Tiger footprints. We stop in our tracks. Excitement rises. Our guide kneels and studies them, and concludes they are old ones. Disillusion comes with a hidden sense of relief. There is a gun-carrying guard with us, but still.
We set off once more along trails through a forest so hot and dry that the dehydrated leaves barely hang on to the trees. The sound of walking through the fallen leaves reminds me of Europe’s autumns, which is entirely at odds with the scorching temperatures. Continue reading
Amidst a crowd of typical, T-shirts-and-jeans-wearing Brazilians, a black woman stood out. She wore an intricate, white, lace bodice covered with necklaces above a dark-blue, billowing skirt and a white piece of cloth artistically wrapped around her head. She was deep-frying some sort of snack. I had just arrived in Salvador da Bahia and was as yet unfamiliar with Salvador da Bahia’s famous Baianas de Acarajé. 
It was Sunday, late afternoon. The weekend vacationers from Manaus had returned home and peace reigned once more over the small tourist town of Novo Airão. I was the only one to go swimming with dolphins – what a stroke of luck. 
I feel as if I am looking at a scene in the cartoon of Jack and the Beanstalk. Amidst the flooded forest of Anavilhanas-Archipel, I am looking up at a meters wide trunk of a tree that divides into three immensely thick branches that reach high into the sky, as if they are on their way to heaven.
“You can’t leave Rio de Janeiro without having seen the Maracaña Stadium!”
With only another 120 kilometers, the days suddenly pass very, very quickly. The western section of the Datça Peninsula is one of the remotest sections of the 850-kilometer-long Carian Trail. Few villages, mostly footpaths meandering through forests and traversing headlands that divide dozens of secluded bays. 
It’s Day 3 of waiting out the storm, which hopefully will be our last before we can finally start our 850-km-long hike along the beautiful coast of Southwestern Turkey, called the Carian Trail.