Zanzibar: Rastas in the East

Posted on February 15, 2013 by hilarylust

The next morning, 8 of us split off from the tour group and spent three days on the East coast of Zanzibar. Nick and Sandy were good enough to do some research and book us all into a little backpacker hostel called Mustafas.
The place was wicked. A super laid back Rastafarian joint that had quaint little bungalows, sandy paths, a huge fire pit and a bar/restaurant for everyone to relax at. The bar had a constant stream of Bob Marley tracks blasting out into the courtyard, and a steady supply of semi-cold Kilimanjaros (our favourite beer here). The locals who worked and hung out there each introduced themselves by their strange nicknames: Shaggy Dog, Scooby Doo, Slim Shabby, and the such. They spent most of the day smoking hash, lounging about, and serving us food and drinks as we needed. Life is sweet.
On our first afternoon, we walked the half block to the beach for a swim. The tide was way out, so mostly we just trudged through clay-like mud until we could find a deeper spot to wade in. That’s where we met Shaggy Dog: the supplier of all tourist needs! The know-it-all of East Zanzibar! He could get us scooters, bicycles, snorkels, paddle boards, kite surfing, or a large assortment of illegal drugs and have everything organized in a matter of minutes.
The boys had already done introductions by the time Kelsi and I waded up through the water.
“Hi, my name is Shaggy Dog”
“Hilary” I replied as I shook his hand.
“Hairy? Nice to meet you, Hairy.”
Great. The second he said it, I got sideways smirks from the boys and knew “Hairy” was going to be my permanent nickname for the rest of the trip. Oh well, embrace it. “Yup, that’s me, Hairy!”
We told Shaggy Dog we were going to take it easy, but we’d chat with him the following day about activities. That day, we took it slow. Finally a day to lounge at the hostel, relax in the surf and walk along the vast stretches of white sand beaches. The water in Zanzibar is a beautiful turquoise blue colour that I wasn’t quite expecting from the coast of Africa. It was paradise.
We all went to a local restaurant for dinner, waited over an hour for our meals (despite being the only people in the place) then spent the night laughing by the fire. One of the local guys, who we nicknamed “Colgate” because he only had 3 functioning teeth, took a liking to Sandy which resulted in more fits if laughter from us girls. Colgate spent the evening dancing, playing the bongo, and offering up flowers and coconuts to him. Endless amounts of entertainment! We finally had to escape for a midnight dip in the ocean and lie out on the sand watching the stars well into the night.
The next day we collectively agreed to rent scooters for the day. Although we couldn’t drive the scooters on the roads without a permit, Shaggy Dog said it would be no problem just cruising up and down the beach. Falafel (Mallory’s nickname because she is a vegetarian) was our only voice of reason in the group.
“Guys, none of us know how to drive scooters, we don’t have permits, we don’t know the condition of the bikes, I’m not coming”. So Kelsi and I sat and tried to explain our unreasonable side. If we were going out, we were bringing the whole dirty 8, no man gets left behind!
“Falafel, it’s just scooters, what could possibly go wrong?!”
Famous last words…
In the end, we did convince her to join us. We rented four scooters between the 8 of us and trudged to the beach.
“No worries,” we told Shaggy, “we all know how to use these!”
Immediately afterwards the boys taught us all how to drive (being the only 2 people qualified enough to work a scooter). And yes, even I drove a motorized, 2-wheeled vehicle for a little while.
When we’d all practiced for a few minutes, we decided to head out 6km or so north to the Blue Lagoon. We hopped on the bikes and started out. Sarah jumped on the back of Nick’s bike, and as he started revving forward, she leaned back and the two of them flipped backwards, the bike, with wheels still spinning, crushing them from above.
“Help!!! Help! Get it off!” Sarah yelled at Nick.
“I can’t! You have to let go of me!!” Unfortunately, Kelsi and I were already driving up the beach, and so I missed actually seeing this. But apparently it was fits of shrieking from Sarah as she death clutched Nick’s waist so he was unable to move… Everyone else just stood around and watched and laughed. Minor cuts and bruises resulted from the accident, and the two of them were up and speeding down the beach in no time.
It was hot that day, and the wind blowing in my ears made it impossible to hear what Kelsi kept talking about as we drove along the surf line. A few minutes down the beach I heard Kelsi yelling something.
“What?!” I yelled. “Your helmet? What’s falling off? Should I hold it on for you” Then I looked up and realized what she was talking about. Cara and Mel had drifted too close to the water and hit some soft sand. The bike swerved, stopped short and sent the two of them flying over the handle bars. Mel did a full front flip from the back of the bike and landed in the water. Cara hit the handle bars during her ejection and skidded face first into the sand. Kelsi and I pulled up moments after Sandy and Falafel to find the bike upside down in the sand and the two girls walking around in a shocked daze.
“Are you alright?!”
“Ya… We just crashed” they said, all too calmly.
Cara was walking around in a crooked line, her face half covered in sand, lip bleeding and a mangled nose ring hanging from her nostril. Mel was just soaked, trying to take off her helmet as she walked back up to the beach. We hugged them both, made sure everyone was okay, flipped the bike back into an upright position and sat on the beach laughing for a good five minutes.
“How fast were you two GOING?!” We asked.
“Don’t know, but we were in 4th gear.” Said Cara.
More laughter.
Turns out, the bike engine was flooded and the front wheel was crooked. The girls were still a little shaken, but in amazing spirits. We hopped in the water for a swim, washed Cara’s face off, and made bets on how bad her black eye would be the next day.
The bike wouldn’t start. We dreaded how much it was going to cost us when we brought a busted bike back to Shaggy Dog. Falafel shook her head at us and reminded us of our “what could possibly go wrong speech”. Oops!
Luckily for us all, a half hour later the girls were able to kick start the bike and we set out (at a much slower speed) to find Nick and Sarah at the lagoon. In the end we never found it. But we did come upon a beautiful light blue cove with a resort that was absolutely stunning. A dock went out into the middle of the water and had a restaurant floating above the ocean at the end of it (For guests of the hotel only).
We went for a long swim, lay down in the lounge chairs, and eventually stopped at a restaurant on the beach for lunch. The seafood in Zanzibar is incredible. Actually, I think we only ate seafood for the entire four days we were on the island. The restaurant we were at served this delicious octopus curry that blew my mind. We actually ended up eating there the following day as well, where 4 of us ordered the octopus dish a second time.
After lunch we packed up and headed home (Cara and Mel a half hour slower than the rest of us). The damaged bikes were no big deal and cost us just a few dollars. The rest of the night was spent lounging around. We had another campfire party, which ended up turning into a tiger balm massage party after not too long. (Mel gives incredible tiger balm head massages that became a continual necessity for the rest of the trip).
On our final day in the East we were determined to find the real Blue Lagoon. So we rented slightly safer bicycles, got some vague directions from one of the staff and set out along the road. All of the locals in Zanzibar are so lovely. Nearly every man, woman or child we passed greeted us muzungus with an excited “Jambo!” and a wave. It felt nice to be so welcomed in their community.
After 45 minutes of biking in the scorching sunshine, we finally came upon the “Blue Lagoon” sign. We were all excited! Exhausted from the biking, parched, and sunburnt from the midday heat, all we wanted to do was jump in a lagoon and cool off. We biked down the rocky path that the sign pointed to, came around a building, and realized we were at the EXACT same location that we’d been at the afternoon before. Fail.
Apparently “lagoon” doesn’t have quite the same meaning in Africa as it does other places; but we weren’t complaining! We rented some snorkels, lounged around, and ate more delicious octopus curry.
When we arrived back home we started drinking: sipping on Killis in the shade throughout the late afternoon. We asked around for a good place in town to eat, and were given the name if this great little place about a 20 minute drive away.
We were getting pretty tipsy by the time our cab arrived. The 8 of us piled in and our driver blasted ear deafening tunes the entire way. When we got to “town” (aka, a slightly more dense area than where we already were) all we wanted was another beer. Too bad. On an island where 95% of the population is Muslim, many of the restaurants opt out of serving alcohol. This restaurant was one of those.
So we sat, for ages, waiting for our food to come out, and began to sober up. We had joked all weekend that our food only showed up once the candles on our table had burnt out. But when the ones that night were getting very close to the end, our server laid fresh ones out… Looks like we were going to be waiting a long time to eat.
In our drunken hunger, we all ordered way too many dishes. Pizzas, pasta, seafood, chips, etc. all started filling the table. Us girls filled up quickly and gave all our leftovers to the boys. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen two people eat so much before. We could feel their pain as beads of food sweat ran down their foreheads. In the end, not a scrap of food was left; not even the pizza slice that had fallen off the plate and landed on the dirty table.
A couple hours later we piled back into the sub woofer that was our taxi and headed for home. We sat on the rooftop of our little bar and played a wild game of Kings cup. Part way through, Scooby Doo came to join us for drinks. Scooby was this laid back, dreadlocked Rastafarian that may or may not have worked at Mustafas. He did however sleep on the couch on the roof of the bar, and seemed pretty content smoking weed all day and chatting with the tourists. Scooby was pretty drunk when he joined in our drinking game, when we had finished, he was beyond wasted. At one point we apparently offended him and he blew up at us.
“I hate you all! No one has a heart here! Screw all you guys! Only Sarah and I have feelings!” (How he targeted Sarah as his favourite we have no idea). No matter how much talking down we did, Scooby just got more angry. Finally he stormed off in a fit of expletives and left us wondering what had just happened.
Hours later, at about 3:30 in the morning, he stumbled upon us on the beach with a machete. He angrily hacked away at any lamp posts or palm trees he could find in a blind rage… Perhaps it’s time to leave Mustafas.
So we waited til he passed, went to bed, got up early and checked out. At 8:00 am Scooby was already awake and stoking the fireplace. We tiptoed around him, not quite knowing what he remembered from the night before. As we snuck out the front gates of the hostel we could here him yelling to us.
“Hey! Hey! You better f*cking come back to visit us, you here?! You better f*cking come back!!”
“Sure, thanks Scoobs” we yelled back
“Sarah!” He yelled “Say hi to your mom and dad from me!”
Omg. What a crazy man.
We climbed into our van, exhausted, and made the hour and a half trek back to Stone Town. Time to get the hell out of Zanzibar. What a weekend!

Stone Town: Zanzibar

Posted on February 10, 2013 by hilarylust

Stone Town, Zanzibar

We woke up dark and early the morning after the Serengeti tour to start our 14-hour drive to Dar Es Salaam. The drive was fairly uneventful and long, and the traffic as we reached the city was atrocious. It rained as we arrived at the campsite, but Kelsi and I braved the weather, passed on the sleeping upgrade and set up our tent in the dark and the damp.
Our Dar Es Salaam campsite was lovely. Right on the Indian Ocean with a great bar looking out to the water. We had a couple of beers with the boys before bed and then up early to head to Zanzibar.
It took three bus rides, two ferries and a customs stop to reach Stone Town. Everyone has to go through customs to get to the island. It’s an unusual system; Zanzibar has its own government and flag, and passports must be stamped upon entry. Still, the island is part of Tanzania, and the government has to answer to Tanzania’s rules.
The trip over was muggy and hot. We dragged our feet from bus to ferry and back in a pool of sweat. While we waited in line for the first ferry a local man snatched Sarah’s camera from her bag. She yelled at him as he passed it to his friend, then Kelsi grabbed it out of one guy’s hand to get it back. We glared at them as they walked away while some other locals snickered in amusement. A close call and another great welcoming.
For the second ferry, we opted for the fast version. This meant, for $8 extra, we reached the island in a quick 1-hour excursion instead of an excruciating 4-hour trek. Although the ferry was air conditioned, I’m not sure if I could have handled a four hour trip. When the waves picked up, the boat was sickening. Our trip over wasn’t bad, but the ride back was so choppy, I woke up from a short nap with half the people around me vomiting into bags. People wretched over the side of the boat, and locals lay down in the aisles with their heads in the complimentary barf bags. I had to walk outside to avoid the sounds and smells or I would have joined in on the festivities.
By midday we arrived in Stone Town: 95% Muslim population, a huge supplier of various spices and a central port for the once African slave trade. Stone Town is a quaint city with a combination of Arab and Indian architecture mixed in with local stonework. The city is filled with stone ramparts, stone homes, stone boardwalks and the such. We stayed right in the heart of the city, half a block from the beach, in a hotel called the Karibu Inn (or Caribooin as I wrote on my customs card because I apparently can’t understand Tanzanian accents). It was a great location.
The first thing we did was head out on a spice tour. Although a six-hour tour about spices seemed a little daunting after such a long trek, we had heard great things about the tour from other travelers. In the end, I think everyone was satisfied with the excursion.
The tour began with a free lunch. Two of our woo girls had been feeling ill for a couple days and opted out on lunch. This was perfect for the rest of us, who were starving, and took advantage of “secondsies” by ordering for them and eating two meals ourselves.
When we were satisfyingly stuffed, we drove the half hour out of town to the spice groves. Our guide, Ali D (not to be confused with Ali G), was one of the most unusual characters I’ve ever met. His Tanzanian accent was muddled with this bizarre cockney slang that made him sound ridiculous. Over his years as a tour guide, he had picked up a million colloquial phrases from Australians, Canadians, Kiwis and the British that all mixed into one very strange sounding man. He would normally use about three different accents in every sentence which made us all crack up in laughter every time he explained anything to us. He did have a pretty good sense of humour, and was also pretty good at straying off topic. Nonetheless, the spice tour was very informative.
The thing I found most unusual about the spice groves was how everything was laid out. I was expecting row after row of pepper trees, then a whole field devoted to vanilla followed by a grove of nutmeg. When we got there however, it was just a forest of scattered plants and trees. The harvesters have to walk through the different plants, remembering where each tree is, so that the crop can be picked. Zanzibar grows a LOT of spices. As we walked around the place we got to taste and learn about each spice. We tried lemongrass, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, cardamon, and pepper among many other things. We also got to try star fruit and lychees, fresh mangoes and jack fruit (a pineapple/banana tasting fruit that is surprisingly delicious!). When we had successfully explored the spice farm, we all got to sit down and enjoy some fresh fruits and hot tea, we had lemongrass with vanilla extract, a strong chai tea and a third one, with ginger that I’ve forgotten the name of now. Lemongrass and vanilla was Kelsi and my personal favourite.
When the tasting was over, we went back to get a quick walking tour of Stone Town. Although we did learn some things, this is where I felt that the tour fell flat. I would have loved to learn more about the slave trade and the architecture, but the information was minimal and didn’t stand out in my mind. We did get to check out the slave holding areas, which were small dungeon-like stone basements that held 75 or so slaves chained together. The heat was excruciating, and the only air and light was from small slit windows on the far side of the room. The one we sat in was made for women and children. Sadly, only able bodied women and children older than six were allowed in the market. The others were simply murdered. The area where the trading went on is now covered by a church. It was the Christians who finally came in and stopped the slave market from continuing. To remember and pray for the souls of those who had lived or died there, they built a large church right in the middle of the market.
The Stone Town tour concluded our trip for the day. We made it back in time to have a quick shower, a beer on the beach and then to the open market for dinner. Kelsi, Nick, Sandy and I were so hungry and excited by the time we hit the food market that we forgot to set prices before we ordered and ate. Only a couple bites into the food we realized we were about to get severely ripped off like ignorant white tourists. We couldn’t even do anything about it. Four experienced travelers, and yet all we could do was sit around, waiting to hear the bad news of how much everything was going to cost us. In the end we paid fancy restaurant prices for sub par street food prices and couldn’t argue a bit. Our fault entirely, c’est la vie! We needed a beer…
So the four of us headed out to Freddy Mercury’s bar (Freddy Mercury was actually born in Zanzibar) and started drinking. Before long, the world’s worst singer came out with a keyboard piano and butchered all our favourite classic songs. I don’t have great ear for music, I must admit. Even tone deaf people sound not half bad to me. But this guy had some weird, echoey trill to his voice that sounded a lot like his microphone was just busted. To ease the pain, we began playing drinking games. Before long, the musician was just background static and we were having a blast.
When Freddy’s closed, the bartender took us to a local outdoor nightclub where we could dance the night away. We partied until Sandy “wigged” out. Then, to make an excruciatingly long story short, there was some drama, a missing persons report, some angry nail painting, and finally a comfortable sleep in an actual bed: our first long day in Zanzibar completed.

The Masai

Posted on February 4, 2013 by hilarylust

During our two-day safari tour we got the chance to spend some time in a traditional Masai village for part of the afternoon. The Masai people are cow herders and nomads; they migrate with their flock and live in small huts as a community.
When a Masai tribe moves to a new location they send ahead about 20 women to build the village. They work, one home at a time, for close to a month to set up enough huts for everyone in the tribe. The huts are made from cow dung, mud and sticks. They are small. Very small. Inside, there is just enough room for two makeshift sleeping areas, a stool and a small fire hearth. Traditionally, the hut is for a man, his wife, and any children under the age of ten. There are also male and female huts for unmarried children over 10.
When we got the chance to go sit in one of the huts, it was like walking into a fly infested furnace. The heat was insane. I would have thought that the mud huts would have been a welcome afternoon escape from the scorching sun outside; unfortunately, the fire inside kept the hut as hot as hell both inside and out. A young man sat inside the hut and talked to us about the Masai ways. Sweat poured off my face and back while thousands of flies flew into my eyes and ears. Concentrating on the conversation was difficult to say the least.
The village that we spend time in consisted of about 20 or 30 small huts. They were enclosed in a fence made of bundled sticks that closed in the community. Just outside the fenced area stood a small, wooden hut. This was the village’s elementary school. 50 children attend this school every day: 25 in the morning and 25 in the afternoon, both male and female alike. When the children have passed all their classes, some will move on to a nearby town to attend secondary school. The others will herd cows or build huts with the rest of the community.
When our small group arrived at the village we were greeted by a traditional Masai welcoming dance. The men chanted and grunted in a line, then paraded around with small hopping movements and shaking sticks like batons in the air. We were herded into the dance with no preparation and looked like fools trying to figure out the steps without smashing into the person in front. When the dance had finished the men performed the “warrior dance”. All the men stood in a semi circle, yipping and hollering as two men step forward and try to out jumped each other. An old woman grabbed me by the hand and had me stand with the other women who were also chanting and lightly hopping as they watched the men. Then before I knew it, I was thrust a long stick and shoved into the warrior circle to out jump the men in the village. I thought I held my own against the first guy, who eventually stepped back and was replaced by a second jumping man. He kicked my ass. There’s no other way to put it. His feet were practically at my waist when he jumped. There was no keeping up if my life depended on it.
Overall it was pretty neat to see the traditional Masai way of life. The only complaint I would have is how the Masai have capitalized on tourism over the years. Even though it is required to pay $15 a person as an entrance fee to the village, before the tour was over, people were already bombarding us to buy trinkets and jewelry. I felt overly pressured to spend at least a couple bucks on a souvenir before the tour would continue. That was the only off-putting factor to the afternoon. Otherwise, it was an eye-opening peek into the nomadic world of the Masai culture.

Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti

Posted on February 3, 2013 by hilarylust

We pulled up to the entrance of the Ngorongoro crater just as the sun was rising. Ngorongoro is the largest crater on earth, at 310 square kilometers and a depth of 760 meters. It also hosts one of the greatest biodiversity of wildlife in the world. Here you can spot tens of thousands of different species, and all of Africa’s big 5.
Africa’s “Big 5” are the 5 most difficult animals to hunt on foot, they are also among the most dangerous to humans. This is new to me…until recently, I had ignorantly just assumed they were the five largest animals unique to Africa (much hilarity ensued when I had suggested that giraffes were among the most dangerous big 5). So, for those of you as unlearned as myself, the big five consists of lions, leopards, the cape buffalo, the African elephant and the rhinoceros.
Our jeep absolutely lucked out the day we went! We managed to see ALL of the big five in a single day. Apparently this is incredibly rare. Not only that, but we came upon four prides of lions during our two day stay. Two of them, right next to our jeep, and one large pride with cubs ripping apart a water buffalo… The National Geographic gore you hope to see while on a safari tour!
Our little jeep held 6 of us: Kelsi and I, our token “woo girls” Mel, Cara and Sarah, and our friend til the end, Mallory! All of us were ecstatic about entering the conservation area. As we drove through the entrance we sang along to the Lion King’s “Circle of Life” and within seconds we ran across a herd of buffalo. First of the big five, check! The buffalo are apparently extremely aggressive animals and are the second most dangerous to humans (next to the hippopotamus). We snapped some shots of the small herd from within the truck and moved along to the crater rim.
The first glimpse of the crater literally gave me goosebumps. It was early morning light, slightly overcast with sunbeams shining down onto the sparkling lake below. Shadowed mountains framed the green grasslands below and dark coloured specks were signs of abundant wildlife. The scene was breathtaking!
The decsent into the crater took about an hour in the jeep and even before hitting the bottom, we were seeing all sorts of animals: weaver birds, jackals, zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, ostriches, and foxes, among many others. It wasn’t before long that we came across a couple large elephants cruising across the plains and away from the lake. The six of us were overly enthusiastic about each and every animal! Hyenas, hippos and warthogs were each met with an excited gasp and an occasional “woo!” from the jeep.
Before long, we came across our first pride of lions. A group of lionesses and one male all bathing in the morning sunlight after an early kill. Lions all hunt very early in the morning and only need to do so once every three or four days. Although we were so excited to see lions (especially up so close) I must admit, there’s only so many photos one can take of sleeping animals. Our guide told us this may be our only chance to see lions, and so, we stuck around for a while, just watching the sleeping beasts.
Amazingly, however, about two minutes down the road we ran into ANOTHER pride. These ones were slightly more alive, and they were actually lying on the road! Can’t get much closer than that.
By lunch that afternoon we had seen four of the big five. The rhinoceros was the only disappointment. There are only black rhinos in the Ngorongoro Crater, and they are very rare. In fact, there are only 20 of them in the whole area. We were fortunate enough to see three out of the 20, but they were so far away it was pointless trying to catch them on my sub par camera.
Lunch was a pre-packed meal that we ate by a small lake in the crater. We were warned by our driver to eat our meals inside the car. “There are many birds around that will eat your food! They will bite off your fingers if they get a chance” he said. But it was too nice of a day to sit inside the car, so Kelsi and I found a rock nearby to sit on and enjoy the sunshine. Before long everyone had joined us and I figured we would find safety in numbers and the circling scavengers above would ignore us.
We were still exploring the full contents of our little lunch box when the first bird struck. Poor Robbo was peacefully nibbling on a chicken thigh when a falcon swooped across the top of us, snatched the entire piece of chicken from his hands and caught a talon in the side of his nose. The damage was minimal; only a small mark and a single spot of blood was left on Robbo’s face… The chicken was never seen again. We all nearly choked on our meals we were laughing so hard. It happened so fast we weren’t quite sure what had gone wrong. But when the laughter died, we looked up to see a few dozen birds above us, just waiting for a similar chance… We ate the rest of lunch in the jeeps.
By that afternoon it was time to leave the crater and head to the Serengeti. Serengeti National Park is 14763 square kilometers of flat grassland. Moments into the park we got a flat tire. A very minor inconvenience when compared to other stories we’ve heard (a man we met in Zanzibar said his jeep did a full roll and he fell out the top). All we had to do was sit in the scorching heat for a quarter of an hour. A wonderful welcoming into the park.
The Serengeti hosts another array of animals to see. This is where we came across our first tower of giraffes (and yes, I learned that “tower” is the proper collective noun for a group of giraffes). The giraffes were one of my personal highlights of the day. It was so strange to see these tree-like beasts trekking across the plains like moving trunks. Their heads sway up and down as they move and it’s almost humorous watching them move along in a line of head bobbing beasts. Fun fact about
the giraffe: they are the only animal that doesn’t make a sound. Apparently all of their communication is done by body language.
Just before sunset, we came across a grove of sausage trees. Sausage trees (which have strange fruit that look just like hanging sausages) are a preferred relaxing place for leopards, and before we knew it, someone had spotted one in the trees. There was a mother leopard and a cub chilling out in one of the lower hanging branches. They had made a kill and were taking turns chewing away pieces of the animal in the crook of a tree branch. Once again, my 8megapixel iPhone fell short on the zoom. But we got out some small binoculars and spent a good half hour watching the two animals. The last of our big five!! I couldn’t believe we’d seen them all in a single day. What a feat!
As the sun set we headed to camp. We were spending the night out in the wilderness, with all sorts of animals just roaming around the area. Rules for that night were very strict. Don’t go to the bathroom at night unless it’s with 3 or 4 people. No flashlights in the tent, no sounds, no snoring, definitely no food, and good luck making it through the night alive! If you see an elephant, run the other direction, if you see a lion, walk calmly in the other direction… So many things to remember! So we all went to bed that evening thinking of wild animals. During the night a hyena scavenged around the tents, and strange sounds could be heard, but everyone was alive and well by our 5am wake up call (just in time for lions to start their morning hunt… Fantastic).
We did a final game drive that morning, had lunch, and then worked our way back to Snake Park for dinner time. Pretty amazing couple days if I say so myself!

The Snake Village

Posted on February 3, 2013 by hilarylust

After a few hours of driving, we had reached the Tanzanian border. Already a new currency to figure out (and I still hadn’t figured out the Kenyan conversion yet). We were swarmed at the border by hoards of women selling beaded jewelry. They wore traditional dress, with long colourful capes, shaved heads and a plethora of piercings in their ears and nose. They followed us from Kenya to Tanzania trying desperately to get a dollar from us Mzungus. Other than that, the border was quick and painless and we hopped back in the truck.
Tanzania apparently has 117 different tribes within its borders. As you drive by the small villages and camps it’s amazing to see the women all decked out in Masai outfits, children slung in a blanket on their back and a 10 litre pail of water balancing on their heads. It seems like all the women carry things this way: bundles of sticks, buckets, or piles of goods wrapped in blankets. And yet their stroll is graceful and effortless… I have no idea how. And yet, city life in Tanzania seems to be an interesting mix between traditional and western culture; while one person herds goats along in a brightly-woven, caped outfit, the next person bikes along wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
Before long, we arrived at the Meserani Snake Park. This was to be our campsite for the evening. We struggled to set up our tent (which we have now mastered only a few short days later) unpacked our sleeping mats, and trucked off to the snake park.
The snake park was like a small zoo for snakes and crocs and turtles. Kelsi and I had an awesome time checking out the cobras and the scaly alligators for a good 45 minutes or so. We were only slightly put off when we saw a bunch of fuzzy baby ducklings huddled in the corner of one snake cage just waiting to be eaten. Ahh the sad facts of life! At the end of it all we got to hold a little snake of some sort and then we celebrated our bravery with a beer at the bar (which was conveniently attached to the park).
It was an early night for us after dinner as we had to be up early the next morning to make it to Karatu: our final campsite before our 3-day Ngorongoro Crater excursion.
In the morning, we set out to a nearby city to grab all the necessities for the Serengeti trek. Money, last minute snacks and an Internet cafe to book our accommodation for Zanzibar. We had an hour and a half to explore the place… I got nothing accomplished. After searching the streets for an ATM that was in service, we finally found a working bank and tried our luck. The MasterCard system is rare here in Africa, where most of the banks work through Visa (keep that in mind if you find yourself over here). Everything seemed to be going well at this ATM that we had found, until my card refused to pop out. I tried with some tweezers to grab it, when all of a sudden the machine shut off and sucked in my card. Great. So into the bank I went.
The bank was full of people lined up here and there. There wasn’t a line in the place shorter than 15 people. After asking some staff, and being placed in a number of lineups, I was finally moved to the end of a long queue at the back of the bank that moved slower than a glacier. Kelsi came to find me 45 minutes later where I had moved up a measly THREE people. No one was very helpful, and no one seemed particularly concerned with moving people along quickly. But a long story short, a little over an hour I was sent on my way with my bank card, no money, and told to use another bank’s ATM. The other ATM’s in the city believed I had already reached my daily withdrawal limit, and so, I was stuck borrowing the last bit of Kelsi’s cash to make it through the following three days.
After lunch back at the camp, we packed up and drove the two and a half hours to our new campsite in Karatu.
Karatu is only a short 20 minutes to the crater. We all had another early night so we could be up before dawn to start the day!

Steak and Tango: Buenos Aires Homestretch!

Posted on January 8, 2013 by hilarylust

It was bittersweet, but we arrived back in Buenos Aires for the last two days of our trip. Luckily, we still had very exciting things on the agenda! Night one: learn to tango. Night two: eat the most amazing steak on Earth at La Cabrera.

We did little during the day, as per usual these days. We walked the Sunday market by the cemetery and checked out cafe Tortoni (the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires, which was both beautiful and had great coffee). Afterwards we shared a pre-tango bottle of wine on the second story terrace of our hostel. It was surreal being back in Buenos Aires. We have stayed at the Ideal Hostel three times now on this trip, and being back this time was by far the strangest; I felt as if we should be STARTING a journey rather than ending one.

The first evening, we set out to La Catedral, a local milonga, full of portenos that held cheap tango lessons and had great shows later in the night. We had been there before, 4 months earlier, and loved it! Creaky wooden floors, red brick walls, and full of good wine and local flavor: everything you could want from a tango bar in Buenos Aires. This time, we wanted to take lessons, so we jumped in a cab and took off through the city.  Very different from four months ago, I managed to flawlessly chat with the cab driver as we cruised through the streets. I’m impressed how much my Spanish has improved in such a short time. We covered a wide range of topics, including European influences in Buenos Aires, the wars between Portugal and its colonial provinces in South America, the places and things Adam and I had done on our trip, and joking about how I would love to buy all the clothes in the city, if only they would fit in my backpack. This is a far cry from four months ago when I would say “Corrientes y Suipacha por favor” and shut up for the rest of the ride.

When we arrived at La Catedral, we sadly discovered the place was closed (damn you Sundays!). Luckily, the driver knew a bunch more milongas in the area, and suggested a few dinner places as well. We were dropped off a few blocks away, and ended up in a restaurant that was full of people (rare for Buenos Aires at 8pm). We decided this was a good place, and sat at one of the only tables available, upstairs, overlooking the restaurant and a stage that was set up. By 8:15 there was not a single table left in the place… And it seemed to us, as we peered down on the crowds below, that EVERYONE knew each other. At first we thought we were being paranoid when it looked like every person kept looking up and staring at us after they walked in. We were the only tourist at the place, but Argentina has such a mix of culture, surely you couldn’t tell that from walking through the door!  So we ordered a platter and some wine and forgot about the crowds.

Before long, it was apparent that a show was about to start. The emcee got up on stage and started talking. It was hard to understand him over the microphone, and he spoke ridiculously fast, but soon we realize he was congratulating an old woman on her birthday… This was her birthday party, and everyone at the restaurant had come for it. Great, first we crash a funeral, now we’ve crashed a little old lady’s birthday too! We’re on a roll!

Then all of a sudden the emcee switches to English and looks directly at Adam and I “hello my friends, welcome!!” then in Spanish “The couple from Canada ladies and gentlemen! Let’s welcome them to the party by a round of applause!” we get cheered for and whistled at, then out of nowhere a spotlight shines over at us and blinds me. I’m sure I’m blushing as we get a shout out by the announcer within the first 3 minutes of the show… People are still clapping for us. We smile and say thank you, and the show continues. This is going to be an unusual night, I can already tell.

The show went all night and was really quite amazing! It began with a few singers that sang popular Latin music, and a couple classic English songs like Whitney Houston’s “I Will Love Again” and Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” both translated into Spanish. The crowds of loved every second of it. They sang along ruthlessly to each of the tunes, cheering and moving to the music all the while. South Americans are so much more passionate about life it seems, and they certainly love a party!

Next, the tango dancers began. The tango is both beautiful, and sensual, and Adam and I quickly realized we would have looked like absolute idiots at the class. How do you teach steps like that in an hour and a half?! I’m extra thankful at this point that the lessons weren’t available, as it seemed the girls take 3 steps to each one of the guy’s movements! I would have tripped over my uncoordinated feet FOR SURE. Nonetheless, I adored watching the dancers on stage!

After a round of dancing, a large bald man got up on stage and sang opera. He was fantastic! He didn’t even need a microphone; he easily could have filled the restaurant with his voice solo. I decided right then and there that, had I been at an entire opera show, I probably would have cried. Then later, when he broke out with one of my favourite Andrea Bocelli songs, I nearly did.

His son, who was probably about 7, sat on the stage behind him and offered him water between each song. It was very sweet. This kid was anything but shy. At the first intermission, when everyone in the restaurant got out on the dance floor and tangoed, he stood up on the stage and danced as crazily and as hard as he could. He was the center of attention for the entire restaurant, and was hilarious to watch while he shook his hips and his head as his arms and legs flailed haphazardly at his side. When the intermission was over, he ran upstairs to his mom to boast about his stage performance. She praised him and offered a sip of her wine as congratulations. Before she knew it, he grabbed the glass and scalded the entire thing in an instant! I nearly choked on an olive I was laughing so hard as the mother mortifyingly tried to pry the empty glass from his hands! No wonder he wasn’t shy, the kid was hammered!

The show continued with another set of the same. Singing, more dancing, then more singing again. The choreography become more complex, and as a result, more impressive! The performances went on until well after midnight, and just watching I was exhausted by the time it was over. Argentina is a dancing culture. You can easily determine this by the sheer number of great dancers that were there that night. Couples, old and young, got up to show off their moves at each intermission, and all of them were fantastic! I wish we had some sort of cultural comparison in Canada.

Our second day in Buenos Aires we spent in the San Telmo district. Still my favourite district in the city, we had no problem hanging out with a few pints in the main square, people watching the afternoon away! This is where we decided it was a good time to add up our collective bus trips over the past four months. Yes, all those hours of hell we had been carefully keeping track of. In four months we had a total of 43 bus trips (not including tours or city buses) for a disgusting grand total of 338 hours!!! When you do the math, that’s 14.08 days, or TWO ENTIRE WEEKS!! Good lord, no wonder we hate buses so much now!

Thankfully, all of that was behind us. No more buses in South America on this trip! It was our final night on the continent, and we had other things to do… Such as finish our bet!

For those of you that have been following, Adam and I have had an ongoing crib tournament that we have been tallying up since the beginning of January. The rule was, the loser of all the totaled games had to pay for a steak dinner at the famous La Cabrera in Buenos Aires! In the end, the score was Adam: 70, Hilary: 122. Sorry Adam, looks like steak is on you!

So we dressed up in our best backpacker clothes and went to the steakhouse for 7:30. Turns out, the place didn’t even OPEN until 8. But that didn’t matter, reservations were full and we were already pretty far along on the wait list. How popular IS this place? Also, there are actually TWO locations! One a half block from the first, both of which were packed an hour before opening. Ingeniously however, the restaurant had a few benches and a TV outside that played a blooper reel of the most ridiculous wipeouts. We found this hysterical (and that is an understatement). Although many people loitered around, watching the screen, only Adam and I were curled over in our seats, with tears in our eyes, wheezing breathlessly at how funny this was. Perhaps we had been deprived of comedy for a while (having only CSI on the English TV channels) or maybe it’s true that we do just have more fun than the average passerby. Whatever the case, we sat in line for an hour before we even realized that we were hungry. Well done La Cabrera, well done.

Finally it was our turn. Just as we sat down, they popped open champagne bottles to give to each of the waiting guests in line (jealous!). But not to worry, we had scoped out the menu an hour ago and were ready to start the feast! An amazing bottle of Santa Julia reserva Malbec and stuffed olives with parmesan, almonds, and a sundried tomato with sesames mix in the center. Unreal! We picked away at this for a while and decided that, on our last night, we would re-read all the blog posts I had written over the last four months… Oh how much we had forgotten!! The horrific airport experience on day one, catching up with friends in Brazil, Carnaval, the Amazon River… and that’s just the first part of the trip! I realized how much I love to describe food in my writing (fancy or otherwise), and my limited vocabulary when it comes to describing scenery… Sorry everybody.

But it really has been an awesome trip. And so, to finish my posts for this trip, why not go out in style and describe another meal!

So for our main course at La Cabrera, we (Adam) spared no luxury. We ordered the nicest thing on the menu. A 500g medium-rare Sirloin Strip Kobe Beef steak… Oh my God. We have been convincing South America that, although Argentinean beef is amazing, we have EXCELLENT Alberta beef as well. It’s hard to impress us Canadians with an “okay” steak. But this Kobe beef blew us out of the water! It was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Perfectly seared to medium rare, with a dark red juicy center. Also, it came with a platter of accompaniments. A waiter came around with a large wooden plank of sides that we could choose from. “Take as many as you want!” he said! Big salads with poached eggs and vinaigrette dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, grilled zucchini, spicy dijon mustard dip, palmitos, red pepper sauce, and so much more! We had a table full of small jars to go with the steak, each one more delicious than the last. We actually shared a steak (because the thing was massive) but were both stuffed by the time dinner was over. They added a free glass of champagne for dessert and a lollipop to go! Wow. Hands down the nicest steakhouse I’ve been to, with the most delicious meat I’ve ever had. The Santa Julia Reserva ended up being top of our rating for the wine log (now at exactly 60 different bottles) which made the meal even more perfect. This was not only the best meal of the trip, but also of my life! What an awesome way to finish off four months of travel! We had been at the restaurant for 4 and a half hours (including wait time) by this point, so it was finally time to go home… Actually. Our flight to Canada was scheduled for 9:35pm the following day. How time flies!

Malbecs in Mendoza

Posted on January 7, 2013 by hilarylust

We arrived in Mendoza like giddy children in a candy shop. Wine: lots and lots of amazing bottles of wine at beautiful vineyards. This is where we were meant to finish our trip…

We stayed at a wonderful little hostel called Empedrado, recommended by Felicity and Aaron (thank you guys!), which was outstanding! Nice, affordable rooms, huge free breakfast, rooftop terraces, hammocks, lots of common areas to hang out in and free wine every night. It was every bit as wonderful as it sounds.  We once again arrived on a holiday – go figure that the long weekend extended to Tuesday – so everything was conveniently closed. Luckily our hostel offered a 12-dollar, all you can eat, all you can drink BBQ that we took full advantage of. A group of twelve of us sat around for hours, chatting about our trips, eating meat until we wanted to throw up, and graciously accepting the never-ending bottles of vino that our host relentlessly brought to the table.  Morning number one and I already had a red wine hangover… I see how this is going to go.

We made it to our buffet breakfast by 9:15; an excellent time considering we are now accustom to sleeping until 11 every morning. But the victory was short lived when Adam insisted on napping again before the wine tour. Whatever… We’re on vacation!  It was a later start than expected, but we rolled up to Mr Hugo’s just before 1pm. For those of you who know Mr. Hugo’s, you probably just thought “Uh Oh…”. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Mr. Hugo’s is a well-known tour company for checking out all the wineries in the Mendoza area. You rent bikes from him, he gives you a map, and you leisurely explore the wineries at your own pace. Seems very lovely… Until you experience this yourself.

Adam woke up that morning and said “You know what I think about wineries Hilary?”

“What?” I asked.

“I think that some people need to be supervised when going on a wine tour… And I also think, that MAYBE you and I fall into that category.”  We laughed… Turns out he was right.

After getting the low down on the various vineyards, Mr Hugo offered us some free wine. “wine’s always free at Mr. Hugo’s!” he boasted.  How sweet…  When we had finished, he filled up our glasses again. Uh oh. After our third refill we quickly jumped up, trying not to be rude, and hopped on our bikes. “Thank you, but we must be going!” We hadn’t eaten in 4 hours, and we were already tipsy from three glasses of wine. Good thing we only had SIX wineries to get through that afternoon.  Firstly, I would like to point out that this biking situation would NOT fly in most countries. Not because we didn’t have helmets, not because we drove against oncoming traffic where buses sped by at alarming speeds, but because driving a bike, drunk out of your mind, is considered EQUAL to a DUI in most countries. Argentina has its own rules… And by that, I mean NO rules. Biking wine tour is totally legit.  I also found out, that biking with a little bit of a buzz, and knowing that your final destination is a beautiful and relaxing vineyard, ACTUALLY makes biking a pleasant experience (mostly). I cruised along and, without knowing it, biked a half marathon easily without loathing my existence! Such an improvement!

Our first winery was Tomasso: a family owned vineyard that has been open and operating since 1869, making it the oldest bodega in Mendoza! It is beautiful (as most vineyards are) and has a quiet restaurant in a shady area that overlooks the fields of grapes. We had a tasting of 4 of their famous wines and actually learned a lot more about wine than I had expected. The differences between Crianzas and Robles (6 and 12 months in the barrel respectively), the origin of the Malbec grape (apparently Eastern Europe) and some other minor facts I was surprised about! The guide was a wealth of knowledge when it came to wine, and since Adam and I were the only ones there, we peppered him with all our questions in rapid fire!

After our tasters we figured we should eat something (see, we were trying to be responsible!) and sat out in the restaurant and ate a small platter of meats, cheeses and olives… With a glass of our favourite wine from the vineyard of course! And then we added our tasters to our rapidly growing wine log so as not to forget.

From there, we cruised onward to the next winery: Mevi. Already a little drunk, we sped down the street singing “Mevi! Mevi!” in a high-pitched voice, imitating Elton John’s “Benny!” from “Benny and the Jets”. This should have been our first sign to just go home…

So into Mevi we went, and this vineyard was even more stunning than the last. We were led out back to the upstairs porch that looked out across the winery: an olive tree grove, acres of grapes and the mountains in the background. We lounged in the hot sunshine on a comfy white couch and picked our wines. Reservas (aged 15months) were the only way to go. Not only were they so much better than the regular wines, we realized that if you fork out the extra 10 pesos for the better wine, they will give you the cheaper wine tastings for free anyways. Win/win!

The view at this winery was by far my favourite, but the lady working there didn’t have a clue about wine. When she tried to convince Adam and I that a Syrah and a Shiraz were not only the same grape (which I agreed with), but also the exact same wine, I lost all faith in any of her future facts. Am I a wine snob?  Nevertheless, Mevi’s wine was excellent! I could have sat there all afternoon if there were no more vineyards to visit that day!  A little way into our tour, Frederic, a guy from our hostel that joined us at the BBQ, arrived with a Father/Son duo from Ireland. “When in doubt, a bottle of Vino, right?” Yup… The five of us were going to get along famously.  Adam and I drunkenly biked the 500m to the next winery, and minutes later Frederic and the Irish guys joined us. We sat down at a table, together with another couple, and each ordered the 4 wine, half glass tasters that they offered. This was, by far, the most wine I have EVER seen on a table at once. 22 glasses of wine were lined up along the table. All reservas (’cause we’re classy like that) and all delicious! It wasn’t long before the Canadian/ Irish banter came out, and we were good-humoredly picking fights with each other… This continued relentlessly for the next seven and a half hours.

Nonetheless, we kept drinking, and was particularly fond of this vineyard’s Syrah (something we haven’t given much thought to here in South America).  Before we knew it, it was 5:30, and we remembered that all the vineyards closed at six. Three wineries in, we were in no way prepared to stop now. Our reckless group of five quickly biked the tedious 100m to our last winery: Tempus Alba. Unfortunately for us drunkards, this happened to be the classiest bodega on the tour. At this point, we were borderline disasters… We ordered another tasting set, and sat out on the balcony just in time for the sunset. This winery actually had my favourite of all the wines on the tour! Their 2006 Tempus Pleno was BY far my favourite wine in the past four months (and I’m hoping that wasn’t due to the extreme amounts of booze I had been consuming that day). Even at the winery it was a $45 bottle of wine and all of us were 100% sold on buying a second bottle. Unfortunately (or luckily) the winery had closed, and we were sent back to Mr. Hugo’s.  This is where the night went downhill.

Mr. Hugo’s was packed! Everyone who had been on a wine tour that day was hanging out at the rental place. There were tables and benches and pitchers of wine set out among the guests… “wine is always free at Mr. Hugo’s!”  Oh No!!  We sat. And we drank… And we drank until we realized we hadn’t eaten in 8 hours and we’d been drinking for 10. Three or four pitchers of plonk wine later we decided to cram the five of us in a cab and head to a steakhouse in Mendoza…. To be honest, the rest of the night is fuzzy.  We ate, ordered more wine, tried to get home, had some altercations with a cab driver and the cops, and hours later… I woke up covered in purple. Solid day.

We didn’t do much the following day. Missed breakfast, managed to walk the single block to the supermarket, failed at exchanging money (again) and went back to our room to watch a CSI marathon on TV. We did make it to a wonderful pasta dinner at Tommaso Trattoria that was fantastic! Another fabulous recommendation from our friends Katelynn and Scott! And then off to bed early.

On day three, we hopped on the bus and went BACK to Mr. Hugo’s. I know, we are crazy… But we had missed a winery, and we were determined to take it easy the second time round. We only had TWO glasses of wine at Mr. Hugo’s before setting out, and our first two stops served food instead of wine!  We started at a little olive oil factory and got a tour of the olive oil making process. There’s not many things in the world I love more than stuffed olives, tapenades, baguettes dipped in a rich olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and all you can eat food. That is what this place had to offer. There were three tables all set out before the two of us. The first had olive oils, balsamic vinegar, puréed olives, chilies, mustards and a bowl of bread. We shoved our faces full of everything and cleared the basket of bread in record time. The second table was jams. Chutneys, jelly’s, marmalades. Some made with malbec wine, others with whiskey, each of them more unique than the last. These were good, but as soon as our guide turned her back to talk to other people, we were back at the first table, filling ourselves with spicy mustard and garlic tapenade like it was going out of style!  The third and final table was liquors. A row of about twenty different ones, Adam and I got to choose four to try. We picked a spicy liquor that had a chokingly strong pepper aftertaste, a smoother Irish cream liqueur, Tia Maria (a rum mixed with coffee and tea) and a 75% Absinthe… Obviously. These were good, but mostly sweet, and after two stops of this we were happy to make it back to a winery.

Our third stop of the day was Trapiche: the largest winery in Mendoza. Trapiche vineyard also has the largest amount of exports, shipping their wine to over 70 different countries around the world. Here we tried, not the basic wine, not the Reservas, but instead, we had the luxury of trying the Gran Reserva wines! Aged 18 months in the barrel, gran reserva wines are supposed to be the best of the best… And they are delicious! We even tried a gran reserva Chardonnay, which was unusual and rare considering a huge majority of wines here are red, and to take the time to make a gran reserva white is a risky business. It was not bad for a white, but if I’m going to choose a white wine I’m probably not going to be looking in the Mendoza section of the liquor store. Their 120-anniversary blend was delicious and the Malbec was an obvious favourite for the winery. The tasting room at Trapiche was so beautifully put together. Dark wood bars with leather couches and a dim lighting. The room had a glass floor that looked down onto hundreds of stacked, French-oak barrels below. Glass cabinets lined the walls, displaying their most famous bottles. The place was very luxurious!  But after Trapiche we decided we better be responsible and head back into town before we got stuck partying at Mr. Hugo’s again! We found a lovely restaurant near Plaza Independencia and shared a tapas platter over a bottle of Malbec. It was an early night once again, as we had booked our LAST, 16-hour bus ride to Buenos Aires early the next morning. We were so adamant about forgoing an overnight bus, in fact, that we chose the early morning, milk-run day bus that took an extra 2 and a half hours to reach our destination. Although there was no food served, and no exciting landscapes to be seen, I think we made the right decision… Buenos Aires, here we come!

Santiago

Posted on January 7, 2013 by hilarylust

Santiago is not only one of the most modern and industrialized cities we’ve come across in South America, it is also one of the most scenic. It WAS apparently considered the most beautiful place to live in the world… before all the smog settled in. Sadly, the smog is Santiago’s downside. We did managed to catch the city during the end of an extra long weekend, which meant no cars and factories working for a few days, and clear, sunny skies for us to enjoy! But unfortunately this is an uncommon occurrence for the city.

Over our three nights in Santiago, we actually had to stay at two different hostels. Apparently the long weekend made for very full hotels and the closed pass between Chile and Argentina left people stranded an extra couple of days. On top of that, some hotels were actually closing for the WINTER at this point. But on our second and third night we stayed at this adorable hostel run by a tiny, old woman we simply referred to as “grandma” from the second we met her. She didn’t speak a word of English, but blabbered on to us in Spanish as of we were her long lost grandchildren coming for a visit. Everyday she wore a tiny pin of a Canadian flag on her shirt, and seemed so excited that we were actually from Canada! She was  aaaaaaadorable!!

Once again, we were completely unproductive in the city: it was wonderful. We walked around the downtown core the first day and were surprised at how green and active Santiago really is! A huge green park runs right through the middle of the city and continues for kilometers! Patrolled by mounted police, the park is full of bikers, runners, rollerbladers, picnickers, families, dogs and everyone else under the sun it seems! It wasn’t crowded ever, but it was definitely well loved. From the park you could see the Andes Mountains looming in the distance. They were gorgeous and covered in snow and reminded me a lot of the North Shore Mountains from home. We did meet a girl who moved to Santiago and she said she was in the city a whole week before she knew the mountains were there. Apparently the smog is usually so bad they are completely invisible… How sad.

We also heard that you haven’t truly experienced Santiago unless you’ve taken a nap in the big park. So, as stressful as that sounded, that’s what we did, 2 days in a row! We checked out the city sites, smaller parks, cafe’s, a small castle nestled in the city center, then lay down and took a nap! The architecture was beautiful and colonial and there were very few modern looking high-rise buildings (which I was expecting from such a major city). It managed to keep it’s quaintness, even though it houses about 1/3 the population of Chile!  After nap time in the park, it was vino time at the hostel. The upstairs balcony had a great setup of comfy couches where we stretched out and continued our ongoing crib tournament. We ordered takeaway pizza the first night and spent hours enjoying the final hours of sunlight from the deck.

On our second evening, we discovered the Bella Vista district, which was full of touristy restaurants and cafe’s. It was tucked down a pedestrian-only alley and opened up into three major squares, each filled with three levels of restaurants on all sides. Great food, huge selection and awesome for people watching the night away. Although we tried to avoid it, we were both craving steak and ended up having a wonderful meal at a fancy steakhouse right in the middle of the square. Sometimes it’s hard to believe we’re backpackers.

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn to start our bus ride back to Argentina. The pass was finally open again, and we booked ourselves a day bus (anything to avoid overnight buses still). The scenery between Santiago and Mendoza is unbelievable. This is the Andes mountain range at its best! We drove through snowy passes and cruised by mountains that were surprisingly similar to the views between Banff and Jasper. Gorgeous, overly dramatic mountain ranges that you could never tire of if you lived there! So glad we decided to travel during the day!

Valparaiso

Posted on January 3, 2013 by hilarylust

We had finally made it to the coast of Chile. Back at sea level and next to the wide-open ocean for the first time in months… I was ecstatic! You could smell the salty seawater as we drove through town in the taxi. Valparaiso is such a beautiful seaside city. It’s built into the natural hills of the landscape, has a massive port for the city’s fishing industry, and if you go just a few minutes out of town in either direction, there’s fresh seafood and sandy beaches!

We spent the first afternoon strolling the cities slopes. Valparaiso was the first place where we realized that it is actually autumn… In May! The leaves are changing a beautiful yellow colour, and crunchy brown leaves cover the sidewalks. The mornings and evenings were brisk, but the afternoons were still full of sunshine and heat! Personally I find this really neat, that autumn can happen in May. For Adam, it totally freaks him out. It’s been over a week since we arrived in fall weather, and he still can’t stop talking about how unnerved he is by the sudden change in seasons. I egg him on by stomping on every crispy leaf we pass with a satisfying crunch and then talking about everything fall related: the colours, the weather, the fall boots I spot at every shoe store… I find his weather frustration infinitely entertaining. But even Adam admits that it’s a great time to end our trip.

Valparaiso, Santiago and Mendoza are utterly stunning in Fall colours!  Our second afternoon in Valparaiso we went on a self-proclaimed graffiti crawl. The city is absolutely chock-a-block full of beautiful works of graffiti. Not just tags and amateur scrawling, but real works of unique and innovative pieces of art. The graffiti covers nearly every blank space of wall in the city, and we had a great time searching out our favourite pieces and photo-bombing the city.

Near the end of our afternoon we ran across the Museum of Pablo Neruda, a famous poet and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. I used to love reading Neruda’s work in school, so was eager to check out his museum. The museum was actually Neruda’s house at one point in his life. He lived for many years in Valparaiso in a gorgeous, 5-story house, high up on the hilltop of the city, with a fabulous view of the ocean. Of course it was interesting seeing where the poet lived, wrote, spent time engrossed in thought etc, but what was the most fun, was checking out the house itself. Firstly, the architecture of the place is beautifully unique: rounded rooms with large open windows, a floor to ceiling, urn shaped fireplace, a spectacular view of the city from every room in the house… This was prime real estate. But secondly, Neruda was the most amazing collector of antiques and artifacts. He was fastidious with his decorating, and when he found an object that he wanted, he stopped at nothing until he obtained it. Paintings, maps, statues, plates, desks, you name it! Each piece had a history and a place in Neruda’s home. We must have spent over an hour, listening to the audiotapes and exploring his home before finally moving on. We both walked out of the place wishing we could become antique collectors… Guess I’d need a house first.

After our “exhausting” afternoon taking photos and exploring museums, we decided it was time to relax. We found this great restaurant by our hostel that overlooked the water, where we sipped on a bottle of chilled white wine and watched the sun descend over the water.

At 6 we met up with Mark and Oli, who had finally finished their bus trip down from the North. It was their final night, so we decided to celebrate Adam’s birthday one night early and head out on the town together. We had some pre-bottles of wine at their stunning hotel with an awesome view and then went back to the restaurant we had found in the afternoon for some food. (Adam and I had the crab-stuffed ravioli in a cream sauce with truffles that was honest-to-God the best ravioli I’ve eaten in my life!). By our third stop I lost track of the bottles of wine. Although we woke up with pictures of each label, there’s no way I could have properly rated them in our ongoing wine log…needless to say, Adam and I both spent most of the next day’s afternoon in our room recovering.

On our final day in Valparaiso we went to the beach. The forecast had called for rain, but when we woke up it was sunny and gorgeous! We took the metro out to Portales station and walked up and down the waterfront. From there you could see the entire city of Valparaiso; from the ports to the towering city behind them. The beach was beautiful and sandy, and covered with great looking, fresh seafood joints. After checking out the fishermen on the docks, and watching them feed the group of sea lions below, we picked a place to eat and decided to camp there ALL afternoon eating platters of seafood and sipping on wine. This was one of my goals since day one: seafood and wine on the coast of Chile. So that’s what we did!

We started with a delicious seafood soup. It came out in a steaming hot, stone bowl, and the water was still boiling inside! The soup was full of prawns, muscles, scallops, and squid, and had fresh herbs and some veggies in it as well. We mixed in a couple scoops of their freshly, homemade, spicy seafood sauce and the thing was to die for! We had endless garlic bread to go with and a lovely bottle of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. After we sat around and let the soup settle, we ordered prawns. A plethora of prawns!! We had one massive bowl of prawns, sautéed in butter and garlic, which came out as steaming hot as the soup. Then we had a cold, avocado shrimp cocktail which had slices of fresh avocado under a mountain of prawns, topped with a light mayonnaise dressing, displayed on a bed of lettuce. We picked away at these dishes for a loooong time, still indulging on the endless bread, before we realized that there was no way we could order a main dish. They did not skimp out on the number of shrimp they offered in each dish, and we were both stuffed by the end of it. We settled up, moved back outside to the beach, and lay down on the sand to let our stomachs digest and to watch the waves. I could not have though of a better way to spend our last day in Valparaiso. This was definitely vacation mode… And luckily, it is only a short hour and a half bus ride to Santiago!!

Star Gazing in The Valley of the Moon

Posted on January 2, 2013 by hilarylust

As soon as we stepped over the border into Chile, our travels ended and our vacation began. We decided that, for the last 2 weeks of our trip, there would be no more running from city to city every other day, no more crazy tours, just good food, good wine and lots of relaxing! San Pedro was the start of this.

We had finally made it back to warm weather. Very different from the morning’s freezing geysers, by the early afternoon, we had descended thousands of meters and ended up in the hot desert. San Pedro de Atacama is an adorable town, of just a few blocks, in the middle of the desert: a little oasis in an otherwise dry world. The place felt like it was straight out of a western film. Unpaved roads, horses walking through the main street: I felt as if a tumbleweed should blow through the place at any moment.

We spent the afternoon sitting in the sunshine and eating good food. Finally tried to get some colour after 2 months of cold weather! As the sun went down, we decided to grab a couple bottles of wine. Although we were a little shocked by the difference in price between Bolivia and Chile (I’m pretty sure Chile is the most expensive country in South America) we managed to find some cheaper versions at the minimarket. We sat out on the patio with some snacks with our new Aussie friends and enjoyed being back in wine country until our star gazing tour began.

Stargazing was the one thing we wanted to do while in San Pedro – and it was incredible! We had a small group of 4, the two of us and a couple from Brazil, and our two guides. We drove out to the Valley of the Moon, where a massive telescope had already been set up for us. It was freezing out, but, with no cities or lights around for miles, the stars were unbelievable! We spent two hours learning about the southern constellations and the names of the stars. We got to see Saturn so well through the telescope, that even its rings were clearly defined! We saw young stars like Sirius, that under the telescope looked EXACTLY like the most beautiful diamond I’ve ever seen. It is bright white and sparkling and, as people who love shiny things, Adam and I were totally sold! Then we checked out Beetlejuice, a red star that apparently is actually dead and gone, only its light is still reaching us from millions of miles away. Our guide had an incredibly strong laser pointer with him to properly point out which star he was talking about (which was helpful with so many millions of stars up there). We saw Mars, the Southern cross, all the astrological signs that could be seen during this time of year. In fact, I think the only thing we didn’t see in the Valley of the Moon was the moon itself! Apparently it was hanging out in the Northern Hemisphere somewhere… The tour was super informative, really fun, and to top it all off, the tour came with free wine!! What more could you ask for really!

When we arrived back in San Pedro at quarter to midnight, the sleepy town was already shutting down. So we went to bed early and prepared for another day of nothing.  The next morning, all we accomplished was dragging ourselves to a cafe on the edge of a beautiful little main square. We sat there eating, reading and drinking banana milk shakes all afternoon until it was time to take our hour bus ride to Calama.

From Calama, the next morning, we had a flight down to Santiago… Yes, I repeat, a FLIGHT! We finally got our act together early enough to book a flight instead of taking yet another 24 hour bus ride South. To top it all off, the flight, with all taxes in, was actually $4 cheaper than the bus! Win/win situation!! Mark and Oli were slightly less fortunate than us and had to suck up the bus ride while we slept in a comfy hotel room, left 10 hours later, and still arrived in Valparaiso 8 hours before them… Sorry guys. But after four months of buses, this was by far the most exciting mode of transportation we’d been on in a while. Less than a 4 hour trip from the North, to the beautiful coastal city of Valparaiso!