EchelonFive

While in Playa del Carmen, we also took a daytrip to Tulum. Tulum is just about an hour bus ride from Playa del Carmen, so it was an easy trip... or at least it should have been. :) We ended up going into the city of Tulum after missing the bus stop for the Tulum ruins. This was good and bad. The good was that we were able to walk around and see the city. The bad was we ended up walking about five miles (at least) to the ruins. You may ask "Why didn't you take a taxi?". Well, my handy-dandy Tulum map was not drawn to scale and, so, the distance from the city to the coast was three or four miles but appeared a short walk away on the map. By the time ... read more

"'You the good pilot up there, what do you really want... you want to go very fast in the wrong direction or slowly in the good direction?'" - Betrand Piccard - a question posed to him by a weatherman during his balloon flight around the world. People ask me a lot why I'm learning Spanish. Reasonable question. It comes down to many things... dreams, goals, interests. Prior to this, besides self-studying Spanish, I dipped my feet in for about four weeks on two trips to Ecuador a couple of years ago, of which I also wrote about. However, I've never been committed to it... emotionally, it was a goal that I had sitting in front of me and it was like I was looking at it earnestly wondering if this is something I *really* want to ... read more

Note: I'm woefully behind on my travel blog entries, but I will catch them up over the next few months (I still haven't written about the rest of the NZ trip, Thailand, Cambodia, or Japan). What an awesome weekend! Though, it was another weekend in a plane... except for the big difference that instead of in a plane in the air I was in one *submerged*! :) A few weeks ago I took the plunge and signed up for the NAUI Advanced Diver Course at Sub-Aquatic Sports & Services located in Battle Creek, MI. For the course, last week we had two nights (Tuesday & Thursday) of class time. Then for the weekend we had a schedule of six dives. ------------------------------------------ After a half-day at work last Friday, I drove home, took care of a few ... read more

Day 7: We started out the day in Wanaka with breakfast at a cafe with a good view of the Laka Wanaka and the surrounding mountains. It was sunny with a light breeze. After breakfast we walked around a bit and along the shore. Wanaka is similar to Queenstown in that it is by a lake and has great views of mountains. And Wanaka and Queenstown are about an hour drive apart. We then started our drive to Queenstown. Along the way, Vanessa decided to take her first turn driving; in NZ driving is on the left-hand side of the road, so this was a big event. Where we started, the road wasn't that curvy. However, shortly after she took the wheel, the road quickly became curvy in the mountains with many hairpin curves... not ideal ... read more

Christmas! The idea was that the coastal towns of Greymouth and (the nearby) Punakaiki would be the perfect place to relax while we celebrated Christmas. And stay, relatively, in one place. After getting ready, we headed up the coast about an hour to Punakaiki. Punakaiki is mostly known for its pancake rocks and blowholes. Its coast, in general, is beautiful, as well. To get to the pancake rocks (see photos to see where they get their name), we had a wonderful hike through some low-lying vegetation to get to Dolomite Point (location of pancake rocks and the blowholes). We spent quite a bit of time watching for water shooting out of the blowholes (didn't see much) and the waves come crashing in underneath us (the walkway goes over arched rock where the water flows under) and ... read more