Holidays in Florida: Oh, the places they stole. Four times this year I’ve been to the canals of Venice, without ever setting foot in Italy. In Vegas, Macau, Qatar and where I live, Venice, California, there are facsimiles of the famous waterways, only cleaner, shinier, and without the creases of deep history. Theme parks, made-made-islands, … Continued
You can’t drive here; you can’t boat here; you can’t even walk here… you’d be eaten. We’re somewhere in the back end of nowhere, some 300 kilometers from the closest paved road; 1500 kilometers from the nearest Whole Foods. If you cry wolf here, everyone believes you. It’s the third day of a week-long safari. … Continued
Travel, of course, suggests movement, and adventure implies a well-planned trip gone wrong; yet when my partners and I started Sobek Expeditions, back in 1973, it was a radical departure from the typical travel provider train station, something perhaps akin to the Glacier Express, which bills itself as the slowest express train in the world. … Continued
“I learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which springs from abstinence,” -Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands, 1959 My son Walker wants to join me on an adventure in Morocco. I propose a rash undertaking, a trek to the Riff Mountains, the Mediterranean coastal range where the grass is greener, so they say… … Continued
Bhutan a Happier Place With Books (co-authored with Laura Hubber) When Claire Thomsen was 11, her parents pulled the rug out from her comfortable Malibu existence. They sold the family business, rented out the house, and spent the year roving the world, 27 countries in all, with Claire in tow. Instead of entering middle school … Continued
Vermont: 50 Shades of Green Beyond its partially-trussed shoulders, and sensually curved back, beyond its juicy, succulent berries, Vermont is a place that emanates a pheromone that smells more pine than Axe. And yet it somehow manages to excite in ways unexpected. The favored car is not a Porsche, rather a Subaru. The state color … Continued
This is the story of my experience with the Worst Food in the World. Do you have a story (video, print or photos) about your worst food experience? Tell us about it and we’ll publish the best right here! On the way to the headwaters of the Bio-Bio River in Chile, where we hoped to … Continued
Our TRAVEL WRITING CONTEST Judge, Richard Bangs, recently traveled to Qatar. Enter by July 4 to share your story of where you find FREEDOM. All roads led to Rome; the sun never set on the British Empire; the point of exceptionalism around which the world turned, America. Now tiny Qatar, the wealthiest country in the world on … Continued
I went to the Galápagos off the coast of Ecuador for dinner. As a consenting adult, I agreed to be part of a grand prize for a sweepstakes offered by LAN Airlines. The winners could choose a free trip, for two, to one of four destinations in South America (Iguaçu, Easter Island, Machu Picchu or … Continued
While scouting for the first descent of the Baro River in Ethiopia, a tributary of the White Nile, I heard about a Peace Corps volunteer, Bill Olsen, 25, a recent graduate of Cornell, who decided to take a dip in the river at Gambella, a village near the South Sudan border. The locals warned to … Continued