tubedriven

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01 Jan 1970
17 Oct 2011 – start of travelblog

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06 Jan 2009
17 Oct 2011 – start of travelblog

RESERVED

So we went to Green Turtle Lodge this weekend which was great as the beach is pretty much deserted so we sunbathed and ate good food for 3 days which after a week of fried chicken and rice was wonderful!  We managed to convince some of the staff to drive us the 5 hour journey istead of making lots of changes so it was pretty pleasant, we even had a trotro quiz which i won (not only on the sex and the city section but current affairs too which made me feel better) We did a bit of paddling as you cant really swim due to the huge waves and currents so between the fear and drwoning here and the fear of being eaten in south africa it looks like I’ll be staying on dry land!

Ive managed to have my first semi injury of the trip after walking on the beach and scrambling over rocks for a day and have given myself achilles tendonopathy which everyone thinks the hobbling physio is hilarious!  A few of the group left saturday so our family has shrunk and the compound is a bit quieter but it means axtra closet room and water on the bright side.

We took the boys to our placement today where they got to do some training with the football team which they were all very excited about, mostly because now they can go home and say theyve trained with a premier team but it was a fun day.  now we’ve gotten to know some of the players we’re enjoying placement more, we’re doing more treatment and we get fussed over by a whole team of men so cant really complain!

Me and sophie are going to salsa with the physio who lookes after us tonight so that should be entertaining and tomorrow we start working in the afternoon in a free clinic for people who cant afford to pay for medical care so are one more step towards saving africa!

And after what is obvioulsy a very stressful 3 day week we are heading off to another beach so clearly im doing a lot of hard work out here….

I would love to post some photos but I think it might have to wait until s.africa as the computers are slow to the point of making me cry.

hope everyones ok xxx

Posted from Ghana:

posted Wednesday September 2024

COLOMBIA

Well, I just wrote this entire blog and then my computer decided to shut itself down unexpectedly and I lost the whole thing! Raah! Not my day!

So I am back in Colombia after having spent a week in Ibague with the family of Diana and Cristianas Dad. Ibague is located 4 hours west from Bogota and as you descend from the Andes the climate is significantly warmer however we were not so lucky and ended up with quite a few rainy days. We tried to kid ourselves one day and go to the pool. While we managed to catch some rays the water was freezing!!

If anyone has read Gabriel Garcia Marquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude the you will understand the situation of the house I stayed in Ibague.  This family literally stepped straight out of that novel! There are three generations living in one house. The adorable abuelos, abuelo and abuela, the parents and grandparents of the house. Abuelito is recovering from an operation and still has a catheter but he is such a sweet heart and is always running up and down the stairs to fin where the action is even though the doctors have told him to stay in bed. Abuelita runs the house. She is the true matriarchal figure but has a fabulous quirky sense of humour. One day she came into where I was reading and gave me a gorgeous wooden beaded bracelet so as not to forget her but I certainly wouldnt forget he soon even without the bracelet. The two of them are so sweet that I found it hard to put sugar in their coffee!

Four of the abuelos seven children still live in the house. The youngest is there because even after achieving his degree in industrial engineering he cant fin a job. It is a serious problem in Colombia. There are just no jobs for young professionals the result being that many are looking for opportunities overseas and hence Colombia is loosing its young minds. Two other tios Javier and Carlos also live in the house. Javier has lived their since his divorce. He is learning Portuguese and was so interested in my trip around South America. Every time I spoke to him would speak to me in Portuguese which was a little difficult because it always took me a while to figure out whether he was speaking in a weird Spanish accent or speaking a language I dont speak. Also considering I dont speak a word of Portuguese the conversation always seemed very amusing to him and not so amusing to me! However when I left Ibague he presented me with such a lovely gift of a full copy of his Portuguese workbook complete with a copy of the audio CD so that I can begin learning Portuguese  before I go to Brazil. Such a beautiful gift!! And then there is tio Carlos who is suffering from some kind of mental illness bus every so often he gets a moment of lucidity and begins to totally freak out that he is losing his life and that he will lose his job and his wife (who comes to visit him every day but cant support him in their house anymore).

Tia Margarita is a single mother who shares one of the rambling upstairs bedrooms with her seven year old daughter Maria Jose very cheeky and a little spoilt but still super cute! Tia and Abuelita run the house from the kitchen where they spend all day churning out meals to feel the immense number of people in the house. Finally there is Carolina, the 15 year old black skinned live in maid, from the coast of Colombia. She spent the whole week marvelling at my eyes (she has never seen blue eyes before).  

So many intertwined relationships! This is the kind of place where you can find a seat in a quite corner, not say anything all day and still be thoroughly entertained. I was treated like an absolute princess. I was unable to do a thing! My clothes were removed from my room and washed (by hand! No washing machines here!). There is no hot water in the house but every morning I had a baby bath filled with hot water boiled on the stove. I had three meals a day served to me hot from the kitchen. I felt completely ridiculous! Of course I was just living the life of the any of the men in this Colombian household but watching the women scrub the shirts of the men who carelessly dropped them on the floor it felt very unjust to be treated as a princess when these women clearly already had plenty of work to do! One day I managed to convince abuelita to let me cook lunch. The enormous task of cooking lunch for 15 people took me 2 hours of preparation. And as a took the dish out of the oven a put it on the side board next to the sink where is promptly exploded into a thousand pieces! Now mum has warned me that you shouldnt put hot things out of the oven on cold surfaces, but as it has never actually happened to me I didnt actually believe her!! Well mum consider yourself believed! Bugger! Of course we couldnt eat any of the food and I now had 15 hungry people waiting to be served lunch.  Abuelita came to the rescue, shushed me out of the kitchen and whipped up some rice and plantane chip thingos in a matter of minutes. I was completely defeated! Still quite red faced about the whole thing!

While in general Colombia is pretty safe. I was alarmed one day when we were told to stay indoors because they were helicopters circling and that meant that there was guerrilla activity in the area!! What?! Needless to say I stayed well within doors and nothing ended up transpiring that day anyway. Safety issues do suck!!! I would really like to go to Cali in the south of Colombia known as one of the salsa capitals of the world, also the home of Claudias family, but the Australian government says not to travel there. I also had the plan to cross the boarder to Venezuela by bus from the coastal town of Santa Marta but the government has said that the boarder is too dangerous. Even if I take the risk I wont have any travelling insurance. So that means I have to take a 26 hour bus back to Bogota to fly over the boarder to Venezuela when I would be right there!! And it is going to cost a pretty penny as well. But then if something were to happen at the boarder there is no way I would be thinking well this is worth it for the money I saved!!  

So now I am back in Bogota and the thing at the forefront of mind is that I seem to have misplaced my camera. I forgot to take it with me to Ibague, or so I thought but maybe I lost it on the way. I cant find it anywhere and the question now seems to be whether I buy another one. Cameras are a lot more expensive here so if I buy a new one the whole replacement cost wont be covered by insurance and what if the other one (which is perfect) shows up after I have bought another one? But at the same time I love taking photos of my trip especially for all of you guys. The plan for now is to wait a couple of days and nothing shows up to start shopping! Damn!!

On a more cheery note yesterday I had my first rock climbing class! It was so great! I love the gym where I am doing it. It has a cafe where everyone hangs out after climbing and everyone is really nice.  My teacher is great and I have already learnt two methods of guardar. Sorry I have no idea how you say that in English. Actually quite weird, because I never climbed in Australia I never learnt any of the climbing vocabulary in English so I only know it in Spanish! Ha ha! Anyway was super awesome! My arms are a bit painful today but not too bad. My next class is on Wednesday I am totally pumped.

Sorry I have no photos to accompany this post but I lost my camera (in case you didnt already get that from my paragraph of complaining about it!! Ha ha!).

Posted from Colombia:

posted Saturday November 2024

Jess is a Wanderer drove along Karikari Peninsula in search of infamous Maitai Bay. With its white sand beaches, turquoise waters and unspoilt natural scenery, it’s a popular spot for campers and trampers alike.

The DOC campsite is huge and you just turn up on the day, sign in with the manager and set up your pitch. With fantastic views it’s an incredible place to set yourself up for a camping trip. If you’ve got the equipment… since my tent’s blown away more times than I can count, I’ve stopped the camping and switched to Couchsurfing. It’s much more stable and I’m getting to meet some great people.

Anyway, Maitai Bay. There’s a walk you can do to the headland. It’s 3.5km long (return) and takes a suggested 90 minutes to complete. It’s a fairly easy walk – if it’s dry – otherwise it can be slippy in parts. There’s one main steep bit but if you keep focused on the view, you’ll surely survive.

On the way, you can appreciate the scenery and watch the bees to and fro with their honey-making. The view keeps getting more and more impressive with every step and if you’re feeling particularly keen, you can go down and sit on the rocks which stretch out into the water.

It was super windy when I was there so I didn’t stay too long but you could easily set yourself up for the day. Highly recommended.

On the way home, take the coastal road and stop by Doubtless Bay for some more fantastic beachy scenes.

Highlights from Maitai Bay:

Day 25: Jess is a Wanderer went to Albania in search of mountains. Thethi National Park came up with the goods but the journey there was quite the adventure in itself…

We knew that we had to take the bus from Tirana to Shkodër, pronounced Shkodra, from somewhere near the capital’s Central Bus Station. That’s about all we knew!  It was raining so we were going to call for a taxi until we realised that we didn’t know where our apartment was so that would be a pointless endeavour. Instead, we opted to wait outside in the rain and hail a cab from the road. Within seconds a yellow taxi pulled up and we told him ‘autobus Shkodër’ in the hope that he would know 1. We wanted a bus and 2. We wanted the bus to Shkodër. As with lots of European cities, the bus stations are split into local and international departures and arrivals. Some routes are domestic but end up leaving from the international depot and vice versa. With little information online, we didn’t want to make any errors so we handed over our fate (not for the first time today, but I’ll get to that later) to our driver. 

  He got us to the correct place and as we stepped out of the taxi we were immediately overwhelmed by ‘minibuses’, coaches and men. Sensing our bewilderment and confusion, the men started shouting destinations at us – with one being Shkodër – to which we smiled with excitement and were directed to a fancy looking coach. In Albania, you load your own bags and board the bus, filling from the front. What luck that we got to the station at 9:50 and the bus was due to leave at 10:00. Fate was on our side!

  Despite our hotel being way out in the back of beyond in the mountains, the receptionist had organised us a ‘shuttle’ for €10. I say ‘shuttle’ and I’ll get to that later, there’s a lot to get to later in this post!

Ninety minutes of the two-hour bus ride went by swimmingly without need for comment or observation. That was until the lady in front of us had turned green, woozy and began throwing up. She knew it was coming as she’d prepared a plastic bag but that first chunder missed completely and spent the rest of the journey dropping down the headrest in front of her, pooling around the floor and congealing on her shoes. It was not a pretty sight nor smell. You can imagine we disembarked quickly upon arrival into Shkodër. 

We were greeted, as so often is the case at bus stations such as these, by the chorus of shouts from local men: taxi drivers, minibus drivers and probably some locals with access to a car. Politely declining their offers of transport, I explained that I only needed a phone. I called the hotel to say we had arrived and agreed to wait outside Hotel Rafoza (a nearby landmark) and our ride would arrive imminently. 

Twenty minutes later we’d been approached by a number of people offering to help and whilst I was in the bathroom of the hotel Wolvo turned someone away. It was only when I returned to standing in our puddle in the rain that the same chap approached, this time with a phone, and held it out to me. 

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, hello, are you the person who is waiting to go to the hotel?’

‘Yes, I am. Is this man the driver?’

A slight pause and then the receptionist replied, ‘Join him for a drink in the lobby. The car is coming in an hour so you will wait until then.’

A lady appeared next to the man and ushered us into the hotel. What a lovely couple, taking us for a drink before our journey into the mountains. 

As you’re reading this, do you think it’s weird? Well…  you may be surprised to hear that things got a whole lot more weird. 

Sitting in the hotel lobby, it was revealed that we had access to wifi. How exciting. We’d geared ourselves up for five days of not being connected to the world so this was an opportunity for a last check of social media. And emails. 

As normal, I waited for the connection to get through to my messages.  Downloading 1 of 7. 7 emails, that’s weird, I’ve only been offline for 3 hours. One from booking.com to confirm the hotel for India, one from the travel company in India to confirm the transfers, a receipt, an iTunes bill and a message from the hotel that we were currently heading to:

‘Please, wherever you are, find some paper and write MARTIN and stand and hold it.’

Insert confused emoji here! Who’s Martin? Are we currently being treated to a Coke Zero by Martin? Who was the lady on the phone telling me to go have a drink with this couple? Are they to do with Martin? Did she send this email?

Unfortunately, as I read this email, we were being led back out of the hotel to the road to a waiting vehicle. There was no time to ask questions as the phone was being handed to me once more and the voice was saying:

‘There’s a car here, get in and it will take you to your transport.’

It was like being in a movie. Phone rings, mysterious voice answers, main character jumps without second thought or hesitation to follow the given instructions. 

We loaded our bags into the 4×4 and climbed aboard. There were already two German girls in the car. They’d hitchhiked their way to Shkodër and were off to do some multi-day hiking trips whilst being based in a guest house. I explained our situation and that we were not staying with them and were with a guy called Martin but we weren’t sure if we actually were with him but there was a voice on a phone giving us instructions which we were following. 

Saying it out loud was quite humorous so we all had a good giggle. 

Moments later, we’d pulled over and were being shown a minibus. That was the transport to take us to Thethi National Park and ultimately our accommodation. And the Germans were coming with us so now there were 4 but still no sign of Martin. Or if indeed it was Martin who we’d had coffee with then he was still at the hotel. He hadn’t made it this far. What was his role in all of this?

As you read this, I’d love to know what’s going through your mind…

A short time later, we’re racing along some tiny roads – far too tiny for our minibus – at a speed of which is definitely not safe. We’ve picked up a chap off the side of the road so now there are three blokes in the front and us (with our new German pals) in the back. We pull over at a place and people leave the vehicle. The Germans return with water. The men return with fairy liquid and sponges. 

Back on the road, still hurtling on at break-neck speeds, crashing over potholes and splashing through puddles we pull over again. We’ve turned down a small lane and are reversing into a driveway. This time we’re at someone’s house. An old man comes out and greets the three chaps. One man exits the vehicle and an empty jerry-can is loaded on board. 

Everyone waves to the old man who gives us a thumbs up and we’re off again. Zoom, zoom, zoom and the brakes are slammed on. The man we picked up back in the centre has left the vehicle. Back on the road, we pull over again, this time we’re at a mechanics. A bumper is loaded into the van. It looks like it’s been repaired and is all shiny and new. The jerry-can is removed and my foot space is now being encroached on by said bumper. 

Two minutes have passed. We’ve flown over speed bumps and overtaken all manner of vehicles and then it’s braaaaaakes on, everyone thrown forward and we’ve stopped at a petrol station. This is turning out to be quite the adventure!

We’ve been in the minibus for just under an hour  and have barely travelled five miles. Ahead of us is 40 miles and some of the most dangerous mountain roads in the world. 

Thoughts so far? Let me take a guess: kidnapping, sex trafficking and minibuses barrelling off narrow, winding mountain-top roads? Yeh, thought so. Same as me then. 

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

We’ve just been pulled over by the police. It seems our driver was on his phone and driving erratically. He’s left the vehicle to (hopefully) have a good telling off. 

No joke, less than 60 seconds later and we’re back on our way. Still driving erratically. Insert laughing-crying emoji here. Oh, and he’s back on the phone!

Ten minutes has passed. We’ve stopped again. Beer. We’ve stopped for beer. A stack of beer is being loaded onto the van. Maybe there’s a party tonight? The Germans are hungry. They’ve left to go buy some food. We’re not buying anything as it’s not a mealtime so we don’t need feeding. We also made sandwiches for the journey because, you know, we’re penny-pinching. 

Although, if Wolvo says ‘shall we just get a bit of chocolate because it’s a road trip and it’s allowed’, I shall not object. 

She didn’t make a suggestion. The rest of the journey (rather surprisingly) continued without any further drama. We travelled along some crazy, winding mountain roads, encountered some sheep – and pulled over to let them pass – then arrived at our destination. Our destination which turned out not to be a hotel at all. In fact, it was more of a homestay and you’ll have to wait for the next post for more on that!!