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Adventures in Wonderland

~ a pilgrimage of the heart

Adventures in Wonderland

Tag Archives: nomads

Shelley’s Story – reflections from a freelance travel writer

June 18, 2019

Her work has been featured in National Geographic, USA Today, Fodor’s, LA Times, CNN, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Yahoo, and …

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Homing In On Home

August 14, 2017

From Don: I don’t know what to say, I hardly know where to begin. We got back to Vancouver from …

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Why The Best Travels Of My Life Started After Fifty

April 6, 2017

An article I wrote for Intrepid has just been published in The Journal, by Intrepid Travel. Head on over and …

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Snail Mail

February 12, 2016

I’ve been on the move again. Ra, over at rarasaur has put together a series of articles called the Sonder …

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A Week to Arrive: creating a home in San Miguel de Allende.

January 21, 2016

14 January 2016. We had to be in Canada for two months after we returned from Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt …

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Do you want a home or do you want a life?

August 14, 2015

We were in our sixties and faced with the reality that we couldn’t have both. We didn’t see it with …

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Good-Food-Bad-Food, and Endless Beaches. Aloha from Hawaii.

December 15, 2014

29 Nov – 4 Dec 2014. We are at our gate in the Honolulu airport. It is after midnight as …

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Too Big For Our Boots

October 5, 2014

South America was a key. Things changed during that trip. It was during that journey that we greatly expanded our …

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Some Hair-raising Stories

September 20, 2014

It is February of 2012. We are living in the dusty town of Tiruvannamalai in India. We are here to …

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A Portrait of South America

September 12, 2014

26 Sept 2013 – 24 March 2014. We began on the east coast of the continent in Buenos Aires, Argentina. …

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This Nomadic Life – This wasn’t supposed to happen!

September 6, 2014

31 July 2014. From Don: This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were supposed to come back to Vancouver to get …

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Galapagos Revisited

August 29, 2014

We met Kenny and Anna from Taiwan on our Galapagos cruise. They were our meal companions on the ship, and …

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Together twenty-four seven: a working relationship

August 22, 2014

Don and I have been together for seventeen years and married for thirteen. Since we became nomadic in September 2011 we have …

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The Cañari of Ecuador, a ‘palace’ and a pig.

August 11, 2014

12-24 March 2014. To the northwest of Cuenca, past the town of Azogues, is the village of Biblían. High on …

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Travelling through the world, and through life, feeling our way by the tips of our fingers.

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Kitano Tenmangu flea market, known as Tenjin-san, has the feel of a small-time festival. Performing together at the flea market in Kyoto, I think this human has had his monkey from when it was a tiny baby. The love between the two is so palpable, and the monkey looks so healthy, that it makes me smile. It’s such a delightful performance. It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand a word of what the human is saying, the monkey says it all in his own clever way, and when it’s time to bow, he bends at the waist so low his head is on the ground. The whole audience laughs and claps. See my latest blog post: The Ultimate Treasure Hunt - a flea market and a food market in Kyoto. Link in bio.
Kitano Tenmangu flea market is known locally as Tenjin-san flea market. It's as if the attics and storage rooms of Japan have been emptied out and put on display. There are both special artefacts, and the detritus of life spread out on the street; picture frames and small furniture, vinyl records, toys, an old scale, stacks of new dishes, beautiful handmade pottery, and uniquely Japanese antiques and curios, and rack upon rack of gently-loved kimonos. It feels like a small-time festival, and we lucked into it. It only happens on the 25th of each month. See my latest blog post: The Ultimate Treasure Hunt - a flea market and a food market in Kyoto. Link in bio.
Nishiki Market, a narrow street of five covered blocks with a ceiling of rainbow windows, is known as the kitchen of Kyoto. The market began life in the 1300’s as a wholesale fish market. Over the years it morphed into a retail market selling primarily foods, but also various other goods. There are hundreds of shops and restaurants, many of which have been in the same family for generations, and the market is now a long-standing fixture of ordinary life in the city. These two ladies are selling tea, and they hand out tea samples in beautiful pottery cups. No one steals the cups, because Japan. See my latest blog post: The Ultimate Treasure Hunt - a flea market and a food market in Kyoto. Link in bio.
For over three weeks we were based in Cusco, the still-beating heart of the Inca Empire, as we explored the Urubamba Valley. It is known as the Sacred Valley because it was the property of the emperor, and it is littered with imposing Inca ruins and traditional villages. We visited such sites as Moras with its enormous circular crop terraces, the cascading salt evaporation ponds of Moray, the villages of Chinchero and Ollantaytambo, several of the more prominent Inca ruins, and of course Machu Picchu. And all along the way we encountered ordinary people living their lives pretty much in the same way as they have done for hundreds of years.
After a three day overland trip from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile across the Bolivian altiplano to the Uyuni salt flats we flew to La Paz, Bolivia’s capital. I don’t remember why we decided to not spend time in La Paz; instead we took a bus straight to Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. I took this photo from the bus while waiting to leave La Paz. Mi ciudad esta cambiando – My city is changing. Blog post: Salt Flats and Bowler Hats. Link in bio.
We did a road trip by bus in South America: Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago, Chile, two days later Santiago to La Serena, two days later La Serena to Antofagasta, two days later Antofagasta to San Pedro de Atacama. All the buses were double-decker, and all had seats the size airplane business-class, and on every leg we got the upstairs front seats giving us panoramic views of the landscape as we travelled. It was epic! Antofagastais a working class town with a rough edge to it, a regular downtown core, and a small beach; an unremarkable mining town in the far north of Chile. Still, there is this bright mosaic gecko bringing a little life to an otherwise dull building.

Recent Posts

  • The Ultimate Treasure Hunt – a flea market and a food market in Kyoto
  • We Could Be Heroes – shameless self promotion
  • The Eyes Have It – a photo essay
  • Traditions Both Tribal and Personal: Stories From Montreal
  • Winter in Montreal
  • An Ode to Vancouver’s Fraser River
  • Happiness Is To Hold Flowers In Both Hands* – a photo essay
  • Oh deer! Nara – Japan’s Ancient Capital

Top Posts & Pages

About us - Alison and Don
Salt Flats and Bowler Hats: Uyuni and Copacabana, Bolivia
Why I Blog: Creativity And The Need To Give It Away
The End of an Era
To Tour Or Not To Tour? Independent Travel Versus Travelling With a Tour Group
Homing In On Home
Jordan Highlights: Gerasa, the Dead Sea, and the Map of Madaba
Why The Best Travels Of My Life Started After Fifty
Earthquake City – Antigua, Guatemala
Women of Guatemala - a series of vignettes

Archives

Categories

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  • This Nomadic Life (94)
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  • Uncategorized (5)
  • Uruguay (1)
  • USA (3)
  • Vietnam (5)
  • What I'm Juiced About Right Now (20)

Copyright

© Alison Louise Armstrong and Adventures in Wonderland – a pilgrimage of the heart, 2010-2021.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any written or photographic material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Alison Louise Armstrong and Adventures in Wonderland – a pilgrimage of the heart with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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