It was my lucky day when I saw I was the only person in line at the visa application counter at the Mozambican border crossing. Other border crossings and immigration procedures that I’ve endured have lasted up to four hours, but this one looked easy. I smiled, said “bom dia” (good morning), and handed my […]
Fifty shades of green. Go ahead, wrap your head around that and you’ll be surprised how many shades you will recognize. Kelly green, spinach green, hospital green, milky green, pistachio green and fern green, for example. They say the human eye can see 10 million colors, and while fifty shades don’t seem to make a […]
Enjoy this short video highlighting a few best of Africa photographs I took during the 2014 summer in South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. I used a Nikon D7000 and Nikon Coolpix P510. Note: For best results, view this YouTube video full screen in high-definition. (After starting the video, hover over lower right corner of video for […]
During a recent Saturday morning bike ride, just out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a herd of llamas grazing. Other than their jaws chomping away on the dewy grass, the llamas hardly moved and I could have easily missed seeing them. I looked back to see if my eyes had played a […]
From a highway’s black ice in Alabama to gravel mountainous roads in the Kingdom of Swaziland, my fun Chevy Spark rental cars provided a great backdrop to some of my American and African adventures. It all started with a severe winter ice storm moving across the southeastern United States and airlines canceling thousands of flights, including my next […]
My first title of “Safety & Security” did not sound very fun or interesting; after all, that would certainly not be the typical travel tale one writes home about. However, “Watch Your Six” has a bit of intrigue, does it not? Watch Your Six is a term I recently learned, and learned well. Working my […]
Lemon Meringue. There are not two better words in the English language to describe a recent sunrise over the Indian Ocean, a real lemon meringue sunrise. Ignoring the fact that I was visiting the quaint little coastal town of St. Lucia in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, and ignoring the fact that I had […]
While recently trying to plan a 10-day excursion into neighboring Mozambique, I was starkly reminded of how much we depend on internet access. The excerpt below – from a conversation between myself and a local South African, Andre – gave me pause to wonder if my dependence was a need or a want… Me: […]
Looking in to the eyes of a foreign person wearing his military camouflage is intimidating, no matter what you are doing or where you are. In our case, we were simply driving across an isolated mountainous area and not 100 yards into our cross-mountain road, I made eye contact with the first pair of eyes […]