After a good night of rest, we woke up and headed to the hotel restaurant for a caffeine fix and breakfast. We got on the road around 8:30, and knew we had about 8 hours of driving ahead of us, plus a border crossing, but were hoping we'd be able to make it to Leon before nightfall. Today, the weather had cleared, it was sunny and beautiful, and the traffic was pretty light. We were feeling good about the time we were making. We did a short stop for photos by Lago Yojoa, and then continued on. We were getting near the border by around 4, and knew that Leon was still almost 2 hours on the other side, but were still hoping we wouldn't have to do too much driving in the dark. We had ... read more

Finally got to see my friend Jamie again, after 16 years! It's amazing those kinds of friendships, where it can feel like it was just yesterday once you finally get together and catch up. We had a relaxing day on our own Wednesday, just playing badminton and relaxing at the pool, and then Jamie and her family arrived back from their trip on Wed night. Yesterday we spent the day together- drove up to Cypress mountain, and then to a park by the beach. The kids all played frisbee (he kids are close in age to mine), and Jamie and I went for a walk. Spent the whole day talking, getting up to date on 16 years of life. Today we fly out in the afternoon, so we'll have the morning together, and then our huge ... read more

On the 18th, we woke up early, and Dave took us to a nearby McDonalds to find our poparide driver, Tricia. I had been researching ways to get from Calgary to Vancouver. I really wanted to include Vancouver on our trip, but we're on a pretty tight budget, and flying, train and bus all were too expensive, so I was looking up ride share options. There were several different spots I posted on (kijiji, a Facebook group), but the site that I found our ride was poparide. You can post both looking for a ride and offering a drive. Drivers can't be looking to make money, just to be covering their fuel costs. They post the trip date, time, seats available, room for luggage, pick up and drop off points and price per person. For our ... read more

We arrived to Calgary yesterday afternoon, and got picked up by Dave, one of our favourite hostel guests, who was at the hostel for several months :) Dave took us to his house, where we got to meet his wife and 2 super cute dogs, as well as his robot lawn mower, Mow. His house has a complete cinema room in the basement, with reclining movie chairs, crazy speakers, huge screen, popcorn machine. After dinner, we had movie night (I started to fall asleep, so didn't stay in the 'cinema' til the end, maybe tonight). Today we got up and had breakfast, then Dave dropped us off at the Calgary Stampede. We took the skyride so we could check out where everything was. Then the boys did a few rides and games, and we wandered around ... read more

Our stay at Glover's has come to an end. I think we loved it even better than 6 years ago, as the boys are old enough now to do so much fishing, but it's definitely not a place for those wanting to be pampered. The well water (for the 2 outdoor showers on the cay) is sulfur smelling and fairly salty, and compost toilets are not my favourite amenities. I love the over the water cabins and the beautiful starry nights, and the lack of electricity and being disconnected is wonderful for awhile (the main building with their restaurant has a generator amd wifi is turned on a couple hours each evening so you can still get any semi urgent messages, but no one walks around glued to their smartphone, which is a welcome change to ... read more