Oops, I fell off the wagon

Sorry about that - I disappeared for 6 months.  I honestly don't have a great excuse.  Life and laziness.  They happen.  I announced I was going to Croatia, and for all you knew, I went and never came back.

That was pretty tempting, actually.  Croatia is officially my new favorite country, and I could easily see moving or retiring there.  For starters, it's a jaw-dropping gorgeous country.  Granted, most of what I saw was coastal, but dadgum was it breathtaking.  People were helpful and friendly without being too helpful and friendly.  I was always treated like a person, not a tourist with "ATM" tattooed on my forehead.  And I found the most refreshing was the safety.  There's very little crime in Croatia.  Shoot, my first night in the country, a group of us took bicycles to the town center for dinner and left them propped up against a wall without locks.  There was no concern that they would be stolen.  No one locks their doors.  I even left my passport sitting out in the apartment I was staying in with the windows open and didn't worry in the least about someone taking it.  I've been so many places where I had to keep my valuables practically in my underwear, watch my own purse like a hawk, and do research on elaborate scams that I needed to be aware of and avoid.  Not having to worry about all that was glorious.

Then there was the tour that I booked.  I have a history of traveling on my own, but the whole reason for this trip was to go on an adventure tour that I found on The Clymb.  They offered a kayaking/biking/hiking trip through a local Croatian adventure tour company called Jamming Adventures.  If the outdoors is your thing and Croatia piques your interest, I cannot recommend this company highly enough.  They are super organized, very responsive, flexible, and have a fantastic lineup of activities ("so many activities!").  They also restrict their tours to a maximum of 8 people, so it doesn't even feel like an organized tour.

People look at me funny when they find out I went to Croatia but didn't go to Dubrovnik, Zagreb, or any other major city with tons of attractions.  Sure, I'd love to see those places someday, too, but I couldn't have been happier going to breathtaking national and local parks that many tourists probably never get to see or don't have to resources to get to (like the Kornati Islands, which I'll talk about in a future post - very difficult to get to on your own).  The tiny town of Murter where I stayed offered both a large grocery store and a dramatic hilltop view of the surrounding islands, each just a 5 minute walk from Jamming's accommodations.

I'd go back in a heartbeat.

The next big trip will be to...

... Croatia!

Oh, you didn't know I was planning to take a trip?  Well, that makes two of us.

I've known for a few weeks that I'd have much of September to do pretty much whatever floats my boat thanks to having some time between jobs.  But due to many other factors, I didn't know if going anywhere during that time would be possible or even a good idea.  Maybe it's not a good idea, but I just said what the hell and booked it anyway.  It's on somewhat of a whim I suppose, but in a lot of ways it's really not.  I'm saving that for the next blog post, though.

So what exactly will I be doing?  Kayaking in the Adriatic Sea for a week, that's what. There will also be a little hiking and biking involved, and I'm going to entirely miss the crush of the main tourist season while still enjoying some rockin' weather.  It's been nearly two years since my last international trip, and I've been jonesing to get off the grid and go somewhere completely and utterly different - as in can't read the street signs (if they have street signs) different.

I am just a tad excited about all of this.

How did I decide on Croatia?  Well, for starters, I've never been.  But that wasn't a huge factor, because I pretty much want to go everywhere that I haven't been to yet.  I decided I wanted to do something, not just fly to a big city and mill around.  So I limited my search to a website that I knew would offer exactly the kind of trips I was looking for. - The Clymb.  Then I asked the following questions:

1. Does this trip sound cool?
2. Have I been to said destination before?
3. Does this trip fit my desired time frame?
4. Can I get there and back using frequent flyer miles?

Boom.  The Croatia trip I found met all my criteria.  Done.  Pass the sunscreen.  It's time to lather up and get pumped.

My favorite things: Opsrey Talon 22 daypack

I'm on a backpack roll here - I hope you don't mind.

Last week I talked about my beloved North Face Napali 50 pack for traveling.  It's great for carrying all your stuff, but this isn't the kind of thing I want to carry with me while I'm out and about looking at the sights, out on a day hike, crouched on a tiny plastic stool with a 40-cent beer at a bia hoi, or crashing a funeral.

For these things, I have another backpack that I rely on:  the Osprey Talon 22.  This is my favorite backpack of all time.  I might be in love with it.  If someone stole this thing, I would be much more upset at losing the bag itself than any of its contents.

I bought my beloved little backpack back in 2008 to take on a last-minute trip to visit a friend that had just moved to Hawaii.  My plans involved lots and lots of day hikes (I'm not a huge chill-on-the-beach-for-days person, plus I'm ghostly white with a sunscreen allergy), so I was in need of a tough but comfortable daypack.  Holy mai tais, did the Osprey ever make my day.

The straps are unbelievably comfortable, and they come with a mini-pocket on each one.  If you have an old-school cell phone, it'll totally fit in one of the pockets.  I drank the smart phone Kool-Aid a few years ago, so I stash my phone in one of the 2 mesh pockets on the hip belt and keep an LED flashlight stored in one of the strap pockets.

The back ventilation is top-notch, it includes an internal sleeve for a hydration bladder, it has side pockets for holding drink bottles, and it has a stretchy outside pocket that's perfect for storing your fleece or raincoat.  The zippers are tough but easy to move, and the backpack material is super tough. And thanks to its smart overall design, the bulk of the pack sits away from my arms so that I never rub against it while I'm out and about.

To put this as bluntly as possible, this daypack is downright amazing, and any daypack you might own is completely inferior. Boy, I wish Osprey was paying me to say that, but they aren't.  They just impressed the hell out of me.

I've taken this pack to Hawaii, Chile, California, South Korea, and South Africa.  I've hauled it on countless camping trips, hikes, and bike rides (hey, speaking of biking, it even has a built-in thingy to attach a blinker light).  It's still in great shape. The Talon also comes in other sizes, too:

       

You might have noticed that the Talon series is a tad on the expensive side.  But you totally get what you pay for.  I paid full price for my Talon 22 (something I rarely do - I'm a discount whore).  It was SO worth it.

Volcan Villarica, Part 2: what I wish I´d known

There are a few things that I wish the tour operators, my 6-year old Lonely Planet, and random strangers or the internet had told me before sauntering up Volcan Villarica last week.  Granted, I was extremely lucky to talk to some great people in my hostel that gave me some good advice, but frankly, this information needs to be in print somewhere.  So here you go - as a virgin mountaineer, these are the top 7 things I wish I´d known before strapping on a helmet and picking up an ice axe:

1. Don´t even think about climbing Villarrica if you have so much as a slight fear of heights.  I have never been afraid of heights, but the sheer grade of the mountain at many points gave me a bit of a start.  I willed myself not to look down unless I was sitting.  And even then, it could be a little dizzying.
2. You don´t need previous mountaineering experience, but you do have to be in good shape to make the climb.  This is no stroll on a wooded path.  The hills are not alive with the sound of music, and kittens are not up there pooping rainbows.  This is a steep, sometimes treacherous climb on snow and ice, and it takes 6 hours just to get to the summit.  So if you think 6 hours on a stairmaster will kill you, then so will this volcano.
3. Don´t believe travel guides that say the climb isn´t technical.  If you´re an experienced mountaineer, then yeah, it probably isn´t technical for you.  But for someone like me that didn´t see more than a dusting of snow until high school and runs and bikes on flat ground back on the east coast, an excursion requiring crampons, an ice axe, and a helmet IS technical.  Or maybe I´m just a gargantuan chicken. I´m ok with that.
4. Take twice as much water as your tour operator tells you to.  All the operator websites I looked at prior to the climb said to bring 1.5 liters of water.  That´s crap.  Bring at least 3.  I drank 2.5 liters during the climb and STILL got a headache from not drinking enough fluids. Drink some every time you sit down, whether you feel  thirsty or not. 
5. You will not need to drop trou to relieve yourself.  It´s a non-issue because you won´t drink enough water (see above).  Trust me.
6. Bring high SPF sunscreen with you, and reapply every time you sit down.  I was fortunate enough to receive this advice from a great group of guys in my hostel the day before my climb.  A couple of them reapplied sunscreen 5-7 times and still ended up with red faces.  I would never have thought I would have needed to put on sunscreen that often.  I got lucky and ended up with nothing more than a pink-ish nose.
7. Research your tour operators ahead of time.  I did this before I left the US simply because I´m anal, but not all tour operators operate equally.  I found Paredon Expeditions online, and they have set an amazing standard of safety, service, and satisfaction.  While I wasn´t able to climb with them in the end (they didn´t have the minimum number of people needed to make the climb that day), the effort they put into helping me find a operator to climb with simply floored me.  I would climb Villarrica again just to go with Paredon because I was so impressed.  They´re also more expensive, but your life is on the line, and I think that´s worth an extra $30, don´t you?

Sapa Part 1: Oh my Buddha!

Dan and I had a hilarious guide named Kong (well, really it's Cuong, but I like using "Kong") for our weekend trip hiking through the mountains of northern Vietnam outside of Sapa.  Instead of exclaiming "Oh my God!", Kong would yell instead, "Oh my Buddha!" which I promptly stole started using myself.  Kong was from one of the hill tribes in northern Thailand, and he spoke an amazing array of languages - Tay, Black Hmong, Vietnamese, Spanish, English, and likely others, too.  Kong was a riot, but I'll have to tell more about him later.  In fact, so much happened during our epic weekend in Sapa - there was moonshine, chicken attacks, amazing food, and late-night singing, and more - that I'm going to have to break this up into numerous posts.  But before I get to the wacky stuff, first a little introduction to this place:

There are about 54 ethnic minority hill tribe groups in the mountains of northern Vietnam.  The area they live in is beautiful but makes for a very harsh life.  The mountains here are glorious - sweeping mountain peaks, entire mountainsides terraced out for rice paddies, small villiages, waterfalls freakin' everywhere, corn fields, and grazing buffalo.  If you come to Sapa and say, "Meh", then you are not human.  Turn in your Homo Sapien card and go back to Mars.

The hill tribe women do all the work around here.  They work in the fields, harvest corn and rice, make clothing from hemp and dye and embroider it, make (and embroider) handicrafts for sale, have lots and LOTS of babies, and they have to walk up and down steep mountain trails day in and day out to make all this work.  I don't know what the men do because we hardly saw any.  But according to our guide, the men are lazy bums that sit around and get drunk off the rice wine that their wives have made for them.  Maybe they help plant rice or something, too...

Black H'mong women and their baskets 'o stuff

The two tribes that we encountered the most were Black H'mong and Red Dzao.  Each tribe has it's own traditional clothing, and it was beautifully refreshing to realize that the hill tribes do indeed wear their traditional clothing on a daily basis and not just for tourists (lederhosen, anyone?).  Most of the clothes sport very detailed and colorful embroidery work that the women do by hand.  The Black H'mong also wear clothing made from hemp and dyed with indigo.  And then there are their shoes.  All the women that we saw were wearing sandals.  I'm not talking about Keens or Chacos or anything tough and rugged.  I'm talking cheap, plastic slip-on shower shoes that you can probably get for $10 at Wal-Mart.  These women walk every day up and down the mountains on narrow, technical, rocky, muddy trails in dadgum shower shoes.  Did I mention that most of them haul large baskets of hand-crafted goods or food on their backs?  Or have babies strapped to their backsides?  Yeah.  Showoffs.



One of the Black H'mong women that joined us for a nice 6-hour trek

Dan and I were both pretty humbled by these women trotting up and down steep mountains in plastic flip-flops with babies and corn and such on their backs.  Next up:  stories from the trail and our homestay with one of the hill tribe families!