Bob and Karen's Circle Pacific Tour: Any ideas?

Peru was the right place to begin a year's travel

Peru was an eye-opener of a place to launch our trip. It’s a little difficult to remember all the things that went through our minds as we settled into our year off during that first month of leisure. But I recall being sharply aware of the need to travel differently than any previous travel we’d done. This was a year off, and there was no way any person could spend that many days in full-on explorer mode. You have to stop and let the time pass you by. And you have to do that surprisingly frequently. You can bully your way through the strenuous two days of climbing Mount Putukusi and neighbouring Machu Picchu after a big bad bout of altitude sickness, but there are serious physical limits in the longer term. I speak now from a position of clearer understanding. Our first major steps on returning home were health care – Karen to a naturopath to fix her digestive tract, me to the family doctor to treat a knee injury. Now the knee MRI data is in and it turns out that a year of stress to one’s knees doesn’t necessarily cause ligament damage. At least not in my case. Instead, a year of daily strain (and about a dozen mountain climbs) results in bone injuries – extensive bruising and a small fracture to my left femur. My knee may take as long to heal as it took to cause the damage. And Peru was a powerful dose of knee wear with which to begin our year’s adventure. About two-thirds of the way through our year off we began to look back at Peru and comment that it was a good thing we’d done Peru first, because at that point we didn’t feel capable of the mountain exploits we’d done back in September. Now, a full year later, I have similar thoughts regarding the year off. I don’t think I could do it again. I certainly can’t do it again in the condition I’m in now. The effects of aging isn’t the point of this piece but I had to get past that to get to the wind-down in Huanchaco. While Machu Picchu was one of the icons that we built our year off around – the others were Easter Island (up next) and Angkor Wat (towards the end) – the lazing away of days and weeks in Huanchaco is the travel style that we wanted to perfect. Later, we executed a nearly perfect down-time dropout on the island of Koh Phangan, where we spent 33 days doing as close to nothing as two people can manage. In Peru, we spent almost half our month in Huanchaco. It is a small fishing village, with little going for it but charm, and we made it our home. By the time we had wandered every street I knew we were successfully living in the moment. That’s a sensation that we are striving for in our travels and, as much as Machu Picchu was a miracle in the mountains, Huanchaco was its own miracle on the seashore. I am more likely to go back there, but that may just be the bad knee talking. We could always bus it up Machu Picchu.

Re-living our tour in photos

A totally unexpected result of travelling for a year (unlike any other number of months) is that we are re-living the experience month by month as we sort photos. It's September now so we have spent weeks sorting and editing our Peru pictures. As we build a slideshow of our month in Peru, we are choosing from photos that weren't available for posting during our trip. We carried two cameras but only blogged from a backup point-and-shoot. So, here's the result, a handful of our Peru favourites. We might find a few more before the end of September when we switch to reminiscing about Chile. But first we'll have an essay on Peru, which will be our next text post.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Any ideas?

Camping in New Zealand is awesome. But we are having an awful time getting something organized for when we arrive in Sydney on Dec. 30. Everything is $600 a night for New Year's Eve and usually sold out through Jan. 1, 2 and 3. So . . . any ideas out there? We're stumped.

4 comments:

Unknown said...: Ah, the joys of travelling...I checked expedia.com for dec 30, jan1,2 checking out jan 3 and the following hotels have rooms (in US dollars)... Holiday Inn Sydney airport for $268/night. Pullman Olympic Park total $1,200 for 4 nights. Hotel Urban St. Leonards total $1295 for 4 nights. There are also hotels with availability in the suburbs - Holiday Inn Rooty Hill 50 km from Sydney $126/night. BreakFree Bankstown International 30 km from Sydney $155/night. Crowne Plaza Norwest, Seven Hills 35 km from Sydney $168/night. Rydes Parramatta 30 km from Sydney $181/night. I'll keep checking...xoxoxo; November 24, 2009 at 10:19 PM
Anonymous said...: How downmarket do you want to go? http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/australia/sydney/ has some vacancies but they all seem to have a minimum seven night stay. I didn't check which ones had twin rooms as opposed to dormitories.

Mickus; November 27, 2009 at 7:46 AM
Unknown said...: I looked up temp housing on Craigs List for Sydney and found this:

Looking for couple or small family, (individual may be accepted), to rent my apartment from 17/12/09 - 3/1/10. Total for 17 nights $1900 (plus deposit)

Spacious 1 bedroom apartment, situated 200m from Manly beach and central Manly, and 100 m from the harbour. Birlliant location. Has kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, loungeroom, and balcony with barbeque.
Fully furnished and very comfortable living conditions. If you are looking for a holiday house in Manly for the christmas/new years period, this is perfect.

Please contact me via

phone 0422 702 984
or
email natural_hill@hotmail.com

You might want to see if it is still available.

Deni; November 28, 2009 at 1:57 AM
Unknown said...: Found a better price - this is the one I meant to post to you. It is also from Craigs List

Our beautiful beach appartment is located on Roscoe street, just next to the famous Bondi Beach (15 minutes from Sydney city).

It is available from the 23rd of December to the 4th of January 2010.

For 180 AUD per night, this 2 bedrooms appartment can accomodate up to 3 adults and 1 baby (one Queen size bed + 1 single mat + 1 baby cot). Linen are provided.

There is a large living room, with views on the ocean, large sofa, TV, music player (CD & I-pod), large table (for 8), buffet.

The kitchen is self contained: large fridge & large freezer, kettler, microwaves, oven, toaster & all the kitchenware you need.

There are 2 large balconies:
- one with a outside table (for 3) and a gas BBQ
- one with 2 long chairs

The bathroom has a shower and a bath.

Additional features:
Dishwasher
Washing machine and Dryer
Hair dryer
Ironing board and Iron
Fans
Toys for baby + highchair
Fly net on all windows
Internet access (add 50 dol)
Security building
Just next to bus stop to the city / bondi junction
Bond: 1800 AUD

Contact: Anne-Laure
annelauredalle@yahoo.fr - + 61 4 19 48 70 75

Hope they are of some help

deni; November 28, 2009 at 2:02 AM