AdventureCPA

      After a two year Covid travel hold, Denyse and I went on a five week trip to Chicago and Colombia. Here's the story.....       Getting to Chicago from Alamosa, CO involves a 6AM Christmas Day bus ride that ends in downtown Denver at 11:30 AM.  Then a Metro light rail ride to DEN, flight to Chicago and arrival about 6PM for a nice North Shore AIRBNB.    But the real reason to head to Chicago was to see (almost) two month old Aerin.         After a nice visit in Chicago at 4AM New Year's Day we returned to OHare for a flight on Spirit Airline for a trip to Medellin, Colombia.  There we were faced with an already growing crowd attempting to get on a 5:30 Spirit flight to Ft. Lauderdale.   With new requirements to fly to Colombia (Spirit had not warned us about), with staff vastly outnumbered by customers, references to use technology we don't have, and apparent lack of airline staff showing up for wo...

Australia and New Zealand 2019-2020      This trip started with the world at the old-normal and ended as a new-normal.  During our last month in New Zealand, March,  the Corona-Virus 19 became only topic of news throughout the world.      But let me start at the old-normal in November, 2019.      11/27/2019, the day before Thanksgiving we left our home in Alamosa, Colorado via bus to Denver, Colorado, train out to the airport and on to San Francisco airport, Auckland airport and finally Perth, Western Australia airport.  Suddenly it is 11/29/2019 and we lost Thanksgiving.      Perth, located on the SouthWestern edge of the continent is the only substantial city on that edge.  It is as if San Francisco existed but LA, Portland and Seattle did not.  But it is still 4 time zones away from the Eastern Edge of Australia.   At any rate, it is big enough to have good public transportation an...

Quito to Mindo....then back to Quito and out of here for Europe. Shortly before leaving the US the Wall Street Journal had an article on the bird watching capital of Ecuador...Mindo.  Only a two hour bus ride away from the capital ($3.10 per person) so with a few days left we took the city bus to the bus and arrived in Mindo Monday morning. Mindo is high in the mountains East of Quito so it appears to be technically in the Cloud Forest.  It certainly has plenty of clouds and rain.  Typical weather is morning sun until about Noon followed by mist and rain the rest of the day.  I guess the birds like it as it has become a birder destination.  Very much a tourist town with the required restaurants, taxi drivers etc.  We chose to stay during the week as it is said to be popular with Quito residents escaping the city on weekends so rates are down. Obviously, rain equals rivers so there is also tubing, butterfly attractions and hummingbirds.  Think I...

Ecuador ....first to Ibarra and Octavalo, then Quito. Upon arrival in Ibarra on a Sunday afternoon we walked to one of the city parks and came across this city band concert.  Nice afternoon although all the music sounds the same to my ears. Ibarra is a midsized city that we stopped at in order to consider a detour to the Ecuador coast . (New road built within the last few years).  Unfortunately the new road did away with the old railroad that was a classic travelers story...decend a few thousand feet from bare mountains to the steamy seacoast with the adventurist passengers riding on the top of the train. But it is no more....now just the inside of a german built bus. However the day after we arrived there was a nationwide bus strike for all intercity bus lines.  Little dispute that the government mandates lower fares for students and elderly but has not reimbursed the bus lines to the tune of about $72,000,000.  Only a one day strike as they dont want taxi dri...

From Cali we  continued South to a few days in Popyan (Spelling ?),  one in Ipiales and across the border to Ibarra, Ecuador. From Popyan we did a day trip to Silva (Or was it Silvia).  Anyway a small town to happened to have their weekly market that day.  After the trading, men and women sit around the square I suppose to gossip about  kids, weather, etc. Southern Colombia is nothing to write glowing about EXCEPT for the geography.  Green mountains, passes every 20 kilometers  and spectacular vistas.  Other than that cities compete to have the most cell phone stores and shoe stores.  Not sure which one is winning.  Things seem to be a little more expensive here...perhap as it approaches Ecuador and perhaps due to transportation costs.  Still, anyone looking for an inexpensive place to spend a few North American winter months...Colombia should be on the short list.   (But a little Spanish skill is really needed.) H...

OK. I admit it.  I am not that fond of Big Cities....And Cali is another city with a population of four million plus.   Plus it is fairly hot, humid and of course busy.  But with full disclosure of my prejudices I feel OK saying two nights in Cali is enough.  And it is the most modern city we have found in Colombia.  Showers have hot water...public rest rooms have TP, some have hot water, some even have towels to dry your hands after washing and some have toilet seats instead of just the everyday round ceramic fixture. (Apparently more of that missing in Men than Woman facility.)  But it is OK. We went to the modern art museum which reminded me of a song by the Austin Lounge Lizards. "a truckful of art is burning by the highway....but nobody knows what it means."  Guess you had to be there. (But you can google it.) Hmmm. This Hostel PC doesnt want to recognize my camera so no pictures today.   But I did discover that the KTM 200 is a...