After a 5:00 am wake-up call, Torrance rings the gong on our front wall before placing a pot of coffee through the dumb waiter door in the living room. By 5:30 am, Alan and I have donned raincoats for a wet walk to the reception area where Enoch, our ranger, and his tracker, Sam, are preparing the Land Rover for this morning’s 3-hour excursion. As the rain pours, Alan, Gail (another guest) and I peer from underneath green poncho hoods at an African fish eagle, impala, kudu, cape buffalo and giraffe. The rain is pounding when Enoch asks, “Would you like [View Full Entry]

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For the past weeks I have been dealing with "writer's block", and hundreds of photos began to accummulate in my Blog, as I was trying to overcome my daily anxiety dealing with the 2008 Presidential election in America. I have now survived the strain and the stress of the daily English news about the direction and conclusion of the election on China's television CCTV-9, and the internet coverage of MSNBC, CNN, and the New York Times. I have also noticed that my hair has become more gray and a little thinner, something a "political junkie" like me has to expect every [View Full Entry]

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The RG's description of a 12 hour bus ride to reach San Agustin, punctuated by military and guerrilla roadblocks at which one might be relieved of money or other valuables, was as out of date as much of the information circulating about travel in Colombia. As I waited at Popayan bus station for my 6AM departure, I chanced upon the deaths/injuries board showing a tally for each of the transport companies and was pleased to see zeroes in all columns for Cootranshuila. 6.75 hours later, most of which was spent on a fairly horrendous pot-holed gravel road - though the green [View Full Entry]

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The Transsiberian Train is a journey by itself. There are many travelers leaving their countries just to take the longest train ride in the world. To be precise we didn't ride across the Transsiberian line, this one connects Moscow to Vladivostok. We crossed the Transmongolian line, from Beijing in China over Mongolia finishing in Moscow (The Transsiberian and Transmongolian join they journey around half way near lake Baikal in Siberia). There are so many ways to do this trip. From a nostalgic direct, super luxury coach to a cattle-class hop-on hop-off vodka filled adventure. It all [View Full Entry]

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A flight from Ban Lung in Ratanakiri Province to Sen Monoram in Mondulkiri Province, then on to Phnom Penh. total time was 1.5 hours! Impressive considering it takes 13 hours by bus. These are the aerial pictures from the flight. There's a lot of them, but I moved the best ones to the first page. Full disclosure, most have been cleaned up in Photoshop, it was very hazy that day. I included so many pictures with the hope that someone, somwhere will find them useful... * NOTE * -I've recently discovered the key to getting the best clarity out of posting [View Full Entry]

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Less than a week after returning from sunny Ecuador I'm heading to a place significantly colder - Iceland. Although it was certainly cold (our first couple of days anyway) I can't agree with the naming of the country at all as I had to wait until we say actual icebergs before I had seen any ice at all. Still, had a late night arrival in Reykjavik followed the next day by an early morning start to our tour stopping first at Thingvellir. Thingvellir National Park, or 'Parliament Plains', is the site of the first Icleandic Parliament in 930 and the parliament [View Full Entry]

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We clacked and clanged our way across the Peruvian border on an ancient one-carriage train. We set off from Arica (Chile) clearing immigration at the tiny station and arrived into Tacna (Peru) where the train proceeded through the center of town behaving more like a bus than a train, navigating a roundabout and braking for a truck that wasn't planning on stopping. The train seemed ill-equipped to have 'international' status and that's because it was. It only became international by chance, when Chile claimed Arica and all of a sudden that little train was a big deal. The new responsibility [View Full Entry]

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The shiny, silver metal drill bit pushed against my right leg, pressing into the skin just below my knee, and the burly Bulgarian doctor turned his face to me and cheerfully said: 'Radio, Musica? Yes?' Looking around the room at the cracked paint, the box of tools of on the floor and its wide window with a view of the crisp blue sky and the tops of the dusty mountains, i was suprised to see a small radio next to me. 'Why not? OK.' i agreed. You dont argue with a man built like this guy, especially when he has a [View Full Entry]

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