Yummy Wakame Weblog
Archive: hiking/backpacking
Belize? P-lease!
THIS image exactly captures why I want to go back to Belize. And not only go back but live there. Imagine? Actually living there!? Waking up every single day to yet another gloriously hot sunshiny sky thinking, “What’s uuuup! Wow I’m in BELIZE!!! What am I doing here? Oh right, I LIVE HERE! EEEEEE!!!” So crazy. I’ve imagined it for years so eventually its going to happen. I’ll find this very island and pitch a tent on it and sleep at least one night. Uhhhhhhh…………………
And then kayak back to my ordinary every day life on a bigger island somewhere in belize. Now that doesn’t sound too shabby.
Inner Guidance System Calling
Returning to Ometepe Island was not the homecoming I thought it would be. It felt very homely the last time I was here and I imagined it would feel even more so returning, but instead, I’ve been feeling increasingly alien. And though I feel I can make myself belong by putting down roots and being stubborn about it, at the same time I feel I really don’t belong here in the most natural sense. I’m just not feeling it inside. (more…)
Routed en root
What is going on???
Eight days ago I left freezing cold Pittsburgh city and flew, smack back to my love’s arms, whisked off to a treehouse paradise and the merciless heat of Nicaragua. 30C, 95F and 65% humidity. Now I’m back on the island of Ometepe just a couple of days ago. In two weeks we will hitchhike though Nicaragua and Honduras with a small bag each to El Salvador for a major surfing trip. That is really the only fixed plan I have in my life right now. I’m afraid of having more than one fixed plan at a time it seems. And I get nervous when I don’t have one too. This is how indecisive I am at the moment.
I feel sort of strange a lot of the time. The changes in temperature, altitude, surroundings, friends… the other night I jumped up in bed a few times shouting, “WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?!!!”. I don’t remember this except that I woke up a few times for a few nights now. Apparently I’ve said a lot of scary stuff in my sleep lately. Along with very bizarre dreams. (more…)
Amateur Astrophotographer Creates Largest True-Color Night Sky Panorama
WOW! What an adventure! What an achievement!!!
Gizmodo.com: One day, Nick Risinger, a 28-year-old marketing director from Seattle, felt like he needed a change. So he quit his job, packed up six professional astronomical cameras, and hiked 60,000 miles through western United States and South Africa, taking 37,000 color pictures of the night sky.
The result? This 5000-megapixel, interactive, zoomable map showing our full Milky Way galaxy, stars, planets, and the nebulae surrounding it. It’s the largest-ever, true-color, 360 degree panorama of the heavens—all created by this first-time astrophotographer.
Anywhere
This morning I woke up on a new couch to all new smells. Often I feel strange about the fact that I have no place to call home, to come back to, to feel my heart settled with that familiar belonging.
But then I remember that its because I have no home, that I can live anywhere. I make home wherever I go. I lived at a hostel on Ometepe Island for the past 3 months and covered the sides of my bunkbed with draped sheets and dresses, turning a simple bed into a room that looked and smelled of all my comfy familiarities with almost all the privacy I needed. About 4 years ago, on a solo trip without my husband at the time, I remembered thumping my bag down on the floor in my new room, and in that moment I heard in my mind, “home is wherever I put my bag down for the night.” I understood that home is where I am at any time, and my bag holds the comforts. But never has this idea been more tested than in the past 2 and a half years, of continuous, living out of a bag. I understand it so much better now. I understand the beauty of the idea, but also the inherent vulnerability.
Some day I will settle down, build my treehouse, and share it and everything in it with a beautiful travelling spirit and lover. Someone who not only understands but feels the need for both. Someone who has searched for home and finds comfort with me, there, and wherever we travel together.
Skinnidipping Lake Nicaragua
Running away from the loud, drunken crowds barging around in the streets, loud firecrackers, strange scarecrows being set on fire, I almost ran to the beach tripping over rocks and branches in the dark. It got darker and darker till it was pitch on the shore. This beach is so secret, only the locals next to it know it exists. Slipping into the water the trees opened up to light and fireworks along the Nicaraguan shoreline ahead.
I dived in with my glasses on. Like a right plonker. They dropped to the bottom of the lake!!! It was so dark. I’m so screwed without them. Can hardly see a thing. After 10 minutes of searching, blinking, feeling incredibly irritated and desperate, and shivering, at the exact moment I’d given up hope, I stepped on them! It was the most lost and blind I’ve felt in years. Really weird. Other strange things happened too, but ended well. A bat nearly flew into me. For a scary moment i thought i was hallucinating and had lost all sense of reality. And it rained! And rained. How I have LONGED for rain. It was so gorgeous.
I feel very blessed. To spend a New Year without a frantic party plan. For once! To have my glasses. To be living next to so much water. To be warm in winter on an island. All the things I hoped for for years, are finally falling into place.
I love you Ometepe Island. You ARE magic. I will never leave without coming back sticking in my heart.
Forward the (r)evolution
About a month ago I was really lucky to meet these guys. They shared a few meals with the family and I at Hospedaje Central, the hostel where I’ve been living the past month. Forward the (r)evolution is two couples who are living and traveling the world without money. It started as a fun idea to do for a few months and now they have gone past their end date and are now living a life of travel without money. They aren’t bums. They aren’t trust fund kids. They are respectfully dressed, clean, ordinary people like you and me who live with little to no impact on the earth, catching rides that were going somewhere anyway and eating good food that would have gone to waste anyway. All the while they are giving talks on how other regular people can do the same. How ultimately we could all live in a world without money and evolve to a new system.
I’m not quite ready for this drastic step and all that it implies, like letting go of my career which I love, and the vulnerability of a single woman traveling alone without money worries me. But a seed was planted. And I admire them so much. I have a feeling I would do this for a few months, and then never want it to end. Who knows…
If you’re curious, check out their amazing travel blog, and the links where they give full information on how they did it and how you can too.
Wide Wings Fly Solo
This morning I woke up in Cristiano’s loft, packed my stuff again after a lovely week there, still stuffed from the handmade French crepe made by tres sexie “no, is not a pancake! Is a crepe.” Arturo last night, and joined my El Zopilote friends for a last game of cards while others peeled fresh roasted cacao.
I hugged them goodbye around 10:30am and headed down the winding path to the main road. Heavily slept, huge smile on my face, feeling absolutely deliciously contented I caught two buses to Moyogulpa. (more…)
Trusty Ole Shoestring
I’m halfway through the 3 month stint here at InanItah. Pfft… I don’t even know what to think about that. Its all too quick really.
Thinking, all the time, about Cape Town, Terlingua TX, Peruuu, the Gobeeeeee Desert, Bisbeeeeeeee Arizona, Austin Texas, Steel City Pennsylvania, Sierra Leone, The Land of Ports Oregon, The Land of Thai, San Fran, and not a cent to rub together to make anything happen. haha! yet. YET! Yet yet yet!!!! Yet it WILL happen. It will ALL happen! ALL. On my own shoestring.
And that’s final.
Help Save Japan’s Dolphins!
More than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises are being slaughtered each year and their meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food in Japan, often times labeled as whale meat. Send a letter to President Obama, Vice President Biden and Japanese Ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki urging them to address this issue »
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