Sayulita has been a Mexican vacation spot for Americans and tourists for a long time, and during the past ten years its popularity seems to have grown. I’ve wanted to visit ever since I saw beach and tacos photos popping up on my Instagram years ago and always had the idea that it could be a stop-over destination on the way to somewhere else or as a short vacation spot to accommodate a beach side work-style. And it did – I ended up staying in two other places as well, San Pancho, a smaller town about fifteen minutes outside of Sayulita which is a little less developed than Sayulita but still retains the same taco and beach vibes. The beach at San Pancho is better than in Sayulita and it seems a better place to stay and visit if you are in the market for a short Mexican getaway, though I also enjoyed Sayulita (and the gym that I used for a couple of days — no air conditioning, no water, 40 degrees and super sweaty). I also spent four days at the W resort in Punta Mita, Mexico which was a special splurge that was a lot of fun […]
Read More
Banff is the sort of scenic mountain town that you might find in Colorado, USA. Big mountains, trees, rivers, lots of tourist appeal, hiking and activities to attract visitors in every season of the year. The real appeal of Banff is not the town of Banff – it’s everything outside of it. For some reason all of us tourists flock there because it gets a lot of the attention for the beauty of Alberta that surrounds it. Banff is just another hyped up touristy mountain town. Skip it if you can and enjoy all the cool stuff outside of it. There are so many hikes to do all over the place offering different views and panoramic landscapes. Morraine Lake and Mirror Lake are both famous places to see but there are some logistical stress that comes with visiting them. The national park service disallows parking or vehicle traffic to manage load, so you need to purchase ticketed reservations. The time slots sell out immediately (as within 10 seconds of them becoming available online during high season). But what you can do is rent a bike or ebike (electrical bike) and ride 9 kilometers from the rental shop to the lakes […]
Read More
Calgary has been on my Canadian hit list for the past couple years as Canada has increasingly become a place of interest to me; it’s like the United States, but it isn’t the United States,. For a travel hipster like me, that’s a cool reason to visit. So far I have visited Montreal, Toronto and Newfoundland and Calgary has been next in queue. Part of my interest in Calgary has come from the annual Calgary Stampede which is a huge, ten day rodeo in the middle of July with many other events and activities, and always seemed similar to Cheyenne Frontier Days, a comparable event in Cheyenne, Wyoming each July for ten days. I couldn’t visit the Stampeded this year owing to my friends’ wedding in Prague at the same time, but I was able to visit in August. The people I talked to while I was in Newfoundland told me how the province of Alberta (within which Calgary is situated) is different from the other places I had visited in Canada. Alberta is more western, mountainous, scenic and rural. It’s always really fun to “discover” a new sort of mico-culture in a country, it makes you feel like an […]
Read More
My friend David is from and lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland and I visited him for the second year in a row to stay at his house and attend the annual George Street Festival. Each year dozens of bars on George Street open their doors and people stream between them as live music bands play in the street during each of the seven nights. David was again a gracious host and we had fun exploring the streets of George Street again, though I think we only made it out about three or four times. When David goes out he likes to stay out until 4 AM which isn’t something I’m so good at handling anymore, though I am proud to say I’m pretty good at drinking David’s drink of choice, Whisky diet gingers. My favorite part about staying at David’s are the afternoon happy hours that happen outside in his back yard around his fire pit, listening to a portable speaker playing tunes while we talk about work and women. I’d fly to St. John’s just for that. The next time I see David there’s a good chance he’ll be married – he met a woman from Jersey (the island) […]
Read More
In 2004, I took my first solo, international trip to Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, to fish for sea-run brown and rainbow trout on the Rio Grande River. At the time, I was a financially constrained, post-collegiate individual. I quickly learned that fishing access in Argentina was only possible if you paid thousands of dollars to stay at large, private estancias (similar to Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming or A-A), catering to wealthy foreigners who wanted to fish. I thought that couldn’t be right. Surely, there would be local public access for ordinary people to fish, just like in every other country in the world (presumably). However, I couldn’t find any information online, and even inquiries on the TripAdvisor web forums (lol TripAdvisor) yielded no results. Nonetheless, I ventured forth to figure it out upon arrival, and what an adventure it turned out to be! It involved, among other things, an abandoned, post-apocalyptic hostel, a ghost ship named DESDEMONA, a run-in with authorities, and help from local children. Eventually, I did locate local public fishing access and caught some truly enormous trout on salmon flies. I updated my TripAdvisor question with the fact that I figured it all out: there was […]
Read More
I tend to avoid hyperbole, so when I claim that the Isle of Skye, Scotland, is the most picturesque destination I have visited, I’m not exaggerating. It was too difficult to pick just ten photos for the customary Instagram post I make for each destination, so I ended up posting a lot more. The selection I have here includes some of my favorites. Really, my two weeks on the island didn’t do the location justice, nor did my photos—I was so busy with work that most of my time there was spent behind my computer. When I did have time to venture forth and explore, it was limited; I would have taken more photos if it weren’t for that gosh darn obligatory need to earn money. Skye has its own distinct culture and history within Scotland. I was attracted to it by my lovely friend Michelle, a native of Portree, Scotland, who encouraged me to visit during the best time—summer. Initially, I wanted to come in September, but she said that would be too late as summer would be over—crazy, right? So, I carved out two whole weeks in July for the trip instead. I’m glad I allotted extra time—typically, […]
Read More
I had never visited the Netherlands. My family did have a Dutch foreign exchange student my freshman year in high school but I was never interested in visiting the country, maybe for that reason. I figured I could delay a visit to Amsterdam until I was 85 years old – presuming that it would be the easiest place in the world to travel to, and probably the safest. After all, it’s flat, full of bicycles and Europeans; no point on rushing there, I can tackle when I have entered my “boring travel” mode. But then something crazy happened — I visited Amsterdam twice in the same summer. I stopped in Amsterdam for five days on the way to Scotland, the city is a convenient stop en route to the rest of Europe too and then again traveling from the USA en route to Austria. My time visiting was so great that I plan on making it a regular entry and exist destination to and from Europe, when possible. Well, as everyone else already knows, Amsterdam is a pretty great place. It has a youthful, energetic and cosmopolitan energy to its personality and its no wonder that it attracts people all […]
Read More
Mi Czech friends, David and Marketa, invited me to their wedding in Prague on was was my 43rd birthday, July 7th. Even though I was planning to stay in Brazil for the summer, I changed my plans and ended up celebrating my birthday at their wedding. It turns out that’s a pretty smart thing to do — you get a catered event with lots of people who want to party. I didn’t even have to pay for anything, and there was a champagne truck. I hope David and Marketa get married again soon have have a wedding on my birthday again.
Read More
This was my second time in two years in Fortaleza. I came back for a month to train at a local gym that I really like, work and chill on the beach. Increasingly I find myself returning to locations where there is less to be explored, and more that supports a comfortable life while I am there and Fortaleza is the perfect place for that. My favorite part of Fortaleza is the upscale gym where I train. It’s located a block from the beach in Beira Mar (“seaside”), and much fancier than the gyms I typically go to. It’s expensive too, but everyone is really nice and happy to see me there, and there are yoga classes too. Even though nobody speaks English (and I don’t speak Portuguese), everyone is really kind and supportive. There’s an attached cafe at the gym that sells me post-workout tapiocas, which I just can’t get enough of. I always make performance improvements while I am training there, and each time I leave Fortaleza I am excited to come back again, for longer. I like staying in Beira Mar, a central downtownish place alongside the beach. A long esplanade runs along the beach for about […]
Read More
When I spent time in Fortaleza, Brazil in 2022 I learned about a small beach town 45 minutes west of the city called Cumbuco. Locals apparently traveled there on the weekends for great beaches, live music concerts and parties. It is a famous destination for kite surfing (it seems like I am always traveling to famous destinations for kite surfing). So this time around, on my way to visiting Fortaleza again, I spent a week in Cumbuco first to do a reconnaissance trip to get the vibe and feel of it to see if it would be a place I’d like to stay again for longer in the future. Such reconnaissance trips are my modus operandi for sustained livability on the road and serve the purpose of scouting locations without a big, upfront investment. It’s better to spend a few days figuring out a place before I commit to spend a month, or longer there, sight unseen. In this way I can also get a beat on the neighborhood I want to stay in if I return which would be otherwise more difficult to do without being there first. Cumbuco is pretty cool. Well, actually it’s very hot during the […]
Read More
