Category: Travel

Three Hikes Around Killarney

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Moving to another country is never easy, and even more so during a pandemic. I’m still trying to get my residency card, set up a bank account, etc. etc. And job-hunting during a pandemic, in a small town known mostly for tourism? Nightmare. At least while I’m in the midst of getting all the logistics sorted out and sending an endless stream of CVs, I’m lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful places ever. There’s a reason that Co. Kerry is known as The Kingdom. And the magnificent weather over the last week has offered ample opportunity to explore it with beautiful local hikes. I’m writing about them here in order of easiest to most difficult:

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Planes and Pandemics: Moving Internationally During Covid-19

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The plan was this: Finish our Southeast Asia adventure on March 25, spend two weeks visiting friends in Seattle and Vancouver, arrive in Philadelphia on April 6, and fly to Ireland on May 8. Obviously, that didn’t happen. But we cut our trip short, headed straight to my parents’ in Philly, and spent three months hanging out, going for walks in the park, and catching up on Netflix, Steve’s 90-day visa-free allowance in the States was up so he headed back to Ireland.

I was meant to stay an extra month, see my sister, and then join him, but rumours began to fly that the EU would implement a ban on travellers from high-risk countries. Although I would qualify for an exemption that should have allowed me entry, I didn’t want to chance it and end up stuck for the foreseeable future, so on the 24th of June I booked my flight from JFK to Dublin for just a few days later, and on the 28th I was off. This is what it was like to fly internationally during the pandemic.

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Hiking Mount Rinjani: Sunset, Monkeys, and Altitude Sickness on our first SEA adventure

Lauren (thebestpossibletime.com)1 Comment

Most tourists who go to Indonesia head straight for Bali or the Gili Islands to relax, drink cocktails on the beach, and complain about bogan Australians (or be bogan Australians). That was definitely on our itinerary (apart from being bogans), but our first stop in Indonesia was to do one of the things I was looking forward to most on our backpacking trip, so when we touched down in Denpasar we got straight on another flight to the neighbouring island of Lombok to hike Mount Rinjani.

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Where we are now

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On March 15 I was in a hotel in Hanoi, full of nervous energy and the fear that a staff member or another guest would exhibit symptoms of Coronavirus and the Vietnamese government would lock down the hotel until they could figure out the scope of the virus there, and Steve and I would miss our urgently-rescheduled flight back to the United States.

Of course, we had been monitoring the situation throughout our travels in Southeast Asia. The first cases of the virus had been reported in China shortly after we arrived in Indonesia, but it seemed unlikely to affect us. Apart from seeing a lot of locals wearing masks in Singapore and Thailand, something which is common practice in Asia anyway after the SARS outbreak, it was business as usual. We even went to a Lunar New Year in Bangkok’s Chinatown, and any fears of the virus were outnumbered by excitement for the holiday from both locals and tourists.

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Back across the ditch (for a dose of bad luck)

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One of my regrets when leaving New Zealand after my working holiday last year is that there were so many amazing hikes I only found out about once I was already in the country, and I didn’t have enough time to plan all the tramps I wanted to do. When we left Australia at the end of our visa there, Steve and I agreed our first stop would be back to NZ for a few more walks. We decided that apart from Queenstown, which we’d fly into and stay long enough for a Fergburger, and Wellington, where we wanted to catch up with friends, we would focus our itinerary on places we hadn’t yet been. After all, who knows how long it’ll be until we get to come back to this side of the world again?

Our route looked like this: Queenstown – Dunedin – the Catlins – Stewart Island (Rakiura track) – up through the Haast pass to the West Coast – Glaciers – Greymouth – Picton – Marlborough Sounds (Queen Charlotte track) – Wellington.

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Where in the world are we?

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Hi blog, long time no talk. You’re probably wondering why I’ve seemingly abandoned you since November. Well, typing posts on a phone isn’t my favourite, but my laptop is sitting in storage somewhere in Killarney, after my former housemate kindly shuttled it back to Ireland for me.

Meanwhile, I’ve been busy. Apart from some bus rides here and there, I haven’t exactly had a ton of time to sit down and compose posts. You see, since our working holiday visas in Australia finished at the end of November, we’ve been on the move.

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