Boy, Are My Arms Tired
I got FIVE shots today. Yellow Fever Tetanus Typhoid Fever Hepatitis A & B Meningococcal Meningitis I passed on rabies and polio, so there is a chance I will spend the rest of my life in an iron lung or foam at the mouth. Oh well. Everyone at the travel clinic was sort of aghast …
2014: A Year In Photography
2014 was another landmark year for me in terms of travel and photography. In February, I was named the Travel Photographer of the Year by the North American Travel Journalists Association. In April, I was named the Travel Photographer of the Year by the Central States Chapter of the Society of American Travel Writers. In …
You Do Not Need A Guidebook To Travel
If you have been reading the news the last few days, you have probably come across the “scandal” about the Lonely Planet writer who wrote parts of the Colombia guide book without ever traveling to Colombia. Actually, it is a non-story. He was never supposed to go to Colombia. He was just supposed to write …
Last Thoughts on French Polynesia
Before I get too far away from it, I should add that I did not hate my brief time in Tahiti. While it was expensive and it did seem to overwhelm much of the experience, there were a few things I did enjoy. Poisson Cru. Before I left the island, I made sure I was …
The Temples and Shrines of Japan: Part 1, Kyoto
Read part 2 and part 3 Travelers to Europe often complain of church fatigue. Everywhere you go, you see old churches and castles and after a while they all sort of just blur into each other. In Asia, the equivalent would be Shrine and Temple fatigue. No place I’ve visited so far suffers more from …
The Mouse That Roared
I know you are all probably following along at home, but in case you didn’t know, the 2007 Pacific Games have started in Apia, Samoa. This has actually been a big deal everywhere I’ve been this summer. In Samoa, all the streets in Apia had banners for the games and every day in the paper …
Kakadu National Park
In the United States, there are three parks which are considered to be the crown jewels in the National Parks system: Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. If you had to make a similar list for Australia, I don’t know what two of the parks would be, one one of them would have to be …
My Day As An Underwater Photographer
There are lots of places in the world you can go SCUBA diving, but Cairns just might have the biggest concentration of dive shops and and the largest diving industry in the world. The size of the industry is big enough that it has dedicated businesses devoted to underwater photography. I figured this would be …