When I visited my brother and his partner last Fall, I’d never been to a temperate rainforest before. They live in Vancouver, which is a city known for its proximity to wonderful hiking and skiing, but neither of them are hikers, nor skiers. In fact, they’re pretty indoorsy people. Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, just north of the city, is a nice compromise when you’re looking for natural beauty accessible by public transit. We had skipped this particular attraction the previous year when our mother was with us because she has a fear of falling. The suspension bridge for which the park is named is 450 feet long and strong enough…
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The Obligatory Plitvice Post: A Photo Essay
I can’t NOT write about Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. If there’s a “beaten path” for backpacking Europe, Plitvice is definitely on it. I know many travel bloggers before me have visited and written about this place, but Plitvice is awesome, so I’m going to go ahead and join their ranks. In particular, I feel the need to share my photos because I visited under different circumstances than many travelers. This is the classic Plitvice photo: Beautiful, no? And you can get this shot just by walking along the trail: Well, I visited on a rainy day in November, and this was my experience with the same view: Not…
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The Pros and Cons of WWOOFing on Maui
Do you want to live in Hawai’i for free?! Um… maybe. The answer to this question isn’t as simple as you might think. I lived and worked on Maui for 2 months by WWOOFing. To refresh your memories, WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and provides people with the chance to take part in work-trade programs all around the world. In exchange for room and board, volunteers work part-time as farmers. I’ve written about this program and other alternative ways to travel the world before. This time around, though, I want to talk specifically about my experiences WWOOFing, and share with you the pros and cons of…
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The Hana Highway and Hana Town: A Pseudo-Local Perspective
I lived in Hana, Hawai’i for two months while working on an organic farm, and, as such, I have some insights into what life is like there. I want to share my pseudo-local perspective with anyone considering a visit or a more extended stay like mine. These are the insider tips you learn from living in a place, and knowing people who have lived there longer, but they are not the lifetime of understanding that comes from being born and raised in a place. Hence “pseudo-local.” I’ve mentioned the Hana Highway twice before (here and here), but I’m dedicating a post to it now because it’s one of the main…
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Hiking in Haleakala National Park
In which I hike 7 miles in 6 hours with 1 water bottle. Not one of my smarter decisions. You know how I recently updated my header tagline to read “travel, tea, misadventures”? This is a misadventure. Back in early March, I found myself with a weekend off from farm work and nothing to do. Another woman working at Hana Farms, let’s call her Alaska (because prior to arriving on Maui, she was living in Alaska), also had the weekend off and suggested we use our free time to go camping and hiking in Haleakala National Park. We had heard from the other farmies that the cool thing to do…
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Weekly Travel Inspiration: Wild by Cheryl Strayed
I know everyone and their brother read Wild when it came out last year, hit #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List, and became an Oprah’s Book Cub Pick, but I only just finished it, and found it to be a great inspiration. The book’s subtitle is “From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” and it recounts the author’s experiences hiking over 1,000 miles through California and Oregon, alone, at the age of 26. As such, it could be considered a travel memoir, but Strayed elegantly weaves this tale with the events which led to her taking this trip — the sudden death of her mother, and…
