Venezuela Happy Holidays Posts have been scant in the past few days because we're in Caracas, spending the holidays with Conor's family. Of course there's a lot to say about Caracas and Venezuela, not even touching on the political situation, but since this is Conor's
Mexico Mexico – ¡Que Padre! We have been collecting a series of desktop pictures for our computers in order to remember the trip. We thought we'd share 24 of the best ones, so that you can enjoy Mexico on your desktop. Clicking on the images leads to a high resolution widescreen version of
Panama A Man, A Plan, A Canal = Panama Yesterday we went to see one of the engineering wonders of the world - the Panama canal. The Miraflores Locks are right outside Panama City so we could see the action up-close and personal. Like everything in Panama City, it started with a little bargaining. Taxis in the city don&
Panama Adios Costa Rica, Hello Panama! Yesterday we caught a bus, walked across a bridge and suddenly found ourselves in a whole different country. That's how easy it is to get to Panama from Costa Rica. (Although if you could take a boat it'd be even easier and faster.) The bridge isn&
Costa Rica Row, Row, Row Your Boat Yesterday it rained cats and dogs all day long and Turrialba didn't really show itself in its prettiest light. (Or maybe that was just my own bad mood influencing things...) In any case, I wasn't too excited about going white-water rafting today. But when we opened
Costa Rica A Couple Walks Into A Hotel... Unlike Mexico where we had each stop carefully planned months in advance, we hadn't made any real plans for our stay in Costa Rica besides the week of surfing with Henriikka. Once she left, we just looked in our guide book for a place to stay in the
Costa Rica The Life of Sloths and Other Animals That's Conor and me at the moment, we're living the life of gluttonous sloths. After three intense days of surfing in Santa Teresa (on the waves by 6am every morning for the sunrise session) we moved on to Dominical, supposedly for the surfing as well. But
Costa Rica The Girls Are Back In Town At the Epcot Aquarium we met a couple of sea turtles during our dive that struck me as very large at the time but they were nothing compared to the Leatherback momma we saw a few nights ago. We arrived at the Parque Marino Las Baulas for our appointed '
Costa Rica The old woman's corner We recently spent two nights at the "Rincon de la vieja" national park, literally "The old woman's corner". As in many parcs of Costa Rica, there were volcanoes, bubbling mud, thermal waters and a few choice wildlife sightings. The reason we went to the
Costa Rica Juiced So, highlight of my day? I got sprayed with jaguar juice. Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write... We were at "Las Pumas" wild cat rehab center, looking at a very beautiful male adolescent jaguar who was restlessly padding back and forth
Costa Rica Smokin' hot We drove up to see the Arenal volcano which, lucky for us, was for once not shrouded in clouds. It was rainy and grey but we could see the smoking tip of the crater and wallow in our recklessness at staying so close to this deadly contraption. (I'm
Costa Rica Some more surfing On our third day of surfing I was ready to pack it in and move on. It wasn't so much that I couldn't do it – I'd stood up several times already and even had one or two really nice rides – but the effort was
Costa Rica Surf's up, dude! Today was our second day surfing and the bruise on my hip is developing a nice pinkish purple colour. I have aches in muscles that I didn't know I had, my ribs are sore and my knees are bright red. Yes, I'm a surfing newbie. We&
Mexico Mexico City Mexico City is so many things that I'm having a hard time putting it all into words. Let's start with what it's NOT: it is not the dirty, poor and asthma-inducing smogpot that you hear about a lot. It's also not the
Mexico San Miguel de Allende A quaint, pretty place with not much to do. I don't mean to sound harsh but besides shopping and ambling around the streets to look for more shops there's not much happening in San Miguel de Allende. Of course that makes it a great place to
Mexico La Panamericana On our last night in Oaxaca we had to kill some time before our bus left just before midnight. (Another night bus trip, nooo... But fortunately our last!) Our host René had told us that in the late afternoon the Panamericana rally would arrive in the city; the first stop
Mexico OAXACA!!! Gesundheit... Yes, it's the city with the funny name that sounds like a sneeze once you know how to pronounce it (say: wah-HA-ka). We've been here for four days now and are loving every minute. The food is excellent, our bed & breakfast is wonderful, there are
Mexico A short trip into the mountains The most exciting thing about San Cristobal de las Casas was probably the weather. We arrived from hot and humid Palenque (on a long and windy mountain pass which I'd rather forget about) where it had been over 30C and just walking to lunch made you sweat like
Mexico San Juan Chamula Since our stay in San Cristobal de las Casas included a Sunday we decided to go and visit the market in San Juan Chamula, a small township in the surrounding hills. We'd read about the place in our guidebook where it was praised as a stronghold of indigenous
Mexico A day of physical and mental exercise in Palenque Today we spent the whole morning scrabbling around the ruins of Palenque which, if you ever find yourself in Mexico, are not to be missed. In our humble opinion, they are even more impressive and worth the visit than the much touted Chichen Itza. Might also have to do with
Mexico Tulum and Cenotes After we went diving on the world's second largest reef the day before, we spent the next day at Tulum's archaeological site and then went for some more diving. This time in one of the fresh water caves that are dotted all over the Yucatan peninsula
Mexico Puerto Morelos - que buena onda! We finally made it to Mexico after a little delay in Miami due to missing our plane (woops!) but that way we got to have lunch at Bulldog barbeque with Fer and Ido and taste the best ribs in South Florida before taking off. Now we are staying in a
United States Diving with Nemo After we passed our PADI Open water certificate in the murky waters of Sarasota, we decided that our first real dive should be in the most unreal environment there is - the Epcot DiveQuest experience, i.e. diving in the Disney World aquarium. Our instructor had talked about it with
United States Paws in the water Two more names haven been added to the PADI list of "Open Water Certified Divers" this weekend - we passed our test! We took the whole course online over the past few weeks and then did three days of confined and open water dives here in Sarasota to
United States Culinary, mostly Miami is about food for us because we're staying with Conor's cousin Fernando who is an excellent cook and loves to eat. In the last few days we've had fresh shrimp cooked in a tomato onion broth, soft-shell crab (thanks to Luis and Lacey
