International Travel
Iceland - Feb 2015
Here are a few videos from our recent trip to Iceland.
Fear and loathing in Mother India
Lately I have felt that I need to jot down the final legs of our journey. This blog ended rather abruptly with our conquest of the Himalayas in Nepal. Sadly…
Topping Out
I was only two thirds of the way up to Gokyo Ri’s summit of 17,500 ft, and I was dead tired. It had taken us ten days to trek to Gokyo, the mountain village…
Top Two
November 8, 2009 The food on this trip has been amazing, but the Thai food has been the best. North to south it’s sweet, spicy, sour and bitter; usually all…
View from the Top of Gokyo Ri 17,500 ft
Falling Short
This is what happens when you aren't going fast enough on a zip line.
Caution: Heavy Posting Ahead
October 6, 2009 We left Cambodia 4 days ago, and I can't reconcile the disparity between the different things that happened to me. Was Cambodia good? Sure. T…
Dr. Fish - ichthyoid clean my feet
Full
Cindy and I both realized that it's been quite a while since we posted anything other than pictures to this blog. I got to thinking about why. When we first…
Elephant Washing
Sept 10Just outside Louang Phabang, it's possible to go elephant riding, so Geoff and I picked up a cheap tour and headed out this morning. After a comfortab…
Curious gorge
Three hours north of Lijiang by bus is one of the deepest gorges in the world. It's called Tiger Leaping Gorge. Legend says that in order to escape from a hu…
Hiking to WenHai
August 26 So it was time to get off the beaten path. Geoff and I hit a traveler's online forum and found that it's possible to hike to a village at the edge…
Changes
Greetings from Jijiang. We have spent the better part of the last 4 days just trying to figure out if we really want to cut out the southern part of China or…
Feasting on Street Food
August 16, 2009 I am having a serious love affair with street food in China. It all started with my breakfast dim sum; now Geoff and I search out street food…
Random musings
Boy my dogs are tired. One of the few things that my aging memory gets right about the last big trip we took was that we walked ourselves silly most days whi…
Fluidity of travel
Today we are finally out of Beijing. We are finding it a little difficult moving around the country because it's the local tourist season and all of China is…
Around City
August 8, 2009 Beijing - So today is our first full day in Beijing. Our hostel is in a fascinating, traditional "Hutong" neighborhood full of street vendors,…
Great wall goodness
Just an aside about being in China. The government has blocked access to both Facebook and Blogger (the home of this blog). We have found a way to post to bl…
Arriving in Beijing
After 11 butt crushing hours with Air Canada we got to Beijing safe and sound. It's funny to post about the airport, but it was very impressive. With a minim…
Dont Panic!!!
Don't panic was the overriding thought yesterday morning as we boarded the shuttle bus to the airport. Cindy's wallet was missing containing her credit cards…
Bolivian Memories
Thoughts of long term travel have got me thinking of trips past so I sat down and penned this post about an adventure that we had in Bolivia.
Tolerance
We knew that the predominant religion in Mombassa city was Muslim. The East African coast was settled long ago by Arab slavers and traders and they brought t…
Nairobi by Rail
We had to go back to Nairobi to finish the second half of the in country VSO Training. VSO split the classes up because there was a second group of volunteer…
Adopting Gertrude
We have adopted ... a Praying Mantis. I call her Gertrude or Gertie for short. She sleeps in our house all day then comes out to hunt our little bugs at nigh…
Athletes with Heart
Peter dodges Matatus and Lorries for 6 kilometers in his wheelchair. His hour-long trip down the Mombasa-Malindi highway is done in 35 degree heat at 90% hum…
Reality Check
We had a reality check yesterday about the hard life that people have here. We are starting to make many friends here. One of them is Paul. He is a great guy…
And now....A word from our Sponsor
I am very impressed with the organization that I am working for. Its called The Association for the Physically Disable of Kenya (APDK) was created in 1958 an…
The Matatu Experience
Necessity is the mother invention, and Matatus are the result. Thousands upon thousands of panel vans, locally called "Matatu", race up and down the streets,…
First Days in Mombasa
My day starts earlier than in Portland; around 6AM. I role out of bed and the day is already warm. I sit for breakfast now insteading of grabbing a granolar…
Daily Rythms
We have only been here a week and are starting to settle into the rhythms of our new life. Up every morning at around 6:00 because we went to bed early, bath…
Creepy Crawlies
We arrived two nights ago from Nairobi and were given a few days to settle in. The house we are living in was built for a man named Hans Zimmerman. He put up…
98.9% of our DNA
East Africa has been one of the great highlights of our trip. We have seen and done so much. We never got tired of safaris or tracking some critter in the ju…
A false sense of security
Hi all,We know it has been a long time between emails. We are currently having a great time in Iran. It’s a beautiful country filled with some of the nicest…
Travel: educational, interesting, and sometimes disgusting
I have just finished watching the truly amazing Twirling Dervishes, and that is probably what I should be writing about. But a written description of the bri…
Bad vibes in Jerusalem
We are now playing in the Red Sea in the Sinai on the coast of Egypt. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Israel. Regardless of what you saw on the news, we fe…
Romantic, Relaxing Dahab
Early evening is my favorite time in Dahab. This is when Geoff and I go out to one of the dozens of open-air sea-side restaurants that line the local shore o…
A man parted from his money
Unlike Cindy’s wonderful stories, this is just an update of what we have been up to in the last few months. Obviously writing has not been at the top of our…
In the footsteps of the Incas
We know it has been a while but we have been moving around so much lately.We are finally getting the time to write in our journals and get some postings out.…
Dynamite, Amonium Nitrate and Detonation Caps in Potosí
Wow it has been over a month since we have posted anything on this site. Truth is that travel is as exhausting as it is fascinating. Geoff and I became a lit…
Galapagos Dive II
…over to take a better look. Its black thick shell is at least 3 ft across. Its head is comical. It reminds me of a sock puppet. We both take the opportunity…
15,000 Feet of Altitude and Wet
Hey all,Time keeps flying by and we keep getting into more than we bargained for with our adventures. Here is the latest from Geoff’s journal on Oct. 29We ar…
Rain and Donkey crap dont mix
Well the next morning started out as a beautiful clear day and we decided to go for the summit after a coin toss said that we should. I had my reservations,…
Galapagos Islands Dive - Part 1
It’s 11 AM. We have spent the morning walking the soft sandy shores of Floreana Island watching the day old sea lion pups playing in the surf and snorkeling…
Topping the Andes
Gavin is a New Zealander who came to Villcabamba 20 years ago; before there was a paved road from the provincial capital of Loja. Back then it took 5 hours t…
Crossing from Ecuador to Peru
This is something I put together to go onto a travelers’ web site. It’s not super interesting, but it’s information on how we’ve spent the last week.I just c…
Jungle Canopies and Leaky Boats
The boat ride up the river to the cabanas was fantastic. The boats are long dugout canoes with a small motor on the back. The local people have been using th…
Finca Ixobel - Part III The End
How can I make a decision right now? I’m much too busy clinging to the wall. Geoff shouts, “I think we can do it.” I give this a few clock cycles and decide…
Into the Amazon Basin
After kicking around Quito for the better part of a week, with a brief sting in the boring city of Otavalo, we have ended up deep in the Amazon basin on the…
Finca Ixobel - Part II
We join our muddy, sweaty cavers just as they enter the cave and the water …That’s when we lose the Dutch girl. She is not a very good swimmer. She turns the…
Finca Ixobel Part I
Geoff and I hung out at a Finca (that’s what they call a farm here) for a few days and quite accidentally had a good time putting ourselves in harm’s way. I…
Mayans, Jaquars and drugs
HondurasDays later we had another great guide. This one was a storyteller but in a different way. I believed his stories. We had traveled on to Honduras to s…
One month in
One month laterCindy and I can’t believe that we have been out for a month. It has gone by so fast and so slow at the same time. We both feel like we are jus…
School busses from hell
We left Lake Atitlan yesterday to make our way to Chichicastenango for the Thursday market day and then we headed back to Antigua today. The only way to get…
Good help is hard to find
San Marco, Lake AtitlanWe arrived yesterday afternoon having taken in a shuttle from Antigua. We were supposed to take the 7 am chicken bus but it had rained…
Bad Spanish
I am tired, frustrated and failing miserably at learning Spanish. We landed in Guatemala City four days ago and took a taxi to Antigua. It is a charming, sma…
Bed Bugs and Courtyards
I have 37 flea bites on my legs. I look like I have the Chicken Pox. Two days ago I woke up to a few red itchy splotches and chalked them up to a mosquito. B…