The first few days of our time in Glacier National Park were spent on the west side of the continental divide. Here we enjoyed our lakeside hotel room, drove along scenic roads and took several day hikes to beautiful lakes.
The east side of Glacier National Park was no less spectacular than the west side. We continued our day hikes in the area and stayed in one of the historic lodges. A day trip to Waterton National Park in Alberta, Canada was a highlight.
One of the highlights of the entire trip was the visit to the Amazon Basin, which was a short flight from Cuzco to the gateway city of Puerto Maldonado. Once there, we boarded a boat for a journey up an Amazon tributary for a total of eight hours to a research center.
Two days were spent in the Lake Titicaca region, including a home stay with indigenous Aymaran families on one of the islands. Getting to the lake was half the fun, via a 10 hour train trip over a 14,200 foot pass and through the beautiful stark altiplano landscape.
We are currently on the fast boat up the Tonle Sap River from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, Cambodia. We have just finished staying three nights in Phnom Penh, the capital city.
Yesterday we went to the Great Wall. It is a portion of the wall that sees very few visitors. With all the buses and subway, it cost us Y66 or $7 per person. Pulling the whole thing off wasn’t easy though.
After some rough traveling, we first visited the pandas in Chengdu and then relaxed in Dali. Among the highlights there was a visit to a local market.
After leaving the relaxation of Dali, we visited Kunming, another large Chinese city. The major highlight of this visit was a day trip to the Stone Forest.
We are now in Kunming, which is in the southwest corner of China, very close to the Laos and Vietnam borders.
We took a three-week trip to five countries in Europe, using the train and bus as our primary modes of transportation. Our children were six and nine during this trip, which was their first taste of extended international travel in a hostel setting.
