Mageru pulls over to the side of the road, parks and idles the Land Cruiser. We are still a few hours away from arriving back in Addis Ababa. He looks over to me, pats the steering wheel and says “I am a little tired. You can drive.”
This does not strike me as a generosity I should accept. Although I am confident in Canada, Ethiopian driving doesn’t exactly rev my engines. “Oh…I don’t think so, honey. The driving here is very different from my experience back home.”
by B.J. Stolbov
When I was young, my father took me on a father-son bonding/camping/fishing trip to some unpronounceable lake in upstate New York. I learned to squeamishly poke a hook through a wiggling worm. I learned to awkwardly cast a fishing line out into the lake. And when I did catch a fish, with the point of the hook sticking out through its eye, I immediately learned, while screaming and crying, that I was no fisherman. No fisherman either, my father and I gratefully agreed to bond by never going fishing again.
by Elyn Aviva
It took nearly 11 years and three attempts for my husband, Gary, and me to complete the 12-mile-long St Michael’s Way across the southern tip of Cornwall. That’s a rather long time for a short walk—probably a record of some sort. And even though we ended up hiking more than 12 miles, we never did manage to walk the middle five.
But we persevered, although we were misled every step of the way.
by Kate McCahill
On weekends, Alex and Vicky, my landladies, take me on walks through Barracas and San Telmo. They have known these Buenos Aires neighborhoods all their lives; they point out old buildings they’ve inhabited and the places where grand old cafés once stood. They are sisters. They’ve each been exiled twice, the first time to Europe for political reasons, the second to Mexico for economic ones. Each time, they returned because things were improving in Argentina, and they wanted to be a part of the change. They’ve rented their spare room to dozens of foreigners over the years, English teachers and language students like me.
I was 22 when a friend persuaded me to see a psychic in my home town on New Zealand’s west coast. At the time I was studying science and psychology at university, so I told myself psychic predictions were fanciful. But I was curious too. Like most young women, I wanted to know when I would meet the man of my dreams.
by Dan Dworkin
What would you do if you were asked to voluntarily give up your cell phone, computer, TV, and sex for a month? When I revisited my Peace Corps assignment after forty-two years away, the people of my village in Fiji, indeed the residents of the whole province, were doing just that, in a manner of speaking. They were giving up tobacco, yaqona (kava), their ceremonial drink, and sex for a month. Why would they do such a thing?
One hundred and forty years ago, the people of a nearby village, Nabutautau, killed and ate the Methodist Reverend Thomas Baker. When I visited in July, 2011 they were conducting a ceremony of reconciliation, begging the Methodist Church to forgive them for their ancestors' actions.
I am sitting in a chair on our fifth-floor terrace, looking out over the Onyar River to the hills and the Old Town of Girona. I can see tour groups starting to arrive. A queue of impatient visitors and uniformed school children is forming at the stone bridge, waiting for the shiny red “City Tour Train” to appear and transport them effortlessly through the winding streets.
It is the 60th Temps de Flors, the annual Girona flower festival held in early May. Tens of thousands of people jam the narrow cobblestone streets and stair-stepped alleys of the Old Town, admiring the profuse floral displays that adorn the private patios, gardens, and buildings normally closed to the public. The air is fragrant with flowers, their themes and textures as varied as the artists who design the installations.
by Carolyn Handler Miller
One day a slender brochure arrived in the mail and my husband Terry and I scanned it with growing excitement. It was from the Archeological Conservancy, an American organization dedicated to the acquisition and preservation of archeological sites. The Conservancy was offering a unique, archeologist-led tour of eight Maya sites in Belize and Guatemala, most of which are rarely visited by anyone besides serious Mayanists.
by Edie Jarolim
It is 10am and I am sitting in a tiny mid-Manhattan office, contemplating penis sheathes. I'm not talking about the latex variety, though my fantasies of spontaneous, sweep-the-papers-off-your-desk sex always end with concern about sexually transmitted disease.
by Angela Smith Kirkman
As far back as I can remember, my life’s goal has been to travel around the world. Now, as I sit in row twenty-two of our Boeing 777, chasing the moon over the Pacific somewhere between Tokyo and the International Date Line, I can feel the book closing on this chapter, on the whole epic adventure. And the same question keeps resonating in the back of my mind.
by Judith Fein
Around the world, viewers and readers are transfixed by the racism dialogue that has transformed from a whisper to a scream in America. It took atrocities, murders, abuse to reach the point where black Americans are being heard. They are refusing to take it any more.
And in my heart, I think the roots of this racism are in slavery. I thought I had a basic grasp of the subject until I went to Louisiana and discovered 12 surprising—sometimes shocking--things I learned that I wanted to share with you.
by Jennifer Hobson-Hinsley
I honestly believe people are either born with a sense of direction or without one. You either drive past your own house at night, or you don’t. At birth, I was at the front of the receiving line for a sense of direction, my husband was at the back. My husband drives past our house at night, and it makes me absolutely crazy. Crazy hit a new level when we recently drove from our house in Santa Fe to Telluride, about six hours away.
by Chris Pady
While visiting the town of Derge (rhymes with reggae) in eastern Tibet, my partner, Michele, and I learn of Palpung, the area’s largest and most important Kagyupa (White) sect monastery, locally known as the “Little Potala Palace”.
Yet despite Palpung’s reputation, we have no luck hiring a guide through any of the town’s hotel staff, shopkeepers, or restaurant owners. Finally, we bump into an English-speaking monk who promises to arrange everything for us. “Meet here at 7 o’clock tomorrow morning”, he instructs, pointing to a designated spot. Nothing about the arrangement spells certainty, yet we’ve got nothing to lose.
Two young men, Juan and José sit, side-by-side, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, beside the road, watching the cars and the vans and the trucks and the buses going by.
Both are high school graduates, but no more than that; neither of their families could afford to send them to school anymore.
Juan lives on this side of the road. He helps around the house, helps to raise his younger brothers and sisters, and helps in his mother’s ukay-ukay (used clothing) store. Juan has not heard from his father for years.
by Harriet Mills
I had been in Australia for just over two weeks so I was firmly in the relaxed, travel state of mind when my Dad asked me if I wanted to do a skydive over Airlie Beach, the Whitsunday's, and the Great Barrier Reef. It sounded enticing so my straight answer was a prompt yes. This occurred on our first day of five in Airlie Beach and as time progressed my nerves began to rattle me. My sister had always been the daring one, but now I had placed myself in the position where I had to befriend my adventurous side.
Just below the brickwork of the fence line on one of the busiest streets in this enormous city, a fully-grown woman was squatting over the autumn leaves next to a tree that had no hope in hell of disguising her need to go. This was a manoeuvre I had performed myself many times, under the cover of the Australian bush. Never once did I consider I would see it here in the epicenter of Paris.
by Kate McCahill
For six hours, the bus creeps south from Cusco towards Lake Titicaca, crossing arid, wintered plains and sprawling Peruvian cities littered with plastic bags in a hundred colors. It’s late afternoon before we reach marshland, and then we round a bend and here is the lake, ocean-blue and ocean-huge. The road tips down into Puno, a rippling, clay-colored city pinched into the shore. The woman beside me says that you can see Bolivia from here.
by Chris Pady
I balance perilously on my teammate's shoulders, wondering what to do next. The crowd below me grows impatient. I would love nothing more than to wipe the beads of nagging sweat scurrying down my face in mini rivers, but my hands are covered in greasy grime. The cacophony of blaring music and people screaming is so loud that I can barely hear myself think.
by Renee King
The chatter of tourists surrounded me and invaded my ears. I tried to block it out, but, truth be told, even my own travel companions were taking up space in my head. I closed my eyes, took slow deliberate breaths, and cleared my mind. When I opened my eyes, a vast white valley spread itself out before me – inviting me to take in its pristine beauty. Towering majestic mountains on either side bookended the sea of ice before me. Awestruck and breathless, I tried to comprehend that I was seeing was nature – raw, unforgiving, awesome for all my senses. As I heard questions from either side of me, I was able to deflect that unwanted noise. I breathed deeply and found something just for me on the Mer de Glace in Chamonix, France.
by Fyllis Hockman
I am sweating profusely. My pores are so overrun with liquid that I fear I will float away in a river of my own perspiration. Since I am molting inside a sweat lodge, I figure I can’t go very far. Temporarily reassured.
