Welcome New Viewers

This blog covers the period January 1, 2007 to September 2007, during which time Sally and I visited 31 countries by plane, boat, train, bus, taxi and foot, and never once lost our baggage! The primary purpose of keeping the blog was to share our adventures with our children, other family, and close friends, while we were on the road. However, I would like to think that it contains some ideas that might be of interest to a broader public.

Unfortunately, to read it, you must go backwards...to January and February to read about New Zealand and Australia...to April to see some amazing places in Southeast Asia...to May to see the pink city of Jaipur and the sandcastle like Jaiselmer in India. June will take you to Greece, Turkey, and then up the underrated Adriatic Coast. If you have time, do check out Albania, our first post in July...it was one of the most surprising stops on the trip. July also found us at the Hotel Gellert in Budapest with its historic wave pool, and in Prague where we found one of Frank Gehry's best buildings...known locally as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers!

The architecture of Poland and Russia is described in some of the later July entries along with our experience being kicked off a train between Warsaw and Moscow. August finds us in South America. In addition to Rio and Buenos Aires, Parati in Brazil and Colonia in Uruguay were two relatively unknown gems that we were delighted to discover.

We hope that this blog will inspire you to now start thinking about leaving your jobs and comfortable lives for a while, and visit some places you have never seen before. Or even heard of! We are so very glad we did it and hope you will enjoy reading about some of our experiences.

ps: to read about some of the planning lessons that I picked up along the way, you might want to check out my Vancouver Sun Column 'Homes Away from Home' which can be found at www.michaelgeller.ca

Three Months Later...

How quickly time passes. It has been three months since we returned to Vancouver, to begin the next stage in our lives. While most things seem the same, there is no doubt that our 8 month journey has changed our perspective on other things. Some are significant; others are quite minor, but interesting. For example, we no longer worry whether we can put used toilet paper in the toilet or not! In many places that we traveled, this was not the norm! (no photo) We noticed the progress on the SkyTrain construction, since the track was visible just outside the airport. Another thing that surprised us was the price of housing. It seems like sales prices have risen quite significantly in just 8 months. While this is great for those of us who own property, it is a real problem for those who who haven't been able to buy. Each month, they seem to be falling further behind.One of the delights of being home is seeing the regular sunrises and sunsets along the Fraser River. We can also see the girls on a more regular basis. In fact, they have both moved back into our house! Georgia is enjoying her medical studies, while Claire is dabbling in social work and bartending. She has also built a bicycle for herself, from scratch. While Sally is still trying to decide what to do, I have returned to work on a part time basis. Inspired by my colleague Larry Beasley who has been working in Abu Dhabi, I also agreed to do some consulting work in another of the world's great oil capitals... Fort McMurray! While the work is gratifying, the venue is not. I have also been doing some work with Polygon, headed by our good friend Michael Audain, and am pleased to be trying to help Larco redevelop a sustainable 'urban village' on the site of the Arbutus Village Shopping Centre. Recently, I got a job with Imperial Oil. I have always wanted to be a gas station attendant, but this will be a bit different. Imperial is in the process of de-commissioning its IOCO Refinery Properties, and there are over 200 acres of lands that were never used for industrial purposes. They fall within two municipalities, Anmore and Port Moody, and offer wonderful opportunities for sustainable 'low energy' neighbourhoods. Perhaps the most interesting activity has been working with former SFU Chancellor Milton Wong, former JCC Executive Director Gerry Zipursky, former Carnegie Centre director Michael Clague, and a few other very dedicated people on developing urban design principles and an implementation strategy to address Homelessness, and other housing issues in the Downtown Eastside. This is, of course, a monumental task, but it is something I have wanted to try and help with for a number of years. We have been fortunate in having the opportunity to do a variety of interesting things since coming back to Vancouver. I particularly enjoyed listening to Bill Clinton when he spoke in Vancouver. He encouraged us to make an industry out of our 'green expertise'. He also told Sam Sullivan that Mayor of Vancouver is the best job of the world. I wondered if this was reported back to my favourite politician Carole Taylor! Sally and I joined 50,000 others at the Western final football game.

There have been a lot of wonderful parties since our return. In early October, I turned 60 and we celebrated with a few friends. My old friend Eli Harari, with whom I lived when I turned 21 in England, came up from Silicon Valley. Eli started SanDisk, and gave me a powerful new compact flash card, onto which I was able to load all 15,000 photos from the trip. There is now a continuous slide show of our travels playing in our kitchen on one of the new computerized picture frames. You should check them out. They are wonderful. (The Philips model is particularly good.) There was no Halloween Costume Party this year. (We will start again in 08.) But we celebrated the 6th night of Chanukah with many of the girls' friends from school. Tessa and her mother again made their famous cookies, that have to be seen to be believed. We have also eaten much too much at many Holiday parties, and it is showing. But we have started back at the Arbutus Club, and while we don't walk as much as we did on our travels, we're trying to make the effort.
As a result of our travels, and a different attitude towards driving and parking (I now hate going into tight underground garages downtown), I have started to buy bus passes, and purchased a smaller Prius. Sally also treated herself to a nice new convertible, which has a sunroof! With the girls back home, and four cars, we are seriously damaging the environment. However, I still plan to do some cycling, once I can figure out where to leave my bike and helmet when I get on the bus!

This is the time of year when we all think about holidays past and old friends. We have revived our tradition of designing Holiday Card which we can send to people who we might not see, but with whom we still want to remain in touch. We have sent them off to many of the people we met on our trip, although unfortunately some have been returned.

So as we approach the end of 2007, we look back with great fondness on a year of discoveries and adventure. We are so glad that we were able to follow through on our plans, and would urge everyone to try and block out some time to just take off. You don't have to do 8 months; it may just be a couple of months or longer. The key is to get away for more than just 3 weeks, and to go to places you haven't seen before. While we'll stay around Vancouver for a while, we are starting to think about some home exchanges for 2008, and another big trip in 5 years. In the meanwhile, our thanks to everyone who helped us enjoy the world, and our best wishes for the coming year. Let's hope there really can be some more peace throughout the world.

Aguas Calientes to Vancouver

We returned from Machu Picchu to a very wet Aguas Calientes, which I guess was not surprising since Aguas Calientes means Hot Waters. It was raining so hard we were reluctant to leave our very comfortable hotel suite looking out over the river and mountains. But since it was one of our last nights on the road, we walked around the town and settled on one of the many attractive cafes serving Peruvian food and Pizza. We were subsequently told we should have eaten at India Felix, but we didn’t discover it until lunch the next day. We’ll be recommending it the Moodies who are off to South America later this year.

While Aguas Calientes didn’t seem very attractive when we first arrived, it is a much better place than that described in most of the guidebooks. It has a dramatic setting with two rivers and a train track running through the town. A lot of money has been spent on upgrading the pedestrian realm, with new sidewalks and public spaces. Although the choice of hotels is limited at the moment, there are lots of cafes and restaurants, and far too many shops selling native artifacts.

We probably should have planned to go for a hike or visited the local museum on our last day. But we just were not up to it after climbing around Machu Picchu. Also, we had had far too many early mornings in the previous week. So we decided to sleep in and take it easy, until we discovered the hotel had a 9 am check out to accommodate its 10:30 check in time.

So we strolled about the town, running into others on our tour, who had also decided to not climb any more mountains or go on a hike. And we did have an excellent lunch at India Felix.

The train set off at exactly 3:55 and we were soon entertained by members of the crew doing native dances and putting on a fashion show down the aisle. I had to buy a black sweater, although afterwards discovered that Peruvian sweaters look much better on handsome Peruvians than they do on bald Canadians! When the train made a short stop at a small town, a young girl was out on the tracks trying to sell a wall hanging. I purchased it, although the negotiations had to end when the train started to move. She had a big smile on her face as we pulled away. Hopefully, one of my daughters will like it.

We didn’t take the train all the way back to Cusco. Because it has to do quite a bit of shunting from track to track, you can save forty minutes by getting off at the second last stop. Sure enough, the tour company was there with a big bus, from which we were transferred to a small bus and dropped off at our hotel. That evening we sought out the MAP restaurant, considered the best in Cusco, but couldn’t find it. So we ended up eating at the Inka Grill, another popular spot. I had the roast guinea pig, like Jesus did.

The next morning we discovered the Cusco Novatel also had a 9 am check-out. But the sun was shining and we wanted to see the town before flying back to Lima and on to Vancouver. Fortunately, we came upon a parade, with some wonderful costumes and music going through the main square. It was very joyous and a lovely way to say goodbye to Cusco.

Again, the flight to Peru was uneventful, which as you’ll recall, is good, but not always common in South America. We debated whether to go into Lima and try and see the Gold Museum, but weren’t sure if we would make it through the traffic in time. Furthermore, we had been so careful over the past week to ensure nothing went wrong to delay our return home. So we decided to check in early for our 11:30 flight and spend our time in the business lounge, finalizing the blogs and enjoying the airline’s hospitality. Unfortunately, this couldn’t happen. There was no one at the Continental Airlines desk to check us in until 7 pm, and without a boarding pass, we couldn’t get through customs and into the lounge. So I worked away in a restaurant, while Sally read, and went to the counter at 7:15. It was just being set up. At 8:15, it was still being set up. Then we learned what the problem was. The entire Continental Airlines world wide computer system was down! Eventually the system came back up, but of course, the flight was delayed.

So we now sit on Continental flight 261 from Houston to Vancouver. We are both quite excited at the prospect of being home. Other than having a camera stolen in Malaysia, difficulty getting a Belarus Transit Visa, and some challenges in India, we both agree the trip has gone very well. We have been to some wonderful places, and had many good surprises. While there are some places we won’t rush back to, such as Moscow, there are many we would like to see again: the Adriatic Coast for example, and Buenos Aires, as well as places we missed like Chile, Northern Brazil and other parts of Argentina. We would also like to return to New Zealand. But there are also many places that we haven’t been to that we would like to see. Ireland is near the top of our list.

During our travels, we often extolled the benefits of House Exchanges. Hopefully we can get back to doing that, fitting them in between work. But we also hope that not too far in the distance, we can be like the Homelink Members whose listing reads, ready to go anywhere, anytime! That’s our next travel goal for the future.

Machu Picchu: one of the 7 wonders of the world

At 4:30 in the morning we received our wake-up call. At 5:30, we were loaded into a waiting van and taken to the train station. We didn't take our luggage, just an overnight bag, since we were warned there was not much luggage space on the Vistadome 2 train. We didn't get off the bus in front of the station like most other passengers. Instead our driver went up a narrow lane and dropped us off right at the train. I guess this why people pay the extra premium for tours!

There are three train services from Cusco to Aguas Calientes, the town next to Machu Picchu; the backpackers’ special, the Vistadome, and the Hiram Bingham. The premium for the Vistadone is about $50 and definitely worth it. The Hiram Bingham is a luxury train and costs about 3 or 4 times what the Vistadome costs. You also have to take a bus to catch it since it doesn’t come into Cusco. It might be worth investigating, especially if you want your breakfast and dinner served by men in dinner jackets. Although, our crew looked quite smart in their navy suits.

If you have the choice, try and sit on the left side of the train going and the right side returning. We quickly realized that this was going to be a very memorable journey with constantly changing scenery. After some good views of Cusco, we went through small towns and villages set into the mountains. At one point, a lot of cacti appeared. Then we were in the jungle. Every once in a while we saw Inca ruins and regretted that we were not fit enough to have done the 4 day Inca Trail hike from Cusco, which Georgia and many others had done.

I found that I wasn't taking as many photos as others on the train; but then, they lived in places like Tampa and Virginia and didn't regularly travel the Sea to Sky highway.

Around 9:30 we arrived in Aguas Calientes, a small town which initially didn’t appear to be that attractive, from where we took an exciting 30 minute bus ride climbing up a tortuous road to the site.

Machu Picchu is one of the new 7 wonders of the world. While I did not find it to be as impressive as the temples around Angkor Wat, or Bourabadour in Indonesia, (the largest religious structure in the southern hemisphere), it is an amazing sight in a very majestic setting. We soon realized that visiting it is not for the faint of heart, especially those with a fear of heights, or in poor physical condition. There can be a lot of climbing along very narrow unprotected steps. But there are also lots of easy trails. Just like Whistler.

Not a lot is known about the origins of Machu Picchu. It was probably built in the 15th century for religious and military purposes. It was 'discovered' in 1911 by Hiram Bingham who was exploring in Peru for Yale University and the National Geographic Society. He apparently was told about the ruins by one of the locals who he paid to take him there. He returned on a number of occasions, taking many artifacts with him. The Peruvians would like some of them back.

The lack of information about Machu Picchu is illustrated by the story of some skeletons that were found at the site. 135 skeletons were found and it was determined that 109 were females. This led to speculation that the site accommodated primarily women who were fleeing the Spaniards in Cusco, and were the chosen ones of the Inca.

However, it was recently determined through more sophisticated DNA analysis that the ratio of men to women was about 50/50. This has put an end to this speculation. However, one thing that is certain is that the Spaniards never discovered Machu Picchu. As we wandered around our guide kept pointing out things that are still unknown, like two small circular pools carved into the rock. What are they?

As we wandered around we noticed some new construction taking place. It seems that much of what is there is restored, in part since Hiram Bingham did a lot of damage by trying to burn off all the vegetation that had covered much of the site. We also came across some llamas that have free roam around the property.

We spent much of the day looking around; but we didn't go back the second day as initially anticipated, since Sally has a fear of heights, and many of the better climbs can be quite treacherous coming down. But we saw enough to appreciate the special qualities of the place, and are now keen to learn more about the Incas and their place in history.

Machu Picchu had always been planned as our last stop of this journey. It was a very good way to end it. We were glad that we had booked a tour through a travel agent, and can heartily recommend Florencia at Barcelo Verger Business Travel in Buenos Aires. Whatever you do, book a tour with someone. It’s so much easier.

One final thing. There is a very nice hotel, the Sanctuary Lodge at the top of the mountain. It’s about $600 a night or more. We chose not to stay there, preferring to pay less and be in the town. We don’t regret this decision. But we did have the buffet lunch there. This, I do recommend, since it allows you to have a break, and then go back for more climbing with a stomach full of ceviche and alpaca.

Cusco: on the road to Machu Picchu

I was looking forward to seeing Cusco, since this is where Georgia spent some time working in a clinic late last year. She said we would like it.

The flight from Lima took about an hour. It was uneventful, which is a good thing for any flight in South America. We flew on LAN, the main Peruvian airline, since this is what Florencia recommended. I was beginning to trust Florencia’s judgement after our night in Lima.

The first thing I noticed after arrival was that my fingers were tingling, almost vibrating. I didn’t know whether this was due to the altitude, or the Diomox, the drug Sally was giving me for the altitude. I also noticed I was easily out of breath, but wasn't sure if that was due to the altitude or the fact I had spent too much time during this trip on the computer when I should have been at the gym.

At most of the airports, bus and train stations we have been to for the past eight months, everyone has had someone to greet them, except us. In Peru it was different. Once again, we were met at the airport by our Viajes Pacifico/Gray Line Peru driver. He looked after our baggage, took us to our hotel, and checked us in. All we did was sit in the skylit courtyard and drink coca tea which apparently helps you adjust to the altitude.

While we were told to rest, we were keen to see the town. Tourism has taken over Cusco in the last 20 years. We couldn’t go anywhere without someone wanting to shine our shoes, or sell us knitted dolls, wall hangings, paintings, table cloths, carpets, hats, cloth bags, and on and on. Most of the stuff was very colourful, and quite beautiful, but we kept thinking we’re 35 years too old to be buying it! But we did get a couple of small things, since that’s what keeps the economy of the place going.

In the afternoon, we did an organized city tour with 20 other English speaking people. It had been a long time since we were with so many English speaking people. Our first stop was Korikancha, the Inca Temple of the Sun, where we all stood around and admired the amazing stonework. Built around 1350, there was no mortar between the stones. Instead, the stones were cut so that they slotted into one another. The objective was to create buildings that could withstand earthquakes. And they did. Unfortunately, they didn’t withstand the Spanish who destroyed much of what the Incas had built, and used the stones to build their own structures.

We then went to the Spanish Cathedral, but we weren’t that keen to see it since the Spaniards had been so cruel to the Incas and had built the cathedral on the foundations of an Inca Palace; we had already seen a lot of magnificent churches on this trip; and it was also very cold inside. But it was impressive, and I was particularly intrigued with the ‘black Jesus’ that had been sent from Spain with the hope that it might attract more natives to the Catholic religion. I also was amused by a painting of the ‘Last Supper’ featuring a guinea pig as the central dish.

We then set off for Saqsayhuaman, a megalithic complex about 2 km outside the city. Not much is known about its origins, but it is speculated that 20,000 men worked for more than 50 years on its construction. Some of the rocks are immense, and again, it was designed to withstand earthquakes. But the Spaniards destroyed much of it, and used the stones for other projects, including their cathedrals.

It was all quite interesting. The guide was good, and we regretted not paying more attention at school when we learned about the Inca Civilization. But we had not come here to see these sights. We were really here to see Machu Picchu, our next day’s destination. We were also interested in seeing a bit more of Cusco.

So we were quite happy when we were loaded into the bus around 6 o’clock and taken back to the main square, where we could check out restaurants for dinner, and be assaulted by more delightful young Peruvian boys and girls and older ladies trying to sell us things.

That evening, we did find a good restaurant, with a very interesting buffet. We had some excellent ceviche, whipped up by the chef on hand, which I followed with Alpaca carpaccio. We ate a number of things that we had never had before, some of which were quite good. The local river trout tasted much better than most of the meats. During dinner we were accompanied by Peruvian flute players, and just as we were ready to leave the dancers arrived.

But it was all very good, except for the fact that El Condor Paso had taken over from The Girl from Ipanema. One lady on the bus wanted to know if the music was written by Art Garfunkle.

We went to bed quite early, since we had to be up at 4:30 the next morning, to catch the train to Machu Picchu.