Travelogue

A well known saying goes something like this. Never put anything smaller than your elbow in you ears. Well, I’m never one to listen to sayings, and I guess I paid the price this past weekend in New York City. On the upshot, I got to experience private health care. On the downshot, it ain’t any better than public health care. But I digress. It all started on the [long] bus ride to New York. It was an all-nighter, and to pass the time, I brought my MP3 player to listen to old BBC radio broadcasts of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy. To do this, I was using my Shure E3 headphones, which are in-ear headphones to block out noise, which I also use on stage when playing music. Well, wouldn’t you know it, at one point, I tried pulling out the earphone to hear someone talking, and the damn bud stayed in my ear!! I’m talking waaay deep in my ear.

Well, Jody and I had such a great time visiting New York that we’ve decided to make a return visit in the next few weeks. Andrea is currently working down there representing Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs on their mission to the United Nations. Or something like that.
At any rate, we’ve booked tickets to head down there from Ottawa on the bus. It’s about 9 hours each way, and we plan to make the trip on the red-eye. So we leave Ottawa at 10pm Thursday, and arrive 7am Friday. Ths shitty part is on the return trip, we get back to Ottawa at 7am on Monday. Oh well, straight to work for us!
Another funny thing that I learned is that on Greyhound, you don’t actually reserve a seat, you just get a ticket, valid for up to 1 year. That’s a bit scary, but the guy assured me if we get in by 30 minutes before the bus leaves, we should get on. Here’s hoping! All that remains is that we get our camera back from the shop by then, We haven’t had out camera since Peru. The lens wouldn’t open anymore. Woes us…

Huzzah! After a long wait, we’ve finally started getting our pictures from the Peru trip online. At the same time, we’ll also be slowly adding pictures from the thousands we have from other trips, parties, activities and adventures. As you might have guessed, we’ll be using Flickr. We got a ‘pro’ account, so we’ve got plenty of storage space, and will allow registered contacts the ability to actually download the high-res versions of any of our pictures, should you wish to re-print them for anything.

To get to the goods, head on over to my flickr site. If you had my other Flickr site as a contact, you may want to remove it, since I’ll be porting all the pictures on it to this new account.

I’ve also decided that I’ll try to start adding content to this site on a regular basis, so if you’d like to bookmark it, or get feeds from it, I’ll try to keep you up to date! Jody will also have an account, and will perhaps add her thoughts on occasion as well.

Well, I thought I’d better write out a couple paragraphs about the rest of the trip before I forget it all. Jody and I got back safe and sound yesterday from Peru. All told, it took us just over 24 hours to get from the depths of the Jungle back to the good ole Capital City. The day started with several hours on the river in a motorized canoe, followed by hours waiting for a delayed flight in the jungle, capped off by the red-eye from Lima to Toronto, and a narrowly-caught flight back to Ottawa where bright-eyed Alix was waiting to take us home. Unfortunately, that didn’t end the journey, as we then had to drive directly out to get Jonah and back again, an extra 2+ hour trip! Needless to say, we’re a bit road-tired today, but tonight I might start checking out the 1600+ pictures we took!

Howdy all!

Well, hard to believe, but we´ve now got less than a week of this great trip left. I guess all things must come to an end. On the plus side, the time really hasn´t seemed to fly, meaning we´ve really been enjoying the trip, and it truly has felt like a proper getaway!

We´re back from the Inca trail, and no worse for wear. If you´ve ever contemplated heading south and seeing this area, I would definitely recommend getting back to nature and doing some proper hiking. Our 4 day journey wasn´t exceptionally difficult, but it had it´s ups and downs (literally). One of the downs would probably be the fact that on the day we started, Apu the sun God decided that it was time for rainy season to start. For most of the trail, the mountains were shrouded in clouds, and yes, we did experience both hail and heavy rains at various points. That being said, it certainly didn´t dampen (get it, dampen?) our spirits or reduce the experience in any way.

My personal favourite part of the journey wasn´t the trail, or even Macchu Picchu itself, but the hike we did on the site of the ruins, which was to climb up Wayna Picchu, (Young Mountain), the bigger peak behind the ruins. It is an uphill trail that is incredibly steep in parts, and culminates in a peak of a few really big boulders that you´re free to scramble around (1000s of feet above the valley below). We took some great shots from there, and both remarked that ´liability insurance´ obviously isn´t something required in South America. But obviously since I´m writing this, we both made it down in one piece. The rain even let up while we were up there.