Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats sitting on a rocky cliff overlooking an ocean whose color and clarity is stunning, with a cocktail in hand as its effects slowly trickle through your system! Its like a rip of a sheet of paper that I have to pick up from here within the hour knowing I will shortly be hanging out in Houston International Airport. I honestly could sit here all day and write away in my little notebook. Why this is happening now on my last minutes to take advantage is a good question. Maybe Gauguin and Hemmingway experienced this and [View Full Entry]

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Can you imagine traveling to a new place as did the explorers to the New World..? expecting maybe a tribe of natives and stumbling upon a city of 100k people with agriculture, aquaculture and architecture to rival ones own civilization? I mean really... stop and think about how world altering this must have been. How humbling and frightening really. How many more of these foreigners were there after all? This day and age we feel unbelievably intrepid when we have ventured far enough to encounter "primitive societies", be they bands of desert nomads keeping alive ancient traditions in [View Full Entry]

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Eh, long time no? It has been, since I've been traveling anywhere but between Tampa, NYC, Charleston and my parents houses. But no longer, boy do I have some travel planned! And speaking of long times.... the sudden once a decade frost bite that has bitten the deep south this January has run me out. I couldn't take it anymore, and last Wednesday I did some internet desperation searching and came up with a next to nothing trip to Cancun. Mexico. Land of wet t-shirts, margarita's and college aged stupidity. The last time I was in Cancun it was 1995. Yes, [View Full Entry]

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Well, I had to leave my lovely walled palace eventually, and despite the wintery weather of 55 degrees or so, I slowly found myself in Cape Town. No more luxury, back to the basic, and cheapie for me. I am staying at the "Backpack" a self proclaimed luxury backpackers in Cape Town. All I can say is that it depends on the room and on the time of year. It is very cold here, and damp this time of year in Capetown, so the rooms, mine which had very little natural light, was also very damp and cold. It was also [View Full Entry]

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Still entralled with my cloistered lifestyle behind the palace walls, I woke up this morning to utter luxury and to breakfast in bed, still sore from whitewater rafting in what seemed to be a world away. I had questions. They were the first questions I asked my driver when I got in for my day tour of Johannesburg and Soweto. They were the first questions I started asking anyone whom I could screw up the courage through my American upbringing to ask, "how do you think things are going since the end of the apartheid government with respect to racism?" and [View Full Entry]

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After what seems like an eternity of living in either tents, huts, or sketchy hotels with mystery lumps in the bed, where you definitely didn't want to run barefoot across the floor, I was estatic to get into my room at the Peech Hotel in Johannesburg. Jo'burg is rife with tales of urban warfare and random crime and its enough to make anyone a lot wary. Because my main goal was to rest, really enjoy a nicely made meal, bed and shower, I had the hotel pick me up at the airport, and whisk me away. My driver (and I later [View Full Entry]

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The place we had stayed in Livingstone has to be up there in the top 5 worst places I have ever stayed. It really didn't matter because really it was just a bed to use, but its worth noting that in the budget accomodations to stay at, this place should be crossed off your list. First, the shower barely worked...and of course was missing a shower curtain. For some reason this had happened MULTIPLE times just to Katie and I on this trip. Second, the security of the place was terrible. We broke into our own room multiple times. Our door [View Full Entry]

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Let me just start by saying I've been white water rafting before. Several times actually, maybe half a dozen. Some meandering, some exhilerating, one with members of my family bailing their boat into mine. One recently with a family who was massively overweight, couldn't swim, and couldn't balance to save their lives. The dad fell overboard getting in the boat, and managed to fall out several other times without the aid of any whitewater. But I digress. You know you are not in Kansas (or Colorado) whitewater anymore when the rafting guides informs you that there will be four [View Full Entry]

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Dr Livingstone we presume? Once our group got through the border ordeal we headed for the Falls. Right through Livingstone, where we are actually staying. We are here in a 'high water' season, and because of very heavy rains the water is more massive then usual. Traditionally, Victoria Falls was visited by the Zimbabwean side, that side had some of the better views and the hotels and infrastructure was superior and right on the water. In comparison, Livingstone was just a town nearby, poor and with little tourist (or any other) infrastructure. Well these days, given the political [View Full Entry]

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Crossing borders is my favorite - there is nothing like watching the crossroads of 3rd world life, bureacracy, ferries, produce, products, businessmen, truckers and the odd little face of a tourist or two toting backpacks and looking out of place. Some scared, some harrassed looking, and some barely noticing that they aren't in Kansas anymore. There is always ample time to observe these myriad of things as the guantlet of forms and queues are processed and waited on, first on one side, then on the other. Enterprising vendors make use of the bored masses by offering cold cokes and nati [View Full Entry]

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