TRAVELS & ADVENTURES
It's early in the morning and we're cruising down the Karawari River in Papua New Guinea, stopping at villages along the way. Why do this by boat? Because there are no roads that connect any of these villages! This is the reason that 600 languages are spoken on this island off the coast of Australia.
My wife, Lisa, and I had just toured Israel. We decided that we would regret it if we came all the way to the Middle East without going to Petra, Jordan. It was clearly time to take a trip to The Treasury!
An amazing thing happened to us while we were touring the Galapagos Islands in April of 2009. La Cumbre Volcano on the Isla Fernadina began to erupt while we were sailing from the Isla Isabela to Punta Moreno. Here's what happened...
As a young man, I can still remember sitting in the auditorium of my medical school listening to the Dean calling out our draft numbers for the war effort in Vietnam based on our birthdays. Mine was 315-whew!!! Little did I know at the time that I would develop a fascination with South East Asia.
Here's the situation. Cliff, Kunta (our guide), the boat driver and I are traveling up the Niger River in Mali on our way to Timbuktu. This is a three day excursion with no electricity, no grocery stores and no shelter! I was glad that I had three camera batteries that were charged and twelve memory cards because what we saw was worth photographing.
In 2005, my friend Cliff and I went to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. This is a closed society under despotic rule that has strict regulations and limits regarding travel by foreigners. You might then wonder, how would two Americans like us end up in this Asian country?
When I was 27 years old, I took a year off between my undergraduate studies and my first year of medical school to travel throughout Western Europe and the British Isles using "Europe on a $24 a Day" as my Bible. I did not know it then, but this experience would shape my young life.
