Best of the Worst (and Best) Part II

With 5 weeks left in our trip we are overdue for a "Best of" post. It looks like our 4 part series is going to become a 3 part series. Apologies to Norah, who has been waiting for this post for 3 months.

Food (Lori would never let this category go away)

Best Dessert

• Lori - Chocolate Lava Cake in Te Anau, New Zealand. Enough said.



• Dan - Yogurt Cheescake at the food court in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Who knew a food court could be so good, but if you're going to order it pronounce it, 'shogur'.

Most Unpalatable Meal

• Lori - Battered everything meal in Melbourne, Australia, just what the body needs before going to sleep on a Ferry.



• Dan - Valdivia boat cruise. See picture in this post. I think the picture says it all.

Unexpected Food Moment

• Lori - Free chocolate samples in every chocolate shop in Bariloche, Argentina, and there are a lot of them.



• Dan - The meat man in the park in Bariloche, Argentina. I think it might have been all about the sauce.

Accomodation

Most Syrian Prison like

• Hands down, Bahundanda on the Annapurna Circuit. White washed walls, wicker floor and ceiling about, 5 feet high, and wooden cots. Thankfully we were allowed out of the room.
  

Most 'Rustic'

• Little Swan Port, our second week of volunteer work in Tasmania. Our accomodations were advertised ahead of time as 'rustic' and that certainly hit the mark. We're talking basically camping in an 1834 brick building. This didn't trouble us much as we brought our tent, but the occasional screams due to creepys from the brick building let us know what we were missing.

Best Toilet

• Lori - The Jailhouse in Christchurch, New Zealand. Unfortunately we arrived too late to really enjoy our accomodations. The barbed wire in the toilet seat prompted Lori to make this category.



• Dan - Attached squatter in Manang on the Annapurna Circuit. I love the squatter, the fact that we had our own was just awesome, and also, I had to put something in this category.

Adventure

Wildlife

• Lori - Wallabies in Tasmania, at first you might just see one and say, 'oh cute, a wallaby,' and then, you'd look again, and see them everywhere!



• Dan - Condors in the Colca Canyon, Peru. Their curiosity making them swoop low over the crowds gathered to check them out caused screams. An amazing bird.

Most Near Death Experience

• Dan - Its hard to choose from the wide array of near misses: dodging low lying power lines on top of the bus from Pokhara to Besi Sahar; sitting on busses being fueled while running; dodging cows and traffic while riding a motor bike in Nepal; but I think the one that stands out most in my mind was the 10 meter ride down a very large fallen tree we were scrambling over on the Overland track in Tasmania. I managed to fall off before hitting any major obstacles on the tree itself and before hitting the lake and into some brush, thankfully containing no snakes, and thankfully breaking no limbs.


• Lori - Surviving the miserable Paso John Garner was bad enough, but adding insult to injury with a 5 meter mud slide down incredibley steep terrain and potentially breaking something on a tree was enough to prompt some pretty bad language.