Darlene and I joined her sister Shel and Diane, Regina, Rochelle, Lori, Brianna and Rachel on a trip to New Zealand this past month. Darlene and I had both visited New Zealand before but individually, before we met. Rachel, Darlene and I flew out to meet the others in the South Island, in Christchurch and Rachel got her first experience on electric scooters. From there we drove to Akaroa for a boat cruise looking for dolphins and other wildlife. We continued down the Otago coast hitting up the very cool Elephant Rocks near Oamaru and the Moeraki Boulders on our way to Dunedin. We stayed several nights in Dunedin, visiting sights like Tunnel Beach, Larnach Castle and Toitu Otago Settlers Museum. We also did a bit of hiking, saw the glowworms at Nicols Creek, visited the Royal Albatross Centre and got to spy on both the Yellow Eyed and little Blue penguins in the wild.
We continued on to Queenstown, where we enjoyed a steamship cruise to Walter Peak sheep farm for a BBQ dinner and sheep shearing demo. We took in the views via the gondola to Bob’s Peak and had a blast riding the wheeled toboggans down the Queenstown Luge. We visited an ice bar (and lots of shops) in town, I spent a day biking around Lake Wakatipu while everyone else went zip-lining in Glenorchy.
At this point, we split up with some of the group heading home and others continuing on to the west coast. Darlene and I stayed a couple more days in Queenstown doing some hiking before heading south to Te Anau. Some late winter weather closed the road to Milford Sound for a day or two but luckily the weather cleared up again and we were able to make a day trip from Te Anau with lots of stops to enjoy all the waterfalls and snow-covered mountain views both along the road as well as in Milford Sound on an afternoon boat cruise. The day was only marred by an attack of Kea birds damaging our rental car while we waited our turn to pass through the tunnel.
After Te Anau, we continued our road trip to the south coast and the Catlins region, stopping off at Gemstone Beach (we came away empty-handed) and lost the afternoon in Invercargill dealing with a damaged tire (unrelated to the Kea birds) and swapping out our car rental. As a result, we arrived after sunset at our somewhat remote accommodation (Mohua Park, lots of dirt roads to get there but oh so worth it) and we were still blown away by the gorgeous setting in the hills, surrounded by a sheep farm. As nice as the location was though, we spent our two days there out exploring and hiking along the Catlins coast.
From there we headed back north, all the way to Aoraki and Mt. Cook Village where we spent a couple of days enjoying fantastic hikes both below and partway up the surrounding mountains. We also managed to book a helicopter sightseeing tour when we saw the weather was likely going to clear – it was a spectacular flight on a gorgeous day, soaring among the peaks of the “Southern Alps” and landing on one of the glaciers.
After a long drive back to Christchurch, we took an evening flight to reach Auckland on the North Island. From Auckland, we set out for the Hobbiton Movie Set near Matamata, stopping off at a surprisingly creative and captivating botanical garden, the Hamilton Gardens. The Hobbiton afternoon tour, dinner banquet and night walk was all really great and we were incredibly impressed by everything they’ve done and how well it’s maintained and presented.
We filled the following day with a couple of cave tours in Waitomo to see cool cave formations and more of the famous New Zealand “glow worms” as well as a visit to a bird sanctuary where we could see nocturnal kiwis among other native New Zealand birds, albeit in captivity. With our last day and a half in Auckland, we enjoyed the Weta Workshop tour, went up the Sky Tower, rode scooters out to Mount Eden for the city view, tried our hand at a couple of escape rooms and explored an amusing “sensory maze” experience. But then it was time to fly home again… until next time!
Continuing our European vacation, Darlene, her sister Kathy and I spent four days in Copenhagen – first time for all of us. We did some sightseeing around the city, from the top of the Round Tower astronomical observatory to inside Frederik’s Church, we enjoyed a boat tour of Copenhagen’s waterways and very interesting Danish architecture. We visited the immersive Museum of Danish Resistance and climbed up Copenhill, a surprising combination of waste-to-energy power plant and recreational site for year round hiking, skiing and climbing. We rented bikes to tool around a bit like proper Copenhageners, enjoyed an open air street food market and strolled some of Copenhagen’s famous streets and waterfronts like Nyhavn and Strøget.
Bunches of pictures from a week in Tahoe with Darlene: hiking with Glenn and Michele along the old railroad bed from Donner Summit and through some of the tunnels, mountain biking with Mike up to the fire lookout at Martis Peak, kayaking from Sand Harbor to Secret Cove on the east shore of the lake, riding the Truckee River trail to Squaw Valley, watching the fireworks from the water’s edge at Kings Beach and, posted separately, soaring over Tahoe in a glider and saving the world from total ruin in Pandemic Legacy.
Darlene joined me for a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, last week to enjoy three days of board gaming at Shut Up and Sit Down’s very own, second annual board gaming convention (SHUX ’18). I only discovered Shut Up and Sit Down and their most excellent and entertaining board gaming content last year. I’ve since been hooked on their written and video reviews as well as their podcast. They’re also responsible for me being driven to buy a trunk load of additional games over the past year. (As if my game collection wasn’t large enough already.)
We got to try out a bunch of games I’ve been meaning to check out, meet some new people, get to see Quinns, Paul, Matt and Pip live and even see a little bit more of Vancouver – including tooling around on some electric bikes for a few hours. It was a great trip and great convention, though I wish we had used our time a little more wisely and squeezed in a few more games as well as been prepared for the early closing of the game-lending library. Also, would’ve been great to participate in one of the day-long megagames (if the convention were longer) or in a more involved version of Two Rooms and A Boom. We only got to try the basic version with just a couple of people with roles. We did get to try and got hooked on several great ones: Bunny Kingdom, Mystery of the Temples, Bårenpark, Great Western Trail, Sagrada, and Azul. Not so great: Crows, Koi and Kodama: The Tree Spirits. Terrible: Cat Lady, Nefarious.
I also wish I had thought to take pictures of all of the games we tried (and the folks we played with), but click through for the full gallery:
Big Sur got hit hard with the heavy rains earlier this year, with several massive land slides and the forced demolition of the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge. This severely isolated the community around Big Sur and so a temporary, emergency foot path was created to allow residents to get supplies. They’ve since opened up a path through to the public. So, until the replacement bridge is completed (end of September), you can park down near the road closure at the Pfieffer Big Sur State Park, hike the steep 1/2 mile trail and get to ride highway 1 with much reduced traffic.
And that’s what I did today with Mark and his family and friends! We hiked over and rode as far as Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park and the McWay Falls (about 20 miles round trip).
Click through for pictures and video from our attempt to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest (oldest living trees on Earth!) while on our Owens Valley road trip in the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle in mid-May. Unfortunately, the remaining snow from this winter’s very heavy storms kept us from driving all the way and then we attempted to continue on our mountain bikes but it was just too much snow! We stayed up there two nights though and got to watch the sunrise spread over hundreds of miles of the Sierra Nevada from the vantage of that fantastic Sierra vista point up there:
Earlier this month, Darlene and I were able to get away for a little road trip in Bavaria, the southern region of Germany. Darlene used to work summers in Bavaria and so she organized a little ten-day itinerary for us to see some of the sights. We flew into Frankfurt and visited several locales before flying back via Munich. We ended up skipping Frankfurt entirely when our inbound flight was delayed half a day, but we had a day seeing castles in the Rhine River valley, two nights in Heidelberg, a day visit in Bamberg, two nights in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, day visits to Aalen and Augsburg, three nights in Oberau and the Garmisch-Partenkirchen area, a day visit to Hohenschwangau and then a final two nights in Munich.
As an add-on for our trip to Chile’s Atacama Desert, we all wanted to be sure to get to see the amazing Uyuni Salt Flats in nearby Bolivia. As it worked out, we were able to join up with BikeHike’s trial run of their new Bolivia adventure trip by taking a guided, three-day, 4×4 road trip from Chile over the Altiplano to the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia. Darlene was also able to finagle a little additional time off from work to join us on this portion of Glenn and Michele’s Most Excellent Adventure™.
A video montage of our time in Bolivia. (6:45 min, 131 MB)
Across the Altiplano: Glenn, Michele and I started out in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, and were driven up to the Altiplano and dropped off at the tiny, remote little border control building on the southwest Chilean/Bolivian border. After successfully negotiating Michele and Glenn’s Bolivian visas (mostly about producing absolutely pristine US dollars for the visa fee), we were loaded into the apparently defacto standard Altiplano vehicle: a Toyota 4×4 Land Cruiser. Over the next couple of days, we navigated a maze of dirt roads in the high altitude (15,000 ft) visiting a series of color-coded lagoons (red, green, white, etc) and a few miscellaneous sights and landmarks. We overnighted in both a hotel made of stone and one made of salt and got to try our hand at herding llamas to pasture as well as trying to fire a slingshot without injuring ourselves. We also spent the better part of two days criss-crossing the Uyuni Salt Flats and they proved to be as vast and amazing to behold as suggested in the photographs we’d seen before.
Crossing the Uyuni Salt Flats
More of the Uyuni Salt Flats: After this initial introduction to Bolivia, we were deposited in the town of Uyuni in time to join Darlene and the rest of the BikeHike group flying in from La Paz. Over the next couple of days, we would explore much of the area on bikes, starting with a tour of the mining ghost town of Pulcayo. We biked back down to Uyuni, mostly following the route of the old mining railroad bed. We biked across a few chunks of the salt flats itself – which proved quite daunting due to the vast, unchanging scenery. We stayed overnight in a more rudimentary building made of salt on the slopes of the volcano Tunupa and enjoyed a ride out for sunset and stargazing on the salt flats. On our second day, we visited a cave containing desiccated mummies and continued on to the island of Incahuasi, in the middle of the flats and home to hundreds of cacti.
Biking Bolivia’s “Most Dangerous Road”
“Death Road” Ride: Upon our return to La Paz, we had an early start to go ride mountain bikes down along Bolivia’s infamous “world’s most dangerous road”. They’ve since built a new, modern, paved highway to bypass the route but it was once very treacherous for being a dirt road cut into very steep mountainsides and forcing buses and other large vehicles to try to squeak by each other. This route now makes for a gorgeous and easy downhill bike ride packed full of wonderful mountain vistas. Unfortunately, we had to do the ride with one of several large tour groups and so you have to do things on their terms. You’re forced to keep to a schedule that at times is pushing you forward (despite the desire to stop and enjoy the stupendous views) or making you wait (for organized photo portrait stops, despite the fact that everyone has cameras of their own, or while the staff clean and prep the bikes at the end of the ride, etc). Amusingly, you’re also required to wear full downhill racing body armor and full face helmets despite a route that consists of first a paved highway and then a well-used dirt road and a gentle downhill slope. Actually, the full face helmet was dangerous for how much it limited your ability to see around you. I suspect the armor is both to drum up the “Death Road” adventure marketing as well as for insurance purposes – not that body armor would do you much good if you managed to ride off a several hundred-meter precipice! Anyway, I think this excursion would be a lot more fun with your own group, going at your own pace and with normal biking gear.
Enjoying a scenic overlook in Bolivia’s Amazon jungle
Amazon Jungle and Grassland: After La Paz, we were on to the Amazon jungle, starting with a river boat cruise to our jungle lodge in Madidi National Park. Along the way, we stopped off at a farm where among other things they grow sugar cane. We were able to put a little labor into squeezing out a bucket of sugar cane juice for everyone to sample, with a touch of lime. From our jungle lodge, we set out to hike to our overnight campsite, near a macaw nesting area. Besides lots of spiders and ants, our guides were able to scare up a pack of wild boar. I was a little anxious about overnighting in the Amazon as I’m very not keen on large creepy-crawlies and have already had my share in other tropical rainforests. As it turns out, at least this part of the Amazon was no more intense in terms of bugs and it was fine. I do wish we could have spent a more leisurely time moving through the jungle though and seeing and learning about the rainforest (as I have enjoyed on other such hikes), instead of in the apparent rush we often seemed to be in. I wasn’t even really able to pause to take any decent pictures along the trail. We did enjoy a leisurely return trip to the lodge, floating down the river in the afternoon rain on a log raft constructed on the beach. That night we went for a short jungle walk to see what we could find after dark.
Temo demonstrates his boundless affection for Michele. (30 second video)
The following day saw us return to town by river boat and then take an extended drive to get to a second lodge in the swampy grasslands of Pampas del Yacuma. First we were greeted by not-so-friendly caiman and turtles but then by a super-friendly and ever-curious coati at the lodge. We ventured out again on a pair of boats to follow the river and see the many birds, caiman and capybara along the river… before the skies opened up for serious afternoon downpour. (At least our boat didn’t pussyfoot it back to the lodge to get any silly rain gear.) That night Glenn and I went out again with our guides Ishmael and Jorgen to see all the creepy eyes of the caiman reflecting back at us in the dark. Plus we managed to catch several Amazon trout by expertly letting them leap into our boat. On our fourth and last Amazon day, we went hiking in a plantation to hoot at howler monkeys in the trees and to catch meat-hungry piranha by the river side. The tricky part seemed to be removing the hook from the menacing jaws of those little fish.
An alpine view near Mount Condoriri
Our Last Day: After returning to the cool, high altitude of La Paz from the Amazon basin, we enjoyed a home-cooked meal at the home of a local resident while Glenn kept careful watch over a clearly demonically-possessed children’s doll. On our last day, Michele suggested a hiking destination for us all in the Andes: the glacier-laced Mount Condoriri. The drive out there proved adventurous in itself, including trying to find a suitable box lunch among the raw meats and stacks of junk food in the street-side market. We ended up hiking to an alpine lake at the base of the mountain and it proved to be a nice finish to a great little trip.
Recommendations: Our 4×4 excursion from San Pedro de Atacama over to the Uyuni Salt Flats was not particularly exceptional and I have no reason to recommend them (actually it seemed our driver was more knowledgeable and trying harder than our English-speaking guide). For the rest of the trip, the BikeHike tour of Bolivia including the Uyuni Salt Flats and the Amazon jungle, this trip was very enjoyable despite being their trial run to shake out the “bugs” and find improvements to be made. Definitely worth checking out. But I want to call out special attention to Ishmael and the folks at Mashaquipe EcoTours for their splendid staff and lodges in the Bolivian Amazon basin as well as their efforts to benefit local indigenous families. Lastly, thanks again to Trish and Jorgen for helping us (me, Darlene, Glenn and Michele) enjoy another great adventure!
