Our travel around the world

Spent a day walking through very hot New York city. As always the city amazes us and doesn't dissapoint with scorching weather!

My birthday gift - skydiving jump - video here - http://www.vimeo.com/13235732 Then 1 day of rock climbing. Still awaiting a scary photo from Pavlik when we climbed 40 meters.

initially we didn't think to stop here, but in the end stayed for 3 days and experienced great wildlife viewing. Lots of bisons could be seen, elks and even black bear!

one of my most favorite places on our trip so far - the mountains are just WOW! Some of the hikes we did and liked - Lake Louise, Sulphur Mountain, Johnston canyon, Ink Pots One night our $34-tent didn't survive the rain, after we arrived from dinner we saw paddles of water in our tent - not good, luckily we found at last minute backpackers and spend the night there

even more impressive than Banff - especially because there weren't that many tourists on hikes. First day we did a 10km hike around Jasper, nice views and we didn't met anyone on the trek! Next day a steep hike to Bald Hills rewarded by fantastic views of mountains nearby and beutiful Maligne Lake. Last day a very difficult hike near Edith Cavell area. 800m elevation gain in rough terrain - poor Vlasta couldn't walk for few days after the hike.

explored Vancouver's Chinatown and ate following on the night street market: cold noodles, tuna&octopus balls, panfried pork dumplings, chow mein, beef rice roll, candied strawberries and peanut butter wheel cake :) yummy!

driven through beautiful Vancouver Island , not many cars around so 1-lane road wasn't a problem and we swiftly arrived at Port McNeil. Spend a night there and in the morning short drive to Telegraph Cove where we started our 4-day sea kayaking adventure. And what a great time we had! We packed all our clothes to plastic bags and put them into the kaykak along with sleeping bags and tent. Our friendly guides Brian and Erin prepared lots of food supplies and we were off to our base camp. Water was very cold as you would expect so we limited our contact with water to absolute minimum, still our bottoms were wet and for first 2 days it was rather cold. last 2 days we had perfect sunny weather and it was much nicer. We did 2 paddles around the coast line every day, usually 2 hours each, separated by delicious lunch by our resourceful guides. Food was vegetarian all 4 days but amazingly we didnt miss meat at all! On a 2nd day we saw the orcas, all group curiously watching with their cameras flashing - it was great experience to see them in the wild. On 3rd and 4th day we seen plenty of seals and sea lions, it was fun to watch how they approached us curiously while we were in the kayaks. Also, we also seen loads of eagles - I never seen so many eagles in my life!

went to attend a conference in Mountain View, California. In case you wonder where you heard of Mountain View - its in the heart of Silicon Valley, home to Google headquarters. The conference was in Microsoft Campus - pretty amazing to meet all the passionate entrepreneurs who will one day create next Google, Facebook or Apple.

Vlasta's favorite place on the trip so far and that's why we spent there 2 days out there. First day we invited our colleague Ovi for 2 wine tasting sessions and nice dinner at the restaurant called Girl and the fig in Sonoma (Thanks for the tip Tammy and Marten!) The wineries we tried Chateau St. Jean and St. Francis - the first wine tasings was a private tasting with a chap called Bob from Colorado who was not only a painter but also knew a lot about local wine. The second wine tasting was Okey but we sat in the garden and enjoyed the views of surrounding vineyeards. The second day Vlasta was joined by our friend Tomas who decided to join us for few weeks of travelling America's south-west. I excused myself for a round of golf in Oakmont Golf club.

great views around this glacier-cold lake. We first circled the lake and enjoyed super-short swim afterwards.

Yosemite NP has surprised us quite a bit! We didn't expect such a beautiful and huge rock formations. After enjoying tasty sandwich in Yosemite Village we went for a short hike up to Nevada Falls. I must say this was one of the most spectacular waterfalls views ever - check out the photos if you can spot the rainbow ;). On the way back we stopped at the river bank and spotted a rescue operation of a climber who was like 500meters up on the rock and helicopter trying to pick him up....