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Remember the Little Black Ball?
The one from this story?
Go ahead, click the link, the part with the ball is under “Digression”, but if you have the time I encourage you to read the whole story (and the 2 follow-up stories, it was a very long trip).
After more than 3 years, in September 2025, the story continues!

The Plan

The little black ball and I are going on a road trip to the Black Sea in my 1977 Mercedes S-Class. Because if you’re going to do something slightly ridiculous, you might as well do it in style.

This is all about:

• Documenting a wonderfully absurd journey across Europe
• Having a good excuse for a road trip

The Journey

Route: Rijeka → Sarajevo (to revisit where it all began) → Black Sea coast

Vehicle: 1977 Mercedes-Benz S-Class W116 (because if you’re taking a ball on a road trip, it should be a classy one)

Strategy: Scenic routes all the way – no highways, no tolls, just the beautiful long way around

Goal: Get this thing to where it was trying to go

Documentation: Photos, videos, and stories shared on Adventure Imminent blog

Why Support This?

Look, this is admittedly a bit silly. But sometimes the best adventures are the ones that make you smile rather than change the world.

Your support funds gas, food, board, and definitely some good stories along the way.

What You Get

Every Supporter: Your name listed on the “supporters” page on Adventure Imminent blog

€15+: Postcard from the journey, featuring a photo of the black ball along the way (printed through a postcard service and mailed to you)

€500+: Come along for a stretch of the trip! Ride in the 1977 Mercedes S-Class with me and the black ball as we head toward the Black Sea
(if somebody is seriously considering this, be sure to reach out first to make sure we can make it happen)

How to donate

Simply use PayPal or Revolut

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I had to get tested at the airport. The website said it cost 30€ so I gave the lady 40. It turned out they changed it to 15€ for the quick test but the lady took both 20’s and gave me change for 25 in Ariary. At a terrible rate, of course. I protested and the lady showed me a sign saying the give change in AR. I’m not sure if she was playing dumb or really didn’t get it. I gave back all the change and insisted on my euros back. Once I got them back, we were ready for a new transaction. I gave her one of the twenties and got back the change for a 5 in AR. 

I got out of the building and met a guy holding up my name. We started walking when I got tapped on the shoulder by a girl. For a moment, only a single thought occupied my mind. Wow, she’s pretty! But then I got thoroughly confused. She was also holding a sign with my name. It turned out the guy was sent by the place I had canceled. He made a call, put me on, I told them I booked another place. 

I went with the girl to a comfy 4×4. The driver looked like he was 900 years old. His face lit up when he heard me say my hometown. He had spent time there and he had fond memories of the place, especially the local food. Small world!

Being on the right side of the road was now strange. 

First impressions of Madagascar boiled down to “damn, this is third world!”. 

I felt bad about the other hotel sending the driver. They were very helpful with arranging all the documents back when I still needed them, before Madagascar changed the rules, and generally seemed kind so I didn’t want them to lose money on me. I messaged them, they gave me the payment details and I paid them for the ride a couple of days later, when I set up mobile payment with my new sim card. 

The girl was not exactly a girl, she was 36. She did not look it. She was very friendly, gave me all sorts of tips and even went into town with me to get a local sim. The process of getting one includes getting your photo taken.

I didn’t want to ask any questions to not come across as rude or nosy. She volunteered a lot of information soon enough. The driver was her husband, he was 70. She casually mentioned his girlfriends and how she sees no point in jealousy. She said she wanted him to be happy and that we were all free. A very progressive stanze and I wished that I shared it. I mean, in theory it makes perfect sense. But I don’t really see myself sharing. 

At dinner on Friday I mentioned that I was looking for something to do and that I couldn’t find a car to rent online. She said I could take theirs, just fuel it up.

She’d come along. I was not about to pass up a free car, especially when I think about how much we paid for the Mazda in Mozambique. And I was happy to have company, I had been by myself for a while. 

The traffic is terrible. Complete chaos. All the types of vehicles you can imagine plus a couple that would probably never cross your mind plus pedestrians plus livestock, all in the street at once. It almost seems quicker to walk than to drive. And if you’re not a skilled driver, don’t even try it. 

At one point we got stuck for a full hour. While we were waiting, a million street vendors approached us selling anything and everything. They don’t move along when you indicate you don’t want any and it gets really annoying really soon.

I saw a police officer help some guys push a truck that had broken down out of a roundabout. I tried to imagine the same happening in Europe but couldn’t quite do it. 

Once out of the city, it gets a little better. But the roads are far from perfect. The potholes demand respect, a lot of them are big enough to cause serious damage. 

We got to Lemur park. They come really close but you’re not allowed to touch them.

When we got to the ringtailed I asked the guide if that was king Julien. His reply was perfect – yeees, I like to move it move it! 😀

The park is not very big so the tour ended pretty soon. The day was still young and we went to see some more sites. There was a nice river with a couple of waterfalls.

We had a nice time so we agreed to go somewhere again the next day. We found a park we wanted to visit and set out with google leading the way. After an exciting drive along a not-really-a-road, we found an entrance but not the correct one.

We couldn’t get in without a ticket and a guide that we were supposed to get at the main entrance. Rather than doing that, we decided to look for another place. Google tried. At one point we drove through a river. At a couple of points I wasn’t sure we’d actually make it.

So, even though we basically found nothing and spent the day just driving in nature, I felt good about the day. It was fun and exciting.

We even picked up hitchikers, they rode in the back, like in the movies.

The work week was stressful and I did nothing but work, eat, sleep and worry. 

The plan was to buy a vehicle and move on on Saturday. A lot of ads are priced in francs even though the currency was replaced by ariary 15 years ago, it didn’t exist any more. And it’s not just ads, I later learned. A lot of vendors would still tell you the price in francs. Buying a vehicle turned out to be harder than expected so we spent all Saturday looking at different ones. She let me have the car again and went with me to help and translate. We went to look at several cars and scooters. We couldn’t find a decent, reasonably priced one. I found an ad for one that was a little more than I was looking to spend but looked nice so we went to look at that one. It only looked nice. As we were about to leave, I saw a nice looking motorcycle. Is that for sale? No, but the scooter is. And the scooter was leagues above any we had looked at. The price was reasonable. We brought it down a bit more and I bought it.

But we couldn’t settle the paperwork until Tuesday, Monday was Easter Monday. So I was staying in Tana another week. 

So we went somewhere on Sunday again, with the scooter. We weren’t legal but the idea was that nobody was going to pull us over on Easter and if they did we’d bribe our way out of it. We went looking for a park. We had a minor setback when out transmission belt broke but we lucky enough to find a guy who could get a spare and replace it (on Easter).

I got coffee from a street vendor. Take a moment to imagine a cooffee cart and a cup you get from one. Do you have an image in your mind?

Now look at what this one looked like. How close were you? 🙂

We continued. Google at the helm. We failed miserably. We put the poor scooter through hell, driving it over terrain that scooters were not built to be driven on. Well, mostly driven, pushed and even carried a little a couple of times.

I may not have seen any exotic animals but I was an exotic animal, judging by the way people were looking at me. She said I was probably the first white person many of them had seen. It kinda made sense. A lot of tourists go to a touristy spot and stay there. Few travel by land, fewer still end up where we were. There wasn’t even a road there, let alone anything to attract tourists. A fun failure, all in all, no regrets. 

On Monday we went to some national park, not the one we looked for the day before. On our way there we stopped at a place where they let you feed the lemurs and interact with chameleons and snakes.

At the national park, they have hugely different prices for tourists and locals and I support that. I know that we have a lot of national parks back home that most of us haven’t visited because they are too expensive. We started a tour. The guide brought us to a place and said “this is a viewpoint but you can’t really see anything through the branches”. I giggled on the inside. It started to rain. The famous big lemurs were nowhere to be found. Half an hour into our 3 hour tour the guide suggested that we end it and go outside of the park where we were guaranteed to see them. Fine. We got there, completely wet by this point, to find one lemur sitting at the top of a tall tree in the mid distance. So, technically, we had a sighting and none of the other visitors that day did so yay.

When we got back to the car we realised I had a hole in my pocket big enough to fit a car key. It wasn’t far, somebody found it and returned it. 

We spent a lot of time together, went everywhere together and had dinner together every night. Sometimes we’d get a beer or two after. Thursday was one of those times. After a couple, I started looking at her differently. I figured I’d better excuse myself and go to my room before I act on these impulses. And so I did. But soon after I did, I got a message saying she was thinking about me. I replied I was thinking about her too. She asked if she should come to my room. I said yes. 

It felt good to touch somebody again, to fall asleep next to somebody. It also felt almost sad. I was putting distance between myself and something that I didn’t really want to be distant from. Not really, not even after everything. But it strangely also felt like a step in the right direction. 

We woke up early and the light of dawn slowly revealed more and more of the most beautiful figure I was ever this close to. It felt better. Next night felt even more right. And then it was time to leave. 

I got to a gas station with a couple of bottles. She warned me that I was driving through a long stretch of nothing and that I may not make it on a single tank. They wouldn’t fill bottles at the station but the clerk went into the trash and fished out an old engine oil canister, washed it out with gasoline and filled it up for me. He seemed even more grateful for the tip than I was for the can. 

I probably would have made it on one tank had I fueled up at the last station before the nothing.

I stopped for lunch at a small restaurant. It looked… well, like food poisoning. But the food was really really tasty. You get used to the way things look after a while.

I took a bunch of videos of the scenery and of the small settlements scattered across the large area, some not more than a couple of huts. I later found that what I actually recorded was the road, I didn’t position the camera properly. I did also take a couple of photos with my phone so I can share those. And no, I did not apply any filters to them. Those are the actual colors!

Late afternoon, I found a dreadful place to stay. But I was tired and the weather was getting bad so I didn’t feel like shopping around and I took it.

The hotel had a restaurant so I went to eat. It was the creepiest place ever, it looked like a wedding hall that had been deserted for 20 years, it had a Silent Hill vibe.

And the meat was inedible. I went to my room. The power went out. Creepy again. And then, with the power still out, a disturbing tune started playing outside, some carneval/ice-cream truck sounding melody. I quickly invited my rational side to please step in, and thankfully it did. And I did not get murdered by the ghost of the bride-to-be from the wedding hall. 

I continued towards Mahajanga.

Road signs are a bit special there. They’re made of concrete and hand painted. They’re like that all over the island, metal ones are very rare.

I had coffee at huts along the road. They cost next to nothing and are mostly quite good. Most of these huts offer breakfast too, simple things fried on the spot. And there are always children around. 🙂

I stopped at a restaurant with loud music. I ordered some food and a beer. Well, I hoped I ordered food but I wasn’t really sure. While I was waiting, some local kids asked me to buy them a bottle of rum (surprisingly easy to mime).

It’s dirt cheap so I did. I ordered another beer. Something was cooking but I wasn’t sure if it was for me. I finished the second beer and still no food. I wasn’t really that hungry anyways so I was fine either way but I didn’t know whether I should wait and I didn’t know how to ask. 

Finally I just asked for the bill, they didn’t mention food so I left. 

Near Mahajanga, my check oil light came on. I got help from a group of locals to find and add some, but the light stayed on. I bought the guys a drink and they gave me their number so I could call if I needed anything. 

I figured that the light must be broken and I kept driving. I later learned that it needs to be reset. 

I got to my accomodation for the week. It was terrible but the internet was good so it would do. I had a bathroom that wasn’t really private but I was told I would be the only one using it. Only that one didn’t have running water. There was a hose under the staircase at the ground floor where I could “shower”. It’ll do for a week. 

Morning walks, coffee, evening walks or drives all week long. Nothing exciting. More cows in traffic than average, perhaps. The big baobab is really big. Sunsets were impressive, one turned the sky purple. Deep, proper purple. I didn’t know the sky could be that color. Again, no filters on any of the photos.

To be fair, there were interesting things there, I was just on the island for so long that they became mondane. The internet stand, for example. I actually love how “bare metal” it is. It looks like a joke but it does what you need it to do, it provides the service you need. No regard for esthetics, only functionality. It’s just that after seeing five, the sixth is just ordinary. Pretty much the same thing happens with everything else, like what the streets look like, what tools and technology people use but also with the beauty of scenery. Yes, it’s amazingly beautiful, but after a while it’s just what nature looks like. That’s why I say nothing exciting.

And then on Friday night I lost my wallet. Id, drivers license, bank cards, the works. There’s some excitement right there. I looked, I went back to the restaurant to ask. The restaurant owner took me to the police, they sent us to a different police station, for foreigners.

The police station was remarkably third worls. You have to see it to believe it. I sneaked a couple of photos but I didn’t dare risk too much. Also, I was pretty worried so photos were not exactly at the top of my priority list. Note the typewriter.

We didn’t accomplish much and we arranged to meet in the morning to go back and finish the process. I wasn’t sure what exactly the process was but it involved photos and coming back. I went back out to look, retracing my steps. I typed into google translate that I was after the wallet and the documents, not the money, and showed it to everybody I ran into. I went back to the first police station we went to because it was close to where I lost it, to ask if someone had brought it in. This time they took my info and number to call me if it was found. 

The next morning I made a sign, it offered a reward for the wallet. I showed it around for a bit and then set it next to me as I sat down for coffee. People were interested but no takers. A woman told me I should write it in Malagasy. I said I didn’t know how. She said no worries, that guy will help. They even got glue for me to put up the malagasy version.

A couple of hours went by and I became old news. I snapped anouter photo of an AK.

At 9:30 I came to the restaurant, as agreed. At 9:45 I called him, he said he’d be there at 10:30. I went back to the port with my sign. 

Going back at 10:30 I took a little shortcut through a one way street. I noticed the sign a bit late and it was a very short and wide street so I figured I’d be fine. I was not fine. There was police at the end. I apologized, told them about the wallet, how looking for it distracted me from noticing the sign. They said I had to pay a fine. I said I couldn’t. No wallet. I showed them the papers they gave me at the station the night before. They insisted. I insisted back. They insisted more. So did I. They couldn’t articulate the thought in english so one of them walked me back to the scooter and pointed at the fuel tank. How you will put? To that I opened the seat and pointed at the canister of gas. They were still not dissuaded. But after a couple of minutes they just handed me my papers. I thanked them cordially and hurried to the restaurant, I was now running late. He didn’t mind. As a thank you, I fueled up his scooter along with mine. I had some cash in my bag so I didn’t lose everything when I lost the wallet. So, yes, technically, I could have paid a fine. 

We went to get my photo taken. I’ve taken document photos before plenty of times. Never like this. First of all, this happened outside.

Second, this happened with the kind of camera you would dig up from a drawer and give your 4yo to play with. And finally, this cost 50 cents. As expected, these were incredibly ugly photos but I had no reason to care. We went to the police, they said come back at noon. We made use of the time by going to the local TV to place an ad about the lost wallet. Then we went to look in on the mechanic fixing his truck. We got held up there and got to the police at 12:50. The guy had gone out to lunch. When he came back he said he had urgent business to tend to and he’d call us in an hour. We went back to the mechanic. 16:40, still no call. We went back to the station. He sent us out to type up the document ourselves and come back for him to stamp it. We went out to find an internet cafe to translate the document and print it out. We eventually found one that was open. The computers were a blast from the past but we got it done.

We were back at the station at 17:35 with the docs printed out. At 18 he called us in and processed it in a minute and a half. A minute of that was attaching the photos to the document.

As we’ve established, driving in Madagascar is dangerous. The roads are terrible and you have to keep your focus, especially on a scooter. So, driving at night is a really terrible idea. So I went ahead and did it. It was actually quite pleasant. I had to drive a little slower but not much. And the cool night air felt good. 

After a couple of hours I got tired. I got a room at a national park along the road. Those really are everywhere. The parks, I mean. The guy who gave me the key took the money because reception doesn’t open until 8 AM and I wanted to leave early. I wonder if he kept the money and accused me of running away without paying. 🙂 

The road was getting worse and worse. After a while it could hardly even be called a road, it was just terrain.

The scenery, coluds and the light created a very special athosphere.

Sunset found me in the middle of nowhere and it was a proper african picture postcard sunset. The trees, the mountains, the colors, you could show it to anybody and they would immediately recognize it as Africa. 

And I caught one of my favorite “right place right time” photos.

I reached a village and found a house with a sign that said hotel. No english. Hotel? Oui. Excellent. So she waves me over to a table and asks me what I want to eat. I stop her when I recognize french for chicken. I get a decent chicken soup. I was eager to get to my room as soon as I finished. I try asking about it. I get out my phone and try asking in french. She looks at me with a blank expression. Types in something that google didn’t recognize. I type in I need a room, she answers ok and keeps staring at me. I type in where, she points to the village ahead. I guess hotel doesn’t mean the same thing here. I carry on. 

I asked in the village ahead. I was led into a suspicious dark alley. There was a bar. I asked about the price, it as 4€. You can’t argue with that. 🙂 A narrow path between houses led us to a small yard and the room. The room itself was spartan but ok. The bathroom was, and I have pics to prove this, a barrel with rain water placed between two houses and walled off by a wooden door. 

I settled in and went to the bar. The locals invited me to sit down with them and I bought a round. 5€ for the 6 of us. I could get used to those prices 🙂 

They told me to put my scooter inside, it would be safe in the bar for the night. I never parked IN a bar before. 🙂

Early next morning I went to shower. I asked for a towel and mimed towelling off. I was pointed to the barrel. I tried again and there was a spark of understanding in the ladies eyes. She brought me soap. Sure, I could use that too. I tried yet again and got the towel, I was all set for my barrel experience. Not at all a bad one, I must add, the water was clean and warm. 

I asked for coffee in two places, they didn’t have any yet, it was too early. The third had some weak excuse for coffee. The fourth got me a decent cup.

I was going to Nosy Be. No, it’s not pronounced nosy bee. 🙂 In case you’re wondering, the o in Nosy is pronounced uu, as in put or foot, so it’s more like noosy. Be is like bet but without the t. 

More bueautiful secnery. Boooriiing! 😀

I had a strange moment when I felt just how far from home I was. Let me try to explain. I’ve seen chameleons a bunch of times, but they were in captivity. So they were just exotic animals in cages. But now I saw one just crossing the road. This is normal here. I was so far that chameleons weren’t even exotic.

So I went looking for the port. It seemed straightforward enough, turn left at Ambanja, get to Ankify, find the port. I got off the main road in Ambanja, to an unpaved road. Then a worse unpaved road. Reached a muddy part I couldn’t pass. Turned back, looked for alternative routes. Reached more dead ends. Reassessed my internal definition of drivable road and tried again. Drove past a truck stuck in the mud. Got stuck in mud myself. Lost my slippers in the mud. Ran out of roads, followed footpaths and finally, well, nothing, basically. Just drove through the forest with a vague sense of a general direction.

Eventually I found a path again. Then a small road, then a bigger road, then asphalt again. I got back to Ambanja having spent the better part of the morning exploring muddy dead ends. And then I found a different road from Ambanja to Ankify. Asphalt all the way. The great Troll in the Heavens was smiling down on Google. 

I got asked for my papers at a checkpoint. So, by law, scooters with 100+ cc need to have a document called a gray card. Mine was a 125 so it needed one. However, instead of actually getting one, the guy who sold it to me just put 100cc on the receipt. Strangely, this worked, I was fine every time I was pulled over. But this particular police officer asked for the gray card. I pretended I didn’t know what that was. I showed him the receipt and the insurance slip again. He tried to ask about the gray card again, but finally just gave up and sent me away. 

I wanted another coffee. I stopped at a place, asked for coffee, a couple of guys nodded their head yes but the guy at the other side of the table, let’s call him the bartender, yelled no, no coffee. Maybe he didn’t like me? 

I was fine at the next place. The bartender even posed with his daughter for me. 🙂

I got to the port. Let’s do that imagining thing again, imagine a ferry. Have it?

It was the cutest thing. It could maybe fit 2 cars. It was me with the scooter, a bunch of sacks with live animals inside, some furniture and a couple of people. It cost 23000 money which is around 6€. It took a couple of hours to get across.

I was stopped by the police, they checked my passport for some reason but quickly let me go witho no hassle.

Hell-Ville looked like a metropolis after the last couple of days. There was asphalt and concrete houses. And what I believe was my first (possibly only) metal road sign. 🙂 And yes, it IS actually called Hell-Ville!

I googled accomodation but didn’t make a booking because I wanted to negotiate the price. And negotiate I did, from an initial 60 000 to a wonderfully acceptable 33 000. The room was good, it had a bathroom with a working shower. I had stopped taking that as a given and appreciated it. 

They also offered food and it was great! I never ordered anything specific, I let them surprise me, and I was rarely disappointed. In the 3 weeks I stayed there, the worst I got was still pretty good. 

The island is not very big. The roads are not very good. I caught the sunset at Mont Passot. 

The check oil light on my scooter came on again. I added a bit of oil and tried to reset the light again but the button didn’t work. I took the dash off and managed to break the button off completely. I took the dash to a guy fixing phones in the street and he soldered it back on. It still didn’t work, though. But I managed to fuck up the rev counter in the process. Oh, well. 

Morning walks, work, lunch, work, evening walks, and the week was over. 

I worked out on the terrace, it was a really pleasant work environment! I’d order coffee every morning and they would bring me sugar. One day it invited a cute guest!

On Saturday I took a trip to Nosy Iranja. A nice looking speed boat. And as we were speeding towards the island, I found myself bored out of my skull. Wow, you ungrateful little shit, I thought. Then some islands came into view, I started taking photos and the bad feelings went away. 

The twin islands are really movie scene beautiful. We went for a walk to a viewpoint as a group. I did the touristy walk across the white stretch of sand. Lunch was great, I had a couple of beers and I fell asleep on the boat ride back. 

On Sunday I found a ranch with horses, got a nice tour. It was just me and a guide. I got to ride a horse on a sand beach, that’s something straight out of a movie. The horse I was riding loved the sand. I was warned about it but I was still not able to stop him from throwing himself to the ground. We got back without me getting off at any point. When we got back the owner took one look at us and started laughing, he knew what had happened.

I asked him about a restaurant and he recommended one owned by some Italian people. I found it and asked the waiter if he spoke English. He didn’t. I remembered that the owners were Italian so I asked, not really expecting he would speak it. But he spoke it flawlessly. It turned out that Italian is actually popular on Nosy Be due to a lot of tourists. I used it on several occasions after that. 

I went further north. I stopped for ice cream. It was hands down the best ice cream I ever tasted. It was actually made from whatever it was called, real vanilla, cocoa, rum and raisins. It was 2€ a scoop. That’s insanely expensive here, no local would ever pay that. And I was already getting accustomed to living a semi-local lifestyle so I resented them for the tourist trap prices. But it was a place for europeans and they could get away with it. It was packed full in spite of the prices. 

I headed back south. I wondered aimlessly for a bit and found a remote beach. There was a small settlement and a couple of people. One tipsy old guy walked up to me and started following me down the beach, trying to talk with the few words of english he knew. When I reached the rockier part, he finally gave up and left me alone. I enjoyed a bit of quiet time with noone in sight. You’d think you’d be alone a lot on Madakascar but somehow there’s always people around. No idea where they come from at times, but there’s always somebody. You stop to rest in the middle of nowhere and someone walks by. And there’s nothing around, you really can’t guess where to or where from they’re going. Even here, I saw a couple of people walking on the beach in the distance. But once they got out of sight, I was completely alone. I went for a nice relaxing swim.

The old guy was there when I came back. He said he was a fisherman and offered me a boat ride, I refused. He walked me bact to my scooter and asked for money, I gave him a little to get him off my back.

I enjoyed the sunset in a beautiful bar with a tasty mocktail.

The kitchen didn’t open until 7. I wouldn’t have minded the wait but I had my heart set on trying lobster for the first time and they didn’t have it. I found a place that did and it was meh at best. I guess I’m not a fan. Or they messed it up, I have no way of knowing. Either way, I don’t think I’ll try it again.

On Wednesday I went for a drive after work with no particular destination in mind. I stumbled upon a nature park, one with no road. You need to get one of those cute little traditional boats. It’s called a pirogue. Maybe you knew that already, I found out after I got in one. 🙂

Once again, Italian came in handy. I knocked the price down a bit and got in the boat with two locals. They gave me a paddle too. The boat is surprisingly agile.

We got to a nice beach and took a trail inland. We hard lemurs shriek, I never imagined they could be so loud. After a while we were able to see them too. It was getting dark and cameleons were up in trees for the night, they looked adorable with their tails coiled in a disc. We even spotted a tiny tiny one which is, according to my guide, a very lucky find. 

I got to taste real curcuma, straight out of the ground. And some white root that tasted like a mix between coconut and chesnut, I immediately forgot what it was called. I found out again some time later but I forgot again.

It was night by the time we went back. The small boat silently gliding over the calm, moonlit water, nothing but nature all around, it was so soothing. I was actually glad I came so late, I think I got more out of it than a day visit would have offered. The photos are… well, my phone tried.

I tried to capture the serenity of the boat ride in a photo, but night mode on my phone just made it look creepy.

Driving back, I reached into my pocket for my phone. It wasn’t there. I stopped and checked again, still gone. I checked the scooter. I checked under the seat even though I knew I didn’t put it there. I headed back looking intensely at the road. I asked everybody I encountered, in an attempt at French plus mime. I got back to where my scooter was parked before, nobody had seen my phone. I checked my bracelet a lot but it couldn’t connect. I found my guide, he checked the boat for me, even though we both thought I didn’t leave it there. He got on the scooter with me to help me look. We stopped everybody we ran into but this time he did the talking so they actually understood what was going on. Every time we stopped to ask, I would check my bracelet. We stopped a car that was driving towards us, he hadn’t seen it in the road. We were still asking people but chances of finding it were getting slim. We asked one last guy and he also said he hadn’t seen it. But as he was saying that, I looked at my bracelet and saw that it was connecting! You lying old bastard, I thought, as I was hitting the “find device” button. The phone started ringing. Not on the old man, though. Some distance away, near the edge of bt range. And I immediately felt embarrassed for having suspected the poor guy. It was just a freaky coincidence that he happened to be at that exact spot and we wouldn’t have found it had we not stopped to ask him. To make me feel even worse, the guy looked genuinely happy for us to have foud it. I should really make an effort to not be such a dick and think the worst of people, I thought.

I took the guide back to the village. We exchanged contact info, he offered to organize an excursion for me on the weekend.

I went to dinner on Thursday. The dish was on the expensive side, but ok. The portion was on the tiny side, but ok. Desert was terrible, but ok. And then he wanted to charge me extra for fries that came with the calamari and that really pissed me off. I told him to get his boss. He said his boss couldn’t come. For some reason I didn’t want to let this one slide. I paid for everything else but left without paying the extra charge.

There were other lousy restaurants too, with uncooked meat, burnt sugar with water sold as caramel, a “large” pizza barely bigger than my hand.

But what never failed was the street food. It looks awful but tastes amazing. And it costs next to nothing. To go orders come wrapped in notebook paper or, at more high end places, plastic bags. I particularly liked cassava, both cooked, fried or grilled.

I visited Lemuria Land on Saturday. I paid the entrance fee and haggled over the price of a tour with a guide. We couldn’t agree on the price so I said I’d visit the park without a guide. Very soon, his colleague caught up to me and offered a tour at the price I offered.

The park is rather small but very nice. Some animals are happy to interact with people. The tour also includes a visit to the essential oil distillery where they process Ylang-Ylang. You get to smell the pure oil that’s used in parfumes. There’s also a part where they craft furniture and souvenirs out of salvaged driftwood.

On Sunday, the guide from the pirogue park arranged an excursion to a small island. Without realizing it, he wore the perfect t-shirt, with this journy’s trtademark – an AK. 🙂

He was really great, he put in a lot of effort to show me everything there was to see, including a horned spider! Horned! Spider! I mean, really, if there’s one thing a spider doesn’t need it’s horns! 🙂

The island is beautiful, mostly untouched nature.

I saw a couple of kids playing with a home made vehicle of some sort and I couldn’t help wondering what life was like growing up here, on a remote little island. They do have a school but not much else. What opportunities do they have in life? Are they happy? They actually all look much happier than us so maybe they got it right and we live life wrong. I still probably wouldn’t trade lives, though.

There were a couple of girls making some sort of food that looked awful. The guide noticed my interest and told me it was coconut fried with sugar. He encourage me to try it and it was the tastiest candy ever!

The higlight of the excursion is swimming with turtles. We were warned not to touch them because they bite quite hard. You wouldn’t guess it by looking at them, they look so calm and peaceful.

Oh, and a pirogue with an engine is a very special sight! 🙂

The work week was peppered with afternoon drives, sunsets and mocktails.

I saw bicycles made of bamboo. I also saw a cast/splint made of bamboo on some poor guy’s leg. I thought this would be a terrible place to get hurt.

I left Nosy Be on Friday. I got to the port and was offered a ride on a boat (not a ferry) for 40k. I refused, said it cost me 18 to get there. They said fine, 18, but an extra 5 for loading my scooter onto the boat. We settled on 20k total. I later learned that I remembered the price wrong and I actually paid 20something coming to the island, not 18. Honest mistake.

They sail all sorts of vessels, it’s really amazing to see. They also drive all sorts of stuff but we’ll get to that later.

I made my way north. It got dark and I wanted to find a place to stay. As you can not really see from the frames extracted from the action cam, there was a surprising number of people in the road and segments were not ideal so driving in the dark was beginning to be a chore.

I thought I’d ask a police man about a hotel. I pulled up next to him, said hi and asked if he spoke english. He replied in malagasy. “Something something malagasy something Madagascar”. It was enough to get the message. He wouldn’t speak anything but malagasy, he made no effort to hide his contempt for foreigners. I smiled, said sorry, no malagasy. He repeated his phrase more loudly and energetically. I bet in his head he was Vin Diesel shouting “this is Brazil!”. I left without saying anything else. Outloud. 

There were bonfires all along the road, I don’t know if there was a special occasion or if that’s just what they do in the evening. I wanted to stop and sit by the fire for a bit, but, of course, not nearly enough to actually stop and try to ask people if I may do so. So many stars were visible, I stopped and stared for a while.

I found a hotel. The bed reminded me of that one day I spent in a holding cell in my home town. And the bathroom was less than ideal. But it was 7€ for a decent meal and the room so I really couldn’t complain.

I stopped for coffee the next morning and got a thermos full of coffee. Not that I was complaining. They also left me unsupervised with a can of condensed milk. I ate a couple of tea spoons, it’s so delicious. Surprisingly, it’s not often you find real milk, they mostly use this instead.

The roads were interesting. The colors were amazing.

I got pulled over by a couple of cops. They did their best to get me to bribe them. First they asked about my malagasy drivers license. I knew I didn’t need one so after a bit of back and forth, they gave up on that and moved on to a certificate of vaccination. They wanted a printed version. I had a digital one. They insisted that was no good. They spoke very little english. To get his point across, he took my passport, held it up and said ok. Then he took out his phone, took a photo of the passport and said not ok. I kept insisting on no photo, digital document, is ok. After a while they handed me my documents and straight up said they’d let me go but I should give a little money. I said oh, no, I don’t have money, and left.

While they were bugging me, they also pulled over a guy in a van that hardly seemed up to code. They let him go. It’s a good thing I have a photo because you wouldn’t believe me if I just described it.

Meanwhile, right next to us, there was a guy with a couple of old canisters and a couple of sticks. I’ve heard professional drummers on real drums sound worse. I tipped him while we were still on the malagasy license story.

I picked up a Hitchhiker. He was walking somewhere so I figured he wasn’t going far. My bag was tied to the seat behind me so we had to untie it to make room for him. He put it on his back. Still a suspicious dick, I looked in the mirror every time he moved to make sure he wasn’t going through it. Of course, he never was. I kept waiting for him to tell me to drop him off but he never did, he stayed on all the way to Diego.

His backpack was cute. The black one is mine 🙂

Diego-Suarez was actually renamed to Antsiranana in ‘75 but noone actually calls it that. And I told you about francs already. Apparently, not big fans of change, the Malagasy.

Diego is a proper city, asphalt, concrete, tall buildings. The goat at the gas station was not surprising.

I sat down for a beer and got it served in the fanciest manner.

I got a cheap room. It looked like a prison, no windows. Shared bathroom. But it would do for a night. The irony of the hotel name was delightful.

A lid came of my salt shaker at lunch and I ended up with a ton of salt on my fries. They were kind enough to take it away and put it back in oil for me, to wash away the access salt. I ordered lemon juice and got a whole large pitcher of juice.

Soon after lunch I started feeling a little off. I went back to my room and soon got very sick. I threw up a couple of times and spent the rest of the day in bed. I finished an audiobook, the subtle art of not giving a fuck. Not the worst use of my time.

I booked a more expensive hotel hoping it was nicer. I got there early the next day and wanted to see what they say if I just ask for the price without mentioning my booking. They wanted more than double. I got my reservation out and they accepted the price.

It was raining and I didn’t know what to do so I sat down for coffee and pondered meaning and what I was doing wrong with my life. Something was missing, I wasn’t happy. The rain stopped and I went exploring the peninsula to the north.

On the outskirts of teh city I came across another quary with people crushing rocks manually.

The road was muddy and difficult to drive on. The parts that weren’t dangerously slippery were uncomfortably rocky and I was not enjoying my little excursion at all.

I craved a little comfort. The new hotel wasn’t doing much to help with that.

Looking back on the photos and videos, parts were quite nice. If I had a vehicle that was better suited for the terrain, I probably would have enjoyed it.

I even found an abandoned airstrip. I heard Clarkson yelling “poweeeeer!” as I hit the accelerator. I know Top Gear did a special on Madagascar, but I haven’t seen it yet. I didn’t want spoilers.

I returned from the peninsula and explored the city a little bit. I found the market street. Also, some nice views at the edge of the city.

On Monday I exchanged my terrible room for a less terrible one. In this one the shower wasn’t broken but water kept coming and going. So did electricity.

I was running low on cash. With no cards and no NFC anywhere, the only way to get money from friends was Western Union and that’s a very expensive way to transfer money. The girl from Tana offered to help me out using the mobile carrier mobile money service which was much more affordable. She sent me 500€ which is way more than I expected her to trust me with, but for some reason she did.

My mum updated me on the latest with my biological father. Let me give you a bit of background first. We were never close. He was terrible to me all my life. A couple of years ago I decided to move back into our family house. My parents were separated, he was living on the top floor, mum on the ground floor. She had too much space and I was not enjoying living in the city (and paying the high rent) all that much any more so it made sense. We were just about done with renovations, made a studio apartment in the back for me, redid everything else. It was becoming a nice place to live. And then one day he burnt the top floor. Everything was gone, the roof was gone too.

And the ground floor got extensive water damage while the firemen were trying to put the fire out. So I offered to get a loan and rebuild the house. And put him in a home, after such an accident I didn’t feel comfortable letting him live there unsupervised. He agreed, but then the hellspawn that is his daughter (note how I am avoiding calling her my half-sister) started filling his head with objections until he changed his mind. I got a loan and used it to buy an apartment in the city with a studio right next to it, so that mum and I can be neighbors. We left him the house. And now, he was talking about selling the house. And I have no doubt he was serious. When I moved back in, he blackmailed me into buying him a car in exchange for the piece of land right next to the house, otherwise he would have sold it to some guy who wanted to turn it into some eyesore storage space. So not only did he burn my inheritance, now he was going to deprive me of it completely. Oh, well, fuck him and the house. He did nothing but leech money off me for the last 20 years, I haven’t needed him in forever and I damn well didn’t need him now. But it still left a bitter taste in my mouth. 

I felt tired, fed up with traveling, but at the same time I had no desire to go back to Croatia.

Extending the visa required a million documents and a dozen visits to several offices with the officials playing their version of hide-and-go-seek with you. It took 3 days. 

On day two, a guard in front of an office sent me away to get a face mask. While getting it, I lost my phone. I looked, couldn’t find it. I wanted to find it from my laptop but there was no wifi at the hotel. A local that was often at the hotel, perhaps even working there in some capacity,  took me back to his house to get online and look for it. It failed, it was unreachable. Then he went with me to the police to report it. I bought him lunch to say thank you.

The fun part is that the guy in the office never showed up and I didn’t even need the mask. And when he finally did, on day 3, I went in without a mask and nobody said a thing.

I went to get a replacement sim card. They insisted on my passport so I had to go to the immigration office to get it back from them. When I came back the power went out and they told me to come tomorrow. I said I’d wait for the power to return, I needed internet for work. They sent me to an office across town and I got a replacement sim and a portable router. I got back to the hotel and there was no water or electricity again. I was at the end of my rope with this place. I went out to eat and look for a different hotel. I found one I liked, with a generator and water, but we couldn’t agree on the price. I spent the night in the lousy one and found a decent one the next morning. Then to immigration again, this was day 3. I got sent back to the first office I came to and there I was told to come back in the afternoon. In the afternoon I waited for half an hour and finally got it done.

At the old hotel, I asked for my money back for the 2 nights I paid for in advance. They said that the guy in charge wasn’t there. Booking.com said he offered 3 free nights in leu of money. I had no interest in going back to that place. I went back a couple more time, but I wasn’t able to get my money back. It wasn’t a lot, it didn’t really matter. It just felt bad to let them keep it because they definitely didn’t deserve it.

I went to Ramena on Saturday. I got lost in the suburbs a bit going there. Once I left the city, the road was in great condition. This was a welcome change!

I didn’t even go see the famous beach. I sat down for breakfast, met a local who was keen on being my guide, we had a couple of beers, some rum, and then we went sights seeing.

The road leaves the town and follows along the beach. There’s a toll booth, that part is a nature reserve or something.

There were some huge canons at a beach fort, that was cool.

And some beautiful coves. And a road with deep sand, we spent more time pushing the scooter than riding it. And riding it in the sand, when we could, was very demanding.

It took forever but we finally reached the next village. There was a surfing competition at a beach but that was only fun for a bit. We had a nice lunch and went back. I paid for everything and gave him a little cash that was left over. 

On Sunday I asked the hotel to start the generator for me at 7 AM and they did. I broke my coffee cup, they cleaned it up for me and got me another cup.

I went back to Ramena. They had a ramp at the entrance to the town center now and they wanted to charge me for parking. It wasn’t there the day before. I turned around and found an alternate path to the square.

My guide from the day before tracked me down as soon as I arrived and helped me get an excursion to a beautiful little island in an amazing azure bay. Going there, we had to wait for a bit at a shallow part for the tide to rise. I used the time to go snorkeling, it was actually quite nice. Nobody else joined me but it was their loss.

The bay really is special, the color is amazing!

The island is uninhabited, there are only a couple of gazebos there. The boat crew dropped us off and left. They came back after a while with a bucket of freshly caught fish which they then cooked for us and it was amazing.

I saw a guy carry salt in a hollow coconut shell. It was clearly the first thing he could find to serve this purpose, it wasn’t a bowl made out of a coconut, it was just a piece of shell and for some reason I found this so interesting. It reminded me of how far from home I was. 

My guide took me to a viewpoint, you can see the whole island and the bay from it. Along the way, he picked up some garbage and ranted about how it’s terrible that people litter here. I wish I had the power to make him mayor.

It started raining all of a sudden. I went for a swim in the rain. It stopped as abruptly as it started. As we were leaving, the island was framed in a rainbow.

The sea was rough going back, the tall waves were super fun but getting soaking wet in the wind was not much fun at all. They gave us a tarp to hide under but it didn’t help much. The wind died down as we reached Ramena. The high tide made the restaurants very interesting.

My tee was soaked so for the scooter ride back, I “wore” a large bright orange scarf I bought from some girls on the island. I did not feel any shame at all! 🙂

On Monday, I went out for my morning walk and found myself near a square where a toon was playing and people were standing all formal. Traffic was stopped and nobody was walking in the streets, they were all standing still. I kept walking and some locals started shouting things at me. Maybe that was the anthem or something, perhaps I offended them by walking. I never checked up on it.

I bought a can of tuna at the store but I didn’t think to check what kind of can it was. It was the kind with no easy open lid. I opened it with a nail clipper and a tea spoon.

The police lost my report of loss for the phone. The guy told me to let him know the IMEI number of the phone again and gave me his phone number. I would guess that email would be more convenient in case of a lost phone but no, phone number. I went back the next day, the guy wasn’t there, nobody spoke any english so they got a prisoner out of a cell to translate for us. I could not make this up. They sent me to a different office to file a report again. The next time I went there, they got the same guy out of the cell again and told me that my report was at a court and that it would take a month to process. The prisoner added his comment after he translate what they said: they’re lying to you. It never went to any court and it doesn’t take a month, they just don’t want to do it.

On Friday I went to settle the bill, I had coffee every morning and I only payed for the first one, I owed them for nine. But the price was more than nine times the price of the first one. They said that the price had changed since I arrived. I laughed and paid what they asked. A couple of minutes later the lady came to my room and brought me the difference. I said it was ok but she insisted, said it wasn’t right because they never told me that the price had changed. I left a nice tip when I left.

Saturday morning I went scuba diving. No problems this time. We did two dives, one to 14 meters, the other to 18. I took my gopro with me. It’s waterproof to 10 meters but I risked it. It was not damaged but it didn’t exactly work either. Pretty soon the water pressure presses the power button and it just stops recording. So, even though it can take the pressure, you still need a case if you want to take it diving.

It was the first day of my vacation. I took the last two weeks on Madagascar off work. It was going to b exploring the island, beaches, sunsets and wind in my hair. Instead, it was crash and hospital and stitches and 40 hours on a public bus and infections and more doctors and hospitals. Spoiler alert, I survived 🙂

There are tons of animals in the roads. They are usually very chill. But I ran into one that was not. It was a turkey. It was on the opposite side of the road doing it’s thing. It suddenly got scared an started running across the road. It gave it all it had, legs and wings at full power, and charged straight into me. Just a bit less of an effort and it would have missed me but it really gave it all it had. It hit me just below the headlight and the impact was enough to knock me over. I went down and slided on the ground for what seemed way longer than it actually was. I gave out a cry of anger and pain. I tried lifting the scooter off myself but couldn’t. I saw blood literally squirting from somewhere above my eye. I couldn’t get up. I gave another loud cry, this time of pain and fear. Some locals came and lifted the scooter off me. I tried getting up but it was too much for me and I went back down. Blood was everywhere. A strange thought visited me: Is this it? Is this how my story ends? But I’m not done yet… They helped me up and off the road. They put some powder or sand or something on my head wound and that got the bleeding down to a drip. They told me I was bleeding a lot and I needed to go to a hospital. They would take me. With what vehicle, you ask? A motorcycle, of course. Three of us, the driver, the translator and me. I barely had enough composure take my bag with me.

We got to the hospital. It was a gray concrete house. It looked nothing like a hospital. They washed my wounds outside, with rain water from a bucket. They stitched me up without an anesthetic. They gave me a shot of antibiotics and put betadine on my wounds, no bandages. I don’t remember how much they charged me but it wasn’t a lot.

As far as motorcycle accidents go, this was not a bad one. It could have gone so much worse. That being said, it was still kinda bad. I’m no John McClane or, you know, whoever his modern counterpart is. I don’t have that gene that turns pain into chest hair and sexy looks. The pain of having large portions of my skin scraped off was brutal and you could tell as much by looking at me. 

They suggested I put my scooter in a taxi and go to the nearest town. They also suggested that we take the motorcycle back to the crash site but I really didn’t feel like doing that. They went and got my scooter for me, I waited. Then we waited for the taxi together. I was expecting a pickup but a tuk tuk came. They examined the scooter for a while, they wanted to put it in the tuk tuk but finally they suggested I leave the scooter there and come back for it. I agreed. The translator went with me. They got me to a hotel. It was a total dump but fine. There was no electricity in the whole town. I asked if there would be internet once the power returns and they said yes so I took it even though the price was at least 50% more than it was worth. I tipped the translator and asked him to share it with the guy who drove the motorcycle to the hospital. I hope he did. I got blood on him and his motorcycle, he deserved a tip for that alone.

I tried to get some food at a couple of local restaurants. I couldn’t communicate so I gave up. 

Sleeping was a challenge. Even the slightest movement woke me up. The sheet kept trying to grow into me.

The power came back at some point during the night, my laptop charged. I asked for internet, there wasn’t any. I felt cheated and miserable, unable to fight against the injustice. I asked the night before. I would have found a better place had I known.

I limped towards another hotel. There was a big slash in my ankle and I did my best not to bend it. I paid 5k for wifi and let people know I was ok. The girl from Tana said to come back there and it was by far my best option.

I got a tuk tuk back to where I left my scooter. They charged me half of what they did the night before but I was sharing a ride now.

It’s not considered impolite to stare, people even nudged friends and pointed at me to take a look. I didn’t really mind. 

When we got to the scooter they offered to take it back in the tuk tuk. They wanted four times the fare I had just paid so I said no on general principle. I’d just drive it back. It actually seemed like the more comfortable option. I’m not even sure what they had in mind but they must have wanted me to share the front seat of the tuk tuk with the driver which I don’t think I’d enjoy very much when I was healthy, let alone now.

I drove very slowly. I was literally slower than some bicycles. I reached a police checkpoint. I showed them my wounds and the blood on the scooter. I explained I couldn’t wear my helmet over my head wound and they didn’t bother me about it, they wished me a safe journey and let me go.

I got back into the town and quickly found a taxi bus that would take me and the scooter back to Tana. I paid for my ticket. They offered to wash the blood off my scooter and I said it was fine. I’m not sure why I wanted to keep it but I kinda did. People saw the for sale sign on my scooter. It was there since before the crash and now I edited the price. We needed to get to where the bus was departing from. Two guys took the scooter and the third guy and me got in a tuk tuk. When we got there, the guy wanted me to pay for the tuk tuk. I was not doing that. Again, the cash value was negligible but the idea of them driving on my scooter and having me pay for a ride did not sit well with me at all. The guy grunted and paid for the ride.

They washed my scooter anyways. I wasn’t happy about it but I wasn’t getting into it.

First they put me in the back of the bus, but they reconsidered and let me have the front seat. I was sharing it with a girl but I was still more comfortable that I would have been in the back.

In Ambanja we stopped for lunch. The market had tables with cooked food and I got a dish. It turns out that the flies favored the taste of my wounds over anything else there. And there was no shortage of them. I barely made it through my lunch, I can not describe how annoying it was to have hundreds of tiny feet poking at my wounds. And I couldn’t really do anything, swatting them was not an option. I ate as fast as I could and got back to the bus, there I wrapped my leg in tissues to keep the flies off. Of course, the paper got attached to me and grew into the scabs.

Some guy asked about my scooter. I told him the new price and he seemed interested but we left it at that.

Some time later, the bus driver answered his phone and than handed it to me. It was the guy from before calling to say that his son wants to buy it, in Tana.

The drive was not exactly smooth.

Around 3 AM, we stopped somewhere and a guy walked up to my window and said his brother would meet me in Tana to buy the scooter, he was the son of the guy who called. I wasn’t holding my breath but I was polite to the guy.

We had a flat tire twice. The third time we got one, we hade no more spares. We spent 7 hours waiting in some village with no reception.

I ate at a local restaurant, the meal was cooked right there on a fire and was very good. When you first come, you have to force yourself to look past how things look. After a while, you get used to it and it becomes normal.

For a while, I was doing quite well, considering. I even got a pic touching an AK! 🙂

After a while my mood dropped. My leg had swollen considerably. I was in pain. I was constantly harassed by flies. My left eye was swelling shut.

I snapped, hit the bus with my fist, started cursing loudly and shouting I need to get to a doctor. But we weren’t going anywhere, the driver was still gone. People said they would find a local doctor for me. After a while,  a kid in short jeans and a very dirty undershirt walked up to me and said he was a doctor. I was not convinced. But he went away and came back with a syringe and some medicine. He had obviously washed his hands. We sat down at a table of a closed restaurant and he gave me a shot with chickens running around us. I think I came across as a bit of a dick at first so I tried to make up for it by giving him a tip when he charged me for the antibiotics.

It was dark by the time the driver came back. He changed the tire and took us to a shop. He asked me to lend him 130k, he’d pay me back in Tana. I did. 

We got to Tana at 6:30 AM after 40 long hours. They wanted to charge me money to unload the scooter from the bus but I told them to talk to the driver, I paid for my ticket.

I sat down for coffee while I waited for the buyers for the scooter and for the driver to get my money. It was cold and it reminded me of home. I kinda liked it. They buyers came, they were happy with the scooter and they paid up. The driver said he was still waiting for the cash. I said I would call him and I left. The girl called him a couple of times for me in the days to come but he never paid us back. Oh, well.

I spent some time looking for an affordable taxi. I didn’t want to pay a tourist price. I eventually got one at a price I had in mind.

I got to her house and she took really good care of me. She helped me with my wounds, she went with me to find a doctor. The first one we saw tried to give me a shot but she missed my vein twice. I didn’t want an intramuscular shot so we went to a different place. 

I walked as much as I could and my ankle wound would often open. The swelling was getting worse. I have photos but I chose not to include them. I’ll include one of the leg 3 weeks later when it looks much better.

I went to the hospital again to ask for a compression bandage. They said I needed to get an x-ray and ultrasound of the leg. It seemed excessive but I went along with it. Both were fine. Finally, they cleaned my wound almost as if they were trying to hurt me as much as they could. Finally, they gave me a compression bandage which was all I wanted in the first place. 

In a couple of days the swelling went down. 

We decided to go on a roadtrip to tsingy de Bemaraha. The two of us, a Belgian woman and a Japanese guy. It was like an opening to a joke. I was ok to drive. My leg hurt a little but it was manageable. We headed out at 3 AM on Saturday.

We got to Morondava by late afternoon and we were at the baobab alley at sunset. Keep in mind that the photos are stills from a video recorded out the window of the car while I was driving it.

It was nice. But the next morning, at dawn, it was epic! I know, the stills suck, but believe me, it really is a site to behold. 🙂

We pressed on towards the Tsingy. Sand road. We got to the first river. We had to wait for the ferry for a bit. We noticed a drip under the car. It was diesel, the tank was punctured. A local used soap to stop the leak, to hold us over until we could find a shop. 

You climb the ferry using ramps, it feels exotic and dangerous to do it, even though it’s perfectly safe. 

One of the guys from the boat went with us to help us find a shop. We found a place that could do it. They took the tank down and used those welding sticks that you melt with heat. They actually started a small fire on the tank which didn’t feel safe at all. But they obviously knew what they were doing. My companions took the photos/videos of the welding process but they never sent them to me.

A legion of kids gathered around us. They wanted to interact and I wasn’t really in the mood so I took out my laptop and played a movie for them. They were entertained and I was left in peace so it was a win win. 

We got to the last village before the Tsingy and found a place for the night. I cleaned and bandaged my wound. The beds were terrible, it was hard to sleep. And it still hurt when I turned which didn’t help. 

Next morning we picked up our guide and climbing gear. We drove to the Tsingy.

There was a soldier there with an AK. I went for it, I asked him to let me hold his gun for a pic. He didn’t even take the bullets out of the gun! It was more than a pic, it was an achievement. 

I put my bandaged foot in my shoe and tried to walk as if nothing was wrong. I made the walk, I made the climb, I made it back. But I paid a price. It hurt. We were supposed to go to another, smaller, one but I said I’d wait for them. It was too much for my leg. The rest of the group was on the fence for a bit but finally they all decided to skip the activity and we went back.

We drove for a bit and found a hotel. We woke up early and we reached the river before dawn. We had to wait for a ferry. As dawn was nearing, I walked out of the car and to the river bank. As far as “I was in a place at a time” experiences go, this one was pretty epic. The area is flat and the river is wide. On the left, the sun was nearing the horizon, the sky was burning orange. Above me, it was still grey. To the right, I was still dark and the full moon was about to set. A surreal display. And sharp pain in my leg to keep me grounded. In some strange way, it was like it added to the experience. 

We got to Morondava in the afternoon.

I was in so much pain I decided to resort to drugs. It turned out Tramadol was OTC there. In case you’re not familiar, to describe it in a word, it’s ecstasy. They told me to take two if I need to. I took four. I felt great for a while but next morning I felt dizzy and sick. I even threw up. I was not fit to drive so the Japanese guy took over. He was not a hundred percent up to the task but we moved forward. The car started making noises and soon broke down, a wheel bearing gave out. We barely made it to a mechanic.

The girl and I took a bus to the nearest city to get the parts, the other two stayed with the car. The bus ride was torture, I got so sick, I was dangerously close to throwing up on the bus. She took such good care of me, got a bag for me just in case, blew on my neck and fanned me to help me through the worst of it. The bus ride took too long, everything was closed by the time we got there so we got dinner and found a hotel. We got the parts next morning and headed back. Buses don’t leave on a schedule, they leave when they’re full. And by full I mean full, way more people than actual seats. And when I say bus, I mean (mini)van.

Everybody was super careful with my leg, though, even in the crowd nobody ever so much as touched me, they all made a real effort to protect me. 

We got the parts to the mechanic and went for coffee.

Yes, that’s where we sat down for coffee. No, it no longer seemed strange in any way.

We got some fried chicken in the street. Not the feet, though. 🙂 And we saw the towns only site. A rather large church for such a small town.

It was afternoon by the time we got the car fixed so we stayed at another hotel. This time I wanted a nice one and I didn’t mind the price. We found a really nice one, it almost felt like a European one. Hot water, internet, comfy bed, the works. 

The day before I left, I took out my stitches myself, with a nail clipper. It seemed fitting to do it this way. 

She went with me to the airport to see me off. 

My hand was still in hers as I turned away, my arm extended behind me. Another half step and I felt her hand slip, her fingers sliding along mine, then just her fingertips and then we broke contact. I paused for a split second, took a breath and walked away without turning back. 

I was going to get some snacks, drinks and some souvenirs at the airport. Everything was closed. There was a single cart that sold snacks and drinks but they didn’t take ariary. So, even though I kept a little money, I was effectively broke. With 4 flights ahead of me. To Mauritius, to Istambul, to Rome, to Zadar. 25 hours. I had hoped I could maybe get two seats to myself on the plane to Istambul so I could get some sleep. No such luck, the flight was fully booked. By the time I got to Rome I was exhausted. Walking was getting difficult. I was hungry and thirsty. Still broke, though.

I finally boarded the last flight. 

I had a fantasy about how this story would end. The airport. I clear customs. I was there, she was there waiting. A hug that tells a story of a million words, only more accurately. A kiss that says “I’m ready now”. Happily ever after. 

I got to the airport and… there was nobody there. My friend was an hour and a half late to pick me up. I was tired, I was hungry, I was in pain and I was broke. All I had was ariary which I couldn’t exchange anywhere. So the wait felt like forever. I was in a foul mood.

So, I do not get to use my dream ending to this story. I will borrow one instead. From one of my favorite videos ever, by exurb1a. 

Earth lovely 

Existence interesting

Ice cream, Hugs, Parks, Lunchtime bongs 

Life alright 

Life not so bad 

Everything cool maybe Bye.

Epilogue

I went to the doctor when I got back. One cracked rib and some torn ligaments. Again, as far as motorcycle accidents go, not bad.

My first week back, she sent me a message. It said she’d like to meet, talk to me. And I said ok.

I was going to dinner with her parents that evening and the two of us were going to meet before that. But she canceled last minute because she had too much to drink. This is where it gets very soap opera. I went to dinner with her parents. My mum was joining us but she was running late. The reason she was running late was that my ex’s friends called her to come help. My ex was pretty out of it so my mum took her to our place and put her to bed. 

We had a nice dinner and went home. I went to bed. At some point my mum came over and slept on my couch because her studio apartment reeked of alcohol.

My apartment and my mum’s studio share a terrace. I went out there to drink my coffee in the morning. My ex came out. “Well, you look like shit”, she said. I did, I was covered in scabs and limping. We hugged and god damn it, for the first time in 6 months, I was home. For the 5 seconds the hug lasted.

I had wondered what she would have to say for me to forgive her and I could never think of the words I’d need to hear to really let it go, until she said them. I will not share them with you but I will say that I felt no more anger towards her. 

We talked for a while and then she went home. She sounded different. I liked it. Maybe, said my heart. Naah, said my brain. 

Her mum told me that she said, after her visit, that we should not be left alone together or it would start all over again. “So, yes?”, said my heart. Naah, said my brain. “Yes”, my heart insisted. “Maybe”, my brain yielded.

We met again. Kissing her felt right. She spent the night. We decided to spend the weekend together.

At one point she said she couldn’t lose me now because she didn’t have me. I said wrong on both counts. You do have me. And I can feel from the way you hold me I have you too. We are together, it’s just that we know we’re breaking up again on Monday.

But Monday came and neither of us wanted to break up again. We talked a lot. We were still scared, not sure if we could fix everything that was broken the first time around. But we both wanted to try. And somehow it felt like we actually had a fighting chance. 

I was there. She was there with me. We’d be all right.

There’s one more thing I want to share with you. It’s a collection of veteran cars you can’t believe still run. Some of them are really cool! Enjoy!

The plane to Johannesburg was a small one, as you would expect from a budget airline. But it had AC. The airport didn’t so this was a nice change. And I had a window seat so yay. 🙂

Why are clouds white if water is clear? I remember thinking I’d google it when I’m online but I never did. I was mesmerised by clouds. I’m not really sure if these were in any way special but I somehow got lost staring into them. 

I barely had time to finish my sandwich before the plane started to descend. 8 hours to the next flight. Not ideal but as long as I can find a power outlet, it’ll be ok.

I found one with water pouring out of  it, so maybe not that one. 🙂

I found a dry one but it required a bit of a special touch to get it to work. Sand to the rescue!

There were plenty of sockets around but they have a different standard. I only had a british converter and european plugs so the british outlet was a rare treasure.

I heard a croatian or possibly bosnian person curse loudly in our native language somewere in the mid distance. Jebo oca svoga! (may he fuck his father). You’d think that I would be happy to run into a member of my own tribe so far away from home but it just made me feel like I hadn’t gone far enough. And I was vaguely embarrassed by the fact that cursing is what our people are famous for.

The area where I found the barely functional outlet was not for my flight so I had to move when people started gathering. I couldn’t find another socket I could use so I went to a restaurant. Since I was there, I figured dinner would be nice. The prices were in rand. I had no internet so I aproximated a conversion to metical based on what I remembered about prices in Punta, then I aproximated a conversion to kuna from that. So dinner cost somewhere between free and a used car. But it kinda seemed fine. Later, I checked my bank statement and it was pretty reasonable. I have a photo but photos of food are lame so I’ll skip it.

When boarding the next flight, I was served with the old “This is problem, sir, we can not accept you on the flight” again. Because of no onward ticket. Of course they were going to let me on, I was still 2 flights away from Mauritius. Finally, they had me sign a waiver and let me through.

This guys socks made me forget about the hassle.

Ordering a whiskey on the plane got me a very generous serving.

I took a million photos of dawn above Kenya but none of them do it justice.

At the security check before my last flight, they took away my sand. It is dangerous. You could put it in someones eyes. Really, guys? Really? But they were determined and I had to let it go.

I was tired and in no mood to get into it with Mauritian officials so I bought an onward ticket before I boarded the last flight.

A guy dressed as an optical illusion made me smile. 🙂

A flight attendant saw my “I can’t  adult today” t-shirt and said : me cant also! 🙂 She was so cute.

I landed and met some very zealous customs officers. They went through all of my meticulously packed stuff and made me take an x-ray because “they suspect I am carrying drugs”. Good thing I bought my ticket, they checked it, along with any other document they could think of, and seemed very keen on making my life difficult. But everything was in order and they finally let me through.

An ad at the airport tickled my curiosity but I set the thoughts aside for later.

Taxi seemed quite expensive so I went looking for a bus. The station was empty, it was Sunday. I wasn’t sure whether it even was the station or just a parking lot. I asked the one guy I met, he said the buses I need go from further down but that he wasn’t sure if there were any today. He was the driver of the only bus I saw in the station but he wasn’t going my way. I walked to the end of the station, I couldn’t find a timetable or any other information on any buses.  

The guy with the bus pulled up next to me. I will take you to *insert random noise*. I had no idea where he was offering to take me but it sounded like progress so I got in. He said usually I’d go directly to Pot Looee. I later understood he was pronouncing Port Louis, that’s not what it sounded like in my head when I read the name on the map. 🙂 It was a nice small bus with ac, the ride was relaxing.

We got to where we were going, I paid him 200 money and got off to wait for the bus he instructed me to get on. The bus came but they told me it was not the one I wanted, I should wait for the #162 direct. The conductor on the 162 was a very friendly lady. She shared her nuts with me and gave me some for later. Her english made it a little hard to talk to her but I didn’t mind putting in the effort, she was very sweet. We got to the last station, everybody got off but she told me to stay on and they let me off at an intersection so I would have less to walk to my next station. They were very kind to me for no particular reason, it was so sweet. I followed their instructions to the Port Louis bus station.

First impressions of Port Louis were not really something to write home about.

I asked for the bus I needed and got on. It was a terrible bus but I loved it for it, it was an experience.

The ticket was 34 money. A cup of coffee is 90.

I got to Grand Baie. It took much longer than anticipated. I couldn’t buy a local sim, everything was closed on Sunday. I had no internet and no idea how to get in touch with my landlord or find the apartment. I walked into a bar, ordered a beer and asked for help. A man, likely the owner, let me use his phone, then talked to the landlord so that he could give me directions. Once more, kindness for the sake of being kind. The landlord had left Grand Baie and left the key under the mat.

For a second I had a strange feeling I was in a spy movie parody and a spy van disguised as an ice cream truck had followed me from Louis. But no. Also, different truck. 🙂

I found the place, found the key, got in. It was a really nice place. It had everything I could want. I guess the price really should have been higher, I actually got lucky.

Now that I got that sorted, it was time to find food. I was hungry but also completely worn out so my will to explore was nonexistent. There was a McDonalds right across the parking lot. It’s been years since I’ve eaten at one so I was actually happy to go. And the best part was they had a screen where you can order and pay without talking to anybody.

The next day I rented a scooter and went for a little drive. I was 3 hours ahead of my colleagues so I didn’t have to start work until noon. There are some really nice beaches and there are people cleaning them all the time so they are tidy.

I bought a local sim and an internet package at a local store.

I found that not all gas stations accept cards.

There was a large supermarket near my building. Proper european style, with fridges and proper shelves and AC and all. I had not been in one like it in a long time and I appreciated it.

I was almost tempted to get the colored prawn crackers, they looked like the opposite of food. I didn’t.

Next morning I went for a drive in a different direction. I got caught in a bit of rain, enough to get the front of my tee wet. The back was still dry so I turned it around. I looked like an idiot but my front was dry and that’s where the wind is so I was happy with myself. 🙂

I went inland a bit and it I felt like I was in one of the FarCry video games. Luckily, there were no hostiles. 🙂

A road sign tried to warn me about something. I’m not sure what. Ents, maybe?

I waited out a quick shower under a balcony by the side of the road. They do not want you to sit in the windows.

They disguise their radio towers as palm trees for some reason. Noone could ever tell…

Skydiving has been on my todo list for as long as I can remember. When I saw the ad for it at the airport I basically knew right away that I was going to do it. This seemed like the perfect place for it. I went online and booked it. 

A couple of days into my stay, I got a message on Whatsapp from the ministry of health. I thought it would be about covid tests but it was about malaria. They wanted me to go in and give a blood sample. I asked if it was mandatory, they said it was advised. I asked again, it wasn’t mandatory so I said I wouldn’t do it. They said to get in touch if I exhibit any symptoms. To this day I have doubts about the legitimacy of that conversation but I never bothered to check the number.

I went to Port Louis one afternoon to get something and there was a traffic jam. I wiggled between lanes, pass the stopped cars, to an intersection. There was a police officer there and I thought I might get in trouble for driving between lanes. Instead, the police officer waved me on to cross the intersection and continue pass the cars stopped in the lane oposite. I loved the relaxed attitude!

I managed to snap this gem while driving. I don’t even care it’s a terrible photo, I ‘m happy I got it at all.

I met my landlord when he came by with some guys to fix the washing machine. We didn’t get to talk much because I had meetings for work.

I was excited about the jump. On Friday I went out and got a GoPro to record it. I couldn’t let that go undocumented! I also got a waterproof lamp so I can go snorkeling at night.

I went out to test both that night. I was impressed by how cool the underwater footage looked so I spammed all my friends with it. 🙂

I was so happy with my new toy and I couldn’t wait to take it on the jump. I even got a chest strap for it. But when I got there, they told me I couldn’t take it with me because it “wasn’t safe”. It was perfectly safe. The real reason I couldn’t bring it is that they offer videos and photos at a ridiculously high price and they want to twist your arm into paying for them. Such a dick move. But an effective one. I tried reasoning with them, I tried talking to the instructor directly about sneaking it onboard but finally I had to give in and grudgingly get the video from them. 100€ for a video. It’s also 100 if you want photos (still frames from a video). 150 if you get both. Such a ripoff. 

When I met my instructor, he asked where I was from. I said Croatia, he said “o, dobar dan, dobro došao”. That was definitely a surprise! He was from Slovenia. A nice guy. We chatted for a bit, he said the island gets really small after a while. 

There was a bit of rain and we had to wait for the clouds to clear. They did and we went up.

There were still dark clouds in the distance and I thought about how it’s all about perspective, even the darkest clouds are shiny from above.

The plane was like a Renault 4 with wings, all rickety and not at all what a plane should look like. It was repaired with duct tape in places. But it got us into the air, we were slowly gaining altitude.

The island is quite something. We were nearing the jump zone. I was calmer than I expected. They opened the door and it flew open, a strong smell of fuel filled the plane. We sat on the edge, legs out.

And then there was nothing holding us up any more, we were plummeting towards the ground. I started yelling with excitement! It was the most amazing feeling I ever experienced, exhilarating, scary, fun, all at once! And all too soon it ended. It was around 30 seconds but it felt like 3.

Surprisingly, the parachute part was not boring. And they even let you steer for a bit. First they just let you believe you’re steering when in reality they grab hold of the commands above your hands, where you can’t see. You can tell when they let go and actually give you control for a bit. He knocked us around a little, made it feel like a decent rollercoaster ride. 

The instructor talked to the guys and got them to throw in the photos for free with my video. That was really nice of him! He took my number, said he’d call me to go out for a beer but he never followed up.

I was still shaking after we landed, overloaded with adrenaline. I got a beer at their bar and wanted a cigarette more than I had in a long time. But it’s been 5 years, I’m not falling into that trap again. There’s no such thing as just the one. 

The day was still young so I went south. 

There’s a mountain hike trail, leads to a nice viewpoint. The metal cross overlooking the underground waterfall. I figured it’d be a light walk and I’d be fine without water. Oh how wrong I was! The second half of the climb was quite demanding and by the time I reached the top I was parched.

Luckily, a friendly german guy shared his water with me. He was a lifesaver! We chatted on the way down, he was in IT too.

The view of the waterfall from the mountain is nice but to truly appreciate it, you must get an aereal view from the sea. Photos of it look really cool. But it costs a lot to get a helicopter or plane to see it live so I figured the mountain view would do.

I found a couple of interesting plants. One was eaten into looking like crochet and the other looked photoshoped into reality.

On my way back I tried to capture the beauty of the sky at sunset with varying success.

It was night by the time I got back. I sat down for a surprisingly mediocre steak dinner. But the staff were nice. And the cook had cool blue hair.

On Sunday I went exploring, south again.

I stopped at a local food place, it didn’t look like much but curry in flat bread cost 25 money and it was as so good I had another.

It started to rain a little. Then a lot. Then it got biblical. I hid in a cave by the road, that helped for a while but then a lake formed in front and each passing car would cover me in water.

It no longer made sense to stay there so I carried on in the rain. 

Some local people having a beer in front of a store saw me driving in the pouring rain and waved me over to take cover. I did.

I got beers for everybody. They got a cable for me to charge my gopro. The damn thing has a battery life of 6 seconds. They said they had never seen that much rain. They offered me another beer, I refused, driving. They said get a small so finally I caved. Well, it didn’t take all that much to talk me into it. 🙂 

All my clothes were drenched so they found a large plastic bag for me, I put it under my jacket so it protects me from the wind. Still, it wasn’t comfortable.

The rain caused landslides, brought trees down onto the road and created lakes along the road.

Near the Chamarel waterfall and the 7 earths I found a restaurant and a gift shop. I went into the gift shop hoping they might have t-shirts. They had some clothes on the top floor so I bought a dry shirt. I went into the restaurant bathroom to change. It didn’t exactly fit and it wasn’t going to win me any beauty competitioms but it was dry and that was all that mattered!

I stayed for lunch. Before I could even look at the menu, the waiter asked whether I wanted fish or meat. I went with fish. Do you like spicy food? Want to try the octopus curry? – is it good? Yes! – ok. 

He brought various spicy sauces with bread as an appetiser. I ate it in big, hungry bytes and then died, they were very hot. Then ate it again. 

The curry was ok but overpriced. I enjoyed sitting in a dry shirt more than I did the lunch itself. 

I went to check out the sights. The waterfall was nice.

A guard pointed out another viewpoint to see it better, I would have missed it. I started laughing at myself as soon as I reached the 7 earths, I immediately realized my mistake. It was wet and it all looked the same! 

A random guy at the parking lot warned me to avoid Port Louis because it was flooded. 

I was making my way back over the mountain when it started to rain again. Not as much as before but enough to get me soaking wet again. The chill mountain air did not feel good. I reached a town, fueled up. The gas station didn’t sell clothes. It was Sunday afternoon, all the stores were closed. I found a small grocery store that was open. I knew there was no way to get clothes here but I was freezing and desperate so I went in to ask. I squeezed my needs through the language barrier and got a tee and a track suit! It was a hideous thing, it looked like it was from the late 80’s, but at that moment it was the most glorious apparel ever! I put the top part on immediately and snuck into an alley just outside of town to put on the bottom after I changed my boxers, those were soaking wet too. 

I made it home. I wasn’t sure what to think of my day. On one hand, it was a terrible ordeal, but on the other it was also an adventure and I was almost glad that interesting things happened. But either way, I was glad it was over. 

Work days were all the same. A walk, a swim, get back before my colleagues are even up, work, go for another walk in the evening. It’s actually a dream routine, you get your exercise and you get to soak up the beauty of the island.

Thursday was my birthday. I got the best present EVER! A friend came to visit me from halfway across the world! I rented a car to go pick her up from the airport. She landed early so we had plenty of time before I had to start work. 

We went to Rochester falls. There was a guy there who led us down a path to the base of the waterfall, offered us bananas, chopped down some sugar cane and squeezed it into our hands to drink. It’s actually quite delicious. I tried it once before, in Zanzibar, but it was in a glass and with lime. This was a more interesting way to drink it! And there were fruit bats. I had never seen one before but wanted to ever since I read about Kona having one in a book I can’t remember by Christopher Moore (I couldn’t remember him either but I googled him). The guide asked for a tip, we gave him a hundred. 

We went to the volcano next. There was a guide there too, told us about how we missed things like the tree of life and some wood filled with oils that give out a pleasant smell and repel bugs. He picked a couple of branches for us. He also asked for a tip and got a hundred. We joked about having payed 2 euros for a handful of juice and another 2 for a couple of branches. 

The car I rented was terrible to drive. It had a weak engine and automatic transmission so uphill it would scream and shout and barely move. But hey, it got us everywhere. 

My ex called in the afternoon. I’m ashamed to admit it but I watched the phone ring and didn’t feel strong enough to pick up. 

She sent me a photo. She baked a cake for my birthday and she, her parents and my parents celebrated it in my absence. Our parents have known each other forever so I guess it’s not as weird as it sounds. 

I thanked her later. She said to let her know when I can talk, I said I’d rather not. I said we could talk when I came back. She still made my stomach cramp, I was just not ready for her yet. But I thought about that cake a lot. It was adorable.

The weather was iffy so we rented a car again for the weekend. This time we got one in terrible condition but at least it had proper transmission. 

I wanted to check that tree of life thing, about how you can drink from it. I found one, poked a hole and there was water! It tasted good, a little like cucumber. And it was a fun thing to do 🙂 

The Chamarel waterfall was much smaller this time and it was white. It was much more impressive with all the flood water. The 7 earths were much better though, you could actually see the colors. 

We stopped at a restaurant and they asked if we had a reservation and then made it sound like a special favor to us that they would seat us even though we don’t. The place was empty. And it stayed half empty the whole time. 

I got fish in a banana leaf and it was great. She ordered a tuna salad and got a plate with a couple of slices of raw tuna. She was not happy! 

The Port Louis sunday market was annoying, they push hard and saying no doesn’t make them stop. The vegetables look nice and washed but the buckets they wash them in are filled with disgusting looking brown water. We did get a couple of souvenirs so not all bad. 

The botanical garden was nice, getting a guide was a good decision. He showed us various nice smelling leaves and real cinnamon. It smells sooo nice! At the end of the tour he pointed us to where we can see the toy-toys. Sorry, see what? Toy-toy, animal. Ooh, tortoise. 

We had dinner at the waterfront. I ordered a medium steak but it came still alive, I had to send it back. I hate doing that but it was really too raw to eat. And then to the ice cream place for desert. It was delicious and it looked great too, if you’re going to treat yourself, that’s how to do it! 🙂

When I went to return the car on Monday, there was nobody there. I called, they said to just leave the keys under the mat. 

Going back I ran into a police bike patrol. I don’t think I’ve seen that before. 

The work week was pretty much the same but her being there made it so much better! Morning swims, sunset, everything was a shade brighter with her there. 

I took a billion photos of the bay. Each time I’d see something new that I just had to have.

The huge store next to our apartment doesn’t sell cold beer. They sell beer, they have tons of fridges, they just choose not to put beer in them. I wonder why. 

They tried to short us on change at a food truck. That’s about it for story-worthy events that week. 🙂 

The weekend was more touristy. There was a McDonalds right next to the apartment so we got the app and got a coupon for 1+1 free coffee. It opens at 9, we got there at 9:20 and claimed the coupon in the app. We were about to enter it into the self-service terminal when a girl came and told us they would open a little later, 20 minutes. She didn’t offer an explanation. But we used a coupon. What did you want? 2 coffees. Ok. We waited for a bit and finally got hot chocolate instead of coffee. Not their proudest moment.

They have an interesting sign so at least I got that out of the experience.

Speaking of dogs, there’s a bunch of them roaming the town and the beaches but they all look well fed and happy.

The island really is beautiful. But not as many beaches as you’d expect. Most of them are private and walled off.

In Flacq market a guy came out of nowhere and started bugging my friend, offering to buy her a gift, offering her money. He wouldn’t let up so we walked away. He followed us so I turned around and pushed him away, told him to leave us alone with the meanest expression I could muster. He got the point and walked away. 

One of the merchants saw the exchange and came up to me saying “you should do like this, you have a right to go wherever you want in peace”. I was glad for the support. 

And it looks like there are children for sale here. 🙂

The sunset that day was special. Not in the west but in the east! The island is flat enough for the light to color the sky in the east with the gentlest shades of pink and other colors I don’t know the names of. Like lilac or magenta or, you know, different pink. The sky looked like it was drawn in dry pastel. 

And there was a camo crab.

I looked at my phone Sunday morning. The message said “I love you”. The next one said “sorry, it was a dare”. And I thought fuck you! But then I thought that couldn’t have been it. Hitler would stop shy of sending an empty “I love you” just because. There must have been something to it. And I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I said I’d ask her if she still meant it when I come back. Her reply was “I told you it was a dare”. So, there was no more to it. She was now officially the worst person I knew. I had wondered what it would take for me to snap out of it with her. Apparently, “love you lol jk” would do it. I still loved her but I no longer liked her. 

I was sad enough that my friend was leaving. I had a wonderful time with her. Even when she annoys the life out of me, she still makes me happy. And now this. I was overloaded and it showed. At lunch I just couldn’t hold it together. I thought that maybe my tears might go unnoticed if I didn’t draw attention to them by wiping them. They didn’t. It took a minute for the mood to pick up. But I thought this had to have been the last time I cried because of her. If I ever do again, it’s on me. 

We found an interesting spot by the sea with unusual rock formations, waves playing with the cliffs, many photo ops.

We had a nice dinner and then she was gone. I felt more alone than ever. One star, would not recommend. 

Work was a welcome distraction. It helped the week go by. 

This guy helped too, I found him chilling in front of my front door and he made my day. 🙂

The parking lot and the road to the beach were good for an occasional distraction too. Most notably, how the meticulously airbrushed car was fixed with scotch tape. 🙂

And I was finally able to take a shot of this pretty guy. He teased me for days, I’d see him, he’d stand there until my camera was almost out and then he’d fly away, as if he knew.

There’s another photo of a bird that I almost got right. Too bad about the framing, the timing was perfect.

One evening I took a photo of an old trailer at the beach. It looked like reality hadn’t finished rendering yet. I took it in regular and night mode and the next morning I took it again in the daylight.

My flight to Madagascar was on Saturday. 

On Friday it wouldn’t stop raining. I got soaked while getting my PCR. I took care of all the preparations. Madagascar had a mandatory quarantine upon arrival so I booked an approved hotel and postponed my reservation at the guesthouse I had booked before I found out about the quarantine. The hotel sent me all the documents I needed and we arranged an airport transfer. 

I dried my clothes in the oven and packed. I arranged for a ride to the airport early in the morning. I was set to go. 

I got to the airport in time. I was told my flight was yesterday. I explained that I got an updated ticket from Kiwi and that it was for today. They sent me to ticketing. Ticketing sent me to the flight supervisor. The flight supervisor sent me back to ticketing. Ticketing sent me back to the flight supervisor. I couldn’t board, this was not a commercial flight. They don’t know when the next commercial flight is. 

So now what do I do? I have nowhere to go. The flight super told me to wait, she made a call. She said to wait until the end of checkin to see if we can manage something. I went to customs to get my tax return sorted for the gopro. I was greeted by a note saying back in 15. I waited, a lady came, did my paprework. Where’s your camera? It’s deep in my bag. It’s ok, no need to take out. 

I got coffee. First she charged me 240 because she accidentally put two on the bill. Then she gave back 180 in cash. So I have no idea how much the coffee was supposed to cost. 

At the end of checkin the flight super told me there was nothing she could do for this flight but she will make sure I’m on the list for the next flight, in 4 days. 

I found a place to stay in the nearest city. I went to the bus stop. Once again, on a Sunday. Not a bus in sight. A taxi driver pulled up next to me. Said he’d take me for 600, usually it’s 700. I had spent all my rupees, I had the change from the coffee and a little bit left over, 300 all together. So I offered him that. He protested, talked about atms and euros. I said take it or leave it and he grudgingly took it. 

I went for lunch and got charged tax on top of the menu price. A bit of a dick move. 

A long time ago, in Sicily, I reached out of the car window to pick an orange straight from the tree. I remember it to this day, it was so good. Ever since, I wanted to try picking a banana straight from the tree. I finally got to do it. Unfortunately, it was green and completely inedible. But still, it felt kinda special to do it. 

It looked even more like FarCry here. Can you tell which game I played earlier that year? 🙂

There werer some pretty sites.

But you should not look too closely. It gets a little less pretty when you do.

And then there are things that are just interesting, like the worlds least comfortable bench. Or the way they tile the floor. Or the tree growing from a tree in a river. Or the bunch of signs with uplifting messages scattered around the town. Also, note how the “united we stand” message on the wall goes great with the concertina wire on top of the wal…

I went to the market one day to buy fruit and came across something interesting. I asked what it was, the guy said grapes. It looked a little like grapes but not exactly what I’m used to. I’m not really a huge fan of grapes but the guy saw my interest and offered me one to taste. He knew what he was doing, as soon as I tasted one I had to have more! The taste is perfect and there are no pips, which are a big part of why I’m not a fan in the first place.

I got in touch with the approved quarantine hotel, explained the flight situation, canceled the booking and said I would re-book once I’m sure of the dates. I got in touch with the next accomodation and told them I would let them know when I was coming. They asked me if I could go to a pharmacy and look for a food supplement they needed, it was no longer available in Madagascar. I was able to get it for them. 

I called Air Mauritius on Monday to confirm I was on the list to fly. They said they would call me back. They didn’t. On Tuesday they didn’t pick up until late in the afternoon. Again they said they would call back, again they didn’t. I emailed them. They replied that there were no flights on Thursday. But the flight manager had said that there would be and that I would be on the list to board it. So, do I do the PCR tomorrow? Is the flight just not in the system yet? Will it be? If I do it and the email was right I wasted money. If I don’t do it and the email is wrong, I can’t fly and I may even lose my ticket because I missed the first available flight. I decided to do it and call them again. 

On wednesday I got an email saying there was a flight on Thursday. I went online to ckeck in. I found my booking but checkin didn’t work. Later, I couldn’t even find the booking, I got an error message saying it was canceled. I emailed, no reply. I called, no reply. I figured I’d just go there in the morning. 

The bus dropped us off at the roundabout near the airport. I exped the bus stop but hey, close enough. I got to ticketing, i was not booked for this flight. They fixed it. I can fly. A load has been lifted. I sat down and had coffee. Madagascar lifted the quarantine rule while I was waiting for my new flight so I didn’t have to re-book the approved hotel, I could go straight to the place I originally booked. I let them know I was coming and they confirmed airport pickup. I worked for an hour. I was there as soon as checkin opened. I got my boarding pass. Until I held it in my hand I was not completely at ease, a part of me was still worried that something was still wrong. 

I went to get my tax refund for my camera. They charge a hefty commission. I only got roughly half of the money I paid. I tried protesting for a bit but quickly realised there was no point. Institutionalised theft. No fighting it. 

I went to a lounge and worked until my flight. No, I didn’t pay for a lounge, my bank offers it for free to holders of their credit cards. 

I had a meeting for work just as boarding was starting, I joined it from my phone. I stayed back until the last minute and then muted myself while I was boarding. Luckily, boarding required no interaction other than handing my boarding pass. I was in my seat by the time the call ended. I hung up and looked out the window. I was on the plane. A calm washed over me. I was moving forward. 

And I even got my areal view of the waterfal.

I’m taking you to South Africa.
-I will father your children!
I never did father her children, but we did go to South Africa. 🙂

The gamble

We drove to Zagreb, to the airport, stopping along the way to jump around in the snow like little children. It was February. Getting the visa was a bit of a hassle, we had to attach a document from the bank (that stated we had at least 500€ in our accounts) to our application and going to the bank is always a drag. There was no SA embassy in Croatia so we had to get the visa from Budapest. But all that had been behind us and we were all set. We left the car with a friend and got to the airport, all excited to be going.  I presented my ticket and my passport with the visa in it. When it was her turn to present the visa I watched her expression turn to stone as we heard the guy say “madam, you can not travel”. The date on her visa was wrong, they put in the wrong month so it was as if the visa had expired (we had even checked the date but only on my visa and since everything was ok we didn’t think to check the other). It looked like our trip had ended before it even started. There was less than an hour left to board the plane, we couldn’t even get our money back (and the tickets were far from cheap). But we were not going down without a fight.
“So, we can’t get on the plane without the visa?”
“No.”
“But this flight is to Istanbul, we don’t need a visa to go to Turkey” (we didn’t at the time, this was 2012)
“Well, no, but you will not be able to continue from there”
“But you will let us on THIS flight without the visa?”
“Well, yes, but once you get there you won’t…”
“Thank you”
We ran off on our nerve wrecking quest to get the SA embassy contact information of the spitefully slow internet, get them on the phone, wait for what seemed like forever, explain the situation and request that they email us some sort of document which would state that they had made an error and her visa was, in fact, valid. The time to board the plane had almost run out and the email had not come. F**k it. We boarded the plane.
It was hard to relax since we had no idea whether we would actually get on the next plane or be left in Istanbul and not only lose the money we spent on these tickets but spend even more on tickets back home. Although, a part of me was loving the adventure of it, I’m funny that way.
“What if this doesn’t work?”, she asked.
This whole let’s-jump-and-worry-about-landing-later approach to the situation was kinda on me, she was always…well, smarter. And this was a pretty big gamble, I knew that, but I was confident it was one worth taking and she went along with it.
So, in order to reassure her, I said “Well, I don’t know what you’ll do, sweetie, there’s nothing wrong with MY visa!”.
I was joking, of course, I would never have left her. Or would I? I mean, the tickets were paid for, better one go to waste that two… And it’s not like I’d be leaving her to fend off marauders in the wilderness, she’d just fly back home… No, no. I wouldn’t have left her. Unless she insisted… No, no leaving the girl I love.
We landed in Istanbul and went on to figure out where we could check our mail, me still shooing the little voices that were finding new ways to justify going on without her if this didn’t work. No leaving her, we both go or neither of us goes!
We went to one of the offices, squeezed our predicament through the language barrier and went online. Everybody was extremely friendly and helpful so even though communication was difficult we soon had the document printed out. It was good enough to get us on the plane and we had that feeling that you get when a high stake gamble goes your way, you know what I mean.

Istanbul

We had some six hours to kill before the next flight so we took a taxi into the city. It was some kind of a big holiday so the city was very quiet. I was sort of sorry I was missing out on the Istanbul vibe I had heard about, especially the infamous traffic. The Hagia Sophia was nowhere nearly as glamorous as I had expected, the Blue Mosque was better but not quite there either, and the Bazaar was closed. Even the baklava was not that great. So, meh. But I did have one of the three coffees I mentioned in the Russia story. X-ray vision!

Cape Town

We boarded the plane to SA. There was still a chance we would have a problem with the visa once we land but I was fairly confident we were ok now that they let us on the plane. And we were. A rush of joy came over us once we were officially in the country and we hop-hugged like I imagine a couple of teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert would (I must say, I don’t really know much about him except that I’m supposed to hate him. I have remained uncanningly well shielded from his work but having heard a fragment of one of his songs and people saying that he actually considered himself an artist, I can see the problem people may have with him. I just don’t care enough to hate him myself. Sorry, I got sidetracked.).

English is one of the official languages in SA so there were no problems with communication. You don’t really appreciate the ability to communicate until you go to a place where you don’t have it. Failures to communicate can be hilarious, though, like that time in Georgia when a guy said hanging out with his friends included a lot of drinking and fisting when he meant to say feasting, but it’s very relaxing to be able to speak without restrictions when you go somewhere.

It was hot here, beach weather. Nothing like the winter we left back home. We got a hotel, left our stuff and went into the city.

The waterfront. Tons of people walking, packed restaurants, view of a huge statue made of beer cases, the cute clock tower. As you walk you get offered all sorts of things, from helicopter rides and safaris to diving with the sharks. I was interested in the sharks thing but we opted against it because it took all day (there’s a boat ride to where you dive). I was really interested in this helicopter ride in an old Vietnam war helicopter, a war zone simulation. So, basically, Apocalypse now without the napalm. But it was outrageously expensive, some 200€ per person for half an hour. I was torn but finally decided it was too much to spend. I still kinda regret not doing it.

We sat down to have lunch and checked the menus. I found my dish: crocodile, kudu, ostrich and warthog (it was one of the mean bastards that used to pick on Pumba so it was ok). Ostrich meat was nothing like poultry (which is how I imagined it to be, for some reason), it was red and looked and tasted more like veal. The crocodile tasted kinda like hake.

A group of dancing street performers grabbed our attention, one does not simply walk by such an exotic act.

A lot of walking later we decided we’d had enough and went back to the hotel. That’s when we were introduced to the minibus taxis. It’s a sort of crossover between a bus and a taxi. There’s the driver and the yelling guy (he’s the fare collector but his main job it to yell the van’s destination at pedestrians). There’s a starting stop and an end stop and all the other stops in between are on demand. Where ever someone inside the van wants to get out or someone outside raises their hand, the van stops. The yelling guy is in charge of opening and closing the door which he doesn’t always do (he leaves them open while you drive, he never keeps it closed when people want to get in or out 🙂 ).
They won’t hesitate to overload the van and they drive like maniacs but it still feels quite safe, you get the feeling they know what they’re doing. And it’s cheap. You pay once you’re inside, if your seat is in the back you just pass the money to the person in front of you and it finds its way to the yelling guy or the driver.

There was a store near the hotel where we bought some pâté. We didn’t go in to with pâté in mind, we just couldn’t resist when we saw that they were crocodile, zebra and… can’t remember the third kind. Something exotic. Anyway, in my experience there are three flavors of pâté in the world and, regardless of what the can says, the stuff inside will be one of those three (this was the case here as well). I guess hoofs are hoofs and they add the same chemicals to them anywhere.
We also bought some fruit. Now, this was incredible! So much scent and flavor! Comparing a banana I had there to one I can get in Europe is like comparing a HD photo to a pencil drawing. And I don’t mean those ninja artists who can do miracles with a pencil, either, I mean me picking up a pencil and drawing.

Over the next couple of days we saw most of the city’s sites. I didn’t enjoy the historical sites all that much because, well, of the history. And even though apartheid had ended 18 years ago I still couldn’t help but notice that at any bar or restaurant, 99% of the guests were white and 99% of the staff were black. Not just bars, almost anywhere you looked it was black people stuck with the less desirable job and the white enjoying the more elite positions. I don’t like thinking about that so I’ll stop talking about it.

I enjoyed the company’s garden, a big park with all sorts of plants. I entered a gazebo but I didn’t get +1000 exp, that was disappointing. 🙂 (if you’re not part nerd ignore that, if you are, you’ll enjoy the Heroes of might and magic reference). There were squirrels there too, we spent entirely too much time watching one of them who looked like she had stumbled upon somebody’s stash of amphetamines, darting all over the place and jumping high into the air for no apparent reason.

Greenmarket square is probably the best place to look for a souvenir, there’s all sorts of stuff there including, but not limited to, handbags made out of old records and working radios made out of wire and bottle caps.

We were at the castle of good hope on Sunday, at 9AM. It was empty, not even the bar had opened yet. Not only did we have the place to ourselves, we got the tickets at half price too. 🙂
It was near the castle that we met a con artist (my first ever real life con artist, yay!). And he was quite the actor! He had this elaborate story about his car being stuck inside a parking garage or something, his wallet… him… doctor… rich…paying us back… buying us dinner… (the details are fuzzy in my memory but you get the gist of it) and he delivered it with such conviction that he actually had me going for a while! We ended up giving him some money, not because we actually expected to get it back but because of the entertainment value of the performance! We were in too good of a mood not to, really. 🙂

Speaking of money, they have animals printed on theirs instead of dead politicians, I was thrilled!

At Nobel square I learned that SA had four Nobel laureates. I learned that there was a  suburb of Cape Town called Woodstock from a traffic sign. I learned nothing at the aquarium but it was fun. 🙂

All the guide books say you have to make reservations to buy tickets to Robben island because they’re sold out for weeks in advance. The reason I know this is because she liked to plan ahead and read up on things to see before she went somewhere (I don’t, for me that spoils the fun). Even though we knew this, we still hadn’t made reservations, instead we came to the ticket office hoping for the best.
We got tickets for that day. So we got to the island and took a tour of the prison (the one where Mandela was incarcerated) and the quarry. The quarry really is incredibly bright, no wonder the prisoners had eye damage from working there.
It’s kinda cool, in a really bizarre way, that the current guide at the prison is actually a former inmate who had served a seven year sentence there. I always have to put in an effort to detach myself emotionally when I go to such places so they don’t bring me down.
Apart from being a prison, the island was also used as a leper colony. Did you know that two people with leprosy can have a healthy baby? Neither did I but there had been healthy babies born at the colony. The fact that they had babies at all puts unspeakable images in one’s mind, doesn’t it? Uhh.

By far the most epic thing to do in Cape Town, in my book, is take the cable car up to Table mountain. We took the bus to the base of the cable line. There’s a “friendly reminder sign” there which reminded you to check whether you had your camera, tickets, clothes, whether you remembered to lock you car and things of the sort. Cute. We got into the car and soon discovered that it rotated as it moved and that it didn’t have glass all around, parts were open. This really comes into play once you find yourself near the top, some 1000 meters up, and reach an open section, nothing between you and the drop but a waist-high rail. My knees turned to jello.

I have a weird relationship with heights, I’m very much afraid of them but find myself irresistibly drawn to them at the same time, so, even though standing near the edge of a high drop fills me with dread, I never miss an opportunity to do so (and even if going over the edge is even more dreadful, I still went paragliding a couple of times). And I got my fill of the dread-joy up on Table mountain, there are some really scary view points. Also, amazing beyond words.
The photo features the side that faces away from Cape Town and I chose that one because a) there are a bunch of better photos of the more popular side than the ones I took available on google, and, more importantly, b) because this side had a model advertising it. I don’t really know what kind of bird it was but it was quite happy to jump around hardly a meter away from me and pose for photos. In return, I shared a biscuit with it (left in my pocket from a coffee somewhere).

There’s was an ATM at the top cable car station and on the side of it it said “ain’t no mountain high enough to keep FNB from helping you”. Now, I don’t know how many people actually use it since there is not much to spend money on up there, but I’m sure the sheer advertising value is well worth the upkeep.

Not Cape Town

If we had gone home after Table Mountain, we would have gone home having seen plenty.
But we were not done yet.

We rented a car. It was a ’91 Toyota (remember, it was 2012) with a four gear manual transmission (hey, at least it wasn’t an automatic!). But the lack of fifth gear paled in comparison to the other issue: the steering wheel was on the wrong side! I had never driven a right hand drive car before! I did have some experience with changing gears with my left hand as I often did it for my friends from the passenger seat (while they were on the phone or lighting a cigarette), and this came in handy, but this was a whole new experience. The first left curve ( with me driving on the left side of the road) felt incredibly wrong and every fiber of me was screaming “we’re all gonna dieeee!”. It got better over time. It’s not just that you drive on the wrong side, intersections work differently too, cars keep coming from places you don’t expect them to come from! 🙂

We drove by a slum and the size (and state) of it amazed me. And yet, in spite of the state of the place, the people did not look unhappy, they even looked quite cheerful (or that’s what I made myself believe so to not ruin my holiday).
I was glad to discover that South Africa was not that Africa, the one you see in documentaries, the thin-child-with-a-fly Africa. I realize I might come of as ignorant for even having thought that it would be and, well, I can’t really claim not to have been. I know better now. 🙂

There were street vendors at every intersection, selling anything from water and fruit to tissues, sunglasses and toys.

We drove south through various towns in various bays, each more beautiful than the other.

We drove through Chapman’s peak drive, where the road is carved into the side of the mountain.
We drove past a sign warning us to be on the lookout for baboons (we actually saw a couple and the existence of signs started to make sense. They’re really big and have huge fangs, not at all as harmless as I had imagined them!).
We drove down south until there was no south left.

Cape of Good Hope. The sun was relentless but the hike was worth it. The scenic walk was wonderful but walking all the way up to the Cape Point lighthouse was too much in that heat so we took the funicular (the car had “Flying ducthman” written on the side of it). The view from the lighthouse was breathtaking! I kept imagining great sail ships returning form India in the distance.
And yes, I actually wore the hat. Functionality over appearances. It was light, comfortable and did a great job of protecting my face AND neck so back off. 🙂

Once we took enough of the atmosphere in, we headed back north, to Boulders beach, home of the worlds cutest signpost (pointing to the Moon!).

Oh, and the penguins! You get to swim with penguins! It’s amazing, they’re so awkward-looking out on the beach but incredibly elegant once they reach the water. And they’re used to people so they’re quite comfortable swimming right next to you.
The beach would be great even without the birds, but with them, it’s really a unique place!
The most surprising thing about the birds was the noise they made. I would never have connected that noise to that animal had I had to guess based on just hearing it. It sounded like a donkey! Not at all befitting of such a cute little animal.
We checked under our car for penguins before leaving, as the sign asked us to do.

We caught the sunset somewhere in the Hout bay area, the sun dipping into the ocean, casting our shadows on the hill behind us.

The next day we were on the road again, this time going even further south, to L’agulhas, the easternmost point of the continent (Good Hope is the easternmost point of the Cape peninsula, not the whole continent).
We were a little unprepared, we downloaded sat nav maps in a restaurant along the way, while we were having lunch.
There was a part which was painfully boring to drive. Straight road, straight as far as the eye can see. And after an eternity of driving the straight line (and wishing I had 5th gear) we get to a saddle, get to the top and there’s a straight line as far as the eye can see ahead. Another saddle, another straight line. But we got to L’agulhas eventually. 🙂
The Atlantic and the Indian oceans meet there. We went for a swim and stayed in for hours, having so much fun in the 2 meter waves we didn’t want to get out (we don’t have those in Croatia).

Thinking about it now, I wonder if we were in any danger swimming there. When we were on the beach in Muizenberg there was a black shark flag up. I know the two places are not near or anything and I wasn’t worried at the time, remembering about the flag now is just putting sharks in my head. I know nothing about sharks (except for that swimming to breathe thing) or where they like to live (whether there are ever any there). I guess if there were some there, they weren’t hungry. 🙂
Btw, the old wooden houses at the beach in Muizenberg are cute, they remind me of that island in Venice, the one with all the houses painted in different, bright colors (can’t remember the name, too lazy to google it… 🙂 ).

To make up for the boring roads, SA offered some really fun ones as well! Gravel roads, but wide and incredibly smooth, you could hardly tell you weren’t on asphalt (until you pulled the handbrake, then you got all the benefits of gravel). They actually looked like they do in video games, all red and with weird trees growing alongside of them. Granted, I didn’t really do much epic driving with the handbrake and gear lever being on my left, but I managed to have a little fun.

We devoted two days to seeing animals. The world of birds, monkey town and Fairy Glen (big 5 safaris).
The world of birds had all sorts of incredible birds, some fancy chicken (they really were, with long, white, dandy feathers and a bitch I’m fabulous stance), even some monkeys and an alpaca (not a lama).
Monkey town has a great concept, it’s not actually monkeys in cages, it’s more like visitors in tunnels. Feeding time was a great show. And the people in an estate near by, where we stopped to ask for directions, had a couple of hell hounds. Or great danes. Either way, they were huge and sounded like a thunderstorm in a well.

The big 5 was the most impressive of the bunch. It’s a hundred-and-something km east of Cape Town but the drive is it’s own reward, some beautiful mountains to see.
The estate is very pretty, the buildings nicely decorated. We had a drink while we waited for our tour, I had a Fanta (orange) and it actually tasted like oranges!

I was thrilled to see the contraption that was to be our tour bus! It proved to be a remarkable off-road vehicle. Our guide was a charming guy, always making jokes. We were the only ones on the tour so we chatted the whole time.
There were tons of animals running around, enjoying all the protection of captivity (since the area is closed off) along with all the joys of freedom (since it was so huge that they didn’t even feel they were in captivity).

There’s a type of antelope that has a white ring in the back, the story is it was the first one on Noah’s ark to go to the toilet, before the paint was dry.
Standing a couple of meters from an elephant reaffirmed my decision to have a pet elephant once I’m all grown up and rich.
We didn’t get off the…umm…bus(?) when we got to the lion part of the estate (they’re separated from the antelopes and such). Even from the bus, being 3 meters from a grown lion was a bit unsettling since, as you can see, the bus doesn’t really provide much shelter, but the guide assured us we were safe because the lion knew him and the bus and because the bus was positioned so that we had the sun behind our back so the lion couldn’t even see us unless we moved. So we didn’t move.

The bisons looked really pissed off all the time (“They won’t just kill you, they’ll kill you 6-7 times!”, said the guide).
There was a sad part of the tour. They had a couple of rhinos and a couple of months earlier somebody had broken into the estate, drugged the animals and sawed off their horns to sell on the black market, leaving them nearly dead. The sight of the poor mutilated animals was heart wrenching. But, they were making progress toward recovery and would survive.
Btw, have you ever seen a rhino pee? Wow. It looks like it’s trying to flood a small village!
At the end of the tour we pulled up to a turtle. A big one. The guide told us we coul sit on it but we wouldn’t harass the animal (we were surprised he’d even suggest it). It turns out that it wouldn’t be torturing it since the turtle’s hobby was crawling under cars and lifting them! I know, I still have doubts myself, but I figure he had no reason to lie.
Speaking of cars, they had two old-timers, I think they we’re 50’s Cadillacs, but you couldn’t rent them, I asked. Not even for a short drive.
We took a slightly different route back to keep it new and exciting.

Watching the sunset from Table View is a big thing, you have to get there earlier if you want a chance of getting a table at one of the numerous bars/restaurants at the beach. I guess my expectations were raised too high. Not that it wasn’t nice, I just liked the Hout bay one, with no islands in sight, better. Maybe it had something to do with there not being any people around to spoil it too (there were legions watching it a Table View).

We ended up doing 1500 km with our rental so we had to pay something extra for exceeding the limit but it still wasn’t that expensive. Way less than what we would have payed for a serious car. And by serious I don’t mean better, this one had character and I loved it! 🙂
And I loved SA. I’d go there again! I probably won’t, though, unless on business, because there are too many places left that I have to see for the first time, but it really is an extraordinary place! If you get a chance to go there – go there!

Let’s see Russia.
-What part of it?
All of it!

Ok, there’s a little poetic exaggeration, you can’t really see all of Russia in one lifetime, let alone one month, but we did see a lot of it. And some extra treats.
There was murder and gulags and mountains and rivers and radiation and robbers and monuments and mishaps and excitement and fear and a bridge.
We took a train to Kiey, felw to Latvia, then flew to St. Petersburg, took the train all the way to Vladivostok and then flew to Mongolia. And back home again but that’s sort of a given. 🙂 This was back in 2011 but I only recently started writing about my travels, you won’t mind that’s it’s not brand new, will you?

Ukraine

We took a train from Rijeka to Zagreb, from Zagreb to Budapest. Not much going on yet. Ok, lake Balaton is nice but I enjoyed it much more when we went there by car this year, I’ll get to that story some day as well. The most memorable thing from that part of the journey for me was running into someone whose footwear was more ridiculous than mine! I managed to take a photo without the person noticing. Aren’t those something? And remember, this is 2011, before the whole Crocks thing got totally out of hand!

We only had a short wait in Budapest so we didn’t see any sites except the train station.
36 hours to Kiev. At the Ukrainian border the width of the track changes. Until then I thought tracks were tracks, same everywhere, you put a train on them and it runs. Apparently, not so. To deal with this, they lift each car in the air and change all the wheels (passengers all still in the car). The process takes about three hours but I slept through most of it.

So, Kiev. There’s something about the place that brings back memories of growing up in Yugoslavia but I can’t really put my finger on it. I guess it’s stuff like the police driving a 90’s Lada (which is hardly any different from a 70’s or 80’s Lada) or this very useful fire alarm (says out of order where the button should be).

The city had some beautiful buildings and we enjoyed looking around. But we were disappointed. Not by the city, there was nothing wrong with it. By the fact there were no tours to Chernobyl available. That was why we had come in the first place! We did go to the Chernobyl museum in Kiev, though. The place messes with your head, it took me a couple of hours to snap out of it. I knew the story before but the exhibits and the atmosphere of the museum really brought the suffering of the people to life and it was hard to handle. Eventually I managed to shake the feeling off.

Now, I should mention famous sites like the St.Sophia cathedral and the huge portrait inside made entirely out of Easter eggs. I should give you pictures of those and other, meaningful and learned, stuff, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll give you a lamp and the Smurfs (note the Cyrillic script in the poster)! 🙂

But google the Easter eggs portrait of virgin Mary, it’s quite something. Although, even the best photograph doesn’t do it justice.
A building here, a monument there, some boršč, some vodka and we were done with Kiev.

We flew to Latvia. We had just enough time to take a walk in Riga. It was not what I had expected, mostly because I had no expectations in the first place. But I was pleasantly surprised. It was night already when we got there and the lights made it look like Peter Pan was going to burst out of a window at any moment.

St. Petersburg

The flight was at an ungodly hour so we hardly got any sleep and by the time we got to St. Petersburg we were barely keeping our eyes open. We took a taxi into town and went to get some coffee before we go looking for a place to stay. There are three cups of coffee that etched themselves into my memory to this day (although none of them was technically in a cup) and this is one of them (second one was in Istanbul, third in Sarajevo). The yellow stuff at the bottom is lemon juice (pure, no water or anything).
The thing gave me x-ray vision!

With my new found zeal I went to the toilette where it seemed like I had gotten literal x-ray vision but it was, of course, just a fake mirror. I could see out but nobody could see in.

So we found a hostel, got some rest and went exploring. For the next few days we were in a constant state of amazement! There is so much to see, where ever you go there’s a monumental piece of history waiting to be seen. If I had to pick just one city to call the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, I think St. Petersburg might be it.

That being said, time for the odd stuff.
You probably know the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (it’s the candy church, sister of the St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow) but what you may not know is that they actually put an ATM right inside it! Now, I’m not big on religion myself but shouldn’t the people who are find that offensive? It just seems kinda wrong to me. Anyway, moving on.

The gem on the right might seem like ordinary public transportation. Well, the public part is right. However, it’s not transportation, it’s toilet. Yes, I’m serious. Speaking of toilette’s, there’s a thing that takes quite some getting used to:you don’t throw used toilette paper into the toilette bowl.

There’s a bin next to the bowl for that. And it’s like that in most of Russia. When I get to talking about some parts east of Moscow it get’s even worse. I’ll warn you before I talk about that so you can skip past that part if you’re squeamish.

On to a nicer subject. In fact, one of my favorite subjects: cars (and similar vehicles).

This is an UAZ and the country is littered with them! They’re also very popular in Mongolia and the Ukraine and I’ve seen some in Georgia and Azerbaijan too. The reason they’re so popular is that they are supposed to be unstoppable, any weather, any road. The down side is they’re almost as hard to feed as they are to stop (this is second hand information, don’t hold me to it but I was told it took 30-40 liters to go 100 km). Unfortunately, I never got a chance to ride in one of them. So far.

Nobody actually drove around in a V2, that was just an exhibit. That would have been too much, even for Russia. 🙂
At this point I’ll stop myself before I go overboard with pictures of home “tuned” Ladas, various Volgas or stretch limos. They love stretch limos and will stretch anything. For example, I saw a pink stretched Hummer.

Ok, just one more picture of a car, because wtf. There was a wedding, this was the groom’s car. I’m sure there’s a story behind it, probably a tradition full on meaning and stuff but it looks just wrong. Doesn’t it?

Enough about cars, let me tell you abut bridges and dead bodies. You didn’t see that coming, did you? 🙂 So, as you may know, they have bridges that open for ships to pass under them. It happens late at night, everything is beautifully lit and the bridges themselves are quite large so it’s a site to behold. We were there at 1 AM enjoying the show. No dead bodies yet. It was around 2 AM, when we headed back to the hostel, that we stumbled upon a crime scene. The police were already there and the bodies had been covered with sheets (not completely, I could see the legs of one of them) but it still made us feel quite uncomfortable and eager to get back to the hostel quickly.
I mention this because it popped back into mind when we got lost outside Vladivostok and it played a part in me being perhaps more scared than I have ever been, before or since (including the time I had to come home and tell my father I crashed his car when I was 15).

Apart from that, great times. The city is not all about history, there’s other stuff too. Like a chocolate museum. Or a pub with Freddie chillin’ in front of it.
We took all the tours. The hop on hop off bus, the canal boat ride, the cruise around the city. The days flew by and it was time to move on.

Some 700 km to Moscow but in a beast of a train so the ride took under four hours.

Moscow

You know how when you first smell somebodies perfume it’s really intense but after a while it get’s less and less so? The perfume is still as fragrant but your senses get numb. A similar thing happens with awe, after a while it loses it’s edge. So, by the time I got to Moscow my reaction went from “woooow, can you believe that? Wow!” to “yep, that’s monumental too”. There’s just too much stuff to be amazed at.
But even my numbed senses were still stimulated. Standing at the base of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Building (one of the seven sisters), walking on the Red Square… you can’t not be moved. Fun fact about Red Square, there’s a church at the edge of it (Kazan Cathedral) which was destroyed by Stalin in ’36 because (allegedly) he wanted to make room for a parade (it was rebuilt in the 90’s).
Everything is huge in Moscow, it’s as if it was designed to make you feel small. And it’s not just buildings. Peter the Great’s Statue is almost 100 meters tall, for instance. Why would you need a statue to be 100 meters tall? 🙂 Another example of excess are the metro stations. Google Moscow metro stations, you won’t be disappointed. They are regular palaces!

There are a couple of “mainstream” tourist sites I have to mention.
One is the Lubyanka. I had read “Child 44” shortly before the trip (for those who haven’t gotten around to reading the book yet, it paints a grim picture of oppression with the dreaded Lubyanka in it’s center) and it was still very fresh in my mind so standing there was a very special feeling, real images kept overlapping with images from the book creating a unique sensation. And ringing in my mind was the thought “not that long ago…”. Even though the times of the KGB reign of terror are in the past, if the police see you taking pictures of the Lubyanka they will stop you and make you erase them! It actually happened to one of my friends so we had to come back the next day so she can take them again. 🙂 She had walked over to take a photo from a different angle and was stopped so while she was busy talking to the police and deleting photos, the other girl and I simply walked away and went down to the subway station, our photos intact. She joined us quickly, no taking away and torturing. 🙂 We also went to a gulag museum, while we’re on the subject. I was surprised to learn how many of them there actually were (gulags, not museums).
The other site is the Kremlin. That was a big disappointment. I mean, it’s not bad, it just does nothing to the numbed sense. Compared to everything else there is to see, it’s kinda a waste of time. There is a tree there that was planted when Gagarin went to space, though, that was cool.

Remember “Wind of change” by Scorpions? Remember the first line? Follow the Moskva down to Gorky park?. We did that! The thing is huge. Especially after you’d been walking all day. I don’t think I’ve ever walked as much as I did in Moscow. Worth it, though, so I won’t complain too much.
Among other things, they have a genuine space shuttle there!

There’s another side of Moscow I found particularly amusing. It’s the west coming in and mixing with all the history, the buildings, the monuments. Like that  huge Mercedes sign I saw sitting on top of a Soviet building. This McDonald’s ad might be one of my favorite photos from Moscow (even though I’m not a big fan of the restaurant itself) because the slogan, I’m lovin’ it, is translated to Russian and written in Cyrillic script! And there’s Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Wendy’s, Burger king and all sorts of other American brands all written in Cyrillic.

Speaking of American, there’s a place called Beverly Hills diner which looks like it came straight out of an American 50’s show, with cars for tables and waitresses on roller skates. The first thing in my mind was a $5 shake! If you didn’t get that, shame on you, go watch Pulp fiction, now!

Yep, this is the kind of blog I’m writing here. I won’t give you a photo of Red Square at night (it looks like a coca-cola commercial, you keep waiting for Santa to fly over) but I will give you this Subway trailer.

Here I have some photos that I don’t know how to smoothly integrate into the text but want to share anyway so I’ll just squeeze them in. It’s creepy chocolate, USA vs. CCCP chessboard and a couple of extension cords.

I know, but aren’t you glad you saw them? Speaking of items, my lighter collection got quite a boost from this trip. The lighters got airport security quite excited later, we’ll get to that.

There are two things that were in abundance in Moscow (all of Russia, in fact) when we were there: statues of Lenin and scaffolding. Well, I suppose the statues are always there, not just while we were. But the scaffolding is a seasonal thing. Since summer doesn’t last very long and Russian winter is no time do do any work, everything is renovated while the weather is favorable. Scaffolding everywhere, all over the country!

We left Kiev with the Smurfs, we’re leaving Moscow with Conan the barbarian.
Four days had passed, time to move on.

Trans-Siberian railway

Out of Moscow and into Nizhny Novgorod. Nothing happened. At all.
The train was different from the one that got us to Moscow. This was one of the old school trains and it had it’s charms because of it. It had, as did all the other trains we took from then on, a samovar. It’s a water heater with scorching hot water and we used it all the time to make tea and coffee.

And once, something that may or may not have been food. I don’t really remember exactly where this was, I remember it had been a while since we last stopped anywhere and we were starving so we asked the attendant if we could get some food. She gave us plastic cups with some powder in them and showed us to the heater. We figured it was probably soup.

But as we started stirring, the soup became denser until, finally, it became mashed potatoes. I mean, you can imagine how close to actual mashed potatoes it was. But that was all we had so we ate it.

Yekaterinburg. Used to be called Sverdlovsk. The place where the Romanov imperial family was killed by the Bolsheviks, the city president Boris Yeltsin selected as a reserve capital for the Russian Federation should Moscow became too dangerous. So, obviously, I’ll tell you about a trash can, a massage parlor and a can of soda. 🙂

The trash can made out of an old computer doesn’t need much of an explanation. The massage parlor only needs explaining if you can’t read Cyrillic script because if you can you will notice that the parlor is named Viagra. I don’t think they could have made the hint any more obvious.

The can is here because of the quantity, 0.237 liters. That seems strangely specific and arbitrary, doesn’t it? Well, until you convert it to ounces, than it’s just boring eight.

And there’s the inevitable car part. Again, I’ll spare you the “special” Lada’s. I’ll give you this one regular Lada instead. At first glance you’ll probably see nothing wrong. At second glance you’ll probably still see nothing out of the ordinary. You may notice that the guy is making a right turn without his turn signal. The thing is the car is not making a turn at all, there’s nobody in it! That’s just the way it’s parked!

Also poorly parked is this guy but his parking is the least of it’s problems! What is that and why is it so ugly? Kill it! Kill it with fire!

At some point we passed the obelisk that divides Europe from Asia but, unfortunately, we slept through that.
Another thing we passed was something we didn’t even know was there until after we’d passed it. East Urals Radioactive Trace (EURT), an area contaminated by the Kyshtym disaster (a huge nuclear disaster in the 50’s). That would explain the area where the pine trees were currant instead of green, I was wondering about that while we were passing them. The reason that disaster isn’t “famous” is that they managed to keep it a secret for long enough that by the time the word spread it had happened so long ago that nobody really cared any more (a gross oversimplification, sure, but pretty much the gist of it). They were going to do the same with Chernobyl but the radioactive cloud spread too far north and was detected in Finland (or Sweden, I’m not sure. One of the northern ones, anyway).
We reached Siberia. Tyumen, Omsk, the cities all became one blurry speck in a vast sea of birch-trees and pines.

By the time we reached Novosibirsk we were only half way there.
The city was more or less what we’ve come to expect, I had a feeling we kept coming back to the same city ever since we left Moscow. Not that they were ugly cities or that there was nothing to see in them. It’s just that they all looked somewhat joyless. I can’t find a better word to describe what I felt was wrong with them.

Novosibirsk did have a special treat, though. A bridge that went from nowhere to nowhere! There’s probably a good explanation but I kinda wish there wasn’t, I would like to believe that someone somewhere built a bridge from nowhere to nowhere just because. Wouldn’t that be something? 🙂

A strange thing happened when we were buying tickets to continue our journey. First we stood in line for half an hour only to be informed that we couldn’t use credit cards at that window and we had to wait at the next one. Some 45 minutes later, when it was finally our turn at the window, the woman takes off (presumably to consult her colleagues) because she doesn’t know what to do with the letter “ć” in out passports. She comes back and makes one of the tickets. She then looks at the clock and says her break is starting, closes the window (our passports still with her) and walks away. We can see her drinking her tea through the glass. Fifteen minutes later she returns and makes the remaining two tickets in a minute and a half. And she couldn’t have done that before going on break! I felt the urge to beat her over the head with her kassa ne rabotaet sign! But hey, her behavior fueled my hope of the bridge being there for no reason. I mean, if this is a place where taking a 15 minute break in the middle of a 2 minute job makes sense, a nowhere bridge is not that big of a stretch! 🙂
We got our tickets and we were moving on. The display showed 11 degrees Celsius, mid August. Perfect!
On the train again. There was no power outlet in the compartment so I dismantled the lamp and tried to connect my phone to it using some wires (I can’t, for the life of me, remember where I got wires) in order to charge it. It didn’t work.

Tayshet. Zima. Temperatures in Zima reach -50 in the winter. Krasnojarsk.

Irkutsk. And not a moment too soon. We needed a change of pace. And we got just what we needed. Irkutsk is home to the greatest toilette sign in the world, btw. 🙂

Detour

There’s an island in lake Baikal, some 300 km from Irkutsk, Olkhon island. It’s so remote it didn’t get electricity until 2005! In the summer you can get there by ferry. In the winter you can drive across the ice. In between, while the ice is forming or melting, there is no way across. I can’t imagine living in such a place. But there are people who do.
We were driving to a remote part of a remote area. Cattle walking on the road was a common occurrence.

We stopped at some sort of restaurant and I wanted to go to the toilet. Remember how I said I would warn the squeamish to look away? Be warned.

So, there’s a tin shack with no door, what little privacy you have is provided by the shape of it (imagine a square, break one of it’s sides in half  and fold it at a right angle so that the part that was in the corner of the square goes inward, to get a spirally shape). And in the “private” part of the shack there’s just a hole in the concrete. A nasty irregular hole with foul stains from people not succeeding in getting everything inside the hole. As for the stench, it was beyond words. I survived by holding my breath. I wreaked of it for quite some time after. There were outdoor toilette’s in other places, some better, some worse, but none as foul as this one. Ever.

Ok, you can look again! 🙂
After a while asphalt gave way to gravel. It didn’t cause our driver to slow down any. I like that. 🙂
We got to the ferry, it took us across.

It was one of the most peaceful places on Earth! The were only a few cars on the whole island, not a trace of asphalt anywhere. The island was a gem! The view of the mainland was spectacular, the island even more so!
The village was an assembly of small houses and shacks but it was bigger than one would expect here, at the edge of the world.

Our hostel (or whatever type of establishment it formally is) was one of the biggest estates in it and perhaps the only one to feature a two story building. The rooms were quite nice, clean and comfortable. There was a restaurant where we mingled with other tourists, the place was full. The outdoor showers are not really the height of luxury but they weren’t all that bad. I don’t really know how that works the rest of the year, it was far from hot in August (some 10 degrees or so).

In the picture below you can see Shaman rock. There are nicer pictures of it but if I used one of those then I couldn’t brag about climbing a 2 m post (no props, no help, wearing crocks) and I kinda wanted to brag about that. 🙂

Shamanism is really big here and there are ribbons tied to trees all over the place. We didn’t know what those were at the time, we learned about them from our guide in Mongolia. There was an orthodox church in the village as well.
Did I mention how beautiful the place was? Really awe inspiring! A very different kind of beauty than the cities, but in no way less.
The water was clear and inviting. Until you put your foot in. Then it stopped being inviting because the cold went straight through the flesh and grabbed you by the bones.
There’s one grassy hillside which is covered in names spelled out in white stones.

And a special treat: the sheets in the hostel featured “Nu, pogodi!”! For those of you not familiar with the cartoon, it’s sort of the Russian version of Tom and Jerry only with a wolf and a hare. Every episode ended in the wolf failing to get the hare and saying “nu, zajec, pogodi!” which means something like “well, hare, just you wait…”. It was on TV all the time when we were kids, before Yugoslavia fell apart.
Two days at this wonderful place is enough to recharge your batteries. But it’s also enough, period.
On the way back we saw a guy wearing a big ring with the Batman logo on it. A grown man. Wearing a Batman ring.

Back on track

4300 km left to Vladivostok. Three day ride, non-stop. I mean, the train did stop but they were only brief stops. No spending the night at a hotel or even going into town. This was our bathroom for the 3 days. The toilette is in the other corner. Three days is a long time to spend in a train compartment. There was a restaurant car, it was cute, looked like it came straight out of the 60’s (I wouldn’t be surprised it it actually was from the 60’s) but we only made the mistake of eating there once. Terrible.
We passed through Mogocha, a city where the lowest temperature recorded is -62, Amazar, the last city in Siberia and the beginning of the Russian far east, Birobidzhan,  administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Kabarovsk, where some policemen boarded the train with a prisoner in cuffs.
In the three days I occasionally went to the back of the car where smoking was tolerated (I tend to indulge in the vice when on holidays) and I started talking to a Russian guy. A big scary guy, but really sweet. We talked about all sorts of stuff in spite of the fact that he only spoke Russian which I didn’t speak. We relied on vague similarities between Russian and Croatian (due to them both being Slavic languages), those few isolated words of various languages that you somehow have in your head, mime and air writing/drawing (writing invisible symbols with your finger).

Vladiostok!!
The San Francisco of Russia! The gem of the far east! -is what I heard people call it. Somehow all that beauty escaped me. All I saw was an industrial city with a military base. Not even the sea helped much, it still felt a lot like any of the cities between Moscow and here. For better or for worse, this was our last stop in Russia. We had taken the famous trans-siberian railway, 9288 km.
We went to see as much as we could of the city before we catch a flight to Beijing.

One of the first things we saw this guy taking a nap on the pavement. We were not surprised by it, though, since it’s not an uncommon site. In fact, I think there was at least one drunk guy sleeping it off in the street in every city.

We had not seen a gravity defying truck before, though. Safety first!
Or a 5D cinema attraction. I was only aware of four (and that’s if you count time as a dimension) and yet, there the poster was. 5D. This was topped by a 7D in Georgia this year. I went into that one. It turns out mechanical tentacles are a dimension. o.O To elaborate, the 7 dimensions were: 3D image, moving seats, fans to simulate wind, nozzles that squirt water at you (after 2 shows my shirt was soaking) and mechanical tentacles that grab your legs from under the seats.

We went to see the view form this hill they have which is supposed to be amazing. There’s a funicular to take you most of the way up but it wasn’t working so we had to walk. We had walked around town quite a bit already so this was becoming torture. And when we got up there I was not amazed. The view was good but not really amazing.

I think the most memorable part of Vladivostok was the submarine they have on display in the harbor. Which also disappointed me at first because the first part is turned into a museum of sorts so all of the original interior was stripped out to make room for display cabinets. So, basically, it was just a room. I got my money’s worth in the second part, though, which was really cool!

And we saw Yul Brynner’s house, a huge bridge being built and some other cool stuff (mostly statues). And we got to dip our feet in the sea of Japan. This was some 5 months after the Fukushima disaster. We didn’t grow any extra toes, though.

Remember the scary part, when the bodies popped back into mind? Here it comes:
We took the train to the airport. It turned out that the station we needed to get off at was a field in the middle of nowhere, no signs, no concrete, no lights, no nothing. We were lost and it was obvious. People started approaching us. Nobody spoke English so communication was difficult. One guy appeared to be trying to get us to go home with him for some reason. Some other people started approaching us and started arguing among themselves. They all looked sinister. We managed to walk away from the commotion but one woman followed us. As we were trying to communicate with her, her boyfriend (I suppose) came along and was getting irritated. He was a big fella. At one point he got so frustrated he hit a road sign with his fist and I stared at the post swinging as if I were hypnotized. I would not fare well in a physical confrontation with a guy his size, if he were to direct his anger towards any of us I would end up severely hurt. I wouldn’t be able to protect my friends or myself. Thus, fear and dead bodies.
In the end we managed to get away from them all and find a bigger road but we were still lost and there was nobody to give us directions. After a while we managed to hail a cab. As soon as it stopped we knew we were going to be ok.

So now we’re at the airport and we have to pass the security check. When my bag got to the x-ray it caused quite an uproar among the security because the screen showed a bag full of guns, bombs and ammunition. They were, of course, the latest additions to my lighter collection but there was no way to discern that from the image on the screen. I was immediately pulled to side and made to open my bag, the guards in a state of alert. Once they realized what the content of my bag was their tension dissolved into laughter.
A bus took us to the plane even though it was no more than 50 meters away, walking there would have taken less time. Protocol > common sense.

The Beijing airport is a city, it’s huge. It was a bit of a shock to see someone working at an airport sniveling and using their sleeve instead of an handkerchief but I’m told that such and worse (by our standards) behavior is normal there.
Even though we never left the airport we got a Chinese stamp in our passports. I know I haven’t really been to China but I still like having it there. 🙂 I don’t know how but while walking around, waiting for the plane to Ulan Bator (Ulaanbaatar), we got to the airport exit without anybody asking for our papers. There was nobody there, we could have just walked out the door and into the city without a visa. And I would have done it too, had we had the time. But we didn’t and China remains on my list.

Mongolia

Love at first sight. Ulaanbaatar is not what you’d expect a capitol to be. There is a small city core with some large buildings and one(!) modern looking sky-scraper but most of the city are either single story houses or, even more frequently, yurts. A terrible place to live if you’re Spiderman, very soothing otherwise. The areal view showed a nuclear power plant right in the middle of the city! I’m pretty sure it was some other kind of thermal, not actually nuclear, but it had the Simpsons cooling towers and we decided to call it nuclear, more fun that way. 🙂
They’re more into Genghis (Chinggis) Khan than Russians are into Lenin! Remember how I said statues of Lenin are everywhere in Russia? Well, here it’s not just statues, everything is Genghis, from the name of the airport to brands of beer and vodka. He’s on money, too.

On the way over from the airport we passed by a plane parked behind an apartment building. Sure, I guess, where else are you going to keep your plane if you live in an apartment building. 🙂 I’d love to hear the story behind that.

While looking for a hostel we got to a traffic light. You know the little guy in the lights? Take a close look at the picture. Yep, this one’s on a horse!
We found a hostel, left our stuff and went into town. Not much to see, really. The square is nice but that’s about it. One of the friends got her camera stolen from her jacket pocket there which was sad, not because of the camera itself but because of all of the photos. But what can you do…
There was a monument to the Beatles somewhere, that was unexpected. Even more so was a poster for Gorenje products (Gorenje is a Slovenian brand) all the way out here.

By the end of the day we’d seen everything there is to see in the city so we went back to the hostel and booked a four day tour in the countryside. They have a great way to present different tours, there’s a big map on the table covered in plastic and they draw routes on it with markers as they explain them. The tour cost around a million monopoly money so there’s me in the picture being a millionaire! 🙂
A terribly maintained road took us out of the city. That was the last time we saw asphalt.

Even using the word road is far too generous for most of the paths we took. Still, between our driver being extremely skillful and the van being comfortable, the ride was quite enjoyable.
We were introduced to the local version of tea. It was tea with goat milk and salt. Yes, salt. Strangely enough, after the initial shock you get used to it and it kinda tastes good.
Our guide was a philosophy teacher at the Ulaanbaatar university and he guides tourists in his spare time because he loves the nature. He was wonderful and he took great care of us!
We stopped in something that someone with a very vivid imagination might call a diner for salty tea and some kind of noodles with mutton.
They took us to the Khustain national park first. There’s a special breed of wild horses living there and they’re beautiful! So is the scenery. Grassy hills as far as the eye can reach, very calming.
We moved on. Didn’t really matter where we were going, where ever we went there was pure, untainted nature in all it’s beauty! Granted, I wouldn’t like to get sick there (with no civilization around). But since none of us did, we were free to enjoy the vast areas unspoiled by human touch.
There’s a peculiar thing about a lot of their mountains, you can see exactly where they start. Plain, plain, mountain! There’s a clear line separating the two, it looks as if the plain was there and somebody took a mountain, made the bottom flat and just put it on the plain. No mounds or valleys or anything to soften the transition.

At the first camp we stayed, where the picture to the right was taken (btw., that IS a road), we spent so much time admiring the sky that the guide asked “don’t you have sky where you’re from?”. “Not like this we don’t” we replied. The area was so flat that there was nothing for the sun to set behind, it was like standing in the middle of a green ocean that slowly turned golden as the sun approached the horizon. At night it became incredible, all that sky got filled with more stars that we’d ever seen! Yeah, I know they don’t have extra stars, but there’s absolutely no light pollution so a lot more of them are visible.

There is one down side to the beauty of desolation – hygiene is a bit tricky. The picture to the left shows a bathroom. We didn’t have a proper shower for the duration of the tour, we only washed critical parts.

I must admit I don’t really remember the names of places we visited or the exact order in which we visited them.
There was a hill with a statue of a deer (and a story of how a hunter nursed a deer back to health there and thermal springs appeared), there was an impressive canyon of a big river, there were smaller rivers… Our guide cooked lunch for us at a particularly beautiful spot by one of them, some kind of a traditional meal cooked in a pot over a fire and it was fantastic.

There was the camel ride which is more fun than it sounds and far more comfortable than I expected it to be. The weird part is getting on and off. The camels kneel for you to get on but when they rise they straighten their hind legs first (still kneeling with the front) so you have the feeling you’re about to fall over it’s head.
There was riding the horses through the river so deep we got our feet wet without getting off the horse.
There was a stunning waterfall.

There was the old capital of the Mongolian empire, Karakorum (I didn’t remember the name, I googled it) where you can hold an eagle on your hand and see how big those bastards actually are (I’m 1.80 m tall and the bird makes me look small), pet a big stone turtle or, if you’re a girl, touch a big stone penis for fertility.
There were yaks which I had never seen before and found very amusing. No Young Nastyman or mind bullets, though (that’s a Tenacious D reference, if you’re confused). 🙂
There were shepherds on motorcycles using the horn to guide the cattle, because horses are to old school.

At one point we reached a point where a river intersected with the road. This is quite common but rivers are usually shallow enough to drive through at those points. This one was bigger than usual that day and seeing how the white truck hadn’t made it across we decided not to risk it. Instead, they took us to a different camp. We were not the only ones who had turned back so this camp was full. As a result, the three of us were placed in the yurt of the camp owners.
All of the guests chipped in and the owners prepared a feast for us, a traditional meal. This included slaughtering a goat. I went for a walk during that part. Once they were done cutting up the goat they used the otherwise useless parts of it to put on quite a show. They started throwing the parts into the air where eagles caught them mid air. A dozen or so of these huge majestic birds gathered for the event, it was quite something! The meal was cooked in a big caldron and it included goat, potatoes, some vegetables and – rocks! They put volcanic rocks in with the food and once the food is done you hold the hot rocks in your hands, that’s supposed to be good for some-thing-or-another, I don’t know. Our guide didn’t seem to be all that bothered by the fact the stone was hot. While I was basically playing tennis with mine he was holding his with calm.
During the night somebody walked into our yurt and asked something in a raised voice. We said we didn’t understand, in English. They tried again but eventually realized we didn’t speak their language and left. We didn’t think much of it and went back to sleep. The next morning we woke up to hear quite a story! Our guide told us that a band of robbers had come to the camp during the night. There was a fight and guns were drawn but the drivers of the vans, including ours, managed to fight the robbers off. Now we knew who the people who came to the yurt last night were, they must have come there expecting to find the owners. The police had come and everybody had been taken into custody to a town some 3-4 hours drive away. Since the guide had the keys to the van, we agreed we’d go there to try to get our driver back.

Our guide was a decent driver but decent wasn’t enough. We got stuck in a bad patch of mud. There is a code of conduct here which dictates that you never drive past somebody in trouble, as our driver had demonstrated several times before, so we knew that if somebody were to happen by they would give us a hand. But we also knew that the chances of somebody driving through here any time soon were very slim. There was no cellphone service. We were stranded. Any attempt the guide made to get us out only dug us in deeper. We tried helping by pushing the van but it didn’t help. I asked whether I could give it a try and in an act of pure desperation the guide said yes. After a couple of minutes of pure sorcery behind the wheel I actually did it, thrilling and surprising even myself! I got my wish of off-road driving in Mongolia and I got to save the day, all at once, I was as happy as could be!

We waited for our driver’s release for quite some time. As you can guess by the photo of the center of the city, there wasn’t much to do.
Finally, we were on our way again but we were way off schedule. It was getting dark by the time we got to the next village and we weren’t going to reach the one we were supposed to spend the night at. At the one we were entering, the most amazing interaction took place. These two women were walking by the road and we pulled over next to them. They spoke in tongues for a while and the women got in the van with us, even though all of us, including the driver and guide, were complete strangers, and took us to a small house with a room fitted with several tables. If that place was a restaurant (which it could have been in the same sense the thing you saw earlier was a bathroom), it wasn’t open for business at this hour. Still, the women brought out food for all of us. What they brought was less food than the place was a restaurant, though. Despite not wanting to be rude or ungrateful, despite being hungry as hell and despite all of our sincere efforts to eat, none of us could finish the dish. The driver and guide not only ate, they seemed to enjoy it. Incredible. The foul taste of mutton still haunts me and to this day I have not had a worse meal.
The woman feeding strangers like that was strange enough but it didn’t stop there. They got back in the van with us and took us to their house so we can spend the night there! We met the whole family but soon they all retired leaving their living room to us.

At this point the guide produced a bottle of Mongolian vodka that he managed to buy without us noticing and gave it to me saying it was a token of gratitude to me for saving the day and, also, to all of us for being good sports about the whole situation. I was really moved! We opened the bottle and finished it right there. It’s funny how life works, that day was, by all definitions, ruined and yet it turned out to be one of the greatest and most memorable days ever!
Our last day of the tour went smoothly, no more robbers or mud, just beauty all around us.

Once again, our guide picked an epic spot to cook us a fantastic meal. The little green dot at the top is me. 🙂 I managed to brush against a particularly vicious nettle while I was climbing.
And then it was time to return to civilization. When we got back to the hostel we were dying for a shower but the tour was well worth the sacrifice.

I’ll finish the story about Mongolia with this photo of three guys on a bike.

We flew back to Moscow where we caught a plane to Zagreb. Our luggage didn’t. But it caught up with us in Rijeka the next day so all was well. No guns, bombs or bullets were missing from the bags.