Her Name is Rio

Once upon a time, when my life wasn't filled with blood samples and vagicams, Doc and I used to go on vacations...real vacations, to far away countries. Twice a year, we'd pack our bags and take a flight to some pretty remote places. The more remote and random, the better. (I've posted a few of our pics from different vacations).

Doc has always had wanderlust. He's been to over 50 countries and typically plans all our vacations -- no tour groups or organized trips. So, really, all I do is pack my bags and show up. Prior to dating Doc, I had been to Japan, India, France, Mexico, Germany, and Switzerland, but my country count definitely increased once we became a couple.

We are not the relax-on-the-beach-and-drink-mai-tai vacationers. Our first year together, we took our first trip to Vancouver Island and spent a week camping and kayaking with orcas (during their migration). Six months later, we took our next trip to Barbados and Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic), where we went scuba diving and hiking for 2 weeks.



Mongolia

In our second year together, we took our most adventurous trip which included Korea, China and Mongolia (this was the adventurous part). Korea and China were pretty standard, however, Mongolia was something else. Although, there wasn't much to see in terms of sights, the people and the vast expanse of land were amazing. Mongolians live very much like they did 1,000 years ago. Many of them are still nomadic, moving with their herds and pitching their gers (or yurts) wherever there is food for their animals. There are no roads outside of Ulaanbaatar, so we'd drive over hills and across the plains hoping that we weren't lost and we'd get to our ger camp. From there, we'd have meals of lamb and more lamb and even more lamb...morning, noon and night. No vegetables, just lamb. Let me just tell you, it gets old very quickly. But, it was a trip that Doc and I still talk about, even now.



Indonesia - Borobudur

Our second trip that year was our honeymoon to Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. We had a great time. Malaysia had some of the best diving we have ever experienced. Singapore had wonderful, delicious food! And Indonesia (Bali) was so relaxing -- beautiful beaches and warm ocean water. We'd go back in a heartbeat.



Dubrovnik, Croatia

We spent a good part of our first year of marriage traveling. In the spring/summer we took a month to travel in Central/Eastern Europe. Starting off in London, we made our way to Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. It was an amazing trip, but the highlight was without a doubt, Dubrovnik in Croatia. Right on the coast of the Adriatic, it is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen.



Serengeti, Tanzania



In December of that year, we took a month and traveled to Africa, specifically: Reunion, Mauritius, Mozambique, Tanzania, and South Africa. We spent a good amount of time scuba diving in the Indian Ocean and another chunk of time on safari. We were lucky to be able to catch the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti. It's exactly like something out of National Geographic. Amazing is the only word that describes seeing miles of wildebeest and zebra in the natural habitat as far as the eye can see and watching the lions lying only feet away from our jeep. We loved every minute of our trip.



St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow

Last year, because of our TTC ordeal we only went to "safe" locations and spent two weeks in Hawaii and another 1.5 weeks in Russia (St. Petersburg and Moscow). Our time in Russia was great -- very cold, but so interesting and nothing like we had imagined. All that Cold War propaganda while we were growing up really brainwashed us into believing that evil KGB agents were lurking around each corner. Instead, what we found was a beautiful country with very friendly people and tons of culture and history.

This year, we've also decided to take it easy with the trips because of you-know-what and so, our spring/summer trip will be to Puerto Rico. We're excited, but it's not technically international, so our excitement and sense of adventure are a bit subdued.

To make up for this, we made a decision this week that our fall trip would be to South America! We'll be spending two weeks in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. I'll be singing Duran Duran until November!