(Note: Readers familiar with my travel blog will know that I try not to describe the obvious about places I have traveled. How many ways can I talk about white sand, sun and wind? All good, but you can learn that anywhere.} A few months ago, I read the new book by Kim Stanley Robinson … More Aruba: A Little Ministry for the Future
“With Cultural Diversity and National Solidarity We Move Towards the 21st Century.” That noble slogan greeted us at a bus stop along the way from Belize City to San Ignacio in 1997, our last plunge into Mayan territory and culture. Another signpost paints a less utopian picture of the new country at a literal crossroads. … More My Mayan Culture Fixation: Part 3–Belize
Ed: This is another set of travel reminiscences, during the time of no travel due to the pandemic. About 35 years ago my husband Phil and I spent a winter vacation with our six-year old daughter in the southeastern Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, the free and sovereign state of Quintana Roo. Mayans currently are about … More My Mayan culture fixation-part 1
On our fourth week of March in Colombia we headed for a pre-planned trip into the part of the Andes called Los Nevados National Park. About 8 hours by bus from Medellin toward the west, Los Nevados consists of mountain peaks of up to 17,000 feet, glaciers, volcanos, and a wide array of ecological regions. … More Adventure Travel–Don’t Panic: Part 3
My Colombian daughter-in-law has been building a lovely traditional two storey house above Medellin in a town called San Pedro de los Milagros. She has been project manager from Minnesota via cell phone while at home with a new baby and a preschooler. Now that she is here for a few months, she is managing a … More Maybe a bike-oriented Airbnb in Colombia?: Part 2
Note: My husband and I are spending a month in and around Medellin. Our Colombian daughter-in-law is here with her family and her two young children. She is sitting out the Minnesota winter and completing a project of building a simple house in a small lovely village above Medellin called San Pedro de los Milagros. … More La Transformacion: Part 1
Guest blogger: Lily White, who just spent one month in Argentina. Thanks, sis! Sometime between the 1970s and 80s, hitchhiking fell out of fashion in the USA. Signs began popping-up along the entrance ramps to highways, and stories of dangerous hitchhikers circulated around our small Midwestern town. My mother and Aunt Dorothy cut cautionary articles … More Hay Maté!: The case for picking up hitchhikers in 2019
Four years ago my permaculturist daughter decided to take her 20 month old daughter Alder with her on a month-long trip to Costa Rica. Half of the time would be spent in the central mountains on an organic farm as a WOOFer. Not having been to Costa Rica before, I began to worry about the … More Grandma to the Rescue—or so I thought
In mid-summer 2013 my son brought his new love and her preteen daughter to visit us for a couple of weeks from Medellin, Colombia. If you are trying to sell Minneapolis to denizens of “the city of eternal spring” (Medellin), a July visit is a good tactic. Having visited Medellin and its gorgeous mountainous environs … More Adventure Travel in the Colombian Andes: It’s payback time!
Six years ago (2011) our son was living and working in Medellin, Colombia. It seems that North Americans, when the topic of Medellin comes up in the conversation, immediately go to Narcos and Pablo Escobar. It’s like if you said you were going to visit Chicago, your friends would say: aren’t you worried about Al Capone? … More It’s Colombia, not Columbia!
Other states, other lives, other souls 