Tiny Peruvian Night Monkeys in the Amazon all cozied up in their hole. They remind me quite a lot of how I felt about getting back to international travel in 2022! But we got back out there! And have big plans for 2023!

2023 Looking to Travel Ahead!

January 3, 2023

2022 People were back traveling, with reports of full planes, festivals and fairs running out of parking and food, and rising prices.

2023 We can expect more travelers and crowds at popular destination, which means more than ever people need great advice to choose good destinations make their trips the best! I get my advice from great travel advisors and I use trusted travel companies to take remote of group tours. Please see our list of trusted travel specialists here.

2022 In Review

Back to travel for us in 2022! After no travel in late 2020, and traveling primarily domestically, we finally got out of the country in 2022.

January Return to Walt Disney World

Click to see our trip report! Celebrating WDW’s very extended 50th anniversary celebration

March Yellowstone in Winter

Click here to see our trip report A wintery visit to Yellowstone and Big Sky was cool in every way!

April and December New York City and Broadway

See our trip reports April here
Click here for December
A pair of trips to see Broadway shows…quiet in Aril, but the crowds had returned in December!

May and June Peru

See our trip report here. The Supay Cano in the remote Peruvian Upper Amazon Basin. Our first “big” international trip ended with a covid infection and 5 day quarantine in Iquitos, a market town that is a gateway to the Amazon. But the week on the Delfin 2 along the remote Amazon upper River Basin included pie eyed primates, secret ox box lakes, troops of monkeys leaping through the canopy, enormous flowers, tiny frogs and swimming with pink dolphins was memorable!

September Maine Wildlife Camp

Our Report from 2020 here and 2021 here and a gallery of our photos from 2022 below

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October Quebec City

Chateau Frontenac from La Citadel, in Quebec City. An anniversary trip to Quebec City in the fall? OUI!

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November Back to Ocean Cruising

It took some guts to get back on board a large cruise ship, but after contracting covid while on a small ship with just 21 passengers, I concluded, “size doesn’t matter” and with a recent “new booster” chose to take the plunge. We had a fantastic experience, re discovering our love of the open sea and adventurous ports in Caribbean Mexico.

2023 Plans

Some of our plans have been in motion for months, while others are last minute (or will be) choices. In the last 2 years so many trips were rescheduled and moved up, that we’ve decided to plan a few larger trips that depend on a lot of logistics and do some smaller explorations last minute.

Space Coast and Walt Disney World

Vermont Skiing and Ocean Cruising to Mexico and Grand Cayman

Hoping to chase away winter blues by “embracing” winter with a cross country ski trip to Vermont (pictured) and “escape” winter with a cruise into Mexico and Grand Cayman.

Hawaii

Our last foray into Polynesian landscapes and culture was in 2012, to Tahiti (and Moorea in the distance)aboard the Paul Gaugin cruise ship. Now more than 10 years later, we plan to visit Hawaii and explore under water, along the shores and up into the volcanic mountains. We will be cruising on the Uncruise expedition ship Safari Explorer (36 passengers) and crossing the Pacific to Vancouver aboard Royal Caribbean Quantum of the Seas (with over 4ooo passengers!)

Balloon Festival in Mane

A bucket list adventure! We have a weekend planned in northern Maine where we hope the weather cooperates and we can take a balloon ride and photograph mass balloons launches! (stock photography)

The Back 1/2 of 2023

We are open to adventure! Our biggest adventure will exploring our LAST CONTINENT - Antarctica in early 2024! In just over a year we hope to explore Patagonia and cruise to South Georgia Island and the Antarctic peninsula.

Many more adventures to come, so long as we are blessed with good health! Thank you to our followers who have engaged with our content through the years and especially to our friends who participated in out “Go See It People” interviews. Please share where your next adventure will be!

Thank you to all our friends and readers for following along, and we wish you good health and exciting adventures in 2023!

Editor and Publisher: K Klofft

All photos: J klofft (unless noted)

Amazon in Peru; It Was Real, But Felt Magical

November 29, 2022

Magic Realism: chiefly Latin-American narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction. Sep 16, 2022 Britannica

Every day, with our 20 fellow passengers, we left the Delfin 2 and boarded small pangas to explore the upper amazon in Peru. Accompanied by a boat driver, and naturalist guide, we explored areas only accessible because the swollen Amazon River had created secret channels leading to lush oxbow lakes. We saw lily pads the size of dining tables, frogs the size of my thumbnail that looked like they were made of gold or painted like a giraffe, we swam with pink dolphins, saw night jar birds swooping and massing in trees, and discovered pie eyed mammals staring at us from holes in the flooded trees. One day after a shower a rainbow appeared and we were alone in the wilderness with colorful animals and lush green flora. It was truly one of the most “magical” environments we’ve ever visited, but it was entirely real!

Exploring in a panga

A tiny frog with giraffe coloring

A night jar

Flooded mangroves lead to secret lakes

A tiny river rat

a tiny frog

pink dolphin

Night Jars

As we floated through this magical environment, I found myself thinking about the Latin American authors and filmmakers who often use Magical Realism in their fictional tales. I could see very easily how this environment could inspire them! Much of what we saw felt like a fever dream, and this was before any of us had the actual fever from Covid. (In the end, nearly all the passengers on our trip had Covid before the trip ended, but we were fortunate to only miss our last day due to Covid.)

In late spring we finally had the opportunity to visit the upper Amazon in Peru aboard the Delfin 2 after delaying the trip more than a year because of Covid. We had booked a trip aboard the Delfin 2, a small expedition ship that explores the upper Amazon in Peru with its own team of naturalist guides. The company chartering the ship was Lindblad/National Geographic who also provided two naturalist guides who also handled logistics.

Delfin 2 - approximately 28 passenger expedition vessel on the upper Amazon

Jonny at the bar

Dining room in the stern with river views

upper deck lounge

lighting in the dining area

dressed for adventure

Local residents share crafts with passengers

lounge and presentation area

daily schedule of activities

Spending some time in the mangroves looking closely, allowed us to see many beautiful insects and amphibians and lizards.

A frog that is camoflaged and looks like a giraffe!

During our twice daily explorations at dawn and at sunset, we saw many mammals in the canopy above the water.

Many people visit the Amazon to birdwatch and the birds are so plentiful and colorful!

Our journey into the upper Amazon was magical, from the flora to the birds, to bugs to mammals…everywhere you looked there was a vista unlike anything you can see anywhere else, and if you looked carefully, you could see the magical animals that live in this environment.

A note about the our experience with the travel providers of this adventure!

We had the most amazing experience exploring this area with the knowledgeable guides aboard the Delfin 2. The staff and crew of the Delfin2 made our exploration memorable and created an amazing trip. They were also responsible for our Covid quarantine and handled it beautifully, with excellent communication and providing everything we needed during our unexpected stay after disembarking.

We had some negative experiences, both on the journey and before and after the trip with the major travel brand company that chartered the Delfin 2. While we highly recommend the Delfin 2, next time, we’d book it through our trusted travel advisors and not travel with the major travel brand that chartered our cruise.

Thankfully, we didn’t allow our experiences with the company or with catching covid during our trip affect our opinion of the actual adventure on Delfin 2 in the Upper Amazon!

48 Hours in Siem Reap Including Angkor Archeological Park

May 15, 2022

Siem Reap

Just before the world shut down for Covid 19 we traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia (see our trip report here) Following an AMA River Cruise, we asked Active Travels, a membership travel consultancy to plan 48 hours in Siem Reap after the cruise.

Active Travels booked us at Phum Baitang a unique off the beaten path resort in Siem Reap. A quiet get away from the tourist hustle bustle of the Angkor Archeological Park and its star attraction, Angkor Wat, this resort was designed to mimic the traditional architecture of rural Cambodia, and it a true ecoresort, with special attention paid to limiting it’s impact on the environment.

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We were transferred to Phum Baitang by the guide who planned to fetch us before dawn the next morning to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. We had a “foodie” tour planned by Active Travels that evening and our guide left us with a word of warning: be careful what you decide to eat tonight, because its an early wake up call, and you won’t want to have a tough night over the toilet!

Our Vespa tour of markets and eateries in Siem Reap was a highlight!

Did we take his advice? Well, sort of…

We’ve learned that people eat different things all over the world and we enjoyed trying things we might not try at home and what we’ve found is that bugs are full of protein and are often very tasty and plentiful!

We had the opportunity to try food and drink at high end restaurants, restaurants where the local people go for food, intimate historical bars and several night markets. We steered clear of street meats but ate plenty of fresh peeled peeled fruits at the markets and we felt we had to try the tasty insects!

Luckily, all our explorations didn’t affect our digestive systems and we were ready before sun up to watch the sun rise over the massive Angkor Wat in the Angkor Archeological Park. We were fortunate that our guide had arranged our admission to the park the day before, so we were able to arrive and take a position with the hundreds of other tourists there to experience the sunrise over the temple.

We spent the rest of the day exploring Angkor Wat and the other temples of the ancient Khmer Empire Angkor Archeological Park. For many years after its golden age, the architecture declined and was subsumed by the jungle. In the late 19th century, Europeans exploring the area took an interest in restoring the ruins. Today, archeology and restoration continues, but there is a delicate balance between completely restoring the ancient temples and allowing some temples (which have been settings for movies) to remain interestingly entwined in the greenery of the jungle. There is also much discussion about how to protect the ruins and the local communities from over tourism.