The Joy of Solo Travel

I’VE BEEN BLESSED to have spent a combined total of three years in the last decade backpacking and travelling through 25 countries across 4 continents. My first foray abroad without parents was as a painfully shy teenager at the tender age of 17 to the Balearic island of Ibiza in the late ’90s. My buddy […]

Backpacking on a Budget – 10 Cost-Cutting Essentials

I spent several years during the decade that was my 20’s travelling far and wide with a limited budget. Central + South America, China, New Zealand, Mainland Europe were all tapped where I squeezed as much fun out of a limited budget as possible. What follows are my tried and tested tips to backpacking on […]

The Night I Faced an Ecuadorian Firing Squad

‘Squad’ might be a tad generous. There were, to the best of my memory, only three rifles aimed at us from the high walls that enclosed the palatial home of Alberto Antonio Alvarez Tufillo, Argentina’s Ambassador to Ecuador. Although the order was barked at us in Spanish, it was pretty clear what they demanded. My […]

Mountain Biking ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Road’

“OK Guys. To break the ice, everyone do a quick intro – your name, where you’re from and one fun fact about yourself.” We could barely make out what our Bolivian guide was saying because the van we were in, which was loaded with a dozen bikes on its roof rack was throwing the passengers […]

A Volcanic Adventure

It was my last week in the charming colonial city of Antigua in Guatemala. Four weeks were spent studying Spanish and I was looking forward to field testing my new skills in cities that weren’t so overrun with gringo’s. However, while I was still in Antigua, there were a few items I wanted to tick off […]