Lobster Bob"s Scenic Tours

Say hola to Lobster BobHe guessed about twenty. Somebody else had the real number.It is Sunday, the one day Lobster Bob is not flying, sailing or driving anywhere. He is sitting in Hernán's shop in La Candelaria, Caracas, where the air smells of glue, old paper and the coffee on the hot plate at the back. Hernán is the man who binds Lobster Bob's logbooks: he stitches the pages together by hand and puts them inside a cover of real leather. Today's is dark red, because red leather

Say hola to Lobster BobFive clues. One place on Earth. Shout it at the speaker.Lobster Bob did not drive to this place and he did not fly. He went by water, on Nellie, PZ 1953 N, the boat he co-owns with Cpt. JT Peg, over water that was warm, clear and the colour of a jewel. Underneath her, stretching further than she could travel in a day, was something alive. The anchor never touched it. Not once in three visits, and it never will.Then Lobster Bob put on a mask and a snorkel and floated face-down

Say hola to Lobster BobEl Cóndor and the Sulawesi VolcanoIt did not explode. It cleared its throat.El Cóndor, YV-528, is a bush plane bought at an auction in Caracas and named after the Andean condor, the largest flying bird in the world. The condor rides the air instead of fighting it, and Lobster Bob spent three years learning to do the same. On the morning of this story, at the airfield at Manado on the northern tip of Sulawesi, in Indonesia, he does his walk-around, touches the small nick on the

Say hola to Lobster BobA postcard from a rock that does not belong to the person looking at it.La Mula, LAM-001-VE, carries Lobster Bob into the centre of Australia, to Uluru, the sandstone monolith rising 348 metres above the desert. It appears on the horizon forty kilometres out, a low shape, then a larger shape, then the only shape there is. At the cultural centre, in thirty-eight degree heat, the woman at the visitor desk hands him a leaflet explaining what visitors do and do not do here. The

Say hola to Lobster BobThe storm had the fearsome name. The boat had the name of somebody's grandmother.Nellie, PZ 1953 N, is co-owned by Lobster Bob and Cpt. JT Peg, the only vehicle in the fleet with two owners. On the evening of this story she is at anchor off the Galapagos Islands, almost exactly on the equator, when the sea goes wrong. Not loud. Quiet. The water goes flat, the wrong kind of flat, and the sky turns the colour of a bruise. Cpt. JT Peg is far away on the radio and uses

Say hola to Lobster BobThree books, one guidebook, and lost in twenty minutes.Lobster Bob parks La Mula, LAM-001-VE, outside the Blue Gate of Fes, in Morocco, because no car can enter the old city. Inside are about nine thousand alleys, and people have lived among them since the year 789. He walks in feeling very prepared. He passes the same blue tile once, then twice. The third time, a boy of about eleven is standing beside it, watching, and does not laugh.The boy walks him back to the gate. It

Say hola to Lobster BobA river that arrives under a blue sky, with no rain anywhere in sight.Lobster Bob drives La Mula, LAM-001-VE, the four by four, down into a dry riverbed in Kaokoland, in the north-west of Namibia, inside the oldest desert on Earth. The sand is flat and firm. The sky is blue in every direction. He has checked the weather where he is. He has not checked the mountains sixty kilometres away, where it rained two days before.Halfway across, the sand begins to shine. The water

Say hola to Lobster BobHola! You, yes YOU, have a seat reserved on the greatest adventure on Earth. No ticket. No queue. Lobster Bob has been to 528 real destinations across six continents, by land, by sea and by air, and he never travels alone: La Mula the four by four that refuses to quit, Nellie the beautiful boat he shares with Captain JT Peg, and El Cóndor, the little bush plane with the biggest heart in the sky.A new tour every single day:La Mula, Nellie and El Cóndor: the vehicles tell their