A Travel Blog by Katie Chavez
I first visited the beautiful Waiheke Island when I was a kid growing up in Auckland. I have hazy memories of deserted beaches and eating ice-cream from the dairy (that’s a corner store for all of you that don’t speak Kiwi). I remember it feeling empty, especially compared to the busy city suburb we lived […] Read more…
As you probably know, I am kinda in love with Vancouver so it was only fitting to end our Americas trip in one of our favourite cities in the world. Originally we were going to be spending a few nights in Victoria and were only going back to Vancouver to catch our flight, but as […] Read more…
Volunteering on Denman Island only became part of our plans at the last minute because of our bad experience at Osoyoos. It is funny how the unplanned parts of your travels, and in life in general, can sometimes turn out to be the most satisfying. After arriving by ferry from Vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver […] Read more…
After how well our first experience with Help X went, we weren’t as nervous about starting our second placement which was two weeks working on a vineyard/farm in Osoyoos. But if we knew what a Help X nightmare we were about to endure, we would have hightailed it back to Vancouver straight away. Osoyoos is […] Read more…
After a stressful time on Greyhound buses involving late arrivals, rude bus drivers and an almost missed connection, we finally arrived in Chase, the closest town to the HI Squilax Hostel and General Store where we would be volunteering for two weeks. Trav and I signed up to a couple of websites, Workaway and Help X, […] Read more…
Our Rocky Mountain Road Trip did’t start out with a bang. Sixteen hours on a Greyhound is not anyone’s idea of fun, certainly not ours. I think the fact that they made us change buses and wait around for an hour at midnight was what made it even less fun than we expected it to […] Read more…
As our time in Vancouver was coming to an end, I started to feel anxious. Although I was excited about our road trip through the Rockies and the volunteering set up for after that, I couldn’t help but feel that the best part of the trip was over – this is the pull that this […] Read more…
Anyone that knows me knows how much I love Vancouver. Trav and I lived here for a short time back in 2009/2010 and I fell head over heels in love with this city. For what I look for in a city, Vancouver is perfect (except for the rain from October to June). Within the Greater […] Read more…
I first visited Seattle back in 2010 with my Dad, as part of a six week West Coast road trip. We only had a couple of days in Seattle so we did the general touristy stuff – ate seafood on the waterfront, visited the Pike Place Market, went to the Art Museum and wandered around the downtown. […] Read more…
To get from Toronto to Chicago involved 2 buses, numerous stops, an intrusive border crossing experience and a whole lot of time. I always dread having to cross into the US, especially by land. The US Border Guards are pretty much always nasty and incredibly self-important at the best of times, but the guy that […] Read more…