Anyone who follows us on our blog or social media knows it’s not new news that we are huge foodies. Every day at some point discussions fall to food and we reminisce of steaming bowls of breakfast noodles in Asia, luxurious butter chicken in India, pizza in Italy and, of course, endless Mexican street tacos.
If you have an appetite for travel, and adventure then you have probably already added a few of these to your list. But, just in case you’re in the planning stages of your trip, these are some of the most celebrated travel experiences in the world.
Photo by Angela Compagnone on Unsplash
While we loved our home base of San Marcos, one village that stole our heart at Lake Atitlan was the textile heaven of San Juan la Laguna. It is really impossible to spend time in the entire country of Guatemala without becoming more than a bit obsessed with the stunning, hand done textiles.
Most travelers have a bucket list. I have been lucky enough to have checked quite a few off my personal list, but one place I have not yet reached is Jakarta. The 13,000 islands of Indonesia are astonishing, and having spent a month in serene Bali, my dreams now turn to city life. Enter Jakarta, the massive capital on Java, the mixes cultural influences from around the world.
image via Flickr by Stenly Lam
What drives us, we nomadic types? What causes us to leave stable jobs, lovely homes, friends and family, to throw ourselves out into the world? To force discomfort upon ourselves by the mere act of having no home base, no tribe to reach to for comfort? To live a life outside our comfort zone, both mentally and literally?
Time is always surprising; It seems like just yesterday, not nearly 27 years ago, that I first locked eyes with Jim, in Ken’s living room. Jim, full-bearded and scruffy, just off the boat from Alaska. Myself, fully focused on going to school for international law and moving to Paris. An unlikely pair? Apparently not~ Six days after our first date Jim asked me to marry him, and the rest, as they say, is history. Astonishingly, June 2nd we will be celebrating our 25th anniversary. 25 years… it seems unreal, and presents a very literal example of how fast time moves by.
I dream of travel. My nights are spent luxuriating on the beach in Mexico, eating my weight in SE Asian street noodles, being awoken long before dawn by the roar of an African lion. Sometimes my dreams aren’t quite as vivid, rather than memories of past journeys, they consist of the anticipation of what is to come. These days those dreams have a lot of llamas in them.
I sat in the rickshaw, trying to think of anything cool, sweating profusely in the mid-afternoon heat of Southern India. Jim was in yet another seedy hotel, searching for an acceptable room, a dismal possibility, even according to Lonely Planet. As usual, my job was to wait with the bags and the tuk-tuk, rickshaw, taxi…. whatever our current form of transportation entailed. It had been one hell of a day, beginning with us arriving late for our water taxi, being forced to run along the banks of the river with our full packs, and leaping aboard as it pulled away from shore. After a 4-hour journey through the back canals of Kerala, we arrived in a no-name town, our stop for the night en-route to get to Kumily. And it was hot. Like 98 and humid hot.
Doors are my favorite photography subject. I am fascinated, not just by the doors themselves, but by the stories I imagine they could tell if only they had the words.
Any long term traveler knows that if you have been on the road for any length of time, standards shift. Standards in hotel rooms, safety concerns and, well, it has to be said, personal hygiene. While we have never been particularly fussy regarding our accommodations, by the time we arrived in Goa, India, we were simply thrilled to have a beachfront room, even if it was of questionable design.
