Tag Archives: RTW

Being Lost, And Found, In Strange Lands

22 May

Being in a foreign country, especially when you have a minimal grasp of the language, is both exciting and exhausting.  Travelling on a budget means that we pretty much never hire a tour guide, and we always go for the public transportation options.  Guidebooks are okay for getting a general idea of how to get around using public transport or our own two feet, but often the book falls far short of any real help.

Once in Valdivia, Chile we knew that we could get to a small park reserve by bus, but we just weren’t sure of the times, or where to catch it.  We asked our hostel, who told us a bus number that was totally incorrect.  We asked the tourist information office. Twice. They gave us the correct bus name, but couldn’t be specific about where it stopped.  We asked 7 different people who worked in the general area and they all pointed us in different directions.

FINALLY, the next day, we found the bus stop and, surprise surprise, it wasn’t anywhere near any of the places we’d been directed to.  Once we were on the bus we asked about specific return times since the reserve was nearly 50 kilometers outside of town.  We were told there were two return times – 2pm and 5pm.  As the reserve was the last stop, the driver assured us that this is where we needed to be to get picked up.

We were at the stop at 1:30pm, just to be safe.  We waited. And waited. And waited.  Finally, at 3, we started walking.  At 4:30 we managed to hitch a ride with a very nice couple who spoke zero English and didn’t seem to understand our Spanish very well.

Justin attempts to get us a ride on the long walk back to Valdivia…we had seen nothing but these sheep for 45 minutes.

Thankfully, they were able to drop us reasonably close to a town that had another bus that could take us back to Valdivia.  It was an adventure, to say the least.

My point is, sometimes getting around can be tough.  Every once in a while though, we encounter a stranger who helps us avoid yet another fiasco.

Today we were attempting to get to one of Istanbul’s oldest Byzantine churches, which is a bit off the regular tourist circuit.   We knew we could take a bus, but the place we had to get on was riddled with buses and we had not a clue which one we needed.  After asking about 7 different drivers, all of which just waved us towards the general direction of another dozen buses, we were approached by a man who asked (in English!) if we needed help.  We told him where we were going, and as luck would have it, he was also going that way.

Then we realized we couldn’t pay the fare in cash, we needed some sort of metro card, which we didn’t have.  The man paid our way with his own card and refused our multiple attempts at paying him back.  He then rode with us to our stop, got off with us, and led us for the 20 minute walk through winding streets to this little church.  There is no way we would have found this place on our own.

The whole time he’s helping us I was thinking, “What does he want? Is he going to charge us something for this?  Is he really dragging us to a carpet shop to try and sell us something?” but no, he was just really nice.  After getting us to the church he wished us a happy day and went on his way.

Every once in a while we are reminded that in this huge and crazy world there are genuinely kind people, and we are very thankful that we encountered one of them today.

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Photo Friday – Family Pictures in Buenos Aires

18 May

Buenos Aires has a fantastic Sunday antiques market, the Mercado San Telmo.  We spent an afternoon wandering around among the stalls and we came across this box of old family photos.  When we find relics like these I’m forced to wonder, “Who were these people?  Why have their photos ended up here, selling for 5 cents a piece to strangers who know nothing about them?”  I am both fascinated and saddened by this because I think of my own family, and wonder what could have happened that all these family photos have ended up for sale here.  There are years of memories, vacations and celebrations jammed into this box, their stories lost somehow and leaving us only to wonder what might have been.

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The Uruguay Roundup

6 May

The Statistics

Number of days spent in country –  15

Cities/towns visited –  Colonia, Montevideo, Punta del Diablo

Number of different lodgings – 3 plus a couchsurf

Local bus journeys – 8

Combi/collective/taxi  journeys – 0

Boat rides – 2

Bike rentals – 1

Days of rain – 1

Budget

Total US dollar amount spent – 1,228.50

Average cost per day, per person – 43.88

Average lodging cost per night – 38.40

Most expensive lodging – Hostel del Diablo – $41/night for a private room with bathroom and a patio looking out to the sea.

Least expensive lodging – Willy Fog Hostel and El Viajero  in Montevideo were both $13 per person for a dorm room, including breakfast

Average food/drink cost per day (per person) – $20.15  We ate out for pretty much every meal, and drank a healthy amount of beer and wine.  Lunches we generally had empanadas on the beach, but we went to basic restaurants most nights for dinner.  We could easily have spent a lot more on food and drink, but we chose mid-range restaurants with only a few exceptions.

Best:

Best. Empanadas. Ever.

* Empanadas – Kiosco Alba at the end of the ‘pier’ where there are trinket vendors.  These go down as the best empanadas we had in all of South America.  They are made fresh to order and are STUFFED with fresh fish, or ham and cheese.  They are fried, yet they aren’t greasy.  They are incredible, and there was always a wait, but it was well worth it.

Mmmmm…grilled meat….

*Parilla meal – Huge slabs of grilled meats are typical in Uruguay, especially in Mercado del Puerto.  It’s incredible just to walk around and marvel at all the grills going at the same time, and you have more than a dozen choices for lunch.  We ate at La Chacra with our couchsurf host, and had some of the best steak we’d had on the trip thus far.  A tad pricey, but well worth it.

We took a break from biking to take photos with the massive Montevideo sign

* Bike ride along La Rambla – Do yourself a favor and rent a bike at Bicicletta Sur on Aquilas Lanza and Durazno.  For a dollar an hour you can spend all day cruising up and down the coastline, stopping for ice cream, empanadas, and whatever else catches your fancy along the way (like the giant Montevideo sign above…).  There is a well maintained path for both pedestrians and bikes.

Playa Grande in Punta del Diablo

* Playa Grande in Punta del Diablo – It’s already a super chilled out beach town, but we hear it can get pretty crowded during high season.  To get away from the masses, head over to Playa Grande, just a few minutes walk up the coast.  You’ll find an expansive beach that you’ll have nearly all to yourself since most people don’t want to make the trek over the sand dunes.  If you walk all the way out to the end of the beach you’ll be at the beginning of a nature preserve where you can marvel at the foliage and maybe even spot some sea turtles.

Worst

* El Viajero Hostel in Montevideo.  It was clean, well located, and had a good breakfast but all of those things can’t make up for terrible layout and a bad staff.  The room we had didn’t have a window, which made it swelteringly hot in the night.  In addition, the rooms all faced the open courtyard where people hung out until all hours of the night – the noise was deafening.  The staff was indifferent at best, downright obnoxious at worst.  We left after only one night.

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Photo Friday – Hornocal Mountains in Northern Argentina

4 May

Way more than 7 colors….click on the photo to view it in a bigger size

In March we embarked on a whirlwind road trip through northern Argentina with our friends Kristin and Bryan from Happy To Be Homeless.  Purmamarca has it’s share of fame for the ‘7 Colored Mountains’, but I had heard rumors of a more spectacular hillside located somewhere outside of Humahuaca.  We set off with nothing more than a hand-drawn map the owner of our hostel made us, and a few hours (and a few breakdowns in our beater of a car…) later we made it!  The mountains were just as stunning as I had hoped, and completely devoid of other tourists, except for one truck whose occupants looked at our tiny rental car as if we were insane to be driving such a little tin-can up the side of a mountain with…less than ideal road conditions.   You’ll need your own car, preferably a 4-wheel drive.

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6 Months!

2 May

It’s our 6 month anniversary of being on the road!  Time certainly does fly…We’ve spent a half a year tromping around South America, yet we still feel that we’ve just barely scratched the surface of this amazing continent.  We could spend years here, but we’re heading off to explore another part of the world next week.

We still have some catching up to do on country-specific ’round-ups’, but in the meantime, here’s a quick breakdown of our travel stats from the first 6 months:

Average cost per person, per day (not including Antarctica) – $43

Continents – 2 – South America and Antarctica

Countries visited – 6 – Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador

Towns or cities visited – 53

Beds slept in – 56

Bus rides – 101

Taxi or combis – 34

Boats – 25

Planes – 6

Swiss Army knives lost – 3

Random weddings attended – 1

Empanadas consumed – we should have kept track…the number is probably in the high hundreds.

Regrets – 0

Our next leg includes Turkey, Israel, Jordan, India and Nepal; if you’ve been to any of those places don’t be shy, leave us some tips in the comments!

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Photo Friday – Fishy Business in Punta del Diabolo, Uruguay

27 Apr

Fresh fish, salted and drying in the sun.

After our trip to Antarctica back in February, we felt the need to thaw out a bit, and we decided there was no better place than the small beach town of Punta del Diabolo in Uruguay.  We spent ten fantastic days lazing around, and eating fish empanadas every chance we could get.  There are four separate beaches in the area around Punta del Diabolo, one of which is known for the fish shacks that run along its edge.  As such, there are a few days a week where you can see, and smell, the most recent catch out salting in the sun.

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Trekking the W – Torres Del Paine, Chile.

24 Apr

One of the original bits of inspiration for our trip was the desire to head way, way south to hike the W in Torres Del Paine, in Chilean Patagonia.  Unfortunately, the park was closed at the end of a December due to a devastating fire that was set by a careless trekker who chose not to follow the rules, and we feared that we wouldn’t be able to see this rugged bit of nature.

We delayed our journey south for a few weeks, which proved to be a wise decision as more and more of the park was re-opened to the public every week throughout January.  Just a few days before we were set to start our trek the entire circuit we intended to hike had officially been opened, though we were cautioned that the most recently opened part (the west side of the classic ‘W’ trek, named for the shape of the route through the mountains) would still be smoky, ashy, and not such a great place to be wandering around in. We decided to play it safe, and shortened our trek to just a ‘U’.

It was the first time that we have been ‘real backpacking’ together, which means carrying all our own gear – tent, sleeping bags and pads, cook stove, and all our food.   Patagonia is notorious for wild weather and it’s not uncommon to encounter anything from blistering sunshine to snow or sleet all in the course of a single day.  We attempted to balance packing enough layers for all the possible elements, while trying to keep our packs at a reasonable weight.

We had attended the infamous “3 o’clock talk” given at the Erratic Rock hostel, which is where we ended up staying both pre, and post-trek in Puerto Natales, Chile.  With their guidance, we diligently separated our food into ziplocks, portioning out each meal for easy access and efficiency.  We brought mostly lightweight, carb-rich and sugar loaded food such as oatmeal, noodles with packets of meat sauce, granola, peanuts, and tons of chocolate bars and caramel candies.  I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to be eating chocolate every few hours to keep my energy up, and knowing all the while I was definitely burning it all off.

Ready to go!

Looking ahead.

We set out with high hopes and heavy packs, and day one was fairly uneventful.  We chose to trek first to the Campemento Cuernos, the traditional middle part of the W.  We originally wanted to be able to stay in one of the free sites in the French Valley, but due to the fire the camps were closed so we knew we’d need to stay two nights at Cuernos to accommodate a long 26 kilometer day hike to the valley and back.

One of many river crossings

Towards our first campsite

The big attraction at Torres del Paine is, well, the Torres.  However, we had heard that the French Valley was majestically beautiful, and we were looking forward to spending the whole day exploring the valley.  The day started out beautifully and it didn’t take us as long as expected to reach the base of the valley where, unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the worse.

Storms in the French Valley

As we made our way over giant boulders, past glaciers, and wound our way into the forest at the top of the ridge, the weather turned from chilly and drippy to downright freezing with whipping winds and sideways rain and snow.

I swear, there's a view back there somewhere!

We made the push to the very top where the last mirador (viewpoint) lay just to say we did, but we weren’t able to see much.  By the time we made it back down to camp we were soaked, exhausted, and my feet had multiple blisters.

The next day was another big push, retreating out of the campsite and up towards the towers.  We started early and made good time, though we ended up stopping at Campamento Chileno instead of continuing another hour up to the free site at Torres.  My feet felt like they were on fire and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue standing, let alone hike another 5 kilometers.

Down into the last valley before the Torres

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing inside by the fire and debating the merits of waking at 2:30 am to hike the last two and half hours in the dark to see the Torres at sunrise.  We ended up deciding to sleep in a bit and start the hike at the more reasonable hour of 7.

The next morning we made it to Torres in great time since we weren’t weighed down with our heavy packs, and we were greeted with clear skies, and only a few other trekkers marveling at the immensity of the stone towers.

The Torres in the freezing morning

On our way down we began to encounter huge groups of hikers on their way up, as well as people on their way down who had stayed at the free Torres campsite and gotten up early to see the towers at dawn.  Apparently, there was nothing much to see at dawn as the sky hadn’t yet cleared, so it turns out we’d had the perfect timing – arriving after the sky cleared, but before the bulk of the late-morning crowd appeared.   We rushed back to the campsite, packed up all our gear, and started down the mountain, for the last 8 kilometers.   My feet screamed at the thought of being back in my hiking boots, so I wore my New Balance barefoot trail runners for the remainder of the day and while I might not recommend them generally for multi-day hiking, they were so much more comfortable for my aching feet.

We arrived to the end of the trail with plenty of time to spare before the shuttle left for Puerto Natales, so we rewarded our tired bodies with huge glasses of beer and some of the most expensive hamburgers we’ve ever eaten.  I have to say, after 4 days of oatmeal and ramen noodles with tomato paste, those hamburgers were the most delicious things ever!

We made it!

After it was all said and done, we had hiked around 60 kilometers in 4 days, consumed something close to a million calories in chocolate and peanuts, and realized that we are more ‘outdoorsey’ than we thought.  With the exception of one trip a million years ago when I was in college, we just don’t tend to do these kinds of multi-day outdoor hikes.  We weren’t really sure what to expect, and we were both pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoyed ourselves. Initially we were really disappointed to not be able to do the last part of the ‘W’ trail.  The thing is, Torres del Paine isn’t going anywhere, and we can always come back to finish the circuit.  In fact, when we come back we plan to do the full 10-day loop, which promises to be even more spectacular than the glimpse we saw in our 4-day version.

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Word on the Street

In the interest of not making a blog post into a novel, I’ve made a separate post dedicated to what you might want to know if you’re thinking of doing this hike.  Look for it in the next few days!

Until then, check out the slideshow on Flickr!

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Living The Dream – Why We Chose To Leave It All Behind

1 Apr

Recently we met a young couple who genuinely didn’t understand why we embarked on this huge journey.  They wanted to know why we didn’t seem to miss our clothes, our home, our ‘regular’ lives.  Why aren’t we worried about what happens when we go back, or when we run out of money?  Why aren’t we worried about our careers? Why would we choose this unstable sort of life?

These are all valid questions, and some can be answered at least partially by checking out our “About Us” section.

We’ve been on the road for almost five months and we’ve thought a lot about the things that motivate us to travel, and the reasons behind the decisions that have landed us where we are in life.

I’ve started this post a dozen different times and discarded every attempt at an answer until now.  It’s a complicated answer because life is complicated.

Why do writers write?  Why do athletes compete?  Why do artists create?  Most of them will tell you that it’s because it is their passion.  There is something that burns inside of them and says “This is what you must do”, and so they do it.  If you ask Justin if he has a burning passion for travel he’ll say no, but he does enjoy it.  If you ask me, I’ll say yes, I have a passion for travel, but it’s not all encompassing.   We have a love of the world, a desire to see new things, to immerse ourselves in different cultures, to meet new people.  Yes, it can be frustrating  to not have a huge wardrobe selection, or to have to move every few days, or to have to sleep in dorm rooms with 20 other travelers, but the benefits of what we are doing far outweigh these minor issues.

This alone might be answer enough for most people, but there is more behind it.

We’ve lived fairly comfortable lives.  We had the opportunity to earn university degrees, we had careers that we enjoyed, family and friends we love, and we could have settled comfortably into a nice routine in Colorado and lived out our lives pleasantly…but…there’s always a ‘but’.

People talk about living life to the fullest, taking advantage of every moment, every opportunity.  Most people don’t follow that philosophy in their everyday reality though.  Life is busy, things get in the way.  All those responsibilities build up and we have a hard time looking through them to where those moments and opportunities might lead us.  I’m as guilty as anyone else of living like that.  The conventional wisdom tells us to work hard.  Save money.  Plan for the future.  We were on that path.  We were saving money for a down-payment on a home. I was pushing myself professionally to make sure my career path had an upward trajectory.  We were diligent about putting money aside for retirement.

Then, over the last few years, a number of things started to jolt us out of that cocoon of complacency.  A close friend’s mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  My mother was hit hard financially and lost her home to the bank.  A schoolmate from when I was a child died from a brain tumor.  A classmate from high school died from melanoma.  Three years ago today, one of my most dear friends was murdered by her ex-husband.

Everyone knows life is precious and fleeting, but these events sucker-punched me.  There were things that had been left unsaid, regrets, and ‘should-haves’ and the weight of them felt terrible.  We came to realize that while we had a great life, we weren’t actually taking advantage of what it could be.  It became painfully clear that despite the best of plans and the most careful of arrangements, it can all be gone in an instant.  We took a good long look at ourselves and asked, What is it that we dream of?  Why don’t we follow that dream and see where it goes?

That burning passion that writers and artists and athletes have for what they do?  Well, I don’t exactly have that, but the thing that burns inside of me says take the chance.  So we did.

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Packing List Part 1- Clothing

27 Dec

We FINALLY got around to putting up the first part of our packing list – Clothing.

In the months before we left I spent hours looking at packing lists from all kinds of RTW trippers, and even more hours making, then re-making my own list.

So far we’re fairly happy with the clothes we brought, and have worn everything at least once, with the exception of some of the colder weather gear that we’ll more likely use as we make our way further south.

We’re working on setting up the rest of the gear posts – medical kit, tech gear, and everything else – so check back often to the “Things We Carry” link at the top of the page.

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How We Made The RTW Decision. The Long Version.

28 Jul

We’ve probably been asked 50 times how we made the decision to leave our regular lives behind and travel the world.  It’s not as concise an answer as most people seem to expect, but nothing ever is.  This is the long version.  If you’d rather stick to the short version, go here.

Initially, our decision to leave New York City had nothing to do with long-term traveling.  We had been talking about a change of pace for many years, specifically a move to Colorado, and we had been building our savings up since we got married in 2009.  In the spring of 2010 we made the final, for real, solid decision that we were going to leave New York at the end of the 2010-2011 school year.  Part of that decision included a mini-break that would allow us to stay in Vermont for the summer and fall before permanently moving to Colorado.  At that point we began to save more seriously in anticipation of living for 3-4 months without jobs in Vermont, and then making sure we’d have enough to take us through a potential of 6 or more months of unemployment in Colorado since we weren’t sure how difficult it would be to find work there.

A little over a year ago a friend of mine from childhood moved to Santiago, Chile with her husband, and I had been hoping to eventually get down there for a visit.  Around the same time, another friend took few months to travel around Chile and Argentina and began posting envy-inducing pictures on Facebook.  Last fall, Justin and I started tossing around the idea of going down to S. America, both to see our friends in Chile, and to take some time to visit Patagonia and other places in Chile and Argentina that had piqued our interest.  It had occurred to us that after our stay in Vermont would be the perfect time since it would be summer there, no jobs meant we could stay for as long as we wanted, and we had already amassed enough savings that we knew we could swing it without a problem.

A few months later we realized that winter in the USA was summer in a lot of places we had always wanted to visit but never had.  Places like Australia.  New Zealand.  South Africa.  We started considering going to New Zealand after the trip to South America.

In December, during my internet research about Patagonia, I found a blog written by a couple who had recently completed a yearlong trip around the world.  We looked at our current savings, and started to try to figure out ways to save even more in the last 6 months we had before we knew we’d be leaving our jobs.  We started checking out travel guides from the New York Public Library  – as an aside, you can check out the most current guidebooks to, well, everywhere.  It’s a great way to get some initial information about a place before you run out and spend a ton of money on guidebooks before you really settle on where you want to go.  It’s also a great way to compare guidebooks and figure out which ones are more in line with your personal travel style.  We took out books about Peru, India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia.  Our friends started noticing the stacks of travel books and began to ask questions.

In early January we started to talk to our friends about our idea to travel long-term.  By the end of January we had decided, with some trepidation, that we were going to take a year and see as much as we could.  Over the next few months we continued to make lists of places we wanted to go, things we needed to take care of before we would leave, and of course, we started saving more manically.  By the end of April we had told our parents, and by the end of June nearly all of our friends knew of “The Plan”.

We are almost exactly 3 months out from our departure date, and there are days when I still can’t quite believe we’ve decided to do this.  It seems as if we still have a million things to do, including purchasing the first plane ticket, but I have faith that we’ll somehow get it all done.  In the meantime we are going to enjoy our time in Vermont since, after all, it’s the first leg of our extended travel.

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