Our timing was again impeccable.
Honduras, a country we had just visited, experiences a military coup and begins to melt down just days after we leave its borders.
Our timing was again impeccable.
Honduras, a country we had just visited, experiences a military coup and begins to melt down just days after we leave its borders.
The weight of my backpack at 5:00 AM was brutal: 9 liters of water, 1 sleeping bag, and sundry other camping bits and bobs. And I was one of the lucky ones. Dan carried all that plus an old school (read: heavy) four-person tent.
Even at this hour, it was steamy. Under the weight of my pack, I was glazed in sweat before we reached the crossroads for the chicken bus to the trail head. I looked around at the young, energetic faces – mostly in their early 20s – and wondered, “Am I too old to be doing this?”
Ah, the local barber. A ritual, a comfort of home.
Not so for me. Every haircut is a new adventure: a different country, a new language and yet another man with scissors (or God forbid, clippers) who has his own ideas about style.
During a recent ear-lowering interlude in Leon, Nicaragua, it struck me that barber shops are less about haircuts and more about history and culture.
Over 900 days on the road, and I'm still not immune to the phenomenon of culture shock.
Descendants of shipwrecked slaves from Nigeria; Jerry Garcia's rumored Caribbean seaside bungalow hideout; warrior dances (see video below) and turtle shell drums; echoes of an accented pigeon pidgin English that smacks of Jamaica; and a remarkable coconut seafood soup called tapado.
This is Livingston, home of the Garifuna. This is the other side of Guatemala.
“Hola, Gringos!” a little Honduran girl calls out to us from the garden of the coffee plantation-cum-guest house on the edge of Gracias, Honduras where we awoke Saturday morning.
“Hola, ninos!” we offer in response.
Giggles all around. Little do we know what a prescient greeting it is.
What do we do when we're not chasing chicken buses from one town to the next? Here's a hint.
Some friends have suggested that we attach helmet cameras to our heads to give viewers the unabridged full monty version of our lives.
Trust us, you really don’t want to see all of it.
Do you pay for your photographs? Do you ask permission? Have you had any problems taking photographs of people on the street?
We field these sorts of questions often. Several readers also recently requested that we write a post about how we take our people portraits in street and market settings.
In response, we share ten tips for taking engaging photos of the humanity that colors our planet.
Singapore, an unexpected stop on our Southeast Asian itinerary thanks to a cheap flight from there to India. Our culinary expectations for this small city-state were low, particularly in the wake of our street food experiences in Thailand and Malaysia. Yet in the three days before our flight to India, it seemed like all we did was eat.