I have never had a dive experience quite like the one I had in Hawaii this past January.
I've logged over 30 dives around the world. This has included incredible sights at the Great Barrier Reef, lightning storm dives in Florida, and a near-fatal fight against currents in Bali. After so much diving, I am still having new and unique experiences under the ocean's surface.
This dive tops them all! From shipwreck-dwelling sea turtles to a sunken airplane, I was already incredibly fulfilled on my dives with Ocean Legends in Honolulu. But then a most unexpected arrival came sweeping through: A submarine! Read on—and watch the videos—to re-experience it all with me!
When people think of Hawaii, they don't often think of hiking. They think of beaches, and snorkeling, and surfing. Getting all hot and sweaty walking up mountains is not most people's idea of an island vacation. Even so, Hawaii has some topnotch hiking.
Most tourists who visit Oahu only know about the Stairway to Heaven. A 24/7 guard blocks entry to the hike because it's so dangerous it's actually illegal to hike it. They will fine you up to $1,000 or 6 months in prison if caught. Trust me. You do not have to risk your life or a fine to experience amazing hikes on Oahu. I learned Oahu in particular has some of the best hiking in all the Hawaiian islands. Below are 3 of my favorites with photos highlighting the best features of each.
In February of 2014, I visited Maui for my best friend Erin's wedding. Three years later, I am currently traveling around Oahu! I am super excited to have the opportunity to explore another Hawaiian Island this week.
So, in anticipation of sharing my Oahu adventures on the blog, I wanted to take a look back at the experience I had in Maui. I was maid of honor at the time, so I was mostly busy helping out with the wedding. But, in between wedding plans, I had the opportunity to see a lot of the island. I drove the road to Hana, swam in a waterfall, drove up a volcano, hiked a bamboo forest, explored caves, went whale watching, attended a Hawaiian luau, and lots more.
It was during a time before I had my nicer camera, but I still took tons of photos with my Windows Phone and received some great shots from the friends I was with. Regardless, this photo-centric post will show you what Maui is like and the types of activities that can be enjoyed on a Hawaiian vacation.
Who knew tracking down manatees in a mangrove maze would be so mind-blowing? (I promise that's the only bit of alliteration in this post)
One day in the Florida Keys, Jono and I decided to kayak the mangroves around Islamorada. Two maps were handed to us and we were off. Confident in both our navigational abilities and physical abilities to take us around, we did not anticipate the amount of effort we were about to put into this trip.
In the end, we learned that when other people lay out a path for us, it's not always the clearest one to follow!
In travel or in life, there is a plus side to every failure. That is the lesson I learned from my failed attempts to see alligators with Jono while visiting the Florida Everglades.
This post has 4 failures describing why I did not get to see any alligators in southern Florida. Some of the reasons were beyond my control while others were absolutely my fault.
If your mission is to see alligators, make sure you do not do what I did and learn from my mistakes!
You can go snorkeling in the Florida Keys and have a great time—or you can royally mess up the experience. I did a bit of both. Along the way, I learned what to do and what not to do the hard way.
Follow my tips in this post and you won't make the same mistakes I did. You'll even learn a little trick I learned to get a really cheap boat ride turned snorkeling experience unlike any other!
I went to the Florida Keys to dive the shipwrecks. It's almost the entire reason I went, so it's a good thing I was able to visit 3 different wrecks during my stay.
Since Jono and I were only there for a week, we decided to concentrate our attention on one part of the over 100-mile archipelago. An important part of our planning was picking the optimal location to dive the most shipwrecks. This put us diving off of Key Largo, an excellent decision! But it also meant we missed 5 other shipwrecks found off the coast of the Keys.
This guide will help you decide which ones to see and which ones to skip.
Plans don't always work out—and sometimes that's okay! When the alternative is possibly getting electrocuted underwater, almost any alternative seems preferable.
When your plan goes awry, I find it's best to try to enjoy the moment for what it is because, sometimes, the unexpected can occur. You end up having an amazing time!
This is what happened on my 29th birthday this year. I traveled to the Florida Keys with Jono specifically to go diving. We were all set on the boat for our first dive when a massive storm hit. Instead of getting upset, I sat back, took in the excitement of the storm, and spotted the next best thing in the distance: A pod of dolphins heading straight for us!
This is going to be a quick post. I've run out of time to write something more extensive this week because I just returned from my trip to New Orleans and the Florida Keys!
I had an awesome time exploring these two parts of the USA with Jono who has been visiting me from New Zealand this summer. We spent 5 nights in New Orleans and 7 nights in Southern Florida. These places were vastly different from each other and incredible in their own separate ways.
Instead of going into a deep post this week, I've decided to share with you a few of my favorite photos from these two places. I think these photos best capture both locations in their individual glory.
Following from Part 1, this part of the guide to deciding where to travel goes a bit deeper. Actually, it turns the conversation from the outer, external components to your decision and focuses your attention inward.
This post is more specifically for the worriers. The people who have a bit of fear about travel will benefit from this post whether they are worried about getting lost in an unfamiliar place or about not enjoying themselves as much as they thought they would.
This is your guide to the personal considerations when deciding on your travel destination(s).
One of the hardest parts of travel is deciding where to go in the first place. When the world is so enormous and the destinations so numerous, it feels like we'll never see it all. In truth, we most likely won't see it all. So we are left with picking and choosing what we can manage in one lifetime.
If you're like me, you like to be as informed as possible when making any decision. So for the thinkers, the planners, the people who used to be indecisive but now they are not so sure, this post is for you. This is your guide to the practical considerations for making the most informed decision possible about choosing your travel destination(s).
At exactly this time last year, I was preparing to depart a rainy, wintery New Zealand to dive in the warm, northern waters of Australia.
Jono and I decided to make the most of my last weekend there. So we "tramped" (kiwi for hiked) Sunrise Track and stayed overnight at a mountain top hut during what turned into a violently windy rainstorm.
In this post, I finally tell the story of this trepid adventure and the ending that was so good, I couldn't resist returning to New Zealand some 3 weeks later.
I've decided to hold off on writing more about Nashville this week in order to honor the bison. If you haven't heard, President Obama signed a bill this past Monday to make the bison America's first national mammal!
I was lucky enough to see this incredible beast (and over 40 of its bison friends) roam the open prairie one state over from Tennessee last month. We saw them while on a day trip to Land Between the Lakes which stretches across the border into Kentucky.
A two-hour road trip outside Nashville brought us across the border for a very close encounter with these historic symbols of strength and intimidation. Let me say that again: A very close encounter. I'll let you decide for yourself just how close you would get!
Last week, I posted a throwback to my time in Iceland. This time, I'm giving you another throwback but to last year when I was living in New Zealand. Reminiscent of all of the waterfalls I saw in Iceland, this post is about a waterfall I visited in Hawke's Bay. Hawke's Bay is on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. There's tons to do there, including several easy hikes that make for great day trips.
When Spring had finally sprung in the Southern hemisphere, Jono and I immediately took to the outdoors to cure our cabin fever. After a hike to Cape Kidnappers, we planned another jaunt to the famous Shine Falls. The walk to Shine Falls goes through the Boundary Stream Reserve. It has some impressive views through farmland and native bush (forest) with plenty of birds to hear and observe along the way. The waterfall is deep in the reserve and its stunning—the perfect example of typical New Zealand beauty!
There is nothing quite like having photos to remind you of the good times from your travel adventures. But you know what's even better? Having video of it.
I was not exactly religious about taking video of my experiences in the beginning of my 15-month journey in 2014 to 2015. I was barely familiar with my new camera during my first stop in Iceland. I also did not really have any ideas in mind about how I should film or what I should film. What resulted was a random selection of moments—what I think perfectly summarize my time in Iceland.
In this post, I share the raw, uncut footage from these moments. You'll see the Blair Witch-style in which I film and you'll get an idea of the carefree mindset I was in. The following are a sequence of videos from the start to the end of my 9 days in Iceland. It includes my starts and stops and the times I let the film roll when I suddenly felt the urge to capture the moment. It's random. It's fluid. And I think I naturally ended up capturing some of the best moments from my time in Iceland.
I went to school in the quaint little one-traffic light town of Pine Plains, New York. For years, I drove up Route 82 with a single mountain protruding out from behind farmland to the West and I never once climbed it. Stissing Mountain was an icon of my youth, the namesake of my high school, and I still never managed to get up there.
My motivation to finally climb Stissing came when I returned from my 15-month trip abroad. Discovering the wonders of the world in other people's backyards made me want to discover the wonders I have neglected in my own backyard! As it turns out, Stissing Mountain is quite the unique and unexpected natural wonder because of its significance in nature. It's importance has even been recognized with a display featured in the American Museum of Natural History!
Throw back! I never talked about the time I visited Cape Kidnappers, so here it is!Throw back time! Once upon a time, I did a review of all the great places to visit in Hawke's Bay New Zealand. I mentioned a golf course named Cape Kidnappers, but later learned Cape Kidnappers is so much more than a golf course.
After 7-months living in the area, I got increasingly curious about this place with its criminal name, rumors of mudstone protrusions, and an enormous gannet colony. I had to see what it was all about.
Jono and I took a day to stroll along its shore out to the headland and back. I ended up being enthralled by its geological features, I had a photo shoot with seabirds, and I was even almost caught in a landslide on the return trip!
I had finally arrived at my last destination abroad before returning to the USA: Tokyo, Japan. At 6:35am, I got off my connecting flight from Bangkok with a clear mission. I was going to spend the next several hours shopping in Tokyo.
I would need to minimize my time spent on public transportation in order to maximize the time I had between my flights.
Although I felt a bit rushed at times, I think I did a pretty good job planning my day. In 9 hours time, I managed to find out where to drop my luggage, board the right trains to get to the optimal shopping neighborhoods, and find the stores that would carry gifts for my game-loving, anime-loving family members back home.
I had a wonderful time exploring Bali, Indonesia over 12 days. Every experience I had was a reminder of the previous 15 months of my travels around the world, from interacting with the locals and diving in the sea to eating local foods and observing gorgeous landscapes and coastlines.
I put together a little video montage as a wrap up to my time spent between Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan, Ubud, and the Karangasem region. Enjoy!
On my last full day in Bali, I hopped on the back of a motorbike with a local who showed me the highlights of the lower Karangasem Regency. My tour guide was Han, a local who offered to take me around the region. His tour turned out to be the perfect wrap up to my time in Bali.
There really is no experience like the one you can get from a local showing you around. I got a personalized tour of the region with opportunities to learn about Indonesian culture and take in some of the sights on my own terms. Han ended up driving me to 5 separate locations, including a traditional Bali village, two water palaces, a chocolate and soap factory, and a chilled-out, sandy beach. Below, I describe my experiences visiting each of these places, but the real story to share is how wonderfully well-rounded Han had made this tour.
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