Through the Interface

Córdoba and Tucumán

I wasn’t expecting very much from either Córdoba or Tucumán. They were originally just waypoints on the path to Salta and beyond. This is pretty much exactly what Córdoba ended up being: it’s a big, fairly unexceptional (in our view, anyway) city. For sure there are things we might have visited that would have improved our view of it, but we decided not to spend an excessive amount of time trying to discover another side of Córdoba: we focused more on the kids’ schoolwork and recharging our batteries after the more hectic days in Rio and Iguassu. On our... Read more →

Brazil to Argentina

We’ve been in Argentina for most of the week, especially if you count our stay in Iguassu (where we stayed in Brazil but ended up spending most of our time in Argentina). It’s probably a good time to reflect on some experiences between the two countries, before things blur even further. I enjoyed Brazil, but certainly felt we were more at risk there than in Argentina. This feeling might have been driven by horror stories friends (and the media) reported, but still – it was tangible, and I don’t believe at all misplaced. Luckily nothing bad happened, but the... Read more →

Iguassu Falls

Our last stop in Brazil ended up being one of the trip’s highlights, so far: we arrived in Iguassu on Sunday night, and stayed in a hotel on the Brazilian side of the famous Falls. (We were sure we’d asked the travel agent to book a hotel on the Argentinian side, but then it’s our fault we didn’t check the itinerary.) We only had one day to visit the Falls – many people take 2 days to visit both Brazilian and Argentinian sides, for comparison – and as the Argentinian side is more extensive and varied, we decided to... Read more →

Paraty to Rio de Janeiro

The weather wasn’t great during our first few days in Paraty, but at least we were dry after the thorough soaking we received in Sao Paolo. We used the time to do a few “non-beach” tourist activities, such as renting a boat to take us around the coast, walking in the jungle and visiting a cachaça distillery. The old town of Paraty is really nice, too: The place we were staying in – the Resort Croce del Sud – was really special. It had been built by an Italian named Luca, who had previously built a boat he was... Read more →

Sao Paolo to Paraty

Apparently Brazil has very few extended bouts of cold, wet weather – even in their winter, which is, of course, right now – but one of them started just before our arrival. Sao Paolo had just gone 40 or so days without rain, and so many people welcomed it. Fair enough. From our side, we were hoping for better weather to discover Sao Paolo, but in the end we spent more time than expected catching up on work and schoolwork. Our Airbnb was very central – just a block from the famous Paulista Avenue. There are many, many pizzerias... Read more →

Displaying a round-the-world itinerary using Google Maps – Part 5

I really thought this series was finished, but there you go. In the first part we saw a basic, embedded map and then added information windows and labels. In the most recent part we added overlay data being recorded by a tracking device to show our progress in real-time. Here’s the thing: a few days ago I realised the tracking information wasn’t being displayed. Initially I thought it might be due to limited connectivity or bandwidth – I was in Peru, at the time – but I then realised it was probably due to the volume of points being... Read more →

From Peru to Brazil

So we made it to Brazil. After a 4:30am departure from the hotel (ouch), we took the 6:55am flight back from Cusco to Lima. We ended up having to collect our bags and recheck them onwards to Sao Paolo, as LATAM needed to issue us a new ticket after cancelling the previous leg due to our “missing” the flight from LA to Lima (this is when we were re-routed via Dallas and Miami, as you’d be forgiven for not remembering :-). The wait in Lima was a little long but not insufferably so. The flight to Sao Paolo was... Read more →

Cusco and Machu Picchu

We were always expecting these few days to be special – one of the highlights of our trip – and they haven’t disappointed. We didn’t want to take any chances with the Peruvian leg, so we had the complete itinerary – including airport transfers and hotels – organised as part of the overall round-the-world trip. The week started well: I mentioned in passing, last time, that we had one fewer bag than expected on arrival in Lima. It took the airline a few days to sort out, but we were finally able to pick the bag up just prior... Read more →

Lima

We left early on Thursday morning to get to SFO in good time for our flight. Catching BART would have been my preferred way to get there, but when I costed up the options it looked cheaper to catch an UberXL (at around $43) than to pay for 5 people at $8.90 per person (it’s frankly outrageous there are no discounted BART tickets for kids unless they have a Clipper card). Plus there would have been the not-insignificant effort of walking 6 blocks to 16th & Mission (which is way up on the list of most sketchy BART stations)... Read more →

San Francisco

It’s been really great to be back in the Bay Area. My wife and I lived here from 2000 to 2003 – back when (in retrospect, although it didn’t seem so at the time) it was affordable to do so – and being back here is in many ways like coming home. Old friends have gone to great pains to make us feel welcome: it was fantastic to stay briefly up in Novato – taking advantage of the weather in Marin County – and our time in San Francisco itself has been excellent, if a little on the cool... Read more →

From Monterey to Marin County

After leaving Sequoia National Park, we headed across the central Californian valley towards Monterey, stopping for lunch in Fresno. Approaching Monterey we started to get excited, seeing the golden hills of California reminded us strongly of our time living in the Bay Area. Then we hit the bank of fog coming off the Pacific and remembered just how much the temperature can vary during the summer months in this part of the world. Camping might prove interesting. We’d just spent a couple of days of camping in Sequoia – and the previous days of camping were just before the... Read more →

Las Vegas to Sequoia National Park (from the ridiculous to the sublime)

Las Vegas pretty much met my expectations (which were admittedly very low). After coming to the city 1-2 times a year for around 20 years for Autodesk conferences, it was strange coming back with my family. We initially struggled to get a room at late notice: between the Black Hat security conference, a huge basketball tournament and the World Poker Championships (plus probably 15 other events I’m not aware of) the city was pretty well booked. In the end we stayed at the Travelodge by McCarran, which was on the helicopter flight path for the airport. We had fun,... Read more →

Parks of Utah

Utah is an absolutely incredible place. We’ve spent the last week or so discovering some of its State and National Parks. As mentioned previously, we used Dead Horse Point State Park as our base for the first few days, from there visiting Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We then hit the road and headed towards Bryce Canyon, passing through Capitol Reef and staying overnight outside Bryce at Cannonville, so that we could get in early for a first-come-first-serve camping spot. Our stay in Bryce went very well: after a couple of days we got up really early – packed... Read more →

Camping

I enjoy certain aspects of camping. I won’t say it’s my favourite thing in the world, but there are things about it that I appreciate. Things I like: Chats around campfires The lack of showers Drinking a beer or two (also around the campfire) Waking up in nature Seeing our kids playing together without electronics Things I don’t like: Being either too cold or hot (in Yellowstone we were both: we went to bed too hot and woke up freezing) Biting insects Setting up tents in crappy weather Crappy weather in general Here’s a quick video I recorded of... Read more →

Heading south

Our plan – as you can see from our website – was to spend some time in Grand Teton National Park before breaking the journey south to Bryce Canyon in Salt Lake City. That plan changed in Yellowstone: while in Mammoth Hot Springs we met a really nice family from Oregon who had some interesting advice about visiting the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks while using Dead Horse Point State Park as a base. Thanks, Dan and Meghan! So it was that we headed south through Grand Teton and even ultimately decided to power on through, rather than staying... Read more →

Yellowstone

We arrived in Bozeman from Toronto (having changed in Denver) fairly late on Thursday night. After picking up the rental car – and eating a quick pizza in Belgrade – we zoomed over to West Yellowstone, the town closest to the western-most entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The kids really only had a few hours of sleep in a Days Inn before we bundled them into the car and headed across to try to snag a spot at a first-come-first-serve campsite (the only way to get a place in Yellowstone at this time of year, at late notice). We... Read more →

Toronto

For the last year and a half I’ve been reporting into an Autodesk Research team based mainly in Toronto, so it made sense to include that city in the itinerary of our round-the-world tour. This did mean, however, that almost inevitably my wife and kids would be left alone for the majority of our time in the city, while I spent time with colleagues. I’m part of the Complex Systems Research group, run by Azam Khan. It’s an impressive group – many have PhDs, a few of us do not – so it’s always an education for me to... Read more →

Displaying a round-the-world itinerary using Google Maps – Part 4

In the first parts of this series we saw a basic, embedded map and then added information windows and labels. In this post we’re going to overlay data being recorded by a tracking device to show our progress in real-time. This was made pretty easy thanks to Garmin’s MapShare service: our Iridium-connected inReach Explorer+ device publishes tracking information automagically to our MapShare page, which has a KML feed that can be embedded as an overlay on Google Maps. The additional code, below, is trivial. It’s possible to zoom into the location of the latest data on map load, but... Read more →

Old friends and Pinball Bob

Several people have looked at our trip’s itinerary and have reacted in a similar way: Washington DC New York West Hartford Toronto … “Wait a minute… why on earth are you going to West Hartford?” It boils down to this: one of my closest friends lives there. Duncan and I met during our first week or so at University – we played field hockey together – and ended up becoming very good friends: we lived in a shared house during our 2nd year at Uni, for instance. We’ve stayed in touch ever since, visiting each other in the US,... Read more →

The first few days of our big trip

So far our big trip has gone well: the trip out via the UK went smoothly – we had a 5-hour layover at Heathrow Terminal 5, as we had to collect and re-check our bags (our ticket from Geneva was separate from the main round-the-world itinerary, it seems) – but time passes quickly in a pub when you’re eating fish and chips and sipping Guinness. Arrivals in DC were also a breeze: I’d forgotten about having to take mobile lounges at Dulles, but immigration was quick and easy. We booked an UberXL (we’re 5 people with lots of bags)... Read more →