Visiting

I want you to turn away from the computer and go to your childhood bookshelf. The one stuffed with all the big fairybooks and broken-spined Grimm's collections. Are you there? Find a fairy tale and open it to the picture of the castle. The one with the princess in the turret and the ogre in the dungeon. Pretty isn't it?

That's where I was on Friday.

On Thursday my Dad arrived from England, which was very exciting, and even more so when my big meeting-up plan worked like a dream, and I didn't have to run around Lisbon desperately looking for him.

The next morning I looked out of my window at the Serra de Sintra and, not seeing any clouds, hustled down to Dad's hotel and onto a bus bound for Sintra Village. Although I can see it from my window, it's still a 40 minute bus ride from Cascais. Perched high in a forested national park, Sintra used to be the big town, and Cascais the fishing village. These days Sintra is the preserve of the rich and famous and daytrippers from Lisbon, and when I say these days, I'm talking about right back to Lord Byron's time; in fact, Byron called it his Glorious Eden and used it in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, while Hans Christian Andersen merely considered it the most beautiful place in Portugal. Several English notables ended up here, some for more noble reasons than others, and some of them made their marks in beautiful palaces and landscaped English gardens.

We rode the bus through suburbs and villages, climbing the landscape, until the castle I can see from my bedroom window as a grey sliver in the distance was more looming than slivering, then we got off. Unfortunately a couple of stops early, so we had to walk through the lower town for a short bit, but we fortified ourselves with a Portuguese brunch - coffee and pasteis de nata.


Heading onwards past deep valleys and tiny roadside shrines, we turned a corner and were suddenly in Sintra Vila proper, the National Palace before us, chestnut sellers on the corner. We equipped ourselves with a map and a paper bag of roasted chestnuts, and sat in a deserted corner, a treed courtyard with a bench overlooking the valley. We decided to see the castle, and we decided to walk up to it - I swear Dad had all the information at his disposal when he decided that!

It was a hard work, but we took it slowly. It wound up a steep mountainside for 700m, first through tiny houses (one was lived in by Hans Christian Andersen once) and churches, then through forest. The forest floor was dotted with great big slabs of rock which seemed unnaturally shaped and placed. A couple had definitely been hollowed out a bit - perhaps to supply a suitably uncomfortable place for a hermit to live out his life. Soon we started seeing more definite signs of life with thick defence walls and a ruined church.


The path became wider and more defined.

I climbed an interesting little tower to look down on the ruin, and only realised after scrambling down the narrow steps again that there was a skull-and-bones on the base - it was an ossuary for the bones from the church's crypt.

Finally we reached the main wall of the castle. The Moors conquered Iberia in the 8th century, and their final defeat in Portugal by Christian Portuguese in 1249 coincided with the establishment of Portugal as an independent nation. In Southern Portugal, they left behind some beautiful architecture and buildings, and some important names - Lisbon (Al-Ushbuna), Coimbra (Kulimriyya), Beja (Baja - where I lived as a student), the Algarve (al-Gharb) and the beautiful area we're now exploring - Sintra. The Moorish influence continued long after the last were expelled from Portugal and Spain in the centuries following their defeat. Portuguese people took up their paintbrushes and created some of the most beautiful pieces of pottery I've ever seen, with intricate patterns and convoluted stories. The Moorish Fountain is an early 20th century example in Sintra.

This is no pretty but fundamentally pointless folly, though - it remains a water source for local people to this day. We passed another fountain further up the hill, also built above a natural spring, where groups of older people were cheerfully ignoring the municipal sign restricting them to 2 litres a day, filling five or ten 5-litre bottles each, and loading them back onto their waiting bakkies...

Anyway, as I was saying: we'd just reached the top of the hill, where the Moorish castle sits like a natural eruption of pale stone. Less menacing than it perhaps would have been were the hill still deforested to the base, as I'm sure it would have been once. The forest has taken back its territory, and is thick even inside the walls - fairly useless if you wanted to see your enemies coming from far off! The fort - for that's really what it is - looks remarkably well-preserved for something built more than a thousand years ago, and which has been through a number of wars and nation-shattering earthquakes. And this is because it's not well-preserved, but rather well-renovated. Much of the lower walls and floors, and the amazing cistern have survived from the first occupants, though. Even the outdoor granaries are still there - despite having been converted to rubbish tips by the subsequent Christian occupants.


The view from the crenellated walls is astounding - villages on the coast, half a day's hard ride for 8th century warriors, are clearly visible. Sintra Village is just beneath - although if you bear in mind that we actually walked up to the Village, and only then up to the Castle, I'm pretty sure you're bloody impressed with us right now. If you're not, you should be.

Dotted throughout the forest were dozens of sprawling mansions, every one of them sprouting turrets and lace like a set designer had just learned the Grimm Brothers were coming to see the play tonight and were expecting perfection, thank you very much.


From one of the towers, the fanciful palace on the next hill is clear in its pink and yellow glory - Pena Palace, a 19th century pure embodiment of romanticism built over the ruins of a medieval monastery.

Sadly, after all our effort, we didn't feel up to battling the tourists for a closer glimpse, and when we left, it was straight onto a bus, which teetered its way down the hills to the bus station. And when I say teetered, I actually mean "perilously crashed" - Dad thought it might be a source of pride amongst the bus drivers as to who terrifies more tourists on each shift... From there we caught another bus back to Cascais, along the beautiful western coast.

Bedtime arrived early that night.

Mountain 2 - Korean Edition

As everybody knows, once the world was not as it is today. Animals could speak, and mountains could walk. The world was still being moulded out of fire and water.

In the east, a beautiful mountain range was being built. It was called Geumgangsan, the Diamond Mountains, and it was to be the loveliest and most revered of all Korean mountains. Representatives came from all the cities in Korea to be a part of it. Ulsan, a city on the south-east coast, decided to send a rocky mountain north to Geumgangsan, but this mountain, having so far to travel, arrived too late: he discovered the range was already filled with twelve thousand peaks. Weeping with grief and shame, he turned round to make the journey home again. One night, as he was looking for a place to sleep, he found an enchanting valley. Bewitched by its beauty, he lay down to rest, and, looking about him in wonder, he fell asleep, never to awake again. His name is Ulsanbawi - Rock of Ulsan - and today he sleeps in the Seorak valley, an 873-metre granite outcrop, skirted by deciduous forest and quiet streams.

On Friday, Harry and I packed up the car and drove to Seoraksan for a weekend, picking up Brynley on the way from his home in Seoul. This time I intended to actually climb a mountain, as I missed the chance on my volunteering weekend!

Autumn leaves are a BIG deal in Korea. The place to see them is Seoraksan, and funnily enough, this weekend was the weekend, according to news reports, so we were ready for a communal climbing experience with half of Korea. We arrived around midnight and went searching for a hotel to rest our weary heads at. We found a surprising number open and their managers awake, and chose one called "The Honeymoon House". Contrary to our expectations, it was a pleasant, clean little hotel, with a fireplace in the lounge, and a fake windmill on the side - reminded me a little of a Vumba-style hotel.

In the morning, we woke to pouring rain and a rather dismal sky. Luckily, we took a while to get ready and have breakfast, and by the time we drove to the park's entrance, the clouds had cleared and it was a lovely, sunny day, if a bit cooler than an African sunny day. Perfect for climbing. We'd agreed to hike a shorter route than Harry might have wanted. It was listed as a 1.5 hour walk from the entrance and we felt this was entirely achievable by Brynley and me. The first part of the walk, as expected, was shared with the multitudes, and we squeezed our way up a wide path cleared of debris and with stone steps and wooden bridges set in place over difficult parts. Very Korean. It was a path with diversions too, as we passed a temple - Sinheungsa - possibly the oldest Zen temple in the world - and then two well-established restaurants, full of climbers taking a break to drink and eat. Hawkers squatted on the side of the path selling sticky peanut brittle and toffee suckers. About an hour up we came to a little hermitage where a monk once lived in a sandy-floored cave. It must have been something magical in the days when a thousand tourists weren't poking about and taking photographs. The mouth of the cave overlooked a wide vista of trees and mountains and very little else, and it would have been very remote in the days when the closest settlement, apart from the temple, was at the coast. We pushed on further, up a decked path lined with rubber which took us over the older, simpler path (closed to repair erosion) and toward the top. We shared this part with the multitudes too - in fact, there was no part where a large group of elderly Koreans was not having a nice picnic on the edge of a rock... We told Harry to stride on ahead and he didn't argue much as he disappeared round a corner. Finally Brynley and I made it to the top.

Well, what we thought was the top.

See, the forest part finished and then the rocky crags started, and I, in my naivete, reckoned the forest edge would mark the end of our hike.

Unfortunately, Koreans are not people for giving up that easy, and a set of stairs had been erected straight up the mountain face.

It was so windy at this point that I needed a helping hand up the rocks to the base of, terror of terrors, 400m of steep stairs...


We did make it to the top, with just a couple of breaks, and with the egging on of a couple of hundred friendly Koreans ("keep fighting! Go on!").

The summit was a tiny crag edged by railings - an absolutely essential aspect, as the wind was so violent, I was terrified of getting blown off.


Amazingly, there was a guy with an urn and some paper cups selling coffee to climbers! Right on the top of a mountain! I don't even know how he gets those supplies up there - and oh my, that means he climbs up and down every single day! At least his office has a good view ;)

We made our way back down again, battling the wind - I mostly gripped banisters with both hands and did a kind of sideways shuffle down the most exposed bits to avoid being blown off the mountain entirely. By the time we reached the temple the sun was dipping below the mountains and we decided to make our way home.


On the way we went past the enormous Buddha again and I couldn't resist a sneaky photo of him meditating in the sunset glow.


The minute we got back to the hotel, Harry and Brynley collapsed across the bed and fell into a deep sleep, while I had an hour-long bath - a luxury unheard of since I left South Africa - and then read my book downstairs in the Vumba-style lounge. Later we went for dinner at a little restaurant nearby. This was the beginning of the night:


I unfortunately can't show you the end of the night. I was fast asleep when the pair of them drunkenly bumbled into the room, waking me up - I was too busy laughing at the sight of them to be cross :)

The next morning, I packed them into the car, drinking coffee and complaining of how early it was (it was nearly 11am...), and we drove down the coast to the highway back to Seoul. On the way, however, we spotted a Salmon Festival on the banks of a river, so we detoured for some delicious, if sacrilegious, deep-fried salmon and ginger.


Sated, we walked down to the riverbank where hundreds of tourists and Koreans were gathered, their trousers rolled up to knee height, and their shoes abandoned.


I wondered what it was all about but before the fleeting thought had time to fleet, a whistle was blown, and the hordes went screaming and splashing into the waters to commit the most wholesale massacre of innocent animals I have ever seen. Children that came up to my knees grabbed enormous salmon by the tails, flinging them onto the rocks with gleeful abandon and demanding applause from the gathered adults, while the "grown-ups" in the group stuffed two or even three writhing fish into plastic bags or specially prepared cooler boxes. I'm sure it was a lot of fun, but I prefer my fish filleted and clingwrapped, thanks very much. It very nearly made me turn completely vegetarian watching such rampant killing...

Our journey back to the west was pretty event-less, and we delivered Brynley home safe and sound, arriving back at our own home by 7pm, refreshed by the weekend and ready for another week of work.

(Not quite so refreshed the next day, as muscles in my legs I didn't know I had woke up to call a cheery "hello"; I spent my first week on the Adult Program hobbling around English Village, unable to take a step without fiery pain...)

Mountain

All through human history, mountains have been powerful symbols of majesty and mystery. Tribes have worshipped them as the homes of gods, or even as the gods themselves. Men and women have retreated there to explore their faiths and themselves and often been worshipped as well, so close to divinity are they. With their feet on the ground and their heads up in heaven, it's easy to see how mountains have inspired so many complex myths and legends.

Gunung Batur, the third highest mountain and second highest volcano in Bali, has been pretty godly of late for the Balinese. It rises from the caldera of a supervolcano 13km across, which exploded about 30,000 years ago. A lake fills the south-eastern side of the caldera, and a small fishing town has built up around it. Baby Batur has made Daddy Volcano proud with its activity. In the early 20th century it swallowed up half of the enormous caldera lake with its angry rivers of lava. The next major eruption was in 1963 when it completely consumed an entire village. The survivors now live in a new village on the rim. Although the activity has been relatively minor since then, it's still pretty scary to my way of thinking - 50-foot plumes of fire, earthquakes, landslides and constant steam - I said it was being godly... why, you might ask, do people still live so close? That's easy. Because, we're human, because we're stubborn, and because it's really, really, beautiful.

We're woken up at 1am by Made, the Marvellous Manager, with coffee and sliced tomatoes for our sunburn - which I would just like to say is a totally unfair state of affairs because I barely stuck a toe outdoors without lashings of Factor 40 suncream and now I can barely walk. The glow from my legs and torso actually precedes me into a room...

Anyway, we all hop into the cold shower and have a bit of coffee and generally groan about how tough this is going to be, until Guntur arrives to pick us up. It's an hour and a half's drive away through small towns and villages. The road is fairly quiet, but I'm amazed by how many people are up at 2am - there's even a marketplace still open! After about an hour we hit a wall of porridge-thick fog. Guntur doesn't slow down much and it's a pretty perilous drive - hairpin turns and 2 metre visibility. Finally we leave the fog behind us and descend into a valley (at this point in the dark and the fog, I don't realise that I am actually already standing in an active volcano, having just descended the rim of the caldera), where a gaggle of guides is waiting. All the guidebooks had warned me about the Guide Association here, who have an absolute monopoly and terrorise tourists who try to make the climb without paying for the services of a guide, so I am glad to have Guntur, who sorts us out with two guides and some jackets. In our sleepy state we just accept their first extortionate rental offer for the jackets and I'm pretty certain the dark hides some large grins on the faces of the guides, although their own backs are now freezing.

We set off along a lazy slope. We're at a few hundred metres above sea level already, but still have almost a kilometre to climb to reach the 1717m summit. The lazy slope soon becomes not so lazy and then rapidly turns quite energetic on us, and we find ourselves scrambling up rocks and over volcanic scree. I manage fairly long stretches on the lower sections but the higher we go the more often Cait and I find ourselves pleading for breaks. Leigh, Liam and Robyn leave us close to the top and stride on ahead while one patient guide gives the pair of us a hand over slippery rubble. The path by now is zigzagging crazily across the mountain face.

An hour and forty-five minutes after waving goodbye to Guntur, we arrive at the summit, breathless and proud! Below us, the lights of Toya Bungkah sparkle around the edge of the black mass that is Danau Batur, the lake, across which we can faintly make out the darker patches of Gunung Agung (the highest Balinese peak) and other mountains.


It is difficult to believe how high up we are! A man who hiked up with us now produces Cokes from his backpack - he makes this climb twice a day with a full bag - even more than the guides, who have to wait their turn on a rota system and usually only ascend two or three times a week. We're half way through our bottles when he comes to ask us to pay Rp25,000 per bottle - more than six times the most expensive Cokes we've bought in Bali! It's only £1.25 for a Coke at the top of a mountain, but we still grumble quite a bit... At least we've learnt our lesson about asking prices before consumption... I try to take a photo of us, but the camera has to balance on a low bench so we all lean down to fit in.


We sit and we wait and we pat ourselves on the backs as dawn slowly creeps up, casting its pale light over the caldera and our narrow route up.



As the sun pulls its sleepy red self over the bulk of Mount Agung, the gathered climbers - and I use that term for myself with no small pride and a large shot of exaggeration - fall silent at the sight.

It is a serene and majestic moment.



Interrupted, unfortunately, by the cold ache of my knees.

Behind us the guides drink strong Balinese coffee under a shack decorated with prayer flags that snap in the wind.

One of our guides offers to take a photo of us - the sheer joy of having made it up so early in the morning clear on our faces!

Behind our sunrise viewing spot is the volcano's largest and deepest crater. To get to the edge we have to negotiate holes in the ground, holes that are damp around the edge, holes that steam. Robyn and Cait warm their hands over one.


It all feels so exciting! Cross-looking monkeys range around the lip of the crater looking for unwary humans carrying food. Our guide Nyoman is not unwary but quite nervous and is suitably impressed by my monkey-bite scar! He tells me of a ceremony carried out by locals two days ago to appease the gods and prevent another eruption. It's rather like a melodramatic, grainy, 1930s flick, except instead of scary tribespeople in makeup there's a few hundred Balinese people in t-shirts and hiking shoes, and instead of a screaming heroine in a flimsy, billowing, white dress, there's a succession of animals thrown into a pit of fire. A buffalo, an ox, a pig, a deer and a duck are all flung off the clifftop as sacrifice for the angry and gluttonous gods.

At least the poor virgins are spared these days.

We move on to another, more recent crater, the black sandy earth punctuated by steaming holes. Below us, flooding out into the flat floor, there's a barren lava-flooded plain, a single green hill rising from the centre. Four brightly coloured trucks are visible, mining the lava field for rocks to be fashioned into temple statues and roads.


It's 7am and time to go, so we slip-slide our way down a steep path littered with the basalt debris of eruptions.


At the base of the track we sit for a moment to empty our shoes and socks of black dust and then move onwards, past a shrine piled high with pleas for good luck, left by previous climbers, the fluttering flags of the mountain temple just visible over a hill. A Cat digger is excavating a road out of the mountain face which will lead to the temple half way up, and I can't help but think "lucky sods" of those who will make this journey in a year's time. Not that I envy them the halved sense of achievement that will come with the halved climb. My back and knees are sore and I'm silent with my guide as I scramble downwards, several places behind my friends because every step I take presents me with another unmissably gorgeous photo opportunity. When Base Camp hoves into view, I'm exhausted, but it's exhaustion with an extra-large side portion of happy pride.

I've climbed a volcano.

I've perched on the roof of Bali.

So... who's up for Everest next year?