2 Elusive

Once again we’re in London, and again plagued with connectivity issues. Dear readers, never use the UK 3’s 3G (dis)service; it’s unequivocally shit! An Eifel tower is planted right next to us, marred with comm. stuff and yet there’s limited/no service!? And the guys in the 3 stores have zero technical knowledge—my grandma would be more helpful!

I loathe bad service and even worse, people who are clueless about the service or product they’re selling. There, off my chest now

We’ve decided to go back to Aus.

The adventure has been great, but to go on would be to just see and do more of the same (we assume) and for us that is not worth the effort of working in the van. There is plenty of good rock to climb in Aus, after all.

We leave Arco tomorrow, aiming for Fontainebleau in France for a spot of bouldering. From there it’s on to London to sell the van, and then a flight home. So there are probably a few weeks of pottering around to go yet. We’ll keep you all informed…

After all the climbing on limestone my arms were screaming for a much-needed rest so Ol hesitantly relented—even negative walls won’t peel him off rock!—and agreed to come along to the city of water. After a 3-hour trip from Arco, we offloaded at the only train station in Venice along with the heavy herd of tourists and began marching through the streets, some so narrow that you almost scrape your elbows. Around every turn is a pleasant surprise; a piazza flanked by old churches, a canal that appears unexpectedly, a shop exhibiting weird and colourful sweets, a funky café (always an amiable discovery for Ol), a market cart loaded with Venetian masks, glass ornaments and silk scarfs, or a street even narrower than the last.

The city stretches across 100 islands in a shallow saltwater lagoon. There are a staggering 400 bridges that connect the islands, which are divided by about 150 canals. The only mode of transport is by foot or on water. The canals are scattered with motor boats and gondolas, the classical Venetian boat, carrying passengers wielding cameras and wide smiles.

Venice at night was the most memorable: the day-tripper tourists have left town, the big-brand shops are closing and hiding behind steel shutters, and the shadowy streets and canals echo with the sounds of the lapping of water against the mossy walls of the buildings.

Cheap eats were available if you took the time to hunt them out, but one time we experienced our most expensive coffee on this trip yet: 5 Euros and it was nothing special! Given the current exchange rate, very ouch!

We didn’t book accommodation ahead of our arrival and later found out that a lot of the hostels were either fully booked or criminally expensive (280 Euros for a 3-star hotel??!!). We spent the night at a hostel, in the ‘emergency room’, namely the attic. It wasn’t a spacious holiday from the van, but it was very cool to be spending the night in Venice.

Arco, Italy, was (our satnav brain assured us) best approached by firstly coaxing the Taj up the remaining rise of the Alps which, with cabin heaters on to control engine temperature, we did. Luckily the road was wide enough at times for us to let past the Mercedes convertibles and Audi station wagons banking up behind us. Frequent tunnels caused our brain to lose its satellite connection but no unexpected turn-offs eventuated. On the other side of the mountains road signs began to wear Italian-looking place names (though we were still in Switzerland) and fewer people understood English. But it wasn’t until we crossed the border that things became fully Italian: dudes walking around in aviators, tight jeans, pointed leather shoes and a suit jacket; ladies in equally massive sunglasses, loaded down with gold and silver jewellery and oversized handbags, with an unlikely number of them blonde.

Eventually we wound our way down a mountainside to the town of Toledo on Lake Guarda (famous for windsurfing) and then took the additional 5 km to Arco. We were in the Sarche Valley now, the steep sides made up of tree-covered slopes and white limestone cliffs—the reason we were here!

Our first week in Arco was taken up almost entirely by work. This was the first time we both had (almost) fulltime work in the van, and we were glad when it finished. In the second week we finally got onto some rock…

Which turned out to be very different to elsewhere on this trip! Apparently frictionless (compared to granite, and of course gritstone) and with so many small features that they all seem like viable holds from below, until you actually try to use them. Then eventually you find the one usable pocket or crimp, but are too pumped to continue. Anyway, we got used to this eventually and are now becoming ridiculously strong on the long, steep routes at the Massone cliff, and loving it.

Arco village is a cute place, chock full with unusually fit (and mostly Austrian) tourists (the area is famous for mountain biking and hiking, as well as climbing and windsurfing), outdoor gear shops, cafes and pizza joints. These folk really do seem to live on just pizza and pasta.

We realised a few days ago that, with the funky new exchange rate, staying at this (admittedly nice) caravan park is costing us more than our apartment in South Perth did. Ouch.

All the clichés regarding Switzerland are not exaggerated (yes, cow bells, clocks and pocketknives) and it is totally neat, clean, and crimeless. Apparently there’s a law against flushing the toilet after 10 pm (and men are not allowed to stand up while peeing); perhaps an urban myth, but all the same it wouldn’t shock me (anymore).

After Ol arrived in Zurich, we, along with the Taj, crawled up the Swiss Alps to regroup our things and thoughts. We stayed and worked in an apartment for few weeks in a small village, called Hospental, for a good break from the van. It was a strange experience: we learned to operate the prehistoric washing machine (punch card and all) and became sheep-like and used the designated grey garbage bag, and used a key to throw the rubbish out into a communal bin—all very odd.

The nearby village, Anderamatt, was our sanity refuge (played too many chess games in that apartment): an excellent source of coffee and Apfelstrudel. Here, at a funky café, I learned to routinely say ‘Kann ich Apfelstudel und Kaffee haben bitte?’ I don’t know German, but I did take some time to listen to German lessons while on my journey from Sweden to Switzerland—I was sweetly rewarded Actually, Ol knows a lot more German than I (and possibly his parents) first realised; I reckon the apple strudel helped him access the Germany memory bit from his childhood

In all, a nice experience in the Swiss Alps (it even snowed one morning), but the arms were going from steel to rubber, so it was time to climb (but the legs didn’t want the long approaches to climbing crags). The answer: Arco, Italy…

To steer away from boredom—exacerbated by the last five months of intense climbing and travelling—while Ol intently works, I taught myself how to use the multimedia software, Adobe Flash: check out the banner heading