The security that is actually here, on site, is quite good. We often have a uniformed securty guard with a shotgun, then we have 2 plains clothes ex-army guys with hand guns that shadow us everywhere. We also have a squad or two of Philipine Army who follow us around when we're surveying in the mountains. We had one incident where a landowner who had already agreed to let us survey on his land changed his mind, or wanted more money, or something. Pretty soon, all the army guys had surrounded him and sat watching him. We still had to stop [View Full Entry]

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My last entry only talked about the adventure of getting from Vancouver to camp so I really feel like I need to write about the jungle. I've been working everyday in the jungle for the last three weeks so its hard for me to recall my first impressions and first trepidations but I'll do the best that I can. I came to Panama to do a seismic survey with explosives but there was a delay in delivering the explosives and so I worked my first day in the jungle with the resistivity crew. I didn't pick up much of the field [View Full Entry]

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Since I'm in a foreign country again I thought I'd start up my travel blog again. Pretty exciting times in Panama so far. We left Vancouver last Friday on a 8am flight to Houston and then caught a flight to Panama City. There were 5 of us from work flying in to replace other colleagues who finished their rotation. Our Russian geophysicist, Andrey, was really keen to get some duty free Scotch in Houston but there was a problem. The camp we were moving into was dry, no alcohol. This meant we would have to drink the whole bottle the one [View Full Entry]

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My 3rd International flight was supposed to arrive in Auckland around 11pm but, as always, something went wrong. The flight was overbooked and I got bumped onto a later flight. Every single international flight has been late for me so far. So I showed up at Auckland International at 12:30 am with no accomodations and no idea how to get there if I did. I managed to look a place up and assuming they had room I jumped on a shuttle. It worked out really well, I got a really cheap room in a nice part of Auckland city. I spent [View Full Entry]

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Thanks for the emails, I really appreciate the concern. I've had a rough couple of weeks but I've slowly been getting my head right. I'm going ahead with my travel for now. I still need to spend a lot of time thinking things through and the outdoors is my favorite place to do that, so I may as well stay in here. I've haven't talked to many of you in a while, but I'm going to try and keep in internet contact and write more. I also have a lot of pictures and stories to write up and post, so I'll [View Full Entry]

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The day after the sail boat races I jumped on a Greyhound bus to head up to Brisbane to visit my old VOC friend Kim and my new friends Sophie, Ro, and Pete from the Tasmanian track. This was a pretty epic bus ride. It was supposed to be 14.5 hrs long. Unfortunately the bus broke down twice in the night and we had to switch buses at like 4am. I still have no idea where I was when we switched buses. I ended up getting into Brisbane after almost 21 hours. I was lucky that Kim was also done school [View Full Entry]

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A lot has happened since my last post. It's going to be a while before I get anything else up. I was in a rock climbing accident on Jan 2. My climbing partner fell from the 7th pitch of a route and died. I'm staying in his hometown till the funeral and trying to get my head straight. Rest in Peace Nick. [View Full Entry]

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I stayed in Sydney for about 3 or 4 days before Christmas. I enjoyed walking through the Sydney Botanic Gardens and seeing hundreds of bats roosting in the trees. I also went to the aquarium and saw the shark tank and some turtles and penguins. Probably my greatest find in Sydney was a restaurant on some random back alley in King's Cross. The Prague is a Czech restaurant with really good beer and really good, large portion meals with lots of meat. In other words, a perfect restaurant. Ya, the waitresses were cute too. Hyde Park in central Sydney is also [View Full Entry]

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Back in Melbourne from Tassie. I just finished hiking the Overland Track from Cradle Mountain to Lake St. Claire. It was a 7-day trek and we covered over 100km. I was surprised to see how green and non-flat Tasmania is compared with the rest of Australia that I've seen. I had heard that Tasmania is the closest to BC that Australia gets and I was certainly reminded of home as we drove through the state. There are a lot more sheep in Tassie though. I'd say the theme of our trip at least for the first couple of days was 'lower [View Full Entry]

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Hey Friends, I just got back from Araps last night. I sure know what 'travel weary' means now. Or maybe I don't, I haven't been gone that long and haven't travelled that far from Natimak to get back to Melbourne. I was pretty glad to check into this hotel off a park in Melbourne though, have a real shower and sleep in a real bed. Three weeks in a tent with varying amounts of sleeping mattress (I went through 3 sleeping mats, sortof) and infrequent showers combined with physical activity in the sun everday and then add on top of that [View Full Entry]

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