Rather than one of taking off, 2019 was a year of landing, of arriving rather than departing. We returned to Europe after nine months of tramping around Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico, we visited our home countries and settled (temporarily, as ever) in Antwerp, Belgium. But just like we are writers even when we’re not writing, we are also travellers when we’re not travelling. And real wandering souls find wonders in their own backyard as well as on the other side of the world. In chronological order, these were our travel highlights of 2019:
Mérida, Mexico: always in the party mood
Okay, I admit it, our view of Mérida can be a bit distorted thanks to the fact that we arrived on New Year’s Eve. But I assure you, the parties there don’t stop just because the holidays are over.
Mérida is a fantastic stop for budget backpackers. It’s easy to navigate around the town without falling into tourist traps. I cannot even remember any touristic restaurants in town, everything seemed to be built for locals to enjoy.
The best part is, of course, the food. It’s not as if there is a place in Mexico where you can escape from delicious dishes, but Mérida has a great variety of choices, and most probably you end up eating stuff you’ve never even heard of before. Forget all you knew about Mexican food and welcome cactus tortas, panuchos and papadzules. You can eat wonderful cheap vegetarian food, grab finger-licking empanadas, buy dirt cheap veggies and fruits from a market that smells like coriander and mandarins, pick and choose from dozens of regional dishes like mole and huevos motulenos, or keep snacking away in cantinas.
Cantinas are bars where they keep bringing you free snacks as long as you keep drinking. In Eladio’s, the snacks are not just popcorn and chips but proper meals. So if you don’t mind to get tipsy, you’ll get a free meal. Another great thing about cantinas? Live music! Yes, every day there is a band playing salsa in Eladio’s, and people start dancing already in the afternoon. Cannot dance salsa? Don’t worry, look for a cantina that gives free lessons and have fun!
Don’t come to Mérida if you don’t feel like going out, because on every evening there’s something to do. You can listen to Mariachi music in street squares, watch Maya football, or enjoy a light show projected on the cathedral. Many of the events are recurring every week. It’s definitely one of the places you feel sad to leave.
Homún, Mexico: cenotes, the bathtubs of the Maya
The Yucatán peninsula is like a Swiss cheese, full of holes. They are called cenotes – from the Mayan word dzonot or tso’ono’ot, meaning abyss. Cenotes are basically underground pools, sometimes open, sometimes (partly) closed. Depending on the source you consult, Yucatán has between 3000 and 6000 cenotes. Some, like the ones near Tulum and Vallodolid, are swarmed with tourists flocking in from the Maya Riviera. Others are deserted. Though we wanted to swim in every single one of them, we obviously preferred the latter kind.
As a cenote seldom comes alone, luckily, we could visit many of these private swimming pools. In Homún, we employed a motorbike taxi driver and hopped from one to the next. There were large semi-covered holes, with impressive stalactites and ropes from which you could swing like Tarzan. There were small ones with big fat fishes in them, very deep but tiny ones, and complete underground cave systems which we cautiously explored. All had water so clear that it felt you could drink from them. In a region devoid of many rivers, cenotes often served as the water sources of the ancient Maya.
Homún is the perfect place to do some cenote hopping without hordes of other tourists in your slipstream.
Chabihau, Mexico: palm forests, pink lakes and flamingos in the backyard
You don’t always have to pay a lot for an awesome experience. We wanted to see pink lakes but did not want to pay for it. So instead of running with the herds to Las Coloradas, we booked the cheapest Airbnb in the whole Yucatán. In Chabihau, near San Crisanto, we aimed for less famous pink lakes. Chabihau is ideal if you’re after authentic experiences. There are no crowded beaches, no luxury resorts, heck, there’s not even a restaurant in this village. So make sure to bring enough food.
Chibihau is located on the top of Yucatán peninsula about an hour by bus from popular beach town Progreso. The palm-fringed highway takes you through the sleepy villages where you can buy as many coconut products as you wish: coconut ice-cream, pudding, pie, cookies bread, hair and skin products and oil. The Airbnb belongs to Santiago, a kind man from Honduras. Whenever he has money, he buys some food for all the village dogs. Our home with kitchen and hammocks was 5 minutes from the white sand beach. In the daytime, we admired two pink flamingos promenading behind our back door, during the night we watched a moon eclipse from our rooftop.
In nearby San Crisanto, we walked around the pink lakes and took a boat tour through the mangrove. At the end of the tour, we could jump into a small cenote (hole in a ground filled with water) and swam with gigantic fishes.
Camping in Kabli and Krapi, Estonia
It’s not a secret that the most beautiful beaches in Estonia are located between Pärnu and the Latvian border. And it’s also not a secret that this was one of the reasons why we decided to hike all the way from Pärnu to Ainaži (Latvia). And now, for all of you who don’t have cars, there is a decent bus service from Pärnu to all these places for 1 euro a ride. So all you have to do is carry your camping equipment for 10 minutes to the campsite. It really doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg to help our planet and leave your car home for once.
Our two nights in tents were not entirely dreamlike. When we reached the Kabli campsite, we were soaked to the bone and thanks to continuous rain spent the first hours sitting around the covered picnic table, trying to dry all our wet clothes and hoping it would stop raining, so we could make a fire.
In Krapi it was so windy that we saw our tent flying away. Wind mauled our tent all night, pine cones fell like very heavy raindrops to the sandy ground, and we hoped that no tree would fall down because of the crazy wind and kill us in our sleep. Thankfully we’re still here to tell you the stories.
As always, it was all worth it. In Kabli we had the whole campsite for ourselves. Next morning we enjoyed the local beach that was almost empty in mid-June.
Krapi was another picturesque beach again with almost no people. We sat hours on the beach watching the sunset.
Jurmala, Latvia: Sleeping in a hanging tent on the romantic riverside
If you leave it to Anete, she will fill the whole travel itinerary with beaches. So, of course, our first stop from our Estonia-Belgium trip was a romantic seaside town in Latvia. 20 minutes by train from historic Riga, you’ll find a wooden architecture paradise Jurmala. Kilometres of sandy beaches to promenade, literally hundreds of changing cabins, a small-town atmosphere and thick forests- that is Jurmala. The trick is to stay away from crowded spas and loud waterparks, smell the pine forest and enjoy the sunsets on the beach. Unless of course, you love to splash and stay in spas.
We slept in a paradise. A local guy had hung dozens of cone-shaped tents on the tree-branches. We had a lovely view of the river but no bedsheets inside, so be prepared to bring your own or pay extra. There’s a little outdoor kitchen to cook your breakfast, and you can rent bicycles and kayaks for free. We jumped on bikes and rode to town, but you can also walk through the forest and take a train to Jurmala.
Gdansk, Poland: the perfect blend of east and west
Gdansk has a direct ferry to Hell and was the scene for the first shots in World War II. Yet, despite that atrocious description, it’s one of our favourite cities in Europe. A place, even, where we could see ourselves living.
When mentioning a trip to Poland to Belgians, there are two kinds of reactions. There are the ones who wonder — why Poland? Isn’t that a grey country full of grumpy Soviet zombies, who eat grey mush and drink too much vodka? And there’s the one who’ve visited and who know that it’s quite contrarily, a colourful country full of friendly and welcoming people, who eat fresh, healthy and locally-sourced food and, yes, drink too much vodka.
We had only a day and a half in Gdansk. Not enough time to see all its historic sights, hit all the beaches and eat all the food we wanted. But it gave us enough of a sample to know that Gdansk has everything we look for in a city. A gorgeous old town, suburbs full of character, an industrial vibe, water, history and culture, a vibrant atmosphere with cute cafés and bars serving delicious yet affordable food and beer. And so we said to each other, could we live here, in Gdansk? Why not!
Berlin, Germany: “Ich bin ein Berliner”
I remember walking into a coin laundromat in New York. The place was full of bored locals staring at running machines. I freed a seat for myself by placing a laundry bag on the floor. What a mistake! A huge black bulldozer barged into my direction – the type that’s fed on a diet of burgers and coke – and started barking: “That seat was for my laundry bag! You’re not from New York, are you? You have to earn your right to be here!” I instantly decided that I’d rather eat horse shit for dinner for the rest of my life than to be a New Yorker.
Berlin was exactly the opposite. Within minutes of arriving, we were drinking Warsteiner on the balcony overlooking leafy Schöneberg. Hours later, we had a whole crew of Berliners to drink with. They were not self-centred and pretentious like many big-city dwellers tend to be, but as curious and inquisitive about us as we were about them.
Over the course of the next days, we walked at least a marathon to explore the different neighbourhoods, beyond kebab places and shisha smoking Arabs, along canals and past horizontal gardens, graffiti, moustachioed boys, girls in hotpants and drunk hobos peeing in the river Spree, a mix of grit and glam that made me scream from the top of my lungs: “Ich bin ein Berliner!”
Cycling from Mol to Antwerp: a town called Carrot
Sometimes, we live in Indonesia for a year or we make a nine-month trip through Central America. Larger than life adventures, experiences that stick with us for a lifetime. At other times, we go on micro-adventures, little trips that are short, simple, local and cheap but also exciting and life-affirming. Little getaways from the rut of everyday life.
When we moved into a flat in Antwerp at the beginning of September, we needed bicycles in town. So instead of taking them on the train, we decided to cycle from Mol to Antwerp. Using the awesome system of bicycles ‘nodes’, which allows you to map a bicycle route from anywhere to anywhere in Flanders, we hit the road with our iron horses.
And because it’s not all about the destination, we made a detour to a town in northern Belgium, a stone’s throw from the border with the Netherlands. Its name? Wortel, or Carrot, most famous for the colony of hobos and tramps that lived and worked here until 1993, when the Belgian government officially decriminalised vagrancy. We put our tent up on a free bivouac spot, gathered around the fire with a group of men on a father-child weekend, and even melted some marshmallows.
The next day, these two rambling hobo souls cycled home.
Port of Antwerp, Belgium: ammoniac fields
When you think about Antwerp, then the first things that come to mind are Rubens house, the Zoo, MAS and the train station. But there is one more thing that Antwerp is famous for. It’s the port. After all, it’s the second biggest seaport in Europe after Rotterdam. Of course, I wanted to see it.
As always life had a surprise for us. This time Tom’s bicycle broke just before our cycling trip to the port. Quick change of plans and we decided to take a boat instead. Taking a water bus is actually as much fun because how often can you sail on Schelde and admire all the landmarks of Antwerp from the water? Not that often.
We planned to take an 8-kilometre hike around the industrial landscape and were fairly excited to get our hiking boots muddy again.
We landed in a sleepy village in the middle of the port called Lillo. Lillo has a couple of cosy bars, a museum, mill and 35 inhabitants. After checking out the town square, we were ready for a hike. Nuclear station ahead of us, another factory coughing up smoke on our right we marched on wondering how healthy the air was which we inhaled. Soon we got our answer. The smell gradually grew more and more disgusting.
I’m not the person who covers her nose because of manure smell and can tolerate exhaust fumes, but this thick smell took quite literally my breath away. It felt like it was suffocating me, and we had to turn around. Next to us on the flower field, we saw funny sticks stuck into the ground with ‘ammoniac’ written on them. No idea how that affected us, but it made me seriously reconsider Antwerp as a place to live. According to reports, Antwerp is among the 50 most polluted regions in the world and has the fourth-largest concentration of nitrogen dioxide in Europe. The city is slowly killing us and I had no idea about it.
The trip was fun and eye-opening at the same time.
Hiking the GR5A in the Flemish Ardennes: the sound of silence
Sat on the trunk of a tree, in the middle of a forest plastered against the flanks of a hill in Geraardsbergen, we listened to the silence of nature when suddenly the chatter of a small group of hikers punctured the peace and quiet. Only then did we realise how quiet it had been – and how easy it is to take that kind of silence for granted. And especially how rare that silence is in our urban lives, in a city like Antwerp where everything is loud, from the road works in our street to the buzz in the library (undoubtedly the loudest in the world, I know fully packed football stadiums that are quieter).
That realisation, on that tree trunk, was exactly why we had started this long-distance hike, almost four months earlier. To get away into nature, to find ourselves. The 570-kilometre-long GR5A roughly follows the contours of two Belgian provinces – east and west Flanders – and should bring us to the coast somewhere next year. It somehow manages to show us the prettiest images of my homeland, the forests and marshes, the sleepy countryside and historic centres of towns and cities, without revealing too much of the ugliness. For that, I salute the mappers of GR.