Another bus full of tourists, another border crossing, without the corrupt officials this time though, and it’s welcome to Guatemala. My base for this part of the trip is the tourist saturated Flores, a tiny little island in Lago Petén Itzá connected to Santa Elena on the mainland by a quarter mile long causeway. Flores is a cool place to stroll around, but as far as I can tell its just hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops. I’m staying in Santa…
My border crossing from Chetumal, Mexico, into the next country on my list, Belize, went pretty smooth, if not a little slowly. I took a bus full of tourists, just like me. First we exited the bus to get stamped out of Mexico. Normally you get charged a Mexican tourism tax with your airline tickets, which I did, but I read that the border guards try to scam tourists into paying it again when leaving. Me and the couple in…
I hope you’re comfortable because this post is gonna be dense. I left Tulum on an early bus going further south to Chetumal and then got right into a taxi to take me to the airport where I rented a car for this next leg of the trip. Because a car equals freedom. But before driving out of Chetumal, I made a quick stop at their Mayan Culture Museum. The museum was fairly small, but sure packed a punch. They…
Another adventure has begun! This has probably been the roughest start to any of my many trips so far, though. So much so that I’m not even in the right country. I was planning on three months in Thailand, but due to lots of miscommunication between Thailand immigration, the airlines, myself, and one stupid typo, I wasn’t allowed on the plane. The saga probably deserves a post of it’s own, but I’ll leave that for another time. Thailand, unfortunately, will…
From Maun I said goodbye to Botswana and made my way to the next country on my list, Namibia. I was supposed to have an hour and a half connection in Johannesburg, but my flight from Maun left thirty minutes late, and my flight from Johannesburg got changed to thirty minutes earlier, so an hour and a half turned into a thirty minute frantic sprint through the Johannesburg airport. I sprinted, cut in line at immigration, sprinted, cut in line…
I intentionally tried to end this trip to Italy with one of it’s bigger and more significant cities and Florence turned out to be perfect for just that. Along with the size and significance came an awful lot of people. This last several days has been a chaotic mix of pedestrian traffic jams, waiting in lines to see sights that a month ago I could just walk right into, and having to buy advance tickets for things wondering if I…
A very quick train from Bologna and I’m now in one if Italy’s, if not the world’s, most famous cities, the beautiful and enchanting Venice. When the Roman towns along the Adriatic coast were overrun by barbarians in the 5th century, the people ended up settling in these wetlands. In the early 8th century the first doge was elected and Venice slowly grew in power and size. Today, Venice is an unbelievably beautiful city, a tourist Mecca, comprised of 118…
My route from Modena to Bologna may be the shortest stretch of travel I’ve had on this entire trip. Just a quick thirty minute train ride. And since I’ve already passed through the train station here three times in the past week, I may as well explore the whole city. Bologna is a really busy university town, in fact, the university is the oldest university in the world, established in 1088. Bologna, despite all the idealistic young hipster students walking…
It was another long, yet easy travel day following the Adriatic coast way up north to Ravenna. It’s probably not one of Italy’s more famous cities, but perhaps it should be. For most of the 5th to 7th centuries, around three hundred years, while the rest of the empire was falling apart, Ravenna was the capital of western Rome and after that, the capital of the Ostrogoth kingdom. Today Ravenna is most well known as the mosaic capital of Italy….
Just a couple of short train rides, first north to Brindisi for a quick connection and now I’m in Matera, one of the oldest inhabited places on earth. One source I read claims that it’s the third longest inhabited place on earth. How they know that is beyond me, but in any case, civilization has been in this spot for around 7000 to 8000 years. A long long time! It was afternoon when I arrived, so I only had time…