This one time in Nicaragua I attended a pool party at a popular backpacking hostel in the beach town of Las Peñitas. Conversing with a bunch of young travellers over many cans of Toña, a pattern began to emerge that I couldn’t really comprehend. These people have been all over South America, they’ve been to Panama, Costa Rica, and they’re now in Nicaragua. Next they’re … Continue reading Don’t Skip El Salvador, Sillies
I have been looking forward to today for a pretty long time. I persuaded my friend to drive us for 11 hours through batshit insane Honduras to get here, and we were up and showered by 7am, driving from our sleepy little Oasis hostel at the beach town of Las Peñitas to nearby León to meet a dude called Aris at his office. Aris operates an … Continue reading Volcano-Surfing Nicaragua
There are two ways to get from La Tortuga Verde, El Salvador’s most chilled waterfront paradise, to León, home of Nicaragua’s only surfable volcano. One of these doesn’t involve driving through Honduras, so that’s what we tried first. We rocked up to La Unión where there were many boats in the ‘harbour’ and a lot of boatmen twiddling their thumbs in a nearby bar who we hoped would jump at … Continue reading The Hazards of Honduras
I read about five minutes ago that less than 0.1% of British people have been to El Salvador, which, apart from making me feel all smug for apparently being part of my country’s travel elite, made me pretty sad for the remaining 64,370,000. This figure may even be generous given the likelihood that many of those who claim to have been to this place were … Continue reading San Salvador: The Best City You’ve Never Been To
Deepest winter, which we are currently very much in the midst of, puts a limit on the amount of Norway’s great outdoors the casual tourist can reasonably engage with. The days are short, the roads are snowy, and all the country’s most popular fjord-based attractions are coated in several inches of solid ice. We kind of knew this when we booked our tickets, but we weren’t very … Continue reading Norway in a Nutshell
I arrived in Bergen at 3am not out of choice but because, as a general rule, planes do not work properly when I am on them. Bits fall off, flaps malfunction, things start to smoke…. that kinda thing. Today it was the windscreen that shattered on aircraft number one and the de-icer that called it quits on aircraft number two. Amongst other things. Here’s a full account of … Continue reading Bergen + Oslo
It’s that time of year again, when it’s good and proper to look back on what happened in the previous 12 months and smugly congratulate yourself for how awesome a year you gave yourself. It may have been a bit of a shite year if you care about your celebrities being alive, and we may have taken a step closer to total global sociopolitical chaos… but … Continue reading Year in Review: 2016
In my last post, I explored how and why a rational individual might travel to the other side of the planet for a long weekend, using my recent trip from Scotland to Singapore as the case in point. I deviated somewhat from my regular travel-journal-with-pics style post, but don’t you worry, I’ve done that too. Here is what you can actually get up to with your 5000 minutes in … Continue reading 5000 Minutes in Singapore
People get all kinds of surprised when in response to their socially-mandated inquiry into your planned weekend activity you tell them that you’re popping over to Singapore. Travelling from Scotland to South East Asia for a three-night runaround is apparently something only a crazy person would do. Have you met me, though? Borderline lunacy is kind of my thing. Especially when it is of the travel variety. It helped my … Continue reading Long-Haul Micro-Tripping
The inside cover of my guide book seemed to have a tough time finding a pleasant way to sell São Paulo to the common tourist. The opening paragraph was full of words like “polluted” and “ungainly”, “concrete” and “sprawling”. If I hadn’t booked the flights before doing the reading, I might have had second thoughts about spending the second part of my Brazilian trip here. … Continue reading São Paulo is a City
the lost scot 