Sapa Trek

One of the Black H'mong grandmothers poses for me

It's roughly a nine hour journey by night train from Hanoi's dusty streets up into the mountains of Lao Cai province, Vietnam. Snug against the Chinese border, this is in fact the most easternly stretch of the Himalayas. We left the cozy warmth of the sleeper car for the deep chill of early morning, paid far too much for a street-side cup of Vietnamese coffee (rocket fuel) and boarded the shuttle van to the Sapa Summit hotel,  our arranged trekking company, an hour's drive away.

After breakfast and a hasty repacking session, we headed out front of the hotel to meet our group - and found not only travelers in NorthFace coats milling around, but also a flock of girls and old women all dressed in navy leggings and navy tunics, woven bamboo baskets on their backs, laughing and joking and watching us. One of them brought us a clipboard to add our names to: this was Em, our nineteen-year-old guide.
The girls and the old women - essentially, the village members not needed in the fields - of a nearby Black H'mong village make their way into Sapa every morning in order to meet and escort every new group of trekkers on the first part of their journey. The girls asked us questions in broken English, the grandmothers twisted long-stemmed grass to make toy horses as presents. They tromped through the mud in their rubber boots, holding our hands as we edged carefully along the ridge of a rice paddy so that we wouldn't fall in.

As we approached the village where the women live, the grandmother who'd held my hand along the paddy walls suddenly had a pile of embroidered pillowcases and woven bracelets in her arms, liberated from the depths of her bamboo basket.

This is how you avoid the muddy soup of the rice paddies

"You buy from me? I help you! You no fall." she said, nodding down into the muddy valley.
She was right. I didn't fall. And although I didn't really want either - I had too many woven bracelets already, and I'll have to carry the pillowcase in my already-stuffed backpack, but I felt obligated. Which is, of course the point.

"Well, I... well. How much for this?" I pointed at a navy pillowcase, embroidered with colourful thread. I look over at Dan, who is backing away from several old women, a juice harp in his hand.

At least they were cute souvenirs.

Em cooks dinner for us - stir fried chicken and vegetables

Over dinner that night, we got to know our guide. Em is Black H'mong, one of the many ethnic groups spread across northern Vietnam's hilly countryside. In fact, she was living in one of the villages we'd walked through that day. She had been married for eight months to a man she's known her whole life, who is also Black H'mong, but from a neighbouring village.


Em became a tour guide at 16, to help support her family, and now to help support her husband's family. Here, when a girl is married, she moves in with her husband's family and makes his household her priority. So having a boy has special significance... otherwise, no one will be working to support an aging mother. Em has eight siblings, only the youngest of which is a boy, her mother's goal.

Apparently in the last decade, it has become more acceptable for a daughter to support her parents if there are no sons - in the past, the solution was to buy a son from a woman with an 'extra.'

Although Em was married young, it's now socially acceptable to put off having children until she's ready to stay home with them. For now, she wants to keep guiding tours and bringing in money to support the family.

On the morning of our second day, the fog finally lifted and we got a great view of the valley, each hill terraced into rice fields, like washed-out staircases, or soupy layer cakes. In late December, the rice has long since been harvested and the water buffaloes mill about in the muddy water, munching on the stringy weeds.

S.

Sumatra - Volcanoes

To pick the story back up, Dan and I and Jo and Janosch took public transportation - the infamous bemo - from the jungles around the Tangkahan elephant sanctuary, through dirty, congested Medan and southwest to the Karo Highlands, to a town called Berastagi.

Here, as I wrote in the last post, we met Irana and her family on our first day in Berastagi. On the second morning, Dan, Janosch and I decided to brave the misty, chilly weather and climb Gunung Sibayak, the smaller of two nearby volcanoes.

The climb up was reasonably easy: at first, our path was up a steep, but wide road, winding up the mountainside from the bemo stop that sits at the base. Most of the way up, the road ends with a wide tarmac (where buses stay, during the high season, maybe?) and there isn't much clue as to where the path picks up. Fortunately, another guest at our hostel had given us the secret: off to the left, behind an empty and rather forlorn concrete pool (why this is here, I just don't know) is a small path that leads up the loose, chalky embankment and into the jungle.


The jungle path was steep and full of slippery tree roots, but was clear and even had occasional concrete stairs. As we climbed through the palms, the smell of rotten eggs, of sulfur, became stronger and stronger - at first, we thought the scent was carried by the clear, rushing streams, but then we emerged onto a treeless, rocky stretch, and we saw the steam.

Just a bit farther up was a set of fumaroles - volcanic vents, gushing out endless clouds of hot steam, stinking of sulfur. After years and years, they've left neon yellow stains and a white film over the rocks.

After the fumaroles, we saw the crater - not, as I was hoping, a smoking hole leading to boiling lava and certain death, but rather a blocked crater. The sharp edges swoop down to a bowl filled with shallow and dirty looking water, where people have rearranged rocks to spell out names. The sides of the crater are maybe a hundred metres or less where we approached, but opposite, the black rock soars right up to Sibayak's summit, several hundred metres above us.

We scrambled up the thin, craggy path to the summit (2212m above sea level) and then after a rest and a chat with some hikers from Medan, we started down.

The route down also featured concrete steps - lots of them - but they've now eroded so that the middle is a deep pool. So basically we hopped from concrete ledge to concrete ledge down the mountainside. When the steps gave up, it was muddy and full of those slippery tree roots. Down is always so much harder than up!

At the bottom, we waded (literally) through a bamboo plantation - interesting to see the men slicing the timber into strips for weaving right on site. We skipped the hot spring at the bottom and grabbed a bemo home.

The next day, we left Berastagi for Lake Toba, to the southwest. We took a series of bemos (one of which was terrifying - I can handle the average speedy Sumatran driver, but this was the scariest ride we've had yet!) and a ferry, and landed in Tuk-tuk, on a little jutting peninsula off the main island in the lake.

Toba is the world's largest volcanic lake: as in, the lake is a volcano crater. It is absolutely massive. One tiny stretch of the lake took us a half hour to cross by ferry.

We spent four nights on the island, called Samosir, in a laid-back hostel. I'm sure that if we hadn't had a flight booked, we'd have been there far longer. It's the kind of time-free, easy-going place that draws you in and lets you linger. We met lots of new friends at the hostel to drink and chat with. We rented a scooter for a day and drove all the way around the island (water buffalo and waving children everywhere! Amazing.) and tried all the local delicacies.

At the end of our time in Tuk-tuk, it was also time to leave Sumatra, and I was a bit heartbroken. It was (and still is, as I write this over a month later) the best place we've had the privilege to visit in our travels. We'll be back!

S.

Jungle Adventures - Sumatra

Head craned upwards, I squinted and strained my eyes to find what Kumbar was pointing at, high up in the canopy. There! A flurry of movement as the ape flung itself from one branch to the next, the acrobat of the jungle. We'd found an elusive white-handed gibbon, bigger than the long-tailed macaques that had been following us on our trek so far, and with thick, powerful arms. As we watched it, the gibbon began to sing: a bright, soprano warble, floating down from the canopy.

We watched it leap from tree to tree for a while, and then, still listening to the warbling, we climbed higher on the path, following a low ridge deeper into the jungle.

We rounded a corner and stopped dead. There, sitting at eye level and working us over with a penetrating gaze, was an orangutan. There was a movement beside her, and we saw a smaller face look out at us, maybe curious. Two orangutans.

This was the goal of our hike. We'd arrived on the Indonesian island of Sumatra the day before and made our way to Bukit Lawang, a village famous among travelers for its orangutan sanctuary.

And here we were, in the jungle, face-to-face with a semi-wild female, rehabilitated after years in captivity.

The pair didn't pay us much attention, and took off through the forest, swinging slowly between trees, stopping to chew a leaf or to break open a termite nest for a mid-morning snack. We followed them down the ridge. What beautiful, graceful creatures!

We came across a single Thomas Leaf Monkey, sitting calmly on a log, sporting the distinctive mohawk - and then the baby orangutan chased him away. Poor guy.

Although the orangutans have been largely rehabilitated and most of them manage to fill their tummies on jungle fruits and leaves and grubs, there is a lingering problem of unsanctioned feedings by the guides during treks. This is bad for two reasons: first, the ape cannot be entirely rehabilitated and second, orangutans are very susceptible to human diseases. They can catch viruses from eating food that's been handled by humans.

I'm happy to say that we didn't see our guide feed any of the wildlife, but we did see another guide handing out bananas to an orangutan who approached and grabbed his bag. To be fair, there isn't really another way to get the bag back - she was well aware that if she held it hostage, she'd get a ransom. But after the episode was over, he continued feeding her and patting her on the back. Not a great way to help these beautiful creatures re-attain their independence.

But overall, the guides we spoke to seemed very aware of and concerned about the delicate situation of our ginger friends. To most of them, having grown up in Bukit Lawang and the neighbouring communities, the apes are part of the community and part of their unique heritage.

We arranged with some other travelers to share a van from Bukit Lawang to an elephant sanctuary at the village of Tangkahan, two hours farther north in the jungle.

This was prime logging territory until a stand-off between loggers and environmentalists convinced the government to name the whole area as protected land. This ever-shrinking jungle tract is home to Sumatran elephants, and without a vast amount of space, like the orangutans, the elephants can't survive. From Tangkahan, rangers still roam the jungle mounted on elephants (all formerly captive) to check for signs of logging and poaching.

For the last few years, the village has also made a name for itself by allowing tourists to pay for elephant trekking through the jungle, again using the formerly captive, domesticated elephants.

We started our day by bathing the elephants - armed with a stiff-bristled scrub brush, we wadded into the water and 'washed' the elephant that was waiting patiently on its side, half submerged in the muddy river... really, it's more of a wet back scratch. The elephant seemed pretty content with the whole thing.

Sumatran elephants are smaller than their African cousins, but still impressively enormous. We rode Augustine, who is twenty-two years old. When a pro rides an elephant, he signals the elephant and it offers a bent leg, which he uses to propel himself up around the beast's thick, leathery neck... we, obviously, are not pros. So we climbed clumsily into our saddle from a raised platform.

How amazing to cruise along on the padded saddle, feeling the elephant's slow, steady stride and the rolling motions of her back as she negotiated little hills and the muddy jungle trail, all while snatching snacks from the sides of the path.

All in all, a pretty incredible week!

S.

Tuscany

Although I would love to write a pile of posts about our two weeks in Italy, I'm going to try to keep it to one for each week so that I can start getting caught up with myself.

We took a night ferry loaded with large, loud Italian families and jovial, guitar-strumming monks from Split, in Croatia to Ancona in Italy. Despite all our worry over the Schengen Area visas, the Italian border guard barely glanced at our passports. So maybe counting out exactly ninety days wasn't entirely necessary.

We met Dan's parents, Val and John, just up the coast in Rimini, spent a night there sharing stories and catching up, and set off the next morning for Tuscany.

Although it doesn't look all that far on the map, the drive through the mountains to Tuscany's rolling hills took all day. And as it was Sunday, all the shops were closed out in the country. (Who knew you could get so hungry in Italy?!) But finally, we made it to San Gimignano.


We were perched on the side of a valley of grape vines, lit bright in the late afternoon sun. A kilometre off, on the crown of the nearest hill, was the silhouette of a perfectly preserved medieval city, its skyline sprinkled with tall, square towers and ringed by thick stone walls. Although our apartment for the week was nearer to the walls, but it was worth a drive out to the main guesthouse for the view (and the pool and the wifi).

Over the course of the week, in addition to exploring the cobbled streets of San Gimignano, we went on day trips to Pisa where the leaning tower is much larger and at much more of an angle than I'd anticipated, to Cinque Terre, to Siena and to a small winery.

At Cinque Terre, we hiked along the number two trail, down the Via dell'Amoure (Lovers Lane) from Riomaggiore To Manarola, a pretty and very flat stroll along the cliff side and then Dan and I hiked the more rolling stretch from Corniglia to Vernazza, where we met back up with Val and John for drinks and foccacia. The views from the cliffs over the ocean are stunning, and the trail led us through olive groves and gardens that cling to the rocks, steeped in the salty breeze. Unfortunately, even in late September, the trails were busy. About half the walk, we were stuck in an ant trail behind meandering tour groups.

In Siena, the enormous cathedral took my breath away - and at this point, I've seen my share of European churches. The walls, inside and out, are striped white and deep green marble; the floor is rife with biblical depictions in carved marble; the hymnals in the library are two feet tall, their verses painted in vivid colours and gold leaf. Really, really beautiful.

We spent a morning at the Casa Emma, where big, sweet grapes grow up to become Chianti wine, the regional specialty. The tour was informative, and the tasting was a yummy breakfast (also informative. I love having wine explained because I can never decode it myself. Thank you to Carlos!)

And of course, we spent lots of time drinking wine by the guesthouse pool, looking down at the vineyards and up at the town, lots of time eating rich and hearty Tuscan food, and lots of time chatting and playing cards. Because that's what is best about Italy: wine, food and family.

S.

Cave Dwellings

Capadoccia is out of the way. It's in the centre of Turkey, hours from any other touristy destination - but it's incredibly popular as a window into an ancient lifestyle and a unique landscape.

We rolled into Göreme, the region's most popular town, on a Sunday morning, tired from a restless snooze on the night bus from Istanbul. We made our way through the little crowd of hotel owners offering lodging, and down a street full of restaurants and souvenir shops and ATV rental agencies to find our hotel.

Soft, white stone is the defining feature of the whole region. There are two major draws: the natural rock formations created by erosion, and the homes and churches that were carved out of the same stone by the Byzantine Greek population beginning in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

We were staying in a 'cave' hotel, which means that some of the rooms on offer have been carved out of soft volcanic rock to make a unique and atmospheric little room. It's a cute change of pace.

Göreme itself grew up around a collection of carved-out Byzantine churches that forms the Göreme Open Air Museum, which was our first stop while we waited to check into our cave room.

There are a number of individual churches and chapels as well as a monastery in the complex, all long-abandoned but well-preserved. They're each carved out of the cliff side and filled with artwork.

In some, the predominant art is primitive red ochre: lines and geometric shapes drawn in decorative patterns. But in others, there are full-colour frescoes of biblical stories and figures. The faces of the figures were largely smashed off in the following centuries, but in many of the churches, the colours are still clear and the designs are easy to interpret.

At the end of the string of churches is one nicknamed the 'Dark Church,' because no natural light enters the chamber, thus preserving the original, vivid colours of the frescoes, to incredible effect. From floor to ceiling and front to back, the church is covered in paintings, angular figures with black-outlined noses, wrapped in colourful robes set into a deep blue background. Here, too, many of the eyes have been gauged out, or the faces have been smashed off by rocks - some of the paintings are eerie in their facelessness, bright colour abruptly giving way to dull gray rock - but the room is beautiful and quiet.

That evening, we went for a short hike east from Göreme through the Rose Valley, a fertile little stretch of grape vines and dry shrubs and trees. On the way, we found many more abandoned cave houses, carved inside big conical formations and into ridges that swirl gently upwards like rosebuds.

At the collapse of the Ottoman empire, Turkey and Greece held a population exchange. The Capadoccia region was populated primarily by ethnic Greeks, some of whom were still living in the traditional carved-out homes, but few Turks came here to replace them. We wandered through a few of the homes - it's so hard to know if these were in use at the time of the population exchange, or of they'd already been abandoned for centuries. The empty, dusty shells defy all attempts to pinpoint a timeline. In places, we saw where the rock has given out and houses have collapsed, or half a room has tumbled two stories to the ground, exposing a perfect cross-section of this bizarre, ancient lifestyle.

We sat on a ridge above the Rose Valley and watched the sun sink over the horizon before making our way home along a ATV trail.

Th next day, we took an organized day trip - nice to get a full sampling of the region and let someone else do the planning, although being shuttled around in a convoy of mini-buses on identical tours is at most a once-in-a-while activity for me.

We admired the fairy chimney formations in Göreme from a viewpoint above the town, then drove an hour across Capadoccia to an underground city, carved out two thousand years ago and used for centuries in emergencies. When war struck the region, which was often given its position on the trade route to Asia, the entire population of each town would move into their respective underground labyrinths of tunnels for safety. They could stay for a year or more if necessary and subsequent generations tunneled deeper. This city was twelve floors deep: we squeezed down the long, short stairways to the eighth floor, deep in the cold earth.

We went on a short hike through a forested, shady canyon (so rare in this dry, dusty place!) and ate lunch at a riverside restaurant, then climbed through an ancient monastery carved into the side of a towering, rocky hill.

Our final day, we were booked into a night bus to the Mediterranean coast, so we decided to spend the day hiking to exhaust ourselves. We walked back through the Rose Valley, this time making our way past the grape vines to the adjacent Red Valley. By chance, Dan noticed an opening above us in the rock wall - through it, we could see St. John's cross carved into a ceiling. We found a dusty path hiding in the shrubs and scrambled up to find a church, certainly Byzantine and so certainly old, one room decorated with faded frescoes, all to ourselves.

We ate lunch in the cool inside of the church, examining the paintings and the carvings. Once, this place was covered in polished, gleaming white stone and in bright frescoes. Amazing.

We left the valley church and walked along the sweltering, shadeless highway to the Love Valley, famous for its tall, thin 'mushroom' formations... most of which look extremely phallic. (It is the Love Valley, after all.)

The rest of our hike took us through the aptly named White Valley and after a lot of backtracking, back to Göreme for a much-needed shower before loading onto the bus for the night.

S.

Snowdonia

We stood looking over the breadth of Caernarfon Castle from the top of the Eagle Tower. With its tall walls and lofty turrets perched on the edge of the briny straight facing the Isle of Anglesey, this is the formidable king of the Welsh castles.

Built by the English from the thirteenth century onward Caernarfon and its sister castles encircle Wales, created to repress the freshly conquered Welsh. This particular castle was done on such a scale that rebellion would be discouraged by sheer intimidation.

The design, from the giant octagonal towers to the subtly striped walls and the stone eagles set atop the tower in which we stand, was intended to invoke the image of a grand Roman castle. England's Edward I was trying to create a clear parallel between his own forces and the only previous conquerors, the Romans, for whom the Welsh had a lingering admiration.

Tragically for Edward's intention, to this day the six hundred castles in the ring are looked upon as a symbol of a conquered people, and although they are stunning to see, they inspire admiration in tourists more than in the Welsh people. This is one of the most nationalistic parts of Wales: even the teenagers speak Welsh.

We climbed through the thick walls and up the towers for a few hours, checked out the exhibits and watched a cheesy film narrated by a Welsh ghost.

After leaving the castle, we walked for a good while past the shallow, muddy bay and up the coast, enjoying the sun and the breeze coming off the water.

The next day, we got to Llanberis, a town at the heart of the park, fairly early in the day. We were getting settled in the hostel, above the bright yellow and blue and red Pete's Eats café, and Dan started talking with one of the staff.

Dan told him we planned to climb Snowdon the next day. He mulled this over and then told us that he avoids Snowdon. It's crawling with tourists. If you want a bit of quiet and to see the area properly, that isn't what you want. Try something else as well.

He gave Dan a moderately incomprehensible set of directions in a thick Welsh accent. To paraphrase: "Go down the road here, turn at the outdoors store (the second one, not the first) and then left and right where the hill starts and right. There will be a path to either side, take the correct one or you'll miss the trail entirely. Up the hill, through a green gate, turn left and take the path leading by the derelict church."

It reminded me of getting directions from my uncles in New Brunswick: "go left at that big tree." "No, no that was cut down. Go left where Aunt Margaret's cousin lived, and then down towards the river where the truck fell in that once."

To which you blink a few times, nod slowly and hope for the best.

So we promptly forgot most of the directions, but after some misguided turns, a ramble through a chicken yard and passing at least three green gates and multiple derelict buildings, we miraculously found the correct combination leading up the very ridge we'd hoped to climb.

It looked much steeper than we'd thought.

Too late. Panting all the way, we hauled ourselves up the smooth, steep slope, judged  at every step by molting sheep. I don't really understand why, but there are fences all along these ridges, and then down the sheer cliff sides  Sure, they might keep an especially dumb animal from plummeting down the ridge, but all of the fences have holes where the wire is pushed up and covered with wool from the backs of escapees. Tragically the great escape is always ruined when the sheep gets to the other side and forgets entirely why she's there and how... better eat some grass.

Anyway, we made it to the summit of our little mountain and continued on the ridge, admiring the views across the bogs and forests to the other grassy ridges with stony peaks. On one side we could see Snowdon, the tallest of the bunch, summit in a cloud, the steam train to the top chugging away in a haze of smoke.

We had great cell reception on the ridge, so I had a sit and called my Mom.

Our ridge had a gradual slope on one side, but on the other cut away in a dramatic drop-off, curving around to shelter a calm blue lake.

We climbed a second peak, but on the third decided to follow a sheep path around the side rather than the main path upwards, for novelty as well as to save our legs. We ended up tromping through a huge patch of wild blueberries, which despite Dan's initial hesitation, I devoured. Although I tried to pick the ones off the path, that the sheep hadn't rubbed against as much.

Eventually we descended, hopped through a bog and found the road back to Llanberis.

The next morning, we decided to brave the crowds and climb Snowdon. After a bit of reading about the many paths to the summit, we chose the Pyg track up and the Llanberis track down.

Our guidebook describes the Pyg track as the most rugged and difficult ascent, so we chose it as a challenge. Although it begins at a higher altitude than the others, it climbs swiftly over rocky terrain. We were also hoping that with such a description, it would be a quieter choice.

Not so. The beginning of the path at the Pen-y-Pas car park was chaotic, and the trail was full of people.

We saw a lot of people pulling themselves up the big, rock stairs in jeans and sandals and similar things with no water... I know it isn't an overly difficult climb. You don't need a compass, you probably don't need emergency equipment. You do need proper clothing and water and to take the mountain seriously. Although it is hard to get lost on an ant trail such as this, it happens, and inclement weather is normal. Rescues shouldn't be as common here as they are.

Rant over.

Despite the crowds crawling up the mountain, we were able to enjoy the scenery. This is a popular climb for a reason. The thin, jagged ridge curls into a crescent, the peak of Snowdon itself obscured by that seemingly ever-present cloud. The sheer cliffs tumbled down to cup a small glacial lake on a flat plateau. Our hike led us eventually along the inside of the crescent, upwards until the path began zig-zagging in a steep ascent and we passed into the mist.

I'd love to tell you that the view from the top of Snowdon, the highest UK mountain outside of Scotland, is fabulous and worth the three hour ascent.

If you were to climb on a very clear day, it just might be. But Wales isn't as such known for its sunshine, so I think that is a tricky thing to ensure. And all we saw from inside the mist was tourists. We couldn't even get into the supposedly crap café at the summit because it was entirely jammed with people.

It was a great hike up to the cloud line - the jagged ridge is very beautiful, the lake is picturesque. The climb was challenging but not (we thought, anyway) overly hard.

For our descent we had planned to take the Llanberis track, because it's a gentle (albeit boring) slope down the arm of the ridge that stretches right into Llanberis town. Dan's knee had been bothering him since the rough descent the week before in Glen Coe, so this would be ideal.

You know how I said you don't need a compass? Bring a map at least. We missed the fork for the Llanberis track and ended up coming down an entirely different arm, the Snowdon Ranger's track. It was steeper than we wanted, so Dan suffered a bit. It was, however, less busy than either the Pyg or Llanberis tracks. It came down the rocky backside of Snowdon, through sheep fields and down to the roadway where we were able to grab a bus back to town, complete with a full tour of Snowdonia because we'd ended up on the wrong side of the mountain.

S.

Och, Aye! (or, When I Fell in Love with Scotland)

Rallying our hangovers, we set off from Edinburgh on a July Friday with a rented Ford Fiesta. This was Dan's first time driving on the left, but despite a few attempts to shift gears with the door handle, he did very well.

We filled our need for greasy food at a McDonalds in Stirling, and on evaluating the number of tour buses climbing up the hill to the famous castle, we opted to skip. Instead, we drove slightly west and explored the rather less chaotic Doune Castle.

For my fellow nerds - this is the place where Monty Python filmed the Holy Grail in the seventies.

Doune is remarkably well-preserved, slippery spiral staircases and all, and the audio guide was recorded by Terry Gilliam, which makes the experience all the more entertaining.

And yes, we threw insults from the wall in an outrrrrrrageous accent, and fechez'd la vache by donning our new shaggy cow hat.

Excellent.

From Doune, we rushed northwest and caught the last ferry from Lochaline, on the mainland, to the Isle of Mull and found our YHA hostel in Tobermory, among the jellybean-bright houses that line the marina.

We spent Saturday afternoon on a wildlife watching cruise out between Mull and the nearby island of Col. I won't call it a whale watching cruise because although Minke whale sightings are semi-frequent, we did not see any.

We did see a handful of basking sharks, gentle, oblivious giants that measure in at nearly five metres. As the twelve of us crowded to one side of the little boat, picking up our guide Stewart's enthusiasm, we watched the big dorsal fin glide gracefully through the water while the tail fin flipped back and forth. As they skimmed the water next to the boat, we saw their wide, gaping mouths, comically large, seeking tiny plankton.

We saw seals, flopping about on the rocks and bobbing around in hidden coves. We saw two porpoises rushing by us. We saw a whole lot of seabirds and an eagle, which left Stewart beaming. It is great to have a tour guide who really loves his job.

We spent the evening driving a circuit around Mull's northern side, speeding down the single-lane roads, admiring the cliffs where the stiff, purple heather clings defiantly and where the sheep with their matted coats and curly horns insist on climbing, although I don't think they know why. We picked up Sara, who we'd befriended at the hostel, when we saw her hiking down a road - happy to be spared the walk home, she rode around with us for the evening.

We drove around the south end of the island in the morning - the west side of Mull is unbelievably gorgeous. The cliffs spill in ruffled greenery into the vigorous sea. The roads are ruled entirely by oblivious, munching sheep, and if you get caught behind a flock of them, you could be watching their shaggy, dirty coats bound along for a while before you can break through the flock. This is not a place in which you go anywhere in a hurry.

We took the ferry back across to the mainland and picked up some supplies in Fort William. It was raining hard and we were the only guests at our little country hostel, so we took the evening off and relaxed in comfort.

In the morning, we left for Skye. Let me set the scene.

Feet are steady. Right hand in the crack there, left on the rock in front. It's slippery. An off-shoot from the thin, fast waterfall to the right is trickling down the rock wall, the alternating mist and pelting rain have made my shoes damp.

But we can see the way up, and although the well-marked trail has given out, we pick a path through the scree and then climb hand over hand up the chunky rocks to the glacial plateau we seek.

We reach the plateau, known as Corrie Lagan and I plunk down on a flat, black boulder beside the clear, shallow lake, and for the first time in the two hours we'd been trekking, was able to get a look at what we had come to Skye to see: a Black Cuillin, towering over us with jagged, craggy ridges that would seed doubt in even the most accomplished mountaineer.

We weren't going to attempt the sheer cliff face, but the view from the base, which is itself 500 metres up, was astounding.

When we started planning our highland road trip, the Isle of Skye was the first place I knew I wanted to see. It's legendary for its beauty, for the intimidating majesty of the bare-headed, smooth Red Cuillens and of the wicked, craggy ridges of the Black Cuillins. In the north, peninsulas fan out like graceful fingers, some edged with steep cliffs, some with gentle slopes and bogs, all covered with winding one-lane roads.

We walked out along the Waternish Penninsula past a village that was abandoned during the Clearances, a painful era of Highland history in which, on the realization that sheep were more profitable to keep than human tenants, greedy landlords evicted thousands across the Highlands.

Uignish, and on the horizon, the silhouette of the
Outer Hebrides.

There are two villages on Skye that have been entirely abandoned. This one was Uignish, at the very tip of the peninsula. The stone walls of the buildings, piled without mortar, still reach my waist height and often higher. Now, their primary function is to block the wind whipping off the sea while sheep nibble the tasty morsels growing from the floors.

This is also the centuries-ago sight of many bloody fights between two of Skye's more prominent clans, the MacDonalds and the McLeods.

As we walked out to Uignish and back, over the water we could see the the Outer Hebrides, stretched in full across the horizon, a dark silhouette against the blessedly clear sky.

It was hard to imagine that such a peaceful place, ruled now by sheep wandering between the bogs, could have such a violent, tragic history. It's hard to find any corner of the Highlands and the Islands, it seems, that doesn't have claim to a bloody episode or a battle or to eviction sentences that destroyed the lives of thousands.



We had one final adventure before leaving the Highlands to return the Fiesta in Edinburgh: it was high time we bagged some munros.

To clarify, the Scots love hill-walking and mountain climbing, so they have special terminology. To 'bag a munro' is to summit a Scottish peak standing over three thousand feet or roughly one thousand metres tall.

From Skye, we drove south along the long, thin lochs, nestled in their deep glens at the bases of the mighty ridges until we reached the wildly pretty Glen Coe, just south of Fort William.

We left the car at the side of the highway and began our climb up to the Buachaille Etive Mór, a three-peaked massif at the southern mouth of the glen.


I knew we were beginning our most difficult hike of our time in the highlands, but I was excited: we had gone on a few challenging hikes this week, notably the scramble up to Corrie Lagan, but hadn't summited anything.

After an hour and a half of clambouring up first the stones of a dry creek bed, and then up a steep, winding scree-filled path, we made the ridge. In another half hour, we summited the first peak: Stob Dearg, 1022m. Bagged!


The sky around us was magnificently clear. To the northwest, we could see the dramatic cluster of the Nevis mountain range. The tallest of them, indeed the tallest in Britain, Ben Nevis, was crowned by a wreath of clouds. We could see bright, sunlit Loch Nevis in the distance, and Glen Coe's graceful, green sweep between the towering peaks, rising up from the moor to make a magnificent corridor to the west.

We made our way across the ridge, which was comfortably wide, to the summit of Stob na Doire - at 1011m , our second munro. Yes, it counts even if you don't descend between baggings.

We descended the ridge on a perilously steep and at times eroded trail, ambled down a path in the mushy bog-land and reached the Fiesta just as the rain began to fall. Armed with beer and cider from the corner store, we made our way to our hostel for a well-deserved sleep.

S.

Cambridge

We passed an uneventful night on the ferry and disembarked in Harwich after a jarring 5:30 wake-up call. After a sleepy morning wandering around the cute and very old town of Colchester, with its Norman keep and Roman ruins, we boarded the train to Cambridge.

Now, I don't know if Cambridge is normally the Bermuda Triangle of British intercity transport, but on the journey in, we spent three hours in Bury St Edmunds because of a blockage on the train track (kudos to the frantic young National Express employee who was simultaneously attempting to explain and re-explain the situation to thirty annoyed and confused passengers who swarmed him incessantly, call cabs to placate said passengers and figure out what the eff was even going on). On the trip from Cambridge to London, our bus dropped all of its oil onto the road two turns into the journey, causing chaos for cycling students and once again leaving us waiting patiently (as we have nowhere to be for nine months) for the next vehicle.

Bit of a shock coming from the slick precision of German and Dutch rail. But maybe we're bad luck. After all, one of our trains in Germany WAS one-and-a-half minutes late.

Either way, we eventually made it to a campsite 5 miles outside Cambridge and set ourselves up. We were in need of a rest, so three nights turned into five and even so, we never did manage to tour the inside of any of the colleges.


We wandered Cambridge's winding streets, lined by quaint black-gabled houses and shops, and walked along the 'Backs,' the long and woodsy park running along the backside of the elaborate colleges. We took a look at the tiny but history-rich Round Church, built as a prayer-stop for medieval pilgrims, and we spent Sunday hiding from the heat, holed up in a pub to watch F1 (Dan) and to devour cheese toasties and use the wifi (me).

We spent a day at yet another war museum, the Duxford Imperial this time, located on the Duxford Airfield, which was a major base in both world wars. As you have probably guessed, it is mostly about airplanes, which thankfully weren't a major feature in Overloon the week before. I will give them this: airplanes are pretty cool.

The highlight of the day came when someone flew their restored Spitfire in loops over the airfield, the droning roar chasing behind the little gray plane as it buzzed down along the grass and then up to flip and fly back down, again and again, loop after loop. We have no idea who owns the plane - the museum can't afford the expense of keeping most of the planes fully functional, but does allow private collectors/pilots to keep historical aircraft in the hangars.

On our final day in Cambridge, we set out on a long hike across the fens - reclaimed marsh land - to Ely, 17 miles or 30 some-odd kilometres away. A long, but very flat walk between the River Cam and the train line, past long, thin house boats covered in windows and plants, families of swans and herds of cows that only begrudgingly moved off of the thick dikes to let us by, sidestepping splatted cow patties as we went.

And then it began to rain, hard and angled in the wind that whipped across the fenlands. We donned our brand-new, ultra-stylish rain pants and tromped on through the muck. Our waterproof shoes began to leak a couple hours later, but there wasn't much to do but sploosh, sploosh, (squish! Cow patty?) along, squinting against the wind and the sharp rain.

Our moment of redemption came when, five hours into the walk and three into the rain, suddenly the massive octagonal stone tower of the Ely Cathedral came into view, beckoning like a lighthouse in a sea of swampy fields. Tragically, we were still five soggy miles off - but now we had a goal in sight.

At least we know the rain pants work?

S.

The Road Trip: Alps

We left our linguistic comfort zone behind as we crossed into Italy, heading immediately north along the border and then east, passing just over Milan. In the alpine foothills, we stopped to stock up on two super-greasy pizzas and three magnums of red wine (you cannot be too prepared), and then off we went towards the northern border and the dizzy, snowy heights of the Alps.

That night we drank the first magnum at our campsite perched on a cliff over top of a valley town in Northern Italy with a magnificent view of the nearby peaks. Amid the thick, muffled forest, it's certainly easy to imagine how strange noises could spawn fairy tales and how rumours could attain a legendary quality. Even now, many of the mountain passes close for the entire winter. Although tunnels make the alpine villages much more accessible than in years past, the weight of isolation is easy to feel.

The next morning we packed up and set off into the alps. We had aimed for the famous Stelvio pass in the northern reaches of Lombardia, but after a morning of creative route-making through past the stone houses of a tiny alpine town (what happens when the navigator is also the designated nutella sandwich maker) we found that even in mid-May, the pass was closed.

So we picked our way back west through a different pass, had a delicious pizza lunch at a family-run restaurant at 2000 m altitude, and crossed into Switzerland. We gazed, awestruck, at the Swiss section of the alps - the highest and most picturesquely snowy we'd seen, and then promptly crossed the border into Austria.

We stopped for the night in the Austrian town of Kufstein, a mere four km from the German border and the base for some excellent and accessible hiking. Kufstein is adorably kitchy, complete with a smallish white castle on a hilltop in the middle of town and a medieval section with lederhosen for sale and similarly themed murals on the street walls.

We rose early the next morning and took a chairlift high up between a set of peaks that sits nestled in the Kaiser range - specifically Wilderkaiser and Zahmerkaiser, climbed up a peak in the middle and then walked for hours along the valley that links them. During a dizzying descent full of tiny rock stairs, rebar handholds,  and steep cliffs we watched as a chamonix, the alpine mountain goat, charged down the mountain side, darting nimbly among the trees and rocks and deadly drops.

Leaving Kufstein, we spent four days wandering southern Germany. Although we decided it would be too complicated to see Munich with a car to deal with, we spent a sombre morning learning about Nazi atrocities at the Dachau concentration camp memorial, and then after an afternoon of driving, admired the fabulous exterior of King Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein castle. We camped near Stuttgart and spent a day in the car museums - Dan made it to both Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, I only managed the first. Which was very informative and well-organized and even interesting, although by the end I was car'd out.

Our final two German days we spent in the Schwarzwald - the Black Forest, named for its black pines. We hiked around a mountaintop and down into the dense forest, and explored the student town of Freiburg, where the medieval centre is in tact (rare in German towns following the bombings in the war) and where I fell deeply in love with currywurst.

Currywurst! Writing in Amsterdam, I'm hesitant to even think about it because the thought makes me hungry. Currywurst is simple - a wurst, or German sausage, sliced up, smothered in bbq sauce and then sprinkled with curry powder. So simple and so delicious.

We drove from the Schwarzwald back into the Alps and back into Switzerland. Rather, through Switzerland. We drove past Interlaken and out to Jungfrau, but in the fog of a rainy day were unable to see past what I would approximate as 2000 m. We had a similar problem with Mont Blanc, once we crossed the French border. Although we could see the fingers of glaciers poking through the mist, that was all.

We were still two nights from Paris, but for our poor little Fiat, we were done the hard part. After a week of alpine adventures, the brakes were now almost done in and smelled awful on descents, but the champ of a car managed to get us safely back to France.

S.

The Road Trip: Riviera

Early May, we left Barcelona on a Eurolines bus to France. Originally we had planned to take the train down the Riviera and up to Lyon, where we would rent a car and tour the alps in (compact) style - but given our new time-crunch (expletive directed towards the Schengen Agreement...), we decided to rent the car right at the Spanish - French border and return it just east of Paris 13 days later.

We picked up our sweet steed in the town of Narbonne. While waiting for the car, we discovered a fourteenth century cathedral - although we'd seen churches that claimed to be older, it was really nice to explore the damp, musty interior. Churches are nicer when they aren't tourist traps.

Our car was a Fiat 500, standard transmission. Tiny engine but, as we proved later that week, entirely alp-worthy. The arrangement for our two week rental was that Dan would drive and I would navigate old school - ie with a giant atlas - because we are too cheap for GPS.

Enormous bridge at Meyruis, Parc des Cevannes.

From Narbonne, we drove north into the Pyrenees to the Cevannes National Park, a former tableland that has been gouged out by rivers into a series of long peaks and deep gorges that make for phenomenal hiking and exciting driving, if you're into whipping around one-and-a-half lane roads and cliffs and near death experiences. Cough, cough, Dan.

We stayed at a nearly empty campground and that night thanked our lucky stars that we had invested in a puffy, 7€ comforter for the duration of the road trip, because the temperature that night fell to nearly zero degrees Celsius. Wrapped up in layers and our fleece blankets and the comforter, after a bottle of red wine, we made it through the night warm and happy.

The next day we got hiking information at the tourist office in nearby Florac and hiked up one of the peaks. As our first climb in a couple weeks we were easily winded, but the view over the hills and gorges was worth the thigh pain.

From the Cevannes, we drove high up along a long peak and then descended into Avignon, which is pretty, but expensive, and then to Arles. As the city is famous primarily for being home to Vincent Van Gogh for over a year, we couldn't help but take a Van Gogh tour to see the original buildings and landscapes he spent the year painting. We also toured through the Roman colosseum, which is still used today for non-lethal bullfights.

The view of Arles from the colosseum

We drove along the French Riviera, encountering navigational difficulty only when we accidentally ended up in chaotic Marseilles, generally avoiding the cities and sticking to the small, winding roads along the coast. Even in May, the water is turquoise and inviting, the beaches are covered with sunbathers and screeching children and the cliffs in the background are stunningly picturesque. We stopped for the night just west of St Tropez, back in the woods away from the coast, and then on the Sunday night just west of Nice.

I'd been to Nice before, in 2008 with my best friend Piper, and we had a phenomenal time - coming back and looking for the gorgeous, lively town I expected to show Dan, I was a bit disappointed. If you're not in Nice to party, it seems to be a bit too full of tourists and dirty to be as enjoyable as I remember. Although I'm sure had we gone to the beach early in the day, I'd have spread my towel over the smooth, hot stones and been as content in the Mediterranean sun as I was three years ago. Nice will have to live in my hazy, happy memory.

The beach at Menton, just east of Nice
on the Franco-Italian border.

Dan and I both very much enjoyed being in Southern France. Primary among the reasons, past the usual stuff about the scenery and the food (I love cheese. I LOVE IT.) was the simple fact that we could once again communicate with people past basic needs. Neither of us are fluent in French, but we are both functional, and after just a few days of being surrounded by the language and the culture we were quickly picking our floundering vocabularies back up and chatting, if in a bit of a slow stutter. It is amazing the difference it makes to the travelling experience!

I will have the alpine section of the road trip up in a few days - we miss everyone at home!

S

Parc des Cevannes - sometimes, there's just no rushing the drive.