The Last Chapter...

Here we are, sitting on the last plane of our trip! It's a lot more bittersweet than I thought it would be.  We have definitely been looking forward to going back to Vancouver, but now that we're actually there it's hard to believe that the adventures are over (for now)! On the other hand we are so looking forward to seeing friends and family again.  The more I travel, the more I appreciate how incredibly beautiful Vancouver is, with the mountains to the North, the ocean, Stanley Park, false creek and the fact that it is green green green in both meanings of the word! 

We have so many pictures to sift through, bags to unpack, and various odds and ends to take care of, but more than anything we've been left feeling like we did everything we wanted to do and more on the trip and on top of that we have met countless people along the way who were really what made our trip so memorable.  

The Tomatina Festival left us feeling pretty damn exhausted, but the night in an actual hotel room was heaven- what a great sleep!! We had dinner in Barcelona- one last paella, yum! The hotel room was actually a fall-back seeing as we were trying to hit up a campground but it was 60 Euro for one night!! So we payed 80 or something for a real room. Absurd, but in the end awesome!
After a ridiculous argument over whether or not it was worth it to pay for the breakfast buffet in the morning (Chris 'won', and we stayed for breaky.  After traveling for so long together, you're bound to have a few silly disagreements that you can later look back on and laugh at), we headed back towards Switzerland to stay with Ketty once more.  We showed up late only to be surprised with a traditional African meal, with outfits and everything! We were so excited to share in her traditions from home and the food was absolutely amazing! Both Nico and Ketty have been so good to us, we hope to return the favour one day! We took some pictures after creating our African safari background and had a great night catching up.  Nico was flying in from Africa in the morning and going straight to work so we popped by for a tired hello/good-bye on our way towards Luxembourg.

Does it look like we're in Gabon?!

We met up with our buddy Onur in Geneva! We first met him in New Zealand, how cool is that?!

I must say that Chris is generally an organized person, especially for a guy. He loves his lists and is great at organizing events when he commits to them, and I love that we shared the job of Couchsurfing communications during our travels. Unfortunately, he had one small error, accidentally replacing the word 'Friday' with 'Saturday' and as a result, we showed up at our hosts' doorstep to some shocked faces. "You had said you would be arriving tomorrow..."! Oops! Anyway, it was Jean-Marc and his family of seven kids- what's a couple more people? Of course they were having family over that night (a four-person family), so now they were suddenly entertaining and feeding 15 people! We had an awesome night having home-made sushi- what a fun activity for the kids! There were bowls of different accoutrements all over the never-ending dining room table and we had small hand-sized squares of seaweed, so it was like making Japanese tacos. Delicious! Maybe the kids will come visit us in Vancouver one day (though let's hope not all seven at once!). Honestly, you have GOT to check out Couchsurfing!

It was our last day in Europe, so we headed out fairly early, headed for Luxembourg. Here in 'Lux city' we saw the coolest street performer. Everyone gathered around to check out the illusion! We walked around a bit, but with little time to spare and after having seen soo many main squares we decided to just buy the traditional shot glass to add to our collection and move on. We detoured through Belgium JUST so that Chris could by a shot glass, but ended up in a really cool city which we both liked a lot, called Liege. We walked around the main area (starting to see a trend here?) and did a bit of last-minute shopping for chocolates and a giant bag to help us carry all our stuff home. 


Finally, we made it to our last stop, Dusseldorf, and where we would meet up with our first and our last CouchSurfer for the Europe leg of the trip, Joe. We popped some champagne to celebrate all of the memories we have to look back on through our travels in the last 7 months. Chris and I both value the people in our lives so much, and I think one of the highlights for me was meeting people from all over the world and sharing experiences and stories. We met them as a couple, and learned about each other through listening to stories and opinions shared.  What I love about the people we met is they were all so open, so kind, so happy.  Sharing the love of travel gives you this mentality and I hope we hold on to that openness and desire to share our lives with everyone we meet in it as we return to life back home.

Joe! Our very first (and last) CouchSurfer in Europe!

Speaking of important people in our lives, I can't imagine ever being able to do this trip with anyone else. Chris, to me, is the ultimate travel companion- he is up for anything, reminds me of the things that are most important, knows how to make me smile no matter what the circumstances, and has such a happy, easy-going personality that it's no wonder everyone he meets almost instantly realizes how awesome he is. There were definitely bumps in the road and we learned a lot about each other (for better and for worse) along the way, but I'm so excited for what lays ahead for us after passing this ultimate relationship test with flying colours. 

Looking back I can honestly say we're happier and closer than ever, so thanks babe! I wouldn't have wanted to be:
dodging the cyclonic rain of Fiji, digging 'wobbles' the van out of pea gravel, partying until mugged at the Full Moon Party, sweating (and let's be honest, complaining) in Anchor Wat, braving the animal market in Bac Ha, breathing in the dust of Aswan, tandem biking the streets of Amsterdam, beer-tasting in Belgium, CouchSurfing through Europe, posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, freedom camping in Germany, hiking through the hills of Austria, checking out the Prince's palace in Liechtenstein, listening to the cowbells in Switzerland, sunbathing in Nice, surfing the internet in McDonalds, wine-tasting in Provence, getting kicked out of a lake in Carcassonne, indulging in unique views at the pool in Andorra, swimming on the coast of Spain, walking (with difficulty ;) through the streets of Marrakech, riding on a donkey-pulled platform through the outskirts of Asilah, navigating the streets of Europe for countless hours and finally getting sprayed in the face with water, fighting to stay on my feet and dodging tomatoes at La Tomatina,
with ANYONE else!

To Chris, I love you more than ever, and can't wait to top this adventure with all the more to come in our lives together!!

To everyone we met along the way, we hope to meet you again and will eagerly have you to stay if you ever come to Vancouver. Thanks for all the memories and big love to you all!

To all back home, thanks for following along and sharing in our journey! Happiness and adventure are that much more awesome when you share it with those you love.

Until the next adventure then,...

Much love, Lauren and Chris!!!

Ha ha, we MADE IT!!!!!

Peace Out!!!

Going out with a bang (and a tomato in the face)

We definitely went out in style, finishing our trip as planned, at La Tomatina!!!! For those who haven't heard of this event, it is an annual festival in Bunol, a small town 40 kilometres inland from Valencia in Spain. The premise is that basically it is a giant tomato fight.  We had seen some pictures and read about it and thought it would be a fun, crazy thing to participate in.  Well,,.. it was definitely crazy, the jury's still out on the fun part!

Couchsurfing also has an activities section, and the happened to be two groups organizing a meet-up for La Tomatina.  We thought this would be perfect as it's one thing that we really wanted to do with a group of people so we didn't just end up hucking a couple of tomatoes at each other.  We met up with almost 30 people in Valencia from all over the world, but of course mainly Aussies! After a few beers and a lot of "so how long have you been traveling for?" and "where are you from?" and "where have you been in Europe so far?", we linked up with a few choice couchsurfers to head into Bunol to party for the night.  The town was crawling with loads of people who had turned up for the event.  Down all the streets restaurant tables were set up outside and people were having tapas and drinks and good times. We wandered around with Megan, a fellow Kiwi who bummed a ride with us into town, and purely by chance ran into another couchsurfing group who had met up in Bunol.  We partied and danced to Spanish music. They have a spanish version of 'yankee doodle', which actually seems to still be popular for some reason. There were tons of Japanese tourists at the event dressed in crazy costumes, looking like contestants on Wipeout. Fair enough as it doesn't get much quirkier than this and based on their game shows, I think the Japanese get a kick out of quirky. We headed back to the car for a couple hours of sleep and to our surprise there was dance music pounding at full blast in the property right next to where our car was parked! We were too, um, 'tired', to care and threw in some earplugs to sleep a bit before the events the next day. 

Couchsurfing is AWESOME! Cheers to that!

We woke up bleary eyed in the morning to the same blaring music like we'd never slept a minute's sleep. We picked Megan up off the ground beside our car where she'd slept among another half-dozen partiers, and headed down to the main event! This town is pretty small and they get a good 50,000 people who come in for the event. It was 8:30 in the morning and the tomato-chucking trucks didn't roll in until 11, but you have to go early if you want to be in the thick of things because there are so many people that you wouldn't be able to make it through the crowds otherwise.  The other reason you go early is to experience the ridiculous but endless entertainment of the greasy pole.  Yes, that is correct.  Every year they put up a wooden telephone pole and attach a ham to the very top of it.  The goal is to climb up to the top of the pole to get the ham. The challenge? There is about an inch of pig fat covering the entire thing from top to bottom! It was a hilarious scene: there were people trying to go it on their trying to reach as high as they could, taking running jumps and straight back down to the bottomw. Then people start to climb on top of each other, with feet in faces and elbows to the head, shirts being ripped, it was mayhem! Each time someone would get a bit higher than previously they would grab handfuls of the pig fat and throw it into the crowd and everyone would cheer at the progress made. One japanese girl was giving a go scrambling up the backs of a few tough guys and wrapped both legs and arms around the pole like her life depended on it! Someone grabbed her shirt and her boob popped out for all the thousands of people to see.  She wasn't giving up though, she braved the laughing cheers from down below. Still, her efforts proved fruitless. Another favorite contender was a black guy who looked like he'd recently competed in the Olympics he was so ripped. People cheered for him every time he hit the pole by yelling "Uss-ain Bolt! Uss-ain Bolt!".  I only learned this after the fact when Chris explained to me.  Here I thought they were yelling "Use that pole!". Failed again! Ha ha! It was sweltering outside and we were shoulder-to-shoulder standing in a stagnant crowd for over two hours waiting for the tomatoes.  We turned to the locals in the metal cage (yes, they were!) with pressurized water hoses and begged them for 'agua', and every once in a while they'd spray us and we'd be refreshed for a few minutes before we turned back into a sweaty mess. We learned from previous tomatina vets that there was no way our flip-flops would make it out alive, so we taped them to our feet. We also knew that supposedly the tomatoes were delivered by trucks that drove down the street. With us already being too close for comfort to each other it was difficult to fathom how we would ever make room for a giant truck to drive through the people without anyone getting trampled! Finally a four-man chain was made so that a guy could just reach the netting encasing the ham. He pulled just a big enough hole that after he had slid down the crowd was able to shake the ham free! And just in time!

 The gun went off to signal the beginning of the tomato fight and things turned to chaos. We quickly realized the potential of the water hoses - they had the pressure of a fireman's hose and rather than a gentle hose down were being blasted into the faces and orifices of innocent tourists! It was a good fifteen minutes of blasting and we were just starting to question whether it was in fact a water fight rather than a tomato fight, when we caught glimpse of the first truck.  It started off slowly, we caught glimpse of the odd tomato. Chris got the first one of our group in the face! Then, the trampling began as people tried to make way for the truck. Check out this video clip to see just how much of a struggle it was to stay on your feet!

   Tomato-fight Footage!


Things quickly turned from hilarity to intense chaos which was, frankly, kind of freaky! I was clinging to Chris like my life depended on it, to avoid falling over and being trampled! Our arms were like useless chicken wings trapped at our sides, yet we somehow were able to shuffle towards the side of the street. Here, we hit the wall of people smushed up against the building and were safe, as no matter how hard someone pushed on us there was nowhere to move - thankfully! The first truck honked it's way through the masses and the tomatoes were flying! We stood frozen in place, me with my swim goggles on and Chris bravely bracing the blows. Doesn't it sound awesome!? There were five or six giant dumptrucks full of tomatoes and in between the arrival of each one we were blasted once more with the fire hoses. I guess it was actually a blessing in disguise, having the tomato seeds and juice rinsed out of your orifices so you could have a few clean breaths before the next truck arrived. I think I maybe threw three or four tomatoes, albeit not very far since I couldn't exactly get my arms out from beside me.  The trick is you have to patiently wait until a tomato lands in the crevice of your elbow. I felt like a velociraptor throwing those things- without being able to move my arms all I could really womp up was a hard wrist-flick to launch the tomatoes. Not the most effective method, but I did what I could. The girl beside us was crying after we were only two trucks in... again, oh the joy! Best event ever!! We continued to get pummeled and squished and it seemed like everyone around us was trying to convince himself that this was really fun. Just when you thought it would never end, the horn sounded for a second time, to end the tomato toss.  You could really tell that everyone respected that bell. We couldn’t believe how everyone just dropped everything- how ironic that the crowd could be so orderly after such an absolutely insane hour!  The streets were clogged with tomato pulp and water and a sea of floating flip-flops and people began to wade their way out of the main drag. We slowly marched en masse, tomato caked through our hair and wiping juice out of our eyes, with mixed emotions of pride and relief that it was all over.

This isn't even quite in the main square...!

This is almost exactly where we were standing! I couldn't find us in the picture though :(

The locals just lapped up the sight of all the beaten tourists, but were kind enough to hang outside of their property with hoses to rinse everyone off after the event. Chris’ favorite local was one who was spraying people with his hose in one hand, while in the other he was happily smoking hashish from his hookah. Classic! We eventually cleaned ourselves up enough to warrant getting into our car to head for the ocean! One last swim in the Mediterranean and we were good to go, mostly tomato-free, and relieved to be able to move around freely and enjoy having our personal space back.  What a way to end our crazy travels! Just a few more days of visits and driving and we will be flying out of Dusseldorf before we know it!

Unfortunately my jandals were retired post-Tomatina, after 7 months of almost daily use during our travels!