Hello fellow blog-meisters. Just over an hour north of London by plane is the sparsly populated border county of Northumberland and the pretty town of Alnwick (pronounced, "Annick"). This is where Dave grew up! Quaint fishing villages cling to the edge of the rugged coast, small farms and market towns are dotted throughout the hilly interior, and fancy-schmansy X-ray machines have private rooms in the hospitals. Theresa's foot needs some TLC but will recover in time for the next adventure (yup, already planning the next one...). We spent Christmas and New Year with family. It was also the wettest December (and year) since sometime in the 1800s and neither of us have any reason to disagree with those rainfall records! Many raindrops fell upon us and a lot of towns were flooded, rail-lines were washed out ... read more

Hello Blog-followers, and a belated happy new b'ak'tun (or happy new year if you're not familiar with b'ak'tuns.) We are a wee bit late in publishing some of our latest blogs as we got a little side tracked. We briefly bounced between 3 of the world's continents this time around. Usually we seek out sun and warmth due to our homebase being situated in the subarctic (you know - that cold, dark, windy thing at the top) but his time we happenstanced upon rain and clouds mainly... It was an unlikely trip... But not just because of the clouds?!... We left Canada on a night flight across the Atlantic and had quite the lay-over in London Heathrow. Because airports are generally quite dull structures we decided to take the underground train to Piccadilly Circus to explore ... read more

Hola amigos para la ultima vez de este viaje! Panama City is full of juxtapositions! Old, ruined buildings standing next to modern glass fronted high-rises, millionaires in mansions surrounded by slums and shacks. Wealthy businessmen working along side the poverty-striken lower-class, fancy new highways that merge into pot-holed and litter-strewn tracks... It's an amazing place! The skyline of mighty skyscrapers and the ocean is a startling view, they nickname the city "Mini Manhattan" or "Miami of the South", both names are fitting but we still called it Panama City. When we arrived in the Casco Viejo district of the city we wandered for quite a while, hauling our backpacks from hostel to hostel and hotel to hotel. Many places were full because of the Easter holiday. Because of our style of just rocking up to a ... read more

Hola It is little wonder that the expression "As delightful as a border post" has never been coined... The Costa Rica - Panama post of Paso Canoas was of course charmless and we had little reason to hang out there. We stayed only long enough to have a dashing glance at our passport stamps and to cherish the fact that this was the last overland border crossing of our trip...Ah! Hola Panama! What a feeling of relief as we rocked up to Cerro Punta and it´s clean, fresh mountain air, beautiful farm land and friendly people. At 1800 metres above sea level, we had forgotten what it was like to feel the cold! Our long sleeves and toques got their use after weeks in the backpacks. Shortly after arriving we heard a voice yelling from a ... read more

Hola! Costa Rica surprised us in that there was a lot less garbage on the highways and in towns and cities, which is a good thing! We did notice many more car dealers here as well and this might help explain why our bus from the border was half empty as opposed to crammed with people. We also noticed that prices are higher and you do not get the same value for what you pay compared to the other countries in Central America. We do hope that some of this money funnels down to better wages for locals and more protection of the national parks and environment. We chose to explore the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, a fairly tourist trodden area but beautiful nonetheless. It is extremely rich in wildlife diversity and we are dedicating ... read more