Mantis and Mango; THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES!

Wouzer!  I can't believe that again another year has vanished.  "Yet in some ways i still feel like my stomach is still full of pistashieos. Ha"

But alas it has and we are off on another adventure!!  Ooo? "Where are they going?"  You might not believe it, or if you read all of last years Indian stories you might.  

Usually about November, December we start brain storming the most ridiculous adventures we can think up and then in the end we pick the one that everyone says, "don't do that, it sounds horribly dangerous, and possibly not even fun, you'll get sick for sure."  "We'll show you", we say.  "Mantis and Mango can make anything fun!"  And.. Usually we do!  And..  It's always fun, though there are always moments when we think, "shit, they were right, this is dangerous, why again are we here?"  "O yes, in the name of Adventure!"

Well on that note.  November and December conjured up these ideas;

1.  Fly back to Indonesia, purchase a 125cc motorcycle a couple of surfboards and attempt to island hop it east to Timor and then south 3 or 4 thousand miles through the desert to Rachaels home town.  

2.  Meet our friend Will, who is currently cycling around the world, in the Stans part of the world and ride with him for a few months

3.  Cycle N to S through South America, emm, that was high up on the list

But then the more we thought about it all we really wanted to do was surf!  Not just here a surf, there a surf, but, everywhere a surf, surf!  We wanted to get back to our roots.  We wanted to be surf bums!!  We wanted no responsibilities!  We wanted salty skin! We wanted dirty hair!  We wanted tans!  We wanted warm water!  We wanted the sun!  We wanted to shut our brain off and not think about anything but the most important thing, surfing!  We wanted to wake up and go surfing!  Eat breakfast and then go surfing!  Take a nap, drink some tea and then go surfing!  We wanted to nap in the hammock, read our books and then surf with the setting sun!  We wanted to take our passion back!

Goodness me.  That really should be so difficult.  Pick some where with a high surfing potential for the month of feb and march, get there and don't leave!  

Emm?  Central america, been there, loved it, but already been there.  Hawaii, lots of surfing, but lots of surfers, and aggressive surfers at that.  California, emm, to cold.  South America, ooo, to much adventure involved.  Indonesia, yes, indonesia, the surf meca, but we already been there and it is 24 hours and 1200 dollars away, ahh darn.  Brazil, em, nope.  Florida, to small.  

Yes!  I've got it!!  Why didn't we think of this in the first place.

Starts with P ends with O.  No it is not Poo!

Puerto Rico!!  It is close! The are tons of waves! Its cheap to get there.  The sun it shining in PR!!

There you have it.  We're not venturing so far from home this year!  We've rented a house on the ocean, on the surfs up side of Puerto Rico for five whole week!!  

And along with our trusty surf boards we'll be living the surf bum dream!!

Who knows, if every thing goes to plan, and all we do is surf, i might not have much to write about, but then again...nothing ever goes to plan!  It could go flat for a year, we could have a hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, military cue, taken hosage, ooo geee, maybe we should stay home!  I don't think so!

Puerto Rico here we come!!

To the point...i'm sending this email to make you aware that more may be on there way.  But more importantly every year after the adventure has begun i get quite a number of folks asking me if i'd mind adding so and so to my email list.  No, i don't mind at all!  The more people reading nonsense the better.  But once we are on the road the internet isn't such a certain thing and so it is far easier for me to add peoples email address to my group list before we go.   So, if you know anyone who you feel might appreciate this type of b grade literature please send their email address to me and i'll be sure to add them to the list. 

O yes and one other thing...I know i mentioned it at the end of our Indian adventures, it wasn't finished then, but now it is.  Mantis and Mango have their own blog site.  This means if you are ever hanging out, thinking, i'm board, i wish i had something to read...now you can read any old mantis and mango tale you wish.  Not that i really expect anyone too, i mostly did if for my self so that i can keep all my creations in one place, but it is there and you are welcome to it!  Not to mention they are also accessible on all your smart phones out there, ooo!  I made it mobile device compatible!

go to     http://globalgallivanters.blogspot.com/

O yes and the other other thing.  As if 5 weeks of surf bumming in PR weren't enough we're cycling our bicycles a few thousand miles from Georgia back to Plymouth through the mountains so i'm sure there are bound to be some tales.  

Love Mantis and Mango

Here's a few photos a what we got up to in 2011

 

A FINAL MANTIS RANTING OF HOLY SHIT INDIA‏

Our last day in India my goal was to write a story about our overall feelings for the place.  But alas I spent the day in bed moaning about my aching throat and inability to swallow, (looks like I said, “hey Rachael, India might be covered in shit but it is the first time we’ve not gotten sick”, one day early).  Then I figured the 40 hours it was going to take us to get home I’d have plenty of chance to write but something about screaming babies, awful airplane air, fat feet and looking after your wife who’s throwing up on the plane were too distracting for any creative thinking. 

So now, two days after our return, I’ve snuck out of bed at 6am on Saturday morning to scribble down this absurd inky idea that has popped into my head.

Landing in India, you feel like you’ve awoke swimming in your local poo farm.  Everywhere your eyes land you see shit, every time you breathe through your nose you smell shit, everything you touch, it is covered in shit.  Not wanting to put your face under you cruise around doing the back stroke and bizarrely come across the odd undigested pistachio floating on the surface.  Thinking, ‘what the hell do I have to loose, I’m floating in shit’, you pop one into your mouth…surprisingly it’s rather tasty.  And the more you search the more delicious floating undigested pistachios you discover.  ‘Things could be worse,’ you think.

After a few weeks of bobbing on your back, curiosity gets the best of you; rolling onto your tummy, you stick your face in, against better judgment you open your eyes you have a look around, ‘HOLY SHIT’, it is like a pistachio gold mine down there.  Soon enough you get sick of coming up for air and so take the plunge, you inhale a big lung full of brown frothy aerated shit, expecting to gag your body tenses up...but to your surprise nothing happens, in fact you feel fine; looking at yourself in the mirror you see why, in just a few short weeks you’ve miraculously grown Indian shit filtering gills, Wouzers!  No longer encumbered by the need to surface for air you swim deeper, filling your pistachio sack and breathing freely.  Slowly but surely you seem to be ‘acclimatizing’ to your environment and can only sense the shit you know is out there if you strain really hard.  The deeper you go the denser the pistachios get until a few fathoms down…you discover a solid bed of pistachios…a bizarre sensation creeps over you, ‘your smiling’; and you realize that only now are you experiencing the real INDIA!

Mantis and Mango Are Home!!!

You know what that means…PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are going to be having a potluck dinner and slide show of our trip!!!  Everyone is welcome, invite anyone you want!!  Please come, and bring a dish to share!!!!

Like every year it is going to be a rubbish free dinner.  We’ll have a recycling bin for bottles but other than that we don’t want to create any trash.  So bring a picnic basket with plates, cutlery, cups, cloth napkins and anything else you need might need!  Plastic plates will be frowned upon!

Date: Next Saturday, April 23^rd

Time: Potluck to start around 5pm with slide show sometime around 7pm

Location: 56 Langdon Street, Plymouth, NH 03264 (that is the barn behind my parents’ house)

Parking is slightly limited so please carpool if you can.  Please park in my parents driveway, on Langdon Street or if you don’t mind being parked in a number of cars can fit single file in our driveway. 

Email or give us a call if you have any questions!! 603-254-8824

Love Mantis and Mango

BOOBS

STORY ONE:

On our 3^rd rest day in as many days of riding we’ve landed in Kumily.  The plan was to just spend the afternoon here and then ride on but our bodies were calling for more rest!  Yesterdays ride was a bit more than we’d planned for.  20km of gradual up, 30km of almost get off and push up and down, then it took us 3 hours to ride the next 20km (that’s an average of 6.6km/h which is only just over 4mph, I could drink 30 beers and crawl that fast), finally reaching the top of the pass we were told, ‘40km of flat from here’, maybe in a car but not on a bike.  All told we were in the saddle for 7.5 hours, at 100F, plugged into the ‘is it too hot and steep for riding equation’ that is 29 normal hours, no wonder we needed a bloody rest day, we’re insane!  Plus we had 3 separate rain storms, one section of shrapnel road and our first crash of the trip.  One of us, upon seeing a bus swerve our way, slammed on the breaks and veered off the road so abruptly, that the one in the rear had no time to react and so careened into the other; overlapping wheels was forced down, luckily managing to unclip and land on their feet while the bike skidded to a hault.  No one was injured and the bikes were fine! HS-TIA!  (for anyone who’s watched Blood Diamond and is familiar with the term TIA, This is Africa, we have modified it for our current situation.  This Is India! And in extreme cases like a bicycle crash HS is added as a prefix.)

Limping into port around 5pm we find a mooring, collapse onto our bed and proceed to eat everything we can find left over in our bags, chocolate pies, curry chips, peanuts, cookies and raisins.  Shower up and out to dinner where i fist so much delicious curry, rice and parotas (they are one of the amazing India breads) down my gullets that I actually almost vomit on the walk home.  Despite the gorging I have the best night’s sleep since leaving home! Yes

Late the next afternoon we venture out on our bikes to explore what the signs claim to be, ‘The Only True Eco-Tourism Model in the World’, yah right!  I’m expecting to see more rubbish and poop then eco-anything but the national park is only 3km down the road so we have to check it out. 

After paying 20x the local price (which is still only 5 dollars) just to be allowed through the gate we start seeing signs like nothing else we’ve come across in India, ‘Please don’t throw Rubbish’, ‘No Horns’, ‘No Passing’, ‘No Music’, ‘No Speeding’, ‘Preserve India’, ‘Animals have a right to Live’.  HOLLY SHIT!  We pinch ourselves to see if we are sleeping or maybe worse, dead.  Nope we are not!  There is even a road crew of ladies picking up what little rubbish there is.  Nice one National Parks!

Getting to the end of the road it turns out there is really only one reason to come in and that is to take a wildlife spotting boat trip on the 1820’s British damned lake.  The locals are doing it so we figure, ‘why not.’

Along with 200 Indians and a handful of westerners we clamber aboard 3 boats that are more resembling of ocean ferries then sightseeing lake boats.  From the onset I’m pretty sure the real show will be inside the boat, not out.  Firing up the noisy diesel engines I’m proven wrong.  The boat ride is ridiculously long and most everyone falls asleep but we do spot monster deer, buffalo herds, boar, monkeys and a lone distant elephant. 

Way to go India!  It’s refreshing to learn there are spots in India that haven’t fallen prey to the destructive human race!

STORY 2

Just made some new friends, Emma and Guy!  After spending a few hours together around the breakfast table, watching the local fisherman haul in the most insane beach netting system, it starts to get hot, India style!  The kind where if you don’t drink your chai quickly enough it gets salty and watered down from the steady stream of sweat running off your nose.

Well then, what better to do with a rest day at the beach then go bodysurfing.  Oddly enough, or maybe not as they are from England, where it’s always cold, this is one of the first times Emma has ever been in the ocean where there is any swell.  Wading in chest deep a wave comes and we all dive down to get underneath it, that is except Emma who just stands there and gets tossed around a bit.  Turning I can see that she’s out of her comfort zone so I give her a grin, ‘nice one’.  At the same time Guy shouts, “one’s popped out Emma!”  Following her eyes down…low and behold it has, a boob has completely hopped out of its hammock. Wiping it back in she looks mortified and turns for shore.  Most likely because she thinks I was giving her the ‘One Eyed Titty Wink’ not the ‘Good Ocean Skills Grin’ I was intending. 

Sadly because either her wipping acting was olimpic athleat fast or my visionary reaction was so slow i didn't even get to see the boob.  Not necessarly that i wanted to but who would give up a free boob spotting opportunity; it was like getting caught steeling out of the cookie jar when you didn't really steal any cookies.

How do you explain that one?  I thought about it for a few seconds and came to the realization that I couldn’t so I let it go. 

Haha, that is until now as she and Guy are on our emailing list.  Haha. Boobs!

Love Mantis and Mango