Coastlines, Castles, Ruins Fatigue, The Blarney Stone, And The Real Distance To Tipperary… The (beautiful) South of Ireland.

This is going to be a long one… Sorry! We left Munich scorching in it’s eighty-seven degree heatwave (the Germans don’t do well with that type of heat and get very stern and very grumpy), and flew to Ireland for a comfortable eighty degrees and sunshine. The Irish folks assured us of two things: 1.) […]

Hasta La Vista Ecuador!

Sitting in another airport, waiting on another flight. This time we ended up with a seven hour wait between flights between the Galápagos Islands and an overnight back into the US. We will be back in Bend tomorrow afternoon. From Ecuador. Ecuador. I guess what I can say is… Wow. I cannot believe the sheer […]

Galapa-going Crazy About All The Animals

We have been in the Galapagos for almost a month now, and we have two days left. We were both a bit thrashed and sunburned, so we took a day off to get some projects done. So here is one of my projects: I just wanted to share some photos of the animals around here. […]

Some Small Wave Silliness In The Galapagos.

I have been out for a number of surf sessions since we have been here in the Galapagos. The South swell surf on San Cristobal Island tends to be pretty heavy, with some pretty serious consequences involving some very sharp rocks. The problem is, the surf breaks too close to the rocks when the waves […]

Reflections

A bit ago, I did a post about going to the Amazon. It wasn’t all my favorite thing, but there were some beautiful visuals. In that post I mentioned (briefly) how I really appreciated the reflections off the black water… Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Maybe watch this one with the […]

Sea Lions, turtles, and Iguanas, Oh My.

We made it to the Galapagos! We were originally planning on skipping the islands, because it is really expensive to travel here, but we managed to find a house on San Cristobal that was mostly in our budget and we are planning on eating a lot of Top Ramen and tuna fish. We already agree […]

An Interview With A Wet Explorer Traveling Reluctantly on Amazon Tributaries.

Interviewer (INT): Well, you have just spent seven days traveling in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian tributaries of the upper Amazon basin. What would you say is your first impression? Wet Explorer Traveling Reluctantly on Amazon Tributaries (WET RAT): It’s really wet. Int: Anything else? WET RAT: Probably too much to describe. There is so much […]

A Quick Update (with some plans for the next couple of weeks)…

I don’t want to take a bunch of time on this one, but, I wanted to post something about what we have been up to, what we are about to be doing, and when I may actually get some new posts in here. To start with, as you may know, we are in Quito, after […]

In Quito! (Exploring And Freezing To Death).

We made it to Quito! We had a ten hour ride up from Ayampe, straight from sea-level to ten thousand feet. It took a couple of days to acclimate to the altitude (we have been at sea level for nearly a decade), but we are feeling better now. The headaches and mild nausea are gone. […]

A Rant About Ayampe

We left Ayampe after two and a half months. I can’t really say that it was terrible, and I can’t really say it was great. It was a strange place. Let me just start by saying that I loved the locals. Every morning I would take a stroll down to the beach to check the […]