Month: June 2017

After travelling through flat farming country for a while the train from Amsterdam began to follow the meandering Elbe River valley through eastern Germany. The views changed to steep forested hillsides, lovely sandstone cliffs with old buildings perched atop them. Although the current flowed visibly strongly in places the river had many large tracts of navigable water and plenty of calm swimming and canoeing sections. The tiny townships clinging to the river banks were sweet and traditional, unspoilt and quiet looking. We decided there and then that we would re-visit this gorgeous valley when we pick up our campervan following all our Eurail adventures.

The scenery became even more stunning the closer we approached the Czech Republic. The trees thicker, the hills steeper and the houses older. We were fortunate to be sharing a compartment with a very old Czech gentleman who recognised our enthusiasm for his homeland, so despite the lack of a shared language he proudly pointed out a few landmarks to us.

Then we rolled into Prague. It is an ancient city that managed to avoid the insanity of the 2^nd World War’s bombing raids, so the number of grandiose old structures is unparalleled throughout Europe. The city was full of beautiful buildings and wonderful sculptures with narrow cobblestone lanes winding between. The cobblestone mosaics themselves were very attractive, but the tall spires and huge stone buildings festooned with gargoyles and statues in various stages of undress were quite gob-smackingly gorgeous. We attended a classical concert in a fabulously adorned ancient church then found a great jazz cellar that had a brilliant band pumping out fantastic jazz.

We ate meals in lovely restaurants, sampling traditional Czech fare, visited art galleries and museums, travelled around the city both on foot and on trams and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We even found time to rest, take a nona-nap and play with dogs in a river side park. One of the mind-blowing things we saw was a museum of special effects by Karel Zeman from the 50s and 60s who made brilliant movies of Jules Verne’s stuff and stories set ‘way back with the dinosaurs, including Journey to the Beginning of Time. Other mind-blowers were lots of Andy Warhol’s art as well as Dali and Mucha. Quite a treat really. We also visited galleries of other famous and not so famous Czech artists, ranging from the ancient to the very modern.

Europe has been amazingly warm since we have been here – who knew summer would be quite so toasty? On the downside, there are a gazillion other tourists taking advantage of the weather, and visiting the same places as we are, and at times battling the crowds has been a little overwhelming.

Paris was amazing, Amsterdam was vibrant and fun. Prague is incredible. Could this be our new favourite city?

Neat, ordered and clean with everything working smoothly and efficiently. The Netherlands consists of strips of green land lying between bodies of water, the canals tending to dominate the landscape. Nary an undulation in the ground’s surface is to be seen, except where bridges cross waterways, the country that we saw on our visit was as flat as a pool table.

Bicycles were the most common form of transport in Amsterdam, with modern trams and trains coming in a close second. The architecture was a dichotomy of very old and very well maintained tall buildings, with a successful marriage of sleek modern structures that somehow avoided the garishness of many new buildings found elsewhere.

Everyone spoke perfect English, but the Dutch signage is often not that hard to interpret anyway.

Whilst doing the usual rounds of museums and art galleries we indulged in a visit to the Van Gogh museum, which included many examples of his friends’ and contemporaries’ works as well. It was a fantastic experience to absorb the roughly daubed textures and true colours that are not obvious in the reproductions contained in books. The real thing is very different and much more emotional, Van Gogh’s torment could be felt in many of his works. We also spent some delightful hours wandering around the Rijksmuseum, and finally saw many of Rembrandt’s original paintings in all their glory.

Despite the freedoms of the red light districts of Amsterdam there were no signs of disorderliness or crime that some might expect. There was a party atmosphere clearly evident but the crowds all behaved properly. Politeness was the order of the day (and night.) Obviously permissiveness can, and does, work well in a civilised environment.

 

It was hot, the temperatures soared whist we were there and the little room in our airbnb flat was quite stifling. I don’t think any buildings in gay Paree are designed to cope with heat waves.

We travelled around using the Metro (underground rail) and a hop-on-hop-off city sights bus. The Metro is fast and efficient, the doors staying open for only a few seconds before the train accelerates madly away at high speed. You have to hang on! But the incredible number of stairs leading down into the stations (not an escalator to be seen anywhere) was a real challenge for Georgie’s crook knee.

The open top of the hop-on-hop-off bus was a great way to get to view the incredible architecture of the city, and there certainly was no shortage of that. When the ancient Parisians built those tall mansions and amazing palaces they sure had a love for beautiful sculpture and elaborate wrought iron work. There truly are some rather fabulous structures throughout the central city section.

Finally getting see so many of those legendary art works by the old masters ‘in the flesh’, so to speak, was a bit of a thrill, and the art museums themselves are really impressive. We waited to visit the Louvre until well after 7 pm so that the crowds of people weren’t quite so dense, so we actually managed to get to stand close with an unimpeded view of the Mona Lisa.

The gastronomic pleasure of finally tasting good escargot in a quaint restaurant in a tiny alley was a delight for Rod. Absolutely yummy stuff! Georgie wrinkled up her nose at it a bit, like she does at oysters. After that we wandered into a dark and atmospheric jazz club basement to have a drink and listen to the great live music.

Paris has a lot of motor bikes buzzing around and parked along the streets, and they are not the little putt-putts you see throughout Africa and Asia, nor are they the silly lumpin’ great harleys you see so commonly in Australia, people tend to ride nice sporty bikes and there are lots of those three wheelers that can lean into corners. Rod enjoyed ogling many a parked bike as we wandered around the streets.

Paris also seems to have a superfluity of pretty young ladies. That city seems to be a magnet for an inordinate number of attractive girls. Coupled with the amazing architecture and the cool bikes it sure made for pleasurable viewing.

Those of you with rather astute powers of observation will have noticed that a certain lump of rock features rather regularly in these photo essays. Bass Island is a stunning feature off the coast of North Berwick where we were fortunate enough to spend a couple of nights. The handsome hound is Blu who accompanied Rod on a morning walk in that gorgeous place of crumbling castles on craggy coastlines.

Despite the biting cold of Summer we meandered around narrow winding roads that snaked up over high ridges covered in mossy heather and bracken. Stands of poplar, oak and pine trees grew amongst the damp green moss of the valleys and clear tumbling streams coursed and bubbled down the slatey hill sides. The views were grandiose despite the haze of misty rain and the almost ever-present overcast clouds. Wildflowers splashed colour over mountain sides and road verges, cheering up the otherwise grey-green landscape. There was much oohing and ahhing as we wove around those steep hills and deep valleys.

When we arrived at the land of the lochs we were even more impressed. Clear clean lakes beneath towering mountains that still had some patches of visible snow in the upper regions. The landscape was very dramatic – that being a word which aptly describes much of the wild parts of Scotland.

You need only walk briskly for a few kilometres to warm up (except for the ears, they never get warm) so morning strolls were very much order of the day. Rod managed to fulfill a dream of dazedly wandering about the Scottish highlands, and Georgie managed to fulfill hers of laying snugly warm in bed until he returned all agog with tales of the soggy wonders he had experienced.

The sharp and crumbling escarpments that reared so high up above that world were held so tenuously together by moss and heather. Every pore of the mountains oozed water, running in trickles, rivulets, cascades and thunderous clear waterfalls. Every scree slope was splashed with wildflowers amid the peat moss, which grew thickly between the scattered sheets of slate.

And always the biting wind blew, whistling around your earlobes and any other foolishly exposed body parts. Man it was cold. But stunningly awesome and beautiful at the same time.

 

The moment we passed over the border into Scotland the scenery changed dramatically . The coastline became more craggy, the clouds shifted to a darker shade and the valleys deepened. Rod dreamily muttered that he felt like he had returned to his ‘Ancestral Grounds’ (however unsubstantiated and illogical that might be).

Heavy raindrops pelted the tiny rental car and the roads gushed with mini streams, but a bright beam of sunlight lit up a tall rocky isle just off the coast. Shining bright white with the thick layers of gannet poo coating its rugged cliffs it stood out sharply against the dark blue-black of the heavy clouds veiling the horizon behind it.

A morning constitutional walk along the water’s edge provided quite a few great photo opportunities:

We left Africa a few days ago and arrived on the chilly shores of England. The contrast between the two places is amazing, and not just temperature-wise!

Drivers in the UK are polite, the roads are well maintained (although unbelievably narrow in many places) and pedestrians are practically non existent. In Africa the roads may be wider but the surfaces are a shambles, the drivers are loons and pedestrians are everywhere, even in the most remote places people are forced to walk.

We have had a rushed few days popping in to a small number of friends and relatives whilst making a bee-line towards Scotland. There are not enough days in our itinerary to see everyone, so huge apologies to those of you who we are not catching up with this time.

A quick stop over in York to try and wake up a comatose lawyer has us feeling the briskness of the air as we progress ever nearer the Arctic circle. The Sun barely dips below the horizon for long, as the equator recedes physically, and emotionally, behind us.

Along the way we have enjoyed meandering through a few narrow and quite scenic back roads, taking in the very green and quiet countryside with all those the quaint villages and old buildings. We are now getting used to speedometers that read in miles per hour, and making judgements (quite accurately thus far) on the width of the car when passing. Rod even found a patch of scrub to wander about in that was quite wild and unorganised! Lovely!

Tomorrow we hit the frozen hills of the kilted Celts.

Africa’s mountains are huge in comparison to Australia’s. Mt Kenya sits neatly on the equator yet it is so high that it keeps some snow on its cap all year round. Kilimanjaro is similar.

The physical enormity of the continent allows for an incredibly diverse number of geological formations, from ancient granite outcrops to relatively young volcanic craters. It’s all just so fascinating!

So to begin with you have to have the highest mountain in Africa: the very famous Mount Kilimanjaro.

Then the next most impressively huge: Mount Kenya.

Both of these two amazing behemoths we were only able to observe from a distance when their enshrouding clouds parted. Kilimanjaro was only seen from a long way off, but we actually got onto the lower slopes of Mt Kenya at about 3500 metres but then a thick wall of precipitation ominously approached, spitting ice cold drops onto our shoulders, so we pulled the pin on the planned walk. Plus the guard told us that no one could wander off the tarred road without an armed escort. Talk about party pooping! That would be no fun!

Another memorably mighty mountain was the Spitzkopf of Namibia.

This gorgeous granite gargantuan was an amazing contrast to the surrounding starkly flat deserts. Ancient smoothly rounded rocks jutting up to amazing heights and standing out against the broad blue African sky.

Of course no mention of Namibia would be complete without the magnificent sand dunes of the Namib Naukluft National Park. Words are insufficient to describe the grandeur of these enormous clean mountainous dunes.

Namibia has some weird glittery mountains too. The mineralogy of its numerous mountain ranges is complicated and puzzling, with combinations that are totally unique. This moonscape took our breath away.

Fish River Canyon was gob-smackingly huge. It is yet another of Namibia’s wonders.

The wet forests and lush grasslands of Tanzania’s Ngoro Ngoro Crater stood high above the dry and harsh Serengeti plains.

The windswept rocky coastline of the South West Cape of South Africa was incredibly dramatic.

This sharply rocky terrain was covered in the weird and colourful feinbos scrub which clung so tenuously to those crumbling steep escarpments.

South Africa also has the breathtaking Blyde River Canyon.

And then, of course, there is Table Mountain:

The stunning grandeur of all those different African Mountains will stay with us forever.

In Kenya every year there is held a sort-of car rally. Except it’s not really a rally. It’s more of a time trial over incredibly difficult ground. The winner is the one who completes the course within the time limit with the shortest distance travelled.

Picture, if you can, incredibly modified robust and long legged 4WDs with a crew of about four ‘runners’ who not only pace out the terrain in front of the vehicle but also connect and operate the winches, both front and rear. The vehicles have to negotiate huge boulders and rough ground in ‘blind’ conditions due to thick undergrowth, as well as enter and exit deep gorges of more than 20 metres depth, scaling up and down cliffs and incredibly steep and heavily wooded slopes.

We were totally amazed at the places that they elected to travel and actually succeeded in doing so.

The enormous amounts of money raised from this outrageous event go towards conservation projects which predominately concentrate on the ‘Water Towers’, the forested mountains of Kenya.

The people that we stayed with in Nairobi have participated every year since its inception 29 years ago, and we tagged along with them as part of their support crew on their ‘Charge’.

The country that we moved amongst was bushland that we wouldn’t normally get to see and we spent five days camping, walking, eating and drinking quite a bit of booze. No doubt about it, those Kenyans don’t mind the odd drop of grog. The bush in that region varied from tall forests to thick thorny scrubland to open savannah and near-desert, with lots of deep rocky ravines to negotiate. There was even a beautiful crater lake atop one hill.

Unfortunately our crew broke an axle, the first major mechanical failure they’ve ever endured, and they were out of the ‘Charge” after completing only four of the thirteen checkpoints. Some sections, such as the ‘Gauntlet’, were simply littered with broken cars, so it was a very tough and technical endurance test. Only one of the sixty five vehicles entered actually completed the whole course.

It was a fun time, and a real eye-opener.