Note: idly flicking through some old notebooks, I found this journal from 2010 scribbled in the back of one of them. I have transcribed it here almost verbatim, with some insignificant tweaks for flow. Some of the spelling, especially the French, has been left deliberately unchecked. Square brackets are my notes written now, in 2017. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Part 3/3. Reading this predictive piece now, thirteen years later, I am not surprised by my ambitions, and my failure to meet some of them. But I am also pleased that some of the things I wanted just, well, they just kinda happened anyway. I eat better now, I have a good tech setup, I still [...]
Part 2/3. To my mind, this journal entry was written at the lowest point of our nine-month trip. We had planned a round-the-world journey since we were 15. We were now 23 and we’d made it from Vancouver to San Diego before we gave up and begged our way home. The language is confusing, I think, [...]
