TRAVELS & ADVENTURES
In 1978, I took a year off from medical school and backpacked through Western Europe and the British Isles. One of the most memorable parts of this trip was the time I spent in Florence, Italy, where I first encountered the Duomo. I was amazed to see its pastel colors, interesting geometric shapes and hordes of tourists gaping at it.
We've made it to Puerto Maldinaro in Peru. It's now time to enter the Reserva Amazonica through the Manu National Park and Biosphere Preserve. It is hot and humid down here! I've researched this trip and know that at least 30% DEET and a mosquito net to sleep in are necessities to avoid the bite of an anopheles mosquito.
We've been in Israel for 1 week and have arrived in Jerusalem. This is a destination I've known about and had a great desire to visit since I was a teenager. The only problem is that it is a Saturday in Israel, the Jewish Sabbath. I didn't have a complete understanding of the extent to which Jewish commerce comes to a halt on the weekend.
Cliff and I are on our second week of travel in Papua New Guinea. We've flown in a small 6-seater propeller plane from Karawari to Mount Hagen. There is no runway. The plane descends rapidly over a mountain crest and as we touch down I realize that the landing area has a fair sized incline.
It's November of 2006. Cliff, Kunta (our guide) and I have just spent 3 days traveling on a small boat up the Niger River to our destination, the fabled city of Timbuktu. Our goal for today is to head up the Sahara Desert to our new destination, a Tuareg camp on the way to Taudenni with its important salt mines.
I was a teenager in the 1960s, a tumultuous decade characterized by the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. There was the March on Selma and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Who can forget Woodstock? And then there was the War in Vietnam.
It's a Sunday in November off 2007 and we're cruising the streets of Madurai, India. One would expect things to be relatively quiet early on this day of the week. Not in Madurai!
I'm fascinated by turtles! First of all, I've always been amazed by their cartilaginous shells that act as shields for their protection. It has been determined by scientists that the earliest known turtles date from 220 million years ago which makes these creatures one of the oldest reptile groups, antedating lizards, snakes and crocodiles.
Sometimes the best things happen when they are unplanned and you least expect them. That's what happened to Cliff and me on our second day in Lhasa, Tibet when we went to the Jokhang Square.
We're on safari in the Masai Mara in Kenya. Until this trip to Africa, the only big game animals I had ever seen were on television or in a zoo; however, now the zoo is live, in real time and with no cages. Our goal is to see the "Big Five" in this famous reserve where Out of Africa was filmed.
