A Monumental Week in Hungary

With some time to spare, Mike and Jo head off to find out about Hungarian public art,12 to 18 May 08

With a week still to fill in while we waited for our Australian passports to go to Canberra and return to Budapest, we decided to look at some specific aspects of Hungarian life.

We have seen a lot of public art during our travels ranging from round-about sculpture to massive, and generally dry, water parks. Some of it has been wonderful, some of it quirky or humorous and much of it banal.

Charlton Heston Put His Vest On

6.7.09 Popayan, Colombia

Mincing Moses! It looks like the rumours about Colombia may be true! I'm only in the south, but the vibrating greenness of the mountains, the mood-bumping warmth of the people, the eye-popping, shirt-testing Oh-My-God-ness of the honeys, and the (so far) utter lack of getting shot, robbed or kidnapped are all starting to pull Colombia up my (facile and ill-considered) Best Country In South America list.

Still in New Zealand

After David's mom left Christchurch to go back to Canada, we started our camping trip again. We found a very beautiful place, Lake Tekapo with a milky aqua color that reminded us of Lake Louise in Alberta.

Lake Tekapo, South Island

The Bridge on the River Mtkvari

Tbilisi is a nice place to rest if you crash at the right spot and we definitely did.

Wednesday 09 Sept - St Louis - St Robert(MO)

The stunning Gateway Arch was built in the early 60's as a tribute to the pioneers that opened up the country to the west of the Missippi notably the famed explorers Lewis and Clark who set forth from here to the Pacific along the length of the Missippi.The trip to the observation deck is done in tiny pods but the view from the centre of the arch is incredible.

Chita to Khabarovsk

Elephant destroys a rear tyre in 200km on the gravel roads between Chita and Khabarovsk.5 July to 11 Jul 08

Chita to Khabarovsk is a distance of 2150km. Not much in this vast land. Of this, a few hundred are a bituminous surface varying from “good”to pot-hole alley. The remainder, about 1800km, is unsealed. To be more technically correct, the “remainder” is under construction. To put that in perspective, that is a construction site stretching from Brisbane to Melbourne. In the land of giants, even the construction sites are epic.

Do Mention The War.

17/12/08 Rio Grande, TDF, Argentina.

It's 175 miles from the petrol station ("gas outlet" if you prefer) in Rio Gallegos to the next one, just over the Chile/Argentina border in San Sebastian, Tierra Del Fuego. My petrol tank goes to reserve at 165 miles - if I haven't been too silly and childish with my throttle fingers. All well and good if the station actually has fuel in it; reserve should give me about another 35 miles.

Slacking in Seattle

Slacking in Seattle

So, we cut across from the coast to Kelso, WA for the evening. In the morning we rode to and around Mt. Rainier, but I only got one pic due to not stopping and it being cold. In case you didn’t know, 90% of my pics are taken from the saddle while riding. If I stopped to take a pic every time I thought about it, I wouldn’t get any where.

image

We got to Dave and Jen’s place in Seattle. On Friday, they took us around town a bit. The neatest place was the Pike Place Market.

image

The Thousand Towers (II)

Whole day lost at the tire repair shop...

"Well laid plans of mice and men"

The initial planned route is The initial planned route is Cape Town to Nelspruit through to Maun to meet up with David and Miles (around the 28th September), who will have travelled up from Cape Town via Namibia. From there the planned route is Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Eithiopia, Sudan to Egypt.

Deciding to Go

Wth their children grown ad their lives settled, Mike and Jo decide on one more adventure.They say that every journey begins with a single step. The first step on this journey, however, was imperceptibly small. A tiny shift in mind set, a distracted feeling at work and, somewhere, a growing feeling that life was short and precious and, if not to be taken too seriously, certainly to be lived, these were the small beginnings of an adventure. Jo and I have always loved motorcycles and, if we were not as active in our child rearing years as we would have liked, the passion remained strong.

Unnerving Mattress.

28.5.09 Nazca, Peru.

I'm sorry, truly sorry, if your grandparents perished in an unheated Middlesborough council flat last January, but if it's any consolation, riding them around on the back of a motorbike at 14000 feet after sundown wouldn't have helped. They had a good innings anyway, unless one of them was an England cricketer.*
---