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Ode to Dumblebee

You will always stay in our heart…

Kühlschrank
Elektro- und Gasherd
italienische Kaffemaschiene
fließend Wasser
heizbare Dusche
Toilette
begehbarer Kleiderschrank
und noch ein Kleiderschrank
bass-lastige Musikanlage
Tassen und Topf
Geschirr und Besteck
wohlfühl Krimskrams

Ich in Schottland:

Ich vor Stonehenge

Ich in Skandinavien

Ich im Schnee

Meine Ausbaugeschichte

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Dumblebee sucht(e) neue Weggefährten

Hallo, ich bin Dumblebee, ein 16 Jahre junger Peugeot Boxer.

Mit meinen jetzigen Weggefährten bin ich 3 Jahren lang unterwegs gewesen, leider können die mich aus gesundheitlichen Gründen nicht weiter begleiten. Daher suche ich unternehmenslustige Menschen, die meine Freude am rumfahren und welterkunden teilen.

Ich bin ein sehr zuverlässiger und liebevoll gepflegter Begleiter, mein 2,2 HDI Herz hat gerade mal knapp 68T KM geleistet und lies mich sogar tapfer den Großglockner erklimmen.

Als anerkanntes Wohnmobil ist mein Unterhalt sehr moderat, und mein Durst hält sich dank Tempomat auch auf längeren Strecken im einstelligen Bereich. Meine Ausstattung bietet alles, was für ein Abenteuer in der Wildnis benötigt wird

Das war mein Bewerbungsschreiben und es hat geklappt.

Ich habe eine neue Familie gefunden:

Ich bin mir sicher, mir ihr werde ich genauso viel Spaß haben wie mit Freaky & Weird

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Two drifters forced to settle down

Hello dear friends and readers,

in this hard and strange times you could imagine that travelling thru the world is currently not possible. So Faye and I decided to stop moving.

Consequently our blog will provide no further stories about our drifting life and our experiences. We do not want to use our blog to talk about the current situation and provide usefull or foulish hints.

Nobody knows that the future will be, neither us. So no plans for the moment at all.

We wish you all the best, we hope you and your beloved are save and not hardly affected by the crises.

Thank you for your support in the last 15 months, we love you all.

Faye and Andy (aka Freaky and Weird)

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Locked out :(

Unfortunately we were locked out of our own blog, no way of accessing it for both of us! But finally we made it, could log in again, and here we are already, sitting at the airport waiting for our flight back.

To put long stories short, we survived our cruise without killing each other or anybody else. Thus: goal achieved!

We titled this experience as “awfully nice”, good to have made it, but not again I would say.

Luckily we were picked up from the ship by our new Jamaican family, Janet and Rad, had again a nice cocktail at the Hard Rock Cafe (after breakfast this time ^^) and a good talk and lot of fun.

Then we had two days off and enjoyed the silence and relaxation at the Waterfield Retreat (great view, otherwise quite disappointing accomodation).

And right now we are already checked in to our flight from Montego Bay to Brussels. Unbelievable that 4 1/2 months passed since we started our Caribbean tour!

But for both of us it was enough and we are soooo happy to see our family and friends again soon <3

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Tortola … why the f*** did we cruise here?! :P

After walking 1 1/2 hours through Road Town we didn’t find anything special or nice on this British Virgin Island. The current was too strong to swim in a lot of the beaches, and being lined up with all the other cruise ship tourists at the beaches that were left, no thanks! And Road Town is even not really a town, nearly no cafes or restaurants, no groceries or shops like on the other islands. Just a small local crafts village where they sell stuff from China or India 😉 Funny that this is one of the cruise destinations, but we did not do the expensive tours an yachts or catamarans to the other smaller islands, so maybe it is just a good point to start another tour from.

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Cocktails for breakfast :D

St. Marteen, Dutch Virgin Islands. After 15 months we finally really did it: started our morning right away with a Cocktail for breakfast … oops, no two … okay at the end even three 😉

But free WiFi at the Hard Rock Cafe and only 2$ for each refill made it possible, and yes, after 2 hours we even took a starters platter and then did some shopping afterwards. So now we have a lot of shirts and sweats with St. Maarten logo on it 😀

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Better day today

As Faye wrote, yesterday was a not such a good day for us and for our relationship. The massive input of people, music, entertaiment, heat and trash talks was just too much.

So as a consequence we tried today to find more quiet places, not an easy thing on a ship with 2400 tourists. But we made it. We skipped the breakfast, had a very slow morning in the cabin, and joined the lunch very early at noon on the outer deck. Because most people just finished breakfast and searched the sun on the pool we were on our own. We had a corner table with a nice view to the see, and lucky us we are saw even some whales. The rest of the daylight we spent on the frontdeck (also only a very few people there) and next to the railing on deck5. We had some good talks and found back to ourselves. Early lunch means also early dinner so we choose the same strategy an outside table in the corner. We had a very beautiful sunset and we spent several more hours (even without eating but with white wine and beer) at the deck. Funnywhise the whole evening nobody asked to sit on our 8 person table, like we had an invisible sign „pisss off, we like to be on our own“ on the table.

So our lesson learned for cruise ship traveling: if you like to get rid of the hustle and bustle on a cruise, eat anti cyclic and search quiet places, they exist you just need to find them.

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Day 7, Dom. Rep, La Romana

After one week of being a cruise ship tourist, I definitely know that I prefer to be a backpacker (not an astonishing fact, I guess ^^) and also on my own, or just the two of us. This is all just toooo much permanent input for me. You cannot escape the whole showbiz on the ship (unless you stay in your cabin the whole day) and it feels so mega strange to be treated like a cruise ship tourist on land that I sometimes would like to be invisible. Usually nice locals turn into sales monsters when they see the cruise tourists. And then people return on the cruise ship and think this is how locals are in these countries … No real contact at all. Very sad for both part.

For me this whole cruise ship trip feels like being in a very weird movie world, most stuff is not real, just a lot of fakes – and some like this and enjoy it. I can just wonder at it all… The food and night sky, the lovely breeze, the great open waters of endless sea and all that friendly staff are still very nice and I can appreciate it, but honestly: one week would have been enough for me 😉

Fortunately we are cruising to some nice Carribean Islands now and we hope to get off the cruise ship tourists tracks there … somehow, somewhere.

Wonderful watermelon art 🙂
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Hard Rock Cafe Cartagena, Columbia

Free WiFi at last, so here some pics and updates 😀

Our pros and cons of the cruise trip so far (definitely more pros than cons!)

pros:
We both love the moment when the ship leaves the port and we cruise to open waters again, feels like going on a big adventure (they also play great music for this special moment);
great food on board: esp. Sonnenblumenkerne-Vollkornbrot!!! Salami, Bierschinken, Camembert, Obazda, plenty of fruit and salad … all very very yammy!;
Buffets in all restaurants, great for mixing and trying new food;
Faye loves: white wine for free
Andy loves: beer for free (during service hours) or for extra charge even: Büble Bier!;
good beds;
being on a cruise ship is somehow sexy;
watching people is like watching a strange movie all the time;
great water pressure in shower;
nice quiet zone areas to relax;
very friendly service staff;
no moskitos!!!;
as we didn’t book any Aida trips, we can explore all we want on our own or not at all;
no money needed, you just pay with your boarding card;
no imigration control when you visit a country (you have to fill in a manifesto beforehand);
watching the stars at night on a nice windy outer deck is just amazing 😀

Cons:
We eat too much (even if we try not to);
Toooo many people (but we knew that before, so no real con ;);
we feel even more freaky and weird than before between all those people;
going on land with the others of the cruise ship (white and privileged people) means: every local wants to have your money, just sucks, but we can also understand it;
some services (eg water, coffee) you sometimes have to pay extra on other times not, strange Aida policy;
being woken up by the anchoring noises in the morning (esp. at 5 in the morning, when the ship anchors and the horn just blows you right out of your dreams, not funny!);
very small pool;
very expensive wifi (100 MB 20€, 2 GB 99€, internet flat for 2 weeks 239€);
We have to get used to the very special German ‘kindness’ again ;);
The prices of the Aida land trips are inappropriatly high (esp. for budget tourists like us)

If you go on your own, like we did here in Cartagena, you pay instead of 40€ pP only 5€ 🙂

  • Our home
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Guess what: we like it!

Yesterday we embarked on the Aidaluna and from the beginning everything went very easy. Not much fussing about anything, no waiting time at all. Our first visit to the restaurants was like Christmas for us, so many delicious things that we did not eat for about 5 months now… the people at our table must have considered us crazy how we took every piece of dark bread, prezel, ice cream or cake into our mouths and made loud “Oh my God!” comments.

To leave the port at 9 pm felt for me like I am in a scene of the Titanic movie (no waving crowds unfortunately ^^), that’s why I had to play the Titanic “ship leaves port” soundtrack on spotify … as some might have thought this a strange things to do, they left their place near us, so we even had more space 😛

Then we got welcome drinks for free, which we enjoyed of as much of as possible, followed by disco dancing. Just the greatest fun ever for me, dancing barefoot, a lot of space, the stars above and great music of the 80s.

The most surprising thing until now: it doesn”t feel that crowded as we thought it would. You can always find a place to watch the stars and feel like on your own. Amazing!

And best: as we booked the cheapest cabin class (interior), we were supposed to have no window at all. Lucky guys we are, we got the last cabin in the row and now even have a window, we don’t see the ocean, but have light from outside and it feels so different. Sooo happy for that!

And I even could sleep very well. No sea sickness by now.

Yep, everything much better than we expected!!!! 😀

Pictures will follow and Andy will make his own post later.

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Bye-bye Jamaica!

And bye-bye Puerto Seco Beach Club

And bye-bye to our hosts and friends for a lifetime (at least): Janet and Rad, who offered us the best home away from home ever!

And also bye-bye to the very tasty and veeeery relaxing special tea. We really enjoyed it! 😉

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Doing what you fear most ;)

That’s how it feels for me on our last day on firm ground.

Don’t they tell you: If you want to keep growing in life, you have to get beyond your comfort zone, risk what you may fear most sometimes.

So, after we quit our jobs and sold nearly everything we had in December 2018, visited countries, where we sometimes didn’t understand one word and had to cope with completely different cultures, now it’s going to be one of the really tough parts: going on a cruise ship with about 2400 GERMANS !!! 😛

As Andy already mentioned in a former post, 3 days before we booked the cruise I said to him: “If I am ever willing to go with you on such a cruise ship, you have to shoot me, as I am definitely obsessed by an alien monster and no longer myself!” (Andy always fancied the idea of doing such a cruise ship tour some day …)

The idea of spending my nights on floating grounds didn’t attract me at all as I get sea sick very easily. The idea of having thousands of people around me, just horrified me and that these people even all speak a language we will understand is the most frightening thing of all! Hey, we are not used to this any longer 😛

Yes, the question arises: then why the hell did you book this cruise????

The honest answer is: MONEY

The special offer we got was too tempting and it is just the cheapest possibility to get to the islands we didn’t see yet, the cheapest accomodation (we booked the ‘Leonardo DiCaprio’ wood class) with breakfast, lunch and dinner included (even beer and wine!)… and also the idea of enjoying German food again just overwhelmed us!

And we’ve learned that it’s sometimes really interesting to do things you usually wouldn’t do as you have a fixed opinion of it. ‘Question your own thinking’ is one of my favorites. So it’s also the curiosity: Is it really what you think it is? How can I know, if I never try it?

Quite often my expectations about anything I did not really know by myself until then and just had a loose opinion from stories of other people or internet reviews turned out to be quite different from theirs when I really experienced it on my own. Therefore this will be another big step out of my comfort zone again (like walking the tree top hanging bridges or having a snake on my neck, some of my very special fears that I just defeated in the last few weeks).

And it always felt liberating to do these things, not to only imagine them in my head, but to really experience them. Funny as it is, most of the former horrible fears turned out to produce child-like feelings of excitement and were quite different from what I thought. So, maybe being on a cruise ship will be the same?

Anyway, we decided to write a special cruise ship diary, starting tomorrow with the boarding. And also make kind of a social study of it. Like investigators from outa space that observe the human race and its social behaviors, ours included of course! 🙂

As wifi is expensive on a ship, maybe the text will come first and the pics will be uploaded later when we get on a land trip and find a ‘free wifi’ restaurant.

So, cross your fingers and stay with us in our new freaky and weird adventure <3

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Wonderful relaxed days …

Only 4 days left until our Cruise ship adventure starts, so we just enjoy our time here, hang loose at the courtyard or get refreshed in the pool. And right when we start to think about what we shall get for dinner, our awesome hosts Janet and Rad serve us a lovely surprise dinner with even spiced rum as aperitif and a delicious plantain strudel as dessert! Yammy yammy 🙂

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Saturated like a soggy sponge :D

That’s how we feel right now. And it is a wonderful feeling, like after a great buffet dinner when you have tried everything you wanted, some stuff just tasted gorgeous, some quite nice and some was not quite your gusto, but you did not eat too much after all and everything was well rounded and worth it.

After drifting through the world for such a long time, we decided we need some time for digestion and both long to stay at one place again, in a familiar environment. So after our cruise ship tour that starts on 23. Februar and lasts for 2 weeks (which we just declared as kind of a social study for us, but more of that sometime later), we will have a short 2 day retreat on a hill overlooking Montego Bay and then fly to Belgium on 11. March to stay with friends the first night and finally return to Karlsruhe on 12. March. We booked an apartment near Karlsruhe for 6 weeks. I even decided spontaneously to offer some massage for my former clients during our stay and really look forward to doing something nice with my hands again and meeting all the old friends who already booked their appointments (thanks to Facebook so easy to get in contact again!).

Beginning of May we will then drive to Austria where we booked an apartment till middle of July. That means 2 1/2 months of enjoying the spring and summer in the beautiful Austrian Alps. We are already looking forward to the delicious Austrian cuisine, their lovely dialect and all the amazing nature: mountains, trees, lakes and wildflower meadows 😀

And as it is not that far from Karlsruhe (compared to our actual destination ^^) we will have the possibility of having our family and friends visiting us there, which we also look so much forward to!

So, really sounds like a great upcoming spring and summer time for us, less travelling, more family and friends.

  • This will be the view from our bed in Austria

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And already it’s Good-bye again

The 2 amazing weeks we spent with our son Nico and his dude Jan passed so quickly … so then it was already:

The final day at the beach

The final patties order

The final hang loose in the pool

The final cuddling in the parents bed

The final cuddling of King

And some farewell pics

But: Hopefully in a little bit more than 3 weeks we’ll see each other again and also the rest of our Ohana! So this time the good-bye went easier than 4 months ago ^^

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Beach Club – a completely new experience for us!

As the entrance to the Beach Club here in Discovery Bay is included in our airbnb package (thanks to our generous hosts!) we used some beach chairs and umbrellas for the first time in our 14 month trip 😀 Otherwise we would never have spent money for that.

Here at the Puerto Seco Beach Club you have to pay US $20 entrance fee per person! So quite different in Jamaica than in Barbados or Guadeloupe where all beaches were free for public use. But therefore you can also have fun at the waterpark (and horrible muscle pain afterwards, poor Andy!) and dolphins to watch or swim with in a special basin (very expensive and we don’t like animals to be caged like that). But: the beach is very clean and there are nice bars, showers and a swimming pool there. Unfortunately you are not allowed to swim too far into the ocean as the baywatch guys will call you back otherwise … even if there are no harmful waves or anything like that in sight. Very strange for us, indeed!

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Best airbnb and Welcome ever!

Arriving on Jamaica has really been one of the greatest experiences we ever had with airbnb hosts. Janet and Rad are the most kind and caring hosts we had the pleasure to meet till now, they even had some bottles of different local beers and water packed in a cooler for us and some lovely local food to snack when they picked us up at Kingston Airport. From the first moment we felt like home in their company and in their gorgeous apartment. Enjoying the refreshing pool on our first morning, we knew: we wanted to stay here forever or at least as long as possible! This feels like kind of luxury XXXL. So we booked the apartment for the next three weeks till we embark on our cruise ship extravaganza.

And to make it even better our elder son and another friend will join us for the next two weeks 😀

Best sleep in this huge and comfy master bed since we sold our own bed 14 months ago! And watching TV while lying in this bed, boom baby!!!

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Bye Bye Barbados

Tony has been such a funny and great help/driver/host!!!

We really enjoyed our month on this amazing island and especially it’s people.

And we finished our stay how we started it when we arrived on 31st Dec, with a meal from the ever present Chefette on Barbados ;D

Now it will be Jamaica waiting to be explored 😀

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Pool crasher

It was very hot today and being in the wet makes life more bearable. But as the beach at Crane is full of red algae and high waves this was not an option. Going to one of the west coast beaches means another bus experience which we refused because of the heat. So we thought about other options.

The crane is not only the name of this area but also the name of a 5-star resort next to us. Therefore there must be a pool inside. Quick check in the internet, Yeap, pools available. But could we use them as non residence of the resort? Well, no risk no fun. Let’s do it.

We took the back door: pass the beach, up with the elevator, cross the appartmens, waved and greeted if somebody saw us. „Be brave and act normal“ we thought.

Yes we did it!

It was really cool and refreshing. And we felt a bit naughty. But doesn’t that keep us young?

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How does a day on Barbados look like for us?

First we start with really lazy mornings, drinking a coffee in bed, reading some news/chats/mails on the mobile, checking, if there is anything we have to do … then deciding what we will do today (depending on the weather, on our mood, if we have some water/food/beer/rum left in the fridge, if Andy has some work to do aso), then taking a shower (the nights are always quite hot here ^^), packing our stuff, doing some housework, if need be, and then … out into the heat, waiting for a bus to take us to the westcoast (no algae there!!!). That means waiting, waiting, waiting. No bus plans. The bus will come or not. Sometimes you wait an hour or more, sometimes you are more lucky.

Waiting for the bus, you might think the Barbadians invented coolness, no one just looks ordinary, everybody has his hair differently, a real pleasure to look at!

After approx. 45 min drive in a more or less crowded bus (often we are the only whites in the big local buses that take the workers or school children home), we arrive at the beach, buy some delicious spicy fish cakes from a local and enjoy 😉

And yes, it’s still unbelievable for me to see these water colours! Like watching a picture that looks like a fake, but is real. I love these turquoise beaches and the wonderful clear water with just perfect temperatures. Only “kind of problem” (what a word ^^): the sun is really really hot here, so you better stay in the shades or get burned (no matter how high your sunblocker is) and shades cost money (renting an umbrella, what we never do), or are rare and therefore crowded. And weird fact: I still get sea sick from floating in the waves for too long … haha, that’s why we will go on a cruise ship in February for two weeks 😉

But here, it’s no problem, if you have troubles with the sea:

Life guards on duty 🙂

After enough of sun and floatings in the sea, we do some shopping in the supermarket and still get quite shocked by the prizes (remember: everything is imported here). Just buy, what we really need or want, or are willing to pay for things that we want anyway (bottle of wine, vegetables, sweets).

Then the way back, waiting for a bus again. Unfortunately all smaller buses are full and just pass by, the bigger ones even don’t show up. So after approx. 1 1/2 h we give up. Time for Plan B: There seems to be a nice Café not far away, let’s just go there! And, how lucky we were to have not gotten a ride home, as this was one of the most terrific locations we have been so far here to watch the sun set (these are the moments we think: Let’s forget about the money and just have fun! Behave like tourists 😉

So after a small snack and some drinks we head again to the bus stop and are lucky, after about 10 min a bus arrives, completely overloaded, but as long as we hold firmly to the grip above our heads we manage the 1 hour ride back savely.

Yeah, that’s how you can spend your time on Barbados (if you don’t take taxis) 😀 Feels like a real life for us!

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Posh, but poor guys

After my post stating that the beaches here in Barbados were so beautiful, below is the beach a few hundred metres from our new apartment. Here in Crane we are no longer facing the Caribbean Ocean, like on the Westside, but the Atlantic.

Directly above the beach are two really posh resorts, The Crane and Hilton Resort. So these guys staying there pay at least 400€/night for a room and have this kind of beach full of seagrass and algae to swim in! According to the internet and lots of ads everywhere this should be one of the most beautiful beaches on Barbados. But nowadays you really never know what nature and the environment will present you when you finally arrive at your booked holiday destination.

For me it looks like these posh guys are definitely one of the poorest tourists here …

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What a luxury!

Yesterday we arrived at our new airbnb apartment (more expensive this time: about 55€/night instead of 35€ as our last ones) and YES, we really enjoy it!

Can you guess what? Having hot water for taking a shower or doing the dishes, having a good mattress that is about queen size, where we both can sleep without doing synchronic nightly movements, mosquito nets at the windows, means not being eating alive at night … and: a huge TV to watch some nice Netflix movies in the evening (much better than a laptop)! Not to mention: a decent aircon in the bedroom, quite good furniture standards, some items even completely new, e.g. the bath mat (better don’t ask how they look/feel like sometimes …).

Yes, that’s what is luxury for us now! A few years ago we booked hotel rooms for double as much as today. Funny to realize how you get used to quite different standards and surroundings than you were used to, even when you passed your fifties already 😉

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Time for some more Barbadian Impressions

After 3 weeks on Barbados we can say without doubt: many great beaches and even more great people! So many countries boast themselves for their friendliness (especially Bali, which we both thought is completely overrated, see our older blogs). But Barbadians or Bajans, how they are called, are really one of the friendliest people we have ever met (next to Hawaiians). From our first second on this island till now we saw so many friendly faces, heard so many nice greetings, got in contact with so many polite people who really wanted to help us. For us taxi drivers and street vendors are always a good example for real politeness. Here Bali was quite horrible for us, walking down a street you really got annoyed very soon about the shouting taxi drivers and vendors every two steps and you really needed to be unfriendly or stare at your feet down on the street all the time to be left alone. Here it’s completely different. The taxi drivers ask you friendly and in a decent voice, if you need a taxi, you answer politely ‘no, thanks’ and then they even wish you a nice day. No shouting vendors. What a pleasure! It’s also no problem to walk alone on a street/beach as a woman (which was quite different in Guadeloupe, not to mention Malaysia). So, after 3 weeks we would honestly proclaim: Barbados is really what you would call a very friendly island! 😀

PS: Can’t finish this blog without a last big hug for Gary!

  • Street art
  • ‘shopping mall’
  • visitors this morning
  • taking the local mini bus
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Meeting an angel

In a world where the news are often bad and frightening and you read and hear about racism, right wing political disaster, environment pollution and burning continents you could lose trust and faith in the human race.

In these times it is even more important to realize not everybody is mad and foolish, there are millions of ‘good’ people out there. People who act in an absolutely unselfish way. Not for profit, nor power, nor honor that they are acting for. Just because they are human and they love other humans. These people I call angels. And today we met one of them, and while writing this post I again get tears of joy in my eyes.

So here is the story, this is for you Gary!

This morning we decided it’s time to have some contact to animals again ( unbelievable that the most remembering part of today is the contact with a human being). Well, back to the story. There is a wildlife center on Barbados, not far away from out current location. They have monkeys, turtles, deer, and some other small animals so we thought it is worth going there. The wildlife park won a prize “most popular place on Barbados” so we didn’t even thought about that we need to pay everything in cash. But after a short bus trip and a few steps to the entrance the lovely woman at the desk told us: Cash only. Hmm, we had some cash, but not enough to pay the fee and the bus ticket back to our home. So no chance, we needed to skip the visit and drive back, that’s what we thought. We went back to the street, started walking down the hill, made a short detour into the wilderness, come back to the street and continued walking down. After a few seconds a car passed, stopped 100 meter in front of us, geared back and asked us if we would like a ride. Sure, a car is anyhow more comfortable than walking in the sun to the next bus or minibus and you guess right, it was Gary. So we jumped in, Gary started driving, we talked about the day and Faye told him that we wished to visit the wildlife center, but we couldn’t because they take no credit cards, just cash.

Gary slowed down and suddenly pulled the breaks. He turned the car and said: “You know what, if you really like to see the park, and it is worth seeing it, you should.” In the first step we didn’t understand, but Gary continued: “Well, 60 BDollar (about 30 Euros) is not that much for me. I take it for you.” Wow, Faye and I were speachless. There is a foreigner who is just willing to pay a fee for an entrance for us. Out of nowhere. We even didn’t have his phone number or address or anything else to get the chance to pay it back. But Gary even didn’t want it back. He about said to me “I do what I can in life. And the only thing I would like to ask you is: Do the same for someone else”. So impressive. So unselfish. So human.

Thank you again, Gary! You made our day. And you gave us hope that the human race is not at its end. We will follow your path and we will do what we can!

We came across several miracles while our drifting tour and we wish that one of the future miracles would be meeting you again sometime. We wish you all the best. For you, your beloved and all creatures in the universe. Keep on being as you are.

Gary and his son
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We will do some vacation

If you didn’t think until now we are freaky and/or weird I guess now you will 🙂

Yesterday, after a full day of research from Faye about our next location, we finally decided to have some vacation. You are wondering what will be the difference from our last 13 months life? Well, it will be a vacation from our normal activities. As we need to have a look on our expenses most of the accommodations are not that luxury, with walking to the grocery and self cooking. 99% Faye did the trip planning, scheduling and booking, which results in heavy internet searching and she got a bit frustrated of doing that, especially in those extremely expensive countries. So that’s the reason of a ‘vacation’.

But what could we do to have an other way of living? Ohh, if you know us a bit, you will never ever guess!

We do a 14 days ship cruise. Bähhhm. Not kidding. This is what it is:

If you still can’t believe what we are going to do and still wonder why, here are our decision making arguments:

  • The starting and the endpoint of the trip is Jamaica. We will be there in February already.
  • The cheapest flight back to Europe (which we will travel to after the cruise) is from Jamaica, 2 days after the cruise ends.
  • we can see lot’s of areas and islands in the Caribic we didn’t visit until now as going there was not worth according to the travel costs.
  • We really longed for having some luxury, dreaming of an all-inclusive buffet in a nice resort, but even after 2 days searching in the internet we didn’t find anything which would fit to our budget.
  • The cruise trip is very cheap. At the end, it doesn’t cost us more than our living now because all food (and drinks within the meals) are included and we have something to sleep.

Funny anecdote at the end. 3 days ago we visited Bridgetown which has also a large harbor with incoming cruisers. We saw one of them and Faye said to me: “If I ever tell you that I want to make such a trip, shoot me!” Well, I didn’t 🙂

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Taking risks … is not always having fun ;)

Remember that I wrote in one of my last posts that we booked two airbnb apartments that were listed completely new, had no ratings and were quite inexpensive? As Barbados is a very expensive island we try to manage staying here with as little money as possible anyhow. And airbnb is the only chance to do so. So our last little apartment in Bridgetown had some pros and cons. Arriving at this one in Speightstown, I hoped a little bit to get a ‘normally’ sized double bed again (like it was mentioned in the listing), but this one is as small as our last one and to even beat it, it has an old mattress and the bed bumps every time one of us tries to move (which we have to do synchronically). We also hear every little step of the person living above us and we have quite a few mosquitos. I was also looking forward to warm water under the shower again, but we were told: warm water is not working at the moment :/

The interior I would call kind of shabby style (without the important: ‘chic’ ^^). But we have more space than before and what’s definitely best: the view! We can watch the sunset, what is really nice (just shouldn’t forget to jump in again right after the sunset to be not biten by mosquitos all over 😉

So that was my ‘lesson learned’ moment concerning my statement: No risk, no fun 😀 Just don’t know, if I really learned that lesson now … maybe I just forget these not so comfortable issues and look forward to our next apartment (which is not that cheap and hope it looks like the pictures and works better for us ^^)

Here you can see some of the lovely interior details:

Don’t know what the living room is for, there’s no TV or anything in there … maybe sitting there and counting mosquitos would be a funny fame?

BUT: a nice view 🙂

And a really loud and really nasty (and also somehow cute) kitten, that has no teeth in the front:

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Power blackout

Nothing unusual in the Caribbean that the power is switched off for a while. And we had that this morning.

Interesting to realize how much we are dependent on ongoing power. Heating or cooling, depending where you are. Light, fridge, hot water, cooking, most of these things won’t work without regular power.

But the most important thing about not having power is: no router is working. And no router means no wifi. No wifi means no internet. And for us, even if we are middle aged, the internet is something we use permanently. Surfing, posting, gaming, chatting, working – but also having music, movies, books. Everything is online. No internet meens having nothing of it.

Clever us, we had some offline music to listen 😉

But besides music what did we do while being offline for a while? Ahhh, not that. Shame on you .

We talked together. We just layed down and listened to the sound of nature. We got aware of ourselves. We let the thoughts go through us. It was a very peacefull experience, I can highly recommend to everybody trying it from time to time:

switch offline

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Dive deeply into it! (Instead of blocking it or pushing it away)

This is one of the main internal changes I went through the last year: If there happens to be an annoying or disturbing situation that I just cannot change (which is not that unusual when you travel on low budget most of the time), at the beginning of our trip I tried to ignore these moments or get rid of them as fast as possible or direct my attention somewhere else. That worked out, but it cost me a lot of energy and there was no real aliveness in these moments. It’s like you turn to stone … waiting for things to pass by … nothing can hurt you that much, but you cannot feel anything either.

This kind of attitude I used for nasty people in my surrounding, unbearable hot temperatures, dirty streets or whenever there was a situation that was not really enjoyable. Closing myself up as good as possible and waiting till it’s gone.

In the last weeks/months I tried a totally new attitude: staying wide open, attentive and child-like curious. When something frightening happened for example, like walking on a street with no sidewalks, between very fast cars that I only saw last minute due to mountains blocking my view, I became very attentive and alive, opened completely up to the situation and it felt very different right away. Like you have a feeling of a car driving just an inch away from you round the corner before it is there (with so much noise that you cannot trust your ears). The same with people we pass by or talk to, I do no longer try to cut the nasty or frightening ones out of my life, but stay open and very curious for this very moment. And then everything gets so much more exciting, as if you suddenly enhance the colors in your life.

That does not mean I become friends with everyone, but it means I become a friend with this moment. I savor it in its depth, how it feels, how it smells, what it looks like and what reactions I feel inside of me. Like an alien witness that does not know yet how being a human feels like and that enjoys every moment, even if it is very profane or simple or even what’s usually called unpleasant.

So funny now to think about how much energy I always spent in blocking annoying situations out of my life. I also worked and lived like this for a long time before we went on our journey. How frustrating, how lifeless I felt sometimes. Like imprisoned in a kind of shell suit I did not enjoy wearing in order not to get in contact with the disturbing outside world. The cost of it? Aliveness! Real aliveness! Enjoying what life presented me every second. Even if it is something I formerly would have called annoying. If I stay open, it always becomes a very interesting situation, if I do not block it, it is just another facet of this wonderous ever changing life. If I ignore all the adjectives I have learned so far and imposed on situations or people, every second feels so very fresh and new! Every touch (even the broken plastic seats in the buses here) is a new sensation! Every person a whole universe to explore!

I don’t know, if anybody knows or understands what I tried to describe here. But I wrote it anyway and maybe someone does? 😉

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New home, new challenges ;)

Yesterday we arrived at our new apartment that we booked for a week. It was one of the cheapest airbnb apartments we could find. No pictures from the outside, only a few from the inside, but hey: only a short walk to the beach! Sounded great! (At our last apartment we had to walk about 30 min to the beach, mostly on a street with no sidewalk for pedestrians, so quite hot and risky sometimes 😉

And now it’s again living with what we’ve got. To give you a small impression, here some of our thoughts and pics (we live in the extremely beautiful grey left part of the house).

Pros: Short walk to the beach, everything quite new, nice decoration, huge tv screen, walk in shower, good aircon, nearly no mosquitos (great!!!), supermarket and bus station only 5-10 min walk

Cons: sitting outside is not a real option, only 1,20 m wide bed (for the two of us!), cold shower water only, very poor tv sound, no real table to eat at, very little cooking stuff

As we are the only ‘white tourists’ in this residential area, it is really interesting to see how the locals live, but also a little bit strange … as if we don’t belong here.

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As good as it can get ;)

Swimming with sea turtles, enjoying a great dinner at the Oistins Fish Fry, seeing green parrots in the morning flying by while we drink our coffee and Andy doing some work now to get all that great living paid for us. That’s really as good as it can get. Especially for me 😀

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B A R B A D O S

What shall we say? It’s just unbelievable … the people are so relaxed and friendly … everyone wished us a good afternoon when we waited at the bus stop yesterday 🙂 … the beaches we’ve seen till now are gorgeous … crystal clear turquoise water and white powdery or even slightly pink sand (tried to show it in the pictures below)… to beat it all you can swim with sea turtles just between the ships at the beach … really great vibes here 🙂

Only negative so far: the food in the supermarket is very expensive 🙁 We think it’s even worse than Guadeloupe. As Barbados has no own agriculture they have to import everything. When I asked our airbnb host yesterday, if there are any local markets here to get vegetables cheaper, he had a good laugh and told me that they do not have any local food. So no wonder the prices are so high. Only thing that’s not expensive, guess what? The local rum!!! And it’s really tasty 😛

So we decided to stay at least 3 more weeks here. And as we got used to taking some risks in our lives, we again booked two airbnb apartments that were listed completely new (as in Guadeloupe) and thus offer special beginner prices. Therefore you really have no clue what you will get at the end, the pictures and descriptions are no guarantee for anything. But: No risk, no fun, isn’t it? 😛

Lunch made by our hosts for New Year’s Day. Simple and very delicious!

View from our apartment

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What a start in 2020

New Year’s Day, our first morning in Barbados. We walk down the street from our apartment, being curious as always what the beaches here will really look like. Most of the time the pictures from the ads or in the internet are not what you really get, so we learned to stay open to every kind of experience. And then: Woohoo! Unbelievable, what a beach!!! (our pictures are no fakes, not photoshoped)

  • Approaching …
  • and they have good beer!!! 🙂