The sounds of the wildlife at Tikal are what sold me on the experience.
I follow suit and listen for the sounds.
In the distance I hear a deep growling sound – it almost sounds like hogs…but only magnified times ten in both volume and intensity.
It’s the howler monkeys.
The ruins of Tikal, a pre-Columbian Mayan site, sit nestled still well within the Guatemalan jungle and although archeologists have uncovered numerous ruins all over the area, the forests are left in tact…and in fact they’re still hiding secrets as yet uncovered.
As we wander …

The ruins of Chichén Itzá were my first stop on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. As my first set of Maya ruins of this trip, I have to say, they’re quite a bit different from the temples architecture of Asia – and a good thing too because I got really “templed out” by the end of my time in SEA and India.
The Maya ruins are a whole different ball game though; the history behind the temples and the sacrifices and religious ceremonies held at Chichén Itzá are incredibly different from …

We’re flashing back to Australia today – to Uluru most specifically. Fret not my friends, the stories of Ireland are not over, but there were a handful of neat experiences in Australia that I never got a chance to cover.
I’ll preface this entire post by saying that although I was on an organized tour and saw all of the major sites…the fact that it was raining made this one of the biggest (and wettest) of my Australia adventures. It’s not incredibly typical for it to rain for days on end …

To finish up this series on the Lake District let’s go on a little tour of the region. The series this past week covered a few touristy things I did in the region – but there is just so much more to see if you can stay for more than three days!

I met some amazingly cool people at the hostel because all of the backpackers were similarly minded – this is not precisely the place to come for a good party but more so walking, hiking, and boating; we …

The Lake District in England is the perfect place for “just a bit of a wander” as all of the hostel owners and locals have called it. This quaint phrase is just one more example of the differences between the US and England…and I have to say, framing a walk with the idea of “having a bit of a wander” sets the mood entirely different than, say, “going for a walk;” even “out for a stroll” doesn’t have quite the same charm.
With the wandering mentality front and center as I …

The green sheep pastures of the Lake District in England were so stunning that they actually caused me to go into spontaneous dances of joy. I mean, if you know that you’re completely and truly alone with only a sheep as witness is there really anything else you could do?
I reckon not. I made a pact with myself at the beginning of the trip that I was going to teach myself a cartwheel by the end of this year of traveling. I still can’t do it (drats!) but I spent …

The sparkling lakes glistened with the setting sun as my train sped through the Lake District National Park in England; I couldn’t help but admire the spectacularly green rolling hills dotted with small white sheep that were in turn spotted with a dot of blue or red color to mark their owner.

After the hustle and bustle of London I chose to spend several days hiking, walking, and boating around the Lake District. This area made me instantly feel like I was entering a Jane Austen novel – truly! The lush …

The real heartbeat of most countries can be found out in the country in the smaller towns and cities that dot the countryside – even in developed countries I find that the people are much more accessible in the smaller cities. Prague is a huge city and I don’t know that I even remotely felt like I got a taste of the Czech culture.
Just a bit south of Prague though is another very touristy Czech city – but this one is small and consumable and interactions with the locals around …