Sitting in Nate’s in the Ottawa airport waiting for flight.
Last Canadian meal before beef time!
Dreary weather is looking in on us from the outside world. Overcast and the like.
I’m peering out at a robin’s-egg blue Air Canada plane at gate 17. Ours is next to it.
C-GJWO is our equipment. Airbus 319. Looks air-worthy. We’ve got about 1:15 till lift-off 0:45 till we board.
Update: there was a gate change, we were actually at Gate 15. Don’t know what the tail ID was. Sorry kev.
Well my friends, here it is. A worthy blog post about travels within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Not only would Jody and I be undertaking internal flights, but we were actually bound for Medina, which is one of the two holiest places for all Muslims. In fact, the city centre is completely forbidden to entry by any non-Muslims. Luckily, the airport is located outside the city, and our transport would be taking us all the way to our hotel without ever entering the city. Of course, the actual purpose of our traveling to this area was not to visit a holy Muslim site, as that is a very bad idea. We were bound for two very special places, one known as Al-Ula, and one known as Mada’in Saleh. These are areas of archeological and historical significance. Mada’in Saleh in fact has just recently been declared a UNESCO world heritage site, the first one of its kind in all of Saudi Arabia. We would be visiting these two sites together on the same day, but I would argue that each of them on its own is worth a blog post, so that’s how I’ll write them up and present them to you. For your pleasure, I have of course put up a whole boat-load of pictures to check out on flickr. So why don’t you do that, then read my story?
Yes my dear friends, it’s that time of the year. The air is turning cold, and the leaves have all changed colour and are fluttering to the ground. You know it’s going to happen, but you’re reluctant to admit it, and would just rather keep running in shorts and a tank top. Unfortunately, it’s becoming readily apparent that something does have to give here. I don’t have a really deep or meaningful story to share with you this time, but just a brief update on what was up on the weekend for me. The main event of the weekend was supposed to be a wine and cheese soiree downtown, but the host ended up falling ill, which meant we had to put the kaibash on that plan at the last second. Not to fret, there’s always plenty to do, right my friends? Read on for a couple Seinfeldian paragraphs about ‘nothing’ to keep you entertained for a few minutes. You can also gander at some pictures that we snapped on Saturday.
Hey Gang!
With the brief internet breaks I´m using, it´s easier to just send a message to everyone rather than respond personally. Don´t take offence, and please keep writing back, great to hear from home.
Anywho, here we are in Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incan Empire. I´m sure those Incas would be rolling their collective eyes at the amount of panhandling / harrassing going on here! It´s nuts. I mean, I don´t mind getting a restaurant suggestion, but getting swarmed by 5 different people at once yelling about their menus to me just gets to be too much! But, given that over 60% of this city´s population of >300,000 has only tourism as their income, I guess I don´t blame them.
So we´ve spent several days now at high altitudes (right now, i´m sitting at 3462m above sea level!). We went direct from Lima to Puno, which is on Lake Titicaca (and over 4000m up!). That caused me a bit of a problem on the first night, which resulted in my going to bed around 8:30. Luckily, the one good night sleep fixed me up. Well, that and the coca and mint tea that I was sucking back!
We spent 2 days in this region, with one of the nights being spent on and island called Amantani, living like the locals. Whew, what a unique (read intense) experience. Our family of 9 lived in 2 little shacks (about 7ft x 14ft), the third shack was for us. We were treated like family, which meant zero privacy, with fairly frequent ´visits´ by some of the children. On this island, we also hike up to the top, which sits at about 4180m. That´s almost as high as our Inka trail will take us (4198m). We also got a chance to dress in the traditional clothes of the island inhabitants, and attend a fiesta, with local live music (wouldn´t buy the CD), and lots of bailar (dancing).
Click here for pics from the last 2 days in Buenos Aires and the flight home. Arrgh! Although I should be happy that we arrived back in Canada safe and sound, I can’t help but feel a little sad that I’m no longer living the life of a rich man in Argentina. The flights back were pretty routine. The only real snafu was Jody sadly lost the pendant on a nice necklace that she picked up while we were down there. It was a sad moment. The trip took us about 15 hours of total flying time, and a combined 2 hours of lay-overs in Santiago and Toronto. I used my last pesos to buy a couple beers and waters in Buenos Aires. I ended up spending all but about $5 US of all the money I had converted.
