Stāsts lasāms arī latviski What are the truly essential things in our lives? And can anybody apart from ourselves really define that? That is an... — Izlasi 34 min.
I squeak with joy quietly and reach for my phone and its camera. It serves as a reference point proving that this moment is real. If I get this urge to take photos, it means I am right here and right now. — Izlasi 40 min.
“If you have not bought a ticket to the Riviera by the next session I will not consult you anymore,” my psychotherapist warned me, half-jokingly. — Izlasi 34 min.
The week has flown by. Much too short. It has been full of colour and events. Caves and desert dunes, queer trees and spinning doplhins, abandoned beaches and luke-warm lagoons. And all of that framed in the turquoise blue of the Arab sea. This is the picture I take with me. — Izlasi 17 min.
Passenger’s log-book from m/s Hebridean Sky, operated by Polar Latitudes. Voyage to the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and Antarctica. Departing from Puerto Madryn and finishing at Ushuaia. — Izlasi 16 min.
Just like the three musketeers and D’Artagnan with their motto “One for all and all for one” there are four of us in West Africa: our driver, common sense and pathfinder Justice, Oskars who oftentimes gets called millionaire by the Latvian mass media as if that was a profession or craftsmanship, the math teacher Jeff who saved me from an attack of wild dogs last year in Cape Coast, and I. We make up a very balanced team, not unified by a noble cause or other nonsense so popular in literature. We have joined forces for one purpose only - to drive around Ghana and explore lesser known regions near the country’s border with Burkinafaso, Ivory Coast and Togo — Izlasi 24 min.
I come to Ethiopia on a regular basis since 2008. Not that I am completely obsessed with this country, I have been elsewhere too - in other African countries, India and such. But there is something that draws me specifically to Ethiopia. Which is why I keep exploring all and any opportunity to go there at least once a year and at least for a month, preferably for three or more, if I get lucky. In my travels I have criss-crossed this country all over, I have worked here, I have lazed around - just living among the people. Alone. At the beginning - with no language skills at all. Ok, so I did know a bit of English and a few words in the Amharic language. But it is not language that matters. It is the interaction that has to be learnt. — Izlasi 25 min.
It was a tender April 20s night, not unlike one of those I imagine Francis Scott Fitzgerald wrote about: a gentle wind blew from the sea, a full moon shone above Nice, the bustling of restaurant visitors on Place Garibaldi got quieter already after 11pm. It was an off-season Wednesday, after all. It was around this time that I decided to take a walk from Nice to Monaco. Well, I had no choice. I had forgotten my card and phone charger in my friend's car, and she had left for Monaco much earlier. I had spent more than an hour waiting for the night bus and in vain. As I discovered with help of a passer-by, there was no night bus from the Nice airport to Monaco on Wednesday nights. Meanwhile, I had missed the last train leaving around 11pm. — Izlasi 7 min.
My only questionable character trait is that I cannot help but tell everyone about Africa. Without being asked, for no reason at all. They talk to me, say, about love, but I barge in with my “But once in Burkina Faso…” I do understand that it is stupid, but I just seem unable to help it. This adventure stands out way too brightly in my drab life. I cannot refrain from sharing it. It is about time therefore that I legitimise it and write it down on these pages. — Izlasi 30 min.