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| The Guides Astrid and Jack Mols |
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| Left: Beautiful Brooklyn Bridge connecting Manhattan with the Brooklyn area. Taking a picture from Brooklyn side towards Manhattan gives you the perfect skyline overview. |
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| The Guides We found that whatever information you seek, the Lonely Planet series are a good option to abide by. Most of the information is updated regularly by them. But be sure you buy the latest revised edition. Its best to watch for the year of issue. Although an older Lonely Planet might suffice, it could be busstation timetables might have changed or the odd guesthouse might have fell in disrepair after change of ownership. The Rough Guide proved a little too rough for us, but they do try to compete with Lonely planet. If you are travelling to the Hawaiian islands Kaui or the Big Island, the local "Kauai revealed" or "the Big Island revealed" are a must! Advisable is to read stuff about the next country you are planning to visit BEFORE you go there! It'll sure help you get around. Rather travel well documented, than reading afterwards what you have missed or could have seen in that little town you have left behind. A lot on worldtravel information is available. "Globetrotter" is a good example of a reference book, but it is mainly suited for English and American travellers. Dutch travellers can't do without 'the guidebook for a worldtraveller' or 'handleiding voor de wereldreiziger' by Frans Timmerhuis, who has done this stuff himself. |
| Then there's one more thing we wanted to share with you. We have written a book about our journey. Its nearly finished and the manuscript is in dutch. Knowing that a lot of you can't read dutch, below is an exerpt translated into English. We hope you enjoyed our site and wish you a lot of cappuccino on your world travels! ...Exmouth lacked tourism but wasn't this what we've always been looking for? At the edge of the beautiful Ningaloo Reef, which could easily compete in splendour to the Great Barrier Reef was Cape Range National Park, which has no equal in the world if it came down to natural environment. Exmouth existed because of its military base and the incidental tourist trying to find unspoiled terrain. Hiking Cape Range proved to be quite a challenge. We armed ourselves with water and provisions defying the afternoon heat into the ranges and gorges. Not a single other foolish enough hiker insight. The heat melted our cheese and made it run around in our wobbling backpacks. The water we took got to be nice and warm and didn't supply that extra refreshment we had hoped for after the long walk. The silence was overwhelming, only now and then disturbed by cracks from tripped upon branches. Rocks white, yellow and red and eyeblinding blue sky portrayed a painting in the making by the likes of Vermeer and Van Gogh. Green leaves seemed to get moisture from somewhere, though the bark of the small trees was scorched and burnt from previous bushfires. Suddenly whilst looking over a ledge into the ravine below I saw something staring back at me keeping perfectly still in order not to be seen trusting the mimicry of its fur. Its eyes gave it away through being inquisitive. It was on a rock sticking out of a seemingly shear wall which apparently seemed to support the ground we were standing on. It was one of those days. While expecting nothing, encountering one of the most elusive animals of Australia, the Rock Wallaby. This rockhopping animal was dressed in a greybrown furry coat with a white belly. Its strong big furry paws provided stability, front paws dangling on its tummy. It was just sitting there acting to be harmless, but watch those paws! Astrid still bore scars of an attack from a heavily traumatized kangaroo a few years earlier. It meant: NOT APPROACH! It lost interest the fourth time we were looking at it from a different angle and vanished. The heat seemed to press sweat out of our pores in a rate higher than we could take in moisture from our drinking bottles. We reached the place where we parked the car at dusk. On our way up here we already saw signs "after sundown drive slowly", we never imagined what spectacle lay ahead driving the 90 kilometers back to Exmouth. There the were, hundreds of them.............. |