3. Klondike Gold Rush history 1896-98. Never understood why needing to go up the Chilkoot pass’ ice steps outside Skagway, Alaska was such a big deal until I found out that the RCMP mandated you needed to carry one year’s worth of supplies to be allowed into Canada- so you had to do it 40-50 times! The goal was to get over the coastal mountains to Carcross, then go by the Yukon River ~600 km past hazardous Whitehorse rapids (they looked like the flowing manes of white horses,

Monikers given to Sri Lanka and Taiwan by Arab and Portugese traders respectively, and where we have spent the "travel" portion of our current tripSri Lanka is a crazy (there is actually a website called crazylanka) and fascinating place, and travel there is quite the adventure. It is not, however, somewhere that I would recommend that anyone other than the very-widely travelled put on their destination lists. Why? well in addition to being far, difficult to reach, and hassle

Nicaragua?! Are We Nuts?! Those were the questions we were wondering when we first considered the idea two months ago. Guide books seemed to state that Nicaragua was among the safer countries in the Americas, and that much of its bad reputation related to outdated vague memories of considerable violence from the '70s and '80s of Somoza, the Sandinistas and the Reagan-backed Contras.

From The Cook Island(s) to Mt Cook We are on our way back from Auckland after 3d on the Cook Islands and 3½ wks in NZ. Although both made for quite enjoyable travel, neither are as intriguing culturally as the two prior years’ overseas tripsThe Cook Islands –or should I say “island”- are/is beautiful. Like most visitors and locals, we only visited the main island of Rarotonga- which has 2/3rds of its population, and most of its economic activity (tourism is the #1 industry).

2013   Hi Everyone, We are heading home after 4wks of travel, the last 19 days in Japan (my 1 st  time there, JC has overnited before) after a week back in Malaysia. We flew into Osaka, from which we also day-tripped to the nearby  ancient capital of Nara (with its many temples from the 7 th  and 8 th  centuries) and Hiroshima (~330km but only 90min going by rapid “Shinkansen” train, max speed 320km/h- jumped on the wrong one returning so it took 3hrs) with its impressive mus

We are flying from Istanbul into London, at the end of nearly 4 weeks of traveling. We started with 2d in Istanbul, then 5 in Serbia (Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Lake Palic, with a side trip into Szeged, Hungary [country #50 for JC], and Smederevo) 4 in Bosnia (Sarajevo, Mostar, Medugorje [no, Virgin Mary did not make an appearance to me, continuing instead only with her daily apparitions to the six former 1981 teenagers, now wealthy businessmen, my explanations to some of the be