Travel stories, quotes and fun facts

The night bus and the puncture

We stopped on a mountain road at two in the morning. The driver, the conductor and six passengers changed the wheel by phone torch in eleven minutes.

Havana at eight in the evening

Somebody was playing dominoes on the pavement, somebody was fixing a car, somebody was singing. All three had been doing it since before we arrived and continued after.

The Cuban mechanic

He had made a part for a 1955 Chevrolet out of a Russian tractor component. He showed it to us the way other people show photographs of their children.

Jamaican bus music

The volume was not negotiable. A grandmother two rows up conducted with one hand and the driver adjusted the bass on her instruction.

Hurricane shutters in July

Every house had them and nobody used them that week. The shop owner said you fit them in May and forget them, and that forgetting is the whole point.

Snorkelling the blue hole

From the boat it is a dark circle in turquoise. From the water it is a wall going down into nothing and your brain refuses to process the scale.

Bioluminescent paddle

No moon, no lights, no cameras allowed. Every paddle stroke lit up and fish left trails like sparks under the kayak.

The wrong island

We took the wrong ferry and spent a day on an island with one road, one bar and eleven residents who found the whole thing very funny.

Waiting out the storm at altitude

Afternoon thunderstorms arrive almost daily in summer. A ranger said the rule is simple: summit by noon, and if you cannot, do not summit.

Trail magic

A stranger had left a cooler of cold drinks at a road crossing with a note. Nobody took more than one, and somebody had refilled the ice that morning.

The desert night sky

We drove twenty minutes from the town and the difference was absurd. A ranger explained dark sky certification and then turned off her own torch to prove the point.

Slot canyon rain rule

The guide checks the forecast for the whole watershed, not just the canyon. A storm eighty kilometres away can fill a slot canyon in minutes and there is nowhere to go.

A hostel kitchen in winter

Nine nationalities, one pot of soup, minus twenty-eight outside. Somebody's grandmother's recipe was reconstructed by committee and it was excellent.

The overnight train that ran late

Freight has priority, so passenger trains wait on sidings. We were eleven hours late and the dining car simply kept serving as if it were a hotel with wheels.

Not I, nor anyone else

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself.

Afoot and light-hearted

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.

Now I see the secret

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Keep your eyes on the stars

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

Do what you can

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Far better it is

Far better it is to dare mighty things than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much.

Some trees are older than writing

Great Basin bristlecone pines in the White Mountains have been growing for more than 4,800 years, predating the earliest known written records.