Isafjordur, my Icelandic love
It was the end of November when I landed to Isafjordur, on the North Western fjords of Iceland. Useless to say it was cold, very cold. In Reykjavik my flight had been cancelled for two days in a row, due to the stormy weather conditions in he North. I had almost lost my hopes to […]
Northern Lights: the true story
This is the most funny of all my travel stories. The truth is: I have been in Iceland 3 times, always in the middle of the freeking Icelandic winter and I have never managed to see the Northern Lights! Never. Not even a glimpse, a green spot, a stain in the sky that could have […]
Bratislava in black and white
Bratislava is one of those nice Autumn surprises you don’t expect to get after a 18 hour night bus trip from Amsterdam. It welcomed me in a shiny, sunny and warm day of middle October, and donated me am incredible warm week of joy, discovery, surprises and catching up with an old friend I didn’t […]
Pisa, at the feet of its leaning tower
Despite the beauty of such an ancient, stylish and beautiful place such as Piazza de’ Miracoli in Pisa, despite the amazing view of the leaning tower, enchanting in it perfect shape, there is one thing that astonish you the most in that Medieval Square: the people, the thousands of tourists standing at the towers feet […]
Africa: your questions, my answers
Here it’s some of the most common questions I had to answer once back home How was it? How is Africa? Africa is a wonderful land and the trip was amazing. It is still too early to talk about it and tell you everything, I feel I have to absorb the thousands emotions felt […]
Eating with an Italian princess
The atmosphere is charming and it enlights the warm Mediterranean nights of Southern Italy. It is like diving into the past, on Medieval night of ages ago when Antonello, sir of Salerno, sir of these valleys, introduced his beautiful bride, Costanza, to its people. People from all over the Southern reign came to his castle […]
Unbelievable places: Kolmanskop, a ghost town of the desert
In the middle of the Southern desert, the one belonging to Namibia and to the Southern Hemisphere, Kolmaskop is a true gem, a pearl of beauty and silence, like the Desert that surrounds and hug it. It appears on the side of an unknown road that runs for kilometres without crossing any village or […]
Etosha, into the wild
“This is where humanity kicked off – it ‘s about time you came home” (Lonely planet Africa). Humanly speaking, that was indeed the feeling I had when I entered not only Namibia but Etosha National Park, too. The door to it actually opens up a new world, the world that belongs to Africa in the […]
Unbelievable places: Tundavala Abyss
One of the most glorious and unexpected corner of paradise came out of the blue in the middle of our busy time crossing Angola. We were overnighting for a couple of days outside Lobango, in the garden of a beautiful guest house surrounded by the most friendly cats and dogs ever met on this trip. […]
Back to the Savannah in Angola
In Angola we have sadly left the rainforest landscape to come back to the infinite and much more spoiled view of the Savannah. The landscape has slowly started to change since we entered the country, the weather got dryer, and the nights chillier. We are running through Angola fast, as our visa is only for […]
And finally on the bad roads of DRC
We had been talking about them since the beginning of the trip, fearing them, waiting for them, imagining them but I think none of us really thought they could really be as bad as the reality showed us: DRC bad roads. We left Congo to enter DRC on the top of the most beautiful […]
Brazzaville, capital of Congo River
Not so European like Libreville, neither so modern or cosmopolitan, Brazzaville is a real African capital, with a mix of old and new, trying to get closer to the new world but holding up a lot of features that remind you where you are: in the capital of Congo. I couldn’t feel more in […]
My Congolese birthday
It was in Congo, at the border with Gabon, in a small village called Mbie, that I celebrated the special edition of my birthday this year. You may wonder how it is having a birthday on a truck, while travelling across Africa, and I can tell you it was special, and not for the […]
Gabon, close to the sun
It was in Gabon where we passed the Equator, going literally on the other side of the world. Just like the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator sign is in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the rainforest, were the only company you can get is the one of the trees and of the men who […]
Cameroun, African beauty in a nutshell
From the moment we passed the border, Cameroun has been an explosion of colours and shapes. At the border, where we slept the night we arrived, I had one of the most enjoyable nights of the entire trip, surrounded by local kids who were almost fighting to come to sit on my knees. Like everywhere […]
Nigeria, land of contraddictions #2
After we left the Consolidated Brewery the real Nigeria finally started to appear. The Nigerian flag has green stripes, probably related to the main colour of the country, which is definitely green. That’s the first thing you notice when you start driving across its roads. The entire country is covered by a rich vegetation that […]
Nigeria, land of contraddictions #1
At the border with Benin, where the borders are not properly identified and the two countries mix together in languages, people and cultures, it’s difficult to say if Nigeria is as scary as we have heard in the last few weeks, when everybody we met on our way suggested us to be careful as it […]
In Benin, where the sun gently shines
Leaving Togo and its friendly charm was not much of a shock as we got to Benin, which is almost its continuation, both geographically and socially. In Cotonou we finally applied for the Nigeria visa, and with our great surprise, people at the Nigeria House were friendly and polite and we got it after few […]
A day at the voodoo fetish market of Lomè
There is a bit of everything at Lome voodoo fetish market; there is what you expect, like cows’ head bones or horses hair tails, and there is what you don’t expect, like dead cats’ heads, or even what you have never seen in life, like cobras’ or antelopes’ heads. Once you enter it, you enter […]
Shantaram, a book for travelling Africa
Before I left Italy, early in January, I was looking for a book to bring with me to Africa. I didn’t have a lot of space and I knew I could bring only one, so I had to choose the one, the book who would have enlight my Africa days of dreams. I spent almost […]
