Bali
Bali is one of those destinations that I’d always vaguely thought sounded amazing but had never really got around to seriously considering actually going there until I’d been dating Kate for a few months & she suggested we go for our first holiday together. Well actually, we talked about a long weekend in Europe, maybe Greece, and it quickly escalated into 2 weeks in Bali… basically because Kate kept saying, “Yeah but what about Bali?” until I started to feel like going had been my idea all along!
Thankfully, it was one of the best decisions ever as the entire trip was completely out of this world! Very worthy of the Spacefrog Hall of Fame.
So, we packed our trunk with a trumpety trump & off we set. First stop, Gatwick for the obligatory breakfast-with-cocktail photo & then an incredibly long flight to Kuala Lumpur for an 8-hour stopover before connecting to Denpasar.
Kuala Lumpur stop-over
While in KL, we decided to head out for a bit & see some of the city. We walked around for an hour & then changed our plan as it was so incredibly hot that we felt like we were about to pass out. We got a taxi to a swanky hotel with a rooftop pool & bar overlooking the Petronas Towers to cool down for a bit but they wouldn’t let us up as it was for guests only. Feeling like a bit of a baller, I said ok, we’ll book a room. Oh what’s that? You only have a suite available? Of course you do. Fine, we’ll take the suite then & pay for a night just so we can swim for a couple of hours & have a quick nap before going back to the airport. Insane, but it turned out to be a far better option that walking round in the unbearable heat. We had a great swim with some cocktails, then had a 90-min nap before showering & heading to the airport to fly to Bali.
Immigration queue hell
By the time we arrived in Denpasar, it was pretty late, like 10pm, and after disembarking we went into the arrivals hall, along with about 3 other planes’ worth of passengers, and then queued for about 3 hours to go through customs. It was completely mental -the queues were massive & there didn’t seem to be any urgency or effort to get people processed any quicker. Our hotel transfer driver must have phoned me 20 times to check we were still coming…
Uluwatu
Finally we were through and on the way to our first hotel of the trip. We were staying in a cliff-side hotel in Uluwatu that looked straight out onto the sea from the bedroom, It was a little basic but comfy and gorgeous. The steps down were treacherous - very steep, no handrail, basically a nightmare at 2am carrying heavy suitcases, but we finally made it. We were completely exhausted but also totally jet-lagged and far too wired to sleep so we stayed up until about 5 drinking wine and eating pringles before finally going to bed,
We were rudely awakened at 7am by workmen drilling and hammering as they built new bedrooms for the hotel (which was not in the brochure!) & wandered over to the hotel next door as they served food whereas ours did not. After a wonderful meal with amazing coffee, we hired a scooter from our hotel for a couple of days and went off exploring the area.
Uluwatu is a gorgeous place - full of dramatic cliffs and temples. We went to one fairly nearby for sunset, having covered ourselves with the provided sarongs, and enjoyed stunning views from the cliff edge over the sea as the sun went down before having dinner & heading back to our hotel & relaxing on the balcony.
The next day we went to a beach and I went out for a sea swim. The waves were pretty intense and, despite being a confident open-water swimmer, I may have got a little carried away, swimming straight out past all the surfers on their boards and then out a bit more. Which was fine, until I started to head back in & realised I wasn’t making any progress due to the riptide. Long story short, it took me about 45 mins to swim back in and I could feel myself moving slightly backwards for a solid 20 minutes. I couldn’t swim to the right because the waves were smashing onto rocks and to the left were all the surfers so I just kept plugging away until finally, with the help of a series of massive waves that sent me tumbling around under the surface, I got back to the beach and a somewhat concerned girlfriend. My bad.
Ubud
After 2 days in Uluwatu, we got a taxi to Ubud. Looking at a map, I was convinced it would take about half an hour to get there - it was like 50km - but Kate just laughed & said it would be more like 2.5hrs because of the state of the roads and general traffic. Literally everyone rides scooters, many without a helmet & usually with at least 3 passengers and a dog. It’s insane. And the standard of roadcraft isn’t great but I found I fitted in really well when we were on a scooter. However, right now we were in a car so the journey took forever.
We finally arrived at the Komaneka hotel in Ubud, our home for the next 2 days. That evening, we swam in the stunning pool surrounded by lush greenery, ate an amazing dinner and got an amazing sleep, catching up on what we’d missed the last two nights of jetlag.
The next morning, our first task was to go for a wander and get a scooter, picking up breakfast on the way. Kate wanted a Scoopy; I had no idea what this meant but soon realised it’s a retro-looking scooter and we found one that ticked the cute boxes for Kate & the brakes even worked, so I was happy too.
Ubud is a truly unique place. Very bohemian, spiritual, relaxed, chilled… everyone wearing floaty fabrics and doing yoga. Very cool. Kate’s very much into this way of life anyway and I threw myself in with gusto. We did yoga at Yoga Barn and a gong meditation session and I ate vegan food on purpose.
The next day we’d booked acoustic sound bio-resonance
Dominican Republic
It all begins with an idea.
Believe it or not, this was my first ever beach holiday.
I mean, of course I’ve been to the beach before & I’ve been on holiday before & I’ve even been to the beach while on holiday before… but I’ve never before been on a holiday where the whole point was to laze around by the sea for more than a day or so with nothing more adventurous going on than the occasional swim, drone flying & trips to the bar to load up on cocktails when the people who take your drinks orders from your loungers hadn’t been around in a while…
We (my girlfriend, Kate, & I) flew out at the end of Feb for 11 days of sun, sea, piña coladas, & all-inclusive goodness. (On a side note, I once again forgot to take my flying ring frisbee which I’ve owned for 11 years & never once thrown as I keep forgetting to take it anywhere decent. I’m nothing if not consistent in my ridiculousness.)
We’d been thinking about getting away for some winter sun and were looking at a week somewhere but the deals we found for 11 nights were barely more expensive than 7, so we happily plumped for the longer duration. We picked the Hilton La Romana resort based on the gorgeous turquoise sea, white sand beach and good reviews.
Bags packed, including new additions of goggles, snorkel (love that word! makes me laugh every. single. time.) and fins, plus a fully-loaded kindle, camera, and drone but no zebra mask this time. I knooow. It’s in storage due to a recent house move, or I would definitely have taken it.
This was a holiday of firsts for me - as well as being my first beach holiday, it was also my first all-inclusive and first package holiday with one of the traditional tour operators, in this case, TUI Travel.
We departed from Gatwick and got there via the London Victoria Gatwick Express (we live in Kensington so it’s a very easy journey). For the first time in forever, we didn’t get to the airport in time to have the obligatory breakfast & expresso martini (shocking), and just about had time to grab some water & sandwiches from Pret before we boarded. Or tried to board - there was this mad panic as the information board said the flight was boarding so we rushed to the gate, but all that really happened was we were herded into a stuffy departure lounge with 300 other people and kept there for a good 20 mins (more than enough for a cocktail!) before they actually opened the gates.
The flight itself was fine, shorter than I expected at 9 hours. The meals were ok and they did offer a free drink or two, but then did that thing which I really dislike whereby they continually launched into these sales pitches over the tannoy to try and get us to buy their tatt. Seriously, if they’d announced one more time that the “Haribo was now only £3, yes that’s right, ladies & gentlemen, just £3”, I think I would have gone postal and tried to open the door to fling myself out and end the pain.
Thankfully, we landed without incident, although it was touch and go for a while.
All pretty straightforward once we landed - we collected luggage, found our transfer bus & settled in for the hour’s trip. On arrival, we checked in, freshened up and headed to the buffet for dinner.
There was a choice of five or six restaurants on the resort; we ate at the buffet most days (always for breakfast, often for lunch and dinner) as it was very well stocked and had cooks on hand to make omlettes, pasta dishes, or barbequed chicken, steak or prawns. The other times we tried out the other options which included Japanese, seafood and Mediterranean cuisine.
Norway - Under restaurant, November 2019
It all begins with an idea.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Pembrokeshire coast, October 2019
It all begins with an idea.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Finland Aurora safari
It all begins with an idea.
My first glimpse of the majestic Aurora Borealis
I’ve always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis (…who hasn’t, right?) and tried in Iceland back in 2009 over a long weekend, but it snowed so heavily the whole time I was there that I couldn’t see a thing. No Aurora, no landscapes… I couldn’t even see the (apparently) stunning Godafoss waterfall despite being stood right on the edge of it. Good times.
So then I was meant to go to Nellim, Finland, in 2013 but a family medical situation meant that I cancelled my trip and shelved the idea for a while due to other priorities.
2019 was going to be the year I tried again. I’d put it off too long and it had been niggling at me non-stop. Besides, I’d been practicing my night-time photography and was raring to go capture some amazing Aurora shots.
I booked a 4-night trip with The Aurora Zone , packed a bag with some warm clothes, camera gear and a tripod, and off I went!
The Journey
Getting there was pretty straight-forward. I flew to Helsinki then connected to Ivalo where I was met by the hotel’s airport transfer bus and driven the 60km further north to Lake Inari. The first leg was on probably the most awesome plane I’ve ever been on. It was a Finnair flight and the seats were super comforable, with plenty of leg room, and really good entertainment systems with good tv screens. I loved it. The next leg was also Finnair but, understandably, a smaller, and less luxurious model.
One lesson I quickly learned first-hand - things aren’t cheap in Scandinavia. I grabbed a sandwich at Helsinki airport which was insanely expensive and really very average. Luckily I had two credit cards and a spare kidney on me so was able to cover it…
On that note, take your own alcohol. I went to buy some Baileys at the duty free at Helsinki having forgotten at Heathrow (I wasn’t able to because my next flight was internal) and even so, a tax-free bottle of spirits was still around €40. No problem, I thought, I’ll just have the odd glass of wine at the hotel… for €15 a pop.
The Wilderness Hotel
I was staying at the Inari Wilderness Hotel, a gorgeous, rustic retreat in the far north. The hotel is comprised of a main log cabin building housing the reception, restaurant and bar areas, complete with huge roaring fires, separate accommodation blocks, and a variety of log cabins, chalets, and glass-roofed Aurora cabins dotted around the main building. I was initially staying in the standard rooms and had upgraded to an Aurora cabin for the last night.
The hotel is right on the bank of Lake Inari, the third largest lake in Finland - no idle boast in the Land of a Thousand Lakes. Even though it was only late September when I went, the water in the lake was so cold that, on the few times I tried to go swimming, I literally couldn’t do it. Now, I’m no stranger to cold water; I’m an open-water swimmer and have swum in the Southern Ocean in Antarctica but this was something else… maybe because it starts off quite shallow so you have to wade in for a while rather than just being able to plunge straight in. Anyway, I only got as far as knee-deep before my feet started burning with cold & I legged it back to the sauna. Fail.
Foooooood (nom nom nom)
The food at the hotel was really awesome. Breakfast was a buffet, lunch and dinner à la carte. I basically had reindeer steak with berry jus and roasted root vegetables every chance I got, which was amazing, but because I’d booked an all-inclusive package, once or twice I was told I needed to have the set menu. However, I found this disappointing so was allowed to go back to choosing every meal. Win.
Excursions
I’d arrived at the hotel around 7.30pm on the Thursday and checked in, picking up my Aurora phone in the process. This is used to alert you to any Aurora activity that’s spotted up until 1am. I then took my bags to my room and wandered down to the lake shore to have a look around and take some pictures.
After that, I had an amazing three-course dinner and nightcap and headed to bed, fully prepared to leap out if the buzzer sounded.
Which it didn’t. Boo.
Shopping trip to Inari town
The next day was at my leisure, with the first scheduled activity included in my package being an Aurora-chasing drive that evening. I had a late breakfast, getting in just before the buffet ended at 10am, ate, and set off on the 35-minute walk into Inari town for a look around. I had the vague idea of buying some wine and snacks for my room and had a look around the three supermarkets, to no avail. It turns out that supermarkets don’t sell alcohol (apart from beer and low-alcohol wine); the government controls the Alko shops which are the only ones licenced to sell spirits. And the nearest one was 60km away in Ivalo.
Aurora chasing
That evening, I met up with two couples who were booked on the same trip in reception after dinner and we piled into a minibus to head out and look for some Aurora action.
We drove about 45 minutes north and the driver stopped when he thought he saw the beginnings of some activity. We all got out and, sure enough, there were some misty wisps of light in the sky so we set up tripods and cameras, fiddled with settings and started snapping away.
First glimpe
Initially the Aurora we could see started as a glowing stripe across the sky which steadily grew, but it wasn’t the incredible dancing display that you really want. It didn’t look like much to the naked eye but the cameras were picking up the electric green colour really well with 15 second exposures.
After an hour or so, it began to fade so we turned around and headed back to the hotel, having captured some pretty good shots and feeling rather pleased with ourselves.
We stopped off on the way to take pictures of the moon reflecting in a lake and noticed that the Aurora seemed to be following us, and as we carried on driving, it essentially kept pace with us. When we arrived back, I immediately went and set up on the bank of the lake along with about a dozen others.
Mind = Blown
Sure enough, the Aurora kept coming, creeping steadily across the sky until they were seemingly right above us. Still though, not much was happening - there was very little movement.
After a few hours, shortly before 1am, most people called it a night and went to bed, leaving a die-hard group of 4 or 5 of us still hoping to wring the very last drop of Aurora experience possible out of the night.
Within 15 minutes, our commitment paid off, massively.
We were treated to the most indescribably epic display of Northern Lights which lasted just a minute or two, but left me feeling totally awestruck and giggling like I’d lost my marbles. I genuinely felt that I’d experienced them at their most majestic and (though I’ll never stop trying), if I never see them again, I really can’t complain. But I probably will, because I’m greedy and want more :)
Trying to put into words how visually intense the Northern Lights are is virtually impossible, as is attemping to convey with some degree of accuracy how stunned it leaves you feeling, but I’ll do my best.
Whereas before they’d just been a slowly moving, pale glow across the sky, what happened next was about as dramatic as it gets. A streak of intense green light suddenly appeared from behind the glass roof of the nearest Aurora cabin, shooting up into the sky and arcing over to come down right above us and the lake.
I was amazed because this wasn’t the insipid-to-the-naked-eye, wispy glow we’d been seeing for 3 hours; this was a much stronger electric green colour and could be seen clearly, like my previous shots on camera. Half of the sky seemed to light up and then we saw the mystical dancing effect it produces, moving rapidly across the sky and shooting down in mile-high columns of beautiful light. The energy was incredible; it made me think of a celestial being playing a magical piano in the sky, producing bars of colour instead of music which charge down towards the ground. (Just go with me here - it makes sense in my head.)
It was completely mind-blowing; easily the most surreal, profound, awe-inspiring and magical experience of my life.
Even though I was completely awestruck, I managed to aim my camera and fire off a couple of shots, but only a couple - as I said, the whole thing was over with in about a minute.
But what a minute it was! I was literally so excited while it was going on that I was breathless and couldn’t string together a cohert thought - I just stood there giggling to myself, feeling completely overwhelmed and amazed. I do specifically recall thinking that I wished my girlfriend was with me to experience it too but she hadn’t been able to come on the trip.
The pictures below are from this moment and illustrate exactly what I saw with my eyes - for the first time all night, it looked exactly like this.
This is the point at which the Aurora first shot up from behind the cabin.
Here is where it really intensified and started to go absolutely crazy, dancing all over the sky with the bars you see to the right darting down towards us one at a time. The energy was incredible and it felt even more surreal for being completely quiet although it seemed like I could feel the music the lights were dancing to.
A few more seconds of the heavens dancing and bouncing up and down and then that was it… it stopped as suddenly as it started and faded away, leaving me completely blown away.
Mere words and pictures can’t hope to convey the emotion of experiencing this first-hand but I’ve done the best I can. Suffice to say it’s every bit as incredible as I hoped it would be, and more.
After the amazing few minutes, there was still Aurora to be seen for another hour or so. The band of green swept over us, at one point fully covering half the sky, and then moved off across the lake towards the moon. It was still beautiful, but not doing the dancing movements it had done before.
I stayed out until the bitter end, not wanting to miss a second of it. I took a bunch more photos and only gave in and went to bed, tired but elated, around 2am when I finally accepted the show was over for the night.
Boat Trip & Another Aurora Chase
The rest of my time there was less dramatic.
The following day, Saturday, I was booked on a boat trip on the lake and a visit to the Saami Museum in Inari to learn about the local culture and their history. I was again with one of the couples from the previous night but the other couple had left to go back to New Zealand.
We had a great day, all in all. The boat trip was fun, complete with commentary from the crew teaching us about the lake, local area and customs. We stopped off at a tall sacred island in the middle of the lake before heading back to shore where the museum was. That was really interesting too - we saw models of sleds, igloos, canoes, tools, weapons, and homes, as well as learning all about the local wildlife.
I spend some time in the afternoon sat by the fire, reading, doing some picture editing and enjoying a coffee. And a Baileys. Very enjoyable.
That evening we had another Aurora chase, this time to a cabin about half an hour away that had been built specifically for this purpose. While there, we had hot chocolate made on the open fire and tried to catch a glimpse of the Aurora. We did actually see some, but it was very weak and didn’t develop into anything note-worthy.
Woodland Hike
On the final day of the trip, we were to be led on a hike through the woods to a camp where we’d cook lunch before heading back. This was great - we were out for a good 4 or 5 hours and we were slap bang in the middle of Ruska which is the part of a Finnish autumn where all the trees and bushes are various shades of yellow and red, so the scenery was gorgeous.
We crossed a narrow footbridge over a raging river, learned about different plants and reindeer habits, and almost fell off a log before arriving at the camp. Once there, I used a very rustic outdoor toilet before we got a fire going (there were logs stacked ready, we didn’t have to chop any trees down or anything) and cooked the lunch which our guide had thoughtfully brought with him.
Aurora Cabin
When we returned, I packed up my room and transferred to my glass-topped Aurora cabin for my last night, which I was super excited about. It was a really cool room, very comfy and warm, with a heated roof so you can always see through it even in the middle of winter when there is 2ft of snow everywhere.
I was two cabins down from the sauna, so I booked an hour slot (that’s how it works there - you don’t all share it, you have it to yourself for an hour at a time whenever it’s free) so I spent a relaxing 40 mins alternating between sitting in the sauna with a drink and nipping out to get in the lake, only to chicken out as soon as I was up to my knees. Hardcore.
Final Night
That was my trip, in a nutshell. The rest was uneventful - I had an amazing meal on my last night - exactly the same thing I’d had most days - and relaxed with a book and glass of wine by the fire. After that, I went and read for a while in my cabin, glancing up occasionally in the hopes of another magical display but there was no Aurora to be seen that night.
The next day we were transferred to the airport after breakfast for the flight home, but I definitely left a piece of my heart in Lapland.
Aurora Portfolio
The complete collection of my Aurora shots from this trip can be found here.
Eye Vs Camera
Now, contrary to popular belief, you can’t see the Aurora as intensely as a camera shows them up due to the way our eyes work and process colour at night. The amazing, dramatic photos of the Lights you see are usually long exposure shots that have had the colour enhanced in post-processing to bring them out to their fullest. It’s not that they aren’t there as the photo shows - it’s just that the naked eye isn’t sensitive enough to discern everything that’s going on, so we typically see a washed-out, desaturated version. I’ve read articles by other Aurora photographers who say they usually can’t tell what colour the Aurora is until they see what the camera shows. I say “typically” and “usually” because there are times at which the Aurora is really intense and you can get the full experience, which is rare, but absolutely mind-blowing when it happens, as I described in this article.