So as we were planning our trip, a tweet from @gingerale, whom I follow, popped up.
The tweet linked to a photo posted by @EarthPix
An amazing shot at the top of Lion’s head
It was an amazing photo, and inspiring to me, as I was thinking about our upcoming travel. Since I knew we had South Africa on our list, I decided I needed to learn about this hike and plan a visit. In fact I replied to the tweet saying, I needed to do visit, and added it to my travel checklist.
Well it only 160 days later and mission accomplished. I am nothing if I am not good at completing todo items 😉
Standing on the same rock from the original photo
Oddly enough, finding the original photo so I could link back to my inspiration was a bit hard as @EarthPixs has since removed the photo. Luckily, nothing is ever really gone on the internet and a few google searches turned up the photo. However, I still don’t know who exactly to credit for the photo, so I will still just refer to the no longer working @EarthPixs post.
Erin on edge as well
another edge with Robben Island in the background
Erin don’t look down!
Yes we always take peace sign photos
Not a bad view
it almost looks like I am jumping into the ocean
Erin and I dangling our feet
Anyways, it is an amazing hike. It’s actually more what I would call rock scrambling. There is a nice standard trail for about 3/4’s of the hike, then it splits to the easy route or the chains and ladders route. Both routes are reasonably difficult and will require climbing with your hands and feet. The chains and ladders is more popular, but was very crowded so we only use it on the way up, opting for the less popular ‘recommended’ route on the way down. Some of the ladders are just metal hand holds bolted into rock. Others are legit ladders secured into the rock face. There are still many places you will be ‘scrambling’ up with hands and feet together over slightly challenging terrain. Besides a few overcrowded moments where we were are forced to stand with a crown by a cliff face, this is my favorite kind of hike, a mix of walking / climbing.
a partial pano from the top
The spiral climb is amazing because you get to see the view from all sides of the mountain. It still has nothing on the 360 degree panorama you are treated to if you reach the peak. I was really happy to have to chance to experience this ‘todo’ item. It took us 3h40min because of crowds and a picnic lunch in the shade of a cave on the way down. Going our normal speed without crowds it would likely still take 2h30min.
Erin blazing the trail
yes we were on top of that!
hmm looks like a long way down
Finally the beach you see below our feet is Camp’s Bay Beach, which was so beautiful that we had to make it our next stop. Down the mountain and straight for the sand. The view of Lion’s head, which we had just summitted, from just outside out beach umbrella was impressive.
If you ever have a chance visiting Cape Town for Lion’s Head hike, I highly recommended it. Just might want to visit during a less crowded time than Christmas and New Years, as everything is packed even the trails.
After a small hiccup with airport security involving Erin’s favorite sunscreen we had a lovely flight to Thailand.
We ended up moving a few things around between our international flight and domestic flight. During that reorganization, we accidentally put the bag of sunscreen in our carry on. After we had checked bags we went through security and they said one bottle of sunscreen was over the size limit.
This was Erin’s favorite which she had just received as a resupply from her awesome mother a few days prior. Erin was arguing to keep it and trying to pour it into ridiculously small openings of other sunscreen bottles. Dan stood by trying to not argue knowing he had about 4 other too large to travel sunscreens they hadn’t found tucked away in his carry on. After failing to convince them to let us through, Erin took the bottle and said meet you at the gate and left security with her bottle in frustration headed back to the check in counter. I went to our gate to wait, and eventually heard this story.
Back at the check in counter Erin tried to check the bottle…
Desk: Mam you cant check a bottle
Erin: (puts it in a zip lock bag) can I check this bag?
Desk: no no, a real bag
Erin: puts zip lock back inside larger black plastic bag
Desk: no no, you need luggage or box
Erin: (walks to nearby airport book store, please do you have any boxes around) Can I check this double bagged box with sunscreen
Desk: OK thank you
Lesson is, always check your sunscreen and never upset my wife 😉
We celebrate joy to the fishes of the deep blue sea
Dan follows the leader Erin
We swim with the fishes
We got some scuba diving in during our Thailand visit. We are diving on the island of Ko Samui, which has been lovely. We chose to dive with Discovery Dive Center. It included “free” photos with your diving… IE you get photos for free but they aren’t the cheapest dive operators on the island, not that I ever look for “cheapest” when diving 😉
The water was pretty dang warm, but visibility doesn’t match Caribbean / Mexico. The reef and fish are in much better shape though, which is nice. Hadn’t seen schools of fish this large for a long time. Saw a school so large and dense that for about 30 seconds I thought a whale shark was coming into view, but it just turned out to be a massive school of fish coming in from the distance. Sadly, no whale sharks on our dives. Can’t complain we beat the bad weather (monsoon) to the best dive site on these small islands.
I think I did a really good job packing. I read a bunch of travel blogs, I had various backups, little tools, repair kits, first aid, expandable overflow bag, and lots of little useful things not always thought of. I thought I had everything covered, but some things you learn on the road.
I had packed a travel body wash / shampoo combo and my wife had picked us both up some awesome Lunatec self cleaning travel wash cloths that can be used as loofahs (gear that has already proved very valuable — thanks for the tip, ZINK Year).
Lunatec travel wash cloth
As we traveled from hot city to very hot city I started to sweat. Especially as we started to reach locations like Beijing, with less than ideal sanitary conditions, I noticed something. I started to smell!
yeah um, could you keep your arm down.
A smell in hot weather when you are walking 13 miles or so a day (thanks fitbit) might seem obvious to people. I have never really been a very sweaty person, in the states I don’t normally need antiperspirant or deodorant. I smell fine showing once a day even if with a light workout. If I have a real workout I shower after and all is good. Not so much in Beijing I tried to shower 4 times in one day and still couldn’t stay smelling clean. Something wasn’t right and I needed to solve the problem. (I went through this little journey of discovery while a friend was traveling with us, sorry Dina!)
Keeping Dan Clean
We had been in and out of hotels and I had been using a loofah often with the hotel provided liquid body wash. I realized that wasn’t strong enough, back home I always use a soap bar. Buying a real bar of soap and keeping it in a little zip lock bag (you did pack some of those didn’t you) between hotels. This got me most of the way back to normal, but with the extra daypack on my back and hotter temperatures I eventually added travel size deodorant to my arsenal. It is safe to say even if you don’t normally need these kinds of things at home, you might need them while traveling.
Only later did I remember my lush shampoo bar, which is great for travel, and very powerful. I have since used this bar as soap when needed and it works great, definitely cleans better than many of the free shower gels provided by hotels. I mostly have this item for the 24 day camping Safari in Africa, but I’m happy it has already come in handy.
Happy to be back to a nice clean non-smelly person, I figured I should share that nothing beats a real soap bar, a little extra packing space and weight easily worth it.
great travel shampoo, doubles as shower soap
my travel deodorant, lifesaver
clean hair, clean body, clean soul, can’t loose
Keeping Clothes Clean
As long as we are on keeping things clean and smell free, let’s talk laundry. When doing laundry in the sink, we learned from our Vietnemes host family that we needed less water and about 2X the soap in the mix when hand washing clothes. The tip has definitely improved the freshness and lasting effects of a sink clothes cleaning. Also, allowing our clothes to soak in the soap water in the sink a longer time helped improve the freshness. A sink was is really best for use for the times between finding real laundry facilities (which is still highly recommended every couple washes as nothing really beats it). We did have access to several buckets in our home-stay, which is a way better way to hand wash clothes, than in the sink. Our host family really upped my clothes washing skills.
Single use packets of Tide travel (or similar), are highly recommended for sink cleaning. We originally had little sheets of soap, Travelon travel laundry soap, which looked great and travel really well, but they don’t really get clothes very clean and certainly can’t get socks back to smelling fresh after a hike. If you are out of single serve laundry soap, you can find it at little markets all over the world. If you are in a pinch, I have found shampoo, body wash, or directly rubbing a bar of soap on clothes to be effective.
buckets and shower
a small load in the sink
Drying Clothes
We have also learned some tricks and improved our skill drying clothes while traveling.
When you have a nice sunny desk, hook up a travel laundry line, we love our sea to summit clothes line. Things dry great outside and smell amazing. Remember to keep and eye on the weather, we left a set of clothes drying out through a storm and had to start over. If you don’t have a deck you can string it up as best you can inside, which sometimes makes the room hard to navigate (effectively making a trip wire, which nearly kills me in the night). This works but depending on humidity, AC, and such it can take more than 24 hours to really dry out and then it doesn’t smell quite as nice.
our travel laundry line
Hoi An in the sun
the line inside also makes a passable trip wire, nearly killing me in the night
So what to do if you have to sink wash, and you can’t hang outside in the sun, be it lack of space or current weather situation?
We have started to dry pretty much all our clothes using the, Exofficio drying method. While they recommend this for their excellent give-and-go underwear. It works great on t-shirts, travel pants, socks, etc. Basically, a simple 4 step drying process.
ring out the garment
roll it up in a towel, like a burrito
ring out, squeeze, or stomp on the towel
hang to dry
While this requires extra towels, most hotels didn’t have a problem giving us one extra. We also sometimes just showered using a travel towel and would use one hotel towel to help dry clothes. In a rush or didn’t use the Exofficio method? Don’t worry, you can always bust out the hotel hair drier in a last ditch effort to get your clothes dry for your night out.
my REI travel towel, I’ve had it for approx. 25 years
I am heating up our already hot room, even more!
Wash, Rinse, and Repeat…
Go out & destroy your clothes again.
feet up, chasing after the next ruin.
Climbed yet another ruin, stairs you can’t stop me.
Adventures of the Miller Mayers 