For pictures from Mendoza, click here. Quick final post. I´ve got 20 minutes to wrap up this blog, pick up my laundry at the Bubbles Lavados up the street, and meet the group for supper, and a briefing on tomorrow´s activities. We arrived early in the morning to this beautiful city. Jody and I opted out of any city tours or any responsibilities. Instead, I got some laundry together, and explored the city on my own. Local busses, trolleys, and just plain locals in general. I´m really enjoying practicing communicating down here. I ended up getting a private tour of the city hall by a security guard, who took me to the roof of the building for some very impressive views and chit-chat, even though we were both out of our language comfort zones. It was quite cool. I then went to a very large park honoring San Martin, the man largely responsible for liberating Argentina. There is a mountain-top monument to this, the greatest of National heros. The location is known as Cerro Saint Gloria. It was a nice view, and nice moment. Then, local busses back here, and now I´m writing you. It was a bit funny, because a lot of the tour group opted to take a bus tour of the city, paying a bit of coin for it. My personal city tour, using local busses and my own two feet, was almost the same thing, but cost me 3.5 pesos, instead of 25+ pesos paid by the rest of the group. Of course, I didn’t go quite as far, but I still saw most of the main sights, and even crossed paths with them twice! Well, gotta go. Just realized it´s October 31st. Hope everyone´s having a spooky night, and I guess we´ll see you in less than a week now. Till then, enjoy the week!
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Hello everyone! I figured it was time to give you all an update on the happenings of me over in Saudi Arabia. As you likely pieced together from the last couple posts, we had a very smooth arrival in the Kingdom. Unfortunately, the Internet connection from here is rather slow, making it difficult to fire off too many emails or do other things. In spite of this, I’ve still managed to post quite a few pictures on our flickr page, so feel free to head over to our sets page and check out the latest while we’re over here. I will also attempt to give a little insight into our first few days over here in Riyadh and the Diplomatic Quarter. I’ve decided that although these are the same physical place, life is much different in the DQ than in Riyadh. Namely, I am on ‘Canadian soil’ when I’m at the embassy and in the house here, so we have a lot more breathing room in terms of what we can do while here compared to traveling around the city. I’ll try to keep this post on the short side, as we are leaving shortly for the camel souq and the horse races, and I’ve only got a little time to sort out my thoughts. Read on for the details.
21/03/08
Howdy folks. Welcome back. Today sadly marked my departure from New Zealand’s South Island, on my return journey to Auckland, and ultimately my leaving of Aotearoa, after an awesome three and a half months. In order to make it a little more symbolic, I chose to ride my way off the island. I stayed in Blenheim last night, which is about 30km from Picton, where the ferry terminal is. My plan was to get up, cycle into Blenheim first to see that a little bit, then make the final journey up to the ferry terminal in Picton. I had an awesome night’s sleep at Ann and Murrays, and was up the next morning and sitting at the breakfast table with them by 8am. Of course, it was also Good Friday, which meant that most shops would be closed, so it was a good thing I ate with them, because finding a pie might have been tough :-). Read on for a little more info on my final day on the South Island. No really big stories, just a short narrative.
24/01/08
Well, I’ve finally done it. I got on a ferry and made my way to the spectacular South Island of New Zealand! I’m not really ahead of schedule, but I’m also not behind schedule either. I’m pretty much right on time 😉 Isn’t that nice? You see, you can’t really worry about schedules when you haven’t created one to follow. Tee hee. I’ll have a good 8 weeks to explore down here, and from what I’ve seen so far, it looks like even that might not be enough, especially if the first 35km of biking over here is any indication. As per usual, I’ve put together a map of my days journey. Note that this map also includes the ferry crossing on the map, but the statistics I’ve put up reflect only the biking on either side of the crossing, so the numbers are accurate for the biking. Check it out, and read on for more about another great day in the saddle.
Well, the bags have been packed, re-packed, weighed, and re-weighed. I’m now at my maximum allowable size and weight for pretty much everything. It’s after 11pm the night before I fly out for Fiji, and it still hasn’t sunk in. What am I embarking on? What will I discover? How will this change me? How will this bring me closer to my own realities? I have no idea, but I also have absolutely no fear. My life thus far has been as rewarding as anyone could possibly hope for. You could say that I have everything I need right here. And yet, this idea to get away and undertake an adventure on my own has been germinating within me for as long as I can remember. I already wish that I was going for longer, even though this is the longest trip I’ve ever taken, and I will be doing it all on my own, while Jody minds the ranch.