Cost/day: $35/day

What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen lately?

In South Africa, seeing a lion eat an impala, a family of elephants cross the road, two giraffes fight, rhinos hanging out, a leopard chase its prey and a handful of other breathtaking scenes at Kruger National Park was definitely “strange.” It honestly didn’t feel like it could possibly be real.

In Mozambique, the chapas – a shared mini-bus taxi that is typically the only mode … Read more »

About 110 years ago an Englishman named Ewart Grogan made the journey across Africa from south to north. He was the first person to do so, and it took him two years.

In Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure, author Julian Smith recounts some of Grogan’s story, following much the same route. The title refers to the fact that Grogan … Read more »

Bethlehem, Palestine

On Sunday, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired film footage of San Francisco in 1906. The footage, taken by a camera attached to a cable car going down Market Street, is less than 12 minutes long, and it is mesmerizing in a way a still photo cannot be. We see bodies moving, faces moving, … Read more »

Cairo, Egypt

“Right now Egypt is like having a fast pass at Disney. People should come over.”

These are the words of Rick Zeolla, the general manager of the Cairo Marriott, quoted last week in a New York Times article titled “Tahrir Square, Egypt’s New Tourist … Read more »

Cairo, Egypt

This past Friday, I was on a hostel roof talking with a Hungarian journalist when a tremendous roar, straight out of the lungs of tens of thousands of Egyptians, swept through the streets and over Cairo’s Tahrir Square. We stood and ran to … Read more »

Hendri Coetzee

Note: Earlier this month, global adventurer Hendri Coetzee was killed by a crocodile while leading a kayaking expedition down the Ruzizi River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Guidebook writer and no-baggage travel pioneer Jonathan Yevin was friends with Coetzee, and he sent me a heart-felt eulogy that explores Hendri’s unique … Read more »