Visiting the Snow of Quebec

Quebec City

[Maryanne]While much of the USA and UK are suffering from unusual snow and cold levels, we've been in Arizona and enjoying sunny skies and pretty comfortable temperatures. Enough of that, we needed to share the pain, and visit a snowier climate.

[Kyle]When I went to work after our weekend in Sedona, Maryanne joined me for a long layover in Quebec City.

Even though it was around 10°F (About -12°C) when we were there, Québécois were out with us in large numbers for the sunny day. We walked into the old city and marveled at both the beautiful architecture and the long views of the frozen St. Lawrence Seaway. Quebec is a real jewel of a city. It successfully pulls off being both majestic and intimate at the same time. It feels like an old-world European city with its meandering avenues of stone and its tiny shop fronts set between massive cathedrals, grand hotels and government buildings.

We saw people leaving a hotel with cross country skis slung over their shoulders who were headed to a nearby park. Others ice skated around a rink in front of one of the massive gates in the city wall. At another, a lunchtime ice hockey game was being played. We eventually made our way to the toboggan hill, where $2.50 got us each a trip down after dragging the toboggan up to the top. Boy, that was fun! The wind chill on the way down was a bit much for my bare fingers, but it was worth it.


Toboggan Ride - fast and fun (and cold)
Shortly after that, our poor camera decided it was way too cold to work as well, which was pretty good timing as we needed to get back to the hotel anyway for the trip back to the airport.

Out and About in Arizona

[Kyle]Maryanne and I decided to spend a long weekend exploring a little further afield in Arizona, so we rented a car and drove up to Sedona.

First, the car. Those who have been following the blog for a while know that we have a preference for small, super fuel efficient cars. Rental car companies, particularly in the U.S., seem confused when we don’t leap at an offer for a free “upgrade” to a bigger car. After all, we live on a boat that has something like a mere 150 square feet of living space. Neither of us sees the point in dragging around more car than we absolutely need to get the job done. Well, you could imagine my glee when, at the Phoenix airport, the rent-a-car guy offered me an even smaller car than the one I had reserved for the same price. Based on his reaction, I surmised that most people took one look at the car and laughed at him. He seemed shocked when I jumped on his offer to take a Smart car for the weekend.

Up until now, the smallest car that we have been able to get our hands on was the Ford Ka in Oban. As far as we were concerned, the Ka was still too much car. After all, it still had a tiny, vestibular back seat on which the four unnecessary cubic feet of air we carried everywhere had to sit. The Smart car has no such wasted space. The cargo area sits on top of the engine in a two and a half foot extension behind the two seats.


Kyle was very proud of our rental - a Smart Car that amazingly managed to fit in all our gear.
I admit that, from the outside, the Smart car is hilariously tiny. It looks like the front half of a regular car with the hood chopped off then lowered onto four tiny go-cart wheels. From inside, though, the car is totally cool. We kept forgetting we were not in a normal sized car. There was plenty of leg and head room and the car had lots of cool features that we didn’t expect like power windows and mirrors, air conditioning, paddle shift or automatic transmission and, my favorite, a button on the dash that will fix a flat tire with a built in air pump. In fact, every time the car is started, the pump automatically inflates the tires to the correct pressure. Ours even had an electric cabriolet top and it could be parked in the shade of any nearby mail box. The car didn’t have any problem with the 75mph speed limit on the freeway, even climbing over the passes on the way. It also has a five star crash rating. I loved that little car. I hated to return it. My only real disappointment was that our quest to rent ever smaller and smaller cars has likely reached its limit. The only car I can think of that is smaller is the diminutive Corbin Sparrow electric car. The problem is that particular car only has one seat, defeating the whole idea of spending time together. Plus, I don’t think anybody is renting them.

On to Sedona.


Montezuma's Castle - prehistoric cliff dwellings
On the way, we stopped at Montezuma’s Castle, the name given to a village of cliff dwellings carved high in a cliff. The trail in the park did not go up to the dwellings, but we were able to get up close for a look at a village that was occupied until about 800 years ago.

Once in Sedona, we spent very little time in our hotel. Since the gorgeous scenery beckoned so irresistibly, we spent every daylight hour hiking some of the trails in the area. Our main hike was an all-day walk up the long trail up to the top of Bear Mountain. From the car, which was parked in the back half of a space at the trailhead, we could see the trail as it headed across a short plain before zigzagging up a steep, red mesa to the top. Once on the trail ourselves, it didn’t take long before the flat plain gave way to a steep climb up rocks that were of such a size and spacing that the climb became like taking stairs two at a time. Every now and then, when we needed a rest, we would turn away from the mountain and take in magnificent views of the surrounding mountains that became more and more impressive the higher we climbed.

After a final push up the steepest part, we crested the top of the mesa and had a nice walk along the flat trail to the other side through cactus and Joshua trees. On the other side, expecting the trail to end at a viewpoint, we instead found the trail continuing up the next steep hill, which had not been visible behind the mesa when we started. We were pretty tired, but we figured we’d come this far, we couldn’t quit now. At the top of that hill, the trail still did not end but instead continued steeply up yet a third hill over loose rock. Alright, Fine! We’ll climb that one too!

We were rewarded with the most stunning views of the entire valley. We sat on a cliff edge and enjoyed the view while eating our hard-earned pack lunch. Then it was time for the much easier descent back down to the car, picking our footfalls carefully as we made our way back down the mountains, happy with our day of stunning beauty and feeling the satisfaction that comes from a day of straining muscles and fresh air.

On the day we left, we hiked the much more moderate loop around Bell Rock, capped with a climb up the rock itself. That climb started off normally enough but, higher up, became quite treacherous. There is a band of Bell Rock where there are no real trails and it was necessary to climb the face of the bare, steeply sloped rock. At this point, the only thing protecting against a long fall is pure shoe traction right at its limit. It was necessary to carefully scan the rock face for those pockets that were slightly less steep and then figure out how to link enough of them together to get to the top, all the while knowing that if I got it wrong, there was nothing to stop me until the bottom. I don’t recommend it without good shoes, plenty of time to take it slowly and nerves of steel. Maryanne sensibly opted out before the insane part.

I eventually made it as high as I could before I would have wanted proper climbing equipment to continue. Other people had apparently been able to get higher while free climbing, but I thought the risk was excessive. From my perch just over halfway up, I was rewarded with an incredible view. Oh, what I’ll do for a view!



Random views of beautiful Sedona and it's stunning Red rocks

Cruising Life in the “Other World”

[Kyle]Since my return to work in earnest at the beginning of December, we’ve developed what I guess could be called our land routine. Our sea routine usually involves planning for the next few days over the horizon, keeping constant watch on the weather and maintaining Footprint so that she will carry us there. Once at anchor, we stay in shape primarily by going for runs or hikes that take us to what is usually the top of the highest point in the area. Well, now Footprint is hauled out 5000 miles from where we are spending most of our time. We’ve had to leave her unattended in the elements and hope that our planning and preparation were sufficient to carry her through the winter. Oban was -6C (18F) the other day.

In the meantime, we’ve settled in quite nicely at Mom’s house in Phoenix. Maryanne and I go running almost every day followed by an hour or so at the gym. It is nice to have a gym that’s so accessible and running routes that are right out the door – no rowing required, no running down a road only to find that it dead-ends in a bog. All of this is, of course, necessary to counteract Mom’s wonderful food, which always continues to taste good well after the required number of calories has been consumed.

I think I have finally managed to get into the routine of work again. This mainly involves getting back into the mindset of putting my personal life out of my mind while I’m there. Even though every third overnight or so allows some free time, for the most part, it’s a 24-hour job. The days are pretty long on average. I’m clear on the other side of the continent staying where the company wants me to stay when they want me to stay there. My uniform is always hung next to the door waiting to be the next thing I wear.

The other thing I have to get used to again is living my personal life in the small doses that a weekend provides and then shifting back into work mode. We’ve had some help from our friends. We took one weekend to visit our good friends Kate and Mark in Norfolk. It rained pretty much the whole time, which gave us the perfect excuse to just stay in most of the time and catch up or have great, long conversations about whatever sprung to mind.

After that, we spent a weekend with JD and Dale in Richmond. Just before I flew in from work, the Blizzard of ’09 hit. Maryanne and I drove to their house in decidedly scary conditions, going about a third of normal speed. This pretty much assured that we would spend the next day in the house with our friends and their kids chatting and enjoying their new Wii.


Kyle really did shovel snow, but we never got that on camera!
The next day, with the end of the weekend looming, it became necessary to shovel ourselves out of the wet, heavy snow. I’m pretty sure that I have managed to avoid shoveling a driveway since I was a teenager in Denver. Don’t worry, It comes right back to you. JD has a really big driveway. As I was just going to sleep in preparation for catching the first flight out to work, Maryanne came up and admitted to me that she had locked the rental car keys in the trunk while loading the luggage. I had to get to sleep, but a few hours later, she crawled in bed saying the locksmith had just left and we had our keys back.

The timing of the storm could not have been worse for holiday travel. Thousands of flights across the country were cancelled. For the next week, almost every flight was overbooked with stranded travelers trying to get where they were going. I was actually pretty fortunate since most of the people bumped off flights from Richmond to Newark probably just gave up and drove, leaving a handful of seats left. It was not the same with longer trips. Every airport I went through all week was standing room only. I would constantly overhear conversations people were having about being bumped off one flight or another and being put on standby for yet another flight. Most of them sounded exhausted and completely resigned to spending their day stuck.
Maryanne got to be a part of it herself. After spending fourteen hours in the Richmond airport getting bumped off one flight after the other, she finally got the last seat on the last plane to Cleveland. She spent the night there, got bumped off the flight to Phoenix, and got the last seat to Houston and then the last seat to Phoenix. She arrived 38 hours after getting to the airport and got to see almost as many places as I did.

After a hectic week, a kind Captain picked up my last round trip, which allowed me to get the jump-seat an a jam-packed full flight to Phoenix six hours earlier than I had planned. That flight was looking really horrible and there was a really good chance I wasn’t going to make it home by Christmas. A bonus was that both of the pilots were Captains of mine when I was a shiny new First Officer. We managed to pass the long flight getting caught up with each other.

So I managed to arrive in Phoenix while it was still daylight and I have an extra-long weekend before I have to go back, and earn the money required for our cruising life.

Where Have We Been?

[Kyle]I know it’s been a while.

We made it to my mother’s house in Arizona as planned after our second departure from Tanzania. We were pretty exhausted from all the flying so once we got there, we pretty much crashed. We spent the rest of the remaining week resting and getting our circadian rhythms in line with Mountain Standard Time. For the first couple of days, I was waking up at 3 a.m. completely slept out. I’d go for a run or a long walk and would be ready for a nap right around sunrise. As time went on, I still kept waking up at three but stayed awake for shorter and shorter periods. Eventually, I didn’t even bother getting out of bed. By the next night, my sleep was finally normalized. Maryanne doesn’t have these problems. She sleeps wherever, whenever.

Once that was done, we got busy doing all of the things on our shore list that have been pent up for so long, most of which was pretty dull administrative stuff that’s just way easier with an address and some space to spread out. We’re still also marvelling at everyday “luxuries” like essentially unlimited electricity and water, just for the asking, in house laundry and stores with everything. I keep habitually wanting to check the ammeter to see how much electricity the TV or the lights are using but, of course, there isn’t one. Mom’s ammeter is the bill at the end of the month, which is too rough for my taste. I like to know my impact at all times.


Family Thanksgiving fun
Once we got settled in, the Thanksgiving holiday was upon us. We had lots of family over, notably my brother, Darren, whose boss rarely seems to ever give him a day off, so the week was occupied with that. My step-sister Heather and her family arrived in time for Thanksgiving day, and helped us eat too much turkey and pie. It was nice to see everybody. Mom topped it off by taking me, Maryanne and Darren to a live dinner theatre performance of A Christmas Carol. We all really had a good time with each other. The play turned out to be a musical. It was not a play with a lot of songs but a full-blown musical with EVERY line sung and big song and dance numbers every five minutes complete with way over the top acting. I chose to enjoy it as I would enjoy a retrospective on really bad monster movies or something. It was so bad, it was kind of fun to watch each other squirm as the stage filled up and we knew another “big number” was imminent.

To be fair, it was a very elaborate production and it was clear the cast and crew had prepared endlessly for it but, like hip hop or country music, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get into the art form of musical theatre.

Not Exactly as Planned

[Kyle]Our last day was mostly transportation to Arusha and the Kilimanjaro airport but did include a few hours game drive en route. We saw lots of cute critters and beautiful scenery, of course, as we usually do. The big event of the drive was that Maryanne spotted a lion before anybody else did. He was lying down in the grass and could have easily just been a clump but she spotted him. Juma didn’t believe her at first and took some persuading to stop, but it was a real lion and Maryanne caught him before anybody else.


Maryanne's Lion
After the game drive, we were dropped at the beautiful Arusha Coffee Lodge for lunch. Most of our party had arrangements for the five hour drive to Nairobi, Kenya for their flights home. Maryanne and I didn’t have to leave for the airport until late, so opted to spend time at the much more comfortable lodge rather than go to the airport. This left us spending another couple of hours at the lodge with our least favourite people from our group, who were also flying out of Kilimanjaro later.



Arusha Coffee Lodge, where we dallied and watched monkeys eat from the Avocado tree
These particular people were a pair of young newlyweds on their honeymoon. I could go on for hours about them but I won’t. Suffice it to say they were snobs and complete narcissists and we had to spend two of the longest hours of our lives after the others left of listening to them talk about how wonderful they are and watching the wife fly into a rage about how every breeze was messing up her hair. She doesn’t do outside eating. We are so glad we will never see them again.

Our tour company wanted to take all four of us to the airport together but Maryanne put her foot down. Their flight was four hours before ours.

Two hours later the guy showed up and said we should get going because, even though we were really early, the third world ticket agents have a bad habit of closing the ticket counter with three hours to go and stranding people who were late. Our driver said, “I’m sorry. I know it is very early, but it is a Tanzanian thing. You don’t want to be late.”

Once we got to the airport and I already tipped the bastard, we found out his story was all B.S. I think he just wanted to go home early and just made it up. The ticket counter actually opened up three hours before the flight, two hours after he dropped us off. Since the flight only stops in Kilimanjaro on the way to Dar es Salaam, there were only about fifty people to check in. They didn’t even start clearing seats until an hour and a half to go.

We didn’t make it. The agent explained that there were no seats for two days. He was very nice and offered to help negotiate a better fare for the hour cab ride back into town and suggested a few decent hotels. By then, Maryanne had already gone online and found most hotels wanted around $150/night. The only one near the airport, the Kia Lodge, wanted $250/night. This actually made everything a close tossup as a cab ride into town runs about $50 each way. The KLM agent, generously helped us, offered us his personal cell phone number so we could check loads on the Monday flight, and said he could help us negotiate a cab ride into town for us for $30 (rather than the $50). The hotels in town were supposed to be decent but not in a particularly good area.

We were sitting there wondering what our fate would be for the next couple of days when the very last passenger checked in, the Honorary Consul for The Netherlands, and offered to make a couple of calls on our behalf. A couple of minutes later, he got us a room at the Kia for $150/night. The van was on its way. Not ten minutes after leaving the airport, we were given a room complete with fresh petals scattered on the bed. What luck.


KIA Lodge
The KIA lodge is beautiful. It consists of lots of open, airy buildings with thatched roofs set amid tall bushes of bright colored flowers. The staff is as friendly as could be and the restaurant has a view of Mt. Kilimanjaro itself. Our room was clean but had a mosquito net that was not up to the job. We augmented it the second night with our own. The bed was also rock-hard. We didn’t notice this the first night, but by the second, we felt like we’d slept on a flight of stairs. We had nothing to do the last day for the ten hours between check-out time and heading to the airport so we are hanging out in the shade by the pool on chairs that are way more comfortable than the bed. If we get too hot, we nip downstairs to the bar for a coldie.


Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance - as seen from the dining room
Our flights home are looking pretty good for now. If everything goes as planned, we’ll be at my mother’s house in 34 hours or so, 25 of which will be flying.

Tarangire

[Kyle]We bid Ngorongoro farewell and descended back down the long dirt track to the Great Rift Valley. Just before Arusha, we turned south for Tarangire National Park, where our next lodge was located. Tarangire is home to the entire assortment of African animals but is best known for its elephants and its baobab trees.


Elephants are very much more careful of humans in this park
We saw both pretty much immediately after entering the park. The elephants in Tarangire are noticeably more aggressive than the other ones we’ve seen, particularly the older bulls. Juma, our guide says that this is because he elephants in Tarangire were hunted by poachers until about 1960. The older ones still remember what happened and as a result, are pretty mistrusting of humans. We were able to get close to the elephants, but with almost every contact the bull would stand guard while the rest of the family retreated. Once they were sufficiently far off, he would do a menacing charge for three or four steps, complete with tusks raised and dust flying. The message was clearly, “Don’t follow us, or else!” Apart from being scary, I thought it was sweet, a bull being worried about his family. If they manage to keep poaching at bay, in a couple of decades, when the older generation starts dying off, Tarangire’s elephants may start being more tolerant of humans.

We had a quick stop at the lodge to check in and have lunch and then it was out into the park again. By this point, we had pretty much seen most of the animals there were to see. We figured Tarangire was just time filler between Ngorongoro and the airport because the crater was so far.

We turned out to be wrong. Tarangire is a beautiful park in its own right. The hills are multicoloured red, yellow and tan. Giant baobab trees are everywhere as well as lots of elephants. There are probably few places in the park where you are not in sight of an elephant.

We left the lodge and stopped at a baobab tree to learn about them. The next thing that happened after that was Maryanne spotted a bird in the top of a far-off tree that she thought the bird watcher in the group would be interested. Our guide looked through his binoculars and declared it a Lilac Crested Thrush. While our bird watcher friend was snapping away, I took a look through our own binoculars. I was amazed at what I saw. It wasn’t a Lilac Crested Thrush; it was a Senegal parrot, Poicephalis Senegalis. Another look and Juma conceded that it was a parrot. Yes! I outguided the guide!

Senegal Parrot, picture taken by our fellow safari passenger Luce - way to go!
I love Senegals! Many, many years back, I had a couple of them (Scooter and Buzzy) and I still miss them dearly. They are such sweet birds. They are such animated clowns and their antics are hilarious all-day entertainment. It was such a treat for me to see them in the wild and see what their natural habitat is like. That alone would have made the Africa trip worth it for me. The bird took off and let out a screech. I recognized their natural screech immediately. I have heard it so many times interspersed with English and other noises picked up in the home. We heard several more but they seemed quite skittish and would fly away every time we got almost close enough to photograph them. I got a good long look through the binoculars, though, and all the happy memories of my birds came right back to me right then.


Lovebirds and dik dik
A little further on, our guide spotted three lovebirds (also parrots) on the ground in front of the vehicle. They took off when we approached, but we saw and heard quite a few of them as well for the rest of the day. I was in parrot-lovers heaven.

Oh, but that’s not all, a few minutes after that, we came across a female lion lying by a river. ‘Big deal’, we thought, ‘We’re all lioned out. She’s cool and all, but what’re we going to do with more lion pictures?’ Once we got closer, we got our answer. This just wasn’t another lion, but a mother with five adorable cubs. The half eaten carcass of a freshly killed wildebeest was under a nearby tree. While mom slept off the effort of the hunt and the subsequent food coma, the little cubs played with full stomachs and not a care in the world. They were so young that they seemed to be just giant ears and paws that stumbled over themselves just walking. Over and over, they would practice big lion stuff by sneaking up on, and then pouncing on each other, bursting with hyperactive joy like kittens.


Cheetah enjoys feeding on its recent kill
It was getting late and sunset was imminent, so we started back to the lodge. About a third of the way back, Juma, now known as Eagle-eye, stopped our vehicle and pointed out a cheetah feeding on a fresh kill. Cheetahs are so well camouflaged that none of us could find it. It wasn’t until Maryanne started looking with binoculars and started directing our gaze in the right direction that the rest of us found it. This cat was 50 meters off the road lying down in the grass. The only thing visible to the naked eye was some slight motion and occasional flashes of red from the kill. That’s what Juma saw. He didn’t even slow down and search for a while, he just saw it. Well, we knew all of the guides share information (in Swahili) over the radio. We figured he must have received a tip. Once he got on the radio, other vehicles started showing up. The other guides confirmed that Juma saw this one first and were all clearly congratulating him in Swahili when they showed up. Cheetahs are probably the hardest animals to find. They’re solitary, secretive, small and well camouflaged. We are very lucky to have seen not Just one, but two of them on this trip.


Juma, our ace guide
Juma, who rumor has, is the youngest guide, clearly scored himself some points with his peers on that one. Even though he is young, he has been a really good guide. He looks seventeen, but he speaks at least five languages and we haven’t been able to stump him on a biology, geology or ecology question yet. Every time we were able to check his answers from an independent source, he’s been spot-on. As far as we can tell, the Senegal thing was the first thing he got wrong. When we did later find a Lilac Crested Thrush, I thought it was another Senegal – until it turned its head and I saw the beak was pointy instead of hook shaped. In flight, they look completely different, but sitting on a branch, they are very hard to tell apart – until you see the beak. That one’s still mine, though.

Ngorongoro

Scenes from the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge
[Kyle]Descending into the crater, we immediately came to a standoff between buffalo and a pride of lions. One of the lions had managed to injure one of the buffalo calves and the big bulls in the herd were alternating between forming a defensive perimeter and charging the lions to run them off. The bulls managed to hold off the lions until the rest of the herd was a safe distance away and then they went off to join them. The lions had taken over all of the territory around a watering hole and were clearly more interested in having their food come to them than chasing it all over the crater. So the buffalo win that round. A little later on, we came upon a lion finishing off a kill from the day before, so they didn’t seem too motivated to hunt again just yet. They normally eat only once every four or five days.


Lionesses on the hunt

Lazy, lounging (male) lions
We left the area and came upon a traffic jam of safari vehicles. One of them had stopped to look at three male lions. The lions then came over to the truck and plopped down in its shade, effectively immobilizing it since the vehicle would have had to run over them to leave. Well, this gave everybody else a chance to get some good close shots of the lions and it all balled up from there. As soon as one vehicle would gingerly extricate itself, they’d go over to another one looking all drowsy and plop down, thus repeating the process.


Black Rhino
Once we were out of there with our fill of lions, we drove a bit further and found a lone Black Rhinoceros warming up in the sun. It didn’t really do a whole lot, just stood there warming up, but it was cool to see since they’re so rare. Our guide told us that participating in a rhino hunt, no matter how small a role, carries a life sentence in Tanzania. I don’t imagine anyone survives very long in a Tanzanian prison.


Hyenas feeding on a dead hippo
From the rhino, we went to a hippo pool, where a pack of about five hyenas was in the water eating the carcass of a hippo that had recently died. There was about twenty more of the pack sitting on the bank waiting to get at the carcass. Once the hyenas on the hippo had their fill, they’d swim off and would be replaced by new ones. The new arrivals had to run a gauntlet of swimming past hippos, which are very, very territorial and not happy to share their water with others, to get to the carcass. The hippos didn’t seem to mind when the hyenas were eating, but they were not happy to let them pass.

After the hyenas, we drove toward the forest at the edges and looked for more of the 30 rhino in the area, but were unsuccessful. Instead, we saw lots of ostrich, zebra, gazelle and baboons.


Beautiful Crater Scenery
It was getting late in the day and we started heading back to the ascent road on the other side. Along the way, we passed through large herds of wildebeest and zebra, which hang out together. We also saw several elephants grazing and cooling themselves off in the reeds at the edge of a pool.


More animals in the Crater
On the way out, snoozing right in the middle of the road, we found the same three male lions that had caused the traffic jam that morning. Since we were one of only two vehicles by then, they decided that we would be their shade for a while. They were close enough that if we were dumb enough to try it (which we weren’t, by the way) we could have pet them through the windows.


Lions resting, still; tough life
As we drove out of the crater, I stood up with my head out of the pop-top, facing backward, lost in thought as it receded below and into the distance. What an amazing place.

Later on, as we were brushing our teeth for bed, I heard a strange noise out the window. I went to the solarium and saw two huge buffalo grazing outside barely over arms length away. Buffalo are famously ill-tempered, always ‘with the angry faces’, as Juma put it. The thin floor to ceiling glass of the solarium seemed awfully feeble protection. Fortunately, they seemed more concerned with trimming the lawn than us.

Since it gets a little cold at the crater rim, the lodge places hot water bottles in the beds when it does the turn-down service during dinner. Maryanne especially loved this. The bed was nice and comfy warm. We were so tired at the end of the day that even with those behemoths munching right outside, we were both asleep within seconds.