Archive | Topics RSS feed for this section
Travel in the time of COVID

Travel in the time of COVID

I admit it; exploring Utah was my idea.  All four kids’ original summer plans had been cancelled, replaced with virtual internships and work-from-home realities.  And we had the privilege of being able to go.  It was too tempting not to take advantage of the opportunity to go somewhere together.  Staying in the US was a necessity.  Data on National Park re-openings and […]

Read more
Big gift in a small package

Big gift in a small package

Sri Lanka packs a lot of experiences in a relatively small country.  About the size of the state of Georgia, Sri Lanka can be driven from top to bottom in 6-7 hours (assuming use of the new highways).  In just ten days, my friend Phyllis and I were able to dabble in 2 religions (Buddhism and Hinduism), […]

Read more
Bucket List

Bucket List

(Dana) It feels like Christmas morning. I have wanted to trek to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda for years. It’s finally here. Will we find them? Will our interaction meet expectations? Will it have been worth the effort to find some of the last 800 of these animals on earth? The process that leads to […]

Read more
Fading traditions

Fading traditions

(Dana) In 2014, hundreds of thousands of visitors to Myanmar followed the standard tourist loop, including the stunning sites of Bagan, Mandalay, Inle Lake and Yangon. As I learned in 2014, the former Burma is a fantastic country filled with lovely people and perched on the brink of a tourist explosion. In 2015, I wanted […]

Read more
The Arctic

The Arctic

(Dana) The Arctic. A place where the sun never sets in the summer…literally. Where the only metropolis boasts 1,800 inhabitants. That has no recorded history before the early 1500’s. Where it’s 40-degrees F during the hottest month of July. Where glaciers drop building-size icebergs into the clear water. Where it’s so sparse you can go […]

Read more
Polar Bears

Polar Bears

(Alex) For as long as I can remember I have been in love with polar bears. My best guess for a reason why: since I was a baby my favorite stuffed animal has been a white bear. When we were younger, we visited zoos around the Boston area and my favorite exhibit was always the […]

Read more
6 DP (dog power) Engine

6 DP (dog power) Engine

(Reis) We pulled up to the outpost in the limos of Longyearbyen (which is not saying much, given that they were 15 year old Ford vans repurposed as shuttles to our destination), and the smell hit us immediately. It was hard to describe but it was something that smelled awfully like 60 unwashed dogs in […]

Read more
You went where?

You went where?

(Dana) In January, Cambodian Living Arts annual board meeting took me half-way around the world. To justify the expense and travel time, I opted for a second week away and detoured to Myanmar. Where? Myanmar…the country formerly known as Burma. Like many Americans, I had the impression that Myanmar was still romantically undiscovered. After all, […]

Read more
21st century dinos

21st century dinos

(Andrew) With over 44,000 crocodiles, Padenga Crocodile Farm on Lake Kariba is one of the largest of its kind. At the age of 3, its reptilian inhabitants are slaughtered for their precious skin, which is sold in today’s markets. We arrived off of our houseboat and were greeted by a pool of disinfectant to dip […]

Read more
Walk, don’t run

Walk, don’t run

(Greg) We hadn’t yet been told that, just a few weeks earlier, a Zimbabwean fellow had been killed by a lion exactly where we were walking, but I didn’t need that happy yarn to keep me on my toes. This was our first walking safari and I felt a certain responsibility to my own four […]

Read more