We eventually arrived in Yangshuo (aka B ladder box drawers, aka southern China's answer to Khao San Road) and made the grave error of checking into a guesthouse above what turned out to be Yangshuo's karaoke strip. We woke (a loosely applied term when kept awake all night by dreadful Asian renditions of such already dreadful songs as Everything I do I do For You by Brian Adams and Whitney's I Will Always Love You) the next morning to the most amazing vista of karst scenery.

Karst scenes in Yangshuo

We hired bikes and rode out through rice fields, across bridges and through orange groves and small villages.

Cycling in Yangshuo

The weather wasn't brilliant, but all the same we decided to catch a local bus up to Xindi and then hike 24km along the river down to XingPing and then take a bamboo raft back to Yangshuo the following day. There's huge business for the locals in bamboo rafts and almost everyone owns one and hopes to make money ferrying tourists around the local area. One local woman even bought herself a ticket on our bus to Xingdi in the hope that she'd convince us before we got there to take a bamboo raft to somewhere else with her. The scenery was amazing, though somewhat foggy, and walking through 24km of mud was well worth the effort.

Bamboo boats

The Longji Rice Terrace was a great day trip from Yangshuo and a fine example of agricultural engineering and creativity. Along the way we stopped at a not-very-authentic local village and met some ladies with incredibly long hair performing some local dances.

Longji rice terraces

A local at Longji

Long hair at Longji

Yangshuo really is southern China's answer to Bangkok's Khao San Road. With dozens of bars, great food, endless outdoor activities and enough neon to outshine an 80s theme party, Yangshuo (or Yangers to expats who've been there longer than a week) is a blackhole for the weary backpacker. Backpackers have been known to arrive but never leave and we spent about ten days there just generally hanging around and doing not much at all really.

Neon in Yangshuo

Getting some exercise in Yangshuo

Local chef in Yangshuo

These baby bum-pants are all the rage in China, though we can't quite work out how they're supposed to help!!

We met a Chinese kid called Jo who is ten years old and likes to practice his English on tourists. At first we were a bit suspicious of him (almost everyone wants something from tourists in China) but we soon found he genuinely just wanted to have a conversation in English. Each night he'd find us in whatever restaurant we were in, sit and have a chat, then move on to find his other tourist friends.

Kids at play

When the time came to leave, we decided to take a sleeper bus to Guangzhou and then fly to Bangkok. Having taken countless trains across China we thought the bus might be a neat experience. WRONG!!!! The bus had short bunk beds in three rows along the length of the bus and we lurched and swayed along through eight hours of Chinese roadworks before being turfed off the bus, tired and nauseated, on the side of the road somewhere in the middle of Guangzhou at 5am. We spent three hours trying to find a Metro station that didn't exist (Guangzhou wins our award for worst signage but most heplful random local of our travels) and eventually made our way to a hostel on the river for the day. Glenn trawled another motorcycle market and Bec caught up on some sleep before taking a late flight to Bangkok to start the Thailand leg of our trip home.

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Further to, or as a result of Bec's enormous childhood collection of bears, we arrived in Chengdu with the sole purpose of seeing some panda bears. Again, we wasted no time in getting ourselves on a bus and out to the Giant Panda Breeding and Research Station just outside of Chengdu. We took a day trip from our guesthouse which got us there before the tour bus hoards arrived and we spent a blissful hour watching the gorgeous and comical pandas go about their morning feeding activities.

The poorer cousin to the black and white Giant Panda is the Red Panda. More like a fox or a cat, the Red Panda is not believed to be as endangered as its Giant Panda cousins, or as photogenic. A photo with a Giant Panda costs 1000 yuan (about AUD$250), while a photo with a Red Panda costs 100 yuan (about AUD$25). Alternatively, have your pic taken for free with the cardboard cut-out in front of the Red Panda enclosure!! Many of the Giant Pandas are sponsored by individuals and corporations. Most of them are named things like ZuZu or Ring Rong, except for the pair sponsored by Microsoft who are named Microsoft and Unlimited Potential. How much can a panda bear?

A whole new yardstick by which cruel names are measured..................

The Red Panda

As close as Bec could get

Chengdu has other charms and we spent a week there just hanging around and enjoying the warmer weather. We sent another box of purchases home and did a bit more market shopping and temple-seeing.

Glenn went mountain bike riding through the peach blossom trees on the outskirts of town with an Irish guy he met on a riding forum.

Riding through the peach blossom fields

We took a day trip out to Leshan to check out the Giant Buddha, supposedly the world's largest seated Buddha. He was quite spectacular, though making our way through the crowds down the mountainside staircase made us glad we weren't travelling in summer.

Leshan Giant Buddha

One thing we didn't do a lot of in Chengdu was eat. Sichuan food is incredibly hot and even though we thought we'd broken ourselves in in terms of spicy food, Chengdu was mega spicy and we found ourselves eating boring old fried rice or nothing at all!!

We're constantly amazed by the many modes of transport in China. The streets of Chengdu are one huge loading bay and it's not uncommon to see a man pushing two fridges up the road on his bike.

Chinese transport

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Terracotta Army

At the big pit

Looking over the big pit

"Sod this. I've been standing here for thousands of years. Wake me up when something happens."

Adding the final touches to some clay lookalike warriors

We bought a couple of imposing, knee-height warriors to guard our front door on the assurance of our salesman that they were metal rather than clay.

Xi'an's old city is contained within its historical wall and we spent a day walking the 14km along the top of the city wall. It took 5 hours or so to walk but we enjoyed a new perspective on the city from ten metres above the hustle and bustle of the city.

Atop Xi'an's city wall

Xi'an's Big Goose Pagoda was lovely by night and set a nice scene for the city's sound, water and light show.

Big Goose Pagoda by night

The Belltower was also nice, though somewhat disappointing in its lack of sizeable bell.

Not the original bell tower bell

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On arriving in Beijing we were greeted with the capital's concession to Olympic security: xray machines in metro stations. It seems to be perfectly acceptable to carry pocket knives and kitchen knives on the train, but deodorant spray cans are serious contraband and we found ourselves unpacking Glenn's bag in order to surrender our security threat. We checked into our guesthouse in a traditional Chinese Hutong and then set out to check out Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. Again, the security presence is well felt and we queued for quite some time before security deemed us safe to trod on Tian'anmen Square. The place was an absolute madhouse with Chinese tourists keen to have their photo taken under Mao's picture and, grand as it was, Tian'anmen Square felt rather sterile and not the kind of place for weekend picnics and kite flying.

Mao overlooks Tian'anmen Square

Possibly our biggest Chinese highlight thus far has been our visit to the Great Wall of China. We were determined not to simply take a bus out to the closest section, see it, touch it and leave. Instead we took a three hour bus trip out to the Jinshanling section and hiked 10km to the Simatai section. It was excellent. Knee-knackering but excellent. Many parts of the wall were crumbled and some sections were virtually vertical. We saw probably 20 other hikers on our section of the wall and we were accompanied periodically by several ageing Chinese hawkers selling anything from water to t-shirts to beer. The air was clear and the wall was visible for miles, though unfortunately the Chinese government are at present building an expressway very close to the wall which is sure to destroy the mystery and tranquility of that section of the wall. On reaching Simatai, we took a zip-line (Bec: A Chinese zipline? Hell no!! I've seen Chinese safety standards!! Glenn: It's either that or walk another 40 minutes to the bottom. Bec: Alright, but you're going first.) across a ravine to a restaurant in the nearby village. In all, an excellent experience.

On the Great Wall

The old-world Great Wall under the new-world flight path

'Look mum, no hands!!' Bec defies death on a Chinese zip-line

The next day we took our painful selves (OK, Bec's painful self) to the Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube. Again, cue Chinese security. The Stadium is certainly an engineering masterpiece and we were able to have a run around inside the Stadium.

The Birdsnest

And so the shopping continued. Bec bought two more pairs of boots and a jacket (and was decidedly smug with herself and her bargaining abilities) and Glenn continued with the bike-bit-buying mission, this time being asked to supply cheap goods rather than buy them.

The joy of travelling in Beijing so soon post-Olympics is that Beijing is immaculate. The metro is super clean and self-explanatory, public toilets are everywhere, English menus abound and all the major attractions are still gleaming from their pre-Olympic make-overs.

Beijing bling

The traffic is mental, though we found it to be more manageable than Shanghai. China's road rules seem to be more 'guidelines' than rules and bike and scooter riders are a law unto themselves. The whole thing seems to work though and we've not witnessed any accidents as yet (this is probably attributed to a law which dictates that foreigners cannot drive in China).

Beijing bike parking

A store selling police equipment. Maybe a set for the Triton or the Barina?

Our food experience continued in Beijing with a plate of traditional roast duck and our first introduction to a Chinese hotpot (huge and hot, obviously). Beijing's night food market is an impressive display of star fish, grasshoppers, seahorses and over-priced noodles all for the eating.

Duck carving

Star fish and sea horses feature on the market menu

And again, time to move on......

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We took the MAGLEV (one of the fastest trains in the world which operates by magnetic levitation) from the airport to the outskirts of the city at a very tidy 431km/hour. The cars on the parallel freeway looked like they were going backwards and the whole trip took only eight minutes. After a bit of confusion at the metro station over trains not running, we eventually made it to our hostel and got into beds we didn't get out of again for two days.

The Maglev's speedo at 430km/hour

We'd been really looking forward to getting back to Asia. We love the food, the smells and generally just the feel of Asian countries and we weren't disappointed when we finally woke up to look out our window and find a woman cooking noodles on a street stall. We woke up to the smell of her cooking every morning for six days.

Mmmmm, street stir-fry

On eventually leaving our hostel, we wandered along the Bund (Shanghai's riverside) and watched the hundreds of barges and cruise boats go by and then strolled through the neon madness that is Shanghai's Nanjing Road. We fobbed off countless entrepeneurs keen to sell us knock-off watches and skate shoes, determined to do our own bargaining in Shanghai's clothing markets.

Ad boats on the Bund

Neon on Nanjing

Our shopping mission started out with a research trip to a few big-name department stores to find that the prices were all very western and that the best bargains would be found in local markets. Glenn made an absolute killing at the Shanghai Motorcycle Market where he bought gloves, knee guards, elbow guards and body armor for well below retail cost in Australia. Bec wasn't quite so successful in her boot-buying mission coming away with only three pairs. We sent our first carton of Chinese acquisitions home three days after arriving in China.

Shanghai Motorcycle Market

Shanghai seems to have a bit of a reputation for being Beijing's poor cousin in terms of tourist attractions. This may be true, but we still enjoyed the very kitch (and again very neon) Bund Tourist Tunnel and an eye-popping performance by a group of Chinese acrobats.

More neon inside the Bund Tourist Tunnel

The food in Shanghai was excellent, though we seem to have lost some of our ability to eat with chopsticks. We often eat from street stalls so that we can point and order, rather than play the food lottery in restaurants with no English menus. Not all plans are foolproof, however. We went to a restaurant next door to the hostel which had a vague kind of English menu. We pointed at beef and chicken and then said 'noodles'. The waitress looked confused for a minute before holding her hands far apart to indicate something long. Yep, excellent, noodles thanks. Not so. What actually arrived was a big eel, chopped into bits (with the exception of its head which sat proudly staring at us through seared eyes atop the plate) and stirfried to death in oyster sauce and it took us about half an hour to pick the bones out of it with our chopsticks. Entertainment ++ for the locals. Naturally we were wondering how much our eel speciality was going to cost us.The whole meal cost us 55 yuan ($12) for three mains and a beer so we were thinking that we got the food poisoning fish (the fish sit in tubs of water out the front of the restaurants, this particular eel shared its water with a bunch of cane toads about to become Braised Bullfrog) rather than the super-expensive tourist fish and set about drinking copious quantities of preventative beer in keeping with the theory that alcohol on the skin kills bacteria, thus alcohol in the stomach will do likewise. We were naturally very grateful that we got a plate of eel and not a plate of stirfried snake or braised bullfrog.

Toads, fish and squid await their stir-frying in plastic tubs in front of restaurants

After a week in Shanghai, it was time to head for Beijing...........

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The train trip from Zagreb to Ljubljana in Slovenia was very scenic and the border crossing uneventful asides from Bec being assigned a new pronunciation of her name; Rebechecha Yentra (apparently double hard c’s and j’s defy Slovenian language capabilities). Ljubljana is a gorgeous city with a relaxed vibe. The city market provides good food and good views, as does the town square and we spent quite a few hours eating Burek (cheese or meat rolled in filo pastry and formed into a pizza shape) and people watching below the main monument.

Pretty Ljubljana town

A local woman sells her wares in Ljubljana

Burek-fast, Slovenian style

Never able to pass up a funicular, we rode it to the castle on the hill above Ljubljana. Possibly the best description of the castle could be found in the castle’s visitors book as ‘This castle is not very castle-like’.

'This castle is not very castle-like'

We like to listen to languages (without having to participate ineptly in conversations) and the local puppet theatre had a show on so we went and watched Supramiska (SuperMouse, or so we thought) with about 50 sub-seven year-olds and their parents. Initially we felt a bit dodgy on account of being childless but we soon got over it and enjoyed the very basic 45 minute performance of which we understood absolutely nothing. The following day as we walked past the theatre we saw a sign out the front that translated Supramiska to mean Skip Mouse, not Super Mouse. Turns out we watched a show about a dumpster rat.

Dumpster mouse

It was impossible for Glenn to be in Ljubljana and not try the horseburger.

Horseburgers

Lake Bled is about an hour away from Ljubljana by bus and we took a day trip there and circumnavigated the 6km around the partially frozen lake. Virtually a ghost town in winter, it’s easy to see how it’s a tourist magnet in summer.

Lake Bled

From Ljubljana we took an overnight train to Zurich for our onward flight to Shanghai........

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Though feeling slightly annoyed at then having to carry our bags all the way into town, we were pacified somewhat to find we’d been chucked off the tram in front of the Sarajevo Holiday Inn (home to the world’s journalists during the war) which we wouldn’t have noticed had we been on the tram.

Home to the world's journo's during the war

Sarajevo is a lovely city full of market stalls selling all manner of things from cotton to copper, lovely parks and rehabilitated buildings. War damage is still apparent in Sarajevo, though less so than Mostar. The city dwellers are very modern and the parks are full of men playing chess on giant chess boards on the ground.

Outdoor chess, snow and all

Possibly the biggest danger we faced in Sarajevo was death by falling icicle. Temperatures were consistently sub-zero and dumps of snow and huge chunks of ice were falling with massive thuds from the roofs of buildings.

Icicles cling to roof gutterings

Again, several new cemeteries have arisen throughout town and it’s desperately sad to read the headstones of so many young people.

Flowers punctuate the somber white expanses of Sarajevo's cemeteries, while cranes in the background continue the clean up effort

Sarajevo has some interesting museums, among them a dedication to the 1984 Winter Olympics and a museum of BiH history located at the spot from which Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, subsequently sparking the start of World War 1.

Site of the death of Franz Ferdinand

Bosnian food suits us well and cevapcici (little spicy sausages served with pita bread, onion and yoghurt) became a favourite very quickly. Likewise, the beer didn’t disappoint.

Leaving Bosnia and Herzegovina, we took the overnight train to Zagreb in Croatia.

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We arrived by bus into Mostar mid-morning and, together with a British guy we met on the bus, took ourselves on a walking tour of the town. War damage is everywhere. Bullet-scarred and burned out buildings are the norm rather than the exception and although many of the shopfronts have been repaired, the upper floors the buildings remain largely derelict. Churches and office blocks loom abandoned.

A church and an office block await rehabilitation

War damaged buildings and houses are common

We were warned by well-meaning locals not to stray off well-worn paths for fear of landmines and many of the crumbling buildings sport warning signs. The locals capitalise on the sheer number of spent bullets and shell cartridges by turning them into elaborate pens and vases and selling them to tourists.

Mostar market stalls

Several new cemeteries can be found around town and it is very, very sad to read the headstones of so many young people all with the same date of death. (A bit by Bec: Initially I found it to be very overwhelming and very confronting, almost to the point of dizziness. I found it very difficult to look at all the destroyed and damaged buildings and not let my mind imagine the type of horror experienced by the townspeople. I found myself looking at women my age in the street and thinking that at 15 years old, when I was fighting with my mum about going to the Bundaberg show , these women were most likely experiencing sheer and absolute terror like we’ll never know. I’d also look at people in the street and wonder how many loved-ones they’d lost through the fighting and wonder how they can now go about their daily lives.)

The people of Mostar appear to be getting on with their daily lives and the reconstruction effort is continual. The Mostar bridge (destroyed during the war) was reconstructed and reopened in 2004 and dotted around town are signs that read ‘Don’t Forget’. Mostar has a beautiful and vibrant old town and is a magnet for summer tourists. We spent three days wandering the streets of the old town and exploring (carefully, on well-trodden paths) the area.

Mostar's bridge

Signs like this one urge people not to forget and are found throughout the old town

Business as usual

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Beautiful Dubrovnik harbour

We met a man in a park just outside the bus station who owned a hostel (as they all do). We seldom book anything in advance but generally have an idea of where we’ll stay unless someone can offer us something better. Our usual plan involves hanging around the bus/train station with a map and our backpacks and bargaining with the touts until the price reaches 10 euro per night. The man we met in Dubrovnik was about 70 years old and on his way to the market to buy sardines so we decided to go and stay with him. When we got back to his place he prepared and grilled his sardines in garlic and lemon and gave us half to eat on his patio overlooking Dubrovnik. Definitely a winner. Our nameless host’s wife, Budema, got us familiar with the map of town and assured us that it never snows in Dubrovnik, or at least hasn’t for 30 years. We’re finding our accommodation to be fairly hit and miss but generally we’re pretty happy with a comfy bed and internet access of some form. We’re been pleasantly surprised with the availability of Wifi internet everywhere we’ve been.

Our first afternoon in Dubrovnik we spent outside in the sun walking the coastal route.

A Croatian fisherman bringing in his catch

The following day we headed into the old town to wander its narrow streets and see its harbours but were thwarted by rain. The next morning we woke to find Dubrovnik’s first snow in 30 years. According to Croatian radio it was the first snow to actually settle on the ground in more than 60 years. And it snowed all day. Big, fluffy, blizzard-like snow. Visibility was zero, but after being cooped up in our tiny room all day we decided to venture out and see how the locals were fairing, and for once it seemed the locals were more enthralled by the snow than we were. When it hasn’t snowed in 60 years, there is no etiquette for snow-play and we got amongst it with the four year-olds and the 74 year-olds.

Snowy Dubrovnik

The following day we were out and about early to check out the old town in the snow. The council workers were out with their modified snow shovels and the locals were using dustpans to shovel their walks. It was the only time we’ve seen snow chains in use and our guesthouse lady was beside herself with excitement. The streets were full of snowmen and the harbour covered in snow.

Modified snow shovels

Dustpans for snow shovels

Oddly, Dubrovnik was going to be our back-up plan if the rest of Eastern Europe was too cold for us too handle. The crazy snow only proves that bad weather is, in fact, following us.

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Pebble beaches at Bar, Montenegro

Montenegro's Coast

Appreciating beer as we do, and given that beer is cheaper than water in all the countries that we've been to so far, we've made it our mission to diversify our beer tastebuds by drinking the local brew in each region we visit. Consequently, 'Happy New Beer' has replaced 'Happy New Year' as our toasting mantra.

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Arising early, we took a bus from Ohrid around the shore of the lake to Sveti Naum on the Albanian border. The bus stopped right at the border and we got out and walked to the border patrol booth. It was freezing cold and we stood outside in the wind while the border guard scrutinised our passports. After exiting Macedonia, we walked 1.5km in the freezing cold mountainous breezes through the grey zone to the Albanian border and customs ‘caravan’. Granted entry, we were met on the other side of the Albanian border by a taxi driver eager to take us into the transit town of Pogradec. We paid him more than we should have on account of the huge shotgun on the back parcel shelf of his alarmingly new Mercedes. Pogradec train station is 4km out of town and we wisely chose to get out in town and get cashed up before we went there. Finding another taxi was not a simple task and only possible with the help of a kind local who parked his car in the middle of the road while he found us a taxi. Pogradec train station, despite its waiting area and price listing, was where Bec’s frustration began to surface. Cursed with being female and the subsequent inability to pee standing up, Bec was pointed in the direction of the ‘public toilets’ which she’d previously deemed derelict and overgrown and had the worst toilet experience of her life. Enough said. It made her very grumpy.

Train timetable

The arrival of our train was also fairly interesting. It would seem that along with drinking coffee, the other national Albanian pastime is throwing rocks at train windows. We chose a carriage with the most number of intact windows (by no means all of them) and settled in for a heater-less and toilet-less ride to Durres on the Albanian coast. Though painfully slow, the time seemed to pass quickly as the train made its way through mountains, across valleys and past backyards full of children who derived great joy from throwing rocks at the train. Reminders of Albania’s grim past are everywhere in the form of about 700 000 concrete bunkers dotted all over the country side. Some of them are painted and others are hidden behind plants but most are in various states of disrepair and dilapidation. We again arrived in the dark and found ourselves an overpriced hotel in the centre of Durres.

Albanian bunker through the cracked train window

We’d only intended Albania to be a transit visit on the way to Croatia. After investigating the possibility of taking a ferry to Dubrovnik we were again foiled and found ourselves at Durres train station with the plan of taking the train to Shkodra on the Albania/Montenegro border. Internet research had shown an early connecting train to Shkodra so we (stupidly) defied the woman in the ticket booth and got off the train at Vora to aghast looks from the locals on the train. Naturally there was no connecting train and we had four hours to kill in the middle of Albanian nowhere until the next train came through. We spent an hour drinking coffee and lemonade in a smoky Albanian pool hall where Bec seemed to be the only woman to have ever set foot in the place and then decided to hang out at the train station (read: closed shack beside the train track).

On the platform in Albania

We got a good lesson in rural Albanian life by watching the comings and goings of the sheep and cows and their shepherds. Bec has unashamedly taken to peeing behind buildings, not caring who sees her, caring only that she doesn’t get arrested. Eventually our train arrived, preceded by its usual cacophony of whistle, grinding breaks and rattling window panes. The train was older than any we’d seen before and so full we had to sit in the little fold out seats in the aisle. Eventually we moved into a cabin with a very friendly Albanian couple who seemed fairly intent on determining whether we were married or not. We couldn’t understand a thing each other was saying and reverted to the usual charades-like conversation before they got off the train a few stations later amidst a lot of handshaking and farewelling.

A typical Albanian train station

We eventually arrived in Shkodra, again at nightfall, and found a taxi to take us to the Montenegren border. After an uneventful border crossing we paid someone to take us to Bar, Montenegro’s coastal playground.

We both had a bit of a dummy-spit in Albania. Glenn was the first to announce he was sick of it and Bec was soon to agree. Travelling frustrations are beginning to get to us. Glenn is sick of the effort it takes to find the transport and sitting on trains all day and not really doing much. Bec is sick of having a dirty jacket and smelling like a homeless woman and having hair like a scarecrow. Happy Valentines Day to us.

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Macedonian rail station

We arrived in Ohrid in the dark and didn’t wander around for long before we were approached by Antonio who owned a set of reasonably priced studio apartments and as a result became our new best friend. We spent two nights in the studio apartment and then moved to Antonio’s family home. We woke the first morning to clear skies and set about exploring Lake Ohrid and its surrounding old town. Ohrid is set on the sure of a huge lake which forms part of the border between Macedonia and Albania and is absolutely stunning.

Beautiful Lake Ohrid

We weren’t wandering for long before we were befriended by our own personal tour guide in the form of a shaggy grey dog who led us around for almost four hours. We’d get to an intersection and he’d take us in the direction of the next point of interest and he even traipsed across the turrets of the fortress in the rain with us. He sat with Bec while Glenn viewed some frescos in a local church before taking off to find his next group of tourists. We suspect he has a tourist sensor and gets fed well by the tourists he hooks up with.

Glenn and his tour guide at the fort

On our second morning in Ohrid we woke to snow which only served to make the place prettier and we walked along the lakeside in the opposite direction.

A typical Macedonian car

That night we moved to Antonio’s house where we met some other travellers and availed ourselves of Antonio’s mum’s biscuit-bearing hospitality. We went out to dinner with our new American, Australian and Swedish friends and enjoyed a much needed night of snow fights and general stupidity before heading to Albania the next day.

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We caught our bus and it took well over four hours to arrive in Seville via every tiny town and narrow street along the way. It's amazing the only damage the driver did to the bus was on backing out of a bus station and not while weaving down the narrow cobbled streets.

After finding a bed for the night, we set out for some Spanish cultural immersion in the form of a tapas bar. We spent four days in Seville, which is quite possibly one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The orange trees were full of fruit (apparently more ornamental than edible though) and Seville is home to some of the most beautiful buildings.

Gorgeous Seville

Plaza de Espana, Seville

Still in search of some warmth, we went south in our hire car to the small town of Cadiz on the Costa del Sol. Deserted as the coast was, it's not hard to see how it could become a British enclave in the peak summer season. Our lunch stop enroute to Cadiz was the setting for Bec's first severe language failure which resulted in a 40 euro lunch and a budget-imposed diet for the next two days. We'd only planned on staying one night in Cadiz but found ourselves in the middle of a festival known as the 'Spikey Fish' festival (still not sure what this was about given that we saw no fish and definitely no spikes) and decided to partake in the merrymaking. We bought a litre of beer for $2 and took to the streets with the rest of Cadiz.

Alocal fiesta in Cadiz

Our next stop was just outside of Gibraltar to spend a couple of nights with Bec's old Bundy neighbour, Steve, and his very pregnant wife Tatiana. It was excellent to catch up with them (and play with their crazy dog) and though we wanted nothing more than a bed, Steve and Tati turned on the hospitality. Tati is an excellent cook and we spent two nights by the fire eating, drinking and generally just being merry. Steve and Tati have an awesome view from their home and the most beautiful nursery awaiting the arrival of the bella baby Boge.

The view from Casa del Boge

Enroute to Gibraltar we passed the most enormous windfarm with no less than a thousand wind turbines dotted across the hillsides. Very impressive. We spent a day in Gibraltar itself (a British territory on the southern Spanish mainland) which necessitated us parking the car in Spain, flashing our passports as we crossed the border (which also happens to be the airport runway, they have to close the road when a plane is about to land) and then reverting to spending pounds instead of euros for the day. We paid a cabbie to take us around the famous Rock of Gibraltar. We like to say that Glenn got a trip to England and a view of Africa for his birthday (you can see Africa from the very south of Spain).

Bec on the runway/border at Gibraltar

From Gibraltar we ended up in Granada. The weather was still rubbish and our hotel was in the middle of a slushy, muddy, cementy building site that made parking difficult. We thought we were being clever in avoiding parking tickets by moving our car after midnight, no such luck. We'll see if we're billed through the credit card for that one!!

Bullring in Ronda, Spain

We then meandered our way north to Madrid where, nerves and patience shattered after a week in a hire car together, we spent the night in an airport hotel before flying to Bucharest the next day.

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After registering our interest on a few websites, we were approached by a woman in Portugal who ran an 'animal rescue charity' on her property. We'd pay 20 euro per night for all meals and accommodation and in return we'd look after some animals and some orange trees. Great, we thought. Nothing like a few weeks of wholesome work to cleanse the soul (and the liver). So we flew from Dublin to Lisbon and took two buses to the middle of nowhere, arriving by taxi to the property at about eight o'clock at night.

On arriving we were enthusiastically greeted by an AmeroEnglish couple of about our age who looked as though they'd not been in normal company for quite some time (they'd arrived three days before us). We met the British owner of the property, a British couple running the property and the Portuguese neighbour from down the road who spoke no English. There was a roast on the table and loads of wine.

The next morning we woke up to find very little food in the house and our new AmeroEnglish friends took us on a tour of the 'animal rescue charity'. We're not sure that the animals had been brought into a better situation. BellaDog was locked in a cage the size of a small car and was up to her ankles in her own faeces. Likewise Jack the horse, whose grumpy personality meant he was largely ignored. Darling JennyDonkey looked like she was about to have twins, but was most likely badly malnourished and riddled with worms. The Forgotten Seven horses in the back paddock were poorly shod and left to fend for themselves with not a scrap of food. Cash was clearly scarce and the animals not provided with their basic food or health needs. Most likely, the owner of the property went into it with good intentions but lacked the know-how, funds or motivation to be fair to the 'rescued' animals. An internet search of the owners name turns up pages exposing involvement in horse fraud in the UK.

Bec and Jack the Ass

The weather was abnormally cold and the house was freezing. Our days were spent in the orange orchard tidying up the trees and trying to gather firewood without an axe or a chainsaw ('We have no axe and you need a license to use a chainsaw in Portugal'). The owner was driving around on the spare space-saver tire on her car 'because there are no tires in Portugal' and we often ran out of gas for showers 'because there's a problem with gas bottles in Portugal'. The people running the place had no respect for each other, their volunteers or the culture in which they'd chosen to live (as evidenced by their backstabbing of each other, the theft of money and dishonest acquisition of money, and the zero intention they had of learning the Portuguese language. The Portuguese neighbour calls the owner 'la gorda' which she believes means 'the beautiful' but actually translates to 'the fat woman'). The final straw for us came one night in a display of drunken volatility with the inference of knives. The next morning we packed our bags and did a runner with the help of our AmeroEnglish friends who did a runner the next day. We'd paid 200 euros upfront for ten days and left after four. We like to think our money was used to buy food and health care for the animals but we suspect it became part of the wine and frozen french fry budget.

Portuguese orange grove

As a result of a negative review by our AmeroEnglish friends, we believe this listing has been removed from the exchange program website. In case it hasn't, please excuse these few key words. Animal charity/Portugal/Helpex/Viana. We hope to make this google-able so as to prevent other people ending up in our situation. Contact us through this website if you think you might end up at this place and we'll give you further details.

And so we ended up spending two nights in a lovely Portuguese town called Beja before heading to Seville in Spain.

Beja

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And so Glenn and Troy and Bec took the train from Euston Station to Holyhead port, and then the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin where we were met by Soph and Jimi, whose hospitality lived up to its legendary status as usual. At the top of the to-do list was a visit to the Guinness Brewery and the mandatory pint of black stuff, or course, high above the Dublin streetscape.

Soph and Jimi getting amongst a few Guinnesses

The next few days flew by in a haze of late nights and hot toddies. We borrowed Soph and Jimi's car, Glenn reverted to driving-on-the-left mode, and we took a road trip around Northern Ireland to check out the Giant's Causeway at Antrim and checked out the Causeway Coastal route. In spite of being positively freezing, it was still stunning. We also checked out the very interesting and very old NewGrange monument.

Giants Causeway rock formations

Some stunning Irish coastal scenery

The very old Newgrange

The Irish weather was typically rubbish, so we planned to set off for the warmer climes of Portugal........

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Staying for free with Glenn's brother (thanks Troy) allowed us to redirect the 'accommodation' part of our daily budget to the 'socializing' part and we didn't waste much time getting amongst it. It was excellent to catch up with Troy, Ros, Zhar and Asher and Leonie, especially given it was Christmas and all and how busy everyone was.

Christmas Day was a quiet, three-person family affair complete with roast lamb, trifle,modified Trivial Pursuit and enough mulled wine to fill a washing machine. New Years Eve was much the same. Tempting as it was to stand outside in -2 degree breezes with two million other people and watch the fireworks, we decided to forgo the queues for the loos and the tube carriages full of vomit in favour of a quiet one at home.

Christmas Day 2008 (and some dodgy Aussie shirts)

We checked out our old London stomping grounds. Tooting Bec has become rather posh. All the little bakeries are now quite flash and even Chicken Cottage has automatic doors. Canning Town has tidied up its act with not a single burnt out car or trench coat-wearing dealer at the end of the subway tunnel and the old pub/house at Surrey Quays was so unrecognisably renovated it's hard to believe it used to be a hangout for Polish air hostesses and subject to burning newspapers through the mailbox.

Tooting Bec tube station

The old Surrey Quays pub, now posh!!

We took a weekend trip up to Derby and caught up with our mate Gav who we'd met in Thailand a few years ago. Gav took us round to the family car dealership, the local tourist attractions (Little John's grave, the pottery factory) and round to his mum's place for a cuppa. Good food, great company and an educational on absurd British nightclub dance practices (google 'Oops upside the head dance') if you're curious.

The lack of sun in London lent itself to doing a whole lot of nothing and after tripping around to such places as Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club, the Imperial War Museum and the Brick Lane markets and curry mile (mmmmm curry), we decided it was about time to move on.

The BBC media room, Wimbledon Tennis Centre

There's nothing quite like an impromptu trip, so we booked a 27 pound rail and sail deal and headed to Ireland........

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Miami is a city of beautiful buildings, beautiful people and beautiful cars and hence we were completely out of our league given our wardrobe/backpack of wash-and-wear, 100% unnatural fibres. What to do? Go on a cruise to the Bahamas, that's what.

Art deco in Miami

Now, we're not very cruise-ship type people but after thorough investigation it appeared that it was cheaper to live on a cruise ship for four nights that it was to live on the mainland USA so we got ourselves a cheap internet deal and soon found ourselves buying a helmet full of beer on the Norwegian Sky as it set sail from the port of Miami destined for the Bahamas. It took us a night to find our sea legs, but the following day we were partaking in the buffet with the best of them. After introductions all round, it seemed that the cruise ship clientele was mostly from Florida. So much so, in fact, that it seemed impossible that there was anyone left in Florida. We spent a day in port at Freeport and Nassau and on the island of Great Stirrup Cay. In spite of the weather being warmer than Iowa, it still wasn't warm enough for Bec's Iowan bikini to get a work out. Glenn went swimming as a matter of principle.

Our cruise ship

Great Stirrup Cay Airstrip

After four days of eating a drinking ourselves silly with half of Florida, we docked again in Miami and took ourselves off on a tour of the Florida Everglades. We took a run-of-the-mill airboat tour, complete with toilet paper ear plugs to reduce the ungodly racket, around the national park and watched a rather peculiar display of crocodilemanship.

Airboats in the Everglades

After a blissfully warm week in Florida, London called................

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The weather went from fall to winter virtually overnight. Twice we dragged ourselves out of our warm beds to go and play in the snow and throw sticks at the frozen streams. Our snowmen were of better quality than any we'd ever built before and the parks and pine trees are really beautiful covered in proper, thick snow.

Snowmen in Iowa

Living in sub-zero temperatures (Bec regularly walked to work in -13 degree Celsius temperatures) actually requires a lot of effort. Glenn had to scrape the ice from the windscreen of the car every day and only after the snow plow had been through could he actually go anywhere. Our hotel maintenance man had to shovel and salt the footpaths everyday and was often on the roof of the hotel in the snow trying to keep the gutters clear of ice.

Glenn scraping the ice off the car

Not only is living in sub-zero temperatures a lot of effort, it also comes with its own set of dangers. When the snow melts and refreezes again it becomes ice which is, of course, very slippery. Cars slide off the road everywhere and Bec witnessed two low-impact car collisions in an hour from her hotel window one particularly slippery morning before she went to work. Possibly she should have taken this a sign of things to come and stayed at home. Rather, she headed off to work only to do a very 'old lady' thing and slip and fall over on the ice in the middle of the road, the result of which was two sprained wrists and a broken tailbone (not to mention the mental trauma associated with the non-xray diagnosis of said broken backside). The following few weeks were fairly uncomfortable for Bec.

Despite the weather we've still managed to get out and about. We did a quick trip around the Bridges of Madison County and took ourselves to see some icehockey. Ice hockey is EXCELLENT!!!! It's fast, furious and completely violent. We got front row seats behind the plexiglass next to a family with two small children whose cheering repertoire alternated equally between 'LOSERS!!!' and 'You suck ref!!'. Good, wholesome family fun and much better than the football.

Ice hockey carnage

A Bridge of Madison County

We can't really say that we were sad to leave Iowa (not the least because the temperature in the taxi on the way to the airport was -11 Celsius). It's lovely during summer and fall, but we're just not tough enough to live there full-time.

Bring on the Bahamas!!!!!

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We took a trip to the Amana Colonies, a group of small towns of German heritage, and sussed out their version of Oktoberfest. We (ok, Glenn) took part in the keg tossing competition and partook in a beer or two. We kept it fairly tidy on the basis that it might be a little too cold to sleep outside the beer hall or even in the car due to a lack of hotel rooms in town.

Fun and games at Oktoberfest

Halloween decorations had been in the stores since the day we got here, so on Halloween night we got in the car and drove to a kid-filled neighbourhood. Well, there were hoards of kids everywhere dressed as anything and everything from PowerRangers to election ballot boxes. Lit pumpkins lined the streets, some of them very intricately carved. The amount of candy some of these kids collected would be enough to keep them high for two solid years.

Halloween pumpkin

We finally managed to get ourselves to a college football game. The University of Northern Iowa (UNI) is just up the road from our hotel and every weekend the place fills to capacity with purple-clad UNI Panthers fans. We were astonished to learn that there seems to be at least 60 players on a football team and that a 15 minute quarter actually goes for about 45 minutes!! A group of ten year-olds sitting beside us gave us a much needed five minute tutorial on the rules of American football which, unfortunately, still wasn't enough to keep us interested past the third quarter. Ice hockey season has just started so maybe we'll have a better attention span there.

Action in the UNI-Dome

Winter has crept up on us here in Iowa and is adding a whole new dimension to our trip. Last Wednesday the weather was a sunny 23 degrees celsius. Two days later we got a dumping of snow and a maximum temp of 1 degree celsius!! The fall colors in the lead-up to winter have been absolutely stunning and ride-on mowers have been replaced by snow plows in neighbourhood driveways.

Fall colors in a local park

Silliness in a local park

And a few more fall colors, just because they're pretty!!

It's only early days yet, but winter here seems like way too much effort. Put on three jackets, one scarf, one beanie and one pair of gloves to walk to car in morning. Scrape ice from windscreen of car with hotel swipe card. Remove three jackets, one scarf, one beanie and one pair of gloves when car has become sufficiently heated. Arrive at office and put on three jackets, one scarf, one beanie and one pair of gloves to walk from car to office. Enter office and remove three jackets, one scarf, one beanie and one pair of gloves. Repeat in reverse for homeward journey.

The upside to all of this is that bikinis are really cheap which pleased Bec no end as she had to replace the one she daftly threw out in Vancouver (under the misguided notion that she'd be able to last a year without going somewhere warm). Bring on the Bahamas!!!

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The following morning we got up early and set out to check out Glenn's office in Waverly and to scope out a bit of the country side and to see if Iowa really does live up to its 'Is this Heaven? No, it's Iowa' catch-phrase. They print this on bumper stickers. Seriously.

Every weekend we take ourselves on a roadtrip and have seen some superb scenery and have attended some events for which appropriate adjectives do not exist.

We've pitched a few baseballs on the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville:

And visited the National Farm Toy Museum:

We've ridden the world's shortest and steepest railway in Dubuque:

We've checked out a wedding at the local Scarecrow Show (exactly that, though we've decided we prefer our scarecrows traditional rather than abstract):

The Effigy Mounds National Monument (burial mounds in the shapes of animals covered in grass) was interesting:

But not as interesting (for some) as the John Deere 90th Birthday celebration:

And we're seeing lots of Iowan cornfields:

We're lucky to have had six weeks of really good weather. It's been warm enough that we're wearing t-shirts but we suspect that this might come to a screaming halt soon. Glenn has been scraping ice from the windscreen of the car with a credit card (given the current financial climate that's about all it's good for anyway) for the last couple of days and popular opinion is that we will soon graduate from credit card to shovel to snow plough.

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