My View from the Lip: Six Months of Surf and Self-reflection on the Nicaraguan Pacific

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 [...]

The Dirty Secret About Paradise: It’s Boring

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 [...]

My Favourite Animal Encounters From Around the Globe

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 [...]