Transport
The mode of transport you use on long distance travelling can really enhance your experience. Train travel in particular has its own excitement – pulling out of a city feels so auspicious, as does arrival by train in a new place. Locally, using the services of local buses, trams and metros will help you get the feel of a place. And so you learn to live like a local, and if you’re lucky, you get to meet people too. Systems can be difficult but people are so often helpful – if it’s confusing, someone will help you out. On longer journeys, the use of public transport gives you the opportunity to study the terrain at leisure, you can watch the world pass by as you move through the different areas. Busy towns give way to open fields; mountains and lakes. Stations too are stimulating places. The manic activity of bus and rail stations is great to be part of. What at first seems chaos soon becomes clear. Just sit back and enjoy.
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Lakes & Mountains Of The Central Highlands
Two things which are a regular aspect of our travel but haven’t yet featured in Costa Rica, each come into play on our journey from Cartago to Atenas: a train journey, and a hire car. The rail service here is extremely limited, with just two short lines heading out of San Jose in different directions, one of which is, handily, to Cartago. Once the transport of fruit started to switch from rail to road, the railways steadily fell into disrepair and each time an earthquake wreaked havoc, another section was abandoned. Some modest investment has recently enabled purchase of old stock from Spain and new stock from China (not Derby,…
- Central America, History, Independent travel, Photography, Transport, Travel Blog, Walking, Wildlife
Tortuguero: Beyond Roads
Two of Cahuita’s most colourful characters are downtown on our last night in the village, firstly the “Latin Hendrix” who is again strumming his guitar and wisecracking in Luisa restaurant, seemingly amusing himself as much as anyone else, like all good performers. Our other new friend Boa, meanwhile, is in Coco’s Bar and has obviously had more than enough booze already, his normally darting eyes unfocussed and his walk decidedly unsteady. We chat for a while, kind of, until a waiter tells Boa that it’s time for him to go home, and by his actions it’s clear that Boa is intending to ride his motor bike home despite being too…
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Eastwards To The Caribbean
The time has come to move on and bid farewell to La Fortuna and its imposing, looming volcano, and farewell to all of the great things that the Arenal area has to offer. Our week in La Fortuna has been so full of experiences and activity that we’ve barely mentioned how settled we’ve felt here. This town may be a popular destination for visitors to Costa Rica, but for us it’s been just the right blend of plenty of options without being over cooked. Recommendation wise, our favourite restaurants have been Snapper’s House with its fabulous seafood, a sumptuous family run Peruvian restaurant named Chifa La Familia Feliz, and a…
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Athens & Kalamata: Tales From Two Cities
After eleven weeks in Greece and its islands we are into the last week of our journey through this sun soaked land, leaving the wonderful island of Milos and taking the short prop plane flight over the Aegean to Athens. Amusingly the bus ride from Athens airport to Syntagma Square takes considerably longer than the flight. It’s only two years since we were last here in the Greek capital so this visit is one of expedience and we are here just for a single night, in an 8th floor hotel room with magnificent views of the Acropolis. After so many weeks in an assortment of apartments and houses, a hotel…
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Pricey Paros
Anyone who has used island ferries knows the drill: you place your bags in the rack labelled with the name of your destination, settle on deck or wherever, then return to pick up your bags just before disembarkation. So picture our reaction when we return to the car/luggage deck and find what looks like several hundred bags piled where our backpacks were and, when we pull and throw loads of them to one side, ours are no longer there. Just as panic sets in, Michaela spots hers, on a rack marked for a different port, several racks away from the correct one. Mine is even further away, and the two…
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Hopping Mad: The Lesser Cyclades
Here it is again, that feeling. It’s 7am and the sky is turning a blazing shade of tangerine as the sun raises its head above the mountain peaks. We chug out of Katapola and leave the beautiful island of Amorgos behind, and the feeling is here again: that heady mix of sadness at leaving and excitement at moving on, somehow even stronger when the leaving is early morning. As we bid farewell to Amorgos we have a distinct feeling – unusual for us – that we will return one day, not a reaction which we have commonly felt on our travels. Ahead of us now though is some old school…
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Thomas, King Of Katopola
All we knew when we first made contact was that our next host was named Thomas and the apartment was in a building known as Thomas Villas On The Beach. Maybe this should have been a clue. Our logistical problem on arrival on the island of Amorgos was going to be the fact that the ferry sailed at 5:15am and made port at Egiali at 06:40, far too early for anything in Greece to be open. And our apartment was booked for Katopola, some distance from Egiali. Thomas offers a solution via WhatsApp. “I can organise a hire car at very good price”, he texts, “you can collect at Egiali”.…
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One Night In Piraeus
One night in Piraeus, is like a year in any other place…. You are a serious rock music aficionado if you know that the above line is a plagiarism of a song by English 70s band 10cc, and that in the original lyric it was Paris, not Piraeus. But our one night in Piraeus, sandwiched between Korinthos and our first island of this adventure, manages to almost live up to the line. The smooth running, punctual, air conditioned train from Korinthos pulls into Piraeus dead on time, and we step out into the searing heat to trudge to our one night stay, backpacks on. Piraeus station is conveniently positioned very…
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Moving On: From Delphi to Korinthos
Our next move presents us with some logistical decisions on how to get round to the other side of the Gulf Of Corinth. A ferry once ran from Agios Nikolaus to Agia, but was suspended for “essential repairs” about 10 years ago and has never reappeared. Our next thought was to hire a car in Delphi and drive around the western side of the Gulf but none of the companies in the area are willing to offer a one-way hire. The journey back to Tithorea to pick up the train means an hour long cab ride, its associated cost, and timings which don’t really work. Fortunately one unexpected alternative presents…
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Into The Mountains: From Thessaloniki To Delphi
There is something very special about moving on when travelling. One of our travel maxims has always been: move on while you still love a place. For us, that mix of emotions of being sad to leave somewhere clashing with the excitement of heading to a new place, somehow encapsulates the very essence of travel. It’s an exhilarating feeling. But before we leave, Friday July 23rd marks our last full day in Thessaloniki and just like the previous four days the afternoon temperatures hit 37/38 degrees, but the ever present sea breeze just takes off the edge and keeps even the hottest time of day pleasant. For our last day…
