Goodbye Summer / Hola Mexico!

Travel Journal #14

Hello fellow travelers! While summer may have finally slipped away, we are not mourning the changing of the seasons. Today, we are looking forward to future adventures on the horizon. October has been the month of travel for us the last two years – 2017 to South America and 2018 to the Canadian Rockies – so why should 2019 be any different? This year we will be visiting Central Mexico for 2 weeks and the adventure starts… today!

We’ve had an incredibly busy summer, so we must send our apologies for the lack of updates over the last few months. Hopefully our readers have had an equally amazing summer, exploring the world near or far. The two of us spent the summer apart; Norma stayed on Cozumel and Rob flew home to Vancouver to work for a few months. The wait is over, and we are back together again. It’s always a little bittersweet because we are not together, but we still found some adventures to keep us busy.

We did the best we could to enjoy our separate summers on different sides of the continent. We have lots of great content building up, which we are excited to start sharing with everyone.

This year we are excited about the changing of the calendar into October because it means that it is time to begin our next trip. This year, we will be traveling across Central Mexico, from Guadalajara to Mexico City and exploring many amazing destinations in between. We are excited to get underway. More on that below.

We also wanted to say thank you to anyone and everyone who takes to read about our adventures. Travel Around the Galaxy recently published our 200th post (well, in August) and we’re still excited and amazed by every new milestone we reach. We began this blog early in 2018, and have been sharing our travel adventures ever since. We have connected with some incredible bloggers here on Word Press and across social media, especially on Twitter. The #TravelTribe is incredible, and has made the entire travel blogging journey so much more enjoyable.

So, what have we been up to? We’re glad you asked.

Planning our trip through Central Mexico

You should always be looking towards the future instead of dwelling on the past, so lets start with whats coming next!

We’re super excited for our latest adventure, especially since we leave in just a couple hours! Later today, we will be flying from Cancun to Guadalajara, where we will spend the night before traveling north to visit Norma’s family in Zacatecas. Since we’re already going to travel all the way over here, we decided to go on an adventure and will be exploring some new parts of Mexico.

We have just over two weeks set aside to travel through Central Mexico. We’re visiting Norma’s family in Tepechitlan – just north of Guadalajara – and we have flights home booked 2 weeks later in Mexico City. So we just have to fill in the blanks. Our main points of interest are San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Queretero, Puebla and Mexico City, plus anything else we can discover along the way.

We will be sharing lots of stories and travel guides from this adventure soon!

Summer in Vancouver

Vancouver is home for Rob, and having grown up in the city, there are many hidden spots that only a local will know. While the summer was spent working for the most part, Rob was able to find some time to go out and explore the city.

The goal for the summer was to explore as many neighbourhoods and attractions as possible. It’s fun to try and visit places in your hometown through the eyes of a tourist. Many of these destinations we have been sharing throughout the summer, including Kits Beach, Gastown and Chinatown. We still have a few more that will trickle our over the next few weeks.

During our exploration of Vancouver, we have been working on a few great blog posts about things to do in the city – like the 15 Incredible Public Art Pieces in Vancouver – and some of these great destination guides will be coming up soon. Summer always comes and goes so fast, so it’s hard to keep up.

It is always good to go home once and a while to visit friends and family or to explore favourite restaurants (and discover new ones). When the weather is nice in Vancouver, it’s important to spend time outside. There are many great beaches and outdoor activities to do in the city. Most of this free time was spent in the wilderness, as there were several incredible afternoons spent hiking around the North Shore mountains and along the Sea to Sky highway. Which leads us to…

Hiking around Vancouver and Squamish

Vancouver is blessed with some incredible outdoor adventures, and there are many great hikes and wilderness destinations that we set our sights on this summer.

While there were a few that we had to postpone until next summer because of the weather – Brandywine Meadows and Garibaldi we’re looking at you – we managed to successfully finish a good number of incredible hikes. One of the big travel guides that we have been slowly working on, which should be ready in a few weeks, features 11 Incredible hikes around Vancouver and Squamish. We look forward to adding even more next year. During this summer Rob was fortunate to visit some great spots, including St. Mark’s Summit, Crooked Falls and Eagle Bluffs.

It was a much cooler summer in Vancouver, which is usually good for hiking, but especially towards the end of August and into September, the weather decided to change, preventing us from going up some of our desired destinations. Garibaldi was definitely the hike we wanted to attempt the most, and was disappointed that the rain returned a few weeks early, so we will have to try this one again next year.

Panorama Ridge (overlooking Garibaldi Lake) is one of the most spectacular spots to visit around Vancouver, and will allow for some great views of the Coast Mountains, including Black Tusk and other towering peaks of the coast mountains. We have had friends visit here in the past, and despite the effort it takes to get to the top, not one person has suggested it’s not worth the trip.

Back to Cozumel

Cozumel is our “home” right now, and once we get back from our Central Mexico adventure, we will be back together enjoying our Caribbean Island soon.

Throughout the fall and winter, we will be exploring more of the Island and the surrounding Riviera Maya.

Eventually we will have completed the perfect travel guides and have finished our photo journals. We are still living on the island, so there is so much more to explore, and we are still trying to figure out what the best attractions and most exciting places to eat and drink before sharing our discoveries.

Norma did some exploring during the summer, and we still have many pictures from last winter on Cozumel to share. We have been on the island for just over a year now, and we still have a few more spots we need to visit. We’ve been holding back on sharing content from the island because we haven’t finished exploring. We will be back on the island in a few weeks, so stay tuned for some of our best of, coming soon.

We do have a couple that are almost ready to share; the Seawalls Mural Festival, Sunsets on Cozumel vol. 2 and some of our favourite southern beaches including Punta Sur Eco Park and Palancar Beach.

Since we are so close to the Riviera Maya, we will also be hopping back to the mainland every once and a while to explore. There are many Mayan Ruins and colonial towns still to discover, so we hope to knock a few of those off the “bucket list” soon. We do have a few travel guides we’ve been working on – including 15 Incredible things we did in Quintana Roo – which will be released this fall.

The main destination we have our sights set on is Calakmul, located close to the south of the Yucatan Peninsula along the border with Belize and Guatemala. This ruins is supposed to be one of the best (and most remote) ruins that is still a bit off the beaten track.

We hope everyone enjoyed our update, and are excited to share the adventure with us throughout the rest of 2019 and into 2020. Happy travels everyone!