The Odyssey of Rusty and Kelsi

New House!

2010-07-03T00:46:00.001-07:00

OK, so we actually bought and already moved into our new house June 30th, which isn't the one pictured in our last post, but it's still in Suncrest. We have been terrible at blogging since we got back to "normal" life, although we're still having too much fun. We meant to post our ATSkiing excursion we did a couple weeks ago. It cracked us up skiing so late in June, so it was worth the picture. More pictures to come . . . some day

Through the Holiday Season

2010-02-09T11:54:00.000-08:00

We've been up to a lot of things in the last couple of months, but we realized the other day that we haven't posted anything other than a coupleo of recipes for a while. Here are a few of our goings on:

OFFER ON A HOME. We recently made an offer on a home in Suncrest (on the back side of Salt Lake's point of the mountain and above the city of Draper). The home is a cute three bedroom, with a little room to grow into in an unfinished basement. We love the neighborhood and location, which is set amid endless possibilities for backcountry skiing, hiking and mountain biking. It's a short sale, though, so who knows when and if we'll get it. In the mean time, we are renting some basement space in West Jordan from Kelsi's cousin Louise and Danny McCleve. We thoroughly enjoy staying with them and their three children.

Our Dream Home, maybe . . .

GETAWAY TO PARK CITY. In November, we had a really good time taking our Ryan and Julie's kids to Heber (near park city) for the weekend. We stayed in a timeshare with a swimming pool and played all kinds of water games.

THANKSGIVING was delicious with Rusty's parents in Brigham City.

JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Motab Christmas Concerts, helping out with Kelsi's sister, Emily, Holiday Party for nephews and neices, visiting with friends in town for the holidays, Skiing at Brighton for quarter price with the holiday food drive, and the births of Zenock Diehl, Lucas Diehl and Sophia Hansen.

CHRISTMAS. We split our time between Kelsi's family in Salt Lake City and Rusty's family in Brigham and Logan. It was a delight to spend the holidays with family after missing last Christmas.

SKIING AND SNOWBOARDING at Brighton and Alta... BTW, Alta is free everyday from 3 to 430 pm... not bad! Rusty claims that the picture below was of him, but Kelsi just doesn't remember taking it...

NEW YEARS get together in Brigham City with Rusty's friends.

SINGING. Rusty and Matt Toyn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" in Matt 's ward. Rusty's brother, Kevin accompanied.

TRIP TO SAINT GEORGE with Kelsi's father to see a home that Kelsi's dad is interested in buying.

MEDICAL ASSISTING. Kelsi decided to expand her education in the medical field by getting a certificate in medical assisting from salt lake community college.

CIVIL AIR PATROL. Rusty was offered the opportunity to be an assistant legal officer with the US Air Force Civilian Auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol "CAP." CAP is a voluntary orgznization funded by the USAF with the mandate of assisting with surveillance and recon for homeland security and federal anti narcotics programs. CAP requires Rusty to wear a USAF uniform and comply with miltary courtesy, but as a civilian volunteer, he won't be subject to military laws or court martial. He is excited at the prospect of getting involved in such an exciting organization!

UTAH CLIMBING CLUB: Rusty joined a mountaineering and climbing club that goes on monthly climbs and camping trips around the western US. He just went ice climbing to Maple Canyon, near Fairview, UT yesterday.

OTHER LATEST: We scored a couple Sundance Film Fesitival tickets from Kelsi's friend from her past job in Park City, Tracey, and got to see a documentary about Cambodia's Khmer Rouge killings. It was an interesting film. Also, Kelsi can finally run again after nearly 4 months of being off her normal athletic enjoyment from an ankle injury in October. She also enjoyed a day snowboarding with her Aunt Bev and family along with her cousin, Louise. Kelsi's sister delivered her adorable baby, Lucian Heward, last week. It's quite the year for babies!

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

2009-11-18T17:12:00.000-08:00

Louise (Kelsi's cousin who we're living with and one of Kelsi's best friends) and Kelsi made the BEST homemade chicken noodle soup tonight including noodles from scratch! Mmmm!

It brought back memories from when Kelsi & Louise's grandma used to make homemade noodles when they were little girls. The latest blog posts seem to be the gourmet cooking odyssey (not necessarily after Julie & Julia, but we want to watch that movie when we get a chance).

Here's the link to the soup recipe: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1739,150185-255198,00.html

And the noodles: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1627,146191-251199,00.html

Back to "Normal Life"

2009-10-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, but we've been busy since the last post. In mid September we ran the Brigham City, UT Peach Days 10K where Kelsi's pace was 1 min/mile faster than the half marathon the week prior and faster than the last time she did it a couple years ago. Yeah! (Rusty runs with Kelsi, but would have no problem running faster!) Here we are with Rusty's family after the race watching the parade.

All of Rusty's family were up in Brigham City (where Rusty's parents live) for the Peach Days weekend, so we took our niece and nephew, Hannah and Ethan, fishing in a nearby creek and caught this fish:

The kids were having a great time until Hannah's flip flop came off her foot and was swept downstream. She was SO upset! Her Aunt Alice had just given her 4-5 new pairs of shoes for school JUST before we went fishing, so Kelsi said something like the following to Hannah: Well, think of all the beautiful new shoes you just got. And Hannah started whailing, but I LOVE these shoes! They're so beautiful! And I want THESE ones! It was kind of hilarious to the adults. But luckily the creek turned into a pond just a short ways down and Rusty and Nate (Hannah's dad) were able to retrieve the flip flop. So everything ended up OK - though Ethan also tripped in the creek and got upset from being soaked. In the end, they decided that they weren't interested in fishing again until they are bigger. "Maybe in 2 or 5 years."

A couple weeks later we went to St. George with Rusty's friend, Aaron, and his girlfriend, Jessica, where we went rock climbing then to Zions for some spectacular canyoneering. We had to rappel down 5 or so big drops. The last one was about 90 feet with about 80 feet just free hanging. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures since none of us had a waterproof camera and we had full submersed swims through pools of water at times.

A couple weeks after going to Saint George, we took our FJ on the Canyonlands White Rim trail. We should have also taken our mountain bikes as EVERYONE else on the trail was biking it. We did take a rapelling rope though and backed our FJ up to a drop about 60 feet, put the emergency brake on, then tied the rope to the hitch and did the drop which went to a place you could walk back. Rusty ascended back up the rope once using prusik knots with two ropes to inch his way back up by stepping on one then sliding the other up from his waist. Then he would put weight on the top rope and slide the bottom rope up and repeat. We also enjoyed sharing our rope with the camp next to us as one of the guys who'd never rappelled before gave it a go on our rigged up contraption. That was a lot of fun.

Here's a couple pictures along the trail:
Sheer drop off the the left of us:

The following picture is of Musselman Arch about a quarter of a way into the trail. You can walk across it, though it's quite narrow and a death drop if you tripped. I think we've heard insane stories of people riding their mountain bikes across the arch, though, we think it's officially not allowed. That's not something we would do! Even walking across it gives Kelsi the eeby jeebies! We decided to post a picture from almost exactly two years ago when we did this trail with Rusty's friends, Russell and Emily, since we could both be in that picture:

The following is Rusty's rigged up rappel off the back of our FJ:

Since the trend of this blog seems to be reporting every other weekend, two weeks after the Canyonlands trip, we enjoyed Halloween by getting our first dental check-up in a year and a half by Rusty's friend, Benji, in Brigham City (no cavities for either of us!) followed by a family Halloween party where we dressed up as a cowboy and indian:

(Rusty's poncho was from our trip to Peru and Kelsi's outfit was from her trip to Sulawesi, Indonesia, with her friends, Sharon and Natalie). Picture from that trip:

We also had to post a picture of Kelsi's outfits from Papua, Indonesia (same trip with Sharon and Natalie) that were worn very well this year by Kelsi's cousin, Louise and husband, Danny:

Picture in Papua last year:

Of course our nieces & nephews & friends kids were also all adorable, but we'll let you look at their blogs & facebook pictures. A couple of our favorites that we saw were a 3 year old ghostbuster and a 3 year old fairy including matching shoes:

Louise's daughter, Aaliyah

Nephew, Isaak

As far as "normal life" goes, Rusty's still working for the law firm and Kelsi's still looking for a job! Crazy market!

Utah!

2009-09-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

We started off in Brigham City for Rusty's brother, Kevin's, wedding before Rusty took off to Denver for a couple weeks to take care of a few last things with his former business.

Kelsi has been trying to find a job in this crazy economy and inbetween that, has been dedicating time to getting back in shape. She recently took her nephew, Andrew, mountain biking on the Wasatch Crest Trail & hiking Mt. Timp, ran a half marathon with her cousins Lillian & Eliza, then biked the Wasatch Crest Trail again with Rusty when he got back home from Denver. Hopefully this weekend's 10K in Brigham City for Peach Days will be a breeze. Much inspiration on returning to health has been from two of Kelsi's cousins who lost 60 lbs and 100 lbs over the past year! What amazing accomplishments and great inspirations!

Sunrise view at Mt. Timp:

Kelsi's 14 year old nephew, Andrew, on Mt. Timp the day after we mountain biked 24 miles:

Kelsi's Half Marathon in Springville with Eliza and Lil:

Rusty lengthened his name officially to Rustin Paul Diehl, Esquire, and had great fortune sliding right back into work as a lawyer for an estate planning law firm he clerked for before we left.

Kelsi has only received rejections from job applications. We heard it was a tough market while we were gone and it's interesting experiencing it. We're lucky Rusty had better success!

Other than that, we've enjoyed visiting with friends and family that we only were able to keep up with cyberly for the past year.

How to Pack a Year in One Bag...

2009-08-05T08:42:00.000-07:00

(Pictures Posted Below)
We keep getting requests to explain how we packed for our trip. Ideally, you want all of your luggage to be under 15 pounds total. This way when you arrive at your destination, you can comfortably carry it around on your back and don't need to immediately (and desperately) look for a place to stash your sweaty, heavy burden. This is hugely important for reducing travel stress; we took too much stuff and were kicking ourselves over it. IT IS POSSIBLE TO TAKE VERY LITTLE IF YOU PLAN CAREFULLY! In simplest terms: PACK MINIMALLY The overall rule is: WHEN IN DOUBT, LEAVE IT OUT!!!

Here are some more specific tips along with pictures below:

Luggage:

Take one primary bag and one day pack. Eagle Creek makes a really compactable day bag that can be stored and stuffed into it's own pocket the size of a potato.
If you simply can't fit it all into a small bag (under 15 lbs), then get a backpack with wheels to save yourself backache (but make sure the bag has straps to that you have the option to convert it into a backpack when necessary).
Make sure that you don't completely stuff your main bag: leave some empty space for souvenirs, etc.
Buy a few organizers to keep your stuff from getting ruined in your bag, but don't take this too far: they also take up precious space and add weight. Get one for toiletries (leaky stuff is ruinous), one or two for small easily lost items, but don't buy them for clothing... takes up too much space!
Combination luggage locks approved by Federal Flight Administration. You can find these in the travel section at Walmart. You will want one for each lock on both your main bag and your daypack along with a couple extras. These seem to get lost and are essential. We have run into many travelers who have had stuff stolen, but neither of us had a single thing stolen all year! We may have been lucky, but we were also cautious and aware.
A combination bike lock (remembering combos is easier than not loosing keys, but don't forget your combo!). This is useful for overnight train rides somewhere like India so you can chain your luggage under your bed to the bed frame in order to not get hit by a quick thief doing a grab and dash. We also always kept our stuff locked in all hostels and even private rooms in sketchy countries. Not one thing turned up missing . . .

Clothing:

Clothing gets especially bulky, so we only took the following: 2 zip-off pants, 2 short sleeved shirts (one t-shirt, one collared), 2 long-sleeved shirts (one lightweight with a collar for sun protection and one warm like a thermal), 1 swim suit, 1 swim shorts that can also be used for jogging, 1 sports bra (women), 2 short non-cotton socks, 1 warm non-cotton socks, one rain jacket, one winter hat and gloves. Kelsi also took a fleece jacket to layer with her thermal shirt and rain jacket for the colder areas and that was almost adequate except in the Himalayas where we rented down coats. In all of your clothing, it is best to avoid cotton and take fast drying materials.
Underwear takes up too much room, so we opted for only two pairs of underclothes, in polyester or mesh so that we can wash and dry one pair while wearing the other.
For footwear, we use crocs as sandals/shower shoes and we each took one pair of gortex trail runner shoes. The gortex gives you a waterproof option that is essential! Also, trail runners allow you to use them for both jogging and hiking, which are essentials as well! I know some of you are Croc adverse, but nothing works better for travel! They are really comfortable and light weight and fast drying. Get a sturdy plastic bag for the pair of shoes you aren't wearing to avoid smearing your clothes! (Once again, Eagle Creek has a great shoe bag - forgot to picture below).

Toiletries

Don't take too much! We took about one large zip lock bag worth (plane carry-on size). . . shampoo, conditioner, face wash, bar of soap, sunblock, sunblock chapstick and toothpaste are about it. Always replacing these items, but keeping our original travel size containers. Along with q-tips, toothbrush, floss (sometimes hard to replace). No hair gels, lotions, etc. You may notice by our pics :) . . .
Shaving: Take an electric shaver... cream doesn't travel well, and good lathering soaps are hard to find abroad once you run out.
Feminine products are hard to find, so take a lot. We found a few places we could buy more, but there were also a lot of places where you couldn't.
Makeup: take a bare minimum! Not sure I took the least necessary. . . Also take a few boby pins and a head band that secures your hair during windy rides and snorkling, etc. A couple safety pins also come in handy along with a handful of ponytail holders.
Nail clippers and a flat tipped nail file.
Make sure to take a few band aides, balm, and wet wipes just in case.
Tylenol and IB Profein is also a good idea.

Essential Comfort Items:

Be sure to take good sunglasses (with a hard case to protect them) and a hat... even if you tan nicely! Best hat is a soft full brim hat. Also take chums for your sunglasses or you will certainly break/lose them.
Take a bandana to cover your mouth from dust, and eyes from light while sleeping in a dorm room or overnight bus. For women, the headband can also double for these purposes.
Take at least 3 pairs of foam EARPLUGS! Very important if you want to preserve your hearing and get sleep in those same dorm rooms and overnight busses!
Packable Bedsheets: The silk ones that stuff into a pouch the size of a potato will protect you nicely.
Mini-sized fast-drying towel in a packable mesh bag. You can find this at any outdoor store.
Sarong (cloth wrap-around). Good for EVERYTHING. We found it to be as versatile as duct tape! You can use it for laying at the beach (since you should not bring a full-size towel . . . sarong packs up much smaller). You can use it as a scarf for the extra cold moments. You can use it as a light blanket on super-airconditioned buses. You can use it for a skirt to enter particular temples and mosques. You can use it as a pillow case to accompany your travel sheets. The list is endless.
Head flashlight (like what you use in a cave, etc.).
Water resistant watch with alarm and calculator if you can stomach the nerd factor.
Water bottle tether: manufactured by EK accessories. This way you can keep it on the outside of your bag rather than drip all over your stuff as it sweats in your bag.
Mesh bags: For keeping your drying laundry in when it isn't quite ready to pack up, but you are moving on.
A small whistle (good to keep on your neck or in your pocket if you are out late at night or on overnight trains in India, if you are in a super crowded area with a buddy, if you go caving, or your ship sinks like in Titanic :), etc.). We actually used this one night in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, as you can read about in our blog last year, to deter a mugger.
A waterproof cover for your backpack that folds up into a small bag.

Souvenirs:

Photos are the best souvenirs and don't take up any space! We don't buy very many souvenirs at all! In most places where we travel, if you try to send them home, they will get stolen and\or damaged by the postal workers. Even a small package is usually worth more than the locals make in a whole year, so even a DHL or UPS worker in a place like India might steal your stuff if they get a chance.
All the same, be sure that you leave some extra room when packing your big bag so that you can fit a couple things. If you send them home, send them from a place with a reliable postal system like Europe or Australia.

Organization of Documents:

Spread out all of your important documents: passport, drivers license, professional credentials, immunizations, social security card, wedding certificate, birth certificate, and credit cards and take digital photos of them (much quicker than scanning). Send that image to yourself and someone back home via email in case one of them gets stolen. Keep one photocopy of your passport in a separate location than your passport.
Buy an accordion plastic folder to organize all of those cluttery receipts, brochures, maps, plane tickets, reservations, etc.
Take a little notebook and pen in a sturdy plastic bag for taking notes on the go.
Take around 20 passport sized photos for visas, certificates, etc. Keep these in a small plastic bag.

Computers and Electronics:

Don't take a full-sized computer! Internet is available everywhere, so use the local shop rather than lug around all of that junk! If you insist on taking some computing power, instead, buy an unlocked, sim-card, WIFI enabled, PDA Phone (you might even be able to buy local sim cards for it in some places.)
If you take a media player (highly recommended) download songs, movies, games, and other entertainment... you wait a lot when you travel long-term.
If you take a Windows or Apple PDA, subscribe to Skype and buy the SKYPE PDA plug-in for your PDA, and you can make free calls home when you get access to wifi. Skype is also available for use in many internet cafes if you don't take a PDA.
Buy a universal, all in one plug adapter. Don't worry about getting a power converter... they are a thing of ages gone by and most modern electronic plugs will work anywhere if you can get them to fit into the wall (according to Rusty - Kelsi hasn't done the research to confirm that the power converter is really not essential).

Books:

Don't buy hard copy travel guide books. Buy your travel guides in PDF format and use your PDA to read them. If they aren't available in PDF, take digital photos of the pages you need on your digital camera and use that to look at them. SAVE THE WEIGHT and SPACE!!
Limit yourself to one pleasure reading book and when you finish it, trade it with fellow travelers or find your local book exchange to get a new one.
Download a bunch of good audio books from Audible.com.

Photography:

Storage is the main issue. Unless you are a professional, I recommend that you buy a large capacity SD card (16gb) and thumb drive (64gb). Delete the pics you don't like when you get a chance to use a computer. This was enough storage for an entire year for us. For professionals, take a portable hard drive.
Buy at least one spare camera battery so that you always have a fresh one. Remember to take it with you when you go out!
If you use an DSLR camera, you should consider investing in one, universal 18mm-250mm lens. You will be ready to throw away multiple lenses after lugging them around for a month!
Unless you are a professional, don't take a additional camcorder... just use your point and shoot camera to take video clips.

Toys and Special Equipment, Etc.

Don't take equipment unless you are certain you need it! You can rent most equipment you might need on the spot, including coats, sleeping bags, climbing gear, etc.
We would recommend taking goggles and a nose plug rather than a mask and snorkle. You can rent a mask and snorkle most places, but can at least have goggles as a miniature sized backup.
Rusty took a Yo-Yo, but we had no other toys.

Here's our packing in pics:

Our bags had wheels, but could convert into backpacks. Next time (aka if we could Do-Over or what we'd recommend to others), we'd only take a SMALL backpack without wheels and only pack up to 7 kilograms if possible. We think we might be able to get it down to a science.

The water bottle attachment was a nice feature below. These were our daypacks that also attached to our main bags. Next time we'd take a mini daypack that comes in a self contained fold-up pack to fit into our SMALL regular backpack.

Would skip the PJs and the 2nd pair of pants next time and maybe even the 3rd short sleeve shirt. But musts are a pair of shorts for running and to wear at the beach and one pair of zip off quick drying pants as well as a pair of yoga type pants described below. Would also skip the organizer bag.

Money belt. Notice the zipper that's inside. Pretty cool!

We ended up with a pair of tights for layering for warmth, but would skip the tights and the PJs and even the 2nd pair of pants next time and combine all into one pair of silky spandexy lightweight yoga type pants that can do all the functions in one pair. But the hat, gloves and jackets are essential! Would also skip the organizer bag here again.

Would skip the organizer bag here as well.

Our shoe selection was one of the more perfect things we had down. Gortex trailrunners and crocks! Worked perfect for trekking, jogging, showering, beach time, comfort, etc. etc.

We'd probably skip the organizer bag next time and put it all in one small bag to shave a tad bit space and weight.

Forgot to picture sunblock chapstick - another essential.

We took a mask and snorkle, but wouldn't recommend the space - just take goggles and a nose plug for times you can't rent.

Rusty liked his Wal-Mart calculator watch the best! But it finally broke to pieces in our last couple weeks.
Don't forget the rain cover for your backpack:

We took a Magic Jack and phone, but would skip that extra space and use Skype instead. A padded electronics bag is really nice. The black item in the corner is our external hard drive where we had copies of both our computers backed up that made it easy to access things that came up while we were out for a year as well as space to back up all our photos. Also, don't forget your chargers.

We were amused by how worn out some of our clothes got, so we had to share a couple pics below:

We just kept using them anyway! But they landed in the trash when we got home. Rusty's crocks had strings tied to hold on the heel strap, but it took a hole in the bottom to finally make them worth going in the garbage the night before we flew home.

Portugal: We're Coming Home!

2009-08-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a year since we left home, and we're coming home for Rusty's brother, Kevin's wedding on August 7. We decided to cross into Portugal and fly home from the far Western side of mainland Europe. Here is what we did on our last stop in our odyssey..

Our first stop in Portugal was a small village called Sagres. They have great wind, so we decided to try wind surfing lessons. Rusty had tried kite surfing in Morocco, but the two sports are not really at all alike. The boards you ride are quite different, and the power mechanisms are different (kites versus sails). We had a great time with it in any case!

Kelsi got the hang of it pretty quickly, although Rusty was a little too salty from repeatedly falling off of his board to get an action shot of her cruising around!

Sagres had a pretty nice fortification which was built to protect the shipping routes back in the day.

We thought this little old fisherman looked particularly precarious standing on top of the cliffs inside the Sagres fort. We just hope he didnt hook into a big one after we left!

After Sagres, we took a bus ride to the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. Aside from enjoying the fine dinning (loved the relatively inexpensive and delicious fish dishes), we also hiked around town and took time to check out a few overlooks and fortresses. The one behind Kelsi is called Castelo Sao Jorge, and was originally built by Moslim Moores when they were ruling the area. The views of Lisbon were amazing here.

Lisbon is a beautiful city, and we loved it as our last stop in the old world. Portugal and Spain were also a perfect last stop for assisting in getting used to the time back home because the locals here keep strange hours. They are on the late to bed, late to rise schedule. In fact, in Spain they had a big problem with siestas on the job, so the government had to pass a law a few years back officially limiting government employees to a 45 minute lunch. In any case, the advantage for us is that the schedule here put us closer to the actual times we should be sleeping back home. Our Lisbon hostel's quiet hours were Midnight to 8 am, which is like a typical quiet hours around 10 or 11 pm to 7 am where no one actually makes it to bed at the early end of that bracket. We never went to bed before midnight and only got up early a couple of times, which usually ended up being a waste as nothing opens before 9:30 am at the earliest. Breakfast usually starts around 10 am.

It is crazy for us to think that when this blog posts, we will be 30,000 feet in the air flying back home to Utah. It feels as surreal to head home as it felt to leave for our trip, but we both feel ready to be home again for a while. We were thinking a year or two at a desk job is a good way to revive travel enthusiasm:) Thus ends this part of our Odyssey!

Spain

2009-07-31T10:19:00.000-07:00

Spain isn't necessarily famous for wildlife, but in case you missed seeing animals from our Africa blogs, we thought we put in a picture of some ducks that were in the grounds of the "Cathedral" in central Barcelona.

Spain is known for its tasty cuisine, and did not let us down! Spain is popularly known for its tapas, which is variety meal of sampler sized dishes. However, the Spanish are also the most voracious fish eaters in the Mediterranean. We loved the fish dinner pictured above! We were a little worried if we were paying $12 for each the enormous and delicious salad, drink and desert that accompanied the gormet fish dish, but our sketchy understanding that it was all included in the fabulous lunch special turned out to be correct. Phew! And Wow!!! One of our best meals on the whole trip - including a reasonable price and all.

Barcelona also had an amazing market. After getting addicted to the fruits and fresh fruit juices of EVERY assortment, we wandered around, staring at the grotesque (our oppinion of course) animal parts for sale. It's hard to imagine the delicious Spanish foods originating from such strange origins!

Please note in the picture of the heads, there are brains for sale in the plastic containers. In case it's hard to tell right off, the following picture has tongue and tripe (stomach lining). We tried tripe soup in Bali, but can't say we are fans.

Barcelona is blessed with a plethora of street performers . This twiggy guy was superlative with his crystal ball magic. We also enjoyed the many art displays and flower shops with blue roses and lots of beautiful to see and smell selections.

Spain is also renowned for its artists (Picasso) and architectural masterpieces. Foremost among the elite architects is Gaudi. A rather bizarre person himself, his modernist architecture adorns Barcelona in many places and ranks among the top attractions. Pictured below is the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's masterpiece church. Construction was initiated well over 100 years ago, and might take still another hundred years to complete. When finished, it will be addorned with 12 towers dedicated to the Apostles, four to the evangelists, one to The Virgin Mary, and a 560 foot tower in the center dedicated to Jesus.

We also took time to visit several residences constructed by Gaudi. All of them have unique contours and interesting adornments of metal work.

Below are picture's of Gaudi's Park Guell, which Kelsi likes to think of as something out of a Dr. Seuss book (as described in the Lonely Planet). We enjoyed several hours strolling around the various lanes and arcades of the park.

After Barcelona we headed down south to the Andalucian city of Granada. The bus ride down south is worth a brief mention. It was particularly eventful due to one young mother and her children. She fed her little 5 year old boy and baby girl a lunch of Doritos and chocolate milk. The baby girl loved the food, but it wasn't long before it came back up all over her mother in a torrent of nastiness. The mother asked the driver to stop and wait while she fished out a new outfit from her luggage under the bus. The driver was a bit impatient, which worried the mother and upset the little boy. When the mother and children climbed back into the bus after changing clothes, the boy was so angry that he walked straight up to the driver and began screaming and waving his hand to lecturing the bus driver on patience. His mother could only laugh and pull him back to his seat. However, the boy hadn't quite hadn't quite had his fill of yelling, though, so as soon as him mother released him, he rushed back up to the bus drive for round two of his cussing out! The other passengers couldn't keep from laughing at the audacity of this little boy... that's the passion of Spain.

It is hard to capture the enormity and beauty of Granada's Alhambra, built in the 14th Century by Spains Muslim conquerors, the Moores. In any case, but here are a few pictures attempting to show some of what we enjoyed.

Our final stop in Spain was the sweltering city of Seville, the provincial capital of Andalucia, and home of the famous Real Alcazar (royal palace.) Seville has had several rulers, so the Real Alacazare was a hodgepodge of styles. The overall effect was quite nice, though.

The Royal gardens were particularly nice, and we enjoyed getting lost in the Royal maze, created from various bushes and hedges.

Seville is the center of Spain's passionate dance and music style known as Flamenco. Flamenco music and dancing features incredible percussion, including tap dancing, clapping, and guitar. The male dancer in the performance we attended tapped so vigorously that he sounded like a machine gun at time. It was a dramatic and passionate production to say the least.

We stayed near the beautiful Cathedral in Seville's historic jewish quarter.

And now, a short history on the Spanish Lisp. We had heard rumor that the lisp was a result of the popular emulation of a speech impediment of a popular King, Pedro of Castile. However, Pedro lived in the 1500's, and the lisp didn't widely appear until the 1700's, two hundred years later. More likely, the lisp developed as a result of other regional linguistic forces, although the impact of one popular man on the development of a language can be enormous. In the English language, Chaucer and Shakespear come to mind! Like the lisp or not, it is addictive. We're doing all we can to avoid catching it ourselves. We're now off to the final leg of our trip, Portugal! Looking forward to Theeing you all thoon!

Books: Updated List

2009-07-30T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a follow up list of what we have been reading since we last posted our books list:

Novels:

White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (Both)
The Flood - David Maine (Both)
King of Torts - John Grisham (Rusty)
The Bretheren - John Grisham (Rusty)
Palm Sunday - Kurt Vonnegut (Both)
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates (Both)
'Tis - Frank McCourt (Both)
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini (Rusty - Kelsi read back home)
Beloved - Toni Morrison (Both)
Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella (Both)

Travel:

Getting Stoned with Savages : A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu - J. Maarten Troost (Both)

Science/Social Science:

The State of Africa - Martin Meredith (Rusty)
Chaos - James Gleick (Rusty)
The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Thomas Friedman (Both)
When Elephants Weep - Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson & Susan McCarthy (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)

Spiritual/Philosophical:

A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle (Kelsi-second time)
The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck (Both)
Life Ahead - J. Krishnamurti (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)
The Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler (Kelsi catching up - Rusty had already read)

Our Favorites:

A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle
White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
'Tis - Frank McCourt
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
The Road Less Travelled - M. Scott Peck

Not sure if The Flood was quite on the favorites list, but it was a very engaging historical fiction about Noah's Flood (for a more complete review: http://www.textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/the-flood/).

We happened across Confessions of a Shopaholic at a hostel and found it to be quite a fun read, actually. Rusty read it in one day - like a long movie. We'd have to say it was better than Twighlight! :) Just had to comment on it since it was our least intellectual book of the list . . .

Morocco

2009-07-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

Morocco is a colorful, hot, deserty, African, former colony of the French. It was a total delight, but seriously hot. It hit 125 degrees one day, but we were lucky to find the local water guy in the crazy hat above. He was happy to dump cool water on the head of anyone willing to pay

Morocco grows oranges like Utah grows weeds. They even plant them as shade trees along the streets of Marrakech. The main square had dozens of orange juice stands, and we tried them all in our attempts to stay cool. We drank at least 4 glasses per day. One night that's all we had for dinner along with the dish pictured with Rusty below . . .

Kelsi accidently got a tatoo. Since Kelsi doesn't remember her high school French, we resorted to communicating with the French/Arabic speaking Moroccans by Rusty using Franco-English words in a heavy, mock-French accent. It only worked 50% of the time. The tatoo artist just didn't under stand Rusty's request for "non-permanent." It's a good thing the design is neutral and Rusty talked Kelsi out of doing the tatoo on her face like the local Berber women customarily do.

Rusty's first time trying escargot (snails). They are quite common in Morocco due to the strong French connection, and they served it up by the bowlfuls for 75 cents. However, we only shared one small bowl, which was more than enough for us!

Rusty atttempted to take a lovely picture of the old trading fort in Essaouira Morroco, but Kelsi wanted to make sure that you knew she was really there.

We enjoyed winding our way through the shops and locals in the narrow streets of Essaouira's medina (old town). The town came noisily to life with locals catching up on gab and shopping each evening just about the time we were trying to lay down to sleep! We were hoping to snap a picture of the ladies who wore full black burkas with only tiny eye slits, but we didn't dare to make it obvious. They are usually married to the strictest Muslim men . . .

We enjoyed several meals of fresh fish from the catch of the day. Mmmm! Kelsi's dad will be happy to hear that we have had a few amazing meals along the year journey - not always only super cheap eats. Although $20 for a meal is quite a splurge for us, that included so much seafood (shrimp, calamari, sol, sea bass, fresh sardines - only had canned before, but fresh isn't much better . . . ) plus salad, bread and a drink for both of us! We also tried sea urchin, but can't say either of us became a fan.

Essaouira is blessed with tons of wind. While not ideal for the sun bathing crowd (which we are decidedly not a part of due to our fluorescent white skin), it is excellent for windsurfing and kite surfing. Rusty decided to take kite surfing lessons for a few days.

Mastering control of the enormously powerful kite proved to be the most difficult task involved. If you are considering this sport, don't have a friend teach you! Kites can be well over $2000, and before you gain good control of it, you will definitely slam it into the ground several times, risking a totally ruinous blow-out of your friend's kite a number of times. Not to mention the fact that these kites are powerful enough to lift you up 50 feet in the air and slam you into a nearby building. Definitely a sport where it's better to be taugh by a professional while abusing their gear. Rusty researched these facts online before deciding he was definitely interested in taking lessons rather than asking his friend to teach him.

Once Rusty got adequately in control of the kite, his wake boarding experience took over, and he had no problem standing up on the board and riding around. With Rusty's newly acquired skill, Kelsi had a hard time trying to convince him not to attempt to board across the ocean to Spain. She ultimately succeeded in talking him into taking the ferry across... as you will see in our next blog.

Tracking African Primates

2009-07-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

Africa is full of primates. Included among them are several close relatives to human kind, known as the great apes. We couldn't visit Africa without saying hello to our cousins. Although many primates are seen in abundant numbers in Africa, it was necessary to visit Uganda's famous Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to spot the prize of all primates; the elusive mountain gorilla. When we first heard the name of the park, we didn't really get the "impenetrable park." After machete hacking our way through the dense jungle and clambering down near verticle precipes for 7 sweaty hours, we better understood the meaning.

In addition to rough terrain, finding gorillas requires tracking. Tracking primates requires that you look for footprints, nests, and feces from the animals. Even finding signs is no guarantee you will find the animals. In Uganda's Queen Elizabeth park, we were foiled from finding chimpanzees by a band of foraging elephants. Luckily, our guide was well armed with a rifle and was able to scare them off, but the encounter ruined our opportunity to see the chimps.

Below, a chimpanzee nest in the tree; no one home, though!

Kelsi pointing out some gorilla poop... she smelled it out without trouble!

As we scanned the jungle floor for signs of gorillas, we became aware of life that we might have previously overlooked, including ant colonies. Safari ants, also called army ants, swarm in huge numbers in militaristic, agressive food gathering campaigns, and have been known to devour animals and even people who are unlucky enough to get caught in their way. At several times during our hike for the jungle, we had to pry them off of our skin as they bit into our skin. Interestingly, this also allows use of these ants as stitches for closing up wounds. The Masai people (depicted in our earlier safari blog), have also found a beneficial relationship with Safari ants. The Masai leave them alone in exchange for the ants performing something akin to biological pest control on Masai lands.

Fortunately, for the gorilla treking, we hired a knowlegable guide to accompany us, and he helped us to find the animals. Our reward upon finding the animals was being immediately charged by a 500 pound gorilla Silverback. The noise alone was terrifying, not to mention the chest beating and snarling.

Adult male mountain gorillas are called silverbacks because a saddle of silver-colored hair develops on their backs with age. Mountain gorilla groups are dominated by one dominant silverback, which can reach 5-6 feet in height, with an arm span over 7 feet, and weigh in at a massive 450–500 lbs. In addition to the gorillas, we also saw several other varieties of primates. Following are a few snapshots of them.

Baboon females love little baboon babies with bright crimson butts and black fur so much that they try to steal them from eachother. A baboon mother must very carefully watch over her baby.

The black and white colobus monkey is shy, and rightfully so. He is often the prey of choice for not only tree climbing leopards, but also for meat hungry chipmanzees.

Below is a male blue monkey. See if you can figure out why he is called "blue"...

In addition to primates, we enjoyed simply being in Africa and watching the women carrying home the loads on their heads. All of Africa is a rich collage of cultures, including many indigenous tribes. The Pygmy people of Uganda and its close neighbor Congo are a great example of this. have experienced sickly brutal treatment by their neighbors. In 2003, during the Congo Civil War, they were hunted down and eaten like game animals by the rebel armies as they lived off the land. This kind of genocidal mania is, unfortunately all too common in Africa.

Africa Safaris & Culture

2009-07-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

Although we had already ventured into Northern Africa while in Egypt, we weren't content with covering so little of this huge continent. Sub-Saharan Africa was calling us. We would have come here straight from Egypt, except that we had made the sailing commitment in Greece that didn't allow us to order our time to fit in the Middle East and safari Africa together. Not to worry, though, because the delay gave time for the rains to calm down, making wildlife viewing much better.

From Rome we caught a flight to Nairobi, Kenya where we landed at four in the morning without any plans at all. Luckily, the airport was swarming with budget safari operators. Although it was difficult to smell through the abundant lies and claims, we eventually picked a safari operator and found ourselves on the way to Kenya's Masai Mara Park just a few short hours after landing. The Masai Mara is famous for the huge amounts of wildlife it hosts, including the dangerous "Big Five," coveted trophy animals for hunters and photographers alike. They include: Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, Elephant, and Rhino. We were fortunate to see all of them! (We spotted Rhino in a nearby national park, Lake Nakuru, not in the Masai Mara).

Although this male lion is passively lazing around during daytime, they are quite active at night. We saw several lion kills during our time in Africa and even saw them in the process of stalking and chasing water buck and zebra at one point, but the lions disappointed us by not making the kill. They didn't look like they were trying very hard for the last charge, but they must be doing a more skillful job at night.

We were lucky to snap this shot of the elusive leopard.

The main reason we were able to find him is because the leopard had deposited the remains of last night's hunting in a tree overhead.

These aggressive buffalo are close relatives of the cow, but infinitely more dangerous. Although lions occasionally attack them, they are fearless fighters, and will even defend other buffalo against lion attacks.

Elephants are the largest land animals on earth, with bulls sometimes weighing as much as 26,000 pounds! Big as the bulls are, it's the women who run things in a matriarchal order. Elephants are also rarely, if ever, prey for other animals. Even though they are herbivores, they are one of the most dangerous animals in the wild due to their sheer size!

We had to be careful around the elephants, as they can easily flip over our vehicle if we disturbed them. It was fun how close we got to them as well as to all the animals - as you can get an idea of below. Mothers, who go through 22 long months of gestation are particularly irritable and protective of their young.

The Rhino is a highly endangered animal due to Chinese demand for it's horn and other body parts, some of which they believe to be powerful aphrodesiacs or medicine. We were fortunate to take a close-up look at these animals in Lake Nakuru Park in Kenya.

Kenyan Lake Nakuru's salty waters also hosts millions of pink flamingos.

There were so many birds that the lake appeared to have a floating, pink doughnut ringing it's fringe. It was so beautiful!

Giraffes begin life with a 6 foot drop out of mother, and it gets even higher from there. These gentle herbivores grow up 17-20 feet high and bulls can weigh in at 2,600 pounds, comfortably eating tree leaves that elude lesser creatures. Interestingly, they're difficult prey for lions, as they have a powerful kick. One way a lion may catch them, though, is by grabbing them by the neck when the giraffe holds his head down to munch on grass rather than leafy trees. Giraffes have a difficult time managing the blood pressure build-up that occurs in their head if forced to stay low for too long due to their long neck and high-up heart, so the giraffe quickly succumbs to the lion.

The zebra's black stripes confuse would be predators when they're in a group. These smart creatures have done well and were very abundant across Africa. They are the leaders of the path for the annual migrations to food sources.

Wildebeast, or Gnu, are particularly ugly and somewhat dull, but their sheer numbers are awesome. It is the annual migration of 3.5 million Gnu that makes visiting Masai Mara particularly inspiring! We also enjoyed our guide's comment that this was his favorite animal because they are so "dumb." He finds them entertaining because they are frequent meals for lions as they never learn better to stay away! They'll graze right up next to a lion.

We loved the hairdoo on this pumba (warthog.) He's got sweet meat for the lion, but is rarely bothered due to his nasty tusks. However, when he is being chased, he has been known to have a terrible memory, forgetting that he's being chased, and resume feeding. In this event, he becomes a tasty snack for the predator.

The Hyena has an undeserved bad reputation after the movie Lion King. These sucessful predators have jaws strong enough to chew up the teeth of other animals. They not only hunt well, but can even take on male lions in groups. That said, this guy is about to fill his belly on a buffalo killed by a group of nearby lions the night before. Be careful walking in the African bush, as hyenas have the tendancy to bite off human hands swinging in stride.

Tanzania's Ngorogoro crater is an amazing microcosm of African wildlife. It was freezing cold due to the high elevation. We didn't expect Africa to be cold, but it rarely got above 70 in the day, and dipped into the high 30's several times! But we can't complain as it's easier to put on a jacket than burn up; it just was pleasantly surprising.

Keya's Masai Mara National Park is the Kenyan section of the Serengetti, which is shared between Kenya and Tanzania. It is full of all types of wildlife, and full of the Masai People. The successful Masai warriors marry many wifes and father loads of kids. This leads to conflicts in the national parks because they need land to graze their cattle and must defend them against predators.

The Masai are famed warriors and love to show off their prowess by jumping, singing, and dancing. We took some time to jump along with the best of them. Rusty tried his hardest to prove that white man can indeed jump, but was dissapointed when he failed to gain the approval of the warriors.

No trip would be complete to Nairobi without stopping by "The Carnivore." This restaurant serves up skewers of African meats and domestic meats. They no longer serve wildebeast and zebra, but crocodile and ostrich are still on the menu.

We enjoyed meeting some new friends who accompanied us to "The Carnivore."

We found the locals delightful and amusing. In one instance, we were especially pleased when a young man exchanging our money asked "are you on amazing race?!" We also enjoyed their "God" advertising. "God's Grace Driving School" and "God's Will Beauty Salon" struck us as particularly humorous examples.

Travelling during and after the 2008 presidential elections has also been a very interesting experience. In Brazil, during the leadup to the US election, we learned that would-be politicians were changing their name to Obama. Nowhere was Obama fever more prominent than in Kenya. Obama is 1/2 Kenya, with roots in the Luo tribe. His paternal grandmother still lives there. During the election, the entire region took time off work to attend voting polls which were set up for the locals to cast their votes in relation to the US election. No need to say who won the Kenyan vote. When telling people where we are from, we always heard the exuberant response "Obama! We share Obama with America." In one conversation, a guy asked where we were from and said, "Oh, Obamaland," and Kelsi said, "Yah, we're from the same country," in jest and comradery. He really liked that response. Now in Kenya, there are Obama Berspective travelling abroad, the entire world considers Obama their man. All minority groups consider it a propitious sign that the black man is rising and can also become President.

In another funny yet kind of disturbing experience, Rusty suggested that an employee turn off an idling bus, spewing out lung choking fumes, since the departure time was still 3 hours away. After numerous requests, it was exasperating to hear him repeatedly respond "yes, one must not waste," but he still failed to switch it off. Eventually, Rusty asked "you are just saying that aren't you? You don't really intend to do anything?" The young man responded with a smug "yeah." Finally, Rusty got a different person to turn it off.

As we mention frequently, we are reading loads of literature while traveling. Africa was no exception, and Rusty read an intriquing book about the rise of modern Africa from its colonialist roots, "The State of Africa" by Martin Meredith. Needless to say, Africa has hosted a shameless orgy of autrocities, autocracies, and corruption of epic proportions. From African leaders siphoning off 100's of millions of dollars to private bank accounts to dictators dining on the hacked up bodies of their rivals, this continent has seen it all.

Africa is poorly educated and ignorant. The patronizing Western colonial powers must shoulder their lions share of the blame for not developing and training African talent and establishing more and better institutions of learning for Africans during the West's tenure in Africa. The ignorance provides a home for ineptitude and corruption in leadership. It also leads to a general disregard for progress and often a lack of care according to Rusty. Kelsi hasn't read the book (to claim all these opinions), but found the parts of it Rusty shared along with his thoughts on it interesting. Many accounts documented in the book are quite disturbing though.

However, Africa is still looking for a brighter future, but unfortunately must rely on unwilling Western powers cooperating with corrupt government. Unfortunately, the aid given to Africa by the West is often harmful and certainly not enough to accomplish what needs to be done. The US Government has promised 7/10 of one percent of GDP will go to developing the third world (including India, China, Africa, etc.) We currently aren't even giving 1/10th of a percent. Aid often undermines local initiatives, competes against itself, props up tyranical dictators, or ends up in the hands of expensive expatriate "advisors" and local bureaucrats. If you decide to donate time or money to Africa, be certain to consider these factors beforehand.

Rome

2009-07-19T03:59:00.000-07:00

We saved Rome as our last destination in Italy. We began our time in Rome with a tour of the famous Colosseum, Roman Forum & Palatine Hill. The Colosseum was Rome's ancient stadium, and is famously known for the gladiator battles, criminal executions, and hunting tournaments it hosted. Although the Russell Crow film may have taken some artistic liberties, it really wasn't too bad at showing the craziness going on here. The ultra brutal Roman empire wasn't a good place to be for those men and animals who found themselves entertaining the blood thirsty Roman citizens. The Roman Forum (pictured below) was the ancient equivalent of modern day Washington DC's National Mall. Many of the important government buildings were located in this centralized location.

After spending time in the forum, we visited the museum, "Museisi Capitolini." It is full of priceless sculptures and other items of antiquity.

Our favorite piece in the museum was a sculpture of Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus, nursing at a she wolf. The story goes that, an important Vestal Virgin who "accidentally" became pregnant. Not wishing to be executed, she claimed that Mars, the Roman god of war, was the father. To avoid controversy, the local leaders simply had her pull a "moses", so she put them into a basket and floated them down a river. They were eventually found by a "Lupa," which in Roman can be translated as either "prostitute" or "wolf." The locals laid claim to the "wolf" interpretation, which has led to the image of these little tike's nursing from and being raised by a wolf to become the enduring mythology for the founding of Rome.

The locals claim the all the best stuff was taken away to the Vatican. So our desire to see the best stuff took us next to the Vatican, headquarters for the Catholic Church, and a sovereign governmental power. While there, we visited the Vatican Museums, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. Although we couldn't use flash to capture the fresco's, we'll share the best we were able to manage:

After the Vatican Museum, we climbed over 500 stairs to the Cupola top of St. Peter's Basilica for an amazing view of Rome. After which, we found Rusty's favorite sculpture, Michelangelo's "Pieta," located inside the Basilica, which was also designed by Michelangelo. Michelangelo created the Pieta at age 24, and it is his only work that he signed. The sculpture is an achingly beautiful representation of a young Mary holding her still younger son, Jesus, in her lap after his crucifixion. (picture below)

After leaving the Vatican, we continued our path through Rome and visited the bizarrely fascinating, albeit obscure Capuchini Bone Chapel. This eerie crypt houses the bones of thousands of Monks, arranged into walls, chandeliers, sculptures, and other patterns. We weren't allowed to photograph, but you can easily pull up a google image by entering in "Capuchini Bone Chapel." After experiencing a taste of death, we decided to try a taste of Italy's best Gellato (ice cream) on our way to the famous Trevi Fountain.

Who wouldn't love delicious, gourmet, Italian ice cream? The rich frozen treat came in so many flavors, displayed in provocative swirls and lacy ruffles that drove us to eat way to much of it. Luckily, we weren't the only ones!

Our favorite was ricotta cheese flavor. Sounds a little strange, but consider how delicious cheese cake can be.

After consuming copious amounts of Gellato and basking in the afternoon sun of the Trevi Fountain, we waddled to the nearby Pantheon, one of the few enduring structure from ancient Roman times. In fact the lack of enduring Roman structures is due largely to the early Catholic church destroying them to wipe out the old Roman Gods and use the building materials to build churches. Fortunately, the Pantheon has a history of almost constant use, and was converted into a Catholic church rather than demolished.

After the Pantheon, we took pause in Piazza Navona to watch a crazy finger puppet street performer named Marcel. It took a couple minutes to fully appreciate the piano-playing dexterity with which he performed different dances with with multiple puppets on his hands. We took his business card after he finished, and we loved the saying he had inscribed on it: "Just be yourself and nobody will ever be able to tell you that you've done it wrong." He definitely lives by this code!

As evening approach, we took a walk through the venerable old neighborhood called Trastevere, long a haunt of European debutant's. Now it hosts some rather upscale shopping including the ultra expensive shoe shop of Joseph Debach (www.josephdebach.com). Rusty was particularly fond of the toothy shoes below and was tempted to buy them as a compliment to his suit to emphasize his "sharky" nature as an attorney.

For our last evening in Rome, we camped out on the famous Spanish steps and listened to a high school choir singing Italian madrigals. The perfect ending to our journey in Italy.

Italy

2009-07-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

We began our Italian journey in Venice, the magical, decaying city built on rock piles and stilts in the shallows of the Mediterranean sea, where you can drown crossing the boat-clogged, watery roads. We first paid a visit to Saint Peter's Square, where we people watched and did a little hat shopping before popping into the cathedral and museum.

Our afternoon was spent lost in the alleyways and waterways of Venice.

In the evening we took a boat ride around the Gondola filled waterways of Venice.

We next took a train to Florence, via Bologna, the father of pasta. We stopped off for a quick bite of bow-tie pasta and lasagna bolognese (Bologna is famous for pasta and invented spaghetti bolognese) and checked out a couple of piazzas (squares) before jumping onto the afternoon train to Florence. We found the coin-operated prayers candles in one Bolognese cathedral a tad-bit humorous!

Our first day in Florence took us to the nearby town of Pisa, with it's leaning tower. This botched architectural masterpiece was built on soft soil, which subsided and sunk during the construction process, leading to the precarious lean. Considering the precarious 3.99 degree tilt of the Pisa tower, it is a seven wonder of the world that it still stands as an enduring monument to screwing up big-time. We took pause to capture a few typically touristy corny pictures at its expense.

After seeing the tower in Pisa, we returned to Florence and explored this amazing city. It is a definite repeat with hosts of beautiful sculpture and architecture, including Michelangelo's renowned "David" statue.

We particularly enjoyed the shaded pathways and sculptures of the beautiful Boboli gardens.

We noticed something queer about the statue below, but we'll leave it to you to figure out.

The view from the rear of the Bobeli gardens looked out over beautiful estates and gardens in the Tuscan countryside.

After Florence, we headed to Southern Italy to see Naples, or rather, to eat Naples. Naples is home to the uncontested best pizza in the world, and we gorged ourselves on it! Our two favorite places were Da Michele and Pizzeria Sorbillo (Rusty's favorite by a thin margin), and both are justly famous. The simple Margherit pizza was delicious beyond our best descriptions! Mmmm! We're getting hungry again just writing about it!

From Naples, we took an overnight trip to the scenic Amalfi Coast. Our brother in law, Nate Heward, had recommended a scooter trip in this area, so we did exactly that. Riding along the steep cliffs of the Amalfi coast was yet another stunning view of the Mediterranean Sea!

Blitzing across the Balkans

2009-07-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

After receiving news that our flight from Istanbul to Italy had been canceled, we prepared our hitch-hiking thumbs to cover some serious ground across the Balkans. Our path couldn't have been more crooked, as we kept discovering more interesting things to do! Despite the Balkans recent wars, these lands have some of the most spectacular natural beauty we have seen in our travels. We found it interesting that Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia had so many enormous and elaborate dwellings in rock faces and underground, then as we moved West, most cities were surrounded by fortresses. It really seems to be yet another indicator of the turmoil in these regions. We left Istanbul Turkey and headed straight into Bulgaria... once again, Rusty was at home with his Russian language. Our first stop in Bulgaria was the beautiful town of Plovdiv, a historic city with striking Roman ruins.

From Plovdiv, we quickly hitched our way across Bulgaria, and ended up in Skopje, Macedonia. It wasn't very photogenic, so the only eventful event on this leg of our journey was hitching a ride with the Prime Minister's race car driving body guard... we made good time in his car to say the least. From Skopje, we went to lake Ohrid, which is shared between Macedonia and Albania. The town we stayed in was on the Macedonian side, and had a great historic old town and beautiful lake vistas from the old hill fortresses.

After Ohrid Macedonia we felt that we needed to make some distance, so we took a straight path across Albania. The one notable thing we saw was UFO University in the capital city Tirane. We couldn't help taking a picture and submitting a quick application to their Alientology/UFOlogy program.

From Tirane, we continued our path across Albania, arriving in Budva, Montenegro late in the evening, where we slept. Budva was a scenic coastal town with a very moderate climate, which even allowed them to grow bananas. We never knew tropical fruits could grow in the Balkans! After filling up on some of Budva's delicious tropical fruits and pizza, we took a detour to see the old town and craggy, mountain-side fortress of Kotor, Montenegro.

From Kotor, we continued on to Dubrovnik, considered by many to be the crown jewel city of the Balkans. The UN's UNESCO program has pumped lots of money into this city to rebuild it following the Balkans Civil War of the 1990's and it has paid off. Dubrovnik is an old fortress trading town which sits on a sharp relief which plunges into the Mediterranean sea. It was strikingly beautiful, and the locals know it; prices were higher than other places in the Balkans!

The old Balkan conglomerate nation known as Yugoslavia was a mix of Catholic and Muslims. Religious tension between these groups was one of the many things which eventually contributed to the Balkans Civil War and break-up of Yugoslavia into the current Balkan states. While in Dubrovnik, we were fortunate to see a Catholic celebration, complete with singing and marching priests.

We next cut across Croatia and a short coastal piece of Serbia to get to Mostar Bosnia. The bridge in the background was rebuilt after being destroyed during the recent civil wars. Even though it drops about 80 feet into a river, the local youth jump off of it to show off for the tourists. Rusty insists on stating that he was brave enough to jump as well, but he claims that he just didn't want to worry Kelsi too much.

From Mostar Bosnia we took a world famous train journey to the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. The train line had miles and miles of tunnels, and the scenery was gorgeous.

After Sarajevo Bosnia, we took a bus straight to Pula Croatia. Pula had a pretty nice old town, but the best attraction was an old Roman Coloseum. It's definitely on par with Rome, and the locals even hold summer time concerts there, which we enjoyed listening to.

Pula was our final stop in the Balkans, and from Pula we took a bus back to Rijeke Croatia and then cut across Slovenia to Trieste Italy... ready for another Southern European adventure!

Hitching Back to Istanbul

2009-07-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

After our hitch hiking success in Armenia and Georgia, we couldn't resist hitching our way back across Turkey to Istanbul. Hitching can be a little tough, though, like when you get stuck in the occasional rain storm or have to hike your way 5 or 10 miles to the edge of a town, but we loved it anyway. Hitching is really quite a good way to connect with the locals, and we were picked up by people from all walks of life. Despite its stigma as being dangerous (and you do need to look out for Gypsies in this part of the world) we didn't have any safety issues. Most people who stop were salt of the earth, and a total delight to share a ride with. Rusty was particularly proud when we finally succeeded in securing a ride in a big rig...

In addition to enjoying some more of the best Bakhlava in the world (we pretty much developed an addiction), we were pleased to see enjoy some more of Turkey's best on our way back across Turkey from the east to the west. We made pretty quick progress, but still took a few breaks to stop off for a short time in Amasya to see a beautiful fortress on a craggy cliff along a river and to drop by Saphronbolu to see its old town. The highlight, however, was Istanbul. We began our visit by exploring the Blue Mosque, one of Islam's most significant buildings.

Inside the Blue Mosque below:

Adjacent to the Blue Mosque, the Aya Sophia (pictured below) is another Islamic structure with scale and decor beyond anything we had imagined.

We spent an enjoyable afternoon wandering around Turkey's crazy/hectic Grand Bazaar. It's an incredible collage of smells, sounds and colors.

Istanbul is shared by the continents of Europe and Asia, with a narrow ocean passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea called the Bosphorus, acting as the official dividing line. We decided to enjoy a "two continent" day while we were in Istanbul, so we took the ferry across to the lavish Dolmush Palace, one of several amazing Ottoman palaces we visited.

Once again, we couldn't resist snapping a photo of an interesting vehicle... a motorcycle with two front wheels caught our attention... We thought it worth sharing with you.

While we were in Istanbul, we discovered that the flight we had booked to our next destination had been canceled. Not to worry, our hitch-hiking thumbs are now well experienced to make the next leg of our journey over-land.

Hitch Hiking through Georgia and Armenia

2009-06-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

Since we were already in Eastern Turkey, we couldn't resist crossing over into her neighbors, Georgia and Armenia. We spent our first night in Akhaltsikhe Georgia, where we took a short trip to see the Sapara Monastery. It was located at the top of a fantastically green canyon on a serene, wooded slope. The monastery is still a functioning facility in the Georgian Catholic Church, so we were pleased to see a few of the monks in passing.

After one night's rest, we then hitched rides to see an amazing fortress at Khertvisi and another city built into the cliffs at Vardzia. People in Georgia were really generous about stopping to give us a lift, so we made it with no difficulty. The sites were both awesome, and we can't get over how many fortresses and under ground cities have been built in this particular region of the world. It is definitely a testament to the number of times this beautiful part of the world has been invaded and conquered.

One of the rides we hitched happened to be with a group of school children. They took a liking to us and even sang some traditional Georgian and Russian songs for us along the way!

After seeing these few places in Georgia, we hitched another ride to Armenia where we spent the night in Gyumri. Gyumri had a really nice central plaza complete with an amazing Armenian monument featuring violent cavalry and foot soldiers defending the mother land. Unfortunately, Gyumri was leveled by earthquakes which killed 25,000 inhabitants in the 1980s, so nearly everything has been rebuilt.

In Yerevan, Armenia's capital, we found it a bit hostile that on a hilltop monument, they had lined up a number of weapons pointing toward Turkish owned Mount Arrarat. Mount Arrarat is the supposed landing sight of Noah's arc, and was part of the many lands taken from Armenia by Turkey during the early 2oth century conflict with Armenia.

Armenia has close ties with Russia economically, culturally, and militarily. Rusty felt that Armenia still has a very strong former soviet block feel to it. All Armenians speak Russian very well, which allowed Rusty opportunity to use his Russian language. This Russian car selling apples out the back is a perfect image of former sovietism.

Our next Armenian destination was Sevan, which was a lake resort town for Armenia. It had a lovely peninsula with a couple of ancient churches and some really good food, but due to uncontrolled lakeside development, it certainly wasn't our top pick for prettiest place.

At Sevan, we rented a beatupcabin on the lake, checked out some ancient churches, and had some delicious fish before heading on to Vandazor and then crossing from Armenia back into Georgia.

We briefly saw Georgia's capital, Tbilisi before we moved on to spend the night in Sarp, which is on the black sea and close to the border with Turkey. Thus ended our short sojurn into this interesting area of the world, collectively known as "The Caucus."

Tramping Across Turkey

2009-06-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

For thousands of years, Turkey has been (sometimes quite literally) torn between powers of the East and powers of the west. During the Ottoman period, Turkey herself became a major power. Because of this, Turkey has a rich historical heritage and a wealth of historical sites. Kelsi also wanted to mention that Turkey also has a wealth of frogs (they are absolutely everywhere in some places - it's hard not to step on them walking down the sidewalk), storks, and GIANT wild dogs. This aside, after leaving Alberto's boat, we began our journey in Turkey at the Spectacular Roman ruins in Ephesus, where the Apostle Paul taught the Ephesians.

During Roman times, public toilets were an important social setting. The men would sit around on the toilets and discuss local business while they took care of personal business. As you can see in the picture above (taken at Ephesus), these old Roman toilets are pretty tightly packed together to afford plenty of opportunity for personal contact. They even had a center fountain (located just in front of Rusty) to help drown out any awkward toilet noises. It isn't a far stretch to imagine that when Paul was teaching the Ephesians, the public toilets played a key role in his success by providing him with a "captive" audience.

Aside from public toilets, public baths also played an important socialization role in Roman society. Following Ephesus, we went to the ancient Roman bath ruins at Pamukkale. The baths are still in use, although the ancient Roman structure has fallen into the pool (picture above).

Pictured below is the amazing white travertine terraces flowing for hundreds of yards down the hill from the baths, which are located on top of the hill. They projected mulit-colored lights onto the terraces at night, which created a lovely scene. Rusty was relieved to learn that the travertine is the result of natural mineral leeching in the bath water, and is not a horrible case of ancient Roman bath scum.

After the Roman ruins, we headed in Turkey's heart, Anatolia. In the heart of the heart lies a magical place called Cappadocia. Since the times of the Hittites, this has been constantly inhabited, and has been an important stop on major trade routes. Because of its strategic importance, it was constantly under attack, so the inhabitants decided to build their homes inside of the mountains.

When westerners first saw house lights glowing from the chimney rock formations of Capadocia, they thought that ferries were living in the rocks. Because of this, the rocks were called "ferry chimneys." The Chimneys are a geological phenomenon of erosian. They are formed from softer rock underneath, capped with harder lava rock on top.

Inside the rocks the carvings are often astonishing. Early Christians carved churches, wineries, graneries, and even stables into the rocks. To this day, the churches still have beautiful frescos inside of them.

To explore the area, we decided to rent mountain bikes. Rusty thought he looked really great with his hat sticking out from his helmet... you decide!

We even slept in a cave motel called "The Flintstones." Aside from being a bit cold and dusty, it wasn't too bad. We're glad that we aren't living permanently in a cave, though.

We are suckers for open markets and thought that this colorful collage of vegetables was particularly inspiring. Kelsi loves fresh cherry season, and Turkey was well supplied to please her!

On our way across central Turkey we stopped off at a bus station and noticed some of the local toys. Turkey boasts one of the largest armies in the world and service is compulsory. It is seen as a rite of passage for young men, and we were happy to witness a huge send off party at a bus station. You can see from the dolls below that the indoctrination begins early in life... reminded me of my GI Joe army toys when I was a kid!

Our final stop on our West to East way across Turkey was the Kurdish town of Kars. It's located the far flung eastern edge of Turkey, and has a real Central Asiatic feel. The local Kurds were an interesting people with a unique culture. They always dress formally, circa 1900 Europe (most men wore sports coats and wool caps), and it was a delight to stroll around the city among them. While in Kars our main activity was a visit to a site called Ani on the Armenian boarder which has a collection of churches remaining from thousands of years of constant civilization.

Ani has passed between many religions including Zoroastrian, Georgian Christian, and Armenian Christian. Turkey finally took the land from Armenia in the early 2oth century, and built a mosque here. Armenia claims that they murdered 1.5 million Armenians in the process, although Turkey sites some tensions with Armenian allegiance to Russia as the causal factor. The Armenians are seeking compensation and claim that in modern history, this genocide is second only to that of the Nazis. Turkey denies the genocide claim, and this point of contention has become a major obstacle for Turkey as it tries to gain entrance into the European Union.

In any case, the land and site were beautiful with a river gorge separating Turkey from Armenia. If you look closely, you can see two Russian backed Armenian military bases across the gorge, peering suspiciously back across at Turkey. With a neighbor that has 500,00 soldiers and indoctrinates their children with violent cabbage patch dolls, who can blame Armenia for inviting in Russia's even bigger and scarier military to help out with defense!

Gaia: Onboard a Sailing Yacht

2009-06-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

We didn't say a lot about the sailing yacht we crewed in the Mediterranean, so we thought we'd say a few things here. The ship is named Gaia which means "goddess of the earth," and she has belonged to Alberto (our skipper) for about 35 years. Gaia was originally set up as a "ketch," a ship with two masts, but Alberto converted her into a "sloop" by removing the smaller of the two masts. She is a 52 feet long cruising ship and has ample storage and living space, which makes her a "yacht." Basically, Gaia has all the comforts of home, although you need to be conservative with fresh water use and electricity (which is generated by two large solar panels on the rear of the ship). We'll show you a few highlight pics below so that you can check out where and how we lived while we were cruising the Mediterranean.

Above: Overview of the entire yacht looking in from the entrance which is located at the stern (back) of the boat.

Below: The galley (kitchen) where Alberto prepared Italian culinary delights. The stove is set on two horizontal hinges so that it will stay level and not dump scalding pots on the chef when the boat is rocking in the waves. The galley is also equipped with a large refrigerator.

Above: The command center where Captain Alberto runs the ship. Modern Sailboats are equipped with motors, gps, and even auto-pilot systems, so there is a lot of technical stuff going on.

Below: Living room/dining room/library. Under every floorboard and seat is storage space.

Above: Kelsi and Rusty's bedroom. The ship is quite wide, so the living quarters are divided into starboard (right) and port (left) sections. Our room was on starboard side, and there was an almost identical bedroom on the port side of ship where Alberto lives. Around and under our beds was a large fresh water tank and more storage space.

Below: Double beds in the bow (front) of the ship. This is where the other crew member, Melodie Fee, stayed. She was sweet to take these living quarters since the bow section moves more when the ship moves.

Above: Our bathroom. On the side of the toilet is a pump which sucks in salt water and flushes it back out... you can imagine how that looks! The faucet has a long, retractable hose so that it can be extended to use as a shower. The shower uses fresh water which is heated by the motor and drains through the floorboards after use. We shared our bathroom with the other crew member, Melodie fee. Our bathroom had a door to our room on one side and another door to Melodie's room on the oposite side. Because of the boat layout, to reach the bathroom Melodie eıther had to cut through our room or climb through her room's window (all windows opened up vertically to the deck). Alberto had an identical bathroom in his living quarters, although his bathroom was not shared with another room.

Below: The amazing crew and captain of Gaia!

Crewing a Sailboat in the Greek Isles

2009-06-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

After Athens we jumped onto a sailboat with an Italian skipper named Alberto whom we met via internet on the website floatplan.com. We got the idea from fellow travelers we met trekkıng in Nepal back in October (our Alaskan friends - thanks Andy!). Before we became "salty" (that means "experienced" in sailor talk), the thought of sailing had conjured up two different images. The romantic one was of a luxurious boat sailing off into a beautiful sunset. The adventurous one had a captain with a peg-leg who would tell you to swab the deck or else you would be forced to walk the plank. As it turned out both images were a little true and we loved it!

The first part of our voyage took us to a recently active volcanic island named Santorini where we stayed on anchor in the harbor, which was located in the sunken caldera of the volcano... yikes! We were taken by surprise when Alberto, the ship captain, asked us (nicely) to swab the deck. We thought he was just joking until he handed us a mop and bucket! No threat of walking the plank was uttered by Alberto (he's much too nice for that), so we considered ourselves lucky.

In addition to cleaning, Captain Alberto and Melody (the other crew member), were really good about teaching us the ways of sailing the seas. We practiced sailing knots, changing and adjusting sails, mooring, and we even put Kelsi behind the wheel... Other than a few accidental circles due to insufficient wind she was an excellent helmswoman!

The boat we were on was named "Gaia," which means goddess, and she has been with the same owner for over 35 years. Alberto was our skipper and we were really happy to have such an experienced and enjoyable captain to learn from... not to mention a fırst rate Italian chef. It is going to take a little while to recover from eating copious amounts of pasta every day for a month during the gourmet sailing experience. We had dinner parties almost every night with Alberto's sailing friends we met up with at different islands.

We will show you more pictures of "Gaia" soon but here is a nice picture of her:

The great thing about crewing on a personal sailboat is that we got to stop off at many beautiful Greek Islands. Some islands were remote with no tourist accommodation while others were popular with really expensive accommodation, but the boat always provided a comfortable home base and Alberto always prepared amazing meals. Whats more... it was really affordable since we just paid for our share of groceries, fuel, and port expenses. AND... we were always trying to supplement our diet with a bit of bounty from the seas. It was our first experience eating and preparing octopus, although we have to admit that it is pretty tasty!

The Greek flag is a pattern of blue and white colors. These colors are very reflective of the sea and sky nature of the Greek Islands, and the island locals have even elected to use blue and white as the main colors for most buildings. We stopped off at about eight or nine islands and they all had epic histories and heroes of biblical proportions (literally). Some of the islands we visited were Santorini, Ios, Naxos, Dhonousso, Patmos, Samos, Khios, and a couple other smaller islands surrounding these. Given that our blog is titled "The Odyssey of Rusty and Kelsi," it's worth mentioning that we hitch hiked across Ios to visit Homer's grave. Aside from that, we'll just let you enjoy a few snapshots we took of the beautiful Greek Island architecture we found so attractive:

We loved being on a boat with a captain and fellow crew member we could learn from. More than that we enjoyed exploring the islands together. Here are all four of us together: Kelsi and I with Melodie Fee and Alberto.

We also wanted to briefly mention some of the other friends we met along the way: Raimon, Pepe and Carmen who sailed with us in their boat for the first third of our trip and Carlo, Susanna, Max and Alessandra who sailed with us in their boats for the last third of the trip. We had so much fun meeting Alberto's sailing friends and enjoying their wonderful company and friendship as well as delicious dinners :)! Also, we need to mention one really sweet lady who gave us a grand goodbye of hospitality as we departed our sailing excursion through the Greek Islands. We drove our rental car across the medium sized island of Khios to the main city, Khios Town, to catch a ferry to Turkey. Once we arrived in Khios Town, we became lost in windy neighborhoods and stopped to ask directions from the sweetest Greek lady who decided to jump in her car and lead us out to the main road after giving us a tupperware container of homemade rose jam. It was such a sweet ending to our wonderful experience in Greece!

Cyprus & Athens, Greece

2009-06-01T03:12:00.000-07:00

After Israel, we hopped a flight out of Tel Aviv, and had a wonderful opportunity to check out Cyprus during a day-long lay-over. It was all blooming with beautiful spring flowers, and made a lovely stop. Cyprus is a Greek speaking sovereign country, although the Northern half is mostly Turkish speaking, and is controversially occupied by Turkish forces. During our time there, we took a nice tour of the town and discovered the church pıctured above which was built in commemoration of Lazarus (the guy Jesus raised from the dead), who is rumored to have finally died here in Cyprus.

After stopping off in Cyprus, we continued on to Athens Greece, where we saw the Greek Parthenon, one of the greatest architectural achievements in the world. The Parthenon was built to look large from afar, a sign of Athenian dominance in the region, but it also looks small and approachable up close, signifying the accessibility of the government to the citizens. The mathematics used to design this amazing structure follow the perfectly devised rules of proportion known as "the golden mean," which is a ratio found throughout nature. The pillars are angled in slightly so that if you follow their lines upwards, they would connect in a pyramid about 6000 feet in the sky (one of the techniques to make it look smaller up close). Unfortunately, the building was destroyed a couple hundred years back. It was being used to store explosives and was hit by a shell from a British warship... crazy!

We also happened to time our visit to Athens to see the very grand changing of the guards on the tomb of the unknown soldier on a Sunday morning.

We were impressed with this enclosed motorcycle... not that it has anything to do with anything but we saw it in Athens and wanted to share it with you!

Athens hosted the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. The olympics originated in Greece so naturally the locals thought it a great honor to have the games return to their home. As a result of this collective pride they built an enormous and amazingly expensive olympic park which is now completely neglected with rust and grafitti and overgrown with weeds. At the current rate it will end up looking as ruined as the Roman ruins in a couple years.

Our Anniversary

2009-05-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a year that we've been married now! May 24th that was anyway. Since "normal" life for us isn't so "normal" at the moment, what we really wanted to do on our anniversary was watch a movie at a movie theater. It's kind of funny how you always want a break from the version of life you happen to be living. But not THAT long of a break! We are definitely still loving our amazing opportunities to travel and experience the world. Anyway, we had a nice anniversary :)

Israel and The Palestinian Territories

2009-05-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

Israel is a land that many relate to as a holy place... for better or worse. It is so full of alleged historical and biblical sites (most sites are mostly just speculations) that we could spend forever talking about it, so we'll just leave you to your own studies for that. As for us, we loved wandering around in Jerusalem's old town through windy streets, markets, and arches. We'll try to share a few pictures we shot while we were there.

Above is the famous Muslim Mosque, Dome of the Rock. Hundreds of years after the second Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Romans on site, the Muslims moved in and built this Mosque. To the Jews, Muslims, and Christians, this site is celebrated as the place where Abraham went to sacrifice his son. The Jewish still yearn for their temple at this location and congregate at the western wall of the temple site, known as the "Western Wailing Wall." See the picture below:

This olive tree on the Mount of Olives is almost 2000 years old. It is possible that it is in the location of the Garden of Gethsemane.

The site below is possibly Golgatha. If you look closely you can see a face in the wall. (Golgatha means "place of the skull").

This place is known as "The Garden Tomb," one of the sıtes where many believe Jesus was placed after his crucifixion. There is another site in Jerusalem in the Church of The Holy Sepulchre that many others believe was his burial location.

We took some time to travel to Bethlehem to see the supposed birthsite of Jesus', pictured below.

Passing through the disputed west bank was very interesting to say the least. The Palestinians have sprayed graffiti all over the wall, expressing their discontent with what they see as an occupation of their homeland by the Western-backed Israelis. We got an earful from both sides on the issues, and both sides loved to blame the others for killing babies... You can read up on this one for yourselves.

The picture below was painted on the wall of a wall around a Christmas Tree, which may seem to tie into the wall around Bethlehem.

For our final stop in the region, we thought it would be fun to visit the lowest land on Earth at the Dead Sea (1349 feet below sea level) since we had been in the shadows of the highest point on earth looking up to Mount Everest. Rusty was able to lather up in the supposedly healthy mud and go for a salty float. Kelsi was only able to go in up to her ankles with her healing knee since the salt water has stories of intense stinging on open wounds. The ocean water during diving was enough sting for Kelsi, so she'll reminisce in the Great Salt Lake one day. (Her knee is fine though - as some readers had expressed concern - thank you for caring :). We enjoyed watching one lady swimming who started splashing nervously when she struggled to get her feet back under her. The salt is so thick it's hard to even stand back up once you're floating.

Rusty trying to sink:

Dead Sea mud is sold in packages as a rather expensive cosmetic mask. Rusty wants to point out to his mom that he has finally managed to gain back a little weight around his middle, although it seemed to disappear once he went swimming again...

Jordan

2009-05-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

You might have be familiar with the above picture of the Treasury in Petra, Jordan from the last supper scene in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Petra is an amazing place, hewn from the sandstone cliffs by the local Nabataean people (and the Romans later), who used this strategic location to control trade routes.

The Canyon leading up to the entrance of the treasury in Jordan makes the site all the more dramatic.

The sandstone cliffs and arid environment reminded us of Southern Utah. The picture above and below were a couple of our favorite views of the beautiful swirling colors we called tie dye rocks.

In addition to the treasury in Petra, the Nabataeans carved numerous other buildings, dwellings, and stables carved into the rocks.

The Monastery that requires a 45 minute hike. It looks a little bit like the Treasury, but notice the differences.

This is another picture in front of the Treasury, but we thought 3 pictures of this stunning view was acceptable, and the donkey pictured above was such a great photo composition by Rusty.

A couple other views around Petra.

Here is our favorite host, Muslah, from our hostel in Petra. When we arrived, he asked Kelsi if she was missing her family and even offered to call up Kelsi's nephews and nieces for a minute... a really nice gesture! (Ashley, this is who you talked to).

As always, we are continuing to read voraciously as we wait for trains, planes, and automobiles. Here is Kelsi waiting for our bus to our next destination. Really good book "Tis" by Frank McCourt. Now we're definitely going to read his other book, "Angela's Ashes."

Two Red-Heads at The Red Sea

2009-05-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

In addition to being the Biblical place where Moses parted the water, the Red Sea has amazing coral reefs for scuba diving and snorkeling. Unfortunately, on our first day at the Red Sea, Kelsi finally took her turn going to a medical clinic after slipping on wet tile and slamming her knee into a tile ledge. In our 8 or so months out we've only had one major medical situation with Rusty's kidney stone in Nepal. Fortunately, the x-rays of Kelsi's knee didn't show a cracked patella and the gash did more smashing than slicing so stitches weren't required - AND the budget hotel even covered the bill as it happened on their patio. They also comped Kelsi one free dive in the Red Sea! Nevertheless, we lost our first day of diving, which left us some time to photograph the area...

"No Camels and Horses"... only on the Red Sea!

From where we stayed in Egypt, we could look across and see Saudi Arabia. At different places, you can see Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The landscape in all directions was strikingly barren desert leading up to the Red Sea, which was full of great underwater life.

The town of Dahab Egypt had a really nice atmosphere with beautiful restaurants lining the ocean side.

Aside from Dahab Egypt, we also spent time in Aqaba Jordan. We tried the diving in both places, which was really spectacular! Kelsi felt like a mermaid princess during a dive in Dahab called "The Islands" where we swam up and down and through this wall and that wall of absolutely beautiful pastel colored corral after entering the dive through a cave. This site is named "The Islands" because of all the corral formations that are like a bunch of underwater islands. It was the most beautiful corral Kelsi had seen. Rusty thought is was a spectacular dive as well though the corral was more pastel than his liking of brilliant. There was more live corral in beautiful formations than either of us had ever seen though. One amazing brain corral that was crayola blue (the brightest of the corral on this dive) and enormous in size had resident clown fish swimming around in the anemone on top. It's called brain corral because it looks like a brain. There was also soft corral that Kelsi called popcorn corral because there were tons of little round balls opening and closing.

The dive company required that we do an easy dive before this one to make sure we had good buyancy in the water since there were many tight areas where we swam around corral and sometimes we'd be down at 40 feet then we'd swim over a formation at 15 feet, so you had to be careful not to bump into anything nor to pop up to the surface before the safety stop. It was quite an adventurous dive. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures since our waterproof camera broke in New Zealand, but the google picture below may give an idea of what the formations looked like that we were swimming through.

In Aquaba, Jordan, we did a 260 feet long shipwreck dive in amazing visibility. Notice the diver at the top of the ship. Picture from google:

Our second dive in Aquaba, Jordan, we saw the highest concentration of Lion Fish (picture on our Sulawesi blog) we'd ever seen: 10+ at one corner of corral as well as two creepy (and dangerous to the touch) stone fish that looked like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" Black Pearl Pirates. See google image below:

Egypt: Land of Pyramids and Baksheesh

2009-05-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Egypt is one of the world's great ancient empires, and has an amazing share of world heritage sites. To go along with it's amazing share of world class sites, Egypt has an ample share of the scams we have encountered. We estimate that about 30% of the money we used in Egypt was taken from us by dishonesty. Don't get us wrong: there were some really nice, helpul people, but many people in Egypt were not. At the end of this blog we'll write about some of the scams we encountered.

It's difficult to capture the immensity of the pyramids, but it was a surreal experience to walk and ride in our shaded horse carriage around them.

After a long day of site-seeing and being relentlessly scammed, we took pause in the cool of the sunset to take a quiet felucca sailboat ride on Cairo's Nile River.

After Cairo, we took the overnight train to Luxor, where we were amazed at the size and style of the Luxor Temple and surrounding monuments. Walking around the sites in Luxor felt even more surreal than the pyramids as they exceeded expectations. The sun was fairly intense here as you may notice in our expressions.

This walkway of Sphynx's was magnificent! It's Rusty's favorite new animal, replacing the Liger (half tiger, half lion).

Rusty wants to know who's head is bigger? He didn't like Kelsi's answer.

The detailed Egyptian hieroglyphics were stunning:

As we were bicycling in the countryside around Luxor, we came upon this monument, the Colossi of Memnon. It was fun to be biking among so many sites.

Although Egypt is fairly well-developed, there is still a little room for modernization (see below) ... or maybe they have it all right considering the rise in gas prices!

The Land of Baksheesh

Egypt is plagued with discrimination by both the government and locals against foreigners. They charge foreigners 10-20 times the local price for everything. Although we are accustomed to being charged a 2-3 times higher, "tourist price" by private parties and for some museum entrances, we have never been to a country where even government transportation services charge foreigners more. For a ferry boat ride that should have cost about $7-8, they ask foreigners for $70. For a train ride that should have cost about $10, they want $60. This attitude of sticking it to the tourists starts at the top and extends all the way down through the ranks of society. The result is that almost everyone will steal from tourists or ask for money for any little thing they do. The bribe, tip, or extortion (depending on the situation) is called "Baksheesh," a rather ugly sounding word for a rather ugly societal practice.

Baksheesh is requested for anything and everything. If you ask someone for directions, it's a 50/50 that they will ask you for baksheesh. In one case, Rusty asked a police officer at the train station to point him toward the bathroom, thinking that an officer on duty was a safe way to avoid the baksheesh shakedown. After walking Rusty 30 feet to the bathroom, the officer asked for baksheesh. Similarly, if a bus driver grabs your bag and lifts it 18 inches into the cargo hull of a bus before you can stop him from doing it, he will ask not only for the usual luggage charge, but also for baksheesh of up to $1 for "his trouble."

Even in bathrooms, "paper towel boys" wait around for foreigners so that they can hassle them for baksheesh if the foreigner is naive enough to take a paper towel handed to him from the boy instead of grabbing it from the dispenser himself. Rusty got keen to this and and opted to use the electric air dryer, but the moment he looked away as he was drying his hands, the paper towel boy dashed in and threw a paper towel over Rusty's hands! He gave Rusty a triumphant look and extended his hand, saying "Baksheesh!?" with a swagger.

The baksheesh scams follow the tourists right into the pyramids. If a local gets his hands on your camera to take a picture of you, you won't get it back without some hefty baksheesh. If a foreigner points to a site before you notice it on your own, he'll ask for baksheesh. In some places where photography is forbidden, you are even required to turn your camera into the local guards. Even though they paid a salary, they extort baksheesh from foreigners as ransom for the return of your camera.

By now, you might be tired of the word "baksheesh," and so were we after hearing requests for it dozens of times per day for every little thing. Like us, many people are unwilling to pay baksheesh, so some Egyptians have no problems with simply taking money by dishonesty, petty theft, or extortion. In one situation, we were lied to by an animal driver/guide that the pyramids are not entirely accessible without a guide and animal transportation. The guide lied to us that he represented a government office and told us we needed to ride a short distance to see his manager to get the price for the animal service. He got us 4 feet off the ground (camels are really tall) and took us about 10 feet before stopping and demanding an exorbitant price. He probably figured we'd rather pay than try to climb down, but he didn't know that we'd already been smartened up a bit in India.

While we weren't robbed or pick-pocketed in Egypt (many tourists are), we lost a decent amount of money by petty dishonesty. On several occassions we didn't know the correct price of transportation, and the government employee at the ticketing counter charged us several times the price and pocketed the difference, which we realized later. This happened as well with private business. In our travels we have encountered numerous scams, but nowhere have they been so ubiquitous as in Egypt. There were some very nice people who helped us without thought for money, but by and large, Egypt has a lousy way of treating her guests. And we found most people we encountered who had traveled to Egypt have had similar sentiments. Rusty came up with a great analogy to "The Soup Nazi" from Seinfield. The Soup Nazi was a restauranteer whose soup was so good that his restaurant remained popular despite how badly he treated his clients. Egypt is the same way: if you have the pyramids, people are still going to come no matter how badly you treat them!

Papua Indonesia - WARNING: contains tribal nudity

2009-04-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

WARNING for young viewers: please ask your parents permission as some pictures contain tribal nudity. We tried to select the least inappropriate pictures for all viewers.

It never ceases to amaze us that there are still traditional people on earth. It is estimated by Survival International (see their website for interesting reading) that there are still over 100 uncontacted tribes in the world. Papua has a large share of these tribes. While the Dani tribes that we visited in Papua's Baliem valley have been in touch with the outside world for several decades, the remoteness of the region where they live has largely interrupted attempts to change their culture.

Papua is yet another incongruous island in largely Islamo-Asian country of Indonesia. Like the people of Vanuatu (see our previous blogs), native Papuans are mostly considered to belong to the racial group of Melanesians. As such, Papuans look somewhat African in appearance, which led the early Dutch explorers to name them "Papuans," which roughly translates to "fuzzy heads." After a period of Dutch rule, the newly formed Indonesian government tried to change the name from Papua to Irian Jaya (which supposedly has a grandiose meaning something like glorious mountain rising from the sea), but the Papuans would have nothing of it. They strongly opposed Indonesian rule and stubbornly refused to adopt the new name, preferring instead to stick with the name Papua and remain the "Fuzzy Heads."

We opted to save some money and make our journey by hitch hiking around the area, so before heading out to the remote areas of Papua's Baliem Valley, we stopped off at the local market for some food and to find transportation. We loved the rich blend of aromas, colors and food. We were even surprised to see some traditional people running around in their traditional dress. It is probably a good time to mention that you might find some of the following pictures strange, but they show the traditional dress which consists of penis gourds for the men and grass skirts for the women. Kelsi had visited Papua before and even purchased one of the penis gourds. Her dad was fond of fooling his friends into trying to play it like a flute before he showed them a picture of what it really is. Needless to say, these pictures could be straight out of National Geographic, which is why we loved Papua!

Our first stop in Papua after we left the market place in an overflowing van was a small tribe of Dani people. They were proud to show us a their village mummy which has a small pock mark on his scapula (see just below the hand in the picture below.) This hole is from the arrow which killed the now mummy man in tribal war some 250 years ago.

The picture below shows a similar arrow wound on a living man's scapula from a tribal war a few decades ago. Lucky for him, he survived.

Rusty with the Dani Tribesmen. He asked if he could get a bone nose ring too, but Kelsi wouldn't go for it.

Funerary rituals are always interesting, and one of the more interesting ones in Papua is that when a family member dies, the women remove the top one or two joints from their fingers. Notice the left hand of the older woman below, who has obviously lost a number of close kin. We saw other women who were missing even more of their hands, which must make life rather difficult... The practice has been outlawed by the Indonesian government, but we still noticed some relatively young women who had continued the tradition. (image from google)

Even though traditional tribal culture is still alive in Papua, this is changing rapidly. This inevitable push from traditional culture to modernization wipes out much of what is interesting in these cultures, which is one of the primary reasons we chose to travel now before the Western world influences changes so many of the places we have seen forever.

We also had a great story about the airport security. The local military had all flights on one carrier booked out for 3-4 days due to elections. We found it amusing watching the soldiers put their bags through the security screening just before they walked through the metal detectors wearing semi-automatic machine guns. So, what, there might be some weapons hidden in their bags?

This reminded Kelsi of a similar incident when she was in Papua a few years ago. Her friend, Natalie, forgot to put some spears she purchased into her checked luggage. The airport security motioned for her to put them through the screening belt and we all laughed once we made it through. Again we thought, "what, are they worried there might be some weapons hidden inside the spears?"

Sulawesi Indonesia and Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

2009-04-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

In Sulawesi we stayed in a typical beach shack and spent several days diving, snorkelling, and reading lots of books. It was a pleasant rest after our more vigorous traveling in Papua the week before. After destroying our diving camera in New Zealand, we didn't get any pictures while we dove the world class reefs in Sulawesi Indonesia. We did manage to get some video of the place, and we plan to make a nice video of our trip for anyone interested later. The reef and sea life were amazing. It was definitely among our top diving experiences. On one dive we had turbo current with the reef whizzing by. We saw lion fish just while snorkeling. They are such unique looking fish (pic from the web):

The highlight of this trip was meeting Vijay and Vivien, a newly married couple from Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. We told them that we had a layover in KL after Sulawesi, and they were kind enough to invite us home as guests since they coincidentally were on our same flight. They were very hospitable in letting us stay in their comfortable apartment, and even showed us around several interesting areas of town with nice ethnic food. The highlight was ducking into an Indian restaurant to wait out a torrential downpour as well as getting a Thai Massage. For some reason we both love the torture of the Thai Massages. Needless to say, we were very happy to make some new friends and did our best to convince them to come visit us in Utah some day!

Bali Indonesia

2009-04-19T22:42:00.000-07:00

Bali has it all.

World class surfing and scuba diving. Mountains to climb and rivers to raft. Smoldering volcanoes and smoldering jungles (full of menacing monkeys)! It even has one of the most interesting cultures we have seen (see the photo of traditional Balinese dancing above). Bali is a Hindu island in the midst of the largely Islamic Indonesia.

Bali is one of many islands in the archipalego (string of islands) which makes up the country of Indonesia. Indonesia's enormous amounts of land (over 3X that of France) are spread out over an even more enormous area of ocean, and are highly populated (some estimate 300,000,000 people). Not surprisingly, the culture of each island is dramatically different from the rest.

Kelsi first visited Bali several years ago. Since that time, the best-selling travel/spiritual book, "Eat, Pray, Love," featuring Bali came into our hands. In the book, the author spends several months with a traditional Balinese medicine man named Ketut Lyer. Although we had no thought to look him up, by strange fortune, we happened to meet a man who took us to Ketut for a palm reading. Ketut was a delight! As part of the palm reading, he inspected our palms, backs, arms, legs, and heads. After looking us over, he pronounced with a huge, toothless grin that we were "very good boys and girls!" Among other things, he let us know that Rusty's lips were sweet like sugar, whereas Kelsi's were sweet like honey. He told Kelsi to slow down while driving and Rusty to work on a patient heart. Definitely worth the visit...

In addition to visiting with Ketut the medicine man, we paid a visit to the famous monkey forest in Ubud. It was confirmation that Kelsi was indeed sweet like honey; the monkeys wouldn't stop terrorizing her!

Rusty seemed to get along alright. They must have thought he was one of their own!

In addition to our time enjoying Balinese culture, we decided to try our hand/feet at surfing. Before we rented boards on our own, we hired an instructor at a local surf school to get us started out. Although he was able to get us both up and riding pretty well, as you can see, he couldn't get Kelsi to quit plugging her nose. Her nose-plugging style is a little unorthodox, but who wants their sinuses cleaned in the ocean?

Bali is really a great place for anyone and everyone: great shopping, five star accommodation (not that we stayed in one), reasonably safe (if you stay away from the night clubs), and it's somehow remained dirt cheap! Go there while it lasts!

Tonga "The Friendly Islands"

2009-04-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

As we approached the Island of Tongatapu, Tonga our pilot announced in all seriousness "no worries folks, the volcano has finished erupting, so we should have a clear landing." Tonga would be our final stop in the volcanic Pacific "ring of fire." Supposedly, the three-headed palm tree pictured above proves that we were there.

Captain James Cook, one of the greatest navigators the world has known, stopped by Tonga in the early 1800's and the locals threw him a huge party and feast, after which he bestowed upon Tonga the name of "The Friendly Islands." What Cook didn't know was that the Tongans were actually planning to fatten him up in preparation for slaughter and raiding Cook's obviously rich boats. However, the Tongans dropped the plan due to indecision among the leaders. Thirty years later, a different party of mariners fell to this plot upon reaching Tonga and were massacred. Cook was later killed in a similar manner in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) after leaving Tonga.

All the same, we decided to try our luck and enjoy a Tongan Feast.

After the feast, rather than killing us and robbing our wallets. The locals put on a show of traditional dancing. The highlight for us was the hip dancing (not pictured here) and the Tongan fire dancing (pictured below). In Arambol India we had already attended a professional fire spinning show put on by the local hippies, but watching these Tongan's light their hair and the roof on fire (no exaggeration!) was definitely well worth while.

In addition to the fire spinners (luckily no one was injured), we enjoyed the traditional costumes. It's interesting to consider the different modesty standards we have found around the world. In Tonga it is not appropriate to have your knees show, but the traditional dress is mostly sleeveless. In India, the modesty is wrapping up from head to toe in brightly colored cloths, except that it is completely appropriate to wear a midriff with the belly hanging out. In Vanuatu, women go bare-chested, but showing thighs is considered very inappropriate. To be balanced, though, perhaps the US is strangest since anything is game.

In addition to the traditional food, dancing and costuming, we were also interested by the all-black clothed funeral processions, and the shallow-ground burial mounds, which the Tongans believe makes them closer to God and their living relatives. The theory of one expat we were talking with is that this is just an excuse; who wants to dig a huge hole and cart away all the excess dirt from burying an especially corpulant Tongan?

Culture aside, Tonga has amazing vistas everywhere. The rough surrounding ocean has formed blow-holes and caves at every turn. However, Rusty was reluctant to take too many pictures of the spraying and drenching blowholes (didn't want to ruin another camera), so we instead took a few pictures from the top of these 30 foot cliffs. Just after snapping this shot, a colossal wave smashed the cliff below and show water clear up and over Rusty. Luckily the camera was spared the drenching this time, but so much for trying to protect the camera!

When the seas mellowed out, we took some time to snorkel and kayak around some of Tongatapu's outer islands. The fish-life was abundant and the corals were fairly colorful. We also saw some giant clams unlike anything we'd seen before. The shipwreck below is one of the sites where we enjoyed snorkeling.

Kayaking in the strong currents and winds wasn't too easy, but we had a good time all the same.

In additiona to great culture, vistas, and activities, Tonga is a total tropical paradise. They litterally drop sticks into the ground and Yams, Taro, and other hearty foods spontaneously grow without any needed maintenance. The results are two-fold. First, the Tongans don't need to work or do much of anything, so they are consummate masters of "the art of doing nothing," per our hotel owner. Second, Tongans are all built like big Rugby players, and Rugby is one of the few things which will rouse them from their doing-nothing-ness. We enjoyed going to a tournament.

Although the big, tough Tongan men enjoy Rugby, there is a softer side to (some of) these guys: "Fakaleiti." Fakaleiti is what it sounds like, Fake Ladies. These ...er... ladies (dare we say it) are a long-standing tradition in Tonga, and provide a universally accepted third gender choice for people who are transgendered, transexual, gay, etc. Interestingly, for thousands of years, India has had an equivalent intersexed tradition known as "Hijira." In India they are even incorporated into the Hindu religion and afforded special roles at some ceremonies. We didn't knowingly recognize the Tongan Fakaleiti since many of the women in Tonga are also quite robust and we don't know if it's very common presently in Tonga. However, we did occasionally run into groups of very feminine, but deep-voiced hijira in India. Whatever your thoughts, we find it at least interesting how different societies around the world handle sexual variation. ...and to satisfy your curiosity, we'll post a few pics we downloaded from Google since we didn't get our camera out quickly enough on a train ride in India!

We didn't quite master the doing-nothingness, so we are off for another island in the Pacific. We've now visited two Polynesian countries (New Zealand and Tonga), but only one Melanesian country (Vanuatu). We'll leave you to guess where we are heading next...

Vanuatu's Very Active Volcano and John Frum Movement

2009-04-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

As we explained in the last blog about Vanuatu, it is a pacific island nation. After we spent some time with the Namba people on the island of Malekula, we opted to take a puddle jumper airplane (grass landing strips and all) to check out the island of Tanna. We are told that this island may have been featured on a few television programs like "Lost," but despite any popularity, we had the place to ourselves.

As we've mentioned, we prefer to make arrangements "on the fly," and fortunately, this was possible in Vanuatu because of their language of Bislama, a pigeon English with a vocabulary of around 8000 English and French words. Although very difficult to understand at times, we loved it! Kelsi was so happy when an elderly man was surprised at how well she was hiking and shook (almost broke) her hand, excitedely saying "Yu SmatFalla!" (You are a smart fellow!) Here are a few common phrases and translations, complete with the original spelling as used by the people of Vanuatu:

Bae/Me lukem yu (Bye / Me look you (See you later))
Tankyu to mas (Thank you too much)
Nem blong mi Kelsi (Name Belong Me is Kelsi)

Here is a sign about AIDS prevention in the Bislama "pigeon english." See if you can get the meaning:

After a late landing in Tanna and a night's rest in the island's main town (a sparse collection of a dozen buildings), we again thumbed a ride to Tanna's volcanic back country to see the famous and terrifyingly explosive Mount Yassur. We first had to cross a swollen river from the huge rains (it is rainy season here). Two big local guys helped Kelsi cross the waist deep raging river, while Rusty was able to cross with the help of one other guy. No other tourists were around since in the main town everyone was spreading news that the river wasn't crossable. That was partially true, but we like the adventure of figuring out how to make things work. The group of locals on the river's edge cheered for us when we made it. We had to leave all our bags behind with a villager so we wouldn't destroy our stuff if we fell into the river, so we spent the rest of the day and following night with nothing but the wet clothes we wore and our camera that we put in layers of all our baggies inside a pocket of Kelsi's rainjacket.

The climb up the steep, slipping and crumbly west slope of this volcano was scary enough, but nothing could prepare us for the exploding duel cauldrons of Mount Yassur, which often shot huge chunks of glowing, molten magma high over our heads. Although Kelsi claims that Rusty just caught her by surprise in this snapshot, it is pretty obvious (to Rusty) that she wasn't exactly relaxing into the experience:

After skiing and down the ash slopes of Mount Yassur, we hiked over to a nearby village where the locals are renowned for practicing a very interesting religion known as "John Frum." The John Frum movement is classified by some religious scholars as a "cargo cult" which was developed as the islanders saw inexplicable riches of cargo simply materializing into the hands of the European colonizers.

The John Frum movement took root when a man named John (you guessed it!) turned up and announced himself to the locals and told them that they would prosper if the Europeans departed and they returned to their traditional "Kastom" ways. Supposedly, he wrote them a letter which ended in the signature of From, John, which the elders transcribed as "John Frum," and thus was a religion born.

In the beginning of this John Frum movement, they used black magic, chanting, and dancing. During world war II, more cargo riches than ever began to pour into their lands. In response, they altered a few of their traditional magics and began to mimic many of the "white" activities which they assumed must be the "white peoples' magic"responsible for materializing the cargo riches they were seeing.

They cleared jungle and created bamboo airplanes and watch towers to "lure in" airplanes filled with cargo. They built bamboo wharfs to lure in ships with cargo from the sea, and even created a bamboo radio tower to send out orders for goods. The radio orders were sent using bamboo-made microphones and earphones which the chief would wear with a cord attached to an "oracle," which was generally an elderly village woman who would babble in response to the chief's orders.

To many of the John Frum people, the arrival of the Americans, who were generous and giving to the locals, was a fulfillment of the John Frum prophecy. From that point on, the John Frum movement began to incorporate American Uniforms as their official clergy dress, sing traditional lyrics set to American battle hymns, and ceremoniously raise the American flag each morning.

Kelsi and I were greeted very warmly by the John Frum village, and personally received by the movement's leader, Chief Issak Wan. He not only took time to introduce us to his tribesmen and explain the religion, but even invited us to spend the night with him and participate in the Friday night singing and flag ceremonies the next morning. Friday night is the John Frum's "Sabbath", and we thoroughly enjoyed joining them for their all-night sing/dance along from Friday 6 pm until Saturday 6 am. The band was a gifted group of singing guitarists and drummers, and the villagers were equally talented singers and dancers. We especially enjoyed seeing the small children's natural sense of rhythm as they danced and clapped to the music ALL NIGHT LONG.

At 8am in the morning, we witnessed the morning flag ceremony, where the tribesmen marched like soldiers, even donning US army uniforms, and raised "Old Glory" up over their village.

Rusty and Chief Issak Wan with the American flag and one of the US Military flags in the background.

Incidentally, Chief Issak Wan told us that he was taken to the US for a visit of LA, Atlanta, DC and a couple other places by some John Frum supporters. He said that it was terrifying with all the traffic and planes . . . This coming from a man who lives in the shadow of an active volcano that has constant 10 minute intervals of ground shaking explosions - on a calm day. Not to mention the "shark bay" practically in his back yard. We even saw the glow of the volcano in the background from his village music and dance evening.

Vanuatu (Yes, it's a sovereign country, so google it!)

2009-03-28T04:06:00.000-07:00

We have always prioritized seeing the less touristic areas of the world while they are still unhomogenized by westernization, and the string of volcanic islands which comprise the country of Vanuatu is definitely one of these places. Although tour companies can arrange package tours to this country, we opted to travel in our "figure-it-out-as-you go"style of travel, which gave us access to a more remote side of Vanuatu that delivered just the right traditional mix of Tribes, Black Magic, Cannibalism, "Never-seen-a-white-personISM" that we were looking for. During the West's imperialistic period, England, France and Germany all attempted to colonize and/or Christianize these islands with mixed results. There's a lot of "Christianity" mixed in with some traditional culture. For example, during a particularly violent rainstorm, we were invited into one guy's hut for food and lodging. Right after serving us our food, we paused, making sure it was OK to start eating. He noticed our hesitation and asked if we wanted to pray first. We said "sure." So he said the following prayer while holding out his right hand like a handshake and wiggling his fingers like "spirit fingers": "Jesus, bleeeesss this food. Amen."

John Williams, the first Christian missionary to Vanuatu in the early 1800's, set foot on the island of Erromango, where he was promptly cooked and eaten by the locals. They did, however, take the effort to splay out and chip around the outline of his stout body on a boulder, where his body print can be seen to this day. The same thing happened to many of the other first westerners until an astute white trader began to use the Vanuatan peoples' cannibalism to his favor. In exchange for local riches, the trader would pick up a boatload of slaves and sell them to the Vanuatans who would cook and eat them. Although the locals claim that they disavowed cannibalism some time ago, we heard rumors that in some exceptionally remote areas it persists to a lesser degree even to this day. This isn't too surprising since Vanuatu, although officially a government controlled republic, is, in actuality, largely ruled and policed by local tribal chiefs. One islander told us that as punishment, they would give the offender a drink of Kava (an indigenous root-derived depressant) and bury him alive while. Wow!

Kelsi, in a known cannibal site, posing beside the specially human-sized stove.

Cannibalism aside, the people of Vanuatu were an absolute delight, and the most friendly people we have ever encountered. Just after arriving on the remote island of Malekula, we decided to check out the remote bush areas of the island, so we thumbed a ride from a pick-up truck (where we rode in the back along with an enormous sword fish). When we arrived at our intended village, which was nothing more than a collection of a dozen thatched, bamboo bungalows, we asked directions and set out on a footpath we had read about. After some distance, we came to a small clearing and a gathering of six or seven huts. We called out and were soon greeted by several women, children, and tribesmen.

One of the tribesmen identified himself as the chief of the area (they speak a form of Pigeon English left over from the colonial era). We explained to the chief that we wanted to see some traditional dances, which seemed to please him. He promptly decided invited us to "sleep with him" and began making preparation and orders to his tribesman to prepare food, blankets, and dancing for us. Although we must admit that it was a bit rough sleeping with bed bugs on the ground of a hut, and the enormous spiders were even enough to scare Rusty, it was well worth it!

The "Small Namba" people where we stayed with the chief's family. They are called Small Nambas because the men's leaf sheath coverings are "smaller" than those worn by their neighbors:

The Small Namba's performing a traditional dance for us:

In addition to showing us the dancing of his own people, the Small Namba's, the chief also took us to a neighboring tribe where he introduced us to the chief of the Big Namba's (picture of the chief below). They were kind enough to show us a few traditional dances as well.

Big Namba's dancing:

In addition to dancing, staying with the chief gave us a wonderful opportunity to visit with the locals. We were tickled by some of their questions and comments and they found some of our comments equally funny. Both we and they revealed an utter unfamiliarity with each others' worlds. For Example:

"How much pigs to buy a wife in America? Here in Vanuatu, wife is very expensive." --We didn't quite know how to respond to this one...

"Will your wife live with you and your father's family" --Rusty had to explain that his father didn't have several acres of jungle to throw up huts for his children when they marry, unlike the custom in Vanuatu.

The time we spent chatting with the chief and his family was very good, and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them.

Geographically, Vanuatu is located in the huge area described as "Oceania," which includes Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, and all the other pacific islands. You can sort of think of this area like you would Europe or Asia. As a region and culture, Vanuatu is located in Melanesia, which includes such countries as Papua New Guinea, The Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and Fiji. Melanesians are physically dark skinned, and with curly hair. Early explorers thought they looked like Africans. We were excited to discover that although they have some African-like physical features, the Melanesian people also have a range of natural hair colors. This is especially predominant in children:

Naturally Blond and Loving it!

Two Red-heads!

This brunette child with a knife is a typical site around Vanuatu. No one goes around without a knife (just like a second arm to these islanders), and they are used for everything from food processing to hacking through the bush and jungle. They start training their kids for life by handing them a knife at the tender age of 3 or 4... can you imagine what people would think if they saw this in the US!?

We have a few more things to tell you about a different island in Vanuatu, so we elected to put that in a different blog to keep things "bite-size."

New Zealand

2009-03-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

New Zealand is full of spectacular scenery and outdoor adventures... but it's expensive by our shoestring budget standards! So, we rented another station wagon and spent our time on a South Island Road trip (New Zealand is broken up between a North and South Island). Altogether, between Australia and New Zealand, this made almost two weeks sleeping in the back of a car! Sleep deprivation aside, it was worth it!

We began the trip by heading South to Mount Cook in a mountain chain known as "The Southern Alps." They are stunning! You have probably seen these mountains in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. New Zealand has a climate which is similar to Seattle or Portland, but it gets a lot more rain (seven meters per year in some places). When we arrived in New Zealand it rained every single day, and because it was fall here (the seasons are the opposite of Utah), we often awoke in the morning to see the mountains dusted in fresh snow. Over thousands of years, this huge amount of precipitation and snow accumulates in the mountains and has formed thousands of glaciers. We chose to visit the Franz Joseph glacier to hike and climb on it.

Franz Joseph Glacier from a distance:

Checking out a glacial crevasse:

Kelsi Climbing up a vertical ice hole using crampons and Ice picks (A good refresher of our climbing in Nepal!)

After exploring the Franz Joseph Glacier, we spent several days hiking through New Zealand's lush, tropical rain forests. Many of them abut beautiful fjords, and the views were beautiful! The picture below doesn't do justice to the view we saw (asking other people to take a picture for us doesn't always work out the best).

The grand finale for our trip was swimming with wild Dusky Dolphins. They aren't coaxed, fed, trained, or caught... they are completely wild! Dusky dolphins are naturally gregarious and very curious, and when we got into the water with a pod of over 300 dolphins, they circled and swarmed around us to see what we were up to. Dusky dolphins are very playful and are often seen playing with whales and seals, so they probably thought we could be potential playmates. Unfortunately, the waterproof housing for our camera leaked while we were out with the dolphins, so we only ended up with a couple of short video clips before our digital camera was destroyed. All the same, this image from Google shows exactly what we were seeing:

Australia Road Trip

2009-03-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

We knew Australia would be more expensive than India, so after considering our options between expensive bus tickets along with expensive hostels (approximately $20-$30 US per person per night), we decided to rent a reasonably priced station wagon that would let us sleep in the back and road trip around.

Here's a picture of us picking up the beauty:

Right after we got our station wagon, we headed to a travel agent to see if we could find any travel deals. This is where we met Marion, our travel agent. We enjoyed visiting about travel so much that she invited us out for dinner after she got off work with her partner, Nic. We all had such a great time visiting over dinner that they invited us to spend the night at their house! They offered us an extremely comfortable futon and our first hot shower in over 2 months! We felt like we were back home! Then they barbecued us up some bacon for breakfast. Barbecuing is the big thing in Australia. We'd never had BBQ bacon before. That was pretty fun, besides being really hospitable of them. We're on a great track for meeting extremely kind and generous people upon entering countries (we had some similar experiences when we arrived in India). Hopefully some of the great friends we've met abroad are enchanted by our ravings about how great Utah is so we are able to reciprocate some hospitality. Meeting such great people is such a memorable way to travel. Here's a picture of the 4 of us at their place:

After our amazing breakfast that morning, we hopped in our station wagon after saying our grand goodbyes, and the key wouldn't turn over. A repair guy came, sprayed some silicon in the tumbler, cussed a little, and ultimately gave up and called a tow truck. Apparently this happens all the time with that version of vehicle, but we had to wait for a tow truck to come take us all the way back to the rental shop to exchange for our new and improved station wagon as seen below at our first roadside "campsite."

After a great night's rest (by station wagon standards), we went for a run in the lovely countryside, then ate breakfast from our cooler and stumbled across our 2nd fabulously warm shower at a local municipal park where we also washed some clothes.

Throughout our road trip, our campsites were usually rest stops, but occasionally, we ended up in random parking lots. We were also able to take various interesting roads along our drive North from Brisbane on our way to go diving in the Great Barrier Reef. One detour that caught our eye was a place called the "Glass Mountains." These are volcanic "plugs" where the earth wore down around the lava core that had turned solid. We hadn't heard of this type of inactive volcano before. The main volcanoes we are familiar with are mountain looking mounds with a depression in the middle. It was an interesting and beautifully scenic drive. Here's a picture of the "Glass Mountains":

We finally reached the southern-most tip of the Great Barrier Reef and found out that the best diving to be found was actually not on the reef itself unless you wanted to spend upwards of $1,000 to go remote, so we opted for a "less expensive" amazing dive on the Yongala Shipwreck. This dive is considered as one of the top 10 in the world and is unique because it is in the same Eco system as the Great Barrier Reef, but isolated between sections of the reef by a several hours boat ride in a sandy bottom section of ocean. This makes it the only area for miles with any hard structure, so the coral have overtaken the ship and it has become a major feeding site for sea life. The fish here grow ENORMOUS and look like they're on steroids! While we were diving, we decided to get our Advanced Diving certificate since the cost difference was and we've become fond of traveling education certification :)

Because this is Jellyfish season, we were required to wear full body wetsuits including head-covers. Here's Kelsi all suited up:

The sea life was spectacular. Near the beginning of our first dive, we saw this sting ray:

We saw several more sting rays as well as several turtles. Below is a picture of Kelsi touching a turtle after her guide had given permission.

Below is a picture of our guide holding an Olive Sea Snake, one of Australia's most poisonous (and Australia is famous for poisonous snakes). We saw dozens of these venomous snakes, but fortunately they are very docile and don't care to bite. In Australia the main things to worry about in the sea are the crocodiles and the stinging jelly fish.

We found Nemo!

After diving we went to an aboriginal cultural center where they taught us the secrets of the Boomerang, an indigenous Australian weapon, toy, or tool. Rusty thinks he looks fierce in this picture, so we didn't include the follow-up pictures which show Kelsi out throwing him.

Not only did we snap a few pictures in front of the famous Sydney Opera House... we also splurged and went to an opera (it was affordable with our student ID cards). Where is a better place to confirm that we don't really enjoy or appreciate dramatic opera performances than the seventh-world-wonder Sydney Opera House?!

The Travails of Traveling

2009-03-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

The other day we decided to make a list of the hardest parts of traveling:

Sewage smells everywhere
Spending 24-7 with a new spouse for endless months - you can imagine
Traveling with no home base indefinitely - sometimes it's nice to "be home"
LOUD talking, snoring, etc. of random people when sleeping in random places, especially on sleeper trains when they board at 2 am and you're getting off at 6 am
Vipassana meditation - you have NO IDEA how hard even ONE HOUR is to focus and not move ANYTHING even to scratch or adjust or ANYTHING - then try it 10+ hours / day for 10+ days (it was really 10 days plus 2 half days)
Getting Kelsi to bungee off of a 500 ft suspension bridge!
Kayaking lessons as a beginner with 3rd world country standards (straight to class 2+ rapids)
Climbing a vertical ice wall at 20,000 feet (with no supplemental O2!)
FREEZING your butt off for months straight, but especially over 18,000 feet trying to sleep
Jostling for a place in lines... Indians are the most incredibly audacious line cutters we have ever encountered!
Hand washing our clothes in the shower or a sink more frequently than not
Alternating between only two outfits of clothes; sometimes you just feel like wearing something different!
Sleeping in the back of a station wagon in Australia and New Zealand for two weeks... sleep deprivation hurts!
Bus rides - esp. over night and in the bounciest part of the bus in the back - why did we land the back seats?! I wouldn't call this a sleeper bus. But that's not the end - even during the day time it can get difficult when more people squeeze onto and off a bus than imaginable, shoving and bumping all the time, and your ride is 12 hours long
Nasty toilets - don't think anything can top Mt Huashan in China where the "squatter" was overflowing and sewage spilled under your feet as you added to the pile - but there were no other options!
Scheming taxi drivers - highlighted in our scam post
A man's NASTY STINKY feet removed from his shoes and put up on the bench next to where you're sitting
Our stink after not being able to shower for a week
Cold showers for 2 months straight
Poor sleep - esp. with bad beds, back aches, putrid hostels, noisy neighbors and animals, rats, too many nights in a row on sleeper trains . . .
Constant indigestion from poor food hygiene
Communication barriers between languages and cultures. For example: getting a dish that you didn't intend to order (nor especially want) when you're STARVING
Alternating between which of us runs to the toilet next and hoping that our sudden and explosive urges don't happen at the same moment
Hacking our lungs out for weeks after catching a bug from who knows where
Lugging around all of our bags and stuff... which somehow keeps expanding?

These are some of the hard parts of travel we thought we'd share. Although our travels don't go without travails, we definitely wouldn't trade places with anyone!

Our Last Days in India

2009-03-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

After we finished building the guitar, we wrapped up our study of Ayurveda (traditional Indian medicine). They even gave us a certificate proving that we completed 100 hours of Ayurveda and massage studies, although Kelsi was the sterling scholar in our class of two. We had personal classes taught by three doctors of Ayurveda as well as two therapists. The photo above is four of our staff and the photo below is the 5th staff member, during the theory class.

After "graduating" from Ayurveda school, we decided to check out the far southern state of India called Kerala, which means land of coconuts. The first item on our agenda was a Kathakali drama performance. Before the performance started, they allowed us to watch the application of the makeup, which really added to our appreciation.

Kerala is also famous for it's backwaters. We couldn't come all the way down here without taking a boat tour.

A backwater-style houseboat that we would like to recommend for our next family reunion:

Chinese fishing nets:

Because of it's location in the backwaters area, we also decided to check out the ashram of Amma, India's most famous female guru, who has been dubbed the "hugging guru." She wasn't there when we stopped in to bestow a blessed cuddle on us, but we hear that her hugs are really world class. Aside from hugging, she is building tens of thousands of homes for needy people among her other impressive accomplishments. All pictures of Amma and her Kerala ashram are from Google images, as photography is prohibited in her ashram

Nearly every town in India of almost any size is blessed to have a Missionaries of Charity branch, set up by Mother Teresa and her volunteers. Different branches specialize in meeting the needs of different groups of desperately needful people, from babies to the dying. Although Missionaries of Charity is a worldwide organization, we were interested in seeing once of her centers while in India, so our final destination in Kerala was to visit an orphanage for severely handicapped orphans. We spent our time there playing, visiting, coloring, singing, and drawing with the children. It didn't seem appropriate to photograph, so we pulled an image of Mother Teresa from Google Images.

After seeing what we wanted most in Kerala, we spent the rest of our time catching up on things: haircuts, internet, one last bollywood movie, and we payed $15 (that's 2-3 nights worth of accommodation) for going to the gym FINALLY once in 6 months. And we can tell it's been that long... ouch!

After working out, we left Kerala on the night train to Trichy in the state of Tamil Nadu, where they speak mostly Tamil rather than the Hindi language of Northern India. They fed us a really nice traditional meal on banana leafs. You are supposed to mix up and eat the rice and sauces with your fingers. We actually find this quite enjoyable... reminds Rusty of being a child again!

We also took some time to check out the Hindu temples while we were in Trichy. Look at how ornate this temple entrance was!

We spent our last evening in India climbing up a 100 meter hill to watch the sunset from Trichy's famous Rock Fort, which has an amazing Hindu temple at the top. We have spent over 3 months in India, and we can now brush our teeth with the magical tap water without even getting a tummy rumble (not sure if that's good or not). Although, we've really only experienced a sliver of the experiences that this country has to offer, we felt it was time to move on to the next country, Australia...

Our Favorite Books

2009-03-04T00:17:00.000-08:00

We got a lot of inquiries about which books we liked the most, so here are the top 5:

The Secret Life of Bees
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
The End of Poverty
A New Earth
The White Tiger (not on original list of books)

We were originally going to mention our recommendations, but liked every book on the list so much (except for Twighlight), so really, they're all great. Enjoy!

Books: What We're Reading While Abroad

2009-02-24T23:51:00.000-08:00

Often, what would be a simple task at home is a big, time-intensive process while traveling, and this leaves LOTS of time for reading. (The photo above is a sleeper train from Goa to Kerala). This enables us to read about one book per week on average. We usually just trade for new books with other travelers, but we still have quite a few, very heavy books that we lug around with us. Here is a rundown on what we've been reading while abroad. You may notice Rusty's list is a little longer than Kelsi's, but remember that he went to Law School and had to get through masses of pages, so he reads 2-3 books for every one Kelsi reads.

Novels:

A Girl Named Zippy (Both)
Twilight (Both)
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Rusty)
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand (Rusty)
On Chesil Beach (Both)
The Awakening (Rusty)
The Secret Life of Bees (Both)
Nepal Folk Stories (Kelsi)
The Kite Runner (Both)

Historical:

Devil in a White City (Both)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Both)
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer (Both - For some reason, Kelsi read twice)
Seven Years in Tibet (Both)
Life in the Far West (Rusty)

Science/Social Science:

The End of Poverty - Jeffrey Sachs (Rusty)
The Making of Modern Economics - Skousen (Rusty)
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (Both)
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins (Rusty)
When Elephants Weep (Both)

Spiritual/Philosophical:

A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle (Both - Rusty twice)
The Art of Living - William Hart (Both)
A Theory of Everything - Ken Wilbur (Both)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (Both)
The Art of Happiness - Dalai Lahmma (Rusty, Kelsi currently reading)
Nausea - Jean Paul Sartre (Rusty)
Life Ahead - J. Krishnamurti (Both)
Tao Teh Ching - Lao Tzu (Both)
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert (Both - 2nd time for both of us)
Textbook of Ayurveda - Vasant Lad (Kelsi)

Wedding Pics

2009-02-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

We've had many requests to see wedding pics, so here's a few highlights (if you're not on Facebook). Finally 9 months later - can you believe that?! Now we've been married 9 months.

Starting with some adorable kids . . .

And an adorable photographer!
Kissy Kissy!

Our niece Ashley helping out without being asked to! What a wonderful flower girl!
KISSY! KISSY! Again . . .

A Sneak Preview caught Rusty off-guard!

Rusty's sister, Briana, died her hair in our wedding colors special for this day!

Man Love

2009-02-20T06:59:00.000-08:00

India has very strict social codes prohibiting hand-holding and touching in public. Fortunately, for those who enjoy a good cuddle, this applies only to contact between opposite sexes. You will almost never see a husband and wife holding hands or touching when they are out and about. In fact, if two couples go out together, the husbands will stroll along holding hands with each other, with the wives dutifully follow along from behind.

We have been travelling in India and Nepal for almost five months now, and had become completely accustomed to same-sex interdigitation and cuddling as a normal, everyday, occurrence. Then, one evening as we were enjoying a walk along the Arabian Sea, when our western social conditioning awoke us to the fact that everywhere we looked, hairy men were holding hands and cuddling each other. We had our camera with us, and here are a few pictures we snuck.

Although this may strike westerners as a little queer (pun intended), same-sex affection, or "man love," as we have dubbed it, is actually a non-homosexual, worldwide phenomenom. Maybe it is us who are the strange ones... In any case, we decided that to balance everything out, we should include one last picture...

Finishing the Guitar

2009-02-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

We finally finished our guitar yesterday, and thought we'd post a few more pictures of the final product as well as a few more showing the 16 day process.

Holding our new guitar with Chris, our master luthier teacher.

It sounds amazing... perfect intonation and accoustics!

Our first piece of wood.

Amazingly the stack of wood clamped together below turned into the guitar neck.

The finished guitar neck.

Rusty working on the headstock.

Kelsi making the rosetta.

Rusty bending the sides and trying not to burn himself over a torch-heated pipe.

Kelsi preparing to inlay the rosetta with the router.

Unfortunately, this is the only group picture we have with the other couple (Malachy and Stephanie from Ireland) that was 2 weeks ahead of us on their guitar. We became quite good friends and hope that our travels will cross paths again.

Rusty laquering.

Our Decision to Become Luthiers

2009-02-04T05:26:00.000-08:00

We seriously can't get away from India! There are so many things to do here, and we love all of it. This country has devoted nearly its entire existence to exploring the nature of reality and spiritual practices, so we have spent a lot of time looking around at what all of these practices can offer (you can read more about that in our previous blogging.) After all of our spiritual exploration, though, by some cosmic chance, we became neighbors with Jim, a physically huge, but big-hearted Utahn, former Weber State footballer. As we got to know him, he introduced us to a luthier teacher in the area, and we are now totally hooked!

Although our decision to become luthiers might seem strange to many of you who are acquainted with our backgrounds, education, etc., it really is a perfect fit for us. The results and progress we see each day thrill us, and and we just love the calm and meditative state that we experience in this cingular-focused work. While being a luthier isn't necessarily easy, it is uncluttered by rigidity and is surprisingly flexible. Aside from this, if one is diligent and becomes a master luthier, it can even provide a living. Chris, our England-born luthier teacher, moved to India to open a center, which now provides a comfortable income for his family. However, we aren't necessarily set on taking the same course in life as Chris, as becoming a master luthier really requires a lot of dedication and time. However we develop as luthiers, we are really pleased to have stumbled into this, and definitely intend to continue enjoying the fruits of this work for our entire lives. We'll just let these pictures explain an experience which can't really be put into words.

By the way, a "luthier" is a guitar-maker just in case anyone is wondering exactly what that word means, and we are hand-crafting a guitar of our own. We certainly didn't intend for our ambiguous description of "luthier" and the above worshipful looking images to cause anyone to even momentarily worry that we joined some strange religion, which are exceedingly abundant in India (although we were tempted to join a group in the last town that holds a morning tree worship service - not joking).

Below is a picture of the progess we have made so far during our guitar-making course, and a picture of Chris, the master luthier (check out http://www.jungleguitars.com/). Like we mentioned, we get to keep the fruits of our labors as luthiers, although it's a bit difficult to haul around a guitar in addition to all our other stuff. We'll look forward to strumming out a sweet tune for anyone who requests when we return home!

Spiritual Seeking

2009-02-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

We originally came to Goa, India for three reasons. First, Goa has paradisaical beaches. Second, Goa is Christian and we wanted to attend Christmas Mass in one of the famous white-washed cathedrals. Lastly, we wanting to take paragliding lessons. The beaches were beautiful but sunscreen is expensive, Christmas Mass was nice but only one night, and paragliding didn't work out too well on the sandy beaches of the Arabian Sea; the sand kept getting in our noses, eyes, mouths, and filling up the paraglider each time the wing went down, and after Kelsi got dragged across the beach one too many times, we flunked ourselves out of the course.

After all this, we purchased a train ticket out of Goa, but as it happened, we stumbled into so many interesting distractions that we cancelled the ticket and are still here. Mostly we have been taking interesting courses, and since India has more courses than any other place we have ever been, and we could just stay here learning forever...

The first course we took was an introductory course in Iyengar Hatha Yoga. The basic idea of Iyengar Hatha Yoga is to initiate awareness and wisdom through bodily movement. Iyengar Hatha Yoga is a famous school of Hatha Yoga that teaches a very structured and safe way of making the Yoga movements which appealed to us and (apparently) to the loads of Germans in our Yoga class who seemed to really like the precise instructions and structure of the Iyengar Hatha Yoga school. The picture above might give you a better idea of what a Hatha Yoga move looks like when performed by two red-headed, beginning Yogi's.

In the US, what people think of when they hear the word "Yoga" is usually the bodily movements of Hatha Yoga, which many Americans use for exerice. In addition to the bodily movements of Hatha Yoga (also called "Asan Yoga", there are also various Yogic schools and philosophies which are also under the broad umbrella of "Yoga," which means "to join" body and mind/soul. The Yogic practices that might help an individual to initiate awareness, such as: breathing Yoga, acro Yoga, partners Yoga, laughing Yoga, dancing Yoga, sitting meditation Yoga, chanting Yoga, mantra Yoga, humanitarian service Yoga, scholastic Yoga, and many others.

Although many Yoga practitioners diminish Yoga's connection to the Hindu religion, the Yogic practices were developed by monks to assist with meditation, and many of these practices were recorded in Hindu religious texts called the "Vedas." In truth, though, many of the Yoga practices are non-religious and don't have any attendant religious doctrines or dogmas from their Hindu origins. Such is the case with Hatha Yoga. After our first week of Iyengar Hatha Yoga, we liked it so much that we moved into a bamboo hut inside the Yoga center and continued to take yoga lessons for a total of three weeks. As you can see from the following picture, our modest jungle hut even included a few choice pets! (We found this one in the corner by Rusty's toiletries bag.)

As we advanced along in our Hatha Yoga courses, we were moved from the beginner afternoon class to a morning class from 6:30 to 10:30 AM. With the entire day open, we decided to see what other courses we could find. A friend recommended that we take a look at a 13 day program called "The Twelve Inquiries," which is taught by a group called Great Freedom. After attending several morning introduction classes, we decided to jump into the course. We won't say too much about it, although it was really interesting, and we recommend that you check it out at http://www.greatfreedom.org/.

We finished up our Great Freedom course and our intensive Iyengar Hatha Yoga courses almost two weeks ago, and decided to move to a different town just down the beach so that we could study Ayurvedic Medicine. Ayurveda is basically traditional Indian medical science, and it is considered a sister study to Yoga. Below is a picture of the facility where we are studying Ayurveda. As usual, Kelsi is vying to be the top student in our class of two.