Posts Tagged ‘friends’

So sorry to be so far behind in our adventures. We’ve had a wonderful time seeing friends and family and haven’t had much time for blogging. But, that does mean that we have lots of wonderful days to post about!

We arrived in Edinburgh after one of the nicest (read: least bumpy) flights ever. There was one slight mishap on the getting to the airport in Madrid. I woke up, in a panic that I had slept through my alarm, roused Justin and very sleepily hustled us out of the hostel, only to find out that my alarm hadn’t even gone off yet! We were about two hours earlier to the airport than we needed to be. But I suppose that’s better than two hours late.

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We arrived in Barcelona and went right to the hotel to meet up with our good friends from home.  This was so exciting!  We got 4 whole days traveling with them and it was glorious!  The hotel we stayed at in Barcelona was quite a bit more pricey than we’ve been used to, but we were excited to have our own bathroom and a really comfy bed for a couple of nights.

We went out and tasted some of the food and nightlife in the neighborhood we were staying in.

Amazing seafood paella!

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We couldn’t wait to get back on the road to see Barcelona.  We had heard that it was a really cool, funky city – but we were even more excited to see John & Cynthia who decided to meet up with us there and tour the city!  It was unfortunately not fated to be as easy as it sounds.  After our wonderful date at El Buey, we went right back to the dorm and crashed; we woke up in the morning and realized that we still had one more night left in Madrid before our bus left for Barcelona.  No worries, I said, and went down to the desk to ask for another night at our hostel.  They were full!  It was quite a surprise to me since not a single room we’d been in there had ever been full and now they tell us there is not even one more bed for us to take the next night.  And we had to check out in an hour!  So I ran back up to the dorm, awakened Hazel, and started looking for another place to stay.  I wanted a private room to ensure we got some good rest before going out on the town in Barcelona, and booked it at a nearby hostel.

So we got on the Metro, made it to our proper stop, and began walking looking for the street.  Did I mention that streets change names nearly every block in some parts of Madrid?  We ended up taking a wide circle around the hotel, with all our worldly possessions on our back.  It was frustrating!  We were both afraid for our personal security, since we looked like (er, were) lost foreign tourists with all their worldly possessions on their backs.

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Dr. DeWitt the veterinarian!

We had a very fun and joyful stop in Ithaca, NY to watch Justin’s sister Jessica graduate from veterinary school at Cornell University.  It’s good to have a doctor in the family!

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For our second day out at San Pedro de Atacama, we decided to visit a very famous couple of valleys near the town. Our tour was run again by CosmoAndino Expeditions, who ran our tour of the altiplano, and whose guides and equipment we found to be really nice. We were lucky to meet a couple who had been on the last tour we took, and had a great time chatting with them and enjoying the scenery! Their talk of packing much of Chile into a 10 day trip really made us appreciate the luxury we have by taking our year vacation – time to relax.

Our first destination was ‘Piedra del Coyote’, a place with a really dramatic view over a valley, and with a precarious rock outcropping whose image frequently graces postcards and tour books:

On A Cliff

It has been a while since I’ve managed an update.  We’ve had a busy and amazing time recently and have been very, very lucky.

Since the last post we took the southern scenic route around the bottom of the South Island.  This took us through the Catlans region and then up into Fiordland.  All in all we’ve had pretty good weather (except at Milford Sound), so we’ve been able to do some really good hikes and see lots of incredible scenery!

Beach in the Catlans at Sunset

We saw more penguins, did a beautiful river walk and met some incredibly nice people who shared their campfire one night.  There are loads of waterfalls in the Catlans, so I had a chance to practice taking some waterfall photos.

We had a huge adventure getting to Milford Sound as we realized part-way that we would not have enough gas in our tiny tank to make it back if we went all the way to the Sound.  There is no gas anywhere along the route, so running out would be pretty annoying, as would turning back and not seeing it.  We found ourselves at a hut where a few of the hikes start and managed to talk our way onto a bus that was passing through.  It ended up being really good because the road was incredibly scenic (despite the rain) and we both got to enjoy it instead of having to think about the very windy road.  It also ended up giving us only about 1.5 hours at the sound, but we didn’t mind that because we were saving our boat trip for Doubtful Sound and it was really poor visability.  We paid the bus driver and he told us “this never happened” and we went on our way.

The road to Milford is just incredible, with waterfalls everywhere and the steepest cliffs – highly recommend a whole day just to explore that road.

The next day we did a hike up to Key Summit (still before getting gas) and got some incredible views of the valleys and mountains.  I’m not going to have time to get pictures up, but I really will try in the next few days!

Our boat trip to Doubtful Sound was absolutely AWESOME!  We went with Fiordland Expeditions and it totally exceeded anything I had imagined.

Doubtful Sound

We had all the lobster and blue cod we could eat.  Which it turns out is quite a lot!  We also got to catch both of these things and they were cooked fresh right there on the boat.  I caught not only my first fish, but three more as well!  We actually went all the way out to the Tasman Sea for fishing and it was totally unreal (unreel?) how easy it was to hook a fish.  Except for the guy who caught a 5 foot shark!  Absolutely incredible!

We also went kayaking, did a little stargazing and Justin jumped off the ship’s helicopter pad.  I jumped off something a little lower, but it was awesome that we had such perfect weather that we could swim.  Everyone kept saying that they hardly ever have that much sun there.

But that wasn’t even the end of the seafood.  The kind people who shared their campfire invited us to their beautiful home to try Paua (abalone!).  So straight off the boat we drove back across the country and had another amazing seafood feast and wonderful evening of conversation (and showers and laundry!) at their house.  Much to my surprise I really liked the Paua and ate both strips of it and ground up patties. It’s a pretty off-putting black and blue color on the outside, but it tastes delicious!  We also had fish and chips style blue cod.  It’s amazing how generous people are as we would never have been able to try Paua like that.  Chris knows how and where to dive for them and snatched them that same day off the rocks!  You aren’t allowed to tank dive to get them, so it takes quite a bit of know-how.  We’re hoping that one day we’ll be able to return the favor, but we were having trouble thinking of truly American food besides hot dogs and twinkies.

My internet time is almost run out, even though I could go on and on about the last week.  We’re on our way back to the North Island now and going into intensive Spanish practice mode to get ready for South America at the end of the month.

I had hoped to get a lot more blog posts up before heading out, but it’s time to turn off my computer, pull out the hard drive, and say goodbye to the rest of it.

It’s so hard to leave this place – we love our apartment and our friends and our dog!  The goodbyes have been tough, but wonderful to have such amazing friends.  And now we’re almost on our way.  Tomorrow we set off for a few days in Seattle with family and then on Saturday we fly out.

Thank you California friends!!!!!  We’re really going to miss you!!!

It's so empty!

On a Hike

One of the hardest parts about taking off for a whole year is leaving this sweet face behind.  I found Daisy in the Tacoma, WA pound 5 years ago and she’s been a major part of my life since then.  She’s moved with me from Puyallup, WA to Davis, CA, back to Seattle, WA and now here to the Bay Area.  She’s gone fishing, camping, whale watching, rafting, hiking, was the ring bearer in our wedding and even goes to work with Justin every day.  It’s going to be pretty difficult leaving her behind!

Luckily for us, our close friends have volunteered to take her for the year we are gone.  Daisy already loves hanging out and playing ball with them and will be totally happy to spend a year with them and their two kitties.  And even more luckily for us, they’ve promised to give her back once we are back from our travels.  We couldn’t ask for a more ideal situation.

Fetch in the Park

We’ll miss Daisy, but it’s much easier leaving knowing that she’ll be in such good hands!

Whale Watching off Monterey