Monday, December 21st As part of our walking tour we went to a collective that taught at-risk youth how to make hammocks in exchange for a promise by the students to go to school. Men with wads of cash would stand on street corners in front of banks, quite legitimately offering to exchange dollars for cOrdobas – a sight that too many years of watching the Sopranos never failed to surprise us. From there we rented bikes and explored a cemetery and the ruins of the old hospital. Typically we were like pinball balls, bouncing lost from one set of instructions to another, not registering the response to our queries for directions whether they were in English or in Spanish. The hospital was like discovering ancient ruins, lost histories, forgotten memories of lives long gone. ... read more

Friday, August 6th Touch down in Kuwait without a visa or hotel reservation to our name. The visa was a no brainer with our new spiffy non-Israeli stamped passports and $11, we were good to go. Assuming they would have a tourist information booth we didn’t make reservations for a hotel. Surprise surprise! We were greeted with “hey lady, wanna a hotel? Cheap!” as men covertly asked us. Not a good scene. We ended up booking with the Holiday Inn that was lovely. *Kuwait got its Independence in 1961 from the UK *Has 2.6 million people and in terms of land mass is only slightly smaller than New Jersey. *Petrol is 95% of its export and government income and ½ of its GDP *Unemployment is 2.2% *Women got the vote in 2005 and one needs ... read more

Saturday, July 31st It was wonderful being on the tour, coddled and shepherded around with the group but it’s a very satisfying feeling to also be independent - half to prove that we can and half because the adventures that happen unplanned are often the best part. Outside of our window fishermen boats lined the bay. We had breakfast at a café with our toes in the sand which somehow always makes things taste better. Unwatuna’s beach is on a beautiful bay. We had heard that the sunset over jungle beach was spectacular. Even more charming was the path through the wild life that we could take and get there in no time. Half way through the jungle we realized two things. One was that if we were going to watch the sunset then we’d ... read more

Roped In Sunday, July 25th It is monsoon season in Sri Lanka so this year as part of our fifteen pound backpacking allotment we included ponchos, rain coats and umbrellas. Up till now we’ve been fabulously lucky with the weather. But we woke up at 4:30am before we were about to start our big hike to the first rain we’d seen the whole trip. Regardless, in our rain gear we trudged out to the mini bus and fell asleep promptly until we arrived at the starting point. Luckily it stopped raining though it was freezing cold. To get our bodies warmed up we started our trek on our way to the end of the world. World’s End was just one of the stops along the way where we were able to look to our left ... read more

Thursday, July 22nd Far more impressive than Ajanta in India, were the caves of Dambulla which are filled with paintings and sculptures over 2000 years old. One of the bizarre aspects were the multi-cultural faces painted on the frescos. How did those people know what Africans and Hawaiians looked like? Were there travelers even then? How did the monks get their saffron colored robes? The legend says that the monks were in the jungle and they needed robes to wear as a uniform when they approached the villagers. At that time they didn’t cremate bodies they just wrapped them in a white cloth and left them in the jungle. So the monks, not having cloth and needing it, stole the white wraps and headed to the villages. Before arriving they noticed they were breaking out ... read more