Tag Archives: vacation

See, taste and experience Otavalo Market

17 Saturday Aug 2013

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Mom and baby at Otavalo

Though our trip to Ecuador was all about birding, every guide book (yes, I still read those) and online resource indicated that the Otavalo Market in the indigenous town of Otavalo was a must-see. So after two weeks of chasing birds it was time to relax (birding is exhausting!) and just take in some of the culture. And do some shopping (natch). It’s only a two-hour drive from Quito and if you drive 15 minutes further you can also visit the town of Cotacachi, which is famous for its leather goods.

What you will see

You will see Panama hats. “What?” you ask. “In Ecuador?” Yep. In fact, they are made in Ecuador, not Panama. So now that you know, this little piece of knowledge could potentially make you the smartest person at a dinner party should the subject of Panama hats come up. (Oh, and by the way, Cuenca, I hear is the best place to find the finest made. More bonus points for dinner party conversation.)

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They’re made in Ecuador. Now you know.

You will see electric colors all around you. Expect happy, happy colors on all of the tables. How can you not be happy? They are woven in the wool cloth, strung as beads and painted as smiling masks all laid out on a table as though a crowd of jesters are laughing along with you. If you have the time, make sure you do a quick walk-through of the tables first before you begin buying/negotiating. There is a lot to see and happening upon all that color is a lot to take in at first. You might miss something the first time around.

Alone, each might be a little scary, but all together it's like a friendly choir. Almost.

Alone, each might be a little scary, but all together it’s like a friendly choir. Almost.

I'll take one of each, please.

I’ll take one of each, please.

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The indigenous women of Otavalo wear these beads–one for every child they have. Young girls wear the tiny beads you see in the back.

What the Otavalo people are known for: their beautiful, bright woven woolen fabric.

What the Otavalo people are known for: their beautiful, bright woven woolen fabric.

What you can taste

You should eat. Really. Because there’s a lot of food. If you’re not in the mood to buy a Panama hat or buy something colorful you definitely should try the food. You can either hand-pick fruits and vegetables from the tables for purchase or buy a quick meal.

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Panella, a type of brown sugar (In Asia it’s also known as jagery)

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Penino dulce, which is a sweet cucumber

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Achotillo or Lychee

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I also had never seen so many grains and flours before.

You will likely run into my all-time favorite tomato on the planet. My favorite is the Tomates del arbol, also known as sweet tomatoes. It’s what we had as juice on our first morning in Ecuador, served as a salsa over chicken at a restaurant and when we were Tandayapa Lodge, the cook served it as dessert–baked with a sugar sauce. I think I’ve dreamed every night of that dessert since I’ve been back.

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Tomates del arbol–one of my favorite discoveries in Ecuador

You will be able to try a traditional Ecuadorian dish. Best of all, is the Hornado and Llapingachos, a traditional Ecuadorian dish in this region. The aroma of this dish is what makes the market so wonderful. I didn’t get dizzy from all the colors, but from the food.

The meat the lady has in her hands in the hornado (roasted pork). The small yellow balls are mashed potatoes that are the Llapingachos.

The meat the lady has in her hands in the hornado (roasted pork). The small yellow balls are mashed potatoes that are the Llapingachos.

If you don’t believe me that this dish is important, here’s proof. In a nearby town there’s a monument in honor of the dish.

A monument celebrating food. I tell ya, there's not enough of them.

A monument celebrating food. I tell ya, there’s not enough of them.

What you will experience

Yes, there’s colorful things to buy. Yes, there’s loads of food to taste. But even if you do none of those (buy, eat), go to Otavalo market just for the experience and for the people watching.

You can practice your negotiation skills. Steve, who was being a great husband by coming along (did he have a choice?) hates shopping and browsing. Plus, too much stimuli makes him dizzy, but he was a trooper and even though he swore he wasn’t going to buy anything, an enterprising man with leather belts was persistent with Steve. Enterprising man won and Steve walked away with a new belt. (Can a man have too many belts? I say no. It’s my same argument with shoes.)

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I think Steve is trying to get him down to $8.

You can also join a local game of…I don’t know what. We happened to see a group of men huddled over and yelling and cheering. I got a look at what they were doing and a man said, “Casino! Want to play?” I thanked him kindly for his offer. I so would lose my shirt.

Casino!

Casino!

A tip you should know

When I had booked our Andes birding adventure with Tropical Birding I asked them if they could also arrange for us a guide for Otavalo Market, and they hooked us up with the most delightful woman, Desiree, from their office who was full of so much history and knowledge about the area. Most people don’t think to ask the tour company to arrange other activities for them, but you should.  Of course, you can easily get to Otavalo on your own. Even though it’s only a two-hour drive from Quito, we like private guides who give us so much more information about the area. Besides, Desiree was so completely wonderful and engaging I can’t imagine having done the trip without her.

Tropical Birding not only helped us arrange our guide, Desiree, but also arranged a private guide for us when we had a day in Quito and also helped us book our week at Sacha Lodge. It was so much easier working with boots-on-the-ground people in the country who know much more about who to contact and how to make the arrangements, because my Spanish is crummy and if I tried to do it myself I’m certain we’d end up in some other country.

Otavalo Market

I have not been paid or compensated for anything on this trip. My gushing is authentic and genuine and on my own dime.

Pressures of Ecuador

12 Monday Aug 2013

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The following post is from my other blog The Accidental Birder. I finally gathered enough courage to write it. I’ve included the intro here and to continue reading it, jump over to the Accidental Birder blog by clicking “read the whole story” at the end of the intro.

Act 1: The pressure to keep up

Muddy boots in Ecuador

It was 5:00 a.m. and the rain, warm as bathwater, was coming down hard and in giant drops. Thud, thud, thud, on my head, my shoulders, my arms, my back. The drops looked huge in the light emanating from my headlamp. Our group, in single file, walked on the slippery boardwalk over the swamp—a swamp full of anaconda, caiman and piranha.

The unimaginable entered my mind: Right now I’d rather be back at the office doing Powerpoint. No, it didn’t enter my mind. I heard the words come out of my mouth. 

Right now I’d rather be back at the office doing Powerpoint.

Who says that? Like, ever?

The rush was necessary but I was failing everyone around me, making the awful journey slower and more arduous than it needed to be. This death march over the swamp would lead us to a boat ramp. We would take a motorized canoe on the Napo River to clay licks where we would see possibly hundreds of parrots and parakeets. But we had to hurry. Parrots and parakeets wouldn’t wait for slow pokes.

Read the whole story.

When my husband went all Tongan on me at the Polynesian Cultural Center

21 Tuesday May 2013

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Tongan man blows into conch shell

You couldn’t get me on stage. No, not even if you promised me a new pair of shoes. I thought husband, Steve, would be the same way. But put big Tongan drums in front of a man and he turns into a boy.

That’s what happened at the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) on the island of Oahu. There are villages throughout the PCC, each representing Polynesian islands in the Pacific, specifically, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Hawai’i, Samoa, Tahiti and Tonga, and it is the Tongan show that is a big hit with audiences.

The show begins with a man blowing into a conch shell and drummers begin hammering away on the big drums. It’s the hollow beat, beat, beat that swoops through your chest and were it not for my fear of being looked at, I would have stood up, closed my eyes and started dancing.

Tongan Drummer 1

Tongan Drummer 2

The drumming or Tongan ta nafa has five performances a day, Mondays through Saturday.  It’s an opportunity to not just see and hear the drumming, but three lucky individuals from the audience get to try their hand at it as well.

Little did I know Steve had a Tongan drummer spirit within him. Yes, my quiet, engineer-type, bookish husband was called up on the stage and he let loose on the drums.

Oh dear. Take a look at the video below. I think you’ll have a good laugh over this one. Afterward, my mother turned to me and exclaimed, “I had no idea Steve was like that at all!” Nor did I.

For more on the Polynesian Cultural Center, see also my other post, Islands of smiles and brothers connected by an ocean.

Also, visit their website at http://www.polynesia.com.

Picturing Quito

05 Sunday May 2013

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It is big. It is colorful. It is busy. And it is full of children on this particular day. It must be the day for field trips to Quito. Children, led by a leader, form a long chain as they hold hands through the busy streets and sidewalks. They are here to learn about Old Town in Quito like me.

Children on a field trip to the "White House," where their country's president resides.

Children on a field trip to the Palacio de Gobbierno or Presidential Palace

School children navigate Old Town Quito

School children navigate Old Town Quito

Quito was really a pause between adventures.  We had just spent a week in the Amazon in Ecuador and we had two nights in Quito before we were headed to the Andes. I had seen pictures of Quito and read my travel guide. There is plenty to find out on this UNESCO World Heritage Site. But one day wasn’t enough to take it all in. Oh to be a student again and I would spend a semester here and become part of the cement or the cobblestone or the walls. I’d be able to learn more about the religious history of this area and the struggle to hang on to one’s beliefs. That struggle has been there for centuries and continues. Quito is evident of that both historically and today.

Madonna statue atop El Panecillo

Madonna statue atop El Panecillo (the tallest Virgin Mary statue in the world and only one, it seems, with wings.)

There is a mix of the traditional and the modern here in Quito

There is a mix of the traditional and the modern here in Quito

It was the day before Good Friday in Quito and the city was preparing for the big celebration the following day. Churches were mostly closed and benches were being set up to prepare for the procession Jesus del Gran Poder, one of the biggest processions in South America for the Easter holiday.

One of the many churches in Old Town Quito

One of the many churches in Old Town Quito

A man sings in the streets.

A man sings in the streets.

View of Quito from El Panecillo

View of Quito from El Panecillo

Looking at Quito through the “retro lens of Instagram” helps me keep Quito preserved in the past. I think I like it that way and hope that all the little children who walk through Quito hand in hand will remember it that way too.

Old Town Quito (Instagram)

Old Town Quito (Instagram)

My favorite photo of Quito that I took looks just like an old postcard. (Instagram)

My favorite photo of Quito that I took looks just like an old postcard. (Instagram)

Navigating the airport in a wheelchair

01 Friday Feb 2013

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My husband and I passed by the long serpentining line of people and we were ushered through a no-waiting line, as if we were VIPs with exclusive privileges beyond the velvet rope. “Hey, this is great!” I told my husband. “It’s way faster doing it this way.”

My special situation got him rushed through as well, but in the end, it really wasn’t fast for me at all. I was navigating an airport in a wheel chair and what should have taken me only 30 minutes to get from curb to gate took me twice as long.

Airport wheel chair

My airport mode of transportation

Search and Rescue had to haul me out of Zion National Park

Search and Rescue had to haul me out of Zion National Park

Forty five days earlier I had broken my leg in Zion National Park followed by surgery (a plate, 2 pins and 5 screws). The accident put me in a wheelchair and eventually on crutches before I finally was able to walk again, yet I still had to travel for work. In fact, I had two business trips and if you think traveling through an airport is a pain, try doing it when disabled.

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Steve, my sherpa

Fortunately, Steve had the flexibility to travel with me and be my sherpa throughout the whole ordeal of travel. The poor guy had to drag both his bags and my bags around and it became no surprise to me that he suffered months of back pain after doing this for both the trips.

The consistency of inconsistency

Moving in front of the TSA line is a joy, yes, but the pat-down is excruciatingly long and arduous. Everything gets swabbed and TSA was never consistent in its procedures. Every airport seemed to do things differently. One airport let me remain sitting in my wheelchair. Another made me stand up–balancing on one leg. Another airport (Orlando) made me go into a little x-ray pod room (quite strange) where I had to sit on a table and they x-rayed my whole body and they gave me a pat down. Was this all really necessary? Another airport’s TSA even asked me to remove my boot, to which I said, “Are you kidding?” and then the agent decided not to pursue it.

I wore this thing for 3 months. Ugh.

I wore this thing for 3 months. Ugh.

While I was being dismantled like a live bomb, my husband was meanwhile trying to collect all our carry-ons (quart-sized bags of liquids, lap top, purse, both our bags) from the conveyor belt like Lucy and Ethel when they worked the chocolate factory on I Love Lucy.

Wheeling around the terminals

When you book your travel you have the option to let the airline know that you are in need of wheelchair assistance. As a result, all airports (a total of four during both business trips) had an agent available when we got off the plane, but it was a little confusing when we first arrived to the airport. Generally, once we arrived at security the airport wheelchair agent could be called on, but there was a wait and was such a pain.

Hats off to the folks who have to wheel those of us around the airport. The only annoying thing was that nearly all of them made me wear the seat belt on their wheel chair. Oh for Pete’s sake, we weren’t going very fast. I mean, really?

Bulkhead is your best bet (Actually, First Class is)

Only on one leg did I get upgraded to First Class, which was incredibly helpful since I was wearing a boot. (I was upgraded due to my frequent flyer status and not because I was disabled.) The other legs, though, I sat in bulkhead. My Corporate travel agent made those arrangements for me on my first trip, but on my second trip she said the airline indicated that I had to wait until I got to the airport, which was a complete pain and created a little more stress as I worried about not getting bulk head. (I eventually did get it, but my husband couldn’t sit with me.) Again, inconsistencies.

A shout out to the flight attendants who were particularly helpful and sympathetic to my situation, which is always nice, especially in grabbing my crutches for me when I needed to get up and use the bathroom, although I panicked a little when one took my crutches and stowed them who knows where. I didn’t like not having them nearby.

You do get to board first (though after First Class in some instances, which is just plain weird and stupid), which if you’re looking for perks is nice but when you’re traveling by wheelchair or by crutches, who really cares in the end.

By being limited in mobility (and not used to it at all) I felt like I was moving like a sloth. You can’t easily reach for anything, you can’t properly sit to work on your laptop and the swelling from the flight doesn’t help either. Let’s face it, being injured is a complete pain and you can’t do anything normally. You rely so much on help from others. Thank you so much people who helped me along the way.

So what did this teach me?

Patience. That’s what I’ve learned. Yes, me who is not at all patient. Though I think Steve believes I could use some more training in that area. I think there are easier ways than breaking my leg in order to achieve that.

Also, how come airports are doing away with the golf cart shuttles in the terminals? That would have been a much better ride.

Winter Holiday at the Grand Canyon

27 Thursday Dec 2012

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Grand Canyon Rendezvous

I didn’t expect snow at the Grand Canyon. All I could remember from my first visit 30 years prior was the scorching Arizona heat of 103° F, and add about 10 degrees to that and you get what the temperature was in our non air conditioned family van. My brother, sister and I were passing ice cubes to each other—ice we grabbed from our Coleman water chest—and rubbing it on our faces and necks as my baby sister was bawling because she found the heat unbearable too. It was so damn hot. That’s what I remember from my first trip to the Grand Canyon.

But this time was different. It was my first Christmas with my boyfriend, Steve, who was visiting from Toronto. After our courtship blossomed in Scotland, then grew in England, Steve and I found ourselves in a long-distance romance that was taking us to the Grand Canyon in the winter.

We took our time driving the 500-mile journey from Salt Lake City, stopping in Las Vegas for a night and exploring sites like Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats and Hoover Dam along the way.

We pass the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah

The Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah (or what I like to refer to as the Devil’s Ice Skating Rink)

It’s a different road trip when it’s not over 100° F. There was no crying baby sister, no suffering in a van with my brother and sisters. Just a quiet ride with a fella I met nine months earlier. This time I could really pay attention to the landscape. And it helps when you’re traveling with a geologist. I learned more from Steve than I ever did in my college geology course. (Even more helpful is an instructor makes you swoon.)

Hoover Dam on the border of Nevada and Arizona

Hoover Dam on the border of Nevada and Arizona

As we approachedt the Grand Canyon it was dark and snowy and I couldn’t see a thing. I hate driving in the snow and so I pulled over and had Steve drive into the park.

Snow in Arizona. I couldn’t quite make sense of that. Arizona is supposed to be freaking hot, not wintry.

We stayed in the park at the Yavapai Lodge, which had painted cinder blocks for walls. resembling a college dormitory and a toilet that ran all night. The accommodations weren’t lush, but they were practical and we got a good night’s sleep. After a full hot breakfast in the cafeteria we made our way to the rim of the canyon. 100_0824Tourists filled the pathways near the edge, just like they did when I was nine, except people were in parkas, scarves and wool caps, not t-shirts and shorts.

Snow was falling and my fingers could barely stand the icy chill as I snapped photos with my little Kodak camera. This is not the same Grand Canyon I saw when I was nine.

I looked over the edge to look down in the canyon–the Grand Canyon–to see that it wasn’t the hot, scorching beast I remembered, but it looked like a grand dessert with layer upon layer of oranges and browns and golds with a dusting of powdered sugar on top. A geological Mille-feuille.

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A Grand Canyon Mille-feuille

I’m not a fan of winter or snow, which I know is weird because I live in Utah where most people really like the stuff. But to see snow blanketed over the Grand Canyon is a spectacular treat, which most people never get to see. So, you think you’ve seen the Grand Canyon? Sure, maybe you’ve seen it in summer when it’s blowing its hot breath at you, but try seeing it dressed with snow. It’s a much kinder and sweeter Grand Canyon. It will blow you a snowflake kiss.

Click on any photo below and it will enlarge and take you to a slide show. Much better way to view these.

The fear of scuba diving and why I do it

09 Sunday Dec 2012

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As I breathe through the regulator, I can’t help but think that if my line gets tangled or caught somehow, or even ruptures I will lose all oxygen and drown.  I will sink to the bottom of the ocean and die.  Maybe Steve will be able to rescue me, but what if he can’t? These are my thoughts, yet the bigger question is, “Why am I even doing this?”

scuba diving in Hawaii

scuba diving in Hawaii

Scuba diving. I never had an interest in it until I was dating Steve, and then, it wasn’t because I was interested in the sport as much as I wanted to impress Steve with my willingness to try something new.  For about a year here’s how the conversations would go:

Steve: “So, do you Scuba dive?”  Me: “Uh, no.”

That little exchange was repeated about four or five times until finally I answered, “No, but I could maybe look into taking lessons or getting certified or whatever.”

“You would?” he asked with excitement in his voice.

And I did. Turns out that even in Utah there was a dive shop three blocks from my home. So, twice a week for a few weeks I took the class, did the drills in the pool and then over a weekend I certified in Open Water Scuba Diving through PADI in a geothermal spring at a crater in Heber, Utah.

All that for love, my dear.

So, let’s make a list to see why I do this

For me, diving is one of the most paradoxical activities I enjoy, endure, do. It’s so conflicting for me that I found myself on dives wondering if I really want to be doing this. So I’ve made a list to figure out where I stand on this whole scuba diving thing.

  • It’s something my husband enjoys so I do it too. His immense curiosity about the world—both above water and below—has opened up my world in discovering and learning so much.
  • I love looking at the earth’s phenomenal underwater world. Did you realize there are really cool things down there in the ocean? Like freaking huge sea turtles, big ass groupers, schools of wildly colorful fish, sea horses, which always seemed mythical to me before I saw one for the first time, eels of all types and even iridescent squid.

    Giant Sea Turtle on the wreck dive we did in Maui

    Giant Sea Turtle on the wreck dive we did in Maui

  • Cool storytelling: We saw a 14 foot Tiger shark TWICE on our dive in Kona, Hawaii (cool story, but a little too terrifying for me. I sucked through my air pretty fast). We also did an amazing night dive with manta rays, which I count as one of the top five things I’ve ever done.
  • I love being on a boat. I don’t get sea sick and I love sitting in the sun with the wind blowing all that hair I have out of my face. Look how happy I am on this boat!

    On our dive boat in Belize

    On our dive boat in Belize

  • I’m still not very good at diving. My buoyancy sucks, I can never remember how to clear my mask and I’m always worried my regulator’s line will have a pin prick in it and I’ll drown.
  • Diving has taken us to some truly wonderful places. Since we’re also birders, we often combine diving trips with jungle birding adventures.
  • It is kind of cool to be able to tell people, “Yeah, I’m a diver.” But the wet suit and neoprene hat, I realize, don’t really make me look cool.  Or do they? Let’s say they do.

    On the dive boat in Kona, Hawaii

    On the dive boat in Kona, Hawaii

  • Diving constantly challenges my fears. Steve is more fearless than I. If I didn’t dive I’m actually convinced I would just stick to routine and become boring in my middle years.

Bottom line, I still like it

I do really like diving. I like that I learned how to do this in my forties and even though it took falling in love with a guy to nudge me to do this, it is one of those things in which I surprise myself. My first real dive (after certifying at the crater) was in Cozumel, Mexico on our honeymoon. Since then we’ve been diving in Belize, Honduras, Costa Maya (Mexico), Cozumel again, Panama and Hawaii (Kona and most recently Maui). The dive companies we go with are as varied as the people we meet on the boat. Some dive companies I like better than others, but overall, I’m glad I’m a diver and I’m motivated to get better at it so I’m not so scared.

But really, it’s not a bad thing to do something that scares you.

Scuba diving on our honeymoon in Cozumel

Scuba diving on our honeymoon in Cozumel

Tales from Oahu: Follow that van!

22 Thursday Nov 2012

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While driving around the North Shore of Oahu we were making our way back to Laie when all of a sudden this guy merges in front of us:

Did you read that? Yes, on the back of that van it says, Coconut Peanut Butter! To my mom who was driving, I hollered, “Follow that van!”

There are two things I love in this world: Peanut butter and coconut and at this moment I thought either the Rapture occurred and I was swept up into heaven or the tropical trade winds were messing with my head and I was hallucinating. The really good kind of hallucinating. Either way, I didn’t care. Follow that van!

Well, we lost track of the van. He turned right and we went straight because we were in search of a bathroom. Seems I have to pee a lot in Hawaii. Not sure why. So the bladder took precedence. (If we had followed the van, wetting my pants would have certainly taken the joy out of the whole thing. Maybe it was a dream, so bathroom won out.)

Mom took us to a little shopping strip mall kind of thing in Haleiewa. Bladder relief, check! And then my mom in all her brilliance asked a kind lady in a Hawaiian tchotchke shop (Hawaiin and Yiddish–I just cracked myself up writing that) if she knew where we could find this mysterious Coconut Peanut Butter.

Please, oh, please let it not be part of my imagination.

It wasn’t! The lady said, “They have it next door, but it’s a little expensive.” I didn’t care if I had to take out a small loan for it. She started to explain how it’s even good just eating it out of the jar with a spoon.

“You think I haven’t already plotted that out?” I thought.

I don’t even think I let her finish talking about it. I was already out her door and into the shop next door. Here’s what the most heavenly thing on earth looks like:

Oh, and by the way, only TWO ingredients: Peanuts and coconuts. No sugar added! I also discovered that if you slather it on a banana it’s really crazy awesome.

Think I’m gonna share? Nope. Go find your own.

The disappearance and reappearance of Bryce Canyon

11 Sunday Nov 2012

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Bryce Canyon National Park Rendezvous

“It’s here, I’m sure it is,” I said. “I mean, it’s a big ass canyon. Where could it have gone?” It was an October morning and we had just walked on the paved trail from our cabin, following the signs to view Bryce Canyon. The fog was so dense I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me and the colors that would have been there—the red rocks, the green sage—had been washed away as if we were catapulted into a black and white movie from the forties. And the canyon. It was gone.

It’s as if it were Brigadoon.

That’s me in front of Bryce Canyon. Yes, really.

And this is Steve in front of Bryce Canyon

This was our third rendezvous. We were now on the same continent, which was progress, I thought. It had been two and a half months since our rendezvous in England and six months since we first met in Scotland where Steve had been living. I was so excited to take Steve to see Bryce Canyon. I actually hadn’t been since I was a kid on a family vacation but I remembered the orangey red clayish rock and the hoodoos that pointed up to the sky like a million little fingers. This time was different. I had a geologist with me (Steve) and he narrated our five hour drive from Salt Lake City to Bryce Canyon with explanations about the different color of rock, the strata and iron.

Alas, my excitement and anticipation of experiencing Bryce Canyon with Steve unravelled like an old sweater. I was bummed. I really wanted Steve to see this beautiful part of Utah and the weather ruined it. It’s like traveling a long distance and finding that the museum you wanted to visit is closed. Or that all the tickets to a tour are sold out. Just as we were beginning to turn around on the path back to our cabin a couple emerged out of the fog. Really. Like right out of the fog. They could tell that we were a bit disappointed as we were snapping pictures of each other in front of a backdrop of white and as they approached us one of them said, “You have to take the trail down. It’s beautiful down there and the fog is beginning to lift. You see more at the bottom.”

No convincing needed. Off we went down the trail.

We walked down, down, down and we began to see the red rock. Fog curled around the hoodoos and the more we walked down the less fog we saw. It was quiet—there weren’t very many people around, but what I thought at first to be a disappointment ended up being an extraordinarily unique experience in one of the most popular National Parks in the U.S.

Bryce Canyon, alone, is a spectacle to behold, but without all the summer tourists and with curling, swirling fog, it’s a whole different experience. Not many people get to experience Bryce Canyon this way:

I imagined that maybe I was on another planet. Is this what people mean when they say,”Out of this world?” If so, I totally get it now.

Four years later we visited Bryce Canyon National Park and as we walked down the same path on a warm September day we saw the hoodoos standing upright without the curtain of fog, and in unison we said, “So this is what it looks like!”

A picture perfect Bryce Canyon (sans fog)

For more pictures of Bryce Canyon National Park check out the photos in the slide show.

Sorry Canada, but I’m telling everyone about the Okanagan Valley

27 Saturday Oct 2012

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Calgary has it’s Stampede, Banff lays claim to Lake Louise and the rising Canadian Rockies, but head just west of there and you land smack into a wonderful valley called Okanagan in British Columbia. The Okanagan Valley is wedged between two mountain ranges (Columbia and Cascade) and painted with orchards and vineyards that line the long, meandering Okanagan Lake, which travels southward toward Washington State. Canadians seem to know all about this place (natch), but the rest of us? Not a clue. And I think the Canadians like it that way.

Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia

This wasn’t my first time visiting Okanagan Lake. My first visit was when I was dating Steve five years ago. Color me so shocked to find all those vineyards lined up as grids all along the valley, and the orchards of apples that stretch from Kelowna–the main city in the valley–up into the hills.

The weather is very mild compared to the rest of Canada, which I realize is not saying much. The speed is slow like you would expect in an area that attracts retiring Canadians who consider themselves snowbirds, but not snowbirdy enough to dip their toes into the United States. In fact, living in Okanagan Valley is much more tolerable than, say Montana, which though certainly south of Canada isn’t a place where you’d want to winter.  It’s all relative, you know.

Vineyards in Okanagan Valley, British Columbia

I’ll state the obvious here: water sports are aplenty and a person has no trouble finding their preferred watercraft. There’s also the Jazz Festival every September, and winery after winery. I’m not talking a handful of wineries–but oodles of wineries. Sure, there are some smallish operations, but there are also the more well-known Inniskillin, Mission Hill and Jackson-Triggs. And with wineries you’ll naturally find award-winning restaurants. Oh, the restaurants! (Can we retire here, sweetie?  Just wonderin’. Oh wait, I forgot we were retiring in Panama. Maybe the Okanagan Valley can be the Summer home.)

Say “cheese!”


In between our decadent winery meals we returned to one of our favorite lesser-known points of interest: The Carmelis Goat Cheese Artisan, Inc.in Kelowna.To get there you take a road that serpentines up one of the highest hills overlooking the lake and where you can still see the remnants of charred trees from the firestorm of 2003 that burned over 60,000 acres.

At Carmelis you simply must sample the cheeses, buy some goat cheese and crackers to take back to your hotel room and especially don’t miss the goat’s milk ice cream. It’s totally worth the calories.  (In fact, everything in the Okanagan Valley seemed to be worth the calories, so bring pants with an elastic waistband.)

Speaking of that elastic waistband…

Tim Horton’s and I are just taking a break from each other

On our last day in Kelowna we decided to do something absolutely crazy and not have breakfast at Tim Horton’s. (Tim Horton’s was the Yin to our Yang of decadent and pricey lunches and dinners at wineries.) So instead of our usual breakfast sandwich and donut at Tim’s we found the Marmalade Cat Cafe where you smell the tea brewing as soon as you walk through the door and where their breakfast sandwiches are, well, look at this:

The best breakfast place in town (Sorry Tim!)

The Okanagan Valley isn’t a one-note region. You don’t have to drink wine, enjoy jazz, water ski or even collect a pension check to find your niche here. Hey, I’d keep coming back just for that goat cheese. It was my second trip to the area and I still feel like I haven’t fully realized everything there is to enjoy, so I’m going to keep the idea of a summer home alive with Steve. (And sorry all my Canadian friends–I just let the cat out of the bag about the Okanagan Valley.)

More photos here. Click on any of them and it will take you to a slide show for better viewing. Everything looks yummier with a black background anyway, doncha think?