Ingrid and Marcel World Journey
The Blog for the famous Journey around the world of Ingrid and MarcelArchive
Archive for April, 2011Du chunsch natuerli an hug ueber, wenn ier im August choemmed Carmela…
He, dae Mike isch au intressiert
Last Friday we rented a jeep for a day with our new friend Ben. Sally packed us a picknick (I told you she was like an aunt taking care of us!) and we went to swim in what they call blue holes. It’s a little lake formed in the middle of a river where the water is fresh and oh so blue. There was even a rope to jump in the water from. You needed to climb up some funny tree (see pic) with arm force because the steps were far apart, and then let go and swing like tarzan into the blue hole. Cool….
We then drove up the coast to a small village where people live from their garden and fishing, if they feel like it. The place is so mellow even the cows take a stroll on the beach and go dip their feet in the ocean. We walked across to a small island and over it to the other side where we swam in the ocean and watched some very beautiful blue corals with Ben’s mask.
Driving back at the end of the day was a bit freaky. Since there are no street lights here, you rely solely on the car’s head;ights to drive. Theoretically this is no problem, except there are always people walking on the side of the road, or more exactly on the road, so you need to constantly watch very carefully not to hit someone. The trip’s official driver Marcel did wonderfully, as usual: no casualties to report!
After this fun outing we stayed in the next day. We’re living life easy here with Sally and Ben, cooking meals together and spending hours talking in the kitchen every day. However….towards the end of the day on Sunday my back started to ache. I got my personnal massage therapist to try and sort that out,but by the next morning it was not any better, I couldn’t move my head and was stiff like an old baguette left out on the counter. Turning 40, I tell you….and climbing up to tarzan ropes…. After 3 days in bed or sitting up straight, some muscle rub (you know the one that smells like toothpaste?) and a couple chinese plasters, I am happy to say that I can move again! No more twing with every small movement, I can even sleep properly! So much so that we could even go diving on the reef today. We saw a huuuuge lobster. His head was around 15cm wide. HUGE!
At lunch time we sat on the beach and ate sandwiches and fresh peanuts (fresh, can you imagine!) and fruit, and at one point Ben asked the dive guides where one can see coconut crabs (yes, crabs that eat coconuts!). The guide asks for Marcel’s lighter and disappaers into the bush with his knife saying: I’ll be back in 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes later indeed he comes back, still in his wetsuit, with a blue coconut crab tied up in a liane! Oh, and while he was gone his colleague opened a coconut for us on a tree branch, easy peasy.
Marcel, Ben and I were joking the other day, that if you left a European with a Victorinox in the forest for a week you’d come back and he’d be half dead. But if you left a ni-Van in the jungle with his machete you’d come back 5 days later and he’d have a whole resort built.
Probably not too far from the truth….
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Tomorrow we’re going on an adventure: 2 days out in the jungle on a trek and village visit. He he….
We liked so much the experience of landing somewhere and already having booked where we would sleep at least that night, that before leaving Port Vila we had called ahead at the Tropicana hostel in Santo. The lady on the phone was very friendly and even organised to send someone to pick us up at the airport, mega luxury! So we retrieved our luggage (see the modern baggage counter in the pics) and hopped in the van, together with another tourist from our flight who had been talked into coming to the Tropicana by the driver (who also happened to be the owner). We didn’t know yet we had chosen a super place run by a wonderful lady and met our new best friend Ben.
We arrived at the Tropicana and realised the hostel is completely new, they opened only a couple months ago, so everything is pico bello. Sally the live-in manager is very nice and welcoming, we feel more like we are visiting an aunt then living in a hostel. Actually when we got there she had already booked diving for us for the next day (I had mentionned our intention to dive when I had called). I call that easy travelling!
We also socialised with the guy from the airport, Ben, who turned out to be a dive instructor also here to see the underwater, and a super friendly guy, despite being German. J Wer haette es gedacht? Das gibt’s! (pour les francophones qui me croient raciste, detrompez-vous, mais c’est trop long d’expliquer la relation suisse-allemande….)
So the next morning we were picked up at 8h00 and taken to the dive shop to prepare the equipment and sign the usual forms (“if you die no one can sue us” type of thing) and drove the couple kilometers to the USS Coolidge dive site. This american boat used to be a luxury liner and was transformed into a troop ship during WWII, before it sank just off the shore of Luganville. It’s supposed to be the most accessible and biggest wreck in the world. On the 1st dive we were taken on a general tour of the outside top part of the boat and saw some funny items like a gun, helmets, a gas mask. On the 2nd dive we went inside the wreck to see one of the statue from the ball room, also saw a line of toilets (?). Funny that before going down I thought a wreck would give me the creeps, but once underwater it didn’t feel that way, even inside the boat it was not really freaky. However I realised that wreck diving is not my thing, it mostly seems to me like just old rusty metal covered by corals. With exception of the night dive, this was special: there are gazillion of little fishies living in the wreck which light up at night, some bacteria in their cheeks or something that makes like a stroboscope. That was impressive to see, tons of little light flashes in an otherwise pitch dark environment.
We also dove at a site called Million Dollar point, which is basically a huge pile of american equipment: bulldozers, wheels, tanks, crates of Coke, etc. They say after WWII it was all offered to the local government who declined, and instead of carrying all back home it was just thrown into the ocean. Go figure.
Since no more people are gessing, im telling you.
The first scale showed 89kg and the second 88kg. The average is 88.5kg pretty cool ha.
So Rony is actually closer then Carmela.
Time flies….we’ve already been in Vanuatu for 5 days and I must say haven’t done much. There is one point we oversaw when booking the cheapest flights possible from Perth to Port Vila: one night without sleeping and 20 hours in transit makes you kaput! I think we needed to take it easy for a few days anyway. So we enjoyed our real big bed (he Marcel could lay on his back with the arms on the side without touching me!), visited Port Vila, spent some time at the national museum and just lounged around in our living room (with TV!).
We were happy to have found such a nice place at an affordable price, it was a super clean apartment with bedroom and separate living room/all equipped kitchen, 2 balconies and friendly people. It was a bit outside of the city center but that didn’t matter because Port Vila has the most efficient bus system I have ever seen. No kidding. Buses here are privately owned mini-vans (7-8 seaters) with a red B on their number plates. You just stand on the side of the road and when you see one you wave and they stop to pick you up, anywhere. You tell the driver where you want to go, and he drops you off in front of the door. Since he offers this service to all the people in the van or whom he picks up while you’re in the vehicle you don’t go directly to your destination, but that’s even better, because he then takes little back streets full of potholes and you can spy on local people! All this for 150 Vatus (about 1.50$ or 1.50CHF).
We had shortly read about a local beverage called Kava, so when Liline (one of the nice ladies working at our hotel) suggested we go with her have a drink one evening we thought that was a super idea. If you read in a book it will say that Kava is made from a root and has properties like an anaesthetic, it sort of relaxes your muscles too. Now trying it is a different experience altogether!
First of all try to forget the noisy, busy and brightly lit place where you live. There are not so many buildings here, it’s mostly small houses hidden behind vegetation. Only the main streets are paved, the others are just dirt roads. At night the streets are dark, there are no street lamps. In this more quiet, more relaxed scenery, Kava bars are spread out a bit everywhere, you recognise them by the lantern hanging at the entrance of the site. What I call “the site” is a small area outside, say 5m x 10m, with either grass or dirt on the ground. On one side are a few benches, really just a couple of wood planks nailed together. On the other side is a line of little booths about a meter wide, some of them with a small lantern or a candle lit on the narrow counter. These are the ones selling kava that evening, you just choose amongst them where you’ll get your drink. I suppose every one has his favourite “brewer”. You have the choice of a 50 Vt or a 100 Vt shell (nowadays a bowl), and after you’ve purchased it you step aside and down it in one shot (I made the mistake of stopping halfway and almost didn’t make it to gulp the whole grey-brown chalky liquid down). Some people then start spitting, others take a drink of water (bottles for everyone to use on the counter). Afte rthat you return the bowl and sit down on one of the benches to “listen to the kava”, fashionable people would say “chill out”. The first effect you feel after you drink the kava is a slight numbing of your lips and tongue, not much, you almost have to actively be attentive to notice it. Then after 3-5 minutes comes the “anaesthetic” part of it. . I can’t say I have much experience in that matter, but if you ask me: it feels like if you had smoked one puff of a joint. Marcel (who is an expert about such things) couldn’t even describe the feeling: after having 3 of the 50 Vt portions he still didn’t notice anything so gave up on it.
I had one of them and was already very “easy man” in my head, although it didn’t last long, maybe 20 minutes altogether. Now we understand why there is this kava custom here: it makes you all woozy for a while and it’s cheap, it’s harmless and it’s legal. Pretty cool stuff he?!
?By the way: we are now Santo and are going to dive the biggest wreck in the world tomorrow. My first wreck dive (Boden lake doesn’t count)….wahh!
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- Liline’s mama selling kava
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- Liline and Marcel drinking a shell
On the road again….
Back to the roots: we transferred our wondervan to the new owners today and found ourselves with a bag on the side of the street! Funny feeling….silly as it is we’d grown attached to our van and it was sad to say goodbye to it. Although we were happy the emptying out, cleaning and preparing was over. Since 10 days went by between showing the car and transferring it we ended up doing a lot of cleaning twice. But now it’s all over, we’re basically spending time in Perth (8-10 hours) before catching the first flight for this journey.
Australia has been great. Traveling in the van for these 5 months was definitely not boring! I wouldn’t have thought we’d stay so long, but somehow once you have the van and are on the road you just get used to this way of life and always find something else you’d like to visit, and it so happens that things are often thousands of kilometers away in Australia! If we were to do this trip again we’d probably schedule it differently, flying some sections instead of driving the whole way. But then again, afterwards one is always smarter, and these long drives were part of the adventure.
So in about 24 hours we’ll be landing in Port Vila. After 3 flights and I forget how many waiting hours at airports we’ll be bagged for sure, but we already reserved a room (the 1st time we made a reservation since we left Zurich!) at a cute little guest house where a real bed is awaiting us. What a treat!
I wonder how we will find it to land in a country like Vanuatu after being here for so long, but to be honest I’m not too worried. From what we’ve heard and read, it looks like paradise.
Our campervan is sold!
After only 1 day on internet we had our first interested buyer e-mail us. We called him back right away, he said he needed to talk to his wife and he’d contact us again. We hoped non-stop for 36 hours, then the next evening he phoned again and we suggested to drive to their place to show them the van. At 10h the next morning the deal was closed by a handshake. And at a darn good price too!
You see 5 months ago when we were looking for a van we realised there was a lot of the backpacker category: beat up vans selling for around 4000$, dating 1982 to 1987, not upkept, with loads of mileage on them, sometimes a 2nd engine, and probably a mechanical trouble down the road. So when we saw our van at Jim and Evie’s, we knew it was ours. We also knew we were paying a good price for it (but there was this other couple on their way to seeing it, we had to get it, otherwise they would have for sure), but we were in love.
All that to say, we thought we may lose a bit on the selling….. Of course you’ll get less money after 18000km, but there are a lot of vans for sale in Perth at the moment, and someone scrolling through the ads doesn’t know the good condition of our car.
Anyway: we lead a good life!! The people buying from us are not backpackers but a local couple close to retirement, so they do appreciate the reliability and well….are paying for it J All the cleaning, polishing and washing was worth it!
So now we’re getting a good price for the car, we have money to keep travelling for a little while. And on the way to Canada, what better stop over then visiting a couple islands in the south Pacific? He he….
On Wednesday morning (so early it should actually still be called Tuesday) we are flying off to Vanuatu. What is Vanuatu? A very small country….they probably do have a delegation of 2 or 3 people at the Olympic games parade along with all those small countries like Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Where is that? It’s a group of islands neighbouring New Caledonia, somewhere north east of Cairns in the South Pacific. This is actually where the New Zealander who invented bungee jumping got the idea from: every year young men jump from a tower made of bamboo and lianes with only their feet tied to a self made rope, it’s a part of their initiation. And guess what? This event takes place in April and May each year….so we may even get to see it.
Message special for Mom: no worries, canibalism officially ended in 1887 there, we’ll be fine.
One of the other special things about Vanuatu is the diving. It seems there are wonderful corals and numerous wrecks, one of them being the biggest in the world, called SS Coolidge.
After Vanuatu we’ll be heading to Fiji. Re-he he…. And after that to Honolulu.
La vie est dure….
Some asked about my weight over the time and I have to say, it changed quite a bit without doing anything for it. (No diet or exercising)
I started in Zurich at 104 or 107 Kg I don‘t remember exactly. After the big heat in Oman I passed the 100 Kg mark. In Asia I could never check my weight in the store because the scales where accurate to 10 kg plus or minus (which doesn‘t help.)
Now in Australia after starting with our dayly wine and not asian cuisine I tought it will move up again and was wondering.
After I polished the whole car (sweating a lot and as a treat after that we went to Hungry Jack/Burger King and I ate two Whoppers with fries and 5dl Coke) I tought it would be time to check.
So we went right after to a store Target and checked on two scales.
He guys watch out I passed for sure Vojti and Juerg, but I‘m on the passing lane and driving fast!!! J
Maybe I passed already Mike or even Rene and if I don‘t watch (slow down) soon even Roger.
The last time I weighted anywhere close to that I was 14 (except a short while in the Military Service)
I was thinking what ist the reason for that.
Hang around at the beach,drink more alcohol then used to, eat still quite more then Ingrid and lose and lose…
You pour souls at home’s guess is as good as mine.
Who can guess my weight at the moment?
The closest will get a hug J
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- giant bats taking a nap
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- cleaning the ants & eggs from under the bed
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- the 450km I drove (from 18000)
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- have been sweating a bit?
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- after a bath in the ocean (no pins holding!)
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- pink salt lake
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- turning 40
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- yoopdidoo on the jumping pillow
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- open this one….2 koalas dozing
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- incredibly long necked turtle!
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- watching the Formula 1 race