Independent travel
Independent travel gives you the freedom to move on when you are ready and not tied to a single hotel. Its fun fending for yourself and finding accommodation when you arrive at a new destination. It enables you to travel off the beaten track and away from the crowds, it is a liberating kind of travel. Mingling with the locals, eating their food, learning about their culture is an important part of travel. Travelling independently ensures that your money goes directly into the local economy and not to national or international businesses. The easiest way to experience independent travel is in Greek Islands where it is easy to travel between Islands
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Tales From American Bars: Barstow CA
We could have guessed that Barstow was going to be an experience. Just approaching the town down the wide, sloping highway gives a sense of being somewhere different, as the sun baked town creeps outwards to fill the shallow basin in the otherwise barren desert. From Barstow it’s many miles to anywhere, its nearest neighbours being a long drive away across the unforgiving desert which stretches to the horizon in every direction. Heat hazes shimmer above the asphalt and the early evening sun, still blistering and intense, creates dazzling reflections in windows and windshields. The broad main highway sprouts giant signs – McDonalds, Starbucks, Home Depot, Chevrolet and no win…
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Looking Back And Planning Forward
Our garden looks strange as we take our first look at it after 12 weeks away. So much has died in the unusually hot and dry summer, but the heavy rain which has now fallen in the last few days has turned all the dead stuff into an untidy grey. Green patches try their best, but there is precious little colour and the whole garden looks a kind of damp monochrome with splashes of green paint. Within minutes of our arrival home, we are alerted to the drama unfolding at Balmoral and, around four hours later, the Queen’s death is confirmed. As the BBC plays the national anthem Michaela and…
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Tales Of Smut, Keys & Turtles: Last Days In Mexico
We described Tulum in our last post as being too over developed, too touristy and very much too over priced for our liking, with an enormous amount of further development in the midst of construction, but, you know, everywhere has redeeming features – it’s just that in places like Tulum you have to look a bit deeper to find them. The music in some of the bars in the main street is simply too loud to hold a conversation, so loud in fact that I’m reminded of what my Dad used to say. “I do detest pubs which are so loud that I can’t hear myself drink”. But as we…
- Belize, Central America, History, Independent travel, Mexico, Music, North America, Photography, Transport, Travel Blog, Wildlife
Nearing The End & Back Into Mexico – Or Are We?
Only on our last night on the island do we discover Caye Caulker’s best bar, where the superb soul/blues band named, perhaps predictably, Andrew & The Go Slows, are playing live. These guys are so good – Andrew, if that’s really his name – has a voice so soulful that he gives us goosebumps. Anything and everything from Lynyrd Skynyrd (Sweet Home Alabama) to Tom Petty (Mary Jane’s Last Dance) to Bill Withers, Otis Redding and Kings Of Leon, given THE most soulful, bluesy treatment. This guy is GOOD. Time to go. As we pack up our backpacks once again and prepare to walk the short distance to the “water…
- Belize, Central America, Independent travel, Photography, Transport, Travel Blog, Wildlife, World food
Out Of Mexico And In To Belize
A dreadlocked guy lazes in a hammock and raises his hand as we alight from the ferry. “Welcome to paradise” he beams. The delicious smell of barbecued seafood drifts across the sandy track, a smiling girl clocks our backpacks and suggests we taste the local rum before we walk any further. We turn right, heading to where our next bed is. The breeze is deliciously warm, the sun incredibly hot. And everything is different, just a short journey has brought us to a different culture which feels so different that we could call it a different world, let alone a different culture. No longer is there any significant Spanish influence,…
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Ancient Sites & Plunging Cenotes: Our Time In Yucatan
After several hours of walking the ancient sites in soaring temperatures and 100% humidity, jumping from the rock platform down into the cool, cool waters of the cenote is exhilarating and refreshing beyond belief. Swimming in one is a pure joy, but more of that later. A half hour collectivo ride out of Valladolid is one of the so called “new” seven wonders of the world, the extensive remains of the ancient Maya city of Chechen Itza. Paying our entry fee and ambling towards the first section of the city, the first thing that strikes us is the sheer number of visitors. It’s not even peak time of day yet…
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Valladolid: Gateway To Wonders But So Much More
We leave the lovely little beach town of Puerto Morelos with a real sense of disappointment, an unshakable feeling that we really missed out here. Not so much that the seaweed invasion spoilt both the beach and the sea – though that was disappointment enough – but more the fact that I couldn’t shake off the bout of “travel tummy” enough to enjoy the town’s splendid bars and restaurants. Being a beach town, this is probably the best collection we’ve seen in Mexico, but regrettably I just wasn’t up to making the most of it. As we walk home on our last night here – a Friday – after eating…
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Puerto Morelos & The Seaweed Attack
Puerto Morelos marks a minor milestone on our 2022 travels – it’s our 48th bed of the year, one more than our previous record which we set last year. And it’s only August. Altogether we’ve been travelling for over 180 days so far this year – we’ve only been in our own home for 49. The pristine white sand beach which is in all the on line photographs has a sargassum seaweed problem just now. Having talked to people here and then researched it ourselves, it seems the current situation is abnormal with unprecedented levels of sargassum growth this year, with a reported 24.2 million tons being pulled from Mexico’s…
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From Chiapas To The Coast With A Touch Of Tuxtla
Usually the first one we hear is just before 7am, though occasionally we hear an earlier one and sometimes a handful just after midnight. And then at regular intervals throughout the day. We didn’t know what they were at first – somebody shooting rabbits, perhaps, but then, could the louder ones be cannons? They’re sky rockets, of course they are. It turns out that in the provincial towns of Mexico (the pueblas), there is an obsession with buying or making fireworks and then lighting them outside the church. Apparently intended to “amplify” prayers and take them closer to God, these rockets don’t light up the sky or provide colourful shows,…
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Into A Spiritual World….And Out Again
Alighting from the collectivo in front of the church in the village of San Juan Chamula is to enter a different world, higher still up the mountains from San Cristobal and deeper still into the world of the indigenous tribes of Chiapas. This is the village we referred to in our previous post, the spiritual and material home of the tzotzil people and on first viewing alone is still clearly dominated by tradition; the village where ancient beliefs are still held by all, where tribal teachings merge effortlessly with modern society, and the village where Coca-Cola has infiltrated life to the point where it has religious and spiritual significance. You…
