I used the opportunity of Thanksgiving to escape to Seychelles for a week’s vacation. I prefer to save up years’ worth of credit card loyalty points in order to spend them on vacation excursions to places that I wouldn’t normally visit. The timing worked well to coincide with Thanksgiving and direct flights from Johannesburg, South Africa. The stay was spread across two Seychelles islands: Mahe and Prasiln – I ended up visiting a third island, Curieuse Island on a day excursion with a tour company. Curieuse is home to hundreds of wild giant tortoises which I had a lot of fun photographing and petting. Additional fun discoveries included the Coco de mer, or double coconut which is endemic to the island of Praslin. Owing to its protected status and relative obscurity, it is forbidden to take these coconuts from Seychelles. Another delightful discovery were the giant golden orb weaver spiders that are very common throughout the islands. They grow to the size of a human hand and the silk they produce is as strong as any spider. Fascinating to see so many, everywhere. In the Seychelles there is a wonderful, accessible mix of beaches where you can relax and swim, […]
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This story started the second week of March, 2020 in a Boise, Idaho public library. I arrived from New York City five days before after a week as a tourist. Since that time, news of the Covid-19 virus’ entry to the USA was spreading. New York City was locked down four days after my departure and the country scrambled to define a more cohesive, panicked response. Nearly two years later the world is still scrambling. Boise was nice and cozy. I made a habit of working from the central public library’s second floor atop a large rectangular table near the stairs. From here people ascending and descending were in my periphery and a low hum of library conversations was a welcome backdrop to otherwise mundane work. I remember one conversation in particular. A librarian was talking on the telephone to a work associate in a different library branch; the library would be closed indefinitely the next day on account of Covid. There went the old normal — my most vivid memory of the beginning of America’s Covid response. Everyone knows what has followed — government-mandated masks in public places, children prohibited from attending in-person school etc. Reductionist health protocols that […]
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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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I was intending to return to the USA for a few months this autumn. Coincidentally there was passage available on a transatlantic cruise ship leaving from Lisbon shortly after my departure from Split, Croatia. My mother had been planning for months to cross the Atlantic by ship and invited me to join her. Unfortunately there were no rooms aboard left to be booked three weeks before departure. As luck would have it, my step-father opted out of joining my mother and there was room and availability to share her room with her. We had two small beds and an outside deck overlooking the port side of the ship and were offered a great deal to upgrade to a larger room with unlimited mini-bar and clothes ironing included for $200 extra dollars. What a steal. In the mornings I awoke early as our journey was continually traversing time zones during the 12 days of our cruise and adding extra hours to the day. I exercised in the gym which was well equipped, even for an athlete-hobbyist such as myself, though the circular dumbbells were ill-equipped for a ship that was continually rocking side-to-side atop an ocean. Afterwards I would take a […]
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Before looking at a map I believed that Bermuda was somewhere in the Caribbean. Imagine my surprise to learn it is east of South Carolina about 800 miles. More surprises included that it is only 20 miles across and a mile wide. I stopped here for just part of a day on my way across the Atlantic. The four hours that I had in port at the town of Hamilton was plenty of time to traverse the island and get a sense of its personality, look and feel. I have never been to a more ritzy foreign destination. Huge mansions costing tens of millions of dollars and painted in bright pastels seem to be scattered everywhere. Something about being a tax haven attracts both the wealthy and insurance companies here. Since November is the offseason and the weather was unfortunately cloudy, I wasn’t given a sense of what a bright, summery beach day entails here. I think it is preferable to the loads of tourists and crowded roads that must congest this island that only has 65,000 residents. The whole place reminded me of a James Bond film location — beautiful houses, exotic cars and yachts, country clubs and golf […]
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