In mid-February we flew to Amman, Jordan to begin a two week travel through time in Jordan and Egypt. Achmad, our tour guide in Jordan introduced us to our driver Hossain and his Time Machine (bus). Sites visited ranged in time from 3000 BC in Egypt to 2035 AD in Jordan.
In January, we flew to San Diego to spend time with Danielle. She had arranged for us to travel La Paz, Mexico, which turned out to be a wonderful way to reinforce our increasingly positive impressions of Mexico. She is only 20 minutes from the border and flights from San Diego to La Paz were very expensive. So we Lyft-ed to the border and walked across a bridge that went directly into the Tijuana airport. From there it was a 2 hour flight south to La Paz which is near the tip of Baja California Sur.
Danielle texted us before the trip and asked if we would be comfortable swimming with whale sharks and sea lions. John replied with a question: “what do they eat?”. Danielle’s response was: whale sharks are vegetarians, not sure about sea lions”. We did it anyway and it was fun.
At Uluru in the middle of Australia – in the chair the Dalai Lama sat in last year.
2019 was another generally good year. It was a major milestone since we both turned 70 in 2019 — but we don’t feel 70 on most days. We continued to run our consulting business, and did a fair amount of business and pleasure travel in 2019. We also try to spend plenty of time with our family. A negative on the family front was the unexpected passing of Paula’s younger brother Tim on December 29, 2018.
We have documented some 2019 events on the following pages. We logged six other countries this year (Iceland, a new one, plus Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Paraguay and Mexico) and made domestic trips to San Diego, New Orleans (twice), Washington D.C. (three times) and Boston (three times).
John and Paula
Sadly, Paula’s brother Tim passed away on December 29, 2018. He had not been well for some years but his passing was unexpected.
We spent time with family at home, Oviedo, Alexandria and Boston.
Leon, Julian and Ben continue to grow and develop. We enjoy spending time with them.
In 2019 we made our third visit to Australia, and each time it has been a great trip. We have now experienced three distinctly different and very interesting regions. We ran a conference in Brisbane and then flew to the very center of the country (called the Red Centre) to experience the world’s most famous rock: Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta, both sacred to Aboriginal people, and then visited the very remote outback town of Alice Springs.
Brisbane is a lovely town, very modern but with a heritage dating back to the 1820’s when it began as a British penal colony. England had a problem with overcrowding of jails and the loss of American colonies in the War of Independence led the English to establish a penal colony in the new land of Australia. A central feature of Brisbane is the river, with fleets of water taxis that are heavily used by commuters. We spent a week getting to know Brisbane.
Our rental car license plate
After that, we took a 3 hour plane ride to the center of the country deep into the Outback. We landed in a dust storm and the rental car agent told us to watch out for the wild camels: The dust storm had caused them to get closer to the roads and “They don’t know what they are doing!” Apparently the British brought camels from Afghanistan 150 years ago to help explore the interior and these were the descendants of those that escaped. We were disappointed that we didn’t see one, but the weather cleared up nicely that afternoon
Sunset dinner on Tali Waru dune, with Uluru in the background.
We did a sunset dinner with local entertainment and local food, having driven out to the dunes in a monstrous all-terrain vehicle. The sunset was spectacular and an astronomer then gave us a guided tour of the Southern Hemisphere constellations.
Gourmet dinner on the dune, sampling lots of local food, including ants – a great source of protein
The classic view of Uluru (Ayers Rock)
Uluru, the world’s largest monolith, was “discovered” in 1873 by Europeans but the local Anangu people had already been there at least 22,000 years. Long called Ayers Rock, it was returned to its Aboriginal owners in 1985 and reassumed its original name. It was named as a World Heritage site in 1987.
Alice Springs Telegraph Station – World-Changing Technology: The Electric Telegraph
Deep in the center of Australia we discovered technologies significant to both John and Paula. John’s was the Overland Telegraph Line (OTL) completed in 1872 by the British-Australian Telegraph Company, which was the last link connecting the underwater telegraph cable from Singapore and Indonesia to the cities in south Australia and considered one of the great engineering achievements of the 19th Century. It reduced the time to get a message to or from London from many months to 24 hours by use of multiple repeater stations along the way. Alice Springs was created as one of those repeater stations.
Paula’s technology: Royal Flying Doctors Service
Another attraction in Alice Springs is the headquarters of the Royal Flying Doctors Service, established in 1928 to bring basic medical services to the remote areas of the Outback. That technology was a bit more interesting to Paula.
Hiking at Standley Chasm in the West MacDonnell mountain range.
2019 was the milestone year that we both turned 70. It doesn’t feel that long……
We are working hard to stay healthy and fit.
We added a new country in 2019, when we circumnavigated Iceland on the small French cruise ship Le Boréal, with Kathy, Roy, Roger and Peg. It was an active Backroads tour, arriving in a new port each day and lots of hiking to waterfalls, hot springs, mud pots, hydro and geothermal power plants, volcanoes, etc. We also added to our list of latitude parallels by hiking to the Artic Circle on Grimsey Island.
We visited Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia again this year to conduct a conference.
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