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 […]
It was not to be an average Sunday afternoon drive. Forget that it was actually a Monday, but when there aren’t any available seats on a small bush plane for days, and a pair of safari lodge managers needs to get back to work, we launched an arduous transportation effort to return them to their […]
It was in early March when the days were still chilly and the snow was still falling that the locals assured me the snowfall was not normal and not to worry. “This week’s snow would be the last”, they all claimed. As a recent transplant to Boulder, Colorado, I was excited to live in a new […]
Wandering through the small town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe is an apt way to acclimatize to “city living” after spending ten adventure packed days on game drives. Granted, Victoria Falls only has a population of about 8,000, but with paved roads and concrete sidewalks under my feet, it felt like real city living. Small […]
Last night I fell asleep with about 70 impalas standing at attention just outside the door of my bungalow. These short-haired graceful animals had roamed into our riverside camp in the late afternoon and remained standing, with heads held high and noses pointed north, until almost dawn today. I am in Zimbabwe. We fill our days […]
Fourteen hours into my flight across the Atlantic Ocean, I finally opened the shade at my window seat to have a look, and I see Africa. I SEE AFRICA! Forty thousand feet below, the land is copper in color, and some tan spots wind about across the flat Namib Desert. At the eastern edge of […]
One morning we disembarked our boat on the Yangtze and wandered into Fendgu, a local village by the river. All the people were short, under 5’6”! There were no other foreigners in sight, and we really stood out. They stared. Were we rock stars or freaks? They watched us as much as we watched them. Could we […]