Archives: Guide

I stopped on a corner of the narrow incline to take breath. A woman trudged down the slope towards me and clutched a wooden post.

A full moon was shining down turning the entire landscape monochromatic. Bushes on either side took on ghostly animal shapes, and sounds seemed eerily loud.

A camping expedition in Tanzania was our bid to seek the ultimate antithesis of the humdrum London lifestyle.

We had nowhere to stay until the following night. The air was warm and the park was quiet, so we put our rucksacks down with a joyous release of pressure.

Thunderous rumble reverberated across the otherwise quiet ash plain. What was that I wondered apprehensively.

The air was cold and the hour early as we sped toward the market. Buoyed on by our love for seafood, we’d gotten up only a few hours after we’d gone to bed.

We woke early in a small, family-run hostel. Alex and I had met one week earlier in Quito on an intensive Spanish language course

Illuminated stalls, draped in layers of textured cloths, woven into an array of eye-catching colours. Echoes of vendors calling after the flock of an international mix of tourists passing through the narrow, cobbled alleyways.

Wandering in a city in which we’ve never been, this was the first time my husband and I were on vacation without our two kids; enthusiastic to be empty-nesters, eager to reconnect.

With a sense of guilty relief, Clem and I left the broken city of Christchurch, New Zealand. We drove away from the confusion of temporary road signs and the nightmarish sight of half demolished buildings still standing on the gaping wounds of a traumatic event.