http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/aspiringnomad/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from aspiringnomad en-us Thu, 23 May 2013 15:12:37 +0000 Thu, 23 May 2013 15:12:37 +0000 You39ve just been robbed of all your money and credit cards still six hours travel from the city you fly out from in three days without the means to pay the bus fare the outstanding hotel bill or even the airport departure tax. This poses a problem at the best of times. Add to that the fact it just so happens to be freaking Thanksgiving in your banks country of residence 8000 miles http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Philippines/Manila/blog-784166.html The guy youre sharing a drink with at the bar is smoking a cigarette complaining about how smoky it is. How passive smoke is not only ghastly but that it can create very real longterm health problems for those who breathe it including cancer. Theyre killing everyone in here with their bloody smoking he blasts. As he takes another drag on his cigarette he derides the chain smoker ov http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Malaysia/Melaka/Melaka-City/blog-768232.html I cant remember whether I was coming or going or where indeed that somewhere might have been. Im not even sure if this particular conversation occurred before or after The Lord of the Rings had cast its spells over us all. I do remember I was stood on an Underground platform somewhere beneath the streets of London with a backpack slung over my shoulder when a man in a suit made eye contact http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/New-Zealand/South-Island/Milford-Sound/blog-765138.html To die a backpacker death allows you to exit your body to float up and see yourself from above from the outside to look down on what you have become from afar. This new perspective allows you to evaluate what you have become what you have learned and where you wish to go. New perspectives are why I began my journey all those years ago. Location Opunohu Bay Moorea French Polynesia. Time Sun http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/French-Polynesia/Moorea/blog-727376.html In all my life Ive never looked at a landscape with my own eyes and thought it looked photoshopped the colors a little too saturated a little too vibrant rendering it too good to be true. I never would have believed it possible before I laid eyes on Kalalau Valley during the golden hour. I had first seen it in photographs and it was love at first sight hovering at the top of my todo list fo http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Hawaii/Kauai/Napali-Coast/blog-721393.html All that fresh air must have had some weird homeopathic affect on our AC Unit because the minute we departed Yosemite National Park it all but lost its mojo. Even though we would be selling the car within a month we only seriously pondered the option of living without AC for about five minutes before we were once again beholden to civilizations accesses and had it repaired meaning we were able t http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/California/San-Diego/Coronado/blog-717929.html The towering grandeur of these majestic Giants provides a living relic from a prehistoric age. Their immense girth soars up into the sky as a striking symbol of longevity and strength. Some of these trees were alive when Jesus walked the water once dominating an area of some twomillion acres of the Californian coast and before the last Ice Age pruned them back they covered almost the entire nor http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/California/Yosemite-National-Park/Yosemite-Valley/blog-716180.html Id like to offer an opinion about Seattle. Only problem is I am at a loss to do so. A few months before embarking on this trip I had the opportunity to attend a conference there. I rejected this out of hand since it was February which meant it was cold where I was and doubtless be cold and wet in Seattle. Anyway one of my student comrades did go and beforehand he and another quasiintelle http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Washington/Seattle/blog-707708.html I once was a wee lad who used to go fishing on the weekend with his mates. As I would sit on the riverbank eagerly casting my bait in anticipation of what lurked beneath my eyes would be drawn to the shadow of an overhanging branch on the far bank where the river ran tantalizingly dark and deep. That is where the monster surely lay undisturbed and uncaught and that is where my bait and I by http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Montana/Glacier-National-Park/blog-701891.html Sarah They say they have an intact culture but they have volleyball toothpaste plumbing and I saw a guy with an Abercrombie and Fitch pullover.Zoe Yeah the guide has a Lacoste TshirtTony No culture is completely untouched.Sarah oh yeah I know it was alright though.Indigenous people who fail to live up to the tourists expectations of authenticity run th http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/South/Loja/blog-664091.html It had been five weeks since I had seen an independent tourist in Saraguro when I received a text message just before midday something to the extent of tourist near bank heading to market in cowboy hat and dark glasses. I hurriedly lathered my twoyearold with sun block put on his hat and threw him up on my back grabbed the weekly shopping list and dashed out the door.One can never rea http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/South/blog-663355.html The idea that civilization or its Trojan horse globalization corrupts and ultimately destroys indigenous culture and all its inherent goodness was a common belief amongst the tourists visiting Saraguro. As one tourist put it the indigenous people of Saraguro face a struggle to maintain their culture values and traditions and not be bulldozed or washed away by outside forces. Another tou http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/South/Loja/blog-662360.html As we sit on a grassy bank eating our lunch the guide exits the house with a man in the small courtyard just below us but out of earshot. One of the tourists from the little group I inhabit states These people live such a simple life. Nobody responds so almost by way of qualifying his statement he continues Any person from any of these houses could just go to another house. In Canad http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/South/blog-661964.html We just had a look through our pictures to pull out any we had of children to be used for a conference Jennifer is helping to organize in Canada in May. So since they are all sorted and sitting in a single file I thought it would be no trouble at all to throw them up here now possible in a single click and share them with the world. I wont be putting captions to any of them but in many inst http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Ecuador/South/Loja/Saraguro/blog-550602.html This blog was originally to consist of a blow by blow rendition of our trip from Vancouver Island over to Jasper and down to Banff. However it needed an angle if it wasnt simply going to be and then we went there The angle hit me right there at the end in my anxiety my purpose and my excitement at finally seeing Moraine Lake and capturing its image. This angle hijacked th http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/Alberta/Banff-National-Park/blog-540233.html When you think about Canadians you may ask yourselfWhy are we the way we areWell the answer is laying right under our feet literallyfact is it's this land that shapes us.There's a reason why we run off the dock instead of tippy toe in.It's because that water is frozen. Six months a year.And that frozen water brought on a sport that we can call our own.This land is unlike any otherWe have m http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/British-Columbia/Vancouver-Island/blog-536861.html Tarija is good entry point for visiting Bolivia if youve spent an extended period in Chile and Argentina beforehand. Its unassuming unknown devoid of tourists not too high not too hot not too big and not too different. Many Argentinians we spoke to about visiting Bolivia recounted with horror how they were forced to eat Chicken DAILY whilst there. However in Tarija they have cows and f http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Bolivia/Chuquisaca-Department/Sucre/blog-511105.html Flying home with zee German family in tow we pick up our hire car at Stansted hot foot it into London to pick up the English contingent and a couple of hours later were sitting in front of a fireplace in a 400 yearold cottage in the Cotswolds. Whether were on the road or back home our activities down the years have led family and friends to associate us with a certai http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Gloucestershire/Bourton-on-the-Water/blog-495967.html We flew in on the redeye from Almaty to Riga and as the sun came up over the Russian Steppe I gazed out of the window onto parts of the world that hadnt previously existed even in my imagination. Wed planned months before to cross Kazakhstan to Russia to Europe overland. But time had caught up with us. China will do that to you. I had one overriding wish driving into Riga on that overcast http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Estonia/Tallinn/blog-490030.html Travelling from sight to sight variety beauty adventure and other delectable contrasts to life in the daily grind the raison d'tre of ones touristic existence can captivate and beguile in both the positive and negative sense. However there are times when one takes a break from the extravagant exaggerated and ornate that one can experience a humbler more earthy existential. Oftentimes it http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/China/Xinjiang/Urumqi/blog-487956.html