The Shinkansen ride from Tokyo to Kyoto was fun. It's an incredibly smooth ride considering you're on a train reaching speeds of up to 180 mph. It happened to be a gorgeous day and from my window seat I watched town after town blur by. At one point I looked up from the book I was reading to see Mount Fuji, seemingly so close, snowcapped and surrounded by blue skies. In just a few quick hours I was in Kyoto, and little did I know that I was arriving for the peak Autumn leaves season. With plans to meet my couchsurfing [View Full Entry]

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A year after spending Thanksgiving Day driving 17 hours through the barren Patagonia landscape, I decided to spend this Thanksgiving week exploring Japan. It felt so good to pack my travel pack once again - the first time since returning from South America. I landed in Tokyo after dark on the 20th and made my way to the Ueno area of the city which is where my couchsurfing host, Kyoko, lived. Couchsurfing under any circumstances will generally provide unique and especially fun travel experiences, but when traveling solo and in one of the world's most expensive countries (when the dollar [View Full Entry]

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Approximately 13 months ago, I had my first Kalalau experience over a long July 4th weekend. Since then I have spent seven months backpacking in South America and seen many amazingly beautiful things, but all that has only convinced me further that Kalalau is perhaps the most beautiful place on the planet. Throughout my recent travels abroad, I have looked forward to my next Kalalau journey. Anticipating minimal employment and ideal summer weather, I dreamt of a week long camping trip, but little did I know I'd be thrown right into a relatively busy work schedule. Finally, a date was pic [View Full Entry]

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Couchsurfing is truly an amazing thing. It makes traveling anywhere possible because wherever you want to go, you have a place and a friend to stay with. Well after my trip to Vermont for Memorial Weekend, I decided to head to Niagara Falls for the hell of it. I made the seven hour drive up there on my own, but very smoothly, jamming out to my ipod the whole way. The only inconvenience of the entire trip came when it was time to cross the border to get into Canada. The Canadian immigration questioned me about every detail of my short [View Full Entry]

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I think everybody loves the thought of a long weekend in the wilderness. Of being secluded with a group of good friends, surrounded by trees and privacy, yet with the amenities of being at home. Well that's what we did this Memorial Weekend of 2009. Epstein invited many of us up to his family's mountain house at Mount Snow for a weekend of partying and enjoying Vermont's outdoors. Things are exceedingly comfortable here with a large outdoor hot tub, two kitchens, satellite tv, a big pool table, and most importantly a giant trampoline. With so many people up here, we each [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Panama City with exactly one week left on this trip. Along with nearly our entire group from our boat, we checked into a highly recommended hostel in Panama City called Luna's Castle. Not wanting the good times we shared on the boat to end, six of us with flexible schedules decided to continue the party and spend a few more days together. This included Drew and myself, Adina and Linn from Sweden, Jonny from London, and Amy from Canada, who conveniently for us is well connected in Panama since she spends a lot of time visiting her retired [View Full Entry]

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After our adventures in Tayrona, we made the trip from Taganga all the way back to Cartagena, our last substantial bus journey of this 7 month trip. We had already spent 2 days in Cartagena between Medellin and Ciudad Perdida, and would spend one more day walking around the historic and romantic streets of Cartagena waiting for our final big adventure - sailing across the Caribbean from Colombia to Panama via the San Blas Archipelago. Since we had already taken our photos and explored a satisfactory amount of the city on our first pass, we had nothing on the agenda for [View Full Entry]

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When we got out of the Lost City, we went directly to Taganga with our friends Anna and Tim, from our trek. Taganga is only a 5 minute taxi ride from Santa Marta, where our Lost City trek embarked from and concluded, but it has an entirely different personality. Rounding one bend along the coast line from Santa Marta, and the dirty, crowded, city feel is replaced by the laid back, sleepy, fishing/beach town vibe. Taganga is an easy place to pass the time, and many travelers make this place an extended stop. There is rarely a cloud in the sky [View Full Entry]

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Now we´re talking. Colombia has skyrocketed in the South America rankings and is most definitely living up to its hype as a backpacker favorite since you heard from me last. From Medellin we caught our last foreseeable overnight bus ride up to Cartagena and a day later we continued from Cartagena on to Santa Marta. Upon arriving in Santa Marta, we immediately signed up for a trek departing the next day for Ciudad Perdida, or in English, the Lost City. Although six days is the common time frame for this excursion, the 11 of us (and by us I mean random [View Full Entry]

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Our first days in Colombia were supposed to be spent in a quiet mountain town called San Agustin. It is famous for pre-Colombian statues and ruins which are most commonly explored on horseback. Knowing that our bus stop was supposed to arrive at 3 AM, we both set our alarms for 2:15 to ensure that we didn´t sleep through it. We woke up at the aforementioned time, struggling to keep our eyes open, and eventually arrived in Cali a little after 4, at which point we were told that we arrived at 2 AM (rather than 3 AM) where Drew and [View Full Entry]

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