Feeling lost???

It's crazy how many times in my life I felt lost and without direction. And I have found the only way to regain perspective is to pack my bags and hit the road!

Sometimes you just need to escape from it all, clear your mind and hear your own voice again.

Quite often I ended up in some out of the way places and have never felt more at home!

So if you feel like you can't find what you are looking for, stop looking in the same place, because more than likely it's not there... you have to go and seek it out!

Angel Falls Expedition: Part 3

Canaima National Park

Angel Falls is the prize at the end of this adventure but Canaima definitely is a place worth visiting on its own merits. It is a small Indian village, it is inaccessible by any roads and the only way in or out is by those little planes we had just hopped off. The airport is basically a gift shop with toilets and some benches to sit and wait on until you are called up to board a plane, who gets chosen seems to be randomly selected.

Angel Falls Expedition: Part 2

Jimmy Angel's plane.

We were driven to the airport by our man from the Posada with an English couple who were also heading into see the Falls. Finally getting onto the plane to fly out didn’t unravel quite as any of us expected. Perhaps we were expecting too much to have any timetables or ETA’s, or anyone who could tell us what to do next. So with as much sign language as possible and as little information as we could gather we made it through a little security station, that didn’t seem too concerned with security, into a small waiting area. And we waited. After what seemed like a while a pilot came in and took the other couple and we were motioned to stay put, apparently we wouldn’t be taking the same flight.? We saw them board a largish plane through the window, and Nadi had some hope we wouldn’t be flying in a small tin can.

Angel Falls Expedition: Part 1

Making Cuidad Bolivar our first stop on our three month tour of South America was definitely jumping in the deep end. We had arrived in Caracas after a long flight from Madrid and had flew directly to Bolivar from there. As timing of these things always go, of course we arrived into the tiny little airport late in the night. The place was empty. There were a few men standing around, presumably taxi drivers and hotel operators, but having just arrived and being exhausted, your imagination runs away with them having much more sinister intentions. Also at the airport were a group of five or six soldiers wielding large automatic rifles. Having them there made us feel slightly safer but it was also slightly disconcerting to think that they may be necessary…
We had arranged to be picked up from the airport but were not surprised to find that our ride was not any of the people loitering around the airport in the middle of the night. Shortly all the other people off our flight had found their pick-ups waiting for them the airport was closed. Great.
So we were now locked outside the terminal, with the soldiers, and the taxi drivers, praying to God that our man arrived soon. We were starting to think we had bit of more than we could chew! So we waited and waited, sweaty and exhausted in tropical heat in the middle of nowhere. What the hell were we going to do if he didn’t show up?

A little bit of heaven…

One of our more recent trips was to the beautiful Whitsunday islands in North Queensland, Australia. We stayed in the backpacker mecca of Airlie Beach. Unfortunately these days it is more overcrowded with locals than backpackers. This country is getting to goddamned expensive, to live in, to travel through, even backpacking. But if you get the chance the Whitsundays and Great Barrier Reef are absolutely stunning.
One of the must-sees of the region is Whitehaven beach. All the hostels and travel desks in Airlie sell tickets and there are many different ways to see this majestic beach. You can fly over it, sail to it, or paddle to it. We went with Whitehaven Express on a day tour which included snorkelling around some amazing coral and marine life.