New friends, new house, new skills
One of the great things about travelling like this is the wonderful people we meet. The property in which we are staying has another small house at the bottom of the garden. So far it’s been empty, but the day before Gabriel’s birthday party, a couple arrive to rent it who we quickly get to…
Bike rides and birthdays
We’ve been to many incredible markets on this trip so far, so it’s easy to get blasé. But the market in San Cristóbal is fabulous. It’s a heaving mass of people, with incredible colours, sounds and smells. As you enter the market, there are people selling boiled or roasted sweetcorn and others with barrows piled…
Chiapas politics
It’s Immediately obvious that San Cristobal is a very political city. Political party advertising is everywhere (particularly the Verde party); there is political graffiti on many buildings and the presence of the Zapatistas is everywhere, from woven masked dolls in the markets, to postcards in the shops, to cafés that openly state their support for…
Settling into San Cristobal life
Lilies from the garden are helping us deal with the underlying smell of cats’ pee in our dining room We start to settle down into a rhythm in the lovely town of San Cristobal. The town is not massively touristy and yet there are enough to ensure a good supply of lovely shops, cafés and…
More ruins and cats pee
It seems as though all of my recent blogs start with a long, arduous journey and this is no exception! We wondered about breaking the journey between Tulum and Palenque, but eventually decide to take the overnight bus and do it in one go. We’re getting used to these journeys – the buses are air-conditioned…
Hola Mexico!
The journey from Quito to Mexico was always going to be a tough one. Because of the way our round the world ticket works, we need to go via Miami and then back to Cancun. At least one thing’s for sure, I’ve travelled to the US more times than I care to remember and I…
Gracias Ecuador
Following our adventures in the Amazon, we spend one more night in gritty Lago Agrio before heading back to Quito. Rather than taking the night bus, we’ve decided to travel by day and break the journey in Papallacta, which we’ve heard is one of the best natural spas in the country – just what we…
Our Amazon adventure
After a couple of incredible weeks in the Galapagos, we’re now off for another week that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. My Dad has always been into natural history and we watched all the wildlife programmes at home as children. But one ecosystem has always intrigued me more than any other…
Reflections on Galapagos
We return back to Puerto Ayora in Santa Cruz the same way that we came – on a very bumpy 2-hour boat ride. It’s quite extraordinary – despite the severe bumps, all 3 of our children sleep most of the way! We have just one night on Santa Cruz, in a basic but clean hotel.…
Incredible Galapagos wildlife
The boat ride from Santa Cruz to Izabella is not the most comfortable! It’s a fairly small boat, at its maximum capacity of about 25 people. It has three Yamaha 250 hp outboard motors and so is no slouch. There’s a gentle swell out in the ocean but the boat really slams back down onto…
Walking in Darwin’s footsteps
A few years ago I answered a questionnaire; one of the questions was: “if you only had one holiday left in your life and you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”. My answer was the Galapagos Islands. So to say I’ve been looking forward to this chapter is a bit of…
Stress-free zone
Vilcabamba is as far south in Ecuador as most tourists go, unless they’re going on to Peru by road. It’s renowned for its fabulous climate and people that live to a great age, after a Readers Digest article in the 1950s. The road down from Cuenca passes a surprising amount of planted pine forest that…
Settling into the rhythm of Cuenca life
Our lovely time in Cuenca continues, with Jemima, Gabriel and me skipping to Spanish class, Millie going to her school and Fi having some precious time to herself in the mornings. We’ve all changed teachers again as we’ve moved up to 4 hours a day. Jemima and Gabriel now have Juana, who is very into…
Cuenca – Spanish, history, politics & horse riding
We’re not shirking the difficult journeys – this one’s an overnight bus journey from Otavalo. South – down the spine of the country to Cuenca in the southern highlands. Despite the bus arriving in Otavalo half an hour late, the journey isn’t as bad as I’d imagined. Jemima & Gabriel fall asleep quickly and sleep…
Otavalo – slowing down the pace
Our beautiful home in Otavalo, from the vegetable garden. Otavalo is only a couple of hours north of Quito by bus, so a pretty straightforward journey. We’re dropped off next to a main road on a roundabout with no pavement, which seems a little strange! But we manage to get a taxi to take us and…
Hola Ecuador!
The journey from Auckland to Ecuador is by far the longest to date. The first leg, from Auckland to Santiago, takes almost 12 hours. We have six hours on the ground and so head to an excellent interactive museum to kill the time. Then it’s back to the airport for the nearly 6 hour flight…
Adios New Zealand…
We say our sad farewells to Toby, Heather & family – our road trip and time together has been fantastic and we’re incredibly grateful for everything they’ve done for us. For the children in particular it’s going to be hard; they’ve cemented friendships and have spent the last 10 days together while Fi and I…
Abel Tasman – child free bliss!
It’s great to be back at Toby and Heather’s in Wellington and the children are all really thrilled to be back together again. The lego is out, as are the Elsa and Arna costumes, within minutes! Fi and I have really been looking forward to the next instalment – Toby and Heather have very kindly…
Pancakes & venison
New Zealand, South Island… After our helicopter extravaganza on Fox Glacier, we enjoy a picnic by a river and another cold swim before stocking up at the small (and expensive) supermarket and resuming our journey northwards along this stunning coast. We cross several rivers, all of which are a different shade of blue but all…
Waterfalls that go up and ice that flows down
Our NZ South Island road trip continues as we drive south from Wanaka to Queenstown and on to Te Anau, where we stay for a few days in a backpackers hostel. As a family, we are the oldest and youngest in the place as the vast majority are 20-something backpackers. It’s a fun atmosphere, with…
The Dickinson / Gee road trip
We meet up with our good friends Toby & Heather Gee and their 3 children at Mount Maunganui on New Years Eve. It’s really great to catch up with friends from home again and our children once again have other children to play with. Heather’s cousin Biddy is also there with her partner Ant and…
New Zealand – it’s home from home for Christmas!
We need to get to Bangkok for our flight to Sydney and then on to Aukland. After some some debate, we decide to travel up the west coast of Cambodia, crossing the border at Koh Kong. It’s a rather bitty journey, but made easier by doing the first leg – up to the Thai border…
A river runs through it
We’d briefly considered travelling down from Phnom Penh to Kampot by boat, but quickly discovered it largely involved going down through the centre of a huge lake, so nothing much to see, so we opt for the bus. The countryside on the way down is very flat, with huge expanses of paddy fields. The houses…
The Killing Fields
We leave Siem Reap after a few short days, having survived the temple visits and enjoyed the hotel & pool, and take a bus down to Phnom Penh. We’re only here for a day but First impressions are of a sophisticated modern city. Although 80% of vehicles are motorbikes, I’m struck by the quality of…
The temples of Angkor Wat
We take the short flight from Luang Prabang to Siem Reap – as the aircraft approaches it’s already clear that we’ve left the limestone karsts of Laos behind and this part of Cambodia at least is much flatter terrain. We take a tuk-tuk to our guesthouse the Golden Banana – there’s a delicious looking swimming…
The French Connection
The view up the Nam Khan river from our revised hotel choice After the adventures of Vang Vieng, we were intrigued to find out what Luang Prabang had in store, which is much more on the tourist trail and a ‘must see’ destination in Laos. We had booked a hotel with a pool for the…
Vang Vieng
Our minibus ride up from Vientiane to Vang Vieng is relatively uneventful – the countryside is fairly flat to start with; as it starts to get more hilly and interesting, unfortunately it also starts to get dark. On arrival, we make our way to the Champa Lao guesthouse on the edge of (this small) town…
Gateway to South East Asia
(NB – our camera has been sent back to the UK for repair 😢) From Kathmandu, our journey into South East Asia takes us via Kuala Lumpur. We only have one day here before we head to Laos – the airport is about an hour’s drive from the city centre, so our original plan was…
Farewell Nepal
So we head back to Kathmandu and say goodbye to the snowy mountains, at least for a few months. The children are happy to be back with their friends – ever since we arrived at Karma’s house we’ve been encouraging Gabriel to go and play football with Norbu and his friends but it’s only now…
Chilling in the mountains
We’ve seen Karma’s village of Syafru from several vantage points throughout our trek. However, it’s only when we arrive that we can appreciate its unique situation, perched along a sharp ridge with views on one side to the Ganesh Himal (elephant) range and the Langtang peaks on the other. Straight down the valley, we can…
Nepal trekking: Dal bhat power, 24 hour!
So first of all, it’s back into a 4WD for the drive from Kathmandu to Syabru Bensi before our trekking begins – this time it’s an old Mahindra rather than a Toyota; much more basic and fairly clapped out, but it gets the job done. After we turn off the main highway the drive gets…
Kathmandu: Buddhist Diwali!
Having navigated Kathmandu airport, we are met by our guide and host for the next month, Karma. Even though he comes strongly recommended by our great friends Heather & Toby, I’m a bit apprehensive meeting a stranger who I know we’re going to be spending most of our waking hours with for the next month.…
Reflections on India
It was inevitable that with us only having 4 weeks here and India being such a vast country that we were only ever going to be able to scratch the surface. That said, we’ve seen a great variety of landscapes and had plenty of memorable experiences – we’ve loved it. Fi came to India 30…
It’s time for tea… and a little medical tourism
From Masinagudi it’s a short taxi ride, up 36 hairpin bends to the British hill station of Coonoor in the Nilgiris hills. It’s technically in the same area of jungle as Masinagudi – just over the hill to the south – but at 1,850m altitude it feels like worlds away. There are no tigers here,…
We’re going on a tiger hunt, we’re gonna to catch a big one…
Journey distances are a lot shorter this time – we get a taxi to take us 100km south to ‘Wild Haven’ – a lodge in Masinagudi, on the edge of the Mudumalai National Park, again recommended by Carole & Norman at Casa Susegad in Goa. This stretch of ‘jungle’ covers 3 adjacent National Parks at…
Mysore – a city of many colours
Another night train pretty much due south down to Mysore – Gabriel has now officially progressed from monkey to gibbon in terms of swinging and jumping between the bunks. After deciding to come to Mysore, we discovered that we would be just in time to catch the finale of the 10-day Nasara festival, which is…
Boulders and temples
Our plans here in India keep changing. We were still planning to go down to Kerala, but Carole at Casa Susegad questioned why we were going so far, to beaches when we’re not really beach people and to the backwaters that the kids would find boring. It’s a very fair point, so we take her…
Time for a rest
Our original plan was to just visit Kerala. However, we (OK then, Fi) did a bit of digging and discovered that the beaches weren’t great at this time of year and on reflection, we felt that the backwaters on a boat would be great for the two of us alone, but that the children would…
Steamed up glasses and poached bottoms
We are flying to India via Dubai, so decided to stay a couple of nights there. Needless to say, it’s immediately obvious that we’re going from one extreme to the other! I pay a vist to the loo in the airport, and not only am I struck by all the gleaming tiles and the fact that…
Reflections on Ethiopia
Of course we have strong emotional connections to Ethiopia and our time here 3.5 years ago was such a positive experience for us all. But this time we don’t have the emotional intensity of an adoption overwhelming our trip, so perhaps we can be a little more objective… Hard, hard work in the fields The…
Monasteries and mountains
(Be warned, this is a bit of a long one…) Having seen a fair bit of the south of the country, with its beautiful countryside and fascinating cultures, it’s now time to embark on an 8-day tour of the north, the more classic ‘historical’ tourist route (after a very brief 4 days in Addis to…
Return to Addis
Crossing the river after the rain So, after our visits to the various tribes, we start our long journey back to Addis. One thing that struck us in what was often pretty inhospitable landscape in South Omo was how quickly things can change. We crossed a bone dry riverbed one morning – we commented on…
The tribes of South Omo
Before we arrived at Arba Minch we visited a Dorze village, the first of several local communities we would visit over the next few days. This visit set the tone for what we would become accustomed to – hire a local guide for 600 Birr (about £18), which includes an entrance fee into the village.…
Donkeys, Toyotas & Tuk-tuks
The drive down to & from Mizan Tafari was absolutely stunning. This part of the country is absolutely beautiful and so far removed from the Live Aid images of famine. It is lush, green and verdant, with teff, sorghum, maize, coffee & tea, plus bananas, mangos, papayas & avocados all growing in abundance. Snacks were…
Take a chance on me…
Gabriel & his new buddy, Bek The car arrived to collect us on time – however, apparently our driver guide had been involved in an accident and was still assisting the police with with their enquiries. As a result we ended op with separate driver (Amdi) and guide (Bek). This turned out to be the…
Settling into Addis
Our first few days have been spent in and around Addis, reacquainting ourselves with the patience required to get anything done here. The traffic seems worse than ever, taxi prices have more than doubled and there are buildings springing up everywhere. There’s still that all-pervading Addis aroma of injerera & shiro, mixed with petrol fumes…
And breathe…
…As we settled into our Quantas seats, the children each having their own choice of films on the in flight entertainment system. It felt like the for last couple of weeks we’d been sprinting to get everything done before the taxi came to collect us from Nick & Nancy’s. It went right down to the…
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Five Go Round The World 