Still alive, and headed for the other side of the world.

Yeah, so that whole science thing got in the way of our actually writing about science. Sorry about the absence—we’re back for the second half of our journey and eager to get you up to speed ASAP. We are still alive, and very much still traveling. Even this post got kind of intercepted by a failed attempt at typing on a French keyboard in the airport, hence the strike-throughs....

Right now we’re sitting in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris Changi Airport in Singapore, waiting for the longest flight that either of us has ever been on, from Paris to Singapore our flight to Melborne. The next part of our travels is taking us to Papua New Guinea. I’ll admit, I absolutely adored traveling through Europe, but I am also absolutely giddy at getting back to some place more remote—no where we’ve gone yet this summer has truly been off the beaten track, and I really miss traveling places where there aren’t Starbucks.

The downside of that, however, is that it might limit our connectivity with the rest of the world. In about fifteen hours, we’ll be Right now we are in Singapore for a quick stop. Then we fly to Melborne, then to Cairns, Australia, arriving about a day and a half from now. (Mom, that will be at about 9 pm your time on July 26, 2009). We’re pretty certain we’ll be able to find internet in Australia, but after that it may be less than convenient. We’re spending just one night in Cairns, and leaving on a 7am fight for Port Morsby, PNG.

I can come up with few places more remote or challenging to travel in than PNG. There’s not totally a government, barely any tourist infrastructure, and river valleys so wild that basically any entomologist or botanist who walks a mile in from the ocean is guaranteed to find something no one’s ever described before. This is the kind of adventure I miss having.

It’s also the kind of adventure that doesn’t do great things for one’s internet connectivity. I’m sure this is far more frustrating for us, particularly because I’m at the point in the journey where I want to snuggle every small child I see because I miss my son. Still, we both do really want to share our stories more with anyone who wants to listen, and hope that there’s a few listeners still out there. Either way, we’re hoping to send out posts about Goreme (a bizarre Cappadocian village carved into rock formations), Croatia’s very cool dog breads and Belgian breweries and beer in the next little bit. Look out for those, and for much increased travel stats in the next couple days

Updated stats, courtesy of my lovely husband:
12 flights
8 time zones
84:15 traveling hours [note this only counts flight-associated travel time]
27,854 travel miles
15 countries (counting all landings and time spent on the ground at all)
12 countries (counting only those countries we left the airport)