Finally out to dinner last night…What the heck have we been doing since we left Marloth Park 23 months ago?….

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Here was the sunset we spotted while outside of our Kauai condo. Wow!

It had been almost three weeks since we went out for dinner after I’d been sick for 2½ weeks. It feels great to be back to myself exercising again, feeling well, and finally able to go out to dinner last night at the Speakeasy.

Although we spent every day and evening together, there’s something magical about dressing up a little and getting out of our usual environment. Without any distractions from podcasts, TV news, and streaming, we had each other’s undivided attention and, surprisingly, found ourselves catching up as if we had been apart.

It’s not as if we don’t chat all day and evening. We frequently engage in conversation and with little snippets throughout the day. But based on our together-all-the-time lifestyle, we often give one another “space” to engage in activities during the day that we each enjoy on our own.

For Tom, this may be updating Ancestry, watching sports, listening to podcasts, and researching topics he enjoys, which may not appeal to me. Once I finish the daily posts, I exercise, prepare the evening meals, and work on financial matters. Before I know it, the day is more than half over. In the evenings, we spend our time together streaming movies and TV series we mutually enjoy. We just finished a new favorite on Netflix, the astounding “Shogun,” a memorable series.

Lately, I’ve been awakening at 3:00 am, staying awake for an hour or two, and then falling back to sleep for a total of eight or more hours. I used to get by with six or seven hours at most, but in the past few years, I’ve found I function better with eight hours. Thus, I may not get up at 6:00 or 7:00 am, like Tom.

Getting up late is no problem. There certainly is no specific necessity to get up early most days. I guess this is a part of enjoying retirement. When we fly out on March 1, our flight isn’t until after 10:00 pm so that no rushing will be required. Of course, we won’t sleep for almost 54 hours from the time we awake on March 1 until we go to bed in Marloth Park on March 3,

That’s the most challenging part about getting there: it’s far away, well over 10,000 flight miles. We’ve learned not to dread the flight and to accept it as part of the opportunity to be in this magical place. I can’t believe we’re leaving in a month!

Initially, we’d planned to be away from Marloth Park for 13 months. Now, after my health issues, it will be 23 months since we left in April 2023. It’s been a long haul over these past 23 months interspersed with great experiences and some not so much. Here’s the breakdown of where we’ve been in the past 23 months:

  • April 2023: left South Africa
  • April 2023 – July 2023: The Villages, Florida
  • July 2023 – Scotland
  • August 2023: Cruise, Norway to Amsterdam
  • August 2023: Cruise Iceland, Greenland, Canada, to Boston, then back to the US
  • September 2023: Boston to Las Vegas, Nevada (we needed to renew our driver’s licenses)
  • September 2023: Las Vegas, Nevada to Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • October 2023: Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Quito, Ecuador
  • October 2023: Quito to cruise The Galapagos Islands back to Quito, Ecuador
  • October, November, December 2023: Holiday rental in Ecuador
  • December 2023 to April 2024: Ecuador to Lake Las Vegas, Nevada
  • April 2024: Lake Las Vegas, Nevada to Apache Junction, Arizona
  • May 2024: Drove from Apache Junction to Los Angeles, California, to Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • May, June, July, and August 2024: Minneapolis, Minnesota, waiting for appointments at Cleveland Clinic
  • August, September, October, November, and December 2024: Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio
  • December 2024, March 2025: Lake Las Vegas. Nevada
  • March 1, 2025: Fly from Las Vegas to Nelspruit/Mpumalanga/Kruger Airport
  • March 3, 2025: Drive from Nelspruit/Mpumalanga/Kruger Airport to Marloth Park

Wow! After seeing this in writing, we realize how much travel we’ve done in the past almost two years. It’s exhausting just reading this! We had a lot of fun in some ways, but it was tedious and stressful in other ways. But, in any case, we are excited to be on the move again in one month!

Thanks to all of our readers for spending these long months with us. In a short time, the excitement will begin again. We are very grateful.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, February 1, 2015:

Suddenly, while driving, we stopped in Kauai for such a scene as this. For more photos, please click here.

We’re back after a wonderful weekend…Big changes I’ve made…

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The Speakeasy in the Village in Lake Las Vegas has a hidden room, which can be accessed by moving a section of this bookcase, typical of speakeasies in the 1920s.
Ah, it’s a good Monday for several reasons. We have secured the house in Penguin, Tasmania, for next March and April; our laundry is washed and dried; tonight’s dinner is prepped except for the salad I’ll make soon; and this morning, when I weighed myself, I realized I had lost 5 pounds in the past month.

Since I took all those heart rhythm drugs, I gained weight when my body slowed down so much that I was barely able to move. Once we arrived here almost a month ago, I went on a rampage to get fit and lose the 20 pounds I’d gained in the past 18 months from sheer inactivity and perhaps overeating (still low carb) to soothe my weary state of mind and body.

We sat at this bar while we enjoyed our drinks and later moved to the quaint dining room for dinner, shown below,

On several occasions in the past 18 months, I mentioned trying to lose weight, but I failed miserably when the weight just wouldn’t come off. I knew I had to make adjustments in my workout routine, which wasn’t vigorous enough, and reduce the “amounts” of foods I was eating, not so much related to “what” I was eating since my diet already consisted of eating salads and healthy non-starchy vegetables, fish chicken and beef and Greek unsweetened yogurt.

A grand piano was to the far right in this quaint dining room where we enjoyed our dinner.

I knew I had to adjust the above to lose weight. Here’s what I did that finally resulted in losing 5 pounds, most of which was in the past two weeks:

FOOD

  1. I reduced the amount of yogurt I ate. I’d often have some for breakfast and more as a snack after dinner. Too much dairy prevented me from losing weight.
  2. Stop eating anything once I was done with dinner. We usually eat around 5:00 pm, and once I take the last bite, I don’t eat another morsel until breakfast the next day, usually around 10:00 am. That provides me with at least a 16-hour fasting window each day.
  3. If I feel like having a glass of wine, I have it at 3:00 pm and sip it until dinner. After dinner, I only drink water or unsweetened iced tea. At first, I felt hungry a few hours after dinner, but I fought off the temptation to have something, and soon the hunger dissipated.
  4. I reduced the amount of salad I ate with dinner each night. I ate too much salad to get full when I was not eating any starchy side dishes, which made my digestion uncomfortable. Now, after dinner, I don’t feel uncomfortably full.
  5. Tom’s bacon cheeseburger and shoestring fries as we dined in the dining room.

    My Caesar salad was topped with a good-sized blackened salmon fillet. It was delicious after I picked off the croutons I’d asked to be excluded but didn’t make a fuss when they weren’t removed.

EXERCISE:

  1. I changed my exercise routine, knowing I wouldn’t have any exercise equipment when we arrived in South Africa. Five days a week, I do a routine of walking indoors while stopping every two minutes to do various heart-pounding exercises, continuing for 12 minutes. It’s the most conducive way to get my heart rate up sufficiently to do my heart some good. Walking alone isn’t enough. My 76-year-old knees don’t invite running or walking at a fast pace.
  2. Two days a week, I use the exercise bike in the fitness center, biking as fast as I can in intervals of the highest resistance, such as in HIIT (high-intensity interval training) for 15 minutes. On February 1st, I will wean myself off the bike and increase the indoor routine, ramping it up to 20 minutes daily.
  3. I’ve become more conscientious of getting up and moving around every 30 minutes during the day when I may be sitting by saving particular household tasks for those intervals. I set the alarm for every 30 minutes up until 5:00 pm when we have dinner and relax for the evening.
    The long staircase to the upper-level cigar smoking lounge.

    The bar in the smoking lounge.

SLEEP

  1. I’ve always been a poor sleeper. In the past month, I have focused on staying off my phone when and if I am awake during the night. Now, I can get at least 8 hours of sleep each night, making me feel much better during the day.
    The humidor with cigars for sale.

    The upstairs cigar lounge.

All of the above takes a lot of motivation and commitment every day. But, as they say, I tackle it “one day at a time.” In the past week, after almost a month of this new routine, I’ve noticed about a 25% improvement in my walking ability. This is my biggest motivator, and I must continue at this pace to ensure it improves further.

A cozy sitting area in the cigar lounge.

No, it’s not easy. But if we want to continue traveling, I must work harder on my health than ever before. I am now reminded of all the years I worked out this hard and how good it was for me.

Today’s photos are from our delightful Friday night dinner at The Speakeasy, where we dined for the first time. It was such fun, and we look forward to returning shortly. On Saturday night, we dined at The Pub. In both instances, we chatted with locals, which only added to the experience.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, January 13, 2015:

This photo of the snorkeler was somewhat confusing. Could they have been conducting some research? For more photos, please click here.