Category: Travels for Fun
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ECUADOR WITH MOM
Padma and I lived in Cali, Colombia in 1994. My mother visited us and we took a roadtrip to Ecuador during Padma’s summer holiday. I didn’t keep a journal and never wrote about the trip. Just some photos and a few scattered memories remain. We visited Otavalo, the Middle of the Earth equator monument, Quito and Riobamba. In Riobamba we watched an evening parade and then visited the weekly outdoor horse market. We circled Volcan Chimborazo and came home. We travelled about 2,000 km in a beat up old Suzuki jeep.
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FROM ALEPPO IN A VW
In May of 1993, Padma and I and our VW camper van left Syria with the hopes of spending a few months exploring Turkey. That didn’t quite work out the way we had planned. Our VW wasn’t was licensed in Syria and the Turks didn’t accept our international registration. It’s all complicated but in the end we had to pay a USD5000 bond and were given five days to pass through Turkey. Amazingly we got our $5K back at the Greek border but our plans of a few months photographing the…
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NEMRUT DAGI
My ICARDA mates, Eunice Carter and Michael Baum, did a four or five day roadtrip to Nemrut Dağı, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in April 1992. THe mountain top is littered with statutes and it is assumed to be a royal tomb from the 1st century BC. Perhaps we were pushing the season as a lot the area was covered with snow. I only took two photos from the summit … don’t know why. On the way home, we saw a farmer tilling his field with horses about three kms from…
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CARPETS BUT NO ARK
In June 1991, my mates Heiko Schnell and Ben and Sharon Timmerman and I drove from Aleppo, Syria to the NE corner of Turkey where it borders Armenia and Iran. Our destination was Mt Ararat. We didn’t find the ark but found this carpet/kilim/soumak vendor along some quiet road with a view to Ararat. I had a hard time passing carpet vendors in those days. I don’t believe we bought anything from this gentleman partly because we had just bought carpets the day before and I already had a soumak very…
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A WESTERN TURKEY ROADTRIP
From 12-19 April 1991, my ICARDA colleague, Anne, and I travelled in his little car on 2500 km roadtrip to Western Turkey during the Ramadan Eid. I did not take journal notes and can only piece together the trip via a vague memory and a few captions on photos. We began in Aleppo and drove the length of Turkey’s southern coast along the Mediterranean along the D400 highway. Days 1 and 2: Aleppo to Yenkikas to Tahtalı Dağı Day 3: Tahtalı Dağı We climbed Tahtalı Dağı (2,366 m), which is also known…
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DIVING IN BELIZE
In February and March of 1990, I had some time to kill. I was in between jobs. I had finished my job at the University of Wisconsin because I had been hired by ICARDA to work in Aleppo, Syria. But there was delay after delay in getting my work visa. So I figured I’d go to Belize while I waited and get my PADI scuba diving certificate. I arrived in Belize City and took a water taxi out to Caye Caulker. I spent enough time to get in enough dives to…
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Atitlán
I spent the summer of 1987 in Central America. Mainly I was in Costa Rica conducting research for my Masters degree. But the folks at CATIE gave me a contract to develop a slideshow on sustainable natural resources. For some reason, I invented an excuse to travel to Guatemala. Perhaps I was working but I only remember going to Lake Atitlán and staying in Panajachel. On one day I took a boat to Santiago de Atitlán and on another I rented a bike and pedalled south along the coast.
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ABOARD THE VICTORIA
When the Costa Rican National Park Service asked if I could join a group of American tourists on a cruise on a Swedish schooner to Parque Nacional Isla del Coco, I just couldn’t refuse. The Park Service always required that a representative join groups to the Island and my name came up on the list. We set sail from Puntarenas and for a couple of weeks, I was aboard the Victoria and we travelled to Cocos Island … fully pampered by the Swedish crew and British cook. The Americans came for…
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SELVA LACANDONA – NO PLACE FOR A GRINGO
Day 1 – 28 March 1981Lagos de Montebello to Huistan on the Rio Delores They were the best tortilla I had ever eaten. Made of freshly ground corn, they were thick, yet not tough and still warm. I folded one and used it as a spoon to scoop up the scrambled eggs served in a bowl of hot water with onions and tomatoes. An Indian man and his son silently sat on a stool, shelling beans, and watched my companion, Hans, and me clumsily try to use the tortillas as spoons.…
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