Barry Backpacks Around the World

Since my return to the US, I have been asked some questions mulitple times so I thought it would make a good blog topic to answer them. Read the rest of this entry »

For those interested in such things, I have decided to write a page with some statistics about my trip. Hopefully some will be useful to someone and some will probably just be odd but here they are anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Day 8 in Iceland dawned bright, but windy. I packed the car and continued my trip east. The drive today was dominated by the icefield of Vatnajokull. This is the biggest icefield in Europe. It stretches for 150 km along the coast and into the interior. Numerous glaciers descend toward the coast from the icefield. After leaving Vik, the farmland quickly gave way to miles of wasteland or polar desert. The road past through large swathes of terrain made up of braided river channels and gravel fields. Wherever the glaciers descended, the wind really picked up in speed. Dust and gravel blew over the road in visible clouds. I was very concerned that the car paint would be damaged as you could hear it hitting the car. I stopped at several points to look at various glacial terminuses. When I exited the car, I had to be careful to hold onto the door to keep it from being snatched open in the wind. (I met another group later whose car door was damaged in this manner. It would no longer shut straight.) The highlight of this portion was the glacial lake of Jokulsarlon. It was formed in the early twentieth century when the glacier retreated. From the parking lot, I walked down to the shore of the lake and sat for a while and watched the large ice blocks moving in the lake. Seals could be seen in the distance bobbing up and down in the water. The outlet of the lake was a small river which led to the ocean. Icebergs floated down this outlet to the ocean where they were ground up on the beach. It was great just to sit there and listen. Over the howl of the wind, one could hear the ice creaking, groaning, and breaking up in the water. While I was doing this, a spotted seal surfaced right near me and swam on its back watching me. While walking along the lake shore I came across a dead baby seal that must have been crushed in the iceflows. Read the rest of this entry »

The Norrona sailed out of Torshavn harbor at 5:00 pm sharp. After checking in, I went to find my cabin on deck 6. I was happy to discover that this time I had a cabin to myself. After plopping down my bags, I went out to the open deck to watch as the ship sailed away from the islands. The ship did a small sightseeing trip before heading out into the open ocean. We sailed up close to and between some of the islands that I hadn’t got to visit. It was very impressive to see the massive cliffs from a different angle. The air was full of seagull which nested amongst the rocks. With the huge cliffs in the background dwarfing the birds, they looked almost like a swarm of bees buzzing around the cliffs. After about 1.5 hours, we left the islands behind and headed out into the open ocean for Iceland. The wind picked up due to the increased boat speed and lack of land so most people went inside. I walked up to the front of the boat to watch the water pass below us. I was alone except for a young Frenchman (Laurent) and women (Marie).  After I stood there for a while watching the waves, the French group waved me over and politely informed me that the Frenchman was going to strip naked and take a picture standing in the cold wind on the front of the boat to fulfill a bet. They hoped I wouldn´t mind. I replied that it didn’t bother me and went back to looking at the waves. (If a man is going to take a naked photo, a cold environment is probably not the wisest place to do so for several reasons.) After the bet was satisfied and clothes put back on, Laurent and Marie went back inside and asked if I wanted to join them in the bar car where they had to finish a bottle of wine. Marie ended up going to bed and I visited with Laurent while he finished the bottle.  Laurent was going to work in Iceland for two months as a tour guide for French groups. His friend Marie just came for a vacation. They were driving to Akureyri. I was offered a ride if their friend didn’t show up when the ship docked. Read the rest of this entry »

I am now sitting in the library of Reykjavik using the Internet, but I do not have enough time to do a full blog update. Internet access has been difficult to obtain here. Everywhere has wireless, but I have no computer. I will be at my sister’s house tomorrow and will work on the update then.

The article should be well worth the wait. It will regale you with tales about stunning scenery, treacherous roads, snowstorms, monster trucks, and lest I forget, naked French people.

I will also put up a  trip statistic section with cost and other things like how many pairs of sunglasses I have gone through.

The Faroe Islands have got to be the most unusual place (terrain wise) that I have seen on my trip. Not only is the complete and utter lack of trees striking enough (even deserts have small shrubs, but not here) but the lack of variety of other flora is also unusual to me. The whole island is covered in a type of grass which now is brown but in the summer must turn the islands emerald. (It reminds me of a science fiction story I once read. An alien that came to Earth was amazed at the trees as it’s planet had only grass.) Outside of the capital of Torshavn (which is the largest city about 20000 in a nation of 48000 and sits in a broad plain) most of the the towns consist of 1000 people or less. It sits at the ends of fjiords or in small flat areas on the water that back up into steep hills (mountains highest point is 2894 ft). Torshavn is just now starting to develop a small suburban area as people move here from the outer villages. The villages are full of single or double story brightly colored wooden buildings. Each village also has an old wooden or stone church with an attached graveyard.  The people all speak Faroese language which is descended from Old Norse. Their alaphabet has a few extra characters like ø, æ, å which I have great trouble pronouncing along with lots of accent marks. Due to the rugged terrain, the road system that connects the islands consist of steep two lane roads and many  long tunnels. There are also ferries to islands not connected by tunnels. Read the rest of this entry »

After saying goodbye to Brian and his roomate, I took the last train of the night to Charles de Gaulle Airport. When I arrived, I had to go to all the terminals before finding out from which one I would fly. I finally learned this from a guard as the computer screens were inaccurate. Around 2:00 am I finally settled on a spot on the hard floor to try to get some sleep. The spot I picked was near some very loud Italians, but I decided to go with security (the airport was nearly deserted and I figured they would let me know if someone was rifling through my pockets while sleeping) instead of ease of sleep. I probably managed about half an hour and finally gave up around 4:30 am. At 5:00 am, the electronic ticket machines came on and I checked myself in. I then went through security and got on the plane at 7:00 am. I managed to sleep most of this flight. I landed in Copenhagen at 9:00 am and took the train into the city. After arriving at the central train station, my first action was to buy my train ticket to Thisted for April 10. As I was supposed to meet my next couchsurfing host later in the day, I next put my bags into a locker and got my first sticker shock. (Scandanavia is very expensive. So this whole blog won’t be about how expensive it is here, I will make a comment now that I often feel a bit lightheaded when walking into the shops. With the weak dollar and just the normal high prices here some things are about 3 times what I would expect to pay as opposed to double in Paris. I hope that I don’t go into a catatonic state by the time I am through with Iceland which should be 4 times more expensive. ) The locker was 30 krone (4.7 krone = 1 US dollar). To be fair the locker rental was for 24 hours (you can only open it once) but I only needed it for about 4. Read the rest of this entry »

My flight to Paris took off on time, but the pilot thought he was driving a fighter jet and took us up to cruising altitude with a steep ascent and lots of stomach churning drops (reverse for the descent.) As I was sitting next to a window, I got to see the terrain change below me. We left the desert behind and headed out over the Mediterranean. Coming back over land in Europe, we flew over the Alps which were heavily laden with snow. Landing in Paris 5 hours after take off, I got my bags and took the train, then the metro to the Montemarte area of Paris. Here I was to meet Damien whose home I was going to couchsurf. (For those not in the know, couchsurfing is a website where people with extra space open their homes to travelers to stay for free. I met several people on my trip who had tried it. With the horrendous euro/dollar exchange rate I need all the cost savings I can get.) As it was still an hour before it was time to meet him, I sat and waited at an Internet Cafe. I then walked to his building using a map that he sent me. We met up outside of his building. He lives in a 100 year old, very narrow building on the fifth floor. I was shown the couch where I would be spending the next five nights. He then offered to take me on a bike tour of Paris. I needed to rent a bike which in Paris is very easy. There are public bicycle stations at various points in the city. You have to use a credit card to put down a 150 euro deposit. The bike cost 1 euro (1 euro = 1.58 dollars) for 24 hours. There is a very annoying catch though. You have to replace the bike at a station every 30 minutes, or you get charged more money. This short time span is very annoying as you constantly have to look for new stations. I would rather pay more money up front and get longer time as the money you pay keeps increasing the longer you keep the bike past the 30 minutes. We first rode out of the hilly Montemarte district past the Moulin Rouge which sits on a very open and flashy adult street. Then we rode through the horrendous traffic around the Arc de Triomphe to the Eiffel Tower. Here the sun was setting and I got to watch a great sunset from beneath the tower. Finally, we headed down the Champs de Elysee to the Place du Concord on which sits an Egyptian obelisk bought to France by Napolean. This ride gave me a good first impression of Paris. The weather is still quite cold. There are lots of trees, and they are just starting to put on Spring foliage. The city at night is especially pretty as many of the fountains and trees are lit up. Read the rest of this entry »

We boarded our small bus early in the morning for the long trip to Mut, the capital of the Dakhla Oasis. The western desert in Egypt is sparsely inhabited with towns centering around the few oases available. It didn’t take long for us to leave behind the Luxor cityscape and the Nile greenbelt. The landscape turned into harsh stone sandy desert almost immediately. (I should mention that before this turn of events I had a little accident. While setting down some boxes of water on the ground for use during the trip, my pants decided to split along the rear seam. This was one of those times where one is thankful for the invention of underpants. I guess my pants finally just got tired of supporting my rear after a year. Fortunately, one of the ladies in our group said she could fix them as it would give her something to do on the drive. Back to the desert) The desert was punctuated by rocky worn hills and very little plant life. The first major oasis we hit was Al Khurga. This town once went 17 years without rain. The town appeared out of no where and was constructed from concrete and mud bricks. It only partially looked like I imagined an oasis would. There were plenty of date palms and plants, but no water. This oasis like all the others, except Siwa, is fed from underground wells. The wells formed when a branch of the Nile in this area decided to forsake the surface world for cave life. Read the rest of this entry »

After writing the last blog entry, Tyson and I decided to take a look around the local area. As our hotel was near the Nile River, we decided to head in that direction. After crossing several lanes of ferocious traffic, we made it to the river’s edge (actually more of a small channel separated from the main river by an island). There were many people out strolling about in all manners of dress from full burkas and the full length cotton dress worn by the men to people in western clothing. We walked down to one bridge and walked back along the other side of the river until we could cross again on the bridge. We were officially in downtown. Like most developing cities though, it’s hard to actually pinpoint a downtown as big buildings sprout randomly in all directions instead of in one central location. There were several mosques brightly lit up for the night.  After ending the walk, we stopped in a sandwich shop and ate chicken schwarma wrapped in flat unleavened bread. We also got sucked back into the shop that I had been in earlier when I went to the ATM. The worker persuaded us to hire a car and driver from him to take us to some outlying pyramids the next day. It seemed like a good price so we agreed and then returned to the hotel. As I was walking up the stairs, one of the hotel staff confronted me speaking in Arabic to which I responded in English. He apologized and went away. I think he thought I was Egyptian and was asking if I belonged in the hotel. Unlike India where I could barely pass as Indian, here unless I open my mouth or have my camera, 3/4 ths of the people think I am Egyptian. The majority of the population has my skin tone which is now, I believe at maximum, tanless. Pale eyes are not uncommon. Earlier, I had been in the elevator with two burka clad ladies who kept repeating something in Arabic. I didn’t realize they were talking to me until one of them said five in English indicating they wanted me to push the button for the fifth floor.  At least this means that when I am not in my full tourist regalia I can walk down the streets fairly unaccosted. Read the rest of this entry »