A trip to Accra, Ghana

It was my first time to visit Accra, and I was excited to be heading to a new destination. After a nice and quiet flight we landed into Accra around lunchtime, and were greeted with fresh coconuts in the hotel. What a welcome!

After heading up to the room and freshening up, I popped on down to the pool to soak up some sunshine. I met up with a couple of the other crew and we sat by the pool having some cocktails and chatting. Since it was a Saturday, there was a DJ and everyone was in a party mood!

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Portugal: Cycling the Alentejo Coastline

If you’ve ever thought about visiting Portugal, don’t hesitate any longer – go and book your flight right now! My parents kindly invited us on holiday to cycle along the Portuguese coast with them for a week, and it was some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen.

Joe and I touched down in Lisbon after an 8 hour flight from Dubai, and soon met up with Mum and Dad, who’d flown in from the UK, and my brother Matt and his girlfriend Miriam, who’d come from Munich. From Lisbon airport it was around a 40 minute drive to our first stop, Sesimbra.

Day 1: Sesimbra – Setúbal

We started our days early, as we had around 35 – 40kms on average to cover each day.

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Blissful Borneo: Exploring Kota Kinabalu

Back from our amazing couple of days in Sandakan, it was time to explore Kota Kinabalu some more.

Kota Kinabalu, formerly known as Jesselton, is the capital of the state of Sabah, Malaysia. The city is located on the northwest coast of Borneo and Mount Kinabalu, which gave the city its name, is located to the east.

We decided to do a day trip to one of the five islands which make up the nearby Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park – Gaya, Manukan, Sapi, Sulug and Mamutik.

Our hotel had a tour desk however the only tours on offer didn’t appeal to us, so we made our way down to the jetty where there are plenty of stands selling tickets to the islands. Not having any preference or idea of which island we wanted to visit, we picked out a stand at random and the boat ticket was a reasonable price, so we booked it!

We had a little bit of time to wander along the jetty checking out some of the stalls, and to grab a fresh pineapple juice, before heading off to our boat.

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Blissful Borneo: Sea Turtles & Orang Utans in Sandakan

Day 2 of our trip to Borneo had us up at the crack of dawn, ready for the next adventure. This time it was back to Kota Kinabalu airport, ready for a 30-minute flight across the island to Sandakan, the former capital of British North Borneo.

Kirsty was lucky enough to be sitting on the left hand side of the aircraft, which is the best place to get a great view of Mount Kota Kinabalu.

Air Asia, who we flew with, doesn’t let you choose your seats and since the flight was full, we couldn’t sit together, so I’ve borrowed her pictures of the mountain!

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Alligator Hunting in The Everglades

On a recent layover in Fort Lauderdale, having visited Miami the previous time, I decided to head out to the Everglades in the hope of spotting some alligators.

Once again we had a 50-something hour layover, which gave us plenty of time to do some exploring. After getting a few hours of sunshine in by the pool (which the hotel forgot to mention was empty and under construction …. at least I got a tan!) 6 of us met for dinner.

Our captain had hired a car big enough for everyone to fit in, so we drove down to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, which wasn’t too far.

We had a recommendation for a restaurant called Aruba Beach Cafe, and it was a great choice! We got a table out on the terrace, and ordered up a seafood feast.

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