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:
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La Palma, El Salvador: art, nervewracking bridge and bloodthirsty dogs
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.
6 Things to do around Lago de Yojoa, Honduras
Travelling long term, we need to take a break from the classic backpacking sometimes and stay somewhere for a little while longer. If only to get some words on the paper. We hadn’t had such a break since we became carpenters in Finca Ixobel in Poptún. When I read about Lago de Yojoa – a tranquil lake which not only has lots of nature on its shore, but also a craft brewery – I was instantly convinced I had found the perfect spot for exactly that.
Life, however, is more than writing (and drinking beer), so we still made a couple of side trips. Here’s our list of things to do around Lago de Yojoa. Continue Reading →
Coastal hiking in Estonia (part two): in praise of the freedom to roam
The long Nordic summer day slowly closes its curtains and we enjoy a sip of red wine from a cardboard cup, and a perfect sunset on the beach of Krapi – a lively duel between shades of orange and purple across the entire width of the sky, ending in the Gulf of Riga. An hour earlier, we trudged several hectometres into the water to enjoy an evening swim among colonies of swans.
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