It’s now been almost two weeks here. I’m still unsure of how I feel about this city, but it’s getting better the more I get to know it. Definitely beautiful the areas I’ve already seen, it has a lot to offer. I think I’m learning how to walk on the street being cautious of what’s exactly happening around me, but at the same time without staring at anyone. I’ve seen a little bit of my neighbourhood and went to Lion’s Head full moon hike.
The house where I live is located in Observatory (Obz) which is a neighbourhood that is getting trendier. It’s full of little restaurants and cafes where we can go out and it’s pretty safe. The people is really cool and they’ve already showed me where to karaoke on Thursday night, so that is important.
I enjoyed a walk down Sea Point with some guys from the house, seeing the sea and just walking. The esplanade is full of runners.
On my first weekend here it was full moon. The city has three mountains around it, Lion’s head, Table Mountain and Devils Peak. It is quite popular for people to do Lion’s Head full moon hike – you hike right before sunset and go down when it’s dark. The moon is fullmoon so most days you have some light, but it’s good to have a torch on you.
With another girl from work we hiked up there to see the sunset and the moonrise. It was just a regular path up the mountain at the beginning, but then it gets “a bit” complicated, as you have to climb rocks and use stairs on the rocks so you can keep going up. Not difficult at all, and there was so many people doing it that we had to queue. Yes, literally queue to climb rocks, something that has never happened to me before. On the top it was packed, it looked like Las Rambles (The most touristic street in Barcelona, always full of people). Lion’s Head full moon hike is an easy and short hike, depending on your rythim can take from 40min to 1h15min.
It is well known in the city that Lion’s Head full moon hike has really good views to both sides.
Sunset in one side..
..And moonrise from the other
It was amazing to sit there listening to someone’s music (I will always cherish them for their chose of songs) and watch as the light started to fade, the moon started to rise (and it’s majestic to see a full moon) and the city started to glow.
On our way down we meet fellow travellers and bloggers (www.umgezogen.com). They’re from Switzerland and have quit everything so they could travel with a minivan all the way from Switzerland to Iran and now they’re in Cape Town. Stories like theirs are hard to find, but so nice to listen to!
I’m dying to go to the city centre and explore the city, but as everyone in this city (locals and expats) keeps saying: don’t be afraid of the city, just be careful.
You can walk alone most of the time, but apart from that just be careful and take an uber or a taxi everywhere when it’s night time, even if it’s for a 5 minutes walk. I find it interesting that even when I’m in neighborhoods that are supposed to be safe all the houses have fences both on the garden and just in front of the door to get in the house, as well as in the windows.
This city is going to kill my “I walk everywhere” motto but I’m not complaining about taking ubers everywhere 🙂
Flying to Cape Town last week I started thinking what I do for long haul flights. When I have to spend time at the airport alone or have a long connection somewhere. Chances are, on international flights, you will have some waiting time. I have some long haul tips that I’ve been applying the past few years and I’m going to share them with you. Hopefully you can get some ideas for your next flight.
PRE-BED ROUTINE
It seems like a dumb idea, but the human is a creature of habit. We create routines before going to sleep. Some read a book, some brush their hair or their teeth. Some scroll down every social media account they own. Some drink a glass of wine. Well, I’m sure you got the main idea. We need to maintain our own bed routine in order to get a longer sleep during the flight.
In my case I brush my teeth and then scroll down twitter for a bit before closing my eyes. I’ve tried to do so on long flights and it’s not difficult at all, helps me getting better sleep.
PILLOWS
Almost everyone owns a neck pillow. They are extremely useful when traveling by car, plane or train. I own one that is a frog (cute, right?).
Expert tip: this one I learned by seeing some guy do it on a Flight from Cairns to Melbourne. Use the neck pillow in front of you, hugging your neck from the front. By doing that, when your head is about to go down as you sleep, the neck pillow would act like a support so your head won’t fall.
USING TECHNOLOGY
I am a technology geek I have to admit it. But on planes I use it in two different ways. The first one is creating playlists for my trip. The playlist usually include my latest additions on my phone. It works for me as I create a soundtrack for my future trip. I also have different playlists like relaxing music or white music for when I study, so those ones also help me avoid all the noise in a plane.
Before boarding, I try to not watch movies for at least a couple months. For the ones who know me, I watch tons of tv shows and series but someone has to specifically recommend a film to make me watch it. Good news are, when I’m on a 14 hour plane to somewhere in this wonderful world, I always have new films to watch.
COZY CLOTHES
This one seems logical, right? Well then tell me why too many people fly with their heels, and other complements that make getting cozy an impossible thing. The truth is I was one of those people travelling with boots that took minutes to take off, jeans and hoodies. My reason was to save place on the suitcase and pack more.
Took me some time to learn how to pack light. But now, my flying outfit has radically changed. First of all, I always fly with trainers and warm socks, because the blanket usually leaves my feet out of it. Second, I try to fly with tracksuits, sports bottom or anything that doesn’t make me feel like I’m trapped. Allows me to sleep in the weirdest positions with my feet up the seat.
COLOURING BOOKS
I haven’t tried this one yet, but after reading in so many blogs that colouring is relaxing for adults too, and helps your mind unwind while doing something productive, I’ll have my colouring book ready for my next long haul flight!
What do you do when you are on a long haul flight? Please comment your tips!
I’ve always been independent but never though I would travel alone until I was in Australia. Then I realised if you want to go somewhere where your friends have already been, you can go alone. It was my first solo trip and first experience as a female solo traveller.
I was on a solo trip for 3 days. I flew up from Sydney (where I spent New year’s) to Cairns, Queensland and then took a bus to Port Douglas, a little fisherman village. The shuttle driver was explaining stories all the way up. When he dropped me he said ” keep hydrated the bottle shop is around the corner”. I was staying in a hostel called Dougies and had the Great Barrier Reef tour booked for the next day. For the rest of my Sunday I walked around the town and making friends in a bar for a couple beers before dinner.
Next day after 1:40h in the boat with a bumpy sea that got most of the people dizzy, we arrived to the Great Barrier Reef. Started snorkelling on the first out of three locations. We saw anemones (Nemo’s), two sharks, and loads of colourful fish. We learned that healthy coral is the one yellowish and the ones we were amazed with, coloured blue, purple or red are the stressed and unhealthy ones. At the end of the day my legs where sore from swimming but the exhaustion was good. I got a turtle shaped USB device with all the photos of that day.
I highly recommend Wavelength Cruises for the tour. Their attention is really good and they take good care of you and the boats have a maximum of 30 people. There’s a biologist on board explaining theory between the diving spots. I liked it because it gives you good knowledge of what you just saw.
The next day I went up to Cape tribulation with some guys I met in the hostel and spent the day walking around the massive rainforest there. Because it was raining we couldn’t really appreciate the beaches, which was a shame.
On my last morning there, we woke up with the guys in my room at 5:30 am to go see the sunrise by the beach. So beautiful. And finally to make my journey complete I took the bus back and shared my days with the same driver. He also got me in the airport 45 minutes before departure, and I could catch my flight.
The most scary thing about my first solo trip was the fear of the unknown. Will I make friends? Will I have a good time? But after those first four days, I can strongly say it was the best decision!
Have you ever travelled solo? Please share your experiences below!
I know it’s been a long time since I was there, but to be fair, I didn’t feel the need to write about it. The most obvious reason was, of course, that I was leaving that amazing country and didn’t want to admit it. Writing about it seemed too real.
Sydney
And the other reason was that Sydney got me pretty disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice city, it has a pretty good night life and the Opera is one of those buildings you keep looking and thinking the architecture is perfect. But beyond the opera and the bridge, my friends and I (no, I wasn’t the only one thinking it) were disappointed with the social capital of Australia.
We saw the Opera and the bridge from every possible location, visited the Royal Botanical Gardens and went to some amazing beaches (they are huge, but the amount of people in them was insane, I keep laughing when I think it was January). It was just another cosmopolitan city, really hot at the time and didn’t impress me.
The Blue Mountains
We took a train to the Blue Mountains, and despite the buses full of tourists, the views were stunning. My tip: to do one of the signaled little hikes to avoid masses and get good views.We went down a path with a thousand f stairs that led to a small roc lookout with a view of the entire valley and a waterfall.
Sydney new year’s
I need to say, though, that it was a unique way of spending the New Year’s in Sydney. From waking up 8:30 the 31th and queuing in the sun for about two hours till the gates from the botanical gardens were opened, to get boiled in the sun for 12 hours waiting for the sun to set and give us a rest of the high temperatures. We were drinking frozen coca-colas and eating our home made sandwiches. But again, you can’t compare to be in one of the first new years in the world and its fireworks with anything else.
I was lucky to be there, and be able to watch the countdown and just after that, the opera and the bridge from a whole different range of colours while the fireworks lightened the sky. It was definitely worth the 12 hours wait for those 20 minutes of amazing fireworks. It was pretty cool to be able to joke with everyone from home saying: “I’m one year ahead of you” or “You are one year behind me” :).
New year’s in Sydney was really something else, and the fireworks were more than impressive.
Gili islands are my new definition of Paradise, and my new destination on the top of the MUST VISIT AGAIN list.
One day and a half in Gili Trawangan wasn’t definitely enough time.
There are three of them, Gili Trawangan, the one we stayed and more touristic, Gili Air and Gili Meno.
You can see the other island coast from the beach. Gili Trawangan is also where the majority of hostels, hotels and diving tours are located, and the party.
Gili Trawangan for one day: what to do
We arrived there after two hours on a fast ferry from Bali. After finding a hostel and checking in we hit the beach.
All the beaches have little fishermen boats anchored near them, and lots of dead coral in amazing shapes in the sand. The coral is protected and you cannot take any piece with you.
We enjoyed a really good meal for 4$ in a cool restaurant by the sand, and then it started to pour rain. Like 5 hours of heavy rain.
The island was covered in 20 cm of water when we were able to go out again. We were basically walking barefoot because there was no point in walking with flip-flops.
That night we drank at the hostel (2dollar cigarettes, 2.5 dollar beer and 3.5 dollars the big beer, 2 dollars shots and 4 dollar spirits) with everyone that we met, and we went to Jungle Bar.
The next day we woke up at 6:30 to rent bicycles and bike around the island. It takes you 1 hour and 15 minutes approximately, and you can stop and take pictures.
There are three places where the path is so sandy that the bicycle can’t run, so we had to walk with them, but it was worth it. Exploring early in the morning gave us the chance to see the whole island before it got too hot or crowded.
While waiting for the ferry, both in Bali and Gili, I met this Indonesian man living in the Netherlands. He explained to me the meaning of Jam Karet. Means elastic time in Indonesian, and they used it a lot every time they have to wait for something. We had to wait almost 3 hours at the beach to get the ferry back to Bali. They think “it’s time well invested, not wasted”.
What else would you do if you had one day to spend in Gili Trawangan?
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Sunset in one side..
Sunset in one side..
