The best things in life aren’t things. They’re the experiences and connections that shape us and travel has always had a place in my life from the time I was a boy until today.
In 1998, Yim joined me on the adventure and our big trips are still to come.
I enjoy writing about our travels and using my photography to illustrate them as a way of recording a life I am grateful for. I hope you find something you enjoy.
Uvita was the southernmost part of our two month adventure and the drive down Costanera Sur was beautiful. Surrounded by some of Costa Rica’s most dynamic natural environments, the highway follows the Pacific Ocean coastline and threads through tropical rainforest landscapes rich in biodiversity. Along our route, we passed through Dominical — known for its…
The drive from La Fortuna toward Quepos on a cloudy, rainy day was slow and deliberate. It was raining and the winding mountain roads twisted sharply as we drove up into the mountain, and they are flanked by deep ditches. We’d counted four cars in the ditch while in La Fortuna, which illustrates the fact…
La Fortuna was our third stop in Costa Rica and we drove in from Monteverde, along the twisting, mountainous dirt roads. The 40 kilometre drive to Tilaran took an hour and forty-five minutes, because we weren’t comfortable travelling faster than 30 kilometres an hour. Although is was a nice drive at that speed, with beautiful…
On the day before our drive to Monteverde, we had very strong winds at night in the Esterone area. Palm trees scraped along our metal roof all night long, punctuated by the occasional bang of a branch hitting the tin surface. The next morning, as we wound our way out of the region along the…
Above: Sunrise at Playa Buenavista. Esterones, Costa Rica – Our First Month For the first month of our visit to Costa Rica, we rented a house in a small district called Esterones de Samara. Esterones is a quiet, agricultural, jungle-surrounded community a short distance from the beautiful Playa Buenavista. It is situated about 35 minutes…
The Ostional Wildlife Refuge in Costa Rica was created in 1984 to protect one of the world’s most important nesting sites of the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. It was a destination I had been interested in visiting since 2017 as the beaches of Ostional are the location of a rarely seen biological wonder – an…
2025 was a particularly cold winter and spring, and the weather in Collingwood did not really warm up until early June, the same month I turned 70 and I decided that I was no longer willing to tolerate five months or more of cold weather annually and we started planning for extended periods of time…
Ratatouille is a traditional French Provençal dish of stewed summer vegetables that originated as a peasant food in the southern region of France. But I knew it better from the Disney movie of the same name but had never remembered actually trying it so on a cold November weekend while Yim was out at her…
Over a month after being home, the incredible, lush landscapes of Madeira remain lodged in my memory… This is the most comprehensive post I have ever photographed and written of our travels. It features 20 separately linked posts expanding on the hikes and outings we did. I hope you take the time to enjoy the…
A little bit about the home we stayed in, because it deserves it’s own page. We stayed at an Alojamento Local that we found on AirBNB called Cantinho do Sol, which was represented by a local company called Stay Madeira Island. When we started researching where to stay, we didn’t know much about the island…
