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Hola, México! Cancún Dentists and Tacos

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Incredible street art in Cancún

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Cancún, México, belly full of tacos, skin sun burnt, and listening to the terribly off-key wailing of Karaoke night from the pub down the road as I write this. It seemed like an odd choice for a lot of my fellow Canadians, to start my world travels this time in Mexico, as Mexico is most often only seen as a tourist destination for all inclusive vacations to escape the winter blues and icy torment of the cold. And oddly enough, the reason Mexico even made the list was that I needed to go to the dentist; I didn’t have any coverage for the last three years, which meant I would be looking at a monster bill if I went to the dentist back home. So I said why not hop down to Mexico, get my check up, cleanings, fillings, and then we can be on our way to travel? And then I realized how ridiculous that is. Why would we not stay and travel in Mexico? I adored Guatemala and all of Central America, and I knew Mexico would offer much of the same – while simultaneously wildly different – culture, food and experience as those Latin American countries. Why would I come all the way down here just to go to the dentist and then be on my way?  I mean, tacos are literally my favourite food group. Ever! So it was decided – we would spend four months in this vast and magical country! And Cancún would be the first stop to get that pesky dentist appointment out of the way! Continue reading →

The Route: Round 2!

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Well Hello again!

It’s hard to believe that here I am, on the road again, setting off to see the world one more time.  It feels as if I just returned from my last grand adventure, and yet suddenly my feet are swept out from under me, and I’m rambling down the road to adventure once again!

People often ask, “Where are you heading this time?” and so I list off the countries that my partner Travis and I decided on for this adventure. The follow up question is always, “How did you decide on these places? Did you just spin a globe and point?”. And that one is a little harder to answer. I didn’t sit down one day and say, ‘Okay, where do I want to go?’, and map it all out. It came organically,  bit by bit.  And it changed, often. Continue reading →

An African Diary IX: Africat

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Day 20: Tuesday December 8th, 2015

Today we are leaving Ngepi. But oh how I love this place! The hippie vibes, the beautiful scenery, but most of all the work this lodge is doing to be sustainable and help out the local surrounding villages. Ngepi runs completely on solar power, all of their water is pumped from the river, they employ almost all of their staff from the once nomadic surrounding villages, they only serve wild game (no large domesticated animals), and they offer an incentive program to locals to plant trees and maintain them so as to ease the camps ecological footprint. The place is filled with adorable wooden signs reminding you to do your part. And the bathrooms! They were hands down the best I’ve come across in my travels. The walls were made of lanky sticks fashioned together into a six foot high fence, the showers were all fenced in with the same stick work (with no roof of course so you could look up to the heavens as you showered with the river water). Trees and vegetation covered the walls all over the shower section, creeping in from the surrounding vegetation. The shower platform itself was just a cute little dipped cement oval with a hippo carving at one end, and the shower head just floated above your head with the plumbing all hidden from view in a tangle of vegetation. It was like taking a rain shower in nature heaven! In the toilets you only had three stick fence walls – two on your side and one behind you – the front wall being left out so you sat and looked out into the thick tangle of forest while doing your business – as nature intended! Continue reading →

An African Diary Part VII : Into The Wetlands

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dsc_0910Day 16: Friday, December 4, 2015

Sleeping in until 7:30 was absolutely glorious and much needed after so many days of rising at dawn. Today was mostly a driving day as we had another 450km of road to cover to pass through the whole Caprivi strip to our next camp – Mazambala, near the border of Zambia and as close to Victoria falls as we would get, unfortunately. Next time… because we absolutely know there will be a next time! The rains came again and joined us for much of our drive, this time accompanied by massive rakes of lightning and rumbles of thunder.

Mazambala was situated on the Okavango river, surrounded by marshlands.  The camp is actually on an island on the river, but because the rains were only just starting, it was still connected to land. The campsites were 2km away from the lodge on the ‘mainland’, but we could take a boat over to the lodge whenever we wanted. We drove over to check in and check the place out and book a game drive for the following day.  This was the part of the country where we were hoping to see hippos, crocs and water buffalo. After setting up camp, as night fell, the warning from the lodge host ruminated in my head: “Don’t stray far from your camp, the hippos will be about, you’ll likely hear them.” Continue reading →

An African Diary, Part VI: Etosha Continues

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Day 14: Wednesday, December 12, 2015

5:30am came in the blink of an eye. I ripped out my ear plugs, shot up in bed and smacked Rug.

“Lions”, I said.

We sat stock still for a moment and listened as their raucous roars filled the quiet morning. No other words were spoken as we grabbed our knife (the security of this water hole was questionable at best in our minds!), head lamps and cameras and marched to the waterhole. In the distance, two male lions and two females could be seen.  The smaller male was off and to the left, alone, clearly not welcome to enjoy the feminine joys of the other male lions domain. The big male stretched and roared and sniffed at the females, nuzzling their heads. They each slowly rose from the ground where they lay and lethargically made their way to the waterhole. The predawn light was dull and muted so I wasn’t able to get any good pictures. Instead I just sat and watched them interact among each other and listened to those frightening roars that had kept me awake all the night before. When they all began to move off back into the bush, we set out back for our camp and packed up quickly and hit the road to see what else sunrise had brought with it as we made our way towards our next and last camp. Continue reading →

An African Diary Part V: A Taste Of Etosha

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Day 12: Monday, November 30, 2015

7am saw us up and busy. I prepared a breakfast of eggs and beans while Rug pulled down the tent. We ate, washed up, packed up and were on the road by 830am. We had been looking forward to this day ever since we began our journey: today was the day we entered into Etosha National Park. While we had seen heaps of amazing wildlife already on our journey, this is what we had been waiting for, this is where the big stuff was, and in high concentrations – the lions, the elephants, the giraffe, the rhinos – none of which we had seen yet. We cruised quickly over the dirt roads, stopped too fuel up in Outjo, reloaded the cooler with ice, checked the propane and hit the black top for the next half hour until we reached Galton Gate, the westernmost gate to Etohsa. Continue reading →

A Night In A Wadi Rum Bedouin Camp

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Petra was the main reason I wanted to visit Jordan, but I had met a Jose, a Puerto Rican, on my flight from South America to Europe and he highly recommended checking out Wadi Rum in the south of the country. Only having a few short days, we decided on two days with Petra, two days in Wadi Rum and our last day a stop at the Dead Sea while on our way to the airport. Jose, my friend, I cannot thank you enough for your recommendation because Wadi Rum was the absolute highlight of my short time in Jordan. There are few places in the world as breathtaking as The Valley of the Moon.

We left our Bedouin camp outside Little Petra in the early morning, a taxi arranged for us by the camp. The morning was a little frustrating as I found out later in the taxi that we had been brutally mislead about the cost of our back tour into Petra and what was supposed to be a shared taxi was now a private, much more expensive taxi. We were easily out over $100 each. The only unfortunate thing we discovered about Jordan is that sadly people will rip you off unabashedly left, right and centre. If traveling to Jordan, I can’t urge you enough to rent your own vehicle, especially if tight on time, as taxi rates are exorbitant and bus schedules intermittent and unreliable. And if you’re arranging any sort of tours or deals with local people, ensure you settle the price and pay up front so there is no confusion. It really put a sour note on my time in Jordan and made me feel quite bitter towards how the people were conniving and ripping us off so badly. But our journey into Wadi Rum all but made up for that and let me leave Jordan with warmth in my heart.

Continue reading →

Cappadocia

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With some flight delays and missing baggage, our little jaunt across the country wasn’t entirely smooth, but we didn’t let that dampen our moods. Our first day ended up being a freebie because no one had their bags, and thus the warmer clothing needed for our tours, so we instead got the full tour of the Michelle Dream Cave Hotel. When Butch and Brenda first came to Turkey in 2002, they had no idea they would fall in love so quickly with this incredible country and end up buying a condo and spending their winters there.  They also happened to make an amazing business contact and now life long friend, Ahmed. Before they knew it, they began making plans of purchasing land and building a cave hotel. If Cappadocia is known for anything, it’s the caves! The hillsides are peppered with caves. From hundreds to thousands of years ago, these caves were carved into the mountain sides as houses, refuges, stables and pigeon houses.  Today they are used as storage for lemons (the temperature remains the same in the caves year round even with the changing seasons), but mostly – they are turned into cave hotels. Continue reading →

The Cats Of Ephesus

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It was a brief flight from Istanbul down to Izmir. My illness was holding off thanks to the Pepto, but I was terribly weak and desperately tired. We all piled into the huge family van and our driver safely got us to Ephesus, where we checked into our lovely little bed and breakfast. It was a free afternoon, with suggestions of what to see and do – but I kept thinking all I wanted was a nap. Instead, I powered through the feeling and joined a few others to head down to the beautiful little market and explore the quaint city streets filled with shops and restaurants. But in the end we had an early night because in the morning we had our Ephesus ruins tour lined up. Continue reading →

Istanbul, Turkey

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Feeling rejuvenated and ready for adventure, I hopped on a plane and touched down hours later in Istanbul, Turkey (after another lovely airport overnight in Athens). Before I left Yellowknife, my good friend Mike (more commonly known as Rug) and I had made plans to go on an epic six week adventure together. It started with him joining me in Africa. I had settled on the country Namibia and I still to this day cannot recall how it was I chose Namibia out of all of the countries in Africa, but I believe it was one of those ones that the universe seemed to be sending me subliminal messages about, over and over. Experience has taught me it’s best to listen to the universe, and so, without knowing anything about Namibia, I decided this would be my African destination. I was interested in Turkey as well and he told me his mom and step dad owned a really cool cave hotel there, and that maybe we could check out Turkey together as well!  Jordan had of course been on my wish list from the start and after some planning we figured we could spend a week in Turkey, a week in Jordan and then use the rest of our time down in Africa. Continue reading →