Maybe you’ve seen the photos coming out of Peru over the last week or two: raging rivers, washed-out bridges, mud-buckled railroad lines, and tourists being airlifted from under the shadow of Machu Picchu in the town of Aguas Calientes.
What is a bucket list?
It’s a list of things you would like to do before you kick the bucket (i.e., die).
We’re here to suggest — despite it all — that you keep Peru on (or consider adding it to) your travel bucket list.
Why?
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Filed Under:
Travel by Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
You took the San Martin city train? Foreigners usually just take taxis here.
– A local porteño, eyes wide, expresses shock at our opting to take one of Buenos Aires’ grittier public transport lines during our first week in town.
Taxi cabs are easy: they get you from point A to B directly and with relative efficiency. In a taxi you don’t have to deal with people leaning on you and accidentally hitting your head with a shopping bag; there are no unnecessary pauses, no large-crowd odor issues, and no long waits at stops.
But inter-city public transport does have its advantages. More often than not, we choose it over taxis whenever we have the chance.
We confess: we have a love affair with public transport. And here’s why. Continue Reading »
Sure, we enjoyed our time in the Galapagos Islands. It’s difficult not to when you are surrounded by blue-footed boobies dancing their way to marriage and penguins torpedoing their way through the water.
But when travelers fly in and out of Ecuador only to see the Galapagos, they are missing out.
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How do you get food to look like that? What kind of camera do you use? Do you use any special lenses?
Go to a big food website and the food glistens, the light is perfect and everything is in its place. But let’s say you are a traveler carrying a pocket or DSLR camera and you have a fascinating, colorful spread before you that you’d like to share with others or capture for your own memories. Conditions are tricky and time is limited.
What to do? Continue Reading »
- Capturing Humanity: 10 Tips for Great Street and Market Photos
- Guerilla Food Photography: 10 Tips for Taking Great Food Photos
We eat the mountain…and the mountain eats us.
– David, a mine guide and former miner in Potosi, echoes a decades-old sentiment about the city’s lifeblood, its world-famous silver mines.
It was late morning and the sun was bright, the sky crystal at 13,400 feet in Potosi, Bolivia. We were being tended to by a group of schoolgirls dressed as nurses at a hygiene fair; they sought to teach us the methods and benefits of properly washing our hands.
The mood: uplifting and hopeful.
Contrast this with just the day before. Continue Reading »
I feel sorry for the Colombians. They only have three types of peppers.
– A pepperista — surrounded by 40 different pepper varieties at the Mistura Peruvian food festival — sheds unintended humorous light on one of the many advantages of Peruvian cuisine.
Peruvian cuisine has attained a certain hipness over the last decade. So when we put out a call to our network for Peruvian food suggestions prior to our visit to Lima, we were surprised when the net response amounted to “ceviche and pisco sours.”
For sure those are requisite tastes, but the Peruvian food scene offers so much more. Continue Reading »
Have you ever been thankful for an experience that you wouldn’t choose to repeat? Continue Reading »
Filed Under:
Travel by Audrey Scott
One decade ago — late December 1999. As people counted down and stockpiled their cans of beans in anticipation of a Y2K-related world meltdown, I visited Dan in San Francisco while on extended leave from my Peace Corps assignment in Estonia. The word from Peace Corps management: get out because there are two Soviet-built power plants nearby – one in Russia, the other in Lithuania — that just might blow.
Although there would be other catastrophes — numerous ones in fact — that would visit the world during the ensuing decade, the Y2K bug never really bit.
But for us, the travel bug did.
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