Santa Barbara has a Spanish feel to it, whitewashed houses with red tile rooves, colourful tiles adorn many of the shops and buildings. Many of the streets have Spanish sounding names. This week, however, the Spanish theme really took over with music, art and Flamenco dancing on the streets. All culminating with the children's parade on State Street today. Children of all ages took to the the parade adorned in colourful costumes and danced their way down State Street to the sound of castinets etc. Unfortunately we haven't managed to see much of the festivities as we've all been busy working on Sharon and Scott's new house. They got the keys 2 weeks ago and since then it's been all systems go. The complex is really nice though and towards the end of each day we ... read more

We were happy to be leaving Monument Valley as the tourists were beginning to roll in thick and fast. After a quick lunch at ‘Route 66’ café we continued the journey to Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is a preserved site where the Pueblo people made their home for more than 750 years thousands of years ago. There are 600 cliff dwellings all built into the Cliffside. It is thought that the people built their homes in the cliff face for safety from predators. From here we drove to Gallup in New Mexico. There was nothing much there but a string of motels and fast food joints but was a convenient overnight's stopover. Next morning we were on the road again bright and early making our way to The petrified forest. As usual, a small ... read more

I've never doubted that the world is full of amazing places and we've been lucky enough to see quite a few already but over the last few days we managed to see another four examples of what nature can do. The results were spectacular. America covers a huge area so to get anywhere takes an age. We set off from Santa Barbara at 9am Monday morning and arrived at Flagstaff, the gateway to the Grand Canyon, 12 hour later at 9pm. We'd driven through hundreds of miles of dessert to get there and seen amazing sites along the way but were looking forward to the 'big one' the next day. After a very early start and another two hours of driving on Tuesday morning we arrived at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. There are ... read more

The purpose of our trip to California was to meet our expected grandchild. Well she's here!! 20 days early but both mum and baby are doing well, little Kyla couldn't wait to arrive. One minute we were on our way to eat dinner in a restaurant overlooking the harbour the next minute we diverted to the hospital and she arrived into the world just over 3 hour later! She's gorgeous, I know I'm biased but she IS!! We're now running around frantically to get everything ready for her to come home tomorrow. I think I'm going to be busy for a while! We were expecting to have 3 weeks to get to know our way around here but it's amazing how fast you can adapt when needed.... read more

We left the island of Pandan at 1pm, Dominique, the owner of the island assured us we would have no problem getting a bus back to San Jose for our flight, there was one every hour and Holy week was over so there would be loads of empty seats.. When we got to the bus station, however at 1.20pm expecting to get the 2pm bus we were told that the next bus was 3pm. We jumped back on the tricycle and asked him to take us to the other bus station. Once there the news was the same- next bus 3pm! How stupid to have two buses going at the same time. We had no option but to sit it out, the sun was beating down hard and there was barely any shade. 3pm came and ... read more