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Half The World Away…
“Who knows where the road may lead us, only a fool would say who knows who 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?” La Sagrada Familia – Alan Parsons “In a big country, dreams stay with you, like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside” In A Big Country – Big Country “I’m leavin’ on a jet plane don’t know when I’ll be back again” Leavin’ On A Jet Plane – John Denver “it doesn’t matter where you go in life …what you do…. …or how much you have… it’s who you have beside…
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It’s That Time Again…
We love this bit. Printed maps spread across the table, guide books poised and travel blogs open on the right page. The calendar sheets printed off from the iPad take centre stage, constantly being altered, updated, erased and re-pencilled, as we discover new destinations, unearth different transport opportunities and change the planned route one more time. Travel is such a joy that even the planning stage is always a significant source of excitement. Sparks fly every time Michaela moves. There’s only a few days to go now. Next week we head off to Heathrow, flying first to the Qatari capital of Doha for that stopover where we will discover whether…
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Stopovers: Too Good To Be True?
We’d seen the offers, first from TAP we think, but hadn’t really investigated too deeply. It was only when we read a post written by Rochelle at adventuresfromelle that we started to realise that the changing concept of what a stopover might constitute may just be something which we could embrace for our benefit. What happened next seems too good to be true. Qatar Airways will be the chosen airline for our next ultimate destination, and, when booking, they were pushing a stopover in Doha. Further investigation made it clear that the difference between passing through Doha airport within three hours and stopping in the centre of Doha in a…
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That Was 2024
Well, our travelling for 2024 is done and dusted and we eagerly await our first adventure of the new year. We think it’s fair to say that although 2024 was another splendid year of travel, not everything went according to plan. What with having to return home when Michaela’s Dad passed away, hiking ability being blighted by hip/groin trouble, becoming unexpectedly Africa’d out and heading to Turkey instead, the year ended up with a shape significantly different from the original plan. You could say it was a year of mighty rivers, as we saw or sailed upon the Amazon, the Rio Negro, the Mississippi, the Tennessee, the Thames and the…
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Our Next Adventure: Nairobi To Cape Town Through 7 Countries
Yep, that’s what we’re doing next. In the middle of July we’ll be flying out to Nairobi, so making Kenya the first of seven countries on our slow journey from there to the continent’s southern coast. We will be starting with only an outline plan of our route, a framework which contains a number of definites and several “must sees” but with a variable plan which is likely to evolve and change as we make our way southwards. All seven countries will be, for us, new African ground. Together we have previously visited Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Cape Verde and Tanzania including Zanzibar, and Michaela has also visited Gambia and Senegal,…
- Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, Independent travel, Photography, South America, Travel Blog, Wildlife
Biding Our Time
“Wasting my time, resting my mind And I’ll never pine For the sad days and the bad days When we was working from nine to five” Lyrics from “Biding My Time” by Pink Floyd We’re in a bit of what you might call a hiatus. It’s been a strange year, one way and another, with the whole of January at home to deal with a property matter, then our Brazil trip interrupted by the sad news of Michaela’s Dad’s death and our return to England for the funeral. Of course, we then reconvened our trip and enjoyed ten weeks of Brazil, the southern states of the USA and a little…
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Time To Go
When the plane touches down in São Paulo on Friday morning it will be precisely four weeks since we made our way to Rio airport for our hastily organised and unexpected journey home, and frankly there hasn’t been much to shout about in those four weeks. Unless you are given to shouting about rain. One of the anticipated joys back when we were first planning long term travel was to escape the English winter. That word – winter – conveys, in many parts of the world, images of pristine white snow, frozen lakes and icicles hung from the eaves of roofs. It’s not like that in England, oh no. Winter…
- Brazil, Central America, Europe, Greece, Independent travel, North America, Photography, South America, Thailand, Travel Blog, USA, Wildlife
Countdown To Rio
It’s that time again. Never mind counting the days, we’re just arriving at the stage where we’ll be counting the hours until we lock the doors behind us and head to Heathrow to start our next great adventure. The exotic, vibrant city of Rio de Janeiro awaits, one of the world’s greatest carnivals about to begin, romantic sounding locations like Copacabana, Ipanema and Corcovado soon to be on our doorstep. It’s a little over a week until the journey begins. After waking up on New Year’s Day many thousands of miles from home in each of the last two years, this feels like a late start for us and the…
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264 And Counting
Being just a little bit addicted to making lists, we have kept a note of every city, town and village outside of Great Britain where we have stayed since we started travelling together in 2011. Not a list of everywhere we’ve visited, that would be too long a list, but a list of every place where we have stayed overnight for at least one night. One night, though, is enough to qualify. The number currently stands at 264 at the end of the year, so we’ll be hoping to push it beyond 300 during 2024. Putting the 264 into alphabetical order, the list runs from Acton (California) to Zermatt, in…
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On To Mojácar: Pink Lakes, Red Prawns & Silver Moonlight
More often than not, when you visit something with a name like “the blue forest” or “the purple mountains”, they’re not really blue or purple, are they. OK so there may be a hint of the colour which gives the place its moniker, but you would never call it vivid. Until, that is, you visit the Lugano Rosa, the “pink lake”, just outside the town of Torrevieja, which is properly, undeniably pink. It’s rental car time again as we look to fully explore the next section of Spanish coastline and head down into Andalucia, driving south from Alicante and taking a detour specifically to see whether this lake really is…
