Mountain Biking

The first bunch of photos is from our annual camping trip to Stanley, Idaho with our HP biking group. The rest are of me and Ben biking around the Boise foothills. We’ve been biking A TON this summer – it’s so nice to have great trails so close to home.

Since the forest fire, shade is limited

Mountain biking in Stanley

Part of the biking group

Ben - conquering another mountain

Alonna

Ben, waiting for dinner

Maybe the joke is related to the GIANT marshmallows?

Boise foothills

Ben, notice his shirt?

Watchman trail in Boise

Alonna - biking in Boise

Sidewinder trail with bikers on the ridge

Beautiful flowers up at Bogus Basin

 

Giving Back to the Couchsurfing Community

While traveling, Ben and I took advantage of couchsurfing.org to stay with some really nice people around the world who offered us a free place to stay. Now that we’re home, we’ve been hosting travelers passing through.

Ben with couchsurfers Derek and Alex

Derek (middle) was our very first couchsurfer, and a memorable one at that! On his way to Boise he was in a bad motorcycle accident, and crashed into the river off of HWY-21 north of Boise. Luckily his injuries were relatively minor – a punctured lung, broken foot, lots of bruises, and a totaled motorcycle. Derek stayed with us for a week before flying back to New Hampshire where his parents live.

Sphinx – Giza, Egypt

Elephant – Kruger National Park, South Africa

Opera House – Sydney, Australia

This one is a little different – the first two are similar to typical mosaics, but this one heavily overlaps and rotates photos.

It’s a given that you won’t come back from a world-wide walkabout as exactly same person.  Some people write books about their life-changing experiences, but for most travelers, the changes are small. To friends and family, the only immediately noticeable difference will be an annoying tendency to share world travel related anecdotes. “This reminds me of the time I was grilling kangaroo meat in Australia….”

But even if you have an “ordinary” world travel experience, here are some of the ways that world travel might affect you:

• An understanding of what a huge and diverse place the world is. There is a big difference between knowing and understanding. You might know that it hurts to break your leg, but until it happens you don’t
  

  Millions of Parisians live out their entire lives without ever eating a Sloppy Joe

  really understand. Everyone knows that 95% of the people on this planet don’t live the USA, but until you’ve visited some of these places and seen how billions of people live their lives in very foreign ways in very foreign places, mostly indifferent to what goes on in our country, believe me, you don’t really understand.

• Softening of tightly held opinions. When you grow up in any given culture, you inherit a set of opinions that seem inviolable. Freedom of speech and the inherent superiority of the free market are ingrained for us Americans. It’s shocking to encounter entire countries full of people who live out their lives valuing things that seem strange to us, and indifferent to principles we regard as fundamental. Your opinions probably won’t change at all, but you’ll realize that there are a lot of different ways to live out your life happily, and that that is all that matters to most people.  (Though maybe they would be even more happy with freedom of speech and a free market)
• A better understanding of your own culture. Somehow I had always assumed that because America is a melting pot of different cultures, that the way we do things is the just the most reasonable way, and what everyone else does is their “culture”. You might not carry around such a silly notion, but even so you’ll notice a million little things that people around the world do differently.  Everything from what time we eat dinner and how we hold our silverware to what our government taxes and where new shopping centers are built, it’s all cultural.
• A long list of ways America could be improved. As you travel you will inevitably encounter ideas for how you’d like to see America change.  Some things will never change – we work long hours and take insanely short vacations, it’s who we are. Others – like public transportation and an appreciation for fresh food – are objectively better and might find their way here if enough of us work at it.
  

  From here, Incan history looks more interesting

• Appreciation for America. Living in the United States, you can’t help but take a lot of things for granted. Travel the world and you’ll collect a long list of things to be grateful for.  Start the list off with free water at restaurants, one of hundreds of only-in-America things that you’ll miss when you travel the world.
• A Second Education. You might have thought history was boring in high school, but you won’t find it boring when you visit the places where history was made. Stand next to the massive rocks Incans built with, visit WWII concentration camps, and walk down the road – still with the same basalt paving stones! – that Julius Caesar walked down triumphantly on his return to Rome, and history is suddenly fascinating. The same thing goes for geology, geography, zoology, botany, and gastronomy. It’s the field trip of a lifetime.

Big Ice

Remember when we hiked around on a glacier in Argentina? Well here’s what ice crunching under your cramp-ons sounds like.
 

 

Sounds of Islam

Our introduction to the Islamic call to prayer was in Istanbul, where the eerily beautiful chants provided occasional background music to our sightseeing. At our next stop in Cairo, Egypt (a city of 10 million people, BTW) I was awoken every morning at 4am to this slightly stranger cacophony shouted across the sleeping city.
 

 

 

How to Cross the Parallel Bars

Walking near Bondi Beach in Australia, we stopped at a few of the “exercise stations” along the path. Here’s Ben demonstrating the parallel bars (or whatever this contraption is called). Just try not to laugh, I dare you.
 

 

 

Animals

A woodpecker in Argentina, penguins and sea lions in Chile, elephants fighting in South Africa, and fish galore at the Great Barrier Reef. Enjoy!
 

 

 

 

 

Didgeridoo music at the Sydney Harbor

Sweet sounds of the didgeridoo!
 

 

Airplane Fog

On a flight in Ecuador, Ben and I sat down, buckled up, and witnessed fog begin to gush out of the ceiling. We were a bit concerned until someone nearby said it was totally normal for this very humid climate.
 

 

The trip of a lifetime

The Costs

Total Travel Costs

Travel Costs by Country
Sorted by average cost per day in that country.

* NOTE: The “Other” category includes things like souvenirs, clothing, toiletries, laundry, internet, and guidebooks.
 

How it could be done MUCH cheaper

If this number scares you, but you’d love to take some time to travel, there are a few very easy ways to spend much less than us. I wouldn’t change a thing about our trip, but if I was going to do it again, I’d definitely be more aware of these tips:

An expensive bathroom break! (actually $0.20 USD)

Even cheap flights take a toll on the budget

Shopping in Paris

How we kept track of expenses

In case you’re curious, we kept track of every single purchase we made while traveling. I kept a small black notebook in my purse, and wrote down every purchase. Occasionally I would enter it into a master spreadsheet to add it all up and see if we were on track. This allowed us to see what we were spending our money on, and make adjustments if we were out of line with our budget.

Our home in Boise

Re-Discovering our House

Something I never anticipated was how nice it would be to return to our house and belongings after living out of a backpack and in hostels for 5 months. In some ways it’s liberating to have only a few sets of clothes and just the essentials with you at all times. While backpacking, you can’t help but wonder why you need that house full of “stuff” anyway – you’re doing fine with just these 30lbs. But, you forget about all the little things that make life so much easier and more comfortable. No – I didn’t miss the lawnmower or vacuum cleaner – but I was surprised to remember that I love wearing high heels and jewelry, and I now have the choice between at least 5 pairs of jeans and hundreds of tops. In addition to clothing, we have a kitchen full of nice dishes and appliances. We cooked a lot while traveling to save money, but the kitchens in hostels are nothing like your own kitchen back home. Dull knives, missing utensils, tiny fridges packed full of people’s food, and no cupboard with of your favorite spices and cooking supplies. Like I said, it’s really nice to be home.
 

What’s Next?

Now that we’re back, you might be curious about our plans for the future. We are too! We don’t have any solid plans yet, but I promise I’ll let you know when we do.

As for the blog – it will live on! We still have a lot to say about our past year of traveling, and we’ll continue to share photos of any interesting adventures that come our way. Some topics in the works include the cost of our trip, things we’ve learned, and more photo collages. Is there anything you’d like to know about? Please leave a comment and we’ll try to address it.

Thank you for following us on this incredible journey!

Hiking Kuliouou Ridge

We found an awesome hike up a ridge on the Southeast part of Oahu.  It was pretty steep but took us all the way to the top of the mountain range with 360 views.  Here’s a couple photos of the views:

Looking Southeast from the Top of Kuliouou Ridge

Looking south from the trail

Other Hawaii Photos

Honolulu and Waikiki Beach

Mai Thai at the harbor

Ben at Makapuu beach

A good day of body boarding!

Ben cliff jumping at Waimea Beach

Waimea Beach from above

Pineapple fields at the Dole Plantation

Pink pineapples!

Hibiscus flower

View of the East shore from Pali lookout

Sunset on the North Shore

Sunset on the North Shore

First Class breakfast!

 

The Blue Mountains

One of the days we hiked to Wentworth Falls, one of the more interesting waterfalls I’ve ever seen. We hiked across the top of the waterfall, then down really steep stairs to a middle level, and then across the valley on a path along the cliff. It was very cool.

Another day we rented mountain bikes and rode up to a lookout point called Hanging Rock. The biking was awful (rough gravel roads – not our style) but the views were great. The Hanging Rock is a huge rock barely hanging onto the mountainside. It looked like you could hike out onto it – but you’d have to be completely insane (see photos).

The Three Sisters

At a distance the mountains look blue

Ben in the Blue Mountains

Hiking down to the Three Sisters

Wentworth Falls

Alonna near the top of Wentworth Falls

Steep stairs down the cliff

Part of Wentworth Falls

Ben on our hike along the cliff

Hanging Rock

Alonna

 

Couchsurfing hosts Tim & Yulya in Sydney

Our boat stopped in two places.  The first was a little island where we snorkeled from the beach.  The water was calm and beautiful, with tons of coral and fish right near the beach.  The second stop was out in the ocean at the reef, which was a bit rougher sea but just as impressive.  I even saw a tiny shark!  (I’m told these ones are harmless… but I still turned and swam away quickly).  The Great Barrier Reef was an unexpected highlight of the trip for me, and I’d highly recommend a trip out to see it.

Our boat: Passions of Paradise

On the way to the reef

These huge batfish hang out around the boat

Our first stop at Michaelmas Cay

At the cay we snorkeled right from the beach

The Great Barrier Reef

Tons and tons of fish

Beautiful coral

Red fish

Blue fish

Old fish, new fish?

Ben snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef

The small shark I saw at a distance

Tired and happy after a day of snorkeling

 

The best part of the zoo was the koalas.  They live  in the wild too but are rarely seen. Their fur is extremely soft and they are even more adorable in person than you might think.  They’re like teddy bears that you just want to cuddle up with.  But be careful if you do – just a little squeeze can break their ribs!  I couldn’t resist paying a little extra to hold one

Here’s some of the animals I saw at the Cairns Tropical Zoo…

Kangaroos!

Kangaroo

Wallaby (like a small kangaroo)

Koala

Alonna holding a koala - so cuddly!

Koala hiding in eucalyptus tree

Crocadile - regulating its body temperature

Feeding the crocodiles

Just in case...

Wombat

Cassowary

Red Panda (not found in Australia)

 

Wanaka

We immediately fell in love with Wanaka. Just 2 hours drive from the utlra-touristy Queenstown, we found it to be a low-key oasis with beautiful scenery, a cute and live-able town, and plenty of fun outdoor activities to keep anyone happy. If we ever decided to live outside the US (unlikely), I’m pretty sure this would be the place.

We stayed a few nights in Wanaka, enjoying a cool campsite with amazing views of the lake, jogging on a lakeside path, and mountain biking in the “Sticky Forest”. There’s also a lot of hiking in the area, and tons of water sports in the summer… as we’ve said many times on this trip, we’ll have to come back.

RAIN

And then came the rain. For about a week, we drove around the southern part of New Zealand looking for somewhere we could get out of the rain, with no luck. We missed seeing Fjordland, since the roads were flooded, and we would have loved to try some mountain biking in the Alexandra area. However, we did enjoy a little down-time, and we witnessed the streets of Queenstown flooded from the overflowing lake. On a trip like this, we’re bound to have a little bad weather, and until now we’ve been extremely lucky.

Queenstown

After dropping off the campervan, we spent 3 nights in Queenstown and managed to avoid doing any overpriced “must-do” activities like bungy jumping, sky-diving or jet-boating. Luckily the weather finally cleared up, unveiling the beautiful mountain scenery in the area. On our last day we took an afternoon wine tour to sample the white wines and pinot noirs the area is famous for.

Leaving New Zealand…

Of all the places we’ve been so far, New Zealand is the one place I was really sad to leave. It’s such a beautiful country and we barely skimmed the surface. I’m definitely going back… someday!

Caving Adventure

Not knowing much about it we randomly signed up for a cool-looking caving tour, and it turned out to be worth it. The cave is undeveloped; only a guide rope has been added. We entered armed with wetsuits, headlamps, and a small inner tube in tow. The cave formations were very impressive, and part way through we turned off our lights in the middle to see the absolute darkness in the cave. Then we descended to the lower level of the cave which has water that flows into the nearby river. We boarded our inner tubes, turned off our lights, and floated through the cave with millions of “glow worms” lighting up the cave ceiling above us. Glow worms are small worms that live on rocks and catch insects with tiny sticky threads hanging down. And, their bums light up! Floating through the glow worm cave was magical.
 

Pancake Rocks

There’s a funny set of rock formations along the coast called Pancake Rocks. During high-tide and rough seas, large waves will cause water to shoot up through blowholes, making large booming sounds and showering nearby rocks (and sometimes tourists). We spent a couple hours watching the explosions and trying to get cool videos and photos. It was good fun.
 

The Beautiful West Coast

 

Yes, there are a lot of sheep in New Zealand. Near Westport we ran into a sheep drive! We just parked the car and waited for the sheep dog to chase the sheep further along on the road.

Franz Josef Glacier - below the clouds

A popular stop on any New Zealand itinerary is the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers. We arrived yesterday to cloudy skies and a poor forecast for the next few days. Since we’ve seen our share of glaciers, we decided just to do a long day hike for the exercise and leave the next day, whether or not we saw the glaciers in all their glory.

Peaking out the campervan window this morning, the skies looked clear and I was hopeful for good weather. We rushed to get ready and hit the trail by 10am for our 10 mile 4000 foot elevation gain hike. After three hours of strenuous hiking through rough terrain we ran into cloudy skies and figured we wouldn’t see a thing the rest of the day. In fact, two other couples we met on the trail turned around early to head back. But we were in it for the exercise, so we trotted on.

New Zealand above the clouds

Soon after we came out of the forest above the treeline, the sun peaked out and the clouds started to dissipate. Soon enough, we were struck by one of the most amazing mountain views I’ve ever seen: snow-capped mountains framed by bright blue skies, floating above a thick layer of clouds.  We practically ran the rest of the way to the top to get the full view. Only a few minutes later we were again surrounded by clouds, completely obscuring the view.  We had lunch and waited around another 45 minutes for the clouds to leave. Finally they did, and we scrambled to take a bunch of photos.  I couldn’t believe our luck – pushing ourselves to complete the hike despite the weather, and then getting to see this amazing view.

Hiking in the clouds

First view above the clouds

And a few minutes later this is all we saw

Ben & Alonna - above the clouds in New Zealand

 

Beautiful New Zealand

Ben and I arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand last week via a long set of flights from South Africa. At that point we had no idea what to do in New Zealand, so we found a hostel and hunkered down for 4 days to plan and get over our jet-lag. I don’t have a single photo of Christchurch, but it’s a really great city right next to beaches and mountains with a cool downtown.
 

Campervaning

Jucy Cruiza Campervan

Our time in Christchurch ended with us setting out to explore the South Island for 2 weeks in a “Jucy Cruiza” campervan. Campervans are really popular here, and can range from a regular van fitted with a bed and basic cooking facilities, to your typical American-style RV. Our campervan is near the lower end, but we opted for a hi-top, which gives us room to stand up and a better kitchen. For about $46 US dollars a day, we’ve been really happy with it. Unfortunately we also have to pay for a powered campsite in order to run our little fan heater at night (it’s autumn here and getting cold), which runs us another $20 USD per night. Anyway, it’s been fun and gives us lots of flexibility since we can go as close or far as we want every day. We might even extend our rental for another week.
 

Getting in Shape – New Zealand Style

We decided that New Zealand was a great place to get back in shape after being on the road for a few months. Since there’s tons of outdoor activities here, our plan is to do something each day – mountain bike, hike, jog, kayak, or whatever. With this scenery, and endless options for activities, it sure beats the gym back home!

Ben blasting his pecs

Our Rough Plans

We have about 2 1/2 more weeks in New Zealand. To keep a slow pace, we’ll only visit the South Island. Here’s a map to show you where we’ve been, and tentatively where we plan to go…

View New Zealand Road Trip in a larger map
Blue – Where we’ve been
Red – Where we might go

Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand

Ben and I have searched the globe for good mountain biking, but have failed to find anything worthwhile outside of the US… until now. Yesterday we rented full-suspension bikes and rode one section of the Queen Charlotte Track near Picton, New Zealand. The scenery was gorgeous and the riding was awesome. We will definitely be mountain biking more during our next 3 weeks here.

Biking the Queen Charlotte Track

Alonna biking in New Zealand

Amazing views from the trail

Ben and Alonna

Ben

Alonna

Ben showing off

 

Blyde River Canyon

Just west of Kruger park is Blyde River Canyon, a beautiful mountain range with cute towns and amazing viewpoints. After driving through the area, we booked last-minute reservations for two nights at a guesthouse out in the country. It was probably the most comfortable and beautiful room we’ve ever stayed in, with an enormous bed, jacuzzi, gorgeous view, and friendly host. Originally we were hoping to stay in town and spend our time hiking and sightseeing, but we took this opportunity to relax for a couple days instead. It was absolutely lovely.

South African Braai

Meat is cheap and delicious in South Africa, and similar to Argentina, this contributes to a grilling culture. Argentinians call it “parrilla”, South Africans call it “braai”, we call it “grill”, and supposedly Australians call it “barbie” but we’ll see when we get there.

We ended up with a love/hate relationship with braais in South Africa. The meat is fantastic – you can get cheap and delicious pre-marinated beef kebabs called espetadas. However, cooking them on the braai (a lidless charcoal grill) must take some special skill… somehow it always took us about 2 hours to get anything cooked.

Couchsurfing

We were lucky to line up couchsurfing hosts for 2 nights in Johannesburg. In case you haven’t heard of it, couchsurfing is an online community of friendly people around the world who let travelers stay at their place for a couple nights for free. Dawn and Paul were great hosts; they made us feel at home, gave us great advice for things to do and where to go, and filled us in on local history and their take on current politics.

Apartheid and ongoing Racial Tensions

This is way too big of a topic to tackle in this blog, but let’s just say that South Africa has a fascinating history and is unlike any country we’ve ever visited. Prior to arriving, we knew basically nothing about apartheid, the country’s history, or current politics. While in South Africa, we visited the apartheid museum, heard opinions from our couchsurfing and guesthouse hosts, witnessed racial divisions, and happened to be in town when the right-wing leader Terre’Blanche was murdered. In a lot of ways we found South Africa to be the most like the United States than anywhere we’ve visited so far, and in other ways it’s completely opposite. Although some people might say that we still have racism and racial issues in the United States, this is nothing compared to South Africa. Just 15 years ago the majority of people in South Africa (blacks) couldn’t vote. Now the country is still struggling to establish a fair and balanced government and come to terms with it’s diversity. Seeing this from the outside, I’d call it growing pains, but locals who are living through are frustrated to say the least. I’ll leave it at this, but if you’re interested, you can read about apartheid on wikipedia, and ask us about our experiences when we get home.

Self-drive Safari

How it works

Animal viewing from the car

We visited Kruger National Park, a huge game reserve east of Johannesburg. You could call this a “self-drive safari” because visitors simply drive their own cars around all day looking for animals. The animals are anywhere and everywhere, and most of the time we spotted them crossing the road, or near a river or water hole. You’re not allowed to get out of your car except in a few designated areas, but with all the animals around you wouldn’t want to anyway.

So Ben and I rented a car and stayed 3 nights inside of the park in a private bungalow with a small kitchen and grill. Each day we would head out, armed with cameras and binoculars, in search of wild animals…
 

Animals!

During four days of driving around Kruger, we saw almost every animal imaginable. The most common sightings were impala (a type of antelope), elephants, and giraffe. We also saw plenty of zebra, wildebeest, warthogs, baboons, vervet monkeys, hippos, rhino, water buffalo, and kudu. And finally, we were lucky to see some of the more rare animals: a pride of lions sleeping on the road (sunrise drive), a leopard hanging out in a tree, three cheetah (barely visible through our binoculars), some ostrich, and a hyena nursing a pup.
 

Interesting Encounters

Here’s some of our memorable experiences at Kruger:

• Driving on a dirt road, we came across a pack of about 20 water buffalo. They were slowly grazing and making their way from one side of the road to the other. With nowhere to go but forward, we inched our way towards the heard, eventually becoming surrounded by buffalo. Most of them didn’t seem to mind, but we got a few very intimidating stares. In particular, one buffalo stood in the middle of the road directly in front of us. She was protecting her calf, and glared at us without budging. Luckily, after a few minutes she shooed her calf off the road and let us pass.
  

  Face-off with a water buffalo

• My favorite animals at Kruger were elephants. We saw plenty of them, and I enjoyed each and every encounter. We usually found them crossing the road in groups of 10 or more, with at least a few adorable baby elephants in tow. They’re huge animals, and look so funny as they use their trunk to pull leaves off the trees and put it in their mouths.
  
• Ben’s favorite animals were rhinos. They remind me of dinosaurs with their tough skin and horns. On one of our guided drives, we came across a group of three white rhinos. Apparently intimidated by us, they would trot about 20 feet away, and then stop and form a defensive stance. They stood with their back-ends together and facing outward.
  

  Rhinos on the defense

Photos

Of our hundreds of photos, here’s some of the better ones… enjoy!

Lion resting on the road

Lions before sunrise

White Rhino

Baboons

Elephant

Elephant

Elephant crossing the road

Giraffe

Ben in Kruger Park

Warthogs

Kudu

Zebra and Impala

Vervet Monkey

Leopard resting on the tree branch

Leopard through our weak binoculars

Olifants River, Kruger Park

Alonna & elephants in the river basin

Ben with the rental car

There's a wildabeest in the distance (middle left)

Sunset in Kruger