Saturday, May 26, 2012

Melbourne: the perfect cocktail

Put Berlin, Brussels and New York in a cocktail blender and the result might be something like Melbourne. It's been a week now after we left that astonishing city, but it's vibe is still resonating in our brain.

Maybe it's about the night, when the tall buildings seem to disappear in the skies, embraced by the clouds lit up by the bright city. The casino blows fire in the sky and during the weekends thousands of dressed-up fancy people are crowding up the streets. It's just wonderful. While wandering through the city, we discovered narrow streets with astonishing graffiti arts, fancy little bars and well-hidden pubs - luckily, we were helped a little bit by Sharon, who guided us through the darkest places of Melbourne. We got ourselves into outdoor bars and museums, Dimitri enjoyed the traffic infrastructure and Graham went out of control in the games museum. You wouldn't believe us, but we kinda fell in love with a city.

Let the pictures speak for themselves...


Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Melbourne by night

Melbourne by night

Nelson's case: solved!

News update from Colombia. As you might know, we were robbed in Colombia. Nelson, the off duty cop who was walking with us that day, was also robbed.... but started an extensive investigation operation. He just sent us an email with great news: "La banda del cerro Las Tres Cruces" has been arrested!
RIP! (P for Prison)
It's big news in Colombia!
Newspapers about the group - they should've read our blog! 
Santiago M., the leader of the group which robbed us, was killed one month ago. Risky business, high stakes.


The guns which were pointed at us...


Sunday, May 13, 2012

First impressions: Australia

Just a few hours after selling the car in New Zealand, and thanks to helpful Samantha and her colleages at the airport Flight Centre, we were already heading for the next destination of our Grand Voyage, Australia. Due to a pot of strawberry jam we underwent some extra x-ray screenings at the airport security, which resulted in some lessons about smuggling, knives and last but not least Dimitri's machete. Surprisingly Dimitri's "coconut slicing tool" (as he described it himself) is still travelling with us all the way from Panama.

Adelaide, our first destination, surprised us with it's young vibe, amazing museums and slick architecture. We rented some bikes, drove around to the beach and prepared our first expeditions here. To support global warming and palmtrees in Europe, we decided to rent a small car and drove around, enjoying extensive wine tasting tours in McLaren vale and Adelaide Hill, well-known wine regions in the vicinity of Adelaide. Then we met Tanya, the amazing host(el manager) of one of the best and most remote hostels ever. Just hoping that she didn't ruin someone's wedding, she sneaked into the cellar and 'borrowed' some wine bottles for us. We didn't need a lot of discussion to extend our stay... and we had the time of our lives.

Meanwhile we met Benedicte, who turned out to be 'the mama' of the group soon. This Bruxelloise dared to share a week together with us, driving up north to Flinders Ranges. The following pictures don't need a lot of words...



During this first week~expedition, we composed a ranking of the best wines, based on an impressive list of tastings and our personal palette and preferences. Coming up next: the one and only DG-wine-award. Stay tuned,

D&G

Groene Vingers