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As I fly over the Indian Ocean, from the sky, I see granite boulders rising like standing stones out of a pristine tropical jungle. Below me, the alluring turquoise Indian ocean and shades of unknown creatures.
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The last rays of sunshine lengthen over Conceição Beach as I swim just before dusk, birds flying over my head. The warm, constant flow of waves and white fluffy sand feel like velvet on the skin. Glorious “Morro do Pico”, in between surfers, rises above the shrubbery. I walk with bare feet through the long stretch of beach, to end up at Bar do Meio, where a small crowd gathers and dances at the sound of live music.
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There had been heavy rain since we landed in Kauai, but now the clouds are slowly lifting. The sun insists on making its way through as I stop paddling for a few seconds to admire dramatic emerald mountains around Hanalei Bay – a long right-hand point break in the long stretch of beach where I am surfing – with views to cascading waterfalls.
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Los Angeles has a soul. La-La Land is filled with the glamour of Hollywood and movie set backdrops. Yet, it’s also home to some of the United States’ very best museums, like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, outstanding art galleries, and architectural masterpieces like the Getty Center. Sure, it’s a sprawling metropolis with eternally congested freeways, but it also contains one of the most diverse and unique sets of neighborhoods in the States. It’s a town that feels like a country, and is so culturally diverse, where the greatest challenge for travelers is not what to do, but which version of this vast city to embrace.
I have consistently found in my travels that surfers get to the best beaches first, before mass- tourism develops. And often, one needs to travel far and say no to the convenience of a direct flight to reach the most interesting places. Siargao, a teardrop-shaped island, in the region of Mindanao, 800 kilometers southeast of Manila, Philippines, validates my theory.
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It’s a sunshiny morning in late April 2018 when we land in Tambolaka airport, after a 55-minute charter flight east from Bali. We are in Sumba. On a map of Indonesia, to its northwest, is Sumbawa, to its northeast, is Flores, to its east, is Timor, and to its south, across part of the Indian Ocean, is Australia.
Over the past four decades, one of the most exotic destinations in the world turned into the most visited country in Asia, thanks to its stable political atmosphere and the development of its capital as a crossroads of international air transport.
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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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The Maldives are not only for honeymooners or a couple’s getaway. With their natural beauty and biodiversity, they are also a delight for adventurers of all kinds.
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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