Santa Barbara is a nice little town, with low rise buildings with red tiled rooftops, reflecting the Spanish colonial heritage. There is a pleasant and easygoing ambience, all in accord with what the traveller expects to find after viewing so many Hollywood movies. We...
We flew the next day to Bodø, a small town of 50 thousand people, which markets itself as the ‘gateway to Norway’s true north'. The city was still covered with a layer of ice, making walking quite challenging, so we spent about three hours until the ferry’s departure,...
We flew from Athens to Copenhagen and then to Bergen. The second largest Norwegian city is the hub to the fjord world, surrounded by great landscapes and dominated by the bold color palette of the city’s houses. When we arrived the sun was shining, the skies were...
We arrived in Quito on Friday evening, after a long flight form Madrid. Mariscal Sucre, the new international airport is about one hour drive form the old town. We lodged in the beautiful Hotel Patio Andaluz, now declared a National Treasure, close to Plaza Grande....
Still overwhelmed by the rainforest and the Huaoranis, we started early in the morning from Quito to go south. We rented a car and a driver without any guide. Our planned itinerary included the Quilotoa loop, Baños, Riobamba, Guamote, Alausà and finally Cuenca. Then...
We returned to Quito and met with Nana and Vassilis who had arrived from Athens the day before. Our hotel for the night was on La Ronda, the nightlife strip of Quito, but surprisingly the sound isolation was perfect and I slept like a stone. The next morning we got on...
Originally, we did not intend to include Galápagos in the itinerary to save some time and money. Then, fortunately, I changed my mind. The Galápagos was going in and out of the bucket list for quite sometime and since I did not go the during my first visit to Ecuador,...
The following morning we flew to Yangon, to complete our Myanmar trip. Our guide and driver waited for us in the airport. The usual stuff: polite but very limited knowledge of the English language. The city is pleasant, more westernized than one should expect and has...
We arrived in time in the airport to catch our flight to Ngapali that left before the scheduled time! The heat wave struck the second I went out of the airplane. After we cleared immigration (! weird, we were not coming from abroad) we headed to the Amata resort, a...
The second largest lake in Myanmar is only 116km² in size and a mere 2m deep on the average. Some seventy thousand people lead their lives on these waters. After lunch in one of the lake side restaurants, we got on the boat to our lodge. The afternoon light was great...