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From The Coast To The Falls: Heading South
With the buses leaving at awkward times and featuring difficult connections, we opt instead to do a deal with a local driver in Paraty to take us all the way to our overnight stop at Guarulhos, nearly four hours’ drive away. As we leave the jewel which is Paraty behind and head up into the mountains, we ponder on whether crossing the range will take us out of the rain and back into sunshine. In reality the exact opposite occurs – the weather deteriorates considerably and by the time we’re on the freeways our driver is battling spray, surface water and worsening visibility. Pools of rainwater dance and splash in…
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Boats, Bugs, Booze And Not Doing Things By Halves: Days in Paraty
Just as we’re fearing a stifling night without AC, the lights come back on and we can hear the sound of cheering from neighbouring houses – this has been the second lengthy power outage in our first few days here, brought on this time by the afternoon thunderstorm and lasting until bedtime. It’s been handy then that the Caborê Brewery is only just down the road: brewery means generator which means cold beer and a restaurant which is open, saving us a walk through the rain to those areas unaffected by the outage. This local beer at Caborê isn’t at all bad, either: more pricey than the ubiquitous Brahma but…
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Moroccan Roll Lifestyle
Mehdi’s brother’s friend with the rental car office is waiting for us, car clean if a little battle scarred, he even has paperwork and insurance documents ready – often when we’ve done this kind of “local” hire before, the only paperwork which changes hands is cash. “Gendarmerie” he explains, with a wave of his hand. Our destination for our only day on the road in the Rif Mountains is the tiny village of Akchour, gateway to a renowned spectacular waterfall hike. Actually, it’s not just the hike that’s spectacular, the drive from Chefchaouen to Akchour is pretty amazing too. The huge, sweeping mountain terrain is so scenic, so dramatic. Regularly…
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This Is Yosemite
So many people had told us that Yosemite was fabulous long before we came here, and just about everyone whose advice we sought before planning our California adventure checked that we’d included Yosemite on our itinerary. Then, the guy in the Santana T-shirt at Downtown Joe’s in Napa said that we will never forget seeing Half Dome for the first time. None of this was a case of over selling; in fact, no amount of pre-warning can really prepare you for the unbridled joy of Yosemite. Even before we enter the Park, the drive from our base at “the Bug” to the Park gates is absolutely stunning, following the River…
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Adventures & Adrenaline In La Fortuna
We’ve had some pretty amazing adrenaline adventures before – whitewater rafting, tombstone dives, even a bobsleigh run – and now La Fortuna goes into our history as a place where we have matched or even surpassed those thrills. Ever thought of coming down a mountain via zip wire? Nor had we, until the temptation was just too strong…. It’s on the Monday that whoever is in charge of La Fortuna weather throws a few switches and changes a few dials. Heavy cloud cover replaces bright sunshine, regular bouts of torrential rain flood the soakaways and send everyone running for shelter, and the imposing Arenal volcano disappears from view completely. The…
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Krka National Park
As well as the many attributes of its own, the city of Šibenik is also a gateway to the Krka National Park, another spectacular series of waterfalls as the Krka river crashes down the mountains towards the Adriatic. To access the park, we drive to the small town of Skradin, from where we take a river boat to the falls: a wise decision, as Skradin turns out to be a charming and peaceful place in its own right. Krka is markedly different from Plitvice. Plitvice was largely unspoilt, and clearly less popular, perhaps due to its more remote location. Around the sixteen lakes there were only three modest cafes, spaced…
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Plitvice: Deep Gorges and Gorgeous Villages
About a 40 minute drive north of Mukinje is the incredibly picturesque village of Rastoke, which is so utterly charming that it’s difficult to know where to start to describe it in words. But we’ll give it a go…. Two rivers converge in the village, but one, the Slunjcica, enters at high level from the mountains; the other, the Korana, flows in from the bottom of the deep gorge and therefore at a much lower level. Consequently, the waters of the Slunjcica cascade down a series of waterfalls and rapids, flowing into the larger Korana in multiple places throughout the village. In fact, much of Rastoke is effectively built on…
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From The Sea To The Lakes
Saturday morning’s rainstorm has just about cleared by the time we pick up the hire car and head off on the road trip section of this adventure. With the Adriatic on all sides of the city bar one, the only way out by road is the steep climb up and over the mountains which form such a dramatic backdrop to this part of the Dalmatian coastline. For our journey northwards from Split, we ignore the motorways and head along smaller roads through great plateaux of green between the rolling hills, passing through quaint towns and sweeping valleys as we make our way towards Plitvicka Jezera, the Lake District of Croatia.…
