New York, New York, New York

It was a strange touchdown in New York's JFK. The shocks squeezed lower. The wheels seemed to push against the earth with an unnaturally heavy load. Our travels came screeching into the same runway from which we had lifted off to Tokyo nine month's earlier.

We are so enjoying the NYC welcome. While it feels like another stop on a long adventure, we are happy to be in familiar places and spending long, languishing warm days with family.

This morning, the two of us walked the Highline Park While there, we remembered our best suits as travelers: we feel our presence and community spirit brings us into harmony with what locals love about the places they live. We do not live in Chelsea, New York - yet we know it, feel it, understand it in the space of hours and days.

Yet, even as we relish the slow pace of long family visits, tomorrow we are back on the road. Labor Day for us means early rise to share over breakfast our newest fun travel recipe rice pudding with Indian spices.



While we are not feeling thrilled about donning our packs again and walking across the width of New York at dawn, this will be business as usual, breakfast with a lovely Aunt and Uncle, public transit and bus through four states to Boston and Salem, Mass; more visits with old friends, and round off the evening with genuine local cuisine 'steamer clams,' fresh coastal corn-on-the-cob, beers, loads of fun and laughter.

Our journey departing Beverly, Mass on Tuesday morning repeats our favorite late-Summer circuit. New York to Maine, back through the Cape and Islands (hello M.V.!!) to East Canaan, and back again. This year will also wrap up with Fall colors in Vermont. From here we will visit grandmothers and old friends. Tomorrow's journey takes us up our family pathways through Boston, onto the Atlantic Coast of New England.

At the end of the month we will celebrate Yale-in-China centennial back here in New York. After that our journey will head South, overland from Northern Vermont, through Ithaca, NY, to Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit my parents in Berea, Kentucky, before finally making it home to New Orleans.

Around the world and a half? People ask us sometimes when our journey will end. It is a reasonable enought question. The truth is, we both look forward to settling on some piece of land and staying long enough to plant and raise crops, to grow trees, and to garden.

For now, this is not in the cards for us. After only a couple months on our beloved Gulf Coast, it will be back on the road again when we will begin traveling again back to South America, to Taganga, Colombia and our hotels El Miramar, Santa Marta and Oso Perezoso Hotel in Taganga. From Taganga, we may find our way circling through Amazon voyages or up the Rio Orinoco with our friends from Posada Don Carlos to distant villages cut off from modern devices. We do not pretend to know where all we are going.

Will we see you on the Colombia beaches next Winter? Or will our paths cross some other way? Who knows where our fates will lead us to exactly?

Keep up with us. We hope to continue to not only feed you our stories and experieces; we want to share our advice, our research, our ambitions and dedication through this blog.