Dog Blog

From Real de Catorce we were on our own and headed for San Miguel de Allende. It was our first leg in Mexico without support (Hank and Jochen). We were perhaps overwhelmed for the first two days trying to find our feet. Our Spanish was non existent so we quickly discovered 'street' food. It's cheap, tasty and you can point at the pots of food you want, just make sure you smile and say 'por favor' (Spanish for please) so it doesn't come across as rude. If you prefer somewhere to sit and relax for a while, the rooftop restaurants are something fun and different and you can enjoy looking at the church towers or down on the brightly coloured streets during the day or sparkling lights at night. Mexico really comes to life at night but with the warm evenings it's no wonder families and friends are out mingling, socialising and shopping. We spent 3 nights in San Miguel at the start of the Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter). This was a very special time to be in town as the celebrati...

We had said a fond farewell to Dallas, our home for the previous three weeks. The departure was not quite as we planned and were thankful for no great send off. The checkout from the hotel was midday, we handed over our room keys at 12:01pm but then spent the next three hours in the hotel car park loading up the bikes. It wasn't the plan of course, we had hoped to be on the road at midday to take the scenic four hour ride to Austin, the capital of Texas, set up camp and explore the city the next day. Loading the bikes was an epic task and it was also the first time we'd done it, so we were throwing out excess stuff that didn't fit, repacking, throwing out more stuff and then repacking again. When we were finally ready to ride we realised our communication and map systems were not working. Everything had passed the pre-flight checks the day before. With the sun quickly setting and determined not to check back in to the hotel we had no time to muck around so we jumped on Interstate 35...

Had everything gone to plan, us (Janell and Stu) and our 7 year old Bull Terrier mix Skyla would be riding through Central America right about now. So what went wrong? Skyla was diagnosed with cancer (Lymphoma) in October 2013, only weeks after booking our flights to Dallas. We were rapidly packing up our life in Sydney in preparation for a two year motorbike adventure across four and half continents. Skyla sitting on her bike Without treatment Skyla had only months to live. The news of lymphona was devastating and placed a major obstacle in our plans to travel around the world as a family. The tears and disheartened feelings were short lived as we turned to the internet for options to extend her quality and length of life. A Google search resulted in an article about a border collie called Muffin that had undergone a Bone Marrow Transplant as a potential cure in recent years. We approached the lovely team at Dee Why Veterinary Hospital who were more than happy to help us pursue th...