Lead technician for our adventure documentation team.
We bid adieu to Santiago this morning, taking a tour to Valparaiso (an hour or so away, on the coast), which is the embarkation point for our expedition trip. Our first destination was Vina Del Mar, to see the famous Reloj de Flores, a giant flower clock, which was created in 1962 for the World Cup. It was giant, there were flowers, it was a clock. ...
Buenos dias from Santiago, Chile! Today we started out on a walking tour of Santiago. Our hotel was downtown and in close proximity to many sites and we were able to cover a lot of ground after breakfast. The first stop was the Palacio de los Tribunales de Justicia de Santiago, which is the building that houses the Supreme Court, the Appeals Court, and...
We are winding down our time left in Uzbekistan. It is now Day 11 – our first full day in Samarkand. For those that read yesterday’s blog (Day 10), you might remember one of the last pictures that was of a beautifully arranged fruit tray, and how we said we’d come back to this tray… Well we’re back to it. The consensus is that it was possibly...
Okay, today’s blog will be fairly short, picture sparse, and yea… boring. Today was the day we embarked on the long bus ride to Bukhara, roughly an all day drive. There were a few high points, such as when we pulled over at a high point where we could see nearby Turkmenistan, but all-in-all, a fairly boring drive through the desert. That green area on the other side...
We didn’t mention our hotel yesterday so we’ll have to describe it today. The hotel was right outside of the south gate to Itchan-Kala Fortress. It was more of a complex than a traditional hotel. There were multiple buildings, each like its own hotel with a manned front desk, etc. and we were in the newest building, Building 5. Each building...
This is the day we bade farewell to the lovely city of Tashkent, flying to the western city of Urgench. Flying domestically was…interesting. Airport security was this…. Place everything on the conveyor – suitcase, carry-on, breakfast – and then walk through the detector. Wait…breakfast?? Yep, people put their sack breakfasts and drink on the...
We appear to have left the laptop’s power brick at home, so this is sadly, likely the last post this trip. (i.e. unfortunately you won’t be able to follow live, it will be an “after the trip” look. We’ll get the days in as quickly as we can…)
“The day we became millionaires”. Misleading statement……. We exchanged $200 USD and got back 2,180,000 Uzbeki Cym (pronounced “SOOM”). The bills were 100K and 5K notes, so we ended up with a stack of 37 bills. Talk about a fat stack! (We were told you used to have to bring a back-pack to carry your money… but that thankfully they...
After about 3-1/2 hours of sleep, we headed back to the airport to retrieve the missing luggage (they don’t deliver here – you have to retrieve it yourself). It was a beautiful morning (70-ish) to drive with the windows down and this was our first glimpse of Tashkent during the day. What a beautiful, green and clean City! Jay’s suitcase was indeed there...
Today was our last day (well, half day) which we spend doing some last minute exploration near the guesthouse and port area. Here are a last look at a few of the nearby buildings as we made our way to the Harpa Concert Hall. This first one is our guest house. The entrance is the white door people were coming out, just to the left of the double brown doors. It was a...