Any guilt I had about leaving Tahiti earlier than I planned melted away the moment Rarotonga appeared in the window of the plane. Geology Like all Pacific islands, Rarotonga was created via vulcanism. You can think of islands on a continuum from the Big Island of Hawaii down to coral atolls. The Big Island is …
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 …
Tomorrow I’m off to Milford Sound. The place which is usually rated the #1 attraction in New Zealand. I hope I get good weather. I decided to stay in Queenstown and take a tour bus to the Sound, rather than drive. Once gas and everything was factored in, I was about the same just staying …
Instead of leaving Maui before schedule, I’m going to be staying a few days longer so I can get my SCUBA certification in. The best I could do was a class that starts on Wednesday and ends on Friday. Today (Tuesday) I’m going to drive down the Hana coast and take photos and read my …
I did my first two SCUBA dives today. It was pretty cool except for two things: 1) I can’t handle changes in pressure very well. We didn’t go down that far (about 20 feet) and my ears were killing me. They still seem a bit plugged up. 2) My face mask seemed like it was …
I first visited Bulgaria in 2011 as part of a G Adventures trip from Budapest to Istanbul. I was able to visit cities like Belogradchik, Sofia and Veliko Tarnovo. However, I never got to the Black Sea. My agent Stephen Hanselman (who took the photos for this post) and his wife Julia Serebrinsky recently visited …
I’ve been extremely fortunate traveling. In over five years traveling in over 100 countries, I have never been robbed, mugged or even had anything stolen in my hotel room. Cross my fingers, I’ll be able to keep this streak going indefinitely. That being said, I try not to do anything that will get me in …
I often read advice from a lot of “travel experts” on how people should travel. After 5 years of non-stop travel I’ve realized that I break most of the conventional wisdom that people believe in when it comes to traveling. Here are 9 ways I don’t follow conventional travel wisdom. Some are things I probably …
Over the last several days I’ve been going through packages of DVDs and hard drives I shipped home from the road with backups of my travel photos. After many hours I have finally assembled all my photos together and have created identical copies on two, 1 terabyte hard drives. Despite all the overseas shipments, the …