Down Mexico way...
We just booked a trip to Playa del Carmen for early May. Three days of diving on the Meso-American Reef. Look for photos here in a couple of months!
Also upcoming - Colorado, Boston, Orlando (work trips) and Toronto. Another summer on the road... just the way we like it.
Sri Lanka 2008
New Year's resolution for 2008: update blog more regularly. With that in mind, here is a brief post with some photos from our trip to Sri Lanka.
The last time we were in SL was only 5 months after the Boxing Day Tsunami and that trip was all about helping rebuild houses and get food to people. It was like a blur and didn't really seem like a trip home for Gish or a vacation for either of us. Rightly so. But this past December we were really ready to soak up some home cooked curries, tropical heat and sea salty air. I got my scuba diving certification last year and was eager to see SL from underwater. And Gish was ready to give it a try too.
We landed on the 29th of December, after long flights and an eleven hour layover in Heathrow Airport. Our first couple of days were spent in Colombo, at Gish's parents' new apartment. Then we set off for Hikkaduwa, a town on the Southern coast renowned for its diving and surfing.
Hikkaduwa has a coral reef offshore which creates a naturally calm beach area (it was spared the worst of the tsunami). The reef also makes for the excellent diving and snorkeling. We stayed at the Coral Sands Hotel, due mainly to the fact that we had a connection at the International Diving School, which is connected to the hotel. It turned out to be a pleasant place to stay and we befriended most of the hotel staff over the eight days we were there (5 days the first week, 3 days the third week of our trip).
I dove every day, sometimes twice a day, at sites including the massive underwater boulder piles Goda Gala and Hikkaduwa Gala ("Gala" means "rock" in Sinhala) and on the old shipwrecks, the Earl of Shaftsbury and the Conch. Conditions varied from good viz and calm currents to ripping currents and bad viz. Water temp was always 81 degrees. Heaven.
Gishani did a Discover Scuba dive, where she took some brief lessons and then went on a shallow dive with an instructor. She liked it so much that she decided to go ahead and get certified for diving. So she did her classes and skills dives with an instructor (a wonderful Austrian chap named Rainer) while I was out with the group diving. By the time we left Hikkaduwa after the first week, Gish was a certified Open Water Diver, so we planned to return in a week to do some more diving. I was, and am, so proud of her.
The week in between our diving adventures, we drove inland, to the Hill Country, with Gishani's parents, to stay at an old English bungalow on a working tea estate. Fantastically remote, Mahatenna House had a spectacular setting high on a mountainside, with views over acres of sloping terraced tea and misty mountains in all directions. The weather was cool and rainy and we spent days huddled in bed, reading and sleeping. Perfect way to off-gas all that nitrogen we'd sucked up while diving the week before.
The one day the rain stopped for more than five minutes, Gishani, her father and I decided to hike down to the waterfall on the property. This entailed a steep walk down a slippery path through the tea bushes. What we weren't prepared for were the legions of leeches that were lying in wait for us. They attacked en masse, climbing up from the mud to get in our sandals, dropping from trees to attach to my neck, and even one that found its way.... well, never mind that bit. Needless to say, we didn't make it to the waterfall, but turned and high-tailed it back to the house, where spousal duties extended to thorough bodily examinations that would make an airport security agent proud.
All Biblical rain and leeches aside, it was a relaxing way to spend four days. We all left feeling rejuvenated, which was negated by the bumpy five hour drive back to Colombo.
The second time around at Hikkaduwa, we went on three dives, the last one to Goda Gala being absolutely spectacular. Visibility was over 60 feet, currents calm and stunning scenery. Huge schools of colorful fish spiraled above us and we saw numerous morays hiding among the rocks. After surfacing, while we waited for the dive boat, I saw two dorsal fins surface about 20 feet behind Gish. It was a brief moment of anxiety (i.e., panic) for both of us until I realized they were dolphins breaching. Whew...
Our days in Colombo were spent visiting old school friend and relatives, eating well and a bit of shopping. Meals consumed included wild boar curry, crab curry, roast beef, godhamba roti, pol roti, chicken curry, potato, prawns, kola kandha (Gish's home-cooked favorite, my least favorite) and on and on. The entire trip was a movable feast (we hauled a frozen wild boar haunch back from Mahatenna House) and one from which our waistlines are still recovering.
Our trip back to the States was predictably long and unbearable, with two ten hour flights separated by a mere 45 minute walk between terminals in Frankfurt. Ouch. Anyway, now we're home and it's February. Enough said. We're ready to go back.
Keep Tahoe Blue
In late June, we flew out to Las Vegas with Gishani's host parents from college and then drove up to Lake Tahoe for a reunion of friends and family. We did some kayaking, hiking and relaxing. The drive was gorgeous and we swung through Yosemite on our way.
sea caves
For Gishani's birthday weekend, we went up to Bayfield, Wisconsin to stay in this little cottage and do some kayaking in the sea caves in Lake Superior.
paddling the Upper Iowa
This past long weekend we paddled from Kendalville, Iowa to Decorah via the Upper Iowa River. It was blazing hot but a great time. The one capsize felt good on a hot day!
Here are some photos:
business travel - Miami Vice
I am feeling like Willy Loman lately - the traveling salesman. Since January, I've been to Colorado, Tuscon, Boston and Miami, and will be in Chicago soon too. Hopefully nothing then for a while.
Just got back from Miami - 80 plus degrees, high humidity, lots of concrete, low riding cars and big SUVs (why?), mansions and slums, cell phone towers disguised as palm trees (no kidding) and bad traffic.
Managed to get out for a run on Wednesday morning, followed by a dip in the hotel's outside pool. My running routes were limited - along a highway or through a gated upscale community. I chose the latter.
On our last night in town, our purported Miami expert led us on a wild goose chase through Miami Beach looking for a place to eat. This necessitated walking about 60 blocks (round trip from where we parked) to an outdoor restaurant. The meal was good (cumin/sunflower seed-crusted grouper on a bacalao cake) but my feet were killing me since I wore my dress shoes instead of the running shoes for this marathon outing.
Here is the view out my hotel room window:
Here is a shot of the art deco hotel (name has changed since) where Gishani and I stayed years ago on a trip through Miami en route to Key West:
And here is where we (my colleagues and I) ate dinner (view from our table outside):
High times
I was so happy to see Gishani on Friday when she arrived. I had been in Colorado since Tuesday for our annual company meeting and Gish and I made plans to spend the weekend enjoying the mountains.
Saturday morning after a hotel continental breakfast and bad coffee we headed off towards Estes Park, about 45 minutes west of Boulder. The town of Estes Park is the jumping off point for Rocky Mountain National Park. After grabbing some lunch in town and wandering around the Stanley Hotel ("The Shining"), we headed off into "Rocky".
The Park is at about 7,500 feet above sea level, with some of the roads going as high as 12,000 feet. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground at the higher elevations and I suddenly had to remember how to drive on snow and ice. We both had headaches and were groggy from the elevation. But the scenery was spectacular. Unfortunately it was a blustery, overcast day so the higher peaks weren't visible and our forays out of the car were limited to quick dashes with the camera.
Our first stop was Bear Lake (el. 9,500 feet), a small alpine lake that has already frozen over and was set against a panorama of pines and peaks. The snow is dense and dry, like confectioner's sugar, due to the absence of much moisture at that altitude. After some photos at the lake, we stumbled back to our car for the drive down.
We took some other side roads in the Park, to an area known as the Alluvial Fan, where a "fan" of boulders had spilled out of a valley, presumably from a flood or glaciers eons ago. Along the way, at numerous points, we would see huge herds of elk along the roadside. The elk were easy to spot, due to the throngs of cars and tourists parked nearby.
Longing for thicker air, we descended out of the Park and headed back towards Boulder via the Peak to Peak Scenic Bypass (Colorado Highway 7) which heads south, past Longs Peak and Mount Meeker, both invisible behind the clouds. The drive was like a sportscar commercial - miles of descending paved switchbacks between huge rock outcropppings. It was a thrilling drive and our rental Dodge Neon did its best to live up to the venue.
Back in Boulder, we parked and enjoyed the relatively oxygen-rich air and warmer temps and wandered Pearl Street, visiting the myriad of shops and cafes. When our stomachs started rumbling we happened to be in front of a hip little sushi/sake bar and thought, "why not?" and went in. Turns out it was happy hour and we enjoyed some really good calamari and some sushi rolls and a flight (4 samples) of sake all for a minimum of yen.
Sunday we checked out of the hotel and headed back to Boulder. Some local intelligence told us to go to Foolish Craig's for breakfast and we enjoyed heaping plates of eggs and good coffee before setting off for a few hours of hiking in the Flatirons. The day was gorgeous - temps climbed up to the 60's with ligh winds and hazy sun. We hiked out of Boulder at the historic Chautauqua Park on a trail that climbs and climbs, up through a golden meadow into a forest of pines and finally up switchbacks to the lower slopes of Flatiron 1, 2 and 3. We rested there and spotted numerous teams of rock climbers high above.
We hiked back down to Boulder, had some lunch and then it was off to the airport for our flight home. Every time I spend time in Colorado I start to get carried away with thoughts of moving to Boulder and I roped Gish into the same thinking. But on our walk home from the train last night we agreed that we have what we want right here and can go to Colorado for the experience whenever we want.
For Gishani's birthday weekend, we went up to Bayfield, Wisconsin to stay in this little cottage and do some kayaking in the sea caves in Lake Superior.
We took some other side roads in the Park, to an area known as the Alluvial Fan, where a "fan" of boulders had spilled out of a valley, presumably from a flood or glaciers eons ago. Along the way, at numerous points, we would see huge herds of elk along the roadside. The elk were easy to spot, due to the throngs of cars and tourists parked nearby.
