Poor Me!!!!!!!!

Oh dear, oh dear. I should not have tempted fate. Now have a real lowlight to share.

We spent the last three days in the Dolomites. It’s a bit of a mission to get there, since the roads are small and windy and the busses and trains are slow. It is, however, well worth the effort. We had booked ourselves into the Lagazuoi refugi for the first two nights but missed out on the first night due to train issues. Basically, we missed our stop. When I noticed that we had just chuffed right out of the station we were supposed to change at, we made a mad scramble to be ready for the next stop. We had our packs at the ready and waited at the carriage doors so that we could get out and retrace our footsteps. The train stopped and we opened the doors. Only they refused to open. We wrestled and tugged to no avail. The train chuffed off again. By this stage we were highly agitated. We migrated up another carriage and managed to alight at the next station, only to find we had a half hour wait for the opposite train. We ate a somewhat grumpy lunch of bread and ham and eventually managed to train back to the original missed station. We lost an hour. Another train trip and a bus journey later, we found ourselves at Cortina. It’s a pretty town – very Swiss. Wooden chalets with geraniums in window boxes, mountain slopes studded with pine trees and ski runs and ski lifts and massive rock faces as far as the eye can see. That is not an exaggeration, the mountains are all around and you can’t see through them. Cortina hosted the Winter Olympics a number of years ago. It even has a ski jump. At the bus station we discovered that while we were in time to catch the last bus to Passa Falzarego, we were too late to catch the last cable car up to the refugi. And there was no ways we were about to hike up a mountain in the drizzle, with nigh on 50kg of luggage between us. So we found ourselves a campsite and pitched our tent. The next day we left most of our stuff in the tent and then set off for Passa Falzarego carrying minimal burdens. The bus trip was quick and the cable car ride was great. We whizzed up the mountain. The view from the Lagazuoi refugi is spectacular. Mountains and mountains and mountains. It’s a good thing that the view is spectacular, because so are the prices. It cost me 43 Euros for one night in a dormitory (shared with seven others, one of whom was a terrible snorer) and supper and breakfast. Plus some gluhwein and wine and I hit the 50 Euro mark. Close on R600 for the night’s lodging. AND!!!!! I was incensed to discover that the showers were pay showers. Sod it, I thought, I will just remain grubby and smelly. Let them wash their sheets extra!

Fortified by a helping of apple strudel (late brekkies) I set forth with N to challenge the Tomaselli via ferrata. This one is much harder than either of the previous two I had done – graded 5 with a seriousness of C.

Via Ferrata Tomaselli - up that massive looking mountain behind N:

At first it was cold. I wore my down jacket. Patches of dirty (old) snow lay about and there was no sun. Just clouds and mist. We got to the start of the route and set off in the mist. The route was a bit slippery due to the recent rains, but it wasn’t unmanageable. In fact it was a lot of fun. 

Me having fun:

Me having loads of fun:

N rounding a corner:

It was a lot of fun right up to the halfway mark, when the rain started to come down. It poured down. The route became a water chute. A slippery, glassy water chute. And the rain was so cold. My hands started to freeze. Although this sounds unpleasant, I think it was a blessing, because it meant that they were so cold that I couldn’t feel how sore they were. Slippery rock, freezing fingers, imminent hypothermia, sodden to the skin, not a dry patch on me anywhere. Unhappy in the extreme, I was. And there was not a damned thing to do except carry on. We were past the escape route section and there was not a sausage of a chance that I was down-climbing that route. No way. Up was scary enough. Down would have been wicked injury potential. So on I soldiered, teeth chattering and sphincter tightly clenched. You can only imagine how thrilled I was to reach the summit which, thank the gods, we did. As we unclipped our final clip the rain stopped. Giving the Universe the finger, we commenced the descent. The descent was also slippery but thankfully it was a much shorter section of cable. Once we reached the end of the descent cable the sun came out in earnest and shone prettily for us, showing us the glorious landscape we had climbed through in driving rain. We ate lunch (bread and a Mars Bar) and then walked the long path back to the refugi in the sun, with patches of snow all about. Strange indeed for a South African gal. Even though the sun was weak, I still managed to get a healthy dose of sunburn. We didn’t think to bring the sunscreen when we set off in the middle of a cloud. 

On returning to the refugi I celebrated with a glass of steaming gluhwein. By that stage the rain was back and it was bitingly cold again. It was a delicious feeling to look out at the clouds and the rain and the mist swirling about the mountains while supping on my gluhwein. Definitely worth the hefty price tag. The next morning we eschewed the cable car despite the rain and headed off to descend via the next via ferrata . This isn’t quite as hard core as it sounds, because this one is really just a walk in a tunnel. No need for any via ferrata gear, just a torch. These tunnels are the WW1 tunnels that the Italians occupied. The Austrians occupied another set of tunnels a short distance away and they spent the years of the Great War (as it is called in the region) shooting at each other and trying to mine underneath each others’ tunnels and dynamite each other into oblivion. It is hard to imagine just how unpleasant life must have been for those soldiers, living underneath rock with winter temperatures reaching to minus 25. It’s a very special experience to do this walk. And we were lucky we set off so early and in the rain because it meant we had the place entirely to ourselves. N and I actually lost each other somewhere near the beginning and did the walk largely on our own. A couple of times I turned off my torch and stood in the pitch black and the silence, imagining what it must have felt like to be there so many years ago in the icy cold and the damp, with a group of people hell bent on killing you just around the corner. 

Hut/cave where the Italian soldiers slept:

N pretending to be an Austrian officer outside his hut:

Italian Tunnels:

The tunnels end halfway down the mountain and the rest of the way is a large, well worn track that you can descend pretty quickly. We passed droves of people walking up to do the tunnels from the bottom up and I was once again glad that we started our day so early. I don’t think the tunnels would have been nearly so atmospheric filled with torches and chatter and laughter. 

Me entering a section of the Italian tunnels armed with trusty headtorch, down jacket and Climb Like A Girl buff:

Filled with the sheer delight of the day, the splendour of the mountains and the heady intoxication of overcoming physical challenges in yesterday’s epic battle with the elements, I bolted down a section of the path to get a picture of the descending cable car. The road (because that is what it was by this stage of the descent) was wide, dusty and gravel/rock strewn. My heady intoxication and delight vanished in a puff of road dust as my ankle turned over and I ploughed two deep furrows into the road with my knees. And two smaller ones with my hands. As I fell, I could feel my ankle giving way with an extremely undelightful sear of pain. N caught up with me and asked “Are you alright?”
No. I was not. The knees of my climbing pants were gone, ripped to bit by the rocks, as were my knees. Blood speckled the remaining bits of the pants. My hands were ok, just bruised, but my ankle was nasty. It’s a very nasty sprain, probably better described as a low grade torn ligament. I mean ligaments. I did more than one.

Me looking and feeling truly pathetic:

As I type this, with my poor ankle elevated on some blankets, the outside ankle bone looks like someone has put half a tennis ball in there. The inside ankle bone is not as bad as the outer one, but it still looks fat and puffy and horrible. Even the tendon that runs down the front of my shin bone has swollen up. And the bruising is starting quietly. In a couple of days I will be a real sight. The climbing pants have been retired. As it was they were developing a need to be patched on the butt and I figured that after the fall, there was more hole than pants. And I don’t think I will be needing climbing pants for a while….

My poor deformed ankle:

I haven’t gone to the doctor yet. I’ll see if I need to in a day or so. I’ve now had so much experience with torn ligaments that I don’t think there’s much that the doctors will be able to tell me that I am not already doing. I can still walk, as long I don’t do any sideways or stabilizing movements. I’ve thrown out some stuff to lighten my pack. N is now carrying the quickdraws as well as the rope and tent. I can manage the lighter pack if I walk very slowly and carefully and not too far. In a very depressive moment yesterday I found myself pondering that this might be the end of my Europe trip. Hopefully that will not prove to be the case. I am self medicating with anti-inflammatories (the same ones that were prescribed to me for my last little accident) and trying to keep the poor ankle elevated. At last an excuse to be able to put my feet on the furniture! I am bandaging it for support it and fending off N’s desperate pleas to be allowed to sticky tape it instead of bandaging. He finally got to spray me with merthiolate and is now pestering me fairly consistently “Don’t you think you need more merthiolate on your knees? You know – they need to be disinfected…” He just likes to spray the red stuff on me. I look like a ten year old with skinned knees.

My poor skinned knees:

We had to travel to Venice today. Fortunately this involved minimal walking. I don’t think I will be seeing quite as much of the city as I had hoped, though. That’s the end of the saga for the moment. Wish me well and hope that I won’t be seeing you prematurely back in SA.

I look like I have elephantitis:

North Italy - Lowlights

Ah yes. The lowlights. There have definitely been a few, although fewer than the highlights.

EasyJet Flight From Mallorca – EasyJet is topping the list of my least favourite budget air carriers. We were due to fly from Mallorca at 2pm, which would have left us a fairly tight schedule to travel from Milan to Lake Como, but not a ridiculous one. EasyJet, in their infinite wisdom, decided to change this departure time until more like 4pm. We received email notification that they were doing so and they were oh so, so, so sorry! But nothing they could do, blah blah. Oh yes – in order to compensate us they would grant us either a) a free transfer to another flight or b) a credit file. Credit file option? Utterly useless to those of us stuck on an island and needing to fly off the island sometime soon. A transfer? Great! We’ll have one of those please. We’d like to transfer our flight to be a day or two earlier (i.e. a flight that left at 2pm) so that we are able to make our way to Como without the likelihood of getting stranded without transport during the night. But sneaky EasyJet! The “transfer” is free i.e. you don’t pay a transfer fee. But they still wanted to charge us 55 pounds each for the difference between what the flights cost! We bought our tickets almost half a year ago, when they were very cheap. Now the flights are expensive. So we had to just stick with the originall flight, only now we were departing Malloca at 4pm, leaving us with an extremely tight transport schedule. On arriving at Palma airport we were informed that the flight had been further delayed, due to problems at Milan airport earlier in the day. Of course, the signs all said our flight was delayed but EasyJet was making panicky announcements about how anyone flying on our flight must proceed IMMEDIATELY to the late check in desk as they were running out of time! So we raced like maniacs through the check in process, hurtled through the airport and screeched to a halt at our boarding gate, just in time to find… nothing. We sat and waited for about an hour before some EasyJet employees appeared, full of the joys of their job. Everyone made a wild dash for the boarding gate. EasyJet’s chaotic boarding process leaves much to be desired. You all scrum for space, while an EasyJet employee shrills at the seething mass of frantic flyers before her “People!!!!!! People!!!!! I am NOT going to start the boarding until you all step back and allow the “SB” status flyers to the front.” Needless to say, every person in the seething mass knows that if they display weakness they will be swallowed up by the rest of the seething mass and likely be trampled to death. So they all continue to elbow and jockey and seethe. The shrill lady sulks and shrills ineffectually and drib by drab, the SB people board. Then the SA people fight their way to the front and then the A people, until just the B’s are left. At this stage, things get dangerous. You’re likely to collect a cracked rib or a chipped tooth as the snarling B flyers try to force their way to the front of the mass of other B flyers. Um, no people – you cannot push straight through me. I am solid flesh and bone and I AM IN FRONT OF YOU! I came very close to snapping. A couple of people do not know how close they came to getting a black eye. One more poke in the back and things might have gotten ugly.
We boarded the flight eventually, despite EasyJet’s best efforts to keep us in Palma. We then sat around for what seemed like another age. I don’t know what the crisis was, but they really messed us around. We were supposed to depart at 16:40 and land at 18:20 (give or take a minute.) When we got to the airport we were informed that our flight was delayed until 15:50. But we only took off after 19:00. We left Palma airport after we were due to have landed in another country! EasyJet was absolutely useless when it came to explanations and updates. We were all just left wondering what the hell was going on and when we were going to leave. When we did eventually take off, the captain apologized and made disclaimers about how it wasn’t their fault. Pah.

The airport bus between terminals took about 15 minutes to arrive (where was it? On a coffee break?) and dropped us at Terminal 1 JUST in time for us to miss the Malpensa Express train. We had to sit around for another half hour to catch the next train. We got to Saronno station late in the night, to find that the last train (for which we had tickets) had left 20 minutes ago. We had to sit in the station for over an hour and wait for the substitute bus, which arrived after 23:00. By the time we hit Como, needless to say all of the other busses had stopped running and there we were – stuck at the bus station with 50 kg of luggage. (I was carrying 24, N 25.5) How on earth have we accumulated so much crap? 50 kg of luggage and a map. *%#@ing great. So we walked. And walked and walked and walked. We walked through Como to the other end of town. We got there at twenty past midnight, to find locked gates at our hostel and a thoroughly disgruntled man, who had been expecting us at 19:00. I was exhausted and starving and my feet and hips incurred a lot of damage (which I am still struggling with) on that unhappy midnight tramp through Como. Thanks a bunch, EasyJet.

Being A Hobo – The next day we toured Como and ended up leaving later than originally planned. We trained back to Milan and then the plan was to train and bus out to Arco. N warned me while on the train back to Milan that he “might want to look about for an i-phone in Milan.” I said fine, but I did not want a repeat of the night before where we get stuck in a two bit town with no transport anywhere. We reached Milan. We wandered out of the train station. I saw a computer shop and we nipped in there to replace my laptop power cable (lost in Mallorca – looking back I am starting to develop somewhat negative feelings towards that island…) and to ask if they had i-phones. Well, I got a power cable (62 Euros – flipping well seven hundred bucks!) but no i-phones. They recommended N try “near Duomo.” So to Duomo we went. Fortunately we took the metro because by now my hips were trying to pop out of their sockets. At the Duomo stop, I waited with the 50kg of crap while N fled into Milan to run from phone shop to phone shop, getting nowhere. Not an i-phone to be found. After 40 minutes he returned to me where I had managed to buy the onward metro tickets and fall and twist my ankle in the process. (Well, you try lugging 50kg of backpacks through a metro station by yourself when you weigh less than 60.) I had also tried to open my last tin of sardines and eat it, because I was ravenous and heading into hyper-glycaemic shaky hands and light-headedness. Needless to say, the pesky opener on the tin broke and try as I might I was unable to bludgeon it open with a fork. So N returned to a shaky, light headed, sore ankled, sore hipped, starving, miserable me. We metroed to the central station in Milan, which is an extremely impressive building. Pity I was too miserable and broken to bother to take a photo. Pizza in the station managed to restore me slightly and we took off by train for Pescheria del Gardia, where we were going to catch an onward bus. Ha! Yeah right. We got there after the busses had stopped running. Bloody i-phone. It was pitch dark by this time (after 22:00) and the nearest camping was allegedly 5km or so away. Walking there with my 24kg was a physical impossibility. N cunningly suggested that we stash our backpacks in the bushes near the train station and walk without packs until we found a spot that was wild enough to camp and then return before light to retrieve the packs. Just as cunningly I declined to do so. I will not be leaving my pack in any bushes in an urban setting. If my pack is found somewhere it shouldn’t be, I want to be with it. Having spent R700 to replace my power cable and R300 to replace the day pack it was in, (and a bunch of other stuff still to be replaced) I do not feel like replacing everything else when my abandoned pack gets nicked. I also didn’t feel like walking anywhere, what with my hip bones grating in their sockets. So we slept in the bushes between the train station and the long term parking. I was a hobo for a night. It would have been fine, except that we (obviously) couldn’t pitch the tent. And so the mozzies attacked me relentlessly the entire night. I was chewed. I slept very little. I had a remarkably unpleasant night and was remarkably unimpressed the next morning, with life in general.

So you can see how Arco is a small paradise for me. After those two nights of awfulness, Camping Zoo feels like home. 

My other lowlight is the blisters. After a week of being unencumbered by a pack, my hip joints have 90% recovered the ability to rotate without seizing, but the blisters remain. And they get worse every day. I’ve had two days where the walk into town turned into about a five km walk, due to grocery and i-phone hunting. And two days of hiking and doing via ferratta. Last night I could barely hobble to the bathroom. So I threw caution to the winds and popped the blisters. All three of them. And then I doctored them with N’s tincture of merthiolate. Which stings like wasps sting. Hopefully they will now harden up and allow me to be fully mobile again, because I am looking forward to doing more via ferratta in the Dolomites in the next couple of days.

Ending off the lowlight post on a positive note, I am sitting under a tree in the shade. The wind is blowing. The day is pleasantly warm. I am eating salted sunflower seeds. Later (blisters allowing) we will walk into town for the last grocery supply and maybe some more ice cream. Soon we will be heading off to the Dolomites. Life is good!

Ps - discovered the best ice cream place! 5 Euros for half a litre of ice cream. We shared one the other day. Flavours – dark chocolate fondant, crème caramel, dulche de latte, grapefruit, tiramisu and fior de latte. Might have to have another half litre tonight before we depart Arco for good.
Pps - another highlight! Tonight Camping Zoo has advertised a "white yoghurt party." We are intrigued and looking forward to it.

Northern Italy Highlights

The opening line is always the hardest. Once I start writing it just kind of comes. But sometimes I spend ages trying to figure out how to begin. Fortunately I’ve got that over with already and so I can now commence “just writing.” 

Oh yes – this is a no photo post, since my photos are on my camera and my camera cable is in the tent across the river and I’m not going to fetch it. Sorry, I will try and post more photos soon.

It’s Arco right now. Northern Italy. What a sweet town. (I mean that as in “schweet” and not “Biggie Best”, although it is really cute too.) Arco will be hosting the 2011 climbing world champs. There are mountains all around and I love that. I am a mountain junkie. It’s not quite the Dolomites (we’re going there next) but it’s still very relaxing for me to have hills and cliffs all around me. We’re staying at “Camping Zoo”, which is just a km or so out of Arco. So we walk in to town every day or second day for groceries and stuff. It’s doing my fitness levels a lot of good and my blisters a lot of harm. We're very happy with Camping Zoo. It’s about 500m further out of town than Camping Arco, but I think it’s worth it. Not only is it a couple of Euros a day cheaper, but the atmosphere is enjoyable. It’s relaxed. The people seem to be here less for a massive party and more to experience a chilled holiday with their families. People cycle everywhere. They walk. They rollerblade. (I was dead keen to buy myself a pair of rollerblades but try fitting those into a backpack…) They climb. 

Every night we eat supper at a wooden table and bench next to our tent. I have wine. It’s less than 1 Euro for a litre carton (re-sealable) of red wine. That’s cheaper than I can get it in SA! And the wine is pretty tasty too. Plonk, but very yummy plonk. During the day we wade across the icy, icy, icy river and sit in the shade and work on our laptops. Then, when it cools down a bit we putter in to town or off to a crag or (once) to the local pizza joint. It’s a delightfully peaceful existence. I am enjoying it a lot more than I did Mallorca. It’s not as hot during the day and we have lovely shady trees all around. It’s also great to be based in one spot and not to be haring about from place to another with ten tons of crap in a backpack. 

Highlights of the past week:
Via Ferratta – What fun!!! For those not in the know, a via ferratta is something in between hiking and rock climbing. It’s a route up a mountain (or cliff, or canyon) that is artificially protected with iron cables and stemples (big staples in the rock) and pegs. You need a climbing harness and via ferratta gear. Oh yes – gloves are highly recommended. The gear consists of a shock absorbing device, incorporating some dynamic rope. You clip the middle bit to your harness and then you have two “tails” each with a carabiner on the end. You clip the tails to the cables and off you go – attached to the cables by two ropes. You get easy routes, on which you hardly need the safety gear. (Yes Mum, I promise I am using it anyway. Um…. most of the time…) And you get hard routes which could just about be climbing routes. We’ve done two so far. One super easy route opposite the camp site, which was really just a scramble. And then we did a day trip to Castello de Drena for a slightly harder one. It was so awesome! A route up a small canyon, walls water-smoothed by centuries, which used to be used as the escape route from the castle in old times. It was pretty, it was fun, it was slightly athletic – I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was also a cool wire bridge across the canyon. Three wires – you walk on one of them and you hold the others in your sweaty little paws. If you are even slightly athletic and you go to the northern Italy/Germany region you must must must do at least one via ferratta. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. They are fantastic. I wish I had my photos on my computer to share some of them with you!

Castello de Drena – At the end of the via ferratta we coughed up the 2.50 Euros each and nipped into Castello de Drena. This is a ruined and now somewhat restored castle in the very small town of Drena. We were accosted by an excited employee. We couldn't understand a word he said, but he was very keen for us to do something. We eventaully gave up and followed him, after surrendering my passport. The suspense…..! Turns out he wanted us to climb to the top of the tower. Why us? Not sure. He didn’t accost anyone else while we were there. Perhaps we had that manic “we are adrenalin junkies who have just finished the via ferratta” look in our eyes. He hustled us off to the tower, unlocked the door for us and shut us in, giving us strict sign language instructions to close the door when we came out. And then off he went. We climbed to the top and had a gorgeous view of the mountains in 360 degrees. The wind blew in from hundreds of miles away, danced over our faces and then rushed off again. Stunning. Down we came, retrieved my passport and left with the castle employees smiling happily after us. We then had to walk 2 km or so to Dro because Drena is so small that only two busses run per day and we had missed them. From Drena we caught a bus back to Arco. Wish we had such useful public transport in SA….

Arco Market – Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!! We encountered this on our way to the via ferrata in Drena. It surprised us in Arco town. Luckily the bus only left for Drena an hour after we got into Arco, so I had a short while to putter about. I bought myself a lovely t-shirt for 2 Euros and a super cute dress for 10 Euros (brought down from 25 Euros for market day – ooooooh the scrooge in me rejoiced at the bargain!) Even with an exchange rate of nearly 12 to 1, that’s pretty good going in Rand terms. I was very sad that I didn’t have more time to rootle further. I saw a lot of stuff that was incredibly cheap and so different to the things in SA. I would have loved to have bought more. To my great regret and to N’s utter relief and delight, we had to leave the market and catch a bus. 

The Watermelon Party - Last Saturday, Camping Zoo sprung upon us ….. a watermelon party! Open to all campers, and entirely free, it was a delightful surprise. They had piles of watermelons, which they cut up and gave out in slices. Eat as much as you like. We did. We ate. We liked. Then they brought out the entertainment. We had a mini-circus. A fat man lay on his back and twirled logs and wooden boards. Someone else threw knives at a pretty girl. A lady did some fire eating. Then they brought out a massive bowl of cheese and more watermelon. We guzzled. The cherry on the top of the evening was the candy floss machine! What circus is complete without candy floss? I scrummaged for a candy floss for N, who wasn’t sure that it was entirely fitting for a 33 year of man to be elbowing children out of the way in his quest for candy floss…. This 34 year old women had no such compunction. After we polished off the candy floss we wisely decided not to get another one and waddled off to bed, replete and content. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and reinforced our liking for Camping Zoo. (Note to others, that you may learn from my mistakes – do not eat vast quantities of watermelon straight before bedtime. I was up five times during the night to pee.)

I was going to make this a highlights and lowlights post, but I see how long it is getting. I think I will post the lowlights in a separate post.

End of Mallorca

We're in Port de Pollenca right now, staying in an interesting little spot called Hostal Paris. The owners seem to be expats who are living their dream by running a little establishment in a Spanish sea side resort. Not that I have asked them, but I am enjoying thinking it, and see no need to correct myself with the truth by asking. They are friendly and seem like genuinely nice people. It’s 30 euros a night for our twin bed private room with en suite “bathroom.” This is a pretty good price in comparison to many other places. The breakfast (included in the price of the room) is not bad at all and to a starving soul like me it is manna. There was this morning the most delightful baguette bread, baked fresh and still warm, with real butter (how I hate marge) and some ham (not the disgusting polony like stuff the other place served up), cereal, yoghurt, jams, coffee, orange juice (but from a carton, not the nasty mix-it-up stuff that hotels always try to water down to the greatest extent possible…) and that baguette was the best bread I’ve had since I left SA. The building is somewhat run down. The shower in our "bathroom" is tiny - approx 2 foot square. N cannot stand in it without the shower curtain wrapping itself around him. The toilet marginally overhangs the shower rim. There is JUST enough space to close the door without actually climbing into the shower, if you squish yourself into a pretzel shape. When I look out of the bathroom window I can see water running down the outside wall opposite me. I presume that one of the other bathrooms is not very well water-proofed. All this, however, is pretty much what befits our price bracket. 

There is sometimes a smell of petrol. I figured out this morning that there is a petrol station nearby - must be the tankers offloading or something. But I like the place. You can see that the owners make an effort. There are some English books to read in the lobby. And there is a very Jikky smell in the loo. Although I do not like Jik, I do like the fact that they use disinfectant.

The hotel is about a minute’s walk away from the beach, which has the warmest water of the trip so far and no waves, resulting in a delightfully relaxing swim. I have been totally enjoying the opportunity to sleep in a real bed, despite the mattress springs that poke me in the back the whole night. And it is blissful to look outside at the blazing heat and be tucked away under cool plaster, with a slight breeze blowing through the room. Last night, however, the room was super heated, because we closed the window. Somewhere about 03:30 I soaked my towel in water and slept with it. We closed the window because of the mozzies. The damned things feast on me. Why me? I swear they have radar that picks me up about 7km away. They drop what they are doing and beat their wings to ribbons in their attempts to get to me ASAP!!!!! And they phone all of their nasty, biting, vicious friends along the way. “Woo Hoo! Feeding frenzy in room 207 guys!” They bite me. They raise welts raise all over me. I itch. I hurt. I can’t sleep through it. However, last night the room was so hot without the sea breeze that I couldn’t sleep anyway. Maybe tonight I will leave the window open and be bitten and sleepless instead of hot and sleepless. N would probably prefer that option and he was very good about last night’s sauna effect – didn’t complain at all. 

Tomorrow night we leave our island and fly back to Italy. Aims: Dolomite mountains, via ferratti, more climbing, hot water spring place, caves, day trip to Venice, try not to spend too much money. The last one is looking unlikely. Camping anywhere in the north of Italy is just ridiculous. Exorbitant. We’re unthrilled and will continue to look for more options.

And now for the requisite holiday snaps to make people jealous. (Well, why else does anyone go on holiday?)

Distant view of the beach we swam at one day after climbing. You have to walk down an extremely steep hill to get there. And back up again after swimming.

One of the incredibly dodgy bolts we keep finding at the crags. Salt water corrosion and all that. No, we don't climb on these bolts. We find other routes.

Unphotoshopped sunset view from the watch tower at Formentor.

Yacht anchored off the Formentor coast, also seen at sunset from the top of the watch tower.

More Lluc

Ok, I’m bored. Today was another rest day. N managed to step on a sharp and pointy piece of wood yesterday at the crag. It went through the sole of his strops and into his foot, making walk-in’s, tight climbing shoes and sweaty climbing feet a bad idea for the next day or so. So today was spent in the picnic area of the Lluc sanctuary. After staying in the sanctuary itself for three days, we decided that we’d indulged ourselves in enough luxury and it was time to look after the coffers again. We are now staying in the Lluc campsite. It’s ok. Most of the tent sites are flat, dry, unshaded and dusty. We have scavenged ourselves a fairly nice little spot against the wall. It’s shaded from most of the day (gets late afternoon sun) by some big trees and it’s far enough away from most other campers that noise isn’t an issue. It is on a slight slope, but we figured that we’d cope. We do, but each night does involve a certain amount of leopard crawling back up to the top end of the tent. The toilets are awful. Truly nasty. I was lulled into a false sense of happiness when I accidentally went into the men’s toilets the first night and found the one clean loo in the entire place. After that, I have been so appalled by each of the toilets I have attempted to use that now I just prefer to walk the 300 metres or so to the sanctuary, where there are clean public toilets. The good thing about this campsite, though, is that it’s free. And so we soldier on….

Just next to the sanctuary and the campsite, there is a large picnic area. It is filled with grey rocks, shady trees and olive trees. I love olive trees. They are the most beautiful things. Well, the old ones are. They get all gnarled and wizened and twisted. They make incredible shapes and you can see things in the wood. N has decided that olive tree gazing is my substitute for looking into the sky and making pictures out of the clouds. Soon I will post some olive tree pictures. But not yet because they are still on my camera.
So yes – we spend our rest days, and afternoons when it is too hot to climb, in the picnic area. N sets up his solar panel and we both take out our computers. N works and I write. Or email people. Or blog. Or edit photos. N is happy as Larry, puttering about with his gadgets and tweaking them to get the angle of the sun just right. And I am happy because I usually have a glass of red wine in reach of my paws as I type. Today, though, I have reached saturation point. I have emailed. I have written. I have done stuff. It is hot. The benches are uncomfortable and the only other thing to sit on is rocks. There is no green grass. There is nothing to lie down on comfortably. My bum is sore from the benches. There is nowhere to go. There is nothing much to do. I am bored and unimpressed. My faintly grumpy recommendation is that you don’t go to Mallorca in the dead heat of summer, when the island swelters every day and the tourists swarm. Most particularly, do not do this if you are not going to stay in a nice room with air-conditioner. And showers. And toilets. If you have no room, no air-con, no showers, no toilets, no fridge, no chair and no comfy bed, Mallorca kinds of sucks at midday. There is a reason that all the Mediterranean folk siesta…

On a more positive note, I would still rather be here than at work. 

Since I am lacking in inspiration today, I shall just share a few arbitrary points:

I wrote an email to my mom today. N has been doing his best to pester me as I write. I think he is bored. He has been trying to sneakily type randon letters into my email. He finally managed to type an "n". I deleted it. He is now threatening to tell my mother that I deleted the letter that he typed to her...

Europe is a very dirty place in many ways. Everywhere you go people are peeing and poohing. Toilet paper lies around every rock. People seem to drop their pants as and when they please. 
Are South Africans any cleaner? Our country does not have loo paper around every rock. Does this mean that we are better behaved in SA or would our country look the same if it was as densely populated as Europe?
Europe does, however, have a massive recycling effort going. Everywhere you go there are rubbish bins. But not just bins – often 4 different kinds of bins. Yellow for plastic, tins and tetrapaks; green for glass; Brown for organic waste and black for irredeemable rubbish. It would be so cool if recycling were this widespread in SA. But it’s unlikely to happen until we have as much of a space and a “where are we going to put our rubbish???” problem as Europe does. 

South Africa has a bigger range of foodstuffs than I have been able to find in Italy or Spain. We have been to both small café type shops and larger super-markets. SA wins hands down. Peanut butter was all but impossible to find in Italy. (Fortunately we have found a supply in Mallorca – N was starting to twitch with desperation.) Marmite or anything of the sort? No such luck. Salt and vinegar chips are just about impossible to find and when you do find them they are bland and you might as well not bother. SA has a huge range of chip flavours which are not found here. There are no blue Doritos. Biltong is clearly wishful thinking. We’re quite well catered for in SA in terms of the variety of foodstuffs we get. I will admit that Italy kicks our butts in terms of ice-cream varieties. And in terms of mozzarella cheese, but who cares about cheese…

More Monastery

It is day 3 in the sanctuary today. We aren’t doing very much except sitting in the room and working. N is working on real work (nice for him that he can ean a salary while he travels…) and I am editing photographs, doing our expenses and sending emails. I am also getting stuck into a litre of wine. I picked it up on the shelf of the super market assuming it would be re-sealable like all the others I have bought. Only it wasn’t. So now I have to finish it before we leave here. Oh the hardship!

Flowers on the magnolia tree that we see while sitting in our room:

Yesterday I commented that no one in the sanctuary has tried to convert me. Well, I think the building might be trying. I have mentioned before how I often have songs in my head. They pop in unbidden and then go round and round and round. Right now there is a duel to see who gets more airtime between the sung version of the Lord’s Prayer and Onward Christian Soldiers. Quite honestly, I wish they’d both just get lost already – I’ve had enough.

It’s a good thing that we are leaving here tomorrow. We have just about run out of food and there is no town within miles with a supermarket. We have a packet of snacky things (sunflower seeds and peanuts) and a packet of fried and salted corn (like bar snacks) and peanut butter and one tin of tuna. We have eaten so much corn in the last few days that I don’t want to see it ever again. Last night I ate a tin of sardines and a spoonful of peanut butter for supper. I nearly cried when we got to the restaurant and it was closed and we had to come back to the room for that nasty meal. I will eat at the restaurant tonight come hell or high water. In the meanwhile I am wrestling with my conscience about the tin of tuna. N is asleep. The great debate is about whether I should gobble it up before he awakes. I think that if I hadn’t already filled up on a disgusting amount of corn, there would be no debate…
Poor me – I shall clearly have to stave off the hunger pangs with another glass of wine.

Mangers at the monastery from the days when you could only reach here by foot or by horse:

 So tonight is our last night in civilization. Tomorrow we leave the sanctuary for the cold, hard world again. No more flushing toilets. No more hot water on tap. No more comfy beds. Back to mosquitoes and heat. Bother. I think I need more wine. And perhaps a little stroll in the botanical gardens.

Mallorca - Rock, Sun, Heat, Mountains, Monasteries

I am staying in a monastery. Well, maybe it’s really called a sanctuary. Hard to tell with the language barrier. Either way, I find it delightfully ironic, since I am not exactly a believer. I don’t think anyone really cares about that. As long as the tourist euro is spent, they do not care where it comes from. It seem to make no difference whether it is an unblighted euro, handed over by a righteous, pure hearted, Christian minded, chaste and godly little soul or a tarnished euro, handed over by... well, um… by me.
Maybe they whip it through a quick blessing ceremony to clean it up. Who’s to say the church doesn’t launder money….

But there are no monks. I was quite looking forward to sitting here of an evening and listening to eerie singing and chanting resounding over the mountains. Kind of like a live rendition of Gregorian Chants. No such luck. The closest we have come is the bells, which ring an interesting pattern for the evening mass. Or service – whatever it is called. I haven’t even seen bishopy sort of folk, gliding serenely down the ancient stone corridors in beautiful gowns. Hell! (Um, I mean “heck” of course.) Not even a black gowned priest furtively following tight-bottomed choir boys down the corridors. Nothing! No monks, no priests, no chanting and no choir boys. (They are on holiday, according to a notice on the notice board – hey, maybe that explains the absence of the priests…) I haven’t even had to fend off an attempt at religious conversion. There have certainly been no lively theosophical debates. I am feeling almost swindled on the religious dogma side of things. 

Apart from the grievous let down on the religious dogma side of things, it is really quite nice here. The sanctuary is in the middle of the mountains of Lluc. Because of the altitude we have somewhat escaped the baking heat that plagues this island everywhere else. And the mosquitoes!!!!! There are no mosquitoes! Maybe there is a god up here… This could possibly be the one thing that might effect my conversion. I have not been bitten once since I got here. Well, not by a mosquito anyway.

Monastery of Lluc from the hills above it:

Closeup of the Clock:

 We are staying on the 2nd floor of the sanctuary. The walls are thick stone. We look out onto the courtyard, which is filled by a gorgeous magnolia tree. There are thick iron bars over the windows. They make me want to reach my arms through them and wave them madly, shouting to the tourists below “Help me! I am being held here against my will!”

Yesterday we wandered through the church. The first room is disastrously cluttered with paintings, frescoes and other evidence of religious devotion. Alarmingly cluttered as far as I was concerned. Very Baroque. Faintly redeemed by two simple granite fonts. I have a horror of clutter. I must say, it did have a very beautiful ceiling thingy. I’m not sure what you call those domey, turrety bits on the tops of churches. Cuppola? That might be the Italian word. Anyway, on the inside they usually have a bunch of paintings and then some windows to let in the light. The church had one of those that I found quite beautiful. 

Gorgeous ceiling:

 I was generally much more taken with the back room. A simple affair, furnished with plain wooden pews and an abundance of lights. Lights with iron light shades that have patterns cut out of them. Lovely. 

Back room and lights:

The sanctuary is very pretty, but I must say that I am somewhat more of a fan of the 'church of nature" (that is such a twee phrase that I find myself compelled to do the inverted comma thing) and find more evidence of godly activity in the splendours of nature, such as the view of the sunrise from our campsite of two nights ago, and the mountains and the sky and the clouds that we saw on the drive here.

Sunrise over the mountains of Lluc:

Lake at the Gorg Blau: