Tag Archives: adventure

Africa, Namibia

Planning: Full adventure in Namibia

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Those who follow this blog may already know that we are used to plan our travels using satellite images. We don’t use travel agencies and reduce to the minimum the expenses behind the planning of a trip. In this post we speak for the first time about our next travel destination: Namibia!

How did we decide to go to Namibia?

Last year we crossed the Iberian Peninsula from Barcelona to Portugal and did a road trip through a fantastic country, visiting Alentejo, Lisbon, Porto… and Sintra. I say this because it was in Sintra, maybe one of the most beautiful places in Europe, where we realized that the beauty cannot be properly explored among thousands of people. Some places which can be fascinating when isolated may loose their magic when thousands of people are looking at it.

When we came back home and being in that period between the last trip and the need to plan a new one, we saw a documentary in TV about a Catalan family, also the two kids, doing a round trip around the World. One of the places they went to was Namibia and there they did free camping in some of the dreamiest landscapes in the planet. They also planned a strategy to find the desert elephant which can only be seen in some places in that country.

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Desert elephants
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Austria, Europe

Grossglockner: Sleeping in a hut among glaciers

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Have you ever heard the name Grossglockner? Maybe yes if you are from Austria or live around the Alps in Europe. We must admit that we had not heard about it before and we want to share with you how we discovered the most beautiful road in Europe.

Everything started with my obsession to memorize the satellite images of the zone that we want to visit. In that exploration, using Google Earth, I saw this:

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Google Earth research before traveling

Finally I realized that there was a hostel at the highest point of the road, at 2,600 m, where we could sleep. Moreover, I found those two huts and I decided there was no better place to spend a night. We modified the plans for the previous day just to be able to sleep there. And fortunately we could. Here starts the story that brought us to the Grossglockner road.

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New Zealand, Oceania

Blue Ice in New Zealand

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We love traveling because it generates the perfect conditions for having unique experiences. This is what happened in Didac’s trip to New Zealand.

If I met an alien and it asks me to show the Earth in just three weeks I would take it to New Zealand. The reason is that it is a country where you can find active volcanoes, incredible high mountains, sand deserts, jungle, glaciers, fiords, beautiful villages, a mix of cultures… everything! Traveling to New Zealand is like traveling to the five continents.

I traveled to New Zealand and rented a campervan for three weeks. I started in Christchurch, did a round route through the South Island and then crossed the Cook Strait towards the North Island. As you can imagine I cannot explain all my experiences in just one post, so I will explain just one amazing experience that everyone should do at least once in a lifetime: taking an helicopter to a high point of Franz Joseph Glacier and then start an unforgettable hike through the blue ice.

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Blue Ice and a path towards the unknown…

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Travel Inspiration

Why Mapping The Map?

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Mapmaking has been an integral part of the human history for thousands of years. From cave paintings to ancient maps of Babylon, Greece and Asia, through the Age of Exploration, first explorers used to map their steps through the land and their miles through the seacoast; they painted their progress in a two dimensional surface, creating patterns of symbols in order to be able to come back at some point or ease others their way to newly discovered places.

We share the same passion of those first explorers. We aim to reach every corner of the planet and discover its mysteries, know local people and learn new ways of understanding culture and daily life. Mapping the Map is the blog where you will be able to follow the steps of two explorers of 21st century.

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Grossglockner High Alpine Road (Austria)

Although we share those old feelings and aims, as 21st century human beings we use the most advanced technologies to plan, perform and record our journeys through this little blue planet. We start always by using Google Earth, looking at the planet from the space, navigating from one place to another in order to decide our next travel project. We use our camera to catch up every emotion we experience during our journey and we will use this blog to share our discoveries with you.

Travels, experiences, photography, philosophy, happiness, open minds, gastronomy… let’s discover the planet together. Let’s walk through an existing map in order to create our own map of emotions, feelings and thoughts, and put them together to know who we really are.