Desert dwellers

Desertdwellers

Desert dwellers

We are a husband and wife who work full time but love to travel as often as our bosses will allow. We prefer minimalist backpacker style travel and rarely stay in the same location for more than a few nights (much to my husbands chagrin). I use credit miles and points to get free or almost free flights, and love helping and sharing tips and tricks to other travelers.
We prefer to go to far away and exotic locations outside of resort towns, preferably with a beach for some diving or mountains nearby for hiking. We enjoy immersing ourselves in what different cultures have to offer, doing it as simply and frugally as possible without sacrificing too much comfort. We equally love to travel around our home state of AZ and to our nations beautiful National Parks. 51 countries and counting so far.
Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain. -Jack Kerouac



Oceania » French Polynesia » Tahiti September 23rd 2023

For those of you that know us, you are familiar with how we travel and why I select certain places over others at particular times. It's all about the points, miles and free travel because we surely can't afford travel like we do on our public safety salaries alone. Of course Tahiti has always been on our travel bucket list, but it quickly rose to #1 when I scored a 48 hr flash sale on United for about half the miles it would ordinarily cost (approximately 1 credit card sign-up bonus for two round-trip tickets). Tahiti, or more aptly called French Polynesia for it's collection of 118 islands and not just the one largest island of Tahiti, has enticed me not for the $2k a night over the water bungalows but rather one of the few ... read more
Fare
My kind of day at the office

Oceania » French Polynesia » Fakarava September 22nd 2023

Our final stop for this trip was to the atoll of Fakarva, an hour and a half flight out of Tahiti. Fakarava has only been accessible by plane since the mid 1990s, being nothing more than a long circular strip of coral surrounding a lagoon in the middle of the South Pacific. What brings anyone here is not over the water bungalows, white soft sand beaches, five star dining, but rather the sharks, and tons of them. So many so that in one area to dive its earned the nickname "wall of sharks." So why would any reasonable person seek this place out then? Because scuba divers love sharks and understand they really aren't the mindless man eaters Peter Benchley would have us believe. As we arrived in the grass hut that is considered the airport, ... read more
Relais Marama

Oceania » French Polynesia » Moorea September 19th 2023

The following morning we took the ferry to the island of Moorea, a short 45 minute ride across the channel. By all accounts Moorea is just as beautiful, if not moreso than Bora Bora, but for a fraction of the cost and only an inexpensive ferry away. We thought the mountains plunged straight into the sea on Tahiti, well the landscape was even more extreme here. Sheer jagged peaks and spires leap vertically from the lagoons here in a postcard perfect landscape. We stayed at Residence Vainau ($83), one of the last beds on the island despite my booking months in advance. Not necessarily out of popularity but just because there is not much tourism here at all either. In the 1960s there was less than a dozen hotel rooms on the entire island, and by ... read more
pineapple plantation
Residence Vinau

Europe » Ireland » County Kerry March 24th 2023

We arrived in Dublin, Ireland by ferry at 12:30 on S. Patrick's Day. Truth be told this was never the intent of this trip, but once I started planning the trip I saw we'd be in the area for the holiday so I made sure we'd be in the capital for the celebration. We arrived in time to catch the end of the parade with our luggage still on our backs amidst hordes of green clad tourists from across the globe. We ventured out later in the evening and it seemed as thought the crowds had grown and you could scarcely move in the Temple Bar area. In hindsight a smaller city would have been a better and more genuine place to spend the day. The following morning we picked up our rental car and headed ... read more

Europe » United Kingdom » Wales March 17th 2023

We picked up our camper van, Art, from Bangor, Wales after a gorgeous and easy ride through the rolling English countryside. Train travel is really the way to go here. I found the van hire on quirky campers.com, which rents out privately owned vehicles all over the UK and elsewhere. Art is lovingly owned by a couple who designed and built it themselves and who travel all throughout Europe, and it is easily our favorite van we've rented yet as far as the design and space goes. The owners left a perfect cd collection of British rock, and Dennis was delighted to be driving through the harrowing narrow winding roadways driving a large manual shift box van whilst listening to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. We were lucky to have arrived with no rain, ... read more

Europe » United Kingdom » England March 16th 2023

We spent our last full day in London trying to cram in as much as possible, as is usual with us. We again took the "Uber boat" down the Thames all the way to Greenwich, which is an approximate one hour ride through downtown London, and where the meridian line as in Greenwich mean time comes from. The tide was very low in the mornings on the river so we decided to go beach combing in the tidal flats like we had seen others doing. I found a piece of glazed green painted pottery, which according to a sign stated it might be medieval era pottery. I can only imagine the treasures you could find in the muck here! In Greenwich we took a tour of the Cutty Sark and went to the maritime museum. The ... read more
Cutty Sark
Waldorf

Europe » United Kingdom » England » Greater London March 14th 2023

Wow, so much to cover. Well we had a disruption free journey across the beautiful French countryside and over the English Channel from Calais, France to Dover, England. I couldn't help but picture every WW2 movie I had seen across the large flat swathes of green fields dotted with small villages here and there. The crossing was a scant 1 1/2 hrs, despite the gale force winds and whitecap large swells throughout most of the trip. Only the die hard French smokers ventured onto the deck until we made it within sight of the white cliffs of Dover. We made it onto London in the evening, all in all an approximate 9 hour journey. Our hotel, The Belgrave, was conveniently located in Westminster, a short walk from the Thames river, tube station and bus stops. Our ... read more
Whitechapel

Europe » France » Île-de-France March 9th 2023

So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.-Jack Kerouac I was on the fence about writing another travel blog for this trip, but here I am. Apparently there is a few people that still read it and were asking about it prior to our departure. Sometimes I feel the more ordinary trips in accessible countries don't deserve the same amount of chronicling, but then again these are the trips people are most interested in because it is recognizable and within easy reach for their own travels. As with all our trips I utilized my credit card miles to purchase the airfare, this time through a KLM credit card signup bonus. This time we needed to unfortunately fly out of LAX to score the deal, our most hated airport. However it was a direct ... read more
Sacre-Coeur
Louvre

Europe » Iceland » North » Húsavík May 10th 2022

I again woke Dennis up in the middle of the night so we could head down below in the camper and close the pop top, with the winds 30mph or more. With the storm brought a beautiful fresh blanket of snow across the stark volcanic landscape of the Lake Myvatn region. The land of ice and fire. This region is another area full of steam vents, mud pots, fissures and calderas. As you gaze off into the vast horizon the steam billows up from a multitude of areas. We visited the Grjotagja Cave, the grotto where Jon and Ygritte bathed in Game of Thrones, and around , a volcanic rock wonderland full of petrified trolls, and the where the Yule Lads hang out around Christmas. Icelandic tradition tells of the mischievous Yule Lads, the 13 sons ... read more
Home of trolls and Yule lads

Europe » Iceland » East » Seydisfjördur May 7th 2022

The wind started picking up again during the night, so much so that I got paranoid and woke Dennis up at 0300 so we could move downstairs from our soft sided pop top before it ripped. The wind did blow out the clouds and we were greeted with blue skies in the morning. Our first stop was at Stokkness, a seaside Viking village built as a movie set near the ruins of an old farm. It was a small collection of deteriorating wooden structures distinctly Norse in architecture, mired in damp, muddy grass and partially enclosed by driftwood battlements. Besides the friendly herd of beautiful horses grazing nearby we had the place largely to ourselves. Stokkness also has black beaches, more picturesque in my opinion than the famous ones to the south because these have small ... read more




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