On The Road

No Longer On The Road

Just a quick update, since our last post has long since dropped off the page, I thought I'd put something here.

After Nepal, we went back to France, where we got married in July. We had planned on making a go at living in France for a while, but after so much travelling, we were really missing the Bay Area, and our friends and family back there. So in September, we headed back home.

We're living in north Oakland now, right around the corner from where we lived before the big trip. It's nice to be back, but it feels almost as if we never left. I haven't figured out if that's good or bad.

You can still get to our old posts via the Recent Entries or Archive sections on the left. The photos are still there, too.

Take care,

-b & j

Heading...Home?

Our trek was incredible. The pictures speak much more about it than I could, but I'll give the basic outline. The trek runs three-quarters of a circle around a number of 6000-8000+ meter peaks, including Annapurna I, II, III and IV, Annapurna South, Gangapurna, and Machhupuchhare. It starts at 800 m (2,600 ft) and hits a high point of 5,416 m (17,770 ft). At the end we connected with another trek, the Annapurna Sanctuary, which heads up into the mountains to the Annapurna south face base camp, at 4,157 m (13,635 ft).

It took us 22 days to complete it, which included two enforced rest days while Jacqueline recovered from some kind of stomach ailment. Outside of that, the only problem we had was at the very start of the trek, when we somehow managed to lose our ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) trekking permits. They cost about $28 each in Kathmandu, and you need to produce them at a number of checkpoints on the route. If you don't have one, you have to buy another--at double the price. Fortunately, we got it sorted out, thanks to a friendly ACAP employee who walked with us to the nearest phone, two hours up the trail, so we could call Kathmandu and get it straightened out.

By the end of the trek, particularly after having descended over 10,000 feet in two days, we were very happy to get back to "civilization"--defined in our case by beer and internet access. But after four days of traffic, pollution, and haggling with merchants here in Kathmandu, we're longing to be back in the mountains again. We're already talking about possible treks in the French Alps.

It's a good thing we ignored the U.S. State Department warnings about Nepal (and that we didn't tell our mothers about them). Over the last few years the Maoist insurgency has been increasingly bad, and now not a day goes by where you don't read in the newspaper of people being killed. Just two weeks ago there was a huge attack on the town of Beni, which is pretty close to the trek, and over 500 people were reportedly killed. The Maoists also regularly enforce strikes and blockades that make it impossible for people in more rural areas to get supplies, and tourism is down drastically from even a year ago. The so-called "People's War" is ironically really hitting the people of Nepal hard.

Fortunately, tourists are generally left alone. In the past, however, Maoists were known to ask trekkers for "donations" to their cause--usually 1000 rupees, or about $14. They reportedly stopped this practice this past Fall, however. We didn't encounter any Maoists, nor did anyone else we'd talked to. Still, a number of Nepalis we talked to told me not to tell anyone that I'm American; the Maoists have a particular hatred for Americans, probably partly for ideological reasons, but I think mostly because the US is helping to train the Nepalese army. So I started telling any Nepali that asked that I was Canadian (Jacqueline being French, of course), and never had any incidents.

Hopefully the Maoist problem will be resolved soon. Nepal is a beautiful country and its people are among the friendliest we've encountered on our travels.

So our year of travelling is over. Tonight we board a flight for Paris, and when we get down to Marseille we have to face reality again--apartment, jobs, wedding planning.

I'm not sure yet what we'll do with this journal. I imagine I could update it from time-to-time with news from France. We're not sure how long we'll stay there. One thing our year of travelling has made us realize is how much we miss the San Francisco Bay Area. We'd always planned on going back there eventually, but now we're really jonesing for burritos, Zachary's and Cheeseboard pizza, bagels, big coffee drinks, climbing gyms, wireless internet access (Brad), running and aerobics (Jacqueline), and most important, family and friends. But we'll give France a fair shot first.

Enjoy the new photos. We've added a few more to India, and captioned them (so you can figure out why we were covered in paint), and gotten about 3/4 of the Nepal photos up.

We hope you're all happy and healthy.

Take care,

-b & j

Alive and Kicking in Kathmandu

So we're in Kathmandu, Nepal now. It's almost 10:45pm--15 minutes before this internet cafe closes. We're leaving at 6:30am tomorrow to trek around the Annapurna massif--315km (200 mi.) over 3 weeks.

We've been scrambling around like mad the last few days getting our sh*t together for the trek, but I promised myself I would get a post up with new pictures before we left. So here you are. No time for captions, so you'll just have to guess at what things are. We'll fill them in and post something a bit more interesting when we get back to civilization.

Cheers,

-b & j

Saigon, Vietnam

Just a note to let you know we're still here. We're in Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City now, but everyone save government officials still call it Saigon), about to leave for a 3-day tour of the Mekong Delta before heading up to Cambodia.

We've been lame and haven't written anything about Vietnam, which has been an amazing country. We will try to get something up in the next couple weeks. There's a lot to say, so we might do it in a few goes. In the meantime, we've posted our photos to date.

BTW, if you visited this site in the last week, you probably noticed some strangeness. I just moved footle to a new server, and had to work out a number of kinks. One of those kinks was my email--I never got messages from a few people who sent them. So if you sent me a message in the last week and haven't heard back from you, there's a good chance I never got it. Send it again.

Take care,

-b & j

Vientiane, Laos

We've been in the capital of Laos, Vientiane, for three days, waiting for our Vietnam visas to be valid (when applying for the visa, you have to specify when you'd be arriving, and we had picked the 11th). Vientiane itself is nothing spectacular, although there's some good restaurants, cafes, and shopping. Most important, however, it has fast internet connections, so we've uploaded a ton of new photos.

After the last post, we remembered a number of things we should have mentioned:

Elephants!
How could we forget? One of the highlights of our trek out of Chiang Rai. We went to an elephant camp where we took an hour-long ride on the back of Hang Dee, a towering 28-year-old male. We both enjoyed it immensely, but Jacqueline was particularly thrilled, as it was something she's wanted to do ever since chickening out on riding an elephant when she was three (also in Thailand).

Interesting Meat
On the second night of our trek, our group, having just finished dinner, was sitting around the table and we got on the topic of meats that Jacqueline won't eat (namely, cute animals, such as rabbit, lamb, deer, etc.). This led to a discussion of venison, and whether people liked it (or had even tried it). Our guide, Kuan, had just gotten his own dinner, a dish of meat and greens (something specially prepared for him, as opposed to the significantly more bland dishes they prepared for our Western palates). We asked what he was eating and he replied "golden deer," a local delicacy. He offered everyone a taste, and half the group tried it (J didn't, of course, and I abstained mostly because I felt bad that everyone was eating his dinner). The ones who had had venison before said it tasted gristly and nothing like venison. Then Kuan asked me if I ate "hot dog" in America. A bit confused, I said well yes, I have, and he grinned and pointed at his dish and said "hot dog." After a few minutes of confusion, it came out that the "golden deer" in his dish was indeed dog. Needless to say, some were pretty upset....

Finally, after we left Luang Prabang, we went south to Vang Vieng with the hopes of going climbing there. Apparently the only way to do it is by going with a tour guide, and there was only one company licensed to do this. They had an office in Luang Prabang, so we went in there and were shown a brochure that indicated that, since we were climbing with our own equipment, we could get transportation to the climbing area, a private guide, and lunch for $7/each. When we arrived in Vang Vieng, however, we were told that that price was only for the permit to climb, not for a guide or even transportation to the site. It would be $25 each if we wanted what we had been promised. After a bit of arguing, and a call made back to the office in Luang Prabang, he offered transportation to the site, but nothing else. We were pretty peeved at being so misled, so we said forget it and asked for our money back (we had paid in advance). He did so, grugingly. We were bummed about missing out on what was probably our last chance to climb (we've looked and haven't been able to find anything in Vietnam), but justified it to ourselves by saying that it couldn't have been anywhere near as good as Krabi, anyway.

Ok, we've got to run. We're taking a 22-hour bus to Hanoi, Vietnam. They've told us the bus is comfortable, but we've long ago learned that means nothing in SE Asia.

Cheers,

-b & j

Chiang Mai, Thailand to Luang Prabang, Laos

Ah, these get harder and harder to write the longer we go between posts. Actually, if we go really long between posts, like we have a number of times, it's a bit easier, as we can collapse whole weeks into a few sentences. Anyway, best to just jump in....

When we last left you, we had just arrived in Chiang Rai, Thailand. We ended up staying in Chiang Rai a little longer than planned, but not for the best reasons.

We took a cooking class, something we had been very much looking forward to doing. The class started with a tour of the local market, then we went back to the "classroom" (a restaurant), and spent the day making--and eating--six different Thai dishes. Jacqueline was a bit better at restraining herself, but my Midwest upbringing makes it hard for me to leave any food on my plate, so by the end of the day, I was painfully full. Fortunately and unfortunately, my stomach wouldn't stay like that for long.

That night I started feeling a bit off, and before long I was throwing up my expertly prepared dishes and shaking with severe chills. I was better in the morning, but still to weak and nauseous to leave the room. The next day my appetite was starting to return, but the smell of Thai food still made me a bit queasy.

Up until this point, I was certain that I had gotten food poisoning. However, Jacqueline seemed to prove my theory wrong by proceeded to get sick as well, just as I was recovering. Another day spent in bed. (Having a TV helped pass the time, although for some godawful reason the only English-language news channel they got was Fox News, which is in itself nauseating in its non-stop conservative blather.)

By the time Jacqueline was feeling better, we'd been in Chiang Mai for a week and spent half of it in our room. We had planned on going climbing nearby, but both decided that we'd rather just move on.

(I'm realizing that at my present rate, it's going to take hours and many more pages than you might want to read in order to catch up, so I'll try to be a bit less verbose.)

Next stop, Chiang Rai, a few hours north by bus. We went there, as most tourists do, for one thing: trekking. We did a 3-day trek through through the countryside, through jungle and bamboo forests, visiting some hill tribe villages along the way. It was very interesting and great fun. There were 8 in our group, with people from New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Canada, and Japan. Our guide was great, pointing out all sorts of fauna and flora, explaining hill tribe traditions, and demonstrating that bamboo is probably one of the world's most all-purpose plants. He and some hill tribe helpers that tagged along made cups, bowls, chopsticks, water carriers, flutes and even spitball pop-guns out of bamboo. For lunch our second day, we stopped for lunch by a river and watched while they made a fire and proceeded to cook for us noodle soup with vegetables, along with tea, all prepared in, served in, and eaten with bamboo. It's also used for constructing houses and even for aqueducts, funnelling water, sometimes hundreds of meters, from a nearby river.

We got back from our trek on New Year's Eve, and spent the night celebrating with our trekking friends.

The next day, we took a bus to Chiang Khong, then crossed over the Mekong River into Laos. We spent a night in Huay Xai, then took a two-day slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. We had been apprehensive about the slow boat, not being sure if our backs and bums could handle two days on hard wooden seats, but it ended up being a great trip. There was plenty of room to strech out and move around on the boat, and the scenery was superb. The Mekong River valley is beautiful, surrounded by lush hills and sparsely populated by very primitive villages.

Luang Prabang is a wonderful city. Beautiful wats surrounded by both traditional Lao and French colonial architecture. The city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995, so a lot of its old buildings have been restored, and many more continue to be. It's also small enough to be walkable, with relatively little traffic (and thus pollution).

Tomorrow we head south to Vang Vieng, the next stop on the standard Lao backpacker loop. We're actually going to be able to get some climbing in for the first time since leaving Tonsai. The only way to do it is by booking a guide to take you, and interestingly enough, you need to book at least a day in advance so they can get approval for you to climb from the provicial governor, in Vientiane. Ah, life under communist beaurocracy. Anyway, we're looking forward to it; hopefully we haven't completely lost the climbing muscles and callouses we built up in Tonsai.

That's it for now. Take care,

- b & j

P.S. Still no new pictures uploaded. Maybe when we get to Hanoi, which should be in a week.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

We arrived in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand Sunday evening. It was a pretty grueling trip: we took a night bus from Krabi at about 4 in the afternoon, got to Bangkok at 5 am, then another bus that left Bangkok at 9 am and got to Chiang Mai at 6 pm. Luckily we had already booked a room, so it was easy once we got here.

We had a pretty interesting experience on our two bus rides. The first bus was for tourists. They packed as many people into very tight quarters on a bus that had its front windshield held together with packing tape and sounded like its transmission wasn't going to last the trip. It stopped a couple times for food at fairly expensive places designed for tourists. In contrast, on the Bangkok-Chiang Mai bus, a significantly less expensive Thai government bus, we were the only Westerners. This bus was comfortable and roomy, and we were served a tasty lunch and several snacks. So now we know how to travel. The second bus trip was booked by the owner of our bungalow place in Tonsai. She called friends in Bangkok who got the tickets for us. There was a bit of confusion in meeting up with them. Brad ended up calling and waking one of them up at 6:30 am (they were meant to meet us at 6). They came and got us, though, and took us to the [decidedly non-tourist-oriented] bus terminal, helped us order breakfast (no English menus here), and made sure we got on the right bus.

Our first 12 days in Thailand were spent in Railay/Tonsai, Thailand's rock climbing mecca. It's about halfway down the "ax handle", directly east across the Andaman Sea from Phuket. Towering limestone cliffs, dripping with stalactites, surround several beautiful beaches. There are no roads into the area because of the cliffs, so the only access is by longtail boat--usually a 45-minute ride from Krabi Town--giving it the feel of a remote island.

We were there two years ago and it was interesting to see what had changed (a lot of new bars on Tonsai Beach), and what hadn't (quite a few of the Westerners who were living and working there two years ago were still there). Most of the prices are still at the same level as well.

We stayed in cheaper digs than we did last time--only about $6/night. Our bungalow was about as basic as you can get: a raised bamboo hut with daylight coming through the wooden floorboards, a mosquito net over the bed (BYO sheets--a good thing we did), a cold shower on a concrete floor that didn't drain very well, and a toilet that was flushed by scooping water from a plastic tub into the bowl (or, for more serious jobs, just dumping in the whole tub). We also had some roommates; mosquitos and ants notwithstanding, we shared our bungalow with lizards, at least one persistent mouse (who kept getting into our food and chewed through our camera's USB cable), and a frog that viciously attacked Jacqueline in the bathroom one morning.

Most of our time in Tonsai was spent climbing. When we first arrived, we hadn't really done any climbing for a couple months...and had been on a steady diet of French cheese, bread, and wine. Needless to say, we were a bit weak initially. By the end, though, had moved up a couple grades in difficulty, and were noticeably more buff (helped by a diet consisting largely of rice, curries, and banana shakes, with a bit of beer for good measure), making it all the harder to leave.

We did manage to get out and see a bit of the Krabi area on one of our rest days. We met a German couple and the four of us hired a driver to take us to a famous local wat (temple), Wat Tam Suea. Part of the wat is on top of a mountain, up 1200+ steps (some of which were about 2 feet high). We also went to a nearby national park to check out a waterfall there. It was ok, although the special foreigner admission price to the park was a bit steep (200 baht, which is about $5--about the same price as dinner for two here).

We will probably be in Chiang Mai for about a week. A few days will be spent taking cooking classes, something we've been looking forward to for a long time. We will also check out a climbing area not far away. Otherwise, Chiang Mai seems like a great city to just walk around and sightsee.

As a special Channukah/Christmas present to everyone, we've actually uploaded new pictures. See the pictures section on the left for pictures from France and Thailand.

We hope you are all doing well. Happy Holidays!

Cheers,

-b & j

Carqueiranne, France

Things are going well here in France. The majority of the wedding planning is done. The date is set for July 2, 2004, here in Carqueiranne.

J and I leave on Dec. 8 for Bangkok. We'll be spending some time in Thailand, then Vietnam, Laos, perhaps Cambodia, then hop over to India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. If we have time before we return (in early April), we'll try to see Egypt as well.

I hope everyone is well. We'll post again soon, probably from Tonsai Beach, Thailand!

-b & j

Off to France

We're heading to the [San Francisco] airport in less than an hour to catch our flight to Paris. A bit sad to leave our family and friends, but modern communication and the increasingly nomadic nature of our generation in particular makes moving to France seem no more serious and permanent than moving to Cleveland. Certainly much more exciting. Anyway, we'll keep everyone posted, and we're only an email away.

Take care,

-b & j

Don't worry, this should be painless

a-HA! The blog lives! Perhaps you thought we decided once and for all to spare you our rambling missives? Or that we found true happiness in South Dakota and decided to end our travels there and settle down? Wrong on both counts.

This isn't going to be a long-ass catch-up posting. I'm too lazy for that. If you haven't already talked to us and want to know what we've been up to for the last two months, email me. Or Jacqueline.

The big news is that we've sold the Bus. A very nice man flew out here to Oakland from Fort Collins, Colorado, paid us in cash, and drove off into the sunset. It was very sad. Both of us got a bit moist in the eyeballs. But she's in good hands, and we've been promised pictures.

Speaking of which, if you look left and up a few inches, you'll notice four shiny new links. Yes, more photos! I've broken them into more-or-less bite-sized chunks. Resist temptation to start at the top--the "New York to Minnesota" gallery is chronologically first. I've also added a couple more "People with Bus" photos to that gallery.

We're currently back in Oakland, living in our tent in my sister's backyard. We leave for France on the 30th (to avoid having to come up with Halloween costumes). Then begins part deux of our adventures: the wedding planning. If we manage to get our merde together, we'll take off again for more travelling: Egypt, India, Nepal, SE Asia. Then back to France in the Spring. Target date for the wedding: June 26. Pencil it in, and start saving your pennies for the flight over.

That's it! Painless as promised, no?

Catch-up Time

I'm sure we've lost most of our audience by not posting for over a month, but for those dedicated (or very bored) fans who still check this stie, we'd like you to know that we--and the bus--are still alive and having a blast.

So, a "quickie" update: From the Gunks, we drove to DC to hang for a few days with my friends Tom & Alie Hoover and thier baby Alexa. From there, we drove to Charlottesville, where J gave me a tour of UVA (where she got her Master's). Then we headed west to southern West Virginia to climb at the New River Gorge. Sadly, it poured all night, making it too wet to climb, so we decided to move on.

Next stop was Columbus, OH, to visit J's brother Geoffrey and his wife Carolyn. They had literally just moved there from Philadelphia--we arrived only hours after their moving truck did. Nevertheless, they were great hosts. We stayed longer than anticipated, as we took the bus to a local mechanic to see if we could get our cracked cylinder head fixed. More on the bus later, however.

After Columbus, we headed to Ann Arbor to visit my alma mater. We spent and evening walking around campus, visited a number of old haunts (Jerusalem Gardens, Stucchi's, Ashley's), and spent the night with a friend of my sister's, Jenny Croze. The next morning we had breakfast at Zingerman's, took a sandwich for the road, and headed up to Ishpeming.

We spent an enjoyable and relaxing week and a half in my hometown. My parents threw an engagement party for us, drawing relatives from both coasts. Jacqueline's parents few in, as did my brother and sister, Aunts Bobbye and Dee, and Uncle Al. My brother did a great job cooking and bartending, ensuring that everyone was stuffed with chicken, salmon, and veggie kabobs, and sloshed on chocolate martinis, peach sangria, and mohitos, among others.

We tried to squeeze in a bit of climbing while we were there, although the U.P. is not exactly a climbing mecca. Still, we found a respectable cliff, but as we were trying to figure out what to climb (there was no guidebook), we heard thunder, and the rain followed not long afterwards.

From Ishpeming, we headed down to Madison, WI, to visit my friend Andy Lehto (who had also come up for the party). He took us along to a summer squash potluck where pretty much everything but the beer J & I brought was made from some variety of squash.

We left Madison the next day and drove up to Devil's Lake, where we finally managed to climb. We spent two days there, then decided to head westward, as we had only a few weeks before we had to be in Seattle.

Our destination was the Black Hills of South Dakota, a two-day drive. Along the way, we stopped in Austin, MN to visit the SPAM(tm) Museum (the versatile luncheon meat, not the email variety). The museum was surprisingly well done, yet we still couldn't bring ourselves to buy a can for the road.

We spent a few hours driving and walking in the Badlands, then headed to our current location, near Custer State Park, the home of the "Needles"--a climbing wonderland. We've been here for a week, and still have a couple more days of climbing before we'll be ready to move on. We've found a great , free camping spot at a trailhead that we've had completely to ourselves, except for one night when about fifteen Scottish bikers wearing kilts swooped in and had a wedding there (yes, we have pictures), and another night when an ambulance and rangers showed up to rescue someone who had collapsed on the trail (from heat exhaustion, apparently).

Today is a "rest" day, at least for me. I am spending the day at an internet cafe in Custer, working for my friend Erik. Jacqueline, never one to just chill out for a day, is doing a 10-mile hike to the top of Harney Peak, the highest peak in the Black Hills.

So why have we been so lax in posting? Laziness/procrastination is always a factor, but we have some real excuses: first and foremost being that my laptop is dead, but also, public internet access has been hard to find. And in case you've tried to call us on the cell phone, you should know that we haven't been in SprintPCS-land for ages.

Now, update on the bus' health. We now know the reason we've sounded like a regiment of lawnmowers since hitting NJ in May--we have a cracked cylinder head. It is still running well otherwise, and two trusted mechanics have said that it will probably keep running for a while, provided we avoid cold weather. So since we don't feel like spending $2000 and two weeks getting it fixed, we've decided to keep on truckin', and to keep our fingers crossed. The only other quirk is that the starter motor occasionally gets stuck in hot weather, requiring me to crawl under with a hammer and give it a little love tap while J turns the key. She finds this incredibly amusing.

The forecast for the next two weeks: Devil's Tower, Glacier Nat'l Park (or at least the parts of it that are open after the wildfires), Banff/Lake Louise (more climbing), then to Seattle by the 25th.

OK, back to work. Take care!

-b & j

New York and The Gunks

We're posting from the Bus, in a parking lot in New Paltz, NY (about 80 miles north of NYC). We came here to climb the world-famous "Gunks" (aka the Shawangunks). We arrived late Wednesday night, and got in a fair amount of climbing yesterday, but today it is raining, so we're killing time and hoping that the rocks will be dry tomorrow.

We had a good time in New York. Jacqueline's friend Kate's wedding was very nice. We both got to hang out with friends, although I spent a fair amount of my time doing work for my friend Erik's company; it's good to be making some extra travel money, though (especially considering how expensive New York is).

We're happy to be back at home in the Bus. We cooked our first meal last night--Mac n' Cheese with tuna. Our appetizer was a can of Wild Consomme Pringles that we brought back from Thailand a year and a half ago, accompanied by a local microbrew or two. We started a game of Scrabble, but got about 2 words into it before Jacqueline fell asleep. I think my mistake was leaving to clean up the dishes while she was mulling over her next play.

You'll be happy to know that we managed to get some more pictures online: the last stage of our initial trip across the country (Iowa to New Jersey), and our Greece photos. The photos from Turkey still need to be captioned, and there are about 180 of them, so it might be a little while. If it keeps raining, though, it may be sooner than later.

Bisous to all,

-b & j

Back in the US

Just a quickie to say we're back, and in one piece. The flights were long, but uneventful. We managed to kill 4 1/2 hours in Heathrow without too much trouble, and for some blessed reason got bumped up to business class for the flight across the pond.

We're seriously jet-lagged now. Or at least I am, as evidenced that I'm posting this at 4:30 in the morning.

We'll try to have the pictures up in the next few days. Other than that, probably no posts until after we leave the New York area, in a week or so.

Cheers,

-b

Athens - Heading Home

Only about 12 hours until we're on a plane back to New York. This should be an erudite summary of our travels in Greece and Turkey, but we've been travelling for the last two days and aren't particularly inspired at the moment. Perhaps soon (although the next couple weeks back in the US is going to be crazy).

We arrived in Athens this morning. We had a very pleasant ferry ride from Rhodes; we found an economy-class seating area on an upper level that was completely unoccupied. We were able to stretch out on our thermarests and sleeping bags and actually got a much better night's rest than we did our last night in Turkey.

We wandered about Athens a bit this afternoon. It's definitely not a good time to be here. With the Olympics a year away, everything is under construction. The typically bad traffic is even worse, and everywhere you turn there are jackhammers and bulldozers. Hopefully, though, they'll be the better for it after next year.

One interesting anecdote from the last couple days: In Marmaris, the departure point for the ferry to Rhodes, we sat down for lunch at what looked like a fairly Turkish establishment (as opposed to tourist-oriented--i.e. with things like schnitzel, spaghetti, and hamburgers on the menu). They handed us a menu that had English and German translations of their mostly turkish dishes, at somewhat high, but not absurd prices. I paged through to the back, however, which was all in Turkish, and noticed that they had most of the same items, plus some others, at much lower prices (less than half). We were actually looking for something called a lamachun, which is a kind of snack-sized thin-crusted minced meat pizza, eaten rolled with lettuce and tomatoes inside. They're very good and almost always very cheap; this place had them for about 50 cents each--but only on the Turkish menu, of course. The waiter was surprised when he saw that we were looking at that part of the menu, and tried to redirect us to the English, but we insisted on the lamachuns. We ordered three (he was trying to tell us that three wasn't enough, although it was more than enough), plus a couple of ayrans (a traditional yogurt-based drink, also usually very cheap). He seemed a bit upset and asked us how long we'd been in Turkey; I guess they're used to people who just came off the boat. The lunch was good, and when we asked for the bill, we noticed our waiter talk to the manager and look in our direction. We guessed that they were going to try to overcharge us somehow, and sure enough they did. We asked the waiter to explain it, as it wasn't really itemized, and he kept saying it's ok, it's ok. We ended up just handing him the amount it should have been and walked away. He looked upset at having lost the battle, but accepted it.

Fortunately, this was not a common experience in Turkey. You just have to be careful in the bigger, more touristed towns; I think particularly port towns where they get a lot of people either just arriving or just there for the day. Outside of places like this, almost everyone has been very helpful and honest.

Anyway...our flight gets into Newark around 5pm tomorrow (Tuesday). As soon as we get settled, we'll start going through and pairing down the 500-odd pictures we've taken. We'll get them online as soon as we get to a decent internet connection (your office, Erik?). I think on our future trips we'll try to post them as we go, so we don't have such a massive backlog.

See many of you soon,

-b & j

Olympos - Fethiye

How wrong we were about Olympos. We thought we'd last at most two nights, bored out of our minds and disgusted by the partying backpacker scene. In the end we had to force ourselves to leave after four days. It was wonderful.

Although it would have been easy to spend our days lounging on comfy cushions, we actually managed to keep ourselves fairly active. One afternoon was spent rock climbing on a wall behind one of the pensions. Another was spent swimming for two hours along the rocky shoreline. On our most active day, we climbed (with rope and gear) a 900 ft. rock behind our pension. But despite these spurts of activity, we did do a lot of relaxing. During the hottest times of the day, it was easier to just read in the shade.

Our pension, Saban, was great. We wisely avoided the larger, more party-prone pensions and opted for this smaller, family-run place. For about $14/night, we had our own treehouse, plus got breakfast and dinner. The dinners were excellent. It was served buffet-style, and because you were allowed to go up for seconds (or thirds), we often stuffed ourselves.

Evenings were spent sitting in one of the pillow-lined open-air huts, drinking beer and chatting with other travellers. Meral, the friendly woman who seemed to be in charge most of the time, would often come around and hang out with us (even kicking my (Brad's) butt in backgammon one evening).

We could have spent longer there but the end of the trip was looming, and we still had a fair amount we wanted to see.

We headed to the village of Kas next, not quite sure what we were going to do there. I wanted to do some scuba diving, and I knew they did dives from there. Kas was a cute town, although definitely geared towards tourists. It has a small cobblestone walking district, situated around the harbor, with a lot of boutique jewelry and small art shops, and quite a few restaurants. We had a great dinner at a little family restaurant where they invited us to come to the kitchen and showed us their dishes, and we ordered by just pointing at what we wanted.

We left the next morning, though, as we decided (after a bit of research on the Internet) that the diving would be better out of Fethiye, about 2 1/2 hours further west along the coast. Everything we wanted to see was more accessible from there anyway.

We picked a great pension in Fethiye: Tan Pension. It's run by a very sweet elderly couple and is the cheapest place we've stayed on this trip--only about $7/night. It's also got a great top-floor terrace overlooking the bay.

We walked around a bit and paid a visit to European Diving Centre, the dive shop for which I had found recommendeations. Since it had been a year and a half since I had been diving, they required a refresher dive before going on one of their real dives. This was Monday, and they suggested the dives they were doing on Friday were some of their better dives, so we worked out a plan where I would take my refresher dive they next day, on Tuesday, in Butterfly Valley, a place we were planning on visiting anyway, and they would just drop us off there.

The dive went well, although there wasn't much to see. They dropped us and our packs off on the beach as promised. We were planning on spending the night there, but after finding out that it would cost almost $30/night, even to just pitch our own tent, we decided to just spend the afternoon there and head out on the last boat.

Butterfly Valley is a small, very steep mountain valley leading down to a beach. The name comes from the rare Jersey Tiger butterfly (which we think we saw...we're not entirely sure what it looks like, though :-), which can be found there from July-September. There are pretty much only two things to do in the valley--either hang out, either at the beach or at the overpriced restaurant/bar on the beach, or hike up to the waterfall at the head of the valley. We did a little of the first, then headed up to the waterfall. The first waterfall you get to is nice, but small, and you can actually climb up past it and up the somewhat steep river to get to the top, and a much bigger, very beautiful waterfall. Not everyone ventures up that far because it is slightly dangerous, and certainly wet, but being the experienced adventurers we are, it was a piece of cake. Well worth the trip to dance in the verdant fall, the mist throwing rainbows in the air.

When we got back down to the beach we rewarded ourselves with an absurdly overpriced beer, and chatted with a British traveller who convinced us (well, me--J. was already convinced) that we had to visit India on our trip.

The next day was a bum-around-Fethiye day. We saw some more ruins, and some 4th century BC tombs that are cut into the cliffs above the city. We also ate some more ice cream (actually, it's a rare day when we don't eat ice cream).

The next day, Thursday, we went to Saklikent Gorge, about 50km away. It's a narrow gorge about 18km long, although we only slogged up the river about 1km before we got to a section that looked pretty hairy (even for us), and we headed back. Still, it was a lot of fun.

Today we actually spent most of the day apart--probably the first time we've done that in months. I had my diving--which was good--and Jacqueline took a hike to a ghost town, abandoned when Greece and Turkey had an organized population exchange after WWI and the Turkish War of Independence.

Actually, the day was almost a disaster, as we both woke up in the morning with a bit of the runs. We had had no problems up until now, and we were thinking it was particularly evil timing. Fortunately, it was short-lived. We don't know what caused it, as we both share almost everything we eat.

Tomorrow we start our journey back to Athens, via the Turkish port town of Marmaris, then to the Greek island of rhodes, then a ferry to Athens. We'll probably have a full day to kill in Athens, so we'll try to post again from there.

Cheers,

- b & j