thinkoholic.com - a blog by markus nolf

posts tagged "travel"

independent travel tips for flores, indonesia, april 2018

[posted: Thursday, 2018-04-12] [category: general] [tags: , , ]

the indonesian island of flores is wonderful! however, since it’s not very touristically developed, compared e.g. to bali, we’ve found it fairly hard to come by information for independent travelers, like times and prices for public busses or boats etc.
here are some bits of inforamtion that were *not* easy to find out even while we were on the island:

komodo national park: staying on komodo island
almost anybody will try to sell you a 1 or 2 day trip to komodo island and surrounding sights. be aware that you’ll likely only have about an hour on each island, so any real hiking or quality time looking for dragons is more or less impossible. there are official hiking routes taking up to 5 h round-trip, and you can even get a guide for the day and arrange any length of hike.
if you want to stay on komodo island (there are homestays in komodo village, and a cabin that’s run by the rangers), there are several options. in order of descending easiness and price, you can… [more...]

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vanuatu independent travel notes and recommendations, january 2018

[posted: Monday, 2018-01-15] [category: travel] [tags: , , ]

we’ve just spent five weeks in vanuatu, largely off the beaten track, and wanted to share some first-hand and up-to-date travel information and tipps for independent travellers, from december 2017 and january 2018.

i’m typing this text on the phone to post it while it’s fresh, so proper formatting and some pictures will follow later.

general notes

online resources:
positive earth’s vanuatu aelan walkabaot (“island walkabout”) at positiveearth.org/bungalows/explorer.htm has lots of information about accommodation, transport, and things to see on all the islands, even in very remote parts of vanuatu. the website is getting a little outdated, so prices have increased e.g. from 2500 to 3000 very p.p. for typical accommodation in the banks province, but in many cases it lists several options that other resources don’t, and in greater detail.

shefa travel at shefatravel.weebly.com is run by the shefa province tourism office and has good travel info for efate, pele & nguna, emae & tongoa, and epi islands, including phone numbers to contact local-run bungalows directly. 

similar websites exist for the some of the other provinces, e.g. malampa.travel for malekula and ambrym in malampa province, but these seem to have a central non-profit (but nonetheless slightly more expensive) booking office and don’t give direct contact options.

there are apps that let you download web content for offline use, such as OffLine Browser for android. very handy for remote where we found cellphone reception and data connections to be very unreliable.

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photo: sunset in the rooiberg mountains, south africa

[posted: Saturday, 2012-01-14] [category: random photos, travel] [tags: , ]

this picture was taken in the rooiberg mountains near eksteenfontein (south africa), just south of the namibian border and close to richtersveld world heritage site. we visited the region while on a botanical field trip.
ammie, miri, christian and i did a quick evening hike up to one of the peaks (this specific one, to be exact), and arrived there just before darkness moved in across the land.

overlooking the rooiberg mountains - markus ammie, miri and christian

i also remember re-reading douglas adam’s “hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” during that trip, and finding the number 42 here – in the middle of nowhere – painted in big white digits on a rock wall next to the road.

you can find more information about the trip in our field trip report: namibia and south africa.

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