Random Past Posts
The Road to Uaxactun (Guatemala) The muddy, bumpy, 14-mile trek to the town (and the archaeological sites) of Uaxuctun takes just over an hour. So that’s how much time I got to spend with a blind, 100-year-old Guatemalan man named Julio and his great-grandson, Manuel. More...
Kiwi Springtime: Queenstown, New Zealand New Zealanders refer to themselves as "Kiwis." And of course most Americans are aware of the brown, furry fruit of the same name. But if you're tracing the original source of the term "kiwi," be aware that the chicken-sized bird came before that egg-sized More...
Kashmir on the Lake: Srinigar Houseboats Srinigar, in the Kashmir region of northern India, sits on a big, shallow lake at the edge of the Himalayas. Most ‘hotels’ are houseboats, reachable only by hand-paddled gondolas. Central Srinigar is like a cross between Venice Italy and More...
Cuba (Part 5) Club Tropicana Another in a seemingly-never-ending series of my pictures from Cuba. Remember I-Love-Lucy’s Cuban-born husband Ricky Ricardo? Ricky’s 1950s New York nightclub, the Tropicana, was named for and patterned after the real and original Tropicana in an upscale part of More...
Iran: Azadi Tower at Night It was originally called Shahyad Tower -- built in honor of the kingly "shahs" of Iran. So now, since the Islamic Revolution that ousted the last Shah, it's been renamed Azadi -- "Freedom" -- Tower. Built in the 1970s, it More...