With an approaching birthday this weekend, Kongo was invited out last night for an evening with long time friends Betty and Kim and their friends Mike and Shelly who were visiting from New York. The six of them headed off in the late afternoon to the Cordiano Winery in Escondido for some wine, pizza, and a spectacular sunset. Betty and Kongo have been traipsing about the world together for more than 30 years and they had a great evening talking about where they might be headed to next. Myanmar before it gets spoiled? Panama? And then Kongo starts whining about the India trip he wants to take. Mrs. Kongo and Kim (Betty’s husband) just smile and sip wine through these types of talks. They’ve heard it all before. Read on.
Mike and Shelly, who seem to have been everywhere, added colorful comments and told great travel stories, like the time Mike fell off a bridge in Costa Rica while going white water rafting almost killing himself but was up for zip-lines in the afternoon before blowing out back disks making a “wet landing” at the next resort a few days later. All kinds of travel trash talk and good conversation.
The winery has great wine, terrific pizza, and over the top views of the San Pasqual Valley. As the sun sank lower and lower Kongo got some great images and wished he’d brought his tripod because the light after sunset was truly spectacular.
The Cordiano Winery is a great place to spend the golden hour, sip wine, and watch sunsets. Watch how much wine you drink though because it’s a windy road back down the mountain in the dark!
Betty remembered Kongo’s birthday with this really cool little gadget that every traveling monkey should have. It’s a Pocket Monkey! What a great surprise and Kongo is sure it is going to come in very handy in Myanmar!
Travel safe. Have fun.
Sounds like you had a great evening, Kongo. The Canary – currently stuck in the UAE – is jealous and would love to switch locations with you;) Just for a couple of nights and a few glasses of vino rosso.
I’ve done hard time in UAE. Actually I like it a lot. Friendly, interesting sights, and great sunsets.
Is this a ‘yes’ to my swap proposal? 😉 Yalla!
What a fabulous post! I smiled all the way through it. Happy Birthday!
Thank you, Pam. Getting on in monkey years. 🙂
Those sunset shots are something special. How many candles will this monkey have on his cake? I don’t quite know how monkey years work? 🙂
The monkey will have to blow out 63 candles this year but doubts they can find a cake big enough so maybe it will be just a token number!
That’s a lot of puff for a small monkey 🙂 Have a good one.
Wow, those sunset landscape photos are spectacular! ♪ ♫ ♪ Happy Birthday ♫ ♪ ♫
Thanks, Kris!
The Pocket Monkey is great! Thanks for the link.
That little pocket monkey comes in very handy. I used it the past few days to get off sales tags, open some packages (thus avoiding WRAP RAGE) and even used it as a stand (with a credit card inserted through a slot) to act as a stand for the iPhone.