Marco-YOLO

Our camping gear (Colleen’s stuff on left, Mustafa’s on right and tent between backpacks)

I already had camping gear but Colleen didn’t so her stuff is all brand new. While we’re only camping for one of the six weeks we’re on the road, being cold and miserable at night is no way to vacation (As Colleen learned on below-freezing nights at 13,000 ft on the Inca Trail, and will never let me forget!), so our camping equipment is geared towards comfort, especially Colleen’s. Her sleeping bag and pad are both extra plush and roomy and it is evident from the photo that weight and volume were not considerations in their selection – It is strictly for car camping, not hiking. The pad is 25″ wide instead of the normal 20″ and her bag is rated for 25F, 5 degrees below the lowest temperature we expect to encounter.

I have a Big Agnes Lost Ranger bag (down fill, rated for 15F) and Big Agnes Air Core pad which fits in a custom pocket beneath my bag so it’s impossible to roll off at night. I have owned these for several years and love them because they’re warm, roomy and comfortable, yet also light and packable. The inflatable pad gives me 2.5″ separation from the ground and the bag is big enough for me to sleep on my side if I want, which is a must for me because I am a restless sleeper. For me, regular mummy bag =

My backpack is a North Face Crestone 65 and Colleen’s is a North Face Terra 55. We wish we both had the dicipline to stay under 45 litres so we could carry our bags on flights, but we’re still relatively inexperienced as backpackers and tend to bring a lot of unnecessary stuff along.

Lastly, our tent is a Mountainsmith Morrison which is a large 2-person tent. Colleen thinks it’s still too small and wishes I’d bought a 3-person, but I couldn’t resist buying it when I saw it on sale for under $100. With a 35 sq ft base and 43″ height, I think it’s plenty big. It’s held up well the few times we’ve used it and it’s light enough to be taken hiking (4 lbs). The only drawback for me has been the smallish vestibules, but they’re not terrible.

Forty two days in a rental car is a long time. To make our US road-trip more enjoyable, we bought a portable GPS unit ($90 from Target) and a satellite radio ($40 from Best Buy). This will hopefully prevent us from getting lost and in case we do, at least we’ll have good tunes to rock to

Last Friday was my last day of work. Today was my first Monday not working. We went on a long bike ride along the Potomac River, taking a break at Gravely Point to lay on the grass and watch the planes pass overhead as they landed at Reagan National Airport. It was like a cheesy romantic comedy. We also watched a couple of foreign movies on Netflix and I saw my dentist to make sure my chompers are up to the task of chewing exotic dishes for the next year and a half – whether it be fermented herring in Sweden, fried tarantula in Cambodia, beating cobra heart in Indonesia, or balut in the Philippines (you can Google that one – I’m not explaining it but I may eat it).  It made a ton of sense to have my pearly whites inspected while we still have employer subsidized health insurance because everyone knows to be without good insurance in the US is risking a real shitty time. Good news is my teeth are in tip top shape. Bad news is we lose our good insurance at the end of the month because as the title indicates we are now both unemployed.

Last day at work

We now have committed renters that we will be handing our house over to on May 1st. Actually, the property management company will oversee the handover. We’ll be in Asheville, NC by then, checking out the Biltmore Mansion, the largest private estate in the US, and then making our way to Nashville, TN the following day.

With the house out of the way, the car becomes the biggest item we need to offload. We listed it on Cars.com and Craigslist one week back and initial interest was strong, but it waned when potential buyers saw a tire bubble and one headlight with condensation inside, both recent issues. We’re getting both fixed now so no more buyers are turned off because otherwise the car is in fantastic shape.

Tickets, visas, gear, vaccinations, medical and travel insurance, farewell party…all are being arranged as we speak.

Tomorrow is also my last day of work and I have half a dozen things to wrap up. I’m sure I’ll be there late but then I really don’t mind because it’ll mark the beginning of a very long and exciting vacation.

Home sweet home! Nothing quite beats it! Arlington has been home for us since 2006. It’s the most highly educated county in the United States and along with great restaurants and low crime it also has great trails for running and biking and gives us easy access to Washington DC, where we both work (normally), and the Potomac river, where I sail and fish (unsuccessfully). My fastest record commute to my office in DC is 7 minutes so don’t let the Virginia bit fool you, we’re very close to Washington, less than 9 km from the White House, which incidentally is also one block from where I work (for another 3 weeks). Here is a photo of a 2012 backyard barbecue at our house.

We have a split level house with a covered patio and koi pond on a 1/5 acre lot. Here is one of our happy koi!

In May 2013 we will hand over our house keys to renters and take off on a 16 month adventure around the globe. The initial plan was to hit all seven continents but has since been pared down to five, in the interest of time, money and sanity. After all, we’ve already been to all six inhabited continents and the objective of this trip is depth, not coverage. We are off course nervous about handing over the keys to our most expensive asset to complete strangers but we’ve got good landlord’s insurance and a property management company that came highly recommended so that helps us sleep better.

I went to the US Virgin Islands to get my American Sailing Association 101, 103 and 104 certifications that would enable me to bareboat charter a up to 50 foot yacht in coastal waters. We mainly sailed between St John, St Thomas and Culebra, Puerto Rico, learning all the required skills over 9 days on board a 46 foot Island Packet bermuda-rigged cutter, although we sailed it like a sloop, never using the staysail (second headsail).

I was at the helm for 14+ foot high waves which was quite a ride – enough to make me reconsider my aspirations to do an Atlantic crossing. But who knows? Maybe some day.

This was a 10 day road trip along California’s famous coastal highway in a convertible.

San Francisco – Met up with old Capital One friends, Tsvetan and Jarisara, for lunch, took my cousin Alizeh, a freshman at UC Berkeley, to dinner, and did some tourist stuff again.

Carmel – I love the vibe of this town, relaxed and happy, a great place for the low-key kind of Dolce Vita.  It was also near Pebble Beach, which was cool to see.

Hearst Castle – This may be the coolest building I’ve seen in the US. The beauty and opulence of this mega-mansion is something to behold and crown jewel for m was the pool, maybe the most iconic in the world.

Pismo Beach – Just a stopover, nothing special.

Los Angeles – LA is a fairly known quantity so not much to say. At Colleen’s behest, we took a TMZ bus tour, which was the corny guilty-pleasure type fun you’d expect it to be. I also rode a mechanical bull for the first time and did miserably.

San Diego – Nice city by the bay. Highlight here was a shore dive into the kelp forest off La Jolla. It was my first cold water dive so I was wearing a 7-9mm wetsuit with hood, gloves and shoes. The hood confused a playful seal (photo below) who initally though I was a giant awkward seal, but even after he figured out we weren’t seals, he still hung out with with us for several minutes. But the oddest thing was being 40-50 feet under water and seeing birds swimming by you like rockets. Cormorants seem remarkably at home under water for a flying species, and the amazing thing is some Cormorants can dive to three times that depth!

Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since 1898 when Spain lost it to the US during the Spanish-American war. Keeping this history in mind, one of the coolest things you’ll see in Old Town San Juan (the capital) is the Castillo San Felipe del Morro, an ocean-facing 16th century fort with super-thick walls (as thick as 18 feet / 5.5 meters) and cannons for defence against seabourn attackers.

We also got our ATVs on in the rainforest, which was not very far at all from San Juan. Really most of the Island has rainforest-like topography so this is not too difficult to find.

We had rented a car which made moving around the Island all the easier, and we recommend doing this because it’s relatively cheap, the roads and traffic are easily navigable and it affords you flexibility that is especially precious on short trips (4-5 days in our case).

A rental car was especially useful to make it to the famous bioluminescent lagoon which is in Fajardo, nearly 40 miles from San Juan. We kayaked in the lagoon which is full of dinoflagellates, tiny plankton that emit light when the water around them is disturbed. This meant the water around your kayak oar appeared to be full of glittering diamonds as you rowed through the lagoon. It also meant you could see fish swimming through the water even in pitch darkness! I’m a fisherman so when I saw these submarine comets flying all around our kayak, I was ready to fish! Alas, no rod rental facility was available so maybe next time. You could even tell the size of the fish based on the size of the underwater comet! Sigh! On another note, kayaking is hard! Definitely requiring better synchronization than canoeing.

All through the trip, we sampled pretty decent food at the more-hyped restaurants of San Juan and did alot of strolling. I brought fins and a snorkle so took in some snorkling, launching from the beach in front of our hotel. With the exception of a lone stingray, I didn’t see anything exciting but at least there were fish. Puerto Rico receives strong and consistent Northeastery trade winds so I got my basic Kitesurfing certification over two days, issued by IKO. We also took a tour of the Bacardi factory.

We went skiing at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe. Being a novice to intermediate skier, I found the double black diamonds I was able to navigate with relative comfort on the East Coast only equate to easy blues here. Even the harder blues gave me a very hard time. I suppose that’s why Squaw has twice hosted the Winter Olympics.

Mexico is at war with its drug cartels which are outfitted like modern armies and are ruthless to Tarantino movie levels.

However, of all the places in the world I’ve visited, just about the only one I’m willing to go back to at the drop of a hat is Cancun, not because I don’t like any other place, but because I don’t like going back to something I’ve already seen when there is so much out there I’ve yet to see and experience.

Cancun gets to be the exception because it combines exceptional service, I mean the hotel staff will bend over backwards for you with a smile, and a smorgasbord of activites on-site or very close. Things to see/do:

- Deep sea fishing - I’ve caught amberjack, barracuda, African pompano and sailfish here.
- Mayan ruins – Tulum is closest and its coastal setting is magnificent, but the big dog without a question is Chichen Itza, a new wonder of the modern world, first settled in 800AD. While not as exciting as Tikal in Guatemala, it’s still very cool.
- Scuba diving and snorkeling – I’ve done some great drift dives here and seen great sealife up close.
- Sailing and kite surfing – Good winds = fun times. Our hotel allowed us to take their sailboats out free of charge whenever we wanted, so Colleen and I got to try our hands sailing Sunfish and Hobie Cats.
-  Supercars – There’s a track in Cancun where I drove a Ferrari F430, Lamborghini Murcielago, Mercedes SLS and Lotus Elise. Shockingly the Elise was my favorite – no electronic meddling!
- Beautiful beaches, great food, great weather, and it’s very easy to check out the resorts towns of Playa del Carmen and Cozumel as they are both nearby.