Michael Catford

There I crouched, on what seemed to be the edge of oblivion. My friend Nicko was beside me, though he seemed half a world away. My eyes focused into tunnel vision, seeing meadow, more meadow, then empty space. Complete and absolute nothingness. Sloping down at an absurd angle, the meadow left only air where in […]

Go to prison of your own free will. Have a massive party. Leave the next morning. Or stay. No one really cares. A couple of years back, I spent 12 months wandering around South America, and from the day I landed, I quickly learned about the South American backpacker’s bible, and that it was basically […]

At the beginning of my first big trip just a decade ago, I bought a hideously overpriced phone card, made my way to one of those famous London phone booths, and called my parents back in Australia to let them know I’d arrived safely. I used the same phone to call around to hostels to […]

“You’re going where?” – my mum. When a parent hears the news that their child is going to Colombia, they are typically…less than thrilled. And to be fair, if you had ingested the last four to six decades of Colombian news, you’d probably be a little hesitant to send a loved one there, too. From […]

The cute face, the doting eyes, the hilariously long time to get from A to B. Sloths are the loveable idiots of the animal world and it seems like their purpose in this world is to make people go awwww. A lot of folks don’t know this, but sloths actually exist outside of the internet […]

Green. I don’t know if I truly understood what that colour was until I arrived in Costa Rica, a nation wedged between Nicaragua and Panama in the very centre of Central America. Beaches, forests, wildlife, and fun come together in Costa Rica to form what the locals call pura vida. Life is more balanced here: […]

The scars of European invasion and exploitation run deep in Africa. Centuries of fighting, pillaging, and colonization have taken their toll on the continent and most cultures are now smudged facsimiles of their original selves. But then there’s Ethiopia. Ethiopia is the only African country that hasn’t been colonized or overpowered by a European nation […]

“What if we filled this 2-person hotel room with 16 more beds and charged people a little bit less to stay here?” – some genius. Hostels are many things to many people. To the backpacker set, they’re a godsend: a way to travel the world on limited funds and meet some like-minded folks along the […]

In 1835, the HMS Beagle dropped in on a chain of Islands off the coast of Ecuador. “You guys think these finches look weird?” muttered Charles Darwin, a young naturalist on board. “Yeah, a bit,” said the crew. And thus our understanding of the natural world changed forever. Anyone who has ever watched a David […]

Africa is big. Seriously big. Like, imagine how big Africa is in your head. Wrong. It’s even bigger. This was a fact that I didn’t entirely grasp when I made the decision to travel overland (i.e. on roads) up the east coast of this huge landmass. Point A was Cape Town, South Africa. Point B […]

I’m far from hardcore, but I generally enjoy the feeling of a racing heart and clammy hands. Adrenaline is Mother Nature’s drug, served up for free when you place yourself in the right situation. Never do I feel more alive than when I’m going fast, falling from a height, or using mum’s good fabric scissors […]

From the bathhouses-turned-bars of Ancient Greece to prohibition speakeasies, the art of serving liquor in unconventional places is, to my mind, a tribute to the ingenuity of humankind. And nowhere is this alcohol-fuelled ingenuity better demonstrated than in the city of Budapest, Hungary. In the last 15 years, this town has seen an explosion of […]

Any backpacker who has been to Australia will be familiar with the east coast. A well-worn tourist trail carves its way along the coastline from far north Queensland, through New South Wales, and down to Victoria in the south. When people say they’re going to an Australian beach, they mean they’re going to one on […]

Malawi is one of those countries that a perfectly educated and worldly person can get through their entire life having never thought about. It’s fair to say that this landlocked African nation hasn’t exactly got a lead role on the global stage. If anything, it’s the kid in class who has to play background tree […]

There’s a place on this beautiful earth of ours that experiences average daily maximums of 41.1C (106F). I’m not talking the average in the height of summer. I’m talking every single day of the year. Dallol, Ethiopia is the hottest inhabited place on earth. It can be found in the very heart of the Danakil […]

In Bolivia, progress is more an abstract concept than a reality. That isn’t an insult. It’s a compliment. Arriving in Bolivia from almost any other part of South America, whether Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, or Peru, you can feel as though you’ve Marty McFlown back 50 years or more. Everything you’ve been force fed about South […]