Story#801
Steak and no menu
The parrilla had four items and a chalkboard. The waiter asked how we wanted it, disagreed with the answer, and served it his way. He was correct.
Travel stories, quotes and fun facts, part 9
30 stories, 50 fun facts, 20 quotes on this page. It covers Argentina, Australia, Asia, Oceania, Chile, New Zealand and 35 other places. Page 9 of 10.
Page 9 of 10
30 stories, 50 fun facts, 20 quotes on this page. It covers Argentina, Australia, Asia, Oceania, Chile, New Zealand and 35 other places. Page 9 of 10.
Countries on this page
Every country page collects its entries in one place, with a fact sheet and the guides for going there.
Entries on this page
Fun fact#802
Australia's longest fence runs 5,600 km
The Dingo Fence stretches further than the distance from Berlin to Kabul, built to protect sheep country.
Quote#803
Shalom and salaam
Shalom and salaam come from the same root and both mean peace.
Fun fact#804
Melbourne's laneways became galleries
Once service alleys, Melbourne's laneways now hold legal street art walls, tiny bars and coffee counters.
Story#805
Tango in a square
Two people in their seventies danced on paving stones in San Telmo with a portable speaker. A crowd formed, and nobody who watched was under any illusion about who was best.
Fun fact#806
Sydney's opera house has a million tiles
Just over one million self-cleaning Swedish tiles cover the shells, in two subtly different finishes.
Quote#807
Aloha means more
Aloha means hello, goodbye and love, and locals will tell you it is a way of behaving, not a greeting.
Fun fact#808
Australia has more camels than Arabia
Feral dromedaries introduced in the 1800s now number in the hundreds of thousands across the outback.
Story#809
Wind in Patagonia
The wind blew constantly for four days from the same direction. On the fifth it stopped and everyone in the hostel came outside to check that something was not wrong.
Fun fact#810
Kangaroos cannot walk backwards
Their tail and leg structure prevents reverse movement, which is partly why the kangaroo appears on the coat of arms.
Story#811
The W trek weather
Four seasons before lunch on every single day. Nobody bothered changing clothes for the rain because it would be sunny again in twenty minutes.
Fun fact#812
Wombat droppings are cubic
Wombats produce cube-shaped droppings thanks to uneven intestinal walls, so the pellets do not roll off rocks.
Quote#813
Mana
Mana: spiritual power and presence, carried by people and by places.
Fun fact#814
New Zealand has more sheep than people
The ratio has fallen from twenty to one in the 1980s to around five to one today, still comfortably ahead.
Story#815
Stars in the Atacama
The guide switched off the last light and asked us to wait ten minutes for our eyes. The Milky Way arrived as if someone had turned it on.
Fun fact#816
New Zealand had no land mammals
Before humans arrived the only native land mammals were bats, so birds filled almost every ecological role.
Fun fact#817
New Zealand was the last big land settled
Polynesian navigators reached Aotearoa around 1300 AD, making it one of the last large landmasses humans settled.
Quote#818
Kaitiakitanga
Kaitiakitanga: guardianship of the land, on the understanding that you are only borrowing it.
Story#819
Salt flat perspective
Everyone takes the same forced-perspective photo and everyone thinks they invented it. Our driver had a box of props and a practised routine and enjoyed it more than we did.
Fun fact#820
Milford Sound is really a fiord
Carved by glaciers rather than a river, Milford is technically a fiord, and it gets over six metres of rain a year.
Fun fact#821
New Zealand has a legally recognised river
In 2017 the Whanganui River was granted legal personhood, with guardians appointed to speak for it.
Story#822
Death road brakes
Sixty-four kilometres downhill with a drop on one side. The guide said the brakes were the only thing worth checking and then checked them four times.
Quote#823
Turangawaewae
Turangawaewae: a place to stand, the ground where you feel connected and empowered.
Fun fact#824
Rotorua smells of sulphur
Geothermal activity vents hydrogen sulphide across the town, earning it the nickname Sulphur City.
Story#825
La Paz cable car commute
The world's biggest urban cable car network is public transport, not a ride. We commuted across the city over rooftops for the price of a bus fare.
Fun fact#826
Bungee jumping was commercialised in Queenstown
The first commercial bungee site opened at the Kawarau Bridge in 1988, inspired by Vanuatu land diving.
Fun fact#827
Vanuatu invented land diving
Naghol divers leap from wooden towers with vines tied to their ankles, a harvest ritual centuries older than bungee.
Quote#828
Songlines
Songlines: routes across the land recorded in song, a map you can sing rather than fold.
Story#829
Titicaca reed island
The ground moves under your feet like a mattress. They add fresh reeds every fortnight and the whole island is rebuilt from underneath over about thirty years.
Fun fact#830
Fiji has more than 300 islands
Fiji comprises around 330 islands, of which about a third are permanently inhabited.
Fun fact#831
Samoa skipped a day
In 2011 Samoa jumped the international date line for trade reasons, and 30 December simply never happened.
Story#832
Ceviche at eleven
The best cevicherias close in the afternoon because the fish is from that morning. Anyone serving ceviche at eight in the evening, our host said, is telling you something.
Quote#833
Walkabout
Walkabout: a journey undertaken on foot to reconnect with country and self.
Fun fact#834
Tonga was never colonised
Tonga is the only Pacific nation never formally colonised, retaining its monarchy throughout.
Fun fact#835
Kiribati spans all four hemispheres
Kiribati's scattered atolls cross both the equator and the date line, giving it an enormous ocean territory.
Story#836
Rainbow Mountain crowd
Five thousand metres, three hundred people and a queue for the summit photograph. Twenty minutes along the ridge there was nobody at all and the same view.
Fun fact#837
Tuvalu earns money from a domain name
Licensing the .tv internet domain has provided a meaningful share of Tuvalu's national revenue.
Quote#838
A guest is a gift
A guest brings good fortune with him.
Story#839
Galapagos indifference
Nothing runs away. A sea lion slept on a bench, a bird walked over my boot, and a marine iguana sneezed salt at me without moving.
Fun fact#840
Nauru was the richest country per person
Phosphate mining briefly made Nauru extraordinarily wealthy before the deposits ran out in the 1990s.
Fun fact#841
Palau banned some sunscreens
Palau restricted reef-toxic sunscreen ingredients in 2020 to protect its coral, one of the first nations to do so.
Story#842
Market day in Otavalo
The animal market starts at six and finishes by nine. Everything else is for tourists and the sellers say so themselves, cheerfully.
Quote#843
The guest is God
Atithi Devo Bhava: the guest is equivalent to God.
Fun fact#844
Papua New Guinea has 800 languages
With over 800 living languages, Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country on Earth.
Fun fact#845
The Marshall Islands taught wave navigation
Navigators read ocean swells using stick charts, memorising wave patterns rather than carrying the charts to sea.
Story#846
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.
Fun fact#847
Polynesians navigated by stars and birds
Wayfinders crossed thousands of kilometres of open Pacific reading stars, swell direction, cloud shapes and bird flight.
Quote#848
Travel east, travel west
East, west, home is best.
Story#849
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.
Fun fact#850
Bora Bora is a sinking volcano
The central peaks are the remains of a volcano slowly subsiding inside its own coral ring.
Fun fact#851
Tahiti's black sand comes from lava
Volcanic basalt ground down by waves gives many Tahitian beaches their dark colour.
Story#852
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.
Fun fact#853
New Caledonia has a heart-shaped mangrove
A naturally heart-shaped clearing in the mangroves of Voh became famous through aerial photography.
Quote#854
He who does not travel
He who does not travel does not know the value of men.
Fun fact#855
The Pacific holds half the world's water
The Pacific covers about a third of the planet's surface and contains roughly half of its free water.
Story#856
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.
Fun fact#857
The Mariana Trench is deeper than Everest is tall
Challenger Deep reaches about 10,900 metres, more than two kilometres deeper than Everest is high.
Quote#858
Do not follow the path
Do not follow the path. Go where there is no path and begin the trail.
Fun fact#859
Point Nemo is the remotest place
The nearest humans to Point Nemo are often astronauts on the space station passing overhead.
Story#860
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.
Fun fact#861
Coral reefs cover under one percent of the sea
Reefs occupy less than one percent of the ocean floor but support around a quarter of all marine species.
Story#862
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.
Fun fact#863
Most of the ocean is unmapped in detail
We have better high-resolution maps of Mars than of our own seabed, though mapping projects are closing the gap.
Quote#864
If you want to go fast
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Fun fact#865
The Arctic is ocean, the Antarctic is land
The North Pole sits on drifting sea ice while the South Pole rests on a continent under kilometres of ice.
Story#866
Bioluminescent paddle
No moon, no lights, no cameras allowed. Every paddle stroke lit up and fish left trails like sparks under the kayak.
Fun fact#867
Antarctica has a blood-red waterfall
Blood Falls is stained by iron-rich brine that has been sealed beneath the ice for over a million years.
Quote#868
Smooth seas
A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.
Fun fact#869
Antarctica has dry valleys with no ice
Katabatic winds strip the McMurdo Dry Valleys bare, and some have not seen rain for around two million years.
Story#870
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.
Fun fact#871
Emperor penguins breed in winter darkness
Emperors incubate eggs on their feet through the polar night at temperatures below minus 40 degrees.
Quote#872
The sea is common
The sea is common to all.
Fun fact#873
Svalbard has more polar bears than people
Residents leaving town are legally advised to carry a rifle because of the bear population.
Story#874
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.
Fun fact#875
Nobody is buried in Longyearbyen
Permafrost prevents decomposition, so burials in the town cemetery stopped decades ago.
Story#876
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.
Fun fact#877
The Arctic has 24-hour daylight in summer
Above the Arctic Circle the sun does not set for weeks, and blackout curtains are standard equipment.
Quote#878
Every road leads
All roads lead to Rome.
Fun fact#879
Icebergs are freshwater
Icebergs calve from land glaciers, so despite floating in the sea they are made of compressed fresh snow.
Story#880
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.
Fun fact#881
Only a tenth of an iceberg shows
Roughly 90 percent of an iceberg's mass sits below the waterline, which is where the metaphor comes from.
Quote#882
When in Rome
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Fun fact#883
Passports were standardised after WWI
The modern passport with a photo and standard booklet emerged from a 1920 League of Nations conference.
Story#884
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.
Fun fact#885
Time zones came from railways
Before railways every town kept its own solar time. Standard time zones were adopted to make timetables possible.
Story#886
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.
Fun fact#887
The date line zigzags on purpose
The international date line bends around island groups so countries are not split across two calendar days.
Quote#888
A journey shared
A shared journey is half as long.
Fun fact#889
Jet lag is worse flying east
The body finds it easier to lengthen a day than shorten one, so westward flights usually feel gentler.
Story#890
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.
Fun fact#891
Aircraft windows have a tiny hole
The small bleed hole in a cabin window equalises pressure so the outer pane bears the load.
Quote#892
Travel light, travel far
The lighter the load, the longer the road.
Fun fact#893
Cabin air is drier than most deserts
Relative humidity on a long-haul flight often drops below 20 percent, which is why you feel thirsty.
Story#894
Airport floor sleeping
There is a hierarchy: carpet beats tile, chairs without armrests beat carpet, and a bench near a plug beats everything. This knowledge is earned.
Fun fact#895
Food tastes blander at altitude
Low pressure and dry air dull sweet and salty perception, so airline meals are seasoned more heavily.
Story#896
The kindness of a stranger's phone
My phone died in a city where I could not read the alphabet. A teenager at a bus stop looked up my hotel, wrote the address in her language, and walked me to the right stop.
Fun fact#897
Black boxes are orange
Flight recorders are painted bright orange with reflective tape so search teams can spot them.
Quote#898
Slowly, slowly
Slowly, slowly the egg walks on legs.
Fun fact#899
Airport codes can be historical
Chicago O'Hare uses ORD from its old name Orchard Field, long after the orchard disappeared.
Story#900
Lost passport, calm official
The consulate staff had clearly done this a thousand times. She asked three questions, made two calls, and told me it would be four days and to go and enjoy the city.
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