The day was finally here, the one that was to be the apex of this journey...(drumroll please)...ziplines! The zipline was actually invented in Costa Rica and for those of you not familiar with this adventure sport, it involves climbing into a harness, attaching said harness to a pulley that is then attached to a galvanized or stainless steel cable, and then falling from a height to a lower location while being zipped along the cable. Wheeee! Once the excitement of falling at 40 mph begins to wane, that's when you may want to introduce a trick or two. There is: swinging one's legs, letting go of the approved hand locations, leaning backward into a prone position, bending further back in an attempt to touch one's toes, spinning in circles, going two at a time to gain speed, flipping upside down, facing backwards, doing the splits while upside down, etc. etc. etc. For those interested in installing a zipline in their own backyard, please see http://www.outdoorfunstore.com/zipline.asp. Would it be too crazy to use a zipline as my means of egress from my 2nd story apartment down to the street?
The day began at 6:30am when the alarm went off. We had decided to attempt to deplete all of our stored adrenaline in one day and had booked a 7:20 canyoning trip and a 1:30 canopy tour. The first thing that I did was, of course, remind the person at the desk to look out for my camera. Then I was free to eat a quick breakfast and head off for a morning spent rappelling down waterfalls. Seriously, we rappelled down waterfalls. This excursion was second only to ziplining on my list of must-do things in Costa Rica. The van drove us a short way down the road to meet up with a jeep which drove us out to the canyoning site. DeLisa, Nicole and I got onto the last jeep in the line and thus were the group that turned back for two late arrivals, but they were nice guys, so we weren't too hard on them. Also, turning back gave us the opportunity to see 3 fabulous mental postcard moments: 1) a 3-4 year old boy trudging barefoot up a hill with a few long pieces of wood held over his shoulder. The tot just seemed to be feeling so terribly sorry for himself, and I can't say that I blame him; 2) a group of 3 cows, one laying on the ground, with the other two standing protectively over the cow on the ground - it was a poignant moment; 3) what had to be the world's fattest turkey - this thing was absolutely huge - HUGE, even I, a vegetarian for 15 years, wondered what it would taste like.
Finally, we were at the spot and were ready to go. The group of 20 or so were all kitted out with harnesses, identical blue jackets, and blue hard hats. Somehow, DeLisa ended up with a white hard hat which came in handy later on. Oh, by the by, I've never been a huge fan of the Meyer-Briggs personality test, which purports to classify people and assist them in forming career and life aspirations by determining if any individual is an: Extrovert/Introvert; Intuitive/Sensitive; Thinker/Feeler; Judge/Perceptive. I sincerely doubt the validity of this personality assessment but all the night before, during dinner, I kept finding myself thinking, "Goodness, I love how DeLisa thinks; this woman is just so clearheaded and rational." Well, as you might have guessed from the lead up, it turns out that we are both ENTJs. Interesting. It was very refreshing to talk to someone who sees the world in a very similar way to how I view it.
Well, all of us lined up at the first rappelling site and prepared to descend a cliff. The order of the tour was a little screwy and so the longest drop was the first one. I guess that it was good to practice on, but it would have been fun to try it after we had done a few other cliffs first. I hadn't rappelled since I was a teenager at Hume Lake summer camp and I worked up quite a case of nerves while waiting my turn to jump off of the cliff. Finally, I was over. Left hand above me, right hand below me, and JUMP! Hmm, this was a bit trickier on jutting rocks than I remember it being on concrete. I made it down in 4 jumps and landed feeling exhiliarated and shaky, always a good time. Next was the trip down a waterfall, right through the water. Unfortunately, the guides waited until we were already trying to rappell to tell us that we should just try to jump straight down. I tried in vain to find something to push off of and ended up ignonomously sliding down the rope. ¡Qué lastima! There were three more sites, all of which were fun, but I really wanted to go back and redo the first two now that I knew what to expect. Instead, we went off for a wonderful lunch and coffee and chance to purchase a CD of photos. Remember that I said that DeLisa's white hat would come in handy? You can pick her out of the photos, unlike the rest of us. There are about 10 photos that I think might be of me, but it's hard to be sure. Maybe when I see them on a bigger screen...
We were bused back to the hostel for a short period of downtime in which to shower, dry off and change clothes for the zipline trip. By 1:30pm, we were back on the road again, this time to hit the canopy with Aventura Mundo. We had to sit throught the obligatory demonstration, but were in a converted school bus being pulled by a tractor (seriously) in a very short time and then were hiking up to the top of the mountain to begin our descent. The first line was fabulous, fast and through a narrow break in the canopy over the rain forest. It was a good chance to get back in the groove for ziplining and I mostly held the recommended position with my knees drawn partly up and my feet crossed, with my left hand in a glove holding onto the rope and two safety ropes attaching my harness to the pulley and my right hand in a thick leather and wood glove-type device behind the pulley on the cable. This device is the brake and allows me to slow down or come to a stop, though some people apparently brake a bit to frequently and get stuck partway along the cable without reaching the next platform. When this happens, you get to pull yourself along the cable, hand over hand. The guide on the platform might come out to help you, but he might not. Oh, just as an aside, other than Noelia, our nature hike guide the first night, every guide I have seen in Costa Rica has been male.
The second line, I rode upside down with my legs split. This was so much fun that on the 3rd line I rode upside down trying to touch my toes in an arched position. This was a not-so great idea because when I came up out of the bend, I was disoriented and was facing backward. I almost put my hand on the cable in front of the pulley , which can be a bad idea when you are going that fast, and only barely turned myself around before reaching the next platform. Whew! That was actually a little scarier than I would like. Geoffrey, the lead guide with whom I had been speaking during the hike up (practicing my Spanish) told me not to do that again, and I had to own up that I deserved the scolding. For the next two lines, I was very sedate, and then, the adrenaline took over my body again. The 6th line is the longest and goes over La Fortuna waterfall. It was stunning, absolutely beautiful, and I'm afraid that it made me do the splits! The next line went back over the waterfall and right through the canopy and I rode that one with Geoffrey so that I could go backward and film the fall. It was awesome. Next, I went upside down with my feet on the pulley, then with my hands off and feet out. My foot actually touched a clump of leaves. Then, it was the 10th line and that was it. I rode it in sedately, but with Andy (one of the guides) shaking the line to add some pizzazz. At the bottom, I was just one of the happiest people in the world. I swear, it was a religious experience for me.
All over the world, tour guides are some of the most sexually active people on earth. First you take a tourist out of their native environment, you introduce him or her to some sort of quasi-dangerous activity, and as the Dutton and Aron bridge study in 1974 showed (http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Misattribution_of_Arousal_Paradigm), many of these tourists will believe themselves to be aroused rather than merely under the influence of adrenaline. That said, these guides are also typically young, fit, adventurous, English speaking, and guaranteed to have no strings attached. Therefore, I was not surprised when one of the guides, Andy, invited Nicole and me out for drinks that night. I was noncommittal and had no intention of meeting the guides. After all, I'm pretty sure that I know what they would be thinking and I had no desire to mislead anyone. However, Nicole thought that it might be fun and said yes, and then we were committed. After all, just because they would expect one thing, it doesn't follow that we are required to oblige.
After setting up our date, we continued on to a faux Maleku village, which has been built on the site to introduce visitors to Maleku culture, and to sell off their handicrafts. The Maleku actually live a few miles on the other side of town, but this is where they do business. We all said "kapi kapi" to each other and made knocking gestures (this means hello) then we sat on logs arranged around a very smoky firepit while the gentleman in the leather skirt spoke to us in Spanish, which is not his native language, and Geoffrey translated into English. It was pretty boring, mostly because it was painfully obviously that this was just a prelude to sell us the handicrafts which covered every available flat surface in the lodge. The crafts, especially the carved coconuts and balsa masks were actually really nice, but they were just covered in mites, spiders and assorted other bugs. This is not something that I really want to put in my pack.
After the shopping trip, we all mounted up to ride horses back to the main office. At first, this was a bit of a dud, since my horse didn't even seem to want to move, much less pick up the pace, but Geoffrey came through and slapped my horse on the butt with a switch and we were off. We galloped down the road in a 3 person race (one of the other tourists was also running with us), and I was just finding my seat and feeling comfortable when we arrived back at the barn. Qué lastima. Geoffrey then tried to incite me to dismount by grapping hold of a beam overhead and swinging off over my horse´s rump, but I resisted the temptation and dismounted like a sedate adult.
Nicole and I again gave in to the sales pitch and bought the CD of photos. We then jumped on the shuttle back to the hostel and prepared for dinner and our hot date. This is when the curse of the camera struck again. Nicole couldn't find her camera. She was certain that she'd left it either in the bathroom at the zipline office or in the shuttle. We asked the new guy behind the desk at the hostel to please call the office of El Mundo Aventura to ask after it. He called and no one answered. Since this guy seemed a little more together than either Yselia or Alonso, I decided to ask about my camera, too. Now, the story changed. This guy told me that there was a problem, that since I was not the last tourist off of the bus, the driver would claim that another tourist must have stolen the camera and I would not get it back. What he suggested was that Nicole come back down at 7:30am to try to recover her camera before too much time had passed. For me, through the incompetence and platitudes of Alonso and Yselia, he was fairly certain that my camera had already been given away as a Christmas gift to the driver's family, but he did say that I should come down closer to 10am and that he would then call the Gray Line owner and we'd try one last time.
With only my underwater camera left to tell the tale of our adventures, Nicole and I headed out for a subdued dinner with Pietr. We visited a new ATM for cash and then stopped at a Soda Shop/24 hour pizza place that was excellent and very cheap. Then, it was time to go back to Chela's to meet our dates. We did convince Pietr to come with us as our bodyguard by offering to buy him piña coladas. Like a true gentleman, he agreed to come and to protect our virtue. When we had gone to Chela's on Saturday night, the place was about half-filled, with nice music and a chill vibe. We were expecting more of the same. Instead...we got...karaoke night! I regret to inform you that I am no longer a karaoke virgin. I gave in to Nicole's intense peer pressure and belted out I Will Survive. We tried to convince Pietr to join us, but apparently, this song is well known in Holland as a drag queen anthem, and he was worried about his masculinity. Instead, he winced and watched in fascinated horror while we mangled the song.
After we had been at the bar for half an hour, it became apparent that we had been stood up! Can you believe it?? Sure, the evening would have ended in disappointment for Geoffrey and Andy, but they didn't know that! I can' t believe that they stood us up. We stayed for about 2 hours and the highlight of the night was watching an elderly American couple jitterbugging on the dancefloor. Everyone had lots of fun, and since it was Pietr's last night in La Fortuna, we were happy to stay out a little late and chat with him.
We went off to bed with visions of lost cameras and defecting guides dancing in our heads.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Rio Celeste hike with Carlos and sloths!
Day 2 in La Fortuna began with a 7am alarm clock so that we'd be on time for the 8am pickup for our full-day hike. After quickly showering (once I'd figured out the 3-knob system of the shower), I went down to the desk to inquire into the status of my camera recovery mission. Alonso was not working, but Yselia was there and we talked for a few minutes. She called the Gray Line office and it was closed. I impressed upon her how important this was to me and asked if she would be able to keep calling while I was on my hike. She confirmed that she would definitely do this and reaffirmed that there was no problem, this happens all of the time, the company is soooo reliable and the drivers are so honest. I thought about skipping the hike, but we had already forked over $85 apiece when we had pre-booked (nonrefundable) and I really wanted to go. Unfortunately, this was a full day hike and so we would not be back until after the office had closed again.
After a quick breakfast, we set off with Alf (our driver) and Carlos (our guide) along with Pietr, our dormmate; a Japanese-Brazilian couple on their honeymoon; Rita (US); and a couple more people who apparently did not leave a strong impression on me. The drive out took about two hours, though we did stop along the way when Alf, our sharp-eyed driver, spotted wildlife along the road. It was amazing, we saw a 2-toed sloth, which is called Hoffmann's sloth (so cool), actually cross from branch to branch of his tree when Carlos imitated a hawk's cry. Next, we saw a 3-toed sloth which has grey, plush fur (Hoffmann's sloth has long blondish fur), and decided not to move while we were there - maybe he wasn't fooled by Carlos' hawk imitation. The third stop was to see a huge ceiba tree (the national tree of Guatemala) where we were lucky enough to also see a green and black dart frog. It was just gorgeous.
The hike was up to a waterfall and to some fumeroles and then to a natural volcanic hot spring. It was an out and back trail and was challenging enough to be interesting without being really tough at all. The Celeste river is amazing. The volcanic minerals in the water give it a milky turquoise appearance that I have never seen before. The falls were beautiful and we also were lucky enough to see a couple of white face monkeys (capuchins) along the trail. Nicole and I could have driven out by ourselves, but we definitely saw more wildlife with Alf and Carlos, so that made it worth doing the hike as part of a tour.
We went to the waterfall first, on Carlos' prescient recommendation, 'cause it did start to rain later in the day and the water doesn't have that fab color when it's muddy. Next, we climbed up to a fumerole to feel the hot gases venting out of the mountain and then hiked back to the fork where we picked up the trail out to the hot spring. By this point, we were passing many other hikers on the trail and when we got to the spring, it was pretty full. Nicole and I had both brought bathing suits, but decided that we didn't really want to be chafing for the rest of the day and we just put our legs in. The water was interesting, with cold and very hot currents drifting in different places. At the recommendation of a Columbian American man from Utah, we sat in the spot where the water was juuuuust right. While the rest of the group waited fairly patiently, we enjoyed the water and a conversation with a couple of Americans who just happen to be good friends with a few of the people that Nicole went to law school with. It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all...
After that, we hiked out, seeing various birds and butterflies and then stopped for lunch at the trailhead. The lunch was actually very good, which was shocking. Usually, the vegetarian lunch on a tour is chicken broth soup, yes they think that chicken broth is vegetarian, salad that I am afraid to eat, and rice. Yum. This was rice and beans and a jicama salad and pineapple and a lovely side of macaroni with tuna. Yes, with tuna...on the vegetarian plate. Oh well, they almost hit the nail on the head and I didn't actually swallow it, just chewed it for a bit and then compulsively rinsed my mouth out with water.
Back at the hostel, Alonso was working. I asked about my camera. He looked panicky and then said, "I'll call right now....brrrring, brrrring...oh, sorry, they must be closed." At that point, it became clear that I needed to impress upon him the gravity of the situation. I explained that I had taken video of my 87 year old grandfather at Christmas and that the information on that memory card was irreplaceable. I asked if he understood this. I reinforced the message, making absolutely sure that we were clear on how important this was to me and that he would definitely be calling first thing in the morning.
With even less hope of recovering my camera, we set off for dinner. Pietr, DeLisa, Nicole and I went to the ATM and luckily, Nicole was able to pull out 100 dollars, so her ATM situation was resolved after a mere 48 hours of frustration, emails, live chats, and hair pulling. In the meantime, my credit card stopped functioning. Nice. There was a short period of time in which I supplied cash and Nicole supplied credit and we limped along in a three-legged financial situation, with neither of us being able to do without the other.
After grabbing some cash, we started checking out the local dining options. Finally, we decided to splash out a a nice little Italian place with photos on the wall of the Lippizaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Considering how much I loved it, this seemed like an auspicious sign. The food was great, though Nicole ended up with spaghetti marinara rather than the penne bolognese that she ordered - the tip was adjusted accordingly. Nicole and DeLisa were enjoying a nice glass of wine with dinner and decided to have a second. Pietr and I lingered for a bit and then left the ladies to their wine and headed home. I think that Pietr was eager to escape the grilling he'd been getting about his love life and the three-woman consultation that we gave him regarding life and love. I say this with some certainty due to the fact that once back at the hostel, he immediately jumped into a conversation about cars with Fredrik from Sweden. Manly.
Fredrick and his girlfriend Maulin were from Gottland, an island in Sweden. Maulin and I were chatting for awhile about her home and traveling, etc. when Nicole and DeLisa returned with styrofoam cups filled with wine. Apparently, after finishing their 2nd snifter glass of wine, the waiter brought over 2 complimentary glasses of wine, each being about half a bottle's worth of wine. What is anyone supposed to do with free wine? Well, DeLisa started pouring hers out on the street, and so Nicole was really morally obliged to drink it. Remember, there are children all over the world going to bed without wine...it'd be a sin to waste it.
After a bit, DeLisa went off to bed and Pietr, Nicole, Maulin, Fredrik and I stood around in the lounge talking and laughing and having a language exchange. It started with Maulin explaining to me that her dialect in Gottland is a little different from that spoken in the rest of Sweden. For example, they say jo rather than ja, or as it's pronounced, yo! Then, Maulin started telling us that puss in Swedish means kiss. It was all downhill from there. I´m sorry to say that the dirty words really are the most fun to learn and the most likely to stick in one's mind. Ashlet. ;)
Then to bed; perchance to dream...
After a quick breakfast, we set off with Alf (our driver) and Carlos (our guide) along with Pietr, our dormmate; a Japanese-Brazilian couple on their honeymoon; Rita (US); and a couple more people who apparently did not leave a strong impression on me. The drive out took about two hours, though we did stop along the way when Alf, our sharp-eyed driver, spotted wildlife along the road. It was amazing, we saw a 2-toed sloth, which is called Hoffmann's sloth (so cool), actually cross from branch to branch of his tree when Carlos imitated a hawk's cry. Next, we saw a 3-toed sloth which has grey, plush fur (Hoffmann's sloth has long blondish fur), and decided not to move while we were there - maybe he wasn't fooled by Carlos' hawk imitation. The third stop was to see a huge ceiba tree (the national tree of Guatemala) where we were lucky enough to also see a green and black dart frog. It was just gorgeous.
The hike was up to a waterfall and to some fumeroles and then to a natural volcanic hot spring. It was an out and back trail and was challenging enough to be interesting without being really tough at all. The Celeste river is amazing. The volcanic minerals in the water give it a milky turquoise appearance that I have never seen before. The falls were beautiful and we also were lucky enough to see a couple of white face monkeys (capuchins) along the trail. Nicole and I could have driven out by ourselves, but we definitely saw more wildlife with Alf and Carlos, so that made it worth doing the hike as part of a tour.
We went to the waterfall first, on Carlos' prescient recommendation, 'cause it did start to rain later in the day and the water doesn't have that fab color when it's muddy. Next, we climbed up to a fumerole to feel the hot gases venting out of the mountain and then hiked back to the fork where we picked up the trail out to the hot spring. By this point, we were passing many other hikers on the trail and when we got to the spring, it was pretty full. Nicole and I had both brought bathing suits, but decided that we didn't really want to be chafing for the rest of the day and we just put our legs in. The water was interesting, with cold and very hot currents drifting in different places. At the recommendation of a Columbian American man from Utah, we sat in the spot where the water was juuuuust right. While the rest of the group waited fairly patiently, we enjoyed the water and a conversation with a couple of Americans who just happen to be good friends with a few of the people that Nicole went to law school with. It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all...
After that, we hiked out, seeing various birds and butterflies and then stopped for lunch at the trailhead. The lunch was actually very good, which was shocking. Usually, the vegetarian lunch on a tour is chicken broth soup, yes they think that chicken broth is vegetarian, salad that I am afraid to eat, and rice. Yum. This was rice and beans and a jicama salad and pineapple and a lovely side of macaroni with tuna. Yes, with tuna...on the vegetarian plate. Oh well, they almost hit the nail on the head and I didn't actually swallow it, just chewed it for a bit and then compulsively rinsed my mouth out with water.
Back at the hostel, Alonso was working. I asked about my camera. He looked panicky and then said, "I'll call right now....brrrring, brrrring...oh, sorry, they must be closed." At that point, it became clear that I needed to impress upon him the gravity of the situation. I explained that I had taken video of my 87 year old grandfather at Christmas and that the information on that memory card was irreplaceable. I asked if he understood this. I reinforced the message, making absolutely sure that we were clear on how important this was to me and that he would definitely be calling first thing in the morning.
With even less hope of recovering my camera, we set off for dinner. Pietr, DeLisa, Nicole and I went to the ATM and luckily, Nicole was able to pull out 100 dollars, so her ATM situation was resolved after a mere 48 hours of frustration, emails, live chats, and hair pulling. In the meantime, my credit card stopped functioning. Nice. There was a short period of time in which I supplied cash and Nicole supplied credit and we limped along in a three-legged financial situation, with neither of us being able to do without the other.
After grabbing some cash, we started checking out the local dining options. Finally, we decided to splash out a a nice little Italian place with photos on the wall of the Lippizaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Considering how much I loved it, this seemed like an auspicious sign. The food was great, though Nicole ended up with spaghetti marinara rather than the penne bolognese that she ordered - the tip was adjusted accordingly. Nicole and DeLisa were enjoying a nice glass of wine with dinner and decided to have a second. Pietr and I lingered for a bit and then left the ladies to their wine and headed home. I think that Pietr was eager to escape the grilling he'd been getting about his love life and the three-woman consultation that we gave him regarding life and love. I say this with some certainty due to the fact that once back at the hostel, he immediately jumped into a conversation about cars with Fredrik from Sweden. Manly.
Fredrick and his girlfriend Maulin were from Gottland, an island in Sweden. Maulin and I were chatting for awhile about her home and traveling, etc. when Nicole and DeLisa returned with styrofoam cups filled with wine. Apparently, after finishing their 2nd snifter glass of wine, the waiter brought over 2 complimentary glasses of wine, each being about half a bottle's worth of wine. What is anyone supposed to do with free wine? Well, DeLisa started pouring hers out on the street, and so Nicole was really morally obliged to drink it. Remember, there are children all over the world going to bed without wine...it'd be a sin to waste it.
After a bit, DeLisa went off to bed and Pietr, Nicole, Maulin, Fredrik and I stood around in the lounge talking and laughing and having a language exchange. It started with Maulin explaining to me that her dialect in Gottland is a little different from that spoken in the rest of Sweden. For example, they say jo rather than ja, or as it's pronounced, yo! Then, Maulin started telling us that puss in Swedish means kiss. It was all downhill from there. I´m sorry to say that the dirty words really are the most fun to learn and the most likely to stick in one's mind. Ashlet. ;)
Then to bed; perchance to dream...
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
The adventure continues...Arenal...Ziplines...Loss
Dear friends, I have suffered a most grievous loss (this line is to be delivered by a voice-over while slowly zooming in on the hand of a lady writing with a quill pen). Being a silly silly person, I left my beautiful camera (Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 with 10x optical zoom and 9 megapixels) on the shuttle from San Jose to La Fortuna. Being an even sillier person, I believed Alonso, the receptionist at the hostel in La Fortuna, when he assured me that there was no problem, he would just call the driver and because they deal with the company all of the time; because this has happened before; because the company is super reliable; because the drivers are so honest; and because Costa Rica is a paradise upon earth, I should go ahead on my volcano tour and trip to the hot springs and my camera would be there when I returned. Hmmm.
Well, to start over, Nicole and I got up early, bade a fond farewell to our new chums, Monica and Tarah, met our Israeli roommate, had a very hurried bfast, as in: we ordered a yogurt and poured cups of the free coffee offered in the rooftop bar/restaurant, and then our shuttle arrived. We had booked a ride on the Gray Line up to La Fortuna. It cost us $35 per person and is supposed to be fast reliable door-to-door service. We ended up being in an underbooked van and spent a good hour to an hour and a half cruising around the SJ hotels while our driver tried to get more passengers. Nicole and I were holding our breath at each stop, since we each had grabbed a row of seats to ourselves and were hoping for a nap. Finally, we hit the road with plenty of space to spread out and relax.
After a short nap, we arrived at a rest stop cum tourist crap vendor and our guide, Albarro, gave us 15 minutes to use the facilities and to donate some dollars to the local economy in exchange for lovely magnets in the shape of turtles or parrots. Nice. We stocked up on water and I deeply admired the shaped leather wall sculptures that resembled cow hide full-body reliefs of beautiful women - have you all heard of Ed Gaines? One of the fun things that I´ve learned about Costa Rica is that you can spend dollars all over the country. All prices are offered either in dollars or in colones. The exchange rate varies from location to location, but everywhere I´ve been, the people are happy to accept either currency or a blend of both and they carry handy calculators to more easily show you the amount left in either currency. Very handy and it makes me wish that I had accepted the $20 that my dad tried to give me before my flight. I just didn´t think that I needed any dollars in Costa Rica. Hah!
Anyway, back to the Gray Line. We rode for another hour or so and saw some breathtaking scenery and some very charismatic cows. It was the cows that screwed me. I just thought that they were so cute. So, like any camera-happy tourist faced with an animal and a landscape, I whipped out my camera, opened a window and took two blurry photos of Costa Rican cows. Then, I proceeded to set down my camera and pick up my book. Unfortunately, the place where I set down my camera was apparently not in my backpack.
The shuttle dropped us off at Arenal Backpacker´s Resort which is at the end (volcano side) of the main road in La Fortuna. The hostel is actually a gated compound with grounds, landscaping, a bar/restaurant, a tour desk, a free internet room, and...A POOL!!!! I kid you not. A lovely pool with lounge chairs and palm trees and it is all just amazingly gorgeous. When we arrived, Alonso was super friendly and immensely helpful in setting us up with tours, even getting us booked with a tour that was less than two hours away, to go hiking; view the volcano at night; and then visit Baldi hot springs. We forked over cash and credit card numbers and trotted away to our room, thrilled to bits with our agenda.
While meeting our new roommates, Pietr (Holland) and Caroline (Ireland), and unpacking our bags, I suddenly thought, "Oh crap, where´s my camera?" At first, I almost laughed at myself for panicking, because, of course, my camera must be around somewhere. Then, I couldn't find it and I felt a wash of cold sickness start at my hairline and wash through me, settling first in my stomach and then radiating out to my extremities. By the way, it would be interesting to learn how to replicate that sensation with some sort of pharmaceutical aid. I ran down to the reception area and told Alonso that I had left my camera on the shuttle and asked him to please call the driver, who had spent the whole drive up chatting away on his cell phone. Alonso assured me that there was no problem at all, that this happened all of the time and that he would call right away. He called...busy...he called....busy...he called...no answer. At that point, it had been about 30 minutes since I had come downstairs and over an hour since we had been dropped at the hostel. Alonso told me that he thought that the company was shut down for siesta and that I should come back a little later. I was starving and our tour was leaving in an hour, so I went off to lunch with Nicole and Pietr.
We had a lovely burrito/wrap at the Lava Lounge and made a fruitless visit to the ATM, where Nicole discovered that her card wasn't working. Back at the ranch, Alonso told me that the Gray Line still wasn't answering, but that I should go ahead and go on my tour because he would continue calling and my camera would most likely be waiting for me when I got back. I was starting to have my doubts, but I went off on the tour secure in the knowledge that Alonso was doing everything that could be done and that there was no problem.
We were picked up by a shuttle and drove to the other side of Arenal Volcano. There, we were dropped off at a trailhead on private land that has great views of the volcano and that offers good wildlife sightings. Our guide, Noelia, gave us some great information about the area, and the history of the eruptions of Arenal, I guess that the last one was in 1968 and over 80 people are confirmed as having died and over 100 are missing, presumed dead and disintegrated into ash. The locals are prepared for the volcano to go off again at any time and lava continually flows partway over the crater lip, with frequent pyroclastic activity. The gases are very strong and the volcano can not be hiked without gas masks and a portable air supply. We decided to give that one a miss.
We started our hike off with a sighting of two chestnut mandibled toucans, which was fabulous! Then we stopped to watch some leaf cutter ants carrying their little leaf hats along their own trail. I had been wondering why so many plant leaves had holes in them, I mean, some of these leaves look like lace, there are so many holes; well, after seeing the shapes of the leaf sections carried by these ants, I understood the local flora much better. We later discovered that the leaves are not taken for food themselves, but are carried to a composting station upon which yummy mushrooms will sprout and grow. Our next sighting was of a rubber tree, which is also pretty cool. Noelia pulled off some rubber and we all oohed and ahhhed over how much it seems like a rubber band straight off of the tree.
The next sighting was the best, in my opinion, we actually saw three spider monkeys. They were fabulous. My personal favorite was the one who decided that the next tree branch over was a bit too far to jump, though her chum had no problem with the leap, and instead swayed the tree back and forth until it was close enough for him/her to make a short hop. I just love watching animals perform actions that are so full of knowledge within their sphere. It does make one wonder about the true level of thought that animals, particularly primates, are capable of.
The hike was far too short and we ended up in a carpark waiting for who knows what before leaving to go view the volcano. There, we met up with James (England) who had come over from Monteverde by boat and would be heading back to town with us. We talked him into joining us at Baldi and set off for the hot springs. Yippee! We had been disappointed to learn when we arrived in La Fortuna that both of the natural hot springs, Eco Termales & Tabacon were fully booked in the evenings for our entire trip, but we were able to get bookings for Baldi. At the springs, located in a large hotel complex, Nicole and I went off to have our dinner (yes, we were suckered into buying the awful, overpriced, buffet dinner - I blame the adrenaline 'cause Alonso pushed it on us after booking us on zipline and canyoning tours). It turned out that another woman on the tour, DeLisa, had also fallen for the buffet sales-pitch, and so we all sat together to consume our rice, beans, chocolate covered strawberries (???????!!!!!!!) and coffee. DeLisa actually enjoyed the meal, mostly because she hadn't eaten in 13 hours, but Nicole and I were underwhelmed. After rushing through our meal, we ignored doctors' orders and jumped into our bathing suits and into the swim-up bar. Whoohoo! Time to get this party started!
We ended up forming a group of five: yours truly, Nicole, DeLisa, James & Gabriel (French Canadian), and set off to sample the waters. We tried a number of pools, slowly making our way up the hill and to the back of the park. The most notable pools were: the super hot pool, which only Gabriel was able to enter; the waterfall pool, where we took silly-sexy photos; the perfect temperature lagoon which also had a cold pool inside it the way that Lesotho is inside South Africa; and the water slide pool. We had heard a rumor from Tarah that there were waterslides at Baldi. However, a distinct lack of advertising and/or signage convinced us that this was merely a backpackers' legend similar to the one about the tourists who wake up sans kidneys in Mexico; though a little less gruesome. Well, to our delighted surprise, this one turned out to be fact, and what a fact! Those slides were the fastest I have ever been on. I remember slides in my youth going so slowly that I would have to push off a second time halfway through the tube. Not these puppies. James, Gabriel and I scouted out the slides while Nicole and DeLisa were at the 2nd swim-up bar and were up the metal scaffolding faster than you can say, "wheeee!" At the top, I waited to see if the slide would collapse under the weight of the two gentlemen before beginning my own descent. Upon ascertaining the relative safety of the slide, I assumed the position (legs straight, back down, arms crossed) and gave myself a mighty shove, in anticipation of a slow slide. Whoops! At one point, I caught 4 feet of air and ended up shooting off the slide a foot above the water before skipping once and then sinking with my bathing suit in complete disarray. Thank goodness that the water was deep and mostly opaque.
After that, we had to change and meet up to get our ride back to the hostel. James and Gabriel were at different hostels, but they agreed to meet us in 20 minutes and head out to a local bar. By the time we got back to the hostel, Alonso was gone, and the girl at the counter knew nothing about my camera. I told her the whole story and she said that the Gray Line office was closed and that she would call in the morning. I thanked her, told her how important this was to me and headed off to Chela's with Nicole, James and Gabriel - DeLisa decided to get an early night.
Chela´s is a fantastic local roadhouse that has a tourist-Tico ratio of about 1:10. It was nice to see actual Costa Ricans in Costa Rica, crazy. We had a couple of drinks (piña coladas for me), talked about life, love and the price of cheese, and headed off to bed in love with the world.
That was our first day in Arenal.
Well, to start over, Nicole and I got up early, bade a fond farewell to our new chums, Monica and Tarah, met our Israeli roommate, had a very hurried bfast, as in: we ordered a yogurt and poured cups of the free coffee offered in the rooftop bar/restaurant, and then our shuttle arrived. We had booked a ride on the Gray Line up to La Fortuna. It cost us $35 per person and is supposed to be fast reliable door-to-door service. We ended up being in an underbooked van and spent a good hour to an hour and a half cruising around the SJ hotels while our driver tried to get more passengers. Nicole and I were holding our breath at each stop, since we each had grabbed a row of seats to ourselves and were hoping for a nap. Finally, we hit the road with plenty of space to spread out and relax.
After a short nap, we arrived at a rest stop cum tourist crap vendor and our guide, Albarro, gave us 15 minutes to use the facilities and to donate some dollars to the local economy in exchange for lovely magnets in the shape of turtles or parrots. Nice. We stocked up on water and I deeply admired the shaped leather wall sculptures that resembled cow hide full-body reliefs of beautiful women - have you all heard of Ed Gaines? One of the fun things that I´ve learned about Costa Rica is that you can spend dollars all over the country. All prices are offered either in dollars or in colones. The exchange rate varies from location to location, but everywhere I´ve been, the people are happy to accept either currency or a blend of both and they carry handy calculators to more easily show you the amount left in either currency. Very handy and it makes me wish that I had accepted the $20 that my dad tried to give me before my flight. I just didn´t think that I needed any dollars in Costa Rica. Hah!
Anyway, back to the Gray Line. We rode for another hour or so and saw some breathtaking scenery and some very charismatic cows. It was the cows that screwed me. I just thought that they were so cute. So, like any camera-happy tourist faced with an animal and a landscape, I whipped out my camera, opened a window and took two blurry photos of Costa Rican cows. Then, I proceeded to set down my camera and pick up my book. Unfortunately, the place where I set down my camera was apparently not in my backpack.
The shuttle dropped us off at Arenal Backpacker´s Resort which is at the end (volcano side) of the main road in La Fortuna. The hostel is actually a gated compound with grounds, landscaping, a bar/restaurant, a tour desk, a free internet room, and...A POOL!!!! I kid you not. A lovely pool with lounge chairs and palm trees and it is all just amazingly gorgeous. When we arrived, Alonso was super friendly and immensely helpful in setting us up with tours, even getting us booked with a tour that was less than two hours away, to go hiking; view the volcano at night; and then visit Baldi hot springs. We forked over cash and credit card numbers and trotted away to our room, thrilled to bits with our agenda.
While meeting our new roommates, Pietr (Holland) and Caroline (Ireland), and unpacking our bags, I suddenly thought, "Oh crap, where´s my camera?" At first, I almost laughed at myself for panicking, because, of course, my camera must be around somewhere. Then, I couldn't find it and I felt a wash of cold sickness start at my hairline and wash through me, settling first in my stomach and then radiating out to my extremities. By the way, it would be interesting to learn how to replicate that sensation with some sort of pharmaceutical aid. I ran down to the reception area and told Alonso that I had left my camera on the shuttle and asked him to please call the driver, who had spent the whole drive up chatting away on his cell phone. Alonso assured me that there was no problem at all, that this happened all of the time and that he would call right away. He called...busy...he called....busy...he called...no answer. At that point, it had been about 30 minutes since I had come downstairs and over an hour since we had been dropped at the hostel. Alonso told me that he thought that the company was shut down for siesta and that I should come back a little later. I was starving and our tour was leaving in an hour, so I went off to lunch with Nicole and Pietr.
We had a lovely burrito/wrap at the Lava Lounge and made a fruitless visit to the ATM, where Nicole discovered that her card wasn't working. Back at the ranch, Alonso told me that the Gray Line still wasn't answering, but that I should go ahead and go on my tour because he would continue calling and my camera would most likely be waiting for me when I got back. I was starting to have my doubts, but I went off on the tour secure in the knowledge that Alonso was doing everything that could be done and that there was no problem.
We were picked up by a shuttle and drove to the other side of Arenal Volcano. There, we were dropped off at a trailhead on private land that has great views of the volcano and that offers good wildlife sightings. Our guide, Noelia, gave us some great information about the area, and the history of the eruptions of Arenal, I guess that the last one was in 1968 and over 80 people are confirmed as having died and over 100 are missing, presumed dead and disintegrated into ash. The locals are prepared for the volcano to go off again at any time and lava continually flows partway over the crater lip, with frequent pyroclastic activity. The gases are very strong and the volcano can not be hiked without gas masks and a portable air supply. We decided to give that one a miss.
We started our hike off with a sighting of two chestnut mandibled toucans, which was fabulous! Then we stopped to watch some leaf cutter ants carrying their little leaf hats along their own trail. I had been wondering why so many plant leaves had holes in them, I mean, some of these leaves look like lace, there are so many holes; well, after seeing the shapes of the leaf sections carried by these ants, I understood the local flora much better. We later discovered that the leaves are not taken for food themselves, but are carried to a composting station upon which yummy mushrooms will sprout and grow. Our next sighting was of a rubber tree, which is also pretty cool. Noelia pulled off some rubber and we all oohed and ahhhed over how much it seems like a rubber band straight off of the tree.
The next sighting was the best, in my opinion, we actually saw three spider monkeys. They were fabulous. My personal favorite was the one who decided that the next tree branch over was a bit too far to jump, though her chum had no problem with the leap, and instead swayed the tree back and forth until it was close enough for him/her to make a short hop. I just love watching animals perform actions that are so full of knowledge within their sphere. It does make one wonder about the true level of thought that animals, particularly primates, are capable of.
The hike was far too short and we ended up in a carpark waiting for who knows what before leaving to go view the volcano. There, we met up with James (England) who had come over from Monteverde by boat and would be heading back to town with us. We talked him into joining us at Baldi and set off for the hot springs. Yippee! We had been disappointed to learn when we arrived in La Fortuna that both of the natural hot springs, Eco Termales & Tabacon were fully booked in the evenings for our entire trip, but we were able to get bookings for Baldi. At the springs, located in a large hotel complex, Nicole and I went off to have our dinner (yes, we were suckered into buying the awful, overpriced, buffet dinner - I blame the adrenaline 'cause Alonso pushed it on us after booking us on zipline and canyoning tours). It turned out that another woman on the tour, DeLisa, had also fallen for the buffet sales-pitch, and so we all sat together to consume our rice, beans, chocolate covered strawberries (???????!!!!!!!) and coffee. DeLisa actually enjoyed the meal, mostly because she hadn't eaten in 13 hours, but Nicole and I were underwhelmed. After rushing through our meal, we ignored doctors' orders and jumped into our bathing suits and into the swim-up bar. Whoohoo! Time to get this party started!
We ended up forming a group of five: yours truly, Nicole, DeLisa, James & Gabriel (French Canadian), and set off to sample the waters. We tried a number of pools, slowly making our way up the hill and to the back of the park. The most notable pools were: the super hot pool, which only Gabriel was able to enter; the waterfall pool, where we took silly-sexy photos; the perfect temperature lagoon which also had a cold pool inside it the way that Lesotho is inside South Africa; and the water slide pool. We had heard a rumor from Tarah that there were waterslides at Baldi. However, a distinct lack of advertising and/or signage convinced us that this was merely a backpackers' legend similar to the one about the tourists who wake up sans kidneys in Mexico; though a little less gruesome. Well, to our delighted surprise, this one turned out to be fact, and what a fact! Those slides were the fastest I have ever been on. I remember slides in my youth going so slowly that I would have to push off a second time halfway through the tube. Not these puppies. James, Gabriel and I scouted out the slides while Nicole and DeLisa were at the 2nd swim-up bar and were up the metal scaffolding faster than you can say, "wheeee!" At the top, I waited to see if the slide would collapse under the weight of the two gentlemen before beginning my own descent. Upon ascertaining the relative safety of the slide, I assumed the position (legs straight, back down, arms crossed) and gave myself a mighty shove, in anticipation of a slow slide. Whoops! At one point, I caught 4 feet of air and ended up shooting off the slide a foot above the water before skipping once and then sinking with my bathing suit in complete disarray. Thank goodness that the water was deep and mostly opaque.
After that, we had to change and meet up to get our ride back to the hostel. James and Gabriel were at different hostels, but they agreed to meet us in 20 minutes and head out to a local bar. By the time we got back to the hostel, Alonso was gone, and the girl at the counter knew nothing about my camera. I told her the whole story and she said that the Gray Line office was closed and that she would call in the morning. I thanked her, told her how important this was to me and headed off to Chela's with Nicole, James and Gabriel - DeLisa decided to get an early night.
Chela´s is a fantastic local roadhouse that has a tourist-Tico ratio of about 1:10. It was nice to see actual Costa Ricans in Costa Rica, crazy. We had a couple of drinks (piña coladas for me), talked about life, love and the price of cheese, and headed off to bed in love with the world.
That was our first day in Arenal.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Onward and Southward! Costa Rica
Well, I've battled the evil forces of inertia & married bliss and have set off once again to explore the world. This time, I headed off to Costa Rica, adventure sport locale extraordinale!
Honestly, this trip really came about because I entered into the frenzy of wedding planning and singlehandedly planned a James Bond themed wedding in Las Vegas with accompanying bachelor and bachelorette parties, spa day and reception, and then a 2-part honeymoon in Moorea, French Polynesia, and Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California. After the planning was over, I was still revved and wanted to carry on with the frenzy; thus I planned a trip to Costa Rica!
However it came about, it was a fab idea. I spent Christmas eve with hubby and the in-laws, including our adorable nieces, and then flew down to Redondo Beach on Xmas morning for a day with my fam. At 10:30pm, my dad dropped me off at LAX to catch my 12:45am flight to Guatemala and then San Jose, CR. The trip did not start auspiciously. First, the interior of LAX closes down at 11pm. By the luck of the German-Czech-English-Scottish-and Irish, I managed to be the last person allowed in line at Starbucks, which was the last place still open to sell water. Hordes of thirsty travellers tried to form a line behind me, only to be turned away by the barrista. Inevitably, someone decided that it was pointless to opportune the barrista and that they should focus on me. I ended up buying 10 bottles of water and giving them out as Xmas gifts to the poor thirsty masses.
On the flight, I was fortunate enough to be seated both behind, before, to the right and to the left of infants! Wow! How do I get so lucky? Well, the 7 hour flight passed, though not comfortably. I also had the wonderful experience of being told by the parents of two of the crying infants that I was unbelievably inconsiderate to use my reading light and that I needed to turn it off. Rather than inform these poor deluded people that contrary to their apparent belief, they were not in fact my ideal traveling companions either, I shut off my light and rethought my resolution to procreate. :)
All was well once we landed in SJ. I snuck off the plane ahead of the childer and breezed through Customs and Immigration without a hitch. My bag was one of the first off the plane and my shuttle was waiting for me where they said that they would be. After a 20 minute ride through SJ, I arrived at my lovely lovely hostel.
About that ride, I have to say that this city is a bit shocking. There are blondes riding around in new Jeeps on streets that are partially blocked by impromptu rubbish heaps. The rubbish heaps each tend to have one or two people picking through the garbage for anything usable and scrawny looking dogs are roaming throughout. The houses are small and made of cement, with painted cement floors. The windows and doors, and often the entire front of the house, are covered with metal bars. It is a powerful sight and a good reminder to be grateful for all that I have and to be as generous as I am able to be.
The hostel is one of the best I've ever stayed at. There are loads of great, fast computers with free internet; a rooftop restaurant/bar; a pool; murals; a pool table; Xmas decorations; a tour desk; a TV room; and fun fabulous people!
I wanted to try traveling with a friend this time and my friend Nicole Farrar decided that she wanted to visit CR, too. Yay! My flight got in much earlier than hers, so I chilled and took a nap 'til she arrived and then we got together with our two dorm-room-mates, Monica Aguilar and Tara Rudolf, and hit the town. We rambled toward the main square and did some shopping before stopping for dinner at a really nice little cafe where we lingered for at least an hour and a half, being attended to by a cute waiter. Nice. I had my first Costa Rican Costa Rican coffee (as in, not imported) and it was yum yum delish!
Next was going to be dancing, but after stopping off at the hostel to drop off/pick up some stuff, we decided to check out the rooftop bar and found it hopping. We settled in with beer, tea and fresh pineapple with rum (that one was mine) and chatted about life, careers, world affairs, and...what else would four ladies discuss? Oh yeah, MEN!
All in all a wonderful day and I can't wait for tomorrow and our trip up to La Fortuna and Arenal. I really am a traveling stone. :)
Honestly, this trip really came about because I entered into the frenzy of wedding planning and singlehandedly planned a James Bond themed wedding in Las Vegas with accompanying bachelor and bachelorette parties, spa day and reception, and then a 2-part honeymoon in Moorea, French Polynesia, and Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California. After the planning was over, I was still revved and wanted to carry on with the frenzy; thus I planned a trip to Costa Rica!
However it came about, it was a fab idea. I spent Christmas eve with hubby and the in-laws, including our adorable nieces, and then flew down to Redondo Beach on Xmas morning for a day with my fam. At 10:30pm, my dad dropped me off at LAX to catch my 12:45am flight to Guatemala and then San Jose, CR. The trip did not start auspiciously. First, the interior of LAX closes down at 11pm. By the luck of the German-Czech-English-Scottish-and Irish, I managed to be the last person allowed in line at Starbucks, which was the last place still open to sell water. Hordes of thirsty travellers tried to form a line behind me, only to be turned away by the barrista. Inevitably, someone decided that it was pointless to opportune the barrista and that they should focus on me. I ended up buying 10 bottles of water and giving them out as Xmas gifts to the poor thirsty masses.
On the flight, I was fortunate enough to be seated both behind, before, to the right and to the left of infants! Wow! How do I get so lucky? Well, the 7 hour flight passed, though not comfortably. I also had the wonderful experience of being told by the parents of two of the crying infants that I was unbelievably inconsiderate to use my reading light and that I needed to turn it off. Rather than inform these poor deluded people that contrary to their apparent belief, they were not in fact my ideal traveling companions either, I shut off my light and rethought my resolution to procreate. :)
All was well once we landed in SJ. I snuck off the plane ahead of the childer and breezed through Customs and Immigration without a hitch. My bag was one of the first off the plane and my shuttle was waiting for me where they said that they would be. After a 20 minute ride through SJ, I arrived at my lovely lovely hostel.
About that ride, I have to say that this city is a bit shocking. There are blondes riding around in new Jeeps on streets that are partially blocked by impromptu rubbish heaps. The rubbish heaps each tend to have one or two people picking through the garbage for anything usable and scrawny looking dogs are roaming throughout. The houses are small and made of cement, with painted cement floors. The windows and doors, and often the entire front of the house, are covered with metal bars. It is a powerful sight and a good reminder to be grateful for all that I have and to be as generous as I am able to be.
The hostel is one of the best I've ever stayed at. There are loads of great, fast computers with free internet; a rooftop restaurant/bar; a pool; murals; a pool table; Xmas decorations; a tour desk; a TV room; and fun fabulous people!
I wanted to try traveling with a friend this time and my friend Nicole Farrar decided that she wanted to visit CR, too. Yay! My flight got in much earlier than hers, so I chilled and took a nap 'til she arrived and then we got together with our two dorm-room-mates, Monica Aguilar and Tara Rudolf, and hit the town. We rambled toward the main square and did some shopping before stopping for dinner at a really nice little cafe where we lingered for at least an hour and a half, being attended to by a cute waiter. Nice. I had my first Costa Rican Costa Rican coffee (as in, not imported) and it was yum yum delish!
Next was going to be dancing, but after stopping off at the hostel to drop off/pick up some stuff, we decided to check out the rooftop bar and found it hopping. We settled in with beer, tea and fresh pineapple with rum (that one was mine) and chatted about life, careers, world affairs, and...what else would four ladies discuss? Oh yeah, MEN!
All in all a wonderful day and I can't wait for tomorrow and our trip up to La Fortuna and Arenal. I really am a traveling stone. :)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Budapest
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. I love Buda & Pest. They are lovely towns connected and divided by the Danube river. I completely understand why there is such a large expat community in Budapest. The fantastic architecture, the thriving pub scene, the good weather, the great metro system, & the baths. Oh, the baths!
My trip originated as a vague impulse to go to Budapest and try out the different thermal bath houses. Then, in my research, I discovered how close Vienna and Bratislava are to Budapest and I decided to try those as well. Austria was lovely, Slovakia not-so-much, but Hungary is fantastic.
As you may recall, I cut short my trip in Slovakia (because of it sucking so much) and went to Budapest a day early. Actually, I feel certain that The Slovakian region was saying to itself, "Go, flee, we got rid of your ancestors almost 400 years ago! Don't come back!" My maternal grandfather's family was originally from outside Prague back when it was still Bohemia. Anyhoo, I have rarely been so happy to leave a country or so certain that I will not be back.
Maybe it was only the contrast or maybe Budapest really is one of the best cities ever. My mission was to visit as many of the thermal baths as possible. After dropping my stuff off at Carpe Noctem (the all-time best hostel - I love Susie & Ian!), I headed off to women-only day at Kiraly. This is a 500 year old Turkish bathhouse. When I say women-only, I mean because we were nekkid! It was fantastic. I was floating in a pool of hot mineral water, looking up at a 500 year old dome. I had momentary blips of time-displacement, imagining that I was different people in different phases of the baths' history.
After my soak, steam & sauna, & walked along the river on the Buda side. I stopped for a very strange tofu burger, then crossed over the Chain Bridge before continuing my amble on the Pest side of the river. I stopped again to watch a gorgeous sunset before heading back to the hostel for a rowdy night of partying. Well, everyone else was rowdy. I enjoyed their excitement.
The next day I went to visit St. Istvan's Basilica to see the famous incorruptible hand of St. Stephen. Yuck! I also climbed the stairs to the top of the dome, and took the elevator back down. After lunch and a short nap, I meandered around Margaret Island and then made my way (after much trial and tribulation) to Gellert Baths. Fantastic! This is baroque at its best. I loooove Gellert. There is a men's and women's segregated thermal area with changing rooms, massage rooms, different temp pools, sauna, steam room and showers. Then there is the main pool in a two story high open ceiling, columned neoclassical delight of a space. Upstairs and outside is the wave pool. It was fantastic. I also bought myself a 20 minute massage which turned out to be more of an oiled pinching session than a massage, but what the hell.
After that, I felt fantastic and so decided to climb Gellert Hill to the Citadel and explore a bit. I took silly photos & then tried to come down the other side of the hill on foot. Hah! After walking for 20 minutes, I flagged down a cab and discovered that I was so turned around that I was literally walking in the opposite direction from the river. Whoops! I got dropped off at the river and then went on an expedition in search of Eden Vegetarian Restaurant which was right there according to Lonely Planet. Harrumph! LP is normally my bible, but for Budapest, it sucks! Maybe things just change too quickly for LP to keep up, but it was unreliable.
I ended up walking all the way up to the metro line and had a fantastic couple of crepes at the 24hour crepe place. Then, I turned a corner, and there was Eden Vegetarian Restaurant. Unbelievable! I had spent almost an hour walking around in circles, asking random people and thinking, LP says that it's right here. Then, after giving up, in a completely different section of Buda, I randomly run across Eden's new location. Too strange. I then just had to have a second dinner. :)
That night was another party night at the hostel. It was also the night that an extra person was apparently booked into my dorm room. In around 3 in the morning, an extremely drunk Brazilian guy woke up the whole room by exclaiming, "This is my bed. You are in my bed." The sleeping German guy responded, "Yes, that is because she (Japanese girl) is in my bed." After a few repetitions, drunk Brazilian guy approaches sleeping Japanese girl and says, "We can share this bed, OK?" After she says, "NO!" he repeats this exchange about 5 times. The Japanese girl finally goes and sleeps on the couch. Whoops! Fun for the whole room.
The next morning, I headed of to Szechenyii baths with a lovely girl that I'd met. We walked down Andrassy Ut to get there, were passed by an intense motorcade (there was some sort of ceremony going on at Independence Square) and then discovered that the outside baths weren't open that day, only the inside thermal ones. Hmm. This is the point when I should have said, "Oh, I'll come back tomorrow." Instead, I decided that I was more interested in the thermal baths anyway. This was a HUGE mistake. After wandering around inside for 45 minutes (no one speaks English or is very helpful), I finally located a changing cabin, a bath sheet, and the entrance to the baths. Once inside, I saw three pools. I tried the water in all of them and was disappointed to find that none were very hot. I sat in the hottest one with about 20 other people, ick, and was disgusted to see crud floating in the water. I jumped back out and decided to go up, get my camera, take a few pictures and then leave. I got my brand new, 10x optical zoom, 9.2 MP camera that I loved like a child and took some fun shots of the main room, the side rooms with other (even colder) pools, including a great one of a senior citizens' water aerobics class, and then thought, "huh...I don't want this whole thing to have been a huge waste of money...I should at least go in the steam room for a few minutes." I didn't want to go to my cabin upstairs, come back down for two minutes and then go back upstairs, so I looked around, and decided that it'd be safe to leave my bag of stuff (water, book, camera, towel, cabin key, sunscreen) in one of the cubbyholes with everyone else's bags of stuff. I went and sat in the steam room for literally 120 seconds - I counted - then I rinsed off in the shower and came back to find my bag still there and my brand new camera gone.
Devastated, I made my way back to my hostel. I had lost my camera, my memory cards, my new camera case, my spare battery, but really I was most upset by the loss of my 2 memory cards. How could I bear losing all of those memories? At the hostel, the lovely Katie immediately poured 2 shots down my throat, the first a delicious St. Hubris (yes, really) and the second some homebrew palenka - a Hungarian liquor. I cried. Then, while I was still processing my loss, I looked in my purse for my chapstick and found...my 2gb memory card! Awesome! That card had filled up the night before at the Gellert Baths. I had switched it with the 1gb card that had some video footage of the big headed jazz musicians from Bratislava. I had still lost the camera and about 20 pictures as well as the video, but I had all of the other pictures with me. Thank God that I was too lazy to put the card back in my camera case the way that I should have.
Bolstered by my card and the two shots, I went off for my caving trip. If you are ever in Budapest, definitely try the caving excursion. It rocks! It's not that the caves are gorgeous, they aren't. It's just a ton of fun. Our guide took us through openings that I didn't think even a child could fit through. We elbow shimmied our way along passageways 100 meters under the surface. It was just so so much fun. I even liked being dressed like a miner. The coveralls have a lot of grip to them allowing me to get up rock surfaces that were too slick for my shoes to find purchase. My group were all young, thin and fit (our guide Laszlo's words), so we were able to take a very challenging route through the caves. Laszlo was awesome. Energetic, talkative, and cute!
After caving, I went home for a bit, had some dinner and then hit the pub crawl with the hostel crew. There were about 20 of us. I made it to the first bar and then skived off with 2 other girls to the hookah bar for some quiet conversation. I made it home by 1am only to be woken at 3, 4, 5, and 6am as successive waves of pub crawlers crept back home. We also had a repeat of the "this is my bed" conversation from the prior night. Unbelievable. All three people involved apparently thought that one of the others had moved to another room. Not to mention that there actually was a free bed in our room, they were all just too drunk to realize it.
My last day in Budapest, I finally went to Castle Hill. For some reason, I'd been resistant to the idea - I don't know why, too touristy? After taking the funicular to the top and wandering around, I was very glad that I came. It is beautiful in the old walled town of Buda. I didn't actually enter the castle, just wandered the streets and bought some souvenirs. After that, I rode the train over to Pest and visited the House of Terror. Wow. Horrible. I cried again, for something other than my camera. The Hungarian people were brutalized for decades. The stories of the people who were imprisoned in the 40s and 50s were horrific. The descriptions of the torture that happened in the rooms that I was standing in was so REAL by virtue of being there. I learned a lot about Hungarian history and saw some amazing Soviet art and came away ready for another trip to the baths.
Rudas Baths, another of the old Turkish baths from the days of the Ottoman empire, reopens its doors on Fridays and Saturdays from 10pm to 4am. I arrived soon after 10 to find a line to get in. It is co-ed on the night swims and there were lots of couples as well as big groups and a few singles like me. Rudas is great and the bath staff were the best that I encountered. The cabin attendant had full conversations with me despite the fact that neither of us spoke a word of the other's language. Gestures and grunts really do work when there is a genuine desire to communicate! There was an octagonal main hot pool; 4 small hot pools of different temperatures, one hot enough to boiled food in; a cold plunge; a sauna; a steam room; and on the other side of the changing cabins, a swimming pool. It is an extensive facility and a lot of fun. I stayed until around 12:30am. At that time, it was already starting to get a little raunchy. The couples had started making out. At one point, I was sitting in the main pool between two kissing couples who were each only 6-12 inches away from me. That was when I decided that it was time to call it a night. I did meet a big group of students enrolled in a Master's environmental studies program at Central European University which included a guy from Torrance. Funny, all the way around the world to meet a guy from the next town over from my hometown.
That was it. I stayed up that night for a little while drying my bathing suit, but then I slept for a couple of hours (the party was going all night) before getting up at 6am to get ready for my 6:30am taxi to the airport. I had an uneventful flight from Buda to London and then to San Francisco. I did have a momentary certainty that my flight would explode into a fireball, due to the run of bad luck that I'd had, but when we didn't explode, I relaxed and settled in for the ride.
My trip originated as a vague impulse to go to Budapest and try out the different thermal bath houses. Then, in my research, I discovered how close Vienna and Bratislava are to Budapest and I decided to try those as well. Austria was lovely, Slovakia not-so-much, but Hungary is fantastic.
As you may recall, I cut short my trip in Slovakia (because of it sucking so much) and went to Budapest a day early. Actually, I feel certain that The Slovakian region was saying to itself, "Go, flee, we got rid of your ancestors almost 400 years ago! Don't come back!" My maternal grandfather's family was originally from outside Prague back when it was still Bohemia. Anyhoo, I have rarely been so happy to leave a country or so certain that I will not be back.
Maybe it was only the contrast or maybe Budapest really is one of the best cities ever. My mission was to visit as many of the thermal baths as possible. After dropping my stuff off at Carpe Noctem (the all-time best hostel - I love Susie & Ian!), I headed off to women-only day at Kiraly. This is a 500 year old Turkish bathhouse. When I say women-only, I mean because we were nekkid! It was fantastic. I was floating in a pool of hot mineral water, looking up at a 500 year old dome. I had momentary blips of time-displacement, imagining that I was different people in different phases of the baths' history.
After my soak, steam & sauna, & walked along the river on the Buda side. I stopped for a very strange tofu burger, then crossed over the Chain Bridge before continuing my amble on the Pest side of the river. I stopped again to watch a gorgeous sunset before heading back to the hostel for a rowdy night of partying. Well, everyone else was rowdy. I enjoyed their excitement.
The next day I went to visit St. Istvan's Basilica to see the famous incorruptible hand of St. Stephen. Yuck! I also climbed the stairs to the top of the dome, and took the elevator back down. After lunch and a short nap, I meandered around Margaret Island and then made my way (after much trial and tribulation) to Gellert Baths. Fantastic! This is baroque at its best. I loooove Gellert. There is a men's and women's segregated thermal area with changing rooms, massage rooms, different temp pools, sauna, steam room and showers. Then there is the main pool in a two story high open ceiling, columned neoclassical delight of a space. Upstairs and outside is the wave pool. It was fantastic. I also bought myself a 20 minute massage which turned out to be more of an oiled pinching session than a massage, but what the hell.
After that, I felt fantastic and so decided to climb Gellert Hill to the Citadel and explore a bit. I took silly photos & then tried to come down the other side of the hill on foot. Hah! After walking for 20 minutes, I flagged down a cab and discovered that I was so turned around that I was literally walking in the opposite direction from the river. Whoops! I got dropped off at the river and then went on an expedition in search of Eden Vegetarian Restaurant which was right there according to Lonely Planet. Harrumph! LP is normally my bible, but for Budapest, it sucks! Maybe things just change too quickly for LP to keep up, but it was unreliable.
I ended up walking all the way up to the metro line and had a fantastic couple of crepes at the 24hour crepe place. Then, I turned a corner, and there was Eden Vegetarian Restaurant. Unbelievable! I had spent almost an hour walking around in circles, asking random people and thinking, LP says that it's right here. Then, after giving up, in a completely different section of Buda, I randomly run across Eden's new location. Too strange. I then just had to have a second dinner. :)
That night was another party night at the hostel. It was also the night that an extra person was apparently booked into my dorm room. In around 3 in the morning, an extremely drunk Brazilian guy woke up the whole room by exclaiming, "This is my bed. You are in my bed." The sleeping German guy responded, "Yes, that is because she (Japanese girl) is in my bed." After a few repetitions, drunk Brazilian guy approaches sleeping Japanese girl and says, "We can share this bed, OK?" After she says, "NO!" he repeats this exchange about 5 times. The Japanese girl finally goes and sleeps on the couch. Whoops! Fun for the whole room.
The next morning, I headed of to Szechenyii baths with a lovely girl that I'd met. We walked down Andrassy Ut to get there, were passed by an intense motorcade (there was some sort of ceremony going on at Independence Square) and then discovered that the outside baths weren't open that day, only the inside thermal ones. Hmm. This is the point when I should have said, "Oh, I'll come back tomorrow." Instead, I decided that I was more interested in the thermal baths anyway. This was a HUGE mistake. After wandering around inside for 45 minutes (no one speaks English or is very helpful), I finally located a changing cabin, a bath sheet, and the entrance to the baths. Once inside, I saw three pools. I tried the water in all of them and was disappointed to find that none were very hot. I sat in the hottest one with about 20 other people, ick, and was disgusted to see crud floating in the water. I jumped back out and decided to go up, get my camera, take a few pictures and then leave. I got my brand new, 10x optical zoom, 9.2 MP camera that I loved like a child and took some fun shots of the main room, the side rooms with other (even colder) pools, including a great one of a senior citizens' water aerobics class, and then thought, "huh...I don't want this whole thing to have been a huge waste of money...I should at least go in the steam room for a few minutes." I didn't want to go to my cabin upstairs, come back down for two minutes and then go back upstairs, so I looked around, and decided that it'd be safe to leave my bag of stuff (water, book, camera, towel, cabin key, sunscreen) in one of the cubbyholes with everyone else's bags of stuff. I went and sat in the steam room for literally 120 seconds - I counted - then I rinsed off in the shower and came back to find my bag still there and my brand new camera gone.
Devastated, I made my way back to my hostel. I had lost my camera, my memory cards, my new camera case, my spare battery, but really I was most upset by the loss of my 2 memory cards. How could I bear losing all of those memories? At the hostel, the lovely Katie immediately poured 2 shots down my throat, the first a delicious St. Hubris (yes, really) and the second some homebrew palenka - a Hungarian liquor. I cried. Then, while I was still processing my loss, I looked in my purse for my chapstick and found...my 2gb memory card! Awesome! That card had filled up the night before at the Gellert Baths. I had switched it with the 1gb card that had some video footage of the big headed jazz musicians from Bratislava. I had still lost the camera and about 20 pictures as well as the video, but I had all of the other pictures with me. Thank God that I was too lazy to put the card back in my camera case the way that I should have.
Bolstered by my card and the two shots, I went off for my caving trip. If you are ever in Budapest, definitely try the caving excursion. It rocks! It's not that the caves are gorgeous, they aren't. It's just a ton of fun. Our guide took us through openings that I didn't think even a child could fit through. We elbow shimmied our way along passageways 100 meters under the surface. It was just so so much fun. I even liked being dressed like a miner. The coveralls have a lot of grip to them allowing me to get up rock surfaces that were too slick for my shoes to find purchase. My group were all young, thin and fit (our guide Laszlo's words), so we were able to take a very challenging route through the caves. Laszlo was awesome. Energetic, talkative, and cute!
After caving, I went home for a bit, had some dinner and then hit the pub crawl with the hostel crew. There were about 20 of us. I made it to the first bar and then skived off with 2 other girls to the hookah bar for some quiet conversation. I made it home by 1am only to be woken at 3, 4, 5, and 6am as successive waves of pub crawlers crept back home. We also had a repeat of the "this is my bed" conversation from the prior night. Unbelievable. All three people involved apparently thought that one of the others had moved to another room. Not to mention that there actually was a free bed in our room, they were all just too drunk to realize it.
My last day in Budapest, I finally went to Castle Hill. For some reason, I'd been resistant to the idea - I don't know why, too touristy? After taking the funicular to the top and wandering around, I was very glad that I came. It is beautiful in the old walled town of Buda. I didn't actually enter the castle, just wandered the streets and bought some souvenirs. After that, I rode the train over to Pest and visited the House of Terror. Wow. Horrible. I cried again, for something other than my camera. The Hungarian people were brutalized for decades. The stories of the people who were imprisoned in the 40s and 50s were horrific. The descriptions of the torture that happened in the rooms that I was standing in was so REAL by virtue of being there. I learned a lot about Hungarian history and saw some amazing Soviet art and came away ready for another trip to the baths.
Rudas Baths, another of the old Turkish baths from the days of the Ottoman empire, reopens its doors on Fridays and Saturdays from 10pm to 4am. I arrived soon after 10 to find a line to get in. It is co-ed on the night swims and there were lots of couples as well as big groups and a few singles like me. Rudas is great and the bath staff were the best that I encountered. The cabin attendant had full conversations with me despite the fact that neither of us spoke a word of the other's language. Gestures and grunts really do work when there is a genuine desire to communicate! There was an octagonal main hot pool; 4 small hot pools of different temperatures, one hot enough to boiled food in; a cold plunge; a sauna; a steam room; and on the other side of the changing cabins, a swimming pool. It is an extensive facility and a lot of fun. I stayed until around 12:30am. At that time, it was already starting to get a little raunchy. The couples had started making out. At one point, I was sitting in the main pool between two kissing couples who were each only 6-12 inches away from me. That was when I decided that it was time to call it a night. I did meet a big group of students enrolled in a Master's environmental studies program at Central European University which included a guy from Torrance. Funny, all the way around the world to meet a guy from the next town over from my hometown.
That was it. I stayed up that night for a little while drying my bathing suit, but then I slept for a couple of hours (the party was going all night) before getting up at 6am to get ready for my 6:30am taxi to the airport. I had an uneventful flight from Buda to London and then to San Francisco. I did have a momentary certainty that my flight would explode into a fireball, due to the run of bad luck that I'd had, but when we didn't explode, I relaxed and settled in for the ride.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Hydrofoil between Bratislava and Budapest
After arriving in Bratislava, I checked back into Downtown Backpacker's Hostel for the night and picked up my gear from the left luggage room. I was thrilled to find that my 3rd battery had retained its charge, and to be able to take photos again - though with restraint due to the loss of my 2nd battery. I splurged on a good dinner at an Italian restaurant in Old Town. Expensive but worth it. Then back to the hostel to combine my two bags and get some sleep.
In the morning, I was at the hydrofoil office by 9am for the 10:30 boat. I really did not want to miss it. Unfortunately, they were unable to sell me a ticket until 15 minutes before the boat came in, because they were unable to contact the captain to make sure that there was an available space on the boat. Yeah right. It was a non-holiday, non-high season Wednesday and a very expensive trip when the bus is both faster and about a fourth of the price. Somehow I managed to suppress my surprise to learn that yes, there was an unsold seat available. In fact, there were about 75 unsold seats available. :)
The ride down the Danube was gorgeous. The entire trip took 4.5 hours, with the first couple of hours in Slovakia being a fairly monotonous rural scene with the occasional town and/or light industry to break up the riverbank trees and fields. There were also some nice houses right up on the river with tiny beachfront areas that were just lovely. About an hour or two down the river, we went through a fairly intense lock. We descended about 18 meters before passing under a bridge that we were level with before going through the lock. Very cool.
After another hour or so, we started coming up on the more scenic sections. First, we passed the town of Esztergom, the center of the Roman-Catholic church in Hungary, and its amaying Basilica. I spotted it down the river earlier than my fellow passengers, and was able to snag the coveted near-side open door area from which to take photographs. Yes!
After Esztergom, we passed Visegrad and its 13th century castle. The castle was gorgeous enough, but what really made it special was the handful of paragliders circling over the castle. Unbelievable! Believe me, I tried to find out if this was an activity available to tourists, and reluctantly concluded that these were private individuals with their own gear. Bummer. That must have been such a rush, and such a great way to see the castle!
Those were the major highlights of the boat trip. I would definitely recommend it. Also, do not sit in the front part of the boat. Sure, you have a nice view through the glass, but if you sit on the right-hand side of the back section of the boat, in a row with a window, you'll have your own spot from which to photograph both the Basilica and the castle and won't have to fight the senior citizens for a place at the door. The ticket from Blava to Budapest cost 79 euros one-way or 99 for a return ticket, though why anyone would want to return to Bratislava after escaping...
The refreshments available onboard are extremely limited, so I would suggest stocking up on supplies. For example, the advertised cheese sandwich was unavailable, so I lunched on a (very sweet) blueberry muffin. It's also quite expensive, but they do accept Euros, Slovakian Crowns and Hungarian Forints and will provide change in the currency of your choice. So what I overpaid for my muffin, juice and coffee, I probably made up for in not paying a currency exchange fee.
My favorite thought on the river was that this was the Duna, the Great Mother River. I was flashing back to reading The Plains of Passage (by Jean Auel) and remembering Ayla and Jondalar's prehistoric journey along this river. It was very cool.
In the morning, I was at the hydrofoil office by 9am for the 10:30 boat. I really did not want to miss it. Unfortunately, they were unable to sell me a ticket until 15 minutes before the boat came in, because they were unable to contact the captain to make sure that there was an available space on the boat. Yeah right. It was a non-holiday, non-high season Wednesday and a very expensive trip when the bus is both faster and about a fourth of the price. Somehow I managed to suppress my surprise to learn that yes, there was an unsold seat available. In fact, there were about 75 unsold seats available. :)
The ride down the Danube was gorgeous. The entire trip took 4.5 hours, with the first couple of hours in Slovakia being a fairly monotonous rural scene with the occasional town and/or light industry to break up the riverbank trees and fields. There were also some nice houses right up on the river with tiny beachfront areas that were just lovely. About an hour or two down the river, we went through a fairly intense lock. We descended about 18 meters before passing under a bridge that we were level with before going through the lock. Very cool.
After another hour or so, we started coming up on the more scenic sections. First, we passed the town of Esztergom, the center of the Roman-Catholic church in Hungary, and its amaying Basilica. I spotted it down the river earlier than my fellow passengers, and was able to snag the coveted near-side open door area from which to take photographs. Yes!
After Esztergom, we passed Visegrad and its 13th century castle. The castle was gorgeous enough, but what really made it special was the handful of paragliders circling over the castle. Unbelievable! Believe me, I tried to find out if this was an activity available to tourists, and reluctantly concluded that these were private individuals with their own gear. Bummer. That must have been such a rush, and such a great way to see the castle!
Those were the major highlights of the boat trip. I would definitely recommend it. Also, do not sit in the front part of the boat. Sure, you have a nice view through the glass, but if you sit on the right-hand side of the back section of the boat, in a row with a window, you'll have your own spot from which to photograph both the Basilica and the castle and won't have to fight the senior citizens for a place at the door. The ticket from Blava to Budapest cost 79 euros one-way or 99 for a return ticket, though why anyone would want to return to Bratislava after escaping...
The refreshments available onboard are extremely limited, so I would suggest stocking up on supplies. For example, the advertised cheese sandwich was unavailable, so I lunched on a (very sweet) blueberry muffin. It's also quite expensive, but they do accept Euros, Slovakian Crowns and Hungarian Forints and will provide change in the currency of your choice. So what I overpaid for my muffin, juice and coffee, I probably made up for in not paying a currency exchange fee.
My favorite thought on the river was that this was the Duna, the Great Mother River. I was flashing back to reading The Plains of Passage (by Jean Auel) and remembering Ayla and Jondalar's prehistoric journey along this river. It was very cool.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Eastern Slovakia
My itinerary for Eastern Slovakia was very carefully planned - I even had a spreadsheet. Seriously. I had looked up all of my train timetables and bus connections. I had printed out a map of the trail that I wanted to take throught the High Tatras mountains - the red line, Magisterial Trail - and made all of my reservations at the mountain chatas (cabins) including vegetarian meal half-board (breakfast and dinner). The only thing that I didn't plan for was the snow.
I woke up Sunday morning at 4:30am, feeling surprisingly alert and ready to go. I made it to the train station with time to spare before the 5:40 intercity train to Poprad-Tatry. I tried to sleep on the train, but had trouble doing so because I was so excited to finally be going to the place that I had spent so much time thinking about over the last few months. I did doze off at one point. I know this because I suddenly opened my eyes to find an old lady laying on the row of seats across from me, staring at me. Ack! Let me explain. Slovakian trains along the main Bratislava-Kosice line are cabins with two facing rows of three seats in each cabin. I had a cabin all to myself since it was such an early train. I was stretched out on one row with my bag on the row across from me. The bag was apparently what lured my traveling companion. She passed my cabin, looked in, and thought, "My, what a nice place to prop up my congested chest." She then proceeded to spray me with her TB laden coughs for the next hour or so, smiling radiantly.
After 4 hours, we arrived in Poprad-Tatry. Because of my research, I knew to go upstairs to board the electric train to Tatranska Lomnicka, which would be departing in 10 minutes. I made it and had a very nice man translate for me while I bought my ticket onboard. After another 30 minutes, I disembarked at T. L. This is when things started to go off schedule. First, it started to rain. Not in the plan, but I had brought an emergency rain poncho, the same one that I've been bringing with me on trips for the last 5 years, never actually needing it. Well, its aversive charms had finally worn off. I put on the poncho and after eating breakfast (crepes with berry jam, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce) headed up the hill to the cable car up the mountain to Skalnate Pleso, 1788m. From there, my itinerary called for me to take a trip up the 2nd cable car to Lomnicky Stit, 2634m, take some photographs and then descend back to Skalnate Pleso where my trailhead was. Unfortunately, when I got to Skalnate Pleso, my trail was covered in 2 feet of snow and more was falling from the sky.
I had a brief moment of insanity where I actually thought, "hmm, I can do this." Then, I stepped outside and found out that my light trail runners offer neither traction nor waterproofing. Agh! I purchased a return ticket on the chair lift and glumly started thinking about Plan B. Actually, I didn't have a Plan B, because the trails had been open for over a month. How could there still be snow??? Anyhoo, back at T.L., I found the local internet cafe and began frantically searching out options. My first thought was Slovensky Raj, Slovak Paradise National Park. I knew that it was in the area and had great hiking. Sounds promising. I looked into it and it looked good. The best hiking seemed to be within striking range from a place called Podlesok. I made my way down to the train stop to find that the next train back to Poprad wasn't leaving for 3 hrs. Great. I could see that my string of bad luck was just starting.
After eating scrambled eggs that first came with chunks of ham (not on the menu) and then came seriously runny (hello, salmonella), I sat dismally at the stop with the other disappointed hikers. We got back to Poprad by 3pm, and I made my way next door to the bus station. There, I found a bus that went to Hrabusice in an hour and settled in to wait for it. I remembered from my research online that Podlesok was only 2km from Hrabusice and this seemed perfect. Unfortunately, when the bus came, the driver (through the international language of gestures) made me to understand that the bus didn't go to Hrab. on Sunday. I asked how close it went. He said very far. I asked if it was closer than Poprad and he said yes, so I got on. After riding for awhile, the driver let me off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. He pointed down the road in the direction that I should take and I set off into adventure.
The first bit of the trek was actually fun. The sun had peaked out and I was happy not to be waiting at a station anymore. At least walking, I was in control of how fast I was moving. The road seemed to have lots of signs for Slovensky Raj and I was confident that I would find the place. The countryside was gorgeous and I was going to take a bunch of bucolic photos. I started off photographing some snails crossing the road because they looked interesting and it was something to do. When my camera started flashing the low battery symbol, I decided that I might as well switch to my spare battery right then. That was when the new disaster struck. Somehow it had lost the charge. I was screwed. I had left 1/2 of my stuff at the hostel in Bratislava, to lighten my pack since I would be carrying it for 3 days of hiking in the Tatras. Hah! Not only was I not hiking in the Tatras, my 3rd battery, which hopefully had retained its charge, was sitting in my purse in the left luggage room at Downtown Backpackers, Bratislava. I had who knows how many pics remaining on my good battery and certainly couldn't pass the time in idle photography. Not to mention, I had done it again and had not brought my charger. I thought that 3 full batteries for a week and a half trip was plenty. Why take the risk of losing my charger? Now, I only had 2 batteries, one of which was currently unavailable. Then, it started to rain.
6 miles later, I finally arrived at Podlesok, which rather than being a town near a state park, is in the state park. At a fork in the entrance road, I turned left rather than right and ended up at Podlesok Ranch, an amazing family-run hotel rather than at the autocamp cabins - much cheaper and much less atmospheric. I'm not sure whether that was still bad luck or if that was good luck. Either way, I was thrilled to be dry, fed and housed. My room had a flat screen TV, a private bathroom and wall lamps for reading. There was no one else in the room. I had a beautiful view out to a small creek, a wooded area, and the village of Hrabusice. I was fed the "coyboy's dinner" of local Slovak food which since it was homemade, was actually delicious. The blue cheese gnocchi was amazing and the piroshki were just fantastic. Paradise.
The next day, I got up for breakfast at 8am, then went back to bed 'til 11am, just to catch up on sleep and enjoy my solitude. I set off on my hike at 11:30. By 12 noon, I was in a small restaurant having missed the trail, gotten lost, spooked a deer and thought about what predators might be around, slipped on a wet rock and fallen on my face, then got caught in a torrential downpour. My luck hadn't changed.
In the afternoon, I walked into Hrabusice to the bus stop to try to get to Poprad to visit the NAY Elektrodom, my one faint hope of acquiring either a new battery or a charger. I walked through the rain to the stop, to find out that the next bus wasn't due to arrive for another 3 hours. I just could not do that again. My time is worth more than that. I managed to get a cab driver to agree to drive me to NAY, wait, then return me to Podlesok for the low low price of 650 Slovakian crowns. Since this came out to 32 dollars and change, it seemed a good tradeoff for an afternoon and evening of extreme aggravation. NOTE: If you intend to travel to Eastern Slovakia (I do not recommend it), get a rental car!!! Life without a car in SK seriously sucks. A 10 minute drive turns into an all day excursion. The only people who ride the bus are the Rom (gypsies) and schoolchildren. Everyone else has a car, so they don't care that there are only 3 buses per day to the most popular destinations.
Of course, NAY did not carry my battery nor a charger for my battery. This is the downside of having a brand-spanking-new camera. It just came out in March 2008 and has not made it to SK. In fact I have version 5 of my camera - they carry version 1. A wasted trip behind me, I had dinner, read, and went to sleep.
In the morning, I was determined to salvage something from this debacle. Come rain or shine, I was going to hike. I made it to Sucha Bela (Dry White Gorge), which is an amazing hike up a stream bed gorge that was running fairly high due to the very wet winter. The trail description said that it was technically difficult. I took this to mean that it would be very steep in sections and quite arduous. Well, it was steep, but it was also technically difficult. If you do not have either an excellent sense of balance or galoshes, don't make this hike. There were ladders, stepping stones, rolling logs that were covered in slime and were about 5 inches in diameter. It was exhiliarating! I can't say that it made the whole trip worth it, but it did make up for quite a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the end of the trail, because I wasn't sure that I'd have enough time before my bus came and didn't want to chance risking it. I turned around after the waterfall and hiked back down the same trail rather than around the top of the ridge and back down a different trail the way that I had planned. It was more important to me to make the one bus at 12:30 to Poprad and not have to wait for the next one at 4:30. The hike was still fab and my battery held out for a few pics of the trail and one of my hotel before finally dying.
I decided to scrub the plan to go to Spis castle (used as a location in Kull the Conqueror) and to catch my flight from Kosice to Bratislava. Instead, I returned to Blava a day early without trusting my bad luck on a plane. After all, what's the point of spending all day, numerous buses, a 45 minute hike out and another back all to visit a castle that I couldn't photograph. I wish that I were the sort of person to whom the picture doesn't matter, but I'm not and it does.
I made it to Poprad in time to catch the 1:51 intercity train back to Blava and called it a draw. Slovakia had not quite succeeded in beating me into the ground. I met some lovely people out in Paradise and had a fantastic hike. Even the 6 mile hike through the rain makes an excellent story. I was satisfied to call it a day.
I woke up Sunday morning at 4:30am, feeling surprisingly alert and ready to go. I made it to the train station with time to spare before the 5:40 intercity train to Poprad-Tatry. I tried to sleep on the train, but had trouble doing so because I was so excited to finally be going to the place that I had spent so much time thinking about over the last few months. I did doze off at one point. I know this because I suddenly opened my eyes to find an old lady laying on the row of seats across from me, staring at me. Ack! Let me explain. Slovakian trains along the main Bratislava-Kosice line are cabins with two facing rows of three seats in each cabin. I had a cabin all to myself since it was such an early train. I was stretched out on one row with my bag on the row across from me. The bag was apparently what lured my traveling companion. She passed my cabin, looked in, and thought, "My, what a nice place to prop up my congested chest." She then proceeded to spray me with her TB laden coughs for the next hour or so, smiling radiantly.
After 4 hours, we arrived in Poprad-Tatry. Because of my research, I knew to go upstairs to board the electric train to Tatranska Lomnicka, which would be departing in 10 minutes. I made it and had a very nice man translate for me while I bought my ticket onboard. After another 30 minutes, I disembarked at T. L. This is when things started to go off schedule. First, it started to rain. Not in the plan, but I had brought an emergency rain poncho, the same one that I've been bringing with me on trips for the last 5 years, never actually needing it. Well, its aversive charms had finally worn off. I put on the poncho and after eating breakfast (crepes with berry jam, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce) headed up the hill to the cable car up the mountain to Skalnate Pleso, 1788m. From there, my itinerary called for me to take a trip up the 2nd cable car to Lomnicky Stit, 2634m, take some photographs and then descend back to Skalnate Pleso where my trailhead was. Unfortunately, when I got to Skalnate Pleso, my trail was covered in 2 feet of snow and more was falling from the sky.
I had a brief moment of insanity where I actually thought, "hmm, I can do this." Then, I stepped outside and found out that my light trail runners offer neither traction nor waterproofing. Agh! I purchased a return ticket on the chair lift and glumly started thinking about Plan B. Actually, I didn't have a Plan B, because the trails had been open for over a month. How could there still be snow??? Anyhoo, back at T.L., I found the local internet cafe and began frantically searching out options. My first thought was Slovensky Raj, Slovak Paradise National Park. I knew that it was in the area and had great hiking. Sounds promising. I looked into it and it looked good. The best hiking seemed to be within striking range from a place called Podlesok. I made my way down to the train stop to find that the next train back to Poprad wasn't leaving for 3 hrs. Great. I could see that my string of bad luck was just starting.
After eating scrambled eggs that first came with chunks of ham (not on the menu) and then came seriously runny (hello, salmonella), I sat dismally at the stop with the other disappointed hikers. We got back to Poprad by 3pm, and I made my way next door to the bus station. There, I found a bus that went to Hrabusice in an hour and settled in to wait for it. I remembered from my research online that Podlesok was only 2km from Hrabusice and this seemed perfect. Unfortunately, when the bus came, the driver (through the international language of gestures) made me to understand that the bus didn't go to Hrab. on Sunday. I asked how close it went. He said very far. I asked if it was closer than Poprad and he said yes, so I got on. After riding for awhile, the driver let me off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. He pointed down the road in the direction that I should take and I set off into adventure.
The first bit of the trek was actually fun. The sun had peaked out and I was happy not to be waiting at a station anymore. At least walking, I was in control of how fast I was moving. The road seemed to have lots of signs for Slovensky Raj and I was confident that I would find the place. The countryside was gorgeous and I was going to take a bunch of bucolic photos. I started off photographing some snails crossing the road because they looked interesting and it was something to do. When my camera started flashing the low battery symbol, I decided that I might as well switch to my spare battery right then. That was when the new disaster struck. Somehow it had lost the charge. I was screwed. I had left 1/2 of my stuff at the hostel in Bratislava, to lighten my pack since I would be carrying it for 3 days of hiking in the Tatras. Hah! Not only was I not hiking in the Tatras, my 3rd battery, which hopefully had retained its charge, was sitting in my purse in the left luggage room at Downtown Backpackers, Bratislava. I had who knows how many pics remaining on my good battery and certainly couldn't pass the time in idle photography. Not to mention, I had done it again and had not brought my charger. I thought that 3 full batteries for a week and a half trip was plenty. Why take the risk of losing my charger? Now, I only had 2 batteries, one of which was currently unavailable. Then, it started to rain.
6 miles later, I finally arrived at Podlesok, which rather than being a town near a state park, is in the state park. At a fork in the entrance road, I turned left rather than right and ended up at Podlesok Ranch, an amazing family-run hotel rather than at the autocamp cabins - much cheaper and much less atmospheric. I'm not sure whether that was still bad luck or if that was good luck. Either way, I was thrilled to be dry, fed and housed. My room had a flat screen TV, a private bathroom and wall lamps for reading. There was no one else in the room. I had a beautiful view out to a small creek, a wooded area, and the village of Hrabusice. I was fed the "coyboy's dinner" of local Slovak food which since it was homemade, was actually delicious. The blue cheese gnocchi was amazing and the piroshki were just fantastic. Paradise.
The next day, I got up for breakfast at 8am, then went back to bed 'til 11am, just to catch up on sleep and enjoy my solitude. I set off on my hike at 11:30. By 12 noon, I was in a small restaurant having missed the trail, gotten lost, spooked a deer and thought about what predators might be around, slipped on a wet rock and fallen on my face, then got caught in a torrential downpour. My luck hadn't changed.
In the afternoon, I walked into Hrabusice to the bus stop to try to get to Poprad to visit the NAY Elektrodom, my one faint hope of acquiring either a new battery or a charger. I walked through the rain to the stop, to find out that the next bus wasn't due to arrive for another 3 hours. I just could not do that again. My time is worth more than that. I managed to get a cab driver to agree to drive me to NAY, wait, then return me to Podlesok for the low low price of 650 Slovakian crowns. Since this came out to 32 dollars and change, it seemed a good tradeoff for an afternoon and evening of extreme aggravation. NOTE: If you intend to travel to Eastern Slovakia (I do not recommend it), get a rental car!!! Life without a car in SK seriously sucks. A 10 minute drive turns into an all day excursion. The only people who ride the bus are the Rom (gypsies) and schoolchildren. Everyone else has a car, so they don't care that there are only 3 buses per day to the most popular destinations.
Of course, NAY did not carry my battery nor a charger for my battery. This is the downside of having a brand-spanking-new camera. It just came out in March 2008 and has not made it to SK. In fact I have version 5 of my camera - they carry version 1. A wasted trip behind me, I had dinner, read, and went to sleep.
In the morning, I was determined to salvage something from this debacle. Come rain or shine, I was going to hike. I made it to Sucha Bela (Dry White Gorge), which is an amazing hike up a stream bed gorge that was running fairly high due to the very wet winter. The trail description said that it was technically difficult. I took this to mean that it would be very steep in sections and quite arduous. Well, it was steep, but it was also technically difficult. If you do not have either an excellent sense of balance or galoshes, don't make this hike. There were ladders, stepping stones, rolling logs that were covered in slime and were about 5 inches in diameter. It was exhiliarating! I can't say that it made the whole trip worth it, but it did make up for quite a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the end of the trail, because I wasn't sure that I'd have enough time before my bus came and didn't want to chance risking it. I turned around after the waterfall and hiked back down the same trail rather than around the top of the ridge and back down a different trail the way that I had planned. It was more important to me to make the one bus at 12:30 to Poprad and not have to wait for the next one at 4:30. The hike was still fab and my battery held out for a few pics of the trail and one of my hotel before finally dying.
I decided to scrub the plan to go to Spis castle (used as a location in Kull the Conqueror) and to catch my flight from Kosice to Bratislava. Instead, I returned to Blava a day early without trusting my bad luck on a plane. After all, what's the point of spending all day, numerous buses, a 45 minute hike out and another back all to visit a castle that I couldn't photograph. I wish that I were the sort of person to whom the picture doesn't matter, but I'm not and it does.
I made it to Poprad in time to catch the 1:51 intercity train back to Blava and called it a draw. Slovakia had not quite succeeded in beating me into the ground. I met some lovely people out in Paradise and had a fantastic hike. Even the 6 mile hike through the rain makes an excellent story. I was satisfied to call it a day.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of the Slovak Republic. It is also a mere 40 miles or so from Vienna, and not much further from Budapest. In fact, that is what sparked my visit here. Back in December, I was thinking about where I wanted to go for my next trip - I am almost always thinking about my next trip. I decided on Budapest as a destination and a week and a half for my duration. Well, then I thought about what I could do around Buda for a week or so and discovered that hey! right along the Danube river are 3 national capitals: Budapest, Hungary; Bratislava, Slovakia; and Vienna, Austria. I had me an idea.
After reading an Eastern Europe guidebook, a trip began to take shape. I wanted to end my trip in Budapest. Logically then, I should fly into Vienna, make my way to Bratislava and from there on to Budapest. Hmm. That still left a couple of days. I started looking into the Slovak Republic. Slovakia has been independant since 1993 only because the Czech Republic couldn´t believe their good luck that the Slovakś wanted to be independant, since all of the wealth lay on the Czech side of the border. I discovered that this land was the frontier of the Ottoman-Christian battleground and is dotted with over 300 castles. It is undeveloped when compared to other European states, but has a disproportianate number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. I thought that this bore looking into and decided to spend a good chunk of my trip in Slovakia.
Accordingly, from Vienna, I boarded my train and was whisked off to Bratislava, without even needing to pass through customs or to have my passport stamped. I arrived at around 9pm at the main train station. The directions from my hostel, Downtown Backpackers, was to board bus number 93 from in front of the station and ride it 2 stops. Easier said than done. It took me a couple of tries to locate the bus stop. Then, the next 93 wasn´t coming for about 15 minutes. I used that time to attempt to purchase a bus ticket. There were a good dozen machines that looked like parking meters. Like parking meters, they only accept coins. Currency exchanges do not trade in coins, only paper. I had a huge wad of useless paper money and no bus ticket. To add insult to injury, while I was figuring this out and trying to shove a bill in the ticket dispenser, a man standing right next to me let loose with a loud fart. Lovely. I decided to try inside the station for an information booth, etc. No luck. There was a tabak stand, which I approached thinking that like in Vienna, they might also sell bus tickets. Nope. So I bought some water, thinking to get change. The vendor gave me back paper currency and just kept shaking her head when I pointed to the huge pile of coins clearly visible in her drawer. After that joy, I went outside the station to see my bus pulling up to the stop. Ack! I ran and barely jumped on before it took off. I had no ticket, but luckily no one checked. I say luckily because it is a 70 USD fine to be caught on the bus without a validated ticket - you must buy the ticket, which is good for 10 minutes, ahead of time and then validate it in a time and date stamp machine on the bus.
After 2 stops, I got off of the bus and looked blankly around the stop. That took me to the end of my instructions and I had no clue where the hostel was from there. Luckily, I picked the correct direction on the first try and found the hostel almost immediately. They had my reservation so that was fine, but I almost wish that they had lost my reservation. The place opens into a bar. It is filled with smoke and incredibly loud. The dreadlocked guy working the reservations desk seemed to know very little about anything. Not bus tickets, train times, restaurant locations, laundry, etc. etc. He was cute, but not much help. He did succeed in checking me in though. I dropped off my bag, made myself a cheese sandwich from my Viennese provisions and settled in with my book. I was asleep by 11:30, thinking that I´d get an early start in the morning and catch the early light for some photos.
The best laid plans of mice and men... 3 drunk New Zealand boys came stumbling and laughing into the room at 4am. They proceeded to turn on the light and to loudly start rehashing their night. Great. I got up, went to the bathroom, came back, put in my ear plugs, and finally asked, "can you please be quiet?" They eventually turned out the light and went to sleep, but this was no better. 2 of the 3 were champion snorers, one on the bunk above me and one on the bunk across from me. Earplugs could do nothing against such a concerted attack. Then their somnambulant forms began releasing gas. I was still awake at 7:30am, which is when I had planned to get up and explore Blava. Instead, I finally got back to sleep and didn´t get up ´til 9:30. The charming fellows in my room did act as alarm clocks. When I say that I got up at 9:30, I really mean that they did. They started throwing things at each other and calling each other names and laughing like hyenas. Apparently, no one ever taught them a little thing called consideration for others. When I got up and went off to the showers, one apologized for waking me up. I pointed out that actually not only had they woken me but had then kept me up for 3.5 hrs. They found that very amusing and told me that that's what hostels are all about.
Well, my hostel is also filthy. The showers were disgusting. Nor do they serve any sort of breakfast. The downstairs bar was still filthy and smoky from the night before. I got out of there as quickly as possible and made my way to Old Town. Ahhh. Finally, some beauty. I wandered without a map or a definite destination, but still managed to see the major sights: Michaelś Gate, Bratislava Hrad (Castle), and St. Martin's Cathedral. Almost everything is under construction, which is what I assume the guides mean when they say that Blava is undergoing a "renaissance", but it's charming and looks to be even better when the construction is complete. I enjoyed my wandering, especially after having a (bad) croissant and a (good) cup of coffee. It is amusing that Blava is also having a festival this weekend and I heard some awesome music by 4 musicians with huge heads, literally - check out the photos!
The castle was nice, but it is closed for renovations and strongly reminds me of similar "historical" edifices in Russia that have all been built over the last 20 years. Yet, even knowing that it is nowhere near historical, the castle is still beautiful. By then, I had worked up an appetite. I had passed a Mexican restaurant near the main square and decided that a quesadilla sounded like just the thing for lunch. That was a big big mistake. When I got to the restaurant, all of the sidewalk seats were taken. I should have moved on. Instead, I sat at a table with a view out the window. Then, the waiter never came to take my order. I finally flagged him down after about 20 minutes. I really should have left, but I had chosen my meal and really wanted it. I ordered. He immediately brought me an opened bottle of Bonaqua (was it really tap water?) which I drank. The thought of paying four dollars for tap water and having to start over somewhere new is the only thing that kept me there over the next 1/2 hour. Seriously, 30 minutes. That was when my waiter appeared to tell me that they did not have my cheese and spinach quesadilla and that I would have to have ham and cheese. I told him that I am a vegetarian and asked if I could just have a cheese quesadilla. He got a strange look on his face and disappeared. I assumed that meant yes. I did think that it may be that the quesadillas are not actually made on site, just defrosted, which would entail them picking bits of ham out of my cheese quesadilla, but I carefully didn´t ask, preserving my veggie hear's plausible deniability. Then, 15 minutes later, he brought me my quesadilla and potato salad (don´t ask, it seemed like a good combination). However, my quesadilla and guacamole had turned into quesadilla and spaghetti sauce. They don´t seem to have fully grasped the concept of salsa here. I called the waiter over and asked where my guac was. He said that the ham and cheese quesadilla came with salsa. I said, yes, but I ordered the cheese quesadilla that came with guacamole. He asked if I wanted guac to which I gave him an exasperated, "yes!" The food was OK. Definitely not worth the 20 dollars I paid for crappy mini quesadillas and a side of potato salad, but OK. I had to wait another 10 minutes after finishing my meal for the check, during which time the lady behind me loudly passed gas. I´m beginning to think that Slovakia's state motto should be The Land of the Speaking Ass. Then I see that I have been charged for the guacamole which was supposed to be part of my order. That was it. I was already pissed by the lack of service and opened bottle of water, the crappy food, and the foul odor - now I wasn´t going to take it anymore. I confronted the waiter and he insisted that the charge remain. I could have spoken with his manager and blasted them, but I was too angry to hold it together. I paid for the meal and told him, "You are a horrible waiter," and walked out to the sound of him asking me why I would say that. What a joke. I guess that this is another reason not to go to developing countries - they also have developing wait staff. Needless to say, I left no tip. Let him drink my leftover marina sauce/salsa if he wants a tip.
After that debacle, I felt sick to my stomach from the conflict and needed to chill, so I stepped into a lovely indoor courtyard and sat myself down in the internet cafe. Thereś nothing like blogging to soothe the savage breast.
Downtown Backpackers actually offered a pretty good 2nd night. I got to meet a very cool French chef from Brittany. He works at one of the resorts there and works 9 months on, 3 months off. Nice. He commented on the fact that he never meets working class Americans abroad. I tried to explain the difficulties of buying a thousand dollar plane ticket on a minimum wage budget, but he still seemed dissatisfied. I felt obscurely guilty for not being a blue collar worker. Brotherhood, fraternity... it is always fun to get the Socialist point of view. I also chatted up 2 US students from Tulane and Loyola who are studying in Dublin and Brno, Czech Republic. It seems like the only people traveling from the US are students, and here I thought that I timed my trip to avoid the summer/winter school holidays!
The two Louisianians headed off to Sub Club for a drum and bass set, and I headed off to sleep not sorry to be leaving Bratislava but happy to have seen it. The next morning, I needed to be up early to leave for my big three day hike of the Carpathian mountains!
After reading an Eastern Europe guidebook, a trip began to take shape. I wanted to end my trip in Budapest. Logically then, I should fly into Vienna, make my way to Bratislava and from there on to Budapest. Hmm. That still left a couple of days. I started looking into the Slovak Republic. Slovakia has been independant since 1993 only because the Czech Republic couldn´t believe their good luck that the Slovakś wanted to be independant, since all of the wealth lay on the Czech side of the border. I discovered that this land was the frontier of the Ottoman-Christian battleground and is dotted with over 300 castles. It is undeveloped when compared to other European states, but has a disproportianate number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. I thought that this bore looking into and decided to spend a good chunk of my trip in Slovakia.
Accordingly, from Vienna, I boarded my train and was whisked off to Bratislava, without even needing to pass through customs or to have my passport stamped. I arrived at around 9pm at the main train station. The directions from my hostel, Downtown Backpackers, was to board bus number 93 from in front of the station and ride it 2 stops. Easier said than done. It took me a couple of tries to locate the bus stop. Then, the next 93 wasn´t coming for about 15 minutes. I used that time to attempt to purchase a bus ticket. There were a good dozen machines that looked like parking meters. Like parking meters, they only accept coins. Currency exchanges do not trade in coins, only paper. I had a huge wad of useless paper money and no bus ticket. To add insult to injury, while I was figuring this out and trying to shove a bill in the ticket dispenser, a man standing right next to me let loose with a loud fart. Lovely. I decided to try inside the station for an information booth, etc. No luck. There was a tabak stand, which I approached thinking that like in Vienna, they might also sell bus tickets. Nope. So I bought some water, thinking to get change. The vendor gave me back paper currency and just kept shaking her head when I pointed to the huge pile of coins clearly visible in her drawer. After that joy, I went outside the station to see my bus pulling up to the stop. Ack! I ran and barely jumped on before it took off. I had no ticket, but luckily no one checked. I say luckily because it is a 70 USD fine to be caught on the bus without a validated ticket - you must buy the ticket, which is good for 10 minutes, ahead of time and then validate it in a time and date stamp machine on the bus.
After 2 stops, I got off of the bus and looked blankly around the stop. That took me to the end of my instructions and I had no clue where the hostel was from there. Luckily, I picked the correct direction on the first try and found the hostel almost immediately. They had my reservation so that was fine, but I almost wish that they had lost my reservation. The place opens into a bar. It is filled with smoke and incredibly loud. The dreadlocked guy working the reservations desk seemed to know very little about anything. Not bus tickets, train times, restaurant locations, laundry, etc. etc. He was cute, but not much help. He did succeed in checking me in though. I dropped off my bag, made myself a cheese sandwich from my Viennese provisions and settled in with my book. I was asleep by 11:30, thinking that I´d get an early start in the morning and catch the early light for some photos.
The best laid plans of mice and men... 3 drunk New Zealand boys came stumbling and laughing into the room at 4am. They proceeded to turn on the light and to loudly start rehashing their night. Great. I got up, went to the bathroom, came back, put in my ear plugs, and finally asked, "can you please be quiet?" They eventually turned out the light and went to sleep, but this was no better. 2 of the 3 were champion snorers, one on the bunk above me and one on the bunk across from me. Earplugs could do nothing against such a concerted attack. Then their somnambulant forms began releasing gas. I was still awake at 7:30am, which is when I had planned to get up and explore Blava. Instead, I finally got back to sleep and didn´t get up ´til 9:30. The charming fellows in my room did act as alarm clocks. When I say that I got up at 9:30, I really mean that they did. They started throwing things at each other and calling each other names and laughing like hyenas. Apparently, no one ever taught them a little thing called consideration for others. When I got up and went off to the showers, one apologized for waking me up. I pointed out that actually not only had they woken me but had then kept me up for 3.5 hrs. They found that very amusing and told me that that's what hostels are all about.
Well, my hostel is also filthy. The showers were disgusting. Nor do they serve any sort of breakfast. The downstairs bar was still filthy and smoky from the night before. I got out of there as quickly as possible and made my way to Old Town. Ahhh. Finally, some beauty. I wandered without a map or a definite destination, but still managed to see the major sights: Michaelś Gate, Bratislava Hrad (Castle), and St. Martin's Cathedral. Almost everything is under construction, which is what I assume the guides mean when they say that Blava is undergoing a "renaissance", but it's charming and looks to be even better when the construction is complete. I enjoyed my wandering, especially after having a (bad) croissant and a (good) cup of coffee. It is amusing that Blava is also having a festival this weekend and I heard some awesome music by 4 musicians with huge heads, literally - check out the photos!
The castle was nice, but it is closed for renovations and strongly reminds me of similar "historical" edifices in Russia that have all been built over the last 20 years. Yet, even knowing that it is nowhere near historical, the castle is still beautiful. By then, I had worked up an appetite. I had passed a Mexican restaurant near the main square and decided that a quesadilla sounded like just the thing for lunch. That was a big big mistake. When I got to the restaurant, all of the sidewalk seats were taken. I should have moved on. Instead, I sat at a table with a view out the window. Then, the waiter never came to take my order. I finally flagged him down after about 20 minutes. I really should have left, but I had chosen my meal and really wanted it. I ordered. He immediately brought me an opened bottle of Bonaqua (was it really tap water?) which I drank. The thought of paying four dollars for tap water and having to start over somewhere new is the only thing that kept me there over the next 1/2 hour. Seriously, 30 minutes. That was when my waiter appeared to tell me that they did not have my cheese and spinach quesadilla and that I would have to have ham and cheese. I told him that I am a vegetarian and asked if I could just have a cheese quesadilla. He got a strange look on his face and disappeared. I assumed that meant yes. I did think that it may be that the quesadillas are not actually made on site, just defrosted, which would entail them picking bits of ham out of my cheese quesadilla, but I carefully didn´t ask, preserving my veggie hear's plausible deniability. Then, 15 minutes later, he brought me my quesadilla and potato salad (don´t ask, it seemed like a good combination). However, my quesadilla and guacamole had turned into quesadilla and spaghetti sauce. They don´t seem to have fully grasped the concept of salsa here. I called the waiter over and asked where my guac was. He said that the ham and cheese quesadilla came with salsa. I said, yes, but I ordered the cheese quesadilla that came with guacamole. He asked if I wanted guac to which I gave him an exasperated, "yes!" The food was OK. Definitely not worth the 20 dollars I paid for crappy mini quesadillas and a side of potato salad, but OK. I had to wait another 10 minutes after finishing my meal for the check, during which time the lady behind me loudly passed gas. I´m beginning to think that Slovakia's state motto should be The Land of the Speaking Ass. Then I see that I have been charged for the guacamole which was supposed to be part of my order. That was it. I was already pissed by the lack of service and opened bottle of water, the crappy food, and the foul odor - now I wasn´t going to take it anymore. I confronted the waiter and he insisted that the charge remain. I could have spoken with his manager and blasted them, but I was too angry to hold it together. I paid for the meal and told him, "You are a horrible waiter," and walked out to the sound of him asking me why I would say that. What a joke. I guess that this is another reason not to go to developing countries - they also have developing wait staff. Needless to say, I left no tip. Let him drink my leftover marina sauce/salsa if he wants a tip.
After that debacle, I felt sick to my stomach from the conflict and needed to chill, so I stepped into a lovely indoor courtyard and sat myself down in the internet cafe. Thereś nothing like blogging to soothe the savage breast.
Downtown Backpackers actually offered a pretty good 2nd night. I got to meet a very cool French chef from Brittany. He works at one of the resorts there and works 9 months on, 3 months off. Nice. He commented on the fact that he never meets working class Americans abroad. I tried to explain the difficulties of buying a thousand dollar plane ticket on a minimum wage budget, but he still seemed dissatisfied. I felt obscurely guilty for not being a blue collar worker. Brotherhood, fraternity... it is always fun to get the Socialist point of view. I also chatted up 2 US students from Tulane and Loyola who are studying in Dublin and Brno, Czech Republic. It seems like the only people traveling from the US are students, and here I thought that I timed my trip to avoid the summer/winter school holidays!
The two Louisianians headed off to Sub Club for a drum and bass set, and I headed off to sleep not sorry to be leaving Bratislava but happy to have seen it. The next morning, I needed to be up early to leave for my big three day hike of the Carpathian mountains!
Wien - Vienna
What an amazing place! I absolutely love Vienna. I can´t say that I did anything too terribly exciting, but just being there and chilling out during the May Day holidays was fantastic.
After my brutally long flight (16 hrs with a layover in London), I checked in to Wombats: The Lounge. Wombats hostel is fabulous. It is spotlessly clean; there are electronic keycards for the doors and for the in-room lockers; there is a bar, a kitchen, a cafe for breakfast, a lounge area with cushions, an internet kiosk, a luggage storage area, and a pool table. Can anyone ask for more in a hostel?
I lucked out right from the start by meeting up with a fun trio from the San Diego area. Amanda, Dani and Hans are taking a few weeks off from school to learn firsthand about Europe and strange drinking habits. I met them in our shared dormitory and then joined them down in the bar for drinks. Itś a good omen to have a great first night, especially when jet lagged and staying in a dorm room.
After having brekky and waving adieu to my new chums, I headed off to see the morning training of the Lippizaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School at Hofburg Palace. I have been reading about these horses since I was a horse-mad little girl, so it was the number one item on my Vienna To Do list. I made my way from Wombats down Mariahilfer Strasse to the Palace complex. Once there, I discovered that a Vienna radio station was throwing a festival. The grounds were being set up and a band was running their soundcheck from the stage. Then, the song 99 Red Balloons started to play and I was just so so happy.
I found the entrance to the Riding School and joined the line for tickets. Immediately, a German woman and her son tried to cut in front of me, but I had been through the wars in China and carefully shoved my elbow in front of her face to let her know (subtly) that she needed to BACK OFF! This worked, and we had a pleasant exchange regarding her travels in the United States. However, at some point, I became distracted and a whole Portuguese family of five shoved their way in front of me. With no common language and with a formidable foe in the form of the family matron, I conceded defeat and stewed, muttering "queu jumpers" under my breath and glaring. Such is life: you win some, you lose some.
The stress of the line was worth it. Those horses are amazing. I couldn´t believe that I was actually there. The building itself is a gorgeous 3 story baroque masterpiece. It is a temple to horses. The riders were mostly training the horses in simple manuevers, so I didn´t see any of the tricks like having them walk on two legs (crow hopping), etc. However, just seeing them was enough for me. I took loads of pictures just like everyone around me, and was stunned when a steward approached me and told me that pictures aren´t allowed. Itś like when the speed of traffic on a freeway edges up to 80 and you are the one pulled over. Why did the copper have to pick on you??? I put my camera away, climbed up to the second balcony level, and started snapping away again. By this time, I had discovered that I´ve developed a brand new allergy...to horses! Between the runny nose, watering eyes, and constant sneezing, I was almost pleased to be caught with my camera out a second time, because I chose to take it as a sign that it was time to leave. By that point, my throat had began swelling shut. I love allergies!
After the horsies, the only thing left on my to-do list was to explore the Inner Stadt, and to sit in a coffee house drinking espresso and eating appel struedel. I began with the wandering. I made my way over to Stephansdom, the most famous church from the Hapsburg epoch. It is the most stunning cathedral that I have ever seen - the interior, the exterior is undergoing rehabilitation and is not-so lovely right now. If you are ever there, be sure to ascend the North tower. The South tower has the famous stairs, which are a great workout, but terminates inside a tower. The North tower has an elevator and terminates in an outdoor viewing platform above the bell tower with fantastic views. I was even able to see the famous ferris wheel that was featured in the classic Orson Wells movie, The Third Man. It is amazing. The cathedral has so much detail and is so inspiring. There was a menś choir singing while I was there and I had a strong understanding of why religion was so popular for so many years. Imagine a life with no books, no TV, no world travel, no cheap dyes for clothing, no easy access to bath water. The most beautiful thing in life would be that cathedral. 600 years ago, I would definitely have made the pilgrimage along with the rest of my village.
The whole Inner Stadt is fantastic. I especially love how tall the buildings are. Most are 7 stories high, with a few mere 5 story buildings. This makes for interesting winding streets and shady passageways. I didn´t set a destination, just wandered around. I did stop for a plate of tofu and veggies at a Chinese restaurant, then kept wandering. Eventually, when my feet were really hurting from the cobblestones, I made my way out to the Ring Road and hopped on the number one tram that circumnavigates the Inner Stadt. I jumped off at Parliament for another photo op and then made my way to Cafe Central, the kaffee haus that Trotsky used to hang out at. However, I don´t think that he had to wait an hour for a table, or paid 4 euro for a cup of joe. I regretfully decided to head elsewhere. :(
A good story regarding the start of the Viennese coffee house tradition says that following the Ottoman siege of Vienna, the Turkish army decamped so rapidly that they left behind a big bag of coffee beans. No one knew what these strange things were, except for one man who ground them up and began serving the first coffee in the Western world. He founded the first Viennese coffee house and is directly responsible for my morning addiction. Just as a note, another good story from that siege is that when the army arrived, the Ottoman Sultan declared that by the end of three days, he would be having breakfast inside the cityś walls. Well, Vienna was a tough nut to crack, and on the morning of the third day, the Viennese commander called down a message to the Sultan. He said, "Tell the Sultan that his breakfast is getting cold!"
I decided that I had seen enough of the Inner Stadt and that it was time to jump over to the Museum Quarter. This is a relatively new area of Vienna. Itś the site of a dozen or so museums and is a wonderful gathering spot for Viennaś citizens, young and old. Here, I had my apfelstruedel and kaffee (fantastic), and people-watched to my heartś content. I had planned to just stop by, and ended up staying for an hour before heading off to the Volkstheater underground station to catch the U3 line back to Westbahnhoff station - very near my hostel. The Vienna underground is excellent. There are plenty of electronic kiosks, with many languages programmed, from which to purchase tickets; the signs are in both German and English; there are metro system maps all over the place; and there are electonic signboards to tell you when the next couple of trains will arrive.
After picking up my pack and purchasing provisions (bread, cheese and water), I took tram 18 to Sudbahnhoff train station to catch a train to Bratislava. I am on a tight schedule and didn´t have time to linger, but Vienna is certainly a place to linger if at all possible. Especially fun was looking around and seeing my hair color, my pink skin tone, my grandfatherś eyes and my brotherś nose. I never realized how German I look until now. My favorite phrase had to be "Spriechen zie Inglitsh?" because people kept speaking to me in German. Oh, and just to be topical, it was interesting to be in Vienna during the international scandal regarding the man who imprisoned and bred with his daughter, creating 6 (grand)children. It was on the cover of ever newspaper that I saw.
All in all, I would highly recommend a weekend in Vienna to whomever can arrange one. Itś a beautiful city with friendly people, wonderful food, and great weather. I wish that I´d had more time, but themś the breaks. If wishes were fishes...
After my brutally long flight (16 hrs with a layover in London), I checked in to Wombats: The Lounge. Wombats hostel is fabulous. It is spotlessly clean; there are electronic keycards for the doors and for the in-room lockers; there is a bar, a kitchen, a cafe for breakfast, a lounge area with cushions, an internet kiosk, a luggage storage area, and a pool table. Can anyone ask for more in a hostel?
I lucked out right from the start by meeting up with a fun trio from the San Diego area. Amanda, Dani and Hans are taking a few weeks off from school to learn firsthand about Europe and strange drinking habits. I met them in our shared dormitory and then joined them down in the bar for drinks. Itś a good omen to have a great first night, especially when jet lagged and staying in a dorm room.
After having brekky and waving adieu to my new chums, I headed off to see the morning training of the Lippizaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School at Hofburg Palace. I have been reading about these horses since I was a horse-mad little girl, so it was the number one item on my Vienna To Do list. I made my way from Wombats down Mariahilfer Strasse to the Palace complex. Once there, I discovered that a Vienna radio station was throwing a festival. The grounds were being set up and a band was running their soundcheck from the stage. Then, the song 99 Red Balloons started to play and I was just so so happy.
I found the entrance to the Riding School and joined the line for tickets. Immediately, a German woman and her son tried to cut in front of me, but I had been through the wars in China and carefully shoved my elbow in front of her face to let her know (subtly) that she needed to BACK OFF! This worked, and we had a pleasant exchange regarding her travels in the United States. However, at some point, I became distracted and a whole Portuguese family of five shoved their way in front of me. With no common language and with a formidable foe in the form of the family matron, I conceded defeat and stewed, muttering "queu jumpers" under my breath and glaring. Such is life: you win some, you lose some.
The stress of the line was worth it. Those horses are amazing. I couldn´t believe that I was actually there. The building itself is a gorgeous 3 story baroque masterpiece. It is a temple to horses. The riders were mostly training the horses in simple manuevers, so I didn´t see any of the tricks like having them walk on two legs (crow hopping), etc. However, just seeing them was enough for me. I took loads of pictures just like everyone around me, and was stunned when a steward approached me and told me that pictures aren´t allowed. Itś like when the speed of traffic on a freeway edges up to 80 and you are the one pulled over. Why did the copper have to pick on you??? I put my camera away, climbed up to the second balcony level, and started snapping away again. By this time, I had discovered that I´ve developed a brand new allergy...to horses! Between the runny nose, watering eyes, and constant sneezing, I was almost pleased to be caught with my camera out a second time, because I chose to take it as a sign that it was time to leave. By that point, my throat had began swelling shut. I love allergies!
After the horsies, the only thing left on my to-do list was to explore the Inner Stadt, and to sit in a coffee house drinking espresso and eating appel struedel. I began with the wandering. I made my way over to Stephansdom, the most famous church from the Hapsburg epoch. It is the most stunning cathedral that I have ever seen - the interior, the exterior is undergoing rehabilitation and is not-so lovely right now. If you are ever there, be sure to ascend the North tower. The South tower has the famous stairs, which are a great workout, but terminates inside a tower. The North tower has an elevator and terminates in an outdoor viewing platform above the bell tower with fantastic views. I was even able to see the famous ferris wheel that was featured in the classic Orson Wells movie, The Third Man. It is amazing. The cathedral has so much detail and is so inspiring. There was a menś choir singing while I was there and I had a strong understanding of why religion was so popular for so many years. Imagine a life with no books, no TV, no world travel, no cheap dyes for clothing, no easy access to bath water. The most beautiful thing in life would be that cathedral. 600 years ago, I would definitely have made the pilgrimage along with the rest of my village.
The whole Inner Stadt is fantastic. I especially love how tall the buildings are. Most are 7 stories high, with a few mere 5 story buildings. This makes for interesting winding streets and shady passageways. I didn´t set a destination, just wandered around. I did stop for a plate of tofu and veggies at a Chinese restaurant, then kept wandering. Eventually, when my feet were really hurting from the cobblestones, I made my way out to the Ring Road and hopped on the number one tram that circumnavigates the Inner Stadt. I jumped off at Parliament for another photo op and then made my way to Cafe Central, the kaffee haus that Trotsky used to hang out at. However, I don´t think that he had to wait an hour for a table, or paid 4 euro for a cup of joe. I regretfully decided to head elsewhere. :(
A good story regarding the start of the Viennese coffee house tradition says that following the Ottoman siege of Vienna, the Turkish army decamped so rapidly that they left behind a big bag of coffee beans. No one knew what these strange things were, except for one man who ground them up and began serving the first coffee in the Western world. He founded the first Viennese coffee house and is directly responsible for my morning addiction. Just as a note, another good story from that siege is that when the army arrived, the Ottoman Sultan declared that by the end of three days, he would be having breakfast inside the cityś walls. Well, Vienna was a tough nut to crack, and on the morning of the third day, the Viennese commander called down a message to the Sultan. He said, "Tell the Sultan that his breakfast is getting cold!"
I decided that I had seen enough of the Inner Stadt and that it was time to jump over to the Museum Quarter. This is a relatively new area of Vienna. Itś the site of a dozen or so museums and is a wonderful gathering spot for Viennaś citizens, young and old. Here, I had my apfelstruedel and kaffee (fantastic), and people-watched to my heartś content. I had planned to just stop by, and ended up staying for an hour before heading off to the Volkstheater underground station to catch the U3 line back to Westbahnhoff station - very near my hostel. The Vienna underground is excellent. There are plenty of electronic kiosks, with many languages programmed, from which to purchase tickets; the signs are in both German and English; there are metro system maps all over the place; and there are electonic signboards to tell you when the next couple of trains will arrive.
After picking up my pack and purchasing provisions (bread, cheese and water), I took tram 18 to Sudbahnhoff train station to catch a train to Bratislava. I am on a tight schedule and didn´t have time to linger, but Vienna is certainly a place to linger if at all possible. Especially fun was looking around and seeing my hair color, my pink skin tone, my grandfatherś eyes and my brotherś nose. I never realized how German I look until now. My favorite phrase had to be "Spriechen zie Inglitsh?" because people kept speaking to me in German. Oh, and just to be topical, it was interesting to be in Vienna during the international scandal regarding the man who imprisoned and bred with his daughter, creating 6 (grand)children. It was on the cover of ever newspaper that I saw.
All in all, I would highly recommend a weekend in Vienna to whomever can arrange one. Itś a beautiful city with friendly people, wonderful food, and great weather. I wish that I´d had more time, but themś the breaks. If wishes were fishes...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
