Neanderthalers are alive in Estonia. They sojourn on the banks of Lake Õdri amidst Karula National Park. A big family of buffoons occupied the whole RMK campsite. Magazines, garden chairs and badminton rackets were strewn all over the ground. They were noisy, ate with their mouths so far open that you could see their uvulas, and farted and burped loudly as if it were their way to honour the company of strangers. A few of the men of the company started chopping down trees to feed the fire. In. A. Protected. National. Park.
Continue Reading →Tag: hiking
How to access national parks and hiking trails in Estonia by public transport
However glorious Tallinn, Tartu and Pärnu can be, you’re missing out on a quintessential experience if you stick to the cities of Estonia. Nature is what defines this country. Wherever you turn, you’ll find forests and meadows full of wildflowers, dramatic cliffs and sandy beaches, marshes and bogs, lakes, islands, and waterfalls.
Estonia’s nature can be enjoyed in every season, but the long June and July days are especially suitable for berry-picking, swimming in lakes, making bonfires, camping or simply going for a hike. Estonians use these summer months to recharge their batteries for the long and wearing winter.
No car? No problem! Cities are better connected than the countryside, but that doesn’t mean that backpackers or budget travellers can’t enjoy Estonia’s national parks and nature reserves using public transport. As long as you have time and patience, you can get almost anywhere.
Below, we list some options to inspire you. Nature is everywhere in Estonia, so your only limit is your own imagination. Be creative, get off the beaten track. If we can do it, without a car or smartphone, you can, too.
Continue Reading →Hikes, flamingos and a town called Carrot: Volcano Love’s travel highlights of 2019
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:
Continue Reading →La Palma: the village in El Salvador where Fernando Llort’s art rules
El Salvador is not the most popular destination for art lovers. It’s understandable- smaller countries tend to have less interesting stuff in their museum collections. MARTE, San Salvador’s art museum, is no exception to the rule. Most of the art there is pretty bad. But it’s an amusing experience nevertheless- every item has a price tag, just as if they’d be happy to sell their whole collection.
Continue Reading →Hiking in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco: Let the Wild Rumpus Start!
You can say a lot about Estonia (1), but not that it’s a mountainous country.
Okay, Lasnamäe was built on a plateau of limestone and extreme euphemists – the type of people who’d say that Donald Trump is one sandwich short of a picnic – call the region around Karksi-Nuia and Otepää ‘the Switzerland of the Baltics’. Let’s say they’ve never been in a hundred-kilometre radius of the Alps. But even with those terms in mind, you won’t need to pack climbing irons for the highest mountain molehill in the country. Not even now that it got a few metres higher. What did you expect from a landscape pimple with the name of Big Egg Mountain? And yes, there’s also a Small Egg Mountain. Reinhold Messner already calls for his mother.