Seeing Beautiful Sunsets in Exotic Locations

On January 12, 2021January 12, 2021 By Living The Q Life Travel AdventuresIn Blogging, Travel Tips4 Comments

It doesn’t matter where we travel to, but we always like taking photographs of sunsets. As beautiful as they are wherever you may be, there is something extra special when you are in an exotic location. We don’t always take photographs of them and sometimes just sit and relax while watching the sun descend to the horizon. Also, sometimes we don’t have our camera with us, so we take them with our phones, but that doesn’t diminish the beauty of the image. We have put several of our favorite sunset photographs from some of our more unique travels here.

When we were in Ecuador, we stayed at an ecolodge that was located deep in the Amazon Rainforest. On our first night there, we climbed up to the observation deck and had the opportunity to see this wonderful sunset. You’ll have to use your imagination to hear the monkeys and birds that were all around us in the treetops.

During our three day cruise in Halong Bay in Vietnam, we saw several amazing sunsets. We even saw a few sunrises as well, but the sunsets were much more vivid. It really didn’t matter what time of day it was to enjoy the scenery, but watching the sunset from the deck of the boat was certainly a highlight.

While we were in Bolivia, we visited Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The following day we took a boat out to see Sun Island and Moon Island and our day started with rain showers. The gathering clouds during the evening before added to the sunset.

Sailing down the Nile River in Egypt from Luxor to Aswan provided some absolutely stunning sunsets. Something about the sand being blown into the air adds to the way that the sun reflects as it descends. It also signaled that the temperatures were about to drop, which was a massive relief considering how hot it was in Egypt.

View of the Sunset Over the Mekong River in Vientiane, Laos

Sunset from the Rooftop Restaurant in Laos

While in Vientiane, we spent the evening walking along the Mekong River that separates Laos from Thailand. There is a large park along the river and at night people from throughout the city gather to enjoy food and carnival rides.

Beautiful Colors as Sunset Ended in Acapulco, Mexico

Peak of a Sunset on a Twilight Cruise in Acapulco

We saw several wonderful sunsets while we were in Acapulco. We took a twilight cruise where we enjoyed drinks on the ship while we cruised along the coast. We also went to see the cliff divers, who perform shortly after the sun goes down, so we ate dinner prior to the show and watched the sunset. It made for a very relaxing evening.

It could be us, but there is something magical about sunsets with palm trees in the foreground. And any time you can capture the sun’s reflection on the water, it makes for a wonderful photograph. Looking back at some of these photographs makes us long to get to someplace exotic once again in the near future.

Looking Forward, Not Back in 2021

On January 5, 2021January 5, 2021 By Living The Q Life Travel AdventuresIn Blogging, Travel Tips1 Comment

We would normally start off the new year with a recap of our travels from the previous year, but since our travels were so limited we decided not to do that this year. There wasn’t anything magical about the first of January that will suddenly make everything that was wrong with 2020 come to an end as we are all too painfully aware and the start of 2021 feels pretty much like a continuation of 2020. Travel restrictions continue around the world and despite the hope that a vaccine brings, it is going to take a while before it provides the impact that everyone is hoping it will have. That assumes, of course, that the new mutations don’t impact the efficiency of the vaccines. We cancelled all of our major trips that we had planned in 2020, including trips to Turkey and Western Africa. Although we don’t have enough confidence to start planning anything new quite yet, we have tentatively planned to visit Portugal at the end of April.

The new year does come with a sense of optimism that perhaps we will all return to some sort of normalcy in the coming months. Like many people, we are itching to get back to exploring the world and perhaps the lack of travel will inspire us to go to places that we hadn’t previously considered. We still hope to do a safari in Africa before the end of the year and have several other ideas of places we’d like to visit. It is truly hard to believe that it will have been at least a full year since our last trip out of the country and close to a year and half since our last significant trip, which was to Vietnam in November of 2019. When all of this started in March of last year, we really didn’t expect it to last for more than a few months and now it feels like it is never going to end, but we are trying to be hopeful.

With that said, we are not just putting 2020 in our rear view mirror, but doing our best to erase it from our minds. Until we can get to someplace new, we will continue to revisit some of our past trips to help us find inspiration for the future. We are doing lots of research on places that we’d like to see in 2021 and probably reading more about them than we would have previously done. We are also paying attention to the changing requirements for travel, such as proof of a negative test and potentially proof that you have been vaccinated, which we hope isn’t the case going forward. We know that some people found a way to continue traveling even in 2020, while others probably won’t travel until things have completely returned to normal. Whatever your plans are, we hope everyone has a safe and wonderful new year.

New Year’s Fireworks Over the Acropolis in Athens, Greece from Our Trip in 2017

Battling the Depression Caused by Lack of Travel

On October 30, 2020October 30, 2020 By Living The Q Life Travel AdventuresIn Blogging21 Comments

That might sound like an exaggeration, but for us it is actually true. Considering that we would have been out of the country 3 to 4 times since the shutdown started in March, we find ourselves not just sad and frustrated, but truly depressed at times. We are making every effort to stay active and continue to provide information on a regular basis, but there are days when looking at photographs of previous trips is just too much to do. We had truly hoped that things would have improved by now, however it seems that things are once again getting worse and places are shutting down yet again.

We look forward to seeing new places and actually enjoy the entire travel experience. What is probably hardest is not meeting new people and hearing from them about their culture. We have teased several times that we’ll just have to travel twice as much next year, but clearly that isn’t reasonable and also assumes that somehow things will truly open back up again. We try not to get depressed when thinking about travel because, after all, we have our health and are together and most people consider travel a luxury. We think about all of our friends who rely on the travel industry for their livelihoods and feel for them knowing how difficult it must be on them. We apologize if the moods of our posts are not as upbeat as they usually would be, we will try to stay motivated in these trying times.