February 2010- it's all about shipping

Another month on the road… a better half of it was stationary but more out of necessity then design- we had to organise shipping of the car to South America and it took a week of back’n’froing with emails in Costa Rica (camping at Francis and Jackie’s place), another half a week of paper work in Panama City and nearly a week of waiting for the ship to arrive in Cartagena, Colombia- fucking shippings!
What did we actually do in this past month others than that? Well, we spend some time driving dirt roads on Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica searching for (and finding some) surfing beaches, we grooved around for a couple of days on the Costa Rican Caribbean coast smoking pot and taking turns swinging in our hammock. We also visited in Panama a lovely town called El Valle which lies in the crater of an extinct volcano; it is very pretty up there, it’s got some warm springs and special mud to wallow in, there is a waterfall in the woods and I saw a very nice looking coffee shop; altogether, it was a nice visit.
Panama City was damn hot and damn muggy- shopping centres where the only escape from it. I think the Canal was about the only exciting place I’ve seen there. The we drove to Colon. The nite before we shipped our car from we stopped in a marina for the nite and that was really cool. It was half an hour out of Colon, to get there we drove through the locks on Panama Canal and once in the marina we got to use their hot showers and washing machines- each one a rarity for a traveller in those parts. And when it rained, I was ready to dance. I loved that place.
As for the shipping, well, the whole loading was of course more tiresome and complex than we thought with lots of waiting in between- waiting in a queue to pay, waiting for an inspection, waiting in a queue to pay again, waiting for another inspection, then the ramp shoot off from underneath our car when driving into the container, collecting my foot on its way, so the car was half stuck and I was bruised- more waiting. Then the crane couldn’t reach the container to place it on the ground as it was standing too deep under the roof- so we are waiting some more. And when our car was finally inside, it was such a close fit that the guys, who secure the car in the container, had to crawl on the roof and underneath it to do their job, hence it took them quite a while. 4 hours and 1 bruised limb later we were free to go. Relocating from Colon to Panama City and then to Tocumen airport by buses went really smooth. We got out of Cartagena airport by taxi and easily found a place to stay in town. We did it all in one day.
S we are in Cartagena de Indias now. I am sitting in our basic little hostel room under a fan where I spent most of the last 5 days. The boat had delay and we’ve been here longer than we planned. It’s a pretty place, I mean, the old town is pretty, and where we are staying (Getsemani) the street is kind of mix of bums, whores and backpackers- we make for an interesting crowd. There are cheap hostels here, cheap food, cheap beer, probably also cheap sex. Only alcohol is expensive. I don’t know about drugs, I just know they are there.
It is Wednesday today, 3 March 2010. So far, I discovered for myself in Colombia good coffee in the Juan Valdez chain, nice seafood dish called Cazuela de Mariscos, boca queso, blackberry milkshakes and freshly made lemonade. I’ve got a feeling there is much more to discover, but I am taking it slow- one step at the time. Too much excitement can kill and I am such a fragile girl.

Central America- January 2010

Here I come again with my road stories…

The month of January 2010 we spent mostly in Central America; a few days in Chiapas, Mexico, around a week of road tripping on the Yucatan Peninsula, still in Mexico, for a week we were indulging ourselves in Guatemala’s hot springs, lakes and coffee shops, 4days on El Salvadorian beaches, maybe 4 hours in Honduras but even that felt too long, 5days on beautiful Nicaraguan coast and on 1 Feb we crossed over to Costa Rica. The idea of this recki was to find some cool surfing beaches, where we could linger for a bit on our way back North. So far we found a couple of those- El Tunco in El Salvador and Playa Madera in Nicaragua. Hopefully, in Costa Rica there will be more.

Jan was good but it was not all peaches and cream. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed when I woke up on the Caribbean coast near Tulum and all I could see was developed for long kilometres beaches full of garbage. On the top of it, it was very windy hence chilly hence not really a swimming weather- so much for the hot tropical sea from the folders, heah. But it’s not like I had a bad time there- Mr Coffey and I hauled a bottle of Mezcal to the beach and worked on it till it was empty gossiping like schoolgirls on Friday nite sleepover; made me feel young again.

Guatemala was simply great and after reading all the travel advisory crap, it took us by surprise. Colourful, vibrant villages where people seem to live in tune with tradition, beautiful volcanic landscapes, great coffee and cakes, the food I tried was soooo good, that I wished I was a cow and had four stomachs. You know those groovy colourful blankets that they have in Mexico? I reckon that the Guatemalan blankets look even better. I still have a kick when I think that we bought one. I always wanted to have a blanket like this. Oh, yeah- last but not least, Guatemalan organic weed- maaaan… and I mean, maaaaaaaaan. It makes you incapable of any bad thoughts about yourself; no matter what you do, you just can’t go wrong. I bet this is all that their politicians smoke, because the same people have been screwing the country for decades.

The first day in El Salvador we found this fantastic surfing place in district of Libertad- El Tunco. It’s a laid back surf village, waves are just amazing and carry you so far that you actually don’t even need a board to have fun. And it’s cheap, cheap, cheap. After spending there a few days we were thinking that all the Salvadorian beaches were going to be as amazing. Having high hopes we arrived on the south coast of El Salvador where beaches were as disappointing as were the high prices and bogan residents. We spent the night on the gas station, squeezed in between two buses and a neon sign- still better option I thought; and the next morning we left the country.

And then came Honduras. We were made welcome to the country first thing on the boarder by a hospitable policeman, who was asking for different documents as long as found one we didn’t have, then took Mick’s passport and refused to give it back until somebody mentioned to us that $100 might make him change his mind or we have to return to El Salvador. The car in front of us with 4 Israeli managed to bring the bribe down to $50 but we didn’t want to pay. As I turned the car back to the bridge to El Salvador, for I had a plan how not to pay the Honduras bastards and still get into the country, there was a little commotion on the bridge (the Israeli squad in action) and while nobody was paying attention to us, I found myself holding our papers in one hand and reversing slowly the car from the bridge, back to Honduras. Later on, the Israeli did the impossible and got their money back from the Honduras police. And since we shared such a great experience together, we decided to share some more and team up for crossing Honduras having one objective in mind- to get out of there as soon as possible. It worked really well- whenever police stopped us and it was around 4 times, we all forgot the little Spanish we knew, played dumb smiling apologetically, magically grew in number and volume, looked cute and vulnerable or confident and unbreakable- whatever seemed to work. There wasn’t a shortage of effort on the side of Honduras police to pin us for whatever, safety triangle and extinguisher being among the favourite, but there was always something that made them let us go in the end without having to pay. We celebrated that nite in Nicaragua in a little beach town of Las Penitas, having dinner together, sipping Salvadorian vodka and Nicaraguan brew. Some two local kids were hanging out with us, trying to sell us some shells and checking out everything in our car. I made some funny deals that nite.

From Las Penitas we slowly rolled to Playa Las Cardones and even though we met there a cool family of local fisherman, we met them through their neighbour who invited us to stay at ‘his’ house and proved to be somewhat weird. He had some issues and didn’t deal very well with loneliness so he unloaded it all on us. Ouch! Language barrier wasn’t helping either. This could have been a great experience, but we left from there tired of our host and his confusing behaviour; but very fond of his neighbours, who were extremely hospitable, gave us some fresh fish for breakfast and were just a very cool couple.

After this full-on immersion in Nicaraguan culture we were after some more conventional tourist experience and we found it all 12km north of San Juan del Sur. When we arrived at Playa Madera, I could hardly imagine a destination that would be more desirable- a beautiful, quite beach with just enough interest from travellers to have a campsite with pit toilet under tamarind trees with direct access to the beach and a bar. Alleluia! We spent there 3 days hanging out with the fellow travellers, cooking and eating together, discussing our plans and experiences, just having a good time. I see there a potential for a fantastic month of surfing, some time in not too distant future.

On 1 Feb we crossed over to Costa Rica but I will leave it for another time.

My first year on the road

I’m writing this recollection of our first year on the road in hope it will prompt me to blog more often in the future, just to make it easier for you to remember how awesome I am. If you don’t need to be reminded, that’s even better. Either way, it’s kind of long so don’t feel like you have to read this.

Today it’s been a year since Mick and I hit the road. A year that has gone fast and furious and there was so much happening that it could easily fill up a few calendars. And all that happened seems like it was long time ago. Every place we visited became a separate stage- different vibe, different purpose; a different experience altogether. It feels like it hasn’t been one trip but many, one after another. And right now, all I know is what it means to be on the road; feels kind of cool, if you ask me.

We left Australia on 3 January 2009. Our first stop was Thailand. The arrival was a bit of a shocker as I had been too excited to plan anything beforehand and my strategy was based on blind faith that Mick knew what to do- he’d been there before. So we had a bit of an epic getting out of the airport with more luggage than we could carry and not enough know-how to avoid getting ripped off. But others than that, it was all good. Days in Bangkok went past on sampling its fantastic food and shopping on the markets. Then we took a train south. I liked travelling on trains in Thailand- very comfy beds and you get to see some cool countryside views. Beaches down south, Tonsai and Raily, were all about climbing and lazing around. I had a major mental struggle climbing there but luckily came around before we left and still enjoyed following Mick. Everybody who’s been to Tonsai knows that fruit shakes, bbq chicken and sticky rice with mango are the culinary highlights and living in a bamboo hut is just one of a kind experience; especially, when you also have your own hammock.
Altogether we spent in Thailand a month and even the nearly $100 fine for overstaying by 2 days didn’t spoil my good memories from there. Once more, it was good to have means in the absence of knowledge.

Second stop was Poland- only 2 weeks, but filled up tight with family and friend catch ups, which basically equals talking, drinking, eating and more drinking. It was pretty intense as there were so many people I wanted to see and so little time. I should have known better than scheduling such ridiculously short timeframe for visiting home after 3 years. A lesson learnt.

Our next stop was Canada. We arrived mid February, in the middle of moody winter which on regular basis swang its temperatures anywhere between +15 and -45 degrees of Celsius- not so good for skiing which was the main reason why we were there. We made our base at my godmother’s place on the outskirts of Calgary. The 3 months there we spent between working on the van we bought to fit it for camping (usually on weekends) and hanging out in the Bow valley, skiing in Sunshine Village, doing backcountry trips, soaking in hot tubs of Banff Centre, indoor climbing and zipping the awesome coffee in the Wild Flour cafe. Even though the backcountry conditions were kind of scary for unexperienced skiers like us, fitting the camper van in Canada turned into Mission Impossible3, and I lost a friendship, Mick and I also had a lot of fun together and it was great to get to know my godmother and her family.
But when the spring came, we were ready to hit the road- off to Alaska.

The Alaskan roadtrip lasted for 6 weeks. We spent the first week in British Columbia (BC), exploring its hot springs and beautiful landscapes and starting our bear count which by the end of the trip was somewhere in mid twenties. We got snowed in the middle of warm spring weather, our van stuck on the uphill forest road in mud and snow. Some beautiful people of BC helped us out and wouldn’t even accept any money, because this is what you do out there- you help each other. In the end, it turned into such a good experience. British Colombia is a very beautiful country.
In Prince Rupert we got on the Alaskan Ferry and our first stop was Juneau where we stayed 3 days. Their skiing resort was closed for the season but they didn’t mind people skiing there on their own. So we skinned up and from the top of their mountain we could see the ocean. It was the heaviest snow I have ever skied. Then there was this glacier we hiked to. Every so often a piece of sky-blue ice would break off and fall into the lake, so there were those blue icebergs floating all over the place. And the last day we did this hike through a beautiful spring forest along the coast full of hidden bays and pebble beaches; we started to meet those many people of Alaska who came in only for holidays and never left.
From Juneau the ferry took us over to Haynes. From there we continued our trip overland. I will remember Haynes for its magic trail to Seduction Point where we collected mussels at low tide and cooked them later in fire on the beach, we had our tent on this tiny peninsula overlooking 2 beaches in opposite directions at the same time and there was a sea otter that was checking us out from the water and the next day followed us along the trail. We met no people.
Then came Valdez where we just went for a little hike and marvelled the backcountry potential of surrounding mountains, especially the Thompson Pass. In Anchorage we just went off shopping gear, as you do when the price is right. Then it was a quickie to Homer but not much happened there as all the fun stuff was on the other side of the bay and prices to cross over by boat were a bit high, we thought.
Seward though had this really neat hike that we had to do in the middle of the night as the only time to get through the beach section was at low tide. At 4am we had to cross barefoot an ice-cold creek, along the way we saw some seals, otters and sea lions and at the sunrise we made fire on the beach and went to sleep on our thermarest mattresses. I think I got maybe 2 hours of sleep before three little sparkles melted holes in my bed- enough to say that sleeping on the stones was not the same… We had lunch in an abandoned Second World War fort and when the tide was low again early in the afternoon, we made our way back to town.
And then we went to Denali National Park- a 5 day wander in the pathless backcountry among bears, mammoths, caribous, moose (which we luckily didn’t meet) and the gophers (which made us move our camp, little bastards). Against the odds we had a fantastic weather and Denali with all its 20000 feet kept us company everywhere we went.
We drove in Alaska some pretty spectacular roads and met some really nice people. It took us a week to drive back from Denali through Yucon Territory back to Alberta; it is a long way but also they have some cool cities out there (Dawson City, White Horse) and of course the hot springs, of which Liard Hotsprings was my favouriteJ

The next stage was the US climbing trip. It started on 1 July, when we headed off from Calgary, and it finished end of October in Pheonix. We climbed in Squarmish in BC, Smith Rock in Oregon, Grand Tetons and Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, Boulder in Colorado, Mt Whitney, Tuolumne, Yosemite Valley and Joshua Tree in California, Red Rocks in Nevada, Moab and Indian Creek in Utah. We visited Yellowstone, Las Vegas and Grand Canyon, met up with Jen and Tash, and we climbed together for a month. A lot happened on the road. I found some beautiful places and met great people, you know, those who inspire you to live your life to the fullest. I had some highs and lows, normal everybody’s life stuff. But altogether things were simple. I like simplicity. All you had to worry about was a place to sleep, something to eat, what to climb today, when to climb it and an occasional phone call home. Our sleeping location ranged from the side of some noisy road to the top of the hill in the forest overlooking The Titons with everything in between, including Walmart parking lots, forest roads, desert and 2 weeks in the Yosemite campgrounds. As for cooking, I make mean goulash, not bad curries and stir-fries and nice fresh tomato spaghetti- cooking in just 2 pots you can’t go wrong.

Mexico was the last stage of our trip that happened during this first year on the road. Mexico is such a full-on, deep cultural experience that it takes years to fully understand it but already after these 2 months I appreciate it. Mick and I spent a week in the country with hardly any language and then took a month of Spanish in Guanajuato which made all the difference. Even though my Spanish now is really basic, I feel like I can communicate with people and express myself to some extent which is a fucking relief. In Mexico we visited Mexico City, climbed the volcano, Pico the Orizaba, spent a week on the Pacific beaches, visited some groovy ruins in Oaxaca, Teotihuacan and Palenque and cruised thru Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo- Golf of Mexico is flat as pancake and the Caribbean coast in Tulum was somewhat disappointing- resorts stretched for kilometres along the beach, crappiest road ever, lots of garbage and clouds and chilly wind so even though the water was clean and blue it didn’t tempt me to swim. But the prettiest sunrise I have ever seen and shooting tequila on the beach while talking bullshit with Mick- that was priceless. Altogether, I think I liked it there.
Now, what I liked best about Mexico was that people there when in doubt use common sense and everybody seems to take responsibility for their own actions. It gave me sense of freedom; it used to be like this in Poland, but now too often people hide behind often useless regulations. And I like how open people seem towards each other- simple and direct over vague and phoney totally works for me.

Where from here… I guess, we will slowly make our way south to Guatemala. Hopefully you will hear from me from there. Hopefully, my momentum theory will work and I will get to more regular rhythm of writing from the road. If not then talk to you again next year.

Devils Tower

I had mixed feeling about going to Devils Tower before we left the Tetons, doing the Grand was really cool and i'd been reading my guide book for the Eastern Sierras and i was starting to think that if we waited too late in the season that we wouldn't get anything done but now, as we drive away from the tower i've got a very ccol buzz after a fun three days. We arrived in the arvo and went for a walk around the base of the tower to check out all the lines and decide which we wanted to do. At the nearest decent sized town, Gillette, we'd been in the library and i'd made photocopies of a very small guidebook of select climbs and it was this that we were now refering to ... the Walt Bailey memorial climb reads as follows .. 5.9, 4 star, beautiful sustained hands,165 feet, bring extra medium stoppers ... it doesn't mention anything about the first 100 feet being hard finger locks. i didn't bring anything smaller than one .3 camalot and was convinced i was somehow on the wrong climb so i set a bomber nut and lowered off as the fingerlock turned into fingertips, the foothold blanked out, and afew drops of rain started falling. Just around the corner we found another 4 star 5.9, Soler, and went up that with much more ease, only afew tough sections and pretty sustained on the second pitch that lead us up to an area called the Meadows. From the meadows you scramble 4th class to the summit but at first glance you think 'no way' but it was pretty straight forward once we got going ... only afew sections where falling could have meant a looong fall. The summit was alot smaller than we were expecting and was in the cloud when we were up there, so just a quick signing of the summit register and off to find the ring bolts to rap down. We were rapping of the other side of the mountain and once we found the bolts it was kinda scarey rapping off and hoping we had the right bolts and would find the next bolts ok somewhere on the side of the mountain but it was all pretty straight forward and three rappels later we were on the ground, without getting the ropes stuck in the rope eating cracks. you feel like abit of a star as you get back to the tourist trail and groups of people waiting to ask question and take photos, one group found us back in the carpark to thank us for the show and get our email to send us the pics they took of us.
The next day was rain and was spent hanging about using the free wifi at the local souvenir shop a quick cruise to the nearest town for pizza and back to our nice little campsite in the state forest ... free camping, nobody else around, parked in the grass next to a little stream, watching the rain fall. There wasn't a cloud in site the next morning and the plan was to climb yet another 4 star 5.9 with a 4 star 5.10a approach pitch. We stretched the 2 pitches of the 5.10 into one long by having Ula start climbing up the easy start ramp to give me enough rope to reach the anchors. The 5.9 ... far out, what a mega long sustained crack, about 50m using doubles of #.75, triples of #1 and doubles of #2 along with a bunch of smaller stuff at the finger crack start. We rapped of the same way as the other day and spent the arvo hanging out in the carpark with some other climbers and generally having a great time. Oh yeah, i even got back the nut i bail on from the first day ... i had to hang my head abit as the girl handed it back to me even after i insisted that it was fair booty and she should keep it ... but secretly i was actually pretty happy, it was one of my faves ;) All in all, a very worthwhile trip

Time marches on ...

I've gotten slack on the blog, mostly due to not publishing before we get to another place. For whatever reason i feel compelled to post stuff in a chronological order so when i miss a destination, that's where the trouble starts. I also wanted to change blogs and we've got a rest day in Boulder so i think it's time to tackle it, the new site does have some sort of subscription feature but not quite as simple as i'd hoped, i was hoping that i could have something that would notify people via a short email when i'd put in a new post and it has something similar but not exactly so if you know of anything that can do this please tell me. I'm reading help sites and feeling like such an idiot because i don't understand the bits which they gloss over at the start, assuming that any moron knows that bit.
There's a list of blogs that i've cut and paste from the previous blog page and afew that i've had as word docs on my hard drive.
We've got a couple of weeks before we're planning to be in Yosemite to meet up with Tanya and Jenny ... it'll be cool to see some familiar face after so long. We'll probably spent a couple more days around here in Boulder then head off for a week or so in Utah, mostly around Moab and the Canyonlands.
Boulder is pretty cool ... just ask any one who lives here, actually, you don't even need to ask, they're more than happy to tell they you. The food and shops are good, Ula has a new favourite gear store, Montbell, which does very nice, ultralight gear. The climbing in Eldorado Canyon is fantastic, we've done a bunch of multipitches since we've been here and they're all fantastic with Yellow Spur 5.10b going to that fuzzy, undecided area at the top of my all-time favourites list.
The thing that sucks here is the camping ... there is none, we've been hanging out at the crag(state park, no camping) then cruising back to town when it's dark to find an inconspicuous place in the neighbourhoods to stop and pull the curtains. It's been no problem so far but it's nicer when we don't have to be sneaky or drive for miles out of town to find something. We haven't had to pay for a night yet, if we're in an area to climb we usually look for the BLM (bureau of land management) land or for national forests were you can usually camp for free. It's not that the camping is expensive, usually $12 a night for no facilities up to $21 with facilities, it's just that we're not setting up a tent so paying for somewhere to park the car for the night just doesn't seem to make sense to us. We really had some good luck in Yellowstone, the camping there is at the more expensive end, it's crowded, and the park is big, too big for us to be able to drive out and find somewhere for the night. The luck came while climbing in the tetons when we met up with a couple climbing with there young son, Liz worked at the clinic in Yellowstone and has a staff cabin in the park where she invited us to stay for a couple of days. What a score, we camped in the van in the driveway and had use of the shower and kitchen and a real loungeroom to relax in at night, it felt like luxury for a couple of days.
i've only been spooked a couple of times and made Ula get up in the middle of the night to drive further down the road because i was sure the boogie man was outside.

Zebra Zion and the Monkey Face

Zeba Zion, 3 pitch 5.10b went well, unfortunately i took a rest in the crux ... could not commit to do a very weird balance move in the crux even though the green Alien i had protecting it was bomber. The second pitch had a pretty airy traverse with no gear and the third pitch, well the third pitch was stellar, such exposure laying back off a flake three pitches up but having easy climbing at the same time. A side note mentioned in the guidebook was that Fred Beckey lead that pitch at 78 years old ... i meet him a couple of times in Banff and the guy is my hero, a lifetime climbing bum and still going.
We had abit of a rest day after that ... at the carpark of the Park, they have a very nice picnic area with the softest green grass, tables and trees so we spent the day just lazing about there ... well actually we spent most days just lazing about there when it was too hot to climb. We've still got our hammock from Thailand with us so we'd string it up between the trees and have lunch, they also have sprinklers running all day, every day which kind of did away with the need to have shower at the end of the day :)
The next day was an early start and we headed off to climb the Monkey Face on the other side of the park, unfortunately we didn't take the camera but the climb was alot of fun. The third pitch is an aid climbing pitch(goes free at 5.13 or something), a bolt ladder going up the overhanging face. We don't have any aiders but the bolts were close enough(only just at the start) to haul on the quickdraw and clip the next bolt ... i thought it looked pretty simple but bugger me it was hard work, the top out onto the ledge in the monkeys mouth was a nightmare and i had a moment of dread thinking that i was gonna have to bail on the last bolt or do some awful, awkward flop onto the ledge so i opted for the last one. The last bolt of the ladder was on the lip of the ledge and the anchor out of reach so i was standing with one foot in a sling, heal hooking a slopey ledge, desperately trying to find anything i could hold to stop me rolling back off the edge ... if my reach was just 10mm shorter i would have been screwed. After that it was just a matter helping Ula haul her way up the draws. The 4th pitch, also very cool, stepping out of the monkeys mouth onto the face is refered to, in the guidebook, as the 'panic point' as you step out onto the top of an overhang that drops 60m onto a slope falling away even further. It made for a nice rappel, almost a full 60m of free hanging space.
Afew more climbs in the afternoon finished the day, one being a nice onsight of a crack climb i'd been checking out. I feel completely shagged now and my body needs a decent rest and lots rehydrating so today we've decided to pull the pin on Smith Rocks and start making our way across Idaho to Wyoming. More adventures to come.

Smith Rocks

After our climbing session last night, i've finally kicked into enjoying Smith Rocks ... not that i wasn't enjoying it before but it felt like i had to work at it, we were getting up before dawn and heading in to climb and having to stop when it got too blisteringly hot in the sun but yesterday we decided to wait till the afternoon and that made all the difference. Climbing in the shade and having a nice warm breeze that wasn't getting any hotter was what i'd been looking for, plus we had a cool adventure which, i guess felt like one of our first proper multipitch adventures. It was only a 2 pitch climb but Ula wanted to lead the first trad pitch, a 3 star crack climb up a thin ramp, and i finished on the second pitch, which was a 4 star sport climb that was pretty easy but had some amazing exposure along an arete ... i think they'd added a grade just for the position.
Out first couple of days here were actually spent as rest days about 1.5 hours from Smith Rocks at a place called Elk lake, up in the mountains. We spent the time just hanging out, slacklining, swimming and eating before heading back down to the heat of the valley ... there are alot of rivers around Smith Rock but they're not in great condition for swimming. We have another climb planned for tonight, which i'm pretty excited for ... a 3 pitch 5.10b that looks fantastic, hopefully a good report coming