globe-trotters.ch

Links

On this page, you find some (hopefully) useful links.

Over time, the link list will grow.
If you feel that the link to your page is missing, just drop us a note, and we'll see to it :-)

Other people on tour

Two of our best friends, Yves & Anna, are currently travelling in Latin America. In September 2006, we joined them for some weeks in Ceara, Brasil. We had a great time together kitesurfing, camping, barbecuing, and visiting this beautiful area. Anna & Yves travel with a similar setup as we did (do ;), using a Toyota Hilux Pickup with Roof Tent for (almost) total independence. Check out their excellent website www.huarache-feliz.net.

In Costa Rica at the Caribean Cost, we met Lars from Denmark. He's an absolutely great guy who helped us a lot when we tried to get our car through the customs, and we had really much fun together.
He has a florishing (in the real meaning of the word ;-) business rising tropical plants and importing them to zoos all over Europe. He also does the whole planning of Tropical Gardens for Zoos or Botanical Garden. You can learn more about him by visiting www.tropicalzooplants.dk.

Another kitesurfing couple that we met on our travels are Grit & Sten. In 2005, they decided to travel the world on the quest for the best Kitebeach. Their journey that is documented on their weppage Sonne, Meer und Schnee took them from Namibia to Asia, Australia and South America.

In Moab, USA, we met Uros & Kristina, a couple from Slovenia travelling in two years around the world in a Toyota 4Runner. We spend some days together, having a good time, before our ways got separated again. While we were travelling North, they drove down to Chile, before crossing over to Africa, from where they returned to Europe. Currently, they write a book about what they experienced, and give presentations. Check out their site at www.ravbar.org

At the end of our cycling trip at the border of Yunnan and Tibet, in the mystical Shangri'La, we encountered Magali & Vincent, a French couple travelling around the world to rise money for an orphelinate in Vietnam. They took over our bicycles, and rode them until Indonesia. Their adventures are documented on their webpage.

Another globe trotter travelling in a Toyota Landcruiser HDJ80 is Tobias. His tour around the world started in Spring 2006 in Switzerland, and will take him through North and South America to Australia, Asia, and then back to Europe.

In 2007, we met Doug in Paracuru, Brasil.. He is currently travelling the world, both looking for great kite beaches and nice powder slopes to ski. Before, he founded skicamp.com, which prepares talented young people to ski racing. After some twenty years on the racing slopes, he decided to dedicate more time to liquid water, especially in combination with a kite as power source.

Car

When you say "Landcruiser", you mean "Buschtaxi" . Equally, if you need to know something about a Landcruiser (actually any Landcruiser you may encounter ;-) , go to www.buschtaxi.org
The amount of information you'll find on this landcruiser portal is just incredible. There is a forum on buschtaxi.org where a lot of very competent people will answer all questions that may still need an answer.

During the quite extended project of converting our Landcruiser into sort of an "expedition vehicle", Chris of the www.safari-centre.com was a great help.
His advice, based on an experience of over 20 years in the business, was invaluable to us when planning the extension of the car and thinking about the necessary equipment.
I will certainly remember standing with him at 11 pm in the Garage, and vividly discussing the last details of work.
Last but not least, he is also a really nice guy. Thanks, Chris :-)

Equipment

In Zurich, a lot of good travel equipment can be found at Transa and at Trotto Mundo. Both shops have a broad choice of good quality equipment, leading from shoes over tents and backpacks to kitchen equipment for trekking etc.

Regarding the clothing, we are very happy with our vests from Marmot and Mountain Hardwear . From this provider, we also got our arctic sleeping bags. These are explicitely not down filled, as we will travel for long periods in the humid tropics where the filling power of downs could suffer.

In order to "fuel" our battery for the fridge and all the electronic equipment, we are using a 45 W nominal solar panel. Mr. Linke from the www.solarlink.de was providing excellent advice about what system to choose and what not, about what pieces do work well together and what to use in the very humid zones of the tropics. The panel is producing more power than we expected, and is working flawlessly until now.

Sport

An excellent source of information about Kitesurfing is www.kiteforum.com. It is, to our knowledge, the largest online community dedicated to kitesurfing. Very often, information about new kites, boards etc to be officially released only several month later can be found there.

If you prefer to discuss kitesurfing-related things in French, have a look at the flysurf forum. You will meet a very nice community of dedicated french kitesurfers, who will bring you up to speed whenever you want to know anything about french kitesurf equipment. Yes, we know that we are biased a bit in this respect ;-) , but there is a lot of good french kite stuff around, i.e., takoon kites, one of our prefered kite brands, or the boards of RSC , which you really need to try for yourself (as there is only a limited number of boards produced per year (several hunderts), and demand is much larger, make sure you have your credit card and phone ready the morning when they are delivered to the shops.

In case you need kite info about Switzerland, or you happen to be in Switzerland and want to learn kitesurfing, the contact point is Airone. Airone's patron Olivier is an ex-Swiss Kitesurf champion, and a really nice dude. He teaches in Beauduc (well, yes, we know, this is not exactly Switzerland, but then it's not such a great idea to learn kitesurfing in Switzerland ;) ), organizes kitetrips all over the world, and imports (among other stuff) EH kites & RSC boards.

A local kiteclub are the Kitegenossen, where Swiss German kitesurfers are organized (if you speak German, they also have a forum).

When searching a Kitebeach, look at www.kitebeaches.com. It has vast information about kiteable beaches around the world.

The newest developments with regard to skiing are discussed in the forum of www.carving-ski.de.