TravelStream™ news feed for member sfrtw on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/sfrtw en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 13 May 2008 02:36:36 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1208075160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1208075160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1208075160/tpod.html Tue, 13 May 2008 02:36:36 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Kaneohe, Hawaii, United States

We finally reached Hawaii our last stop on this trip!  We spent a lot of time just relaxing, hanging out with my family, eating out & then going to the gym and doing some touristy sightseeing as well.Frank's favorite was of course the kiteboarding at nearby Kailua Beach.  One of the top kiteboarding spots in Hawaii and only 20 minutes from my parents place!  There aren't as many kiteboarders at Kailua Beach compared to Cabarete, but on weekends the beach can still get fairly crowded with windsurfers, kayakers and swimmers all sharing the beach.  Anyway, the kiteboard community at Kailua Beach is pretty cool and friendly.  Frank actually bought his board from one of the locals and got all kinds of tips from fellow kiteboarders on the local conditions and regulations and also some good tips on jumping.  When we left after three weeks he felt pretty much like one of the local kiteboarders and was very sad to go.We also tried kayaking at Kailua Beach which was cool, as there are a couple of islands nearby you can kayak to.  Most of the islands are fenced off to protect nesting sea birds, but you can still walk along the perimeter of the island.  Another time we rented a paddlesurf board, which is like a surf board, but you stand on it and paddle yourself around. That was actually a lot tougher than it looks!  Most of the time we spent falling off the board into the water.  The best part of Kailua Beach aside from the nice breezy weather and beautiful turquoise waters is that almost always you will see sea turtles swimming around near the shore. We'd be swimming and several feet away, we see a turtle sticking his head out of the water as he comes up for air.  What's funny is that couple times we saw a woman swimming with her 2 dogs, one being towed on a boogie board.  The dog would bark non-stop as he was riding along, and the woman said the dog thought he could call the turtles! We did a little bit of sightseeing while we were there -- we went up Diamond Head, Pali Lookout, snorkeled Hanauma Bay, and drove around the North Shore, all the way to Kaena Point where the road ends (Frank's favorite spot on the island).  I also got to really enjoy time with my parents and eat a lot of great local food -- fried rice, smoked pork, kalua pig, ramen , malasadas , kalbi , dim sum, mochiko chicken etc, etc...  Thanks Mom & Dad!!!!  Frank was also happy to have fresh pineapple and watermelon, and ice cream pretty much every night.  We'll definitely need to go on a diet when we return back to Seattle!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1207902300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1207902300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1207902300/tpod.html Tue, 06 May 2008 23:26:43 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Las Vegas, Nevada, United States

We booked a flight to Las Vegas for the weekend to celebrate Nick's (Shari's brother-in-law) birthday. Happy Birthday Nick!  It was a double celebration for also graduating from college.  Congratulations too Nick!Friends and family from Hawaii, California, and Washington drove or flew in for the celebration. The big bash was held at the Rio hotel for their fabulous Carnaval buffet. It seemed like you could walk a mile to get from one end of the buffet to the other!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206692580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206692580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206692580/tpod.html Sat, 03 May 2008 18:06:06 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Seattle, United States

This is just a quick update. Unfortunately we needed to get back to Seattle to work on Shari's townhouse problem.  We spent a couple weeks hiring an engineer to do some investigating and also get contractors to bid on the repairs.  Not fun stuff but we had to take care of it, it couldn't wait any longer.   One nice thing about getting back to Seattle earlier is that I caught the last weekend of snowboarding at Mount Baker.  It was great as my friend Volker from Germany was in town, and we also met up with another friend Florian from Vancouver, B.C.  The 3 of us had a blast!   There was still 5 meters of snow at the base--- Woohoo!  I also got a kite off of eBay and can't wait to try it out in Hawaii!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206078240/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206078240/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206078240/tpod.html Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:15:32 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Quito, Ecuador

Since 94% of Ecuadorians are Catholic, Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is very important with many activities during the entire week from Palm Sunday to Easter.  The highlight of the week is the Good Friday Procession, in which seemingly thousands of people participate.  The procession in Quito is a whole-day event, and starts at Plaza San Francisco in the morning.  The participants march throughout the streets of the Centro Histórico (Old City), and finish back at the Plaza San Francisco in the late afternoon. We were lucky to eat at a couple of great restaurants in La Mariscal earlier in the week, and got more information about the procession.  The owner of the restaurant Big Sur in La Mariscal told us to go to Plaza San Francisco at 7:30am to secure a good spot to take pictures of the procession, and the owner of Cafeto also gave us some brochures about Semana Santa.  Both restaurants had awesome food and the owners were so helpful in getting us some information on the festivities! 7:30am was a bit too early for us on Friday, but expecting a big crowd we made it to the plaza around 9:30am and found a great spot right at the corner of Bolivar and Cuenca.  When the procession actually started around 11am the plaza was jam packed.  We could hardly move an inch!  It was absolutely nuts as people from behind pushed like crazy trying to get closer while the police blocked off the street to create room for the procession.   With mainly locals around us, it was interesting to see how moved the people where when the procession passed us. The procession had two major parts. The first wave of participants, called cucuruchos, wore purple robes with matching tall purple pointy hats.  It is hard to resist the comparison with the KKK, however besides the costumes there seems to be no connection between the two. Mixed with the cucurochos were some purple veiled women, called veronicas.  The Semana Santa brochure said that each year there are about 800 cucurochos and 150 veronicas in the procession.  Also in the procession were people dressed in white robes wearing a crown of thorns, carrying unbelievable huge wooden crosses on their backs through the streets, representing Jesus.  Sometimes they were surrounded by participants dressed as roman soldiers.  Others had a huge log on their back, with their arms tied to the log.  Some other people wore heavy chains on their feet as they walked bare-foot in the streets.   We saw some people whipping themselves over and over again while they were walking.  We saw their backs swollen red from the beating, and some were even bleeding a bit.  We even saw one guy with barbed wire wrapped around his body also bleeding. Check out a video of the procession here. An hour later after the purple participants left Plaza San Francisco, three huge statues were carried on shrines by people through the streets. The statues were the Virgin Mary, Jesus and San Francisco (Saint Francis).  The police surrounded the statues as they passed through the street, to protect them from the crowds of people that tried to get close to them.    Near the end of the procession, we saw the participants still carrying the crosses. They could hardly walk and took frequent breaks, with other people pouring water on their heads to cool them off.   Once in awhile we saw someone who could no longer carry the cross and other people had to step in.    Then it started to rain, and masses of people still followed the statues packed tightly together in the streets. It was a pretty solemn and impressive event to observe.               
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1200903900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1200903900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1200903900/tpod.html Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:34:06 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Picton, New Zealand

We took the scenic route to Picton, driving along Queen Charlotte Drive.   The part from Havelock had scenic views of the Marlborough Sounds from time to time.  There were also lots of views of logged mountains, which wasn't so nice.  We decided not to go up to do part of the Queen Charlotte Walking Track as we didn't have much time (our ferry reservations were for the day), so we just headed on to Picton. Picton was a little more developed than Frank remembered from his NZ trip 12 years ago. However the quirky backpacker place he stayed at was still there, still looking the same.  We basically didn't do too much in Picton.  Did some blog catching up and also drove up to a small lookout northeast of town with great views of the Queen Charlotte Sound (except for the ugly lumber yard in part of the sound).  We cooked dinner up at the lookout and killed some time till 10pm as we were going to head down to the ferry terminal to stay there the night.   Lots of locals walked up to this lookout.   A German guy came up and chatted with Frank for an hour or so.  He left Germany 30+ years ago to live in NZ.   It was nice that he shared some tips and 'must sees' for the North Island.  At 10pm we headed to the Picton ferry terminal to spend the night in the parking lot as we had to check in by 4:45am the next morning.   It was great that the ferry office told us we could park overnight there after 10pm, as we were a little worried we would oversleep and miss the ferry!  We weren't the first ones into the lot either at a little past 10pm - there were quite a few campervans already parked there.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1200126360/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1200126360/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1200126360/tpod.html Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:23:41 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Glenorchy, New Zealand

Since many of the LOR scenes were filmed around Queenstown, we thought why don't we do a LOR tour?  We chose Dart Stables' Ride of the Rings in Glenorchy, which said in their brochure "Be transported into Middle Earth astride your own steed!"  I've only ridden a horse once, when I was 12 or something, and Frank rode one 3 times, so this ride sounded nice & easy for beginner riders, yet scenic. What was cool was that our driver was an Uruk-hai in one of the LOR films.   Apparently they paid Uruk-hais $150NZ to run up and down the hills in a sweltering bodysuit of plastic and neoprene, but all our driver ended up doing was playing a dead Uruk-hai lying on a beach.  Some of the horses at Dart Stables were also used in the movie, and the driver said that couple of them seemed to have picked up quite an attitude after the filming was done! It's cool that many of the local guides around the area have played a part in the LOR fims.  The info center back in Queenstown said that pretty much everyone in town had some part in the entire LOR project.  Many of the tour companies used to produce the film now do tours like Ride of the Rings, which is great for the local economy.  The weather was not cooperating that day and it was quite gusty out there.   One of the guides thought it might be a little risky to go out as the horses are usually a little more nervous in gusty weather.  But they decided to go for it anyway and doubled up on the group size.   We had 9 people in our group (usually 4-5) with 2 guides to keep an eye out on us.   The guides assigned us each a horse.  I got Merlin, who I was told was gentle and had nothing to worry about.  Frank was assigned Zodiac, who we later found out had a bit of an attitude.  We left Paradise and headed into the woods to seek some shelter from the winds.  I found out Merlin, like many of the other horses in our group, loved to eat so I had to get used to pulling up on his reins to get him to move on.  Merlin also liked to mess with the tail of the horse in front of him, which caused some friction between them at times.   Frank ended up having to discipline Zodiac for the first quarter of the ride to show him who was boss!We got to 3 areas where LOR scenes were shot - Lothlorien, Amon Hen and the area used for Isengard.  They also showed us some scene from Narnia, and showed us another place where they will be shooting the upcoming Wolverine movie.  The scenery was absolute spectacular.  The only thing was it was a little difficult to hear the guide given how windy it was!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1194534540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1194534540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1194534540/tpod.html Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:57:38 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Addo, South Africa

More pics hereWe decided to self-drive Addo Elephant Park with our little Chico.  Opening hours weren't so good at Addo -- 7am-7pm!  So Frank couldn't really take good photos at sunrise like we did in Kruger, which opened at 4:30am.   The sun was already out in full force by 7am with the light already too harsh for good photography... according to Frank. Good thing was that Addo wasn't as hot as Kruger.   There always seemed to be a cool breeze.  Another plus is that they are in a malaria free part of S.A.  We saw lots of elephants and tons more warthogs.  We thought they should call the park, "Addo Warthog Park" instead as there were like mosquitoes there.   Driving back from Addo, we did a little drive through Port Elizabeth.  Although the beach area where we stayed at had some nice resorts, in the central area we saw only black people.  No white people at all, which was kinda strange.  Our guidebook said that all the whites migrated to the suburbs a long time ago.  We didn't spend much time in PE, not too much to see, so we headed straight along the N2 highway to our next stop, Jeffreys Bay.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206376020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206376020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206376020/tpod.html Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:31:15 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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San Francisco, United States

We left our Quito hotel at an ungodly 4am in the morning to catch our 6:25am flight to Miami.  After we got to the airport, our flight was then delayed ~4 hours, ARRGH!  No surprise, we also ended up missing our connecting flight from Miami to Los Angeles, ARRGH!  However, we were relieved that AA got us onto another flight, directly to San Francisco, whew!  After arriving in San Francisco at midnight, we discovered that AA lost our luggage, ARRGH!  After flying around the world for 5 months on at least 20 flight segments, how ironic that we finally lose our luggage when we return to the USA!  Go figure!We're very sad to end the international portion of our trip.  In fact, Frank is still in denial.  But we couldn't extend our trip any more as I had some pressing home owner issues to deal with.  So we had to return to Seattle at least for a few days to deal with the real world, and to especially give my sister a break from taking care of my home problems.   Thanks Midi!  And then we will be continuing on to Hawaii , to recover from our vacation.So why did we fly into San Francisco instead of Seattle?  Well, we needed to pick up Frank's car and remaining stuff that has been in storage the last few years.  Amazingly his trusty Honda Civic fired up OK after not being driven for several months.  If we had more time, we hoped to drive the long way to Seattle and stop by several national parks along the way.  Guess the national parks will need to be in a future trip (and blog!).  We need to make it from San Francisco to Seattle in less than 3 days to make our appointment on Friday, so there is no time to do much sightseeing!The drive was a blur and not very exciting,  but here's a short recap:Tues: Picked up Frank's car, went to storage, took a car load to the dump, got car checked out/oil change, met with a friend in SF while waiting for luggage.  Luggage was finally delivered to the hotel at dinnertime, and we left SF at 7pm. Stayed overnight in Ukiah, CA.Wed:  Frank drove a whopping 500 miles today.  It was pouring rain so we only caught a glimpse of the Redwood giants and the southern Oregon coast.  I started to get really sick and slept the entire drive.  We made it to Eugene for the night.Thurs: I was still sick, and we drove straight up I-5, arriving in Seattle at 3:30pm!  First stop was a doctor's office where I found out I had Type A influenza.   Yuck!  We made it back in time for our appointment, though not in the greatest shape.  We still haven't quite adjusted to being in the USA, and Frank's still in denial on being back.  We hope to get readjusted in Hawaii soon!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206203100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206203100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1206203100/tpod.html Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:30:54 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Otavalo, Ecuador

We booked another tour to see the Otavalo Market on Saturday, being a little too lazy to get up there by local bus transport.  We booked it with the same travel agency as the Cotopaxi tour, and surprise surprise, we got Carlos as our guide again.  However there was no mention of UFOs on the tour this time! The Otavalo Market is Ecuador's most famous market, with vendors selling a wide variety of goods, from produce, animals, crafts, textiles, and several food stalls.  By the time we got there in the late morning, it looked like the traditional, local part of the market was no longer happening.  We saw goods produced for sale for tourists.  We saw lots of panama hats, alpaca clothing, woven goods and your usual other touristy knick-knacks and T-shirts.  We were in the middle of buying a really nice wool jacket, when it started to rain. It then started pouring down pretty hard and we got soaked.  We left the market and visited a couple other places - Laguna Cuicocha and some window shopping for leather goods in Cotocachi. All in all that day wasn´t very exciting and we got drenched.  The following day was our last full day in Ecuador, and last day before coming back to the US!  The morning was actually nice and sunny, so we headed up to the Teleferico and caught the cable car up to the summit of Cruz Loma.  The cable car ride is quite steep- it rises from 2950m (9678ft) to 4050m (13287ft)!  The visibility was great and the view was spectacular from the top.  But it was quite tough to get around, I really had to take it easy and walk slow as the altitude really got to me.  You can also rent horses up there to get around, but as it was quite windy and chilly, we opted to grab some hot cocoa and apple pie and enjoy the view from a sheltered comfortable spot.  It was a nice way to end our trip in Ecuador. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1205557920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1205557920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/sfrtw/sfrtw2007/1205557920/tpod.html Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:19:36 -0400 Not Another Rainy Winter in Seattle: RTW From Berlin to Honolulu, and a few places in between

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Puerto Ayora, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador

Today was our last day on the Galápagos Islands, very sad!  We left the Galápagos Voyager at 7am, and transferred to the airport on Baltra Island with just a quick stop at the Twin Craters on Santa Cruz Island.  Here it was time to say goodbye to our guide and check into our flight to Quito.  Unfortunately the airport in Guayaquil was closed, so our flight was delayed.   We were pretty wiped out and felt funny, like we were land-sick, as our bodies missed the rocking motion of the boat.  Two hours later, we finally left Baltra and flew back to Quito.   We were happy that it wasn't as cold as the week before...but when we arrived in the Old City it was raining quite hard. Yuck.  The hotel room was pretty icy cold too, double yuck. The next day we just did some errands.  We had a whole bag of laundry but since it was Sunday, no laundry service was open anywhere!  We walked around the city for a bit carrying the big bag asking people on the street if they knew of a laundry place that was open.  Guess when 94% of the population is Catholic, there is no laundry service on Sundays! We also had to look for some warm clothing since we are going to Cotopaxi on Monday.  The front desk at our hotel told us to go to an area just up Chile Street from the Presidential Palace.   There he said we would find clothing BBB: Bueno-Bonito-Barato (good, nice & cheap).  We managed to find fleece jackets really cheap, along with a hat & some gloves.   We were super happy to get some warm clothes. Frank was also long due for a haircuit, and he got one where the locals go. It was the fastest and cheapest ($1) haircut he ever got. Many streets in the Old City were closed to vehicle traffic today which was really nice.   There were lots of people coming and going to churches, and also there were performances going on in various plazas around the Old City.  We caught part of a dance performance by a group from Bolivia in the Palacio Arzobispal and also some theatre acts in front of the Presidential palace. 
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