Blogs from North America - page 6770

July 18th. Traveled from Calgary to Edmonton and met up with Aunt Derda and many family members and friends. Tonight is casual dining, but tomorrow is the 'big' party dinner. Travel today was punctuated by a heavy thunderstorm, lightning, hail and heavy rain. Scenery fairly bland (no hills) between Calgary and Edmonton. Saw an emu but guessed that it was an alien species and should not be here. Pam and George... read more

14july: booked flights to africa with a stop in london and a stop in amsterdam on the return. good price, i thought. arranged seating and meals too. always request a special meal so that you are served early, especially on BIG overseas planes. 15july: went online to find that airline had cancelled my flight. i rang. they said the price was too good to be true. i was outraged as i had all of my confirmation numbers. after nearly 2 hours on the phone with onetravel.com i gave up. then i went boogie boarding in the river to overcome my distress. 16july: was on way for climbing and stopped to check airfares. all are going up. still upset but went climbing anyway. on way home stopped and surfed prices again (i'd rather be surfing in the ... read more

16th July 2008 We got up at 7-30pm this morning in Howe Sound, Squamish. Amy went for a run as usual, the rest of us went to explore the granite cliffs called the Stawamus Chief. The closer you get to it however the more difficult it was to see the scale of it or even see the cliff at all for the trees around the foot of it. We walked through the tall trees at the foot of the cliff which was also a campsite popular with the visiting rock climbers. We did see a board which said there was a viewing platform 300 metres away so headed towards it. The path was so steep that it had wooden steps most of the way between scrabbles up a steep rocky path. We passed the viewpoint (which ... read more

Hello! So again a quick update, time is so limited always and i'm trying to get my photos up. Anyone who's texted me lately i have no signal i'm afraid and may not have for over a week. Since my last entry I spent a day in Chicago, went up the Sears tower, did a boat ride, saw Navy Pier and a few parks, watched a crazy australian acrobatic show, went up the John Hancock observation deck and saw the nightly fireworks and then went to an Irish bar, it was fun and very packed. The next day was our biggest drive, 10 hours to Sioux Falls but we broke it up with a Spam Museum and a statue of the Green Giant (yes the sweetcorn guy) which was... strange. That night we couldn't be bothered ... read more

Mexico Haciendas Hacienda San Jose Hacienda San Jose appeared to be away from any towns. It was a sugar plantation but the buildings had fallen into disrepair. Their reconstruction is shown in photos in the reading room. There are extensive gardens, aqueducts and facilities that suggest the hacienda's former glory. Some of the footpaths were made of slabs of limestone with gaps in between them. Since they were not smooth they were difficult to walk on, especially at night. Most of the buildings were painted a bright blue with white trim on the outside and an orange-brown on the inside. There seemed to be an electricity generator in the kitchen building. Our room had a very high ceiling with 2 ceiling fans, but no air conditioning (probably due to limited amount of locally generated electricity) and ... read more