There is No Way to Happiness. Happiness is The Way! (Buddha)

According to 20th century folklore, the laws of aerodynamics prove that the bumblebee should be incapable of flight, as it does not have the capacity (in terms of wing size or beat per second) to achieve flight with the degree of wing loading necessary. Not being aware of scientists 'proving' it cannot fly, the bumblebee happily goes on flying!

Go as far as you can see, and when you get there you can see further (Mahatma Gandhi)

We’d left our dear chocolate and snow-mountain country last December fully packed with our kite surfing gear and a single air-ticket to Brazil. Except for the Budget and the final destination, everything else was unplanned. Following the calendar of the trade winds and the moon, we explored the sportsgrounds of our dreams, visited important cultural and natural centres and got inspired by cheerful and helpful people. Now, after 11 months and 44 thousand kilometres on transit, our 2bumbleB project has happily reached an end in order to give space for a new beginning! But this is going to be another story...

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. (Marshall McLuhan)

Through this blog (and the photo collections on Flickr), we would like to share our adventures, impressions and gratitude with you. Definitely it is just one of infinite ways to discover and enjoy the endless wonders of this world. Life is beautiful and we are meant to cherish all of its riches, as much as it is our responsibility towards our flourishing future generations to always stay openly critical towards everything - including ourselves - and act with respectfulness (check the new blog 2HumbleB!!!)

Experience is not was happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. (Aldous Huxley)

Anh-Dao and Padi
October 30th 2007 in Sydney NSW Australia

One last escape to Melbourne

How can we decide to settle in Sydney if we haven’t even visited Melbourne beforehand? And my best friend Valerie was expecting us there! With these reasons in hand, we booked our tickets at a low-cost air-company and set up for the final step of our 2bumbleB Journey.

We arrived on a chilly, rainy and windy Tuesday evening via Avalon airport to the huge, modern train station of Melbourne CBD. A short tram-ride through a deserted city took us to a Victorian-style suburb where Valerie welcomed us with a hot cup of tea. She’d prepared a program for the week-end and some magazines and maps for our time in Melbourne City. It was such a nice feeling to know somebody like her in that part of the world! While we visited some of Victoria’s best places at day and night, we shared many thoughts together. I could talk with her for hours and hours to share travel experience and learn about the work conditions as she had experienced in Melbourne.
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Closing a Circle in Sydney

The first time I thought of actually revisiting Sydney, my place of birth, was when I saw the cruise ship Pacific Star a couple of weeks ago on Isle of Pine. Having slowly given up the hope for the sailing trip with Magellan from New Caledonia to Darwin, Northern Australia, that ferry was the first practicable option to move on, and I must say - despite the original strategy of our 2bumbleb journey not to visit any place one of us already knew - it was quite a seductive idea to arrive in Australia on a huge cruise ship, entering Sydney harbour to view the magnificent Harbour Bridge and the famous Opera House before setting foot in the heart of the city at Circular Quay.

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Isle of Pines – Waiting for a sailing boat that never came

Who wishes to be forgotten in paradise?

Originally, the island said to be closest to paradise was planned to be our starting point for our sailing adventure on Magellan. Instead of one night, we ended up spending 17 long days without clear information. As we kept on waiting in hope for good news, we learnt that bad news was definitely better than no news. In fact, Magellan’s rudder blade broke between Fidji and in southern Vanuatu only a few days before arrival, and at first there was no way for them to contact us, nor to know how and when the repairs would be successful.

We speculated waiting would take just a few days. So we went out to explore the unique beauties of the island like cycling, hiking, horsebackriding, scuba diving. We did’nt find any reasonably safe and reliable kitesurf spot. Not being prepared for a longer camping-stay, cooking tools were practically unexistant, and we quickly started to suffer the lack of fresh food supplies and generally exorbitant prices, not only in the very fiew restaurants, but also in the foodstores. Frequent rainfalls and low temperatures over 5 days made our camping quite uncomfortable, but it was never too bad to be a reason to give up. Instead, we focused on catching up with things we’d never had time for up to now. Spending more time than usual guests, we started to socialize with locals. Each time they saw us again, they wondered why we we were still here, since we'd explained that we would leave very soon.

One day Anh-Dao could not stand it any more. She was ready to leave everything behind, even me! Of course I was more patient because I knew the captain of Magellan personally and remained faithful towards him. Moreover, where should we have gone, if not keep waiting in the camping? Nouméa with its expensive hotels was not an option. Moving anywhere else was another huge logistics project with all our gear. On that day there was a big invasion of Ozzies, enjoying some hard ground on their cruise back to Sydney. Watching the big cruiseship outside the Bay of Kuto, I realized that we could maybe just hop on and reach Australia that way. Calling the maritime agent, he was in for the deal but could not persuade the captain who was against such risky, short-noticed actions. Anyway, the sudden rush to clear our tent space and prepare our luggage saved the day and Anh-Dao had a proof from me that I was ready to look out for new options.

Fortunately, we met some very cheerful people who had come to Isle des Pins 38 years ago to develop tourist business with modern watersports. Now they run an Arts & Handicraft Boutique and create souvenir items themselves. We spent quite a few evenings with them to get inspired by the experience of one another. On these encounters we dare to conclude that it’s not the birth year that determines our age, but the sane amount and creative nature of our future projects and our positive attitude towards them.

After nearly two weeks, our friends on Magellan at last contacted us and the many speculations came to an end: Due to major technical problems, Magellan can’t immediately continue its trip to Papua-New Guinea and Darwin. For recovery, they’ll extend their stay in New Caledonia and add a loop via New-Zealand and Eastcoast Australia. This way, we also had to completely change our plans. But we had no way to leave the island for another 5 days. It’s quite challenging to change a travel plan spontaneously, when trying to keep expenses minimal, and wishing to meet friends in New Zealand or Australia spontaneously without disrupting their original programs. One thing is clear: We can’t stay any longer in New Caledonia. We have to move on rapidly and try to settle in Melbourne as planned. We are at the end of our trip, our budget reaches the bottom end. Thinking more about time, work, money than enjoying the moment on an island so close to paradise is a clear sign enough. In fact we’ve spent as much money waiting for the boat on Isle of Pine and taking the airplane as we would have for 2 months sailing to the same destination. And we will not have made the sailing experience we’d so dearly wished since we arrived in Tahiti.

How shall we deal with all this resentment towards our friends on Magellan? It wasn’t their fault! Lucky enough they survived their accident! Anyway, we were looking forward to see Chloé and Jean-Baptiste as we got back to Nouméa. They cheerfully picked us up with their Dinghy on our arrival at the the ferry-pier, carrying all our belongings with us. We ended up spending two nights on Magellan, experiencing fullmoon on deck, and exchanging all our stories with much enthusiasm. The expedition together would have been great, but “Es hat nicht sollen sein!”

Finally, we are happy to have made this special experience of New Caledonia. Despite the challenging extreme conditions with weather, wind and temperatures, we managed to push our limits in kitesurfing and add more lasting impressions to our underwater career. Many local people, no matter if native Melanesian Kanaks, native white Caldoche, or expat metropolitan French and other nationalities, were great source of inspiration to us in terms of friendly attitude, warm hospitality and great respect for the resources of nature. We will cherish all this good Mana as we move on to Australia and hope to find a place where we can keep irradiating our environment with it for a long time!

To explore the stunning beauty of Isle of Pines, click slideshow.

Extreme Adventure on Ilot Tenia

After a week of rockin’ round la Grande Terre in a Peogeot 207, it was time to slow down and get back to the roots... We couldn’t resist the unique offer of our new Caldoche friend Mark to take his canote, some camping gear and enough supplies for water and food, and experience a Robinson Crusoe life. The coral cay of Tenia is a natural reserve with a sandy island and beautiful coral reef, based at the limit of the world’s largest lagoon and the Coral Sea. This place was to become our new home for the coming 12 days.

To get there from Mark’s place with all our gear, it took a two and a half hours ride in the little canote. Mark and his mate Bruno were so cool to show us the way, do some gunfishing, leave us some fish and cold beers before they returned to their homes through the dark of the early nightfall. We quickly got settled in an abandoned shed and prepared for some great snorkelling and kitesurfing. Being alone on an island far off civilization, our rhythm rapidly adapted to the eternal breath of pure nature. Never-before-heard, Mozart-like bird singing from all directions and distances announced the morning sun and cheered us up to get ready for the day. Of course these depended heavily on the tidal calendar and the winds. To extend some daytime, we lit campfires using stranded woods we found on our daily strolls along the deserted beach.

Having a little boat of our own was great. We could go and visit some outer reefs (with great long surfbreaks) and snorkel among unalerted marine life. The coral reef’s wild fauna and flora seemed rather intact and definitely excited us more than anything we’ve seen beforehand. However, with 22° C water temperature was chilly and kept us off doing long underwater sessions. Back on land, we enjoyed the moderate winter sun to heat up, but had to constantly take good care not to step onto one of the countless sea snakes obviously having the same intention with the sun. These creatures are extremely venimous, but fortunately behave rather passive when encountered.

Lucky enough, our stay dropped into a long period of great SE trade winds between 20 and 30 knots. Exclusively enjoying glassy waters in offshore wind conditions, we were fortunate to have the boat for emergency cases. Being only the two of us, we could never surf at the same time, since one had to secure the other. Now and again winds were so hard, Anh-Dao couldn’t control the smallest kite. On one occasion she lost the board and the gales let her no chance to bodydrag upwind. She drifted faster than the abandoned board and was relieved when she could save herself further down the island. Assured that she was fine, I rapidly drove the canote out to search for the board, but the wind was so strong I hardly could keep the boat flat in the water. Anh-Dao joined me in the canote and together we searched for another 2 hours, in vain. This loss was quite a shock for us both. Having accumulated this with the experiences the day before (sight of large shark during kite session, nightmare due to a helicopter waking us up in the middle of the night with his penetrating flashlight, mystical moon eclipse), Anh-Dao suffered a luxuation of her right shoulder on her next dive expedition, and I provoked a second, more serious one on manipulating the stiffened muscles to relief the pain and calm her down. That was the point where we realized there was more than just fun related to our adventure.

Now and again the island received other visitors coming for a daytrip. We sympathized with some kitesurfers and scientists from the capital Nouméa. Our conclusion to this is for reasons of precious time, energy and money, it is wiser to wait on a little piece of paradise for few but mostly interesting encounters, rather than get lost in a crowded place where it is hard to filter the people we would like to spend more time with.

24 hours before we left, heavy rainfalls started, that disgustingly made all our gear feel humid and wet. Fair enough, the boatride was calm and we even saw some dolphins. Mark expected us back at his weekend house and helped us to clear up and dry all the things for ongoing journey. In the evening we were invited to Laurence’s birthday BBQ with excellently tender Vanuatu beef, plenty of cold Champagne and great dessert pastry. This way we enjoyed a pleasant return to civilization.

Waiting for the ferry to transfer onto Ile des Pins and join our friends on the sailing boat Magellan, we spent a night at our new friend from Tenia, Guillem. Anh-Dao was lucky to buy the last reasonable kiteboard available in whole Nouméa from Stéphane Tranne, the Caledonian wakeboard star, who spontaneously invited us to join in for an excellent wakeboard session on his wonderful, large Mastercraft motorboat.

If you'd like to know how kitesurfers fly in glassy-flat water, check this: tenia slideshow.

Rain Challenge on Grande Terre New Caledonia

Having Tahitian shell necklaces from Nadège, Christelle, Dyonita and Fabien pending on my front, a Farewell cocktail from the Beachcomber bar resting comfortably in my belly, and with a wide lasting smile on my face from the fresh impressions of snorkelling just hours ago with humpback whales in crystal clear tropical waters, I arrived in New Caledonia’s International Airport with Padi on my side. It was midnight, and it felt strange to have lost a whole calendar day after crossing the dateline in the “wrong” direction. Moreover, we had no reservations for transport or accommodation, so we were bound to improvise. Lucky enough, we met a warmhearted person who enjoyed chatting with us for hours before lending us a rental car for the week. His name is Mark Levy, and I can’t imagine to have discovered New Caledonia without his help and his fascination to share the hidden beauties of his generous country with us. He gave us clear instructions on how to reach a wild campsite used by hunters on the shores of the magic Tontouta River in the middle of the night. Can there be any better first impression of a new country than being woken up by birds’ concerts and the morning sun in a save place on a heavenly bit of land?

Travelling inland through the vast and hilly bush on red dirt tracks is like diving into ancient times. In the South we hiked on some fantastic botanical trails to discover sceneries reminding us of the prehistoric Gondwana era. Then again, we were surprised by the differences of the tropical eastcoast and the rather dry, prairie-like westcoast.
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Imagin' French Polynesia

...like The Little Prince who visited Earth and asked Antoine de St. Exupéry to draw a cute sheep to bring back home to his little planet.

...like Julien Cottereau miming his imaginary world with its monsters and courageous heros, ending his tale Imagine-toi with a lot of new friends.

...like us two bumble bees blown by the wind into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, starting a new episode of our life with bated breath, a breath boosting us with positiveness for our common future!



Soulrider's Vision
To experience total freedom while gliding over flat, endlessly turquoise water along coconut trees! The search after this fantastic sensation was driving us all over our journey and finally came true in the beautiful lagoon of Maupiti.
An encounter with the crazy kiters from Lakana Fly on Moorea taught us new limits: Those guys use two 80 meters long towing line in parallel behind a motorboat that cruises against the wind to give them a lift up to over 50 meters. The kiters then let go the line and sail their conventional kites like hanggliders to gently land on the water and continue with a graceful synchronized ride back to the starting point. We never saw something like that before!
We did not have as often wind as expected. Therefore, on calm days we often used a kayak to enjoy gliding over the lagoon. The wake-up Yoga sessions at the shore became Padi's daily routine to an extent he did not feel the need for regular cardiac training anymore. However, he was very happy to join a Sprint-Triathlon and find back the sensations of his long neglected favourite athletic discipline.


Daydream on a secluded Pacific Island
You need plenty of time and trials to finally find a place that corresponds to your dreams. First it's often hard to describe some imaginary settings, then you have to go and look for yourself in secluded areas, because if you follow guidebooks and commercial tours you'll just be disappointed to find some spoilt spots full of people, noise and rubbish. We found a neat campplace on a lonely cay full of coconut trees and lived like Robinson Crusoe for a week. Ok, he did not have kiteboarding gear to enjoy the wind. But he surely suffered far more than us, that there was no means of communication with the outer world. Instead, we sucked up the beauty of nature in an everchanging scenery conditioned by the weather, the Sun and the Moon, and let the magic do its work on us.
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Tahiti Dream

We'll take a time out with our blog reports - just such that you don't get too jealeous... We plan to bumble bee on the Islands around Tahiti... Cya later!!! Na na!!!

LATEST NEWS: Photos from Tahiti on FLICKR!!!
Due to the announced service stop of Yahoo Photos, we were forced to migrate our Photos to Flickr. The adaptation of all our links will take a while, but you can already directly check out the cool Flickr Slide Show Feature to view our latest impressions of Tahiti and Moorea, or Bora Bora.
To reach all the other photos of our 2bumbleB Journey to the South-West, click on this link. The complete 2bumbleB Photo Collection will then open via the Flickr.com website. Have fun!

Easter Island at Pentecost

Lucky enough we arrived at the end of a long period with steady rainfalls, and we were able to set up our new tent and quite comfortably camp right next to the ocean, enjoying the sound of some huge Pacific swell while watching sunset. The cool, misty and very windy weather conditions were perfect to explore the mystical Island of Rapa Nui by bicycle! Since it was the absolute low season, we hardly saw any other tourists, and loved the many encounters with free horses! Of course we would have preferred to swap locomotion... At the end of the day we enjoyed some great Ceviche for dinner, a raw tuna fish speciality. If you like to know more about the island, we recommend you watch the film Rapa Nui by Kevin Reynolds. I loved the film for its birdman race that reminded me of some moments I experienced during the Camel Trophy in Tonga and Samoa.

Click here to visit our Rapa Nui Photo Set on Flickr!

Farewell South America after 6 unforgettable months!!!
What do you do when you come to the end of a very important chapter? Organise a party and do a resume? We thought one party was not enough. You just have to design the chapters creatively...

So we had a great party in Arequipa, on the highest terasse above the main square, overlooking the cathedral and the volcanoes in the background waiting for a beautiful sunset, and enjoyed a fine alpaca carpaccio and a decent Peruan wine to celebrate our last busride of totally 11'450 bumpy South American kilometers and 262 long hours in public transports overland ...
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Condor flight over the abyss of the Colca Canyon
Photographic pictures of the Colca Canyon can't reveal the full beauty of this place. We are glad to have visited this rugged valley in the north of Peru's third largest city Arequipa and its beautiful volcanoes. The visit is easily feasible on your own, so you can avoid the high fees of the agencies and enjoy to visit the place at your own pace. We chose to do a 2-day trek to get off the beaten track from mainstream tourism.

After being visited by majestic, 3 meters large Condors at only 10 meters, we descended 1400m down to the gorge and spent the night in a lovely Refugio (Roy's House in San Juan de Chuccho). The fertile but steep valley can only be reached by foot or donkey, so you can imagine how laid back the people there are!!! After only a day it already did not seems strange any more to see trains of donkeys crossing our way.

This is THE place of our whole trip in South America where we felt the most travelling in the past. People are still very friendly and simple. The fact that you have to spend at least a night in a simple stay without electricity and communication after a hard and dusty trek fortunately still keeps back mainstream tourism from spoiling the place.

More pics on our Arequipa photo set by Flickr.

Worshipping the Sun at Macchu Picchu
Have you ever imagined how deeply fascinating and rich in symbols Inka's architecture and culture could be? No? So let's see what a roundtrip of ten days in Peru, imerging in archeological sites of the most famous Inka ruins, can teach us!
Qosqo, the ancient capital of the Inka Empire and the actual city of Cusco in the heart of the Andes, is headed by Sacsayhuaman, an impressive construction of stone walls (some of them weigh over 100 tons!) that constitute a place for sacred ceremonies.

The perfect knowledge of the agricultural calendar, systems of irrigation and terrace cultivation constitute the main point of interest of their ancient sustainable live style. They mastered the mystification of the Sun by combining naturally positioned and geometrically shaped rocks to produce fascinating games of light and shadows using the orientation of the sunrays on special days like the winter solstice. These events illustrated the power of the gods in order to control the people and were often carried out with sacrifices and offerings. Thanks to all the guides that recalled us all these elements of the Inka culture at the various sites in and around the Sacred Valley, we learnt to discover new forms in the rocks, like the Puma Guard or the Andean Cross, or even the lying Inka Face formed by the Wayna Picchu range in the background of the Macchu Picchu ruins.

As fresh baked Inka amateurs, we enjoyed to find out by ourselves the symbols hidden at the Temple of the Moon near Macchu Picchu. The enigma of this place, lost between Wayna Picchu and the Rio Urubamba and completely ignored by tourists, seemed perfect since haven't found any explanations in the specialized bookshops.
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Discovering the tresors of Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca is said to be the highest navigatable water surface in the world. Unfortunately we did not have our Kitesurf gear with us, so we could not verify it ourselves. However, we did see some fishermen cruising around in their triangle-shaped sailing boats, that surprisingly remembered us of the Jangadas we'd seen in northern Brazil.

Titicaca is the center of the ancient Inka culture. We were enchanted by the beauty of the holy Isla del Sol, where only half millenium ago, the Inkas used to pilgrim to a big sacred rock to swear that they would never rob others or lie to them, and that they would never be lazy in order to support the prosperity of the Inka empire.
Beforehand, we had visited the pre-Inkan ruins in Tihuanacu. This civilisation proved to have had a great influence on the Inkas: Not only did we learn about the holy trilogy of Heaven, Earth and the Underworld with their respective wild animals (condor, eagle, puma, lama, snake, frog etc.), but also we saw that the people of Tihuanacu had great geometric capabilities in building their sacred sites, as well as managing to handle huge blocks of stone.

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Three Bolivian Jewels: The Cities of Potosi, Sucre and La Paz
We felt the need to contrast the overwhelming emptiness of the Uyuni Salt Lake by visiting three important historic centers of Bolivia.
Potosi, the silver city, surprised us with the perfectly shaped triangular Cerro Rico, the mountain that brought much richness to the colonialists and much misery to the indigenous people. Today, children are still forced to work because they can more easily enter the narrow mines. We did not feel like seeing them and moved quickly to Sucre after a short yet pleasant visit of the city center.

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Journey to another Planet: Atacama Desert and Uyuni Salt Lake

It was only a short hop by bus over the snowy Andes from Uspallata to Santiago de Chile, where we then met Anh-Dao's mother Madeleine at the airport. Since we have a ticket to Tahiti for the end of May, we were happy to leave our heavy kitesurfing equipment in Santiago in order to travel lightly throughout our loop to Bolivia and Peru. After a delicious seafood meal with great local wine in Santiago's central market, Madeleine preferred to leave the hustle-bustle of the big city and immediately add another 26 hours of travelling to her flight from Switzerland. So we rode a comfort bus along the Pan-American Highway north to San Pedro de Atacama.

San Pedro is a neat town in an oasis at 2440 meters above Sea, in the middle of one of the driest places on Earth. This is where we chose to acclimatize for a couple of days before starting an epic 4x4-trip to the world's biggest salt lake of Uyuni in South-West Bolivia, during which we would spend our first night on chilly 4300 meters.

The dry air, strong sunshine, chilly winds, icy night-time temperatures and ever-present dust turned out to have more lasting effects on us than the thin air in the altitude. Nevertheless, we had to manage an unexpected challenge that taught us a great lesson: We'd rented a 4x4 pickup truck for a day and invited the two Swiss guys Raoul and Cyrill (we had met in Mendoza a week before) to join in for a discovery trip South to the Salt Lake of Talar. After a wonderful day full of odd-worldly impressions on the artwork of Pachamama (mother Earth), our rear-left tyre punctured just before we wanted to confront the 200kms back home. Fortunately, Anh-Dao managed to stop the truck safely, but our nerves were seriously tested, when we found out that the reserve tyre didn't have enough air to take us anywhere.

What would you do in the middle of the windy desert at 4500 meters, when the warming sun is about to leave, the two trucks per day from the Argentina border have already passed, the mobile phone network is inexistent, and you're stuck with only 1 liter of water each and a chocolate bar, feeling the first symptoms of altitude sickness like heavy backhead, no appetite, nausea and knowing that the next village Socaire is at 70 kms? Keep cool, give every one in the team a clear task and hope. Hope for the rental company to come and search for us. The question was, when? We can tell you when: 22 hours later!!!


Lucky enough, there was a mine nearby, called El Laco, and some workers passed us on their way to their camp (they were the only ones who would cause any traffic during our stay in El Laco). They helped us kindly on our time-consuming attempts to get back to San Pedro the same day after inflating the spare tyre and alarming the rental company. Well, this let us take more risks than necessary. The spare tyre did not hold and we finally we had to walk 4 kilometers at moonlight to access the miners camp. Not knowing when or if at all the rental company would send immediate help, the miners gave us some food to cook in their kitchen and spend the night in their spare beds. What an adventure for us all! We had a good time in El Laco and found an agreement with the rental company, so in the end this story turned out fine for all of us!

After this incident, we had no worries about the 4x4 trip to Uyuni any more. The 3 day-trip along volcanoes and colourful salt lakes was like a wonderful dream. There are no words for what we've experienced along with our driver Alberto from Estrella del Sur Expediciones, our mates Daniela and Daniel from Germany, Rich from England and the motorcyclist Rolf from Switzerland. Just visit our Foto Albums and dream yourselves!

Uyuni Expedition
San Pedro de Atacama
Santiago de Chile

From 0 to 4000 meters above sea in ten days

Our adventure to reach the Andes Mountains along our journey south-west is like an encounter of the five Tibetan elements - Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Clouds! In Argentina!
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Rio Maravilhosa

Rio De Janeiro, The Marvellous City, has caught our hearts! It already felt like getting home, as we crossed the huge bridge over the Guanabara Bay and for the first time sighted the vibrant city embedded between the Sugar Loaf Mountain and the Corcovado Rock. Our friend Françoise, who works for the Pan-American Games 2007 in Rio, is kindly hosting us in her flat in Leblon, at the far end of Ipanema Beach. Thanks to her we can enjoy the real life in Rio! Oh, sorry, without the stress of work, of course...

Let us just describe a few fragments of our rather addictive sight-enjoying activities:

- Visit an open-air Samba club and let the vibes drain your blood vessels in order to synchronize with the adventurous rhythm of life in Rio.

- Feel like the Christo Redentor Statue on Corcovado, and enjoy the show of the humid seabreeze and the setting sun playing with the clouds to constantly recreate new 360º sceneries of Rio.


- View the surprised faces of all the tourists visiting the top of the Sugar Loaf Mountain by cablecar on our arrival by foot with our brilliant climbing guide Fabio (climber's website)

- Feel like a looser after having joined the fan-ranks of the "Flamengo" team in the Maracana - football stadium and viewed the 999th goal of Romario, for the "Vasco da Gama" team.


- Feel like a bird sailing in the sea-breeze along the Pedra de Gavea Mountain and attacking a free-fall with recordholder Marcio's double-place hangglider towards the beach of Sao Conrado (Easyflyrio).
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Unwind in Cumuruxatiba

Some people may think we are completely crazy to cover the distance between Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro by bus (about 1400 kms, and the airtickets are as cheap as the bustickets). In reality, we had a good reason to suffer twice 24 hours travelling by road: that reason was called "Cumuru" - a place where it is said that tiredness suddendly diseappears (That's probably also the feeling Vasco da Gama and his sailing crew had when he as first European set his feet on Brasil 500 years ago, at less than 10 kms north of Cumuru). One lies at low tide in the middle of a huge sandy reef, under the clear starlight of the Milkyway, and respires pure air from the Southern Atlantic. Old people there are said to get younger every day thanks to the magic black sand (apparently radioactive...).
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3 days trek with Extreme EcoAdventure (Interview)

*Padi: Yeah, we did it! Welcome back to civilization! How does it feel, this first icy beer, after three days in nomansland?
-Anh-Dao: Cool! But I especially appreciate the comfortable chair and the relaxing background-music.

*What is the first deep impression about this trek, that comes up to your mind - can you visualize it?
-I feel the vibrations in my whole body: my legs will remember that hard crossing of a coca-cola coloured, cold river with its strong currents and the slippery stones and mud on the ground. My back will remember sleeping on the hard rock of the natural caverns. My stomach will miss the energetic tapioca-porridge in the early mornings. My nose will identify all kind of smoke in the future. And my eyes will never forget the glowing horizon over the lower plains, and the bird's sensation of hanging over a deep gorge with a bombastic waterfall.
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Bahian Contrasts in Salvador and Chapada Diamantina

Salvador de Bahia was Brazil`s first capital city in the 16th and 17th centuries. Now it claims to be the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture. Our schedule was set to experience this famous city one week after carnival. Perhaps not the best idea, since we must have rather met a hangover community. We did find a group of stranded afro-culture tourists making their way at nighttime in a rather improvised rhythmical bloco through the historical center called Pelourinho but we preferred the performances of an international gathering of street artists at the peninsula of Ribeira, after enjoying a sunset over the beautifully calm Bay of Todos Santos. Of course we checked out the rather lousy and lazy Sunday gathering at Salvador's most popular beachfront Itapua. During our visit at a Candomble ceremony, where colonially dressed Afro-Brazilian ladies danced nearly 4 hours to heavy flowing drum sounds, we saw them falling into trance which supposedly means they get into contact with some of their religious spirits. However, our best experience of Salvador was the great view off the open terasse on the seventh floor of our Hotel during breakfast, feeling the fresh breeze in the short hair after a radical haircut in the streets of the Pelourinho. Get a grasp of Padi's experience on the Salvador Photo Set.

If it's not for visiting friends or taking dance or music lessons, 2 days in Salvador are definitely enough to spend. After visiting Padi's former Velotaxi compatriot Anita who runs a neat waterfront pousada (Coco Maluco) on the nearby island Itaparica, we decided to move on rapidly and take an overnight bus ride to Lencois in the famous natural park of Chapada Diamantina.


The most remarkable thing about this mountaneous region full of spectacular waterfalls, caves and cliffs is probably the air temperature. Ah, it feels so nice to sleep at 20 degrees... After having checked out a few of the most popular tourist sites (check out the pics on the Chapada Diamantina Photo Set), we are now getting ready for a three days very wet adventure treck off the beaten track. Our guide will be Marcus, an extreme adventure freak from Sao Paolo, and an experienced dutch backpackers couple will join in to form a little expedition through the heart of this former diamond mining region. We will carry along all we need to survive for 3 days and hope to learn a lot about the so-called ecologic tourism, that is rapidly developed throughout the country by young enthusiastic Agenda 21 students and nature lovers from southern Brazil.

We'll append more to this report once we turn back from the treck! Keep your fingers crossed for us! Ate logo!

Brazilian Carnaval

What a welcome on our arrival at Recife airport: Instead of waiting for the luggage, dancers cheered us with their traditional carnival marching tune called Frevo swaying their typical little coloured umbrellas. That rhythmical tune shall follow us for the coming 5 days in the overcrowded streets of Recife and Olinda. Both city centers were exempt of traffic in order to let the people invade its streets with the folia of the different Blocos (marching carnival gang) that meet each other to form a chaos of different rhythms in a sweaty climate and mix with cheap bacon smell off the many improvised barbeque stands. In fact you can only stand this fool if you fill your stomach in an appropriate way: At least 2 to 3 Capeta drinks (a sip of each of the strong alcoholics available on the stand mixed with a few spoonful of Guarana, cinnamon and chocolate powder) and regularly enough Macaxeira com Charque (Manioc with cheap greasy meat to keep fit for the many capetas…).
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St. Valentine's week on Fernando de Noronha

First of all, it's planning our budget. Since we want to travel at least 10 months before getting to Australia, we have a daily budget of 80 US$ for 2 persons a day, including accommodation, food and local transportation. Now Fernando de Noronha is a typical honey-moon destination completely out of our margins... But as we are real globetrotters, we'll show you how we master that! At first, neglect all commercial packages proposed on mainland and find a low-budget charter, then - on arrival at the destination - hitchhike to the main village and bargain the cheapest bed&breakfast (assure a good quality breakfast as it will have to hold for the day), maintain a special diet and only eat out at after sunset (daytime is short at the equator) and especially never forget to constantly drink enough against dehydration (careful, water is nearly as expensive as 40% alcoholic cachaça, but has a fairly more neutral effect under the sun).

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Vida Dulce na Praia de Pipa

Happy to travel lighter, after having sold our bikes in Canoa Quebrada, we still managed to stress the busdriver with our fragile surfboards. But having arrived in Pipa, we know it was the right thing to do. There are great waves in many different wild beaches surrounded by black volcanic and orange sandy rocks. The most inexpecting view on deep blue mother Sea was from the top of a natural platform where two men sitting in the air in total harmony with their paragliders were moving slowly above the powerful atlantic waves breaking on the cliff 50m below.
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The call to move on to Canoa Quebrada

On Tuesday 24th in the evening, we arrived back home to Paracuru. Having tasted the sceneries and the strong winds further northwest, we could not stand the sticky windless weather conditions and immediately felt the urge to leave the place we'd so much loved during a whole month back in december. Many kitesurfers have left, the strong trade winds have definitely moved on further north, and the local population started to give us the impression as if they've got eager to scratch every single little cash as possible, not considering their own good reputation before sinking back into misery for half a year. We decided to leave within 36 hours in order to keep the place in good memory (since probably most of the negative feelings were produced by ourselves, suffering pure coincidence and having no fun to start a new household as we had in december). We would transfer by public bus lines via Fortaleza to another village called Canoa Quebrada, on the eastern tip of Ceará's coast.
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14-days discovery-trip with beach-buggies by kitehouse.ch

If you´re in search of the ultimate kite adventure trip in northeast brazil, opt for a bunch of humorous kiters having plenty of time and at least one with a little idea about mechanics, rent a couple of those 15 years-old, loud FYBER beach buggies equipped with VW-beetle engines made in Latin America, pack enough drinking water, biscuits and suncream along with your huge bag for all your kite gear, some jerrycans of gasoline, spear tyres and the repair kit – and off you go on an epic journey along Ceará’s Sunset Coast all the way to the Parnaibá Delta in the neighbouring State of Piaui - through endless and nearly untouched beaches, along mangrove forests, across rivers and huge sanddunes, constantly searching for that one perfect kite spot of the day.
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Sunset Surfing on X-Mas Eve

Let us describe a perfect day in Paracuru Paradise:
It starts with the first ´kickerickee´ of the neighbour´s rooster. An hour later the sun calls us kindly out of the bedroom. We enjoy a sumptuous breakfast with juicy fruits (watermelon, mangoes, maracuja, pineapples, papaya) energetic pancakes and mouthwatering medaillon filets. Time to cross the dunes by Bike to Quebra Mar, the kitesurfing spot at 6 kms distance. The low tide allows us to enjoy flatwater in the lagoon during 5 hours a day. We refresh ourselves with ice-cold fresh coconut juice. As long as the tide is still low enough, we bike back to Paracuru on the hard sand between the sea and the dunes. The wind is so strong in our backs we hardly have to push the bikes. Towards the evening the tide comes back in. That´s when waves are at their best. Yeah, enjoy sunset surfing a perfect righthander. Then it´s fish-time at Mama´s Barraca on the beach. Delicious! Accompanied by the sound of the waves and some soft Bossanova in the background. Heavenly! We walk home in the dark, the surfboards under our arms, and look forward to a fresh beer at home in the hamac outside the veranda to round up this fantastic day. Read more »

Bom Dia Brasil!


Life is a breath - Love its inspiration... and Norteste Brasil the perfect place to launch or Kites!!!

After a 2 days "grounding" with Air Madrid, we declare that the one Liter Welcome Sangria of Val on our Arrival at Madrid Airport and the delicious Tapas near Plaça Mayor saved our first step of the trip.

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Ready for Takeoff! Attend the Launch!



On Sat 2nd decembre 2006 the countdown of 2bumbleb will be at zero. Come and join the last hours before launch and spend some memorable happy time!

Wed 29th novembre at Sansibar, Militärstr. 114, Zürich, after 8:30PM

Thu 30th novembre at Lago Lodge, Nidau/Biel-Bienne, after 6PM (check out the pictures on our photo album)

Fri 1st decembre at Anh-Dao's anticipated Birthday Dinner (photo set)

The Horn that matters...


How can we plan to leave our country without having seen the most well-known rock in the world? No way! Best thing to do: Invite a dozen of great friends for a weekend to zermatt.

The ultimate penthouse experience with jaccuzzi-direct-view-to-the-matterhorn (unfortunately it took 2 days to heat it... so no way to wellcome-drink champagne in a bubbling hot tub...).

Check out the photo set for lasting impressions by clicking on the picture of the Matterhorn! Thank you guys for having come all the way up on that memorable weekend of the 10th till 12th of novembre! We really had great fun together!

29th Sep 2006: Liquida(c)tion after Sunset


Last call for party at Bremgartnerstr. 70, 8003 Zürich!

It's time to give up Padi's appartment after nearly 3 years. No milestone without party. This time, all ZH-friends of Anh-Dao and Padi are requested to help eliminate all available liquid stock. Doors open after sunset. End is open as well...

Attention: the latest birds might encounter the earliest birds and might be forced to help moving and cleaning the appartment... ;-)

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To Bee or Bumble Bee? That's no longer a question!



Anh-Dao and I have decided to make things clear:

WE ARE LEAVING SWITZERLAND ON THE 2ND OF DECEMBER 2006!!!

Our plan is as simple as it sounds: We'll bumble about in the southern hemisphere.

This blog is dedicated to our dear families and all our friends who want to take part in our journey. Of course we'll be delighted to read your comments. Let's share the emotions!