After nearly 6 months in Africa and only a handful of hot showers it was beginnng to be hard to see where the sun tan ended and the dirt began! So, I had promised myself that as soon as I reached Morocco I´d go for a Hamam and get well and truly scrubbed. I´ve been for a hamam once before in North Africa and the experience was ever so slightly frightening; being told to strip to almost naked then led into a room full of other naked women throwing buckets of water over each other and getting lathered up with soap. This would all have been OK if it wasn´t for the rather large tattooed woman who then came over, grabbed me with some force as she laid me out on a slab of marble and started to "exfoliate" (er...scrub me raw) me until pounds of skin had come off! However, from memory the worst thing about the hamam was that you were totally at a loss as to what was going on, everyone else around you knew exactly what the score was but I was totally in the dark.... so, this time I thought, with all my previous experience everything would be OK! Some of the girls at the rather lavish Equity Point backpackers told me about their previous days visit to the hamam, it cost them 675 Dirams and to me sounded like a day at a health spa, what I was after was the real thing, the local wash house that you can only locate through a tip off and some hand signals... so, with a tip off I set off to find the orange building with arches and who could miss such a sign as the scary looking old lady sat outside? For 70 Dirams I´d ordered the full package and before long I was naked again and being led into a steamy bath house which strangely resembled the entrance hall of Gloucester Road tube station! Of course, each of these places has their own etiquette, their own way of doing things and once again I was the clueless girl not knowing what would happen next. This time the "scrubber" (is that the technical term?) was old and tiny and a couple of times I had to lean down so she could get the bucket of water over my head, but her hand was no less firm and before long pounds of black skin were peeled away and a slight tan is all that remains - but, it felt amazing to have gallons of hot water at my disposal and for the first time in months I feel truly clean!
After a whistle stop tour of the not so romantic town of Casablanca with its almighty mosque, the buzzing tourist town of Marrakesh and the labyrinth which is Fes I was ready to board the ferry at Tangier and make my way back to Europe. Leaving Africa was a moment of real mixed emotion, so much learnt and so much more to learn about that most different of continents. But for now its back to European anonymity and plentiful hot water and need I remind myself, in but a few short weeks, also back to the grind.
The route home - Tarifa, Seville, Malaga, Granada, Madrid, Paris and London town.
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Friday, 29 August 2008
The ultimate beer run
The bus journey from Tanzania to Rwanda was long and to be honest quite scary in parts. We headed from Arusha to Mwanza on the Air Jordan bus (yes the clue was in the name!)along the main road, otherwise known as dirt track. To begin with it was fun, we spotted a giraffe out of the window and we bounced over the pot holes, but as the day went on the driver sped up and the road got worse and something happened which very rarely happens on an African bus...even the locals started looking panicked and shouted at the driver to slow down!! After a day of recovery in Mwanza we took Allis Sports bus (yes, yes, when will I learn!!) as close the the Rwandan boarder as he would take us. From there it was a nights stop over at a local truckers hang out in Rusumu falls before catching the early morning bus to Kigali.
Our two weeks in Rwanda was hard work. Much of the time was spent trying to work out how we could get from one place to another. This was made all the more difficult because the phone network rarely works, there are so many languages being spoken its hard to know how to ask someone and there is just no tourist infrastructure or information. That said, it was a beautiful country and very different to the picture I had in my mind of a broken country, ruined by the genocide of 1994 and impoverished. The government is trying to promote tourism with the line "A thousand hills and a thousand smiles" Well, it definitely has a thousand beautiful hills which are cultivated in a way which reminds you more of SE Asia than of the usual chaos which is African agriculture. Beneath the surface I think there is still someway to go before the thousand smiles completely rings true, but its certainly a country with hope which is clearly looking to the future and of all the African countries I've visited feels the most likely to attain its goals.
The genocide memorial in Kigali was truly amazing. They have managed to capture both the horrors of what happened whilst also providing historical context and warnings for the future. Over 1 million Rwandans were killed in the genocide, they were let down by their friends and family, notably by the church and by the International community. The UN evacuated ex-pats when the Presidents plane crashed along with Dignitaries of the Habyrimana regime; authors of the genocide - enough troops were used in the evacuation to have prevented the genocide which followed. Sometimes the worlds priorities just look a a little screwed up. 500,000 women were raped, often by HIV infected men which was used as a genocidal tool. ARV's have not been given to hardly any of these women who continue to suffer, although many of the perpetrators have received ARV's in Arusha. One quote particularly sticks to mind; "If you knew me and you really knew yourself you would not have killed me" Felleien Mtagengwa.
For some reason the only accommodation we seemed able to find was in convents and christian conference centres!! All very nice and clean but no beer! Having recently read the book Blood River and various others about the Congo and East/Central Africa I had learnt that for many Africans the old colonial boarders don't mean much and at some, people travel freely between countries and so the story of the ultimate beer run unfolds.... we were staying at Peace Guest House which of course did not sell beer...we had arrived late after a long journey and decided our only option was to buy some in the local town of Cyanguge. After a few minutes walking we hailed a local bus and within minutes the Congo boarder was in sight and our bus was heading straight for it. Fear hit me. For one horrible moment I thought the bus was going to cross right over and all we had with us was an empty bag and enough money for 4 bottles of Mutzig Beer!! Getting into the Congo might have been very easy, but I doubt very much getting back across would be anywhere near as simple. Fortunately at the last second the bus swerved right and came to a stop, you have never seen us get off a bus so fast! but the adventure wasn't over yet, the town was, well, nothing and certainly had no shops which sold beer....but we are not ones to give up, we spotted a hotel on the hill and headed purposefully avoiding the eyes of the boarder police. The hotel was padlocked shut but after a few yells up the hill it was opened and we finally were able to order our beer. You can imagine by the time we got back to the guest house we were definitely in need of a drink!!
We drank our beer that night looking across lake Kivu at the Congo, wondering what that broken of countries was really like. The view we had made it look peaceful and almost Tuscan with white washed houses sunk into the hillside. For now Congo would be an adventure too far... but that evening has left some ideas in my mind!
Audio version of the Ultimate beer run and other stories not to tell your Mum - coming to London soon!!
Our two weeks in Rwanda was hard work. Much of the time was spent trying to work out how we could get from one place to another. This was made all the more difficult because the phone network rarely works, there are so many languages being spoken its hard to know how to ask someone and there is just no tourist infrastructure or information. That said, it was a beautiful country and very different to the picture I had in my mind of a broken country, ruined by the genocide of 1994 and impoverished. The government is trying to promote tourism with the line "A thousand hills and a thousand smiles" Well, it definitely has a thousand beautiful hills which are cultivated in a way which reminds you more of SE Asia than of the usual chaos which is African agriculture. Beneath the surface I think there is still someway to go before the thousand smiles completely rings true, but its certainly a country with hope which is clearly looking to the future and of all the African countries I've visited feels the most likely to attain its goals.
The genocide memorial in Kigali was truly amazing. They have managed to capture both the horrors of what happened whilst also providing historical context and warnings for the future. Over 1 million Rwandans were killed in the genocide, they were let down by their friends and family, notably by the church and by the International community. The UN evacuated ex-pats when the Presidents plane crashed along with Dignitaries of the Habyrimana regime; authors of the genocide - enough troops were used in the evacuation to have prevented the genocide which followed. Sometimes the worlds priorities just look a a little screwed up. 500,000 women were raped, often by HIV infected men which was used as a genocidal tool. ARV's have not been given to hardly any of these women who continue to suffer, although many of the perpetrators have received ARV's in Arusha. One quote particularly sticks to mind; "If you knew me and you really knew yourself you would not have killed me" Felleien Mtagengwa.
For some reason the only accommodation we seemed able to find was in convents and christian conference centres!! All very nice and clean but no beer! Having recently read the book Blood River and various others about the Congo and East/Central Africa I had learnt that for many Africans the old colonial boarders don't mean much and at some, people travel freely between countries and so the story of the ultimate beer run unfolds.... we were staying at Peace Guest House which of course did not sell beer...we had arrived late after a long journey and decided our only option was to buy some in the local town of Cyanguge. After a few minutes walking we hailed a local bus and within minutes the Congo boarder was in sight and our bus was heading straight for it. Fear hit me. For one horrible moment I thought the bus was going to cross right over and all we had with us was an empty bag and enough money for 4 bottles of Mutzig Beer!! Getting into the Congo might have been very easy, but I doubt very much getting back across would be anywhere near as simple. Fortunately at the last second the bus swerved right and came to a stop, you have never seen us get off a bus so fast! but the adventure wasn't over yet, the town was, well, nothing and certainly had no shops which sold beer....but we are not ones to give up, we spotted a hotel on the hill and headed purposefully avoiding the eyes of the boarder police. The hotel was padlocked shut but after a few yells up the hill it was opened and we finally were able to order our beer. You can imagine by the time we got back to the guest house we were definitely in need of a drink!!
We drank our beer that night looking across lake Kivu at the Congo, wondering what that broken of countries was really like. The view we had made it look peaceful and almost Tuscan with white washed houses sunk into the hillside. For now Congo would be an adventure too far... but that evening has left some ideas in my mind!
Audio version of the Ultimate beer run and other stories not to tell your Mum - coming to London soon!!
Monday, 4 August 2008
A game of two halves
After a dodgy start to the volunteer work in Dar es Salaam I moved to Arusha in the north of Tanzania and there could not be a bigger contrast. My time has been spent working with two organisations; Teaching computer skills to trainee teachers at a teacher training college and secondly with WEMA, a small Tanzanian NGO who work with women living or caring for those with HIV/AIDS - with very few resources they do a fantastic job and Dr Asteria, Founder and Managing Director has been an inspiration.
My time at WEMA has been spent helping with future planning, budgeting, fund raising and sorting out their marketing materials but my main role and probably the most satisfying has been working with their Micro-financing programme (an area which I've become facinated in for its ability to allow people to bring themeselves out of poverty). They currently have 52 women in the scheme each paying back a $25 small business loan. Visiting some of the businesses (selling fruit in the market, collecting firewood, small shop, baking and selling small cakes) has been truly eye opening and seeing what a difference just $25 can make to a woman's life and that of her family. Whilst there I also ran a Business Skills course for 20 women which was truly moving - and rather different from business skills sessions I've run with companies in the UK!!!
Saying goodbye to the women at WEMA was one of the most emotional days of my travels thus far, not only did they cook an amazing meal and bring me farewell gifts but also invited a female member of the Tanzanian government (and Board member of WEMA) to officially invite me to become a member of their Board of Directors. It was incredibly moving to witness their acceptance of me an outsider with only a couple of months working with them and it didn't take long into my acceptance speech before the tears were too much. WEMA is a Swahili word and means caring - well these people have certainly showed that, to each other, to me and to their community.
After a few days of Safari doing the "Northern Circuit" and seeing so many lions and so close to the truck...I've headed back to Zanzibar to relax and try to make sense of my experiences over the last few months - and what better place to relax than this paradise island..... not so much of a paradise when my Rucksack came flying off the top of the Dala Dala this morning on the way back to Stone Town causing a commotion, the sudden breaking and then the truck heading back in the opposite direction at break neck speed to recover said item!!! But, body and mind are now sufficiently relaxed to start what I suppose is the home leg.
The remaining journey:
Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Morocco, Spain, France and home sweet home :-)
My time at WEMA has been spent helping with future planning, budgeting, fund raising and sorting out their marketing materials but my main role and probably the most satisfying has been working with their Micro-financing programme (an area which I've become facinated in for its ability to allow people to bring themeselves out of poverty). They currently have 52 women in the scheme each paying back a $25 small business loan. Visiting some of the businesses (selling fruit in the market, collecting firewood, small shop, baking and selling small cakes) has been truly eye opening and seeing what a difference just $25 can make to a woman's life and that of her family. Whilst there I also ran a Business Skills course for 20 women which was truly moving - and rather different from business skills sessions I've run with companies in the UK!!!
Saying goodbye to the women at WEMA was one of the most emotional days of my travels thus far, not only did they cook an amazing meal and bring me farewell gifts but also invited a female member of the Tanzanian government (and Board member of WEMA) to officially invite me to become a member of their Board of Directors. It was incredibly moving to witness their acceptance of me an outsider with only a couple of months working with them and it didn't take long into my acceptance speech before the tears were too much. WEMA is a Swahili word and means caring - well these people have certainly showed that, to each other, to me and to their community.
After a few days of Safari doing the "Northern Circuit" and seeing so many lions and so close to the truck...I've headed back to Zanzibar to relax and try to make sense of my experiences over the last few months - and what better place to relax than this paradise island..... not so much of a paradise when my Rucksack came flying off the top of the Dala Dala this morning on the way back to Stone Town causing a commotion, the sudden breaking and then the truck heading back in the opposite direction at break neck speed to recover said item!!! But, body and mind are now sufficiently relaxed to start what I suppose is the home leg.
The remaining journey:
Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Morocco, Spain, France and home sweet home :-)
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Chips in my eye!
After six weeks living in Tegeta, a rural community on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania I am moving on. The volunteer work has not been all I expected and so tomorrow I move to Arusha in the North of Tanzania where hopefully I'll be kept busy and the volunteer experience will improve.
So, for a little bit of fun and to give a glimpse of life in this part of the world the following are a series of my personal observations over the last six weeks. Some you may think are a little harsh, but they are observations nothing more!
1) Blue band is the only butter, it doesn't live in the fridge and no matter how hot it gets it just doesn't melt. What's in it??!
2) Mama and Max the two crazy dogs that insist on walking with us everywhere. Who's taking who for a walk in this relationship?
3) The constant cries of "Muzungo Muzungo" i.e. white person white person....so annoying I miss being anonymous.
4) Chipsy Mei Ei (and when ordered sounds like you are saying "Chips in my eye" a strange food obsession sold in every restaurant and on every street corner. Basically throw a load of chips in a frying pan, crack an egg over the top and cook like an omelet!
5) Kids who just come running up to you in the street and say "Give me money" and the day it happened once to often and I told the young boy to "F**k off" really not my finest hour! Patience is a virtue :-)
6) How come Tanzanians (and Africans generally from what I've encountered before)have perfect whites even though they wash them in cold, often dirty water?
7) The mother and child I saw collecting water with a bucket from a muddy puddle which had gathered in the middle of the road due partly to the rain and partly to the burst water pipe which nobody has tried to fix.
8) Why to people on bikes always cycle towards you giving you no space to get out of the way?
9) The lack of customer service as we know it! Shop keepers, bar staff and waiters so often look at you as if they are doing you a favour.
10) How no shop, bar, restaurant, hotel ever has any change.
11) So often being charged "Muzungo price" i.e. being ripped off
12) The restaurants all around Dar es Salaam who don't have menus because they all serve the same; chipsy mei ei, fish, kuku, rice...the only thing that varies is the price and then not only from restaurant to restaurant but from day to day and sometimes from person to person eating together!
13) The common phrase you hear so often in bars and restaurants after you have ordered "xxxx is finished" and always so much of the menu is "finished" it really would be easier if they just told you on arrival what they actually have.
14) Not being able to tell where agricultural land starts and stops.
15) Nobody and nothing is ever on time. People are always late for meetings, events always start late and not just a few minutes often hours. And the phrase which always accompanies their arrival if you dare mention the lateness "This is Africa poly poly (slowly slowly) relax"
16) Power cuts happen nearly ever other day - where did I put the candles again?
17) People wearing T-Shirts with the most random words. One lady a few weeks ago was wearing a Thames Valley University T-shirt, others are from American colleges, football teams from around the world, phrases such as "you can have my sister", from fun runs completed in 1998 and new years parties from 2000. Its like watching the last ten years of history walking around on the backs of Tanzania's poorest. I often wonder if they know the significance the T-shirt might once have had to its previous owner? I'd love to track the life of the T-shirts; from raw materials to production to initial sales and then to their current owner. Maybe a website should be launched: T-shirt-tracker.com
18) The longest yet most friendly greeting on earth. "Jambo" Jambo "Mambo Vipi" Poa "Habari" Nsuri. And all that you've established is that you are both OK. Some days it wears you out and other days it reminds you just what a laid back friendly place Tanzania really is.
So, for a little bit of fun and to give a glimpse of life in this part of the world the following are a series of my personal observations over the last six weeks. Some you may think are a little harsh, but they are observations nothing more!
1) Blue band is the only butter, it doesn't live in the fridge and no matter how hot it gets it just doesn't melt. What's in it??!
2) Mama and Max the two crazy dogs that insist on walking with us everywhere. Who's taking who for a walk in this relationship?
3) The constant cries of "Muzungo Muzungo" i.e. white person white person....so annoying I miss being anonymous.
4) Chipsy Mei Ei (and when ordered sounds like you are saying "Chips in my eye" a strange food obsession sold in every restaurant and on every street corner. Basically throw a load of chips in a frying pan, crack an egg over the top and cook like an omelet!
5) Kids who just come running up to you in the street and say "Give me money" and the day it happened once to often and I told the young boy to "F**k off" really not my finest hour! Patience is a virtue :-)
6) How come Tanzanians (and Africans generally from what I've encountered before)have perfect whites even though they wash them in cold, often dirty water?
7) The mother and child I saw collecting water with a bucket from a muddy puddle which had gathered in the middle of the road due partly to the rain and partly to the burst water pipe which nobody has tried to fix.
8) Why to people on bikes always cycle towards you giving you no space to get out of the way?
9) The lack of customer service as we know it! Shop keepers, bar staff and waiters so often look at you as if they are doing you a favour.
10) How no shop, bar, restaurant, hotel ever has any change.
11) So often being charged "Muzungo price" i.e. being ripped off
12) The restaurants all around Dar es Salaam who don't have menus because they all serve the same; chipsy mei ei, fish, kuku, rice...the only thing that varies is the price and then not only from restaurant to restaurant but from day to day and sometimes from person to person eating together!
13) The common phrase you hear so often in bars and restaurants after you have ordered "xxxx is finished" and always so much of the menu is "finished" it really would be easier if they just told you on arrival what they actually have.
14) Not being able to tell where agricultural land starts and stops.
15) Nobody and nothing is ever on time. People are always late for meetings, events always start late and not just a few minutes often hours. And the phrase which always accompanies their arrival if you dare mention the lateness "This is Africa poly poly (slowly slowly) relax"
16) Power cuts happen nearly ever other day - where did I put the candles again?
17) People wearing T-Shirts with the most random words. One lady a few weeks ago was wearing a Thames Valley University T-shirt, others are from American colleges, football teams from around the world, phrases such as "you can have my sister", from fun runs completed in 1998 and new years parties from 2000. Its like watching the last ten years of history walking around on the backs of Tanzania's poorest. I often wonder if they know the significance the T-shirt might once have had to its previous owner? I'd love to track the life of the T-shirts; from raw materials to production to initial sales and then to their current owner. Maybe a website should be launched: T-shirt-tracker.com
18) The longest yet most friendly greeting on earth. "Jambo" Jambo "Mambo Vipi" Poa "Habari" Nsuri. And all that you've established is that you are both OK. Some days it wears you out and other days it reminds you just what a laid back friendly place Tanzania really is.
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Time and Transport
If there were two re-occurring themes to our 3 weeks in Mozambique they were Time: or rather nobody paying attention to time and transport: or rather the pain and hassle which seems to accompany all journeys by public transport. Most buses leave at 4:30am, well that's when they say they are going to leave, in reality it can be hours later and when I say bus what actually arrives is often a truck with far too many people squashed in the back between the sacks of rice, fire wood, live goats, chickens and even a bag of live crabs on one occasion!
The further we ventured north the more we realised that our ambition to travel the whole country overland including the notorious border crossing into Tanzania was just not physically possible in the 3 weeks we had and if we did attempt it our stress levels would sky rocket out of control, so we made a small compromise and flew from Beira to Pemba (the 1hr flight saving us 3 days of buses) and from Pemba to Dar es salaam (another 1 hour flight saving us the best part of 5 days worth of buses and boats). The experience we had on our last bus trip from Ibo island back to Pemba confirmed that this was indeed a very wise decision! About 10km out of Pemba the police patrol post stopped the truck we were in and insisted on seeing the passports of the two conspicuous white girls...they had soon found what they thought was a problem with our Visas and out of the truck we got following the policeman who had taken our passports. 20 minutes of argument later we were still without passports, very unclear what the problem was and the truck had to leave us...so there we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, no transport and 2 laughing policemen joking about us becoming their wives. With the last few seconds of battery I had left on my phone we called the only person we knew in Pemba, Peter the man who owned the accommodation we were about to go and stay at - hearing the panic in our voice he was with us in minutes along with a local staff member and they two tried to get the police to see that there really wasnt any problem. They insisted on taking us to the police station for the commander to resolve (although we had to drive said policeman as they don't have their own cars!) we waited and waited and then the police chief arrived, so totally drunk that he couldn't even cross the road, in fact he fell asleep on the pavement and so more waiting....Shelley and I were having visions of spending the night in a Mozambique jail (not an experience either of us wanted...especially as there was NOTHING WRONG!!) but Peter was our saviour and 2.5hrs later we left the station complete with passports.
There are so many other stories I could tell; of not being able to find food or drink on Ibo Island, the bar that had no drinks, the bus scam that nearly left us stranded, the crazy local Tipo Tinto rum fueled nights in Tofo and the constant waiting around in the early hours, but they can all wait so I have something to talk about when back in London.
The route for those interested:
Jo'burg - Maputo - Tofo - Vilankulos - Biera - Pemba - Ibo island - Pemba - Dar es salaam.....
Keep an eye out for:
The Times travel supplement featuring Mozambique and especially a photo of 2 slightly scruffy looking backpackers!
The further we ventured north the more we realised that our ambition to travel the whole country overland including the notorious border crossing into Tanzania was just not physically possible in the 3 weeks we had and if we did attempt it our stress levels would sky rocket out of control, so we made a small compromise and flew from Beira to Pemba (the 1hr flight saving us 3 days of buses) and from Pemba to Dar es salaam (another 1 hour flight saving us the best part of 5 days worth of buses and boats). The experience we had on our last bus trip from Ibo island back to Pemba confirmed that this was indeed a very wise decision! About 10km out of Pemba the police patrol post stopped the truck we were in and insisted on seeing the passports of the two conspicuous white girls...they had soon found what they thought was a problem with our Visas and out of the truck we got following the policeman who had taken our passports. 20 minutes of argument later we were still without passports, very unclear what the problem was and the truck had to leave us...so there we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, no transport and 2 laughing policemen joking about us becoming their wives. With the last few seconds of battery I had left on my phone we called the only person we knew in Pemba, Peter the man who owned the accommodation we were about to go and stay at - hearing the panic in our voice he was with us in minutes along with a local staff member and they two tried to get the police to see that there really wasnt any problem. They insisted on taking us to the police station for the commander to resolve (although we had to drive said policeman as they don't have their own cars!) we waited and waited and then the police chief arrived, so totally drunk that he couldn't even cross the road, in fact he fell asleep on the pavement and so more waiting....Shelley and I were having visions of spending the night in a Mozambique jail (not an experience either of us wanted...especially as there was NOTHING WRONG!!) but Peter was our saviour and 2.5hrs later we left the station complete with passports.
There are so many other stories I could tell; of not being able to find food or drink on Ibo Island, the bar that had no drinks, the bus scam that nearly left us stranded, the crazy local Tipo Tinto rum fueled nights in Tofo and the constant waiting around in the early hours, but they can all wait so I have something to talk about when back in London.
The route for those interested:
Jo'burg - Maputo - Tofo - Vilankulos - Biera - Pemba - Ibo island - Pemba - Dar es salaam.....
Keep an eye out for:
The Times travel supplement featuring Mozambique and especially a photo of 2 slightly scruffy looking backpackers!
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
From vine to Bottle
So this was the bit everyone (yes you!!) was excited about...in fact it was the bit I was excited about too. How cool to spend 3 weeks in one of the top wine regions of the world learning to make wine. Well, it lived up to every expectation and more. The Barossa valley is stunning, a truly beautiful part of the world and I was lucky enough to not only have the best guide of the area...yes the one and only travel buddy Shelley, but also to be staying with Chris and Dennis Canute in their home and at Rusden winery. My time was pretty much split between two wineries: Rusden and Massena, both small, boutique and reliant on old fashioned manual labour - ie everything is done by hand! Within a few hours I realised that I was gonna learn more than I'd ever imagined and what with full on long hard days at the winery and even more educational conversations over dinner in the evening, plus wine tasting at the weekends (in addition of course to more decent bottles on a Tuesday night than I've ever had in my life!) and you begin to get a picture of how the three weeks panned out.
The guys at Massena and Rusden were excellent teachers and by the end of the stay I had helped in every part of the process completed during vintage: grape picking, crushing, pump over after pump over after pump over during fermentation, testing temperatures and alcohol levels, cleaning and filling barrels and even labeling bottles for export. My old science teachers would have been shocked and maybe proud that I can use some bits of lab equipment at least and my PE teacher would never recognise the upper body arm strength or muscles I now have!! One afternoon thanks to a friend of a friend of a friend (yes this is Barossa life!) I had the amazing opportunity to see first hand how Penfolds make their wine. kitted out with hard hat and bright yellow jacket I got to see the equipment and processes of one of the worlds largest and most successful wineries - the process is very similar but its amazing how little is done by hand and how much is done at the press of a button - rock on the small wineries!
So, if you get the chance try a bottle from one of the following.... leave it until the 2008 vintage is out and you'll have to contend with my hands and feet being apart of the good stuff (well....not exactly but you know what I mean!) and me talking about it endlessly :-)
http://www.rusdenwines.com.au/mos/
http://www.massena.com.au/wines/
Top two tips for other Barossa wines that you really shouldn't go through life without trying:
1) Yalumba D.... such a great sparkling red. However if you can't find this just make sure you try a sparkling red - the good folk of the Barossa shouldn't be allowed to keep this to themselves any longer!!
2) Rockford basket press Shiraz - failing that anything from Rockford rocks the big one, including their winery and staff which goes down as the best of the best of my winery visits
The guys at Massena and Rusden were excellent teachers and by the end of the stay I had helped in every part of the process completed during vintage: grape picking, crushing, pump over after pump over after pump over during fermentation, testing temperatures and alcohol levels, cleaning and filling barrels and even labeling bottles for export. My old science teachers would have been shocked and maybe proud that I can use some bits of lab equipment at least and my PE teacher would never recognise the upper body arm strength or muscles I now have!! One afternoon thanks to a friend of a friend of a friend (yes this is Barossa life!) I had the amazing opportunity to see first hand how Penfolds make their wine. kitted out with hard hat and bright yellow jacket I got to see the equipment and processes of one of the worlds largest and most successful wineries - the process is very similar but its amazing how little is done by hand and how much is done at the press of a button - rock on the small wineries!
So, if you get the chance try a bottle from one of the following.... leave it until the 2008 vintage is out and you'll have to contend with my hands and feet being apart of the good stuff (well....not exactly but you know what I mean!) and me talking about it endlessly :-)
http://www.rusdenwines.com.au/mos/
http://www.massena.com.au/wines/
Top two tips for other Barossa wines that you really shouldn't go through life without trying:
1) Yalumba D.... such a great sparkling red. However if you can't find this just make sure you try a sparkling red - the good folk of the Barossa shouldn't be allowed to keep this to themselves any longer!!
2) Rockford basket press Shiraz - failing that anything from Rockford rocks the big one, including their winery and staff which goes down as the best of the best of my winery visits
Sunday, 23 March 2008
Kaka Uluru...
My introduction to the Northern Territory set the scene for the next few weeks - a 36hour bus ride with vast amounts of nothing to look at and fellow passengers who were more interested in where their next beer was coming from and when the Pokies room opened than anything else. Whether its the hot humid temperature or the lack of people that does it I don't know, but there is definitely something a little odd about the people up north! One thing that hadn't changed was the weather and so I am probably one of the few people in the world that has seen Kakadu National park in the rainy season...and boy did it rain! The park lived up to all expectations, the scenery is stunning with creeks, bilabongs and rivers loosing their boundaries and flowing as one massive expanse of water. There were crocodile warning signs everywhere but the closest I got was seeing charlie the stuffed buffalo as featured in the film crocodile dundee behind the bar of a local roadhouse! All the locals I'd spoken to said that the little known and off the tourist track, Litchfield national park was well worth a visit, and I would now totally recommend it. the mighty Wangi falls, the prehistoric wilderness of Tolmer falls and the intriguing magnetic termite mounds with their incredible design; its amazing to think that the knowledge of which direction to build them for optimum light and heat is passed down from generation to generation - clever little species!
A further 22 hours later and I arrived in Alice springs where travel buddy Shelley reappeared as if my magic (at least using one of those big metal birds...) and our outback adventure began. Uluru is one of those icons which you grow up seeing pictures of and have a clear idea in your mind of what it will be like - well, it was better, much much better than I'd expected. It is a massive rock in the middle of the dessert, but it is so beautiful and contains so much history and memory. For the local aboriginal people it is a sacred site and as a result each cave, every watering hole, each crack and bend of the rock tells a story. Walking around it you appreciate the details, its not smooth as I'd imagined, there are jagged edges, caves with cave paintings, visible layers in the rocks geology and a whole lot of vegetation close by. Watching the sunset behind the rock and the colours changing before your eyes was an awesome site, seeing that massive rock illuminated red is an experience which will be hard to forget.
Last stop in the outback was the crazy opal mining town of Coober Pedy. The town is weird! It looks and feels like the end of the world, its crazy hot , dusty and you rarely see a sole above ground. The majority of the population live in underground houses, as did we for our nights stay and that is where they seem to hang out during daylight hours at least. Sleeping 6 metres below ground was an odd experience, although its cooler the atmosphere is very flat - but I think it gives the biggest clue as to why the town folk are the way they are!
Missing: For those who were wondering if this travel lark is taking its toll here's my list of 5 things I'm missing
- Towels that dry you
- Internet access freely available whenever I want it
- Having ingredients to cook with
- Curry
- Never running out of books to read
A further 22 hours later and I arrived in Alice springs where travel buddy Shelley reappeared as if my magic (at least using one of those big metal birds...) and our outback adventure began. Uluru is one of those icons which you grow up seeing pictures of and have a clear idea in your mind of what it will be like - well, it was better, much much better than I'd expected. It is a massive rock in the middle of the dessert, but it is so beautiful and contains so much history and memory. For the local aboriginal people it is a sacred site and as a result each cave, every watering hole, each crack and bend of the rock tells a story. Walking around it you appreciate the details, its not smooth as I'd imagined, there are jagged edges, caves with cave paintings, visible layers in the rocks geology and a whole lot of vegetation close by. Watching the sunset behind the rock and the colours changing before your eyes was an awesome site, seeing that massive rock illuminated red is an experience which will be hard to forget.
Last stop in the outback was the crazy opal mining town of Coober Pedy. The town is weird! It looks and feels like the end of the world, its crazy hot , dusty and you rarely see a sole above ground. The majority of the population live in underground houses, as did we for our nights stay and that is where they seem to hang out during daylight hours at least. Sleeping 6 metres below ground was an odd experience, although its cooler the atmosphere is very flat - but I think it gives the biggest clue as to why the town folk are the way they are!
Missing: For those who were wondering if this travel lark is taking its toll here's my list of 5 things I'm missing
- Towels that dry you
- Internet access freely available whenever I want it
- Having ingredients to cook with
- Curry
- Never running out of books to read
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