Bored. Snapped a few pics in the airport. 3 hour layovers in terminal 1 are toooo looong. Happily the Red Rocket supplies us with beer. 2 pints of Rickards – an outlandish $19 after tax and hefty tip (hey, I’m on vacation and happy). Looking forward to $3 bottles of Argentine Red!! Next up, the hung for Chester Cheetah’s Cheese Corn! Rumour has it that Nacho Libre is slotted for the next flight. THe Notebook is also on tap, but luckily, it’s later on so I won’t have to stay up.
Well, Happy New Year to one and all! Sorry for the recent lapse in communicating with the world. You see, Jody and I were off in Cuba enjoying a week of fun and sun over the holiday season. I’ll post a few more entries over the next few days about Cuba, but generally speaking, it was a fantastic week! Lots of pictures can be seen here. Every day was between 22 and 29 degrees, with mainly bright and sunny skies. Mind you, yours truly didn’t pick up much of a tan, but rest assured, I drank plenty of rum and spent much time in the water 🙂 The ironic exception to the weather of the week was on New Year’s Eve! We started our day off with plenty of sun and beach walking, followed by my attempts at sailing and windsurfing. From there, Jody and I took out a tandem kayak and went out snorkelling in the water near the hotel. Lots of fun fish. We had an underwater camera, so hopefully some of those shots will turn out. Later on, we had supper at one of the A La Carte restaurants, which we’d booked early in the week. It was very nice, a good way to have New Years Eve supper, away from the big chow hall. The meal was a feat of gastronomic indulgence, as we had a full 7 course meal lasting 3 hours! However, as you can see by this picture, sometime around 10pm, the skies unleashed monsoon-like rain! It was insane. In the span of 15 minutes, the normally dry walkways all over the resort were under ankle-deep water! The rain kept up for almost 2 hours. This made it rather unpleasant to attend the mainly outdoor festivities that the resort had planned out. I feel sorry for all the work they had put in only to be ‘dampened’. As a result, Jody and I ducked back to our cozy room to enjoy the evening in dry comfort. After all, we had a nice covered balcony from which to watch the world. I’ll say this much for the Cubans and New Year’s. They LOVE fireworks! They had shows that were almost the same calibre as the Canada Day fireworks in Ottawa! No joke! It was amazing. At midnight, they had a show of almost a half hour. It was a great way to enjoy the complimentary bottle of champagne that the staff had placed in every room (and complimentary quart of rum, which we took home).
Welcome back to another, and perhaps my final post on our adventures in Morocco. My apologies for the slight delay between posts. I was off to Toronto for a conference, and had other family obligations. At any rate, on the plus side, we now have all of our pictures put up on flickr. I’ve even added a folder of videos as well, with a few clips that I shot in various places. For this post, I’m going to take you on two unique journeys. The first will be a camelback ride out into the dunes of the Erg Chebbi, where we spent the night in a Berber camp. The second part of the story will be our exploration of the ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis, an expansive site which was one of the farthest trading posts of the Roman empire. Both of these little adventures was pretty amazing, and this was the first time that either of us had ventured by camel into a desert, and spend the night under the stars in the desert. Once you’ve had chance to peruse the desert pictures and Roman ruin pictures, hop on back and read the whole tale.
Hi folks. I see you’re all back to read the next installment in my ongoing saga in New Zealand. Thanks. I’m happy to provide everyone with glimpses into my psyche and what I’m doing, why, and what it all means to me. This installment sees me biking from the Little Earth Hostel in Whangarei to the coastal town of Mangawhai Heads and the Coastal Cows Hostel. First thing I did before leaving this morning was to check whether or not the hostel would have room, so that I’d know whether or not I’d have to keep moving. Huzzah, they had room, so now I didn’t have to rush to get there early, but could just roll in when I rolled in. That makes a big difference to me, and came in handy today. Actually, the owner even said if he wasn’t here, just to let myself in. Well, as I write this, I’ve been here alone listening to tunes on the stereo, and working away, after having eaten. No owner has shown, but I showed two other couples around the place. Too funny. Anyway, on with my story of the day, and don’t forget to check the map 🙂
Catchy title, isn’t it? That’s the number of squished possums I counted today on my 80km journey. They were in various states of decomp, some looking very fresh indeed. I’m happy to say that I didn’t run over a single one myself. Although I bet I could inflict some pain on the little varmin. It’s easy to understand why they are a target. They all but wiped out Kiwis in New Zealand, and the department of Conservation actually encourages motorists to attempt to hit the possums wherever possible. And it would appear that the overzealous NZ drivers have taken that to heart. Well, regardless of the roadkill, my day was considerably better today than it has been in the last two, in spite of it being my furthest day in the saddle. Read on for a little bit about my happy day cycling in Northern New Zealand.
