After a very pleasant evening in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, I took a four hour flight over the Sudan, Central African Republic and down into Douala, Cameroon. Everything was fine except for the daily double of having the only super fat guy in Africa right next to me crushing me into the wall and a guy […]
La République du Tchad
December 15, 2009 by 3 Comments
After nearly 36 hours of travel and transit I made it to Chad. This is my 8th trip to Africa and the 6th in the past 3 years. Chad has long been seen by travelers as a place to get through rather than to see, which explains why there are so few visitors. In fact, […]
A Weekend in Oregon
November 2, 2009 by 9 Comments
‘Keep Portland Weird’ is written in huge letters on the back of a building across from the famous Voodoo Donuts on Third Street in Portland and few sayings can sum up Portland quite so well. It is a weird place, that’s for sure. However, it is also one of the best cities in the United […]
Club Med Turkoise
October 26, 2009 by 8 Comments
So for my last country in the Caribbean I decided to check out my first Club Med. The Club Med Turkoise had been highly recommended by several friends. In fact, I have two friends that actually met their future wives there. I certainly was not looking for wedded bliss or anything of the sort but […]
La Republica Dominicana
October 20, 2009 by 8 Comments
The island of Hispaniola is the second largest island in the Caribbean behind only Cuba. The island is one of only two islands in the Caribbean broken up into different countries or administrative regions-the other is St. Martin/St. Maarten. Hispaniola is of course made up of Haiti and its much larger neighbor, the Dominican Republic. […]
24 Hours in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti
October 17, 2009 by 11 Comments
After a warm up night of Creole food and voodoo in the French Quarter of New Orleans because of a forced layover we made our way down to Port-Au-Prince (PAP), Haiti after an American Airlines connection in Miami. At the International airport in PAP, we were greeted by the usual Caribbean steel drum band except […]
A Classic Road Trip in Arizona
September 7, 2009 by 6 Comments
There are few things I love more than a good road trip. Anywhere in the world, I would almost always prefer to drive if it’s reasonable because you get to see so much more, so much closer up. In the United States, there are few better places to take road trips than the Southwest. The […]
Four Days in Tibet
August 26, 2009 by 4 Comments
“Go to Tibet and see many places, as much as you can; then tell the world” ~His Holiness the Dalai Lama Tibet is a land that has inspired wonder and existed with an aura of mystery for centuries. It has piqued the imagination of many Westerners as little was known about this remote Shangri La […]
Beijing to Lhasa By Train
August 23, 2009 by 13 Comments
Inaugurated in 2006, one of the worlds great train journeys, the Beijing to Lhasa train opened with much fanfare and eagerness. This engineering marvel through the Tibetan Plateau topping out at an altitude of 5072 meters took decades with the difficult conditions at such high altitudes and cold temperatures. However, against the wishes of many […]
