Day 1 - Mexico City & Teotihuacan

We arrived in Mexico City later in the afternoon. We dragged all of our lagguage over the catwalk to our hotel just across the way from the airport. They had a wonderful fitness club so we decided to start our trip somewhat healthy with a nice hour in the gym followed by a swim in their pool, even Lucka took part in it.The next morning we headed back to the airport to get our car. It took almost two hours just to get out of the rental place! After that we embarked on to the unpleasant drive out of Mexico City - blah - amazing how large a home of 20 plus million people could be.. what a horrible experience! Especially for Chris who was stuck behind thewheel. Thank God for our GPS that always got us out of the worst trouble that we managed to ran into on our way to Teotihuacan. I believe Chris called it the Magic Box and from now on he is going to worship it!Teotihuacan was very impressive. I can't believe it was all built around the 100BC to 200AD. We climbed up both of the main pyramids - of the Sun & the Moon. The pyramid of the Sunis supposedly the third largest pyramid in the world. It was hot but luckily not scortching hotso we managed to get up without any issues. Lucks now knows no gracias very very well - havingto say that to the vendors that were all over the place.

Mexico Here We Come

Get ready... we are heading out for a ten day trip to Mexico... stay tuned for updates as soon as we get an access to the internet. We are going to be starting in Mexico City and then on to Teotihuacan, San Miguel de Allende, Patzcuaro, Zihuatanejo-Ixtapa, & Taxco.
Stay tuned :o)

Weekend in Lake Tahoe

Skodas invited us to spend the weekend with them up in their ski lease cabin in South Lake Tahoe We didn't have any plans that weekend so we decided to take them up on it. We drove up with Patty on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, this was right before all the snow fall they just had so there was no snow on most of the drive up. Luckily there was at least some around the lake itself. Skodas were on the slopes when we got there so we decided to enjoy the outside and head for a hike from Camp Richardson. It was so beautiful there; not much snow but the sky had fantastic clouds and a wide variety of colors - perfect for pictures. We emptied our flasks on the hike and headed back to the cabin for more booze :o).
The following day Patty decided to go with the Skodas to the slope and we went out for a snowshoe hike around Fallen Leaf. There was plenty snow there and frash snow so we were actually able to use our snowshoes. We took lunch with us and found a beautiful deck where we had our lunch. On the way back we got lil spooked as we ran into a pack of coyotes ... I think we counted 7 or 8. Luckily, our guard dog didn't even notice them.... yep she is special. They checked us out but I guess we didn't look appetizing enough so they decided to leave us alone and move on.
A storm was coming so we decided to wrap it up and head home. We got back in record 2hrs 45min. Tahoe rocks!!!

San Francisco Day

On Sunday we headed to the city to have a perfect San Francisco Day just like all the tourist do. We parked our car at Crissy Field and walked over to Buena Vista Cafe for the 'Best Irish Coffee in Town". Only to find out that everybody else was there for the same so instead we ended across the street in an Irish bar and ordered wide varietal of coffees - starting with Irish, Italian moving to Baileys, Amaretto... and who knows what else. All I know is that we had a good base to get us through the next couple of hours..... why were we buzzed from a coffee? What's up with that?
After our starter we got our tickets and hopped on the cable cart and took it all the way to the Union Square... being tourist is fun! up and down those crazy streets...
From Union we walked down to Market got on the street cart and took it to Embarcadero. We walked around the Ferry Building..... and stopped over at The Slanted Door for margarita and appetizers... still don't know what's the big thing about this place... Julie makes much better spring rolls than they served us...but hey... I was happy with the drink :o)
From there we walked to Fisherman's Wharf...where we end up with a nice lunch/dinner with of course... more alcohol... and we ended the day with a beautiful sunset just as we were entering the Aquatic park on the way back to our car.
Not a bad freaking place we live in! It is good to be tourist here... but even better... it's awesome to live here!

Perfect Winter Day on the Beach

Couple of weeks ago we had a brilliant idea to spend the afternoon on the beach. We had a wonderful warm spell those couple of weeks but around here you still don't know what to expect around the ocean. Luckily were we all in for a treat!! Neither one of us could remember another day when we would have seen the ocean that calm and the weather so perfect to hang out on the beach. Limantour was fantastic!

We chased and ran away from the weaves and frolicked on the beach all afternoon long. Patty made us fantastic sandwiches, the wine was superb... it was just the best day ever. Oh, did I mention the chocolate dipped strawberries?
We stayed around in our tank tops and shorts until the sunset and got back home around 7 or so. It was one of those absolutely perfect days!!! Life is Good!!

Quick Glance Back @ 2008

I would just like to glance back at 2008 really quickly before we move on to 2009. Last year has been very good to us. All of our loved ones stayed healthy! and no major disaster struck us! That's good right! But it was even better than that.

We took on a wonderful and lengthy project that was our kitchen. Our house was a mess for over 3 months but it was sooooo worth it and we absolutely love our new space! We were also lucky enough to be able to travel some. We spent 10 days in Arizona/Utah in April followed by kitchen & house mess escape to Alaska in August and finished off by almost three weeks in Central America in November. In September we also celebrated our first wedding anniversary.

For the new year we can only hope for the same! We are very lucky to have each other and to have such a wonderful family and group of friends that surrounds us. Thank you all for being part of our lives.

End of Our Trip

Ok it is time to finally finish my recount of our vacation and move on to the present time.
We finished our last day in Belize with a wonderful dive. I was lil nervous once we got out there past the reef into the open sea and I was told that we were going to go to 80+ feet. The deepest I have ever gone was 35ft.... oops... at that moment I knew I had only two options - 1) stay in the boat and for sure puke myself as the waves were huge or 2) go down and take my chances and pray that I will do fine. Chris didn't seem all too sure which one I was going to choose but was relieved that I went in. I immediately started going under as it is much calmer down there and once I looked around I was instantly at ease. It was so surreal. The depth made everything seem ... I don't know... I guess like we were in space... everywhere you look you have people floating midair or so it seams and the depth of it all.... it was just amazing! I loved it.... but I still couldn't believe that I am ok! Especially once I saw that we were at 86ft....
I was one of the first to go up as I used up my air rather quickly but I was also the last to go back in the boat as I didn't want to empty my stomach. I was very happy that we didn't partake in the puke fest that was going on on board.
Once refreshed and rested we went for a fantastic bike ride around the island and were rewarded by beautiful sunset.
Our stay was fantastic... but we were ready to go see our family - especially our pup.

4 Days in Ambergris Caye - Belize - Part 2

We started the day with a wonderful breakfast made for us by Renita. It was delicious and very nicely setup. After breakfast we took the bikes provided by our B&B and embarked on the island exploration. We stopped by the recommended dive shop - Amigos del Mar to book our afternoon dive and headed up north along the beach. I think this was my favorite part of our stay. Just cruising the island on a bike. So nice and relaxing and the beach was beautiful. Not to mention to get to peak into all the resorts along the way!
After lunch we got picked up by our dive boat and headed to Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley and we were not disappointed. We did see ton of fish, turtles, 7ft nurse sharks and about 5ft sting rays. The only disappointing part was the amount of people everywhere.
The rest of the day we spend with drinks and cards on our patio and a wonderful dinner with our newly acquired friends from Canada.
The following day we took our bikes and headed south instead. This part of the island was not as enjoyable at the north part but we still got the best out of it. Once we got back Patty headed for the rest of her dive cert and since the sea was not too calm we decided to opt out of dive that day and instead we explored the town and had a couple of drinks with Amanda and Justin. in the evening we took a part in the popular game of Chicken Drop if you don't know what it is ... look it up. Too funny.

4 Days in Ambergris Caye - Belize - Part 1

We arrived in Belize City around 4pm the following day with a stop on the way in The Guanacaste National Park -it sounds better than it actually was, but at least we stretched our legs a bit.
Belize City itself was really not impressive at all. Very dirty, nasty and chaotic. Oh, did I mention that it has population of 70K (lil bit bigger thanSan Rafael) with almost 8 murders per month! Safe city right?! Yuck... Needless to say we couldn't wait to get on our flight and get the heck out of there. Luckily, they were able to accommodate us rather quickly and in no time we found ourselves on board this tiny plane where Patty was the co-pilot (God help us!) Luckily, Patty didn't touch anything and let the pilot do all the work and we safely landed in San Pedro within the next 20 minutes.
We got a cab and arrived in Changes of Latitude - our B&B home for the next four nights. Renita the co-owner was a very very nice lady who made us feel very welcomed and gave us some pointers about the layout of things on the island and places to see and do. After settling in and couple of drinks we headed out in search of our dinner. Once in San Pedro we could finally understand what Belize was all about - this was it. Forget the mainland.... the islands are where its at! The vibe was very very different... more like a Caribiean island and the people were actually nice. They all had the easy going no rush attitude. We loved it! Chris and I were finally able to stop bitching about Belize and enjoy it for what it was... the islands. The part we didn't like though were the prices. Even in the cheapest and not so clean place you can expect to pay $20+ for a plate. That said ... we also had the best shrimp burrito we have ever had!!! We finished the day in the bar on a beach listening to some Regee. Not a bad day at all.

Tikal - Guatemala

We checked into our hotel - Jungle Lodge right in the park - and immediately rushed into the park to catch the sunset. Oh wait... first we made ourselves some stiff drinks and then with those we rushed into the park. ;o)
The park was amazing.... we went to Chichen Itza last year... but it was nothing compared to this place. These beautiful and some extremely tall buildings in the middle of the jungle! It was amazing! And the best part.... they still let you climb all over the place. There were some people singing beautiful ballads and we watched the sun set with a few other fellow travelers while finishign our drinks.
In the morning we got up before sunrise in order to make it to the temple IV on time to watch it from there. I wish I could say we actually saw the sun rise... but.. it was cloudy so we didn't see it until some time later... but it was still great. What we did see were some spider monkeys that threw stuff at us as we were entering the park and we also spotted a very loud howler monkey... now I understand where they got their name!
We left the park for breakfast and returned back later on in the morning. Once we got our fill of the park we drove to Flores - lil island town about 45 minutes away from the park. It was a very nice town that reminded me of Mideateranian cities more than anything else. It seemed lil out of place. We spend a few hours here and finished the day by a nice dinner at Jungle Lodge.
In the morning we departed for Belize City and from their on a plane to Ambergris Caye - our final destination!