More updates!

I promise this will turn back into a travel blog at some point, but there’s been a lot going on since arriving back in Zürich last week. 🙂

Aside from standard moving back to Switzerland stuff (eating lots of amazing Swiss bread and cheese, registering with the state, setting up health insurance, getting to know the temporary neighborhood (we’re lucky enough to have a place to stay for a couple of months while we sort ourselves out), visiting friends and family, apartment hunting, apartment hunting, apartment hunting and more apartment hunting), I’ve been prepping for a new job (!!!) that starts TOMORROW!

It’s corporate but seems promising in that it involves topics that I’m actually really interested in and in some convoluted way, it actually kind of ties in with this blog and aspects of what I love most about traveling. I’m really excited for it!

I will be writing loads more and plugging the heck out of it in a post later next week, but for now, I’m mostly wondering how I will manage to walk around in heels all day tomorrow after two and a half years of wearing mostly sneakers, flip flops and comfy boots! 🙂

With all the change that’s been going on, I’ve also updated the “about” section of this blog. Take a gander here.

Sounds of Switzerland

And just like that, I’m back. It feels surreally normal to be here. I’m not sure if that’s the jet lag speaking or if it simply is so.
Here’s what woke me up on my second full day back in Switzerland.

A yoga teacher of mine once shared a old wive’s tale that if something is said and then a bell tolls it must be the truth. I like the thought of that but what I love even more is the sound of church bells in Switzerland. A nice welcome home. 🙂

A new tense

When we left on our world trip, my biggest cheer leader was my aunt, my mama’s baby sister.

All three sisters – my mama, my godmother, and my aunt – are renowned for their wilfulness (some may call them stubborn, perhaps even bossy 🙂 ). It’s possible that my aunt Gertrud, the baby of the family, was the most bossy of them all. She also had a great big heart and a sense of adventure that led her all around the globe.

I didn’t know her so well growing up, but I got to spend more time with her as an adult when I lived in Switzerland and I loved the woman I got to know – direct, strong, caring, warm and a great lover of life. She celebrated the idea of the highly ambitious world trip that Roman and I were embarking on. Unlike some people in our lives we tried to explain our idea to, she never hesitated for a moment in giving our plan her full endorsement and us her unabashed encouragement and I have been so grateful for that support.

She was very ill when she left and she passed while we were still in Asia.

It feels entirely unreal to me that I will be returning to Switzerland and that I won’t be able to hop on the train to visit her and tell her all about the fabulous places that we got to visit in Asia that she never saw, compare notes about both our experiences in the Galapagos, ask her for recommendations from her travels for our next trip (yes, we’re already dreaming of a sequel). I have a hard time comprehending that she won’t be there when I get back.

(Ok, let’s be honest. I HATE it that she won’t be there when I get back. I am ok with it because you have to be but still I HATE it.)

I mean, of course I understand that she’s gone. But some days, the precise sound of her voice still echoes through my brain as though I’d just gotten off the phone with her seconds ago. The feel of her personality is still imprinted so firmly on my heart. She has been in my thoughts at so many of the most beautiful places we visited on the trip. For me she is SO present.

So it feels wrong to me to speak about her in the past tense.

My mama and I were talking about her just this morning while I was helping her make her bed and I started to say something about my aunt and I found myself semi-consciously mumbling the verb in the sentence because my heart couldn’t decide between “is” and “was”.

Saying “Gertrud is so ….” feels like I’m being wilfully ignorant (wilfulness being a trait I am proud to have inherited from the strong women in my lineage). But saying “Gertrud was” feels even more wrong and also inaccurate. How can someone who is so very PRESENT with me be described in the PAST tense? I just doesn’t work for me.

So I need a new tense, one that can let me talk about the people I love with all my heart who may not be here in the world but who are very much here with me, today and always. Not entirely sure what I’ll say while who ever is in charge of the English language sorts that out for me but in the mean time, I will be (stubborn and proud of it) keeping Gertrud PRESENT in my thoughts and heart. ❤❤❤

From left to right: my mama, Gertrud and my godmother as girls

A quick “where’s she been?” post

In case anyone is still checking this blog, I hope the past months have been really good to you. 🙂

I decided to take a hiatus from blogging back in February. Life has conveniently filled in my spare time while I’ve been staying with my family in Connecticut, so that it’s hard to believe that around three whole months later it’s “already” just about time for me to return to Switzerland. I’ve been away for over two and half years and I can’t even begin to think about what it might feel like to return cause I’ve been pretty darn busy here in the States – too busy to think too much about how the future might feel. I may not have been moving around the way I used to, but staying put has been feeling tremendously productive and there’s been a lot of movement in non-physical ways. 🙂

 

Since I’ve been here, I’ve….

 

supported my parents through the remodelling and redecorating the ground floor of their house,

have dealt with a cancer scare/health situation (I’m fine now!!! 🙂 ),

have put a lot of energy into taking care of myself with yoga, diet, Ayurveda and spiritual work, have been getting back into my practice (with a delicious amount of time in the yoga studio, a couple of amazing weekend workshops (thanks to Dew Yoga and Elements Yoga!) and I’ve even taught my first yoga class in years which was a lot of fun),

have been spending lots of time with my super duper nephew who at two and a half is more awesome than ever,

have done some freelance writing and design work for my dad,

got to see Sheryl WuDunn of Half the Sky fame speak which was tremendously inspiring, have been applying and interviewing for jobs (keep those fingers crossed! 🙂 ),

have been processing the last two plus years of traveling through regular flashbacks which has been kinda trippy and fun,

have been spending a LOT of time with friends and family (love, love, love, love to the point of my heart overflowing), some virtually through the wonder of the internet,

and most recently have been helping out while my dad spent five days in the hospital with a seriously acute infection (freaking yikes!),

have been soooo enjoying the arrival of spring and all the beautiful flowers here in my home town.

 

That’s off the top of my head. Have probably done some other stuff as well that I can’t remember at the moment. 🙂

 

I feel full to the brim with love and I wonder how things will gel once I start building up a life in Switzerland again. I have some pretty ambitious dreams. I hope that I am brave enough to even dare to attempt them. I hope that  I can hold onto the sense of gratitude that humbles me to the point where I feel compelled to try to really live with intention.

 

One small dream – more of a goal really – is to keep capturing my memories from the trip in this blog. So hopefully there will be space to get back to and keep up with my writing once I get settled back in Zürich.

 

Let’s see how it goes…. 🙂

 

Klutziness on the high seas and a resort review

So, now Roman is in Switzerland and I am in the States. Here in Connecticut, it’s the coldest week we’ve had all winter. We’re talking optimistic highs of 20 degrees Fahrenheit, with lows much lower than that. The skies are clear and the sun is out with full force – everything outdoors is beautiful: frozen, brittle and glittery in the glare of the bright light. I’m happy to observe it from indoors and to let my mind wander back to the warmer climes we enjoyed in the Philippines.

Coral Bay: a retreat from the world

My last post on our time in the Philippines was about its capital city, Manila. We had a great few days there but our main objective in the Philippines was to get some beach time in, do some diving and r-e-l-a-x after our jam-packed time in China.

So our next destination after Manila was chosen very specifically with those goals in mind. We were heading to Coral Bay Dive & Beach Resort, an intimate, rustic resort on a wee island in the midst of an archipelago surrounded by beautiful blue ocean.

Back when we were actually there, I did a quick illustrated post on how to get there: Getting to Coral Bay

This place is in the middle of nowhere; the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like I was a cast away on a deserted isle. Popototan Island, where Coral Bay is located, is inhabited only by the resort staff and by one seclusion-loving European in a private home. Most of the islands in the area are uninhabited.

Here’s the link to the map – you can click and zoom out to see just how small this island is!

Being so far from anything, the resort is by necessity – and by choice – a bit rustic.

Accommodation is in the form of simple bamboo huts furnished with the basics – a bed with mosquito netting, bedside tables and lamps, a basic bathroom, a balcony with a hammock. There is a generator that supplies electricity from 6 at night to 6 in the morning. Water for showers is not heated. Hearty, home cooked food is available, buffet style, at prescribed times in the open-air restaurant. WiFi is available in the resort’s office only: the goal of this place is to provide its guests with a chance to unplug and appreciate the spectacular surrounding nature.

Aside from spending all day in a hammock by the water, Coral Bay offers activities: snorkeling, kayaking, island hopping and diving. The snorkeling is one of the place’s best features. Grab the gear from the dive center, hop off the pier, swim a few yards and you’ll be floating above the resort’s private and pristine reef, where thousands of beautiful creatures make their home. Roman and I did this nearly every day we weren’t diving. Floating peacefully just above the fish, clams, anemones and corals all doing their thing – it’s just magic!

Not a great shot, but this is one of the resident lion fish hanging out by t he dock

For my personal preference, the cottages could have been a bit better furnished – the bed and seating weren’t as comfortable as would have liked. And the food was a bit on the stodgy side for my taste – very carb and meat heavy and a somewhat limited selection. But this was the case for us everywhere in the Philippines. This country is NOT known for healthy eats… On the balance though, the minor discomforts were well worth the chance to spend time surrounded by so much beauty!

Moments I want to remember

It’s been a walk down memory lane going through my photos from our stay at Coral Bay. Since these things fade over time I want to make sure I get them down in writing now. 🙂

– We arrived from Manila at Coron, the only town on the big island “closest” to Popototan. We had time to kill before our boat for Coral Bay was leaving, so we got to wander the town, have a snack at a cute little restaurant, and check out the local marketplace. Always one of my favorite things to do. Coron was teeny tiny, sweet and welcoming in the warm sunshine. I wouldn’t mind going back some day to get to know it better! 🙂 Here are some of my favorite photos from our short visit there.

– One of our first nights at the resort, Roman and I went to the dock to look at an inky black sky strewn with a thousand stars. Suddenly, the hotel’s generator broke down, and everything was cast into total darkness except the glimmering stars above. Looking at the water below, we noticed that there were little lights flitting about – fish with phosphorescence no doubt! We ran our hands through the water below the dock and little specks of glowing lights trailed behind our fingers. Nature lighting up the heavens above and the waters below!

Coral Bay’s mangroves at night

– We were on the island for Thanksgiving. One of my friends emailed and suggested we share photos of our turkey-day grub with each other. So me, my friend in Atlanta and my friend in Poland were together in spirit. And that day, the buffet had roast chicken and potato on the menu – probably as close as I would have come to Turkey and mashed potatoes anywhere in the Philippines anyway. 🙂

– I loved the silence on the island. No traffic, no TV, no machinery, meant lots of space for the sounds of nature. Every night, once the sun had set, there was a slow-paced concert put on by the local geckos which was just awesome. Check out what it sounds like in this post: Interlude from the Philippines: Sounds of Coral Bay

No pictures of this memory, thank God!

We did a bunch of dives while we were at Coral Bay. It was my first time ever wreck diving. Things seemed pretty relaxed in the Philippines; I’m not sure we were technically allowed to do wreck dives with our open-water certification. The dives could have possibly been a bit more professional, but we still had a great time and it was a good experience.

Batfish lingering around a wreck

I had some challenges with the diving (I did a post about it when we were there: Paradise surrendered: lessons from the sea) but once I got past those it was a great time – aside from my klutziness, one more my less admirable characteristics that comes to the fore from time to time.

Somehow on the day in question I had equal parts luck and klutziness going with me which was definitely a good thing or else I may have gotten swept out to sea!

During the first dive of the day I managed to somehow dislodge one of my flippers. The thing disappeared and no amount of searching the area around the wreck was able to produce any trace of it. So I spent the dive swimming lopsided and wondering what sort of insane fee we would have to pay for losing the hotel’s gear. Happily though, the flipper had floated to the surface just next to our boat and one of the crew had rescued it. Win number one!

The bigger fail/win came on the trip back to the resort.

We were on a small boat. It was simple but I assumed it was pretty sturdy. After a day of diving, we were relaxing, watching the horizon as the sky changed colors in advance of the sunset. I borrowed Roman’s camera to take a few snaps. I walked to the prow of the boat for a better view. Trying to get the optimal angle, I leaned against a beam – not realizing that the piece of bamboo was being held in place only by the canvas roof bracing it against the bottom of the boat.

Was the shot worth it? Awesome storm clouds over an island

I guess I leaned too hard, because the next thing I knew, I was toppling over. My feet flew above my head, my torso plunged over the side towards the water speeding below, and my hands grasped! In some sort of divine instinct, they found their marks, and I managed to grab hold of Roman’s tumbling camera in one hand and a bit of thin rope that – thank God – was securely attached to the ship in the other. The camera and my head stopped thanks to my hold on that rope about five inches above the water and the crew ran forward and hoisted me back onto the boat.

My sarong had dipped into the salty brine, I had a rope burn on my left hand (I still have a slight scar from it today, over a year later) and my dignity might as well have been flung overboard too. The sarong that I’d been wrapped in flew over my head as I fell I have an awful mental image of my pale, flabby body in a bright green bikini flopping around for all the crew to see – poor guys!! But I escaped an unplanned dip in the ocean, or worse, and I even managed to save Roman’s camera. So I guess that’s a fair trade off for being embarrassed to the point of utter mortification!

My China videos

Now that I’m going to be staying in one place for a bit, it’s time to get back to the blog back-fill. I’ll get to the Philippines soon, but I’ve had these China videos kicking around for a bit now so I thought I might as well post them. I did two because for me Xinjiang was SO different from the rest of China that it felt like another country altogether. And it’s just one of my most favorite places. 🙂

Hope you enjoy! 🙂

Xinjiang

China

Full circle

I don’t have anything insightful to write. Only I want to make sure I mark the date.

Today is January 17^th. Actually, by the time I post this, it’ll technically be the 18^th, which is Roman’s last day in the US. His last day of our epic journey.

After ten weeks and two days driving a rather lopsided oval through the United States of America, we’re back where we started – that is, my childhood home, staying at my parents’ house in Connecticut.

We’ve been here for coming up on two weeks now. When hit the road to head west back in the Fall, we were still fresh from our Southern Hemisphere adventures. Australia, New Zealand. Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Galapagos. What an awesome hemisphere!!

And exactly a year ago today, we were here in Connecticut as well, still reeling, trying to get our heads and hearts around the jam-packed 15 months of travel through fabulous Asia.

Two years ago today, we were in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where we were trying – there as well – to get our heads and hearts around all we’d just experienced in our three months in India – the spectacular first stop of our grand odyssey.

Tomorrow, I’m driving Roman to the airport, where he’ll head to his first (my second) home – Switzerland – for the first time in 850 days. That’s well over two years since he left Zurich, since he’s seen his family and friends, since we’ve covered all this ground and since we’ve made a third home of the world in general. Why be a citizen of just one country when this whole planet has so much to offer?

That being said, I’ll follow him to Switzerland in a month or two and am lucky and grateful that we have a chance to try and make that particular corner of Earth home again.

Although at the moment, I can’t even imagine what that’s going to look like or feel like.

Mostly, I’m focusing on helping Roman pack and tomorrow’s coming goodbye and wondering what it’s going to be like for him to take those first steps in the Zurich airport, to see his mom and step-dad waiting for him, to smell that distinct, familiar and oh-so-comforting Swiss air as they drive away from the airport.

But when I stop and think about our huge road trip, about where we were a year ago, and two years ago, about all that we’ve seen and done, I do get rather bowled over by it all. Hopefully I’ll be able to be a bit more articulate about it all at some point once I’ve been able to digest it a bit better.

For now though, I think it’s bedtime. There’s one more flight yet before the Journey’s over.

This is us on the balcony of our old apartment in Switzerland, the day I flew to India. Roman joined me there a few weeks later.

At a pooja in India

Zip lining in Thailand

Exploring ancient ruins in Myanmar

Bringing alms to a temple in Laos

Cambodian tuk tuk!

Trying to cheer up after my phone got stolen in Vietnam

Learning how to manage an unruly camel in China

Wreck diving in the Philippines

Carnival fun in Melbourne, Australia

Silliness on an Argentine bus

Chilean desert!

At the amazing Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia

We wore ourselves out hiking around Machu Picchu, Peru

Galapagos!

Horsing around on a misty day in the Grand Canyon, USA

Holidays on the road

The year is almost out. The last time I wrote, Christmas and my birthday and nearly the whole month of December on the road was still to come.

Now it’s a rain-drenched night in Nashville where I’m sitting and tomorrow morning we leave for our final destination of this month/year (nearly the final destination of our road trip – of our epic journey – but that’s a though for another day), where we’ll ring in the arrival of 2013 holed up in a cabin in the Virginia woods, cut off from internet and, most likely, cell phone reception, where I plan to watch movies with Roman, cook, eat, nap, read, sit by the wood stove, nap, write if I get ambitious, walk if the weather cooperates and nap some more.

And it’s not a moment too soon.

The past month has been AWESOME.

December first saw us leaving San Fran for a couple days on the pacific coastal highway. Then there were all the dear friends we got to spend time with in LA. A rollicking drive through twilit Death Valley to a surreal stint in Las Vegas. Zion National Park. Monument Valley. The Grand Canyon.

a rare bit of sun along the pacific highway

Seasons greetings from Disney on the “It’s a Small World” ride

Rodeo drive all blinged out and sparkly for Christmas

Las Vegas’ take on the holiday spirit….

Zion for my birthday! 😀

Stunning Monument Valley

We visited the Canyon on a snowy, blustery, cloud covered and beautiful day

In the canyon

Reconnecting with my most favorite friend from college in Phoenix. Meeting her husband for the first time. Less than 24 hours in Santa Fe. A long drive to Amarillo, Texas for a surprisingly snowy and bitterly cold Christmas.

Christmas lights and cacti in Phoenix

Ceramic Santas in Santa Fe

Oh, and we got to watch the Hobbit in 3-D Imax at the movie theater next to our hotel – one of two places we could find in Amarillo that were actually open for Christmas. The other being the Big Texan, home of the 72 ounce steak, where we out of necessity and an appreciation for the kitsch factor ate dinner both nights we were there.

 

And finally, two long days of post-Texas driving changed the landscape dramatically and brought us to Arkansas and now Nashville.

We’ve been on the road trip for just over nine weeks now. In the month of December alone, we covered 9 states, made 11 stops, spent time with lots of people I love dearly, saw lots of new stuff. And now I am TIRED.

This afternoon I crashed. We’d gone to see Jack White’s Third Man Records. I was so excited to be there. I took bunches of pictures, chatted with the friendly lady working the counter, fed the automaton monkey band a quarter so they would play a White Stripes jam.

All smiles. Then I headed out of the studio door and walked head first into a big fat wall of grumpiness.

Suddenly I was just done. At the moment, there’s not a single thing more I want to look at, hotel I want to research or book, place I want to go, history or natural wonder I want to ponder or regional specialty I want to eat. Sometimes with travel this happens. You just get full up. Any drop more would simply be too much.

I’ve been watching sit coms in a horizontal state in the hotel room all night and it seems to have helped – I’m over the grumps at this point. But I’m still SO glad it worked out (in the last minute!) to rent this cabin that – from the looks on google map – is pretty much literally in the middle of no where. There will be nothing to do but chill. I mean, the closest Starbucks is an hour and a half away! 😉

And that’s exactly what I need. A few days to digest all that the past month – two months really – has been. And a few days during which the future – 2013 and the end of the trip both – can wait.

I hope December has been good to everyone out there. Once I have space to think again, boy will I be excited to see what 2013 brings. 🙂 Happy New Year everyone!!

Memories of Manila

(written back in Big Sur but I’ve only had the chance to post now…)

Since I’ve got the luxury of free time today, I’ll do some catch-up blogging. Where I’ve left off: we were just leaving Taipei for some beach time in the Philippines. It’s over a year ago now that we were at this point in our trip (First of all, MIND BLOWN. Second of all, ack, I have soooo much catching up to do!).

As I’d mentioned in my last post on the topic, we’d decided to stop in the Philippines for a bit of easy down time after two jam-packed months of shuttling all over expansive, intriguing China.

The easiest way to gain access to this archipelago was via its capital city, Manila. We’d heard other travelers’ advice and opinions about the place, which were pretty much, get out as fast as you can and the place is a cesspool (actually, more colorful language than “cesspool” was used in this case, but I’m trying to keep this blog rated PG).

Our guidebook didn’t disagree with this perception, but did a decent job tempering city’s negative aspects:

This is the sort of city you leave, fellow travellers tell us, immediately after arranging your ferry ticket out. To a degree, Manila’s earned its rough-around-the-edges reputation. After all, this incredibly huge metropolis is home to well over 11 million souls, with scores of hungry transplants from the provinces arriving each day. In other words, this is exactly the sort of place in which there’s bound to be a good bit of chaos…

For a city that’s not known as a major tourist draw, Manila sure has a lot to see. Because of its hugeness and its traffic, you’ll likely never see it all. As you explore, you’ll get an appreciation for a city that has been at the pinnacle of Asia – and almost at the nadir as well. And you’ll get a feel for the soup of cultural influences that combine to make Manila the free-wheeling metropolis it is today. Much of what’s best to see isn’t always at a traditional sight , but rather can be found in the life of the varied neighborhoods.

…If you’re a traveller who likes to get a feel for the pulse of a place just before the rest of the world storm in, it’s quite likely that Manila may just be the sort of town you’ve been looking for.

(Lonely Planet Philippines)

We are not such savvy travellers that I would claim we managed to read Manila’s pulse, but we did decide to spend a couple days exploring the city before heading to the country’s idyllic beaches. Even though we were happy to have a break from exploring culture and history after all that we’d taken in in China, I’m still SO glad that we gave Manila a chance.

Yes, it’s rough. Yes, it’s loud. Yes, it’s grungy. Yes, I saw more human feces on the streets of the city than I saw on the whole rest of the trip (heartbreakingly, it seemed there were more homeless in Manila than in any other than in any other metropolis we’ve visited on the trip).

But there was a lot more to Manila than its roughness. May of the sights we visited were beautiful and fascinating and nowhere else in the Philippines were we more readily able to tap into the sense of this complex country’s history and culture.

First impressions

Exiting the airport, my first impression was that we were someplace VERY different from the rest of Asia.

The air was warm and muggy but with a different feel to it than the tropical countries we’d visited in Southeast Asia. Our cab driver spoke English easily as we navigated through the traffic of, to my American eyes, well-known makes of cars and trucks to our hotel. Somehow everything felt nearly familiar to me, even as we entered our Spanish colonial style hotel. If I relaxed my senses, I could just about convince myself that our short flight from Taipei had landed us somewhere in the Caribbean, Mexico or Florida somewhere. This was a surreal feeling to have, knowing full well that we were still in Asia and not at all that far away from countries that had felt very exotic and foreign to me during our months of exploration.

The strange sensation of familiarity – and how at odds this put Manila to all the other places we’d visited in Asia – made me eager to see more of the city. All things considered, we managed to get around a decent amount in our limited time there.

Bits and pieces of Manila

We stayed in historic Intramuros, the walled neighborhood in Manila that was once the strong point of the Spanish colonists, where today one can still feel the echo of the conquistadors’ presence in the style of architecture; in fact “many of the buildings still have Spanish-tile street names” (LP Philippines).

We wandered a bit, exploring aspects of Manila as diverse as its rough but interesting Muslim quarter to it’s massive, overly air-conditioned and pristine western-style shopping malls. I hope the photos below can help give a sense of the diversity found within the city…

Photo impressions of Manila

The church of Saint Augustin in Intramurous
The oldest stone church in the Philippines. Completed in 1607, the structure has survived quite its fair share of disaster – from earthquakes to invasions by the British and the Japanes and the Spanish-American war in 1898.

 

Beautiful massive doors and Spanish architecture in Intramuros.

Manila graffiti

The Manila Cathedral

Fire truck

At Fort Santiago. Aside from its general historic significance, the fort holds a significant place in the Filipino psyche as it was where Jose Rizal, the Philippines’ national hero, was imprisoned prior to his execution by firing squad at the age of 35. A quick overview from Wikipedia:

He was a proponent of achieving Philippine self-government peacefully through institutional reform rather than through violent revolution, and would only support “violent means” as a last resort. Rizal believed that the only justification for national liberation and self-government is the restoration of the dignity of the people, saying “Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?” The general consensus among Rizal scholars is that his execution by the Spanish government ignited the Philippine Revolution.

For more on Rizal, please click here. 

Filipinos walking Rizal’s steps towards where he was executed

Manila

Pedicab driver taking a nap between jobs

I loved the Jeepneys!

Reading the paper as a bus rolls by

Outdoor market 

Walking to the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene. The bridge we’d just crossed was clearly a place to sleep for a lot of homeless people, with many corners having obviously been turned into outdoor bathrooms. Not the most pleasant walk…

 

Selling flower garlands outside the Basilica

Devotion at the Black Nazarene

In Manila’s Muslim quarter

Homeless; possibly trash pickers since the child was in a dumpster

Manila

A homeless man surveys golfers inside the Club Intramuros golf course

Indoor skating rink at one of Manila’s insanely huge, western-style malls

Getting ready for Christmas

Yay for rain!

It’s been weeks since my last haiku; it may as well be months and months for how busy we’ve been and how far away Wyoming is feeling.

Circumstance has gifted me with a quiet day today. We are in Big Sur, California. It’s our one full day here and it is positively sodden outside. It’s been pouring since well before I woke up, and the rain continues now into the afternoon, dripping down through the branches of the redwoods all around us and pattering on the rooftop while the puddles outside grow increasingly broad and deep.

Raindrops on Redwood leaves (needles?)

It might seem like a shame – I’d been really excited to see the beautiful coastline that the area is so famous for. Not to mention that it appears the wet weather has been following us around since we arrived in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. But actually I’m just as pleased to have a “day off” from typical travel.

We’re staying at a little cabin at the Big Sur Campground. Everything is rustic wood and light and warm inside, making it a delightful place to hole up in against the gloomy weather. The place even comes with a “wood stove” with a gas-powered fire, which has been glowing warmly in the corner pretty much since we arrived last night.

Wood stove = heaven

There’s no wi-fi (I’ll post this when ever we return to connectivity), no cell signal, and aside from the other cabins in the campground, the only things in sight are redwoods, ferns and a swollen, rushing stream. I’m loving it and wishing we were staying in this peaceful retreat for a week, rather than a day.

Our cabin amid some young Redwoods

But (aside from everything in Big Sur being crazy expensive) we’ve recently discovered that we won’t be able to extend the rental period for our leased car – something that we’d been assured was not only possible but easy when we picked up the car back in Connecticut. So our travel plans have now been reduced by two weeks and it’s important that we keep moving if we’re going to make it back to return the car on time.

So I’ll enjoy this time in Big Sur for what it is – a day of comfort and quiet indoors – and maybe we’ll get to come back some day for the beaches and the hiking and the views and all that other good stuff. After all the moving and activity of the past three weeks, being more or less forced to do be quiet and do nothing is exactly the blessing that I need. 🙂

Rain and redwoods – recorded this morning; the sound of rain pattering on our roof and the metal tank outside our cabin. 🙂