Spontaneity is Expensive and Rude

Sunday, before last, I was working at one of the three part-time jobs I now have when Jason called me and informed me that we were going to Durban. “Ok.”, said I, not completely convinced that he was serious about making an unplanned 6 hour trip. When he picked me up from work he assured me that we were leaving in a few hours and that I should get a day off work. I didn’t bother to reason because I was pretty sure I had no choice in the matter.

Jason and his brother, Matthew, had just decided that the beach would be a nice escape from the cold winter weather. Jason organised for us to stay with friends in the Midlands on Sunday night and Matthew arranged a free hotel room in Durban for Monday night. We would drive home on Tuesday.

Jason’s “We’re going to Durban” face

Along with Amber, Matthew’s girlfriend, we drove to the Midlands. Malvina had only been given a few hours notice of our visit but had generously made us beds and offered us dinner. She put Jason and me up in their cottage and Matthew and Amber in the under-construction lodge.

In the morning the sun revealed a beautiful farmhouse with surrounding natural forest. The four of us took a walk down to one of the waterfalls and then Jason and I walked through a shallow section of forest. We would have gone in further but we knew that if we got lost Matthew would be furious at us for taking from his beach time.

The house 

Walk with the Danes

Taken from future Bath House building

This building is going to be the backpackers

We left the Midlands early afternoon much to my disappointment; South African beaches don’t really compare well to Caribbean beaches.

I assume that the Kwazulus must think that the rest of South Africa is occupied by psychopathic killers. I really can’t think of any other explanation for the large signs that read “Please don’t kill us!” as you drive through Kwazulu Natal. Either way I realised it must be important to them if they made the effort to put the signs up. I made a mental note not to kill anyone while in Durban.

“Free hotel room” sounded like something that would be pretty dodgy and I prepared myself for something that would be remotely liveable. Turned out that the free hotel room we got was not only more than liveable but also the best room in the building. It was air-conditioned, pretty and most importantly clean; which is not something I can say for cheap Caribbean hotels.  Also the receptionist was a real sport. She had no idea who we were but refrained from throwing us out. She even let us check in before making calls to verify that we weren’t fraudulent vagrants. So if ever you are looking for a nice and affordable hotel to stay in, in Durban, go stay at the Florida Park hotel; not only because they let me stay there for free but also because the receptionist knows how to keep her shit together. If that doesn’t qualify as service I don’t know what does.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on a filthy Durban city beach. I walked along the beach avoiding condoms and broken bottles while the other three braved a dip in the cold winter water. Their swim was soon interrupted by a huffy man on a quad bike who informed them that they were not allowed to swim because all the lifeguards were on strike. This made me wonder if people really get paid to drive around on quad-bikes telling other people to stop swimming. I certainly wouldn’t mind getting paid to do that for a living. Sure you’re the bearer of bad news but you’re the bearer of bad news on a quad bike on the beach!

The next morning we decided to find a nicer beach outside of Durban. We found a spot that sheltered us a bit from the wind and I put down my towel to lie on while the rest took a quick dip. For the first time in weeks I felt completely relaxed. Lying on the beach I pretended just for a few hours that I didn’t have to start my life all over again.  I pretended that I didn’t have three part time jobs, a cell-phone that doesn’t actually work and a learner’s licence that had expired months ago. Sea air therapy worked its magic.

 

By the time we left Durban we were rested, slightly tanned and Amber was sick. Clearly the sea air wasn’t working as well for her.  The getaway was well worth it, even if we spent a lot of money and even if we only gave Malvina a few hours notice. To our merit though, we didn’t kill any KwaZulus.

The Benefits of Coming Home after Travelling

Although I miss travelling already I’m not unhappy about being back home; after all there are so many advantages for someone who’s recently travelled. Here’s my list:

• Perspective

To cheer myself up about having to spend money on groceries I compare the prices to that of how much we would have paid overseas. Jason bought a six pack of beer last week that cost the same as one beer in the USA. Score! Well at least it feels that way.

• Tipping

I came back with heaps of coins from America and Antigua that were shaking around in my wallet for at least a month. I had no idea how handy they would be until I went out to have a hangover breakfast one morning. After Jessica accidently spilt an orange juice all over me I asked a waitress to bring me a wet wipe or a serviette to clean my pants. She rolled her eyes at me and when she returned to clean the table I had to ask her again. Finally another waiter brought me a bowl of dipping water. My friend Astrid pointed out that she definitely wasn’t getting a tip. I did give her a tip though, in US dollars.

• Some more perspective… for other people

I came back to discover that my youngest sister cleans the bath properly now and my mother occasionally cleans the counter after cooking. Actually this has fairly little to do with me going away but it’s still nice. While I was away my mother had a tenant who was pretty much half blind. She couldn’t see well enough to clean the counters or even the bathtub properly. Jessica, who was annoyed about having to clean the tub before bathing each time, admitted that she now knew how I felt when she had done the same to me. Some of the best words I’ve heard uttered.

• People actually want to listen to me

Actually this applies more to Jason because he loves to talk much more than I do. The point is that ever since we came home people have been interested in listening to us. They want to hear about the parties and killer rums in Antigua and sometimes about the ‘oh-so dangerous’ sea travel. These people are usually friends but Jason doesn’t allow the label of ‘acquaintance’ to deter him from exhibiting a slideshow of 101 photos.

• South Africa is awesome!

Just a few of my favourite spots

Kaapsehoop- inhabited by mist, horses and rocks

Hike to Bridal falls, outside Nelspruit

God's Window

On a Serious Note

So I’m just going to put humour aside here; bear with me. Today I want to mention one of the things that made our experience as travellers so wonderful. The people we met were really what made it fantastic; starting with Sophie and Matt who we met in Tortola.

When we arrived in Tortola we had no idea what we were in for. We couldn’t find any work that wouldn’t get us deported and the cheapest accommodation we could find turned out to be very expensive. In no time at all we had spent our airfare money and we were pretty stressed. When we met Sophie and Matt they were just about to go on holiday. They did not need a house sitter but offered us the choice to house sit for them anyway. The best part of all is that they had such a lovely home with a view of all the nearby islands. When I finally did get a little bit of work I didn’t have to spend my earnings on expensive hotel fees, instead I bought us tickets to Antigua. For Sophie and Matt’s kindness I will be eternally grateful. They are the kind of people that make the world so fantastic and not only because of their kindness but also because of their sense of adventure.

Sophie and Matt looking at the view after our hike up.

Thank you, Matt and Sophie.

Very Amateur Travel

I have been writing almost every day for the last two weeks but not at all about anything that I would ever read or ever write about if I weren’t being paid to. However, it’s surprisingly less tedious than I thought it would be because it’s still writing even if the topics include ‘how to pick up women’ and ‘medical cargo pants’. Still it’s really amusing; I don’t know the first thing about picking up women seeing that I’ve never tried.

The other thing that has been taking up my time is trying to decide what to do with this blog seeing as it is a travel blog and I am not travelling. It is dishonest after all to have a blog called ‘Amateur Travelling’ which is really about my boring life as a part-time shop assistant/internet-fluff writer and whatever else I stumble upon.  So I’ve come up with two possible solutions:

1. I could change the name of my blog to something more appropriate like ‘My travelling is so amateur I don’t even leave the house’ or ‘travelling is for amateurs; I stay at home’. Only problem is that I don’t have the slightest clue how to change my blog’s name. It would probably take a lot of effort and an understanding of how websites work.
2. The easier option would be to simply earn enough money so that I can go on holiday frequently and write about that. A four hour drive to Nelspruit still counts as travelling and maybe I’ll even make it as far as Mozambique. In the mean time I guess I could write about all the places I plan to travel to when I do have the resources to. I would love to do another yachting season in Europe but at the cost of doing an almost-three month boat delivery to get there I think I’ll take a rain check.

What I really want though, is for someone to pay me to go on holidays. I wouldn’t mind writing about that sort of thing at all. So hopefully someone will stumble upon my blog sometime in the near future and decide that that is exactly what they want to do.

This has nothing to do with my topic but it's really funny. My sister and her best friend woke me up wearing this.

I guess my life isn’t completely boring…

New York

New York was a mad rush consisting of two days that are, now, a blur to me. Even some of the photos are blurry.

On the Saturday Gareth, Courtney, Jason and I took a taxi to Providence where we were to catch a bus to New York. Our taxi driver was probably half blind; he almost squished a squirrel and went straight through a stop street after that. We found ourselves wishing he’d do more concentrating and less talking. He told us in a paternal sort of way that New York was very overwhelming. “Whatever you do, do not let the city overwhelm you!”

After three and half hours on the bus we started walking towards our hotel room and closer to Times Square. When we reached Times Square we stopped to take it all in. Courtney clutched his chest and gasped, “The city! It’s overwhelming me!”

Times Square, overwhelming us.

And it really was overwhelming; the noise, the smells and the clutter of people, buildings and flashy advertising. We spent the first few hours just walking around dumbfounded. For the first time since we left home I actually felt like a tourist especially with Jason walking next to me with a big camera taking pictures of everything.

After booking into our hotel room we lost Gareth and Courtney in a hoard. We shrugged off our losses and went ahead and had a great day anyway.

We took a stroll in Central park, explored over-the-top shops including a three story Toys R Us and also a two story shop devoted entirely to candy coated “m&m” souvenirs.

m&m statue of liberty, because you know, liberty has everything to do with candy-coated chocolate.

Found in Central Park. “Twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder what you’re at”

Life-sized T-Rex robot in Toys R Us

Also in Toys R Us, which I pointed out to Jason would be more appropriate in an Adult World

 

My favourite though, was the Ripley’s Believe it or Not ‘Odditorium’.  Surely it doesn’t get much better than shrunken heads, albino giraffes and three-legged tap dancers.

Yeah, that’s my boyfriend.

Albino giraffe!!

oink!

My pickled head

Shrunken head

On the next day Jason and I visited the Natural Museum of History which we had to do quickly to get to our bus on time. At the ticket counter Jason asked how long it would take to do a proper tour of the whole museum. The lady told us that it would take about a week but that we could do it in three days. “Perfect!” we told her, “we have three hours.”

We ran through the museum taking fuzzy pictures, occasionally stopping for a brief ogle. Jason pointed out that when people asked us “what animal does that skeleton belong to?” and “Why is that guy wearing a shell suit?” we’d probably say something like “Oh wow, I don’t remember seeing that.”

Giant Armadillo

Giant skeletal Tortoise.

No, I don’t know why he’s wearing shells. Honestly I don’t know why anyone would.

My overall opinion of New York: It was noisy, stinky, excessive and crowded. After spending only two days there I decided I could never live there. But despite all of that I loved New York; loved the lights and the signs and the busy energy and everything that made New York excessive.

South African Planet

we are in

SouthAfricanPlanet

South Africa

That One Time We Hit a Shark: Antigua to Newport

Two weeks ago Jason and I hopped onto South African racing yacht ‘Prodigy’. In exchange for working as delivery crew to Newport the owner agreed to buy us flights home. Since then Jason has decided to stay with the boat for a while longer to work as race crew. I’ll be flying home this week. The delivery took 10 days and along with our Skipper, Gareth, and third crew member, Courtney, we had a pretty good time.

Sorry this is so long. Props if you don’t fall asleep halfway through. I’ll put a post up about our trip to New York next week.

Prodigy 

Prodigy, built in South Africa in 2006, hasn’t had the best of luck. After sinking about 4yrs ago she sat in a harbour up until the beginning of this year when she was finally repaired and sent off to the Caribbean to compete in the Antigua Race week which she didn’t enter due to engine and generator problems. We have now delivered her to Rhode Island where she will take part in the Transatlantic race. I’ll let you know if she doesn’t break down before that.

If you don’t know much about racing yachts then you probably don’t know how uncomfortable they are.  They are extremely uncomfortable. This delivery was very challenging in the way that we really had no luxuries; no shower, no air conditioner, no fridge, no freezer, tiny gas cookers and no autopilot. So just to make our suffering clear, that meant washing out of water bottles outside, eating mostly tinned foods and someone had to be steering all the time.

Introducing Courtney (left) and Gareth

My bunk: the no-fun hammock.

Kitchen

This is the account taken from my journal.

Day 1: Didn’t I say I’d never do this again?

Finally left, 15 days late. It was just one disaster after the next trying to leave Antigua.  Felt mild discomfort (seasickness) after a few hours of sailing but overall it was a good day. When the wind was right the boys brought out what looked like a circus tent, but really it was just a spinnaker sail because apparently it makes no sense having circus tents on racing yachts.

The boys caught two fish today.

Caught this Barracuda first but we let him go. Weren’t sure if he was safe to eat so close to the coast.

The Tuna the boys had for dinner.

The circus tent and a very hung-over Courtney after a night of forgetting he was on antibiotics.

Day 2

After a good night of rest I’m feeling very chuffed about the deal I struck with the boys. Basically it was agreed that if I cooked dinner and helmed a little during the day, when the boys had to do sail changes or repairs then the boys would do all the night shifts.

We stopped for a swim today. It’s been very calm and flat today; unfortunately no wind.

Photo by Jason

Beautiful Dorado. Let him go because he was too big for dinner.

Day 5: The Peg Game

Gareth invented a game today for us to play for the rest of our trip. I’m too lazy to think of a catchy name so I’ll just call it the “Peg game”. Basically we all have a clothing peg that we’ve named and pegged to ourselves. These are the rules:

1. No talking about the peg game outside of the peg game. (oops)
2. You have to keep your peg on you at all times. If caught without your peg the other three competitors get to graffiti your face with marker pens.
3. To eliminate another contestant you must steal their peg without being caught and peg it on the Dan buoy.
4. Peg can only be pegged onto clothing.
5. The winner gets three drinks on the rest of the competitors and must proclaim that he/she is the “Peg champion!” after each drink.

Small fry holding a big fish.

Day 6: Sneaky Tactics

Jason deviously stole Gareth’s peg while he was sleeping this morning. We all sat outside snickering like foxes waiting for Gareth to wake up and realise. Finally I had to wake him up for his shift, calling to him through the hatch. All I heard in reply was a string of profanities and insults directed at his lousy crew. Ironically Gareth had been telling Jason all night how he knew he was going to win the game.

When Gareth finally came out he gravely informed us: “I never thought a peg would make me feel so bad.”

While taking a nap this afternoon, Courtney snagged my peg. I woke up when I heard someone running on the deck; I checked for my peg and realised I’d been jacked.

Peg Game just became Courtney vs. Jason.

Jason laughing at Gareth

Day 7: The Mysterious case of the Ravioli

Because we’re beating into the wind we had pretty rough weather last night. Things got thrown all around the boat and it’s pretty messy inside. Fortunately I slept with my head under my sheet last night because of the strong diesel smell; when I woke up there was canned ravioli sauce all over the ceiling, all over my sheet and on the wall right above my head.

The boys claim no responsibility and apparently have no idea how it got there.

I took my revenge on Courtney while he was winching this afternoon, making Jason the peg champion.

Gareth checked the weather today on the satellite program and apparently we’ve missed a hurricane by a week. That’s how we roll!

Day 8

I threw up for the first time today which is definitely a new record for me.

We’re running out of good food and Courtney suggested that they eat me. Sometimes I can work pretty well under pressure; I skilfully changed his mind by pointing out that it would be silly to eat the skinniest. It totally worked.

Hiding from the cold.

The Small Things

I’ve been living in Antigua for four months now and in less than 2 weeks we’ll be leaving. In true Carmen ‘leave-it –to-the-last-moment” fashion, I’ve still hardly written a word about Antigua and I how I feel about being here. It comes down to a little bit of procrastination. Mostly though I didn’t want to write because of how miserable I felt about being here; starting when Tasi died. He was one of Jason’s closest friends and being unable to make it to his funeral was very hard for us. It was one thing after the next following that; missing important birthdays, being unable to comfort my family when they needed me, and just simply missing home and the people I care about.

Being stressed about not finding full time positions while all around us our friends were hopping onto boats just made me want to be home all the more. As South Africans we knew it would be hard to find positions, we just didn’t know how hard. The painful truth is that when it comes to hiring, Europeans and Americans will always take precedence over even the schengen-holding-South Africans.

A few weeks ago I went on a charter as a chef/solo stewardess with a Kiwi (neither the bird nor the fruit) Skipper who helped me gain a little perspective. After a week working together, because he realised how hard I’m prepared to work and that I’m really good with guests, he asked me if I would like to come work for him when the owner buys the new boat. It made me realise that there are still Captains (or at least captain) who don’t care how much paperwork it takes to have the most diligent crew rather than the most entitled.  After arriving back in Antigua, a South African friend of mine was also offered a job and he is now on his way to England.

Back to the point though; what do I think of Antigua? In the last four months Antigua has become a little like a home to me and not because I’m fond of Antigua itself, in fact I barely like the place. It’s the friends I’ve made here that have made it a home. I’ve always struggled with people a little; I’m very judgemental, cynical, harsh and also insecure at times which makes it hard for people to like me. Coming to Antigua gave me a fresh start; a chance to be more of the positive traits I have. In the last five months, I’m including Tortola, I’ve made more friends than I have my whole life.

Antigua without these people and without Jason would just be the brown island of the Caribbean with terrible service and a shortage of good manners, to me.

Other than that it’s the small things about Antigua that intrigue me; it’s the small things about any place that I want to hear about. When my Aunt came back from India where she lived for six months one of the things she told me that fascinated me the most was simply that ‘toilet paper is really expensive in India’. That’s not exactly something you would find out about by reading ‘Lonely planet’. So I want to talk about the small things and you can find out about the beautiful beaches and great restaurants in a travel guide. By the way if that travel guide also tells you that there’s good snorkelling in Long bay then the writer obviously hasn’t snorkelled there since they built Sandals on the beach; if you want to snorkel then go to another island all together.

The first thing the guide books won’t tell you is that the locals really aren’t big on ‘service with a smile’; in fact half of them make you feel guilty about having asked for service in the first place. In my experience whenever I’ve had a friendly waitress, bartender or cashier he/she has come from another island. I won’t pretend to know why this is; maybe they’ve had enough of all the tourists and crazy yachties or maybe their culture is just plainly lacking in etiquette. Either way it’s something you become accustomed to if you stay here long enough. I’ve acclimatized to the point where I might never tell off a Cape Townian waitress again.

The rest of the things that bother me about Antigua are pretty much the same as the things back home: animal abuse, careless littering, steel drum bands, drug abuse etc.

I regress; just like the toilet paper fact I’ve one trivial fact (from now on known as the toilet paper fact) about Antigua that really surprised me. A while ago I started looking in all the little shops in English Harbour for an A4 book. When I didn’t find one I went to the stationary shop in Antigua’s town, St. John, and in every other possibly stationary related shop and I still couldn’t find one. Soon after that I started noticing all the scholars doing their homework, outside the local internet cafe/grocery store, in little A5 books.

A street in St. John

Toilet paper fact #1: Antigua has no A4 books.

Well now that I’ve made Antigua sound like the worst place in the world (tourist music!?!?) I have to be honest and say that there are also things that I like about Antigua besides the fact that you can walk in the streets without a shirt and a beer in your hand. Not that I would do either.

Antigua has really good public transport in the form of very expensive taxis and very cheap buses and if you manage to hop on either in the right direction there are parts of Antigua to see that aren’t brown. We went to see some of these places on four-wheelers which happened to be my favourite day spent here. I’ll let the beautiful photos Jason took do the mending.

 

Jolly Harbour where the eighth member joined us.

Boys sitting on a canon at an abandoned fort

Sitting in the top a windmill. From left: Ollie, Rob, Lukas, Jason, me, Ryan, Gareth.

Now the season has ended here, all our friends have left or are leaving, and also because I don’t particularly like hurricanes it’s time to leave. We’re going to Newport where we’ll try again for a little while and then we’ll be on our way home.

Settling into Antiguan Life

This is where I work.

This is where I play

(Written yesterday, posted today because 80 minutes of walking is enough for one day)

So I haven’t posted anything in quite a while because I actually haven’t been writing at all. I like to think that it’s because of an unhealthy dose of stress that I haven’t been remotely inspired. Either that or I’m just plain lazy. Although I did take a 20 minute walk four times today, which means I walked for 80 minutes today and calculating that probably proves I’m not lazy.

Either way I don’t want to rattle off about being stressed or my soon-to-be-amazing leg muscles. That would be boring. Actually I’m confessing to a personal weakness today… I hate asking people for anything, unless I’m paying for a service. I hate hitch-hiking, I rarely have a second plate of food at someone else’s house and I often carelessly stretch my arm across the table for the salt. The list of examples is embarrassingly long but you get the point.

Jason, however, is the complete opposite. He has no qualms with asking people for almost anything while I’m either blushing violently or hiding behind a tree. He’s always lecturing that “you don’t get if you don’t ask.” I know he’s right but I just mull around anyway hoping that someone will just make an offer so I don’t have to ask. I know that sounds ridiculous but it works sometimes. Just a month ago, hitch-hiking in Tortola, Jason had run across the road to ask someone for a lift and I was casually watching cars drive past. Despite my complete futility a car, with two tourists in the front, stopped and offered me a lift.

I’ve managed to get four days of work on three different boats in the last two weeks in pretty much the same way. It’s not that I’m not dedicated to being here, I just really hate walking up to boats, none of which have “hiring here” signs, and asking the crew, “Can I please clean your bilges today?”.

I’m sure you can guess just how good Jason is at dock-walking; starting today he has 3 weeks of day work. This means walking the docks alone for me which of course I will do, in fact I’ve already been today. I just had to swallow, take a deep breath and convince myself that I’m not going to have a panic attack and that no one is going to notice that I’ve worn these pants at least twice every week. I also went into ‘Jane’s crew agency’ today, for the first time on my own, and asked her to call me if she has any work. To be honest I probably did say it very fast and it made me a little dizzy even though technically I wasn’t asking for a favour because I did after all pay a sign up fee.

On the whole I feel like I was fairly brave today.

St. Maarten

Day 2 in St. Maarten

Happiest girl in the world

After spending the whole morning cleaning boat we’ve showered and put on nice clothes to go to town in. We’re hoping to find an electrical store and a place to buy some work clothes. We’re waiting outside of a hotel for a taxi and Jason is sitting next to me flapping his shirt to cool down. “Why don’t you take off your shirt?” I ask him. “Oh,” Says Jason, “I keep forgetting it’s a French island.” He could practically walk around naked if he liked. It’s not only a French island though; it’s half Dutch. We’re actually going to cross into the Dutch side to go to town.

Evening of Day 2

We walked up and down the two shopping streets in Philipsburg today looking for clothes but found something better instead; a very clever Indian man, call him Vishal, trying to sell us something very cool. Karl says “you could go to the moon and you’d find an Indian man trying to sell you something”. At the time we weren’t very happy about meeting him though; we knew we were about to spend money.

None of the many duty free shops had interested us until we found the camera. Of course Vishal told us about all the wonderful functions and we calculated that it cost us less than half of what it would at home. We were sold.

We stopped at the first bar to ease our nerves. It was an open stall on the side of the road. I realised, as I watched people open their drinks and walk away, that you can drink wherever you like here.

Where we had a drink.

Our day didn’t end there; we still had to find our work clothes. Jason and I were amused by the shops we walked past: jewellery/electronics stores and alcohol/jewellery stores.

Day 3

View from a pool we swam in.

This morning a catamaran exactly like ours sailed in and asked to nest next to us. I was delighted to find they were speaking Afrikaans. They are also delivering a boat for the same company and are actually acquaintances of Karl and Maria’s.

The crew: Alwyn, Cameron and Heini, all joined us for drinks this evening at the “Dinghy Dock”. They were low on money so Heini asked the owner of the pub if he could play a couple of songs on his guitar for a round of drinks. In a thick American accent, he says “Hell, I’m easy-going; I’ll give you a round of drinks if you play a few songs.”

Heini fetched his guitar and Jason appointed himself manager, showing him where to sit so that everyone could hear him. He also opened the guitar case next to Heini, “So” he gestured very loudly “people can give tips.” Heini played and we all clapped with much enthusiasm after each song, partly because we enjoyed and partly because we wanted people to notice and give tips.

Unfortunately the only tip he got all night was from Jason. The mostly, French customers weren’t interested in us strange South Africans at all.

When we left Maria invited the American bartender, Ellen and all her friends over to the boat. The next thing I knew we had about twenty guests on the boat including American and French bartenders, French military police and one American surgeon, Tressa.

Day 4

All woke up this morning with hangovers, ate some oats and then along with our three South African neighbours and Tressa, Jason and I made our way to the beach. It was overcast but we decided not to give up the chance to go snorkelling before we left.

The beach we snorkelled off of.

Never snorkel with a hangover! I was so exhausted from just swimming out to the reef, which wasn’t far at all, that I thought I was going to drown. Jason practically dragged me back to the beach.

We set sail for Tortola three this afternoon and I was sad to be leaving friendly and peaceful St. Maarten. Holiday is over.