Category

Diving

6-8 days, Beach, Culture, Destinations, Diving, Europe, Experiences, Italy, Itineraries

Cruising through Puglia, Italy’s heel

I arrive in Bari, a busy modern port and the largest city in Puglia, tired. The many hours on the road navigating the 1,200 km between my home in South Germany and Italy’s heel seem endless. Though most of it is an interesting drive. Traversing the Alps and Northern Italy to land at the edge of Europe feels like moving through different worlds. As we drive south, the change in scenery is extreme. Puglia is like a different continent, a place apart. Caught between the Adriatic and the Ionian seas, it’s the end of something and the beginning of something else. 

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3-5 days, Asia, Beach, Destinations, Diving, Experiences, Indonesia, Itineraries

Bawah Reserve, Indonesia’s finest private island

It’s late October when I am picked up at home in Singapore on an early Friday morning. Unlike most of my travels, this time, I’m loving the idea of a resort holding my hands from the moment I step out of my door until I reach its final destination. Yet I am quite intrigued by the place I’m headed. I can barely find it on a map. My husband points at the waters between peninsular Malaysia and Borneo on Google Maps. I have to zoom it in hard to realize those little dots are actual islands. 

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14-18 days, Beach, Culture, Destinations, Diving, Experiences, Itineraries, Oceania, Papua New Guinea

The coral reefs of Papua New Guinea

My search for the world’s most exotic tribes in one of the most undocumented landscapes left on the planet ends in dramatic encounters. In Papua New Guinea, not only do I come across extraordinary indigenous peoples who adorn themselves with wondrous ornamentation and keep alive ancient rituals, but I also discover the most pristine offshore reefs that remain.

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4 days, 5 days, Beach, Diving, Maldives, Wildlife

Where the Mantas run wild 

When the seaplane lands on the waters of a remote atoll, in an Equator-straddling island somewhere in the Indian Ocean, I am not able to anticipate the dramatic wilderness of the place. The navy-blue waters sometimes interrupted by shades of infinite turquoise are, perhaps, the most obvious appeal of the idyllic paradise where I am headed. But there is so much beyond that. Beneath the surface of this ridiculously alluring ocean, lies one of nature’s most extraordinary events – and this is what drives me to this part of the world in the first place.

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Diving, Experiences, Uncategorized

Freediving

Five years ago, on a trip to Venezuela, I scuba dived for the first time. It was a journey that kicked off my passion for the ocean and its conservation. Since then, I’ve been traveling the world improving my diving skills in search of the most pristine coral reefs and wildlife. The more I understood the ocean, though, the more I challenged myself to be in harmony with the sea. I desired to dive with no weights and tanks, in the most natural way possible alongside the greatest’s marine creatures on earth. Then, I went to Hanifaru Bay – the world’s largest manta ray feeding station located in the Maldives – where one is not allowed to scuba dive.

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10 days, Beach, Culture, Diving, Indonesia, Motorcycle

Inside Flores

There is something about Flores that is rather unearthly. This diverse island in Eastern Indonesia with its savannah landscape, pristine oceans, impressive volcanoes and lakes resemble a wilderness that seems to belong to another place and time. Though it is just an hour flight from the internationally-acclaimed Bali, Flores is an island still covered in relative obscurity.

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12 days, Beach, Diving, Mozambique, Wildlife

Beyond the waters of Mozambique

From the sky of an almost empty Savannah, we spot three herds of elephants running across Mozambique’s once war-torn plains. As we move from the city to the wilderness, it is the untouched that excites me – Africa at her most genuine. But the open vista has never been like this. 15 years of civil war tore apart one of the densest wildlife populations in Africa, and now, 25 years later, the megafauna is slowly getting back on track. Unlike our previous trips to Africa, though, this time we are not looking for the Big Five. We travel to Mozambique in search of what lies beneath the surface. As our chopper turns from the Bush to the Beach, I’m seduced by 2,500 Km of a dramatic and untouched coastline. And then I’m convinced this journey is all about the ocean.

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3 days, 4 days, Australia, Beach, Diving, Oceania, Wildlife

The Ningaloo Coast, Western Australia

It’s six o’clock in the morning, and we are sitting in a safari car in the Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Another jeep parks alongside just before we spot a beautiful tiger. We start talking to two photographers in the car next to us about remote locations to travel to. They are from Australia and seem to be the type of people who know where the wild things are. We share our experiences. They mention their favourite wildlife places in Australia, and that’s how I hear about Ningaloo Coast for the first time, two years ago, while tracking tigers in India.

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3 days, Beach, Diving, Indonesia

Diving in Komodo Island on board of Alexa

Life is never as amazing as when we share the special moments with our loved ones. When looking for a unique experience to share with our dear friends visiting us from Brazil, Fernanda, and Claudinho, we came across diving in Komodo Island, a board of Alexa. Nothing sounded to beat such a beautiful boat navigating towards one of the best diving spots on earth (CNN Survey 2015).

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