Last weekend, I landed at Miami International Airport after spending a week in Cuba. My tour-mates, tired and bedraggled from a week crammed with activities, dutifully queued up behind a long line at Immigration. I breezed through Immigration, collected my luggage, took the Green lane at Customs, and was checked into my airport hotel room in 20 minutes, flat. I didn’t even need to fill out the written customs declaration usually required upon entry into … Read more »

A few months ago you may have noticed something on Facebook or Google+ called the Black and White Challenge. It was a challenge started by photographers to post a black and white photo every day for five days. Typically someone would nominate you and you could then nominate someone else. Challenges like this can be a good way to improve your skills or force you to take and post photos. For me it was a … Read more »

“Learn to watch faces and expressions. Language is not all it’s cracked up to be. Often you go wrong when you are struggling with dimly remembered foreign words and neglect the person or context. You’ll need a bit of Russian, a bit of French, and a bit of Spanish, at least, to do the world. Sometimes it’s better if you just use the international hand-to-mouth for food, or go into the kitchen to point.” –Mike … Read more »

I opened my backpack, reached a hand into its dark depths and frowned. It was going to take forever to find the black shirt I was looking for. The clock next to the bed said I had to leave in five minutes.

My hand fished, searching for the black shirt. It kept coming up grasping other … Read more »

Currently, I am in Newport Rhode Island getting ready to sail on the Oliver Hazard Perry for the next five months. The ship is in the final stages of getting ready to sail. It is a massive 280 foot long tall ship named the Oliver Hazard Perry.

Cost Per Day

Newport can be expensive if you are … Read more »

There is something magical about riding an elephant. Their huge, lumbering bodies swaying slowly along while you sit atop, taking in the view. It’s an experience that is never forgotten.

Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.

Despite my intense desire to know what it feels like to ride atop one of the world’s most majestic creatures, I’ve never taken the opportunity. My knowledge of how these creatures are broken so that they can … Read more »

“Any budding academic can tell you that deliberately placing oneself in a position of not-knowing, and to then go about finding out what you don’t know, can be a fulfilling pursuit, and the disorientation itself, the early stages of figuring out what you didn’t know that you wanted to know, was as exciting as the eventual discoveries. This was one of the reasons I traveled.” –Alden Jones, The Blind Masseuse: A Traveler’s Memoir from … Read more »

A few years ago, after finishing a journey in the Indian Himalayas, I traveled to the desert state of Rajasthan and visited the Hindu holy-town of Pushkar. A scenic outpost of 13,000 residents, Pushkar was famous for its Brahma Temple, its serene lake, and its annual Camel Fair. Several travelers had recommended it to me as a mellow … Read more »

Tracey Mansted

hungryheads.org

Age: Tracey – 50 Mike (husband – 47) Imogen (10) Indira (9)

Hometown: Rainforest near Byron Bay, NSW Australia

Quote: Albert Einstein said “If at first an idea does not sound absurd, there is no hope for it”  – which I think equally applies to thinking and learning about new things as well … Read more »

“Travel, its very motion, ought to suggest hope. Despair is the armchair; it is indifference and glazed, incurious eyes. I think travelers are essentially optimist, or else they would never go anywhere.” –Paul Theroux, Fresh Air Fiend (2000)