The most amazing dive I’ve (n)ever done
Mention Ningaloo Reef to people and their first thought is usually ‘Whale Sharks’ but divers also love the area for a special dive site called ‘Navy Pier’. The Navy Pier When I told friends I was heading to Ningaloo Reed, one friend urged me to make sure that I dived the Navy Pier while I was at Ningaloo. Now the Navy Pier doesn’t sound very excitng, does it? It is true that it is a man-made dive site, rather than a natural spectacle, but nature has a way of taking over beneath the surface. Nothing is ever simple There are several dive operators in Exmouth (the town nearest Ningaloo Reef)…
Delicious Brittany
Brittany, originally independent from, but now a beautiful corner of France, has over 2,800 km of stunning coastline. It is not just the coastline that will leave you awestruck though. There are some fantastic eats too. The Bretons certainly know their food. Here are some of my favourites. Crepes and Galettes Crepes are found all over France, but nowhere are they quite like those found in Brittany. In the South of Brittany crepes de froment are more traditional. These are sweet crepes made with flour, eggs, milk and melted butter. They are often served with nutella, bananas, or strawberries and Chantilly cream. Galettes de Sarrasin are traditionally from Brittany’s North…
The wonderful whale sharks of Ningaloo
Armed with little more than a snorkel and my camera, I quite deliberately, went swimming with big sharks. Most of them were at least 10m long in fact and I loved it. Want to know what it was like? Read on. Where are we going? At an ungodly hour I was waiting outside my hotel for the ‘whale shark bus’ After several others came by and I was starting to feel like I was on Oxford Street, a bus looking for me turned up. It was a 20 ish minute drive out to Tantabiddi, the launch point for trips to Ningaloo Reef. From here you are taken by small dinghy…
Kayakoy – The Gemstone of South West Turkey
Kayakoy is a gorgeous little unassuming country village nestled in the mountains behind Fethiye. It has changed little in the 15 years that I have known the area and continues to provide welcome relief from the tourist drag, to those who venture here. Kayakoys beautiful, abandoned stone houses on this hillside are the village’s main drawcard. A Little History Kayakoy has had many names over the years. Its Greek name was Levissi and its Turkish name was Karmylassos. For centuries both Greeks and Turks lived here together harmoniously and both names were used. The Turkish population worked mostly in agriculture and kept animals, while the Greek population kept themselves busy…
Uluru Sunrise
At 5:30am, and against every natural wish of my lazy lazy body, I got up in the cold Northern Territory desert pre-dawn to watch the sun rise over Uluru. I wore all the clothing I had with me; it reminded me of winter mornings in the UK. I was surprised how cold the desert was, despite knowing that deserts experience extremes of heat. I made my cold and numb way through the silent campsite, in the dark, to the meeting point. I had opted to go on a tour, which is unlike me, but the price of a hire car and my lack of local knowledge made a tour a…
Seven Words
It’s all about 7s this week isn’t it? I posted My 7 Links last week and now i’m posting Seven Words. What is Seven Words? I hear you ask. Well… My friend Al’s blog is all about her life bringing up her amazing little girl, who has special needs. I spotted earlier that she posted seven words which summed up her life at the moment. Check them out here. It made me think. I have been through enormous change recently. I have lost my Dad, left a job I had for five years and moved to Australia. Which words sum up my life at the moment? To be honest I…
A Foray into the Atherton Tablelands
“Bloody Bandicoots!” my friend shouted as we screeched to a halt in the early evening pitch black darkness somewhere between Kuranda and Mareeba in Far Northern Queensland. “Bandi-whats?” I asked. A few moments of recovery and a quick explanation later, we were on our way again, this time nervously looking out for naughty eyes reflected in our headlights. Hidden away up the range behind Cairns, the Atherton Tablelands is a collection of villages and settlements set amidst agricultural land. Atherton, Tolga and Mareeba are places to get away from things, or life in noisy Cairns anyway. It is cooler up at the Tablelands than down on the coast, offering welcome…
My 7 Links
And now for something completely different! The World is Waiting is fairly young in blogging terms, the six month anniversary sneaked past only last month, so it was very exciting to be nominated by Turkey’s For Life (Thanks Julia!) to take part in Tripbase’s ‘My 7 Links’ which asks bloggers to choose seven posts from their archives in certain categories. Here goes! The Links 1. Your most beautiful post For me, being able to finally reveal my travel plans to everyone was beautiful. It was a relief and something I was really excited about. So from my archives I think The travel plan I kept secret for so long is…
My Dad – My Travel Hero
My parents are travellers. Not the strange hippy kind but the curious-about-the-world type. Travelling is something that always interested Dad especially. From a young age he was curious, taking part in his school exchange to Germany as a gawky teenager and later spending his gap year in Swaziland (in the 1960s when gap years were far less common than they are now). My parents met and I was born in Luxembourg, while they were both expats there. I blame them both for my nomadic streak! From a young age, my brother and I were taken abroad as our parents explored the world. Thanks to them I have fond childhood memories…
How to call home for free wherever you are
Calling home is nice. It helps prevent your friends and family from worrying about you when they haven’t seen you in ages and only receive the occasional postcard from far and exotic lands (you do send postcards, right?) It also keeps you up to date with developments back home. As soon as you are in a different country though, international call costs are high and depending where you are they can even seem prohibitively expensive. Never fear – VOIPs are here! What is a VOIP? VOIPs are ‘Voice over internet protocols’. Essentially they are software or downloadable applications that you can run on your smartphone or computer to make phone…
