Blog

Om…..

We’ve just arrived at the Bohemia Resort in Cairns, after a 22 hour train ride up the coast of Queensland. It was a long journey, but there were movies and blankets so it was all good, and still not as long as our Fiji ferry ride! Our peaceful week at Chenrezig Buddhist Institute brought us mindfulness, new revelations, new friends and amazing food. We all got a lot out of… Read More

Update from QUETZAL

We all survived the second and last week at Bona Fide Farm! Some of us were a little worn out in the beginning of the week, but a couple surprises from Mitch, AKA Earth Mother, made an awesome week. To start the week, Kaitlin, Zach, Byron, Graham, and I went to Santa Cruz beach. A storm approached as we arrived, but that did not stop any of us from swimming… Read More

Student Directed Travels!

Hello my lovelies! Hannah here writing from the immaculately beautiful Zanzibar! The group has just finished with our student directed travels and what a lovely whirlwind it was. The idea behind the student directed travels is that it is all up to us, the students, to find a spectacular place to explore another part of Tanzania. After days of research, phone calls and late night group meetings we finally found… Read More

Updates from South America

“I’m a long time traveling here below, I’m a long time traveling away from home.” I love starting pieces of writing with song lyrics, especially when they apply so very well. And this particular song came into my head during a very particular time in our travels: ten more days, and we head back to the home that we´ve been traveling away from for almost three months now. Not only… Read More

Sam Leaves

If people do not already know I left 2 days ago for reasons do to my health. I just wanted to post one blog because I never got the chance to post in Bonafide. Two and a half months ago I signed up for a gap year program that was headed to Central America. I had no clue who I was going to meet, what my experience would be, and… Read More

The Best of the Best!

Hello again friends and family! With only a week standing between us reciting monologues about our epic voyages to all you, I give you one of our last updates. It seems like a lifetime ago we were sadly leaving Calcutta. Heading to Phool Ashram we all had our reservations about this week long semi silent retreat with 5:30 am wake up calls for morning chanting and meditation, neti potting and… Read More

The Ballad of the Salad

My fellow Americans, Hi!!! This is Kate Maher from the Nkula East Africa group (obviously). I am channeling you all from a computer at our guest house in ZANZIBAR. So without further a do, as your blogger, let me relate to you the events of two weeks ago. Our journey left off when we traveled from Mufindi to Njombe town, a town I love exclusively for its dairy products. They… Read More

Just Keep Swimming!

Happy Turkey Day from the Carpe Diem Hongi Group. We have had an amazing experience here in Cairns. The fun started at the airport in Alice Springs and continued all the way through our time here. We were given a taste of Australian paradise the past two days. We took a boat Thursday morning and headed to Fitzroy Island. We arrived and everyone automically was on “relax take it easy… Read More

We Were Treated like Kings Indeed

  “I can’t, I have to finish my homework,” is a phrase I never thought I would hear while on this trip. But, this past week we all fell into the old routine of doing homework late at night, in hopes of becoming scuba certified. We started class at Cairns Dive Center (CDC) on Tuesday of this week. We packed our lunches for the 8 hour day ahead of us… Read More

Our Nica Food Experience

Food is never far from the forefront of our groups’ mind. Our wonderful preoccupation with our meals didn’t skip a beat during student directed travel. We started our week off in the sleepy fishing village of Las Peñitas, a lazy beach town perfect for relaxing, swimming, and eating. So we relaxed, swam, and ate. If you had walked into the common area at Hostal Barca de Oro you would’ve found… Read More

A Great Sandy Week!

Last week our group split into two groups and embarked on separate CVA (Conservation Volunteers of Australia) journeys. My group, which consisted of Nick, Riley, Liv, Trace, Allie, Brett and our new team leader whose name was also Brett, camped and worked at the beautiful Cooloola Recreation Area, Great Sandy National Park for the week. Our campsite was a short walk from the beach which was made up of warm… Read More

The Outback!

Our journey into the outback began when we got picked up in this massive off-road looking bus. We set off into the outback riding on normal asphalt roads as well as driving on rocky dirt roads. It was pretty hard to take a nap because we were being bounced around inside the truck. The very first place we stopped, we were at a watering hole so we could go for… Read More

More Student Directed Travel updates

After a tough week of work in the Amazon we returned back to Puerto Maldonado a small river town. There we decided to splurge on a hostal that was slightly out of our budget but a neccesary luxury. The hostal Anaconda Lodge featured large lodge type rooms with private bathrooms, warm water, comfy beds, a gorgeous pool, the best thai food in Peru, and best of all monkeys. It was… Read More

Student Directed Travel

After a week of jungle life, it was time to begin our student directed travel. We stayed in Puerto Maldonado for a couple of days in what became known amongst the group as `Monkey Palace`. Monkey Palace is the beautiful hostal we stayed in, filled with adorable (but sneaky) monkeys. After Puerto Maldonado, we took a 10 hour night bus to Cusco, and from there, a 2 hour bus ride… Read More