You know, a day to recover and recoup. But I couldn’t imagine a better place to do it than the Mount Meru Nature Lodge. This time we got the number one room facing the watering hole, and to top it off, tonight is wood fired pizza night. It did not disappoint.
Marce was fighting off a spot of traveler’s lurgy so I was left to my own devices. I took some time to wander, which is something I like to do.
The grounds are peaceful, restful, and blessed with a healthy stream which leaves them lush and green in the middle of dry season. It’s no wonder all the animals stick around here.
The out buildings feature old photos, windup Victrolas, saddles, and memorabilia from the 1950s safari life along with production stills of nature films shot in the area. Amazing local Masai photos which sadly had to be shot in glass frames on the wall.
The following morning we’re being driven to the Kilimanjaro airport by our friend Julius, with great sadness at leaving Tanzania and yet tremendous excitement for our next destination.
After winding our way back up the switchback road, we got to the ranger station where we picked up a young guard with a weapon slung over his shoulder. He directed Emanuel to drive up to the rim of the caldera for the beginning of our game walk. Emanuel would meet us at the end of the trail.
I guess when we look back on it, our expectations were a little high. We were thinking we’d see wild animals close up, outside the protection of the Landcruiser. That’s why we had an armed ranger with us, we thought.
After we piled out I realized he’s got a damn Kalashnikov strapped over his shoulder. Twice he said, “If an elephant charges do not run, this is a very powerful weapon, I will fire a warning shot then aim to stop it!” Well, okay. I didn’t see any elephants around. “We won’t run,” Marce assured him.
He proceeded to repeatedly load and unload the gun with a ch-chung that was probably meant to give us a thrill. We quickly realized that in addition to climbing a semi steep rise, there were huge piles of poop on this trail that you kinda want to miss.
There are nature walks and then there’s nature and it soon became apparent that the Masai use this trail to move cattle around. Maybe too much nature. The only wildlife we were likely to see were the cows.
We spent some time taking the obligatory photos at the edge of the world’s largest caldera. Our ranger enjoyed using my new iPhone and Marce asked a few intelligent questions which he answered. Then he claimed if we went further we would struggle to keep up and he suggested we return to the Landcruiser. He spent the rest of our “walking safari” on his phone. I guess we can’t blame him. We were late getting there and he wanted to go home.
The road back to the ranger station was all washboard which set the whole Landcruiser to chattering and bucking. Apparently there is a prescribed speed which when adhered to, will launch the Landcruiser into the air and it just tiptoes over the ruts. Something like 50 kph. It’s a theory. Marce swears it’s how they drive in Philadelphia. Be forewarned.
Within shouting distance of the ranger station we caught up to a water truck laboring up a hill. We were heading directly into the sun and Emanuel was struggling to see through the glare in the windshield.
The water truck came to a stop. “Elephants,” Emanuel said, and we saw about 8 or 10 beasts crossing the road from right to left in front of the truck. Emanual stopped too, but the driver of the water truck, either impatient or struggling to ride the clutch on the steep road, kept inching forward toward the elephants. He eventually split the herd, let out the clutch and took off.
Emanuel, always respectful of the animals, paused as the last elephant crossed the road. Suddenly, we heard a loud trumpeting, the first we’ve heard in nearly a week of elephants. The three of us turned toward the sound, to the left, where Marce was sitting in the back seat.
Not six meters away, charging through the thick tangle of underbrush beside the road, was one massively pissed off elephant, trumpeting loudly, big tusks aiming right at Marce.
In an instant the ranger cocked his shotgun and lunged across to the seat behind Marce for a better shot. I thought, “My god if he fires that thing in the cruiser we’ll never hear anything again.” At the same time Emanuel mashed the accelerator and the Landcruiser surged forward up the hill in the nick of time. The elephant stopped just as he emerged from the bush at the edge of the road. He’d done his job, scared us off and protected his family. Emanuel and the ranger did the same, protecting us.
The adrenaline rush took quite a while to subside. What a day!
Our story begins with the tattoo of our first African rain on the tent roof. The sailor in me says there should be calm after rain and an old Masai gentleman agreed saying, “Tomorrow you will fly.”
We woke up to a dead calm but very dark morning, if you can call 4am morning. Everything had a deja vu quality to it. I kept wondering if I’d taken care of something, or was that yesterday morning.? You can’t just leave your tent at night. We are actually inside a national game reserve and all night long we hear game walking through the camp, sometimes we even step in the evidence. After we convinced ourselves that everything was packed I radioed camp HQ and they sent one of the Masai to escort us to the waiting land cruiser. He smiled, “Today you fly.”
Immediately our darting headlights scared up several rabbits and soon we left the proper track making our own slightly less rutted trail, navigating from blue flag to blue flag hung every so often from a tree, like a ship navigating from buoy to buoy. It would be so easy to get turned around just like at sea.
We shuddered and bounced to another camp and picked up a couple who, it turns out were the birders of big game driving, ticking the box of everything they’ve seen, and now they’ve moved on to your lesser cats. He had a lens so long the camera looked like an afterthought hanging off the end. I, on the other hand, use an iPhone 12 and Emanuel gets us close.
Darting headlights ahead seem to coalesce at the meeting place with several amoeba shaped dark blobs. We’re going to fly. This pre flight orientation was even better than the last one while the balloon envelope continued filling with cold air. This is called a cold air fill.
There are hellacious looking burners used to heat things up a bit.
Marce and I were assigned a cubby and they tied the balloon basket to a land cruiser. Soon our skipper pointed at us and we hopped up into our compartment and after a few healthy burner blasts you could feel her tugging at the land cruiser.
Suddenly we had slipped the surly bonds of earth, as they say. Skipper wanted to stay low to catch the breeze toward the river. I could hear the basket skimming the tall grass. That’s low.
At one point we hit an old rotten tree that turned out to be a very sturdy old tree. A lady in front said, “I told him there was a tree coming.” Soon we gained altitude reveling in the majesty of the Serengeti
Hippo tracks to the riverA bloat of hippos
We watch as the hippos form a line and head down stream.
Floating over our breakfast camp we start our descent to touch down near a herd of wildebeest.
We enjoyed a traditional champagne toast followed by a full English breakfast.
I reached over to tap the hull, our signal to trim the sheets or mind her course. No hull. In fact we’re in Tanzania in a tent on safari. I know that sound though and that’s around 8 knots which is about cutoff for today’s activity. It’s 04:00 hrs and we’re catching a ride this morning.
So it’s going to require some warmish clothing and all the cameras at full charge. Don’t have much that’s warm. Living in 95 F in Malaysia for three years will tend to winnow down the warm stuff.
Africa’s deeply rutted and washboard dirt roads are hard to take at 04:45. We pick up a German woman at a remote camp about a half hour from us. Back on the road a sated and blood-covered lioness appeared in our headlights. She strolled down the center of our narrow lane unconcerned that we followed her at a crawl for fifteen minutes before she veered off into the undergrowth. After a while we are at the meeting spot. Brilliant light beams probe the blackness, turning the Serengeti grass to fire, darting dancing at all angles as Landcruisers come from all over to converge at this spot on the plains of Serengeti to watch the sunrise. The vast majesty of this place, especially at sunrise, must be seen to be believed.
Frank is a short spunky bloke with a funny tie under his well worn leather flyboy jacket, who was not pleased with the 8+ knot gusts passing over the Serengeti plain. No, not at all pleased. We are happy just to watch the sun come up.
There are over 10 trucks and 30 paying guests and even more ground crew waiting for the word from Frank. The word is no. Safety first. We will not fly today.
Poor Marce freezing and fighting a cold
The entire process reverses, the chattering, the bouncing, but without lioness. Maybe tomorrow.
Wheels down in Kilimanjaro, after a layover in Doha, and in minutes we knew this was going to be different. It’s a smallish, but certainly not the smallest airport we’ve ever landed in. We found our bags sitting on the floor in the terminal.
A guy, who looked like he had highly discounted Rolex watches to sell leaned in and said, “I get you tru these lines tout de suite. Show me your Covid papers.”
He frowned. Evidently we were missing the secret most important form. He smiled and said, “I get you tru anyhow,” followed by the standard awkward pause while we fumbled for shillings in astronomical quantities. It is something like 2,301 Tanzanian shillings to 1 usd. As a reformed cheapskate Yours Truly finds it hard to hand over 20,000 anything as a tip.
Dazed and confused, we’d been traveling continuously for two straight days, schlepping all our bags. We squinted out into the African sun to find our new friend Emanuel, smiling his humble smile, holding a sign that proclaimed “Jack Archer.” Close enough! He stowed our bags and we scrambled up into a genuine nine passenger indestructible 4×4 Toyota Landcruiser, standard transportation in African bush.
Forty-five minutes later Emanuel pulled into the lush deep green oasis of our game sanctuary lodge just outside of Arusha, our home for the night.
We hadn’t had to dodge one motor scooter the whole trip. We’re in the land of dodging the small engined motorcycle.
We knew we’d have to rest fast because tomorrow morning Emanuel would pick us up in the Landcruiser for the long ride up to Lake Manyara National Park to start our African safari. I have to say it felt like we’d already been safari-ing.
So where do you go to find the breathing space to make a plan to try to piece your life back together again? Cruisers always say that plans are written in the sand at low tide, and when you consider that the wind changing direction just a few degrees means you aren’t going where you thought you were going, you can see where this mystical fatalism comes from. Our answer is Penang.
We always stay in old Georgetown which is a world heritage site chock-a-block with crumbling colonial architecture, some being repurposed, some not.
Famous for street art. I don’t know why but this is a vibe I seem to really like.
This time we’re staying in an Airbnb which is a two story traditional family home, maybe middle class, with the craziest fixtures, hardwood floorboards one foot wide, omnipresent shutters, open air courtyard, dog bone windows and clay tile roof.
Some might think we moved here because we are right around the corner from the Mugshot which has the best bagels this side of New York City.
Marce ready to tuck into guacamole at an Escapee favorite Holy Guacamole.
Only partly true because the pastries next door are sensational. We even found a new Banh Mi place that’s better than any we had in Vietnam.
Ah…the plan you ask. There is a destination and an activity. It involves Covid testing, visas, money changing and the kind of clothing we haven’t seen in years, so shopping in Penang’s massive malls is considered great sport for the huge towers filled with wealthy Hong Kong expats, but Yours Truly is not amused by the activity. All I know is every day I reach for something I need but now it’s missing. It’s going to take some time.
So check the box for the first step, done and dusted, and take a deep breath.
PS just heard that Escape Velocity is now called ESCAPE VELOCITY.
One turns to the other and says, ”hey what’s all that moss about?” “Well I’ve been hanging around here for quite a while now and it kinda feels like a change would do us good.”
Where to start? I’m searching for the words. After all, I’ve found Rebak Island to be an amazingly safe hurricane hole, both for storms and Covid, quiet, friendly, beautiful, with abundant birds, sea eagles hornbills, monkeys, lizards and so many fish that it can be annoying.
We’ve even been able to carry out many projects, collecting boat bits from all over the world’s chandleries.
But after returning from our South East Asia travels and getting locked down by the pandemic, we took notice that a curiously odd bit of lurgy was spreading out from roughly our neck of the woods. Some of our cruiser friends provisioned up and asked to be excused. I mean they rolled right on out of here while the rolling was good, even though the traditional harbors along the way were closed. Even Thailand’s border, almost within sight, was closed. Many of those brave souls got involved in international imbroglios spending many months quarantined on their boat. Most, in true cruiser fashion, found a way to have fun and adventure regardless. Unable to travel off the boat because once you left Malaysia you couldn’t return, and feeling less and less inclined to cross the Indian Ocean, we stayed put.
We aren’t used to “put.” We don’t do “put.” It chafes. We watched as the world turned upside down under lockdown. Stuck in our own little tropical paradise doesn’t sound so tough, but it wears. A velvet lined trap for the traveling soul.
Maybe it was time for a serious change. A big change. It’s tricky changing when everything you own in this world is stashed into forty feet of sailing yacht.
For me it felt like a stealthy plan that formed out of the ether, which then snuck up on me while Yours Truly was dozing poolside. Much too soon, before anyone was even allowed into Malaysia, improbably an offer was proffered for our loyal home. Big changes were afoot. It was madness from the get go. Eleven large boxes, overstuffed with, well stuff, numbered, weighed, categorized, schlepped, ferried to Langkawi to await a slow boat to New Jersey.
But what will we do with us? I mean what’s the plan Stan? Every day we have to field that question and I usually say, ”I’m not driving this bus my friend.”
The logical destination would be Thailand but they’ve been working Covid as a money making proposition with weeks of quarantine at their special hotel eating their special food, with special testing, special visa prices, etc. We will pass on that at least for now, although rumors persist that they’re going to lighten up.
I don’t know, where do you Escapees think we should go? The problem is that we’ve been here so long we’ve got to calling it home.
So…lets see…where was I? Oh yes, with EV stashed safely floating in Malaysia in the lagoon Marina at Rebak Island, a tiny speck a mile off a somewhat larger island called Langkawi, as previously noted, we’ve been able to do a spot of soul-enriching deep traveling in Asia.
After our quickly improvised visit to the states to see a surprise new family member, it was obvious that it was time to pull the trigger on a new and improved knee. Stainless or titanium? My doc squints at Yours Truly and says, “At your age, you’re not going to need the titanium” and he can do it tomorrow! They don’t mess around here in Malaysia. I thought it was a nice touch when my nurse presented a plastic zip bag with my old knee to me, just like a car repair shop that shows you your old shocks so you can say, “Yep, they were bad.” And so it goes.
Maybe you don’t have to endure as much pain as I did while rehabbing a new knee but I can say, not much happens until the swelling goes down.
I’d devised ways to get around Escape Velocity with a bad knee so I found it surprisingly easy to negotiate the boat with a rather stiff new one. One day as I was mounting the three giant “Simon says” boarding ladder steps up to EV’s deck, I noticed that it’s getting a bit easier and I wonder if I can get the knee bent enough to pedal my folding bike. There’s only one way to find out. “Johnny Fairplay” has to admit that the first couple of strokes put a few tears in my eyes but riding my bike was like freedom to me.
We were both finishing so many projects on EV that I can’t remember them all and that’s the way it’s supposed to work. If we’d remember them all we wouldn’t do this to ourselves.
That’s when we heard of something called Covid-19. Seemed quite remote but China is in our neck of the woods and the Chinese seem to like visiting the resort on Rebak Island. It bears watching.
In no time the world turned upside down. The resort closed. Langkawi shutdown. Malaysia shutdown. Asia shut down leaving a handful of us yachties stranded at our marina with nowhere to go, and visas expiring. We wouldn’t even consider the descent into the chaos and madness of the twinkle toes magical thinking of anti-science USA.
We watched them drain the pool, close the resort, kick out all the guests, close our beach Tiki bar and the yachtie’s own Hard Dock Cafe. This is probably one of the safest quarantines on earth. Nothing but hornbills, sea eagles, monkeys, monitor lizards, and more snakes than any of us want to think about. Especially the three-meter python that squished a little ship’s cat one night, right beside a sleeping yachty. Yikes!
Our friend Mike was on his way to Japan when the border closed while he was airborne. Five or six canceled flights later he barely made it back to Rebak as borders slammed shut behind him. Many of our friends are trapped on islands in a long stream heading west across the Indian Ocean.
So here we sit, with EV gently tugging on her dock lines as the tide slowly flows in and out of the lagoon, taking a morning walk or maybe a ride on our only nature trail which loops around the island, past the empty pool, to the ghost town of our resort.
There are rumors, but there’s always scuttlebutt around a Marina.
Ah, so Sydney it’ll be. After spending an inordinate amount of time inviting family and friends to a largely expense paid vacation in exotic Malaysia aboard Escape Velocity, we were honored with a proffered week in one of our favorite towns with two of our favorite people, Diana and Alex formally of Enki ll. It’ll count as a reset for our Malayian visas as well. Weighing the pros and cons took about two, maybe three seconds. The mountain goes to Mohammed.
Marce started the insanely frustrating process called booking an airline ticket in 2019. Of course we have a few complications such as, and I’ll be generous here, spotty internet in Rebak, and maybe even less cell “service”. Turns out the month that you want to fly is critical as is the date and day of the week. I never knew the hour of departure could effect the price of one’s ticket to the degree it apparently does and of course we have to factor in the schedule of our little ferry to and from Rebak, without which we aren’t going anywhere. Suffice it to say you really don’t want Yours Truly anywhere near this process.
It was about at this time we realized that it’s winter in the land down under, we have no warm clothes and they don’t offer much, if anything, in the way of thermal wear here. It’s damn hard to find anything that even fits a reasonably healthy Yankee frame in Langkawi.
Being the packrats that we are we came up with what we hoped would be enough layers for what the weatherman said was a seasonably moderate 5 – 15°C…whatever that is.
Marce accomplished her usual magic, coming up with red eye flights to and from Sydney, which allowed for our Rebak to Langkawi ferry schedule while getting us to OZ mid morning.
We found Sydney sunny and clear but predictably cold after being efficiently stamped, inspected, welcomed, and shot out of the transportation end of the terminal. Well, that was easy and we weren’t separated or locked up in a dog cage as others seem to want to do.
It was all quite familiar all the way to Rozelle by train and bus, and when that cheerful door opened it was hugs all around. It feels like home.
Word came up from down under. Down under the sink that is. It’s never good news to hear that it’s wet down under the sink. There’s a lot of tortured plumbing jammed in under the sink and access, if you can call it that, is minimal at best. You’ve got the union of the twin sinks that drain somewhere down there. Freshwater hot and cold faucet with spraying hose, and taps, drinking water filter and faucet which likes to leak, foot pump and its faucet, and the main freshwater pressure pump, which runs the whole works. Have I mentioned I really hate plumbing?
Most of the connections have to be “Micky-Moused” because the authorities have decreed that there will be no compatibility between home and boat systems, thread type, or hose and hose clamps to whatever the hell kind of fittings various countries around the world use. In short I have to fix it with whatever I can find, wherever we are.
Long story short, after removing our medium sized garbage bin, an awesome collection of cleaning products, a rusty spray can of WD40, rags (mostly worn out tee shirts), spare garbage bags and crap I’ve already forgotten about, I found a small puddle of water which had collected under our beloved smart sensor freshwater pressure pump. This pump has quietly been supplying water to the entire boat since 2004. Definitely some kind of record. If you’ve ever experienced the racket the typical water pressure pump makes in a boat you’d know how treasured a truly quiet one is.
I start by dipping a finger in the puddle. Every captain has to do this; it’s in the bylaws I think. Is it fresh or is it salty? Which means are we sinking or do I just have a plumbing problem? I immediately set about trying to find the source of the drip. There was no squirting involved. None of the fittings would give up the source, but there the puddle would remain. Sadly, and I do mean sadly, I started to remove our beloved pump.
As I’ve said before it’s always the pressure switch and I hated to be right again but there it was, dripping. Still, it works fine except for the drip so back under the sink cabinet with a small collection bowl strategically placed under our smart sensor Shurflo quiet pump.
After due research we found that many others have gone before us in this quest only to find that Shurflo, in their infinite wisdom, have redesigned the pump and the pressure switch is not retroactively compatible with anything older than 2006.
Maybe someone around here will have one last old Shurflo pressure switch. What are the odds? We add it to the “to buy” list. In the mean time I think it’s your turn to empty the bowl.
That’s when we heard of something called Covid-19. Seemed quite remote but China is in our neck of the woods and the Chinese seem to like visiting the resort on Rebak Island. It bears watching.
Our friend Mike was on his way to Japan when the border closed while he was airborne. Five or six canceled flights later he barely made it back to Rebak as borders slammed shut behind him. Many of our friends are trapped on islands in a long stream heading west across the Indian Ocean.
There are rumors, but there’s always scuttlebutt around a Marina.
