If you ever find yourself in the Northern Hemisphere around December to February, bogged down in the winter blues, and in serious need of vitamin D, southern Spain is your answer. Specifically Andalusia. With only on average 7 days of rain in the rainiest month of December (compare that to 23 in Ireland…), it’s a …
South Africa spoiled hiking for me. There’s no better paradise for hikers than at the tip of Africa, specifically in the Western Cape. Where else in the world can you get jagged peaks, lush valleys, hidden waterfalls, refreshing swimming holes, and epic views for days? Read on for ten of my favourite hikes in the …
Accessible just an hour and a half outside of Cape Town, the 35km Highlands Trail is the ideal starter trail if you want to get a taste of an overnight multi-day hike. Since we were keen on doing the 3 to 4 day Congo Nile Trail hike in Rwanda but had never done a multi-day …
If you’re trying to plan a trip to the Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), you’ll probably have realised by now there’s very little useful information to plan your trip. To be fair, Eswatini is overshadowed by the epic Drakensberg Mountains in the south and the rich wildlife of Kruger National Park in the north. That …
If you’re headed out to find the Big Five in Kruger, you might want to consider tacking on a detour to the Panorama Route to stretch your legs after all the safari drives. The route lies just west of Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga, stretching from Graskop in the south up to the Three Rondavels …
Arangieskop is considered to be the ‘Mount Kilimanjaro of the Cape’, not necessarily because of its height, but because of how the whole first day is ‘up, up, up’ and the second day is ‘down, down, down’. The 21km loop trail up and down the 1696m mountain is typically hiked in two days, with an …
If you’re looking for a change of scene from Cape Town or want to experience something unique during your trip to South Africa, head over to Cederberg. Just 3 hours drive from Cape Town, and you’re in an entirely different world. While fynbos is lovely and all, nothing beats some really nice rocky landscapes. The …
I’m ashamed to admit that Brazil wasn’t on my travel radar until I received funding to attend a conference in Fortaleza in June 2018. Naturally, I had to take the opportunity to sneak in a two-week visit to a few places around Brazil while I was there. In hindsight, I could have used a full …
The Garden Route stretches between beautiful coastal towns from Witsand to Nature’s Valley in the Western Cape, South Africa. Technically, TsiTsikamma isn’t part of the Garden Route, but its lush forests tempted us to include this park as our farthest point east on our Garden Route trip. We only had 5 days we could take …
The Congo Nile Trail spans 227 km along Lake Kivu from Cyangugu in the south to Gisenyi/Rubavu in the north. Most people will walk the 80km unpaved section between Kibuye and Gisenyi. Lake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes, lies between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Not only is Lake Kivu …