Preparation for Life after Life –
The early roots of this is when I first met Charlotte in the late 1980’s and she was preparing to leave Jackson, MS. Instead, because of me, she stayed in Jackson for about 30 years.
We were fully engaged in life in Jackson – owned two businesses (Computer Co-op – computer services, and Fair Trade Green – gift shop) and I was CEO of Rainbow Natural Grocery and High Noon Café and Charlotte was the secretary on the Board of Directors.
In November 2016 I retired as CEO of Rainbow. Rainbow was struggling financially, and I had twice cut my salary, but retiring was a way to transition my salary to $0. I assigned my work to other staff members but continued to actively help Rainbow for the next year.
A couple months later, our wonderful in-house technician at Computer Co-op, announced that he was leaving for a lucrative government job. Charlotte was not excited about trying to find a replacement for him and I knew it would be difficult too. So after a couple days of thinking about it, I suggested that we just go ahead and close the repair shop and work from our home. Charlotte agreed and we began the process of selling off all our inventory and moved our office to our home living room.
We began thinking it was time to get Charlotte to a place where she had always dreamed of living. She had several criteria: 1) warm all year. 2) near a good beach. 3) not in the path of hurricanes. 4) low cost of living. 5) humane toward animals.
I created a spreadsheet of places that might meet her criteria. Some of the places on our list were:
Dominica, Grenada, Uruguay, Dominican Republic, Aruba, St. Croix, Martinique, Nevis, Virgin Gorda, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Bali, Malaysia, and more.
I had data on population, ethnicity, weather, cost of living, cost of travel, banking, environment, visas, health care, culture and much more. We visited St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John as well as Turks-Caicos, Grand Cayman, Costa Rica, Belize, the Canary Islands, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Hawaii, San Diego, Bali and East Timor.
The cost of food was high through most of the Caribbean as they could not grow most of their own food and had to import it. And recent hurricanes had ripped through some of these places.
We subscribed to International Living magazine and read it pretty much cover to cover for a year. It gave us a lot of good ideas and it was really worth it to hear stories of people who had actually moved overseas.
What most impressed us was the very low cost of living in south east Asia. What stuck in our mind about Bali was their version of the Hindu culture. We saw people greeted everywhere with respect. People put their hands together, bowed to the person they were meeting and seemed genuinely concerned to create a positive experience. So we started focusing on Bali as a possibility.
We arranged to transfer our Computer Co-op clients to another company that had a former employee that we loved as a technician. We were not able to find a suitable buyer for our Fair Trade Green store, so we created a Limited Liability Company to own the business and got 33 people to purchase partial shares in the business.
We had several yard sales to get rid of the contents of our rental unit. Our son bought our electric car and we had it transported to him in Missouri. We advertised our possessions on Facebook marketplace and Craig’s List. What we could not sell, we had a truck come by and pick it all up and take it to a thrift store that gave items to veterans for free.
We consolidated our five computers down to one laptop. We got our possessions down to what would fit in two checked bags and two carry-on bags and two smaller bags.
We made a big trip to visit relatives just after Christmas. Missouri, Minnesota and Chicago.
A great friend, Gen Barbour, offered to have us stay with her as we prepared to leave. We stayed with her much longer than we had intended – over a month – but it was a wonderful experience.
We used a rental car for the last month or so and when we got our loose ends/to do list down from six pages to only about thirty items we started looking for tickets.
We were going to use Delta frequent flyer miles and needed comfort seating for these extremely long flights. We started to see what dates would work, beginning with February 11th, 2018. That day didn’t work, neither did the next day or the next. We spent most of two days on the phone with Delta and finally found that Monday, February 26th would work.
So that was it. All that preparation. Now we had the date.
Leaving –
It is a very long ordeal to get to the other side of the planet. The flight from Atlanta to Tokyo is about 16 hours. Then the flight from Tokyo to Singapore is another 8 and a half hours. We arranged to have a few days to recover in Singapore. Still it was hard on our health – me mostly. I developed a bronchial infection, something I am prone to, and had a very hard time breathing. A lot of serious coughing.
Singapore –
We arrived in Singapore about half past midnight and went straight to our room in the airport hotel. After a lot of sleeping, we got some food near where people come out of baggage claim, Mr. Wang’s. It is pronounced Wong. Being from Mississippi we pronounced it wrong. We had two tours organized in Singapore. The first was to be an evening tour with localtours.com. We agreed to move up the time of the tour to, I think, 6pm, but still he showed up late saying there were traffic issues. Then he also had a government exam he was going to have to take at 7pm or 7:30pm. So when we got in the city he had us meet somebody else to do the tour. We went to several places on foot at a fairly fast pace. We sampled some food, saw some large buildings. Had to remind him a couple times that we didn’t eat meat. We covered 6 miles and were pretty exhausted by the time we caught a taxi to come back to the hotel.
The next day was to be a day tour – a food tour – with Arthur Ang. He was really good. We had a slower pace and went to the Malay community, the Chinese area and the Indian community and sampled dishes from each cuisine. We ate as much as we could and got very full. The whole tour took over five hours.
Bali –
On March 2nd we reached Bali. All international flights arrive in Denpasar. We followed the advice from expats we have been communicating with and went to a desk before immigration to sign up for paid VOA’s (Visa On Arrival). The paid version ($35 each) allows a person to apply for a 30 day extension. After going through security and immigration we saw Made from Yunni Guesthouse in Amad holding up a sign with our name on it. We got all of our luggage out to his Land Rover Suv. We headed out through the significant traffic of Denpasar, up the east coast of Bali. After a few hours we stopped at a place to eat. It was a restaurant next to a Water Garden. The food was very good. The Water Garden was a bit of a tourist trap place. We had fun walking through the water on small platforms. If felt like some Indiana Jones set.
We arrived in Amad which is basically a fishing village with some tourism for snorkelers and divers. Yunni Guesthouse was right on the main road and there was a lot of traffic noise. Most of the traffic is motor bikes and motor scooters and motor cycles. We had paid for an ocean view, but were put in the first floor which doesn’t have an ocean view. The ocean view from the second (top) floor was better and had a balcony. Yunni Guesthouse is a very basic place. The bathroom was very small with rusty handles. But we just needed a place to recover some from being pretty sick. Charlotte started getting a sinus problem. The couple that run the Guesthouse are very sweet and we really loved them, so the stay was just fine because of them. Made is also a driver for hire.
The first morning in Amad we went for a walk on the beach and found it to be too rocky for jogging or really for swimming too. There were a group of fishermen getting ready to put their boat and nets into the water, when one of them spotted a disturbance in the water near the shore and excitedly got the crew to get the boat and net out. They circled the swarm of fish and hauled the net in and got a couple big buckets of rather small mackerels.
While in Amed, we took a trip to the oldest (possibly) Hindu temple on the island. These temples are used mainly just for ceremonies at particular times of the year. Everyone is required to wear a sarong and cloth belt, so Made and his wife got us all dressed up for the occasion. There was a small offering fee to enter. The temple was in three sections. We saw the first two sections but the third section was close to a mile further up the mountain and required navigating about 1,700 more steps. We weren’t quite up for that. We did take part in a short meditative ceremony with a chanter and ringing bells. Incense and rice on the forehead.
We had to arrange our baggage to meet some rather strict weight requirements to get from Singapore to Bali, so we used this time to reorganize our belongings. Our two largest bags are a bit much to haul around.
We arranged for our next place to go. We decided on Seminyak on the south beach. We picked the same hotel we stayed at a couple years ago. We hired Made to drive us there and it took most of a day to get there. He stopped at a Water Palace for a break along the way. The Water Palace was another total tourist trap and was more expensive. Maybe about $4 each or something. I did enjoy seeing a picture of the last ruler of the Lombok people. I intend to post it in the pics section.
Seminyak –
We arranged to stay at the Grand Balisani Suites for several days. It is right on the ocean with a sandy beach and surfing quality waves. We found several good places to eat here. One of our favorites was the Spicy Coconut. Really great vegetarian and vegan items on the menu and served in a very appealing way.
On the beach we found a couple restaurants, (they are called Warongs here) that we enjoyed. It was nice to sit at a table with our toes in the sand and listen to the waves crashing, watch the people walking by on the beach or surfing, and enjoy a good meal and watch the sunset. I’m sure we’ll post some of those pictures too.
We ran on the beach some mornings. Two mornings we spent picking up trash on the beach. The trash issue has gotten worse in the last couple years. It’s a worldwide problem. We all need to work to eliminate single use plastic as a start. One of the reasons we liked Spicy Coconut was their use of metal or glass reusable straws.
One side issue we were dealing with is that I had left my phone in Made’s car when he dropped us off in Seminyak. We were able to message him using Charlotte’s phone and he had it. When we arranged to next go to Ubud, we also arranged for him to drive us there so we could also recover the phone and that worked out great.
Ubud –
Now we are getting close to real time. We arrived in Ubud on Sunday afternoon, March 11th. We got situated in our apartment, which we really liked. Spacious, quiet, comfortable. We have a refrigerator, a cookstove. So we took a good look as maps and set off to go to the big grocery store, Bintang Supermarket, about a mile away. It was a hard walk. There is very little room on the sides of the road with lots of traffic. The streets were wet from an earlier rain too. It was also steeply downhill then uphill. The grocery shopping was interesting as there were basically no familiar brands. Charlotte was looking for calamine lotion and it was not easy explaining what she was looking for. We got about $50 worth of food. (Prices were not particularly cheap there) Charlotte got a six pack of beer and it was going to be a lot of weight, so we got a taxi to take us back for about $3.50.
We got a late start the next morning. Usually we try to get out and get some exercise right after sunrise when it is coolest, but we didn’t get out until about 10am. We looked as our google map of the immediate area and decided to try the smaller roads behind where we were staying.
The first road we tried turned out to be a private driveway. The next road showed us why we weren’t easily finding these roads. What looks like a road on the map is just a walkway. I’ll put a picture on the pics tab to show you. We did follow these paths through the maze of properties and came out to a small traditional restaurant we had marked as a place to try to find. It was very good. The older lady that ran the restaurant, cooked and waited tables and everything. We’ll post pictures of the food. It was a lot of food. Enough to get us through the whole day. And the cost for both of us was about $6 total.
Although this might be better for a blog post, I wanted to share an observation here. As we get more off the beaten path, we tend to meet much more interesting people who also have left the easy and mainstream places. We met a fellow at the above mentioned restaurant who had spent many years in Bali and remembered the days when the main street of Ubud was a dirt road with just one car and only a couple motorcycles. He told us some interesting things about the island just to the west of us, Java. Enough to spark our curiosity and we decided we should go there and check it out.
Today is Tuesday, March 14th. We did get up pretty early – earlier would have been even better – and went on a long trek that included the ridge rice field path. It was a long trek, several kilometers with steep hills. It was worth doing. We heard some very strange nature sounds. Couldn’t make out if it was frogs or birds or what. The trek starts way down in a river gorge and climbs out and up on top of a ridge over the river following it upstream. We did find a clinic returning from the trek and Charlotte asked them about the skin reaction on her arms and hands (lots of little bumps). Charlotte said the condition was diagnosed when she was in India as a heat rash. She was given Calamine lotion when in India and they happened to have it at this clinic also. We’ll see how that works. Charlotte says if my bronchial condition doesn’t keep improving, we’ll go to the clinic for that condition too.
We are right across the street from a raw and vegan restaurant named Alchemy that gets their food from their organic farm. We’ve gone there twice now. It’s a bit expensive but they do take Visa credit cards and that helps us retain our cash.
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Thursday, March 22, 2018
We’ll be staying in Ubud for at least another week. We met Elizabeth Suli whose office-apartment is just a few feet away from where we have been living. She is an agent for visa registrations. It is so convenient to have her right here, so she is handling our 30 day visa extension. We have given her our passports and she has taken them to Denpasar to immigration. She will let us know when immigration is ready to have us get our pictures taken and get fingerprinted. The son of the man who owns the building next to us will drive us to Denpasar starting out at 7:30am when we know what day we need to go. Then several days later, Elizabeth will go to Denpasar immigration and pick up our passports with the 30 day extension added.
So we are looking at places to go next. We met a couple at dinner this week who are looking for where they want to have a base. They have been at it now for FIVE YEARS! God. I hope we’re not still looking after five years. We are looking at places along the southern coast but further northwest than Seminyak. We did a Google Earth drone like flyover of nearly the entire southern coast.
Charlotte went to see a skilled healer, deep tissue massage person named Master Ketut Arsana at the Ubud Bodyworks. She seemed to get some relief, so I am going there in a few minutes (this is a week later) and Charlotte is scheduled for another session with him on Saturday.
I’m losing some weight, which is good. Eating a lot of fruit and consuming a lot of ginger and turmeric. Getting to a healthy weight is one of my projects for early retirement here.
We couldn’t stay at the Bagous Wooden Apartments any longer because he had another guest booked for the room, so we have moved across the street to Sungu Spa. It’s a little more expensive but then we get a breakfast paid for each morning, a pool to swim in and a shuttle service to take us anywhere around Ubud that we need to go.
It has been such a treat to have so many good restaurants within two blocks of us. There must be more than a dozen. There is a lot of variety and all have vegetarian and vegan options. Last evening we ate Indian food, but we have also had Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Malay, Indonesian of course and more. Sometimes the meals cost as little as $2 or $3 per person. Other times we are at the more tourist oriented restaurants and the entire bill might be $20 something for the two of us with drinks included. I don’t think the bill has been over $30 even in the fanciest of places. About half of the places take Visa cards not many take American Express.
We left the USA with about $1,500 in cash and still have over a third of it left. We understand that the best way to get more cash is through ATM’s. There is one ATM in Ubud city center that lets you get $3,000,000 rupias out in one transaction, so that is the one to use. Most others have a limit of about $1,500,000. How much is $3,000,000 rupias? About $225.
We are regularly thanking people now in Indonesian. I think the next phrases to start using are “Good morning, good afternoon and good evening”.
Just a day after that last diary update, our daughter Maya and her husband Chris in Cambridge, Massachusetts had their first baby. A healthy boy named Jude. He will be our first stop when we organize a trip state-side. I’ve got a picture of the three of them on my computer desktop.
My health keeps slowly improving. Charlotte seems to be doing better too. We did do a “death walk” a few days ago (This is what Chris calls Maya’s long walking tours in Cambridge, MA). That’s what we now call it when we bite off more exercise than we should handle. First we visited a coffee/tea plantation where they make that expensive coffee that comes out of the butts of civets. Appetizing, right? We did get some good ginger tea and lemongrass tea there. There was some cliff climbing involved there. But then we went to see a gorge of rice fields. It was intensely downhill. Then intensely uphill and then repeat, repeat. It particularly wore Charlotte’s legs out. And if that wasn’t enough, we went to see a waterfall after that and that was yet more downhill and uphill.
Time to go get a treatment at Ubud Bodyworks. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Friday, March 30, 2018
The treatment with Ketut Arsana went well. He’s a light weight man, so at times he had all his weight on me. He was very skilled at accupressure points and intuited just the right amount of pressure and time at each point. His main advice to me was to lose weight – which is slowly happening here.
Tonight is our last night in Ubud. Charlotte has eliminated Ubud from home base consideration mainly because you can’t see the the ocean from here and it doesn’t feel like an island.
One thing that has really surprised us is how much good food we have found in so many restaurants. It took us years in Jackson to find the restaurants we really liked and in just a matter of a couple weeks we have found as much great food here.
Today we went up in the mountains to a volcano named Mount Batur. It still puffs steam occasionally but hasn’t really blown its top since the early 1900’s. For an hour we drove uphill until we reached the rim of the caldera. Down below us was the largest lake in Bali, Lake Batur. We drove down to the lake and stopped at a hot springs and spent at least an hour melting into the very warm waters there. They drain all their hot spring pools every night, scrub them out and refill them by morning with mountain water. The air is cooler up in the mountains, but the sun is still intense and I got some redness on my face and upper body – but not enough to cause a problem.
Yesterday we went through the Ubud Monkey Forest. The coolest thing there was when a couple monkeys decided to climb up my leg and one of the perched himself on my arms and hugged me for a while. Charlotte was a bit worried about it as we had just watched a monkey climb up to the shoulder of a woman in a nice dress and proceeded to pee all over her. There are 4 groups of monkeys in this sanctuary about 800 in all.
We have a swimming pool right outside our door that is nearly private. Every time we have used it, we were the only ones around. Swimming at night is pretty nice.
Our vocabulary is increasing slowly. We are still really frustrated by how quickly we forget words we learn. In addition to regularly using Indonesian for ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’ we now use Indonesian for ‘good morning’, two phrases for ‘good afternoon’ (one for before 3pm and one for after 3pm and one for ‘good night’. We have also used a couple other phrases some, ‘How are you?’ and ‘very good’. It is daunting to see the vocabulary we have yet to tackle.
We’ve seen all the stages of growing rice now and it is getting demystified. Everything grows so much and so fast here. It just blows my mind how much food is being grown here. It’s almost everywhere you look.
Tomorrow we have a driver who will take us to a small place that is not on most maps, Kediri. The biggest point of interest near Kediri is Tanah Lot Temple, a very important temple on a rock outcropping into the sea. We plan to stay in that area for a week and during that time we plan to rent a motorbike and get use to driving it. It’s going to be a stretch for us. I just don’t picture us driving motorbikes so much. For one thing they are dangerous. We saw a horrible accident just after it happened where a girl went down with her bike. People were helping her, but she looked in shock. Hard to say how serious her injuries were.
We’ve started to get back into our meditation routine some. I think more than anything else, daily meditation helps tune us into making better decisions during the day.
Learned yesterday that Bernie Sanders is going to be in Jackson, Mississippi for a program on economic justice next week. If we were still in Jackson we would not miss that for anything. Hope the Alamo Theater is packed for the event. Maybe they will live stream it and we’ll catch it that way.
I forgot to cancel my subscription to Major League Baseball in time, so I have a subscription to this years baseball season. I watched a lot of Minnesota Twins games last year (being from Minnesota) and it was exciting in that they went from the worst record in baseball to making the playoffs. So here I am in the middle of the night catching the first pitches of the new baseball season. (I’ve already cancelled my subscription so this won’t happen again next year.)
We did venture out a couple days ago to an ATM machine just to make sure we can use one to get money out of at least one of our banks in the USA. It worked. We’ll have to wait to see how much the service charge was.
Although we are in the rainy season, there hasn’t really been that much rain. It’s barely gotten in our way. Last night however it did rain real hard, but this morning – no problem.
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April 1 – 7, 2018 The Beach at Ketiri, Bali
We got a driver (the nephew of the son of the man who owned the building next to the Wooden Apartments) and made our way to Ketiri, Bali about an hour away. Ketiri is very near a famous sea temple built out on what becomes an island in high tide. A zillion pictures have been taken of the place. It is called Tanah Lot. We were so close but we didn’t fight the crowds to go there.
It was difficult to find this place. I had taken pictures of it from google earth and had them on my phone. We actually got very close on our first try but there was a huge celebration in the little village that blocked the main street. We asked about the place we were looking for. Online it was called Atlantis3 but nobody knew it by that name. Turned out later they knew the place by some name we had never heard of. After turning around and stopping at a small convenience store and calling, our driver said we were going to the right spot the first time. When we headed back to where we had been, a housekeeper on a motorcycle greeted us about a mile out and guided us in. At the big street celebration there was a series of side streets that got us around them.
When we reached ‘Atlantis3’ it was right at the beach. We had a second story apartment. There was a third story with one apartment that had tremendous views on three sides. But our view was nothing short of spectacular. We had open windows to the beach and the huge surfing waves crashed loud all day and night. Sunsets were also spectacular. The owner, Jayanti, is originally from Belgium, but has been in business in Bali for maybe 20 years. He makes furniture, designs kitchens, owns restaurants and more. He is a wonderful resource for knowing the area. We made a video of our apartment and posted it on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/luke.lundemo/videos/10157363976835299/
Breakfast was included in our week rental. It was a voucher for the restaurant up the street called The Fat Hog. Ya, I kid you not. It was run by an Aussie guy and we also ate all our evening meals there too. The second night we were there we had a bit of an adventure. We left the windows open when we went to dinner and when we got back (after dark) the apartment was full of these small black bugs. They were kind of stinky too. It was too much to deal with at that moment so we sequestered ourselves away in the air conditioned bedroom that had very few bugs and in the morning we gathered up all these guys and put them outside. There were hundreds of them.
Another skill that Jayanti has is a motorbike racer. He was the perfect person to have for learning how to operate a motorbike. He took me out to a lesser used ‘bitumen’ and have me a couple hour practice session on starting, stopping, turning and maneuvering. The last half of the experience started with driving and him riding on the same bike sitting behind me. We took some different roads, some of them quite narrow and on a hidden curve on one of these narrow streets a large truck was coming at me. I had just a narrow part of the road to navigate in and I probably should have just stopped, but I tried to keep going and I went a little bit off the road and hidden off the road by some tall grass was a small irrigation channel. The front tire slipped over the edge and down into the channel and we crashed. Jayanti was ok, the bike was ok and I just had a few scratches. Not to bad, but a very valuable lesson. Then he got on a different bike and we went through streets together. At the end I got Charlotte on the back of the bike for the trip back to the apartment. I’ll need a few more lessons to get proficient, but I’m very cautious. The roads here are very dangerous and driving with all the other motorbikes and pedestrians and animals and cars and trucks going every which way really challenges the attention capacity.
We jogged most mornings back up the roads into the village. There were a lot of dogs but none of them were vicious. That’s a blessing. Made me think that the people in the village treated the dogs half descent. After one jog we got our swimming gear on and went out into the surf. Wow. These huge waves are very powerful. We got thrown around a lot and our bathing suits ended up full of sand. The waves are great for surfers, great to look at, make a nice and powerful sound, but kinda rough to swim in.
The ceremonies in the small town that blocked the road had been going on for about a month and finally ended just before we left. Bali is ceremony central. There’s big ones – somewhere on the island every day, but millions of small ones every day. Everywhere people, mostly women, put out these offerings in front of basically every structure, light some incense, say some prayers and go on to the next structure. This goes on every single day. It’s hard to imagine the immensity of the effort from the whole population. There is usually some food in these offerings as well as flowers and spices. The offerings are received by the gods, usually taking the form of birds or cats as well as insects. The offerings are at least two fold. They invite gods to enter their space and they guard against evil spirits at the same time.
On Easter morning, there was a big party on the beach organized by the surfers. We didn’t attend but we did see the secluded place where the party was held. The restaurant owner did go by and described the scene as very trippy. Spaced out dancing and more.
We liked the apartment a lot and the apartment above us with the awesome views, although we knew it wasn’t right for us as no part of it was air conditioned. A couple nights before we left we met a couple who decided to rent that top apartment for a year. Turns out Jayanti agreed to put in air conditioning and a bunch of other major improvements and workers took to it right away. On the last day we were there, the water pump went out but we had already had our morning jog and shower, so it turned out to be good timing for us.
Jayanti arranged for us to get a ride to the far northwest part of the island for our next stay. It was going to be a relatively expensive drive. We talked them down to about $80. After the drive (it was long and mountainous) we realized he earned all his money.
April 7th – 14th. Taman Sari ‘A mountain resort by the sea’ in Pemuteran, Bali
Up, up and more up. The drive took us right up into the mountains. Tucked away in the mountains were a couple more pretty good sized lakes and a temple on one of the lakes that we stopped at and took a travel break. Lots of tourists. Right on the lake water. A little further on even higher on the mountain we stopped to hang out with some monkeys. People were feeding them and the monkeys thought that was just wonderful.
It rained a bit and the road turned and turned and finally we started down again on the north side of the island. We went down and down and down. I remarked to Charlotte that we kept going down so far I wondered if the sea were several thousand meters lower on this side of the island. We finally reached the coast and there was a much better and wider road that followed the coast going west. I was surprised to find the GPS working on my phone and it helped the driver find our destination. We had a small bungalow to stay at here. An outdoor shower and toilet and sink again but all very nice. An air conditioned bedroom again. Breakfast was included in this rental as well and we had vouchers for the on site restaurant.
There must have been 40 or more bungalows and small villas at this place and we met people here from all over the world. The two swimming pools were a popular place to meet people in the morning after breakfast. I was busy doing a lot of tax work but I could sometimes work from the lounges at the pool. I don’t think people who don’t travel understand the cultural exchange opportunities that exist in environments like this. We are meeting people truly from all parts of the planet and in every case we have found that friendliness is met with friendliness and everyone has been great in their own way of sharing their life and culture and been genuinely interested in our experience as well. It is this growing network of world travelers that are raising the awareness that everyone on the planet shares the same basic aspirations. We all want to live in peace, to be able to enjoy our families, to have our basic needs met and to enjoy learning more about our world and its people.
On the second morning here we arranged to do some snorkeling. We took about an hour long high speed boat ride to an island near Java, Menjangan Island. The plan was to snorkel for an hour, move to a different location and have lunch and then snorkel for another hour. We wore t-shirts for protection from the sun and put on sun screen. This first site was a coral reef and it was fantastic. The variety of coral and the variety and sheer number of fish was something I had never experiences. Hundreds of varieties of fish. Some were as large as maybe two feet. Others were very tiny. Every color and pattern that you could imagine. We saw large sea clams, angel fish a foot tall, ‘nemo’ fish, puffer fish, trigger fish of several varieties. It was eye candy at every glance. The water was warm and swimming over the reef for an hour passed quickly without getting very tired.
We went around to the other side of the island and connected to an anchored bouy and had lunch. Charlotte slipped off a bench, or rather tried sitting where there was no bench and hit her elbow pretty hard, but not enough to put her off doing another snorkeling session. After we ate our lunch on the boat, we jumped in and found that this part of the island had a very long what they called a coral wall. The coral coming out from the shore was just a couple feet under the water, but then the coral dropped off in a sheer cliff at least 30 meters down and maybe much further. Water visibility in all of this was crystal clear. There was coral and fish all over this wall going down into the depths. In several places there were cave like places. It was even more amazing than the first place.
We did experience, near the end of this hour, a floating garbage patch. When we looked up we saw the underside of hundreds of pieces of floating plastic and other stuff. It looked nasty and ugly and our heads were plowing through this mess. We found a way to swim around it, but it will leave a lasting impression.
Even going across the open sea we saw floating crap: plastic bottles, wrappers, Styrofoam. It occurred to me that a new survival strategy at sea would be to simply collect the floating stuff and bind it together with some floating nylon netting or plastic rope you come by and make yourself a raft. Jesus. What has this world come to.
So we spent two wonderful hours looking down into this amazing wonderland of fish and coral. Meanwhile up above, the sun was unrelentingly toasting every exposed surface of us it could find. You don’t feel sunburn right away. But you feel it for days and days afterword. We had to cancel massages that we had scheduled for the next day.
Although Taman Sari has a perfectly fine restaurant, the prices are touristy (high). So we did venture out several times to try other restaurants. The three that we tried were all great in their own way.
On the next to last day we did get around to those massages. It was a full hour of deep tissue massage and the cost was about $10 each. The massages were not of the high caliber that you would get form a trained person in the US, but still it was a great deal and all the major muscles got a nice workout and I left feeling much better balanced (and even well oiled!).
The place where we arranged the snorkeling trip gave us free snorkeling gear to go out in the area near shore where they were rebuilding the coral. They had put all kinds of metal structures in with the rest of the coral and started coral growing on these structures. We later heard they found that a small trickle charge of electricity helped the coral grow faster, so they were using that technique. There were hundreds of fish of great variety and we really enjoyed the experience. The place is called Biorock and it has won many international awards for the work it is doing in learning how to restore coral reefs. Of course we did all of this very early in the morning to make sure we didn’t fry our already scorched skin.
We checked on prices of long term rental of villas in this area, but most were out of our price range. Most villas are designed to handle larger families and we don’t need quite so much. And there is still the issue of Charlotte feeling trapped in the air conditioning in the afternoons because the sun and heat and humidity are oppressive. So we are still looking for that right climatic situation – if it exists.
April 14, 2018 NusaBay Manjangan
We’re about up to date again. Today was a moving day and we organized transportation to a harbor about 30 minutes away and got in a boat and sailed out to a place that is connected to Bali, but is on a peninsula that has no roads. The only way to get here is by boat. It is part of a national park. When we arrived we found that except for the staff, there were only two other people on this ‘island’. We have organized a walk through the natural world at 7:00am tomorrow. We had tea this afternoon and dinner just a short while ago. The restaurant, which with the small number of guests is a one man operation, was superb. We ate next to a family of deer grazing next to us and later they settled down for a rest on the beach. A black monkey scampered by and climbed a pole/tree supporting the awning of the restaurant. It is as odd as people say it is to see deer and monkeys in the same view.
After dinner we went out on the pier and wow, what a show the Milky Way was putting on. Of course, except for the lights from this operation, there was no artificial lights for miles and miles. The gazillion of stars in the galaxy were shining bright and it felt powerful to remember our place in the cosmos.
We did take that nature walk the next morning. Kingfishers, trapdoor spiders, lots of flora id’s and tasted. The oldest tree in the area – probably about 200 yrs old. A place where large pythons hang out. Climbed a steep hill to get a wide view of where we were. Sat down on the path and had a nice long talk with our guide. Learned more about his life, his family, how he makes a living, where he’s been, his take on the politics of Indonesia. From his values it was clear he’s be a democratic socialist.
The next morning we stepped out on our deck and saw we were in the middle of a large family of rare black monkeys. Their faces have so many human characteristics. It’s really very mind altering to lock gazes with one of them. It made me aware that I have a gap in my consciousness between human animals and all other animals. This experience went a long way to bridging that gap. For the good of the entire community of life, we have got to rapidly start living in a more sustainable fashion.
We keep meeting wonderful people from all over the world. It makes me more aware of what is called citizen diplomacy. The idea that all these millions of interactions between people of different cultures, languages, religions, races is where our hope lies in finding a way to live in peace and mutual respect and understanding.
We got out and snorkeled some around the long pier. It was quite good. We were careful not to stay out too long and overdo the sunshine on our skin.
We took the same boat back that we came on. Charlotte was beginning to have an issue with her digestion. Having some cramps and diarrhea. We got a ride organized back to Taman Sari where we were going to stay for a few days before heading back to Ketiri.
Tamin Sari, Pemuteran April 18-21, 2018
It was good to be in familiar and comfortable surroundings as Charlotte’s digestive issues continued. We got some medicine from the resort staff that seemed to help. We decided not to try any ambitious activities until Charlotte felt better. We swam in the pool and borrowed some all-in-one face mask snorkeling gear and really liked how they worked. We bought our own gear at a dive shop right nearby and went out and tested the new gear. It worked well. We organized transportation back to Ketiri and the trip went smoothly, we didn’t stop for anything and made it in three and a half hours.
Ketiri (again)
We arrived on a Saturday just past noon and were met by the housekeeper. They had put nice velcro screens over the windows facing the ocean so we will now be able to leave those windows open all the time and enjoy the soothing crashing waves all day and night. We had some trouble with the toilet, but it got fixed in less than a day. On Sunday a huge – really huge – crowd of people showed up at the end of the day at the beach. We had never seen so many people there. I took a picture of the sea of motorbikes parked there.
We arrived at an important realization over the past couple weeks. This part of the world (at least the part next to the ocean) is simply too hot for Charlotte. I’m adjusting to a lot of the heat, but she is not. What that means is that most days from around 9 or 10 in the morning until 4 or 5 in the evening, Charlotte has to stay confined to the air conditioned indoor spaces. She would much rather be able to be outside doing all kinds of things. So what this means is that we won’t be making any more reservations around this area and instead be searching out a place where the climate will work better for her.
I’m somewhat sad about this because I really love the culture here and I know I would not have to worry about finances here either. But this whole adventure is about finding a climate that Charlotte is happy with and that is what drives our decision making.
So I’ve dusted off my Retirement Places spreadsheet and added much more climate detail about a number of possibilities. We’re committed to being in this part of the world until May 7th, but we’ll probably be making a long flight right after that.
April 24, 2018
So today we made the decision on where we will go after May 7th. We will be flying to Malaga, Spain. Malaga is on the Mediterranean Sea. Whereas the average daily high in Bali in May is 91 degrees. The average daily high in Malaga in May is 71. So we are picking a climate that is very close to how Charlotte has been setting the air conditioner.
We’ll actually be living just south of Malaga in a community named Torremolinos. We’ll have an apartment right on the beach for the three weeks after May 7th and we’ll see where things go from there.
May 4, 2018
We’ve spend the last week in Penang, Malaysia. We’ve been able to run every day and swim in a large pool, meditate and get other exercise. The climate here is very similar to Bali and the culture is not that different. Much of the language is the same too. We had the first travel screw up where our luggage got lost on the way here, but a day of trying to find it paid off and we got our clothes back. We’ve found a lot of good restaurants and have enjoyed the doves that are roosting on our balcony overnight, the mynah birds hanging out at the outdoor breakfast, and the monkeys swinging along the electric power lines between trees along the road. It’s also been a lot of fun meeting more people from all over the world. The simplest acts of kindness are so important to building good relations between people of such different cultures. Smiles are important too. We feel like we are a bit international diplomats and trying to represent the USA in the best light we can.
May 15, 2018 – Torremolinos, Spain
We arrived here a week ago. We unplugged the air conditioner in our apartment and have not used the heating system. One of Charlotte’s climate wishes was to live where she did not need these devices and so far this place is working. Charlotte also wanted to live near the ocean. We have glass doors to the balcony on the east side of our place. The doors stay at least partly open most of the day. We clearly hear the ocean waves all night and day and see the ocean from anywhere in our apartment, except the bathroom. Here is our view:
Another criteria was to have a good place to jog. I think in that picture you can see a road beyond the swimming pool. On the far side of the road, before the beach starts, there is a wide promenade. It is at least 6 to 8 people wide, flat, lit up all night, safe, and it goes on forever. We’ve gone more than twenty minutes in either direction and not found the end. Another criteria was not to be in the path of hurricanes or cyclones. Those storms don’t happen on the Mediterranean. Another criteria is kindness to animals. We have not seen any starving stray dogs (yet). There are a lot of cats roaming around. Although Charlotte gets concerned about them, they have that notch in their ear meaning they have been ‘fixed’, and we see people feeding them as well. And finally – a low cost of living. Well, this one is still up in the air. We are currently living a bit beyond our means, but we might be able to organize a situation where we can get that under control.
One thing that is blowing the budget is eating out. Torremolinos is about one third the size of Jackson, Mississippi and yet has (according to Trip Advisor) 632 restaurants! Can you believe it? And I’m sure they have missed a lot of them. Amazingly they are almost all within walking distance. (some are not so convenient – out there near the 2 kilometer range). So an evening meal at most of these places will run between 20 and 45 euros. (That’s between $25 and $60 US).
We have a kitchen. We have bought groceries. I’m willing to cook. But Charlotte so far has not been very interested in that. This is where tourist mentality and resident mentality gets real. We bought a whole big two bags of groceries for about $27 US. I think I can get 6 to 8 meals out of it. That’s about $4.00 a meal. That would work.
We haven’t found a good health food store within walking distance, but we have heard there is one about a ten minute drive from here. We did find a good place within walking distance to get top quality supplements.
Yesterday we checked out the train station which is underground here and just a short walk away. We’ll actually take a trip on it later this week I think and see how that works as a way of exploring the greater area.
We have found a chiropractor/deep tissue massage person in a village down the shore. Charlotte has an appointment with her this Friday. We’ll see how that goes.
We have this apartment for another two weeks. We don’t know what’s next. Extend our stay here? Look for another (more affordable) place here in Torremolinos or along this “Costa Del Sol” area? Go to southern Portugal? We’re working on a plan. Maybe next week we will know.
Meanwhile, I am working on that question of, “What will I do with the rest of my life?” I think it is going to be difficult to describe where that question is leading me. I’m definitely not looking for a particular climate. In fact, a good part of the answer is not even going to express itself externally. And even more mysteriously, the answer to this question may even dissolve most of who “I” think “I” am. The sense of time might shift out from under me. The edge between inside me and outside me might further blur. The answer might appear to come from someplace that is not exactly outside me or inside me. See. I said it would be hard to describe.
I am spending ever more time meditating. It’s the most transformative part of my day. It colors all that happens internally and externally each day. I’m sure somehow, this quest will leak into this diary. But for now, the sun is about to come up over the distant mountains and another day is about to take shape. Love you.
May 24, 2018 – Torremolinos, Spain
We checked our financial situation and came up with an amount we would be willing to spend to extend our stay here – if it is available – until the end of July. The apartment management gave us a discount that brought the price down to just about what we thought we could afford. There was just one day where the apartments were fully booked and within a few hours they found a way to make that not a problem. So we are right here in this exact same apartment until the end of July.
Trying to get ahead of the game a bit (as we have to leave the Schengen agreement countries (25 European nations) after being here 90 days on our visa) we’re thinking about where next. Tentatively we are thinking August would be a good month to visit Ireland and then we are thinking to visit family back in the USA in September. October? We don’t have a clue yet.
We are working with a law firm on seeing if we can get Spanish residency. We sent them some financial information yesterday and they responded by saying they thought we would have no problem on that criteria. Residency would allow us to establish a ‘home base’ in Spain and we could then travel freely without visa time limit issues throughout Europe. I think part of this process has to be done from the USA, so it looks like it works for us to get that rolling when we are in the USA in September.
We have started using the local commuter train system and find it very easy to use and affordable. We can ride it all day for $2 euros. It runs for about 20 or so stops about 20 miles in either direction. The airport and Malaga are on one end, the southern end is in Fuengirola. We are actually headed to Fuengirola in a couple hours as that is where Charlotte’s deep tissue massage person has her studio. It is also where there is a health food store that looks pretty promising and we will check it out today.
There is another part of the commuter line that goes about 20 miles into the mountains. We haven’t tried that line yet but plan to on Monday.
Everyday we get out and greet at least a hundred people from all over the planet. Where we are staying, Bajondillo Apartments, there are 650 apartments and we get to meet lots of people right here. It’s a community with a lot of fluidity and diversity although it is a little skewed toward white, European and older and missing some low income folks.
June 7, 2018 Happy 19th Anniversary to Luke and Charlotte
We continue to find more resources here and get more comfortable with the language, the local geography and the people. Charlotte now has a deep tissue massage person. She also has a chiropractor (that she will see again on Monday). We have found several places now that have organic grains, nutritional yeast, tamari and high quality supplements. We are getting very comfortable with using the train system and are about to launch into quite a search for a great apartment deal.
We have developed quite a routine in the mornings: meditation, a whole series of stretching exercises, running a couple miles and now we have added going to the beach after running. We make ourselves a breakfast after that and then plan the rest of the day.
We have not been very good at sticking to our budget. I bought some expensive video editing software and have begun training myself how to use it. If I can get good at it, it is another skill I can use to produce more income. We’ve cut down eating out, but need to cut that back further. We have a well stocked kitchen now and have made a wide variety of meals already.
We spent about $65 euros and went to the canyon trek called Caminito del Rey. You can see a lot of pictures and videos elsewhere on this site. It was well worth it. The views of these canyons from right along the middle of the sheer canyon wall were amazing.
We are trying to keep up with Spanish lessons every day and our comfort level with speaking Spanish is increasing as well as our vocabulary.
I’ve begun writing a fiction story. We’ll see where that goes. I want to use it as a vehicle to talk about a different way of seeing the world.
Take care.
June 28, 2018 Torremolinos
We’re finding that transition from tourist mode to resident mode particularly difficult. We’re not living within our budget. Partly because we are choosing to live in a pretty expensive apartment. The transition is made more difficult because when we lived in Jackson, we lived close to what a tourist would live like. We went out to eat four or five times a week! Getting the eating out down to just once or twice a week has not been an easy transition.
We are getting deeper into what it will take to get a Non-Lucrative Residency Visa for Spain. A lot of paperwork to get together and it all has to be translated into Spanish by certified translators, and not just notarized but in need of an apostille. Never heard of apostille? Me either. Only secretary of states and the USA state department can give a document this kind of authentication. We checked into a couple law firms that could help us through this but they were both expensive. Then we found a document on the web for under $50 that answered a lot of our questions. One of the big issues is that once we get all these documents together, we have to show up in person at the Spanish Consulate in Houston to present them. There is a two month waiting list for getting an appointment there. They don’t make it easy.
We have settled into a routine of a lot of meditation, stretching, yoga, jogging and swimming.
Tomorrow we get up early and take the train to Malaga. From there we are going to see how far we can walk up the coast. Just exploring.
The entertainment program that use to be in the restaurant next to the lobby on the ground floor has moved outdoors. It starts at 10pm or 11pm and goes to 1pm and it is really loud. We have to close the balcony sliding door, close the curtains, run things like a little fan or air conditioner, wear earplugs and still it’s a challenge to sleep through it. We did look at an apartment on the other side of the building away from the music, but it is hard to find an apartment with a better view than what we have. So we are trying to deal with it.
The World Cup futbol games are going on every day. Three or four a day. It gets a lot of attention here as Spain has made it through the elimination rounds and is among the 16 finalists.
We have organized our flight from here to Dublin, Ireland as we decided to put off visiting Portugal until later. We are thinking about a day trip to Gibraltar though. We are also taking a closer look at Morocco. Their long term visa application does not require us to go to the USA. And the cost of living there is really low. By the way, did you know that Spain has two cities on the northern coast of Africa? We didn’t know.
July 5, 2018 Gibraltar
Charlotte wanted to do something special for my 69th birthday, so we hopped on a bus and went to the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Got our passports out and for the first time in close to a year we entered into an English speaking culture. Well almost. Lots of these folks speak something called Spanglish. Charlotte had an interesting encounter with a monkey. She had stashed some hard candy in her pant pocket and went out to take pictures of the critters. Well, they have supernatural smelling powers and went after her and her pocket of candy. I happened to catch some of it on video. It is posted under videos. I enjoyed looking into the eyes of the monkeys. They might be the almost only wild thing left here. Oh, add the wild sea here. Everything else here seems to have a few centuries of mixed cultural overlay. We also had an encounter with an Israeli new shop owner who was trying to get us to buy a tube of stuff to make facial wrinkles go away. He demonstrated by doing by right eye. I guess it worked, but the area around and under my eye felt puffy and rigid and I really didn’t like it. He did one of Charlotte’s eyes. We kept telling him we weren’t interested. He showed us how it retails for $999 a tube. I walked out. By evening my eye has pretty much recovered. Jez. It was nice to see the land and coast between Torremolinos and Gibraltar. It was less than a two hour drive.
July 31, 2018 Torremolinos, Spain
We leave for Dublin, Ireland on August 5th so we are in our last few days here. We’re meal planning so we run out of all of our food by the time we leave. We have to figure out what to leave behind in a suitcase or two. We want to travel lighter going forward. The Apartmentos Bajandillo will store our luggage at no charge at long as they know we will be coming back. We do want to come back, but nailing the date will not be easy. They will let us revise it if we get it wrong. We can’t come back to Spain for three months, so the date will be after November 5.
It has been great to get into a healthy routine here. I usually wake up before 6am and meditate. After having tea with Charlotte, we do a lot of stretching exercises and yoga then go for a log jog on the beach promenade. After re-hydrating, we head out to the sea where I go for a swim ( I did get stung by a jellyfish one day. The Spanish word for jellyfish is medusa.) and then we sit on the beach for a while as I play with rocks there (pictures in the pictures tab). Most days after that we swim in the pool for a while before heading back to the apartment for a small breakfast/lunch and a shower. The afternoons are a bit warm for a long walk, so we do some planning or maintenance work in the apartment or meditate some more or maybe even take one of those famous Spanish siestas. I usually cook a meal sometime between 5pm and 8pm and we eat out on the balcony. It’s light until almost 10pm, so sometimes we go for a walk about after dinner.
One day a couple weeks ago we took a field trip to Malaga to walk around the Alcazaba and the Gibralfaro. These are huge Moorish building complexes from the 11th and 14th century. The climb up to the Gibralfaro Castle was challenging. Great views from up there.
We still aren’t quite living a financially sustainable lifestyle. Getting closer. But not there yet. With our current income and in-bedded costs, we can spend a little over $100 a day. By October we plan to cut some of those costs so we will have about $120 a day to spend. We’ve been spending about $150 a day and according to our budget we should not have added the two week Ireland trip that is coming up, but I think we see more clearly than ever what we are going to have to do to make ends meet.
Ireland – August 5-19, 2018
We flew Aer Lingus, the Irish airline to Dublin and a taxi to Kennedy’s Pub not far away. We had a room above a bar. The first evening was loud music that went late with folks drinking at tables on the sidewalk below our window. The second night was local Irish music and we went and hung out with the musicians (about 10 of them) who put on this show regularly. It was a lot of fun. We went running in Griffin Park and met some really nice people who we had nice long chats with. The locals here speak Gaelic to each other and a lot of the signs are in English and Gaelic. There is a lot of Irish pride and the invasion/occupation by the English still smarts on some folks.
From Dublin we rented a car, and driving on the left side of the roads, we went north to the oldest archeological sites in Ireland. They had just discovered a new very large Stonehenge type circle in a field near there due to an extreme drought that had the buried stones leave those parts of the field greener than the surrounding area. They had also just discovered a 150 meter long tunnel that was thousands of years old that went under a farmhouse near one of the ancient mounds.
From there we went to the very northern tip of Ireland where we were surprised to see some folks in wet suits trying to surf in the North Sea. When the wind blew it was quite cold. There was also a beautiful old lighthouse which we checked out.
After a couple nights we went a short while back down the Western coast to Arnolds Hotel where we could watch the tide fill up a huge basin and then empty out again. We continued the next night down the coast to farmhouse bed and breakfast way out in the most rural area. Long dirt roads to get there. Our GPS only showed emptiness.
We continued to travel down the west coast of Ireland we enjoyed the Cliffs of Mohre and the nearby Dooling cave with the huge stalactite.
As we headed back toward Dublin we stopped to admire the memorial to the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi for their generous contribution to the Irish people during the potato famine of the early 1840’s. Since the Choctaw were dirt poor themselves, it seems amazing that they were able to help as much as they did.
As we kept working our way closer to Dublin we stopped at a very old cathedral that predates Christianity and climbed one of the few remaining lookout towers that were built to help warn of impending Viking invasions.
We turned our car back in at the Dublin Airport and spent our last day at a nearby hotel. Across the street from the hotel was an amazing park with 100 year old redwood trees and many delightful community gardens. Jogging there was a joy. When the hotel developers bought the property the community made them preserve that park area and I am so glad they did.
Our last stop was the airport and we hopped aboard another Aer Lingus flight. This time to Chicago.
Visiting Family in the USA. August 19 to September 19, 2018
We landed at O’Hare in Chicago and were met by Sheila (Charlotte’s sister) and Gary Courington and spent a week with them. We visited wildlife areas, jogged on their quiet sidewalk neighborhood streets and nature preserve area. We spent a wonderful afternoon at the Field Museum going through their evolution exhibit. Had wonderful meals each evening usually followed by a fun board game.
On the following Saturday we got on Amtrak’s Empire Builder and rode to Minnesota. We enjoyed the views and the huge leg room. We stopped briefly as about ten locations, first going toward Milwaukee, then Lacrosse before heading up the Mississippi to Minneapolis. We stayed with my mother at 9 mile creek in southern Bloomington for three weeks. We got to see many of our relatives. It was the most time I had spent with my mother, I think, since college or high school. We exchanged a lot of stories that we had never heard. My sister, Mary, just lives a mile away from there. We jogged regularly at the creek (9 mile) behind where my mother lives. We would often jog all the way to the Minnesota river bottom. There were many huge old growth trees along the way and there was a wetland just before the river. There was an active beaver dam, we saw geese, blue herons, egrets, kingfishers, and more. Our niece, Claire and her husband Kevin loaned us a car for part of the time and my sister, Mary, loaned us their van for part of the time. While in Minnesota, our daughter Maya and her husband Chris and new baby Jude visited for a weekend from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was our first time to see our new grandson. We put together many jigsaw puzzles with my mother and some of her friends. My mother loves to sew and knit and had just finished a ‘diamond’ painting which on one of our several trips to Joannes we ordered a frame for it. Me made it out to our lake cabin on Lake Koronis and had a nice swim. We had worried about it being too cold this time of year as we had gotten rid of all our cold weather clothing, but the whole time we were in Minnesota the weather was fine, even reaching the 90’s a few times. We got taken to the Minnesota State Fair on one day – senior day – and were with a record breaking crowd. A lot of interesting and exotic foods, but we kept it fairly healthy. It’s over 400 acres and we didn’t even make it to the midway. We also made it to St. Peter to spend a day with mom and relatives at the River Bend Folk festival. They had some very good local musicians and some from the New Orleans area also. On the last day in Minnesota, we rented a car and headed south.
Columbia, Missouri – September 16 – 19, 2018
We caught our son, his wife and our 14 month old grandson as they were coming back from a wedding in Colorado. Tao, our son, took the day off on Monday so we could spend more time together and part of the day we got to spend at a park with Milo, our grandson. We got to visit KOPN community radio where Persephone (Tao’s wife) was on the radio speaking about her experience as one of Missouri’s representatives to the National Democratic Party. She did a great job by the way. We got to spend part of an evening writing postcards to potential voters urging them to vote for a Berniecrat in the local area for a seat in the Missouri House of Representatives. We got to tour Tao’s new workplace at Veterans United Home Loans headquarters in Columbia, Missouri. Columbia is an artistic and progressive oasis and it was fun spending time there. Now it is onward to Jackson, MS.
Jackson, Mississippi – Sept 20 – October 20, 2018
Leslie Puckett, the manager of Fair Trade Green offered to let us stay at her house where we had a room with a comfortable air mattress and an attached bathroom. Jackson felt like we had made a full circle. All the way around the Earth. It reminded me of NASCAR. One loop around the Earth track and now it’s in for a pit stop. We saw dentists, doctors, dermatologists, chiropractors, and deep tissue massage people. But also a lot of old friends and visited many of our favorite restaurants. Our relationship with Jackson had changed. We felt like we were a little bit hovering in the air – definitely not stuck to the ground. We did two workshops at Fair Trade Green. One was to teach meditation and connect the practice with personal evolution. The other was a description of our journey into becoming World Citizens – both the inner and the outer transformation. Although less than a year into this conversion, we found we had a lot of valuable tips to aid others considering a similar journey. After putting our rental car through it’s own pit stop, it was on to Ft. Lauderdale to catch a flight to Lima, Peru.
Florida, October 21-22, 2018
We drove through the Florida panhandle that had recently been torn by Category 5 hurricane Michael. For 150 miles we saw thousands upon thousands of trees ripped from the ground or snapped in half. Although we saw few buildings, nearly all had roof damage. We stopped for gas in this area and it felt so much like what we witnessed in Katrina back in 2005. Chaos. Dazed, shocked people. Disorientation. Suffering. Confusion. It will be a long time before they experience anything like a recovery. We spent the night in Gainsville and went on to Fort Lauderdale the next morning and returned the rental car. Just our suitcases and feet again. Walking to a nearby restaurant we saw exotic Egyptian ducks, iguanas, snapping turtles, mina birds and more.
Lima, Peru, October 22, 2018 –
It was so strange to start on the East Coast, fly directly south and end up on the West Coast. We arrived late in the evening and took a taxi (green taxi) straight to our apartment, about a 45 minute drive. It’s a beautiful, new and comfortable place. We are in the Barranco District. We are just one block away from the ocean. The organic grocery is one block away. The supermarket is another half block. A wonderful chiropractor is just a couple doors down the street. Lots of restaurants with vegetarian options. We have a great running trail, “El Malecon”, which goes for six miles along the cliff top along the ocean through gardens. Every Sunday there is a huge organic farmers market about 4 blocks up our street. They close off the street and about 80 vendors set up on each side of the road. It’s a great place to get all kinds of fruits and vegetables, cheese, bread, hummus, nuts and much more.
The apartment is new, has 24 hr. security. We are on the 4th of 5 floors. The kitchen has everything – oven, stove top, microwave, toaster oven, blender, frig, freezer, utensils – everything we need to start cooking right away. It has 1.5 bathrooms. A huge LCD Smart TV in the bedroom with cable and Netflix and YouTube. The high speed internet is solid.
Just before we left Jackson, Mississippi I was diagnosed with a type of skin cancer on my upper right arm. We found a doctor who could do the surgery to remove the cancer in Lima. He did a great job. The cost was $300. He gave us some free samples of sun block. When Charlotte used it, she got a pretty nasty skin rash. We tried several treatments but eventually had to go back to the doctor. On the second visit back, he gave Charlotte a steroid shot and she started to get better. He did not charge for the visits or the shot.
Do you know how many people liver here in Lima? Well you would have to add almost all the people from New York City to all the people who live in Chicago, and you would have it. There are 43 districts in Lima. Our district, Barranco, is known as the bohemian district. For many years it has been the home of many artists, musicians, actors, writers and other creatives. Just to the north of us along the Pacific coast is a district called Miraflores. Touristville. So many US-global corporations have a stake here. Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, KFC, Apple, Nike, and many more.
There are surfers out in the water every day – dozens of them. They have to wear wet suits as the water is part of a current that flows up from the south. The air temperature, however is really pleasant. I’d say 95% of the time the temperature is between 65 and 75. Usually the mornings are overcast and it gets pretty sunny in the afternoons. There has been absolutely no rain in the month and more that we’ve been here.
A few years ago, Peru voted to outlaw Monsanto and genetically modified foods are prohibited from being imported, grown or sold in Peru. We like that.
I’m writing this part on December 2nd and we’re about to start exploring more of Peru. This desert climate along the coast is just one of three main climates here. There is the climate in the Andes and beyond that, the Amazon rain forest.
Exploring More of Peru – Dec 3-12, 2018
We’ve been pretty disciplined resident/non-tourists here in Barranco for the past six weeks. Now for 9 days we will be tourists of sorts. We got on a Peru Hop bus and headed south out of Lima.
The coast of Peru, when its not urban, is a desert. Where a river reaches the sea, there is a splash of green. We stopped at a huge hacienda for the 1500’s. Earthquakes had destroyed it several times. Ownership changed and it kept being rebuilt. After the last earthquake ( I think in 2007) they discovered a network of secret tunnels used to move slaves around to avoid taxes. One section went over 10km to get slaves up from the coast. Slavery was outlawed in Peru in the same era as in the USA. We continued on and spent the night in a fishing village named Paracas.
In the morning we took a boat out into the Pacific to see the wildlife at the Ballestas Islands. Here we ‘, sea lions, over half a million other birds. Then it was out to a part of the desert that is a natural preserve. From there we went through the city of Ica to a natural oasis in the desert. We were scheduled to do a ‘buggy’ ride and sand boarding. Charlotte had no idea how wild the ‘buggy’ ride would be. It was a real death defying thrill all right, but it took a toll on Charlotte’s back (which she broke long ago from jumping off the top of a crashing bus in Nepal – another story). We had to request a special ‘gentle’ ride back for which we generously tipped a driver. Charlotte’s back would need a lot of extra tender care for the next several days. We did find a really great pizza place at this oasis called Wild Olive. Our hotel’s back yard was a sand dune hundreds of feet straight up.
The next day we headed out to a vineyard. This area is famous for growing the type of grapes used in Peru’s wonderful pisco. Our guide through the vineyard was an entertaining woman and when it came to sampling all the wines and piscos, she had interesting nick names for all of them which described what they were best used for. There was one that was good for making babies, divorcing, one too dangerous for women, etc. There was one pisco that tasted really good. It had chocolate, honey and other cool ingredients. We bought a nice sized bottle. We continued south toward Nazca and the Nazca Lines. We climbed an observation tower and viewed three of the over 300 figures and symbols drawn on the desert floor. Their origin and meaning is still a mystery. Most of them need to be seen from way on high. There are monkeys, whales and other depictions not found anywhere near the desert location. There is even an astronaut – go figure. We got back on the bus and it will be an all night ride to Arequipa. It was hard. They did play a movie “Mrs. Doubtfire” which made a couple hours go by. Charlotte was having bowel issues and ran into a gas station bano where we think she got a bunch of itchy bites on her lower legs.
We arrived in Arequipa very early in the morning and got dropped off at our hotel, Los Tambos just as they were opening up. Our room was ready and it was excellent with a balcony over the restricted traffic street on the 3rd floor. This hotel really treated us nice. We stayed two nights and they made us sack lunches as we were out early both mornings and missed the included breakfasts.
After the first ‘night’, we got up and were gone by 3:30am to Colca Canyon. It’s about a four hour trip each way from Arequipa. Arequipa, by the way, is the second largest city in Peru at nearly a million people. On the way, we covered some high altitude areas of nearly 5,000 meters (16,404 feet – which is a couple thousand feet above the summit of Pikes Peak). I kept a cocoa leaf tea bag in my cheek to help with altitude sickness and I did a bit better than Charlotte. We were hoping to see the giant condors but only saw a couple at a distance. The altitude was taking its toll on us and by the time we got back to Arequipa we were part zombie. Back in our room we contemplated going up to the roof to watch the sunset and came to the horrible realization that we had left our Nikon camera on the bus. We had the hotel call the tour company. They ad found the camera. We rushed over to their office and retrieved it.
Early the next morning we boarded a bus for the long uphill trip to Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca – the highest navigable lake in the world. When we got there we right away noticed that climbing stairs to our 3rd floor room winded us pretty badly. We rested just a short time and then got on a boat and went out on Lake Titicaca to visit some of the 2,200 people that live on manmade floating islands. I think they depend a lot on tourist money, but it was still interesting to learn how it takes 1.5 to 2 years to build one of these floating islands (and there are now a few hundred of them). It was also interesting to hear about how they maintained the islands and even sometimes moved them. They use mainly solar power. They can punch a hole into the island and fish through it. It was over 30 feet of water under the island we visited and some boys were fishing through such a hole and we saw them catch three or four small fish. After getting back to Puno we took a fairly long walk to a recommended restaurant, Colors and enjoyed the experience. Charlotte had two pisco sours and it was all she could do to make it home with a lot of help. Around midnight I noticed a light bulb blink out and went on sleeping. When we got up around 4:00am we realized there was no power in the entire building or anywhere on our street. My laptop had drained all the way down. We worried that the outage was citywide and would keep our 7:30am train from running. At about 6:00am we learned the outage just affected our block and we were able to get a taxi to the train station and get on the train.
It turns out that the train from Puno to Cusco is much more than basic transportation (and it is reflected in the cost). They served excellent food (most of it included in the price) and they had really good entertainment. With a group of musicians, a dancer, a fashion show and a demonstration of how to make pisco sours. The seating was in very comfortable living room style arm chairs. The trip is ten and a half hours. Although it was the beginning of the rainy season and it had rained heavily in Puno a week earlier, we had a sunny day in Puno as well as beautiful weather on the whole train ride. We went through one city along the way that had over a mile long market that was right up against the train on both sides. About half way through the day, you reach the highest altitude point and then as the altitude drops everything gets greener and more populated. Not being able to charge our phones with the power out the previous night meant that our devices died on us before we got to Cusco.
When we arrived in Cusco, we organized sharing a taxi with a fellow from Amsterdam. He did most of the negotiation but really screwed it up. He told us that it would cost us all a total of 12 soles (about $4). He gave us 6 soles and got out at his son’s apartment. When we arrived at our hotel, the driver wanted 24 soles from us. We had quite a discussion about it, but he insisted and we paid him about what he asked for. (It was too much.)
Our hotel, the Royal Inka I, was very near the city center. Cusco is about a thousand year old city by some accounts, but that just marks the beginning of the Inca occupation. We explored just a few blocks, had a small dinner at the Museum Cafe and tried getting some sleep as it would be another early morning start tomorrow.
Still well before sunrise, we waited in the hotel lobby and got picked up by a van of people and headed up the mountains out of the Cusco valley. It gradually got lighter and after about two hours of driving we reached a village where we got on a train. On the train we sat with a couple from Pittsburg that we had met earlier on the train to Cusco. We had a great time exchanging stories and talking progressive politics. They got off several miles before the end of the line as they were going to be hiking to Machu Picchu. When we got to the end of the train line, we had a short wait in the village at the base of the mountain that Machu Picchu is on. Then we got on a bus that wove back and forth and climbed the mountain to Machu Picchu. It’s a dirt road and pretty much straight up. These busses run about every 5 minutes during the peak visiting season.
We had quite a wait at the top of the mountain and the entrance to Machu Picchu as our guide was not there. When he did finally arrive, he just handed us off to another guide and then we were on our way. We climbed a lot of steep stone steps and got pretty winded, but it was quite a site (and sight) to see.
A little historical perspective: The Incas controlled almost all of South America as the 16th century started. Cusco was it’s governing city. Machu Picchu was started maybe around 1490. People from Cusco came out to build it. The building process went on for about 40 years. It was a planned city for about 2-3,000 people. It had area set aside for agriculture and was designed to be a very self sustaining place. At about forty years into this building process, events outside of Machu Picchu stopped its construction. The polygamous ruler of the Incas had a son in Cusco and another by a different wife in Quito, Ecuador. He was getting older and named his son in Cusco as the heir to the empire. This did not go over well with his wife in Quito and eventually a compromise was reached where the northern part of the empire was given to the Quito son. The compromise did not last long and the wife from Quito soon wanted her son to control the entire empire and a war ensued. All the workers in Machu Picchu left to fight in the war. Many died. With this war still going on, the Spanish arrive in Cusco in 1533 and brought their agenda of exterminating the native population. Those that were not killed, fled to the Amazon jungle.
The Spanish never found Machu Picchu and the jungle grew over it. It was accidentally found again in 1911. It was about 80 percent intact and 20 percent has been restored. The site was opened to the public about 70 years ago. Last year it had nearly 1.5 million visitors. We spent a couple hours walking and climbing all over the site. We sat for a while and just contemplated the almost incomprehensible effort that building this city entailed.
Later in the afternoon we retraced our route to make it back to Cusco. The next morning we flew back to Lima and returned to our apartment in Barranco.
January 31, 2019
We left Peru about January 15 on a flight to Ft. Lauderdale. The US was deep into a government shutdown and airport wait times were pretty horrendous. We got a flight out of Miami to Madrid, Spain the next day and from there a flight to Malaga and a ride in a van to Torremolinos.
The place we stayed last year, Los Banjondillos, was still under reconstruction. There was some code violation that made them make the swimming pool a little deeper, so they had to redo that whole area and took the opportunity to close off that side of the apartments to repaint and generally refurbish that area. They will still be at it for it looks like at least another month, so we are in the top floor of the north wing until we can move to where we really want to be, on the top floor of the south wing, facing north.
So we have comfortably settled in. Compared to the summer months, Torremolinos is a very laid back place in the winter months. Many of the beach bars/restaurants are either closed or have reduced hours. The promenade is less crowded and the beaches are pretty much deserted.
The weather is different too. In the summer, the mornings and evenings were the most comfortable times to be out, with mid-day a little bit on the toasty side. In the winter, the days are much shorter and the mornings and evening can be a bit chilly, while the mid-day is just about right (Our latitude is about the same as southern Missouri). So at night we can hit the high 40’s and the afternoon might reach 70.
We’ve renewed several friendships. Charlotte has taken up where she left off, saying Buenos Dias! to everyone we pass while running along the beach promenade. Last year we would run 10 minutes one direction, rest and run back and the next day go 10 minutes the other direction, rest, and run back. I guess we’ve gotten some more endurance because now we go 30 minutes, rest and walk back.
We’re continuing most of our exercise, pilates, yoga routine every morning. We still do all our grocery shopping and cook most of our meals. We’ve found some new closer sources for some of the hard to find items like tamari and nutritional yeast.
This week we figured out the bus system and took a trip south to Marbella – a little over an hour. They have a good myofacial massage person there that Charlotte got an appointment with. There was a nice vegetarian restaurant and organic market right next to where Charlotte had her appointment.
We keep working on our Spanish. We are both averaging about a thousand word and phrase exercises every day. We are already noticing how much better we can communicate in restaurants. We catch more words in passing conversations and even newspaper and television stories are starting to make some sense.
We have heard about some amazing caves about an hour up the coast past Malaga. I’ll be sure to let you know all about it, if we make it there.
Budget wise, we didn’t do very well in our first year out in this global citizen experiment. We overspent our budget by over $10,000. Not sustainable at all. But now the first month of this new year we stayed within our budget by nearly $700. That works. Maybe we are catching on to what it takes. I hope so. Later. (or as they say, “hasta luego”).
February 24, 2019
Well, they got the south wing of the apartments ready faster than we thought they could and we have moved. We are now on the top (9th) floor looking north up the coast and we are in the end closest to the ocean. As I type this evening, I’m listening to the roar of the waves rolling in. I’ve started calling it our ‘million dollar view’. Yet all things considered we are living here (food included) for under $75 a day.
The pool just got filled with water, but we’ve heard they won’t be heating it until next year. We’ll see.
I can’t see where I’ve mentioned it earlier, but we’ve also been studying English to prepare for possibly teaching English as a second language. Right now I’m slogging through English grammar. I didn’t like it 50 years ago and nothing much has changed regarding that. (A nice compound sentence there.)
Tomorrow morning we head out to explore some caves.
May 5, 2019
Soon after that last entry, I got very busy running tax returns through tax software. I’ve worked with the same CPA doing this work now for over twenty years and we’ve become quite a team. Last year we converted to a much less paper dependent system where I get an email of the penciled in tax forms and raw data documents and I use that information to complete the tax return in the software, check it for errors, turn the federal and state tax returns into pdf files and email them back to the CPA office in the USA.
We continued to explore our area on foot. Regularly running 30 minutes along the beach, switching directions each day, has us staying in touch with a big swatch of real estate with lots of shops, restaurants and interesting people.
We met one English fellow who custom designs and then sells t-shirts (and paintings) mostly of well known musicians. We asked him if he could make us Bernie Sanders t-shirts and he was able to design and produce some really nice ones for us.
We found a nice apartment to rent in Tangier, Morocco through Airbnb and organized a trip there by taking a bus to Tarifa, Spain and then a ferry to Tangier. One of our cheapest visa country changing travels yet. (Less than $100 each).
We were met by our host, Mohammed at the ferry terminal and he drove us and our luggage to our apartment building. (We had thinned down our luggage again and left some at Bajondillo Apartments for storage as we planned to return there in mid October.) We are living on the sixth floor of a quite new 9 story building. From the roof we can see nearly the entire city.
We have a routine of running to the beach, which takes about 10 minutes, and then running east along the extremely wide beach promenade for another 10 minutes, then turn around and run back along the beach. After that we walk, sometimes stopping at a grocery store or a small sidewalk cafe for some chocolat chaud (French for hot chocolate).
Now in addition to our daily Spanish studies we have added French and Arabic. We’ve got a little language school going here. It happens every day now that we use all four languages.
There is so much of the city we have not yet explored. The old part of the city, inside the Medina, is a wild maze and we have not tackled that yet. There is a big market above the Medina that we will be exploring shortly.
We’ve shopped maybe a dozen grocery stores of all types and have our favorites for different items. Some things are hard to find, like tamari and nutritional yeast. The food is inexpensive, particularly the unprocessed foods. The Moroccan restaurants are also very reasonable. At local restaurants we can get enough good vegetarian food for two meals for under $10.
There are very few street traffic lights here. Some roundabouts, but pedestrian crossings are marked by stripes on the pavement and you just have to work it out with approaching traffic if they are going to stop for you when you cross in front of them. So far so good.
So today is Cinco de Mayo, which is celebrated more in the USA than in Mexico. Lots of guacamole and Mexican beer going down today. But today in the Muslim world (1.8 billion people) it is the beginning of Ramadan. A lunar month of daytime fasting and people turning their attention to personal improvement by being more generous and kind. It will be interesting to experience. The fasting is not only food, it includes no liquids – not even water. It starts at sunrise and continues each day until sunset. Hope to let you know how this works out.
July 10, 2019
We have just a few days remaining in Tangier, Morocco before we jet off to Pomorie, Bulgaria on the Black Sea.
I wanted to let you know how Ramadan worked out. I was able to do the fasting without a break for the full moon cycle (around 28-30 days). The hardest part was late in the afternoon thirst. I keep up the morning jogging of several miles and I think that set me up for getting pretty thirsty late in the day. Didn’t lose any weight. Read some Koran. There is a nice 2-3 day celebration after the end of Ramadan.
At the beginning of July we hired a driver and car and took a day trip to the Blue City – Chefchaouen. We got to see some of the Rif mountains on the way. The city itself is on a mountainside and a good part of the city feels like being inside a work of art. On the way back we visited villages along the Mediterranean coast of Morocco and got a sense for what life outside of Tangier might be like.
August 14, 2019 – Pomorie, Bulgaria
Well, Charlotte just got some kind of ‘bug’ and started taking antibiotics today, so she asked me to tell about Bulgaria. From WWII until the 1980’s Bulgaria was under Communist rule and people our age remember it well. A lot of property and land has been returned to previous owners and people do not fear their government like they did under the Communists.
We live in a community named Pomorie. It’s on a little piece of land jutting out into the Black Sea about 20 kilometers north of a larger city, Burgas. Burgas has an international airport. It’s a $2 buck bus ride to get there. Pomorie is about 15,000 in the winter (About the size of Elk River, Minnesota where I grew up), but in the summer the population swells to over 50,000. A lot of people from the interior of Bulgaria and its large capital city, Sofia, are here as well as people from all over central and eastern Europe as well as Russia.
We were told it would be hard to find people who speak English, but enough people know English that we are having no problems. Most signs and menus are in the Cyrillic alphabet which presents a challenge. We get up early and go for a 30-minute jog along the sea promenade that goes on for miles. We great people in Bulgarian and as they get to know us, we have so many people smiling and greeting us back and have made some good friends that way.
We live on the top floor of a 5-story small apartment. We have a huge deck/patio where we can see the sea just a couple blocks away. It has a hammock which is great for star gazing at night. It has a partial cloth ceiling and nice breezes so we often eat out there too. Our Airbnb hosts are very nice and helpful with everything we have needed.
There are a lot of people out in the evening. There are small restaurants all over the place and there are several streets that are pedestrian only. The streets along the sea feel a bit like a state fair each evening with vendors selling all kinds of food and fun things for kids to do. There is often fireworks or bands playing in the center of Pomorie. One community band played a lot of polka and marches. Where Pomorie is very much a family centered place, up the beach (the opposite direction of Burgas) there is Sunny Beach which is a much younger and wilder scene maybe emulating some place more like Ft. Lauderdale.
The cost of living here is low. We get all our fruits and vegetables from the local farmers market just a couple blocks away. Their tomatoes blow our mind. And two steps away, a local vineyard has a store with huge silver tanks of their wine. They open the spigot and let you sample. A dinner for two can vary from $10 to $30. Our apartment is about $1,000 a month with high speed internet and cable TV included, but you could easily find a smaller place without the awesome view for about half that price.
Charlotte has discovered the sisterhood of red-haired women. I’ve never seen so many shades of red – young and old. They look like they are having a lot of fun with it too.
We are at a latitude that is about the same as somewhere between Chicago and Milwaukee. The Black Sea though is much, much warmer than Lake Michigan. By 9:00 am there are thousands of people on the beach and in the water. There is a lake here just back from the sea that has healing mud that has been used for centuries to help with aching joints and you see people once in a while covered in that mud.
Most people probably don’t know, but there are some powerful geo locations in Bulgaria and Romania. Without really consciously pursuing earth ley lines, we have plunked ourselves down at these power points all over the planet. Hopefully we’ll get to visit the seven sacred lakes area in the next couple months.
These past couple years while we’ve been living in Asia, South America, Europe and Africa I have to let y’all know that the people of the world are watching and their view of America (the USA) has changed. The most common attitude we’ve encountered has been, “What the hell is going on there?” “How could you have let someone like Trump get elected?” Charlotte and I have been making long out-of-country trips for nearly thirty years now and the world is really hurting now for lack of moral leadership. I think people sense that humanity has such greater potential – and will probably have to actualize that potential to deal with the threat of our warming planet – but millions, maybe billions, of people are looking for the leadership that they can trust. Fragile times. You just never know, it might be something any one of us does or doesn’t do that will have huge consequences as things unfold. We’re still meditating every morning and wishing well to everyone.
September 18, 2019 – Bulgaria
Less than a month before we head onward to Greece for a month. The season is changing here. Universities started a couple weeks ago and all the other schools started Monday. Almost all the tourist have gone and we are here with just the locals or ‘year-rounders’. People are getting their winter supplies of firewood delivered and chopped up. Most restaurants, tourist attractions, gift shops and beach businesses have closed up. So much quieter, no fireworks in the evenings.
We really enjoy the connections we’ve made here. So many people we’ve met through greeting them every day on our morning runs and walks.
We have made a couple day trips. One was to the ancient town of Nessebar just to the north of us. We spent the day in the old part of the city with many buildings dating back to the fifteenth century.
The other trip was to an ancient site just on the outskirts of Pomorie. It is a Thracian Tomb (they think). Built under a huge mound with a brick lined long entry tunnel and the most interesting center. It features a hollow column that mushrooms out at the top to become the ceiling – yet the center is hollow all the way to the top of the mound. We got there early and had the place to ourselves. You can listen to our recording.
October 14, 2019 – Bulgaria
We are about to head to Sofia, the capitol of Bulgaria and then fly to Greece. Since my last post, we had another day trip south to Sozopol an old city on the Black Sea. We also discovered the Pomorie Monastery and its healing waters. We’ve really enjoyed our spacious apartment and the large deck on the top of the building that lets us see the black sea and at night all the stars and planets.
One of the joys of our new lifestyle is greeting dozens and sometimes hundreds of people each morning when jogging and walking. After three months we are able to really change the atmosphere in those places we frequent. We leave now in just 30 minutes, see you in Greece!
November 13, 2019 – Paralios Astros, Greece
We’ve been in Greece now for almost a month. We leave for Spain in three days. We spent our first few days in Athens and walked a lot, seeing all the ancient sites. Most impressed with the Acropolis with the Parthenon at the very top. I had no idea it towered above Athens like it does and in ancient times it was a much smaller place with a wall around it and the Acropolis in the center. Athens is huge. Too much to see in a couple days. Too busy and loud to want to stay very long.
So we took a bus a couple hours south to this small place on the Peloponnese – a huge part of Greece (almost an island). Our village on the Aegean Sea is only about a thousand people and we live on the very southern edge of town, but the whole town is easily walkable. In the summer it is a quite popular tourist place for people from the interior of Greece, but now it is quiet.
It is amazing that the water is still warm enough to swim – we’ve been in a few times and we see others swimming nearly every day. The day time temperatures are in the mid 70’s usually and we’ve had a lot of sunny days. We have a nice second floor balcony-deck where we often eat at a table there. Looking north up the street we see a tall hill with the ruins of what they call the castle – a nearly thousand year old structure. Looking south, there are lots of olive trees and the sea with mountains in the background.
Right away we met our apartment neighbor, George, who befriended us and took us in his car to see the area – a beach to the north, a wildlife preserve to the south, a two thousand five hundred year old olive tree, a very old monastery in the mountains and a nice outdoor cafe in a mountain village. He has been giving us local walnuts and chestnuts as well as limes, olives and olive oil. He also made us a wonderful meal.
Our hosts here, Dimistris and his mother, Ioanna, have also been great. Their apartment has everything we need and they took us on a field trip to Nafplion, modern Greece’s first capitol. We had a delightful day exploring that historic city.
Just a few days ago, we took the bus to visit them where they live in Tripoli about an hour away up in the mountains. Dimistis picked us up at the bus station and took us further up into the pine forests to a ski resort. No snow up there yet, but maybe in a month. We next went to an enchanted place where, when there is a lot of water, a river flows into the base of a mountain. We spent an hour or so exploring the extensive ancient caves under this mountain. Then we went to see a very unusual church made by an architect – civil engineer in the 1970’s. Then back to Tripoli for a walking tour of the city and just a fabulous meal prepared by Ioanna. She also gave us plenty to take home with us so we had more than one meal from her.
We’ve enjoyed shopping at our local grocery stores here and the jogging route takes us on level ground all the way through the village, out around the fishing port and back. We’ve also hiked up to the ‘castle’ and had the place to ourselves one morning. Another excursion took us along a small footpath to the solar lighthouse that replaced the hundred year old brick and mortar one along our jogging route.
Like everywhere we go, we enjoy greeting people. Here, ‘good morning’ is pronounced ‘kali mera’ and ‘hello’ is pronounced ‘ya sas’. Between the folks who speak some English and our phone translator program, we’ve been able to get by just fine. We also took the phone Mohammad gave us in Tangier and got it chipped out for Greece. It’s been great for texting and calling with Dimitris. As everywhere, we’ve found the people here to be just great.
Thanks to Dimitris giving us a good deal on renting here (and an offer to even better it if we were to come back for a longer say) we have found it nicely economical to live within our budget here. It is nice to make living arrangement outside of AirBnB as they add a big fee to rental stays.
So I guess the next entry will be from Spain. We’ve been studying Spanish every day – almost religiously – mostly with the app, Durolingo. I think we will notice much better proficiency than we had seven months ago when we were last there. On the way there we will pass through Barcelona (just the airport unfortunately), but we do hope to eventually see more of Spain.
January 9, 2020 – Torremolinos, Spain
Before we take off for Caye Caulker, Belize I wanted to report on our last two months here in Spain. This is the coldest time of year in Costa Del Sol with daily high temperatures probably averaging just under 70 degrees. Not quite as sunny as the summer months, but only a couple rainy days in two months. We had a top, 9th floor apartment with our balcony overlooking the beach and Malaga and the mountains to the north. We rang in Christmas and New Year here this year.
We continue to study Spanish and can get by with some basic conversations and we pick up more phrases and words when we hear Spanish spoken. Still enjoying meeting people from all over. Met some great people from Canada who run a bed and breakfast out in Western Canada. Met people from Poland, Belgium, England, France, Germany and Russia among others. Meeting people from all over Europe and beyond is one of the great pluses of Torremolinos.
One anxiety that stays with us is health care. We couldn’t afford it in the USA and we don’t quite qualify for ex-pat insurance. Travel insurance is even more expensive and some policies don’t insure anyone 70 and older. We’ve been living in countries with free medical care for their citizens and we can see how wonderful that is, but you have to be a resident to qualify. So far the medical people in every country have treated us when we needed it and really not charged us for it. Our biggest hope and we actually work for this every day, is that the USA adopt a single payer Medicare for All system that would solve our problem.
I’ve been volunteering with the Bernie Sanders campaign. I make phone calls for about an hour a day to help organize people going to early primary states to canvas door-to-door.
Although we are in such a different time zone, I am still able to watch any sporting events that I’m interested as they stream on my computer. We keep up with movies and such with Netflix.
Our doctors and chiropractors have finally convinced us to change our exercise routine from running to walking. We walk about five miles a day instead of jogging.
We’ve been away from the USA for fifteen months in a row so far, but we are planning to visit family and friends when the weather warms up in the spring. Skyping has been nice to be closer to family.
Our first year out of the USA we did not stay within our budget, but this last year we did pretty good. Barring any major expensive health events, we have found a way to live in the entire world on a very limited budget and I am happy for that.
Our longer range plans (after visiting family in the USA May-June-July) is to spend some time in South America. Uruguay for sure. Maybe a shorter time in Manaus, Brazil. Possibly some time on the Ecuador coast and maybe Argentina and/or Chile. Beyond that possibly South Africa and eventually back to Spain. But all that longer range stuff is still very flexible. We’ll see how it unfolds.
February 7, 2020
Typing in our living room, looking out toward the barrier reef maybe thirty yards from the water.
It looks like paradise, doesn’t it. In many ways it is. But our plans here have been disrupted by what you can’t see. No-see-ums. Millions of sand flies, much smaller than a spec of pepper have bitten us up. Charlotte mostly. We’ve tried literally a dozen recommended remedies for prevention as well as cure. We have found that nothing works great for everyone. For prevention, keeping your skin covered with a thick layer of oil, baby oil or some other type, does pretty good, but it feels kinda yucky. Benedryl, rubbing alcohol and aloe vera help with the itching.
It has been great to spend some time with our friends David and Jane Waugh who have a house here on Caye Caulker, they did a lot to help us adjust to living here. We had hoped to stay here until May, but we changed our minds and will just stay for the month we prepaid for. We are living in a more remote part of this small 3 mile by half mile island. That’s probably one of the factors making the sand fly problem worse.
This is our third time on Caye Caulker. The first time was nearly twenty years ago. The second time was about ten years ago. The place has of course changed a lot. Much more built up. But still the streets are sand, not paved. You still run into wild looking and very happy Rastafarians. No cars. Lots of ex-pats and tourists. English is spoken more than Spanish. The native people are very friendly to all. It is warm all year round.
So we have had to come up with an alternate plan. In a couple days we will fly directly to Panama City and live in a neighborhood along the Pacific Ocean called San Francisco. Of course we’ve never lived in Panama before, so we will see how it goes.
June 11, 2020 – Panama City, Panama
A month ago we were scheduled to fly to New Orleans and visit friends and family for a few months. Not happening. We arrived here in Panama City four months ago. We lived with a gay couple, one of the guys mother and a housekeeper and two other AirBnB guests. We were 19 floors up in the sky but just a block or two from a huge beautiful park with a rich variety of mature trees and birds and open space and an excellent walking trail.
There were also hundreds of amazing restaurants to check out with every kind of cuisine. We had explored much of the city and were about to take a trip along the Panama Canal to explore more of the country. The trip got cancelled as the pandemic shut down everything.
Eventually we moved to an apartment of our own in the same building to better do social distancing. Here we have been for three months now. All air traffic in and out has been cancelled. We have been in one of the most severe lockdowns on the planet. Women can go out for two hours on M-W-F, the hours determined by the last digit of their ID or passport. Men get to go out on T-Th. No alcohol sales. Only grocery stores and pharmacies and hospitals open. A few thousand people detained and fined for breaking the lockdown.
There is now a six step program for opening up the country. We are on Step 1 here in Panama province. Some rural provinces are on step 2.
We would rather be up in the mountains in a place called Boquete. Here in the city the daytime temperature is nearly 90 all year round. Up there the daytime temperature is in the mid 70’s all year round. They will not open up the provincial borders until Step 4.
Our mental health is doing pretty well. We meditate many hours every week. Watch a lot of Netfix.
I’ve also started virtual traveling with lots of family and friends and a few new friends. It’s called Earth Walk 2020. We started in Muir Woods under the redwood trees on May first and we are now walking our way across Canada over 1,300 miles into the journey. There is a narrator that tells our adventure every day. You can read all about it at a Facebook page called Earth Walk 2020. Even better, you can join the adventure by submitting some distance that you have walked to earthwalkcentral2020@gmail.com
November 3, 2020 – Boquete, Panama
The new COVID-19 cases in Panama stabilized last month and they opened up the province borders so we were able to escape Panama City and are now living in an AirBnB in Alto Boquete up in the mountains.
It’s cooler. In fact the temperatures are great. Year round it is basically 70’s in the day and 60’s in the night with little variation. We are in the thick of rainy season, which means it rains for at least an hour nearly every day, usually in the late afternoons.
It is about a three mile walk into the center of town and we walk it nearly every morning. If we do a lot of shopping, we take a taxi back home for $2. We’ve been picking up trash along the road nearly every day and have most of the route cleaned up now. To get more trash we need one of those trash grabbers that extend your reach about 3 or 4 feet. It’s not quite as safe to reach into tall weeds here. On our first walk back back from town we found a deadly coral snake waiting for us at our house. You can see a picture of it under the Panama, Boquete menu.
We spent the first couple weeks here getting familiar with the local resources; grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, dentists, farmers markets, mailers, hardware stores, chiropractors, coffee shops, transportation systems, micro breweries, etc. We are just now starting to venture into the rain forests. Our first trek, a few days ago, was called the Pipeline trek as it follows a water pipeline up into the mountains. We saw and heard howler monkeys, butterflies, lizards and lots of birds. The trees were amazing. Huge trees. Lots of air plants and orchids growing on them. One tree in particular was maybe 1,400 years old. We were very near the only active volcano in Panama and this tree had survived the past two eruptions, 550 and 800 years ago.
One day soon we plan to trek to the top of the volcano, the highest point in Panama and the only place where it is possible to see both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean.
Just before getting out of Panama City, Jacob and Juan Carlos (the guys we were renting from) took us on a trip to the Caribbean. We went to a small community on the coast where they were looking for property to buy as a get away. Sandy beaches and clear, calm warm water. Very nice.
We’re working on some visa issues these days. As a tourist you can stay in Panama for six months. Our visas expired in August. The government extended our visa stay through October 31. So now we have overstayed our visa. The penalty for overstaying the visa is $50 per person per month. We have hired a lawyer to help us with getting a pensionado visa which would allow us to stay here as long as we want – and give us huge discounts on travel, entertainment, medical, restaurants, etc. Our fingerprints have been taken and are being sent off to the FBI for a required background check, if we pass that hurdle, then we have to meet a financial requirement (guaranteed income of at least $1,250/month) then get a temporary pensionado visa and within six months a permanent pensionado visa. We will probably just stay put until this visa process reaches some kind of conclusion.
From here our travel plans are up in the air while the pandemic is still an issue. Uruguay is on our radar, but we will delay returning to the USA for visits for now. We’re hoping the election today will be a turning away from all the hate spewing from the USA. The world so needs to come together to address the climate emergency, poverty, and military conflict. Stay safe!
July 9, 2021 – Jackson, Mississippi
We stayed in Boquete until the end of June. We did a lot of walking. Picked up a lot of trash. Recycled a lot of aluminum. Met some really nice people.
With our pensionado visa application we eventually found that Panama rejected our FBI background check. They didn’t like my felony convictions for resisting the Vietnam War (even though Gerald Ford’s Clemency Program was suppose to have removed it from my record. Charlotte also had a 40 year old blemish. But as luck would have it, since we had been in Panama for a whole year at that point, we could substitute a background check from Panama and of course that was squeaky clean. So we took a trip back to Panama City and got our temporary pensionado visa. A few months later, after we had gotten both COVID shots (Pfizer) we went back to Panama City again and got our permanent pensionado visa.
With being fully vaccinated and having out permanent pensionado visa with a multiple entry visa, we are finally ready to try some more traveling. The trip to visit family that had gotten postponed for 16 months was ready to happen.
So on July 3rd, 2021 we flew first to Houston and then on to Jackson, Mississippi where we rented a car and went to stay with our friend Chris Carey while doing a lot of appointments and such and visiting friends. Next stop, the Lundolos in Booneville, Missouri
September 28, 2021 – Torremolinos, Spain
What a marathon road trip in the USA! So, yes, we did head out to Missouri from Jackson, Mississippi and went to very rural Cooper County south of Booneville and stayed a week or so with our son Tao, his wife Persephone, son Milo and new daughter, Addie. So peaceful, way out in the country where there is quiet nature for miles and miles. We spent an hour or so every morning walking their gravel country roads and only encountered one pickup truck. They have such a full plate, raising two young kids, two full time jobs, a big house and lots of acres. A wonderful environment in every way to raise a family.
From Missouri we went across the country all the way to Boston, Massachusetts. There we visited our daughter, Maya, her husband, Chris and their son, Jude. They live in a beautiful 4th floor apartment in Cambridge near Harvard and MIT with a porch overlooking the Boston skyline. They are surrounded by parks with playgrounds and we went with Milo to many of them. While there, one day, the Wilson’s (Jennifer and Jim), who use to live in Jackson, Mississippi came by in their Tesla and took us out to the home they are remodeling out on an island (almost) just north of Boston. Really cool place. We loved it.
So we stayed with Maya and family for almost a week and then headed across country again, this time to Chicago to see Charlotte’s sister, Sheila and her husband Gary. It was wonderful to see them. They cooked great meals, had fun games to play and took us to a surreal park in central Illinois.
So now it’s another jump. This time we’re headed to Bloomington, Minnesota. We’re going to log over 5,000 miles in this rental car. In Bloomington we are staying with my sister, Mary and her husband, Marv. We spend a lot of time visiting my mother who lives just a couple miles away. We have a nice gathering at Mary’s house with Rose’s two daughters and their families. Because of Covid-19, the family has really not been able to get together much for over a year. Mary’s house is right against a huge wildlife area and we enjoyed walking through there each morning. While in Minnesota we were able to organize a round of golf in Le Seuer with my brother-in-law Bix and nephew Kevin. Then Mary organized getting a bunch of us to a Minnesota Twins baseball game on Native American heritage night. We also got to spend a day out at the family cottage on Lake Koronis. In all a really fun visit.
It’s August now and we’ve been on the road in the USA for a month but it’s time to head back south. On the way we stopped in again and spent a night with Tao and Family in Missouri, but left the next morning to get all the way back to Jackson, Mississippi to turn in the rental car. And then catch a flight to Atlanta and from there to Panama City, Panama.
We spent a week in a Panama City hotel waiting for our appointment to get our pictures taken for our permanent cedula cards, which makes us officially residents of Panama. We got the pictures taken and our lawyers agreed to pick up the cards for us after they were ready a week later.
We wasted on time and hopped on a plane for Florida and then on to Lisbon, Portugal. This was our first time in Portugal and we stayed in a small hotel right near the water in the old part of town. Some parts of Lisbon are very old. The old Catholic cathedral was just two blocks behind us up the hill. They had a great jogging trail that ran along the river for several miles. We loved it. Lots of young people. Lots of good restaurants. Lots of art everywhere. We did spend one day and hopped a train for an old university city, Coimbra. One of the oldest universities in Europe. It was located on a very high hill. I think this is where the phrases, “High school” and “Higher Education” must have come from.
We only stayed in Portugal for a week and then got on a direct flight to Malaga, Spain. By late morning we were at our familiar apartment building, Bajondillo Apartments and even got the same room on the top floor corner that we had two years ago. That is where I am writing this entry. We will be here until November 21st when we hope to be able to go to Cyprus. We shall see.
December 22, 2021 – Paphos, Cyprus
We weren’t sure we could get here – with all the restrictions due to Covid-19. And it was a lot of extra work. But we did have a great time again in Spain. We took care of a lot of stray cats, helped with the rescue of a starving horse, fed a lot of birds, did a lot of walking and took on cleaning up a trashed out street outside the ‘tourist’ area.
We arrived in Cyprus about a month ago. We had rented our apartment for a month, but after living here a couple weeks we decided it was quite good and made arrangements to stay here the full three months. A little hiccup ensued as the place was rented for 10 days in January already. The people we are rent from helped us find another place for those 10 days and it turns out to be an apartment just one floor down from us. That makes it an easy move. The weather here is a bit warmer than it would be in Spain. We might get a few nights where it dips into the high 40’s Fahrenheit.
We’re in the western coastal city of Paphos. It’s the capital of the Greek side of the island (the other side is controlled by Turkey). The population is listed as 35,000 but it seems much larger than that. We are right next to the Mediterranean Sea with just a large grocery store below us before the beach. Just down the beach is a World Heritage Site called Tombs of the Kings. We’ve explored the tombs, which are about 2,000 years old.
The cost of living here is cheaper than Spain and even a bit cheaper than Panama. We’ve got access to all the food we like. Much of the produce is local. There is a health food store in the mall which is a bit over a mile away and in that same area is the largest grocery store, Alphamega where we can get tofu and Beyond Burgers and such.
Before I forget, I need to mention a big disaster we had going through customs on arrival. We had bought this lightweight nylon backpack to put our computer in, but didn’t realize that when some weight was put on it at the right angle, the zipper would unzip. It did unzip. The computer crashed to the ground. It was badly damaged. After a bit of work I was able to get it to boot up and after disabling the touch screen, it even functioned. Nevertheless, we don’t trust it to keep working, we we bought a replacement at a local computer store. It was a couple weeks of intense software reconstruction to get everything set up on the new computer but we’re pretty much there now.
There are a lot of stray cats here. We’ve been feeding a lot of them. We have become official volunteers at the large Animal Rescue Shelter a couple miles away and they’ve got us walking dogs as a starter activity. They have horses, mules, rabbits and tons of dogs and cats. There is a good vet clinic that works with them and spays and neuters.
There is also plenty of trash. We’ve picked up more than a dozen bags of trash already and it’s starting to make a difference in the area we are in. We have recycle bins for plastic, metals, tetra-packs, glass and batteries. We’ve connected up with an organization called Trash Busters and we call ourselves Trash Busters International. We’re having t-shirts made up.
At this point we are hoping to organize a trip up into the mountains to visit a monastery. We aren’t sure yet where we go from here, but we have to leave on February 20th or so.
May 21, 2022 Leaving Spain for America
Today we will begin our next journey. We have been at our favorite place in Spain. Torremolinos on the Costa Del Sol. But today we fly to Amsterdam. Tomorrow we fly to Panama City, Panama. After a couple days we will fly to David, Panama and then get a ride up into the mountains and settle in to a place we lived in about a year ago in Alto Boquete.
There I hope to do some volunteer work for Global Food Providers. We shall see. We’ll continue our trash pickup work. For the first time, we will be in Panama without a visa that makes us leave. We are now residents of Panama and can stay as long as we want. We shall see if that feels different.
August 1, 2022 – Coronado, Panama
We spend about six weeks in Alto Boquete up in the mountains. We volunteered with Basura Busters and picked up a lot of trash. We stayed at the same 2nd floor rental unit that we were in last year. Never did get to volunteer with Global Food Providers. Signed up for their volunteer program, but they never notified me of an opportunity like they said they would. It rained a lot the first couple weeks, then it dropped off to normal rainy season weather. We tried several therapies to lessen Charlottes chronic back pain. No miracle cures.
Charlotte started getting withdrawn symptoms from being away from the ocean, so we organized moving to Coronado on the Pacific coast. Just as we were about to move, an intense protest about fuel prices, food prices, medicine prices and government corruption erupted and the one main highway going east and west across Panama got blocked in over a dozen places making travel impossible. It went on for 18 days. At the end of that period, Panama has little produce which traditionally would come from our area. In Boquete we were totally out of gasoline, diesel, propane, chicken and several other items. The province to the north of us, along the Caribbean, had it a little worse because they got their electricity from diesel generators and running out of diesel meant no electricity. Our electricity was mainly hydro power.
When travel was finally possible, we were given a ride to Coronado by a couple we had met in Omar Park in Panama City over a year ago. Since then, they had come to the Boquete area, liked it, and bought a house up there. Our reservation at the AirBnB got messed with because we had to delay the start of the reservation due to the protests. To make it all work we had to stay in a couple other places for a few days before ours was again available.
The first place we stayed, for two days, was in a high rise condo right at the beach, Solarium Coronado Beach. Too expensive for us to stay there long. But the couple in the apartment next to us turned out to be soul mates with us. They were from Michigan and were in Panama for their second day. They had just sold everything back in Michigan (sound familiar), and were about to launch themselves into global traveling. We hit it off very well and loved exchanging experiences. In four and a half years out on the road, we had hardly met anyone like them, like ourselves, so it was very affirming to share.
January 31, 2023 Playa de Corona, Panama
Ok. Time to catch you up on the last 6 months. August was spent in Coronado, but not on the beach. We were in a little ‘casita’ without much of a view. We did have a back yard with a nice swimming pool and lots of buddha statues. We organized some community trash pickups on the beaches and roads.
We had researched the cost of getting dental care in various places and found Medellin, Colombia looked really good. So in September we flew from Panama City to Medellin, Colombia. Medellin is called the city of eternal spring. The climate in this huge Andean valley is wonderful. The temperature stays within about 10 degrees of 70 day and night all year round. It looks like a city built in a park, with a large variety of big trees and streams everywhere. 2.5 million people live in this valley. In the 1980’s Time Magazine declared this the most dangerous city in the world. At that time drug lords and their gangs, paramilitary units and government forces were fighting in the streets. A lot of people died. Today that is all in the past. We felt very safe.
We did organize all the dental work we needed through Smiles International. They did a great job and it was really affordable. It started with dental x-rays. 16 bitewing shots and one panorama x-ray. I priced these in the USA and it came to about $760. In Medellin we paid under $30! Charlotte had work done on a tooth than needed a new crown. We both had all the toxic mercury vapor emitting amalgam fillings removed and replaced with ceramic fillings. I think I had about 9 of these. It was difficult to do this work on wisdom teeth, so I had all my wisdom teeth pulled one day. That was rough.
Our friends from Michigan, Steve and Rezan, came to Colombia with their cat, Beauty, to visit for a couple weeks. Medellin has these gondolas that go up the mountainsides that are part of the public transportation system. You can ride the aboveground subway and the gondolas for under fifty cents. We took one trip like this way over the top of the mountains to the huge natural park, Parque Arvi. There were three other excursions we made. One was a walking tour of the downtown area which really gave us a good sense of how the city got to be the way it is. Another was a walk about in Comuna 13. This was the neighborhood where the most intense battles were fought in the 80’s. The main road to the coast left from this area, so who controlled this area, also controlled the trade and drug traffic. Our guide was a resident who lived through that time and lost a lot of friends. The third trip we took was to a huge semi-open market near downtown. We were taught about the local fruits. We went to a lot of different vendors and sampled various products. Maybe a dozen different fruits in all. Most of them were somewhat too sour for Charlottes taste, but there was one that she fell in love with and we’ve been eating a lot of it ever since. It is called Dragon Fruit. If you get a chance, give it a try.
We also had a visit from another couple who came from Boquete, Panama. They happened to rent an apartment in our same building. We enjoyed restaurants together, Charlotte and Debbie went to a hair appointment together and we did some shopping as well as a medical visit together.
Nearly everywhere one walked was uphill or downhill. We did the downhills, but generally called an Uber for the uphill walks. Ubers were cheap. Sometimes just a buck or two for a ride. We would definitely like to return to this city.
So as December neared, our 3 month visa was up and we flew back to Panama City, then David and got a ride back up to Boquete. We had an important piece of mail that didn’t get to Boquete from the US until after we had left last time, so we needed to pick that up. We stayed in a different place this time in Boquete. We were there for two weeks and lived almost two miles up into the mountains. There was a long winding road up to where we were staying. Walking, there was a shortcut, but it was a bit too steep for Charlotte so we ended up walking down into town the long way. It took about 45 minutes.
After Steve and Rezan left Colombia, the returned to a condo they had on the ocean about 15 minutes south of Coronado, Panama. They asked us if we would consider cat sitting for them while they toured some parts of South America and Mexico and we agreed to do it. So in mid-December we got a ride to their condo, got the cat care instructions and off went Steve and Rezan. So until February 9th, we are living with Beauty (the cat) in a beautiful condo, on the 11th floor, overlooking the ocean. They also left us their car so we can make our weekly trip to Coronado to stock up on food.
It was about this time that I started Bright Line Eating to lose some weight. I started out at 236 pounds. The four bright lines in this program are 1) no sugars of any kind except whole fruits. 2) No flour. Just whole grains. 3) Three meals a day and no snacking in-between. 4) Weighing quantities of proteins, grains, vegetables, fruits and fats. (To stay within the program limits of quantities.) As of this writing I have stayed with the program and today weigh 215. Down 21 pounds.
We have made some plans for continuing this journey. On February 14th we plan to fly to Spain to live for two months at our favorite place in Torremolinos. This will be like our fifth time there. We will stay there through tax season as the internet is good there. Then around April 20th we plan to fly to Tushkent, Uzbekistan where we will meet up with Tim and Tu who have been in Vietnam but who we met in Boquete, Panama. The visas in Uzbekistan are only good for 30 days, so we’ll be heading somewhere else in May but at this moment we don’t know where that will be.
July 21, Suva, Fiji
Well, we did fly to Spain. My mother, in Bloomington, Minnesota started having more serious health issues including a failing heart. In March, on St. Patrick’s day, she passed away. We flew to Minneapolis for the funeral. We got COVID somehow through that process and delayed our flight back to Spain long enough to not be infectious to others on the flight. Once back in Spain we did organize transportation and lodging to get to the Atlantic Coast to meet our friends Steve and Jeanne Rozman as they landed in Cadiz while on a cruise out of Portugal. We experienced the wild days of processions in the streets during holy week.
We ended up staying in Spain a little longer as being in Minnesota for over a week let us stay longer on our three month tourist visa. We had kept in touch with our friends, Tim and Tu as we had plans to travel together in Uzbekistan. They got to the ‘stans’ much earlier than we could get there and toured several of those countries and would be leaving that area headed for the Philippines by the time we arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
In mid-May we did fly to Uzbekistan via Istanbul. We stayed there for a month in an apartment near the national library building. We had really good places to walk in that part of the city, including a nice long walk along the river. We did take a day tour on the high speed train to see the sights in Samarkand. Uzbekistan only allows a one month visa, so in mid-June we were on the road again.
Our next stop was to be three months in Fiji. No direct flights out of Tashkent to any location that had flights to Fiji, so we organized travel to United Arab Emirates, then on to Singapore, then Melbourne, Australia and finally to Nadi, Fiji. A tiring two and a half days of travel. From Nadi we took a 3-4 hour bus ride to Suva and made it to our room at Tagimoucia House Hotel. It was very hard to find an affordable place in Fiji. We soon learned why Tagimoucia was in our price range. They were just starting to recover from being out of service from Covid and so many things were broken, rusted out, not available, etc. We worked with the management to make life manageable. The big deal was getting a way to cook our own meals. They had a shut down restaurant and we eventually worked out a way to use that as a place to cook after they repaired the broken sink, replaced the rusted out toaster, brought in a rice cooker and an electric skillet. They also unlocked the large refrigerator and cleaned it up for us.
We were a bit shocked at all the trash piled up along the streets. We eventually started cleaning it up in our neighborhood. We found the nearby Coca-Cola factory had a bottle and can buy back program, so we first collected all the cans and plastic bottles we could find and turned them in. We got about $7.00 in Fiji money. First time we had gotten paid for our recycling efforts. Then we went after the trash and got 20 bags of trash picked up between us and the main grocery store about a half mile away.
We got a bus pass and took the unique windowless busses (open air windows) into the downtown area of Suva (population 330,000) several times and checked out some restaurants, saw a couple movies and enjoyed long walks along the ocean as well as checked out some parks and the Fiji museum.
We did take a three day stay in a rainforest eco-lodge up in the forest. A lot of birds there.
While we experienced some record high temperatures in Tashkent, we were in Fiji for some record low temperatures. Fiji is in the southern hemisphere, so it is winter this time of year. On July 19th the old record low was 71 degrees. This year it hit 69.
So in a couple days we are headed back to Nadi where we have a place lined up on the beach. The really nice beaches are all out on the small islands around the main island. Fiji is a collection of 330 islands. About half of them inhabited.