Nonstop action! We endure more sweaty bus rides and miles of loose rocks called "roads" until we arrive in the far flung communities of Lanquin and Semuc Champey. Dave and I broke off from the ladies for this adventure (they went to a big Guatamalen market to shop). The big attraction here are the caves. We arrive late in the afternoon and head directly for the cavernous Lanquin Caves. We are told that many thousands of bats blast from the entrance of this cave everynight at around 6:30pm. That gave us 2 hours to explore. We don our headlamps and begin [View Full Entry]

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Holey Moley...the adventure never ends! We begin our time in Guatamala by arriving in the strangely clean and comfortable city of Antigua. This is in stark contrast to the raw and difficult landscape that lays outside of the city. Cobble stone streets, brightly painted buildings, interesting decaying churches and large fountain filled town squares will be our jumping off point to several nearby attractions. Our first choice is the Pacaya Volcano. While climbing a volcano does sound instantly intriguing, we were all a bit skeptical. Most of us had experienced volcano hikes in the past that [View Full Entry]

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Although our stay on mainland Nicaragua was absurdly brief, I felt a trip to the corn islands was good for several reasons. First, I felt our vacation needed an injection of relaxation. We were regularly getting up at 4am (or earlier!) to catch buses to the next destination. Inevitably our backpacks would end up spewing all of our clothes, camera gear, wet stuff, etc all over the room. Packing and repacking this everyday can be a bit of a grind (I know, poor me). Sooo, I thought 3 days in the same lazy place sounded excellent. And the 2nd reason, SCUBA! [View Full Entry]

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Buenas! I am titalated that you guys are enjoying our journey. Although I am falling a bit behind with these posts, I will not be deterred (I am typing this one on my iphone!). It feels a little strange hunting down computers to reconnect with the digital world when I am surrounded by such non-digitalness. I have a self-imposed conflict about it actually. Part of me says,¨swoop into analog!¨ and experience every moment without distraction. But a seemingly stronger voice yanks me back to the computer to spew out my thoughts and experiences. I really think it helps digest and process [View Full Entry]

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And into the jungle we go! Corcovado Park is in the Osa Peninsula on the far southwest of Costa Rica. Not many tourists bother to go to this park as it requires a fair amount of difficult travel. This is good news for hearty explorers like us as it leaves the animals and vistas in pure form. We did take 1 pretty serious shortcut in that we took a small plane into Puerto Jimenez. This allowed us to skip an 11 hour bus ride from San Jose. We didn´t feel too bad about this cheat considering the piles of effort that [View Full Entry]

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Ahoy friends! I am filled with joy that you are reading my little blog! Last night was a ¨getting to know each other¨ night. We went to a local bar and grill that attempted to approximate a typical USA sports bar. It tasted good but missed on some of the details...like they forgot to fry my country fried steak! (it was grilled instead). We had our first taste of Imperial (Costa Rica´s beer) and played a rousing game of A$$hole. Today was a stupendous day. We took a short bus ride to the Rio Pacuare. It was a class III and [View Full Entry]

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Greetings friends, So things have gotten off to a great start (much better than last years car problems). Scott and I took a 2am flght to San Jose. I really enjoy being in the International terminal of the airport. It feels as though you are already in another country even though you are just a few moving platforms away from flights to Deluth. I attempted my first spanish interaction with a Guatamalan women sittnig next to us. It was a miserable failure. I could have sworn she needed a pen, but she just stared at me blankly. Surely my spanish isnt [View Full Entry]

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Come with me! I am on the brink of another adventure in Latin America. It will take me through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize. Last time many of you kept me company through this blog. I truly appreciated it and I hope you will peek into the trip now and then. I hope to improve Version 2.0 with audio and video. Lucky for me, I have real life travel buddies this time! Hurray! EA Audio Ninja Scott, Venice Beach Dave, MOM and 2 unknown travel buddies I have yet to meet. For you audio geeks out there...I [View Full Entry]

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Hello friends, I finally wrangled this Galapagos video onto the web. This post will conclude my 1st South America trip report (only 9 months late!). Who wants to join me on the upcoming sequel to this trip?! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2181125486606282688 Ka-Blamo! [View Full Entry]

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The final leg of the mainland Ecuador trip has just wrapped up tonight. This section was more focused on cultural markets and towns and consequently less adrenaline packed. It was actually nice to relax and take things in at a casual pace. Some of the highlights included going to the Equator at Latitude Longitude measurement of 0 0 0. Strangely enough there are actually 2 monuments for this special location...one created by the French a few hundred years ago based upon geographical measurements and one that was recently created by GPS. The GPS is about 100 yards down the road and [View Full Entry]

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