The Destinations Guru

21/01/2023

Part 2 of my visit to the cairns region of Australia takes us to a few beaches and waterfalls. Wonderful scenery abounds. But watch out for crocs and stingers!

Beaches and Waterfalls Around Cairns and the Tablelands Posted on January 21, 2023 The Beaches On our recent visit to our friends Ralph and KC in the Cairns suburb of Goldsborough, they took us far and wide to show us some of the magnificent scenery to be found in the region. North of Cairns to Port...

14/01/2023

My wife and I just came back from a week long visit to our friends Ralph and KC in Cairns. It was a fabulous week and I'll be publishing several looks at our visit culminating with a trip to the rainforest, the oldest rainforest on the planet. Here is our introductory look where we discovered one of the prime industries is sugar. And we discovered the critter they call the brumby. http://destinations.guru/2023/01/14/cane-trains-and-brumbies-oh-my/

17/07/2022

It's been a while since I added something to my travel blog, but in April while visiting my brother in Ontario, his daughter and I took a trip to Niagara Falls. If you've never been there, it is an astounding sight, a mesmerizing sight. One of the natural wonders of the world. http://destinations.guru/2022/07/17/niagara-falls/

Niagara Falls Posted on July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 Niagara Falls! The name alone stirs up images of thundering water rolling over a vast cliff and plunging 160 feet to the gorge below. The falls were formed during the Wisconsin Glaciation, the last North American ice age which happened from 75,000 t...

06/12/2021

What if your home really was a castle? For Robert Dunsmuir, it was!
https://vocal.media/wander/when-a-man-s-home-really-is-his-castle

A guided tour of Canada's most famous castle

29/11/2021

Who knows if the cruise business will ever get back on its feet again? I hope so because we have enjoyed cruising tremendously. It is a fabulous away to see the world and meet people of many different cultures. And dollar for dollar, you get great value for your money. We took our last cruise in November 2019, just months before the pandemic hit. Here is my guide to what to expect on a cruise. https://vocal.media/wander/the-joy-of-cruising

What you can expect on a cruise vacation

25/10/2021

My review of Margaret C. Jacob's book The Secular Enlightenment has now been published at Savvy Street. This is superb book on the cultural rather than the political influence of the Enlightenment. https://www.thesavvystreet.com/orthodox-religion-vs-the-enlightenment/

Book Review: The Secular Enlightenment by Margaret C. Jacob

24/04/2021

Craigdarroch Castle is a slice of history in the heart of Victoria, British Columbia. Here is a look at the history and beauty of this historic landmark. http://destinations.guru/2021/04/24/a-mans-home-is-his-castle/

They say a man’s home is his castle but it is rare that a home really is a castle. We generally think of European royalty, but there is a distinctive group of wealthy industrialists who built homes that resembled castles. The Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California is one notable example. Another ...

04/09/2020

On Monday, visiting relatives from Alberta and our local family visited the Chilliwack Sunflower Festival. That event has now been extended to Sept. 13th. Here is my description of it on my travel blog.There's also a Photo Gallery with additional photographs. http://destinations.guru/2020/09/04/chilliwack-sunflower-festival/

17/02/2020

One of the ports of call on our Panama Canal cruise was Guatemala where we took a trip to the historic town of Antigua. http://destinations.guru/2020/02/17/the-other-antigua/

When we think of Antigua, we usually think of the Caribbean island, but there are in fact three others. Two of them are small towns, one in Australia and one in the Canary Islands. The subject of today’s tour is the ancient city of Antigua in Guatemala. Founded in 1543 as Santiago de los Caballero...

31/01/2020

One of our excursions on our Panama Canal cruise was a trip along the Tarcoles River in Costa Rica. We did not know at the time that this is the most polluted river in Central America. Nevertheless, the bird population is beautiful to see. http://destinations.guru/2020/01/31/birding-in-a-tainted-paradise/

The next stop in our Panama Canal cruise, after leaving Panama, was Puntarenas, Costa Rica. We had booked something called Tárcoles River: An Eco Adventure, one of eleven different excursions available at this port of call. It is promoted as Jungle Crocodile Safari, which is a bit of a misnomer. Bu...

07/01/2020

The fourth installment of my series on our Panama Canal cruise takes us for an excursion to see monkeys in the wild in Panama. http://destinations.guru/2020/01/07/monkey-watch/

Monkey Watch was one of the excursion options on our recent Panama Canal cruise. The tour took left from the pier at Panama City, after we had transited the canal itself. Panama has a large harbor but it is not set up to accommodate cruise ships so we took one of the tenders to get to shore. One of....

31/12/2019

On November 20th, our cruise ship transited the Panama Canal. This is truly a marvel of engineering. http://destinations.guru/2019/12/31/transiting-the-panama-canal/

The Panama Canal was listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World in a BBC miniseries produced in 2003. A marvel of engineering, the story behind it is truly incredible. Almost everyone has heard of it, but few know much about it. We had the privilege of taking a cruise from Fort Laude...

16/12/2019

Our first port-of-call on our recent Panama Canal cruise was Cartagena, Colombia. It;s a fabulous city to visit. Lots of history there. http://destinations.guru/2019/12/16/cartagena-colombia/

Cartagena, Colombia When we booked our excursion online for Cartagena, we knew nothing about the city. Since we booked a tour of a 16th century Spanish fort, we thought it might be a sleepy little city like Cadiz or Malaga in Spain. Malaga is actually a good size with around 570,000 people but it do...

11/12/2019

Janis and I took a fabulous Panama Canal cruise from Nov. 15th to Dec. 1st. This post is an overview. I'll follow up with separate posts on each of the ports-of-call and the canal transit itself. http://destinations.guru/2019/12/11/our-panama-canal-cruise/

Our Panama Canal Cruise One of the things on our bucket list was to take a cruise through the Panama Canal. On Nov. 15 we did just that. It was a sixteen day cruise that left from Fort Lauderdale, traversed the Panama Canal, and ended up in Los Angeles. There were six ports-of-call along the way. Ou...

24/10/2019

A couple of months ago, The Destinations Guru fell prey to a cyber attack. It was severely hacked and the only solution was to delete the website completely and start rebuilding it. Several upgrades have been made and Go Daddy will be moving it to much more secure server in the new Year as well. In the meantime, with the help of The Wayback Machine, I have been painstakingly copying and recreating every page. I have made considerable progress but much remains to do. I hope to be creating entirely new pages in November or December reflecting an upcoming vacation, a Panama Canal cruise. Meanwhile, if you missed a lot of the posts from 2016, those are the ones I am repopulating first. Check it out here. http://destinations.guru/

20/04/2019

In the wake of the devastating fire that struck Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, I look back on our visit there in 2011. http://destinations.guru/2019/04/20/remembering-notre-dame/

10/11/2018

All new recruits to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are trained at a large facility in Regina. The site is also host to the RCMP Heritage Centre, a fascinating museum with dozens of historic artifacts. . http://destinations.guru/2018/11/10/the-mountie-museum/

Posted on November 10, 2018November 10, 2018 by DestinationsThe Mountie Museum Follow us on Facebook! Besides being the capital of the province of Saskatchewan, Regina is also the home of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy, also known as Depot Division. Every Mountie in Canada is trained at t...

12/10/2018

About two hours out of Vancouver, up a winding country road, you'll find the Weaver Creek Salmon Spawning Channel. Every year from Oct. 6 to Nov. 5th, the salmon make their run, migrating upstream to lay their eggs and die. The channel is specially designed to enhance the salmon population by providing ideal spawning conditions. It is well worth the visit. The peak period of the run is coming up in a few days (Oct. 15-25) http://destinations.guru/2018/10/12/the-weaver-creek-salmon-run/