As I pack my backpack for the last time this year, wondering why I’ve bought so much fresh coffee to take home, and what on earth I need to throw away in order to fit it into my bag, it occurs to me that after two years of travelling, there is very little … Read more
Screaming the entire way, I twisted my body through the crack and dropped into the water below. I was treading water in the dark wondering how the hell I was going to fit through the tiniest crack in the rock when I had a flashback. I’d been in exactly this situation before, in Guatemala, about … Read more
I get asked regularly which travel websites I use for recommendations on where to stay, where to eat, where’s good for wi-fi, the best place for breathing. If there’s an activity out there, then you can place money on the likelihood of there being a website capturing people’s opinions on whether the thing in question … Read more
The round-the-world ticket way Four thousand stops in a hundred countries, or so it felt when I booked my first round-the-world ticket. I wanted to go everywhere. Immediately. And so, without even a casual thought for one-way tickets, I crammed it all into one 42,000 mile air-bound adventure. London – Madrid – Quito – Rio … Read more
Whenever I meet travelers en route to South or Central America, I’m always quick to pass on my list of recommended hostels in Latin America, not least because I know what it’s like to turn up at a place and wonder if Hell might have any vacancies as a better alternative. A hostel, the … Read more
Indiana Jo – cycling from Alaska to Patagonia and climbing the highest points of each country in between? Given I’m very wobbly on two feet, let alone on wheels, I can’t proudly claim that achievement, but Thomas Laussermair can. Taking a staggering 14 months and who knows how much energy expended, Thomas has kindly agreed … Read more
‘How long have you been going for?’ comes up more than once a day when you’re travelling and I struggle to give a simple answer. This trip, I will have been away from the UK for exactly one month today. However, that’s not the entire reality. The longer answer is that I left ‘home’ in … Read more