Yearly Archives: 2014

Kobe, Japan

Julie and I were a bit skeptical about stopping off in Kobe for a couple of days, as we wondered what else there might be to do in this city famous the world over for the quality of its beef. Well, we couldn’t just eat steak all day now could we..

Teppanyaki Kobe Beef at Steakland

Steakland in Kobe, purveyors of the finest, most meltingly delicious beef we’ve ever had

We were all set to visit a restaurant called Mouriya which has fantastic reviews, until we got talking to the folks at our hostel who recommended the theme-park-named “Steakland“, which we were assured was as good if not better.

It was very easy to find, and when we arrived we found out the whole place is set up for teppanyaki – a cooking style where the chef cooks at the table on a large hot plate, which we later found out was invented in Kobe.

Our chef preparing the famous Kobe beef. Mouth watering level at the time this photo was taken: 11

We watched our chef carefully, masterfully prepare our Kobe steak, before he placed the bite-size morsels on our plate. The texture on the tongue was of lightly seared beef, which gave in to our bite with all the resistance of a marshmallow. Then the fattiness and flavour of the beef hit us. Mmmmmm.. bliss. It is, to my carnivorous brain, the final evolution of the art of consuming beef. Yep, even to my well-travelled tastebuds, this is the best steak I’ve ever had.

Kobe beef, in Kobe, cooked in the teppanyaki Kobe style

Kobe Earthquake Museum

The Kobe Earthquake Museum. Why did they surround it with glass?

The Kobe Earthquake Museum, or to give it its full title: “The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Memorial, Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution” (whew!) retells the story of the massive earthquake that occurred on the 17th of January 1995, measuring 6.8 on the Moment magnitude scale (the successor to the Richter magnitude scale).

The Museum starts abruptly with an immersive recreation of the earthquake which happened in the early hours of the morning. The theatre is dark. The scene is set with stills of Kobe’s streets, shops and offices before the video and deafening sounds of breaking civilisation completely disorientated us.

The video includes CCTV footage of shops and offices, and the devastation wrought was unbelievable. As we have travelled for the past 15 months we’ve recognised places and names, mostly because we’ve seen or heard about them on the news, but neither of us recalled anything of this disaster which took 6,434 lives.

Collapsed sections of the Hanshin Expressway caused by the Kobe Earthquake. Source: My photo of a photo on display in the museum

The museum goes on to describe the immediate aftermath, which was explained to us by very friendly English speaking members of staff who added their own stories of the tragedy. It was fascinating to hear that so many rules and procedures have been introduced as a result of the Kobe disaster. Some examples we were told about were that relief efforts were delayed because of hierarchical authorisation which has been changed in the event of earthquakes, and that fires were caused by the electricity being reconnected – now they inspect the power lines and restore it in stages.

Demonstration area in the Kobe Earthquake Museum. Clockwise from the top: Staff teach schoolchildren (and us!) about liquefaction; Liquefaction demonstration – only one house remains standing because it has deep foundations, the coloured balls represent underground services such as water, gas and sewerage; Map of the world showing the tectonic plates and locations of volcanoes, earthquakes, impact craters and plate tectonics

Engineers and support staff from Kobe have provided assistance at subsequent earthquake relief efforts not just in Japan, but around the world. We thought the interactive visual displays were excellent; a simple bucket of sand demonstrated liquefaction, and a vibrating table demonstrated seismic base isolation.

Kawasaki Good Times World

Me having a Good Times™, marvelling at all the machinery Kawasaki have built through the years

With the delightfully translated name of “Good Times World”, the history and accomplishments of the Kawasaki company was pleasantly impressive – for being more interesting than we had hoped, the amount of information on show, and for the breadth of industries Kawasaki has been involved in.

Julie and I take turns sitting on the Kawasaki Ninja 400 Special Edition

We learnt a lot about the company and its creations that we had no idea about before, like they build the Shinkansen bullet trains and the tracks, they still make huge container and transport ships which is how the company started, they own the trade mark “Jet Ski” and they built the machines that dug the Eurotunnel!

The museum has examples of almost everything they make, which we had fun climbing into and playing with.

Good Times. Clockwise from top left: First generation Shinkansen; Me at the controls; Julie taking charge of a much more modern tram; Me on the Shinkansen arcade game / simulator (which I was rubbish at – sorry Uncle Ken!); Julie on the Jet Ski arcade; Me on the Jet Ski arcade

Kawasaki Good Times World – Good Times indeed!

Nunobiki Waterfall, Herb Gardens and Ropeway

Just 5 minutes north of the Kobe Shinkansen bullet train station is a narrow valley between Mt Futatabi and Mt Maya that leads up to the Nunobiki waterfall.

The Nunobiki waterfall, a serene place so close to the bustle of Kobe

A little further up the trail we passed a reservoir which would have been a welcome stop were it not for the annoying public announcement being looped through loudpseakers!

A Kobe reservoir. It holds water. We didn’t stop for long. What more can I say?

We pressed on, and made it to the Nunobiki Herb Gardens and Ropeway, which can also be reached by said ropeway from the lowest cablecar station near the Shinkansen train terminal.

The Herb Gardens purport to be Japan’s largest herb and flower garden, with some 200 species blooming throughout the year. We really enjoyed the variety of the gardens, and as we’ve come to expect in Japan it’s very well laid out too, although as we started at the bottom some of the hills were quite steep to walk up!

Kobe Nunobiki Herb and Flower Gardens, which also have a great view over downtown Kobe

Herbs and flowers at the Kobe Herb and Flower Garden. Clockwise from top-left: Honey bee collecting lavender pollen, round yellow flower (Allium); pretty blue flower (Cornflower); pointy yellow flower (Lupin)

As well as the herbs and flowers, the gardens have a number of art installations, and a lovely greenhouse complete with a herbal foot-bath that Julie couldn’t resist after all the walking we’d done!

Complimentary herbal foot-bath

While she soaked her weary feet, we ate the various flavours of bagel we’d carried from the bakery next-door to our hostel, and admired the view over Kobe.

It was a nice, peaceful end to our couple of days in this fascinating stopover, and a great way to make room for more delicious Kobe beef!

15 month summary

Countries visited in the last three months (1st April to 30th June)

Singapore, Japan (total visited to date on this trip = 14)

Have you managed to stay within your budget (£70 per day)? And what has been the expense breakdown?

Nowhere near, we knew before we departed that Japan would be expensive but it still came as a shock after a year of travelling the rest of Asia, although to be fair it’s probably no more expensive than travelling in Europe would be.

Our average daily spend over the three months has been £99.83. Our daily spend to date since we left home has been £69.67 which is exactly what we’d hoped – our savings to date were enough to balance the overspend in Japan.

Accommodation is yet again the biggest expense at 38.0% – for most of the time we stayed in business hotels which as a couple usually work out cheaper than hostels with the added advantage of an ensuite bathroom. The downside compared to a hostel is you don’t get to chat with the host or other travellers and there’s nowhere to prepare meals (not that all hostels have kitchens but some do).
Food is next highest at 24.0% – we’ve eaten really well in Singapore and Japan and while it’s possible to find relatively reasonably priced food it certainly can’t be described as cheap.
Intercity transportation was high at 18.5%. We had two flights in this quarter, from Dhaka to Singapore, and from Singapore to Nagoya (Japan). When moving long distances in Japan we usually travelled by Shinkansen, the famed bullet train. Very fast, clean and comfortable but not cheap. We kept costs as low as possible by taking occasional buses or travelling by local train when moving between nearby cities.
Local transportation was comparatively high at 5.2%. Although buses and trams are not too expensive (usually £1-2 each per trip) they do add up. We also did a few long distance day trips which were possible because of the speed and efficient timetabling of buses and trains, for example to Kamikochi from Matsumoto and to Ibusuki from Kagoshima
For the first time on this trip the visa spend for the quarter was absolutely nothing – no spend and no stress! Both Singapore and Japan allow UK passport holders to stay for 3 months visa free.

What has surprised you most in the last three months of travel?

If you listen to the continental Europeans or Americans they’ll have you believe that the British are plain weird for driving on the left, pretty much unique. Well, in the last 9 months we’ve visited no less than 6 other countries who also drive on the left (Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Japan) and while it could be argued that for some of these countries, though certainly not all, this is due to a colonial British heritage I don’t think we should let that detract from a good argument.

Apart from family and friends, what are you missing most about life in the UK?

Not much to be honest. Travel in Japan and Singapore has been pretty easy, with all our creature comforts adequately provided for. Although we both love trying new foods we do get the occasional hankering for a good cheese sandwich or a plate of fish and chips.

What’s the most memorable sight that you’ve seen in the last three months?

Julie – I loved Okunoin cemetery in Koyasan. The huge cedar trees amongst the gravestones of all ages, the surprising statues that we came across and listening to the monks’ morning chanting all added up to an experience I won’t forget.

Andrew – My preconceptions about Japan were fast trains, commuter-packed metros and high tech everything, so the most memorable sight is the amount of greenery and scenic beauty here. Julie won’t let me have that as it’s not specific enough, so I’m going to pick Mt Fuji, the iconic mountain of Japan.

Tell us a funny story from the last three months of travel.

On our first day in Kanazawa we had lunch at Omicho Market and bought a small cake each for dessert before walking across town to Kenrokuen garden. Inside the garden we found a bench from where we could admire the view while eating our cakes. Suddenly, I flinched back as I caught sight of a bird seeming to swoop very close. When I turned to Andrew to see if he had seen it, he was looking in disbelief at his empty hand which had been loosely holding his cake. A Black Kite had swooped in and taken it without touching him! Since then we’ve always been very watchful when eating out in the open…

Who is the person you’ve met that you remember the most from the last three months?

Our host in Singapore, Diana, was such a pleasure to stay with. We booked her spare room through Airbnb and it was an ideal place for some R&R after the somewhat challenging travel through Bangladesh. She made us feel right at home, from her comfy sofas, fast wifi and well stocked kitchen (Julie seriously lusted after her top quality pans and knives), to her friendly conversation and introducing us to the TV programme Grey’s Anatomy which we watched avidly for a week! As an added bonus we discovered that she had lived in Japan for 6 years and didn’t mind us picking her brains. Her suggestions on where to go basically established our itinerary for the first month of our stay here.

Finally, what have you found to be the greatest challenge so far?

Julie – Struggling with the budget again. We’d really got used to staying in fairly nice places and basically eating wherever we wanted while travelling through SE Asia and into Bangladesh and it’s been a hard habit to break, needing to think twice about stopping at a cafe for coffee and cake, or whether to organise a packed lunch rather than relying on finding something while we’re out. We don’t compromise on sights and activities so accommodation, food and drinks tend to be where we try to save money.

Andrew – We’ve found that booking last minute budget accommodation as a couple has been hard in Japan, especially as we usually want to stay for three or four nights. It seems that as well as all of us foreign tourists, the Japanese also like to travel a lot, which meant we had to quickly firm up our plans and start booking 3 to 4 weeks in advance, rather than the 3 to 4 days we’ve been used to so far!

Himeji, Japan

Naoshima, the art island of Japan

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The night before we left Yakushima, we met Georg, a young and enthusiastic Swiss architect who was full of praise for Naoshima when we told him we were heading there next. For years now I’ve been building my perfect house in my head, collecting inspiration from designs, materials and nice touches I’ve seen, and I asked Georg’s advice about how best to convey my ideas to an architect, which started a fascinating conversation..

Georg politely explained that I’d be employing the architect to do the design, so it’s far better to think about how I intended to live in the house, and to mention anything that affects the allocation of space, for example, where will I spend most of my time? Is the kitchen more important to me than the lounge? What impression should the house make from the outside?

Naoshima is covered in art, like this giant red pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama that greets you at the ferry terminal

Then we started talking about materials and found we shared what some might call an unhealthy fondness for bare concrete. Georg showed me the works of architects who use concrete in their designs, and specifically those of Japanese architect Tadao Ando who is known for his ‘brutalist’ style of concrete, glass and steel, and I knew I was going to enjoy Naoshima.

Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando is self-taught and one of the most famous architects in Japan. He has designed buildings across the world, including Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester (UK), Fort Worth’s Modern Art Museum in Texas (USA), and of course, many buildings in Japan such as the Tokyo Skytree, the Omotesando Hills shopping complex and three large museum spaces on Naoshima.

Omotesando Hills shopping complex in Tokyo. One continuous inclining walkway links all the shops. Photo source: Wikipedia

Chichu Art Museum

Built into the top of a hill, the Chichu Art Museum incorporates a number of permanent installations, and is itself a work of art

Chichu Art Museum. Ando's design meant the museum building is all underground. Source: Benesse Art Site Naoshima

Chichu Art Museum. Ando designed the museum to be underground while still making use of natural light. Source: Benesse Art Site Naoshima

We loved the mix of geometry and materials, the long underground entrance corridor of concrete reminded me of the D.T. Suzuki zen museum in Kanazawa, and ended with a square, open air staircase whose bannister concealed the stairs so from the ground it just looked like a large square atrium. After climbing the stairs, another long open air corridor ends with a triangular courtyard which we descended to access the gallery spaces.

The triangular courtyard of the ChiChu musem. This one has stones at the bottom, the square one had long grass

We thought it worth visiting just for the museum building, but there are site specific installations by 3 artists, including a stunning off-white room of natural light built specifically for 5 of Monet’s Water Lilly series paintings, 2 immersive installations by James Turrell, an American artist who presents light as art, and a large stepped room containing a huge sphere surrounded by various geometric cricket-stumps by Walter De Maria which was Julie’s favourite.

Lee Ufan Museum

The Lee Ufan Museum on Naoshima. Pointy

The Lee Ufan Museum is a small museum, again designed by Ando and again built into the landscape. We liked the contrast – the large open space outside with the huge standing column gave a feeling of openness and accessibility, but this initial feeling is quickly betrayed by the claustrophobic passageway of 18-foot high concrete walls one must traverse before arriving at the museum’s underground entrance. Inside, the journey through the gallery spaces continue the theme of contrast: light then dark, large then small, each carefully planned for the exhibition of one of Lee Ufan’s installation pieces, until the final room.

Medium in size, with natural light, wooden flooring and rounded corners, the final room is juxtaposed with the rest of the museum, a final contrast if you will, and it invites contemplation because it’s designed as a mediation space. I really liked this – a dedicated space where you are encouraged to sit for a while and reflect on the art and architecture you’ve just experienced.

Lee Ufan – Shadow of Stone. Source: kamel mennour

Of the artwork, I enjoyed the mix of Lee’s work – the large abstract block paintings of the ‘Encounter’ room (entitled ‘From Point’ and ‘From Line’), and the ‘Shadow of Stone’ piece where a video was projected into the shadow of a knee-high stone was captivating for both its content and execution.

Benesse House Museum

Benesse House Museum. Source: Benesse House

The original museum project of the island, the Benesse House Museum is part of the larger Benesse complex that also includes an exclusive hotel, park and a beach. While still incorporating permanent artwork installations such as the Oval (which, sadly, is only open to guests of the hotel), the Benesse Museum is more of a conventional contemporary exhibition space.

Benesse House Museum - Some of our favourite pieces from the exhibition. Yukinori Yanagi 'The World Flag Ant Farm' (source: Benesse Art House Site); Bruce Nauman '100 Live and Die'; Yoshihiro Suda 'Weeds' (source: Big in Japan)

Benesse House Museum – Some of our favourite pieces from the exhibition. Yukinori Yanagi ‘The World Flag Ant Farm’ (source: Benesse House); Bruce Nauman ‘100 Live and Die’; Yoshihiro Suda ‘Weeds’ (source: Big in Japan)

Our favourites were the wall of country flags made from painted sand and joined up into a giant ant-farm, which meant the ants had completely destroyed some of the flags (we tried to identify as many as we could!); the flashing neon wall of words and the very cute piece by Yoshihiro Suda called ‘Weeds’, which look like small weeds growing out of the building itself!

Art House Project

Minamidera, houses my favourite exhibit of Naoshima – ‘Backside of the Moon’ by James Turrell. Photo source: The Unhatched Egg blog

The Art House Project is a collection of regular dwellings that had been abandoned, and were subsequently turned into art installations. A single ticket buys entrance to all 6 of them, and it was fun to cycle between them, as they’re all located in the small port town of Honmura.

We’d spent most of our day at the bigger museums, but we had just enough time to quickly visit each house. On the advice of the ticket staff, we made a beeline for the Ando designed Minamidera, as entrance was limited by number and to 15 minute blocks – which immediately piqued our interest – that and it was built for another James Turrell installation..

While we waited for our turn, we zipped off to see the others before returning for what would be my favourite single exhibit of the island.

Haisha, the ‘scrapbook’ art house

Julie really liked the crazy Haisha, which is aptly described as a ‘scrapbook’ and includes a giant plastic statue of liberty, and we both really liked Kadoya with its pool of submerged LED numbers counting down at different speeds.

Finally, Minamidera. We were led into the short end of the building by a handrail because it’s an installation in the dark. Once in, we sit down and are advised to wait about 10 minutes for our eyes to adjust.

10 minutes later, we can now make out two faint lights at either side of the other end of the room, and between them we were asked if we could see the screen – an empty rectangle of grey that looks like a cinema screen. Once we were all able to see it, I was expecting a show to start, and thinking that the show had already begun, I started seeing little stars move across the screen..

Then we were asked to stand up and approach it. What I thought had been stars were actually the blood vessels in my eyeballs, and as we got to the screen we found it was completely uniform in colour. Then came the surprise.

I’d love to tell you what happened next, but this one is better when you experience it for yourself :)

Us with another of Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins

We thoroughly enjoyed the art and architecture-packed day on Naoshima, but as each museum charges around ¥1,000 (~£6) for entry (or ¥2,000 for Chichu), we spent ¥5,000 (~£30) each, and that doesn’t include lunch, bicycle hire, or the round-trip ferry to get there. Yep, it was an expensive day on our budget, but it was definitely worth it!

Yakushima, Japan

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While we were chatting to the owner of the hostel where we stayed in Nara and telling him our rough plans for our travels in Japan he asked if we’d heard about Jomon Sugi, a really old tree in the centre of an island off the south coast of Kyushu. Well, we hadn’t but it sounded intriguing and after a little more research we found that the name of the island is Yakushima and that 20% of it has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site on account of the value of its ancient cedar forests. It was quickly added into our itinerary.

Yakushima’s location [Image source: Yakumonkey]

Several weeks later we had made our way as far south as Kagoshima. Our final day in the city was grey and rainy so it was a pleasant surprise when we woke the following morning to blue skies and bright sunshine. Especially pleasant as we had a four hour ferry journey ahead of us which really wouldn’t be nice if it was windy and raining.

Yakushima is 60km south of Kagoshima and there are three ways to get there, flight (very fast and very expensive), hydrofoil (takes about two hours and more moderately priced) and car ferry (takes twice as long as the hydrofoil and is half the price). We opted for the cheapest option but would recommend it to others if they have the time. The ferry was comfortable, uncrowded and Andrew was thrilled to discover that there’s an onboard sauna, although he didn’t get chance to make use of it.

The end of the Satsuma peninsula seen from the ferry to Yakushima. The conical mountain in the centre of the photo is Mt Kaimon-dake.

As the ferry approached Miyanoura port we were delighted to see flying fish scooting away from the ship (and stunned at how far they can travel). I was also surprised by how mountainous the island looked and began to feel a little nervous about the long walk to the old tree which we planned to do the following day.

Our first stop was the tourist office where picked up what has to be my favourite information handout ever – an A3 sheet with a map of the whole island, all the bus stops, points of interest and a complete bus timetable for all the routes – an obsessive travel planner’s dream tool! Next we wandered along the main street in search of lunch, eventually settling on Satchan where the friendly waitress managed to translate enough of the menu for us to decide on a set meal of Yakushima specialties. It was a delicious feast of sashimi, fishcake and grilled fish although the fact that it contained lots of flying fish made us feel a little guilty after admiring them so much from the ferry…

Excited to dig into our lunch!

Yakushima is famous for its ancient cedar forests and also has the rather dubious honour of being the wettest place in Japan receiving up to 10,000mm of rainfall per year. To put that into perspective, the wettest town in Britain, Dalness in the Scottish Highlands, gets an average of 3,300mm per year. Yes, that’s right, this place is three times wetter than Scotland! We had our fingers crossed for a dry day for the walk up the mountain and the forecast looked promising.

You can tell how wet the climate is by the amount of moss in the forest

Our accomodation was a one hour bus ride from Miyanoura which Andrew managed to sleep through while I followed the route closely with my new favourite piece of paper. Alighting from the bus we found ourselves in the company of two other travellers, Brian from New York and Claudia from Zurich, and quickly realised that we were all staying at the same guesthouse. We spent the rest of the evening talking them into the early start that was necessary to join us for the 10 hour hike to Jomon Sugi. The only public transport option to the Arakawa Trail Head meant that we had to get up at 4.30am…

Brian, Claudia, Julie and Andrew looking pretty chipper at the start of the trail at 6.45am

The first three-quarters of the trail are not too challenging. The path is along an old logging railway and the incline is very gentle although the distance is long (just over 8km or about 5 miles). We were by no means the only group to be doing the hike although most of the others seemed to be small groups of mostly middle-aged Japanese ladies with tour guides. Everyone was very friendly and by the end of the day, having passed each other numerous times, we almost felt like honorary members of some of the groups!

Walking the railway line

Us with a slice of the trunk of a felled cedar at the site of an abandoned loggers’ village part way along the trail.

The last section of the trail is only 2.7km (about 1.7 miles) but it is steep and the path is a combination of steps, boardwalk and twisty tree roots so we really needed to watch our step. This is close to the highest part of the island, where the old growth forest still survives. There are many old trees along the path and a couple of stumps too. Wilson’s Stump is big enough to fit about eight people inside and, when looked through from the right angle, the view up to the canopy from its centre is heart shaped.

The last part of the trail seemed to be a never ending series of steps

Andrew checking out the height of one of the ancient cedar trees

After seeing some incredible huge trees we thought that Jomon Sugi might be a bit of an anti-climax, but when we arrived it made us gasp. It’s the largest cedar ever found in Japan at 25.3m tall and 16.4m in circumference. Estimates of its age range from 2,170 to 7,200 years old, based on a scientific sampling of the trunk, and an estimate from its size respectively.

Us with Jomon Sugi. Unfortunately this is as close as you’re allowed to go to prevent erosion around the tree’s roots.

After stopping for lunch, we then had to turn around and do it all in reverse. We just pressed on to get the hard part over and done with quickly and we were back on the railway line in about an hour and a half from where, even with tired legs, the going wasn’t too bad. Highlights of the walk back were seeing deer and a couple of monkeys (both sub-species indigenous to Yakushima) and also a brief stop away from the track at the riverside – the water is crystal clear and looks wonderfully turquoise blue in the sunlight. I was very tempted to give my feet a soak but eventually decided against it worried that once off, I might not be able to get my boots back on!

At the river in the afternoon sunshine

At last we made it back to the trail head in time to catch the bus back to the guesthouse. All four of us exhilarated but exhausted.

You’d think that after all that exertion we’d take it easy the next day but we only had two full days on Yakushima and we wanted to make the most of it so we hired bikes from the guesthouse and set off to explore the southern coast of the island. After picking up a picnic lunch, we made our way to Hirauchi Onsen to coincide with low tide. This hot spring bath is very much au natural, the sulphurous spa water bubbles up from beneath the rocks and is contained in crude concrete baths. It’s so close to the sea that it can only be used for a few hours either side of low tide.

Hirauchi Seaside Onsen

The onsen was exactly what we needed to ease our aching muscles and it left us feeling so relaxed that we thought we might go straight back to the guesthouse, but after a bite of lunch and a sugary drink we had a bit more energy and decided to carry on to see if we could reach the waterfall marked on our map. Turns out it was a bit further than we’d expected, but by the time we’d realised we were only a few kilometres away and so we pressed on.

Ohko-no-taki waterfall with a drop of 88m was much more impressive than we’d expected especially considering that it was the end of the dry season.

By the time we got back to the guesthouse we were completely exhausted and when we worked out that we’d cycled a total of about 50km we joked that all we needed now was to swim back to Kagoshima and it would be like a three day triathlon! In the end though we decided to get the ferry instead…

Yakushima’s southern coast (clockwise from top left): Mountainous scenery above the bridge at Kurio, a very strange house, beach at Nakama, a huge banyan tree

One of the very few things that we don’t like about travelling in Japan is that reasonably priced accommodation can get booked up fast and so we’ve found it necessary to have our accommodation booked well in advance. This denies us the flexibility to stay in places that we really like for longer than our initial estimate. We could easily have stayed on Yakushima for a week, gradually exploring the whole island and chilling out in its quiet greenness but unfortunately it wasn’t possible this time. We also started daydreaming about island hopping between the remote and small inhabited islands even further south so I think there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be back!

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures