It’s not Thanksgiving but…
We recently completed our almost 7 month odyssey around South America, a journey that will certainly never be forgotten. One that has changed me as a person in many little ways, hopefully for the better, as only challenging travel can. We’ve been spending the last week here in the US with my family as we rally around my Grandmother in the hospital and I’ve had a lot of time to think about the things i’m grateful for in life. I’ve been …
Climb Up then Slide Down. Yes Please.
I like Pucon, Chile. It is a fun town. I hope to go back to Pucon, Chile because of those two facts. It was pretty as well. Ok, enough of that. That was my imitation of my writing skillZ in comparison to Seema’s. #Fail. En serio – Pucon was our first real Chilean experience. We made our way over the border from Bariloche to Pucon to see if we could taste the difference between Chilean Patagonia and Argentina Pategonia – turns out …
Itacare is better than Ilheus (see Seema’s previous post)
We hadn’t planned much of our Brazil trip before entering the country, opting for the plan-as-you go method that has worked well for us on this trip. Due to our advantage of time and the burden of having to get the maximum value out of every day of travel is removed. We learned about Itacare in Salvador from a Dutch girl that we ended up running into subsequently both in Morro do Sao Paulo (our destination between Salvador and Itacare) …
The Perfect Travel(er) Day Defined
If you were to ask me what the perfect traveler day is, I would describe a day that resembles the day we spent last Monday in Cusco, Peru. It went something like this: 9am: Wake up. It’s pretty cold in the morning in Cusco because it’s at some 13,000 ft altitude in the Andes Mountains. So I wake up, and it takes some will power to leave the heavy covers of our Hostel bed. Considering my only real commitments are to keep …
The Great Hot Dog Project: Panama City
You may not know that I am a Great Hotdog Project correspondent for StewOver.com. As such, I have the responsibility to uphold the standards and founding principles of the HotDog Quotient. This is my quest, and I aim to apply the HotDog Quotient around the world from the beef dogs of Argentina to the actual dog-meat-based dogs (I’m assuming) in Vietnam. I plan to make my vendor/restaurant selection based on popularity as judged by the amount of people …
Santa Catalina, Surf Haven
Santa Catalina, probably my favorite place we have visited so far. A beautifully rustic tiny surf town on the southern Pacific shore of Panama. It is the home of multiple international-class surf beaches and not much more – which is precicely why it’s such a gem. No internet (basically), no supermarkets, no chain businesses of any sort (including gas stations and ATMs), only a few scattered restaurants of questionably quality and sanitation practices, and a point break that makes beautiful waves …
America, can you still hear me?
Broken down cars, and late night power failures; Ometepe is where our trip gets interesting. We left for Ometepe Island from glorious San Juan Del Sur on Tuesday with fellow hostel guest, Canadian Mark, to San Jorge. The cab to ferry combination took about 4 hours door-to-door and was relatively comfortable minus the horrible bible-verse-screaming preacher who took advantage of a captive audience on the 1 hour ferry ride to Ometepe. Ometepe is a 2 volcano island in the middle of a …
What I’ve Learned So Far
So, it looks like a vacation, and feels like a vacation, but it’s not supposed to be a vacation. One of my goals of this journey is to learn something even though when we started off I wasn’t sure what that was going to be. I’m secretly hoping to have a philosophical and metaphysical epiphany, but I think I’ll need to wait a bit longer for any significant paradigm shift of internal wiring. In lieu of said tipping point, I’ve …
San Juan del Surf, Nicaragua
OK technically this place is called San Juan Del Sur – but it is the surfing capital of Nicaragua and gets its Nica nickname from the most fun thing to do here. Today I am completely exhausted from surfing from 10am – 3pm – my body feels like I’ve been through inside washing machine all day. I can’t really complain because surfing is fun as shit (good). It is a delicious mix of all the good “tion’s:” relaxation, exertion, competition, meditation, …
San Ignacio – Caracol and ATM Cave Tours
After our 2 awesome weeks in Caye Caulker, we didn’t go home – this is where the trip starts to feel like a leap and not a vacation. Normally, we would take a 2 week vacation and return home- in this case we are diving deeper. We took a 4 hour “chicken bus” ride from Belize City to San Ignacio, a smaller tourist-based city, to see some ruins. The bus was 7$ for the 2 of us and drove with a …