Adventure of the month

Getting from one Sri Lankan beach town to another had been wonderfully easy. There were cheap public buses, which would normally be my first choice but there was also the Pickme app (aka Sri Lankan Uber) that offered a choice of taxis or tuktuks. For a couple of dollars, you could go town to town, door to door without ever having to worry if you had gotten on the wrong bus. I was getting spoiled. I was getting soft. All of it came to an end when I left the beaches and headed towards the southeast coast and its crazy abundance of wildlife. The further you go from the major towns and the beach area, the less likely you are to get a Pickme. I now had a choice: to pay full price for a taxi or figure out the bus system. Anyone that has ever traveled with me knows this is not a real choice. I tend to have more time than money and will almost always opt for public transportation. I could rhapsodize that this is about getting the local feel and becoming one with the people but let's

In an earlier post, I wrote about my unexpected road to Fiji. In short, I had used a voucher to buy a ticket to Nadi only to learn a month later that I would soon be moving to Fiji for four months. I was able to cancel my ticket and best example of a first world problem aside, now found myself with a voucher on my voucher. In deciding how to use voucher 2.0, I was applying my usual criteria in finding a new destination. It had to be a new country. Since I was going in December, it would have to either be in the southern hemisphere or have a very mild winter. It couldn't be too expensive to get there/ stay/ get around. And of course, there had to be fun stuff to do. The answer to the last part came to me not so much in a dream as in a dive bar happy hour. I was sitting at the bar, absentmindedly playing with my phone when the tv caught my eye. They were showing a nature program of some kind that featured amongst other things wild leopards, elephants and monkeys. I tried to fi

When is a pink lake not a pink lake? Before addressing this riddle, I should probably clarify a couple of things. When I say pink lake, I am not referring to the ones in Australia, Canada or Azerbaijan . My focus is on Lake Retba aka Lac Rose in Senegal. This is because I was recently spending some time in Dakar and thought it might make for a worthy outing. A Google maps search revealed it was less than a 30 minute drive so I thought it was strange when the hotel concierge booked our driver for 3 hours. Maybe there was a lot to see along the way. The truth is that Google maps has no idea what Senegalese roads or traffic look like. In theory, I guess you could cover twenty kilometers in 20 minutes or so but that theory would have to discount dirt roads, traffic and the occassional goat. It took us about an hour to arrive at Lac Rose's shores but I had seen enough vibrant Instagram pictures to know that it would be worth it.

The more you see, the more you realize there is to see. I don't know if that is an actual quote or a if it's saying that I saw somewhere and butchered for my own purposes. Either way, I use it a lot. Whenever someone introduces me and says something along the lines of "This is Berti. She's loves to travel and she's been everywhere", I'm quick to jump in and point out how much I haven't seen. I'll protest that "You know the saying, the more you see..." as the person wonders if I understand how small talk works and why I need to be so damn literal. However, there is some truth to it. Obviously, no one- no matter how well-traveled- has been everywhere. Nor should they. There are some boring ass places in this world. But there are also so so many amazing places. You would think that with the glut of travel shows, instagram influencers and  annoying bloggers, we would know about all of these places, whether we'd been or not. Case i

Friend: Hey, if you are interested, you can fly for free to Me: Awesome! Yes, I'll take it. Friend: Great, it'll be on flights to Me: When does it leave? I can get my bag right now.  Friend: Don't you want to know where it goes? Me: Does it matter? The answer is always going to be yes. But sure, where am I going? Malaga. Through an arrangement with a Dutch low-cost carrier, my colleagues and I could go to Malaga for free. I had already been , some eleven years ago. Twice. The first time I stayed in the port city itself and the second, I used it as a jumping off point for Sevilla and Granada. Both times, I fell madly deeply in love with Andalusia, the southern region of Spain.

Can't decide between a weekend getaway to Greece or Turkey? Want to do both but are limited on time? I've got the place for you: Cyprus. The southern half is culturally Greek, although not a part of Greece itself. The northern part is under Turkish control and is sometimes referred to as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It is essentially two countries for the price of one. In the span of one city block, you can go from a borek to a gyro, from Euro to Turkish Lira, from Efes to Mythos. Just don't think that this is a harmonious relationship. Far from it. There are a lot of geopolitical sticking points with the arrangement, none of which I am well-versed enough to discuss. I can only speak to the practical issues. For one, my Cypriot map- the nice official one that I had picked up at the tourist office in Larnaca- effectively ends when you reach Nicosia. Anything north of the dividing line could just as well be the Mediterranean Sea. There are no cities marked,

Four years ago, I was in Vilnius, Lithuania trying to plan out my day. Among the tours on offer was one to neighboring Belarus. In less than an hour, I could happily add a new country to my list. The problem- I had not realized this far enough in advance and did not have either the necessary visa or the time to get it. No Belarus for me. Fast forward to 2019, the visa requirement has been lifted and conveniently, there is now a direct flight from Amsterdam to Minsk. I visited in August, when the weather was perfect and was admiring the blue skies while trying to talk to the cab driver who picked me up at the airport. With no common language between us, I was working off of google translate. As I did this, he kept saying "Russian". It was obvious I am not Russian, so that's probably not what he was trying to ask but I had no clue what he was getting at. I just smiled and kept typing away. When I handed him my phone, he went straight to the language selection mode a

Reasons I was really excited about going to Tonga:  1. Are you kidding me with this? It's Tonga. It's a country that I have not been to, that I never thought I would have a chance to get to and now I have a flight booked to mother fucking Tonga!  2. Humpback whales. Other places have them but very few allow you the chance to get in the water and swim with them. Tonga is one of those magical places. So far this summer, I'd froliced with (look away if you hate shameless bragging): 3 species of reef sharks, bull sharks, turtles, giant mantas and whatever nudibranches are. I was due for a whale encounter.  3. Tonga is the only royal kingdom in the South Pacific. While all their neighbors were being occupied (mostly by the Brits and the French), Tonga maintained sovereignty. To this day, they have a king whose visage stares down on you from billboards all over the island. This reason is not all that exciting but I feel that lists work best in threes.

Samoa has a ridiculous number of churches. I would like to quantify "ridiculous" but no one I asked, not even google, could give me a number and I think I know why. There are simply too many to count! You could try but at some point, you are going to lose your place and have to start all over again. I know. I tried. About 15 minutes into my ride from Faleolo Airport into downtown Apia, I noticed that every other structure seemed to be a religious building of some kind. Usually, they came in pairs. If say a Protestant church opened on a corner, a Catholic one had to claim the adjacent turf. Curious, I started counting them. I hit 43 before I got bored and turned my attention elsewhere. And we were only 20 minutes into the ride.  Once we arrived at the uber-colonial Sheraton Aggie Grey , I was quickly reminded of what happens when missionaries really do a number on a small South Pacific Island. It was Sunday, so I expected the stores to be closed but I was certain it was

I've said it before but I'm lucky af. Or reventada, as my friend Ivon would say. You know how I know this is true? Because a fluke combination of circumstances recently led to me living in Fiji for almost four months. Meaning not only was I waking up in paradise every day, but on my days off, I could book convenient getaways to other nearby paradises. My first outing was to Vanuatu. I could babble about how it has always been my dream to visit this Pacific Island nation but that would be such total bullshit. Like most people, I had barely heard of Vanuatu. This might be why I was so fascinated when I met a couple from Australia who now lived in Port Vila. They painted such an appealing picture of this as-of-yet undeveloped tropical nirvana that I had no choice but to book my flight. With that done, I ran into the first obstacle when you are amongst the first to the touristic party. Try as I might, there were no hostels in Port Vila. Anyone that has read this blog, met me

I'd toyed with the idea of getting a proper underwater camera for a long time. I'd bought the disposable kind that you have to take into the store to get your photos developed... like a fucking cave person. I'd bought a cheapie one that produced meh photos and gorged on batteries that I never seemed to have on hand. It was a mess. When I made the decision to go to Fiji and swim with sharks- check out the last post for more details- I finally broke down and bought a GoPro. For the unfamiliar, this is a tiny but rugged camera that is generally associated with very physically active people. I am not that person. If you ever see me scaling the side of a mountain, know that there is some really scary shit is coming up from below. Honestly, I am surprised they even sold it to me. Anyways, all that aside, I now had an underwater camera. That same motivating factor, swimming with sharks, got me back into diving. I realize by phrasing it this way, it could be implied that at s

In our last episode, our quarantined blogger looked back on happier times and began a list of the her favorite Fijian escapades. It has now dawned on this blogger person that even with the benefit of too much free time, this might be too ambitious an undertaking. There were a lot of great times in Fiji. Like a lot a lot. There is no possible way to list them all. Instead, this blogger- me, we are talking about me- will continue to try and hit some of the more memorable highlights. One that comes to mind right away was my birthday. Why was it so special? Well, for starters, I was in fucking Fiji!  On my birthday! That's pretty special. Add to that, my friend Iliana, who had just flown in from Miami. Which leads me to a story. Back in February, I had an airline voucher that was about to expire. I went on the AA website and started plugging in a bunch of "dream destinations" to see if I could make any of them work. I saw that for $1200 (minus my $800 voucher), I coul

Full truth: This post will appear as if it was written in April 2019. It wasn't. Today's date is actually April 5, 2020. I, along with sensible people everywhere, am "sheltering in place", trying to ride out the Covid-19 epidemic that has brought the planet to a standstill. It is jarring and hard to believe that exactly one year ago, I was about to embark on a truly once-in-a-lifetime adventure. On April 9th, 2019 I landed in Nadi, Fiji. My co-workers and I were supposed to stay for an undetermined amount of time or more specifically as long as it took to get the Boeing Max up and flying. We all figured we had a couple of weeks, at best, before having to return home. We ended up staying until July 24th. The Max still wasn't (and still isn't) fixed but we ended up living in paradise for three and a half months. In that time, I took advantage of being based in this far-flung part of the world and dropped in on Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga, all of which I pos

Back in January, I had a couple of days off in Buffalo. To be clear, I think we can all agree that there are at least two things horribly wrong with that last sentence. 1. Up until recently, Buffalo was not a place I'd choose to be under the best of circumstances. 2. Anytime that you combine Buffalo and the middle of winter, that is anything but the best of circumstance. Yet here I was. Trying to make lemonade out of bored and bitter lemons, I figured that I could go to Niagara Falls and get some of those cool frozen waterfall pics that pop up on all those nature sites. Or to rephrase, when faced with the dilemma of what to do in the Siberian hellscape that is western New York in January, my first instinct was to get the hell out, even if it was to a possibly colder place.

I knew approximately three things about Portland: 1. It is located somewhere in the Northwest. Ask me to differentiate it from Seattle on an unmarked map and I would have, at best, a 50% chance of getting right. 2. Based on reporting by famed documentarian, Fred Armisen, it is a designated hipster preserve. 3. A new friend, who is earning cool points by the bucketful, has spent a lot of time there. As a result of this, he send me off armed with what some would call an exhaustive list of recommendations. Now here's one thing I did not know: 1. How cold it could get. By conflating it with Seattle, I pictured gray, rainy days but nothing that would require serious layering. I was oh so very wrong.

For the past six years, figuring out New Year's Eve plans has been pretty simple. Seeing as I live in a mid-rise in the middle of downtown Miami with a view to most of the area's firework displays, it was a given that the party would be at my place. It's always worked out wonderfully. We don't have to pay exorbitant cover charges. I got to play hostess, which I love, and my friends always had a place to crash once the party was over. Problem is, after my latest run-in with the evil that is mold, my apt is a demolition zone and not in the cool fashion-shoot kind of way. It's an uncomfortable mess and definitely not suitable for entertaining, no matter how much champagne we pour into little plastic flutes. Therefore, we were in need of a plan B.  This where my friends, Ivon and Sylvia came up with an always wonderful idea. A road trip. We would move this shindig to St Augustine.