Want to Know More about Moving Overseas?

Moving to another country can be both frightening and exciting, with lots of potential rewards.

If you are interested in living abroad either temporarily or permanently, read my article on Suite101 - Living Abroad: How to Move Overseas and please tell me what you think.

A Change of Scenery

Summer is... Tree Planter Season

For the last week, there have been new faces in our rural, industrial town. Tanned faces belonging to bohemian personalities, lithe bodies and cheeky smiles. For us foreigners, tree planting season came as a complete surprise and a welcome diversion from the oil and gas workers we see all year round.

Modern-day hippies, complete with promises of free love and summer fun, the tree planters are young, gorgeous and ever so off-beat. They spend their summers planting seeds for big forestry companies (for what gets cut needs to be reforested), often to pay for university tuition or travel.

According to tree-planter.com, planters need to buy their own gear for the job (such as shovels, cords, tarps and planting bags as well as camping gear, boots and outdoor clothes) which can cost several hundred dollars, meaning that almost all planters work for at least two or three consecutive seasons.

Most companies pay planters per tree (or seed), leading to one of the many industry in jokes, "I bend over for eight cents". Planters only receive money for trees that have been well planted and that adhere to strict quality and density requirements. The going rate is usually between eight and twenty-five cents.

The job has been recorded as one of the most physically challenging occupations in the world, and the bush living conditions are rough - often endured for months at a time. But tree-planting becomes an addiction and the planters a tribe and family.

To read more, visit www.tree-planter.com

What are Your Travel Must-Haves?

We all have a list. Some of ours are short (generally only those of non-metro guys) but most of ours are long and ever-expanding. Your customized and unique travel essentials list is born out of trial and error, learning the hard way and not listening to mom – until you are finally able to remember how horrible plane socks are or how much you craved a Panado last time or that despite being a fashionista you really should have packed a raincoat during monsoon season.

With plumper, uglier assistants pandering to their every desire, first class all-the-way tickets and unlimited LV monogrammed luggage, celebrities have it a tad bit easier than most of us. However, they do have to run the paparazzi gauntlet on the other side, something that most of us are quite happily spared from. How do they manage?

Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum’s right-hand-man in Project Runway and cameo star of How I Met Your Mother and Sex and the City 2 always takes “extra underwear, just in case… I of course travel with all of my skin products, you have to at my age…and I always travel with a good book.”

In her book, That Extra Half an Inch, the ever-so-posh Victoria Beckham writes that she recommend you take the following in your hand luggage: “Johnson’s baby wipes to take your make-up off; a good, heavy moisturizer; eye cream; lip balm; herbal sleeping pills; Chantecaille’s Rose Water or Evian Spritz… some music and a pile of magazines and books you’ve been saving up. That can pretty much get you through any flight.”

Gorgeous super model Chanel Iman told Vogue.com that she doesn’t lock her front door without packing Smith’s Rosebud Salve: “I always have that. It’s good for the lips and nails. I rub it on my cuticles.” She also takes along a brow pencil, saying, “For me, I really like a filled-in eyebrow. I can’t leave the house without my eyebrow brush and pencil,” and mascara, “I always carry around some mascara—the old-fashioned Maybelline,” she says, pulling out the classic pink-and-green Great Lash tube. “It’s better than the expensive stuff.”

Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine from What Not to Wear fame write in their Trinny & Susannah Survival Guide, “With meticulous planning we manage to pack everything we need into a holdall. It hasn’t always been the case. Susannah used to turn up to the airport with only the clothes on her back, while Trinny would arrive for a weekend away lugging the contents of her house in a steamer trunk” proving that it is not only us economy-class travelers who find packing difficult.

Here’s my ultimate (until next trip, anyway) list for carryon luggage – thought I would spare you the actual suitcase part
Camera, Moleskin notebook with pen, paperback books, international fashion magazines, The Economist, face wipes, toothB&B (plane ones are gross), make-up essentials, soft woolly socks, a pashmina & the general handbag essentials (hairbrush, wallet, lip balm etc).

What have I left out that you always take? Any clever tips or travel tricks for the rest of us?

HAVANA - Steamy Nights, Sultry Days

Cuba is a country of contradictions, complications and compromises, where instead of providing answers, visiting only poses more questions and uncertainties about the fascinating mix of people and cultures. To speak about the beauty and generosity of the people, the lushness of the forest, the idyllic turquoise and white beaches and the magnificent patchworks of crumbling colonial buildings seems to denigrate the country into cliched brochure-speak.

But it’s all true. Cuba is not the most comfortable country (far truer for citizens than visitors), where the heat reaches unimaginable humidity levels without breaking, plumbing works only occasionally and even the government-owned hotels and resorts are not exempt from flies, mosquitoes and bed bugs – great levelers in a genuinely unequal system. Yet it is one of the most authentically beautiful; besides its physical aspects the island has an enthralling history, a complex social situation and is one of the only places in the world virtually untouched by contemporary American culture. The fascination and beauty of the location does much to distract from the occasional discomfort (although it is hard to look consistently glamorous in such a sweaty, sticky and yet sexy place).

Culturally, the talent is astounding, and incredibly accessible. The amazing quality of live music at every meal renders one almost inured to it after a few days, yet leaves one surprised at the silence surrounding meals back at home. Cd's from bands we had listened to for hours and paintings from people we met and with whom we had discussed the challenges of Cuban life have become personal souvenirs of the experience, far more treasured than any anonymous mementos would have been.

Few things measure up to walking along a narrow Havanan street in the dark, the interiors of buildings lit up in relief as people eat, play or watch sport on television. Groups of young men kick at soccer balls or smoke on street corners, children run around chasing each other and women chat comfortably through open doors or on the edge of pavements. We undeniably stand out as being foreign but attract no hostility; everyone wants to know where we are from, what languages we speak, how we live and what we think of their country. Many implore us not to believe the international perceptions of Cuba – they are anxious to show us the reality of the country, the citizens, the governmental systems and the pride. Possibly due to half a century of international semi-isolation, Cubans, even dissenters, tend to be intensely nationalistic. And they have reason to be proud. Even engrained poverty is presented with beauty and style, which does not take away from the hardships they face.

The sweat and sweet flower smells of Havana, the open doorways leading to labyrinths of households, the generosity of spirit, earnestness and inherent pride in what is good – these are things which will stay with me forever...or at least until my very next trip.

SNAPSHOT

The pouring rain roars between crashes of lightning and thunder, soaking plants, scaring animals and chasing people indoors. An orange sky reaches out to the horizon where the dying sun peers through breaks in the cloud. My nose is filled with the scent of wet earth, my ears with the lonely cry of the freight train, protesting against the storm as it rumbles through the rural interior. Although the house is still warm, the storm has cracked the heat of the day and the rain pelts cool bullets against my welcoming skin.

Please Vote!

Hi beautiful people -

Please be so kind as to visit www.travelmaharishi.com and click to vote for

1) FIFA World Cup a Bone of Contention for Cubans
2) One of the Many Crumbling Pre-Revolution Facades (left)

Thank you forever!

Yours, Sarah

Fish River Canyon, Namibia

I was 85km weary, had accumulated a five-days-layer of dirt and more than my fair share of bloody blisters after hiking five days through Africa’s largest canyon. And I was smiling. I had been warned that the hike would be arduous and the conditions sub-rustic, but I had not been advised of the stark beauty, ever-changing pastel colours, intense stillness and myriad of stars we were privileged to view in Namibia.

The Fish River Canyon hike entails walking from Hobas down to the river valley and 83 kilometres along the canyon to the oasis of Ai-Ais by using the river and a decidedly inaccurate map as a guide, sleeping under the stars and drinking river water. There are no rest camps or any other facilities along the route and we carried all our food and belongings in straining backpacks. When I was first offered a place on the trip I was most likely decidedly tipsy to take up the challenge, but every moment of discomfort was worth it, even just to prove that city-loving, self-proclaimed princesses can rough it up and enjoy it.

Traveling with my uncle, a cousin and an athletic friend from England, we set out from Cape Town with the nine hour drive to the Namibian border stretching along the unwavering highway before us. The scenery we drove through up the west coast of South Africa was mainly desert – flat sand lands occasionally punctuated by dry thorn trees and dusty succulents. After the draining drive everybody perked up at the shabby yet overly officious border control and before too long we were stamped through to a different country! The sky seemed somehow distilled – bluer and bigger, the desert drier and the horizon stretched even further. It was a relief, a few hours later, to pull up to the entrance of Ai-Ais hot springs hotel and campsite. The recently renovated facilities are clean and comfortable, apparently a marked improvement, and our self-catering cottage was exactly what we needed, especially before heading out to sleep on sand!

Ai-Ais (pronounced “I-ice”) are the local Nama words for “burning hot”. The natural thermal springs serve as an oasis in the arid Karas region and due to the extreme heat of the region both the resort and the hike close during the summer season. Prospective hikers are all required to obtain a recent medical certificate, proving them healthy and fit enough to take on the canyon. We also tentatively signed our lives away on scarily comprehensive indemnity forms.

The night we arrived in Ai-Ais we braaied outside our cottage and discussed our daunting mission. We ate well and slept even better, fully aware that for the next few days we would be eating non-perishables out of our backpacks and sleeping on the ground; an inch-deep foam “mattress” separating our sleeping bags from the sand.

Day one entailed a bustling morning of preparation; painstakingly packing, unpacking and repacking our backpacks, incessantly measuring weight against essentials . Needless to say, changes of clothes did not feature high – we judged food as being essential. My aunt had spent hours before our trip designing meals, buying and allocating food and supplies; life-savers such as mosquito spray, head torches, matches and the countless necessities that I would never, ever have thought to have taken. On a more delicate note, we also had to take along plenty of toilet paper and a shovel... no need for details on that one! We thus divided the loot between ourselves and strapped the bottles of water to the outside of our packs – these we would constantly refill along the way. Dressed not for style but for comfort and with a backpack that I struggled to put on by myself, we set off – to a minivan. From Ai-Ais one needs to drive the forty kilometres to the start of the hike: the intimidating, steep descent into the bottom of the canyon. It officially begins a 10km drive away from Hobas, the rustic campsite and small office officiating the entry of all wannabe hikers. Registering with them is somewhat important – they are next to the only people who know where you are and by what day you should reach your destination!

To read the rest of this article, please visit: http://www.itournow.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/namibia/