-
Wild Penguins: The Last Patagonia Chronicle, Part 5
Exploiting nature for money is a thing of the past. Yeah not really; but it should be. All across the globe humans are furrowing their brows, concerned about the sustainability of and our effects on wildlife. Muscles were tingling, cinching up somewhere inside as I was surrounded by the “typicals” swiping from photo to photo on their phones at the harbor in Ushuaia. We had just gone from hut to hut elbowing past swaths of people lining up beside business signs on the walkway. The signs had crouching humans taking selfies with Magellanic Penguins. “Visit Penguin Island!” they said. This was where crouching people turned into an encroaching species. I…
You May Also Like
The Patagonia Chronicles Part 2: Is That Really Another Guanaco?
-
Tierra Del Fuego, The End of the World: The Patagonia Chronicles Part 4
After consuming ungodly numbers of Che Empenadas in El Chalten and getting a little too friendly with another South American Gray Fox near Lake Condido we braved the mangled guardrail road to Ushuaia. It was summer, but apparently the road was too much for many of the international truckers in the rain. Legend has it that Tierra Del Fuego got it’s name from the fires that the explorer Magellen saw burning by some 12,000 aboriginals on the coast. The disappearance of these ethnic groups is one that is all too familiar across the world. My curiosity about the tribes peaked as I gawked at historical sketches of men in loin-cloths…
-
The Patagonia Chronicles Part 3: A Flamingo, An Ice Wall, A Rock Pile, & An Estancia
Crossing between Chile and Argentina was little more than a blink of an administrative counter. We got out to lift up a chain and let ourselves over. We had been strategically planning our diesel stops on the map. All plans to purchase and keep a spare can had run dry. The scrub grass silence was broken when we took a 65 km shortcut down a cheese grater and laughed in disbelief that the lambs had long tails. They wagged like dogs. Then there was the lone flamingo. Lost far from it’s comrades in Northern Chile, the wind had grounded it. It was the only colorful thing for hundreds of miles,…
You May Also Like
Tierra Del Fuego, The End of the World: The Patagonia Chronicles Part 4
-
The Patagonia Chronicles Part 2: Is That Really Another Guanaco?
Puerto Natales is the closest hub of civilization and it’s 80 km to the national park. From our hostel we passed the town’s pride, a massive Milodon sculpture, and later on the cave of the Milodon. I wasn’t even really sure what a Milodon was, but knew it was big, kinda had the body of a bear and the face of a llama, and it was really old. Yeah, like 5,000 years old. But the landscape looked exactly like a place where dinosaurs, Milodons, and cave men probably ran around. There’s just something that doesn’t couple about sliding around in a ragged out truck rocking out to Nelly’s “Ride Wit…
You May Also Like
Wild Penguins: The Last Patagonia Chronicle, Part 5
-
The Patagonia Chronicles Part 1: Backpacks, Bagualeros, and Torres
The dreaded blue box . . . A plane full of backpackers chatters as we barrel in our silver bullet from Santiago to Punta Arenas. Many were headed to Antarctica. My blood pressure begins to calm since the teenager in the airport aggressively demanded to assess the size of my (and everyone else’s) backpack at the plane door by trying to put a blue box over it. Shoutout to LATAM airlines, the biggest bunch of bag-Nazi-fun-police I’ve seen in 43 countries. You people need a physics lesson that a bag exactly the size of the allowed dimensions will not fit into a blue cardboard box the exact same size. “You’re…
-
Romania, So Much More Than Vampires
Can we begin with a creepy, exaggerated laugh of a villain? I’ll be the first shmuck to admit that the reason that we visited Romania was to see Bran Castle– hit Bucharest, tackle some vampires, and get out. But Romania has a way of slapping around silly tourists with this inappropriate attitude. My favorite memories really had nothing to do with Vlad , castles, or blood sucking. Folklore developed around the region when tribes fought to keep out invaders. The ruthless Vladimir, rather infamously known as Vlad the Impaler, went around mounting entire armies on sticks when they threatened his people. He became the most wanted man in…
-
Trouncing Around: This is Kosovo?
The border agents admitted that the only Americans they were used to seeing were military. Where was I? My daydreams of the dramatic almost cartoon like whistles of bombs dropping and the sounds of crazed secret faxes between Bill Clinton and Milosevic chatter in my mind and come to a screeching halt. “Americans? American basketball? You know Dirk Nowitzki?” Yeah I knew Dirk Nowitzki. “Michael Jordan he’s the greatest”. We shook our heads in agreement but my look was more bewildered than his. What was this place? Moseying into Prishtina it sure as hell wasn’t what I expected. War torn? Nope, totally in tact. The look of war ravished people…
-
An Entirely Maddening Time in Dubrovnik
Let me just preface this by saying that I loved the Dalmatian Coast. Visiting a new place is similar to dating. You’re both trying to figure out if you like each other, if you fit together. Dubrovnik was the equivalent of dating an international super model. Despite her beauty, I couldn’t get to know her. I couldn’t tell if she just had no personality or if she was fabulously & characteristically mysterious. She slipped out of my fingers before I had enough time to figure it out. The experience was entirely maddening. Old town Dubrovnik was one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen . .…
-
Saudade in Portugal
Portugal will always be the sea. The waters where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic mirror the sun while violently capping against the limestone cliffs and grottoes of The Algarve. An artistic ambiance rises from the sea foam spray like watercolor splashing over gold and orange cliffs. The Portuguese attribute their notable tolerance of new ideas to their wayfaring spirit of their sailing and exploring ancestors during Portugal’s height of the fifteenth century; for with the exchange of goods, also came the exchange of culture and beliefs. I could still see the sailors as I examined the men on the street. Their dark mustaches and broad shoulders exactly matched the…
-
Funky in Seattle
Photos of the lovely Seattle
-
14 Photos of Montenegro That Will Make You Want to Visit
A week before my Balkan road trip I sat in a meeting. I didn’t know the man sitting across from me. I didn’t know his name or his official job title, but I knew he outranked me because of the way he carried himself. We scoffed at the latest news about Trump shoving the prime minister of Montenegro back in May. We conducted our meeting business via phone with an associate in London. Instead of telling the associate goodbye, someone at the table nonchalantly said, “Be safe” and the phone clicked. We all looked around. “Be safe?” “Yeah, you know, because she’s abroad”. Then the conversation came full circle. “She’s in London!…
-
Friends to Cuba- Actually, Friends to Cubans
If loving Cuba is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. What I especially loved about it were it’s normal, everyday, working class people and the families of the slums. I visited Cuba legally, and hesitated to publish what I learned because of the icy relations of the past that have yet again been drug up to the mat. But I’m publishing in the name of art, in the name of truth, in the name of education, free speech, and almost everything I believe in: loving others despite their ethnicity, nationality, race, political stance, or religion. The second story balcony of a colonial casa with iron railings and white…
