Where I'm At

Best laid plans, yada yada yada

After two days on Bali our next stop as to be Probolingo. The main event for that port is a long days excursion to see the volcanic Mt Bromo. The mountain has been active, which meant that we weren’t sure just how close we’d get, or what we’d see, but ‘hey – a volcano!’

The weather on this trip has been hot, some rain and lots of wind. Our day on Lambok was littered with fallen trees – we were keeping a close eye as we walked in the jungle. The plan for Bali was that the ship docked at the pier on Wednesday, and on Thursday morning they would move the ship to the outer harbour to accommodate our departure Thursday evening when the tide was low. Everyone was highly motivated to go ashore before they moved the ship and we were shoreside by 8:15.

After a long day exploring Bali we returned to the terminal and took a moment to see if we could catch some wifi. While we were sitting we heard the unmistakable sound of a ship’s horn very close by and looking through the door I could see the familiar looking blue hull of a large ship. We went outside, and sure enough the Volendam was parked right where we left her.

So, it turns out that the big winds are to continue, which would make the the tendering process unsafe (and having participated in a particular ‘exciting’ tendering in the Falklands I believe them) at Probolingo. So, an extra day at sea and we head for Singapore.

A lot of this going on

And this

Our room steward leaves us a towel animal each night. Some are cute

And every so often there is an odd one….

In which I develop new skills

On the island of Lambok we hired a car, driver and guide for the day.

First up – pot making.

Of course a discussion of my hair was in order.

Then, on to weaving. Apparently a woman has to be able to demonstrate ability with weaving before she is considered marriageable. I guess I got it right because next up:

Sharon and Wilf dressed for a wedding.

There are several waterfalls in the high reaches of the island. There is one that all the coach tours go to. So of course we went to the other.

So beautiful. And refreshing in the punishing heat. Waterfall number two required a walk through the jungle.

Lots up. Lots of down.

A ‘bridge’.

Coffee trees.

More stairs!

At the end there were pools below the waterfall.

And the waterfall itself.

A little advice!

And, of course, the stairs to get back out. I was getting a little worried ’cause I just wasn’t sure that I could manage the trip back to where the car was. And it started to rain, too..

But when we got to the top of those stairs – hooray! Guys on bikes offering a taxi service. Man, I hopped aboard so fast! I must admit that I kept thinking as we roared along this rolling muddy track that I might just be an item on the back page of the newspaper ‘Local woman comes to a bad end in the jungle of Indonesia ‘.

But no, we were all delivered safe and sound – wet and breathless and exhilarated.

As they say – Woohoo!

The destination and the journey

Shore excursions on a cruise can be a challenge. They can be expensive and rather chaotic. But sometimes they are the way to go. On the island of Java there is an enormous temple called Borobodur – to me that sounds like the name of a place on a Tolkien story. It is one of the must see sights, but it is a long drive from the nearest port of Semarang. We decided to take the ship excursion – the traffic in the area is legendary, in a bad way, and we figured that if we were with a ship tour they wouldn’t leave us behind. To break up the long journey (2.5 hours) we decided to take the excursion that included a train ride.

It turned out that we would take a 30 minute ride on this beautiful steam train:

We ran along the edge of a shallow swampy lake, which meant we had a great view of local activity.

Lots of rice being planted and managed.

Once we left the lake area we climbed up into the mountains. The traffic was challenging – our convoy of buses had a police escort – not for safety reasons but to move us through the traffic. Eventually we got to the temple.

It is one impressive structure. The lower levels are covered with carvings that tell the stories of the life of the Buddha. As we worked our way up the walls become simpler and simpler until we reached the top level, which is covered with bell shaped structures called stupas. Each one contains a statue of the Buddha.

Of course, to achieve nirvana, one must climb the 150 steps of the temple –

Not everyone was impressed by the sights.

But we were

It turned out that the traffic on the return trip was intense and we were very delayed. All aboard was supposed to be 6:30, but the first bus didn’t arrive back until after 7:00. 18 coaches arrived and unloaded – about 800 of the 1400 passengers were off the ship that day. The company that managed the excursions did a great job of managing it all – things were staged so that it never felt like we were all in the same place at the same time. It helped that this is the off season. During peak season the temple can see 50,000 visitors in a day.

There be dragons!

We paid a short visit to the national park on Komodo Island to see th famous residents. No, not the 1000 humans who live on the island. We were looking for one of the 1300 plus Komodo monitors, or Komodo dragons, that live there.

We spent a couple of hours walking through the jungle with a guide and a park ranger. As jungles go it was relatively dry and fairly open. But we still were very alert, since the dragons blend in well and move fast.

And there one was, basking on the rocks.

Further along, at a water hole, we found a group.

We’re looking at them, they’re mostly ignoring us.

Everyone paid attention when this guy stood up and looked back!

Sweaty selfie with dragon in the background

Apparently I have a beautiful nose.

One of our tour guides told us that we could be expect that people would want to take our pictures, and that they would be very interested in our noses. Apparently we have large noses, which are considered beautiful by Indonesians. My first thought about that was pfftttt.

So we find ourselves in Surabaya and we have a guide named Erica. As we were driving along we saw carts laden with durian fruits – they are in season now. When we said we wanted to try them – Well! A moment later she had parked the car and was negotiating with the nearest cart owner.

You know durian, right? Spikey fruit – smells bad, supposed to taste good. You’re not allowed to take them on the subway in Singapore? When we see these in North America they are usually quite large, but these are much smaller.

I had always assumed (I don’t know why) that the inside was more like a papaya with a flesh that you would scoop out with a spoon. Nope. There are large seeds – almost the size of a walnut – with a soft flash that we nibbled off. Creamy custardy texture as promised. I don’t know how to describe the taste – there was a definite funky odour, but the fruit itself was – okay.

As we were working our way though the fruit the stand owner and friends were keeping up a steady commentary. Erica reported that they were discussing my nose and declaring it to be beautiful. Usually it’s the hair that gets talked about, but here we were – all about the nose.

After we left the durian stand we visited a group of fisher men. Their women were processing the catch – scallops and sea cucumbers.

As soon as this lady saw me she started pointing at her nose and indicating the wanted to switch with me! No, she’s not threatening to take my nose! She was teasing Wilf as he was taking her picture.

Gung hoy fat chow

When we realized we would be in Hong Kong for Chinese New Year we weren’t sure what that would mean. Would the city be packed? Or deserted? Turns out that the answer was ‘Yes’. Sort of.

Chinese New Year is one of the great travel events in the world. Millions of people are on the move within in China, and more and more Chinese people take the opportunity to travel outside the country. Throughout much of the rest of Asia people are moving about, too.

So, Hong Kong, the city built on hustle, the city of go go go. When we started out on Saturday morning the streets were empty. Most of the shops were closed, and with the shutters down the streets were very dull. We found our way to the Kowloon high street and admired the shop windows in all the luxury stores – all by ourselves. We walked onto the Star ferry with a few people and found ourselves on Hong Kong island. Our plan was to take the tram up to the peak and look out over the city. We had a bit of a wait as the bus didn’t run until 10:00. Of course we got talking to a fellow in line. Firstly, we were in the wrong line for the bus to the tram. But, this was a better bus – it would take a scenic wind up the mountain and then we could take the tram back down. Which is what we did.

The view from the peak across Hong Kong to Kowloon.

When we took the tram back down the city had woken up – there was a mob waiting to go up the mountain, the street hawkers were setting up and people were out and about. This was more what I expected. In spite of the crowds, many things were not happening – the flower market street only had one shop open, only a few goldfish shops were open, the jade market was locked up tight and even the ladies market was barely open when we passed by.

So what did we do with ourselves? Oh, the usual…..

Yep, eating our way through the town!

Lots of decorations for the new year – almost every business had mandarin orange trees flanking their doors – the Intercontinental Hotel won the prize for the biggest trees!

I seem to have lost Friday

Travel across the dateline is disorienting enough, but I can usually get my head around the concept. Flying to Hong Kong turned out to be more confusing than usual. We started off from Victoria on a 10:00 flight to Vancouver. Instead of leaving for the next leg at 1:00 pm delays to the inbound flight meant we didn’t get airborne until about 6:00 pm. It did mean that we had a leisurely time at the airport – we even took the time to enjoy the art displays that we usually race past.

The original plan had us arriving around 7:00 pm, giving us time to get to our hotel, hit the nearby night market for a snack before bed time. Instead we had a 14 hour flight that arrived just at midnight, putting us at our hotel around 1:30 am on Saturday. So much for Friday – it vanished into a travel black hole. Turns out the night market was still in full swing, but we decided to give it a pass.

Being the determined tourists that we are we were up and out early Saturday morn after a few hours of sleep- after all the sights weren’t going to see themselves! I’ll leave you with a shot of us up on the Peak, enjoying the view out over the city.

Once more, into the breach

You know that whole – the days, the months, the years just fly by – thing? So true. And it is so easy to look up in the spring and realize that I’ve been hibernating and have not gotten enough exercise over the winter. My solution to that has been to sign myself up for a training clinic for the spring 10k road race in Victoria. If nothing else, it means that for 14 consecutive Sunday mornings I get myself out and to the community centre for a walk. And then there’s the homework sessions in between. By the time the race rolls around I’m ready and the day itself it fun.

After participating in the clinic 5 times I decided it was time to up the ante this year.
Hence:

Yep – this year I’m a leader for the walking group. Today was our first session (only rained a little bit!) I figured I’m going to show up every week and do the work – I might as well be part of the team!

Having said that – we’re about to embark on another one of Wilf and Sharon’s adventures, so I’m going to miss a few session. But more about that later!

Still about the water

Yesterday I was talking about waterfalls and geysers. But there are still other ways that water has a dramatic impact upon Iceland. Many of the largest volcanoes have glaciers sitting on top of them. This means that in addition to ash, cinders, gases and lava, water becomes a factor when a volcano becomes active. Sometimes they blow right through their icy caps, other times they melt parts of it away. Either way there can be huge surges of meltwater flooding down from the mountains.

There are great out wash plains below the volcanoes- there is always meltwater rushing to the sea and the outwash will have streams and rivers that are present all year round. The bridges that cross them are engineered to resist a massive outpouring of water, and the approaches are designed so that the road beds can be quickly cut and allow the water to flow around the bridge – easier to fix the road than replace the bridge.

It was really amazing to drive across these vast expanses. Some are miles and miles of gravel. Others are farmed. Once upon a time masses of water swept across huge areas. Some have been untouched for millennia. When Eyafjallajokull went up in 2010 the world knew about the ash that grounded the airplanes. But after the planes flew again the water came down, as it always does. This time there was warning and people were evacuated.

It takes a special kind of people to live underneath a volcano!

Foss Foss, baby.

This is such a beautiful country. I’m a bit biased – I like huge open spaces with not much in them and vast tracts of lava don’t bother me. And this relatively small country contains some really vast expanses.

And water! Everywhere. Running across huge out wash plains. Rivers, streams. Hot springs. Water bubbling up from the ground. Water leaping out of the ground. And water falling from heights.