"Colombia. The only risk is you will want to stay"
- Colombia tourism advertising slogan
We are in San Francisco this morning. We got in from Mexico last night.
We will spend the final leg Episode VIII here and spend Thanksgiving with our son Stephen. Stephen is working on his PhD in Geology here at Stanford University and the timing of the trip allowed us to see him and some old friends in Fresno where I did my residency training 1000 years ago.
I came across this article this morning while doing laundry and I thought it was interesting because these are some of the countries we are considering visiting as well.
There is so much information available now. I remember years ago I would only have a green Michelin guide travel book. I still feel I missed a lot of what was around me.
We travel two or three times a year at our present pace. Neither of us are sure how long we will continue at this pace but for now that is the plan. We have been asked a few times how do we pick where we go?
Most of the time it is serendipitous. Colleen is amazing at research and she will come across a deal on flight tickets and that will set us off on a certain direction. We tend to travel in the Winter and Fall with occasional smaller trips in the summer. More often than not we will go somewhere warm.
At first we got caught up (At least I did) with having to go to a different country all the time. I have let that feeling go. Everywhere we have gone is worth another visit and I am sure we will return again in the future. You also need to decide what you want to do. If you want to 'see all the sights' you will inevitable be disappointed. There is often too much to see and you will either be exhausted or feel let down.
I have often wondered if anyone traveled with us that they would find it boring. We move at a slower pace most days often without a specific agenda. Our goal is more an immersive experience rather than a check list.
Research is the most important thing. The internet makes the world open to you and with a little effort you can plan a reasonably priced trip without having to backpack in hostels. Some friends of ours went to Antartica which sounded amazing. We looked into it but the price point was beyond our reach. So we can't go everywhere.
Episode IX, coming in January, is a place we have talked about for about a year. It will a little longer than this trip. We will be gone about 7 weeks.
Anyway, the newspaper article got me musing a bit about the process we use. It is a random collection of thoughts that I wanted to set down this morning here in the bay area.
There is laundry to do. I need to get going.
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