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 had about a five hour drive from Mashatu northwest to my next stop, the Khama Rhino Sanctuary. I checked into my little chalet and rested up for the next days activities. The Khama Rhino Sanctuary was started in the 1990’s in an attempt to save the near extinct rhino population. It’s been a pretty good success too. They currently have around 35 white rhinos (I’ve heard different numbers from different sources) and 4 black rhinos, all guarded by round…
Welcome to Botswana! Holy crap time flies! It seems like I barely had time to catch my breath after the last trip and suddenly, I’m on another adventure. I’ll start off by saying that Botswana was not easy to get to, at least not from the USA. My trip started in Salt Lake City with a flight to Newark, and then a Holy Crap Adventures first, an airport change. From Newark I took a shuttle for a very circuitous tour…
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…
Modena was just a quick stop for me, quick but busy. Busy because most of the sites I came here to see aren’t even in Modena, they’re in nearby towns. It was just a short train ride from Ravenna to get here, then I dropped my backpack off at the hotel since it was too early to check in, and immediately walked to the bus station to make my way to the first site on my agenda in Maranello. That’s…
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…