Travel is a lifestyle, not a vacation.
This morning started not with a rooster´s crow, but with a rustling in the trees, and then the loud, deep cry from a howler monkey just outside our window. An extended family of monkeys call this part of Boca Brava Island home, and the night before, they were frolicking in the trees, dangling upside down…
Big surprise. It’s raining in the rainforest. We had a pretty clear morning for a hike in the Parque Nacional Volcan Baru on the Sendero los Quetzales (The Quetzal Trail), so named for it’s most famous inhabitant–the resplendent quetzal. The famous bird, known for it’s long green plumage, even has an Aztec god named after…
On a piece of paper posted at Cielito de Sur are more than 40 things to see and do in the Chiriqui Highlands, but for some reason, Chris and I had a tough time mustering the strength to do any of them. Instead, we lounged on the grounds of the six-acre property, napping and reading…
From Panama’s Chiriqui Highlands, visitors can see both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, from a lookout on the Baru Volcano, which rises 11,400 feet above sea level (Panama’s highest point). We haven’t seen much since it’s been raining on and off today (as expected in a rainforest). But, interestingly enough, the countryside reminds…
A 5:45 a.m. flight is bad enough, but then we had to deal with a bumpy ride all the way down to Houston. I thought the plane was going to break apart from all the turbulence. We rocked left and banked sharply to the right. The captain said we were the guinea pigs because so…
We’ve had a few breaks in the unending cold front that seems to have parked itself over northern Morocco. The town of Chefchaoun dried out briefly, allowing us to hike up to the ruins of a mosque on the mountainside overlooking the town. When we returned to the town, we allowed ourselves to get lost…
Almost every city in the Arabic world has a hamman, or a public bathhouse, where the locals come for their scrubdown. In Chefchaoun, the men have the run of the bathhouse in the morning, and women come in the afternoon and evening. It was around 6 p.m. when I decided to try out the hammam…
The bus driver awoke me to say we had arrived in Fes. He asked me if I was continuing on to Chefchaouen, but I wasn’t. Then I was. After reading a description of the small mountain village in the Lonely Planet guide, I convinced Jennifer to skip Fes and go directly there. Afterall, it was…
What do you get when you cross three Brits, four Americans, one Arab and a minibus? A cross between an iPod commercial and the film “Little Miss Sunshine.” Our trip to the Sahara Desert got off to a good start with Rock the Kasbah blaring on the van’s speakers. One of our fellow travelers had…
There’s no better reason to go shopping in the souks of Marrakesh than when you’ve lost your baggage and you are desperately seeking underwear. No, it wasn’t my luggage that was misplaced, but that of my travel companion, Jennifer. So, here we were on our first few hours in Morocco, scouring the market for a…