We arrive in the capital city of Peru after an 8 hour flight from Dallas in seats designed with midgets in mind. Tired and stiff we breeze through immigration, collect our bags and pre pay for a taxi to our very first AirBnb accommodation (more on that to follow). Our driver was smartly dressed, courteous and thankfully spoke better English than we speak Spanish, so we loaded up and headed off to Miraflores.
During my old life–whilst working the 5 to 9,–I would sometimes reflect back on the prior 5 to 10 years.
The result of that introspection was often a ‘gelatinous goo’ of memories. A sleep inducing, homogenized pablum of monotony, it was a great sea of beige where nothing really significant stood out.
The only exception to my frozen TV dinner memories (not that Yvonne ever served TV dinners), was when I was able to escape my life, long enough to travel somewhere cool. Long enough to have an authentic life experience, an experience like our 6 week volunteering adventure in the Philippines in 2010. [continue reading…]
In April 2018, we found ourselves between housesits with time on our hands for some exploring.
Logistically we needed to get from Aswan, Egypt to Pathos, Cyprus and had already booked a flight from Egypt to Athens Greece, (rather than fly all the way to the UK and back again).
Our host in Pathos, helpfully mentioned that Ryan Air flew from Chania, Crete to the Pathos airport relatively inexpensively. A little research and we had to agree, so what the heck – never been to Crete – lets check it out. It was only a short hop from Athens to Chania (pronounced “Han-e-ah”) [continue reading…]
Since May 2012 we have been traveling full time. Experiencing the world, making wonderful new friends, and partaking in the riches (and annoyances) of new cultures for less money (and angst) than it would cost us to stay at home and work for a living.
But it wasn’t always that way for us: [continue reading…]
Cruising the Nile has always been on our bucket list. When we accepted a house sitting assignment in El Gouna Egypt this year, the opportunity to check another item off the list presented itself.
After a short foray into our options for cruises it became very apparent there were vastly different ways to go about it. [continue reading…]
I had never heard of El Gouna near Hurghada on the Red Sea, until I came across a request for a house and pet sitter.
Why go to Egypt? It’s dangerous–according to many countries travel advisories, it is not a safe place to visit—it’s dirty, hot and the touts are relentless.
Some of that may be true of the rest of Egypt (we will find out over the next few weeks no doubt) but here in El Gouna, we appear to have only the best that Egypt has to offer. [continue reading…]
After 5 years of house sitting around the globe, we are in the Caribbean for the 4th year in a row and have a deeper understanding of the acronym ASDIP–
“Another Stupid Day in Paradise”
We are spending 7 months on a small island in the Grenadines with a population of about 5,000 this year and often quote ASDIP to ourselves.
Living in the Caribbean sounds like we are living the dream. However, living in the Caribbean fulltime is a lifestyle – rather than a permanent vacation. [continue reading…]