In the Jungle …

In the Jungle, the mighty jungle …

Nup. Not a sleeping lion to be seen. Maybe a Puma or a Jaguar. No Pajeros though. Even though the Mitsubishi 4X4 was named after a lithe and athletic pampas cat (Leopardus pajeros), it had to be renamed the Montero in Latin America, since pajero is a Spanish slang term which loosely translates as wanker. But even the best Montero would be out of its depth here. This is the Amazon …. the headwaters thereof at least…. the Rio Napo, a 1000km tributary of the Amazon which begins life in the Ecuadorian Andes and flows eastward to the Peruvian border where it turns southeast and continues through dense tropical rain forests to join the Amazon on its journey to the Atlantic coast in Brasil (with or without a z).

The wow factor is as high as the tree tops we traversed but more of that later. This was THE way to finish a 60 day out-of-Oz experience. Sacha Lodge deep in the jungles of Ecuador, two hours downstream from Coca, 30 minutes up in the air in a turbo prop ATR 42-500 from Quito, three hours at 30000 feet from the Galapagos and a lifetime away from Tony ‘the pajero’ Abbott disclaiming climate change.

Talking of stupid. It is interesting that a bloke can go through life not equating the fact that Ecuador is in fact the Spanish word for Equator. Probably why most lateral thinkers, if given the latitude, would run rings around me.

Our Seven Little Australians had started their South American adventure in Buenos Aires in early September as the Famous Five. Two were added in Lima to keep the Blyton fantasy alive. Post Galapagos, all things Enid were dispensed with as we became the Fab Four all of whom were all able to “picture themselves in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies”. The trip to Sacha is an adventure in itself. We had flown out from the Galapagos airport on Baltra Island to Guayaquil (where the g is not a g as in whacuamole) and then to Quito. More big breaths at 2850 metres and we boarded our TAME (sounds like Tahmay if you care) Embrauer for a thirty minute flight to the ‘oil-town’ of Coca. We were met by Joel from Sacha who fed us, handed out the life jackets and took us the 100 metres to the long-boat for the two hour river canoe ride down the Rio Napo. Twin 75 Yamahas set a cracking pace as the spotter in the front and the captain at the back chicaned us between floating logs, sandbanks and unseen person-eating pirana.

A bit like the Yangtse without steroids, the Napo is the transport lifeline for the movement of most everything which is either shunted in barges or loaded into long boats (no tinnies here) for their journey up or down the river.

And there was us, with our ponchos for the drizzle and our suitcases for the four night rumble in the jungle. The landing was dry, the kilometre hike along a boardwalk through the forest was exhilarating and the final half an hour paddle your own canoe ride filled with expectation. No noisy two-strokes here, all sweat and silent strokes of the paddles. It should be obvious that I was a paddlee, but whistling “Lay down Sally” was a tad unnecessary.

And then, oasis-in-a-desert-of-mixed-metaphors-like, appeared ‘the lodge’. After three hours of travel by foot, boat and canoe, imagine our surprise to see the bar and restaurant complete with welcoming drinks. And Fausto #1.

Now, I’d read Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus in El 202 (Elizabethan to Romantic Literature) in 1971 so I knew about the deal that old Dr Faustus did with Mephistopheles when he sold his soul. But Fausto (the manager) assured us that our souls were safe …. as long as we stayed indoors after dark, didn’t deviate from established paths and tipped our guides handsomely for keeping the jungle marauders from devouring us during our four nights in a real jungle with birds to make Lala have a parrotsysm and beer at $3 a stubbie. Piraña heaven. Our own jungle hideaway with hot showers, flushing toilets and an authentic jungle experience in the amazin’ Amazon.

Lodge room 202 was comfortable, insect-screened, ensuited and had a hammock on the deck to lie back and watch the passing parade of wildlife. It also had a ‘drying space’ (lit by a 40 watt globe) to keep electronics ‘dry’ in the clinging humidity of the rainforest.

Aptly named that old rainforest as the next morning attested. But there was no stopping our Guias Naturista, Fausto #2 and Wilson. No, not a typo. Not since 1971 had I had any dealing with Faust. Now two in one jungle (no Capt Bloodwood, not Wunjunga). What’s the likelihood? But no devil-worshipper this one. What he and his Quechan side-kick didn’t know about jungly things ain’t worth knowing. So, after our usual buffet egg scramble, off we went. Like Tarzan and several Janes. Past the Mariposa House where cobalt blue butterflies fluttered by and straight to the high wire.

Three towers above the tree tops, each 36 metres from terra firma and linked with a 275 metre bridge that I Jones esq would have considered risky. Even Tarzan would have balked to consider which of his phobias to accede to. For mine, it was take your pick from the list below but panophobia comes close and coprophobia was a close second but only in the event that the climb might lead to the ultimate motion sickness or at worst, an accidental run for your money.

Phobia                                         Fear of

Acarophobia                             itching or of the insects that cause itching

Acrophobia                                heights.

Aeroacrophobia                        open high places

Agrizoophobia                           wild animals

Arachnophobia                          spiders

Bathmophobia                           stairs or steep slopes

Cardiophobia                             the heart

Cnidophobia                               stings

Coprophobia                              feces

Gelotophobia                             being laughed at

Gephyrophobia                         crossing bridges

Hylophobia                                 forests

Panophobia                                everything

 

But with Cardiophobia (the fear was that it would stop, not that I had one) licked and the final flight climbed, the view was singularly spectacular.

It was only the Gephyrophobia that needed to be conquered. Said bridge was not only narrow and held together with the sort of trellis plastic I use to grow beans, but was prone to swaying … at least I think it was moving in the gusts of rain but with vertigo and closed eyes, it was hard to tell.

One of our party with a particular penchant for one of the height phobias above, noted at the end of her first crossing that she had been bitten in the webbing of both hands. Small red welts bore some truth to her acaraphobia until she grasped the thin blue poly rope to continue her ‘stroll’. Mmnnn. blisters. Now that’s called hanging on tight.

Three towers. A hundred metres between each. And what bird to oversee our progress? Yep. None other than a pair of vultures. True. But we showed ’em and I expect they ate cake.

Avocational birders, twitchers, bird-watchers, ornithologists and even escapees from the Audubon Society members would find few better hides to check out their favourite feathered friends. Way up high Dorothy. And all the rage with the smartphone generation is ‘digiscoping’. This works best when you have a guide to carry the 20-60x80mm telescope and tripod up the 15 flights of stairs. It also works best when the guide sets the scope, takes your iPhone and adroitly lines up the lens with the scope and takes photos that would please an Attenborough.

And as if three towers in a day were not enough, he who sold his soul (Fausto #2 had us up the old Kapok Tower to watch the sun go down.

 

Luckily we had overcome some of the aforementioned phobias by then including climbing to 43 metres of new heights in the afternoon sway.

But there to meet us? Yep, number 5 in the all-time phobia list:

But I guess you’ve worked out that we survived and went on to catch pirana in the same lake that housed our swimming pool; and we saw deadly red frogs that locals used to tip their blow darts, three different mobs of monkeys that the locals used to kill with their blow darts tipped in red frog, and self-same locals who let us play with their blow gun. Barn doors at ten paces had no cause for alarm.

They also fed us the local fare and the jungle juice that old mate Fausto used to steady his nerves and Wilson, his two I-C, used to placate his offspring. Not for me the fermented juice of the tuber but the catfish was delish, and the grub on a stick not too bad after managing to overcome grubaphobia.

But all too soon, the days and nights were done and the bar account settled in USD before the reverse trip back to Coca and the ATR 42-500 turbo prop back to Quito for an 8 hour stop-over. Luckily T and D had befriended a local taxi driver named Raul who not only met us at Quito airport but who showed us the sights, took us to the Equator ‘theme park’ and got us back to the plane on time. And all for $100 which was about 1/4 the quote by the tour company. This is us at the Equator Park.

It’s take more than a line in the sand or even a hemisphere to separate me and Lala.

And then to Santiago in Chile via Lima for an overnighter which started at 0630 with a locked airport door (a bit like how folk arriving at Christmas Island feel), segregation from ALL other nationalities to pay the $117USD reciprocity fee (mmnnn Julie, fix that!) followed by our last Chimu Meet n Greet and a tour of the town of 6.5 million with our last views of The Andes.

The tour ended with the insides of my eyelids at 1400 hrs when the hotel room was ready for a nap to compensate for 30+ hours on the hoof.

Last Hurrahs at the Holiday Inn, final re-pack of the trolley-bag and QANTAS QF 28, here we come for the smile trip home (so called because of the loop it takes down to the Antarctic before heading north to Sydney). Ice flows and wine flows saw us in on time and then it was jiggedy jig time to Brisbane and home suite home.

And manflu.

Well that’ll teach you to share a blow gun with someone named Faustus!

And then from WordPress, there was silence. Bliss.

Galapagos

Islas Galapagos

Jet lag has a consequence and sometimes it’s serendipitous. At very least, waking in the wee hours in Australia when the sun is still beaming on the west coast of South America provides plenty of time to knock over the missing bits of the epic that was. And so it is dear reader that we now venture to places where beagles fear to tread.

As our surprisingly large Avianca A320 descends to a surprisingly small airstrip on San Christobel Island,  the ‘map my trip’ screen reads: Altitude 3750 metres – Temperature 9 degrees C. Remarked I pithily: “We’ve walked higher than that in the last two weeks” …. and so with that most tenuous of links, this little dissertation tells about the less dizzy heights but no less spectacular Galápagos Islands … the penultimate destination in our line up. Have I mentioned that we lined up?

Galapagos Duck is an Australian jazz group formed in the 1960’s and in case you wanted to know, will be performing at the Paradise Showroom on the Gold Coast on 21 October from 6pm. This non sequitur has absolutely nothing to do with our trip except that the Duck’s 1983 album is titled Journey of the Beagle thus providing one of THE clumsiest segways (sic) since Joe the Cameraman fell off his at the cricket. But just in case your scepticism needs quelling, try them out at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJeNRkoP7oI

Almost equally as irrelevant (but when did that ever stop this little blogger?), we discovered on our South American peregrinations what we considered to be an unhealthy fascination with colons. The assumption that this included “ectomies”, “oscopies” and even “ic-irrigations” prevailed until we remembered the tomb in Seville of one C. Columbus, Genoese explorer and alleged discoverer in 1492 of South America’s northern neighbour. The Spanish call him Cristobal Colon with a squiggle over the o.

His tomb reads: “The illustrious and excellent man, Don Colon, Admiral of the Ocean Sea.” Light bulb moment and some relief that our hotel in Cusco was not moonlighting where the sun don’t shine.

Meanwhile back to the Islas where our naturalist (no Dave, not naturist) guide met us at the airport, dressed us in floaties and herded the 18 Qwell-takers aboard the rubber duckies which tendered us through a pristine bay to our floating home for four nights.

The Monserrat, for the technically minded, is 30 metres long with a 6.6 metre beam. The twin Cummins engines thrust her through the Pacific at up to 12 knots. The Monserrat, for those with a historical bent, is named after the Virgen de Montserrat, patroness of Catalonia in Spain. For centuries, sailors worldwide have adopted her as their loyal companion and have revered her as their protector through their journeys at sea (the fact that I lived to tell seems to justify this faith … vive the virgen I reckon). The Monserrat for the rest of you has beds, ensuites, a top deck for arvo drinks (see below as the Mag 7 plus two Belgian interlopers shared sundowners), a diner and ‘room’ for 20 paying pax and 11 crew. Of these, one is the captain, two tell you about stuff, and the rest get you places, prevent you from snorkelling yourself to death or keep you fed and watered (where watered is a loose term and does involve other liquids including cervesa at $3 a bottle.)

In about 1535, the Bishop of Panama was sailing to one of the duelling latino countries (Equador if you must know) to sort them out, when his Monserrat (not its real name) chanced upon the islands. Greeted by tortoises, finches and iguanas, he decided that the tortoises with the saddleback shape had the naming rights and so called the islands Galapagos after a certain type of Spanish saddle popular during that era. Subsequently, lots of good and bad folk visited the land of the saddlebacks including a bunch of buccaneers. Richard Hawkins, Ambrose Conley and probably Johnny Depp ate tortoise while plundering Spanish Galleons and flying the skull and cross bones, One Scottish privateer, Andrew Selkirk was marooned on Juan Fernandez Island by his captain. But he wasn’t Robinson Crusoe … mmmnn come to think of it, he was!

And then, almost exactly 300 years later, along came Charles Robert Darwin in the brig-sloop, HMS Beagle, which was 28 metres long with a big-assed beam of 8.8 metres. 68 pax crammed her bits. This included the hammock slinging Charles, one of 8 fee-paying supernumeraries. During his five years of rum and the lash (the missing third element is just idle speculation and besides, how could you in a hammock?), Darwin kept a diary of his experiences Journal and Remarks. Sort of WordPress for the 19th century. But unlike certain travelogues of the modern age,  Darwin’s recollections and scientific journal were widely popular, and reprinted many times with various titles, eventually becoming known as The Voyage of the Beagle. And in the blink of an eye, well 15 years, Charlie the lad from Shrewsbury in Shropshire had used his Galapagos gatherings about finches beaks, tortoise breeds, wet and dry iguanas and life on volcanic islands located 973 kilometres from the Ecuadorian coast, to formulate his On the Origin of the Species. And in truth, the significance of that work and the underlying intellect that deduced this landmark and high watermark bit of science would mean that not visiting las islas would leave a large hole-in-your-bucket-list dear Liza.

Incidentally,  I’ve made some natural history discoveries of my own:

Careful observation of sea-lions suggests that they have evolved from people in wet-suits. Whether frolicking or just laid back in the sand, the link is incontrovertible. Flippers, oceanic elegance, land-based indolence, a predilection for seafood, getting mauled by sharks … and look alike! No more proof needed. Unless of course, some theory-busting naturalist spotted me using my snorkel as a drinking straw, my flippers as obstacles and my wet suit as a sand trap.

Finches beaks vary depending on their food source. By one of Mother Nature’s cleverest and quickest adaptations, the finches of Isla Baltra airport are now able to eat cake crumbs left on tourist tables (rare photo at right). National Geographic take note. I’m available.

Toiletry bags are regressing and seeking to return to their species origin. On a particular rough evening cruise from Espanola to Floreana Island, my black bag, complete with toothpaste and floss made a bold attempt to make the anti-evolutionary transition, flinging itself from the bathroom sink into the toilet bowl. Thus went the ring of confidence and another theory down the gurgler.

And toilets themselves are in a state of evolutionary and political flux. Some flush to the left, some to the right (this is known as the Coriolis effect) and some have evolved to a state where they are paper-intolerant. Ne tirer el papel hygenico en el bano … don’t throw the toilet paper in the dunny …. which creates havoc with the almost autonomic paper flushing habit of folks from sewered lands. But they do clean the sorbent bins frequently as a response to nasal stimulus.

And of course, hypotheses abound regarding the regressive counter-evolution of US citizens, but it’s a delicate topic and I’ll reserve my observations for the Flat Earth Society 500 club, where Trumps and Misere intersect.

And among we Harry Butlers of the Pacific, “endemic’ is the buzz word. Even the beer is Endemica …. and tastes as if it were personally passed by geriatric tortoise, Lonesome George in his hare racing heyday.

Still, I reckon I got my $100 USD (cash only) island entrance fee as well as my $20 USD (cash only) departure and re-entry fees worth. Lala the bird watcher got more than her money’s worth too I reckon. Galore comes to mind: well of course we saw boobies – part of the raison d’etre surely. Blue footed at that. (Photo by Anneleen from Belgium with a long lens)

As well as red billed Tropic birds, Franklins gulls, Galapagos gulls (no ducks, sorry boys), frigatebirds, did I mention boobies (NASCAR and blue foot), brown noddys, Galapagos hawks, noddy turnstones, sanderlings, yellow-crowned night heron, plovers, mocking birds on my Crocs, doves, finches by 3, brown pelicans (photo by Anneleen),

albatrosses and chicks, golden warblers, egrets (I’ve seen a few but I then again too few to mention), wimbrils,  penguins (actually penguin), flamingoes and a large group of etceteras who were probably just visiting or on vacation.

And for you Dr Doo-Littles, the animals abound except for the tortoises which barely raise a canter. There were, and given the focus on animal rights, probably still are: marine iguana, land iguana, saddle back and giant tortoises (we saw Lonesome George, aged 102 and looking as if he were alive, but in truth, he’s taxidermically stuffed unlike old mate below who stuck his neck out for this photo at the Charles Darwin Research Centre), and the one Lala photographed looking out for lady tortoises riding side-saddle.

 

And then there were sea turtles (green), manta rays, lava lizards, skinks, sea lions galore,

even Rattis Rattis and the colourful Sally Lightfoot crabs whose culinary value is unknown because no one has been able to catch one. And one beached sea-lion told us that he’d seen sharks and his trailing entrails suggested he’d pass a polygraph test.  Thoughtfully, we kept this little observation from our fellow aquatic adventurers who still had the guts to snorkel where sea-lions fear to frolic.

And not to forget the epicureans, we gutsed ourselves on: turkey, salads ,ham steaks with pineapple and glacé cherries, tuna steak, beef goulash, lasagne, Oreos and juices of watermelon, grapefruit, guava, mango as well as beer (Pilsner and Club), g and t and Chilean red wine.

Splendid really splendid, except perhaps on the diplomatic front. In the mea culpa Julie Bishop category, I think some international reparative work may be needed. I confess I have behaved badly, almost with diplomatic impunity. First there was the travelling shyster in Aguas Callientes who took me into a dark alley and offered to polish my hush puppies (well, Brooks Dyads for the Aged actually) for ten bucks, promising to buff the fashion joggers to a patent shine. He polished those shoes until they had a shine to look up skirts. So proud of his work was he that the asking price suddenly went to $10 per shoe. I think I took the shine from his enterprise when I indicated where the size nines would be if he didn’t skip down that alley-way clutching his tenner.

But that was just the start of my diplomacy. Have we restored relations with Peru yet? There’s one pimply youth from the Incan terraces at Ollantaytambo who may still be crying foul after he constantly halted my downward momentum amidst a horde of downhill (and over the hill) ramblers. As we traversed the steeply sloped steps that the Incans built (in times before pimply teens with smartphones were ‘inclined’ to stop on each *&%%$^& step to take a selfie of his chicken legged companion), my fear of fractures overtook my normal calm demeanour.  Language barriers aside, he seemed taken aback when I suggested that one more photographic impediment to my downwardsness would result in his Samsung firmly inserted into a ringtone that even Telstra and the nbn couldn’t tinkle. He seemed surprised but daren’t risk having 85 kg of vacation-toned KP fall on him.

Ah well, at least the beautiful Islas Galapagos have allowed me time for drinks of contrition and then to seek solace in the Jungles of the Amazon with the Jesuits. And I’m sure that all will be forgiven.

Til we rumble in the jungle, here’s looking at you.

KP and Lala

 

 

 

 

 

Archeology 101 Anyone?

If you can believe the heart symbol on KP’s Apple iPhone for Thursday 21 September 2017, we walked about 8 km, trod more than 12000 steps and climbed more than 158 floors. More than enough to take your breath away … or maybe that was the altitude. But more likely, it was the astonishing sight that is Machu Picchu.

There’s a certain salute in South America. Imagine a person with feet firmly planted, right (or left, depending on your preference for the dexter view of things) arm raised to just more than halfway, peter pointer pointing into the distance and a mouth agape suppressing a squeal but nevertheless encouraging others to take a look at the sight in front of them. Machu Picchu does this to all but an Inca I reckon.

South America has some of the best tourist line ups in the world and by now, we have lined up at most of them. Machu Picchu, the last and best hurrah of Hiram T Bingham, the history professor from Yale who rediscovered the ruins in 1911 is another of the world’s great ‘line-ups’. And to think I thought we were going to see Indiana Jones (allegedly Hiram T was the inspiration for the archaeological whip cracker) in The Temple of Doom. The 0630 hrs line certainly resembled doomsday and it was about a kilometre long and the bus stop so far distant that entrepreneurial peruvians had established a plethora of places to pee for a peso (the currency is actually the Sol but the alliterarti will get my point).

And we waited and inched forward (can you millimetre forward?) until the light at the end of our time tunnel had lights … bus number 19 had 22 seats and also had our name on it to take us on the thirty minute bus ride up a switch back road from the town of Aguas Calientes. AC as we called the joint (oh dear) has been converted from a sleepy hollow to the starting point from which 1.4 million turistas annually visit the amazing UNESCO ‘loved to death’ Machu Picchu which is acknowledged as one of the seven new Wonders of the World. And we contributed to the love. More about the dizzy heights and the feats of the Incas shortly.

There are two ways to get to Machu Picchu: travel by bus from Cusco through the Sacred Valley to Ollantaytambo (no Rodney, not the one near Blackall) and then a train ride to Aguas Calientes, which translates as ‘Hot Springs’ (no Rodney, not the ones near Muckadilla); or Adventure Trekking on the “Caminos Del Inca” which is a 4-day trek to Machu Picchu. Obviously, it was only the time constraint which precluded the latter, so IncaRail and terry tourist bus it had to be.

Our departure point (Cusco) is the usual acclimatising point for visitors to Lago Titicaca and Machu Picchu – time for your sea-level bodies to get used to thin air. For some reason of scheduling, we had gone to Puno (the highest point at 3812metres) first, possibly believing they had a ‘special’ on Oxygen that week. Not so, but it made Cusco, some 412 metres lower, a push over and the seven little Australians used every cc of extra oxygen to shop for bargains and catch the ancient sights in preparation for Pachacutek’s place on the hill. We even saw the ‘famed’ local copy of the Last Supper in the Cathedral. Jesus and the Guinea Pig? Really? But I’m sure Leonardo would have had a giggle.

As part of our preparation for MP, we practised climbing things while breathing and we visited terraced sites that would challenge a D9 dozer and hydraulic rock splitters let alone an Incan workforce with rock hammers and bronze chisels. The remarkable walled complex of Saksaywaman (sexywoman to you), is famous for its remarkable large dry stone walls with boulders carefully cut to fit together tightly without mortar, displaying a precision of fitting that would leave contemporary brick layers mortarfied.

And there are hints and allegations that Eric the dilettante von Daniken’s Chariot of the Gods may have been involved … well the geometry and astronomy would appear to be out of this world.

And then there was the Incan trail which led to waterfalls and aqueducts at Tambomachay (no Rodney, not Mackay) where our guia turista snapped this happy couple of trailblazing trekkers.

The train trip from Ollantaytambo to Agua Calentes is one of THE train rides. Towering mountains and rushing rivers and ghosts?

punctuate the landscape and the reassuring train noises lull the unsuspecting into a false sense that they are prepared for the next day’s tour of the citadel, which is where this blog started. More lines than Trainspotting. But we survived the line and the 27 switchbacks and the line at the top for the loos and the hustle and bustle of the newly enforced crowd control measures which limit how many of the 1.4 million can enter at any one time. But then, we did get to stand where Hiram T saw what he saw – the holiday home for Pachacutec and his faves, built in the 15th century by the ninth Incan Sapa (that’d be head honcho to you) complete with 600 terraces, 170 buildings, 16 fountains and a temple or two. Oh and yes, did I mention the steps?

And then it was deserted and left to crumble (well as slowly as granite crumbles) for reasons known to none. And then we lined up to come back down.

And lined up to catch the train and almost as incredible as the stone edifice atop the hill, ran into a work colleague from days at the Ipswich coalface. Of all the Incan gin joints in all the world … hope you made it home safe Desley.

And so back to Cusco and a very trying next morning starting at 0330 as our bus driver slept through and arrived at 0400 to get us to our line up in time to try to understand why LATAM would open three portals for a plane load and then block two with ineligibles who spent 20 minutes while one of our group of seven got bumped off … only to eventually get ushered to the plane at the last minute.

But some of us were fortunate to be upgraded to premium economy. And then unfortunate to be lobbed an aisle-width from Señor Malodourous … I’m sure the rest of the plane would have chipped in to buy him a new roll on Rexona but it was left to the cabin crew, with pegs on their noses to sledge hammered their way through the pong with judicious use of air freshener. I suspect old mate thought that a bano is a suburb of Brisbane and agua is for all purposes other than bathing. Ah for a temporary case of anosmia – that condition where you can’t smell anything. Or else, why not screen the pongoes like they did with SARS or even have the sniffer dogs … nah RSPCA would reject that notion.

And so from flying high above the Andes (or in his case undies), we bid farewell to Peru and headed for the country of the Equator: Equador, where Galapagos tortoises and jungle jaguars await the next fraught episode of KPnLala’s last legs in South America. Vamonos amigos.

Peru Part 1

In search of hyperboles

Keep up KP. KP groans, exhausted from countless flights of Incan bipedalism up mountains that no one was ever meant to climb let alone terrace and build a fortress atop. No, I mean keep up with the blogs. What happened in Buenos Aires and Iguacu and Rio? Lots really, but before the rarefied air and next set of wtfs and wows from Ecuador, I reckon we’ll just work backwards from Peru and have a crack at Christ the Redeemerville, Madonnatown and the waterfall that straddles the border of Brazil and Argentina in the next (but previous) episode sometime in the future … so that’ll be back to the future but it’s ok because I’ll write it in the past tense …. assuming that is that we survive flight numbers 20 and 21 of our epic adventures.

We’ll all see roons said everyone as we flew to Peru

And roons we saw in overplus that made us aaah and ooh. (Apologies to John O’Brien … not his real name).

We came upon a midnight clear … now you know I’m lying. It’s never clear in Lima. But it was midnight and we had flown across South America from Rio to Santiago to Lima and were a little tired of hearing LATAM’s “how to fasten your seat belt talk in Spanish” and ready to metaphorically crash. But Lima is never clear as the dawn testified.

 More like Tom Lehrer’s song “If you visit American city, you will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware: don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air.”. But our hotel room upgrade was something else at the Estelar Miraflores … you mean you don’t have a spa and sauna in your hotel room?

After another weight watching catastrophe at the breakfast buffet, where we caught up with members 6 and 7 of our touring party (Seven Little Australians were we … Ethel Turner is rolling over I think) we had time to relax before our tour of the city of Lima (population 10 million).  Yet another bi-lingual Guia Official de Turisma trotted us past historical sites and filled in the gaps between Pizarro’s 1535 founding of the city, San Martin’s freeing of the city on 18 July 1821 and the (to me) chaotic gubernatorial system that prevails today with 43 different district leaders levying their own taxes and systems. Not unexpectedly, this shows in a city with no consolidated public transport, more cars than a Fast and Furious franchise, more honking than a googleplex of geese and taxis that have no meters. But they do have some pretty sights.

We did see the Huaca Pucllana pyramids of adobe built sometime between 200 and 700 AD and just a bit before the conquistadors of Charles V imposed Catholicism on the Quechuan Limeno who lived there. Catholicism rules in South America still. Yes, even the pope is catholic … I mean South American. And I’m sure he would have blessed the couple who both texted as he (the driver, not the pope)  bravely battled traffic with a set of rosary beads hanging from the rear view mirror. Reminds me of the local church of uncertain denomination whose sign said: Honk if you love Jesus. Text if you want to meet him sooner. At any rate, I doubt Francis of the Vatican via Buenos Aires fully condones the scratch and sniff, try before you buy, best of both worlds marriages (and other religious worship of Pachamama) that some of the more remote Taquilenos from Titicaca have adopted. Still there’s something to be said for a pre-nup that can last until your sure and final marriage approval from a father-in-law that depends solely on the ability of the intended’s knitted headwear to hold water. We ought to try that with politicians and brains. 

And it is fascinating the way the local artists have given the BVM (not catholic huh? The Blessed Virgin Mary of course) a touch of local physiognomy.

Peru is renowned for its cuisine, and like Australians, eats its faunal emblems. Alpaca on toast and Llama legs are not real dishes but Cuy is. Cuy is pronounced Cooeee (like when you’re lost or not near something) and it is better known as Guinea Pig. Needless to say I had a crack at a rack of Alpaca but did not go within cooee of the rodent. We did however pre-book from Australia, an evening at a world renowned Lima Restaurant called Astrid y Gaston. Cabs across town with taste buds at the ready for our seven pm destiny with the equivalent of hats and stars in the world of gastronomy. And it did not disappoint with three courses (life’s too short for the 12 course degustation) of excellent quality, fine wines and a table visit from Astrid herself. I had the duck (note, this refers to the main course and casts no aspersions on madame). And not a Pisco Sour to be seen.

We left the sauna suite in Lima and headed across The Andes by LATAM to Juliaca.

 Juliaca is the jumping off point for Lake Titicaca (or kaka, depending on your version of Wiki; our Peruvian guide reckoned that since the Peru – Bolivian border cuts Lake T down the middle that they arrange for the kaka bit to go to Simon Bolivar’s eponym.) Jumping off point is appropriate with Juliaca located high in the Andes at 3825 metres above sea level. We had researched altitude sickness (indeed I had researched Lake Titicaca as a boy …. more for the fun of saying it out aloud and not being thrashed than for any genuine interest in what is the highest navigable lake in the world). I knew it was a real risk in Puno and the lake, as well as several other places high in the mountains. Stepping down from the LATAM stairs, the effects hit almost immediately. Panting for breath and becoming increasingly aware of an intrusive headache are two of the more pleasant symptoms. Lala and I had prescription medicine (Diamox) but brave KP decided to be the ‘control’ while Lala popped the pills. And despite a long slow acclimatising walk to the burial towers in Sillustani (wherein I thought I might take up residence so laboured was my breathing), the effects were substantial and effectively liver cleansing as the advice to avoid alcohol was fairly strictly observed due to disinterest. 

But Lala was ok and found enough energy to play with a vicuna on the way down the hill. 

It became apparent that she was largely unaware of my sleepless night with Princess Paracetamol (they sell it in 750mg individual tablets) and paranoia caused by the claustrophobic effect of having a weight on your chest and substantially less oxygen than at sea level. Big breaths she said and I was too stuffed to accept the obvious one line response!

Can you wait for the next chapter to see if I survived?  Now that’s just being silly … only famous writers get ghost written. So of course I lived to visit the lake and its fine folk and climb the hill on Taquile Island (4000 plus metres … puffin’ like a porn star I was … in the puffin’ part only given I have no moustache) and go for a row in a reed canoe on Uros, where they live on beds of reeds floating on the lake, and buy a cushion cover allegedly made by the fifteen year old Urosian who had dressed us up as locals. 

This (the cushion cover not the girl) was our first souvenir and my remarking upon it is designed only to lower any expectation that there might be a bag of chinese made llamas, vicuna stoles and shiny beads for those who hold us dear! 

Back to Puno after 9 hours punting on Lake T, a night in the Iron Lung and hyperbaric chamber and off to Juliaca to catch the midday flight to Cusco. On the way, as we took a last look at the lake, the unfinished nature of nearly everything became plain. Steel reinforcement sticking out of the roof of partially completed brick structures was evidence of a family custom of adding another floor to a structure as families enlarged or offspring begat offspring. But I’m sure the council building guidelines are enforced.

Meanwhile at Juliaca Airport, the thin air had clearly befuddled the heads of airport officials. All three departing flights for the day (and remember, a ‘few’ folk visit Lake youknowwhat) were scheduled for around big lunch. Townsville airport looks sophisticated and well run in comparison. This was disorganised chaos unlike Reykjavik (op cit Iceland blog, 28 August 2017) which was organised chaos, but on a much larger scale. So with three A320’s scheduled all within 40 minutes of each other .. do the math as they say!  Consider the following equation: each airbus holds 180, that’d be 540 pax as they say in the business, and there are two departure gates with seats for fifty and banos for fewer than that and what do we get?  Well firstly we morons all line up before our plane has landed and proceed to protect a place in a line for a plane that’s still 6000 metres above us …. oh David Attenborough please check out this weird species and see if someone smart can administer the flights into the Andes.

Then we finally board after being scanned, checklisted, x-rayed (and the lucky ones groped). A marathon stroll across the Tarmac in the rarified air, a daunting stair climb to find our seats between the carry on antics and groans from the overhead lockers to hear:  “Attention ladies and gentlemen we need to check the exact number of passengers on board. Please remain seated.”  Mnnnn!

But the big jet dragged its load along the runway and eventually the wheels came free as I pondered the aerodynamics of taking off in thin air with a full load. But we didn’t disappear into thin air and arrived in tacto at Cusco (elevation 3399 metres and still some 1171 metres higher than the top of Mt Kosciuszko) and then we did our washing. These two things are not directly related …. well I speak for myself here.

Tales of the Lavendaria

Hotels have found a new way to reduce their chores and responsibilities – yes we offer a laundry service but first you must buy us a washing machine … or so it seems from the prices charged. $10 for a shirt, c’mon Mr Hilton!

After the Rio experience (that’s yet to come in the future past blog) where I spat the dummy and accused the Lavendaria of money laundering or at very least gold leafing the cuffs and collars and went home in a tantrum to wash me smalls and bigs in the bidet, we went to old mates lavvy in Cusco or was it Costco? Out came the hanging scales like the ones we used to weigh fish with – weight was right when heads were nodded and my 4kgs were billed at 20 Peruvian sols  about $8. I went out and threw everything else onto the footpath just to take advantage of the deal. Out of interest (who’s I hear you ask), the international fiscal abbreviation for the Peruvian Sol (pronounces solis by the Limoncellos) is PEN. It comes as no surprise then that the Argentine Peso is known to many English colonials and the IMF as the ARS.

But that’s your bloomin’ lot for this rant. There’s Machu Piccu, Galapagos and the Amazon to come, not to mention the ghosts of futures past from the eastern side of this vast continent. 

See you when the guinea pig’s done, the pisco sour is poured and the cerviche has stewed the fish in lime, lemon and its own juices.

TTFN

KP n Lala, still a long way from home

The Real Madrid

Madrid

To round off the European interlude between the Scandies and the Latinos, we practised our holas and learned to count past dos in Andalucia and Madrid.

Stubbing your toes on history is de rigeur everywhere in the Schengan states and Madrid is no different except that it also has some of the best art galleries and collections in the world. The Prado, Reina Sofia and Thyssen comprise what is known amongst the arterati as the golden triangle of art. Further evidence that all things are not created equilateral. But more of that soon.

Fond adioses (sic) were said to Sevilla at Santa Justa Station… if you sound the jay as an aitch, you may sound just a bit like the taxi driver who knowingly navigated the narrow lanes and got us to the train on time. Santa (Saint) Justa is big in Seville. We saw her in statue and in oils as she and her sister Rufina  in the early 200’s were (allegedly) killed for their faith. Luggage is X-Ray’d at the station that bears her name, lest others become martyrs for equally absurd washed brains.  And then at speeds up to 250km per hour we hurtled towards Atocha Station in the Spanish capital expecting to be met by Javier Bardem or Penelope Cruz with a handful of jamon jamon. (Ah, c’mon, surely you’ve seen Jarmon Jamon on SBS!)

Another Spanish hotel to challenge the taxi drivers. That’d be your place across San Martin Plaza senor. Ah. The familiar sound of suitcases with wheels on cobblestones all the way to the Hotel Intur Palacio San Martin. Intur? I ask you. Who comes up with these names? But the “d” was not silent and we were ensconced and not interred before you could say Hose A or Hose B.

For once, we elected to avoid the preferred fitness strategy of travelling weight watchers (vis exercise by pushing people out of the road at the breakfast buffet) and settled for local desayunos around the corner where toasties and expressos may not sound too flash but for 11 euros for the 2 of us, it beat the hotel’s regurgitoria fare by 25 euros. Ham and cheese anyone?

And so to the highlights. Sorry … no bullfights. Not even a Real Madrid v Atletico Madrid derby. Not even the Almudena Cathedral (another ‘new’ testament to Catholic take-overs, where upon the existing mosque was subsumed by the cross – sort of like dogs lifting legs to mark their territory so that lines of turistas can now pay per view.) My house is a house of prayer but you have turned it into a revenue stream said no bishop ever.

We did catch a metro or two (unerringly) and saw the poshest people’s palacio in town.

But the Real Madrid highlight (oh dear) has gotta be the art triangle. No not that triangle … besides it’s usually covered with a tiny wisp of gauze that lands on the appropriate place (Ref P Cook, D Moore). Described by Wiki as the crown jewel of the tourist itinerary, the Prado Museum is home to masterpieces of Spanish, Italian and Flemish schools, although why anyone would name a museum after a Toyota four wheel drive is beyond me. Nevertheless, it’s a magnificent collection with a gaggle of Goya’s, a raft of Valasquez’s and the odd Domenikos Theotokopoulos … yes I know that you all know him as El Greco. Prado tick. Second time really after some of the great works had been on display at GOMA in Brisbane a few years back while they refurbished the Madrid museo.

And so to the Reina Sofia, Spain’s national museum of twentieth century art. And guess what we ‘jagged’?  The last day last day of a Picasso exhibition called Pity and Terror: Path to Guernica. The display provided an historical perspective to much of Pablo’s work and to the original black and white painting showing the horrors of the German bombing of civilians at General Franco’s behest in Guernica during the Spanish “Civil” War. Guernica was front and centre all the way from the Met in New York where it usually lives. And of course there were countless other Pablo pieces and paraphernalia and photographs including old BBC news reels of the horrors that motivated Senor Picasso. This ‘special’ display (about eight rooms-full) was worth the admission price in itself.

And so to the third leg of the golden triangle of art: the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. The odd million have visited throughout this year. So, we prepared to line up only to find the ticket office was unattended. Went to whinge. No senor. Today is free. In you go! Lottery win of the day. Old Masters galore with Titians, Tintorettos and Holbeins Henry VIII and me. 

And Lala found her own old master – unlawful Cardinal knowledge I reckon.

Done in and paintinged over, we made our way back through plazas and bollards, marvelling at the grandeur of Madrid and the crazy-to-us Spanish eating hours where restaurants are empty until well after 2000 hours and thousand upon thousand spew out of metro exits to nibble tapas and guzzle vino tinto. We watched Spain v Italy with a cervesa and some Smiths crisps in a sidewalk cafe where home team goals by Isca and Moratta were cheered with Gooooooaaallllaaaaaaas and no teardrops were falling from blue spanish eyes. Blue Spanish Eyes?  What was Al Martino on? Blue? Maybe a gintonica like this wee dram???

Back to the Intur. Trolley bags packed. Graciases made. Taxi to Madrid International where Captain Schmidt (his real name) gunned the Lufty Airbus to get us to Frankfurt in time for the long haul 747 that would take us to the land of Maradonna and a gaucho or two. Bet you can’t wait.

KPnLala

Andalucia

Bollards

No I’m not being deliberately offensive. Well maybe it’s an allusion verging on offense but the bollards are no illusion. They are the ubiquitous response to the camionetas – the offensive vehicular weapon of choice of the gutless arses who attack the innocent.  And they range from your actual standard bollard made of metal and at ACL taunting height to cement edifices that might cause the Tiananmen tanks to think twice.

 And in the cities of Spain, the police presence in public places is high. And huge police vans themselves block the plazas from … well everybody except the thousands who stroll about and their own their caballeria … the equine constabulary. Alert but not alarmed were we.

To blog about Andalucia in one wiki leak is like the  old Naked Vicar Show’s Readers Digest version of War and Peace (you know the one? – “a Russian named Pierre wanted to kill Napoleon but didn’t”). And continuing the literary link – more Holas here than a season of Dora the Explorer. BUT let’s give it a crack.

Let’s start with the tourist data: ‘lots’ is probably my usual statistical medium but I always was a bit of a standard deviant. The data crunchers say that 10.5 million turistas visited Espana in July this year. That’s more than your average Ryanair load of poms sunning their pulchritude at Torremolinos. No fake news this. It was on BBC World News and given that this was the only English language channel for most of our stay (and without it, we still might be ignorant of the news about the latest heir to the sans hair to the throne), it must be true. Now 10.5 million in July is part of the 67 million who flocked to Felipe VI’s favourite plain last year. Except it seems that they all forgot to go home in August because everywhere that Lala went the crowds were sure to go. At least the restaurants in the street had reason to stay up late.

So at long last, the great conquistadors are getting a little of their own back. Blame Cortes, Pizzaro, Balboa and Columbus (yes I know he is Italian but I’ve seen his coffin in Sevilla) and Magellan (oops he’s Portuguese).  The turistas of the rest of the world are now beating a path to your door. I guess the difference is, they will mostly go home eventually.

Staying up late is a Spanish theme it seems. No, this is not a lisping pun. Siesta is true. Just try and get a feed between 1600 and 2000 hours. Or a beer. Or service at a cafe … mmmnnn this is actually a myth. This doesn’t really happen out of siesta time either. There’s a reason they are called ‘wait staff’. Until time for la cuenta when the race for your hard-earned seems to generate remarkable interest and even miraculous command of the English language. But the way the whole Spanish life begins in the twilight is a fascinating phenomenon. Families congregate in plazas for dinner and kids hang out for their tapas and chips until way past what we Aussies reckon is a reasonable bedtime. Hola to you too Dora. And hola said I to Miguel de Cervantes. And to each his Dulcinea said he to me.

Cigarettes? Who mentioned cigarettes? 29.5% of the Spanish population over 16 years of age it seems. Except at restaurants serving tapas on the street (dejuener sur l’herbe? Or is it al fresco?). Regardless, the percentage of folk who don’t mind if you eat where they smoke doubles in the outdoor eateries – doubles everything except life expectancy, that is!

Carmen made cigarettes in far off Spain

She couldn’t get a fellar ‘cause of nicotine stain

Then she met a toreador who made her heart flip

‘Cause he was super fine and had a filter tip ole!

From whence cometh that? Oh about 1972 I reckon. That broad general Arts education has a lot to answer for.  Bizet’s Carmen was set in Sevilla (pronounced as in I have a Sevilla headache) and we didn’t go to the Cigarette Factory even though it is on the tourist check list. Nor did I go to the Barber of Seville. Go Figaro! And just in case you were wondering what the Romans had done for you:

So there we were in beautiful Sevilla having landed first in Malaga (which we avoided in case we were mistaken for Brits who had exited early), took an ALSA local bus from the airport to Granada (pre-booked else you walk) and then found our way to Ronda, Cordoba and Sevilla by RENFRE fast trains (also pre-booked in Australia complete with seat allocation). Now this is the turista bit. That broad general arts education may have taught me a ditty or two, but even it fails to provide enough epithets (adjectives to you maths folk) to describe adequately the wonders of Andalucia. From the outrageously elaborate spectacle of the Alhambra (no not the picture theatre at Stones Corner, the Red Fort in Granada pictured below which predates the Stonesy establishment by about 700 years)

to the stunningly jaw-dropping views of Ronda 

to Cordoba’s astonishingly monumental Mesquite (which the Catholics call the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption but which the Muslims reckon is a false assumption and call it a mosque) and its 1300’s moorishly opulent castle, known as  Alcazar de los Reyes

and then to the very very tall Tower … I mean Giralda in Seville, Andalucia delights and fills up sd cards such that we’d run out of ooohs and aaahs.

If anything, our nine days really meant sticking with the touristy places (and touristy they are with more than 3 million visitors to the Alhambra in Granada each year alone

 … not sure how our day guide manages them all but he was very good, and if you plan a trip, make sure you book online well in advance). It also meant that my new Brooks walking shoes have had two years of walking in about six weeks. And as for the plantar fascia and the necrotic knee? I guess I always was a little down at heel.

Our casas all the way have been well chosen by S and T, our Travel Managers. Centrally placed as a rule and ranging from hotels with personally selected chinese travelling companions to self-catering Giralda apartment suites in narrow back-streets, we have been happy with our ‘digs’ and the fact that they were all pre-paid made it feel as if they were free. Yes delusional I know and Mastercard agrees. But two things if I may and how would you stop me? One is the lost in translation thing. Lala would like someone to explain a pillow menu that includes a “cervical” pillow and I’d be interested in knowing how a “double stuffed” pillow came to be so. Number Two: the banos (bathrooms but pronounced like Banyo). Bidet ‘socks and jocks washing tubs’ aside, I reserve my most quizzical and raised eyebrow look for the person-washing apparatus that appear to be specifically designed to confound if not injure. If like me, your eyesight almost entitles you to a guide dog, don’t enter the cubicle sans specs. Blind knob twisting and scalding are synonymous it seems. As for logic. Having the red dot facing the direction from which one might expect hot water to emanate is but a deviant plumber’s hysterical hispanic humour.

And bloody shower gel. It’s up there with carry on baggage. Just give me soap .. not even on a rope and not a lump of Pears or Palmolive. Just some soap like even the little circles are better than trying to lather a handful of gel which may or may not be shampoo. Imagine using the wrong stuff on this body and not being able to do a thing with it. Better still, don’t imagine that.

But fun we have had. And learned sooo much about the history and habits of this independent ‘state’ of Spain (life and this blog are too short to explain the 17 autonomous states that comprise Espana and how they operate and who looks after what locally and federally …. mmmnnn states, a senate, federal. Sounds a bit familiar. And they have a king and a prime minister ……….

And then we went to Madrid and then to Buenos Aires, but that’s another story. Groan.

Adios amigos

Cisco and Pancho

Germania

Germania .. pronounce it as you will. One man’s schadenfruede is another man’s zeitgeist. And yes I have ALWAYS wanted to use those two words in one sentence! And yes, obviously Lala took the beautiful Berlin by night panorama.

It had been nineteen days, seven flights, two ship trips, three trains and all your fingers and toes worth of buses since kp and lala were all alone – well as alone as you can be when no one else in the world appears to be where they usually live and where letters about postal plebiscites lie in unattended letterboxes … online Malcolm … I will vote online … even if the wifi in the Galapagos is powered by land-tortoise and finches have different beaks. That distraction aside. There we were, at 0400 trailing our trolley bags along cobbled streets to the transfer to Reykjavik airport for the flight to Frankfurt. Chaos and baggage blockages fazed no-one and the 270 accompanying folks on Iceland Air’s flagship 767-300 were soon a fond memory (apart from the woman in the seat in front of us, whose explosive cough should have been detected by the explosive cough detectors at the airport and who is one of several thousand possible contagion donors who gave Lala the lurgi.)

Thus to Frankfurt. Somewhere north of the Black Forest (the place not the cake kiddies), and even further north than either the Maginot line (a spectacular success in preventing Hitler’s invasion of France) or the Siegfried Line, where marching soldiers allegedly hung out their dirty washing. These two stunningly unsuccessful French tactics to keep the ‘jerries’ at bay make Donald’s wall for Mexican integration seem do-able. As my satirical hero Tom Lehrer once sang:

“Once all the Germans were war-like and mean, but that couldn’t happen again.

We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they’ve hardly bothered us since then”.

Ah well, it least those old lines of fortification kept the Stuttgart Porches out of Paris for awhile.

It may seem ironic that our first meal in Frankfurt was a hamburger not made of fish. And no. We are not going to Hamburg to sample the culinary vice versa. But a pleasant stroll through the old town and a sniff of the new money that is rolling into Frankfurt from that olde financial capital on the Thames was sufficient and we slept fitfully as we waited to catch train number 1537 (coach 27, seats 72 and 74 as if you cared) at 1102 from the hauptbarnhof. And the trains do run on time.

Berlin. Where beemers are everyday and mercs are taxis! And the pork knuckle (baked of course) has enough sauerkraut to wind power a small town and kartofel to die from. And lala had the fish. And I had the local Pilsner served in a bucket with handles. Think I’ll change my name to Heinz.

We lived for four days in Kurfurstendam, a veritable hub for tourists and transport. Quickly learned the ropes on the Ubahn and SBahn and thrust our WelcomeBerlin cards into the paws of any ticket seller or tour operator. As Berlin neophytes, we decided to ‘take a walking tour’ with one of Mother England’s best, Ysanne (we called her Issy) and walked and walked as if shoe leather were free and there was a bathtub full of Radox awaiting us when we finished.

Apart from her proclivity towards all things designed or built by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781 – 1841), she proved an outstandingly knowledgeable young woman who had just completed her Masters degree in “everything you wanted to know about Berlin” courtesy of Britain’s membership of the …. ooops, I almost mentioned you know what but I think I got away with it!

She wandered us past almost everything that might spring to mind when you conjure up your ideas of Berlin (no Ben, Mark and Matt, she knew nought of the Bundesliga). We saw the dome of the Reichstag from a distance (Angela was too busy to see us). We visted Hermann Goring’s ministry of the ‘non existent” Luftwaffe. It appears Samsung and the renovators have taken over the dreams of the Third Reich.

 And then to the ‘wall’ stuff. “West of the wall, I’ll wait for you, west of the wall”, so earwigged the 1962 hit song by Toni Fisher which I remember from the Radiogram in the kitchen of my childhood. The song, for what it’s worth, laments the separation of two young lovers when the wall was erected overnight on August 13, 1961. The singer plighted her troth “and though we’re apart for a little while, my heart will wait til we both can smile”, and presumably consummated that troth plighting in her zimmer frame in 1989 when the people hastened to accede to Ronny Reagan’s request to Mr Gorbachev to ‘tear down that wall’. Actually Gorby didn’t get his hands dirty at all. But thanks to him, there were no tanks. And the wall came tumblin’ down. And we walked on through the Brandenburg Gate unchallenged (except for the bumper crowd who must have heard that there was free beer and bits of wall on offer.)

Checkpoint Charlie (above) is a tourist rip-off (so sayeth Issy the proclaimer), but is a place of some significance nonetheless, while all silly songs about walls evaporated when we solemnly reflected upon the worst of man’s inhumanity to man at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe. 2711 concrete blocks have been placed in a grid and are of variable heights and follow the contours of the city block. Not to be moved. But we were. And more so when the tour ended where Hitler did.

Four days is not enough especially if you like sausage and beer. But we crammed it in (no not the tucker, the culture mate) as if another reich (the satirists already call the current parliament the Merkelreich) might come and steal it all away.

Museum Island is a must for old and new ‘stuff’ (and pickpockets but we have failed to feed a felon … so far), but the Berlin Art Gallery (the Gemaldegalerie) holds some of the best of the Old Masters and is Pontormo of the Burdekin’s pick.

And as one old master to another, here’s looking at you Rembrandt.

We strolled up the Unter den Linden which links the city centre to the Brandenburg Gate

and scored a perfect score in catching the right train the right way every time unlike the sign writer who (as we reflect in the picture below) lost a bit in translation!

We even got the right cab to the right airport for our Swiss Air flight to Malage via Zurich which looked easily done until the first leg was delayed and we landed 23 minutes late in the land where the Swiss clock is renowned. We got to discover how close Gate A83 and Gate A67 were apart. Yeah 16, right. But even the Fed ex himself would have stretched out through two levels, three travellators and two escalators and a lot of bent arrows allegedly showing the direction we were meant to panic about. Make it we did but Lala is fighing her own cold war (thanks whoever sneezed) and it looks like some comprimidos de resfriado y gripe (good old Google … Cold and Flu tablets) when we hit the sunny shores of Spain.

Which is next even if you don’t want it. Surely you know by now how hard it is to unsubscribe from spam you never signed up for in the first place.

KP n Lala (although in Espanol this is probably Yaya)

ICELAND

Iceland – land of ice and too many

Ok. You know by now that we are not in Iceland. We are in Andalucia lisping our way from thix pack to cervesas with no lime in the bottleneck. But you dear reader are going to get what you get and today you get Iceland.

The area of Iceland is 103000 square km with a population of a third of a million hardy folk. The area of Tasmania for comparison purposes is 68400 square kms with half a million even accounting for the number of heads factor. The capital of Tasmania is Hobart. The capital of Iceland was about 10 bucks at the time of the GFC. And while many would have it that the map of Tassie is a far more interesting shape, Iceland more aptly describes what you actually get for most of the year.

It is a land of contrasts. Fire and Ice. Hot and Cold. Expensive and Expensif (this is the f’in expensive version). The actual capital (city) is Reykjavik which Lala reckons translates from the ancient language to ‘loved to death’. I seem to recall during my last visit to the northern hemisphere that I pompously postulated that Britain was full and that they should keep calm and close the gates. I was kidding but they didn’t get it and Brexited instead. Bit extreme really. I just wanted a car parking space in Torquay.

Well, if Britain is chockers then Iceland is that in over plus. Full to the bream. Well cod, char and halibut actually. In summer, 1.3 million tourists (most of whom were either on our tour of waterfalls and glaciers or at the airport the day we left) overwhelm the 330000 Icelanders with their bags on wheels and their carry on luggage that could hide a mammoth (have I ever mentioned how fond I am of the airline executive or Boeing builder or nincompoop who thought that it was a good idea to allow people to bring their kitchen sink aboard an aircraft in limit pushing ‘carry ons’ that many can’t actually carry and which even more can’t lift into the overhead locker? The worst Carry On idea since Sid James. Grumpy old man? Me?).   Anyway, the tourist to Icelander ratio works out at about 4 pet tourists for each local during the summer

Just as we had chanced upon the one day of the year in Stockholm, we hit Reykjavik the day before their hootenanny day which combines the Icelandic marathon with that ultimate oxymoron – fun run. 330000 locals and the 1.3 million others lined up at the famous hot dog stand (pictured above) while the unpronounceable did the unthinkable and ran the cobbled streets ragged. And then partied til dawn (some still bedecked in their fashionable red shirts proclaiming their participation, others with shiny gold plastic medallions and the rest in those sheets of thin insulating material that protect them from burning up upon re-entry.)

Our Icelandic adventure was a small group tour arranged by our Brisso mates S and T who work in the travel business and who did wonderfully well herding the cats and arranging all of our travel. Let us know if you need some travel planning … only too happy to recommend and pass on contact details!

All mandatory Iceland sights were ticked in our four day homestay at the Hotel Alda (but no sign of Hawkeye from MASH). We paddled in the Blue Lagoon, visited geysers (and they were Faithful), saw the hexagonal basalt rocks on the black beach (complete with puffins that make an A380 seem gainly), witnessed the clever use of the 31 thermal systems to control the steam and hot water to warm the cockles and power the generators, saw spectacular waterfalls and took care that Lala’s new camera was subjected to no maidenly mist, stood solemnly at the sight of the ancient Viking parliament and looked for signs of a postal plebiscite, listened attentively (well as much as I ever do) to detailed accounts of how trolls and elves feature in the Icelandic wonderland, gazed at glaciers from near and afar (that’d be moraine dear … better get the goretex then), and heard grim tales of volcanoes and sills and dykes (that weren’t on bikes).

Most of us were introduced to Iceland back in 2010 when the volcano Eyjafjallajokull (with two dots over the o) held up world air traffic for six days in a display of stack blowing that sent ash into unsuspecting intake fans of jets at 36000 feet. What do you mean you can’t pronounce Eyjafjallajokull –  you can easily get your head around it – at least that’s what the cap says.

But there is no mystery as to why we don’t all immerse ourselves in Icelandic sagas from the 700’s when Snorri Sturluson told tales about Egill Skallagrimmson (yes his real name). It’s their funny extra alphabet bits that confuse us. You can for example use an accent on each of the vowels thus making the sound different. They also have three extra letters: an AE that conjoin at the downstrokes (which sounds like the I in tide), a D with a minus  sign in its vertical downstroke (pronounced as a th in there there pet) and a lowercase p with an extension upwards on its straight bit (which is also a th but is pronounced as the the th in I think therefore I am). Easy Peazy. Now you too will be able to find the snyrtingars with the rest of us and line up for your pre flight snyrt. But don’t forget to bring your 200 kroners to pee Visa Card.

And what’s a good blog without a poor pun to end it all?  At very least a segue without wheels. Iceland is home to the “World Phallalogical Museum” and has gone to great lengths to gather up the male members of many species for visitors to ogle at and sing renditions of whale songs about Jolly Good Phallos. Seguing about which, is the membership of the Icelandic men’s (it has to be mens to be in this museum) silver medal winning Olympic Handball team from Beijing. Forever cast in silver (Klaus of Innsbruck did not get a look in) and methinks some handballing took place in the preparation of the casting session.

And on the totally unrelated subject of golf, Iceland has an estimated 17000 members. How do they find their balls in the snow I hear you shiver. They use hi-viz coloured balls of course … blue most likely. And then there’s arguably Iceland’s most famous footballer,  Eidur Gudjohnsen, who, to my knowledge, hasn’t shed his kit for a plastering, but whose name alone would gain him entry into the locker room of most US slang museums.

But enough of this saga of the schlong. Time for the reality of planes and boats and trains again.  So it was back to the irport that can’t cope with the love and the ticket machines that don’t print luggage labels and the line up for the snytingars as we sought out new ways to share contagion in close quarters on our way to Germany for some R and R and some Currywurst with the Ich bin eine Berliners.

KP and Lala

Oslo and back again

Oslo and back again

Oslo is the capital of Norway. And it’s about there that the factual reporting will probably end, except to say that the tour we are on is designed to start with flying visits to the capitals of Sweden, Denmark and Norway (flying is operative … all inter city travel is by air) and to end with a coastal voyage on a working Hurtigruten ship from Bergen to Kirkenes. This component is called Norway in a Nutshell … and yes I’m sure we encountered traces of nuts.

I have a rapidly forming view that Norway may well prove to be the prosthesis capital of the world as many folk will need plastic appendages as they will have paid an arm and a leg for a beer and a feed of fish without chips. Even with the confusion of the non-interchangeable but consanguine kroners (sort of like how you can’t marry your first cousin unless you’re royal), prices are steep compared to the land of sweeping plains. 10.5 danish kroner scored you a litre of unleaded fuel (about $2.05 AUD) while a Norwegian pitstop in the far north registered 16.6 NOK on the RACQ fuel price check (that’d be $2.64 in the polymer dough). And then there’s the price of life’s sustenance: beer.

Scandinavian beer is for the most part excellent. From the known (Tuborg and Carlsberg) to the unheralded draft Mack on the good ship NordNorge, beer is gold. Well liquid gold it seems and heavily taxed to ensure the locals don’t get on the scoot and cause the national health scheme to buy a new liver.  Consequently, the midnight sun chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous is as unattended as an  ”I voted for Pauline” piss-up at the Lakemba mosque. Most recovering Norwegian alcoholics are in actual fact recovering from bill-shock.

Oslo is another stunning old town but sadly Danny Kaye didn’t sing any songs about it so we took a tour of the bare necessities. Most memorable of these was Vigeland Park where the countless nude statues in granite, bronze and wrought iron provide cold comfort for the frotteurs and followers of Gustav Vigeland who populated the park (and elsewhere) with hundreds of his members. His Wheel of Life in Vigeland Park is a life-sized reminder of birth, death and the Lion King.

The mandatory visit to the Viking Museum of old wrecks and relics dispelled the myth of the horned helmetted hoons heading for Valhalla. Thor? How do you reckon I feel! No said our Valkyrie guide, no horns. Imagine twenty boofy pillagers in a viking long boat in a storm? More gore than a matador’s estocada and coup de grace. (Yep. Wiki. Haven’t been to Spain yet.)

On our own, we wandered the streets, stopped at a local pub called Steaman which was either a long- uncorrected typo or it heated up later in the night. We shared a sandwich that cost two thirds of the gdp of Greece and waited for the sun to go down. And waited. Then home in the light to the Bristol Hotel for a wallet smashing night cap served by the lad from Plymouth. He was as Norwegian as me.

But Roald Amundsen was a true blue (a symptom of hyperthermia I suspect) Norwegian who left Oslo on 14 December 1911 to race Capt Scott to the south pole. Good old Roald talked his explorer mate, Fridtfjof Nansen, into letting him borrow his egg shaped ice cracking ship, The Flam, under the pretext of cruising north to the floating pole atop Norway. But tricky ol’ Roald that he was, set sail south and as even my potted view of history tells, beat Scott all ends up in the race for oil exploration rights south of McMurdo Sound.

The reason for such a lengthy corruption of historical fact is that from Oslo we joined a northbound freighter out of Bergen that wasn’t called the Roald Amundsen … but the shipping line (Hurtigruten) on which we headed for the Arctic has just commissioned a new ship that is. And it makes The Flam look flimsy and Heyerdahl’s  Kon Tiki look like a bunch of reeds and grass tied together with rope.

But you haven’t told us about how you travelled the 480 km from Oslo to Bergen KP. Well, since you asked so nicely, by coach and train and another train and a ferry and a coach and train and a coach. And all in one long day that started well before the breakfast buffet baked beans had begun to work and ended after 2130 hours in a 300 year old restaurant with a unicorn symbol that sold fish and no chips (Enhjorningen is its name if you’re passing that way!). On the way, the famous Flam railway gave us an indication of how downhill ski jumping feels and the fjord ferry whetted appetites as much as the rain and waterfall spray wetted my new Kathmandu rain jacket.

A day walking in Bergen took us to the Bryggen (wharf) area where we wandered past the UNESCO World Heritage hanseatic buildings (of which our unicorn fish restaurant was one) and in due course to the gang plank of MS NordNorge, our floating fridge for the next five nights as we headed north with a cargo of chilblain cures and a boat load of buffet bargers. And no need whatever to pine for a fjord. We saw them by the ship load as we stopped at every place where once glacier had carved rock and shell-like ears had been whispered into.

Names like Trondheim and Tromso where haircuts cost 300 kroner (that’s  $47,91 aussies if you do the sums), Bodo and Kirkenes will be as indelibly etched as the dining room menu of cod and char and breakfasts of last night’s leftovers, as will memories of crossing the arctic circle, travelling as far north as Europe goes (not unsurprisingly at a freezing rocky outcrop called North Cape (that’s Lala below in and at the aforementioned cape)

where rain oops rein deer abound and Sami sell souvenirs.

And ever so close to Russia we were (Yoda mmmnn how did he get here?) that we nearly dropping by the submarine base at Murmansk from whence Captain Ramius instigated the hunt for Red October. All in all, a pleasant little voyage up the Norwegian coast in our little cabin with a window to the chilly seas outside and my etymological discovery that Laplanders are actually folk who try to carry their buffet plate in an Arctic swell.

And then it was SAS again all the way from Kirkenes  (pronounced more like chickenus) to Oslo. Hang on, haven’t we been there before? Yes. And in this very blog. But we hadn’t seen Munch’s Scream at the national gallery.

So like Amundsen we headed the wrong way (at least he meant to).  And after a few cool dry gullies, we parted with some kroner, visited Edvard Munch’s rooms in the gallery (Munch is to Norwegian Art what John Lennon was to Norwegian Wood) and took phone selfies along with hordes from the east who have discovered that Scandinavia is the place to be.

So came farewell times for our American buddies and a few Aussies who were unwilling to swap the realm of the quisling for the post apocalyptic landscapes of Iceland. To them we said tak and ha det and to Angela our tour guide we said tchau.

And then we went to Iceland. But that, as they say in all the best clichés is another Arctic tale.

Nordic Noir

From Brisvegas to Copenhagen

So there we were. The travel sagas of KPnLala were being readied once more to extinguish any romanticised enjoyment of long distance flight! And once again, the QANTAS lounge at Brisbane international was the scene of crimes against sleep, personal hygiene and latitudinal confusion. Ah. Only eight hours to Honkers in Mr Joyce’s A330-300. 275 metric tonnes of fear and trepidation and not a dry glass in the aluminium house in the clouds.

Then solitary confinement in the Lufthansa alliance lounge in HKong with a midnight departure on the 560 tonne / 560 passenger A380 to the sausage city of Frankfurt where twelve hours with Captain Manfred von Richtofen seemed like twenty four and Frau Thansa treated us with hot towels while the meal went from bad to wurst. Woke up looking like the love child of Phyllis Diller and Worzel Gummidge and probably smelling that way too.

A further two hour hop skip and jump with the flugging german icon in an A321 -100/200  across a bit of the Baltic landed us in Stockholm … well Arlanda actually … 42 train kms from the flughafen to the cbd.

All in all, more than 24 hours of Airbus experience. Lucky we don’t subscribe to the “if it ain’t Boeing I ain’t going” school of flugging or we’d still be eating croissants in the Qantas lounge in Brisbane.

And so to Stockholm, the Volvo, Saab and Scania centre of St Patrick’s factory of safe travelling. No Stock-holmaphobia here. We arrived on the weekend of the Stockholm Pride festival where the three hour street parade made the Sydney mardi gras  seem a little effete and contrived. This was mardi gras for the people … from dykes on bykes to dancing queens and students with causes to causes celebres. No sausage for me … I’m a vagitarian rejoindered a witty young woman. And yes, even the YMCA! A veritable pride of loins. Ah Stockholm. You know how to party but more than that; your liberalism is infectious and your lesbian bishop but one exemplary testament to what might be.

Why, even the hotel toothpaste had rainbow stripes and the local burger is Lettuce, Guacomole, Bacon and Tomato .. the LGBT burger; and they didn’t even have a postal plebiscite.

As part of a tour group (unusual in itself for the typical KPnLala ‘let’s wing it’ travel saga), we are travelling as part of a group of 33 other intrepids comprising 17 aussies and whatever 17 from 33 is Americans. And we have Angela the tour manager – Portuguese  by birth but fluent in as many languages as I can say “beer” in. And so well organised that no bus, train or ferry driver dare mess with her. Our very own Angel of the north who lead us not in to temptation … but I digress as usual. Our tour of Stockholm (the Pride Parade was free time – neither mandatory nor legislated lest Malcolm freeze our passports until Corey had a say) started at the legendary Vasa museum. Clearly the story of the Vasa was Stockholm’s worst kept secret and our local guide shepherded us past the hordes to the Vasa Museum below to see first hand how the other sort of pride precedes … well not a fall, but a remarkably successful sinking.

So, the story goes that good old King Gustavus Adolphus commissioned the biggest and best warship in 1626. A spectacular 69 metre long timber beast that could carry 145 sailors and 300 soldiers. Could is the operative word … if it wasn’t so royally ornate as to cause it to topple over about a kilometre into its maiden voyage. IKEA and Lego learned a lot from the Vasa under wasser. But the real winners are the folk who raised her from the stygian murk and built a brilliant museum around her. Just like ABBA … the Bjorn-again museum that we drove past in the bus and spent the rest of the day humming earwigs from the fab four from Stockholm. 

And before you knew it, the Swedish Kroners were swapped for their Danish cousins, and after a battle with the auto check-in, baggage drop off system that SAS have copied from Jetstar, we Boeing’d across the Scaggerak (or is it the Kattegat?) all the way to the land where Freddy met Mary, where Lisbeth met Blomquist and where even the Danish Girl eats danishes.

Wonderful wonderful Copenhagen, friendly old girl of the town … so warbled Danny Kaye when he played Hans Christian Anderson in the eponymous movie of the same tautology. And clink and drink one down we did as we sat near the harbour lights listening to the Danish Opera Company’s version of Nessun Dorma and bits of Carmen. Tears in the Tuborg I tell you. And unlike Turandot, I slept like a log in our Admiral Hotel constructed of 30 cm square logs of Pomeranian Pine around the original structure of a granary that was storing grain before Jimmy Cook set out on his Aussie Endeavours.

Interestingly, some of the logs are low hanging and I think I was subjected to an NRL Head Injury Assessment before heading off to Fredericksborg Castle the next day.

As we’d already seen Mary and Freddy’s place (and she was home – see below),and we’d glimpsed the penthouse that the aforementioned Ms Salander fictitiously acquired in the Millenium trilogy, and had visited the smaller than her reputation would have us believe Mermaid and had even avoided a few roll-mops at the local market, we cashed in our Copenhagen Card Vouchers at the Central Station, caught a train to Hillerod (the ‘o’ has an oblique line through it) with the masses and strolled around the opulence that Frederick or Christian the somethingth built in some sort of narcissistic statement of his own importance in the 17th century. We just took a selfie with our tongues in our cheeks and headed up the hill to the garden cafe for kaffe. Our long walk was rewarded with a Closed on Monday sign so we strolled back past Fred’s Slot (Slot IS the Danish word for castle … really)  to downtown Hillerod for a slap up lunch with our day’s travelling companions from Brisbane, said tak for mad,  before joining the rabble train back to Copenhagen Central. Prior to this trip, we’d noted that the Danish predilection for walking, hiking and cycling meant that they were a ‘lean’ and ‘fit’ and courteous mob even when their ‘pushies’ took up half a carriage. Then we met the original nordic noir ferals from outa woop woop. A sort of oral causation exemplar – both for putting too much into their mouths and letting too much out of it. And being allowed to breed.

Back in Copenhagen, we conducted our own obesity challenge with Ben and Jerry at the Tivoli Gardens and then home for the suit case stuffing challenge, where 18.5 kg of stuff for 63 days of lugging was accomplished in time for the next joust with the SAS ticketing machines on our way to Oslo. But more of that when I work out what to do with Danish Kroners in Norway and if it is even possible that beer could be even more expensive than in the place where old JCCarlsberg first turned yeast into liquid gold.