waterfalls

Iguassu Falls: Indescribably Epic

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2– 6 September 2016

Travellingross Rating: 10 out of 10

Brazil has long been on my travel to-do list, but getting a visa has always been a hassle and turned me off trying. So when I heard that this year over the few months of the Olympics, Brazil was waiving visa requirements I was hooked. Usually I don’t plan or think of what to do on a break until say 2 weeks out. But this one I had a fair idea about since the beginning of the year. I am still winging it, but I knew that Iguassu Falls was a must-visit after seeing the photos a friend took during a visit some years ago. I have a thing for waterfalls and the more epic the better – Victoria, Niagara…now Iguassu.

But like anything epic, it starts with a journey. 17.5 hours. Including an 8 hour layover. Following a good work rotation where I was actually able to find time to go for a run after work, I was not my usual wiped out self on day 23. I went out for dinner with a friend in Parbo then got picked up at 10:45 pm for the airport. Odd flight time of 1:45 am meant I didn’t even sleep in the city compared to the last few breaks where I have been staying a night or 2 before flying out.
Belem airport was more advanced than I expected. English seems to not be widely spoken though and I quickly remembered that Portuguese is not that similar to Spanish. I got through immigration without a word spoken, and I didn’t even have to fill a form! I am amazed that my bag and I made all the connections including a twenty-minute connection in Rio. With a driver waiting for me at the Foz do Iguacu airport, I was ready to relax.
Belmond Hotel das Cataratas is flawless. I cannot fault a single thing. From the welcome at reception (and free room upgrade!), to the fireplace filled lounge, to the barman carefully explaining the varied types of Caipirinha, to the breakfast, to the views, to the perfect rooms with the little sticker on the toilet paper….I could go on haha. Great recommendation. Although only 2 nights is required to see the sights, I booked 4 because of timing and because I knew I would enjoy the down-time.
The Falls are incredible. Over 270 individual waterfalls occur across this divide between Argentina and Brazil. The photos hopefully tell the story. They say the Brazil side has the view, the Argentine side has the experience. Basically you get drenched on the other side with an immersive experience across a lot of boardwalks, whereas Brazil has the panoramic views and one boardwalk that looks up the main chasm “the devils throat”.  I thought a lot about crossing the border to also visit the Argentinian side but decided not to.
 
The weather was not the best. 2 days were wet and cold (17C). Nice to relax in the hotel with a hot stone Amazonian massage and drink, while catching up on life. The pool is heated but I didn’t swim. I really wanted to do the helicopter trip over the falls and luckily on my last day the clouds cleared and the choppers were able to fly. Fortunately I did not have a flight to Rio until 4pm so I had time. It was only a 10 minute flight, but so good. I did a similar flight over Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe many moons ago and really like the vantage you get from the air and seeing the mist swirl up.
So, I am really happy to be in Brazil. To have seen the Iguassu Falls. And this is just the beginning.
Belmond Hotel das Cataratas. My hotel. I loved everything except the colour.
Sitting room.
Pool
View from my room…wet day
First view of the falls just across from the hotel
Time to stay inside, get room service and drink champagne.
The bar was too good
The bar. Birds.
Ahhh the sun came out to play. Briefly.
The Argentina side and their boardwalks
No thanks…to the boat trip.
The Brazil boardwalk
About to get wet!
Couldn’t see much of ‘The Devils Throat’
Such great photos
Amazing power. The noise!!
After
Naturally…
Feeling smells.
The warnings are everywhere not to feed these bastards
But people do
Flawless breakfast. Yes, I have 3 drinks.
Helicopter tour!
Hahhaa this guys face
I love this
My hotel

The Amazing Caribbean Race: Windward & Leeward Islands

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23 July – 8 August 2016
This break was all about the islands. Cover as many as I could to get a taste and determine which ones to come back to for longer. Due to best flight times, I had to depart a day late and return a day earlier giving me two restful days in Paramaribo but meant one fewer island to tick off. A part of me wants to lay claim to visiting as many islands as I can while I’m working this location – at this point I’ve got a year left. But it’s also very relaxing, enjoyable, knowledge fulfilling and…who wouldn’t want to travel the Caribbean! Especially when you can be in Barbados in 4 hours.

Barbados – 9/10

  1. 5 nights. Turtle Beach Resort. Discounted for low season.
  2. Within a few minutes of checking into my room, I stood on the 4th floor balcony looking at the amazing view and down below in a public laneway access to the beach a tall young local man started talking to me. After a moment to decipher his accent, I realised he was trying to sell me cocaine. Welcome to Barbados. This happened another time on the beach. As someone not at all into drugs, I find it unsavory and disturbing.
  3. Very rough surf on the south coast, when I traveled to the west it was so much calmer. Next time I will stay on the west coast.
  4. Staying at an all-inclusive for the first time was good to not have to worry about food choices or paying for drinks, but I did feel locked up. Like on a cruise ship.
  5. I drank a lot more than normal instinctively trying to get my money’s worth.
  6. Lots of children. Next time I’ll find an adults only all inclusive.
  7. This country is less developed than I expected.
View from room
View from room
Turtle snorkel catamaran tour
Turtle snorkel catamaran tour
The hotel I tried to stay at but ‘couples only’.
Golf time
Grenada – 7/10
  1. 2 nights. Allamanda Resort. Good location on the beach and cheap.
  2. Again offered drugs within moments of stepping onto the beach.
  3. The fort overlooking St Johns is totally without maintenance and a public safety risk, but great views of the harbor and port.
  4. I had not realised that this country had a communist coup in the late 70’s, then another coup where the prime minister and cabinet were locked up in the fort and executed. Then the USA invaded and ‘liberated’ the nation because they thought the new military government was building an airstrip to support Soviet and Cuban air craft to refuel in the southern Caribbean.
  5. I walked into a nutmeg store and said hi to the young male attendant as I was the only one in the store.  He immediately replied “you know me”. I stared and wandered. He said “look at me well”. Then it dawned on me that we sat next to each other on the 1 hour flight from Barbados to Grenada. Small part of the world.
  6. Grand Anse is a nice long public beach with clean water and nice sand.
  7. Found a nice marina with a bar, restaurant and pool. A rare place that was new, functional and welcoming.
View from the fort
View from the fort
Grand Anse beach
Grand Anse beach
St Lucia – 6/10
  1. 2 nights. La Haut Resort. Way out of Soufrière town.
  2. Taxi from airport to hotel was an hour and cost 80 usd! A signal that this island is not cheap.
  3. Too mountainous which makes for bad beaches, and long travel times.
  4. Gros Piton hike was the toughest I’ve done. My calf muscles were sore for days.
  5. Incredible views from La Haut plantation resort were amazing but the place closed for good the day I checked out. Up for sale. Spooky quiet at night which had me laying in bed thinking I was in the movie paranormal activity.
View from room
From the town pier.
The ‘trail’ up the mountain. Crazy.
View from the top of Gros Piton
After hiking up for 2 tough hours
Up in the clouds
Petite Piton
Having a beer afterwards. Watching the CPL – T20 west indies style.
The hotel owners house!
The hotel owners house!
The hotel owners house!
The hotel owners house!
The hotel owners house! – random rain storm
and rainbow
Martinique – 9/10
  1. 2 nights. Can’t remember the hotel as I literally walked off the ferry and checked into the first hotel I found. But it was nice. Except the level 3 elevator door didn’t work. And I was on level 3.
  2. Finally a developed island! A carrefour grocery store, paved sidewalks, street lighting and people leave you alone rather than try to sell you cheap bead necklaces.
  3. Only downside is it’s French speaking, but that could be a positive since people leave me alone!
  4. 21st century buses, roads and intersections. Hub of a ferry system.
  5. Bakeries and food that is beyond chicken and Creole
  6. Although I almost got run down crossing a road. I hate crossing roads.
  7. The beaches close to town are not very nice. And full of local children.
  8. Service is snail pace.
  9. I’d definitely come back and couple it with other French islands. I think the French funding and connection to the European Union means they must abide by EU standards which are much higher than the former British colonies that are poor.
Dominica – 3/10
  1. 1 night that turned into 2. Fort Young Hotel. Lovely refurbished hotel and best part of Roseau.
  2. Do not return. Undeveloped, wrecked by a recent storm, mountainous with long travel times on bad roads, dull landmarks. Although, no one bothered me to sell stuff on the streets or offer me tours like I was in Lucia.
  3. Roseau is a simple under developed town with nothing noteworthy. Except for my hotel, which was modern, sprawling and good service.
  4. The activities desk while seemingly professional, postponed my organized tour of the island not once but twice. Fully knowing that I only had 2 days 1 night on the island. And although I’d paid already for something they couldn’t offer anymore, did not provide a partial refund or even a genuine apology. Giving me the sense this happens often.
  5. As if Dominica knew I didn’t like her, she punished me further by hovering a rain storm over the island at the time of my evening flight causing it to be cancelled and being put up by liat airlines in a hotel room with no ac and a ceiling fan moving so slow it may as well have been switched off.
Hotel
President’s House and Office, opposite the hotel
Trafalgar Falls
Hot baths. Literally baths.
Says everything about Dominica
Antigua – 8/10
  1. 3 nights that was supposed to be 4 except for Dominica. Airbnb apartment in English Harbour. Well located with lovely views, but in a loft with no cross breeze so it was stinking bloody hot.
  2. Very modern airport.
  3. Renting a car was simple and easy to cruise around. Although some hairy corners on what should be single lane one way roads.
  4. Again no hassle from the locals and I rode a public ‘bus’ to town with ease for a dollar. The bus is a mini van that loads in the people, most without seatbelts. Similar to what I rode in Grenada.
  5. Beaches are lovely but not as postcard worthy as I believed from Google images. But I do believe the phrase that there are as many beaches as there are days in the year on Antigua.
  6. I’d likely come back and use this as a base to explore Barbuda, St Kitts and St Barts.
View from my room
Pigeon Beach. My closest beach. Ok
Climbed a hill
Halfmoon Beach. Lots of seaweed washed up recently. Not as nice as claimed.
Jolly Beach
Jolly Beach

 

And that’s it. No hurricane. Although it threatened. Some islands I’d come back to, others are firmly on the DNR list. Definitely prefer ferries over planes where I could. Easier to get around than I thought and lots of research online that you can just google and make it up when you wake up!

Iceland, Copenhagen, Windsor Make for a Fantastic Break

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Friday 21 August to Tuesday 8 September 2015

travellingross rating = 10/10

After another short busy rotation, I was off again. This time to Europe which is the best flight as it is direct to Amsterdam, on a good airline (KLM) and leaves in the late afternoon rather than the usual 6am or thereabouts. With the shorter time on site, it was hectic (but still enjoyable and challenging in the right ways), so I had limited time to plan anything for this break. Fortunately I was meeting 2 friends who shared the planning work load. And it helped having a day off in Parbo before flying out (to get the KLM flight, rather than fly questionable Surinam Air).

Iceland

Landing in Amsterdam, I had a five hour layover which was enough to get my McDonalds fix, then meet Amy who had flown in from South Korea a few days earlier to catch up with cousins in Rotterdam. I spotted her in the WOW (yes, that’s the Icelandic budget airlines name) line and it was our first time in person for 18 months. Amy and I did more research for Iceland while reading the wow airplane magazine enroute from Amsterdam. Very informative and we quoted from it throughout the trip.

We arrived a couple hours ahead of Chiraag (a mutual friend from Perth) and then set off to collect our Renault Captur rental car before heading east. Iceland is only 330,000 people but the rental car guy said they have had 1.5 million tourists this year so far. the rental car guy gave me the low down on random things to beware of renting a car in Iceland – sand storms, wind so strong it could flip your door off, ash damage, the speed limit is max 90kmh. So throughout the 7 day trip we would remind each other “hold your door” when getting out as the wind was truly the strongest I have experienced. It was also cold for summer and I was very glad to bring my thermals. As I expected, Iceland is overall quite expensive, especially on the food side since most of it is grown in glass houses due to the cold and infertile volcanic soil. A soup for instance is around $23 AUD (but some places have refills). But this is offset by free entry to every sight that we saw (expect Blue Lagoon). The 3 of us all have similar travel interests and Iceland is full of natural wonders which is my travel turn-on so we all rated the trip as one of our best ever. We laughed a lot and it was an excellent setting to catch up. Chiraag had roaming data on his phone and that made a world of difference so we could search places to see if worth a stop as we drove by, navigate, review restaurants ratings before deciding to walk in etc.

The photos speak for themselves and show the beauty of this country. Highlights for me were seeing countless waterfalls during a 6 km hike, seeing my first glacier, swimming in a thermal hot river, bubbling hot springs, and of course seeing the Northern Lights unexpectedly in the capital city (Reykjavik). The latter has been on my dream travel list for many years and we saw something spectacular as we walked out of our apartment – purples, whites, greens. Surreal and filled the sky. I still want to see more and hear that Canada is also good for it (with the added bonus of polar bears). Overall, Iceland reminded me of New Zealand but ten times better and less populated so it made driving a dream.

this woman filmed the inside of the plane, leaned over me to film the take off, and landing.
Growing cucumbers
We went inside. Not the highlight of my trip.
Very relaxing. 3 km trek to get to it though.

Copenhagen, Denmark

We hauled ass to the airport to make it in time for Chiraag’s 6:30am flight to Dublin and then Amy and I battled the longest security line ever known to man for our flight to Copenhagen. We landed about midday and still did not have accommodation. I had spent time last night searching options and found an AirBnB place that would be perfect only to get declined when I checked my messages on airport arrival. So we taxi’d to my back up hotel contemplating whether to stay there one night while we found something better. But we searched and got an ‘instant book’ AirBnB place in a really good location that we could go immediately to to drop our bags and then come back at 5:30pm to check in.

Copenhagen is a smaller global city of about 1 million people and so more my preference than the overly busy cities elsewhere in Europe. Over the 5 days we managed to visit a range of sights including doing a free walking tour (for a tip), the Carlsberg brewery, Rosenburg castle with the crown jewels and royal collection, the Amalienborg Palace which has no big gates or exclusion zones, and shopping along the world’s first pedestrianised mall (that confusingly has bikes and cars on it). The Danish capital offered Amy and I time to sleep in and relax more than the full days of Iceland so we both enjoyed that. Food was really good (which is saying something coming from me who is not a foodie). The weather was mostly cloudy and wet except our last full day that we went to the brewery. I had very little knowledge of Denmark, so I enjoy these type of trips where you go in ignorant without even knowing that they are not on the Euro currency (how annoying) and now know more about the country than some Danes themselves. Amy and I are now full bottles on the Danish Monarchy. I have little idea what the remainder of the country has to offer, but the city is only 16 km from Sweden across a road bridge so it would be quite simple to return and explore the Scandinavian area.

Say no more, I’m there
Where they used to hang people outside the courthouse
Nyhavn
Strangling it with a crown
Please don’t touch
350 year old blood stains on the former King’s clothes
Antlers
Spot the mistake
Thrones
Didn’t know this was used to make things
This car drove into the palace. I think it was Mary!
Not as good as Heinekin tour in Amsterdam
Until Hitler started using it.

Windsor, United Kingdom

We were asked to check out early from our Copenhagen accommodation (11am) so we got to the airport with time to have a bite to eat and spend our last Kroner before saying goodbye as I flew to the UK and Amy to Taiwan. We’ve previously travelled to Las Vegas, Niagara Falls, Houston, and Jamaica together but I would say this was our best trip together so far.

The mission of the UK trip was to stay with a friend I met at the Ghana job (doctor who was Chief Medical Officer) who lives in Windsor and also to meet up with friends I met at Munich Oktoberfest in 2013. It was nice (and cheap!) to stay with a friend for a change, and nicer still to be in a place where I had no tourism desires since it is my 3rd time to Windsor/London and I have done pretty much all the tourist items there (except I still want to do the London eye, see Kew Gardens and Greenwich). So instead we visited the local pub, went to the local shops, saw a stand-up comedy show in Chiswick (must be posh as the comedians kept referencing this), bussed into Piccadilly Circus to see a Saturday matinee performance of ‘The Book of Mormon’ (ok stage show from the writers of South Park, but I am surprised so many people go see it as it is as controversial as that TV show), then met up with my Oktoberfest friends for dinner and a couple beers, and a sunny Sunday to wander the main street of Windsor and have a final pub dinner (unfortunately the worst steak sandwich I have eaten…or attempted to eat I should say) before getting up at 4:45 am Monday morning to go the 15 mins to Heathrow to catch my flight to Amsterdam and then direct back to Paramaribo. A relatively quiet way to end the international component of my break. Typing this on the flight and have a day off in Parbo tomorrow (Tuesday) before returning to work Wednesday.

I spent longer in the passport line than I did on the 1.5 hr flight
Still impresses me

Websites and Tips to Make this Trip

Stayed at:

Iceland:     Hellisholar Cottages, Hvolsvollur, 280 euro for 2 nights for a 3 bed studio cottage. VERY small with no light in the shower (lucky for mobile phone flashlight). Nice setting, terrible restaurant food.

Klukka Apartment, Selfoss, ISK36,000 ($267 USD) for 2 nights. Looks terrible from the outside but spacious, modern and adequate on the inside. Half of someone’s house cut off and adapted. Good location.

Reykjavik Airbnb apartment for $463 AUD for 3 nights. 2 bedroom unit in a complex with a small balcony which we could watch Northern Lights from.

Copenhagen: Montergade 4, $900 USD for 4 nights. See Airbnb review.

Rental Car: Compact car (Renault Captur) from Green Motion booked through holidayautos.com for 399.25 Euro. Glad I got an automatic.