I got back from my trip to Hong Kong and China. The most striking thing is the booming economy there. You wouldn’t know there is a recession here in the states.
Here is a picture from one of the hotels in mainland China. The smog lingers constantly and the construction continues into the night.
Here is [...]
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On one of the days, we went to a zip line “park” run by Canopy Safari. It was about an hour’s drive into the jungle from Manuel Antonio. It started out with about a 20 minute walk up the hill. From there, it was about 20 zip lines down and a couple of rappel [...]
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On one of the days in Costa Rica, we went white water river rafting on the Savegre River. Our tour was conducted by the Amigos Del Rio group. We chose the full day adventure down the Class 3 rapids of the Savegre River. The adventure started with a bus ride to a way point about [...]
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We just got back from a week of vacation in Costa Rica. This time we rented a beach house in Manuel Antonio Beach. Manuel Antonio is a small beach town about a 3+ hour drive from the capital city of San Jose in Costa Rica. We rented a car at the local Budget and [...]
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On the second day of our Zion trip, Doug, Denis and I took a hike along the lower Subway route. This is about a 10 mile hike that took us a little over 7 hours round trip with a lot of climbing in and out of the canyon.
Here we are at the start of [...]
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Posted in Vacation, tagged Banos, Ecuador, Vacation on April 12, 2008 | 2 Comments »
On our last two days in Ecuador, we headed south of Quito on the Pan American highway to the village of Banos. It is known for its Tungurahua volcano which is an active 5000m high volcano site. It last erupted in Nov. 2006 and was said to have released steam on the days [...]
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On one of the few remaining days after the Amazon, we went to the equator, also known as the middle of the world.
Here are the kids on the equator line.
We visited a museum that had a water demonstration supposedly showing the coriolis effects. On the equator line, the water drained from the sink straight [...]
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Each day, we went on a canoe ride and did some hiking. Here is a video of one of the canoe rides. Listen to the sounds of the jungle and see the amazing variety of plant and animal life.
On one of the days, we climbed up to the top [...]
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All of our hikes and tours were led by 2 guides. One was a native Indian guide (on the left below – named Segundo) and the other was a high school professor by training that acted as translator and story teller (named Oscar).
The kids really took a liking to Segundo. Even though he [...]
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The middle part of our trip was spent in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador.
We started off with an early morning plane ride from Quito airport to a small town called Coca about a 1/2 hour east of Quito.
From there it is a short “chiva” bus ride to our safe house where the staff pack [...]
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We are back from our Ecuador trip over Spring Break. It was awesome.
I’ll start posting pictures but we did soooo much in the 10 days so it may take several posts.
We arrived at our hotel room on Thursday night. I had packed some bananas that we purchased from Trader Joe’s (in California) that [...]
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We spent the week before Paris in Geneva. I had to work during the week (Monday thru Thursday) so Anjali explored (probably more so than in my numerous trips in the past).
Anyway, here are a few of the local sights.
The United Nations is on the outskirts of town. There were many dignitaries and [...]
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I’ve been meaning to post a few more pictures from our last day in Paris.
We took it pretty easy and just visited the Louvre and walked around the Eiffel Tower.
Here are a few picture from the Louvre.
We did see the Mona Lisa but boy was it unimpressive! They make you stand 20 feet [...]
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The Paris bus and train strike that started last week almost derailed (pun intended) our plans to visit Paris over the weekend. We ended up cancelling our train tickets and instead drove the 525km trip from Geneva to Paris. The drive itself was fairly easy with the TomTom GPS system and the outstanding [...]
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On one of the last days in the Bay Area, we went to Muir Woods redwood park.
It was a 2 hour drive from Mom and Dad’s house.
We went for a long hike and saw the redwoods. The tallest trees in the park are 260 feet with a 14 foot diameter and are over 1000 [...]
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Posted in Vacation, tagged park, Vacation on August 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
On one of the days in the Bay Area, we went to Paramount’s Great America Park in San Jose.
Here are Mom and Anjali on the Demon ride.
Here are Vikram and Nikhil on the Centrifuge ride:
Here are all of us on the Delirium ride —a powerful spinning pendulum that will send you whirling.
Here are [...]
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Posted in Vacation on August 19, 2007 | 1 Comment »
We just got back from a week up in San Francisco at Mom and Dad’s house in Morgan Hill. On one of the days, we went to the Winchester Mystery House.
The rich, crazy widow haunted by spirits was told to keep building her house to ward away the evil spirits. She did this [...]
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We just got back from a 4 day trip to Zion National Park in Utah.
We stayed at the Desert Pearl Hotel which I would highly recommend for traveling families.
The first day, we did a moderate 3 mile hike called Emerald Pools. There are three pools – Lower, Middle and Upper. There is [...]
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