Author Archives: Julie Paterson
Travel before the internet – why it was such a great time, and how to escape again
I feel really fortunate to have grown up in the 80s and 90s before the internet and mobile phones were a big thing. OK, so we had awful hairstyles and bad fashion, but at least we knew how to communicate. But we were also able to disappear off the grid if we wanted to. And […]
Abdullah’s miracle
8 October 2019, Dahab, South Sinai, Egypt. I was meandering my way down a dusty, nameless Dahab street on a sunny desert day, on my way to visit a toothless, old Bedouin lady. She speaks to me in an old dialect through her scarf and I barely understand a word, but I am intrigued by […]
Why we need to be kept in the dark…
Last week I learned why we really shouldn’t be afraid of the dark…and why we need to be kept in the dark… During my long years as an outdoor guide, I spent many a night gazing at the beautiful starry nights with my international clients, quite in awe, and wondering all those things that you […]
When I was a travelling unicorn in Africa in the 80s
My most favorite decade of travel was the 80s – ahhh the good old days. No internet, no plastic problems, no over-tourism, no mobile phones, no selfie sticks, no extinction problems and best of all, nobody knew where you were. We just drifted around, using the trusted travelers grapevine as our Stone Age Tripadvisor, only […]
Covid 19 news from my guides around the world…
In April I wrote to my guides in different places around the world to get an on-the-ground-perspective of what was happening in the world. One day we will look back at this post as a piece of history, and a reminder of what we went through. Here is what they said: NEWS FROM MARCELLO IN […]
A long visit to Limboland
Limboland. It’s not a place I have spent much time in before. Who would have thought, that whilst on a 4 week holiday in my country of birth, New Zealand, visiting friends and family, that I would have gotten stranded here in Limboland, with my life as I knew it turned upside down? Mid March […]
Cuba – a journey and a lesson
Cuba: Pina Coladas, cigars, tropical beaches, salsa and old cars! That’s the main image most people have of this hot, time-warped Caribbean island. But, as with any travels, we discovered much more than that: a land with a rocky history, which still very much affects the present, and locals bracing themselves for the future. Above […]
Revisiting Ethiopia 10 years on…
It had been a few years since I had been to Ethiopia, so I was curious to see the changes. Sometimes things change for the good, sometimes for the worse. But I think what I had forgotten is that it’s how Ethiopia changes you. Unlike most other countries which you visit, learn about the culture […]
Bedouin women making history
Um Yasser, a middle-aged Bedouin woman of the Hamada tribe in South Sinai, was born in a rock house, but spent much of her childhood living in a cave dwelling in the desert, where she and her mother tended their herd of goats. The Bedouins are an old, conservative ethnic group, with laws that govern […]
Adventures of Venus 