No New Adventures

Haven't blogged in a while...not really been doing anything of interest. I was starting to believe that I was a pretty boring person, until I realized that this is just a temporary ebb in my life's adventure's...I've had lots of good adventures. Just not in the last two weeks.
Boring people should just go traveling more. Even if you have nothing interesting to say about your life, people will listen when you start a conversation with something like "I remember when I was in Bolivia the last time....". This not only sparks their interest because your clearly a man of the world who has been to an exotic destination, but that your so super adventurous that you can seem nonchalant about having been there twice. You can carry this too far...try not to talk in a superior manner about the savages, its very colonial and annoying.
That being said, it's true, I have been to Bolivia twice.
So with nothing else interesting to say about me today, I'm going to bore you all with a brief recap of my adventures...the highlights...and the low points.

This is my first passport...the travel document that got the whole ball of wax going. And this is a picture of me circa 1995...going for that Charlie Manson look.

My first trip was to South America...a one way ticket to Peru from Miami. We took a bus to Miami from Bellingham, taking gross advantage of Greyhounds Anywhere to Anywhere for $89 promotion. Ninety-six consecutive hours of bus travel preps the mind for exposure to foreign lands, particularly on the Hound, where such a diverse cross section of strangeness is so close at hand.

This trip was to be my longest and most far reaching, lasting some 5 months and covering 6 countries on two continents (not counting the bus ride through the states). This was also this least expensive trip, though not always the most enjoyable. It was on this trip a learned the conversational value of tales of woe and sickness on the road...everyone wants to hear about your bout with dysentery or your near scam by the fake Bolivian police.
Countries we visited (Kira has been with me for all my travels, and has done more on her own) included: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Columbia, Guatemala, and Mexico. We traveled back from Mexico by Greyhound, a definite theme in my early travel experiences...it's amazing how far you can go without flying.
Highlights of this trip included the three day hike along the Inca trail culminating in a visit to Machu Picchu.
This tops the list for more than one reason. True Machu Picchu is one of the worlds wonders, but to see it at that time was very provident. We were able to hike the Inca Trail unguided, with only a handful of other travelers along the trail. Now it is mandatory to go with a guided tour group with an average of 100-200 people per day. Probably changes the ambiance.
A second highlight was Isla Del Sol in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. Again, this was the time to go. This Incan island has been overrun by tourists, and was decidedly less adventurous the second time round (still worth a visit though).
Another highlight for me was the four day trek from La Cumbre to Corico (Bolivia). This largely down hill trek drops 3000m from top to bottom and takes you through many beautiful and unique ecozones. This may have been a low point for Kira, as she was very ill, and actually begged a cow to gore her at one point.
Yet another highlight was my first experience with Mexico, particularly the Oxacan Coast.
Yet another highlight was the brilliant ingenuity we had to get from South America to Central America with almost no money. We were hardier souls in those days. We'd walk ten miles to save a dollar.
Low points included my near death illness in Ecuador, Kira's near constant sickness at altitude, the crappy food we ate because we were cheap, and all the overnight buses we took to save money. We definitely focussed to much on the budget part of budget travel, although we got a pretty good ride out of very little green.
My next trip was an other 4 month epic journey, this time covering only Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, but as the journey was mostly overland, It seemed like a lot of traveling.
Again the journey started with a really long ride on the Greyhound.
This time from Bellingham to San Diego. Then it was the Mexican train.
Mexican train travel is not for everyone (in fact it is not for anyone, anymore, as alas there is no train service along the Pacific Coast), but there is just something about riding the Mexican rails in a third class car that makes long journeys fun.
We saw a lot of Mexico this trip.
The northern interior and the Copper Canyon. The Pacific Coast. The colonial highlands of Michocan. Oaxaca. Chiapas. Heading south, the trip seemed to focus more on the cities. Guadalajara, Tepic, Morellia, Patzcuaro, Ururapan, annd San Cristobal de los Casas The biggest highlight of this leg of my journey was definitely the Mayan site of Palanque. A beautiful temple site in the raw Chiapan jungle.
Guatemala has never been my favourite country...to many Canadian hippie tourists.
Honduras was a mixed bag, outside of Copan, there were no tourist attractions per se, other than the beach, and there was always an edge of potential violence in the air, but for some reason, I got stuck in a place called Trujillo for almost two months. The expat lifestyle caught up with me, and I got a glimpse of what it would be like to be a foreigner living in a strange land.
Trujillo was pretty much destroyed by hurricane Mitch the next year.
We traveled back overland into Mexico, and spent some time in Oaxaca, before flying up to Tijuana for yet another long bus ride home.
My second passport does not have many stamps. Thats not because I stopped traveling in this period. In fact, I went on trips 4 years out of 5, but Mexico stopped stamping your passport sometime between 1998 and 2002.
My first trip with this disturbing image as my travel ID was back to South America. Peru, Bolivia, Chile (sort of), and Argentina (only for a couple of hours to renew my Bolivian visa). This trip lasted three and a half months.
This trip was a really good one. For this first time I was able to sacrifice money for comfort and pleasure. For example, I've been to Nazca twice. Only the second time did I pay the $25 to fly over the lines.
We probed deep into the Andean Highlands of Peru and Bolivia, and got off the "Gringo Trail" (beaten tourist path) and saw some pretty cool places. In Peru we saw both the area formerly occupied by the Shinning Path, and the virtually untraveled coast. In Bolivia, we spent over two months...seeing as much as we could, from high glacial lakes at over 5000 metres, to the giant salt flats of the Salar de Uyuni. We saw impoverished miners far beneath the surface, and gave them sticks of dynamite. We shuddered as they detonated them. We swam in waterfalls outside of Cochabamba and Samipata, and we trekked through washouts in th red coloured hills around Tupiza. Everything in Bolivia on this trip was a highlight, and Bolivia remains my favourite country.
The next three trips were all 2 month road trips to Mexico. I won't bore you with the details, but there's something indescribably cool about driving around Mexico. Lets just say I know some good beaches. Twice we traveled with friends. Once in a large group, and once with another couple. We learned the joys of traveling with companions and the annoyances of other people. We learned how to described car troubles to Mexican mechanics using broken Spanish and hand gestures. We drank a lot of beer.
My trip to South East Asia required a third passport. This time I don't look like a psycho-killer.
This was a great trip (short at only 7 weeks), but amazing the whole time. We spent lavishly, and sometimes even said "screw the budget". Not luxury you understand, but nice. fortunately Asia has great values on accommodation and even better food.
Lao was an absolutely fantastic country. Full off saffron clad monks and hammer and sickle flags. It's a rural country (not unlike Bolivia), not the sort of place you go to hit the discos. We saw the destruction wrought by the USA's secret bombing campaigns,witnessed Hmong courting rituals, and developed a taste for rice whiskey.
In Cambodia, we visited genocide museums and spent 5 whole days starring at the great temples at Angkor. Unfortunately, we had to cut the Cambodian portion short...due to time restrictions...so we have to go back.
Did I mention how good Thai food is. Thailand (although I didn't spend much time there) is a paradise on earth. Nowhere has that many tourists not bothered me. Thats how interesting the culture is...no matter how many tourists...it's still foreign. I regret not going to more beaches, although I understand that these have been somewhat compromised by the European hoards.
My last trip was the shortest I've ever done. A mere 5 weeks. Not long enough to travel hard, so we kept it confined to Nicaragua. But if you read my travel blog you know all about it. This trip was worthwhile, but I wouldn't recommend Nicaragua to everyone. The food is terrible, and there are some sketchy areas. Avoid Managua!

So that's my life's adventures in a nutshell. All this travel (adds up to over a year and a half, has left me with countless yarns. Otherwise I'd have to talk about work...and that would bore the pants off of you.

One of these days I'm going to scan some pictures from my early travels...they are few (compared to the digital trips) but there are some good shots from yesteryear.