Get Lost Issue 40

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10

Southern Splendour

OF THE WORLD’S

BEST PARTIES to from BRAZIL

ISSN 1449-3543

TAIWAN

Oman’s frankincense route

Bear Facts

Tracking China’s wild pandas

Paradise Found

Rote: the Bali of 20 years ago?

To Be Sure

On the craic in Galway

White On

Cruising Antarctica

ARGENTINA | AUSTRALIA | INDIA | NEW ZEALAND | SOUTH AFRICA

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10 reasons to go wild

The mad, rad and slightly dangerous parties to add to your calendar.

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INDONESIA

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OMAN

Perfect breaks, tiny villages, few tourists…

Is Rote Island the Bali of 20 years ago?

cHINA

The spectacular desert landscape of Dhofar’s ancient frankincense route.

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ANTARcTI c cA cTI cutting through the ice on a Southern Ocean adventure. #10 get lost ISSUE #40

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Busting through bamboo on the trail of elusive wild pandas.

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TASMANIA

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INDIA

How’s the serenity? Searching for solitude in the endangered Tarkine.

Meet the local women dishing out grassroots justice.

get in the know As a student, Pope Francis worked as a bouncer and barman in Buenos Aires.

contents

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et books, 22 Lonely Plan ggage, 23 Paklite lu , 48 USA trip s, 122 Tamron len

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News & Views The globe uncovered Events What’s going down?

Get Social Send in and win Places to Stay The weird and wonderful

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Top Trips The best we can find Top 10 Quirky superheroes Retro Travel PNG before independence You Wish Flying the Fiordland

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Get Packing An instant itinerary for Hong Kong After Dark On the craic in Galway Festival The true brews of San Diego

114 LIKE A LOcAL

128 TOP BARS

118 FOOD F

130 MUSIc

120 PHOTOGRAPHy

132 REvIEWS

124 TRAv A EL JOB Av

136 cONFESSIONS

Discover Sea Port in cape Town The hungry traveller in Argentina Take great selfies

Unpacking designer hotels

The world’s best watering holes The soaring success of Dan Sultan Gadgets and other goodies Stalin’s ’’s last hideout

126 TASTE T TRIP A bite of Bangkok

get in the know When The Goring opened in London in 1910, it was the first hotel to offer en-suite bathrooms.

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I

was In Jordan to do a story on Petra. Each day, my Bedouin guide, Hmoudi al B’doul, and I would explore a different area of this ancient city carved from sandstone. on this evening, I followed Hmoudi up a steep hillside. we ended up on top of al deir, one of Petra’s most beautiful buildings. He scrambled down and hopped on top of the dome, as he had done so often throughout his lifetime. as the sun slowly set, I photographed my friend in his sacred place.

• Nikon F3 • Nikkor 20–35mm • Shot on film Photography by annie Griffiths

GALWAY With the summer sun shining well into the evening, Jayne D’Arcy discovers it’s easy to uncover craic in Ireland’s west-coast city.

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get in the know Eyre Square was renamed John F Kennedy Memorial Park in 1965, but even now few call it that.

Looking across the Corrib towards the Galway Arts Festival’s Big Top. get in the know Galway is one of Ireland’s Gaelic-speaking districts, with about 10 per cent of the city’s population able to converse in the ancient language.

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HERE WAS NO DENYING THE CINEMATIC setting. Lush, leprechaun-green hills as far as the eye could see launching into a cobalt-blue ocean. Abundant sunshine only made it all the more panoramic. That the backdrop was the swanky Lodge at Torrey Pines resort in “chill, babe, it’s San Diego” only punctuated the “life is good” moment.

The occasion? A bites-and-brew Beer Garden celebration of the city’s delicious and famous craft-beer scene.

Then some guy said, “I don’t like beer.”

OK, not entirely expected. This is a city, after all, that’s managed to blow those Budweiser horses off their slick advertising double trucks by cultivating an Evel Knievel culture of I-dareyou-to-brew-that handcrafted beer. A city where the once marginal and now legendary Stone Brewing Co.’s Stone IPA (Indian Pale Ale) slides down a bar just as fast as a Ballast Point Victory at Sea Chocolate and Coffee Porter.

Those beers, and just about every variety in between dreamt up by San Diego’s redoubtable craft breweries, are the focus of San Diego Beer Week, held annually during the first week of November. “When we started San Diego Beer Week in 2009, we were hoping to #42 get lost ISSUE #40

share our unique brewing scene with locals,” Matt Rattner, president of Karl Strauss Brewing Company and board member of the San Diego Brewers Guild, confides in me.

“Five years later, we’re internationally recognised for our innovation, quality and collaboration.”

The event now spans 10 days and takes place all over the city, from local boîtes and spiffy tasting rooms to assorted breweries for beer-pairing dinners.

My first discovery during my first Beer Week this past November was that, in San Diego, beer is as vaunted as wine. Arrive with the idea that beer is trashy, not as posh as wine, and you’ll be chased out of town faster than a bartender can pull a pint.

Which intrigues as to why someone in the midst of this fermented demimonde might exclaim they’re not into brews at all. Luckily his attitude is inconsequential to the brewers and bystanders who realise all this guy needs is an education. The civilised response? “You just haven’t tasted one you like yet.”

Tasting a beer you like, much less sourcing one, is not a problem in San Diego. Unlike conventional breweries or even other cities

Image: Tim Stahl

Each year, the craft brewers of southern Cali fling open the doors of their establishments for 10 days, inviting in the beerloving public to taste their wares. Neal Webster Turnage raises a glass to San Diego Beer Week.

Behind the scenes at Mike Hess Brewing Company.

get in the know Craft beer is the 13th largest industry in San Diego County and has a AU$340 million impact on its economy.

festival: USA

Kari Strauss at the San Diego Beer Week ‘Beer Garden’.

The San Diego Brewers Guild Festival at Broadway Pier kicks off the week.

get in the know There are 82 craft breweries in San Diego with 32 more in the planning stages.

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R E H T R U F NO

h t u So

In search of the tourist-free Indonesian paradise of decades past, Brook Mitchell finds himself on Rote Island. Eventually.

Photography by Brook Mitchell

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get in the know The uninhabited Ndana island, just south of Rote, is the most southerly island in Indonesia.

INDONESIA Fishing on a tidal lagoon near the village of Boa, Rote Island.

get in the know Ndao, sitting just offshore from Nemberala, is another small island that can be visited on a day trip.

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Kids are starting to make their way out into the surf on old battered boards.

S

ome time during the fourth day of waiting i begin to lose my mind. malarial mosquitoes gather in numbers for their insidious evening raids, and my daydreams of perfect waves and swaying palm trees are interrupted by the rhythmic clang of a rusted ceiling fan. outside, a dusty potholed mess plays host to a constant procession of hotted-up bemos blaring garish indonesian pop. With little company other than my own swirling thoughts i reach a low point i never thought my travels would take me. Anyhow, any way, i want off this island. i pace and i swat, while the buzzing in my ears sends me quietly off the deep end.

I am in Kupang, West Timor’s grim capital and the first stop on a journey in search of the fabled “Bali of 20 years ago”. Depending on whom you ask, it still exists in far-flung isles around the Indonesian archipelago, and I’d

ensuring a harrowing journey. It is renowned as one of the deadliest stretches of water in Asia, even by Indonesia’s dodgy public transport standards. In recent years the crossing has seen more than its share of sinking vessels and lives lost. My arrival in Kupang has coincided with a not-uncommon run of strong winds with the potential to cause even more perilous conditions for the former European River Cat that is ill-designed for its use here.

Mornings quickly turn into a routine of loading luggage onto the ferry, fighting for space, then sitting as the wind swells before heading back to town to do it all again the following day.

Kupang is a busy port with few redeeming features other than an impressive night market, serving the freshest catch of the day and regional specialities for next to nothing. The town was occupied by Japanese troops during World War II, which in turn saw it battered by numerous Allied bombing

the main wave is called t-Land, in recognition of a similar wave in Java, although some refer to it as old man’s Left, since the expats who surf it are generally of advanced years. heard whispers of a small island called Rote.

Depending on the whims of the local weather, it’s a three-hour ferry ride from Kupang.

An overnight stop in Kupang is required for anyone travelling to Rote. All going well, the morning after your arrival, a ferry will take you across the Pukuafu channel. The dramatic confluence of the Indian Ocean and Timor Sea, Pukuafu is a stretch of water where strange currents, whirlpools and walls of chop bounce off jagged islands lined with volcanic stone, #54 get lost ISSUE #40

campaigns. Walking along the waterfront today, it’s not hard to imagine the place in the days after the raids. The buildings are a mix of the decrepit and crumbling, with no hint of charm and a thick layer of dust.

Captain William Bligh found his way here after the mutiny on the Bounty, and small reminders of his sojourn can be found around town, most notably in the one decent drinking hole on the waterfront, which has great old maps and memorabilia on display. The

Far from the nearest PlayStation, kids run wild all over the island.

get in the know The critically endangered Rote Island snake-neck turtle is endemic here and nests on Ndao and Ndana.

IndonesIa

get in the know The most traditional music on the island comes from the sasando, a violin-like instrument made of palm leaves.

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Captive pandas, like this one at the Daping Yu Scenic Spot, are easy to view and photograph, although it’s possible to encounter wild individuals in the region, too. #70 get lost ISSUE #40

get in the know Shaanxi means “west of the mountains” and it is here – west of the Taihang Range – Chinese civilisation began.

CHINA

Cinda Chavich treks into the forests of China’s Shaanxi Province on the trail of the elusive wild panda.

Photography by Cinda Chavich

get in the know It was the first Qin Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who filled his burial tomb with 8000 life-sized terracotta soldiers.

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get in the know The Akademik Ioffe was built during the Cold War for sonic mapping and submarine detection.

ANTARCTICA

the big There’s nothing like the first glimpse of a white wonderland to make you forget two days of raging seas. Danika Porter conquers seasickness and innumerable layers of clothing on a magical trip to Antarctica.

Photography by Danika Porter

get in the know Eighty-five per cent of the earth’s glacial ice is located in Antarctica.

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Let’s

Get This

Party

Started Shake it, drink it, just do it! To celebrate get lost’s me 10th birthday, we’ve co nd up with 10 parties arou you the world that will have ing singing, dancing, carous g and waking up wonderin are. where in the world you

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get in the know The oldest rock music festival in the world is the Netherlands’s Pinkpop Festival, which began in 1970.

Partygoers at Spain’s Sitges Carnival. get in the know The biggest ever toga party, according to Guinness World Records, was held in Brisbane in 2012, with 3700 attendees.

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Sitges Carnival SITGES, SPAIN 10–17 FEBRUARY, 2015 It gets totally wild when scantily clad Sitgetans take over the Catalonian city during their Carnival. Even in the chilly weather (it’s Europe in February, after all), a full covering is optional and debauchery rules the streets after dark.

When it first gets going, Sitges is essentially a party that attracts the LGBT crowd, but after the initial four days it becomes slightly more like Carnival in other parts of the world, albeit with a rainbow hue.

It all begins on Fat Thursday – they call it Dijou Gras here – and the Gran Rua (King’s Parade). Costumed ‘queens’ shimmy down the street and the King of the Carnival reads his proclamation to start proceedings. From then until the ceremonial burying of the sardine on Ash Wednesday the town becomes a heaving, swaying mass of humanity.

The two biggest events, however, are the Debauchery Parade on Sunday night and the Extermination Parade on Tuesday evening. A procession of floats, pumping out tunes and surrounded by dancers, cruises through the streets. Drag performers and dancers from all over Europe strut beside them, as up to 300,000 people from all corners of the globe shimmy on the sidelines. Then, when the parading is done, the Sitges night-life keeps the party going until well past dawn.

During the day, if you manage to wake up, things are often a little calmer. You’ll see folk dancing and costumed children, take part in a game that’s a bit like bingo called the Great Carnival Quinto, and hook into the traditional feasts held at different points around the city.

Try xató (cold cod salad), but hold on to your plate since the carnival jesters have been known to start food fights.

MAKE SURE YOU… prepare to feast as hard as you party. The food fiesta throughout the week means a full tummy is a carnival must-have.

DON’T… forget your wicked party disguise to dance through the streets undetected.

TIP: Get to know the carnival story to fully absorb the atmosphere. The parades tell the tale of the journey of the Carnival King from his proclamation to his death.

www.visitsitges.com

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get in the know Known as Spain’s Saint-Tropez, Sitges has 17 beaches along its shoreline – perfect for post-party recovering.

world’s best parties

get in the know October’s Sitges Film Festival is the largest fantasy film event in the world and features a Zombie Walk.

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