Random Travel Update 47

Last locations: Kauai, Hawaii

Arrival Date: July 15, 2009
Departure Date: July 29, 2009

Current location: SLC, Utah (layover)
Arrival Date: July 30, 2009
Departure Date: July 30, 2009

Next Locations: Tucson, Arizona

Arrival Date: July 30, 2009
Departure Date: unknown

If you do one thing in Kauai, make it the Napali Coast Trail. Conflicting interests made the total 22 mile round trip a no go for me this time around but I did succeed in getting Jon and my mom to accompany me on an 8 mile round trip section of the trail on our final day. It was, in my opinion, absolutely magical with dramatic terrain and even more dramatic views. I saw the rest of the trail looking inland from a catamaran, and I am confident that it is impressive in its entirety.

Every other worthwhile activity on the US island, with the exception of trail and beach activities, will cost you. The activities I enjoyed, but am not necessarily advocating because of the price, included a one hour helicopter ride over the island, a five hour catamaran trip down the Napali Coast in good weather (dolphins!), a four hour kayak and hike to a waterfall that was very much overrun with tourists, and a luau.

Equally good and free or next to free activities include, hiking to one (or several) of the many waterfalls on the island, boogie boarding ($6 per day or $20 per week rental fee), picking through smooth glass and chasing crabs on the glass beach on the southern coast, and snorkeling with sea turtles, eels, sting rays and fish at one of the many reefs.

We did some diving on the North and South shores which was quite enjoyable, but I saw near as much diversity of wildlife snorkeling the shallower reefs, and the price of diving on Kauai is very high. Sea turtles and eels are plentiful but visibility is mediocre. Unless this is your only opportunity to dive for awhile, I recommend saving it for another vacation.

As for vegan food. The world renowned vegan restaurant Blossoming Lotus, one of my expected trip highlights, closed its doors shortly before our arrival and moved to Portland. Tragic. Now the options include a multitude of Thai restaurants, some Mexican, a few good health food stores, a bakery with vegan cheese pizza, and Taco Bell.

I am not sure whether I've mentioned it before, but if you have any say in the matter, never ever fly Delta. The whole operation is a joke and an embarrassment to The United States. They keep their prices low by cutting everything including legroom, personal entertainment, air-conditioning, meals, windows on window seats(!), and most noticeably customer service. We have yet to have a positive experience with them. American Airlines is also pretty awful.

Salt Lake City is fantastic. Even the airport.

Love,

Melissa

Random Travel Update 46

Last locations: Amman, Jordan; Petra, Jordan
Arrival Date: June 30, 2009
Departure Date: July 2, 2009

Current location: Tucson, Arizona
Arrival Date: July 2, 2009
Departure Date: July 15, 2009

Next Locations: Kauai, Hawaii
Arrival Date: July 15, 2009
Departure Date: July 30, 2009

This update is mostly to inform you that I have three newly edited and fully captioned photo albums up on Picasa from the Middle East, that we are currently in Tucson, and that we are leaving today for Hawaii.

Our short stay in Jordan was really fantastic. Petra was spectacular and very deserving of its spot on the New Seven Wonders of the World list. We stayed late our first day and arrived early on our second to enjoy the whole site to ourselves. Having a site as grand as Petra to ourselves was an experience unmatched by any other, and the absence of other tourists was a welcome change from what we had come to expect in South America.

Amman, too, was more than worth the short time we spent there. My favorite thing about the city is prayer. Muslim prayer is a regular occurrence, happening five times a day in every populated area in the Middle East (with the exception of Israel). But it is particularly wonderful in Amman, where the prayer, always spoken in song, reverberates off Amman’s many hills creating the echo effect similar to that of an organ in a Cathedral. Except that in this case, the whole city is the Cathedral. The effect is magical.

You can find my photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/a.melissa.meyer
Visit old and new blogs at: http://randomtravelupdates.blogspot.com
Or check out Jon’s take on things at: http://elfanoos.blogspot.com

Love,

Melissa

Random Travel Update 45

Last locations: Eilat, Israel; Jerusalem, Israel; Bethlehem, Palestine; Tel Aviv, Israel; Jericho, Palestine; Siesta Beach, The Dead Sea
Arrival Date: June 21, 2009
Departure Date: June 29, 2009

Current location: Amman, Jordan
Arrival Date: June 29, 2009
Departure Date: June 30, 2009

Next Locations: Petra, Jordan
Arrival Date: June 30, 2009
Departure Date: July 2, 2009

Our goal was to avoid the incredibly expensive ferry directly from Nuweiba, Egypt to Aqaba, Jordan by crossing into Jordan by land via Israel. We were going to head north through Jordan and cross back into Israel via the Allenby/King Hussein crossing through the West Bank. Upon arriving at the Israeli border of Jordan however, we were informed that there is an incredibly high departure tax when leaving Israel. So, we quickly changed plans and got a bus out of Eilat the next day to Jerusalem where we enjoyed the hospitality of one of Jon's old friends, Dan, from their days in The Sierra Club.

It's hard to write about Israel and Palestine without getting into politics and religion. It is easy to want to pick sides in the matter. On one hand you have an elite class of wealthy occupiers severely oppressing the less prosperous former land tenants, on the other, you have a nation of individuals whose land has, since the beginning of time, been disputed. As our cab driver in Bethlehem put it, "All I wonder is, after the Israelis, who's next?"

It is impossible to deny that the Israelis have done amazing things with their little strip of the Mediterranean desert, turning it into a no-holds-barred first world resort destination. There is air conditioning, well-serviced public bathrooms and superior infrastructure. For this, you pay about five times as much for everything and have to put up with the Israelis. I am not convinced that it is worth it.

Despite being multitudes richer per capita than their neighbors to the South and East, the Israelis won't hesitate to add a little extra to your bill, whether it be for going three minutes over time at the internet cafe to adding "too much" salad at a salad bar. Transgressions that wouldn't even garner a baksheesh request in one of Israel's poorer Arab neighbors. Racism, as in most countries, is alive and well here, which isn't so much surprising as it is ironic.

On a suspicion that I would like it more, we planned two mini-trips to the WestBank. We spent the first day touring Bethlehem and reminiscing over all of the sitesthat made for the basis of much of my Christian education growing up. We saw the places where Jesus was born, cradled, crucified and buried. And I did like it. The people who we met, from a group of little girls to a convoy of soldiers, were all marvelously friendly, warm and welcoming.

The second trip, on our way from Jerusalem to the Israeli-Palestinian border with Jordan was to Jericho where we spent the evening floating on the Dead Sea and coating ourselves in the mineral rich and addictively squishy Dead Sea mud. We spent the night in the city and woke up the next morning to see Hashim's Palace, a gorgeous ruin where we were the only visitors. In fact, we didn't run into a single other tourist in Jericho. Despite it's vast share of Holy Land sites and historical religious significance, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has near annihilated tourism in the West Bank. The only trouble we ran into was when we befriended a local youth living next door to us in our budget hotel. He turned out to be crazy, and spent the better part of the late night banging on our hotel room door and picking at the lock pleading for us to hide him from the Israeli Police.

The border crossing the next day was a disaster. After spending two hours and our last 100 shekels to get to the Jordanian border, we were told, for the first time, that we were at the only border crossing with Israel that could not issue a foreign visa. Two more hours of waiting confirmed that we would have to go back to Israel and re-enter from the northernmost crossing, 60 kilometers away.

Getting back into Israel was a whole new nightmare which required passing through an infinite number of checkpoints all bottle-necked with Palestinians impatient to get home. Another two hours got us through this mess and to a pull-off where we waited patiently for a bus that would take us north an hour later. We hitched the final few kilometers from the bus drop off to the required border crossing and eight hours from our departure from Jericho, we arrived in time to watch the sun set on the beautiful northern Israeli countryside and passed effortlessly through the deserted checkpoint.

And that is how we arrived in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Love,

Melissa

Random Travel Update 44

Last locations: Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Alexandria, Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt
Arrival Date: June 2, 2009
Departure Date: June 13, 2009

Current location: Dahab, Egypt
Arrival Date: June 13, 2009
Departure Date: June 21, 2009

Next Locations: Jordan
Arrival Date: June 21, 2009
Departure Date: Undetermined

My favorite thing about Egypt is the ubiquitous reply to being American: "Obama! Number one!", sometimes repeated many times in a row in order to make sure that we know that they know that Obama is in fact "number one". It was particularly nice that Obama decided to come to Cairo the day after we arrived, presumably to thank us for all of our hard work on his primary campaign. I am going to return the favor by visiting him in DC this August.

With the exception of Dahab, Egypt is a chaotic place with an overwhelming presence of ancient and contemporary historical value. A recent resurgence of Islamic conservatism has many women walking the streets in black niqabs which revel only the eyes of the wearer and only a handful of local women choose to go bear-headed. The vast majority wear a hijab, and despite the near oppressive heat, no female goes anywhere wearing short sleeves.

The male culture is like that of undersexed adolescent boys and men have a difficult time vocalizing their appreciation of the opposite sex in an appropriate manner, an unfortunate phenomenon that even Islam and five prayers a day is apparently unable to remedy. Otherwise, Islam has done wonders here. Despite a high poverty rate, theft is almost unheard of and you can get out of most tourist scams and heckling by making an appeal to religion (helps if you speak Arabic). Though worlds dirtier, hotter, and louder than anywhere we visited in South America, Egypt is also worlds more interesting.

The cheapest flight out of Tucson was, unusually, a Sunday flight on the 31st of May which, to my delight, makes the dates of our trip very neat to work with. Day 1, June 1st, was spent on a long layover in Amsterdam which allowed us to arrive in Cairo on Tuesday June 2nd, exactly six weeks prior to our departure date from Istanbul on Tuesday July 14th.

I had meant to write this two weeks into our trip, but that goal has been delayed due to my inability to spend much more than 15 minutes at a time in the internet cafes which, like most places in Egypt, blatently encourage cigarette smoking by hiring only chain smokers to work the counter.

Our first week was packed with us getting out of the way all of the things that one must see when on a visit to Egypt. We spent three days in Cairo, couchsurfed in Maadi, checked out the famous Khan El Khalili market, killed time at the Ahwahs (traditional Egyptian coffee houses) playing backgammon and reminiscing over Jon's old Egypt days, and of course hung out with Barack Obama during his visit to the Pyramids of Giza.

On the night of day three, we hopped on an overnight train south along the Nile to Luxor where we saw all sorts of impressive Egyptian sites before heading further south to 47 degree Celsius Aswan where we floated along the Nile on lazy Feluccas, rode Camels to ancient Christian establishments and perused the Nubia Museum which was surprisingly worthwhile (and air conditioned). From Aswan, we took the uncomfortable 15 hour train back up to Cairo where we spent the morning before connecting with our afternoon train up to Alexandria.

We spent another afternoon in Cairo, where I visited the overpriced and under air conditioned Egypt Museum while waiting to catch the eight hour overnight bus to Sharm El-Sheikh, our first stop on the Sinai. We spent US$100 on a hotel room, $15 on lunch, $30 on dinner, $15 at the coffee shops, $30 to go dancing and left the next day to avoid blowing through the rest of our Middle East budget in a single weekend. Best thing about Sharm: The Hard Rock Cafe in Naama Bay which serves up a delicious Veg Burger and almost equally delicious frozen drinks in an air conditioned non-smoking section. Extra bonus: there is toilet paper in the bathroom. Truly incredible.

Better than Sharm, is the smaller and more authentic-feeling Dahab, just an hour up the East coast. It is a budget divers paradise, where you can strap on your gear and head straight to the ocean from your hotel at $25 per dive, gear, guide and tank included. An air conditioned room for two costs less than $10 and a candlelit waterfront meal adds up to $5 per person. It is about as idyllic as it gets.

Tomorrow we leave for the ancient city of Petra in Jordan and from there head north to the Dead Sea, Amman and Jeresh before crossing into Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

I was able to post the first set of Egypt photos to Picasa which I will attempt to edit and caption when I am reunited with my Macbook. For Jon's take on Egypt, visit elfanoos.blogspot.com sometime next week. I have been going through my emails to make sure that I haven't left any unanswered, often the consequence of my leaving the internet cafe abruptly due to cigarette smoke or computer failure. Please help by resending any emails that I may have missed.

Love,

Melissa

Random Travel Update 43

Last locations: Quito, Ecuador
Arrival Date: May 25, 2009
Departure Date: May 27, 2009

Current location: Tucson, AZ
Arrival Date: May 27, 2009
Departure Date: May 31, 2009

Next Locations: Amsterdam The Netherlands, Cairo Egypt
Arrival Date: June 1, 2009
Departure Date: Undetermined

While Jon and I were enjoying some falafel and baba ghanoush at a Lebanese café in La Paz, it occurred to me that being in South America was, for me at that moment, like sitting through a movie just after seeing a trailer for another movie that I would much rather be watching.

If you read the back cover of the Lonely Planet’s guide to South America, you will get the following review, “Challenging? Check. Rewarding? Beyond your wildest dreams. South America is made for travel—the griping, spine-tingling, adrenaline-charged type of travel you live for.”

In reality, the most challenging part of travel in South America is remembering not to flush your toilet paper down the toilet. Or, moreso, trying to get off of the gringo trail…a near impossible feat. And as for rewarding, sure, but so is every destination if you arrive with the right mindset.

South America is definitely made for travel. It is as if the whole continent were taken up by the tourism industry, thoroughly chewed and regurgitated for the travel-hungry masses to enjoy. And there are masses. While Americans are at home working hard at their careers and enjoying their annual two-week holiday, the English, Israelis, Germans, Dutch, Swiss and Aussies seem to have sent the majority of their youth out to go “discover themselves” for months at a time on the beaches and bars of every country with a good beer-to-euro ratio.

As for griping, spine-tingling, adrenaline-charged, in reality, South America is pretty laid back. And while you can adventure sport to your heart’s (or budget’s) content, the truth is that adventure sports tend to be griping, spine-tingling, and adrenaline-charged regardless of what continent you do them in.

That being said, do go to South America, just maybe don’t do it the way we did. There are many destinations that would be worth spending two-to-four weeks in and getting to know the local community and environment. Better even would be to study or work there. Cities and towns that I could really see myself staying for several months or more include: Buenos Aires, Santiago, Valparaiso, San Pedro de Atacama, Sucre, Samaipata, and La Paz.

I don’t have much time to finish this. In just over two hours Jon and I will get on a plane headed to Egypt by way of Minneapolis and Amsterdam the latter of which we will be for ten hours.
New photos of Bolivia are up and Jon has several new blogs in the works. Visit http://picasaweb.google.com/a.melissa.meyer and http://elfanoos.blogspot.com/.

Love,

Melissa

Random Travel Update 42

Last locations: Tiwanaku BL, Lake Titicaca BL, Machu Picchu PE, Nazca Lines PE
Arrival Date: May 10, 2009
Departure Date: May 19, 2009

Current location: Lima, Peru
Arrival Date: May 19, 2009
Departure Date: May 20, 2009

Next Locations: Mancora, Peru
Arrival Date: May 21, 2009
Departure Date: May 22, 2009

Machu Picchu: √ (check). Like Disneyland but with less rides and real stones, Machu Picchu is one of those magical places that I'd be happy to never visit again. In an effort to salvage at least part of the experience, we opted for an alternative trek to the Inca Trail, which is littered with 200 tourists and 300 porters a day, few of whom care significantly about their immediate environment or the act of trekking in general.

Still, paying hundreds of dollars to trek with guides, pack mules and eight other foreigners at half the pace we would otherwise choose, is pretty distant from my idea of fun and adventure. The scenery, however, was breathtaking (as was the altitude at times), we met local indigenous people along the way, and the food, though it took the cooks hours to prepare, wasn’t half bad.

As for Maccu Picchu, it was every bit as incredible as people make it out to be and almost every bit as crowded. The photos taken cannot do it justice, and I don’t blame the hundreds to thousands of tourists who arrive each day to marvel in person at what must be one of the world’s most spectacular archeological sites.

Another cool archeological site in Peru is the Nazca Lines. We saw those today via a sobrevuelo (overflight) in a four-passenger private aircraft. They were impressive, but the three of us (me, Jon and Jon’s friend Aaron) agreed that they are much smaller than we were expecting.

Backing up a bit, our last few days in Bolivia, before our miserable overnight bus ride from Copacabana to Cuzco, were some of our best. The ruins at Tiwanaku were surprisingly calm with few tourist groups. While the city itself needs a lot of rebuilding since the Spanish plundered it in the 1500s, the stone-carved artifacts that have been found on the site are very impressive. The Tiwanaku civilization is thought to have predated the Incas by thousands of years and is perhaps the longest continuous societies in the history of the Americas. The surviving ancestors of the Tiwanaku are today called Aymara, while the descendants of the Incas are Quechua. Also present in Bolivia are the descendants of the Amazonia people, today known as Guarani.

We spent our last night in Bolivia on the Isla del Sol where the sun is said to have been born in local Aymaran folklore. We supported the local economy by taking a private boat to the northern shore which allowed us to see all of the archeological sites virtually untouristed since most visitors have to hike two to three hours up to the north shore and either spend the night or hike back down the same day. We were able to see all the north shore sites that evening, eat dinner, spend the night and wake up before sunrise the next morning to hike down to the south shore and explore our hearts out before the others were even awake. It was one of the highlights of our trip and very much somewhere that we hope to return to someday.

And return we will. In the meantime, Jon and I have decided to save the rest of our South America tour for the future. Instead of going on to Colombia and Venezuela next month as planned, we will be taking a flight out of Ecuador next week, spending a few days in Arizona to repack and upload photos (my hard drive is full again), and then catching a plane to the Middle East from where my Random Travel Update will be based for the following six weeks.
Keep keeping in touch.

Love,

Melissa

Random Travel Update 41

Last locations: Santa Cruz BL, Asunción de Guarayos BL, Samaipata BL, Cochabamba BL, Torotoro BL, Yungas Road BL
Arrival Date: April 10, 2009
Departure Date: May 1, 2009

Current location: La Paz, Bolivia
Arrival Date: May 2, 2009
Departure Date: May 9, 2009

Next Locations: Tiwanaku BL, Lake Titicaca BL, Cuzco, Peru
Arrival Date: May 10, 2009
Departure Date: undetermined

First, in regards to Swine Flu: Please, stop supporting confined animal agriculture. As complicated as the media tries to make the issue, it is no mystery as to how these epidemics come about. Anyone who has ever witnessed a modern day animal processing facility will attest to the filthy, overcrowded warehouse environments that breed such disease. The contemporary method of raising pigs, cows and birds for slaughter is not only cruel and environmentally degrading; it also poses a serious threat to public health.

To learn more factory farming and the current epidemic visit: http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/qa_on_swine_flu_050209.html

CNN also ran a news story highlighting this threat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j10SQpCO9Wc.

The most effective thing that you can do as a concerned citizen is to boycott the meat industry. For tips on eating vegan visit: http://pcrm.org/health/veginfo/vsk/index.html.

We really like Bolivia. It is rugged, moderately undeveloped, colorful and cheap. Taking a bus is still an adventure here. Our first bus ride from Uyuni to Sucre included 10 hours of unpaved, unmaintained road, five river/wash crossings, countless sharp turns on narrow roads bordered by steep drops and passing vehicles, a guy who threw up two times, a three hour wait in near freezing weather at 2am for a transfer bus with no bathroom access. Following that, we learned that planes are actually quite a good deal in Bolivia, costing less than the same distance in Argentina by bus in cama or super-cama class.

The Bolivians may be some of the cutest people in the world. On Sunday we went to something called “Cholita Wrestling” which involves cholitas (the diminutive form of “chola” which refers to indigenous Bolivianas who live in cities rather than in rural indigenous villages) wrestling cholos (masculine form) in a boxing ring. Though not specifically about Bolivia, the movie “Nacho Libre” would provide you with a very good idea of the nature of the event. Or you can watch a match on youtube. The Cholitas tolerate getting beat up pretty bad before they come back to win the match. If your interest is spiked regarding all things Cholita, the Travel Channel has an episode dedicated to them.

Today we did a super-touristy thing and biked the ¨World´s Most Dangerous Road¨ proclaimed as such in 1995 by the Inter-American Development Bank in reaction to its record annual death toll of 200 to 300 passengers. A few days ago, we rented a car (Jon´s idea) and headed out from Cochabamba to the very rural town of Torotoro to explore caves, canyons and dinosaur prints. Previous to arriving in the desert college city of Cochabamba (not unlike Tucson), we spent ten days in the beautiful town of Samaipata where we spent our time taking Spanish lessons, meeting with locals, and volunteering at an animal refuge. Before that, we attended the Biennial
International Theater Festival in Santa Cruz, during which we learned acrobatics (pictures to come). And, previous to Santa Cruz, we stayed in the charming city of Sucre after the completion of our 3-day tour by jeep of The Reserva National de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa and the Salar de Uyuni; the highest, largest and most impressive salt flat in the world.

There is more to say. I think Jon plans to elaborate on each activity in his next blog post. Look out for it next week at elfanoos.blogspot.com. For about half of the Bolivia pictures, check out http://picasaweb.google.com/a.melissa.meyer/Bolivia#. Check again next week for more.

Love,

Melissa