Having spent days trying to figure out a way to keep the bears out of the garbage at my little log cabin in the mountains in Connecticut, I must admit I feel a little hypocritical traveling to Florida’s Nature Coast on a wildlife tour. But here I am, swimming with the manatees and cooing over the fish and birds in the accurately-named Crystal River and feeling my heart break over orphaned baby bears at the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park – a rehabilitation center for injured or orphaned animals. I mean, what is cuter than this bear still too young to be foraging in garbage cans… Read More…

A partial list of the critters I have seen while kayaking would include, alligators,  dolphins, water snakes, ducks (duh!) eagles, hawks, ospreys, anhinga and snapping turtles. Just listing all the wildlife makes it sound as if kayaking was a chaotic experience. In fact, it’s just the opposite. There’s something so peaceful about moving slightly above the surface of the water; kinda in it and kinda not. The gentle slosh of the paddles is my only contribution to the sound track provided by nature. Wekiva River, Florida One of my favorite kayaking spots is the Wekiva River in Orlando, Florida not far from Walt Disney World… Read More…

Over dinner, when I asked my travel companion, the Belgian journalist, Raphael Meulders, what he enjoyed most about our day traveling in northwest Ethiopia, he hesitated about two seconds and answered, “the people”.  I know just what he means. We had a day full of moments that made me feel as if I’d just stepped into a National Geographic special. Our bus stopped to wait while cows and goats were shooed from the street and we gaped at the monkeys in the trees, pelicans on Lake Tana and the colorful centuries-old murals at the church of Ura Kidane Mihret. But it was the people we… Read More…

All this talk of chocolate and coffee has me thinking about Geneva; because no matter where you go in this city, you are never far from either. In keeping with the theme of GO HOW,  that is how you get where you go matters –  I want to stress that sweets notwithstanding, Geneva is a city for people who like to be on the move. They’ve got trains, they’ve got buses, they’ve got boats and (my personal favorite) they’ve got airplanes! Boy oh boy do they have airplanes. EasyJet has a hub here and fifty-nine other airlines serve little Geneva Airport. And not only that,… Read More…

After six weeks of traveling on assignment – from the steamy heat of  Singapore to mid-winter in Christchurch, New Zealand, back to tropical Bangkok and then on to the Arabian desert –  I finally took two days off from work and plopped myself down on a beach blanket by the Indian Ocean in Dibba in the United Arab Emirates. I found the Holiday Beach Motel through bookings.com (which has a much better selection of hotels in out-of-the-way places than asiarooms.com, that’s for sure) and selected it for its great price and for the fact that it had a dive/snorkel shop right on the premises. Forget… Read More…

It should not be surprising that Bangkok, home of the ancient gilded barge, the horse drawn tram, and the famous tuk tuk, should now boast about its large and modern international hub airport. And as the growth in air travel shifts from North America and Europe to the far and Mideast, Bangkok is seeing a boom in airport traffic.  Many of these travelers do not have Thailand as their destination; they are passing through on their way somewhere else. That is what brought me there early this month. My plan was to travel from Christchurch in New Zealand to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates… Read More…

Lots of people love to travel. Those crowded airplanes? That’s what they’re telling us.  On this blog, Go How, I do intend to pander to your love of travel, ‘cuz I’m like you. I need no excuse to pack a bag. I’ve visited every continent but Antarctica, fifty countries and most of the states in the US. But I also have a goal that’s larger than just writing about destinations and sharing my photos and interviews with people I’ve met. Exploring the world just isn’t big enough for me! I want to expand the notion of travel to include how we go. If you consider… Read More…