Sunny Christmastime

Hi everyone. Merry belated Christmas. We were on Zanzibar, which is an island off the coast of Tanzania, for Christmas. For Christmas day we were on the beach. We started the day by waking up and looking at all our presents. I got a jingle dress, an Eqyptian bookmark, a ruler with heiroglyphics on it, some turkish delight, a Croation doll, a Greek doll and a Turkish doll, a blue eye bracelet, one special african hair braiding, and Santa signed us up for swimming with the dolphins in the wild.

My favorite was swimming with the dolphins. The closest I got to one was probably about one metre. I felt like diving down and touching it, but something told me “no”. The way you see them is to look under water with your mask and you see them. To get into the water near them you have to jump off your moving boat while there are other moving boats around. You can’t hesitate. We also saw one baby dolphin with its mom, it was really cute.

After we opened our presents we went for a big buffet breakfast. There were even cream puffs and brownies...  I especially liked when daddy thought the cream puffs were plain and he put chocolate sauce on his. He bit in to it and went “ wow!”  After breakfast we went to the beach for the day. About lunch time, Mattias and I got hungry (of course) so we got some food from the beach bbq and cokes.  After that, Me and Daddy built a sand man, (not a snow man) it was big but had to be lying down so he wouldn’t collapse. Later, me, mom, daddy and Thias all went for a long swim. The Indian Ocean is so warm, you actually feel like you are in a bath tub!

At dinner time, we went to a beach buffet dinner. It was a really really yummy dinner, and for dessert there was Christmas cake and fruit tarts. 

For presents from the family, since there were no shops around, we decided to make gift certificates. Daddy is getting a new coffee press mug since his old one got left behind... Mattias is getting a soccer ball, Mommy is getting a new swimsuit, and I am getting a long skirt.

On Christmas we also picked a fresh coconut that was very yummy. My favourite part of Christmas day was present opening from under the drawn Christmas tree.

Bye for now, Emilia

No bears, no chickens....but the big 5!

We went on a 9 day safari  from Dec’ 13 to Dec’ 21 the first day we went to Arusha National Park, it was a great starting place ‘cause you could see lots of variety of different animals and lots of them.There were lots of giraffes and we got lucky and saw a black and white Colobus monkey. They are rare to see because of how well they hide. We drove to a little view point and saw them in a tree and then when we were going back from the view point they were gone. The second day we woke up and drove to Lake Manyara National Park. Lake Manyara is famous for its tree climbing lions. The lions adapt to different habitats so this is why they climb trees in this park only.  Although we didn’t see any, we saw lots and lots of elephants. The first elephant we saw was way in the bushes and you could only just see him.  Looking contently at it, James (our amazing driver/guide) said lets skip this elephant because we will see many more up close. We drove about 2 minutes and  guess what? We saw another elephant. Not necessarily closer, but a lot easier to see. Actually, he was very hard to see at fir... let me skip the details and give you the highlights and main thoughts!

 Day 3 -we came about a metre away from a big bull elephant - he came so close we could have touched him, but instead we all jumped back. We thought we would drive away, but James just sat there while we freaked out! We asked him how do you know when an elephant is mad, he said since he is happily eating you don’t have to worry.  Phew!

Day 4 - Serengeti - James pointed out a Leopard in a tree but all we could see was its tail. He suddenly stopped, backed up and we were looking all over wondering what he saw and then he pointed in the tree about 30m away. None of us could see it, then he gave us more detail about where in the tree and we found him!
Day 4 - When we were driving in to the Serengeti, practically the first thing we saw was a cheetah lying down in the shade of a bush. Then after a few more minutes driving, we saw a lion lying down. He was hard to see unless you looked backwards and then all you could see was her paws sticking up in the air! (lions are lazy). We got a good view of the lion then as you know we saw the leopard I mentioned above.
Day 5 - We woke up early in the morning and went for a game drive before breakfast. Luck must follow us because we saw a pride of lions. There were 8 females, 3 cubs and one male. He was the dominant male ( there can be 2 or 3 males per pride). James said the pride probably had more dominant males because sometimes the males will leave the pride for a bit. We watched them for so long that we saw them move from the long grass all the way to the rock outcroppings. We watched them for a long long time and we saw something very interesting that they do to protect their cubs. They leave their cubs on a smaller rock nearby all hidden and all the other full grown ones on the big main rock. Then we went back for breakfast.
Day 6 - on Day 6 we went and saw a bunch of wildebeast and zebra on their great migration. James said there were half a million Zebra and 2 million wildebeast. Zebra and wildebeast go together because wildebeast can smell well and zebras can see very well. We drove right into the middle of the wildebeast and zebra. you could hear the zebra making their weird almost trumpeting noise. We were surrounded by them and could not see the road but James knew by heart the way to go and the wildebeast and zebra would move out of the way.
Day 7 - Day 7 was very lucky for all of our leopard sightings. We went out in the morning looking for some good game. We saw a bunch of cars parked around bad luck rock (we don’t usually see anything there, but James was determined we would so we kept going back, and that day we saw a leopard and two cubs. James said there were three cubs, but we only saw two.  Later that day, after lunch, we went for another game drive and came really close to a Leopard. You pretty much looked up and she was there sleeping in the tree. I am not joking that she was 3 metres away. After we looked at the leopard for a while I wondered, “hmmm, why doesn’t it have a kill in the tree?”  then James said “ look right behind her.” and there it was, it was a grand gazelle pretty much eaten and would last maybe for that day. She had wedged it in between two branches and stuck its horns into a branch. The Leopard’s put their prey in a tree so hyenas  (scavengers) and other cats cannot steal it. They also put it in a tree to rot for a day or two so it is more tender for eating. Their teeth aren’t strong enough for fresh kill. If it over rots they leave their kill for the vultures.

Day 8 -  Day 8 was our luckiest day. We actually saw two kills. The first was a cheetah walking around in the grass. James said he is looking for rabbits, and the next thing we knew she had a rabbit in her mouth! It wasn’t hard for the cheetah. She just had to walk and pick it up.  The second kill was the most amazing. It was five lions, one was male, attacking a heard of cape buffalo for a newborn young one. In a fight like this one, either one of the cape buffalo or one of the lions will die. After a while, some of the herd left. Only the mother and one other was left to help the calf. The lions got the calf and the mother buffalo made one last try to save her young and realised it was already gone. wah!: (

Day 9 -  On our final day we saw a mother black rhino and her young. They were very far away and very scared of vehicles. There are still poachers but not in the Ngorongoro Crater where we were. There are only 27 rhinos left in this area.  We also saw lots of Hyenas here, there are over 400 in the crater!

The safari was so amazing. I think we got really lucky on it!  Everyone we meet says that Mima and I are the luckiest because of our age already doing crazy things like this.

Bye everybody, I will do another blog shortly about poaching.

This is Africa

Tanzania has been a wild and amazing ride! We came here with a lot planned, unlike most of our travels to date.  All we had to do was make sure we got busses and ferries to get to and from our various points of interest.  Dar Es Salaam is not the city of dreams, rather, a city to avoid. Even the TI office was stumped when we asked if there was anything worthwhile to do!  Having said that, we knew it would be a point of departure and arrival - so today, we have a full day to get ourselves caught up while sitting in a muggy, humid 35 + degrees before flying to S Africa tomorrow.  The power is off for now, so the AC is not on either.  This is Africa!

Our travels began with the fun bus to Arusha, 9 hours turned 12 - but best slow than option b, the driver who gets you there in 9, but you are so shell shocked when arriving you aren’t sure how you are still alive - luck of the draw. Arusha is the starting point for most safaris in Tanzania.

What a 10 days - too hard to describe - phenomenal. Mattias is giving a day by day highlight so I will leave that for him.  Seeing the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Arusha National Park was a once in a lifetime experience - and we will never forget it.  Bernie is working on getting the photos up - but the power here is on again off again and it is slow going - This is Africa.

From Safari we made the trek back to Dar to make our way to Zanzibar by ferry.  Most tourists travel between places by air - now we know why- chaos is endemic in public transport here ( reminder to self -this is Africa). Emilia’s blog tells most of the story of Zanzibar - beautiful beaches, warm waters, lovely hotel for Christmas and lots of fun. We met lots of people, and the kids even found a good buddy to play with, Sonny from Germany was a great kid and they spent lots of time together.

Jambiani Beach allowed us some freedoms not seen to us in the rest of Tanzania. Feeling quite segregated from the locals in Dar and Arusha, we finally were at ease to mingle freely and not have the same security concerns. A breath of fresh air, and some fun getting to chat with the Africans.  Mattias is a great barrier breaker as he wears a footie jersey daily and it always brings comments his way. It even started some footie games on the beach.

Tanzania has been a country of highlights for us, our only regret being that we often felt cooped up and unable to really get out and to mingle with the locals. We are reminded daily by ourselves and others - This Is Africa.

Happy New Year everyone - we long to hear your holiday stories too.

Toot is common

We went to the cairo museum and saw a tooting mask (king Tut's). It was mostly gold with beautiful rock that was green and dark and light blue. Tut's beard was long, wow! It had two serpents on the head that represent upper and lower Egypt. He was so full of himself that he decided to make a coffin around him, another around that and another around that and then a sarcophagus around that. And around the sarcophagus was a pyramid (I think I'll make a pyramid here... hmm, not big enough- make a new one!)

Animals were so important to the Egyptians they even mummified their animals. We saw a baby alligator, this big-{ }
And an adult alligator about 50 times that length. There were monkeys and Cobras. There were even the bones of a hippo! There were sarcophagi for shrews (interesting).

We saw a mummified common person which I think is crazy because everyone needed to go to the after life, well didn't need to. Some of them had real sarcophagi and some just had baskets. As you might know the king's had their brain taken out through their noses during mummification, but I don't think the common people did.

That museum was great! Sorry photos with this one, no cameras were allowed inside.

Heading for the longest day...

And so a few days of amazingness in Jordan. We saw only a little of it as we had to decide between south along the Nile or Jordan in 5 days, and in the end we are glad to have escaped the mayhem of Egypt for a more leisurely pace. Two nights in a Bedouin camp is something not to be missed....if you ever get the opportunity, take it. Then three days in Petra wandering the ruins of the ancient sandstone city, the high points and the canyons while singing Indiana Jones Theme songs was pretty fabulous too.

In the midst of all this, Knecht Ruprecht came with St Nicklaus and the kids fears that Santa may not find us were alleviated as they learned that they are worthy of a visit from him in a few weeks.

But alas, all the fun has come to an end for a few days as we head to Arusha, Tanzania. A full day of chaos getting from bus to ferry to bus via border crossings, a nine hours bus to Cairo ( guaranteed to be frightening and dirty), a night flight in to Tanzania and then who knows what is in store on the the 14 hour trek from Dar to Arusha... What we all know is that at the end of the next few days of travel, we have a 10 day safari awaiting us. Now there is a carrot! So, the longest day may be about epic travel stories, but truly our longest day will be on Dec 21 in the southern hemisphere while on Safari!

Our Egypt and Jordan photos should be up in the next few days, it has taken a while to get them uploaded on slow connections and we still have to sort them.

We are not sure of our ability to be online once in Tanzania, there are varying degrees of reports about power and connectivity..so this may be good bye for a while.

Merry Christmas to everyone...sorry no individual cards this year, but know we are thinking of each one of you and wish you the best for a fun holiday with family and friends.

Best wishes
Karen and family

The Challenges of Travelling

Well, I can't believe it has been almost five months since we left home and four and a half since we left Canada. Time in one hand seems to be flying by, but when we stop to think about where we have gone and the things we have done and seen, five months doesn't seem to fit.

Daily we count ourselves as being fortunate and the kids hear all the time from other travelers how lucky they are. Yet, there have been challenges and it wouldn't be traveling if it was all smooth sailing. Below is a list (in no particular order) of some of the "best" moments that come to mind:

• Being scrubbed down by another man in a Turkish bath - a large hairy man at that.
• Playing hopscotch down the back stairs of the Citadel in Cairo attesting to the serious lack of nearby public latrines.
• Stepping out of the car in France, in the dark, looking for a place to pitch the tent, only to realize too late I was standing in a good thick patch of stinging nettle - in shorts and sandals of course.
• Having breakfast to the sound of the hostel staff snoring on the bench, couch, or where ever... in the common area. I guess their work includes room and board, but when the rooms are booked...
• Getting dropped off in "Kafacek" (as we instructed the bus driver to do) as the sun was going down, hoping to catch a minibus ("there are many, many buses") to our destination. No mini buses and the town of "Kafecek" we learned afterward means junction. As we walked along the highway in the middle of nowhere, Mima said "I thought this is what we were going to do all the time". I guess we could have prepped her better ... : )
• Subjecting ourselves and our kids to a secure and enclosed waiting area for the ferry from Egypt to Jordan with hundreds of people, of which most are men and almost all smoke. We felt like bad parents - compounded by the fact the ferry kept getting delayed (by six hours). Hack!!
• Enduring the night bus to the Red Sea trying to manage some sort of sleep in between police check points while being bombarded by bad Egyptian movies cranked at full volume (regardless of the language barrier, I'm sure there is no plot).
• Trying to get the proper coffee buzz off Nescafe.

I'm sure there will be more challenges and we will do our best to take face them with a positive attitude. As Mattias said when we got dropped at the junction, "we're really in our traveler's groove now" and he looked for a spot to pitch the tent.

Snorkeling in the great Red Sea

We are in Dahab on the coast of the Red Sea in Egypt. We went snorkeling in the best snorkeling area I have ever done. The first day we just went outside the Penquin Hotel, where we are staying. We discovered that day that my snorkel had too big of a hole and we had to dump it. It was still pretty cool but I didn't see many fish at all. Yesterday, we shared snorkels at the Lighthouse snorkel area. It was the coolest snorkel area I've ever seen. I went out for the first time, saw a few fish and then my mask started leaking. So we went in to the beach area. For the second time I went snorkeling in the lighthouse, we fixed my mask and then I could go snorkeling with my Mom. I went out on her back to where it got really pretty. We saw a few fish, I got too excited and breathed with my nose a bit so my mask started leaking again and we had to go in. Darn it!

The third day, today, we bought a new snorkel for me and then the snorkel started filling up because the waves were so big. We were at the area called the Islands, which were only amazing if you went really far out. After the Islands, we met a friend, Nathan, who we had met in Olympos, Turkey and went for milkshakes. I had a pineapple vanilla thick shake, that had a lot of really yummy ice cream in it, which is probably rare here. This afternoon the water got calmer and I really wanted to try snorkeling again because I was getting anxious to see some of the cool fish. I went out on Dad's back and then I didn't panic, I was totally calm and guess what? I saw Indian lion fish, pencil fish, a puffer fish puffed out, a really cool blue fish with purple spots and a purple tail and a yellow face, and I saw two bright yellow fish with colorful stripes on their tail. I finally did it. Yahoo, yippee kayaye!

I can't wait until tomorrow to check out another really famous site named the eel garden. It is supposed to be really cool.

That's it for now, bye,
Emilia

ps. there is a really nice waterfront walk path that I like to walk barefoot on.

Puffies

Hello everybody,
I know that puffies sounds like Puffins again, but guess what? It means puffer fish! We are in Dahab on the coast of the Red Sea in Egypt. We are staying at a place called the Penquin ( even though there are no penguins). The whole reason we came to Dahab is for the snorkeling (pretty amazing)! We have snorkeled for three whole days and have seen maybe a hundred different kinds of very colorful fish. I wanted to rent an underwater camera so everyone can see how amazing the fish are but it was too expensive. I went snorkeling about one hour ago and knew what the puffer fish looked like, so I found one, then scared it and made it puff! I also saw an eel that was green and black and scary. I was wondering what it was until it looked at me. It looked me for quite a while, I looked at it, then it opened its mouth and showed me its sharp teeth. This usually means " don't come near me or I will eat you up" so I didn't, I swam away (scary).

There are three different places we have snorkeled in the three days and every place has been amazing mostly for the fish. But the coral reef is super colorful and fun to look at. There is a type of clam that every now and then you see in the coral. It is very beautiful and very sensitive. If you swim down near it, wave your hand in front of it, the blue and purple sucks into the clam and if you scare it a lot the clam completely closes- interesting.

We'll go snorkeling again tomorrow to hopefully see even more types of fish and maybe even a different type of clam.

Bye for now, Mattias

Ps I'll try to put on some pics later.

Tombs

Hello again every single person,

We are in Cairo with a population of 20 million plus across the Nile there are another 12 million and 4 million come into Cairo to work every day. Who can imagine how crazy it is with as many people in Canada as there are in two cities that are more like one?

Anyhow, today we went on a private tour to all the pyramids in the area and saw the Sphynx (it looks smaller in pictures than it actually is). We went in to a pyramid that everybody except for my little darn sister had to duck for. There was a sarcophagus in the pyramid bigger than the entrance. See if you can figure out how they got it in there (answer in the comment box).

We saw a statue of Ramses II and his nose was the size of my head, so you can imagine how ginourmously huge it was!

In Cairo you need to be really cautious when you cross the road because there are about three painted lanes and 12 lanes of cars. So you have to cross one car at a time and stand in the middle of the road with cars going in front of you and behind you. One nutty guy that helped us cross the street (he was a human shield) said to us "a tip to cross the street is to close your eyes and open your heart" (silly).

Bye for now, Mattias


ps... vegetarian tip - eat Koshary - it is a pasta with lots of sauces, chick peas, lentils and some other good stuff. There are fried onions. We went to a restaurant that this was their only food.

TD and P of C

Hello everybody, sorry I haven't blogged for a while.  While we were in Istanbul, we went to a TURKISH DANCE. At the dance there were belly dancers and men dancers and there were traditional dancers. There was a bit of Turkish jazz. My favorite was in second part. It was a solo belly dance and she had little jingle things on her dress so when she moved she jingled.  The dance was in an 500 year old Hamam (Turkish bath) that was converted in 1986 to a theatre. There wasn't a big stage. You sat in regular chairs that went in a semi circle and the stage didn't go up high. At the intermission they were giving away Turkish Delight and drinks.

In Egypt, where we are now, it is very hot and we are in Cairo. Today we went to see the PYRAMIDS OF CAIRO. The ones still standing and full, in total there were 10. When we went into a pyramid that was very small, Mom, Mattias and Dad had to duck, but I didn't- hee hee hee hee heee ha ha ha.  We saw the Sphynx and the day we are flying out in 2 weeks we are going to see Pharaoh  Tutankhamen's famous mask at the museum of Egypt.

Get on the bus

If you have kids, you may have heard of this song by the Doodlebops, well, it has become a regular hit with our family in Turkey given the number of buses we have taken in the last month.

Our first bus was spectacular and I can see why people rave about the Turkish bus system. We started with a bus that was pretty average, only to realize this bus was just the shuttle to take us to the otogar (main bus station) that are all a few km out of the centre of town. A huge coach arrived, seats were assigned, there are two drivers and ticket taker, and then, another guy appears and he is in the in-house flight attendant - no kidding -service similar to that on and Air Canada Jazz regional flight, only better because we also had wifi for the entire trip. Did I mention personalized tv's and direct trip door to door too? So our first experience- pretty good.

Our next trip baffled us as we couldn't quite figure out how a 220 km trip was to take us 5 hours. We started off on the shuttle and found out it wasn't the shuttle, it was the bus and it took 5 hours because it went through every little village en route. We still had drink service, but no wifi on this bus. This bus was direct too...sort of... we had to change twice and the last bus wasn't included in our ticket, we had to pay more.....

The third trip confused us further as we were on an overnight journey and we knew we'd be on a big coach again. But 9 hours for the 450 km still seemed long. Well, a mini bus, another minibus, a few hour wait at a main city to get the 9 hour bus and finally we were on our way. Hmmmm... No flight attendant service, no wifi, Turkish movies played out loud on the one tv screen and a stop every two hours for half an hour with announcements and lights on... Pretty poor sleep quality and when it was time to get off, we were the only ones getting off and we were pretty much tossed off at 6am with not much more than a look of disgust that the attendant had to get off to get our luggage out from underneath... Pretty much direct though.

Bus 4 direct to the north...pretty good and met our definition of direct...no minibuses and it did include inflight service, but no wifi and no tv's.  Emilia was getting a little too much attention too, so she had to move to a window seat just to be left alone for a while. Not much meeting up to that first bus standard.

Bus 5 was the classic. This bus was old. It didn't even stop at the otogar ; we had some bus helping guy show us where to and how to flag down the bus on the road as it drove by. Our seats were taken and the rest were dirty or broken. This bus had no service or tv or wifi, in fact it was more like what we expected before the first bus ride in Turkey. The best part of this trip was that we were to get off at some named town we couldn't find on our map and then just wait on the side of the road for one of the many minibuses to go by to get to our actual destination. Apparently there are lots of minibuses from our drop off point.  We got dropped off at the junction of two highways as the sun was going down. No town, no minibusses going by.  After some deliberation we walked up the road a ways to find help. Glad we did.... The traffic policeman who was the only guy around for miles...lucky moment.... helped us by waving down the most decrepit vehicle and putting us in it with instructions to the driver to take us to the next town. We were way over charged but happy to be on our way along the 10km hike we would have taken with our packs in the dark on a hwy....to the next minibus and then the final minibus.

We are not sure we actually want to get on another bus since they seem to be getting a little worse each time. The best part was that the kids attitudes were great. Emilia told us that the hiking we were doing along the highway was what she had envisioned when we talked about going around the world so it wasn't so bad. Mattias reminded us if all else failed we had the tent with us and we could pitch it and deal with getting to our destination in the morning. I am not sure at 7 or 9years old I would have had the same attitude! Oh, and once we had got our wits about us, we looked at our dictionary for the name of the town we were supposed to be dropped off at, and it wasn't a town, the word meant junction/crossroads. The joke was on us but we laughed pretty hard especially when it made us think back to the bus driver's look when we showed him where we wanted to be dropped off. He needed to know "where".... So we just told him our final destination and all seemed to be okay. We had assumed he just knew as a result of our trip direction. What did we know?!

So, we have learned that the bus company does matter, sometimes you are shuttled and sometimes the shuttle is the bus, and the meaning of direct changes dramatically depending on who is selling the ticket and how desperate they are for a ticket sale.  Our 300km journey to Istanbul tomorrow is 6.5 hours and direct on a large coach.... we will have to see what that actually means.

Hamam (Turkish Bath)

We are in Amasya, Turkey. We arrived two days ago and at about 5:30 in the morning we realized I had a terrible flu. I threw up quite a few times and the full morning was boooorinnnng because I had to stay in bed. Mom said that all the energy needed to go to getting my flu to go away. Luckily the flu only lasted the day. Today was much better. When I woke up we realised I was fine. So for the day, I will say these in order, first thing we went straight to a mosque (mom and I wore head scarves). The mosque was very cool. There were men going in and out praying on their knees facing east because they are Muslim. After that we went up a hill to a castle that was built-in the bronze age. It was very fixed up and looked like a building from only 1000 years ago. After that we went to the most exciting part of the day.

We went in the hamam ( I like to call them hamammis). First we got really sweaty and hot in the steam room. Then we doused ourselves in water and then finally we went in to a room and had a real scrub down. All of the dead skin came off and it was disgusting. After that we went for, yay, the massage. It felt so nice. When he did the choppy thing on my back I was making noises which made it seem like a bumpy truck. Then we got wrapped up in so fuzzy towels and had tea (only mom and dad had tea, we weren't allowed for some odd reason). I want to go for another one, it was great! Mom said we probably will go for another one in Istanbul.

Bye, Emilia

Amasya

Most o....I forgot to mention Hello everybody.
Most of the towns and places we go to are set up for tourists from the west region, but Amasya is set up so that mostly Muslims come to visit!! I think because of Ataturk's influence here many Turks come to visit (Ataturk was a Turkish leader who helped the Turks win independence- 80 years ago). Actually we are the only non Muslims that we have seen besides some loud American laughing about touching an old woman's head. Everyone else seems to be from the middle east. Don't forget to practice your Turkish charades before coming here.

There is not much to do in Amasya but we found four really interesting things to do:
- hike around in the tombs built in the side of the cliffs
- go to the castle at the top of the mountain
- go to a hamam ( a traditional Turkish bath)
- walk around the town (look at the awesome water wheel in the river)

The place we are staying is very traditional. It is an old Ottoman Empire house hanging over the river. There are lots of very Turkish things( besides the bathroom). The bathroom is definitely a WC (water closet). It is literally a closet with a shower, toilet and sink. Disturbing photo to follow, and some other pics of the place we are staying.

Fairy Chimney Hike

I am in Cappadocia, Turkey.

We went for hikes through fairy chimneys. The fairy chimneys are rock formations that stick up like big cones. In the fairy chimneys there used to be people living in them.  The first day we went for a hike we went through two valleys. The two valleys are called Rose Valley and Red Valley. They are called that because they have the colour pink on the mountains. See...!

The second day in Cappadocia we went for a tour of the underground city. In the underground city 20,000 people used to live there too.

People lived in the sturdy chimneys and the underground city because they were early Christians and Christianity was not always accepted. They even built churches into the rocks. One of the churches built into the rock in the open air museum was really neat with a cool design on the ceiling.

The third day we went for a 12 km hike. We went through tons and tons of fairy chimneys. Here are some more pictures...

Saban!

Merhaba (Turkish for hi),
I thought I should catch you up on one of the places I'm staying. My favourite is the place I'm in. It is called the Saban. The reasons I like it are that breakfast and dinner are included (great food) and there are two, two week old puppies (we only see one most times). The mother was kicked out for killing 2 chickens (bad thing not roosters because they wake you up at 5:00am). They are eating a lot better than when we arrived. The Saban has hammocks, a campfire each night, comfy turkish sitting areas outside, and ping pong. It is near the beach. The next thing is we can eat oranges off the trees. And the last thing is that Mima and I get a tree house to ourselves while mom and dad are in a bungalow next door.

We all like it here so much, we stayed here two days longer than we had planned.

 What is this picture of? (above) Answer in the comment box please!

Happy Halloween!

Well the festive candy haul was a little different here on the coast of Turkey at Olympos.

The scariest part was likely the feet in this photo - luckily you can't smell them when viewing over the internet (at least not yet). The "Smelly Feet" song sure comes up often during our travels. You'd be happy to know that this particular pair did get a good soak in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea right after this photo.

Of course we couldn't find any Jack-o-Lanterns here either so we decided instead to eat chocolate around the "fire breathing rocks" of Chimerae. No kidding, these fires have been burning for thousands of years and though the photo might look like we're just huddled around the campfire, there is no wood burning here, just natural methane seeping out from somewhere deep in the earth. Legend (Homer) has it that it comes from the fire breathing beast (Chimerae) that was beaten and driven deep into the earth. In celebration of this the Lycian people would light torches and hold sporting events with these lit torches. Many believe that this is the origin of the Olympic flame.

 

After watching the fire burn into nightfall we hiked back to Olympos in the dark making sure to include going past tombs of the ancient necropolis for an added spooky effect. Not the same as the North American event, but we figured it was a pretty good alternative.

Pamukkale Paradigm

As soon as we arrived in Pamukkale, I knew I would have difficulty with the travertines from an experiential point of view. From a distance the travertines look a lot like an early season ski hill or a small glacier- the ice falling over edges, the colour of the dirt and algae on the surface, the look of the slippery slope. We have had windy and cool weather while we have been here, adding to the difficulty of thinking about swimming in the warm pools made out of calcium carbonate rather than skiing down the relatively short slope. Even at night, looking up at the hill made me think of Red Mtn with night skiing. Added to this were the emails from Big Red Cats showing photos of the early season skiing back home.

It wasn't until we were walking amidst the travertines shoeless and geothermal water running over our bare feet that I really could get a grip of the fact that this was a very different formation and not ice or snow. It was a fantastic experience and today we are all back into the preset mind state as we slip on our words and say ice rather than salt to describe our experiences. It really speaks to the strength of our experiences as we try to change our paradigm of what really could be.

See photos in Emilia 's blog below.

Pamukkale

We went to a small town called Pamukkale. There is also a site named Pamukkale. The site has little cup things that hold water. They do not hold water all year long. We got lucky in that it rained so that they would be filled with geothermal water.

We also went to an ancient pool in Pamukkale. The ancient pool was more geothermal than the cup-thing-a-ma-bobbers. We swam in the ancient pool. In the ancient pool we would play on daddy's back and daddy would smash his shins on the ancient pillars and the ancient rocks. The ancient pillars and the ancient rocks came from the Roman empire. The Romans built a beautiful pool for the emperor and the ancient rocks and the pillars are from that pool.

All the water at the site was geothermal (geothermal means heated by the earth). Most of the geothermal was warm, but some of it was bit cool. The geothermal reminded me of Iceland.

Bye,

Emilia

Ephesus

The day before yesterday we went to an archeological site called Ephesus!! It is the most preserved Roman site in the world! Everybody knows that Kelowna has 100 000 people, but this ancient city Ephesus had just over 200 000 people in it. Wow, that must have been big! Actually, the site was over a whole kilometre long.


We also went to the temple of Artemis. It is one of the seven great ancient wonders of the world. We have also visited two other of the great ancient wonders on the trip. The Parthenon and the site at Rhodes where the giant statue of Colossus once stood.

Yesterday we went to a beach!!!!!! I built a tunnel so I could go through it. It was very hard to go through one way, but easy to go the other way.

In Turkey there is this thing called the blue eye. When you have one and someone gives you the evil eye, it bounces back at them. I really wish I had one so my mother and father would stop looking at me in funny ways.

Bye for now, I hope your school year is going well.

Mattias

The Search for the Ever Elusive Pita

There are certain things I associate with a country and for the most part, these associations have rung true. Like Crepes in France, fresh Pretzls in Germany, Strudl in Austria... So you'd think that Greece would not let me down when I tried to find Pita. In a way she didn't let me down, there was pita available at most restaurants and certainly at every Gyro stand. But whenever I tried to find fresh pita in the grocery store, there was none to be found.

Lunches are generally picnic affairs and we try to vary things a bit and often try to inject as much of the local staples as possible, so I thought pita at lunch would be a nice change up when in Greece. At first we found NO pita in the grocery stores we went to. Bakery's too. None, zilch, nada, nichts, kanenas... Now these were not always little stores - even the large ones where they had everything else - Greek and otherwise. "Where are the Pita?"we would ask. We usually got a shrug and the best we got was a 10 pack in the frozen section. Now the frozen 10'r was an improvement, but it still wasn't the same.

Often with will and determination there is a happy resolve to these kinds of quests, but alas, I must admit defeat. We never did find a source of the fresh pita. Perhaps all of the Gyro stands have the market cornered? Maybe Greeks don't eat it? Maybe you can only get frozen imported from... Canada? Whatever the case, we never did track fresh pita down and will have to make this a priority should we ever find ourselves in Greece again. I hate to think we were simply missing something obvious - though that is a possibility as well. I will have to resign myself to the fact that the frozen 10 pita were pretty good (once they thawed) and the ones from the Gyro stands and restaurants were great.

Fresh Pita - Where are you?

Quarterly update

Amazingly we are, to the day, three months out! This is one quarter of the way through our trip so we decided it was time to reflect on the many adventures we have had so far. We are doing this as a family, so some of the comments may include more than one response if we have differing thoughts.


Iceland
Best attraction: Minke whale, geyser, natural hotsprings
Best food: homemade soup
Biggest challenge: staying awake the first day; sleeping during daylight

England
Best attraction: salcombe sailing, Oliver, crabbing
Best food: Salcombe ice cream
Biggest challenge: Saying goodbye to the car

France
Best attraction: classic hike in Pyranees, Eiffel tower, Puy du Fou, Chateau Breze , Lascaux caves (so many...)
Best food: pan au chocolat, Camembert, mussels
Biggest challenge: finding camping in the middle of the night in Moisac(they lock the gates); kids biggest challenge was talking the parents into letting them have a pan au chocolat
every day

Spain
Best attractions: FC Barcelona museum; hiking in Picos de Europa, aqueduct in Segovia
Best food:we camped and cooked our own food mostly so we are not sure what we missed...
Biggest challenge: parking (anywhere in Spain), getting away from the cigarette smoke

Portugal
Best attractions: uncle Paddy and playing in the waves, archaeological site Citinia de Briteiros
Best food: BBQ fish, rice bowl with egg, vegetarian platter
Biggest challenge: getting info from Tourist info about anything other than the specific town we were in.

Germany
Best attraction: FC Koln game, riding Marina and Geronimo (auntie Chris' horses), hiking the steepest vineyard in Europe
Best food: pretzels, Daddy's birthday cake, Chris' pumpkin soup
Biggest challenge: beating Michy at footie (Mattias), none for the rest of us

Austria
Best attraction: Crown jewels in Vienna, meeting all the family, hike on the Hohewand with the petting zoo and zip line
Best food: sacher torte, heurigan food
Biggest challenges: getting cold milk, finding a happy Austrian in Vienna

Slovenia
Best attraction: Skojan caves, Vintgar gorge
Best food:Slovenian pub fare in Bled
Biggest Challenge: staying dry

Croatia
Best attraction: Plitvice Lakes, old city Dubrovnik
Best food: seafood risotto, ice cream/ gelato in Croatia
Biggest challenge: finding an easy route to Greece

Greece
Best attraction: black sand beach, Santorini; quads, old streets of Rhodes, Zeus' temple
Best food: halva, olives
Biggest challenge: finding fresh pita in the stores, not stepping in land mines (dog poo), finding legit TI offices

And there you have it....some of the best, not really much to complain about, and lots of yummy food.

Zoom Zoom

Today and yesterday.... well, yesterday we rented a quad for yesterday and today. (I forgot to say we are on Santorini, Greece).  The fastest speed we hit was 52km/hr. I was with the crazy driver Dad. Dad and  Mom also let me drive by myself for 5 minutes or so. We zoomed to a town called Oia  (Eeya) and watched a sunset. Today we zoomed to a red sand beach and a black sand beach.

At the red sand beach, we tried to snorkel but the water wasn't clear enough and there wasn't much to see.  Also, I tried to balance a thin rock on a thin rock, but it wasn't working for me so I put them together like a T for sitting on and then it all collapsed.

At the black sand beach we found some beach beds under umbrellas for free, that felt very tropical. I went snorkeling and saw and eel at this beach. He glared at me so I swam back and told Mima to get out of the water.

I think the place we are staying, is the best place we have stayed  so far.  It is good because it is comfy, they clean our room each day, there is a swimming pool and cake every day so I think Life Is Good!

I think that is it for this blog entry, I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Mattias

ps - don't forget to write comments.

Quad - ruple

We are on Santorini Island.  We rented some quads. On them today, Daddy let me drive for a bit. Frightening, hey!?  He totally took his hands off the steering and accelerator and let me drive. We went to three beaches. One was rocks and we didn't stay long. Another was a red sand beach and the other was a black sand beach. We stayed at the black sand beach the longest.  At the black sand beach, me and Mattias would swim in the water and snorkel with Daddy. We also would lie in the sand and bury ourselves. Yesterday we drove on the quads to Oia ( EEH-ah) and watched the sunset.  Tonight we are going on a night ferry that will arrive at 7am.  I am looking forward to Rhodes Island.

Groovy Greeks

Classic Greek vs our version
Corrupt police sounds like carped police - Emiliaism
Socrates sounds like great soccertes - Mattiasism ( disappointment at learning he wasn't a soccer player)
Typical Greek corner today - looking one way you see riot police and civil protesters (every other day event right now) less than a block in the other direction a ceremony marking the end of the German occupation, more police, but his time dressed in their best....hmmm. The irony not lost on too many on that one.

So here we are, in the heart of the city of Athens. Athens wasn't even on the original itinerary, but Greece, well it is so enticing! Getting from Croatia to Greece is an interesting dilemma and a long way given the options, we opted to take a ferry to Italy, wrong direction - we know, and then the 17 hour haul to Greece. The first ferry time flew by as we met some really fun Brits doing a year trip too- we hardly saw our kids, they were having a blast with their new friends Charlie and Billy, while we were being taught a new card game that Bernie, well, I'll leave that unsaid.

Surprisingly - in Greece, everything so far has been just that....surprising.

For me, Athens is nothing like the city I remember from 24 years ago( to be honest I was dreading coming) - it is cleaner, more welcoming, the hostels are great and the site-seeing really is amazing. The sights haven't changed much I suppose, but my outlook likely has!

For Bernie, the history has been fascinating (bit of a history buff he is) and the photography is fantastic.  Mostly the later as a result of the man we met who cleaned his camera.  For about 6 weeks, Bernie has been disgruntled at a dust speck you can see on most of his photos. He tried cleaning it himself, but ... When we arrived in Athens he did some internet searching and found Picopoulous cameras. Off we went - and discovered a man who had been in business -with his father- since 1935. His father was the only Greek to ever produce cameras - named Picca ( pic from the last name, ca for camera) . And he was totally up to date with his knowledge of digital cameras.  Bernie got a scolding for trying to clean it himself ( apparently it was obvious once opened).  The kids got a glimpse of his camera collections - wow! and the best part, the man was brilliant - a doctorate from Cambridge in Philosophy.  He was friendly, fun and obviously loved his work. It really helped that his English was good too - it meant for some great conversation. What better Greek to meet!?


The kids have enjoyed learning the Greek history (nice and gruesome) and seeing some for themselves, but today, they found the best thing yet - at Hadrian's Library ( yes, a Roman in Greek territory) they scouted out 9 tortoises, one a wee baby. They were in heaven.

Sorry for the lack of photos on the side bar - we are having trouble finding a connection fast enough to upload them... wait for Croatia tho, they are pretty great!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are Canadian.... we know we have lots to be thankful for....

Till next time,
Karen

Walls (images here too...!!!)

We walked on a Roman wall. It was so cool! You could see all of Dubrovnik. I forgot to say we are in Dubrovnik. We also went to an Island called Lokrum. On Lokrum we went swimming on a rocky beach. We had to wear sandals because there are sea urchins on the coast of Croatia. Lokrum is on the coast of Croatia.

While me and dad were swimming, we saw a black sea urchin eating a clam. It was really awesome. We also went tortoise hunting - no tortoises, but we did see peacocks. And we saw a baby peacock. The length including the tail was about a half foot and it was about half a foot tall. It was by its mama peacock.  We also saw lots of males but they did not spread their beautiful feathers (I guess that is for mating season).

Daddy is reading to us about the Groovy Greeks. They got in a different wall by playing tricks and because Cheradimus knew the password. Tomorrow we are heading to Italy and the next day to Greece on an overnight ferry. I hope the Greeks don’t play any tricks on us!