It’s not quite what you expect when you arrive at your holiday accommodations. Instead of:  ”Welcome, there is chocolate on your pillow and happy hour starts at 5?” my visit to the ...

Kathy Carroll talks with humor about her nickname as the “cat lady” on Lanai. If that nickname makes you think of an old-lady recluse with a dozen cats, then you have the ...

The working day  doesn’t start too early at La Casa delle Acque, a small organic orange farm at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily. It’s around 8 O’clock. The sun has lit ...

Slowly edging our way along the river bank, the light from our torch scanned for the unmistakable orange glint reflected in the eyes of this night-time killer. A close relative of the ...

Sometimes a great meal is great because of the cuisine. Sometimes it is the companions or the ambiance. This unlikely photo is of me having one of the meals I remember most ...

I was asked recently for a recommendation on a Spanish language immersion program but came up empty. While I have wanted to take Spanish classes in Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America, ...

The Amateur Traveler talks to Chris Guillebeau from the Art of Non-Conformity about his years volunteering in West Africa with the NGO (non-governmental organization) Mercy Ships. Chris and his wife volunteered with ...

The staff and I piled into an antiquated 1980 Toyota Landcruiser. Like all of my other experiences in Bolivian vehicles the seat belts were missing. There were four of us in the ...

On January 12, 2010, a severe earthquake (magnitude 7.0 on the Richter scale) shattered the heart of Haiti and practically destroyed the capital city of Port-au-Prince.  An estimated 270,000 people died, 300,000 ...

The Amateur Traveler talks to Lillie Marshall of AroundTheWorldL.com about the 3 months she volunteered in Ghana in sub-Saharan West Africa on her round the world trip. She worked for the program ...