A vast circle of yellow ochre, ringed in red, burns beneath the Andalucian sunshine. As the brass band begins to play, a black ball of fury rages across the yellow earth, a dark comet crossing the sun, a solar storm. Photograph by Chema Concellón Continue reading
“Where everyone knows your name” is now published by Bradt Travel Guides. The tale takes place in tiny Wimbí, an Afroecuadorian village along the farthest reaches of the Cayapa River, as it snakes its way through the Chocó rainforest. Separated from the Amazon by the Andes, the Chocó is remote, barely explored, and exhaustingly hot. Continue reading
As the sun sets and the sweltering temperatures begin to subside, the dancers come out in Cartagena. The energetic drumming is like a siren call, ringing through the colonial streets, drawing onlookers from across the old city. Continue reading
It’s not every day that you get a tattoo while 3,000m up a mountain. My tattooist was a delightful little Colombian named Maruja, and her simple tools were plucked from the Andean mountainside, just as they had been for centuries: a plant, and a pinch of soil. This was no ordinary traveller’s tattoo: this was a Muisca tattoo Continue reading
In a small corner of Ghana’s Upper East Region, the buildings themselves tell stories. Faint patterns emerge on the adobe walls of the compounds and granaries and huts. Smudges of red ochre, ebony and ashy white flake from the baked mud, becoming richer and more visible the further north we travel. Continue reading
Chief Zotentaar-Suhbazaa of Tengzuk sits beneath a vast baobab, squinting at us through his orange-tinted aviators. He is an extraordinarily powerful and respected man, as his entourage and his ceremonial walking stick suggest, and so, presumably, does the neon-streaked beach towel he has draped casually around his neck. Continue reading
“All the places in the world – and you went to Haiti?!”
Since finding out I was going to be travelling to the poorest country in the Americas, this was the kind of shocked response I had grown accustomed to.
“Yes,” I answered. “And it was lovely!” Continue reading
Oh, to be able to bring this scene to life with the noise, the heat, the humidity. The acrid smells of rotting crops and fly-covered meat, the sticky black floor. This photograph is strangely calm, its subject lit as if upon a stage by the Caribbean light penetrating the glorious, rusting, metal roof. Continue reading
These stories were told at Uganda’s Ndere Cultural Centre. I went to a cultural evening there after having lived in the country for six weeks, and the stories summed up my experiences – of making friends, working, travelling, my daily Ugandan life and frustrations – rather beautifully. Continue reading
A tour of a Nambian township is a start reminder of what Nelson Mandela – who is 95 today – has achieved. Apartheid literally means ‘apartness,’ ‘the state of being apart,’ and to be confronted by the physical reality of this was incredibly shocking. Continue reading
La Nomadita's Travels 