Adventure of the month

Four years ago, I was in Vilnius, Lithuania trying to plan out my day. Among the tours on offer was one to neighboring Belarus. In less than an hour, I could happily add a new country to my list. The problem- I had not realized this far enough in advance and did not have either the necessary visa or the time to get it. No Belarus for me. Fast forward to 2019, the visa requirement has been lifted and conveniently, there is now a direct flight from Amsterdam to Minsk. I visited in August, when the weather was perfect and was admiring the blue skies while trying to talk to the cab driver who picked me up at the airport. With no common language between us, I was working off of google translate. As I did this, he kept saying "Russian". It was obvious I am not Russian, so that's probably not what he was trying to ask but I had no clue what he was getting at. I just smiled and kept typing away. When I handed him my phone, he went straight to the language selection mode a...

Reasons I was really excited about going to Tonga:  1. Are you kidding me with this? It's Tonga. It's a country that I have not been to, that I never thought I would have a chance to get to and now I have a flight booked to mother fucking Tonga!  2. Humpback whales. Other places have them but very few allow you the chance to get in the water and swim with them. Tonga is one of those magical places. So far this summer, I'd froliced with (look away if you hate shameless bragging): 3 species of reef sharks, bull sharks, turtles, giant mantas and whatever nudibranches are. I was due for a whale encounter.  3. Tonga is the only royal kingdom in the South Pacific. While all their neighbors were being occupied (mostly by the Brits and the French), Tonga maintained sovereignty. To this day, they have a king whose visage stares down on you from billboards all over the island. This reason is not all that exciting but I feel that lists work best in threes.

Samoa has a ridiculous number of churches. I would like to quantify "ridiculous" but no one I asked, not even google, could give me a number and I think I know why. There are simply too many to count! You could try but at some point, you are going to lose your place and have to start all over again. I know. I tried. About 15 minutes into my ride from Faleolo Airport into downtown Apia, I noticed that every other structure seemed to be a religious building of some kind. Usually, they came in pairs. If say a Protestant church opened on a corner, a Catholic one had to claim the adjacent turf. Curious, I started counting them. I hit 43 before I got bored and turned my attention elsewhere. And we were only 20 minutes into the ride.  Once we arrived at the uber-colonial Sheraton Aggie Grey , I was quickly reminded of what happens when missionaries really do a number on a small South Pacific Island. It was Sunday, so I expected the stores to be closed but I was certain it was ...

I've said it before but I'm lucky af. Or reventada, as my friend Ivon would say. You know how I know this is true? Because a fluke combination of circumstances recently led to me living in Fiji for almost four months. Meaning not only was I waking up in paradise every day, but on my days off, I could book convenient getaways to other nearby paradises. My first outing was to Vanuatu. I could babble about how it has always been my dream to visit this Pacific Island nation but that would be such total bullshit. Like most people, I had barely heard of Vanuatu. This might be why I was so fascinated when I met a couple from Australia who now lived in Port Vila. They painted such an appealing picture of this as-of-yet undeveloped tropical nirvana that I had no choice but to book my flight. With that done, I ran into the first obstacle when you are amongst the first to the touristic party. Try as I might, there were no hostels in Port Vila. Anyone that has read this blog, met me ...

I'd toyed with the idea of getting a proper underwater camera for a long time. I'd bought the disposable kind that you have to take into the store to get your photos developed... like a fucking cave person. I'd bought a cheapie one that produced meh photos and gorged on batteries that I never seemed to have on hand. It was a mess. When I made the decision to go to Fiji and swim with sharks- check out the last post for more details- I finally broke down and bought a GoPro. For the unfamiliar, this is a tiny but rugged camera that is generally associated with very physically active people. I am not that person. If you ever see me scaling the side of a mountain, know that there is some really scary shit is coming up from below. Honestly, I am surprised they even sold it to me. Anyways, all that aside, I now had an underwater camera. That same motivating factor, swimming with sharks, got me back into diving. I realize by phrasing it this way, it could be implied that at s...

In our last episode, our quarantined blogger looked back on happier times and began a list of the her favorite Fijian escapades. It has now dawned on this blogger person that even with the benefit of too much free time, this might be too ambitious an undertaking. There were a lot of great times in Fiji. Like a lot a lot. There is no possible way to list them all. Instead, this blogger- me, we are talking about me- will continue to try and hit some of the more memorable highlights. One that comes to mind right away was my birthday. Why was it so special? Well, for starters, I was in fucking Fiji!  On my birthday! That's pretty special. Add to that, my friend Iliana, who had just flown in from Miami. Which leads me to a story. Back in February, I had an airline voucher that was about to expire. I went on the AA website and started plugging in a bunch of "dream destinations" to see if I could make any of them work. I saw that for $1200 (minus my $800 voucher), I coul...

Full truth: This post will appear as if it was written in April 2019. It wasn't. Today's date is actually April 5, 2020. I, along with sensible people everywhere, am "sheltering in place", trying to ride out the Covid-19 epidemic that has brought the planet to a standstill. It is jarring and hard to believe that exactly one year ago, I was about to embark on a truly once-in-a-lifetime adventure. On April 9th, 2019 I landed in Nadi, Fiji. My co-workers and I were supposed to stay for an undetermined amount of time or more specifically as long as it took to get the Boeing Max up and flying. We all figured we had a couple of weeks, at best, before having to return home. We ended up staying until July 24th. The Max still wasn't (and still isn't) fixed but we ended up living in paradise for three and a half months. In that time, I took advantage of being based in this far-flung part of the world and dropped in on Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga, all of which I pos...