Firstly a lot of tourists “skip” Guatemala City from their itinerary and visit to Guatemala. Some even ridiculously fly into GC airport and get a minibus straight out to Antigua!! Big mistake as far as I’m concerned as they miss the beating heart, the pulsating throb and the vivacious beast of the nation’s lively capital.…
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“How will you ever learn when your hands are tied and your bridge is burned?” – Mark Morriss Bonjour. Hola. Jo San La. Guten Tag. Jo Napot. Bout Ye! This is actually my 1,650th proper travel blog post on Don’t Stop Living which coincides ridiculously with being on the 7 year anniversary of my blog,…
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It’s been a while since I’ve written a post on Tuesday’s Travel Problems and the only real excuse for this is being occupied on other things, such as writing about getting visas, crossing borders, backpacking through villages and jungle tours. If you read my post a few years back on the need to avoid insect…
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“Hey Xela, stars about to fall so what do you say, Xela” – Noel Gallagher, lyrics altered slightly (Lyla) Quetzaltenango (Xela) is a decent backpacking beast. Factually it is Guatemala’s second biggest city. Though quite where these half a million odd locals actually are could baffle you. We arrived across the border from Ciudad Cuauhtemoc…
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Throw Belem into anyone’s dreams of backpacking in Brazil and you might get the “where is that?” response. I don’t blame them for asking that. But when you get beneath the surface of a city like Belem you get to know its charm and you realise – these are cool places and you might not…
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*** STOP PRESS **** VOTING WILL END at 11.59 pm (GMT) on 31st December 2014 Hi readers, followers, friends, You might have heard I’m on a conquest to “crack the century” (i.e. visit 100 real countries properly). As I close in on my 99th country on this backpacking journey, I thought it would be fun for…
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It’s been seven years since I went backpacking in the USA and while I have fond memories of touring Los Angeles and New York on the cheap, it’s the realisation that the world is huge and we may never be there again. Here’s a sure fire top 5 things to do in Atlantic City in New…
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Here goes. This is a big one. A big one for me personally. Every single time I hear the mention of Maradona, Norman Whiteside, Jose Batista, Joel Bats etc. I get inspired. The 1986 World Cup Finals in Mexico were my first major childhood memory. Northern Ireland qualified. We punched well above our weight, defying…
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Oaxaca de Juarez comes as a pleasant surprise as you bus your way south of Mexico City. In the wake of a lot of air disasters, it was a wise move to use buses in Mexico and we had quite a few before heading to Guatemala. We arrived by bus into Oaxaca and decided on…
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This one felt good, I won’t deny that. The reason being that in 2011 it was a big hassle and stress the first time I got my Suriname Visa, I wrote about that before in the Suriname Visa struggle post and the aftermath that explains how to get a Suriname Visa in Caracas, Venezuela. I…
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