This looks like it’s going to be a victorious tale about man vs. fish.  But it’s not…
Mike and I had been attempting to catch fish for the last 6 weeks without success.  We were so desperate that when a 6 year old boy told us about salmon roe and powerbait, we ran out to the store the next day and bought some.  For those who don’t know, salmon roe is obviously fish eggs that are baited to a hook.  Powerbait is glitter covered playdoh in neon colors with a fishy scent.  Trout have keen eyesight, and know to avoid a hook if they see one (according to Wikipedia or some other internet source we read from).  By molding the powerbait over the hook, the trout swallows the glow-in-the-dark bait whole.

Well, let me tell you…powerbait works.  After only a few minutes Mike almost had his first catch ever!  He caught a fish, but just as he almost had it reeled in, the line broke.  So, technically he hasn’t caught anything.  I threw my reel in and fairly quickly caught this fish pictured above.  This is where the tragedy comes in…

Once we got the fish out of the water, we weren’t sure what to do.  We weren’t going to keep it, it looked too small.  Because the fish was flapping around, Mike couldn’t get a grip on it, and now Mike’s hands are flapping around, and were both looking panicked about what to do next.  And he says accusingly, “I thought you knew what to do once you catch a fish.  You’ve been doing this all your life.”  My thought was, “Dad, can you unhook my fish?”  I’ve never unhooked a fish in my life, that’s what dads do for their little girls growing up.  So, even with with Mike flapping his hands and all jittery, we finally get the fish on the ground, but can’t see the hook.  The rainbow trout swallowed the hook so far that it’s in the back of its throat.  I can’t seem to get my fingers down by the hook, the fish is now starting to bleed, and so we decide to cut the line, and toss the little guy back in the water.  But it floats to the top.  OH, NO.  It’s dead.  And now on this beautiful lake, there is a dead fish floating on the water.

So we decide to try to hide the evidence of our killing.  Using the end of our fishing pole, we try to bring it back to shore.  But some how the fish gets submerged, and stays underwater.  We wait for it to float back up, but it doesn’t.  After a while, we resume fishing, but are afraid.  We are afraid our dead fish might reappear, and we are afraid we might catch and kill another fish.  After 20 minutes the stress becomes too unbearable, and we head back to our camper– we might have had vegetarian curry that night.

We stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park for a quick visit.

The red rock formations of Sedona are stunning to behold, but there is much more depth to the rocks than meets the eye.  There are special spiritual vortexes that exist in Sedona.  These energy centers are located around Sedona, and can be more intense at the actual site of each vortex (4 main vortexes in Sedona) where a person may feel uplifted, inspired, or a strong positive sensation.

The above is Bell Rock, where the “balance” of masculine and feminine vortex is located.  I’m not sure if it was the vortexes I felt, but in a place so beautiful, how can you not feel good??

Zion can dwarf pretty much anything, but when we parked next to this 42′ big rig, our little camper sure looked even smaller.

When I get home to Philadelphia, I’m going to see if I can find the photo that was taken in 1993 with my mom and I (rather than Mike and I, as above) standing in the exact same place in front of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

While at Arches NP we took a hike through the canyon fins in search of arches.  There are no marked trails on the Fiery Furnace walk, nor are there any trail maps to lead you through the sandstone labyrinth.  We took a 3 hour guided tour with a ranger, and although it wasn’t a tough trail, it was enjoyable.

What an incredible location!  This is the Devil’s Garden Campground inside Arches National Park.  There are only 20 sites or so that are first come first serve.

The above photo was much of our view of the lake.  Sadly, the mountain pine beetles have done their damage on the pines at Steamboat Springs Lake.  The park is in the process of cutting down the dead trees, and are planning to replant 18o0 trees this year.  The loss of the trees also means, there is little shade or shelter.  We stayed two nights; our first evening we got drenched in a hail and rain storm, and the temperature dropped to 36’F.

 The morning however, turned out to be sunny and beautiful.  We spent the day fishing without any luck.  The night would have been perfect, if not for the swarms of gnats everywhere.

We wrapped up our visit with family by camping in the Poudre River at the Big South campsite, a small campground, about two hours northwest of Ft. Collins.  The Big South is situated between the Cache La Poudre River on one side, and the main road on the other.  Eventhough camping road-side doesn’t sound appealing, this campsite still offers a good amount of privacy once it got dark.

We were planning on tent camping until Christine found these great little Scamp travel trailers while browsing eBay.  Neither of us had ever seen one of these before, but aparently they were quite popular in the 70s.  Check out the Fiberglass RV website to see some cool pics of all kinds of small vintage RVs.  Only 13′ long and made out of fiberglass, they weigh just over 1000 pounds and are very easy to tow.  We found a guy in Illinois who renovates these little guys and are now the proud owners of a vintage 1978 Scamp travel trailer.  Fitted with a small stove, fridge and AC, we won’t exactly be roughing it, but we’re looking forward to being self contained as we go back on the road.

We headed off to England for Heather’s wedding the first week of October…three days in Manchester for the wedding, 1 day in Henley, 3 days in London.

(Heather and Patrick right before the ceremony)

(a tour around Henley-on-Thames where Hedda grew up)

(Mike crossing Abbey Road, while friends watched in cyber-space)

TOP TEN PLACES:
Okavanga Delta, Botswana
Patagonia (El Calafate/ El Chalten/ Torres del Paine)
Bulungula, South Africa
Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique
Petra, Jordan
Galapagos, Ecuador
Tofo, Mozambique
Pammukale, Turkey
Molunlong, Lesotho
Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

TOP TEN CITIES:
Cape Town, South Africa
Istanbul, Turkey
Barcelona, Spain
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Oaxaca, Mexico
Cinque Terra, Italy
Cagnes Sur Mer, France
Havana, Cuba
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Cartagena, Colombia

Top 10 things to bring:
mosquito repellent
pony-o’s
afterbite
Lonely Planet travel book
Blackberry with international data plan
flashlight
a knife
a book
more money than you think you need
an open mind and plenty of patience to live/travel at a slower pace in order to appreciate every moment.

Maybe 5 or so years ago, the mojito drink made its way into mainstream American bars and restaurants, ushering in a whole new cuisine to go with the drink.  We must have talented chefs in the US because Cuban food is delicious in America, but not in Cuba.  There is little variation available in Cuba–rice, black beans, cabbage salad, and fried chicken/fish/beef.  And no spices–not even salt and pepper.  I found Cuban food to be very bland, and after a week of eating the same thing, we had to break up the monotony and eat pizza at El Rapido, Cuba’s fast food chain.

As I mentioned in a previous post it was suffocatingly hot, I was delirious from the heat–making sightseeing and anything related to being outside unpleasant.  But we suffered through the heat, and walked around Havana, an ethnically diverse city and the largest city in the Caribbean at 2.5 million people.   Regardless of their dire straits, Cubans aren’t bothered by much, they live life to its fullest–dancing and celebrating where-ever and when-ever they can.  Grand buildings and colonial homes built during the height of Spanish rule can be seen as a reminder of the grandeur that was once Cuba.  These buildings, regardless of missing a ceiling or an exterior wall, are fully occupied.  It’s not uncommon for 3 generations of the same family to be living under one roof.  The houses crumbling, the vintage cars stalling, and the people really just living in the moment bring feelings of nostalgia for the past, despair for the present and hope for the future.

We side tripped out of Havana to Vinales, a three hour bus ride southwest.  It’s a small town with one main road, a main square with a church.  There are nearly as many tourists as town people, and most of the Cubans are in the tourist industry.  Groups of people meet you at the bus stop selling a room for the night.  Almost every house off the main road looks identical, and each has been converted into a casa particulare, a room for rent in a house occupied by a Cuban family.  Because there are very few hotels in Cuba, many tourists stay in casas particulares.  We stayed at Casa Rosa, complete with air conditioning to battle the heat.  During the day the temperature was in the 90’s and humid.  Probably the hottest place we’ve been–ever.

The ‘Vinales Tour’ the next day brought us to all the best sights in the area; starting with view point overlooking the valley, a primitive mural of evolution painted on the side of a rock, a visit to a cave, and my favorite, a visit with a local farmer.
The farmer we met ‘owns’ four hectareas of land which has been in the family for four generations.  The farmer is completely self-sustaining with his fields of potatoes, taro, corn, sugar cane, rice.  He also grows avocados, tangerines, oranges, mangos, and coffee beans (which is left out to dry for months, and is very, very  strong coffee).   Lastly, each farmer by law is required to grow a minimum amount of tobacco.  November to April is the only growing season for tabacco, the government buys the dried tobacco leaves for $600 dollars for 3 tons of tobacco (or something insane like that).  Since there is no private industry, the government owns everything, including the tabacco industry which is one of Cuba’s largest money generators.  So, it buys the tabacco from the farmers at a favorable price for itself, barely covering the cost of the labor for the farmers, and sells it’s Cuban cigars for huge profits.

Dolphins road along side the boat for a while, and off in the distance we saw a giant sailfish jump out of the water and spread its top fin.

We rented an amazing house with an endless pool on a cliff above Manzanillo beach with a view over Angelito beach.  It’s hard to imagine after a year of being on vacation that we would need a break from traveling, but a week without planning each day and the following week sounded perfect to us.

Oaxaca is known for its culinary traditions, and I wanted to learn more about it.  So I signed us up for two different classes.  Our first class was with Pilar at La Casa de los Sabores.  Before we started cooking we headed to Mercado Democracia to buy our fresh ingredients…mangos and watercress for our salad, yerbasanta leaves, corn husks, banana leaves, squash blossoms, huitlacoche, and corn masa to make tamales.

Going to the market is one of my favorite things.  I love to look at local fruits and vegetables, the cheeses and meats.  But going to the market with an expert like Pilar makes the experience even better.  It also makes it easier to taste foods you may normally not eat–after all if the chef is eating it, it can’t be that bad.  Pilar seemed pretty excited that chapuline/ grasshopper season had just started.  Grasshoppers are sold in a variety of sizes, but the baby ones are the freshest and taste the beat.  The grasshoppers are boiled then mixed in a salty concoction and eaten like any other snack, by the handful.  To me, it tasted like dried salted shrimp, kind of like smelly fish.

After our market experience, we headed back to the kitchen to get working on our menu–a fresh jicama/mango watercress salad, three types of tamales, spicy salsa, and a mango mousse.  There were eight of us in the class, and we worked as a group on each of the courses.  The tamales were chicken with black mole, bean with yerbasanta leaf, and squash blossom with huitlacoche (black fungus).  I love mushrooms, but I was weary of the corn fungus.  But mixed into our corn tamales, it was actually hard to detect much of a taste.

Lastly, we made spicy salsa with gusano worms crushed in for added flavor.  It turns out Mexicans have a long history of eating insects, mostly because they did not have many domesticated animals, so as an alternate source of protein they ate insects.  The gusano worm is the same worm found at the bottom of a bottle of Mezcal.  They are white, pinkish or red in color.  We ground up the worms in a mortar and pestle along with the rest of the ingredients for the salsa.  I can’t exactly describe the flavor of the worms–smokey?? But I didn’t like the flavor of the salsa.  Maybe it was because I knew there were worms in it.

I fully enjoyed learning to cook from Pilar, it was a great experience.  Somehow she had my secret list of things not to eat, and I tried them all.  When in Rome…

We marked this anniversary by taking a boat tour of the Isletas de Granada (little islands), and a nice, casual dinner at our hotel in Granada. 

We met back up with Hedda & Michael Hagen for the week, and Michael Hagen has been teaching us how to surf on Playa Amarillo.  Other than a few unused shelters built on the beach, Playa Amarillo is completely undeveloped–no boats, houses or restaurants.  The last two days the four of us have had the beach completely to ourselves.  Since I’m just a beginner surfer, I can’t speak for the quality of waves in Nicaragua, but a beautiful sandy, deserted beach anywhere in the world is a real jewel.

Since I’ve skied all my life, learning to surf seemed like it should be easy, but it’s not.  The toughest thing about surfing is not tiring yourself out while paddling out past the waves crashing down.  The waves keep breaking; even as I get past one, there’s another one and another one, as if they multiply.   As I try to dodge the white water, I’m kind of panicked, thinking “oh shit,” “oh shit”…if a wave crashes down on me, I’m thinking something way worse than “oh shit”…by the time I make it out past the waves breaking, I’m completely relieved and exhausted…while I wait for a set to roll in, I try to catch my breath…when the time is right, I try not to get frantic as I start paddling against the wave thinking, “hurry, hurry, paddle faster!”…as the wave takes me, “yeah, here we go!”…if I get to my feet, I’m elated thinking, that wasn’t so hard, along with “whoa, this is excellent!”.  If I didn’t make it to my feet, I’m holding my breath underwater wondering when I will be released from the grips of this mighty wave and wondering whether my surf board is going to knock me out.  It’s obviously going to take time to get it right–but it’s the right combination of challenging and rewarding to keep me going back for more. {above: Michael Hagen surfing.  Look closely and you can see a blur of orange under the wave.}