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Llywindatravels 2021

~ Around the world with Two Suitcases

Llywindatravels 2021

Tag Archives: Transportation

The Indian Pacific Raillway Takes Us Across

07 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in Australia, Indian Pacific

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Landscape, Transportation

We spent a peculiar four days and three nights crossing Australia from Sydney to Perth. The trip included days of being glued to the train window watching the scenery as it went from tall trees to flat, dry, and empty, liberally dotted with kangaroos and emus. On the other hand, we took this trip to enjoy a number of interesting stops along the way. Due to a breakdown before we ever boarded, we didn’t get any of those opportunities that were such a large part of our decision to take the train. Never mind the downside, the view out the windows was fascinating!

The land became drier and drier as we moved west. The soil ranged from red to white.Water for irrigation is running out and we saw recently abandoned grapevines.

Salt flats between Adelaide and Tarcoola.

We got off the train for a few minutes at Broken Hill, which has interesting train murals. Twenty minutes was just enough time to walk up and down the platform and get some fresh air.

Our next stop was Adelaide, and it was dark when we arrived. The final stop during the journey was Kalgoorlie, where we had an hour to stretch our legs. By then, our third full day on the train, everyone was happy to disembark for a while. We strolled around in the early morning light.

Life on board the train was not uncomfortable, though it did get to be a lot of the same sights after three days of constant motion. There were only a couple of places where the route turned and let us see the cars ahead.

It’s always fun to eat in the dining car of a train, making meals an event. The food was good, and the company excellent. Having Lyra with us made it more fun. The three of us made a winning trivia, team, too.

Outside the train, especially in the late afternoon, we saw kangaroos browsing as they watched us pass. There were emus, hawks, and other birds, though we did not see any feral camels, despite spending many hours looking out the window. The sunsets mixed orange sunlight with blue, gray and white fingers of cloud in patterns that changed as we watched. We arrived in Perth after dark, the last kangaroos long since passed. Disembarking was a bit like emerging from a space ship might be. We set down in another landscape, completely different than what we had been seeing out the window. Perth is a large city, and we had to re-engage with reality, find a taxi and go pick up our rental car. Our days of staring out at Australian landscape now over, though well worth the time spent.

If anyone is interested in the story of how our Indian Pacific trip ended up with minimal stops, leaving Sydney late and arriving in Perth late, I’d be happy to tell you.

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Directing Traffic in La Paz

09 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by winifredcreamer in Bolivia

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Transportation

La Paz has terrible traffic. We picked up our rental car less than 1 km from our hotel and drove back to the parking structure. Sunday morning we planned to drive to Tiwanaku. Google Maps and our phones suggest a route crossing the heart of the city. We opted for the slightly longer highway route that circle the city center. Sunday’s are often a good day to drive in large cities. Traffic can be lighter because it’s not a work day.

Not for us. Today was the first Sunday closing of the highway to permit its use by cyclists. It was only supposed to have closed a single lane, but the entire area was blocked off, so we gritted our teeth and followed the directions on Google maps. What a disaster! Who writes the algorithms that send you from a blocked highway into a Sunday market! We were trapped in a maze of streets as we very very slowly worked our way around a large area blocked off for the day. As we felt our way along the edge of the market, we crossed intersections that let through one car on each green light, another in which all streets were one way the wrong way because the market had closed off the only through street. We fought taxis and combis (van buses) to turn back at two dead ends, waving back the cars coming toward us to the same fate. We seemed to have made it to the far side of the market area after almost an hour and our directions sent us up a hill. The street was open as we started up but there was only one lane, the rest of the street was taken up by parked cars. We got half way up and cars started streaming down. We held up opposite an empty parking space so that vehicles could get around us, waiting for another gap to get the remaining half block.

Car after car funneled into the street. After ten minutes or so, I said, I’ll go up to the corner and stop traffic. Jonathan encouraged me to wait. After all, the street was empty when we started up. Five more minutes and the street was full up to our front bumper. I was getting a bit worried. Just then the front corner of a full-sized bus began to emerge from the right and turn into our lane. I got out of the car and ran the half block up the hill. I forgot we were over 12,000 ft and by the time I arrived in the intersection, panting heavily, the bus was already inching toward Jonathan. Cars were barely moving. I began waving my arms. “Stop! Stop! No! Back!” I shouted at them. I yelled that a car had to get out. No one wanted to stop but I stood in the intersection. A cab tried to get around me, but I stepped toward him waving my arms and using my mom voice. He was going to create gridlock in another few seconds. “Back, back up!” I stepped toward the front bumper of his black station wagon taxi still creeping forward. “BACK!” He began to reverse. Another car began to pull ahead and I waved my hand and shouted “NO.” Then a car indicated it wanted to pull away from the mess in the direction we ultimately wanted to go. I waved them on. Another followed. I looked back down the street. The green and yellow bus was still choking the street, a giant inchworm trying to move ahead. There was some movement, though slight. I turned my head back to the intersection still waving and shouting. Two cars back, the honking began, but I waved my arms, “No, No, Not until it’s clear!” The bus had begun to worm its way past Jonathan. He was almost clear, so I kept shouting.

Two women at a sidewalk stall were grinning at my antics, some crazy foreigner shouting at the traffic in Spanish. Then they pointed and shouted. Jonathan was finally coming up the hill. He stopped in the middle of the intersection, I opened the door, got in and shouted my thanks as we drove off. The ladies waved.Waving my arms frantically and yelling at two lanes of oncoming cars is hard work at 12,000 ft and the second I sat down in the car, I wilted, my head began to burn with a full-on migraine, and I grabbed a bottle of water. It was just overexertion at altitude and in a few minutes my blood pressure was back to normal and we were climbing up the side of the valley away from the city center and on to Tiwanaku.  At that point, I opted to pop a mouthful of coca leaves and some activating ingredient, which put my mouth immediately to sleep and then miraculously cured my headache.  Some traditional medicine is worth its weight in gold.

Postscript: We may be dumb but we’re not stupid. We are never driving in La Paz again. We’re parking our rental at the airport and taking a taxi in. We learned our lesson.

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Something got confused in Den/burgh or Edin/mark

04 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by winifredcreamer in Edinburgh, Paula, UK

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Illness/injury, Transportation

More on having a sprained ankle….. There was a long walk between flights. Our first leg, Oslo to Copenhagen, landed at the end of one terminal. Our next leg left from the end of another terminal that also required passport check. I went ahead (a bad idea as it turned out) and then tried to get an electric cart for Jonathan. By the time I got it, he was at passport control. When we went through, we turned out to be at the start of a very long walk to the gate. Fortunately, Paula had contacted the gate staff and the plane waited for us. We weren’t late for the flight, but we arrived at the gate with only a few minutes until flight time, and the doors are often closed 10-20 minutes before the scheduled departure. We had already found out that our seats were SASGo, the cheap seats, and not SASPlus as they had been on our arrival in Norway. That meant less room and no food. Not a problem, fortunately, as Jonathan was on the aisle and we weren’t starving.

SAS–THE uH-oH FLIGHT!!!

Our welcome to Edinburgh was marred by the arrival of our luggage. That is, all of our luggage EXCEPT Jonathan’s suitcase. I went to the desk to submit a report and found two staffers, only one of whom could handle SAS issues. He was on the phone for a long time, 10-15 minutes, with the group before me. He then said he couldn’t be in two places at one time. “If you have lost luggage to report, follow me.” So I did. He then walked me and another passenger out of security without telling us that was happening. We got near the exit and I said, “What about the others in my party?” His answer, “You didn’t say you were with a group.” He said it was already too late to go back, at which I pointed out that I didn’t even have my passport.  In the end, I got him to call Paula’s cell phone to tell her and Jonathan to come out of baggage claim and meet me. At the end of a half hour after the last bag came off the carousel, all I had was a strip of paper with a phone number. He said to call and collect our reference number for the lost bag, he couldn’t give it to me because it involves typing in all the information on the form I’d filled out and he was too busy. “Be sure to leave a message, because I can’t always answer,” was his last comment.

That was Saturday afternoon at about 4 pm. It is now Monday at 1:30 pm, Jonathan made about a dozen phone calls, mostly with no answer despite the website saying that baggage handling works seven days a week.  To get the reference number for his bag he had to call SAS in Stockholm (possibly outsourced to New Delhi) where you are charged 18 cents per minute to speak to an agent. The young man in Edinburgh was just not going to answer the phone, I guess. We now have our reference number but no further information on where his suitcase might be. More updates as they happen. I am doing the laundry in our new flat so that he has more clothing. Fortunately, I had some of his dirty clothes in my suitcase, so he is not utterly without clothing. We may have to do some shopping.

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Agadir to Sidi Ifni–the charming Hand of Fatima

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by winifredcreamer in Morocco

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Transportation

Nouri, the very helpful manager at our riad in Marrakesh, picked up our bus tickets to Agadir. He also helped arrange our transfer to the bus station. First the suitcases go in a cart to the edge of the medina, then the taxi is loaded, and then we are off to the bus station. Three hours later we meet Joyce and Jean-Marie in Agadir.

3.11.16 BusBus stations are much alike.

3.11.16 Agadir to SI-004smThis is the landscape of southern Morocco.

We were delighted to arrive at our friends’ home in Sidi Ifni. The Hand of Fatima painted on their front door is a symbol of protection and fortune.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

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Subway, train, bus, and on foot

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by winifredcreamer in Barcelona

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Transportation

I commented on the events of Catalonia Day, but there’s more! Riding the escalator to the subway the next day, what did I see, but a left over arrow from the demonstration. This lone survivor (dark pink, for equality) is now living on the wall of our apartment.9.12.15 flea market El Encants-007 I am very happy with my artifact of the demonstration. The tens of thousands of its companions (see previous post) have probably been recycled already.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To learn the suburban train system we took a trip to the beach, visiting Caldes d’Estrach, a town about 40 minutes ride northeast of downtown Barcelona. Getting there was the easy part. It took us almost as long to find out where to purchase our “Tarjeta Dorada” (Golden Card) that gives us a 40% discount on all train tickets all over Spain just because we are over 60. With that and assistance at the ticket machine to find the tab to use it (Other), we bought round trip tickets for 4.90€ each. We managed to miss the train while finding the platform, but the information people were helpful and showed us that another train departed the same place only 15 minutes later. Trains along the coast are rarely more than 20 minutes apart. The train station in Caldes d’Estrach is a few hundred yards from the beach.9.14.15 Caldes d'Estrac

The beach on a Monday.

9.14.15 Caldes d'Estrac-00sm2

The sand is full of tiny shells, miniscule limpets, mussels, scallops and sea urchins smaller than a drop of water. They look white in the sun, but at home, some were pink, lavender and striped in shades of tan and brown.

9.14.15 Caldes d'Estrac-007sm

Yes, it turned out to be a nudist beach but no one minded us. It was Monday and even nudists were thin on the ground. We had our picnic, bought drinks and chips, beach combed, read books. It was great. I even went in the water, briefly. (Our chairs and umbrella cost 15€).

Beach combing (my favorite sport) is somewhat different here. This beach appears to be groomed every day, probably to make the beach less steep, but this churns up the shell. Most are small. I look for beach glass with the added bonus of beach ceramics here in the Mediterranean where people have been throwing debris in the sea for thousands of years. I threw back far more beach glass than I saved, but found some interesting bits. I also found a small rectangle of tile that we brought home to use as a soap dish. I saw a similar one in a museum shop for 7.50€ (score!).

DSCN0911

 

 

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