Road Tripppp

And we are home. We drove ten hours on five hours' sleep, entertained by S-Town and Hamilton, and now we've flopped into bed and I am going to share with you the dramatic sky that France farewelled us with. Tomorrow is the last day of MyBloWriMo so this seems fitting.

 It all started off so innocently, clouds as gentle as lambs

 Then they got lower

 and darker

- pretended violence -

and then rolled like the sea

It never acted on its threat though - it was all bark today

See you tomorrow! It's going to be a rough one - the first day back after a long holiday is always so - but I've got my to-do list (so long it reaches the floor like a cartoon scroll) and I'm just going to knock things out one at a time and hope for the best.

Big hugs,
Essss

On a desert road trip, the Salinas Grandes, and 'adventure travel'

OMGYOUGUYS. It's time for a travel tale. Do youguys remember last winter, when we went to Argentina to visit delightful friends (the ones who sent me that gorgeous diary yesterday) and cruised the countryside for a while? SURELY YOU MUST. Anyway, you may or may not also remember that there was a bit of a gap in content between Cafayate and our return to Buenos Aires. In that time we cruised Salta and Iguazu Falls and things got Super Real. Super Awesome, to be sure, but Real, nonetheless. This was no urban, hipster portion of our holiday, where we ate fancy food and watched dancers do the tango, or cruised vineyards and poolsides and ate our weight in empanadas. No, Salta was none of these things. It was cowboy country, close to the borders of Bolivia and Chile, a gorgeously wild, rocky countryside, full of llamas and gauchos and wool and stew and folk music and grit.

I don't know if you know this, but Wolf and I aren't super gritty.

Our day out of Salta began with a drive north to Purmamarca to see the Cierro de Siete Colores (Hill of Seven Colours). We intended from that point on to continue our drive north to Humahuaca to see More Colourful Hills and Rocks before turning around and trekking back south. It would be a long day on the road - about three hours each way - but THOSE VIEWS, right! That LANDSCAPE! IT MUST BE DONE IT IS WHY WE ARE IN SALTA.

It all started according to plan: we made it to Purmamarca by 10:30 in the morning - after a drive through rolling hills covered in fog, very Northern-California - and got to see this:

I'm pretty sure this is where unicorns are born.

Purmamarca was the sweetest little village nestled in the crook of a rainbow: it had a charming market square filled with dusty pottery and llama wool blankets and a whopping total of about five little shops packed with mate gourds, bombillas, and wooden carvings of animals. It was EXACTLY what you wanted it to be.

Taste the rainbow.

Our plan from this point was to make it to Humahuaca by lunch, take some more photos of pretty rocks, maybe take a walk, and then head back to Salta for dinnertime.

It was in the tiny Purmamarca tourism office - if you can call a single room containing nothing but a giant yellowed wall map a tourism office - that our path changed. 'You MUST go to Salinas Grandes,' the tourism-girl/map monitor assured us. 'It is MUCH nicer than Humahuaca. Also closer. Drive is very nice.' We consulted Wall Map, squinted at her one faded brochure from 1994 that showed giant salt plains and a bunch of fluorescent nerds jumping around, looked at Wall Map again, and saw that it was indeed a closer dot. And - unlike Humahuaca - we could loop back to Salta via a local highway so we wouldn't be backtracking and taking the same road up and down the country. All new territory! And halfway through this loop was a town that - going by the size of its dot - was pretty good-size, and the brochure said that tourism buses bound for the Salinas Grandes used this town as its halfway point for a break, and that it also had a train station because it was on the track of the Train to the Clouds or Heavens or whatever. So it must contain at least a charming square of some sort and possibly an empanada or two! Who needs Humahuaca and its dozens of cafes? We're sold. Caution to the wind - me feeling very proud that for once I wasn't following a carefully-planned itinerary, I am so spontaneous and exciting - we hit the road.

And the girl didn't lie: the approach to the Salt Plains was BEAUTIFUL. Mountains and switchbacks and views in every direction:

'Look at those rock formations!' we exclaimed, convinced these were at LEAST as nice as those of Humahuaca, if not BETTER.

'Have you ever SEEN such beauty??' we thrill. 

'Oh yeah. We made the right choice.'

It took us about an hour to get to the Salt Plains, and we are psyched. We got to drive through SO MUCH PRETTINESS and now we're going to see SALT PLAINS. We're thirsty, and starting to feel peckish - it's noon, after all, time for first lunch - so we decide we will pop in to the Salt Plains Visitor Centre and buy a bottle of water and an overpriced cookie or something to tide us over until we get to that Halfway Town.

Except we get there, and there is only this:

Salt Plains, as advertised.

That's okay! How naive of us to assume that all national parks would have visitor centres! This isn't the UK or America, after all. We've travelled the world, we should've known better! And we aren't sissies, we can wait until Halfway Town to eat or drink. We jump around like nerds because the brochure seemed to indicate that was the number one activity here, and then we continue on our Fun Times Road Trip.

We took the car back to a painted arrow we remembered seeing a few minutes before: 101km to San Antonio de los Cobres *that way*. Excellent! In about two hours we'll have a break and a bite. Sure, we hadn't eaten since 7 that morning and now we were looking at two in the afternoon, but a little hunger builds character. WE ARE NOT SISSIES. Onwards!

Things are still looking good as we head back to the arrow. And then: Where is the road?

Is it that dirt track?

SPOILER ALERT: IT IS THAT DIRT TRACK.

We're momentarily alarmed before realising that it must only be dirt for a short time before becoming a normal road again, because Wall Map showed this road as a thick yellow line like all the other roads we had been on before and none of THEM were made out of sand. Let's not worry too much, we must get on with things, lunch awaits and it's this or return to Purmamarca.

We take the turn.

This is what it looks like when donkeys are laughing their *sses off.

We ignored the warning, the hilarity, in his eyes.

We start driving. And driving. This is all we see for the first half hour: 

Eff you, Salt Plain horizon.

And this is all we see for the NEXT THREE HOURS:

At this point, the road is so rough that Alan's struggling to keep our tiny tin-can rental car in our 'lane' (insert delirious laughter here. There are no lanes. There are no other cars). The constantly shifting sand, the buffeting wind, the rocks - everything conspires to push our vehicle into the path of nature. His knuckles are white on the wheel and every time we hear a pebble ping against the side of the car - which is every two seconds - we flinch and regret not taking out the insurance policy, because surely by the end of this, our car will be as pocked as the surface of the moon. We can't roll down the windows, because within seconds the wind pushes so much dirt into the car we are covered head-to-toe in a fine red dust.

Eventually, having driven for over two hours without seeing a single other vehicle, Alan relaxes his grip and gives up and drives down the middle of the road, where the car appears to be (more) content. Any approaching vehicle we'd see coming days in advance. So, you know, bright side?

THERE IS NO BRIGHT SIDE HERE. THIS IS DEATH.

This is where they bury the bodies of all the tourists who take this road.

And then - finally, finally, oh thank God we've made it - San Antonio de los Cobres! We made it! Civilisation! We made it! There will be water! Food! Gas! WATER WATER OMG WATER WE ARE DYING OF THIRST AND HUNGER WATER. It's now 3:30 in the afternoon, we are low on gas, and it's been over 8 hours since the last time we had anything to eat or drink. Our hanger has led us to bottomless depths of silence and all we can think of is putting ANYthing in our face, ANYthing AT ALL, and not running out of gas because we still have A BILLION MORE KILOMETERS to get to Salta. This was HALFWAY, YOUGUYS. HALFWAY THROUGH THE JOURNEY. But it's a town! Salvation is upon us.

OH. EFFING. NO.

THIS IS THE ENTIRE TOWN YOUGUYS.

Just let that sink in a minute.

Maybe that's the convenience store?

It is at this point we begin to despair. This was our goal, it's what kept us going through over three hours of driving through a deserted wasteland. We panic in a silent way, because we are too worn down to panic in our usual scream-to-the-gods way, my preferred method of supplication. Our focus narrows immediately. GAS. WE MUST GET GAS. Forget dreams of food and water, forget white-washed churches and leafy town squares, IF WE DON'T GET GAS WE ARE STRANDED HERE. And we are pretty sure the only place to sleep is that graveyard we passed an hour before. 

We drive down the road. We find a dirt track that leads to another gravel road. We drive down that road. There is still nothing. We internally panic some more as the car's tank trickles down. We stop and ask two men walking down the road who are so covered in that pervasive white dirt you can't see the brown skin beneath and their insides must be white and cracked as well, and when we asked them for directions, their Spanish was not my Spanish and we can only understand their gestures and confusion. 

We finally find it: a tank. A man. A hose. GAS. We are so incredibly thankful we don't care that there's no shop attached, still no sustenance. We pass a house with a table in front and there's evidence of a parrilla that smells torturously of roasted meat, but this semblance of a place that sells food is already shut, they shut at three. Our Spanish is not your Spanish, so we cannot feed you, we are shut, you see our gestures? 

We get back on the road. We're slightly less terrified than before - at least now we have a full tank so we can die farther down the road - but now we are hell-bent on getting back to Salta. 

The road is still rough, but it's smoother, it's cleaner, we are moving faster, scenery is rising again: 

What is beauty in the face of the end of times? 

IT IS NOTHING. A WEARY SOUL KNOWS NO BEAUTY.

And then youguys, it happened. THE ROAD BECAME PAVED.

THE ROAD BECAME PAVED! You would not believe our shrieks of joy, the way we bounced in our seats and attempted the radio again and then gave up and sang our own songs. It didn't matter that we still had two hours of driving ahead of us, that we are now going on ten hours with no food or water. IT WAS PAVED, YOUGUYS.

You wouldn't believe how quickly two hours can pass when you can drive at a million miles per hour without swerving off a dirt path. As soon as we got back to Salta, we squealed to a halt in front of the first street food vendor we saw, not caring what he was selling, how authentic or local or charming it was, whether it had been reviewed by Tripadvisor or Yelp or Travel & Leisure, and we ate the best cheeseburgers of our lives and drank cokes so fast we nearly choked. Propped up on his stools, shovelling it all in, crusty and wild-eyed, the guy must've thought that we were absolutely insane.

We were. INSANE FOR THIS BURGER. I'm pretty sure my hand was trembling in this photo.

Eventually we made it back to our tiny hotel and showered and went out to Real Dinner - because OBVIOUSLY I still had a plan and a list of places we had to eat and no Burger Starter was going to stop that - before we at long last stumbled back to our room. We slept for ten straight hours that night, as heavily as the dead buried in the middle of the God-forsaken Argentinian desert.

The next day: Iguazu Falls. AKA 'Water.' It had better be good.

Big hugs and lots of love,
Esss

Why doesn't EVERYone live here

OMGYOUGUYS. Glasgow's West End is ABSURD. My friend Dianne - a supremely talented, darkly funny, creative individual, and an old hand at Glasgow - gave me a list of places to go and things to do, and her tips did not lead Lyndsey and I astray.

Breakfast started at Old Salty's, which was a terrific Scottish diner that had - I kid you not - a huge Scottish fry-up for a fiver and a bacon butty for £1.50 (add black pudding, tattie scone, or egg for 80p). We sat in a booth similar to a classic American diner booth, except upholstered in Scottish wool. The stools, cushioned in tartan. It was the best possible combination of old and new worlds, and not so hipster you couldn't eat your fill for pennies. Please to go to there next time you're in the area:

All they need now is to be open for 24 hours and they've nailed it. 

Then...the River Kelvin walkway. YOUGUYS. This river walk. Those colours. It's so gorgeous you'll want to punch yourself in the face. Di said it was lovely this time of year, but obviously she lied because 'lovely' doesn't even COVER it:

Between these points, there *may* have been a stop at Inn Deep, where we built up our stamina with a refreshing pint of *cough* water. 

 Canal on the left, river on the right, and all the wet benches you could ask for. Five minutes beyond this when the path connected with another and it temporarily widened, we encountered a group of crew-cut men running up and down the path in a loop wearing brightly coloured parkas, like a really festive boot camp. Their turning point was marked not by a cone but by a guy wearing brown fatigues and a dapper beret with some fancy plumage. He broke his serious glare at the men to give us a side-grin and a wink, so clearly he owns them.

More benches, this time trying to hide by covering themselves in leaves.

 I absolutely loved the circle of red leaves under the tree. Doesn't it look like it's bleeding?

The rain tried to drown us way more than the river did.

I can't wait to come back to hit the rest of Di's recs - The Hunterian, the Sparkle Horse, The 78...Lyndsey, you're never getting rid of me now.

Tomorrow's plan: camp out on MumBetty's sofa with my kindle, my Netflix, and a bottomless cup of tea, stockinged feet hanging off the end, and to keep things exciting, perhaps an occasional doze.

There's gonna be loads to blog about.

Big hugs and lots of love,
Esss

Buckets and buckets and buckets of wet

OMGYOUGUYS. I'm in Scotland right now. Glasgow, specifically. West George Street, if we want to continue zooming in. And it is GORGEOUS.

Well, not the weather. But one doesn't come to Glasgow for the weather, now do they. They come for things like Celtic games, wherein rowdy Norwegians flock to town and cause such a disturbance with all their carousing and singing and general milling about that the police bring out the big guns. (If by 'big' we mean 'peaceful' and 'guns' we mean ' attentive horses.')

Then of course there's the Gallery of Modern Art, which I must confess I did NOT go into. But I like to think pausing to admire their neon counts as appreciation, so I can say with full confidence it's worth checking out.

And then there are the churches and the architecture. This one below Lyndsey helpfully supplied the name of as '...   ....   .... St. Mary's?'

Obviously St. Mary's.

Now I'm off to dinner at Meat because my 400g of steak last night was obviously not enough animal and a girl has got to keep warm throughout the winter somehow.

Next up: tomorrow's tour of the West End! Lyndsey is my guide again so I'm in pretty good hands.

Big hugs and lots of love,
Esss

On stuffed mice, Southwold, and road trips in France

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. - Rilke 

OMGYOUGUYS. So much has happened these past few weeks:

1. I made the world's most terrifying taxidermy mouse. He is my mangy little treasure and clearly the stuff that nightmares are made of:

I love him so much.

Also, I'm supposed to cut the wires now that he's stiffened, but I can't bring myself to do it. I suspect they're the only thing keeping him upright. (He's so jazz.)

2. A weekend in France indicated that spring arrives there sooner than here. We CYCLED. In the SUN. And we didn't die or need a jacket or ANYthing:

If you follow the lane to where it winds around to the right, you'll come to our back garden!* 

3. We also spent a weekend in Southwold! I'd like to say it's because I can't get enough of coastal England, but really it was because I bought an armchair on eBay and didn't notice until it was too late that it was listed as 'collection only.' 

'But think about how much money I saved!' she justifies, as she reserves a room in a seafront b&b. 

Luckily, Southwold has everything an English seaside town should: 

A pier with a retro arcade in which all the machines have been handmade by the town inventor:

Beach huts:

Village confectionary that advertises via vintage bicycle:

Seafood sold out of harbour-front shack:

Again with vintage bicycle. It's like this town was designed by Instagram.

And Lighthouse:

So really, I don't know HOW one could say I messed up here. 

France update! We officially did the Mega Move: we hired a van here in the UK, packed it full of random furniture and miscellany, and drove it the ten hours down to Bergerac. And I think it is safe to say WE WILL NEVER DO IT AGAIN. For one, our sat-nav apparently likes the scenic route, and the van barely fit through tiny village after tiny village. We suspected that nearby there was a highway - there had to have been! - but our garmin refused to guide us there, and our Michelin road map was unfortunately crammed somewhere in a box in the back of the van. Two, an old man in a truck totally took off the van's side mirror when he barreled past us (while we were pulled over, mind), before promptly disappearing into the wind like so many old men going renegade in the French countryside. All we could see was his wild, white, bush-like hair retreating into the distance, his own mirror clattering along. 

It also turns out life in France is a lot like camping. Like how you have to bathe with a garden hose because your builder has gutted your bathroom in the process of installing a new shower. You would think a hose-shower in the cold dawn of early spring would be romantic, except you're also doing it while standing barefoot on what feels like frozen concrete, overlooking the back lane that the neighbors also enjoy. The same neighbors who - after months of being nowhere to be seen - started to appear en masse over the course of the week. (I refuse to believe there is a connection. Also, they are WAY friendlier than stories would have you believe.) Luckily, I've been practicing Not Showering for years, so I handled seven days of filth like a pro.

Also, I think Alan tried to kill me in the act of gardening. There was a thorny little tree climbing up the side of the house (and more importantly, scratching heck out of the top of the rental van) and finally, in a fit of agitation, I decided it needed to come down. We had intended to trim this tree 'eventually, down the road' - but after two days of it attacking us every time we approached, I had enough. I grabbed the hedge-trimming shears, and with a strength known only to enraged hulks, WENT TO TOWN ON IT. It didn't stand a chance. Branches are flying everywhere. And as I was nearly done, Alan grabs the tree and gives it the final yank that will pull it from the wall. And DIRECTLY ONTO MY HEAD. MY HEAD YOU GUYS. A THORNY TREE ON MY HEAD. And as my face and bare arms are being scratched to pieces by this barren twiggy tree completely enveloping my person, I'm pretty sure Alan just stood there, possibly smoking a cigarette. He claimed later that he reacted immediately, but I think we can all agree I was encompassed for about an hour. By the time I emerged, it looked like I had been attacked by a pack of wild cats.

Thank God I could at least clean my scratches under a bone-chilling hose shower.

But it's coming together. Trials and tribulations aside, with each visit down, it starts to look less like a skip and more like a dusty, dirty, box-filled home. We haven't been able to unpack anything yet - our contractor has dust-clothes and plastic draped over every surface - but soon. Soon our stuff will be laid out to collect dust the good-old fashioned way.

I can't wait.

Big hugs and lots of love,

Essss

*I didn't say we cycled FAR. I'm still ME.

On ebay, Cafayate, and life on Mars

It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it. - Terry Pratchett

OMGYOUGUYS. Have you heard of this website called ebay? It's like the newest thing ever. I'm currently trying to get us cheap furniture for France-House and for the first time I am entering the ebay-fray rather than just poking around like a voyeur and WHY IS IT SO EXCITING? Every time I enter a max bid, my heart races like I've just gone off a high dive. I FEEL ALIIIIIIVE! The first time - and to be fair the only time, I'm not good at this - I won something, the rush was so great I laughed. Out loud. Alone. In my kitchen. It just bubbled up, totally uncontrollable. I immediately and self-consciously tried to look normal.

Totally worked.

In other news, the Salta pictures are coming along! Check these out:

Doesn't it make you sick?

These were taken in the Quebrada de Cafayate, which is the crazy-scenic drive between Salta and Cafayate. It was 3 hours of 'PULL OVER! PULL OVER!' again and again and again. Alan loved it. He also liked how I invariably had the wrong lens on my camera and spent the first five minutes at the side of the road cursing and dropping filters. I am pretty much a pro. All the trouble was worth it, though*: the terrain was absolutely wild. The red rocks, the red sand, the Andes, some other rocks, etc. - it was like we had landed on Mars. Except with cowboys and cacti. And oxygen.

I think.

And then when you finally get through all that exhausting mother-effing beauty, you land in the CUTEST VILLAGE IN ALL THE LAND: Cafayate.

Also, home of the best steak I've ever had in my entire life. Shula Cata parrillada is a must-do, youguys. There's no sign on the front so it's easy to miss, but you'll know it by the flourescent lighting, plastic tables, and smell of sweet delicious meat utopia wafting out the open frontage. It is located in the residential part of town, a bit off the beaten track. The locals filling the space will look at you, because you stick out like a sore thumb. Either that, or because you've got blood dripping down your chin. I was too busy shoveling in 'todos los carnes' - my highly-specific order - to notice.

Cafayate is HEAVEN. It's sweetly nestled in the mountains, surrounded by dirt roads that lead to lovely wineries, and it has a teeny tiny leafy square and a dozen options for street-food and empanadas and ice cream. I just don't know how a place can get better than this. As a real piece of travel-writing called it, it's 'Down-at-the-Healdsburg.'

Super roughing it.

Just wait until next time I post - it's going to be all the pics from the drive back UP to Salta. They're just like these ones, except in reverse. So, you know. Exciting. Red. Dusty. Full of aliens.

Big hugs and lots of love,
Essss

*To me.