Melody and I figure that a trip around the Alps by foot and by paraglider probably requires some sort of training before hand. On our PCT trip a few years ago we definitely learned that the best training is the hiking that you do in the first couple weeks of your trip. But….Having a trip like ours on the horizon is also a wonderful opportunity to call all that outdoor stuff that we love to do “training.”
Vol Bivouac literally means “fly camping” though, it is often referred to a “sky camping” in English. I think this is because sky camping just sounds cooler. Sky camping is a form of backpacking where you travel by foot and by (paraglider) wing. On a pure sky camping trip you would not use any form of motorized transport. You fly cross country when the conditions are right, you hike when you can’t fly, camp in the wild at night and are fueled by the spirit of the adventure!
I designed the Red Nozzle Stove for my wife and I for a trans-Alps Backpacking trip (well, actually Vol Bivouac trip) that we are planning for the summer of 2011. What we needed was a light, fast, very efficient alcohol stove that would work with our Snow Peak Trek 900 Ti Pots. I have built many cat food and soda can type stoves in the past but, as I started to research designs this time around I fell in love with the idea of a continuous feed compact alcohol burner. After a bit of tinkering the Red Nozzle Stove was born.
Seems you can soar anything here…..
Soaring the Nikko Hotel – Nusa Dua, Bali:
The second half of our Alor trip was an exploration of some of the traditional tribal villages in Alor’s interior. Alor is a odd shaped volcanic island with fantastic bays and lagoons backed by white and black sand beaches strewn with coral on the coast. Mountains rise precipitously immediately behind the coast line. In these mountains there remain a few traditional villages where the people live in thatch houses constructed as they have been for centuries.
Four days before we were supposed to fly to Flores, Sati mentioned the Alor Archipelago, a chain of islands in East Nusa Tengara, just north of West Timor. After reading what little was written about Alor in our guidebook, we spent the next few hours in a travel planning run-around like only Indonesia can conjure. The next day, we were on a propeller plane headed east.
Ubud is quite nice. They call it Bali’s “cultural heart” and there are a multitude of activities for the tourist to engage in that are aimed at introducing them to Balinese culture. To be fair the villages surrounding Ubud are beautiful and steeped in the full richness of Balinese Hindu tradition. In some ways Ubud might be the cultural heart of an island that is jam packed with culture. It certainly is the epicenter of tasteful, upscale tourism and its associated art and shopping madness.
As I drive through the villages completely relaxed or we see our friends at launch I allow myself, momentarily, to feel like a natural part of this place. But every single day, the moments that remind me that we are not in Kansas anymore are hilariously charming. “Did you just see that?!” I ask Sati delightfully so many times each day. Huge yellow dump trucks piled high with massive limestone boulders say “I love you full” in two foot high block letters across their windshields. Other similar trucks come barreling down a steep, narrow road at us with “Risky” emblazoned on their windshields. Indonesians have adopted toilet paper for many other uses and most warungs (little restaurants) have plastic dispensers specifically for toilet paper to use as napkins. Some people here row out in boats just to fly kites. Other people make kites that create a weird, we’re-being-invaded-by-aliens sound and then tie their kites off to fly on their own all night. Teeny kids hide behind fences and pop out long enough to say, “I love you!” and then duck and hide, giggling insatiably. Mothers take all four uniformed kids to school on a motorbike at once. In some villages, when all the kids are in uniform and walking to school, girls carry stick rakes and boys carry machetes. Pringles come in softshell crab, shrimp and seaweed flavors. There is a brand of snacks called Pura Agung that has no indication on the packaging what the snack is made of; some are shrimp crisps, others are fried sweets, others are shredded coconut cakes – you just take your chances until you can recognize those you like. Fifty motorbikes might decided to drive at you in your lane in the wrong direction to get past a bit of traffic on their side of the narrow median. People have fake police lights on their cars. It’s all just weirdly awesome.
We took a trip north to Bedugul to check out some hot springs and temples. We decided to go straight to the hot springs because we have been so stressed out (heh heh). Our directions seemed clear and we were following along smoothly when they just sort of ended with, “the destination village is Desa Angseri, but people will know the area as “patung jagung”, ask locals for directions from here.” So we asked a few people and they kept pointing back the way we had come. In my limited, but improving Bahasa Indonesia, I asked how far it was back. We kept asking people and they kept saying back, back. We were nearly back to the original turn in the directions, when we looked up what “patung jagung” meant in our dictionary. We had been asking people where the corn statue is. Not the hot springs. Not the area where the village is located. The corn statue. Thanks, directions. After this, it was very easy to ask directions to the actual hot springs and we drove through some very remote villages, in which everyone stared at us as we bumped along, and finally reached the springs.
The pilots have been antsy on launch….
Paraglider Pilots tend to get antsy when they don’t get to fly. The last 3 days Timbis, Bali’s “ultra consistant” on-everyday paragliding site, has not been on. Light winds have been torturing us. All the pilots sit on launch trying to put on a good face. Ah, it will be good tomorrow, at least this place is beautiful, blah, blah, blah. And the place IS beautiful. 300ft coral limestone cliffs give way to the blue green Indian Ocean. Reef streaks out to the breaking waves for two hundred yards. Temples dot the ridge line. Dugongs troll the shallows behind the reef. Seaweed farmers toil at low tide.