Thursday, January 21, 2010

Equipment for travelling with the kids







The few times we travelled by air, everyone was amazed how small our bags were – we do travel light. We learned this the hard way years ago, dragging a great many excess kilos around a very wet hitchhiking tour of Austria, and now we always make a big effort to carry the absolute minimum, so that if we need to chuck our bags on a boat or a bus or hike across town with all our stuff on our backs, we can do this with minimum fuss.



In terms of weight, our big rucksacks and came in at around 12 kilos (my 60 litre bag) and 8 kilos (Dorka’s 42 litre one) though we also had a big (15 litre) North Face daypack and Emma carried her own (10 litre) rucksack of toys and books. Lara didn’t carry anything, and of course we had to bring some sort of pushchair for her too! All this gear could fit in the boot of a normal sedan car, though it was a tight squeeze!

Isabella. The North face daypack became a constant companion. Its model name was Isabella, and that name stuck. The great thing about it/her was that there were 2 main large areas, plus many sub-compartments for nappies, changes of clothes, food, etc. and these gradually became used for certain things, which made it easier to find them. No one dared put the car keys in binoculars place! Seriously though, you do tend to spawn a lot of stuff with kids, and let’s not forget that a standard lonely planet guidebook is itself pretty huge and heavy, so it was important to be comfortable.

The „Pram”
This was a tough three wheeler Italian Cosatto (http://www.cosatto.com/). It had originally been one of those 3-in-1 combi sets where you take the wheels and slot different upper sections into it, such as a car-seat, a pram (Mozes basket) and a sit-up pushchair (stroller). This last was the top that we took on our trip. It’s advantages were it’s rugged construction ( we bumped it up and down steps, dragged it across beaches and did more than a few gravel paths), that it could recline right back for naps, that it had a mosquito screen and a bottle carrier to keep drinks cool, though we soon found it was good for yoghurts, fruit, and pretty much anything. It also had a puncture repair kit for the inflatable tyres (used it twice in Budapest, but had no problems on our trip! )

Its disadvantages were the weight, (about 5 kilos empty,) and it’s width (got stuck in a few doors) It could "fold down" but this was quite an operation. You had to separate the upper sections, remove the wheels if necessary and then fold the lower frame together - though this was still a huge flat framework about a metre long by 50 centimetres across. I managed to do this operation in 10 seconds flat once when we got stuck in the narrow doors of a brisbane bus, so it was just about feasible.

The red carrier and the blue sling
The blue sling was a strip of material maybe 50cm by 4 m that we could use to tie Lara our front. It was fine for short distances or for when we had to unexpectedly carry our 1 year old, and it doubled as a blanket a few times too.

For Longer stretches we used the red Liliputi carrier. Dorka had found a backpack style carrier, from a tiny Hungarian company (http://www.liliputi.com/ ) It was completely made of textile – no bulky frame, but more like a loose shoulder harness that the child slots into behind you, held on with great wide shoulder and waist straps for comfort- D saw someone wearing one about 2 days before we were due to fly, tracked down the couple who made them and managed to order this little wonder by email just in time. It arrived by courier an hour before we left, and thank goodness it did.

It absolutely changed our trip. Lara loved being in any kind of carrier of course, as it was nice and close to our bodies, but this one had some great advantages. It had strong, padded straps easy on our shoulders and hips, (Dorka carried Lara in it for all of a 4-hour mountain climb once,) it had a great hood-strap which we put up to gently hold her head to our backs and stop it joggling around when she fell asleep in there (quite often on long walks) and was also UV resistant (very important in the bright sun of Australia and New Zealand!) Basically, this contraption allowed us the freedom to walk in NZ – very important as almost all the sights are outdoors and often on tracks that would finish the toughest pram. If we were out and about during afternoon nap time, we preferred Lara in the push-chair if circumstances allowed, as it could recline flat, but things didn’t always work out that way, so she actually slept on our backs in any number of museums and even restaurants.
There aren’t many products we would recommend so heartily, but this is one – in fact we still use it now, back at home, even though Lara is bigger. (it’s good for ages - from whenever the child can support its head , until 3 or 4 years old (15-20 kg max, the makers say))

Baby monitor
Didn’t use this too many times, but it was useful when we hit the right circumstances – i.e. a hostel restaurant where we had a clear line of sight to our cabin door, or in one case, where the common room was right next door to our room and I got great reception. If that wasn’t the case, then we tended not to leave the kids alone when they slept, but rather one of us would go off shopping or to watch a film in the common room, while the other one stayed in the room and slept too (mostly . If you think about it, you’ll see this meant that there were very few times in the whole 3 months when we could be alone together, but that’s one side of travelling with kids. Being together with them all the time was also one of the great advantages, after all….

Hmm, what else was useful? The bassinet on the plane (Eva Air) was pretty good, but everyone with babies gets those, you simply get allocated space in the front rows by the bulkheads and the staff put it up as soon as the seatbelt sign is off.

Teva sandals were great, mostly because we only had 2 pairs of shoes each (boots and sandals), so these had to be pretty hard wearing. They make nice leather ones too, but I prefer the all-plastic version, as you can wade over rocks and into the water in them if necessary, and they suffer no ill effects.

Full body baby swimsuit. This little treasure was UV-proof, so we used it extensively in OZ and NZ.

Portable beds. I mentioned these in a different post, right back at the start. They were great, particularly Lara’s little pop-up bed. Which we used each and every night of our 3 month trip, and of course we had to assemble and disassemble it whenever we moved - probably about 50 times! Emma’s blow up mattress was ok, but somehow we didn’t have to use it more than a handful of times. Everywhere we stayed had 3 bed rooms.

Head torch. This was a tiny head-band torch by Petzl It was just a little bigger than the 3 AAA batteries that powered it, and weighed nothing. It only had 4 LEDs, but these could be covered by a folding red filter for a night light / oh this was really useful for fiddling about in the backpacks next to sleeping children. The red light was less disturbing. The kids also loved playing with it, so they get one each next time!

Oh, and mustn’t forget the laptop. This was an ultra small Eee pc by ASUS. It was important to have something to write the blog on, and we wanted it to be very portable. This thing is perhaps 25cm x 15 cm x 3 cm and weighs about 1 kg, so it was ideal. Dorka’s sister bought us this thing as a farewell gift, and even installed all the software, so that was a great help to our trip. It was mainly for writing this record on, but of course it also downloaded and stored all of our photos, and it could even power the charger for the camera battery, useful as we only had one main plug adapter. Emma watched a few cartoons we had on it, and we also kept in touch with home via skype on it too. When I had it all set up in a hostel cupboard in Auckland, it looked a bit like Nasa ground control!

That’s it really. As I said, we travelled light!

Monday, January 18, 2010

Homeward bound via Taipei Jan 18th 2009

Well this really was the final stage of our trip, and we arrived back in Taipei in a bit of a hurry. In Laid-back NZ style, we hadn’t arranged accommodation this time around, and that’s really not a good idea here. Taipei hotels are, I’m sorry to say, very far from what a typical westerner would expect from a hotel. They are more often than not housed on floors 12-15 of a 23 story tower block, have a lobby that looks completely unwelcoming, and are generally run-down. We had to try really up market places to get anything worth a serious look. As it turned out the local YMCA, was great. We’d never used on before on our travels, but this was fantastic. OK, it was floors6-11 of a 23 story building, but the lobby was huge and airy, it had its own restaurant, and the staff were great. One morning Lara woke up much too early, and as I didn’t want to disturb the sleep of the other two, we decided to have a walking tour of the entire office block at 5:30 am The staff, as I said were very understanding….


Our second-to-last day was spent out at a distant part of suburban Taipei, Jade rock waterfall, I think it was called. They were having some sort of festival, and Emma had some hand-painting done and played 7 incredibly well-organised games in a rigid order in a 45 minute ”play-campaign” which had to be paid for, but was actually quite cheap. Apart from that we just mooched around – really just trying to save our energy for the big flight.



The final night we spent picking up missing gifts at a night market. If anyone ever tries to convince you to take a wide three-wheeler mega-pram into the bustling swarming crowd that is a night market, I strongly advise you to refuse. It was an experience, but the ride there and back n the metro was great. I had to realize again how welcoming these people are. Everyone was smiling and nodding, and those who could speak a little, talked to us (mostly they talked a lot actually, but the thought was nice)


Finally, with slightly frayed nerves after several re-packing adventures and, we set off for the airport. The flight itself was great again. Both kids slept a lot on the way back, but never at the same time, funnily enough, so Dorka and I also had to take turns through the 14 hours.




Finally we landed in Vienna, on a bitterly cold January morning, to be welcomed by Dorka’s father, who had driven an incredible 3 hours to collect us! Just like that, the trip had reached its end. Had it all been worth it? For us, absolutely. We’d do it again in a second!

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Christchurch and Auckland- bye bye New Zealand! Jan 12-15

Christchurch was really a blur of activity, repacking our bags for the flight up to Auckland, returning the hire car, so we didn’t really do it justice. In fact we only saw one sight – but it was a really good one- the International Antarctic Centre www.iceberg.co.nz. I hadn’t really thought about it, I mean who would, outside the scientific community? But it turns out that Christchurch, being the closest place to the south pole except the tip of south America has gained a position as the official transit point for all the nations’ Antarctic research teams on their way to their various bases in the carved-up international pie that is the great southern continent. There are 30 countries with summer or year-round bases in Antarctica, so this strikes me as being a fantastic bit of business for New Zealand, not to mention a huge missed opportunity for Chile or Argentina.
The kids enjoyed the penguin enclosure, which had an area for viewing them from underwater, and some little peep-holes into their nesting boxes. Lara was captivated!




There were so many great exhibits for all ages, that we could have spent all day there, in fact we did spend most of it. Emma wanted to experience the blizzard room, so we got huge parkas and in we went. Well the temperature started at -5 degrees Celsius, but when the storm blowers started, it dropped to -18 wind chill and they dimmed the lights to add to the tension. I can only say that my respect for explorers and researchers grew considerably, and I vowed never again to wear shorts in a blizzard if possible.


As an end to the day, Emma and I took a ride in a Hagglund, this is a boxy two-part truck designed in Sweden for use in ultra-low temperatures and rough conditions. I thought we’d do a big circle and come back to the car park, but no. Our driver took us to the Hagglund testing area and rove it up and down hills, over a 30 centimetre crevasse, and even made it swim across a small pond. We were shaken about like crazy in the back, but it was great to experience.


The final drama of the night was back in the campsite.- We had used Kiwi Holiday parks wherever possible in NZ, as we had a discount card, but here it all became worth it. Our campsite (the all-season, I think) had the best playground ever. Unfortunately we have no photos of it, but it was amazing. There was a jungle gym right outside our chalet door, the old playground, but the new one was a massive affair complete with an inflatable bouncy thing. Not a castle, but a kind of flat inflated trampoline the size of a tennis court, complete with a wall/platform thingy in the centre to fight over! Oh to be 5 and a half again!




We flew off in the morning back to Auckland, where we had two more days before our big flight to Taipei. We didn’t have too much time, so we decided to just take things easy – on our first day we took a bus (no more wheels, but at least because we rented rather than bought, we didn’t have the hassle of needing to find a buyer at the last minute) and headed for Misson Bay, where we swam and ate and watched the kiwis do their typical Sunday afternoon stuff. It was amazing to see how active they were. The seaside park was full of games – here badminton, there cricket, and rugby all over the place. After a late meal, we narrowly missed the bus and had to wait ages for another, but finally made it home tired and full.




Our last full day in NZ was spent on an excursion to nearby Waiheke Island. This is an exclusive little corner of the world- close enough (via ferry) to be convenient, yet separate enough to be exclusive. It was very idyllic with a slightly Caribbean feel somehow. We made our way slowly to a bay and lazed the day away. We had to finish our Auckland time with a swim, so we jumped in the sea, dragged Emma in too and had one of our most enjoyable splashing sessions of the whole trip. We body-surfed, swam and then just had time to drip dry before running for the bus-ferry-bus combination that would take us back. This was, in effect the very first stage of our journey home to Budapest.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Hamner Springs

We drove into Kaikoura under a cloud. We had been looking forward to this place for ages, because here our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook told us, we could possibly swim with dolphins (a special event that coincided with Dorka’s birthday.) The weather was not on our side, and no sooner had we checked into a hostel, then we learned that most trips were cancelled due to storms over the next few days. We went for a sunset hike down around the rocky cliffs at the southern end of town, where we saw loads more New Zealand Fur seals. This encounter was of a FAR closer kind than previous one. One big old fellow was sitting on a rock with about 8 humans in a ring around him snapping away merrily. I could see his teeth when he yawned, so we kept the children back a little way. These seals seemed to be used to humans, but in a positive way - they just ignored us completely!

The following morning we had a little family meeting and decided to leave Kaikoura. With no dolphin swimming, there seemed to be nothing to keep us. We had heard of a resort with warm springs in the town of Hamner springs a few hours inland, so we went there, and ended up staying several days. It was the first week of January, (Emma had just turned 5 and a half, as you can see) , it was holiday season, and the campsites were all full. We stayed a little way out of town (mistake) but the quite surroundings allowed us to start to prepare for the end of our trip. We cleaned the car and our kit, tried to get our photos in order, and just generally hung around.

One very positive point was that Dorka soon got a call from Kaikoura, that the weather had shifted, and a boat might go the next day, so she drove to the coast again while the girls and I had a day at home. (the campsite was 2 miles out of town, so we couldn’t realistically get there even.) She came back soggy but excited many hours later, with tales of huge pods of dusky dolphins frolicking all around her. It sounded great, though we have no photos of that unfortunately.

We played crazy golf, a first for Emma, which she loved and then we all had a soak in the hot springs. We enjoyed huge meals, and took a drive up to a lookout/make out point above the town and chatted about going home. Somehow, the mood of the trip had changed, and we could all feel it. It might seem dramatic, but 3 months is a long time, and this nomad lifestyle had become the norm for us, and now we had to start planning things for “afterwards.” First though we still had Christchurch to go!

Most amazing sights never seen!

Top 5 things we can’t show you:

1. Waimtomo Glow worm caves in New Zealand– the amazing underground fungus maggots were quite a site, a thousand little spots of light across the roof of the huge caves, but it’s all a dark greenish glow our poor little camera could never catch.

2. The Penguin tour in Bichenot, Tasmania. Emma and I stayed up late to see the tiny fairy penguins scuttle out of the water and waddle up the beach, easing carefully right past our silent tour group and off into the night towards their various dens. They have sharp eyes for seeing at night so flash photography would have blinded them, poor things!

3. Dorka swimming with Dolphins in Kaikoura, New Zealand. Dusky dolphins may be smaller than Bottlenose dolphins but they make up for it, but milling together in huge pods of 200-300 dolphins. Dorka said when she swam among them they were everywhere she looked. The rest of us, and possibly the camera battery, were not there at the time...

4. The Kiwi House in Otorohanga, NZ. This was an awesome little bird park, the highlight of which was of course seeing active Kiwis. These are kept in a specially darkened "reversed" room, where they have the lights on at night and off in the day, so we could view them in comfort at a civilised hour. It was a great to see these large birds digging and stalking about, but it was all pretty dim, so not really camera-friendly.

5. Blackwater rafting underneath Waitomo (again). This is another activity that takes place by torchlight – where you crawl around in caves with a tractor tyre inner tube which you can occassionally stick your bum in and float along with. Trust me , it's much more fun than it sounds, but no place for a camera...

Mount Cook


After a long drive up through the mountains, we couldn’t quite decide whether to risk taking a detour to see the mighty Mount Cook. We did just that of course, but on the way we passed through a tiny town where we filled up with petrol (only just made it, and the towns here were few and far between!) and had a meal in a fantastically kiddie-friendly restaurant, which proved hard to leave. The girls had just begun to play nicely together (a rarity) and we felt they had been cramped up in the car for so long, we could hardly bear to tear them away. The hostel we stayed in that night was the YHA in Twizel a little town built to house workers at a hydroelectric power station, some 60 kilometers from the mountain itself. It was funny actually, because we were hunting around for a hotel, when Dorka shouted that she could see a YHA Hostel logo; Emma asked if she had to pretend to be four years old again. You can see we taught her some important life-lessons here. (For shame, for shame!)

The next morning, bright and early we headed for the mountain, but it was already too late, and starting to cloud over – we learnt that you had to be pretty lucky to catch this mountain in good weather, and we had no such luck! We did do a little walking though – up the path a few kilometers to a lovely spot overlooking a glacial lake. It looks like a big muddy puddle in the photos, but we were high up above it, and each of those chunks of ice floating in the puddle was as big as an office block! Emma and I clambered over rocks, while Lara slept peacefully on Dorka’s back. We headed back to little Twizel for the night, but we came back again the 60 km next morning, hoping once more for a glimpse of Mount Cook.
No such luck – just clouds. We had a lovely view of the clouds though, from the famous Hermitage hotel, a massive structure complete with coffee shops and a restaurant, and even a little museum, which Emma explored by herself while her parents enjoyed some hot chocolate.

After waiting around all morning, and some of the afternoon too, we finally got moving North and East towards the coast. This was one of the epic drives of the trip, through mountain passes and down arrow-straight empty highways. Stopping only to pick up sandwiches, we headed on under an amazing sky. None of us had ever seen such clouds! They rolled and billowed like a child’s drawing and burned with all shades of orange and pink and later purple. As it got dark we found ourselves far from anywhere, so we started asking at each hotel we passed. None had any vacancies, and we began to think about simply driving in shifts all the way to the coast (another 4 or 5 hours away , but then we’d arrive there in the wee small hours, to do what?) In the tiny silent town of Mt Hutt, we found a tiny hostel, where the owner wasn’t even home, but one of the other long-term lodgers showed us around and gave us a room. It was all a little surreal. This unreal feeling continued when, just as we were easing the two sleepy kids into bed, an old fashioned air raid siren went off next door for a couple of minutes. So much for bedtime! (It turned out that this was the call for the local part-time fire brigade boys to come in for a fire-drill or whatever.) This was the weird end to a weird day, well actually the end was sipping tea in front of the telly and listening to tales of sheep shearing in Australia, while we waited for the host to arrive. It was great.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Funny Things we saw on our Travels


This is a mixture of photos we promised to put on the blog trudging back along highways to capture hysterically funny roadsigns, but then it grew into all kinds of things from the trip, that made us smile, really.