travel

A snapshot moment

| Sophie

I’ll set the scene:

Me (purple, floaty trousers, black and green Hawaiian shirt, slightly tanned, curly hair tied back), lying in my hammock in the “porch” of our “mansion”. It is HOT today, so hot in fact that I got in the “shower” earlier fully clothed just to cool down a bit. The sun is shining and the river flows idly, the grass is quite overgrown and bright, little seeds cling to my socks and trousers whenever I walk anywhere. Insects are constantly buzzing about, jumping up from the grass and circling through the air which hangs heavy and still with humidity. Frogs and mice occasionally peep out from their homes and the geckos in our “mansion” crawl silently across the walls and the ceiling. The crickets are buzzing and the birds chirping and every so often the rumbling of a motor crawls past as members of the community travel up and down the river. The giant leaves on the banana trees rustle slightly in a gentle breeze, and the sound of the shallow water dancing over the rocks in the river floats up from the bank. I can smell the rich scent of tropical nature, almost cloying and almost sweet. And I feel calm. The heat has soaked into my bones and it is bliss to lie here, embraced in the warmth of the air and the peace and serenity of the trees.

I have spent the morning working on my project. Hours and hours and hours of data collection and analysis, with hours and hours and hours to go. My ears are ringing from listening to my music too loudly, my mind is buzzing with thoughts of work, and my fingers are sore from clicking and dragging and typing. I’m taking a break. Whether it’s well-deserved I’m not so sure, but the heat and limitless time we have make it hard to concentrate.

Heather and I have been at the station for 9 days now. Just us. Here. Alone. In our paradise-like prison, or prison-like paradise; depending which mood we’re in. We’ve been on rations for a few days now because our food supply is dwindling so meals have been delightfully creative or completely boring. The flies are out in full force so we’re both covered in bites, but I think we’re more used to them now so they don’t bother us as much. Evening is settling in, the air is cooling slightly and the sun getting lower.

 

 

I’ll get back to work now. The tab of my spreadsheet is staring at me disparagingly from the bottom of my laptop screen and, as much as I wish they would, the photos won’t start sorting themselves.

 

 

*”quotation marks” used to indicate the metaphorical nature of these descriptive nouns. We don’t actually live in a mansion, but a 4 roomed, open, wooden building built on stilts. The porch refers to the area at the front of said building. We have a structure which does a very good imitation of a shower, but in reality is 3 small concrete walls and a shower curtain with a barrel that we pump full of river water when it gets low, and a tap coming out of it.

 

How to survive in the Jungle

| Sophie

First of all, I hope that none of you reading this are intending on actually using this blog post as a guide to the jungle. I am not professing to have succeeded at life here, nor am I suggesting I have any great wisdom on the matter. This is more a collection of observations and lessons I have learnt so far in the 2 short months that I have been living in the Amazon rainforest.

Don’t complain about how much you sweat.

Complaining makes you frustrated, which causes your blood pressure to increase and your body to heat up, which causes more sweating. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. There’s no escape or respite from it, there’s nothing you can do to prevent it, and it doesn’t get any easier. My advice is tranquillo, tranquillo. Being chill is synonymous with cold for a reason. Relax, be calm and slow, and the sweat is manageable.

Laugh a lot at how ridiculous life can be.

The best thing you can do when the jungle pushes you to the limit of your adaptability is to laugh. 3 new super itchy bites on your bum, an awkward and socially-unacceptable place to scratch? Have a giggle about it, then scratch it anyway. Droplets of sweat that have made it all the way from your under-boob down to your ankle? It’s okay, just wipe and laugh. A huge, scary looking scorpion thing sitting innocuously in the exact spot you were about to place your hand? It’s cool, you saw it just in time, scream a little bit, then laugh. When the local, wild, jungle dog has raided your kitchen, upturned all the bins and spilt gross, smelly liquid all over the floor, maybe don’t laugh right away, maybe clear it up asap and lock the doors. Yell ‘hijo de puta’ to the general surroundings… then laugh.

Make friends with the insect community.

Only the harmless ones though. Become one with nature and take on a Snow-Whitely demeanour as the butterflies and moths swirl around you, and weird and wonderful little creatures somehow end up on your body and you’re not quite sure how they got there. Smile at them warmly, sing a little song if you’re so inclined, then get them the hell off you just in case.

Be prepared for attack at all times

The silent, tiny enemies that cause an unbelievable amount of grief are the biting bugs. A sting, and a week-long, incessant itch are the least of your worries, some of these insects carry horrible diseases like Malaria and Leishmaniasis. The likelihood of us getting either of these is fairly slim, but I don’t want to take any chances. Along with deet and long clothing, Heather and I have developed a series of noises and phrases designed to scare off unwanted critters. They work with varying degrees of success. These usually explode out of us when we realise we’re being attacked and often come from the recesses of our subconscious. Heathers go-to insult is yelling “BIG HAIRY BEAST” at the offender. It seems to work. My expletives are usually a series of weird noises like ‘lblblblblbllb’ or ‘chchchchchhc’. Yesterday, a wasp was hanging round the spout of our lemon juice, and I politely turned to it and said ‘Go away! That is not your lemon juice!’ Needless to say the wasp didn’t listen.

Tiger balm, and lots of it.

The only successful minor relief from the stingy itchiness is our beloved tiger balm. We try to keep stocked up at all times and apply it so often that most of our clothes and bed sheets have a yellow-ish tinge. I feel like every time I kill a mosquito, I’m helping humankind, ridding the world of disease one bug at a time. You’re welcome.

Frequent showers – for clarity of mind

The water is pumped straight from the river and is dispensed into a concrete shower block from a medium-sized plastic tank, so it’s always cold and fresh and has to be topped up every couple of days. When I say shower block, I mean a very small concrete cubicle with only 3 walls and a shower curtain, and no ceiling. Sharing a shower with the outside world is not so bad although the unavoidable, clothe-less nature of a shower does increase skin surface area for flying insects to land on. An inevitability unfortunately. One time, when Heather was showering, glasses-less and vulnerable, a massive toad reduced to a blurry leaf due to lack of 20:20 vision leapt desperately on to her leg. Not the ideal shower companion. My favourite time to shower is just after the sun has set, there’s something quite magical about showering and staring up at the moon and the treetops, plus the water is usually not freezing as it’s been heating up all day!

A strong stomach

Because who knows how many ants have died a merciless death in your boiling soup after they’ve climbed into your saucepan, and how many bugs you’ve had to force down after they landed in your drink and you only realised when you felt them sliding down your throat.

You’ll need a good selection of offline films, series and books.

I have rediscovered my love of reading here. My absolute favourite, most perfect, peaceful time of day is the morning. We usually wake up as the sun rises and make the short journey from our mattresses and the protection of our mosquito nets to our hammocks on the porch between 7 and 8, then read for an hour or so as the day heats up. We take our kindles to breakfast with us and read whilst sipping coffee, eating and chatting. Our mornings are delicious. Then at night we usually watch something we have downloaded, swinging in our hammocks listening to the buzz of night life around the station. The other night we were watching Stranger Things during an intense thunder storm lighting up the sky with bolts of lightning striking the trees across the river, the atmosphere was incredible.

Take a breath and remember how lucky you are all the time.

Because it’s true. Heather and I often have beautiful moments where we become sort of meta-aware about our surroundings and it dawns on us how unlikely and wonderful it is that life has brought us to this magical place. Glorious sunshine and a swim in the river can quickly turn into a furious thunder and lightning storm, deafeningly loud and thrillingly close. The river can be serene and gentle one minute, then have turned into raging rapids and be transporting large trees the next.

Why We’re Here – The Research

| Sophie

For those of you who have got the impression that so far my time in Ecuador has mostly been exploring, lying in a hammock and swimming, you’re wrong. Well, half wrong. Okay, just a little bit wrong, we have been doing a lot of that. But there’s a much more serious side to our life here: the research.

To preface the bulk of this post, I’ll just explain why I’m here: I’m 2 and a bit years into a degree in Biomedical Sciences with Industrial Placement at Manchester, and this is my placement. Heather is also on placement with me, she studies Zoology at Manchester and is a passionate animal lover, even the grizzly, scary, creepy ones… especially the grizzly, scary, creepy ones. Our aim over the course of this year in the Jungle is to complete research in an area of our choosing and produce scientifically viable results. If we work hard, then getting published could be on the cards.

We’ve both spent a long time coming up with a plan for our research proposals which mainly involved a lot of emailing, scrolling through PubMed, reading papers and chatting to Javier, the Ecuadorian station manager, about what would be possible. Javier has a degree in Forestry Engineering and has been working at the station for 6 years now. He’s affectionately nicknamed Jungle Dad and is sociable, generous, and a real joker. Even though most of his jokes are in Spanish and fly straight over our heads, he still makes us laugh with his faux-stern expressions, dad dancing and inability to say slept. “Slepech. Slepecha. Slepch?”

Heather’s main project will be investigating the Arachnid biodiversity here at Payamino. She was given a fantastic opportunity to work closely with an Arachnid specialist during her time here; they’ll complete the field work and research when he arrives at the station in January next year. ‘Arachnid Biodiversity Study’ means capturing as many spiders as possible, bringing them back to the station and identifying what species they are. Heather’s hoping to gain a greater appreciation of an animal that’s normally shunned in society and has a huge fear stigma attached to them. In her opinion, they’re actually underappreciated, beautiful creatures that aren’t nearly as scary as they seem. Already we’ve seen lots of spiders, including a baby tarantula (that we caught in a soup bowl) and many jumping spiders. Heather uses the word adorable, not something synonymous with spiders in my personal opinion, but it’s her project not mine. It’s a good thing I’m not scared of spiders (which my mother proudly attributes all credit to herself as she always made me and my sister get rid of the spiders in the house so she didn’t have to, thanks mum). Also, Heather will be continuing with the research on Heliconias, a native flowering plant, which was started by a previous placement student. The project is looking at the effects of genetic variation in Heliconia species and the associated insect communities. It will involve cutting off roots from existing plants and growing her own little, genetically-identical garden, then measuring the species diversity found between the two plants. Interesting stuff, plus Heliconias are really pretty.

My projects, which I’m very excited about, will be Fungi Biodiversity and knowledge about ethno-medicine in indigenous communities. Fungi are a largely under-researched, under-appreciated group of organisms. They are neither a plant nor an animal, but a whole kingdom to themselves. My project will be on the different types of flowering fungi found in Payamino. It will be impossible to do an all-inclusive biodiversity survey as a lot of fungal species are microscopic and I just don’t have the equipment to find them, so the project will be limited to fungi I can see with my eyes. There has been absolutely zero research into fungi biodiversity here, so I’m in unchartered territory and hopefully my research will be valuable to the scientific community. Once I’ve collected data on each fungi I find, I will get in touch with a fungi specialist either in Quito or the UK who can help me identify each species. Hopefully I’ll develop a comprehensive list of species found in this area. My interest in fungi started to develop in first year of Uni when I came to appreciate how diverse, interesting and spectacular they can be. For example, did you know that some species of fungi create their own jets of air in order to spread their spores further; some species are carnivorous, capable of punching holes in the cell walls of passing nematode worms and insects for food; and some have even teamed up with plants they live on and kill the insects for them then feed them the corpses. I started to see them as the research underdog of the natural world, and love the idea of contributing to this hugely unfinished puzzle piece of nature.

My second research project is quite close to my heart. I’ve always been interested in alternative medicine and how they practice medicine in different parts of the world, inspired by my own battle with illness, and had the idea of looking into medicine used in the indigenous communities here before I even applied for the placement. When I arrived, I found a book on the book shelf entitled ‘Plantas de Medicinales en Payamino’. I’m sure you can crack that Spanish on your own. The book was a catalogue of all the different plants used medicinally by the Kichua community, what they’re used for and how they’re prepared. I got in touch with the author of the book, Dr Brian Doyle – a researcher in the States, asking if there was any further research he wanted to do here, and if not, whether his research bought up some interesting questions that I could research myself. He replied with 3 large bullet points, each detailing a possible research area I could pursue, and said he was planning on coming back to Payamino next year to continue his research. This was the best possible news I could have hoped for. Bullet point number 1 turned out to be not so relevant after chatting with Javier who knows the area and communities really well. Bullet point number 2 was simply monitoring all the plant species year round; collecting samples for the National Herbarium in Quito and collecting data and pictures about the life cycle of each plant. Bullet point number 3 was by far the most interesting and challenging suggestion. Brian had recently published a paper that analysed the distribution of knowledge about traditional medicine across the community near the station. His suggestion was that I do the same thing, with improvements and a few alterations, in a few other indigenous communities, and use the data to compare knowledge between communities. Imagine: travelling to various indigenous communities in the rainforest, staying for a week or so and in that time surveying a random sample of the population using images of plants and a basic questionnaire. Queue huge excitement and the stomach-dropping realisation that I’m going to have to be near fluent in Spanish to pull this off. So at the moment I am doing my best to learn Spanish, with a general plan to do this field work next Easter.

So my plan is to get a chunk of the Fungi project done by Christmas and send over the data to a specialist to see what results I get; and learn Spanish rapido. There’s only so far you can get with audio-tapes, books and Duolingo, so Heather and I spent an intense week in el Coca having Spanish lessons with an Ecuadorian-but-lived-in-Norway-for-18-years English teacher, Fernando, doing 4 hours of lessons a day. It was a pretty hard week but we learnt a lot. On the Friday, we went to a bar (Papa Dance, a salsa bar on the river) with Fernando and met some of his other students learning English and found we could actually have a simple conversation and swap basic information about our lives. It was a triumphant moment.

The pace of life is still quite slow here as we travel to and from various cities on a weekly basis to get all the relevant documentation needed for our contracts with UEA and our Ecuadorian work visa, and as we adjust to the living conditions in the Rainforest. We’ve only been here a month but it already feels like a lifetime. This little clearing on the bank of el Rio Payamino has become our home and we love it. We both have high hopes for our research here and can’t wait to see our ideas and plans come to fruition. Let’s hope that in a year’s time, Heather and I can look back at the blog post and have succeeded in meeting our aims. Buena suerte a nosotros. Good luck to us.

An interlude in Peru

| Sophie

Lima, Llama, Lame

After our 36 hour bus journey from Quito, we finally arrived in Peru. We stayed for a night in Lima, spent the morning having a wander, then swiftly moved on to our next stop. Heather, Lucas and I had been informed by other backpackers that it wasn’t really worth a visit. It’s densely populated and there’s nothing that really distinguishes the city as anything special, so onward and upwards. Well, Eastwards to be geographically accurate.

Paradise in Paracas

Mission number 1 in Paracas was to book our tour for the next day and then find transport to Huacachina. This was fairly easy as there are travel agencies everywhere, and everyone is so keen to get you to book onto their tour that we merely had to step out onto the street before we got accosted with offers. The other amazing thing about touristic places is that almost nothing has to be booked in advance. We then found some dinner in a little burger shack and drank Pisco Sours, the national Peruvian cocktail. A few sips in I realised it’s made with egg whites so I quickly switched to mojito’s!!

The next morning we woke bright and early for our boat tour. A man arrived at the hostel with a checklist with our names on, so we followed him to a pier. Being unable to speak any Spanish at this point, most things had to be undertaken with a bit of blind faith. There’s not the certainty that comes from handing over a ticket, or presenting an ID. Often, someone rocking up and saying your name is the only validation you’ll get that you’re going on what you paid for. So we arrived at the pier, queued for our tickets and got ushered onto a speedboat along with a hoard of other tourists. We were taken to a group of rock formations out to sea which were home to Peruvian Boobies, Humboldt Penguins, Pelicans, Dolphins and Sea Lions. Fortunately we caught a glimpse of the penguins, one of the highlights of this trip for me. Another highlight was the man sat in front of the three of us; a middle-aged South American man on the trip on his own. His pure excitement and need to share everything he saw with the strangers around him was infectious and soon had us laughing and sharing in his childish happiness. He anxiously kept his eyes darting around the horizon, steeling glimpses in every direction to make sure he wouldn’t miss a thing: pointing and shouting every time a fin peaked out of the water or a sea lion could be seen basking in the sun. This was made even more hilarious by the fact that most of what he pointed to from our speeding boat disappeared from view in the time it took for everyone to look to where he was pointing, so most of the time it looked like he was gesturing excitedly at nothing.

After this we took a bus out into the desert where we learnt about fossils hidden in the sand and saw flamingos drinking from the oasis. Having grown up in a desert, this wasn’t as exciting for me, but it was beautiful nevertheless. After lunch in the desert, we continued our journey onto Huacachina.

Huaca-fucking-china

Not really knowing what to expect, we arrived in a deserted, dusty desert town with nowhere to stay that night and no idea what it offered, so we walked into the nearest hostel and asked for 3 beds. Fortunately, it was a relatively cheap, nice hostel with comfortable beds and its own bar – always a good sign. To our great surprise, out the back of the hostel was a beautiful lagoon, nestled in the middle of a circular boulevard. Having not realised this would be there, we all felt like we’d stumbled unknowingly into a little paradise. We spent the night drinking Sangria, eating Pizza and Pasta and feeeling really suave for the first time since coming to Peru. The next day we ventured over to a different hostel with a pool and sat in hammocks, chatting, eating, writing and reading until 4 o clock when we had booked on to go sand boarding. We took our place at the back of this massive 15-seater doom buggy, and were thrown around as we drove to the spot where we were to start boarding. There were 4 dunes in total, the 4th one being absolutely massive and scary looking from the top, although  actually perfectly fine. Pumped full of adrenaline and endorphin’s, we returned to Huacachina sweaty, hungry and sun burnt.

The next stop on our journey through Peru was Nazca, although we also had the choice to just go straight to Arequipa. We had been umming and aahhing about doing the plane trip over the Nazca Lines. We’d heard from a few other travellers that it was quite scary and dangerous, and a lot of people threw up in the plane. But in the end decided we wanted to do it – when in Peru – so booked and sorted our transport, accommodation and tour in Nazca for the next day from a travel agents in Huacachina, then had the afternoon to chill out by the pool.

Nazca Lines, alien signs

The bus journey that evening was only a few hours, and we got to Nazca around 9:30pm. The hostel we had booked was in walking distance from the bus terminal, and when we got there it was locked and dark. We had walked past a couple of old drunk guys, and after peering in through the glass door to the hostel for a while, one of them came up to us with a key. He was stumbling around, jabbering in slurred, accented Spanish and half his teeth had rotted or fallen out. We didn’t know what to think about the situation, but let him let us inside and show us to a room. A bit later on, a much younger, cleaner Peruvian came and greeted us, apologising for the behaviour of his drunk uncle, but it worked out well because the drunk uncle had accidentally put us in a private room when we had booked into a a dorm. The next morning we were woken up at 7am by the hostel owner banging on the door, telling us our taxi was outside. At the travel agents the day before, she’d told me we were going to get picked up at 9am, albeit using my very basic Spanish and her even more basic English, so this was a bit of a surprise. We threw on some clothes and groggily made our way into the taxi. I was the first in, so sat in the front. I reached round to put my seat belt on, only to find there wasn’t one. The taxi driver saw me grappling at the empty space, and hastily assured me that there wasn’t one, and not to worry, “tranquillo tranquillo” (‘relax, relax’). If you say so?

At the airport we watched a hilarious Nazca documentary that was showing on screens around the building, depicting what life was thought to be like around the times the Nazca Lines were formed. There are a few theories as to how the Nazca Lines exist: aliens and religious reasons being the two most popular. They are quite amazing. We went up in a little 8-seater plane and flew over all the different shapes and lines on the desert. I could see why a lot of people throw up, there was a lot of dipping and weaving and turning the plane on its side so the people on each side could see clearly, although I never at any point felt unsafe. My favourite lines were the hummingbird and the spider. My other favourite was a little astronaut on the side of a rock. It absolutely paled in comparison to the rest of them, it was so poorly drawn, the lines haphazard and uneven and the shape barely distinguishable as a person, but that’s what made it funny. You can just imagine that each Nazca person was assigned a shape to draw in the desert, and one guy got an astronaut and completely fucked it, and the rest of his group turns to him, masterpieces finished, and see his terrible drawing, and just walk away sighing and shaking their heads. To me and Heather, this guy was Daniel. For fucks sake Daniel.

So after our little plane trip, we had the afternoon off. We found a hotel with a pool, had a swim and sat around reading for the afternoon. The next journey was a night bus to Arequipa.

Arequipa, you a keepa’

In Arequipa we stayed at party hostel, Wild Rover. Wild Rover had a bar and pool in a courtyard out the back, a ping pong table, a pool table, a cinema room and free shots at lunch time, what more could you want. We spent 2 nights in Arequipa and got on really well with the staff, most of them were really fun and up for a laugh, although there was this one douche who took a fancy to Heather and wouldn’t leave her alone. The food was fairly good, even the vegan stuff, and the drinks were cheap. The city itself is pretty beautiful; cobblestone streets, quaint little cafes and a big square. We could have been somewhere in Europe, easily. We spent our day mooching round the shops, chilling by the pool and playing ping pong. It was some well-deserved and needed down time from the hectic schedule we had been keeping so far. The night out was fun, we played games, got free shots and ended up at a club nearby that was sweaty and crowded.

Whilst in Arequipa we booked a 2 day trek into Colca Canyon. There were 3 options, the 1 day, 2 day and 3 day tours. The 1 day you don’t do any hiking, just drove there and had a look. The 2 day you hike down into the canyon on the first day, and back out again on the second day. The 3 day, you do exactly the same as in the 2 day trek, except you take 3 days to do it and drag it out a bit longer. Heather and I decided to do the 2 day. We were short on time and fairly confident in our fitness, so thought we would go for the hardest of the 3. Looking back we grossly underestimated the challenge and hadn’t been adequately warned about the difficulty of the hike: everyone else doing the 2 day hike with us seemed to be seasoned hikers with professional gear. There was a group of 4 beautiful, scantily-clad Americans obviously making one of those GoPro adventure videos you see on YouTube, and it was funny to see the filming process. Most of it was them hiking clumsily like us normal folk, then getting out the GoPro’s on the good bits, reapplying their make-up and filming each other strutting along looking perfect. Well, now we know the truth.

We were meant to be picked up between 3am and 3:30am, so being me, I aimed to be ready for 3:15am. Of course, the driver arrived at 3am on the dot, and so I made us late and they left and came back half an hour later to get us again. The route included the standard stop for breakfast in a random village, and an hour at a lookout point to see some condors, and then finally arriving at the set off point for our trek. The next two days were a blur of blisters, altitude sickness, pain, beautiful views, sweating, exhaustion, pain and pain. The hike on day one took us down into the bottom of the canyon and along a Peruvian flat (extremely hilly) to our base camp for the night. Fittingly called The Lagoon, our camp was a collection of chalets with a few icy cold pools and bars. After our 8 hour hike, the pool was a welcome relief to sore feet and achey muscles, and bed beckoned not long after. The wake-up call on day 2 was 4:30am, with the aim of reaching the top by 8am. It was a very, very steep, constant ascend along a sandy, rocky path that took Heather and I just under 3 hours. There’s a lovely picture of me reaching the summit, desperately trying to conjure up some happiness from my exhaustion at reaching the top. Digging deep, the best I could do was a half-hearted arm raise, and a grimace.

The journey back was nice, we spent a lot of time in a minivan, but also stopped by some thermal baths which were just beautiful and put Budapest to shame. All in all, Colca Canyon was absolutely gorgeous and there were some rare moments that took what little breath I had away. We spent another night in Arequipa for a bit of rest and recuperation, and prepared ourselves for the next 36 hours.

You know, Puno?

One overnight bus later and we arrived in Puno at 5am. This was not a nice journey, no one got ANY sleep at all. All 3 of us (Heather, Lucas and I) got window seats so as to have 2 seats by ourselves, and when we got on, the bus was fairly empty which was a relief, but then this man sat next to Heather. He had booked an aisle seat next to a window seat that was taken, when there were loads of empty seats on the bus! It was really strange, and meant that Heathers night was cramped, stressful and frustrating. Needless to say none of us were in particularly good moods when we arrived. Regardless of our shit night, the day was amazing. We went on a tour round Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca is the 18th largest lake in the world and the largest if you look at lakes over 2000m in altitude, it borders Peru and Bolivia and is home to the floating islands of the Uros and other amazing natural islands. We started off the day by visiting the floating islands. There’s a community of people that have built islands made out of reeds to live and thrive on. The main trade now is tourism, but in the past it was reeds and fish. We were given a ‘how to make your own island’ demonstration and learnt about the way of life there. Something that was quite funny, is that if a man and woman are dating they can’t really do anything in their homes because their houses are made out of reeds, and it’s so quiet and peaceful there that anything would be heard, so they take a boat out to the reeds in the night so as to get some privacy. So if you saw a suspect boat hidden in the reeds at night, you’d know exactly what was going on.

We went to Taquile Island for lunch, it looked exactly like a small little Greek island, except in the distance you could spot glaciers on Bolivia’s shore line. We had lunch there and learnt about how the men on this island were expected to knit hats, and their knitting ability was a show of masculinity and manhood, and they knit themselves a hat to signify when they get engaged. We got back to Puno and headed back to the bus station because that night we were on another overnight bus to Cusco. I honestly don’t know how we thought this was a good idea because it ruined us, but it saved us a day and meant that we could make the most of Cusco.

Cusco: a must go!

Completely beautiful, Cusco charmed us all with its bold character, charming residents and good food. We had been recommended a vegan restaurant and bakery which I was so over the moon about. The food had been average at best on the trip so far, and I was really looking forward to having a proper meal with a pudding. This restaurant exceeded my expectations. It was amazing. So much delicious food, chocolate cupcakes, nutritional shakes, a salad bar, humus!!!!!! I could have eaten there every day for a week. We all came away absolutely stuffed to bursting, having only spent £7 on a 4 course meal, a cupcake and a shake. I would go to Cusco again just to visit this restaurant.

Heather and I decided that we wanted to do Machu Pichhu ourselves rather than go with a tour in order to cut down on the price. Most tours charge upwards of £500, and doing it ourselves meant we only spent around £150. Without the help of a few good blogs, I’m not sure we’d have worked out how to actually get there and back! So after an afternoon of planning, an evening of partying and a morning of throwing up, we started the journey to the town of Aguas Calientes, the starting point of the Machu Pichhu hike.

The journey started with a walk down into the city centre, a taxi to the bus terminal, and public bus to Ollantaytambo and finished with a train to Aquas Calientes. The train journey was an event in itself, the train travelled through base of the mountains and had windows in the roof so you could see all the way up. That night in Aquas Calientes we were kept up by (what we later found out was) the Miss Machu Picchu awards ceremony, the rats in the ceiling didn’t help either. We started our gruelling climb the next morning just before 5 and reached Machu Picchu around 7. We arrived a pair of sweaty messes, our clothes soaked with sweat and cloud water, with the ruins still completely immersed in clouds so we couldn’t actually see anything. After a few hours the clouds had cleared and we could truly appreciate how amazing the ruins of the Inca Empire were. We had also bought tickets to hike to the top of Machu Picchu Mountain and set off at 9:30am. This climb, labelled ‘moderate to difficult’, took us to the very top of the mountain so we could see the ruins in the distance far down below us. It was over 3000m in altitude and we saw a baby Andean bear up there!! It was very cute! We made an American friend, Tim, who accompanied us down to the bottom of the mountain and for lunch. He’s actually currently walking from China to Turkey for the next two years, sounds like an epic journey!

Then we made the long, faffy journey back to our hostel in Cusco and went straight to bed, because the next morning we were picked up from the hostel at 4am to go to Rainbow Mountain. I did not feel good that day. Even before we set off, I felt groggy and ill and exhausted. Our guide was really fun, he seemed very switched on, impressively good at English and really experienced. I got chatting to him later and it turned out that he had travelled the world and lived in lots of different countries teaching salsa! Cool guy!

The journey to Rainbow Mountain was pretty amazing. For a long time we were driving along roads built into the side of mountains. At some points the roads were only as wide as the van, and looking out your window all you could see was a half mile drop into a deep ravine. The closer we got to the bottom of the trail, the more colourful the surrounding mountains got. Reds, blues, yellows and greens snaked their way across the rocky faces of the mountains, and glaciers started to appear on their tips. We were high up.

At the start of the trek I felt okay, but really tired, and by the time I got to the top I was broken. There was a point where the end was in sight, but I sat down on a rock and just burst into tears. I felt so ill. There was no energy left in my body, I was out of breath, headachey, and slightly nauseous, but I couldn’t not go on. Towards the end, I would sit for 30 seconds, then walk as fast as I could for 10 seconds, then sit for 30, and repeat, until I got to the top. Finally, I reached the top, tears streaming down my face with the effort (getting strange, curious looks), and just soaked in the view. 5000m above sea level and insanely beautiful, the mountain looked so raw and untouched. It’s only been a tourist attraction for 2 years because up until then it was covered in snow, and the locals won’t allow scientists to discover what minerals are causing the colouration because they don’t want to destroy its beauty. The guide caught sight of me in a lot of distress and gave me something to smell which helped a little bit. The only cure for altitude sickness is to descend (well and chewing coca leaves for the nausea but I was past that point), so I started the long 2 hour journey back to the van. At the bottom, I felt less tired but for some reason developed a migraine. So did Heather actually, we both had colds which was probably why. We sat in the van on the way to the lunch with invisible axes lodged in our foreheads, me just openly weeping, and Heather stonily silent grimacing in pain. We both agreed that we had pushed our bodies past their limits over the last few weeks and were suffering the consequences.

We couldn’t relax quite yet when we got back to the hostel, because we were leaving at 4:30am the next day in order to fly from Cusco to Quito, so we had to pack. The contents of our backpacks had been steadily growing since we had arrived in Peru, how my bag didn’t start splitting at the seams after I’d shoved everything in there, I don’t know. We were both sad that our holiday was over, but so glad to be going to Quito and having a few days to ourselves with no plans and nothing to do. For the last 7 days of our holiday we had been awake before 5am, it wasn’t natural. So we said sad goodbyes to Peru, and made the journey back to Ecuador, excited for our next big adventure into The Amazon.

My first week in Ecuador

| Sophie

Did you know that the capital city of Ecuador, Quito, is the ‘highest’ capital city in the world? (but only when Sucre is considered capital of Bolivia, if it’s not then technically La Paz in Bolivia is higher) sitting at 9,350ft (2,850m) above sea level. Altitude sickness is a real danger in Quito, and unfortunately I found this out the hard way after drinking on my first night in Ecuador. I didn’t overdo it on the night out so when I woke up on deaths door, unable to keep anything in my stomach the whole day, I was totally confused and convinced I had contracted some awful stomach bug, but after talking to some of the volunteers at the hostel, it turned out that this was actually completely normal, and that it was the altitude at fault, and not some nasty Ecuadorian disease.

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Unfortunately, I never seemed to recover from altitude sickness and spent the whole week feeling nauseous and fatigued which was slightly inconvenient. Couple that with being vegan and finding it semi-difficult to get proper meals, I ended up feeling a bit weak and malnourished by the end of the week. Saying that, being vegan wasn’t too difficult and I did manage to eat out and not starve. So day number 2 was a complete write off: caught up on GoT and watched The Angry Birds Movie in bed feeling really sorry for myself. Even traversing the many stairs in the hostel proved too much for my fragile stomach so I was pretty much confined to my bed all day.

I had gone out with some people I met at the hostel as well as Amy who had just done 3 months at the research station as part of her masters’ project and was staying at The Secret Garden on her way home. It was my first night in Ecuador and Amy’s first night out of the rainforest so she had a touch of cabin fever and a night out was the perfect remedy. Then on Tuesday, while I was dying in bed, Lucas arrived in my dorm and we became fast friends. We ended up exploring Quito’s old town the next day together which was pretty but was also very run down. Ecuador is famous for the chocolate they make here which is really good quality, and we discovered this shop which at first appears like just a door with its paint coming off, surrounded by traffic and pollution and other run down stores, but you step inside and enter this haven of quality, money and a lot of chocolate. We had coffee and cake in there, feeling rich for half an hour.

The next day (Thursday), Amy, Lucas and I went on a tour to the active, but dormant volcano, Quilatoa. We went via a Kichwa community which was amazing because they keep 100’s of Guinea pigs which are so, so cute and puppies which they were selling for $5. I so wanted a little Ecuadorian puppy during my stay here but knew, of course, that it would be stupidly irresponsible to get one. We learnt that the Guinea Pig is a speciality in Ecuador, and as live animals they are celebrated and well-cared for. Shamans claim that Guinea Pigs can be used to diagnose human illnesses better than Western Medical technology. It’s not a very nice method, but our tour guide swore by it, explaining that his dad was a Western Doctor and he had seen the Guinea Pig method live. The Shaman rubs the Guinea Pig all over the patients’ body, and then immediately cuts the Guinea Pig open, and the Guinea Pig will have become ill with the exact same thing that the human is. They use them to detect past and present illnesses. A Guinea Pigs anatomy is similar to that of a human, and this method has been tried and tested again and again by South American Shamans, maybe there’s something in it? The world of Western Medicine has recently started training dogs to sniff out cancer, and claim it may be a better diagnostic tool than current strategies. Who knows what’s possible.

Once we got to Quilatoa, we had lunch then started the hike to the bottom. This was the fun part as it was sandy and steep and quite easy to walk. There was a lady selling pictures with a cute little alpaca on the way down, and of course I had to get one. Then at the bottom we rented kayaks and had a paddle down in the crater. The way up was the hard part. The sandy road was a mile long, ascending by 1,650ft up to an altitude of 12,841ft. The average time back up was an hour, so Amy and I set ourselves the goal of doing it in 50 minutes which we did, but it was so hard! We were both so out of breath, her because of her asthma and me because I’d already been suffering with altitude sickness all week. Each step set my heart pounding, and my lungs craving more oxygen than was available. Needless to say we all were knackered after this and slept on the bus the whole way home.

There to greet us at the hostel was Heather, fellow student of Manchester and doing the same placement as me for the year, having arrived that afternoon from England. The three of us had a huge catch up and talked about the station for hours before crashing in bed.

Amy had told Heather and I that Javier the station manager wasn’t going to be at the station until the end of September, and our academic supervisor at Manchester, Richard, wasn’t replying to any of our emails regarding our arrival at the station, so we were faced with a bit of a dilemma. Both of us had flights booked that weekend to Coca from Quito, however it seemed as though we would get there and be greeted again with silence like in the previous weeks. So we took a risk (which has paid off, it’s been another week and we still haven’t heard anything) and decided to spend 3 weeks in Peru, so we rearranged our flights for September 28th which gave us a 3 week window to do whatever we liked. So on Friday (the day after we went to Quilatoa), Heather and I spent the whole day sat in the hostel bar coming up with a general itinerary and deciding what we wanted to do in Peru. I got a lot of my inspiration from a blog post by “twoscotsabroad” outlining a 3 week itinerary in Peru, starting in Lima. So task 1 was finding transport to Lima, which was actually way more difficult than expected. Websites, blog posts and reviews took me round in circles and it seemed that we wouldn’t be able to travel to Lima for at least a week. Flights were out of the question being $400/$500 each (it would cost as much to get to England!) so we were reaching a dead end, when I got a recommendation to try Cruz Del Sur, which turned out to be absolutely perfect. They had a bus leaving the next day at 11am, taking us straight to Lima. The downside was that it cost $110 and the journey was 33 hours (it actually turned out to be 36 hours). Lucas decided to join us, so we booked it at 9pm and started packing, gearing ourselves up to leave early the next day.

The bus journey went quicker than we expected. We set off at 11am, and arrived in Lima at 11pm the next day. The first day of the journey was travelling through rainforest in the mountains going South-West through Ecuador. This was honestly amazing, I hope my words can do it justice. We spent hours climbing in altitude until we reached the clouds at the tops of the mountains. Half of the time we were driving through the clouds, and occasionally we would descend a little bit and see where the clouds hung into the crevices of the mountains. When inside them, the clouds looked like fog and wet the windows of the coach, however when looking at them from below, you could see the bottom layer hanging down into the sky forming silvery-white wisps, like the water wanted to fall but still clung to the clouds above. The flora was all deep green, healthy and continued as far as the eye could see. Interspersed with the green, were trees with silvery leaves which grew where there has been disturbance in the rainforest. Occasionally there would be gushing rivers down the sides of the mountains lined with rocks and pebbles, and the occasional glimpse of wild-life. We saw a group of about 10 vultures surveying a particular area, a sure sign that a death recently occurred. We passed a dozen or so areas which were inhabited by people; some were big enough to be villages but others were just a few shacks selling food and drink. Eventually we left the rainforest and drove through areas of farmland that were more inhabited. Most of the farmland was cocoa and coffee, with the occasional banana farm and rose garden. The main exports of Ecuador are chocolate, coffee, cut flowers, shrimps and banana’s.

We reached the border of Peru at 11pm, by which time most of the coach had fallen fast asleep. So after we got our passport stamped everyone went straight back to sleep. I woke up in the morning feeling really ill. I had awful tummy ache and cramps and felt really weak. I spent the whole morning shivering and in pain, then took an ibuprofen and started to feel better and warm up. Amy got Typhoid in the rainforest despite having had the vaccination, and another placement student contracted a parasite, so a fairly serious illness seems to be on the cards for our year there. Just got to pray it doesn’t end up being too bad! But anyway after a few hours I started to feel better and I spent the rest of the day reading and staring out of the window. We had entered Peru and were driving down the West coast which is endless dessert. Occasionally we’d glimpse the coast, but most of the time we were driving across barren, rocky, mountainous dessert. In the space of 24 hours we’d crossed from the depths of the Amazon rainforest into the Peruvian dessert. Quite amazing. We reached Lima 3 hours later than expected, and got a taxi to the hostel I’d booked us in for the night at midnight, only to be told that they had no record of our booking. After digging a bit further, it turned out I had booked us in for the night after so at 12:30am after our 36 hour bus journey we had nowhere to stay. The night manager pointed us in the general direction of more hostels, and we ended up finding somewhere nice enough, and ended up in a dorm with 3 bunk beds all to ourselves with an ensuite which was so comforting after a week of zero privacy. And that marks the start of our journey through Peru!

To be continued…

San Jose, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz and San Francisco

| Sophie

So it’s been an amazing 11 days in NorCal staying with my aunt, uncle, Charchie and cousins in Los Gatos in Silicon Valley. I’ve explored a lot in the time I’ve been here, but of course there’s always more to see and more to do!

I’m not quite sure what I expected from my first trip to the states, but it wasn’t really that. I arrived on a sunny day and immediately felt like the flora, weather and architecture was reminiscent of Southern Spain. Los Gatos is a colourful, clean and beautiful town with a healthy, rich vibe. Certainly a lovely place to live complete with good schools and easy access to the beach, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and massive outlet stores.

I was given the tour of Silicon Valley and saw the HeadQuarters of Facebook, Google, Apple, Roku/Netflix, and shown where the owners of Snapchat and Whatsapp live, as they’re in the same neighbourhood as my family. Tech capital of the world indeed. The money in Los Gatos is evident in absolutely everything. The streets are pristine, each house is a work of art with architectural styles from all over the world, the flowers are colourful and healthy, the cars were all top of the range, and it’s a safe place to live. My aunt and uncle had neighbours popping round exchanging figs and limes that grew in their gardens, there was someone jogging past the window every time you glanced out onto the streets, wild rabbits played easily in the gardens and the sun shined every day.

Google HQ
Apple HQ
Anthropologie
A cool building

Gentrification is a big problem around San Francisco and San Jose. Because it is the Tech capital of the world, big earners are flooding into the neighbourhoods outbidding all the poorer communities which had given SF and SJ its soulful personality back when the city was building up. The house prices are extortionate which reflect the local economy.

Never the less it was fascinating seeing the HQ’s of these world-dominating tech companies. Also, we visited Stanford University which was incredible. No.2 university in the whole world, and one of the most beautiful. Palm trees line the roads approaching the uni; each building has its own character however the whole complex fits together so well, and is very well maintained.

San Francisco is super edgy, artsy, liberal, run down, chic, open-minded, multicultural, beautiful, interesting, and above all, just cool. The architecture is stunning. Each house screams out the personality of its owner and you’ll often see liberal political opinions written on the walls, signposted in windows and represented by colourful graffiti. You get houses in every different colour and style, from Victorian, to European, to Indian, to classic american, to Arabic… name a prominent culture and you can find houses that look like they belong there in San Francisco. It certainly is not a bike friendly place, the hills are absolutely insane and sometimes even a bit scary to drive down. Shout out to my amazing tour guides Sierra and Grace who gave me an insight into the culture I never would have got on my own. And shout out to Sierra for being such a patient photographer. I managed to time my visit concurrently with the hottest day in San Francisco on record, ever. 40 degree heat is just not fun to walk around in.

Me and Sierra also explored surfer town Santa Cruz with its edgy undercurrent full of thrift shops and run-down book stores. The boardwalk is like a mini theme park contained on a small beach, and there’s a long pier with restaurants and fish markets. The sea is littered with surfers in long wetsuits due to the icy cold pacific sea, and there’s a fog that hangs in the air most days.

All in all it was a great 2 weeks and I thoroughly enjoyed staying with my aunt and uncle. They made me feel so so welcome and I will definitely go back there on my way home. California has been added to my ‘could live there’ list.

Onwards to South America!

 

How to kick-start your solo travels

| Sophie

Travelling on your own can be a daunting and even seemingly impossible prospect. Glorified blogs and epic Instagram accounts make it seem like only the most accomplished travellers dare to wander the world independently, risking their lives everyday and partying with new people every night. These travellers usually have expensive GoPro’s and movie editing software, endless streams of money and a seemingly innate ability to talk to anyone.

However, from my own experience, I can tell you that it’s not as glamorous and scary as it seems. Most solo travellers are people who decided to set off on a path of self-discovery, step out of their comfort zone, take a few risks and ended up accidentally on a whirlwind adventure. The trick to travelling is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. No matter where you end up, who you meet, what you loose, what you find… just keep moving forward and don’t give up. You will learn how to make the next step after you’ve taken the last. There are lots of ways to ease yourself into life on the road that will make you answer the question ‘how did you find travelling on your own?’ with a confident ‘I was never on my own’ when you get home from your adventure, full of pride and amazing memories.

Now you’re all inspired to organise your first solo journey, I’ll give you a few tips on how to get going. There are several ways to start your travels, but the main ways are working, volunteering, backpacking or couch-surfing.

WORKING. Do you want to get travelling now but just don’t have the cash saved? Work your way around the world and you’ll never have to stop. The beauty of being prepared to work is that you can keep going for as long as you like. Whenever you’re close to running out of money, put down some roots and get a job wherever you are at the time. Working holiday visa’s for 18 – 30 year old’s are pretty easy to get for Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Buy yourself a visa, book 1 week in a central, popular hostel in a city of your choice, catch a flight, and get job searching once you’re out there. Look on gumtree, pop into STA, hand out your CV, speak to people and keep your standards low. My first job in Sydney was door to door sales. I quit after a week but I ended up moving in with the people I met on the job (who also quit after a week) and we became really great friends. Alternatively, you could get a seasonal job. Popular winter seasonal jobs are Ski Seasons: getting these are as simple as googling, emailing and persevering. During summer, you could work in a bar/restaurant in a party town around Europe, to do this you’ll either need to go through an agency online, or just rock up and start handing out CV’s. If the drink all day and party all night life just isn’t for you, you could get a job as an activities leader. Camp America is great if you don’t need to save, or you could try In2Action who supply activity coordinators to Holiday Villages all around Europe (and 2 outside of Europe). I worked in Tunisia for 4 months and absolutely loved the experience! Another avenue you could go down is working on a cruise ship! Whether you’re an entertainer, singer, dancer, restaurant staff member or cleaner, you’ll be paid to tour some of the most beautiful places in the world. Another option for those of you who want to travel a bit more permanently, is to do a TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) course. This enables you to teach in schools all over the world, earn a decent salary and really immerse yourself in a new culture.

VOLUNTEERING. If there’s something more specific you want to do, maybe this is the way forward. The International Citizen Service is a great place to start if you want to really make a difference in a small community by working on a project. Their website is very helpful and the great thing about ICS is that all you have to do is fund raise £800, and all other costs are paid for. Something I’m desperate to do once I’ve finished University is to volunteer at a Yoga and Surf retreat. These are found all over the world (I want to go to Sri Lanka!) and usually say if you work in a cafe/restaurant for free, then you have access to surf equipment and yoga classes at their facility. If you want to volunteer while on the move, you can work for bed and board. This includes WWOOFing, (a popular option in Australia) or working in a hostel, on reception or cleaning, in return for free accommodation.

BACKPACKING. There are so many organised tours out there, visit STA or have a google to find some of the most popular tours for solo travellers. These are great for the first couple of weeks as you usually end up meeting some people you can stick with once the tour is over, and they give you a good feel for a new country whilst keeping you totally safe. Down side is these are a little more expensive. If you don’t fancy a tour, just rock up to a new place having pre-booked a popular, suitable hostel and researched a bit about the area and what you want to do there, and start making friends! People are much friendlier in hostels than they are anywhere else in the world – I promise. If you’re more organised, then plan your journey and your accommodation in advance. If you’re more spontaneous (like me) and get a thrill from last minute decisions and not knowing where you’re going to end up, then just book the first few days and see where life takes you.

COUCH SURFING. This one is fairly self explanatory! Get signed up on the couch surfing website, build a profile, and plan your journey. The benefits of this mode of travel is that you get to hang out with locals who can point you in the direction of some hidden gems as well as the obvious tourist attractions. The downside is that you may feel a little bit vulnerable if you don’t feel comfortable staying in other peoples homes.

So hopefully you now feel equipped with a wealth of knowledge about how to plan and implement your solo travels. Good luck! Find yourself, loose yourself, take lots of selfies – and don’t be scared to ask strangers to take your picture!! – and take care.

Europe trip – Berlin to Dubrovnik

| Sophie

I travelled with one of my lovely best friends from home, Meri (pronounced Merry) and we decided earlier this year to get to know our European neighbours a little bit better this summer. (Side note: I’m heartbroken over Brexit, loved our European community). I would always choose more of a backpacker style holiday than an all-inclusive because I love immersing myself in new cultures, exploring and staying on the move; so we decided to do 8 cities in 3 weeks and get a little taster of each place. We travelled between cities by coach which was very cheap, comfortable and reliable and I would recommend.

Berlin

We’ll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start (Sound of Music reference fyi, this is relevant, you’ll see) in Berlin. First full day in Berlin we realised we’d made a packing faux pas as it was actually quite cold, but we managed in our summer clothes, albeit either cold or drunk. We had an amazing first morning; RECOMMENDATION: the free alternative walking tour. Our tour guide was a guy named Peter who had been living in Berlin as an artist for the last 8 years and was really passionate about the music and arts culture within Berlin that makes the city so unique. This was the concept of the tour really, history and politics from a music/arts perspective. The youth in Berlin are amazingly politically-minded, made me feel ashamed really for my lack of knowledge in politics but it inspired me to become more involved. There are absolutely no politics lessons in the British curriculum (unless you study it at A Level) so I still feel like a complete beginner, I might get ‘Politics for Dummies’ on my kindle.  Anyway, so I learnt a lot about Berlin and I really encourage you to go and find out for yourself!

Graffiti in Berlin

That evening we met up with an old friend of mine from Bahrain, Aoife, and went to a vegan-friendly Vietnamese restaurant then a cool rooftop bar for the sunset, Klunkerkranich. The next day Aoife took us on a mini cycling tour of the city, we cycled through the iconic templehof airport which closed in 2008 and became a recreational space and home to thousands of refugees by popular vote in Berlin. We then saw the (underwhelming) Brandenburg gate and visited the holocaust museum which is very sobering but a must in order to appreciate past and present Berlin.

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Prague

Next on our tour was Prague which was a little hotter thankfully. With beautiful gothic and renaissance architecture, Prague’s finest attraction is the city itself. We spent our days walking up and down the markets on the river, visiting churches and castles and soaking up the relaxed, happy atmosphere. We went out one night to this underground bar that used to be an old train station, the music was trippy and repetitive and techno; the air was humid and hot; the drinks were expensive, but the night ended up being good. We also witnessed the changing of the guard which we were very excited about until we realised it happened every hour, not such a unique experience!

 

Salzburg

Salzburg was one of my absolute favourite places. We only spent one night but I was already planning my next holiday there before we’d even left. A river runs through the city with mountains and beautiful buildings either side; the air was so clean, it really was such a picturesque place. With multiple classical music concerts happening every night, Salzburg attracts a slightly richer crowd and is subsequently more expensive however the hostel we stayed in, Yoho, was quite reasonable. The next morning we went on a Sound of Music tour which I loved and was one of the highlights of my trip!! I adore musicals, especially the Sound of Music so it was such a special experience to see where they shot the scenes and learn about the real Von Trapp family. Our tour guide was fantastic, a mix of cheesey and dry humour, very informative and friendly. I decided when I’m older and have more money, I’m going to visit Salzburg in the winter, stay in a nice hotel, see an opera or a concert and ice skate on the frozen lakes, it’s on my to-do list.

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Vienna

From there we went to Vienna, another beautiful city but what made our visit so special was that we were a 5 minute walk from the famous Vienna Film Festival. There were loads of gourmet, international food stalls and a buzzing atmosphere all day. The first night we saw a Swedish Clarinetist and the second night we saw an opera. The featured image in this post is of the pedestrian traffic lights in Vienna, half of them were two men and the other half two women, in celebration of gay pride. Amazing. The city is beautiful, I recommend doing some researching and picking a few places you want to go/eat, because at first glance there’s not much to do.

Budapest

After Vienna came Budapest and the arrival of Jack and Charlie; Jack being Meri’s boyfriend. We went on another great free tour around the city, learnt all about Hungary’s interesting, lesser-known history and got orientated with its small capital. Our tour guide was very patriotic and portrayed Budapest (pronounced Budapesht) in a majestic light. We learn that Hello is pronounced ‘seeya’ and Goodbye is pronounced ‘Allo’ ironically. If you want to say ‘cheers’ in Hungarian, say ‘I-guess-she-can-drive’ fast and slurred. Budapest has churned out 3 Nobel prize winners (all of which were in the same chemistry class at school, I wonder if they were friends), is the birthplace of the Rubik’s cube and is the main exporter of various materials. It’s also where the famous magician Harry Houdini was born – we visited his museum. If you’re in Budapest, a few more must-visits are the hot spring bath-spa’s and the ruin bars which come alive at night. We visited a few amazing ruin bars, including one that was voted in the top 3 bars in the world a few years ago! Dedicate at least one morning to lying in because the ruin bars are a must-see.

Budapesht
Budapesht

Croatia

Our last 3 cities were all in Croatia, we spent one night in Zagreb to explore and 3 in Split then the boys went home and me and Meri had 4 nights in Dubrovnik. We had one of our best nights out in Zagreb then made our way down to Split the next day. We stayed in a beautiful apartment which we found on Booking.com and spent our first day chilling out on pebbled beaches. The second day we explored the old town and visited Sandy beach, a small cove which has the only sand beach in Split and the third day went on a tour to the national park which has the most amazing waterfalls!

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Dubrovnik was spent reading, relaxing on the beach, swimming and drinking red wine on our balcony, a perfect way to end our holiday. It’s so important to get out there and see the world. To realise that literally anything is possible if you know where to look. You don’t have to settle for the lifestyle you grew up with and you certainly don’t have to end up in a 9 to 5 job you hate, praying that England gets more than 2 weeks of sun this year. I love the sun, it makes me happy and I want to live somewhere where it’s normal to wake up to sunshine. I also love experiencing new cultures and challenging the narrow perspective of social norms you’re used to and realising that everything you consider rude / polite / right / wrong is completely different in other parts of the world and that you don’t have to live your life according to the morals of the town you grew up in. 14311461_10207054489936644_7284734615564215989_o