We enjoyed our first night in our hotel in Skaftafell. The hotel has fantastic views of the surrounding countryside,a turf church on site and three little fairy houses by the front door to welcome any of the Hidden People who might pay a visit! Our plan for the day was to spend the morning searching for puffins and then head for the National Park where we would have opportunities to explore the local trails, visit the Black Waterfall and maybe do some ice climbing. We were all very excited about seeing the puffins. Iceland is home to one of the world's [View Full Entry]

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I spent 6 days hiking around El Bolson. Each night sleeping in a different refugio. Refugios are rustic buildings and the surrounding areas that function as combination campsites-dorms-restaurant-kitchen facilities and crash pads. Basically they are little communities in the wilderness populated by a couple caretakers and a daily rotation of trekkers. They are located in areas of interest along trails in the mountains - next to a lake or near a canyon or a glacier route. Each refugio has workers who greet visitors, get them registered and setup for the night. Most sell pizza or some othe [View Full Entry]

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Canadians make no attempt to hide the fact they live in cold weather conditions. It actually seems like a pissing contest at times to note who lives in the colder climate. This recently happened to me during my first visit (ever) to the next door province of Saskatchewan to visit Saskatoon. When travelling abroad, I smugly tell other travellers that it's normal to have temperatures dipping to -20 Celcius. This seems to be the mark where residents will plug in their cars at night so they start in the morning, others will break out the long johns and Sorel winter boots [View Full Entry]

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Day 639 (28.12.08) After a pretty uneventful bus ride of sleeping, reading and a bit of Harry Potter, we pulled into the bus station in Puerto Varas by mid afternoon. As a former German Colony, Puerto Varas has maintained a very different look and feel to other towns in South America. The architecture is the first and most obvious difference with coloured shingle clad buildings lining the streets giving it a very 'German Mountain town' feel. Walking into town with no real decision on accomodation having been made we stumbled upon Hospedaje Ellenhaus, a cheap but comfortable option with a [View Full Entry]

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When, after scratching my legs, my nails were black, I realised I spent 4 days without a shower... I didn't care, I thought that, maybe this way people will give me some personal space... when I saw it wasn't working, I made contact with the water... After 16 days with Aimar, he went back to England leaving us totally addicted to soy milk; in a way I was jelaous: he'll see family and friends, sleep in his bed and eat his favourite foods... but I guess he'll miss pad thais... It won't be long before we meet with him, once again, [View Full Entry]

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The crowded and long train left my home, cold Taizhou, Jiangsu, at 6:02pm and 24 hours later arrived in what is known as the "coldest" city of China, bone-chilling HARBIN, the capital of China's most northern province of Hailongjiang. The province of Hailongjiang has its borders with arctic Russian-Siberia, and HARBIN looks more like an Eastern-European or Russian city than a Chinese city. What drives people from around the world, including myself, a tropical Floridian, to visit this deep-freeze, provincial capital in the middle of the harsh winter, where temperatures can reach below -22 [View Full Entry]

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At the risk - or, rather, certainty - of sounding trite, the past number of months saw an odyssey of a different kind. From the casual observer I was at the last entry to a paid up participant in Porteño life, finally I could claim membership of the society I’d shuffled awkwardly around the edges of, like some shy teenager, with a mixture of childish infatuation and graceless mimicry. There followed a journey too intimate and banal to recount here, until the voyaging once more resumed its literal character and I landed up in Peru just in time for the holidays. [View Full Entry]

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We left Luxor on a late night flight out of the local airport and arrived in Sharm El Shek around 11:30pm. We had arranged for a driver from our hotel to pick us up but he was no where too be found. So here we are, sitting at the local terminal at midnight in Sharm, Egypt trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get to Dahab (which was over an hour away). Luckily I was able to borrow the cell phone of a local, call our hotel and sort out the issue. After another 20 minutes a [View Full Entry]

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