Hi, great seeing you here, on Rumbo Mundo!
This portal is me and my passion. It is intended that Rumbo Mundo (literally: direction world) is something like a cookbook with travel recipes. Here I describe every ingredient, give ready recipes, proportions and costs. And you prepare for yourself and season to taste. I hope you will like this formula and, most importantly, find it useful.
I started as a Beskidy guide
PTTK
SKPB Warsaw
What would a person who is not familiar with given place want to see and experience on a trip. What is absolutely necessary to show them, what to tell them about, where to take them, and what to skip or leave for future trips. And at the same time how to organize the whole trip or journey, so that the participants see as much as possible, but also have good time and are not “rushed to enjoy”.
I think my tour guide experience has a huge impact on how I organize private – that is, mostly family – trips. But I also use that experience in organizing trips with a larger or smaller group of friends, and now also in creating Rumbo Mundo
Family included; Chicuanga, Mozambique
And for the past 11 years we’ve also been taking our daughter on these trips. An avid lover of both adventure and nature in general, and a proud winner of the PTTK Bronze Hiking Badge already. She went abroad with us for the first time to Andalusia when she was 7 months old. She spent her first birthday with us in Tokyo….
I have visited 37 countries
It seems to me that I don’t travel very much. I rarely have the opportunity to travel the world more than twice a year. Nevertheless, little by little, I have managed to see quite a few countries and have not been to only two continents now. Below I have prepared a map with marked countries that I have already managed to visit. Many of them I have seen only in fragments, most of them I would gladly return to more than once. Yet, there’s so many white spots still on this map….
Countries I’ve already managed to visit
I get to know places before I visit them
For most trips, including virtually all of the long-haul, far-away ones, we go with the whole family of 3. The family may not be particularly large, but still, we always have to balance work and school, so we don’t travel very spontaneously. Yes, some trip ideas – for example, to the Caribbean Turks and Caicos or Botswana – came to us quite by accident. But even if the decision to go “there” is quite spontaneous, it’s often at least 6 months, before the actual departure. And for me, that’s always six months of intensive learning about the country or region where we’re going.
Camping in Kruger Park, South Africa
I guess it’s for the same reason that, as much as possible, I try to avoid crowds. I believe that the real Paris is not the top of the Eiffel Tower, and the real Egypt is not among the pyramids. That’s why I like to see the most besieged attractions as quickly as possible, and leave as much time as possible to travel off the beaten track – where you can see the real face of a city, region or country. And although when going to New York we choose to stay in a hotel; in Iceland, the US, Australia or Spain we traveled in a camper van or RV, still our best memories are those from the trips where we slept under a tent. Whether it was wild Africa or the Beskidy mountains….
I also leave room for spontaneity and surprises on trips, but I find that good, in-depth preparation allows me to better weave them into the whole trip. This is usually hard to do on commercial trips, but my family really enjoys such unplanned and often crazy activities, so we don’t stick to plans too rigidly.
I hope Rumbo Mundo will also help you organize your trip in the best way possible, and without having to spend six months poring over all the sources about the place you are going. And with my self drive plans, there’s always a lot of flexibility to adjust the plan as you see fit, while on the road already…
Ready-made recipes for self drives
From my almost 30 years of travel experience – from sleeping in a tent in the Polish mountains or on the floodplains of the Okavango River, through Spain and the USA, to Japan and Australia – I know that the most valuable experiences and memories require reliable preparation and planning first. And for that you need information! Where to get them from? From the Internet, of course – after all, there is everything there… Well, exactly – everything and nothing at the same time.
When preparing for trips, I look for information even in 5 languages, and still I am always disappointed. There are plenty of different guides, hints, travel reports, but assembling from them a cool idea for my own trip can be really laborious. So one time I thought, since there is no website on the Internet that satisfies me, maybe I need to make one myself. After all, there must be more people with an approach like mine! For years the idea germinated in my head, until finally RumboMundo just grew out of it: world direction and travel recipes for everyone! 🙂
Lisbon, Portugal
And all this given in one place, by someone who has been there, seen it, touched it and wants to share it. Routes, prices, opening hours, contacts, cautions and much more. Well, and all arranged not according to how I went there, but according to what I, as a guide, would recommend seeing. How to go, how to choose the optimal route, which attractions to see and which ones to let go of, etc. etc. Well, and so that all this does not cost “a million bimbalions”.
If something on the pages is unclear, if something is missing or if you have ideas on how to improve it – write, I will be happy to read and respond. To the extent of available time, I will try to do it as soon as possible.
I also like to take photos
I was not immediately a fan of photography. To St. Petersburg, somewhere in the ’90s I think, I took a camera with black-and-white film and didn’t bring back a single good photo. In Australia, I only had some ordinary small digital camera with me. On my first trip to Iceland, I took only a cell phone – its 2 MPx camera was considered a marvel of technology at the time. But I only really became infected with photography with the birth of our daughter.
Today I take two large SLR cameras, four lenses, drone and a whole separate – quite heavy – backpack of various photo equipment, mics and accessories on expeditions. My dear participants increasingly complain that it is impossible to drive or go further, because “dad is still taking photos”…. However, I think I already know a thing or two about photography and occasionally manage to take a nice shot.
Below are my favorite shots, divided into several galleries. They may not all be the most interesting or beautiful, but each of them is somehow important to me. Photography is supposedly a window to the soul, so I open it for you 🙂
Landscapes
It’s only recently that I’ve been trying to take as good landscape photos as possible. The older ones show different phases of what I considered nice. I still have a weakness for frames and vignettes, but I think I’m evolving toward softer, softer photos. On the other hand, I still think it’s the people who give a photo its energy and story.
Animals
I may not (yet?) be crazy about pets and animals in general, but peeping into the lives of wild animals is an absolutely fascinating activity. We don’t have too many of them in Europe, and I guess that’s why they always attract my eye and I have a great affection for them.
Animal portraits
Some time ago I managed to buy the telephoto lens of my dreams and was able to start taking close-up photos of animals. At the same time, David DuChemin inspired me not to take photos of animals, but portraits (I recommend his inexpensive e-book: David duChemin). Below are some samples of this approach. I’m curious to hear your opinion 🙂
Almost selfies
Well – on any trips I’m usually the one taking the photos, so I’m very rarely on them myself. Fortunately, I was able to find at least these few proofs that I don’t just write about trips, but actually take them 😉
