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Did you pack that?

June 23, 2011 By Jillian

Have you ever put something down and not even remembered touching it?

That happens to me a lot, I instinctively move something or put it away, but don’t even realize I’m doing it. This means sunglasses and random objects are usually not always where I think they should be or for Danny where he thinks they should be.

On the road I was always worried about losing things. Mostly our passports and cash, but also just little things like our laundry line and sunscreen. Ridiculous, I know. Surely every market had twine, but it wouldn’t have the cool little clips and small neoprene pouch that our fancy shmancy seatosummit one had. We might be able to find sunscreen, but it wouldn’t be the waterproof 30SPF oil free kind from home that we love.

Somewhere along the road of selling it, quitting it and giving it away I got very protective over those precious few items in my backpack.

So we developed a stuff survival system. DEFT- Drying, electronics, food, toiletries- the things that would most likely be left behind. We double checked as we left the room. “Honey did you pack____?” I’d say. Things were tightly put away in pouches, our backpacks fit together like puzzles, everything only fit one way which made it a lot easier to know when something was missing. But not everything.

Somethings were lost along the way.

Actually quite a few things, especially as time went on. Towards the end of the trip we stopped paying so much attention to our stuff, perhaps because we knew the end was in sight. From a rather expensive rain jacket in China to yes, a laundry line left hanging at a campground in Africa, many of those precious few items were left along the way. And you know what, at the time, we missed them. We had truly packed down to our essentials, there was hardly anything in that pack I didn’t use on a daily or weekly basis. But losing them didn’t ruin our trip. (Although I think Danny would disagree about his raincoat!)

The stuff I was trying to protect really didn’t matter. It made us more comfortable, but when I couldn’t buy contact solution (for the record ONLY Ethiopia) I just did without. In the end we both came home with packs smaller than when we left. Not because we lost so many things, but because we realized we could do more or the same with less. We let our stuff go and you know what, it was rather empowering.

Packing for a big trip? Check out our youtube video on packing a backpack!

Vang Vieng, more than a happy menu

December 2, 2010 By Jillian

We’d been warned for months about Vang Vieng, a mecca for party-hard backpackers in Laos- complete with restaurants offering “happy” menus of drug spiked food and drinks. Two other bloggers told us that despite the awful things we’d heard it was a not miss and so we decided to chance it. After being completely disappointed with four thousand islands were were hesitant. With a wish and a prayer, we headed to Vang Vieng and somewhere between Britney Spears’ greatest hits and Jameraquai we found a reason to stay.

Nestled in the mountains, Vang Vieng has become a town with two faces, the party-hard scene and the adventure tourism scene. For sure these two don’t normally mix, and as we walked down the street I was shocked at the number of backpackers staring blankly at Friends re-runs on restaurant TV’s. Annoyed, my mood didn’t change until we were sitting in out hotel room overlooking the river. The charm of the place began to grow on me and by the time we were rock climbing the next morning after a great night of sleep, some delicious western food and numerous fruit smoothies I was sold.

We spent a day mountain biking to various limestone caves in the surrounding hills. For sure they are heavily backpacked, but it was lovely floating through the underground river on a tube, that was until navy crawling through the cave I came face-to-face with a large brown spider. “Not dangerous, right?” I asked our guide in pigdin English. “heheh,” he replied. Thankfully there were no other suspicious creatures in the other caves.

It was sunset by the time we got to the “blue lagoon” cave. Up the steep cliff side of a mountain, the cave itself is actually home to a gold reclining buddha. Although there were a few other late afternoon tourists with us, it was really amazing to look up from the bottom of the cave to see the buddha on his platform with a small sliver of late afternoon sun. By the time we left we were the only tourists left on the site, which proved to be a problem because Danny had blown out his bike tire. Hitching a ride back to town in the dark was actually rather easy. The hard part was mountain biking back in the dark. Major kudos to Becka for attempting something she hates, at night, in the dark.

It is easy to see the negative impact of tourism in town. Sitting down to dinner one night we were presented with the “happy menu” of all sorts of food and drink that could be made with marijuana, mushrooms and opium. Never seen that before! Bar after bar has theater style seating facing televisions that play reruns of friends and family guy seemingly 24/7. It’s not pretty.

The long and the short of it was that Vang Vieng way exceeded our expectations. We were sad to go after only three days and with the ridiculously cheap and delicious fruit smoothies, fresh stuffed crepes and baguette sandwiches not to mention gorgeous scenery and good activities we could have stayed much longer despite the “happy” meals and reruns.

Hola Costa Rica

June 24, 2009 By Danny

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With Nicaragua behind us we practically sprinted into Costa Rica…full of excitement for all the eco-adventures that awaited us. We’d planned to take multi-day whitewater kayak trips and spend the better part of a week learning to wind and kitesurf. We allocated just over two weeks for the fun of Costa Rica, hoping against hope that we’d have enough time to do it all.

Our first target upon arrival were the cloud forests of Monteverde in Santa Elena to take a canopy tour. While the name “Canopy Tour” might conjure images of a breezy nature walk through a forest, this could not be further from the truth. A canopy tour is actually a series of zip lines (metal cables strung through the forest that when harnessed in send you flying through to the other end of the line), some of which are as long as 700 meters and cross high above a ravine. This is a thrill ride to the first degree and something we had to do before allowing ourselves the more simple pleasures of Monteverde such as a guided night hike (to see the wild animals of the night…including bats and tarantulas) and a hike through the world renowned Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.

While in Monteverde we got a bad taste in our mouth. This country has changed since I was here last. In our opinion it has been overrun by tourism. In many parts of the country, little seems to be left of native culture. Expensive restaurants have replaced family run sodas. It seems the largest difference between the people of Costa Rica and Miami is that here people actually speak English. Don’t get me wrong, the landscape is incredible and the biodiversity unmatched, but through promoting tourism at the expense of all other pursuits I believe the government here has thrown away some of the country’s magic. Indeed, much of the pura vida culture I’d experienced 6 years ago has been replaced with condos, timeshares, and greedy tour guides. We arrived excited at the opportunities that awaited us but now that we are here many of those opportunities seem to have lost their luster. Costa Rica is by far a on the beaten track tourist destination, a great place for a relaxing vacation, but not a good place for independent adventure seeking travelers, especially those on a budget.

Having said all that, we realized we needed to readjust our plans. Rather than paying for expensive ($17 pp just to walk through a park, unguided, for a few hours) tours and visits we moved on from Monteverde with the a few new friends we’d made and headed over dirt roads and big lakes to the city of La Fortuna, home of the mighty Volcan Arenal. Regular readers of this blog are well aware that we’ve had our share of volcano encounters and as powerful as Arenal is we’ve already seen volcanos, hiked their peaks, and felt the heat of their lava. While in Xela we also enjoyed hot springs and were a bit dismayed when we discovered the $60 pp option here in Fortuna; a little bit of looking paid off and before long we found the “local” watering hole for 1/10th (that’s $6) of the price. We relaxed, played cards, soaked in the spas, swam in the pools, ate food that was bad for us, and drank a few beers while we were at it too.

We left La Fortuna much much happier than when we arrived. It seems we will be unable to kayak any rivers here in Costa Rica…mostly because we’ve yet to find an outfitter that has any kayaks for a reasonable price. Surf lessons-be it regular, wind, or kite-all cost here as much as they do in the USA so that is also out of the cards. We have a few more tricks up our sleeves to get the most we can out of Costa Rica and then we’ll be heading to Panama to get that whitewater kayaking in and maybe see some sort of “big ditch” (I hear they call it a canal.)

Did you pack that?

Vang Vieng, more than a happy menu

Hola Costa Rica

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