Another early start but fortunately not a lot of driving today, the inter-island ferry was going to do most of the heavy lifting and then it was only 20 kms or so to our first stop on the South Island, the town of Blenheim...we were heading for the wine region of Marlborough, was looking forward to checking out some vineyards and sampling some vinos! The plan for the South was to do a counter-clockwise tour, starting in Picton and finishing in Christchurch in a little under two weeks...would prove to be a lot of miles and driving but that's the price we had to pay for what we wanted to see and do, and frankly the driving was a big part of the experience...fortunately the South Island provided tons of beautiful scenery, and it didn't take ... read more

Our stay in Lhasa had come to an end and it was now time to get in the van and explore the Friendship Highway and even more importantly Everest Base Camp...while in Nepal we had toyed with the idea of doing the trek to that base camp, but with it clocking in at around two weeks round trip we just didn't want to devote that much of our vacation to it...we did however take a plane tour out of Kathmandu to try and get a peek at the peak, and while we did see it in the distance the tour abruptly came to a halt halfway through as we turned around and headed back to Kat...no idea why, but with the safety of Nepali airlines being somewhat dubious we were glad to be back on Terra ... read more

And away we go! Now that we mostly had our legs beneath us in China, it was time to get on to the main event: Tibet! After a final day of touring Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in Beijing we made our way in the evening to the train station, next stop Lhasa... We received our tickets and prepared to board the 8pm train, only to discover we were not all together for this portion of the trip...we were all in "hard sleepers", meaning 6 bunks in a "room" with no door, fortunately K and I were in the same berth along with Alex and Kevin, Maria and Jinba were in another car and unfortunately Erin was all by herself in yet another car...her first time to Asia, talk about cultural immersion! A real trooper ... read more

Touched down at Newark's Liberty International on Friday morning with "I Love New York City" by Andrew WK pinging in my head; hadn't been able to shake it the week leading up to our weekend getaway to the Big Apple...it had been more than fourteen years since I was here last and I couldn't wait to get back into the fray and see what had been going on in my absence... I had been here three times before, all with my good mate Ken, and each time provided plenty of epic adventures and stories (with one or two still lore in NYC after all these years...haha...they will not be recounted here for the sake of time, and more importantly to protect the somewhat guilty...). And so it was Ken and I again and this time we ... read more

Day 7, our last full day exploring the Ring Road...hard to believe we have almost come full circle, but the mileage signs to Reykjavik are the first indications we are nearing the end of the road trip... Enough of that though, still a full day ahead; after grudgingly leaving our warm and comfy cabin we were on the road for a day of waterfalls and the famous Golden Circle attractions of Gullfoss, Geysir and Thingvellir National Park... First leg of today's journey would be all waterfalls: Skogafoss, Seljalandsfoss and Gljufurarbui...Skogafoss was up first; an impressive 62 meter high waterfall that was really cool, and on the cover of the latest Lonely Planet I think...there is a long staircase leading up to a spot near the top of the falls, but we opted to just make our ... read more