Results for "Sienne+et+restaurant+|+9+>+215"

Bonjour !!!!

J'ai eu la chance immense de croiser heinz stucke en juin 2006 en Islande. On a passé un après midi ensemble, grand grand souvenir pour moi..... Est-ce que quelqu'un saurait ou il est en ce moment par hasard???? Je pense souvent a lui en demandant ou il peut bien etre et s'il va bien!

Merci pour vos réponses !

Jérôme

Bonjour à tous! Nous rentrons tout juste d'un voyage en Italie (carnet de voyage en passant par mon profil) et nous n'avons pas compris comment se procurer des bouteilles de gaz de rechange! Nous avons trouvé un sympathique vendeur de camping car qui possédait le détendeur adéquat (le pas de vis est très légèrement différent du pas de vis français, de même que les bouteilles qui sont un peu plus hautes) et dont l'employé est allé nous acheter une bouteille de gaz, ce qui nous a suffit pour terminer notre voyage sans soucis. MAIS j'aurais bien voulu avant de quitter l'Italie échanger ma bouteille presque vide contre une pleine mais impossible d'en trouver! J'ai fait successivement 4 stations services sans succès et ne parlant pas italien n'ai pas pu me renseigner auprès des pompistes. QUI SAIT OU TROUVER DES BOUTEILLES DE PROPANE EN ITALIE? (vu la densité de camping-car là-bas, ça doit quand même pouvoir se trouver!!) Merci pour votre aide. Marie

Salut a tous

J'aimerais savoir s'il y a un train de Marseille a Rome, combien de temps pour si rendre et combien cela peut coûter.

Est-ce une bonne idée de prendre le train ou c'est mieux l'avion. Nous manqu'on de temps pour le faire en auto.

Nous aimerions mieux avoir plus de temps pour visiter Rome.

Nous voulons aussi partir de Rome pour aller en Toscane je ne sais pas si c'est si long.

Alors j'attend de vos nouvelles

Salut

Bonjour Nous sommes le 10/10/2006.Je viens d'avoir la visite de la gendarmerie française concernant un procès verbal pour stationnement a SAN GIMIGNANO italie le 29/03/2005. Avez vous payer si non avez vous eux des poursuites et quel est la procédure a suivre. Dans mon cas j'étais stationner a 800 m du centre ville aucun panneaux d'interdiction de stationnement. Mon véhicule était dans l'herbe et ne gênait personne ?

Bonjour,

Je vais bientot partir à Shanghai suivre mon compagnon. Je suis antillaise et je recherche un salon de coiffure pour afro dans cette ville. Apparemment, il en existe un qui serait du coté d'une université à Nanjing. Nanjing, est-il un quartier de Shanghai ou une ville à part entière ??

Merci de vos réponses ! 🙂

je cherche à constituer une trousse de secours pour un voyage de 2 mois au pérou. à savoir, 1 mois dans le sud du pérou et la bolivie, et 1 mois à iquitos dans la forêt amazonniène, la saison étant l'hiver (juin, juillet, aout).

d'après vos expérience, que dois je emporter?

merci

Bonjour á tous, Nous sommes actuellement en Amérique du Sud. Nous aimerions transferer notre véhicule au Panama et voyager avec lui. Si quelqu´un connait la solution, merci de nous contacter. Voir le carnet de route pour savoir oú nous sommes. A bientot.

Bonjour à tous, 😉

En fait voilà nous nous rendons en Italie durant le mois d'août à environ 10km de Florence en Agriturismo. Nous atterirons à Pise. Je voulais savoir s'il était plus judicieux et moins couteux de prendre le train ou de louer une voiture étant donné qu'on est un peu retiré de la ville et que nous effecturons quelques visites (Florence, Sienne, ...) Il y a également le trajet de l'aéroport de Pise à notre "demeure" environ 100km.

Merci pour votre aide 😎

Edit: Y a t'il moyen de louer des scooter? Quelles sont les restrictions et les prix?

bonjour, je cherche une destination pour un WE en amoureux, en Italie, au mois de mai merçi de m'aider

(je sais il y a Venise, mais je voudrais avoir vos avis)

Bonjour!

Nous sommes une petite famille qui désirons découvrir l'Italie cet été...

Nous partirons avec notre motorhome à partir de la Belgique. Nous avons deux petits enfants (6 et 3 ans) donc nous avons besoin de faire des arrêts fréquement.

Nous aimerions voir quelques belles villes, faire aussi de bons resto ... bref être bien "cool" 😉

Nous avons trois semaines...

A vos tuyaux, conseils et adresses!

MERCI 😏

Christine

question cruciale : quelqu'un a-t-il déjà visité l'Italie (du moins la Toscane et pourquoi pas une descente vers Rome) en motor home? Si oui, quid de la visite des grandes villes ? Faut-il prévoir un autre véhicule ou alors des vélos ? Les transports en commun sont-ils pratiques? merci de répondre à toutes mes questions.😉

Salut a tous! Je viens de m'inscrire sur ce site par nostalgie de mes voyages...et je me suis rendue compte que je pourrais en meme temps faire appel a vos experiences et vos opinions sur ce que vous avez vu ou vecu!!Je dois faire un petit travail dont le sujet est :"existe-il une nouvelle forme de colonialisme a travers le tourisme? Je sais que les reponses seront tres partagées mais c'est ce qui m'interesse.J'ai passé plusieurs mois en Asie, mon premier voyage etait fantastique, j'en garde un tres bon souvenir, le second 3 ans plus tard etait plus cerebrale, et je me suis posée bcp de questions par rapport a notre influence positive et negative sur les pays que nous visitons... Bref si vous avez le temps et l'envie, racontez moi!!!!Ska.

Bonjour, Qu'emmenez-vous comme nourriture ds vos sacs à dos quand vous partez plusieurs jours en autonomie complète, avec tente et tout le barda ? Lyophilisés : lesquels, combien par jr ? Et puis ?... Nous on tourne pas loin d'1 kg par jour / personne (à cause du pain ! Malgré les lyophilisés !), je suis sûre qu'on peut faire mieux sans pour autant crever de faim (et je déteste avoir la dalle !!). J'attends vos bons plans à vous... Merci.

Bonjour à tous, J'aimerais rouler en Italie l'été prochain, j'aimerais avoir des idées sur un itinéaire sur un circuit d'environ 1 semaine dans la région de la Toscane et/ou autour. Je veux faire environ 80-90 km par jour. Est-il facile de le faire dans cette région en itinérant soit en juin ou septembre.

Merci pour les conseils Nathalie

Bonjour!

Vous qui êtes des voyageurs attitrés, j'aimerais savoir quel(s) pays avez-vous préféré(s)? Et pourquoi? Je crois bien que ce sujet n'a jamais été abordé.

Pour ma part, c'est le Canada, parce que j'ai seulement vu ce pays-là. 😛 Et un peu des États. :)

Répondez-moi en grand nombre s'il vous plait. Ça va me donner des idées de voyage. 🙂

Quelqu'un m'a dit qu'aller en Italie coûtait très cher. Il faut débourser au moins 5000$ pour aller là. Et 5000$, sûrement que tu fais attention, que tu dépenses pas trop et tu couches certainement pas pendant deux semaines dans les hôtels. Mais ça, c'est du monde du Québec qui m'ont dit ça. Pour le monde de l'Europe, ça coûte certainement bien moins cher, parce que c'est la même devise (l'Euro) et qu'ils n'ont pas à prendre d'avion (ou s'ils le font ils n'ont pas à faire un très long trajet comme nous, et que ça coûte bien moins cher). Alors, est-ce que quelqu'un du Québec y a déjà été et peut me dire si c'est vrai ce que cette personne me dit, si c'est moins cher que ça, ou peut-être même plus.

Merci d'avance. :)

Bonjour tout le monde,

j'ai deux questions précises dont je n'ai pas trouvés la réponse sur le forum concernat le Markha valley trek :

1) Est il possibele de loger dans des Guest houses (ou tentes) le long du trek Markha sans apporter la sienne ?

2) Y a t il a manger genre tea house ou autre petite échoppe à bouffe ?

Merci

Salut à tous,

Du 21 au 23 août prochains, je pars avec Ryanair visiter Rome. (2adultes et 1 fille de 12 ans)

J'aurais voulu savoir si quelqu'un pouvait m'indiquer un hôtel pas cher mais sympa, où alors s'il y avait moyen de loger chez l'habitant????

Si vous avez des petits trucs pour m'éviter de perdre du temps (taxi à prendre, bus, sites à visiter plutôt qu'un autre etc....)

Je vous remercie d'avance et j'attends vos réponses !!!

Je constate qu, il y a non seulement plusieurs compagnies maritimes pour aller d'Italie vers la Grece en ferry(voiture plus passagers) mais également plusieurs ports de départ et d'arrivée. Entre Ancone, Bari ou Brindisi....lequel choisir? La plupart des Cies font la traversée de nuit ce qui oblige a prendre une cabine. Mais peut-on faire le trajet de jour...?

Réservation obligatoire ?

Que peut-il y avoir comme frais "cachés" pour la voiture en-dehors de la taxe d'embarquement? Assurances spécifique???

Peut-on considérer la 2eme semaine de septembre comme étant déja la basse saison en Italie? Aussi bien pour le ferry que pour les sites touristiques(Florence, Sienne etc....)

D'avance, merci.

Memphre

Bonjour à tous

Je prépare un voyage de 10 jours en italie. au programme visite à une amie et we pres du lac de come, deux jours à Florence et le reste de la semaine à Rome.

Je voyage seule et je cherche un hebergement qui ne serait pas trop excentré, ou je pourrais rencontrer facilement d'autres voyageurs comme moi.

Des idées ?

Y a t il des italiens/italiennes de rome ou de florence qui aimerait me faire découvrir leur ville ? Je suis prete à faire de meme sur Paris qui est ma ville et que j'adore.

A bientot

Samia

Bonjour à tous,

Je pars pour Cuba (Playa Pesquero), dans la semaine du 18 mars et je me questionne à savoir combien de $ en argent comptant je dois amener. Mon agent de voyage me dit que les cartes débit (Desjardins) ne peuveut être utilisées là-bas pour retirer de l'argent comptant, pas plus que les cartes de crédit (avances de fond).

Est-ce que vous pourriez me dire combien de $ vous amenez, généralement dans ce genre de voyage?

Existe-t-il un moyen d'obtenir de l'argent comptant là-bas?

Pierre

I'm currently converting a DAF/HEULIEZ MB205 bus.

Cheaper and more spacious than a regular vehicle, the paperwork (in France) isn't too difficult for approval.

I'm ready to help anyone who wants to tackle this kind of project. Those who know, help those who want to....

Sans y participer, j'ai beaucoup lu ce forum ainsi que quelques autres. Enrichissant et.. questionnant 🤪

Voyageuse en individuel (c'est-à-dire hors circuits organisés) mais toujours à deux depuis longtemps, je suis tentée par le voyage en solo puisque je dispose de plus de temps (et d'envie) que les personnes qui pourraient m'accompagner. Seulement... je suis loin d'être une aventurière. D'où mon cheptel de questions: Avez-vous des angoisses vraiment fortes avant de partir, une fois sur place? Quelles sont vos peurs en général? Que craignez-vous le plus une fois seul(e) dans un pays inconnu? Ou êtes vous au contraires de ces "chanceux" qui savent juguler leurs angoisses, leurs appréhensions, qui en font une force (je vois pas comment mais bon... :-) )? Avez-vous suffisamment confiance en vous-même pour être quasi certain de vous tirer de toutes les situations une fois loin? Ou vous n'y pensez même pas? Ou c'est ça qui vous booste, le plaisir de se surpasser? Bref, si vous étiez un(e) mega angoissé(e) totalement névrotique (bon, j'arrête, ça va faire beaucoup :-) au départ, comment avez-vous réussi à passer outre? En fait, je suis surtout curieuse d'entendre des ex angoissés, ou des encore angoissés. Si vous êtes de la race des vrais aventuriers qui savent contrôler leurs peurs, ne répondez pas, je vous déteste 😄 (mais vous pouvez quand même donner vos recettes, on ne sait jamais, des fois qu'elles servent à de vrais terrifiés ;-)

hello,

début juillet je vais partir avec ma cousine 2semaines en italie. on part en voiture, tranquille, avec de bons sacs de couchage et une tente. on compte faire un peu tout le tour alors si vous avez de bons tuyaux à me donner, n'hésitez pas à m'envoyer un petit message! merci d'avance....

Bonjour à tous,

Voilà on voudrait partir en grêce au mois d'octobre et j'ai plusieurs questions:

est-ce la bonne période ( je voudrais éviter la pluie si c'était possible!!)?😎

que visiter là-bas?

quels sont les bons plans pour voyager pas trop cher (mais pas en camping!!)?😛

merci d'avance pour vos réponses

There exists a rare land where life expresses itself, a land where everything is destroyed, patched up, where everything is dirty and faded, yet paradoxically, each passing day is synonymous with light and joy. Seen from the sea, magnified by its translucent waters, the island is splendid; seen from inland, ochre and green dress a landscape one would wish to be pristine. As you approach the coast with the tides, countless boat wrecks never finish dying; returning from a hike, you know you’re nearing the city by the increasingly obvious proliferation of all kinds of trash. Overflowing the towns, makeshift homes made of corrugated iron stand here and there, wherever the eye lands; from a height, looking toward the horizon, you find the calm blue of the ocean and the beauty of infinity.

But where does all this corrugated iron come from? Blue, gray, red, or black, you find it pretty much everywhere—except, of course, on the island’s heights, where the heat is such that all life seems impossible. Yet, a few kilometers from the capital, more than an hour’s walk away, the corrugated iron is very much there, omnipresent, guaranteeing a land registry as hypothetical for us Europeans as it is very real for those who live there, far from civilization and comfort. I keep climbing. I’m precisely looking to meet these people who live on very little, if not nothing.

- Jéjé Mogné (Hello, sir in Shimahorais)! Where do you get water here, in this place? How do you drink, irrigate your plants?

- I wait for the rain. We have tanks that fill up well with each rainfall. But right now, it’s not raining much.

At the top of the next hill, lost in the bushes, it’s easier for me to guess the distant city, Mamoudzou, than the rest of the path, a remnant of a magnificent GR called the Island Tour, abandoned for the most part, sometimes maintained between two lost hamlets. The city, the pulse, water. Below, the ocean, running water, drinking water—despite regular interruptions; here, up high, an hour and a half’s walk away, tanks, arbitrariness. On other slopes, however, during another hike, I saw the water supply network, made of sturdy pipes tangled in the earth, right there by the path. It seems there are places where water climbs. Others not. Each to their own karma. In 2025. In a French department.

A path of misfortune, lost and regained, thanks to a sign, an inscription, or the compass’s directions. No one walks here anymore, except those who live here or come to harvest their crops. I remember that breathtaking hike in 2013, when I connected Bandrélé to Mamoudzou, passing by the peaks of Bénara (660m) and Bépilipili (643m), barely pausing at Tsararano and Vahibé: 34 km of intense effort on a rollercoaster path, along a trail that was still discernible. Today, it’s as if everything had disappeared. By also destroying the paths and vegetation, Chido* broke the last momentum of these cautious hikers: insecurity has made its way across the archipelago, and Sunday strolls are no longer the norm. Me, I keep going. I will have walked here and there during these three weeks to get an idea of the places, the people, the landscapes, and the superhuman effort required to move forward in over 40°C. To tell the truth, during my last hike, I cut my plans short and let myself be carried by a group of young people heading back to the city. The path is now just an inextricable network of small trails, the specter of Providence** comes to mind. True wisdom is knowing when to give up. I leave.

* A cyclone named "desire" (in Shona), which ravaged the island of Mayotte on December 14, 2024. ** June 2023, a very poorly prepared hike on Providence Island (Caribbean) from which I miraculously escaped.

On Petite-Terre, Marie takes me to visit some locals, white people who have lived there for a long time and make a living from their art; jewelry for her, all kinds of objects for him. We love this little shop, this oasis amid the chaos that embodies Dostoevsky’s phrase: "Beauty will save the world." It’s clean and tidy, beautiful, well-kept. Invariably, the question of insecurity resurfaces in the middle of the conversation. The woman says:

- I know someone who slipped in their bathtub. Still, I keep taking baths…

So, is this insecurity a myth or reality? I hear stories that are often true but sometimes seemingly exaggerated through the lens of misunderstanding and one-upmanship. Like that of this midwife assaulted one evening (it gets dark early) on her way home from work. Sometimes she was attacked on the path, dragged by the hair for several meters, sometimes she made it home, but it was her roommate who let the two men in. One version talks about a snatched phone and gratuitous violence, another about violence outright. In short, one thing is certain: walking around at night flaunting your phone isn’t a good idea, no more in Mamoudzou than in the rough neighborhoods of Nantes. Also, I played it safe: nothing flashy, nothing bling-bling, and always something to give if needed. I was never approached. It’s not easy to get a sense of the realities, between the hazy reports from journalists sensationalizing everything and the real lives of real people. But I know I can’t rely on these few ideas I’ve formed: I’m nobody, and above all, I don’t live here. What I do know, however, is that since my last visit to the island in 2017, over 80,000 babies have been born, and tens of thousands of immigrants have reached the archipelago’s shores. What’s also obvious is that poverty, hunger, and—let’s say it—indignity foster delinquency and insecurity. So, without taking journalists’ alarmist speeches at face value, we’ll try to keep in mind that a young person rendered orphaned by circumstances (parents expelled), poor and often hungry, involved more or less against their will in village wars and fueled by synthetic drugs*, will readily turn to violence when they truly have nothing to lose. We can trace the origin of this despair to the fact that in Mayotte, those without legal existence have virtually no hope of accessing anything.

* "Chimique" is a series of synthetic cannabinoids

Meanwhile, in the evening, it’s good to go home before the time of stone-throwing. From time to time, along the roads, gangs throw stones at vehicles and school buses, but mostly at police cars—almost all the white Dusters on the island! In front of the Mamoudzou police station, all parked vehicles—mostly Dusters—bear the scars of these attacks. Maybe it’s only at night that gangs unleash and all the burglaries happen? I saw nothing, heard nothing. I lived three weeks in a sort of bunker with no real access to outside light, protected by a fake wooden door doubled with a real metal door, both locked at all times. You don’t tempt fate. You endure it differently.

Today, extraordinarily, it’s raining. Yet, it’s the rainy season! But with my karma helping (what selfishness to want to walk dry when so many souls live off the rain) or is it climate change? The rain only falls once I’ve put on my horrible green pajamas. In front of the board outlining the program, I’m told that out of the six scheduled C-sections today (sic), they’ll probably only do two, maybe three. Because it’s raining. And when it rains, people don’t move around. Not for lack of will. Rather, for lack of means. And that ties into those sad days when the police patrol around the hospital: patients don’t come. They’ll come back tomorrow. To compensate, I’m happy at the thought of tackling the abscess program, but the sterilization unit is acting up and blocking the instrument trays. When it’s not the rain, it’s the unions. And when both finally quiet down, there’s always someone to find fault with the order of operations. You have to imagine an operating room where the question of urgency reigns supreme. Here, no surgery is scheduled more than 24 hours in advance—only emergencies, nothing but emergencies. So, following that reasonable adage that what’s done is no longer to be done, it’s sheer madness when the rain meets the interests of Force Ouvrière and the bad will of some combines with the laziness of others. To tell the truth, I’ve never seen so much energy expended to… do nothing. Hallucinating. But who am I, a small-time striver, an islander in my spare time, a temporary worker at the end of the world? I came, I saw, I was disappointed? Not really. Here again, I can’t judge a system in so little time. I can barely utter a few bitter words in front of obvious facts. But nothing will take away my joy of being here for three weeks. Here, they heal with somewhat outdated but still functional means. You do what you can with what you have, 8,000 km from the Métropole. Yes, the operating room doors hesitate, and the operating tables stutter, but in this blessed period, we lack neither medicines nor supplies. So we examine, anesthetize, and repair, far more undocumented people than French—if I may play with somewhat borderline statistics here; we deliver babies, dress wounds, and relieve pain in this hospital at the end of the world where neither white women nor Mahorais women would ever consider giving birth or getting treated.

What’s the solution? The obstetrician talks to the woman during a C-section under spinal anesthesia:

- Bouéni! (Madame, in Shimahorais) You need to think about tubal ligation. This is your fourth C-section. Your uterus is like tissue paper. Your next pregnancy will be very risky.

No answer. Culture. It’s all about culture. The funniest thing is that France also gets bogged down with the idea of other cultures’… cultures. The woman in question arrived illegally a few years ago to give birth to her first child. Since then, rejecting the very idea of contraception—her husband, for his part, will invoke God or Allah to refuse a vasectomy—she comes back every 12-14 months. And the obstetrician explains to me how his idea of making information about permanent contraception mandatory was deemed racist by associations. It’s always the same story. I suggest to the associations that they take charge of all these extra births, not only the medical costs but also the entire education, not just financial, of all these children doomed to live a life of misery on this forsaken archipelago. The probability that one of these offspring will emerge as a gifted, sensitive, and fiercely happy individual must truly be weighed against the degradation and abandonment that will invariably afflict the thousands of others living around him. In reality, simply mentioning a very real danger to the mother should be enough to impose sterilization. But we are a country whose greatness of soul is measured by the number of heads cut off to uphold the famous rights of man... Already a proponent at home of ending family allowances after the third child—you can’t subscribe to a certain idea of society and, at the same time, accept that tens of thousands of children are sacrificed on the altar of thoughtlessness and financial interest*—I will weakly advocate here for a controlled right to have children. Well, what will they say about me when I express the idea of imposing sterilization on women in irregular situations after the birth of their third child? National solidarity funds the noblest ideals? In Mayotte? Let’s be serious. It’s so much easier to hide behind the inalienable right of women to control their bodies than to acknowledge one’s own powerlessness to assume the consequences of such a policy. Because after 18 years of struggles as a second-class citizen, the young stateless person will have no choice but to live in hiding: faced with the impossibility of claiming birthright citizenship**, they will be deportable. In Mayotte, there aren’t enough schools, not enough housing, not enough projects for youth, not enough jobs, not enough money, not enough future… In Mayotte, an average of 5 children are born per woman. In reality, we never ask about the right of children to control their own lives.

* Single parent with 4 children: RSA at 1937 € + family allowances… ** Law of May 12, 2025 aiming to strengthen the conditions for accessing French nationality in Mayotte.

I live in the city in a clean apartment where air conditioning eases my aches and sweat, and where water flows abundantly, thanks to huge tanks that fill up between water cuts. On the hills of Koungou, I was struck by this image: there, women (a matriarchal society?) do the dishes in a miserable stream. Upstream of the same stream, the same image as downstream: disgusting water with bits of foam floating on it. A little further, however, there are taps with running water that children play with. Strange. In any case, water is a question. They tell me it’s drinkable; I doubt it. A system that’s regularly cut doesn’t seem reliable to me. In any case, I can’t help but think of the Canary Islands and their chronic water shortage, especially in Lanzarote. Without entering the debate on desalination plants—I’m quite ignorant about environmental repercussions—I’ll just say that in the Canary Islands, you can buy 8 L jugs of purified water for less than 2 €. Here, in Mayotte, the price of water—as is the price of gasoline—is the same everywhere: 0.65 € for a bottle of Cristaline (1 €/L)*. While I was walking up there with a couple of farmers shuttling between two remote spots, I know I hit the mark by offering them one of my two bottles I’d brought for the occasion.

* At home, we find Cristaline at 1.14 € for a 9 L pack, i.e., 0.13 € per liter.

Outside, everything is broken, abandoned, old, worn, torn, faded, heavy, dirty, forsaken. But life goes on. And that’s fascinating. At home, at 5:45 PM, people close their shutters and watch cable TV, sometimes late into the night, emptying the streets of any salutary clamor, unwittingly extinguishing the necessary pulse of life. At home, we die of boredom. In Mamoudzou, between two dying trash cans, metal frames laid on the ground are covered by the elements of a broken garden set. A bare concrete staircase, without railings, provides access to the upper floor of a dwelling. On the steps, you can read: Private space - Please take your trash with you. Metal rods protrude from the said dwelling. On the ground, it’s a festival of screws and nails… A cat passes by. It doesn’t look great. A madwoman crosses the street dancing. A slightly hurried driver brakes. A six- or seven-year-old boy comes out in his underwear from his low house made of corrugated iron. He smiles. He’s having fun doing acrobatic figures over an old mattress on the sidewalk. Forward roll, backward roll. You wonder if he eats enough. Different culture. Different customs.

I will remember for a long time this blinding morning light, a raw, vital, striking light. I almost forgot where I came from, the grayness and boredom of that continental European country where nothing really happens anymore. Here, I could join Camus, contemplating these people placed halfway between misery and the sun, resigned for the most part and, for the other part, not too unhappy with their lot. But the Mahorais discourse is unanimous: "France really screwed us over!" Today, more than half of the island’s inhabitants are undocumented; a tremendous amount of energy is spent expelling 20,000 to 25,000 of them each year; colossal sums are swallowed up to care for all these people, and the island is drifting. I talk with some gendarmes. One of them tells me:

- They intercept one kwassa* out of three… Can you explain to me why they can’t catch everyone? It’s 2025! Can’t they put the necessary boats in place?

Clearly, and this is also my opinion, this whole mess serves interests beyond us. For who can believe for a second that this glaring incompetence isn’t orchestrated? Shared interests between secret France and the Union of the Comoros? A desire to bring insecurity to its peak, either by the Comoros to eventually take back control of Mayotte, or by our own government, in a deliberate effort to see all the white people leave the archipelago and let the Mahorais fend for themselves? At one point, I’m even told about an extraordinary deposit beneath Mayotte’s soil, a promise of infinite wealth**. Not to infringe on human rights, to do some cleaning from time to time, to calm things down to avoid implosion, while waiting to go after this providential bounty? Decidedly, Mayotte hasn’t said its last word!

*What’s paradoxical is that in the early 2010s, to revive traditional fishing activity, the UN financed in Anjouan the construction of a factory to produce these light boats, 7-10m long and 1m wide, which largely served the interests of smugglers. This skiff owes its name to a Congolese dance known for being as rhythmic as it is jerky, much like the navigation experience offered during a crossing to Mayotte. ** A 2025 study revealed the existence of a gigantic magmatic reservoir located 23km beneath the archipelago. If the Icelandic experiment succeeds (Project KMT, see here), Mayotte will then possess almost unlimited energy.

Hell on earth. Paradise at sea. The world’s largest lagoon offering spectacular marine depths, Mayotte’s coral reef suffers less from the abundance of tourists* than from tropical storms**. So, let’s admit that Mayotte is best appreciated when approached from the lagoon. The heights are for old hands like me. The sea spray is rather for the snobs who shun the sun god Ra, risking too much exposure and ending up on sick leave for sunstroke! But I’m not exclusive: I twice don my snob attire and head out to tackle the waves, the seabeds, and the elusive. Because yes, underwater, we leave our landlubber reflexes behind, and flying over corals and other magnificent drop-offs, it’s as if we’re soaring, keeping in memory only what our eyes can store. Multicolored, even phosphorescent fish, sharks, rays, the immensity of the blue, and then, there, dolphins, just a few meters from me, underwater. Incredible.

* 70,000 tourists annually, mostly affinity tourism (links with family or an expatriate). ** Present almost at the water’s surface, the reefs were largely destroyed by Chido.

Paradise at sea? When you think that Mayotte comes from the Arabic Jazirat al Mawet—literally, Island of Death—because of its double coral barrier where many skiffs have run aground and continue to do so… Paradise. Eldorado. The Comoros now face an unprecedented influx of immigrants from the African Great Lakes. And Mayotte, for its part, continues to attract relentlessly, thanks to the evolution of the law*. In reality, whether hidden interests exist or not, France remains bound hand and foot by international, European, and French rules: it can’t do much. Barely has it boarded a kwassa when the one who flees by swimming cries attempted murder; barely has one been sent back to the Comoros when an association will look into their detention conditions and find a loophole; barely has one told a bouéni how her next pregnancy could be fatal when so-called human voices cry scandal.

* Regarding the Métropole, the rights of squatters and other bad payers against the notion of private property, legally violated in favor of the right to housing… ** You can read about France being condemned for its illegal practices of expelling Comorian minors. Inhumane treatment, arbitrary detention, collective expulsion.

Everyone forms their own idea of justice, and no one can claim a monopoly on good thinking. So, as long as I treat without prejudice, as long as my hands are sincerely guided by the love I bear for our humanity, I’ll allow myself to think what I think, understanding that I’m rather open to dialogue and that my opinions evolve with time and events. Today, Mayotte represents for me the failure of a model, a European one in this case, where opulence quickly meets its limits. For it’s not wrong to think that our society can’t share more than it produces, nor is it wrong to think that every human being has a right to their share of the pie; in Mayotte, you’ll find the proven result of our civilization: it doesn’t work. Exclusively financed by the right, the ideas of the left jam in Mayotte more than anywhere else: national solidarity coupled with a sense of guilt creates chaos. Political courage, or true social justice, would be to offer a future to those who have no choice—the one who’s already here, the child to be born—not to offer a present to those who can choose or to whom one can give keys to understanding—the woman of childbearing age, the candidate for exile. Ultimately, the Comoros’ coup d’état over France comes at the cost of many innocent victims, starting with the children*.

* Tens of thousands of deaths by drowning between Anjouan and Mayotte, tens of thousands of children left to fend for themselves and doomed to a non-existent future.

On the evening of the 31st, I go for my usual run and notice near a roundabout a fool in rags pedaling the wrong way. A police car passes by: the guy gets stopped. A rather quick identity check. The guy is taken away. Would he still be among us if he had ridden the right way? In the evening, the line is long in front of the club near the dock. Me, I’m just passing by, greeting my friends of the season, much more inclined to savor rest than to exhaust myself on an overheated dance floor. There, a man, thirty or forty years old, clearly in a world of his own, is searching the trash for something to eat. He’s barefoot. I console myself by thinking that at least he won’t die of cold. Out of ten children born in Mayotte, I can reasonably think that only one will be able to afford an existence that minimally meets any of our criteria.

It’s time to go home. After sweating and thinking so much about this gem of the Mozambique Channel, I spend peaceful hours by the pool at a hotel next to the airport. We checked out at 8 AM, and the flight is at 7 PM. The perfect opportunity to slack off and chat a bit more. I’m happy to get to know one of the co-pilots of tonight’s flight, staying at this hotel, while one of my flight attendant friends from this airline had already recommended me to the crew. But it’s not the captain’s day, who’s in a rather gloomy mood. I’ll travel in the back, up to the vertical of Cairo. Midnight has just struck; it’s January 2nd, my name day. Concerned about solving an unsolvable problem with a passenger, the crew asks me to give up my exit row seat and takes me to the front for the last four hours of the flight. In the end, the captain gave in? I laugh to myself: if there’s one thing I mustn’t forget, it’s that God never abandons me!

Hi, I started a thread about Afghanistan.

Out of 4 pages, more than half had nothing to do with the country/topic. The mods closed the thread—why not ban off-topic members and clean it up instead? Instead of closing a thread that had 2 REALLY interesting videos! Because in my thread, there will be more videos to come...

If you close it as soon as a few members go off-topic, letting some former prostitute who’s never set foot in the country tell a guy who spent 10 days there what’s true or not about Afghanistan...

If all the anti-Taliban folks tell you *Le Figaro* or others do a better job than this YouTuber... LOL Journalists often haven’t even been there—they just copy each other or write articles via ChatGPT... *Le Figaro*, for example, gets millions in subsidies to churn out garbage... And now this young guy deserves to be silenced?

Reopen the thread and clean it up! Thanks

Il me semblait les avoir quelque part sur mon ordi... mais non. Il me semblait que je saurais les trouver facilement sur le net... mais non (je me sais peu doué, j'ai du très mal chercher)

Du coup je lance un SOS: où trouver des traces gps correspondant à la Via Francigena del Sud (de Rome à Brindisi)?

Hello everyone,

Here’s the story of our two-week trip—13 nights, actually—in the national parks of northern and southeastern Kenya, which we took last September at the end of summer. My wife and I planned this trip with a French agency (Bel Africa, Paris), which worked with a local operator in Nairobi (Nadhy Travels & Tours). The latter provided a driver-guide and vouchers, but no aperitif🙁! Our all-inclusive package included animal safaris exclusively in a customized 4x4 vehicle (with a pop-up roof) and accommodations in high-quality lodges that we selected ourselves. It’s great for comfort, but not so much for the wallet. The cost was obviously astronomical for the services provided. But that’s just my usual take on lodging in East and Southern Africa! Our itinerary was a loop starting and ending in Nairobi, passing through Ol Pejeta, Buffalo Springs-Samburu, Meru NP, Amboseli, and Tsavo West.

Trip breakdown:

Day 1 to 3: Ol Pejeta Day 3 to 7: Buffalo Springs Day 7 to 8: Meru NP-Nairobi Day 9 to 11: Nairobi-Amboseli Day 11 to 14: Tsavo West

Photo gear we brought:

- 1 bridge camera - 2 DSLR bodies - 2 telephoto lenses: 70-200mm f/2.8 and 200-500mm f/5.6 - 2 pairs of 10x42 binoculars

What motivated this trip? We wanted to recharge and were looking for a certain tranquility that would be ideal for wildlife observation and photography—our hobbies. That immediately ruled out the parks in the southwest, which are too crowded. Plus, those would have likely been a repeat of what we experienced in Tanzania a few years earlier (see my travel journal "The Great Migration"). Buffalo Springs particularly appealed to us because of the unique animal species it’s home to. It was really their existence that drove our choices. We wanted to see animals we’d never seen before in their natural habitats.

So, on a beautiful late-summer evening, we took off from Paris-CDG for Nairobi. The overnight flight was uneventful, and we landed early in the morning at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (NBO). But our driver-guide wasn’t waiting for us. Judging by the number of signs being held up, we must have been the only travelers in that situation. Good grief, why wasn’t he there like all the others?

Bonjour,

Je voudrais réserver pour ce circuit en janvier 2020, es que que quelqu'un la déjà fait, es que je pourrais avoir vos impressions sur hôtel, visite...... J'ai fait un devis pour 13 nuits /10 jours pensions complète pendant le circuit et pdj à Pucket: 1570€ cela vous semble correct?

Merci de vos réponses