Blog

@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } After a short comfy ride we found ourselves nestled amongst the gradually rising and descending hilltops along the outskirts of Luang Prabang to partake in Shangri Lao, our next expedition. After debriefing the previous night as to what the program entailed and the schedule we would be… Read More

Roatan Baby!… But We Ain’t Rowin’ yet!

You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when your dive instructor tells you it’s time to take off your mask, especially when you know there’s a four foot barracuda circling the group… Scuba Diving is intense, some would say (and by that I mean Shayna sitting next to me) horrifying, but ultimately it is the feeling of experiencing a whole new underwater world.  We… Read More

More from Zanzibar!

Hello again! We are taking advantage of the close-by Internet cafes to squeeze in a few more blogs before the semester ends… Today, the divers completed the underwater portion of the scuba certification process, while others did cultural things around the amazing island of Zanzibar. I (Zoe) was part of the diving group, while Vicki did the Spice tour and checked out some museums, so we’ll each have good input… Read More

Freeeeeee Travvvvlin

Greetings blog readers, worried parents, friends of friends and creatures, space aliens of all kinds. We left off in McCloud gang in the wintery little village of the daliest lama and took a day train to bikaner. Avery quaint little desert town, we arrived late at night and not a creature was stirring, only wild dogs sniffing through garbage. We turned our attention towards our hotel, my bloodstained sheets and… Read More

Chanrezig

Hello back home,We sit here in Cairns after our plane ride this morning from Brisbane.  We intended to board a train last night that would have taken 22 hours, but the train was canceled due to flooding.  Instead, we got the whole day to check out the city and find out all the information we needed for our next group activity.  Tomorrow at 9, 7 of the 11 members start… Read More

SCUBA! SCUBA! SCUBA!

We’ve finally completed our certification classes for open water scuba diving! Yay! Here’s how the journey started: On Thursday morning, we all went to the One Ocean Dive Centre and got signed up! It was a long, long, long day filling out a ton of forms, watching videos, reading and taking tests. The whole process took about 9 hours…yup, getting open water scuba certification is a loooong process! 🙂 For… Read More

Free Travel!

Hi family and friends, Keely here from San Jose, Costa Rica. We just completed our week of free travel, which we spent in Puerto Viejo de Talamaca, a small beach town on the Caribbean coast.  We had a low key week in this relaxed town, using rented bikes as transportation. (A shout out to Mike, who was kind enough to tote me around on the back of his bike due… Read More

Watch Out For Drop Bears!!

Two weeks ago, we flew from Sydney to Adelaide where we met up with our contact from the Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA). After a quick orientation where we met our group leader Hamish, we discovered that we would be doing work on Kangaroo Island. The work we did consisted of building boardwalks on four of Australia’s most beautiful beaches. We were also pleasantly surprised to find out that we would… Read More

The Austins take control

Namaste Bros, We have just finished a four day yoga and meditation retreat in the Sacred Valley. We started every day bright and early with a nice relaxing meditation, followed by an hour and a half of broga (also known as “yoga” to all you normal people). After a dank breakfast of dank foods, including homemade yoghurt, quinua, and fresh fruit, we did our 45 minutes of daily seva (chores… Read More

Free Travel-Moshi and Tanga!

Hello!!We just had an amazing and exciting past few days of free travel. We started our free travel journey on Thanksgiving at the United African Alliance Community Center. The group ended up deciding to split up into two groups, a group of five and a group of seven. We all traveled from Arusha to Moshi together and stayed the night at a backpackers hostel in Moshi. The next morning, the… Read More

Save the Baby Turtles

This is Lillie and Rebecca signing in after a week in Playa Hermosa with the adorable tortugitas. When we arrived at Punta Judas, finding enough beds for everyone was our first challenge, but after the initial confusion we all found a place to rest our heads and enjoyed a delicious meal.  The first day of work found the group in an all too familiar situation of moving dirt as we… Read More

We’re back!

Greetings family and friends,We’re now back in Cuzco until tomorrow morning, after 4 wonderful/interesting days at Lake Titicaca. The 24th, we left Cuzco by way of a private van, 13 smiling, healthy (note: healthy is a crucial word here) gringos and one native driver off to see the highest navigable lake in el mundo. As the hours in the van turned into extreme hunger, our driver, who led us to… Read More

When I grow up I wanna be Kate Bosworth

When I was eight years old, I saw the movie Blue Crush. You know, that one where Kate Bosworth lives in Hawaii and surfs in competitions until she gets into an accident and becomes truamatized but eventually finds the inner strength to win Pike in Oahu? Yeah, well ever since I saw that movie, I´ve wanted to learn to surf. There´s just something inherently cooler about a girl who can… Read More

The Truth About Turtles

Hey everybody. Maya here, broadcasting live from the beautiful beachside town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, our chosen free-travel destination. Our week on la Playa Camronal was harder than most of us expected, with killer bugs and long, often fruitless nights of turtle work. A fair ammount of our time during the day was spent relaxing, and the rest performing various seemingly meaningless tasks– we picked up garbage on the… Read More
Here we are in McLeod Ganj, tucked high up in the hills, surrounded by even higher peaks-the mystical Himalayan Mountains. After our week at Deer Park Institute, we were able to enter this week in McLeod with clear and focused minds. We are all excited to finally have reached this destination, so different from any place we have previously been to because of the strong Tibetan influence, or rather, a… Read More

Groovy Grape & CVA

    Hey all! We had a great time on the Groovy Grape with our new enthusiastic companion, Steve, (BRILLIANT!). We started off our journey through the Outback by driving over to Uluru a.k.a. “Ayer’s Rock”, the biggest attraction in the Outback. We spent two days here and on the second night we got to experience a once in a life time opportunity of a thunderstorm over Uluru. The next day we… Read More

Gratitude is my mood…

Gratitude is my mood… If anything I’ve learned from travel it is that we are all family in some waysucked down by gravity to walk this landAnd on Thanksgiving 2010 with you, my brothers and sistersgratitude is my mood when you glow as you write and wrestle and wrestle and write with your journey, Amanda,you alight inspirationand gratitude is my mood when you dance and dance then sit for hours… Read More

Did pancreas just explode on my leg

Hello! Happy Thanksgiving! We are still in Arusha, but no longer with the Maasai anymore. We have been staying with Black Panther, Pete O’Neil for the past 3 days. For everybody who doesn’t know who Pete O’Neil is, he started the Black Panther Kansas City chapter. After being exiled from the United States, he and his wife Charlotte moved to Tanzania and started the United African Alliance Community Center. We… Read More

Everybody Loves Photos! (More cowbell!!!)

FairPlay Spanish School in Cusco, Peru Payaya TIME! In the Jungle at Robin´s Farm!!! Jungle Walk around Camino Verde protected forest. Your friendly neighborhood white caiman. Salt Lick by ¨The Gator¨ Hiking out of the jungle was mighty hard work! Pina break! Riding around in Puerto Maldonado… Lake Sandoval Ma and Pa Kettle The ¨80 meter¨Black Caiman!! Lobos del Rio!!! Playing Dress up at llanchon, Lago Titicaca… Read More

Maine Boys Check-In

Hello folks, We are currently in Puerto Maldonado awaiting our departure flight back to Cuzco in the morning. We have spent the last ten (mas o menos) days in the heart (mas o menos) of the Amazon. We were in a small community called Baltimore, off the Tambopata River, helping reforest with a righteous broski named Robin (who has a ton of land, knowledge, and rusties [ask your child if… Read More