Yearly ArchiveEverywhere Once |

Blog Meta

by Brian on April 25, 2012 in Travel

We finally got around to creating a dedicated Facebook page for EverywhereOnce. We won’t be using my personal page for the blog anymore, so followers no longer need to “Friend” me to get updates via Facebook (a huge improvement). Existing Friends, though, need to follow the new page if they want to keep seeing EverywhereOnce on Facebook. Simply “Like” the new page here:

http://www.facebook.com/EverywhereOnce

We take tons of photos that don’t make it to the site and often have other thoughts that don’t really fit the blog style. We plan to us this Facebook site as an outlet for all of that content. Think of it as a short-form EverywhereOnce blog, plus links to everything here. Kind of like EverywhereOnce Plus.

Spider Monkey Stowaway

by Brian on April 25, 2012 in Belize, Central America, Travel

This spider monkey commandeered our ship for a time as we sailed down the New River toward the Mayan ruin Lamanai in Belize.

Who are you trying to buffalo?

by Brian on April 24, 2012 in Travel

Last week someone resurrected this old post on Custer State Park to challenge my description of these woolly critters as buffalo instead of bison. My recollection is that here in the States, the American Bison is also called the American Buffalo. The following photo is a buffalo nickel, after all. So while it is technically true that these aren’t buffalo, we do use the names interchangeable in the U.S. And that is important, as you’ll see in a moment.

In confirming my recollection, I discovered something far more interesting. The scientific name for these creatures is actually Bison bison. A sub-species even goes by the name Bison bison bison. Why is this interesting? Because it allows us to construct a grammatically correct nine word sentence using just a single word. If we imagine a herd of plains bison living in a certain city of western New York who deceive some of their brethren, then we have the following:

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

What We Learned Backpacking for 2 Months

by Brian on April 23, 2012 in Belize, Central America, Guatemala, How To, Planning and Prep, Travel

40 liter packs are (almost) all you need

Imagine living out of a suitcase no bigger than a 1.5 square foot box. That’s basically what Shannon and I did for two months backpacking around Central America. We’re proud to report that not only did we have the smallest bags of anyone we met but that our 40 liter packs were perfectly adequate for this specific trip.

While “perfectly adequate” is a true enough description of what we experienced, “barely adequate” fits too. We’d have been in trouble if we needed to plan for colder weather or multiple seasons. Traveling through Central America we had the luxury of packing lightweight clothing, although the highlands of Guatemala got surprisingly chilly. I was happy to have a heavy fleece I didn’t originally intend to pack but brought along because Houston was so damn cold when we left.

Even in colder climates, we probably could have made the 40 liter backpacks work if not for all of the electronics we hauled: two laptops, a digital camera, a video camera, an iPhone, a surge protector, a universal power adapter, battery charger, and the cables needed to power all this junk. Leaving the electronics at home would have freed up almost an entire bag – but we’d never do that.

Howler Monkey Madness

by Brian on April 20, 2012 in Belize, Central America, Travel

Not one other traveler we met had Belize’s Community Baboon Sanctuary (CBS) on their itinerary. Most had never heard of it, which is a shame because it is definitely within the top three things we did in Central America. Tikal gets all the attention. Savvy travelers know that ATM Cave is a must do, but CBS should also make any list of top sights both because of the sanctuary’s awesome work and the unique opportunity to have an up-close encounter with wild and endangered black howler monkeys.

In 1985, 12 private landowners banded together to preserve their property as a sanctuary for black howler monkeys (called “baboons” in the local Creole dialect). Over the years, CBS has grown to over 200 landowners, in seven villages, who have voluntarily dedicated their 20 square miles of land to arrest the habitat destruction that, left unchecked, will cause an estimated 60% population decline over the next three decades. Meanwhile, the “baboon” population at the sanctuary has tripled in size to over 2,000 monkeys.

Visit the Community Baboon Sanctuary

CBS is considered the first conservation effort in the world to rely exclusively on local community cooperation to protect an endangered species. Local landowners benefit directly from the ecotourism revenues generated by the sanctuary creating a win-win scenario for both man and beast.

We’re happy to have lent a hand in the continuation of this good work, and delighted to meet the furry residents in the bargain.