Soooooo...Tazos are just pogs. I watched a video on the internet. There's no real difference. So I'm collecting Simpsons pogs. And it's 2015. And I'm not ashamed. The trip to Armenia was a long 16 hour bus journey, so I'm just going to hit the highlights (if you can call them that). It was a long day, but I'm glad we made it in one shot. We don't plan on spending any time in Armenia, but it's a short bus ride to Salento, but we knew we'd be getting in too late to go to Salento and find a place to stay. So it was a sensible place to stop. Well, except for the 16 hour journey/ The journey started in San Gil when we got up very early at 5am and caught a 6am bus ... read more

Remember Radio? Well, this is the short story of how someone who seemed trustworthy and like they knew what they were doing, and slowly lost our trust. Don't get me wrong here, he's a super nice guy, but we were relying on him to take us up a glacier... Things started out fine. We met him at 7 am outside our hotel and took the bus to Guican, and even paid for our trip. At his house in Guican he introduced us to Suzanne, who's a Venezualan tourist who's also coming with us to the top of Pan de Azucar. She's a serious climber, and was hoping to do as much adveturing as she could while on holidays in Colombia. Like us, she was excited to climb a mountain that was higher than anything that she ... read more

Ah Colombia! Long near the top of my list of places I wanted to go, and Vanessa and I were finally taking the plunge after finagling five precious weeks off work. Our trip this year is over Christmas (again) so it's high season (again). Like last year's trip to the Philippines, we're excited to experience the Christmas festivities in another country. The Philippines comes alive at Christmas, and we expect Colombia will have a similarly festive atmosphere. Travelling at high season can be tricky and requires a bit more booking ahead, but we were fine in the Philippines so we're hoping to do just as well in Colombia. Only one way to find out! The first leg of our journey took us to Toronto. Unfortunately, due to the scheduling and availability of flights, we had to ... read more

We arrived back in Manila early in the afternoon after a short bus ride from Tagaytay. We decided that this time we'd be staying in a hostel in Makati instead of where we were in Malate at the beginning of our trip. Malate was an interesting neighbourhood, if not a little sketchy at night, but we were trying to meet with the Filipinos we'd met in Zambales and San Juan so we thought Makati might be a little more convenient for them. And Makati is more upscale than Malate, for sure. It's cleaner, and has more condos and malls, and things like that. So it's a bit more sterile too, but there is a red light district a short walk form the hostel, so not by much. There wasn't really much we planned to do this ... read more

We woke up very early, at six in the morning to begin our trek out of Batad. I looked for the sunrise but there were clouds hanging over the mountain tops where it would have appeared, so now I know I definitely should have taken a picture of it last night... Oh well. After our last breakfast at Simon's, which featured cheesy pancakes and a potato pancake. I'm really going to miss having those cheesy pancakes every day. If I had discovered how delicious they were on our first day in Batad, that's probably all I would have eaten. And I should be clear, the cheese in the Philippines is not special. I think it's just processed cheese. At least, that's all we've seen around. It's not bad though, and it definitely does the trick. But ... read more