Author: TRAVELWITHZOE

  • Getting Clothes Made in Ghana

    Getting Clothes Made in Ghana

    One thing you’ll probably notice within minutes after arriving in beautiful Ghana is the bright, colourful patterned clothing worn by so many local people. They my entire wardrobe to shame! As if these super creative looking clothes weren’t cool enough already, what makes them even cooler is the fact that…

  • Roots Yard, Ghana

    Roots Yard, Ghana

    After spending two nights in the Volta Region at Maranatha Beach Camp, I wanted to head to Roots Yard, also in the Volta Region but quite a long way further North. I’d found it before my trip from a Google search of “vegan Ghana” and I’d reserved three nights in…

  • Maranatha Beach Camp, Ghana

    Maranatha Beach Camp, Ghana

    After spending my first days in Ghana at Cape Coast, I decided my next stop should be the Volta Region, a big region in the East (kind of South-East, surrounding Lake Volta). I’d heard about it being quite scenic and rural with lots of adventurous things to do, which is…

  • Kakum National Park, Ghana

    Kakum National Park, Ghana

    An obvious day trip to do if you’re staying in Cape Coast is Kakum National Park, well known for its canopy walkway. To get there from Cape Coast, you could hail a taxi and ask them to take you all the way there (I’d say don’t pay more than 50…

  • Elmina Castle, Ghana

    Elmina Castle, Ghana

    If you’re staying in Cape Coast, an easy place for you to go for a day or half a day is the fishing village of Elmina to see the castle. Of course, if you want to see a castle, you could just go to the one in Cape Coast, but…

  • Natural Bamboo Village, Ghana

    Natural Bamboo Village, Ghana

    The first place I stayed during my two week backpacking trip around Ghana was a place called Natural Bamboo Village in Cape Coast, a town on the South Coast, a few (well, several) hours West of Accra. This accommodation didn’t appear on Booking.com or any of the usual places, but…

  • A Week in Haiti

    A Week in Haiti

    After having met a family of missionaries from Haiti while I was in the Dominican Republic, I walked over the border to stay with them for a week and I found it really interesting. It isn’t a typical travel destination and there isn’t much ‘to do’ specifically, but I would…

  • Crossing the Dominican – Haitian Border

    Crossing the Dominican – Haitian Border

    When I knew I’d be going to the Dominican Republic for a few months during my year of travelling around the Caribbean, it was my hope from the beginning that I’d end up making a friend from Haiti or somehow ending up being able to go to Haiti, seeing as…

  • Exploring Old San Juan and La Perla

    Exploring Old San Juan and La Perla

    As explained in my previous post about a crazy plane journey from Jamaica to Dominica, (link here -http://tinyurl.com/zu5wxp5), I was stuck in Puerto Rico for two nights due to a cancelled flight. Most people on the flight were in a complete state of panic and distress that this was happening,…

  • The Most Insane Journey Of My Life

    The Most Insane Journey Of My Life

    A few weeks ago, I had to travel from Jamaica to Dominica for the next part of my adventure. It turned out to be a crazy few days, and I learnt a few things that I thought I’d share with you all. So, Dominica has a tiny airport so long…

  • 10 things that make me laugh/smile in Jamaica

    10 things that make me laugh/smile in Jamaica

    Jamaica definitely has a lot of issues within its society and there are some things which are hard to get used to when you first arrive, but despite this, Jamaica is a place with so much culture, character and life, and I find myself laughing and smiling at a variety…

  • Loading Buses in Jamaica

    Loading Buses in Jamaica

    One of the frequently used types of public transport in Jamaica is the coaster bus, basically a minibus. They’re privately owned (as opposed to the big yellow government buses) and there are set routes that they take e.g. Kingston – Port Antonio, stopping on the way to pick up more…

  • Sunning Hill, Jamaica

    Sunning Hill, Jamaica

    I felt like leaving Kingston for a few days on my days off, so I booked a random AirBnB in a community in the Blue Mountains called Sunning Hill. To get to Sunning Hill from Kingston, you take a coaster bus (minibus) to Morant Bay from downtown from outside Mothers Express…

  • Football Matches in Jamaica

    Football Matches in Jamaica

    In general I think sports games are a great cultural experience wherever you’re travelling, and they don’t tend to be too ‘touristy’, so it’s something I try and find out about when I’m abroad. I’ve been in Jamaica about 6 weeks and I’ve been lucky enough to go to two…

  • Ibo Spice Restaurant and Art Centre

    Ibo Spice Restaurant and Art Centre

    Yesterday in downtown Kingston I made a pretty cool discovery – a place called Ibo Spice which is located at 131 Orange Street (walking distance from the Parade where the buses stop. Just look at Google Maps before you go and you should be able to find it). From the…

  • Cane River Falls, Jamaica

    Cane River Falls, Jamaica

    The other day by basically just searching online for lists of waterfalls in Jamaica, I found another cool place to add to my collection of ‘easy day trips from Kingston’. Cane River falls is apparently where Bob Marley used to wash his dreadlocks, but apart from that I couldn’t find…

  • Life Yard – An Inner City Jamaican Farm

    Life Yard – An Inner City Jamaican Farm

    One way to find cool things to do in the country you’re visiting is to read previous visitors’ travel blogs and basically follow their instructions of where to go. I’d read on one travel blog about a place called Life Yard which was described as a farm in the middle…

  • Bowden Hill, Jamaica

    Bowden Hill, Jamaica

    I’ve been in Kingston for a week now and I was starting to miss the countryside, so I decided to search for some local people on the Couchsurfing app (a site/app to meet local people who like to host travelers or show them around their city) who might be able…

  • Coronation Market, Kingston

    Coronation Market, Kingston

    On my second day in Jamaica, I wanted to go and explore a random area so I took a bus to Downtown Kingston with a girl and a boy from the hostel I’m staying at in the centre of Kingston. People had said it’s a kind of hectic/dangerous place and…

  • Trini Street Food

    Trini Street Food

    There are a lot of things I love about Trinidad, but the street food is definitely up there in the Top Three. It’s a vegan heaven AND it’s quite affordable compared to some other countries. The most well known one is doubles. These cost $5TT (the equivalent of 50p in…

  • Blue Devils in Trinidad

    Blue Devils in Trinidad

    Blue Devils are one of the traditional characters of Trinidad Carnival, dating back hundreds of years. Every year in Paramin, a mountainous area about half an hour from Port of Spain, they come out on Carnival Monday (and possibly some other days, I’m not sure), so I decided to go…

  • My Trinidad Carnival Experience

    My Trinidad Carnival Experience

    Pretty much all the Caribbean people I’ve spoken to in London have said that Trinidad Carnival is something that every carnival fan has to experience, and this year that’s what I finally did. I found a host on Couchsurfing and stayed with him for a week in San Juan, an…

  • Stick Fighting in Trinidad

    Stick Fighting in Trinidad

    Since I arrived in Trinidad in December, I’d been seeing posters up in public advertising ‘stick fighting’, and I finally experienced it for myself the other day. As the name suggests, it’s a kind of sport/tradition where people hit each other with sticks. Its origins are said to date back…

  • Road Trip to Toco

    I’ve been in Moruga, Trinidad, for over a month now, but until last weekend I hadn’t really explored other areas of the island. Thankfully, the family I’m staying with are always down for an adventure, and Giselle (my ‘Trini sister’, daughter of the farm owner) decided to plan a road…

  • Selling at Princes Town Market

    Selling at Princes Town Market

    The family who own the farm I’m staying at make some of their money by selling produce at their little roadside shop outside their house, and by selling produce at the market at the nearest town called Princes Town. People sell at Princes Town on various days of the week,…

  • Christmas in Trinidad

    Christmas in Trinidad

    Since I arrived in Trinidad, people were telling me how much fun Christmas would be, and that I chose a good time of year to come. They explained to me that around Christmas time, people do something called ‘parang’ which means to go from house to house eating and drinking…

  • Marac Beach

    Marac Beach

    Marac is the next village up from where I’m staying (La Lune, Moruga), and you can get there in about 10 minutes in a taxi which costs $4TT (40p in English money). Similarly to the beach at La Lune, the sea in Marac is dirty when it rains a lot,…

  • Natural Snacking in Trinidad

    Natural Snacking in Trinidad

    Before I came to Trinidad, I was trying to be vegan but couldn’t resist eating cheese, so I always failed, but since I’ve been here I’ve been vegan the whole time. Meals at the farm I’m staying at are made from vegetables from the garden with rice, and snacks are…

  • La Lune Beach, Moruga

    The village I’m living in in Trinidad is called La Lune, and it has one beach which stretches across quite a long way, so there are various ways you can walk down onto it (mainly cutting through between two houses). It’s surrounded by palm trees and for some reason there…

  • WWOOFing in Trinidad

    For those of you who don’t know, WWOOF stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms, and it’s one of the websites I use to look for places to stay abroad where you work in exchange for accommodation and food. I ended up here (in the south of Trinidad) because I…

  • Getting Robbed at Gunpoint in Barbados

    After spending two amazing weeks in Barbados, it was our last night and we planned to make it one to remember. We wore the nicest clothes we’d brought with us, meaning that I was wearing a dress (so no pockets obviously), and therefore I carried my things in a small…

  • How To Do Crop Over (Carnival in Barbados)

    Crop Over was the main reason I went to Barbados – I love carnivals and wanted to experience one in the Caribbean. The Crop Over celebrations last for months, but the main parts are probably Foreday Morning (jouvert) and Kadooment Day (the carnival procession day). The fetes (parties/concerts) and Soca…

  • Barbados: St. Lawrence Gap

    If you’re in Barbados and want to party, it’s likely that you’ll end up in St. Lawrence Gap, aka ‘The Gap’, unless you’re going to a specific event/concert that you already have tickets for. The Gap is in the South of the island, not far from Oistins. It’s basically a…

  • Barbados: Beaches

    Barbados’ beaches are one of its main attractions, so as you would expect, it has a lot of pretty ones with white sand and clear blue water. The West coast is known to have the nicest beaches for relaxing/swimming, so if you don’t have a specific beach in mind, I…

  • Barbados: Oistins Friday Fish Fry

    Oistins is a village on the South coast of Barbados and every Friday evening they have something called a fish fry. This basically means there are little stalls selling things like grilled fish, fried plantain, rice and peas etc., along with plenty of alcohol and music. It starts at about…

  • Barbados: Public Transport and Taxis

    When you’re an adventurous traveller, it’s a given that you’re going to take public transport, and maybe some taxis, in the country you’re exploring. Thankfully, public transport in Barbados is pretty simple. Here’s how it works: There are no trains. Buses are the only form of public transport. There are three…

  • Useful Travel Websites

    1.     Workaway – http://www.workaway.info                    Price – $29 (USD) for 2 years Workaway is awesome! It allows you, as a ‘workawayer’ to view hosts’ profiles all over the world who are looking for help in exchange for accommodation and sometimes food. The help required ranges from things like babysitting to looking…

  • Berlin Carnival 2015 – Day 4

    Sunday at Berlin Carnival is the main event.. the actual carnival (Karneval de Kulturen as it’s called in German). There’s nothing better than waking up on Carnival morning, putting on your amazing costume and carefully putting glittery makeup and gems around your eyes whilst listening to soca and getting excited…

  • Berlin Carnival 2015 – Day 3

    By day 3, the rum had caught up with us a bit so we knew we would take it easy that day. The daytime event for the Saturday is the Soca BBQ, which, as the name suggests, is held in an outdoor area and it has soca and BBQ food.…

  • Berlin Carnival 2015 – Day 2

    Friday at Berlin Carnival means one thing… SOCA ON THE BEACH! This is one of the most popular events and it’s held at a fake beach next to a river. Everyone comes in their swimming stuff because there’s actually a swimming pool in the river with deck chairs next to…