Bedruthan Steps

We were all quite keen to take in a bit of the dramatic Cornish coastline on a walk. On the advice of our Lonely Planet book “Walking in Britain”, we headed to the Bedruthan Steps. In what was to become our pattern we rocked up sometime in the late afternoon, decided it was lunch time, or dinner… “dunch”? and proceeded to make toasted sandwiches. I can imagine this would be rather infuriating behaviour for most travellers but as previously mentioned we’re all quite similar and weren’t in any hurry. We probably managed to take in about 0.3% of the walk described in Lonely Planet but it was a spectacular 0.3% so we were pretty chuffed.

It was lunch time for this little guy too:

We plotted to push Shakti over the cliff:

…and failed:

I did my usual “take macro shots of tiny little details that take my fancy” thing and left the grand panoramic vistas to Mike:

It’s a fairly crappy photo but I just love this round mound of earth covered in little flower-type things:

Mike and I felt like we’d been transported back to Ireland when we rounded a corner and took in this cliff-top blanketed in the very same flowers that bedecked many an Irish landscape.

St Ives

We hadn’t actually planned on visiting St Ives — a very popular tourist destination in Cornwall — but the next walk we decided on doing happened to begin there. At this stage in our travels we don’t get excited about places just because they’re popular. Everything’s relative and I suspect its popularity amongst the Vitamin D deficient Brits is due in large part to its sand beach – not exactly a drawcard for someone who didn’t even know there were anything other than sand beaches until relatively recently and grew up in a fishing town on the “90 mile beach” in Victoria, Australia. I’m sure the Brits would find the things I get excited about equally amusing — wonky buildings, thatched-roof cottages and pretty much anything older than 200 years.

We sat and ate overpriced but very nummy chips overlooking the harbour at low tide. We watched as a very cheeky seagull stole a whole pasty out of a plastic bag, then fought over it with much fuss — whilst the owners of said pasty were completely obliviously chatting a metre away. It occurred to us all a bit belatedly that we probably should’ve shouted down a warning.

A group of young English guys sat down next to us and proceeded to make fun of the Cornish accent — it’s so fun being able to understand the natives again! When we were first back in England we were doing some grocery shopping and I was overhearing all sorts of private conversations — I felt like I was eavesdropping and I wondered how they could just talk about all of this personal stuff with everyone around being about to hear and understand every word!

Daniel wanted to watch the tide come in which, despite its rapidity, I thought was not dissimilar from watching paint dry so Mike and I took a walk to photograph the boats on the beach:

Once again, around late afternoon we headed off on our coastal walk — which, of course, we only actually managed a minute fraction of.

Earlier I’d inadvertently sparked a debate about the meaning of life, the universe and everything when I commented on the way bees prefer the hexagon to every other shape for it’s innate sturdiness is the type of thing that makes people believe in intelligent design. We ended up spending the entirety of the hike with each duo trying to come to grips with the others’ spiritual (or lack thereof) beliefs and grappling with new and different concepts. One thing that struck me about the conversation –in hindsight — was how much it reminded me of a similar conversation I had with a Christian girl a few years ago. She asked me questions about how I explained the meaning of life, the universe, and everything without a religion or spirituality. My answer then and still is that I don’t feel the need to have an answer to those questions and even if I did I wouldn’t expect to get one, which is just fine by me. She found this a rather unsatisfying response. I think it’s hard for spiritual people to comprehend that lack of need – like a fish imagining life out of the water.

As you can imagine the debate got pretty lively and toes may have been stepped on but at the end of the day I don’t really mind what anyone believes in (in fact I’m kind of jealous of those who believe in nature spirits and angels- they’re just plain cool), as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone — an addendum which of course means that there are quite a few religious groups out there that I do indeed take issue with.

Guys, thank you for being so open to talk about your spiritual beliefs with a couple of sceptical godless heathens!

On the way back through town I spotted these gorgeous ceramics by Karen Shapley and proceeded to imagine them adorning my future kitchen:

They make me want to take up ceramics!

Daniel and Shakti’s bus back to London was at the uncivilised hour of 5:45am so we attempted to get an early night and stumbled out of bed around 5am to drop them off at the train station. Now we have two more precious little hooks back in Melbourne tugging at our home-body heart strings. I wonder when our Melbourne-based hooks will reach critical mass and we’ll pack up and go home?

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Our decision to remain stationary until Mike’s new app is up and running and out in the big wide world led us to the intriguing prospect of finding the cheapest CL in the UK in a region with strong internet coverage. What fun! We had no idea where we would end up for the next few months – just lots of little dots on a map – it was like a lottery!

Mike spent a while trawling through the Caravan Club site, looking in ever-expanding circles for a suitable place to relocate to.  They were all rather expensive for our liking, so he embarked on a massive project to write some software to drag the entire several-thousand-site CL database from the Club’s website, and make it easily searchable for price (which isn’t searchable on their site).  Several days later, he had a spreadsheet of the sites across the UK that were within our price range, and proceeded to call through the list to confirm the prices, which are invariably inaccurate.

After a rather silly number of hours of work, he’d narrowed our choice down to 4 sites around England’s south-west. The winning CL turned out to be Langarth Farm just outside of Truro in Cornwall. Looks like we’re going to spend a few months in Cornwall then! At first I was a bit under-whelmed at the prospect, despite having wanted to tour Cornwall for quite some time. Before we changed our plans we were going to travel up the east coast of the UK to Scotland and then go back down the west coast. I’ve been pining for Scotland for months now and it looked like I’d have to wait a few more months yet. As the aforementioned friend pointed out, there is something rather funny about feeling let down at the prospect of spending a few months in Cornwall!

During our trundle over to Cornwall we picked up our new (to us) vintage bikes that we’d bought on eBay! Mike’s is a surprisingly shiny blue beast circa 1960s called “Apollo” and mine, also blue, circa 1970s named “Way” short for “Wayfarer”. We’d been looking for these bad boys for a long time and we’re absolutely thrilled with our new purchases.

Mine was in Plymouth which, from our brief drive through looked like a lovely little city.

We made our way to Langarth Farm down ever-narrowing roads, pleased with the promisingly scenic drive on the approach. As we drove we thought about cycling along these very roads with anticipation. Langarth Farm turned out to have many other features of benefit to an extended stay that we hadn’t even thought to check for – grocery store and fish and chip shop in walking distance, small city with everything we could ever need – namely Indian and Thai food – in cycling distance; there’s even an honesty stall down the road selling eggs, potatoes and leeks!

Our days leading up to meeting up with friends in Bath were spent quietly working away, Mike on his new iPhone app and me in my new marketing role as well as my own projects, albeit to a lesser extent as previously. I’m hoping the next app will do well enough so we can hire someone to do the marketing next time and I can get back to my art and creative biz. In the meantime, I don’t mind the work and I’m learning a lot which I’ll be able to put to good use in my own online biz when the time comes.

We also spent our days going for bicycle rides on our new vintage steeds and marvelling at our friends doing this across continents! The hills (and slight inclines indiscernible to the human eye) of Cornwall defeat me every time and I end up taking my bike for a walk half the time, which Mike kindly documented.

The scenery we cycle through is quintessentially English – gnarled trees, bright purple flowers growing along the side of the road, and of course everything is very, very green. This is an achingly pretty country. It reminds us of Mike’s pretty hometown but on steroids. On one of our rides I commented to Mike how I used to think it very funny that the English settlers in Australia found the landscape depressingly barren and wholly uninviting and that they would try to re-create English gardens around their outback homes – how silly, I thought! Looking at this beautifully lush landscape now I completely understand why they pined for the beauty of their abundant colourful flowers and gentle leafy green woods. The area I grew up in in Australia is characterised by dry scrub, the plants are hardy, tough looking things and the trees are tall, straight and skinny with sparse leaves – and forget about flowers. I can see how this may have proven a slightly depressing state of affairs to our English ancestors.

We missed the lambs at Wootton, and the antics of the local pheasant, Monsieur Squark-and-Flap, but the void was somewhat filled by a rather enthusiastic rooster who I realised sounds just like someone over-excitedly yelling “WOOOOO-HOOOO!”. So, we dubbed him Party Rooster. Every day’s a party for that guy – he loves a good time.

Punctuating the uneventfulness of our quiet days spent in Cornwall, the only other things of note are that our boiler miraculously fixed itself and we now have a functioning shower again – reaffirming our “If it aint broke don’t fix it; if it is broke, don’t fix it – it’ll fix itself” policy; Mike sent his passport and Australian drivers license off to the DVLA with baited breath hoping they send us back a British license and preferably don’t lose his passport in the process as we hear they are prone to do, and we finally got around to “spring” cleaning Nettle. Huh. I didn’t know our skylight was white. And what happened to our windowsill terrarium?

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Our one year digital nomad vagabonding anniversary came and went the day before yesterday unacknowledged. This time last year we awoke to our new tabula rasa life in a BnB in Camden, London having just flown in the day before. I think a little reflection is in order.

Then

On the 31st May last year I wrote this in my notebook:

“Come Sunday evening a melancholy befalls in the realisation that I have to go to work tomorrow and the next day and the next day and so on and so forth. Well, this is officially my last Sunday of mourning the weekend for hopefully a very long time, if not forever. This week is my last week of work before I take annual leave and then move to Europe with Mike to re-evaluate and re-invent out lives. I never again want to have a job that makes me mourn the end of the weekend. I either need to have a job I love or a job that takes up as little time as possible”.

A note to the people of seaac (my previous workplace), if you are reading this: I still love you and seaac! I thought I wanted to be a social worker since before I knew what a social worker was – in fact, I even talked to Steve, our beloved leader, about all of this in my exit interview. Turns out I’d prefer to be holed up in a little studio day and night drawing and painting strange but beautiful fictional characters and designing yummy collage papers and patterns! Who knew?

Now

I’m working on the marketing side of things for A Tasty Pixel, Mike’s software development business. I’ve learnt how to use Photoshop so I can design my own collage papers and surface pattern designs and have plans to learn how to use Illustrator as well. I’ve designed over 100 of them and even had a hand in designing Mike’s new website! Hopefully Mike’s next iPhone app will do well enough so that we can hire someone to do the marketing next time and I can focus on what I love. Until then, I don’t mind this type of work. At the end of the day I have complete autonomy and that counts for so much. What I would love to do is sell my collage papers, surface pattern designs, textures and brushes online as downloadable files. I’ve pretty much got it all worked out, now I just have to find the time to do it!

Then

A couple of weeks after arriving I wrote this in my notebook:

“The world is full of wonders and we’re going out to see them. This is probably the most amazing thing we’ll do in our lives and this is the beginning. It is all ahead of us. I’m really excited about spending TIME, precious, preciuos time on art. Learning, learning, learning. The thought of learning has always grabbed my imagination with all of its connotations of possibility and the unknown”.

I also remember updating my facebook status with something like this: “I have dallied for too long: Too many paintings left unpainted”.

Now

I’m still really excited about seeing the wonders we have yet to see. Scotland is our next super exciting destination. I dream about being in a remote Scottish countryside surrounded by dramatic mountains, achingly pretty lochs and at the mercy of fierce weather.

I would still like to spend more time on art. It’s funny, for the first time in my adult life I’m neither studying nor do I have a “job” but I am busier than I have ever been. Sometimes when I think about all the things I want to do and learn I feel overwhelmed. I think it’s a pretty good problem to have. Now that I’ve found my passion it’s gained its own momentum. It’s as if it was waiting, dormant, and as soon as a shaft of light fell upon it, everything that was already there, in waiting, unfurled and is growing bigger and bigger the more light it gets.

To round off, some things I know now that I wish I knew then:

1. Put some bamboo mats and towels under your mattress or you will be re-constructing your bed in 9 months because a dirty big patch of mould is growing there.
2. Driving the entire length of France on toll-ways will cost you a small fortune, which you could use instead to buy a small island or put towards your firstborn’s university fund.
3. One month in Ireland is NOT enough time – not even close – and indeed three months in one country is not enough (unless it’s Tunisia) – slow down!

Some things I never anticipated:

1. Learning how to use Photoshop – those familiar with the mutual animosity between myself and all things computers will appreciate the enormity of this
   
2. Starting a small business and being self-employed – not something I ever envisaged for myself but now I wouldn’t want it any other way. Also, knowing a great deal about running an online business – didn’t see that coming.
3. Having a blog and meeting kindred spirits online – I used to think blogs were rather self-indulgent, pointless things and I was even quite sheepish about telling people that I had one to begin with (ditto for twitter)
   

Some things I’ve learnt:

1. How to have an argument – Mike and I live together, travel together and now work together all in a 6×3 metre space! We need to be able to resolve arguments and we’ve gotten pretty good at it.
2. I can wear a pair of socks (light use) 5 – 10 times before they start to smell
3. I don’t think I ever would have dreamt of, let alone done, any of this – the business, the design, the blog – If I had’ve just stayed in Melbourne working 9-5 Monday-Friday with 4 weeks off a year. Not a chance. There’s something about drastically changing your entire life that opens up boundaries you didn’t even know were there and lets you begin to imagine that things can be different, very very different.
   

Michael:

My mother made this comment about our experience just recently, but it’s worth repeating because I find the fact of it really remarkable: That this thing we’re doing is totally multifaceted. The travel stuff is wonderful – one of my top priorities for my life – but equally valuable is the creative side which has been really rewarding (although not quite financially rewarding, yet – we’ll get there!).

The most awesome aspect of this is Katherine’s artistic journey, and I’m loving seeing her artistic side prospering. Plus, the glee she gets from art supplies is a thing to behold.

Personally speaking, I’m loving the indie software developer lifestyle to pieces. It’s a creative outlet that suits me perfectly, and I love designing software and putting the pieces together just so – which satisfies both my creative side, and my OCD side. My mother used to joke that me, working (tapping studiously away at a keyboard), was rather similar to me taking a break – party time (tapping studiously away at a keyboard). It’s pretty much that way still, and doing this job means I basically never work, and am in fact constantly playing. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Actually, the one thing that does get better than that is having a beautiful, changing view out of the window that we can go and explore from time to time, at our leisure. When we started out, we didn’t have a clear idea of how the travel thing was all going to work, but we’ve sorted it out and found our pace. We love being in the country, fields, woods, mountains, and really enjoy hiking (although not for too long!). Cities have their appeal too, but our hearts lie in the wide open horizons, or the deep green (or preferably, orange and yellow!) of woods.

One thing I never anticipated was the people we’ve met along the way. I certainly hoped that we would make connections with people as we went, but given that we’re not exactly gregarious (I almost wrote ‘egregious’) people by nature, I wasn’t sure how successful we’d be. Don’t get me wrong, we like a good pub, maybe once a year. For a few minutes.

However, we’ve met some really interesting people and made some wonderful friends, always in unexpected ways: On the side of a volcano, in the back-alleys of an ancient Tunisian marketplace, in the car park of a little Italian town, and through my involvement with writing WordPress and iPhone software. A great adventure still to come will be spending some time living in Padua (and learning Italian!) and getting to know our wonderful new-found friends there, who I originally met via my product Loopy.

The online side of this mobile social life has been fascinating – we still have quite a number of people we’ve met online to catch up with some time: Users of software I’ve written, other bloggers, and other people who’ve come across us online (or vice versa). We’ve made some great friends who are currently cycling across Europe (actually, they’ve just bought a little red car and are heading towards, and then across, Siberia), who we discovered while doing a bit of travel research in Tunisia, and we dearly hope to meet them in person one day – then kidnap them and keep them all to ourselves, in our enclave of ‘favourite people’ that we will one day build. nothing

The last thing that I find surprising, in spite of my ever-overly-optimistic self, is just how feasible this thing has been. Okay, we had some fantastic help to begin with – some great, long house-sitting appointments that meant we went almost a whole year rent-free – but apart from the initial, mostly recoverable outlay (Nettle), we’ve generally been living on less that it would’ve cost us to live in Australia – particularly with the horrendous housing situation there lately. My blithely optimistic anticipation of this whole thing has been actually pretty spot-on. We can do this for a lot more time yet, even if this indie software thing doesn’t take off.

So, in more ways than one, becoming ‘vagabonds’ (‘technobonds’?) has been a real enabler for us to pursue the things we really want to do with our lives, travel aside. It’s taken us away from the distracting, (albeit dubious) attraction of a steady income and jobs about which we’re ambivalent, freeing us up for the more important things, while actually lowering our living expenses to make our ‘buffer’ last longer.

That’s pretty cool.

Things I am glad I now know:

1. What Katherine says is right. (Katherine’s note: this is a work in progress)
2. Taking a wrong turn or getting lost never matters – relax, go with it.
3. It’s probably not a good idea to wild-camp in a big city, and especially not a port. Just…don’t.
4. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t like marketing/PR stuff, or how much you’re too engrossed in developing a product: Do it!
5. Don’t look too closely at how your motorhome’s put together, especially the raised bed (or as I like to call it, flimsy-sleeping-platform-of-death).
6. If you run out of food, you can make pancakes with flour and water! (Although they’re not so good if you’re out of water too)

Here’s to another year of technomadding!

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We started out by wandering yet another mediaeval town. My expectations were perhaps a mite high after hearing of it’s popularity and the reception I received at mentioning we were going there on Facebook. As with most major tourist attractions we’ve visited on the trip we were left wondering why this town out of all the mediaeval towns in Italy is so obscenely popular. Location, location, location – it’s within a day-trip from both Siena and Florence. As with any major tourist attraction the maxim “the act of observing changes that which is being observed” – or perhaps more to the point “tourism changes that which is toured” – was evident in San Gimignano. Luckily tourists are extremely easy creatures to be rid of – just walk in any direction they’re not going in, which is pretty much every direction bar one and then like magic you have the place to yourself. So we wandered the back streets a little bit.

It was a beautifully sunny day when we began our hike through the pastural landscape of olive groves and vineyards.

And we were feeling both youthful and vigorous

We came across an interesting, seemingly completely purposeless structure built into the ground that reminded me of something from a fantasy novel or the Amazon jungle.

As the day wore on, the sun that had originally made the day so cheerful, sapped us of our will to go on when it continued uninterrupted by shade and unrelieved by a breeze the whole day long. Like seemingly everything else in Nettle, our water bladder had fallen victim to mould, which had left us with one small bottle of water between the two of us. Of course, we could have bought another water bottle in San Gimignano but every now and then we seem to make these inexplicably stupid decisions, which in hindsight leave us questioning our mental capacities. I think we thought we’d find places to fill up along the way. I’ve definitely come to associate Italy as a place abundant in water fountains, which is great if you’re in a town and not hiking through the countryside where they don’t tend to build public facilities. After running out of water somewhere near the half-way mark of our hike we decided to walk a little bit out of our way to get to the nearest town. We asked the first person we saw for some l’acqua – a middle-aged man picking olives out the front of a property. Of course, he happily obliged. However, it still wasn’t enough water for the two of us and we decided to beef it up with some electrolytes (we didn’t bring enough water but we did bring a full first aid kit) and ration out what was left.

We noticed the following strange phenomenon and wondered if the “anti-light” would show up in a photograph or whether it was just our confused brains telling us the rays of light are dark:

Nope, not an illusion. Anti-light, baby.

We walked back to the point from which we’d diverted from the Lonely Planet directions and took the trail they described (“Buona passaggio“, from a well-wishing olive-picker we passed). Only it wasn’t the trail as it was a dead-end. So we took the only other trail that matched that description, which was also a dead end. We went back and walked along the road a bit further and came to the only other road it could have been. It didn’t match the description in the Lonely Planet guide at all but sure enough that was the one they meant. It turned out to be a short-cut to the very place we had just walked to get water. Having successfully added a few kilometres onto our hike by walking in circles we set off in the right direction for the first time in a good long while.

Stumbling and half-limping, zombie-like, we trudged the rest of the way along the decidedly un-scenic highway back to Nettle. One of our dreams for our travels in Europe is to hike the Alps. Given that we just had our asses kicked by the gentle, rolling hills of Tuscany I think we might have a bit of work to do.

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We’ve been travelling through Europe for seven months now and have developed a sort of astronomically high standard when it comes to things to see and do. Mediaeval hill-top towns with charming, impossibly narrow cobbled streets that would have once had me salivating are now generally met with a lacklustre “it’s nice but we’ve seen better”. Ditto for churches and castles. We went to Assisi and didn’t step foot into a church. When we saw photos of the Siena Duomo, however, the newly found HDR photographers in us couldn’t wait to photograph it and it didn’t disappoint.

One of the first things we noticed about this gothic masterpiece was the cacophony of detail in the facade. We’ve both often wondered at the practicality of such lavish detail that is going to be viewed from a great distance. A sculpture that may have taken months to complete may never be focused on for itself but will just blend into the rest!

We wandered the town before entering the Duomo in order to avoid a school group that was just about to go in. I didn’t find the town itself particularly captivating – there was none of the grandeur of Rome, the beauty of Florence or the charm of tiny villages but the piazza was rather impressive in its vastness.

We spent hours in the Duomo being generally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photogenic goodness and not wanting to miss a great shot. Truly, we would have had lacklustre photos if not for our new found HDR skills given the bright spots of light coming in through the windows and the lamps with the rest being in shadow. Tripods weren’t allowed even if we had one so my shoulder and both of us holding our breath was the next best thing.

I love that those dudes above look like they’re at a rock concert, fist-pumping the air.

Another thing that’s easy to overdose on during an extended jaunt through Europe is religious themed art, especially in Italy. One of the highlights of the Siena Duomo for me was the library which had massive illuminated vellum hymn books on display. To my delight they were filled with creatures and floral designs that could easily slot into a pop surrealism painting today. This guy put me strongly in mind of an X-Men cartoon:

Awesome afro.

By far my favourite little guys were these dolphin-like creatures that I could totally see in a Greg “Craola” Simkins painting – they’ve even got his trademark pearls!

I felt such a powerful sense of kindred-spiritness through this vast span of time with the whimsical soul who conjured up these bizarre creatures. It’s the first time that I felt I could really relate to a specific person from another time period and it made me reel a little bit at the… I don’t know, interconnectedness of it all, I suppose. You can’t get much more modern than pop surrealism in the art world. Like the Impressionists and the Salon, pop surrealism artists are still largely unaccepted by mainstream galleries: That’s how new it is. Yet, here’s some dude illuminating hymn books with these imaginary slightly creepy creatures almost 600 years ago that could be published in the funkadelic Hi-Fructose magazine today. This to me, was much more interesting than seeing an umpteenth Madonna and baby Jesus.

After spending some time pouring over the books Mike asked me if I’d looked up yet.

Thank goodness for zoom lenses and digital SLRs because it turned out there were more creepy creature goodies all the way up there getting lost in the “more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-ness”.

We probably could have stayed and spent another hour or two photographing the cathedral but we were racing daylight so we headed off at peak hour, as usual, for our home for the night – a sosta in the delightfully named town of Poggibonsi.

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Mike and I have taken our photography to the next level by learning about “HDR” – High Dynamic Range photography. I was inspired by the blog of Trey Ratcliff – Stuck in Customs – to finally take the leap but had been a bit in awe of what I’d seen around the interwebs for a long time as well. I originally learnt how to use Photoshop because I was very interested in blending my paintings with photography. In a similar vein, the particular style of HDR photography that I am interested in results in a “painterly” looking photograph. However, my main motivation for learning more about this technique was the realisation that we’re seeing some pretty amazing places and things and if we put a little bit of effort into learning more and improving our photography we could build a fairly impressive portfolio. I had a stabby fear when I thought about coming to the end of our travels and thinking “huh, we really could’ve taken better photos“. I would never be able to forgive myself for that. No regrets!

As they say, a picture says a thousand words so here’s a before and after HDR photograph to give you an idea:

Before

After

Chieti Good Friday Procession

There have been many highlights since being back in Italy. Often it seems like each day is better than the last. An absolutely unforgettable experience though was the Good Friday Procession in Chieti. It’s an ancient tradition and going by the strange garb and bewildering symbology I suspect it hasn’t changed much since ye olde times either – apart from the glow sticks, of course.


I believe each of those doodads attached to the cross symbolise one of the 14 stages of the cross.






I haven’t the faintest why they wear those hoods, but man were the little children creepy. What really set the atmosphere though was the hundred-strong marching orchestra – mainly violins – and all-male choir booming their hymn through the mediaeval streets.

Now for something a bit more cheerful. We stayed at an agriturismo place just outside of a town called “Penne” for a couple of weeks. They had this gorgeous lawn filled with tiny white flowers and strewn all over it were these brightly coloured miniature play-things for children. I spent one sunny spring day snapping away and probably getting some very strange looks from the owners as I got down on hands and knees to capture the perspective I wanted.







To wrap up, here are some miscellaneous pretties for you. An Umbrian field:

And a very sexy tree in the back yard of a lovely Italian couple who had us over for a thousandth course lunch, dinner, and breakfast!

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If you’re a fan of beauty, the environment and being treated like a person rather than a bank/bottle-shop/floosy then you would probably find Tunisia a bit challenging. There are good things about the country and I am going to highlight them but I’m also going to impart my general impressions and generally speaking, our time in Tunisia was a bit shit. Having said that, if you’re only going to be in the country for a few weeks you probably won’t be as affected by the less salubrious aspects of the place as we were during our three month stay. The negative experiences we had would most likely be mere annoyances during a short visit but proved to be exhausting and kind of soul crushing after a month or two.

Before we begin, just one caveat I want to get out of the way. Each of the negative experiences I’m going to touch on here could easily be the subject of an in-depth sociological/anthropological/political/philosophical essay. After spending five years at university studying exactly those subjects and 3.5 years working with asylum seekers and refugees as a social worker you’d probably think I’d be keen to get my academic on and sink my teeth into these complex social issues. Well, I’m not. I’m just putting them out there. This is what I saw/experienced, this is how I felt about it, the end.

The Entire Country Needs a Woman’s Touch

You can tell that women don’t get much of a say in Tunisia because everything man-made is utilitarian, undecorated, unadorned, un-beautified, bleak, barren… you get my drift. To be in a place so devoid of any charm or beauty weighed on me. I suppose that will sound rather petty and frivolous to some but it’s important to me.

A Sign of Progress

We had a very interesting conversation with a man who was a big fan of Osama Bin Laden. Probably the only thing he said that made any sense to me was his dismay at the Tunisian government’s pro-Western policies and the price he saw his country paying for “development”. Quite simply the more Tunisia “develops”, the more stuff is consumed and discarded and the result is pretty depressing.

Do I look like a bank/bottle-shop/floosy?!

We actually met a lot of really friendly people in Tunisia, but unfortunately we were obviously considered easy targets by the country’s entire population of douche-canoes. Mike and I really stood out in Tunisia and a lot of people would say hi, ask us where we were from and welcome us to their country and a lot of those same people would ask us for money or whisky – which is to be expected as westerners in a developing country but gets draining after a while. On top of that, Tunisian men seem to be under the impression that western women are well up for it (and I suppose some of them are), as a significant amount of the encounters I had with men involved one or more of the following:

1. Asking if I was married (usually the first thing they ask, presumably in order to know where they stand but seem perfectly happy to ignore my marital status as well)
2. Touching me (holding my hand, hugging me, stroking my cheek, putting their arm around me)
3. Asking if Mike is my brother
4. Telling me I am very beautiful, have beautiful eyes, etc
5. Asking me to touch my elbows together behind my back (admittedly this only happened once)
6. Asking me out for “coffee”

In the interest of full-discolure the worst of these encounters did occur when I was inappropriately dressed. A singlet top must be a veritable feast for the eyes in a country where not even men wear short sleeves. My bad.

I Miss Women

You don’t see women very often in Tunisia. Public space is for men. There’s something about an all male presence which imbues a place with a menacing air (just me?).

Having said all of that, Tunisia does have some extraordinary places. If you’re travelling to Tunisia, these are the places that would be criminal to miss:

Sfax Medina

We’d read about bad experiences other people had had with aggressive stall owners at medinas (and then experienced it in Tunis) but consistently read that Sfax medina is an exception. We went and it was. We weren’t hassled at all (look at that guy, he barley even knows we’re there).

A highlight of our entire trip to Tunisia was meeting these two young women at the Sfax medina. They were like a breath of fresh air. It was just wonderful getting a young woman’s perspective on life in Tunisia after having only spoken to men for such a long time.

Ksar Ouled Soltane

This place was just plain cool. We even got an impromptu religion lesson (he called it “history”, Mike called it “mythology”) from a guy who was selling his art out of one of the rooms. Such a shame they don’t build them like this anymore.

Chenini

To be honest, I didn’t actually see much of Chenini given the intense concentration I was devoting to not being blown away or getting fistfuls of sand in my eyes, nose and mouth. Plus I may have had a concussion so who am I to say whether or not you should go there. The photos turned out pretty though.

The Sahara

Indescribable. Just do it. No questions asked.

The Chott El Jerrid Salt Lake

Magical. THE highlight of my time in Tunisia. I just looove the quirky little salt sculptures and decorations too.

Dougga’s Roman Ruins

The most intact Roman ruins we’ve visited. They were so startling complete I could easily imagine what this town would have looked like. It put me in mind of Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings with its tiered streets built into the side of the hill.

Miscellaneous Pretties

Wow, you’re still here?! Thank you for coming with me on this epic journey. If you’ve somehow still got more in you and are craving details of our Tunisian adventure head over to my partner’s blog for all the juicy bits.

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I’m very excited to be a part of Andrea Schroeder’s new online group “Creating Dreams Come True“. Turns out, our first assignment is to start a list of 100 things we want to do, be, or have! Her theory (in direct opposition to mine) is that to come up with 100, stretches you to dream bigger and really expands your ideas of what is possible. So, in the interest of being open to new ideas and having a bit of fun, I’m going with it. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. Go on a hot air balloon ride somewhere spectacularly beautiful
2. Successfully sell my collage papers on Etsy
3. Successfully sell my paintings and digitally altered photography on Red Bubble and Image Kind
4. Find my community and make true friendships with other creative, kindred spirits
5. Build a wardrobe full of flattering, quirky, beautiful clothes with lots of skirts, gorgeous footwear, and accessories
6. Have several side projects that earn an income from our travelling – photography, e-books, blog, etc
7. Learn bookbinding
8. Be an accomplished artist
9. Be an excellent conversationalist
10. Own an original Heather Haynes painting
11. Learn how to make pottery
12. Learn to sew
13. Create a children’s book
14. See the aurora borealis
15. Travel Canada in our motorhome
16. Travel New Zealand in our motorhome
17. Make friends in every country we travel to
18. Accept, forgive, and let go
19. Learn the story of my adoption
20. Go paragliding somewhere spectacularly beautiful
21. Practise yoga
22. Join a lively, fun, and friendly book club
23. Patronise contemporary and jazz dance productions
24. Patronise the theatre
25. Own a cozy, rustic cottage in the hills with a studio and an open fireplace
26. Continue to travel Europe in our motorhome
27. Hike the Alps
28. Patronise classical music concerts
29. Attend the Venice Carnival
30. Experience the midnight sun
31. Live in Ireland
32. Live in Paris
33. Live in London
34. For Mike and I to meet our target monthly income from our creative endeavours alone
35. Get to know my brother’s fiance and be a part of my niece’s life
36. Practise meditation
37. Travel Tasmania, Australia, in our motorhome
38. Feel strong and powerful in my body (I totally plagiarised that from Andrea but her wording was just so perfect!)

Wow, over a third of the way there and there’s still such a long way to go! I can see what Andrea means, I really am going to have to get a bit outrageous to make it to 100!

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December 19 Car Ride

What did you see? How did it smell? Did you eat anything as you drove there? Who were you with?

Oh wow, the last 6 months have been one big car ride. Since we picked up our motorhome, “Nettle”, in the Cotswolds, England we’ve driven her through a bit of English countryside, across Wales, all around Ireland and Northern Ireland, back across the UK, from the top of France to the bottom, from the top of Italy to the bottom and then a little bit of Tunisia in Northern Africa. That’s a lot of driving. Of course, some legs have been better than others. I really can’t narrow it down to just one car ride so I’m gonna go ahead and say Ireland and Northern Ireland was one big awesome road trip. I could write a very lengthy blog article just on this one prompt! I’m going to be very restrained and just dot point a few highlights with 1 photo each. If you feel an uncontrollable desire to read about our journeys in elaborate detail check out my very diligent partner’s blog.

Highlights:

• Brightly coloured flowers growing wild along the sides of the roads and clinging to steep hill sides

• The in-between bits – they were just as beautiful as the destinations we were driving to

• A spontaneous detour that took us through the Wicklow Mountains and the first place that made me go “this is why I’ve been dying to travel all my life”

• The Giant’s Causeway Coastal Tour – A driving tour described in “The European Driver’s Handbook”

• Connemara national park – stark, breathtaking, rugged

• Dingle Peninsula -You could believe in faeries and magik and elves in this enchanting place.

• The Ring of Kerry (which was actually pretty disappointing to be honest, but the second half of the drive redeemed itself)

December 20 New Person

She came into your life and turned it upside down. He went out of his way to provide incredible customer service. Who is your unsung hero of 2009.

My partner Mike, and I were befriended by a local Sicilian whilst hiking in the Mt Etna national park one day. He was on his way to a celebration of Sicily’s patron saint with his Alpine club and invited us to come along. There was much eating and singing and dancing. Our new friend and a friend of his then invited us to go see a few of the local natural sights with them another day. Of course, we couldn’t believe our luck and were more than happy to accept the generous invitation. As they showed us the sights they would point out which plants were poisonous, which were good for haemorrhoids, and which ones can crack lava with their roots. They picked various exotic fruits and berries for us to eat along the way. We were then invited to a road rally and then another road rally, dinner at a very special seafood restaurant, a trip to a food expo at Italy’s largest shopping centre with our friend’s mother and partner, and a road trip to a wetland park where flamingos were pitch stopped on their way to Africa for the winter. We’ve been invited back in the spring and summer for some special annual events and have been offered a house to stay in rent-free.

I’ve never met someone so friendly and open and generous. He has almost 700 friends in facebook and I’m not surprised. I’m so unused to such genuine kindness from strangers I frequently found myself entertaining uncharitable thoughts about what could possibly be in it for him and how this could all be a scam, an intricate long-con. I have trust issues. He certainly did come into my life and turn it upside down, as did all the other Sicilians we met who went out of their way to help us. My entire perception of human kind will be forever altered for the better for having met these uncommonly kind Sicilians.

December 21 Project

What did you start this year that you’re proud of?

I have big [for me, not world domination big] plans. I’m so excited. I’m working on them everyday and I’m loving every day. I’ve plunged myself into creating an online creative business. I’m learning how to use photoshop so I can create collage papers to sell as pdf’s on etsy. I love them so much that I look at them every now and then throughout the day. I’m painting every other day and I hope to sell my paintings on Red Bubble. When I decided I’d like to sell prints of my art work on Red Bubble I thought maybe I’d have something good enough in a couple of months. Two days later I had something I was super proud of and am more than happy to put out there in the ether to be looked at and judged and maybe rejected. I’m also learning how to digitally alter photos and am hoping to sell these on Red Bubble also. Just a month ago I hadn’t even entertained the notion of selling my art and now I have an action plan, baby! I feel so energised and things feel so right. I feel like for the first time in my life I’m doing something that I can excel at if I just give it my time and hard work.

December 22 Start-up

What’s a business that you found this year that you love? Who thought it up? What makes it special?

This is very biased of me and it’s also something that I’ve already blogged about so I’m sort of cheating.

December 23 Web Tool

It came into your work flow this year and now you couldn’t live without it. It has simplified or improved your online experience.

Since starting out on this crazy new slow travel lifestyle of ours, Mike and I have been keeping tabs on our expenses so we know how much we need to earn to feasibly do this indefinitely. We’ve been religiously using an iphone app called “iExpenseIt” – terrible name, I know, but it’s a good app. Thanks to this nifty app we know that slow travelling in expensive Italy cost us on average $48 (AUD) a day and since we’ve been in Thrifty Tunisia we’ve been making do on $27 a day. That’s cheaper than living and paying rent in Melbourne, Australia. Add a 30% buffer to cover savings and unforeseen expenses and we need to earn $62 a day (based on expenses in Italy) to continue living our dream. It feels so liberating to know how much we need to be earning and aim for that instead of aimlessly earning as much as we can. If you’re interested in this kind of lifestyle and philosophy, check out The Four Hour Work Week.

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December 13

What’s the best change you made to the place you live?

Anyone who even vaguely knows myself or my partner knows the answer to this one but for those of you who are friends we have yet to meet, in July this year we bought a motorhome in the UK. Her name is Nettle. I wish she looked like this:

but alas, she’s the sturdier more beefy breed of German gal:

… although she does come with a chimney.

December 14 Rush

When did you get your best rush of the year?

I might just ramble a bit here and see if I’ve answered the question by the end of it. I’m a big wuss. Always have been. I don’t like scary rides at theme parks. They make me feel queasy. In primary school I dreaded the end of school break up when we would all go to our tiny town’s amusement park. When all the other kids were giddy with excitement I was dreading the water slide, especially the one that was an enclosed tube that all the big kids liked. I wasn’t too keen on the toboggan either. And then there were the geese that would chase after me. I don’t push myself to do the things that scare me I simply avoid them. It’s a character flaw, I know. I’m okay with that. So, needless to say I haven’t done anything too rush inducing this year. Whilst writing this I’ve sorted through the meagre, somewhat vivifying activities that have made the short list and this is all I’ve got. There’s really no way I can’t make this sound lame. A severe change in weather on a hike in the Central Sperrin’s Way in Ireland is what did it for me. I’m not sure I can describe it exactly but I’ll give it a go. There was nothing particularly hairy about the hike; no vertigo inducing precipices to be skirted or swaying rope bridges to be braved. Just a lovely, hilly, oftentimes boggy terrain to be leisurely trundled. It was a beautiful day and after walking steadily uphill for quite some time we were fairly hot and sweaty. When we finally crested the summit we found ourselves in the turbulent cloud layer. It was awesome. We were buffeted by a fiercely strong wind, pounded by icy cold rain and a dark layer of swiftly moving clouds surrounded us. I was elated. That’s all. The pure joy of being out in the elements and the intense surprise of the extreme weather exhilarated me. Quite a rush.   

December 15 Best Packaging

Did your headphones come in a sweet case? See a bottle of tea in another country that stood off the shelves?

Self righteous hippy outrage isn’t usually my style but I feel a rant coming on. You have been warned! Throughout our travels in Europe we’ve noticed a distressing trend towards over packaging. Things come in boxes which come in plastic then the things in the boxes are divided into smaller portions that are covered in more plastic. It’s out of control. I’m boycotting Twinnings after discovering that they’re tea bags are individually wrapped! How ridiculous, how pretentious, how irresponsible! Which brings me to the best packaging. We’ve been in Tunisia for a month now. We do grocery shopping here and of course there are many differences such as the deafeningly loud Islamic singing playing in one supermarket but by far the biggest difference I’ve noticed is in the packaging, or lack thereof. In the small grocery stores that dot the streets, everything from olives to beans to sugar can be found in vats or bins or buckets to be scooped into a bag. The focus is truly on providing the produce in the most economical way possible with none of the branding or marketing that has led to boutique individually wrapped products in more developed countries. Even olive oil can be bought in re-used water bottles. It’s not always pretty and I have no idea how hygienic it is but it’s refreshing.

December 16 Tea of the Year

I can taste my favourite tea right now. What’s yours?

Mike and I were befriended by a local Tunisian the other week. He took us out for coffee the day we met then that night we went out for dinner and tea afterwards. I’ve yet to see a woman in a cafe here. They definitely seem to be solely a masculine domain. Walking past one always gives me a vague feeling of unease. Maybe it’s because I grew up in machismo-drenched rural Australia but I find there’s something inherently menacing about a group of men. Is that just me, ladies? Am I in need of therapy? So, when our new friend took us to one of these establishments I kind of felt like a curiosity, an honorary male as a foreign woman, if you will. No matter how much it’s something I don’t want to do or wouldn’t usually want to do, if it involves going out with a local in a foreign country it’s always worthwhile. In this case I experienced the taste sensation that is mint tea. Of course, I’ve had mint tea before but never one that’s made me exclaim with delight. And I did exclaim boys and girls, oh yes. I’ve never been one for flavoured teas. I like the exotic romance of them (plus those little arabic tea glasses) but have never been able to actually summon up much of a taste for them. A whole new world of tea drinking possibilities has opened up before me.

December 17 Word or Phrase

A word that encapsulates your year. “2009 was ___.”

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred”.

- JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Truly the universe seemed to conspire in our favour to make this vagabonding life choice of ours a success. I discovered art just when I was to be granted the time to pursue it. Almost a year’s worth of housesitting opportunities presented themselves so that we could save money on rent and put it towards our new home, “Nettle”. Distant relatives who also happen to be full time motorhomers took us under their wing and found the perfect motorhome for us the first time we visited a dealer. Honestly, it was just all too easy. If we had of done this at any other time maybe none of these things would have transpired. As it is it’s all worked out beautifully, like jigsaw puzzle pieces snapping into place.

December 18 Shop

Online or offline, where did you spend most of your mad money this year?

I brought very few clothes with me on our move to Europe. I packed as much as I would if we were only coming over for a few weeks. This leaves me in the dubiously enviable position of being able to reinvent my wardrobe. Something that, given my pickiness and frugal ways is long overdue. I’ve determined I will only buy clothes that I am absolutely in love with and have been drawing much inspiration from Some Girls Wander to give some focus to my personal makeover. Since my last clothes shopping trip I’ve also added an addendum that that which I love must also be flattering or at the very least not unflattering – a stipulation you would think should go without saying but one look at some of the items that have found their way into my wardrobe disproves that theory rather conclusively. I found a little hand made clothes boutique in Positano, Italy by the name of “Nadir”. I could have purchased about 80% of the clothes in that store and stayed true to my “must love it” commandment. I spent hours in there whilst my friends were at the beach. It was a very emotional experience given that the skirts were going for €200 – €250 and therefore completely out of reach of my frugal little fingers. I wish I had of taken photos of the skirts because they were the real show stoppers but a few shots of the more affordable bits and pieces I did buy and a screen shot of their website that hasn’t been updated since 2007 will have to suffice.

I came away with a passionate desire to buy a sewing machine and learn how to make skirts. It’s definitely still on the to do list.

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