Maybe Ol and I have been on the road for so long that we are starting to look adventurous. That can be the only possible explanation as to why our kind B&B host suggested, and we eagerly agreed to take a “scenic detour.” Instead of following the “boring” highway, she told us about an incredibly beautiful drive on a less traveled mountain road. We should have know better when the slender and unassuming 60 something woman told us that she enjoyed “dirt bike riding.” We were sev

I had never really given the Indian Ocean much thought. I think that is because it is a place I never thought I’d visit. Suddenly, it became all that I could think about as I loaded the passenger seat with my maps, water bottle, binoculars, and sunscreen (yes I get sunburned while sitting in the car) for our road trip along South Africa’s Garden Route. The Garden Route starts in Cape Town and runs along the coastline along the Western Cape to Port Elizabeth. The route gets it

It had been over three weeks since I left my phone in the airport in Amman, Jordan. Fortunately, A good samaritan found it and turned it in, but we had gone through acrobatic bureaucratic maneuvers to get it back. We had arranged for DHL to pick it up and deliver it to us in Cape Town. Ol received a message from the Encounters Tour office that DHL had picked up the package and it was on its way. We got a tracking number and could follow the progress. The package was scheduled

While we were traveling in the Middle East, we were heartbroken to hear about the Ethiopian Airlines crash in Addis Abbaba. This became more real, when two days later we were flying Ethiopian Airlines through Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia, the headquarters for Ethiopian Airlines. This is where we had to change planes on our flight from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa. The sign and memorial in the airport terminal for the arriving victims families made it all hit home. This c

It had been over a week and my iPhone was still at the airport in Amman, Jordan. Our tour of Egypt was almost complete. The Lost and Found office in Jordan said that I could come by their office to pick up the phone but that they could not ship it to me. I had no plans to return to Jordan anytime soon. I didn’t know what to do. We called the Encounters Tour office in Jordan who had arranged our tour there. After explaining the situation they offered to send someone to the air

Continuing our tour with Encounters Travel, we have toured Jordan, Cairo, and the pyramids and spent a couple of days sailing the Nile on a felucca. After so many days together our little tour group of seven felt like a small family. After spending the day sailing down the Nile on a felucca and an evening of dancing and singing on the beach, we enjoyed trying to teach our guide Mo, how to play Yahtzee. I couldn’t believe that Dr. Lillian from Vancouver had never played befor

I was surprised to have slept as well as I did on the train from Cairo to Aswan. The train trip took twelve hours and we slept for the majority of it. My lost cell phone at the Jordan airport was a distant memory. However, it had now been four days and still no word on its whereabouts. The phone was still turned off and Ol was not able to track it. Ol decided to google airport information and found an email address for the Lost and Found Office at the Amman airport. He wrote