Mykonos

Upon arriving at Mykonos airport, we were greeted at customs by a loud topless guy brandishing a drink. This probably sums up a lot of Mykonos in a nutshell. As my backpack came out of the luggage carousel, I noticed the bottom section had come undone and some items had been lost. Some jandals and clothes – nothing irreplaceable except my trusty icebreaker sweatshirt, which I hopefully wouldn’t need for a month or two anyway. Due to flight delays, we just missed sunset at our hotel. I went to bed not really knowing what Mykonos looked like. However, the next day showed us a spectacular view from our infinity pool overlooking the town.

One of the best parts of our hotel was Susie, an adorable 3 legged cat, rescued from the streets. Every morning, Susie would greet me with a kind of retarded but cute meowing.

After some lounging, we set off to explore. Mykonos is a maze of narrow cobblestone alleyways, bordered by tall white walls. Shops spill their colorful wares onto the streets, and stairs lead to upper residential dwellings everywhere. The store owners usually stand outside the doorway, beckoning you in in a good natured way. The heat under direct sun is pretty intense, but the streets are usually in shadows.

While the streets would at first glance would appear pedestrian only, every now and then I was surprised to see a small van or 3 wheeler tearing up an alley, sending tourists scuttling away and having scant inches between the mirrors and the walls.

Due to my slightly roomier backpack, I did something that I’ve always regretted not doing on previous overseas trip: souvenir shopping. Usually I disregard souvenirs as tourist bait, but this time I capitulated. I spied some beautifully painted urns with Greek Gods adorning them, and bought 2 after haggling the price down. I give myself 2 weeks before they break. My travelling friends in Greece consisted of Rasha, her sister Nadine, her mother, her aunty, her friend Tony, and our friend Luba. Getting this procession of people to get to one place in a timely fashion was logistically difficult, but we managed to get to a waterfront restaurant for a seafood lunch. As we were eating, local legend Petros the Pelican strolled by, allowing himself to be stroked and posed with in photos. On the whole, I found Greek food to be simple but good. For us, most meals consisted of Greek salad with tzatziki and meat or seafood. We rejoiced when we found a popular local restaurant out of the tourist area for half the normal prices. In fact, when they forgot my dessert one time, the waiter ran out after us into the carpark to present a free giant slab of panna cotta. Some very enjoyable days were spent lazing by the pool and having drinks with good conversation and lively debates into the early hours of the morning.

London

My last time in London only lasted 2 days, and I crammed about a week’s worth of sightseeing into it. I saw a lot of the popular attractions and must have crossed the Thames about 10 times. This trip, I’d given myself a few more days, but did not account for the jet lag which reduced my awakened state to that of a zombie for the first few days.

After several days recovery, I met some old Wellington friends at Borough Market: Jerome, Amy, Stacey, Dale and Rebecca. We were at the market before the crowds were too thick, and first stop was getting an amazing coffee from Monmouth. Then we followed our noses through the wide variety of stalls, from fish and flowers to mushrooms and macaroons. The range of mushrooms was astounding, compared to our “white” or “brown” varieties back home.

After our market brunch, Dale, Rebecca, Stacey and I decided to hire some bikes for easier sightseeing. Immediately I felt the benefits of covering so much ground quicker, and the slow traffic meant you could weave in and out of the cars at will. While we saw many of the primary attractions, my favourite part of London that we discovered was a wrong turn into a series of near-deserted alleyways and side streets. After fighting through crowds of people all day, this was a welcome respite.

Afterwards, we enjoyed some cider in Hyde park, watching squirrels, pigeons and people as we drank in the sun.

While I was in London, I stayed with Rasha, whom I used to date in Wellington 3 years ago. Her and her sister Nadine decided one night to take me out to a BBQ in Brixton. This was quite interesting as I was the only white guy at a party of about 100 odd people. All of the other guys were extremely well built, as if going to the gym was their jobs (some of them were personal trainers, so apparently is was). The BBQ chicken on offer was pretty fantastic, the people friendly and the music was not too bad. However, a group of people did not take to kindly to my photobomb attempt. Can’t please everyone!

While in London, I discovered what New Zealand has been missing all along. I never realised how much New Zealand needs this until I was here: Snickers Ice Cream Bar. This icecream is incredible. I even had one for breakfast at one point, they are that good. I thought, surely I’ll be able to walk these off in Greece, right?

Europe!

So begins another trip, this time to parts of Europe!

The plan is roughly this:

London

Mykonos

Santorini

Budapest

Osijek

Belgrade

Sarajevo

Dubrovnik

Munich

Matrei

Cesky Krumlov

Prague

Krakow

And from Krakow, I have nothing planned. I will most likely go to Vienna, Berlin. My last few weeks will be in Belgium and the Netherlands, where I fly out of Amsterdam. Should keep me busy.

Wellington! And favourite photos of the trip…

And so, after over a day travelling, I arrived back home to Wellington, exhausted but satisfied with my 4 month adventure. I’m really glad I took my camera and made this blog, it will remain a great record of my trip as time goes on and I forget everything that happened. As I hope the blog shows, I had the time of my life, met some incredible people, ate some fantastic food and saw some awesome places. I’ll post up some top 5 highlights sometime soon. That being said, I am super happy to be back in Wellington, I was starting to miss my life here a lot!

So here are a few of my favourite photos from the trip as a whole.
More can be found on my flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawsonsmythe/sets/72157629614755726/

San Francisco Part Two

On the last two days of my San Fran trip, I ended up at the Academy of Sciences. They had a pretty sweet aquarium and I enjoyed wandering around underneath a plethora of fish and turtles. They even had a Nautilus! Aquariums remain one of my favourite places to visit in the world, I think these photos show why.

My amazing friends, Alexis and Sui-Ling, who I stayed with in San Francisco also took me to where Alexis works…Pixar studios! It was pretty amazing, and I had to contain my excitement and nerd levels. While I saw a lot of stuff, including behind the scenes material from Brave, photos were only allowed in certain areas. Nevertheless, I took some fun shots.

San Francisco Part One

After farewelling Ben at the Quito airport (*sob*), I arrived in San Francisco at around 1am. My friend Alexis picked me up and we drove back to his place near Berkeley. The next day, Alexis and Sui-Ling took me sightseeing, including the golden gate bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts, an architectural feast for the eyes.

We also stopped by Industrial Light and Magic to check out the yoda statue:

On the morrow, I used the BART to get into San Francisco, headed to Union Square and jumped on a tour bus. This took me around the city and gave me a good impression of the general layout. I jumped on and off haphazardly, and wandered around Golden Gate Park, Haight street, Downtown and Chinatown.

To finish the day, I made sure I visited the Cheesecake Factory in Union Square, for a peanut butter fudge ripple cheesecake. Id lost 12kg in South America, so it was time I started putting it back on.

Bogota

Just a quick blog post on Bogota. We had a few days here on our way down to Quito for our flights out of South America. We stayed in a hostel in the historical district, which had some nice colorful streets to walk around and some really really good cheap food. The Tamales (corn, rice and chicken cooked within a banana leaf) and arequipes (caramel condensed milk sweets) were especially good. We met up with Allison from our Lost City trek and did a day trip out to a lake. I was suffering from a cold, and when it started to rain, I was glad we managed to hitch a ride with a father and son. However, as we got to the lake entrance, a security guard came out and informed us the lake was closed. Wtf.

We started walking back and managed to hitch a ride in a school bus. After a nice picnic in a small town square somewhere, we grabbed the bus back to Bogota. We also managed to catch up with Pilar, a Colombian we had met in Iguazu. On our last night, she took us out to a steak-house, where we had some good but slightly overpriced steak. I was fighting a cold so we only managed a couple of beers before heading home.

The Lost City Trek Part Four

On our last day, we had a longish walk back to the start point. I was fighting a cold by that point, so set off early by myself. It was great to photograph a variety of insects and butterflies. At one point, we crossed a long swing bridge with metal cables. Matt pointed out a line of ants walking all the way across on one cable. The best part was a dip in the river about 10 minutes away from the end. We saw a large spider on the rock wall as we were climbing out too. A hot lunch and a jeep ride back led us to our hostel, where we chilled out in the pool with a beer. A great end to a fantastic trek.

The Lost City Trek Part Three

On the fourth day, we were up at dawn, and after a quick trip downriver, we reached the bottom of the 1200 steps up the hill to the Lost City. The moss covered slippery steps were easier than I thought, as we were buoyed by the excitement of reaching the city. The early morning sun peering through the vines made for some amazing photos.

We reached the city, which consisted of moss covered stone bases, and rocks forming circular paths around pre-existing hut sites. More stairs led to other platforms with more building sites. As we climbed higher, the trees opened up for a good view of some of the platforms. Right at the top were some army guys keeping the area safe for tourists. They were more than happy to pose for a few photos too.

The Lost City Trek Part Two

The second day, we were up early. Due to the humidity, none of our clothes were dry, so we had the pleasure of putting on wet socks and shoes. Straight away, we had a one hour hill climb and I have never sweated so much in my life. It made using my camera quite hard!

Partway through the walk, we came across a small village of a local tribe. As the guide distributed lollies to the shy children, we walked through the village, avoiding small pigs and kids running around. With permission, we took some photos of the inhabitants. It was really interesting to see how they lived, and how they constructed their huts with sticks and earth. Later, our guide told us more about the tribe. It seemed like a harsh life, where mothers would hang babies in trees and ignore their crying as they worked. Mosquitos would sting the baby, but this would give them an immunity later in life, as mosquitos would not sting the adults. Because of a food shortage, if twins were born, the second twin would be killed. While men and women formed partnerships, they would still live in separate huts.

Our half day walk ended at the campsite with vege soup and swim in the river. The afternoon was spent napping and reading. The previous night, Sixto had told us that if we wanted to do the 4 day trek, finding food and accomodation would be difficult, due to a group of 60 odd students ahead of us. We agreed to do the 5 day trek instead, and were not unhappy as it meant we could stay with our group of friends.

Day 3 was the easiest by far, and only involved a 3 hour walk over the hill to the next campsite. As we were walking, Ben yelled “Woah woah woah! Is that a snake?” Indeed it was, and as the snake rested peacefully on a sun drenched leaf, we leaned in quite close for our photos. Later, as we showed our guide, he told us that if the snake had bitten us, we would have had 12 hours to live, and that the snake had a striking distance of 1 meter. From that point on, I stopped wearing bare feet around the campsites, choosing to wear my soggy shoes instead.

At the campsite, we found that one of the guides was sick, with wide crazy unfocussed eyes, stiff limbs and fingers curled into claws. We were quite worried about him, and what had happened, but it turned out that a tourist had slipped LSD into his drink, and he was having really bad hallucinations. A helicopter came to airlift him out, and the tourist was apparently arrested. After that drama, we played some more games of mafia and watched fireflys come out and light up the darkness around the camp. I tried to photo them, but only got peoples torches and cellphones.