How Far Away Is The Storm?

As I've mentioned before, I love a good thunderstorm. It's such a nice feeling to be curled up inside, preferably wrapped in your duvet, listening to the rain pounding on the roof, and the thunder rolling around the sky.

I especially love the vibrations of the thunder rolling around and the sense of electricity in the air.

One of the most amazing thunderstorms i ever saw was when we were in Tingri, on the way to Mount Everest Base Camp, in Tibet. Tingri is at 4,300m altitude and so you feel like the storm is literally happening around you, and you really are on top of the world.

(This is a town, although the few houses either side of the one road literally are it!)

We spent hours crouched in the corner by the door of our room that night, with one person on 'rabid dog' watch - a handful of stones to throw at them if they came too near, whilst we took photo after photo, trying to capture the power of the storm. This is my best one, which I'm pretty pleased with.

I was always taught, when I was younger, that to find out how far away the storm was, you had to count the seconds in between the lightening flash, and the start of the thunder growl. This used to reassure me as we had some pretty terrifying storms right on top of us when we camped in France every summer, and I used to get so relieved when the counts would start to increase.

I had a look on the Internet recently, whilst we were in the middle of a pretty electric summer storm here in London, and it said that actually every 5 seconds = one mile. Seeing as that would mean that the storm was much closer than I thought it was, I think I'll stick with my counting!

Playsuiting Around

I bought (well got with my allowance) a Johnnie b playsuit earlier this year, as I'm too short for adult Boden clothes and am a child at heart so I think quite suit the childrens ranges. Anyway, I absolutely adore my Johnnie b playsuit (below left - Navy Boat Print) and wear it all the time and was looking at the other styles, but didn't really like any of the other prints or colours and so decided to buy some cotton fabric and make my own. 

If you haven't ever been to Goldhawk Road (London) then go now. If you at all like fabric it's just like being a child in a sweet shop. As soon as you come out of the tube station, and turn right along the main road, there is shop after shop after shop all crammed full of fabric.

I went in to help a friend buy some fabric for experimenting with her new sewing machine and fell in love with this Strawberry print fabric. If you've seen my website at all, you've probably noticed that I have a big obsession with strawberries and am always felting them to make my beautiful necklaces. Although I'm not sure I should really wear this playsuit with a necklace...might be a bit of an overload!

Train Travel & Other Adventures ~ No.5

So the last part of my recent foreign train adventures were in the south of Argentina, in Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. This was the most expensive train of the trip and it doesn't really go anywhere, it's just a tourist attraction because it's called El Tren Del Fin Del Mundo (translated as the Train at the end of the World).

After eagerly scanning my Lonely Planet (of the whole of South America - that is one beasty book!) and realising my plan to travel the continent by train was not going to happen, as there aren't really any, this was added to my list of 'trains that don't really go anywhere but I want to go on anyway!'

Patagonia was one of the top places to travel when I made my vague list of where I wanted to travel to and it certainly was stunning. Although Ushuaia is miles away from anywhere, and really inconvenient to get to, I really wanted to go as it is pretty much the furthest south you can get without being in the sea or going to the South Pole. As I didn't have much room left in my passport for visa stamps (it would have been 1. exit Argentina, 2. Arrive Chile, 3. Leave Chile, 4. Arrive Argentina - repeat on the way back) and 12 hours by dodgy road, I found flights from Rio Gallegos for not much more than the bus ticket, and it was only an hour and a half flight.

Ushuaia was equally stunning and had the most snow I'd ever seen! As we travelled south, I kept getting really excited that there was loads of snow, and then in the next place there would be more...and then in Ushuaia MASSES!!!

As there was so much snow, we went Husky dog sledging in one of the ski resorts and as it was so quiet there, I got to drive the sledge! So exciting! But back to trains...So we caught the Tren del Fin del Mundo which used to be the prison train and take the prisoners out to cut firewood in the forests to the train journey was a bit of a tour like that. When we got to the Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) national park, most people caught the train straight back again, or headed to one of the lodges for a leisurely lunch. But me and Livia had other ideas and so we went hiking...in deep snow...with more falling...

I have to say that it was not the best idea we've ever had, as we couldn't see the path, so kept getting lost and disorientated, and we got soaking wet as the snow was so thick and deep, but it was beautiful, and very peaceful. We saw seals playing in a frozen lake, and then had a picnic - very appropriate for this time of year!

So that completes my recent train travelling adventures. Although I am off to Malaysia in a few weeks time so may have more adventures to come.

Train Travel & Other Exciting Adventures ~ No.4

South America!! Which was surprisingly much easier to travel around than I'd thought it would be. And the Cama buses. Oh how I wish National Express would introduce them for journeys here, it really is the way to travel!!

But I still didn't neglect my trains, and so the first journey was an overnight train from Villazon, in Bolivia, just over the border from Argentina to Oruru, about 4 hours from La Paz. The first challenge was making it to the train station on time. My 16 hour bus to take me to the Argentine border, La Quiaca was only 2 hours late, but then it took 4 hours to queue to get through immigration. By this time, everyone was telling me that the tickets would have sold out, but when i arrived at the ticket office with about half an hour to spare, there were plenty of 2nd Class tickets available, which entitled me to a little bit reclining seat, plenty of legroom and a heater! Perfect!!

The journey was quite terrifying, as there were sections where the earth had entirely eroded away, on some of the cliff edges, and the rails were literally hanging over nothing, but I am not sure that the roads would have been any better! I had 2 seats to myself so had plenty of room and a man arrived first thing in the morning with a steaming pot of tea.

We then thought the easy bit was getting the bus from Oruru to La Paz, as it was only a few hours, and the bus touts wait at the station to herd you all onto their buses so they can leave straight away. Unfortunately, about an hour into our journey, the driver pulled off the road, and drove into the middle of nowhere, and then stopped the bus and demanded more money from everyone before he would continue. I would have understood more if the bus was full of tourists, as they would be an easy target, but there was only me and 2 Belgian guys on the bus who weren't Bolivians.

So the arguments started....and continued....through my basic Spanish I got that they were asking 5 Bolivianos more from everyone. Considering there was about 4.6 to £1 when I was there, that really isn't anything, but when you consider that we only paid 15 Bolivianos in the first place, it is quite an increase.

Eventually everyone realised that we didn't really have a choice so we all paid up and continued on our way to La Paz!

My next train journey was actually in Panama and was much more civilised, but also much more expensive. I took the tourist railway along the Panama canal from Panama City to Colon. Colon is pretty scary, but I managed to find the largest taxi driver I've ever seen in my life, who ended up pretty much proposing to me, but also showed me all around the Panama canal and it is really interesting watching all the ships being raised and lowered to get through.