Damn it. We lived! The Discover Tour was by far the most ambitious tour we’ve ever undertaken. The cornerstone was our visit to Egypt, positioned in the middle of the 12-month tour, bookended with first time visits to South America and Turkey. The phrase ‘trip of a lifetime’ is probably overused by us but our Discover tour really was a once in an incarnation itinerary. Dig deeper into our journey with the blog posts below.

Blog entries on this page…

  • The End is Near

  • Flying South for the Summer

  • Surviving the Summer in Europe

  • The Other Holy Land — Egypt

  • Straddling the Equator

  • And the “Discover Tour” Beat Goes On

  • Our Hearts Were Made to Discover the World

We started traveling together from the moment we met 16 years ago. And now, we’re on an ambitious two year excursion traveling the world to mostly new destinations for us including Turkey, Easter Island, Egypt and more! We started in October 2022 in Thailand and the discovery continues! See our periodic blog posts below or choose a specific country from the page navigation to see the hotels we chose and the activities we enjoyed.

Discover Tour Itinerary By Day

The End Is Near

Newsflash. After our Peru visit we’re heading home to Portland, Oregon USA for the month of November. We’re declaring the Discover Tour over and complete. It was a resounding success exceeding our expectations! The only regret is we have cancelled our plans to visit Bolivia and northern Chile/Argentina. Hopefully, a future time will present itself for us to reconsider these wonderful destinations from the desert of Antofagasta, Chile to Iguazu Falls, Brazil. We need to go home, winterize the house and attend to some other pressing business. We hate it when actual real life gets in the way of our full-time vacation. [Watch our Discover Tour Wrap-Up Podcast, parts one and two.]

Every ending portends a new beginning, right?

Announcing our Naturale tour beginning late this year and continuing into 2024! We leave for a month in Buenos Aires, Argentina at the beginning of December and will bask in the region’s summer weather through mid-March 2024. Just before we leave we take a jaunt from Santiago, Chile to visit Easter Island. Can’t wait! We then plan to spend about three weeks in Japan including another attempt to make some sense of tantalizing Tokyo before heading south (on the bullet train, of course) to the bucolic art scene of Naoshima Island and some sights around Kobe. From Osaka we leave for Bali, Indonesia. By mid-May we plan to leave from the island of Java (after exploring Yogyakarta, Borobudur Temple and the mysterious ruins of Gunung Padang), making our way towards the Great Lakes and our family in Cleveland, Ohio USA by late-July.

The aspiration of our new tour is to spend at least one month every quarter of the year somewhere au naturale — naked. For starters, we’ll spend the month of February at Chihuahua naturist beach near Punta del Este, Uruguay followed by a quick scantily clad week in Florianópolis, Brazil to celebrate Carnival. And then in May we plan to strip down on the northern naturist beach in Bali, Indonesia. And then maybe some time in southern Portugal, or Spain’s Grand Canary islands, before going home to the naturist beaches in our backyard on the Colombia River in Oregon, USA for August. Get ready! We are.

See the current Naturale itinerary.

Flying South for the Summer

Like birds we recently began moving south chasing more summer-like weather in the mid-latitudes south of the equator. Unlike birds we changed hemispheres, from east to west and from north to south, and find ourselves now in Peru for about the next month. We explored early springtime in Lima with an adequate four-night visit and there was lots to see including the exquisite Larco museum, the 1,500 year-old pyramid of Huaca Huallamarca, the gorgeous views and shopping at the coastal Larcomar mall in the Miraflores neighborhood and we enthusiastically made a beeline for the new excellent Taj Mahal Indian restaurant that just opened within walking distance of the Indian Market. Wonderful time.

We then took a convenient Peru Bus south four hours to Paracas and began an extended rest in an Airbnb as we integrate our recent month in Turkiye and prepare for our upcoming busy couple of weeks visiting Peru’s highlands including Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, Cusco and Lake Titicaca.

Speaking of Turkiye, we’re now surrounded by (an unbelievable amount of) sand and water in southern coastal Peru reflecting on our month traveling in Asia Minor that included the last two weeks on an organized tour of eastern Turkiye focused on archeological sites. We saw so much in a short amount of time. It challenged our ability to absorb the onslaught of gobsmacking cradle of civilization encounters. In a perfect world we wanted at least twice as much time overall. One thing we really missed was having a day off in between certain big days to just catch our breath and look at all the pictures we took. (We’re doing that now in Peru!) The flip side was that we efficiently discovered so many epic destinations, were lead by experts who could help unpack the archeological wonders for us and we didn’t have to worry about any of the logistics. It was hard letting go of the control of our schedule some days. But one of the best parts of the group tour was our band of 20 kind-hearted kindred spirits from five continents. What a great group of people! We got along swimmingly! One casualty — we don’t want any more chicken kebab for the foreseeable future!

Some highlighted images from Turkiye below (see more here and here)…

Surviving the Summer in Europe

Hello from Greece in August. We’ve survived nearly three months in Europe having seen just bits of the best of Spain, France, Italy and now Greece. We survived the wildfires, the crowds at historical sites, the (very well organized and courteous) Italian train strike in Rome, the peak season prices and the heatwaves. Thankfully we stopped paying too close attention to all the news about how challenging it was and found ourselves enjoying every minute! And we had some help from local and traveling folks along the way. Here’s some of what we learned.

We went to Spain and France in May and June instead of July and August. (By mid-July we were already south of Rome.) That made a difference. It wasn’t quite peak season crowds. It wasn’t quite so hot.

In many instances we went to regional destinations where everyday Europeans take their holiday for a more relaxed experience. Seeing small towns with delightful outdoor markets such as Montalivet les Bains on the Atlantic coast in France was so relaxing. Enjoying the Calabrian coast of Italy with inland villages where maybe there’s just one (fabulous!) restaurant and hardly any tourists. Montpelier instead of Nice and Bordeaux instead of Paris in France. Ravello instead of Amalfi in Italy. Antiparos and Folegandros instead of Santorini and Mykonos in Greece. You get the idea.

When we were in the bigger cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Rome and Athens (and we loved every one!) we googled ‘non-touristy things to do’ and planned our visits with an expanded horizon and open mind of what to do. And in some instances we just skipped the lead attraction and found something just as rewarding. For example, we got the iconic pic of us outside the Coliseum in Rome (below) but we didn’t venture inside. We’d both done that on previous visits.

We wandered around the continent and let the magic happen. It worked!

For more on our hotels and activities click on any country below…
SpainFranceItalyGreece

The Other Holy Land — Egypt

Only from the tranquility of our hotel room overlooking the sea at the Port of Aiguadolç in Sitges, Spain — just south of Barcelona — can we begin to process the last couple weeks traveling through Egypt. So many ‘wows!’ and ‘whats?’. So many!

To us, it felt like the “other” holy land.

We traversed the entire country from north to south, from the Library of Alexandria [where Paul uncontrollably wept for no apparent reason] and the Mediterranean Sea to the Abu Simbel temples not far from Egypt’s southern border with Sudan. In addition to adding a new country destination to our list, we traveled on a first-ever-for-us organized tour with 30-ish other like-minded, vibrant souls, from five continents, being led by Boston University’s Dr. Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology, a well-known proponent espousing a date for the age of the Great Sphinx of Giza to many thousands of years older than conventional Egyptologists’ dating. His wife Catherine Ulissey was our co-host and together they co-wrote their most recent book, the 2nd edition of Forgotten Civilizations: New Discoveries on the Solar-Induced Dark Age. The book is riveting.

Additionally, our expert Egyptologist leading the way each day was Dr. Mohamed AbdelLatif, an engaging expert storyteller and serious scholar with nearly 20 years experience having worked with Zahi Hawass, Former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs of Egypt.

We were so fortunate to be guided by open-minded top-notch experts. It was fun, fast-moving and basically — our heads exploded!

We weren’t starting from scratch. Before coming on the trip we’d read Dr. Robert and Katie’s book twice and also a chunk of Department of Archaeology, University of York Professor Joann Fletcher’s book, The Story of Egypt, The Civilization That Shaped the World.

We stopped in several seldom-visited destinations on typical tourist itineraries in Middle Egypt such as Beni Hasan, Tuna el-Gebel and Tell el-Amarna. We sailed the Upper Nile for several nights. We seriously shopped buying jewelry and more art. We made lots of new friends. We stayed in a couple really good hotels including the “must-stays” Marriott Mena House in Cairo and the Steigenberger Nile Palace in Luxor.

We had fun for sure. And had some other unusual experiences, like the one in the Library of Alexandria. And in the Great Pyramid we climbed to the King’s Chamber where when Rich touched his newly acquired pendant of the Goddess Sekhmet, the vengeful manifestation of the sun god Ra, to the wall of the Chamber it exploded off his neck and all the accompanying tiny necklace beads spilled onto the floor. And under the Great Pyramid where we descended into the seldom-open, rather creepy, super-deep subterranean shaft. And we touched and talked to the Great Sphinx of Giza up close. And at Karnak in the off-the-beaten-track temple of Ptah, Sekhmet and Nefertom, Rich had an unusual, hard-to-explain highly-emotional encounter that left him visibly shaken and grasping for meaning.

And so, like we mentioned already, our head’s exploded searching for context, meaning and understanding. It will be months, and possibly years, for us to unpack this experience.

Now that makes it a trip of a lifetime! 💜 And our Discover Tour continues!

Straddling the Equator

It’s that part of our current ambitious two-year walkabout where we experience several firsts!

  • A first time on the continent of South America. Panama City was as close as we’d previously gotten.

  • A first time in two new countries — Ecuador and Colombia!

  • And a first time south of the Equator in the western hemisphere. We were in Bali way back in 2013. And Rich was in Australia and New Zealand BP (before Paul).

We are straddling the equator for the next several weeks. With three weeks remaining in Ecuador we’ll then spend the last days up north in Bogota, Colombia. We’ve heard great things about Bogota from other travelers. We initially thought we’d split our six-week in the northern Andes evenly between both countries. But as zippy as the overall itinerary may seem, we don’t rush. At all.

So Ecuador ends up charming us for five weeks. Sorry Colombia but you got sloppy seconds this time around. Sometime down the road we’ll circle back and experience Medellin (and everyone raves about it!) and along the northern coast, including a “secret” naturist place up the coast from Apartadó, near the Panama border. Someday.

From Bogota we fly direct to Madrid. You can read about our onward travel in more detail in our previous post. Just keep scrolling.

For now, tomorrow we leave the (very) outskirts of Ecuador’s amazon jungle and head downhill to the coast to a fun gay hotel in Montanita apparently with an unadvertised clothing optional pool. We think it’s the only one in the country. Then onward to the Galapagos islands!

Next post will be after Egypt unless we’re beamed up to the mothership from the Great Pyramid!

And the 'Discover Tour' Beat Goes On

We’re posting this with a month of all-over tan under our sarong. And we have a month to go to soak up as much of the southern Mexico sun as we can muster. We’ve had plenty of time to reflect on our really wonderful highlands tour of Mexico last month. Loved every minute of it (except for the part where we quarantined in Guanajuato with Covid-19).

With gobs of time to read, meditate and enjoy this delightful little seaside town of Zipolite in Oaxaca, we’ve also been busy filling in the blanks and making some changes on our future travel itinerary.

After a quick visit home to Portland, Oregon this coming March and a visit to Rich’s Grandson Archie in Berkeley, California we are visiting Ecuador for five weeks. Highlights will include a few days in Quito and visits to the indigenous town of Otavalo, the Amazonian thermal baths of Papallacta, the stunning volcanic Quilotoa Lake, the gay friendly beach at Montanita and the famous Galapagos Islands. First time visit for us. We’ve left a week unscheduled at the end for maybe another week at the beach, a plant medicine ceremony if it feels right or whatever else presents itself.

We’ll then fly to nearby Bogota, Colombia, enjoy the capital city for several days and then catch a direct flight to Madrid, Spain. From there we’ll comfortably prepare for easier onward travel to Cairo and our tour of Egypt and Jordan. We’ll be rested and ready to hit the ground running. We return to Sitges, Spain and the beach to rest. We’ll also be doing a men’s tantric workshop and visiting Barcelona before heading to France for more beaches and friends in Cap d’Adge, Montpellier and Bordeaux.

After a week at a naturist village in Bordeaux we fly to Rome for several days of sightseeing followed by a few nights on the Amalfi coast. Paul’s paternal great-grandfather was from a small village in southern Italy so we are spending a few nights in that village, Nocera Terinese, at a wonderful farm homestay. From there we travel across the boot of Italy toward the Adriatic Sea and spend two weeks at a naturist resort in the country among olive trees.

We’ll ferry across to Greece, visit Athens and three Greek islands — Paros, Folegandros and Crete. We’ll also be there about three weeks. Then fly to Cappadocia region of Turkey and see some of the ancient sites of western Turkey. In early September we join an organized tour of eastern Turkey.

After the tour is over we have a week to enjoy Istanbul and then will fly onward to Peru. We’re hoping by then the Peruvian political situation will improve enough to allow once again for visits to Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca and more. We can’t be this close to Bolivia and not go — even with the steep visa fee for USA citizens! [If Peru is still “closed” we’ll skip Bolivia too and just fly on to the Atacama region of Chile.]

Then next winter our plans include visiting Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. We might never stop traveling!

For a daily update from the road find us at hotelguys1 on Instagram. We also do periodic updates on Facebook at Global Hotel Guys.

Our Hearts Were Made To Discover The World

We’ve packed for four month-long trips (Fresh), then six months (Real) and even nine months (Heart) at one stretch. But we were definitely going for extra credit when packing in Portland for our Discover Tour with three different piles of stuff bound for five different continents and an anticipated duration of probably two years! We’ve been here and there over our 15 years traveling together but now we’ve got some bright ideas to explore some more far-flung destinations. Egypt, Easter Island, Crete and Nepal here we come!

The Fall of 2022 finds us gallivanting off to Thailand again for a couple months before the year-end holidays. We’ll see healers, old friends and for sure spend more time sitting quietly in Buddhist temples before strolling down the lanes of Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Phuket and Bangkok to find a bite to eat — hopefully, some nights with new friends we meet along the way.

We’ll do a necessary visa run tucked in there to Malaysia to see the sights of Kuala Lumpur, the tea-growing Cameron Highlands and Penang Island in the Straits of Malacca. We could not resist a return visit to Southeast Asia to begin this mighty excursion and may very well be back here full-circle later.

But first our commencing San Francisco departure will drop us in Singapore to nurse some jet lag and find some good Indian food!

We’ll spend Christmas with San Antonio family! Then another winter ‘23 in Mexico, Spring ‘23 in the northern Andes and Summer ‘23 in Europe and the eastern Mediterranean including up and down the Nile and see for ourselves the jaw-dropping recent discoveries of 9,500 BCE Gobekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey.

We will have to patiently wait for our first-time visit to Lake Titicaca and Patagonia and all good spots in between where we’ll finally spend Fall ‘23 in the central Andes and Winter ‘23 in Chile/Argentina (including Mendoza’s Sposato winery), ringing in the new year ‘24 on the beach in Uruguay — an imagined South American itinerary nixed by 2020’s Covid quarantine.

We’ll circle back a couple times to the homeland to do taxes, vote and see family including a new grandson in Berkeley and grand-nephew in Cleveland both due in our absence!

If we’re lucky, we hope to puddle jump Portland to southern Japan (Naoshima art island) with onward travel to Nepal and the very north of India (Ladakh) for spring/summer 2024. We imagine a summer stop at a few London museums before settling back to the banks of the rivers in Portland to re-group in late summer ‘24.

With an eye on the teetering climate, teetering worldwide political situation and teetering international banking system we’ll adjust our plans when needed!

Summer of ‘24 Paul will return to join Medicare and Rich will return still running circles around Paul stopping perhaps long enough to be serenaded on his 72nd birthday. And if we had to wager at this early juncture, we’ll be on the beach back in Thailand, hopefully naked, for New Year 2025. Wanna bet?

The pandemic is over (yes?). We got the memo!

Here we are in front of our house leaving for the airport. Rich watered his amazing garden and said goodbye as only the plant whisperer can do.

Friends Melanie and Rich snapped this pic of us all dining at Siri on NW 23rd Ave, our favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant, one last time just days before our departure.