[{"content":"We drove from Quito to Baños by way of Quilotoa today. When the plan was originally pitched, I thought Quilotoa was (mostly) \u0026ldquo;on the way\u0026rdquo; to Baños. When you\u0026rsquo;re zoomed out far enough on Google Maps, the detour from Latacunga to Quilotoa doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like a big deal, but it\u0026rsquo;s a narrow, super windy road through the high mountains with a lot of steep ups and downs. It added an extra 3 hours to the drive (plus the amount of time we spent in Quilotoa). We wound up spending most of the day driving with a pretty good hike to break things up. It was just about perfect.\nHertz Always Hurts We needed to rent a car for the next few days and that meant an Uber ride back to the Airport to pick it up. Hertz always seems to do the wrong thing when we rent from them outside the US. A few years ago they completely ghosted us In Costa Rica. They didn\u0026rsquo;t even open their doors the day we arrived. There was a huge line of people waiting along with us. We all waited multiple hours before an agent from a different car company came out to tell us he had called Hertz and the agents and they would not be opening that day. They \u0026ldquo;had no cars to rent\u0026rdquo; and didn\u0026rsquo;t bother letting anyone know. We all wound up renting from a competing agency for twice the price. We said we would never rent from them again outside the US, but they were the only rental agency that didn\u0026rsquo;t charge by the mile. We knew we were going to be driving a lot and didn\u0026rsquo;t want to have to pay extra for all our miles driven. So we risked it and rented with Hertz It wasn\u0026rsquo;t as bad as it could have been. In Quito they were open and had a car for us, but not the car we were expecting.\nSport Utility Vehicle (according to Hertz)\nThe SUV we reserved turned out to be a Chevy Onix. Hertz insisted it was \u0026ldquo;in the same class\u0026rdquo; as the SUV we were expecting. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how a subcompact sedan can be classified similarly to SUVs unless the class is something like \u0026ldquo;vehicles with silver paint\u0026rdquo;. Oh well. I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll never know, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t all bad. It got fantastic gas mileage and it did pretty well climbing those steep roads at altitudes above 12,000 feet. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how well my car would do at those altitudes. It was probably worse for the ladies riding in the back seat for so many hours, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t too bad in the front seat.\nWe stopped for snacks and drinks as we headed out of town and then we drove. Ecuador has speed cameras and everyone told us to use Waze to avoid them. It worked pretty well, but we didn\u0026rsquo;t see any speed cameras after leaving Quito. Sometimes there wasn\u0026rsquo;t any signal, but we managed do all our driving through Ecuador without a single ticket (unless one shows up in the mail at some future point, but I think that\u0026rsquo;s very unlikely). So we drove up, down, and through amazing mountain passes and valleys. We drove along and over rivers. The scenery was incredible so we just kept driving. We didn\u0026rsquo;t even stop for lunch.\nWindy and Windy We drove and drove until we had to pee. I think everyone expected to be able to find a bathroom once we made it to Quilotoa, but the steep winding high mountain roads kept us from that goal. We kept driving until it was nearly an emergency. By the time we pulled the car off the road at the top of a high mountain pass, we really had to pee. We had to pee right then. Immediately. The pass was somewhere above 13,000 feet and completely exposed. The wind was swirling at high velocity and completely insane. There was no way to hide from it. But there was no choice for any of us. We had to pee. Careful attention had to be paid to avoid having pee blown up into your face or all over yourself. Somehow we all managed to avoid any wet clothing or faces. It was an Ecuadorian miracle.\nAs we drove down from that pass, we came to the small town of Zumbahua, where the farms went straight up the mountain sides. It was really pretty. And it wasn\u0026rsquo;t that far from town to Quilotoa. There was a river that had cut some amazing canyons there, and one place where the road had been undercut by water.\nIt wasn\u0026rsquo;t long before we were parking in the little town of Quilotoa that overlooks the lake. It had taken a lot longer to get here than we anticipated and we knew we had to retrace our path back to Latacunga when we were done. We didn\u0026rsquo;t want to spend too much time here because we still had a long way to drive to get to Baños. So we decided to just checkout the various lookout points, take some pictures, and then continue on our way.\nBrett and Jess were moving quickly to get from the parking lot over to the first lookout point. Charmaine decided not to leave her electronics and other valuables in the car, so she loaded up her backpack before we headed out to follow them. It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have been a big deal except that somehow both Charmaine and I managed to completely misunderstand the communication about the stop here. Instead of trying to get back on schedule by staying along the rim of the crater and enjoying the lookouts, the plan was to still do the super steep hike down to the lake\u0026hellip; just to do it faster. Taking extra time to load up a backpack until it was extra heavy did not help us stick to the plan. I opted not to put on my new hiking boots, since that would have taken even more time.\nLaguna Quilotoa We took a few pictures at the top and then started walking the trail that loops around the rim of the crater. Mirador\nThe lake is a little more than 2 miles across, so the crater rim trail is at least 7 miles with a bunch of elevation gain and loss. We walked a little ways along the trail so we could get some photos at various lookouts that were nearby. There seemed to be more down than up on this section of the trail, but I figured it would even out one way or another. Each viewpoint was pretty spectacular, but they were also very similar to each other. I suspected each new viewpoint would be our last and we would have to turn tail and get back to the car. I made sure not to miss any photo opportunities, even if they were not quite as good as some we had already gotten.\nAt one of the viewpoints Brett said something like, \u0026ldquo;We should really just sprint to the bottom and then hit these lookouts on the way back up if there\u0026rsquo;s still time.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s when I realized it was going to be rough day. Suddenly I knew why the trail seemed to have more downs than ups. We were not following the crater rim trail after all. It was the trail down to the lake shore. We were already too far down to consider going back to ditch the electronics or put on appropriate footwear. I think it\u0026rsquo;s about 1,100 vertical feet each direction and we were probably 200 feet down already. In the end Charmaine wound up doing the hike with an extra 15 pounds on her back and I wore my running shoes down and up the steep sandy slopes. Those shoes will never run again.\nBut it was worth it.\nLaguna Quilotoa\nQuilotoa is the westernmost volcano in Ecuador. It\u0026rsquo;s last major eruption was more than 700 years ago. Just like Crater Lake in Oregon, Laguna Quilotoa is a lake that has formed in the crater of a collapsed volcano. The lake is more than 800 feet deep. The rim of the caldera around the lake is 12,840 feet above sea level. The surface of the water is iaround 11,480 feet, but has been slowly declining for at least 10 years. There are several well-known hikes in the area including a 6 mile hike around the rim and a steep descent down (and back up) to the marina at the surface of the water. The lake is a beautiful emerald green color because of the volcanic minerals (sulfur) dissolved in the water. They don\u0026rsquo;t allow swimming in the volcanic waters, but they do rent kayaks so you can paddle around the lake in search of hot steam bubbles escaping from the bottom of the lake at random times and in random places. I don\u0026rsquo;t know what they would do to me, but I think if I took a kayak out to the middle I might \u0026ldquo;accidentally\u0026rdquo; fall out and have to swim back to my kayak. But I digress.\nLike many similar steep hikes, the locals wanted to get you on a donkey or a horse. We saw the same thing in Santorini. We haven\u0026rsquo;t ever ridden one and I\u0026rsquo;m not convinced it would be any easier to ride a donkey up than it is to just do the hike. Maybe it shows my lack of donkey riding skills, but I would definitely prefer to be on my own legs and go at my own pace and see all the nice viewpoints along the way. Despite all that, I still tried to convince Charmaine to take a horse back to the top. The horse rental people were offering rides back to the top $10 each, which seemed pretty reasonable. She declined, but then went back to accept. By that point the price had doubled to $20. I told her to pay it and smile, but she felt like they were trying to rip her off, so she wanted nothing to do with it. It turns out they didn\u0026rsquo;t really change the price. They charge $10 per horse, but won\u0026rsquo;t go up unless there are at least 2 horses making the trip. It\u0026rsquo;s not worth it to them to do it for just $10. Hiking back up was probably the right choice anyway, for all the reasons mentioned previously.\nAt the top we had a quick bite to eat and then drove back through the mountains and on down to the town of Baños, which sits about 6,000 feet above sea level. The sun seemed to set a little earlier than usual as we descended the Amazon side of the Andes, but we still managed to pull into town just as the sun was going down. It was a little sad to see how touristy it is here, but there must be a good reason for it. I suspect we\u0026rsquo;ll discover some of that reason when we begin our adventure tomorrow. Being a tourist trap has its benefits. We had no trouble finding good food. Tonight we went to a nice Indian place and had no choice but to overeat. I didn\u0026rsquo;t expect to find great tikka masala in the middle of the rain forest, but here it is.\nWe are staying at the Samari Spa Resort. It is hundreds of years old. It used to be a Jesuit training center. It\u0026rsquo;s very fancy. It may be the fanciest hotel in town. I\u0026rsquo;m not going to complain. After all, I\u0026rsquo;m usually the one suggesting \u0026ldquo;Sanctuary Lodge\u0026rdquo; style hotels.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/quilotoa/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe drove from Quito to Baños by way of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quilotoa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eQuilotoa\u003c/a\u003e today. When the plan was originally pitched, I thought Quilotoa was (mostly) \u0026ldquo;on the way\u0026rdquo; to Baños. When you\u0026rsquo;re zoomed out far enough on Google Maps, the detour from Latacunga to Quilotoa doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like a big deal, but it\u0026rsquo;s a narrow, super windy road through the high mountains with a lot of steep ups and downs. It added an extra 3 hours to the drive (plus the amount of time we spent in Quilotoa). We wound up spending most of the day driving with a pretty good hike to break things up. It was just about perfect.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Quilotoa"},{"content":"At over 19,300 feet, Cotopaxi is very high. It\u0026rsquo;s the second highest peak in Ecuador (after Chimborazo). It is the third highest active volcano on the planet. Because of its proximity to the equator and the equatorial bulge caused by the spin of the earth, its peak is nearly 6,000 feet further from the center of the Earth than than the center of the earth is from the highest point on Mount Everest.\nDangerous Volcano Cotopaxi is an active stratovolcano, which means it is prone to violent and explosive eruptions. It is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world due to its height, its large glacial cone, and its proximity to densely populated areas. The Ecuadorian government estimates more than 300,000 people are at risk from the volcano. Previous eruptions have completely melted the glacial cone, sending pyroclastic flows more than 65 miles in every direction. It has sent mud and debris into the Amazon and all the way to the Pacific Ocean, destroying cities and towns that got in the way. The last \u0026ldquo;major\u0026rdquo; eruption was in 1903-1904 with \u0026ldquo;minor\u0026rdquo; activity that has come and gone ever since. The mountain really woke up again in 2015 with a series of more than 2,000 earthquakes per month while releasing two large steam eruptions later that year. Then, in October 2022, it began spewing ash. The ash has continued to rise from the cinder cone, turning the glacial cone almost completely black at this point.\nScientist say Cotopaxi \u0026ldquo;remains in a very abnormal situation.\u0026rdquo;\nThere is a climbers\u0026rsquo; refuge lodge at about 16,000 feet high, just below the glacial cone. Nobody is allowed to climb the upper mountain until it calms down again. On Easter Sunday in 1996 an avalanche buried the refuge and killed 13 people higher on the mountain. Those in the refuge had to break windows on the lower side of the slope and climb out to safety. Cotopaxi is a huge tourist draw and the government doesn\u0026rsquo;t want anything to happen to those drawn to the mountain (like us).\nAltitude Sickness Despite having some minor challenges with altitude sickness a few years ago in Cuzco, Peru, I wasn\u0026rsquo;t too worried about it in Ecuador. I felt a minor headache at the top of the tram yesterday, but figured I would feel better after we came back down to the city. I didn\u0026rsquo;t really notice it again until that night. It continued to build and by 1:00 am I couldn\u0026rsquo;t sleep anymore. The pain was getting crazy. I never get headaches of any kind - not even when I\u0026rsquo;m sick. I can count the number of headaches I have had in the past year - including this one - on one finger. I was concerned when it kept getting worse. By 2:00 am I was out of bed, sitting in a chair by the window, pressing my hands into my head in a vain attempt to relieve some pressure. And I was crying. I am a wimp. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t help it. Eventually I got in the shower and just stood under the waterfall for about an hour. By some magic, that stimulation on my head and neck made things better. By 3 or 4 I was able to climb in bed and actually sleep for a bit. It was so nice.\nWe went down to breakfast just before 7 this morning. We skipped breakfast yesterday, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t really know how good it would be. We expected a pretty good spread, based on the quality of the hotel, and our expectations were met. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a crazy amazing spread, but it had plenty of high quality options and we went away satisfied. I even packed a banana for today\u0026rsquo;s adventure.\nWe met our tour guides on the edge of Parque La Carolina, which is basically across the street from our hotel. It took couple hours to get from Quito to Cotopaxi National Park. Ecuador is amazingly beautiful and its beauty was on full display as we drove. Our guides told us the name Cotopaxi means \u0026ldquo;neck of the moon\u0026rdquo; in Quechua and Aymara.\nAbove the Tree Line We are used to phrases like \u0026ldquo;above the tree line\u0026rdquo; which is the line above which there are no trees because the air pressure is too low. As we drove through Cotopaxi National Park towards the mountain, we were well above the tree line. The only thing able to grow at this elevation is Páramo, an alpine tundra. The clouds blocking Cotopaxi cleared momentarily so we all piled out of the van onto the road for some quick pictures, not knowing if we would get another chance to see the mountain this trip. It was a little sad to see the upper mountain looking so dark, with the entire glacial cone covered in black volcanic ash that continues to spew from the top. But it was still exciting to see such a high peak. Moments later the clouds rolled right back in and obscured the mountain once again.\nWe drove onward and upward out of the Páramo and into the dirt/ash area of the mountain. We parked in a fairly large parking lot at the base of the trailhead climbers have been using for decades to summit the massive peak. It was windy. It was so windy our guide decided we would be better off skipping the switchbacks and climbing directly up within the shelter of a canyon. It\u0026rsquo;s hard to know if we received any shelter from the wind, but it sure didn\u0026rsquo;t seem that way. We hiked up a canyon filled with soft sand/ash against the wind. We hiked up to the refuge at 16,000 feet. It was slow going, despite our desire to get out of the cold wind. Atmospheric pressure drops about 50% for every 16,000 feet in elevation. So we were hiking up a steep canyon, into the ash-filled wind, with only about 50% of the air we are used to breathing. You know you should be able to go faster, but somehow you can\u0026rsquo;t. It\u0026rsquo;s a fascinating experience.\nRefugio José Rivas Eventually we reached the refuge, which is a fairly large building where climbers sleep while waiting for the right time to attempt the summit. Nobody has slept there since the upper mountain closed, but they still run a little snack and gift shop. There are several signs blocking the trail up from the refuge. Like many others have obviously done, we stepped past the \u0026ldquo;do not cross\u0026rdquo; signs and climbed just a little higher. The refuge sits about 50 feet below 16k and we really wanted to hit that magical number. And so we did.\nAfter a few minutes enjoying hot chocolate at the climber\u0026rsquo;s refuge, we headed back down to the van. We stopped at a small lake inside the national park before continuing on to lunch at a cute little hotel owned by the tour company in a nearby rural town. After lunch we walked down the road a bit without our guides. It was really nice and relaxing. We saw several types of trees we hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen before with really interesting flowers. Brett decided to pick one of the really large trumpet-shaped flowers and stick it in his mouth. It turned out to be a (highly toxic) Red Angel\u0026rsquo;s Trumpet, but he was fine. Eventually our guides found us so we hopped back in the van and headed down to Quito.\nOnce back in Quito we decided to spend some time checking out Parque La Carolina. We had walked along the outside of the park earlier this morning to meet our guides, but it looked like a really fun place, so we decided to check it out. The first thing we saw was whole families playing soccer together - including little kids, then families playing Ecuadorian volleyball, families riding mountain bikes on the flow track they have setup, etc. The park is very popular with families and family activities on weekends. It was pretty magical. I was also impressed by all the fancy buildings surrounding the park. I think it would be really fun to come back and stay a few months in Quito learning Spanish and working remotely.\nWe walked through the park until it started to get dark. We decided to have dinner at fancy Italian place (Via Partenope) and then, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, we found ourselves back at Sweet \u0026amp; Coffee for a little dessert. We didn\u0026rsquo;t get a lot of items, but we did get passion fruit cake and some chocolate milkshakes.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/cotopaxi/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt over 19,300 feet, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotopaxi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eCotopaxi\u003c/a\u003e is very high. It\u0026rsquo;s the second highest peak in Ecuador (after Chimborazo). It is the third highest active volcano on the planet. Because of its proximity to the equator and the equatorial bulge caused by the spin of the earth, its peak is nearly 6,000 feet further from the center of the Earth than than the center of the earth is from the highest point on Mount Everest.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cotopaxi"},{"content":"We skipped breakfast today because we were headed out to an all-day walking food tour of Quito. Breakfast is included with our room, and it\u0026rsquo;s probably a nice spread, but we decided to get a little extra sleep this morning. We ate late last night and really overdid it and we will probably be eating early and often on the food tour this morning, so eating breakfast would have been a mistake. Instead, we just met in the lobby of the hotel and then grabbed an Uber to take us to the center of the old town where we would start our walking tour of the city.\nQuito is a stunning city. The streets are clean and filled with art. It\u0026rsquo;s also a very large city. We only walked through a few of the neighborhoods, on a route hand-selected by either our guide or the tour company, but everything we saw was really impressive. I really enjoyed the art along the streets and snapped a few photos as we drove. Little did I know we would be visiting an artists colony on our walking tour.\nPlaza de la Independencia We got out of the Uber and started our walking tour in Plaza de la Independencia (Independence Square) in the heart of historic Quito. In the center of the square is a tall monument honoring the heroes of independence of August 10, 1809, when Ecuador declared its independence from Spain. Like many other Spanish Colonial cities, the central square is lined with churches and important government buildings. The Spanish founded Quito in 1534 on the ruins of an Inca city. The Plaza Grande (as it\u0026rsquo;s known locally) has been the center of power in Quito since the early 1600s. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named Quito a UNESCO world heritage site when they created the designation in 1978. They say Quito has \u0026ldquo;the best-preserved, least altered historic centre in Latin America.\u0026rdquo; Only twelve sites were included that year and Quito is number two. As you can imagine, it\u0026rsquo;s a pretty special place.\nWe went across the plaza and into El Palacio Arzobispal (the Archbishop\u0026rsquo;s Palace). It has been turned into a shopping mall with a different little shop in each of the old rooms. On weekends they even have live music (free concerts). It was pretty empty when we walked through and took a few pictures.\nAn Early Lunch From there we walked down Venezuela Street toward the Basilica, but turned down Galapagos Street to find some traditional Ecuadorian food. Galapagos Street quickly turned into a walking-only street that went under some arches and down a few sets of stairs to our first food stop, Pilar Salguero. It was 10:30 am, which is a bit early for lunch, but there were already a few local folks eating. Would this be second breakfast? brunch? first lunch? I\u0026rsquo;m not sure, but after last night\u0026rsquo;s dessert extravaganza, I wasn\u0026rsquo;t very hungry. Each couple shared a small plate with chunks of pork, potato, a small piece of a corn cob, some diced tomatoes and onions, and a few bites of platanos fritos. They also gave us a bowl of orange sauce that we could spoon onto the food on our plates. It smelled like it was made from peppers, but there was basically zero heat to it. The flavors were nice and worked well together.\nAfter that savory meal, we hiked up the hill to Venezuela street and over to the Basilica. We didn\u0026rsquo;t have time to go inside, but our guide pointed out the unique gargoyles around the top which are animals found in Ecuador. Each window is guarded by a pair of the same type of animal. We saw sloths, iguanas, turtles, crocodiles, jaguars, monkeys, and anteaters. I really like the concept of the local animals defending the church and the people inside it. The basilica is said to be \u0026ldquo;unfinished\u0026rdquo; because completing it would mean the end of the world.\nTwo More Lunches We continued along Venezuela Street past the Basilica and then took a walking path down the hill into what looked like a neighborhood. We didn\u0026rsquo;t go too far before we came to lunch spot number two. 11:15 am is pretty early for second lunch, but it was really good, so nobody complained. I think the name of the place was Hueca Manabita El gato Numero 2. They serve classic Ecuadorian empanadas made from plantain flour and there were a couple guys in the back slicing and chopping up green plantains and potatoes to make the empanadas and other fried goodies. We all got shrimp empanadas and they were amazing. They also had a little bucket of hot sauce that wasn\u0026rsquo;t hot at all.\nWe went directly across the street for some juice drinks inside Mercado América. We sat down to third lunch at 11:35 am. This time lunch was a mashed yuca base with some fried eggs on top and more of the diced tomato and onion pico. It was a bit starchy for our third meal in just over an hour, but the egg with tomato and onion was really nice. They also brought us a little bowl of the now familiar orange pepper sauce (not spicy). We had several rounds of some fantastic juice drinks, which made everything even better. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how adding extra high-calorie drinks mades it better, but it did. We started with an old favorite, guanábana. On subsequent rounds we tried several new fruits that we hadn\u0026rsquo;t heard of previously. I really liked the naranjilla (a relative of the tomato, but quite sweet) and the babaco (a sweet, but mild cross of two types of mountain papayas).\nStreet Art of Quito There was no way to eat anything else at that point, so it\u0026rsquo;s a good thing we had some walking to do. We headed to a street art colony and talked about the different artists who have come through from other countries, saw some of their work, and learned about their mission. A lot of the art was really fun and interesting. Some of it had strong messages. I really enjoyed it. Quito is filled with all sorts of art. A lot of it is street art. Some of the artists in this colony have helped create some of the street art around Quito. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty cool.\nFourth Lunch We walked along some of the streets filled with art on our way to the Parque El Ejido, which is a park where a lot of art gets displayed and sold. Just outside the park, we stopped for our fourth lunch. The timing actually made sense on this one. It was 12:30 and the place was packed with locals. We were having seafood. It was mostly fish with a few prawns thrown in for good measure. All of the fish was filleted so the only heads or skin we saw were on the prawns. It was really good. The fish was cooked perfectly and the sauce was excellent, but we were so stuffed that it was difficult to finish. Somehow we all found room when the bartender started whipping up babaco drinks for us. Oh man, that is really good stuff.\nTropical Fruit Tasting There was another long walk between lunch number four and our final food stop. I needed the walk and the time it took. We made our way to Mercado Santa Clara for some fruit tasting. We are not the usual group of tourists. I think our guide was somewhat surprised several times today when he expected to introduce us to something wonderful (like guanábana) only to hear us tell him it was one of our favorites. That trend continued in a big way at the fruit stand in the mercado. We got to \u0026ldquo;try\u0026rdquo; lychee, chirimoya, fresh cacao beans, and a few others. I think he was especially surprised that we already loved granadillas and were well versed in how to open and eat them. We went one more place for drinks to wrap up the tour. Once again we surprised our guide when none of us wanted a coffee or tea. Instead we got some lemonades and fruit juices.\nVolcán Pichincha That was the end of our walking tour. Thankfully, we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have to eat again for a few hours. We realized we had enough time to take the tram to the top of a nearby mountain and enjoy the view from the top, so we grabbed and Uber and headed on over to the TelefériQo Cruz Loma. The tram basically goes straight up a very steep slope of the Pichincha Volcano. The last major eruption was in 1998, but it is considered safe to climb. The tram takes you to a mirador where you can look out across the city and see the really big volcanoes (Cotopaxi, et. al) on the other side. On a clear day you can hike from there up to the peaks - Ruku Pichincha and Guagua Pichincha. It was too late in the day to consider the 4 hour hike up and back and we could see a pretty good storm rolling across Quito. Either would probably have been enough to keep us from climbing. Both at the same time made the choice easy.\nThe view from the top of the tram was pretty great, even with the clouds rolling in. The storm blocked our view of the big volcanoes behind the city (one of the main reasons people go up there), but there were still interesting things to see and do at the top. We wandered around a bit to see it all. This is a very touristy place. Almost all of the tourists seem to be from South America, but we did run into some of the first white people we have seen in Ecuador. We waited our turn to swing on the giant swing set overlooking the city. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty fun to swing at 13,000 feet. From there we wandered a little ways up along the trail that goes to the summit until we came to a little restaurant shack on the side of the mountain.\nHail of a Good Time Plantain Chips\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure we would have stopped and gone into the little tienda, but it seemed like a good idea when it started to rain pretty hard. So we ducked under the thatched roof and ordered some plantain chips. We had the place to ourselves and we expected the rain to pass pretty quickly. We were so wrong. Almost as soon as we sat down the rain turned to hail. Lots of hail. And it just kept coming. It must have hailed for 30 minutes or more. The people who had ventured up the big mountain were not happy. The trail was slick with mud and the hikers were getting pelted with hail as they tried to stay on their feet while hurrying back down and into the shack with us. The llamas outside the shack were basically frozen in place. I\u0026rsquo;m sure they have seen some interesting weather before, but they sure didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to like the hail today.\nThe hail just kept coming. Soon the shack was packed and basically standing room only. We had one of the few tables and felt like we should continue ordering drinks and food so we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t feel bad hogging the table. We got some good stuff, too. I think we had some hot naranjilla drinks, some platanos fritos with cheese (interesting and quite good), some soup. I don\u0026rsquo;t remember because we ordered three or four times, and let\u0026rsquo;s be honest, I was much more interested in watching all the hail. It just kept pounding. There were several inches of hail by the time it slowed down enough that we decided to leave. I was really glad I had worn my new Terrex Free Hiker 2.0 Hiking Boots (to make cobblestone streets a little softer). They were really nice while trying to get back to the tram through the rivers of ice and mud at 13,000 feet.\nBasílica del Voto Nacional We walked down from the base of the tram to where regular streets and traffic were flowing before grabbing a taxi back to the basilica we saw breifly on our tour. We wanted to go inside and there was just enough time to make it happen. It\u0026rsquo;s the largest non-gothic basilica in the western hemisphere. The official name of the basilica is La Basílica del Voto Nacional (The Basilica of the National Vow). There is a giant heart above the main doors and it looks pretty cool. The name and the giant heart are meant to be a perpetual reminder of the consecration of Ecuador to the Sacred Heart. We didn\u0026rsquo;t have a ton of time before closing, but I think we used it well.\nEating Well After they kicked us out of the Basilica we went back to our hotel. It was time to figure out dinner and it needed to be good. We used Google Maps to find the highest rated place near the hotel. We found Chios Portugal, a hamburger shop right around the corner from our hotel. It has 4.9 stars after almost 5,000 reviews. That\u0026rsquo;s an incredible record.\nWe had to try it.\nMaybe we ordered the wrong things. Maybe nothing would have been good after a day filled with eating all the great Ecuadorian fare around Quito. But, in the end, none of us were impressed. Nothing was bad, but nothing was great either. So we nursed ourselves back to health by dropping by our favorite dessert shop once again. And when they didn\u0026rsquo;t have some of our favorites (from last night), we decided to try a few desserts from our hotel. To say this was a big calorie day is the understatement of the year.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/walking-tour-of-quito/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe skipped breakfast today because we were headed out to an all-day walking food tour of Quito. Breakfast is included with our room, and it\u0026rsquo;s probably a nice spread, but we decided to get a little extra sleep this morning. We ate late last night and really overdid it and we will probably be eating early and often on the food tour this morning, so eating breakfast would have been a mistake. Instead, we just met in the lobby of the hotel and then grabbed an Uber to take us to the center of the old town where we would start our walking tour of the city.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Walking Tour of Quito"},{"content":"This is going to be an interesting trip. We bought our airplane tickets just two days ago. We drove home late Monday evening after camping in Canyonlands. Wednesday around noon Brett said he found cheap tickets to Quito this week and we had 2 hours to decide if we were going. We have talked about visiting Ecuador for years. Our only choice was to say yes. So we bought tickets Wednesday afternoon to fly out at the crack of dawn Friday morning. We drove to Salt Lake Thursday after work and started planning the trip that night. We figured out a good outline of what we wanted to do and see, booked the first few hotels and activities, and went to bed sometime after midnight. About 4 hours later we were driving to the airport. I think that\u0026rsquo;s a record turnaround for us.\nDelta Airlines is a Scam I have to rant a little about how terrible booking a ticket with Delta has become. We tried to buy tickets through Delta\u0026rsquo;s website. It showed great prices flying out of Las Vegas (only 2 hours from our home). But the prices were a complete bait-and-switch scam. With Delta you have the choice of buying \u0026ldquo;basic economy\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;main cabin\u0026rdquo;. They have multiple pop-up banners letting you know that you can\u0026rsquo;t pick your seat with basic economy, but if you pay a little more for main cabin you can \u0026ldquo;choose and change your seats anytime\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s the only way to guarantee two people can sit together. That is super annoying since knowing your seat ahead of time probably saves the airline money. It certainly doesn\u0026rsquo;t cost extra for that. But that\u0026rsquo;s just the tip of the iceberg of this scam.\nWe chose to buy main cabin so we could get seats together. Except wait, we couldn\u0026rsquo;t. There were plenty of open seats next to each other on each leg of our journey, but to pick anything other than a middle seat costs extra\u0026hellip; like $100 per flight extra. So buying main cabin did NOT allow us to sit next to each other unless we paid more than $400 extra. Sure, we could pick seats, so long as we each picked a middle seat nowhere near the other. How does that make any sense? Then I thought maybe I would suck it up and pay the fee for one of us to have an aisle or window and then pick the \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; middle seat next to the paid seat. When you choose to do that, a banner pops up warning that if you pay to choose a seat the payment is non-refundable and you will not be allowed to switch seats without abandoning the fee you paid to reserve it. So every single reason for paying extra to buy main cabin is a lie. You CANNOT choose seats next to each other, and if you decide to PAY EVEN MORE so that you can sit together then you CANNOT SWITCH YOUR SEAT. It\u0026rsquo;s a complete scam. The bottom line is they claim the price is $X so the Delta tickets seem cheaper than their competition. But then they tack on the airline equivalent of \u0026ldquo;resort fees\u0026rdquo; by forcing you to pay even more to pick a seat. It meant our tickets would be 25% more than the advertised price. It would be 50% more than the advertised price for a single flyer wanting to sit in an aisle seat. That is a complete scam and should be (probably is) illegal. In our case the original ticket was supposed to be $880 per person, but add 4 legs of picking seats together and the final price was just over $1050 per person (an extra $400+ divided in half). That\u0026rsquo;s a scam and it would have prevented me flying on Delta this time, except we really needed to arrive in Quito the same time as Brett and Jess. Brett has Diamond status with Delta and was able to buy our tickets on his reservation, which allowed him to pick seats for free. The flights out of Salt Lake were more expensive than the flights from Las Vegas, so we wound up paying the extra anyway, but that meant we would all fly together on every leg of the trip. If anyone got delayed, we would all be delayed together.\nWe have two Delta credit cards and flew about 50,000 miles on Delta last year, but we didn\u0026rsquo;t spend enough on the cards to get status this year. Status with Delta has never been worth much, so we spent on other cards that give us much better benefits. It seems the only benefit to having status with Delta is to avoid being scammed by Delta, and that\u0026rsquo;s not a great reason to work toward status. After this experience I think we might finally be done with Delta. We have already stopped using the Delta credit cards, so it\u0026rsquo;s probably time to cancel them and start flying an airline that doesn\u0026rsquo;t try to scam us on every trip\u0026hellip; if one exists. Rant over.\nThe New SLC Delta Lounge is Great We had plenty of time to kill at the Salt Lake airport this morning. Brett used a combination of his Delta credit cards, Diamond status, and some sweet talking to get us all into the Delta Lounge this morning. We used the opportunity to book the rest of our hotels and activities that we hadn\u0026rsquo;t had time to complete last night. I don\u0026rsquo;t remember a trip where we were booking hotels and activities during the trip other than when Charmaine and I went to Israel back in 2011. Since then we have been pretty good at making sure we at least know where we are going to sleep each night. The new Delta lounge in SLC has comfortable seats, good Internet, and some nice little breakfast treats and snacks. I particularly enjoyed the chia seed pudding, fresh raspberries, and chili hardboiled eggs. The food on the plane to Quito was also some of the best I have had back in cattle-class. They gave us a cheese, fruit, and nut plate. It was unexpectedly good for airplane food.\nWe arrived in Quito around 8:30 at night, but by the time we went through immigration, picked up our bags, got an Uber, and drove to our hotel (the Dann Carlton near the Parque Carolina in the center of town), it was already 10 pm. On the way from the airport to the city, our driver (who knew nothing about us) went out of his way to point out a \u0026ldquo;really cool church\u0026rdquo; right next to the freeway. It turned out to be the nearly brand new Mormon Quito Ecuador Temple (dedicated Nov 2022). I tried to snap a picture as we drove by, but my phone refused to do anything but night mode (long exposure), so it didn\u0026rsquo;t turn out very well.\nA Quick Taste of Quito Ecuador doesn\u0026rsquo;t participate in Daylight Savings Time, so for most of the year they are only one hour ahead of Utah. It was at least a 40 minute drive from the airport to our hotel. We basically stayed up all night last night, then spent the whole day in transit today, so we were feeling pretty tired.\nMediocre Shawarma\nWe still wanted to get a quick taste of Quito before bed, so we went out for dinner at a local shawarma place (they\u0026rsquo;re everywhere). I was pretty underwhelmed by the shawarma. I would say it was mediocre at best. It seems to be the most popular street food here, but it\u0026rsquo;s almost always chicken and the flavors we had tonight were nothing special. Maybe we just picked a bad location? I\u0026rsquo;m betting we\u0026rsquo;ll wind up trying it again somewhere else.\nAfter dinner we walked around the block the long way back to our hotel and came across Sweet \u0026amp; Coffee, a little bakery and cofee shop that looked pretty good. Unlike the shawarma, the baked goods impressed. We got a Pan de Zapallo (pumpkin bread) that was really moist and delicious. We also got a slice of Torta de Manzana y Nuez and that was probably my favorite thing. There was a nice sized slice of Carrot Cake and a smaller slice of Apple Pie Bread Pudding. Those were both fantastic. We also tried a slice of their Pasión de Maracuya (passion fruit pie) and it was fantastic. The Queso de Coco (coconut flan) was another favorite. We must have tried about 20 different items and none were disappointing. So we ate way too much, way too late.\nTomorrow morning we\u0026rsquo;re meeting for breakfast at 8. I would like to sleep in longer (and get some of this food processed), but we\u0026rsquo;re starting a food tour of Quito in the morning around 10 am. So there will be no shortage of food. Somehow we will survive.\nAfter just a couple hours in Quito, we are already pretty impressed. The weather is just amazing. The airport was very clean and modern. The city streets seem really clean and we felt safe walking around the area near our hotel at night. I think we expected it to be more like Guatemala City, but right now it feels a whole lot nicer. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how we feel about it after the walking tour tomorrow.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/arriving-in-quito/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is going to be an interesting trip. We bought our airplane tickets just two days ago. We drove home late Monday evening after \u003ca href=\"/blog/the-needles/\"\u003ecamping in Canyonlands\u003c/a\u003e. Wednesday around noon Brett said he found cheap tickets to Quito this week and we had 2 hours to decide if we were going. We have talked about visiting Ecuador for years. Our only choice was to say yes. So we bought tickets Wednesday afternoon to fly out at the crack of dawn Friday morning. We drove to Salt Lake Thursday after work and started planning the trip that night. We figured out a good outline of what we wanted to do and see, booked the first few hotels and activities, and went to bed sometime after midnight. About 4 hours later we were driving to the airport. I think that\u0026rsquo;s a record turnaround for us.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arriving in Quito"},{"content":"One of my favorite national parks is Canyonlands National Park. The confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers is the center of the park, dividing it into three distinct and disconnected districts. To the north of the Colorado and east of the Green lies the most visited district of the park: Island in the Sky. To the west of the Green and the north of the Colorado lies The Maze, which is one of the most remote places in the lower 48 states. To the south and east of the Colorado river lies The Needles. It\u0026rsquo;s not as easy to access as Island in the Sky, with its paved roads and close proximity to Moab. It\u0026rsquo;s not nearly as remote as The Maze, which takes a full day of technical driving to reach.\nThe Needles is still full of challenges and is not a place for inexperienced drivers or vehicles without the right capabilities. It\u0026rsquo;s filled with steep grades, large obstacles, off-camber drops, and paint-scraping narrow sections. Elephant Hill (the way both in and out of The Needles) has a switchback so tight it can only be navigated in reverse. If you get stuck here, a tow truck will cost more than $2,000. Group sizes are strictly limited to keep noise and dust down, to minimize wildlife disruptions, and to let the sights and sounds of nature prevail.\nThere are some amazing campsites in The Needles and they all require a permit. Even single day-use requires a permit. The permits are highly sought after and become unavailable several months in advance. Some popular days and popular spots get reserved within minutes of being released.\nBrett, Jess, and Mark each reserved a campsite in the Devil\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen campground in The Needles over Memorial Day weekend. There are only 4 total campsites in Devil\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen, so between the three of them they had reserved almost the entire campground. It\u0026rsquo;s a really special place with spectacular views. Each reservation allows for up to 10 people and 3 cars but the rangers reminded us of the group size limitations in the park. They don\u0026rsquo;t want to see multiple groups moving together as one larger group.\nBig Groups Are Bad I am not a fan of large groups when camping. Despite my love for Canyonlands, when I heard there would be as many as 30 people camping with us, I did my best to get out of it. I love Devil\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen and the hikes in The Needles, but I really don\u0026rsquo;t like activities with so many people. Especially when the logical divisions in the groups don\u0026rsquo;t align with the campsite restrictions. Charmaine had just been backpacking and camping through The Needles, but she really wanted to go back and show me some of the cool places she had just been. We had also invited my brother Joe to camp with us. I tried to persuade him to camp with us somewhere else this weekend, but he was pretty excited about The Needles. So once it was clear I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be able to get out of it, I tried to make the most of it.\nTo enter The Needles, we drove south from Moab for about 40 miles on highway 191 and then west for another 35 miles on highway 211. We passed several nice looking campgrounds just off of highway 211. We stopped briefly at Newspaper Rock and then continued down towards The Needles. As we were just about to enter The Needles, there\u0026rsquo;s a small outpost where we stopped to top off our gas (at $10/gallon) and buy a few last-minute items before heading into the park. I didn\u0026rsquo;t use more than about 1/3 of my gas in the park, so I would like to avoid stopping at the outpost on future trips, but I doubt that will happen. We always seem to be part of a group where someone is concerned about gas, so I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll just keep paying the premium for a little peace of mind.\nElephant Hill Not long after entering the park it was time to air down and climb our first obstacle - Elephant Hill, the gatekeeper of The Needles distrcit of Canyonlands. If you want to drive anywhere in The Needles, you have to drive up and over it. Elephant Hill is famous for having a switchback so tight that you cannot make the turn and shouldn\u0026rsquo;t even try. Instead, you drive all the way into the corner, put your rig in reverse, and drive up the next section in reverse. You reverse all the way into the next corner and then go back to driving forward again. It\u0026rsquo;s really not difficult, but it is something most drivers have never had to do, so it gets talked about a lot and probably has a reputation for being technical or difficult. Maybe that\u0026rsquo;s why I always expect it to be more challenging than it is. I pretty much just drove straight up and over it this time. Of course, I was following good lines selected by the experienced drivers in front of me.\nWe stopped at the top for some lunch before dropping down the steep side of the hill. I benefited from a host of volunteer spotters going down, and the 4Runner made quick work of the hill. There is another climbing section right after that, and then the road splits into two one-way sections. Coming in from our right is the one-way section that brings vehicles back to Elephant Hill so they can go home. To the left is the one-way section that leads to everything inside The Needles, and that\u0026rsquo;s the way we went.\nThe Squeeze At the end of the one-way section going into the park is another famous obstacle - The Squeeze. This is an extremely tight pass (8 feet wide?) through the Devil\u0026rsquo;s Pocket. It\u0026rsquo;s the type of pass where you have to pull your mirrors in or the walls will do it for you. The rock walls are vertical, but the ground beneath your vehicle is not level, which can cause the vehicle to lean and scrape against the unforgiving rock walls. Avoiding that fate means turning toward the very wall your vehicle is starting to lean into. It\u0026rsquo;s not intuitive. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel right. You have to have a good spotter telliing you to make that choice. Not trusting your spotter can mean grinding more than just your mirrors. You may grind your fenders and doors. You may even become wedged in. Luckily, Brett is the master spotter and has guided dozens of vehicles through without a scratch.\nThere is a sharp turn at the exact moment that the walls start to open up. It\u0026rsquo;s very satisfying to make it through unscathed. I have really enjoyed driving through The Squeeze on previous trips and I wanted Charmaine to have that same experience. She drove through like a boss - never going too fast, doing all the things her spotter suggested - making it look so easy. Everyone in our entire group made it through without incident. In fact, I don\u0026rsquo;t remember anyone ever scratching their rig any of the times we have been through here. And one year that included a full-size Toyota Tundra. So trust your spotter.\nDevil\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen Campground The Devil\u0026rsquo;s Kitchen Campground is literally right around the corner from The Squeeze, so we pulled in and setup camp as soon as everyone was through. As I expected, there was some confusion about who was camping and parking in which spots. Joe got the short end of the stick and had to park his car in a different spot than where we were camping. That\u0026rsquo;s just the way it goes with these larger groups. But I think he managed to have a good time anyway. Everybody seemed to interact well and get along, which made it a good experience.\nDevil\u0026rsquo;s Lane and S.O.B. Hill The next day we drove down Devil\u0026rsquo;s Lane to the petroglyphs. From there we worked our way up and over S.O.B. Hill and then down and around to The Joint.\nDevil\u0026rsquo;s Lane\nS.O.B. Hill is poorly named, if you ask me. The hill isn\u0026rsquo;t special or difficult. It isn\u0026rsquo;t even much of a hill. It\u0026rsquo;s only about 20 feet of climbing. BUT there is a very challenging obstacle with a very tight turn that takes you through a notch in the canyon wall at the summit, which is probably why it got the name S.O.B. It\u0026rsquo;s not the hill; it\u0026rsquo;s the obstacle at the summit.\nEverybody needs a spotter and several adjustments to make the corner and get over some of the boulders. We have been through this obstacle a number of times and have tried several different lines and approaches. One of the Land Cruiser drivers even tried going through in reverse. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure there\u0026rsquo;s a magic solution that will make it easy, but it\u0026rsquo;s fun to try new things.\nS.O.B. Hill\nThe road from there to The Joint is pretty tame after that. Somewhere along that very tame road I managed to slice through the sidewall of my front tire. I was probably going 20 miles per hour due to the lack of challenges on that section of road. I didn\u0026rsquo;t see anything and was a little confused and bewildered that I had done so much damage without even seeing what caused it. I walked back down the road where I came from to try and figure out what I hit. It was tough to guess what had happened, but I eventually saw a rock that had a very sharp edge on the side. With my tires aired down, the sidewall must have tried to grab that sharp rock, but the rock had other plans and tore right trough my tire, causing it to go completely flat almost immediately. I definitely learned my lesson: Always put your tire on top of the obstacle, or completely away from the obstacle. Never allow either side of your tire to grind against an obstacle.\nThese modified vehicles with larger tires and suspension kits that raise them up over obstacles are amazing, but when you need to work on a tire you have to lift them really high. The suspension has a long travel, which means you must lift the modified vehicle much higher than the stock version of the same vehicle. To do that lifting, you need what is known as a Hi-Lift Jack. I have used mine on several occasions in conjunction with a puncture repair kit. It\u0026rsquo;s amazing how easy it is to fix a flat tire under normal circumstances, but you can\u0026rsquo;t repair a tire after you destroy the sidewall like I did. That tire must be replaced, and that always means using your spare tire until you make it back to civilization. My spare tire had never been used previously and it\u0026rsquo;s not the same size or width as my all-terrain tires. That means running it at (mostly) full pressure and always driving slightly off-camber. So I was probably done doing anything too crazy the rest of this trip. My vehicle was a little less capable, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t have another spare tire, so I had to make it home on this set of tires.\nOne lesson I may or may not have learned is about maintenance for my Hi-Lift Jack. It\u0026rsquo;s a critical piece of safety equipment and it gets constant abuse being mounted on the outside of the vehicle. All the sand and dust we drive through gets worked into the moving parts of the jack. I have mostly ignored doing any sort of maintence to the jack, because it has always performed perfectly when asked. Not today. In order to get it to lift my rig today, we had to manually manipulate some of the sliding parts to get it to actually lift. That was certainly interesting and I was glad to have friends around who are more mechanically minded than I am.\nThe Joint The Joint is a bit of a magical place. It is a series of dark narrow passageways through the sandstone formations. Some look and feel like tubes and tunnels, while others are like cracks that extend a hundred or more feet above you. Sometimes it feels a bit like a maze with all the cris-crossing tunnels and slot-cracks through the hoodoos and sheer sandstone faces. When you pop out from any of them, you\u0026rsquo;re surrounded by stunning views of the rest of those formations that you couldn\u0026rsquo;t see while you were basically inside them. It\u0026rsquo;s really something special.\nHiking up Elephant Canyon to Druid Arch After spending a few hours exploring The Joint, we all sat up top for a bit, enjoying the scenery. Charmaine really wanted to share her recent experience in Elephant Canyon with me, so we decided to do the hike out to Druid Arch. At first it seemed we would be the only ones going, but eventually everyone decided it was the best option and everyone came alone. Well, everyone except Peter, Justin, and Walt.\nChesler Park\nWe left our vehicles parked at The Joint trailhead and walked out across Chesler Park, dropped down into Elephant Canyon, and hiked up the canyon until we came to Druid Arch. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure what to expect. Everything in Canyonlands is pretty wonderful, but hiking through Elephant Canyon was something else. It was pure magic. I think it\u0026rsquo;s one of my favorite hikes in Canyonlands, and that\u0026rsquo;s saying something.\nDruid Arch is huge. I was not expecting that. It\u0026rsquo;s at least 150 feet tall with an opening more than 85 feet tall. It looks a bit like a section of Stonehenge (hence the name), but I think it also looks a bit like a capital letter \u0026lsquo;A\u0026rsquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s not really the prettiest arch, but it\u0026rsquo;s a monster. It\u0026rsquo;s so big you could put Delicate Arch through the hole in the middle with 30 feet to spare. And the view of Elephant Canyon from Druid Arch is spectacular. We sat at the arch and looked down canyon for almost an hour before heading back out to our cars.\nWe ran into some unprepared hikers on our way back. They had no water and somehow thought they would be able to get some at the campsite they reserved. No. There is no water in this desert. There are no utilities of any kind at any of the campsites in The Needles. They are pretty good about warning you about that when you reserve a spot. Not only that, but they let you know you are expected to carry out all of your solid waste, even (especially) the stuff that comes out of you. There are a few pit toilets strewn about, but you\u0026rsquo;re not allowed to dig a hole and bury your poop. If you don\u0026rsquo;t use a park-provided pit toilet, you must carry your waste out in some type of sealed container. Anyway, we were happy to share our water with those nearly lost people. We had a lot more water with us. Brett even had a big tank of water mounted on top of his rack, which let us help yet another set of unprepared hikers waiting by our cars in the parking lot when we got back. They had been waiting for about an hour, hoping we would return with enough water to share. Wow. People. It\u0026rsquo;s your life. Take some precautions.\nThe Confluence On our final day in the park, we went out to The Confluence, which is where the Green River joins the Colorado River and you can see the difference in color between the two rivers as they get mixed together. The trek out and back turned out to be a much trickier trail than I remembered. My rig was still sidelined because of the spare tire so Joe decided he would drive and we would ride with him. It was a fun time, but getting Joe\u0026rsquo;s mostly-stock 4Runner over some of the obstacles was a challenge that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have succeeded if it were not for a team effort. Coming back was the hardest part. We were forced to winch his rig over a big obstacle where he had gotten high centered. Hopefully his rig survived the abuse.\nThe next day we went home. But that didn\u0026rsquo;t mean there wasn\u0026rsquo;t time for some shenanigans on our way out.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/the-needles/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of my favorite national parks is Canyonlands National Park. The confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers is the center of the park, dividing it into three distinct and disconnected districts. To the north of the Colorado and east of the Green lies the most visited district of the park: \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/cany/planyourvisit/islandinthesky.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eIsland in the Sky\u003c/a\u003e. To the west of the Green and the north of the Colorado lies \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/cany/planyourvisit/maze.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eThe Maze\u003c/a\u003e, which is one of the most remote places in the lower 48 states. To the south and east of the Colorado river lies \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/cany/planyourvisit/needlesroads.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eThe Needles\u003c/a\u003e. It\u0026rsquo;s not as easy to access as Island in the Sky, with its paved roads and close proximity to Moab. It\u0026rsquo;s not nearly as remote as The Maze, which takes a full day of technical driving to reach.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Needles"},{"content":"This morning we got the bad news that none of our geo-fenced lottery permits had come through. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t too surprising, but it meant we had no plans for the day. Should we just call it and drive home? Should we try to find some other feature to explore? We opted to visit one of the other amazing places inside Vermilion Cliffs National Monument that Mark had heard about. None of us knew anything about it other than it\u0026rsquo;s usually pretty crowded because it\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be pretty awesome. I have never hiked Coyote Buttes at all. I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen The Wave in person. But I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine it\u0026rsquo;s any better than what we experienced at White Pocket. This place was amazing and we had it completely to ourselves. There were a couple people there when we arrived, but they all left before we walked out to the formations. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t get better than that.\nThe Paw Hole Problem Our first attempt to reach White Pocket went sideways. The dirt roads inside the national monument are basically just deep rutted sand. Our 4Runner is very capable. We have after-market suspension, wider rims and larger tires. We let out some of the air in our tires to give us a softer ride and a bit more traction in the sand. Our friends have a similarly capable Land Cruiser. The sandy roads were not an issue for either of us. So why did we have to turn back before reaching White Pocket on our first go? Because we are stupid and didn\u0026rsquo;t read the map before driving to Paw Hole. We originally thought we would just drive up past Paw Hole and continue on to White Pocket. It is definitely the shortest route. Unfortunately, when we got to the Paw Hole trailhead, we realized the road we wanted to take heading East to White Pocket is designated one-way going West. There were no other cars around and we considered just doing it. But we figured it might have some narrow sections that made it difficult-at-best to pass an oncoming vehicle, and we didn\u0026rsquo;t want to cause trouble, so we ultimately decided to head back out and take the long way around. Later we decided it may be a downhill-only route because many vehicles can descend the steep and deep sand, while far fewer can climb it.\nThere was a motor home and a Sprinter van on the edges of the White Pocket parking lot. They were camping there and probably taking some amazing sunrise and sunset pictures. We also saw a well-equipped Jeep. The owners of the Jeep showed up as we were putting on sunblock. They gave us a quick rundown of what they thought was the best and then they headed home. They described the trail out to the rocks as being formidable, but it was a pretty easy walk. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t even call it a hike.\nThe clouds were rolling in, which looked really great and provided some interesting sun and shadow spots across the rocks. But they also brought rain, which was a problem. We didn\u0026rsquo;t mind getting wet or walking around the rocks in the rain, but we had to drive back out on those roads of deep sand. Rain and deep sand are not the recipe we needed, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t stay very long once the rain hit.\nDespite our worries, the drive out was a piece of cake. The rain hadn\u0026rsquo;t made it very muddy. In fact, it may have been just enough to help hold some of the sand together. We zoomed along the back country roads and headed back home. What a great weekend. We will be back.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/white-pocket/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis morning we got the bad news that none of our geo-fenced lottery permits had come through. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t too surprising, but it meant we had no plans for the day. Should we just call it and drive home? Should we try to find some other feature to explore? We opted to visit one of the other amazing places inside \u003ca href=\"https://www.blm.gov/national-conservation-lands/arizona/vermilion-cliffs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eVermilion Cliffs National Monument\u003c/a\u003e that Mark had heard about. None of us knew anything about it other than it\u0026rsquo;s usually pretty crowded because it\u0026rsquo;s supposed to be pretty awesome. I have never hiked Coyote Buttes at all. I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen The Wave in person. But I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine it\u0026rsquo;s any better than what we experienced at \u003ca href=\"https://www.foxintheforest.net/white-pocket-arizona/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eWhite Pocket\u003c/a\u003e. This place was amazing and we had it completely to ourselves. There were a couple people there when we arrived, but they all left before we walked out to the formations. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t get better than that.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"White Pocket"},{"content":"Mother\u0026rsquo;s Day weekend is a great weekend to go camping. Nobody else is doing it. We decided to head east to Kanab, Utah with some of our friends from Orem. It never turns out how we thought we wanted it to, but sometimes it turns out great. This was one of those times.\nWhen we decided to move to Southern Utah, I thought we would probably visit Zion National Park all the time. It\u0026rsquo;s been 18 months and we haven\u0026rsquo;t been even once. We actually visited Zion more often when we lived hundreds of miles away. That may seem pretty pathetic until you realize we are surrounded by magical places that we haven\u0026rsquo;t ever seen. One of those places is Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.\nVermillion Cliffs National Monument You may not have heard of Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, but you have probably seen photos of \u0026ldquo;The Wave.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s the most famous formation/attraction inside VCNM. It\u0026rsquo;s so popular there\u0026rsquo;s a highly competitive lottery system to get a permit to visit it. If you are not lucky enough to be selected during the original lottery (3 months ahead of your potential visit) there is another option. You can apply for one of the daily geo-fenced permits. It\u0026rsquo;s another lottery, but your odds are much much better because it\u0026rsquo;s only open to people already within a short distance of the monument. The geo-fenced lottery happens 2 days before the day you want the permit. This was the situation in which we found ourselves on this particular weekend.\nWe had pay $9 each to enter the \u0026ldquo;daily lottery\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s a bit of a scam, but what else are you going to do? Mark tried for Coyote Buttes North (aka \u0026ldquo;The Wave\u0026rdquo;) and Charmaine tried for Coyote Buttes South (aka \u0026ldquo;The Southern Wave\u0026rdquo;). We knew the chances were much better in the daily lottery than they were 3 months ago in the regular lottery. Still, we guessed there must be at least 100 people trying to get a permit for The Wave, even on Mother\u0026rsquo;s Day weekend. We hedged our bets and had Charmaine go for the far less popular Southern Wave. We have no idea how many people tried for either permit, but we failed to get any. So we spent $18 on lottery tickets and got nothing\u0026hellip; or did we get something great?\nDeep Sand We decided to explore around the Kanab area while waiting to see if we were going to get the permits or not. We headed up to see a slot canyon that some people call Red Canyon and others call Peekaboo Kanab. I see why the good people of Kanab decided to copy the name of a more famous slot canyon. We love the \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; Peekaboo Gulch slot canyon in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, so we were a bit skeptical about what we might find here in Kanab. We also needed to be on the lookout for a good spot to camp.\nDigging Out\nInstead of following the crowd and taking the usual/easy way, we decided to explore the deep sand roads above the canyon. At one point, while descending a very steep sandy hill, we wondered if we would be able to get back up the hill. The answer was probably not, at least not without great effort. Our 4Runner is a lot lighter than Mark\u0026rsquo;s Land Cruiser, so when we decided to turn around about half way down the hill (just before it got really steep), the 4Runner was able to get back up without too much trouble, but the Land Cruiser was stuck. It took a couple hours of digging and driving on recovery boards, but it finally broke free and made it back to the top of the hill. I probably should have winched it at the same time.\nWe parked at the top, just off the road, and walked down the deep sandy hill past where we had been stuck and down to the wash at the bottom. It was at that point we realized how silly we had been to have never sent anyone down before spending hours digging. At the bottom we realized there was no need to go back up the sandy hill at all (except to get back to our rigs). There was a very well maintained, easy non-sandy dirt road that went straight to the slot canyon. We had a good laugh about it as we walked up the wash to the trailhead and watched regular two-wheel drive cars rolling in and out past us as we walked.\nKanab Peek-a-Boo / Red Canyon As luck would have it, everyone seemed to be leaving the slot canyon as we arrived. We had the place to ourselves. That was a stroke of luck, because we had been passed by several Jeeps and side-by-sides on our walk.\nThe Kanab Peek-a-Boo slot canyon is pretty nice. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t say it\u0026rsquo;s amazing, but it\u0026rsquo;s definitely worth doing once. Maybe twice. There was a boulder blocking the canyon at one point, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t actually make it to the end before turning around. There is a decent chance we\u0026rsquo;ll be back sometime, but I would still pick the \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; Peekaboo Gulch over this one every time. Unless that time is when you have to remain in a geo-fenced area waiting to see if you won the lottery for a permit to The Wave.\nThe Great Chamber After leaving the slot canyon, it was time to find a place to camp. We headed north and decided to visit The Great Chamber at Cutler Point before settling down to camp for the night. We saw a lot of pull-outs from the road that probably had decent tent spots, so we were not too concerned about finding a spot. Once again, we arrived at our destination to see the only other car in the area leaving. We had The Great Chamber all to ourselves.\nThe Great Chamber is a yellow sandstone monolith that looks like a big scoop of ice cream was removed from it. Where the ice cream has been removed there\u0026rsquo;s a chamber. It\u0026rsquo;s a really cool place and we had plenty of time to really explore it. Inside the chamber is a tall pile of yellow sand. I can\u0026rsquo;t think of another time or place where I have seen sand this color. It\u0026rsquo;s very distinct and really does remind me of ice cream.\nThe chamber is about half way up the creamy looking yellow sandstone monolith. From the top of the sand pile you get a great view of the entire valley. Most of the valley is covered with sagebrush and junipers, but there is a single large orange bluff sticking out all by itself, not too far from the road that brought us to the chamber.\nThat bluff looks interesting.\nAs we drove away from The Great Chamber, I was driving ahead with Mark and his crew behind. Although the big orange bluff looked really cool, I decided to drive past the turn-off road that leads up to it. I thought about driving up to it, but it was getting close to sunset and I knew we needed to find a campsite before dark. We didn\u0026rsquo;t have enough time tonight. I figured we would explore it in the morning. I wanted to get back to the part of the road where we noted all the pull-off areas for camping. Luckily, Mark started honking until we turned around and followed him up to the bluff. We wound up camping right next to it under some huge pinyon pine trees. It was one of those epic camping spots that you never get. But we got it this time. And there was plenty of time to explore the bluff and watch the sunset. We actually had good cellphone signal there, which was a bit of a shock. And, of course, once again, we found ourselves completely alone in a very special place.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/mothers-day-in-kanab/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMother\u0026rsquo;s Day weekend is a great weekend to go camping. Nobody else is doing it. We decided to head east to Kanab, Utah with some of our friends from Orem. It never turns out how we thought we wanted it to, but sometimes it turns out great. This was one of those times.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we decided to move to Southern Utah, I thought we would probably visit Zion National Park all the time. It\u0026rsquo;s been 18 months and we haven\u0026rsquo;t been even once. We actually visited Zion more often when we lived hundreds of miles away. That may seem pretty pathetic until you realize we are surrounded by magical places that we haven\u0026rsquo;t ever seen. One of those places is Vermillion Cliffs National Monument.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mother's Day in Kanab"},{"content":" Another Sweet Marriott Suite\nDriving into Amman was an interesting experience. It\u0026rsquo;s a big city. It\u0026rsquo;s a modern city with skyscrapers. All the buildings are white and/or glass. We wound around the city until we arrived at the Marriott Amman. It\u0026rsquo;s a very nice hotel, but there are very few properties that can compare favorably to where we stayed last night (the Al Manara in Aqaba). That was really something. The staff here in Amman were extremely generous. Not only did they upgrade us to a suite, but they also provided a gift card to eat free at one of the on-site restaurants. We went to the sports bar and had a reall good hamburger before heading off to bed.\nIn the morning we had breakfast at the hotel before meeting our guide for the day. We were scheduled to do a tour where we see some cool sites, hear about why they are important, and eat at a few good places around the city. The only problem? It was raining pretty hard and we didn\u0026rsquo;t have the slightest bit of rain gear. But we hopped in the car, hoping the rain would clear out by the time we arrived at our the first point of interest and had to get out.\nIt Might Rain\nIt didn\u0026rsquo;t stop raining.\nWe stopped outside our first historic location and it was still pounding rain. Luckily (?) the coffee shop sold really cheap plastic-bag-like single-use ponchos for a high price, which we paid with a smile. The rain was really coming down and our shoes were soaked. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure the ponchos made much difference.\nThe Amman Citadel The Amman Citadel is pretty much right in the middle of town. It\u0026rsquo;s high on a hill overlooking a main street that used to be a river running through the middle of the city. The river dried up not too long ago and they turned the wash into a big street. Our tour guide told us the city of Amman was basically abandoned for hundreds of years. People didn\u0026rsquo;t start coming back to the city until almost 1900. It was sill a small town (under 50,000) when Jordan got its independence in 1946. Just 75 years later, Amman is a huge city with about 4 million people. That\u0026rsquo;s a crazy amount of growth. No wonder they have some traffic issues. Many of the people who are proud Jordanians came to Amman as refugees or had parents who did. That helps explain the pattern of explosive growth, but I still can\u0026rsquo;t imagine it.\nAfter the Citadel we crossed the big street to enjoy the old Roman theater. We called it the \u0026ldquo;amphitheater\u0026rdquo; but our guide corrected us. It\u0026rsquo;s just a \u0026ldquo;theater\u0026rdquo;. He said an amphitheater has two sides. Amphi- means both, so an amphitheater has seating on two sides, not just one. Any theater carved into a hill is just a theater. I now know almost everything I have ever called an amphitheater is really just a theater. Lesson learned.\nTheaters in Philadelphia The Roman Theater was pretty steep and slippery in the rain, but that didn\u0026rsquo;t stop us from exploring it. We also saw the smaller Odeon Theater right next door. The Romans changed the name of Amman to Philadelphia when the Nabateans took over around 300 BCE. It was known as Philadelphia for about 900 years. The rest of the Nabatean Kingdom was annexed into the Roman Empire in 106 CE. These theaters were then built by the Romans between 100 and 200 CE (after annexing the entirety of the Nabatean Kingdom). They are really fun to see and explore, even in the rain.\nNobody was hungry yet, but it was time for lunch. The food was great. We had a bunch of hummus that reminded me of the time Roe\u0026rsquo;e told us about sneaking into the West Bank to get tahini to make hummus. It was some of the best hummus we have had and the pitas were also really good. But wait, there\u0026rsquo;s more. We had piles of desserts that were fantastic. I honestly don\u0026rsquo;t know how we stuffed so much food down our throats. What a day!\nAfter lunch we visited a local spice shop. It was pretty interesting, but I opted not to buy anything.\nThe sun finally poked its head out after that. Our guide bought us some sugar cane juice and an avocado smoothie for Charmaine. She wasn\u0026rsquo;t interested in drinking pure sugar cane. Smart girl.\nYou will try the salt scrub.\nThe expected and basically obligatory souvenir stop was next. They took us to some extremely high-end salt product shop. This is the kind of place where a single bar of soap can set you back $20 to $50. I tried to avoid the samples, since I knew there was zero chance I would be making a purchase of anything. They did eventually get me to try some salt scrub that made my hands feel buttery smooth, but I still wasn\u0026rsquo;t buying.\nAfter the salt shop we had second lunch. Nobody was remotely hungry, but it was shawarma. How can anyone resist good shawarma? I know I can\u0026rsquo;t. The rain picked up again almost as soon as we had our shawarma wraps in hand, so we ate them in the van on the way back to our hotel. We pre-arranged to have a late checkout so we would be able to shower before heading out to the airport. Membership has its privileges, as they say.\nUnfortunately, we had to fly back to Cairo in order to fly back to Paris in order to fly back to Salt Lake in order to drive back to Saint George to get home. I looked to see if I could modify our flights to skip flying back to Cairo (and Paris!), but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t possible on Delta. Maybe in the future we\u0026rsquo;ll fly a different airline or multiple different airlines so we don\u0026rsquo;t have to retrace all our steps at the end of a trip.\nThe flight path from Amman to Cairo should be a short direct flight, but that\u0026rsquo;s not how the politics play out. Instead of flying the straight line from Amman to Cairo, we flew directly south until we were over Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Aqaba before making a sharp turn to the west toward Cairo. Why? Because the airline is not allowed to enter Israeli airspace. That seems really silly to me, but I\u0026rsquo;m sure it\u0026rsquo;s not silly to anybody who lives over here. Even with flying two sides of the triangle, it\u0026rsquo;s still a really short flight.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/amman-jordan/","summary":"\u003cfigure class=\"alignright landscape\"\u003e\n    \u003ca href=\"images/PXL_20230203_155157936.jpg\" data-lightbox=\"images\" data-title=\"Another Sweet Marriott Suite\"\u003e\n        \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"images/PXL_20230203_155157936.jpg\" alt=\"a woman stands between sliding doors at the entrance to the working area of a hotel suite complete with desk, table, couches, etc.\" /\u003e \n    \u003c/a\u003e\n    \u003cfigcaption\u003e\n        \u003cp\u003eAnother Sweet Marriott Suite\u003c/p\u003e\n    \u003c/figcaption\u003e\n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDriving into Amman was an interesting experience. It\u0026rsquo;s a big city. It\u0026rsquo;s a modern city with skyscrapers. All the buildings are white and/or glass. We wound around the city until we arrived at the Marriott Amman. It\u0026rsquo;s a very nice hotel, but there are very few properties that can compare favorably to where we stayed last night (the Al Manara in Aqaba). That was really something. The staff here in Amman were extremely generous. Not only did they upgrade us to a suite, but they also provided a gift card to eat free at one of the on-site restaurants. We went to the sports bar and had a reall good hamburger before heading off to bed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amman, Jordan"},{"content":"There are three main ways to drive between Aqaba and Amman. When we drove from Amman to Aqaba a few days ago, we took the center route (highway 35). Today, on our way back from Aqaba to Amman, we decided to take the western route (highway 65) along the shores of the Dead Sea. I think the eastern route (highway 15) may actually be the \u0026ldquo;fastest\u0026rdquo; way, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t look very interesting, so we never took it.\nMore than half of the drive today was getting from Aqaba to the southern end of the Dead Sea. It\u0026rsquo;s mostly downhill, which is a little strange to think about. Aqaba is at sea level and the Dead Sea is 1,400 feet lower than that. We drove basically straight north through the valley that is half owned by Jordan and half owned by Israel. It\u0026rsquo;s an interesting place to drive. There is a lot of development going on near Elait and Aqaba on both sides, but once you get a few miles north from there it\u0026rsquo;s mostly a bunch of farming villages. There were a lot of people selling fresh produce from their farms along the road.\nScammed Getting Gas Eventually we needed gas and we filled up at a gas station along the way to the Dead Sea. This is where we experienced the one and only person trying to scam us in Jordan. We asked the attendant to fill the tank. And he did. Since we were paying in cash, we watched the meter as the tank filled. It stopped just shy of $35 and the attendant gave it a couple short squeezes to bump it up to an even $35. At that point his accomplice walked in front of the gas pump and reset it to a \u0026ldquo;preset\u0026rdquo; amount of $45. That means the pump will automatically stop at $45 for the next customer. It has nothing to do with the amount or cost of gas from the previous customer (us). The attendant pointed to the \u0026ldquo;total\u0026rdquo; and asked for $45.\nCharmaine was very upset. I think she knew - logically - that $10 really didn\u0026rsquo;t matter to us, but the principle of being scammed when she watched the whole thing and knew exactly what was happening made her very upset. The pump no longer said \u0026ldquo;total $35\u0026rdquo; it now said \u0026ldquo;preset $45\u0026rdquo;. If you\u0026rsquo;re curious how to do this yourself, you just have to press the Clear and Enter button at the same time, then enter the amount you want to spend. We decided it wasn\u0026rsquo;t worth arguing with the attendant over his dishonesty. It was hard for Charmaine to let go after having watched the whole thing play out, but I think it was the right decision. He obviously needed the money more than we did.\nSalt Beach As we drove along, I kept wondering what the weather would be like at the Dead Sea. Would we make another attempt to swim? If we did, how would we shower off? We had been stiffed by the wind and waves the last time, so it seemed likely that Brett and Jess would want to take another shot at it. I had felt fine not swimming last time (since we had done it years earlier), but now I was thinking I might swim if everyone else did.\nWhen we finally arrived at Salt Beach, the parking lot was hundreds of feet higher than the water. Getting down to the beach required climbing over rocks and walking through mud and salt. There were no showers or any other services anywhere around. So the decision didn\u0026rsquo;t need to be discussed. There would be no swimming because it would just be too difficult to manage climbing back to the car all salty and wet.\nSalt Beach is really pretty. The white salt builds up on the rocks each time the water rises and falls. Every time a wave splashes across a salty rock, a little more salt gets deposited. And now the \u0026ldquo;beach\u0026rdquo; is really just rocks covered in several inches of salt. It may look like a white sand beach from afar, but it\u0026rsquo;s nothing like any other beach in the world. We took some time to examine and enjoy the various salt formations, took some pictures, and climbed back up to our car.\nThe Wife of Prophet Lot\nThe Wife of Prophet Lot Not too far from Salt Beach is a tall pillar formation on a cliff overlooking the highway and the Dead Sea. The name of the formation is The Salt Statue of the Wife of Prophet Lot. It\u0026rsquo;s made of rock. There is an equal and opposite rock pillar on the Israeli side of the Dead Sea (on Mount Sodom) that is also supposed to be Lot\u0026rsquo;s Wife. Neither are pillars of salt. They are just rock formations. I got a good chuckle out of that. We didn\u0026rsquo;t stop, so it was hard to get a good photo, but it was fun to see in real life. John the Baptist and the River Jordan A View of Israel across the River Jordan\nWe made good time driving north and at some point we realized we could probably go back the the River Jordan and go on the tour we missed earlier in the trip. Upon realizing our luck, we started to hurry and make it we did. We had a ton of extra time, which turned out to be a good thing. You can\u0026rsquo;t just drive or walk down to these places. You are required to ride in a van and have a tour guide. We bought our tickets at the visitor\u0026rsquo;s center and waited for the next van to take us down to the river. Israel and Jordan don\u0026rsquo;t really love each other and they have a DMZ all along their borders with each other where nobody is allowed to go. The one exception to this rule is right here at this spot on the River Jordan. Both sides have agreed to allow tourists to come down to the river and even get baptized in it, being just a few feet from the other side. Once again, each country is convinced the holy site lies on their side of the line. I\u0026rsquo;m not really sure why it matters. To me it\u0026rsquo;s a bit funny. There\u0026rsquo;s a constant military presence, of course. And who wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to be baptized under the careful watch of a soldier holding a machine gun?\nThe Baptismal at Bethany Beyond Jordan\nThey told us this was the spot where John the Baptist did his baptizing. They have a bunch of reasons for why they believe it, and most of them make a lot of sense. They have even calculated where the river flows now versus where it used to flow, etc. So we saw the church they built in the fourth or fifth century where they believe Jesus was baptized. The name of the church is Bethany Beyond the Jordan. The river doesn\u0026rsquo;t flow through the baptismal at the old church anymore. The Jordanians say the Israeli\u0026rsquo;s have caused the river to change course. It\u0026rsquo;s been more than 2,000 years. I\u0026rsquo;m guessing the river has changed course many times over the years. It\u0026rsquo;s a nice spot and probably has a better chance at being right than anything else. They have believed it is the site where Jesus was baptized since Byzantine times, so I guess it makes sense that some people would want to be (re-)baptized there. But nobody in our group had any desire to enter those muddy waters.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/up-the-dead-sea-to-the-river-jordan/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are three main ways to drive between Aqaba and Amman. When we drove from Amman to Aqaba a few days ago, we took the center route (highway 35). Today, on our way back from Aqaba to Amman, we decided to take the western route (highway 65) along the shores of the Dead Sea. I think the eastern route (highway 15) may actually be the \u0026ldquo;fastest\u0026rdquo; way, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t look very interesting, so we never took it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Up the Dead Sea to the River Jordan"},{"content":"As we drove into Aqaba after a long day in Wadi Rum, we saw a Safeway. We tend to visit grocery stores to buy drinks and snacks and it was pretty exciting to see a name like Safeway.\nAl Manara When planning this trip, we knew the stay in Aqaba needed to be a nice respite from camping in the desert of Wadi Rum. So we booked the ultra luxurious Al Manara by Marriott. It turned out to be even swankier than we anticipated. It was super nice and we got upgraded to a huge suite overlooking the bay. It\u0026rsquo;s the type of place that put a hand-written note, addressed to me, in our room before we got to it. And there was a big plate of really fancy sweets. I may have decided I love macaroons after that. Such a fun thing to have when you first walk in.\nIt is a relatively new hotel and with it being a little more expensive than some of the others in the area, we felt like we had the place to ourselves. We were obviously not alone, but the hotel/resort is big enough that we didn\u0026rsquo;t run into many other people there. The art on the walls was really fancy and big. I didn\u0026rsquo;t take any pictures of any of the paintings (other than those in our room), but a lot of them were more than 6 feet tall and 12 feet wide. It was pretty special. Really everything there was above and beyond our expectations. If we ever get back to Aqaba (this is our second time, so who knows?), we will do our best to stay here again, but I suspect the prices will catch up with reality at some point and we won\u0026rsquo;t be able to fit it into our budget. But yeah, it\u0026rsquo;s a really sweet place.\nAfter seeing how nice the hotel was, we couldn\u0026rsquo;t resist going to dinner in the on-site restaurant. That turned out to be an excellent choice. We tried a few traditional Jordanian dishes, including an amazing lamb and yogurt dish. Everything was really tasty, even if it was a bit more expensive than we could have found back in town.\nDinner at Al Manara\nRed Sea Snorkeling We got up bright and early the next morning to eat a fancy breakfast before heading south to go snorkel the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea with Aqaba Adventure Divers. We rented all the equipment: snorkels, masks, fins, and wetsuits. Yes, it was cold enough that even I wore a wetsuit. We snorkeled the Cedar Pride ship wreck, Rainbow Reef, and finally the Japanese Garden. Jess brought her phone in a waterproof case out to snorkel, but I think she mostly gave up trying to use it (something about water pressure making the touch screen impossible to use). As you can imagine, we don\u0026rsquo;t have many photos. But the snorkeling was pretty good.\nWalking Out\nWe swam out from shore to the wreck and there really wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything to see until we found the wreck. It was about 50 feet from the surface to the highest point on the ship (on its side) and then another 30 feet to the ground. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the wreck. I don\u0026rsquo;t usually find them super interesting, but it was fun to hold my breath and dive down deep enough to look into the hull and even swim under the mast. I decided *not* to swim under the mast, but I was deep enough that I could have.\nFrom there we floated south to the Japanese Garden. This was what I expected the snorkeling to be. There was a lot of colorful fish and the coral looked pretty healthy. There was a bit of a current on top of the water and we drifted further south to a place they call Rainbow Reef (not to be confused with the diving company of the same name in Key Largo). We spent some time exploring the coral there and then made the long swim back north and back to shore. The shore was rocky, so we exited the water wearing our fins and walking backward. It is somewhat comical how bad I am at walking backward in fins. My feet are so wimpy. I really missed my scuba booties! We returned to the dive shop for some quick hot showers before driving back north to our hotel.\nWe arrived back at the hotel earlier than we originally planned, so we had some time to goof around in the fancy pools. It was still pretty early and the sun had not warmed up the pools yet, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t last too long. After swimming we took some real showers in our fancy rooms before packing up and saying goodbye to Aqaba. On our way out Brett and Jess were in awe of a 300 series Land Cruiser in the hotel parking lot. I guess we don\u0026rsquo;t have those back home. It looked way too big for my tastes, but they thought it was super cool.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/aqaba-and-snorkeling-the-red-sea/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs we drove into Aqaba after a long day in Wadi Rum, we saw a Safeway. We tend to visit grocery stores to buy drinks and snacks and it was pretty exciting to see a name like Safeway.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"al-manara\"\u003eAl Manara\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen planning this trip, we knew the stay in Aqaba needed to be a nice respite from camping in the desert of Wadi Rum. So we booked the ultra luxurious \u003ca href=\"https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/aqjlc-al-manara-a-luxury-collection-hotel-saraya-aqaba/overview/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eAl Manara by Marriott\u003c/a\u003e. It turned out to be even swankier than we anticipated. It was super nice and we got upgraded to a huge suite overlooking the bay. It\u0026rsquo;s the type of place that put a hand-written note, addressed to me, in our room before we got to it. And there was a big plate of really fancy sweets. I may have decided I love macaroons after that. Such a fun thing to have when you first walk in.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Aqaba and Snorkeling the Red Sea"},{"content":"We have wanted to go into Wadi Rum ever since our first taste of Jordan back in 2011. We drove past Wadi Rum on our way to Petra that day. It looked amazing - like a completely unique and separate version of Southern Utah. We always wanted to come back and see it, but with so many new places to go, it looked like it might not happen. Luckily, that first trip to Petra was way too short and we didn\u0026rsquo;t get to see all the things we wanted. So it was easy to convince us to come back to Jordan, spend a whole day at Petra, and then go camping in Wadi Rum. It sounded just about perfect.\nYou have a large set of choices when it comes to lodging inside Wadi Rum. You can spend single-digit dollars per night for the bare minimum tents all the way up to several hundred dollars per night for bubble domed structures with the ability to watch the stars all night. We picked something somewhere in the middle and it was excellent.\nThe Sand Highway\nWe would have loved to have our own capable vehicles over here to play in the sands of Wadi Rum, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t allow us to drive past the Wadi Rum Village in our rental, even though it is a four-wheel drive. Let me just say, I completely understand why they do that. Nobody wants extra idiots destroying the wilderness, getting stuck, etc. There is only one road in and out of the Village and it passes through a large gate at the tourist information center. We discovered you have to pay a bunch of money to get your car past that gate, and it\u0026rsquo;s a whole lot more if your car has four-wheel drive. So why do 4x4s cost more if you can\u0026rsquo;t take them past the Village? The math doesn\u0026rsquo;t completely add up for me. I suspect there\u0026rsquo;s some sort of program that allows people to drive into the wilderness. Why should we pay more to drive one mile and park next to a regular car that didn\u0026rsquo;t have to pay as much to go in? We may never know.\nWe pre-arranged with our camp hosts to pick us up in the Village at a specific time, but then we drove faster than Google expected and wound up in Wadi Rum about an hour early. They sent a guy with a pickup truck to get us. We piled all the luggage in the bed and then jumped in for a short ride through the desert on really soft sand. There are no roads in Wadi Rum, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be an issue with so few vehicles and so much sand. That\u0026rsquo;s probably another reason to keep tourists out.\nCabin Camping at Rum Magic Nights\nCabin Camping Our camp was sort of like a cross between a hotel and a camp. There were permanent sidewalks connecting a series of permanent bungalows in a square pattern around a central gathering area. It was nice to have sidewalks so we could avoid carrying so much sand into our bungalows. It was also really nice to have a private bathroom with a hot shower. Each of the units also has a big air conditioning unit attached to the side. Each unit has about as much cooling capacity as my entire house in Saint George. I imagine it gets more than a little warm in summer.\nBrett and Jess went for a quick hike up the side of one of the nearest mountains for a better view of the sunset. I took a shower and then a quick nap that turned into all night. I didn\u0026rsquo;t really sleep last night in Wadi Musa and we did a lot of walking and hiking (13+ miles) in the morning before driving to Wadi Rum. It was cold in our bungalow that night. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t manage to stay warm. Every time I rolled over I would wake up frozen. I do like sleeping in cold air, but this was just a little too cold for me. In the morning Brett and Jess mentioned that the A/C units could also be used to provide heat. Ours was never powered on at all. Ha.\nSunset over Wadi Rum\nJeep Tours We signed up for the full-day \u0026ldquo;jeep\u0026rdquo; tour and to ride camels for 30 minutes. We were originally going to do two short hikes, but I think we were a lot faster going through the canyons than many folks, so they were adding on additional hikes through additional canyons for us. There are a few attractions in Wadi Rum that are popular. We had to wait our turn to take pictures once or twice. I can only imagine what it must be like during the busy season. I\u0026rsquo;m glad we were here today and not when it\u0026rsquo;s hot and crowded.\nSandboarding One of the features of Wadi Rum is wind-blown piles of sand up against the edges of fins and canyon walls that remind me of snowdrifts. After lunch we stopped at one of the larger, steeper sand hills to do some sandboarding. We had been carrying a really small snowboard around with us all day and we finally got a chance to use it in the sand. It took a lot of effort to climb that steep pile of sand and the snowboard was too skinny for anyone with regular sized feet to ride on it. Your feet stuck out several inches past the edge of the board, making it impossible to turn without digging your toes deep into the sand and stopping whatever you were trying to do. Charmaine was able to ride straight down, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t possible to turn. Brett had to just sit on the board and ride it down the sand. The board was just too narrow for American feet.\nFinding Camels Warning: Camels\nI think Jess really likes Camels. As we drove toward Wadi Rum she got excited each time we passed a warning about camels being on the highway. Eventually we stopped by one of the signs and took some pictures. We did see camels wandering freely, but most of them were hobbled by having their front legs tied together loosely enough to allow walking, but tight enough to prevent running. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if there are any truly wild camels anymore, but if they exist anywhere, Wadi Rum may be one of the places. As we headed back across the main sand valley of Wadi Rum toward Lawrence Springs, we came across camels just out wandering. Charmaine and Jess jumped out of the truck to feed them. The camels were well versed in being fed by hand and were careful not to accidentally bite any of the hands. It was pretty cool. There was even a baby camel hanging out with them, but it was much more skittish and didn\u0026rsquo;t let anyone get very close to it, despite Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s best efforts.\nLawrence of Arabia There are a lot of things with the name \u0026ldquo;Lawrence\u0026rdquo; all across Wadi Rum. They celebrate Lawrence of Arabia and his role in the Arab Revolt and the Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during The Great War (World War I). We visited Lawrence\u0026rsquo;s House where we climbed the side of a cliff to get a great view across the valley. We also visited Lawrence\u0026rsquo;s Spring. There is a tree there. I think it may be the only tree anywhere in Wadi Rum. After climbing a few hundred feet up to the spring, we headed out for our camel ride.\nRiding Camels You can\u0026rsquo;t just put your foot in a stirrup and hop up and onto a camel. They are much too tall for that. You would need a few rungs of a ladder to get up high enough to reach the stirrup. Also, camels don\u0026rsquo;t really have saddles with stirrups anyway, so you\u0026rsquo;d be out of luck even with a small ladder. But camels are super easy to mount and dismount because they can lay flat on their stomachs with their legs folded neatly beneath them. They seem to have an extra knee that allows their legs to bend that way. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty amazing to watch them go down to the ground and get up again. When you\u0026rsquo;re up, you\u0026rsquo;re up pretty high. It\u0026rsquo;s a good thing the sand is soft, because a fall from a camel would be pretty serious otherwise.\nMount Up\nWe rented four camels for a thirty minute ride. They allowed us to rent them for as long as a full day. I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine how sore and tired we would have been after 8 hours on the backs of camels. I\u0026rsquo;m glad we only did thirty minutes. That was plenty. We got on our camels not too far from Lawrence\u0026rsquo;s Spring and rode back toward Wadi Rum village, which we could see the entire time.\nThe camels were strung together so they would follow the lead camel in somewhat of a V formation the way geese fly when migrating. It worked out pretty well. Jess was on the lead camel, Charmaine was behind and left. I was behind and to the right of Jess. Brett\u0026rsquo;s camel was a biter and had a tight muzzle around its mouth so it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t bite any camels or riders. Brett was supposed to be behind me and to the left, but his camel didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to like that spot. It didn\u0026rsquo;t want to walk to the left of my camel (and thus directly behind Jess\u0026rsquo;s camel), which seems reasonable, except trying to walk to the right of my camel only pushed my camel further to the right. When my camel went right it would pull the rope that connected it to Jess\u0026rsquo;s camel. Then all the camels would go to the right and the cycle would continue. My camel was continually searching the ground for something to eat, which did not help the situation. Luckily, the owner of the camels was out front, leading the lead camel, or we may have walked in large circles the whole time.\nOur truck driver was there to pick us up when we dismounted the camels. He drove us back to the village where we hopped in our car and headed a few miles down the road to Aqaba for a nice warm shower and a good night\u0026rsquo;s sleep.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/wadi-rum/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe have wanted to go into Wadi Rum ever since our first taste of Jordan back in 2011. We drove past Wadi Rum on our way to Petra that day. It looked amazing - like a completely unique and separate version of Southern Utah. We always wanted to come back and see it, but with so many new places to go, it looked like it might not happen. Luckily, that first trip to Petra was way too short and we didn\u0026rsquo;t get to see all the things we wanted. So it was easy to convince us to come back to Jordan, spend a whole day at Petra, and then go camping in Wadi Rum. It sounded just about perfect.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wadi Rum"},{"content":"Our hotel in Wadi Musa was perfect for what we needed and wanted. It may not have been as fancy as the Marriott hotels where we have been staying, but it nailed almost everything we wanted for this location. The staff, like every single person we have met or seen in Jordan, was extremely friendly and did everything they could to meet our needs and wants. What was it we needed? We needed an early breakfast so we could get into Petra before the crowds. There are approximately zero restaurants between the hotel and the entrance to Petra, definitely none that would be open as early as we would be leaving, so we really needed to eat breakfast at the hotel. They had breakfast ready just after 6 am. And that\u0026rsquo;s not all, they also packed us each a to-go \u0026ldquo;breakfast\u0026rdquo; to eat for lunch inside Petra. They really shined. We only stayed the night at the hotel, checking out before heading off to Petra in the morning. We needed a safe place to park the car with all our luggage in it, and they told us we could leave it parked in the closest parking spot to their front door all day. It really was perfect.\nEarly Birds We were not the first people in Petra today. After eating breakfast and walking over to the entrance to get tickets, a few other people had gone in. But for the most part, the place was still empty. We could stand and take pictures in front of The Treasury without anyone else in our shots. But it was still pretty dark. The sun didn\u0026rsquo;t come up for at least 30 minutes after we were passing the Treasury. Our phones could still sake \u0026ldquo;night mode\u0026rdquo; pictures, but we knew we would want to hit this famous landmark again on our way out.\nThis is the low season for tourism in Jordan. Getting up early during the low season means we were actually wandering around before most of the Bedouin merchants. I was shocked to see how many more merchant stands are in Petra today. It must be more than 10x what it used to be. It is sad to see it this way. The merchant stalls are everywhere except in front of the really big attractions. There are no merchants blocking photos of The Treasury or The Monastery, but all the royal tombs and most of the rest of everything has merchants in front of it. You cannot take pictures of those spots anymore because of them. And the merchants seem to be extremely aggressive now. I only remember donkey-ride merchants being pushy and getting in your face previously, but now it\u0026rsquo;s everyone. It won\u0026rsquo;t surprise me if it causes fewer people to visit Petra, or for trips to Petra to get scheduled shorter, so you can just hit the bigs and then leave. Petra will always be on bucket lists, but fewer people will return to really explore the place with vendors pushing them around.\n\u0026ldquo;Secret\u0026rdquo; View of the Treasury\nNo Secrets One group of Bedouins who beat us to The Treasury were the ones offering to take you to a \u0026ldquo;secret\u0026rdquo; location where you can get a picture looking down on The Treasury. We didn\u0026rsquo;t think there was really any secret, but we decided to pay one of them just so we could find the right path sooner. Our time, especially our time before the throngs of tourist busses arrived, was more important. The path was not difficult and we scaled it quickly, getting some good shots of the group with The Treasury behind us. The sun wasn\u0026rsquo;t up yet, but it was getting light enough for good pictures.\nIt has been raining and snowing a lot the past few days in Jordan, so when we saw plastic-lined ponds filled with rainwater inside Pera, we didn\u0026rsquo;t think too much of it. From the Royal Tomb area we could see an overturned truck in one of the plastic-lined ponds. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t clear how the truck had gotten itself in there, but we didn\u0026rsquo;t worry about it. We made our way down from the Royal tombs and over to the ruins of The Byzantine Church that overlooks Roman made Great Temple. My Monastery\nAlone at The Monastery When we were in Petra the first time, it was a day trip from Eilat. We only had a couple hours and we never made it to The Monastery. It\u0026rsquo;s been on Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s list ever since. Today we made it to The Monastery, which turned out to be a bit further away and a bit more of a climb than we expected. But we had the place completely to ourselves for quite a while. It was surreal. Of course, like everywhere else in Petra these days, the entire road climbing from the wash up to The Monastery was lined with merchant carts and pushy salespeople. It looks like it should be a natural beauty, but there is no way to appreciate it due to all the trinkets being sold.\nAfter coming back down to the heart of Petra from The Monastery, we headed across the main street to see the Great Temple and slowly make our way back to The Treasury and then head out. The Great Temple turned out to be really cool. Some of the plastered walls still have the original colors on them. One of the most amazing things about it is that it was completely buried and unknown until a team from Brown University discovered and excavated it in 1993. How does something so big remain undiscovered for centuries in a place that has so much attention? It\u0026rsquo;s crazy. They did a really nice job with it. Some things have been left as they were, while a few columns and other pieces have been put back together to help give you a sense of what it was like. We really enjoyed exploring it.\nThe Nosebleed Section Heading back up toward The Treasury and The Siq on our way out, we decided to walk up directly from the Great Temple without going all the way back down to the road. We found several trails through the hills and Brett figured we may be able to find a way into or above The Theater. He was right. We popped up at the top of one side of the theater. From there we could look down into the plastic-lined ponds, including the one with the overturned truck. There was a lot of commotion around that truck. We watched in awe as they pulled a body from it and covered it completely on the stretcher. Wow. Should we have said something to someone when we noticed the trucker several hours ago? Surely it was already too late to save that person. When we saw all the police at the base of The Theater, it convinced us that we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t just bounce down the seats and climb over the fence in front of them. Eventually we realized there were way too many police and especially ambulances and search and rescue people for a normal day. They were clearly there to do training. Later on we came across the mannequin (or his twin) that had been pulled from the pond. Phew.\nHigh Place of Sacrifice The Altar at the High Place of Sacrifice\nWe didn\u0026rsquo;t want to go all the way back to the Great Temple, so we decided to go up and around. We would try to find a way to connect us to the hiking path up to the High Place of Sacrifice. The vast majority of people who visit Petra are not interested in seeing it, and the vast majority of those who do go up from the other side. We wound up finding a way up there and it was pretty cool. There were two giant obelisks carved out of stone, a big rectangle swimming pool that was full from the recent rains, etc. The main piece is a circular rock carved in such a way as to let the blood of the animal being sacrificed run out of it. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t the easiest hike, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t too bad. We felt right at home climbing the sticky sandstone surfaces. After taking a few pictures up top, we climbed back down the regular path, which has stairs carved into the rock and is easy to follow.\nThere were a lot more people in front of The Treasury when we got back, but we were still able to take a few more shots before walking back up The Siq, out the front gate, and back to our hotel to pick up our car and make the drive to Wadi Musa. By the time all was said and done, we had walked at least 13 miles door to door, and that included some good elevation too. We decided to stop and eat at Falafel Time (not far from Time Out) on our way out of town. I love good falafel and shawarma. And we couldn\u0026rsquo;t help ourselves - we had to order some more kunafa. Mmm.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/13-miles-of-petra/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOur hotel in Wadi Musa was perfect for what we needed and wanted. It may not have been as fancy as the Marriott hotels where we have been staying, but it nailed almost everything we wanted for this location. The staff, like every single person we have met or seen in Jordan, was extremely friendly and did everything they could to meet our needs and wants. What was it we needed? We needed an early breakfast so we could get into Petra before the crowds. There are approximately zero restaurants between the hotel and the entrance to Petra, definitely none that would be open as early as we would be leaving, so we really needed to eat breakfast at the hotel. They had breakfast ready just after 6 am. And that\u0026rsquo;s not all, they also packed us each a to-go \u0026ldquo;breakfast\u0026rdquo; to eat for lunch inside Petra. They really shined. We only stayed the night at the hotel, checking out before heading off to Petra in the morning. We needed a safe place to park the car with all our luggage in it, and they told us we could leave it parked in the closest parking spot to their front door all day. It really was perfect.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"13 Miles of Petra"},{"content":"We needed to give the Dead Sea a few days to calm down so we decided to drive south to Petra via the inland route which meant climbing up and through the steep cliffs along the eastern edge of the Dead Sea. The road up and over was very narrow and extremely windy. It\u0026rsquo;s a good thing nobody else was on that road because getting past each other could have been dicey.\nKerak Castle We stopped at Kerak Castle, one of the largest castles in Jordan. It was built by the Franks and was initially used by the Crusaders. It sits at the top of a steep hill overlooking the city of Al-Karak. It was cloudy and raining while we were there and we stayed inside the castle quite a bit to avoid the rain. I\u0026rsquo;m guessing the views were probably not as impressive as they are when it\u0026rsquo;s not cloudy and raining, but some were still quite impressive. We could tell it was really pretty.\nAfter our guided tour of the castle, we stopped in town to buy some drinks. They handed me five 1 JOD bills and told me to run into a little tienda to get some cokes. To everyone\u0026rsquo;s surprise, I returned with 4 drinks in cans, and four of the 1 JOD bills. That\u0026rsquo;s right, each drink cost just 25 piastres (1/4 of 1 Dinar), or about 35 cents in USD. Maybe I should have bought more?\nDana After Kerak, we picked a spot on the map that looked like it would be pretty and drove there. We were right. Dana is very pretty. It overlooks some deep canyons. Dana is about 4000 feet above sea level, and while we were there the heavy rain turned into heavy snow. A shop owner called us in for some hot cocoa that he was making. We chatted with him about his life while we were there. He said he has seven children that mostly still lived with him right there in Dana. The snow got heavier as we drove south out of Dana and we drove a little slower than we had planned. We saw a lot of cars and busses stuck and sliding this way and that. It was a good day to be in a relatively new SUV.\nWadi Musa Ain Musa - The Spring of Moses\nWe made sure to drive past the cold springs as we arrived in Wadi Musa (the town that sits at the entrance to Petra). The Ain Musa spring is supposedly where Moses struck his stick into the rock to make water flow for his followers (Numbers 20:10-11). The Nabateans built a complex system of pipes and channels to bring water from Ain Musa into Petra, which is why Wadi Musa was sometimes called the \u0026ldquo;Guardian of Petra.\u0026rdquo; The water didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be flowing very much today. It was still wet, but it was nothing like the strong current we saw on our first trip to Petra back in June 2011. We drove from the spring down the hill and checked into our hotel (within walking distance to the entrance to Petra), parked the car, and then walked back up the hill to find a spot for dinner.\nMansaf: The National Dish of Jordan We picked a place called Time Out that had some of the best reviews for a traditional Jordanian restaurant. We wanted to try some of the traditional Jordanian foods that you\u0026rsquo;re supposed to try. I got the national dish of Jordan, Mansaf, which is a hunk of boiled lamb boiled served with salted, fermented goat yogurt called jameed. It\u0026rsquo;s served with white rice on top of a thin flat bread known as Shrak. They also brought out a steaming bowl of reconstituted goat yogurt to ladle over the top. The shrak flatbread was really good.\nUsing only your right hand \u0026mdash; even if you are normally left-handed \u0026mdash; you tear off a small piece of shrak and then use that to pick up some of the lamb and rice. You don\u0026rsquo;t use forks or chopsticks, just your right hand and a small piece of that delicious shrak flatbread. The lamb wasn\u0026rsquo;t nearly as impressive. It was somewhat chewy and salty. Adding extra goat yogurt over the top made the flavor more interesting, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t help with the texture issue. The goat yogurt was maybe a 4 or 5 on a scale to 10 for how goaty it was, but I kept saying things like, \u0026ldquo;the goatier, the better!\u0026rdquo; I don\u0026rsquo;t think anyone was buying it, but I was glad to have tried it. Jess also got a traditional meal called Maqluba, which turned out to be cinnamon chicken and rice dumped upside down on a plate. I think Jess was hoping it would be similar to the amazing cinnamon chicken dish we had in Morocco a few years ago, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think it had the same magic. To me it was just chicken and rice.\nCheesy Dessert Kunafa\nWe were invited into the back room / hookah lounge for dessert. Tonight we had several kinds of pistachio baklava, harissa, and kunafa. Harissa is a semolina cake with a sweet syrup and an almond. It was really good. The kunafa was somewhat similar to harissa, but on top of a melted white cheese. The combination of the sweet and the salty really worked well. I know we\u0026rsquo;ll be ordering kunafa again before we leave Jordan.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/kerak-castle-dana-and-a-traditional-meal/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe needed to give the Dead Sea a few days to calm down so we decided to drive south to Petra via the inland route which meant climbing up and through the steep cliffs along the eastern edge of the Dead Sea. The road up and over was very narrow and extremely windy. It\u0026rsquo;s a good thing nobody else was on that road because getting past each other could have been dicey.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Kerak Castle, Dana, and a Traditional Meal"},{"content":"We flew on Egypt Air from Cairo to Amman this morning. The flight is just barely longer than an hour, but they still managed to do a full meal service. None of us were hungry, having already sat for a really good breakfast in the executive lounge at the Cairo Marriott earlier that morning. I can say without a doubt that the food options on our Egypt Air flights were definitely lower quality than all our other flights on the trip.\nWe arrived in Amman and picked up our rental car, a Mitsubishi Pajero with about 65,000 km on the odometer. Normally a car with that many miles has a lot of dings, dents, and scratches and this car was no exception. What was exceptional was the meticulousness the car rental staff used when examining the car for issues. They marked everything down, even things that wouldn\u0026rsquo;t usually get marked on a much newer car. This made us realize they would likely be equally meticulous when we returned the car, so we took a video of its condition and made sure everything we could find was marked on the pre-rental report.\nMount Nebo Driving in Jordan is fairly similar to driving in the US. Rules are mostly followed and almost all the cars are in good shape. We drove from the airport to Mount Nebo to see the church celebrating Moses looking out over the promised land before he died. The Bible says nobody knows where he was buried, but some people think it was in the same area.\nThe church was built by the Fransicans on a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea. From there you can almost always see Jericho. On clear days you can also see Jerusalem. It was cloudy today, but we could still see Jericho. The church has a lot of mosaic floors and other things inside that date back to the fifth century.\nThe River Jordan and the DMZ After leaving the church we drove the winding road down the side of the cliff to the Dead Sea. It looked like we could get to the spot on the River Jordan where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Google said the site would close at 5 pm and we thought we could get there just before closing. We didn\u0026rsquo;t get there until about five minutes after five. The gate was closed and a guard came out to tell us it was closed. We told him we had come half way around the world to see it and had just missed it. Couldn\u0026rsquo;t he let us in just a few minutes after closing? No. Google had been wrong. They closed more than an hour ago, at 4 pm. They wouldn\u0026rsquo;t extend to 5 pm until February 1st.\nUndeterred, we set out to find another way down to the river, even if it wasn\u0026rsquo;t the traditionally recognized spot. We drove down one of the first dirt roads we saw and soon found ourselves driving next to the razor wire that surrounds the site. At some point we saw soldiers, military vehicles and buildings, and realized our attempt to find a way to the river was really an attempt to breach the DMZ between Jordan and Israel. We opted to give up at that point and just head south to our hotel on the banks of the Dead Sea. Maybe there was still time to swim in its salty waters before dinner?\nThe Dead Sea The answer was no. The sun was setting by the time we arrived at the Dead Sea Marriott Resort and Spa. The series of swimming pools and their private beaches on the Dead Sea all closed at sunset and we were too late. That wasn\u0026rsquo;t a big deal, we planned to swim the next day anyway. The views from some of the many swimming pools overlooking the Dead Sea were really nice and we enjoyed our first spectacular sunset in Jordan. Hotels designated \u0026ldquo;resorts\u0026rdquo; in the Marriott system do not have executive lounges where members with status can go for snacks and some meals, so we had dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was a buffet with some good choices and we probably ate more than we needed. The dinner for 4 of us cost about as much as a night at the hotel, but there\u0026rsquo;s not really anything else around the hotel, so we sort of felt like we didn\u0026rsquo;t have a choice about where to eat.\nWe were all pretty tired (jet lag?) so we went to bed a little early. We had all been upgraded to suites and we slept well in the comfortable beds.\nStormy Seas It was windy and raining the next morning when we walked down to the beach. We could see big waves and white caps out on the Dead Sea. We guessed correctly that the hotel would have a red flag up, indicating that nobody was allowed to swim. That was disappointing, especially for Brett and Jess, who had not been to the Dead Sea previously. The lifeguard let them stand in the salty waters, but not swim. The hotel had gathered some of the famous black mud from the banks of the Dead Sea and put it into what looked like a bird bath for patrons to use to mud themselves. I didn\u0026rsquo;t feel like getting all salty and muddy if I wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to be able to float in the Dead Sea. Brett and Jess decided to mud each other and take some pictures before showering off and walking back up the hill to the resort\u0026rsquo;s swimming pool complex. We swam in a few of the pools before having breakfast at the hotel.\nMarriott resorts are known to have elaborate breakfast buffets and we decided we would try the breakfast buffet here. Once again, we didn\u0026rsquo;t really have a choice due to the isolated nature of being on a huge resort property in a somewhat remote area. The breakfast buffet looked really good, but it was not cheap. I think it was listed at more than $30 per person. It gave us pause, but our only other option was going hungry, so we just sucked it up and enjoyed the luxurious buffet. As luck would have it, the price for breakfast didn\u0026rsquo;t matter because it was free for everyone staying at the hotel. Bonus.\nMarriott Breakfast Buffet\nAfter breakfast we checked out and started our drive south to Petra.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/moses-and-mount-nebo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe flew on Egypt Air from Cairo to Amman this morning. The flight is just barely longer than an hour, but they still managed to do a full meal service. None of us were hungry, having already sat for a really good breakfast in the executive lounge at the Cairo Marriott earlier that morning. I can say without a doubt that the food options on our Egypt Air flights were definitely lower quality than all our other flights on the trip.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Moses and Mount Nebo"},{"content":"This is our first-ever trip to Egypt. When we originally started booking this trip we anticipated seeing more of Egypt, but the final plan put us in Cairo for only about 36 hours before continuing on to Jordan. We decided to sleep two nights at a hotel in Cairo, but it still felt a little bit like a really long layover.\nGoing through customs and immigration in Cairo was super easy. We already had Egyptian e-Visas linked to our passports. The e-Visa program is pretty slick. And yet, getting out of the airport still felt like it took forever. That was all caused by the rate at which bags were delivered to baggage claim. It took nearly 30 minutes between the time our first bag came out until our final bag came out, and there were still lots of people from our flight waiting for their bags when we left the airport. It felt like no more than two bags ever came out at the same time. Sometimes it felt like several minutes between each small batch of bags - almost like a single person was carrying a bag in each hand from across the parking lot in order to get them on the conveyer belt. Maybe we were just really tired and that caused some time dilation, but it felt crazy slow.\nChoosing the Right Hotel There was some discussion about whether it made more sense to stay right by the pyramids (and hopefully have a view from our rooms), or to stay in a little nicer hotel a little closer to Cairo. Eventually we decided to stay at the wonderful Cairo Marriott. It turned out to be a great choice. We took an Uber from the airport to the hotel (about 20 km away) for less than five dollars! Gasoline may be subsidized heavily, but I still can\u0026rsquo;t figure out how an Uber driver could possibly make any money driving. There wasn\u0026rsquo;t much traffic in the middle of the night and we made good time zipping through the city. We found that Uber artificially limits how much you can tip your driver, so we could only tip about $1.60 for great service.\nLines on roads; traffic signs and signals; these are mere suggestions in Cairo. Nobody stays in their lane. Nobody uses a turn signal. What gets used nearly constantly are horns. Honking lets other drivers know where you are, what you are trying to do, etc. It was really interesting and sort of impressive to see it all at work. But it isn\u0026rsquo;t a perfect system. It looked like every car was filled with lots of dings and scrapes. It was very rare to see a car in good condition.\nThe Cairo Marriott is right on the Nile River. We stayed on the 18th floor and had great views of the river and surrounding areas. The Executive Lounge is also on the 18th floor, so we were able to roll out of bed and into the lounge for breakfast in the \u0026ldquo;morning\u0026rdquo; (slightly before 11 am) to fill up before heading to the Giza Pyramid Complex for the day\u0026rsquo;s activities. Our Uber driver dropped us off just outside the gates in Giza and we wound up walking past many of the hotels we considered previously. The contrast between our hotel in Cairo and the hotels just outside the necropolis was stark. We definitely made the right choice.\nGiza Pyramid Complex The weather was perfect in Giza today. It was about 70 degrees and partly cloudy almost the entire day. We bought all the tickets we could, not knowing if we would wind up using them all. The tickets were not very expensive compared to the cost of not being able to see something after traveling half way across the world. In the end we saw everything we wanted to see, but we did leave with one set of tickets unused, but nobody worried about that.\nWe kicked things off with a trip into the king\u0026rsquo;s burial chamber inside the Pyramid of Khufu. Little did we know, that chamber had been closed to tourists for about an hour before reopening right as we walked up and went inside. Our timing couldn\u0026rsquo;t have been any better. The narrow shaft we crawled along went up at an angle that seemed about half as steep as the angle on the outside of the pyramid itself. They had installed metal braces on the floor to act like rungs of a ladder so we could climb up (and back down) the shaft without slipping or falling. The shaft was both narrow and short, and heads were bonked a few times each direction. The deeper into the pyramid we went (and the higher we climbed up the narrow shaft), the hotter it got. By the time we reached the burial chamber it was really hot. Everyone was drenched in sweat. We didn\u0026rsquo;t stay long. There\u0026rsquo;s really nothing left inside the chamber other than the stone box that may or may not have held the coffin of the king. Nobody knows because the whole thing was looted long ago.\nOnce outside again, it didn\u0026rsquo;t take long to dry out and cool down. We walked around each of the three big pyramids - there are 9 total in Giza. We took some pictures and told hundreds of camel owners that we really didn\u0026rsquo;t want to ride their camels for any price, etc. They rarely gave up trying to find something to convince us to take a ride that we didn\u0026rsquo;t want. Eventually I started telling them I had 2 camels of my own back at home. They didn\u0026rsquo;t know how to respond to that, but they seemed to get the message.\nTipping? Guarding Khafre\nSeveral times we found ourselves accidentally on the wrong side of the chains, or climbing where it wasn\u0026rsquo;t allowed, etc. We also found the security guards were very nice about it and helped us get back to where we were supposed to be. The guards always followed up immediately with offers to let us do whatever we had been doing for a small \u0026ldquo;tip\u0026rdquo;. In fact, when we were inside the Pyramid of Khafre, a place where taking photos is strictly prohibited, the security guard asked Charmaine and I to step around the guard rails and sit next to the burial box so he could take pictures for us. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t something I would have taken a picture of, but it definitely made things clear to me about how the tipping system works. I gave him a US one dollar bill and he tried to talk me up to $100 or $200 or $300 because, as he said, \u0026ldquo;that is like nothing\u0026rdquo; to me. Ha. I told him to have a nice day and he seemed fine.\nI think the Great Sphinx was the most underwhelming monument at the necropolis. It\u0026rsquo;s not in great shape and they keep everyone a pretty good distance away, which is probably a good thing because it\u0026rsquo;s the most crowded spot in the entire complex. It looks like they are rethinking access to it and building some ramps much closer to it, but right now it\u0026rsquo;s not great. We knew our time was limited in Egypt on this trip, so we bailed on our last ticket and headed out to grab an Uber back for a shorter-than-we-would-have-liked visit to the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. They are mostly done building a new museum that will house a lot of the exhibits currently in the Egyptian Museum. The new museum was supposed to be complete years ago. The official word is they hope to open in 2023, but all the locals we spoke to think it will be 2024 or later before it\u0026rsquo;s complete.\nWhirlwind Museum Tour Express Museum Tour\nWe hired a licensed guide to help us hurry through the museum and see the \u0026ldquo;big things\u0026rdquo; including the artifacts collected from the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Our guide made sure to emphasize that King Tut \u0026ldquo;didn\u0026rsquo;t really do anything as king. He wasn\u0026rsquo;t involved in any wars, he didn\u0026rsquo;t build any monuments, etc.\u0026rdquo; and that \u0026ldquo;He is only famous because his tomb is the only untouched tomb of a pharaoh that has ever been found.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s an interesting thing to think about. The riches they found (his inner coffin was 110kg of solid gold, among other things) were likely not as extravagant as what may have been buried with longer-lived, more important kings. But nobody will ever know, because all the tombs of the \u0026ldquo;important\u0026rdquo; pharaohs were looted long ago.\nWe decided to walk about a mile from the museum back to our hotel and hoped to find some good food on the way. We walked across a bridge over part of the Nile River onto the island where our hotel was. We picked a restaurant between the bridge and the hotel and walked up to it. It was in a gated area and as soon as we stepped inside the guards told us it was a private area for members and sent us back outside the gates. There are several restaurants and other businesses inside the gated area, but there wasn\u0026rsquo;t much we could do about it right then.\nSaved by the Hotel We decided to go back to the hotel to regroup and grab a pre-dinner snack at the executive lounge while we decided where to go for a real dinner. Unexpectedly, the executive lounge wasn\u0026rsquo;t just offering hors d\u0026rsquo;oeuvres; they were serving a full dinner meal. We sat down and had another great meal for free. What a great hotel.\nIn the morning our first Uber driver decided he didn\u0026rsquo;t want to take us to the airport after seeing us in the parking lot. He cancelled the trip and another Uber driver pulled up in less than a minute. During the confusion, the hotel staff offered to get us a shuttle to the airport. Luckily the better Uber driver pulled up before a much more expensive commitment was made. The replacement Uber was much bigger than the first and we made it back to the airport for another $5. So crazy.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/cairo-and-giza/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is our first-ever trip to Egypt. When we originally started booking this trip we anticipated seeing more of Egypt, but the final plan put us in Cairo for only about 36 hours before continuing on to Jordan. We decided to sleep two nights at a hotel in Cairo, but it still felt a little bit like a really long layover.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoing through customs and immigration in Cairo was super easy. We already had \u003ca href=\"https://visa2egypt.gov.eg/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eEgyptian e-Visas\u003c/a\u003e linked to our passports. The e-Visa program is pretty slick. And yet, getting out of the airport still felt like it took forever. That was all caused by the rate at which bags were delivered to baggage claim. It took nearly 30 minutes between the time our first bag came out until our final bag came out, and there were still lots of people from our flight waiting for their bags when we left the airport. It felt like no more than two bags ever came out at the same time. Sometimes it felt like several minutes between each small batch of bags - almost like a single person was carrying a bag in each hand from across the parking lot in order to get them on the conveyer belt. Maybe we were just really tired and that caused some time dilation, but it felt crazy slow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cairo and Giza"},{"content":"We flew directly from Salt Lake City to Paris in just under 10 hours. It\u0026rsquo;s a fantastic flight and it was even better being in the comfortable seats in Delta\u0026rsquo;s Premium Select area. Brett has Diamond Medallion status with Delta and was able to get us all upgraded on the longest leg of the trip. Thanks to favorable tailwinds, we landed in Paris about 30 minutes earlier than expected, giving us about 12 hours to go out and enjoy the city before jumping on our next flight to Cairo.\nWe made our way through the huge Charles de Gaulle Airport to the RER B train and headed into the city. It took about 45 minutes on the train to make it to the Notre-Dame stop, where we got off. Paris was cold, as it usually is during the winter. We planned well, keeping our warm clothes with us on the plane so we would have layers to keep us warm in Paris while our checked bags stayed with the airline.\nWe circled the cathedral and were amazed at its current state of reconstruction. The fire had really gutted the place, but the work to repair it was really going well. Scaffolding was everywhere, but so where high-quality images of many of the things they had been doing to put it back together again. it was really interesting, even if it wasn\u0026rsquo;t very picturesque.\nWalking the Seine Street Market Pastries\nWe walked along the Seine river from the cathedral and then turned and made our way to the Arc de Triomphe. We have seen both the cathedral and the monument on previous trips to Paris, but we decided to see them again this time. We took a quick photo at the Arc and then made our way to the Eiffel Tower. I have seen it light up at night from about a mile away, but I felt like I had never actually \u0026ldquo;been there\u0026rdquo; until today. It\u0026rsquo;s worth seeing in the day. It\u0026rsquo;s worth seeing when it\u0026rsquo;s lit up at night. But it\u0026rsquo;s probably not worth going out of my way to see again and again.\nWalking around Paris sort of sucks. This is especially true in winter. None of us ever got too hot or too cold, but we wound up walking about 10 or 11 miles on concrete and cobblestones. I was feeling great until about 8 miles in, when the harsh conditions under foot translated into sore feet and my Achilles tendon reminding me that I\u0026rsquo;m not really the boss.\nThe Paris Catacombs One of our chosen activities today was to visit the Paris Catacombs. As we approached the museum we saw large signs notifying everyone that all of today\u0026rsquo;s tours were sold out. It was a good thing we planned ahead and booked our tickets for a 2 pm tour during our final trip planning meeting about a week ago. There were a few people in line outside the building, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t seem like it would be too crowded. We headed for the back of the line and handed our pre-printed tickets to the gentleman in charge of such things. He looked them over and then handed them back to us. \u0026ldquo;Non,\u0026rdquo; he said, pointing to the date on our tickets. January 24th. That wasn\u0026rsquo;t right. That had to be the day we booked the tickets. But where did it say the date of the tour we had booked? Did we book the wrong day? Yes. Yes, we did. We made a short-lived attempt to convince the man to sell us tickets for today, but it was futile. So the Catacombs will have to wait for some other day in Paris. It\u0026rsquo;s not what we wanted or planned, but we still got a good laugh out of all the pre-planning that went into it, the effort made to walk all the way across the city to be there, etc. It\u0026rsquo;s now a story we\u0026rsquo;ll tell and laugh about the time we didn\u0026rsquo;t see the Catacombs.\nOne of the things we were hoping to do at the Catacombs was find a bathroom we could use. Now that we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be able to use a bathroom at the museum, we needed to find a new solution. Previous trips in Europe have taught us that public facilities are difficult to find. We tried a McDonald\u0026rsquo;s. They had bathrooms, but you couldn\u0026rsquo;t open the door without depositing half a Euro. We\u0026rsquo;re not against paying to use the toilet, but we had not exchanged any dollars for Euros, so we had no coins to drop into the slot. Eventually we found a free public bathroom that cleaned itself after each use. That was a stroke of luck.\nAir France Lounge Access We didn\u0026rsquo;t have to walk all the way back to the Notre-Dame to catch the train, of course, but it was still a good mile walk from the Catacombs to the Luxembourg Station. We rode the train back to the airport hoping to spend an hour or so hanging out in the Air France lounge, but they told us Brett\u0026rsquo;s Delta Credit Card passes wouldn\u0026rsquo;t work for Air France, even though it is a Delta partner. We would have to be flying in the premium cabin that day in order to be allowed in. Wait a minute! We did fly in the premium cabin that day. We were able to just scan our boarding passes to gain access to the lounge without having to use the lounge access passes Brett had. That worked out really well. The spread of food at the Air France lounge at CDG wasn\u0026rsquo;t nearly as impressive as what we had seen at the Delta lounge in Salt Lake City, but it was still pretty good. We had already eaten in the city, so we mostly stuck to hot chocolate and pastries in the lounge. They have a napping area and showers for those long trips. I didn\u0026rsquo;t try either of those today, but I think that\u0026rsquo;s a great idea for future trips.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/a-walking-day-in-paris/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe flew directly from Salt Lake City to Paris in just under 10 hours. It\u0026rsquo;s a fantastic flight and it was even better being in the comfortable seats in \u003ca href=\"https://www.delta.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eDelta\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e Premium Select area. Brett has Diamond Medallion status with Delta and was able to get us all upgraded on the longest leg of the trip. Thanks to favorable tailwinds, we landed in Paris about 30 minutes earlier than expected, giving us about 12 hours to go out and enjoy the city before jumping on our next flight to Cairo.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Walking Day in Paris"},{"content":"We left Sarajevo this morning and drove to Zagreb, the capital and largest city in Croatia. We stopped long enough to go on a bike tour of the city, grab a few bites to eat, and then we drove back to where it all started in Ljubljana, Slovenia for our fight home.\nDragon Cities Saint George and the Slain Dragon\nBoth Ljubljana and Zagreb are cities that celebrate dragons being tamed and killed. Ljubljana has the legend of Jason and the Argonauts founding the city after slaying a dragon, and let\u0026rsquo;s not forget about the legend of Saint George and the dragon. There are several sculptures and statues of Saint George and the dragon throughout Zagreb and the official crest of Ljubljana has a dragon sitting on top of the Ljubljana castle. The dragon that was tamed and slain is most likely a symbol representing paganism and how Christianity overcame it. In fact, Saint George was a member of the Praetorian Guard for Roman Emperor Diocletian (who built his palace in Split), but was put to death for refusing to abandon Christianity and offer sacrifices to the pagan gods of Rome.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to me how different Zagreb feels from Split. They are the two largest cities in Croatia and they couldn\u0026rsquo;t feel more different. Split feels very much a Mediterranean city like Athens or Tel Aviv, but Zagreb feels like Austria. Indeed, Zagreb was an important city in the empire of Austria-Hungary. The yellow and black buildings built in the typical Habsburg style give that away. The leader of our bike tour even said the language spoken in Zagreb is almost identical to that spoken in Belgrade, Serbia\u0026hellip; closer than that spoken in Split. That definitely tracked with how different Split felt from Zagreb to me.\nSolar System to Scale One of the first things we saw on the bike tour was the big gold ball. It gets cleaned about once a year, but it gets fresh graffiti a few days later. It\u0026rsquo;s not just a giant gold ball. It represents the Sun.\nGold Ball Sculpture of the Sun\nA group of mathematicians, astronomers, and artists in Zagreb have installed a series of ball sculptures representing the solar system throughout the city (and out into the countryside). They are all proportionally sized and spaced. We didn\u0026rsquo;t have time to ride to them all. In fact we only saw the sun (the giant gold ball pictured here) and Mercury (a tiny pea-sized ball about 100m away). I thought it was a fun idea to have in the city, but it\u0026rsquo;s too bad about the graffiti.\nWe rode to a statue of Nikola Tesla. He was born to a Serbian family living in the part of Yugoslavia that is now part of Croatia. The Croats have jumped on the Tesla bandwagon in several big ways. They put a good-sized monument/statue of Tesla in a prominent place in the city. They also will be using Tesla on their Euro currency, to the dismay of Serbia. They both claim Tesla, but Croatia is in the EU and Serbia is not (yet). So Croatia can do what it wants with its currency design and Serbia can\u0026rsquo;t do anything to stop them. Our guide was very proud of that.\nThe Earthquakes A lot of the older buildings in Zagreb are closed for reconstruction following a couple large earthquakes in recent years. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 22, 2020, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake hit just 4 miles from the center of Zagreb and damaged thousands of older buildings. There were lots of aftershocks, including a 5.0 magnitude quake just 2 days later. Almost 2000 of the damaged buildings were declared completely unusable. Then on December 28, 2020 a magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck about 30 miles southeast of the city. The very next day that 5.2 earthquake was reclassified as a \u0026ldquo;foreshock\u0026rdquo; because a much larger quake, measuring magnitude 6.4 (more than 10 times more powerful than the 5.2 foreshock) struck, killing several people and completely demolishing about half the buildings in the town of Petrinja.\nFor us, the earthquakes meant we saw a lot of boarded up and closed buildings, scaffolding surrounding some of the more famous ones, including the big cathedral. They have all been closed for more than 2 and a half years now. Reconstruction and retrofitting of these historic buildings is both time consuming and extremely expensive, so the work is slow going.\nSecret Tunnels One of many interconnected concrete tunnels below the city\nZagreb was fortunate to not see the kind of fighting and bombing that happened to Sarajevo during the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War. The city has a huge network of tunnels under the city that we were able to visit on our bike tour.\nMany of the residents only discovered the existence of the tunnels when the bomb sirens went off during the Bosnian War and officials directed people into the tunnels. Since then, the tunnels have been improved with concrete floors and lighting. We walked our bikes through one of the tunnels, taking a short-cut across the city. It was really interesting.\nAfter the three hour bike tour was over, we jumped back in the van and drove back to Ljubljana for our final dinner before flying home. It was another great trip. ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/zagreb-bike-tour/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe left Sarajevo this morning and drove to Zagreb, the capital and largest city in Croatia. We stopped long enough to go on a bike tour of the city, grab a few bites to eat, and then we drove back to where it all started in Ljubljana, Slovenia for our fight home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"dragon-cities\"\u003eDragon Cities\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cfigure class=\"alignright portrait\"\u003e\n    \u003ca href=\"images/IMG_4372.jpg\" data-lightbox=\"images\" data-title=\"Saint George and the Slain Dragon\"\u003e\n        \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"images/IMG_4372.jpg\" alt=\"Statue of Saint George on his horse, standing over a slain dragon\" /\u003e \n    \u003c/a\u003e\n    \u003cfigcaption\u003e\n        \u003cp\u003eSaint George and the Slain Dragon\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Zagreb Bike Tour"},{"content":"Despite all the scars from wars, Sarajevo still feels very much like a typical European city. It feels more like \u0026ldquo;Europe\u0026rdquo; to me than Split did. I\u0026rsquo;m sure that\u0026rsquo;s the influence of the Habsburgs. As we walked around the city tonight, I found myself thinking about how important Sarajevo has been in the history of Europe and the world. And I\u0026rsquo;m not just talking about hosting the Olympics. It was the first city in Europe to have electricity, tramways, and other technologies.\nWe walked to the bridge where the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife were shot and killed. This was the spark that started the \u0026ldquo;Great War\u0026rdquo; (now known as World War I). I think a lot of Americans have forgotten about Sarajevo, if they ever knew anything about it in the first place. It\u0026rsquo;s a really interesting city with a very rich history. The predominant religion is probably Islam, but there are plenty of both Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches and cathedrals as well as Jewish synagogues in the city. People seem to get along pretty well and it feels very safe and peaceful. Next to our hotel are some newer office towers hosting tech companies including Microsoft and Oracle. There are still lots of problems and a big discrepancy between the rich and the poor, but a lot of things seem to be moving in a good direction.\nThe bread in Bosnia has been really good. Even when we were up in the mountains, the bread our guides brought us for lunch was just fantastic. I have been really impressed with the quality of everything. We have even been able to drink the tap water, etc. We stopped at Zeks Döner for some street kebab sandwiches tonight. We fed all 6 of us, including drinks, for about $22 US and it was really good.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/our-last-night-in-sarajevo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDespite all the scars from wars, Sarajevo still feels very much like a typical European city. It feels more like \u0026ldquo;Europe\u0026rdquo; to me than Split did. I\u0026rsquo;m sure that\u0026rsquo;s the influence of the Habsburgs. As we walked around the city tonight, I found myself thinking about how important Sarajevo has been in the history of Europe and the world. And I\u0026rsquo;m not just talking about hosting the Olympics. It was the first city in Europe to have electricity, tramways, and other technologies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our Last Night in Sarajevo"},{"content":"We got up extra early this morning because we had to be in Konjic by 8:00 for today\u0026rsquo;s adventure. We\u0026rsquo;re staying at the Swissotel in Sarajevo and they serve breakfast from 6:30 to 10:30. I think that\u0026rsquo;s the largest breakfast window of any hotel we\u0026rsquo;ve seen. And the breakfast spread was really good. So we met everyone for breakfast at 6:30, ate quickly, and left the hotel by 6:50.\nKonjic is a popular tourist town for mountain adventures like rafting and canyoning on the upper Neretva River. We were scheduled to do two canyons with some river boarding (think boogie boarding down a mountain river). Unfortunately, the water levels are too low right now for the river boarding, but we still got to hike the canyons and float the rivers in our wetsuits and life jackets.\nEquipment Matters Ready for Anything\nCharmaine and I don\u0026rsquo;t have any real canyoneering shoes. We knew we would want some on this trip, but they are nearly impossible to find in the United States. Brett says it can take up to a year to get them. We started looking for them about 2 months ago, but the impossible task lived up to its name. I did bring my approach shoes on this trip, and I used them on the via ferrata we did in Slovenia, but they\u0026rsquo;re not really water shoes. The tour guides did provide some scuba-style booties for use in the river, but I know from experience those are terrible for just about anything outside of the water? So I had a choice to make: do I wear my somewhat uncomfortable approach shoes and be happy during the non-floating periods, or do I go with the scuba booties provided by the guides and have a difficult time on everything outside of the water? I asked the woman giving our briefing about how much hiking we would do on our trip. She assured me we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be hiking except in the river itself, so I decided to stick with the booties they supplied. Charmaine also chose the booties instead of using her worn-down running shoes that she\u0026rsquo;s planning to ditch at the end of the trip. Everyone else in our group has real canyoneering shoes, so they obviously went with their own high-quality equipment.\nColdest River in the World We drove for about 40 minutes to get to the trailhead where we hiked up and then down into the narrow canyon. The choice of scuba booties was a terrible one. There wasn\u0026rsquo;t too much hiking from the drop-off point to the river, but it was mostly nearly vertical ascents and descents. The booties were not up to the task. My feet were really sore by the time I got in the water. We were wearing 3mm farmer-john style wetsuits with dry-suit jackets on top, then a windbreaker, and finally a life jacket. It was a lot of equipment, but it worked out really well in the cold river. We also had helmets to protect our heads. Our guide claimed the Neretva River is well-known as the coldest river in the world. That felt like an exaggeration, but it looks like he was right. He also said the Rakitnica River (the main tributary to the Neretva), where we started our day, is even colder. The water temperature was probably around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which felt plenty cold.\nI accidentally left my gloves in the van, so my hands were well aware of the water temperature. My hands acclimated to the water after the first few sections of the river, but my choice of scuba booties continued to cause me trouble. We spent at least half our time walking the banks of the river, which were almost always hard, sharp, rocks. Those booties didn\u0026rsquo;t have much traction in or out of the water and I slipped and fell several times, but I never really got hurt thanks to all that equipment and padding.\nThe Rakitnica River was really beautiful. At 800 meters deep in some places, it cuts through one of the deepest canyons in Europe. Our guide said the water is extremely pure and that we could drink it without worrying. None of us opted to test that claim, but it was definitely clear and beautiful.\nAs we walked and talked with our guide, we found out he has been to Utah several times while coaching snowboarders for all sorts of competitions including the Olympics, X-Games, etc. He was the head coach for snowboard teams from both Bosnia and Croatia in the big air and slopestyle events. It was interesting to hear his perspective on the world.\nWe made our way down the canyon to where it joins the Neretva River. I really enjoyed the floating sections, and I really disliked the non-floating sections (mostly due to my footwear choice). Some of our group enjoyed the hiking more than the floating. There were a few sections of the canyon where the narrow canyon walls closed in on the river and everyone was forced to swim and/or float. The current was never very strong and the floating sections were usually pretty relaxing and enjoyable.\nAt the confluence with the larger Neretva River, we turned and hiked upstream until we reached our pull-out point. Along the way we jumped off a few cliffs and jumped into the river to float back down through some fun rapid sections. It was the perfect way to end the journey. And I was extremely happy to discover we didn\u0026rsquo;t have to hike far from the river to get back to the van.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/rakitnica-canyon/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe got up extra early this morning because we had to be in Konjic by 8:00 for today\u0026rsquo;s adventure. We\u0026rsquo;re staying at the Swissotel in Sarajevo and they serve breakfast from 6:30 to 10:30. I think that\u0026rsquo;s the largest breakfast window of any hotel we\u0026rsquo;ve seen. And the breakfast spread was really good. So we met everyone for breakfast at 6:30, ate quickly, and left the hotel by 6:50.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKonjic is a popular tourist town for mountain adventures like rafting and canyoning on the upper Neretva River. We were scheduled to do two canyons with some river boarding (think boogie boarding down a mountain river). Unfortunately, the water levels are too low right now for the river boarding, but we still got to hike the canyons and float the rivers in our wetsuits and life jackets.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rakitnica Canyon"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m writing tonight\u0026rsquo;s blog in Notepad because the Internet connetion here at the Swissotel in Sarajevo is so terrible. I can\u0026rsquo;t even check my email via Wi-Fi. My cell phone is working perfectly thanks to T-Mobile, but I only get 5 GB of free international data each month, so I don\u0026rsquo;t want to overdo it. But this Wi-Fi situation is upsetting. The rest of the hotel is really nice. I am super impressed with the quality of everything else, so it\u0026rsquo;s sort of crazy that I can\u0026rsquo;t get Internet access in my room. I\u0026rsquo;ll post this the next time I actually have Internet access.\nMostar We spent about half the day driving from Split, Croatia to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. We made a point to stop along the way at Mostar and see the old bridge. The bridge and the river were really beautiful. I thought about what it would be like to jump from the bridge into the river (it\u0026rsquo;s very deep and very cold), but today wasn\u0026rsquo;t the day for that sort of shenanigans. We walked across the bridge and took a few pictures before grabbing some gelato and heading back to the van. There were a bunch of school-aged kids running around here and there. Most of the boys were wearing the red Fez hats that remind me of the Turks.\nBosnia is such an interesting place. I think the Bosniaks are descendants of the Ottoman Turks who used to rule these parts, but they are also Slavs who speak Bosnian. They are usually Muslim and every city seems to have mosques everywhere. It\u0026rsquo;s sort of like Mormon churches in Utah. Everywhere. But unlike the churches in Utah, the mosques here are really pretty. Each one has a minaret and they dot the cityscape everywhere we go.\nStari Most The Old Bridge in Mostar (also known as Stari Most) is supposed to represent bringing the various cultures of Bosnia and Herzegovina together, but it\u0026rsquo;s hard to say if that\u0026rsquo;s actually happening in real life. The main groups here seem to be: The Bosniaks, who are the majority and are typically Muslim; the Bosnian Serbs, who are typically Orthodox Christians; and the Bosnian Croats, who are typically Catholic. The three groups have not integrated well and that has been a major factor in much of the destruction and wars in this country, particularly in and around Mostar.\nMostar still has many buildings that are nothing more than ruins, despite the original destruction happening about 30 years ago. It\u0026rsquo;s a good reminder of how stupid and terrible war can be.\nWe left Mostar and drove another couple hours to Sarajevo, which also has lots of scars from war, including bullet holes in buildings, Sarajevo Roses (bomb scars that have been filled in with red epoxy), and buildings in ruin. It\u0026rsquo;s amazing and terrible to think about a beautiful city hosting the Winter Olympics in 1984 and then being shelled almost daily just a few years later.\nWe are staying in one of the nicer parts of town. Our hotel is beautiful and there are several other newer high rise buildings nearby, some hosting high-tech companies including Microsoft and Oracle. We wandered through the city and got a 4+ hour tour and history lesson on what happened here. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything like some of our other high adventures, but it was pretty interesting nonetheless. We had the opportunity to learn a lot and ask any and all questions we had. It was really interesting to hear the perspectives our tour guides had on everything. They were each 32 and 33, so they don\u0026rsquo;t really remember the war itself, but many of the forces that shaped their lives were linked to changes caused by the war one way or another.\nTunnel of Hope Entrance to the Tunnel of Hope\nOne of the major parts of the tour was visiting the Tunnel of Hope that used to go under the airport. Most of the original tunnel is gone, having collapsed years ago, but we were able to walk through the remaining 100 meters of the original tunnel. It\u0026rsquo;s a bit surreal to think about what it must have been like. I hope we never have to find out.\nAfter the tour we went to Zeljo, a restaurant our tour guides recommended for some traditional local food. The restaurant serves exactly one dish: cevapi. The only thing you change with your order is how many you want. We each got 10 sausages with sweet cream and onions in a nice flatbread. It was really good, but I think 10 was probably too many for us. I think 6 would have been the sweet spot. From there we continued to wander the city, picking up various pastries and really enjoying ourselves.\nWe came back to the hotel fairly early, because tomorrow we are driving into the mountains very early to do another canyon. It sounds like this one may not include any rappelling, but we may ride some inflatable boogie boards down the river and do some jumping from ledges. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty exited.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/mostar-and-sarajevo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m writing tonight\u0026rsquo;s blog in Notepad because the Internet connetion here at the Swissotel in Sarajevo is so terrible. I can\u0026rsquo;t even check my email via Wi-Fi. My cell phone is working perfectly thanks to T-Mobile, but I only get 5 GB of free international data each month, so I don\u0026rsquo;t want to overdo it. But this Wi-Fi situation is upsetting. The rest of the hotel is really nice. I am super impressed with the quality of everything else, so it\u0026rsquo;s sort of crazy that I can\u0026rsquo;t get Internet access in my room. I\u0026rsquo;ll post this the next time I actually have Internet access.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mostar and Sarajevo"},{"content":"We left Krka National Park on the slow boat back to Skradin at 9:30 am and then walked back to our hotel. We had officially checked out of the hotel before we left for Krka earlier that morning, because checkout time was 10:00 am and we had no way to guarantee we would be back by then. So we cleared out our rooms and put all our bags and gear into the van before heading out. But we left our van in the hotel parking lot while we toured the park. We arrived back in Skradin around 10 and walked back up to the hotel to get our van and drive down the coast to Split, the second largest city in Croatia.\nSplit was pretty interesting. To me it felt and looked a bit like a mix between Athens and Tel Aviv, just much smaller. We went to the old town and bought some tickets to tour everything in the Diocletian\u0026rsquo;s Palace, including something we seem to do a lot on these trips: climb the clock/bell tower. The view from the bell tower was pretty, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t really remarkable in any way. Diocletian was born near modern day Split, and grew up to become the emperor of Rome. He served as emperor for 20 years before abdicating. He built the massive palace (really more of a fortress) as a place for his retirement. We also saw the chapel and the Temple of Jupiter, which was converted into a baptistry at some point over the years.\nAfter touring all of the items on our tickets, we were ready for lunch. We wandered through the city, down towards the promenade along the shore. We ate some lunch there and then wandered some more. We finally found a bakery that sold Leige waffles and other goodies. And, of course, we had a few rounds of gelato.\nLater in the day we rented scooters and cruised down to a nice beach where we once again swam in the Adriatic Sea. The water was a great temperature, but the air temperature dropped as we edged closer to sunset. We dried off and rode our scooters to the top of the mountain where we found a giant cross and whole bunch of couples waiting to watch the sunset. The batteries were getting low on two of the scooters, so we headed back to town and dropped them off before heading out for a fancy dinner where we ate way too much, but had a really good time.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/split-croatia/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe left Krka National Park on the slow boat back to Skradin at 9:30 am and then walked back to our hotel. We had officially checked out of the hotel before we left for Krka earlier that morning, because checkout time was 10:00 am and we had no way to guarantee we would be back by then. So we cleared out our rooms and put all our bags and gear into the van before heading out. But we left our van in the hotel parking lot while we toured the park. We arrived back in Skradin around 10 and walked back up to the hotel to get our van and drive down the coast to Split, the second largest city in Croatia.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Split, Croatia"},{"content":"We got up early again this morning and had yet another breakfast at yet another hotel. It was, once again, a pretty good spread. We had packed all our bags prior to eating breakfast, because checkout was at 10 am. That\u0026rsquo;s a bit early, but we left our van in the parking lot and put our bags in the van. Then we walked a couple minutes through town to the boat dock where we caught our ride into Krka National Park.\nThe river below the park and into town is extremely calm with beautiful green water. There seem to be swans everywhere, which is pretty cool. There were even a few swans hanging out near the dock, hissing at dogs that got too close. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to swim anywhere near those huge birds with their long necks and black eyes. They could bite and peck you a hundred times all while staying far enough away that you would never reach them. No thank you.\nWe were on the 8:00 boat ride. It took about 30 minutes to go up the river dock to dock from Skradin to Krka, but any regular boat could have made the trip in 10 minutes or less. So it was a very gentle, relaxing ride up to the park. Our boat was the first boat of the day and it was nearly empty. That was excellent news, because it meant we would have free reign of the entire park to take pictures without having a bunch of tourists getting in the way, clogging up the works, etc.\nWhen you arrive by boat, the first set of waterfalls you see are the big ones at the bottom of the park. They are really spectacular. We took a few pictures, but we just couldn\u0026rsquo;t capture the magic with our phone cameras. From there we hiked up right next to the edge of those falls, then continued up to other falls. Some areas were just crazy with water flowing almost every direction while you walk on the boardwalk above, beside, and below it all.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t take long to walk through most of the park, enjoy reading some interesting facts, and taking a bunch of pictures. We had our return boat trip scheduled for 9:30 am, giving us just one hour to walk the whole park. Even with virtually nobody else in the park, that wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite enough time. I think you really need about 90 minutes inside the park when it\u0026rsquo;s empty and probably a whole lot more when it\u0026rsquo;s not. We had to rush a few of the viewpoints on the second half, but it was still really cool.\nFirst Operating Hydroelectric Dam Back in 1895 they built the world\u0026rsquo;s first operating hydro-electric dam here. Nikola Tesla built one at Niagara Falls that same year, but he wasn\u0026rsquo;t able to operate his generators until 1896 because he needed things like distribution lines, etc. Fun fact: Tesla was born in what is now Croatia. So there were a few really smart Croatians working on electricity in those days. Jim and I sort of snuck into the old power plant and it was pretty fascinating. It was pretty obvious we were not supposed to be back there, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t stay long.\nAt the end, we had to run a little to catch our boat back to town. The boat was packed to the gills with passengers trying to unload into the park. That gave us just the extra amount of time we needed to get aboard before they pushed off. On our slow ride back to town we saw 2 other boats heading up to the park. Each one was at maximum capacity. As we pulled into the dock back in Skradin, there was a huge line of people waiting to get on our boat and one other. We really got lucky by being in that first group in the park. Wow.\nWe walked back to the hotel, piled into our van, and drove about an hour down the coast to Split, the second largest city in Croatia.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/krka-national-park/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe got up early again this morning and had yet another breakfast at yet another hotel. It was, once again, a pretty good spread. We had packed all our bags prior to eating breakfast, because checkout was at 10 am. That\u0026rsquo;s a bit early, but we left our van in the parking lot and put our bags in the van. Then we walked a couple minutes through town to the boat dock where we caught our ride into Krka National Park.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Krka National Park"},{"content":"We had another unexpectedly good breakfast this morning. Our hotel isn\u0026rsquo;t very big, and the breakfast/dining room is equally small. But they managed to put together a pretty good spread. Lots of cheese and charcuterie, several kinds of granola and other cereals, multiple kinds of juices that were really good, yogurts, fruit, etc. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t expecting it, but it was really good. So we left for the park full and ready for the day.\nThis is the dry season and it\u0026rsquo;s pretty obvious all over the park. Many waterfalls are completely dry and the usually green moss has gone brown. Others are still flowing, but at an extremely reduced capacity. We got some good advice from our hotel and started our loop in the middle. We parked near entrance 2 and immediately took the tram up to the top of the park (tram stop 3) and started walking the waterfalls from there.\nAfter walking the whole top area, we took the boat back to entrance 2 (where we started) and then walked around the lakes down to the big waterfall before walking up through the cave and then back to our car. All in all, we walked about 7.5 miles inside the park. I guess it was a good thing we had such a good breakfast.\nTrade-offs The waterfalls were pretty and we could imagine how much more amazing they could be when water levels are high, but there\u0026rsquo;s always a trade-off with national parks like this. Do you plan your visit for the \u0026ldquo;best\u0026rdquo; amount of water and the most tourists in your way? Do you come during the off season when you can move freely through the park, but may not see it at its full glory? Or do you just visit when you can, because that\u0026rsquo;s when you have time to take the trip? That\u0026rsquo;s what we did, and it happened to correspond to the off-season. But you know what was really cool? Being able to see all the fall colors in the park. The reflections of fall colors on the tops of the blue green lakes was pretty neat. I think I would have preferred to see more water, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t upset to have this be how I got to experience it.\nAfter leaving the park, we drove on to our next adventure near Krka National Park. We arrived at our hotel around 4 pm and didn\u0026rsquo;t want to waste any time, so we dropped off our stuff, changed into swimsuits and headed to the nearest beach.\nRezalište Beach Rezalište Beach was exactly what we expected it to be. Gravel above and below the water line. We all got out there. The water was pretty nice, but the air was already getting pretty cool. That didn\u0026rsquo;t stop Katie from swimming with me out to the buoys marking the edge of the swimming zone (about 100 yards out from shore). We wore our flip-flops out into the water to protect our feet from all the gravel and other rocks, so we had to put them on our hands and use them as very poor hand paddles while swimming. We didn\u0026rsquo;t have goggles, but the sea water didn\u0026rsquo;t make my eyes hurt much. The biggest surprise was that my shoulder didn\u0026rsquo;t hurt. Could it be that I have finally strengthened it enough that I can start swimming again? That would be amazing.\nWe went back to the hotel to wash off the salt water before heading to dinner. We walked to a local place with really good reviews (1300+ reviews and a 4.8 star average rating). Sadly, our expectations were way too high. There were some really good parts to the meal, but there was also a whole lot that needed work. For example, the \u0026ldquo;tomato salad\u0026rdquo; was just a bowl of sliced tomatoes with no seasoning, dressing, or anything else. The cabbage salad was similarly sparse. The \u0026ldquo;specialty\u0026rdquo; that Charmaine and Jess both ordered was anything but special. So we were a bit disappointed, but still went away happy.\nAfter dinner it was getting dark, but we walked around the small town here, hoping to find a gelateria that was still open. We had no such luck, but we did wind up hiking up to the \u0026ldquo;fortress\u0026rdquo; that overlooks the town. There wasn\u0026rsquo;t much there other than a decent view. After that we headed back to the hotel for the night.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/plitvice-lakes-national-park/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe had another unexpectedly good breakfast this morning. Our hotel isn\u0026rsquo;t very big, and the breakfast/dining room is equally small. But they managed to put together a pretty good spread. Lots of cheese and charcuterie, several kinds of granola and other cereals, multiple kinds of juices that were really good, yogurts, fruit, etc. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t expecting it, but it was really good. So we left for the park full and ready for the day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Plitvice Lakes National Park"},{"content":"We met for breakfast exactly when the hotel started serving it, at 7:00 am. Once again, the spread was amazing. Today they had another huge set of items, mostly different from yesterday. I was amazed. This is a good sized hotel, but the breadth of high quality items at the breakfast buffet really impressed me again. If I\u0026rsquo;m ever in Bled again, I will definitely try to stay at the same hotel, despite the slightly late hour at which they start breakfast. Everything else about the breakfast and the hotel is really great.\nJim was twenty minutes late to breakfast, which is extremely unlike him. When he showed up we teased him about the amount of caffeine he took yesterday. He said he couldn\u0026rsquo;t get to sleep until well after midnight. He took some caffeine again this morning, but promised not to take any after lunch.\nWe checked out of the hotel after breakfast and drove up to the trailhead for the Mala Mojstrovka Via Ferrata. Our adventure guides yesterday said it was a great trail, but wondered if we would hit snow. We were a bit concerned about that ourselves and planned to turn around and do a different Via Ferrata if we hit snow on our way there. But there was no snow on the ground until well into the hike, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t a big deal at all.\nThe Julian Alps in Slovenia The Mala Mojstrovka starts at a mountain pass in the Julian Alps at 1611m (5285 feet). We ascended 721m (2365 feet) up the north slope, which is nearly vertical in many locations, with some fun secured iron cable climbing and a lot of scrambling as well, especially as you approach the summit. We hiked down the south slope, which is nowhere near as steep, but full of debris and without any marked trails until you near the bottom. It was really rough on Charmaine, who doesn\u0026rsquo;t like heights, but agreed to push through her fears believing the whole route would be secured. It was far from that type of climb, and it was really difficult for her in the unsecured sections. But she pushed through anyway and we did the full loop. Brett and Katie really went out of their way to help her along and I was really grateful to them for that.\nThe views along the way up were nothing short of spectacular. The weather has really cooperated since we arrived in country and today was the best yet. We had views for miles and miles and miles. We could easily see peaks in Italy and Austria from our ascent. We stopped for lunch not too far from the top and then hit the summit and scrambled down the southern slop to the car where we had a picnic with supplies we picked up at a grocery store that morning after leaving the hotel.\nPassport Control After that second lunch, we hopped in the car and made the long drive to Plitvice, Croatia. We were a little surprised that we had to get our passports scanned and stamped to travel between Slovenia and Croatia, but that\u0026rsquo;s how it was. Yesterday we crossed from Slovenia into Italy and then from Italy back into Slovenia without so much as a border guard saying anything to us. No passports needed. On previous trips to Europe we have driven country to country without having to show any papers, so it was a bit surprising to learn that some Euro-zone countries still require these things. But we had no issues other than the long winding roads on our way through the mountains to Plitvice. Our hotel seems nice enough, even if it is mostly a bed and breakfast. We headed over to a pizza place nearby for a late dinner after we arrived and it was surprisingly good pizza.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/mala-mojstrovka-via-ferrata/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe met for breakfast exactly when the hotel started serving it, at 7:00 am. Once again, the spread was amazing. Today they had another huge set of items, mostly different from yesterday. I was amazed. This is a good sized hotel, but the breadth of high quality items at the breakfast buffet really impressed me again. If I\u0026rsquo;m ever in Bled again, I will definitely try to stay at the same hotel, despite the slightly late hour at which they start breakfast. Everything else about the breakfast and the hotel is really great.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mala Mojstrovka Via Ferrata"},{"content":"The hotel was hot. I don\u0026rsquo;t sleep well when it\u0026rsquo;s too hot, and it was too hot last night. We tried opening the door to let in the amazingly cool and fresh air from outside, but it was so noisy that we had to close it. Maybe leaving it open and loud would have been a better choice, but instead we suffered and didn\u0026rsquo;t really sleep more than about 4 hours each. That\u0026rsquo;s a terrible record for our first night here after a full night of not sleeping on the plane. So we\u0026rsquo;re going to have to solve something for tonight. Hopefully there won\u0026rsquo;t be as many late loud parties tonight since it\u0026rsquo;s Sunday. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\nStarting Early We got up this morning to views across beautiful Lake Bled with the Bled Castle looking down onto the little church on the little island in the middle of the lake. Those views didn\u0026rsquo;t last long, because we were in a hurray to meet up with our guides to go canyoneering. We were supposed to arrive at Altitude Adventures by 6:45, but our hotel stubbornly does not serve breakfast until 7:00. We called the guides to let them know we would be late so we could eat a quick breakfast before heading over. We sat in the lobby waiting for the breakfast doors to open at 7:00. Lots and lots of senior bus tour people were also waiting. Call me crazy, but if most the people staying at your hotel have to wait in your lobby because they all want breakfast sooner than you\u0026rsquo;re willing to serve it, you\u0026rsquo;re doing something wrong. The doors opened right on time and we rushed in. The spread looked really good, but we mostly scooped up big helpings of eggs, bacon, cheese, pastries, and other fun things. I honestly don\u0026rsquo;t remember all the things they had or even the ones I ate because we did it all so quickly. Jim was the fastest. He filled his plate then snarfed it down and was out the door by 7:05 or so. It was pretty amazing. The rest of us were also very fast, but nobody was as fast as Jim.\nWe expected to be the only clients today, but that\u0026rsquo;s not how it worked out. It rained ten out of the ten previous days here and the canyon guides have been unable to take groups down the canyons because of the high waters. But still, there was only one other couple going with us today. The high water levels also meant we couldn\u0026rsquo;t do the \u0026ldquo;ultimate/extreme\u0026rdquo; adventure we had planned. Instead we did the next best thing, which turned out to be pretty fun.\nTo my surprise, the canyon was pretty far from Bled. We drove up into the mountains and before too long found ourselves in Italy, driving past really crazy looking ski resorts. Eventually we cut back into Slovenia and dropped down into the Koritnica valley and the town of Log pod Mangartom. The adventure guides brought all our gear and we suited up in the parking lot and started our hike. Our gear included helmets, wet suits, neoprene socks, canyoneering shoes, etc. The wetsuits were 7mm. SEVEN MIL. That\u0026rsquo;s crazy thick and it made a moderate hike at altitude into a pretty serious workout. But we knew we would be going down a canyon and walking, rappelling, sliding, jumping, and swimming in the extremely cold waters coming off the glaciers and newly fallen snow in Fratarica Canyon.\nHiking and Canyoneering We started our hike by crossing the Koritnica River, which wasn\u0026rsquo;t raging, but was deep enough that it pushed against us as we crossed. Fratarica stream dumps into the Koritnica right there and we turned and hiked up along the stream into the canyon. As we hiked up along the stream, we saw a few waterfalls and wondered if they would be among the rappels we would do on our way back down. And yes, they were, including Parabola Slap (\u0026ldquo;slap\u0026rdquo; means waterfall in Slovenian) that we saw not too far into our hike. The recent rains and high water had changed the canyon in significant ways. One of the big changes was the depth of the pools below each fall. In my naiveté, that seemed like the logical conclusion: the higher water would have pushed harder to clear debris out of the pools. I was so wrong. The higher water did push debris downstream, but it dropped it off in the very pools I thought would be made deeper. Instead they had been made shallow and filled with gravel. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t too big of a deal, but it meant some of our cliff jumping and sliding down waterfalls would have to change into short rappels to keep us safe.\nI haven\u0026rsquo;t done a lot of canyoneering. I have only been rappelling a few times in my life, but I do think it\u0026rsquo;s fun, and it\u0026rsquo;s especially fun when water is involved. We worked our way down the canyon as a group, which took quite a long time\u0026hellip; much longer than it took us to hike up. Many times, we went down directly in the waterfalls. These were usually small and manageable, but at some point we came to the big waterfall (Parabola Slap) we had seen on our hike up. The water was pounding where it does a free fall of 48 meters (160 feet). Each of us went down that waterfall. Our guides didn\u0026rsquo;t want us to lose our grip while dealing with the pounding cold water, so they wisely lowered us down through the falls until we hung between the falls and the cliff. It was pretty amazing. The water never felt colder than on that trip down those falls. I got momentarily slowed down before the overhang and my wet suit filled with the cold water. It was pretty comical because it sort of ballooned up and then drained out my feet holes as I hung behind the falls later on.\nThe bottom of the canyon had quite a few more falls and fun sections than I anticipated and we were all pretty tired by the end. Then we had to make our way back through Italy and the same winding mountain passes that had brought us there. We made it back to Bled in the afternoon and set about finding some of the famous Bled Cream Cake to sample.\nWalking Lake Bled After sharing a round of dessert, including some world famous Bled Cream Cake, we decided we had to walk it off before finding dinner, so we walked the trail around the entirety of Lake Bled. That added another 3 or 4 miles of walking to our tally for the day. The timing of the walk was really good. The sun was starting to get low and the light was really pretty. The clouds were somewhat clear and we took way too many shots of the church and the island and the castle.\nEventually we made our way back to the beginning where we walked around in search of food. We asked our guides for suggestions; we wanted to try some traditional Slovenian foods. They suggested we hit the restaurants of Ljubljana instead of Bled. That wasn\u0026rsquo;t an option for us, but they gave us a few options in town as well. We walked another 2k or so before finally finding one that was open on Sunday night. We ate at a place called Central, and it was really great.\nAfter dinner we hit the pool complex at our hotel. They had several pools, multiple hot tubs, and a waterslide that guests can use for free. They also have saunas and an entire wellness center that you can pay to use. We stuck to the free zones and had a good time until they closed up shop around 9:00. We went up and showered with big hopes of sleeping well tonight with the door open. So far, so good. It\u0026rsquo;s quiet outside for now.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/fratarica-canyon/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe hotel was hot. I don\u0026rsquo;t sleep well when it\u0026rsquo;s too hot, and it was too hot last night. We tried opening the door to let in the amazingly cool and fresh air from outside, but it was so noisy that we had to close it. Maybe leaving it open and loud would have been a better choice, but instead we suffered and didn\u0026rsquo;t really sleep more than about 4 hours each. That\u0026rsquo;s a terrible record for our first night here after a full night of not sleeping on the plane. So we\u0026rsquo;re going to have to solve something for tonight. Hopefully there won\u0026rsquo;t be as many late loud parties tonight since it\u0026rsquo;s Sunday. We\u0026rsquo;ll see.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fratarica Canyon"},{"content":"A long time ago in a galaxy far away, we booked a trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia. We knew we wanted to spend some time there and to see some of the surrounding countries. We got our flights and seats and all that fun stuff booked and paid. Months later, Delta threw us a curve ball. We live in Saint George, Utah, so when we book international trips, we have to decide if we\u0026rsquo;re going to fly out of Las Vegas or Salt Lake City. The rest of our friends on this trip were flying out of Salt Lake, because they live near there. We opted to fly out of Las Vegas because it was a little cheaper and shorter for us (once you add in the drive to and from either LV or SLC). But there we were, about 6 months after making our choice and Delta cancelled our flight and booked us on new flights that cut a full day from our trip. There was no way that would work, since the rest of the crew wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to be missing anything and we would have a hard time catching up with them. So we had to make some hard choices and wound up starting our day 3 hours earlier, adding an extra stop in Detroit, and being pretty upset at Delta\u0026hellip; But at least we could still arrive in Paris with the rest of the group and then journey on to Ljubljana together. Delta wound up changing little things like plane sizes and schedules, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t amount to enough for us to have to do anything.\nTravel day started early for us. The rest of our crew flew from SLC at 2:30 pm, but we had to leave home very early to get to Las Vegas, hand-off my father-in-law to his son who was flying in from Portland, and catch our much earlier flight than we had originally booked. We got to Vegas before rush hour really started and picked up Dave for the hand-off. We all went to a keto bakery for some breakfast before dropping ourselves off back at the airport again.\nAt the airport, as Charmaine gave a hug goodbye to her dad, he got really anxious and asked if he really had to go with Dave (who he didn\u0026rsquo;t really seem to recognize at first). Charmaine told him yes, he really did have to go with Dave. He wasn\u0026rsquo;t super happy with the answer, but he went along with it because there wasn\u0026rsquo;t any other choice. Dave took Richard and our car and started their own adventure in Vegas as we headed inside Terminal 1 to fly to Detroit.\nOverheating in Vegas I really dislike being too hot on flights and almost all flights seem to be too hot for me. Leaving from Las Vegas, even in the morning, can really heat up the jetway and the plane as they sit helplessly motionless during loading and unloading. Today was no exception. We heard the gate attendant announce a pause during loading so nobody would have to spend time in the jetway now that it was \u0026ldquo;too hot for people\u0026rdquo;. I don\u0026rsquo;t think the jetway was all that bad, but the plane was super hot. And it only got hotter. And hotter. We wound up sitting there in the blistering Las Vegas sun for 40 minutes after our scheduled departure time. I had purposely picked our seats for the left half of the plane so we would be on the north side of the plane while flying - to keep our side out of the sun and hopefully a little cooler. But our plane was parked in such a way that the left half of the plane was taking the full brunt of that sunny death ray.\nWe booked seats A (window) and C (aisle) hoping that the middle seat between us would remain empty and we\u0026rsquo;d get a whole small row to ourselves. That almost never works, but when it does, it\u0026rsquo;s great. As usual, it didn\u0026rsquo;t work. A fairly large gentleman from just outside Toronto was set to sit between us today, but he was more than happy to accept the aisle seat in exchange for the middle seat he had booked. For me it meant I could sit next to Charmaine, but it also meant I had someone bigger than me (both taller and wider) pressing up against me. And that last part was just about the worst thing that could happen to me while sitting there, baking in our oven of a plane. I wound up extremely sweaty by the time we finally got off the ground. And the air conditioning never really caught up to cool us down. It was a hot and muggy trip all the way to Detroit.\nFood Search at DTW In Detroit we decided to have some lunch at Chic-Fil-A. I am in love with their Spicy Southwest Chicken Salad with their amazing Avocado Lime Ranch dressing. So we walked the full length of Terminal A in Detroit from gate A10 all the way down to A71 where Chic-Fil-A lives. Bad news, they don\u0026rsquo;t have their full menu at the airport and the part they cut out is salads. It makes sense. I don\u0026rsquo;t blame them, but it means I won\u0026rsquo;t waste my time trying again. Instead we went to a really great steakhouse we passed on our way there. I got a 7-pepper steak salad and Charmaine got a sirloin steak. They were both excellent and really hit the spot.\nWe hopped on our flight to Paris and they served up another dinner! That was completely unexpected, but it was Air France, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t really know what to expect. In general, Air France seems much nicer than Delta. This flight was a red-eye. Our flight was about 30-40 minutes late due to headwinds preventing our aircraft from arriving on time from Paris. I guess it just goes back and forth every day. So we wound up leaving Detroit around 10pm local time. It was only 8pm in Saint George at that point, but I was already pretty tired. Sadly, I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep much - if at all - on the flight. I always have a hard time sleeping on airplanes and even though this one was pretty comfortable, I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find a position where I could sleep very long. It probably didn\u0026rsquo;t help that the woman directly in front of me was coughing almost non-stop for the duration of the flight. It didn\u0026rsquo;t sound like the type of cough you get when you\u0026rsquo;re really sick, but it was still enough to make me anxious and help keep me awake.\nWe arrived late in Paris, of course, and our already short layover seemed really short and we had to run to get through security and catch a bus to a different terminal to catch our final flight to Ljubljana. We just made it when they announced our flight was delayed by about 25 minutes. No big deal. We decided to hit the Air France lounge, which was really nice. They had way too many good pastries and cheeses. I could have been very comfortable sleeping and eating in there all day. But luckily our flight was only 25 minutes delayed and we left at 1:05. Curiously, my Fly with Delta app was showing that I had been bumped to the next flight, which didn\u0026rsquo;t leave until 9:10 pm. I\u0026rsquo;m very glad that didn\u0026rsquo;t happen.\nThe final flight was operated by Hop! which at first seemed like it might be a discount airline a la Sprit. Nobody in our group was sitting by anyone else from our group and they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t let anyone change their seat assignments. But the plane was comfortable and I actually managed to sleep about an hour of the short \u0026ldquo;hop\u0026rdquo; to Ljubljana.\nSweet Slovenia Coming down over Slovenia was like a fairy tale. All the mountains were extremely picturesque and all the little villages looked like paintings. It reminded me a lot of Austria, and that makes sense since they share a border. Everything was so green and perfect, it almost didn\u0026rsquo;t seem real. We landed, retrieved our checked luggage, picked up our rental van, and headed off.\nOur only mission in Ljubljana today was to drop off some missionary care packages to some sister missionaries who met us at a nearby chapel. It only took about 15 minutes to get there from the airport, so we had a few minutes to scout the place out before they arrived. It was sort of an interesting building for a Mormon church. It looked very similar to other European meetinghouses you may have seen, but this one had a ramp going down under the building with a big parking garage below the church. I thought that was pretty cool.\nAfter that we parked over by the castle and walked around town. The first place we stopped was Gelateria Romantika, which we had seen reviewed several times on YouTube. Everyone was saying how amazing it was, so how could we pass it up? Well, the waffles were nothing like the waffles you find in Belgium, which was a huge disappointment, but the gelato was really amazing. We especially loved the Sicilian Almond Cream. I would go back just for some more of that.\nWe took the funicular railway (fancy tram) up to the castle and did a self-guided tour up there. It was pretty, but not all that spectacular. We have seen a lot of castles now, so it takes something really special to knock our socks off, and this one didn\u0026rsquo;t do it. The view from the top of the tower was pretty and the dual winding staircases up the tower were also fun and cool. After the castle, we wandered down through the restaurants along the river to find something to eat. The river was high. Much higher and muddier than we expected. They have been getting a lot of rain lately, which explains it, but it also made us wonder about the two adventures we have scheduled for the next tow days\u0026hellip; it should be interesting to see how it all plays out. We saw a bunch of bridges along the river, including the famous Dragon Bridge. I thought the dragons were supposed to be a lot bigger, but it was still pretty cool.\nWe stopped at a local pizza place and had some pretty good and interesting pizzas before making the short trip up the mountains to the town of Bled.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/saint-george-to-ljubljana/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA long time ago in a galaxy far away, we booked a trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia. We knew we wanted to spend some time there and to see some of the surrounding countries. We got our flights and seats and all that fun stuff booked and paid. Months later, Delta threw us a curve ball. We live in Saint George, Utah, so when we book international trips, we have to decide if we\u0026rsquo;re going to fly out of Las Vegas or Salt Lake City. The rest of our friends on this trip were flying out of Salt Lake, because they live near there. We opted to fly out of Las Vegas because it was a little cheaper and shorter for us (once you add in the drive to and from either LV or SLC). But there we were, about 6 months after making our choice and Delta cancelled our flight and booked us on new flights that cut a full day from our trip. There was no way that would work, since the rest of the crew wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to be missing anything and we would have a hard time catching up with them. So we had to make some hard choices and wound up starting our day 3 hours earlier, adding an extra stop in Detroit, and being pretty upset at Delta\u0026hellip; But at least we could still arrive in Paris with the rest of the group and then journey on to Ljubljana together. Delta wound up changing little things like plane sizes and schedules, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t amount to enough for us to have to do anything.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Saint George to Ljubljana"},{"content":"Today was our last day on Crete. I really enjoyed Crete. It may not be the \u0026ldquo;paradise\u0026rdquo; spoken of by our taxi driver on Santorini, but it\u0026rsquo;s a pretty, amazing place. The north side has all the cities and is fairly green and beautiful. The center has surprisingly tall and steep mountains. The south side has beautiful beaches. We spent the day at one of those beautiful beaches today.\nDriving from Chania to Elafonisi Beach is a challenge. The roads are windy and very narrow. In some places they are so narrow only a single direction can proceed at a time. We passed through what looks like a railroad tunnel, barely wide enough for the microbus we were driving. The road takes you through a few small towns where you are sometimes forced to pull to the side into a driveway so traffic coming towards you can get by. If you get carsick easily, this may not be a good trip for you.\nElafonisi Beach Elafonisi beach is beautiful. In some ways it reminds me of Balandra Beach near La Paz, BCS. There is a section of the water that is \u0026ldquo;knee deep\u0026rdquo; for hundreds of yards in every direction. We walked most of the way around the \u0026ldquo;island\u0026rdquo;. It was not an island today. But the big claim to fame for Elafonisi is not that it has shallow water. No, it is famous for its pink sand. There isn\u0026rsquo;t a lot of pink sand anymore, because so many tourists have scooped some up to take home for themselves, but there\u0026rsquo;s still enough to see and enjoy.\nWe got to the beach earlier than most and had our pick of parking spots. The lounge chairs were still stacked on top of each other as we strolled around. Eventually we took some off the stack and relaxed until someone came around to rent the chairs to us. That was the end of our chair affair. By that time we were pretty done with the beach anyway. We walked back to our cars and drove back up the mountain as the hordes descended. We were like salmon swimming upstream.\nSomewhere in the mountains we stopped for lunch at a cute little place ran by a woman and her mother-in-law. The experience seemed to sum up our other experiences in Crete. The food was great. The people were extremely friendly and working so hard to please. But we couldn\u0026rsquo;t stay long. We had a plane to catch.\nRental Car Returned? We turned in our rental car in one of the most chaotic scenes at a rental return that I can easily remember. Our car was rented through a third-party company and we were returning it to a partner company who seemed to be renting space inside a general car rental return area. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t obvious where we were supposed to go. Everywhere we went seemed to be wrong. Each person we talked to worked for a different company than any previous person we had talked to, and never for the partner company we were trying to find. Eventually we parked our car where someone told us to park (he didn\u0026rsquo;t work for our company). Then we found someone from our company at the carwash and handed them the keys. It was quite the experience.\nWe flew on Sky Express from Chanie to Athens. It was another turboprop plane where we stayed low over the Aegean Sea. I don\u0026rsquo;t think we ever got to 10,000 feet. The captain never turned off the fasten seat belt sign. The crew never got up from their jump seats. There were no snacks or drinks. The flight lasted about 35 minutes. Our taxi driver was waiting for us as we exited the airport and whisked us to our hotel for the evening.\nLast Meal in Athens We stepped out briefly to get one last meal in Athens. It was probably the only real \u0026ldquo;fail\u0026rdquo; we\u0026rsquo;ve had with respect to food and restaurants on the trip. Our waitress got everything wrong. She completely forgot Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s order and delivered every other meal to the wrong person. She was a really nice lady, but the food wasn\u0026rsquo;t great and then to have all those mistakes\u0026hellip; but we still enjoyed being out and about one last time.\nIn the morning we got up and had another excellent hotel breakfast, walked over to Panathenaic Stadium, which is probably the only white marble stadium in the world. We took a few pictures, then walked back through a park or two to our hotel, packed up, and headed to the airport and flew home.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/elafonisi-beach/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday was our last day on Crete. I really enjoyed Crete. It may not be the \u0026ldquo;paradise\u0026rdquo; spoken of by our taxi driver on Santorini, but it\u0026rsquo;s a pretty, amazing place. The north side has all the cities and is fairly green and beautiful. The center has surprisingly tall and steep mountains. The south side has beautiful beaches. We spent the day at one of those beautiful beaches today.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDriving from Chania to Elafonisi Beach is a challenge. The roads are windy and very narrow. In some places they are so narrow only a single direction can proceed at a time. We passed through what looks like a railroad tunnel, barely wide enough for the microbus we were driving. The road takes you through a few small towns where you are sometimes forced to pull to the side into a driveway so traffic coming towards you can get by. If you get carsick easily, this may not be a good trip for you.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Goodbye Crete, Goodbye Greece"},{"content":"The Megaron Hotel continues to impress. Breakfast was perfect. I finally got to try the fried donut balls with sesame and honey. They were excellent. There was a ton of fresh fruit, some Greek yogurt, an omelet bar, a ridiculously well stocked dessert bar, and everything else you could think of. Fried meats like bacon and sausage? yes. Sandwiches? yes. Salads? of course. And like all the good places, they provided plastic gloves for everyone to use as they approached the buffet.\nAfter breakfast we checked out of the hotel and drove to the Palace of Knossos. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what I was expecting, but most of what is there are reconstructions of what an archaeologist thought things might have looked like. He reconstructed things a long time ago and now we can only look at his work. Well, that\u0026rsquo;s not completely true. There are still some original things from 1700 BCE, but like all the big archaeological sites I\u0026rsquo;ve been to - Machu Picchu, Tikal, Chichen Itza, etc. - most of what you see has been rebuilt/restored/reconstructed by someone. It makes sense, especially on Crete. People have been living here continuously for more than 9,000 years.\nOver the centuries people came and went. Buildings were built, destroyed, etc. People were not worried about preserving the past. They were just trying to live their lives. So one layer was built on top of another, etc. Now we want to see what was there, but that\u0026rsquo;s not possible without some imagination and reconstruction. So it is what it is. But it\u0026rsquo;s really not a whole lot when it comes to this particular palace.\nA lot of people will do the museum first and the palace second, but we chose to do the palace first and early in the day so it would still be nice and cool. That worked perfectly. Not only was it nice and cool, but we were almost completely finished with our palace visit when the first tour bus showed up. By the time we were getting back in our car the place was a zoo. Even the parking lot where we parked was crazy. There must have ben 5 or 6 busses there already. We definitely did it right.\nThe Heraklion Archaeological Museum is really amazing. They have artifacts from people who lived and died here on Crete for thousands of years. They have TONS of stuff. It amazed me to be staring at pottery from 1700 BCE and catch myself thinking it wasn\u0026rsquo;t very old compared to some of the other things we had seen just around the corner. It\u0026rsquo;s really interesting to see how things changed as different civilizations came to power, etc. I highly recommend it. If I had to do it all again I might skip the Palace of Knossos, but I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t skip the museum.\nWe were hungry and it was lunch time when we left the museum. We went back to the walking streets with all the restaurants and found our way to a falafel shop for lunch. After that we picked up some amazing Baklava from a place we had tried last night. They use pistachio nuts instead of the usual walnuts and the result is heavenly. We got the Baklava to go and ate it in the car on our way to Chania.\nWe took a detour just before Chania and headed south into the mountains to hike down through Imbros Gorge. It was pretty, but it also reminded us just how lucky we are to have the amazing canyons that we have right in our own backyards in Utah. It didn\u0026rsquo;t compare to the things we have back home, but we still enjoyed it.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/knossos-to-chania/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe Megaron Hotel continues to impress. Breakfast was perfect. I finally got to try the fried donut balls with sesame and honey. They were excellent. There was a ton of fresh fruit, some Greek yogurt, an omelet bar, a ridiculously well stocked dessert bar, and everything else you could think of. Fried meats like bacon and sausage? yes. Sandwiches? yes. Salads? of course. And like all the good places, they provided plastic gloves for everyone to use as they approached the buffet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Knossos to Chania"},{"content":"We got up early to see if there was a response from the boat tour company. They replied during the night. They\u0026rsquo;re not running the boat that does tours of the volcano this time of year, but offered to have us take their other boat (at twice the price) to visit some beaches. Unfortunately, that didn\u0026rsquo;t work out either, so we had a day of relaxation ahead.\nTaking it Easy We got up, packed our bags, and walked to a nearby bakery for breakfast. This one doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a beautiful view and doesn\u0026rsquo;t really cater to tourists. That made it a lot cheaper, but it was also a lot more complicated for us to order. I ordered something I had never seen before called \u0026ldquo;salty pancakes\u0026rdquo;. Brett got an omelette. Charmaine and Jess each got a Greek yogurt. The portions were huge, as they always are in this country. It was a real job eating all our food, but we managed to do it.\nAfter breakfast we stopped by our hotel to check out and move our bags to the front desk. We asked them to arrange for a taxi to pick us up there at 2:00, but they talked us into waiting until 2:30. That was a smart move. There\u0026rsquo;s no reason to wait at the ferry port longer than necessary.\nWith our luggage secure, we strolled down into town, window shopping here and there. We talked about riding the gondolas down to the marina where all the cruise ship people come in and out, but we decided there really isn\u0026rsquo;t a lot to do down there. It\u0026rsquo;s not like we would be swimming again. So we found a bench under a shady tree with an amazing view and just sat and relaxed, watching the ocean, talking about whatever. It was really nice.\nWhen we got bored with all that relaxation, we did some shopping. We considered many things, but ultimately walked away and back to our hotel. We picked up our bags and thanked our hosts right as a minibus arrived to speed us on to our final destination on Santorini, the new ferry port.\nFerry to Crete The port was crowded. We sat down at a table in the shade and enjoyed our time waiting for our ferry with a couple of cokes and a couple of lemonades. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t long before it was time to go. As we walked toward our ferry we saw a bus accident. Most of the busses were parked, waiting for their clients to get off the ferry that had just arrived. One started rolling and for some reason made a hard left turn, scraping a mirror off the bus next to him and putting a nice sized dent in his bus. They took a quick look at things, exchanged information and then went their separate ways.\nGetting on the ferry was chaotic. There were thousands of people and no order whatsoever. This is not Washington State Ferries. Everyone got on board the ferry with the cars in the garage below the passenger area. The ferry pulled out almost immediately with an entire football game\u0026rsquo;s worth of people still in the garage, yet to have their tickets scanned. Eventually it was our turn to go in the door and find our assigned seats up two flights of stairs.\nIt was really nice to have a window seat with a big air conditioner blowing air up alongside the window. I couldn\u0026rsquo;t have hand-picked a better situation for me. The seas were glassy calm with almost no wind and we were flying. This is a fast ferry with huge jets on the back. Being in the luxury area was excellent. We had big leather seats with plenty of legroom.\nHeraklion As we got close, it was obvious Crete is completely different from Santorini. For one thing, there are trees and other green things on Crete. And Heraklion looked like a big city. We were excited to get off the Ferry and pick up our rental van, but first we had to fight the crowds.\nOur hotel, the GDM Megaron, is about 2 minutes from the ferry dock, so it didn\u0026rsquo;t take long to get there. It\u0026rsquo;s a really nice hotel. They upgraded our rooms for us and they are nice. Huge comfortable king-size beds, super tall ceilings, a jar of complimentary cookies and some chocolates. This is what a hotel should be. This is a great start to a couple days on Crete.\nAfter settling in at the hotel, we wandered the city, had dinner at a random cafe, and then did our own sort of pastry and dessert tour of the city. I really like Heraklion. It has a good energy and lots of fun stores and cafes. We\u0026rsquo;re going to have a god time here.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/santorini-to-heraklion/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe got up early to see if there was a response from the boat tour company. They replied during the night. They\u0026rsquo;re not running the boat that does tours of the volcano this time of year, but offered to have us take their other boat (at twice the price) to visit some beaches. Unfortunately, that didn\u0026rsquo;t work out either, so we had a day of relaxation ahead.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"taking-it-easy\"\u003eTaking it Easy\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe got up, packed our bags, and walked to a nearby bakery for breakfast. This one doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a beautiful view and doesn\u0026rsquo;t really cater to tourists. That made it a lot cheaper, but it was also a lot more complicated for us to order. I ordered something I had never seen before called \u0026ldquo;salty pancakes\u0026rdquo;. Brett got an omelette. Charmaine and Jess each got a Greek yogurt. The portions were huge, as they always are in this country. It was a real job eating all our food, but we managed to do it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Santorini to Heraklion"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s pretty cool here right now, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t see the need to get up super early to start our big hike. We got up at a reasonable time, walked around town until we found a nice breakfast place overlooking the ocean, and then started walking from Fira to Oia.\nBreakfast was pretty good, but it was more expensive than it was worth, in my opinion. I guess that\u0026rsquo;s what you get when you go to a place with a nice view. Instead of the typical Greek yogurt, I went for some coconut yogurt with mangos and chia seeds. It was tasty, but I definitely could have used a bit more food before setting out on our hike.\nHiking from Fira to Oia I think the purpose of the hike is to visit all the churches along the ridge between the two cities. We got distracted early and went down to the ruins of Sarkos Castle which is a short hike down the cliff from the north end of Fira. There\u0026rsquo;s a nice church on the ocean side of it and we took a few pictures before continuing down the path towards Oia.\nI know I\u0026rsquo;m supposed to say it was a beautiful hike along the ridge, but it really wasn\u0026rsquo;t all that special. The blue water is very pretty, but the view of it didn\u0026rsquo;t change all that much as we walked along. I did enjoy the final church overlooking Oia with its wind-whipped flag. But otherwise it was just a nice 10 km hike along a mostly cobble-filled path.\nOia is a pretty happening place. The walkways are marble and well maintained. We grabbed lunch at the top rated pizza place in town. It was inexpensive, but really good. The crust was exactly how pizza is supposed to be. The pistachio milkshakes were perfect. And I really enjoyed the Santorini salad. I think I love feta and want to add it to my meals at home.\nWe decided to walk all the way to the very end of the trail and when that wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough, we walked down the stairs in Oia and found ourselves at the marina. From there we took a path at water level back toward Fira. The path didn\u0026rsquo;t go very far before it opened up into a really nice swimming hole on the sea.\nSummoned to the Sea We really wanted to go swimming, but none of us carried our swimsuits on the hike. They were all back at the hotel. So we just watched a few other people swim. You can only watch people enjoying unspeakable joy swimming for so long until you just have to join them. And that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what we did. Up and over a little ridge we found ourselves alone and stripped down to just our underwear and jumped in. It was magical.\nAfter rejoicing in the magical water for a while, we got adventurous and swam across to a small island with a platform about 8 meters high. We had to climb an old rusty ladder that wasn\u0026rsquo;t actually attached to anything in order to climb up to the platform. The worst part was crossing the mosaic made of shells at the top of the platform (obviously not put there for diving), but then we got to the edge and jumped down into the crystal clear water once again.\nThe water in Santorini is really great. The shoreline drops off quickly into the sea, which means there is no seaweed. And I don\u0026rsquo;t think we\u0026rsquo;ve seen a single sea bird the entire time we\u0026rsquo;ve been here. It\u0026rsquo;s basically perfect conditions for cliff diving. You can see everything and the bottom is basically a mile deep just a few feet from shore.\nAfter swimming we got some ice cream from a little shop in a cave at the marina and then climbed the stairs back to the top. There are a ton of donkeys on those stairs, waiting to take wimpy travelers to the top. We are not wimpy. We did not need donkeys. The climb up seemed a lot shorter than the climb down had felt. I guess swimming really replenished us.\nWe knew we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have time to walk all the way back to Fira after spending so much time in the water, so we got some pastries and then headed to the bus terminal where we took a bus back to Fira. It was a great adventure.\nBefore bed we tried to book a boat tour of the volcano, but we were probably too late to have much of a chance, sine the day was done and the companies had probably already setup everything for their morning tours. But we tried. We\u0026rsquo;ll have to see what, if anything, they say in the morning.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/santorini/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty cool here right now, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t see the need to get up super early to start our big hike. We got up at a reasonable time, walked around town until we found a nice breakfast place overlooking the ocean, and then started walking from Fira to Oia.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBreakfast was pretty good, but it was more expensive than it was worth, in my opinion. I guess that\u0026rsquo;s what you get when you go to a place with a nice view. Instead of the typical Greek yogurt, I went for some coconut yogurt with mangos and chia seeds. It was tasty, but I definitely could have used a bit more food before setting out on our hike.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Santorini"},{"content":"The day started early. We had to drive back to Athens in time to catch a flight to Santorini, and that meant leaving the hotel before 7:00. Breakfast doesn\u0026rsquo;t start until 7, but we hoped to sneak in and get a doggie bag for ourselves anyway. No. The lady setting up the buffet wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to fall for our tricks and excuses. We did finally talk her in to letting us grab \u0026ldquo;a role\u0026rdquo; before walking out to the car.\nThe drive back was beautiful, but we did hit some patches of smoke and fog. We only hit a little bit of traffic right as we entered Athens before we turned east to the airport. So we were able to miss most of it, which was great.\nFlying to Santorini We flew on Sky Express, which is one of those discount carriers where you pay extra for any little thing such as bringing a carry-on item with you on the plane. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t close to full and we had a nice flight. I was amazed at how many islands there are in the Aegean Sea. The entire flight from Athens to Santorini was filled with islands. There was never a time you could look out the window of the plane and see empty ocean. It was always filled with islands. Our flight stayed pretty low too. I thought that was interesting.\nSantorini is the island everyone told us to visit. It\u0026rsquo;s one of the most popular destinations in Greece. We are excited to see it. It\u0026rsquo;s famous for its white buildings and blue-domed churches. We arrived around 4pm and got a taxi to our hotel. The covid rules prevent having more than 2 people share a taxi unless they are family. We\u0026rsquo;re all family on this trip, so we shared a single taxi to our hotel.\nMarketing vs Reality The hotel is pretty nice, but some of the things that convinced Charmaine to book this particular hotel instead of any number of others didn\u0026rsquo;t live up to her expectations. For example, even though the hotel is almost as far west on the island as you can get (not a single road further west), it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a west-facing view. That means no famous Santorini sunset from the hotel. Another thing was the size of the bed. This hotel was one of the only hotels to advertise having King-size beds, but they turned out to be smaller (but still fine). But none of these things are a big deal. We can simply walk across the street to get the sunset views and access to the trails and shopping, etc.\nAfter getting settled at the hotel we wandered around the town of Fira. It definitely has a lot of white buildings and a few blue domed churches, but it\u0026rsquo;s not my style of town. There\u0026rsquo;s plenty of shopping and a lot of good food, but there\u0026rsquo;s nothing really special about it and the people running around are not my people. There are \u0026ldquo;influencers\u0026rdquo; at every viewpoint taking hundreds (literally) of photos of themselves for 20+ minutes. It\u0026rsquo;s so terrible to watch. Luckily, we don\u0026rsquo;t have to.\nDinner and Sunset We had an excellent dinner in Fira with a great view. We finally managed to find some lamb gyros, although the were listed as a \u0026ldquo;kebob special\u0026rdquo; on the menu. The gyros on the menu were, as always, pork or chicken. But I ordered the lamb kebobs and they were magical. We let them talk us into an orange souffle with chocolate ice cream for dessert. It was really great. We walked home happy after that.\nWe did some exploring, shopping, and taking pictures of the town before heading back to the hotel for bed. We have a big day tomorrow. We\u0026rsquo;re doing the 10k hike from Fira to Oia along the ridge from church to church. It should be interesting if nothing else.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/meteora-to-santorini/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe day started early. We had to drive back to Athens in time to catch a flight to Santorini, and that meant leaving the hotel before 7:00. Breakfast doesn\u0026rsquo;t start until 7, but we hoped to sneak in and get a doggie bag for ourselves anyway. No. The lady setting up the buffet wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to fall for our tricks and excuses. We did finally talk her in to letting us grab \u0026ldquo;a role\u0026rdquo; before walking out to the car.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meteora to Santorini"},{"content":"We went to bed a little later than usual last night. We enjoyed a sunset session from one of the viewpoints above Meteora, then drove down into Kastraki and had a late dinner at a local pub. The Gyros continue to be pork or chicken only, no sign of lamb anywhere.\nDespite the late-ish night, we still wanted to be up for sunrise at one of the overlooks. We got up around 6:00 and headed up into the hills/rocks. It was nice, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t magical like the previous night had been. Part of that is probably because the newness of the view was starting to wear off, but the real difference was the lack of clouds. People underestimate the value of clouds when taking landscape photos.\nAfter sunrise we drove back down to the hotel for breakfast, which was really good. The had a buffet setup. In order to keep things safer, they required everyone wear masks (which is always required in the public areas of the hotel), but they also put out plastic gloves to wear while accessing the buffet. I was pretty impressed by that, and even more impressed with the food. I\u0026rsquo;m sure I ate too much, but I knew we had a big day ahead of us.\nThe Monasteries of Meteora After breakfast we headed back up into the rocks to visit the various monasteries built atop some of the spires overlooking the town. They were each built by different people at different times. At one point there were at least 24 of them, but now they\u0026rsquo;re down to just 6. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty amazing to see how they were built and how they were able to defend them against everything.\nThis is the off season, and it\u0026rsquo;s a covid year, so there are far fewer people here than normal. And yet, every monastery parking lot filled up and many of the narrow winding roads had cars parked up and down them everywhere near anything remotely interesting. Monasteries drew the most cars, followed by nunneries, and then overlooks. There were also some cars parked randomly at places that didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be interesting, but I\u0026rsquo;m far from an expert. It made for a slow journey through the back roads.\nWe got a good parking lot at the Holy Monastery of Grand Meteoron, which was one of the first to open. They require all women to wear skirts \u0026ldquo;for modesty\u0026rdquo; even if they are already wearing pants. They had a stack of skirts for women to borrow on their way in and a different place to drop them on your way out. Both Charmaine and Jess had to borrow a skirt in order to visit the monastery. Inside the monastery, they had a bunch of old things that the monks had preserved over the years, including books and bibles from the 900s. That\u0026rsquo;s just amazing to me. Of course, they don\u0026rsquo;t allow any photos or videos of their amazing documents and treasures.\nParking had gone crazy by the time we were done touring that first one, so we decided to leave the car parked there and just walk to the next one. It was much smaller, but still very cool. The second one didn\u0026rsquo;t have a stack of skirts to borrow, but they were conveniently selling the same skirts for about $3 each. Charmaine and Jess each bought one. They were surprisingly concerned about getting a good one, even though they\u0026rsquo;ll never wear them again. I found that amusing. They wore their new skirts at all the other monasteries and nunneries we visited that day.\nBalance I don\u0026rsquo;t know what is more amazing to me: the rock formations or the monasteries. There\u0026rsquo;s a really interesting balance between the two, and they\u0026rsquo;re all great to go see. It\u0026rsquo;s not a huge area and there just isn\u0026rsquo;t that much to see. We were mostly done by lunch time, so we headed back down to town. Kastraki is really small and really only has a few pubs to choose from, so we decided to drive to the other side of the rocks to the bigger town of Kalambaka where we found more chicken gyros (still no lamb), smoothies, and some mastic and pink pepper ice cream.\nAfter lunch we went back to the hotel and relaxed a bit before heading back up to an overlook for sunset. There were still no clouds in the sky, which made for a bland sunset compared to yesterday, but it was still fun to watch all the other people scrambling for pictures. We tried not to stay out too late because we have to leave really early in the morning (before our hotel breakfast even starts) in order to get back to Athens in time for our flight to Santorini.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/meteora/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe went to bed a little later than usual last night. We enjoyed a sunset session from one of the viewpoints above Meteora, then drove down into Kastraki and had a late dinner at a local pub. The Gyros continue to be pork or chicken only, no sign of lamb anywhere.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDespite the late-ish night, we still wanted to be up for sunrise at one of the overlooks. We got up around 6:00 and headed up into the hills/rocks. It was nice, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t magical like the previous night had been. Part of that is probably because the newness of the view was starting to wear off, but the real difference was the lack of clouds. People underestimate the value of clouds when taking landscape photos.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meteora"},{"content":"We went to bed a bit early last night. For some reason staying up through the night on a flight will do that to you. So we went to sleep around eight and woke up around five. That\u0026rsquo;s a bit earlier than we were hoping, but the traffic noise was starting to build and it didn\u0026rsquo;t seem like we would be able to fall back to sleep.\nToday is Sunday. A lot of things seem to be closed on Sunday, even in Athens. We walked around the hotel in search of an ATM, an electronics store (hoping to buy a plug adapter), and to find some breakfast. We found an ATM at a bank across the street from the hotel. Across another street from there is a bakery called Bread Factory. We had no choice but to buy some pastries. The pastries were good, especially the mini Pain au Chocolat.\nWe pulled out 300 Euros from the ATM so we would have some walking around town money. We had our hotel break a 50 so we could tip the parking attendant when we were ready to leave.\nBreakfast Brett and Jess came down to the lobby just after eight and we headed off to find breakfast. We walked back to the restaurant area near the Acropolis and ate at a little café on a side street. I had some Greek yogurt with muesli and the omelet special. It was more food than I needed. The yogurt was really good, but the muesli wasn\u0026rsquo;t super impressive. Jess got honey with hers and that looked like the win. Charmaine and Brett each got fruit, which looked better than the muesli but not as good as the honey. The omelet specials we each got were nothing special, but they were fine.\nAfter breakfast we worked our way to the Agora which was really cool. I think I enjoyed it more than the Parthenon and the Acropolis Museum the day before. The Temple of Hephaestus at the Agora is really well preserved and didn\u0026rsquo;t feel reconstructed or fake the way the Parthenon did.\nWhat is a Gyro Anyway? We worked our way through the shopping streets towards the Acropolis museum for lunch. We had pork gyros. That\u0026rsquo;s right, pork. The only options for gyros in Athens (and maybe all of Greece) are pork and chicken. That\u0026rsquo;s extremely confusing to me. Greek restaurants in the US never have pork or chicken. They only have lamb and beef. That seems like a big deal. How did the two diverge? We may never know. I will say this, though, I far prefer the lamb and spices of the American gyros. It also seems to be extremely common to put French fries on gyros in Greece. You never see that in the US. We have a lot of onions and tomatoes on gyros in the US, but you don\u0026rsquo;t see that as often in Greece. Really the only thing Greek gyros have in common with American gyros is that their both served on a pita with a tzatziki sauce. Everything else is different.\nAfter lunch we walked over to check out Hadrian\u0026rsquo;s Gate before heading back to the hotel. When we got back, we were locked out of our rooms. We had asked for a late checkout earlier this morning before leaving, but something must have gone wrong. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a big deal. They swiped our cards and we went upstairs, grabbed our stuff, and headed out to Meteora in our lowrider Mercedes that I really dislike.\nBeautiful and Green The drive to Meteora was beautiful. Greece is so much greener and prettier than I expected it would be. I think I expected dry rocky coastlines and desert-like conditions, but that\u0026rsquo;s almost the opposite of what we saw. Driving the toll road was nice and fast. All the toll booths took visa and it was so easy to just tap the card and never worry about fumbling with change.\nBrett and Jess brought an international plug adapter with them, but only one. We\u0026rsquo;re planning to borrow it from time to time to charge my laptop and then charge our phones from the laptop. Our rental car does have a few good things going for it. One of them is a series of USB-C plugs throughout the car, so we\u0026rsquo;re able to charge our phones anytime we\u0026rsquo;re driving (and we remember to plug them in).\nWe arrived in Meteora to see our hotel bustling with activity. They were filming a Romanian cooking contest TV show out front of the hotel. It was easy to see why they chose this location. It\u0026rsquo;s incredibly beautiful. If this was in the US, it would almost certainly be a national park. We got settled in our rooms and then drove up to some of the monasteries and overlooks to enjoy the sunset.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/from-athens-to-meteora/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe went to bed a bit early last night. For some reason staying up through the night on a flight will do that to you. So we went to sleep around eight and woke up around five. That\u0026rsquo;s a bit earlier than we were hoping, but the traffic noise was starting to build and it didn\u0026rsquo;t seem like we would be able to fall back to sleep.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday is Sunday. A lot of things seem to be closed on Sunday, even in Athens. We walked around the hotel in search of an ATM, an electronics store (hoping to buy a plug adapter), and to find some breakfast. We found an ATM at a bank across the street from the hotel. Across another street from there is a bakery called \u003ca href=\"https://www.breadfactory.gr/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eBread Factory\u003c/a\u003e. We had no choice but to buy some pastries. The pastries were good, especially the mini Pain au Chocolat.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"From Athens to Meteora"},{"content":"We picked up Brett and Jess then picked up Steve and headed to airport. Steve took our car back to his house and will get it to Dave when he comes into town. The plan is to have Dave use the car while he is in town and we are gone. Dave will park the car at the airport when he flies back home, which is just a few hours before are supposed to arrive. So it will only need to be parked at the airport for a couple hours. We brought an extra key fob with us, so Dave can lock his key in the car when he parks it. I think it\u0026rsquo;s a great plan. I guess we\u0026rsquo;ll see how well it works over the next little while.\nOur flight was delayed out of Atlanta. We sat on the plane for an hour without a/c while they worked on one of the engines. We eventually got going and had an uneventful flight. The plane landed about an hour later than scheduled, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t matter to us; we were just headed to our hotel to drop off bags before wandering the city.\nWe picked up our rental car, a white Mercedes A 160d that is super low to the ground and has all the controls for things in places I\u0026rsquo;m not used to. The parking break is a button, for example, and there are no wiper controls to the right of the steering wheel. It took me almost twenty minutes into the drive to figure out how to lower my seat so I could see out the front window. It does have quite a bit of power, so it\u0026rsquo;s not too terrible to drive, but it\u0026rsquo;s a manual transmission and getting it into reverse is tricky.\nAfter getting settled in at the Windham Grand Athens hotel, we made our way to the Acropolis on foot. We walked all around there and then went through the museum of the same name. Both were very cool, but both are the type of places you need to see once and then probably never again.\nI had this idea of the Parthenon in my head that turned out to be very wrong. I thought some of it had fallen apart, but that the stuff that is still standing was exactly that\u0026hellip; still standing. But that\u0026rsquo;s not how it is. The Parthenon has been torn down, rebuilt, blown up, rebuilt, etc. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure everything standing there today has been restored or rebuilt at least once, but probably many times. But it\u0026rsquo;s still pretty cool to see and the rock carvings are just amazing. It is currently undergoing yet another restoration, so there are scaffolds around a lot of it and some cranes parked right inside while they do their thing.\nWe were really tired after the all-nighter we pulled getting here, so after walking back to the hotel around seven, we brushed our teeth and went to bed around eight. We slept pretty well until about five when the traffic outside the hotel started getting loud and somewhat crazy. It\u0026rsquo;s Sunday morning, but I guess traffic can happen anytime in a big city.\nOur hotel in Athens is in a bit of a rough neighborhood, so I don\u0026rsquo;t want to go running early tomorrow morning.\nAthens is a big city and for the most part doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to have any sky scrapers. The city is just really spread out and all the buildings are white. It must get pretty hot here in summer, but it\u0026rsquo;s not hot right now - the highs are around 75 and the lows around 55. There are some once-nice buildings in disrepair after years without any maintenance, and everything is pretty beat up. There is graffiti everywhere, but the streets and sidewalks are pretty clean. They\u0026rsquo;re cracked and beat up, but they\u0026rsquo;re fairly clean for a city of this size.\nWe completely forgot about bringing our international plug converters, so we\u0026rsquo;ll either be buying one soon or wind up completely off the grid.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/off-to-athens/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe picked up Brett and Jess then picked up Steve and headed to airport. Steve took our car back to his house and will get it to Dave when he comes into town. The plan is to have Dave use the car while he is in town and we are gone. Dave will park the car at the airport when he flies back home, which is just a few hours before are supposed to arrive. So it will only need to be parked at the airport for a couple hours. We brought an extra key fob with us, so Dave can lock his key in the car when he parks it. I think it\u0026rsquo;s a great plan. I guess we\u0026rsquo;ll see how well it works over the next little while.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Off to Athens"},{"content":"We originally planned on hiking and camping on Pacaya last month, but it decided to blow its top sending enough ash raining down to force the closure of the airport in Guatemala City. We hoped the two big eruptions would release enough pressure that things would calm down and we could still camp on the volcano before we head back home. Things worked out well and we were able to make our trip to Pacaya and see lava last night and this morning.\nSun Dogs and Rain Sun Dog\nThe weather wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite as cooperative as the volcano. Brett and I worked all morning and then we saw a sun dog. Carlos, the gardener at the house we\u0026rsquo;re renting, told us the sun dog was a sure sign that a lot of rain was coming. We didn\u0026rsquo;t want to believe him, so we looked it up on Google. His story checked out, so we all took rain gear to the volcano.\nWe booked our tour with Ox Expeditions, who we liked because of the experience a large part of our group had climbing Acatenango and Fuego with them earlier this trip. They were great. They provided us with backpacks, tents, headlamps, lunch, dinner, breakfast, and, of course, transportation.\nThe wind and rain pounded our little van all the way from Antigua to Escuintla, but then it stopped as we headed toward the mountain. After passing through San Vicente Pacaya and getting our temperatures taken to make sure none of us had a fever (their best approximation for covid testing), we started up the mountain. Not far from town the road forks and 99% of tourists go to the left and up the north side of Pacaya. We went to the right and that made all the difference. All the recent flows have been down the west side of the volcano, and that\u0026rsquo;s exactly where we went.\nGetting a Local Guide Lava covers a road\nThe van stopped en route to buy some firewood, but the earlier rain meant all the firewood was wet. It was hard to find someone who still had dry wood we could buy. We were also picking up a local guide to show us her farms. As it turned out, her mother still had some firewood. We were going to have a campfire after all. The guide\u0026rsquo;s name was Imelda. She was born and raised right there near Pacaya and had several kids of her own. I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure her whole family all lived under one roof - her mother, her daughters, some of her cousins, etc. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a very large place, but they made it work.\nIt only took a few minutes in the van to get to our starting point. We put on our backpacks and headed up behind Imelda. She led us on a crazy winding path that seemed like it may not have really been a path. As we hiked she explained that the roads, paths, and farms in the area had all been destroyed by and filled with lava during the past two or three days. The lava rivers that emerged from Pacaya after the last big eruption finally made it all the way down the mountain and into their village. Where there used to be a coffee farm, there was nothing but lava. Where there used to be a dairy, there was nothing but lava.\nMelting Shoes and Burning Legs We saw the lava. It had stopped being liquid on top in the past day or two, but it was still very hot. The wind was cold when it came from the south and I wondered if I should have brought a jacket. But then the wind would change direction and it felt like a fire-breathing dragon was nearby. It was a really interesting experience. The lava rocks were still moving slowly down the hill. They cracked and crashed in on themselves every now and then making all sorts of strange noises.\nLava flows between the cracks\nThrough the cracks the red lava glowed. Sometimes it was glowing so brightly that it looked bright orange, yellow, or some shade of white. Did I mention it was hot? We climbed around on some of the rocks and felt the real heat. Sometimes I thought the hairs on my legs were burning off. Other times I wondered if my shoes were melting. The heat alone could be very painful. And the rocks were not like any rocks I have seen or touched previously. They were more like three dimensional fractals of extremely sharp glass. Sometimes they sounded hollow when you stepped on them. Sometimes they broke or moved when you stepped on them. Sometimes you had to use your hands to help stabilize you as you moved around and that was always bad.\nHuman hands are not designed or built to handle fresh lava rocks. Even when those rocks are not hot, they are always sharp and odd-shaped. I really needed some thick leather gloves to be doing the kind of maneuvering I was doing. But it was worth the cuts, scrapes, and stabs to see and experience the lava slowly moving beneath the rocks we were standing on.\nRoasting Marshmallows One of the highlights of the trip was roasting marshmallows and making s\u0026rsquo;mores over some of the holes in the rock where the hotter lava was exposed. We worked our way around a few holes searching for the right angle to get good shot of someone roasting their marshmallow. Charmaine was fearless and somehow survived the incredible heat coming out of those lava holes to be the model for a few pictures. I often joke that she has iron hands and can reach into a frying pan, pull out a piece of chicken from the boiling oil, and pop it straight into her mouth without even blowing on it. She can\u0026rsquo;t actually do that, but she does have a much higher heat tolerance than I have.\nRoasting marshmallows over lava\nWe built a good fire and Imelda went back home to pick up her daughter so she could introduce her to Nate. Her daughter was really cute and made eyes at Nate for hours as they sat around the fire. Nate either didn\u0026rsquo;t notice, didn\u0026rsquo;t care, or was too afraid to make contact. It was sort of comical, but also sort of sad. It would have been a great opportunity for him to both practice his Spanish and to practice talking to girls in a completely safe environment. We teased him about it the next day.\nThe wind and rain picked up after dark and I was glad Ox provided us with such good tents. We stayed dry, but there was little to no sleep to be had. The wind whipped our tents all night. The lava river just a few hundred feet away continued to move and make interesting unrecognizable sounds. The ground was far from flat and not very soft. The pads we had didn\u0026rsquo;t solve any of those problems. So I figure I slept an hour or two at most, but it was definitely worth it for the experience.\nSunrise from Pacaya We got up at 4:45 in the morning to hike to a viewpoint for sunrise. From the viewpoint we could see the three taller volcanos in the area all in a row. Agua (12,000+ feet), Acatenango (13,000 feet), and Fuego (12,000+ feet and currently erupting). It was still a bit cloudy, but the sunrise was still filled with color. We built another fire there, made some hot chocolate, and ate some banana bread with peanut butter. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t ever put peanut butter on banana bread before, but it was really good. I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;ll do that again.\nAfter sunrise we headed back to camp to play around on the lava rocks a bit more before breaking down camp and starting back down to where the van dropped us off. We stopped and took our packs off at a basketball court on the side of the road while we waited for the van. This proved to be the perfect time to tease Nate and Maebelina for not talking to each other. Then the van came and we headed back to Antigua. This may have been the last big adventure in Guatemala this time, and it\u0026rsquo;s already over.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/pacaya-por-fin/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe originally planned on hiking and camping on Pacaya last month, but it decided to \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/23/volcanic-ash-shutters-international-airport-in-guatelama/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eblow its top\u003c/a\u003e sending enough ash raining down to \u003ca href=\"https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/guatemala-city-airport-closed-volcanic-ash-coats-planes-76629452\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eforce the closure of the airport\u003c/a\u003e in Guatemala City. We hoped the two big eruptions would release enough pressure that things would calm down and we could still camp on the volcano before we head back home. Things worked out well and we were able to make our trip to Pacaya and see lava last night and this morning.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pacaya por fin"},{"content":"Sometime around 1450, the Chajoma Maya moved their capital to Jilotepeque Viejo in order to make it inaccessible to their hostile neighbors. The city itself had been built a few hundred years earlier and they hoped moving their capital here would help them keep their warring neighbors out. It didn\u0026rsquo;t work. They were captured and ruled by the Kaqchikel Maya and eventually removed from the site shortly after the Spanish conquest of 1524. The site was never used again.\nScientists didn\u0026rsquo;t have enough information when they named the site Mixco Viejo. At that time, they believed it had a different history and they named it according to the history they believed at the time. Since then, much more information has come to light and they no longer believe it was related to the Mixco people, but the name remains. So the history and naming of the site are a little confusing, but it\u0026rsquo;s still a very interesting place to visit.\nGoogle Short Cut We left Antigua around 9:45 in the morning. Traffic wasn\u0026rsquo;t bad and we were making good time. Google, in its wisdom, directed us to take a short-cut on a very nicely paved cement road with bike lanes and everything you would expect to see in the United States. It was so nice that I commented about how expensive it must have been to build and how long it would probably last. We started to notice we were the only cars on the road. All the other vehicles were big slow trucks. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t that big of a deal, because it was a nice road and we knew it was much shorter than the usual road. Eventually we got to a guard gate. The guards told us we had to turn around. The road is a private road for the cement company. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what company it was or which country bankrolled it, but it cost us at least 20-30 minutes because of the detour.\nAround 12:30 we arrived at the ruins. It was hot. It was 36 degrees C, which Jack converted to 96 degrees F. We hadn\u0026rsquo;t eaten since breakfast. But we decided to explore the archaeological site before getting lunch. It was dry, so any sweat we made quickly evaporated and cooled us. It didn\u0026rsquo;t feel nearly as hot as I expected it to feel. I did really well. But by the time we were done exploring, we were all very thirsty and hungry. We basically had the entire site to ourselves, so it was easy to see all the things we wanted without having to wait for other groups.\nExploring the site The site is broken up into several groups of structures, with each group being atop a different hill. Many of the structures have been restored/rebuilt so you can see what they looked like and even climb to the top of most of them. Some of the structures are in ruin, buried under dirt and grass. It\u0026rsquo;s a very interesting juxtaposition.\nI really liked Group B, which has two identical towers and two Mayan ball courts. We climbed both towers and walked through the ball courts. Some of the other locations had huge trees providing shade and there was always a cool breeze keeping us just the right temperature. The sun was directly overhead, so the pictures of people had really harsh shadows, but we all had a great time exploring.\nBy the time we got back to Antigua, it was 4:30 and everyone was starving. We dropped Nate off in town with 200 Quetz and told him to buy as much pizza as he could and bring it back home. I think that was one of the first times nearly everyone was looking forward to eating Little Caesar\u0026rsquo;s Pizza instead of a more typical Guatemalan meal.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/mixco-viejo-jilotepeque-viejo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSometime around 1450, the Chajoma Maya moved their capital to Jilotepeque Viejo in order to make it inaccessible to their hostile neighbors. The city itself had been built a few hundred years earlier and they hoped moving their capital here would help them keep their warring neighbors out. It didn\u0026rsquo;t work. They were captured and ruled by the Kaqchikel Maya and eventually removed from the site shortly after the Spanish conquest of 1524. The site was never used again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mixco Viejo (Jilotepeque Viejo)"},{"content":"Before leaving Chichi, we took a short hike up to Pascual Ab\u0026rsquo;aj, which is a Maya sacred site that survived the arrival of the Spanish. There used to be a carved idol at the site, but some Catholic Action members defaced it in the 1950s. It\u0026rsquo;s still an active site, though. You can see real Mayans conducting rituals there every day.\nLost and Found Even the cows knew we were lost\nWe got a little lost on our way there and wound up walking up through some farmland and through some houses. One of the homeowners came out and asked us what we were doing in her backyard. We told her we were trying to visit Pascual Ab\u0026rsquo;aj and she told us we were very close; it was just on the other side of her yard. She offered to take us there (so we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t break anything in her yard).\nAt the top of the hill we came across a cinderblock building and a bunch of round discs on the ground, about 3 feet across. There were also a bunch of crosses and other items all around. She explained to us that the cross is an ancient Maya symbol that represents the four directions. The crosses we saw were not influenced by the Spanish the Catholics, or anything Christian. She told us about the rituals they perform there, some for weddings, others for funerals, some for blessings of any kind. It was very interesting.\nRituals The round discs on the ground were charred black.\nRitual Blessing\nOur accidental tour guide told us about some of the rituals they perform there. Most of the rituals involve sacrificing eggs, oil, and a chicken or two. For example, she told us they cut off the heads of two chickens as part of the wedding ritual. If the two chickens dance without their heads, it\u0026rsquo;s a sign that the marriage will be a good one. If only one chicken dances, then there will be problems. There were a lot of chicken footprints on the ground.\nWe were lucky enough to have stumbled into an ongoing ritual. We saw a Maya woman performing a ritual. She was chanting and stirring a fire on one of the flat discs on the ground. It was a hot day with full sun and we were told she had been chanting and performing the ritual for several hours straight. She didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to want her picture taken, and I don\u0026rsquo;t blame her. I can\u0026rsquo;t think of any religion that encourages photography of their ceremonies.\nExit through the gift shop After observing for a few minutes we headed back down the mountain to Chichicastenango, this time using the normal path. It was covered in long pine needles which made it a little slippery in places, but it was shady and beautiful. At the bottom of the hill the path exits through another house, which I found interesting. They had what they call the Museum of Maya Masks. They also sold snacks and sodas. I didn\u0026rsquo;t buy any masks. I had an ice-cold coke. It really hit the spot.\nAngel\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/pascual-abaj/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBefore leaving Chichi, we took a short hike up to \u003ca href=\"https://aprende.guatemala.com/historia/geografia/cerro-pascual-abaj-quiche/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003ePascual Ab\u0026rsquo;aj\u003c/a\u003e, which is a Maya sacred site that survived the arrival of the Spanish. There used to be a carved idol at the site, but some \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Action\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eCatholic Action\u003c/a\u003e members defaced it in the 1950s. It\u0026rsquo;s still an active site, though. You can see real Mayans conducting rituals there every day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"lost-and-found\"\u003eLost and Found\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cfigure class=\"alignright landscape\"\u003e\n    \u003ca href=\"images/PXL_20210415_183647407.jpg\" data-lightbox=\"images\" data-title=\"Even the cows knew we were lost\"\u003e\n        \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"images/PXL_20210415_183647407.jpg\" alt=\"a white cow behind fencing makes eye contact and seems to be wondering how you found yourself there\" /\u003e \n    \u003c/a\u003e\n    \u003cfigcaption\u003e\n        \u003cp\u003eEven the cows knew we were lost\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pascual Ab'aj"},{"content":"Twice a week the main square and surrounding streets of Chichicastenango are transformed into the largest open air market in Central America. People come from miles around to buy and sell goods. Some are grown, some are reared, and many are hand-made. When we have visited in years past, there have been hundreds to thousands of tourists combing the market for bargains, but this year was very different.\nWe have always wanted to stay at Hotel Santo Tomas, but it was always completely full, forcing us to stay in some of the other hotels in town. This year we had no trouble booking 2 large rooms. And when we checked in, we found out we were the only guests in the entire hotel. They told us if we wanted to use hot water to call them and they would turn on the boiler for us. They were not running it because the hotel was empty. That probably meant the other hotels in town were also empty. And that probably meant there were no tourists in town for the market.\nMercado Central Buying Red Bananas\nThe market was very different from years past. Gone were the pushy sales people who would follow the tourists around until they bought trinkets, souvenirs, and other junk. This time the market was mostly business. Buy corn here. Buy meat here. All sorts of fresh vegetables are for sale inside this building. Etc. I was expecting to get harassed to get my shoes shined, since that has always happened in the past, but this year nobody ever asked. In fact, I don\u0026rsquo;t think I even saw a single person shining shoes anywhere.\nCovid has really changed things. As we talked about how much tourist money has stopped flowing into the town in terms of hotel rooms not booked, restaurants not filled, ice cream not sold, trinkets not bought, etc. The impact is enormous. In fact, I don\u0026rsquo;t think we saw even one other gringo at the market today. Wow.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not much for shopping, especially when there\u0026rsquo;s nothing I\u0026rsquo;m trying to buy. I didn\u0026rsquo;t last too long before sitting up on the steps of the big church and just watching the commerce happen. The steps were in the shade of the church and there was a nice cool breeze. I sat with Charmaine and watched flower vendors, mouse trap vendors, and corn vendors for about 45 minutes before heading back to the hotel to enjoy the garden.\nEl Jardín Hotel Santo Tomas has a huge central garden that they have pruned and cared for over many years. It\u0026rsquo;s really stunning. The fountains were not filled or running, but they were still beautiful. The gardens also have a surprise. The hotel has a whole host of macaws and other parrots they bring out into the garden during the day. It was a lot of fun to engage the birds and get them to talk. Most of them knew a few words and phrases in Spanish and some could also say \u0026ldquo;Hello.\u0026rdquo;\nRed Macaw\nIt was quiet except for the birds. Some of the birds got off their perches and climbed down into the garden to pick flowers before returning to their perch where they ate the flowers one petal at a time. It was very enjoyable and relaxing to sit and watch them. A few of the smaller parrots shared perches with each other. They really seemed to enjoy hanging out with one another and it almost seemed as though they were talking back and forth. Sometimes they even sounded like they were laughing.\nThere were three big macaws - two up front and one in the back. As we approached the one in the back, he climbed down his perch as if he was preparing to climb onto our shoulders or arms and go for a ride. He has very large claws, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t want him to climb onto us. His claws would easily pierce our clothes, even if he was trying to be gentle.\nAfter a little while everyone came back from the market. We bought a few ice cream cones at the Sarita across the street and headed off to our next adventure.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/chichicastenango/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwice a week the main square and surrounding streets of Chichicastenango are transformed into the largest open air market in Central America. People come from miles around to buy and sell goods. Some are grown, some are reared, and many are hand-made. When we have visited in years past, there have been hundreds to thousands of tourists combing the market for bargains, but this year was very different.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe have always wanted to stay at Hotel Santo Tomas, but it was always completely full, forcing us to stay in some of the other hotels in town. This year we had no trouble booking 2 large rooms. And when we checked in, we found out we were the only guests in the entire hotel. They told us if we wanted to use hot water to call them and they would turn on the boiler for us. They were not running it because the hotel was empty. That probably meant the other hotels in town were also empty. And that probably meant there were no tourists in town for the market.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Chichicastenango"},{"content":"I needed a haircut before we came to Guatemala. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get one because of various factors and the way I prioritized my time. After another five weeks of uncontrolled growth down here, I was in bad shape. Brett and his boys were also looking shaggy, so we found the barber shop with the highest reviews in Antigua and set up some appointments to get haircuts.\nThe major hair style down here is the fade, which is a cut where they use a shorter set of clippers on the sides and back to taper and blend it all the way down to your skin at the bottom. It gives the look of your hair fading away into your skin. It\u0026rsquo;s especially popular among teen-agers and college kids. Brett\u0026rsquo;s younger boys were very excited to get fade cuts and they turned out great. Brett and I didn\u0026rsquo;t go quite as extreme, although Brett did get the hot-towel straight-razor shave. Goodbye beard.\nRomeo and David did a fantastic job at Classic Barbershop Antigua. Not only did we get amazing haircuts, but we thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. They even had ice-cold cans of coke for us to enjoy while they worked. I only wish we had visited our first few weeks here so there would be time to go back. I think I would have tried more of a fade. Maybe I still will.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/cortes-de-pelo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI needed a haircut before we came to Guatemala. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get one because of various factors and the way I prioritized my time. After another five weeks of uncontrolled growth down here, I was in bad shape. Brett and his boys were also looking shaggy, so we found the barber shop with the highest reviews in Antigua and set up some appointments to get haircuts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe major hair style down here is the fade, which is a cut where they use a shorter set of clippers on the sides and back to taper and blend it all the way down to your skin at the bottom. It gives the look of your hair fading away into your skin. It\u0026rsquo;s especially popular among teen-agers and college kids. Brett\u0026rsquo;s younger boys were very excited to get fade cuts and they turned out great. Brett and I didn\u0026rsquo;t go quite as extreme, although Brett did get the hot-towel straight-razor shave. Goodbye beard.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cortes de Pelo"},{"content":"One of my favorite things to do is jump off of stuff into water. A few years ago we visited Lake Atitlan and did the usual thing of hiring a boat to take us around the lake. One of the places we stopped that day was at a little platform someone had built where you could jump off into the lake and take photos with the volcanos behind you, and then easily climb back up and do it again and again.\nI was really looking forward to jumping in the lake this time around, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t to be, for several reasons. If you know what I did to myself in Semuc Champey, you may have guessed that my leg isn\u0026rsquo;t fully healed yet. You would be right. My leg looks pretty good, but I still have a nice scab that probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hold up well to cliff jumping or swimming in a lake that Jess says made her sick last time. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if I believe the lake was the only thing that made her sick (although she did drink a lot of lake water that day), but it is a lake and it certainly has bacteria floating on the surface, like every other lake in the world.\nBetween my leg and Jess\u0026rsquo;s desire to not get sick (and not have any of her kids get sick), we opted not to do the cliff jumping this time. I have to admit I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sad about it. I think I would have been happier if the group had gone cliff jumping, even if I was only able to stand by and take pictures. When we passed the place where we went cliff jumping before, it was packed. There were at least 15 people on the platform, in the water, and climbing the side of the cliff up to the platform again. See that made me a whole lot less disappointed about not stopping there today. I don\u0026rsquo;t think it would be nearly as fun with a big crowd there. Part of what made it special for me was having that place to ourselves.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re getting to the end of the dry season in Guatemala and the hills around Lago de Atitlan are super dry and brown. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t expecting that. The lake itself is still really pretty, but the landscape doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel as magical without all the green. It\u0026rsquo;s interesting to be thinking and writing this, but I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I need to go back to Lake Atitlan again. I think I\u0026rsquo;ve seen and done as much there as I need to see and do. It\u0026rsquo;s definitely somewhere everyone should visit and enjoy, but I think I have seen and enjoyed it the right amount. There isn\u0026rsquo;t a lot of marginal utility left to be gained by coming back again.\nThe Porta Hotel del Lago\nIt\u0026rsquo;s only about 50 miles from Antigua to Panajachel, but it takes more than 2 hours to do the drive because the roads get super windy as they zig-zag up and down the sides of the mountains. And like all the other narrow roads in Guatemala, traffic can really stack up behind a couple of slow trucks on those corners. On the way there we had several people feeling car sick, so we had the driver crank up the air conditioning in the van and we made it there without anyone getting too sick. I seem to be immune to car sickness, so I do what I can to help the people who don\u0026rsquo;t feel well.\nWe stayed at our favorite hotel in Pana, the Porta Hotel del Lago. It was pink the last time we stayed there, but they\u0026rsquo;ve redone the outside and painted it all green now. It\u0026rsquo;s still looks a little too perfect to me. I kept saying it looks like a Fisher-Price building. The beds were firm and the showers looked American (no suicide shower heads). The food is always great and the location couldn\u0026rsquo;t be better. Every room has a view of the lake and some of the volcanoes that surround it.\nWe had a bunch of extra people with us, so it made for a big group everywhere we went. We had Mark and Kristen come down with Ben and Gabe. One of Brett\u0026rsquo;s neighbors was also down here. Thirteen is a big group in any country, but it seems especially so down here. We filled every restaurant we went into. We barely fit in the boat we rented. But we still managed to do everything there was to do. Charmaine even flew her drone for a little while in San Pedro La Laguna.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/lago-de-atitlan/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of my favorite things to do is jump off of stuff into water. A few years ago we visited Lake Atitlan and did the usual thing of hiring a boat to take us around the lake. One of the places we stopped that day was at a little platform someone had built where you could jump off into the lake and take photos with the volcanos behind you, and then easily climb back up and do it again and again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lago de Atitlan"},{"content":"We don\u0026rsquo;t see this very often in Antigua, but when we travel to smaller cities in rural areas it\u0026rsquo;s common to see complicated connections on many of the power distribution poles. This weekend we took a boat to several of the cities on the shores of Lago de Atitlan. Each of the cities we visited had power poles with more connections than you can imagine. I only snapped a few photos, but I think you can see what I mean. Imagine how much work it is to add/remove/change a connection on one of those. You have to not only know what you\u0026rsquo;re doing, but you have to be able to move carefully so you don\u0026rsquo;t get crispy.\nRat\u0026rsquo;s Nest\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/master-electricians/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe don\u0026rsquo;t see this very often in Antigua, but when we travel to smaller cities in rural areas it\u0026rsquo;s common to see complicated connections on many of the power distribution poles. This weekend we took a boat to several of the cities on the shores of Lago de Atitlan. Each of the cities we visited had power poles with more connections than you can imagine. I only snapped a few photos, but I think you can see what I mean. Imagine how much work it is to add/remove/change a connection on one of those. You have to not only know what you\u0026rsquo;re doing, but you have to be able to move carefully so you don\u0026rsquo;t get crispy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Master Electricians"},{"content":"We went to the ChocoMuseo in Antigua today. We signed up for the \u0026ldquo;bean to bar\u0026rdquo; workshop. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t our first chocolate factory tour, but this was so much better than any of the others. They didn\u0026rsquo;t include picking cocoa pods or fermenting or drying the beans, but we did get to roast them, grind them into paste using a mortar and pestle, make various chocolate drinks, and finally make our own chocolate bars. We also learned a lot along the way. I really enjoyed the whole experience. If you\u0026rsquo;re ever in Antigua and you like chocolate, this is a workshop for you. And it\u0026rsquo;s only $25 per person. Very worth it.\nThere were a total of five people in our group at the ChocoMuseo. All gringos, of course. One girl had been living and working remotely for six years. The other two people in our group were a mother and son from New York. We all got along well for the two hours we hung out together.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to see how many gringos are wandering around town now. Before Semana Santa, we pretty much had the town to ourselves. We were surprised whenever we saw gringos in those days. Then Semana Santa happened and Antigua has been filled with gringos ever since. I guess a lot of places are doing spring break now, so maybe that\u0026rsquo;s why we\u0026rsquo;re seeing so many more.\nWe talked about the difference between cacao and cocoa. Cocoa is a product of cacao; it\u0026rsquo;s the powder that\u0026rsquo;s left over after you extract the cocoa butter. We learned to look for a percentage of cacao and not a percentage of cocoa. There\u0026rsquo;s a huge difference between the two. We made our own cacao paste today by roasting the beans, removing the shells, and then grinding them into a paste. You can\u0026rsquo;t really eat the paste directly, it\u0026rsquo;s way too intense.\nWe also got to pour our own chocolate bars and then put them in the fridge to crystalize without tempering. Charmaine and I sort of switched roles. I went with dark chocolate and she went with milk. I added a bunch of good stuff to mine, including chili pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and pistachios. It turned out better than I expected.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/chocomuseo-antigua/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe went to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.chocomuseo.com/guatemala/antigua/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eChocoMuseo\u003c/a\u003e in Antigua today. We signed up for the \u0026ldquo;bean to bar\u0026rdquo; workshop. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t our first chocolate factory tour, but this was so much better than any of the others. They didn\u0026rsquo;t include picking cocoa pods or fermenting or drying the beans, but we did get to roast them, grind them into paste using a mortar and pestle, make various chocolate drinks, and finally make our own chocolate bars. We also learned a lot along the way. I really enjoyed the whole experience. If you\u0026rsquo;re ever in Antigua and you like chocolate, this is a workshop for you. And it\u0026rsquo;s only $25 per person. Very worth it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ChocoMuseo Antigua"},{"content":"One of the big reasons we chose to visit Guatemala this time of year was to be in Antigua for Semana Santa. They do some amazing things for Holy Week here. Some of the festivities were cancelled by the Catholic Church because of covid, but some of the traditions lived on. One of the most famous is the tradition of creating beautiful \u0026ldquo;carpets\u0026rdquo; out of colored sawdust.\nThe artists work through the night to create these works of art that don\u0026rsquo;t even last through the day.\nWe got to help build a carpet\nWe got to participate in creating one inside the ruins of the cathedral behind the church on the main square. It was fascinating to see how much work is required to build these carpets. You start by filling in all the gaps in the cobblestone streets with sawdust. Then you add on to that with a layer of sawdust to level the whole area where you will be working. After it\u0026rsquo;s level, you build the main layout elements with long straight forms. Then you start laying down the base colors. When those are done, you bring over some stencils and carefully layer them on top of the base colors. You carefully sprinkle colored sawdust in the holes of the stencils to create the designs and pictures on the carpet.\nRight away you realize there is no undo button. If you drop too much color, or put the wrong color in the hole\u0026hellip; you can\u0026rsquo;t really fix it. You just live with it and move on.\nThe night before Good Friday, they close all the roads in the middle of Antigua. Artists work through the night, transforming the cobbled streets into beautiful works of art. We got up early that morning to be the first to see the carpets. It was really nice to see each one before the crowds and wind combined to blur and scar them. There was a dog or two making trouble, but for the most part they looked perfect.\nBy nine or ten in the morning the crowds were gathering. At lunch the streets were packed. Just a few hours later, the carpets were destroyed. I\u0026rsquo;m glad we had the chance to see and understand them.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/semana-santa-en-antigua/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the big reasons we chose to visit Guatemala this time of year was to be in Antigua for Semana Santa. They do some amazing things for Holy Week here. Some of the festivities were cancelled by the Catholic Church because of covid, but some of the traditions lived on. One of the most famous is the tradition of creating beautiful \u0026ldquo;carpets\u0026rdquo; out of colored sawdust.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe artists work through the night to create these works of art that don\u0026rsquo;t even last through the day.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Semana Santa en Antigua"},{"content":"If you want to take a warm shower south of the border, you\u0026rsquo;ll probably run into what a lot of gringos call a \u0026ldquo;suicide shower.\u0026rdquo; You walk into the shower area and look up at the showerhead. It has electrical wires running into and out of it. Yikes. This is because they don\u0026rsquo;t waste a lot of gas and/or electricity down here doing things like keeping a huge tank of water hot. Instead, they only heat the water right when and where you need it.\nThe wires running into the showerhead are used to create a short circuit that gets hot right where the water passes over it. Your shower temperature is controlled by how quickly the water passes by the heating element. Turn up the pressure to make the shower cooler. Turn down the pressure to make it warmer. Try not to touch anything that might make you part of the circuit.\nWe have seen and used these types of showerheads all over in places such as Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. I\u0026rsquo;m hoping we\u0026rsquo;ll get a chance to use them in El Salvador and Panama at some point in the not too distant future.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/the-suicide-shower/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you want to take a warm shower south of the border, you\u0026rsquo;ll probably run into what a lot of gringos call a \u0026ldquo;suicide shower.\u0026rdquo; You walk into the shower area and look up at the showerhead. It has electrical wires running into and out of it. Yikes. This is because they don\u0026rsquo;t waste a lot of gas and/or electricity down here doing things like keeping a huge tank of water hot. Instead, they only heat the water right when and where you need it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Suicide Shower"},{"content":"We regrouped after our lunch break. Our guide explained that each of us had a choice about how to get to the turquoise pools on top of the limestone bridge that is Semuc Champey. The hard way is to climb the stairs up to the lookout and then continue and descend the stairs to the top of the pools. He said it might be too hard for some of us and seemed especially worried about parents with kids. The alternative is to skip the cliff completely and just walk up the flat path along the river, similar to what we had walked earlier with our tubes, just on the opposite side of the river.\nEveryone in our group chose to go up to the lookout. The guide was a little surprised that all the kids wanted to do it, and they all did great. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t all that hard. Maybe 1500 steps with a total elevation gain of about 300 feet. Charmaine brought her drone with her and had hoped to be able to use it from below the pools earlier in the day, but she forgot to bring her phone, so there was no way to control it. This meant she was hauling her backpack everywhere without benefit. So she climbed all the stairs with the backpack on for training, and still beat almost everyone in our tour group to the top. Of course, Brett\u0026rsquo;s family was the fastest. They didn\u0026rsquo;t even notice they were climbing.\nAt the top they have built a lookout platform that hangs over the edge of the cliff. Because of where it is and how it is supported (or not), they limit the number of people on the lookout to 10 at a time. The view from the lookout is pretty, but it\u0026rsquo;s also the same picture you see over and over when you search the Internet for pictures of Semuc Champey. I looked around to see if there were any alternative viewpoints from which to get a shot, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find anything interesting.\nAfter we took our pictures it was time to go down the stairs to the pools we had just been overlooking. The stairs on the way down seemed a little steeper and more direct than the path on the way up. My legs were pretty beat up from earlier events, so that may have played a role in my perception. My right heel was really hurting. My right achilles was bothering me too. And, of course, my left leg was still oozing blood down the front of my shin.\nThe Disappearing River\nAt the bottom of the stairs was the limestone bridge over the Cahabón River. We could walk out across the top pool and take a few pictures before putting our phones and other stuff (backpacks, cameras, etc.) into a locker so we could swim. The lockers don\u0026rsquo;t have locks on them, so some of us chose to swim with money in our pockets, but we didn\u0026rsquo;t have a lot of choice with the camera bag and our phones. We could either trust the lockers, or stand on the edge of the pools and not swim. We chose to swim.\nAt the edge of the top pool we walked out to where the river has carved a channel into the limestone and drops underground. It was really fascinating to stand there and watch as this raging river completely disappeared just a few feet away from where we were standing.\nThe Upper Pools of Semuc Champey\nWe took a few pictures of the upper pools before putting our phones away in a locker so we could swim for an hour or so. The lower pools were actually a lot prettier than the upper pools, but without a waterproof phone or camera, there wasn\u0026rsquo;t a way to capture them.\nAt 4:30 we regrouped at the lockers and headed back to the main gate where our pickup truck taxi awaited us. 45 minutes later we were back at our hostel. The ride back was really pleasant with the wind causing our wet shirts and shorts to dry as we bounced along the winding dirt road.\nAs soon as we arrived at the hostel, Brett and I walked up the hill into town to a nearby pharmacy to buy some bandages and tools to clean out the wound on my leg. They didn\u0026rsquo;t have much, but we got some gauze and an ace bandage. They also sold us some antiseptic water (with some hydrogen peroxide in it). When we got back to the hotel, it was time for the cleaning. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t the most fun thing I have done, but we knew the river I was swimming in all day wasn\u0026rsquo;t exactly clean. The pools up top were probably cleaner than the river where I cut myself, but still far from clean enough to drink. They poked a hole in the lid of a water bottle so they could squeeze the bottle and spray out my wound. It worked really well. We wrapped it up and went to dinner.\nCleaning? the Wound\nWe were smart enough to eat dinner at the hostel. It may not appear anywhere on TripAdvisor or Google, but it was so much better than anything else we saw in town.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/semuc-champey-part-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe regrouped after our lunch break. Our guide explained that each of us had a choice about how to get to the turquoise pools on top of the limestone bridge that is Semuc Champey. The hard way is to climb the stairs up to the lookout and then continue and descend the stairs to the top of the pools. He said it might be too hard for some of us and seemed especially worried about parents with kids. The alternative is to skip the cliff completely and just walk up the flat path along the river, similar to what we had walked earlier with our tubes, just on the opposite side of the river.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Semuc Champey (Part 2: The Pools)"},{"content":"We slept pretty well last night, despite having 3 of us in the room and sharing a double bed with Charmaine. The only time I woke up was when I was freezing and had to adjust the air conditioner so it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be so cold. Tessa said something about how she\u0026rsquo;s glad she brought her blanket from home with her or she would have frozen. That\u0026rsquo;s a good air conditioner.\nBanana Pancakes and Fruit\nWe decided to have breakfast at the restaurant here at the hostel. That was a great decision. The restaurant is great. We knew immediately that we would be having dinner there too. I got the banana pancakes, which turned out to be more like crepes than pancakes, but with the bananas mashed and cooked into the crepe batter. It was pretty interesting and good. They served it with honey, jam, and a bowl of fresh fruit. I was very happy. Other people had omelettes, traditional Guatemalan breakfasts (which looked really good - I might have to get one tomorrow), and crepes filled with bananas and Nutella.\nAfter breakfast we met in the lobby of the hostel to await our tour guides and our ride into the Natural Monument of Semuc Champey. As expected, our ride was an open cage installed in the back of a pickup truck. So we all stood in the back of the pickup truck and held onto one of the bars of the cage to keep our balance as the truck cruised through town and up into the hills on some windy dirt roads. When we got to the park entrance, they were very serious about health and made everyone get their temperature checked and made sure everyone had a mask before entering the park.\nPickup Truck Taxi\nSemuc Champey is a natural limestone bridge over the Cahabón River. The river flows under the limestone for about 300 yards. On top of the limestone are several pools filled with turquoise water that flows down the mountains in the area. It\u0026rsquo;s really pretty. This is our fourth trip to Guatemala and Brett\u0026rsquo;s eighth. None of us had ever been to Semuc Champey previously, so it\u0026rsquo;s great to finally see it.\nThe river wasn\u0026rsquo;t super clean, but it was about as clean as any river I have seen in Guatemala. It didn\u0026rsquo;t stink like the river by our hostel, even though I\u0026rsquo;m 99% sure it\u0026rsquo;s the same river. I guess the town of Lanquín dumps a lot of garbage into the river. The fresh garbage and slow moving water must combine to make the river look and smell terrible by the time it passes the El Retiro hostel downstream from town.\nOur adventure inside the park was split into two main parts. This post covers the first part until lunch. We started by walking upstream, carrying an innertube that we would eventually use to float back down. The main attraction for part one was a cave tour by candle light. Our guide said it was too crowded for us to go in right away, so we did a few other things on the way there. The first was a swing tied to two trees with ropes about 50 feet high. You sit on the swing and let it carry you way out over the middle of the river where you jump off into the water. It was really fun.\nRope Swing into the River\nThe water wasn\u0026rsquo;t very deep and everyone hit the ground when they jumped in. That\u0026rsquo;s fine for people who have flown through the air and know how to control themselves and land correctly, but not everyone falls into that category. One Guatemalan kid in our group accidentally went in head first. He was wearing a life preserver and was terrified of the water. He struggled to swim after coming to the surface, despite the guide yelling for him to just stand up (knowing the water was not very deep). After about 30 seconds he finally stood up and started walking back towards us. That\u0026rsquo;s when we saw his bloody nose. No other Guatemalans tried the swing after that.\nA lot of the Guatemalans in our tour group were wearing life preservers. I don\u0026rsquo;t think many people here ever learn how to swim. It\u0026rsquo;s hard for me to imagine what it must feel like for them to be completely out of control in the water. I guess it\u0026rsquo;s probably somewhat like skiing when the hill is too steep for me. So I think they must be extremely brave to even attempt anything like that.\nAt the cave they gave each of us a candle and lit it as we went in. It was an interesting experience, but not one I would do again. Candles don\u0026rsquo;t provide much light, and it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see anything past the candle you\u0026rsquo;re holding when it\u0026rsquo;s in front of you. I held my candle to the side a lot so my eyes could focus on things ahead. But you can\u0026rsquo;t really see the cave this way, just the way forward to the next person holding a candle. That\u0026rsquo;s probably good, because I can only imagine what damage the black smoke makes from hundreds of candles burning inside every day.\nThe cave is filled with water that flows out of the entrance and down into the river. The water is deep and they have installed ropes and ladders to help you move through the cave. In many places the water was too deep to touch the ground and you had to use the rope to hold your head above water and to pull yourself along. That made for some interesting times as I watched Jess with her phone in one hand and three or four candles in the other still grabbing the rope and pulling herself along. The candles dripped hot wax onto your hands as you went along. Some candles burned much hotter than others. My candle wasn\u0026rsquo;t too bad, but some produced hot wax that really hurt.\nAt the end of our journey in the cave (about 1km in - though the cave itself goes another 10km) there is a deep pool. Some people, including Brett accepted the challenge to climb the wall and jump into the pool below in the pitch black. That must have been an interesting experience, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t call out to me, so I didn\u0026rsquo;t do it. I think I was mostly concerned I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be able to climb the wall.\nAfter the cave we continued upstream with our tubes until we got to a beautiful waterfall that reminded me of a bigger version of the Gozalandia waterfall we went to in Puerto Rico a few years ago. There was a lot of water running away from the waterfall, but not much water coming over the top. The river goes underground about 300 yards upstream and pops up at the base of this waterfall which is just after the final limestone pool on top of the limestone bridge.\nBrett Jumps In\nOur guides led us directly to a great cliff jumping spot about 15 feet above the river. The water there was super deep. It may be one of the spots where the water comes back up. We jumped it several times before the guide asked if we wanted to jump off the big island in the middle of the pool. There was never a doubt.\nBrett and Nate swam with me out to the island and began to climb. Our guide swam out and scurried up the island much faster than any of us. The island is made of limestone (like everything else around there) and has had lots of little cups scooped out of it by water and wind. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty rough and sharp in some spots and it was tricky to climb without cutting our hands. I was wearing my trail running shoes, which gave me an advantage. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t any faster, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t cutting up my feet.\nAt the top of the island, the guide tossed a rock into the waterfall to our left and told us to jump that direction. Brett went first. He jumped from the highest point near the edge of the cliff. Nate stepped down to a slightly lower perch before jumping into the waterfall.\nJumping into the Waterfall\nIt looked amazing. I was really pumped. In retrospect, I was probably a little too excited because I leapt high into the air and went a little past the waterfall when I entered the water. That little bit turned out to be a big deal.\nI am very comfortable jumping into deep water from fairly high up. We were not very high, maybe 30 or 35 feet. Our guide had talked about having three levels we could jump from, the highest being from 20 meters, which is about 65 feet. So we figured this was the middle height and we would graduate to something even higher. There really wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything higher to jump from here, but I was thinking there would be higher waterfalls later on.\nI had a great jump and a nearly picture-perfect entry into the river. Sure, I was a little off from the spot, but I\u0026rsquo;m a strong swimmer so I wasn\u0026rsquo;t too worried about getting caught in the current here. And there wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough water coming over the falls to hold anyone down. But almost as soon as my head was going underwater I knew I was in trouble. Both feet slammed into rocks only about 6 or 7 feet deep. My shoes slipped off the rocks into deeper water, forcing my knees to bend. My left shin slammed into the rock and I came to a stop. I knew immediately that something wasn\u0026rsquo;t right. I pushed off and came to the surface victorious, but swam cautiously back towards the shore.\nThe guide had been watching my performance from his spot at the top of the island. He knew I had missed the spot and slammed into the rocks. He was more than a little concerned and yelled down to see if I was going to be alright. I told him I was fine and continued swimming to shore. The more I swam, the more I realized something was wrong with my left leg. Did I break it? It seemed like I could still move it to kick. I definitely bruised it because it was really hurting. When I got close enough to shore to be able to stand up I realized it was bleeding. a lot. There was a nice red stream flowing out of my leg and heading downstream. I decided to stay in the water so I didn\u0026rsquo;t scare any of the other members of our tour group. I figured the bleeding wouldn\u0026rsquo;t last too long and then I\u0026rsquo;d get out when it was done.\nIt didn\u0026rsquo;t stop bleeding.\nShin Laceration\nThe guides eventually called for everyone to walk downstream past some rapids and rocks to put our tubes in the water and float back to the beginning. I stepped out of the water and the blood kept flowing, running down my leg and into my sock. It was pretty painful to walk, but started feeling better as we walked down the path. By the time I had my tube and was walking down into the river it seemed to be feeling pretty good. But when I stepped back into the water pain raced through my leg and I could barely walk. I managed to climb into my tube and start floating downstream with my leg out of the water, bleeding. Several other people had noticed the blood, but none of them were sure how it happened. I\u0026rsquo;m hoping they all thought I got it from the climb up the sharp rocks on the island and not from the jump into the river. I guess it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter, but I don\u0026rsquo;t like being a reason that keeps people from becoming comfortable in water.\nThe tube ride was super chill and we were back to where we started in no time. We took about 45 minutes for a lunch break before heading up to the top of the natural limestone bridge that made this place famous.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/semuc-champey-part-1/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe slept pretty well last night, despite having 3 of us in the room and sharing a double bed with Charmaine. The only time I woke up was when I was freezing and had to adjust the air conditioner so it wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be so cold. Tessa said something about how she\u0026rsquo;s glad she brought her blanket from home with her or she would have frozen. That\u0026rsquo;s a good air conditioner.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Semuc Champey (Part 1 - Below the Waterfall)"},{"content":"We got up and ate breakfast earlier than usual this morning. It\u0026rsquo;s Friday, which means we\u0026rsquo;re not working \u0026ndash; just trying to get our adventure on. Some of our previous attempts haven\u0026rsquo;t worked out exactly the way we hoped, but nothing stands in our way today. We\u0026rsquo;re headed to Lanquí­n to see Semuc Champey Natural Monument. It\u0026rsquo;s about 200 miles each way, but it usually takes 8+ hours due to traffic, construction, narrow winding roads, slow trucks, etc. Our driver pulled his van up to the house at 8:00 and we headed out.\nThe road trip went about as well as could be expected. We had originally thought about doing this adventure one of our first weeks in Guatemala, but it was too rainy in Lanquí­n. If you want to swim in the caves, float the river, dive into the limestone pools, etc. you can\u0026rsquo;t really have it flooding. Luckily the stars aligned for us this weekend and there\u0026rsquo;s no chance of rain. It is going to be about 100 degrees and humid, but that\u0026rsquo;s the way it goes.\nBuy your own toilet paper\nWe stopped to eat twice on our way. The first time was in the middle of nowhere. Two main-ish sized roads came together and they built some gas stations and fast food joints. We wanted to either hit McDonald\u0026rsquo;s or Pollo Campero, but instead we got a buffet style place where you have to buy your own toilet paper if you want to poo (which is actually pretty normal in this country, but not at McDonald\u0026rsquo;s. At McDonald\u0026rsquo;s the TP is included). Charmaine and I opted out and instead went outside where they were selling ice cream. I got a chocolate cone that was surprisingly good. I will get another one if I\u0026rsquo;m ever in a similar situation. Then we stopped again in Cobán, but this time we specified McDonald\u0026rsquo;s. We know they have clean bathrooms and that they take great care to keep their food clean. Right next door they were having the grand opening of Panda Express, so globalization is still going strong.\nCobán looks like a really nice place. Unlike many places, there is virtually no trash on the street anywhere. The windows on most neighborhoods don\u0026rsquo;t have bars protecting them, etc. We\u0026rsquo;ll have to come back someday and explore it a little more.\nStinky river rope swing\nWe arrived in Lanquí­n around 4:30 and it was still around 95 degrees outside. We checked ourselves in. We are staying at the El Retiro hostel. It\u0026rsquo;s considered expensive in these parts, but it\u0026rsquo;s like $40 per night per room, so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel very expensive. It\u0026rsquo;s right on the river and Nate and Brett wasted no time getting changed into swimsuits so they could jump into the river from the rope swing they\u0026rsquo;ve built. Unfortunately, the water below the rope swing is only 3 or 4 feet deep, so I didn\u0026rsquo;t take that plunge. The deeper part of the river smells like garbage, which makes some sense because a lot of people throw their trash in the river. It\u0026rsquo;s really sad and I hope this isn\u0026rsquo;t the same river we\u0026rsquo;ll be playing in tomorrow, because that will make for a bad experience. I\u0026rsquo;m not swimming in trash.\nCharmaine spent an extra $5/night to make sure we got a \u0026ldquo;suite\u0026rdquo; at the hostel. I think it means we get a private room with a private bathroom and \u0026ndash; most importantly \u0026ndash; we get air conditioning. Brett and Jess got two private rooms, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t get the suites. One room had an air conditioner in it, but they removed the remote so it couldn\u0026rsquo;t be used. The other room didn\u0026rsquo;t have one. Since it was so hot, Jess went to the front desk and got a remote so they could cool their room down, but the other room had no such luck.\nOur palapa \u0026lsquo;suite\u0026rsquo; at El Retiro\nWe thought it would be crazy to have three people in a room with no A/C so we invited Tessa to sleep in our room (we have two beds). It means Charmaine and I are sharing a small double bed, but it just makes more sense. Brett decided to share a bed with someone in the other room with A/C and that left Nate alone in his own room in the heat. He didn\u0026rsquo;t seem to mind too much, but it\u0026rsquo;s hard to know how he really felt. The air conditioner is working really well and has already cooled the room down to 25 C.\nWe booked a tour through the front desk for tomorrow. Then we went looking for dinner. There is a restaurant on site, but we decided to try the highest rated restaurant in town, which has a perfect 5 star rating after almost 50 reviews. Trip Adviser had never let us down before, but it sure did tonight. La Flamenca didn\u0026rsquo;t look like much, and it wasn\u0026rsquo;t. I was wearing cactus juice, but still managed to get eaten alive waiting and waiting for our food\u0026hellip; which turned out to be - hands down - the worst meal we have had in Guatemala. The steak was so chewy that we honestly had trouble cutting through it. The chicken was very overdone as well. So at least that discussion is settled \u0026ndash; nobody will argue that any other meal was worse. ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/the-long-ride-to-lanquin/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe got up and ate breakfast earlier than usual this morning. It\u0026rsquo;s Friday, which means we\u0026rsquo;re not working \u0026ndash; just trying to get our adventure on. Some of our previous attempts haven\u0026rsquo;t worked out exactly the way we hoped, but nothing stands in our way today. We\u0026rsquo;re headed to Lanquí­n to see \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semuc_Champey\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eSemuc Champey Natural Monument\u003c/a\u003e. It\u0026rsquo;s about 200 miles each way, but it usually takes 8+ hours due to traffic, construction, narrow winding roads, slow trucks, etc. Our driver pulled his van up to the house at 8:00 and we headed out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The long ride to Lanquín"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s amazing how quickly we can go from being awed by living in a big house with two chefs making amazing meals every day, someone doing all the cleaning, making my bed every day, doing my laundry, and a gardener who\u0026rsquo;s here three days a week making all the indoor garden areas, fountains, stairs, etc. look amazing\u0026hellip; to taking it for granted.\nTaking all that for granted? Yes.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re getting ready for our trip up to Semuc Champey tomorrow and I just caught myself wondering why my dirty clothes were still hanging on the clothes line upstairs and hadn\u0026rsquo;t been dried and folded yet. How did I get to that point? I\u0026rsquo;m very upset with myself for coming up with such a thought.\nI guess I\u0026rsquo;m really settled in here because I haven\u0026rsquo;t come up with anything interesting to write about. I have a few ideas for when we get back from the jungle, but it\u0026rsquo;s been a few days since I have had anything new to say. In fact, I don\u0026rsquo;t think I have even left the house in the last few days.\nThere has been a lot of work to do to prepare for our trip into the jungle where we may not have any communication or connection to the outside world. The hostel we booked claims to have Wi-Fi, but I\u0026rsquo;m not expecting much. I\u0026rsquo;m certainly not expecting the fast-ish internet we have here in Antigua. But we have made a lot of progress. We\u0026rsquo;re getting ready to launch a new website and a whole new business. We have people who are going to be working on it over the weekend, so we had to get things setup so they won\u0026rsquo;t have any trouble getting their work done while we\u0026rsquo;re gone (and offline).\nPepián with Potato, Squash, and Beef\nThere has been a lot of good food though. We finally got to try pepián, which seems to be one of the national dishes of Guatemala. This is my fourth trip to Guatemala and I\u0026rsquo;m only trying it for the first time now? It was really good, by the way. Maybe not as good as the soup we had when we first got here, but still really good. They serve it with a big chunk of meat and some vegetables on the outside of the bowl. Inside the bowl is the soup and some rice.\nSometimes I\u0026rsquo;m amazed at how many homeruns the chefs come up with. There are discussions about which meals have been the best and which haven\u0026rsquo;t. The answers are very different between kids and adults. Chocolate-chip Pancakes\nMy least favorite meal was this morning \u0026ndash; Pancakes with Chocolate Chips. I could easily get that at home, but I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t choose to get that at all. It\u0026rsquo;s not bad, but it\u0026rsquo;s also not special in any way. I would much rather have oatmeal or fried eggs. I think my favorite meal was probably the soup that first day, but there have been a lot of very close seconds. The consensus among the kids is that the arroz con leche is the best. I find that funny, because they all hate raisins and the way the chefs make it, it\u0026rsquo;s full of very large raisins. I love those almost as much as the rice pudding. American \u0026ldquo;Cheese\u0026rdquo; on a Fried Egg\nFor breakfast yesterday, we had eggs with American cheese. That\u0026rsquo;s probably a close second to the \u0026ldquo;worst\u0026rdquo; meal we\u0026rsquo;ve had. American cheese isn\u0026rsquo;t cheese to me, but I did enjoy having an egg and toast. I think we also had some arroz con leche with those eggs. I guess that means it\u0026rsquo;s far from the bottom after all. That rice pudding is excellent.\nFor lunch today we had Chile Relleno. When Charmaine makes it, it\u0026rsquo;s a whole poblano stuffed with chicken and chipotle peppers, but here it was just the side of a pepper and then a sort of chicken and spice meatloaf on top of it. It was still quite tasty, but there was nothing stuffed about that pepper. Bowls of fresh fruit\nOne thing I can\u0026rsquo;t say enough good things about is the fresh fruit every morning. We always have several kinds of fresh fruit cut up into bowls for us to eat. The amount of flavor in each bite of some of these tropical fruits is amazing. I can only describe it as having more saturation of flavor here. The mangos we have been eating are mind blowing. The papaya is fantastic. Even the pineapple is better than anything you can buy at home. And it\u0026rsquo;s always ready for us to eat it. Amaing. The watermelon, cantaloupe, and blackberries don\u0026rsquo;t seem quite as amazing, but they\u0026rsquo;re all still very good. ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/settled-in/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s amazing how quickly we can go from being awed by living in a big house with two chefs making amazing meals every day, someone doing all the cleaning, making my bed every day, doing my laundry, and a gardener who\u0026rsquo;s here three days a week making all the indoor garden areas, fountains, stairs, etc. look amazing\u0026hellip; to taking it for granted.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTaking all that for granted? Yes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re getting ready for our trip up to Semuc Champey tomorrow and I just caught myself wondering why my dirty clothes were still hanging on the clothes line upstairs and hadn\u0026rsquo;t been dried and folded yet. How did I get to that point? I\u0026rsquo;m very upset with myself for coming up with such a thought.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Settled In"},{"content":"Pacaya blew its top again today and they had to close down the airport. Our weather forecast in Antigua was for \u0026ldquo;Volcanic Ash\u0026rdquo;. I think we got a little bit lucky with the winds today because some locations got several centimeters of ash on the ground and we just got a heavier snow than normal. But it\u0026rsquo;s probably a good thing we\u0026rsquo;re not trying to camp up there tonight. lol.\nAshy weather\nOur chefs must have noticed that the kids haven\u0026rsquo;t been eating the amazing food they\u0026rsquo;ve been making us, because this morning we walked in to see French Toast with fig jelly. They loved the French Toast, but most of them steered clear of the fig jelly. I thought it was great. We also had our usual set of fresh fruit bowls including papaya, pineapple, cantaloupe, and the most amazing mangos I can remember. I may or may not have eaten two bowls of mango and papaya.\nAt lunch we heard the news about Pacaya shooting ash into the stratosphere and the airport being closed. In a way it could be good news, since we\u0026rsquo;re already in a holding pattern. Releasing a lot of pressure now may give us the best chance that it will calm down before our Guatemalan adventure concludes. Camping on Pacaya the last week here would be a great way to wrap things up. It\u0026rsquo;s sort of crazy how fast this trip is slipping away. We\u0026rsquo;re already 1/4 of the way through it.\nSopa de pollo con fideos\nLunch was a really nice chicken soup. It\u0026rsquo;s probably the first thing we\u0026rsquo;ve had that wasn\u0026rsquo;t amazing. It was great, but it seemed more normal than most of the things we\u0026rsquo;ve seen them make. They also had a bunch of tortillas and guacamole. They put some mint in the guacamole this time and the kids loved it. They burned through the entire stack of tortillas and the whole bowl of guacamole. The minty guacamole was interesting, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t my favorite. ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/ash-tuesday/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePacaya blew its top again today and they had to close down the airport. Our weather forecast in Antigua was for \u0026ldquo;Volcanic Ash\u0026rdquo;. I think we got a little bit lucky with the winds today because some locations got several centimeters of ash on the ground and we just got a heavier snow than normal. But it\u0026rsquo;s probably a good thing we\u0026rsquo;re not trying to camp up there tonight. lol.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ash Tuesday"},{"content":"When you make plans to summit volcanos, your plans have to be flexible. Volcán de Pacaya just began a new intense eruption yesterday and a new period of increased activity, so the country closed the National Park. Nobody gets to go near the volcano until it slows down. We got the email about it today, so we won\u0026rsquo;t be climbing to the summit tomorrow night to watch the lava flow down the side of the mountain after all. We\u0026rsquo;re hoping it will calm down enough before we have to fly back to the United States in a couple weeks, but there\u0026rsquo;s no way to predict what it will do. Brett\u0026rsquo;s kids are pretty upset about missing it, but there\u0026rsquo;s nothing we can do except enjoy our other activities. We\u0026rsquo;re still expecting to have a great weekend in Semuc Champey this weekend, but even that depends on the weather.\nI slept pretty well last night. It was nice to be back in this amazing house in Antigua. The weather is always perfect. There was a gentle breeze and we left the windows open all night. Brett said they also enjoyed the breeze. And the beds are so nice here. We are so spoiled.\nTamal de Navidad\nOur chefs pulled out another miracle this morning for breakfast: Christmas Tamales. They are a Christmas tradition, but they\u0026rsquo;re not restricted to Christmas. Our chefs made a batch of 25 tamales for their families over the weekend and they pulled aside some of the best ones for us. They were really great. The masa was moist. The red chile sauce added just a slight kick and depth of flavor. And the pork in the middle was extremely tender. Of course, several of the kids turned up their noses at them, having never seen anything similar in their lives. I think these are the types of experiences Brett wants his kids to have on this trip. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how anyone wouldn\u0026rsquo;t love them after a single bite, but I also know I was a picky eater when I was young. I may have behaved the same way.\nAfter breakfast Brett and I drove our cars back to the Alamo shop across town. We had arranged with the woman there to turn the cars in at 9:00. We didn\u0026rsquo;t get there until about 9:15, but she was running on Guatemalan time, so we were a little early. I wondered if she was enacting her revenge for having to wait for us when we were late picking them up, but I really doubt that. She is still hoping we\u0026rsquo;ll rent the cars from her again as we continue doing little weekend adventures.\nThe check-in process was as smooth as expected. I was a little nervous about a dent in the roof that I had failed to mark when we picked the cars up, but it was pretty obviously done a long time ago, so I figured she wouldn\u0026rsquo;t think we did it. I was sort of right about that \u0026ndash; but not because she thought the dent was old. As she walked around Brett\u0026rsquo;s car to inspect it, I realized she wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to accuse me of the ding on the roof of my car. She wasn\u0026rsquo;t tall enough to see the roof of my Toyota Corolla! We walked back to the house, stopping at a bank to pick up as many Quetzales as we could get. We have a lot of things requiring cash payments coming up and we don\u0026rsquo;t want to come up short. We won\u0026rsquo;t need to pay for the other half of our Pacaya adventure very soon \u0026ndash; if at all \u0026ndash; unless that mountain calms down in a hurry.\nSquash Soup and Oatmeal Chicken\nFor lunch we had a squash soup with cilantro, oatmeal encrusted chicken breasts, and some small potatoes with garlic and rosemary. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t ever heard of using oatmeal for breading on chicken, but it was really good. Of course, everything our chefs make seems to be fantastic and/or amazing, so I shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be surprised, but I am. You might think this was a perfect meal for the kids, or that they would at least love the chicken and potatoes, but you would be wrong. I guess the all-white-meat chicken breasts were just a little too strange looking for them to like. They did enjoy all the potatoes though, and even asked Jess if they could steal some from Brett\u0026rsquo;s plate. He was late to lunch due to a meeting that ran over.\nWe played a round of Cover Your Assets (card game) after dinner tonight. Charmaine made papaya banana smoothies and oatmeal. We mixed cinnamon and broken pieces of pan dulce into the oatmeal. It was really good.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/pacaya-can-wait/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen you make plans to summit volcanos, your plans have to be flexible. Volcán de Pacaya just began a new intense eruption yesterday and a new period of increased activity, so the country closed the National Park. Nobody gets to go near the volcano until it slows down. We got the email about it today, so we won\u0026rsquo;t be climbing to the summit tomorrow night to watch the lava flow down the side of the mountain after all. We\u0026rsquo;re hoping it will calm down enough before we have to fly back to the United States in a couple weeks, but there\u0026rsquo;s no way to predict what it will do. Brett\u0026rsquo;s kids are pretty upset about missing it, but there\u0026rsquo;s nothing we can do except enjoy our other activities. We\u0026rsquo;re still expecting to have a great weekend in Semuc Champey this weekend, but even that depends on the weather.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Pacaya can wait"},{"content":"We went to bed around 9 pm last night. We must be crazy gringo party animals. We invited Nate to sleep on the pull-out bed below our bunkbeds last night because he didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep very well on the couch in the family room the night before. There are no window coverings in there and the lights from outside were shining right on him. He fell asleep almost immediately, but he didn\u0026rsquo;t last very long. There was thumping music and fireworks keeping the rest of us awake until about midnight. And that\u0026rsquo;s about the time Nate decided he would rather sleep on the couch than in our room. I guess we are too noisy with our random coughs and snoring. I woke Charmaine up a few times to get her to stop snoring, but I think I slept pretty well overall.\nWe finally ate the granola and milk for breakfast. No sense letting it go to waste (or spoil in our cars on the way back to Antigua). We negotiated with our Airbnb hosts for a later checkout. It\u0026rsquo;s usually 11:00, but they said we could stay till 2:00. We were out by 1:00.\nBack to the beach The ocean called us back again this morning. There\u0026rsquo;s just something magical about being out in the waves, even when they\u0026rsquo;re not that good. I\u0026rsquo;m drawn to it. It\u0026rsquo;s amazing that we ever moved away from San Diego. I wonder if we\u0026rsquo;ll ever live in a warm location with a beach again. I hope so, but I\u0026rsquo;m not sure. It feels like it might be a trade-off that isn\u0026rsquo;t worth it.\nWe didn\u0026rsquo;t have the beach to ourselves today. There were a lot of other people on the beach with us. There was still a big warning sign right as you left the hotel about the \u0026ldquo;dangerous currents\u0026rdquo; in both Spanish and English. I have to say, there were no rip currents or sneaker waves or side channels or whatever else. But it\u0026rsquo;s definitely not a place to be in the water if you\u0026rsquo;re not a strong, confident swimmer. You will get pounded into the dirt by these waves, and the dirt is made of volcanic gravel. It\u0026rsquo;s not something you want to drag your face across. I wore a white athletic shirt to help protect me from both the sun and the breaking waves. It worked well, but I doubt I\u0026rsquo;ll ever get the tiny black sand particles out of it. And that\u0026rsquo;s OK with me.\nAfter about an hour playing out there and basically being the entertainment for lots of rich Guatemalan families who had come down to enjoy their weekend at this ritzy family-friendly paradise, a few of them ventured out into the ocean. Up to this point, nobody we had seen had ever stepped more than about 2 feet into the water. Now we had real Guatemalans seeing how fun it was and how easily we recovered after unexpected things happened to us, and they couldn\u0026rsquo;t resist trying it themselves. Sadly, it didn\u0026rsquo;t end very well for them. They were too uncertain to go out deep enough to get past the trough where the waves break closest to shore. After being pummeled once or twice, they went back to shore.\nAlways in the spotlight When we went back into the secure area of the resort, past the guards with shotguns, through the showers, to remove the black sand (nobody wants that crap in their pool), we hung out in the \u0026ldquo;deep\u0026rdquo; (4 feet) pool. Soon the kids wanted to do chicken fights, but that wasn\u0026rsquo;t a great idea. Eventually Brett turned that energy into something good and had each kid stand on his shoulders and they would both hold their arms out in a \u0026lsquo;T\u0026rsquo; while Jess took their pictures. I\u0026rsquo;m sure she got plenty of good ones. There was a lot of laughing and giggling as they were learning how to perfect the pose and falling into the pool. It attracted a lot of attention from little Guatemalan kids who thought it looked awesome. It did look pretty cool. Soon there were Guatemalan dads in the deep pool with their kids standing on their shoulders. It was pretty cool to see.\nWe were aiming to leave by 1:00, so by 11:00 we left the pools and headed back to our condo to clean up and start packing up so we would have time for another round of fancy drinks and a great lunch at the snack shack (I\u0026rsquo;m still sorry and a bit embarrassed that I never found out the real name of that restaurant \u0026ndash; it definitely wasn\u0026rsquo;t called \u0026ldquo;the snack shack\u0026rdquo;). We sat down at a table for lunch around 11:30. There were a lot of families with a similar idea to ours, so things moved a little more slowly than usual, but they still delivered some great food.\nLunchtime By this point almost everyone had decided the Piña coladas were the best of the fancy drinks. We actually bought them out of Piña coladas yesterday. Today I opted for Horchata, because nobody from our group had tried it yet. It was pretty good, but not as good as the Piña coladas, and not as good as the horchatas we had found back in Antigua (we are so spoiled). The rest of the group got more Piña coladas. We saw them adding sweetened condensed milk to them as they were making them. I had suspected that ingredient from the first time I had one. No wonder everyone loves them.\nTortilla soup\nI tried to order Arepas, but they were out. I decided not to order anything and just steal some of Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s tortilla soup and nachos. That was a brilliant move on my part, because I wasn\u0026rsquo;t all that hungry after the huge bowl of granola I had earlier, and Charmaine ordered way more food than she could eat. In fact, some of it went to Nate, who was waiting at the end of the table for scraps. Jess went with the steak that everyone raved so much about last night, and Brett switched things up and got chicken fajitas. Other than the nachos, each dish was another hit. The fajitas were quite spicy, which was really great. I added some of Brett\u0026rsquo;s chicken to a few nachos. Mmm. When Charmaine was done with her soup, we added some of Jess\u0026rsquo;s rice to it and gave it to Nate. He consumed it so fast you\u0026rsquo;d think he hadn\u0026rsquo;t been fed in days. I don\u0026rsquo;t think his body has a \u0026ldquo;full\u0026rdquo; indicator; he can always eat more. I doubt we\u0026rsquo;ll miss this little restaurant \u0026ndash; even though it was so great \u0026ndash; because we\u0026rsquo;re headed right back to Antigua and our in-home chefs, who are amazing.\nHome again, home again, jiggety-jig The checkout process was super smooth and easy. We were back on the road in no time. We made sure each car had 15 Quetz to pay the bridge toll on our way out. Traffic along the beach going back to the autopista was insane. It\u0026rsquo;s a tiny two-lane road through a couple tiny beach towns. Groups of crazy idiots would all pull out to pass and just keep driving in the lane meant for traffic going the other direction. That would force oncoming traffic off the road until the idiots were past them. The main body of traffic was going along close to the speed limit of 60 kmph, but the groups passing on the left must have been going more than 100 kmph. Eventually they all had to merge back in so they could cross the toll bridge. That was when things got interesting. There was a minivan who had used the oncoming traffic lane to pass hundreds of cars and was now trying to force his way in between me and Brett. I didn\u0026rsquo;t allow it. I just kept moving closer and closer to his van until he backed off. Charmaine was a little nervous about how close I was getting, but I knew there was plenty of room for me to move away to the right if I had to\u0026hellip; and we were only going about 1 kmph at the time. At one point I got within about 3 inches of the right side of his van. It was easy for me to see how close we were getting, because it was just out my driver\u0026rsquo;s side window. The driver of the van knew his car well, but not well enough to trust how close I was getting to him and he eventually gave up his dream of getting his way.\nThe toll bridge worked the same as before, but this time we paid the toll and drove on through. The highway coming south was really nice and smooth \u0026ndash; like any highway in the states. But our side of the highway \u0026ndash; going north \u0026ndash; was anything but smooth. I\u0026rsquo;m a little surprised we didn\u0026rsquo;t get a flat or go out of alignment on our way back. It was pretty crazy. But the drive went smoothly and we arrived in Antigua early enough to have a snack, unpack, make some plans for the week, eat diner, and do some church. Then we cleaned everything up and headed to bed.\nTomorrow at 9:00 am we\u0026rsquo;ll return the cars, which probably means we\u0026rsquo;re going to have to leave here by 8:30 to drive the 1.5 miles through crazy Antigua traffic. On Tuesday we\u0026rsquo;ll be climbing Volcán de Pacaya and camping somewhere on the mountain. It\u0026rsquo;s erupting pretty good right now, so we should see some interesting stuff on that adventure. And later this week we\u0026rsquo;re heading into the jungle to swim the pools of Semuc Champey. I doubt there will be internet access either place, so some posts may be delayed a few days.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/last-day-in-monterrico/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe went to bed around 9 pm last night. We must be crazy gringo party animals. We invited Nate to sleep on the pull-out bed below our bunkbeds last night because he didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep very well on the couch in the family room the night before. There are no window coverings in there and the lights from outside were shining right on him. He fell asleep almost immediately, but he didn\u0026rsquo;t last very long. There was thumping music and fireworks keeping the rest of us awake until about midnight. And that\u0026rsquo;s about the time Nate decided he would rather sleep on the couch than in our room. I guess we are too noisy with our random coughs and snoring. I woke Charmaine up a few times to get her to stop snoring, but I think I slept pretty well overall.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Last day in Monterrico"},{"content":"Surprisingly good breakfast I think I slept pretty well last night. I had the remote control to the air conditioner in bed with me, and I actually got cold enough at one point that I had to set the temperature a little higher so I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t freeze. That\u0026rsquo;s exactly where I wanted it to be.\nOmelette breakfast with platanos fritos\nWe were prepared to eat the granola from the Super Veinticuatro for breakfast this morning, despite Ty telling us multiple times that the snack shack in the middle of the swimmin pool complex was a real restaurant. Charmaine went over to the snack shack to buy a licuado and to see if she could pay with a credit card. They charge 6% extra to pay with a credit card, so she asked if she could pay at the end of the day for all the drinks and they said yes. She wondered what kinds of drinks they had and they handed her a menu. It was a big menu. And it had real food listed in it. Then she saw they were cooking breakfast for other people in the kitchen there. And immediately our vacation from our vacation changed for the better.\nInstead of granola, we had pancakes and omelets for breakfast. This was a fantastic discovery. Between the excellent air conditioning and the great food, I made up my mind that this is a great place to spend a weekend in Guatemala.\nA full day of swimming Jack told us he had a \u0026ldquo;full day\u0026rdquo; today. There was a lot of swimming that needed to be done. And that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what we did. We swam a lap or two around the big pool complex. We swam in the ocean again. The ocean swimming experience was much better today. There was a sand bar about 20 feet wide yesterday, but it was about 200 feet wide today. That resulted in waves we could ride for 200 feet as they came toward shore. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves, too. It was really fun. There were a bunch of really tiny jellyfish swimming with us making us tingle. The kids didn\u0026rsquo;t like that, so they went back to the pool pretty quickly, but the rest of us had a great time.\nVirgin piña colada\nWe played around in the pools and played games at our condo until it was well past lunch time. The kids were getting hangry so we made our way back to the snack shack for \u0026ldquo;linner\u0026rdquo;. One of the big items on the menu is pizza. Several kids ordered pizzas. At that point they told us they don\u0026rsquo;t make the pizzas at the shack, they order them in from somewhere else and it takes about 90 minutes. The kids decided having pizza would be worth the wait, but some of us wanted to eat right away. So we all ordered some great drinks (mostly virgin Piña coladas) and then the kids went with Jess to walk along the beach.\nDinner at the Snack Shack Dinner turned out really well. I had a chicken panini. Charmaine and Brett had steak. Nate was waiting for pizza, but didn\u0026rsquo;t go with the kids to the beach. Wisely, he chose to hang out with us at the snack shack and hope for some scraps. We handed him several. But he\u0026rsquo;s a teen-ager and we knew he would be hungry again long before the pizzas arrived. They told us they would deliver the pizzas directly to our condo. Perfecto. Sunset overlooking the beach\nAfter dinner we played several rounds of Skyjo with the kids. Pizza arrived and looked pretty good. The crust was very dense and pretty hard, almost like a really thick cracker, but the flavors were good. We didn\u0026rsquo;t come close to eating all the pizza, so we\u0026rsquo;ll either have it for lunch tomorrow, or we\u0026rsquo;ll take it back to Antigua with us. All the sun and swimming must have really taken a lot of our energy because we wrapped up our game playing by 8:30 and got ourselves ready for bed. ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/villas-aqua-los-cabos-de-monterrico/","summary":"\u003ch3 id=\"surprisingly-good-breakfast\"\u003eSurprisingly good breakfast\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI think I slept pretty well last night. I had the remote control to the air conditioner in bed with me, and I actually got cold enough at one point that I had to set the temperature a little higher so I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t freeze. That\u0026rsquo;s exactly where I wanted it to be.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure class=\"alignright\"\u003e\n    \u003ca href=\"images/PXL_20210320_162249603.jpg\" data-lightbox=\"images\" data-title=\"Omelette breakfast with platanos fritos\"\u003e\n        \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"images/PXL_20210320_162249603.jpg\" alt=\"a white plate with an omelette, some salsa, a plastic cup with refreid black beans, part of an avocado, a slice of cheese, and some fried bananas and sweet cream\" width=\"400\" /\u003e \n    \u003c/a\u003e\n    \u003cfigcaption\u003e\n        \u003cp\u003eOmelette breakfast with platanos fritos\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Villas Aqua los Cabos de Monterrico"},{"content":"Feeling Fine As expected, I felt fine this morning. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to get too crazy, but I did eat some pan dulce and drank a little orange juice. We worked some magic and found a nice Airbnb on the beach in Monterrico, rented some cars from Alamo, and headed south for a beach adventure. It isn\u0026rsquo;t El Salvador, but it\u0026rsquo;s the next best thing.\nOur Airbnb hosts were hurrying to make our unit ready for us and said they could have it available by 2:00 pm if we returned the Excel spreadsheet with our passport numbers and license plates. The form had to be filled out by us, then signed by the owner of the unit and returned to the property management and security dudes prior to our arrival or we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be allowed in the gate. Of course, we couldn\u0026rsquo;t fill out the form until we knew our license plate numbers and we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t know those until we picked up our rental cars.\nRenting Cars in Antigua We were lucky to be able to rent cars in Antigua. Alamo used to have a lot of rental locations across Guatemala, but since covid hit they have closed all but 3. I\u0026rsquo;m glad they have one in Antigua, because it changed the game for us. If we had to take a shuttle into Guatemala City in order to rent cars, we probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have done it. But walking across town to pick up some cars was fantastic.\nCharmaine reserved the cars for 9:00 am, but we didn\u0026rsquo;t get there until around noon. The woman waiting for us was very nice, but also made sure to let us know she had expected us earlier and had been waiting for us. The office has desks for 5 workers, but it\u0026rsquo;s clear 3 or 4 of them have not been used in a long time. We were probably the only car rental all day, maybe all week.\nWe reserved two Toyota Corolla (or equivalent) cars. I got a silver Corolla. Brett got a Yaris. I think the Yaris was supposed to be cheaper than the Corolla, but they charged us the same for each. We didn\u0026rsquo;t really care because the total cost per car for 2 days (excluding gas) was like $50 USD.\nWe started walking to Alamo around noon. It took about 20 minutes to walk across town and another 20-30 minutes to fill out the paperwork and inspect the cars. The drive back to the house from Alamo took almost as long as it took to walk there in the first place. Traffic in Antigua never seems to be good, and today was no exception. After we got back, we took pictures of the license plates, filled out the form and sent it back to our Airbnb host, then had lunch. After lunch we packed up and headed out. It was about 2:00 when we left our house in Antigua.\nDriving from Antigua to Monterrico Google Maps decided to route us on some dirt roads on our way out of Antigua to dodge some ugly traffic. It worked pretty well. It was so nice to leave the cobble stone roads of Antigua. I hate that crap. It sucks to drive on cobbles. It sucks for locals to maintain the cobbles (we see workers replacing broken and missing cobbles all the time and it\u0026rsquo;s not an easy process). It sucks to ride your bike on cobbles. It sucks to run on cobbles. It sucks to walk on cobbles. There is nothing good about cobbles. I understand the argument for trying to maintain the character of the city, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to be the entire city. They should pave everything and only leave the cobbles around the center of town. Rant over.\nAfter leaving Antigua the traffic seemed pretty normal. A few slow trucks here and there, a few corners and merges that had little backups, but nothing too crazy. Around Escuintla we merged onto the Autopista and got to drive really fast. At some point after that Google had us leave the highway and take a dirt road. Charmaine immediately questioned the decision (she was looking at the map and traffic on her phone). Google picked it because it saved a few miles but estimated the time would be the same as staying on the highway. The road was pretty dusty, but not too rough. It was sometimes a little dicey when oncoming cars would pass in the dust, but it was fine. The further we went down the road, the smaller it got. I always felt bad when we had to pass people on scooters or bicycles, because there wasn\u0026rsquo;t much we could do other than make them eat our dust. One time a lady and her daughter riding a scooter without helmet or goggles came out of the dust behind Brett\u0026rsquo;s car towards us. She had her eyes closed to avoid the dust. I was a little concerned. She kept her eyes closed and continued to drive down the road past us. I guess she really knows the road well.\nAt the end of the dirt road we hit the biggest traffic jam since leaving Antigua. This is where the two routes came back together and crossed a bridge. It turned out to be a toll bridge. Nothing we had seen or read lead us to believe there would be any tolls. And we only had 10 Quetzales. There were no signs at the bridge to indicate how much we needed to pay. We pulled up and a man with a shotgun moved some barrels in front of our car while a woman in the booth stuck her hand out. I gave her the 10 Quetz. She looked upset and said, \u0026ldquo;Quince!\u0026rdquo; I grabbed a one dollar bill from Charmaine (the exchange rate is about 1 dollar to 7.5 Quetzales) and handed it to her. She said, \u0026ldquo;No! Quince Quetzales!\u0026rdquo; I responded back in English, \u0026ldquo;I only have dollars!\u0026rdquo; and shrugged my shoulders. She glared back at me and waited for me to produce more of the Guatemalan currency. I looked around and realized that we were blocking traffic in both directions at the bridge because traffic behind me had cut off the traffic coming back across the tiny two-lane bridge. She realized the same thing. There was already a traffic jam when things were flowing, but now it was getting crazy. People were starting to honk. I looked back up at her and asked (in English), \u0026ldquo;What do you want me to do?\u0026rdquo; She handed me back all my money and told the man to let us go. I guess we were too much trouble. I would have gladly paid the 15 Quetz if I had known.\nHurry up and wait Our private pool\nIt wasn\u0026rsquo;t much further till we were at our destination, but it would be quite a while before we could go inside. We pulled up to the luxury gated community where we had rented the condo for the weekend. There were a few cars in front of us, but they were stopped and in park (no brake lights). A guard came out to see who we were and which room we were renting. We showed him the email from the owners (our Airbnb hosts) and the Excel spreadsheet we filled out. He already had a copy from them and just needed to see our passports. Well, he really just needed my passport, which he kept. I\u0026rsquo;ll get it back when we check out on Sunday. He checked us in, gave us wristbands, etc. But we still couldn\u0026rsquo;t go in because the cars in front of us were not moving. What seemed like several hours passed (probably more like 50-60 minutes), with many more cars pulling up behind us, checking in, getting wristbands, and waiting. Sometimes the new people would honk, but nobody ever moved. Until suddenly they did. A few cars finally moved out of the way and everyone else got to go in and park in their assigned spots. Later we got an email from our Airbnb host apologizing for the snafu at the front gate. Apparently one group had rented a unit, filled out their paperwork, but the owner of the unit had not sent it to the property management company. So the guards didn\u0026rsquo;t have any reason to trust the people and were not about to let them inside. The people who had already paid (and had nowhere else to go) were not about to leave either\u0026hellip; so the standoff cost all of us valuable pool and/or beach time.\nBeautiful common pool area\nOnce we got inside the condo, we realized it wasn\u0026rsquo;t the lap of luxury we are getting used to at the house in Antigua. They sent us a list of recommendations before we came. The list included things like eggs, oil, towels, soap, etc. The condo is fine, nothing to write home about, but not bad. It is pretty bare-bones though. No hand soap? Only five towels for eight guests? Whatever. It has a huge network of well-designed pools and direct access to a good looking beach. This was obviously why we were here. We got into our swimsuits and did a little swimming in the ocean before sunset. After that we were hungry. That\u0026rsquo;s about the time we realized we had neglected to bring any food. I think we thought we could just hit a restaurant after settling in, but there were no restaurants on the road in to town. There is a little snack-shack looking place in the middle of some of the pools, but it looked like they might not be open today and we suspected they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t really have any real meals. So Brett and Jess got in the car and drove back to a Super Veinticuatro (convenience store) we passed on our way in. They picked up some ramen, milk, granola, drinks, and a few other things we didn\u0026rsquo;t have at the condo (e.g. hand soap). We each ate our cup of ramen, played a few games, sat in our private pool (each ground floor unit has its own private patio and pool) and then got ready for bed. Every room has its own air conditioner, so I think I\u0026rsquo;ll be able to sleep even if the beds are not very comfortable. Charmaine and I chose the small room with bunkbeds because I figured it had the least amount of air needed to be cooled by the little air conditioner.\nI\u0026rsquo;m not sure I need to go back into the ocean here, the angle of the beach combined with the roughness of the volcanic sand made it a fairly brutal place to play in the waves, but I\u0026rsquo;ll probably give it another shot with everyone else tomorrow anyway.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/our-monterrico-adventure-begins/","summary":"\u003ch3 id=\"feeling-fine\"\u003eFeeling Fine\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs expected, I felt fine this morning. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to get too crazy, but I did eat some pan dulce and drank a little orange juice. We worked some magic and found a nice Airbnb on the beach in Monterrico, rented some cars from Alamo, and headed south for a beach adventure. It isn\u0026rsquo;t El Salvador, but it\u0026rsquo;s the next best thing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur Airbnb hosts were hurrying to make our unit ready for us and said they could have it available by 2:00 pm if we returned the Excel spreadsheet with our passport numbers and license plates. The form had to be filled out by us, then signed by the owner of the unit and returned to the property management and security dudes prior to our arrival or we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be allowed in the gate. Of course, we couldn\u0026rsquo;t fill out the form until we knew our license plate numbers and we wouldn\u0026rsquo;t know those until we picked up our rental cars.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our Monterrico Adventure Begins"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s funny how quickly things can change. Yesterday we were trying to make plans for the weekend. Last night I was just trying to survive. I woke suddenly at 2:30 am with a stabbing pain in my gut. I could feel all the muscles in my abdomen starting to tighten up. I went quickly to the bathroom and puked my guts out. That was my routine every 2 hours for the rest of the night and on through the whole day. I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep for more than about 45 minutes at a time from 2:30 am on. I had a fever that would spike and then drop and then spike and then drop. We measured it at 101.7. I felt terrible. By morning I looked terrible too.\nOur chefs made me a \u0026ldquo;remedy\u0026rdquo; they swear by which consisted of mineral water, salt, and lemon. It was really salty. And the carbonated mineral water only added pressure inside my guts, and that wasn\u0026rsquo;t great. I didn\u0026rsquo;t drink more than a few sips before it came right back up.\nCharmaine brought me a couple bottles of Gatorade from the tienda on her way back from Spanish school. I was able to keep a few sips of it down and it made me feel so much better. By evening I had sipped half the bottle and kept it all down. Brett\u0026rsquo;s friend Alma and her son Kevin came over to go out to dinner. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t feeling great so I stayed home. Brett got some Domino\u0026rsquo;s Pizza for the kids (who didn\u0026rsquo;t get to go to dinner). It sounded good, but I knew adding grease to a completely empty GI track wasn\u0026rsquo;t the smartest idea.\nInstead of getting a bunch of work done, I got to stay in my room and puke.\nInstead of going to the tour of the chocolate factory with everyone else, I got to stay home and puke.\nInstead of going out to dinner with Alma and Kevin, I got to stay home. I was glad I wasn\u0026rsquo;t puking anymore.\nI am not going to eat anything tonight, but if I\u0026rsquo;m feeling better in the morning I\u0026rsquo;ll probably have some pan dulce and see how it goes.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/102-in-antigua/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s funny how quickly things can change. Yesterday we were trying to make plans for the weekend. Last night I was just trying to survive. I woke suddenly at 2:30 am with a stabbing pain in my gut. I could feel all the muscles in my abdomen starting to tighten up. I went quickly to the bathroom and puked my guts out. That was my routine every 2 hours for the rest of the night and on through the whole day. I didn\u0026rsquo;t sleep for more than about 45 minutes at a time from 2:30 am on. I had a fever that would spike and then drop and then spike and then drop. We measured it at 101.7. I felt terrible. By morning I looked terrible too.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"102 in Antigua"},{"content":"We have recently been trying to make plans for this weekend. One of the things we want to do while we\u0026rsquo;re down here is swim the limestone pools in the river at Semuc Champey and swim through the Grutas de Lanquín. We really enjoyed swimming through the ATM cave in Belize and it sounds like the caves in Lanquín have a similar adventurous quality. Both of those adventures require relatively dry conditions, but the forecast for this weekend up there is for lots and lots of rain. We\u0026rsquo;re still in the dry season here, but the jungle can get rain anytime. So we can\u0026rsquo;t do that this weekend.\nWe already have plans for the next couple weekends, but no plans for this weekend. We only have so many weekends here and we don\u0026rsquo;t want any to be wasted.\nWe started looking into a trip down to El Salvador. It\u0026rsquo;s the last and most difficult country to hit in Central America. We have already done all the others except Panama, but that one should be pretty easy. I doubt we\u0026rsquo;ll ever plan an entire trip specifically to see El Salvador, so if we don\u0026rsquo;t make it there this time, we may never make it there. That would be unfortunate, but it\u0026rsquo;s the reality of the situation.\nWe found a driver who will take us across the border into El Salvador, but finding a place to stay has been tricky. There is also the issue of covid restrictions. Some people have told us we will need a negative PCR test in order to cross into El Salvador. Others say a rapid antigen test will be fine. Our driver said he researched it and found that even though we\u0026rsquo;re only planning to stay 2 days, we will still need to get two negative covid tests in order to make the trip happen \u0026ndash; one in Guatemala before we go and one in Belize before we come back. It seems silly to me that a covid test administered in Guatemala and used to cross into El Salvador wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be good enough to get us back into Guatemala. It would be within the 72 hour requirement and it would be a Guatemalan test! Whatever. Maybe it\u0026rsquo;s not really true and it would work fine. I don\u0026rsquo;t know.\nBut if a PCR test is required, then we probably can\u0026rsquo;t go. Several of us had covid somewhat recently, and it\u0026rsquo;s common for you to continue to test positive on the PCR test for 90 days afterward. It hasn\u0026rsquo;t been 90 days for us. We all recovered and tested negative with the rapid antigen tests (that\u0026rsquo;s how we were able to fly to Guatemala in the first place), but having to do a PCR test could throw a kink into things, especially if one of us came back positive because of some residuals lingering from when we were actually sick. So we\u0026rsquo;re probably not going to El Salvador this weekend, and maybe not ever.\nAnd that brings us back to the drawing board \u0026ndash; and one day closer to the weekend that we have yet to plan.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/planning-our-weekends-in-guatemala/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe have recently been trying to make plans for this weekend. One of the things we want to do while we\u0026rsquo;re down here is swim the limestone pools in the river at Semuc Champey and swim through the Grutas de Lanquín. We really enjoyed swimming through the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actun_Tunichil_Muknal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eATM cave in Belize\u003c/a\u003e and it sounds like the caves in Lanquín have a similar adventurous quality. Both of those adventures require relatively dry conditions, but the forecast for this weekend up there is for lots and lots of rain. We\u0026rsquo;re still in the dry season here, but the jungle can get rain anytime. So we can\u0026rsquo;t do that this weekend.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Planning our weekends in Guatemala"},{"content":"We can\u0026rsquo;t just play and eat all the time. We have to do something to pay the bills. Luckily, that something can be done remotely when there\u0026rsquo;s a good enough internet connection. The house we rented in Antigua has such a connection. It\u0026rsquo;s definitely not fast by our standards at home, but we\u0026rsquo;re able to do multiple simultaneous Zoom meetings without any trouble, and that\u0026rsquo;s our definition of \u0026ldquo;good enough\u0026rdquo; down here.\nWi-Fi in the Land of Rebar The internet router is in a box in the kitchen. All the walls are thick and made of cement with rebar. The Wi-Fi signal doesn\u0026rsquo;t travel very well through these walls. Luckily, there\u0026rsquo;s an open air courtyard in the middle of the house. And \u0026ndash; luckily \u0026ndash; I brought a long ethernet cable and Wi-Fi router from home. So we setup a secondary network piggybacking off the first. I ran the ethernet cable out of the kitchen and into the open courtyard and setup the Wi-Fi router in the courtyard. It made all the difference. Now we can get internet access in every room on the first and second floor. It\u0026rsquo;s still a little dicey on the rooftop terrace, but it\u0026rsquo;s too sunny to work very long up there anyway.\nNone of the furniture is perfect for working. Some of it just isn\u0026rsquo;t comfortable to sit in very long. Others are exposed to the sun. Some have no plugs so you can only work there until your battery gets low and then you have to work somewhere else while it recharges. The favorite spot seems to be the white couches just outside my bedroom window. They\u0026rsquo;re really comfortable and they have a great view, but the view isn\u0026rsquo;t free.\nGarden of Ashes The view from my new \u0026ldquo;office\u0026rdquo; won\u0026rsquo;t get old quickly\nOn Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we have Carlos, our gardener, working in the courtyard. It\u0026rsquo;s surprising how much work there is to do. Antigua is surrounded by volcanos and from the rooftop terrace we can watch Volcán de Fuego puff ash into the sky about every 5 minutes. At night we can see some of the lava flows. It\u0026rsquo;s really pretty, but it also means there is a constant rain of volcanic ash coming down. After a few hours of working in the courtyard, we can wipe black ash soot off our laptops. Imagine how much accumulates in the courtyard where it falls 24 hours a day. Carlos spends a lot of time just sweeping up the ash. It\u0026rsquo;s really pretty amazing. He also cuts all the dead flowers from the plants and prunes everything.\nHe does a great job. The gardens and views are extremely relaxing. I think I could trade a proper desk for these views and this atmosphere.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/working-from-antigua/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe can\u0026rsquo;t just play and eat \u003cem\u003eall\u003c/em\u003e the time. We have to do \u003cem\u003esomething\u003c/em\u003e to pay the bills. Luckily, that something can be done remotely when there\u0026rsquo;s a good enough internet connection. The house we rented in Antigua has such a connection. It\u0026rsquo;s definitely not fast by our standards at home, but we\u0026rsquo;re able to do multiple simultaneous Zoom meetings without any trouble, and that\u0026rsquo;s our definition of \u0026ldquo;good enough\u0026rdquo; down here.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Working from Antigua"},{"content":"Last night we decided to meet at 7:45 each morning for scripture study before breakfast. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how well that will work for me, because I\u0026rsquo;m used to sleeping until I wake without ever using an alarm. That usually translates to me waking up around 8, but there\u0026rsquo;s no guarantee. I\u0026rsquo;m definitely not a morning person, so we\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t get to sleep last night until about midnight. Then I woke a few times due to noises and other things. By 7:00 I definitely didn\u0026rsquo;t feel like I slept enough, but it was time to start the day. Our two chefs were here and preparing breakfast. They cut up fresh fruit into big bowls. We had pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, blackberry, and papaya. I sucked down a lot of fruit. I\u0026rsquo;m so in love with papaya. The main part of breakfast was \u0026ldquo;typical\u0026rdquo; Guatemalan. We had eggs, black beans, and platanos fritos con crema. I loved the fresh fruit. The eggs had a nice salsa. The black beans had a really complex flavor.\nAmazing Chicken Soup\nIt\u0026rsquo;s starting to dawn on me that I\u0026rsquo;m eating a lot more for each meal here than I would normally have eaten at home. That was definitely true at breakfast. I piled on the fresh fruit. Charmaine gave me some of her eggs (she\u0026rsquo;s not a big fan of runny yolks, but I am). I need to find a way to do portion control, but it\u0026rsquo;s not going to be easy with breakfasts like that.\nThe problem only got worse at lunch. For lunch they made us a chicken soup and guacamole that blew my mind. I asked for seconds and they filled my bowl again. Charmaine asked them if they had a recipe for it and they just laughed and pointed to their heads. I said it\u0026rsquo;s a family secret (the two chefs are sisters), and they laughed again. I\u0026rsquo;m still hoping we can get a recipe out of them before we leave, or \u0026ndash; at very least \u0026ndash; have that soup a few more times. Wow. ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/our-chefs-are-amazing/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLast night we decided to meet at 7:45 each morning for scripture study before breakfast. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how well that will work for me, because I\u0026rsquo;m used to sleeping until I wake without ever using an alarm. That usually translates to me waking up around 8, but there\u0026rsquo;s no guarantee. I\u0026rsquo;m definitely not a morning person, so we\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t get to sleep last night until about midnight. Then I woke a few times due to noises and other things. By 7:00 I definitely didn\u0026rsquo;t feel like I slept enough, but it was time to start the day. Our two chefs were here and preparing breakfast. They cut up fresh fruit into big bowls. We had pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, blackberry, and papaya. I sucked down a lot of fruit. I\u0026rsquo;m so in love with papaya. The main part of breakfast was \u0026ldquo;typical\u0026rdquo; Guatemalan. We had eggs, black beans, and platanos fritos con crema. I loved the fresh fruit. The eggs had a nice salsa. The black beans had a really complex flavor.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our Chefs are Amazing"},{"content":"Brett and Nate like to punish themselves. They proved it by getting up early and going for a run our very first morning in town. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a long run, but it was on the cobblestone streets of Antigua, which can\u0026rsquo;t be fun. A few minutes after they came back, Brett got a message from someone he knew when he was on his mission here years ago, who just happened to be in Antigua with his girlfriend for a cake piping class.\nBrett, Jess, Josue, Jen\nHis friend, Josue, had seen some crazy gringo running on the cobblestone streets and thought to himself, \u0026ldquo;Who comes on vacation to go running?!?\u0026rdquo; I have to admit the same thoughts have crossed my mind. Seconds after thinking that, Josue realized he recognized the crazy gringo, so he sent Brett a quick message that said, \u0026ldquo;Are you running on the streets of Antigua Guatemala?!?\u0026rdquo;. So we setup a time to go to lunch with him and his girlfriend, who Brett also knows from his mission. It\u0026rsquo;s definitely a small world.\nJosue and Jen arrived at our house about 1:30 and we headed out. Traffic in Antigua was insane. It\u0026rsquo;s the final Sunday of Lent before Semana Santa, the markets are open, etc. Es una locura. It took us almost an hour to cross the city in our car (which normally takes 20 minutes to cross *on foot*). We made our way up the side of the mountain to the \u0026ldquo;new restaurant\u0026rdquo; (so named by our landlord in an email she wrote 12+ years ago). The real name of the restaurant is El Tenedor del Cerro, which means the fork on the hill.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty swanky and nice, but that translated into a full 1 hour wait at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. I\u0026rsquo;m not a fan of waiting a long time to eat. Luckily, there is also a big art museum and a set of ziplines up there to give you something to do while you wait. The ziplines look like they would be great for kids, so we may go back just for that at some point, but today we saw the art. We spent about an hour walking through the various exhibits, some outside in the gardens, some inside various buildings.\nWhen an hour had passed we were seated under a tent to block the sun. There was a nice breeze and the temperature was amazing. The restaurant doesn\u0026rsquo;t try to rush you through anything, and we enjoyed our time talking and eating.\nJen started things off by getting us a carpaccio appetizer that was really good. Charmaine ordered chicken marsala. I got a shrimp pizza that had great reviews. Jen also got the shrimp pizza. Jess got a pizza with shrimp on one half. Brett and Josue each got a different steak. We each got a big drink. Most of us got horchata to drink, but Jen got fruit punch and Charmaine got limonada. Everything was really good, especially the horchata. That was some of the best horchata I have had. I only wish I had 3 or 4 times as much.\nWe heard later that it took Josue and Jen 90 minutes to get out of Antigua. Normally they would have been all the way home in about 20 minutes, but tonight it took almost 2 hours. We enjoyed a quick game of Skyjo, where I payed the newbie who lost every round. I\u0026rsquo;ll get \u0026rsquo;em next time.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/el-tenedor-del-cerro/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBrett and Nate like to punish themselves. They proved it by getting up early and going for a run our very first morning in town. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t a long run, but it was on the cobblestone streets of Antigua, which can\u0026rsquo;t be fun. A few minutes after they came back, Brett got a message from someone he knew when he was on his mission here years ago, who just happened to be in Antigua with his girlfriend for a cake piping class.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"El Tenedor del Cerro"},{"content":"I didn\u0026rsquo;t pack the right attire for attending church here. I packed my usual Duluth Trading Company cargo pants and a dark polo shirt. I can get away with that most of places we go, but not here. They dress in their best clothes for church in Guatemala. I didn\u0026rsquo;t plan for that, so I found myself feeling underdressed. But we still went.\nThe church is on the other side of town from where we are staying, so we started walking around 8:30 and got to church around 8:50. We wondered if they would be doing church via Zoom here or not. On one hand, it\u0026rsquo;s a little harder for people to get around, so, being able to do remote church seems like a great thing. But, on the other hand, we wondered how many people would have access to a computer and internet in order to watch church remotely. As it turned out, they have both. Church is conducted live, in person, and they stream it over Zoom.\nThe building is fairly small, but really nice. There were only a few people in the chapel when we got there, and not many more showed up after us. One guy who moved here from Canada about 9 or 10 years ago told us most people watch from home over Zoom and most of the people who show up in person are the ones who were asked to participate in the program. Everything was in Spanish, of course, which made it a little more difficult than usual to pay attention. We caught most of the gist of what was being said, but trying to focus and transalte at the same time really made me tired.\nOn the way home we stopped at a French bakery and picked up some good stuff. I really liked the empanadas (from a French bakery??) and the ham and cheese croissants. They also had some good pain aux raisin, but they just don\u0026rsquo;t compare to Mac\u0026rsquo;s.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/church-in-antigua/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI didn\u0026rsquo;t pack the right attire for attending church here. I packed my usual Duluth Trading Company cargo pants and a dark polo shirt. I can get away with that most of places we go, but not here. They dress in their \u003cem\u003ebest\u003c/em\u003e clothes for church in Guatemala. I didn\u0026rsquo;t plan for that, so I found myself feeling underdressed. But we still went.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe church is on the other side of town from where we are staying, so we started walking around 8:30 and got to church around 8:50. We wondered if they would be doing church via Zoom here or not. On one hand, it\u0026rsquo;s a little harder for people to get around, so, being able to do remote church seems like a great thing. But, on the other hand, we wondered how many people would have access to a computer and internet in order to watch church remotely. As it turned out, they have both. Church is conducted live, in person, \u003cem\u003eand\u003c/em\u003e they stream it over Zoom.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Church in Antigua"},{"content":"Today was our first whole day here in Antigua. It was a Saturday and we didn\u0026rsquo;t have anything on the schedule. We walked around town, bought some ice cream, enjoyed the fountain in the center of town, and then met up with one of Brett\u0026rsquo;s neighbor\u0026rsquo;s for lunch. Adam just happened to be coming to Guatemala this week and knew Brett had served his mission here. He sent Brett an email asking what sites he should see while in town. Of course, when he heard we were going to be here at the same time, he wanted to meet up and say hi. So we did.\nMermaid\u0026rsquo;s Fountain\nWe tried to have lunch at Cactus, which has good reviews, but it is really small. We had a group of 10 and it looked like the total capacity of the restaurant was about 14. Luckily there was a much larger place next door. Papi\u0026rsquo;s BBQ doesn\u0026rsquo;t sound like typical Guatemalan or even \u0026ldquo;Latin\u0026rdquo; fare, but it was really good. I got the namesake burger. Charmaine got a pulled pork sandwich and a maracuya drink. Everything was really good. Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s pulled pork wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite as good as Phil\u0026rsquo;s, but she said it was pretty close. That\u0026rsquo;s about the highest compliment Charmaine can give a BBQ joint.\nAfter lunch we walked across town and hiked up the hill to the cross overlooking the city. The hike was all paved stairs in the shade with a slight breeze, so it was really nice. The view from the top was great. We could see Agua, of course, and to the far right we could just see Fuego and Acatenango. Fuego was spitting out puffs of smoke every now and then. It was very relaxing to sit and look at the three volcanos and watch the city from the above.\nLater that evening we climbed up onto the roof of our place and watched Fuego puff out some more ash. We even saw some lava coming out as the sun set and it got darker. Charmaine did a Zoom meeting with her dad and Steven so they could see where we\u0026rsquo;re staying and maybe catch a glimpse of the volcano.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/cerro-de-la-cruz/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday was our first whole day here in Antigua. It was a Saturday and we didn\u0026rsquo;t have anything on the schedule. We walked around town, bought some ice cream, enjoyed the fountain in the center of town, and then met up with one of Brett\u0026rsquo;s neighbor\u0026rsquo;s for lunch. Adam just happened to be coming to Guatemala this week and knew Brett had served his mission here. He sent Brett an email asking what sites he should see while in town. Of course, when he heard we were going to be here at the same time, he wanted to meet up and say hi. So we did.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Cerro de la Cruz"},{"content":"Antigua has continued to grow since the last time we were here. There are a lot of great places to eat. After a long trip to get here, we needed to eat (and drink). Before we could go off wandering around town, we needed to get settled at the house we rented to be our home base for the next few weeks. We toured the property, met the gardener and the maid, and decided who would stay in which room. Let me just say, this place is fantastic. We knew it would be nice, but it\u0026rsquo;s even nicer than the VRBO listing made it look. This is going to be a great trip.\nCharmaine and I picked a room on the main floor, near the back. It gets a nice breeze and always seems to be perfectly cool. The bed is quite a bit smaller than we\u0026rsquo;re used to, but it will be fine. We packed an extra suitcase that had nothing but our favorite pillows from home. I think that seems a little crazy, but we were flying first class and were able to check 3 bags free \u0026ndash; each. So the nice cool room and our favorite pillows should make a great combination.\nPancakes with Fruit\nI decided to test the bed out and quickly fell asleep for a power nap. After that it was lunch time, and you know what that means? Time to hit the town for some breakfast. We headed straight for the main square and found a great little place called Café Condesa. We each ordered a batido. I wet with mango. It was really good, but I wondered if I should have chosen papaya instead. Especially after tasting the amazing papaya they brought out as part of our meals. I really love papaya. Charmaine ordered a beautiful plate of pancakes with fruit. I got the Huevos Guatemaltecos. That was also a great choice. They came with refried black beans and some fried potatoes. It was great, but I really needed about 5 times as much to drink. The batido was delicious, but it was nothing compared to the amount of liquid I\u0026rsquo;m used to drinking each day. The dehydrated feeling was compounded by the long flights with no drink options. That really was a killer.\nScrambled Eggs, Refried Black Beans, and Fried Potatoes\nOn our way home we stopped by a tienda and picked up some food and other things we thought we needed like shampoo, lotion, toilet paper, etc. It was really hot inside the store and I was really feeling the dehydration. The salt from breakfast was sucking up what little water I had left inside me. I just wanted to get some drinks and get outside. I didn\u0026rsquo;t pay quite enough attention to what I was grabbing or to the other options that were available. I wound up with some of the worst drinks I have ever had the misfortune of drinking. In fact, some were so bad I couldn\u0026rsquo;t finish a single glass. I\u0026rsquo;m sure they\u0026rsquo;ll wind up going down the drain because nobody is going to drink that crap.\nAfter that we took some real, multiple-hour-long, naps. We hadn\u0026rsquo;t really slept the night before, so it was good to get some real sleep.\nWe went back to the same store later that evening and I saw that I could have had freshly squeezed orange juice for almost the exact same price I paid for the terrible stuff. What a blunder. Mostly I just wanted water, though, and I got a bunch of it. I felt so much better after getting some water in me. It was amazing.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/breakfast-in-antigua/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAntigua has continued to grow since the last time we were here. There are a lot of great places to eat. After a long trip to get here, we needed to eat (and drink). Before we could go off wandering around town, we needed to get settled at the house we rented to be our home base for the next few weeks. We toured the property, met the gardener and the maid, and decided who would stay in which room. Let me just say, this place is fantastic. We knew it would be nice, but it\u0026rsquo;s even nicer than the VRBO listing made it look. This is going to be a great trip.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Breakfast in Antigua"},{"content":"Our layover in Los Angeles was just over five hours. That\u0026rsquo;s a long time to sit in uncomfortable chairs in a small terminal where almost everything was closed for the evening. At some point Brett and I talked about what time we thought we would be in Antigua in the morning. We were scheduled to land in Guatemala City around 6:00 in the morning. We thought that would probably be early enough that traffic wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be bad yet. We knew it would take some time to clear customs, especially with needing to verify every passenger held a recent negative test for covid, etc. We thought we would probably be leaving the airport by 7:00 and be in Antigua (20 miles away) by 7:45 or 8:00 \u0026ndash; just in time for breakfast. We thought that was a fairly conservative estimate. We thought we had it all figured out.\nEverything\u0026rsquo;s Coming Up Roses We were the first plane to land in Guatemala that morning. Immigration and Customs were completely devoid of passengers. Charmaine and I were the first people off the plane. We breezed through immigration and the covid health check and then waited for our bags to arrive in baggage claim. Brett and Jess stayed on the plane to gather their kids (who where all flying coach) before coming through, so we pulled their bags off the carousel to make things go faster once they arrived. All of our bags had been checked as First Class, so they came out first. And I mean first. Every one of the first 10 bags to come through were ours and theirs. We pulled them off and stacked them against a wall. The drug dog came around and indicated (sat down) by one of Brett\u0026rsquo;s bags. The soldier running the dog asked me if I had food in the bag. I said I didn\u0026rsquo;t think so, but that we could open the bag and look. He seemed happy with my answer (and probably that I didn\u0026rsquo;t freak out) and went to investigate other travelers. At that point Brett and Jess came through and we headed through customs. That only took moments and we were on our way. It was nearly 7:00 on the dot. We were feeling pretty confident about our earlier estimates about how long each thing might take. We may have even patted ourselves on the back at that point.\nWe were outside the terminal by 7:15. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty close to what we thought it would be. A driver named Ruben was already there and waiting to pick us up in a large silver van. Some local airport guys helped load our luggage and then asked Brett for a tip. We had no money and couldn\u0026rsquo;t tip. Ruben paid them a few Quetzales from his own wallet and we headed out of the airport and on our way. We didn\u0026rsquo;t know it yet, but our plan to be in Antigua for breakfast was about to get away from us.\nThe Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men To leave the airport, you drive along one side and then you\u0026rsquo;re forced to turn right \u0026ndash; even when you want to go left \u0026ndash; and you have to drive all the way to Avenida Las Americas before you wait in a super long line of cars and trucks to do a U-turn. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t even 7:30 in the morning yet, but traffic was intense. We worked our way slowly toward the U-turn and then really slowly back out of the city. And I mean slooooooowly. The more time passed, the worse the traffic became. After about 2 hours in the van (on our 20 mile trip), Antigua seemed further away than when we started.\nTraffic only got worse as we started our descent into the canyon toward Antigua. Eventually we were mostly just stopped. Ruben was surprised by it. He said it\u0026rsquo;s almost never bad traffic in that location, but there we were. After sitting motionless for 10 to 15 minutes, an ambulance passed us. We figured that was probably related to the traffic. Another twenty minutes passed before an undercover cop and a second ambulance passed us. We finally started creeping forward, but our three lane road was merging down to just one lane, because of an accident somewhere down the canyon. Around a few more corners (and another hour later) we saw the wreck. There was an overturned semi truck facing the wrong way. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure how it happened, but I suspect it rolled down the hill from the other side of the divided highway and just came to a stop on our side. It was really smashed up and wonder if the driver made it out. It didn\u0026rsquo;t look like it, but we hoped for the best.\nAfter passing the accident there was no more traffic and we cruised the rest of the way into Antigua. I think it was after 10:00 when we arrived, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t paying too much attention. My mouth was completely dry. I was probably dehydrated. I needed a drink. Delta\u0026rsquo;s lack of drinks had turned me into the equivalent of a very hangry man, but for thirst.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/guatemala-city-to-antigua/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOur layover in Los Angeles was just over five hours. That\u0026rsquo;s a long time to sit in uncomfortable chairs in a small terminal where almost everything was closed for the evening. At some point Brett and I talked about what time we thought we would be in Antigua in the morning. We were scheduled to land in Guatemala City around 6:00 in the morning. We thought that would probably be early enough that traffic wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be bad yet. We knew it would take some time to clear customs, especially with needing to verify every passenger held a recent negative test for covid, etc. We thought we would probably be leaving the airport by 7:00 and be in Antigua (20 miles away) by 7:45 or 8:00 \u0026ndash; just in time for breakfast. We thought that was a fairly conservative estimate. We thought we had it all figured out.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guatemala City to Antigua"},{"content":"Flying first class on Delta isn\u0026rsquo;t what it used to be. A lot of that is because of the coronavirus, but a lot of it is because of cost-saving due to the pandemic. Gone are the drinks to drink as the rest of the plane boards. Gone are the warm towels. The seats are still spacious and soft, but that\u0026rsquo;s about the only thing that\u0026rsquo;s the same. Not only were we never asked what we wanted to drink, but there were no drinks at all. Instead, they gave us a ziploc bag with goldfish crackers and a 4 ounce bottle of water. We were disappointed, but I think Charmaine was really upset. If I read her reaction correctly, I think she was somewhat upset that we had spent the money (miles) to fly first class only to have this extremely downgraded experience. Her entertainment system was broken, so she couldn\u0026rsquo;t watch anything. She fought with her entertainment system for an hour or more and seemed so frustrated that she almost seemed to be holding back tears. We had the flight attendants reboot the system and it eventually started working, but it was definitely not a great experience.\nThe Delta Sky Club experience was also disappointing. When we arrived at the airport in Salt Lake, we headed up to the Delta Sky Club. In the past, anyone flying first class could go in. Not anymore. Entrance now requires either a purchased club membership (I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine anyone actually buys a membership) or a Delta Reserve credit card (like Brett). After that it gets complicated. If you\u0026rsquo;re a Gold (or higher) Medallion and hold a Delta Platinum (or higher) credit card and happen to be flying First Class that day\u0026hellip; then you can get in. For us that meant only two of us would be allowed in. Anyone else who wanted to come in would have to pay $40 (and be our guest). Not flying with someone who gets in under those circumstances? then you can\u0026rsquo;t even buy your way in. So Brett and I went in and ate a few things and then brought a few things out to the rest of the family.\nThe club in Salt Lake is brand new (as is the entire terminal) and really pretty, but the club at LAX is just sad. The food offerings were mediocre and every chair was designed to be uncomfortable (to keep you from staying too long).\nA five hour layover is never fun, but it\u0026rsquo;s especially bad in LAX Terminal 2 after dark. Nothing is open other than the Delta Sky Club, Starbucks, and Slapfish. We couldn\u0026rsquo;t get people into the Delta lounge, and you can only do so many visits to Slapfish and Starbucks. After that you just sleep because you\u0026rsquo;re so bored.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/disappointed-with-delta/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFlying first class on Delta isn\u0026rsquo;t what it used to be. A lot of that is because of the coronavirus, but a lot of it is because of cost-saving due to the pandemic. Gone are the drinks to drink as the rest of the plane boards. Gone are the warm towels. The seats are still spacious and soft, but that\u0026rsquo;s about the only thing that\u0026rsquo;s the same. Not only were we never asked what we wanted to drink, but there were no drinks at all. Instead, they gave us a ziploc bag with goldfish crackers and a 4 ounce bottle of water. We were disappointed, but I think Charmaine was really upset. If I read her reaction correctly, I think she was somewhat upset that we had spent the money (miles) to fly first class only to have this extremely downgraded experience. Her entertainment system was broken, so she couldn\u0026rsquo;t watch anything. She fought with her entertainment system for an hour or more and seemed so frustrated that she almost seemed to be holding back tears. We had the flight attendants reboot the system and it eventually started working, but it was definitely not a great experience.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Disappointed with Delta"},{"content":"Yesterday was originally going to be our last day diving on this trip, but after getting skunked at Molokini Crater earlier in the week, Charmaine scheduled us to hit the crater this morning. We were pretty excited for that after seeing how amazing the visibility was out there yesterday. We checked in at the shop and walked our stuff down to the dock where Captain Levi was directing traffic. The boat going to Molokini was packed full and the boat going to Lanai for a drift dive was half empty. Levi suggested we would have a better time doing the Lanai drift than going to Molokini again. The crater is very popular and crowded for a reason. But he said the Lanai drift dive is special. We looked around and saw the old dude that puked all over the place was on the boat to Molokini and saw how much room there was on the Lanai boat and saw that the dive crew going to Lanai were all people we already liked (and Captain Dave was going to be diving with one of the groups today), so we had Captain Levi call the shop and switch us over. We\u0026rsquo;ll always be glad we made that switch. At the time there was a bit of joking about us being the good luck charm that got the manta, the dolphins, and the whale the day before. We even suggested Mitch switch boats as a joke\u0026hellip; he had to work the Molokini charter because they needed as many crew as they could get with a boat that full.\nSo we headed out to Lanai again. The weather was perfect. The crossing was smooth. We talked about possibly hitting second cathedral after the first drift dive. That sounded great. Being a drift dive, they prepared us for the worst, but the current was \u0026ndash; once again \u0026ndash; very mild.\nBarge Harbor Spiny Lobster\nJust after we made our initial descent, Charmaine spotted an Eagle Ray coming right for us. Maybe she is the good luck charm? It wouldn\u0026rsquo;t surprise me. I was having trouble with the camera, as I usually do when I first drop in. Sometimes it gets switched from Manual to some other setting. Sometimes I have one flash on, but the other off. Sometimes the flash fiber optic sync cable is disconnected, etc. Bottom line: I didn\u0026rsquo;t even try to get any shots of the Eagle Ray. I just enjoyed seeing it swim past. It was pretty cool to see.\nWe saw a big lobster out walking around and I took the opportunity to get my camera issues solved while I took a few shots of him. I also saw a few cool spiky sea stars that I hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen anywhere else in Hawaii yet. They are called Crown-of-thorns Starfish. There were a ton of butterflyfish, of course. They seem to be everywhere in Hawaii and they also happen to be one of my favorite fish. Someone spotted some nudibranch eggi ribbons, which were pretty interesting. They lay millions of eggs in a spiral rose-like pattern and affix the whole ribbon to the bottom of a ledge. I also saw my first banded angelfish, some more turkey moray eels, and a shrimp that you can actually recognize in my photo. It\u0026rsquo;s a little blurry, but I\u0026rsquo;m pretty happy to have something worth looking at.\nIt was a great dive.\nSecond Cathedral We cruised around the back side of Lanai a bit while we had lunch and did our surface interval, but we eventually parked the boat at Second Cathedral. I have to admit I was pretty happy we were going to be able to do that one despite being skunked on our first attempt. It was every bit as cool as we had been told.\nLeaving Second Cathedral\nWe took our time working our way to the entrance to give the first group plenty of time to see what they wanted to see, clear out, and time for the dust to settle\u0026hellip; literally. It\u0026rsquo;s gotta be one of the best swim-thrus there is. The rock formations are just perfect for scuba divers to cruise through and enjoy. We also saw a ton of fish and other interesting things inside. I enjoyed the \u0026ldquo;chandelier\u0026rdquo; in the center of the cathedral. We spotted an interesting nudibranch on one of the upper ledges inside. There were a ton of fish, squirrelfish (they love dark spaces), butterflyfish (of course), triggerfish, etc. But the real story was the cathedral itself. It was really cool.\nAfter we swam out of the cathedral we crossed some sand and explored a bit more of the wall along the back of Lanai. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything special, but it didn\u0026rsquo;t need to be. The cathedral itself had been awesome.\nThe Long Way Home On our way back around Lanai, Captain Levi spotted a hammerhead shark swimming near the surface so he stopped the boat for a minute and let us all take a look. That was pretty cool. It was obviously still quite young and small, but it was beautiful. Sometimes it would even swim with its dorsal fin above the surface, which is something you rarely see sharks do, despite what movies may have you believe. My camera was in the camera bin and I made no attempt to get it to take any pictures.\nGentle Whale Shark\nWe got underway again, laughing and joking about whatever magical combination of good luck charms was bringing all the luck. The weather continued to be amazing and we were cruising again when suddenly Captain Levi stopped the boat as fast as he could and started screaming for everyone to get their masks on. He spotted something they almost never see in Hawaii \u0026ndash; a whale shark. Many of the dive masters on the boat had done thousands of dives in Maui without ever seeing one. Whatever the good luck charm was, its power was immense.\nCaptain Levi swung the boat around to get us close to the whale shark before letting anyone jump in and possibly scare it. We jumped in and spent about 20 minutes playing with it and watching it. Charmaine and I have seen whale sharks in La Paz, but it\u0026rsquo;s always murky and hazy there. This guy was in clear blue water and we were doing our best to take pictures. Some people couldn\u0026rsquo;t help themselves and had to gently touch him. The whale shark seemed curious and approached our boat a few times. It gave everyone a chance to get in the water and see it. Captain Dave and Captain Levi switched places after a bit so they each had a chance to be in the water with it.\nUntil We Meet Again\nI\u0026rsquo;m so glad we didn\u0026rsquo;t go to Molokini today. No matter how good it was there, it couldn\u0026rsquo;t touch the day we just had. It was truly magical. Dive 1: Surface Interval: 21:38\nLocation: Lanai - Barge Harbor\nWeight: 10 pounds\nStarting Pressure: 3000 psi\nTime In: 9:08 am\nSurface Temperature: 81 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 80-100 feet\nDive Time: 48 minutes\nAverage Depth: 48 feet\nMaximum Depth: 78 feet\nEnding Pressure: 800 psi\nTime Out: 9:56 am\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive 2: Surface Interval: 0:57\nLocation: Lanai - Second Cathedral\nWeight: 10 pounds\nStarting Pressure: 3000 psi\nTime In: 10:54 am\nSurface Temperature: 79 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 60-80 feet\nDive Time: 46 minutes\nAverage Depth: 45 feet\nMaximum Depth: 87 feet\nEnding Pressure: 500 psi\nTime Out: 11:40 am\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive Master: Dave\nBoat Captain: Levi\nBoat: Dominion\nWe tipped $40\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/lanai-barge-harbor-and-second-cathedral/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday was originally going to be our last day diving on this trip, but after getting skunked at Molokini Crater earlier in the week, Charmaine scheduled us to hit the crater this morning. We were pretty excited for that after seeing how amazing the visibility was out there yesterday. We checked in at the shop and walked our stuff down to the dock where Captain Levi was directing traffic. The boat going to Molokini was packed full and the boat going to Lanai for a drift dive was half empty. Levi suggested we would have a better time doing the Lanai drift than going to Molokini again. The crater is very popular and crowded for a reason. But he said the Lanai drift dive is special. We looked around and saw the old dude that puked all over the place was on the boat to Molokini and saw how much room there was on the Lanai boat and saw that the dive crew going to Lanai were all people we already liked (and Captain Dave was going to be diving with one of the groups today), so we had Captain Levi call the shop and switch us over. We\u0026rsquo;ll always be glad we made that switch. At the time there was a bit of joking about us being the good luck charm that got the manta, the dolphins, and the whale the day before. We even suggested Mitch switch boats as a joke\u0026hellip; he had to work the Molokini charter because they needed as many crew as they could get with a boat that full.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lanai: Barge Harbor \u0026 Second Cathedral"},{"content":"Getting skunked a second day in a row was upsetting. Worse, the dive we had originally scheduled for today is the dive we wound up doing yesterday \u0026ndash; Mala Pier. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be too sad about diving there again, especially since it was our best dive of the trip, but Charmaine went in to the dive shop and changed some things around so we could go to Molokini today. It\u0026rsquo;s not the world-famous Molokini Crater, but it\u0026rsquo;s still Molokini. We signed ourselves up to do two drift dives at Molokini. The dive shop requires every diver have a flashlight and safety sausage, so I got to buy a safety sausage. Charmaine already had one (and a dive knife).\nEdge of the World Our fist dive was along the back wall of Molokini at a site known as Edge of the World. It\u0026rsquo;s basically a wall dive with a current, so the boat follows bubbles and dive beacons. The wall drops off steeply, so it looks like you\u0026rsquo;re looking down off the edge of the world.\nOn the way out there they prepped us for the fast currents we may face after dropping in along the wall. They had each group standing together at the back of the boat as we got the boat into position and they had us all jump off the boat quickly in what they called \u0026ldquo;Navy Seal Style\u0026rdquo; where they count down the time till drop and then yell, \u0026ldquo;Dive! Dive! Dive!\u0026rdquo; and we all jump in the water one right after another without waiting. I had considered dropping my weight to 10 pounds, but with a drift dive (and little chance to add weight once in the water) I stayed at 12, knowing I would be fine. Charmaine and I have been on some dives with fast moving currents in the Sea of Cortez, so we had some idea what to expect, but we had to laugh because there was almost no current at all. I guess they don\u0026rsquo;t really have a way of knowing what it will be like from day to day, so they just prepare everyone for the strong current. As it was, we had plenty of time to hang out and look at things as we lazily drifted north along the wall.\nThe visibility was everything they said it would be. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure we have ever had better visibility on a dive. You could see well beyond a hundred feet in every direction. I think that probably contributed to the relaxing feeling that the current wasn\u0026rsquo;t very strong.\nBlue Dragon Nudibranch\nRight after jumping in we saw a nudibranch that I didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize and then about 30 or 40 feet below us we saw a giant oceanic manta ray flying by. It was so big and cruised past seemingly without moving at all, despite flying south against the current. Charmaine and others were seen doing little celebratory dances under water. It was very cute. I tried to get a shot of it, but I had my flash turned on and had all the settings configured for taking close-up shots of the nudibranch we saw first, so it didn\u0026rsquo;t go as well as planned\u0026hellip; plus, there\u0026rsquo;s not much light that deep on the back side of the wall (the sun was on the other side of the wall). He must have been about 80 to 100 feet deep. We were all pretty excited to have seen it.\nAs we drifted along, we saw some turkey moray eels, some trevally jacks, a few squirrelfish, a Hawaiian sergeant major (damselfish), a bunch of different kinds of butterflyfish, yellow tangs, parrotfish, some more red pencil urchins, and some triggerfish. I think we were all still thinking about how cool it was that we saw that giant manta (much larger than a reef manta).\nThey picked us up at the end of the wall \u0026ndash; basically the north-west corner of the back side of Molokini \u0026ndash; and took us into the crater where we moored for lunch and our surface interval. It\u0026rsquo;s also where we jumped in for our final dive. Since we were starting the second dive from a moored location with no current, I dropped my weight to 10 pounds. That was just about perfect. I may try dropping to 8 pounds, but that may be too light.\nReef\u0026rsquo;s End While eating lunch we spotted some bottlenose dolphins just outside the crater. They kept coming closer and eventually came over the edge of the crater (where it is still underwater) and played for a bit around our boat. That was great. Greater still was the fact that they were still hanging around as we made our descent. They were digging up sea cucumbers in the sand right below us. We couldn\u0026rsquo;t spend too much time watching them, because we needed to get outside the reef wall to catch the current that would push us gently west to the back (essentially the same place they picked us up at the end of the previous dive.\nCommon Bottlenose Dolphin\nWe saw another whitetip reef shark, some more eels, a lot of fish including moorish idols (they seem to be everywhere in Hawaii), yellow longnose butterflyfish, surgeonfish, milletseed butterflyfish, triggerfish, sergeant major damselfish, bluefin trevally jacks, threadfin butterflyfish, saddle wrasse, etc. We saw a ton of fish. I also saw another cowry shell. Those things are pretty cool.\nThroughout the dive, I kept hearing sounds that I thought must have been the dolphins, but I was wrong. They were the songs of the humpback whales in the area. How awesome is that? Not as awesome as having a humpback whale show up on the surface right next to a group of divers waiting for their boat to pick them up. That\u0026rsquo;s exactly what happened to Mitch\u0026rsquo;s group. The whale breached just a few feet behind them. We were close by as well, but didn\u0026rsquo;t see the whale. What we saw was the boat coming to get us while everyone on board was looking off to the side, toward Mitch\u0026rsquo;s group. We knew something must have happened, but didn\u0026rsquo;t guess it was a whale breaching. That\u0026rsquo;s just amazing.\nIt was a pretty amazing day. Giant oceanic manta ray, bottlenose dolphins,and humpback whales. We were sure to rub it in to the other dive boat when we got back to Lahaina.\nDive 1: Surface Interval: 20:20\nLocation: Molokini - Edge of the World\nWeight: 12 pounds\nStarting Pressure: 3100 psi\nTime In: 9:00 am\nSurface Temperature: 79 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 100+ feet\nDive Time: 48 minutes\nAverage Depth: 47 feet\nMaximum Depth: 73 feet\nEnding Pressure: 600 psi\nTime Out: 9:48 am\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive 2: Surface Interval: 0:51\nLocation: Molokini - Reef\u0026rsquo;s End\nWeight: 10 pounds\nStarting Pressure: 3000 psi\nTime In: 10:37 am\nSurface Temperature: 77 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 100+ feet\nDive Time: 51 minutes\nAverage Depth: 39 feet\nMaximum Depth: 65 feet\nEnding Pressure: 700 psi\nTime Out: 11:28 am\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive Master: Nick\nBoat Captain: Levi\nBoat: Dominion\nWe tipped $40\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/molokini-edge-of-the-world-and-reefs-end/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGetting skunked a second day in a row was upsetting. Worse, the dive we had originally scheduled for today is the dive we wound up doing yesterday \u0026ndash; \u003ca href=\"/blog/maui-jabberwocky-and-mala-pier/\"\u003eMala Pier\u003c/a\u003e. I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be too sad about diving there again, especially since it was our best dive of the trip, but Charmaine went in to the dive shop and changed some things around so we could go to Molokini today. It\u0026rsquo;s not the world-famous Molokini Crater, but it\u0026rsquo;s still Molokini. We signed ourselves up to do two drift dives at Molokini. The dive shop requires every diver have a flashlight and safety sausage, so I got to buy a safety sausage. Charmaine already had one (and a dive knife).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Molokini: Edge of the World \u0026 Reef's End"},{"content":"Remember that time we almost dove Second Cathedral on Lana\u0026rsquo;i? People are starting to wonder if we are bad luck. Once again, we braved the rough water and parked our boat at our desired dive site, only to be turned away and have to dive somewhere else. This time it was the Molokini crater. We arrived after a fairly easy crossing, to find only 2 boats there. That\u0026rsquo;s very unusual. It\u0026rsquo;s the most visited spot in all of Hawaii, getting more visitors per year than the USS Arizona. The two boats were pulling their divers back and heading out. The forecast had changed and they now expected the wind to really pick up soon, so everyone was getting out of there before it got ugly. We decided to dive some spots closer to Lahaina. The first site was called Jabberwocky.\nJabberwocky The reef in Maui seems a bit better than the reef at Lana\u0026rsquo;i. We saw more fish here too. They say Molokini is way better, but at this rate we may never know. We saw a bunch more butterflyfish, moorish idols, triggerfish, domino damselfish, a bunch of black sea urchins, banded sea urchins, and some red pencil urchins that are super cool. We also saw some yellow trumpetfish. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t ever seen yellow before.\nOverall, this wasn\u0026rsquo;t a bad dive. It would have been better had we not had to drive from Lahaina to Molokini and back to Lahaina just to make the dive, but still\u0026hellip; it was fine. I think I\u0026rsquo;m starting to understand why people say, \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t go to Hawaii to dive. But if you\u0026rsquo;re going to Hawaii, dive.\u0026rdquo; It doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem like you\u0026rsquo;d plan a trip to Hawaii just for diving\u0026hellip; but if you\u0026rsquo;re going to be in Hawaii on vacation anyway, do some diving there, because it\u0026rsquo;s pretty good.\nI dropped my weight to 12 pounds today, but I also added the flash assembly to my camera housing, so I still felt overweight. I could easily drop to 10 pounds and be fine. Maybe tomorrow.\nMala Pier Commerson\u0026rsquo;s Frogfish (Giant Frogfish)\nAfter coming up, we cruised north on the leeward side of Maui to Mala Pier, which is literally about 3 minutes from Lahaina Harbor. It turned out to be the best dive we have had. The reef was in much better condition than what we had seen on Lana\u0026rsquo;i yesterday, and it\u0026rsquo;s basically an artificial reef. The Mala Pier was built using salt water in the concrete, so it was condemned soon after it was built. Later it broke apart and pieces fell into the ocean where a reef grew on top of it.\nWe jumped in and almost immediately found a frogfish, which are hard to find due to their camouflage. We actually found a second frogfish later in the dive. We also saw two white tipped reef sharks sleeping on the bottom. One of them was facing us on the ground just outside one of the swim-thrus. So we\u0026rsquo;re navigating around and under big pieces of concrete covered in coral and swimming directly toward the head of a shark that almost seemed to be swimming directly towards us. It was really great. The shark was not swimming at all, of course, just sleeping. They say the only way to get a white tipped reef shark to bite you is to swim up to it, open it\u0026rsquo;s mouth with one hand, put your other hand in its mouth, and then use your first hand to close its mouth on your other hand. That\u0026rsquo;s obviously an exaggeration, but they do seem to be extremely docile.\nOne of the cool things we saw was a Tiger Cowrie. I have seen their shells being sold in various stores across the islands, but I had never seen one in the water until today. That was really cool. I tried a few times to get a good shot of it, but had some difficulty focusing. Maybe it was too shiny?\nThere were a lot of fish along the reef too. We saw lots of moorish idols, various kinds of butterflyfish, goatfish, squirrelfish, convict tang (very cool), pufferfish, white trumpetfish, and then at the end of the dive I got some really good shots of an imperial nudibranch just crawling across the sand. Another diver pointed him out to me to make sure I got a shot of it. He was there with his sister for a wedding. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get an email address to send them any of the shots I took, but I was glad he pointed it out for me. It\u0026rsquo;s probably the best dive shot I\u0026rsquo;ve taken so far this trip.\nDive 1: Surface Interval: 20:20\nLocation: Maui - Jabberwocky\nWeight: 12 pounds\nStarting Pressure: 3100 psi\nTime In: 10:00 am\nSurface Temperature: 77 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 50 feet\nDive Time: 50 minutes\nAverage Depth: 27 feet\nMaximum Depth: 40 feet\nEnding Pressure: 700 psi\nTime Out: 10:50 am\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive 2: Surface Interval: 1:02\nLocation: Maui - Mala Pier\nWeight: 12 pounds\nStarting Pressure: 3000 psi\nTime In: 11:53 am\nSurface Temperature: 79 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 40 feet\nDive Time: 46 minutes\nAverage Depth: 21 feet\nMaximum Depth: 30 feet\nEnding Pressure: 1100 psi\nTime Out: 12:39 pm\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive Master: Elliot\nBoat Captain: Dave\nBoat: Dauntless\nWe only tipped $25 (I think Charmaine was upset about getting skunked twice in a row)\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/maui-jabberwocky-and-mala-pier/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRemember that time we almost dove Second Cathedral on Lana\u0026rsquo;i? People are starting to wonder if we are bad luck. Once again, we braved the rough water and parked our boat at our desired dive site, only to be turned away and have to dive somewhere else. This time it was the Molokini crater. We arrived after a fairly easy crossing, to find only 2 boats there. That\u0026rsquo;s very unusual. It\u0026rsquo;s the most visited spot in all of Hawaii, getting more visitors per year than the USS Arizona. The two boats were pulling their divers back and heading out. The forecast had changed and they now expected the wind to really pick up soon, so everyone was getting out of there before it got ugly. We decided to dive some spots closer to Lahaina. The first site was called \u003cem\u003eJabberwocky\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Maui: Jabberwocky \u0026 Mala Pier"},{"content":"The rain has been pounding and the wind has been howling since we landed on Maui, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a huge effect on conditions below the surface. We were all set to dive Second Cathedral on the south side of Lanai today. We braved the rough crossing in this weather, tied off, and dropped the first group of divers. Then we realized the boat was drifting. The mooring ball had severed its rope and we were no longer tied to anything. We tried recalling the first group of divers, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t hear us, probably because we had drifted too far from where we dropped them before attempting to recall them. So we waited while they completed their dive. We didn\u0026rsquo;t get to see the cathedral.\nAfter the first group of divers popped up, confused about where they wound up (because they couldn\u0026rsquo;t find the mooring line either), we circled around and picked them up. Then we headed to another spot known as No Name. I think it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a name because it\u0026rsquo;s not a good enough spot to deserve a name. It was really mediocre. I was surprised at the state of the coral here. It seems like most of it is dead. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty sad.\nSafety First Safety Stop\nThere were still some good fish and eels to be seen, but our dive didn\u0026rsquo;t last as long as the rest of our group. Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s BCD silently decided to start inflating itself. This caused Charmaine some difficulty, not knowing why she kept losing her neutral buoyancy and having to dump more and more air. At one point she decided to swim down and got stuck with her feet above her head, which is not a position you want to be in for long. She was kicking hard to prevent floating up, but she was burning through her air like crazy. And from that position she couldn\u0026rsquo;t continue to dump air from her BCD. I swam over and gave her my hand and pulled her down. Mitch, our dive master, also calmed her down and solved the equipment problem immediately by unhooking her BCD from her regulator. Without both of those things, we would have had to end our dive right then. But thanks to his quick thinking and steady hand, we continued on. Charmaine had already burned through most of her air, so we still wound up going up before the rest of the group, but at least we mostly finished the dive. Yellow-edged Moray Eel\nWe heard a lot about how 25% to 33% (depending on who is giving the stats) of the species in Hawaii are endemic, meaning they don\u0026rsquo;t exist anywhere else in the world. I was excited that we got to see some endemic fish on our very first dive. I\u0026rsquo;m loving all the different kinds of butterflyfish they have here. It\u0026rsquo;s also nice to see a few different types of eels. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen so many green moray eels now that I almost don\u0026rsquo;t pay attention when someone calls out an eel sighting. But I was glad to see some of the different eels today.\nI got a few shots, but none are spectacular. I was carrying my camera in its housing, but without any of the flash assembly. That made the camera positively buoyant, so I was carrying extra weight to compensate. I think I overcompensated a bit. I was using 14 pounds and it was definitely more than I needed. I\u0026rsquo;ll drop to 12 and see how that feels.\nLighthouse After about an hour surface interval, we parked the boat at Lighthouse, also on the south side of Lanai. I either forgot or decided it was too much work to remove some weight, so I just kept the 14 pounds I had from the first dive. In case you\u0026rsquo;re wondering why it\u0026rsquo;s harder to remove weight than to add weight, let me explain. If you want 14 pounds, you\u0026rsquo;ll probably wind up with two 4-pound weights and two 3-pound weights, so you can balance 7 pounds on each side of your body. In order to drop 2 pounds, you have to swap both 4-pound weights for two new 3-pound weights. That requires taking out all the weight you have, returning the 4-pounders to the pot and hoping there are still some 3-pound weights left. I decided it wasn\u0026rsquo;t worth the hassle and will just drop to 12 tomorrow.\nYellow Tang\nLighthouse wasn\u0026rsquo;t drastically better than No Name had been earlier. I guess I have been spoiled with the diving I\u0026rsquo;ve done, but I\u0026rsquo;m just not that impressed with the diving here. Maybe it\u0026rsquo;s just Lanai? These two mediocre dives were definitely not worth the 1.5 hour crossing in really rough water. For that kind of punishment I expect to see something great.\nCharmaine and I don\u0026rsquo;t usually have trouble with seasickness, but when we saw the weather was still really bad this morning we each took a half dose of dramamine, and I\u0026rsquo;m really glad we did, because the ride home was rough enough that several people were in position to hang their heads over the side at any moment. None of them got to that point, luckily. Then, long after we had entered the lee of Maui and were enjoying the smooth water on our way to the dock, some old dude headed down into the head and puked his guts out, spilling it out the door and all down the deck. It was nasty. I was just glad it didn\u0026rsquo;t cause a chain reaction with all the people sitting near the side exits.\nWe did see some cool fish on this dive. There were a ton of yellow tang, moorish idols, multi-banded butterflyfish, and eels. One of the eels had horns. That was pretty sweet. We also saw yellow longnose butterflyfish, a bunch of black sea urchins moving around, and some banded sea urchins. But again, I was sad to see that most of the coral seemed dead and without much color. They say the summer was really hot last year and it really damaged the coral. Hopefully it can bounce back.\nDive 1: Surface Interval: \u0026gt; 24 hours\nLocation: Lanai - No Name\nWeight: 14 pounds (and my positively buoyant camera)\nStarting Pressure: 3200 psi\nTime In: 10:25 am\nSurface Temperature: 77 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 40-50 feet\nDive Time: 35 minutes\nAverage Depth: 43 feet\nMaximum Depth: 63 feet\nEnding Pressure: 1000 psi\nTime Out: 11:00 am\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive 2: Surface Interval: 60 minutes\nLocation: Lanai - Lighthouse\nWeight: 14 pounds (and my positively buoyant camera)\nStarting Pressure: 3000 psi\nTime In: 12:00 noon\nSurface Temperature: 79 degrees\nBottom Temperature: 77 degrees\nVisibility: 50-60 feet\nDive Time: 40 minutes\nAverage Depth: 40 feet\nMaximum Depth: 57 feet\nEnding Pressure: 800 psi\nTime Out: 12:40 pm\nComputer: Suunto D6i\nCamera: Canon PowerShot G16\nDive master: Mitch\nBoat captain: Dave\nBoat: Dauntless\nWe tipped $40 at the end of the day\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/lanai-no-name-paradise-and-lighthouse/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe rain has been pounding and the wind has been howling since we landed on Maui, but that doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a huge effect on conditions below the surface. We were all set to dive \u003ca href=\"/blog/lanai-barge-harbor-and-second-cathedral/\"\u003eSecond Cathedral\u003c/a\u003e on the south side of Lanai today. We braved the rough crossing in this weather, tied off, and dropped the first group of divers. Then we realized the boat was drifting. The mooring ball had severed its rope and we were no longer tied to anything. We tried recalling the first group of divers, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t hear us, probably because we had drifted too far from where we dropped them before attempting to recall them. So we waited while they completed their dive. We didn\u0026rsquo;t get to see the cathedral.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lanai: No Name Paradise \u0026 Lighthouse"},{"content":"Today was the last day of diving this trip. Nobody was sure what the name of the dives were, because it\u0026rsquo;s a holiday weekend and we were lucky just to get moored on a ball somewhere along Molasses Reef. The reality is that all the dives are pretty close to each other and you can be moored above one spot, but wind up doing one or two of the spots right next to it. So both dives today were somewhere on Molasses reef, but they probably didn\u0026rsquo;t follow any officially named dives. We just went were we could be a little further away from all the other divers.\nDivers are in the water too Silly Divers at the Fire Coral\nI realized I haven\u0026rsquo;t taken (m)any pictures of people on any of the dives yet, so I tried to get some today. People are actually trickier to shoot than fish. If there\u0026rsquo;s something cool to be seen, the people are looking at it, so you can\u0026rsquo;t shoot their faces. If there\u0026rsquo;s nothing cool to be seen, the people are looking around to find something cool. You may be able to get their faces in that case, but there\u0026rsquo;s rarely anything cool around them. I still tried anyway.\nI got a couple good shots of some spadefish that were hanging out this morning, and at one point I was surprised to be face to face with a rather large barracuda who was opening and closing his mouth to show me his huge teeth. When I backed off a bit I got a shot or two of him. I also shot a filefish, a French angelfish, and a grouper on the morning dive. I saw some really cool squirrelfish, but I just can\u0026rsquo;t seem to get a good shot of them; they\u0026rsquo;re so shy. I saw another instance of a grunt opening its mouth really wide, like it\u0026rsquo;s about to eat something, and then swimming aggressively toward a butterflyfish. I thought it was somewhat of a rare occurrence when I got a shot of something similar the other day, but now I\u0026rsquo;m guessing it\u0026rsquo;s kind of common. It\u0026rsquo;s still fun to see in action.\nMo\u0026rsquo;(-lasses) the Goliath Grouper When we were here last year we got introduced to Mo\u0026rsquo;, a goliath grouper that is friends with the divers. He follows them around on the night dives and eats the things they shine their lights on (otherwise those things are able to stay hidden from him). He\u0026rsquo;s huge. We saw him on a dive last year when I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a camera with me. I was really hoping to see him again this year and this morning we did. He hangs out under a big ledge during the day to stay out of the sun.\nMo\u0026rsquo; the Goliath Grouper\nThat makes him hard to spot and much harder to shoot with a camera. My camera did not want to focus on him, and my flash is not bright enough to light up more than his face. He\u0026rsquo;s probably about 8-9 feet long, 4-5 feet tall, and 3-4 feet wide. Each pectoral fin seems almost as big as a diver. He could probably fit one of us completely in his mouth. It\u0026rsquo;s quite the experience to swim up close to him and try to get a picture. I did manage to get one shot where he\u0026rsquo;s mostly in focus, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t convey how big he is. He really is huge. I can only imagine how much he must weigh. The seas were extremely calm again this morning, so even though we were on the Tropical Voyager (aka the vomit comet) it was no big deal to hang out on the boat during our surface interval between dives.\nThe second dive was really interesting. We had idled down to the southern end of Molasses Reef, closer to the deeper open channel, which means there\u0026rsquo;s a better chance to see something big coming in to check things out before heading back out to sea. That\u0026rsquo;s exactly what happened. We jumped in and immediately saw 2 huge tarpons swimming in to check us out. They were so big and so fast. I actually had no idea what they were until I asked the dive master after we surfaced. I didn\u0026rsquo;t get any pictures of them because it all happened so fast and they didn\u0026rsquo;t really get too close. I don\u0026rsquo;t think they were as big as Mo\u0026rsquo;, but they were in the same ballpark. So it was cool to see them. I haven\u0026rsquo;t ever seen tarpon before.\nCommon Snook\nAbout half way through the dive we ran into even more fish that I didn\u0026rsquo;t recognize. They were fairly big and looked somewhat like salmon. They turned out to be snook. Cool. Yet another fish I hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen until now. There were 3 of them swimming around a small sand patch and 3 or 4 more hiding under a ledge nearby. They don\u0026rsquo;t have a lot of color, but I took a bunch of shots of them anyway, since they were something new.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve seen a bunch of French angelfish and queen angelfish on this trip, but I hadn\u0026rsquo;t seen any gray angelfish until today. I swam with a good-sized one for a minute and took a few shots that turned out pretty well. The gray angelfish are very cool. They\u0026rsquo;re much cooler than their name makes them sound. It\u0026rsquo;s fun to see all the variation even among the same kind of fish. We talked about that on the ride back, how the blue tangs we saw in Florida have completely different coloring from the blue tangs they have in Australia (and Finding Nemo).\nGray Angelfish\nIt was a good dive to end on, because it was so different from all the other dives we\u0026rsquo;ve done on this trip. We saw the tarpon, the snook, and some other medium-sized fish I have yet to identify on this final dive. I also saw a trigger fish, a trunkfish, a hogfish, a few trumpetfish, lots of wrasse, tons of parrotfish, a huge column with hundreds of sergeant majors swimming in circles, and a few grouper. I even spotted a goatfish hiding among a group of grunts hanging out along one of the walls. I took a few shots of him, but none of them turned out. Clearly, I need more practice.\nWhen\u0026rsquo;s the next trip? ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/molasses-reef/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday was the last day of diving this trip. Nobody was sure what the name of the dives were, because it\u0026rsquo;s a holiday weekend and we were lucky just to get moored on a ball somewhere along Molasses Reef. The reality is that all the dives are pretty close to each other and you can be moored above one spot, but wind up doing one or two of the spots right next to it. So both dives today were somewhere on Molasses reef, but they probably didn\u0026rsquo;t follow any officially named dives. We just went were we could be a little further away from all the other divers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Molasses Reef"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s a holiday weekend. All the boats are packed. Ours was no exception. We had 20 divers, 4 dive masters, and even a couple snorkelers on board. We were among the first to board and we got the premium seats close to the back. We also managed to get the best guide on the boat. If only I remembered his name so I could write it here. Unfortunately, I am terrible with names and his is now lost. But he had a plan to make sure we were the first group in the water at each dive location and it worked. There were a ton of boats at each location, so our dive master took us in a slightly different direction than all the other groups and it made all the difference.\nI thought our first dive site was going to be Eagle Ray Alley, but we wound up at Winch Hole, which was a little disappointing at first. As you may have guessed, we did not see any eagle rays at Winch Hole. Seeing another one would have been amazing, but you can\u0026rsquo;t see unicorns every time you go underwater. If you did, they would stop being magical. We did see a lot of cool stuff, and the conditions could not have been any better. The sea was not only flat, but there was no current, and you could see fish and turtles from the deck of the boat before even jumping in. Needless to say, any disappointment I thought I had about not doing Eagle Ray Alley was short-lived.\nThis was a great dive.\nThe Barracuda Waits\nI saw perhaps the biggest spiny lobster I have ever seen today. I was trying to get a picture of a black spadefish and suddenly it appeared behind the fish. I failed to get a good picture of the lobster and the rest of the group had moved on so I gave up. Lack of photographic evidence or a testimony of another diver means I basically didn\u0026rsquo;t see it or it wasn\u0026rsquo;t all that big. But I swear it was huge. It was as wide as the arms on my camera contraption.\nThere were a lot of parrotfish, barracuda, and eels. We even found one cool spotted eel that kept going in and out of the reef. We followed it for a minute or two before other divers figured out we were seeing something. Because of its quick movement among the shadows, it proved a difficult target for my camera.\nAs we arrived at the Wellwood dive location (just slightly north from our first dive site), we could see an eagle ray swimming parallel to the boat. That was exciting. We hurried and threw our gear on and went down before anyone else. We got first class tickets to the eagle ray show. He came at us really fast, turned and then stopped to look around, then took off again. I took a bunch of pictures, but none were fantastic. Our dive master told us not to chase the ray, he thought it was circling our area and if we just stayed calm for a minute it would be back. He was right. It came in again and did another loop before disappearing. I could watch them swim for hours.\nThe rest of the dive was pretty amazing as well. There were tons of huge barracuda, gorgeous queen and french angelfish, and blue tangs. Then we came upon a medium-sized loggerhead turtle just sitting there waiting to have his picture taken. I was happy to oblige, though my shots didn\u0026rsquo;t turn out as crisp as I would have liked. Still, I can\u0026rsquo;t complain; it was really great to get so close for so long. After playing with the turtle we also saw trunkfish, porkfish, blue striped grunts, hogfish, sergeant majors, more ells, and then a massive barracuda and a big lobster to round out almost a full hour underwater on that amazing dive. I wrote in my dive log that it was one of my favorites. It really was.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/winch-hole-and-wellwood/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s a holiday weekend. All the boats are packed. Ours was no exception. We had 20 divers, 4 dive masters, and even a couple snorkelers on board. We were among the first to board and we got the premium seats close to the back. We also managed to get the best guide on the boat. If only I remembered his name so I could write it here. Unfortunately, I am terrible with names and his is now lost. But he had a plan to make sure we were the first group in the water at each dive location and it worked. There were a ton of boats at each location, so our dive master took us in a slightly different direction than all the other groups and it made all the difference.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Winch Hole and Wellwood"},{"content":"Brett and Jess arrived yesterday and joined us on our dives today. It was so calm yesterday and I hoped it would be as good today, so they could enjoy some of this sweetness. It was. And they did. Both of our dives were along Molasses Reef today. Our first spot was at a place they call Ryan\u0026rsquo;s Beach. I suspect it has another name, because when they said it, the rest of the crew laughed. It\u0026rsquo;s probably something like Valerie\u0026rsquo;s Beach, but I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to look it up anywhere.\nSouthern Stingray\nThe dive itself was pretty good. Brett and Jess were still getting their ears wet again. We saw a huge southern stingray resting in the sand. Just as I was getting setup to take a few shots of him, the dive master was clanging his tank to alert us to an eagle ray swimming away. I could barely tell it was an eagle ray and he was gone in seconds. I went back to the big stingray. He let us get close and take all sorts of pictures, but there wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything else around to contrast it with, so there\u0026rsquo;s no color or sense of scale to the shots. It was still a cool experience though. We also saw some fairly good sized spiny lobsters and a drumfish that our dive guide pointed out. I decided it was impossible to get a good picture of a rainbow parrotfish. I tried many different settings in differently lit environments during the dive today and I think I finally figured out how to get some color from them.\nAquarium For our second dive today we were back at Aquarium, by request. We jumped in and had just started looking around when we heard the constant clanging of metal objects against tanks and we knew. Someone had spotted an eagle ray. Charmaine was convinced she would see one this trip. I had my doubts. We\u0026rsquo;ve been a lot of places since seeing one in Roatan, including doing a bunch of dives here in Key Largo without seeing one again. But she was right, there was an eagle ray on his way around us. He turned and flew past the boat and I fired off a couple shots and got one or two that I won\u0026rsquo;t throw away. Luckily I already had my camera turned on or I would have missed him completely. Those things are like unicorns. They\u0026rsquo;re magical to see. I\u0026rsquo;m so glad we got to see one again.\nFire Coral Cleaning Station\nNothing else really mattered after seeing the eagle ray, but we did see a turtle trying to scratch an itch with a patch of fire coral. It was pretty amusing and I took a few shots of that too. There were a ton of fish everywhere and we even came across another huge southern stingray hanging out in the sand. I tried to get a shot that would be good, but I don\u0026rsquo;t have the skills for it yet. We also saw a bunch of butterflyfish, hogfish, parrotfish, squirrelfish, grunts, filefish, spadefish, and finally some juvenile blue damselfish. Those juvenile damselfish were some of our favorites in Roatan.\nIt seems they have everything here in Florida. ","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/ryans-beach-and-aquarium/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBrett and Jess arrived yesterday and joined us on our dives today. It was so calm yesterday and I hoped it would be as good today, so they could enjoy some of this sweetness. It was. And they did. Both of our dives were along Molasses Reef today. Our first spot was at a place they call \u003cem\u003eRyan\u0026rsquo;s Beach\u003c/em\u003e. I suspect it has another name, because when they said it, the rest of the crew laughed. It\u0026rsquo;s probably something like Valerie\u0026rsquo;s Beach, but I can\u0026rsquo;t seem to look it up anywhere.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ryan's Beach and Aquarium"},{"content":"When we woke up this morning conditions looked epic. The trees and flags were still. The water was as flat as you can reasonably expect the ocean to get. We were worried if we let our excitement show that we might jinx it. Both dive spots this morning were on Molasses Reef, which is a fairly shallow reef, so I hoped the calm water and shallow depths would lead to some good pictures. When we arrived at Spanish Anchor, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t as clear as I thought it would be, but it was as calm as anywhere I\u0026rsquo;ve been diving.\nDropped Tank I went down to 14 pounds today. I thought I should be at 12, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t confident enough to pull the trigger on that. But 14 proved to be more than I needed. It was easy to compensate for a little extra weight, but there was no way to compensate for losing my tank. You read that right. As soon as I jumped off the boat I felt my tank slip out of my BCD. I grabbed it and prevented it from actually dropping to the bottom, but I obviously couldn\u0026rsquo;t continue the dive without fixing it. I got Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s attention and she got Alison (our dive master) to help out. I offered to go back to the boat, but she was able to put the tank back in right in the water. Apparently fixing your own tank is one of the new skills PADI requires you to be able to do to get certified now. It makes sense. I think I could have done it by slipping out of my BCD, etc. But it was so much easier to have someone else do it for me.\nI put the camera in full manual mode today. It took some time getting used to all the different switches and levers and knobs that needed to be adjusted to get the flash to fire. Sometimes I completely missed the shot because I couldn\u0026rsquo;t figure out what I was doing wrong, but other times I got some really good shots. We got up close and personal with 2 different nurse sharks and I got some decent shots of each of them. We also saw some big lobsters, angelfish, filefish, butterflyfish, parrotfish, blue tangs, grunts, and even a trumpetfish and a trunkfish. There were soft corals everywhere and some interesting colors on the brain coral, fire coral, and elkhorn coral. Near the end of the dive I found a few kinds of coral that had grown into a formation I called a coral wreath. It was really quite spectacular to see.\nFrom there we had a short surface interval while we idled up to the North Star dive spot at the top of Molasses Reef. I think the visibility was actually improving. It\u0026rsquo;s too bad we were not able to dive again in the afternoon. I had to work, but I guess I should be happy that I have the flexibility to go on trips like this in the first place. I can dive each morning and then work for about 8 hours every day and because we\u0026rsquo;re 3 hours ahead of California, I\u0026rsquo;m basically working regular hours.\nNorth Star At North Star we jumped right in and started seeing lobster, barracuda, squirrelfish, hogfish, parrotfish, and, of course, grunts. At one point we spotted a scorpionfish hiding in plain sight. There were lots of other fish similar to past dives and I found myself paying more attention to the coral. I started looking for things like flamingo tongues and seahorses. I didn\u0026rsquo;t actually find any, but it was interesting looking at the smaller details. What a great day of diving!\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/spanish-anchor-and-north-star/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen we woke up this morning conditions looked epic. The trees and flags were still. The water was as flat as you can reasonably expect the ocean to get. We were worried if we let our excitement show that we might jinx it. Both dive spots this morning were on Molasses Reef, which is a fairly shallow reef, so I hoped the calm water and shallow depths would lead to some good pictures. When we arrived at \u003cem\u003eSpanish Anchor\u003c/em\u003e, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t as clear as I thought it would be, but it was as calm as anywhere I\u0026rsquo;ve been diving.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Spanish Anchor and North Star"},{"content":"We hit two spots on French Reef today. We started things off at Woody\u0026rsquo;s Ledge. The surface was calm, but the visibility wasn\u0026rsquo;t good \u0026ndash; 25 to 30 feet at most. They put us in a group with a bunch of folks that hadn\u0026rsquo;t been under water in a while and needed to do a weight check before we got going. So we all jumped in the water and Alison (our dave master) started helping them do their neutral buoyancy checks. Charmaine popped her head up and yelled \u0026ldquo;a huge turtle!\u0026rdquo; and immediately descended to check it out. I decided to follow her instead of staying with the group. The group was going to be fine, but I needed to stay with my buddy.\nThe turtle was a huge leatherback. I think it\u0026rsquo;s the first one I\u0026rsquo;ve seen on a dive. It was really cool. After that we checked out some coral while I tried a few new things with the camera. I decided to use the camera\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;underwater\u0026rdquo; mode. In that mode it doesn\u0026rsquo;t use the flash at all, but I hadn\u0026rsquo;t figured that out yet. After messing with it for a while, we looked around to find our group. They had started off to the south.\nWe started chasing after them, but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t keep myself neutrally buoyant. My BCD was leaking. Each time I added air, it all spilled right back out. Lame. So my choice was to kick hard the whole time to keep myself off the bottom (yes, I still had way too much weight) and burn through air by working and breathing hard, or put air into my BCD and spill it out that way. Both choices burned up air fast. I chose to just circle around below the boat and then go up very early. Of all the dives to have a problem, this was the right one \u0026ndash; visibility was terrible. Hopefully we didn\u0026rsquo;t miss too much. On the boat another dive master helped debug the issue with my BCD. It turned out that the dump valve was all the way open and needed to be turned a few times to close it. They do that sometimes when they\u0026rsquo;re cleaning out the BCDs at the shop. So I missed out this dive, but at least I could participate on the next one.\nEveryone else eventually made it back to the boat and we headed to another spot on French Reef called Christmas Tree Cave. It\u0026rsquo;s named after a swim-through that has a lot of christmas tree worms inside. Visibility was better, but still nothing amazing. It was a great dive. I went with 15 pounds, which was still more than enough. I\u0026rsquo;ll drop a pound or two tomorrow.\nI still prefer Molasses Reef over French Reef, but we had a really good dive today \u0026ndash; maybe the best dive we have had at French Reef. There were a bunch of fish and the camera was ok. It was similar to how the old GoPro behaves when you use the red filter. So I\u0026rsquo;m still not impressed with what I\u0026rsquo;m getting out of it (I already had a GoPro with a red filter; I spent a bunch of money and was hoping to get something better). Tomorrow I\u0026rsquo;ll switch to full manual and see if that makes any kind of difference.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/woodys-ledge-and-christmas-tree-cave/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe hit two spots on French Reef today. We started things off at \u003cem\u003eWoody\u0026rsquo;s Ledge\u003c/em\u003e. The surface was calm, but the visibility wasn\u0026rsquo;t good \u0026ndash; 25 to 30 feet at most. They put us in a group with a bunch of folks that hadn\u0026rsquo;t been under water in a while and needed to do a weight check before we got going. So we all jumped in the water and Alison (our dave master) started helping them do their neutral buoyancy checks. Charmaine popped her head up and yelled \u0026ldquo;a huge turtle!\u0026rdquo; and immediately descended to check it out. I decided to follow her instead of staying with the group. The group was going to be fine, but I needed to stay with my buddy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Woody's Ledge and Christmas Tree Cave"},{"content":"It rained again last night. I worried that the water would be rough again today, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t. We bought some dramamine yesterday and took some before bed. We took another round this morning before heading out. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if it was the drugs or the calm waters, but we were both fine all day.\nWe did our second deep dive today. We decided to do all our deep dives before Brett and Jess get here. I don\u0026rsquo;t think Jess enjoys going deep and there\u0026rsquo;s certainly no need to go deep to see anything other than wrecks. The wreck we saw this morning was the USCG Duane. I took the camera down inside the enclosure for the first time. I brought the big flash because I knew there wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be a lot of light at depth. That full rig is pretty heavy. Speaking of heavy, I took 18 pounds of weight today, which proved to be way too much. It\u0026rsquo;s easy to compensate for too much weight, but there\u0026rsquo;s no way to compensate for having too little. Tomorrow I may try a little less.\nI definitely have no idea what I\u0026rsquo;m doing with the camera yet. So far it\u0026rsquo;s turning out pictures that are much worse than those I am able to get with the very old GoPro. Today I had the camera set to full-auto on the Duane, then I changed it to Program so I could force the flash each time. Neither setting produced any great pictures, so I think it\u0026rsquo;s clear the problem is the guy operating the camera. The other problem is that I ran the camera out of batteries shortly after starting the second dive today. I need to start with a freshly charged battery and only have the camera powered on when I\u0026rsquo;m actually using it. We\u0026rsquo;ll see how it goes tomorrow.\nWe have been to the Duane previously. It has been down there a long time and has a lot of growth all over it. There are a lot of fish and other life all around it. Today we did some swim-throughs that were really cool. I don\u0026rsquo;t think we would have enjoyed them without our spotting lights. Such a great purchase. I\u0026rsquo;m still really liking those lights. There were a few moray eels and some larger angelfish among the other fish, but \u0026ndash; obviously \u0026ndash; the wreck itself was the main attraction.\nNot far from the Duane is Molasses Reef, which is part of a protected marine park. We moored our boat above a spot called Aquarium, which was probably our favorite dive spot last year. It proved to be amazing again today. It\u0026rsquo;s quite a shallow spot, but that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what we needed after the deep dive this morning. We went slow and took our time looking around. It was exactly the kind of dive you want at the kind of location you want if you\u0026rsquo;re trying to get some good underwater shots. Sadly, that is not what I was trying to do. The camera battery had died as soon as we jumped in at the start of this dive. But that is the only sad thing about it. Everything else was awesome. We saw a bunch of stuff: Nurse sharks, a reef shark, a bunch of free-swimming moray eels, an octopus, angelfish, porkfish, goatfish, boxfish, damselfish, filefish, butterflyfish, yellowtail snapper, parrotfish, shrimp, grouper, and even an arrow crab. Oh, and tons of barracuda. They were everywhere. It was hard to go off to work instead of going back out on the boat after lunch, but that\u0026rsquo;s the job. I\u0026rsquo;m glad it\u0026rsquo;s so flexible.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/uscg-duane-and-aquarium-at-molasses-reef/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt rained again last night. I worried that the water would be rough again today, but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t. We bought some dramamine yesterday and took some before bed. We took another round this morning before heading out. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if it was the drugs or the calm waters, but we were both fine all day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe did our second deep dive today. We decided to do all our deep dives before Brett and Jess get here. I don\u0026rsquo;t think Jess enjoys going deep and there\u0026rsquo;s certainly no need to go deep to see anything other than wrecks. The wreck we saw this morning was the \u003ca href=\"https://floridakeys.noaa.gov/shipwrecktrail/duane.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eUSCG Duane\u003c/a\u003e. I took the camera down inside the enclosure for the first time. I brought the big flash because I knew there wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be a lot of light at depth. That full rig is pretty heavy. Speaking of heavy, I took 18 pounds of weight today, which proved to be way too much. It\u0026rsquo;s easy to compensate for too much weight, but there\u0026rsquo;s no way to compensate for having too little. Tomorrow I may try a little less.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"USCG Duane and Aquarium at Molasses Reef"},{"content":"I really like how Rainbow Reef runs their scuba business. Everything is top-notch and professional. The rental gear is always high-end and brand new. They make you do some of the work, but it helps you do things right. I really like them. They are why we came back to Key Largo. We were so impressed with the way they did things when we were here doing our Advanced Open Water certifications last year.\nMorning came too early. We didn\u0026rsquo;t arrive in Key Largo until after midnight last night and didn\u0026rsquo;t get things setup and ready to go until about 1:30 am. First thing this morning we had to go sign in for the week, grab our rental gear, etc. before jumping on the boat at 8:30. I basically skipped breakfast. I took a few sips of some gatorade and some mango yogurt we picked up at Walmart last night, and then I was off. And I mean off. I felt very disoriented.\nUSS Spiegel Grove The first dive was the wreck of the USS Spiegel Grove. With a length of 510 feet and a width greater than 80 feet wide, it is a huge ship. At the time it was the largest ship ever intentionally sunk to serve as an artificial reef. Even now, it\u0026rsquo;s still one of the largest ever scuttled for that purpose. It was brought to Key Largo to serve as the backbone of a new reef system. It is fairly famous for a few events. First, it unexpectedly sank itself less than a day before the planned sinking. Instead of a controlled descent, it rolled as it sank, winding up upside down. A month later they filled it with huge airbags and with the help of two tugboats, they managed to roll it just enough to expose the deck leaving it resting on its starboard side. But if you visit the USS Spiegel Grove today, you\u0026rsquo;ll see it is no longer laying on its side \u0026ndash; it\u0026rsquo;s perfectly upright! In 2005, Hurricane Dennis just missed the Florida Keys, but the storm somehow managed to roll the ship to its originally intended upright position. Today the artificial reef it anchors helps protect the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary.\nI have a new enclosure for my point-and-shoot camera. I\u0026rsquo;m hoping it will take better pictures than my old GoPro. The enclosure book advised me to take it down empty for the first dive, just in case. By the time we were on the water at the location, I was still fumbling around trying to figure out what I was doing. I wound up jumping in the water before putting my gloves on or strapping my camera to my hand.\nA Rough Descent The water was really rough \u0026ndash; as rough as I\u0026rsquo;ve seen it in Key Largo. I\u0026rsquo;m sure it gets much worse in storms, but this was as rough as anything we\u0026rsquo;ve been in for scuba diving. So there I am, trying to hold on to the the granny line with one hand, put my gloves on before I drop them, figure out how to not drop the camera, and pull myself along to the drop point. And that\u0026rsquo;s the moment I realize I don\u0026rsquo;t have enough weight. I can\u0026rsquo;t drop down. My BCD is completely empty, but I can\u0026rsquo;t sink. This really sucks. It sucks because now I have to pull myself back to the boat, beg someone to carefully hand me some weights over the side of the boat, etc. But it also sucks because I already have 14 pounds of weight. That should have more than plenty. When I was here last year I only needed 12 pounds. Am I super gassy? I don\u0026rsquo;t feel like it. Have I gotten that fat? I guess so. So now I have my gloves, my camera, two five-pound lead weights, and the granny line in my hands. This is not a recipe for success. Luckily, Charmaine hadn\u0026rsquo;t descended very far and I was easily able to sink down to her with my new weights in my hands. She stuffed them into pockets in my BCD while I put on my gloves as we continued the descent.\nOn the way out from shore, we had discussed doing some swim-throughs of the superstructure and were reminded of the dangers of deep dives and particularly of penetration dives \u0026ndash; at least 7 divers have died while diving here. Some of us planned to do the swim-throughs, while others would take an alternate route. But there were already too many boats moored at the helm when we arrived, so we were forced to moor at the stern. That meant there wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be any swim-throughs for any of us today. The stern rests almost 130 feet deep \u0026ndash; quite a bit deeper than the helm, so this dive would be deeper and shorter than we originally planned. You can\u0026rsquo;t stay down that deep for very long. You burn through your air much more quickly and you can hit your no-decompression limit. Nobody wants to run out of air or be forced to do a decompression stop in addition to a safety stop while ascending, so we kept the dive fairly short. I haven\u0026rsquo;t downloaded my watch yet, but I think we were only down about 30 minutes.\nThe super powerful (and fairly expensive) video light was attached to the flexible tower screwed into the camera housing. The housing itself was empty, per manufacturer recommendation to dive without a camera the first time \u0026ndash; just in case. But the old GoPro was also attached to the housing via the cold-shoe, directly above where the real camera would be. I was happy to see the enclosure didn\u0026rsquo;t leak. I took it deeper than 100 feet and it was fine. But I wasn\u0026rsquo;t very impressed with the new (expensive) video light. During the pre-dive tests we did at home it seemed amazingly powerful, smooth, and even, but at 85 feet deep I couldn\u0026rsquo;t tell if it was on or off as I pointed at things and aimed it around. I guess I will have to be a lot closer to my targets to see the benefits. It is a 100 degree angle, after all, so the dispersion factor has to be crazy high. But I\u0026rsquo;m really happy to have our new little spotting lights. The angle of their beam is very narrow and you can really see where they are aimed. It\u0026rsquo;s funny how blue I thought their light was at home and how pink/red it seems underwater.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s such a huge ship that we were only able to swim past about 1/3 of the outside of the ship during our dive. That\u0026rsquo;s crazy. It was pretty interesting and cool, but not amazing or spectacular. The visibility was only about 50 feet, which meant the ship extended into the distance far beyond what we could see. We couldn\u0026rsquo;t even see half the ship from above as we descended and less than 10% while diving alongside, but we were able to see some cool things. The first things we saw were some cool flags, still waving in the current. We saw a massive gun turret. We swam under the amphibious transport ramps, and enjoyed seeing all the coral that has attached itself to the ship. We also saw some nice jacks swimming in a circle around one of the posts. It made me remember the long shoal of jacks we saw in Cabo Pulmo and how we need to go back.\nWhen we got up to 20 feet to do our safety stop we could already feel the crazy waves above us. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure it would have been as noticeable if we hadn\u0026rsquo;t been hanging on to the rope, but there was a slight current and we didn\u0026rsquo;t want anyone to get separated from the group. So we were all hanging on to the rope as it yanked us up and down with the wave action on the boat. Did I mention the water was rough? It was. As soon as I made my way to my spot on the boat I knew I wasn\u0026rsquo;t feeling well. I unclipped my BCD as fast as I could and ripped my mask off as I ran to the edge of the boat. I got there just in time to see mushrooms and peppers spew out of my mouth and into the sea below. I felt better immediately and got up and grabbed a cold bottle of water, rinsed my mouth, and took a few sips. I guess the Shake Shack burgers were too greasy to be eaten just a few hours before a rough day at sea. I wound up drinking the whole bottle of water on our way to French Reef.\nFrench Reef It\u0026rsquo;s not a long trip from the Spiegel to French Reef and the water wasn\u0026rsquo;t as rough at the reef as it had been out by the wreck. But still, the boat was being tossed and I felt worse after we were moored and just sitting there in the slightly rough waters. I knew I would feel better under water, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t think I would make it. Everyone got their equipment on for dive number two, and we all lined up, ready to jump off the back of the boat, but my turn wasn\u0026rsquo;t coming fast enough. I sat back down in my seat, took off my BCD, and once again took a trip to the side of the boat. This time I only sprayed clear water out \u0026ndash; no doubt the water I drank as we cruised between dive sites \u0026ndash; which felt pretty pathetic. By the time most of the other divers were in the water and I was still shamefully hanging my head over the side, the boat captain had mercy on me. She came down and told me to just put my fins and mask on and jump in \u0026ndash; she would toss the rest of my gear into the water and I could put it on at the surface. That worked really well. I skipped the camera on this dive, even though I knew it would have been a good opportunity for photos \u0026ndash; shallower, better light, more fish, etc. But I just didn\u0026rsquo;t want all that hassle. I needed some time to just relax and not worry about anything other than the experience.\nIt was a good dive. We saw a lot of cool stuff, including a nurse shark, a huge moray eel, some giant lobsters, hundreds of shrimp, a big beautiful french angelfish, a huge blue parrotfish, some hog fish, damsel fish, etc. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t completely packed with fish, but there were plenty to look at and enjoy. I used my spotting light to look down into the tube sponges and I always seemed to see something (usually a shrimp) in each one. I really like that light.\nWe stayed between 35 and 50 feet deep for about 50 minutes then did our safety stop and got ready to head back. I opted to hang back while everyone else got onboard. I wanted to minimize the amount of time I spent sitting up top, getting tossed around by the boat in the waves. Charmaine climbed up the ladder onto the boat and decided to take her own turn hanging over the side of the boat. She had already assumed the position by the time I climbed aboard. She told me she threw up through her regulator while diving. Wow. I had no idea. I\u0026rsquo;m glad she remembered her training and didn\u0026rsquo;t panic. I guess that explains why she switched to her octo part way through the dive. Being last to board the boat didn\u0026rsquo;t save me; it only postponed my fate. I joined Charmaine at the side of the boat after a few minutes, but this time I had nothing to spew out. I just heaved and made a lot of noise. It was equal parts embarrassing and comical. I grabbed another cold water and poured it on my head. I felt great after that, but Charmaine was still looking pretty green. She didn\u0026rsquo;t throw up again, but sat by the edge of the boat most of the way back to shore just in case.\nWe decided to skip the afternoon dives, take a nap, and just relax. That was the right decision.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/back-under-water/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI really like how Rainbow Reef runs their scuba business. Everything is top-notch and professional. The rental gear is always high-end and brand new. They make you do some of the work, but it helps you do things right. I really like them. They are why we came back to Key Largo. We were so impressed with the way they did things when we were here doing our Advanced Open Water certifications last year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back Under Water"},{"content":"We took a taxi to the airport. It costs about $40 each way (after tip). Parking at the airport is $15 per day, so the $80 taxi ride is a money saver for any trip longer than 4 days. This trip is going to be a bit longer than that.\nWhen you hire a taxi to take you to the airport, you never know if they\u0026rsquo;ll pick you up or drop you off on time. Will they drive the same route you drive? Do they drive faster or slower than you? So you plan on a little extra time. We also allowed a little more extra time because we knew we would be checking a bag filled with our scuba stuff. We had scheduled the driver to pick us up at 9:30. He called at 9:20 to make sure he had the right address. He showed up right on time, drove the shortest route, and got us to the airport by 9:50. We walked straight to the self-check kiosk, checked in, turned in our bags, walked through security without stopping (there\u0026rsquo;s never a line in San Jose) and sat down at our gate. I guess we didn\u0026rsquo;t need as much buffer as we thought. We had nearly two hours until our flight was scheduled to leave.\nAnd then it got delayed.\nOur connection in LAX was already short at just 60 minutes. Getting delayed made things a little more interesting. We flew from San Jose to Los Angeles in a tiny 2x2 SkyWest plane, so we had to take a bus across the runway from the commuter terminal to the main terminal in LA. We didn\u0026rsquo;t run, but we definitely walked quickly \u0026ndash; arriving just 5 minutes before departure. Luckily, the plane had plenty of seats so we didn\u0026rsquo;t have to sit in our assigned middle seats on the way to Miami. I\u0026rsquo;m not a huge fan of the 2x5x2 layout of the Boeing 777.\nThe flight to MIA from LAX was smooth. There was plenty of room and opening the air nozzles even a little was enough to keep me quite cool the whole time. I did have some trouble with the in-seat entertainment system, but it was a pretty good flight.\nMIA is a huge airport. Getting from our terminal to the rental car high rise was a serious journey, but it went by quickly as we walked, talked, and rode the train there with another couple from our flight on their way to Lima. Enterprise made getting our car super easy. Literally no paperwork until after everything was signed, sealed, and delivered. They even upgraded us to a Nissan Altima. It\u0026rsquo;s not a terrible car, but it\u0026rsquo;s a long way from how good they used to be when we owned one. The CVT stuff is crap.\nWe took the 1 (South Dixie Highway) all the way to Key Largo, only stopping to eat at Shake Shack, and to pick up some essentials at Walmart. The Shake Shack was mediocre. The burgers were greasy. I wish I hadn\u0026rsquo;t let the cashier talk me into a double. The fries were greasier. But the shakes! The shakes are made with frozen custard and were very good, but also extremely rich. Still, we probably won\u0026rsquo;t be going back anytime soon.\nWalmart was scary. Seriously. There were hundreds of shopping carts strewn throughout the entire parking lot, many slammed into cars. There wasn\u0026rsquo;t even one car or truck in the lot without serious damage and scratches. I was honestly nervous about parking our nice rental car in that lot, especially with all our stuff in it. I thought about it as we hurried through 10 minutes of shopping. Then as we stood in line trying to check out for more than 30 minutes my mind was focused on it. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to leave Charmaine in the store to checkout alone, and there was zero chance I was sending her out to check on the car by herself. So we stood in line, hoping everything would be ok. Why did we choose Walmart? Why did we go inside after seeing the parking situation? Exactly one reason: we knew they would let us get $100 cash back when we checked out. Everything turned out fine. No shopping carts or cars damaged our rental while we were stuck in that checkout line. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure it was worth risk, but at least we will have some tipping money tomorrow.\nNow we just need to adjust to the new timezone. It\u0026rsquo;s way too late and we have our first dive at 8:00 in the morning \u0026ndash; just 6 hours from now.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/san-jose-to-key-largo/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe took a taxi to the airport. It costs about $40 each way (after tip). Parking at the airport is $15 per day, so the $80 taxi ride is a money saver for any trip longer than 4 days. This trip is going to be a bit longer than that.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen you hire a taxi to take you to the airport, you never know if they\u0026rsquo;ll pick you up or drop you off on time. Will they drive the same route you drive? Do they drive faster or slower than you? So you plan on a little extra time. We also allowed a little more extra time because we knew we would be checking a bag filled with our scuba stuff. We had scheduled the driver to pick us up at 9:30. He called at 9:20 to make sure he had the right address. He showed up right on time, drove the shortest route, and got us to the airport by 9:50. We walked straight to the self-check kiosk, checked in, turned in our bags, walked through security without stopping (there\u0026rsquo;s never a line in San Jose) and sat down at our gate. I guess we didn\u0026rsquo;t need as much buffer as we thought. We had nearly two hours until our flight was scheduled to leave.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"San Jose to Key Largo"},{"content":"Car marketing teams try to come up with model names that make people think the best things about their cars. They don\u0026rsquo;t want you to think they are just good; they want you to think they are the best. It\u0026rsquo;s always about the superlatives and being superior.\nAs I ride my bicycle around town, I\u0026rsquo;ve started noticing these feelings of superiority migrating from the cars to the drivers of the cars, or at least there are drivers out there that believe they are superior, simply based on the car they are driving.\nFor example, when I ride in areas outside the city, the superior car on the road is the older American-made pickup truck with the teenage driver. You know the truck is superior, because you can hear it coming and going. You can see it using up the entire road. If you collide with a large old American pickup truck, you\u0026rsquo;re vehicle will take far more damage than the truck. That\u0026rsquo;s superiority. For some reason, that feeling of power infiltrates the mind of the driver, especially the younger driver. On many occasions I\u0026rsquo;ve been honked at, yelled at, and even forced off the road by drivers and passengers in these trucks. \u0026ldquo;Roads are for cars! Get your bike off our roads!\u0026rdquo; This is obviously a gross generalization, but it\u0026rsquo;s happened often enough that it\u0026rsquo;s the first thing that crosses my mind when I see a teenager driving an older truck.\nAround town I see almost the same behavior from drivers of hybrid cars, especially Toyota Prius drivers. These people have chosen a car they believe is better for the environment than all other cars. I\u0026rsquo;m not going to argue one way or another about the truth of that belief. The important thing is that they believe it. I don\u0026rsquo;t know if they drive a Prius because they are superior, or if they are superior because they drive a Prius, but for some reason they are quite superior while driving it. How do I know this? Because they tell me all the time, both in words and in deeds.\nJust this week I\u0026rsquo;ve been forced to stop or drive off the road by the driver of a Prius on several occasions. In asking other cyclists, the Prius phenomenon is not unique to me. Many of them have noticed the pattern as well. It\u0026rsquo;s another gross generalization, but it\u0026rsquo;s one that people are starting to talk about. Twice this week a Prius \u0026ndash; while stopped in traffic \u0026ndash; saw me riding up the wide-open bike lane next to the stopped line of cars, and maneuvered their car to block the entire bike lane. When I was forced to stop, the driver lectured me, saying cyclists should be forced to wait behind the cars just like everyone else. \u0026ldquo;You wouldn\u0026rsquo;t try passing on the right if you were in a car!\u0026rdquo; I would if I was in my own wide-open lane. It\u0026rsquo;s not just annoying; it\u0026rsquo;s very dangerous and illegal to pull into a bike lane to prevent bikes from getting by.\nI find it ironic that so many Prius drivers behave almost identically to the drivers of the big behemoth gas-guzzling trucks they try to contrast themselves against. If your car makes you superior, or you drive a certain kind of car because you\u0026rsquo;re already superior, then I call you an Auto Supremacist. And you\u0026rsquo;re part of the problem.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/auto-supremacists/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCar marketing teams try to come up with model names that make people think the best things about their cars. They don\u0026rsquo;t want you to think they are just good; they want you to think they are the best. It\u0026rsquo;s always about the superlatives and being superior.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs I ride my bicycle around town, I\u0026rsquo;ve started noticing these feelings of superiority migrating from the cars to the drivers of the cars, or at least there are drivers out there that believe they are superior, simply based on the car they are driving.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Auto Supremacists"},{"content":"I was updating some ID3 tags on a few songs today when I got an error saving the new tag. The mounted file system to my music share had become read-only. I checked the exports file on my server. It was read-write. I checked my fstab. Everything looked good. I checked the file system itself on the server. Trouble. One of my drives had failed moments earlier. Luckily, the array was configured for RAID-5, so no data was lost, but it\u0026rsquo;s still going to take a long time to rebuild it.\nStrangely enough, this is not the only drive failure I have had to deal with this holiday season. One of my good friends asked for some help with a laptop drive that had failed. She wasn\u0026rsquo;t worried initially, because she has an external drive she uses for backup. Curiously, it failed within a day of the laptop drive failure. She has a second external drive that she uses to back up the *really* important things\u0026hellip; and it was giving her errors as well. She panicked. Luckily, that third drive was still functioning and we were able to retrieve her most important things.\nIt was one year ago today that my brother lost everything from his external drive. In his case, the drive was fine; he had accidentally re-partitioned the drive while trying to create a USB boot device to hack his AppleTV. He had his backup drive and his USB flash drive plugged in at the same time and chose the wrong one to hold the boot image. We were able to use TestDisk and PhotoRec from CGSecurity to recover the pictures he had just taken over Christmas. He may have been forgiven for almost losing the photos, but I don\u0026rsquo;t think he got permission to go ahead and install Boxee on his AppleTV.\nI started using Mozy right about the same time. The home version is only $5/month and includes unlimited storage space. It\u0026rsquo;s not perfect, but it\u0026rsquo;s very easy to use. The home version doesn\u0026rsquo;t backup network drives, and I\u0026rsquo;m too cheap to pay for anything else. So I spent a few days rebuilding my file server with RAID-5 about the same time. As you can imagine, I\u0026rsquo;m very glad I did.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/tis-the-season-for-data-recovery/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was updating some \u003ca href=\"https://id3.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eID3 tags\u003c/a\u003e on a few songs today when I got an error saving the new tag. The mounted file system to my music share had become read-only. I checked the exports file on my server. It was read-write. I checked my fstab. Everything looked good. I checked the file system itself on the server. Trouble. One of my drives had failed moments earlier. Luckily, the array was configured for \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eRAID-5\u003c/a\u003e, so no data was lost, but it\u0026rsquo;s still going to take a long time to rebuild it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"'Tis the season for data recovery"},{"content":"Wow. I didn\u0026rsquo;t expect to find a place like this in Burley. My expectations for food establishments in Burley were set very low by a terrible experience I had at Wendy\u0026rsquo;s on my way through town several years ago. But this town has come a long way in my eyes since I started participating in the annual Spudman Triathlon. I have come to realize just how beautiful it is to be right here on this part of the Snake River. And now I\u0026rsquo;m finding great places to eat. Burley keeps finding new ways to impress me.\nSo let\u0026rsquo;s talk about the Upper Crust Grill. It is situated on the second floor of the Gossner\u0026rsquo;s Magic Valley Chalet on the corner of US30 and 7th Street in Heyburn, overlooking the bridge across the Snake River. It\u0026rsquo;s much nicer than I expected. When we first walked in, it reminded me of a Jason\u0026rsquo;s Deli. It\u0026rsquo;s another one of those places that has you order and pay, then take a number and find a table. Once again, I was asked to tip at time of purchase, and before any service had been rendered. This really rubs me wrong, but I got through it.\nI ordered the daily special, which was a Hawaiian Sandwich. It was very good\u0026hellip; Southern Idaho\u0026rsquo;s best ham, fresh pineapple, cream cheese, tomato, lettuce, with a slice of swiss cheese melted over the top. It came served on what I would call a scone, but they called a croissant. It\u0026rsquo;s obviously nothing like the croissants you get in Europe, but despite that little glitch, the sandwich was excellent. I order it with a side of french fries. They must have been good, because both Charmaine and Kristen went crazy for the fries and the fry sauce.\nMark got the Turkey Bacon Avocado Club. He wasn\u0026rsquo;t as hungry as he thought he would be, and wound up giving half his sandwich to me. It was very good.\nCharmaine ordered a Taco Salad, because the cashier said it was special compared to the Bacon Cheeseburger she was considering. That\u0026rsquo;s the kind of person you want interacting with your customers. Unfortunately, the salad looked like it had too many olives and too much dressing, but Charmaine said it was still really good.\nI\u0026rsquo;m glad we stopped for lunch before heading home. I had considered stopping at Carl\u0026rsquo;s Jr, but I knew Mark and Kristen would have hated it, so I was set to make the drive back to Utah without lunch. Kristen saw the sign for Gourmet Sandwiches and we turned around. It wound up being a very good experience and I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll eat at the Upper Crust Grill again, even if it isn\u0026rsquo;t until we\u0026rsquo;re in town for next year\u0026rsquo;s Spudman.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/upper-crust-grill-heyburn-idaho/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWow. I didn\u0026rsquo;t expect to find a place like this in Burley. My expectations for food establishments in Burley were set very low by a terrible experience I had at Wendy\u0026rsquo;s on my way through town several years ago. But this town has come a long way in my eyes since I started participating in the annual \u003ca href=\"https://spudman.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eSpudman Triathlon\u003c/a\u003e. I have come to realize just how beautiful it is to be right here on this part of the Snake River. And now I\u0026rsquo;m finding great places to eat. Burley keeps finding new ways to impress me.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Upper Crust Grill - Heyburn, Idaho"},{"content":"I live in a part of Utah County where there are very few businesses of any kind. We can\u0026rsquo;t even get pizza delivered to our house from any website other than Dominos.com, which is just sad. So when Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s little sister, Lisa, wanted to go to a local restaurant, because it was so good, I was more than a little skeptical. When Charmaine confirmed that she had been there previously, and that it really was quite good, I figured I should give it a shot.\nSo we headed to the Blue Lemon Restaurant in Highland, Utah. It\u0026rsquo;s in a new strip mall on the north side of SR92 (11000 N), across the street from Kohler\u0026rsquo;s. I have driven down that road, right past the Blue Lemon several times, without ever noticing that it existed. As we walked in, I was thinking how hard it must be for a restaurant to stay in business when people don\u0026rsquo;t know it exists. Then I saw there were a lot of people inside, which seemed like a good sign.\nLike many places these days, the first thing you do is place your order and pay for it. Unlike many places that use this type of setup, the cashier at the Blue Lemon asked me to tip. I thought it was odd to be asked to tip for service I had not received yet, especially at a place that is obviously a deli, not a restaurant (despite it\u0026rsquo;s name). So I asked the cashier if people actually tipped. She told me everyone tips, so I did. But it definitely felt wrong. Looking back on it, I think she was just giving me the company line. I\u0026rsquo;m certain it was a con job, and it probably cost them a very good customer. If I ever eat there again, I won\u0026rsquo;t be tipping unless they earn it first.\nThe cashier is situated at the dessert counter, and they had several beautiful desserts on display. While ordering, we spent some time picking out a couple desserts that looked good. After making our selections, we were told they were unavailable. Confused, we pointed to the desserts on display. The cashier let us know that those desserts had already been purchased by other customers. The restaurant had recently changed it\u0026rsquo;s dessert policy and no longer required patrons to carry their desserts to the table. The particular desserts we had selected would be delivered to someone else\u0026rsquo;s table in a few minutes. That was a bit odd, but somewhat understandable. So we accepted our second or third choices, because they were still available.\nWe paid for our meals, tipped our server (that we had yet to meet), chose a table and filled our drinks. The plastic cups didn\u0026rsquo;t seem different from the plastic cups anywhere else, but the word \u0026ldquo;compostable\u0026rdquo; was molded into the plastic. That was especially interesting to me, since I have a compost pile in my garden. I thought about taking the cup home to see how well that claim held up, but I\u0026rsquo;ve had enough trouble keeping plastic out of the compost pile that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t bring myself to purposely add plastic to the pile. It was obvious they were trying to be \u0026ldquo;green\u0026rdquo; and we understood that.\nThe \u0026ldquo;green\u0026rdquo; attitude of the Blue Lemon became all the more evident when our server brought out our meals. All three of us had ordered from the menu, but the server only brought out 2 sets of silverware. Obviously aware of our confusion, the server helpfully pointed out that my sandwich didn\u0026rsquo;t need silverware. I was dumbfounded. I could obviously eat the sandwich without silverware, but I really didn\u0026rsquo;t feel like I should be forced to share a napkin with someone else. And what if I was going to have a bite of someone else\u0026rsquo;s meal, should I be forced to use their fork? No. That was more than odd, it was absolutely wrong.\nThe food was actually quite good, especially the side of artichoke and cream cheese dip that we ordered on the suggestion of the cashier. It was obviously not the bought-at-Costco artichoke dip that so many bad restaurants serve as an appetizer. I was impressed. I ordered the Grilled Chicken BLT, which was very good. Lisa was very happy with the Raspberry Chicken Salad she ordered. Charmaine ordered a creamy pasta dish that was fairly bland. She wasn\u0026rsquo;t all that impressed with it.\nDespite the great sandwich, by the time we were finished, I was still upset about not having a napkin and silverware. The longer we waited for our desserts to arrive, the more time I had to think about the fact that I was told I didn\u0026rsquo;t need one \u0026ndash; and the more time I had to think about being conned into tipping for this terrible service. Finally, Charmaine got up and complained about not having our desserts and they did bring them out. The desserts were average at best, and certainly not worth the wait.\nBottom line: I enjoyed my sandwich, but I won\u0026rsquo;t be going back on my own due to the strange policies, forced/conned tipping, and terrible service.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/blue-lemon-highland-utah/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI live in a part of Utah County where there are very few businesses of any kind. We can\u0026rsquo;t even get pizza delivered to our house from any website other than Dominos.com, which is just sad. So when Charmaine\u0026rsquo;s little sister, Lisa, wanted to go to a local restaurant, because it was so good, I was more than a little skeptical. When Charmaine confirmed that she had been there previously, and that it really was quite good, I figured I should give it a shot.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blue Lemon - Highland, Utah"},{"content":"I moved from the Seattle area to Utah County about four years ago. One of the hardest parts of that move was the extreme lack of good food in Utah. I grew up in Utah and always figured we had good food here, but just in the expensive restaurants. I was wrong. There is no substitute for seafood only a few hours old, and it will never be possible to have that kind of freshness in Utah. One coping method I\u0026rsquo;ve found is to go on vacations, with the goal of eating great food being high on the list of reasons for choosing a location.\nI\u0026rsquo;m pleased to say food options are improving in Utah. Some of the \u0026ldquo;better\u0026rdquo; chain restaurants, like California Pizza Kitchen, Cheesecake Factory, Buca di Beppo\u0026rsquo;s, etc. and some of the \u0026ldquo;better\u0026rdquo; fast-food chains, like Five Guys Burgers and Fries, In-N-Out, etc. are starting to show up in Utah. We\u0026rsquo;re even starting to get some good non-chain restaurants. It\u0026rsquo;s exciting to be able to try all these new places when they show up (and are still relatively cheap).\nBasically, I like to eat out. I\u0026rsquo;m hoping to use that one fact as the basis to revive this blog. I think it\u0026rsquo;s going to be fun for me. I have discovered the WordPress iPhone application, so I can blog my food experiences while I\u0026rsquo;m still enjoying them.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/food-critic/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI moved from the Seattle area to Utah County about four years ago. One of the hardest parts of that move was the extreme lack of good food in Utah. I grew up in Utah and always figured we had good food here, but just in the expensive restaurants. I was wrong. There is no substitute for seafood only a few hours old, and it will never be possible to have that kind of freshness in Utah. One coping method I\u0026rsquo;ve found is to go on vacations, with the goal of eating great food being high on the list of reasons for choosing a location.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Food Critic"},{"content":"After a short swim today, I decided to take a ride up Provo Canyon. My previous rides up Big Cottonwood Canyon and American Fork Canyon were so much fun that I decided it would be a nice relaxing ride to help me get my mind off all the stress at work. It was not at all like the other two rides, nor was it relaxing.\nFor one thing, Provo Canyon is a freeway. I guess that didn\u0026rsquo;t really cross my mind until I typed it just now, but it\u0026rsquo;s true. Provo Canyon is a multi-lane divided highway. The ride up the canyon was a lot of fun. I had a great tail-wind pushing me up. In some spots I was able to hit the \u0026ldquo;red line\u0026rdquo; a few times (75 mph \u0026ndash; indicated). I imagine I was only going about 65 mph, but that\u0026rsquo;s a topic for a different day. It was a great ride up the canyon.\nAt Vivian Park I pulled off the highway and drove up past South Fork park. That road was very much like the ride up American Fork Canyon. If there was a way to get there without going on the highway, I would probably do it again and again. But since it requires the 10 minutes on the freeway, I doubt I\u0026rsquo;ll go back anytime soon.\nThe ride down the canyon was fast, but not all that enjoyable. What had been my tailwind pushing me up the canyon was now a hurricane-force headwind. The wind wrapped down under my facemask and blasted my whole face, making mucus come out my tear ducts in a vain attempt to protect my eyes. It was not a pleasant experience to say the least. And sometimes the wind was coming at me from the side, which made it hard to steady the scooter on corners. Bonus.\nIt certainly accomplished the task of taking my mind off work for a few minutes, and there\u0026rsquo;s something to be said for that.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/red-line/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a short swim today, I decided to take a ride up Provo Canyon. My previous rides up Big Cottonwood Canyon and American Fork Canyon were so much fun that I decided it would be a nice relaxing ride to help me get my mind off all the stress at work. It was not at all like the other two rides, nor was it relaxing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor one thing, Provo Canyon is a freeway. I guess that didn\u0026rsquo;t really cross my mind until I typed it just now, but it\u0026rsquo;s true. Provo Canyon is a multi-lane divided highway. The ride up the canyon was a lot of fun. I had a great tail-wind pushing me up. In some spots I was able to hit the \u0026ldquo;red line\u0026rdquo; a few times (75 mph \u0026ndash; indicated). I imagine I was only going about 65 mph, but that\u0026rsquo;s a topic for a different day. It was a great ride up the canyon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Red line"},{"content":"Several months ago I started the process of getting my motorcycle endorsement to my Utah driver license. The written test was a piece of cake, but everyone warned me about how hard the skills test would be. Luckily, they don\u0026rsquo;t let you take your skills test until several months after you take your written test. I think this is mostly due to the number of people waiting to take the skills test. Today was the day I was scheduled to take the skills test.\nI had never practiced any of the tests I would be asked to perform on my scooter, so I was a bit anxious going into the test. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t even read exactly what the tests would be until this morning before the test. The one bit of confidence I had was everyone saying how much easier the test would be on such a small machine. Apparently the cone weave and U-turn are almost impossible to perform on a large bike, like a Harley.\nWhen I arrived at the DMV, I wondered if it was closed. There were only 3 or 4 cars in the parking lot. I was so confused. The day I took my written test, the entire parking lot was full. As luck would have it, Thursdays are just like that \u0026ndash; empty. I parked my scooter and started walking in when I noticed a guy on a large Harley being tested. I watched for a minute. He seemed to be doing just fine, but it was hard to tell.\nI walked straight to the test counter, showed them my temporary license and motorcycle registration, and they told me to go right out and take my test. The guy on the Harley was just finishing up. He passed with no mistakes. My confidence grew. Maybe this skills test isn\u0026rsquo;t such a big deal after all.\nThe gentleman giving me instructions started shooting the breeze with me, asking me if I went to BYU (no), Provo High School (no), if I was married (yes), how long I had been married (7 years), how many kids I have (none), etc. Then he started telling jokes about how he didn\u0026rsquo;t have kids for the first 4 years he was married and he still reminds his kids that those were the best 4 years of his life. When he switched into joke mode, I figured I was going to be fine. Looking back on it now, I think he probably does it to help those taking the test to relax. It definitely worked on me. The tests were a piece of cake. I passed with no mistakes.\nMinutes later I had my new temporary license and started riding back to work \u0026ndash; all before the scheduled start time for my skills test. Thursdays at the DMV are the best. I\u0026rsquo;ll have to remember that the next time I need to renew my license.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/motorcycle-skills-test/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSeveral months ago I \u003ca href=\"/blog/motorcycle-learner-permit/\"\u003estarted the process\u003c/a\u003e of getting my motorcycle endorsement to my Utah driver license. The written test was a piece of cake, but everyone warned me about how hard the skills test would be. Luckily, they don\u0026rsquo;t let you take your skills test until several months after you take your written test. I think this is mostly due to the number of people waiting to take the skills test. Today was the day I was scheduled to take the skills test.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Motorcycle Skills Test"},{"content":"I took my scooter in for its first oil change a few weeks ago. The Scooter Lounge was having some sort of Scooter Rally where a large group of scooter enthusiasts all rode up American Fork Canyon together. They invited me to go, and bring Charmaine, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure how well it would handle the canyon with both of us on it. I figured the scooter was made for two people, but probably two Taiwanese people. I had just ridden up and over Sun Crest and up Big Cottonwood Canyon the week before that. It slowed itself down to 35 on the road over Sun Crest\u0026hellip; and that was by myself. So I declined.\nBut this weekend we decided to ride up American Fork canyon on our own. Charmaine jumped on the back and we headed off into the hills. That was another great ride. Shortly after you pass where the road splits between Tibble Fork and the Alpine Loop, the road narrows and loses its painted lines. That is where 2-wheeled vehicles thrive. That road was made for scooters and motorcycles. And we saw several, each giving us the motorcycle wave.\nWe didn\u0026rsquo;t go up and over into Provo Canyon, though. We stopped to stretch our legs at the summit and then went back down American Fork Canyon to our home. I\u0026rsquo;m sure we\u0026rsquo;ll be doing that ride again and again.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/alpine-loop/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI took my scooter in for its first oil change a few weeks ago. The Scooter Lounge was having some sort of Scooter Rally where a large group of scooter enthusiasts all rode up American Fork Canyon together. They invited me to go, and bring Charmaine, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure how well it would handle the canyon with both of us on it. I figured the scooter was made for two people, but probably two Taiwanese people. I had just ridden up and over Sun Crest and up Big Cottonwood Canyon the week before that. It slowed itself down to 35 on the road over Sun Crest\u0026hellip; and that was by myself. So I declined.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Alpine Loop"},{"content":"Riding a motorcycle is like joining a fraternity of some sort. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t ever ridden one on the roads, you may not have noticed. When motorcycles pass each other in opposite directions, they usually give each other what I\u0026rsquo;m calling the motorcycle wave\u0026hellip; each rider drops his left hand to wave to the other below the handlebars.\nI realize that my scooter is far from being a motorcycle, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like a typical scooter, either. I guess the larger wheels make it look somewhat like a motorcycle to motorcycle riders approaching from the front, because I get the motorcycle wave fairly often. It\u0026rsquo;s such a simple thing, but it adds a lot to the experience. I\u0026rsquo;m more and more convinced that I\u0026rsquo;m going to end up with a real motorcycle at some point.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/motorcycle-wave/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRiding a motorcycle is like joining a fraternity of some sort. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t ever ridden one on the roads, you may not have noticed. When motorcycles pass each other in opposite directions, they usually give each other what I\u0026rsquo;m calling the motorcycle wave\u0026hellip; each rider drops his left hand to wave to the other below the handlebars.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI realize that my scooter is far from being a motorcycle, but it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like a typical scooter, either. I guess the larger wheels make it look somewhat like a motorcycle to motorcycle riders approaching from the front, because I get the motorcycle wave fairly often. It\u0026rsquo;s such a simple thing, but it adds a lot to the experience. I\u0026rsquo;m more and more convinced that I\u0026rsquo;m going to end up with a real motorcycle at some point.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Motorcycle wave"},{"content":"Silly me. I thought I could head down to the local DMV office during lunch and get my motorcycle endorsement. I completely underestimated the number of lines and the speed at which they would move. As my 1:00 meeting got closer and closer I realized I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t finish the tests by the time I had to leave. At 12:50, I was about to leave, having done nothing but wait in lines for 90 minutes. It was pretty disappointing. But then I checked my email and saw a message from my boss telling me not to worry about the 1:00 meeting. He had rescheduled it to 3:30 to allow me to stay there and take the test (so I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have to re-wait those 90 minutes some other day).\nFinally, they called my number. The written test was a joke. I had never picked up the motorcycle handbook, but managed to pass the test on my first attempt. I had been putting off taking the test until I thought I was ready to pass the skills test. Yet another silly mistake. At the completion of the written test they told me the soonest they can schedule me to take the skills test is sometime in September. That\u0026rsquo;s right. I have to be content with a learner permit for the next 6 weeks. That means no passengers and no riding my scooter at night. Oh well. I guess it just means I\u0026rsquo;ll be that much more prepared for the skills test when I finally get to take it. And I\u0026rsquo;ll be legal riding around town between now and then.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/motorcycle-learner-permit/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSilly me. I thought I could head down to the local DMV office during lunch and get my motorcycle endorsement. I completely underestimated the number of lines and the speed at which they would move. As my 1:00 meeting got closer and closer I realized I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t finish the tests by the time I had to leave. At 12:50, I was about to leave, having done nothing but wait in lines for 90 minutes. It was pretty disappointing. But then I checked my email and saw a message from my boss telling me not to worry about the 1:00 meeting. He had rescheduled it to 3:30 to allow me to stay there and take the test (so I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have to re-wait those 90 minutes some other day).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Motorcycle Learner Permit"},{"content":"After a year of consideration and on-and-off research, I finally found a way to stop driving the Nissan Armada around. The point of not driving it is to save the miles/wear-and-tear for the real reasons we bought it\u0026hellip; to drive large groups of people around and to haul large items around. It was never meant to be a commuter car. We bought it when we lived in the Seattle area and we never drove it to work. It sat parked in our garage most of the time. We brought it out when people came to visit us, when we took road trips (what a great car for road trips), and we hoped to buy a boat and/or other toys that we would haul around behind it\u0026hellip; but then we moved to Utah. Gone are the days of carpooling to work in the morning.\nFor the past 2 years I\u0026rsquo;ve been looking at ways to reduce the amount of time driving the Armada. Last summer we were living in a temporary apartment close to my work so I was able to ride my mountain bike to work, but it obviously wasn\u0026rsquo;t a permanent solution. That\u0026rsquo;s when I started looking into the idea of getting a scooter.\nI did a lot of research and compared specs of many different brands and models of scooters. In the beginning I was thinking Vespa. One of my good friends and neighbors in Washington had a Vespa that he rode around from time to time, so I started out test driving a couple Vespa scooters. I really liked the style of the Vespas, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t like the performance as much as I thought I would. The 250cc version was just too big (I might as well get a motorcycle) and the others seemed a bit underpowered. I didn\u0026rsquo;t dismiss Vespa right away, though\u0026hellip; I still liked the style. But in the end, the small wheels and expensive price tag (relative to other brands with similar specs) made me look elsewhere.\nI read a lot of good things about KYMCO scooters, and one of my neighbors in the temporary apartment had a People 150. KYMCO is one of the largest scooter companies in Taiwan. I test drove one. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite fast enough for me, but I really liked the larger wheels. The People 250 (discontinued) was fast enough, but I kept thinking if I had to get a 250cc engine I should just get a motorcycle.\nEventually I ended up looking at SYM scooters, which is the other major scooter company in Taiwan. I test drove the HD 200. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t quite as fast as I had hoped, but I knew that it was fast enough for me. I wasn\u0026rsquo;t planning on taking it on the freeway, and I figured it could do about 60 mph.\nI bought it.\nThat was almost 2 weeks ago. I have ridden it to work every day since. I even took it camping up Big Cottonwood Canyon. That was a fun ride.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/scooter/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter a year of consideration and on-and-off research, I finally found a way to stop driving the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nissanusa.com/armada/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eNissan Armada\u003c/a\u003e around. The point of not driving it is to save the miles/wear-and-tear for the real reasons we bought it\u0026hellip; to drive large groups of people around and to haul large items around. It was never meant to be a commuter car. We bought it when we lived in the Seattle area and we never drove it to work. It sat parked in our garage most of the time. We brought it out when people came to visit us, when we took road trips (what a great car for road trips), and we hoped to buy a boat and/or other toys that we would haul around behind it\u0026hellip; but then we moved to Utah. Gone are the days of carpooling to work in the morning.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Scooter"},{"content":"I finally upgraded my Linux firewall at home. I had a hard drive warn me that it was going to die soon (S.M.A.R.T. saved my bacon), so I decided the time had come to overhaul the system.\nI recently switched from Windows XP to Kubuntu at work, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d use Ubuntu at home as well. In the process of figuring out what packages I wanted on my server, I played with various ubuntu derivatives. I wanted to keep it light weight, so I decided to go without any GUI or with the Xfce included with Xubuntu over VNC. In the end I went with Ubuntu server with no GUI at all.\nI also installed a transparent proxy cache (Squid) and a content filter (DansGuardian). I\u0026rsquo;ve used both of these for years, but it was interesting figuring out the new options in the configuration files. I forgot to backup my iptables scripts, but I found an old version and brought them up to date.\nI hope it stays up another 216 days (the amount of time since my previous reboot).\nOne of these days I\u0026rsquo;ll have to tell my story of my failed attempt to \u0026ldquo;upgrade\u0026rdquo; to Windows Vista Beta at work. Having worked a few years for Microsoft in times past, I was honestly shocked and disappointed that they would let anyone outside the company try to use something so broken.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/ubuntu-server/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI finally upgraded my Linux firewall at home. I had a hard drive warn me that it was going to die soon (\u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eS.M.A.R.T.\u003c/a\u003e saved my bacon), so I decided the time had come to overhaul the system.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI recently switched from Windows XP to \u003ca href=\"http://kubuntu.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eKubuntu\u003c/a\u003e at work, so I thought I\u0026rsquo;d use Ubuntu at home as well. In the process of figuring out what packages I wanted on my server, I played with various ubuntu derivatives. I wanted to keep it light weight, so I decided to go without any GUI or with the \u003ca href=\"http://xfce.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eXfce\u003c/a\u003e included with \u003ca href=\"http://xubuntu.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eXubuntu\u003c/a\u003e over \u003ca href=\"http://realvnc.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eVNC\u003c/a\u003e. In the end I went with \u003ca href=\"http://www.ubuntu.com/server\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eUbuntu server\u003c/a\u003e with no GUI at all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ubuntu Server"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s funny. I had pretty much abandoned this blog a long time ago, but here I am contemplating actually blogging (my last false-start probably shouldn\u0026rsquo;t count). Why? Because the WordPress php script notified me of some comment spam that was recently added to an old post. That was sort of amazing to me, since I have never advertised my site anywhere. There has never been a link to it from my homepage (there isn\u0026rsquo;t even a homepage right now). In fact, I don\u0026rsquo;t think there has ever been a link to my blog from anywhere in the world. But somehow the spiders and spammers found it and started adding comment spam. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty interesting to me. Why not until now?\nMy site was set to restrict comments to those with valid accounts, but somehow one of the spammers managed to get a comment posted anyway. I decided it must have been an old security hole in the version of WordPress that was installed at the time. I have since upgraded it to the latest version.\nThe real question now is\u0026hellip; will I post again?\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/comment-spam/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s funny. I had pretty much abandoned this blog a long time ago, but here I am contemplating actually blogging (my last false-start probably shouldn\u0026rsquo;t count). Why? Because the WordPress php script notified me of some comment spam that was recently added to an old post. That was sort of amazing to me, since I have never advertised my site anywhere. There has never been a link to it from my homepage (there isn\u0026rsquo;t even a homepage right now). In fact, I don\u0026rsquo;t think there has ever been a link to my blog from anywhere in the world. But somehow the spiders and spammers found it and started adding comment spam. That\u0026rsquo;s pretty interesting to me. Why not until now?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Comment Spam"},{"content":"Your personal information is not yours at all. Companies collect it, buy it, sell it, archive it, mine it, crunch it, and even lose track of it. Many companies have recently disclosed that they have lost track of the information they collected on their employees and customers.\nCitigroup has begun the process of notifying 3.9 million of its current and former customers that information about their accounts (names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, account numbers, account balances, transaction histories, etc.) has been lost. Apparently, this data was contained on backup media that was being shipped to an alternate location. Citibank shipped the backup tapes on May 2nd, but didn\u0026rsquo;t realize they were missing until May 24th.\nLast month, Time Warner lost backup tapes containing all the data it had collected on 600 thousand current and former employees (going back 19 years).\nBack in April, Ameritrade informed more than 200 thousand current and former customers that their personal information had been lost when their backup tapes didn\u0026rsquo;t show up at the desired location.\nDo shipping companies like UPS, FedEx, DHL, and others really lose that many important packages? In my experience, the answer is no. What usually happens is something like this: Company has some change (backups were problematic and were not finished on time, a new shipping person was hired, etc.) that requires a new person to handle some aspect of shipping the backup tapes to the new location. This is where the trouble begins. The new person may not know the right address of the final location, write down just the building address, etc. The package is then shipped and signed for on arrival at the front desk. The receptionist assumes the person that had the package delivered will come claim it, since it wasn\u0026rsquo;t addressed to anyone or any department. A few weeks go by and the department realizes they don\u0026rsquo;t have their package. They panic, call the shipping company, and find out that it was signed out at the destination. They look at the signature, but don\u0026rsquo;t recognize it (the receptionist isn\u0026rsquo;t an employee of the department where the package was supposed to be delivered). They jump to the conclusion that the package was somehow intercepted. Company decides never to use that shipping company again.\nAre banks and other companies losing track of their data more often these days? Why does it seem that we are hearing about it all the time, when we never used to hear about it? Is it because the data was never lost until it was all on computers and backup tapes?\nWe don\u0026rsquo;t know, but we assume that it is no more prevalent today than previously.\nUntil recently, companies were not required to disclose to anyone when they lost your personal information. Now they are only required to report it if the information was not encrypted. But didn\u0026rsquo;t Debby Hopkins, Citigroup CTO, state that the backup tapes were produced \u0026ldquo;in a sophisticated mainframe data center environment\u0026rdquo; and would be difficult to decode without the right software? Yes, she did say that. But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean anything. It is pure spin. Let\u0026rsquo;s remember that they are only disclosing this data loss because they are required to do so. And they are only required to disclose information loss when the information is not encrypted. This tells us that the backup tapes are not encrypted. Sure, you may need a copy of whatever backup software they used to make the tapes in order to piece the information back together, but you will not need passwords or encryption keys to recover and (ab)use that customer data.\nRequiring companies to disclose loss of personal information is a great concept. If you trust them with your personal information, you want them to tell you if they give it to the bad guys. The trouble with this particular law is that it provides companies with a very low bar to jump over in order to avoid being required to disclose their missteps. Data that is encrypted before it is turned over to the identity thieves need not be reported. This is just sad. Whether or not your personal information was encrypted when it was handed to the bad guys is not the issue. They gave away your personal information, increasing your risk of identity theft, and you need to know about it.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t worry, you won\u0026rsquo;t hear about these companies losing track of your data in the future. They have seen the light at the end of the loophole.\nSoon after public disclosure of their loss, Time Warner has started encrypting its backup data, absolving it of the requirement to disclose future losses of your personal information.\nMost Citigroup units send data in an encrypted form and are already free from the requirement to disclose personal information loss. Beginning in July 2005, CitiFinancial data will also be encrypted, absolving Citigroup of these public relations headaches when they lose track of it.\nIn the US, any data collected by a firm belongs to the firm that collected it, even if that data contains your personal information. In Europe, Canada, and Australia, your personal information belongs to you. Those firms who also have custody of it are merely controllers. I\u0026rsquo;m rarely a proponent for new laws, but I do like the UK Data Protection Act (and its European counterparts). I wish our laws did a better job of recognizing that you are the rightful owner of your personal information.\nCompanies should not be allowed to buy or sell your personal information. That\u0026rsquo;s your data. You may choose to allow a firm to have custody of your information, but only when you make that conscious choice. Once you release it, there\u0026rsquo;s no telling where it will end up.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/personal-information-loss/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYour personal information is not yours at all. Companies collect it, buy it, sell it, archive it, mine it, crunch it, and even lose track of it. Many companies have recently disclosed that they have lost track of the information they collected on their employees and customers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCitigroup has begun the process of notifying 3.9 million of its current and former customers that information about their accounts (names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, account numbers, account balances, transaction histories, etc.) has been lost. Apparently, this data was contained on backup media that was being shipped to an alternate location. Citibank shipped the backup tapes on May 2nd, but didn\u0026rsquo;t realize they were missing until May 24th.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Personal Information Loss"},{"content":"I like movies. I buy the movies I enjoy on DVD, so that I can watch them with my friends. Sometimes I expose my friends to movies that they really enjoy, but probably would not have seen if it wasn\u0026rsquo;t for my recommendation (The Spanish Prisoner). Other times they introduce movies to me that I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have seen if it wasn\u0026rsquo;t for their recommendation. We give our honest assessment of each movie when asked.\nHave you ever had a friend give you a review that included something like, \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;except for this one scene that really didn\u0026rsquo;t need to be there\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; or, \u0026ldquo;It would have been better without so much\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo; I know I have. I\u0026rsquo;ve also given reviews like that.\nWhen my brothers tried to watch and edit Austin Powers for my parents, they spent the entire time with their hand on the remote, ready to fast forward or mute anything my parents would find objectionable. They didn\u0026rsquo;t do a very good job, because they didn\u0026rsquo;t know exactly what to skip or when to stop skipping. One solution to this is to make your own edited version of the movie, or to join a video store that has edited versions of movies for rent. The effort required to make your own edited version of a movie likely exceeds the value you would get from having an edited version. There are also many problems with renting an edited version. One problem is that the decision about what is kept and what is cut is left up to those who did the edits. Another problem is that the copyright owners do not like it when people make their own version of a copyrighted work.\nWouldn\u0026rsquo;t it be nice if there was a way to tell your DVD player what types of content you find objectionable and have the player automatically skip or mute the parts of the movie that contain that type of content? This type of solution wouldn\u0026rsquo;t modify the copyrighted work in any way, it would simply simulate my brothers skipping and muting the things that would upset my parents. This solution would allow the viewer to select the types of content to be skipped. If you didn\u0026rsquo;t want to see any violent scenes, you could choose to skip them. If you don\u0026rsquo;t mind seeing drug use, you don\u0026rsquo;t have to skip scenes with drug use. You would think this type of technology would be built in to every DVD player and that every DVD would contain markers for the DVD player to be able to do this kind of dynamic filtering. This type of solution would certainly cause an increase in DVD sales and rentals, because people that didn\u0026rsquo;t want to watch some movie because it had too much offensive content would now be able to buy or rent that movie and watch it without seeing any of the content that bothers them. You would think Hollywood and the MPAA would love this solution. You would think they would be the ones driving this technology forward.\nYou would be wrong.\nIn September 2002, eight Hollywood movie studios, the Directors Guild of America, and thirteen individual movie directors decided to file a federal lawsuit to stop this type of technology from being produced. They claimed that ClearPlay was in violation of the Copyright Act for providing a way for viewers to automatically skip or mute the volume to block content from movies shown in private homes. They have an agenda. They have already been successful in advancing their agenda with things like the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (aka The Mickey Mouse Protection Act) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But the pendulum may finally start swinging in the right direction again.\nThe Family Movie Act was passed as part of The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act on April 19, 2005. It clarifies the Copyright Act to guarantee the legality of technologies that filter unwanted content from movies shown in private settings. It means the lawsuit against ClearPlay is all but dismissed.\nIt means we can still watch the movies we paid for, the way we want to see them.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/clearplay/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI like movies. I buy the movies I enjoy on DVD, so that I can watch them with my friends. Sometimes I expose my friends to movies that they really enjoy, but probably would not have seen if it wasn\u0026rsquo;t for my recommendation (\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0767818113/qid=1114116810/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-7201755-7856623?v=glance\u0026amp;s=dvd\u0026amp;n=507846\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eThe Spanish Prisoner\u003c/a\u003e). Other times they introduce movies to me that I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have seen if it wasn\u0026rsquo;t for their recommendation. We give our honest assessment of each movie when asked.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Clearly Not a Copyright Violation"},{"content":"When you shave your head, you become more aggressive.\nIn high school, I was on the swim team. In preparation for the state championships, we would follow the tradition of many swim teams across the world and shave our bodies. The theory behind it was to cut down on drag. More hair meant more drag. More drag meant more effort required to swim fast. So we shaved our arms, legs, chests, backs, and even our heads in the name of eliminating drag. Freshly shorn, we swam to victory. Looking back, I think we gained as much from the feeling of being shaved as we did from having less drag.\nHair serves many purposes. One purpose is to assist the body with temperature control. It provides insulation from cold, and a way to wick sweat off the skin to help cool the body when it becomes too hot. Another function hair provides is sensory. The feeling of being freshly shorn is unlike anything else. You lose the ability to feel certain things around your body. Your clothes feel different. The way water runs off your body is different in two major ways. First, instead of getting trapped in hair, it runs right off. Second, instead of feeling the water touching all the hair follicles, you feel it directly on your skin. The feeling alone seems to invigorate you. One of the greatest sensations in the world is diving into a swimming pool after you have just shaved your entire body, especially your head.\nAfter a recent ski trip to Utah, I started growing a beard. I had the typical raccoon style sunburn from wearing ski goggles and no sun block. After returning home, my face started peeling and it was difficult to shave. My beard has come in nicely over the past few weeks, and I\u0026rsquo;ve noticed something interesting. I have become less aggressive. My wife has also noticed my behavior change. It seems that having more hair makes you less aggressive.\nThis brings me to several questions. Is aggression better served in management and marketing? Is being passive better for research and engineering? Most of the marketing guys I know are clean shaven with short haircuts. Many engineers and researchers have beards and longer hair. I find that to be more than just a coincidence.\nSome will argue that management and marketing people are clean shaven and have short hair cuts because they have public roles, and engineers and researchers do not need to worry about how they look. But that leads me to ask, why is being clean shaven and having a short haircut deemed \u0026ldquo;better\u0026rdquo; for public appearance? I think it is hard-wired into us to know that these traits indicate aggressive behavior. We want our leaders to be aggressive, or at least we respect them for being that way. They need to demonstrate to us that they will go after the other company and make the kill. Having a clean face and short haircut helps them convince us that they will do precisely that.\nThis plays right into another topic that I\u0026rsquo;ve thought about. Taller people tend to get better opportunities. That\u0026rsquo;s a subject for another day, but I think it is closely related to this one. They both tell the story of what happens in our minds when we see someone more powerful (taller) or more aggressive (clean shaven). Perhaps this is also the reason why some people get tattoos and pierce their bodies? I think so.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/shaved-aggression/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen you shave your head, you become more aggressive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn high school, I was on the swim team. In preparation for the state championships, we would follow the tradition of many swim teams across the world and shave our bodies. The theory behind it was to cut down on drag. More hair meant more drag. More drag meant more effort required to swim fast. So we shaved our arms, legs, chests, backs, and even our heads in the name of eliminating drag. Freshly shorn, we swam to victory. Looking back, I think we gained as much from the feeling of being shaved as we did from having less drag.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Shaved Aggression"},{"content":"how do you start a blog? this is the question that\u0026rsquo;s been on my mind ever since i installed wordpress and created my about page. actually, i wrote a first entry at that time, but i was messing around deleting users and found out that deleting a user also deletes all the posts of that user (too bad they didn\u0026rsquo;t warn me of that when i clicked on delete). but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything worth worrying about losing.\nsomedays i\u0026rsquo;ve thought of something i wanted to write about but didn\u0026rsquo;t, because i didn\u0026rsquo;t feel it was appropriate for a first entry. other times i\u0026rsquo;ve logged in and sat here in front of the write page for a few minutes, hoping for inspiration, only to close my browser and walk away. i\u0026rsquo;m hoping that once i get a few posts up here that i won\u0026rsquo;t be so intimidated about taking a few minutes and posting some random crap.\none of the things i want to do is capture some of the ideas i would like to explore in future posts. that way when i come back here to write, i\u0026rsquo;ll always have something to fall back on. here are a few of the ideas i\u0026rsquo;ve had so far (in no particular order).\nMicrosoft Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit - You can use VSMT to make a virtual image of a live machine, then power up the virtual image and power down the physical machine. This sounds like a great tool for consolidating old machines. As far as run-time performance goes, I think VMWare is still miles ahead of the rest, but tools like VSMT make it easier to try Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s solution.\nDragonfly CMS - I\u0026rsquo;ve built a few family websites using CPGNuke and Dragonfly CMS.\nx86, amd64, em64t, ia64, Power, and other cpu desings\nghost, altiris deployment, landesk, zenworks, and other imaging solutions\nbooks, authors, and writing\nmovie reviews\nitunes, msn music, public libraries, ipods, garage band, pro tools, wma, mp3, ogg vorbis, and other things related to music and digital music\ncopyrights, patents, licenses, open source, and other things pertaining to \u0026ldquo;intellectual property\u0026rdquo;\ntcp/ip, ipv6, ipsec, vlans, vpns, and other networking related things\nreligion\nfamily\ntravel, adventure, skiing, and other outdoor activities\nswimming\nhealth\ngardening\nemergency preparedness\nI\u0026rsquo;m sure there are plenty of other topics I\u0026rsquo;ll come up with, but at least I\u0026rsquo;ve got a crutch to fall back on when I can\u0026rsquo;t think of anything specific to write about.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/and-so-it-begins/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ehow do you start a blog? this is the question that\u0026rsquo;s been on my mind ever since i installed wordpress and created my about page. actually, i wrote a first entry at that time, but i was messing around deleting users and found out that deleting a user also deletes all the posts of that user (too bad they didn\u0026rsquo;t warn me of that when i clicked on delete). but it wasn\u0026rsquo;t anything worth worrying about losing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"and so it begins"},{"content":"This weblog is where I collect my thoughts on various random subjects such as technology, law, religion, culture, and the other things that make up our lives. I am not attempting to sell you anything with my ramblings. They\u0026rsquo;re just my effort to write my mind the way I want it to read. In other words, this weblog is the product of on-going conversations with myself, meant only to convince myself. It is a means to develop and inform my opinions. It is also a history of those opinions; a history I can consult to remember where my mind has been. I also tend to write about things I do and places I go.\nAny and all content is provided \u0026ldquo;AS IS\u0026rdquo; with no warranties.\nAll content is released under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license.\n","permalink":"https://www.jtalbot.com/blog/about/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis weblog is where I collect my thoughts on various random subjects such as technology, law, religion, culture, and the other things that make up our lives. I am not attempting to sell you anything with my ramblings. They\u0026rsquo;re just my effort to write my mind the way I want it to read. In other words, this weblog is the product of on-going conversations with myself, meant only to convince myself. It is a means to develop and inform my opinions. It is also a history of those opinions; a history I can consult to remember where my mind has been. I also tend to write about things I do and places I go.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"About this Blog"}]