The train arrived at the station in Marrakech, we said goodbye to the Libyans we met on the way, and wandered off into the night to find our hotel. The next morning we had a chance to explore the city and another busy medina. Compared to Fez, the old city of Marrakech is a little more active and a little more manageable. It’s not as big, the streets are a bit wider, and there are several large open squares – the largest hosts an enormous collection of street cafes that …

Chiang Mai is Thailand’s second largest city and we headed straight for it from Hong Kong. The flight to Bangkok served the best airplane food we’ve ever had, no joke. They also had quite the selection on board for Muslims, Hindus, Vegans, you name it, impressive Thai Airways!
The first night out we encountered the Thai tri-fecta. One – Friendly people. Despite not exactly knowing where he was going our cab driver got us to our destination, charged us less for getting lost and then walked us to the door of …

With one week left in China, we had several places we still wanted to see. It seems that everywhere we look there is a city here with more than a million people, and we still wanted to find something a bit quieter. We decided to go west from Xi’an to higher, and cooler, ground. This is the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and we thought we’d find something different here out. It took another overnight train to get to Xining, another place home to over a million.
We had hoped …

As some of you might already know, Machu Picchu has been closed since the mudslides in January. They hope to re-open the trail by April since it is the number one tourist attraction in the entire country. We have wanted to do this hike for a long time, we even bought a Peru guide book in 2002 to plan a trip. We’re finally here and have already paid money towards a hike that’s not available right now. Good thing the Incas built more than one trail (some estimates say they …

We made it to the capital city of the Incas after a long journey through the Lima airport.

When looking up our flight from Rio, we realized that we had about 24 hours to spend in Lima before continuing on to Cusco. We spent the day downtown visiting some churches and museums, and had some great ceviche and picso sours. Back at the airport we had to wait until 4:30am to check in and get on the plane. Unfortunately, they won’t let you past security more than an hour before …

Phil and Meredith were fantastic hosts for our 3 day scramble before we left from LA. Not only did we immediately make a mess of their guest bedroom, we also did laundry and brought various half-used items from our house that we didn’t know what to do with. Hopefully the case of homemade beer, various half bottle of liquor and some wine will make up for some of their inconvenience. Yes our trunk was full.
Sunday:

The four of us plus Jeremy went out for breakfast and headed to San Diego’s Wild …