I decided to act like a tourist in my own country, and booked an activity I’ve been wanting to do for the past year. A walking with lions excursion, I’ve been seeing a bunch of tourists enjoying this experience, so I though why not enjoy the fruits of my country. When I realized there was a place only 2hrs drive from home I asked a couple of people to come with me; and as these things go you either wait around for people or go on your own. And I am no stranger to doing things solo so I went all by myself.
I booked a session with Ukutula lodge and game reserve, where I got to walk with my favourite animal and the mascot for my zodiac sign the majestic lion.
Meet Zoro and his brother Milo, aren’t they so beautiful 😍😍
I do some solo travel from time to time and I thought I should share some of my favourite essentials.
First on my list is my favourite inanimate travel companion….my tripod, because pictures must be taken of course. Here’s my compact cellphone tripod.
Next on my list is my cellphone and an eSim because there is no getting around without data. Whether its getting around using Google maps, calling an uber or just uploading photos and videos onto social media data is a must. I highly recommend getting an eSim. I usually get one from Airalo. Here’s my referral code so you get a discount when using Airalo’s eSim OFENTS1830. Honourable mention goes to the powerbank because when travelling solo you cannot afford to have your phone battery die on you.
Another safety essential is a portable door lock, which reinforces the locked door, I highly recommend this to women travelling solo.
Then the miscellaneous travel bits-n-bobs: Luggage edition:
The expandable bag which works as my hand luggage and can be expanded to fit more stuff if the shopping gets out of hand and I need more space.
Then of course we have the compression packing cubes, these bad boys have made my life so much easier.
Then obviously I don’t travel without my motion sickness tablets, aspirin and ginger tea. Once I buy a decent one I’ll be adding a camera to the list, for now my phone camera will do; and it has served be well. Shoutout to Samsung for my phone I still use the Galaxy S21ultra.
It’s taken a while for me to post the second half of my mini Euro Summer which was another one of my favourite destinations Cote d’Azur, Nice to be specific. Honestly in a perfect world every one of my summers would be spent here. Nice is legit the perfect place, the people are friendly, the weather is great, the water’s so blue *in Beyonce’s voice* and you can hop on a train and be in an equally beautiful town or village. I would recommend it over and over again to anyone who will listen.
My first time in Nice was a solo trip and this time around I went with my bestie, so its safe to say it works great as a solo travel destination as well as a girls trip destination.
The sun sets were at 21h30 or so and I tried to capture the beauty.
Sunset
Nights at the beach were lovely.
I revisited Ezè village and Monaco.
I made it to Cannes this time around and the train ride was longer and hotter (you have been warned). Train ride aside Cannes is absolutely gorgeous and their beach has sand instead of pebble beaches in Nice. ( I do not care for the pebbles personally).
Checked out their walk of fame and walked up and down Les Marches du Palais(the red carpet stairs)
Even in my blogs I’m a maximalist here are a bunch of pics that I’m posting just for kicks.😉
I returned to Farago on the roof for Sunday brunch and the views were as lovely as I remembered (pictured above).
If you’ve glanced at my blog even once you will know that Paris is the love of my life. There’s nothing else left to say really as I’ve written many a love letter to this city. So this time I’m just sharing pics from this last trip to mon cœur.
Isn’t she lovely 😍
We also visited the gardens in Versailles, more loveliness.
No trip is complete without a visit to Gallaries Lafayette.
After struggling on French Ticketmaster for ages (we had to Google translate the entire process) we finally got tickets to see Queen Bey in my favourite city…. Paris. 💃🏿💃🏿
The whole experience was amazing right from the day we landed and our uber driver played Beyonce for us all the way to our hotel, so good vibes all the way. My one complaint is the merch stands had run out of the “Cowboy Carter” fans when we got there 🤷🏾♀️. I did get a Cecred headscarf though🤷🏾♀️.
Saying Beyonce was AMAZING would be the understatement of the century. Vocals on point, visuals on point, choreography on point. Blue Ivy 👌🏾. The show was a feast for the ears and the eyes. It was nearly 3 hours of perfection and when JayZ came out it blew all our cowboy hats off. What a show.
Beyonce and her family put on a great show.
Rumi hinting a Hov appearamce
The metro ride after the show was a bunch of Beyhive members plotting how we can experience that again, some trying to work out how to get to Houston to see Beyonce again. We felt like the chosen ones because JayZ performed 2 songs, and you know what we were.
At this point we all know how trigger happy I am when it comes to taking pictures, but they just sit on my phone and a select few make it onto instagram and this blog. My friend and I used to talk about actually print our pictures out and I recently finally did and compiled photobooks. That kinda led to my new hobby digital journalling/scrapbooking.
Yeah I’m an ipad kid so it only makes sense for me to scrapbook digitally. Here are some pages from my scrapbook with my travel chronicles if you will. Chances are at some point I’ll print these out into a photobook.
I still have a bunch of photos that I took on this trip, so this is more of a miscellaneous post to share more pictures. Lets treat this post like tumblr back in the day when we appreciated pretty pictures. And Florianapolis serves a beautiful backdrop. So guys here is more of what I saw and what I got up to in Brazil.
Yeah I know you’re all like “Geez Louise Ofentse how many more Florianapolis posts are there?”. Well I was there for a month and you all know how trigger happy I get with the shutter button on my camera, so I’ve got a bunch of pictures and where else can I share them if not here 🤷🏾♀️.
This post is about what I consider to be the highlights of the trip.
Favela da Mariquinha Street Art Tour:
This was a tour of the favelas and the artwork in and around the Favela da Mariquinha which could be considered one of the largest outdoor galleries.
A ARTE SALVA VIDAS which means ART SAVES LIVES
Our tour guide Alex was born and raised in Favela de Mariquinha and is a community leader and all round Mr Congeniality (He knew everybody in the neighbourhood and they all showed love) . He is involved in various projects aimed at increasing visibility and making a positive impact on his community through teaching kids about art, soccer, surfing & jujitsu . Alex knows the stories behind all the paintings and is passionate about sharing them. Here are a few of my favourite paintings:
And the view of the city from the favelas was absolutely gorgeous
This view
* Check out Favela de Mariquinha on instagram @roledamariquinha
The next highlight was our visit to the Olodum Sul which is like a centre for the kids from the favelas. They have all types activities and programmes for the kids to learn skills from dance, to music, art and general life skills. It really is a great place they even have psychologists at the school. My favourite part is how they instilling a sense of black pride in the sense they teach the kids about black history and black pride which is very important as the region they’re in Santa Catrina is a predominately white area (80% white population). Being black is a struggle worldwide so having a space like this really is amazing.
We did a mini tour of the centre, did some dancing and we did capoeira with the kids it was so much fun.
Below are images of historic black people all over the walls as well as their new podcast studio, it really is so cool how they are teaching the kids all of this.
20 November is Black ConsciousnessDay in Brazil.
An honourable mention to the list of highlights for me in Florianapolis was without a doubt sugarcane juice (I miss it so).
We were informed recently that the group that put together our trip (RemoteYear) has closed down which is very sad as I’ve been singing their praises in the last few posts and recommending it to everyone.
Here are some activities I got up to, most of which were organized by RemoteYear (RIP)
Conceicão Lagoon Hidden Gems Boat Tour
This experience included a boat tour which docked on a beach for us to swim and chill, (sidebar the water was hella cold). Then we went sandboarding (which because of the afore mentioned swimming I did with a wet costume 🩱🤦🏾♀️). I also took a few tumbles on the dunes but it was fun nonetheless. The next stop was a fishing island for lunch and a mini hike to a waterfall. And as I’m writing this little paragraph I realize I was hella active when I was in Brazil. Holiday Ofentse is very active.
Our ride for the day
Sandboarding
Lunch and waterfall hike
We also did a lot of walking tours. Walked through Santo Antonio de Lisboa which is a quaint neighbourhood with quirky stores and house on the coastline.
And like I mentioned earlier, I was hella active here are some shots from the walking tour of the city and we caught the sunset at Hercilio Luz Bridge.
Its safe to say most of us were today years old when we even heard of Florianapolis aka Floripa existed. For those who don’t know Florianapolis is the capital city of Santa Catarina in the south of Brazil and also where I spent the month of November. Here are a few things I got up to. I have no words and too many word simultaneously so I’m going to share a bunch of pictures with captions instead.
First up we have the Welcome Expirence at Itaguaçu where the beach(Praia de Itaguaçu) has boulders which legend has it were witches who have been turned to stone.
We walked through the witch’s portal
The beach was really pretty even if it was a bit too cloudy to see a proper sunset.
lostintheworld.blog 