a veg life

(posted by Emily) One of our favorite things to do while on beach vacations is find a time to go snorkeling. When we planned our trip to Cancun, we knew a snorkeling trip was definitely on our list of things to do! We booked our excursion through a company called Adventuras Mayas . They offer a variety of tour packages, with lots of different activities. We opted for the " Mayan Adventure " tour, which included 3 different snorkeling destinations and lunch. The tour company handled transportation from and back to our hotel, and all of the equipment we needed.  Our first snorkeling destination was a freshwater, open cenote . We participated in a "Mayan Sacrifice," jumping off of a platform into the water, and a zipline in to the water. We had an hour to snorkel around as we pleased before heading to the next destination.  Rick on the zip line  Our second location was a cave cenote--no fish or photosynthesis to ...

(posted by Emily) 30 December 2014 Chiang Mai, Thailand  People come to Chiang Mai for a lot of reasons--there are many things to do here, but one of the most popular is booking an excursion to interact with elephants. When we knew we'd be stopping through, it was the first thing we booked.  Rick put a lot of research into finding a company that treat its animals humanely--too often, people are riding elephants with seats or it's all a show and the animals are mistreated. Ran-Tong is an elephant rescue, saving "angry elephants" and bringing them to a place where they can be happy. I know many of you saw my album of pictures on facebook, but I wanted to still do a post on what a wonderful experience it was.  Like any other excursion company, we were picked up by a minibus from our hotel. There were actually two other couples from our hotel going on the same trip with us. However, they weren't quite the kindred spirits of our new cooking class fri...