There are a few places I’ve been that are engrained in my brain like true snapshots – and believe me, I am not one of those people with a photographic memory.

I mean, if I call these spots to mind – while standing in line at the bank, or waiting on hold on the phone back home in Orlando – it’s like a moving Polaroid complete with sound and smells comes rushing back.

That said, it takes a lot of sensory stimulation to burn a place into my brain.

A family vacation years ago to Mackinac Island, for example, didn’t have what it took – I can barely recall anything apart from the ferry ride over, and arguing with my siblings over cotton candy.

But there is a street in the chaotic winding medina in Fez, Morocco – the Talaa Kabira – that I think I will always be able to see, smell and hear, with only a thought. At the top of the street is the market. Flies are the only things that stir the still air in the heavy summer heat that hovers like a hair dryer’s heat blown from the Sahara.

At the butcher stalls, diamond shaped goats’ heads and camel heads with, heavy-lashed eyes announce the meat du jour. Where the signs read ‘dejaj’ in Arabic and cheery cartoon chickens are inked below, birds fuss about in cages until the butcher plucks one for the taking.

He pops it onto the scale, then turns the chicken’s neck toward Mecca for a swift slice of the knife and a kill as merciful as possible, and all in God’s name. ‘Bismillah,’ says the butcher, just as the blade slices the bumpy flesh that always feels like my own as I try not to cringe.

There are Berber women with tattoos on their foreheads and chins and watery eyes who tug at my sleeves as I shop and say ,”Un dirham, Madame.” They bless me in Allah’s name if I give.

There are men guiding donkeys loaded with crates of Coke bottles and canisters of gas. They shout ‘Balek’ – ‘look out!’ – but forge on through the crowds as their heavy loads pass.

There is rotten fruit and animal dung to avoid slipping on as I walk farther into the labyrinth.

And bundles of fresh mint for tea piled high like mini mountains that transport my nostrils from putrid to pleasant

And above it all, wailing in the wind, the sound of the mosque calling the faithful to pray.

Men in their long white djellabas file past into the mosques – the dark dents in their foreheads speak for themselves as to just how many times they have gone prostrate to pray.

- by Terry Ward

If I may pass along some sage advice about traveling in Spain and Portugal, it would be this: mind the cubiertos. You know that bread in a baggie that’s dropped off on your table in a manner so casual and gracious you’re certain it’s free? Well, it’s not.

Pop open the pan and you can be sure a cubierto – cover charge – will also pop up on your bill.

And you know those lovely looking goose barnacles served as a starter at that fine seafood restaurant on the coast north of Lisbon? The ones the waiter delivered to your table the moment you sat down, and practically called a gift from the chef?

Okay, maybe your limited Portuguese misunderstood the gift part. But still…did you really deserve the six euro fleecing on top of your already hefty bill? It’s a fine line in Europe, knowing when something is given as a little gift and when you’re going to end up paying – often dearly – for the pleasure.

Usually, at the end of the meal, if you’re offered a small shot of alcohol, you can count on it being a thank you gesture from the restaurant. If you’re not sure, you can ask. But that can end up being embarrassing, too.

The way I see it, anything offered to me before I’ve ordered is suspect. I’ve found that in Spain and Portugal in particular – and especially in the more touristy cities such as Barcelona and Salamanca – anything just dropped off at the table implies a cubierto.

In Portugal, I passed on the initial bread offering at one restaurant, but naively believed that the second basket of tiny melba toasts delivered with my meal was included. Needless to say, it wasn’t. Those Europeans are clever, I tell you.

And it can get even trickier once you’re onto the cubierto concept, and try to outfox them by not eating the bread. In Spain, I found myself trying to argue the cubierto off my bill, indicating the bread rolls in their little baggies, pushed to the edge of the table in rejection.

“Are you sure you didn’t have any bread?” demanded the waiter. And I found myself wondering if somehow I had.

- by Terry Ward

I hadn’t planned on going to Tombouctou. My goal was to get to Dogon Country and maximize my time there. But when I found myself in Mopti with extra days and my stomach recovered from ‘Les Galettes de Dogon,’ I figured I probably wouldn’t get a better chance. Now or never.

I could fly, in which case I’d have a day there, or I could hire a 4WD and a driver and stay as long as I want. The bus takes 2-4 days, depending on weather and breakdowns. The boat takes 3 days. The 4WD takes 7.5 hours with a normal driver, but 7 hours flat if you go with Cargo, the Mopti driving machine. I should say 7 hours, including the flat tire we got. Also, with a driver, you don’t have to pull over to the side of the road to pray, as you do with the buses here.

We sped North to Tombouctou on Wednesday, virtually floating over the dusty red washboard hardpack, passing Pelle cowherders, who walk with their cows and drink their milk. Aside from a few days every couple months in town to sell their cows, these people walk and sleep with their herd, and cows milk as their only food. They wear cone-shaped hats that make them easy to identify, but they don’t make these hats. We passed by the village of another tribe that makes the hats for them. It’s similar to the shoe situation. Everyone in Africa wears either Flip Flops or leather shoes of some kind, and you would think there would be shoe factories here, but those are in China. I even saw a pair of NIKEs for sale in Bamako.

Cargo got his name from riding on top of his father’s truck all over Northern Mali as a kid. His right foot is 5” shorter than his left – everyone can recognize him at a distance. He seems to know everyone in every town and always has a smile on his face. We talked in French on the drive. I’m fond of telling people about the Earth, stars, the Universe, and evolution – things they know nothing about. I told Cargo the Earth was 4 billion years old, and he thought about that for a while. Then he said, “That means, next year the Earth will be 4 billion and one?”

We crossed the Niger river on the ferry and arrived Tombouctou by 4pm. Cargo got me a Tuareg guide, who took me on an evening camel (Dromedary, actually) ride into the Sahara to visit some Tuaregs. I kept expecting to see Omar Sharif ride up on his camel. I sat and had tea with the Tuareg family. They had many questions about my watch, which has a GPS. They hadn’t heard of GPS, so I explained how it worked, and they were amazed. They told me about the salt caravans to the desert and how they navigate by the stars, but also by the smell of the sand.

Did you miss Part 1?

As we trekked further into the woods, which wasn’t very far considering we were all wearing flip-flops and moving at a snail’s pace, there was talk that maybe we should go back. However, the prevailing majority concluded that by virtue of its beauty, Hawaii can’t be that dangerous. It won’t surprise anyone to learn that none of us were seasoned outdoorsmen.

Finally, after 45 minutes of sidling barefoot over slippery rocks, we made it to our destination: a clearing in the brush that revealed a thundering, seven-story high waterfall emptying into a shallow pool. Without thinking (i.e. removing my cell phone from my pocket) I waded in. It was triumphant. Normally on vacations the only waterfalls I see at 7:00 in the morning are in my dreams. Now I was ruining my new cell phone in a real one. It was refreshing.

Our next stop along the rocky road was to a narrow cliff overlooking the infamous “Jaws” beach, named so for size and deadly ferocity of its waves. The infamous 70-foot monster waves for which is it known only come along every so often, but looking down at the white water spraying off the “small” 15 foot waves was enough to make me laugh at all the times I’d screamed “THAT WAS AWESOME” when boogie boarding a five-foot wave to shore during my youth (two days ago).

Next we took a turn off down an even more narrow dirt road leading to a small park on the coast. We walked out onto a series of enormous rocks as waves crashed around us sending spray over our heads.
Being so engulfed, one gets the feeling that one is small and fragile and wet. So we left, and on our way back we stopped at a roadside shack selling fruit shakes made from local produce such as papaya and pineapple. As far as we could tell, it was the only structure for miles. Yet here they were selling fresh, delicious insanely cheap fruit drinks. It was the type of stand that New York Magazine would blog about, but instead it existed in this place where Capitalism didn’t seem to exist.

Finally, almost four hours later, we made it to the town of Hana. We couldn’t have been more excited to be out of the car and at our long-sought after destination. But as soon as we parked the car, we came to a horrifying collective realization – it sucked. It was just like every other small town in America, with one school and a post office. The beach was calm and quiet and the roads were nearly empty. It was as peaceful as promised, but it was also something unexpected. Boring. Utterly boring. We visited a snack shack on the water, bought some drinks, and promptly got back in the car.

The funny part was, as we sat there in the car, lamenting our destination, we also found an excitement for our trip home. You see, the road running along the Southern coast is considered almost impassable for vehicles other than SUVs. Some rental car companies will prohibit you driving your car on that road. We checked out rental agreement. Ours didn’t. We looked at each other and all agreed – if we couldn’t enjoy the destination, we’d sure as hell enjoy the journey.

by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame

While waiting on an absurdly long line in Chipotle today, I got to thinking about how people tend to view travel (the actual transportation portion of it) in one of two ways.

First there’s the school of Zen-like masters who preach patience in the face of delayed gratification. This is the “The culmination is worth the effort” club.

Then there is the opposite sect who preach a philosophy not of instant gratification, but constant gratification. That is, “Every minute you aren’t enjoying is a waste.” Or, as we’ve come to know this romantic notion “It’s the journey not the destination.”

I’m not sure which camp I fall into. Clearly the principals require that you fall on one side of the divide – you can’t sometimes appreciate the journey (say, if you are flying first class) and sometimes bypass the journey in favor of the destination (if perhaps you are sitting in front of a child singing the entire Dora The Explorer soundtrack). I’m inclined to say that I am in the “Culmination is worth the effort” camp. Until airports replace those barely padded plastic chairs with massaging recliners, I’m going to have to say that the journey part isn’t all that fun.

Then, as I snaked my way around the far corner of the Chipotle, I remembered my trip to Maui a few years ago. My friends and I thought it would be fun to wake up obscenely early one morning and make the drive out to Hana, a town which is conveniently located on the eastern tip of Maui, completely opposite the developed Western coast, where we were staying. Although Hana is a mere 56 miles from our hotel in Kihea, because the mountainous roads are so windy and fraught with rocky terrain and one-lane bridges, the drive will take the average person 3 hours.

Trieste has nothing going for it other than nice sunsets looking toward Venice. You don’t need to go there. But you do need to hear the story of how I lost my nice watch.

Now that I’m in Italy, I can finally get some decent food. I go to a fancy wine store and restaurant where I’m able to talk Zinfandel with someone who knows. I taste one of his Zinfandels and I’m in heaven. He’s a friendly guy and we get talking about wine, and next thing I know I’m having a fabulous homemade pasta meal that is really the first good meal I’ve had since I left New York. He tells me he’s going to the cellar to get me a special bottle of wine. A 1984 something. I don’t know what it was, but it was just for me, so I couldn’t refuse. I told him I was just having one glass because it’s lunch time, and he says he doesn’t care, I’m going to love it.

So I have the glass of wine, and it’s nothing special. But the pasta is amazing! I’m thrilled. I’m so thrilled that I order another glass of wine because he went to all the trouble. Again, it’s not very good, but I’m having a good time anyway.

I stumble out of the wine bar in the middle of the afternoon, and I think to myself I’ll just go to the park for a nap in the sun. I put my stuff down, take off shoes and socks, and I lay on the grass, soaking up the rays. Then I realize I don’t want a watch-strap tan, so I take off my Tissot T-touch travel watch and put it on the grass by my hip. Forty five minutes later I wake up, groggy, put my socks and shoes back on and stumble back to my hotel room to drink water.