Posts Tagged ‘caves’

Beautiful KL

As I said in the last post, we each picked one thing to do before the year was over.  My pick was going to Borneo!  I had heard great things about the island, and after researching it a bit more, three things in particular stood out for me.  First, I wanted to see Kuala Lumpur – it is a really big city made famous by the twin Petronas towers.  Second, I wanted to scuba dive Sipadan, known as one of the finest sites in the world to dive, with sharks and turtles everywhere.  Third, the Kinabatangan River has loads of wildlife that is easily visible because of the palm oil plantations that are slowly removing all the jungle habitat around the river (only 1km on each side is protected).  These three things turned out to make a really great Malaysian adventure! (more…)

For our second day out at San Pedro de Atacama, we decided to visit a very famous couple of valleys near the town. Our tour was run again by CosmoAndino Expeditions, who ran our tour of the altiplano, and whose guides and equipment we found to be really nice. We were lucky to meet a couple who had been on the last tour we took, and had a great time chatting with them and enjoying the scenery! Their talk of packing much of Chile into a 10 day trip really made us appreciate the luxury we have by taking our year vacation – time to relax.

Our first destination was ‘Piedra del Coyote’, a place with a really dramatic view over a valley, and with a precarious rock outcropping whose image frequently graces postcards and tour books:

On A Cliff

Throughout our trip, Hazel and I have been planning a few bigger trips to mix in with our more everyday low-cost hiking and hosteling adventures.  We’ve been keeping an eye out for a horseback ride that sounded exceptional, as Hazel in particular has wanted to get back on a horse again ever since her accident over two years ago.  Well, it took almost 3 months, but we finally found one in Criollo Expeditions.  They advertise a number of different trips on their website, but one in particular struck our fancy: an overnight trek at the fabulous Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.

The company turned out to be a family operation.  We called hoping to come to their office to talk about our possible riding options, and were surprised to be invited to the home of Magan and Boris Radich outside Puerto Natales where we got to see one of their herds and chat about riding.  We decided to depart in two days (Monday the 28th) and raced home to prepare for the other impending adventure – the 5 days of hiking in Torres del Paine known as the “W”.  I’ll talk about that in another post!

Monday morning arrived and Boris pulled up (right to our fabulous hostel “The Singing Lamb“) in his 4×4 truck with our box lunches and a happy greeting.  It was really wonderful that Boris drove us to the park, since he was able to point out the owls, eagles, foxes, guanacos (Patagonian llamas), ñandu (Patagonian ostriches, also known as Rhea), and caracaras that we saw.  This was just on the trip to the park!  We couldn’t believe how much we saw, besides the normal sheep and horses you might expect in a wide open landscape like the one that leads to the mountains.  Boris was raised in nearby mountains at a remote ranch and he knew all sorts of information relating to the history, flora and fauna, and geography of the entire region.

(more…)

We’ve had a water-filled couple of days!  We decided to go on a “blackwater” rafting trip, which involves climbing through giant caves and floating on a tube in the dark with a bunch of glowworms on the ceiling.  It was a really good adventure, although pretty cold, despite the wetsuits.  We climbed down into the cave and then waded through a long section of tunnel by light of headlamps attached to the helmets they provided.  We got to jump off a couple of waterfalls (one was only about 2 feet high and the other was maybe 5 feet high) and then turned the lights off so we could have a gentle float and see the glowworms.  That was really awesome – they looked like little stars and it was easy to forget that we were inside a cave.  We paddled the rest of the way out of the cave and then got to go back and have hot soup and showers.  It was a little touristy, but a totally unique experience.  I had never been in such an extensive cave system before.

Ready to Surf!

The next day we headed to Raglan, which is known for its surfing.  I had never surfed before, although Justin had gone in Hawaii, so we signed up for a lesson with Steve (a local instructor).  We met up with him at his house and got fitted for our gear and then headed out to the ocean.  It was pretty rough out there.  The waves were good, but there was a strong rip current and it was pretty intimidating at first!  The Tasman was a lot warmer than the water in the caves.  Steve was a good teacher though, and we both  managed to stand up on the surfboard by the end of the lesson!  In fact, we liked it so much that we decided to stay for another day and take a second lesson.  We had better luck with the ocean the second day and another great lesson.  It was really fun to try something new!

Cape Reinga - the NORTH of New Zealand

Once we were done in Raglan we headed up to the far north of the North Island.  We stayed in a couple of beautiful DOC campsites and saw some amazing beaches on the way up.  We even got to have another swim in the ocean.  There were a lot of mosquitos, which made for a sleepless night, but the views from the cape were well worth it.

We return our van tomorrow and leave the next day for Argentina, so we’re doing a lot of preparation for the next step.

Cave!

It was HUGE!

We camped at a great campsite at Karamea (the middle of nowhere – very NW of South Island) and had lots of fun adventures, including being offered a bacon sandwich on the beach by a Brit and a Kiwi who were out fishing.  We hung around and a family pulled up in a Jeep.  After a chat they took off only to back the Jeep over and onto a log – STUCK!  They ended up having to dig it out while we stood observing.  It was very, very funny.  Minutes later the fishing rod went crazy and they pulled in a very large red snapper.  Awesome.

That campsite was at the start of one of the Great Walks – the Heaphy Track. We hiked just the very beginning of it, but it was incredibly beautiful.

Awesome view from the beginning of the Heaphy Track!

The next day we went to the Oparara Basin to see the Limestone Arches.

Gates of Moria Arch

Apparently this arch was named even before LoTR was filmed in New Zealand.  It was awesome because you had to climb in through the back of the arch and then could walk around inside.  A little drippy, but so cool!!!

Oparara Arch - too large to photograph!

The Oparara Arch is the really famous one.  It’s over 200 meters long, and pretty much impossible to photograph.  You can go right up inside it and a river runs through the middle.  The arches were really worth the long gravel road up to them!

These birds would hop right up to us in the woods

Today we went to the Franz Josef Glacier.  They have a path to the glacier that lets you get right up to the base of it.  It was pouring with rain and fairly misty, but an awesome short tramp across the rocks to the base.  We got some good pictures and then pretty much swam back to the car.

Us at Franz Josef Glacier

We got right up close to it - no zoom needed!

We decided yesterday it was about time to do something about Christmas, so we went to The Warehouse (like Target or Wal-Mart) and got some gear.  Mini Tree, Tinsel, CD of Christmas songs and we’re much more in the Christmas spirit.  Our van is all decked out.  We named the tree Sir Edmund Christmastree in honor of New Zealand’s great mountaineer.  I’m hoping to find an ice-pick ornament to complete his look.

Sir Edmund Christmastree

So that’s the update from here.  We’re heading up into the mountains tomorrow and then over to Christchurch for Christmas.