Well here we are in 2020. I think we'll be looking back in 2021 at this year with great hindsight. It has now been almost 5 months since I finished my last tour (to the Guyanas - Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana). The Covid crisis that we are all familiar with has made a devastating blow to the tourism industry. In the meantime, we are hunkering down hoping that things will improve in 2021 so we can get back out and see the world.
So with all this time on ones hands, it's been an opportunity to look and see what I've been too busy to look at in the past. Lo and behold, I remembered that I have a travel blog! Alright. It's only been sitting there collecting internet dust for the last 11 years. But I thought it was time to have another crack at it.
So what has been going on the last 11 years? Well, for those of you who haven't followed me along on social media, I'm now married and I have a sweet child who is currently busy watching me type up this blog. I somehow managed to fit that into what has been a very busy life of leading tours since 2009 (besides a stint in the Adventures Abroad office as the Operations Manager for a year - it had been a challenge - my hair USED to be ginger-y, NOT grey). The tours have taken me as far afield as the remote nations of the Pacific Ocean (think: Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and more), to some that had been decidedly risky parts of the world but okay if you got the timing right (Iraqi Kurdistan, Sudan, Syria, etc), and to the exotic Stans of Central Asia, amongst many more locales. The latter case is well worth mentioning as it would turn out that I met my wife, Acelle, in Uzbekistan whilst on tour and I relocated to the capital of Tashkent for a couple of years while we applied (and eventually got) for her Canadian Permanent Residency visa. Our son, Alexander (the Small), was born during this time and it so happened to be in the midst of the Uzbek summer where it reaches 45+ degrees Celsius. We almost gave him the surname Hot-son rather than Hodgson. Once we secured the visa it was time to head to Canada where we made Vernon (Okanagan, British Columbia) home for a year and a half, followed by my return to Vancouver where it has been home base (again, for me) since 2016.
Certainly the tour and travel career has been a memorable one. Much of the fun has come about from being able to design and lead many of the tours. Probably due to a (now) close connection to the former Soviet Union, recently I've been keeping busy putting together new tours to Belarus, Ukraine & Moldova; an epic 40-day land-based tour across the vastness of Russia; and more in-depth visits to the 5 Stans. Many more were in the works going forward for 2020 and 2021 until we ran into Coronavirus time. Now we bide our time, hoping for a time on the horizon where we will be able to safely go out and tour the world again.
The time spent in Vancouver whilst staying safe has not been wasteful. There was nothing quite like it when we were under effective lockdown and you had to self-isolate at home. No tours to prepare for, no accounts to do, and all those accumulated tasks suddenly became very relevant to keep your days busy. Now I could go through and edit/cull the 50,000+ photos on my iMac (still working away at that one - I'm up to autumn 2017!); catch up on those books I bought a few years ago and have been sitting on my shelf; and, of course, get to spend time with my family. Acelle and Alex have been very patient with my semi-nomadic lifestyle over the course and we have been enjoying our time during lockdown and various phases of "opening up" during CoVid. We try to get out on little jaunts to (very) nearby Stanley Park for forest walks and photographing urban wildlife. There is a lot of beautiful British Columbia to keep us entertained.
In the meantime, it is my intention to NOT wait another 11 years till this blog is expanded upon. Instead? I'm hoping to share some travel thoughts, stories, anecdotes, travel lists, favourite places, etc. as inspirations come to me during this break and, hopefully, beyond! 😜
Photo: Acelle and Alex at an outdoor cafe in Odessa, Ukraine (August, 2019) on a family excursion.
Note: one of the other tasks during CoVid has been to slowly populate a website for my photography. It is very much a work in progress, but if you are so inclined, you can check out the link here:
https://owilybug.picfair.com
So with all this time on ones hands, it's been an opportunity to look and see what I've been too busy to look at in the past. Lo and behold, I remembered that I have a travel blog! Alright. It's only been sitting there collecting internet dust for the last 11 years. But I thought it was time to have another crack at it.
So what has been going on the last 11 years? Well, for those of you who haven't followed me along on social media, I'm now married and I have a sweet child who is currently busy watching me type up this blog. I somehow managed to fit that into what has been a very busy life of leading tours since 2009 (besides a stint in the Adventures Abroad office as the Operations Manager for a year - it had been a challenge - my hair USED to be ginger-y, NOT grey). The tours have taken me as far afield as the remote nations of the Pacific Ocean (think: Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and more), to some that had been decidedly risky parts of the world but okay if you got the timing right (Iraqi Kurdistan, Sudan, Syria, etc), and to the exotic Stans of Central Asia, amongst many more locales. The latter case is well worth mentioning as it would turn out that I met my wife, Acelle, in Uzbekistan whilst on tour and I relocated to the capital of Tashkent for a couple of years while we applied (and eventually got) for her Canadian Permanent Residency visa. Our son, Alexander (the Small), was born during this time and it so happened to be in the midst of the Uzbek summer where it reaches 45+ degrees Celsius. We almost gave him the surname Hot-son rather than Hodgson. Once we secured the visa it was time to head to Canada where we made Vernon (Okanagan, British Columbia) home for a year and a half, followed by my return to Vancouver where it has been home base (again, for me) since 2016.
Certainly the tour and travel career has been a memorable one. Much of the fun has come about from being able to design and lead many of the tours. Probably due to a (now) close connection to the former Soviet Union, recently I've been keeping busy putting together new tours to Belarus, Ukraine & Moldova; an epic 40-day land-based tour across the vastness of Russia; and more in-depth visits to the 5 Stans. Many more were in the works going forward for 2020 and 2021 until we ran into Coronavirus time. Now we bide our time, hoping for a time on the horizon where we will be able to safely go out and tour the world again.
The time spent in Vancouver whilst staying safe has not been wasteful. There was nothing quite like it when we were under effective lockdown and you had to self-isolate at home. No tours to prepare for, no accounts to do, and all those accumulated tasks suddenly became very relevant to keep your days busy. Now I could go through and edit/cull the 50,000+ photos on my iMac (still working away at that one - I'm up to autumn 2017!); catch up on those books I bought a few years ago and have been sitting on my shelf; and, of course, get to spend time with my family. Acelle and Alex have been very patient with my semi-nomadic lifestyle over the course and we have been enjoying our time during lockdown and various phases of "opening up" during CoVid. We try to get out on little jaunts to (very) nearby Stanley Park for forest walks and photographing urban wildlife. There is a lot of beautiful British Columbia to keep us entertained.
In the meantime, it is my intention to NOT wait another 11 years till this blog is expanded upon. Instead? I'm hoping to share some travel thoughts, stories, anecdotes, travel lists, favourite places, etc. as inspirations come to me during this break and, hopefully, beyond! 😜
Photo: Acelle and Alex at an outdoor cafe in Odessa, Ukraine (August, 2019) on a family excursion.
Note: one of the other tasks during CoVid has been to slowly populate a website for my photography. It is very much a work in progress, but if you are so inclined, you can check out the link here:
https://owilybug.picfair.com
