Dear All Greetings from the mountainous interior of lovely Albania. After a great start to my trip in Durrës, I did what I often find to be the more nerve-racking journey on a trip. While I still find the flight to a new country exciting and a little daunting, I actually often find the first journey I make within the country slightly more daunting, as you have to navigate a whole new transport system with all that is unique and quirky about it involved. And thus it was so on a Saturday morning at the end of December, when the time came to leave my very comfortable and friendly hotel by the Adriatic Sea, and head off into the unknown Albanian interior. I first took a taxi to the Plepat Bus Terminal, located about four miles ... read more

Dear All Greetings on this, my final blog entry on this amazing little adventure I had in lovely Croatia. There were so many places to see, and I was awed by the amazing variety and beauty of what I'd seen for myself. After my wonderful afternoon of exploring the "little slice of heaven" that is the Plitvice Lakes National Park (thanks for the phrase, Merry! :D), I left rural Croatia behind and took my final bus journey to here, the country's capital of Zagreb. I would have liked to have spent more time in the Croatian countryside. I particularly liked the smell of pine trees and the sound of roosters there, reminding me of many-a rural place I've visited in the Slavic parts of Eastern Europe. But alas, my journey was continuing, and I was excited ... read more

Dear All Greetings from Split! This is another amazing Croatian city, though really quite different to Dubrovnik. Being Croatia's second largest city at 265,000 people, it is a large and busy urban area with sprawling suburbs filled with communist-era residential tower blocks and hulking great port and industrial areas. Dubrovnik, on the other hand, was slow-paced and deeply charming, a quaint and seriously splendid little city with a comparatively diminutive 40,000 residents. Whilst different, Split also packed a punch (almost) as good as Dubrovnik to me, most notably with its unbelievable Diocletian's Palace right in the heart of town, more on that below. I must admit, I was a little disappointed with the way I arrived there though. I had originally planned a fast ferry ride from Dubrovnik to spend three hours on the island of ... read more

Dear All Greetings, on this my final entry on my amazing journey through South Africa in the summer of 2023. It really was an epic trip, definitely one of the best ones up there alongside recent trips to Japan, Scandinavia and the Galapagos Islands, and I've also been enjoying very much writing up these travel blog entries, re-living all those adventures again! My final few days were spent in and around the country's powerhouse central state of Gauteng, in the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria, with a total cumulative population of a staggering 14 million people! It felt quite something to finally be in the beating heart of South Africa after travelling through its regions for so long, almost like an exciting culmination and climax of a highly eventful journey, and my time there certainly did ... read more

Dear All My last two days in the wonderful little Kingdom of Swaziland were spent at the very special Hlane Royal National Park. I checked out of my very spacious self-catering chalet and said goodbye to its very helpful host, Lello, before taking two minibuses from the nearby Gables shopping centre to the Park. The first minibus took a ridiculous one-and-a-half hours to drive the mere 15 miles to Swaziland's largest city Manzini, stopping off everywhere and often waiting ages for passengers - it was really frustrating. Upon arrival at Manzini's very chaotic minibus station, the minibus driver very helpfully pointed out the next minibus I needed to take heading to the eastern Swazi town of Simunye, but with an empty stomach and another potentially long minibus ride ahead of me, I thought I'd stop off ... read more