Malaysia Ends, MalAustralia Ensues

Day 7 26th - Into the Jungle /  Day 8 Saturday July 27th /  Day 9 Sunday July 28th?

I'm tryinna keep a date
with my little girl that was back in the states
I?m standing in the jungle
I?m afraid of it all?

On our last day we had a choice between Penang Hill and the National Forest at the end of the island. We opted for the latter, which required hopping a bus and riding out past Batu Ferringetti (however it's spelled), and near the end there was some confusion (I had some trouble with the guy's accent) about where to get off, which the bus driver finally ended by telling us we were"at the end of the world."  This we understood, and decamped. Outside the park there was a line of touts, each trying to sell a boat service to somewhere, and we decided to arrange it so that we could "trek" first, and then get picked up by a boat to return.

The "trek" actually turned out to be such a thing.. a walk through some densely overgrown jungle, scrambling up muddy bits, down roped bits, and across tangles of roots. The most exciting thing we saw as a gigantic, as in four-foot long, lizard, which I took an absolutely impenetrable picture of.

It's in there, and it's TERRIFYING!

After a bit more slogging we got to the beach. There was a little inlet we had to cross which turned out to be much deeper than it looked. It was a good thing I had shifted my iPhone to my backpack or it would have been drowned. The beach was named "Monkey Beach" and true to its name had a monkey, just the one, who was dispiritedly tearing old potato-chip bags apart and licking at the salt within.

Then there was the beach.

It was clearly off-season, so there was nothing to do but suck down a coke, watch the waves crash, and stare longingly at each boat that came ashore, hoping it was finally ours.
Finally, ours did come, and we were away across the water, which was nice and refreshing? Here is Yvonne enjoying the moment (Note the noble mien!).

\
Then, after a slogging and sweaty walk towards the tourist area of town, we stopped for a bite and were "befriended" by two cats who wanted our food. One of them was quite amusing -  it would swat with its claws if you were brave enough to try and touch it, but oh could it meow piteously if it thought you had food.

NEXT MORNING
The next morning, we got up and got ready to catch the bus to the airport, but Yvonne made a command decision, so instead we got the hotel service, which left us at the airport about three hours early.

and there we waited. Generally speaking, a boring day.

IN TOWN
The next day is no less boring, as I stayed in the hotel room working on blog posts and Yvonne meandered into town, this time managing to avoid gambling houses or friends in Itaewon (you?d have to be a mad reader of this irregular blog to understand those references, but so what? Reading is fundamental)

The big move is tomorrow!

Malaysia Day Three

Day Three was supposed to only be a transit day, but it turned into a little more than that.

Our plan didn’t leave KL until 8, so we had a lot of waste-time to fill up.

At checkout at noon we left our bags at the front of the hotel and went across the freeway to “KLIA Airport Town,” Which was three dusty rows of businesses backed by housing. It was primarily restaurants, a couple of stores, and the odd automobile related business. It took us about 15 minutes to canvas the whole thing, and we were back to the Hotel, and off to KLIA. We stayed at KLIA for an hour or two, had lunch, and I struggled with the internet connectivity, which was incredibly crappy. 

Then it was a bus to LCCT where I huddled in the Starbucks (again, crappy internet) while Yvonne shopped for an hour in the bookstore. Then it was off to the McDonalds, where we could sit outside with just a bag of fries, and wait. Finally, into the waiting room, where the LCCT internet was crappy UNTIL I tried to hook the iPhone up to it and then use the iPhone as an anchor. The minute I did this, however, it knocked some kind of sense into the wireless router, and the laptop worked. Twice the laptop went offline and couldn’t re-connect, but the minute I fired up the iPhone, the same miracle occurred.

 I have no idea why. 

The trip to Penang was about 40 minutes and we were picked up from the airport. Because it was still before 10:00, we decided to go out and check out the neighborhood. Turns out, we’re in party central. We walked past one place that was.. well.. the loudest in the world, but I can’t get the sound clip to work.^^

 I tried to get killed at an intersection when I looked at the street light and it was counting down from 30 seconds. I interpreted this to mean that I had 30 seconds to cross the street, and started across, only to have a small car whiz by right in front of me. Self-righteously I flipped the car off, only to hear Yvonne yell, “Charlie, what are you doing?” I said I was crossing the street and Yvonne then told me that wasn’t a good thing to do when the cross traffic had a green light. Ooops… the red (Yeah.. RED!) numbers were counting down UNTIL the light turned green and I was an idiot.

I survived, however, and we continued to walk around and look for a place to have a quick seat/bite. Finally, we settled on the Red Garden, which is hard to explain, so here is a movie of it in which you can see what it contains..


 And here is what is sounds like in full fury And when it is fully rocking


 I had beer, Yvonne had a Pepsi, and we split a few pieces of salmon sushi. Just before midnight, we headed across the street to the motel, and passed out in untidy heaps.

Malaysian Art and Birds....

First order of business… On day two we saw this street-sign:

What is it? Answer revealed below!

Day two was spent lolling in the hotel room for a bit… we had noodles and super-strong black coffee from the in-room coffee-maker and headed off to downtown. A bit pricey at 70 Ringgit each way for the two of us, but the fastest way to get into town. We landed at KL Sentral and one short hop on the Komuter Expres and we were at Kuala Lumpur Station, which has a really cool decayed Victorian vibe. I guess it used to be the main train station, but it has been surpassed by KL Sentral and KL City Center.

We walked over to the National Mosque, taking a bizarre route through a rundown car park with no cars in it and a tired-looking man slumped in chair watching for the onslaught of cars that was obviously never to come. We took this route as Yvonne completely refused to believe the signs that directed us to go to the front door of the Mosque. Instead, we approached to the side and Yvonne noticed that you had to take your shoes off well before you entered. For some reason this gave Y the heebie-jeebies and she started keening (Hi Katie!) in that high-pitched voice she has when she gets nervous about how we "shouldn’t go near the place." As she continued keening, butterflies dropped, stunned from the air, tropical plants wilted, and paint began flaking from the minarets. Fortunately, a security guard waved us towards the front, which was where tourists enter.

Unfortunately, we arrived at a time that the mosque was closed to tourists, so we wandered about the outside, snapped photos, and sweated like crazy.

Mosque Exterior (All we really got to see^^)

A few questions revealed that the National Islamic Art Museum was right around the corner.. so we headed off there and it was rather awesome.  For about 20 Ringgit for the two of us, it was one of the best deals we’ve had in Malaysia.  The Museum has three floors and it collects Islamic art from all over the world. This was super cool, because you got a chance to see how different countries had internalized Islam and turned it into art.  Persia (we think?) had all kinds of cool calligraphy, including some calligraphy written into leaves.

Calleafgraphy

Also cool, but not pictured, what China did, which was to used it’s traditional brush-calligraphy and draw what, from far away, looks like traditional Chinese art, but upon closer inspection is made up of calligraphed passages from the Quran and Islamic scholars. Looked totally cool.

And two random snaps I took from behind protective glass:

A Pistol Grip, Actually

Jug

Afterwards, we headed to the Butterfly Museum, but missed it totally, and  ended up super-sweaty in front of the Bird Museum, the so-called “largest free-flight aviary” in the world. From the outside you couldn’t see any birds, and when we got to the front we saw the most dispirited looking topiary in, perhaps, the history of topiary.

That's Supposed to be a Bird!

Confidence not much built, we sat down for a bottle of water, and Yvonne wanted to go in so badly that she offered to pay (butterflies flew again, tropical plant sprang back to full height, and flaked paint returned to minarets!).  So, since she wanted in so badly, I got a couple of tickets, and in we went.

At first it was motley profusion of peacocks, doves, pheasants, storks, and a few other birds.  Section 1 was pretty much just that, wherever you walked, though they were remarkably unafraid of humans, so you could walk directly up to them.

Of course there was the splendor of the ostrich who posed:

Looks Edible!

Around section 2 things began to perk up, and as we walked through we saw a cool variety of birds in a cool variety of settings, including some in cages.  By the end of our walk, I was pretty sure it had been worth it, and if we had my godson and god-daughter with us, it would have been completely awesome.

There's Always One Idiot Trying to Break Back IN!

Final thrill, and a great example of vendors adapting to the modern world, for 10 Ringgit you could get two birds perched on you, and then a friend could take a picture of your bird covered self with your own camera. They were rolling people in every 45 seconds or so,  which would mean a rather nice hourly wage.^^

Yvonne, Uncertain or Happy?

Then it was back towards downtown, where we took a very short break for a drink behind the Petronas Towers, an awesome plaza with dancing fountains and a variety of cafes facing out to it.

Finally, dinner with Chocoballnoona and her best friend. As it is Ramadan, we set this up for 7pm, and waited a bit for it to be “safe” to eat. I passed along some books I had brought, and they were saints and paid for dinner. Yvonne and the two women chuckled regularly at jokes I didn’t get^^ and a great time was had by all.

Then, back about an hour to the hotel, and sweet, sweet bed.

Today, we are in transit to Penang.

Oh, yeah, this is what the sign meant:

Shelter From the Storm

Forget dogmeat.. eat a stupid horsie!

Over at Roboseyo's website, some cultural imperialists are arguing it is wrong to eat dog meat. These folks are mainly vegetarians (LAME!) and vegans (LAMEST!), who I will not judge, for judgment is wrong (THEY ARE LAME AND DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THEIR TEETH ARE FOR!). Then there are the idiots who claim that dogs are different from other meat because they fetch our newspapers and can lick their own balls (these anthropomorphists, I believe, are jealous of that and thus over idealize dogs).

But forget dogs... you can eat an animal that is a pet, a source of travel and in Black Velvet.

Yup, on Jeju you can eat stoopid horsies!



We got in the restaurant accidentally, because it said "Galbijjim" (Imagine that in Korean, if you can). But we sat down and I noticed there were "course" meals that included all kinds of weird things that are NEVER together in a normal Korean restaurant: sashimi, galbijjim, some soups, etc). The galbijjim landed and was very gamey... I then looked over my shoulder and saw 말고기 (horse flesh) which is a way a live horse is never described..

Suddenly it all came together and I realized all the pictures of the noble horses running on the beach, nuzzling their puppies (or whatever little horses are called), and rearing up on their back legs?

That was to get my appetite going!

Yvonne ate it up like it was morphine-based candy!

Jeju Day Three

After our rainy walk on Udo, we set off on the first "proper" section of the Olle Trail. We grabbed a cab from the hotel, which took us back to where we had been dropped off on our first day (a story that the Blogger ate, which I will repost shortly.) There, a few feet from the bus-stop, was the entrance to the first Olle Trail. On the other side of the road from it, there is an information booth that also sells small things like energy-bars and water.

That lovely picture is the beginning of the trail, and off to the right you can see the first 오름 (or "parasitic volcano' or 'small inactive volcano'). We walked for a bit, and then headed up it for a total of about 2.9 kilometers in. The views were ok, but not as good as from the 오름 we would soon go up. It was through pretty land, pastureland really, with lots of greenery, and occasional rain and cows. Also, of course, cowshit. Tons and tons of cowshit.

After a walk through the valley of the shadow of cowshit, we headed up the second 오름 the top of which had a brilliant view of Udo and a massive geographical feature that we weren't yet familiar with 일출봉, or "First Sunrise Peak." We'll get back to that.

Here is Yvonne trekking up the second 오름

And here she is triumphant, unaware of the evil that is to follow.

The first evil was that I, in shorts, managed to slip on the way down a relatively easy dirt trail. This smeared mud on my left calf to such an extent that the next day I had a differential sunburn. I tried hard not to contemplate what the cowshit % of the dirt was, and soldiered on.

Then the trail wandered down to a small store and then a flatish area with the traditional stone walls of Jeju (which I will post below this, because they are everywhere and kind of cool) and various plots of land. We wandered through this for some time, our packs growing heavier at each step.

Finally, we broke out of this (think of hedgerows in Europe) and came to a small village, in which we promptly became extremely lost, but unaware of the fact. We did notice that we were no longer seeing any of the painted blue arrows, or blue ribbons that indicated the trail, but we were confidently following a Korean family that had been on the Olle with us. One thing about the trail, if you're a "spaceout" hiker like I am, you can miss changes in the trail direction.

The evil town in which lostness ensued!

Anyway, we eventually got to a ferry port which was quite clearly NOT on the trail. By comparing a Jeju map to the Olle map, I figured out that we were on the "Shore Road" somewhere, and that by heading down it we would either rejoin the Olle, or figure out where on it we were.

Yvonne violently disagreed with this conclusion (an annoying thing she did at every opportunity) and it took some convincing to get her on the tread again. We walked a while and, sure enough, we eventually saw the reassuring blue ribbons and paint that marked the trail. Part of the reason we had got lost is that ALL road features on Jeju are marked in blue paint (e.g. gas lines, manholes) so it is easy to see false positives for trail markers. I'm not sure why the Olle folks didn't choose a different color?

Anyway, we were now on the "esplanade,' which just means footpunding regular old road. We walked past a bunch of squid hanging up to dry, and stopped for a beer and coke at a lovely roadside cafe directly after an equally lovely statue of a Haenyo (female diver for which Jeju is famous.


Then we plodded on, with so-so views of the ocean to our left.

An hour or so later, I was amazed to discover we had done a big loop... we were back at the hotel in which we had stayed the first night. Even more amusing, the guy who ran it heard our voices as we passed, and leaned out a 2nd story window and said hello to us (this story will make a bit more sense when I repost the first day). We trod on, until it became clear that we we going to end up about 300 meters from our hotel, before we finished the last 3-4 kilometers of our day.

The temptation was too much, and we headed for the hotel. ^^

We had meat for dinner, as we did basically every night that Yvonne and I were together. It's her all time favorite Korean food, though it sometimes wears me out.

The next day, Yvonne was to meet up with our friend Joy (Of the "Foreigner Joy" website) and the big geographical thing we had seen earlier turned out to be right behind the hotel. So, we decided that our next day would be hiking up that, retracing out lost section of the first trail, and then continuing on to finish the last bit of it.

At this point, I had begun to develop some awesome blisters, and a semi day off seemed quite appealing.

Olle Trail 1.1

On day two we headed over to Udo island to walk a 15 kilometer "easy" course around that island. We grabbed a cab, which was a bit ridiculous, because the hotel was close enough to the port that we didn't even get the meter turned over for the cabbie. I felt bad enough that I tipped him to the next chun-won, which was still a pathetic 3 chun-won.

The ticket office was jammed, and we got our tickets and hopped onto the ferry, which took us to one of the two ports on Udo.

We went a lot of cool places, which I will talk about when I get home and can post pictures.. Mainly, as Udo is known as "mini-Jeju," it gave us some hint of what to come, including some brilliant basaltic volcanic stuff, more of which we saw as we headed up the Olle Trail. That picture, by the way, is Yvonne tramping up the butt of the cow (Koreans believe that Udo is an island in the form of a cow lying down, but you know, with cows, they can lie down a lot of ways).

But at a certain point we not only lost the trail (which was actually the second time we'd done so) but it began to rain in horrible shitty buckets. We cranked our way past the lighthouse and to the rather nice beach on the backside of the island. Unfortunately it was really pouring by now, and Jeju is quite windy, so the rain comes in sideways like bullets. While we were stopping so that I could take a picture of Yvonne in full raingear, a car with a young/middle-aged couple stopped to make sure that we were ok. More of that lovely Jeju attitude.

We trudged on until we came to three young girls on bicycles who had stopped by the side of the road to figure out where they were going to go next. They stopped us in the middle of the road and showed us their map, and where we should go. As it turned out, even on our lost walk we had pretty much followed the Olle trail (not unlikely given that it's a small island that you just kind of walk counter-clockwise on). We dried out in a bus stop with a halmoni, and caught a bus that sort of drove us back the way we had come, and brought us back to the port.

We returned to Songsan and our new hotel pretty unimpressed by what we had seen of the Olle trail. It had basically been on a main road except for some rather random and short excursions into horse-fields and meadows that then immediately dumped us back on the road.

Underwhelmed, we contemplated out plans. We decided we would do Olle Trail 1 the next day, and see if it was a bit better.

For dinner we had some of the fattiest pork we've had in Korea....

An unispiring day, and we were kind of beat down by all the pavement we had walked on, and all the camping equipment in our backpacks - and we hadn't seen a single site worth camping in.

Alas!

Oh well, we had seen some cool basalt formations in the sea, some cool beaches, and at least gotten a start.

Incheon Towards Oblivion Pt1

Last week, with substantial prodding from Yvonne, we (I) got off our butts and went away from Seoul. Well, kind of away from Seoul – all the way to Incheon, which is, admittedly on the Seoul subway system. We started mid-day with an unusual breakfast of fish and chips, which Yvonne insisted in. It’s a nice restaurant on the second floor, with good views of the largish intersection, and sitting there I snapped a photo of this fancy apparently on his way to audition for the role of guitarist in an AC/DC cover band.

I had to struggle to get my lens changed and he scooted around the corner before I could get a good shot of his haircut, which would have been somewhere between Rod Stewart's rooster cut, a tight perm, and something perched on the head of a madame in an old western.

He was tragically hip.

Then, we took a short stop at the bookstore, which is always fun because the ajumma, after initially believing Yvonne to be an international book-thief from the Philippines, had now come to love her without reservation, for all the money that she spends.

Sure enough, she spent some. I also picked up "Three Generations" which is an early-modern Korean classic and I'll have to review someday.

After a quick coffee it was off to the subway and Incheon. Incheon station is right at the foot of “Chinatown” so we began there. It’s rather small and can be canvassed in about a half an hour. Here is a picture of a bunch of Korean pretending to be Chinese:


And a picture of a random mask on a wall:



Behind (and up a rather impressive staircase) lies a large park largely dedicated to things having to do with the amphibious Incheon invasion that turned the Korean war in favor of the South. It includes a statue of General Macarthur staring defiantly off at the sea, or President Truman, or something. This statue is nearly always capped by a chubby pigeon, of which there are hundreds in the park, and this trip was no exception.




We wandered around a bit, randomly sightseeing, while Yvonne got busy with losing our map of Incheon somewhere between our trip to the general and watching some Korean kids play with the world's largest hula hoops:



This made our next steps suspect, but by following signs and a rough sense of where the shoreline was, we managed to find (DUH!) the used bookstores in town (on Baedari Street, 500 meters to the left of Dongincheon Station – if you are facing the station. So now you know how to get there).

Then it was a long ramble back towards the seafront, through a quite standard set of Korean neighborhoods. What was weird was that nobody seemed to be out and about, even though it was mid-afternoon/late-afternoon on a Saturday.

Upon finding the waterfront we turned to walk along it. At every corner Yvonne was amused that there were directional signs for the same 10 destinations. Incheon is small, and there really isn’t a ton to do there.

Which is not entirely fair to say, because there are several shopping districts, but I have never been able to classify shopping as a leisure time activity and it was no different in Incheon.

We found a love motel, and tucked in for the night, both a bit walked-out. The love motel was adequate, but had something I really don’t consider a grand idea – a bathroom with a glass door. Because nothing puts the “love” into a motel like catching an accidental glimpse of your mate at their evacuative duties, if you follow me there (and you probably shouldn't, because there's a glass door).

Then it was out for some really quite good and inexpensive Korean beef, and back to the motel to watch bad movies and brawl with the one extremely elusive mogi that managed to get in the room.

We went to sleep knowing that tomorrow would bring another day, and it would likely be tiring and expensive!

Down in Silla Town

Last Friday the family bundled up and off to Gyeongju. We took the train down and on the way I was amused to see the sister campus to where I work looming off on the horizon.



when we got to the yeogwan, Baxter assumed his customary position:


Outside in Gyeongju the evening was frightening:


But it was still autumn when the sun came up:



Squirels were standing on their heads



And the lovely Seokguram Grotto loomed ahead:


As did tumuli
And the harsh streets of Gyeongju (Picture courtesy of Danny):


We wandered through the "open air museum" that is Gyeongju, and ate alarming amounts of sam gyap sal...

You could say it was a good day...

Last Weekend

Since it is already this weekend, I suppose I should post about last weekend?


Which was off the Morning Calm Gardens in Cheongpyeong, which is kind of north-east of Seoul. We had gone on this train line before, but discovered that if you took the train from Oksu you ended up in the Cheongyeongri train station and we were able to catch a train, standing room only, within about 15 minutes. We were in the front car with about 10 college students who were heading up to Gapyeong or Chuncheon. They quickly pulled out the beer, then quickly spilled some of the beer, but everyone was in good spirits.



Once we got to the train station it was a short walk to the bus station, where we discovered we had just missed the bus.


So it was a quick taxi ride to the Morning Calm 아짐 고요 Garden. Alas, we had arrived just about at week to late and most of the beautiful leaves were on the ground, though they were made up for, in volume, by gnats. This will certainly be a cool place to visit in Spring. You can see how beautiful it was BEFORE our visit by checking Roboseyo’s site out. By the time we got there, most leaves were on the ground.

We did get to see one of the world's smallest churches (Photo on right has tiny Injun for scale):


Then it was a walk back through town and a samgyapsal lunch/dinner at a fairly backwoods place – it was where the bus drivers went to eat and we were quite the center of attention with the ajumma hovering and cooking our meat for us. Any random little bit of Korean I could pull out was appreciated and we left, full and happy.

On the mugungwha, again standing tickets, and back to Seoul, drinking a coke and a beer on the floor and sitting with slightly fewer students.

At the Chuseok-hop

So… Chuseok, of course, was not over after 1.8 days. Instead Yvonne and I repaired to the couch to watch movies. The first lovely photo is Yvonne setting up the jury-rigged system we have to show movies on the walls. It actually works wonderfully, and we had noodles and beer and watched Iron Man. I had been given the movie some long time ago by Yvonne’s brother, but had put it in the bookcase where it languished, as a book, until Yvonne found it last week.


Good movie!

The next day, which was actual Chuseok, it was off to Yongsan family park to loll about. Koreans are very public, and Yvonne loves that hang out in public thing, so I bought a pad and we pack up some water-crackers, tuna, and various beverages and go into the park and hang out. Yvonne reads, I read and take notes (somewhere around here is a picture of my “park office” which is similar to my “Train office” which picture I now cannot find on the blog?), and at various times we wander around, watch Korean kids play, watch the dogs run free, or as in one of these pictures, watch the super-solipsistic Korean women find a way to hang mirrors outdoors and make sure their makeup is just so!



And, you know, take pictures of bugs




We stayed out until the sun started hiding from us, and then it was back home to sit around (more reading!) until it was dinner and movie time.



Next day was similar…. A late start and then off for a walk on Mt. Namsan, from where most of these pictures come. When the sun came down that day we went to “Dear Friends” a cute little café up the street and had lemon tea and gin and tonics (I think most people can guess who had what). Then it was time for Yvonne to take off for the train.

It’s a drag – she doesn’t have to start teaching til late on Monday, but the Hagwon insists she be there in case of emergency.

Lo and behold, when I caught her on FB on Monday morning, the imaginary emergency had finally come: Her Canadian (they are largely swine and every last one untrustworthy) co-teacher had pulled a runner, leaving only a filthy apartment and filthier memories.

Heh.. this will be the example the director will use to defend his Monday morning policy for the rest of his life.

My Chuseoked yours in the face...

It was just the Korean holiday for family re-union and ancestor worship, which meant four glorious days off for both Yvonne and I. Yvonne hopped the Mugungwha up to Daejeon. Chuseok is also the Korean National Holiday of Everyone Going Everywhere At Once, so highways and public transportation are wildly impacted..

Anyway, she got up here on Wednesday night. Thursday was spent in that most Yvonne of things, bookshopping. Out at Gwangwhamun, on the way back, we stopped at the exhibition of Haechis (I should note that the human/mascot Haechi is hideous) and took a look.



We had some quick bulgogi and Yvonne was allowed to operate the tongs.



Then it was off to meet Margaret at my office and pass along a fistful of power-prong adapters and some literature. Finally, a trip with Margaret for a few beers in Itaewon, and home for some sleep. For the next day we had mountains to climb.

Yep, it was time to test the old kneebone, and Yvonne had found the steepest, rockiest place in Korea to do so. We hopped on the 6 line (got a happy surprise in a call from the BKF as we were underway) and got off to find the signage in Korean, but quite clear (well, not so much to Yvonne, but that's ok). A nice Korean family adopted Yvonne on the way up. They were clearly afraid that Yvonne's purple face and sheets of sweat were about to turn syncopial and any time Yvonne stopped or slowed, the Ajumma solicitously hovered about her.

The last dozens of meters were up a semi-difficult friction climb, which was difficult for Yvonne, partly because her shoes were shite. But we made it to the top and the nice family shared some apricot and chestnuts with us. Some guys also came over to me and let me toast our "peak" experience with a cup of Makkeoli. I swear... the people who blog about how mean and nasty Koreans are must alway climb up a different route than Yvonne and I do, cause we always meet the cool ones. ;-)



On the way down we discovered we had taken an unecessarily difficult route up the thing. We also discovered (as the climb had hinted) that Yvonne needed new shoes. Her shitty white-rubber soled items wouldn't hold on anything that wasn't bare granite and she spent some time on the way down skiing like a drunk epileptic along perfectly flat dirt patches.



But we made it, and then it was off to get some delicious foodstuffs.