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| Log entries 11 - 20 of 21 | Page:
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Jul 09, 2006 06:00 PM Visiting Victoria Falls
We have been now for 2 days at Vic Falls, it is an amazing site.
I wondered how it will compare with Iquazu Falls in SA, I am not sure now , thay are both very spectacular, but there is much more walking available at Iquazu.
It is only a short walk form the town, but we came accross some baboons, a group f warthoogs and a big group of meercats today, right there in the town, which is quite amazing.
It is the only place in Zimbabwe where there are some tourists, mainly people travelling in overland trucks, they party like crazy all nite, fortunately the owner was smart enough to move all old people like us to some poshy rooms at the back for the price of the simple rooms we took near the bar.
We will be going accross to Zambia tomorrow or the day after.
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Jul 05, 2006 06:00 PM 10 days in Zimbabwe
We arrived to Harare not knowing how easy or difficult would be to travel there. There was food available everywhere, decent accomodation and most important , the public transport was running. No tourists to speak of, we went for two days to great Zimbabwe, the only other tourists were couple of people form South Africa.
We found the people in Zimbabwe very friendly and helpfull.
The major problem for us is the inflation. We change the money on the black market every day and we still end up walking with hugs wads of money in our pockets.
Imagine a cup of coffee costs 600,000 Zim $ and the biggest note is 100,000 but not easy to come accross.
The prices are amended every day, such is the inflation, as for today it is about 1000%
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Jun 27, 2006 06:00 PM Summer in Poland
We spent 10 days in Poland, we very very lucky to have great weather. I went to Masurian Lakes for few days to do some kayaking, bicycle riding and relaxing.
We spent the rest of the time catching up with friends and relatives and by the end of the stay we felt , that 10 days was not really long enough
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Jun 16, 2006 06:00 PM last day in South Korea
Sourh Korea was very nice to travel, not expensive considering that all services are of western standards.
We did some nice hiking, there are plenty national parks , people here love hiking, the trails are very well marked and the scenary is wonderfull.
There are temples scatered in the mountains , which makes the hike even more enjoyable.
I wouls love to return her in the fall to enjoy the colours in the forest.
The trip to DMZ was quite a highlight. When you in North Korea from day one you expect everything to be weird , but here you are having great time in Seoul and 20 minutes down the freeway towards the north, the freeway is fenced off with barbed wire and there are guards posts every 200m or so.
People working in the fields are being guarded by solders.
At the Joint Security Area we were subjected to a little of American propaganda this time and taken to the actual border building, which we aready visited 3 years ago under North Korean guard.
As we were in the building a North Korean solder walked past and looked thru the window. This time around, he was the "enemy" and South Korean solders guarded us in the famus tae-kwendo position.
At the end of the day we were taken to a brand new train stationonly a couple of km away from the DMZ.
It is a ghost station, it has a custom and immigration area and a time table to Pyonyang. In the last few years the railway to the North has been rebuilt along with a new spic and span freeway with an empty custom booths just before the DMZ.
It looks like you could start the traffic accross their border at any minute, it is all ready to go, but will it ever??
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Jun 14, 2006 06:00 PM Soccer in Korea
Yesterday we experienced our first soccer match in Korea. The whole of Seoul was going wild, we never seen anything like it before.
We sat on the street, wearing red shirts with red bandanas and shouted and yelled with the crowd!!
The cheered their team like crazy, i was an atmosphere of a huge party.
It is a pity we will not be able to see more of it, but I have my t-shirt as a memento !!
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Jun 12, 2006 06:00 PM SOCCER MADNESS IN KOREA
Today the Korean team plays its first match with Toga and the whole nation went wild.
The event will be screened live in the city square next to our hotel, we were already given Korean Team T-Shirts on the street and about 10pm will go out there to enjoy the atmosphere.
We have realy been enjoying this country, the people are very friendly, the weather is good, although the food is nothing to write home about (quite bland by Asian standards).
We just returned form a DM tour, it was very interesting to see it again from the other side. The whole 50km of freeway between Seoul and DMZ is surrounded by barbed wire and there are guard posts every 100m or so.
I saw people working in the fields near the freeway and being watched by heavly armed solders, it is quite a spooky feeling.
I must be off to the soccer
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May 30, 2006 06:00 PM STILL IN WEST PAPUA
We flew back again on a tiny plane.
We planned to spent one week in Central Java and as we made our plane bookings to go there, there was an earthquake in Jogja, so we decided to stay couple of days around jakarta then leave earlier for Korea.
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May 26, 2006 06:00 PM OUR TRIP TO KOSAREK
we spent an amazing week in Kosarek, In the morning we sat in the local clinic ( a small timber hut) where Chris was trying to help an visiting doctor from Jakarta to attend to about 100 people a day. It was all a little complicated, I was translating from Indonesian to Polish or English for Chrs, teh local nurse was translating form the Mek language to Indonesian for the doctors.
There was a heaps of medications available to be given away but very little in a way of diagnostic equipment.
Anyway how do you tell a woman about hygiene if in their culture the women share a sleeping hut with a number of pigs??
We spent afternoons visiting the villages built on the clifs.
One night we experienced a small eqrthquake, the house trembled, it was quite scary!!
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May 24, 2006 06:00 PM My Birthday
KOSAREK
As we were approaching Kosarek, the pilot said " Maybe it is best not to look down- the runway is really short"!!!!!
Well, not only it was short, but also very steep, so he was landing steeply uphill, and only just when it look as if he was going to hit a hill at he end of the strip , the plane stopped.
The airstrip was curved out on the side of the mountain and I was glad that the pilot looked very experienced.
The area around us looked like something out of Tolkien imagination, there were very high mountains closing on us, gushing waterfalls falling to rivers that far below, they could not be seen, steep ridges in between with a little hobbit like villages clinging to them.
It was a scenery none of us had ever seen before!!!!
There were people standing on the hills aroud the plane. Some of them wore shabby western clothes, others wore rags and lot of them only wore their traditional clothes.
Women stood around wearing just a little, tiniest ever grass skirts and men wearing penis gourds and a strange rattan hoops around the gourds. It is not easy to describe, while the Dani men wear the gourds upright, the Mek men wear it at 90 degrees, which means, that thay need a lot of space around them, I guess about 400mm of a gourd stick at that angle needs a lot of room.
The pilot loaded up some pigs on the plane and one guy and took off.
The pigs will fetch a good price at the market and the happy owner will most likely walk back to Kosarek after the sale.
To be cont...
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May 21, 2006 06:00 PM OUR TRIP TO INDONESIA
OUR TRIP TO INDONESIA
A day after we arrived to Jakarta we left by plane to Papua Barat (West Papua). Once we got our traveling permit to go to the interior of the island, we flew to Wamena, which is only accessable by plane. The valley is a home to the Dani tribe, I have seen them before 10 years ago.
As then, when we arrived to Wamena already around the airport we sppoted some men wearing nothing but a penis gourd, once all Dani men wore nothing else. Is was nice to see that there are still lot of poeple following the old ways.
Chris was amazed seeing people dressed in such a manner in a small town, I also found is as amazing as when I was there first time. (I will email you guys some photos at later stage).
Dani men are very particular about their personal appearance, often they wear some feather in their hair and a tie made of shells plus the penis gourd of different shapes and sizes.
This time I wanted to see other , more isolated tribe, which lives over the mountains in places only accessible by 4-7 days tough walking (one way) or a missionary plane, which provides the only link between those communities and the outside world.
The missionary aviation has a policy of not flying tourists, so we know if we wanted to go there we had to walk. We did few day walks first around Wamena and we could see that our level of fitness left much to be desired.
I had an idea of speaking to the head of the missionary aviation and ask him if Chris could not provide any medical assistance in the area. I am very happy to report that my limited indonesian was good enough to get the man interested and sure enough a day later we were flown in a small 4 seater plane accross the mountains to place called Kosarek about 10-12 days walk from Wamena through the high mountains.
What a spectacular flight it was!!!!!! even so I am not really a fan of 4 seater planes
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