make me jealous with exotic travel stories.

[Dudley]

t4e - Can we hear the whole of the Mozambique story?

[Art]

No. But the giftshop was open.

[Slippery PD]

Ok then I think Ill come across as middle classed, Im sure Dudley will tell me :)

The usual European Resorts-
Spain, Mallorca, Tenerife.  The really bizzarre thing about these places is that they are really beautiful if you leave the usual holiday maker parts.  Especially the Volcano on tenerife, looks like your on the moon, and the dolphins as well.  Wonderful.  Worst thing is the Brits who just seem obsessed with eating chips and drinking cheap beer.  Strange and Odd.  when theres the wonders of Pealla and wine......

France - see comments above, but on the atlantic coast you get good Surf.....

Winter Holidays
Val D'Isere - wow.  This place is beauiful and my Snowboarding skills are exceptionally average.  But just to travel up a liuft and try and come down a mountain in the wonderful air is just fantastic.
I have been to 2 or 3 french resorts but none of them matched Val D'isere for beauty and fun.

European Tour
My wife and I toured around 1990 -ish went to all the recently fallen communist states.  That was an eye opener.  She was a veggie at the time and there was nothing catering for her in these countries (poland, east germany, czechoslovakia, roumania)

USA
I thought Id hate it.  But Americans truly are the friendliest people Ive ever met.  Id say tons of stuff but Ill probably go on for too long about it

Canada

Brilliant, but their music is crap.  We got all types country and western.  Or at lest that was what the radio was like

Yer Slips

[Devons Daddy]

ahhh africa
cant forget that area.

table top mountain in south africa. and the watching the two oceans meet at the cape is something to see.

ivory coast(or what ever they call it now). quite shocked how tanned the locals are. im not bothered by skin but trust me this is very surprising.we are talking coal here.

mombasa ?? did i spell it right.left an impression on me second only to india in terms of poverty.

went on safari somewhere in this regoin  which was ace of course and got to see a rhino which was very humbling too see such majesty on the horizon.very proud looking beast.

Mexico,.laid in a hammock and drank local beer which is bloody awful. with a lime in which i found out was to deter the flys.of which swarm around you.

philipines
fun place. with friends so only saw the safe side.
but tried the local delicasey a soft boiled fertilized hens egg. you have to be drunk to eat that trust me. its a FEAR FACTOR SPECAIL all of its own.

 been to the fawklands also.
seen the penguins but also laid flowers on the memorail of the war. had a friend at school who father never returned. felt important to honour them considering many had at some point been residents or had relatives in my home town.
thinking about that. i realize that was an important thing to do as a plymouth boy.

[Pyroxian]

Lived out in South Africa for 6 years, while we were there we also visited Namibia, Botswana and Swaziland. Africa's a beautiful country.

Been to the South of France a couple of times.

Have been over to the Netherlands quite a bit, I usually go over there for New Year.

Went over to America for 3 weeks last year, stayed with various family members in Florida and Mississippi.

Oh, been to Scotland and Wales too.

    Steve

[test 4 echo]

one of the rites of passage as a 15 year old schoolboy, left over from rhodesian macho bollox, was a week hike in mountains on the zim/mozam boarder. in dry season, with 30 kg packs fuckin miles from civilisation, ran out of water. nearest likely source on the map was in mozambique.

4 pretty worried kids looked at a bullet riddled sign saying "international boarded do not cross" an crossed it anyway. we were about 3 miles in and heard "you boys stop" from a barefooted tramp in a floppy hat. we stopped, cos he had an ak47 pointed at us. we went into a shit scared frenzy of hello my friend type greetings as his two buddies, also armed came out of the bush. they said they had seen and heard us for ages, and could we "bloodyfuckingshut up" as we were scaring every living thing for miles away.

we ended up squatting down, nobody seems to sit, and talking for 15 min or so. there was 5 minutes of you are from zim, but this is mozambique that had me crapping myself. we told them we were looking for water which started a conversation about the weather. "drought very bad, bad for hunting". no one was going to say hunting with automatic weapons was a trademark of poachers so we gave them our entire supply of glucose and boiled sweets instead, they gave us dirctions to a stream. which was back the way we had come, should have paid more attention in orienteering.

we made a very hasty and quiet return hike into zim, hoping we wouldnt see them again. i dont mind saying i was very scared, weapons and attitude were not uncommon out there, neither was people getting robbed and shot.

got a photo of those guys somewhere. ahh these moments of nostalgia.

[Generally Contrary]

'When I were stopping with t'Iban headhunters of Borneo', is start to one of my stories that always gets my friends groaning, as is:

'When I were a lad I dug up pre-Columbian Arawak pottery in t'Dominican Republic.  Din't know t'value of the stuff, chucked it all away when we left.'

And others.  I've been very lucky, having divorced parents and a globe-trotting (more like strolling, actually - Hong Kong at the mo.) Dad! ;)

[Jared Katooie]

Italy
germany
Holland
France
norway
canada
englandshire
wales.

And you feel jealous of other peoples travels?!

I've been to:

Spain: Too young to remember.

Wales: Pointless.

America: Boring. September 11 happened while I was in Vegas but nobody seemed to notice. And I couldn't drink or gamble.

I hate travelling anyway. Theres nothing you can learn from going somewhere that you cant learn off the telly, thats my policy.

Jared.

[DavidXBrunt]

I went to Llangollen, Colwyn Bay, and  Llandudno last year, and the year before last, and the year before that. And the year before that. And I'll probably go again this year.

Lovely.

[Jared Katooie]

Oh, forgot London.

Stood outside clothes shops mainly while my mam and sister shopped. Painfully dull.

[Max Kon]

I went behind the iron curtain when I was 1. My Mum says that all my nappies were x-rayed.

The worst holliday i've ever had was when I was 9. I went to a Nazi town in France and got v bad food poisoning.

[Satanist]

P.S. I forgot to mention I was conceived in Canada,does that count?

[Queen Firey-Bou]

wow excellent stories..

Arthur you were only half an hour away , I am offended you didnt come round for tea & scones ! and yes the trans siberian would ROCK !

My stories to mind at the moment are sadly all could haves;
 could have done a pottery apprenticiship at 17 in mexico, but parents wouldnt let me
could have been in india filmaking right now.
could have gone to siberia with a paleobotanical expedidion in 2000..

Italy-college trip to florence, mind f*cking art & architecture, crazy incredible powerful place.

normandy countryside with college mates, stealing food from fields to eat, being chased by irate farmers on mopeds.. the mistletoe & bats. ah the bats.

Brittany many times, including a 6 week cultural tour of ancient sites, many now closed to public. dogdy psyuedo nationalist celto freedome fighters & being ill.

norway , incredible scenery, like scotland in exagerated vision. wooden 13th C churches. 9m standing stones.

canada, autumn, dazzling reds listening to the sea freezing at night, winter, walking the frozen sea & making sculptures from ice sheets in frozen river. bear traps & fresh bear claw marks in woods. friendly people.

[ming]

Hello all.

As a wandering Brit, I had a year working in Oz (Melbourne - hello Floyd)
Assorted climbing trips to France, Germany, Italy, Spain.
Worked in California and Alaska for a year
PhD in Norwich (shurely Norfolk counts as exotic?  It's another WORLD...)
...with fieldwork in the Canary Islands
Then to Norway, with fieldwork in Costa Rica
I'm working in Canada at the mo, with my latest fieldwork on an icebreaker wayyyy up north.
Hopefully off to Svalbard (Spitzbergen) this summer.

All time favourite spot?  Hoy, Orkney Islands. Magic.

Bou - the best thing is that through most of this, my ma worked her behind off, dragging us three kids up alone, and when we were all sorted out, remarried and started catching up - in the past few years she and my step-pop have been to NZ, Canada, China, all over Europe, the US, South America, etc.  Great Stuff - where there's life, there's hope...

ming

[Queen Firey-Bou]

coool !  

Hoy was beautiful, i did loads of art work there 1987.

what research are ye doing ming ?


other memories, sleeping in a stair well Paris.

a park bench in some grud forsaken part of north france, being scared whitless by a screecher owl, thinking a gryphon or something was coming to get me..

what about the worlds tallest waterfall in norway?