The last country in my one year trip around the world: Cuba. I had big expectations for Cuba and I really wanted to visit the country as soon as possible, and certainly before any further political changes would take place. I wanted to see Fidel Castro’s Cuba. I had already travelled through many communist countries in Eastern Europe when I was a child, back in the 80’s and early 90’s, and had been through Russia and China this time around, but Cuba is so different in its own way, socialism under palm trees and salsa rhythms already sounds much more appealing [View Full Entry]

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I had now less than one month to go on my trip around the world and was really looking forward to go to Cuba. I wanted to buy a plane ticket in Cancun that would allow me to stay in Cuba for about three weeks. I had therefore only one week left for Yucatan, in Mexico’s south. I came from Belize and went up to Merida on one long travel day by bus. Yucatan is much more westernised than all the rest of the countries in Central America that I have seen. Houses, cars, shopping malls, people …pretty much the same [View Full Entry]

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Not wanting to spend too much time in Belize City, a place where sunset means danger, I took a quick boat ride to Caye Caulker, or otherwise called Backpackers’ Paradise (despite the fact that it is relatively expensive). There is not really much to report on my five days spent on this small island…I went fishing most of the time, even did some spear gun fishing trips (where I lost the spear…typical!), got my introduction to wind surfing (really hard), chilled out at the beach and then partying with other backpackers at night. Caye Caulker is a really relaxed place, wh [View Full Entry]

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After a couple of hours in a small touristy bus coming from Honduras, I finally arrived in Antigua, Guatemala. Antigua’s setting is gorgeous, nestled between smoking volcanoes in the central highlands of Guatemala, the city is famous for its well-preserved baroque architecture as well as a number of spectacular ruins of colonial churches which offer photo opportunities at every turn. I had planned to stay three or four days…and stayed ten. I took a one week one-on-one crash course in Spanish, from 8am until 1pm, then, after some good lunch, I would sit at a sunny terrace of a [View Full Entry]

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On a tough travel day, I took six different buses totalling 18 hours of driving, crossed the border, saw thousands of gunned guards in Tegucigalpa ready to shoot at someone (wishing it was not me), hitchhiked at night in a forest (yes, I could have chosen a better place and time) to finally arrive at my hostel/micro brewery on the edges of lake Yojoa. On the following day, I went on a bird watching tour with an old English “birdie” who had been travelling the world since 28 years and decided to settle close to that lake, given its beauty and [View Full Entry]

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It was a long drive up to Granada where I arrived in the middle of the night. I saw my first gunned guards patrolling the streets while I was walking towards my hostel. I felt a certain sense of security, but then again…why all these guns, is it really so dangerous? Anyway, so here I am in Granada, Nicaragua’s oldest colonial city, founded in the mid sixteenth century. Hiding from a ferocious sun, I relaxed during the day on my hammock in the comfy courtyard of my hostel and enjoyed the carved colonial portals, elegant churches, colourful houses, fine plazas and [View Full Entry]

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Pura Vida! After another short night in Santiago de Chile and a pretty heavy earthquake during breakfast at the airport, I took a flight to Lima and transferred immediately to San Jose, Costa Rica. I had been warned that Central America was probably going to be the most "dangerous" leg of my trip. Costa Rica, however felt more like Disneyland, overwhelmed by thousands of (pretty loud) US tourists during this Christmas and New Year holiday season. Karen, a very nice Tica girl I met on WAYN a couple of months earlier, showed me around San Jose and neighbouring villages for a [View Full Entry]

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I took a long flight across the Pacific Ocean from Auckland to Santiago, Chile´s capital city. After a day of relaxing at the hostel in Santiago, I boarded yet another flight to Easter Island for a five day journey. Easter Island (Rapa Nui in Polynesian) is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. The island is a special territory of Chile. Its name was given by the island's first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered Easter Island on Easter Sunday 1722 and is famous for its monumental statues, called Moai. Moai are monolithic human fi [View Full Entry]

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Kia ora tatou ("Hello everyone" in Maori language)! After a couple of sunny days in Sydney, I flew over to Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city. An hour after having landed, I had booked myself into a 25-day trip through the country with Stray, a flexible bus network for backpackers with an hop-on hop-off facility. I left at 6.00am the next morning on my journey. I hadn't realized that New Zealand had such a stunningly diverse scenery, wild and remote beaches, volcanoes, glaciers, caves - absolutely everything that you can think of! Hot Water Beach and Hahei My first destination would [View Full Entry]

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G'day! I did a little two-day trip to Toronto for a friend's wedding before heading to Australia. Seoul -> Vancouver -> Toronto -> Tokyo -> Seoul -> Cairns was completed in five days and left me pretty exhausted afterwards, so it was time for some "chillaxing"… or so I thought! During my "busy" one month stay in Oz territory, I traveled from Cairns to Alice Springs and then down to Airlie Beach, Fraser Island, Brisbane and finally Sydney. Australia was the first developed “western” country in my trip so far, which made traveling much easier than in other pa [View Full Entry]

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