Blogs from South America - page 12

After Ellen’s nice breakfast, we got to tour her business. She has a small business, called Laurelis, and makes food for some grocery stores and restaurants. It started out with Danish pickles but has expanded to many different foods and juices. She has 3 employees and the facility is located on the first floor of the house. It has been upgraded to full commercial standards and is continuing to grow. Some of the products are different kinds of pickles, pickled zucchini and jalapeno peppers. The company also makes many kinds of juices using local produce and some recipes are made by specific restaurants and she is not allowed to share them. We were very impressed. After short break she drove us to the food market. Oh my, where did they get all this fruit? I’ve never ... read more

(Day 392 on the road)Not to get robbed. Not on the last stretch of my yearlong journey across South America. That was one of the objectives for my final ~3 weeks in Brazil. I had been considering how to spend the final weeks. With Brazil being such a huge country, options were certainly plentiful. After some contemplating, I figured that spending two full weeks in Rio de Janeiro - one of the most exiting cities in this world – seemed very attractive. So I decided to take it slow, spend two weeks in Rio, a few days in the small coastal town of Paraty (halfway between Rio and Sao Paulo), and then my final few days in Sao Paulo. And it turned out to be just right. Before I arrived in Rio de Janeiro from Foz ... read more

Our flight to Puerto Montt from Santiago was scheduled to depart at 5:37 am. That’s the first flight of the day from Latam Airlines to Puerto Montt. That’s damn early! And now-a-days one needs to arrive to the airport even 2 hours earlier even for a domestic flight. From our Best Western it takes at least half hour to reach the airport in the wee hours. So, we had to wake up at least 1 hour to get ready, allowing 30 minutes each for Ryan and me to share the facilities. We just returned from a day trip of Valpariso last night. And we sure were tired, but we didn’t have a choice! Did we sleep at all? Well, you do the math! Hotel reserved a cab for us who came on time. We dumped our ... read more

Greetings from rainy Baños! July and August are the wettest months...after all, it's winter here now! Mostly it's been raining at night. There are new leaks in my master suite roof with every downpour! The add-on, it seems, didn't add on seamlessly to the existing structure...and they seem to keep popping up in new places all the time. When I awake in the night to hear interior drip-drip-dripping, it's often hard to fall back asleep...my brain starts fuming. It doesn't even make sense to repair water damage of paint and plaster until I somehow get this resolved.T his week a worker is coming to 'silicon-ize' some problem areas. We shall see if there is any improvement. Shana and I continue to have lunch and play Scrabble at least 2-3 times a week. CiCi is always under ... read more

Wow! I can’t believe that it’s been almost four years since I posted my last blog to share with my beloved Travelblog friends! “What happened to you, Tab”? Yes, what happened to me? Well, first I had an accident in Africa in 2018 and I was forced to cut down my trip. I flew back to Canada for an imminent surgery on my leg. Then the downtime ended when I planned to travel back to Africa again in 2020 to cover Rwanda genocide! Bang! The pandemic hit the world and destroyed our world order. Like many of you, I was restless but powerless to change the world. So, what did I do? Well, I continued to write my experience of traveling around the world and publish them as books. I got inspiration from my aunt, an ... read more