Portugal

After almost 3 full days in transit, I landed in Lisbon, Portugal. Originally, I don't remember why I wanted to go to Portugal, I didn't know anything about it and I hadn't heard many people telling me that they wanted to go there, but I had booked my flight from Rio to there and when I had to rearrange all my flights I was now dedicated to going to Lisbon. It was a very good choice that I did!

First off I don't speak any Portuguese, however, it is surprisingly easy to pick up if you speak Spanish. I almost missed my flight to Lisbon because I thought 17:00 was 7PM, not 5PM but they re-opened the gate and I was the last to board. My hostel in Lisbon was super easy to get to on the metro which was a nice surprise and it was beautiful, every room was designed by a different Portuguese artist and they held a 3-course dinner every night with free wine for only 10 euros!!!!

The first morning I slept in, had pancakes for breakfast and then decided to do a little research on Portugal and Lisbon. I met a guy named Rob that morning who had just arrived and he agreed to go explore Portugal in Lisbon. We walked along to the waterfront and attempted to take the tram to the top of Lisbon, however after unsuccessfully trying to buy tickets and to find the trams, we gave up and started walking, which resulted in us getting lost but finding some of the most incredible views and entering the castle on top of the hill. I also had the most amazing meal in a tiny hole in a wall restaurant. Rob had a lot of dietary restrictions, however, I just asked the waiter/owner what he recommended and he brought me a tapas dish of all of his favorite Portuguese foods. It was incredible. Meat, cheese, mushrooms, potatoes, seafood, pork, everything! He even paired it with some amazing wines, we sat and talked with the owner for a while as he was born and raised in Lisbon.

view from the Castle

Rob and I exploring the alleys filled with street art

While I was in Chile on my very first weekend I met two women from Portugal, one was still traveling in South America but Francisca was actually in Lisbon, I went over to her apartment and met up with a bunch of her friends, we all went out as they are almost all bartenders around Lisbon. I got back at almost 6AM because partying in Lisbon goes on all night long, but had a tour of Sintra, Cabo de Rocas, the Palaces and the Free Mason house. Luckily our driver was really cool and I got to have a Pastel de Nata in Belen where they were created in 1837. Sintra is beautiful, its set in the countryside of Portugal with colorful tiny twirling roads and great food.  I also got to have duck rice for lunch and visit some famous surfing beaches. After visiting the Free Mason house we were running out of time to see the palaces in full detail and so decided to go rock climbing and watched the sunset with a view of the palaces on the cliff as well. After a full day of site seeing we also went port tasting and I got to try ginja, a cherry liquor served in a chocolate shot glass. For dinner, my hostel waited for us since all 8 of us were on the tour together and we had an amazing dinner of Chicken Piri Piri and wine, corn, and salad.

The next day I went to Porto via train. This was my first European train trip and it was an experience! I couldn't find the train to begin with and spent what seemed like hours running around the train station lost and boarding the wrong trains.... eventually though I found the train headed to Porto and even got a window seat for my journey. The Porto train station I had been told was extremely beautiful but when I got there it seemed like any other train station, maybe a bit more modern but not by any means beautiful. I could not figure out the metro though, and after struggling and walking in circles I found two German backpackers doing the exact same thing, we worked together and realized we needed to change stations to get to the metro area and once there it only took us a few minutes to understand the maps and ticket situation. I had already downloaded the maps for Porto and was able to walk them to their hostel before carrying on to my own as they did not have any maps. My hostel was extremely friendly and as I checked in I was invited to go to dinner with two people. That night I had a Francesinha (a Portuguese specialty) and did the pub crawl. While on the pub crawl Erin and I made drunken plans to go to Essencia do Vino, the amazing wine and port festival happening that weekend.

Porto Train Station

The next morning after the walking tour Erin, where we visited the original train station in Porto which I admit, is very beautiful. We then grabbed lunch with a few of the guys from our group and had a multiple hour lunch with many bottles of green wine (another Portuguese thing) after which the guys were too tired to continue onto the wine festival as planned. Erin and I, however, were game. We made it just in time for the last day meaning tickets were now only 12 euros including the wine glass and once inside it was unlimited. We tasted so many different varieties and types of wines, ports, and wine cocktails. They even had free sandwiches and snacks and it was so interesting to talk to the different wine producers about what went into their bottling process. The venue itself was stunning, and the rooms of wineries seemed to go on forever.

Essancia de Vino venue

After waking up very late (potentially having something to do with the amount of wine I had consumed the day before) I missed the train I had intended to take back to Lisbon to make my flight to Barcelona, to make my flight to Morocco. But somehow in the pouring rain, I made a train (not on the online schedule) and was able to change my ticket for free. Sitting across from me? Everton! He had been on the tour with me and at lunch the day before. He asked why I wasn't on the earlier train and if it had anything to do with the wine festival, but he also offered to make sure I got on the right metro line to get to the airport as fast as possible.

In the end, I made my flight and headed off to Barcelona!

First taste of Nepal and Kathmandu

I landed in Nepal, like many other countries along this trip, with absolutely no idea why I had booked a flight here. Back in October while planning my trip I chose cities and countries on a whim that either sounded interesting to me or had a cheap ticket available, although Nepal was different because the moment I touched ground it marked my official 7th continent. No not on this trip, but in my life. I had previously been to North America, South America, Europe and Oceania (having visited Tahiti 4 years ago); on this trip I had now also visited Antarctica and Africa leaving only Asia. For my 7 in 7 I will be touching down in Australia on June 23rd!

Kathmandu is a magical city of colors, people, heat and noises. Leaving the airport it was impossible not to notice that I had entered an entirely different world from that of where I had just been and especially compared to South Africa where I had just come from. There were cows just chilling in the middle of all the roads, and once we got into the "downtown" as my taxi driver called it, the streets already bustling with people and stalls seemed to wind smaller and smaller yet we continued in search of my hostel. My plane landed just after 6 am, although do to the airports complicated baggage claim system I did not receive my backpack until almost 8 am. Eventually though after a journey through Nepali customs (not having any US or Nepali currency meant they had to get out the "broken" yet perfectly working credit card machine for me and this was a BIG deal) I checked in at my hostel and in less then 15 minutes I found myself having breakfast on a rooftop patio looking around at the ridiculously tall and sketchy buildings.

I ended up meeting two amazing girls in my room and together we spent the next two days preparing for Thi's and mine trek. While on the plane from Dubai to Kathmandu I realized i knew 3 things about Nepal: 1. Buddha was born there, 2. Everest is there, and 3. the hiking is great. With this in mind I decided to try and find a 4 or 5 day hike to do, EBC (Everest Base Camp) was far too long and intense to consider but there was another mountain range that I learned about from McKinlee called Annapurna and the named seemed meant to be.

I had almost all the needed supplies, just needed another pair of treking pants as I had foolishly given mine away in Zimbabwe, needed a dry bag for inside my backpack as it was monsoon season, needed iodine tablets for the water and to replenish a bit of my first aid kit, and lastly needed to get a permit for treking and a regisered TIMS card.

Post 2015 earthquake, Nepal has put in a new system where anyone wanting to trek needs to be registered and there are checkpoints throughout where they keep track of where you may be in case of an emergency.

My first night, we had talked about going to the Monkey temple for sunset, but by the time 6 o'clock rolled around we were all so hungry that we went strait to dinner and saved it for the next night. It did not disappoint. There were monkeys everywhere as well it had the most incredible view of the Kathmandu valley and the seemingly never ending collection of houses and buildings all filled to the brim with people.

While in Kathmandu I also became a vegetarian and did not drink any alcohol. The meat is a bit questionable in places, and as Thi, McKinlee and I were eating together each meal it was easier for our resident vegan to find vegan food in a restaurant already catering to Vegetarians. On my third day in Kathmandu I left at around 6 am to walk to the bus stop for my "7 hour" bus ride to Pokhara.

Final days of the Cruise Update #5

Montevideo Uruguay was out last official port, and a very sad realization that this cruise was coming to an end. We reached Uruguay early in the morning and it was so beautiful and sunny, we didn't know much about Montevideo and so we decided to do the Hop-on Hop-off bus which would give us a tour of all the important sites. However, we had about half an hour before the tour was supposed to start so we decided to walk around the old town and over to a beach. We walked all the way to the other side and as we sat facing the water, rain started to sprinkle, this was a good clue that we should head back to the port for our bus, however before we had even walked two blocks it became a full blown torrential downpour and the streets started flooding with the rain. we didn't want to miss our tour and so we would run between buildings with awnings but after a few blocks we were all so wet that it didn't even matter and we just walked down the main street as everyone stared at us. when we got to the bus we had to ring out our clothing to try and dry it. the bus also had surprisingly really good wifi and this was the first wifi we had seen since Ushuaia 10 days earlier.

After taking the bus for almost the entire loop we got off at a beach as it had dried up and was back to being hot and sunny, and got some McNuggets and then sat on the beach. Roeland and Emma helped me find a Suarez jersey for my friend Charlie from UBC and afterwards I went and explored the city a bit on my own. Because Carnival was the next week, every street I turned down there were practice parades and drums and live music. It was beautiful. Miguel and Gilad made it back to the ship at the very very last minute almost 20 minutes after the deadline and they had to run almost 5 km to get back, but we all made it! That night we watched the sail away and hung out on deck as long as possible before having dinner the five of us (Roeland, Gilad, Emma and Miguel). Saying goodbye to all of our friends on board and packing up our bags was ridiculously hard.

Summary of days at sea:

So much of this cruise was spent at sea, and there were so many activities that we had the opportunity to take part in. Most afternoons were spent in the cafe listening to live music and cuddled up under blankets, with Roeland and Emma journaling and me writing for this blog.

My favorite memories: all four of us signed up to be part of a "Family Feud" game show where Emma, Gilad, and I were all picked. Emma and I were on seperate teams both as the "brothers" of the family meaning we went head to head against each other. Our questionwas "what is most commonly in a mans wallet, I hit the buzzar first however I decided my first answer condom did not seem apporpriate for the audiance of the crusie and so I went with credit cards, well cards turned out to be the second most popular answer giving Emma the chance to steal and of course, the most popular answer was condoms.....

Miguel and I post dancing with the officers

On one of the last nights on board they held a "Dancing with the Officers" based off dancing with the stars were 8 passengers were paired up with 8 officeres and then preformed in the theater in front of hundreds of guests. It was really funny, I eneded up paired with a guy named Jak who was awesome but while we were dancing to the very first song he spun me around very intensly and right as the music turned off I lost my balance and face planted on stage as everyone else froze. Just a bit embarassing.



We also went to the wildlife lectures, painting classes, watching movies on the stern of the boat, random auctions and free champagne events. We spent most nights in the Constelation Bar, or at Silent disco in the Martini Bars, and became friends with many of the preformers, hanging out with David a Singer on board from England for a lot of the trip and inviting him to diner with us a few times.

Update #4 Falkland Islands and Puerto Madryn

After visiting Antarctica our next stop was the Falkland Islands and then Puerto Madryn, Argentina. We had a day at sea before reaching the Falklands as well a day at sea between there and Puerto Madryn. This gave us time to research both ports as well relax a bit from the craziness of Antarctica.

Emma and I went to the lecture on the Falkland Islands which was very informative, teaching us things like
1.there are penguins everywhere!
2. they are British (no matter what an Argentine will tell you), and they use Falkland notes (which are almost identical to British notes except have a penguin where the queen should be), as well except British notes and US dollars.
3. there is no ATM on the island however almost everywhere only accepts cash.... They told us to go to the grocery store which accepts card and to get cash back and they have only one wifi line on the whole island which is down when cruise ships are in town.
4. there is one restaurant a British Pub, whose menu includes fish and chips or chips and fish.
5. their total populaton is less then that of the cruise ship (counting passengers and crew).

We landed in port on Valentine's Day and the four of us took the 11km "walk" to the penguin beaches and old defense cannon and the walk back because we didn't want to pay 10 pounds to take the shuttle bus each way. However, it was beautiful and so much fun. Everyone even speaks with little British accents and the houses look and feel as if you are in the country side of England, Emma felt at home. The Penguins were so adorable although we couldn't get too close to them. The island also has old telephone booths which I used to call home to Seattle for 5 minutes, and we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Port Stanly and soaking in the sun before being tendered back to the cruise.

On the walk to the Penguins we found a beach covered in abandoned ship wrecks which we of course took the opportunity to climb all over them which had incredible views although some of the wooden boards were so rotten that they fell through to the water when we stepped on them, but we all survived! One of the shuttle buses even stopped as a photo opp of us climbing all over the wrecks.

The Falkland Islands still have lots of land mines left over from the war with Argentina, and so it is HIGHLY advisable to stay on the trails and not tread anywhere that isnt marked clear because they are still working on extractng all the left over mines. This means we didnt get as close to the penguins as we had hoped but we still go to see what is potentailly the cutest animal known to man in the wild just chilling on their beaches. 

Puerto Madryn was incredible. The best day of the entire cruise (minus actually being in Antarctica). Puerto Madryn Argentina is famous for its wildlife park and our plan was to get to the shore, and rent a car so that we could drive our selfs out there because the tours they were offering on board were rediculously expensive. However, when we got to shore we started looking for a place to rent a car and after being told no by 4 different agencies and walking almost 3 kilometers we had to change our plan because we were running out of time. The problem was some were out of cars, some required us to return it the next day, some were out to lunch and wouldn't be back for a few hours, some wouldn't rent to a non-argentine license. But while Emma had been traveling in Central America the earlier year she met two guys who lived in Puerto Madryn and we happened to run into them in the street! They gave us the idea of renting bikes and hitting the beach. Which is great except I don't know how to ride a bike. I told them maybe we could find a tricycle, because I have tried to learn many times and I just can't quite do it, but tricycles I can! Well that wasn't happening I even asked in Spanish if the rental places could give me training wheels. They also had paddle boards for rent, so we thought about renting two bikes and two paddle boards for the afternoon and trading off throughout the day.

However, Roeland, Gilad and Emma wouldn't give up that they didn't want to leave me out (I told them I would just sit on a beach with a beer and wait for them) and they were insistent that I could learn. So after persuading the opener of the rental place to let us "borrow" the bike for 10 minutes so that I could try and learn to ride a bike, beacause I told him I wasn't going to rent it for an hour if I couldn't ride it. We took it to the sidewalk and somehow with minor tears and lots of frekaing out, I DID IT. We went back and forth on the side walk with Roeland or Emma holding onto me and me trying to peddle but I couldn't do it on my own, so after our 10 minutes were up, I gave up and told that there would be no way that I could do it on my own without someone holding on to me which would be no fun for any of them to ride with, we turned around to head back to the beach and on the way there, they let go of me and I just did it! I rode back and forth all by my self and I was so excited I started screaming and crying with excitement, I learned to ride a bike! So we rented 4 and went our for over an hour of riding up to the top point of Puerto Madyrn, there we had another problem, I couldn't quite get down the hill. After almost 20 different Argentinean people proceeded to get out of their cars while driving and attempt to help Emma coax me down the hill I finally made it back to flat ground to finish our bike rides. While we were riding around the city a dog followed us for almost the whole time and hung out with us at the top of the "mountain" too.

From there we had a great lunch on the beach and laid our in the sun with the dancers and singers form the ship, as well playing in the waves. We didn't have any beach towels with us so Emma and I went in search of someone who might be selling sarongs or scarfs that we could use as sargons and as towels. Someone no one was selling anything like a towel. However we did find someone selling complete linen sets, comforters, sheets and pillow cases and so we bought it which actually worked amazingly well and we got it for 200 pesos which is like 7 dollars.

It was the perfect day with my misfit family. That night we had an amazing dinner too.