Fighting with Spiders, and Other Creature Stories

To wrap up my posts on the Philippines, I have a couple of stories.

Our first morning in El Nido, we were signed up to go an an island hopping tour that began at 8 am. When the alarm went off, Dan hit the 'off' button and drowsily stumbled out of bed. He turned on the bathroom light and then before entering, turned around, probably to tell me to get up. Instead, he froze.

He said, "Don't move."

Which scared the hell out of me, obviously, because I naturally assumed that immediately behind my head lurked a massive and ferocious monster poised to devour me whole - or something with a similar terror value. Then, in a squeaky whisper, he said, "THERE IS A GIANT SPIDER ON THE WALL!"

It's watching you...

I sat bolt upright and followed his stare: high in the corner of the room, a jet black spider with a leg-span larger than my palm and huge, glowing eyes was staring right back at Dan. Who backed out of the room to get help (after snapping a picture of course). I did not move. I'm proud of my reputation as a fearless lady, but I was not about to mess around with an enormous murder-spider.

Dan reappeared a moment later, followed by the receptionist. He looked at the spider, looked at us, paralyzed by fear, and grinned. He casually strolled over to the spider, reached up with his bare hand, and shooed it from the room - touching it in the process.

I'm sitting there thinking, this man deserves a medal of some kind. And maybe some antivenin, just in case the monster's fangs dripped on him. But he just says, "You don't need to worry. Not poisonous. That is a Filipino house spider!" And then he wanders off, chuckling to himself about the sissy tourists.

We managed to put it out of our minds for the rest of the day. But when we returned from our tour that evening, I bent down to rummage through my pack for something, and out from behind it scuttled - to my horror - another spider. But slightly smaller. Slightly.

Dan and I both jumped backwards in terror, but in a moment of either supreme bravery or extreme idiocy, I decided that for the sake of my pride, I couldn't call on reception again. Who knows why pride mattered at this point. But I mustered all of my self control, and I reached out (absolutely without touching it. I shudder at just the thought.) and began to shoo it towards the open window.

It ran below the window and under our bed. We left the room immediately to drink as much as we could afford and for the next several nights we upheld a ban on looking under the bed.

This is Dan's big mitt in the photo, so it is a sizable bug.

As for other insects, we saw some big cicadas and beetles and ants and the like, but the largest bug we saw was a giant grasshopper. He showed up on our bathroom door while we were hanging out in Sabang. I thought he was a bit cute, really.

The other story:

Dan was swimming in the waves at Sabang's beach on the second or third day we were there, and a local guy approached him. He said, "You shouldn't swim right now. One of the boats saw a crocodile!"

We didn't think much of it until, a few hours later, we were sitting on out porch and playing cards, and a couple of boys ran top speed past us on the beach, largely remarkable because as we were at the end of the beach, no one ever walked past. Let alone ran. A couple more ran by, and as we watched them go, we noticed something in the water way out behind them.

Something long and large and a bit lumpy.

So, we donned our sandals and climbed up the jagged rocks just past our little stretch of beach to get a better view. Turns out there WAS in fact a salt water crocodile lurking in the bay! Sadly, our pictures aren't worthy of putting up. But we got a couple views of his snout and his tail, and he was at least three, if not four, metres long.

As it turns out, although nearby Puerto Princesa has a commercial crocodile farm, wild crocs are almost unheard of around the Sabang area. So within twenty minutes of us scaling the rocks to check it out, half of Sabang's small population had raced down the beach and climbed up to get a look.

For the rest of the week, all of the locals employed in the tourist business denied the croc's presence until we told them that we'd seen it ourselves, because they were worried about the town gaining a reputation as unsafe. When we left a few days after the sighting, the local opinion was that it had probably swam up the river and into the mangroves in search of food.

And to cheer you up after the stories about scary creatures, here is a picture of a cute beach dog.

The jeepney: the best vehicle going. I think that tube either a snorkel or a gas line. Or both?

We went to the Philippines on a bit of a whim, and despite the crazy creatures, I am so glad that we did. The people are fantastic, always smiling and happy. The mangoes are the sweetest I have ever tasted. The landscape on Palawan is unbelievable. And they drive in jeepneys. Amazing. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

S.

Sumatra - New Friends

Although it was Sumatra's incredible wildlife that first drew us to the island, it ended up being the people we met - locals and fellow tourists - that really stole our hearts.

We met Jo and Janosh in the back of a van on the bumpy ride from Bukit Lawang to Tangkahan. Crushed together into an almost nonexistant backseat, Jo and I started chatting about everything imaginable to pass the time. We ended up traveling for over a week together after leaving Tangkahan, and it was an absolute pleasure. It's pretty special to meet people in the middle of a jungle who you'd be happy to befriend in real life! Thanks, you two, for the company, the conversations and for an excellent time!

In the highland town of Berastagi, we met more friends - this time, a local family.

I felt like I was coming down with a cold, so Dan and I decided to take a day off to rest and do some errands around town. We had lunch at a little bakso (meatball soup) restaurant on the main street - this is where we met Irana.

Irana is an English teacher. She has a classroom in her home and gives classes and private lessons. She was in Berastagi with her two sons, leaving Sunday morning church service when her youngest son, Joey, spotted my bright blue rain jacket as Dan and I walked up the street. They ducked into a store and came out a few minutes later, and there we were again, heading into the restaurant. So they decided they would strike up a conversation.

We found that in Sumatra, everyone wanted to practice their English. There aren't as many tourists here as the more southerly islands - Bali or Lombok or Java - and so the locals don't bother with trying to sell you things. When they yell, "Hey Mister! What's your name?" they actually want to know, especially the young people. They're friendly and as curious to learn about our lives as we are to learn about theirs.

On this particular day we were interviewed by two roving groups of students for an English class project (and posed in about a hundred photographs). One group approached us while we were talking to Irana, who ended up helping them tra

nslate their questions and our answers.

By the end of the whole affair, which commandeered the back of the bakso joint for the better part of a half hour, Irana offered to take us back to her home in nearby Kabanjahe, to talk more and to meet her family.

We took the bus to Kabanjahe and walked to the home that Irana and her sons, Joey and Gideon, share with her sister, Datna, and their mother, who introduced herself to us only as 'Mama.' Datna met us at the door and ushered us with a wide grin into the classroom, its green-painted walls plastered with student projects and photos and English vocabulary lists. We all sat cross-legged on the floor. Datna teaches public school and speaks English fluently as well, so we slipped into an easy conversation that lasted out the afternoon.

While we talked, the sisters brought out a bowl of leaves and tobacco and introduced us to a Karo social custom : sirih (pronounced Seeree), also known as betel nut.

According to the internet, chewing the betel nut is a custom throughout quite a lot of Southeast Asia, but this is the only place where we've seen it in action. You take a wide, flexible betel leaf and add calcium paste and the ground up betel nut. You fold it up into a neat little package and chew it, spitting the crimson saliva into a communal bucket.

When it's good and chewed, you take a wad of loose tobacco and dab it at your gum line to soak up the excess saliva. Between the betel nut, which is a mild stimulant, and the tobacco, I was buzzed. The Karo people, the predominant tribe in this area of Sumatra, use it as social lubricant. It works - it made us all very talkative. And it numbed my sore throat! Bingo!

Irana showed us photographs of the Karo people around the time that the Dutch began exploring Sumatra - pictures of the houses on stilts with great swooping roofs, of the proud-looking tribal chief staring into the camera, wearing a European-style jacket but still a sarong and traditional headdress. Datna showed us a video of her wedding dance, less than a year ago. We admired her clothes: a long-sleeved shirt of red lace, and innumerable sarongs and scarves, beautifully patterned, culminating in the folded headscarf.

By this time, a few of Datna's students had shown up to meet us and to practice speaking with us - friendly teenagers. They were delighted - as we were - when Datna left for a few minutes and then reappeared with a pile of scarves and that beautiful red shirt in her arms - dress up time!

Within a few minutes, they had us dressed to the nines, me in the red shirt and a soft sarong and headscarf, Dan in a sarong and headscarf. They buzzed around us, tucking and wrapping and laughing.

We posed for photos outside the front door - and caused a traffic jam as everyone in the neighbourhood slowed down to wave and snap pictures.

I can't say for sure, but we might be married as far as Karo custom goes!

Datna and Irana's mother came home in the evening - an energetic, graceful woman who took it upon herself to teach me Batak dancing and who, through her daughters' translations, told us about her childhood in what is now a preserved ethnic village near Berastagi. Later, we all had dinner - rice and vegetables and fish. Absolutely delicious!

Irana and Datna and Mama, thank you SO much for your hospitality, for opening up your home to us and giving us such an incredible experience! We could not have asked for a better lesson on Karo culture and we'll be sure to keep in touch with you!

S.

Bulgaria

On the journey from Istanbul to Croatia, we spent six nights in Bulgaria. Two in the capital city of Sofia, and four in Veliko Tarnovo, the former capital, perched among the mountains in the northwest.

Sofia still looks like a post-Communist city. Over-sized concrete buildings are easy to spot just outside the centre, and over-sized concrete monuments scattered through the city's vast parks proclaim everlasting friendship with Russia.


But, the centre of the city is a tangle of construction sites that will help modernize the city - overseen by the symbol of a revitalized capital, an enormous golden statue of ‘Sofia’ herself. The women who stride in stilettos over the uneven mess of a sidewalk are confident that they, and Sofia, are cultured and European.

We did a free walking tour to get to know the city - saw the historic Bulgarian Orthodox churches, the smattering of Roman ruins (more of which are surfacing as plans for a metro are carried out), the government buildings that date to the era between Ottoman rule and Communist. And then, best of all, we spent a few hours drinking beers in the park with our twenty-two year old tour guide, comparing the worlds in which we grew up.

It's basically a playground.

Our second day in Sofia we walked out to the Military Museum. The inside section is mostly uniforms from the war fought against the Ottomans for Bulgarian independence, poorly marked and dull. But outside, before you even pay to get in, you can roam a lawn cluttered with tanks and big guns and fighter planes, all rusting away quietly (some painted red so it's harder to tell) at this little out-of-the-way museum. Once you've paid your one Euro, the inside lawn contains everything from WW1 trucks to a missile launcher and advanced radar.

Awesome!

That evening we discovered one of Bulgaria's hidden charms: food. This is a very fertile country. The richness of its farmlands is evident in the plump, juicy tomatoes and the creamy deliciousness of the local yogurt and cheese. The markets are full to bursting with vibrantly coloured produce. That the land and the expertise of the farmers was wasted throughout the Communist era, and that the people in Sofia so often did without fresh food, is incomprehensible.

And, as Bulgarian produce is glorious and varied, so follow suit the restaurants. Their menus are books. There are pages of salads - they take their salads very seriously here, even though the diet is largely meat based. Pizza has been adopted and re-imagined (pickles is a very normal topping) and the traditional meat-and-potatoes style meals are amaaaaaazing.

I'm beginning to drool just writing about it all.

Leaving Sofia, we grabbed a three hour bus into the mountains to Veliko Tarnovo, a small student town perched on the edge of a gorge. We’d planned two nights and ended up staying for four, enjoying the people and the food and the stunning scenery.

One afternoon, after the heat had dissipated, we climbed up the closest ridge in the hopes of hiking to a nearby monastery, which, like many in the area in the mid-nineteenth century, was a haven for rebel soldiers fighting the Ottomans. But, as we reached the top of the ridge and started down the path, we heard gunshots. A shooting range was throwing clay pigeons down the path right in front of us... hike cancelled!

So instead, we sat on a bench at the top and looked over the gorge, cutting away dramatically beneath us, falling to the wide, rushing river that winds like a snake through the town, houses cascading down the three hills. Veliko Tarnovo is beautiful.

We spent a day shopping for warm-weather clothes and shoes (unsuccessfully) and then a day out with a hostel-organized day trip of the region. We saw another monastery (no shooting range this time!), a historically preserved town (think Fanshawe Pioneer or Upper Canada Village) full of traditional crafts, and we drove all over the rolling, forested mountains and the wide valleys, inhabited by tiny, insular villages and by small, impermanent gypsy camps.

Finally, we visited a Russian-built monument that served as a conference centre - a massive, concrete-domed bowl at the side of which was attached a thin, five-story tower, adorned with a huge red star.

These days, it’s called the UFO, because that’s what it looks like. It was abandoned after the Communist party fell and its lavish insides were plundered - marble flooring ripped up, the copper roof stripped, the spray-on red velvet ceilings torn out. It’s technically still locked, but armed with headlamps, we climbed through a window and explored its dark and dusty corners.

Upstairs, in the round conference room, all that remains of the former glory are the coloured-glass murals on the walls, depicting Party members and heroes, content workers and Socialist glory.

We went down to the basement, where mushrooms grow in the damp piles of rubble and someone has spray-painted creepy messages ('Zombies round here') - more thrill than history. No hidden creepers down there, I was watching.

The place has remained as it is, because it would seem that the government doesn't really know what to do with it. So it sits abandoned, red star broken but gleaming, sometimes visited by curious tourists but mostly by wild horses seeking shelter from the mountain winds.

I was entirely unprepared to leave the Veliko Tarnovo, for no good reason at all. I hadn't done enough laundry or researched our rapidly approaching weeks in Croatia, and I was still doddling along with my blog.

But really, I was reluctant to leave Veliko Tarnovo because it meant leaving Bulgaria, and this beautiful backwater with its fascinating past and its delicious food has stolen my heart.

We boarded a mid-morning bus to Sofia and wound our way up over the tall ridges, peering over secretive valleys that have hidden rebel soldiers and gypsies alike over the centuries. I'll miss this fertile land with its fantastic food and hidden-gem monuments and monasteries.

After a few hours in Sofia (just enough to trade our lev for dinar), we were on our way towards Serbia.

We'd decided to skip Belgrade and just cut straight across the south of Serbia from Sofia to Sarajevo, with a night's rest in the Serbian city of Nis. We were reluctant at first because there isn't much information on Serbia's bus system online, but with a conformation from our chosen hostel that a bus does run from Nis to Sarajevo (one at 6 am and one after 9 pm if you are googling this) we decided it would be easier than Belgrade.

Our only impressions of Serbia come from the uncomfortable buses, the funny and helpful owner of the Happy Hostel in Nis, and a massive dinner of rich, smokey meat and thick bread. So although I've heard many stories about the mistreatment of Americans (and Canadians) in Serbia - mostly in Belgrade - we experienced only kind hospitality.

The trip from Nis to Sarajevo was long - ten hours - but beautiful, all mountains and emerald rivers, endless gorgeous scenery.

S.

Berlin (Go Go Trabi)

We rolled into Berlin at the beginning of a sweltering holiday weekend, so to save some cash, we stayed in a suite at a cheap hotel on the south side of Schöneberg. No problem staying away from the action of Mitte and the Tiergarten, though - Berlin's transit is efficient and prompt.

In our five full days in the city, we saw a couple touristy sites or museums each day. I am not the type to pack my days with lists of 'must-dos,' especially as the city was in the thralls of a heatwave.

Berlin is massive - so even taking the subway system from place to place, we ended up walking for hours through the centre, with its massive buildings and its scars from decades of turbulence, left as a reminder.

The longest remaining portion of the famous Berlin Wall now forms the East Side Gallery - a stretch along the river that is covered in murals and graffiti. In other parts of the city, notably heading west from Checkpoint Charlie, the line of the wall is denoted by a double row of bricks that slices through streets and through neighbourhoods. In East Germany, the wall was backed by a wide kill-zone and then by a smaller interior wall, all guarded by watchtowers and spotlights. So there were, at the collapse of East Germany, large portions of the city centre that were veritable wastelands - entirely undeveloped. For us this was most shocking in Potsdammer Platz. Empty at the breach of the wall, it's now a commercial hub full of modern glass buildings.

Here are the highlights of the touristy stuff, for me:

We did a tour of a ruined Nazi flaktower, dug out of the rubble by the Berlin Underworld society. Definitely recommended. The building itself is massive, hidden under a pile of its own rubble that is now a park. The tour explores the safe sections of the building, and is an interesting foray into the city's war-time mentality.

Checkpoint Charlie, the famous gateway between the two Berlins, takes just a moment to see, but the associated museum, Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, would take days to thoroughly explore. It's a scattered, but fantastic collection of information and exhibitions on the Cold War and on the wall itself. Especially interesting were the stories of escapees (and the tragedy of the would-be escapees). The ingenuity and variety of escape methods is astonishing: people shoved themselves into car compartments, tunneled; one man lowered his son over the wall with a pulley.

The DDR museum is smaller, and displays the strange quirks of life in East Germany. Also excellent, and cheap.

And on the subject of East German life: Trabi Safari will give you a guided tour of East Berlin while you drive your very own Trabant, or Trabi: the East German shitbox. Ahem. Car. East German car.

A Trabi in its natural state - broken.

The cars form a convoy and rattle around the streets spewing fumes bad enough to make me lightheaded after an hour and a half of Trabi fun. The tour itself was decent and really demonstrated the physical divide of the city during the war years. But the highlight was obviously driving the Trabis. We both got to drive, and both managed to get it into fourth gear, which is super fast for a Trabi. And ours didn't break down - our tour leader's car did. Ten minutes into the tour. Apparently this is pretty normal.

Lastly, the zoo. The Berlin Zoo is the oldest zoo in Europe. It's tiny compared to the Toronto zoo, far more compact, but still with lots to see. We spent a great half-day wandering around, enjoying the nature after four days of war history.

Recently, we spent a day with a woman who spent ten years living in Berlin, moving away only a few years ago. She told us that, having lived in the city through its second decade of reunification, the city has transformed itself again - but not for the better. The first decade was full of creativity and excitement and the energy of a city forging a new identity - rising from the ashes, if you will permit me the cliché.

But the past few years have seen Berlin commercializing itself. The unique quirks of a city struggling to unite the experience of both east and west are being smoothed into a western, cosmopolitan city. The public spaces that she loved, left empty by the wall, are now filling with condos and office buildings. The rent is high, because the city is now a desirable place to be, but the jobs are not following suit.

So for us, visiting for the first time, the city was incredibly interesting. It has a history and a resilient character that we found captivating. But here is the question: now that commercialism has harnessed the creative energy, can Berlin retain its unique flair, or is it set to become another European city with an exploited soul and a faded hipster vibe?

S.

La Salar and the Never ending Atacama.

And here is post two.

So I believe I left off in Iquique.

I left there on Sunday night (25th of October) and made it to San Pedro de Atacama on Monday morning. Found a half decent hostel.

San Pedro is an odd little town. You can tell that it's a desert nowhere village that was surprised not too many years ago by a tourism boom its only recently learned how to handle. There are only two ATMs (only one worked on Monday...) and NOWHERE to cash traveler's cheques. Frustrating!  There are shops selling alpaca everything and restaurants that are rather expensive even by Chilean standards (Chile being one of the most expensive countries on the continent.)

Outside of San Pedro, La Valle de la Luna at sunset

It´s cute, though, for a couple of days. I only spent one there, as I managed to get a spot on a tour to La Valle de La Luna and do some sand boarding the day I got there. The floor of the valley is covered in rocks that are 70 per cent salt, and so it looks white. Moonish, even.

Sandboarding is HARD. Especially on your first day in a relatively high altitude. I'm glad I did it, though. But I´ll do some squat practice before I try again.... yikes.

I secured a spot to leave Tuesday the 27th on a three-day tour through the northern Atacama and the Salt Flats in southern Bolivia. Very cool. We saw lakes that are every colour under the sun, flamingos all over the place and some of most visually fantastic landscapes I have ever seen. We stayed in a salt hotel (outside of the actual salt flat, so it's legal... the one inside the salt flat pollutes too much and thus is illegal.) and I made friends with a young French woman, Eleanor, traveling with her family. It really makes all the difference in the world some days when you have someone to talk with.

Playing with perspective on the salt flats

As of this afternoon, Thursday Oct 29, I am in Uyuni, Bolivia. I have a ticket to La Paz for tonight, so I'll be there by morning. As much as the desert has been a very unique and rewarding experience, I am ready to head back to the mountains.... I don't think I´m a desert girl.

I don´t have many comments about Bolivia yet, except that they speak more slowly than in Chile here. YAY.

Thank you everyone for your comments. Hope you´re all doing well!

S.