Rare Adventures

Tag: travel

Exploring Sapa and unexpected victory celebrations

With Hanoi completed it was time to head off on our adventures around the north. First stop was Sapa for the trek and the trip up to the Fansipan peak on the longest cable car in the world, but first we had to get to Sapa.

We considered the train, as it would have meant going through Train Street, but when we mentioned it, the locals thought we were mad. It takes much longer than the bus and involved a taxi from the station up to Sapa, and apart from that it is booked weeks in advance to it wasn’t an option.

The coach to Sapa was our first experience of their travel system and it is unbelievably good. Half the route is by motorway, after which you end up back on their slow old roads and the long windy route up to Sapa.

The coach was amazing, generally referred to as VIP, it was like being on a business class flight, the seats were huge reclining seats and loads of leg room. As a person of 6 foot with long legs, I notice such things and these buses are fabulous.

After sea level and claustrophobic heat in Hanoi, Sapa is in the northern mountains at about 1500m above sea level and the change is immediately noticeable, it was raining and noticeably cooler,

The other thing that you immediately notice is that is steep, in every direction, when you leave your accommodation, it is steep. You will also quickly discover that it is really and lively at night.

There has been a huge investment in Sapa to build it as a tourist centre. Much off the tourist infrastructure has been built in the last 15 years, so you are not visiting a historic centre in any way. The investment to exploit Fansipan mountain infrastructure has been incredible, to the extent that the train runs right into the centre of the town is built into a shopping mall and apartment block for the privileged.

The other unexpected factor was that how busy it was, there were crowds everywhere. The entire town was gridlocked, our bus dumped us outside of the town and told us to get a taxi. We then discovered that we had arrived in the middle of huge event to celebrate the Vietnamese victory over the US 50 years ago. A huge stage was built in the central park area, with a huge celebration that dominated the days we were there.

We watched the celebrations involving singers and dancers with video screens behind them, it then dawned on us that the videos were images of bombing during the war and glorifying the power of their military. In such a fun loving country, with lots of people celebrating and having a good time, it was a real culture shock to have the full force of the Communist Party machine in our faces. It’s their country and we enjoyed the celebrations but it was a wake up call about the reality.

Sapa itself is a real mountain town that is busy establishing itself as the trekking centre of the north, and the commercial development reflects this. There is a steep, busy main street that is full of shops selling trekking gear. This was very handy as I had come equipped with no suitable clothing for heavy rain or cold temperatures, so I had an excuse to stock up with new T shirts, fleece and a puffer jacket, none of which I wore after the 3 days in Sapa.

There is more to Sapa than the big park and one shopping street. There is a lovely lake around at the top of the town around which there are bars and restaurants and I suspect that if the war victory celebrations, then the area around this lake would have been much busier.

Lots of people we met were staying in homestays outside of the town and used Grab taxis to get in, there was cheaper accommodation was either further up the hill or further down it. it wasn’t expensive, so we stayed at the grand looking Lacassa Hotel 500m from the centre, it seemed to be the legacy of the French occupation period, or rather a relic. Its grand appearance wasn’t matched by the internal décor, but to be fair it was being redecorated and presumably it will be a lot nicer when it has finished. There was an amazing mural on the walls on the walls of the staircase.

We did a couple of trips, firstly we did the tour of Cat Cat village, Moan Park and Fansipan mountain. A major reason for the trip was to trek through the rice fields, which was a bit of a disaster. We will cover both in later blogs.

22/06/2026
Exploring Vietnam – 3 surprises

We are just back from our adventure in Vietnam, a truly wonderful experience and one that I will remember for the rest of my life. There are millions of words out there about all the things you can do on a trip to the country, and I will be adding to them over the coming weeks as I pull together the blogs about the places we visited.

Vietnam is a country in the midst of a modernisation revolution, on the one hand it has a become a massive manufacturing sector that most of us know for sports shoe brands, it even has its own car industry. Whilst on the other hand when you venture out into the countryside the rural communities are subsistence farmers, living off their land and selling goods at local markets. So not only it is exciting and vibrant, but it is also a place of contradictions, between the claustrophobia of Hanoi to the peace and tranquility of the mountains.

I thought I would start with 3 things that I did really expect when we were doing our planning, and hopefully these will really help you with your plans.

Vietnamese money

Their currency is an absolute nightmare, you can have a wallet full of paper money and not have enough to pay for a coffee, the notes come in lots of different denominations with the biggest being 500,000 dongs, and the smallest is on 500 dongs. Even worse, they all look quite similar, so it is possible to get into a horrible mess.

What makes it a little more difficult is that for all modernisation in Vietnam, they haven’t really moved towards credit cards, which are rarely accepted, so you don’t have the simple alternative to just tap and go. It is very much a cash economy and they use a payment system between themselves that involves a QR code and WhatsApp, which looked fraught with danger!

So, before you go, try to get some basic understanding of the notes and how they work, as everyone, young and old, are confused by the currency.

Tourism industry

You are probably planning to go because you have seen beautiful images of the limestone peaks around the north, or the twinkling lanterns in Hoi An. After I had been there a months it dawned me that this is a massive part of their national strategy and there has been enormous investment over the last 20 years to move the country from a back packers destination to a perfect destination for adventurers of every age, with massive influx of visitors from Japan and Korea in particular.

It is not a coincidence that the buses on the major tourist routes are modern sleeper buses or VIP coaches that are like travelling business class on a flight, these haven’t arrived by coincident. Hotels are all high quality, including the hostels, and as you move around the main centres you find endless trips and attractions on Tripadvisor. After a while the penny drops that these are all quite recent developments, whether it’s the Fansipan cable car in Sapa or Bana Hills near Da Nang, most things have been built in the last 15 years.

Where the Vietnamese have been super clever has been how the exploit their stunning landscape by creating things that make for brilliant Instagram or Facebook holiday photos, whether it is Train Street in Hanoi or you have to climb a mountain in Nim Binh, there is always the Instagram shot ready made.

Vietnamese food

I love Asian food and was really looking forward to this aspect of the trip, but I have to be honest and say that a lot of their food is quite bland. Breakfast might include a croissant, but it wouldn’t taste of anything because it didn’t have the sweet coating, similarly with other meals, we found ourselves reaching for the Soya Sauce to give it some kick as they sauces didn’t have much flavour. It is a far cry from the food you find in Thailand or even your local Chinese takeaway.

I think it is because they don’t use sugar and salt in the way Westerners use it.

Finally, you can’t but love the Vietnamese people. They are so much fun to be around, they are primarily a kind and polite race. To be honest, I’m not sure race is the right word because there are so many different ethnic groupings and something like 50 different local languages still in use. Around Sapa alone there are at least 5 different languages spoken in the villages around that region, as well as Vietnamese, and increasingly, English.

They are fiercely proud of their heritage and happily talk about beating three super powers, the Americans in the Vietnam war, before that they fought off the Chinese and even Genghis Khan couldn’t defeat the Vietnamese warlords, so they might be fun, but don’t truck with them.

Hope that provides you with a few hints to plan your holiday.

01/06/2026
Conquering Rainbow Mountain: high altitude trekking, rolling rocks, courage and condors

The last adventure was the amazing Rainbow Mountain, or Montane Vinikunka. We had first seen the natural spectacle on an episode of BBC Race Round the World; it is a phenomenon that only became visible as a result of global warming around 2012 with the retreat of the ice layer on top of the mountain.

The retreat exposed a multi colour landscape that is one of the wonders of the world, however you define them. There are only two known examples, the Peruvian mountain and one in China.

We didn’t commit to this trip until we had completed the Inca Trail. We didn’t know what the outcome of that adventure was going to be, especially Wooksie and her ability to cope with the altitude. As you will have read from other blogs, our trip to Machu Picchu took a different route to avoid a fire in Dead Woman’s Pass, so we avoided the high altitude element of that trek.

As a result, this adventure took on more significance because we needed to prove to ourselves that we could cope with a big high altitude trek (though I had done the climb on one of the Lake Titicaca Islands), which would make up for missing Dead Woman’s Pass.

As always, we were picked up before daybreak by the bus for our long haul to the mountain. We stopped off at the next hotel for more adventurers to board, most were dressed as you would expect for a long climb up a mountain, with one exception, a lady who came dressed in trainers, a fluffy jacket and muti coloured leggings and looked like she had just arrived from a disco, it was Minni.

We cleared the traffic of Cusco headed in a new direction, with different villages and landscapes and after an eternity we stopped for breakfast. The normal people seemed to group themselves together and we ended up sat beside Minni and her friend and got the chance to know each other. It’s strange how we always end up befriending the less orthodox people in a group.

After an unpleasant altercation with a male Alpaca we got back in the bus and started following the offroad trail, to climb up to the drop off point. Cusco is at about 2500m altitude, high but manageable, by the time the minibus had completed the climb up the mountain tracks we were at 4100m.

When we got off the bus the altitude hit us immediately, it felt like a huge pressure on my chest and it took time to get oxygen into the lungs, but it was a real sudden shock, but the body adjusts.

Basically, we were being dropped off at roughly the same altitude as Dead Woman’s Pass, I looked at Wooksie and could see the lack of oxygen was having an immediate effect. We were all issued with walking poles to help with the climb.

I was amazed to see that most of our fellow adventurers chose to take the easy way up on the back of mountain ponies, the ponies carried customers up to the final station, which meant they only had to do the last climb, cheating or what!

We set off to walk the 5km walk to the summit, roughly 1000m higher in altitude. Progress was painfully slow from the get-go. I could see Wooksie was really struggling and suggested that maybe she should get on one of the ponies. To be fair she has had bad experiences with ponies in the past, and she wasn’t going to make an exception.

She then came out with the bravest of words, “I’m going to climb this f@cking mountain if it kills me”. In the light of what had happened in Puno with altitude sickness, it did occur to me that there was a possibility of that happening. On that cheerful note, we headed off.

The tour guide was carrying oxygen for emergencies and it turned out only 3 of passengers on the bus were walking up, Wooksie, me and of course, Minni in her totally inappropriate outfit. An unexpected consequence of trekking at this altitude is the impact on our bowels, there were 3 rest stations on the climb and the toilets were very busy places.

I was carrying a stock of caffeine energy gels and bars. We hadn’t needed them on the other treks but they came in very handy on this one. Each stage of the trek got tougher, I looked into the distance and saw the peak and couldn’t see anyway that Wooksie was going to make it, however, my girl is from Northern England and made of tough stuff, and she climbed that mountain one step at a time.

Eventually we reached a point where we could see the multi coloured, stripped slopes and I was relieved that Wooksie had made it that far, even if she had to go down, she had seen it, but she wasn’t giving up. At the final rest station, we downed the remaining energy bars and gels and made the push for the summit, Wooksie travelling one step at a time, but now I was full of caffeine and bouncing up the mountain like a gazelle then coming back to chat with Wooksie.

Then a moment of drama, the rocks on the mountain are very loose, and the mountain is very steep. The reason Dead Woman’s Pass was abandoned was because of the loose rocks and we had a demonstration of the dangers.

One of the climbers ahead of us dislodged a small rock, that started to roll very slowly initially, it rapidly picked up speed and headed towards the next batch of trekkers, nobody was looking up for danger and the rock hit a group of walkers like a bowling ball, none of them saw it coming and fortunately it was just a glancing blow before it continued it’s journey down through a gully and to safety. It was a great illustration of the dangers and why the Incas spent all their time terracing the mountains to keep them stable.

Soon after this we reached the ridge and had a full view of the coloured slopes and the valleys, as we sat and looked down the valley we saw a mighty condor fly out from a perch below and glide down the valley, if there was ever a message from the gods that was it. I asked Wooksie if she wanted to go to the summit and you can guess the answer.

We climbed up the last couple of hundred metres to the summit at 5100m and the Instagram shot place where there was a long queue. Then another wonderful thing happened, we spotted Bettina, last seen at 3am in a Huacachina night club two weeks before hanging out with Wooksie.

Big embraces, hugs and photos followed, we had made to the summit and banished the little doubts about whether we would have made it over Dead Woman’s Pass on the Inca Trail, this was much higher and much tougher.

Within minutes of saying arrivederci to Bettina we bumped into Minni, and we wandered back down the mountain triumphantly together. Back at the bus, we discovered that we were the only people on the bus to reach the summit. One of the problems with the pony trek approach is that the lungs don’t adjust and suddenly you are on path to the peak at 4700m with no aclimatisation, so they had all given up.

The trip back to Cusco went really quickly, learned a lot about Minni, who was an architect from Toronto and pursuing a part time career as a fashion influencer (hence the strange get up).

After a stop of for a drink, another confrontation with the angry Alpaca, and once the elation had passed we dozed all the way back to Cusco.

On arrival in Cusco, we headed for the Irish Pub only to find another pal from Huacachina, Cockney John.

12/02/2026
Inca Trail Day 4, the Monkey Steps, Sungate and Machu Picchu

After the drama of Day 3 dinner with the guides and the tip issue the night before, we were in bed very early, with only the very brave (or foolhardy) venturing out into the night for the makeshift toilet. The heavy rain on the tent overnight didn’t lift our spirits for the long trek in the dark.

Day 4 started early, the pots were clanking for breakfast at 2.30am and we were all woken up at 3am for breakfast, which I must admit was pretty hard going but we needed to stock up for a very long day ahead.

The porters were all over the gear like a rash, packing tents and equipment for their early departure. It later transpired that the porters had to lump everything, including waste of all kinds, back down the mountain to the catch the 6.30am train home. A more motivated bunch I have rarely seen.

By 4am we were packed up and ready for the trek from Winay Wayna gate to the Inti Punka or the Inca Sungate, or at least to the gate to the national park to start the trek. We loaded up and started down the trail in the dark and the wet, and to my surprise, within 3 minutes we had arrived at the gatehouse. The Winay Wayna camp was right on the boundary to the national park, so we now joined a queue to enter the park, which opened at 530am, talk about anticlimax.

Luckily, we were one of the first groups to mobilise and were inside the waiting shelter. As the rest of the campsite decamped the queue grew over the next hours to several dozen people, most of whom were stood out in the rain. We were then horrified to discover the gate doesn’t open until 6am, so all this early start was for the convenience of the porters, who had just had a huge tip!

One of the American lads had picked up a particularly bad stomach bug overnight. We had heard his mate complaining about the noise he was making throwing up, and now in the queue he was laid out on the floor but fortunately improved as time went on.

It was at this point that we realised how big the risk of a stomach bug is on a trek, because if we had all picked up this bug we wouldn’t have been going anywhere.

At 6am, the gate to the park opened and after sorting out the tickets we were on our way. The young people seemed to be in a race and hurtled off, but with Wooksie still adjusting to altitude we trundled along at the rear with Todd, who’s knee was reminding him of all the years of basketball abuse it had enduring.

After 3 days of trekking, the 4^th day was tough. It was 2 hours of climbing and staying mentally focused on the prize ahead. Wooksie was starting to struggle with the stomach bug by now, one could only imagine how tough it would be if the bug had developed 2 nights earlier on the trek.

Dawn bought daylight and more stunning views through the gorges and valleys through which the river flowed. Eventually we arrived at the legendary and dreaded monkey steps, the toughest climb of the trek and the last tough push, the each step was 2 or 3 foot high, and each required a big effort to get up, there were over 100 of the monster steps built by the ancient civilisation, yet another example of their incredible engineering skills.

If you are young and fit then you can bounce up them but if you were old and suffering with body pains, they are hell. It is a task that requires arms, legs, knees and the occasional helping hand from friends, I scrambled up them OK, Wooksie followed but Todd dropped behind and made it in his own good time.

Eventually, we came over the ridge to look down on Machu Picchu from the Sungate. There was a feeling of elation, I had expected some mythical sunrise but it was past 8am by the time we got there, so we hadn’t made it for dawn, but we had made it and the view was magnificent.

The next hour was spent getting the Instagram shots done, shaking hands with others and generally enjoying the incredible view from hundreds of feet above Machu Picchu. We then started the much more enjoyable trek down into town, stopping to look at the wild Alpacas but not getting too close, they are cuddly but evil.

The walk up to the Sungate from Machu Picchu is 3 hours alone, so we were glad to be walking down. As we approached the town the views got better as was the feeling of relief at seeing the end of the adventure.

On arrival we saw crowds of people queuing for access from for day tickets and many climbing the up the mountain to get a better view of the town. To be honest the day was a bit of a blur, we did a 2 or 3 hours tour of the buildings and infrastructure, but after 4 days of trekking and being up for 8 hours, our energy was lagging.

The history and splendour of Machu Pichu is like nothing else on earth and you cannot fail to be amazed when you are there. But there is only so many buildings, channels, drains, and terraces that you can take in one lifetime, and by lunch I had reached my fill. The guide who took us around was full of energy, and we tried to be enthusiastic but I’m sure our eyes gave it away.

I was also very glad we had not taken the additional package to climb little Machu Picchu, peak that is part of the park, the climb up another peak would have been too much, it looked incredible but by now I just wanted to sit down and have a decent meal.

We were shipped back to Aguas Caliente. Most of our fellow trekkers gathered in the same restaurant and we had a last meal together, chatted about our experiences, how much we needed a comfy bed and it was time to find our train, the one of those that had passed so close by us on the second day and enjoy the trip back to Ollyemptambo and the bus back to Cusco.

One last thing do not underestimate how much fun the train trip back is. Not only does it have a fantastic glass roof, comfortable seats and people coming around selling coffee and refreshments, you even get a Spanish style guitar band with a trumpet, so there is no chance of sleep until you get on the bus.

09/02/2026
Inca Trail day 3: Cloud forests, precarious toilets and a tip ambush

Eventually, we wandered into our second campsite. To find the porters had all been busy again, the tents had been built, the canteen tent was laid out ready for dinner and we had bowls of water sitting outside our tents for washing.

Another smashing evening chatting with our companions, good food and it was time to re-engage with my wandering mattress in the tent for another night chasing it around the tent floor. After such a long period without camping the hard ground started to take its toll so the early morning stretch was getting tougher.

Same routine with breakfast and then we set off on a long day of climbing. The downside of coming through the valley was that we were way below the altitude needed for the Sun Gate at Machu Picchu. If we had gone over Dead Woman’s Pass we would have been coming down so day 3 would have been the easy part of the journey.

The Incas were very busy step builders and we were regularly negotiating steep climbs and drops using the stairs they had built 500 years ago. The path meandered along the hillsides, dropping occasionally but it was never any relief, because whenever we went down, we knew we would be coming back up.

Best scenery of the trek

The scenery on day 3 was stunning, mostly we climbed through the cloud forest, which is pretty much what it says on the tin, the altitude of the forest means that there are shrouds of clouds in amongst the trees, I guess we would normally call the fog!

The comradery of our fellow adventurers was great but the strain of the climbing was making an impact on Todd’s knees and he really started to slow up, as did Wooksie who was struggling again as we started to hit altitude, plus the endless steps up through the terraces. The young people didn’t have any of these issues and I made it my business to try to keep up with them, but it wasn’t particularly successful.

There were some spectacular structures along the route which left us in awe of the Inca ability to turn uninhabitable hillsides into fertile terraces for growing crops of raising animals, probably Alpacas and Lamas.

Into the afternoon we finally crossed the path coming down from Dead Woman’s Pass which marked the end of the serious climbing for that day. Soon afterwards we were at probably the most impressive of the remote Inca temples and settlements, stunning views, great photo opportunities and an end of the climbing.

We headed up for the last push to the next campsite only to find that we had actually arrived and it was only 10 minutes away. The porters were busy assembling tents on the terraces and putting the food together for the evening.

We had a big chunk of the afternoon to ourselves for recovery, which the young people used to climb up some of the trail to Dead Woman’s Pass to prove they had done it, meanwhile, Wooksies decided she would just go and have a lay down, whilst Todd and I went and found ourselves a nice bench and talked about to right the wrongs of the world, and the looking threat of a Trump presidency.

Precarious Loos

This was our last camp, and due to it’s location at the end of the trail it was very busy. The conditions were crammed and toilet facilities were at a premium. Each night the porters erected a toilet tent, and tonight was no exception, however, due to the precipitous location of the camp site, the toilet tent was literally hanging off the side of the cliff.

Going to the loo involved a lot of dexterity, but we had to hang on to the branch of a tree to stop us tumbling down the hillside into the bushes. There weren’t many late night visits to the loo that was for sure, and it wasn’t linked to heavy rain that started to fall during dinner.

The tipping tradition

The tradition of treks normally involves a tip for the porters which is collected as a form of thank for their services. In this case it was more a form of extortion, after dinner, the trek leader gave us a grand stand speech on how poor everyone was, and how we were rich.

The poor old cooks and porters were made to queue up in the rain, and then they were marched in front of us bowing while we applauded their efforts. It was clear that it was humiliating for them and embarrassing for us, in fact, I eventually suggested that they should be allowed to get in out of the rain as they had worked hard enough and didn’t need to be going through this ritual.

He then told us that we should have separate tips for the cook team and the porter team, and that each trekker should contribute $50 to each of the team, which was $100 each in total. Todd had his family of 7 with in, so in effect he was looking at a tip of $700 !

It is fair to say that this rather the dampened the atmosphere as nobody was carrying that sort of cash. Between us we clubbed together and created a decent contribution from the group.

Interestingly, when we did our feedback to Alpaca Tours on the bus home, everyone complained (without any co-ordination) and to be fair we were met in Cusco by representative who worked hard to resolve the problem, but be warned.

04/02/2026