Don't Swim

The further travels of a neurotic_dog.  From my journal of a year spent travelling back before the toddler was born.

10 April

Warty Towels

After I last wrote we continued our travels in Tasmania and promptly fell foul of the infamous weather, obviously as a direct result of gloating about how warm and sunny it had been. We visited the renowned Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair national parks and did some camping and walking in the freezing rain, but mostly we chickened out and stayed in nice warm motel rooms with televisions and kettles. This was a much more civilised way to travel, although it did lead to one of the more unsettling experiences of our travels - an encounter with a real life Basil Fawlty. The ordeal began when Mr Dog called to book a room at his motel at fairly short notice.  As he made the booking he was grilled comprehensively about his intentions with regard to the room: the motel only had a non-smoking room available, and the proprietor was extremely concerned that we might be masquerading as non-smokers just to secure the room. Having attempted to reassure the man on this point, Mr Dog faced renewed interrogation on arrival at the hotel - apparently he exactly fits the profile of a surreptitious smoker, and had to be frisked for ashtrays before gaining access to the key. Once in the room we began to unpack our year’s worth of camping paraphernalia from the car. Unfortunately this alarmed Basil still further and he accosted us when we tried to go out, demanding to know why we were bringing all this stuff into his motel and accusing us of erecting some sort of construction in the room. We weren’t sure if this had actually happened to him on some occasion or whether it was a suggestion of his own imagination and we struggled to decide which would be more worrying. In any event Mr Dog began to lose his temper at this additional slur on his character, in response to which Basil’s behaviour underwent a total reversal and he became helpful to the point of obsequiousness. Utterly nauseating, especially when he insisted on carrying all our bags for us. The encounter left us with the suspicion that all the rumours about Tasmanians are probably true, although we were unable to confirm this as we never got an opportunity to count his toes.
 
Once we left Tasmania (as fast as we possibly could) we spent some time in Melbourne. I hate to admit this as know it will make me a pariah to all our Sydney-based friends, but we really, really liked Melbourne. It looked and felt a lot like London and we felt very much at home there. By good luck we were there for the weekend of the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix, so we got tickets and went along. It was really good fun - very loud and smelly, lots of spins and crashes, and lots of embarrassed fair-weather Ferrari supporters when Schumacher didn’t win. We didn’t want to leave Melbourne as we were enjoying ourselves so much there and we will certainly be back.
 
After Melbourne we travelled along the famous Great Ocean Road, and it was as spectacular as we expected. We stayed in a wonderful campsite right by the sea, and to our delight we encountered our first wild koalas, which were rather less spritely and a lot less ferocious (and consequently a lot less worrying to have as neighbours) than the last bears we camped with. We did hear one very nasty story of a vicious koala attack, but we remain sceptical - the truth is, they’re very cute, they’re very fluffy, and they’ve got nothing on a rabid squirrel.
 
On the way back to Sydney we travelled through the Snowy Mountains, which were ravaged last month by terrible bushfires.  We went for a really fascinating walk through the burned forest and were amazed by how resilient the Australian bush is to fire and how quickly the trees were putting out shoots and regenerating. The air still smelt of acrid smoke and the floor was covered in ash, but all over the black trunks there were bright green buds and new undergrowth was poking up everywhere. It was quite eerie but strangely beautiful.
 
For the past few weeks we’ve been holed up in Gosford with Mr Dog’s family, enjoying the proximity of the bathroom and making the most of not having to do any packing. A very dear friend of mine has flown over from England to visit up and she and I went on a trip up the coast of New South Wales together for a few days, to the huge relief of Mr Dog and his relatives as she and I had eight months of chatting to catch up on. On the trip we saw kangaroos, parrots, dolphins and beautiful green tree frogs and I managed to take her for one bushwalk along coastal cliffs in a raging thunderstorm and on another bushwalk in the rainforest (in the rain) where we narrowly averted a nasty incident involving a broken bridge and a number of leeches.  Fortunately all this conspired to keep her mind off the scorpions and poisonous spiders at the campsite, so she seems to have enjoyed her visit.
 
Mr Dog and I will be heading to the Northern Territory at the weekend, for a few weeks of guided camping safaris around Alice Springs and Darwin, where we will make every attempt to follow the sound advice of our well-wishing relatives: DON’T SWIM. Should we succeed in not being eaten by a crocodile, we will report again in a few weeks.

8 May

Don’t Swim

I am very sad to say that this will be our last update from Australia, as in a couple of weeks time we'll be heading off to Asia. It's very exciting, but it will also be very strange to leave Oz, as I've begun to feel quite at home here (well, as far as possible for a Pom who refuses to acknowledge that Australians are eternal world masters at all forms of sport, that Vegemite is nicer than Marmite, that the English can't make decent beer, or that absolutely everything tastes better with tomato ketchup). We will most definitely return to see more.
 
The past month has been spent in the Northern Territory and Queensland, where we've journeyed through the true outback and visited some of the most famous landmarks of Australia. We decided to abdicate all responsibility for a while and went on a series of camping safari tours, which involved travelling by bus with a small group and a guide. We figured this would be the best way to cover some of the enormous distances and hostile landscapes in the NT (and also the safest - we had no desire to become the next pair of unfortunate travellers to attract the attention of the shotgun-toting madmen who populate the middle of Australian nowhere...)
 
Our first tour took us around Alice Springs and Uluru, where we were stunned by the amazing wealth of scenery and greenery. I had fully expected to see nothing but desert and the Rock, but was delighted to find beautiful waterholes, ancient cycad and palm trees, awesome canyons and a huge variety of wildlife. We also surprised ourselves and learned a huge amount about Aboriginal culture, geology and local flora and fauna. We watched the sun set and the dawn break over the Rock and inspite of the many thousands of other tourists it was strangely magical.
 
After Alice we flew north to Darwin, where we were immediately wiped out by the heat and humidity. Here our tour took us into the spectacular, wild, crocodile-harbouring Kakadu National Park, where you will be shocked to learn that, in flagrant breach of all the good advice to the contrary, we swam almost every day. Admittedly we did wait until the guide, the rest of the tour group, a group of German tourists and a small dog had got into the water and splashed around a bit before we ventured in, but I fear you will still think it an almost miraculous escape. Especially when I tell you that the night before we set off on the tour we waved a red rag in the face of fate and had crocodile for dinner. But I must tell you that the swimming was delicious relief in the heat, and that the worst we encountered was a small, harmless, fresh-water crocodile in one of the swimming holes. Harmless, that is, unless you happen to be particularly attached to your toes.
 
Crocodiles excepted, we certainly were spoiled for wildlife on these tours. Even in the shower we had the company of tree frogs and lizards, which were curiously charming once we recovered from the initial surprise (although I did feel the line had been crossed on one occasion when I found a dead praying mantis being conveyed across the floor of the cubicle by a few hundred ants, while a cricket, three moths and a large spider looked on). At night we were serenaded by the mournful howling of dingoes and in the morning we were woken before daylight by the excited calls of kookaburras and cockatoos. One night we took the opportunity experience an Australian institution - sleeping under the stars in a "swag" or canvas sleeping bag. It was quite magical as there was no light to obscure the stars and we lay awake watching the sky for ages. Truth be told we were also both a little unnerved by not having even a couple of millimetres of tent to protect us from the snakes, but as it turned out trouble came from a totally different source. We were camping at a wonderful campsite at a disused gold mine, where the owners kept a tame kangaroo.  For some reason he took a liking to us, and at 4am Mr Dog woke suddenly to the feel of kangaroo licking his face. I thought he was surprisingly calm about this (especially given his reaction to the Alpaca incident), but of course he promptly woke me and we spent the next hour and a half trying to persuade the kangaroo to go and play with someone else. He didn't take this rejection very well and was nothing if not persistent - pawing at our heads, poking us through the canvas, and even starting to box with me when I tried to stop him getting into my swag. You can never get lonely in the Northern Territory.
 
Our final tour took us through the outback and rainforests around Cairns. The tour itself was less exciting than the previous two, but we had a lot of fun, largely because of the people we met. A particular favourite of mine was an American flight attendant who confessed one drunken night to having smuggled hallucinogenic drugs into Europe and used them to lead astray, and thereby sabotage, the opposing team in an international Ultimate Frisbee competition. Honestly. I couldn't make this stuff up.
 
We are currently recuperating in Cairns, and will be heading to Hamilton Island next week to relive our honeymoon for a few days, and then spending a final few days in Sydney with family before flying to Japan.

Adventure Tourism

The further travels of a neurotic_dog. From my journal of a year spent travelling back before the toddler was born.


4 December
Don't mention the cricket

We've spent the last four weeks touring around Western Australia, and as a good Pom I've been working hard on acquiring the obligatory patches of sunburn and perfecting my whinge. Although, of course, there hasn't been much to whinge about - apart from one spectacular thunderstorm we've had stunning weather, we haven't been bitten by anything poisonous, and we have cunningly avoided driving our car into a kangaroo. We've been camping for most of the time, and it has been a new experience to be woken up each morning by the sun heating the tent to suffocation levels instead of by the sound of our chattering teeth.

We've only had one camping disaster on this part of the trip - thanks to the recommendation of our trusty guidebook we paid for three nights in advance at an "altogether charming" campsite and set up our tent before checking the facilities. Anyone who has ever seen me in the company of just one wasp will be able to envisage my reaction when I went into the washroom and encountered what could only be described as a wasp-tornado. On further investigation (conducted, needless to say, by Mr Dog) most of the horrendous buzzing turned out to be caused by flies and somehow, by a virtue of relief and relativity, this seemed like good news. We then returned to find every inch of our tent engulfed in the advance guard of the ant invasion, until Mr Dog struck a decisive blow in the battle of the bugs by spraying three quarters of a can of insect poison into the tent. So absolutely nothing's gonna get us now (except perhaps silicosis).

We spent the first weeks driving along the coast, and visiting a host of tourist attractions including the most stunning limestone caves, beautiful beaches, lighthouses, bizarre rock formations, wineries, lavender farms and giant tees. We climbed to the top of a 60m high Karri tree using rungs hammered into the trunk - my legs didn't stop shaking for days afterwards, and I didn't even let poor Mr Dog look at the view from the top because I was so scared that if we stopped up there long enough to register how high it was I wouldn't be able to get back down.

We've seen a huge amount of wildlife - amazing birds, kangaroos, seals, dolphins, snakes, etc, etc. On one excursion we encountered some cute and harmless-looking animals called alpacas, which are similar to llamas. Mr Dog, taking a liking to the ungrateful beasties, bought some alpaca food and proceeded to feed them by hand. His grass-spattered expression of disgust and shock when one of them thoughtfully chewed the mix and then spat it straight into his face will forever be one of my favourite memories. I laughed so hard I gave myself a stomach ache watching him try to wipe off the alpaca-spit and get the bits of masticated grass out of his nose.

The most entertaining place we visited here was Kalgoorlie-Boulder, a gold-mining town on the edge of the desert which still feels like the wild west. Louis' spirits improved enormously - there wasn't an alpaca in sight, and most of the bars were staffed by "skimpies" - attractive female barstaff dressed only in their best underwear. The main purpose of Kal is an unbelievably huge open-cut gold mine called the "superpit", and one of our most unusual tourist experiences was watching an entire rock face in the pit being blasted away in a massive explosion. We also took a very enlightening and highly entertaining guided tour of a brothel, where all the rooms were "fantasy-themed". I'll leave this to your imagination (which is of course the point), but I can assure you that it made quite an impression...

Anyway, after all this excitement we are now back in Perth (recently vacated by hordes of embarrassed England cricket-fans) for a few days recovery, before flying on to Adelaide at the weekend. We've had huge fun in W.A., and definitely recommend it!


26 January
Adventure Tourism

Having spent a lazy December spent relaxing with relatives in Sydney, I'm delighted to report that we made up for it in January. Mr Dog's sister got married on 4 January, and for their honeymoon she and her new husband joined us in touring around New Zealand's South Island for three weeks.

We started in Christchurch, a very pleasant city, and spent three days mooching around town and recovering from our Christmas-New Year-Wedding partying extravaganza. While there we made a visit to the fascinating Antarctic Centre, which contained exhibitions about the antarctic continent and the various research programmes based there. It included a room filled with ice and chilled to replicate the climate at the South Pole, into which you could venture to test your endurance. I now realise this experience was designed as a cunning introduction for visitors to New Zealand, intended purely to make the country seem warmer and more hospitable by comparison.

From Christchurch we headed to the spectacular mountains and glaciers of the west coast, treating our guests to their first experience of my mountain-driving skills on the way. We stopped for a few days in Franz Joseph, with the intention of doing a "heli-hike" onto the ice - this would have consisted of being flown up to the glacier in a helicopter, deposited on the ice, given a guided tour of the blue ice caves and cravasses, and collected again by helicopter at the end, and it sounded like an amazing experience (also much easier than the alternative, an eight hour hike up the glacier to reach the blue ice caves and cravasses). However, we had our first brush with the New Zealand climate, being told on several occasions by a distressingly gleeful operator that the weather (three-day non-stop torrential rain) was too "unstable" to permit the tour. During the wait we did go for our only hike of the last three weeks, up a mountain to look down on the glacier, during which we were humiliated to discover that our hard-won canadian fitness had totally evaporated and that our guests, who do no exercise whatsoever at home, found the hike much easier than we did.

From the glaciers we headed south and spent a week or so with millions of other tourists in the Queenstown region, where we took shelter in a motel for a few days to dry out our sodden tents. Queenstown is the "adrenaline capital" of the South Island, and offered an unbelievable number of ways in which to frighten the wits out of yourself. We all had great fun doing a quad-bike safari and riding at breakneck speed through narrow canyons in a jet-boat, making tandem paraglides (jumping off a mountain attached to a parachute and a bored instructor) and waging a fierce two day war on a luge track (sort of down-hill go-karts) of which the only casualties, fortuntely, were a few small children who should have known better and got out of the way.

However, the most dramatic (and for me, traumatic) experience of the trip was white water river sledging. Among the numerous operators offering white water rafting we found this novelty - one offering the same tour but without the raft. I can only assume that I was extraordinarly drunk when we signed up for this. We turned up one cold wet Sunday morning, hopped into the river armed only with small plastic boards to lean on and launched ourselves into the grade IV rapids. The 40 minutes which followed will haunt me forever - trying to avoid getting sucked into the eddies or pulled down by the whirlpools, I kicked until exhaustion overwhelmed me, floated miserably, facing backwards, when I couldn't kick any more, and then screamed in terror whenever I came up for air after getting knocked away from my sledge and going under in the middle of a violent roaring rapid. I totally panicked, convinced I was drowning inspite of my extremely buoyant wetsuit and life jacket, I whimpered like a baby when one of the guides helped me regain the small comfort of my board, and I generally made a total idiot of myself. The others enjoyed every minute of the experience, of course, but it definately isn't one I'll be repeating. Although today I consider myself to have had a fortunate escape, because I just read in the guide book that on the North Island you can also participate in white water sledging, and the operator there offers "one of the biggest buzzes you'll ever get in adventure tourism - going over the 7m Okere Falls". *Shudder*

After Queenstown we visited the stunning glow-worm caves of Te Anau, and spent a beautiful, if slightly surreal, evening floating in total silence and total darkness on an underground river through caverns filled with tiny blue twinkling bugs. We took a day trip to the spectacular Milford Sound, where we took a short cruise and saw dolphins and seals, walked on some residual glacier ice, and generally admired the scenery and imagined we were in Middle Earth.

The last week of our trip took us down to the south coast, where we spent most of our time wearing gloves and hats and narrowly avoided staying in a campsite which looked even worse than the one in Anchorage (didn't even have doors on the toilets). We saw beautiful caves, a 100-million year old petrified forest, seals, penguins and albatrosses, we lost lots of money in a casino, and we managed to save our tents and rain shelter from a raging gale and torrential rain in a dramatic 3am rescue operation. We finished off with an afternoon's horse-trekking, followed by a dip in some much-appreciated thermal springs.

We are now back in Christchurch recovering from our aches and bruises, before heading off the the North Island (reputedly warmer and less wet - hurrah!) at the end of the week. All in all, it's been one hell of a month.

Great Big Pointy Teeth

This is the second part of the journal I wrote during a year spent travelling back before the toddler was born, which I'm sharing now in a fit of nostalgia for the days when I didn't require a full backpack and a will of steel just to go to the shops.


5 October
Great Big Pointy Teeth
  

We made it safely out of Alaska, and are now in Canada. We spent a few days in Vancouver, which is a really beautiful city, and we really enjoyed being somewhere with real shops (and 24 hour access to chocolate). About a week ago we picked up our hire car and headed on out into the sticks again. This was more momentous than it might sounds, as it has been 10 years since I drove, and that was only to get my licence. My husband has now recovered from his first experience as my passenger, and we are hoping his nails and hair will grow back soon. It has to be said that winding roads clinging optimistically to the sides of mountains make for very exciting driving practice. Especially when suspended 150m above a raging river.

We spent five days camping in Wells Gray Provincial park, which is a lesser known cousin of the famous Jasper and Banff National parks, and was really wonderful. It was utterly remote and the leaves were all turning so the already spectacular views were even more lovely. We were the only people camping at our campground, which made us a spectacle of interest to the people who were staying in the well-heated and extremely comfortable-looking lodges nearby. Several of them came out and stared at us each evening, and some even ventured near enough to point out, incredulously, that we must be freezing. I have now perfected the art of saying "not at all, I have a jumper" through chattering teeth.

Whilst Wells Gray is famous for its bears and moose, our only wildlife encounter (apart from one small and scared looking venom-less snake) was with a truly fierce creature. We were out on another ambitious hike (we are constantly surprised by how fit we don't seem to be) and had stopped to rest and eat our lunch by the side of the trail. We had almost finished when a small squirrel, about the size of my hand, rocketed across the trail and shot up a tree behind us. It stared meaningfully at us for a while then started up an unholy racket, chattering, grunting, squealing and hissing, leaping about the tree branches and throwing pine cones and bits of chewed off branch at us. This display of aggression continued for a while, increasing in intensity as the minutes passed, and we sat watching, unimpressed, until it leapt threateningly onto the branch directly above us and looked as if it was preparing to lunge. Suddenly Mr Dog looked at me and said - "you know, it could have rabies..."  Well, you have never seen anyone pack up and piss off so fast.

Since we left Wells Gray we have travelled into the Rockies, and put the final nail into the coffin of our smug plan to have a whole year of summer. After the cold nights of Wells Gray we were starting to appreciate our decision to stay in a hostel rather than camp in Lake Louise (a decision made not through wise foresight, but because the campsite was closed to tents due to "excessive bear activity in the area").

We had been long anticipating the drive down the Icefields Parkway between Jasper and Lake Louise, which is widely billed as one of the most beautiful roads in the world due to the towering mountains, breathtaking gorges, fall colours, etc, so we set out optimistically from Jasper in spite of the sullen drizzle. As the road began to climb we met the clouds and fog, which settled in so solidly that we did not see a solitary peak, or indeed anything more than three metres beyond the side of the road, for the entire 230 world-famous kilometres. 

And then it started to snow.

We later learned that they had to shut the road that evening and the snow storm through which we drove did not let up for 24 hours. By the time we woke up the next morning it was to a white-Christmas, chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire, winter-wonderland landscape. We immediately went out for a hike and had a fantastic day having snowball fights, smacking trees to catapult mounds of snow at each other, and generally acting like children. Haven't had so much fun since we were nearly eaten by a rabid squirrel.

31 October

Duck au Vin

Our last week or so in Canada was delightful. 

We spent a week touring around the lower part of British Columbia where we hiked some more stunning trails, including one which required us to cross a river in a one-person, hand-operated cable car (they were quite proud of this engineering feat, so we didn't have the heart to ask why they hadn't just built a bridge).

The best bits of this part of our trip were our multiple visits to BC's speciality: hot mineral springs. We took every opportunity to track these down and (politely refusing the offer to enhance our experience by renting a 1920's style bathing costume) immerse ourselves in chest-tighteningly hot sulphur-scented water to watch what is possibly the best entertainment to be had in western Canada: the Plunge-Pool Parade. The most muscular, tanned and manly of men would emerge, lobster-red and steaming, from the hot spring, strut arrogantly around the pool and over to the cold plunge, and jump into the water without testing it first. The cursing and frantic scrabbling for the edge would begin the instant they touched the water, and within seconds they would be lying in a whimpering heap by the side of the plunge, to howls of laughter from the people still huddled in the warm pool. Never got old.

We ended our tour by camping for a couple of days in the Okanagen, which is BC's wine-growing region, where we found an idyllic spot on the beach but had a surreal time having to defend our tent from curious ducks. By happy chance (honestly) our campsite was located between two vineyards and our visit coincided with a wine festival, so of course we were obliged to go to numerous tastings and sample the local offerings. I'm not sure how happy the proprietors of these award-winning wineries would have been to have seen us later that evening, sitting on a picnic bench in our gloves and beanie hats drinking our bottle of "silver medal winning" Cabernet out of camping beakers, but actually I think it was improved by hint of plastic and aroma of duck.

Having been finally overcome by the cold (and having taken the hint that the tourist season was over when they closed down all the attractions and campsites) we decided it was time to leave the country, and set off for Fiji. The 12 hour overnight flight to Nadi was interrupted half way by a stop in Honolulu, which was a totally bizarre experience. We arrived at the gate at about 2am, and were all required to leave the plane and pile onto buses for a 500m drive to the arrivals hall where, regardless of whether we wanted to get out in Hawaii, we had to fill out all the relevant forms and queue up to clear US immigration, then fill out all the relevant forms and queue up to clear US customs. Having accomplished this, we were then ushered 500m back to the departures area, where we had to queue up to clear security so we could return to the same gate and board the same plane, feeling rather like figures in an M.C. Escher painting. 

We recovered from this experience by spending an absolutely wonderful lazy week on a tiny tropical island in Fiji, drinking cocktails and eating coconuts (which, after a week of practice, Mr Dog was able to open with a small camping knife in under two hours). On our last night in Fiji we tracked down a really good curry, something we had been missing horribly since leaving England. Half way through our meal a small kitten wandered past the restaurant and the chef came rocketing out, scooped it up, and ran back inside. We have unanimously decided to read nothing into this entirely innocent incident.

We made it to Australia without further incident (although I was delighted by the service we got from the Australian quarantine officials who didn't like the look of our bear-scented walking boots and very kindly cleaned them for us) and are staying in Sydney for a few days with family before heading off to Western Australia.

Hey Honey - Is That A Bear?

I just came across my accounts of the year we spent travelling back before the toddler was born and a three day camping trip required precision planning and enough equipment to fill a semi-trailer. So, since I'm feeling nostalgic, I thought I'd share, in instalments, the experiences of a younger, marginally less neurotic dog.


August 29
Is it still raining? 

Well we've made it to Alaska and we’re in the capital Juneau, which is in the middle of the Alaskan rainforest surrounded by sea and huge mountains. I never realised that there were rainforests which weren't tropical, but there are more trees here than I thought there could be in the whole world, it hasn’t stopped raining since we arrived, and it is positively freezing. 

Over the last four days we have: hiked, in the pouring rain, up a mountain; visited, in the pouring rain, the ruins of the gold mining operations which were the reason the town was founded; taken, in the pouring rain, a boat trip to a spectacular marine glacier where we watched huge chunks fall into the water and become icebergs, promptly adopted as homes by the local population of very cute seals; hiked, in the pouring rain, up another mountain; taken, in the pouring rain, a tour around a salmon hatchery; and hiked, in the pouring rain, along the bottom of a mountain (getting smarter). It has all been totally stunning and beautiful, if a little damp... 

We arrived here from Seattle via the Alaska Marine Highway, which is a ferry system connecting the small islands around this part of Alaska. We spent three days on the boat, and we saw the fins and tails of several orcas, the fins and tails of a few hump-backed whales, and just the fins of some porpoises - the pictures were all predictably hopeless. We have yet to see any bears or moose, but that may be a good thing since everyone here has a bear story, and I haven't heard one yet which turned out well for the hiker. In a week's time we'll be going camping in Katmai National Park, which is where the bears gather, so keep everything crossed for us.

We're heading off in a couple of days to Anchorage, which is supposed to be a slightly more impressive city - fortunately it is also supposed to be a lot drier, which will make life easier as that's also the bit when we'll start camping.  So far we're still talking to each other, but the camping will be the test...

16 September

Hey Honey – Is That A Bear?    

                                                                              

Well, tomorrow is our last day in Alaska, and it has been one hell of a month.

After we left Juneau we did manage to escape the rain, but unfortunately we wound up in Anchorage, which was a total hole. Our perceptions may have been influenced by our unfortunate choice of accommodation - feeling guilty that we had yet to use our extremely expensive and space-consuming camping gear we had booked into a campsite in the middle of town.

Our newly established FIRST RULE of travelling is that you should never, ever, try to camp in the centre of a city, especially when the campsite is less than five meters from a spot where a major railroad crosses a

highway and right next to the runway of a small airport. To make matters worse, the place turned out to be a concrete parking site for RVs (caravans, in England) with a few sites adapted for tents by putting in sand pits somewhat smaller than even our exceptionally compact tent. The pit assigned to us appeared to have been used by the next-door campers as a convenient urinal (it was, after all, almost 50 metres to the

toilet block, a distance so great they generally felt the need to traverse it in their car). Suffice to say we lasted one, miserable night, packed up at the crack of dawn and fled before the permanent (and permanently inebriated) residents of the RV park woke up and spotted us sneaking out. 

Our experience of the city did improve from there, but not enough to compensate. Our best day there was the day we took a tour out of the city and went kayaking down on the coast, which was pretty amazing - we saw sea otters and porpoises and a huge school of beluga whales (small and white and weird-looking). A close second day was the one we left.

The good news is, once we left Anchorage we spent the most amazing week of our lives in what must be the best place in the entire world. We flew on a very, very small float plane (made, as the pilot helpfully informed us during take-off, by a company which specialises in lawnmowers) to Brooks Camp in Katmai National Park. Brooks Camp is situated on a river between two large lakes, and is the site of a huge salmon run each year, which attracts what attracted us - brown bears. I am delighted to recount that within five minutes of arrival we were seated in front of a park ranger for our "bear orientation" class, where we were told how to behave around bears, what minimum distances we must maintain and what to do if we should unexpectedly encounter a bear at less than this distance. And with all solemnity she said that the best thing we could do as we walked along the trials or if we saw a bear was in fact to clap our hands, wave our arms, and yell "HEY BEAR" for all we were worth. Seriously. These people don't joke.

The camp was arranged with a wash block and a lodge where you could warm up by a log fire at one end of a 2km trail, and a campground, comfortingly surrounded by a small electric fence, at the other end. Once we set up our tent (of course in the rain) we wandered back down the path and into the lodge. Within two minutes an enormous, powerful and totally unconcerned 300kg bear walked into the camp from the trail we had just used and started grazing next to the lodge.

From that point on we saw and heard around 50 bears a day - mothers with cubs, huge 500kg males fishing, bears wandering through camp, bears sitting on the trail between the campsite and the lodge, bears standing under the 3m high viewing platform staring up as 40 cameras stared down, and bears growling very loudly and very unnervingly and very near to the electric fence in the middle of the night. It was the most terrifying, and the most staggering and wonderful, week of my life. 

And I can unashamedly report that for six days and six nights we never ceased in our wild clapping, arm waving and hey bear-ing.

We have now moved back to civilisation and are spending our last few days in the state in Fairbanks, which is just about in the middle of Alaska. This place is famous for the Trans-Alaska pipeline, gold mining, dog mushing, and the Northern Lights. Last night we stayed up until 2am to watch the lights, having been extremely lucky and got a beautiful clear day (we were gleefully informed that this day 10 years ago saw 30cm of snow). It was an utterly amazing, if eerie, sight, and well worth the trip.  We also visited some people (and dogs) who have run in the Iditerod 1,500km dog-sled race, and were reminded of how humble our adventures have been.

I can honestly say I although we have barely scratched the surface of what there is to see and do here, I have really enjoyed our time in this state. The Alaskans are all completely nuts of course, but they are the friendliest and most interesting people you could hope to meet. And the bears were just wonderful.

Something Nasty in the Roofspace

We've had a bit of excitement here this week. It started on Tuesday, when I wandered into the pantry and noticed rather unpleasant smell. I found a puddle on the floor and rather unfairly assumed that the poor toddler must be responsible, although he's pretty reliable with the potty training these days. Without thinking much of it I cleaned it up and we went out.

By the time we came back the smell in the pantry was indescribable, and there was more liquid on the floor. It dawned on me that the puddle was directly beneath the cover of the exhaust fan, which hadn't been working for a day or two.  I shone a torch on it and saw that something was stuck in the fan. Judging by the smell, i could only assume dead rat. The horror.

As I had the toddler with me the investigation had to wait for poor Mr Dog to get home from work. He climbed up into the roof, let out a strangled yell and came rocketing back down the ladder. It turns out there was a massive snake up there, right next to the manhole. Between us and the fan.

It occurred to us that it may be part of the snake trapped in the fan, and that it could be badly injured or dead. We called WIRES (wildlife protection people) who informed us that they do not, generally, bother snakes in roof spaces. Apparently it's very common and most people never know they are there. Positively beneficial, so they said - keeps the rats down. We pleaded our case and they said they'd get back to us.
We spent the night disinfecting *everything*. Mr Dog taped a plastic bag under the fan cover to catch the juices (!) and try to minimise the smell. We couldn't even think of putting anything back into the pantry until we removed whatever was in the fan, and we sure as hell weren't going near the fan while a six foot snake was guarding it.

By Wednesday morning the smell of death was unspeakable. The snake had moved a bit overnight so was clearly alive.  We called WIRES again and begged them to come and move it but they couldn't help and referred us to another organisation. I spent half an hour on the phone to a lady from Wildlife Ark who advised me that since the snake was 'only a python' and was 'never going to attack a human' we should just go up and clean out the fan, 'working around' the snake. I politely explained that this was one of the worst suggestions I have ever heard, and reminded her that it might be injured and not particularly friendly.  She said she'd speak to one of her colleagues and get back to me.

A little while later I received one of the finest phone calls of my entire life, from a chap who informed me he was Dave, The Snake Catcher. Once again I explained the situation, and reiterated that it was not the snake, as such, that I objected to, rather the obstacle it presented to removing whatever indescribably revolting object was trapped behind it in the fan.  He asked me whether the snake was close to the manhole, which I confirmed, and he gave me a piece of advice which I believe I will relish my entire life.

"Just grab it by the head", he said "and pop it in a sack".

Speechless.

Do I look like Steve Freaking Irwin?!

When I stopped choking I pointed out, in my smallest helpless-English-girl voice, that balancing precariously on top of a ladder and wrassling a six foot snake into a pillow case was not one of my dearest ambitions, and that as I was at home in the company of an extremely inquisitive toddler and a decomposing rodent I would really, really appreciate some help. He finally took pity on me and kindly agreed to 'pop by'.

When The Snake Catcher and his assistant arrived it took them less than five minutes to haul the mercifully uninjured but notably hostile python from the comfort of our roof. The toddler and I trailed them as they carried the snake down to the bottom of the property and took turns posing for photographs with the poor critter as it tried to strike at them. They said it is their policy to release snakes as near as possible to where they were found. I'm guessing it's about a seven minute slither back to the house.

The blockage in the fan turned out to be a little present left for us by our uninvited guest. The crushed, regurgitated and rapidly decomposing remains of a small ring-tailed possum.

Come for dinner, anyone?