Mexico stopover

After the Town Hall, Pete joined me in Tucson (a great place! very much like Alice) and we went with our host to Puerto Oenasco (known as Rocky Point to the Arizonians who flood in for weekends and holidays) in Mexico where we stayed at a beach condo and enjoyed the Sea of Cortez, beach, met new contacts and generally lounged around the pool and drank margaritas!!! my new favourite drink!! This is the closest beach to land bound Arizona and there are massive condominium and luxury timeshare developments under construction to provide for the influx if holiday makers, -huge developments perched on the edge of the stark Mexican desert that fringes the Sea of Cortez.

I got my hair corn rowed and braided and look like I’ve had a holiday.

Back to Tuscon through the Organ Oioes Cactus National Park.

We went to a pool party/reunion for a local Peace Corp group and met some more very interesting people. Then we returned to Phoenix where I’m back in the Uni office and Pete is being mr mum!.

All in all a great week last week, with lots of interesting people and places to meet and see. Photos are on their way, we now have a small printer for photos, and I’m going to buy a small album to show people here, of oz, & family & friends. Take care.

Julie

Tucson meeting

Well, here I am in Tucson, missions, mexican buildings, mountains, universities and lots of amazing indian people to talk to.  Pete is swelting in Phoenix 115 last I heard.  I’ve got a few trivia items for you to consider.

1.    light switch has to be switched up – to come on!

2.    museli bars are known as power bars!

3.    you can turn right on a red lights anytime if its clear

4.    all paper money is the same colour and size, so you really have to check out the notes, They still have pennies, five, nickels quarters, dime coins, so the bag feels heavy.

5.   

I’ve got more, but have to return to the Town Hall – not a building, a meeting place name!

6.   Everyone says we have an accent – they have, we don’t! also we are easier to understand then the Brits!

7.  Over a hundred channels on t.v.(great for my surfing finger) but nothing to watch.

8. Everyone is  sooo polite that its sometimes quite embarrassing.

Anchorage to Arizona

As we arrived in San Fransisco, we were met by our host Denis who took us to Pete’s contacts Kathy and Denis2 ’s house. Pete was so unwell we took him to the doctor who said he had bronchitis, so he was in bed for a few days, while I was shown the sights of SF. Harbour, Bridge, cable cars, winding streets, Alcatraz etc… so I will put some photos up soon.

.. .

We then stayed in Los Gatos where the shops display Lambaginis, Mercs, etc.. like we see target!!. On to the plane after the most amazing line up at the airport, they had the All Stars baseball game here and they are all trying to get out of town like us! Flew over some mountains, desert and then landed in Phoenix.

Here in sunny downtown Tempe, where we have been met by our host and have settled into a shared apartment with a very friendly Navajo man Tim, who has two cats that we will live with. I have been busy jumping through the hoops of academia to get a bus pass, ID and office, so its been good. The Temperatue is a sweltering 43 and looks like it will stay that way for another few weeks. The heat has kept us indoors and when we have ventured out we have discovered that Phoenix is a sprawling flat metropolis of look alike bland suburbs with shopping malls scattered through it to define the boundaries of one suburb from the next. The shopping malls are huge complexes which all appear to have the same shops and designers. The photos we have taken all look the same, so we will spare you the images

The trip to Tucson and Mexico were far more memorable. Tucson is a far more interesting city, surrounded by jagged mountainsand with a vibrant desert surrounding it dominated by cacti. Quite a contrast to Phoenix.

Visit to a Mushers Camp near Juneau

We visited a musher’s camp where they did summer training.

We soared around in the mud, with these amazing dogs, pulling 7 adults and yelping for more.

Holmer liked the taste of my pearl ring! Check out those blue eyes.

we were asked to handle the pups as much as we wanted, this one just slept.

The Cruise to Alaska

Cruising the Inner Passage to Alaska

The cruise ship Volendam and our cabin on board.

The honeymoon cruise was a special and relaxing time, but I got a really bad cold (air conditioning) and now Pete is suffering with it! The towns along the inside passage are real frontier towns with lots of character we started off in Vancouver with our Lifeboat drill and then left at 5pm on Friday 22nd June.

Our first port was Ketchikan, where we walked up the famous Creek street (red light district).

Ketchikan provided our first glimpse of the communities which clung to the narrow strip of land between the sheer mountains and the sea. Creek Street was the red-light district for the fishermen and lumberjacks until 1953. The local Tlingit tribe performed traditional dancing, singing and drumming in their meeting house at Saxman village on the outskirts of town.

Then on to Icy Point and the settlement of Hoona

The jetty at Icy point with Volendam in the background and main street Hoona.

where we picked up a heap of postcards. hey, while I remember, can you send your postal addresses as I left my diary at home, so, Bec, Carlene, Sharon, Michelle, Kim, Suzie, Perky, Trisha, Dixie, etc… – if you want a postcard in the next few months, then send an email with your address and postcode please. Pete has some, but it won’t hurt to update anyway. Cheers

Back to our trip on Tuesday we docked at Juneau with sunny skies and wonderful views,

These photos show Juneau (the capital of Alaska) from the water, the Roberts Mountain Tram which rises almost vertically 1000 metres above Juneau and a view of our ship from the top of Roberts mountain.

We went out to a Mushers camp and had a muddy ride with a husky team, had a great presentation on the rigours of dog sled racing, by a Musher who called himself Yukon Jones (who later confessed that he had come from a small village to the south called Miami two years ago), held some puppies and basically heard all about the life of an Alaskan mad marathon sled team.

Sitka was next, with about 800 people living next to an avalanche area, very sad and desolate looking place, but with character. Hubbard Glacier was clouded over, but just going through the ice and watching the changing waters, was spellbinding anyway.

We docked in at Seward on Friday morning, Shannon Atkinson (a former PhD student of Pete’s and now head of research at the Alaska Sea Life Centre) picked us up, and we have been recovering from the trip ever since. The daylight hours are pretty amazing, its still bright daylight at midnight and a bit of dusk from about 1am – to 3am. They have foil on the window, to get some darkness! We went through the sea life center and on to visit another glacier, so we have been doing lots.

Your responses have been a little slow, so now you have more to comment on I expect to hear from you soon. Lots of love and we hope you are all keeping warm and well. Pictures will be posted as soon as Pete is feeling better

Julie and Pete