Lake Tahoe

Our good friend Amy lives up in the mountains in South Lake Tahoe.  She owns a nice house with her boyfriend Kyle and it's about 15 minutes from town, in the woods.  The perfect spot if you like the outdoors.  So here we are for a visit before the real snowboarding season starts.  Let's see how our car does in the cold and the snow.  Priuses are not exactly made for rough conditions like they get in Lake Tahoe.

Anyhow, here are some pics of the area of Lake Tahoe and around Amy's house.

 

 Lake Tahoe

 

Brewing Beer

Chopping wood with a engine powered, hydraulic wood splitter.

A really nice and big stove to keep us warm during the winter.

 Our cars in the morning after the first snowy night.  Oh yeah, it dumps in this area.  Luckily we got our snow chains the day before.

The view from our bedroom window.

First day of the season!!!  We got season passes that are good for 3 skiing areas in the Lake Tahoe area: Heavenly, Northstar and Sierra at Tahoe.   Even though it was storming and snowing like crazy on the first day, we had to check it out, just for fun.  And just for one run because it was way too cold out there.

During the stormy days we had a lot of time and tons of fresh snow to build a sled run in front of the house.  We kept building it higher an higher up to almost 3 meters.  It was super fun and pretty fast.  Occasionally you'd have too much speed and go over the edge on the first turn.  : )

The dogs Bleu and Phinny were also loving the snow.  And we were loving the snow bar after a day of shoveling and playing in the snow. 

The snowbar is right in front of the house.  At one point it snowed so much we had to dig for our bottles.

On the first sunny day after the snow storm, Semu and I went up the mountain at Sierra-at-Tahoe right when the lifts opened at 9am.  It was the perfect start of the season with sweet powder runs, very few people, and not a cloud in the sky!

The view over the Lake from Sierra-at-Tahoe.

The view over the Lake from Heavenly.

Back home in California

We cruised around Central California in a "Chateau" RV with our friend Barbara and her two girls Gaia and Alba, from Switzerland, for about a week. Semu improved his Swiss German skills during these days in the RV Camper with 4 Swiss ladies more than in the past 4 years living in Switzerland. : )

Barbara, Gaia, and Alba picked us up in San Francisco and we headed south on the famous California Hwy 1, passing through Carmel & the Big Sur Coast.

At Julia Pfeiffer State Park

Hummingbird (Kolibiri) at Ragged Point

Elephant Seals, just north of San Simeon

Nice ukulele tunes at sunset by Gaia

Our RV Rock-stars

Morro Bay

Swing time at Cayucos beach

Wine tasting around Paso Robles in a Limo

Monkey Barbara....

... and monkey Alba climbing Eucalyptus trees in Montana de Oro State Park

Dressed up for trick-or-treating at Halloween

Semu & Barbara at the Warriors NBA Basketball game

A beautiful day in San Francisco and a clear view of the Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco by night from the Twin Peaks

We had a great time traveling up and down the Californian Coast with you ladies. Thank you for taking us along in your Chateau. We loved showing you our favorite spots in the area!!!

Islands of French Polynesia

Raiatea

Here are some pictures of the beautiful and laid back island of Raiatea.

The pier in front of where we stayed.

Me, doing my best Beatles impression by the zip line.

Christi loved the swing.

Hinano is the local beer. Very tasty.

Motu Miri Miri, just off Raiatea

A small pearl farm

We had a great time on Raiatea. As you can see it is a beautiful place. We stayed in a super nice camping area with a huge kitchen. It was clean and the staff left fresh flowers all around the facilities every day. There were only a few other guests. Much of the time it was just us and one other guy from France. He even drove us around the island one day. It was pretty funny because he didn't speak any English and I don't speak French. Christi had to translate everything either one of us said.

While there we enjoyed ourselves by swimming, snorkeling, feeding the colorful fish right off the pier, kayaking, fishing, cooking, reading, playing the ukulele, listening to Tahitian music and spending quality time with some good friends that live there.

Raiatea is a nice 20 minute flight or a 14 hour cargo boat ride away from Tahiti. We took the flight there and were feeling adventurous, so... we took the boat ride back. It was much colder and rougher than we expected. Once was enough.

Moorea

This was the view from the porch of our bungalow.

Moorea has lots of white sand beaches and is only a short boat ride from Tahiti. It is very easy to reach and has way more tourists than remote Raiatea. But it was also very beautiful and we really enjoyed our last couple of days on the island while snorkeling, watching the sun set, ...

When visiting these islands, you feel lucky just being there. We will definitely try to make it back.