HannahLewis

What follows is a collection of thoughts, experiences and short stories from our time working as tour leaders in Taiwan. Part One Back in the UK, not quite a month had passed before the opportunity to work in Taiwan arose. A combination of some family connections, our travel blogging and some sheer endeavour led us to a meeting on a Cornish computer screen. We had come full circle and were now beaming out to Taiwan via the medium we had become accustomed to, Skype. The opportunity to “keep the dream alive” and travel for our living was too good to turn down and with terms agreed and bags barely unpacked we hopped on a plane to Kaohsiung which was to be our home for the next two years. Interestingly, ironically maybe poetically we had not been ... read more

It has been many months since we left the shores of the most beautiful Carib-Colombian village Capurgana, our bottoms bouncing from our hard plastic seats as the speedboat surged out across the Gulf of Uraba back to Turbo. With every thwack of the hull on water, shock jarred up our spines. We’d taken this journey two weeks previously but that time the boat captain had put enough diesel in the tanks…this time, after nearly two hours of bouncing, we were marooned just 10 minutes from the coastline as we waited for another boat to deliver us our fuel. Fortunately reinforcements came just as the disgruntled murmurings of the tightly packed passengers rose to fever pitch. We were then thrust back suddenly into the chaos of mainland Colombian city life, but none of this could deprive our ... read more

We were jostling with the crowds, standing on the tips of our toes, our necks craned, Lewi holding a flimsy cardboard sign above his head reading ‘Joshy Balboa’. It was 10pm on a grey Bogota evening and the atmosphere outside the arrivals gate was louder feistier and crazier than a gaggle of teenagers waiting for a TakeThat concert. An hour passed, and as the hyper arrivals hoards around us began to thin there was still no sign of Josh. But then all of a sudden there was another surge of passengers to the doors….including one very familiar face beaming back at us! We joined in the melee of shouting, hugging, laughing and crying, blending in perfectly with the joyous families surrounding us. Bogota itself didn’t have much to enchant the traveller with, it was simply a ... read more

So far our time in Peru had been spent exclusively above the altitude of 2000m, and while we had loved the mountain adventuring our bodies were beginning to crave some warmth. Fortunately this intriguing country is not all mountainous. Far from it in fact. It has sparse deserts that stretch all the way to Chile, lush Amazonian jungle which covers the north east, and of course its elongated pacific coast. We were heading to the Amazon next, but having not seen the sea in two months, since leaving Rio, we decided to make a brief stop in Paracas. This small community is famous for two things, the multitude of birdlife which thrives on the nearby Ballestas Islands, and its consistent stable wind and safe bay which make it a perfect destination for wind sports. You can ... read more

On the count of three I had been told to run, and so I did. But it was hard to run with the huge weight that languidly rose into the air behind me, the folds of the fabric slowly filling with air. Gradually I made progress towards the cliff edge ahead of me, and before I knew it my feet were no longer pushing the ground away, they were dangling in mid air, and the view opened up around me. I was paragliding, and the stunning mountains and patchwork fields of The Sacred Valley were the backdrop. Lewi stood atop the hill where I had stood just seconds before, waving and watching as together with the pilot I climbed higher and higher. It was a beautiful calm feeling as we soared gracefully through the air, wind ... read more