robinblog 2

useless trip statistics...

2010-05-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

some useless statistics from the international portion of the trip:

number of countries visited: 33
number of days out of country: 332

time in transit (train/bus/car/boat/planes): 1,127 hours (46.9 days or 6.7 weeks)
total miles traveled from city to city (train/auto/boat/planes): 82,620 miles
number of nights on trains: 9
number of nights on buses: 9

number of nights camping: 70
number of days climbing: 38
number of nights eating pasta: 72

number of books read: 56 (robin); 49 (erick)

last installment of overseas photos

2010-04-30T23:10:00.002-07:00

we made it home in one piece, now busy unpacking and dealing with stuff we haven't had to think about for a year.

just posted the last installment of photos from australia, pretty much all climbing photos. they're in the usual place:
http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

final days...

2010-04-29T18:39:00.000-07:00

i guess it's been a while since the last post. we're in the brisbane airport right now, awaiting our flight to SFO via auckland, last leg of our trip. we'll have a month in the US before i go back to work, planning on a week climbing in the valley and a roadtrip to montana/seattle/portland to visit erick's family and some friends.

quick recap, from melbourne we headed up to canberra. spent a couple days climbing on ACT granite, very tuolumne like with lots of slab and also nice cracks. had some fun bushwhacking, it took 2 hours of bushwhacking to get to the start of one climb.

from there we headed to the coast and climbed a day at point perpendicular. unfortunately we timed it poorly and the weapons range was closed the first day we were there. spent that day bushwhacking and found some really dirty climbs we didn't want to get on. had a good day at point perpendicular though.

then headed into sydney to visit some cousins i'd never met before, then up the coast to corindi beach to visit a friend we met traveling in jordan and egypt at the end of last year.

from there, headed to frog buttress, renowned in australia for it's crack climbing. we had the whole place to ourselves for 3 days and got on some really great climbs. definitely worth a trip back there one day.

which brings us to the end of our international portion of our trip, hard to believe that we've been traveling out of the country for 11 months.

arapiles climbing

2010-04-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

we just came back from our first taste of australian climbing. we decided to head to mount arapiles, about four hours northeast of melbourne, probably the most famous climbing area in australia. we lucked out with weather and had 3 great days, two bright and sunny, one a little cloudy. the climbing there took a little getting used to, everything is near vertical, even on very easy climbs. we climbed a grade 9 (equivalent to YDS 5.4) which is the steepest 5.4 we've ever seen.

we got in 3 good days of climbing, did a few of the classic routes but way too many routes there, you could easily spend months there and not make much of a dent in the book.

we drove through the grampians on the way back to melbourne today, just to check it out. rock and scenery look nice, next time we come down here we'll have to check out the climbing there.

next up, we slowly head up to brisbane starting tomorrow. we'll stop and climb a few places, tentatively ACT granite, point perpendicular, and frog buttress, as well as visit relatives in sydney and a friend we met traveling in the middle east on the coast.

climbing pictures from arapiles posted in the usual place:
http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

melbourne and tasmania

2010-04-11T03:51:00.000-07:00

we've enjoyed our first week and a half in australia, visiting relatives in melbourne, eating lots and lots of good food, and sleeping in a bed.

the trip to tasmania with my parents was good and relaxing. we went to cradle mountain national park and then spent a few days on the east coast, visiting freycinet national park, tasman national park, and port arthur. one day erick and i hike out to the totem pole (probably the most famous climb in australia, at least the most picturesque) and saw a group of coloradans preparing to climb it with a cameraman in tow. didn't recognize them though...

next up, we'll head to mt. arapalise for 5 days to check out the climbing there and also a side trip to the grampians.

tasmania photos posted in the usual place:
http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

melbourne and new zealand pictures

2010-04-03T04:25:00.000-07:00

we made it to melbourne and have been eating constantly for a few days. it's nice having a good shower and sleeping in a bed again. tomorrow we head off to tasmania for a week with my parents...

finally posted pictures from rarotonga and the month in new zealand in the usual place:
http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

last days in NZ

2010-03-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

our 4 weeks in NZ has passed quickly, we have two days left. from queenstown we headed down to te anau, with the intention of going to milford sound, probably the most famous attraction in NZ. unfortunately for us, two big storms rolled through and the area got 8 inches of rain overnight and a few thousand lightening strikes. there were landslides on the road, so they closed the road to milford sound for a few days and had to helicopter evac people off the milford track.

we headed down along the south coast to dunedin and did some easy climbing on the beach. then headed to mount cook and it cleared enough to see the lower glaciers. headed back to the coast to timaru, where we spent an hour searching for a climbing area which is supposed to have a 10 minute approach (we never found it) to the sounds of animals (cows?) screaming because they were being slaughtered. a horrific and disturbing sound.

then headed to castle hill, world renown for the bouldering, and bouldered a little. mostly walked around because erick can't really boulder and risk falling on his bad knee and i'm a big wuss, especially when we didn't have a crashpad.

new zealand was nice and fun, although we did a lot less hiking and climbing than we expected due to erick's accident. we think he has a minor sprain in his left knee, probably will be another month before it feels good, another few months before it's at full strength.

next up, we head to australia for our final country. we'll spend some time in melbourne with family and meet up with my parents. then we'll take a week trip with them to tasmania and hopefully some climbing after that, knee dependent. we're looking forward to sleeping in beds again after camping every night in NZ, good food and wine as well.

south island I

2010-03-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

not too much to report, we've been on the south island a week and a half. been driving a lot. first went wine tasting in marlborough sound, hiking in able tasman np, climbing at paynes ford. headed down the west coast sight seeing, climbed an afternoon at charleston on sea cliffs then headed to wanaka. now we're in queenstown, will head to milford sound soon.

lots of driving, easy day hiking, a little climbing. erick got the stitches out of one knee but the other knee isn't doing too well, still inflamed and he can't straighten it. we'll get it looked at again.

north island

2010-03-11T13:42:00.001-08:00

after spending a week touring the north island, we took the ferry down to the south island. it's a bit strange having a car but very nice. we've been staying at holiday parks, equivalent to the commercialized campgrounds in the US, due to the lack of public campgrounds. they've been very nice though, nice kitchens, washer and dryers, hot showers and generally very, very clean.

we first went up to the bay of islands, then down to rotorua to see some of the geothermal stuff then down to taupo, where they had just held an ironman. we spent a day climbing in beautiful whanganui bay. the road down was a bit rough and we scraped up the car a bit, good thing it was a rental and a well-used car. we only got on a couple climbs since we didn't have a guidebook and there were no other climbers there, so it was hard to judge how difficult the routes were.

we opted not to do the famous one-day tongariro crossing (dubbed the best one-day walk in NZ) and instead did a small portion of it and hiked up to the top of mt. ngauruhoe instead (mt. doom in lord of the rings). it's a cool looking volcano but unfortunately it was completely clouded over when we reached the summit so we could barely even see the lake in the crater. the ascent was hard work through loose scree and deep ash but the descent was very quick, scree-skiing most of the way.

went to egmont national park in the west and saw tarakana, the volcano the used as mt. fuji in the last samarai.

which leads us to the ferry. we had some time to kill before catching the ferry and erick decided to play on the trampoline at the campground. he successfully did a few flips but on the last one landed on the edge of the trampoline, hitting both knees on the metal edge and falling to the ground. the result was one badly bruised knee and one knee with two deep gashes (you could see the fatty tissue) but not much blood. fortunately there was a medical clinic close by and they stitched erick up in half an hour for only ~US$21 consultation fee. amazing how much cheaper and efficient the visit was than in the US. so we'll take it easy for a few days until he's able to hike and climb again.

LAX and rarotonga

2010-03-05T11:46:00.002-08:00

we spent a nice 10 hours at LAX. we were going to stay in the airport, but after going through security we realized it really sucks. very few food options which are extremely expensive and not even a book store to buy a NZ guidebook. so we went out of the airport. a very friendly and enthusiastic security woman gave us good advise and told us how to get to an in-and-out via a parking shuttle. so we went there and found a baja fresh (burrito fix), trader joes (clif bars and chocolate), panera bread (free wifi), and a bargain bookstore with a NZ guidebook. pretty much we were in heaven. erick's friend ted and his wife jane cane out to meet us for dinner and took us to a ramen place, so pretty much we had the perfect layover.

rarotonga, the largest of the cook islands is beautiful. unfortunately we chose to go there during wet season, so it was really windy and cloudy the whole time with some showers so we didn't hang out on the beach or anything. the first day we rented bikes and biked around the island, 32 km. it was really beautiful with a nice lagoon and picturesque beaches. second day we did the cross-island track with a dutch girl staying at the same hostel. the trail was mostly through jungle, very steep and slippery and led to a big needle in the middle of the island with good views and ended at a waterfall.

we're now in new zealand, on the north island at the bay of islands. we decided to rent a car for our time here so we can climb and easily do hikes, etc. it's weird having a car again and driving everywhere. we are enjoying the english speaking everywhere and the friendly people. a week here on the north island then we take the ferry across to the south island for the remaining 3 weeks.

chile earthquake

2010-02-27T13:03:00.000-08:00

thanks for all the emails checking in on us. just wanted to let everyone know that we're fine, didn't even know about the earthquake until all the emails. we're in buenos aires, flying out tonight. we got very lucky with timing and deciding to fly out of argentina instead of chile. hopefully by the time we arrive in LA things will be more settled with the tsunami warnings since we're scheduled to fly to the cook islands.

south america climbing info

2010-02-26T07:18:00.001-08:00

since we were carrying all our climbing gear for this leg of the trip, we wanted to make the most of it and sought out places to climb wherever we were. some places it was easy to get info, others not so much. we decided it might be useful to someone in the future looking for info on these climbing areas to post what we´ve found. the following is a summary of the places we climbed in bolivia, chile, and argentina. info is current as of early 2010 and recommended climbs only include the climbs we did.

bolivia
amor de dios
closest town: la paz
type of climbing: sport
type of rock: volcanic
guidebook: no, but route grades are written at the base of the routes
recommended gear: single rope, quickdraws
directions: amor de dios is located about 20 minutes SW of central la paz. you can take a bus there but it'd be hard to know where to get off. we took a taxi from town (20 Bs).
lodging: many hostels in la paz
number of climbs: good for a half day

chile
toconao
closest town: san pedro de atacama
type of climbing: top-rope, trad
type of rock: volcanic crack climbing
guidebook: no
recommended gear: single 60 m rope, anchor material (bolted anchors), single set of cams with doubles in the mid-sized if you want to lead or establish new climbs
directions: there are a couple buses that leave san pedro for toconao in the morning (the one we took left at 9:45 am from the bus station by the soccer field, CHP $1000) buses return to san pedro at 1:30 pm and 5:00 pm. from toconao, walk back along the road to san pedro until you reach the bridge. walk about 5 minutes up the canyon and you'll start to see anchors. set up the TRs or there is a steep path before you get to the climbs that leads to rock steps and a locked gate you have to climb over into the canyon.
lodging: many options in san pedro.
number of routes: about 5 top-rope anchors but lots of potential routes if you want to lead.

cochamo
closest town: cochamo, closest big town is puerto montt
type of climbing: sport, trad, aid
type of rock: granite
guidebook: no but big book of topos in the refugio
recommended gear: two ropes, full trad rack (set of stoppers, double set of cams), extendable draws, aid gear (if aiding or establishing new routes)
directions: from puerto montt take bus to cochamo (CHP $2000). we heard from others that the bus will skip the puerto varas stop if it is full, so it's best to go from puerto montt. from cochamo town, get a ride to the trailhead (9 km from town) or get off the bus at the bridge (6 km walk down a dirt road to the trailhead). hike the 10 km mud slog (4 - 6 hours) to the la junta camping area or 15 minutes further to the beautiful refugio. horses can be hired and are suggested if you have lots of gear. see the cochamo website (see below) for much more detailed info.
lodging: plenty of camping at la junta (CHP $2000/per person/night), stay in the refugio- dorms and private room, or camp/bivy at the farther climbing areas. water is safe to drink without treatment.
number of routes: enough to spend months there.
recommended routes: apnea (5.10b)
website: http://www.cochamo.com

argentina
refugio frey
closest town: bariloche
type of climbing: trad
type of rock: granite spires
guidebook: yes, photocopies of r. garibotti's "guia de escaladas refugio e. frey, cerro catedral, bariloche" are available only at club andino in bariloche (20 de febrero #30) for AGP $25.
recommended gear: single 50 m rope (two ropes would significantly increase the number of routes you could climb), full trad rack (set of stoppers, double set of cams), extendable draws
directions: from bariloche take the bus to catedral (runs every 1 1/2 hours from moreno 470, AGP $6). from catedral follow the signs to refugio frey from the left end of the parking lot. trail is 10 km and takes about 3 - 4 hours.
lodging: free camping, beds in refugio (AGP $40/night). water is safe to drink without treatment.
number of routes: enough to spend months there.
recommended routes: del frente (5+) on aguja la vieja cara noreste.

los arenales
closest town: el manzano historico, 135 km SW of mendoza
type of climbing: sport, trad, bouldering
type of rock: granite
guidebook: yes, mauricio fernandez's "escaladas en mendoza, mendoza rock and ice climbing" (AGP $80), available at most of the outdoor gear shops in mendoza (on espejo, las herras). we found many inconsistencies between the written route description and topos for the grades and lengths. we found one rap anchor on el condor pasa had been moved about 5 m.
recommended gear: two ropes, full trad rack (set of stoppers, double set of cams, at least one wide piece BD #4 or larger for some routes), extendable draws, or only quickdraws if only sport climbing.
directions: if driving, drive south of mendoza on ruta 40 to tunuyan. in tunuyan follow signs to el mazano historico (42 km). continue on dirt/ gravel road west of el mazano historico when the pavement ends. after 12 km you will reach a guard station portinari, where you need to register. the bridge over los arenales river is another 2 km further. the refugio is 1 km up the canyon from the bridge (road not passable with most cars). via public transportation, a bus runs from tunuyan to el mazano historico only on weekends. in el mazano historico you can ask for a man named yagua to drive you up to the guard station or else hike up the road.
lodging: there's a loft in the refugio (free) or plenty of camping outside. there is one good campsite by the bridge. we were told that we couldn't camp by the first curve after the guard station, despite the suggestion in the guidebook. there is plenty of water, which we filtered because of all the horses and cows in the area.
number of routes: enough to spend months there.
recommended routes: samarkanda (6a+), andante con dulfer (6a), el condor pasa (5+).

el salto
closest town: el salto, 90 km west of mendoza
type of climbing: sport
type of rock: volcanic
guidebook: "escaladas en mendoza" (see los arenales section for where to get guidebook)
recommended gear: single rope, quickdraws
directions: take ruta 7 west from mendoza. take porterillos exit and follow signs to el salto. just before entering el salto, you will cross a bridge over a small creek. take the first right (dirt road) after the bridge. there's an abandoned building that is partially destroyed on the corner, not a police station as depicted in the guidebook. drive about 1/2 km and you will see the rock and a small parking area.
lodging: camping and cabanas available in el salto and porterillos.
number of routes: good for a day of climbing.

capilla del monte
closest town: capilla del monte, 106 km north of cordoba.
type of climbing: sport, trad, bouldering
type of rock: granite
guidebook: "guia de escalada capilla del monte cordoba" (AGP $20). we bought our copy in capilla del monte at kiosco aguando (corner of buenos aires and belgrando). book is also available in cordoba and buenos aires and other places in capilla del monte. see the GECU webpage (http://www.gecu.com.ar) for the other locations.
recommended gear: single rope, quickdraws, full trad rack (set of stoppers, double set of cams) if planning on trad climbing.
directions: for los mogotes, walk north of town about 1 km on ruta 38 until the turn-off to paseo los mogotes. walk down road until climbing area. total 4 km from the center of town.
lodging: many camping, hostel, hotel, and cabana options in capilla del monte.
number of routes: in los mogotes, a day of climbing (many routes in the guidebook are quite vegetated).

capilla del monte

2010-02-26T04:51:00.002-08:00

we spent a couple days in capilla del monte, about 120 km north of cordoba. after talking to a tour company and deciding we didn't want to pay them $75 to take us climbing, we found a place to buy the guidebook and headed to one of the areas, los mogotes ourselves.

it's a 4 km walk from the municipal campground, so not too bad. there's a few good slab routes and lots of dirty routes or very hard ones, so we didn't end up climbing too much. we later met a local climber who said the trad climbing at another area, paredones, was really good. next time.

now we're in buenos aires for a night and fly out tomorrow night for the cook islands, via LAX. amazing how fast our time in south america has passed.

new pics

2010-02-22T11:28:00.002-08:00

posted new pics (mainly climbing ones) from the past month. in the usual place:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

arenales climbing and mendoza wine tasting

2010-02-22T05:20:00.002-08:00

we decided to take the chance and rent a car for the week from Mendoza. the main purpose of the car was so we could easily access the climbing area los arenales, 140 km southwest of mendoza. without a car we could only get there on weekends and it would involve a 12 km hike up a dirt road from the town manzano historico unless we could find someone to drive us up.

from bariloche we took an overnight bus to mendoza and got the car. by pure random coincidence we ran into marc, a Canadian we'd met at cochamo, on the street in mendoza. crazy.

we spent a total of 5 days at arenales. weather wasn't great, lots of low clouds, some wind but also some nice sunny days. we got in 4 good days of climbing. unfortunately we were limited again by our small rack and only one rope, so stuck mainy with sport climbs. did a couple bolted trad- like climbs, samarkanda and andante con dulfer which were really good. did a number of sport climbs including el condor pasa, a fun 5-pitch sport climb and we did see a condor while climbing. wedidnt get to do any of the longer trad climbs and nice cracks due to our limited gear. not very many people there. the book had some wrong and conflicting info about route lengths and grades which got us in trouble once on a rappel. still it was a fun few days in a nice location and it feels good to be sore from climbing again.

in the middle of our arenales trip we went up to mendoza to meet up with don and martha. had a good dinner and next day went down to maipu for some wine tasting. they did the bike thing and we visited on winery with the car then went into the andes towards the Chilean border. had a good view of aconcagua, highest mountain in south america at 22,830 feet. decided we didn't want to pay to dayhike there and camped in uspallata, where "seven years in tibet" was filmed. headed down to arenales again with a stop in el salto to do a little sport climbing on volcanic rock. place was like an outdoor gym.

only little incident we had is we lost a little piece of the bumper, we have no idea how. maybe someone previously did that and glued it back and on the dirt road it fell off. we'll see how much that costs us.

less than a week left in argentina/ south america. we'll next head to cordoba tomorrow night and check out capilla del monte and hopefully climb, then buenos aires then onto cook islands after a 10 hour layover at LAX.

bariloche, el bolson, frey climbing

2010-02-12T12:23:00.000-08:00

on paper it was a great plan. erick and i would stay a night in bariloche, hike our camping and climbing gear up to refugio frey, stay 2 nights, climb 1 day, then come down and meet don. we'd buy food for a week, erick and i could carry that and some of don's gear since our packs would be empty with all our gear up at frey, we'd get one great week of climbing in and then head back to bariloche so don could meet up with another friend and we'd move on.

unfortunately the infamous Patagonian weather did not cooperate. the summer weather here this year has been all messed up due to el niño, very wet even in usually stable areas like bariloche.

erick and i did hike our camping gear up. it was really windy (30 mph winds with 50 mph gusts) for the 2 days. got up there to a few inches of snow. spent a cold and windy and rainy day sitting in the refugio. erick went to check on the tent and it didn't look good, the stakes were pulled up from the wind and the tent was held down by rocks. so Erick moved the tent and built up the rock wall wind break.

came down and met don. forecast was windy and rainy for a few more days. decided it wouldn't be fun sitting up there in rain and heavy wind for a few days. spent a couple days in bariloche eating lots of ice cream and drinking beer. then headed down to el bolson for 2 nights, a cute laid back town a couple hours south of here. went on a hike and ate a lot.

came back to bariloche, forecast looked good. hiked up the food and gear. miraculously our tent was still intact despite the constant 30 mph winds and gusts for the 4 days we were gone. good tent. weather cleared and we got in 2 days of climbing on 3 different spires. fun climbing and nice summits. unfortunately we were going to climb this morning before we hiked out but it was cloudy and windy and people told us it was forecast to rain. so we slowly packed up and right when we started hiking out the skies cleared and it was beautiful. we continued down.

so 2 days of climbing out of 6 planned days. guess that's patagonian weather. don's meeting another friend here. erick and i will stay a couple nights then take an overnight bus to Mendoza and make our way to aranales in search of more climbing with hopefully good weather.

photos, finally

2010-02-06T03:45:00.001-08:00

bought a new card reader and finally posted pictures through this past week.

pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

we're in bariloche now, hiked up a load of camping gear to refugio frey. unfortunately the weather is horrible, 40+ mph wind gusts, our tent stakes were pulled out. supposed to rain and continue being windy, but we met up with don and will hike up tomorrow and hope the weather will break so we can get a little climbing in...

some new photos

2010-02-01T08:17:00.001-08:00

posted some new photos through the first part of bolivia (la paz, sorata, amor de dios). having problems with my card reader and can´t transfer the newer photos onto my flash drive, which is very frustrating...

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

cochamo

2010-01-31T13:24:00.001-08:00

we just got back from 8 days in cochamo valley. quite an adventure and not too much climbing.

the hike in is brutal, a mud waller. most of the trail is in the forest/jungle since the place is a rain forest. horses are used by many to pack in gear, so the trail us very rutted and eroded and full of horse crap. we hiked in after a few days of sun still half the time were going through mud puddles, bogs, streams. what made the hike in worse, besides carrying almost double the normal weight with camping, climbing gear, and food for 8 days was we couldn't get a ride from town to the trailhead and had to hike an extra 3 hours on the road. it took us 9 1/2 hours to hike in.

the valley is beautiful with tons of waterfalls and huge granite walls. the refugio is amazing with a zip line and cart across to it. all the approaches and hikes are long, boggy, and wet through the jungle. on one approach i ended up knee deep in mud and Erick had to help me get out. views from the peaks (we did a day hike up to arco iris) were amazing.

we lucked out with 5 days of sun and only 2 days of rain. got in 4 days of climbing. we had limited gear and only one rope so were limited to short routes. plus we're really out of climbing shape. routes were very dirty, spent one day cleaning a small crag with brushes and nut tools that had just been bolted (we got to do the first ascents after the bolting), found lots of dirty and flaring cracks. did one 2-pitch route with a 5-star splitter crack for the second pitch. that made the trip worth it. met some nice climbers as well.

the area is beautiful but we think yosemite is more striking. climbing wasn't that great, rock quality varied a lot and many cracks were flaring. really glad we went and saw it and climbed a little, it was a fun trip but i doubt we'll ever return.

will try to post pictures from the past month soon.

valparaiso

2010-01-22T04:56:00.001-08:00

we spent a couple days in valparaiso to break up the long bus journeys from northern chile down to puerto montt. valparaiso is a nice town, very hilly next to the ocean. the coolest thing about the town is that there's about 10 active funniculars, most about 100 years old, to go up the hills.

we'll head to puerto montt tonight on another long bus ride (15 hours) spend a night there then head to cochamo valley. it's supposed to be like yosemite valley without the tourists but just as much granite and tons of climbing route potential, splitter cracks, big walls. hopefully the weather will be good and we can stay there a week or so before heading to bariloche to meet don.

atacama desert and toconao climbing

2010-01-20T08:30:00.003-08:00

we arrived in san pedro de atacama located in the driest desert in the world. it's hot here. we did the must do touron attraction, sunset in valle de la luna. the company we went with had these huge trucks, like the dragoman overland vehicles. we hiked a little in valle de la meurte including running down big sand dunes, then ended up watching the sunset in the lunar landscape of valle de la luna.

while walking around looking for tours we discovered there's climbing areas nearby. we had a free day before our 24 hour busride to valparaiso so we decided to check it out.

took the bus about 45 minutes south to the next town, toconao. there's a gorge there with a few toprope anchors. found an anchor, set up our rope. met a local climber from san pedro in the gorge who joined us for a bit. climb turned out to be really fun. volcanic rock with a blocky start and the second half of the climb was a splitter hand crack reminicent of indian creek. even out of shape we had to do laps on the crack.

toproped another climb that was also fun, offwidth start to hand stacks to hands to an easy roof. quality. unfortunately we had to go catch the bus back. there's so much potential there, if it was in the US there'd be about 100 climbs developed in the area, many with splitter cracks.

uyuni salt flat tour

2010-01-20T08:29:00.003-08:00

from la paz we took an overnight bus to uyuni where we started a 3-day tour of the 1st or 2nd (we heard differing info) largest salt lake in the world.

in our land cruiser was a driver, donatello, and 4 brazilian guys (2 groups of 2). only one spoke english and they mainly spoke portuguese, so we understood very little.

being off-season we were shocked at the number of tours going out. at one point we counted 60 land cruisers at one of the sights! and these tours go out every day. crazy.

first two days saw the salt lake, isla pescadero (island with lots of old cacti in middle of salt lake), colorful lagunas with many flamingos, laguna colorada which is red.

third day we were ready to leave at 5 am except this family in their own range rover who were following our driver couldn't start their car. combination of cold and altitude (14,000 ft). they kept flooding the engine and finally got it started after 45 minutes. there ended up being a big disagreement an hour later and we parted ways with the family.

after that entertainment we went and saw some geysers, stopped at a hot spring where the others went in, and saw laguna verde. the driver then dropped me and erick off at the chilean border.

so ended our time in bolivia and our chilean journey began in san pedro de atacama. we really liked bolivia and wish we could've stayed there longer to hike and climb but rainy season got in the way.

amor de dios

2010-01-12T12:20:00.003-08:00

we decided we should at least attempt to get into climbing shape before we get to bariloche and meet don to climb in a month and also to justify carrying around all this heavy gear. we heard about a crag close to la paz and yesterday went to the local club andino to find out more info.

that visit in itself was an adventure. the office was a closet manned by a 70-something year old man who was the first bolivian to summit aconcagua 50 years ago. he didn't speak any english. after an hour talking with him and two english-speaking guides he called and found, we got the name of the crag, amor de dios, 20 minutes outside the center.

this morning was sunny and clear, so we took a taxi there. it's a small rock, about 40 ft tall with 15 routes are so. we ended up climbing about 6 routes and were exhausted after. met a couple nice bolivian guys who were very friendly and let us climb on their rope. also met a german man in his 50s who hasn't climbed in 5 years and put us to shame. all in all, a very fun and good day.

dos lagunas trek

2010-01-11T11:42:00.003-08:00

from sorata we found a guide (or actually a guide found us) to do the 3 day dos lagunas (2 lakes) trek up into the mountains below the second and third highest peaks in bolivia, illampu and anchohuma.

the first day we hiked up out of sorata to laguna chillata, about 6 miles and 4,900 ft elevation gain. luckily the guide, willy, provided a pack mule to carry our packs. it would've been a brutal hike with so much elevation gain at that altitude. we got to camp just in time, set up our tent before the daily summer thunderstorm. it poured rain for over an hour. that evening due to user error of the camelbak on my part, i managed to drain half a liter of water onto erick's sleeping bag and over my stuff. erick had to deal with the wet down bag for the next two nights.

the next morning we woke up to clear skies and beautiful views of the mountains, which were obscured by fog and clouds the night before. set out on a dayhike to laguna glacial at 16,500 ft (5,028 m). about an hour after we set out the clouds started coming in. after 3 hours of hiking and 2,200 ft elevation gain, we were still an hour and a half from the lake. the weather was turning and the trail was getting more sketchy, lots of slab and exposed rock. i wussed out and decided to turn around because i knew i wouldn't be able to make it to the lake and back to camp before the afternoon thunderstorms came and i didn't want to downclimb the slick slabs in the rain. erick decided to turn around as well. it started sprinkling when we got close to camp. shortly after it started raining for 5 1/2 hours then on and off the rest of the night.

third day we set out after breakfast with the mule for the 3 1/2 hour, 4,900 ft descent back down to sorata. painful on the knees.

it was a nice trek even if we didn't make it to laguna glacial. our guide was really good and we somehow managed to somewhat communicate in spanish. nice views when the sun was out.

lima, la paz, lake titicaca

2010-01-11T11:40:00.003-08:00

we made it to south america after four flights and a night layover in lima. we didn't do anything in Lima except stay in a hostel near the airport. nice hostel though.

flight to la paz was a bit exciting. got to fly through a thunderstorm and thunderheads landing in santa cruz, bolivia. unfortuanately the landing at la paz, the world's highest commercial airport and one of two that requires special training was very average and not exciting. landing in paro, bhutan was much, much better.

spent a couple days in la paz figuring things out and trying to get acclimated. flying from sea level to 12,000 ft is tough. erick acclimated much faster than i did.

from la paz we went up to lake titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake at ~12,500 ft. we took a boat from the town of copacabana to isla del sol and walked down the island, about 4 hours. we lucked out, the weather was beautiful, no rain. only bad part is erick got pretty good sun burns on his arms, neck, and forehead, where he deemed it wasn't neccessary to put sunscreen.

from copacabana we headed to sorata, which is in the cordierlla real and a good base for trekking. it's at 8,800 ft and almost seems tropical. we went on a three day trek, which i'll post in a separate post.

so far Bolivia is very nice, after acclimating. virtually no one speaks english and our spanish skills are basic at best, but we're getting around okay. of course in planning to come here we didn't check the seasons. i just assumed that summer here is like patagonia and dry season. instead it's wet season here, raining everyday for a couple hours. makes outdoor activities difficult and some travel impossible with washed out roads. we'll have to come back in bolivian winter someday, dry season.

trip part ii

2009-12-31T15:52:00.003-08:00

after spending about 10 days back in the US, split between the bay area and portland, we head off to part 2 of our adventure tonight.

it was nice being back in the US, nice beds, hot showers, good food, burritos (four times in 10 days). a bit rushed to replenish and buy new supplies/gear and also see as many people as we could.

next up, bolivia (which involves 4 flights and a 22 hour layover in lima, peru), then overland to chile and argentina. we fly to new zealand at the beginning of march via LAX, with a couple day stop in the cook islands to check them out. a month in new zealand, month in australia, and back to SF april 30th.

even though our packs have almost doubled in weight from all the climbing and camping gear, we're excited for the next 4 months. it'll be quite different since we'll mainly be hiking, backpacking, and climbing, things that we've missed quite a bit over the last 7 months.

if anyone is interested in joining us on this "tamer" part of our journey, we'd love to meet up with people along the way...

egypt, athens, slovenia photos

2009-12-22T06:51:00.001-08:00

photos from egypt, athens, and slovenia have been posted:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

home for christmas

2009-12-22T02:55:00.002-08:00

after spending a few days in athens where it was cold and rainy, we spent a few days in ljubljana, slovenia visiting erick's cousins. just our luck we managed to time our trip when they had a cold front passing by, with highs around 15 deg F and snow. as a result we didn't do much except christmas shop in the city and visit the town of bled, but it was very beautiful and his cousins were extremely hospitable. slovenia is a beautiful country and we'll have to return there one day during the summer to take advantage of the mountains.

due to the scheduling of our flights, we had a one night layover in amsterdam, just enough time to take the train into the city, sleep at a hostel, and take the train back to the airport. but we finally made it home after 7 months and it's great to be back. unfortunately we'll only be here for 10 days before heading to bolivia and with the holidays, it'll be a very short and busy 10 days...

out of the middle east

2009-12-14T06:12:00.002-08:00

our time in the middle east has come to an end, we left Egypt yesterday and are now in Athens for a few days.

the desert oases were interesting. we spent a night in the white desert, visited the interesting formations there and in the black desert. of all the oases, siwa was by far the nicest one and the most remote. we had a couple days there, then in Alexandria before flying out.

unfortunately, the less than hygenic conditions in Egypt caught up with both of us at the end. we both had stomach problems and didn't feel well the last week. might also be partially due to malnutrition the past couple months. very glad we saw all the countries and sights and enjoyed our time but also happy to leave.

Greece is giving us sticker shock and also weather shock, it's very expensive and cold. but nice to be back in a place where prices on food are clearly marked and not made up depending on whether or not you're a local.

we'll be home in a week, can almost taste the burritos.

pyramids and temples

2009-12-05T22:50:00.002-08:00

we've spend about a week doing the touristy things in egypt. went to the pyramids in giza, which are very large, though now quite as impressive as i imagined. part of the problem might be because we were scammed getting to the pyramids. a really nice guy (teacher) helped us from the metro to find a bus to the pyramids. long story short, it turns out he and the bus driver work with some horse/camel stable and we were taken there and had to listen to a sales pitch for why we should ride a horse/camel around giza. we refused and ended up having to walk an additional 2 miles to the entrance of the pyramids. what we get for being cheap and trying to do everything by public transportation.

after cairo, we headed down to aswan on an overnight (all tourist) train. aswan was very nice. had an evening boat ride around the islands, which was beautiful and relaxing. went to visit philae temple which was well preserved and had been moved stone by stone from it's original place under the water (after the dam was constructed).

we took an overnight felucca ride up the nile, which was actually very nice and good food, then drove to luxor. visited the valley of the kings (where there are 63 royal tombs underground, including king tutenkhamans) and the valley of the workers, tombs of the workers who built the royal tombs. the tombs were of course empty but still very impressive with painted carvings and the burial chambers.

from here we head into the desert oases for about a week, then alexandria, then we fly to greece for a few days...

dahab

2009-11-28T09:26:00.002-08:00

after spending 6 nights here in dahab, we're headed to cairo on the overnight bus tonight. fortunately dahab is a really nice place to spend time, laid back, backpacker friendly and cheap (and expensive) food options. unfortunately the main thing to do here is dive and snorkel, which we partook in neither. erick was interested in snorkeling but it's been really windy these few days so he never got a chance.

we did go up to st. katherine and see the world's oldest monastery, including the burning bush, and hike up mt. sinai, where moses received the 10 commandments. it was a nice hike, even if we didn't do the typical touron sunrise hike.

after cairo, aswan, luxor, western oases, alexandria, then we fly off to greece. less than a month before we head home for christmas... we're looking forward to good burritos and chocolate.

turkey, syria, and jordan pics

2009-11-23T06:37:00.003-08:00

new pics posted from turkey, hot air balloon ride, syria, and jordan:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

jordan

2009-11-23T04:40:00.003-08:00

we made it through another country, jordan, and are now in country #22, egypt, after a long and drawn-out ferry ride. the ride itself was only 1 1/2 hours, but they boarded us 2 hours before and made us stay on the ferry another hour after we arrived in nuweiba, egypt. then we had to buy visas and stuff, so we ended up traveling for 13 hours yesterday.

we're in dahab, egypt right now, in sinai. big diving town (on the red sea), very, very touristy and americans everywhere! strange being in a place so touristy again.

jordan was okay, not as good as we'd hoped. we went in with very high expectations, but things were a bit different than we'd envisioned. first, everything was extremely expensive, close to western european prices for standard middle east service (similar to accommodations and food we got in syria for double the price). people weren't as friendly and we felt that many were trying to rip us off, like in areas with lots of tourism. of course coming from syria (and iran before) we were comparing it to two less developed (tourism-wise) countries.

site-wise, we were impressed. jerash, near amman, is the largest intact roman ruins site in the middle east and it was better than anywhere i've seen in western europe. unfortunately we were a little tired of ruins by then. petra was amazing, as cool as it looks in the movies and pictures. the entrance through the siq (canyon) is spectacular. we had fun hiking around petra, even with not so good weather. went through a fun little slot canyon, wadi muthlin, the second day, which was one of the nicest canyons i've seen, including utah.

wadi rum was fun, we spent 3 days there (the bus to aqaba was full so we stayed an additional night). unfortunately there's great climbing but we had no way to climb, so we just hiked and scrambled through some canyons. mostly french climbers in pretty big groups, no americans. the rocks and routes looked very similar to red rocks but a lot less developed and many areas had bad approaches (through sand or necessary to hire a 4wd or camel). maybe one day we'll go back and climb.

we have no desire to dive here, so we're trying to find something to do. there's great climbing in sinai (granite cracks) but again we have no gear and hiring a guide is ridiculously expensive. we'll try to boulder a bit, but we heard you need to have a guide to go into that canyon. we'll see...

syria

2009-11-15T10:22:00.002-08:00

we made it through syria no problem. only had to wait at the border for 3 hours for our visas, while they faxed Damascus and waited for an answer. we did save $114 each by getting the visas at the border and not in the US. our time isn't worth much these days so it was worth it.

spent a few days in aleppo, they have a nice citadel there and took a day trip to st. simeon church, which was a Christian pilgrimidge site in the 5th century. pretty impressive. then headed to hama where there are cool waterwheels from the 13th century including one of the world's largest (ASME plaque to prove it) and a day trip to a well-preserved crusader castle, crac des chevaliers. only downside is erick got pretty sick from some ice and laid up for two days in the hotel until cipro worked its magic.

then went to palmyra, very nice roman ruins in the desert and free! spent a couple days in damascus, big city and lots of tourists and came to amman, jordan yesterday. went to visit jerash, most intact roman ruins in the middle east today, also very impressive. unfortunately I think we've both had enough roman ruins for a while.

Syria was surprisingly touristy compared to where we've been recently and very easy to get around with english and not knowing arabic. people, especially kids were very friendly, always saying hi but not the same curiosity of westerners as iran, probably because they see so many. jordan is a lit more western and touristy. don't think we've seen do many american tourists since rome and i cringe everytime I hear a loud american tourist, which was a lot today.

tomorrow we'll most likely head to Petra or maybe dana nature reserve.

cappadocia, turkey

2009-11-03T07:35:00.002-08:00

we made it to goreme yesterday here in capadocia amidst a snow storm and freezing weather and met up with erick's ex-roommate matt and his girlfriend leanne.

since it was freezing (literally, the temperature was 0 deg celcius) we decided to head to derinkuyu where there's a large underground city, parts of which are 4000 years old). it was cool to wander around and it was dry. only bad part was we had to wait for buses for a total of half an hour in freezing weather. took a while to thaw our feet out.

this morning we had the hot air balloon ride and the weather actually cooperated and it was dry. it snowed a bit overnight so it was really beautiful. there were lots of balloons and tourists (~25 balloons so a pretty crazy sight). the ride itself was beautiful and amazing and well worth the cold and cost.

today it actually cleared up and the sun came out. we went for a couple hikes in the surrounding valleys, saw fairy chimneys up close with churches and houses.

we'll stay here another day then take the night bus to the border and try to get into syria on Thursday. we'll try our luck at getting visas at the border or may be denied and turned back to turkey. rumors that blogspot is blocked in syria so not sure when i'll post again.

new photos, finally

2009-11-01T04:03:00.001-08:00

just posted lots of new photos, including all the iran, armenia, georgia, and snowy train ride photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

snow on halloween

2009-11-01T01:13:00.002-07:00

we successfully made it to country number 19, turkey.

we spent a day in sighnaghi Georgia, east of tbilisi. it's located in wine country, perched up on a hill with the old city wall still intact. very beautiful. managed to get in a little hike the first day to a monestary and holy spring before the weather turned bad.

headed back to tbisili and took an overnight bus to trabzon, turkey on friday night. managed to spend most of my birthday on some sort of transportation. first was that overnight bus with the Georgia-turkey border crossing at 2 am. luckily our bus had 7 people including us so the border crossing was quick. from Trabzon waited a couple hours in the bus station and took a 5 hour bus to erzurum. we didn't realize Erzurum was so high and cold so the actually had a decent sized snowstorm going on and a few inches on the ground. a snowy halloween.

we lucked out and ended up getting train tickets on an overnight train out of ezurum to Kayseri. ended up being the nicest train compartment we've been in, only 2 people, chairs, sink, refrigerator. after 15 hours on the train we got to Kayseri this morning at 6 am and found a bus to urgup (cappadocia) where we'll spend one night before heading to goreme to meet erick's roommate matt. maybe have a belated bday dinner since all we ate yesterday was bread, cheese, clif bars, and bananas.

it's surprisingly cold here in turkey, we were looking forward to warmer weather, and at least in eastern turkey, no one speaks english or german and there are very few ATM machines.

tbilisi, georgia

2009-10-27T23:45:00.002-07:00

we spent a couple more days in armenia, staying in the town of vanadzor in a soviet-era hotel which smelled strongly of smoke and we had to request the water and water heater be turnedvon when we wanted it. we took a day trip to debed canyon to visit sanahin and haghpats monestaries. we tried to take public transportation and walk, so we wouldn't have to pay lots of money to a taxi driver for the day. worked out for the most part mostly by luck. we took a train to and from alaverdi, instead of a bus, since the schedules in the lonely planet were completely wrong.

saw the monesteries, had a nice hike and made it back. got lost a couple times and had to wait a few hours for the train but it all worked out.

took a marshrutka (mini van) here to Tbilisi yesterday. we wanted to head to kazbegi today to see the mountains but the weather is cold and rainy. we decided to stay here another day and see the town then head towards turkey somehow. problem is it is supposed to rain everywhere for the next week so we don't know where to go.

armenia was quite a bit poorer than we expected, especially the rural areas. it was difficult to get around since there is virtually no tourist infrastructure anywhere. knowing Russian was very useful to communicate and get around. it is a nice country with quite a bit to offer but still has a ways to go before becoming a good place to travel.

so far georgia seems to be a bit better to get around and seems to be a bit better off. unlike Armenia though they've seemed to distance themselves from their soviet past, not surprising given their relationship with russia.

armenia

2009-10-24T03:45:00.002-07:00

we decided to take the bus from tehran to yerevan (armenia). ended up being a 22 hour bus ride with the border crossing timed so it happened at 2 to 5 AM at night. nice. no problems getting out of iran or into armenia, fortunately.

the iranians and armenians on the bus were really nice and helpful, without us even asking. a few helped us fill out the iran departure tax forms which were all in farsi (though ended up we didn't need to fill it out), people bought us tea, helped us figure out exchanging money, etc. the highlight though was we met an 89 year old man, giovanni, who is iranian by birth, lived in the US for many years, and now lives in yerevan.

he befriended us, took us back to his apartment in yerevan, let us stay, fed us, took us on a day trip to see the temple in garni and geghard monestary (~30 km from yerevan), let us do laundry, and wouldn't let us pay for anything. he treated us like family (said we were like his grandkids). when we left yerevan yesterday he asked when we're going back and he'd keep the room made up for us. had to tell him we weren't going to go back.

such amazing hospitality, you always read about stuff like that but never expect it. it's amazing that he's in such good health and living by himself, if i were his child or grandchild, i'd be very worried about him. this will probably end up being one of the highlights of our trip!

now we're in dilijan, about 1 1/2 hours north of yerevan. we went for a nice hike today to a monestary, it's nice being in a place with mountains, blue sky and fresh air again, even if it is a bit cold. we'll make out way to georgia then to turkey to meet erick's ex-roommate matt, in cappadocia in a week and a half...

out of iran

2009-10-24T03:28:00.005-07:00

after spending 15 days in iran, we made it to armenia.

the tour was good, just the two of us. guides varied but for the most part they were all good and helpful. we went to lots of big cities (tehran, shiraz, esfahan, yadz, kerman, mashad) and saw many mosques, old houses, gardens, cultural, and historical sites. won't go into that, the pictures (when i get around to posting them) will speak for themselves.

first off, everyone we met there was extremely nice. very curious about tourists, we always had people coming up to us and asking where we're from. many were surprised we were americans, only because they see so few. we had some good, interesting conversations with many, it was a bit surprising how honest and critical some were about the government and revolution. only one somewhat negative reaction when we said we were american, and he wasn't rude, just kind of ended the conversation and walked away.

school girls were really curious about us, always coming up and asking to take pictures. one funny incident is a 4 year old boy who came up to me for no reason and started kicking me in the shin. left a little scab. otherwise, we really enjoyed meeting and talking with people.

in the cities, traffic is horrendous. takes forever to go anywhere and it doesn't seem like driver follow traffic laws, usually red lights but not always. so car rides were a bit nerve wracking, since 2 lanes were usually used as 4 or more lanes.

pollution in the cities and highways was really bad, as bad or worse than china. probably due to the cheap gas (40 cents/gallon with a gas card, $1/gallon without card), so there are many cars with no pollution control.

i think we both are glad we went to iran, it was an interesting and good experience, but we were also ready to leave at the end...

esfahan and yazd

2009-10-13T04:06:00.003-07:00

after spending a couple days in shiraz, we headed to esfahan, with a stop at persepolis (old palace complex built ~2500 years ago by darius the great). very impressive ruins. also stopped at some other ruins at pasargad (built by cyrus the great) but they weren't in as good of conditions.

spent a few days in esfahan, with a day trip to see an old persian village of Abyaneh (people still speak and dress in the old style) and the town of Kashan, where there are old 19th century big houses and nice gardens.

we're here in yazd for a couple days, saw an old zoroastrian fire temple with a flame that's been burning for 1000+ years and the towers of silence, where the zoarastrians used to leave the bodies of the dead to be eaten by vultures.

we'll spend another night here, then head to the desert, then to kerman with a day trip to bam, to see the earthquake damaged citadel.

trips been good so far, very interesting, though tiring being on a tour. everyone we've met has been very friendly and curious about tourists (even americans).

in iran...

2009-10-08T04:13:00.002-07:00

after spending erick's bday in dubai, we spent the next day flying to iran, via bahrain.

dubai was pretty crazy, one night was enough. we were fortuante that we went right after the metro (unmanned) was opened so getting around from place to place was really easy. even went to see ski dubai, which is pretty far from the main area. lots of construction everywhere, very hot, lots of people of different ethnicities. good to see but for a day.

we made it into iran with a little hassle at immigration. finally let us in with fingerprints. spent a couple days in tehran sightseeing, crazy city with lots of traffic. we're the only ones on this "tour" so we have our own guides. flew to shiraz last night, had a morning tour, will have another tour this afternoon, then will see persepolis and drive to esfahan tomorrow afternoon.

people have been really friendly (lots of questions and curiosity), we're given a surprising amount of freedom even though we're american, we have the evenings free to wander around and explore. very, very few tourists, which is quite different and nice.

don't know if when i'll have interweb next but will update when i can. we decided to go out into armenia and spend a week there and in georgia (near tblisi) before flying to istanbul...

hong kong and macau

2009-09-30T15:55:00.003-07:00

we've spent about 4 days here in hong kong and have a couple days left, visiting my grandmother and meeting up with my parents. it's nice to regroup, reorganize, refill stuff (ie 20+ new clif bars for erick), but better yet having good food, being taken care off, and being able to speak the language (cantonese).

nothing too exciting to report, we've both been here before and done all the touristy stuff plus it's been very rainy. went to macau with my parents for a day yesterday to check out the crazy casinos there (not quite vegas but they're trying) and checking out some of the more popular tourist sites. one unfortunate thing that happened is that erick got his camera stolen in macau out of his pack on a crowded street... other than that lots of eating, too bad we can't eat enough for the next 3 months and not bother to eat while traveling.

next stop, dubai for a night (erick's birthday) then iran for a couple weeks. we were successful in getting our iranian visas here in HK and amazingly everything's good to go with the tour.

in hong kong, finally posting again!

2009-09-28T08:25:00.002-07:00

we made it out of china today and are in hong kong. we'll spend about a week here visiting my grandmother and parents, who timed a trip here to meet up with us. it'll be nice to "relax" a bit, regroup, and restock. we're heading to dubai on saturday and supposedly iran, though we're having communication issues with the travel company and it looks like we may have to change our itinerary, unfortunately.

blogspot and picasa were blocked in china, so i wrote up blogs about the north korea trip and china adventures but haven't been able to upload them until now. also posted a bunch of photos, from the remainder of mongolia, north korea, and china. each album has many pictures (some well over 100), sorry about that, just too many interesting photos...

pics in normal place: http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

beijing and sichuan, china

2009-09-28T06:08:00.002-07:00

our stay in china was relatively short. we first went to beijing to meet up with the north korea tour group. my longtime friend cressica was in town and we met up with her for dinner one night. unfortunately she was extremely busy so we didn't get a chance to actually travel around with her and add to our random china adventures.

after we got back from north korea we took a 32 hour train ride from beijing to chengdu. the china trains are much nicer than the russian ones but the boarding process is also a lot more crazy and chaotic. shared the cabin with a mother and her 2 year old daughter one day, who had lots of energy and was running around trying to get into everything.

hung around chengdu a couple days and got to meet up with our climbing friend alice, who was in town for a conference. it's nice seeing familiar faces after being away for so long. also went to see the panda breeding and research center in chengdu which was really interesting. the pandas were extremely cute, of course, and after
learning more about them it's amazing they've survived so long.

originally we were going to go from chengdu to yangshuo to climb a bit but the weather in yangshuo was really hot and humid which would've made miserable climbing conditions. so we decided to stay in sichuan to explore. found a couple areas with big mountains (mt siguniang) and tibetan villages (danba) but unfortunately all the roads to the to places were closed from the earthquake.

we decided to go to songpan, an area famous for horse trekking instead and hike around. the bus ride there was probably the worst bus ride we've been on. the 8 hour trip took 13 1/2 hours. all the roads were under construction from the earthquake and continual rock and landslides. we had to wait at a few places for a total of a couple hours while they cleared the road. many sections of road were one lane from construction or slides. then at night when the bus pulled over to let someone off it was hit by a truck trying to pass, so we were there for over half an hour while the drivers sorted it out. driving up we saw a lot of the earthquake destruction, entire towns being completely rebuilt (using the same brick architecture) roads, bridges completely destroyed, a car completely smashed by rockfall and abandoned. of course large crews of workers everywhere repairing the roads and clearing everything by hand. pretty crazy.

songpan is actually a nice little town, restored city wall, a restored main area which isn't tacky like many touristy areas, blue sky (rare for china), and a decent number of Tibetans and Chinese Muslims wandering around the city still dressed in traditional clothing. went to mounigou valley (a national park an hour west of songpan, aka mini- jiuzhaigou) one day which was actually really nice. very clean
and well maintained, pretty scenery, and best part no people! we saw two other groups the entire day, something i did not expect in china. we saw zhaga falls (the worlds largest tufa falls), erdao lake (colorful pools of water) and drove through Tibetan villages and two monestaries on the way. very nice day trip.

the bus ride back to Chengdu wasn't as bad, only 12 hours. one blown tire (sidewall blew) which was changed quickly by some guy with a huge pneumatic wrench, lucky it blew as we were driving through a village. the bus driver did not instill confidence though, it seems like he could barely drive (better than the Mongolian monk though). he stalled the bus 7 to 8 times including going into the Chengdu bus station, ground the gears, would shift into the wrong gear or would drive in the wrong gear, all while chain smoking. fun. can't say we'll miss china bus rides, with everyone smoking even though they're not supposed to, people blaring music very loudly because they either don't have or choose not to use headphones, people hawking and spitting into the aisle, and people yelling (talking) at each other for hours.

north korea

2009-09-28T06:07:00.006-07:00

the post many have been waiting for, maybe. our trip to north korea. unfortunately china blogspot and picasa so i had to wait until hong kong to post these blog entries and the pictures.

but we made it safely in and out of north korea no problem. probably it really will be the safest place that we will travel, never worried about things being stolen or being ripped off or anything.

we had to go with a tour group, there were 16 of us including our american escort, walter. all of us were american except for one canadian. good group of people, diverse backgrounds and ages, not just one demographic. most were seasoned travelers, many had never traveled with a tour group before. we had two north korean english-speaking guides/escorts who were always with us except at the hotel, a driver, and a video person who filmed a DVD of our trip.

we ended up spending all four nights in pyongyang, the hotel we were to stay at in mhoyang was under renovation by many north korean soldiers.

the first night was the highlight, we saw the arirang performance (aka mass games). it was the best, most amazing live performance i've ever seen. there are 100,000+ performers, including 18,000 school kids who sit on the other side of the stadium and hold up colored cards to make amazing pictures for the background that are constantly changing. almost like a big screen projection. the performances basically tell the history of north korea and the wish for reunification through dancing, singing, gymnastics, acrobatics, and massive choreographed acts. reminded me a lot of the beijing olympics opening ceremony. definitely worth seeing.

the rest of the sightseeing in pyongyang was to the largest kim il sung statue (65 meters tall), many monuments, the metro (yes it's an actual operating metro not fake), an empty department store with lots of expensive items, an impressive library (grand peoples study hall) with free classes and even a madonna cd, the uss pueblo (imperialist US spy ship illegally conducting espionage activities in north korean waters), juche tower, views of the ryogong hotel which is finally being worked in after a 10+ year break and will be the largest hotel in the world when completed, a childrens palace where lucky kids can go after school and learn many types of extra cirricular activities for free, kim il sung's birthplace, the victorious fatherland
liberation museum (about how the north koreans defeated the evil US imperialist aggressors in the korean war). the best was kim il sung's mausoleum, where we had to dress up, go through this huge process of going in, lining up, bowing to the body, seeing all the medals and degrees he was awarded (including a doctorate from kennsington university in california). crazy ordeal, ridiculously large and ornate
building.

the other days we went to the ancient capital if kaesong and punmandong, inside the DMZ. went into the DMZ and into a building run by the UN where the demarkation line splits the building in half- so we "went into" south korea. and saw the buildings the armistice (or surrender according to the north koreans) agreement was signed.

another day went to mhoyang to see an old Buddhist temple with one monk that was partially destroyed in the war but rebuilt and the international friendship hall where a fraction of the 250,000 gifts kim il sung received from other countries are on display. we saw a few rooms including one with a wax figure of him that we had to bow to. unfortunately (i mean fortunately) we didn't see the building with kim jong il's gifts.

all that filled our days in north Korea and it was pretty much non-stop.

so that being said, what was it really like? on the surface everything looked great. people seemed to have good lives in Pyongyang, great resources, city was very clean and no pollution or traffic problems. but reading through the surface these are the
fortunate ones. and even from these 2 million people how many actually have access to these resources? lots of propaganda everywhere (plus side no advertisements), we got told a lot of anti-American propoganda. Pyongyang does have the traffic ladies everywhere and no working traffic lights, everyone wears kim il sung pins.

We got fed plenty of good and meat each meal (erick had lots of problems with the food) but saw very few non- working animals in the country. our guides were friendly and let us argue with them and dispute their version of history but didn't believe our views or have any questions about the version of history they've been raised with
even if it makes no sense.

photos were somewhat restricted but they usually didn't care when we took photos unless it was military stuff. people on the street were friendlier to us than I expected, even some military soldiers and traffic ladies smiled and waved at us. of course they didn't know we were imperialist americans.

at the library there was a free English class and a couple people from the tour group went up to talk to the class. they were warmly received and the students were interested gave us a warm welcome even though we told them we're american. that was cool.

walter constantly pushed the envelope by talking with all the guides trying to convince them the American version of events is the truth, surprised they keep letting him back in.

in retrospect, we both very glad we went and it was worth the price. it was basically what we expected. a very surreal experience, it felt like a trip to Disneyland where everything is glorified and fake, only it's a cult worshipping one person. pretty crazy. don't think we'll ever see another country like this, at least in our lifetime.

trouble with getting into china...

2009-09-28T06:07:00.005-07:00

seems like china doesn't want to let me in. both times i entered china (on the train from mongolia and flying back from north korea) i got hassled.

the train was the worst. a woman came around to collect the passports and arrival cards from each cabin. she looked at mine, stared at the picture, told me to take my glasses off (i've learned it's much smarter to take your passport picture with glasses on if you always wear glasses like i do). looked at me versus the picture for a few minutes. i even put my hair down to help match the picture. she asked when i took the picture and i said 9 years ago. she finally accepted it and continued on.

little did i know that it wasn't over. she came back with another agent and asked him if i looked like my passport picture. he looked, didn't say anything conclusive and told me to follow them. i got marched off the train, down the platform (everyone else was still locked in the wagons) and took me to the supervisor in charge. on the way they asked me the last time i'd been to china, why i've been here so many times, and where i was born. in the supervisor's office it was him and three others. i remembered i had my drivers license and pulled that out. he looked at everything and determined it was me in the passport photo and they let me go.

but the fun wasn't over. they ran me back to the train because it was just about to be moved to have the bogies changed (mongolia and china have different gauge tracks). they put me on the last car, i had to go through 7 wagons to get back to mine. first went okay, then I had to deal with a Mongolian passenger who wouldn't let me by, kept turning me back , explain to 6 Chinese guards what happened and what I was doing, three carriage attendents who only spoke Mongolian who wouldn't let me through their carriages and unlock the doors between the carriages and explain to two more Chinese guards what i was doing. finally got to the last door before my wagon and the attendant let me through but the last door was locked. she shrugged and went away and I thought I'd have to spend 2 hours standing there while they changed the bogies. fortunately, two of the Chinese guards i passed came by and got the key and helped me get back to my cabin, just before they disconnected the wagons to change the bogies.

flying back to Beijing was not as bad, though erick got a taste of it too. the immigration agent didn't think either one of us looked like our pictures and had us sign our names and compared it to our passport signatures. guess we both passed because he let us both in. luckily we shouldn't have any more china entries this trip.

khovd trips

2009-09-11T07:34:00.003-07:00

now on to our time in khovd. besides the car ride back, this was the "real" mongolian adventure we were looking for.

we lucked out in khovd, not having any plans and not speaking mongolian. we found a guesthouse (only guesthouse in khovd- the big family guesthouse) run by adiya in his parents' house. he spoke english and arranged a couple trips for us and also came along as a translator, though his english wasn't great. also found a great vegetarian restaurant in khovd as well, which was a great find.

khovd power comes from russian so everyday we were there, there was a power outage of some duration, which also meant no water. the day before we left, the power was supposed to be out for 3-4 days...

we did two 3-day trips from khovd. the first one we went to see tsambaragav uul (mountain) and a canyon along the khovd river. the driver had never been there, so we stopped at a ger to ask for directions. got invited in, served milk tea, fried dough, aaruul (dried curds), our first true experience in a ger, which was cool. drove up a canyon and hiked up to a ridge close the the mountain, we could see the glacier, really beautiful. adiya determined it was too cold to camp even though we'd set up the tent, so we drove down the canyon and went up to a random ger and asked to spend the night there. it was a nomadic family, young mother and father and a 6-month old baby. we were probably the first westerners they'd seen. we slept on their floor, they cooked dinner for adiya and the driver (us too if we wanted to eat meat) and didn't expect anything in return even though we showed up unannounced and completely unknown to them. amazing hospitality. second night camped near the khovd river, which was beautiful. on the drive back to khovd, we stopped at a kazakh ger and had tea (just went to some random ger) b/c adiya wanted us to see the difference b/w the mongolian and kazakh gers. the kazakh gers were very colorful and full of embroidery. the grandmother asked if erick and i spoke kazakh since we looked more "european" (at least erick). funny.

our second trip we went to look at some big caves with petroglyphs (didn't really see any), tsenkherlin agui, then drove 6 hours to monkhkhairkan mountain to see a waterfall. again, they didn't know directions so we stopped several time to ask horsemen, people in gers, etc. ended up taking the "bad" road, which was pretty bad, lots of rocks, rockfall, and even a dead camel feet up pinned underneath a big rock. we got to the waterfall area near dark, they still didn't know where it was. luckily there was a ger, we stopped, went in for tea, and it was interesting b/c it was small and 3 bachelors lived there. they said there was a family that live near the waterfall that would be better for us to stay with and one of the guys would take us. drove another 45 minutes in the dark and arrived at a few gers. one family gave up their ger for us to sleep in, we thought they were sleeping in another ger but turns out they slept in their truck that night!

beautiful view the next morning of the mountain. adiya mentioned that the waterfall was close but didn't say where. we waited for him and the driver for 2 hours to leave, they were talking/visiting people and who knows what. we watched the nomads chase the yaks around, played with a couple kids. got in the car with the one bachelor that helped us out and took him back to his place to pick up something then he rode with us to town. asked adiya about the waterfall on the way and he said he told us that morning, it was close to where we stayed and there's no water in it right now. so we drove all that way and no waterfall! who knows if it exists.

drove back towards khovd that day, to khar us nuur (lake) where we stayed with adiya's grandmother. she'd killed a goat that day for us, i tried a little, erick of course not. at night we played cards with her (she's a card shark) and the next day got to watch her distill airag into vodka, boil the milk and make the milk skim, and cook the goat organs. and got to try homemade yogurt. it was a cool experience and didn't feel that bad since it was adiya's grandmother, not some strangers.

so overall, we're very glad we went to khovd and that we got to have there authentic mongolian adventures, staying/meeting with nomads who'd never seen westerners, seeing how they live and experiencing the amazing hospitality. and of course if we never went, we wouldn't have to great adventure of driving back to UB from the previous post...

pictures sometime probably much later, depending on if we can post in china.

driving across mongolia with a monk and drunk driver

2009-09-11T07:05:00.003-07:00

so we just had the craziest adventure ever here in monglia. i don't think most people will believe everything is true and not exagerated or from a script of a bad movie, but everything below actually happened to us in the last 3 days... will also write a post about our amazing trips in khovd later on...

we were supposed to catch a flight from khovd back to UB on wednesday. on tuesday we had adiya (from the guesthouse in khovd) call the airline to see what time the plane's departing since it's not really standard/predictable. turns out there was a problem, the plane was stuck in moron because of a runway (asphalt) problem so the plane can't take off and all the flights for the next week are cancelled. problem for us since we had a plane to catch from UB to beijing on thursday morning.

adiya spent the whole afternoon helping us and the best solution we could come up with was to take a car back to UB (~2 days drive), get a refund for the non-used air ticket in UB and buy new train tickets to beijing leaving saturday morning. as long as we were in UB by 6pm friday afternoon, that would be no problem. he found us a car (we thought it'd be more comfortable and get there faster than the bus), a subaru forester (very rare in mongolia), good condition, the driver seemed nice, and pretty cheap (~$35/pp for the 2 day, 1450 km journey).

we left khovd wednesday morning, there was an older monk in the car, the driver, and a mongolian girl. on our way out of town, the mongolian girl decided she didn't want to go so we dropped her and her 70 kg bag of potatoes off at her house and went to the bus station to recruit a new passenger. by chance, there was an american, alex from tennessee, there looking for a bus. he agreed to come along. little did we know that we got him into an adventure of a lifetime...

first sign that things would be fun is the driver let the monk drive shortly after leaving khovd. the monk is learning and doesn't know how to shift very well, the car goes across the road when he shifts. nothing scary, just amusing to see the monk drive.

stopped for lunch a few hours in and the driver drank 1/2 a bottle of vodka with his friend. needless to say he was really, really drunk. the monk also performed a ceremony to bless the house and occupants, which was really cool to see. no one would let the driver drive, so alex took a shot, but hit too many rocks so the monk took over for a bit. then erick drove for a good hour or more. while erick was driving, the driver sat in the back with me an alex trying to "learn" english and asking us how to pronounce the words on the cover and back of slaughterhouse-five. when he deemed himself successful, he hugged me and kissed both my and alex's hand. then asked our names several times and wouldn't believe me when i said i'm american, so i finally agreed that i'm chinese, not american.

finally at a pee spot, the driver wanted to drive and the monk deemed it was okay. we think the monk owns the car and the driver is hired just to drive, since the monk was cleaning the car at every stop and the driver rarely even inspected the car, even after rough terrain or when we hit rocks or a big bump. driver drove, still very drunk, cranked up the music very loud and started singing for along time. alex reached up a couple times to turn the volume down but it just crept back up. we were all dozing in the back and the driver lost control of the car (either fell asleep or b/c he was drunk) and drove off the road, nearly flipping the car. he got it under control, back on the road, and luckily no one was hurt. drove a bit longer until a ger in at midnight where we slept.

next day driver and monk were alternating driving in the morning. on monk's drive, he hit 2 parallel tire tracks (all dirt roads) going 60 km/h and the car flew off the ground and landed hard. end result, both front and back axles bent (back much worse). driver didn't even get out to look at it and monk didn't realize the severity of the problems (erick and alex went out to look at it and quickly realized the severity of the problem). we drove another 0.5 km and the tire blew up, completely shredded from rubbing on the wheel well from the bent axle. since it's a subie, only a donut spare tire, which was actually good b/c a full size spare would've just rubbed and blown up shortly after.

we drove another 600 km on dirt then paved roads on the spare tire, including a little detour when the driver got lost. they looked for a new tire at a town but no luck (no one stocks that tire) so we kept driving on it.

today we were in a hurry to get back to UB to purchase our train tickets by 6 pm. we stopped for lunch and were making pretty good time on paved road, then reached arvaikheer (430 km from UB). the driver stopped at an auto shop (we thought to look for a new tire) and we spent 1/2 hour + getting the car washed and detailed! before setting out on more dirt roads. unbelievable! erick and i were pretty anxious and told them we had to get to the train station by 6 pm and they said they understood.

drove another 250 km or so, driver was getting pretty confident and flying at 130 km/h on the spare tire. even newly paved roads in mongolia still have potholes or else big chunks of asphalt cut out of them for no logical reason. driver hit on of these at 130 km/h and the spare tire blows. we were done for since there's no other spare and we still had a ways to UB.

we were lucky it's a busy road and the 3 of us (erick, alex, me) flagged down a car within 10 minutes, left the monk and driver with the problem car, and got a ride back to UB. didn't make it to the train station in time so thought about flying, but the guesthouse got us tickets to beijing on tomorrow's train and we'll finally be leaving (hopefully). this little adventure ended up costing us $520 in the forfeited purchased train ticket and the non-refunded unused plane ticket (we can't get a refund b/c we won't be in UB when the MIAT office is open). small price to pay though since we made it back to UB in one piece and we're still alive and uninjured...

pictures will be posted sometime, probably not soon since not sure if we can use picasa in china...

gobi trip

2009-09-01T01:33:00.002-07:00

just got back to UB from the gobi trip. we enjoyed the khovsgol trip more for several reasons but the gobi trip was nice and had a few eventful incidents.

first our driver was a maniac. I'm glad we made it back in one piece. he drove really fast and a few times caught quite a bit if air by not slowing down on bumps. once he decided to pass the other van we were traveling with 1/2 km from camp and nearly flipped the car getting back in the tracks. but we survived, he was a nice guy, and spoke a little English.

the more eventful stuff happened to the other car, one girl in particular. the second day we saw one group of cars the entire day. we passed them no problem. went another hour and waited for the other van but the never showed up. our driver somehow got cell reception and called the other driver and they'd had an accident. so we drove back an hour to the site. the other group of cars was a group of Italian tourons in nice land cruisers. one Italian managed to convince his driver to let him drive. well as the other van approached instead of going right and passing as is customary and what the cars ahead of him did, he swerved left into the van and the collided. the van got the worse deal, front smashed in, engine fire, car needed a couple hours work to get it going. and the Italian didn't apologize though it was clearly his fault and wanted to leave right away. luckily no injuries, just a few scrapes and whiplash and the car was somewhat repaired that night.

incident 2, the French girl from the other car sprained her knee pretty bad playing a Mongolian running game and colliding with a pretty big guy. just when it was getting better, yesterday at lunch she went to use the bathroom (outhouse). directions weren't clear and she went into a neighboring yard and ended up being bitten in the ass by a dog. no teeth marks but an open wound. they took her to a hospital in the town we were in last night and as of yesterday she was deciding if she should get the anti-rabies shots (10 over 10 days) and forget the rest of her trip or take the small risk of maybe getting rabies and dying. must be the worst vacation ever for her.

about the trip, saw lots of camels, desert, some small sandstone cliffs (flaming cliffs), big sand dunes, and road camels. erick and I took the public bus back today, the other couple in our car have two more days in places we've already seen. the bus wasn't too bad (7 hours) except they wouldn't let us put our bags below so we had our bags on half a seat and the floor and we had to share 1 1/2 seats for 7 hours, not very comfortable.

tomorrow we fly to khovd in the west. should be interesting because we have nothing arranged and it doesn't seem too developed tourism wise.

mongolia pictures, round 1

2009-08-24T01:56:00.001-07:00

posted pictures from terelj national park and our 8-day khovsgol lake trip on picasa:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

khovsgol lake trip

2009-08-23T04:27:00.005-07:00

we just got back from an 8-day trip to central and northern Mongolia with erick's friend Bryan and two Chinese girls who did the same trip but in a separate car. we really enjoyed the trip, Mongolia is an amazing place, very beautiful and undeveloped. just as it's described outside the cities nomads with large herds of livestock- horses, goats, cows, yaks, sheep (and a few camels) everywhere.

before the details, the highlights. 8-days of driving 8 hours a day (except one day) on horrendous roads. picture backcountry unmaintained 4x4 roads, averaging about 22 mph except for the last day where it was almost all paved. and there's not one dirt road but many. in many stretches, the "road" is 1/2 mile wide with 8 - 10 parallel but sometimes interconnected roads to choose from. it's like those choose your own adventure book. lots of nothing, just big plains and mountains with the occaisional ger and livestock, pretty awesome. we had an awesome driver and a cool Russian 4x4 minivan/jeep which was very durable (only one flat tire, one fuel filter problem, and a brake fluid lake, all of which he fixed within 10 minutes) but which always smelled of gasoline. and the driver only listened to one tape though he had more. we calculated and we heard that one tape ~60 times. erick, bryan, and i can now sing those Mongolian songs in our sleep. the other car (an old Japanese SUV) lost its exhaust system, spewed black smoke, and had some other problems.

we stayed with families in gers for tourists and got dinner and breakfast as well for $3.70/night. ate in local restaurants for lunch. food was hard for erick (vegetarian) and he had a couple days of stomach problems (from inadvertently eating meat we think) and ate clif bars for a few meals. bryan was brave and ate some BBQ marmot today that the drivers bought off a girl on the side of the road yesterday. we also bought some fresh airag (fermented mares milk) from a family yesterday and got to watch them milk horses and go in their house.

sights besides the vast emptiness and nomads. small sand dunes, ancient city of kharkhorin and the erdene zuu monestary (very Chinese style with Tibetan Buddhism), beautiful terkhiin tsagsan nuur (great white lake) with a cool volcanic crater and an early morning horse ride, khovsgol lake- beautiful large fresh water lake. we did a great hike there around the lake and had good smoked fish. a remote monestary restored by UNESCO, amarbayasgalant khiid, then back to UB.

we all had a great time despite the the rough conditions (bad roads, no showers, all outhouses, camping conditions- which erick and I are used to).

next up, most likely a 7-day gobi trip with a trip back on the public bus, then a flight to western Mongolia to see the big mountains for a week. will try to post pics tomorrow.

of other interest, our north Korea visas are approved and our trip is still on for mid-September.

terelj national park

2009-08-14T00:03:00.002-07:00

just got back from spending a night at terelj national park near ulaanbaatar. it was a very touron experience, staying in a ger, horseback riding, etc. we were mainly curious to check out the potential climbing there since we heard there limitless potential.

we found a few bolted routes and some good potential routes with a mixture of rock quality. the area looks like jtree with grass and small mountains but similar rock formations. we bouldered a little bit which was fun and hopefully we'll be able to climb a little bit while we're here in Mongolia.

we just arranged for a 8-day tour starting Sunday when Bryan arrives. pretty packed itinerary but hit many recommended stops including white lake, karakorum, lake khovsgod, and the famous monestary. The hostels providing the car and driver and we'll stay with families on the way and eat in roadside cafes. should be fun.

out of russia...

2009-08-11T02:53:00.002-07:00

we made it out of russia and into mongolia today. the train border crossing is a model of inefficiency, we spent a total of 7 hours for the border crossing including the 30 minutes it took to travel between the border towns.

luckily it was a painless process and we could go outside the train for most of it, until the went on the train to search the ducts and luggage compartments for stowaways. they make it much harder to leave russia than enter!

we'll spend about a month here in mongolia before heading to china and north korea. erick's friend bryan is arriving Saturday and we'll take a week long trip with him to lake khovsgol then come back to ulaanbaatar and arrange some other tours to the gobi desert and who knows where else.

we enjoyed our time and adventures in russia but it's good to be out.

siberia adventure pictures

2009-08-08T00:30:00.001-07:00

spend the last 3 hours posting pictures from our adventures in siberia (backpacking, climbing, mountaineering):

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

arshan and russian grade II mountaineering

2009-08-07T22:44:00.004-07:00

we're out of arshan after 3 days, now in ulan-ude, our last stop in siberia (and russia!). were finally successful in getting train tickets without any big surprises today, we take the train from here to ulaan-baatar (mongolia) on monday afternoon. now that we have train tickets out and everything's set, i can say that the russia portion of the trip has been a lot more memorable in ways i didn't expect and also a lot more enjoyable than i expected. i think this may turn out to be one of the highlights of the whole trip (among many). alright, after all that reflection onto the fun stuff.

we took the bus from irkutsk to arshan, a mini-van which was pretty quick. got to arshan and went in search of the climber's hostel, priyut alpinista, as described in the lonely planet (with twin rooms, climbing maps, camp in the mountains). well we got there and the buildings had burned down in a fire during winter. only tent camping. the owner of the place, igor, spoke very limited english. luckily there was a couple from st. petersburg staying there after a 12-day backpacking trip, who spoke english. we asked for information about climbing and igor offered to guide us. he didn't want to do anything hard, since we came across as complete morons (no gear, no idea what we're doing, etc). we couldn't communicate that we were after the splitter hand cracks and even if we did, he wouldn't have had gear to do it. erick took out our gear to show him (harness, shoes, belay devices, quick draw). he took out what he had left after the fire, 5 rusty thin pitons (all similar size), 2 ascenders (both right handed), 3 figure-8 devices, and about 5 screw gate carabiners. nice. and a hammer. he agreed to guide us though on a russian grade II peak, which we didn't know what that meant at the time.

that evening he invited us to a fire/bbq. we bought food and showed up at this place. he ended up taking us on a walk to the site, which was about 1/2 hour straight uphill, about 600 feet elevation gain. great view though. met some other tourists from moscow and also the couple from st petersburg came as well. had a nice fire and food.

next day was a long one. we started out at 6 am from igor's place, with a 2 1/2 hour, ~3,500 foot uphill climb to start it off. then traversed over a big boulder field to a cirque below Peak Zdorobye (Friendship Peak), our first destination. About an hour of 3rd class scrambling up some talus, then we roped up. by roping up, i mean we each tied into the rope about 10 feet apart with a butterfly knot and simul-climbed without pro. most of it was 3rd class with the occassional 4th and easy 5th class move. it was pretty exposed though in some sections and not as secure without climbing shoes on. we got up to the left summit then traversed over to the right sumit (~2450 m high). from there we downclimbed (still roped together) to the saddle between Zdrobye and Arshan peaks.

since we'd gotten up pretty fast and proved ourselves not to be incompetent, he suggested we also climb up arshan peak. this was a bit harder and it started raining. we belayed at a few points, up the steeper sections and erick and i changed into our climbing shoes. then it started to rain. rain pretty much made the rock slick and our feet useless, didn't trust them at all. luckily the terrain was easy and there were plenty of hand holds. ended up summitting to amazing views of the surrounding valleys and peaks, with fog, sun, rainbows all around. probably one of the most spectacular summits i've been on, just because of the view then. peak arshan, ~2511 m, from igor's house to the peak, 6 1/2 hours, which he says is his summer record.

then came the descent. that was just painful and long. first it was about 2 hours of downclimbing 3rd and 4th class slick rock. very slick, and pretty much straight down with big drop-offs. fun. we ended up mainly trying to go down the ridge. after 2 hours, the trail turned much better and it was okay for a bit. then straight down in the forest, lots of elevation to lose. we finally made it to the river and after a tea break (igor thoughfully brought a stove with him) we hiked out. unfortunately, the last part of the trail, which is along waterfalls, involves lots of scrambling and boulder hopping, which is not what i needed at the end of the day. after a brief stop at the mineral springs (taps have mineral water (naturally carbonated) of different temperatures coming out of it, we made it back to igor's place a bit after 7 pm.

so in total, about 5300 ft of vertical gain (and loss), time to peak, 6 1/2 hours, time to descend, 6 1/2 hours, 2 peaks summited, russian grade II.

even though we're still in pain and sore, with the long descent, and virtually no technical rock climbing (no one placed any gear), we both really enjoyed the trip. we were extremely lucky with the weather as well. it rained a little bit on the way to the summit, a little foggy, but overall okay. on the way down it didn't start pouring rain and thundering until after we'd made it down the scariest part and were on easy terrain. otherwise it would've been much worse...

another fun thing we did in arshan was stay in someone's rented room. they had a separate shack they rented out, two (old) beds, stove, fridge. the house had an outhouse and faucet for water (standard in the town). an interesting experience. the bus ride from arshan to ulan-ude yeseterday was another adventure, just long (7 1/2 hours) and cramped (erick and i shared 1 1/2 seats in the back of the mini-van) with a screaming kid and damp (kind of smelly) van the whole way. but we survived and it's just something else to remember.

two more days left in russia, then the mongolia fun begins...

climbing near lake baikal

2009-08-03T06:42:00.003-07:00

after the trek was over (see previous post) anton (owner of the guiding company) picked all of us up. erick and i were dropped off with him on the way back, about and hour outside of irkutsk for some climbing.

our first clue that it'd be interesting (besides us being completely trashed and tired from the trek) was the amount of food anton brought for us for 1-day. about 30 lbs of food! we hiked into farron rock and cleopatra rock (next to each other) and set up camp.

the area is granite with routes about 10 - 15 m high. very well bolted (better than gym bolting!), most routes very overhung with some jugs, very gym-like. not having climbed in 2 months, we couldn't manage to do much. didn't help that all the routes were very pumpy and the easiest routes started at 6a. erick did lead one route that was really fun, because it was crack the whole way. we sought out the crack, anton avoided it unless he had to use it.

tried about 5 -6 routes and most of them were just too reachy (russian climbers must all be pretty tall) or pumpy or strenuous (heel hook over the head) for us in non-climbing shape.

still it was lots of fun and great to get out on the rock again climbing, even if it is sport climbing. will post pictures soon...

next up, we'll head to arshan, in the sayan mountains a few hours SW of irkutsk for about 5 days. if things go well, we'll be able to climb some of the splitter cracks we've seen, otherwise it looks like an amazing area to hike around in (high mountains, lakes, big peaks, etc).

4-day trek to lake heart (near lake baikal)

2009-08-03T06:29:00.004-07:00

this trip would be more appropriately named "experience life as a siberian exile".

we just got back from a 4-day trek (and also one day of climbing which i'll write a separate post about) in the hamar-daban mountains south east of irkutsk (about 5 km south of sludyanka). we had very little expectations before we set out, signed up for the trek because it fit well with our schedules and we wanted to get outside and do something active. little did we know that it'd be one of the hardest backpacking trips that either one of us had ever done.

first day involved hiking along an old road for a good portion of the day, visiting a lazurite mine, and then slogging for 2 hours uphill through a mosquito infested bog/swamp to find a campsite that our guide had never been to. almost lost my shoe twice to the bog. oh and it rained for a good portion of the day. let's say bog walking with packs (or in general) is not fun. camped in the only non-swamp area we could find on not so flat ground (we were supposed to camp about 5-10 minutes further in a meadow).

second day we bushwhacked through wet shrubbery on uneven ground (swarming with mosquitos) uphill in rain for an hour, before rejoining the trail that we set out on in the morning. ended up on top of cherkogo peak (2090 m) in fog and occasional rain, with about 30 feet visibility. had a fun, exposed hike down and spent the night near a small hut, which had a great wood stove to dry our shoes.

third day we day hiked up to a pass then up two peaks. it was a beautiful clear day and we actually got to see lake baikal. our guide victor suggested we take the "direct" route back to the hut to pick up our packs. turns out he assumed a trail existed that led from a ridge down to the hut. it involved going up two more peaks, then down a loose, steep (3rd class) gully and bushwhacking because no trail actually exists. ended up moving camp down near some waterfalls (trail passed 7 waterfalls) which were really beautiful but we were all exhausted from the day hike. at the end we got to downclimb a 20 minute section of 3rd class boulders in the rain.

fourth (last) day started by hiking down a slippery trail then straight up a rocky gully (very, very steep) and then about 16 km down a nice trail and rocky road back to the trail head.

we had two days of rain, two days of sun with a bit of rain. 4 days of wet shoes and socks, 4 days of wet packs, 4 days of swarming mosquitos, and 4 exhausting and physically challenging days.

all that said, now that we're dry, back at the hostel, things are drying and we're washing our clothes, we had a great time on the trek. not something we'd voluntarily do again, but all the hassle and adventure is what makes in memorable. victor was a good guide (except for not knowing a couple trails/directions/campsites and understating distances by as much as an order of magnitude), we had good company (our two fellow trekkers Julie and Graham from the UK were fun to be with and had great attitudes) and we did enjoy the suffering and crazy things we went through now that it's all over...

will post pictures sometime...

new pictures posted

2009-07-29T01:01:00.001-07:00

posted pictures from estonia, moscow, st. petersburg, the train, and krasnoyarsk:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

stolby

2009-07-28T23:54:00.003-07:00

decided to start a new post for stolby and provide some beta about the area since we found none before we went...

first, directions:

- from the krasnoyarsk train station, take bus 36 or 56 to the Opera Ballet Theatre Stop (next to Hotel Krasnoyarsk)

- take bus 50 from the Opera Ballet Theatre Stop to turbaza (second to last stop). the stops are not signed, ask the fare collector to let you know when to get off (stolby).

- get off the bus, cross the road, turn right and take the paved path that parallels the road. the path will cross a bridge after a couple of minutes and join the paved road to stolby. turn left on that road.

- walk ~6 1/2 km along the road to a picnic area. it's the end of the paved road on the stolby maps posted along the road. do not try to take the path up to the stolbys that cuts off the road halfway up, you will get lost.

- at the picnic area, there's a small kiosk and you'll see a dirt path that goes uphill on the left. this path leads to 1 stolb after 5 minutes.

- take a picture of the map displayed on the boards, it's very helpful.

impressions:
stolby is like a cross between joshua tree and city of rocks. coarse granite pillars with more aesthetic lines and cracks. contrary to what we though, people do climbed roped there, we saw quite a few bolted lines (which looked really hard, 5.12s, 5.13s). we did see one person free solo something relatively easy, but no one climbing down head-first. we brought our shoes and bouldered a little bit (found a nice short easy hand crack) but that was the limit to our climbing there. it's a beautiful area, and great to be back in more mountain-like settings after the coast and train. worthwhile visit if you're in siberia, but not to make a special trip out there just to climb.

in siberia, after 86 hours on the train...

2009-07-28T23:41:00.004-07:00

we made it to siberia, after spending 3 1/2 days on the train from moscow to krasnoyarsk, a day in krasnoyarsk, then another 17 hours from krasnoyarsk to irkustk, where we are right now.

the train ride wasn't quite what i expected. don't know what i was expecting, but i guess something more memorable. we rode in kupe (2nd) class, which has cabins with 4 berths in each. they're small and cramped but not too bad. scenery was okay, it didn't get interesting until the last part of the train ride. a lot of siberia is swamp land and uninhabited. our cabin mates were nice, russian, but didn't speak much. so pretty much 3 days of starting out the window and reading. getting exercise was difficult. we tried walking up the train one time and that was enough for us. so during the longer train stops we'd get out on the platforms.

the platforms at the smaller cities were interesting, lots of vendors selling fruit, fish, shoes, random stuff. less so at the bigger cities. we bought all our food before getting on the train, stuff we could eat with just hot water of without cooking (noodles, soup, bread cheese). it was nice to get off the train though.

we spent a night in krasnoyarsk, primarily to visit stolby, which climbers will know from the patagonia video. that was interesting, we ended up staying in a real russian hotel. they had no cold water (yes cold water, not hot water), who knows why. so ended up we didn't get to take a shower after being on the train for 3 days. i'll write about stolby in another post.

arrived in irkustk last night after one night on the train. we're going on a guided 4-day trek tomorrow in the southern lake baikal region and hope to climb a little bit afterwards. that's still to be worked out.

a little frustrating today as we are trying to buy our train tickets to mongolia to make sure we have tickets and leave russia before our visas expire, but it seems we can't do it from here, since we want to have a stopover in ulan-ude. i guess we'll hope for the best and either find a way to buy tickets here through an agency or try our luck in ulan-ude and hope there's room on a train...

fortunately the bed bug bites pretty much don't itch anymore. erick had bites show up the day we got on the train and got to spend the worst part of it on the train. now we're checking all the mattresses we sleep on when we arrive at the hostels/hotels.

moscow

2009-07-22T06:37:00.002-07:00

we've spent a couple days in moscow. unfortunately those stupid bed bug bites made my life very difficult the past few days. I have over 200 bites and most of them decided to flare up. Yesterday I had to wear shorts because pants hurt too much rubbing against the bites. I look frightening large bright red spots covering my legs and arms. people definitely gave me a wide berth. at least I wasn't concerned about getting robbed since no one would want to touch me. took some pictures but they're too scary to post. luckily much better today the swelling has gone down, itching much less, and could actually walk around the whole day without going crazy with pain/itchiness. erick found a couple bites today on his ankles. I can see how people go crazy living with bed bugs.

moscow is nice. the metro stations are pretty amazing from their depth to elaborate decorations. we saw lenin today which was memorable and the red square is really beautiful. also went to the cosmonaut museum which is highly recommended. some really cool exhibits (all in Russian) and things to see and cheap admission fee.

we get on the train tomorrow for 3 1/2 days to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, where stolby is (for the climbers). spend a day and a half there then back on the train for 17 hours to Irkutsk. we'll spend a week and a half in the area, visiting lake baikal and hopefully the Sayan mountains for some hiking and climbing. should be interesting and exciting.

bed bugs and st. petersburg

2009-07-20T03:54:00.002-07:00

looks like i got eaten alive by bed bugs at the vana tom hostel in tallinn (our best guess). my arms and legs are covered in over a hundred small red, very itchy bites. after lots of researching on the web, my self-diagnosis is bed bug bites. it fits the pattern of very itchy, small insect-like bites, some in patterns, many in groups of three. they're extremely itchy (as i've already said a few time) and more keep showing up everyday. we stayed at the hostel for 3 nights and the bites take up to 9 days to appear, so i'm hoping today or tomorrow should be the end of it. we should've suspected something when the sheets provided at the hostel were burgandy color, not the typical white or light color...

spent a few days in st. petersburg. lots of adventure buying train tickets, mailing postcards today. some of you can expect to receive a postcard with 5 stamps on it. yes 5. hard to fit on a postcard...

st. petersburg was nice. spent some time at the hermitage yesterday looking at the art and mostly looking at the palace room. we were by far most impressed with the hardwood floors there. some really intricate inlay patterns, pretty amazing.

we head to moscow this afternoon on the train, will be there for 3 nights, then on thursday board the train to krasnoyark (in siberia), a train ride of 3 1/2 days. should be fun or at least memorable.

e-mail us your address if you want a postcard from somewhere weird. we realized we don't have a lot of your addresses...

tips for buying train tickets in russia

2009-07-20T03:44:00.007-07:00

lessons we've learned so far for buying russian train tickets and not really speaking russian:

- writing down in cyrillic the destination, date, desired class, and desired train is very helpful

- make sure to write the date with day.month (roman numerals or preferably spelled out in russian).year. use "." between the day, month, year, do not use "/" between the day, month, year. using "/" can result in buying a ticket for the wrong month, as happened to us. we asked for a ticket for july (VII) and got one leaving in august (VIII).

- specify which train you want, either by train number or departure time (research online before going to the ticket office). writing "afternoon" (in russian) leads to some interesting facial expressions and complete confusion.

- pay in cash, even if there is a visa/master card label on the window. we have no idea what the purpose of those stickers are, but if you hand them a credit card as i did, be prepared to hear some a very exaspirated string of russian and then a quick run to the nearest ATM machine to withdraw lots of cash.

- always double check your tickets after receiving them. even with an english speaking ticket seller and an explanation of the ticket, we discovered that we purchased tickets for the day after we wanted to depart (july 29th instead of july 28th).

- outside of major cities (st. petersburg and moscow) you can only buy international tickets for trains originating from that city (ie cannot buy tickets for trains leaving from ulan ude from irkutsk). makes planning more difficult.

this list to be updated as we buy more train tickets...

st petersburg

2009-07-18T06:01:00.002-07:00

we're finally in russia, took the bus from tallin here yesterday. luckily the border crossing was straight forward and easy, except the immigration officer couldn't scan my visa page in my passport and examined every page of my passport and tried scanning other pages. called someone else over to look at my passport and made some comment that i've travelled a lot. asked me if i speak russian, i said a little bit, and he asked "why?", half laughing. interesting.

st petersburg is a city, a bit overwhelming. we're very glad we learned how to read cyrillic and a few basic russian words, it's come in handy already. walked around st petersburg today and it's a beautiful city full of old architecture, some amazing churches, and nice canals. we'll make the obligatory visit to the hermitage tomorrow, from the outside it looks massive, no wonder people can spend days inside.

other adventure so far is we bought train tickets for moscow today. as the book recommended, we wrote out where we wanted to go, the date, class in russian. we got the tickets no problem (though a lot more expensive than we thought it'd be). checked the tickets and they're for the wrong month! (august instead of july). good thing to remember is to write the date with "." in between the day-month-year not "/". after standing in line for another 20 minutes, she changed our tickets to us for the next train (our first option was fully booked) and we'll be going to moscow on monday.

Tallinn

2009-07-15T05:16:00.004-07:00

we've made it to the last point in our Baltic states and Europe portion of are trip (treating Russia as separate from Europe). we're in Tallinn now and head to st petersburg on Friday.

our time in hiiumaa was enjoyable. we rented bikes one day and biked a total of 50 km. we saw the tahkuna lighthouse, old military ruins from the soviet era, hill of crosses, the airport (huge runway with no planes at the airport) and palukula church which is abandoned and used for target practice in WWII. also stopped at some glacial boulders with our climbing shoes in case there was any potential but unfortunately nothing.

the next day we rented a car with a Finnish couple we met at the guesthouse. they go to hiiumaa almost every year so were very familiar with the sights and history. for them they liked the laid back life in hiiumaa and the old farming life reminicent of Finland 30 years ago. we hit the rest if the sights on the island, the kopu lighthouse, kassari area, the wool factory, surremoisa castle, and another trip to the airport.

came to Tallinn yesterday and after spending so much time recently on islands with fewer tourists we were a bit overwhelmed at how touristy Tallinn is and how many people there are. if course having 5 cruise ships in yesterday didn't help. after checking out the suburban bus schedules decided there's no way we can explore the bouldering we found online. even if there were more than one bus a day it'd be a miracle if we actually got off at the right place.

covered the old town sights yesterday and went to the zoo today. nice zoo with lots of different goats and sheep, polar bears, a snow leopard, and a takin.

hiiumaa

2009-07-11T06:08:00.002-07:00

after spending a couple more days in kuressaare visiting a meteor crater and some old windmills (with some fun swings) we headed back to the mainland to haapsalu. our guidebook misled us a little bit by saying all buses to Tallinn from kuressaare go through haapsalu, which isn't true. but at the bus station they told us to take the Tallinn bus and get off in virtsu after the ferry crossing and wait an hour and a half for the bus to haapsalu. bus didn't stop and the bus stop turned out to be a covered bench (with 40+ mph winds that didn't seem like an attractive option) so we decided to stay on the bus to Tallinn. caught a bus in Tallinn to haapsalu.

spent a couple nights in haapsalu which is a nice town with a castle but unfortunately the promenade and beach were dug up and under construction.

took the bus and ferry this morning to the second largest Estonian island, hiiumaa, where we'll stay here in kardla for a few days, probably rent bikes to see some lighthouses and other sights.

then on to Tallinn and the next portion of the trip, Russia and the trans-Siberian railroad.

kuressaare

2009-07-07T07:25:00.002-07:00

well bad weather finally caught up with us. after spending a few days in parnu, including a day trip to the island of kihnu where we expected to find something interesting to see and didn't see too much (there wasn't even a map of the island) and then it started storming. we ended up spending an hour huddling next to the cashier kiosk to get out of the wind and rain.

we're here in kuressaare right now, the main town on the island of saaremaa. we're staying in a nice little studio apartment place but distances on the island are pretty big and limited busses. yesterday we went to the panga cliffs to see the highest (21 meters high) cliffs on the island. it was beautiful, but unfortunately all chossy limestone and unclimable. today we were going to try to visit the island of vahalse, which supposedly has large glacial boulders and bring our climbing shoes but the weather has other things to say about that. rained last night and cloudy and sprinkling all day. weather forecast is for rain the next week, hopefully that'll change.

posted two new albums on picasa of parnu and kuressaare (so far):
http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

photos round 2 and parnu, estonia

2009-07-02T10:36:00.002-07:00

first off, posted some more photos from stuttgart through latvia. they can be found at the usual place:

http://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

we've left latvia, after spending a day yesterday looking at a windmill and wandering around the latvian country-side, including walking along the side of the highway to get to and from a hidden train station.

we're now in parnu, estonia, which is the self-billed summer capital of estonia and filled with lots of tourists. we'll stay here a couple of days before heading to one of the big islands...

latvia

2009-06-29T09:56:00.004-07:00

we've been in latvia for almost a week now. started out on the southern coastal town of liepaja, which is cute and full of old and interesting architecture, probably some of the oldest wooden buildings I've seen in Europe. visited karosta, an old military base with a tour of an old military prison, which was functional until 1997. we opted not to get the full treatment and spend the night in the prison as a "prisoner" (yes it doubles as a hostel where they lock you up and harass you in the middle if the night).

from there we headed to kuldiga, which has the widest waterfall in Europe (245 meters). not very tall though (about 6 feet) and wasn't extremely impressive. cute town though with lots of historical buildings.

spent a night in Riga to see it. it's a nice city with lots of sights but definitely caters to the big partiers, one night there was enough. kind if like a nice european version of khaosan road in Thailand including the strip clubs.

we're now in sigulda which has castle ruins, hiking, caves, and sandstone rock formations (which we can't get to without a car). we'll head from here to Estonia on Thursday.

the Baltic states have been very nice so far, very few tourists except for Riga, cheaper food, very cheap transportation.

klaipeda and missile base

2009-06-23T10:05:00.002-07:00

we've spent a couple days in Klaipeda so far, it's a nice city. our hotel is interesting located in the suburbs south of town in old communist housing. very stereotypical communist housing- big concrete buildings in variou states of disrepair. the room itself is very nice though.

headed down to the southern end of the curonian spit yesterday, to nida with a cute summer village and big sand dunes.

today was quite interesting. saw some stuff in town, a blacksmith museum which wasn't what we were expecting and a good clock museum. highlight of the day was a trip to an abandoned soviet missile base at plokstine reservation (an hour from Klaipeda), decommissioned as part of the SALT treaty. it had 4 nuclear missile heads capable of reaching turkey. now it's an empty underground bunker with massive underground missile silos, very fascinating place. don't think I'll ever see another nuclear missile base.

one more day here then we head to Latvia.

vilnius, lithuania

2009-06-20T11:59:00.003-07:00

we've spent 2 days here in vilnius, after arriving at midnight thursday because our plane was delayed in Munich and we missed the 25 minute connection in Riga. bad news we had to wait 5 hours for the next flight, which got in at midnight and subsequently we got ripped off on a cab ride to the hostel because the bus and train stopped running by then. good news they gave us a voucher fir 2 coffees at the airport. not enough for food, just coffee.

spent one day being tourons in vilnius, which us a really nice city. modern with an old feel to it, very clean, interesting architecture. saw the KGB/genocide museum yesterday. today took a day trip to trakai which was the ancient capital and has a beautiful island castle. lots of local tourists but not many foreigners. interesting local bus ride there too. we head to the coast tomorrow (Klaipeda) where we'll spend 4 days. if all goes well we'll get to visit an old abandoned soviet missile base.

some photos...

2009-06-16T10:26:00.002-07:00

posted some (fortunately edited) photos from our trip so far... i plan to upload photos to my picasa page when we have time and cheap internet connections.

htpp://picasaweb.google.com/robin.h.liu

roma, bern, stuttgart

2009-06-16T03:04:00.002-07:00

after being rained out of val di mello, christie, erick and i spent 3 days in rome being tourons. went to see the colloseum, lots of ruins, many fountains, the catacombs, and walked around a lot. urban hiking is so much more tiring than trail hiking! ran into many chinese people in italy, didn't think i'd have to use my mandarin until china!

christie headed back to val di mello to climb for the weekend, erick and i headed up to switzerland, using bern as our base. little did we know that switzerland is ridiculously expensive, especially transportation! we spent a day walking around the city, which is really nice. the next day we planned to take the train to wengen and do a hike near the base of eiger (actually see the nordwand up close). but when we got up it was cloudy in the mountains and we didn't want to pay 100+ dollars per person to take the train to the mountains if the weather was bad. so we ended up taking the train to spiez and walking around the lake back to thun (about 10 miles). it was nice, mostly urban, though there were fun exercise things, play structures, and zip lines to play with on the way.

we lucked out on weather, it was beautiful and sunny (and hot!) both days, yesterday was pouring rain. took the train to stuttgart where we're staying with erick's friends dieter and angelika for a few days, before flying to lithuania on thursday. hopefully the baltic states will be cheaper to travel in than western europe...

italy

2009-06-10T09:21:00.002-07:00

val di mello turned out to be an amazing place, very yosemite like. huge granite walls, big waterfalls, beautiful, and even better, no tourons! we met up with christie and got in 2 days of (bolted) climbing. unforutnately our luck turned after that. 3 days of constant rain and thunderstorms, luckily we rented these old converted campervans, complete with space heater, so we were warm and dry, just couldn't climb. christie even managed to borrow a rack and 2 half ropes for us too!

after wating many days and hearing "it'll be nice and sunny tomorrow" without that happening, we came to rome instead to be tourons, since christie and erick haven't been here before. we're staying one more day, then erick and i are heading up to switzerland for the weekend with the plan to be in stuttgart to visit erick's friends by monday...

Oregon, Barcelona, Andorra

2009-06-02T10:16:00.002-07:00

Quick update since I'm typing on an iPod.

After the appendectomy, spent a week at home then we took a road trip to oregon, up the coast to Portland to crater lake back home. Another week at home then we spent 3 days in Barcelona with Christie and Matt. Erick and I then came to Andorra, did a nice adventurous 3 day trek and have been hanging out here for a few days.

We fly to Milan tomorrow to meet Christie for some climbing at val di mello in the mountains.

africa and project photos

2004-10-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

i finally finished posting all my photos from this summer and reorganized all the solar oven project photos.

africa photos (including senegal, casablanca, and the gambia) are at:

http://siheyuan.org/robin/africa

project photos are at:

http://siheyuan.org/robin/africa/projects.html

a few photos from ithaca:

http://siheyuan.org/robin/roadtrips/ithaca.html

final post...

2004-09-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

i guess this will be my final post since i have now left senegal. after working through the weekend, we succesfully assembled the first prototype of the oven. a few mishaps, some things took much longer than expected, but it was at a state that i tested it on monday before i left. there are a couple other things that still need to be done to the oven, putting on the seal and supports for the reflectors, and also adding more screws or rivets to fasten the aluminum insert to the box. but i'm glad i stuck around the extra two and a half weeks and got to see a working prototype. the senegalese team will continue the work of testing it and making improvements for the next prototype. my major concern is how heavy it is. we definitely failed on that goal of making the oven lighter...

after a marathon travel day that began with ronald taking the airport at 1 am and me finally arriving at adair's place at 6p, i am in new york. it's nice being back to a place where i can understand everyone and communicate, but also a bit weird. already senegal and life in seems like a distant memory even though i left there a little more than a day ago. it's a little scary how quickly it is to adapt to life back in the states.

i will post pictures of the oven when i get home and later post my senegal pictures.

locusts!

2004-09-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

the locusts have descended upon dakar. they're causing major problems in northern africa, eating all the crops, etc. they must be on a similar cycle as the ones on the east coast, since this hasn't happened in 15 years. yesterday i saw a few at the university, then driving back to yoff in the taxi, i saw a couple swarms of them flying around. didn't think too much of it until this morning. they're swarming everywhere. the sky is just this yellowish cloud of locusts flying around. marian's balcony is littered with locusts that flew into the wall and can't move, children are trying to kill them and collect them. the garden in front of CRESP is covered with them, it's scary just trying to walk from the street to the door. sounds like they're going to be around for a long time too, they're trying to kill as many as they can before the juveniles mature. scary site, i think i'll try to stay indoors as much as i can until i leave...

the first baby is born...

2004-08-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

well, the first box is out of the mold. marian, toure, kassoum, samba, and i went down to transtech today and got to watch the first box being made. we saw them load the plastic in the mold, seal it up, stick in the furnace, take it out, wait for it to cool (which took forever), and them watched them pry it out of the mold! it's beautiful, the dimensions are just as we planned, down to the millimeter. this is surprising because we were given a ballpark number for the shrinkage factor, and i guess the number we chose was accurate. it looks just like the plans.

next major task is to make sure transtech can make the reflectors by next friday (one week), then assembly that weekend, and finished product the day i leave. i took some photos which i'll try to post on the web. since francis is gone (and with him his computer) it's a little more difficult to find a computer i can download my pictures to...

thies, project status

2004-08-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

on saturday nicole and i took a trip to thies. we were originally going to try to go to either lac rose a tortoise village near there first, but we woke up to pouring rain (rivaling that big rainstorm a couple weeks ago). we decided to go to thies first and then if it cleared up and we had time, to visit the other sites on the way back. managed to make our way onto a bang bang bus going to thies.

i think i've mentioned bang bang buses before but never explained them. they're really car rapides (though anything but rapide), old mini-buses that they pack full of people. two people on each side and then seats fold down in the aisle and they put another person there, so 5 people across. probably fits a total of 30-40 people. there's always an apprentice hanging out the back, trying to solicite customers as they drive along. when someone wants to stop, they bang on the bus, and there's another set of banging when the bus is ready to move again. hence the name bang bang bus. at first riding in a bang bang bus seemed so foreign and strange, but now it's normal.

we made it to thies, after going through some flooded roads (we saw a couple cars stalled, water running into them). nicole's friend laura met us, after some excitement. the taxi driver didn't understand the directions and left us at a telecentre near where we were supposed to meet laura. we called her from the telecentre and she said she'd meet us there. we were then trapped there talking to some other guy there who wanted to practice english, asked us for our address, and proceeded to tell us his views on violence, the state of africa, and immigration to the US. we finally called laura again and walked out to meet her. she'd called the telecentre to get directions and the guy who answered told her there were no toubabs there and it wasn't a telecentre. then he came back to tell us that she had called and was on her way there. really strange. laura took us on a nice walking tour around thies, which is a nice city. she's apprenticing with a tapestry weaver as part of her PhD research, and took us to see the weaving place, which was really interesting. then another bang bang bus home.

other than that it's been more work. nicole leaves tomorrow so i will be the only intern remaining for another 2 weeks or so. everything's going according to plan, but i'm being more cautious now and expecting some type of setback. we saw the completed mold at transtech today and they should have the first piece come out of it tomorrow or thursday. we will go on friday to inspect it. toure has finished building the wood/glass frame and the dimensions are perfect. so far, so good.

presentation and project status

2004-08-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

in my last post about the project i neglected to mention our presentation. considering how last minute it was (in terms of putting it together) it went extremely well. about 30 people showed up, most from the university (where it was held) but also some people from CRESP and also transtech. the three of us (francis, kassoum, and i) were in the same room a total of 5 minutes the entire day, just enough to go over what slides we'd put together, but no time to practice. francis and i alternated talking about the slides and kassoum translated it all into french. i don't think he knew what we were saying part of the time, so he'd just say his own thing and also add some additional information, which was great. in total it probably lasted an hour, then we took everyone out to the shop to look at the (mostly) finished mold.

after a good organizational meeting yesterday with everyone involved, i feel much better about the state of the project. assuming everyone sticks to the schedule (which will be my job to make sure that happens), we should be assembling the first prototype my last weekend here and presenting the finished prototype the day i leave. so that's encouraging, just need to make sure things stay on track.

francis left last night after some lessons on how to make bissap and orange gingembre (two excellent senegalese juices) which he gave me a bottle of each. so now the fate of the project is in my hands, though he'll still be doing some work in the US on the project.

carnivorous animals

2004-08-20T05:46:00.000-07:00

wednesday turned out to be our first non-work day in over a week and a half. in the afternoon nicole, francis, and i went to visit hann park, which is something i wish we'd done earlier. it's 20 hectare park filled with trees, nice jogging/biking/walking path, a botanical garden (though it was in need of major repairs), a big pond/swamp, a nursery, and also a zoo. surrounded by the craziness of dakar on all four sides. it's an amazing place to spend time, very peaceful. the zoo though was very interesting. all the guidebooks say it's not worth the 320CFA to get in ($0.70) which i could understand when we first went in. random concrete enclosures in various states of disrepair, a camel, some birds. but then we saw the lions (the national animal of senegal). well actually first we saw all these large (maybe cow) bones littering the ground of one enclosure. then the lions. we lucked out and followed a zoo-keeper around, and he entertained us all by playing with the chimps (showing us their tricks), showing us the lions (there were 8 of them in 4 places), crocodiles, tiger, monkeys, pumas, etc. we were about to leave when he called us back. the truck just came with a dead (skinned) cow in it. we got to watch him hack it up with a huge machete, then go around feeding all the animals. watched them tearing at the huge chunks of meat and bone. pretty gross, but fascinating nonetheless. also you're really close to the cages, not those huge buffers they have in the US.

an extra two and a half weeks...

2004-08-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

so it came down to the day before i'm scheduled to leave senegal, but i am extending my stay here by an additional 2 and a half weeks, now leaving tuesday 7th sept. after much deliberation and also pressure from francis, marian (the CRESP director), and our unversity partner, i've decided it would be in the best interest of the solar oven project if i stayed on for a little longer.

the project is at a tentative state right now. after francis, kassoum, samba (our university partners), and two transtech workers put in a solid 5 days of work, including working through the weekend, the mold for the solar oven box is close to being complete. at least at a state where transtech can finish it off (and we feel comfortable letting them do the additional work without our help/supervision). however, the reflector molds still need to be made (though this is much simpler) and work needs to be done in coordinating how the finished product will be assembled, distributed, etc. marian feels that she can follow up on things a little bit, but we really need one of us here as a presence to make sure things get done in a timely fashion. i expect (more like hope) that after an additional 2 weeks the project will be in a state that everyone feels comfortable it can be and will be continued by our seneglese work partners (with some checking up by marian).

realistically, i have my doubts as to how much i can actually accomplish in two weeks, because francis has been the one spending all the time in the shop, making the CAD model and drawings, and supervising all the workers. i know i will not be much help in the shop, but marian thinks that my presence will be enough, which i hope is true. there's also a few more insulation and temperture tests i can run, to verify our data, plus writing up a good report, etc.

in my mind i was all set to leave tomorrow, so the change in staying for an additional two weeks is throwing me off a bit. also francis is leaving tomorrow night (as planned) and nicole (the only other intern left) is leaving wednesday, so i will be by myself for two additional weeks. it's probably good though, at least i'll be forced speak more french, and hopefully pick up a little more wolof (more than the 5 words i currently know).

work, work, and more work

2004-08-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

so it's coming down to crunch time on our project. we're giving a presentation on tuesday afternoon at the university, to people there, people from CRESP, and people from transtech, summarizing our work this summer. hopefully it'll spark interest in the project and motivate people to actually continue it after our departure. more importantly, other things need to be finished before then, which we've been working on for the past week.

we finally started the insulation tests, determining the conductivity of different materials that can be used for insulation in the ovens. but each test takes 4-5 hours to run, we can run two at a time, and we have 15 samples to test. ideally we'd like to test each sample twice. so we put in several long days in a row at the university running the experiements. two 12-hour days on thursday and friday, a 10-hour day saturday, and we also went and worked today. so much for our last weekend in senegal.

the weekend work schedule had to do with the construction of the mold. we found out thursday that transtech needs help to make the mold for the box. this we found out after visiting them unannounced, after they'd had our detailed drawings for 2 weeks. they probably didn't realize that francis and i are leaving on the 20th. the requested assistance from kassoum and samba (our university partners). they decided the best way to go about it was to move all the material to the university, so that they could use all the machines there, and have two transtech mold makers join them this weekend. francis supervised them yesterday and helped them scribe and cut all the pieces in the steel sheets. today they started welding the pieces together. hopefully it can come close to completion tomorrow. i, on the other hand, took pictures of the process and ran the insulation tests.

but two more long days and we'll be done. we've decided that after our presentation, we'll stop working. spend our last two days in senegal doing what we planned to do this weekend, visiting lac rose and hann park, and also some last minute shopping in dakar. the end of this internship hasn't been too relaxing, i think i need a vacation after this...

minor setbacks

2004-08-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

i guess i've let myself become a little too confident that things would turn out as planned before we leave. the new solar oven was progressing very smoothly until up to a week go. we submitted the drawings to transtech, the people at the university were conducting multiple experiments with toure's old solar oven, taking temperature measurements necessary to comply with the ASAE solar oven standards. everything kind of stalled last week. apparently this is the time of the year that everyone gets sick in senegal. i guess equivalent to december/january flu season in the US. it's been rotating around my host family, a couple people sick for a few days and when they're better than other are sick. the mold maker at transtech, who's responsible to making our mold was sick all of last week. fortunately he returned to work yesterday, so i'm hoping we'll still get to see a finished box before we leave. i'm not so optimistic about seeing a whole solar oven though. the guy at the university who's running the experiments was also sick most of last week, so there were also setbacks there. but those tests were finished and we have finally (after 3 weeks or so) returned the oven back to madame toure.

this week we plan to begin our test of insulation material. we've collected 13 bags of potential insulators, including chicken feathers, cotton, peanut shells, rice husks, saw dust, foam, newspaper, among other things. we built box yesterday for the test, then found out that each test will take 8 hours to run and it's preferable to run 2 tests for each material. so we will start tomorrow and try to run as many tests as possible before aug 19th. another big concern of ours is if the project will continue after we leave. we have been working with senegalese partners and hope that they will continue to carry on the project until it reaches the production stage. the worst thing that could happen would be for work to stop once we are gone. we hope to find someone at CRESP that can follow up with our partners weekly, to make sure things are still moving along.

our time here's running short. matt (who's been working on a fascinating project about the muslim layen brotherhood here in yoff) is leaving tonight. linda leaves on friday. francis and i leave in a week and a half, at 3am on aug 20th. hopefully we can wrap things up by that time but more importantly i hope that at least some, if not most, of our work we've done this summer will have a lasting impact after we leave.

rain storm

2004-08-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

rainy season has officially started here in senegal. we got the first big rainstorm here in yoff on sunday night, the night nikki left. we waited out the storm before moving her luggage up to the road so she could catch a taxi. little did i know that was only the beginning. what we did find out that night is that our rainwater collection system works, since when we checked at 11pm that night, the 500L water tank was completely full! it's good to know that our design and installation worked as planned.

today was another adventure with the rain. francis, ronald (one of our senegalese work partners here at CRESP), and i went to a big market in dakar to look for chicken feathers. we're conducting a test to determine the performance of different types of insulation that can be used in the solar oven. when we got there ronald told us to wait where the taxi dropped us off, so that people wouldn't charge for the feathers since there's toubabs involved. he was gone 25 minutes or so and we started getting worried that he'd come out the wrong entrance and couldn't find us, so francis went off to search. ronald came back and francis eventually made it back. ronald started to take us to see the chicken place and on the way the skies opened up and it started to pour rain. we found a place underneath a building to wait out the storm. it kept raining harder and harder. when i thought it couldn't rain any harder, it did. people were moving all their stuff out of the street (vegetables, fish, etc, that they were selling) and the street quickly turned into a big river. eventually it jumped the curb and the entire place was full of rushing water (about mid-calf deep). a few brave souls waded through the water, while others decided it's the perfect time to get their bags of garbage and dump it into the water. it took more than half an hour after the heavy rain stopped before the water level went down to a point that we could walk through it.

we then took a taxi to another place (after waiting out another round of rain) and the streets were flooded. the taxi we got into didn't have working windshield wipers (and it was still pouring rain at this time) and we could also see holes in the frame of the car, so there was a bit of water coming in. the best part though was when he drove through some pretty deep water and the water started coming in underneath the door! there was 2-3 inches of water deposited onto the floor of the car.

it was a great experience though to see all of it and i'm glad we happened to choose this day to go to the market. of course i hope this isn't typical for rainy season and that we have to go through this every day...

crazy taxi experience

2004-07-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

nothing too exciting to report. it's the first weekend we've been in yoff and not traveling around. francis and i, along with kassoum (our student partner) and marian went up to the village of mekhe on saturday, for a visit of the village by the global environmental fund. they have just begun the process of awarding mekhe with a $50,000 grant over three years to buy solar ovens. it is also the village that abdoulaye toure (the promoter of solar ovens that we are working with) lives in for part of the time (he has two wives there and one here in yoff). it was interesting to see the process of how grants are awarded and the importance of this site visit. also the women of the village will be implementing the grant, so they played an important role in the discussion.

that night the other interns and i talked a couple of our senegalese partners, ronald and lamine, to take us out to a discotechque, so we can experience it one time. they don't get going until after midnight, so that's when we headed out. somehow it ended up the me and 3 other interns (all toubabs) were in a cab, with no idea where the club was. ronald had given the driver directions and the name of the place when he negotiated the taxi fare. we get to dakar and the driver asks us where we're going. we had no idea, told him what we thought the name of the place was (which wasn't quite right). he took us to some random club and wanted us to get out. we refused, since it was clearly not the right place. he then proceeded to drive down virtually every street in dakar, hoping to somehow stumble on the place. after 15 minutes of circling around and one attempt at asking directions, we saw ronald standing on the street corner and met up with the rest of the group. i guess we learned that even when drivers say they know where they're going, they're probably just saying that to get your money...

the solar oven project is going smoothly. we have a design and just need to print out detailed drawings to give to transtech so they can start making the molds. we have also started some tests on the original solar oven at the university, which will serve as a baseline that we can compare the performance of the new oven to.

the gambia

2004-07-20T08:10:00.000-07:00

the seven other CRESP interns and i (along with a senegalese co-worker) went on a trip down to the gambia this past weekend. it was a full day affair going down. we left thursday morning and 9 hours later, after a taxi, a bus, an hour of haggling at the gambian border, another bus, a ferry, and a taxi, we made it to safari garden hotel in fajara (outside of banjul). we'd met gerri and maurice (the owners of the hotel) a few weeks earlier when we were in louly. they had come up to see the village and meet marian because they are setting up an eco-village down in the gambia and were interested to see how things were done in senegal. their hotel was great, a nice restaurant, a pool, close to the beach, and most importantly, free breakfast.

francis and i attempted to work on the design for the solar oven the first day (since we were supposed to present a detailed design to transtech- the plastic company, on monday), while john and nicole played golf (on a course that had 'browns' instead of 'greens') and the others went off to see crocodiles and monkeys. we wandered around banjul in the afternoon, mainly visiting albert market and being harrassed and followed by many people trying to sell us things.

saturday was the best day. gerri and maurice arranged to take us down to kartong, the eco-village they're helping set up. the women and children of the village gave us a great welcome with drumming and dancing, then we were taken to see the sacred crocodile pool. then it was on to another part of the village that maurice had never been to (even though he and gerri go down there every weekend), where they make palm oil, palm wine, and distilled cashew alcohol (which we got to try). then we visited the river port, the border between the gambia and casamance (senegal) and saw the oyster drying and shell industry there. for lunch we went to a UNDP sponsored site, where the youths of kartong are working to build an eco-area with trails and a restaurant. the highlight of the day was at the end, when we ended up at the site of gerri and maurice's future eco-camp on the beach. the nicest beach i've ever been to, totally secluded, warm water, beautiful sand. their plan is to build the eco-lodge in a sustainable manner (ie using bamboo for furniture), train the villagers to run it, and after 25 years, the ownership will be transfered to the villagers.

the trip back to yoff was another long adventure. everything was okay going back to the border, the bus we had arranged for was there to pick us up. nikki, bob, and linda were dropped off halfway at louly, where they're doing a nutritional survey. shortly after dropping them off, a little past the town of mbour, the bus started making a funny noise. the driver stopped, tried to fix it, drove about 30 feet, and stopped again. he realized that it was broken, and since we'd paid him, it was his responsibility to get us back to yoff. luckily alioun (the senegalese partner) was there to negotiate and translate from wolof. we ended up on the last 6 seats of a bang-bang bus (car rapide) packed full of senegalese. that was quite an adventure. but it was a great trip and we eventually made it back here to yoff.

st. louis

2004-07-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

5 other interns and i went to st. louis this past weekend (located in northern senegal bordering mauritania). we stayed at a beautiful hotel (the 4 of us girls had an air-conditioned bungalow) with a really nice pool, located next to the beach, and most importantly, hot water. probably the nicest showers i've ever taken. even when it is constantly more than 80 degrees outside, taking cold showers everyday does get a bit old. the main part of town is located on an island with european style architecture. st. louis is where the french started their colonization of senegal, so i has a very european feel to it. ate some great food at the restaurants, exactly what i needed to revitalize myself for more senegalese food this week. there's a big fishing industry there, so there's one area where there's racks and racks of drying fish. let's just say the smell is pretty strong. another trip this weekend to the gambia for 4 days.

otherwise, the solar oven project is progressing really well. one company here in dakar who makes products out of recycled plastics has offered to make the preliminary mold for us for free. all we have to do is provide them with a design and they claim the turn around time will only be 2-4 days (which is amazing speed for senegal). hopefully this will reduce the cost of the solar oven significantly, so that it can be successfully distributed throughout senegal.

4th of july festivities

2004-07-06T04:19:00.000-07:00

on saturday we went and saw the national senegalise team play zambia in a soccer match. there were drummers drumming the whole time during the game, which made the atmosphere more lively. the scoreboard in the stadium is broken, but since it's soccer it wasn't hard to keep track of the score. it would've been nice to know how much time was remaining though. senegal won 1-0, but everyone was very unhappy after the game even though their team won. i guess quality of play is more important than a win.

we went to a 4th of july celebration sponsored by the embassy on sunday. guards in front of the area, we had to go through a metal detector, and pay to enter. they were selling american food though (hot dogs, hamburgers, cookies, etc) which was a nice break from the daily thieboujian (rice and fish) normally served at lunch. being surrounded by so many americans again was a bit surreal, we could've been anywhere in the US.

on the way home, nikki and i saw a wedding dance celebration outside of our house. our host sister was in the wedding and invited us to watch. it was similar to the village dancing, a large group of (mostly) females and kids gathered in a circle with drummers on one side. people would go up and dance in the middle for a minute or so then go sit back down. right after we sat down, the lead drummer came over to us and pulled us into the middle of the circle. by this time it was pretty dark, so there's was a spotlight set up so that the video camera could capture all the action. the two of us just stood there, with 100 people staring at us, until another woman came up to dance with us. of course we had no idea what we were doing, but everyone was very amused by our attempt at senegalise dancing. when we went to sit back down the drummer came back to us and told us since we danced we now had to give him money. so we did and sat back down. the next day kids in the neighborhood whenever they'd see us yelled 'toubab' (white person) and started dancing and laughing. so we paid money to be embarrassed in front of all the people. i have a feeling our dancing might be the highlight of the wedding video, the portion the couple shows to everyone. oh well, after that i don't think i'll be embarrassed dancing again.

louly

2004-07-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

the other interns and i have just returned from louly, a village about 2 hours south of dakar. we helped with a baseline survey of the village, which involved going around to all 50 households, asking them individual and household questions, and then weighing and measuring all the people who were present at that time.

it was interesting to see the difference between the city and a village without running water or electricity, still dependent on argriculture as the sole source of income. i must say it is nice to be able to take a shower again and wash off all the built up dirt, and to have access to a fan again.

yesterday evening, our last night in the village, there was a village dance with griots (musicians- drummers). the villagers were extremely amused by us toubabs (white people), especially when we tried to dance. dancing is a big public display, with a couple people dancing inside the circle of people watching. the locals would drag us up one or two at a time to dance with them and we'd amuse them by trying senegalise dancing moves, which involves moving various parts of the body very quickly...