Long Time No See

[mattie010]

G'day mates,

it's been a long time since i was online on this forum. I have - in a dark past - started a thread about me going to some places around the world, but never really got into it. So i will give it another shot. This time i will just cover whatever countries I've visited since i went to South Africa in 2014. Good news is: if everything goes right I will be there once again in 2018 or 2019. Luckily, as I'm starting to miss all the nice stuff roaming around in Kruger and the great mentality of the many people I've met over there.

This time around though the plans are to stay for a couple of months. Preferably three, but at least two months in South Africa. All that is for the future though and I'll share some of the good stuff I've done since 2014.

First of i went to Spain in 2014 during the Christmas break.
In 2015 i spent a bit of time in France, then went to Thailand and Malaysia and ended it all in Rome and after that Belgium.
In 2016 i had big plans: go to Australia for a year. Which I ended up doing. But before that I went to Spain for two months and to Malaysia for a weeks worth. In September it was my time to shine and I said farewell to friends and family for a year and landed in ugly Gold Coast.

I went almost all around the country in this years time, saw amazing numbers of mammals, including sought after ones and incredible numbers of birds. I got hit by a cyclone, got stuck on a mountain for a week, almost lost a finger, had a King brown (very dangerous) crawling over my arm and more. But all this will come! Soon!

I'm not going to show a lot of pictures etc from before 2016 as i don't have many. So i will basically start in 2016. Because without its boring :)
Well i do have from before 2016. But... somewhere?

[Flutterby]

Wow mattie, you really have been around the world!! Looking forward to hearing more!

[Richprins]

Hello, mattie! Great stuff!

[Lisbeth]

This sounds extremely interesting

Welcome back

[Mel]

Exciting travels!

ready for more.

[mattie010]

Photobucket changed policys apparently fixing the photos right now. If anyone has a good idea how to upload them here directly, pls comment :

So once I'm back home again (as I'm currently studying, working and living in Belgium and not in the Netherlands) i will continue with everything before 2016. Now, though, i will start with the beautiful country of Spain. I drove from my hometown, Nijmegen, to some place in ehr... France
Not Spain... Well i spent a week in France as well, because i didn't feel like driving any further

I saw beautiful otters while canoeing down the river Orb. Never got a photo though, but i do have a photo of how the river kinda looks like.

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/2EAIge.jpg

I only had my camera for a short while by then and was learning a lot. You will probably see the photos improve a lot and might even be able to tell at a certain point when i bought more camera related stuff.

Anyways i had a lot of fun having a couple beers, jumping off rocks, canoeing and watching the otters play while on the river. After a couple of days i moved on towards the French Pyrenees. Beautiful mountains, but it was kind of cold. Even in summer. I spent a day in a canyon like at a couple of waterfalls.

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/cevamH.jpg

When moving out of the canyon we spotted a little snake:

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/G6zQfR.jpg

That afternoon i went to some weird bridge. It was a bit shaky, windy and well... It's good that I'm not too afraid of heights, because otherwise i might've gone crazy.

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/87yVZb.jpg

The next day i took a day off, of doing anything. Except for looking around for some herps. Not a lot of snakes were found (and zero photographed) but lizards enough.
]
http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/yFABnD.jpg

I remember i had a couple of beers that night. Maybe one or two too many

The day after (I'm flying through this now it seems... But thats because i didn't do a lot i guess) i went hiking deep in the mountains. It is truly amazing how the landscape is if you hike up the mountains only a little bit. You see a lot of birds flying around, tracks of many animals (including wild boar, roe deer, foxes and many more) and the landscape is just amazing.

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/aXh66S.jpg

While hiking around the clouds were coming for us fast. I was there with my brother and we sped down the hill. As we're still quite young we started running. Maybe not the best idea as we still had a good 10 kilometres to go. After about 2 1/2 hours we made it back to the car. Exhausted and soking wet from the wet clouds which we were hiking in. Back at the campsite though the weather was amazing and the lizards decided to show themselves again.


http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/yvlDWZ.jpg

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/M3rapw.jpg

This was my last day in France and finally the real story about Spain begins.
So to introduce you guys a bit: i went to Spain for a few reasons. To look for many mammals, to enjoy the warm weather and maybe, just maybe, to learn a couple of words of Spanish as my sister would be staying in Spain for a while and if i visited her i at least wanted to understand a bit of that crazy, beautiful language. I basically never learned a word of Spanish, but the trip was fantastic!

I started of in the Picos D'europa. Maybe the most amazing mountains i've ever seen. Home to a big population of European wild cats, wolves, a couple of bears, chamois, red squirrels, rodents, red foxes and many more. It's also home to an amazing amount of flowers, insects and (mountain) birds. Did i mention the amazing vistas?

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/quZyy0.jpg

http://cubeupload.com/im/mattie010/Wbojug.jpg

So i reached my 10 photos for this post. Tomorrow i will continue with the beautiful Picos D'Europa. A place one has to see if he visits Spain. Also i will tell you if i saw any animals, so stay tuned :)

Tomorrow in Mattie on an adventure: hiking in the mountains, chamois, cool birds and did i make the top of the mountain?

[Flutterby]

Some amazing pics Mattie!

You can attach photos directly to your post using the forum attachment upload feature.

[Mel]

Great trip so far! Been to the Pyrenees once and really liked the landscape / scenery

[Pumbaa]

Beautiful pictures, mattie,

breathtaking landscape shots

[mattie010]

Maximum size is 500kb lets figure out how to make the photos a tad smaller.
Update will come tomorrow!