Did you know that 7% of Kyrgyzstan is aerable land (that is not how I wanted to spell that at all, but I let my phone win this round), which means the remaining 93% is mountains. That is a heck of a lot of mountains! But thetwinsontour decided they were tired of the non-drowsy Dramamine making them drowsy all day.  So in our infinite wisdom on a 6 hour travel day, we skipped the Dramamine.

The day started out ok. We left Bishkek at 9am and headed towards the yurt camp at Son Kul Lake way, way up in the mountains.  The roads are pretty good out of the Bishkek, and we even got to drive through Kazakhstan for about 77 seconds because that’s where the road goes. Apparently, the borders and road locations did not matter during the Soviet Union time, and then after the fall of the Soviet Union, they just left it.  You can tell you are in Kazakhstan because there is barbed wire along the road. And then there’s no barbed wire, so you are back in Kyrgyzstan.  So that was super exciting. I don’t think I am going to add Kazakhstan to my list of visited countries just yet, though. My phone did not even send me a welcome to Kazakhstan message, so that was a little disappointing. Once again, we are being teased with these nearby countries that are just out of our grasp.

Anyways, after about three hours we stopped for lunch.  That is where we transferred to the smaller mini busses necessary to traverse the unpaved roads through the mountains. The roads were actually fairly straight with only a couple of switchbacks.  It’s not necessarily the winding that is the issue, it’s the road quality for sure.  But, let me tell you this, the views were breathtakingly beautiful. It’s hard to get pictures out the bus window due to the shaking.  You know when you played London Bridge as a kid and you got shook up like salt and pepper.  That’s what the roads do–shake you up like salt and pepper.  My head was just bouncing all over the place. The last hour I just had to close my eyes, breathe deep, and pray for the drive to be over.  

Oh, did I mention that we stopped at a scenic overlook and there were YAKS! Yes! There were YAKS! I’ve never been so excited! I guess it was actually supposed to be potty stop at a smelly outhouse, but we were so distracted by the YAKS that we did not realize the actual purpose of the stop.

Now, to answer the question on everyone’s mind, yes, the trip was worth it! Our final destination was a YURT camp on the edge of Son Kul Lake. A real live actual YURT! We got to sleep in our very own YURT! We didn’t even have a toilet, just 4 beds, a chest, a stove, and a little sink similar to what you see at swanky porta-potties. That’s it! The toilets and showers were in another building.

It was after 6 by the time we arrived and dinner was at 7, so that left us with very little free time. We started walking towards the lake, but got distracted by taking photos of cows. So, we had to turn around before we made it to the edge of the lake (really anywhere near the shore.)

So, what is it like sleeping in a YURT? Well, there is limited electricity. There is one light bulb. That is powered from 7pm to 11 pm. Then again at 7:30 in the morning until I don’t know how long. And, you are at elevation, so brrrrrr is it cold! There is a little stove that they heat up for you, but once that burns up all the charcoal, the heat does not linger. They light it at 8pm and then again at 11pm.  However, our guide said that some people have said that it makes it feel like you are sleeping inside a sauna, so when they came around at 11pm my sister sent them away. I think it was mostly because she did not want to get out of bed to open the door. It was still nice and toasty inside.  

I was really trying hard not to have to wake up and pee in the middle of the night because as I said, the toilets are in a separate building.  I woke up at 1:45 and said, I can hold it.  However, at 3:45 that was not an option.  I was nice and toasty under the covers, but I  put on my sneakers, hoodie, and winter coat by the light of my trusty little flashlight and headed outside to the toilet.  I was wearing my Cuddle Duds under my capri pajama pants. I was going to be fast so I didn’t see the point to putting my jeans on too. 

I stepped outside, and the sky was packed with stars. It was amazing. Once I stepped out of the bathroom, I started trying to get star pictures, but I couldn’t hold still enough no matter how long I held my breath.  Luckily, I remembered to bring my selfie stick/tripod along with me.  I went back into the yurt to get it. By then, my sister was awake, so she got up to pee/stargaze too. We had tried to stargaze before we went to bed, but it had been too cloudy to see anything then. No way were we missing out on this celestial wonder just because it was 4 am.

There was no wind, so I was quite comfortable outside in my Cuddle Dud/pajama pant combo. Long story short (or is it short story long by this point?) an hour later I had gone to the bathroom twice, taken a bunch of star pictures and was ready to go back to bed.  

It didn’t feel too terribly cold back in the yurt, but maybe that is because I had just spent an hour outside amongst the stars. I did however keep my hoodie on when I got back into bed.  By 7am when we woke up, it felt like a refrigerator inside the yurt. I think it was colder inside the yurt than outside. 

So there you have it! Our yurt adventure!

Love,

thetwinsontour

Today we went to Ala Archa National Park, which is only about an hour outside of Bishkek, so there were lots of tourists there.  It’s in the mountains, so some people were backpacking up to the glaciers, but not us.  We stuck to the very nice asphalt trail. Unfortunately, I did not spot any snow leopards. The sign with pictures of all of the different wildlife in the park included snow leopard, so I was very hopefual to spot a few despite missing that one key item necessary for snow leopards, which is snow. I’d have also been happy with a Siberian Ibex or a Himalayan Marmot or a Pika.  But nothing! Not even a Red Squirrel.  At least the mountains were beautiful and the river was noisy. Got some good photos, too. That’s the second most important part after snow leopards–photos for the Instagram. 

We spent a little less than two hours at the park because that’s all the time you need to walk on the paved trail. Then we headed back to town for lunch. Coincidentally, it was another branch of the same restaurant we ate at yesterday in the mall and also where we had the smorgasbord of dessert during our food tour. So, we ate at the same restaurant 3 days in a row. The restaurant is actually an Uzbek restaurant.

We  also walked around for a brief city tour, and we saw a couple of statues that we hadn’t seen yet, so that was exciting. Then, we wandered around the Kyrgyzstan History Museum. It’s pretty nice with all of the artifacts you would expect to see in a history museum. The thing that was the most fascinating was a wooden horse saddle from like the 8th century. That thing did not look comfortable at all.

We were just exhausted by the end of the day, and still full from lunch, so we just grabbed a tasty yogurt from the grocery store for dinner. That about sums up our day.

Love,

thetwinsontour

So, this is absolutely amazing! Day 2 of the trip and we aren’t even behind on the blog! Yet…..

Today we were left to our own devices and had no pre-made plans. Our “old people bus tour” doesn’t start until the welcome dinner at 5:30 pm. So, what to do, what to do…. Our tour guide nicely suggested on the tour board to walk to the Philharmonic building. We thought, well, why not? Just because we saw it yesterday is no reason to not go today! After carefully studying the map, we charged out of the hotel at 9:44 am. We turned to the right and started walking and walking and walking. It was supposed to be about a 10-minute walk. You all do know that I am directionally challenged, right? Well, after about 20 minutes of walking, we decided that maybe we weren’t headed in the right direction after all… So, we turned around and headed back towards the hotel (which was a great plan because I needed to use the facilities….). It sure did look like it was to the right on the Google maps. I heard Google maps does not work so great in Kyrgyzstan, so it probably was faulty Google directions.

Once we were headed in the correct direction, we made it to the Philharmonic in record time. And, you know what? It looks exactly like it did yesterday. We wandered around. Snapped some pictures. Took some selfies. Nothing too exciting. The sun was fierce today, so unfortunately, most of my selfies feature a fierce scowl as I was clenching my eyes tight to avoid getting blinded by the blazing sun.

After all this excitement, we headed for the mall. Again, nothing too exciting. But it is walking distance from the hotel and the Philharmonic. It is interesting to me the stores that are there–Levi’s, Crocs, Skechers… And a lot of cafes and places to eat. And the place was packed! On a Tuesday morning! We wandered around for a while and then realized we were starving.  We decided to eat ate at a popular local restaurant there at the mall because 1. it was another branch of the restaurant where we had our yummy smorgasbord of dessert last night and 2. they had beautiful high-backed benches with local textiles that are just begging for Instagram photos. It was great! Someone amongst us got beet salad. (That wasn’t me.) I went for Shorpo, which the menu declared to be “one of the most favorite first dishes in Central Asia!” Who am I to argue with Central Asia? It was a rich amber broth with lamb, potatoes, and carrots. (The menu description left out the Oxford comma in that description, so I have kindly added it back in for all of you grammatical purists out there!) Anyways, we can talk grammar later. Let’s talk soup! Once I fished the lamb out of the soup, cut it into bite-sized pieces, peeled the layers of fat off, and added it back to my soup, it was really quite delicious! Look at me–eating like a local! Well, kind of. I did have Coca-Cola instead of tea. But I am an avid Coca-Cola travel drinker. Interesting tidbit here, we had little glass bottles of Coke ,33 liters (yes I put a comma instead of a period because that is the way the rest of the world, including Kyrgyzstan, does it.) The little bottles were 125 som, which is about $1.47 at the current rate. Then I broke my own personal rule and ordered a second Coke. This time, he brought me a ,5 liter plastic bottle, and it was only 95 som or $1.12.   The big Coke is a lot cheaper!

Now, I am just sitting in the park right next to my hotel, writing out my heart for you to read. Somehow, not going anywhere or doing anything, I managed to get 16,000 steps in today! That’s more steps than I get in on a good treadmill work day! But, my butt is starting to go numb, and my legs are losing feeling. This is really not a comfortable bench. So, that is all ya’ll are getting from the depths of my soul today.

Thetwinsontour in Kyrgyzstan

Ps. Follow up to yesterday’s post, actual taxis do exist. We saw a taxi stand outside the mall and a handful on the streets. 

After over 26 hours of travel, we made it to Kyrgyzstan at about 5 am this morning. Note to self, fly Emirates whenever possible because they have the most categories of movies that I have ever seen on an airplane.  We are talking Español (España) and Español (Latinoamerica). I watched three movies in Spanish.  If that’s not enough to convince you to fly Emirates, then the Dolly Parton Playlist will surely convince you.  Also, while the airplane food tastes like airplane food, it does not taste like little cans of Vienna Sausages. 

We booked these flights by ourselves instead of through the tour company, so there was no one waiting at the airport for us which was unfortunate.  While walking around the airport looking for an ATM, we were approached by a million Taxi drivers, but everyone knows you aren’t supposed to get a taxi that way.  You are supposed to follow the clearly painted signs on the floor that say Taxi and get a respectable Taxi from the queue of Taxis outside.  Except they don’t know this in Kyrgyzstan.  You go outside and there is no queue of Taxis, just another shady Taxi driver asking if you want a taxi.  So I told him where we were going, and he said $2,000 som, which is about $25.  He takes my bag and proceeds to walk across the parking lot towards the exit of the airport parking lot, which I was not crazy about. That was when I noticed he was wearing flip flops! I remembered our tour guide in Vietnam saying that is how you know the Taxi Mafia from the respectable Taxi drivers. Flip flops was the last straw. So I ran up and told him we weren’t going with him and grabbed my bag. I don’t know if that tell really applies in Kyrgyzstan, but I wasn’t taking any chances. 

Once you exit the airport building, you have to go through security to get back inside. So I just asked the security guard there where I could find a safe Taxi.  He turns around and shouts to one of the prowling Taxi drivers to come drive us.  Of course, this guy wouldn’t go a penny under 3,000 som once he found out the fancy hotel we are staying in.  And you know what, he had no taxi sign, taxi radio, or taxi identification either. But appeantly this is the way it is done.  And the security guard found him for us. I guess just whoever has a car and some free time at 5am heads to the airport and plays taxi driver. Long story short, we survived just fine.  Interesting to note, his Nissan had power windows on the front doors and manual windows in the backseat. I think this is so that your dog can’t roll down the windows like Artichoke does if I forget to put the lock on the windows.

We ate breakfast, took showers, and then a restorative three hour nap. They say you are not supposed to take a nap when you arrive at your destination, but “they” are idiots. Anyways, we had booked a 4 hour food tour of Bishkek (accidentally for tomorrow, but they were able to squeeze us in today).  So we did a little city tour to see some of the landmarks, which we will probably see again when our main tour starts, but it’s all good.  And then we had traditional Kyrgz foods.  I ate too much!  We had some fried bread called Kattama. It’s a flat, flaky, fried bread that has onions, chives, and cheese in it. Needless to say, it’s delicious. It’s also served with a bowl of cream (sour cream) that you are supposed to dip it in. I wasn’t sure why, or if I enjoyed the cream, but I just went with it.  

We went to a very busy Kyrgz restaurant and had a meal of Guro Lagman.  It’s pretty good. It’s little pieces of beef, green peppers, and red peppers on a bed of noodles that look like spaghetti but is not spaghetti. Needless to say, this too was delicious!

Then, to top it all off, we had a huge platter of desserts! We had some baklava, something with a similar consistency to fudge, something that tastes kind of like fried wontons nachos topped with cream, walnuts, funny looking raisins, and poppy seeds. We also had an assortment of nuts, and yummy local honey that you can dip the fried wonton thingies from the bottom of the stack of stuff in.  We were not able to eat it all, but we made a valient effort! And we brought home the nuts and fudge things for a midnight snack. 

The only other thing to note here is that we drank more tea today than we have ever drunk in our entire lives. A bowl of tea with the fried bread and multiple bowls of green tea with dessert.  Green tea is almost palatable when you take a stick of rock candy and swirl it around in there like a proper Kyrgyzstan person (I really don’t know the proper word for them. Kyrgyzstani? Kyrgz?)

That’s it for now!

Love,

thetwinsontour

We left Marrakesh and headed out to the South of Morocco to the desert. The sahara desert! I am quite positive I could hear all the shopkeepers crying tears of despair as we drove out of town. Did you hear that faint murmur on the wind the other day? That was them.

Anyways, it was a long day on the bus. Our tour guide warned us it would be a windy road through the Atlas mountains and to take medication if prone to motion sickness. Hello. It’s me. Yes, that’s thetwinsontour. The problem is even the non-drowsy CVS version of Dramamine (very economical if they happen to send you a 30 or 40% off one item coupon) knocks me out all day. So we pretty much slept through all of the scenery, and I have an appalling lack of blurry pictures out the bus window and even fewer with a reflection of my arm or nose in them.

We did make several quick, beautiful photo stops and visit a Kasbah! Our guide has this APALLING habit of saying, “This is not a shopping excursion–looking only.” And then he keeps us moving, so there is barely any selfie time. And no shopping time. I digress. A Kasbah is just like a little fortified town built of adobe. You have to redo the adobe with mud, hay, and manure every 4 or 5 years, hence the reason so many are crumbling down.

Another cool thing is at our hotel there was a glass floor in the hallway so that you could see a mosasaurus fossil under the floor. My dinosaur knowledge is sadly lacking as I have never heard of a mosasaurus before. The only sign was in Spanish, but beyond my scope of Spanish capabilities, so I still know very little about the overlooked mosasaurus.

The next morning, we were off again for even more driving. However, this time I was determined not to sleep the whole way. I skipped the CVS non-drowsy Dramamine and did just fine. I only slept about a third of the day this time.

More scenic photo stops. Pictures would be better than words in this case, but I’m still not paying extra to get more storage. So this is what you get–a half-hearted promise to maybe someday remember to post some scenery pictures.

Tomorrow is far more eventful, so I will leave you now pining for photos of the Moroccan countryside.

.

Love,

thetwinsontour

Morocco in 200 words or less.  Ha ha ha! Who am I kidding?  Anyways, we left home Saturday afternoon for Morocco.  For those that are wondering, it’s about a 2 hour flight to Detroit, then a little under 8 hours to Paris (if the flight crew isn’t late to the airport because of road construction on I-94), and then it is 3  hours and 20 minutes to Marrakesh. So it makes for a long day, but not horrible.  We arrived around 3:30pm, so the only thing we did was eat half our backpack snacks (not to be confused with purse snacks or suitcase snacks), go to the group welcome meeting, and then walk right across the street to the shopping mall and outdoor restaurants for dinner.  Yes, we both had pizza margherita, and it was delicious! After a full day of awkward meal schedues and gross Air France airplane food, that pizza was so yummy and necessary to reset my stomach.  We weren’t given the option to leave a tip on our credit card, and I did not have anything smaller than the equivalant of a $10 bill (100 dinhar), so I just had to leave 3 one dollar bills for a tip because well, I am not going to just not leave a tip.  Don’t worry, there’s a point to this story later.

The next day we were up bright and early to go on our city tour.  We started out in front of the mosque.  Now I got lost in the explanation, but it was built by the same people that built La Giralda in Seville, Spain.  And the one in Seville was the inspiration for our iconc tower on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas Ctity.  Isn’t it nice how that all loops back together?  There was some minor damage to the mosque from the earthquake in September.  I am not sure if you are ever able to go inside or if it was just closed due to the earthquake damages.  We walked around the medina and saw some more neat old stuff with entirely tooooooo many tourists in my way.  It was impossible to get any good pictures because of all the dang people standing in my way!  We have been spoliled our last few trips, but now we have been reminded of what it is to travel to a popular place.  Our next trip will be some place no one has ever heard of, so we can get ALL the pictures. 

Then we were set free for the afternoon.  Note, we were set free in the shopping area!  Thetwsontour should never be set free in a prime souvenir shopping area! We had to go find an ATM halfway through the day so that we didn’t have to curtail our shopping. We got some fantastic and cheap stuff. If you are lucky, dear reader, you may be the recipient of some of our treasures. But probably not. We don’t like to share.  We got new handmade leather belts that he trimmed to fit while we waited. It’s a great feeling to get 22 cm chopped off your belt!  We got the braided kind like we had in junior high.  Purple and green, too!  And the best part was he kept lowering the price himself and they were only $10 each!  Way cheaper than Kohl’s where you can only buy braided belts in brown and black.  Super exciting! 

After finding a purse store with fixed pricing (serously, I am not good at bargaining. I hate it!) We each got a cute little, but actully kinda big, handmade leather purse for $12.  Again, way cheaper than Kohl’s even with an extra 30% off coupon. It’s cow leather, so it’s not the best quality out there, but still, it’s a HANDMADE LEATHER PURSE.  

This is all in addition to the magnets, scarves, change purses, coasters, and earrings. So it was a successful day indeed.  

Oh, and this part is for my mother.  You know she worries if she thinks I don’t eat.  In between all this shopping, we went to a nice restaurant on the square for lunch.   We could have gone to a quicker and cheaper place, but it didn’t seem to have a bathroom.  We had to pee so bad! So, we paid a little more and had a delicious lunch of chicken tanjin.  Quite tasty, even if the chicken is on the bone.   Thetwinsontour much prefer boneless chicken breast, but we shall survive.  Moral of the story is that sometimes you have to pay a little more for a good lunch so that you can use  a clean bathroom.  It’s a good lesson to take note of faithful readers.

Well, our guide had told us in the morning how to get back to the hotel, but as you all know thetwinsontour are directionally challenged.  We started to head back after a full afternoon of shopping with our arms full of treasures, but we were kinda iffy on where exactly the main road was when we happened upon a taxi stand.  I looked at my sister, and she said, “YES!”  I asked the taxi cab driver how much to the hotel and pretty sure he said 200 dirham which is $20.  I said nope and walked away.  Then he yelled out 70 dirham, and we hopped in the car like our shoes were on fire.  Seven dollars I can do, but it still seems like a lot of money after paying $5 for 45 minute taxi rides in Bolivia last month.  But again, we had to pee, and our arms were full.  So that’s another important lesson too.  Don’t try to remember how to get back to the hotel if you can get a cheap enough taxi and you have to pee.   

Day 3 in Marakesh, we took a quick trip to the Ourika Valley.  This is in the Atlas mountains, but not the part that was destroyed by the earthquake.   So we had tea in a typical Moroccan house.  Their national beverage is Mint Tea, made with fresh mint from the garden. I think everyone grows their own mint, and don’t just buy it at the grocery store.  You can drink it with sugar or without.  I highly recommend the sugar. Thetwinsontour are not fans of tea, but we can drink about half a glass of sugared mint tea if necessary.  Sugar should be in cubes, but the older generation prefers to buy sugar in a giant cone shape and then break it into large chunks by hitting it with the bottom of a glass.  I looked at the grocery store.  The sugar only came in a 2 kg cone, which is quite heavy for the suitcase, but it only costs 11 dirham, so $1.10 for  4.4 pounds of sugar.  If they had smaller cones, my mom would be getting one for watching Artichoke.  If you go to someone’s house for dinner or need to give someone a present, you give them a cone of sugar. It’s tradition.  

So then we went into their backyard to see all of their livestock:  rabbits, chickens, guinnea fowl, sheep, a donkey, and a cow.   And then we wandered around the little town a bit for some quick selfies.  

The next stop was a botanical garden where they talked about the uses of the plants they grow there.  The main takeaway here is that you can use the rhizomes of iris to whiten your teeth.  Now I don’t know about you, but I am not about to dig up my fancy irises to whiten my teeth. I paid a lot of money for some of those iris bulbs! Who is going to use a $15 iris bulb to whiten their teeth?  Not me.  I guess I should have saved some of the boring white ones that came with my house and used them on my teeth. Alas, I dug those suckers up and gave them away.  

Guess what?  After eating lunch at the botanical garden, it was time to head back to Marakesh for some free time. What would you do with that kind of free time? If you guessed, walk back to the medina and do more shopping, you guessed correctly!  thetwinsontour love shopping!  It’s in our blood.  It’s impossible to resist!  We just got more of the same, and it was glorious!  What a great way to spend the afternoon.  

This time, since we knew the way, we walked the mile back to the hotel and saved our $7.  

Now, to conclude our story of Marakesh. We walked across the street to the mall for dinner again. There are 4 or 5 different restaurants along the front, and we were trying to decide if we should go to a different one or one we had already tried. We were wandering around contemplating the possibilities when the waiter from the first night looked at us and said due (doo-aye is Italian for 2) pizza margarita. And we were like, yes, that’s exactly what we want. We didn’t even have to look at the menu. Who remembers your order from 2 days before, even if it is easy? That’s what I call great service! Before he brought out our pizza, he brought out the 3 one dollar bills we had left as a tip and asked for dinhars instead! I mean, he could have just walked downtown and bought 3 cute little camels with those dollars. I bought a lot of stuff from the street vendors with dollars, including several cute little camels. Anyways that’s a nice way to come full circle here. With that, I will bid you a fond fairwell for now.

Love,

thetwinsontour

We’ve been home for a little over two weeks now, and normally, we would have given up on our trip blog weeks ago. However, Bolivia is truly too spectacular to just not write about.   We were just so completely busy the whole time we were there.  We never had any downtime to compile our myraid thoughts.  Of course, 2 weeks later this is going to be a much abreviated version of what we should have written while we were in Bolivia. 

So after Uyuni and another day in La Paz and a last-minute day trip to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, (more on that later, maybe) we were off to Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is in the lowlands of Bolivia (finally!) and also had temperatures around 100 degrees.   The amazing thing is that our flight from La Paz to Santa Cruz was only $35. Yes, thirty-five dollars!  I can’t even remember the last time I got that good of a deal on a flight. Of course, I booked the flight way back in March so I forgot it was that good of a deal.  Seriously, $35 for an hour-long flight.   That’s like flying from KC to Chicago, and those flights haven’t been $35 for a million years.  

We arrived in Santa Cruz during Santa Cruz days so the plaza in the city center was teeming with people (but maybe it always is?)   The Plaza is called 24th of September Plaza and has a big beautiful church that lets you climb the belltower for a panormic view of the plaza, its not super high but it was only a couple Bolivianos each.  We only found like 3 souvenir shops down there, but we did find a special craft fair/vendor fair where we were bought a green and white dress, which is the colors or the Santa Cruz flag, for Artichoke. She just doesn’t know it yet. Artichoke is going to LOVE it!  There’s a name for the typical dress that I knew 2 weeks ago, but now I don’t remember.  Maybe my sister has it written down. (Luckily, someone has an iron-clad memory– it is called Tipoi– which pulls no results in the Real Academia Española dictionary even though Google does.)

The most notable thing about the area surrounding the plaza is the number of ice cream shops. It was paradise! Ice cream shops everywhere.  There were at least a dozen different ones there.   Obviously, we ate ice cream. 

Let’s jump ahead to the next day instead of writing about the obvious.  Why did thetwinsontour go to Santa Cruz? A city that they had never heard of prior to planning this Bolivia extravaganza, even if it is the largest city in Bolivia?  That’s kind of like asking why did the chicken cross the road.   But the answer is a lot more obvious.   And the answer is…jaguars! 

Santa Cruz is near the edges of the Amazon, but we didn’t go to the Amazon.  Nope, we went to a giant privately owned Soy Farm a couple hours from Santa Cruz where we slept in a tent and anxiously looked out the windows of our Nissan SUV hoping to catch a glimpse of a jaguar.  But let’s circle back to that in a bit.  

So, our entourage (or crew, not sure the best word here) picked us up at the Marriott (I was feeling grumpy when I booked that and decided I wanted a nice soft bed and Mattiott bedding before and after we headed out to the wilds  of Bolivia) at like 8am to head out on this awesome adventure.  How big was our entourage? Four people!  Yes, we had f-o-u-r people to take care of the t-w-o of us!  Fancy I know!  We had a driver, a cook, a guide, and a guide in training. So we were very well looked after.  Our Nissan SUV was loaded with lots of gear on the top for our rustic adventure.  I know, I know.  Thetwinsontour aren’t used to roughing it like this, but jaguars…  So yes, we can do it! We left our suitcases behind at the Marriott and set off with just a backpack of necessities and our cameras in a daypack.  

After about an hour of highway driving, we stopped at the supermarket for a potty break and an hour after that we stopped for lunch in the small town of San Pedro which is the last place we had phone signal.  For days, my phone only gave me the weather in San Pedro. Not  like I really needed my phone to tell me that it was super HOT. Then we drove some more and got to the edge of the farm. Almost immediately, we spotted a 6-banded Armadillo! A live armadillo during the day!  I am just sad that I hadn’t pulled my camera out of my daypack yet.  I’ve never actually seen a live armadillo before.  I’ve seen all sorts of dead ones on the side of the road, but never a live one.  So that’s pretty exciting, right?  Eventually, we made it to the dirt road portion of our journey (very well-maintained dirt roads).  If I remember right, it was about an hour of driving on dirt roads to get to our campsite. Yes, I said campsite.  We slept in a TENT.  A real tent with no elctricity and no attached bathroom.   There was a real bathroom there for us to use, and we had matresses to sleep on. But it was a TENT.   There’s a quote un-quote house there where we stayed.  One of the farmworkers (or maybe several?) stay there.  There’s a kitchen and a room the farmworker lives in and a bathroom with running water that is full of little tiny frogs at night. There was also a very nice chicken coop with chickens and guinea fowl, and roosters that start crowing at about 4am when it is still very dark outside. Good thing I remembered my headlamp!

Anyways, we dropped off our gear and headed right back out for our safari.   What can you see here and why?  Well, like I said this is a privately owned farm.  They grow mostly soy, about 6k hecactres and about 3k hecactres of corn which they let dry completely before they harvest it.  So a 9k hecactre farm is pretty darn big.  There is a river that runs through the middle of the farm, which floods during the rainy season, making that land not suitable for farming.  It’s just kind of a jungle in the middle of the fields of soy.  The owner doesn’t allow hunting on his land, so it is teeming with wildlife. And, you can also find lots of wildlife hiding out in the soy fields too. So it is very neat and of course we were the only tourists  there. The owner only lets our tour company go there.

It was about million degrees as we set out on our safari.  Our guides sat on the roof of the SUV with their binoculars looking for wildlife while we sat inside with the windows down.  We did not have the AC on because the windows were down, and also because the dash was covered with a blanket  because of all the dust. 

Birds, lots of birds in the river and the irrigation canals.  Lots of big white birds and pretty pink spoonbills.  Our guide was not into birds, so we didn’t stop to look at hardly anything feathered.

Capybara!  Adorable, cuddly, squeezable capybara everywhere!  Our crew was not nearly excited by the capybara as thetwinsontour were. Especially when we kept passing the same ones over and over and thetwinsontour squealed capybara every single time we saw them.

Macaws!  We saw our first ever wild macaws!  We’ve seen loads of macaws in zoos, wildlife rescue centers, and hotel lobbies, but we’ve never, ever, ever seen wild macaws.   Red macaws!  Blue macaws! And green macaws!  We saw them all.  Birds are evil, and capitve macaws will peck your eyes out at the Rennaisance festival if given the chance, but seeing a macaws in the wild is a life-altering experience (maybe not life-altering, but I think I have used amazing too many times in Bolivia and I am on a roll so no time to look in the thesaurus). 

Caiman. Which I always take a picture of and pretend to be excited by, but I think caiman are boring.   But as you know, we never pass up a photographic moment.  

Pink river dolphins, so that was a surprise.  Day 1  we just saw little blips of them and I had to take the guides word for it that we were seeing dolphins.  But let’s come back to the river dolphins. 

Noticeably missing from this list is jaguars.   But we did pass a lot of places that they have seen them regularly in the past. 

We probably saw some other wildlife too, but it  was time to head back for dinner.  But right after dinner we headed back out to look for more wildlife! 

Fox, we saw a boatload of fox.  Cuter than the fox that sometimes hang out in our storm drains at home.  

More cabybara (probably the same ones every time), birds that lay on the road and just jump up in the air when they saw our car.  And probably some other stuff that I can’t remember. It’s been 2 weeks afterall.  

So we got back to our tent where it was pitch black and brushed our teeth and went to bed.

Frogs!  Lots of little tiny frogs on the walls of the bathroom. Kind of a pale light colorless frog. And the biggest cockroach I have ever seen on my sister’s shoe.  Good thing we hadn’t switched to flip-flops.  

It was quite toasty out still. Do you want to know how hot it was?  It was so hot that I did not wear socks to sleep in!  thetwinsontour wear socks 365 nights a year, make that 363 nights in 2023 since we were there 2 nights.   You know it’s hot if we sleep barefoot.  I didn’t even cover up with the sheet.  

Mosquitos!  Lots of mosquitos.  I tried hard to keep them out of the tent, but its tough to master that zipper door and be fast getting in and out.   We slathered ourselves in bug spray, but mosquitos still get ya some.  

And before you know it, it was 4am and time to get up for our morning game drive.  

Ocelots, or so I was told.  It was so dusty I couldn’t see anything in the dark, but we did run across a soy field looking for the little sucker, but instead of freezing in fear and hiding, he ran away. Of all the nerve!  

Still no jaguars.  But we saw a lot more of the same.  Saw some turtles too.  And eventually we ended up at the river again to watch the dolphins. This may actually be one of our all time wildlife highlights!  So the dolphins were farther down the river, so we kept walking to see them.  Sad story, we saw lots and lots of egg shells on our walk along the river. Turtle eggs. Stupid cute little foxes. No wonder they were so prevelant the night before– they were well-fed on turtle eggs. 

I digress. On to happy news!  Pink river dolphins!  I didn’t even know that this was a possibility, which makes it even more special.  I thought they were just in the Amazon, not in this little river that runs through a soy farm in Bolivia. But they were there. And they were frolicking!  FROLICKING I say!   The water level was fairly low, and there were a couple of sandbars that I swear they were laying on! Actually, I think they were scratching their backs on it, but I got the best photo ever taken of a pink river dolphin.  I got his face and 75% of his body in the picture, which is UNBELIVABLE.  Our guide was so jealous. He never gets photos of their faces. Never. 

It was a spectacular experience that I don’t think could ever be duplicated.  Our driver Jose was super, super excited by the dolphins too.  Our guides even got in the water with the dolphins, but by that time they had moved down the river a bit.  I did not feel compelled to get in the water.  It was so hot that up untlil that point our guide had been inside the car with us because it was too hot to sit on the roof, but on the way back they were on the roof beccause they were all wet with gross river water.  

So then we were back to our campsite for lunch and a siesta. Later our driver told us that the heat index had reached 114 degrees farenheit and the actual temp was like 104.  So when I say it was hot that day, I am in no way exaggerating.  My siesta was not very refreshing.  But my afternoon shower felt amazing.

So, as we were leaving, the farm foreman stopped by to tell us that he has just seen a jaguar!  10 minutes earlier and we would have seen it!  Needless to say we spent a lot of time waiting for him to reappear. We finally did see a part of him. I got a single picture of about 50% of a jaguar and several of where he had been in my attempt to get more pictures. 

But what did we see while we were waiting for that jaguar?

Tapir! During day light! Usually, they are more active at night but he was swimming in the river and then he was crossing the road. 

Peccaries! Which is like a wild pig.  They were on one side of the road and then they crossed the road and wasted no time swimming across the river. They were like get me out of this water! And I assume it is because they are scared of caiman. Does it make me an evil person if I hoped that the jaguar felt like having some bacon? I was hoping the jaguar would give chase and come out of the trees so I could get better pictures of him.  Alas, it was not meant to be. 

After a late night safari and a 430am safari and all day safari-ing, we were exhausted.  So we did not repeat.

But the next day before we left, we had Intel that one of the farm workers had seen a pair of jaguars walk right past him while he was working on one of the irrigation canals. Again, so close but so far away.  We went looking and after we gave up we saw them! Of course, I was sitting on the wrong side of the car, and by the time I launched myself across the seat and the ever-present dust had settled, they were gone.  So technically, we did see three jaguar even though I only have photographic evidence of a half a jaguar.

Did I mention that we were promised loads of Sloths? Have I mentioned any sloth sightings yet? No! They are only in specific trees on another part of the farm which we didn’t make it to yet because of all our time trying to be silent jaguar sleuths.  But on the last possible chance we saw him!  Our best ever wild sloth sighting! Usually they are a mile up in a tree and I just have to take the guides word that that dark blob in the tree is a sloth. 

This time, he was in a baby tree right on the side of the road. The tree was so small it was bent under his weight and blowing in the breeze. Breathtaking, and my heart was near to bursting! It was just like rock a by baby in a tree top. I was a bit worried he would fall off the tree, but he was very tenacious and just hung on for all he was worth.

So with that it was time to head back to civilization. We headed back to camp and took our quickest shower ever before packing up the car and leaving. 

Guess what we saw on our way out of the farm?!?  Another sloth!  Coming down a tree for his weekly potty break.  So we saw him pretty close too. Had we not just saw that one in the little itty-bitty tree, this would have been our greatest wild sloth sighting ever!  Don’t ever believe that sloths are slow.  If they want something–like to get out of a tree to take a dump–they can move pretty dang fast.    

And then we saw a whole bunch of monkeys!  Howler monkeys!  So that was cool too.  But clearly, by now, I am out of words. The howlers did not howl, though.  Still cool to see.

Oh and we saw the armadillo again. Of course, I had already put my camera up by that point.  

So that pretty much sums up our safari experience! Can you believe this is the abbreviated version?

Anyways, there’s a lot more Bolivian adventure but this is more than enough for one blog. If you’re lucky, I might tell you about it.

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS Rheas. We saw millions of rheas which are the South American version of the ostrich and emu. We never stopped to admire them because our guide said they were the most common animal there, and I think he was right. Watching them run across a field or trying to outrun the car as you drive down the road sure does bring a smile to your face.

I know I skipped over days 2 & 3, but it’s my blog, and I can do what I want to. I’ll try to go back later (yeah, right) to cover our other days in La Paz.  But Uyuni is truly thetwinsontour travel dream come true!  We have always, always, always wanted to come to Bolivia to visit the largest salt flats in the world– well, ever since we found out it existed.  It did not disappoint!  It was like all my dreams came true, and then some dreams I didn’t even know I had came true, too! 

So, let’s start from the beginning.  We left our hotel at 6 am (before breakfast of course!)  for our  7:40 flight. Finally a country where the tour guides think you only need an hour at the airport instead of 2-3 hours.  But it took us forever to get checked in because of slow people in front of us. It was mayhem!  There are separate lines for each destination, but people don’t read those. They were letting everyone for the 7:25 flight go ahead of us. Our flight was scheduled for 7:40. Mind you, it was now after 7:00! By the time we got checked in and through security (they let you take water bottles with no problem!), it was time to board, so I did not have time to pee. Luckily, it was only an hour long flight.   

So we got off the plane, and there is a sign in the first room at the airport that says baggage claim, but there is no baggage carousel, just people standing around, and a bathroom thank goodness!  So, you basically just stand there, and they bring the luggage in on a cart and set them in a row. I missed the actual process and chaos because I was in line for the much needed and aforementioned bathroom. So, as soon as I came out of the bathroom, there my suitcase was! Just waiting for me.  

Enough about that, we met our guide and set off on the real adventure.  However, we made her stop for a quick morning snack since we had missed our hotel breakfast.  We got a Bolivian specialty called a salteña from a street vendor cart.  The best way to describe this is an empanada with soup inside..   I’d definitley call it soup and not stew.  There was a lot of steamiing hot broth in there.   Obviously, I made a mess and got it all over my hands. Luckily, I did not get any on my shirt because they give it to you in a little plastic bag that conveniently catches most of the soup– even if it isn’t environmentally friendly.   It was quite yummy!  And only 6 Bolivianos, or a little less than a dollar.  There is an art to eating a salteña, and they say that if you can eat it without making a mess, that means that you are a good kisser. Oh well. 

Then we were back on our way.  Next stop the train graveyard!  The first trains brought to Bolivia were for the mines because they had been  making llamas carry all the silver to the ports to ship it to Europe.  Obviously, that’s not very efficient.  But the trains did not last long due to a decline in mining.  Silver lost its value as European countries started using more paper money instead of coins.  Our guide didn’t mention it, but I think the mines were depleted also.  Anyways, with the decline in mining, the people that knew how to maintain the trains left Bolivia. The indigenous people were never trained how to repair them, so as they broke down, they just put them all here together.  I think there’s over 100. They date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. The salt has not treated them well, but they are fun to climb on!

Directly across from the train cemetery there were some statues made out of recycled metal– we are talking Transformers (this country seems fixated on Transformers, which you would know if we had written about days 2 and 3. Oops!), Terminator, a giant giraffe, an alligator, and other assorted wonders. They built these during covid to try and earn extra money, and to combat boredom. A nice little 10 minute selfie photo stop. Who am I kidding? thetwinsontour take a bazillion photos. It was more like 15 or 20 minutes.

Our guide in La Paz had told us if we were lucky, we might see vicuña in Uyuni. And, he was right! Vicuña are part of the camelid family, but they have never been domesticated like Llama and alpaca. They have the softest fur, very thin and light. A human hair is equal to 4 vicuña hairs. And you only harvest like 250 grams from a vicuña per year–and don’t forget, these are wild animals! So they would have to catch them in order to harvest their fur.  That’s all the details I have because I was busy taking photos out the car window of my sweet vicuñas. But you knew that.  

But all of this greatness is nothing compared to what came next–the Uyuni Salt Flats!  There are no words to describe the vastness and amazingness of this place that has been at the top  of our wishlist for so many years.  It’s like a dream come true!  This is the largest salt flat in the world, and it seems to stretch on forever. It’s like being in another world, and at times you think it is snow, and other times it feels like you are on the moon.  Driving through here is mesmerizing. I don’t know how the driver doesn’t get lost.  There are no roads, but there are some visible paths where cars have gone the same way over and over, but those get washed away in the wet season.   The photographic opportunities are endless!  And amazing!  And well, I hope that you have all already given a love to the pictures we have posted on Facebook and Instagram because they are just amazing. See, I have already run out of adjectives to describe them!  Truly no words for this amazing experience 

It’s not all just salt. I mean, there’s a lot of salt, but there are other must sees here too.  Like the volcanic islands that are in the middle.  Millions of years ago, the Salt Flats were covered by the ocean, hence all the salt that was left behind.  So in addition to being made of volcanic rock, there are also fossilized corals on the island.  Pretty fascinating!   Oh, and did I mention the gajillions of giant catus that cover this island?  Well they are everywhere, kinda like Saguaro cactus of the Southwest (maybe they are the same?).  Appearantly, its more humid around the islands (think more just a little mountain, but it’s called an island) and the humidity is enough to keep all these cacti alive for hundreds of years.  Cacti grow about 1cm per year, so some of these could be over 600 or 700 years old. See, no words.  

There’s also underground rivers which obviously, you can’t see.  But there is a spot where it pops up, and also sometimes there are small holes called “ojos” or eyes in the salt.  I stuck my had down in one to break off a piece of salt crystal, and my hand came out completley covered in salt. If you are lucky, we may post a video of that later.  But only if you promise to give it a love on FB. Surely it deserves more than just a thumbs up.

What else did we do?  Well, we stayed in a Salt Hotel the first night.  It is literally made completely of bricks of salt harvested from the Salt Flats.  The walls are salt, the floor in the lobby is just chunks of salt, the bed frames are made of salt, the restaurant chairs/tables are made of salt.  Everything is salt.  It’s a lot of salt. (But I would not recommend trying to eat the walls.)

We also went out and did some stargazing.    There’s quite a few stars visible there even though we didn’t go that far away from the city lights, and the pretty big moon. This is the southern hemisphere, so no Big Dipper. We enjoyed taking night time Salt Flat star photos.  But it got super cold!  Good thing that I packed my winter coat with me.  It goes from intense daytime sun that requires sunscreen every two hours (or you end up with a sunburned neck and sunburned hands…) to downright cold at night.  The Salt Flats are still at altitude and per my Google search, even a higher altitude than La Paz. My phone said it was about 51 when we went out, but by the time we came back, it felt (to me) like it was in the 20s.  Crazy!

The next morning, we were off for more Salt Flat Fun.  We literally drove for over an hour to get to the other side where we stopped to see, are you ready for this?  Llamas and flamingos!!!!! A flamboyance of flamingos! All together in the same spot.  There is water on the edge of the flats where the flamingoes like to hang out.  There are 2 different species there too!  So that is cool!  We saw Chilean flamingos, which are ligher in color and have some black on their butts, and we saw James flamingoes, which are a vibrant pink and have some pink stripes on their backs.  Needless to say, we spent way too long here taking millions of photos.  But the thing is that we had to walk through a llama pasture to get to the flamingos.  So for us, this would be the equivalant of walking through a cow pasture at home, but with smaller poop. There were gigantic piles of Llama poop everywhere. They do use it as fertilizer, but there is more than enough to go around. Evidently, llamas just nibble the grass and don’t tear it out at the roots, so their grazing doesn’t destroy the landscape. I can’t speak for the poop though.

So, it would have been possible to climb the adjacent volcano if we were more physically fit– Note, walking on the treadmill for 2 hours a day does not prepare you for climbing at altitude. At all. Anyways, there was more to this volcano than llamas and flamingos. There were also chullpares, which are these little caves where they buried the dead. Except they used to bring them out once a year to celebrate Day of the Dead. And then put them back until the next year. Until the Spanish conquered them and told them they couldn’t be playing with mummified skeletons anymore. So they filled in the little caves. Our guide said the remains had been studied and then put back into the chullpares. We saw multiple skeletons in there. Quite the experience. After a quick panoramic photo stop, we headed back down the volcano for a picnic lunch. Let me tell you, Bolivia doesn’t mess around when it comes to picnics. We are talking tables. Plastic lawn chairs–the stackable, but non-foldable kind–that they put chair covers on–and wrap with fancy ribbon like you are at a wedding or something. The driver was always taking pictures of the table after he got it all set. I think this is so that he can show his boss that he did it, and not so that he can post it to his Instagram account. But wouldn’t that be neat if he did? An entire page of “picnic” tables in the Salt Flats that are fancy enough to double as a table at a wedding.

So that pretty much sums up the highlights of our time in Uyuni. It is everything i imagined and more. 10 stars. Highly recommend.

Love,

thetwinsontour

In 1984, the World’s Fair was held in New Orleans.  Needless to say, the Bohrn Family went to that!  Now, that was a long, long time ago.  What I remember most is that there was a cable car that went across the Mississippi River, across it I say!  The reason I remember this so vividly is that I was positive the cable was going to break, and we would all fall into the Mighty Misissippi.  I was so terrified that I refused to go on it. My mother had to stay with me while my daddy took my sister and cousin Brandee across.  I could NOT convince them NOT to go.  Obviously, they made it back. And they brought back a bunch of Michael Jackson stickers that my daddy let them buy from the quarter machine (he was a pushover).  Why do I mention this?  Well because we spent the whole dang day riding cable cars through La Paz Bolivia today, and  I just kept thinking its a good thing I got over my fear of cable cars plunging into the Mississippi, or today would not have been fun. 

La Paz is surrounded by mountians, so cable cars make a lot of sense.  It makes it much easier to get to the top of the mountains that way.  It’s fun public transportation, and it’s cheap too!  It costs 5 Bolivianos per ride if you combine 2 lines and go all the way to the end.  How much is that in Dollars, you ask?  Well, it’s not even a Dollar!  It’s 73 cents!  For about 45 minutes of cable car riding.  You can’t beat that!  Beautiful views, cheap entertainment, and if you are lucky, a car all to yourself!  Unfortunately, we ended up sharing cars several times.   The locals just use it as transportation. They’ve seen the view a million times, so that’s not their main objective.   It is kind of funny, though.  The cars go through the station, and you will see someone run to get on it, even though there is another about 12 seconds behind it. There is literally no wait for the next one because it is  always RIGHT there. 

So the green line is a “short” walk from our hotel.   The guy at the front desk told us a 10 minute walk, and the hotels.com website said it is a 16 minute walk. So it is probably more of a 20-22 minute walk.   So we took the green line all the way to the yellow line.   The yellow line goes to the top of the mountain, and the cable car map lists points of interest on it.  At the end of the yellow line, it says “mirador”  which means scenic viewpoint.  We walked out of the station and wandered in what we thought seemed like a good  direction.  We saw a little landing that could make a good mirador, but there were lots of power lines obstructing the view of the city below and the mountains on the other side.  So we asked a man at a snack kiosk.  He said that there is no mirador anywhere because there are too many houses in the way to see anything.   He suggested that we just go down the stairs a bit to get under the power lines, and we could see more that way.   So that’s what we did.  

Now, when it was time to go back up the steps to get to the station, we barely made it.  Seriously. La Paz is the highest capital city in the WORLD at 11,975 above sea level. I am just going to round that to 12,000 feet.  At 12,000 feet, it is hard to get your breath sometimes. Real hard.  Especially when you are climbing stairs.  We didn’t even go up that many, but it was rough, I say.  Like maybe 2 flights of stairs, and we were both panting and had to stop for air. It was like we had run up 20 filghts of stairs.   Other than trying to climb the stairs, we seem to have acclimated to the altitude pretty well (thanks to medication). The hotel does have oxygen in the lobby for guests if the altitude gets to them.  So, it’s a real concern up here.  Of course, we were over an hour away from the hotel at the top of the mountain when we had trouble breathing.  But anyways.

So, we decided to take the yellow line back down the mountain to the blue line, but don’t  try to buy a ticket to the azul line.  It is the “celeste” line, which is the light blue line (even though the cars themselves  are royal blue).  The blue line goes near the Iglesia de San Francisco, which looked quite beautiful as our airport taxi was driving past it at 3:30am this morning on the way to the hotel.   It’s about a 13-minute walk (per the Google maps) from the end of the light blue station.  Today is Sunday, so it was closed this afternoon, but it does have quite a beautiful facade.  Lots of people just hang out there on the steps in front of the building with their friends or waiting to meet their friends. There was a homeless man sleeping in one of the doorways There was a group of teenagers playing with a soccer ball right in the middle of everyone, and more often than not, chasing after the ball into the crowds of people.  There are also vendors selling ice cream cones that I am probably not supposed to eat, and others selling fruit juice/fruit water that I am definitely not supposed to drink. So, it was a pretty lively place.  

You may have noticed that I said our taxi drove past it at 3:30 in the morning.  Our flight arrived at 2:15am.   We had to wait in line forever for our visa because the people in front of us were not prepared and didn’t have the needed documents. Needless to say, thetwinsontour were prepared! If only we had gotten in line first!  Photocopy of passport, printed copies of hotel reservations, letter of invitations for tours, and most importantly, proof of a flight out of the country, and a visa application. We also had documents that they didn’t need like copies of our yellow fever vaccinations, proof of financial responsibility (a bank statement), and a couple of  other things that I can’t think of right now.   So, what I am trying to say is that thetwinsontour are worn out and going to bed now.

Good night from Bolivia!

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS, for those of you wondering about the weather. The high today was 68 degrees, ..@and the low will be 42 degrees.  I know 68 sounds amazing right about now, but it was pretty toasty.  The sun is FIERCE at 12,000 feet. 

Of course, today was another jam-packed day for thetwinsontour.  The ship arrived in Geiranger at 7am and we had to meet for an excursion at 8:45.  Our original plan had been to sleep in and just go to the excursion. But by now, you know that is not how thetwinsontour operate.  We had watched the ship’s video on Geiranger as we were going to bed the night before and immediately changed our alarms so we could be off the ship at 7am.  There’s a huge waterfall that runs through town, just a 10 minute walk from the ship.  There are steps along the side so that you can climb to the top. So, of course we wanted to do this first thing before it was overrun with people. 

I could see our destination from our balcony. This stuff was close! No getting lost!

Of course when we got off the boat, it was raining. Just a light, persistent drizzle. Thetwinsontour have brand spanking new waterproof raincoats, so this did not faze us in the least. We were just about the first ones off the ship, so it seems as if it did faze the other 2,798 passengers on ship. We could see the church we wanted to visit at the top of a hill. An octagonal building built I don’t know when, but it looks really cool! We climbed up, up, up to the back entrance of the church. The gate to the surrounding grounds was closed but not locked, so we walked right in for a closer perusal. However, the front gate was padlocked! Maybe we were breaking the law? Breaking and entering? Trespassing? Being terrible tourists? Hmm, who knows. Luckily, the wall was short and easy to hop over.

Now, let’s talk about this waterfall. It was ferocious. And seemed to come from multiple sources, converging all together in a magnificent display of nature at its finest. I have no idea where this water comes from. They say it is from the snow at the top of the fjords. But I didn’t really see any snow. I think it was hidden by the clouds. As I am sure you can guess, this was the opportunity for a selfie palooza as we made our way down the stairs that ran parallel to the falls. We were on a time crunch, so we didn’t get the amount of photos we would have liked, but we got a decent number. And, can you believe that there are houses around this waterfall? Like you would always here the roar of the falls– even more so than I can always hear the trains in Olathe– because the falls are constant– I don’t think it gets cold enough for them to freeze in winter due to the warm Gulf Stream that runs along the coast of Norway.  I just think that with the constant sound of rushing water, these people must have to pee nonstop.  They were probably greatly impacted during the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. I digress. But that’s an important digression.

Anyways, it’s a beautiful waterfall right through the middle of town. thetwinsontour would gladly live in one of those houses. The view is amazing.

And then it was time to head back to the ship for our 8:45 excursion meeting time. What excursion did thetwinsontour choose? Why kayaking, of course! There’s no experience necessary, but needless to say, having kayaked Lake Olathe on a beautiful summer day in 2018, thetwinsontour are expert kayakers. Expert, I say!

So we walked around the fjord to the kayak departure point where they gave us our life jackets and kayak skirts and a brief introduction to kayaking. Now, these are 2 people kayaks, which are very different from the single person kayaks that we had cruised around beautiful Lake Olathe in.  There’s a rudder that you use to help steer (not an udder as my sister keeps trying to call it). There’s a bit of a learning curve to these.  As you may have guessed, despite this excursion being long over, thetwinsontour are still on this learning curve.  We are just glad that we made it to the kayak without falling on the slippery wooden dock.  They warned everyone that it was slippery, so of course 3 people fell flat on their butts walking to the kayaks.  Yes, this did make us wonder about the physical abilities of some of the other kayakers.  Anyways, we get in our green kayak and start practicing and learning each other’s rhythm. Kayaking is all about being in rhythm.  This should be easy for thetwinsontour, being in sync and all, but my sister may be the worst paddler in the whole world.  There I said it.  And I may not be great at steering, but I have a much better understanding of steering.  She kept telling me that I needed to steer right in order to go left.  Which is not true!  No matter what we did, it wasn’t right.  We quickly got left behind and nearly got stuck in the mangroves (or whatever sort of trees grow along the fjords of Norway).  Finally, the second guide who was supposed to be bringing up the rear with the slow people (its us, we are the slow people, it’s us) comes along and with confusion in his voice says, “Girls, what are you doing?” Really, I think the answer is obvious Stefano, but “We need help.”  So, finally, after rowing backwards and him telling us what to do, we were able to extricate ourselves from the bushes at the side of the fjord. 

And then we were off!  Kind of.  So we zigged and zagged and paddled for all we were worth.  While he just sort of sat there waiting on us, twirling his oar.  After a while, he says, “Girls, I have a special treat for you.  Look up in the top of that tree, a Golden Eagle! Paddle real quiet and we will ge closer so that you can get a good picture of him on your phone.” So we did. Pretty sure this Eagle is always in this tree as it is one of three resident eagles in the fjord, so spotting him wasn’t that rare. After a few minutes of admiring the eagle way up in the top of the tree, the guide says to us, “Girls, so you want to cross some fjords?”  We just kind of look at him because I am not really sure what he means because we are right there floatng in the fjords in our two person kayak.  Before I can formulate a response, he says, “because I don’t think it’s a great idea.  I think we should just stay right here.”  Needless to say, there was a lot of inner rejoicing with thetwinsontour!  We had no idea how we were ever going to catch up with the rest of the group to see the waterfalls that are 7 km away. 

So, he says, “Give me your phone and I’ll get some pictures of you.”  So that is what we did–posed for a couple of pictures, let Stefano assure us that we are not the worst kayakers ever (he’s wrong), and then bask in the glory and the magnificence of the Geirangerfjord.  It is a UNESCO world heritage sight after all due to its outstanding natural beauty.  And you know what? That is exactly what we needed.  To sit there in a tiny kayak surrounded by the mountains of the fjord and just relax and take it all in. Who wants to be busy paddling and missing all that outstanding natural beauty?   I really should have taken a video, but I was too busy just being. 

All too soon, it was time to head back.  Originally, he had told us that less is more when we were paddling.  But then he told us a little more power.  So confusing!  But anyways we went with the little more power.   With me chanting, left, right, left to try to keep us in sync.  Just because we are twins, doesn’t mean that we share the same rhythm. I can’t even clap– I have no rhythm.  Anyways, I was paddling hard. So hard that I kept dipping the sleeve of my raincoat in the water and then dripping water down the inside of my sleeve.  Don’t worry, this is very clean water. It comes from the millions of waterfalls that we see every day in Norway that come from the supposed snow (that I can’t see) at the top of the mountains. It’s not like gross bacteria infested Lake of the Ozarks water.   So we are paddling for all we are worth, still zigzagging all over the fjord.  Seriously, I think they gave us a defective kayak. It would not go straight no matter what I did.  We were much farther out than we thought.  Even though the cruise ship was in our sight most of the time, it’s a really big ship, so it should always be in your sight.  There were several scary moments when speed boats went by and created big waves.  He told us to go at a 90-degree angle to the oncoming boats, but as previously mentioned, we had a defective boat that didn’t steer well.   There was one big splash that left a puddle of water in my kayak skirt, so there was a puddle of water practically in my lap most of the time.  But that was it.  Anways, we were paddling, left, right, left. Over and over again. As fast as we could.  Finally, the last 2 minutes of the paddling we were finally able to go in a straight line.  It was glorious!   We pulled up to the dock, and then all of a sudden, we were surrounded by other kayaks  pulling in right behind us.  Seriously. I have no idea where they came from.  I never saw them. They were nowhere near us when we started to head back to the dock. I didn’t see them as we were paddling back.  I mean, we weren’t going anywhere near a straight line, so I should have seen them at some point. It’s a mystery. 

By this point, I really, really had to pee.   It was noon, and we had been on or near the water for nearly 3 hours.   My pants were wet from where the kayak skirt leaked, and the inside of my right sleeve was wet from paddling so hard.   We walked back as fast as we could, but it was nearly a 20 minute walk.  I kept looking for the public toilets that had seemed to be all over the place during our morning foray to the town waterfall.  Finally! I found one!  And it costs $2.20. That is the most expensive toilet I have ever seen.  I mean, two dollars and twenty cents is a lot of money to pay to pee.   I just couldn’t do it.  Especially with the ship right there in plain sight, just a few more minutes walk.   Obviously, this was the dumbest mistake I have EVER MADE IN MY LIFE!  Why choose to be cheap now?  What is two dollars and twenty cents when your bladder has never been so full in your entire life (except maybe that time we got stuck in the snow on the side of the interstate in Wyoming in 2005 and had to wait forever for a tow truck and then when we made it to the rest stop it was CLOSED. But that was years ago.)  The ship was in sight, and just a  few minutes away. However, remember the foreshadowing I did above when I mentioned it was noon?  Do you know what everyone wants to do at noon? Head to the ship and eat free lunch in the cafeteria!   Everyone and their mother was in line to get back on the ship right then.  We waited in line nearly half an hour while bemoaning the fact that we should have just paid $4.40 for us both to pee.  It was painful and torturous. There is no reason it should take those people so dang long to go through a metal detector.  Pick up the pace, people! 

We had to stop at the first bathroom we found. Luckily, they are everywhere on the ship.  There was no way I could make it to the 6th floor and the other end of the ship to our room.  So after going back and changing our of our wet clothes it was time to join the masses for lunch on the ship. 

Now, due to the walk/waddle back to the ship, waiting in line to board said ship, changing our clothes, eating in the busy cafeteria, etc, it was after 2pm before we were ready to head back into town.  There wasn’t time to do any of the other hikes outside of town, so we just had to go back to the same waterfall in the center of town.   This time, we approached it from the bottom instead of the top, so we climbed the millions of stairs to get to the top. And there were a lot of people in the way! We also did some shopping. But that goes without saying. Nothing keeps thetwinsontour out of souvenir shops.  Nothing! 

And that pretty much sums up the day in Geiranger.  Now, here’s a few facts about Geiranger. It is a UNESCO World Heritage sight because of its beauty.  It is also a town of just 200 people.  Yes, 200 people.   Due to its exceptional beauty, it also sees over a million tourists a year.  That’s a million tourists, mostly from cruise ships  from May to September.  There were also quite a few people camping there, so not all cruise tourists.   Knowing those numbers, it now makes sense as to why both of the kayaking guides were from Italy and working in Norway for the summer.  It takes a lot of people to handle a million visitors.   

Now, we had prepped for the departure through Geirangerfjord.  During our failed kayak trip, we were supposed to kayak all the way to see the 7 Sisters Waterfall, the most beautiful  and most photgraphed waterfall in all of Norway. Needless to say, we did not get to behold the beauty of said waterfall from our green kayak. Our guide had told us it was on the right-hand side.  But our room was on the left-hand side, so our balcony would be absolutely useless today!  Up to the pool deck to enjoy a piña colada and the scenic view. 

So we approached the 7 Sisters Waterfall and oohed and ahhed as appropriate.  There is also another larger waterfall nearly dircetly across from the 7 Sisters that I was trying to take pictures of without losing my spot on the railing to get the best view of the 7 Sisters. It really was spectacular.  But then, do you know what the ship captain did? He turned that ship around in a complete 360 turn!  That way, everyone could see both sides of the waterfall regardless of being port or starboard.  The thing is, that captain turned a giant cruise ship in a 360-degree turn with far more ease than thetwinsontour were able to turn our defective kayak in a 360 turn.  Amazing and disgusting at the same time. So with that, I am going to end this.  Because, really, what can top that?

Love,

thetwinsontour