Days not Homeless: 4 Years, 314 Days ...and loving every second of this alpine adventure!
Surf Lesson Our friend Jamie was coming for a long weekend to stay with me whilst Wayne was doing the La Ruta bike race for 3 days, or so he thought. It was her idea to sign up for surf lessons and I’m glad we did. Jaco is extremely popular with surfers from beginner...
Pre Race Discovering La Ruta was pure coincidence. By chance I saw post from a guy on the Leadville 100 mountain bike news group asking if anyone doing Leadville had an available room for a Costa Rican Pro in exchange for accommodation at La Ruta. This peaked my...
The plan for the first couple months of our RTW adventure was for Andrea to remain working, this was her decision and nothing forced onto her by her semi-retired husband! That’s what also made Costa Rica our starting point, due to it being on a 2 hour time zone...
Saturday 20th October 2012 This was supposed to be the first day I get to ride day 1 of the “La Ruta de los Conquistadores” mountain bike race course, a 3 day event from Jaco on the Pacific coast to Limon on the Caribbean. I signed up for this crazy event after...
Thursday 18th October 2012, 10.45am Retirement is definitely not over-rated, at least not for me – Andrea may not agree with that yet! So we arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica on a classy Spirit Air flight from Fort Lauderdale and immediately paid too much for car...
Wayne and I will be traveling to central america next week for the Panama 70.3. It's a half ironman distance race with a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run. It's the first race of the season for us and the first race for Wayne since he broke his ankle in...
Would this be the start of bigger things or maybe just put us off long distance cycle touring? Fortunately for me this wasn't the first time spending back to back days in the saddle, whilst Andrea on the other hand was going to find out what is was all about! The...
To date we had yet to visit any of the Italian Lakes, the reason being... well we had no excuses! We were living barely on the French side of the Mt Blanc tunnel and Como was a short 3 hours by car - as I said, no excuses, we were just waiting for the right time....
The thought of being let loose on our own with fancy tech bindings and mohair skins, barely two weeks of skiing under our belts, was slightly intimidating to say the least! Shutdown had come far too early in the middle of March 2020, seemingly far too quickly followed...
Yes, we had views to die for, great winter conditions, amazing summer hiking, a bigger apartment, our own car; all suddenly becoming a bit less significant now that we had discovered the infamous French bureaucracy.... and taxes! We had arrived in France eight and a...
Seeing the ultra runners with their minimalist vests and lightweight trekking poles on Corsica's GR20 earlier this year set the seed. Whilst we hauled 20kg backpacks over the rugged terrain these guys passed us with ease, skipping through multiple stages en route to...
France had just removed its 100km travel limitation, Italy was about to open borders with its neighbors; still we were left with few options for a much needed vacation. We had been hiking like crazy in the Chamonix valley and needed something worthy of our fitness...
Every time we drove or cycled out of town, passing Les Houches en route to Servoz or Passy, we would see this huge chunk of rock dominating the view off to our right. Turns out this is known as the Fiz massif. A little investigation also told us that there's a decent...
Every once in a while we get the feeling that this is the place, the place where we'd like to discover more, experience new adventures, and spend a longer period of time. This time it was the picturesque Chamonix Valley. Whilst we had visited a few times before, once...
Less than fours hours after taking off from Auckland International airport we were touching down on the tiny island nation of Niue, a mere blip in the South Pacific. With access only by air from New Zealand or sailing boat, the Rock as it's locally called, is far less...
Reading 'Love with a Chance of Drowning' could well have set the seed for a different kind of adventure, one based in the high seas instead of high in the mountains. Would sailing the Pacific be in our veins, could we spend three plus weeks on the open ocean without...
The thought was.. Well we've been to the Italian Riviera recently so why not spend a few days in between Morocco and Chamonix mixing with film stars and race car drivers in the French Riviera. Also known as the Côte d'Azur this Mediterranean coastline is famous for...
Would the Sahara be any different from Wadi Rum in Jordan's Arabian Desert or the Namib Desert town of Sossusvlei in Namibia? With Andrea's five day Christmas break we had enough days to find out, the only issue being whether we head to Erg Chebbi on the main tourist...
Still recovering from a frostbitten toe and finger the probability of us actually making it to the top of North Africa was looking slim, made worse by the fact that from Marrakesh the Atlas Mountains looked totally white. This wasn't the sign I was looking for in the...
Prior to arriving in Morocco a month sounded like plenty of time, a time that was unfortunately already cut in half. Being alone for the first two weeks I only got to spend time in the populated Marrakesh and Fes areas so when Andrea arrived it was time to spread our...
Whilst Marrakesh is known for its massive influx of tourists the city of Fes would turn out to be far lower key, a good thing as spending the past four nights in the blue city of Chefchaouen was all about narrow streets full of Asians and their selfie sticks! No need...
Even being stuck in Chacos sandals with only 9 1/2 toes wasn't enough of a deterrent in tagging three more pathetically easy highpoints! Although heading out of south Florida towards Kentucky was the right direction they all still required significant detours; a waste...
Home to 2000 year old trees, Middle Eastern food, Muslims, Christians and Hezbollah Lebanon would turn out to wow us in many ways. Unlike a few years ago when we were in Jordan looking at relatively expensive flights to Lebanon this occasion looked more likely. Rome...
Being in Rome and Vatican City for my first, Andrea's second time, was one of our best travel experiences in Europe. Immensely rich in history the city provided us endless sightseeing opportunities, walking tours, people watching, and some of Europes best tasting...
Not sure that I'd even heard of Portofino on the Italian Riviera until it was mentioned in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the classic 1988 comedy starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin. Still, it was a place that someday I'd visit. Andrea and I had just hiked in...
If everything goes well on summit day then tagging the worlds loftiest mountain is a huge deal, no matter what you hear otherwise. It comes with immense satisfaction, an emotional rollercoaster ride, and the realization that with enough desire anything is possible....
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