Coffee Tours in Boquete Panama

Having done the Tea Plantation tour in Sri Lanka, it seemed only fair to do one of the Coffee Tours in Boquete Panama - And very informative it was.

We booked our tour at the Boquete Mountain Safari tours office for $29 per person. In fact, for the same price they offered to let us join a group

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Boquete Panama - Getting Around/What to Do

Boquete Panama is one of the highlights of a trip to this diverse country. Not really a town as such, Boquete is a huge district spanning 488 square kilometers.

However, most of the action is centred around a short but busy central high street.

A single dual-carriage highway runs up through

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/boquete-panama/

Jungla Experience Boquete Panama

The Jungla Experience Boquete is a well-equipped hostel, combining a dormitory with a couple of private rooms.

The place is hard to find. There are no boards or signs indicating where it is. If you arrive after dark or don't get lucky with a savvy taxi driver, you'll have problems finding

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Hotel Residencial Cervantes David

We interrupted our journey from Santa Catalina to Boquete by stopping for a night at the Hotel Residencial Cervantes David.

When planning our trip, we thought it would be a good idea to break our journey to Boquete in David. In practise, there's no real need to do this when travelling from

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Getting Around Panama by Shuttle Bus

If you have a few more dollars to spend, and you want to make your travel a little easier, the Hello Travel bus shuttle company makes a good alternative to going it alone. For the extra cost, they can make getting around Panama a bit less stressful.

They have regular air-conditioned shuttle

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/getting-around-panama/

Around Town in Santa Catalina, Panama

Santa Catalina, Panama, is a relaxing place to unwind, especially after spending a few days in Panama City.

Santa Catalina is a small resort town on the Pacific coastline, south of Santiago. The town is centered between 2 beaches: Playa Estero for the surfers and Playa Santa Catalina for the
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The Soná of 'Prison Break' Fame

Any fans of the mini-series will be familiar with the infamous Soná of 'Prison Break' fame. This fictional prison featured in much of Season 3 of the series.

The good news is that if you're planning to travel by bus from Panama City (or from Boquete) to Santa Catalina, you will get to visit

Read more...http://www.sandspice.com/sona-prison-break/
#Soná #PrisonBreak #Panama

Panama City to Santa Catalina by Bus

If you plan to travel from Panama City to Santa Catalina by bus, you'll need to start your journey from Albrook's bus station. The easiest and cheapest way to get there is by metro.

Before leaving Panama City for Santa Catalina, make sure you'll have enough cash for your stay. There are no

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/panama-city-to-santa-catalina/

Panama Canal Kayaking - Jungle Land Experience

The Panama Canal is arguably one of most important structural achievements ever built. Apart from cutting a slice through a mountain, construction of the canal also involved flooding a river to form a gigantic lake. When planning our trip to Panama, it had never occurred to us that Panama Canal

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/panama-canal-kayaking/

Lembongan Island Guesthouses

Nusa Lembongan is a laid-back island off the southeast coast of Bali. After our 4-day stay in Ubud, we took a boat to discover what the island had to offer. With a good selection of Lembongan island guesthouses to choose from, we'd selected 2 places - at opposite sides of the island from each

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/lembongan-island-guesthouses/

Top 14 Panama City Activities (or maybe not...)

You can see a lot of what Panama City has to offer by simply walking around. The distances between most of the popular attractions are not that great. Here then is the list of our top 14 Panama City activities and attractions, most of which are reachable on foot.
Amador Causeway
If you're taking

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/top-14-panama-city-activities/

Panama City Hotels

When choosing a place from your shortlist of Panama City hotels, you really need to make sure you're locating yourself in the right areas. Away from the centre, with its relatively small and upmarket high-rise district, you can quickly find yourself in rundown slum areas with a heavy police

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/panama-city-hotels/

Avianca from Bogota to Panama Tocumen Airport

The final leg of our journey from Amsterdam to Panama was an Avianca flight from Bogota, Columbia to Panama Tocumen Airport. This involved another security screening, but thankfully not as inanely intense as in Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

Our arrival at Bogota airport was definately a 'habla

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Lufthansa Longhaul Inflight Experience

Our flight from Europe to Panama involved a 3-leg flight with Lufthansa, starting from Amsterdam. Naturally, we were curious to discover how our Lufthansa longhaul inflight experience would pan out.
Our Lufthansa Longhaul Inflight Experience
Our Lufthansa flight deal was quite exceptional. Just

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/lufthansa-longhaul-inflight-experience/

Lufthansa Longhaul Inflight Experience

Our flight from Europe to Panama involved a 3-leg flight with Lufthansa, starting from Amsterdam. Naturally, we were curious to discover how our Lufthansa longhaul inflight experience would pan out.
Our Lufthansa Longhaul Inflight Experience
Our Lufthansa flight deal was quite exceptional. Just

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/lufthansa-longhaul-inflight-experience/

Amsterdam Layover Hotel & Activities

Our incredibly low-priced Lufthansa flights from Europe to Panama departed from Holland. We therefore needed to find budget flights to get us to Schiphol airport, and then include an Amsterdam layover in our schedule.
Freezing in February
If you bring enough warm clothing with you, a February

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/amsterdam-layover-hotel-activities/

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Apparently, Panama is among the top 5 best-rated countries in the world in which to retire. Facts like this, together with the attractions of a tropical climate and the buzz of a Latin American country are hard to ignore. Throw into the mix really cheap flights with Lufthansa from Europe and we're

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/panama-travel-plan/

The 10 Best-Value Pubs & Restaurants in Edinburgh

The 10 Best-Value Pubs & Restaurants in Edinburgh
http://www.sandspice.com/pubs-restaurants-edinburgh/
#Edinburgh #Pubs #Restaurants

Gdańsk Poland Activities

Apart from the picturesque old town and excellent eating venues, Gdansk is home to a top-class selection of interactive museums. You'll need at least 3 days to do justice to these as well as the other Gdansk Poland activities on offer.

Staying at the Liberum hotel in the heart of the old town,

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Samsara Guesthouse Karimunjawa

Since we arrived 2 days late on the island, we spent only one night in the first of our selected guesthouses - the Waru Guesthouse. For our next three nights, we were booked into the Samsara Guesthouse Karimunjawa, which was just 10 minutes walk from the main harbour.

Samsara's is an

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Waru Guesthouse Karimunjawa

The Waru Guesthouse Karimunjawa was the first of the 4 guesthouses we planned to visit on Karimunjawa island. We had originally planned to stay at the Waru for 3 nights, but an unscheduled 2-day delay in Semarang meant we were only able to get there for the last night.

We arrived at Kariman

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Karimunjawa Fast Boat

We travelled to Jepara from Semarang in order to take the Karimunjawa fast boat north to Karimunjawa island.

Since the fast boat leaves at 9am, we arrived in Jepara the day before and booked ourselves into the , close to the port.

On the morning of our departure, we were advised to get to

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Hotel Samudra Jepara Port

Before leaving the in Semarang, we used one of their guest computers to book the Jepara port for the following night.

The Samudra Hotel was a last minute booking (actually for the same day) following some unavoidable changes to our travel plan (see Jepara ATM woes).

We needed a hotel close

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Hotel Quest Semarang

After successfully retrieving our credit card from the BTN bank (see Honey, the ATM ate my card), we could finally get our travel plan back on track. The BTN debacle had effectively taken 2 days out of our planned itinerary. We were now looking forward to an un-scheduled overnight stay in

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Backtracking to Semarang City

Following our misfortunes in Jepara, we were heading back to Semarang city to try to rescue our vacation from disaster.

With no credit cards and insufficient cash, we wouldn't be able to continue our journey to Karimunjawa, where cash is the only form of payment accepted by almost all

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/backtracking-semarang-city/

Jepara ATM woes - down & out in the suburbs

This marked the low-point of my trip to Indonesia.

Events had spiralled relentlessly downhill from our arrival at Semarang airport, on a domestic flight with Lion Air from Jakarta.

Following the loss of a credit card at Semarang airport (see Honey, the ATM ate my card), we continued with

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/jepara-atm-woes/

New Year's Eve Malta Clifftop Camping

December 31st - While everybody else was putting on their glad rags and preparing for a Yuletide bash in the city, we were heading in the opposite direction - up into the hills in fact. We were planning a New Year's Eve Malta clifftop camping excursion.

Something different, we thought - Just

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/malta-clifftop-camping/

Hotel Elim & Minibus to Jepara

There are several options for getting over to Karimunjawa island from the mainland of Central Java. However, the boats run most frequently from Jepara. More importantly, there is always a boat leaving Jepara port early on the Sunday morning (weather permitting). It's for this reason that we chose

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Honey, the ATM ate my card

What was I to do when an Indonesian ATM ate my card?

We had just arrived at Semarang airport on a Lion Air flight from Jakarta. This was the 2nd day of hopefully a 15-day trip to Karimunjawa: An island 88 kms north of Central Java.

Loosing our card at this stage of the journey, with a fairly

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/atm-ate-my-card/

Lion Air Inflight Experience

On arrival in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, we were heading straight out again without delay> We had booked a domestic flight with the carrier Lion Air to take us to Semarang. Although it is a budget airline, we were hoping that the Lion Air inflight experience would be a painless

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/lion-air-inflight-experience/

Jakarta Stopover

On arrival at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, we'd decided to take a short Jakarta stopover in a nearby hotel, and then take a domestic flight onwards to Semarang. We would have time enough to see Jakarta city on our way back.

To ensure our schedule wasn't compromised by any flight

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/jakarta-stopover/

Doha Airport Layover

Our Qatar Airways flight from Rome to Jakarta included a lengthy 10-hour Doha airport layover. There was really no way of avoiding this when we booked the flight.

If we had arrived early in the day, we could have enjoyed one of Qatar's complimentary 3-hour tours of the city. However, we would

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Qatar Airways Inflight Experience

With their elitist tv commercials and tip-top rating in the World's Best Airlines, we were expecting great things from our Qatar Airways inflight experience.

This is why we snatched up the opportunity to fly with them from Rome to Jakarta for around €500 per person, economy class.

We could

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/qatar-airways-inflight-experience/

Lion Air Inflight Experience

On arrival in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, we were heading straight out again without delay> We had booked a domestic flight with the carrier Lion Air to take us to Semarang. Although it is a budget airline, we were hoping that the Lion Air inflight experience would be a painless

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/lion-air-inflight-experience/

Lembongan Island Transfers

Following our 4-day stay in Ubud, we were heading south to spend some time on a lush island off the coast of Bali. The previous day we purchased tickets for our Lembongan island transfers from a small travel agent in Ubud. We were now gearing up for a (hopefully) pleasant bus and boat transfer

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/lembongan-island-transfers/

Jakarta Stopover

On arrival at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, we'd decided to take a short Jakarta stopover in a nearby hotel, and then take a domestic flight onwards to Semarang. We would have time enough to see Jakarta city on our way back.

To ensure our schedule wasn't compromised by any flight

Read more... http://www.sandspice.com/jakarta-stopover/