Rare Adventures

Tag: travel

Exploring Norway’s Fjords on a Cruise Adventure

When anyone mentioned cruise holidays I used to think “not in a million years mate”.

The thought of being locked up in a tin can and taken to places that I had no choice about filled me with dread. But life moves on and I did become inquisitive about what wonders existed inside those towering pleasure palaces that trundled into places we were staying.

They are Behemoths of the sea, 20 stories high and with roller coasters hanging out the side of the ship was honestly beyond my imagination. I’d been to enough theme parks but really, on a ship!

Watching them head into ports and spew out thousands of people into one small area of a town, which was normally inhibited by hawkers of dodgy goods and trips, or expensive jewellery shops for the well healed cruisers was more convincing that these would not be my kind of people, and certainly not 5000 of them at one time within the giant tin can.

Over the years we’ve moving along from a little from beach side bars playing dance music in a tropical paradise, but not far, we might now include the odd sunset cocktail bar in Tenerife but basically, we are still beach bums at heart.

This, however, presented one problem, I quite fancied seeing the Norwegian fjords. With stunning coastal scenery and high living costs, I was never going to head there in my old camper van, so I explored the other options, and the obvious one was doing it on a cruise.

So, after some soul searching, and recognising that life moves on and that we should try other things, we decided that if we were ever going to do a cruise, Norway would be a good place to test the water.

We could see the format working for a tour of the Caribbean Island as well, so we booked up with P&O to head for the Fjords in Springtime aboard the good ship IONA. A few people had done this trip and waxed lyrical about the wonders of Norway so we went with high hopes that it would be fun, and not feel like 1 of 5000 people locked in a tin can, with huge queues to get around and spending our time being shepherded.

First impressions were great, a huge ship and boarding at Southampton was very efficient. We had an inside cabin (advised by friends as they said we wouldn’t be in it much) which was very comfortable and well designed. We were on very early so had chance to explore.

The first tour of the ship confirmed it was monstrous, rather like a tour of a large glitzy shopping mall. Shops along one deck, restaurants everywhere, a really good gym and spa and plenty of bars and entertainment areas so we were very optimistic about the experience.

03/06/2025
Discover Madeira: A Springtime Adventure

I’d been told years ago that if you want to go to Madeira, do it in the spring because it is colourful. Invariably, I’d notice Madeira at some other time of the year and would make a mental note that I needed to remember to go there in the spring, and then forget.

This year I remembered and last week we finally made it to the island. This is a quick summary of what we found that will hopefully be helpful to others.

So in general, there are loads of things to do when you get away from Funchal, hotels are cheap, beer and food is very reasonable and if you are lucky, you too will bump into an old mate from Plymouth on the plane and get the chance to investigate the bars together.

The weather. I was watching the forecast in the week leading up to the flight and noticed that it seemed to be a bit chilly, and indeed it was. I’ve been to Portugal a few times and the weather has never lived up to the hype and the same applies to Madeira. When the sun was out it was lovely, as soon as the clouds appeared I might has well been in the UK. I’m hardy soul when it comes to cold but I was glad to have a jumper, so if you go in spring expect to take a coat.

Funchal is a concrete jungle, as bad or worse than the Canaries or the mainland. It stretches along the coast to the west away from the centre for 2 or 3 miles and then it suddenly stops and starts to become rural, but they are still building so it will only get bigger. The hotels are more upmarket than say, the Canaries, they are nearly all 4* and a lot more individual in design, they are also cheaper, you should be able to find a 4* with breakfast for about £100 per night.

Once you get out of Funchal the scenery is stunning and it feels like a totally different world.

Steep and colourful – the whole island is steep as it pops out of the sea and is well over 1000m high, so wherever you go expect to be walking up or down a hill, many of which are not for the faint hearted. People who just stay around their hotels in Funchal will never see or experience the things this island has to offer.

There is a really vibrant tourism industry specialising in a whole range of activities from hiking to canyoning that take advantage of the islands natural beauty and gradients, we explored the west of the island on the 4×4 truck tour and it was fantastic. We regretted that we did not have more time to try some of the more adrenaline filled events, but that’s life.

Ugly sea food, they have the best sea food selection of any place I had stayed. The restaurants are full of locally caught fish and it is very cheap. They also have the ugliest fish I have ever eaten, but fortunately it also happens to be the best tasting fish I have had the pleasure to eat – the local name is Scabbardfish and they live in a 1000m of water off the coast, absolutely lush.

06/05/2025
Exploring Kilimanjaro: One Day Trek Insights

As we were staying at the foot of Kilimanjaro it was natural to want to explore the biggest mountain in Africa. It had always had a mystical quality for me since I was a teenager, I had bought an album by Teardrop Explodes and it had a picture of the mountain on the cover.

I wanted to do the trek to the top, but our experiences from Peru and Wooksie’s quite serious issues with altitude sickness at Puno did make us cautious.

This is a pretty typical view of Kilimanjaro – it’s there somewhere

There are various options for trekking to the top, ranging from 5 to 10 days depending on your route. The one thing they all have in common is camping and altitude which isn’t Wooksie’s thing nowadays so we needed a different option.

Hanging out in Moshi we did notice that the mountain is always shrouded in mist. We only saw the peak once in the week we were around there so we were keen to get a better look.

One of the options is the one day trek on Killi. This is a very attractive option as you get the kudos of doing a trek on the famous mountain. It doesn’t come cheap mainly because of the need for the day pass into the park. There are some other 1 day treks that don’t technically enter the park and are a lot cheaper.

So we plumped for the official trek with a company called Killinge Adventures which we booked via Trip Advisor. They were very good but basically it was just the two of us with a guide to take us up the mountain.

And we are off – register at the entrance and off we go

The trek involves a 10km climb to the Mandara camp, this is about a 3rd of the way up Kilimanjaro. On the way up you don’t see much other than trees as the mountain is covered in forest, plenty of knackered looking trekkers making their way back down from the top though.

There are surprisingly few animals or birds. Apparently this is because it is a volcano but I was really amazed at the lack of wildlife, bearing in mind we are in the middle of safari world! We saw a couple of monkeys and the odd bird but that was about it, apparently it was much more interesting for people intrigued by odd vegetation.

Nice place for lunch

So after a couple of hours climbing we get to the camp, full of anticipation for something exciting but in general it was a bit disappointing. There are a few huts you can stay in, it isn’t in a particularly good location for views so not sure why you want to stay here.

So we had lunch, went to look at the Maundi crater rim, which wasn’t particularly impressive partly due to the visibility but a dead crater is a dead crater !

I did take the opportunity to recruit our guide into the Plymouth Argyle supporters Green Army while we were on the crater and get some photos, so it was time well spent !

Moshi Green Army battalion

Exhausted with all the fun, we headed back down and to be honest, the walk down felt tougher than the walk up. The visibility isn’t great in the shade so the return trip carried some jeopardy with the rocky paths and we were glad to get back.

So in summary, it is a 22km round trip, we climbed just short of 900m and took 5 hours 38 mins so it was a good workout after sitting in the safari truck. We can say we’ve trekked on Kilimanjaro but apart from that is wasn’t a particularly exciting experience, and at £200 each, very expensive.

22/04/2025
My weight loss journey – the power of dreams

Why should you change your lifestyle if there is no personal incentive, you need a dream

A valuable lesson is having a goal that will stretch you, and holding yourself to account for achieving it. Make it something so exciting that you will make sacrifices to achieve it.

Click here to follow the res of My Weight Loss Journey

In January 2018 I was still 16st 8lb, the result of beer and BBQs every night and living in the great outdoors down under. As you can see from the photo, I still had a long way to go.

The NZ trip wasn’t all fun, there had been a work element to it and whilst there we had discussed me returning for a longer work trip later in the year.

Finding the dream

Unconnected but relevant, my eldest lad had been surfing off a boat in Bali the previous year and I couldn’t believe that he had achieved such a dream experience. It then occurred to me that if I was heading to NZ I could stop off in Bali and try surfing off a boat. This was an enormous stretch from where I was at that moment, but I wanted it.

I had a goal and I went public with all my pals – “I am going surfing from one of those boats in Bali this year, just like in the videos”, and that meant getting myself sorted and this time I would lose weight.

The Man v Fat football hadn’t really helped me much at this stage, but it was largely because I’d hardly played in the previous 4 months. I bought the ManVFat book and read up on the weight loss techniques and it was quite clear to me that the only way to deal with my weight was calorie counting. I already has an exercise watch that tracked my activity and calories that I was burning, so I just needed to start counting what was going in.

I downloaded the myfitnesspal app that enabled calories tracking and got started.

I had to deal with a few more things, firstly I had to find time to go to the gym, I hate mornings but manged to coax myself there for 8.30 am and got used to it. I had an emotional issue that I felt I was letting my staff down as I wasn’t the first one in the office every day, so I started to view the time at the gym as work prep time not leisure time.

I then had to deal with my lifestyle when not in the office, working away and travelling. So I developed a “calorie trading” technique, so if I was away and wanted to have a couple of beers watching the football, I would “earn the right” by going for a 1 hour walk to earn the 450 kcals that would be in the beer.

Finally there was my all round fitness, a cortisone injection and physio fixed my shoulder but it also highlighted that my core wasn’t particularly strong from all the sitting around, so I did loads of situps. Not surprisingly I ended up with a knackered back, another 4 week layoff from running but I kept going to the gym doing any exercise I could to burn calories.

I had a dream and I was going to make it and nothing was going to get in my way.

21/04/2025
The Ultimate Guide to Planning Your Tanzanian Safari
One of the reasons for doing this blog, is that I really struggled to get my head around what would happen when we arrived and what Moshi was like. Hopefully this will fill in some gaps to help others.

Landing at Killi airport and going through immigration you very quickly realise you are in the heart of Affica, it might be the main tourist airport but this works at African pace.

Tired Westerners meets African paperwork and bureaucracy in no rush to get anything done. For the numerous Europeans hadn’t organised visas, hope you enjoyed that queue folks.

Types of safaris

So a bit of research highlighted 3 types of safaris,
1. Game lodges, these seemed to be mainly private and based around South Africa and the countries in that area.
2. Game drives. Where you belt around the countryside looking for animals in a 4×4, these seemed to be on the Serengeti so tended to be popular in Kenya and Tanzania.
3. Specialist gigs. Seemed to be for people who had done the above and wanted something more specific or rarer animals.
It is more complicated than this as there are variants and combinations of each type but hopefully you get the idea.

Type – So a quick search reveals thousands of tours and options so where the hell do we start. Deciding we wanted to go chasing animals was important and it slimmed the options down to Kenya and Tanzania.

Where – the options were Kenya or Tanzania – the safaris are either north or south of Kilimanjaro and the vast Serengeti which stretches into both countries. (nobody seems to have explained to the wildebeest the charge between them for their annual holidays). We settled on Tanzania because it sounded more exotic and we were able to fly directly into Kilimanjaro airport rather than via a smoggy capital like Nairobi.

Length – there are also loads of different options for length, from 2 days to 21 days. A chat with eldest son helped further, as they said they saw most of the animals in one particular area and their other activities were more of the same, so we focused our search on 3 to 5 days, as after discussions with Wooksie we both agreed we would probably get bored any longer.

Tour company – with one or two minor exceptions we have always planned our holidays independently, which is why we have so many adventures but a safari seemed different and risky and there are hundreds to chose from, so where do we start.

Having worked out roughly what we wanted I contacted the main specialist operators in the UK for a rough price and got wildly different pricing. So I decided I needed to better understand the pricing model and break it down so did more research.

I found this website that was a portal for the local safari companies, that basically put us in direct contact with the safari companies and took out the middle man. It was then quite easy to work out the actual prices we would pay and realised we could save a lot by doing it ourselves.

We contacted half a dozen of the companies offering the 3 day tour, specified that the accommodation needed to be decent, Wooksie insisted she wouldn’t sleep in a tent surrounded by beasts and creepy crawlies.

The companies were based in Tanzania, mostly in Moshi and eventually we settled on Joining Safaris Ltd, Erick was a really helpful guy who gave straight answers to our questions promptly, you can find them at http://www.joiningsafaris.com and I’d definitely recommend them.

The second part of the adventure was some down time, if you are in Tanzania Zanzibar is a short flight away so that was simple enough, hotels booked through hotels.com and booking.com plus safari booked with Erick.

Price Breakdown

So when planning, here is the rough price breakdown in 2024 so you can discuss with an agent or book it yourself

Flight from UK to Kilimanjaro return – about £1000 with premium economy on one leg (KLM)

Safari – £1200 with mid range accommodation each

Flights to Zanzibar, about £200 return

6 nights Hotel on Zanzibar at TUI Zanzibar Bay Resort and Spa about £650 via Booking.com
19/04/2025