Adventure Travel Photography Blog
Before I visited American Samoa the only thing I knew about the Polynesian island chain, was that it is owned by the USA. I learned Polynesians first arrived on the islands some 2,500 years ago.
The USA didn’t get involved with Samoa until 1872 when it signed a friendship treaty with the Samoan government in order to establish a coaling station for the US Navy fleet as the islands are located midway between Hawaii and New Zealand.
LET’S GO
Upon my arrival on the Big Island of Hawai’i, I spent three days exploring the Hamakua Coast, the Kohala Coast, and the Kona Coast before I transferred over to the east side of the Island near Hilo. Since I was most interested in hiking in the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, I rented a VRBO near Volcano Village. I ended up in a little piece of paradise.
LET’S GO
So I tried some of the tourist places first and then migrated off the main drag to dine with the locals. I found the food was just as good if not better at the local restaurants. In addition, the portions were larger for a half or a third of the price! Continue reading “Best Places to Eat in San Andres, Colombia”
San Andrés is the largest of three islands in the Colombian archipelago located in the Caribbean Sea. The islands first appeared on the Spanish map in 1527. Over the next 350-400 years, the islands were inhabited by the English, Dutch and Spanish and changed hands many times. In 1900, the islands were declared Colombia’s. The USA requested that the archipelago be given to Panama by which it is closely located, but the request was rejected proving the local’s loyalty to Colombia. In 2000, the islands became a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. Continue reading “Top 11 Tips for Traveling to San Andres, Colombia”
We had to schedule a day on land after diving so we could off gas before flying. As such we planned on spending our morning at another national park called Christoffel and our afternoon in Willemstad, the larger town near the airport.
We thought it would be best to hike and enjoy nature before it got too hot. It’s a good thing we did, the park doesn’t even allow visitors to hike up the “mountain” after 11am for this very reason. Originally, we thought we would hike the orchid trail. The online information suggested this would be a two hour hike and not too strenuous. Continue reading “Christoffel Park and Willemstad, Curaçao”
Another day…another day on the boat diving! Two tanks with yet another dive master and a trainee. The trainee was one of our divemasters the first day and not from the area. She had only arrived two weeks ago. I still wouldn’t say our divemasters were good, but we had some enjoyable dives at Mushroom Forest and Lagun. The highlights were probably the eels again. We found two next to each other which is somewhat rare, plus we spotted another one free swimming. Continue reading “SCUBA in Westpunt, Curaçao”
a long day of travel, we finally arrived at Curaçao’s International Airport around 10pm. Slowly and in a sweltering heat, we eventually got our rental car from Sixt. We piled our dive gear into the back of the tiny car, jacked with the driver side door lock, turned the volume on the radio blasting jibberish down to zero since the Kenwood stereo wouldn’t turn off and headed out in the dark to Westpunt. According to the map, we only had to make one turn. According to the rental car agent, we had to go to the round-about and go straight. Continue reading “Boca Acension in Curaçao”
It would have been ashame to wake up before the sunrise and never snap a photo…I finally did…check!
Today marked our final day of diving. We only had two dives scheduled today as we had to comply with the 24 hour waiting period before we could fly. Our first dive was at Miyaru Kandu, another channel. Again we were looking for big stuff. I suppose those who really get excited over sharks and the like were disappointed as there was not much to see, so again we swam across the channel to the reef instead of dropping down to watch sharks circle. Continue reading “Visiting Male, Maldives”
We took our usual ten minute journey to our morning dive site, this time, Kuda Rah Thila in South Ari Atoll. The boats rarely travel at night, thus our morning dive is generally positioned near the afternoon site we dove the previous day. This Thila had other small pinnacles next to it, so it made for nice wide swim throughs and was quite different from our continuous reef circling. Continue reading “Sharks and Rays Swarmed in Epic Night Dive in the Maldives”