27 December 2015 We took one more shot at finding an otter across the river, but another two hours in the mangroves didn’t show up anything more interesting than whistling ducks and sacred ibis. No otters in The Gambia for us. On the way back to shore we had another fun example of Gambian witlessness. » » »
Posts Tagged ‘transport’
1 January 2016
Local colour
23 December 2015 Today we transferred from Tanji to Jinack Island, which involved a car ride through the most built-up part of The Gambia to the capital Banjul, and then a boat over the River Gambia and along an empty coast to almost the northernmost point of the country. This gave us a good little » » »
25 December 2013
No corkscrew!
24th December 2013 We’ve found an idyll, and a well-equipped one at that. With the notable exception of a corkscrew. Only a problem because I purchased the one bottle of wine in Bocas del Toro that hasn’t got a screw cap. And of course my Leatherman is much more manly than a Swiss Army knife, » » »
25 December 2013
Pizza in San Jose
23rd December 2013 So yesterday afternoon was a blissful unwind at Finca Maresia to shake off the rainforest (just don’t ask about the confusion over the payment to the tour guide company). Juan is a wonderful host. Turns out that in a previous life he was a tax lawyer in Valencia, but now spends four » » »
24 December 2013
What price silky anteater?
18th December 2013 In fact about $140. That was the price of our trip in a boat through the mangroves of Isla Damas to find a small bundle of tawny fur curled around a thin branch asleep. To be fair, any wildlife tour is reliant on luck, and on a different day we might also » » »
18 May 2013
Overdone day
15th May 2013 I’m surprised that today is our only overdone day. We’ve tried to cover a lot this week, probably too much (as usual), yet it has worked really well and we’ve been able to enjoy exploring every destination we’ve visited. The clearest sign, to me, that we’ve overdone it on past travels is » » »
18 May 2013
Late supper, Dubrovnik
9th May 2013 Even if you’re planning on finding accommodation as you go along, it’s always a good policy to try and book your first night in advance. You’ve been on a plane flight, you’re arriving in a new place with new rules, it might be after dark, the last thing you need is to » » »
2 October 2012
Hitting Denver
27th September 2012 Our journey back to Denver has been through small town America. Very small town America. “Population 135” read the sign on the way into one scattered cluster of tumbledown clap-board shacks and rusting mobile homes, and I’m fairly convinced the sign was over-estimating. Move away from the handful of tourist spots or » » »
7 April 2012
Fun on Funen
It’s a bitter, bitter wind that blows in Denmark in early April. Even though the sun was shining bright the chill never felt much above freezing. It made getting out of the car to explore quite a grim trial, but we forced ourselves to and so we saw many lovely things. We’d driven to the » » »
10 August 2011
List mania
Who doesn’t like Top Ten lists? Or top five, or top three. We certainly whiled away many quiet moments in our year putting together idle lists of our favourite and least favourite things that we had encountered on the way. I’m putting them in the blog to help us remember all this stuff, and also » » »
3 August 2011
South America budget update
Bolivia, Budget updates, Chile, Ecuador, Peru
Written by Maureen Chile We spent just over three weeks in Chile. We had heard that Chile was an expensive country to visit compared to the rest of South America and, in our experience, this is probably true. On the other hand, Chile is a developed country with good infrastructure and we felt very safe » » »
3 August 2011
Ecuador nutshell
Ecuador has a handful of really cool things tucked into a small country, although the two main draws – the Galapagos and the Amazon – cannot be visited cheaply. It’s got an attractive capital city, friendly people, half-decent food and lots of scenery. It is also fairly warm, as you’d expect from a country straddling » » »
24 July 2011
One more for the road
21st July 2011 We’re off on one more small adventure before heading home. One more cheap car rental and four days exploring some bits of Ecuador near to Quito. Renting a car and just heading off is definitely my favourite way of exploring. It’s about as independent as you can get. Even those travellers who » » »
20 July 2011
Chile nutshell
Chile wasn’t the most satisfying country to visit. It has some wonderful landscapes, truly breath-taking, but it sometimes feels like you get developing world quality for developed world prices. The Chilean people make up for this by being wonderfully friendly and helpful. For the prices below, exchange rate was 750 pesos to £1 when we » » »
5 July 2011
Across a dry land
3rd July 2011 Nice to know that travel plans can still go… mostly… to plan. Yesterday afternoon we picked up a bus in San Pedro which took us (via loathly Calama) to Antofagasta down on the coast. It arrived at 10:30pm so we had booked a hotel in advance over the phone. The guidebook map » » »
29 June 2011
Calama-ty
29th June 2011 Would somebody like to leave some comments here in defense of South America? I explain… Our journey to San Pedro de Atacama was in two parts; an overnight bus to the nowhere town of Calama, then a one hour bus to San Pedro. Calama is actually quite unique – I’ve never seen » » »
26 June 2011
Up high again
23rd June 2011 Grr… stupid Hertz. That’s definitely the last time I ever use them. For definite. This time they had our reservation wrong. We went on-line a few days ago, following our Puno delays, and changed the rental dates. But something is obviously squiffy in their systems, because the Arica office only had the » » »
23 June 2011
Blasted Atacama
22nd June 2011 Today was another transit day, south from Arequipa across the border to Arica. It was a journey of nearly seven hours across the most blasted and desolate landscape I have seen anywhere. I mean, we’ve been to some deserts. I’ve seen the red sands of the Australian outback, but most of that » » »
20 June 2011
Birthday irony
18th June 2011 Why ironic? Because a week ago I was cursing the protests in Puno for making us miss Lake Titicaca and fly from La Paz to Cusco. And here I am today looking out over Lake Titicaca because the same protests have stopped our bus going all the way to Arequipa. Why birthday? » » »
9 June 2011
Pear-shaped day
8th June 2011 Oh look, we’re back in La Paz again. Our bus headed off as planned this morning, but simply got snarled in the protest or whatever happening in a town on the route. They’ve piled rubble on the road and no-one is getting through. Determined drivers are taking various alarming dirt roads to » » »
6 June 2011
Australasia Budget Update
Australia, Budget updates, New Zealand
“A descent into budget anarchy” or “How not to budget” Written by Maureen, ex-Financial Director of M&M Disclaimer: This budget post-mortem contains explicit despair. So… what went wrong? A: Australia is expensive. B: The exchange rate is lousy. C: It’s a whole continent and we only had a few weeks D: A complete failure in » » »
28 May 2011
Two duff days for the price of one
26th May 2011 – 26th May 2011 Our flight from Auckland to Santiago crossed the dateline, so we get to celebrate our 10 month mark twice. Unfortunately neither of our 26th Mays were very celebratory days. The first 26th May was just kicking around our Auckland motel until the airport minibus whisked us off to » » »
23 May 2011
Australia nutshell
Australia isn’t a country, it’s a continent. On the other hand, vast areas of Australia are pretty much empty. There’s plenty enough to see but it can take a long time to get there. Civilised but expensive is the way to describe travelling through Australia. In fact in most ways its comparable in price with » » »
20 May 2011
Smooth transfer
18th May 2011 From the back of beyond to the heart of the metropolis in four moves. Taxi from our apartment to Alice Springs airport, a truly criminal $30 for a ten minute drive. Flight from Alice to Melbourne. Tiger Airways pushes the envelope even for budget airlines by having an Arrivals hall that is » » »
Tags: transport
16 May 2011
Mouse plague
12th May 2011 The Ghan is frankly a waste of time. I heartily recommend anyone to fly to Alice Springs. Our reasons for choosing it were a mixture of nostalgia for our overnight train rides in Thailand, a desire to see the extent of the dusty Outback, and a sense of environmental duty since we’d » » »
15 May 2011
The Ghan
11th May 2011 We’ve just passed Redhill station, so it must be Reigate next. We’re on The Ghan, a train which starts in Adelaide and runs north through the very centre of Australia to Darwin at the top, although we’ll be hopping off in Alice Springs. It takes over 24 hours just to Alice, which » » »
15 May 2011
Drive
6th May 2011 Today I worked out that by the time we’ve finished we’ll have probably had a hire car for about half of our year travelling. That’s assuming we get one for a few weeks in Chile. This figure surprised me. I’d really thought that we’d spent much less time with a car. It » » »
29 April 2011
Danger of freezing
26th April 2011 Australians seem very concerned about risk. Perhaps this is due to living in a place where everything is poisonous. Which seems to be a bit of a myth, by the by, as we’ve seen lots of wildlife and none of it dangerous. All the walks we go on here have scary black » » »
28 April 2011
My feet Hertz
25th April 2011 Is it just me that does this kind of thing, or does it happen to everyone (except Maureen)? I went to fetch our rental car this morning, while she finished packing and caught up with email. I thought it was a fifteen minute walk to the address but it turned out to » » »
28 April 2011
Experience the difference
23rd April 2011 One repeated theme of this year is noticing how varied people’s impression of a place can be, based on their own experience of it. Mum and dad visited Melbourne before meeting up with us in Perth, and they enthused about the city and particularly the convenience of “just hopping on a tram » » »
11 April 2011
Buses and hot chocolate
10th April 2011 I’ve skipped a day. We’re taking it a bit easy in Sydney, not trying to tick off all the sights of the city. To be honest we’re not much like that anyway; I’d rather wander around an interesting neighbourhood and look at the shops and houses than make sure I’ve seen all » » »
8 April 2011
New Zealand nutshell
In reality this is a South Island nutshell, as we’re only going to be stopping three days on the North Island. We spent four enjoyable weeks here. New Zealand is a very civilised country, small enough to be manageable, majoring in natural beauty and outdoor activities but with a strong supporting cast of good food » » »
7 April 2011
Painting pictures with words
5th April 2011 Yesterday was rained off. If I’m not mistaken, the only day in eight months. We stayed indoors and caught up with various chores, did some reading, and when the rain eventually stopped late afternoon we went for a walk just to get out. However, while it was raining on us it was » » »
4 April 2011
Forecast is gloomy
2nd April 2011 Despite being on the far side of the world, there seems to be no country more closely connected to the UK than NZ. People all over the world have asked us “where are you from?” and usually the answer “England” satisfies them. Here if we say England they’ll say “yeah, where?” so » » »
8 March 2011
Bali nutshell
We can’t write an Indonesian nutshell, but having spent four weeks in Bali and visited the north, west, east, south and central parts of the island we can probably do a pretty good nutshell here. Bali really is a holiday paradise, with accommodation and food both available for all budgets and of a good quality. » » »
9 February 2011
Wandering by car
6th February 2011 We left our hotel by 9am this morning, and didn’t get back until 6:30pm. I reckon we probably spent a total of 3.5 hours exploring a temple, having lunch and visiting a lake which means I spent about six hours driving. Given that I used less than half a tank of fuel » » »
20 January 2011
To Singapore
17th January 2011 Long day of travelling today, beginning with getting up at 5AM in order to get the first ferry back to the mainland, so we could collect our tickets for the 8AM train from Butterworth to Singapore. And it ended at 10:30PM when we checked into our Singapore hotel. We would have been » » »
Tags: transport
17 January 2011
Thailand nutshell
It’s clear why Thailand has such a gravitational pull for travellers of all kinds. The country is full of interest, it’s more modern and accommodating than other Asian nations, and the crucial travelling commodities of food, lodging and transport are all cheap and good quality; you can dwell comfortably in Thailand for £20 per day. » » »
16 January 2011
Man-made disaster
14th January 2011 And since I’m the man of the outfit, we can probably guess whose fault it was. Anyway… So we decided on a crushingly early start to the day, to go back to the Penang NP for more otter watching. That meant up and out by 6:15AM in the dark, collecting breakfast on » » »
12 January 2011
Ready to explode
12th January 2011 Even as it happened I thought “well, at least it’ll be something to blog about”. Blogs seem to be a useful way of putting events into perspective; if your response to a mishap is “this will make today’s blog” rather than “oh noooooooo!” then it probably isn’t such a great disaster. We » » »
11 January 2011
Zero additional westerners
10th January 2011 Everyone goes to Langkawi. From Ko Yao Noi to Krabi to Satun, the assumption of every tuk-tuk driver, boat operator and helpful person was that we wanted to get to Langkawi. But we had decided to go straight to Penang and so defied expectation. Our last meal in Thailand yesterday evening was » » »
Tags: transport, travelling
10 January 2011
Run for the border
9th January 2011 Written by Maureen Our visas run out tomorrow so we had no choice but to leave our idyllic beach resort and run for the border. After one last walk on the beach, we jumped on a tuk-tuk which sped us to the pier, where we hopped on a longtail boat, which crossed » » »
Tags: transport, travelling
31 December 2010
Cambodia nutshell
I like Cambodia, even though things don’t work quite how they’re meant to, the traffic is chaos and the country is clearly very poor. My warm feelings may in part be due to the nice accommodation we stayed in, but getting an enormous plush villa by a pool for the price of a cosy shoebox » » »
31 December 2010
Leaving Cambodia
27th December 2010 Oops. It looks like something I ate last night didn’t agree with me. Let’s just say four trips to the loo before dawn and I won’t paint you a picture. We’ll just have to have a relaxing day without much activity so I can get over it, within easy reach of a » » »
23 December 2010
Boat trip
22nd December 2010 We left Battambang today after a very relaxing stay at the Sanctuary Villa, and travelled to Siem Reap where we are staying at Dan’s other hotel. Dan (pronounced “dane”) is a seriously nice guy and a real entrepreneur; he’s a computer programmer who seems to have fallen into the hotel business, and » » »
21 December 2010
Clackety-BANG
20th December 2010 Today we explored all the area around Battambang, aboard a tuk-tuk with our friendly guide and driver Somnang. We visited the only winery in Cambodia, then a rare traditional country house that survived the Khmer Rouge, an ancient temple that predates Angkor Wat and a killing cave where perhaps 10,000 people were » » »
Tags: transport
19 December 2010
Lucky charm
18th December 2010 We left Bangkok on the 5:55AM train and headed for the Cambodian border. Research on the internet and in guidebooks suggested we were in for an irksome day – tales of a thousand touts and a hundred scams at what was described as a “nightmare” border crossing. We got off the train. » » »
16 December 2010
Training day
7th December 2010 Looong transit day today. The train leaves Bangkok’s Hualamphong station (which I can’t stop thinking of as hump-along station) at 13:00 and doesn’t reach Sungai-Kolok in the far south until 10:45 the next day. Our sleeper berth is of nifty and compact design, seats by day and bunk beds at night. The » » »
15 December 2010
Diarising
5th December 2010 I’m going to try blogging daily. I’m flattering myself that my writing is interesting enough to put together a diary that won’t reduce our small readership to zero. If anyone has any views on whether this is a good or bad idea, please drop me a comment! I’ll happily go back to » » »
18 November 2010
Nepal nutshell
The main reason to visit Nepal is for trekking in the Himalayas – even then, you need to be the right kind of person to enjoy it. Nepal does have friendly people, it is cheap, there are some great cultural sights, and compared to most of Asia it is hassle-free. But the squalor and chaos » » »
5 November 2010
F@!*ing bus
WARNING: this post contains expletives (which I feel are fully justified in the circs) Our bus ride from Bardia to Chitwan was memorable. It included all the cliches: vomiting women, bare-arsed children suckling and roadside wee stops, but those are asides. There were no seats inside, so we began up on the roof which – » » »
19 October 2010
Overland to Tibet?
Paragraphs in blockquote written by Maureen We travelled overland from Kathmandu to Lhasa, and flew back. So instead of a country summary, here’s a summary of that particular (and popular) trip. This may help if you are thinking of doing the same. A Nepali travel agency arranged the trip for us, which lasted 7 nights, » » »
7 October 2010
Kathmandu goes BEEP
Sight-seeing in Kathmandu is an endurance sport. The whole city is clogged with motorbikes, pedestrians, tiny Suzuki taxis and other random obstacles, which might be okay if the roads weren’t barely one lane wide with shops and street pedlars spilling out onto them. Crossing a road is like walking across the dodgems ride at a » » »
14 September 2010
South Africa nutshell
South Africa is a stunning country for wildlife and scenery. As though there weren’t enough guidebooks already, here’s our brief lowdown on the country for travellers. For prices below, the exchange rate was about R10 to £1 when we visited. Accommodation You can get a good, comfortable, spacious room in a B&B or guesthouse for » » »
1 September 2010
Dragon’s teeth
Bloody roadworks. They’re doing a lot of work on the roads in South Africa right now, which is great (though personally I find the potholes fun and challenging at 80mph) but they’ve got an annoying habit of working on 5km of road at a time, which means the traffic lights for the roadworks are typically » » »
24 August 2010
Hello Robbie and Carmen!
Today we drove and drove across the old Transkei region – one of the former black homelands – and stopped in the town of Matatiele. More vast, dry geography peppered with the odd ramshackle town. And truly excellent roads; you can’t cover 300+ miles in 6 hours on bad roads. There’s not much to do » » »