Will There Be Blog?

Almost six months ago, Laura kicked off our world travel blog with her sublimely titled There Will Be Blog entry. Given that it’s been more than six weeks since we flew from Thailand to Egypt to meet my brother for our Jewels of the Nile tour (also known as the Total Temple Torture Tour), and given that you, our patient readers, haven’t read word one about anything that’s happened on our trip since then (except for us surprising Ginny and Mark at their wedding in Currituck, NC), a reasonable question might be: will there be blog?

Click to read more ...

Into Thin Air (Finally!)

After a rough start to our precious two weeks in Bhutan, Laura and I were finally feeling better and were eager to get out and do some trekking in the Himalayas. Geographic Expeditions and Yangphel (their local partner in Bhutan) had worked a minor miracle and lined up a completely separate, somewhat abbreviated trek for the two of us that would still get us up to the Chomolhari base camp and back to Paro in the seven days we had to work with.

Click to read more ...

Gross National Happiness

We said farewell to Tsewang and our six fellow trekkers on Saturday, and spent the rest of the day watching random American sitcom reruns on Indian TV channels. (We get why they’re still airing Friends, but why anyone thinks that Yes, Dear and Just Shoot Me are shows worthy of television immortality is a mystery we’ll just have to chalk up to cultural differences.) By the next day, Dustin was feeling a lot better, and by the day after that, he felt strong enough to tackle the steep, vertical climb up to the stunning monastery called Tiger’s Nest (a day hike we’d missed out on when our tour group did it a few days earlier). The hike ended up being a fantastic introduction to the Bhutan that had been taunting us outside the windows of our hotel room, with everything from beautiful mountain scenery to fascinating Buddhist culture.

Click to read more ...

Trekking to Chisapani and Nagarkot

Even with our somewhat overwhelming introduction to Kathmandu (re-introduction for me), we were still excited to spend a couple of days doing some light trekking northeast of the Kathmandu Valley. We’d hired a guide and porter through Himalayan Holidays — the same company that Room to Read was working with for their anniversary trek — and they met us that Monday morning to start our trek. Laxman (our guide) and Jhalak (our porter) introduced themselves as cousin-brothers: their fathers are brothers (making them first cousins), their mothers are sisters (again, first cousins), and as it turns out, their wives are also sisters (making them brothers-in-law)! Pretty funny. They both spoke English well enough, and after a short drive out of the Kathmandu Valley, we started our trek up to Chisapani.

Click to read more ...

The Spirit of Santo

We arrived in the little town of Luganville on the northern Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo with only a vague idea of how we wanted to spend our time, but we knew there were some great scuba diving spots around the island (including the WWII-era shipwreck of the USS Calvin Coolidge), a few sandy beaches worth seeing (how could a place called Champagne Beach not be beautiful?), and one crazy cave that Lonely Planet highly recommended we check out.

Click to read more ...

John, Paul, Gorge and Dingo

It’s a bit easier to write about our Outback experience now that the constant, maddening (infuriating!) buzz of the flies in our faces is more of a fading memory than the recurring nightmare that it was in the moment. It’s really hard to describe how challenging it was dealing with the flies, the heat, sleep depravation, the flies… I kept thinking it was a lot like the game of golf: you endure many, many frustrating moments where you swear you’ll never play the game again, but you have *just* enough long, straight drives and sweet putts to make it all worthwhile (with the help of some selective memory). Despite our frustrations with the flies, sleeping on the ground exposed to the elements and creepy crawlies, and a few insanely early wake-up calls, we really did have a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the Red Center (although we both agree that we probably wouldn’t go back for more).

Click to read more ...

G'day, Mate!

After an amazing five weeks in New Zealand, Laura and I hopped a flight from Christchurch (on the south island) to Auckland (on the north), then another to Sydney in the Land Down Under. We arrived late on a Friday night with only a few vague ideas about what we wanted to see and do during our month-long stay in Australia, a mode of travel we’re both starting to get pretty comfortable with. Our four days in Sydney included some great walks, a few scenic ferry rides, a ridiculous afternoon at the Four Seasons spa, one very quirky B&B and another “boutique” hotel (we are *so* over that word), a bit of post-Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade chaos, one very grumpy walk through Chinatown in search of breakfast, birthday tequila shots, and even a bit of culture at the Sydney Opera House.

Click to read more ...

Sweet As

Greetings from a freakishly soggy Alice Springs! We arrived to gray skies this morning and learned that it’s been pouring here for the last 5 days. Everything is flooded and the normally 100+ degree temps have been in the 60’s. We’re about to head off on a 5-day 4WD tour of the “Red Center,” but before we go totally offline we wanted to close out with a few final thoughts on our month in New Zealand.

Click to read more ...

Love in the Time of a Head Cold, the Frayzhe Edition

We’re wrapping up our month-plus in New Zealand by spending our last full day here online (two computers at once!) at a computer lab in Christchurch. This is all well and good, except for the fact that outside these dreary lab walls, Christchurch is experiencing its sunniest, warmest day of the summer. If we weren’t subject to the NO COMPLAINING EVER rule, I might whine a little about this, but instead I will go about blogging and emailing with a smile on my face. :) (—-> See, that’s me smiling!)

Click to read more ...

By George, It's a Glass-y-er!

As if New Zealand didn’t already have enough going for it — incredible jagged mountains, crystal blue seas surrounded by lush green islands, steaming volcanic rivers from the center of the earth, giant fern forests, deep caverns lined with glowing worms, Flight of the Conchords — it has to go ahead and throw a glacier surrounded by a temperate rain forest into the mix. We spent a full day climbing up the Franz Josef glacier, and though both of us had seen it before, there was something about being on the ice for a full 6 hours surrounded by blue ice lit up by the miraculous appearance of the sun (they don’t call it a rain forest for nothin’!) that made this a pretty special day.

Click to read more ...