to celebrate my brother hitting 30 we have started talking about our highlights and top 5's. I'll post those on our blog. Otherwise one of thee coolest thing about this holiday has been how much I've learnt about art and architecture and European history. I 've discovered favourite artists and galleries, seen some seriously miss-matched castles** and walked bridges and roads with histories that fill sections of massive libraries. I guess when your mind isn't being forced to learn for the sake of work, it finds other ways to grow ?!?!

I can't wait to see what happens when we head to India

*Not necessarily Mark's for the record

**Kel on second look I have to agree with you on that random assortment of architectual styles of the castle in Krakow on second look, haven't seen such a mixed on many other buildings

Run in with dodgy police

2009-09-03T20:49:00.000+01:00

A short transcript of text messages to and from my sister sent this afternoon

20.41 B - Oh my god we are being scammed by the police for about €100. And we are totally last which poo pants is blaming me for AND we got ripped off at lunch. Sucks!

20.50 B - If anything happnes we are in Zagrab and their license plate number is 190-943 and its a police car. They are meant to be driving us to Hotel Fala.

20.56 B - Not dead or imprisioned. They dropped us off at the hotel and bugered off empty handed. What a crazy day.

20.58 S - Bloody hell! Only realised you messaged by the time you sent the last one! What the hell has been going on? Yay that you're ok!

Basically we were driving along, lost in Zagrab when Mark pulled a dodgy move int he car. Some police pulled us over and demanded about €100, sans ticket. When we said we didn't have any money on us they offered to escort us to the bankomat, which we said we were happy to do if we were given a receipt.

So they offered to drive us to a hotel, and was convinced they were taking us up some dodgy back streets and I started texting my sister with details of where we were and their license plate numbers.

They ended up dropping us off at a hotel, which is were we are now, safe and sound.

Piran, Slovenia

2009-08-29T00:45:00.005+01:00

Hi, we're in Piran in Slovenia at the moment, staying at a hostel enjoying yet more free wifi.

We left Bled (photo to the left) on Wednesday night, to arrive in a beautiful town with a water at that perfect temperature so that it provides relief from the heat but doesn't make your toes cramp from the cold. However we also arrived with a flat tire and a leak that looked concerningly like it might be break fluid.

We did a massive tour of almost every garage in the area, and were told such conflicting information like we could just drive (about 4000km) as long as we replaced the breakfluid or being forbidden to drive because we will probably kill ourselves, and finding out that almost every mechanic is on holiday/ about to go on holiday/ doesn't want to touch our van with a ten foot barge pool. All with a very reluctent tow truckman who really just wanted to leave us on the side of the road (he was really excited about the 'carry on driving advice' despite the flat tire).

We finally found a someone who did something not one mechanic had done all day, he actually looked at the van! It turns out that it's probably a warn bearing which needs to be replace, which can be shipped over from the UK. Which means the van is stuck in a garage in Slovenia. Thankfully we learnt our lesson from last time and had organised a good insurance company who organised straight away hire car, gave us accomodation AND is locating and shipping the parts. If you're ever looking to do a van tour through Europe, and we haven't put you off with tales of sitting outside mechanics/ tow trucks offices pulling out hair, then The AA is our pick, they are so efficent compared to the three other companies we've had the displeasure of dealing with.

So we've decided to take that free hire car and accomodation drive on over to Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia. Wahoo, more time on the Adriatic!!

By the way, if anyone's looking for a cool weekend away, I'd rate Bled (photo to the left), it's a beautiful lake complete with an monestary on an island within swimming distance, a castle on a hill with a view that you won't kill yourself trying to see, cheap and lovely food, and cheap and cheerful wine.

Which means Laurnce and Lillie if you are reading this, that we probably won't meet up in Budapest, but can try for Prague on weekend of the 12 or Krakow on the 19. Also we left your addresses in the van, so you'll need to contact us if you want to meet up.

Photo's

2009-08-20T19:17:00.008+01:00

Hi, I was going to add these to the relevant blogs, but we don't have much time.

Drinking Spumunta in Venice.

Tapa's bar in Venice

Bonding with my siblings family in Le Marche

One of Mark's sunflower photo's in Le Marche

Here's a picture of the new van. Doesn't include the tent

In Rome

Mark sitting by our faourite Italian Lake busy holiday planning...

Me riding somewhere, can't remember where....

A guy at the medieval parade in Umbria

Salsburg, Austria

2009-08-20T18:22:00.004+01:00

When I last wrote we were in Zurich waiting for our friend Joel to arrive. Joel was our first visitor in the new van as poor Claire had swine flu. We've decided that pigs are the curse of this holiday and are doing our bestest to rid the world of them one meal at a time!!

We managed to time our visit to Zurich for the street parade, it's a bit like Berlin Love Parade, but bigger and strangely less well known. Despite the rain it was absolutelz packed and we ran around with Joel and Claude (a friend from Thailand that we were staying with) watching the crazies, including people on cripplingly high pltform shoes and middleaged naked men wearing a clear plastic pouncho (why the poncho surely he wasn't worried about his clothes getting wet).

I'd guess Joel and Mark's highlight was a little beer hall that Claude took us too that served the Jumbo Jumbo, basicallz a giant (bigger than your plate giant) cordon blue with chips and a quarter of a tomato (???)

We said good-bye to Joel the next day and Claude the day after, a bit sorry to leave friends and Zurich. Never mind we were heading to the Swiss Alps which had Mark bouncing off the walls of our small little van.

He actuallywent slightly mad. In the first two of the three days Mark hiked the equivilant of London to Dover with a long walk on the beach... up hill.

I did part of the walk, but my knees, and interest levels weren't quiet as stong as his. Along the way we saw a lot of cowbells attached to cows (cowbells!!!), blue berries and rasberries, extreme hiking Germans, and German's who thought they were extreme hikers... On his solo hike Mark saw some adorably cute lambs, see photo's below, aren't they cute, so cute that he actually chased them trying to give them a hug..

. Mark's lamb Scene's from the hike

The next day we hicked up a glacier, absolutely beautiful but receeding at a scary rate. 50 years ago the glacier was at the point were we took the photo below.

We left the Alps for the Swiss lakes were I spent a lot of time lying on the beach, marveling at how muscular my legs had gotten, until I saw a guy who had ridden up one side and down the other!!

We left Switzerland and heading for Munich largely so that I could have pork knuckles (die piggy die) in a beer garden and go back to the English Garden. In this tightly packed schedule we also managed to squeeze in time for a palace tour for Mark. Poor Mr Mark, I finallyput my foot down on the touring ever single (not expensive) site in a city. I think mostly becuase he'd been to Munich several times before.

Pork Knuckles, half a chicken and two 1 litre beers

Now we are in Salzburg Austria, having yesterday and the day before visited Berchtesgaden and Obersalzburg, both famous in part for the men who loved them. Berchtesgaden, because King Ludwig II thought it so beautiful that he didn't build a castle there and spoil it's natural beauty (see photo below). It is stunning, and is now a national park albeit with a small area tacky tourist shop area.

Obersalzburg because Adolf Hitler loved it so much that he kicked the locals out (some whose familes had been living there for generations) and turned it into a second party head quarters. It's the sight of the famous Eagles Nest as well as one of our top museams, Dokumentation Obersalzberg, which is considered one of the best museams to cover the entire Nazi regium and everything they did.

We stayed there for over 3 hours and still had plenty to see when they kicked us out.

Today we've been to probably one of my favourite palaces so far, Schollas Hellbrunn, and yet another beer garden. We also visited the garden featured in the Sound of Music, which was packed!!!

Next we head deeper into Austria and then to Slovenia and Eastern Europe.

Zurich, Switzerland

2009-08-08T09:14:00.003+01:00

Hey

Mark's updated photo's again, you can find them here http://picasaweb.google.com/home.

We're in Zurich at the moment, having spent the last month in Italy. As you can imagine we had a bit of an eating tour of Italy.

It was so hot in our van we couldn't really cook to much so I now have a huge salad portfolio, anyone want some recipes let me know ;). We also found a pasta festival in Tuscany, in a town on the old pilgrimage circuit, and Mark managed to eat SIX bowls of pasta. I think he was so overcome by the fact it was (a) tasty, (b) not cold and (c) free. Actually I think it was mostly that it was free. Here's a photo of a very happy Mark

Possibly our most exciting purchase since the leg of Jamon in Spain* (which our friends in London are still eating) has been a kilo of parmesan cheese about a week ago. I don't think I've ever seen Mark so excited, and as our fridge doesn't work so well, we have had to eat it quickly, so he's been eating a small fortune in parmesan daily. Personally I'm starting to feel more parmesan that person.

Right now we are in Zurich visiting a friend we meet in Thailand, Claude. It's the day on the Zurich street party which we went last year with friends Joel and Alex and had a pretty amazing time. This year Joel has flown in from London and a German couple Angus and Tomas, are to join us, so we should have a good party. Tragically it looks like it's going to rain, boo!

*http://markbridget.blogspot.com/2009/06/london-england-new-van-and-one-giant.html

Photo's

2009-07-23T08:51:00.002+01:00

Hi,

Mark's updated our photo site http://picasaweb.google.com/home

New photo's are here http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.bridget/StarredPhotos.

Siena, Italy

2009-07-23T08:48:00.001+01:00

Mark and I are currently in Siena, Italy, which is a beautiful university city in Tuscany, said to be a gothic Florence without the crowds, queues and huge entrance fees.

I think it’s beautiful, the floor of the main plaza, Piazza del Campo, has a gentle slope, almost like a theatre, so in the evening tourist and locals sit on the floor and watch the world go by. Mark and I with our requisite bottle of Spumante* (this time it’s wasn’t quiet €1.80 though) and his camera and tripod sat and watched the sky turn the most amazing blue… and I’m sure that wasn’t just the Spumante talking!!!

Prior to Siena Mark and I spent a couple of days at natural hot spring waterfalls. Aside from smelling like Sulphur it was pretty amazing. The water was a constant 38 degrees and flowed over a series of travertine pools and waterfalls that have been used by budget campers since 1500 BC . We had a great little camp site less than five minutes walk from the springs and spent both nights trying to find shooting stars while lying in one of the pools that Mark was convinced looked like the Trevi fountain in Rome… probably because we’d just been there.

This was the second time I’d been to Rome and I have to admit I didn’t love it then, but liked it more now. My favourite site was the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Conezione, basically a Cemetery for Capuchin monks with a difference. The bones have been used as decoration in the church, with everything from picture frames to the light fittings are made of human bones.

Other highlights have been the volcanic beaches north of Rome with black sand and lots of Italian grannies and their kids; seafood dinner overlooking the marina in a pretty fishing village perched on an old volcano connected to the mainland by a sandbar, ancient Etruscan burial tombs and the ruins of Emperor Hadrian’s villa (more like an entire city) on the outskirts of Rome.

Otherwise, we still have all the wheels on our van, it’s was so hot in Italy for a while that we can’t cook at night so it’s all about salads and sandwiches at the moment. Any cooking is done in the morning. I’ve never seen Mark so skinny! We had been sleeping with the side door open when we could and pegging up a sarong to keep out the mozzies and have a bit of privacy.

Now we are making our way to Florence and Cinque Terre, and then on the Milan to see Claire. We are hoping to make another festival, not quiet sure what it’s for, I only know that they make a giant pan of pasta and hand it out for free! That’s my kind of festival!!!

*Spumante is an Italian sparkling wine for those who don’t remember from our last blog

Perugia, Italy

2009-07-14T11:24:00.004+01:00

I'm currently sitting in an internet cafe in a university town in Umbria, Italy, Mark's touring the city but I need a break and a catch up with what's going on in the world outside our campervan and where ever Mark's camera's pointed.

Over the last few days we have toured through Umbria, which is very beautiful. A real highlight would have to be Spello, which we spent yesterday evening wondering around. Poor Mark had sent out that day on a walk that was meant to be 8 km but ended up being more like 20 through the midday heat, and oh my, what heat!! Standing still induces a little puddle of sweat to pool at our feet, so I was pretty thankful I begged off that one.

A few nights before we managed to find ourselves in a medieval parade in a town in La Marche, complete with Jousting. Yeap, a whole lot of men running around in medieval costume racing around on horses. As exciting as that was, I was pretty bummed because that morning I'd just said good-bye to my mum, dad and sister for what will probably be a year and a half.

The Swarbreck family along with Mr Mark and lovely Lucy had all meet up in a pretty amazing farm house in La Marche for a family holiday. With the family scattered across the globe, it was planned a year ago but ended up providing a great holiday from our holiday and a chance to lounge around and enjoy a pool, couch, and bed that was actually designed for two adults, not two small children!!!

Before La Marche Mark and I spent some time in the Italian Lake region and in Venice. We'd both been to Venice before and were struck with how much cleaner the city was, and how much better it was the second time round. It may have a bit to do with the fantastic italian tapa's style bar we found and a €1.80 bottle of spumante (pronounced spew-munt-a) we drank by the grand canal at sunset. The italian lake's region where we spent a few days in on the way down from Germany is absolutely beautiful, so we're pretty excited about heading back at the end of this month with Claire for a few nights.

Next time I update this blog I'll try to remember to bring along our itinerary with details of where and when we'll be over the next few months for those that want to join us.

Romantic Road, Germany

2009-06-27T11:59:00.002+01:00

You´ll have to forgive me, I´m typing on a German keyboard, and it´s very confusing!!! Here are a selection of letters that I keep hitting accidentlz
z
ö
ä
y
ß

So.. söäyß to zou too!!!

It´s been five days since we left London, where we had a fantastic holiday from our holiday. We drank too much and spent too much but didn´t managed to catch up with nearly everyone that we wanted too.

The first night on the road we went and stayed with Philippe and Jeroen in Belguim, and were treated to a dinner at their local restaurant, which included fermented herring, and Philippe´s roasted watermelon YUM! They are also the proud owners of an AMAZING massage chair - who knew they were so good! I was surprised I managed to convince Mark to leave!

The next day we drove to Luxembourg, and managed to time it for the Luxembourg National Day, complete with bad dance music and some of the best fireworks we´ve ever seen! We gorged on German sausages and beer, and even managed to see the Grand Duke. Life was good!

From Luxembourg we drove to Germany, hitting the river valley, Mossel, which would have to be one of the more beautiful parts of Europe we´ve seen yet. It probably helped that the weather was amazing, and I found some of my favorite mustard in the world. Also the water was so clear we went for a swim every day surrounded by mountains, castles and vineyards. Jealous!?!?! The wine wasn´t bad either.

From the Mossel we hit the Rhine, which was a bit disappointing, although we nabbed a great camp spot under a castle, which Mark was very happy with!

We are now on the Romantic Road. The road itself isn´t that special but the medieval towns are! We are currently in Nördlingen (ö was on purpose, not a typo), which is in the middle of a 15 million year old meteorite crater complete with a medieval wall which we just walked the entire way around. Yesterday we ran around a beautiful town call Rothenburg, also with a medieval city with a wall and huge Bavarian houses. We finished the day with a long walk, ending at a beer garden!

Currently we are hiding form the rain, which is forecast for the next four days. Here is hoping we get some sunshine in time for meeting my family in Italy, near Umbria (however Swarbrecks may want to bring umbrella´s and rain jackets just in case!!). Between now and then we´ll work our way down through the Alps hoping for some sunshine (I reallz want that sunshine)!

Sorry Philippe, no photo´s today, we´re in a pub and don´t have a usb cord.

London, England. New Van and one giant leg of ham

2009-06-16T11:35:00.008+01:00

We've been back in London for over a week and in that time have managed to witness a tube strike, some truely English summer weather activity (hail and gale force wind), buy a new campervan and most excitingly eat half way through an entire leg of Spanish Jamon (complete with pigs trotter).

So to start with the best bit, when speaking to our lovely friend Joel about coming to stay (we're dossing with him, Anka, Lani and Kath at the moment) we asked if there was anything we could bring from Spain. As Kath and Anka were planning a tapas night that coming Saturday night Kath requested so Chirozo, Cheese and Jamon... WELL... hunting around a we managed to find a 6.6kg leg of Jamon complete with pigs trotter. So we bought it, and carried it back in our carry on luggage. Yum. For those Australian readers, you are allowed to move food anywhere through the EU, for those none Australian readers, I've explained this because you aren't even allowed to take an apple across some state boarders.

The other bit of exciting news is that we fairly quickly found a new campervan. It's actually an old police van, so has all sorts of fun features like plastic windows that you can't break, and amazing locks that make them nearly impossible to break into (I won't say impossible because that would be courting doom wouldn't it). The other thing that caught our attention immediately was the fact that it has two extra rear wheels. Brilliant if one of the wheels fall off again!

Our plan is to leave on Sunday to head back to Europe, via friends in Belgium and meet my family in Italy, can't wait!

Otherwise we've been enjoying a bit of a holiday from travel, catching up with friends and gorging on dim sum!!

insurance drama's

2009-06-06T16:07:00.003+01:00

Oh wow - our insurance (who are booking our flights back) got slightly confused between 'we'd like to fly back on the 8 June' and 'Mark's birthday is on the 5 of July' and were organising flights for the 5 of July... thank goodness we have realised in the last 6 weeks* that they are fairly incompetent and called to see what was happening or we'd arrive at the airport on Monday to total confusion.

*Yes it really has taken them 6 weeks to achieve a some total of NOTHING. Not that I'm bitter

Madrid, Spain and sleep deprivation

2009-06-04T20:03:00.003+01:00

We´ve just arrived in Madrid, but are hiding in our hostel waiting until we can get into our room for a siesta. Why? Because for last month has been one bad nights sleep after the other.
Having worked out that buzzing from mosquitos are a night terror (plus waking up to find your face covered in bites) we dutifully declined rooms where it was obvious mosquitos could get in.... only to find that the quiet street that our Hostal (Spanish pension) backed onto was actually the town´s party street complete with locals banging pots and pans, and throwing bottles into bins at 4am, with the street cleaners starting at 6. So we started to look for hidden bars on the street, or pick rooms that back onto quiet communal courtyards, only to have our neighbours or the people in the room upstairs decide to rearrange the furniture at 3 in the morning. We head to hostels, only to share rooms with plastic bag russellers (this should be banned!!), snorers and people who need to unpack their entire bag at 1 am, only to repack at 6am.
Wow sleep deprivation is a truly cruel form of torture!

In other news, the Pig should be back in the UK on the 14 June, and we should be back on 8, hopefully managing our first uninterupted nights sleep of the last month.

I´ve just been told our rooms available, promise to give an actual update on what´s been happening soon!

Seville, Spain & Mark´s tash

2009-05-19T09:35:00.006+01:00

¡Ola!

We´re are currently in Seville, Spain, which is a really beautiful city, full on windy lanes and amazing architecture. To try and keep the budget down we´re staying in a 6 bed dorm room in a hostel, complete with snorers, people who come in at 5am from the night before and people who get up at 6am to leave. Not great for the sleep, but it has been great for the wallet and for meeting people.

When I last wrote, we were in Villa Nova de Millfontes, planning on heading to Lagos to see Sarah. It was great to see her, and we managed to drag her to a few beachs, and generally get a bit of relaxing in. We drove to the most southern point on Continental Europe which was quiet cool, and meet up with a lot of different people, including an Aussie, Dan, who we bummed into again in Seville. It was a bit strange to say good-bye to Sarah, knowing we would see her in 3 weeks or so.

One of the biggest pains of not having the campervan is that we packed in such a hurray, that we weren´t able to grab everything, or even most things we actually need, and a whole lot that we don´t have any use for at all (who needs to winter jackets and two sets of thermals in 30º heat???) One of the things we left behind was Mark´s clippers to trim his beard. After 3 months without shaving, he was starting to look like a gorilla!!! Luckily, Dan had brought some with us, so last night, after drinking too much cheap beer, Mark decided to trim his beard, but after some egging on from evil people, he left a monster moustache. Mark now looks like something out of a 1970´s cop show. ¿¡Hot?!

Our next step is to hire a car and drive to Cordoba, Gibraltar and Granada - the city of free tapas. After that we´ll meet up with Joel and Kelly in Denia, head to Madrid and then back to London. I think we´ll have to change the hire car to a convertable to go with Mark´s tash and mirror aviators. Oh dear!

Hopefully in the next blog we´ll have an idea of when we´ll be back in London so we can catch up with those of you there.

Anyway stay safe, B.

Pig update

2009-05-14T13:41:00.002+01:00

So... finally have some news on the pig, they can´t find the parts anywhere in France, so they are moving the pig back to London.

Which means that if they manage to secure the parts in the UK, we´ll have the pig back, and if not we´ll buy a new newer one, that doesn´t lose a wheel hopefully!!! Either way, we´ll be back in London at some point, possibly in the next month or so, YAY rain!

Otherwise, we are still madly in love with Portugal, the people are friendly, the food is amazing, and the beer is cheap. We went for our first dip in the sea yesterday, and are off to bask in the sun after this. Tomorrow we head to Lagos to see Sarah, wow can you tell I´m excited.

Mark says I have to talk about interesting things, so I´m handing over to him.

We´re in a great little beach town at the moment, with great seafood. Bridget has been gorging herself on octopus salad and grilled sardines. :D Went for a swim across the chanel to visit the sea cliffs yesterday, but timing was a bit off and the tide was running fast. Gave up after realising I´d end up half a kay away after the swim! The coast here is quite dramatic and wild - there are a couple of wrecks sitting rusting on the beaches. But we found a great protected little cove so we´re happy.

Been out on a few random nights with other travellers which has also been fun. A german couple we met free cramping on a beach, two dutch IT designers, and an English couple the other night. This coupled with the local moonshine (a sort of cherry brandy) has made for some intersting mornings in the tent!

Bridget says thats enough interest for now....

In portugal

2009-05-10T19:39:00.003+01:00

Hi

We're currently sitting in our hostel in Lisbon. No further update on the pig, the garage in France hasn't been able to find parts. We are starting to think that's the end of the Pig...

Portugal is AMAZING!!!! It's so beautiful and the people are so friendly. WOW! Porto is absolutely amazing, we managed to make the end of the university week log festivities, which seemed to consist of the worlds slowest parade. I'm sure it all made a lot of sense to those involved, but to us it was just odd. We visited Taylors port house, and did a free port tour and tasting - yum!!

On our way to drop the hire car in Lisbon we free camped in Ericeria and meet a really friendly German family; Mum, Dad and three boys under five - wow! They'd been travelling in their working van for a year on and off. We suddenly felt very lame!

Lisbon is also so beautiful. It looks a little like you'd imagine Paris pre gentrification. Tree lined, cobbled streets with lots of parks. Too bad it's been raining the whole time!

Next we go and sit on a beach for a couple of days, and then catch a bus to Lagos to meet Sarah, my sister, for the english long weekend.

Oh congratulations to Joel and Kellie, hopefully we'll see you in Spain.

Also, if anyone is bored, feel free to email us with updates, we feel a little out of the loop.

photo's

2009-05-09T23:14:00.002+01:00

Hi,

Just to let you know I've updated our web album http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.bridget. We haven't sorted photo's after France, so you'll have to wait for Spain and Portugal.

Kisses!

Hola - 7 weeks in

2009-05-04T14:45:00.002+01:00

Hola from Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

Since our last post in Paris, we´ve travelled through La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Biarritz to Spain, then stopping in San Sebastian, Bilbao, Picos de Europa, Lugo and have landed in Santiago, with a string of tiny villages along the way. We´ve seen mountains, hiked the biggest sand dunes in Europe, snacked on Oysters and Bordeaux wine, but no swimming as yet.

After crunching numbers, and working out how much hostels cost, we decided to invest in a tent and camp (no pithy name of the tent though). Which was great, except it has rained solidly up until the last two nights! The benefit is that we´ve meet a few people along the way, including two guys who went to the same school as me in a hostel in Biarritz. Their brother was in my year, and one of them was in the same year as my sister.

The three highlights so far have probably been wandering around Biarritz during a huge storm and watching the massive breakers lash the rocky coast, a tapas bar crawl in San Sebastian with some friends met in Biarritz, and a hike up into the Picos de Europa among the mountain lakes and peaks of the national park and a stay in a mountain refuge above the snowline with a bunch of hardcore mountaineers (none of whom had washed and all of whom snored)!

This is our last day in Spain - tomorrow we cross into Portugal and, by the forecasts, a bit of sunshine!

In 2 weeks we see Sarah - hooray!

Bridget and Mark

A post from Mark

2009-04-24T10:52:00.001+01:00

Hi, here's a post Mark composed a while back. Apparently I don't talk enough about the sites, and too much about the drama's. Sigh!

Mark here – thought I’d elaborate a bit on something other than van stuff to take my mind off our van woes and also to add some commentary on the places we’ve been for those who care to read about them.

We’ve had a pretty varied time lately to say the least. The week began with a trip to the famous monastery on an island mountain peak at Mont St Michel, where we were lucky enough to witness the massive 14m tides at their fullest for the Spring tide. We had a ball clambering up the mountain and wading across the mud flats. Next along was St Malo, which we got intimately acquainted with due to our unexpected stopover, but at least it was a nice place to wait. We got some sun on the beaches beneath the old city walls, and walked out to some of the fortresses on the islands in the bay at low tide. There were also some shelled WWII gun emplacements with foot thick plate armour peppered wit holes as though it was a tin can. Wouldn’t have wanted to be sitting in there when it happened!

Other highlights were Dinan, a medieval half timbered little village with a giant chateau and city walls overlooking the river rance. Likewise, the cliffs Bridget mentioned were great, and I managed to convince her to hike from an old castle on a promontory to the lighthouse (one of those famous ones that’s in the posters engulfed by waves). We almost got caught out by a storm front but managed to take refuge in a restaurant at the end of the trail to sip cider and watch the storm rage before heading back (lucky me, or I would have faced a very wet and grumpy Bridget!).

After the first tyre incident, solved much more easily than expected, we visited Josselin, another little medieval gem, this time for walks along the Nantes-Brest canal and through the forested hills surrounding it.

The megaliths at Carnac were the next stop – thousands of megaliths aligned into endless rows stretching for miles. An eerie sight in the thin dawn fogs rolling in from the Atlantic.

Beer Laos and Notre Dame !!

2009-04-24T08:10:00.002+01:00

So finally some good news. It feels like we are back on the road with long walks, picnics in parks and a spot of sight seeing while in Paris.

We have caught up with Sophie and Marion, our lovely friends who put us up while we were homeless and have really looked after us. I don't know what we would have done without them! We revisited Notre Dame Cathedral, where Mark proposed to me two and a bit year ago - how romantic :S.

Sophie pointed us in the direction of an amazing Vietnamese restaurant last night, with the best noodle soup I've had out of Asia, and ... wait for it... Beer Laos. No exaggeration, it is the beer of the gods! Sophie you are angle!

After a bit more shouting down the phone on Mark's part, our insurance agency has stumped up a a hire car for the next 14 days. We are planning on picking up where we left off and driving to Lisbon. If we haven't good news on the Pig, we may just head to Malta.

and again with the Pig

2009-04-22T10:42:00.004+01:00

Truely, honestly I would love to write about something other than van troubles. But well, everytime we think our bad luck has run out, it hasn't.

We left St Malo with a car that didn't stop mind drive, feeling pretty happy, and went for a walk along some amazing cliffs. Just by chance we openned the bonnet to see that the guy hadn't fixed the fuel injectors, and instead of one leak there were now two. The car seemed to work though so we decided to keep driving and get to Lisbon where we could find a nice beach and leave it witht he Nissan garage there (we drive a Nissan).

That night we were driving to our campsite when... the back tire blew. The spare tire was a different size. Mark did actually stand, hands to stars asking the gods why they hated him so much. Thankfully we managed to find someone who fixed the tire for 12 euros. Thinking we had our luck back we headed to Carnac to see some amazing megaliths. Well worth it if you ever get the chance.

We then set out to La Rochelle stoping at a very cool market to pick up a dozen oysters for 4 euros (see luck was still with us). Driving just outside of Nantes there was a bang and we found ourselves veering towards the side of the road with a tire (a different one) bouncing in front of us. The bolts had sheered clean off. Shit!!! (sorry Nanna, Nannu, Farmorm Farfar and Granny if you are reading this). We were both fine and the Pig doesn't seem to bad.

Thanks to the nicest tow truck man in the entire world, we manged to get the car to a Nissan dealer despite the best efforts of insurance companies to ruin it all. We stayed in his carpark for three days and were well and truely looked after by him. Seeing all of the other smashed up cars being brought in did hammer home how luck we were!

Now we are trying to work out what to do next as we are vanless. Right now we are in Paris staying with lovely friends Sophie and Marion who have taken us in. We may go to Malta to stay with family and see the sea as it sounds like it will take a few weeks before they can find parts and the van is fixed.

Van update

2009-04-16T08:29:00.002+01:00

Hi

We're still stuck in St Malo. We managed to find a garage to look at the fuel injectors - turns out that a washer needed to be replace (a very expensive 1 cent washer at that), but they didn't have the part so we were left with the Pig in the garage and no accommodation.

We found a really nice hostel. As they didn't have any private rooms left we had to take two dorm beds, in separate gender dorm rooms. Still a proper hot shower was pretty amazing!!

Hopefully we can pick up the Pig and the fuel injectors will be fixed. We're still a bit worried that the problem might also be low compression, but no one here seems willing or able to fix it, so we'll have to wait for a bigger town.

The best news is that we are out of here! Off to Carnac next.

Bridget

oh dear - the drama continues

2009-04-13T17:15:00.007+01:00

Happy easter everyone. Hope there was lots of chocolate!! Thanks to Sarah, we managed to feast on chocolate.

We're currently in St Malo, Brittany - it's a beautiful town about 100km from Mont-St-Michel, Normany. It's proving to be a nice change after all of the chateaux of the Loire Valley.

Mark, being Mark, dragged me along to something like 1 million. Here's are the chateaux I thought were worth visiting and why,

Versailles - but don't bother with the gardens if they try to make you pay
Chombord - it's very dramatic, but I wouldn't bother going in as
Cheveny is stunning, the grounds are fantastic and include a kennell complete with hunting dogs that had my enthralled for hours, the interior is beautiful and really interesting
Villandry - for the most amazing gardens, we didn't go inside so I can't comment.

There were quiet a few others, but they are my top four.

As I mentioned before we are currently in St Malo and, shockingly, have been here for two nights, with a few more to go. Why - because the Pig asserts itself on our plans again. It's decided it doesn't really like starting, or indeed, staying on. It's started to turn itself off on motorways, going down hill, going up hill (exciting) turning corners.... Meanwhile I've had an allergic reaction to something (maybe the sulfar in wine we bought from 'caves' along the Loire, mould from cheese, or as the doctor said, a catapiller) and have broken out into hives all over my hands and legs. It's not pretty, I'm not including photos!

We are staying put until tomorrow when the world is no longer on holiday and the garages open so we can work out what's going on. Mark talks about fuel injectors... we'll see.

Never mind, we've a pretty amazing day today sitting on the beach soaking up the sunshine and have managed to eat crab and mussels for the last two nights. Yum! Tonight calls prawn curry me thinks (did I mention the cheap seafood in Brittany??)

last night on top of the Pig as the sun went down

Mark about to cook dinner

Depending on the Pig, in a week we'll be heading to Northern Spain - spending a week there, then off to Portugal for two weeks and to Spain along the Med. Hurray, more sunshine and beaches!

Viva la France

2009-04-05T15:54:00.004+01:00

Hi

We're in a beautiful little town called Chartres at the moment, using free wifi in the local tourist office. If anyone in London is looking for a romatic getaway I'd rate this place very highly. It even has the scarf that the virgin mary was meant to have worn while giving birth to christ.

On that note, did you know that the French Queens had to give birth in public to prove legitamacy, I didn't until we went to Versailles yesterday. The chateau was amazing, well worth the money spent. I thought the gardens needed a little tlc and wasn't impressed that it cost us €17 to look at fountains with music playing. I though it would be something a little more like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK oB0MHVBvM

Before Versailles we drove through Champagne - Mark and I did a bike ride - actually more like attempted - it was a bit more hilly that in looked on the map - it always is though!!! Probably my highlight was a walking tour, when a old rotund french men stopped us and gave us a half hour tour we didn't understand. Wish I had paid more attention in year 6 french class.

Some breaking news on the pig - Mark forgot how wide the van was and managed to crack the side mirror - it still works and probably makes the van look a little cheaper and therefore less of a target for theifs so we are going to leave it as is. Also, can't be bothered spending the time in a Halfords. That was the minor accident...

Mark also forgot how high the Pig was when driving under a low sign and managed to peel the top box off like a sardine can!!! I promise to attach photos soon, suffice to say I thought it was hilarous and Mark had a slight sense of humour failure. Never mind, it's more aerodynamic and we can already see the savings in fuel costs!!

Promise to write some more on the food - YUM!!! I will say that arriving in the land of the baguette is a wonderful thing.

as promised - photo's of the tin box...

where to after Holland

2009-03-29T23:25:00.010+01:00

Found free wifi in Amsterdam - technology is a wonderful thing!!!

We've had a pretty cool last few days riding around the canals of edam, dodging Scots in blue kilt and war paint and find free parking next to the French Consulate in Amsterdam. I had always though Amsterdam was beautiful and amazingly clean considering, that was until I saw the rest of the Netherlands - wow so beautiful and not a blade of grass out of place. Still, only in this part of the world would a parking inspector remind you that you have a minute remaining in your spot. Didn't manage to make the tulip season but did see some beautiful daffodils (see the picture next to this where I'm trying to be artistic and mess it up by including my head in the frame)

After this we are off to Germany to find gas bottles and check out Cologne. Bit of a family connect there - apparently my uncle as a 17 year old used to distracting his geography teacher by getting him to tell him about navigating along the river and lineing up on the twin spires on his way to bombing raids in Germany. We're thinking of hitting the beer halls and finding pork knuckles if the budget can stretch it that far after all of the driving, not quite as exciting.

Then we'll drive through Belguim to get to France - we're hitting the land of the bubbles first - yum champagne!!!

Amazing food in belguim and crazies in holland

2009-03-27T10:53:00.009Z

We've definitely packed too much stuff. WAY too much stuff. Find a home for everything is proving to be fun.

So far we drove through France to head straight to Belgium were we stopped in Brugge and Ghent. We then went for dinner at Philippe and Jereon. Philippe is a friend we meet in China and happens to be a pretty amazing, well known chef. He's recently become one of the regions leading Vegetarian chef's (possibly the only high profile one??). We were treated to Asparagus soup (YUM!!!!) and vege shepards pie, as well as a couple of 9% beers.

We are now in Holland. Last night we parked just outside Rotterdam, parked outside crazy ladies house. Why crazy?? She was sitting outside of her house, with a plastic bucket in front of her, in full fishing gear with a bamboo pole and a piece of rope dangling into the bucket 'fishing'. What was even more odd were the kids stopping for autographs... Then there was the man on his scooter walking the dog up and down the street.

Apart from that we've seen lots of cheese, beer and chocolate. As well as loads of bikes!!! Mark wants me to mention the windmills and the djiks. I've decided he needs to change his career - he's an engineer trapped in a lawyers body!

Much love to all and thanks for dinner P & J!!

Happy birthday's to Dad and Sanj, and have an amazing wedding Mark and Phillipa

First few weeks

2009-03-23T18:25:00.006Z

We're off at the crack of dawn tomorrow with just one or two final things to pack into the Pig.

First stop is Belguim for a few nights to hopefully catch up with Philippe and Jeroen, then we head up to Holland to see Tulips and windmills.

We're going to pop into Germany very quickly to pick up gas bottles... German Pig - German fittings. The next stop is France, along the Atlantic coast for two or three weeks and then Northern Spain for about a week. After that we hit port, sunshine and sea in Portugal, followed by Spain where we hope to catch up with friends from London and Australia wahoo!!!

photo's

2009-03-23T01:08:00.001Z

Just set up a web album here for those who don't use facebook...

Getting ready to leave

2009-03-22T19:01:00.006Z

Wow I can't believe we are off on Tuesday morning.

Currently cooking a good-bye lamb roast for Guy, Lucy, Sarah and Alex. Very sad to say good-bye to the oven... oh and family and friends.

I've attached a picture of The Pig - our home for the next few years.

Bridget