http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Kat-and-Ben/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Kat and Ben en-us Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:30:20 +0000 Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:30:20 +0000 We spent more time in Turkey than expected and with our flight back to London looming it was time to get a move on and see some of the Balkans. We had originally intended to take a ferry to Greece and then see some of Italy before the summer season began however with time running out we decided to pay a fleeting visit to Bulgaria and Serbia.During the last 5 or so days in Turkey we finally g http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Aegean/Sel-uk/blog-410155.html Our travels in Turkey began in the central region known as Cappadocia. The landscape there is crazy mad built on volcanic soil and eroding 305nto pinnacles and fairy chimneys. Where nature left off humans have taken over and carved the pinnacles into rock hotels thousands of churches and pigeon houses. We spent several days wandering around in the hills near Goreme. After some hefty bu http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Mediterranean/Antalya/blog-403998.html Syria turned out to be one of the pleasant surprises of our trip so far. Back in London we were looking at the maps trying to figure out how best to get between Jordan and Turkey. Syria was in the way. But after doing some more reading we talked ourselves 305nto 305t.There were a few nervous moments as we waited for our stamps at the border. My passport is fairly well thumbed now and t http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Syria/blog-398405.html In the last few weeks we seem to have visited quite a few biblical sites. First on the list was Mount Sinai in Egypt where Moses is said to have received the 10 commandments. We tried to get there for the sunrise which involved leaving Dahab at 11pm at night and starting walking about 3am. The path up the mountain was well trodden although we only managed to have about 3 torches amongst the g http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Jordan/South/Petra/blog-396425.html After 10 months living and working in London we are now on the move again I've been pretty slack on the blog front but can assure you that we have managed to pack every spare weekend with trips away. With the Euro growing stronger we tended to head to UK destinations but have still managed to acquire a few new stamps in the passport. The camera is also loaded with thousands of photos of w http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Egypt/Lower-Egypt/Cairo/blog-389582.html After a month in London with no jobs on the horizon we took the opportunity for a quick jaunt to Austria to experience the Alps for the first time. Of course when you are living off savings corners tend to be cut and we found ourselves at the coach station waiting for a bus to Stansted at an ungodly hour of a Saturday morning. Munich was scorching hot despite it being early so we found a http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Austria/Tyrol/Innsbruck/blog-302291.html We've been a good 4 months or so in Canada now so its probably time for more musings on life in Canada. One truly North American custom we've had the privilege to endure is Wings. We were taken by friends to a local establishment specifically for this purpose. I've never eaten so much chicken in my life. The wings come cheap and by the plateful covered in delicious seasonings. The only ot http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/British-Columbia/Whistler/blog-232907.html This was a squeeze to see how much of the Western United States we could visit in two weeks. Ben thought we could make it all the way to Mexico but the more realistic route took us down the Pacific Northwest Coast and across as far as Las Vegas before heading back north via Death Valley.Working our way around the Olympic peninsula we encountered our first cultural highlight of the trip. Wande http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Oregon/blog-274523.html Some pics from November. http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/British-Columbia/Vancouver-Island/Victoria/blog-222424.html Here are some more pics from around and about Victoria. Can't say we've actually been doing much. Ben has been studying me working and in my spare time trying to deal with the kilograms of apples we picked from our neighbour's tree. http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/British-Columbia/Vancouver-Island/Victoria/blog-214101.html We've been in Canada for 6 weeks now and a number of things have struck me about the place.The thing we Kiwis have found most alarming is the sheer ruggedness of the wildlife here. I thought it was odd that our flatmate instructed us not to let the cats out of the house during the day. Being cats they spend most of their day in respective baskets snoozing but I figured they could probably do http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/British-Columbia/Vancouver-Island/Victoria/blog-210670.html The story as told by BenBoth me and Kat did our 8km race today. We both had a great run but neither of us positioned ourselves very well so spent the first few minutes elbowing children and old people out of the way. Not very smart with a crowd of 2000 runners. Felt shattered at about the 5km mark when this chick came up on me and I decided to keep pace. Eventually she broke me took off and http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/British-Columbia/Vancouver-Island/Victoria/blog-209201.html The rest of Mexico passed in a blur. We had about 5 days left to get back to Mexico City in time to catch our flight to Canada.We stopped in Palenque just long enough to catch the next bus to Villahermosa. There we wandered around till all hours of the night trying to find a hotel that still had space and wasn't going to charge us super large sums of money. We stopped by one hotel that was str http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Tabasco/Villahermosa/blog-198654.html Our entry into Belize marked the first of a number of battles with border guards. First up was the exit from Mexico where the guy tried to get 100 pesos out of us for the privilege of leaving and being able to return again. Who knows what the real story is but we refused to pay as we were roughly aware that it should be free to come and go. We mentioned this down the line of other travellers http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Belize/Belize-Barrier-Reef/Caye-Caulker/blog-197013.html They call the stretch of land down the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula the Mayan Riviera. It is a great spot on the carribean sea with white sand beaches the most amazingly blue sea bordered by jungle.Ben was dreading the thought of beach days but I really wanted to stop here and enjoy the coast. Our first stop was Tulum and we picked up an overpriced cabaa on the beach. Cabaa sounds http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Yucat%E1n/blog-195466.html We said goodbye to San Christobal at some ungodly hour of the morning and set off for Palenque the first of our Mayan ruins.The road was hilly windy and full of speed bumps on the strangest stretches of road. Beside each was a group of children that would jump up and try to sell us coconuts fruit chewing gum etc.We stopped off for a swim at Agua Azul and admired the waterfall at Misolha be http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Yucat%E1n/blog-195184.html Back on the Bamba bus we slid our way down to Puerto Escondido down an extremely windy road. It didnt help that the driver had to get all the way back again that evening so he was nailing it on the corners and throwing us around in the back. The system of speed control on the roads here is in the form of speed bumps. We occasionally hit these at ridiculous speeds and hit our heads on the roo http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Oaxaca/Puerto-Escondido/blog-192529.html Having dealt with bus stations for a good 4 months now we decided to do Mexcio a little differently. We joined the Bamba Experience which is a travel network of vans to take you from place to place. Day 1 was a drive to Oaxaca.It is only recently that the NZ government has stopped warning people from going to Oaxaca. That is because for most of last year the city was paralysed by protests an http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Oaxaca/Oaxaca/blog-192521.html Our visit to Mexico City began with a series of interesting experiences. First we wandered into our dorm room and found a group of fellow travellers smoking joints turning the room into a bit of a hot box. Then to get our bearings we went down to the square outside the Fine Arts museum. There we were confronted by a bunch of nude campesinos protesting and banging drums. We really wanted to vi http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Mexico/Distrito-Federal/Mexico-City/blog-192450.html We took the night bus to Arequipa which arrived at a painful 5 in the morning. After a bit of a nap we had a look around the Santa Catalina convent. Today there are only 30 or so nuns living in the convent but in its day it would have been quite a little village. The complex takes up a whole street block and has its own internal streets and parks. The nuns had it relatively good. Most were t http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Peru/Arequipa/blog-177158.html