Well, we did pretty good at 15,000 feet...

...for a couple of almost 58 year olds!

We had booked a day tour hike to Laguna 69. It's a fairly popular hike, but the trailhead is located in Huascarán National Park and it's a 3 hour ride to get there from the city of Huaraz. Normally, we would try to arrange our own transportation and do the hike on our own, but it makes more sense in these mountains to go with an experienced guide. Plus, the cost isn't much more than you would pay for transportation alone. In this case, we chose Peruvian Mountain Tours as our operator.

Downpour!

By the time you are reading this, we will be somewhere up in the Peruvian Andes. We are being picked up at 4:45am for a 3 hour bus ride to the trailhead for the Laguna 69 hike.

This is a popular hike that leads to a turquoise glacial lake located at 15,000 ft elevation. Are we ready for that? Not sure, but I guess we'll find out today!

Our first day hike in Peru

We are at the beginning of the rainy season here, but that doesn't mean that it rains all day long. In fact yesterday we woke up to sunshine and blue skies. Perfect for our first hike in Peru.

There is a pre-Incan ruins site about 6 kms (3.7 miles) from our residence. And it's an uphill climb of about 1,300 feet in that distance, so it would be good exercise and we would see how our bodies are adjusting to the altitude.

A little bit of excitement last night

We are at the beginning of the rainy season here at the base of Huascarán National Park. Prime hiking months are apparently June, July, and August when you get mostly clear blue skies. So while we do get some sunshine through the day, it is mostly cloudy and there is a good chance of a shower every day as well.

We are getting our bodies used to the fact that we are at 10,000 ft altitude. Most of the good hiking is upwards of 12,000 ft, so it is good to take a couple of days to get used to the thinner air.

We didn't expect this scenery

Most people who have never visited Peru have only a vision of Machu Picchu in their minds when they think of Peru. We were the same, of course, because we had never been here either.

So we were somewhat surprised to learn that the city of Lima and the surrounding area is all desert. That's one of the reasons there are very few trees in the city itself, and it's such a dusty dirty city.

Four dollars well spent!

One thing that we have learned about the city of Lima is that it takes forever to get anywhere. Traffic is horrendous, and while we've enjoyed our three days here, three days was enough for us. We probably could have done one more day in the downtown core, which would have been fine if we were actually staying in the downtown core. But we were not.

Most tourists who come to visit Lima stay in the "Miraflores" neighborhood. But Miraflores is an exclusive residential and upscale shopping neighborhood. It's not really our style, and it's certainly not what we came to Peru for.

A busy day in Lima, Peru

Yesterday, we made our way to "el centro"... the downtown historical section of Lima. We had originally planned on taking the local bus, but it's not an easy system to figure out and even with our hosts help it seemed confusing.

Plus, Lima is a big dirty city of 8 million people, and not all areas are what could be considered safe for tourists. In fact, our Uber driver told us that "Lima is full of bad people".

Beautiful photos of Peru

I know you are expecting us to show you beautiful photos of Peru. And hopefully we will live up to your expectations one of these days, but it won't be today!

Yesterday was our first full day in Lima. We are staying in a nice place with a very friendly local family who do not speak any English.

Arrived in Lima, Peru... country #38

Lindsey drove us to Ottawa airport at 11:30am yesterday. Lots of time for our 2:00pm flight to Montreal. We find that time passes quickly in airports, and it's always better to arrive at an airport early than late!

Sure enough, we were soon boarding our "puddle jumper" flight to Montreal.

We are off to Peru!

Yesterday, one of our readers asked about our trip cancellation insurance.

We have been using a TD Travel Visa that includes a variety of insurance provided you use that Visa card to book your trip. Now, we have a Scotiabank Passport Travel Visa and it includes the same suite of insurance products. Interestingly, in all of our years of travel, we have never had to use cancellation insurance, and this year we have had to use it twice!

Our trip to Ecuador is cancelled!

We've been closely watching the escalation of problems in Ecuador.

Ecuador does not have their own currency. They use the U.S. dollar. While this provides a level of currency stability, it creates other problems. When a country has its own currency, they simply print more of it. However in this situation, the Ecuador government was running out of money, so they went to the International Monetary Fund and took out a loan of $4.2 billion.

We head to the airport at 7:00am

We are back at our daughter's place. Busy household right now because our son came for a visit yesterday as well and ended up staying the night. Great to have the family together.

Gave back our rental car yesterday, so we are carless for the rest of our stay here. No plans, although Ruth is going to borrow Lindsey's car to go to her 40th anniversary high school reunion.

It was time for a change!

We've always been fans of Merrell brand hiking boots. We've probably owned more than five pairs each over the past 12 years or so. But the last pair we each bought did not seem to last as long as the previous pairs.

Especially the last pair that Ruth bought. They began falling apart less than three months after they were bought brand new! Sorry Merrell... that's not acceptable.

Problems in Ecuador

We don't ever talk about politics here unless it directly affects our travels. And in this situation, it might.

There is some civil unrest going on in Ecuador right now. Last week, the President removed the government oil subsidy and almost overnight the price of fuel doubled. So, people are upset... especially the transportation unions.

This has caused riots in the central Quito area and that in turn has caused the Government to move operations from Quito to the city of Guayaquil.

It's all about the choices you make

Not too many people comment on our blog anymore. Most of the comments are made on our facebook page because for most people it's a lot easier to comment there.

One of yesterday's comments mentioned how "fortunate" we are to be doing all the traveling that we do. And people in the past have said how "lucky" we are. But we do not consider ourselves either fortunate, or lucky.

We have not yet been around the world

When our dog Whiskey was with us, we were pretty much limited to traveling in our motorhome in North America. And we were quite happy with that at the time. But when she passed away in the fall of 2011, we knew that would give us the opportunity to do more international travel.

And we have totally taken advantage of that! While we still love RV travel, we can now do it in other countries. We have RV'd in Africa, Europe, and Australia. And we have also taken many "backpack" style trips.

Off to the hospital...

Busy day with the grandkids yesterday as we had to get them to their swimming lessons right after breakfast, and then after swimming Cameron has his karate lesson in the town of Kemptville, located about 60 kms (36 miles) south of Ottawa.

There's a short gap in between though, and they usually go to a nearby park and play for a half an hour before going to Cameron's karate.

One week to go!

We've been here in Ottawa area for 5 weeks now. Normally my limit would be 3 weeks, but we've been so busy that time has gone by quickly. Right now we're looking after the grandkids and Chester the dog, but Mom and Dad return home from New York City tomorrow.

This morning we have to take them to swimming lessons, and then Cameron has his karate lesson right after that. Then we are all going to visit my mom.

Ten years ago today...

Well, fall is definitely in the air today. With an overcast high of 10C (50F), it certainly feels like we have turned the corner. Fortunately, our time here is almost done and we will soon be at the equator!

We are at our daughter's house looking after the grandkids and Chester the dog. Of course the kids are in school all day, so we get to take Chester for some walks.

The cheapest way to do an official legal will

Getting lots done during our down time here. But, it's been busy! There's been something going on almost every day, and when there's nothing going on we are doing Ecuador research and planning for the Mexico RV trip this winter!

Life is never boring, that's for sure! We've also been looking after some personal things like changing our banking, credit card, and investing providers. Along that same line of thinking is updating our wills... something that hadn't been done since 1996!

September Expenses

Well, it was by no means a cheap month, but it did come in pretty much where we expected it to... so there were no real surprises. We always spend more money visiting "home" than we do when we're traveling!

We spent a total of $2,731 CAD ($2,060 USD) for the month.

Here are all the details...

More Ecuador planning

Last day of September! And our Ecuador trip starts in less than two weeks, so I figured I had better get some more planning done.

We are only there for three weeks... not very long in Kevin and Ruth time. And out of our 21 days there, we are a full week in Quito and 8 days in Galapagos, so that only leaves 6 days to see the rest of the country!

Weekend away, day 2

Well, we must be getting older and wiser. It seemed like nobody woke up with a sore head from excessive consumption!

But, we did wake up to rainy skies and it stayed that way until well after lunch. So it was an inside morning.

Away for the weekend

Yesterday, I kissed Ruth goodbye at around noon, and arrived at the "cottage" at around 2:00pm. I took all the back roads and the route was 141 kms (87 miles). One section was pretty curvy, but there has hardly any traffic the whole drive.

No problem finding the place.

Booked for Galapagos!

Yesterday, I finally received my ScotiaBank Passport Visa card with its 0% foreign exchange fee and six free airport lounge passes. For a traveler who is based in Canada, this is by far the best credit card available.

And that essentially completes our transition from TD Bank to ScotiaBank. The bank and investment accounts are all switched over, and direct debit and deposits are changed as well. Glad that's all done!

Home renovations in Ottawa

We are pretty proud of our daughter Lindsey and her husband Justin. They are finally going out on their own in the business world and he is going to work for himself. It's a big step to give up a regular steady income when you've got a mortgage and bills and a young family to support. I remember doing that myself when I was at that stage in life. It's very exciting, but you're a little nervous at the same time!

He's going into partnership with a good friend of his (also named Kevin!) who he has been working with for the past several years at a major Ottawa construction company.

Road trip!

Monday after lunch, we headed out on a road trip. It was about a two hour drive from here to the little town of Ingleside on the St. Lawrence River across from New York State.

We had been invited to visit our friends Bob and Denise and their dog Scarlet! You might remember them from last year's Mexico RV Caravan trip.