Meeting Chaya, Z Gas and Sergeant Major in Cozumel

Thundering clouds are passing through, each one dropping a bucket of water without warning before all goes quiet again. Maybe that's just life on this Western Caribbean island in late May, but it's new to us. A lot of things here are. In this post, I'm going to throw some of those new and disparate experiences your way without any through line to tie them together!

We've settled into such a slow-paced routine. We have a local departamento. (The kind where you walk in to a green courtyard, have a large, clean space, and people give you a pleasant "¡hola!". Or the kind where you can't flush paper down the toilet and you have to flip a switch in the bathroom to turn on hot water. It's a half empty/full sorta thing for you americanos).

Nap in the hammock, walk or jog to the store (la Mega), wander around town, grab tacos, come home, nap some more. Work fits in there somewhere, too.

I don't want this to become another foodie travel journal, but it's hard not to share at least some of our culinary favorites. We've made friends with the taco cart. On this day, they served us egg & chaya and steak & potatoes (they also make a killer cheese & potato).

And the churro man. He showed us that real Mexican churros = wow.

Of course, as anyone who's put Cozumel on their travel itinerary knows, it's just as much about the underwater scene as anything else. So let me share some snorkeling, starring Sergeant Major and friends.

And more snorkeling.

Man, these lucky cruise people sail in almost every day for vacation. Oh, wait, all they do is walk around town and go snorkeling, just like us! But then they have to leave at the end of the day!!

We may have unintentionally adopted a reptile, who now lives underneath the bedside end table. His quirky living situation earned him the name Subdesk. Subdesk has been around for weeks now.

Cozumel gave us some work surprises, too. Nothing crippling, just headscratchers. One laptop didn't like the wifi (or vice versa), so we went out to buy a cable (that's kah-blay round these parts). We need to access the US versions of certain major websites, but here these redirect to the local (.mx) pages. Some dozen workarounds later, we're good to go.

I'll leave you one last taste of the place: this song plays all morning as the local gas truck drives around. You know it's nearby when the song gets louder, so you can run out to grab yourself a tank.

Mole, architecture and kingdom animalia in San Diego (Month 3)

...San Diego!

By now, you're starting to realize that each "month" doesn't last 30 days. Some will be longer or shorter. We just keep moving along when the dates fit.

Anyways, our travels are bringing us back to Southern California for a short time, spurred on by some necessary local work tasks. But, slow travelers (constant workcationers?!) that we are, we put on our sweatshirts and pants, and we make an event out of it. (Sweatshirts? Yeah, remember that we've been acclimatized to the the Hawai'i life. Da Mainland feels downright chilly!)

What kind of event?

(1) book a place nearly equidistant from San Diego's Gaslamp (heart of downtown), Old Town (heritage & historical center) and Balboa Park (home of the Zoo). Check.

(2) Buy two season passes to the Zoo. Double check.

(3) Go out and enjoy something new every day. Check, check and check!

We've descended on this town before to visit the Zoo, Seaworld, the beach or for a cruise departure. This time, we get the chance to walk its streets and sink our teeth into the local joints.


The local joints are kicking our palates, reminding us of how long we've been away from good, homey Mexican food.

 
I could dunk your lawn trimmings in this sauce and they'd be amazing.

We've organically developed this travel habit of walking everywhere if we have the time, so trips of 3-5 miles on foot across town are well within our comfort zone now. That affords us the time to make an observation about San Diego - there's a range of interesting architecture.

We've passed a lot of Victorian-looking houses like this one.

Old Town has that Old West feel.

 Balboa Park is a toned-down nod to Churrigueresque Spain, its main drag lined with these kinds of buildings, fountains and corridors.

Even some of the more modern stuff catches our eye.

Don't think we shy away from the main attractions, either. Refer back to point (2) earlier ;). Lady J loves her some animal action, so she makes time to jog to the zoo nearly every day.

 
It's back to work so that we can keep this travel habit going. Then we're going to a hole-in-the-wall market down the street that sells a local salsa we're hooked on.

Buses, beaches and shave ice.

Alas, our second month comes to a close. It's almost time to leave this island!

We recently visited Lanikai beach on the Windward side, which struck us as an idyllic slice of Polynesia.

 
Yeah, it was worth the 1 1/2 hour bus journey there. Maybe even the 4 hours it took us to get back. Pelted by the rain and wind waiting for the bus in Waimanalo. After stopping for a fabled plate lunch truck that wasn't even there. Okay, maybe not quite worth that, but it was a fun journey.

Most epic of all was our local food romp last weekend. We stopped at House of Pure Aloha for some gourmet shave ice and some good conversation with the folks there. (You should put this on your itinerary if you're ever in Honolulu - they'll love to meet you. It's as much about community as it is about food, so plan a chunk of time to hang out there.) The next Saturday, we hatched a plan to try a bunch of sugary sweet places back-to-back. We took the bus towards Waikiki and walked among the following fine establishments:

1. Leonard's Bakery. Amazing malasadas. Stuffed with Dobash, Mango, Haupia... wow!

2. Waiola. Softest shave ice, like a light fluffy cloud. Its texture is barely perceptible before it melts.

3. Rainbow Drive-in. Good old plate lunch (okay) plus a "slush float", which is like putting ice cream in a cherry slurpee.

4. Snow Factory. It's like shaved ice cream, but it's not. Confused us. Mellow flavors, milky. Lady J loved the little flavor beads (look like caviar) that burst open when you chew on them.

5. Ailana. Nice people serving a rockin' pyramid of shave ice. We've had the tropical trio and chocolate brownie before, but this time was peanut butter and caramel.

We haven't had that much sugar in a long while. What a stomach ache of a mistake, the likes of which will not be repeated on our wanderings. But it was another fun journey.

To atone for our follies, we took our hiking up a notch, doing Koko Head trail so often that we worked up to twice in one workout session last week. I got it down to about 17 1/2 minutes, she did it in in 18:24. Just to think that on one of our first hikes up here, some guy was talking about his 16-something time and we thought, "we could never do that!"

I'll leave you one more picture, this one from the top of Koko Crater.

Do you think our next stop will be this beautiful? Well, I guess that depends on what you know about a place called...

Sore legs and rewarding vistas in Hawai'i Kai (Month 2)

...to beautiful O'ahu! They call it the "Gathering Place", and it shows. More crowds, more city, more concrete, more big-box and chain stores than our last spot. But we're digging a bit below the surface to find an island of contrasts, which has rewarded us with amazing scenery. (Actually, "above the surface" would be the right way to put it. Check out our hiking photos below.)

We shuttle-bussed it past the high-rises of Waikiki and settled in residential Hawai'i Kai. It's a respectable suburb, with houses and shops scattered across islets nestled among craggly cliffs on the south belly of the Windward Coast. "Wind" is the operative word. We work and sleep to the intermittent sounds of howling winds.

Nestled among craggly cliffs (and bounded on the east by old volcanic craters) equals PLENTY of hiking opportunities. So, in our off time (and our lunch breaks), we hike.

We hike Hanauma Bay (sometimes multiple times in one day). We might snorkel there with all the tourists next week, but this week is hiking season:

We hiked Koko Head, and we're about to do it again:

 

We hiked Mariner's Ridge:

Since we don't have a car, we have to hike to the hikes. That usually adds just a few miles each way.

But on our lazy Saturday we took the 2 hour bus ride to "hike" around the Dole Plantation (a total tourist trap) and gorged ourselves on Dole Whip floats!

Pineapples, geckos & honu in Kona, Hawaii (Month 1)

A whole month on the Big Island of Hawai'i? Don't mind if we do.

A block from the crystal blue waters of the Kona coast? Okay, we're sold.

So we packed up our closet and his & hers laptops for an amazing workcation. How amazing? So amazing we're inspired to start sharing our travels with you.

So far we've:

 - eaten 10 pineapples for dinner

 - snorkeled and tidepooled with 9 honu (sea turtles)

 - logged 150 miles walking and running around town (we're carless, after all)

 - fallen in love with bibingka, taro puffs, macadamia nut everything, and chirping geckos

But you're late to the party. Our days of falling asleep to the crashing waves, doing our shopping at the local farmer's market and ditching work to walk past the old archaeological sites to one of the local snorkel spots are almost over.

Don't feel too bad for us, though, because for the next month we're off to...

Work from home where home = anywhere?

Hold up, we never stopped to tell you what's up. We're a couple of remote laptop-heads virtually tethered to our weekday jobs. That word "remote" started getting bigger and bigger in our minds until we realized we could do this work from anywhere. Well, anywhere with a good wifi connection and space to work M-F 9-6 Pacific time. (Turns out we're not the first to have this thought.)

That's piece #1.

Oh, but it's expensive to travel. And complicated. Would we have to pick a place and live there a while? Sign a lease? Get visa papers?

Then we found piece #2 - a little thing called airbnb. So you're telling me that we can live anywhere for a month and pay less than we're paying in rent right now? Sign us up!

Put the pieces together, which brings us to our first anywhere: Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. And we're so excited for more.

da Kona Life

Snorkeling in Kona lulls us almost as much as drifting asleep to the waves crashing against Haukalua Heiau. It makes lady J crack the same giddy smile she gets when she hears the green geckos chirping happily.

Speaking of Geckos, lady J found a struggling baby gecko and tried to nurse it to health. We found a spot he liked and food he might eat, but it ended in tears. We miss you, little guy.

Tonight we enjoy another sunset over the Kona coast from the lanai.