Tangalooma has been on our list for so long. We missed out on the QLD Beach Volleyball Tour Stop in February, and we didn’t end up going for my birthday due to bad weather. But mom’s last weekend here we booked it in. Only for the day. But what a day it was! We had the water package and didn’t sit still for one moment. Except for lunch. By which time we were all so exhausted.
24 February 21:02
It feels great to be back on solid ground and in an airconditioned hotel room. But doing this small excursion to remote islands was really great!
The whole trip was of course organized but due to low tide and other things, it felt like they were winging most of it, haha. We were delayed from Malapascua for 1,5h but I don’t think that would have made a huge difference with the tides. The tides are honestly not something I understand, I thought I did, but apparently they are not on cycles.
We got the impression that this trip was all about having a nice time, spending the night at the beach, stargazing, watching the full moon, sit by the bonfire, listen to live music and watch fire dancers. But both Mikael and I got a bit wary at the briefing when a few people only had two questions; will there be beer and will it be cold. You see where this is going, right? Basically the whole trip there was people being drunk and loud.
There were drums on the boat which was very cool. They were so good and it was effectful to leave Bounty Beach to the sound of drums.
Before really leaving Malapascua, we stopped at the north end of the island to go snorkeling for a bit. Mikael gave up when his mask kept fogging up. But my mask managed better and I stayed in for a bit. The snorkeling at Lapus Lapus was really great! The bottom was full of mostly soft corals and so many fishes!
Galaxy
The next stop was the very local island of Carnaza where we would spend the night on one of the beaches. Due to the low tide, the big boat couldn’t get all the way in to the shore, so we had dinner on the boat after watching the sunset. It was a bit cloudy so the sunset wasn’t extraordinary. On the complete opposite side of the boat was the full moon already visible. That was kinda cool!
Carneza Island
Dinner was traditional Filipino style, served on big banana leaves and eaten with your hands. Very strange to eat with your hands, I’m sure it takes some technique to get that right also.
The low tide wasn’t going anywhere so eventually we got two local fishing boats acting as taxis for all of us 18 passengers, taking two at a time. These boats are super tiny and only supposed to carry one person. So when me and Mikael both went on, there were very few cm left of the boat above the surface. Scary stuff! Also it was really dark. Exciting! Some people swam to shore.
After all of us came to land, the big boat was light enough to cruise over the corals and dock on the beach so we could get everything on land. We set up tents, started the fire, and the owner of the restaurant who organized this trip gathered everyone who wanted to join for a shaman ceremony on the beach. I joined on the side by meditating/sleeping on the coral-y sand. That calmed everyone down! That took about an hour and after that it was live music and firedancing. Not long after that, these two introverts went to their tiny, tiny tent to sleep. But first we watched some bioluminescense further down on the beach. It was not much but it was there!
Normally, that tent would have been too small for me, I couldn’t lie straight in it. But we both managed to fit somehow. We were not prepared just getting a tent from the organizers, so we had nothing to lie on except two beach towels. The sand was full of corals and very hard, but we still managed to sleep pretty well, even if it was a game of human tetris when we needed to switch.
The full moon was incredible! I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a full moon like this before. It was so bright, we cast very distinct shadows, almost like in daylight. I tried taking pictures but it was hard. Full moon with basically no light pollution was something truly magical.
The next morning, today, we woke up with the sunlight. Breakfast was served by the water, sandwiches, ginger tea and incredible local fruit such as mango and banana. So good! But best was the homemade peanut butter. The local peanuts are much sweeter than what we are used to.
The tide was super low this morning so the boat had gone out during the night. We spent some time at the beach, I was reading a bit, sitting in the water. Such a nice morning! While Mikael was meditating, he got a local friend in the size of a child with a toy gun who just sat next to him when he was breathing, haha! I have to say (maybe again), but wow, the kids here are adorable! They are so happy to see tourists, so friendly, curious, polite, asking for our names and welcoming us to the island and so on. I love it! When we eventually left, there were so many kids saying bye and waving us off. Just amazing!
The village on Carneza
The beach we slept on.
The next stop of the trip was the extremely small island of Lamanok which apparently doesn’t even exist according to Google Maps. The owner’s friend lives on it. There were some people fishing right outside the island when we arrived, they were surrounding fish and scaring them into the net. It looked very interesting but probably worth it.
We also saw a caravan of small fishing boats on the way and we stopped in the middle of the ocean to buy some extremely local octopus from them. So funny!
The island is basically just two rocks with a coral beach in between. Really beautiful but I really don’t like these beaches that are made up of dead corals. It’s like walking on Lego, but worse. We went into the water quick, took some pictures and then we had a lunch similar to dinner last night on the boat again. It was so good!
Lamanok Island
The trip back to Malapascua took around two hours. Everyone was so tired and most people slept. I read! Mikael slept and had a company in the form of the owner’s big wolf-like dog, Galaxy. It was so cute when they were sitting together.
Back at the hotel, we took a well-needed shower, got dressed and walked over to Tepanee resort to watch the sunset before heading to Villa Potenciana for dinner on the beach. Magical noodles with homemade bread was incredible!
Two very long days and we are so tired now again. Tomorrow is our last full day on the island! I hope we get to max it out before leaving on Monday morning. I am ready to go home, we both miss the cats a lot. But at the same time, I’m so inspired by everyone I’ve talked to on this trip who just travels the world right now. I’m jealous. Our two weeks felt puny compared to their 3, 6, 8 months trips around Asia mostly. Why didn’t I do that when I was younger?
Since I think that I got something with my stomach and sun stroke, I am too tired to do this tonight. I will post twice tomorrow instead 🙂
But until then, WordPress started working again and I could upload the last pictures from yesterday. Link to the post is here.
2022-10-06, 15:00
So the stomach bug is pretty bad. Dizzy, nauseated, stomach cramps, faint, and weak. And still we prepared for this with vaccinations. Maybe it would have been worse. The sunstroke was really bad last night, I was freezing like I’ve never frozen before. I got a fever and in combination with the stomach cramps, I was not feeling very strong. It’s getting better though. The fever has gone down, but my stomach is still pretty bad. Mikael lucked out on the sun stroke, but also got stomach issues, not as bad as me though.
Yesterday morning stated with a dive with Blue Marlin Dive at Bounty Wreck. The worst one so far because of the gear not fitting. My BCD was too big, the straps of my mask kept sliding down onto my ears, my regulator didn’t really seemed to stay in my mouth, the visibility was only around 10m, and the current was annoying. We had to swim against it at several times and it was tough. It was a pretty cool dive still though. We saw two octopi, several turtles, nudibranches and the wreck itself, a sunken pier full of corals, was really pretty!
We decided we would skip on the second dive to Halik since we did that one already and wanted to relax for a bit. So we rented bikes and rode up north to Turtle Beach where we had lunch at Laguna Beach Resort. Mikael had the tuna sandwich and I had the Mie Goreng (fried noodles with vegetables and egg) and as soon as we finished we both got super dizzy and nauseated. It was so weird. We took a couple of sunbeds and lied down. Went snorkling for a bit and saw three turtles. We were feeling a bit better and decided to bike around the island to watch the sunset on the other side. It took us an hour in total to ride around the whole island, and we were not going fast. Up north, there were only sandy paths and so many sketchy places that sold sketchy things.
The west side of the island was unexploited, much land for sale, very empty, many hotels under renovations. Our agency told us that side was quieter than the east where we are staying and yes it is quieter but I didn’t want to stay there. Also, the beaches were rocky and you couldn’t be in the water because of the rocks.
The sunset was was unfortunately not visible behind clouds. I imagine them being quite amazing here! We were planning to get up at 5:30 to watch the sunrise this day, but decided to take that another time. Those I know can be amazing!
We jumped in the pool before going to our room, I was freezing and used the little hot water we had. Mikael brewed me a cup of tea and I lay in the bed for a long time before managing to get up and get dressed so we could have dinner on the beach. My stomach was really upset but I managed to get a nacho plate down which did me great!
Back in the room, I fell asleep instantly so the episode of Rings of Power that we started will have to wait.
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.
I had written so much text, and then my computer crashes and this one time, Word doesn’t give me the option to open an unsaved document. Stupid computer!!
I won’t write all that again, but will do a short summary since it is really late and I am tired and have to get up super early tomorrow.
I am bad at doing relaxing vacations, I am tired, so today we spent the whole day at Tsambika where we lay on the beach, reading all day. It was warm, so we spent a lot of time in the water. We snorkeled only once since the water was rougher today than it has been. We found a cave, but didn’t go in because we didn’t want to rip us up when the waves would have pushed us against the sharp rocks.
I finished the last book in I am Number Four Series “United as One” and I feel sad. 7 books and 15 companion books are over. Because of this I decided today to expand my blog and make a travel/book review blog.
We had dinner at a restaurant here at the hotel. Fancy pancy Asian food which was delicious.
Now it is late, so no pictures from yesterday will be posted today, but will be uploaded tomorrow (it takes time to go through lots of photos, especially from a dive).
Goodnight for the last time from Rhodes.
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.
My 8th dive ever was in Anthony Quinn Bay here on Rhodes. 50 Euro for everything, all gear rented and a boat dive. Crazy cheap! It was also so warm in the water that a shortie 2.5mm wetsuit was needed. Crazy! Jesper doesn’t have a certification yet so he had to wait at the beach. That was too bad. Until next trip he definitely has to have gotten it. There was not super much to see like it was in San Diego, but it was nice to do it again since it was almost a year ago I did it last time. Good to maintain the skill. We found lots of snorkeling masks, a sunbed table and a sunken boat along ancient Greek vases and stuff and fish. When we took our safety stop, we fed fishes, there were tons of them just centimeters from our faces.
After the dive we drove to Tsambika where we spent a few hours on the right side of the beach. We had sunbeds there and included in the price were two slushees. That was so needed in the heat. The snorkeling was not as good on the right side as on the left, so we will probably spend all of tomorrow (our last day!!) at the left side tomorrow.
We left at 6pm to go to Lindos so we would have time to get to the Akropolis. We followed the trail of donkeys which you could pay to ride one up. We walked, it wasn’t too bad. The acropolis was really cool. Much was restorated, and I hope they will restore more, I am sure it would look incredible. We walked down to the village, which is the cutest village ever. We found the best restaurant and had a really really good dinner there. It was called Stefany’s and was a family-owned restaurant with tables on 3 different roof levels. I loved that restaurant!
The handmade jewelry in Lindos was so cute!
We walked through the village and then drove back to Tsambika where we went for a late night swim. It was 10:30pm, very dark, and star-clear sky. There was a party going on at one side of the beach, but we were at the other side and enjoyed the warm evening under the stars. It was nice!
Now it is super late because of all our shenanigans today, so I will post pictures tomorrow. Here is one from on top of the akropolis though: Lindos Akropolis on Google Maps
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.
Today was spent in beautiful Lindos on the middle of the island. I have been to St. Pauls Bay before and honestly remember the snorkeling to be better. Maybe it has been exploited since I was there last time, 13 years ago. It is still an incredibly beautiful bay with the akropolis right above it. The nature here on Rhodes are truly amazing! The beach in that bay is the smallest ever, so we just went for a swim and then drove to the big beach on the other side of the acropolis, the main beach of Lindos. I have never been there before, and sure, it was a nice beach with fine sand, and the water was calm, warm and clear, but it was kinda boring, nothing really to do than cool off in the water every now and then and read on land. I guess it was nice with that for half a day.
St. Pauls Bay.
We had dinner at a restaurant right next to the beach. We were disappointed, the food was dry and not very good, there were wasps disturbing us through the whole meal and the food took forever. We were planning to go up to the Akropolis after dinner, but apparently it closed at 7pm, and we weren’t done with dinner until after 8. We will come back tomorrow afternoon and also to look around in the city.
Goats crossing the road.
The Wifi sucks today for some reason, so the pictures take forever to upload. They will be uploaded in this post as soon as they are all done (tomorrow I am guessing). Here is one 360 picture over St. Pauls Bay for now: St Pauls Bay on Google Maps
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.
Today wasn’t as warm as yesterday, but it was very very windy, even on the east coast. Sometimes it was hard to hold the eReader on the “beach”. We spent the whole day at Tassos Beach on the northern part of Kalithea. It was not exactly a beach, but rock plateaus. It was a cool place, the snorkeling wasn’t as good as Anthony Quinn Bay, and the water was a little bit colder because of the wind. It was not cold on land, it was very warm, the wind was warm, but helped a little bit. We still had to cool off in the water now and then though.
There is not much else to write, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Here is a link to a 360 picture I took on the beach: Tassos Beach on Google Maps
In the evening we drove to Old Town again, we had dinner at a very cute little restaurant on a small square. We then walked around for a little bit, but my stomach is hurting a lot tonight so we left pretty early. I took some medicine recently and am hoping that spending some time in the Jacuzzi tub will help.
Typical example of when panorama is not working properly.
These two Swedish girls were running around the restaurant after the cats and eventually sat down next to our table to watch one of the cats which we named Simba (she looked like a Lion, and names shouldn’t matter depending on gender – just take our male Cleo(patra) for example).
This view greeted us when we came back to the hotel. Turkey in the background.
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.
Wow, what a day! 17,000 steps AND two snorkeling dives on top of that. I am so exhausted and probably am suffering from some minor sunstroke. We weren’t out in the sun that much today, but still Jesper got more red on his shoulders. It’s unbelievable how strong the sun is here. We didn’t leave the hotel until after 11:30 am after enjoying the delicious breakfast. Our first stop of the day was The Valley of Butterflies. We decided to take Prasonisi another day. It was nice to be under the trees, but it was still very hot and humid, every body part was sweaty. It was not as many butterflies as I expected, but some tree trunks and stones were well-covered in them. There were also crabs running around in the water. At the top of the valley was a monastery and we quickly looked at it and went back down and drove on to the next stop of the day, Epta Piges = Seven Springs. On our way there we drove through a super cute village, Psinthos. I didn’t have time to take pictures, so you should google it if you want to know what it looked like.
Here is also a link to the 360 picture I took at Epta Piges: Epta Piges on Google Maps
Epta Piges is a really cool place in the forest where water runs out of the mountain. There is a very long and small tunnel which we walked through. So as of today, both of us are 7 years younger because when you walk through it that happens. So yeah, I am 18 again, just so you know. We hung out for a bit, had lunch at the nice restaurant there and then drove to the beach. We were so eager to get there! It was extremely hot today!!
We drove on to Anthony Quinn Bay which was the cutest little bay. There was pretty much no room for us on the beach since it was so small and full of sunbeds. So we just left our stuff on a rock and went straight into the water to snorkel around for a bit. I don’t know how long we were in, but we saw some pretty cool stuff. One of the first things we saw was a moray. It was tiny, but was flashing his teeth when I came close. That was really really cool! We saw lots of fish too and some sea cucumbers. It was a nice snorkeling time. Right after we were done, we walked up and over the small ridge to the bay on the other side, Ladiko Bay. We snorkeled there for a bit too, didn’t see too many things there, but there were many bearded fire worms a white tufted worm. We also saw some long and brown sausages, but I have no idea what that was.
I have no idea what this is.
The white tufted worm.
Our last stop was Old Town in Rhodes city. We walked around for a little bit and then we had dinner and walked around some more. It was so hot that we barely could eat. Even if we both were starving. We will probably go back to Old Town tomorrow again, it is big and we didn’t see it all today.
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.
Today was as good as yesterday, and even more. We woke up in the same executive suite, so that was not a dream, good! We then realized that the breakfast buffet was the best ever. We had some troubles getting out of bed this morning so we didn’t pick up the car until 11am when we had reserved it from 10am. But not sleeping more than 2 hours for 35 hours had its toll on us.
I drove us down to Tsambika in our small, red Toyota Aygo. I hate driving it so Jesper will probably drive for the rest of the week. Stupid car. The beach did not look like it did 13 years ago. Now it was full of sunbeds and so many watersports thingies (more than last time) and cafés. We walked to the most right of the beach where no people were. It was also close to the wall so we could see something when we snorkeled. The sand was hot, it was so so so hot! It didn’t just burn, it burned like hell! So we put our towels as close as we could to the water and since it was also very warm in the air, maybe 32 Celsius, so we were probably more in the water than on land. It was impossible to stay on land for a longer time. I am not sure that I will finish the book I am currently reading, we are not really lying down that much, haha!
We did use lots and lots of sunscreen, we put on 50+ at least every other hours, but we still managed to get burned non our backs. It might be because we went snorkeling for 1.5h straight. With aloe vera it should be fine soon.
Here is a link to the 360 picture I took at the monastery over the beach: Tsambika Monastery on Google Maps
Sea cucumbers.
Around 6pm we left the beach and drove up to the monastery above the beach. Of course, the road doesn’t go all the way up, there are 300 stairsteps to the top. It was tough, but the view was worth it!
Here is a 360 degree picture from the top.
The monastery at the top.
Then we drove to Kolympia where we had dinner at a very nice fish restaurant right next to the water. We did some shopping in that city as well and then drove back to our fancy hotel suite where the Jacuzzi tub was waiting for us. It was really nice to sit there and relax a bit.
It was such a romatic restaurant. A little too bad we didn’t stay longer because the lanterns weren’t visible when it was still light out.
It is really late now and we have an adventurous day ahead of us tomorrow. The hottest day this week is going to be tomorrow, so we were thinking that it would be best to drive down to Prassonissi where it is really windy, and then spend the afternoon at the Butterfly forest and the Seven Springs and later in the evening, the Old City in Rhodes city. I am thinking that since both the Butterfly forest and Seven Springs is in shadows, it seems like a good idea on the hottest day. The Seven Springs also has ice cold water.
Goodnight!
This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.
I love Jamaica! The ocean is the right color and temperature, it is warm and beautiful! The people are extremely laid-back, which I like, but I would prefer if they stayed out of my way. Today a guy popped his head out from a wall and asked me if I wanted to smoke. I think I will get that question at least once every day this week.
We got up at 9 this morning, had an amazing breakfast on the patio. Here we order what we want to have the night before and this morning we had fruit and omelette. So good. This place is really nice!
Then we went down to the main street, asked how much flyboarding was. $90 for half an hour. Not worth it, so we just went straight for the beach, Doctor’s Cave. $6 to get in, and $6 for a sunbed, which was worth it. They are so comfortable. And there we stayed for the whole day. Went into the water so many times. Far out were a pretty nice reef for being downtown Montego Bay (downtown is probably the wrong word since this is not a big place). Took some pictures with the GoPro and read some, and got darker some. It was the perfect day! At 3:30 we took our stuff and went to the beach next to it and went out to sail for an hour. Michael’s biggest interest is sailing, so we went out on a small boat. It was really nice. The water splashing us were so warm, the water was amazingly blue and it was just awesome. We had our GoPro’s and took a lot of photos and videos. Michael is gonna make a video of this trip and I am really excited to see how it turns out.
We had dinner on the beach shortly after and then back to the hotel to plan tomorrow. But first I took a shower in the amazing shower that exists here. I will let the picture explain for itself.
While I was in the shower, Michael went and picked up a car, and I planned our roadtrip tomorrow. We will be leaving at 6am, first go to Dunn’s Waterfalls, then through the middle of the island to check that out and all the way out to the west side of the island and Negril. There is a beautiful beach but also Rick’s Café which is a famous restaurant. They have cliff jumping, and an amazing sunset. We are totally checking that place out. Then back to the airport to return the car and then probably some souvenir shopping for me and GoPro filming.
I am excited! That’s all I am right now, haha! But my life is great and I always have a lot of stuff to look forward to. I love it!
Bemm 