My flight from Flores was so quick, it felt like it was over before it began. Less than an hour after take off I was on the ground in Guatemala City. After a quick lunch at the airport I was in a car on my way to my next stop, Antigua. Despite Guatemala City being the capitol and the most populous city in Guatemala, Antigua is the epicenter of the country, at least as far as tourism goes. With it’s…
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 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…