Today was cruising around the Whitsundays, fighting monitor lizards for our lunch, and hiking with snakes and spiders the size of dinner plates.
Today was sudden rain storms and almost being swept overboard by an errant wave.
Today was practically perfect in every way.
As I mentioned here, while we were up in the north of Thailand, we signed up to do a 3 day jungle trek. We didn’t do much research about what it was going to be like (as per usual) and even though it was called a 3 day jungle TREK, we somehow didn’t really get the concept that we would be, in fact, walking the whole time.
In spite of the laboriousness of trudging (quite a lot of it uphill) for 3 days straight in the jungle, alternating between blistering heat, and torrential downpours, it was actually super fun. We had a really good group, it was us, a couple from Germany, a couple from the Netherlands, and 4 really fun guys from the UK, along with our sweet guides, Sam and Ron (not their real names).
The first day we walked about 3 hours, most of it uphill, stopping for a water break at a waterfall, and for a break when our guides found some wild mangos (they were seriously delicious, and I don’t even like mango) and some magic mushrooms. Our guide advised against the magic mushrooms, as apparently lost in the Thai jungle is maybe not the best setting for that adventure.
We eventually got to a village, where we would be staying for the night. We slept in a wooden shanty type structure, it had outside walls and a roof, but was still totally open. We each got a mosquito net to keep out the worst of the bugs. Our guides cooked for us (curry) and then we built a fire, and had a few beers before bed.
As luck would have it, Derek ended up getting sick in the middle of the first night, and stayed that way for the next 3 days. I had brought some medicine along, and treated him myself as best as I could, but being sick in the middle of the jungle is pretty miserable, he would trek with us whenever we had to, but immediately had to lay down for a nap whenever we stopped.
I had basically convinced myself it was malaria, but then I remembered we’d only been in the country for 5 days at that point, so I realized that was pretty unlikely.
Some people were only doing a one day trek, so by the time we finished eating breakfast on the second day, I was the only girl left in the group. We set off trekking through the forest, stopping for lunch at a local farm house in the rice fields.
We learned a ton about rice farming, the couple only lived there during planting/harvesting season, otherwise they went back to their house in the village we had stayed at the night before. The farmer also made rice moonshine, so Sam and Ron grabbed a couple of bottles of that before we left.
After two more hours of walking across rice fields (which was actually really neat, ripe rice is sooooo green) we got to our camp beside a waterfall. We were hot and sweaty, and wasted absolutely no time jumping in for a swim.
Sam and Ron made us supper (curry and rice) and then we lit a fire beside the river. Sam was pretty handy, and made a bong out of a water bottle and some bamboo, so we got to try out some Thai bush weed, which is apparently a non-negotiable itinerary item for anyone visiting Thailand, although getting caught with it means 5 years in a Thai prison, so you definitely want to be careful.
The best part about the whole trip was sitting around the fire watching the waterfall as the sun was setting. As it got darker, we started to see little dots of light in the bushes, they were fireflies. They showed up one at a time, until finally there were hundreds of them, it was pretty amazing.
The next morning, we woke up, ate breakfast (made with river water, so that was just the opposite of everything we were told about drinking water in Thailand) and set off. We only had about two hours of walking until we were back at a road. We had lunch, and then bamboo rafted down the river to get the rest of the way back to where we were getting picked up.
It was really fun, I’m trying to figure out how to upload a bamboo rafting video on here, but so far every time I export the file it comes out with no sound, so I’ll keep working on that.
If you have the opportunity to do trekking while you are in Thailand, and you are at all outdoorsy, definitely do it. It’s so rare these days that you really get to be fully immersed in nature, we had no electricity, no phones or contact with the outside world the whole time, and it was so nice.
It was such a neat experience, and the second day was way better than the first day, so try to do the full 3 days if you have time.
Just a few shots of the time we climbed Camelback in a rainstorm.
Since we weren’t planning on spending a lot of time in Phoenix, I really didn’t have anything planned, and had no idea what we were going to do with our three full days in Arizona.
I asked friends for suggestions, and one of them told me to hike Camelback, so we decided to try it out, bright and early on Saturday morning. It was kind of cold out, and a little grey, but I figured that was just because it was so early, and we set off.
The hike itself was fun, a bit steep in parts, but the view was beautiful.
Unfortunately, the higher we climbed, the worse the weather got. It was super windy at the top, and as we were shinnying across a very narrow bit of rock with sharp drops on either side I was pretty sure we weren’t going to make it. Right when we got to the top it started pouring and made the rocks slippery and even more treacherous.
Also, nobody was going down the way we came up, and we knew there was more than one way to climb the mountain so we decided to follow another group down.
We didn’t realize until we were half way down that it was taking us to the opposite side, and we didn’t feel like climbing back up and over again, so we ended up continuing down that way, and then walking three more miles around the base to get back to our car.
We did get to see some diamond back rattle snakes on our slog back to the car though, so it wasn’t all bad.
We made a quick trip to Phoenix last weekend for a wedding. We planned to just fly in and out, but the way the flights worked out, we ended up having almost three full days there.
We didn’t have anything planned, so everything we did was pretty spontaneous. When we picked up our rental car, there was a pamphlet in it with a picture of the Hole in the Rock. It looked pretty neat, and it was way too hot and sunny to do anything inside so we decided to check it out.
It’s a very short hike, really just a walk up the hill, but it’s gorgeous, and the rock formations are amazing. I kept looking around for diamond backs because I was certain I was going to stumble into a pit of rattlesnakes, but I didn’t see any, and there weren’t any signs or anything.
There were lots of signs about bees though, which I thought would be a less serious threat, but what do I know?
This last week was kind of a strange one, I just couldn’t muster up the energy to do anything, and I’ve been really tired. The long weekend helped a bit, especially since we got out of the Bay and went for a day trip to the Marin county coast, touring around Olema, Bolinas and Point Reyes. It was kind of cold to be out at the beach, but it was so nice to just be outside and to be surrounded by trees.
One of the things I noticed when I lived in Honolulu was that sometimes I would just get really grouchy and lethargic, without a real reason why. Then we would jump in the car and leave the city, head to North Shore or Lanikai for the day, and I would instantly feel better. Being surrounded by people and buildings and cars all the time is just not great for me, and sometimes I need to get away from all of those things and recharge.
We stopped for lunch at a cute little restaurant in Olema, did a bit of wandering around on the cliffs at Bolinas, and made our way to Limantour beach, which was gorgeous, but freezing. We finished off the day in Point Reyes, with a visit to the Cowgirl Creamery.
We had a truly gorgeous long weekend in L.A., it was upwards of 80 degrees every day we were there. One of the things I had been wanting to do was hike Runyon Canyon, we did the Hollywood sign hike last time we were in town, so even though it was sweltering, we grabbed some waters and set off.
After spending 45 minutes searching for parking we finally made our ascent. The hike is beautiful, if a little crowded, with scenic views of downtown L.A. and the Hollywood sign. It’s also a dog park so there are dogs of every shape and size coming up and down.
It’s not a very strenuous hike, there are some stairs that are kind of hard to navigate but other than that it’s a pretty easy, pretty quick hike, I would definitely recommend it if you’re in town and want to get some exercise and some sun.
 |
| Hollywood sign |
 |
| Stark can not hang |
 |
| made it to the top |
While we were in Oregon, and the boys were off doing bachelor things, we decided to embrace our inner adventurers, so a group of us girls set off to check out the lava caves near Bend. We obviously neglected to do any research beforehand, so we arrived to discover that shorts, tank tops and flip flops are not generally the clothing choices of spelunkers the world over, especially as it was below freezing inside the caves.
We also failed to spend the $5.00 necessary to rent a lantern, deciding as a group that the lights from all 4 of our cell phones would more than compensate for the complete lack of light sources inside the caves.
We set out merrily enough, dodging a hive of angry wasps and avoiding the judging looks of the other hikers in their closed toed shoes and winter jackets, with their lanterns shining smugly as they shuffled by.
The first 100 feet went swimmingly, there were plenty of interesting rock formations that could just be made out by the light of my “World’s Brightest Flashlight App”, but things quickly went south. I felt a drop of liquid fall onto my head from the stalactites above that was almost certainly monster saliva (at your own peril will you suggest that it may have been only water).
A few more feet inside, all hell broke loose. The leader of our little band of misfits also got monster slobber dripped on her, and as she turned her arm to wipe it away, something (likely the beady, red eyes of the creature) reflected in the cover of her cell phone case, and she screamed.
That was all it took. The rest of us broke rank and sprinted for the mouth of the cave, every man for himself, as we stumbled blindly in the darkness, all of us hoping we wouldn’t be the one eaten first.
We eventually all emerged from the darkness, bruised, embarrassed and with a stubbed toe or two in the group, but no worse for the wear for the most part. And that’s the story of the time I was nearly eaten by a monster in a cave, for real.
 |
| Don’t let the camera flash fool you, it was absolutely pitch black inside this cave |
On Sunday we went to check out Briones, a regional park in Martinez, CA. Sometimes I get so caught up in daydreaming about all of the places in the world that I want to visit, that I forget that I live in a pretty amazing place already.
There is so much to do in California, and it’s kind of neat to think that the same roads you drive down every day could lead you somewhere amazing, if you just remember to make a different turn every once in awhile.
 |
| me: do you think we could climb all the way up there? derek: no. |
 |
| jealous |
 |
| favourite shirt |
 |
| we saw a coyote, and one random cow, I think he was lost |
loveliness. 