After sleeping soundly in our warm Reykjavik apartment and a hearty breakfast consisting of Icelandic skyr, coffee and rye bread with cream cheese, our group was excited for our “Landmannalaugar on Big Wheels” tour with Extreme Iceland.
Favela. Commonly translated as “slum”, these are communities with low-income residents in Brazil. At best, favelas eve images of colorful brick and cement houses full of vibrancy and activity; at worst, favelas can elicit ideas of substandard housing and squalor, and communities terrorized by drugs and crime.
If travel is an experience for all the senses, then trying out a country’s cuisine can also achieve the same thing. From seeing and touching the fresh ingredients of a meal, listening to the sizzle of an ingredient as it is being coed, smelling a dish’s aroma as it is being prepared, and finally savoring its taste – a food tour can provide a gastronomic ight to all the senses.
A couple of days after our white water rafting expedition, we were making our way back to Ubud to go cycling. We went further north of Ubud this time, starting from Mount Batur and going on a mainly downhill cycle for 20.5 kilometers.
After finishing a three-day Adventure Tours trip that visited Alice Springs, Kata Tjuta, Uluru and Kings Canyon, we were back in Alice Springs, getting up before dawn to meet our new guide, JB, at the lobby of our hostel.
I had just finished up my job in Sydney and was going to be starting a new role in San Francisco, a city that I had heard great things about from all who had been there, although it was a place that I had never seen firsthand.