Journeys To Anywhere – Up North

It’s common for people of this beautiful land to abandon its sun-neglected fields and meadows, to venture southwards in search of warmth and that yellow ball of light that other countries take for granted. What’s rare and would be considered almost lunacy is heading in the opposite direction and travelling north. Not just a little bit north either but North past of the many imaginary circles than band our planet, past the 60 degrees North line and into The Arctic Circle.

I hadn’t really thought about it much before I went, I had it in my head that Tromso was close enough to Trondheim. The night before we flew I got out my atlas to have a look at our route. I found Trondheim, easily enough and then traced my way along the coast northwards, searching for Tromso, it was a long way up, it’s one thing saying that we were going above the Arctic Circle and it was another seeing how far it was on a map, it’s a long way….

Tromso is a quaint town which is the common starting point for expeditions heading to the North Pole. One of the first things we did was to go whale-watching, though even with using high tech sonar we only got the see the tail of one whale. And it was cold too, there we were in the middle of summer and out on the north sea we were wrapped up in all our clothes due to it being 1 degree Celsius. What was interesting about the trip was after we tried to watch whales, we did a bit of fishing.

The best time for fishing is apparently at the turn of the tide, unfortunately we were too late for that a few of us were given a chance to give it a try all the same. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, you don’t even use a rod, just a line with a hook, you couldn’t not pull up a fish, it was like there were thousands of fish down there just waiting to jump onto your hook, I’ve never seen anything like it. We had plenty of fish for dinner that evening.

We traveled through Norway then across into Sweden and Finland, passing through Abisko and Lake Inari soaking up the landscape. One of the highlights of the trip was one day in Finland when we made an impromptu stop at a farm where they bred huskies, it was gorgeous, the silky fur, the blue eyes, the friendly animals. We chatted with the owner, even watching a video of him and his huskies pulling a sled in the snow, which was quite amusing.

It was an animal filled trip, as we got to see some reindeers as well, we went to a reindeer farm and were given the usual tour around. First we got to meet the reindeers (not a red nose among them) and feed them, like most animals they’re only friendly when you’ve got food in your hand, after that they lose interest…

As part of the tour we learnt about reindeer keeping including how to lasso a one, it all looked very easy when it was demonstrated to us, yet when we had the change to capture a stationary set of antlers stuck to the ground, we didn’t do so well – I’m sure those antlers moved….

The final part of the experience was to have dinner in a big Lapp tent, with a fire going, it was nice and warm inside, dinner naturally was reindeer, and it got me to wondering that maybe the order of the tours could be changed, maybe we could have the dinner first and then perhaps we could go and feed the survivors, that way you’d never wonder if you were eating any of the reindeer you’d fed earlier…

Being so far north during summer means one thing, the Midnight Sun, everyone asks me how we were able to sleep, especially as we were camping for a lot of the time. While it was strange to be going to bed while the sun was still shining, you got used to it, and if you’re tired enough you’ll sleep anywhere no matter where the sun is! It was bizarre at times, sitting having a barbecue at the edge of a river at 1 am in the sunlight, getting up in the middle of the night and not stumbling around in the dark trying to find the bathroom….

The weirdest part of the trip happened when I arrived back in Dublin as something that I’d forgotten was possible occurred, the sun set for the first time in two weeks….

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Journeys to Anywhere – Pucón

One thing that I didn’t expect to find in Chile was an Alpine village. There’s the mountains, a lake and bizarrely of all there’s a village filled with wooden chalets, all that’s missing is the VonTrapp family singing “the Sound of Music”.

It was the place to go in the southern summer, the bus-station was ever busy, regularly pouring out new arrivals eager to “have fun”.

It’s a real tourist town with real tourist prices, not for the budget traveller at all or indeed for most of the visitors that came. The busiest place in the village was the supermarket where everyone bought food for their lunches and dinners, avoiding the empty but expensive restaurants.

What makes Pucón different from real alpine villages is the presence of Volcan Villarica, an active volcano that looms ominously over the village.

They have hikes up the volcano and they’re a bit risky, not so much for risking life and limb but it’s more of a financial risk! The trips are not cheap, for as little as $60 you can take a little wander up the mountain. Each morning groups meet up at 7.30am and head off to the volcano. There are times when they have to cancel the trek if it’s too dangerous or if visibility is bad. The catch is that they will refund your money if they cancel before they leave but apparently they don’t usually know if they’re going to cancel until about an hour into the trip whereupon the trek has already started and you don’t get your money back! It sounded a bit dodgy to me!

To have a live volcano so close is a bit unsettling. At key points in the town are “special traffic lights” indicating how friendly the volcano is being. Green naturally is a nice well-behaved volcano, Orange means the volcano hasn’t slept well, is fairly irritable and is liable to throw its toys out of the pram and Red means what are you still doing here, you should have left an hour ago!

In tandem with the traffic lights there is the volcano siren. It’s startling when you hear it go off for the first time, it’s like an air-raid siren but no-one reacts, they just continue what they’re doing so you’re left to assume that maybe you’re safe for another little while. The worst time was lying in bed one night, drifting off to sleep only to have the air-raid siren going off followed by people running and the sound of ambulances…

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Journeys to Anywhere – Bintulu

Tell any Malaysian that you’re going to Bintulu for a holiday and they’ll look at you with incredulity. The polite ones will gape a little before catching themselves and pretend to nod interestedly, while the others will look at you in horror, they’ll look at you as if you’re out of your mind, they’ll look like they want to shake you and ask why, why, why!!!

You can choose your friends but you shouldn’t really choose them based on where they live and so I found myself flying into the oil town of Bintulu…

Before I experienced Bintulu in its entirety, I did a bit of research on the net and as you might expect I didn’t find a lot of interest but one thing that caught my eye was that the airport was right in the middle of town and you could stroll from your hotel to the airport in a matter of minutes, it sounded perfect.

Sometimes I get all excited about a thing that I don’t think it all through so of course I never considered that an airport in the middle of town would be a bit noisy! However it turned out to be academic as I landed in a brand-new shiny airport, 20 minutes drive away from the town. So no strolling into town from the airport, talk about disappointment!

From my room you could see the old runway and it’s become a public space, by day you’ll see people strolling up and down or playing basketball or football, in the evening after it gets dark you’ll see motorbikes and the occasional car going up and down. It would be nice if it could stay in its present form, become a focus, the living heart of the town.

It’s a quiet town, after a day I was ready to escape, trying to find the quickest way to get away but as I stayed longer, the place started to grow on me. Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing to do there, you just have to adopt a different attitude.

I even went to mass. The Catholic Church is the McDonalds of the religious world and like McDonalds it seems to be this huge unchanging monolith but if you probe deeper you find that there are local flavours incorporated in every country. It’s interesting to go to mass in other countries, to see what the regional flavours are, see if they are doing it right and by right I mean like we do it in Ireland!

For instance, most churches in Ireland are of the classic cruciform shape where as the one in Bintulu was hexagonal or octagonal. And then there was the music, all very sombre meaningful hymns, I didn’t recognise any of them, not too surprising really since I’m more used to folk groups and gospel songs at mass. The funniest part was after mass, the rush to get to the cars the completely unchristian way the driver forced their way out of the car park, being kind to your fellow man was not a consideration!

The sight to see, only comes out at night, you drive to the coast, park the car and look out across the bay at the lights of the oil and gas platforms….

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Journeys to Anywhere – Brattleboro

A la Before Sunrise I once met a girl while travelling through Ireland by train, the trip was about five hours long and we spent the trip chatting. We spent her last night in Ireland roaming the streets of Dublin and the next morning she left on her plane back to the States.

Two years later we met up again in a small town in Vermont called Brattleboro.

Like most towns in the world it wasn’t a place for tourists to throng to, I’d even timed my trip a couple of weeks too early and missed the Fall, when the leaves turned beautiful hues or yellow, orange, gold and red, I could just imagine what it would be like by looking at the postcards in the shops.

Its one claim to fame is that it was once home to Rudyard Kipling, just down the road from where I was staying was his cottage where he lived with his wife and family for many eyes, it was there, far from the jungles of India that he wrote the stories that would become “The Jungle Book”.

There’s this image of the fat American, and while I can’t comment on that, I definitely didn’t find much to point to an image of the fit American. I was staying about 3 miles outside town and one day I took a stroll into town, had a ramble around and walked back, it was a nice walk, when I got back they were shocked! They couldn’t believe that I would voluntarily walk that far and then do it again to get back from town.

Another day, we went for a “hike”. There are plenty of mountains in the area and I’m not sure how the “mountain” was selected or if it was chosen at random but they were very excited about the hike so we set off on our expedition. It wasn’t quite the same as the normal hikes I’ve taken, we had to stop every few minutes for a rest or a smoke break and we weren’t even walking all that fast to start with. After about an hour we’d managed to get about a third of the way up the hill and that was it, they couldn’t walk another step!

At the end of a week I’d had enough, I needed to escape so I headed north and crossed the border into Canada…

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Journeys to Anywhere – Saarbrücken

We went there for love. It’s a story of two people separated and how they came to be reunited. Circumstances had forced them apart but fate had brought them back together.

I was training to be a gooseberry at the time so it was only natural for me to come along to celebrate this happy event. There was only one little obstacle on their way to eternal happiness, her boyfriend. While we were working on removing this minor hiccup we took the opportunity to explore the town.

Saarbrücken is in the heart of a coal-mining region, it’s what not you would imagine to be on the tourist trail and it’s not. We searched the whole town and couldn’t find anything really to write home about. We did find one place of note that made it a bit different than home but that was a brothel and being innocent Irish boys we didn’t investigate that particular tourist attraction.

Saarbrücken has its charms, we got to try out some local cuisine, a variety of beers were sampled and of course there was the Christmas market. In the weeks before Christmas, in towns all over Germany, this realm of magic descends making the run up to Christmas that little bit more special…

He didn’t get the girl but he did end up with her friend….

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