September 12, 2009 – Day 261 – Tibet

Woke up smelling like a smoked yak. Compliments of the incompetent woman who can only seem to produce smoke instead of fire and her endless piles of unwashed yak scented blankets. Every time the fire would start to get going she would douse it with a health heep of sheep shit until we finally had to tell her to stop and just let it be. It was better to be cold than to die of smoke inhalation.

Everest in the Morning, Tibet

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August 8, 2009 – Day 226 – Leshan, China

It’s surprising how people behave in the midst of one of the most grand and sacred Buddhist sites in the world. I mean, all the kicking and shoving, the elbowing, the near stampeding conditions after waiting in line for 2 hours before getting to go down the rather perilous carved stone stairs, stairs that are perilous on a day when you descend them alone, not to mention having 200 pushing, shoving, kicking, elbowing Chinese people at your back. It is not the most serene, peaceful feeling that one would expect from visiting such an important Buddhist site. Strange thing, indeed.

The stone Budda of Leshan

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June 15 2009 -  Day 172 – Istanbul, Turkey

Somehow we managed to get ourselves into another 16 hours of traveling and after a long, hot search for lodging we broke down and took the cheapest place we found.

Down by the sea

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Day 67: Paraty, Brazil

Maybe it was jealousy as our sweet 3rd story pad, but our bunkmates at Botafogo were the worse we´ve ever had–ever worse than that guy with his crazy night noises in Uvita, Costa Rica! They were all up at 5:45am, talking really loud and slamming doors and opening the window to let in bright sunlight that looked more like midday than early morning. One of them had dragged the mattress of the bed (bottom bunk, sucker!) to try to get more air from the fan but had left the room and was sleeping on the couch outside the room when we left. What the hell?! Read the rest of this entry »

Day 64: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Morning bus back to Rio left us outside in the sweltering 96 degree heat melting beneath our backpacks as we tried to find a cheap hostel. Despite the fact that we left Rio for almost a week to escape Carnival prices, we were hard pressed to find a hostel that had gone back to its usual prices. Of course, since we´re stubborn and tend to make things harder than they need to be, we refused to get a taxi and walked about for 3 hours to find a good hostel before taking the metro from Copacabana neighborhood into Botafogo, a quiet upper-middle class neighborhood near a small beach and huge shopping mall. Read the rest of this entry »

Day 48: La Fortuna, Costa Rica

We began the morning with a decent (free–woohoo!) pancake breakfast at the Tranquilo Backpackers Hostel where we spent the night before setting out on foot to find the bus station. After our token ritual of getting lost, refusing to ask for directions, get lost some more, and eventually, by some twist of events (walking in circles?), we found our station and hopped the next bus to La Fortuna. Read the rest of this entry »

Day 44: Dominical, Costa Rica

Today wouldn´t have been a Saben-birthday without some grumbling from the old man. He always hates his birthday even when he says he doesn´t. Lin thinks is just him getting more senile as the years go by. Read the rest of this entry »

Day 34: San Jose, Costa Rica

5:30am and this city comes to life. But not just any life. Think of the most noisy, obnoxious sounds you can imagine, multiply that by 80 and you have an idea of just how “lively“ San Jose gets this early in the morning. Incessant, unnecessary horn honking (it´s a red light–what do you want!?), brakes that sqeal so loudly they must have worn our the pads years ago, and the largest collection of muffler-free vehicles in the whole world all come together at the magic hour, 5:30AM, to sound off the start of the day in a truly monstrous cacophany. Read the rest of this entry »

Day 21: Bus from Flores, Guatemala to San Salvador, El Salvador

Bought a ticket yesterday for today’s long bus ride at the same tour agency that we got our Tikal transportation from. We paid $30 each and made sure to ask (three times) that it would be a direct bus on a Pullman (the big “Greyhound” type, not the reconditioned old school bus, aka “Chicken bus”). However, like most things, the 9 hour “direct” bus turned into a 12 hour stop-every-quarter-mile-or-so-to-pick-up-more-passengers-than- there-are-seats ride. Read the rest of this entry »

Day 19: Flores, Guatemala

After a pretty awful, smelly bus ride we pulled into Santa Elena… at six in the morning… in the rain. Funny enough but the local market was already bustling, rain be damned! As soon as we got off the bus we were accosted by the usual hoard of yelling taxi drivers. We grabbed the first one and headed across the causeway into Flores (an island town in the middle of a lake). Read the rest of this entry »