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Travel
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Descriptions of sites about tours in: | |||||||||
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Although Mark and I did a certain amount of traveling before we moved to Pasadena—a cross-country rail trip, for instance—we decided in early 2004 that we should get some serious travel done. I had had a health scare a year or so earlier, and we agreed that we should get as much travel in while I was still capable of it. Mark had been on the mailing list of Country Walkers for a while, and we started looking seriously at their brochures then, in 2004. The various special trips that we’ve taken are listed below in reverse chronological order: the most recent at the top, and the first, to Chile, at the bottom.
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In the ordinary course of events, we might have been expected to take another trip later in 2012, but didn’t. The delay was due to Mark’s uncertainty about his job, but even before he found the new job, we had contracted to take a “VIP Tour” to the Isle of Skye, which would include two nights aboard the “Royal Scotsman”, a luxury train going from the North-east of Scotland down to Edinburgh. I’ve begun to write up my pages describing the trip, and it will probably take quite a while to finish them, but Mark has also started his pages, and I’m sure he’ll be done way before me. |
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Our trip to Hawai‘i in March 2012 was not under the auspices of Country Walkers, and was not strictly speaking a walking tour. When I got an invitation to give a talk at a professional meeting in Honolulu, I was informed that if I was flying off to a Tropical Island Paradise, I would not be going alone, and I would not be going for only the one-weekend duration of the meeting. As usual, Mark made all the arrangements, and they worked out very well indeed. Read about the trip in my pages and in Mark’s. |
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I’d been to Iceland in June of 1969,
and when Mark told me about the Country Walkers prototype walk there, with some saving on the cost, and fewer than the standard eighteen walkers, my reaction was hardly enthusiastic. Beautiful and exciting yes, but my recollections of the cuisine there were not positive. Nonetheless, I relented, and I am so glad that I did! We went to different places than I had in those days forty- one years ago, and the cooking has grown up. In fact, I had some of the best meals of my life there, as you’ll see when you read my pages, and Mark’s. |
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Everyone’s heard of the fantastic biological diversity of Costa Rica. We thought we should take advantage of Country Walkers’ tour there before too long. And we did this in December 2009, with great pleasure. We did not choose to do anything in the country beyond what was part of the tour, though, so we arrived two days before the start of the walk, and left a day after it ended. Mark has his Costa Rica pages and I have my pages, too. Enjoy them! |
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Our original idea of a walking tour was “Classic Tuscany”, one of the first that Country Walkers ever set up. But in 2004, the Chile trip was so attractive that we put Tuscany off. And put it off again and again. In late 2007, though, we decided to stop delaying. Venice and Ravenna would be two of our other travel targets, since Mark had never been to Venice, and both of us were eager to see the famous mosaics of Ravenna. Mark’s page, with his pictures and narrative, is now up on the web in the final version, and so is mine. |
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In November of 2007, our walking trip was to the South Island of New Zealand, and as I’ve reviewed the pictures I took during this marvelous excursion, I don’t think I’ve found a better one than this snap of Mark walking along the shore of Lake Wakatipu, to serve as a hint of what lovely countryside we walked through. Naturally, Mark has his pages, too. From his central page you will be able to get to his day-by-day descriptions of the trip. |
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Mark thought that I should use a picture of the Grand Mosque of Córdoba as representative of the glories of Andalucía, but I think this picture from the Lion Court in the Alhambra does just as well, maybe even better. But no matter: in October of 2006, we flew to Paris and took an overnight train from there to Madrid, thence to Granada, where we picked up the Country Walkers tour of Southern Spain. It was truly wonderful. As with the other trips, Mark has a web page devoted to pictures and I do, too. |
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In August of 2005, we went on a nice long driving trip, ultimate target being the Country Walkers tour in the Olympic National Park, both the rain-forest and the shore sections. Again, you can see the web pages for my pictures, and for Mark’s. |
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In our first trip, we left Halloween night of 2004 for a long triple of flights to Puerto Montt, Chile, and from there we went walking for six days in the Lakes District, already farther south than any of the world’s cities, except for Christchurch and Dunedin. Then an 800-mile flight southwards took us to Punta Arenas, from which we bussed to the Torres del Paine National Park. Both Mark and I have web pages, each showing only a fraction of the pictures we took in this spectacular country. |