Train from Greece to Macedonia

We were originally supposed to stay in Greece for nearly a month, but we decided to extend our time in Asia instead and reduced our time in the country to a mere three days.  From there, we were to go to Croatia to meet Magge's mother and stepfather.  On a map, that looks easy.  I figured at worst we could take a ferry.  You can take a ferry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to Croatia, so the shorter Greece to Croatia distance must have a ferry route?  No.  The easiest way to get from Athens to Dubrovnik is to take a six hour train ride to Thessaloniki, then a three hour train ride that's actually a five hour train ride to Skopje, Macedonia, and then a twelve hour overnight bus to Dubrovnik.  I confess that I hadn't heard of Skopje two weeks ago, and my geography is usually pretty good.  Magge confesses that two weeks ago she didn't know Macedonia was still a country, but I told her to stop admitting that.

The train segment from Thessaloniki to Skopje actually was really nice, despite the lingering smell of smoke (the Balkan peninsula is Europe's ashtray) and no airconditioning.  Here are a handful of pictures from the ride.

We had a good time in Athens, but I don't know if we'll get around to posting anything on our stay there.  At most, we'll post some pictures, but there won't be much that everyone hasn't already seen many times elsewhere.

31 Hours on the Reunification Express

From Saigon we needed to get to Hanoi, 1,000 miles away.  It would have been easy and not prohibitively expensive to fly, but what would be the fun in that?  Instead, we opted for what is often referred to as the Reunification Express, a train that runs the distance between the two cities. 

We boarded the train in Saigon at 11pm, June 15 and arrived in Hanoi at 6am, June 17.  In between, we shared a tiny compartment with a father and his two children, got two surprisingly decent nights of sleep on paper-thin mattresses, barely ate (and what we ate wasn't good), and went through an hour-long stretch of scenery that must rank near the top of the best train experiences in the world.  As you can see below, our digs weren't exactly the Four Seasons.

Pictures from the Hai Van Pass in the full post.  Despite the poor quality due to being behind the window, they still show how amazing that area is.

Slow Start in Vietnam

Note: we got a virus on one of our camera cards, so this post is light on pictures for now.  Will try to add some later.
 
Our time in Vietnam did not have auspicious beginnings.  I woke up in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with a pounding headache, not looking forward to the six hour trip that was ahead.  After almost vomiting during our steamy shuttle bus ride to the jetty, I tried to sleep away most of the three hour boat ride down the Mekong River.  Apparently, it was a nice ride.  Maybe I'll see it next time.  By the time we crossed into Vietnam, the headache was the worst of my life and I no longer chalked it up to general fatigue.  That night my eyes felt like they would pop out of my skull.  Combined with the unrelenting urge to throw up, it meant I didn't sleep that night in Chau Doc.  As I wrote in another post, we determined that I had contracted dengue fever.  We were supposed to continue on to Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by most residents, and referred to as Saigon in this post going forward because I like the sound of it better) the following day, but I wasn't going anywhere.  As I attempted to rest on our hard bed, the skies opened up and the rainstorm proceeded to pour water into our depressingly dark, and clearly not water-sealed, hotel room.  Hello, Vietnam, nice to be here.

Jeff and Magge's Fave Honeymoon Crashers: Jucy and Lorena

Hello all,
Lorena here. Magge confessed while we were traveling that she was nervous to have me guest blog because she didn't want to be compared to a "professional writer" (her words not mine, I write about celebrities for a living, not exactly pro-stuff .. keep your expectations low). Truth is, posting something on Hostel Honeymoon is pretty daunting. I mean this site has multiple comments per posts, tons of views, and I'm jealous of the witty URL name. There are few things more daunting than posting on HH. The one thing more terrifying than writing a sub-par post? Joining J & M on their honeymoon as the Official Third Wheel.

Life on the Road in New Zealand's South Island

We racked up more miles on buses in four months in South America than anyone should in a lifetime. Nevertheless, we were planning on tackling New Zealand in the same manner before being convinced by a number of travelers that getting our own car was the way to go. It’s the best decision we’ve made in this country. Just being freed from the Traveling Problem Child Corollary to Murphy’s Law validates the decision, let alone the added scheduling flexibility and ability to get to places the buses do not travel.  But our favorite feature is that we can pull over whenever we see something interesting.  New Zealand is incredibly beautiful, and much of that beauty is easily accessible from the road.  Aside from the picture from the ferry, every picture in this post was taken within an hour's walk from the road, and most were within much shorter walks than that.

Traveling Problem Child Corollary to Murphy's Law

There is always at least one crying or bratty child on your plane/bus/boat/train ride, and their distance to your seat is inversely proportional to the length of your trip.

Sometimes It's Better To Be Lucky Than Good

Yesterday we embarked on our trip to Patagonia.  Our voyage started with a three and a half hour bus ride from Castro to Puerto Montt, where we stayed the night.  This morning we caught a bus to the airport and took a two hour flight to Punta Arenas (the furthest south either of us have been in our lives*).  Our guide book maintained that we would be able to catch a bus at the airport for the three-to-four hour journey to Puerto Natales, where we are planning to spend the next two nights before heading to Torres del Paine National Park.  It did not, however, inform us that we needed to make reservations in advance.  The woman at the airport Information Desk advised me that we would have to make the half hour trip (in the opposite direction) into the city to purchase tickets and catch a bus going back north.  Lucky for us, there isn't a central bus terminal in Punta Arenas, so we would have to choose a company and hope it had a bus departing soon that we could board.  Crestfallen, I asked the woman about the cheapest way to get into the city.  She said we could take a van for 3,000 pesos (just under $6) each.

Transportation in Trujillo

When we lived in New York, I used think I was quite savvy when it came to public transportation.  If you knew where you needed to go, I could tell you which subway line would take you there.  Preferred a cab?  I had a gift for hailing them. Transportation in Trujillo, however, is a whole other ball game.  As Jeff wrote earlier, the vast majority of vehicles on the roads are for hire and there are a number of different options.

¿Donde está el tren?

I have always loved trains. I used to look forward to my (almost) weekly train rides from Philly to New York to see Jeff when I was living with Nanno and Daddo. As a child, I desperately wanted a train set – yet another example of my deprived childhood. So, when I read about the Nariz del Diablo train ride in Ecuador, I decided that was one thing Jeff and I definitely had to do. Due to traveling logistics, working the train ride into our itinerary was going to be difficult as it only left every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Jeff was on the fence about whether we should do the train ride (of course, for logistical reasons), but I insisted that we do it. Why was I insistent that we take the train ride? Well, for starters we were going to get to sit on top of the train and take in some of the most amazing vistas imaginable. On top of that, many reports talked of throwing candy to children as they passed through the different small towns (sounds fun, huh?). The end of the ride was going to be the best part: La Nariz del Diablo (the Devil´s Nose) is a mountain that the train descends that is so steep it has caused the ride to be dubbed the most dangerous train ride in the world. Did I mention we were going to get to sit ON TOP of the train while doing this? I was so excited.

One of many amazing La Nariz del Diablo train pictures found on the internet

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Ecuadorian Buses

• The Good:  Buses in Ecuador are cheap.  It costs about as much to take the eight hour trip from Quito to Cuenca as it did to take the five minute taxi ride in NYC from my apartment to work.
  
• The Bad:  Terrible music is blasted at 105 decibels on all the bus speakers.  There is some good music down here, but they sure don´t play it on the bus, and playing it at full blast doesn't make it sound any better.  Latin pop music is even worse than US pop music.  I've tried listening to my iPod, but my earphones get overpowered.  When the bus isn't busy playing the same ten terrible songs on loop, they play even worse B-movies on a small TV screen at the front of the bus at an equally eardrum-shattering volume.  Check out this gem that played on the trip from Quito to Baños (in Spanish without English subtitles).  Magge and I were actually watching it when they turned it off with fifteen minutes left, just so they could go back to their awful latin pop mix tape.
  
• The Ugly:  The nasty gringo couple to my left that made out continuously for two hours on my bus ride today from Alausi to Cuenca.  I couldn't look across the aisle without wanting to retch.  They were probably French.