Category: Travels for Fun
-
MEANDERING ALONG THE RIVIERA
I don’t have the patience to read travel guides and figure out what to see and where to go. Padma and I just drive and discover along the way. There are countless cute and picturesque seaside villages along the Riviera. How do you choose where to stay? I let booking.com do it for me. I just brought up the map and searched for hotels that matched our criteria. I found one in Menton, France … which is really more Italian than French. As I studied our approach to Menton, I saw…
-
THE WORLD’S MOST PHOTOGRAPHED LAUNDRY
Padma and I were loving Italy too much so we drove a short distance from Florence and spent an afternoon exploring Cinque Terre, a string of five seaside villages on the Italian Riviera. We had dinner in Manarola and hurried to catch the sun setting from the Vista Panoramica di Manarola. We weren’t alone. The pathway was lined with people catching the last light of the day as it illuminated the village. Interestingly, the pathway was also lined with a gaggle of photographers all vying to capture the iconic image of…
-
ONE ON ONE WITH DAVID
Padma, Nahed, Peter and I were lying under a soothing Tuscan sun after a hearty lunch in the Piazza del Compo in Sienna, Italy. Having our heads to the ground gave us an impressive view of the Torre del Mangia. The plan was to go and see Michelangelo’s David later in the afternoon in Florence but nobody wanted to budge. ‘We’ve seen pictures of him,’ we all concluded. No need to see him live. But a policeman changed the mood. He politely informed us that it was prohibited to lie in…
-
WEST COAST TRAIL, BRITISH COLOMBIA, 1980
On 22 January 1906, the 253-foot passenger vessel Valencia ran aground along the perilous west coast of British Colombia’s Vancouver Island. She lost 133 of her passengers and crew due to high seas, rugged terrain and the inhospitable, remote area with an almost impenetrable rain forest. The coastline lived up to its name of the Graveyard of the Pacific. But it was one tragedy too many for the Canadians. The Government of Canada set out to implement better navigational aides and to construct a lifesaving trail along this infamous section of…
-
BOLIVIA 1989
When my folks told me that an exchange student from Bolivia would be living with them at the family home in northern Wisconsin I knew right away that a time would come when I would make it truly an ‘exchange’. In July of 1989, I gripped my seat on a plane landing at La Paz’s airport. I thought the plane would never stop … with the thin air at 3640 metres of elevation it takes a while for a jet to come to a stop. I caught a connecting flight to…
-
A TOURIST-FREE EGYPT, 1990
In December of 1990, there was a global fear of a regional war in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and was ignoring demands for withdrawal. There were fears the war would escalate well beyond the borders of Kuwait. And that made it a perfect time to travel to Egypt. Tourism in the region had dropped to diddly squat the day Saddam rolled his tanks into Kuwait. My mate, Doug, and I took started our end-of-year holidays from our job in Aleppo, Syria and flew into Cairo on Christmas…
-
FITZGERALD RIVER NATIONAL PARK
Fitzgerald River National Park is one of Western Australia’s largest parks but only comprises 0.13% of the State’s total area. Yet 20% of the State’s flora can be found in the park. It’s a ridiculously diverse region of the State where you can find 1800 species of flowering plants. About 60 of those species are found nowhere else in the world. I’m still trying to learn why Western Australia has so much biodiversity but I think I understand the basic formula. You’ve got an ancient land which has been isolated for…
-
A JOURNEY TO THE SOUTHWEST
DAYS 1-3: SOUTHERN FORESTS AND VALLEYS Padma and I started getting itchy feet again and wanted to get some camping in before the heat and bugs of summer made it less fun. We plotted an itinerary to the Great Southern Region of Western Australia but soon discovered many of the national park campgrounds do not allow campfires. Padma and I just couldn’t see the point of camping if we didn’t have the ‘Bush Telly’ to watch at night and keep us warm. So we re-routed via the Southern Forests and Valleys…
-
THE LARGEST TEMPERATE FOREST ON EARTH
On the last hour of the last day of our double crossing of the Nullarbor Plain, Padma and I drove real slowly. We had no hurry to reach the dumpy motel room in Norseman that awaited us. The sun was getting low in the sky when we encountered a significant change in landscape. The scrubby, treeless Nullarbor Plain was transitioning into the Great Western Woodlands. In a country of superlatives, the Great Western Woodlands stands out as it is the largest intact temperate (that is, Mediterranean climate) woodland remaining on Earth.…
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.