Blue Dot Travel Blog

We all travel for different kinds of reasons. Some people like ancient history, others prefer more recent colonial history. Some folks love to photograph wildlife, while some would rather eat their way around a country.  You can do all of this in Guatemala, and more. Not many Australians travel to Guatemala. Rather, if they head…

Turkmenistan – Land of the Turkmen – could best be described as an odd country. The former Soviet state became independent in 1991 and was until 2006 ruled by Niyazov, a communist-style dictator. Niyazov had absolute final say over the country when his party mandated his presidency for life and during this time, he banned…

I am lucky to have travelled to Malta on quite a few occasions. The more I go, the more I love it. Area-wise it’s a tiny country with two main islands – Malta and Gozo. But don’t be deceived by its size. There are heaps of things to do on both islands. For first time…

I came to Sardinia with few preconceptions, except about its reputation for brigands and kidnappings. Our itinerary included a visit to the mountain village of Orgosolo, a headquarters for the brotherhood in recent years. Today it’s better known as the Painted Village, with politically inspired murals decorating most of the houses in the centre of…

The Japanese are obsessed with the short-lived beauty of these fragile blossoms. They pay to reserve spots in the best parks where they can sit and appreciate their surroundings. The first few days on the tour: bare branches, with buds in various stages of development. Our cameras went berserk every time we found a tree…

We visited Iceland on a recce in 2013. The brief to ourselves was to develop an itinerary providing a “best of” and some lesser-known parts of the country for our small group tours Iceland. Apart from what we had read and seen in magazines and brochures, we didn’t really know what to expect. We spent…

Day 2 of the Timkat Festival,  we reach the special ground where the waters are blessed for the Baptism rites. The whole area was crowded, and locals waved lighted tapers as the priests began arriving in all their glory. Deacons in their white robes with red borders, and priests wearing black cloaks over their white robes, formed a perimeter around…

Our trip was all about the Arctic wildlife. The best opportunity to photograph a bear surely had to be the site where the remains of a sperm whale had been drawing bears for at least a month. There is never more than one bear at a time, with the bear hierarchy strictly enforced. But there’s…

It’s coldish up here in the Arctic, ranging from daily maximum of 1 degree celsius to an incredibly warm 10 degrees. On the warm days, we shed layers like reptile skins. Svalbard is a group of Norwegian islands that extend to just above 80 degrees north. If we went that far south in Antarctica we…