Category: Travel
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Santa Catalina Convent, Arequipa
The water looks dirty, but isn’t. You can see the goldfish clearly enough after all. The Santa Catalina Convent in Arequipa is an astonishing city within a city. In spite of the noise and bustle of the city outside, it manages to maintain a quiet calm. The nuns who lived here (and a small number…
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I Like It Low
I couldn’t believe how big this guy’s paintings were. Seems that as he got older his eyesight deteriorated. His solution? Paint so that at least he could see what he was doing! I believe this painting is by Andy Warhol. But I’m culturally dumb, so can’t rely on my memory. What I do know…
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Road to Bolivia
This photo is on the main road from North Chile to Bolivia as it heads through Chile’s Lauca National Park. This is the nice and easy part – it seems that once in Bolivia the road deteriorates significantly in quality and safety. Just a few weeks after I took this picture a minibus full of…
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Valle de la Luna
Ok, first shot to go up on the photoblog*. I’ve decided to leave it up even though it’s a relatively poor quality re-size. However, I feel it still illustrates the beauty and scale of this location. Here we are, perhaps 1000m above the valley floor below. Priscilla, who I’d just met on this part of…
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Maps of the World
Maps have always fascinated me – I can stand staring at them for hours. Or at least, minutes. Whether it’s a small map of the area, or something covering the whole globe. There’s a few in particular that stand out as interesting, partly for their political background, and others for their technical approach. The first…
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Cuban bathrooms
Cuba has, shall we say, a more relaxed approach to electrical safety than some other countries. In part because it’s poor – good electrics are expensive – but also, I suspect, because of some ignorance and lackadaisical enforcement too. But I was still surprised to see this shower in our first B&B: I will say…
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Transport in Cuba
Transport anywhere in what can be considered a third world country is quite a challenge to anyone used to online booking of easyJet flights. But… if you’ve arrived with Western wealth then it’s never going to be all that bad either. I mean for sure, your chances of arriving on time are little better than…
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First Impressions in Cuba
If you fly with First Choice on their Cuba West Traveller scheme they give you your first night’s accomodation free. The idea, we think, is that in Cuba you can’t just turn up as a typical itinerant and expect to wander about. Of course, that’s exactly what you can do… You just need to give…
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Liverpool Airport (Speke)
Liverpool has one of those small airports that’s done rather well over the past decade. A rise in air travel has been good for many airports, yet Liverpool’s Speke airport (now known as Liverpool John Lennon Airport) has done especially well. Why? Because first of all they worked well with easyJet – with a combination…
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Rocking in Paris
I spend… oooh, lots of time in Paris. Yet I’ve never actually quite got round to writing about it on this site. Why not? Good question. Perhaps because it’s a little personal. I’ve lived there, loved there, and so on. To talk about it in depth may reveal me more to the world at large.…