Category: Blog

For the record, I’m not saying travel makes your decisions better, although it might. What it definitely does is it makes you a better decision maker.

Although I was being conscious of staying fit and healthy throughout the 9 months of my travels, I was expecting to gain some extra weight, because I really didn’t hold back when it came to tasting local delicacies (Save the fried worm in Ecuador, but that had little to do with healthy diet and more…

It’s been a hell of a trip. I’ve seen, experienced and learned so much that I’d have to write a book to share all of it. Even if I had the time to do so, which I don’t, I’d never be able to tell the whole story. Most of what I’ve seen and learned cannot be put into…

I’ve travelled to a new place every other week for the past 9 months. That should make me a seasoned traveller. And it does to a certain extent. Getting to any location by public transport in a city I’ve never been to and whose language I don’t speak doesn’t scare me anymore. I know how…

I went to the market in Puerto Viejo from Cahuita and found out about a chocolate tasting tour by accident. I visited a couple of amazing beaches and saw how real chocolate is made from bean to bar. And made a video along the way.

You know those barriers (apparently called stanchions) they use at airports to make queues look smaller and fit the room? Yes, the ones that remind you of experiments in which rats desperately try to find their way out of a labyrinth. I had to go through the biggest one I’ve ever seen at Dallas airport…

My “office” in Cahuita Costa Rica I’m sitting on a bus to San Jose. In the last hour we haven’t advanced more than 5km. There was a hold up.

One year ago, I quit Facebook. It was driving me mad and I had to do something about it.  A year later, it’s time to draw some conclusions.

Who doesn’t dream about quitting the rat race? Jake Desyllas is one of the people who moved beyond dreaming and actually did it. He built a successful company, sold it, and has been able to spend his time doing whatever he likes ever since. I first heard about him through his podcast, The Voluntary Life,…

In Medellin it was difficult to find healthy and affordable places to eat out. Your options in Bogota are much more plentiful, but the street food scene is still dominated by deep fried stuff. Add to that the Colombians love for red meat and I might be forgiven for getting the impression that healthy eating…

Are you one of those careless people who click “agree” to anything without reading the fine print? We all click “agree” to the terms and conditions of life when we are born without knowing what they are. Decades later, when we run into some of the limitations defined by the fine print, we are often…

Last Friday I had a bad day. I was sleep deprived, frustrated and demotivated. It was the end of a busy week at work and I had almost no time to do the things I was planning to outside work. By Friday, I’d long given up on tracking tasks and my to-do list looked like…

A guy next to me was dozing off and snoring heavily as I waited to board my flight to Buenos Aries. The alarm on his phone was going off, and the loud speaker was shouting “last call” and probably his name, but he just kept sleeping. I couldn’t be sure if it was his flight,…

  Source: girlsinyogapants.com The beauty of travelling without a plan is you have no idea where you might end up going next. But eventually you have to make up your mind and pick a destination. After 3 months in Ecuador, I picked Medellin. It made sense geographically and I only heard good things about it.…

If I learnt one thing at college it was Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. For some reason it came up in several different subjects and the pyramid shape just burnt into my mind. I always suspected that it’s not a great model though. The hierarchy didn’t seem to make sense. I saw too many starving…

Although I left Ecuador more than a month ago and there is plenty of things I’d want to write about right now, I owe myself a summary on the country I stayed in for 3 months.

Montanita is a tiny beach town 3 hours from Guayaquil on the South-West coast of Ecuador. With its long beach ideal for surfing, uncountable restaurants, bars and clubs, and a reputation of being the “hippie capital” of Ecuador (some say South America), it attracts people from all over the world.

Every year, from the end of November to December 6, the people of Quito in Ecuador celebrate the foundation of the city. They call it Fiestas de Quito and it takes many forms. There are bullfights, parades, dancing in the street and of course the famous chivas – buses or lorries crammed with people dancing and…

I didn’t like Guayaquil in the first two or three days. It’s a huge city with 8 lane roads, masses of traffic and lots of dodgy looking areas. I arrived at 8 pm on a Sunday. I had no accommodation booked and I didn’t know a single person here. I could have booked something in…