Day 13

I woke up this morning in Portland, Oregon and was excited to be here. I've heard great things about the city of Portland and there is at least one job opportunity here I might consider. Having never spent any significant length of time in Portland, I figured the best way to get a handle of the city was taking a walking tour. One particular company had rave reviews so I booked a downtown walking tour for 10 AM and grabbed a taxi to the starting place for the tour.

The tour took us all over downtown Portland and told us the history and some of the unique things that make the city such a great place to live. Walking around the city for a few hours I picked up several interesting facts:

The downtown area of Portland is beautiful and they made a conscious effort decades ago to make downtown a true destination not just a place where people go to work. They were thirty plus years ahead of many other cities including Houston in this regard.

One the first steps the city took when trying to revitalize downtown was make the Willamette river a prominent feature in the downtown area. The Willamette river cuts directly through the heart of Portland but originally there was a major six plus lane freeway that stood between the downtown district and the river. The City of Portland asked the department of transportation to tear down the freeway and rebuild it on the opposite side of the Willamette. Unsurprisingly the department of transportation didn't cooperate so they decided to do it themselves and raised taxes to do it. Now the river is clearly viewable from downtown and a beautiful park runs along the entire length of the river; parallel to downtown.

When you walk around the downtown region of Portland it's really different than most major downtown regions and there a couple reasons why. First, there is beautiful public art everywhere because Portland mandates that 2% of the cost of any new buildings or renovations is spent on public art. Second, the city does a great job of managing the streets, signage, sidewalks, etc. The city has mandated that you should be able to look any any direction and clearly see up several blocks. It's hard to describe how much a difference this makes but it's really dramatic compared to other American cities I've visited.

There is a great public transportation in Portland with trains, buses, and trolley cars that are all free within the downtown region. Portland really wants to discourage cars from coming downtown and the great public transport system does a great job.

Some pictures from my downtown tour are below:



Example of the 2% for Public Art and a famous statue in Portland. It's ironic because nobody wears a suit or carries an umbrella in this city.



Federal courthouse in downtown Portland, this is the most liberal courthouse in the nation and has more of it's decisions overturned by the supreme court than any other.



View of the wide streets, sidewalks, limited signage, and notice how far you can see.



The Willamette River and one of the many bridges that cross over it in Portland. A huge park / running trail runs along this side of the river where many events are held.

After the walking tour, I hit up the Saturday Market in Portland which is a sort of like a giant upscale flea market with all kinds of cool things for sale including some amazing street food. One of things Portland is famous for are these food carts that are spread all over the city. The Saturday market had dozens of booths selling all kinds of food and a lot of international fare which I thought was cool. One of the more popular booths was a Greek one selling lamb gyros which I had to try and they did not disappoint. After walking around the saturday market I decided to take advantage of the great public transportation system and grabbed a train back to my hotel for two dollars, a much better deal than the thirty dollar cab ride earlier. Great public transportation really makes life so much easier and really wish Houston can make some strides in this area.

I got back to my hotel and relaxed by watching the Texans win a thriller over the Washington Redskins and decided to check out the Colombia River Gorge which is supposed to a beautiful area less than an hour outside of Portland. I rented from Enterprise at the airport and started the drive out of Portland. I got the Colombia River Gorge area about an hour before sunset so I didn't have much time but decided to take a short hike up to Wahkeena falls. It's amazing how much water is flowing through out this entire region and as a result everything is so lush and green. Pictures are below:

Hiking up the trail to the falls:



Picture of Wahkeena Falls...The angle makes it look like these falls are not very high but the two levels combined are well over a couple hundred feet tall and quite beautiful.



Switchbacks on the hike back to my rental car.



After Wahkenna Falls there was a little bit of sunlight left so I went exploring further into the Colombia River Gorge and eventually reached Multanomah Falls which is one of the largest waterfalls in the nation, with the upper and lower sections combining to be around 2000 feet tall I think. There is a really nice bridge the park service has installed between the upper and lower section of the falls to get a great view point as well. Unfortunately, by the time I got to Multanomah Falls the light was non existent which made taking pictures difficult but here are a couple.





Once the light was gone it was time to head back to Portland and grab some sleep before a long day hiking the trails in Colombia River Gorge.

As always any questions / comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com

Day 12

I awoke on Day 13 refreshed and excited for what the day had in store. The reason I came back to Texas in the middle of my journey was to celebrate my niece, Abigail 1st birthday. After a nice breakfast we started cleaning up for the birthday party this afternoon before friends and family would arrive for the party. The party started around 11 AM and pictures of the festivities are below:











After the party, I caught a ride to the airport in Austin with my Dad and headed out to my next destination which is Portland, Oregon. I had an initial flight from Austin to Long Beach and then Long Beach onto Portland arriving around 11:30. I was excited to be in Portland since I've heard such great things about the city. As embark on this new stage in my life and looking for a new career, I am trying to be very open and where that might take me and Portland was on the short list of places to consider. Stay tuned for my experiences in Portland on a future blog update.

As always any questions / comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com

Day 11

I was supposed to be waking up in the Texas Hill Country this morning but that didn't happen with the flight issues in NYC the night before. Waking up in my own bed wasn't a bad alternative although I would have liked to get more than 4 hours of sleep but those are the breaks. After getting home at 5 AM and sleeping for a few hours, I had to wake up at 9 AM for a business conference call. That went well and had a few items to take care off before heading to the Texas Hill Country.

I decided to do some slight repacking and shift suitcases to a roller bag that would be easier to drag through all the airport over the next couple of weeks. I actually weighed both my carry on bags and together they weighed less than 30 lbs. That floored me that everything I need for a month clothes, toiletries, electronics, camera gear, etc weighed that little and realized how little we actually need when traveling.

Early that afternoon, I caught a ride with my Dad to our place in the Texas Hill Country where I enjoyed a nice dinner with my family including my nephew and niece. The delicious home cooked meal including a couple of my favorite desserts was a great pick me up after traveling for a couple of weeks and went to bed early to catch up on sleep.

As always any questions / comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com

Day 10

My last day in St. Lucia was an early one again. I woke up at 4:15 AM to pack my suitcase and get my camera gear ready for a long day of shooting. My driver, Peter, picked me up at 5 AM and we headed off in search of a great view to watch the sunrise over the island. After talking for a few minutes we decided to head to Vieux Fort on the southern tip of the island and the top of a hill we had been to earlier that week. I had hoped to get some great pictures of the entire island including the Pitons bathed in the soft light of dawn.

Unfortunately, St. Lucia was covered in clouds and a dense haze that blocked out most of the sun and wasn't conducive to great pictures. We waited around a couple of hours for the sun to hopefully burn through the clouds but it never really happened. Below are a couple pictures of that morning:





After taking pictures at Vieux Fort we decided to head to to the Pitons for a hiking adventure. Gros and Petit Piton are both UNESCO world heritage sites and mountains formed by a volcano a long time ago. I was going to try and hike Gros Piton which is nearly a 2000 foot elevation climb to a beautiful view of Petit Piton and the rest of the island. When we arrived I met up with a local guide and since we were short on time, decided to hike about half way up to a great view point of Petit Piton. This actually worked out well since the top of Gros Piton was covered in clouds and the views would be non-existent.

My guide was a native of the island and could have been a the long lost son of Bob Marley. He was very friendly, all about peace and love, was a vegan, and sang in a reggae band. He pulled out his cell phone and started playing his music and singing along while we hiked up the Pitons. The hike was difficult with a rapid elevation gain in a short period of time but in about an hour we finally reached the half way point and a great view of Petit Piton and the Caribbean. At the top, my guide asked me if he could smoke and sure enough he whipped up a rather large quantity of a particular plant and continued his preaching all about nature, peace, and love. Pictures of the view are below.





Since I had a flight leaving St. Lucia at 1:30, we rushed down Gros Piton and upon hitting the trailhead, quickly found a store and drank a liter of fruit juice to try and replace the fluids lost on the long hike. After quenching my thirst, there was another problem... My clothes were soaked with sweat and desperately needed a shower / change of clothes before boarding a 5 hour hour flight back to New York City. The problem was I had checked out my room and a shower was no where to be found in time for my flight.

However, Peter and I are solution oriented individuals so we decided to take advantage of the resources available to us. We headed to a beach right by the airport and I decided to take a quick bath in the crystal clear blue waters of the Caribbean. Peter dropped me at the beach with a change of clothes and my eco friendly bio degradable soap and we made plans to meet back up in an hour. Stripping down to my shorts, I dove into the water and enjoyed the beautiful view while cleaning up for my flight back to the states. The beach I was on is near the middle of this picture.



As I was enjoying the Caribbean water it dawned on me that the I spent 3 days in St. Lucia and the only time I went to the beach was the last hour of my trip and only because I needed a bath before boarding the plane. I'm just not a big beach guy and don't see the big point in hanging out for hours on a beach drinking cocktails. Anyway, after cleaning up in the ocean I went up to a beachfront restaurant and used their bathroom to throw on a fresh pair of clothes and grab a delicious spicy fish dish that is local to St. Lucia. After lunch I headed to the airport and boarded my flight back to the states and New York City to be exact.

The flight back to NYC was smooth until we started are descent into the city... That evening a major storm decided to hit NYC with rain, tremendously high winds, and tornadoes which is not conducive to landing a jumbo jet. The bad weather meant we were forced to circle the airport for about an hour waiting for clearance to land which was understandable. However, I was concerned because I had a tight connection to Austin where I would be spending the next couple of days for my niece's birthday. After an hour delay we landed and checking my flight status saw my flight to Austin was delayed giving me plenty of time to grab dinner and catch my flight.

Unfortunately, after getting through customs and hitting the Jet Blue terminal I realized what a mess the entire JFK airport was. Not only had the bad weather screwed up the flights in and out of JFK but President Obama decided to fly Air Force One into town and for security reasons that shuts down a huge section of the airport normally used... My flight to Austin was now scheduled to arrive at 2:30 in the morning which is a problem since the rental car desk would be closing at midnight. I'd arrive in Austin with no way to get to the texas hill country where I was heading. I found another Jet Blue flight to Houston which made sense so I swapped my ticket. The flight to Houston was delayed several times over the next several hours... Most famously it had been circling JFK for so long waiting for clearance to land it ran out of fuel and had to land in New Jersey to land, refuel, take off, and resume circling JFK until they got clearance to land.

I eventually took off from JFK around 1:30 AM and landed in Houston just before 5 AM. My very nice Dad graciously picked me up at the airport and dropped me at my house where I promptly crashed for a restful 4 hours of sleep before getting up to continue Day 10.

As always any questions / comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com

Day 9

Today started very early in St. Lucia when my alarm went off at 5:15 AM nearly an hour before sunrise... You might be wondering why I would willingly wake up that early on a vacation, especially on a relaxed tropical island like St. Lucia and that's an excellent question. The answer is I had arranged a guided sunrise hike along the beaches with Melvin who works with the forestry department in St. Lucia. My host Lorraine highly recommended him to show me the nature and back country of St. Lucia and I was not disappointed.

We meet at 5:40 and started hiking through the forests, farms, and eventually hit 5 different beaches over 3 hour hike. Along the way he gave me some great information on nature in St. Lucia and I was able to sample many different plants including fresh banana, citronella, cinnamon, plums, sugar cane, and several other things that were all delicious. The banana's especially in St. Lucia were delicious and it's amazing the difference in banana fresh off the tree vs what we get in the store which is picked days or weeks before it's ripe and ready to be eaten.

Some pictures of the beaches / views along our sunset hike are below.





After the hike we ended back at Lorraine's and after a quick lunch met up with Peter my tour guide and driver for the afternoon. We started by heading to Vieux Fort which is the southern most city of the island and the top of hill with a great view of the entire island. St. Lucia is beautiful with the clear blue water and lush green vegetation everywhere, pictures from this view point are below.



After taking some pictures of the island we drove to Soufries on the western side of the island and on the Caribbean coast. Our first stop was sulfur springs and the worlds only drive in volcano. Like many islands in the Caribbean St. Lucia was formed by volcanic eruptions but unlike many of the other islands the volcano on St. Lucia is still active. Even more unusual is they let you actual drive into the crater of this volcano and check it out close up. After buying tickets my driver dropped me off in the crater and a tour guide escorted me to see this:





The volcano is still active but certainly not expecting an eruption anytime soon; talk about bad PR if tourists got caught in an eruption! The steam you see are scalding hot gases being released containing various elements including sulfur which discolors the rocks and turns them into something quite beautiful you will see later. The water / liquid in you see bubbling is very hot, with most pools between 200 and 400 degrees.





Also in Sulfur Springs are the mud baths which were apparently featured on a recent episode of The Bachelor with a couple Jake & Vienna; having never seen the show I have no idea if this is true... Anyway the water coming out of the volcano is infused with various minerals / elements that allegedly have healing properties for any number of ailments including skin issues. I asked my tour guide if that included sunburn since I was a lovely shade of red after a couple of days in the St. Lucian said. She said absolutely which was good enough for me so I headed down to the mud baths and changed into my bathing suit. Below are a couple pictures of what the mud baths looked like.





I slowly eased my way into the mud baths not knowing exactly what to expect with dark volcano water infused with lots of gases / elements. What I found was incredibly hot water that I could barely stay into. I tried getting into the water slowly starting with my feet, calves, knees, etc and found I could only get up to about my waist before it was so hot I had to get out and let my skin recover. This frustrated me immensely and tried different approaches again and again but just couldn't stay in the water for any length of time. I found the security guard and asked her if people actually get in the mud baths or am I just such a wimp the hot mud water is too much for my skin. She looked at me like I was crazy and said “Nobody gets in during the heart of the day, water is much too hot... People go in the early morning or early evening when the water is much cooler.” After hearing that I wondered why nobody mentioned that to me when entering the mud bath area but that was water under the bridge at this point.

However, I still wanted to test out the medicinal properties of this water / mud which supposedly work by coating your body with this mud at the bottom of the pool. I found a water bottle and used it to scoop the mud from the pool and liberally coated myself with the magic healing mud. The security officer was nice enough to take the picture below with my thick coating of mud.



Quick shower to wash off the mud and I was off to my next destination, the Soufries Botanical Gardens and Diamond Falls. The botanical gardens were beautiful and featured tropical plants and flowers native to St. Lucia. Below is a picture of one my favorite tropical flowers in the garden.



Also in the Soufries Botanical Gardens is Diamond Falls which is probably the most famous waterfall in St. Lucia. The water here is the same water that is infused with the sulfur and mud from the volcano and the chemicals in the water are the reason the rocks around Diamond Falls are discolored. Notice the bright colors behind the falls and how dark / muddy the water is.







After leaving Diamond Falls we headed to a couple view points to see the Pitons of St. Lucia. The Pitons are two volcanic plugs that were formed many years ago by volcanic activity and are pretty high mountains for a tropical island. There are two pitons Gros and Petit both over 2000 feet tall. They are both UNESCO world heritage sites and quite beautiful. Below are a couple shots of them including a sunset picture of Gross Piton. I had hoped to hike Gros Piton on this trip but it's a far more difficult hike than I had imagined and would probably take 6 hours with a couple thousand feet of elevation gain in a short hike.





Sunset overlooking the Caribbean.



After sunset, Peter and I drove back to Lorraine's where he dropped me for the night and made plans to meet back up at 5 AM for my last day in St. Lucia. As always thank you for reading my blog and if you have any questions or comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com

Day 8

I awoke for Day 1 in St. Lucia at “The Peace of Paradise” hotel on eastern side of St. Lucia. The hotel was a private home with several spare bedrooms that the owner Lorraine rented out for guests. Her home was buried in the jungle on the eastern side of the island and far away from the typical tourist spots. The natural jungle soundtrack was the perfect background noise for a great night of sleep but the hot and humid weather took a little getting used to.

I didn't have any specific plans for the day and Lorraine, the owner, and had several errands to run today so I decided to tag along with her to get my bearings on the island. We drove over to Caribbean side of the island and stopped at various big tourist hotels along the way with whom she does business. We cruised through Castries which is the major city in St. Lucia and eventually worked our way north to Pigeon Island where I was dropped off for a few hours.

First some background history on St. Lucia and Pigeon Island. Pigeon Island is a small island just off the coast of St. Lucia that was coveted by the French and British primarily as a military outpost in the Caribbean. The island has a couple very tall hills that provide excellent visibility of approach ships and even other islands on a clear day. Control of St. Lucia and Pigeon Island traded hands over a dozen times as a result of military action and I was excited to see what this island was all about.

I started by walking around the perimeter of Pigeon Island and admiring the beautiful beaches where people were swimming, sunbathing, sailing, and generally taking in the beautiful water and views of the southern caribbean. There was actually a local restaurant overlooking the beach where I stopped for a sandwich and some delicious fresh fruit juice.





Continuing hiking around the island I saw some of the old military installations that were used in the various battles between the French and the English. Below are some remains of a military barracks with quite an ocean view.



Hiking up a pretty steep hill on the western tip of the island was a British military outpost with several cannons to lay waste to any unfriendly approaching ships. The view from here was amazing and see could see miles in every direction. It was clear why there were so many battles for control of the island and by extension the southern Caribbean.





To the east was a much steeper hill and on the summit of this hill was the lookout for the entire island. I met a British couple who was hiking down the hill and based on the expression on their face this was a much tougher climb than it looked. They said it was difficult but the view was worth it; so I embarked on a series of switchbacks toward the looking point. Here are some of the views that awaited me.





After taking a few hundred pictures I hiked back down to the beach on pigeon island and decided to stop at the restaurant / bar overlooking the beach. Since it's incredibly hot and humid on most Caribbean islands including St. Lucia, shocking revelation I know, it seemed like a good idea to replace some fluids with a couple liters of fresh fruit juice. After some delicious pineapple and passion fruit juice, I met back up with Lorraine and headed down the western coast of St. Lucia. We eventually stopped at Marigot Bay which is famous for a couple of reasons. First, it was the setting of the 1967 Doctor Dolittle film staring Rex Harrison. Second, American author James Michener famously called it the “The Most Beautiful Bay in the Caribbean”.

Unfortunately, we were only planning to stay in Marigot Bay for 10 minutes before heading back to the eastern side of the island and Lorraine's house for the evening. I decided this place was worth sticking aroun and arranged for a taxi to pick me up later that night at 7:30. Once I made transportation arrangements for later that night I wanted to take some photographs of the sunset and beach at Marigot Bay along with enjoy some nice local food for dinner.

The beach at Marigot Bay is very small and you actually have to take a water taxi across the bay to reach it along with a couple restaurants. I took the water taxi across the bay and grabbed a table at Dolittles for dinner. I set up my tripod and snapped off shots as the sun slowly fell toward the horizon. Eventually it disappeared behind the crystal clear blue water of the Caribbean and I enjoyed a delicious creole Mahi Mahi for dinner. Pictures of Marigot Bay and the associated sunset are below.







Later that evening I met my cab driver Peter and took a long drive through the rain forest and back to Lorraine's on the eastern / atlantic side of the island. Spent the evening laying in the hammock on her patio reading a book and listening the sounds of the jungle before ending the night early. Thank you for reading this blog post and as always if you have any questions / comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com

Day 7

Today was a travel day to St. Lucia and an early wake up call dragged me out of bed for my flight out of JFK. Grabbed my backpack and took the hotel car to JFK and security was surprisingly heavy at 6 AM on weekday but it went quickly and was on the plane to St Lucia. On the plane ride down I watched Iron Man 2, good but pales in comparison to the first and spent some time thinking about careers and passion.

One of the reasons I am able to take this trip is I recently decided to leave my job at BenefitSpecialists and hoped over the 30 days of travel to do some careful reflection on what direction I should go from this point forward. I've spent a lot of time over the past year during some personal development / coaching and one of the things they preach is doing something you are passionate about. We spend so much time at work and I think it's sad that many people spend years of their lives doing something that is nothing more than a job. I understand is a reality and necessity for many people but I want something more than that. In the personal development program I am part of; there is a concept called unique ability which is basically a skill that everyone has and each person does their unique ability better than anyone else in the world. Doing activities that leverage your unique ability and exciting, fun, provide endless amount of energy, and you have superior skill at it. I'm hoping some careful reflection over the next several weeks will help me understand what my unique ability is and then find a job / career that will help me leverage it.

In looking back at my jobs and personal experiences so far, one of the things I love doing is learning / education. Taking a complex subject and simplifying it to a core concept that people can relate to and understand. It baffles me how complicated people make things sometimes and I've been told by several people it's something that my ability to make the complex simple is strength. One of the challenges is how to leverage a unique ability like that into a job or career. Time will tell over the next several weeks and months.

Later that afternoon we landed in St. Lucia and took a taxi to “Peace of Paradise” which is a private home on the Eastern side of St. Lucia into the jungle and near a babbling brook. It's very pretty, very hot, and very humid in St. Lucia and look forward to what the next few days here will bring. No pictures today, didn't break out the Camera but lots of pictures over the next couple of days.

As always any questions / comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com

Day 6

I woke up this morning in New York intending to hit the city and look for some great photographic opportunities. Unfortunately, the nice hotel room, comfortable bed, and plethora of live NFL games in high definition was too much to overcome. The last few days were incredibly long and several thousand miles of flights had finally caught up to me. I spent the first half of the day in bed, eating some delicious NY pizza leftover from last night, and watching the Houston Texans run all over the Indianapolis Colts. It was a glorious morning / afternoon and feeling refreshed was planning to hit the streets.

Unfortunately, I hit the lobby and asked for direction to Rockefeller Center which has a wonderful observation desk overlooking the city. The concierge looked at me like I was nuts and you know it's cloudy and a downpour outside right now... I did not know that and decide it was a sign to go back upstairs and watch more football which I did. Later that night it stopped raining and started to clear so I decided to make a trek to the Top Of The Rock for some great night skyline views on New York City. It looked as a walked to the building and could see the observation deck which wasn't covered by clouds / fog which was my big concern. I got to the top and unfortunately it started to rain and the clouds came and went which severely limited visibly. Nonetheless I tried to shoot anyway and came away with a few decent shots.

The yellow in the center is the empire state building and the white on the left side is the Chrysler building.

After going back to my hotel and packing for an early flight, I decided to check out a 16^th floor balcony / terrace on my hotel which overlooked Broadway & 77^th street and toward the Hudson River. The sky had cleared slightly and it was just before dawn; I actually like these pictures quite a bit and reminds of an old axiom, “You can't put lipstick on a pig”. When the light is bad and conditions are not ideal, doesn't matter what kind of equipment you have, your skill level, or anything else. Photography is all about the light and when the light is good the pictures speak for themselves.

On to St. Lucia and hopefully better weather than I had in New York City. As always any questions / comments please post below or email me at chris@pricelessperspectives.com