All Blog Posts Tagged 'hypertravel' (13)

(part 2 of 2, for more pictures see here)

First you have to realize that Puerto Lobos is not your typical Mexican coastal beach town, with palapas and cabanas, mar y sol,…

        I stop. “Wha’dya’ got?  Is it good?”

        “Is it good?  Hell, yes, it’s good.  D’you think I’m gonna’ get you some Mexican carnicero to snake the drain that’s gotta’ process all those hamburguesas, man?  It’s the real thing, hombre…

        “Cuanto…

See video Voices United for Mali - 'Mali-ko'

It’s horrible, of course, the war currently going on in Mali, the desecration of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu, and the disruption of lives in a place where life doesn’t allow much margin for error. …

Author's blog

Traveling through space is geography.  Traveling through time is history.  I just finished reading the Travels of Marco Polo and Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux simultaneously; okay,…

North Korea is like the urban legend of the Japanese soldier still fighting WWII out on some lonely island in the remote Pacific.  In his mind, it’s all still very real for him.  When he starts shooting at us, then it’s real for us, too.  At first I didn’t know if they were even going to let me in…

China’s cities are so large and mas sively developing that it’s sometimes frightening, and as hard as ever to travel independently.  There’s scarcely a word or destination written in pinyin (Romanized Chinese)—much less English—in the typical Chinese bus or train station, nor counter help equipped to deal with it…

As the plane is landing at Chinggis Khan International Airport in Ulaan Bator, I look down at the dirt tracks swirling through the pastures surrounding the runway.  They look something like a beginner’s guide to chaos theory, the likely paths and the harder ones, converging and re-converging according to some logic…

For pictures see author's blog here.

Any flight that lea ves at 1:20 in the morning is already doomed as far as I’m concerned.  It can only go down hill from there, especially when the airplane seat back doesn’t…

Puerto Libertad is a notch ahead of Puerto Lobos.  At least it has some hotels, and restaurants, too—even an Oriental one, I hear.  But I know in my heart the trip’s really over, anyway, because once…

Puerto Lobos is a study in contrasts.  If (the more developed) Bahia de Kino feels like “land’s end”—per Lonely Planet—then this is off the map, though that is changing with the new highway, as previously mentioned.  My only visit two years ago, the road had just been paved to here—from the north down the…

For pictures, see author's blog here

(part 1)  We Americans have our Wild West just like Mexico has its “norte bárbaro,” and they’re the same place of course, that vast expanse of land bounded by two mountain ranges and stretching from Utah to Jalisco, Mexico.  It’s home to cowboys and Indians ranging from Utes to Aztecs, vaqueros to buckaroos.  Where…

After four days in Pohnpei, FSM, some of them with drenching rain, all of them with power blackouts, it’s good to get the hell outta’ Slidell, that is Pohnpei.  I’ll leave half a bear of honey behind, but the flashlight and Virgen de Guadalupe votive candle will go with me, presumably all the way back to LA, since the trip’s almost over.  And certainly the brownies will come along, too.  Micronesians make damn good brownies btw.  So I board the plane—a pound or two heavier—in a downpour and…

Baguio is the only bump in a long ride up the coast from Manila to the far reaches of north Luzon.  I’m sure there’s a route that hugs the coast the entire way, but I wanted to stop at Baguio first, before continuing on to Vigan.  Manila is only 150mi/250km away from Baguio, but after a seven-hour bus ride, seems much farther.  That’s because the going is so slow through town after congested town full of motorbikes and three-wheelers putt-putting around and clogging up the main road, that…