long trip

It has been almost 4 years since I have last visited Cuba and Havana. My first time around, it was harder to get to Cuba, you had to fly a charter plane, you had to travel with an officially sanctioned tour operator. This time around, we flew with JetBlue, we were still part of a group but that was a small group focused on dancing salsa and rueda. I was expecting huge changes in 4 years and that was not the case, Havana is still Havana. Everything here works on a different time scale. The main difference seems to be that there are more newer cars than last time but there are still plenty of old ones too. It seems there is more signs for “casa particular” (room for rent to tourists) and there is definitely more “palavar” (private...

One of our main reasons for going to the Ethiopia was to see the semi-permanent lava lake at night on the Erta Ale. Erta Ale is about 600 meters high and is located near the north east of Ethiopia. It’s actually very close to the law-less country Eritrea. It is notable for holding the longest-existing lava lake, present since the early years of the twentieth century (1906). Volcanoes with lava lakes are very rare: there are only six in the world (Erta Ale, Ethiopia – Ambrym, Vanuatu – Mount Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica – Kīlauea, Big Island, Hawaii [there are actually two in Hawaii: Halemaʻumaʻu and Pu’u O’o craters] – Mount Nyiragongo, Democratic Republic of the Congo). The largest one is the Nyiragongo but is now...

Like Burma, I’m going to split my trip to Ethiopia in several posts. If you are not familiar with the Danakil depression, I have included a Google map of the area below. It’s in the northeast region of Ethiopia, in the semi-autonomous zone called the Afar region. The Afar region is named after the Afar tribe that administers the region. However the Afar tribe is split between Eritrea and Ethiopia, causing people to cross between the two countries relatively easily, despite the border with Eritrea being technically closed (Ethiopia and Eritrea were at war in 2000). As you may know, Eritrea is not a safe place. This region is relatively high risk for foreign travelers, as stated by the UN, which recommend not to travel there. Traveling there is a long...

Our last major stop and probably the most beautiful place in Burma was Inle Lake. The lake is fairly large but not that deep (2.1m to 3.7 m at the deepest point). The main mode of transportation is a flat boat.  The people of Inle Lake (called Intha), some 70,000 of them, live in four cities bordering the lake and many smaller villages. This community lives by fishing, growing vegetables on floating gardens and tourism. The fishermen are known in the world for using one of their legs to steer the boat and fish with a circular cage. Most of the fishermen who still fish like this, are more interested in having their pictures taken than fishing. Since this is one of the most iconic image of Burma (the Lonely Planet guide for Burma has a Inle Lake fisherman on the...

Up to this point, we had done a fairly standard Burma trip. Two destinations on our itinerary were off the beaten path. First, on our way to Inke Lake we stopped for one day and one night in Pindaya. The second one was the Kyaiktiyo pagoda also known as Golden Rock, which was an extra two days trip after coming back to Rangoon. Based on my previous post about the food and the lodging you could think it was a luxury trip (and it was) but these two locations were a little to a lot more basic in the food and accommodation. Pindaya The attraction of Pindaya are the caves that are filled with buddhas. On our way to the airport, we stopped on the side of the road to take pictures of the low fog in the Mandalay valley. Pindaya is a small town and after visiting the...

One of the most common questions about Burma I get is about the food and/or the hotel or lodging quality. So let’s talk about our trip and our experience. First we went with a small group and with a very experienced travel agency: Insider Asia. They have been organizing custom trips to Asia for many years. While this trip to Burma was their first one, they did a lot of research and selected a very good local guide. Both of those attributes made our trip amazing. The lodging was always excellent as most hotels were 4-5 stars equivalent. My favorite hotel was the Myanmar Treasure Resort Inle. Here is a couple images of what our room looked like. We had a patio with view of the lake, a cool private outdoor shower, and a fantastic bed. In Burma, they make their...