Whoops. I appear not to have blogged since March despite having done a fair bit of travelling. My bad.
But thanks to Sophie, I’ve been inspired to get going again, as she’s nominated me to take part in Tripbase’s ‘My 7 Links’ project, which is basically a great excuse for me to have a read through my own archives and pull up some of my favourite old posts, I’d been meaning to do something like this for a while and now I have a good excuse to. Apologies to those of you who’ve seen these before, if not, hope you enjoy.
So, without further ado, here are mine:
Glacial lakes in the Cordillera Huayhuash
As any reader of this blog will know, I *love* mountains. And the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen are in the Cordillera Huayhuash, in the Peruvian Andes. The nine days I spent hiking there in the summer of 2009 was just one long procession of staggering views of deep blue lakes, shining white snow-capped peaks, lush valleys and breathtaking sunrises.
The stunning beaches of Tayrona National Park, just outside Taganga
I had a lovely, relaxing time in Taganga, Colombia, but I had no idea how popular this post would be as it’s not exactly a huuuuge tourist destination. But two years on it’s still one of my most read posts each week, getting more traffic from Google than any other post of mine, as well as more referrals from Lonely Planet. It’s just about to top 5,000 views and shows no signs of slowing up yet.
Not the prettiest buildings in Bogota
I’m not really in the habit of writing controversial posts. But another post about Colombia really annoyed a local. She wasn’t happy about me slagging off Bogota, and got quite cross in the comments box. But hey, you can’t love everywhere, and I still think it’s one of my least favourite cities in Latin America. The rest of the country is lovely though.
The fantastic Patapata Hostel in Valparaiso, Chile
Based on which links people click on, then my most helpful post by far is this one about my favourite hostels in Latin America. I was just trying to give a little love back to the owners of some of the amazing places I stayed in during my seven months there, and it’s nice to see that over 1,500 people have clicked through to their various websites.
A post whose success surprised me
Rice Terraces on the road from Banaue to Sagada
I was quite pleased with my post about Sagada, in the Philippines when I wrote it. I certainly never expected it to be my first post to appear on the WordPress homepage. It gave me easily my biggest one day traffic to date, and also got the post more comments than usual. I have a feeling it was the photo of the stunning rice terraces that did it.
A post which didn’t get the attention it deserved
On a post whale-shark high
Generally my posts about the Philippines did really well – but weirdly, the one about my favourite experience in the country, snorkelling with whale sharks is one of my least-viewed posts of all time. Reading back, I’m not sure I quite got across quite what an incredible experience it was.
Guanajuato - my favourite town in Mexico
Impressions of Mexico was my attempt to sum up why I completely fell in love with Mexico during my seven weeks there in 2009. There are so many things I adore about the place, and even though I visited a further 18 countries on my round the world trip, it’s still my favourite. Lots of negative news reports have put lots of people off visiting the country, which is a real shame, as most of it is still very safe to travel in, and I’ve always hope this post can do a little bit towards combatting some of those negative perceptions.
…and the final part of the My 7 Links game is that I’m supposed to nominate 5 other bloggers to take part, but I can only think of two other travel bloggers I know who haven’t done this yet so that will have to do for now.
Jillian & Danny from I Should Log Off
Gillian from One Giant Step
Now that felt like a nice way to start writing again, promise it won’t be so long next time, as writing this has got me going again and I now have four more posts coming up, starting with my recent trip to Austria and Slovakia.
Itinerant Londoner 