A million years back, during the last ice age, the river found its way in the rocks, creating the Gorges du Verdon.
After 22 hours of bus, on a straight road in the middle of flat and boring steppes land, we saw its silhouette in the distance: the famous Fitz Roy chain. Slowly, the silhouette becomes sharper and bigger, until revealing a fantastic mountain range like created from shark tooth, surrounded by a beautiful grey laguna and several glaciers. We arrived to the promised land of El Chalten, self-proclaimed capital of trekking of Argentina.
The dream starts at the end of a 22h bus ride.
Kungsleden, “the royal trail”, is a 450km trail running into the Swedish mountains of Lappland, above the Arctic circle. Thousands of hikers come every year in summer to complete a portion (or all!) of one of the most beautiful treks on the planet and enjoy full wilderness – not even phone connection! The first part of the trail, between Abisko to Nikkaluokta is a rewarding 5-7 days trek.
Kungshamn at dusk, west coast of Sweden.
Driving 6h across the country on a Thursday evening after several stressful weeks is not exactly what I had in mind when I talked about “spending a relaxing midsummer week-end”.
But going out of town to enjoy life in the family stuga (cottage) is what you are supposed to do for midsummer when you live in Sweden. With no family cottage to crash in, we ended up renting one on the other side of the country (“the right side of Sweden” according to the ones who live there). “It has better worth it!” I mubbled as I packed my bags, annoyed. What I will realise during the week-end is that the great thing about Kungshamn, is that you don’t have to do so much over there. And just for this reason, it was worth the long drive.
Kungshamn, small town of the west coast is the perfect place to be off for a few days and reconnect with your senses. Here are 5 simple pleasures to experience during a week-end in Kungshamn, Smögen or pretty much anywhere on the Swedish west Coast.
“How much did you spend for the trip in South America?” This is probably the question that we have been asked the most since we came back from South America (ok maybe after “How was it?“). And I know that actually, many more didn’t dare to ask it. But it’s ok to ask. I have been so much under the charm of South America that I am whising everybody to have the opportunity to go and travel on this beautiful continent one day. People usually skip the continent because they think South America is too expensive for a long trip. But is it really?
During our 222 days (more than 7 months) in South America, we tracked our expenses on the road day by day and upon our return I did a proper financial reconciliation to check that our travel budget figures were right. – 🙂 Yes, that’s a professional deformation.
So here you get it all: the full break down of our spendings, cost item by cost item and country by country, figures you can use to plan your RTW trip, a 6 months long trip or even just a nice vacation in South America!
They all say that travelling changes the way you see the world. At the occasion of Earth Hour, Adnan, my travel companion, shares in this article his thoughts about travelling and green responsibilities. Anyone who recognize him/herself?
Traveling in South America made me think about humans role on this planet. How are we supposed to live without destroying this beauty? Or are we supposed to end it all? Is it our role here? I don’t think so, we are build up by the same building blocks as all life on the planet and in a way we are the same. What differs us from the rest you might think? We humans are the only living species that can take control on our own actions, good or bad, happy or sad. That’s why we today more than ever need to take responsibilities for our acts who affect the planet and discuss how to live in a sustainable way. In this posts I am sharing my thoughts about the problem and why, as a traveller, I feel more than ever concerned.
You have heard that before, the ennemy is called Green House effect and the responsible : CO2. CO2 is a colorless, oderless gas vital for all plant life on the planet. The gas is mainly a biproduct from animal respiration, yes we breath out CO2, its also a product from organic combustion such as a camp fire. Also CO2 is produced from natural decomposition done by microorganism or fungi (some kind of mushroom).
Interesting enough, its almost impossible not to produce CO2. Breathing and even dying for example, produce CO2. CO2 is a natural part of our life cycle, it is necessary for all plant life on planet earth. It is also needed to keep our home warm enough to be habitable. CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas and reflects a part of our sunlight back, which warms up our planet. Without CO2 our home would have an average temperature of around minus 18 degrees Celsius. The perfect mix of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually around 300ppm (parts per million) which is roughly 0.03% of all the gases in the atmosphere.
But today, following the industrial revolution, the concentration of CO2 is climbing above 400ppm – a rise of 130% in the latest century and its accelerating. This is due to huge unnatural production of CO2, emission coming from all kind of fossil fuels: petrol, coal, natural gas etc. In 2100 scientists predict that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would be around 900ppm if we continue business as usual, a rise of 300% from the “normal” mix of 300ppm! This means a rise of 5 degrees of the average temperatures on Earth ; with all the disastrous consequences we know: glaciers are long gone, sea level rises, forests becomes deserts, land becomes sea and fragile eco-systems are destroyed, with million species disappearing for ever. After spending more than 7 months admiring wonders of nature (Amazonas, Galapagos, Atacama desert, glaciers… among many) it cannot leave me insensible.
Looking at this fact, there is no doubt: green revolution must happen now if we want future generations to be able to enjoy views like this.
The amazing 27km long campo hielo sur, grey glaciar, Patagonia Chile
And we have to start acting now!
Starting the South American journey but an transatlantic flight… not so great for the planet. Unfortunately, you don’t always have alternatives…
It might be difficult to know where to start. Why not doing something simple first? Tonight, I’m turning my lights off during earth hour (8.30pm local time), and if you have recently admired landscapes that you would be sad to be gone, why not doing the same? Earth hour is just a small step to spread awareness.
During our trip, we got inspire to try to make a change in our life to try to reduce our carbon footprint. A first step was to try to measure it. So we have been traveling for 7 months and during our months of travel we spent a lot of fossil fuels, for transportation, but also to just to live. To be precise we evaluated that we spent around 60000kWh of energy, Which can be translated to around 60000kg of CO2. Using a simplified conversion where 1kWh of coal produces around 1kg of CO2 (the conversion differs depending on which energy source you are using). Its a lot! Is there a way to pay back our carbon dept? Sadly today there are not so many payment plans and the debt is just rising bigger and bigger. Luckily plant earth has some answers, by making plants breath in CO2 and breath out oxygen. But if we would like to compensate for all our CO2 produced during our travel we would need to plant 8500 trees (one tree can offset around 7kg of CO2/year)! Just for us two…
The fragile eco-system of bio reserve Limoncocha, at the border of the Amazonas
Is there a better solution? Can technology help us? This of course triggers many questions…
Have you ever tried to measure your carbon footprint? Which tools did you a use? In a future article we will share our own energy calculator, it is our small contribution but first, let us switch off the lights.
You can hear them from far, way before you can get a glimpse of them. A constant throb, deafening. More than 1.700 m3/second. More than 270 falls spread over 2.700m (almost 2 miles) in a semi circular shape. Iguazu Falls are a gigantic nature wonder. At the border of Brazil and Argentina, the falls have everything to get on every traveller’s bucket list. Here are my tips to get the best out of your visit to the cataracts.