Adventures in Wordpress

Hey gang,

Though the past three months on Blogger have been good, we've decided to jump ship for greener pastures over at WordPress. You can look forward to nicer layouts, more pictures, and general awesomeness. Please visit us at smashadventures.wordpress.com.

Love,
S&M

I Knew There Was A Reason I Bought That Deodorant

As I mentioned in my last post, heading from Ubud to Flores was bittersweet: Ubud is such a hard place to leave, yet it felt good to be 'travelling' again, exploring a place that neither M nor I had been before. We landed in Labuan Bajo on March 15, and my first impression was "My goodness, it's beautiful here." Bali is obviously also beautiful, but in more of a temples-and-gently-swaying-rice-fields sort of way. Nusa Tenggara, as the stretch of islands east of Bali from Lombok to Timor and the Alor Archipelago is known, is more rugged, volcanic, and (even though I haven't actually been there) reminiscent of New Zealand. Flores itself is incredibly mountainous - driving across it, it's impossible to average more than 20 or 25 mph without plummeting off a steep cliff into a thickly jungled ravine - and it's surrounded by hundreds of tiny, lushly green islands sprinkled irregularly on deep blue sea water.

When you're surrounded with vistas like these, it's hard to stop snapping photos.

Lovely!

Speaking of sea water, diving is one of the primary reasons we ventured east. (That, and the Lonely Planet description saying Flores had "the kind of beauty that grabs hold of you tightly and doesn't let go.") Flores, Rinca, and Komodo (as in the dragons) are surrounded by cold, fast-moving currents, and those conditions are optimal for healthy coral and larger pelagics. After arriving in LB, we poked around a few tour operators who were offering two day/one night live-aboard snorkel/dragon-sighting trips to Komodo National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). We knew we'd spend a day diving, but also wanted to check out the world's largest lizard, easily capable of running you down and taking a chunk out of you, so this seemed like a great idea. As fate would have it, we ran into a couple on the street comparison-shopping for the same tour. I first noticed them because the girl was wearing my exact same REI sunglasses, a tee shirt just like one I'd brought on the trip, and was carrying a LeSportSac purse. Obviously her taste was impeccable, so we started chatting and learned they were Americans from Seattle who'd quit their jobs and were traveling for a year...sound familiar? We joined forces and were lucky enough to spend the next couple of days with them, first on the overnight boat trip, then diving with manta rays.

Talking shop.

Dawn and Josh were eight months into their trip, and they dropped a ton of knowledge on us, from glaciers to climb in Ecuador to suggestions for travel gear. We also traded blogs, and after seeing theirs (hers and his), I was utterly ashamed of provincial little Smashadventures. We had no pages. We had no slideshows. We had no maps. This encounter spurred the recent changes you've noticed on the site, and there are more coming. I've decided to bring a computer on Part II of our journey to make it easier to update this site (lucky you, eh?). As it turns out, traveling has changed a lot since I last took a big trip three years ago. Internet cafes have been replaced by nearly ubiquitous WiFi, even in tiny villages, and M and I a laptop-less anomaly. We've also decided to add a second camera to our repertoire, so you should ideally be seeing more/better pictures in the future.

Anyhoo, the overnight trip ended up being terrific. If you were traveling alone and were thrown in with a terrible group, I could imagine it being torturous (endless hours on a small boat; sleeping on salty, humidity-moistened mats under damp blankets), but we had Dawn, Josh, a delightful Spaniard named Inigo (really!), and a dour, mysterious Frenchman named Michelle, but at least he kept to himself. The snorkeling was outstanding: vibrant colors, tons of fish, and a handful of manta rays around eight feet long that flitted around in the depths beneath us, and with one, tiny stroke of their wings, would shoot out of sight. The real stars of this trip, however, were the Komodo dragons. Watching them, I was taken back to childhood memories of the Matthew Broderick classic 'The Freshman,'  featuring Marlon Brando and a reptile which in retrospect must only have been a monitor lizard, because these things were huge. Take a look:

Unless you live in Alaska, Maine, or somewhere else where you might regularly encounter bears or moose, it's easy to forget just how big animals can be. That might sound a touch inane, but until you're swimming with a whale shark or watching a giraffe pluck leaves from a branch twenty feet above your head, you're distanced from the natural awe that sheer size inspires, even before you take grace, speed, or strength into account. That point was driven home the following day when Dawn, Josh, M and I went out for a pair of dives. The first dive was excellent, albeit challenging; we swam back and forth across the face of a gorgeous underwater pinnacle, stopping and reversing course every time we hit the current. (When we mention currents around Komodo, we mean serious currents, as in sudden patches of Class II whitewater on the surface in the middle of otherwise flat ocean. Underwater, it was like swimming into a wall: try as you might, there was no moving forward.)

The second dive, however, is what inspired the sense of wonder I mentioned before, even more than the snorkeling we did the previous day. Because guess what animal loves currents? Manta rays. Our dive site was named 'Manta Point,' and this was not an oversell. We saw at least a dozen rays, some up to four and a half meters long. When I was a kid, I read and loved the Scott O'Dell book The Black Pearl. This was the cover on the copy my classroom teacher gave me, and until that dive, I always assumed the cover artist was employing visual hyperbole for effect. Not so. For nearly the entire duration of the dive, I was yelling "Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit" inside my head. The rays were astoundingly large, smooth, and powerful. They didn't swim as much as fly. I know I've used the words terrific, excellent, and outstanding in this post already, but if I didn't use another superlative word here, I'd be understating the experience. It was amazing. Luckily for us, our new friend Josh was equipped with a GoPro, so he captured some of the magic and shared it with us to share with you. Check it out:

After one last dinner, M and I bid our new friends farewell, and continued eastward along Flores towards Mount Kelimutu. Check back for pictures and videos soon!

Signing Off, 

S&M

P.S. Wondering about the title of the blog post? On the day before we left for this trip, I dropped by Walgreens to pick up a stick of deodorant for M. He specified only that he wanted Old Spice and something I liked the smell of. This is what I chose. As it happens, exotic winds and spicy freedom smell great, and so has M.

One look at you and I can't disguise, I've got hungry eyes. 

There's no way we're taking our eyes off him.

Bali in Videos

Hey team,

After five amazing days of diving in Malaysia, M and I jumped ship (via plane) for Bali, a.k.a. 'Sasha's favorite place in the world.' Three years ago, I was lucky enough to visit a great friend living/chef-ing in Ubud with another great friend. Aside from the fact that friend #2 and I both came down with leptospirosis ten days after returning from our travels, it was the perfect two week adventure. In planning this trip, a return to Indonesia was a foregone conclusion; I wanted to share the wonders of Bali and Lombok with M, and continue exploring east to Rinca, Komodo, and Flores.

We arrived in Bali late on March 3 (torrential rains in KL had delayed our plane), spent one night in a mediocre-by-Bali-standards-but-still-very-nice hotel in Seminyak, and then checked into Desa Seni. Cue Bali video log number one:

Desa Seni: Pimp My Vacation

 

We begrudgingly departed our Eden two days later, feeling thoroughly relaxed, refreshed, toned, stretched, clean, and healthy after two days of nonstop swimming, reading, eating organic produce, and taking yoga classes from lovely Spanish teachers ("Alright, breathe deep, and find your thenter") and something called Nia Dance from a jovial yet Zen African-American man named Saffire ("Yeah everyone, feel the groove and spiral around the room. Oh yes, spiral. Spiral. Spiral." In case you were questioning Desa Seni's hippie cred, the NY Times describes Nia Dance as an "emotional fitness odyssey."). Next up, we took a public bus up Bali's gorgeous west coast and landed in Pemuteran, a seaside town down the road from Bali's one and only national park. We spent a pair of days snorkeling in the park and scooting around on a rented motorbike, but our time there was notable mostly for our accommodation. Presenting Bali video log number two:

Pemuteran: Pimp My Guest House

The only downside of having an enormous garden in your bathroom is that you have also have an enormous garden's worth of insects in your bathroom. Fun fact: cockroaches love soap! I accidentally left our bar on the stones underneath the shower head once, and when I came out, it was writhing with roaches. They scattered when they saw me, but the soap was covered in deep lines and squiggles that resembled ancient runes in miniature, created by their forelegs' persistent scraping. Were they eating it? Is mandarin-mint soap from the Hyatt like catnip to them? I'll never know. A few days later we ventured south to escape the coastal heat in favor of Bali's central mountains, which are spectacularly beautiful. We hiked and motorbiked around a tiny village called Munduk for two days before driving to Ubud, where we arrived just in time for Nyepi (the Balinese New Year) and tried not to get rabies from the primates in the Monkey Temple Forest. On to Bali video logs three and four!

Ubud Monkey Forest: Pimp My iPhone Videos

Nyepi: Pimp My Ogoh-Ogoh

 

Leaving Ubud is always hard to do, but it's particularly tough when you've been away from home for nearly three months.The thing is, Ubud has a lot in common with the Bay Area, including but not limited to: scenic running routes, an abundance of delicious, healthy vegetarian food, stores selling incense and crystals, and extremely fit young people who only seem to wear tight-fitting organic cotton yoga gear. Knowing how easy it would be to get happily trapped there, we bought tickets to Labuan Bajo, Flores, and flew east on March 15th. For any non Spanish speakers out there, Flores means 'flowers,' and the island was given its name (and its religion - many inhabitants are Catholic) by Portuguese explorers in the 16th century. Check back soon to read about Komodo dragons, giant manta rays, and the reason so many features have been added to Smashadventures recently!

Over and Out,

S&M

Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

When my brother and I were traveling in peninsular Malaysia three years ago, I got my Advanced Open Water PADI certification at Turtle Bay Divers, on Pulau Perhentian. My dive master there was a fantastic person and teacher named Mike. Born and bred in Kuala Lumpur, he oozed cool, so I tried to impress him as much as possible by maintaining excellent buoyancy and finding lots of nudibranches on our dives together. When I asked him about his #1 dream dive destination, he got a faraway look in his eyes and spoke of an island called Sipadan, just off the coast of Sabah. "You look up, and you see turtles swimming above you. You look down, you see sharks beneath you," he said with a sigh. Sold. I don't know if Mike's made it to Sipadan yet - I hope so - but what he said stuck in my mind. When M and I sat down in October and began planning our route for this adventure, Malaysian Borneo was at the top of my list. Furthermore, when we sent out our 'Hey world, here's where we're going, do you have any recommendations for us' email to everyone we knew, several people came back and said that the best diving they had ever done was at Sipadan. Double sold.

We signed up for a five day, four night package at an island resort with a dive operator called Scuba Junkies, with M earning his Open Water certification along the way. M and I mostly have been winging our travel, planning two or three days in advance, but to visit Sipadan, a protected marine park, one needs a permit. The government of Sabah only issue 120 permits per day for divers and snorkelers, with odd restrictions on things like gender balance, so we did our best to anticipate our movements and booked five weeks in advance. With the exception of M's first day on the island, when he had to spend around a hundred hours doing all the boring PADI classroom work while I was reading in the sun and snorkeling with turtles, this part of our trip was delightful and vacation-like. In fact, it was sort of like dive camp for adults.

Being the prime athlete that he is, M attended plenty of skill-based sports camps growing up (not to mention the one he founded), but with the exception of a week long swim camp the summer before ninth grade and a few weeks at a musical theater workshop thing the next summer, it's something I never really experienced. Enter life at Scuba Junkies: breakfast began at 7:30 AM in a big communal dining hall, where all meals were served, and we reported to the jetty at 9:00 AM for our first dive. Afterwards, we'd have 45 minutes for tea and coffee before reporting back around noon for our second dive, followed by lunch. After the third dive, tea and biscuits were served, and then we had the rest of the day to wander the island, watch the local kids play with marbles, find a soccer game to join, or try to piece together a decent run by doing the same loop over and over, with only a teeny bit of trespassing onto one of the larger resort's garden paths. Dinner was served just after seven, and we'd stuff ourselves to the gills before retiring to our room. One of the great ironies of diving is that in spite of barely moving at all when you're underwater - exertion is discouraged, since you suck more air - it leaves you both ravenous and spent. We could barely keep our eyes open at night, and would get in a few minutes at most of our team read, The Hobbit, before passing out. There were nights when M asked me what I last remembered from the story, and I'd name an event from the first minute and a half of his previous night's reading. Needless to say, we did not get very far in our Tolkien.

Four days passed blissfully in this manner, and on our fifth day, we went to Sipadan, which was everything we expected and more. Here are our thoughts halfway through the day:

The only downside to all of this is that M is possibly the world's most spoiled new diver. 

After a full day of swimming with the sharks and turtles Mike promised, we returned to Semporna, the not-terribly-attractive coastal town that serves as the portal to Mabul, Sipadan, and a handful of other islands. Our flight to Indonesia was the next afternoon, and we expected the evening to be completely uneventful. However, as we mentioned in a previous post, we sort of got caught in a shootout between supporters of a Filipino sultanate and the Malaysian army. M explains: 'We first got wind of it when the restaurant we were eating in started shutting down at 7:38 PM communicating that the police were coming and they would be fined if they were not closed. As you can imagine this was confusing to us, having eaten there before and much later in the night. In any event, we stepped outside to walk the short distance back to our hostel and noticed that everywhere was shut down, or in the process of doing so. And then we got different bits of info that there was a shootout, that it was just rumor etc. etc.  We heard the next day from fellow travelers that there was a shootout VERY near to our hostel. Really though, I'm not sure how close we were to the larger standoff, this shootout may have been the result of police tracking down a few stragglers. All in all there were nearly thirty killed on both sides and I don't think we were anywhere near that. The airport the next day did have real military presence including tanks. So easy to miss those things if you don't speak the language.'

Who knew that between Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Malaysia, the latter would be the closest we'd get to danger? Next stop: Bali, Isle of Wonder.

Love and Lollipops,

S&M

P.S. More news on the Sulu Sultanate/Malaysia clash.

Sepilok, Sukau, Semporna, and Other Hard-to-Remember Names

Hey gang,

It's officially time to play catch up. We've been in Indonesia for eleven days, and we haven't even gotten past the first four days of Malaysia! Here goes.

• We caught an eastbound bus the day after climbing Kinabalu. I mention the bus only because it was playing the second 'Ghost Rider' movie in English. With Malay subtitles. Which had then been translated back into English subtitles. Now, I like Nic Cage as much as the next girl, but the Ghost Rider franchise is not my favorite of his films (it's a toss up between 'Lord of War' and 'Honeymoon in Vegas'). What I do love is getting to compare the hilarious juxtaposition between what all the characters were saying and the words on the screen. For example, "I'm Jonny Blaze" became "I am the devil magistrate." Amazing.
• Our eastbound bus was headed toward Sepilok, a small hamlet booming with big tourism because of its world-famous orangutan rehabilitation center. (Fun fact: M discovered only a week before our visit to Sepilok that it's orangutan, not orangutang. The name comes from Malay: 'orang' meaning man, and 'hutan' meaning forest.) We spent a day visiting the SORC (Sepilok Orangutan Rehab Center) and hiking around the RDC (Rainforest Discovery Center) and getting SSWDKWTDWO (So Sweaty We Didn't Know What To Do With Ourselves). Fortunately, we were staying at a lodge called Paganakan Dii, and if you're reading this, stop right now and go to Borneo if only to stay there.  We had a villa to ourselves - well, closer to a grown-up treehouse than a villa - with a beautiful indoor/outdoor bathroom and walls that were almost all sliding, so you could create an indoor/outdoor bedroom as well if you wanted to. It was delightful, and a much-needed respite.
• Around this time I developed an odd medical symptom, wherein it hurt terribly every time I swallowed. As a food lover, this was a big problem. Fortunately, M and I have a glut of medical professionals in our lives, and after email consultations with four of them, we figured out that I had developed an ulcerated esophagus as a side effect of the doxycycline we're taking for malaria. If you're reading this, stop right now and make a note to yourself NEVER to take doxy without a meal and lots of water, and never just before bed. A couple days off the drugs and I was chowing down like a pro. Special shout out to Drs. Cochran, Cox, Solomon, and Rakowski for their combined smarts.
• Next, we ventured to Sukau, a tiny village on the tourist map only because of its location on the Kinabatangan, Malaysia's second longest river. Our journey here was also notable, not for the epic cinema, but because we wound up in the back of a car with a driver who was certifiably insane. (It's unclear whether he was a taxi driver; we were standing at a juction and he pulled over and offered us a ride.) Other passengers included a tiny old woman who cackled at everything the crazy driver said, and an illegal immigrant from Indonesia who we had to stop and wait for after he got out of the car and hiked through the jungle to avoid a military checkpoint. Wildlife viewing is the name of the game in Sukau, and every little riverfront lodge has its own boat to take tourists out on river cruises to spot local fauna. After the Serengeti I felt sort of jaded and didn't expect to be impressed by the animals, but our cruise was amazing. We saw a huge herd of pygmy elephants (cuter because they're small, as with most things excluding M) the biggest crocodile of our trip yet, wild orangutans, pig-and long-tailed macaques, and the hilarious proboscis monkey. The latter is so delightful because more than any other primates, they look like awkwardly proportioned men wearing fur suits. While the tourism industry is undoubtedly an enormous boon for Sukau and the other villages in the reason, the sad truth is that animal life along the river is so dense because the rest of their habitat has been taken over by palm oil plantations. Sabah produces fully a quarter of Malaysia's palm oil, most of which is exported to China, though it's a relatively small proportion of the country's land mass.

Next up, adventures in Semporna, 'dive camp' in Mabul, and escapades at Sipadan, one of the world's greatest dive sites!

Over and Out,
S&M

Mount Kinabalu Videos, Finally

This means we can finally start working chronologically through the enormous backlog of videos we've taken since climbing this mountain. Wahoo! This first video was taken immediately after we made it down from the most precarious part of the summit, just after sunrise:

And a few hours later, after completing the Via Ferrata without any major mishaps:

We'll hopefully keep things flowing a bit more regularly from here on out! To all the fourth year med students in our lives, we're thinking about you and wishing you a happy Match Day!

Love,

S&M

Mount Kinabalu

Hey gang,

As promised, here's a recap of our climb of Mount Kinabalu. If you didn't read our last long post, let me set the stage for you: the morning of our climb, M has slept, I have not. This is not an unusual state of affairs.We arrived at park headquarters around 8 AM, paid the multitude of mandatory fees (park, guide, conservation, etc.) met our guide, who spoke a small handful of English words, and were soon ready to set off. We arrived as early as we did because we'd signed up to do the Via Ferrata. 'Via ferrata' is Italian for 'iron way,' but in this case it refers to a trail made up of iron rugs, footholds, cables, and rails wrapped along Kinabalu's north face. It's basically a completely safe yet thrilling/terrifying alternate method of descending from the peak. We needed to arrive at the base camp where we'd spend the night no later than 3 PM for a safety briefing, or we'd have to forfeit the trip (prepaid via an extremely complicated overseas bank transfer, shout out to M's financial people at Chase who helped make it happen). We heard most people complete the hike in 4-6 hours.

The Lonely Planet had mentioned that it was possible to walk from park HQ to the Timpohon Gate, the 'real' starting point of the hike, in an hour, but that it was also possible to hop in a car for 16 ringgit (just over five dollars). Since we generally put ourselves in the category of hardcore individuals, we thought we might hoof it, adding three miles to the day's work. However, our guide immediately went over to one of the waiting cars, opened the door, and motioned for us to get in. "Car it is," we thought, half disappointed. Two minutes later, we were delighted by the choice that had been made for us. The first half mile of the walk was relatively flat and scenic, but soon after, the pedestrian path on the side of the road disappeared and the incline steepened dramatically. After a fifteen minute ride, we reached the gate, ogled the results of the 2012 Mt. Kinabalu Climbathon, and began our own journey up the mountain around 9 AM.

The hike itself was relatively uneventful: it was pleasantly cool, and felt great to be moving. We were chugging along at a decent clip, sometimes leaving our guide a ways behind, passing other hikers consistently, and reached the rest hut where our guide had indicated we'd have our lunch break at 10:45 AM. No matter, we can always eat, we thought. We didn't realize just how quickly we were moving until we overheard another couple resting there say they'd left an hour before us that morning, and were then told by some descending hikers that we were 'winning', i.e. we were the first upward-bound hikers they'd seen that day. (This of course excludes the porters, who hauled up huge wicker baskets full of food/luggage using straps around their foreheads, who were beating everyone. Their calves were roughly the size/shape of softballs.) Now, I know that hiking is all about the journey, etc. etc., but I admit that as a competitive runner, there was a small part of me that was delighted by our progress. When I see people in front of me, I want to pass them. It's part of me, like herding instincts in a sheepdog. Anyway, we arrived at base camp by noon. They were surprised to see us so early - most people show up sometime in the early afternoon - but one of the guides took advantage of the opportunity to give us the safety briefing right then, to give us the rest of the afternoon off. Delightful! Afterwards, we crawled into the cozy sleeping bags provided for us on our bunk beds, and spent the afternoon reading, watching the terrible rainstorm that began around 2 PM and lasted all evening, and feeling awful for the many people that arrived chilled and soaked to the bone.

Dinner was served that evening in a giant communal dining hall, early in recognition of the fact that everyone had to get up again in the wee hours to begin their summit attempts (between 1:30 and 3 AM). We shared a table with a fun group of Malaysians in their early twenties who'd hiked the Mesilau trail (the other option besides Timpohon - M and I originally were interested because it's longer and harder, but the Via Ferrata people told us we couldn't). It took them eleven hours, and they'd hiked straight through the rainstorm. Again, we were happy with how things turned out for us. Given how early we'd arrived at base camp, we asked our guide what time we should set out in the morning to make it to the summit for sunrise around 6 AM. He recommended 3 AM, meaning a 2:30 AM wakeup. Even though it was only 7:15 PM when we returned from dinner, we got into bed immediately. More specifically, we squeezed into my bottom bunk, and M read aloud to me from 'The Hobbit,' our team book of the moment.

In general, it takes me a while to switch off each night in bed. M might fall fast asleep within a minute or two, but I need time to unwind, physically and (especially) mentally. However, in the past few months, I've discovered something of a magic sleep bullet: M's voice. He is my personal puppy whisperer, I am his newborn Boxer. He is the turkey farmer, I am the upside-down turkey. Nothing else works to put me to sleep as fast as the sound of his voice reading Tolkien. Since I'm also a night person and find it hard to fall asleep before 11 PM regardless of the circumstances, I was hoping this would work to help me take advantage of the few hours between us and 2:30 AM. I almost fell asleep hearing about dwarves pillaging Bilbo's well-stocked pantry, but when M crawled up to his own bunk around 8:30 PM I woke up again...and stayed awake, all night.

I'll posit that there is almost no torture so exquisite as desperately wanting to fall asleep and being unable to do so. I lay still with my eyes closed, to no avail. I picked up the book I'd started the night before and read another third, hoping sleep would start tugging at my eyelids. Nothing. I was too hot. One of the older climbers from Hong Kong in our bunk room had on and off coughing fits all night, but my earplugs were giving me a headache. I felt like Goldilocks, except I never found my 'just right.' Shortly after midnight, M woke up too, and saint that he is, he rejoined me in the lower bunk and told me a story to try to get me to sleep. At that point, though, it was too late. I knew the Chinese climbers would be getting up shortly after 1 AM, and another weird quirk of mine is not being to fall asleep if I know I'll be woken up soon. I was miserable in the knowledge that the summit leg of the hike was the hardest section of yet, and I'd be doing it on no sleep. Finally, 2:30 AM rolled around, and I tore myself from bed. M and I were slow to get moving, and didn't end up on the trail until 3:20 AM.

Fortunately, my strange competitive instinct is good for something. As soon as we started hiking, we ran into the long string of climbers who'd left base camp in the two hours before we had. I got an enormous jolt of energy (no doubt inspired by my desire to pass everyone) and we cruised quickly up the mountain's final steep pitches. Once again, it felt great to be moving, and the cold air invigorated me; it was probably around 35 degrees. An hour and a half later, we made it to the final leg of the summit: a slippery pile of boulders that we needed our hands to climb. After ten minutes, we reached the top, and snapped a photo with the one other hiker who'd arrived moments before us (not that anyone's counting). We felt great! Then we realized it was 5 AM, fully an hour from sunrise, and we were standing on a windy mountaintop in sweat-dampened clothing. We spent the next hour huddled against the leeward side of a boulder, cursing ourselves for moving too fast, and watching the other eighty or so climbers reach the top and take their mandatory summit-sign photos. Here's ours:

After what felt like an eternity, the sky began to grow brighter by degrees. It was too overcast for a real sunrise in the end, but the light illuminated the dramatic landscape that we'd skated by in the earlier darkness.  Here's some of what we saw:

We walked another twenty minutes down the mountain to the starting point of the Via Ferrata, and so began yet another adventure. You may have read elsewhere on this blog that I have what some people call 'a crippling fear of heights,' but for some reason I'd set my mind to doing this. As a climber, I have at least 80% faith in things like ropes and carabiners, so I felt mostly alright about walking down the side of the mountain, thousands of feet of air between me and the ground. I volunteered to be the group captain (the group being me, M, and our guide J) meaning I had to go first, and I think the tiny leadership role did me a world of good. It's hard to describe the experience exactly - I think my mind was addled by the adrenaline and lack of sleep - so I'll let these pictures do the talking.

This is much more impressive than it looks.

This is exactly as impressive as it looks.

What's impressive here is primarily our guide's photography skills.

The rest of the day passed in a damp blur (you can't tell from these pictures, but it rained all morning, making the Via Ferrata even more excitingly/terrifyingly harrowing because of the slippery rocks). When we finally reached the Timpohon Gate around 2:30 PM, I cast another glance at the 2012 Climbathon results. All told, M and I spent around seven and a half hours going up and down the mountain, not counting the Via Ferrata, considerably faster than any other hikers that day. The previous year's winner, on the other hand, made it up and back in two hours and eleven minutes. No matter how fast or hardcore you think you are, there's always some Spanish guy out there named Kilian Jornet ready to totally school you.

We've got a couple videos of our time on the mountain that we'd love to share with you, but the Internet gods aren't smiling on our upload speeds at the moment. Soon!

Over and Out,
S&M

Mystery Fruits

Hey gang,

We haven't come across a computer yet here in Indonesia - just patchy WiFi - so to tide you over until we can write everything up, here's a video in which we explore some of the unusual fruits we found at the market in Semporna (southeast corner of Sabah). Let us know if you can identify any of them, and welcome to the undersides of our chins! Note to future selves: never again film from below. This is the least flattering angle possible. 

More Soon,
S&M

P.S. Shout out to M's mom, who celebrates her birthday today. Woop!

We're Back!

Hello, world!

Our sincerest apologies for the enormous gap in our posts. I've looked upon the situation with mounting dread for the past two weeks, sort of like an overachieving middle schooler bummed about missing school because of mono, knowing he'll have to make up all the homework assigned in his absence. I have so wanted to post almost every day since I last did - M will attest to this - but every hotel computer I've sat down at has been broken, every internet cafe has had a power outage, or in the case of tonight, the entire section of town has shut down because the Malaysian army is moving in due to a (rumor of? real) shootout with some Filipino pirates supporters of the Sulu Sultanate, who laid claim to parts of Sabah. However, I waited out a twenty-something German with wispy blonde facial hair to get on this ancient PC in the lobby of our inn, and M is providing moral support by watching Shanghai Noon and booking tomorrow night's accommodation on the couch next to me.

Anyway, let's back things up. Last time we checked in, we were celebrating Valentine's Day on Zanzibar. To be more specific, we were ringing in Valentine's Day on Zanzibar, but then we took a taxi to the airport at 2 AM to catch our 4:50 AM flight to Addis Ababa. And so began our longest section of transit thus far, 40 hours of flying and layovers, laid out as follows: a flight from Zanzibar to Addis, three hour layover, Addis to Frankfurt, two hour layover, Frankfurt to Seoul, seven hour layover, and finally, Seoul to Kota Kinabalu, arriving near midnight on February 15. This video of Matthiah in one of the 'relaxation rooms' in the Asiana Airlines lounge in Incheon does a pretty good job summing up our mental state 75% of the way into our journey:

As you can see, we were pretty delirious. We tried naming all the movies we 'watched' once we landed, but apparently there were several hours when we were in our seats, staring at our personal entertainment centers, with as much going on upstairs as jellyfish. It wasn't all bad, though. The Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt was amazing, and we treated ourselves to abundant creme-based desserts, truffles, and champagne (and in M's case, several giant Bavarian pretzels). While the 'relaxation rooms' in Incheon were less than relaxing, the full service shower rooms were particularly life affirming. M got to shave with a brand new razor, I got to use conditioner for the first time in seven weeks...what more could you want? When we arrived in Kota Kinabalu (KK), we took a mildly extortionate taxi ride to our hotel (we were too tired to argue) and promptly fell asleep for fourteen hours.

When we woke up, more or less alert and now with as much brainpower as primates, or at least very clever Golden Retrievers, we were in a new country, on a new continent. M and I had both previously traveled (independently of one another) to peninsular Malaysia. During my trip almost exactly three years ago, I grew curious about the unread Borneo section of my Lonely Planet, and started plotting my next Malaysian excursion almost immediately. I had three goals in visiting Sabah, one of the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo: 1) explore Sipadan, a tiny blip of an island in the Celebes Sea featuring some of the world's greatest diving, 2) climb Mount Kinabalu, Borneo's highest mountain and a Unesco World Heritage Site, and 3) eat as much roti canai as humanly possible. Roti is sort of like Malaysia's version of Ugandan chapatti: a hot, flaky, crispy, oily, melt-in-your-mouth flatbread. While Ugandan chapatti is usually wrapped around eggs, roti is dipped either into a lentil or a coconut curry sauce. M and I were all booked to climb Kinabalu on February 18, and were starting our stint at Scuba Junkies' Mabul Beach Resort on February 26, meaning our first order of business in KK was obvious: stuff our faces.

Arriving in Asia was a bit of a culture shock after nearly seven weeks in Africa. The difference between Uganda and Tanzania was already stark enough: in Uganda, it felt like everyone - women and children, anyway - were working all day, every day, doing backbreaking labor. Subsistence agriculture was the norm outside of cities, and cities were few and far between. In our first hours in Tanzania, we saw families relaxing together on the shores of Lake Victoria on a Sunday afternoon, men and women together at bars, and a number of teenage boys dressed like Usher. (Seriously.) In essence, we saw how even a little bit of disposable income can change what a life looks like. Cue our search for the best roti canai in KK, which took us to an enormous mall a block away from our hotel, with an enormous food court on its bottom floor. This was a place where you could find twenty different variations on Angry Birds cell phone cases or bedazzled manicures or corn-in-a-cup. (FYI, corn-in-a-cup is just what it sounds like, and you can get in sprinkled with sugar, or drizzled with butter, or with mayo, or with mayo and raisins, etc. etc. Seriously.) You could catch the latest terrible-yet-entertaining MTV-produced movie, Hansel and Gretel (we did) or get your cracked iPhone screen fixed (we did). The top-floor movie theater was just a small fraction of a massive entertainment complex featuring karaoke, bowling, and billiards, all tempting KK's young people to spend their ringgit. It was almost like being in a first world country again, albeit one where you could stuff your belly to bursting for the equivalent of $7. 

With one item on Sasha's Malaysian To-Do List crossed off already, we spent much of the day wondering at the fast WiFi, perusing the aisles at the supermarket (grass jelly soda, anyone?) and walking up and down the KK waterfront, which was a marvel to us in itself. We hadn't seen any sidewalks, let alone pleasant pedestrian esplanades, in months. The next day, we caught a local minibus to Mount Kinabalu - M tried to do some gentle haggling until it became clear that we were being given a fixed price, another culture shock moment - and ascended nearly 1900m, leaving Sabah's steaming seaside capital city behind in favor of misty drizzle at the mountain's base. With a relatively rapid ascent planned for the following day, we'd heard it was a good idea to spend the night before climbing the mountain sleeping at elevation. Now, there are a lot of reasons I'm envious of M: his impeccable hand-eye coordination, his ability to make strangers like him instantaneously, his imperviousness to cold, and his knowledge of carpentry are a few of them. However, the quality I've coveted most on this trip has been his ability to fall asleep anytime, anywhere. Case in point: he somehow stacked our packs on top of each other on the floor of the minibus, stretched out on top of them, propped his head against the cold window as we bounced along the tarmac, and slept for much of the two hour journey from KK. In spite of his nap and our 12 PM wakeup that day (overslept, yikes!) he still managed to conk out around 11 PM in preparation for our early start on the mountain. I, on the other hand, tossed, turned, finished a book, started a new one, read about a third of it, and didn't fall asleep until two in the morning. 

These facts and more will play in to our next installment of smashadventures catch-up, due at some point in the next very few days. We fly to Indonesia tomorrow, but we still have plenty of Borneo stories to tell, including our ascent and descent from Kinabalu (a taste of that below), encounters with proboscis monkeys and pygmy elephants, five days of adult 'dive camp' on Mabul, and what happens to your esophagus if you persist in taking your antimalarial without food or water immediately before bed for two months. Stay tuned.

Over and Out,

S&M

P.S. We want to give a special shout-out to M's grandfather, Odie. He just turned 90, and packs more cool into his little finger than the two of us have combined. Another set of hugs and kisses goes to our dear friends Brett and Katy (the ones who gave us the horizontal iPhone filming tip) who are getting married on March 3. We love you!

Valentine's Day

It's Valentine's Day, and love is in the air! Because I'm not in SF to host my annual Love Is All You Need/Love Sucks potluck dinner and film viewing, you'll have to make do with a quick video of M and I performing a giraffe courting ritual. Enjoy!

Extra Valentine's Day Love,
M&S

The Tides of March (Or, Rather, Mangoes)

Hey team,

Tonight, M and I fly out of Zanzibar en route to Borneo (via Addis Ababa, Frankfurt, and Seoul - got to love tickets purchased with United miles). We've spent the past six days on the lovely isle of Zanzibar, and it's become clear to us that when presented with nothing but free time, clear blue skies, and stunning turquoise water, we prefer nothing more than sitting in the shade, eating fruit, reading, and playing nonstop iPhone Scrabble. In short: we are old. As a matter of fact, I discovered a cluster of three white hairs on the back of M's head ten days ago in Arusha! He looks extremely distinguished.

Anyway, we didn't spent all our time with words and books and bushbabies; we also made a few videos! Here's a glimpse of the stunning water we mentioned earlier, along with video evidence of Zanzibar's incredibly powerful, fast-moving tides:

And because there's always room for more videos of food and eating on this blog, here's a (messy) ode to mangoes:

Love,
M&S

Zanzibar: The Animals Keep Coming (Video Log 16)

We saw a bushbaby. It was amazing. See below. 

Video Log 15: Serengeti Adventures

Hey team,

We wrapped up our safari in the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater almost a week ago, and just now have access to WiFi with which to post our videos. Sorry for the delay! Some quick notes on our safari, and safaris in general:

• We got incredibly lucky. On Day 1 in the Serengeti, we saw dozens of giraffes, elephants, wildebeest, warthogs, zebras, and antelope, which was a great precursor to Day 2...
• BIG CAT DAY. We started out watching a group of four cheetahs breakfasting on an antelope before being mesmerized for several hours by a pride of around twenty lions napping, rolling around, and climbing trees. In the afternoon, we were amazingly lucky and happened to pull up just as a leopard was descending from a tree to hunt. If you're ever been on safari, you know that leopards are very, very shy, and if you see one, it's usually just for a second; Wikipedia notes their 'notorious ability for stealth.' This leopard, however, sprang lightly out of her tree, walked towards the road where we were parked, sauntered across the road, and finally disappeared into the tall grasses in the distance to hunt. However, she did leave her two cubs in the tree, and we could just make out their tiny housecat-sized bodies through the leaves. We waited there for at about an hour, knowing that the mother would return eventually. However, before she did, a troop of baboons began passing between the tree and our car (cue menacing music). Two or three loped by without paying the tree much notice, but then one stopped and began looking up at the branches. Several more also stopped, peering upwards. Slowly but surely, the group of around twenty baboons began converging at the base of the tree, all either craning their necks skyward, or looking around for signs of full-grown leopards. (Important to know for this story: baboons eat meat, and baboons and leopards are not BFFs.) M, our guide, Sham, and I held our breath, and kept turning our heads to scan the opposite horizon for Mama Leopard's figure, waiting for her to come flying treewards to save her cubs. She didn't appear. One baboon climbed the tree and disappeared into the leaves. The cubs had long since retreated to the tree's uppermost branches, out of sight. After the first baboon broke the seal, another fifteen followed. Moments later, we saw one section of branches shake violently, leaves and twigs showering to the ground, accompanied by loud screeching and hissing. Still no sign of Mama. We were playing the National Geographic narration for the scene in our heads, something having to do with the Serengeti's tragic life cycles and hunter/hunted paradigm, read in a soothing British accent. The baboons stayed in the tree for half an hour, with the first ten minutes or so marked by several violent outbursts like the first. After that, things quieted down. While we hadn't seen the cubs' bodies fall to the ground, we could only assume they were dead. Eventually, the baboons made their way down to the ground, and continued on. The mother still hadn't returned when we had to return to our campsite (there's a curfew in the Serengeti to help rangers identify poachers) but our hearts were heavy, since leopard cubs look like this. Over dinner that night, we were approached by another couple who had naughtily broken curfew, but they reported that while the mother never returned to whoop a healthy amount of rosy baboon butt, both cubs were spotted lower in the branches after we left. Hurray!
• We spent our Day 3 in the Ngorongoro Crater. On the way, we saw a million zebras - seriously - and once in the crater, we got to see more of the same animals, plus a few hyenas and four of the only 21 remaining rhinos in Tanzania. (See? We got really, really lucky.)
• While M went on safari in Kenya when he was 14, this was my first real experience in the bush. While I knew that 'going on safari' meant 'seeing a lot of animals,' I didn't realize it also means 'sitting in a car all day while getting fed by your cook as though you were climbing Kili.' It's basically a totally sedentary experience, besides the part where you stand to look through the pop-top roof of your Land Cruiser. We are in serious need of some exercise, so it's ideal that we're being hosted by our friends Carrie and Sim in the only neighborhood in Dar es Salaam where running is feasible. Thanks, Carrie and Sim!

Without further ado, we present our fifteenth video log, featuring two sleepy lions, our guide Sham, and horizontal filming, thanks to our clued-in friends Brett and Katy who are tired of seeing the black bars on either side of our videos and told us so. Thanks, Brett and Katy!

And here's a video of a lion cub who climbed into a tree and was scared to come down. Much like our 'Gorilla Eating for a Minute' video, you won't regret you watched it.

That's all for now. Next stop: Zanzibar, yes oh yes.

A Few Safari Pics to Whet Your Appetites

Video Log 14: The Rwenzoris

Technically, this should have been Video Log 8, but we foolishly recorded it on our camera instead of on our more easily YouTube-able iPhone.

Notes on Uganda

Hey friends,

We may be ensconced in Arusha, Tanzania at the moment, but we've still got Uganda on the brain. We took an hour or so over dinner at our campsite in the Serengeti to come up with these stats, facts, and figure about our trip to the Pearl of Africa. Here goes:

• Days spent: 24
• National Parks visited: Queen Elizabeth, Rwenzori Mountain, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Mgahinga
• Books completed: Sweet Tooth (team read), The Three Musketeers (Sasha)
• Animals encountered: Elephants, hippos, a lonely crocodile, monitor lizards, duikers, mountain gorillas,  red and black colobus monkeys, blue monkeys, waterbuck, warthogs, kob, water buffalo, chickens, cows, the exotic domesticated goat, and about a million different birds. Some of our favorite avian species included the turaco, the Malachite kingfisher, and the green bee-eater.
• Best guide: Mohammed at the Colonel Qaddafi Mosque. A fountain of knowledge on the history of Kampala and Uganda, he schooled us as we took in the views from the top of the mosque's minaret.
• Best signs spotted: 'AVOID MORNING SEX AFRICA' - spotted across the street from the Nile River Explorers campsite in Jinja; 'King of Love Vampire Clan Unisex Salon One Love' - spotted just outside Jinja.
• Best shirts: 'FASHIONABLE MOTHERFUCKER' - spotted on a hike near the crater lakes of Fort Portal; 'Razzle Dazzle Elk Grove Women's Softball' (shirt front), 'Salinksy Orthodontics' (shirt back) - spotted in downtown Kilembe; a tie-dyed, Rasta-fied Obama tee shirt - spotted on the shores of Lake Bunyoni.
• Fellow Bay Areans met: Two! Interestingly, neither one was American, and both lived in Berzerkeley.
• Games played: ~20 NYTimes crosswords (thanks, iPhone app!), dozens of rounds of Boticelli (most challenging for M to guess: Anne Frank and Pippa Middleton), at least a hundred Rhyme Times (thank you, Daniel and Sonja), one game of Scrabble (Sasha victorious), an unhealthy number of Scramble with Friends games, when we have access to WiFi (Sasha victorious), two rounds of lakeside Bananagrams (Sasha victorious), and a few dozen games of SET (thanks, Alex and Michelle - also, Sasha ekes out a winning record). Though Sasha may be typing this right now, you can verify any of these facts with M.
• Best hiking: Rwenzori Mountain National Park. Despite lacking sweeping views - we would have had to do the full seven-day circuit, rather than just three, to reach any summits - there was an interesting diversity of flora, several mini-ecosystems we passed through as we gained elevation, and many lovely birds. Plus, parts of the trail were so muddy that they gave us fun gum boots (see Images 8/9).
• Earliest M-suggested bedtime: 7:15 PM, Day 1 of our Rwenzori trek.
• Earliest we have ever woken up naturally: 6 AM, every day of our Rwenzori trek. It's amazing what the body's capable of when you've been lying in bed since 8:30 PM.
• Most fun day: Tandem kayaking on the Nile in class five rapids (see Images 1/2 below for reference).
• Most terrifying days for Sasha: Tandem kayaking on the Nile in class five rapids (see Images 3/4 below for reference) and climbing the treacherous ladders of Mount Sabinyo.
• Day where we ended up the filthiest: Climbing Mount Sabinyo. Take one muddy, scramble-y hike up a mountain and add a round-trip 28km motorbike ride on the world's dustiest road, and you get actual muddy rivulets streaming off your body in the shower than night.
• Most grueling day: Mount Sabinyo, taking it home again! It would have been totally fine, except we were just coming off an 18km hike the day before and all we ate for breakfast was (delicious but insufficiently filling) plain chapatti. We both ended up dizzy at one point - not a great place to be when you're climbing ladders - but we jammed some nuts in our mouths and it was all better. Usually is.
• Food obsessions: 1) Chapatti! Imagine a freshly made flour tortilla, but thicker, flakier, and often dripping with delicious delicious oil. You can do anything with chapatti: roll eggs in it, making a 'Rolex,' one of the best street foods ever; stick bananas and peanut butter in it; dip it in a container of Nutella...the options are all amazing. The best chapatti we found in the country was at Serena's Restaurant in Kisoro, just in case you're in the neighborhood. 2) Stoney Tangawizi. Perhaps the best ginger beer on the planet, and a product of the Coca-Cola company! We're curious as to why Coke is hiding this product in East Africa.
• Most crowded minibus: 28 men, women, and a handful of children in a 14-passenger vehicle.
• Longest truck ride: 8+ hours, Kabale to Nkuringo.
• Worst road: Kabale to Nkuringo, followed closely by Mbarara to Kabale.
• Most terrifying boda-boda ride: All of them/especially the one we took through rush hour traffic in Kampala.
• Weirdest transit pricing: We paid 20,000Ush to get from a friend's place in a residential neighborhood of Kampala to downtown Kampala, a ten minute ride. Though it was a short trip, our timing was sensitive (we had to be downtown no later than 7 AM) and the driver was reliable, so we paid up. We also paid 20,000Ush for a four-hour taxi ride from Jinja to Mbale. Weird. It is important to note that the expensive taxi had multiple TV screens in it which featured ABBA's best music videos, so maybe it was worth it?
• Least successful transportation experience: Biking from the Lake Nkuruba lodge to Kibale National Park (you'll note Kibale didn't make it on the 'National Parks Visited' list). One the way, M got a flat. After waiting forty minutes for the guy who rented us the bikes to get us a new tube, we were on our way! Another thirty minutes later, M's tire went flat again. With another 10km between us and the park, we gave up, which leads us to...
• Most lost: We decided to turn our cycling/Kibale adventure into a hike through the countryside back to our lodge. We had a rudimentary map and M's great sense of direction, but that didn't help us on the many, many tiny trails leading through many, many tiny villages. We made it home after a few hours of walking and unsuccessfully trying to bushwhack our way through someone's field of corn. Also, we're pretty sure some of the villagers were wary of us, since we had some serious Pied-Piper action going on. At one point, there was a trail of around fifteen kids following us/jockeying to hold our hands.
• And now for the accommodation awards! Cheapest/Best Overall Value goes to the YES Hostel in Fort Portal, Best Food/Fullest goes to Byoona Amagara on Lake Bunyoni (this place is not to be missed), Most Secluded goes to our lodge at Lake Nkuruba (we had a cabin to ourselves a five minute walk away from everything else, right on the lake), Most Expensive goes to the Nkuringo Gorilla Camp ($55 a night!), Emptiest goes to the Simba Safari Camp outside Queen Elizabeth National Park (we had a ten bed dorm to ourselves, and there was only one other person there), Best Sunset goes to the Nile River Explorers Camp (see Vlog 3 for reference), Worst Overall goes to the Red Chili Backpackers in Kampala (the only place we've been legitimately afraid of bedbugs), and Best View/Most Rats Living in the Ceiling goes to the Crow's Nest at Sipi Falls (see Images 6/7).
• What surprised us: 1) The kindness of the people. We'd heard Ugandans were friendly, but we were blown away. 2) The lack of other tourists. With the exception of the Nile River Explorers Camp and Byoona Amagara, most places we stayed were empty. January isn't high season, but it was still remarkable. 3) The camping options. Oh, if only we'd brought our tent! Almost everywhere, even the fanciest spots, offered camping on their grounds for around $5 a night. We could have saved a ton while still enjoying high-class digs.
• Skippable: 1) Fort Portal and immediate surrounds. If you're headed to the area, we'd recommend going straight to a lodge near a lake or to a lodge near Kibale National Park. 2) Queen Elizabeth National Park. The area was lovely, and it was our first safari experience, but it was also more expensive than anywhere else in Uganda. Maybe not worth it?
• What we'll hit next time: Kidepo National Park (the security situation didn't allow for it this time around), Murchison Falls National Park, Mt. Elgon, Kibale National Park and chimp tracking.
• Where we'll definitely return: Jinja, Lake Bunyoni, Mgahinga National Park, and the Rwenzoris.
• And finally, what we'll miss: The boundless enthusiasm of every child, yelling 'Muzungu!' and 'Howayu?!' every time they see you, even if you're half a mile away; the Ugandan's kindness and the overwhelming feeling that everyone we met was looking out for us and trying to help; the easy, abundant transport options; the wide variety of experiences and landscape the country packs into a small area; chapatti; nonstop mangos and avocado and baby bananas; the feeling of safety just about everywhere; the Nile (see Image 5); Lake Bunyoni; and M wants to give a special shout-out to the many rumble strips on the highway, with which he has a love/hate relationship.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3; that blue thing is my paddle.

Image 4; that's M's orange helmet.

Image 5

Image 6. See? Even they say so.

Image 7

Image 8

Image 9

Gratuitous sunset shot otherwise unrelated to this post.

Signing Off,
S & M