Hiking to the famous Torres del Paine was an uphill battle, literally.  The last section of the hike was extremely steep and it felt like for every one step up we slid two back.  Eventually we made it, and after only a few minutes the clouds parted and we had a magnificent view.  Before heading back down we witnessed a mini-avalanche on an ajoining slope, which needless to say helped encourage us back to the refugio in no time!

Vienna is probably best known for its high culture: theater, opera, classical music, dance and museums. The center of the Austro-Hungarian empire for hundreds of years, we weren’t actually interested in seeing the cultural side of Vienna. Perhaps we’ve been in the “bush” too long, but I couldn’t really picture going to the opera in my chaco’s and convertible safari pants. Maybe that’s just me.Lucky for us there is a lot more to Vienna than it’s high culture.
Vienna is called a “green” city, and when you look at the map it’s not hard to figure out why. Our first day in Vienna we took a hiking trail, accessible by public transportation, which wound through mountains and into …

Hiking Mt Sinai is the sort of thing that manypeople come to Egypt to do. Most people fly to one of Egypt’s expensive coastal cities, book a tour, get on the bus around midnight, arrive sometime before 2am, and with some luck are at the summit with one thousand of their closest friends that they never met before who are all just as tired and cranky as you’d expect them to be…..oh, but the sunrise is spectacular. We decided against that route.
We arrived in the small yet touristy town of St. Catherine’s in the afternoon. This is little town is walking distance from the actual mountain but sees a mere fraction of the traffic the mountain does…since no …

Waking up at Horombo hut we were sore and although feeling much better than the day before, still physically exhausted. After summiting at 6:30 a.m. We hiked for another 7 hours back down to Kibo hut and finally to Horombo to spend the night. We ate breakfast and headed out ready to get off the mountain and down to lower altitude. Jubilant that we had all made it to the top, we headed down with whatever spring was left in our step covering the distance to Mandara huts in less than 3 hours. Leaving our friends to their lunch at the huts, we continued down the path for another hour to a little lunch spot along …