You know how that phrase “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry?”
Yeah, that about sums up most of my time in Belize and my major plans for the country.
I have read absolutely fabulous things about the diving in Belize. The Blue Hole has been on my bucket list for quite some time and the country boasts the second largest barrier reef in the world – sounded great!
But then a series of events forced me to completely abandon these plans and eventually just bail from the country …

Here’s a fun fact you may have never known – when you push a car out of deep sand, you can actually fall on your face once the car starts moving.
Fun fact.
I’m all for women power – ra ra, equality, ra ra – but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that there are times men come in handy. Instance number one when it’s nice to have a man around?
When you’re on Fraser Island (on Australia’s East Coast) and your huge 4WD vehicle is mired deep into incredibly …

My nearly year of traveling around the world had to end at some point – check out the first installment of my RTW route through Australia, Thailand Laos and Cambodia, the second installment through India, Nepal and Italy before tuning in for stories and an outline of the last four months around the world:
June ‘09: Croatia’s Parks to Bosnia’s Quiet Charm & Slovenia’s Theatre
June started off with a few transportation problems on the way to Croatia, but all of that was forgiven as we camped out in a rented …

It’s really hard to believe that this week exactly a year ago I was well into my around the world trip and diving on the Great Barrier Reef – and right now, a year later the RTW trip is over. Instead, I’m plopped on my bed in my childhood home working hard to save up the cash I’ll need for Central America in February.
With a new travel plans in the works, for posterity’s sake let’s recap my RTW travel route and some of the more interesting adventures. We’ll do it …

Huddled under one lone awning in the middle of the Outback, as the rain poured down around us, we all looked forlornly at the broken down tour bus while Jess presented us with a choice:

admit defeat and return to the previous night’s campground near Uluru
head a couple hours down the road toward Kings Canyon in hopes that the river hadn’t overflowed – if it hadn’t we could hike the Canyon in the morning.

At this …

Rain alternated between a deluge and a misty-drizzle the entire first day on our Outback tour – and incredible luck meant we not only witnessed the waterfalls on Uluru (Ayres Rock), but also, a briefly visible rainbow as the last light of the day lit the rock a glowing orange.
On the flip side though, the rain also meant that we missed hiking Kata Juta, we were often stuck inside the bus for incredibly long periods of time, our guide had to beg for tents instead of swags (open-to-the elements canvas …

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 …

Oscar Wilde described the Connemara region as a “savage beauty” – he was surely referring to the rough landscape that is largely covered with peat bogs, rocky hills, and interlocking chains of lakes. I’ve got to say, if ever there was a lonely landscape, it would have to be this region of Ireland.
To really and truly appreciate Connemara you have to get some height – as in go climb a mountain or a hill. Although the Twelve Bens mountain range is right in the area too, I couldn’t resist the …