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Shock News: Brazil Is Really Big
Saturday night in Puerto Iguazu is properly rocking, busier than every previous evening with queues outside several restaurants and music from numerous bars clashing mid street in a melee of bass lines and choruses which succeed only in drowning each other out. Bon Jovi, Men At Work and Gnarls Barkley merge into a disturbing melange which threatens to confuse and confound the ears. Whether it’s like this every Saturday, or whether it’s especially busy because it’s Easter, we’ll never know. Our last night in Argentina And so after our brief 5-day glimpse of Argentina, we head back across the bridge and cast one last look at the pale blue skies…
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Last Images Of Paraty
We have now moved on from Paraty and are now in the vicinity of one of the world’s most incredible natural sights, a true natural wonder of the world. But before we get on to that, here’s a few more images of beautiful Paraty which didn’t make it on to our earlier posts……
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High Climbs & High Tides: Last Days In Paraty
We’re not always altogether comfortable with organised group tours, and although both of the outings with Paraty Tours have been good, it’s time to go independent again after two successive days of being chaperoned by others. So Wednesday morning we head to the bus station and wait in the heat for the number 25 bus to Trindade which, by the time the driver reverses out of the stand, is ridiculously overloaded with far too many people and far too much baggage. The little bus really struggles on the mountain climbs, with the driver opting for first gear and a raging engine uphill, then inching slowly down the other side with…
- Brazil, Independent travel, Outdoor Activities, Photography, South America, Travel Blog, Walking, Wildlife
Hello Again Brazil: Discovering Paraty
Exotic bird calls boom or squawk through the trees, now and again the undergrowth rustles with the movement of an unseen creature. We are drenched in sweat, dripping wet from head to toe; the baking sun casts searing heat into the occasional clearing but for the most part the lofty canopy traps intense humidity in the spaces below. Official signs warn of poisonous spiders, scorpions and snakes. The heavy air is full of the scents of foliage and damp earth. This is the Atlantic Forest, its million shades of green scaling every mountainside and sweeping with sumptuous colour to the very edge of the shore. The climb has been testing,…
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Granada & The Alhambra
It’s on the Wednesday morning in Granada that it happens, proper confirmation that I am old. Here I am, fresh from walking the Caminito del Rey, sporting a T-shirt from my travels, boarding a shuttle bus from city centre to the Alhambra and feeling full of the joie de vivre which travelling the world brings, when some guy stands up to offer me his seat. This is the first time anywhere in the world that this has happened to me. I must look so old now that it’s obligatory for someone to offer me their seat. I am suddenly and undeniably an old git. Inside I’m cursing him and wanting…
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Barcelona And Antoni Gaudi
“Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say Who knows if we’ll meet along the way Follow the brightest star as far as the brave may dare What will we find when we get there” Lyrics from “La Sagrada Familia” by the Alan Parsons Project To visit Barcelona is to enter the world of Antoni Gaudi. What was he? Genius or nut job? Inspired or crazy? And what was his work? Flamboyantly brilliant or belligerently ostentatious? The bravest of designs or art for art’s sake? Inspired architecture or the world’s first Disneyland? Whatever your take on it, he still has everyone talking almost a century…
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Halong Bay
Sunshine greets us in Halong Bay and even that one simple fact is different from the miserable days when we bowled up here before, with the world starting to close borders and the grip of a pandemic stretching its dirty fingers everywhere. Back then, this entire place was a ghost town, just us two and a handful of others about to start the mad dash home. It was a hazy grey that day with a mist hugging the silent sea and all the tour boats waiting forlornly at anchor. Vietnam was already shutting down and tourist spots like Halong (or Ha Long) Bay had been among the first to have…
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In Deeper: To The Sacred City Of Kairouan
We feel quite a sense of anticipation as we make our way across the nondescript scrubland plain towards the city of Kairouan and step down from the minibus beneath greying afternoon skies. Indeed, there was a time when we couldn’t even have got as far as this: until being taken by the French in 1881, Kairouan was strictly Muslim only with all others barred from even entering the city. It is today the fourth most sacred city of Islam after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, tradition stating that seven pilgrimages to Kairouan equals one pilgrimage to Mecca. The Great Mosque of Kairouan (aka the Mosque Of Uqba) is widely accepted as…
