robodawno.com – Page 28 – Our Travel Blog

August 15, 2007July 3, 2018

Kelowna

Hey everyone,

It has been a long time since we blogged… It’s not because there’s nothing to blog about, but more because things are just now starting to settle down. Not only did we buy a condo (more pictures coming soon), but we also have a brand new niece! Danica Capri Seitz was born on July 31st and is absolutely beautiful…

But this blog is not about either of those exciting things. This blog is about our time spent in British Columbia.

At the end of July I spent a few days in the Vancouver area, to celebrate a wedding. My good friend Rob Kew got married in Mexico and had a reception in Point Roberts, USA, which is technically Canada as far as I’m concerned. I just about didn’t make it though because I forgot my passport and birth certificate in Medicine Hat. You would think travelling for nine months would have taught me something. Anyway, I got across the border with a only warning and had a great time visiting with friends.

I then met up with DawnO and my family in Kelowna. My dad has a sail boat on the Okanogan Lake and my uncle has a time share at this amazing house so we had a really great set up. I should mention that our next door neighbour was Jarome Iginla and perhaps I took a paparazzi shot of him. Oh the shame.

We had a great time visiting the O clan and got to spend some quality time with my GrandmaO and GrandpaO who are faithful blog followers.

We also got to meet up with our fellow Canadian volunteers who were in Guyana with us. Mick and Jackie mirrored our entire journey in a way. We took the same flight to Guyana together, we left Guyana at the same time, and we even toured the same countries after we were done our volunteer work. It was great catching up with them and comparing our trips.

It was a great holiday, but the real world has finally caught up to us and it’s time to get back to working. In the meantime, I’ll update the blog as our condo comes together.

July 8, 2007July 3, 2018

Back home

It has been too long since our last blog. We apologize but we’ve had a pretty busy past couple of weeks.

We returned home to Canada on the 24th of June and by the 28th, we had bought ourselves a condo. On the 29th, we had a welcome home BBQ, and on the 30th we drove to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan for a wedding/family reunion. DawnO then flew to Calgary the next day to begin her Yoga Teacher Training course while I returned to Medicine Hat to tend to the mortgage and job hunt.

I will be working at putting some more videos up from our travels. I’m not exactly sure how exciting our blog is going to be now that we’re not travelling anymore, but I’ll try to keep things up-to-date and interesting.

June 24, 2007July 3, 2018

C’mon, Feel The Illinoise!

Here we are in Chicago, visiting our VSO friends from Guyana, Meg and Nick.

It’s been a really great ‘decompression’ prior to getting back to Canada. I didn’t realize how much I was missing good hanging out with friends time.

We got in last night and had a fantastic home cooked meal, followed by some fine sangria.

This morning Meg and I checked out the city during a jog. After breakfast we went to a downtown park to check out the sights and skyline of Chicago. Very cool.

Tonight we went to a street festival and had the chance to go to a Women’s NBA basketball game. We headed out for a great Vietnamese dinner – something RobO has been craving for months!

We are so glad that we had the chance to visit our friends and have a couple of days in North America before the shock of getting home!

June 21, 2007July 3, 2018

Quito and around

it´s our last afternoon in south america. boo/yay!!

we´ve spent this week around quito, ecuador. quito, though it´s a huge city, is really quite nice and homey. we´ve toured around, finished the last of our shopping, checked out cool cafes and restaurants, and done our fair share of relaxing.

on tuesday we took a bus to the equator, just north of the city. there´s a big monument and a bright yellow line on the pavement. the funniest thing is that it´s actually not the right spot – i guess the french screwed up when they built the monument! we went to a small museum next door and they gave us a GPS to use to find the real equator. turns out it´s right on the highway!

yesterday we went to the neighbouring town of otavalo to check out the market and the countryside. it was pretty rainy so we didn´t do the hiking we had planned, but enjoyed a change of pace.

June 18, 2007July 3, 2018

The Galapagos Islands

Today we finished our tour of the Galapagos Islands. It was absolutely incredible. For those of you who don’t know, the Galapagos Islands are located on the equator off the coast of Ecuador. They were formed by volcanic eruptions and are famous for their endemic species. It was on these islands that Charles Darwin did research toward his theory of evolution and natural selection. To read more about it, you can click here.

For 8 days we lived aboard the cruise ship “Yolita” with 14 others plus the crew. It was one of the smallest boats on the water so it was a pretty tight fit. Usually we would travel in the night to an island. In the morning we’d have an early breakfast and then hike around the island. We’d return to the boat for lunch and then snorkel. Afterwards we’d travel to another nearby location and either relax on the beach or do another hike.

The coolest thing about viewing the wildlife is that they are not afraid of humans. It meant we could walk right up to them on the land, and swim right next to them in the ocean. We think the pictures speak for themselves. So enjoy!

Note: We have yet to develop our under water pictures so we can’t show you the white tip sharks we were swimming with.

PS One week until we’re home in Medicine Hat.
PPS Happy Father’s Day!

June 14, 2007July 3, 2018

Galapagos Islands Short Blog

Hi everyone!
We´re currently halfway through our Galapagos Islands tour and it´s pretty fantastic. So far we´ve seen loads of animals, birds, reptiles and sea life. We´ve played with sea lions, snorkeled with white tipped sharks, and watched a couple of blue footed boobies do the nasty. It has been quite eventful.

We´ve gotten used to living on a boat… so much so that when we´re on land we still wobble back and forth without any reason. The cabin we are in is quite small, but fortunately it´s located in the bottom of the boat so it doesn´t rock as hard as the people who are staying upstairs.

We´ve taken quite a few pictures so we´ll have to sort through them and post them when we´re done our tour.

June 9, 2007July 3, 2018

Riobamba, Baños, and beyond…

Hello,

The last week has been somewhat of a long week, so here are the highlights.

We started out in Riobamba with high hopes of riding the Devil´s Nose train. The Lonely Planet guide book describes this journey as a spectacular ride. We would probably not use the word spectacular, but everyone else on the train seemed to enjoy it. Though I can´t give it a very thorough review because I fell asleep by the end of it.

Next up was Baños. We were really excited to visit this town because of all the outdoor activities it had to offer. Unfortunately, we seemed to run out of luck with the weather. It rained most of the time. We still managed to rent bikes and cycled along waterfall alley, as well as hike to the top of a neighbouring volcano.

The rain slowed us down enough to realize that we needed to treat our weathered bodies to a massage, a morning at the hot springs, and DawnO got to attend a couple of Yoga classes while I was catching up on some reading. We even treated ourselves in a little chocolate café and spent the best dollar each that we have ever spent in the history of robodawno. We had chocolate fondue and it was worthy of the word ´spectacular´.

We have returned to Guyaquil via our final and worst night bus journey (Complete with bumpy roads, a puking passenger who we´ll call ´Ralph´, non-reclining seats, a constant binging and no bathroom). We are currently recharging our batteries and are getting quite excited for our 8 day Galapagos Islands cruise which starts on Sunday morning.

June 1, 2007July 3, 2018

Machu Picchu

Hello everyone!
We´re currently sitting in the Lima airport waiting to fly to Ecuador. Our flight has been delayed for 4 hours (could be more) so we´ve got some time to kill. Why not blog?

Over the last 2 days we did the condensed version of the Inca Trail and visited the amazing city of Machu Picchu. I will admit, I wasn´t sure that I was going to really be that thrilled by looking at a bunch of ruins (especially after looking at all the pictures), but I was pleasantly surprised. I would highly recommend going if you´re ever in the Sacred Valley area and have a few days to kill.

We started our journey by taking a train from Cuzco to kilometer 104 of the Inca Trail. We hiked for 6 hours, stopped at all the ruins along the way and got a bit of a history lesson. It was a typical RobO/DawnO hike because it started out raining and by the end of the day the sun finally broke through and was gorgeous for the rest of our trek.

At the end of day 1 we got our first glimpse of Machu Picchu as we entered the Sun Gate. I can only imagine what a rewarding experience it would have been if we had done the 4 day version, but it was still quite spectacular for us.

We stayed in a hostel that night and the next morning we were up at 5:20am to watch the sun rise over the city.

We got a guided tour through the city amongst the other 5 billion tourists, but it was still pretty cool. We had 4 hours of free time in the afternoon so we took advantage of all the trails (including the one up Waynapicchu – the one that reminds me of Mt. Olympus in the old Hercules cartoons). I feel that the blog isn´t doing the place justice so you´ll just have to go (you too grandma!)

We´re looking forward to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

As we sit in a smoking lounge (the only internet available to us in the airport) we are reminded that congratulations are in order to the City of Medicine Hat for going smoke free in all public places today. We can´t wait to take advantage of the stink free nightlife!

May 29, 2007July 3, 2018

Cusco and the Sacred Valley

we´ve been enjoying our last week in peru in and around cusco. cusco is an amazingly touristy city, which can be frustrating at times, but also has lots of benefits: fantastic restaurants, lots of sights, and shopping!

we spent our first couple of days exploring the city by foot and on the tram city tour. we´ve continued our shopping bananza, caught up on the latest movies, and have scouted out some of the greatest (and cheapest) restaurants around.

on sunday we went to the neighbouring town of pisac, where they have a famous weekly market, as well as inca ruins. the following day we walked part of the way back to cusco, exploring different ruins sights along the way. though robO and i aren´t really “ruins-people” they were still pretty amazing.

tomorrow we´re heading to the infamous macchu picchu on our 2 day inca trail trek. we can´t believe that friday is already june 1st, and we´ll be flying to ecuador!

May 23, 2007July 3, 2018

Hobbiton

We´re back from Lake Titicaca (yes, the 12 year old in me giggles everytime I say that) and we´re ready to blog again.

We spent the last three days on various islands on the lake and it was quite a bizzare experience. The first stop was the floating islands. These man-made islands are made up of millions of reeds which also make their homes and boats. They are quite tasty as well.

Next up was the island of Amantani where we had our first homestay. As soon as we got off the boat we were handed over to our new family. We stayed in a mud house with no running water, but pantloads of charm. Our new mom cooked in a wood burning stove and our little brother, Nilton, was busy playing with his hoop and stick.

We climbed to the top of the island and explored some Inca ruins and got a great view of Bolivia which is across the lake.

That night we were treated to a strange surprise. We were told that we had to attend a Fiesta, but we had no idea what we were in for. Our Mom dressed us up in traditional clothing and we were taken to a room where we were joined by a dozen or so other confused tourists. We sat along the wall and were prodded into dancing with the locals along to some pretty catchy folk music. Note, we did not sign up with a tour group, but felt like we were on a local tour because we were herded from place to place.

The next day we went to a different island called Taquile. This is where the tour group feeling crashed and burned. We were on our own with a local family who appeared to be afraid of us. In fairness, we hadn´t showered for over a day.

This new island was full of tourists but we managed to escape and find more ruins to explore until they all flooded back to their boats and left us with our timid family.

We enjoyed learning about the people who live on these islands. DawnO mentioned that it was like we went back in time. Most of these people have never seen a vehicle before and electricity is quite a luxury. Their livlihoods are based on sheep herding and tiered farming. Though everything was very simple, we were treated to some nice meals and friendly people.

This morning (day 3 without a shower) we headed back to Puno on the mainland. We´ve since freshened up and are going to take another night bus to Cusco. DawnO hooked us up with VIP tickets so we´ll be sleeping in style. We are getting ready for the Inca trail and finally Ecuador. It´s hard to believe that in one month and one day, we´ll be back in Canada.