dini andy

In the whole time we have been travelling i dont think we have had such a disasterous trip.... Disasterous but fun! So we had booked to do a 3-night camping trip on a remote island in the San Blas islands of the Kuna Yala territory, Panama. It is an archepeligo of around 365 palm fringed islands, give or take a few that disappear at high tide. Its the kind of islands that you picture when someone says "Deserted tropical island paradise"...... Well!?!? We had met our fellow travellers at the hostel in Panama city. Two couples, Bruce and Laura from Canada and Julien and Tasha from Reunion Island and South Africa. We all got along really well. The trip started early in the morning and we headed to the Kuna Yala (Native indian territory not governed ... read more

Alright, the first blog of our Central American Adventure. We started the trip by leaving from England and heading across to Madrid before boarding a flight across the altantic, bound for Bogota. We then had to change planes to get to Quito, Ecuador. We had an overnight stopover in Quito, then jumped on our last planes to the ecuadorian coast. Our friend Eddie who we met in Cornwall, had organised a guy to pick us up at the airport and take us to his town, Canoa. The car journey was a couple of hours and the driver didnt speak any English but was keen to tell us about things. So we did as best we could with our spanish phrasebook and Dinis iPhone app "Spanish for Dummies". I reckon we did pretty well for first timers. ... read more

Iceland 2/02/2011 to 6/02/2011. The capital of Iceland, Reykjavik sits at about 64 degrees north of the equator, not far from the arctic circle. For a place so far north, the climate is fairly mild due to a warm ocean current that passes by the island. As a result, there is usually not that much snow over winter, in the capital city anyway. But wouldnt you know it, it was snowing when we arrived in Iceland and did so for the whole first night. We walked into town from our hotel and had a burger and a couple of beers. The local brew is called Viking which isnt too bad. The next day, the ground was white with snow and the sun was out so we headed up to the Blue Lagoon for a swim in ... read more

After a month in Portugal we entered Spain in the Galicia region. At this point in time the weather was pretty bad and we had a couple of rough nights sleeping in the van, copping the full brunt of the wind and rain straight from the ocean. We kept free camping all along the coast but didnt find many waves due to the weather. Also, after september most shops and tourism places are closed, so there wasnt much else to do except head towards France. The scenery in that part of spain was pretty epic though. It was very green and mountainous, totally different from the dry and arid mediterranean coast. One day we arrived at a well known surf spot called Rodiles. We got there late afternoon after driving for a while looking for a ... read more

After France we drove down to Spain and stayed at Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava. It was a great campsite which sat on top of the cliffs and the beaches were below. The first night we got there we indulged in Spanish cuisine... seafood paella and sangria. It just so happened that they had a flamenco performance on that night which was a great welcoming to Spain, we couldn’t have asked for anything more... until the rain came along and ruined it! After Tossa de Mar we picked up our mates Bondi and Lynda from Barcelona and headed down the coast to a small town called L’ametlla. We stayed in a camping ground just outside of town but on the coast. It was a scorcher the day we arrived and after the van trip ... read more