There are loads of blogs and sites advising you on "everything" you need to know before embarking on a big hike through the Nepali mountains. I attempt here to offer a few things from my (albeit limited) personal experience that you might not find elsewhere. Of course, there will be some overlap, but [...]
Note: this was one of my early attempts to craft a single travel journal piece from an adventure. Two of my best buddies and I spent eight chaotic, harebrained days in the Middle East in the autumn of 2004. It took me more than ten years to see the opportunity to publish my writing. Jordan Waking up in [...]
Note: this is one of two unusually long posts covering the six months we worked at Buena Vista Surf Club. If I was ever going to finish it, let alone keep it to a few pages, I had to let a lot go. There are many stories and people missing (you know who you are) [...]
Note: this is an unusually long post, as it covers a six-month period in one place. And, while this post focuses on our surfing experience, it runs simultaneously with the more general piece about our lives as hotel managers at Buena Vista Surf Club during the same period. Back in my teens my best [...]
I'm specifically talking about the postcard idea of "paradise" here, something like white, palm-fringed sand under empty blue skies, or a palatial suite at a five-star boutique hotel. Whatever it looks like to you, the trouble with "paradise", besides not existing in the first place, is that we get used to it. We get used to everything, it's [...]
Here's a trivial and subjective list of some of the encounters I've had with wild animals that have, for widely different reasons, stayed in a special place in my memory. They're in no meaningful order. Albatrosses, Otago Peninsula New Zealand (2010) From within a whirling, squawking cloud of seagulls, we saw a strangely captivating bird soar [...]
After the highlands of the north, we travelled south by bus to the city of Masaya. On the way we were struck by how uncultivated Nica was. Rather than crop-filled fields, we saw large areas of grass and trees. Everything was green. We passed fertile plains that were fringed by volcanoes, and sprinkled with colourful [...]
Note: Following the previous post from Los Zorros, in the northwest of Nicaragua, we travelled by bus to Estelí, in the more central northern region of highlands that border Honduras. We followed instructions for where to catch buses from Estelí to Miraflor but were doubtful and uncomfortable when we got there. It was 05:15 and [...]
https://www.flickr.com/photos/morph/15324342157/sizes/c/ We took a microbus (minivan) from León to Chinandega. We could see tree-coated volcanoes right from start, flickering like a zoetrope through the trees at the side of road. While I tried to take photos of the view, a lady beside me brushed her hand on my shoulder. I reluctantly turned [...]
Jet lag and exhaustion caught us around 22:00 so we got an early night and woke to the sounds of a metalwork shop jangling through the gap between the wall and ceiling. It was the only rough edge to an otherwise blissful place to stay. We followed the Lonely Planet walking tour of the city’s [...]
