Mexican Food in Egypt?

We unpacked the most basic essentials and went to bed. We slept for a solid 18 hours. It was great to be back in our own house, in our own bed. Now that we are well rested, we are feeling pretty good, but are not particularly motivated to work on our infinitely long list of boat chores.

This morning we went to breakfast at the hotel. Included with breakfast was a selection of juices. We tried hibiscus, cantaloupe, tamarind, and licorice. None of them had a particularly strong taste, and except for the cantaloupe, none were very sweet. The hibiscus looks like grape juice and the taste is somewhat similar to cranberry juice. Had it not been labeled, we would have assumed it was cranberry juice that was somehow not right. The cantaloupe juice is a bright orange and tastes like yummy, vine ripened cantaloupe. The tamarind juice is very dark, almost a dark brown. It is pretty good, something different than we have ever tried. Now that we have tasted the juice, we realize over the past few months we have had quite a few foods that probably had tamarind in them. We both eyed the licorice juice skeptically. It is a light tan color, and had little black things floating in it that resembles pepper. We braced ourselves, expecting it to taste like Jagermeister. Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as bad. It definitely has a black licorice taste, which neither of us likes much. But it isn’t terribly strong, and we could have drank a full glass if nothing else was available. We also tried a new fruit. We are pretty sure it is called a greengauge. It is the size and texture of a small cherry, but inside there are tiny, edible seeds instead of a pit. It tastes a lot like an apple. They are good.

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After breakfast, we booked Continue reading

Getting Ready to Return to Kosmos

Another week has gone by since we wrote the last post, 18 days into our stay in the USA. We are absolutely thrilled to report that Eric’s mom went home from the convalescent home a few days ago. Her rapid improvement has been nothing short of amazing. Yes, she is still very sick, but seeing her get so much better so fast, it is easy to forget how sick she really is. We now have a lot of hope that she will beat the cancer altogether.

Now that she is doing better, at home, and her treatment and care strategies have been more or less situated, Eric’s parents have urged us to go back to the boat and continue with Our Plans. Once we got their blessing to go, we booked a flight back to Egypt. We leave in a couple of days.

In the beginning, Eric’s family was opposed to our trip. Now his parents are our biggest trip supporters and blog fans, which makes us happier than you can imagine. Eric’s parents enjoy hearing about our daily life and travel adventures via the blog, which are much more detailed than we could ever go into verbally. More than ever we feel they are traveling with us.

Though we are sad to be leaving our families, we are ready to get back to our own house (Kosmos is our house now), and to the slow paced cruising life we love. Our last few days at home have become more hectic than ever. We are trying to Continue reading

11 Days Into Our Visit To Eric’s Mom

A week has passed since our last blog entry, and we are pleased to report that Eric’s mom continues to improve a little every day. She is in good spirits, her appetite is increasing, and she can do more and more things for herself with less/no help. The doctor said if she continues to improve, they will let her go home soon. Don’t get us wrong, she is still very sick. But now it looks like she will be fighting a long battle with cancer instead of a short one. We are all thrilled about that.

Chemotherapy has come a long, long way from what it was only 7 years ago when Christi’s mom had cancer. The chemo is more targeted, killing less healthy cells, and the anti-nausea drugs are fabulous. Eric’s mom is experiencing very few of the horrible side effects that Christi’s mom had to endure. Her type of cancer is also especially responsive to chemo.

Eric has spent every single day Continue reading

New Perspective of Life in Southern California

As you all know, our blog postings are behind real time (see About the Blog). You may have noticed that sometimes a post will cover only half a day, and sometime a post will cover three or four days. We only write about what we think is interesting, so if nothing interesting happens for a few days, we condense those days into one story. Over the next few posts, this condensing will be very noticeable. This compression of time simply means the blog is closer to real-time than it was, which is a good thing, since we were getting pretty far behind real time. As an FYI, because it takes hours to write the stories and sort through the photos, the blog will always be behind real time.

We have been in Southern California for four days now. In some ways, it feels like we have never left. Almost everything looks the same and we immediately started to get back into the groove of our old life. When we saw Christi’s family, we just picked up where we left off.

But in other ways, it feels like a lot has changed. First Continue reading