Backpacking Chica Blog » Travel Stories

Forecast: sun, sand, and…grannies?

backpackingchica — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 02:51:57 +0000

Hello hello!

How goes it? Good I hope!

Yours truly is in good ol’ South Florida. Fort Myers to be exact! This sprawling, urban suburbia, just 30 miles from the second richest town in the USA, has one of the worst unemployment rates in the nation. Spat out without second thought to such small issues like the environment, walkability, or constituent happiness, is also known as the “my-grandma/uncle/stalker-live-there”.

It’s a strange thing, but everyone knows someone who lives here. Heck, I once met a guy in Paris wearing a shirt with the words “I love Fort Myers Beach” ironed on the front. Boy did I weird him out.

After a decade of calling this my permanent zip code, I have grown (against all prior expectations) to love this corner of the sunshine state.

First, you have the unique populace. Ten percent German, ten percent northerners, eighty percent old. Yes, old. “Snowbirds,” as we locals affectionately dub the masses of retirees that swarm south for the winter, are a tourist attraction in their own right. At first you notice only the horrible driving, but one eventually learns to forgive the wrinkly bikini bodies thanks to their cute new jersey drawls and the fact that “soda” is now “pop”.

Then there’s a beach, the proximity to Miami, the everglades, and the Edison home. I hardly ever go to any of these places, but I’m still proud. Being a “true” beach bum (see: poser), I scoff at stories of ten foot sharks. I’ve heard of friends-of-friends who’ve wrestled bigger. Alligators and snakes? They practically sleep in my bed. Edison? Aside from the fact that I’m pretty sure he was a douche, I don’t object that the inventor of the light bulb called this place home.

No, all in all, this is a decent place. Whoever is in charge, finally got some nightlife to stay in business downtown (I’m about to test out the beer selection in just a few minutes!)…and a small upswing of liberal voters gives me some hope. If we keep going on this trajectory, we might even be able to have another grand marshall with a pseudo-celebrity status; we once had one of the hot actors from Desperate Housewives…middle-aged women here went crazy, and his grandmother (a local) was suddenly everyone’s best friend.

I guess that’s all you can ask for on a Tuesday night: a place known for sun, sand, and grannies.

A far cry from Paris, but home is still…home.

Learn from my mistakes…Lost in Paris, France

backpackingchica — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:29:57 +0000

Today is a sad day for me. Today, I realized that I accidentally left my diary from Africa in Paris.

Yes, eight months of irreplaceable memories lost, forever, without any sort of back-up record.

So, what’s my word of warning? Guard your travel memories with greater care than I guarded mine. I never made an electronic copy of my diary, and now the hundreds of hours I took to meticulously record details of my time on the dark continent have been lost forever.

Life’s a changin’; leaving Paris, thoughts on "sex lives with cannibals", and other such important things.

backpackingchica — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:41:50 +0000

Bonjour tout le monde!

It’s been one hell of a ride. The last eleven months: oh. my. word.

Living in two African countries and then in Paris, France? The memories could fill a thousand books, which brings me to my exciting news/old news (for those of you who know me well). I have decided to write a book about my travels. By decided, I really mean that I started writing it six months ago, am half-way done, and realized that it’s time to distance myself from blogging while I commit the next six months to finishing it, polishing it off, and embarking on the long journey of getting it published.

I know what you’re thinking: Kim’s writing a memoir? Let’s be clear. I hate the word memoir. It sounds so…self-important. Technically speaking, yes, I’m writing a memoir (definition: “an account of the author’s personal experience”), but this is the only time I will ever willingly use this word to describe anything I do.

Instead of memoir, I’m thinking more along the lines of my book as a love-child between Martin J. Troost and Elizabeth Gilbert, with Bill Bryson as the weird uncle; think lots of laugh out loud humor (clearly from the father), mixed with nice scenery, a tiny amount of romance, and a catchy title (think: Gilbert). Yeah. I know you feel it.

Basically, I want my readers (even if this just ends up being my dad, and the crazy guy who has taken to looking in my window at night) to laugh out loud from the start to the end of the book. This is exactly what I did when I read Troost’s ”Sex lives of cannibals.” The book should have come with a warning label for your abdominal muscles; his ridiculous banter was the only real work-out my pathetic stomach-region was forced to undertake during the whole calendar year of 2009. Great read, good inspiration, and I like to think the fact that we’re both half-european means I’ll be as good as writing as he is.

Writing a book has been simultaneously easier and harder than I thought it would be. It’s easier because there are days when I just brain dump the funniest moments of my trip, and boom…you’re looking at six rough-draft chapters. Sure, half of them will get erased, but 90% of the time when I re-read them, I’m laughing hysterically…and not at how bad my writing is. Basically, I have no problem writing a lot of pages of text.

The hard part about writing a book is finding time to do it. There’s never enough time. Not to mention, I’m not exactly getting paid to write about how a pregnant hooker tried to pick up my friend in an African nightclub or about the time I realized I was driving in a taxi where the fuel tank was really a used water bottle . No, for now, this is being driven by pure will-power, which I apparently have in excess.

So that’s the exciting news I’ve been dying to share! In other goings-on: The employees at Societe General bank are a bunch of wankers. I have over 1500 Euros in my account, and still cannot withdraw money from an ATM. After pondering this for several minutes with a bank employee, he simply shrugged his shoulders and offered, “Je suis desole,” as consolation. Clearly he had used all of his available brain power to help me out of my situation, and was able to come up with nothing. The quest for an answer continues tomorrow.

Also, I have decided that I love Pim’s biscuits, BBQ chips, and white wine. With their power combined, these items are the ying to my yang, the sprinkles to my cupcake, the sugar cube in my tea. I am so set in my ways that the nice man who owns the closest corner store had my regular order ready for me yesterday when I stopped by. If that’s not customer service, then I don’t know what is!

Finally, tonight I will be embarking on a climb up the Eiffel Tower. Yes it’s freezing and I think the “climb” is actually an elevator, but the fact remains: I shall be carried high above the ground where the twinkling lights of paris shall stretch out as far as the eye can see. On a side note, I am going with an attractive, musician ex-boyfriend. The last time I went on the Eiffel Tower, I was with my female best friend. Surrounded by the worlds most in-love people (or at least, by dozens of couples just yearning to copulate), it was a little awkward to say the least. This time,. I figure if I am going to visit the most romantic place on Earth, I should at least make an effort to go with a guy…it’s one step in the right direction.

So, that’s all that’s going on right now. I’ll keep you all posted about how life goes for me.

Over and out,

-Kim

How four girls climbed a mountain and survived.

Kim — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:41:02 +0000

This last summer, a small group of my friends (all girls, by the way) decided to climb up Mount Wittenburg in the New York Catskills. Preparing for our adventure the night before, the only Wittenburg veteran quickly assured us that it was a “fun walk”, “not very hard”, and rounded off the conversation by concluding that “if I can do it…so can you guys!”

Morning dawns, and we’re all in various states of excitement. I, myself, am fairly excited; the prospect of nature is generally appealing to me. Most of all, I know I will have cell phone service at the very top and any modern-day cell phone addict knows that dead zones (such as the one I had been staying in for at least three days) will drive one to do absolutely crazy things. Like climb a mountain.

Driving to the trail, spirits are high. Myself and a good friend (we’ll call her MBA…she’s structured, analytical, and generally in much better shape than the rest of us combined) are about a 9 (on an excitement scale of 10). A third member of the tribe, Charlotte (as in Charlotte from the Sex and the City) is nervously pulling on her Vera Bradley bag and wondering aloud if wearing designer jeans is the best idea. A fourth friend, the Veteran (and local), is going mostly because the third person on our expert mountain climbing team would do just about anything to avoid nature in general.

We navigate the car into the parking lot and worry about the parking costs (no one is there – should we pay? Should we leave? What on Earth will happen if we don’t pay this $5 fee?!??!?), and take some obligatory facebook pictures. We gasp; the trail begins with a beautiful log bridge spanning an equally dazzling and clear mountain stream. More facebook pictures are taken. We climb a few steps and start to look out for the trail notebook; the notebook each group signs to ensure that no one gets lost on the trail overnight. We don’t immediately see it, but that’s OK. Life is good. Sunlight dances through the trees. We walk a few more steps. More facebook pictures.

And then the first sign of trouble: “Can we take a break?” says Charlotte…Veteran agrees. Pep-talks ensue. MBA looks a little ruffled but it’s all good. We keep walking. Another break.

Soon we make a pact that I will climb ahead and wait for Veteran and Charlotte to catch up (MBA chasing them up from the rear), and that we can rest at each one of these points. This works…for some time. We reach the sign-in book. Hurrah! We’ve finally made it to the “official” trailhead. Adrenaline rushes, and we are motivated to continue. We decide: No more turning back.

Another hour passes. I run ahead. They catch up. Facebook pictures are periodically taken. Having packed a million granola bars, I thoughtfully chew them on our various breaks…part of me wonders why no one else is eating either. Never mind, they must have food – who would leave on a day-long hike without it?

Pretty soon we start to look for the half-way marker. Apparently there is a sign which should point us in the right direction and according to Veteran, it can’t be far off. I squint my eyes trying to see ahead. After a couple of false alarms, even MBA is telling me that I’m mistaking weird-looking trees for the sign.

The first one to go is Charlotte. First it’s a few words here and there (mostly pertaining to what exactly the mountain could do with itself, if it were given a choice), but soon it’s a downright mutiny! “Enough!” says MBA: “We’re too far up to stop now…we’re getting our girl’s trip photo-op or else!”

Good. We’re in for the long haul. I start to walk ahead – the stop and go pace is tedious. I soon walk out of hearing range, but I imagine the beautiful mountain top that awaits me and it propels me forward. I climb, and climb, and climb. But it just keeps going. Where the hell is the top of this mountain? I run last-night’s conversations through my head, trying to remember specifically what Veteran mentioned about the trail, but a lot of what she said seems wrong. The trail gets pretty rough. The last hour involves at least five areas where I literally have to scramble up the rockface to get to the next segment of the trail. A few times, I only know where the trail is because of the markers. Clearly this isn’t hiked often.

Finally, after four and a half hours I notice the vegetation getting thinner and shorter. I round a corner, and I yell with joy about the beautiful view stretching out beneath my eyes. A bright blue sky is dotted with clouds, whose shadows play over the lush, green landscape in all directions. The top of the mountain is a worn, grassy area – almost like three large, flat steps that lead down to the edge, where rocks plunge into the forest below. Two large birds of prey fly over my head. There is no sound except for the wind. The sun shines on my face, and I am happy. That is, until I am attacked by dozens, if not hundreds, of little flies.

Flies? On a mountain top? How and why are they here? It’s a mystery to me. All I know is that hiking through the forest, they were no problem. They are only on this sunlit platform, exactly where I had planned to nap the time away until the rest of the group got there. Unable to take the flies, I walk back into the forest. I sit on stone for a while. It gets to be too uncomfortable, so I move. I walk a little further down. Then back up to see the view. Then back down to get away from the flies. Forty minutes goes by. An hour goes by. Could I have really been that far ahead of them? Where are they?

I call their names. No answer. I walk further down. I walk so far down that I’m about twenty minutes from the top. Of course they have no cell phone signal. And my phone is dying; I can’t even waste the time by chit chatting.

Finally, I call out and I get a reply. It’s the girls – they yell out and ask whether I’m at the top. I answer “no, but I’m close”. Silence. They slowly come into view. It’s not a pretty picture. Charlotte is cursing like a sailor. I never would have guessed it, but coming in at 100 pounds, she is one feisty girl! The Veteran is wishing evil on pretty much the entire New York mountain range and looking a little guilty about last night’s amnesia-like predictions of how our walk would go. MBA is looking professionally irritated; great for business, extremely funny in this situation. Trying not to laugh at the picture we paint, I don’t mention the flies. I furtively hope that they are perhaps an imagination; maybe altitude sickness manifested in a strangely real way.

Alas, altitude sickness is not to blame: the flies are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. This is not good.

Everyone retreats to their corner of the mountain top and recovers. Out come the cell phones. But no food. Everyone’s hungry, except for me. I’m just sick of my granola bars. We take more facebook pictures. We climbed all this way, we at least want decent pictures to show for it. I figure out the self-timer on my camera and prop it up using my fleece sweater. The picture looks great; we all check it for double-chins, bad smiles, closed eyes, bad hair. Everyone is happy with it.

Having spent less than fifteen minutes at the top, we gather our items together, happy to be leaving the cursed mountain. Charlotte gets happier and happier the more we walk. She literally has a bounce in her step. We call dibs on who gets the first hot shower. The happier Charlotte gets, the more upset Veteran is. She hurt her hip climbing up, and walking down is tough. We slow down. Light seems to be fighting to peak through the thick canopy, and it starts to get dark. Whispers about staying in the forest overnight echo in our minds.

Gradually, we start to see familiar objects. If only we make it to the sign-in post, we will be just a ten minute walk from the car. Finally, we see it. There are no words in the English vocabulary that can fully describe the joy we all feel. Hobbling down the last few steps, cursing the brown stream with the ugly wooden bridge, and collapsing in the car, we all agree: No More Hiking. Ever.

Driving home we console ourselves with the thought that we at least got lots of good memories captured on film. That was, until I realize that my fleece sweater-turned-camera stand in fact blockes out half of our only group picture.

In total, we hiked eight and a half hours. Although we absolutely hated, hated, hated the entirety of the day, it was the most memorable day of the trip.

In the words of Charlotte; “Remind me to never marry a mountain man”.

Blood sausages and raw meat. Barbaric!

Kim — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:40:13 +0000

I LOVE German butcher shops. I don’t care what anyone says – they are absolutely fantastic. While in Germany with my boyfriend, I took him to a butcher shop. The goal: to buy meat for a picnic.

Inside the family-run shop, thick silver hooks speared meat hanging in glass-door refrigerators. A little chilled, I glanced over our options: a dozen varieties of sausages, rabbit, pork, duck, chicken, and cow. Looking over my grandmother-assigned shopping list I noted the items needed: met (a ground beef/pork/onion mixture eaten raw on bread) and ground beef. The rest was ours to choose.

Raw meat. To eat. Uncooked. To be honest, I absolutely love met. But my boyfriend? A worried crease on his forehead told me exactly what he thought about the whole business.

Tapping my foot to the sound of a hidden employee chopping meat, I wondered if this kind of butcher shop would even be popular in the United States. Meat is often so packaged: perfect, blood-drained, and completely detached from the reality of what it really is: a dead animal. Now, I love eating steaks just as much as the next person. However, having the reality dangling on a silver hook in a storefront is not exactly appetizing. Especially when the ground beef is literally ground right in front of your eyes (as occurred on this occasion).

Anyway, dead carcass or not, I was excited to dig into our spoils. Spreading the met over a butter-covered broettchen, I offered my boyfriend a taste. Taking a smaller-than-usual bite, he chewed thoughtfully and I was delighted to see that his response was positive. Immediately he set about organizing two slices for himself, which were swallowed before they even really existed. Raw or not, it was a delicious meal.

So, I guess the lesson of the story is: even if it looks and sounds completely and utterly disgusting, it might turn out to be absolutely delicious. I should probably make this my mantra for the upcoming months. If the locals eat it, I can eat it too!