Free falling

Hello all!

First, we are safe from any tsunamis that may or may not have hit Costa Rica. We went to a view point where we could see the Pacific Ocean and we didn´t see anything coming, so we figured we were safe. Very scientific of us, eh?

Yesterday we got up early and went ziplining through the cloud forest in Monteverde. Having never done it before, I was slightly terrified, wondering how I let Shaun bamboozle me into agreeing to being trussed up like a turkey and sent speeding down a thin wire tied between two trees. It´s just like when he bamboozled me into scootering around Roatan with him. In the end I did all the lines, didn´t get stuck halfway and only almost took out one guy once. I even did the superman line where you go ¨laying down¨ instead of sitting. The worst (maybe best?) was the tarzan swing. The entire trip Marianne (our group leader) had been talking up the tarzan swing. "Oh I love it, it´s the best" for two weeks. So we get to this swing, and literally all you can see is half a suspension bridge over a.... jungle canyon. The first person to go out? A 73 year old woman who was apparently not afraid to die. They sort of hook her to two ropes and then she jumps. And then nothing. She just jumped off a bridge. That´s when Marianne was like... yeah I hate this, see you at the bottom and took off. So here we are, one by one, jumping off the bridge, some with terrified screams and some to terrified to utter a peep (I fell into the second category, in case you were wondering.) Finally, it was just Shaun and I. I decided to go first, so that I wouldn´t back out. I took a deep breath and walked as confidently as I could to the end of the bridge. "Just don´t look down." I was about 40 meters in the air in a clearing. There was no padding, just... rocks. They had graciously cleared away some trees. They hooked me onto two ropes, put the ropes in my hand. At this point, I looked at one of the guys and told him I thought I was crazy. He agreed with me. Then he opened the gate. You´re just supposed to fall off of the bridge. I jumped. I free fell for what felt like an eternity, but was no longer than maybe a second or two before the ropes caught me and I was swinging like Tarzan. One of the members of group has a video of Shaun doing the jump after me. We´ll try to get a copy of it and post it somewhere. Shaun laughs when he´s terrified. When he got to the bottom he told me that he seriously considered backing out after he watched me jump off the bridge.

We also ate some cheese (Monteverde is famous for its beef and dairy products), visited a butterfly and frog emporium (there´s a picture on the flickr website...www.shaunmcgregor.ca) and drank some coffee. Some really good coffee.

Tomorrow we are going on a safari wildlife float down a river and to the hotsprings. These hotsprings put Canadian hotsprings to shame. There are waterslides.

Ciao!
Sirina

P.S. Shaun doesn´t want to write anything. He says he´s good.

Phew!

Hello!!!

We are currently in Granada, Nicarauga and have much to report. After leaving Copan we realized that Shaun had left the beautiful G11 Canon camera in the hotel. Thus we spent much of our free time on Roatan (gorgeous island in the middle of the Carribean) trying figure out how to get it back. Luckily we figured it out and soon the camera will be on its way via DHL back to Edmonton. That left us without a camera though. Luckily we managed to procure another decent camera, though not nearly as nice as the G11.

Roatan was beautiful. On our first full day on the island we went to the beach and despite many applications of SPF 45 sunblock both still got sunburned. Our plan was to snorkel on the second day, but given the severity of the burns we decided not to risk it and rented a scooter instead (like a vespa type motor bike). Turns out to be the best $35 dollars Shaun ever spent. I´m pretty sure we have to buy one when we get home. This was nice because we got to see the rest of the island and get away from the cruise shippers that had overrun our town. We also went for dinner at a Garifuna lady´s house. The best chicken we´ve ever eaten. Holy. She´d make a kiling if she offered cooking lessons the next day. I´d pay a small fortune to learn how to make that chicken. But we did learn how to make some delicious Guatemalan food while we were in Antigua, some of you may get to taste some.

After two long travel days (and one death defying cab ride in Tegucigalpa... video is forthcoming) we finally arrived in Granada. Today we went to a cigar factory where we each go to roll a cigar and we visited La Merced church. Tonight we´ll wander down to the lake and tomorrow is an adventure up the Masaya Volcano. Then we´re off to Ometepe. Which is being considered for inclusion on the list of the 7 great natural wonders of the world. Hopefully the scorpions don´t get us.

Sirina

I can´t beleive I left a camera in a hotel room...

-Shaun

Sirina Got Attacked by a Snake Today

So, turns out because we are taking pictures in RAW (google it) we are unable to see what photos we have taken at this fine internet establishment and cannot upload them for you folks to see.

HOWEVER, we can tell you that while at the Ruins of Copan in Honduras today Sirina was walking down a path behind me when she screamed and put me in the path of danger. Turns out a large constrictor type snake was sunning itself in the grass beside the path and Sirina disturbed its rest. It was coiled and it had it head lifted and was hissing very loudly and angrily at Sirina. I then told her to take a picture (which she did) and the snake retreated to the safety of the jungle. I thought it was a neat experience but she keeps saying she is going to have nightmares.

Anyway until next time.

-Shaun

Okay folks, he does not adequately capture the fear one feels when confronted with a large hissing constrictor. Yes I screamed and yes I used him as a human shield to protect me from the snake but like any photographer worth their salt, I did take a picture of it, and a pretty damned good one at that. But seriously, that was an instinctual reaction. I didn´t even conciously register what it was I was getting away from until after I had used Shaun as a shield.

We´re headed to Roatan tomorrow, where we will spend 2 full days. We will make time to write some longer posts about the CoED trip (even if there are no pictures) but suffice to say that it was a life changing experience that ended with us crying with a 14 year old Guatemalan student in a pizza joint in Antigua, Guatemala.

That´s all for now!

Sirina

We are in Guatemala

Using the fine Central American internet we are updating this webblog before driving to Lake Atitlan. We met the co-ed group yesterday and they seem like a fine bunch of people. I´m going to be brief as we have a limited amount of internets but I´m having quite a bit of fun here and I´m very happy the words "I trust you implicitly" came out of my mouth one day in July.

-Shaun

It´s Sirina. Guatemala is a very neat place. Yesterday we went with the group to La Labor School on the outskirts of the city to see the school where Co-ed had its first textbook program. The impact has been amazing. We spent some time with the kids, reading (them in English, us in Spanish) and watching their mini-soccer tournament. Today we are off to Santiago and Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. All in all, lots of fun. Pictures when we have more internets.

Sirina

P.S. I already have a funny shaped sunburn.

It is 2:48 AM

We are just getting ready to leave.  Doing the last few chores to save the house from developing a funk while we are gone and saying good-bye to hot showers and dry skin.

Here we go!

Almost Time

Goto http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaunmcgregor/5342276096/ to
see which money belongs to which country.

We are leaving on Monday the 21st of February.  I'm just getting this setup now, but hopefully  while in Central America I'll be able to upload photos and do some blogging.

If you are wondering where I'm going check this and this out.

Also pictured above is some of the money we are taking goto http://www.shaunmcgregor.ca to see my Flickr feed where all the photos will be posted.

-Shaun

Home...

We are home. At last.

It was a long flight, we left Tokyo at 4 p.m. on Friday and landed in Edmonton at 3 p.m. on Friday. How's that for time travel?

We have both been awake for more than 24 hours at this point, not having gotten any sleep during the flights and now must force ourselves to stay awake for another 4 to 5 hours to minimize the 16 hour jet-lag that will hit us.

Now that we have fast internet we will post all the stuff we missed while in Japan. Maybe it will be Shaun's project to keep him awake.

Day 16

But first...

This is a video we took way back when we were in Takayama.

Today

We went to Tama Zoo a little outside of Tokyo. We spent the better part of the afternoon there and that is all we basically did today.


This zoo was very large and had quite a few animals. The most interesting was the Chimpanzees. These little guys had a cool system for getting fruit which involved them using sticks as tools. I had figured I had seen everything zoos had to offer until I saw the chimps using a vending machine...

We are going to Osaka tomorrow and again may not be able to post pictures or video we will be there for 3 days. Then our last night will be back in Tokyo and after that you will all have to endure us being in Edmonton again.

Talk to you soon.

-Shaun

Pictures, Pictures...

...and more pictures

So I uploaded a bunch of pictures to flickr (link on the left) and I will now go about adding some pictures to the previous posts.

If I really feel crazy I spend ￥400 more and upload a few videos.

Make sure you take a look I went to a lot of trouble for you... ;)

-Shaun

GAH!

You heard me

I`m trying to get some videos and pictures up but it is taking a very long time. I`ve gotten one Video up and I have 2 more on their way. Tonight I`ll come back to the manga kissa (internet cafe thing) and get a whole bunch more pictures up.

We are planning on going to Akihabara so I get to look at all the cool Japanese technology.

Check all of our past posts, I will be adding pictures to them in the next 24 hours or so.

-Shaun

We made it down alive!!!!!!!

We are safely down from Fuji. The climb was a lot harder than we had anticipated. They tell us oh don`t worry, children and the elderly do this all the time, but what they neglected to tell us was that we weren`t taking the trail the children and the elderly take, we were taking the steepest most direct route straight up the mountain face. It was challeging especially with my ankle but we made it up to the 8th station where we had a very unrestful night of sleep on the wooden floor with a bean pillow (I can`t believe I haven`t blogged about bean pillows yet-- they have been the bain (bane?) of my existence for the last 2 weeks.)

The Japanese sleep on these horrible pillows filled with either raw beans or rice husks. Makes for a very hard kriky neck kind of sleep. Bean pillows like the bean bags we used to play with as kids. So bad that Shaun actually bought me a new pillow to carry through the country with me, but we left it at Shin-Fuji and so I am back to sleeping on the bean pillows.

Anyways back to Fuji... We slept on the floor where our blankets were thicker than our mattress pads and so didn`t sleep all that much. We were also feeling the effects of the altitude (3200 meters) and so burning lungs, pounding hearts and queasy stomachs didn`t help the sleep situation. At two a.m. when the group left for the summit against local advice due to weather conditions we decided to stay at the 8th station. It was cloudy and no one saw the sunrise so we didn`t feel too bad.

We have gone through most of Japan now, the tour is done and we are on our own for the next week (fingers crossed!). We are in Tokyo for today and tomorrow and then down to Osaka for 4 days to visit Kobe, Nara, back to Kyoto and Osaka. Today we do laundry and we will find an internet cafe to post all of our pictures!!!

Cheers!

Sirina

Leaving Miyajima

Today we leave Miyajima in preparation for the Mt. Fuji climb. As of yet, we have not seen Fuji-- it has always been too cloudy when we have gone near. The trail is supposedly well marked and the biggest danger in the climb is altitude sickness so we plan to take it slow and climb from the fifth station to the summit over a day and a half or so. Tonight we stay at the base and prepare and tommorrow we will take a bus from the base to the fifth station where we start our climb. We spend the day climbing from the fifth to eighth station where we will stay in a hut (read: shack) overnight and then begin our climb again the next morning (read: 2 a.m) so that we arrive at the summit for sunrise.


Yesterday we had a 4 train, 2 tram, 1 ferry boat day-- it was absolutely exhausting. In addition to all the travel we made a breif stop in Hiroshima to visit the peace park and bomb museum so all in all it was a very heavy day. It was also interesting to read history from the other side. Very rarely do you get to read history from the loser`s perspective. The Japanese take full responsibility for starting the Pacific War through their surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, but did you know that the A-bombs were dropped while the Japanese were attempting to negotiate peace? And with no prior warning? And amid protest from 69 of America`s leading scientists? What gets me the most is that they still dropped the bomb even while the Japanese were trying to negotiate for peace. Perhaps they needed a way to justify the Manhattan project and the 2 billion dollar expenditure and `ending` the war with the A-bomb was a good way to do it. It all still rings very true today. Okay I`ll stop depressing you. Shaun has run away to share our watermelon flavoured kit kat bars with other group members, so we`ll leave you here.

Cheers!

Sirina

Map of Japan

That is a map. We are currently near the place called Beppu.

Everywhere else we have been is on the map itself.

Recap:
Tokyo
Takayama
Kyoto
Nagasaki

/Dirty Dirty Hotlinker

In Yufuin

I didn`t know it exsisted either

We are in a very small town in Kyushu province called Yufuin. It`s the public bathing capital of the world. There are a tonne of hot springs here and the Japanese come from far and wide to visit them and take baths. We are VERY hot and VERY sweaty (incidently there is a drink here called Pocari Sweat) but I`m personally still having fun. Nagasaki was somewhat of a relaxing town as Sirina and I did very little sightseeing. We went to the A-Bomb museum and that was about all.

Still haven`t found a place since Tokyo to upload pictures or movies but I will keep looking. Sorry about that I was hoping to be able to put more pictures up as we went along.

Talk to you soon.

-Shaun

Day 6

Internet, sweet sweet internet

Sorry for the radio silence folks, we have been in Takayama which had no internet cafe that we could find. We have a tonne of pictures and videos to upload but we have to find a place to do that. Right now we are in Kyoto, in the hotel lobby in fact.

What you`ve missed

Since we last communicated we have been to the fish market in Tokyo, taken our first shinkansen ride (bullet train) ride, seen the Japanese alps, walked around a Banff like town, had another ride on the shinkansen and geisha stalked in Kyoto followed by a sushi conveyour belt meal. (Shaun holds the world record* with 20 plates)

It has been very fun and I will try very hard to post pictures tonight. Okay it` Sirina`s 15 minutes now

It`s 13 minutes actually

He used up 2 of my minutes. We went up to the shrine　with　all the orange tori gates (those of you that have seen Memoirs of a Geisha will know what I`m talking about)when we first arrived in Kyoto. It is 4 km long (surprising!) and incredibly beautiful winding up a large hill and going past a river with giant turtles. I have some beautiful pictures of the gates to post. We are going to Kyoto station for breakfast; it is an amazingly modern and extremely controversial building here in Kyoto- many local residents feel that it is setting a precidence for the promotion of ultra modern buildings in Japan's old imperial capital. Kyoto is home to over 2000 shrines and temples and all the structures are original (many things that we have seen thus far have been reconstructed) as Kyoto was untouched during the WW2 bombings. Kyoto is the second most visited place on the planet after Mecca (betcha didn't know that!)

Okay I only have 2 minutes left and I want to check my email, so I'll leave you here. Hope to upload some stuff tonight!

Cheers!


*may not be a world record

It`s Day 3

Very Early

I don`t care what Sirina says this is going to be very fun. :D

Yesterday we did a lot of walking and a lot of sight seeing, including the Tokyo station, Imperial Palace plaza, Imperial East Gardens, Harajuko, Meji Jingu shrine and Takeashita street.

It was a very good day, today is a travel day to Takayama and therefore we may not be able to get to a computer where we can upload photos. As soon as we do it will be on the flickr page (look left on this page). Also, check out the video I left there the other day. And Sirina says `Comment People`

Talk to you soon have fun!

It`s 4 a.m.

It`s　4am and Shaun is bouncing off the walls excitedly because we are going to the fish market this morning to see the fish auction. It`s the thing he`s most excited to see while in Japan. I`m sunburned. And it`s 4 a.m. Enough said. He`ll get his payback when we get to Kyoto and all I want to do is find a geisha.

Day 2

Its day two of the tour!

Last night we ate at a wonderful vending machine restaurant where you look at the plastic food display in the window and then go to a vending machine to purchase it. The purchase is sent to the kitchen and then 10 minutes later voila! food in front of you.

The Japanese are an efficient society. Puts the service industry back home to shame.

We kind of just wandered around yesterday, found a random park called　yoyogi park and wandered around there for a few hours after we found a random Japanese hippy festival. Who knew there were so many hippies in Japan?! We visited Ginza (Tokyo`s 5th ave) and Akibara (electronics district) in addition to Shibuya.

Ooop, Shaun is telling me I have to hurry up because we are on the hotel`s free internet. More pictures when we get to our next internet cafe.

Cheers!

Sirina & Shaun

We are here!

Finally

After what seemed like a flight that would not stop we are in Tokyo and well rested. We got in around 2PM yesterday and by the time we cleared customs and quarantine, and rode the train to the hotel it was about 5PM. We promptly and excitedly without any thought to our fellow man, fell asleep for 12 hours...

When we woke up we went down for an interesting breakfast (it involved doorbells). Then we figured out the Tokyo subway system and came to an internet cafe in Shibuya. Right now it is 8.12AM here on Saturday which is 5.12PM on Friday for Edmonton. We will keep in touch as now we know where an internet cafe is. This place also lets us upload our photos, which is good news for you、 in my opinion、 cause damnit if we aren`t good looking.

That`s all Shaun has to say Sirina?

We`re here!!

We finally arrived! A few things that I have noticed:

1. Japan is a lot more green than I thought. They seem to have 2 settings-- densely urban or completely rural.

2. There is no shortage of golf courses here (which surprised me)

3. Alarm clocks in hotels never work, I don`t know why I keep trying to use them.

4. Shaun had the best Salmon I have ever tasted for breakfast and I was jealous that I got a ハムサンドイチ (ham sandwich).

5. The G8 summit is in Japan and so there are NO garbage cans anywhere right now. You pretty much have to pack your garbage with you back to the hotel.

6. I love having vending machines everywhere.

7. Generally, everyone is nice and happy to help you. We only got the stink eye from one person so far!

8. We generally have no idea what`s going on and stare at the nearest Japanese person to figure out what they`re doing so we can copy it. It`s how we figured out the doorbell system for breakfast this morning.

9. Transit here rocks.



That is all.

Sirina

And we're off....

It's officially 10 minutes to 3 in the morning and we are anxiously awaiting Devon who has graciously offered to drive us to the airport at this ungodly hour. We will try and post as soon as we get to Japan, but we have both essentially stayed up all night, so its entirely possible that we'll fall asleep in the Narita airport terminal and never make it into Tokyo. On the plus side, our condo is the cleanest its ever been thanks to my unending nagging to "Clean!".