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Road Trip: The Grand Canyon and Glen Canyon
This post is the first part of a two month road trip I took around The States. September 2017 I got the family discount, even though I wasn’t exactly family. Ross and I had known each other since we were ten, having moved to Big Bear the same year, and given each other shit for our entire acquaintance…so in a way we were absolutely family. I hadn’t been to the Grand Canyon since I was three and didn’t have the keenest memory of the experience. In fact, I remembered absolutely nothing other than a story mum told about how I nearly gave her a heart attack by climbing up the…
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Te Araroa: Final Forests
17.03.2020 Day 141 (32km) If my pace matched the time estimate in the trail notes, I would arrive at the hut at 9pm. There was nothing appealing about arriving that late. Not to mention the temperatures had been dropping over the last week or so and I was not keen to lose the use of my hands to the cold, which was a common occurrence on the TA. After leaving Te Anau I planned to push several big days in a row, cause to be honest I’m over tenting. It’s gotten colder and I don’t want to deal with a wet tent in the mornings anymore. However, in order to…
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The Red Center
The time for goodbyes had arrived: Canadian Sarah stayed in Townsville to continue her journey along the east coast and American Sarah decided to end her trip in Cloncurry, the quaint Outback town she had called home before joining us. The sugarcane fields and banana plantations gave way to scraggly trees and dry glasses. It wasn’t entirely what I had expected; then again, we were only in the outskirts of the Outback. We stopped for food or petrol, and a herd of cattle crossing the highway, egged on by three cowboys on horseback. Otherwise we drove on an endless highway that melted away in a mirage to merge with the…
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Daintree
Serendipity reunited us with Canadian Sarah and after some unexpected plan changes, we invited her to tag along as we traveled north of Cairns. Van life with two was comfortable, with three it was a bit of a squeeze, and it still baffles me that we accomplished it with four. To be honest, there may have been a bit of monkey business…like hiding one person in the back of Hagrid while we drove. The road from Cairns to Port Douglass was said to be one of the most dangerous in Australia. This was due purely to the fact that people can be shit drivers. The way was curvy, hugging the…
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Hot Showers in Hobart
Free hot showers! That was the goal and really all that mattered as we sped towards Hobart. After leaving our campsite we had attempted a trip to Remarkable Cave only to discover the road was closed for construction. Feeling remarkably disappointed we turned our sights to Hobart where hot showers, friends, hot showers, cider, hot showers, and food awaited us. Oh, did I mention the free hot showers? Hobart reminded me a bit of a smaller Seattle: a hilly port town, with light fog and a crisp bite to the air. I’m not really a city person and neither is Pieter so after the hot showers (don’t worry I’m done…
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Drives, Bays, and Blowholes
Day three was meant to be an early morning but turned into a relaxed one. Rain clouds still haunted the skies and although we had wanted to see the Bay of Fires at sunrise, there would have been nothing to see but grey. The rocks were stained burnt orange, a complimentary contrast to the white sands and crystal-blue waters. They stretched along the coast, adding a splash of color and life to the landscape. A calf had gotten out of its pen and was wandering around near the visitor car park. Pieter wanted to pet it, but it was skittish and ran off before he got too close. Light raindrops…
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First Taste of Tassie
I’m sitting in a bookstore coffee shop that reminds me of Babi’s house. The cooking section to my right and has familiar titles like Poly Unsaturated Cooking, A Wizz in the Kitchen, and Cooking for Every Occasion. We have been in Tassie for two days now and are taking the morning off to catch up on things, like blogs. We took the Spirit of Tassie, bringing Pieter’s car and choosing the free recliner over a private cabin with beds. The voyage was a bit rocky but the motion sickness pills and stress from the previous week were inducement enough to sleep through the night. As of late I had been…
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The Great Ocean Road
It was my first time driving on the opposite side of the road and to be honest I had been avoiding it for some time. Whenever the opportunity had presented itself, I had respectfully declined. I love driving, it was just the idea of driving someone else’s car, and on a side of the road that was foreign to me. But the time had finally come to face my fears. Other than constantly hitting the wipers instead of the indicators, it all came quite naturally. The side mirrors were the biggest help, because it was difficult to get your brain to understand the car’s position. By the time I picked…
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Wilson’s Promontory
The weekend had finally arrived; we had been planning it for over a month and I was eager to get on the road and back out in nature. The last time all four of us had been together was during the Lost City Trek in Colombia. Even back then we had known our paths would cross again in Melbourne, and what better way to celebrate than with a camping trip at Wilson’s Prom? Just a little back story: I met Lucy and Brian on the San Blas sailing trip from Panama to Colombia. Then we decided to do La Ciudad Perdida together, which is where we met Holly, who was…
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Glamping in Bolivia
It’s been a while since my last Throwback Thursday post, so I felt like one was in order. February 2014 We took the new road, not the Death Road, to get down to Coroico. The way was smooth, though riddled with twists and turns. My legs were smashed against the seat in front of me, where an older woman wearing traditional clothing sat with a toddler on her lap. She wore a brown bowler hat, a red silk skirt, and a lacy top concealed by a black shall she had draped over her shoulders. Every possible space on the minibus was occupied. Diego, Erica and I had claim over the…
Insights and Stories Through the Eyes of a Wanderer
