Emma Riley
We have sold our flat, quit our jobs and bought round the world tickets. We will be travelling for 4.5 months going backwards around the world.Em and Grae
Travel Blog Posts
June 20th 2008
Hopefully this will be my final enty for the Palau Blog... The day after our last dive in Palau we spent the day at the Palau Pacific Resort just snorkeling on the private reef there, which was fantastic, I spotted a moray eel, and searched again for the octopus we had spotted a couple of days previously. Grae had developed a very sore ear infection which wasent helped by the doctor stabbing him in the ear with the instrument meant to inspect the infection. It bled quite alot and Grae was in alot of pain so he absolutley couldn't get his ear wet, which was lucky that we had finished our diving but a shame that he couldn't snorkel anymore. So while I was snorkeling Grae hired a Kayak for a hour or so and pulled ... read more
June 4th 2008
Wow Palau I am happy never to go to another country on holiday again, for me Palau was perfect. The islands are green and lush, the sea is crystal clear and teeming with life, the sky is a Turner what more could I ask for. Palau is about a two hour flight east of the Philippines, and has been occupied by the Americans and the Japanese at different points through history. Now the Islands are independant from America since 1994 (we were told, he didn't see too sure) although they still use the dollar most of the ties to America in terms of culture are easy to see. This is the same for the Japenese influences too. We were collected a the airport by the manager of our guesthouse and her husband and given a necklace ... read more
May 27th 2008
The Phillippines are a bizzare mix of English, American and Japanese influences. Initially we had worried a little that we wouldn't be understood in Manila as the language would be completley different, but how wrong we were, it took us about 12 hours to realise that nearly everone speaks English and not only that but all signs, newspapers, radio, cinema, shops pretty much everything is in English. So it really wasn't much of a culture shock as they have embraced American culture wholeheartedly, and we felt pretty comfortable straight away. That is at least with the language, the city itself is another story. We only stopped off at Manila because we had to, to fly to Palau, so we only had two full days there before getting on a plane again. This was more than enough ... read more
Not Quite 30,000 leagues under the sea - but far enough for us
Published: May 21st 2008Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Cairns
May 21st 2008
As you are probably aware if you have been following the blogs along with our journey, you will note that Grae and I have been super lazy recently and haven't writtena blog for ages, so now we have a little time in a clean air conditioned internet cafe, Grae will write about the week we had on the Sunshine Coast with J & Helen, and I'll write about the week we had in Cairns, the Barrier Reef and Clifton Beach. Starting with the worst flight Grae and I have had so far, it was only 1.5 hours from Brisbane to Cairns but as soon as we took off the pilot told us we had to drop 2 thousand feet to avoid a storm overhead. As he did this we hit really bad turbulence and as I ... read more
Relaxing on the Sunshine Coast
Published: May 21st 2008Oceania » Australia » Queensland » Sunshine Coast » Coolum BeachMay 21st 2008
The good thing about the Sunshine Coast is that it seems that you can always expect two things, one, that it will mostly be sunny (as the name suggests) and two, the beers are always cold. An additional plus for us was being able to bum about at my cousin James and his wife Helens place for our time there. We arrvived in Brisbane at about 2 in the afternoon and after some confusion with our pickup service, we managed to make it to our rental car and successfully navigate the M1 north to Coolum Beach. After much beer and catching up with James and Helen, we passed out with that travel exhaustion that can only come with long hours of flying, driving and airport stress. The next few days were devoted largely to chilling the ... read more
2 days in Kings Cross
Published: April 30th 2008Oceania » Australia » New South Wales » Sydney » Kings Cross
April 30th 2008
With the South American part of our trip over with, we headed to Santiago airport late on the 24th for our 11pm flight to Sydney. The 18 hrs flight (including a brief stopover in Auckland) went quick enough with a little help from our friends alcohol and tamazepan and we arrived at Sydney just past seven in the morning. After fighting through the border control who fastidiously pick up aubergine smugglers, day in day out, we jumped in a taxi bound for Kings Cross. Now our destination was a hostel on Victoria St, but once we saw the place and the rude welcome we got from the guy when we got there, we decided on splashing out and getting a room at the local Holiday Inn which was well received after the dodgy lodgings we stayed ... read more
April 30th 2008
PS: And there was a class 1 on the richter scale earthquake on our first night. Scary stuff if all you are used to in the UK is waking up to the sound of your own farts! ... read more
The fight against Bed Bugs
Published: April 24th 2008South America » Chile » Santiago Region » SantiagoApril 24th 2008
Hello Grae and I are now in Chile, we flew down from Peru Two days ago and we are leaving Chile today. It was a flying stop, really just to break up the flights from Peru to Australia and perhaps see a Little of Santiago. Well, we haven´t really seen much of Santiago at all, unless you call the bottom of my Mojito glass or the Laundrette typical Santiago. The reason for this being the dirty hostel in Lima. I got bitten alot when we were in Lima, at first I thought it was just mosquitos, But we soon realised it was bed bugs. We didn´t actually see them but they were there, mocking me silently from under the matress. When we arrived in Santiago we decided to do a little research about them and found ... read more
April 20th 2008
I shall try and tell you all of the wonders of the Peruvian landscapes and our trek through the mountains to get to the sacred city of Macchu Picchu, but i will not be able to do it justice. In any event, here goes; After arriving in Cusco and realising that my lungs were complaining of having 10% less oxygen getting to them than normal, we had our city tour (which was described by Em in the last blog) and passed out, waking up just in time for the tour of the sacred valley of the Inca´s tour the next day (i would not recommend 2 day travel and airport sleeping to anyone). We began by leaving Cusco and going down rather steep mountain roads to the small town of Pisac, were we were duly obliged ... read more
April 11th 2008
Hello, I shall start off again from where I left off last night which was actually still in Costa Rica, so here goes. The next day was getting ourselves down the west coast to Jaco, which is pronounced aco - silent J, It took us a while to figure that out. Anyway, it was 5 hours in a shuttle, which is really just a small minivan with a crazy Costa Rican Driver, which seems to be mandatory for Interbus which is the company we were using. The Centre of Costa Rica is mountains and to get anywhere you have to go over these really windy roads that are quite narrow at break neck speeds, with 10 wheeler lorries on the inside of you, it is a little bit eye opening and jaw dropping at first but ... read more
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