Kalilandia

We have taken our doze of organized adventure and activities in the mountains around Monteverde and start our trip towards the Pacific. We will skip the Caribbean side (this time) as there are still torrential storms over there.  This is our first longer drive and we run out of mobile credit, we have no GPS, we have a fairly useless paper map with 5 big cities marked on it, we speak no Spanish and we get lost in a village, where there are like 10 people (out of which 5 drunks), just when it starts pouring rain.  At some point, looking for someone across the streets, I see a heavily hangovered guy, covered in tattoos, smoking in front of a bakery (?!) with his buddy. I ask "Donde vamos por Samara?" (this is when reggeaton gets useful, thank you Romeo Santos). The tattooed guy responds in perfect English "How can I help you?" (and this is when 50 Cent gets useful, I guess?). He takes us to his own bar (!?), where we actually manage to get wifi in this villag...

Life in Monteverde was good! Starting from our accommodation, called with the very self-explanatory name "Romantic cabana"... going through some night encounters with vipers and jumping from 200 meters above the jungle, Monteverde was a bliss. Romance on a hill Accommodations in Costa Rica will prove to be a miraculous and sometimes a very important part of the experience, which is only normal when  you open the door and the view grabs you and takes you on a journey of contentment with just being where you are.   One of the definitions of romance is "the idealization of reality", but also "the expression of love". I think our Romantic cabin in the village Santa Elena, next to the village Monteverde, responded to the second. We also take the chance to eat our favorite Costa Rican breakfast every morning, in as big quantities as we can handle, because it is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S - grilled Costa Rican white cheese, boiled casava, avocados,...

Reaching a next level of driving They say that the Julian Alps in Slovenia offer some of the most impressive Alpine landscapes. Why take a plane when you can drive half way through Europe to visit them? Quite obvious, we think. We load the car with a tent, sleeping bags, pillows, blankets and a sufficient amount of coffee and we - Jenthe (the pilot), me (the singing co-pilot) and our navigator Ednorozhka (a white unicorn) - head from Belgium to Slovenia around 22:00h on a beautiful Friday evening.  We drive through Germany - Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich and meet the morning in Austria. The landscapes start expanding around us, but we realize our estimated driving time is expanding, too. Mountains are growing, hours are growing, too. Many of the main roads are closed, so we need to take some mountain roads. These deviations turn our estimated 12-hourish road trip to something like a beautiful 19-hourish road trip (including a 2-hour nap in the car).  Driving through ...

We are sometimes naive enough to think that we can get prepared for anything, if we try hard enough. The truth is, we are never truly prepared for any experience until we actually face it.  I did read a substantial amount of blogs and guides about trekking in the Himalayas, I even did short treks in the Bhutanese Himalayas a few years back. However, nothing could prepare me for doing the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal - neither for its challenges, nor for its marvels. Kathmandu - Besisahar - Chamje - Dharapani - Chame  The perils of riding Nepalese vehicles The first few days of my journey are mainly marked by excitement. I am cheerfully approaching every part of the beginning. As I leave Kathmandu at 4:30h in the morning, we already have a little accident - my taxi hits a motorbike on the street..."bla bla bla Namaste bla bla bla Namaste", everything is arranged peacefully between the drivers. I find myself in a local van, where I am the only foreigner, except for...