Greetings and salutations, and welcome to the travel blog of Shane and Robbie! We’re going to use this as a forum to share our thoughts and photos with family and friends as we travel around the world, so feel free to browse at your leisure and leave us messages along the way. We’ll try not to upset or offend too many people with our irreverent humour, though we can’t really make any promises…. We hope you enjoy our musings and that reading about our adventures helps to put a smile on your face, a spring in your step and maybe even inspires you to seek out an adventure of your very own.
For those of you who have just stumbled randomly across our blog, read on to get to know us a little better….
TRAVELLER PROFILE: SHANE
I am the boy. I carry the heavy stuff. I will do as I am told and I will love it.
TRAVELLER PROFILE: ROBBIE
I am the girl. I’m a naturopath and a nerd, which basically means I’m a hippie with a passion for good science. An odd combination, I know, but then, as most people who know me will attest, I’m not really that normal in any respect. I’m Italian, but spent most of my childhood in Kenya (East Africa), running barefoot and wild, terrorising my parents, my nanny and anyone or anything else unfortunate enough to pique my interest. To complicate things even further, I have lived in Australia for the past 20 years and now well and truly think of myself as an Aussie (though the appeal of beer still eludes me – that stuff’s revolting!). I went on my first overseas, international adventure at 6 months of age and have had a passion for travel ever since. Whether it’s weekends away somewhere locally, or trips to exotic distant lands, I just love expanding my horizons, meeting new people and experiencing the world’s sensory delights. Inquisitive and opinionated by nature, I’m looking forward to sharing all sorts of random musings with you, dear reader. Enjoy!
Wandering Soles 
I will read and I am sure I will enjoy. Love you guys!
Fantastic can’t wait for your posts have a blast do everything and travel for as long as you can xxxxx
Irreverent…. Check
Emotive….. Check
Robbie calling herself a nerd while Shane gets away without a GEEK tag….. Unfathomable!
Sounds brilliant u guys!
Looking forward to following ur adventures (I likes to watch u see!)
Hello you two, I see the great day is finally arriving. Great itinerary and pity we’ll be seeing you only at the end of it all. Huggies from us all here in Italy.
Yay! As we all know a third wheel makes everything better (e.g tricycle… and I can’t think of any other examples) and I would love to come as I know you are dying to invite me along. Alas, I cannot my friends so I hope you enjoy yourselves and come back more magnificent than your already brilliant selves.
PS. I demand that you offend me with your humour at every opportunity you get (don’t force it, just if it occurs to you)
Bon Voyage!
I enjoyed our chat on the train yesterday. Actually impacted me.
God bless you on your travels.
I simply love the difference in volume of both profiles! I am currently on a 3 month sabbatical myself. People need to go on breaks like these once in a while…
Hello, your lovely pictures caught my eye while I was searching for hiking in Hokkaido. I read with interest about your June trip as we are planning a somewhat similar trip ourselves this year. Can I please ask where your base was when you did the Daisetsuzan National Park please? What was the weather like then? Was it cold? Was it a strenuous hike? You managed to accomplish quite a bit and even to Rishiri island in the north, as well as Shireteko. Did you have your own transport please?
Hi Sue, Shane here. We were based in asahikawa and went for day trips to Daisetsuzan on train/local bus combo. First day was via kamikawa to Sounkyo Onsen. Second day, we headed to Asahidake Onsen from a bus direct out of asahikawa. The weather was changeable, snow still up on the peaks, tending to rain at the lower altitudes.
The small hikes around the mountain were basically well trodden, lots of steps, metal grates, and a few patches of scree and mud, but not at all strenuous or steep. Depends where you go exactly as there are much harder trails. We used buses and trains exclusively in all this, but a lot of the time this meant digging through japanese material; if you don’t speak japanese at all, this might be challenging. One of our fave spots in Japan though, so totally worth the effort in planning it out!
Thank you so much for your input. And you managed to even do Shiretoko from Asahikawa? As well as Rishiri? Wow!! Wow! Another question: if I only can hike from either Sounkyo or Asahidake, which one offers better views (mountains, flowers etc)? What was Asahikawa like? Busy? Smaller version of Sapporo perhaps? Which other city in Japan would you liken it to? Again, thanks for your insights.
Hi Sue,
Day trips only for Daisetsuzan… for shiretoko, we stayed in shiretoko shari (small train, somewhat long trip, to get there). Asahikawa is an excellent little city – yes, a smaller version of sapporo – everything you could want available and not at all busy by japanese standards. For rishiri and rebunto, we went via wakkanai (long train trip) and stayed a night before catching the ferry. You can find more details in the blog entries!
Hi there I am so thrilled I found your site, I really found you by mistake, while
I was browsing on Yahoo for something else, Anyways I am here
now and would just like to say thank you for a marvelous post and
a all round interesting blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to
read through it all at the moment but I have saved it and also
added in your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a great deal more,
Please do keep up the awesome b.
Hi 🙂 I came to your blog to ask you a question and see I REALLY want to read about your travel experiences now! lol. I must, however, stay focused on my task, and then I can play. I would like to ask you if I can use one of your images from my home country of Tanzania, for a storytelling and book event banner. I don’t know how to contact you privately, but I would be happy to do so if it’s better for you. If you could please let me know as soon as you can, I would greatly appreciate it! Asante!!!
Hello. Yes, of course you may use an image, and thankyou for asking. Which image do you want to use? The photos on the blog are smaller images, so if you want a fullsize image, you can go to our flickr page – https://www.flickr.com/photos/shaneandrobbie/albums, open the album, click the image you want, then click the little download button. Enjoy!
YAAAAAAY! Thank you so much! It is of the baobab tree with the blue sky. I think it gives the perfect feeling for telling stories under the baobab tree. Thank you again & again! I will go to your flickr account to get it from there 🙂