This expat-friendly beach destination is popular with surfers, Canadians and Europeans owing to the strength of their currency here. My international-friend group has been in my ear for the past year about it. After a short romance with CDMX last autumn, I decided that it was time to make time to explore Mexico so what better place to start than Puerto Escondido. I made a week-long recon trip to get my feet on the ground and get a taste of what it had to offer. It was great. The food was that classic Mexican fare that gringos like me envy and wish their mothers made them when they were children. The guacamole that I ordered beach-side, while supine on a restaurant-adjacent hammock facing the ocean one Tuesday afternoon came with flower petals on top. I learned that you can order not just micheladas but cheladas that are the equivalent to a michelada in Colombia — beer, ice and lime juice. I drank a few of them due to the scorching daytime heat. Even though it was early spring the mid-day temperatures along the water made seeking shade and a cool beverage requisite for those of us of fairer complexion.For ease […]
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I began 2019 with the goal to vastly improve my Spanish and what better place to improve it than Bogotá, the Colombian capital generally regarded as harboring the most-neutral accent. I already intended just how to do it too — three years ago when I first visited Bogotá a woman named Nataly approached me while I was working from a Starbucks cafe in Zona G to solicit Spanish classes. We exchanged contact information, she emailed me and, well, I was busy with other things and never responded. Actually, I did respond, it just took me three years. But when I did respond I knew it was her who I wanted to learn Spanish from — in the city that I grew to love so much in the interim spacing my reply. The universe had delivered me a teacher (this is how I like to make decisions — by following the path serendipity lays before me) and of course I felt compelled to oblige. I purchased 80 hours of Spanish classes and facilitated class three days a week over the lunch hour and set to work on the challenging task of learning a first, second-spoken language. As someone who studied Latin […]
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The tiny Colombian island of San Andrés lies within the Caribbean sea off of the coast of Honduras, northwest of the Colombian mainland. San Andrés is a popular vacation destination for Colombian mainlanders to escape to during holidays and weekends as the airfare is cheap, less than $100 each direction from the capital city, Bogotá. I visited mid-week for three nights for a good deal on accommodation; it ended up being a smart decision as the island was mostly empty of tourists. The AirBnb that I was at was about 100 meters from the shoreline and offered a scooter rental that was ideal for exploring the island. It only takes about an hour to circumnavigate the circumference of San Andrés and really, you don’t want or need a car for that. A popular alternative is to rent buggys – sort of two-row, suped-up, open-air golf carts and we saw many vacationers travelling around as two pairs of couples in this fashion. I was working while there and the internet was certifiably terrible, some of the worst and least-reliable of anywhere I have travelled. Restaurants and cafes don’t have accessible wifi for their patrons and even that which was provided in our accommodation was […]
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Three years ago I visited Shaman Winston in the Peruvian Amazon for an eye-opening ayahuasca experience; at that time, many happy discoveries within myself had me anticipating an inevitable, future return. This time around there were fewer surprises and a little more adversity, yet again I feel better afterwards for having done it. The trip entailed two nights in the jungle removed from electricity, wifi yet accommodating in ample supply of mud and biting flies. It took a plane from Lima, a car, a boat and a short hike crossing a river twice to reach the Shaman’s compound. I was barefoot and shirtless the entire time (the native flies were well fed) — the two weeks subsequent itching a fond reminder of my time spend mostly naked and unafraid. The low point of the weekend adventure was the afternoon of arrival — enduring a preliminary “cleansing ceremony” which wasn’t a part of my initial experience two years prior. The intent of the ceremony was to remove toxins and emotional restraints that would otherwise prohibit ayahuasca’s intended lessons. People who eat unhealthy diets, drink excessively need to be purged beforehand so that the plant can work its magic, so it was […]
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From Cologne I rented a car to explore some of the scenic country of the Rhineland and make it over to Bonn en route to meeting my friend who was on the other side of the German border in the Dutch town of Vaals. Bonn was just a short two nights but I was surprised at all the photo opportunities. Just exploring nearby Drachenfels castle overlooking the Rhine river was enough to pique my interest and intent to return again for a longer stay. I was most delighted to find references to the Nibelungenlied completely by accident in a small attraction outside of Bonn. Three years ago I read the Nibelungenlied (translated into English of course) and it instilled a curiosity to discover more of the geography and diverse culture of Germany. To find it here again after doing so was immensely fulfilling — it felt as though the universe was reminding me that I was following the proper path.
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While I was in Cologne, three different times, strangers approached and started conversations with me — a huge surprise. Europeans just don’t do that — and certainly not Germans! I had expected that people in Cologne were friendly, open-minded and warm as that was the driving factor for wanting to visit; Europe is nice but it’s typically much harder to meet new people as an outsider. The most interesting person I met was the manager of a hotel I stayed in who was family friends with the Kennedys, spoke seven languages and was somehow curious about me. We spoke for half an hour — Mathias left an impression and I can’t help but thing the universe was urging me to stick around and explore his city further. The second most interesting person I met while in Cologne was a woman about 60 years old who had invested in Apple stock in 1999 — we were admiring an Apple computer on display from the period (inside a design museum); she told me that because of that wise decision today she’s “almost rich” — in German terms I understood it to mean that she is. Cologne felt like a great place to […]
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I had eight days that I didn’t know what to with after leaving Croatia and before Thanksgiving happened back in the USA so I decided to explore the German Rhineland for the first time. It was a great fit because Split has direct flights to Düsseldorf (one of only four cities during the off-season). Conveniently, Cologne is just 20 miles south of Düsseldorf and was the main draw to me this trip. Bonn was tacked on at the end and facilitated en route planned meetup with my friend Ben who I had seen just weeks before in Bremen. Düsseldorf was an exciting destination because I had no expectations ahead of time. As luck would have it, I arrived the night before the annual one-day Carnival celebration; while the normal Carnival celebration is in February, on November 11th each year there is a one day Carnival event with street celebrations and people partying in costumes. It’s like the precursor to what follows three months later. Imagine my surprise to unexpectedly wander into a cohort of Germany cheerleaders line dancing and throwing each other in the air in front of a local pub. I took some fun photos of the festivities across a few […]
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For the fourth time in three years I returned to Croatia to work, swim and be barefoot. The waning Indian summer of October served as a re-calibration to the internationally-remote lifestyle I had set aside during 5 months living in Denver, Colorado; as such, I focused on walking everywhere, eating healthier and undoing the harm of rigid routine staying in one place always brings me. I did do a couple of touristy things during my first week in Split — a tour of the ship building yard and an excursion to a nearby cave (click link to see photos from each). Other than that though I focused my 5+ weeks more on living a healthy, happy and comfortable life along the sea and developing the daily routine to support it. My apartment was near the beach and afforded a beautiful view of the ever-changing sky between dawn, dusk (here are some highlights). The irony of escaping Denver, only to reinvent a routine elsewhere is a funny pattern I always repeat. My Split routine is really great; in the morning I walk to the gym, only two hundred meters from my front door. Afterwards I walk down to the sea, 300 meters […]
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My friend Ben had sent me a calendar of beer festivals in Germany this autumn. Neither of us had been able to visit Oktoberfest this year and were keen for a mulligan. Ben wanted to meet me in Stuttgart for the second-largest beer festival after Oktoberfest. I had just arrived into Split, Croatia however, and was decompressing from my time in the USA and quite enjoying it — I declined the invitation. Fast-forward a few weeks and it turns out there will be a different festival happening in Bremen the last weekend of October. We booked it – my first weekend adventure for quite some time. I had never been to Hamburg or Bremen and this reconnaissance trip was shorter and easier than Havana and Mexico City in terms of logistics — two nights, 48 hours. Short trips like this afford the freedom to be picky on what you do with your time because with so little of it, you are unencumbered by standard tourist obligations; you can curate what is most convenient and “best” without being obliged to visit a museum that other people feel is important. I had not done a trip like this one for a while […]
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One of the trendiest vacation destinations for Americans completely underwhelmed me. Perhaps expectations of Cuban cigars, classic cars and a laid-back atmosphere poisoned me to the reality I immediately perceived of deep economic and social problems masked with a tourist-friendly facade; the entire impression felt as though I was watching a performance with a simultaneous eye on the happenings behind the curtain. There are a few places I never need to return to and Havana is one of them. I knew going into it that it was a place for European and American tourists and “the real Cuba” existed in the rural areas not the capital. Nevertheless I was looking forward to a four day reconnaissance trip to scope it out to see if I wanted to come back to explore the rest further. I anticipated that I would see lots of touristy stuff – vendors, solicitors, “authentic Cuban X” for display and sale; none of that was a surprise. Nor was the highly curated 4-block radius of Old Town Havana — which is delightfully cute and very clean. Musicians playing in cafes and bars, asking you for tips. The classic old American cars from the 1940s and 1950s really […]
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