July 24, 2006
Oaxaca Open Art Studios
Today, friends Sharon and Sueki, a woman visiting from Tucson Texas who we met at Pachote Oganic Market, and I joined a tour of Mexican artist's homes in San Agustin...Read this update
October 23, 2005
Our Brooklyn Neighborhood
We are subletting a pleasant newly refurbished two bedroom apartment on Pacific St in a multi-ethnic, gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood called Boerum Hill. Bob and I enjoy exploring New York...Read this update
October 17, 2004
Great Days Great Wall
E found the website (www.wildwall.com) and the adventure offered intriguing potential...off the beaten track, away from the Chinese tourist groups that follow a guide with a microphone and colored...Read this update
October 16, 2004
Hutongs in Beijing
Quin-dynasty Beijing was redesigned with mazes of mud and brick walled courtyards after Genghis Khan's army reduced the city to rubble and is "now the stomping ground of a...Read this update
October 15, 2004
Far East Youth Hostel
The last time I was in China it was freezing cold in January 2003. The weather is fantastic this October day in 2004. After slogging it out across Russia...Read this update
October 12, 2004
Reflecting on the Steppe
We are lucky...days are brisk but sunny...the sun glints off bare hills covered in golden fall grass. This feels like fall in southeast Oregon where I grew up. I...Read this update
September 26, 2004
Hanging Out Feels Great
After hanging out a couple days...glad to be off the train...Gregory, a former University teacher of German, drove Bob and I, three Germans and a Pole on a half-day...Read this update
September 25, 2004
Five Hours to Olkhon Island
The next morning we are picked up at our homestay in Irkutsk by a sullen driver who drives us five hours over pot-holes, through the taiga and across a...Read this update
September 18, 2004
Free-Wheeling Moscow
2004-09-2004 Like in the big Central European cities we visited, there are cranes everywhere... old soviet buildings built during the Stalin era are scheduled to be razed and new...Read this update
September 17, 2004
Red Square Moscow
Local police don't allow anyone in Red Square until 10 in the morning so when Bob got there the Square was jaw-dropping empty...the Kremlin and Lenin's Tomb on one...Read this update
September 10, 2004
Forest Mushrooms and Vodka
The night before we leave St. Petersburg, Elena and her childhood friend, Dula, breathlessly excited, bring home bags and boxes of forest mushrooms. Bob and I haven't eaten and...Read this update
January 01, 2003
Panda Research Base
An early morning one-hour ride on Sam's Guesthouse bus took us south of Chengdu to the Panda Research Base where China is trying to keep the Giant Pandas from...Read this update
December 24, 2002
Xmas At Re Hai Hot Springs
We went to Re Hai Hot Springs..a short half-hour bus ride from Tengchong. The Asian and European continental shift also resulted in over 80 crystalline hot springs...grand Boiling Hot...Read this update
December 09, 2002
Naxi Old Town-Lijiang
Lijiang has been designated a World Cultural Heritage Site by the United Nations. There are two kinds of Naxi dwellings built with wood, clay tiles, earth bricks and hard...Read this update
December 06, 2002
Zhondian to Baishuitai
Friday Dec 6 2002 There were no street lights so we walked the equivalent of several blocks to the Zhongdian bus station in the dark to catch the 7:50am...Read this update
December 05, 2002
Jade Dragon Snow Mountain
Bob took a flight south to Mangshi and then on by bus to Ruili near the Burma border. Jana and I left Kunming on a Yunnan Airlines flight to...Read this update
September 25, 2002
Hanoi
September 24 2002 Bob left Hanoi right away on the train for Sapa near the Chinese border to do some trekking among the colorful minority villages and then to...Read this update
August 22, 2002
Pagan's 2000 Stupas
August 22 2002 (Pagan was previously called Bagan) I really would have preferred the rickety and slow train north so we could see the countryside but to reserve the...Read this update
August 06, 2002
Talad Nam Lam-Paya Floating Market
Our friend, Jiraporn, who lived in the U.S. ten years and has a doctorate from Oregon State University in Fisheries and is now a lecurer in the Department of Fishery...Read this update
July 31, 2002
Shimla
July 31-August 4 2002 The last few days I have been fighting some sort of strange malady...raging sore throat, red spots on the tops of my feet and the underside...Read this update
July 21, 2002
Mr. Singh's Rickshaw
We take the offer of Mr. Singh, the Sikh driver of an auto-rickshaw, a small, noisy, three-wheeled motorized contraption with no doors, to take us around the narrow streets that...Read this update
July 12, 2002
Sleepover In Soweto
A Sleepover in Soweto-Africa’s largest township On our way to India we stopped in Johannesburg for two days to stay with Lolo Mabitsela in her Bed and Breakfast in...Read this update
June 25, 2002
Table Mountain & District 6
The geographical configuration of the city of Cape Town at the foot of Table Mountain is as beautiful as everyone has said it is. We took the cable car...Read this update
June 17, 2002
Robben Island
June 16 to July 13, 2002 Standing bunched shoulder-to-shoulder in the small anteroom of the prison on Robben Island where Mandela and others were political prisoners, our half of...Read this update
Bo Kaap or Cape Malay Quarter
The next day we take a minibus for 3 rand each (10 rand to a dollar) to look for an apartment. The buses are many and frequent with no schedule-you...Read this update
June 16, 2002
Cape Town!
June 15, 16, 2002 James make an unbelievable maneuver with the truck into the Lions Head Lodge & Backpacker Compound around a corner and in between parked cars on...Read this update
May 29, 2002
Okavango Delta By Makoro
The Makoro Trip through the Delta By the time the 1300 km long Okavango, southern Africa’s third largest river, enters Botswana from Angola, through the Caprivi Strip in Namibia, it...Read this update
May 18, 2002
Dinner & Dancing On A Mat
That night Rod has arranged for us to have dinner at the home of a local family. We each take a bowl and spoon from the truck and are...Read this update
May 15, 2002
Pleasuring In Zanzibar
We spent evenings on the deck of the Mercury Bar watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean full of fishing boats and beautiful lean bodies swimming in the...Read this update
Stone Town Zanzibar
May 11-15 2002 City of Stone Town Island of Zanzibar The tropical island of Zanzibar has a more cosmopolitan and warm and open ambiance than other African countries we...Read this update
May 10, 2002
Ngorongora Crater
The Ngorangora Crater is a conservation area and National Heritage Site. After breaking camp in the Sarangeti, we drive another two hours up to the Crater rim where we...Read this update
May 09, 2002
Animal Spotting The Big 5
I love the remnants of the Swahili cadence in Victor's English. Giraffe: "It is raining and he is very happy there-he is getting a shower." Bob watching elephants: "This makes...Read this update
May 06, 2002
Nairobi to Capetown Overland
May 5, 2002 We left for the 4000 mile seven week trip in a Mercedes Benz truck overland from Nairobi to Capetown. As Bob suspected there would be, there...Read this update
April 30, 2002
A Felluca Ride Up The Nile
In Aswan, a felluca, an ancient sailboat of the Nile, is a common means of transport up and down the Nile River. It has a broad canvas sail and...Read this update
April 12, 2002
Santorini & Sifnos
As the ferry approached the island through the caldera you see a red-brown black and pumice grey terraced cliff face that looms hundreds of feet above the water with...Read this update
April 01, 2002
Cinque Terre
Took a train to the Cinque Terre (Five Lands..or villages) area on the northern Italian Riviera. The towns, jutting out into the Mediterranean and straight up the hills on...Read this update
March 21, 2002
The Atlas Mountains
We took an excursion trip south and east past incredible green terraced fields and old Berber kasbahs (ancient Moroccan self-contained communities made out of the rust colored mud of...Read this update
March 02, 2002
Salamanca Spain
I just walked out of the jaw-dropping Cathedral in the beautiful old city of Salamanca a few minutes ago. Made Notre Dame in Paris look pretty tame. And there are...Read this update
March 01, 2002
Bayonne & Biarritz
Bayonne is a beautiful Basque town in the south of France. I would not be surprised if the movie "Chocolat" was made here. We were told that Bayonne had...Read this update
September 30, 1995
A Dacha In Samarkand
After coming off the Kyrgyzstan trek, Peter, our trip leader, had arranged for us to go to Samarkand in Uzbekistan before continuing on up to Tashkent for the flight...Read this update
September 18, 1995
Trekking in Kyrgyzstan
The fall of 1995 Bob and I joined an REI adventure tour company based in Seattle Washington on an 18 day trek in the highest and most dramatic part...Read this update