PicaJet Blog

This is a typical sight from an Alberta highway.  A quiet little pond, so innocuous, so charming.  But many countries, many lands have similar vistas - sights which look perfectly safe, including those sights in some of the more questionable areas of the world like Egypt and Africa. 

How can a traveler know if a decision to explore a new world is a smart decision? 

Luckily, there are many web sites that can help you make an informed decision.  Some even have links to other travel tools (like currency conversion charts) that make travel to a foreign land a whole lot easier.

Read on . . .

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There’s “adventurous” travel and then there is “dangerous” travel.  Since neither my husband nor I are members of the CIA, nor are we navy seals, we have placed limitations on our travel experiences.   Those limitations recently affected one of our travel decisions: an end-of-summer trip to Belize.

Having reviewed a recent Canadian foreign affairs travel report, we have decided that Belize is not the place for us - at least not this year.  

Read on . . .

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Malaria? 

It’s a word I have heard, but I never really spent much time thinking about it.  That is until I began researching Belize (I am tripping there end of August).

I thought Malaria was prevalent only in far away countries like Africa and India, not the Americas.  But I was wrong.  Malaria is also common in South and Central America.

Yikes, I thought, what do I do?  Read on . . .

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Who are these people?  We didn’t know them either, that is until we attended their wedding, uninvited.  But you haven’t lived until you’ve crashed a Mexican wedding.

 My husband and I don’t normally go uninvited to the wedding of strangers, but cheap happy hour drinks, great Mexican food, and authentic Mariachi music were too attractive to resist.  An evening out at a local Mexican restaurant sounded like a great idea.  We weren’t planning on the wedding. 

Read on . . .

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Looking for drugs?  Do you need a tooth fixed?  Or maybe you just have a yen for a darn good taco.

A visit to Brownsville, Texas is great but you must spend at least one day in a foreign country when in the area.   And that’s so easy to do, because Mexico is just a short drive, or walk, away.

You can choose from a variety of entry points (International Bridges), but double your fun with a drive up Hwy 281, the “Old Military” highway, and hang a left at Progresso.

Read on . . .

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Okay, call me a traitor, call me a fool, call me any name you like but I had to take the chance.  I made a decision, before a recent trip to southern Texas and New Orleans, to leave my heavy Olympus Evolt E-300 DSLR at home.  I replaced it with a sleek little 12-megapixel Fuji FinePix F50 compact digital camera. 

My husband looked at me askance as he repeatedly asked me if I still wanted to take my DSLR camera.  I told him, firmly, “No.”  That I would take my chances.  And that I would live with my decision.  Only time would tell if I had made a terrible mistake . . .

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There is hell on earth, and it’s called, “deep sea fishing.”  What was I thinking, or rather, what was my husband thinking when he agreed to a 5-hour deep sea fishing adventure? 

We took our first deep sea fishing trip just off the coast of South Padre Island in Texas.   To me, it was an adventure; to my husband, it was an unending journey into the depths of hell.

Read on . . .

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