Highlights and lowlights of your last or current trip.

It does not seem appropriate to post direct quotes from a private blog on a public forum.
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Sorry to de-rail the thread, thanks for respecting the privacy of bloggers by requesting permission. It wasn't clear from the initial post. To get things back on track, here is a list of highlights from the final blog entry of our trip to Africa (some high, some low, all memorable) :-)

1. Crossing the Sahara along the coast in Mauritania
2. Mountain gorillas in Rwanda
3. Paragliding/Quadding in Swakopmund, Namibia
4. White-water rafting at the source of the Nile in Uganda
5. Lions around our safari vehicles in the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania
6. Wine tasting in the Western Cape of South Africa
7. Nigerian police check stops
8. Bamako taxi rides, Mali
9. Aswan to Wadi-Halfa ferry crossing craziness (Egypt to Sudan)
10. Hamer tribe bull-jumping ceremony in the South Omo Valley, Ethiopia
11. Getting new passports in Addis Ababa; picking them up in Dar es Salaam
12. Multiplying spiders in the Okavango Delta, Botswana
13. Canoeing on the Zambezi river, Zambia
14. Donkey ride to the Valley of the Kings, Egypt
15. Evil Baboons
16. Shoestrings at Vic Falls, Zimbabwe
17. Bizarre midnight turtle conservation trek in Benin
18. Goats in trees, Morocco
19. Great White Sharks at Gansbaii, South Africa
20. "Vache qui rit" cheese Reply to this

...intended to do a blog dedicated to just this point but haven't got round to it yet!

Be sure to post a link to it here, when it is finished. 😊 Reply to this

Highlight and lowlight rolled into one - inadvertant drug deal in Pnom Penh.

Other highlights - Diving with Mantas and Komodo dragon swimming across the surface all at once in the channel between Komodo and Rinca islands.
- Playing soccer with elephants and swimming with elephants in Sulawesi
- Kissing Sharks in Andaman Sea
- Diving japanese mini sub in Papua New Guinea
- Seeing where the rainbow ends and diving down to not find the pot of gold in PNG
- Meeting a porcupine wandering around doing porcupiney things in Penida jungle
- Flooding and amazing lightning in Pnom Penh
- Watching an elephant give birth
- Ankor Wat
- Great wall of China
- Hundreds of awesome sunsets and sunrises over oceans

Lowlights - flying over Beijing and being diverted due to Tiananmen square massacre
- Being set up by Indonesian customs and offered choice of 25 days jail or 200,000rupiah CASH fine for overstaying visa by 4 MINUTES due to flight delay
- Watching Raskol gang walk up and grab a woman by the hair throw her onto the road and pack rape her in Port Moresby while all the traffic (including police) just changed lanes and did nothing to help. Reply to this

Ah, Donna and Neils account is public again, and their latest blog is on the Front Page. Welcome back! 😊

My last trip

I went to Brazil and Uruguay last November.

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Highlights:
- Puanta del Diablo, Uruguay was all I was hoping for. Wild, remote, windswept and beside the sea. It was worth exhausting myself with tearing down the Brazialian coast on night busses to get there in the limited time I had.
- The hostel in Puanta del Diablo was right beside the sea and the views from all the windows were amazing. You could sit anywhere, and have a great view.
- The hostel only cost 11 Euros per night including breakfast
- The caramel and butter served with breakfast. The dairy products and cakes in Uruguay are great.
- The small quiet hostels in Brazil, that are like staying in somebodies house.
- Free internet in all the hostels
- An Australian guy who insisted on reading my blogs, while giving me beer and chips. He was sitting outside the hostel in Puanta del Diablo one evening using his laptop on the wireless internet. It was funny talking with somebody who was going to visit the UK and was amazed by how far north he was going to be, while I was as far south as I have ever been.
- Being alone, with no childcare responsibilities.

Lowlights:
- The trip was too short, like most of my trips are these days, because of family responsibilities.
- The busses in Brazil are expensive.
- Puanta del diablo was much colder than I expected at sea level place in South America to be and I didnt have clothes suitable for those temps.
- I would have liked to spend a couple of weeks, rather than a couple of nights in Puanta del Diablo
- Water that did no more than trickle out of the showers in the hostel in Puanta del diablo, and got cold while my hair was covered in shampoo, leaving me blue with the cold after every shower.
- An English guy at the hostel in Sao Paulo, who had a real problem with Irish people.
- Gaining a kilo because of sitting around in the hostel gardens, in Brazil because they were so nice and eating too much of the high calorie breakfasts they serve in them, and then eating those nice cakes they have in the cafes.
- People pestering me to go hiking, smoking, surfing, drinking... when all I wanted was to do nothing. I dont often get to do nothing, because there are usually kids around looking for attention and things to do all the time.
- The loud video games and Michael Jackson music playing in the hostel in Sao Paulo.
- It was very difficult to change money where I was in Uruguay, so I had to economise and try to only spend what I managed to get at the border, to prevent spending time looking for someplace to get more. Reply to this

Ohhh Donna make that any private transport drivers (bus drivers are generally ok!)

ok now back to the topic.....! 😊 Reply to this

My only lowlight of our trips when I forgot something what is important or I loose something during the trip. Does not happens often but have some examples....
The most highlight is when I have the chance to travel with my loved ones... Reply to this

It's hard to do this for my last trip but I can do it for all my travels...

My Highlights were (in no particular order):
- Seeing my first hummingbird the day after landing in Lima. Never been to the Americas before so this was a first.
- The Inca Trail - Hard work but incredible
- Iguacu Falls - Tremendous
- New Zealand - Hard to be specific, met up with a friend for the entire 5 weeks and we literally blew our budget apart enjoying everything, scenery, people, extreme sports, food, beer... Awesome!
- Snorkelling with Manta and turtles at Ningaloo reef with my wife on our 2nd year anniversary.
- Karajini National Park, Western Australia... Best National Park we went to Oz
- Broome, WA... Stairway to the moon, dinosaur footprints, Opera Under the Stars and a Beautiful beach which allows nudity... 😊
- Learning to Dive on a liveaboard on the Great Barrier Reef, then diving the S.S. Yongala reputedly one of the worlds best wreck dives (we may have peaked a little early in our diving).
- Finding a massive Sapphire in the gemfields of Queensland.
- Watching kangaroos boxing and playing on the beach as the sun rose at Cape Hillsborough National Park.
- Sydney - That harbour is just too damn photogenic.
- Sunrise over Bromo, Java and then peering into the active volcano afterwards.
- Getting attacked by an Orangutan in Sumatra... the teeth didn't break the skin, before it was beaten off me, so that's why it's in this list and not the lowlights.
- Spending a few nights in the Mandarin Oriental for our honeymoon... bouquet of roses at reception, personalised bedding and a bath butler, with strawberries and champagne... never travelled like that before and probably never will again.
- Spotting our first truly wild Orangutan behind our lodge in Sabah, Borneo.
- Watching a turtle lay it's eggs off Sabah, Borneo, then setting baby turtles free into the ocean afterwards.
- The temples of Angkor... These surely are in everyones list who's been there. Unbelievable...
- Waiting 5 days for our Indian Visas in Saigon - Sounds dull I'm sure, but this is where my wife fell pregnant with our first son. 😊
- Phoning home and telling our parents we were pregnant.
- Walking the Great Wall of China.
- Admiring the Sakura (cherry blossom) in Japan
- Yosemite National Park - Up there with the best scenery I've ever encountered.
- Golden Temple, Amritsar, India - Beautiful
- Food... Everywhere... What can I say I love to eat.

Lowlights are even harder as I think I try to forget them but here goes...
- Taxi drivers and touts everywhere - You saw me say no to the last guy who asked, why am I going to say yes to you?
- Both my wife and I being violently sick while doing the tour of the Salaar in Bolivia... when all you want to do is stick your head down the toilet, the last thing you want is to spend all day in a Jeep.
- Selling our beloved van in Australia, it was a piece of crap but it was our piece of crap.
- Getting scammed by a money changer in Bali.
- Sandflies - I got hundreds of bites off these in one hit in Bolivia, which made me want to saw off my limbs the itching was that bad. Made me paranoid about getting bitten for the rest of our trip.
- The tourist crowds at Angkor - I know I'm one of them but I want it all to myself!
- Coming back to a restaurant from a temple at Angkor to play with a puppy I spent a good half hour with before only to find it gasping for its last breath after being hit by a car. 😞 this one I want to forget the most
- Realising that when your dive buddy becomes pregnant it means you can't dive.
- Saying goodbye at the airport to our parents when they came out visit us.
- Seeing people openly defecate on the tracks at train stations in India.. actually all the dirt in India... trying to protect your unborn child from India was just hard work!
- Coming home.

I know there's a thousand other highlights and a fair few lowlights I've missed some massive some not so, but these are all that come to mind at the moment.

😊 Reply to this

My last trip was to South America.

Highlights:
- coming across a small green gully in a tiny village in Colombia in the twilight and watching hundreds and hundreds of beautiful white birds coming in to nest for the evening.
- enjoyng a mojito on the wall in Cartagena, watching the sun go down over the ocean and looking out towards Bocagrande, after an afternoon trip to the mud volcano
- my birthday dinner at Casa Cruz in Buenos Aires with good friends
- watching troops of squirrel monkeys and capuchin monkeys crossing the canal and jumping over us, from tree to tree, in the Ecuadorian Rainforest

Lowlights:
- being robbed at gunpoint in Buenos Aires
- having to pay a fine at Uruguay immigration to leave the country, on my birthday morning
- getting excited about seeing my first movie in months in Chile, and realising that it was in Swedish (which I don't speak) and that I'd already seen it! Reply to this

Most memorable Low Point in my 2nd last trip was the moment just before I realized that I had become one of "those" travelers.
We had taken a friend up on an invitation to have dinner while staying in Siem Reap. After a fantastic meal, a few tasty drinks and some traditional entertainment it came time to pay for the meal. I gave the waiter an American ten and five dollar bill that I had gotten as change from the guesthouse we were staying at. Because money changers will not take torn bank notes, the waiter refused the five dollar bill I had given him.
Instead of counting out five dollars from the change I had in my pocket, I iniated an arguement, refusing to accept something I knew was futile to disagree with. I thouroughly embarrased my dinner partners and became one of those annoying travellers that I always dred meeting.

Most memorable High Point in my 2nd last trip was the moment after I realized that I had become one of "those" travelers.
Upon hearing my whiny self righteous attitude, I quickly reached into my pocket pulled out a twenty, pressing it into the hand of the waiter and apologizing. I apologized to my diner companions.

I note that everyone's low points seem to be due to others actions and none of their own. Does this seems a bit odd or am I just a "bad" traveller? Reply to this