Our Favorite Places

Jake and all the local kids on Savannah.
Raroia, Tuamotus, 2011

Everywhere we go, the top question is "What was your favorite place?"  What a hard question!  Sixteen countries, more islands than we can count, beaches, caves, desert, sharks, crocs.  I say again, what a hard question!

But we have an answer...we have three answers.  For the most part Andy and I both agree that the Tuamotus, Micronesia, and Borneo were our favorites.  It's the order in which we would rank them that we differ.  A brief description of why we think they're our favorites.  If you want to relive it with us, just click on the links to go to our previous blogs (don't forget to click on 'older posts' if you want to see the full experience).

Tuamotus
Very hard to get to and extremely isolated, this is the place for lonely loners who love the water (i.e. Andy McKaskle)!  The diving was great, the people were friendly and for us, the weather was gorgeous.  The Tuamotus is a group of 90something atolls in the middle of the South Pacific ocean, technically part of French Polynesia.  We spent six weeks exploring only four atolls and had we not been running out of basic provisions like flour, rice, milk and beer (yes, beer was considered a basic provision), the captain would have stayed much longer (well, that whole visa thing would have been tricky, but you get the point).  Jake got to participate in the French Polynesian games at a local school in Raroia and Andy got some of the best shark pictures of his career in South Fakarava and Tahanea.  This was pretty early in our trip so I have to say I was still adjusting to the life.  While I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I had yet to be inducted into the hermit club, so I was desperately seeking girl time, grocery stores and civilization.

Micronesia
Most people we talked to outside of our little cruising life had no idea where Micronesia was.  I often described it as "half way between Hawaii and Japan."  Micronesia is what people think of when they think of the South Pacific (although it's not in the South Pacific at all).  Small islands, clear water, beautiful reefs, and locals who still fish for their food, pound out their taro and collect their own water.  I wrote several blog posts on our experiences there, so I won't repeat it all, but our time in Micronesia changed our outlook on life forever (we're still wondering why we didn't accept that plot of land in Yap).  And by this time, I was a full fledged member of the hermit club and was thoroughly enjoying the isolation provided by the remoteness of these beautiful islands.

Borneo
Having just visited the Philippines, we were acclimated somewhat to the SE Asian way of life, but our visit to Borneo was our first introduction in to the melting pot of cultures that exist in this part of the world.  Malaysians, Indians, and Chinese... Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus, all living in harmony (somewhat).  And the food.... wow, the food.  But most of all, we enjoyed all of the eco-type activities available up and down the west coast.  Our favorite inland trip was visiting the Deer Caves but our favorite excursion was our 60 mile trip up the Rajang river.  The only downside to Borneo was the lack of clear, swimmable water (crocodiles were pretty much everywhere due to all the rivers).  But the beautiful landscape and people more than made up for that.

So there you have it...our favorite places.

Another vacation?

Climbing rocks to make his mom
'freak out'

Most people think of our lifestyle as a constant vacation - beaches, cocktails, adventures - and I can see how they think that when our blog is really the only view into our lives they have.  But our blog for us, is like going to a family reunion and telling people about your kids, job, life, etc.  You tell the things they might be interested in and you try to show your family in the best of light.  While I do occasionally tell some embarrassing stories and have been known to go on a rant, most of the time, I'm just trying to keep the family up to date on the fun things we get to do.  Our normal life includes school (complete with the same complaining 'normal' kids do), dishes, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, fixing things, cleaning, exercising, etc.  Normal stuff.  All without air condition, 100 miles away from the equator. When we stay in one place for a while, like we've done in Kuching, these things get to be more mundane than normal.  This explains why the sudden onset of trips for us like the Mulu Caves and Jakarta.

Last week we took a mini-vacation (although Jake would disagree - he had a complete week of school) and left the dock to go to some islands around here to celebrate Jake's birthday.  He was able to run around on the beaches, have bonfires and actually get to swim in waters free of crocodiles!  One of the islands we went to is a marine protected area...specifically protecting turtles.  There are rangers there that patrol the beach every night looking for turtles laying their eggs.  They tag the turtles, then dig up their eggs and move them to a protected hatchery. When the eggs hatch, they release the turtles back into the water.  Jake found a nest full of eggs and ran to get the rangers, thinking they had missed one.  It turns out, this turtle laid its eggs below the high tide mark and they basically drowned.  It also looked like they hadn't been fertilized, according to the experts.  So the rangers let Jake dig them up and get a hands on experience without harming anything.  They said the turtles lay an average of 80 eggs at a time.  This nest had 107!

Birthday dinner - gnocchi with shrimp and blue cheese sauce.

An unexpected trip for me back to the states really paid off
for Jake...birthday loot!

The requested birthday "cake" - homemade pumpkin pie (as
in from a real pumpkin)....I swear I thought I was cooking
for Thanksgiving.

River dolphins!

Jake, trying to chisel out some 'samples' for later research.

Our final 'break' (for a while) from real life comes this week in the form of an Outback Safari in Australia!  We are super excited and a bit nervous if I'm honest.  It's a camping trip in Central Australia.    We've paid thousands of dollars to sleep under the stars (again, no air conditioning...when we will think these things through?)...I'll let you know when we get back if that was a good idea or not.  We're heading out of here with a positive attitude and lots of bug spray.  Jake says the only reason he came sailing with us was to go to Australia and see a kangaroo (yeah, he actually said that)....so, in order to keep the mutiny down, off we go.  Stand by...there's bound to be a good story or two coming out of this.

Watching some longboat races on the Kuching waterfront
with our friends Lee and Richard. 

More exploring in Borneo

Anytime we spend a long time in one place, things start to get a little like ground hog day.  This past week, we decided to spice it up a bit and rent a car.  For a pretty pricey 70 Ringgit/day (about $23 US) we got ourselves the worst rental car we’ve ever had.  It’s a shoebox with 4 bald tires, a broken speedometer and gas gage.  The passenger window won’t roll down and it takes at least 4 tries to crank it up.  The latest issue with it is that somehow it’s gotten infested with ants.  But that just gives Jake something to do while we drive around.

Our first stop was Matang Nat’l Park and the rehabilitation center.  Andy and Jake had already been there, but I was dying to see the Orangutans and I wasn’t disappointed.  We saw an adult teaching a baby how to climb a tree (part of their “school”) and then we saw two babies playing with a sheet while the mama watched.  They were pulling it up over their heads, rolling around and wrestling with each other.  Occasionally, the mama would grab the sheet and put it over her head.  Very cute to watch.  The funniest part of the day however, was when the “bad monkey,” as Jake liked to call him, threw poo at Andy.  Technically, I guess he threw poo at all of us, but Andy was lucky enough to get hit….twice.  The monkey was quite frisky and didn’t stop with the poo.  He threw banana peels, watermelon rinds, mango skins and papaya….all at Andy.  Jake and I got a big kick out of that.

The next day we decided to head out to Bako National Park and go for a hike to try and see the Proboscis Monkeys.  We underestimated the terrain and found our flip-flops to be a bit of a hindrance, but we managed.  Unfortunately, we didn’t see any monkeys, but we did see a snake and a bearded hog.  The hog was about the funniest looking thing we’ve seen yet.  It has this huge long snout (with a beard), then it’s eyes are about halfway down, then the forehead just keeps going.  Add to that, it has really long legs...not very pig-like.

These naughty little monkeys like to steal
your snacks.  

He still fits on my lap...almost :(

Some other ways we’ve tried to beat the ground hog day feeling…we saw a local ballet depicting one of the Iban legends from the jungle, we’ve taken to having nerf gun wars at the marina when all the workers go home, and we’ve spent a lot of time with our friends Richard and Lee on s/v Before.  Jake has even taken up jogging in the mornings with me and we’ve managed to convince Andy to join us as well.  I can’t lay up in bed when I have a little guy wiggling my toes asking me to go run with him….the best motivator.

This weekend we’re flying to Jakarta to see an old friend of Andy’s and relax a bit (all this fun is tiring).  It’s serving a dual purpose in as much as Jake and Andy need to renew their visa’s for Malaysia as well.   When we come back, the most exciting thing of all…Jake turns 9!

Mulu Caves, Borneo

Deer Cave

Deer cave, located in Mulu, Malaysia on the island of Borneo, has the largest cave passage in the world.  You can fit a Boeing 747 in there (no lie).  We first learned about it on the Planet Earth series when Jake was little more than 3 years old.  Back then, even with the plans of cruising so clearly laid out in our heads, Borneo seemed so far away and so exotic.  It wasn’t even on our radar.  We’ve seen that documentary more times than I can count, but over the past few years, Borneo didn’t seem so far away.  In fact, it was only a few hundred miles.

Once we arrived in Malaysia, it was a no brainer making a decision on what land travel to do here.  We headed to Mulu Caves.  The first bit of excitement was Jake’s first ride on a “propeller plane.”  The only way to get to Mulu is by plane, so we took the short hop from Kuching to Mulu Saturday morning.  We were immediately wisked away to our hotel for a quick check in.  We were pleasantly surprised as the hotel is in the process of being upgraded to a Marriott, so all of the rooms and facilities have been recently renovated, to include air conditioning, satellite TV, marble tile in the bathroom and down comforters on the king size bed!!!  Woo hoo!

Our greeter person (no idea what her official title was but her job was to get us from one place to another), caught us a ride to the National Park for a VERY quick tour of the headquarters and some lunch.  From there, we met our guide Lucas (and were fortunate enough to have him all to ourselves, not mixed in with hoards of other people) and our adventure began.  We figured out we walked about 4 miles that first afternoon.  It included a long jungle walk and touring of two caves, Lang Cave and Deer Cave.  Both were spectacular.  I thought Lang Cave had better formations, but the massive size of Deer Cave impressed everyone.  Jake’s favorite part was the huge amounts of roaches eating the guana mountains (aka bat poop) that covered the cave floors.  He insisted we take pictures so he could send them back to Gigi (his grandmother) to freak her out.  The downside to the day was the long bout of rain we had in the afternoon.  Apparently, bats don’t like to go out and eat in the rain, so we weren’t able to see the mass exodus of bats at sunset like we had hoped.   And we had to walk the mile and a half back to the main headquarters soaking wet.

View from the trail we took back to Deer Cave

There was a nice walk way the whole way through the park.

Critters...

more critters.....

Jake says they called these "smelly worms" but I'm not too sure
about that.  The strings you see hanging are long strands of mucus
used to catch flying insects for the worms to eat.

Inside one of the caves.

The second day started early with a half hour long boat ride to the Wind Cave and Clearwater cave.  The Wind cave was by far my favorite as it had the intricate formations and just looked more like the images I had in my head (only better).  Clearwater cave was cool in as much as it had a river flowing through it.  Not so cool was the 900-1000 steps we had to climb – I’m not exaggerating AT ALL.

We were done with our tours by noon and headed back to the hotel.  All of our legs were shaking from all the walking and stair climbing we did so we just vegged out the rest of the afternoon.  We booked an extra day at the hotel just to relax, so Monday was spent by the pool and in the room soaking up the air conditioning and catching up on the news.

It was a cozy ride up the river.

The underground river in Clearwater Cave.

Note the satellite dish on the left side of the porch...

We arrived back to Savannah yesterday all relaxed.  Now we have to restock our fridge and get some of this stinky laundry taken care of.  It’s nice to be home, but oh was that a great vacation.  Borneo still seems exotic and I know it really is far away, but now we’re lucky enough to have checked that box.