family travel

Sydney – Time to check some bucket list boxes – Days 130-136

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First time in Australia for Mike and the kids….check…..New continent….check…..Opera house…..check…..Bondi beach….check.

Australia was for the kids. There’s a Netflix show called “Izzy Koala” and our daughter, Isabella, dreams of being a koala rescuer too. When we started talking about the trip, her little brain came up with the idea that we could visit Izzy’s koala sanctuary. Unfortunately, Izzy Koala does not take visitors but the idea of a stop in Oz was stuck in my head. Since I’d been to Australia already, Michael was going to be hard-pressed to convince me to come on a separate trip just to Australia so adding it to this world trip itinerary seemed like a good idea. We were off to the land of koalas, kangaroo and shrimp on the barbie; the first stop was Sydney.

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Illness part 2 and a lost wedding ring – Hawaii – Days 126-129

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Hawaii holds a special place for us as we honeymooned there 9 years ago. Our first trip was mostly spent on the Big Island and Kauai Island, but we did have a layover in Honolulu where we drove and visited Pearl Harbour.

This trip to Honolulu was not always on our itinerary. We knew that we wanted to spend the month of November in Australia but we find ourselves in Bogota, Colombia (those locations are not close to each other). The flight path also wasn’t logical with all trips sending us north and involving at least one stop in the continental USA. The cheaper flight options involved two stops which would mean a 36+ hour journey.

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Zona Cafetera – Here we come Juan Valdez! – Days 119-120

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It did not seem right to visit Colombia without visiting the Zona Cafetera (the Coffee Axis), so we added a quick 2-day trip to the itinerary. Although the distance did not seem far, I knew that this might be a long drive so we splurged for a private driver from Medellin to the Hacienda Venecia near Manizales. We were picked up in Medellin at 9:30 and we were glad that we’d had a good breakfast because, once we cleared the outskirts of the city, there were not a lot of places to stop. The drive was very scenic as we drove through green mountains and fields of Avocado trees (a crop that is an expanding Colombian export). I kept waiting to see coffee and kept asking the driver “cafe?” as I pointed in distance. But he kept responding “aguacate”. It was not until we were very close to our destination that he smiled and pointed to a hill saying “cafe!”.

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Medellin – Bring on the Tours – Days 113-118

Mike PLeave a comment
Two children riding the cable cars in Medellin

We arrived in Medellin (pronounced Medejin as Julie keeps correcting us) with our sunburnt bodies. We settled in the area of Laureles, as Paigey decided that was the place to stay. She found a “hipster-ish” Airbnb that worked for us perfectly (it had laundry which we desperately needed). Our goal was to spend a full week settled in one place doing some slow living and some schoolwork. We filled all the drawers with our freshly laundered clothes. We filled the fridge with actual groceries (yep, we bought butter) and not just snacks. We even signed up for an NBA league pass to watch Raptors’ basketball in Colombia. We made ourselves a comfortable home base.

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Tayrona National Park (but not really) – Days 110-112

Mike PLeave a comment
Family buying bananas on side of the road in jungle area

If you’ve had 4 days of warm, wet weather, why not go someplace with warmer and wetter weather?! We had a great intro to Colombia with our stay in Cartagena but since we had booked things ahead of time, we were on the move! Our destination was a mini-resort hotel just outside of Tayrona National Park at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It was our first internal transit day and we were anxious to see if we still had those backpacker skills from years ago.

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Cartagena – Finally an Airplane – Days 105-109

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Flight #1

We have finally reached the part of our trip where we go somewhere international! We wanted to explore parts of our own country before exploring other destinations. But… oh how excited I am to finally get on a plane again after 3 years of the pandemic. When we decided to come to Colombia, we really knew very little about the country.  We’d heard that Cartagena was cool and we’d watched Narcos – that was about it.  

With Colombia, we did not follow my own rule and booked a whirlwind 21 days where we’ll stay in 5 different places.  Oops….  But the guidebooks suggested way too many cool places to visit.  We decided to start our adventure in Cartegena which we knew was a little more touristy and hopefully a little bit less culture shock for the girls.

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Columbus – Isabella’s Birthday Present – Day 85-86 (A post by Isabella)

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My favourite tv show is called “Secrets of the Zoo” and it takes place in the Colombus Zoo and the Wilds (two different zoos). The show is about zookeepers and vets who take care of the animals. I said to mom and dad “because we are going to the USA, can we go to the Columbus Zoo?”. They said “No” and I actually believed them. Secretly, mom, dad and Julie were planning a secret birthday present for me. After we left Indianapolis, I thought that we were driving to Cleveland but really dad was driving to my zoos. Mom and dad thought both of the zoos were in Columbus when they booked a hotel there for two nights but when they looked at google maps, they realized the Wilds was 1 1/2 hours further (and out of the way). That meant we had to drive through Columbus to get there and mom thought I would notice from the backseat that we were not driving through Cleveland! Dad thought I would not. Guess who was right? Dad…. I missed all the signs and was doing my homework in the backseat instead.

When we approached the Wilds, mom started to film me.

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Minneapolis and the Golden Gophers- Days 78-81

Mike PLeave a comment
Two kids standing in front of inflatable mascot at a football game

It was an early departure from Grasslands National Park as we anticipated an eight-hour day of driving. We had not really planned on it but we were changing our route and heading back to Toronto through the northern states. Fortunately, we had picked up Julie’s passport the day before which allowed us to take this “southerly” route and avoid a repeat of the drive between Winnipeg and Nipigon. Julie was pumped as she was getting a new country and Isabella was excited as she figured out Olive Gardens are more plentiful in the US than in Canada.

So there we were at 8:30 in the morning somewhere on the Saskatchewan / US border (Morgan to be exact) waiting for US border control to open up the border. Talk about ignorance on my part! I just assumed the border was open all hours of the day (as I did not listen to Paige who said it might be closed). But we had to wait an hour for the gate to be opened up and for us to be allowed through.

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Alone in Dinosaur Provincial Park – Day 76

Mike PLeave a comment
Two children on a cliff in the badlands at sunset

It was early in the morning when we said goodbye to cousin Lorron and continued our journey east. We remarked that it felt like we were really heading “home” since we no longer had any friends or family to visit. We didn’t want to keep Lorron from work so we opted for a McDonald’s breakfast. The drive was through the prairies but they were no longer yellow and green but brown and dying – even the harvesting seemed complete.  The landscape changed to badlands as we approached Drumheller.  At Drumheller, you kind of descend into the town (felt like a valley) and then the dinosaur marketing hits you.  There is a colossal T-rex at the tourist information centre which the kids noticed first from the backseat of the jeep. After that, there are dinosaur statues everywhere leading to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. 

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