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After all this hiking I went to the towns of Saint-Gilles-les Bains and Saint-Paul. There is a saint behind almost every town here. Diving wasn’t possible, I checked five centers and all were fully booked, so I spent time on the beach and had a great fish for lunch with a view of the beach.…

Had some time for the village itself. It won the title of one of the 150 prettiest villages in France, and the only one on La Réunion. It’s well-deserved. Low wooden buildings with tasteful decorations, not too many cars, and polite people. Very pastoral. Embedded in steep mountains on all sides. The village wakes up…

One would think I’d have enough hiking yesterday, so today I went all in and visited the Trou en Fer, a deep canyon with a waterfall. Trou en Fer means Iron hole; the water carries iron and colors the walls red. Getting to the viewpoint is hard. It’s 9km on narrow, rocky often very steep…

La Reunion doesn’t just have seaside towns, it’s actually more known for its steep green mountain ranges, including an active volcano (which is unfortunately hard to reach). So I was looking for options this morning in Saint-Pierre. The plan was to go scuba diving but I decided to see the mountains instead, and the most…

La Reunion is a small island. It takes two hours from saint de4nis in the north to Saint Pierre in the southwest. Since the northern coast is all steep cliffs, they built this enormous bridge a few hundred meters off the coast into the sea, very impressive. Saint Pierre is just as sleepy as Saint…

Off the coast of Madagascar, a very large African island, is the small island La Réunion, formerly Bourbon island from which vanilla beans take their name. It’s still a département of France,  which means I just took an 11-hour domestic flight from Paris. There are no arrival formalities, everybody speaks French, and you pay in…

It’s been a very warm and picturesque October. Here are some photos from yesterday’s bicycle ride in southern Brandenburg. All are straight from the DSLR camera, no color correction.… Read the rest

Macedonia Square is the largest square in the country, and I was right above it from the balcony of my hotel room. It’s the nexus of the old town in the north, on the other side of the river, and the considerably less attractive new town in the south. Much of the grand buildings here…

Spent sone time walking the bazaar, which is really a tangle of pedestrianized alleys filled with tourist shops, cafés, and jewellery shops, but still manages to look pleasant and quiet. At the western side is Skopje’s fortress, which is really just the original bastions and watch towers with a fantastic view of the city. The…

Pristina is the capital of Kosovo. Not quite as pretty as Prizren, but with plenty to see in and around the city. Like Gračanica Monastery, completely covered in murals inside. It’s actually quite cramped, I don’t see how you could fit more than 20 people inside, but that means more space for the murals. There…

Countries are small here, it’s just two hours by bus into neighboring Kosovo. Neither country is an EU member (yet) so there is an ID check at the border. People smoke a lot, even the bus driver did, and so did restaurant guests… They need to get that under control asap. But Kosovo uses the…

Macedonia is a religious country, churches are all over the place. Not the towering cathedrals of northern Europe but little ones dating back to the Byzantine empire, covered in frescoes and without pews. You want to pray, you do it standing up. This is St. Pantaleon south of Skopje, built in the 12th century. According…

The canyon is near Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, the country north of Greece. I really loved Albania a few years back, so I wanted to see some of the neighbors. Friendly people, a beautiful countryside, and filled with churches, monasteries, and also mosques. Matka canyon isn’t far from Skopje. They offer boat tours,…

This year, the olympic games will be held in Paris. They lit the olympic flame in Olympia and brought it to Marseille on a historic sailing ship, the Bélem. I was there at the old harbor when it arrived, together with what felt like half of Marseille. The banner shows the flame being carried through…

Nantes is a French city near the point where the Loire meets tje Atlantic. City landmarks are usually cathedrals or other buildings, but Nantes has an elephant. The elephant is a giant mechanical steampunk animal with three floors, built by an artist collective that also built all kinds of other mechanical animals. Some are tiny,…

The neighborhood of N’Gor of Dakar can be reached only by two roads, the rest is blocked by a large military airport. The place feels very different from downtown Dakar: it’s very rich, modern, and clean, and half of it is new development. Large billboards advertise split-level luxury condos that are in total contrast to…

I found it hard to find beauty in Senegal. Everything is simple, functional, and dusty. But N’Gor island is beautiful with its painted buildings, its artist, and its flowers. N’Gor sounds like a Star Trek species but it’s a neighborhood in the northwest of Dakar, with a small island a few hundred meters off its…

There are people who believe that Ramadan, the month-long Muslim fasting period, is threatening Western culture somehow. To me it looks the other way around – based on the ads I see in Dakar, Ramadan is turning into some kind of commercialized Black Friday. Welcome to Western culture. I was a bit afraid of Ramadan…

Saint-Louis is at the northern border of Senegal. It’s scenically located on two narrow parallel islands between the mainland and the Atlantic. A lot of colonial architecture has survived here, although sometimes crumbling. It gives the city charm, something that the utilitarian downtown of the capital Dakar lacks completely. It’s also quite clean, only the…

Janjanbureh, aka Georgetown, is two thirds up the Gambia river to its source. It’s a sleepy very basic village with little to do besides river travel. It’s incredibly hot here, all surfaces burn your hand, even my camera and smartphone were so hot I am surprised they didn’t shut down. There are hippos here but…

Gambia the country is essentially Gambia the river plus the land 10-20 km to either side. It’s said that the British steamed up the river and declared all land that their cannons could reach, theirs. That method of drawing borders must have seemed sensible at the time. I followed the road in the south side…

That’s a national park south of Kotu Beach, where I am staying. You must have a guide there who explains the forest, and points out eucalyptus trees (quite unlike those in Australia and North America), incense trees with burnable sap, giant termite hills, gibbons, and more. Some of the trees ans ahrubs have vicious thorns.…

Early in the morning, when it was still dark, I boarded a large old wooden pirogue boat at Niodior (pronounced something like Mordor) that would take me from Senegal to the neighboring The Gambia. It seemed inadequate to cross the open sea but got me there in three hours. The ride was a little bumpy…

The name sounds like Dior but it’s another simple small village down the coast. No luxury here. I am staying with a local family in their simple home. There is little design, everything is practical. Things are stacked on the floor where necessary, plastic lawn chairs, curtains for doors, no windows in the rooms. The…

I had booked a guide recommended by the hotel in Mbour, so we took off in the morning. First to get supplies at the stinky market in Djifer, then we picked up kayaks and paddled for a long time through the mangroves in the delta. The guide had a big kayak stacked high with tents,…

In fact it is a baobab tree. They look different here than in the Madagascar movie.… Read the rest

Much of Senegal is in the Sahel zone, a dry band spanning Africa, and it shows. Most village and town streets are just sand, like on a beach. Few trees, savannah shrubs, or just large expanses of sandy fields. To find color and life you need to see the coast. Buildings are mostly cinderblocks, compacted…

It’s so amazingly quiet in my Mbour resort, I wanted to find out where all the tourists are. They are 6km to the north, in Saly, where the buffet hotels and French hypermarchés are. Saw people with white skin, and despite Ramadan the restaurants are open. I’ll spare you the pictures because I didn’t take…

Took an early bus to Mbour at the Atlantic coast. A little north is Saly, which is more popular, but it’s rather too touristy there for me, with its big buffet hotels. I found a wonderful tranquil resort right at the beach. To get on a bus, evem if it’s only a hundred kilometers, you…

The capital of Senegal doesn’t know what to do with tourists. They don’t get many. While Dakar is still a notch above Dhaka in Bangladesh, poverty and shantytowns are pervasive, making more modern neighborhoods feel like investor transplants airlifted in place. I do not feel welcome here but I didn’t let that stop me. The…