We still had a few more days before we were due back in Antigua, but the weekends crowds had ruined the relaxing atmosphere of the beach side towns. It had only been a few days, but we already craved the cool tranquility of the mountains.
While we were dilly-dallying about in Santa María del Tule we found plenty of opportunities to head into the ‘big smoke’, Oaxaca’s state capital—Oaxaca. Sometimes on our own for errands, sometimes with friends, but nearly always with a camera.
El Espinazo del Diablo (the Devil’s Backbone—a mountain pass along Mexico’s highway 40) is an infamously sinuous mountain road that joins the towns of Mazatlán, Sinaloa and Durango, Durango. The road has a bit of a reputation for punishing travellers with terrifying accident-inducing winding turns. Luckily travellers are also rewarded with spectacular views as the road runs along a mountain ridge, high in the Sierra Madre mountains. This seemed like exactly the kind of thing we should investigate further.
It isn’t often in this journey that we simply head south like we are supposed to. We tend to get distracted, make detours, head back north and hang around interesting places. We generally take our sweet time about actually heading towards Argentina. Making our way south from Álamos to Mazatlán was one of those few occasions where we did. We were, unbelievably, actually heading in the direction we promised to when we embarked on this trip.
When people enquire as to what we are doing as we aimlessly drive around the Americas we tend to respond with: ‘We’re driving from Alaska to Argentina’. Those in the know often respond with ‘Oh, so you are driving the PanAmerican Highway then?” To which we typically respond with a shifty sideways glance and say “more or less”. This shifty sideways glance is because either of these descriptions of our trip imply that we are travelling in a generally southerly direction. The second specifically implies we are actually following some sort of planned route. Most of the time, neither of […]
By this point we were clearly not strangers to the Interstate Highways of the USA. We wished we were, because, let’s face it, they make for some dull driving. But they are also the most efficient way to get from A to B when A and B are a long way from each other. That being said, there is only so much driving on the interstate you can do before you go clinically insane. So this blog post is the tale of the detours we took in a fruitless attempt to maintain our sanity as we drove from east to west […]
We made it to the East Coast and New York City was in our sights!
It had been quite some time since we had been through a big city. Some would argue that Vancouver, BC doesn’t actually fall into the category of big city, but for us it was certainly a change of pace.
Visiting Dawson City is like travelling back in time to the gold rush era. The dirt streets are lined with wooden boardwalks all leading to buildings that cause you to believe you have accidentally hit 88mph and travelled back to the wild west.
Things have been pretty hectic with last-minute trip prep of late, but I decided it was well past time to start working through and publish some of the nearly written blog posts that have waited in the wings for a while. So here’s some more about Australia: Part two of our brief Australian excursion took us North to the Gold Coast to spend some time with family. Staying just inland of Surfer’s Paradise, we were treated to great hospitality, warm weather, dramatic thunderstorms, plentiful wildlife, golden beaches and abundant tropical rainforest.