We heard the loud whistle and the vibrations of the tracks before we saw it. From the platform you could see men holding on to the vertical bars with their heads and limbs hanging out the doorless openings. It pulled to a stop and we climbed the steps onto the crowded train, bumping into bodies with nowhere to go. A few stops later seats opened up and we watched Myanmar speed by. Grimy apartment buildings, tin room houses, vendors by the side of the road, construction, monks, women with baskets on their heads. We got off at the central station, the center of Yangon – the biggest city in Myanmar.

A tall, golden peak rose from a building. We walked towards the pagoda; sweat already pouring down our faces from the heat. The Sule Pagoda was round, and you could walk around the interior of it, with air-conditioned rooms to your right and golden statues of Buddha on the left.

Men and woman knelt in front of the statues and prayed. The rooms held more statues encased in glass. Although there were many people who had come to the pagoda to pray, people came and sat on the floors of the air-conditioned rooms, talking; or sat on the raised platforms in the pagoda talking on their phones.After the pagoda, we visited a synagogue. The synagogue is the only one in Myanmar, and there are only 20 Jews left – there used to be over 2,500.  It was located on a small street filled with paint shops, carts, and stores selling rope and buoys for boats.

In downtown Yangon, each street filled with stores was dedicated to a different thing; one street was filled with paper shops, another boat supplies. We watched men push sugar cane through a crank to make sugar cane juice, and people sat on little stools on the crowded sidewalks eating and talking to each other.

We spent the afternoon at the National Museum, where we saw the golden throne of the last king of Burma, and wax figures of men and woman of different ethnic groups. Our taxi driver guided us through the museum and then took us to a pagoda even bigger than the one we had seen that morning: Shwedagon Pagoda, the largest and most important pagoda in Myanmar. We could hear female voices singing in unison from an open building at one end of the pagoda, and we walked towards the noise. There were Monks everywhere, wearing maroon robes, and bells tinkled in the wind at the top of the pointed roofs. Women stood in front of raised statues of sitting Buddha and poured cups of water over the head and shoulders of the statue.The next two days we spent in Bagan, riding around on rented bikes.  Bagan is 400 miles to the north of Yangon, in the rice-growing heartland of Myanmar.   From the 9th to the 13th century Bagan was the capital of what would become Myanmar.

We visited an ancient monastery with paintings from the 10^th century. It was filled with small rooms all connected by openings in the walls, and rays of light streamed in from the small windows with metal bars. We also went to a current day monastery where we burnt our feet running barefoot over the hot sand to the buildings. A monk led us around an older building with wall paintings, similar to the ancient monastery. Monks were sleeping on wooden platforms with blankets under shaded areas, and we talked with one of them.

On our way to the monastery we’d passed a small shop with pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi – the leader of the democracy movement in Myanmar – and her father, General Aung San, who led the country to independence in the 1940s. We’d seen their pictures in some shops and restaurants. On our way back we stopped to talk with the people in the office. This was the local office of the National Democratic Party and they told us about their work organizing meetings and opening offices in small villages. The country has elections in the fall, but it is still not decided whether Aung San Suu Kyi will be able to run for President. In the past, the military put her under house arrest for 15 years and tried to get her to leave the country by separating her from her children. The next day, biking to the river gave us a glimpse of the thousands of pagodas scattered across Bagan. The river was packed with wooden canoes taking tourists for rides, woman carrying baskets of small stones on their heads – bringing the baskets off of a boat onto shore. Tiny shops were set up randomly on the dusty open area bordering the water, and we stopped for a cold drink.

Later that afternoon, a driver from our hotel gave us a tour of the biggest and most interesting pagodas in the area (there are over 10,000) and we watched the sunset at – not surprisingly – the “sunset pagoda.” A beautiful way to end our three days in Yangon and Bagan.

-Natalia

The next morning, we started another day of kayaking. In the middle of the day, we saw a dolphin in the distance. For a break, we chose a rocky indentation to stop at. Mommy, Daddy and I went snorkeling, while Natalia stayed behind with the kayaks. Toward the end of the day, we watched dolphins playing in the distance—they somehow managed to continually stay ahead of us.

We headed to a homestay a mile off of Gam. When we neared shore, there were buildings, but no one was there. We had seen a village not far from where we were, so we decided to get back in our kayaks and check it out. When we reached it, a boy of about six ran up the docks to greet us and helped us pull our boat onto the beach. We talked to the villagers, and with some language difficulty were able to find out that the owner of the homestay had gone on a trip to the market and would be arriving shortly. So we got back on our kayaks and paddled back to the homestay.The boy, Rio, was there before we were. Again he helped us, stopping every once and a while to catch a ghost crab. While we waited for the owner of the homestay to arrive, Rio franticly chased away two nearby dogs. When the owner got back, the family (who Rio, as it turned out, was part of) immediately started getting our rooms ready and cooking dinner. We watched an amazing sunset and then went to sleep.

We didn’t kayak the next day. Instead we went snorkeling and saw the most colorful coral that we’d seen in Raja Ampat. Later in the day, we took a visit to the village store. It was small but packed with packaged goods, mostly food. We brought some very good cookies, and then went on to explore the village. A dog started following us (this was not the first, nor the last, time this happened). We were circling back around to the homestay when we came upon some puppies. Natalia played with them for a couple minutes and then we went back to our rooms. For dinner we had green pancakes and a debate on why they were green.

The next day, Mommy and Daddy went to visit the local church, while Natalia and I stayed home. There were about 40-50 people in church that day, with a lot of children, and the service involved quiet hymns and a lot of speaking by a pastor, an older man in a suit.         After about 45 minutes the pastor came down from the lectern in front of the church, and motioned to the man who had walked my parents into the church to escort them out, while everyone else stayed in their seats.

In the meantime, it started pouring and so we had to delay kayaking. When it finally stopped raining, we went though a crossing and then tried to take a passage though mangroves. However, it was extremely shallow because of the new moon. After navigating though coral that was sticking out of the water (we got stuck a few times) we realized that we couldn’t get though when the current started pushing us back. However, you could see the exquisite coral very closely though the crystal clear water. We turned around and headed along the coastline, just above the coral.When we finally finished our journey around Gam Island, the French man who we had met a week earlier on Kri Island and another French man greeted us. After a good night’s sleep, and cake for breakfast, we headed out on our kayaks. Unfortunately, it started raining, so we had to go back to shore and wait for a couple of hours. Finally, after a long day of kayaking, we arrived back where we had started. We took the same route out of one of the most remote places in the world.

Here is some information that will let you learn more about Raja Ampat in West Papua, Indonesia. To view some of the incredible coral and sealife we saw while snorkeling, check out The Raja Ampat Through the Lens Of:, a gorgeous book about underwater life. We were so impressed by local efforts to preserve the coral reef. You can learn more about conservation efforts by watching Guardians of Raja Ampat, a beautiful hour-long video. One of the things that attracted us to Raja Ampat is the effort by NGOs to create locally controlled sustainable tourism based on accommodations with long-time residents rather than large corporate resorts. There is more information about this project of developing locally run homestays at www.stayrajampat.com.  You can view a PowerPoint Isaiah made of some of the words we’ve been learning in the Indonesian language.

-Isaiah

After our first day paddling we arrived at a terrific homestay (called Kordiris) in the evening. Maria, a nice woman who Daddy had texted with when he was planning the trip, worked there. The food was great—especially the breakfast cake—and we met many interesting people. There was a man who came all the way from Libya who worked as a traumatic injury doctor and had come to Raja Ampat for the amazing diving. He had previously gone mountain biking in Bali. We learn many fascinating things about Libya from him. For example, he said that before the unrest most of his cases involved car accidents, but afterwards they were caused by accidental gunshot wounds. We also met a family from Singapore, who described their city as a “concrete jungle.”

There was great snorkeling, although quite a distance out. There was a vast array of coral and lots of beautiful fish. On the second day, Mommy and Daddy went out kayaking to see the mangroves, while we collected shells and watched hermit crabs on the beach.

On the way to the third homestay, after a beautiful paddle along the coast, we stopped at a local Papuan village. A woman with red teeth from chewing betel showed us around. The village was centered on a school and a church, and we visited a small store before continuing on. The homestay that we reached at the end of the day had three dogs, one of which was missing a hind leg, and a cat (the only one we saw on the entire trip). At one point a cuscus (nycticebus coucang, a small monkey-like animal) climbed on to the front of the dining room. It glared at us before venturing across the pole in the top of the dining hall. One man tried unsuccessfully to get it down. After a while it went away.

After that, Natalia, Mommy, and Daddy decided to go snorkeling. Daddy had seen others take a shortcut though the mangroves, so they headed in that direction. The long exposed roots hindered their progress, and stepping backwards to avoid tripping over the flippers was difficult. After a while moving like this through the shallow water and holding hands, Mommy, Daddy and Natalia finally made it into the open area. A few people were snorkeling in a sandy area—they were looking for nudibranch fish, after which the homestay had been named. Swimming further out to the exquisite reef you could see colorful fish amid the rich and varied coral.

When we got back, Daddy and Mommy went for a walk through the woods to the nearby village. They came upon a church, many houses, and finally a graveyard. The burial plots had roofs built over them, though no walls. Behind the palm trees, the sun was setting in glorious shades of pink, and as they walked back and darkness descended they stopped to talk to a few people who knew words of English and interact with children playing outside. When they returned to the homestay, they chatted with an Australian couple that was sitting by the water watching the sunset. The man was a sailor who worked a month on, and then had a month off, throughout the year. The woman designed jewelry, which was made in Bali. They had previously spent over a year living in Bali.

The dogs fought with each other all night, and a spider wove a web over Mommy and Natalia’s bed, but we still managed to get good night’s sleep. In the morning we tried traditional Papuan food (one of which tasted like a macaroon), which we had never seen before. Nevertheless, it was very good. We set out on our kayaks, and after a couple hours, we came upon beautiful Beser Bay. The owner of the homestay we were headed toward, Daniel, came by on his boat, accompanied by his family. He warned us not to snorkel in the Bay because there were crocodiles, and then proceeded to throw coconuts into the water for us to eat. When he learned we had no knife, he brought his boat around and scooped them back up.

In certain parts of the bay there were ladders to climb from the water onto small hilly islands, and we stopped at one to see where it went. It turned out to go nowhere in particular, although we saw a hut some distance up. But we did enjoy the beautiful views. Coming up and down the ladder was no easy task, but we managed.

We were exhausted when we reached the homestay. It was a far cry from the previous homestays we had stayed in, as it was entirely over the water. It had two rooms, although they were building more, and the rest was occupied solely by a family of three. In Isaiah and Daddy’s room, there was a table with pitchers of water and rice, plus silverware and napkins. Another table had books and magazines that visitors had left there. The bathroom was simply a hole in the wood floor, surrounded by three walls. Instead of eating in a dining room, they brought the food to our rooms. Natalia played with the little girl, whose name was Marsinche. Daniel had a big English-Indonesian (and vice versa) dictionary, which he was using to learn English. Since we had a notepad where we were keeping track of any Indonesian words we had learned (in a addition to an Indonesian phrasebook), we took the liberty to write down several pages of words from Daniel’s dictionary. Indonesian happens to be one of, if not the, simplest languages in the world. It is written in Latin script and has no tenses, plurals, or articles (the, an, a). However, we were not in Indonesia long enough to learn more than a few words.

The next morning, after a snorkel and a Papuan breakfast of fish, we asked Daniel to take us part of the way to our next destination on his longboat. The boat had two horizontal poles stretched out on ether side that rocked back and forth and balanced the boat when it was in the water. We stopped halfway and kayaked the rest. We started by crossing a bay, and then went though a magnificent small winding passage between that and another bay. Along the way, we were lucky enough to see a turtle. We had to fight the current (which sent us turning in circles) to make it through the passage. As we emerged, stunning rock islands came into view.The next homestay was similar, although better developed. Also perched over the water, it was closer to land, with an actual toilet, a shower (an outdoor faucet that poured cold fresh spring water on your head), and a dining room. The owner, a middle-aged man who was managing the homestay by himself, seem to put a lot of effort into making the place nice. In our rooms, there was a sign where he had written English words (some misspelled) and their Indonesian meanings. We had to drink boiled water, which didn’t taste very good.

That evening after dinner, we sat out on the dock and watched the gorgeous colors over the water at sunset and talked about all the interesting places there were to live and visit in the world.

-Isaiah

After a three hour flight on a small airplane (but far from being the smallest one we’ve been on), we arrived at the Sorong airport, a room that was empty except for a baggage claim, bathrooms, an immigration office, and, of course, people. On the east side there were warnings about Ebola and MERS. In the middle of the Ebola sign, it told people not to eat bats or “bush meat.” Then we got a taxi across the city to a ferry. Like in Bali, many people in Sorong rode motorbikes, but, unlike in Bali, some people walked, and many of them used umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. There were far fewer people than you’d expect in a city.

Then we boarded the ferry.     It wasn’t too different from most other ferries we’ve been on. In the row in front of us, there was a Belgian man who owned a traditional homestay with his Papuan wife, and a German couple who worked for the government but got a year off to travel every three years. Mommy joined them in a vibrant conversation about Papua. Then the Belgian man got out his computer and showed us pictures of his homestay. When we got off the ferry, every man was smoking. The woman didn’t smoke, at least not in public. Papua had a much worse smoking problem than Bali did.

We had to check into the tourist information center, which was, oddly, much bigger than the airport. It had two large rooms, both of which were mostly empty. At the back there were stands with snacks. We brought Oreos and some peanut crackers. Several employees stood around with nothing to do. Two of them were playing a game of chess.

We proceeded to a motorboat that would take us to our first homestay. The German couple from the ferry joined us. Our first stop was a traditional Papuan market, were the owners of the homestays got their food. The market consisted of a couple of tables with food on them. We came in the afternoon, so there wasn’t that much food left, but there still were bananas, cassava, and several other things. People from the surrounding areas also came to buy things. Many had dogs, which were not leashed, but stayed, in the general vicinity of them. We were told that dogs are native to Papua. We did not buy anything because you had to get the entire portion of food, and we only needed so many bananas. However, the people steering our boat got some food from the market.

After dropping the Germans off and watching an amazing sunset, we got to our first homestay after dark. It had dogs, two of which where very nice and slept in our rooms. The first three homestays we stayed at weren’t actually homestays, but rooms made out of coconut trees (indeed, everything was made out of coconut trees) that were for sleeping, plus a place for eating. The other homestays were built on or near the water, had fewer rooms, and were more like actual homestays, being shared with the owners. All of them had mosquito nets, although we saw few mosquitoes. We bought a hammock with us and set it up when we could. The food was mostly fish and starches, with very few fruits or vegetables. Eggs (omelets, boiled, fried) were common, but, oddly, chicken was rare. Every meal had rice.

We were renting the kayaks from kayaks4conservation, an NGO (non governmental organization, of which Papua has many) that made kayaks and made them accessible to visitors. It was located on the island we were staying on, Kri, and so, on our first day, we set out on foot to get our kayaks. One of the dogs from the homestay followed us. Unfortunately, it was Saturday, their day off (we had assumed their day off would be Sunday, because most Papuans are Protestant Christians). So we had to wait until the next day to get our kayaks. In the meantime we met a nice French man who had been living in Germany. He showed us a documentary on conservation in Raja Ampat. The next day only Mommy and Daddy went to get the kayaks, and on their way they saw a giant lizard. The kayaks were very good quality. Later that day, we headed off to our next homestay. The waves were unusually choppy, but we were in our bathing suits and had spray skirts, so it wasn’t too much of a problem. Our plan was to kayak around the island of Gam (not to be confused with Guam, the U.S. territory) and then return to the Kri homestay.

-Isaiah

We spent our third day of biking coasting a very long way down to the ocean on the side of the highway. At the bottom was a tourist area called Lovina (that Natalia hated with a passion – too touristy and full of traffic) and at the very edge of it was a beautiful guesthouse secluded from the noisy town. The pool looked over the open water and a beautiful sunset filled the sky as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Dinner was family style, with the few other guests and the family that owns the hotel sitting around a long table weighed down by food. The owner explained to us that he spent years looking for a place where he could build a guesthouse, a place where people could come and get away from everything out in the world. He wanted it to be a place with no rules. He described it as somewhere where there was “no teaching, just sharing – mostly with love.”

That was the day we reasoned with ourselves that there must be some way to stay two nights in one place. The guesthouses and lodges we were staying at were too beautiful to simply arrive in the evening and leave the next morning. Most of them only had a few rooms and not many guests since it was off-season. We rearranged things to stay two nights at Minabali Bunga ‘lo to relax from the long hours of biking we had done. We basked in the air conditioning and ate bowlfuls of homemade ice-cream (we tried almost all of the flavors – chocolate, dragon fruit, coconut, etc…).

Day 7 of our bike trip we stopped at two different palaces. One was a water palace (Tirtagangga), with beautiful fountains and bridges and stepping-stones over the water. Massive goldfish swam around you as you walked on the small platforms above the water. Statues of four armed people with crowns and masks adorned the far end of the palace. We went on to see another palace (Puri Agung in Amlapura) that was inhabited by the King of Karangasem (one of nine kingdoms in Bali) and his family before he died in the late 60’s. The king was allied with the Dutch who were brutal in colonizing what ultimately became Indonesia. The palace mixed Balinese and Dutch architecture, but was not refurbished in any way, and we were the only tourists there. There were family portraits on the walls and old Balinese instruments stacked in rooms of the main house.

We got to watch Balinese people praying and doing offerings in a traditional temple. We were given sarongs (cloth rapped around your waist like a skirt) and sashes to wear into the temple – a symbol of respect. Everyone was wearing beautiful white outfits, and brought baskets full of offerings. We also took a day trip to a traditional village called Tenganan. A man told us about what ingredients were used to make different colors of the fabrics he sold – turmeric for yellow, indigo for blue, mengkudu for red, macadamia nuts for black, the leaves of plants for green. We met a writer in his 80’s who showed us the wooden scrolls that he engraves with text (there was an article up on his wall that said he was the last person in Bali writing in this style).  

We also visited a local market early one morning. 

On our way back to Ubud we went through Sideman, a rural, rice-growing area high up in the hills.  We spent a lot of time on small (and very steep) roads.

On our last night in Bali we went to a Legong dance performance in Ubud.   

-Natalia

Our first day of biking was one of the most difficult, as we were going uphill most of the time. We passed by beautiful rice fields and small houses, as well as buildings with elaborate statues. As we biked, people sitting on their front porches and steps waved and asked us where we were going and where we had come from. Young kids said “Hello!” and waved excitedly as we passed. We saw a cow being washed in a river and chickens everywhere. We had started biking late in the day and it got dark before we reached the hotel. We flagged down a very small truck, and the driver immediately agreed to take us the last few miles to our lodging for the night.

At every place we have stayed in Bali, the first thing they tell you is to sit down and relax. You are welcomed with delicious fresh juice and not expected to do anything but rest for the first ten or fifteen minutes. On our first night of biking we stayed in a small lodge called Village Above the Clouds. It was connected to a small village high up in the mountains in a rice growing area. The income from the lodge helps to fund an after-school program for children (the Freedom School), has paid for the homes in the village to receive running water, and supports a health clinic.

The next day we biked through Bedugul and along three high mountain lakes. We came upon a Balinese funeral ceremony. There were lots of people sitting nearby. On one side of the road, there were elaborate and colorful structures that had been built to be carried. People had started several small fires, and some people were burning money in the fires.

On our second night of biking, we stayed at a very small roadside place that was called an eco-tourism lodge but was really a homestay with a Balinese family. In the morning they invited us to come watch their family ceremony. It was held on the rooftop of a small building. Everyone from the extended family came. The ceremony is held once a year, and it is to honor the gods and give back to nature. We were not able to stay for the whole ceremony because we had to start biking, but we were able to watch the women set up the table with offerings, and listen to the men play all of the different instruments. They sat on the ground on a tarp in a circle and laughed and talked while they played. It didn’t seem like they were struggling to remember notes, or sticking to a certain song. They just played and tried to match each others’ music with their own.

That day we cycled downhill nearly 4,000 feet on our bikes, on a very steep and winding road. We could see rice fields stretched out to the Bali Sea far below.

-Isaiah and Natalia

The sun was just setting as we left the airport in Bali on Wednesday. We could see the yellow and orange of the sky behind the city’s new and traditional buildings. We were picked up (a first for us) and taken about an hour away to Ubud. Daddy talked to our driver, who shared many interesting ideas about Indonesia. He explained how the central government in Jakarta put pressure on Bali for development that conflicted with the Balinese people’s desire to protect the environment. He explained how Balinese Hinduism was about everything being connected with the gods (one god with different faces) and nature.

We stayed at a beautiful small hotel, called Kano Sari Villa, in Ubud. The backyard was a sea of jungle. You could faintly hear the waterfall, and each morning roosters would crow to wake us up. We also heard monkeys. Our rooms looked out onto the dense forest and the beds were covered in a clear canopy of fabric (mosquito netting).

Parts of Ubud were very tourist oriented, filled with restaurants and small shops. Other parts of the town were residential with traditional Balinese homes. Many of them looked like temples and others were small, plain buildings. Each house – really a family compound – had a family temple, that was used daily. Offerings of food and flowers in small baskets could be found everywhere and we constantly saw women making these offerings, by placing them down and lighting incense. The streets were packed with motorbikes.

On our first day in Ubud, we visited Alia, a colleague of Daddy’s from PICO, who happened to be in Bali with her family the same time we were.

On our second day in Ubud, Daddy and I (Natalia) took a cooking class. We first went to a traditional market, where we learned about the different fruits grown in Bali. These included mangosteen, salak (snakeskin fruit) and rambutan. They showed us spices that are used in Balinese cooking, all of which looked much fresher than the spices we have in the U.S. They took us to a rice field where they explained that they are able to get three crops of white rice a year, but only two crops of brown rice. The rice is harvested in terraces with an irrigation system organized by families in a village.

The cooking class took place in a family’s house and we learned about family traditions in Balinese culture. When people get married, the bride and groom go and live in the groom’s family compound. This means that some houses have thirty or more people living together. When a baby is born, the placenta is buried in the courtyard of their house — on the right of the entrance to the house for a boy and the left for a girl. This is thought to protect to the child during its lifetime.

Meanwhile, Mommy and I (Isaiah) went to the Agung Rai Museum of Art (ARMA). There were two kinds of paintings: modern, which were similar to the ones at the Smithsonian, and traditional, in the centuries-old Indonesian style. After that, we walked over to the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary, a very small forest full of long-tailed macaques. The forest also had a temple and a cemetery. Unlike in other forests, all of the monkeys gathered around the area where the visitors were, because that was where the food was (a stand sold bananas you could feed to the monkeys). There were about 200 monkeys in the forest. Several monkeys climbed on tourists.

-Natalia and Isaiah

We arrived in Tokyo, Japan around 10:45pm, and took a crowded train to the neighborhood of our hotel. The metro was similar to the ones at home, but much busier for the time of night. The train was packed with businessmen in suits and the walls of the train were filled with colorful advertisements, mostly in Japanese but also some in English. We walked from the station to our hotel, passing people talking and smoking and eating in restaurants. The side streets were filled with hanging lanterns, bright lights and colorful awnings illuminated by the lit up buildings.

Hotel Edoya was on a quieter street, a few blocks from the hustle and bustle of nighttime life in the city. It was a very simple building and we squeezed into the tiny elevator to the main lobby (our backpacks took up most of the space). There were slippers sitting in the entrance to our room, and there were three doors leading off from the small space where we left our shoes. One held the toilet (the toilet had a heated seat!), the other a shower and a small square bathtub, and the third was a sliding door into the bedroom. The bedroom consisted of four mattresses lined up next to each other on the floor and a TV on top of a small, bright yellow fridge. We collapsed onto the beds, but were immediately pulled back up by the prospect of food and seeing the city at night.

Even at two in the morning, the streets were filled with people, who didn’t seem to mind the late hour. We were surprised at how many open restaurants there were. We found a good place to eat, and ordered a random assortment of sushi and other dishes, mostly by pointing at the pictures on the menu. We watched people smoking at the counter where the sushi was being made, and others hurrying past the restaurant doors. Tokyo has a lot of automatic sliding doors, and the taxicab doors open automatically too. When we were done eating, we got in a taxi to return to the hotel, but we had to guide the taxi driver back. It was funny to see that we had a better sense of where we were going than he did.

We got about three hours of sleep before we had to get up again to leave. The breakfast consisted of rice, soup, noodles, and vegetables, and eggs that we thought were hardboiled (we learned the truth when Isaiah tried to crack one open). After breakfast we walked to another train station and took the SkyTrain to the Narita airport. The train stations had escalators and those stands where you slide your ticket in and they come out the other side, just like we are used to, but they also had colorful vending machines covered in Japanese. This train was much nicer than the metro we had gone on the night before, and there were reserved seats. We passed by many apartment buildings, a large group of men stretching in what looked like a parking lot, a lot of small and traditional looking houses and then fields growing crops before reaching the airport. Suddenly we were boarding our flight, and leaving Tokyo as abruptly as we had arrived.

-Natalia

We started our descent into the Grand Canyon around 1pm on Sunday and had a long day on a steep trail. There was a lot of loose rock and many switchbacks. About two miles in we met a guy hiking back to the rim, and in exchange for some extra water, he played his didgeridoo for us – a wind instrument originally from Australia, usually made from hardwoods – often eucalyptus trees. We continued on to Horseshoe Mesa, the ruins of an old building and you could still see where the fireplace and chimney has been. From there it was only a mile to the campsite, but it was by far the steepest part of the trail – about a thousand feet down to the creek. Isaiah and I rocketed ahead, and made it to the campground way before our parents (but still after the sun had set).

Day two on the Tonto trail gave us our first glimpse of the Colorado River (it is so green!) and took us on a winding route on the edge of a plateau above it. The hike was precarious and unpredictable, but beautiful. We stayed at a campsite called Grapevine (named after its creek) – which was by far my favorite campsite of the trip. The minute we arrived, Daddy went and laid down on a large rock and put his head in the creek to cool down.

Days three and four were much easier, because the hikes were shorter and we were getting stronger. Our fifth night camping in the backcountry we didn’t have a water source at our campsite and we had to fill a drybag with water so we would have enough for the hike to Phantom Ranch. At Cremation Creek (a dry wash in April) we were able to watch the moon rise above the high walls of the canyon after dark, which was an incredible sight to see.  

Phantom Ranch was not at all what I expected. It is one small building, half of which is a kitchen, and the other a dining hall/canteen, surrounded by trees and little cabins. It is very integrated into the woods, and doesn’t seem at all intrusive to the nature surrounding it. We stayed in a cabin at the ranch for two nights, and met people of all ages with so many different stories and backgrounds. The dining hall is filled with a few long tables, and you eat breakfast and dinner with all of the other hikers/travelers.

We spotted a space station on our second night at Phantom. It looks just like a moving star, or an airplane without the blinking lights.  A Park Ranger told us that there is a website (www.spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/) where you can track when the space station may be passing your area. Interestingly, American Astronaut Mark Kelly just arrived at the space station on March 27, 2015. He is staying at the station for a year (breaking the record for the longest time in space at one time for a U.S. astronaut) and is currently in a twin study with his brother to compare the effects of space on the body. (Mark Kelly is also the husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.)

We spent two days hiking out of the Canyon on the Bright Angel Trail. Day one was easy and fairly short. The stars that night were beyond incredible and we even spotted a shooting star! The last day was by far the hardest, despite the wide, well developed trail we were on. Once we got within three miles of the top, the trail was swamped with day hikers, and you could faintly make out tourists standing along the rim of the canyon.

-Natalia

Welcome to our trip blog…

Outdoor adventures and international travel have been a big part of our family life.  When Natalia and Isaiah were nine months old, we had them out in baby backpacks in Yosemite National Park. A year later—just after they had learned to walk—we did our first overnight backpacking trip in Tuolumne Meadows (also in Yosemite).  When they were three we moved to Ecuador for six months.  And since then, we’ve taken at least one big family adventure trip every year—cycling one summer in Quebec’s Laurentian mountains, and another summer in Europe from Vienna to Prague; kayaking in British Columbia (Canada), Baja Sur (Mexico), and the Exumas (Bahamas—tip: avoid hurricane season!); and taking long hikes in Glacier National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Washington State’s Cascades, the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, Escalante Staircase in Utah, Pictured Rocks at Lake Superior, and this past summer in Alaska.

So while people have been surprised to hear that we’re taking off from work and school for five months to see the world, to us it feels like a logical extension of the life we’ve been living.

Our trips almost always involve a journey by foot, bike, or kayak from one interesting place to another.  We look at packaged adventure tours for inspiration, but do the trip planning ourselves.  What is different (and a bit overwhelming) about the trip we are about to head off on is that it strings together so many different adventures—biking in Bali, Turkey, Andalusia and the Italian Alps; kayaking in West Papua Indonesia and along the south coast of Crete; trekking and hiking in the Grand Canyon, Myanmar, and Bolivia…along with some fun city stops in Yangon, Bangkok, Istanbul, Athens, Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Venice, Prague, La Paz, and Cuzco, plus a month-long stay in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Julia and I have been thinking about a big trip for the last few years.  But the idea of the kids leaving middle school at spring break and not coming back until high school begins in the fall first began to take shape while Natalia and I were cooking Thanksgiving dinner this past November.  We sat at the kitchen table searching the internet to find out whether it was possible to leave school to travel the world (it is!!).  Read more about vagabond schooling…

We began hammering out the “where” during our drive back and forth to Florida over December vacation.  We compressed what probably should have been a year of planning into two months.  You can see a map of our plans here and more details about where we are going here.

There are a million reasons to travel.  For us, much of the draw is nature. In the wilderness, we connect more fully with each other. Julia and I have made most of our most important life decisions—about where to live, where to study, where to work, and when to marry—while out in the back country.  When we leave cars, money, and communication devices behind, we find ourselves with the solitude and time to think about what really matters in life. We feel a kind of peacefulness, resourcefulness, and appreciation of nature—a sense of exhilaration from the constant exercise, accomplishment from climbing over mountain passes and crossing bodies of water, and astonishment at the breathtaking beauty.

There is also something powerful about leaving home and meeting people who view and experience the world differently.  Julia is a cultural anthropologist whose interests in understanding the world from others’ perspectives has driven her reading, writing, living, and traveling for decades, especially through long stays in South America.  Gordon is a community organizer for whom getting to know people from different walks of life through one-on-one conversations, telling his own story and listening to others’, and finding common cause in issues of racial and social justice have been his work for many years. That spirit of encountering difference and the reality of being linked together on a small planet under incredible stress is part of the inspiration for this trip.

We appreciate you reading our stories and following our travels!