At the western end of the Amazon river, where Peru, Brazil and Colombia meet, there is a conglomeration of strange little jungle towns. On the far south-eastern corner of Colombia, the city of Leticia borders directly with the Brazilian city of Tabatinga and together they make up a local hub for trade and tourism - even if they have no road connection to the outside world. From here I went on a boat ride into the many rivers that come together to make up the Amazon, finally ending up on a river bank technically located in Peru. It was there I met her. (more…)

Warning: This post contains pictures of a monster tearing to pieces a dead carcass. This is a long needed departure from nerdy search engines, weekend trips to the coastal towns and the German beer-vacations. This is a picture from a far more adventurous undertaking. Back in 2005 my friend Jon and I went to the little island of Rinca to see some of the most ferocious animals on the planet - the Rinca Dragons.

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The destination research tool is a quick little structured metasearch for looking up information on destinations in a really fast way. Just try it by typing in a destination above. It should be pretty self-explainatory, but it’s just a conceptual prototype/mashup now, so I’ll explain the intentions. I could even need some help to make it better. (more…)

This is from a really short weekend trip down the New South Wales coast of Australia. Seen with local eyes, this isn’t a very large outing, but for me most everything down under has something exotic or at least interesting to it. Actually, it might not be that everyday for the locals either: With every weekend trip I’ve done the last month, the Sydney Morning Herald has had someone create a so ecstatic tribute to the same location even the local tourist bureau would blush of shame. This trip was no different.

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Kookaburras - they’re about as Australian as the kangaroo. Pelicans may not be equally antipodean, but that doesn’t detract from their appeal - they just set off a lot of images of Hemingway in the Florida Keys for me. They’re the hallmark of deep sea fishing and slightly drunken adventures in the tropics. The following bird pictures are from a somewhat less adventurous trip down the south coast of New South Wales, from Sydney to Ulladulla and back. (more…)

Bremen, Germany, doesn’t stand out as a top destination, or even an alternative to consider in where to go for a vacation. The city is, however, a major destination for Ryanair in Europe. And that, in combination with probably not being particularly high on anyone’s list, makes it both a cheap and available place to kick back if you’re living in Europe. What to do there is another question - it’s the kind of place that makes your friends go “Bremen? Why? What’s to do in Bremen?”. Even my uncle the Germanophile, and source of knowledge of all things German, had only one thing to say: “It’s a typical German city”. So leaving the “Bremen?” and “Why?” for another article - what is there to do in Bremen?

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While our visit to the Blue Mountains two weeks ago was eerie enough on its own, it appears to be more dimensions to the creepiness. Although not mentioned in the blog post, my girlfriend mentioned in the comment section that we got food poisoning. And we certainly did, we actually ended up having to go the hospital in middle of the night after we got home. Well, apparently we were not the only ones:

Ten die as gastro hits nursing home 
(Sydney Morning Herald).

It turns out a gastroenteritis outbreak hit the same weekend, leaving a significantly higher than normal number of elderly passing away in a Blue Mountains nursing home. And giving the title of my original write-up (The Blue Mountains: How to survive the mountain towns) a morbid twist..

Now the opposition is blaming the nursing home and accuse the government of covering up the incident, because they sent out the press release late on a friday (seriously, such is Australian politics). What’s interesting is that if we caught it outside the nursing home (we never visited any nursing homes, except for the general home for the elderly that is the mountain towns themselves), that probably means the source was not there - and could help shed light on both the original source and possibly help clear the nursing home. This is also a really good demonstration of the value of a tool like the disease map project mentioned last week.

However, after seeing it in the media we informed the NSW Food Authority that we also got it, so if it’s useful for them to know, it gets to the right people.