Pictured: two great friends, former Peace Corps volunteers in Guatemala, one of whom I met on the balcony of a hostel in Panama City. We kept in touch and I came to veg out at their place in St. Croix for a month when I first decided to drop out of all other employment and just do travel writing. I owe them a lot of inspiration. Weeks later I was back, on my first book assignment for Rough Guides covering all of the Virgin Islands, US and British.

Here they are strolling the loveliest beach in all of the US Virgin Islands, Sandy Point on St. Croix. It was featured in The Shawshank Redemption at the very end (posing as Mexico). Because it is out on a point beyond a wide and lush nature preserve, there is no view of civilization unless you walk way down around the bend. It has the potential to be dangerous, what with the seclusion and all, but in groups we always felt OK. It’s a perfect place for a beach picnic and a swim.

The last time I was there, a hurricane far offshore had reached out with some turbulent waves and rubbed the beach down to some of the large boulders underneath. Such is the nature of beaches – they can come and go.

TRAVEL PHOTOS OF THE WEEK 2012: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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Music is everywhere in Havana, drifting through the air, around the corner, in that shop over there, out that window up there. I found these two street musicians in a small square in Old Havana. They weren’t playing the blues (it was “son” music) but the colors suggested otherwise. Shot with a Pentax K1000 and Fuji Superia film.

Subscribe to follow my weekly travel photos in 2012 as I feature 52 photos from 52 countries.

(This photo is a submission for Travel Photo Roulette, a weekly roundup of photos submitted according to a changing theme. The round’s winner hosts the next round.)

After spending a night on an island in Lake Titicaca, I continued my journey from Puno, a lakeside town on the Peru side, onwards to La Paz, Bolivia. Along the way I stopped at Copacabana, just over the border. Pictured is the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana where you can find the Sanctuary of the Black Virgin, a wood carving of Mary by Francisco Tito Yupanqui in 1592. The hill nearby is called Calvary (Calvario) which features stations of the Seven Sorrows of Mary and a great view of the lake. But the one thing I remember most about my short bus layover in Copacabana is not being able to get that damn Barry Manilow song out of my head. (Don’t click the link. Seriously. I warned you.) This was shot on a Pentax K1000 (film!).

TRAVEL PHOTOS OF THE WEEK 2012: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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An Interview with Nellie Huang

The magazine’s tagline is “Travel Light, Travel Far” and WildJunket makes good on both: it adds no bulk to your backpack and features stories on locations ranging from Arctic glaciers to Namibian desert sands. Along with five destination features, regular departments include travel tips, a calendar spotlighting special events around the world, snapshots from the road, gear reviews, and even a bit of philosophizing on the traveling life. The pages are rich with eye candy and various other travel writers have contributed the stories along with Huang’s own work.

I posed a few questions to Nellie about the magazine and how it came to be…

What inspired you to create a digital magazine? Did you have any reservations about the idea?

Since becoming a full-time travel writer, I’ve always harbored a dream of setting up my own travel media company. A company that’s based on my own travel ideals. With the arrival of the digital era, most readers now favor digital publications to print media, so it seemed like the perfect time to launch a digital magazine. Many online publishers were producing e-books; we wanted to be different. And since I’d already built up a substantial readership on wildjunket.com, we decided to take the plunge and seize the opportunity. It was actually Alberto, my husband, who proposed the idea at the beginning of 2011 – he’s since left his full-time job to focus on building our magazine.

Of course we had reservations at the beginning: Would the two of us be able to handle the workload? Would we be able to generate enough income? Most importantly – would the magazine sell? We spent months researching, weighing our options and considering the feasibility; but everything seemed to point in the right direction and we decided to go ahead with it and haven’t looked back since.

What do you expect out of a travel publication and how did that influence how you designed yours?

I read plenty of travel magazines and I write for a number of them as well – so I’m very clear on what I want out of a travel publication: quality writing that really touches and inspires readers. Spreads of attractive photos and a slick design are a must too, but for me, writing is the key to the success of a publication. That’s how we designed our magazine – with the writing quality as our top priority. We’ve been extremely lucky to work with a pool of excellent writers like Candace Rardon and Abigail King to produce the type of content we aim for.

The photography is lovely. Who are the people behind the images?

Thank you! Having top quality photography is also one of our priorities. Our photos are provided by several professional photographers like Lola Akinmade and Jimmy Cheng, while most feature photos were provided by our mulit-talented writers.

What obstacles did you have to overcome to make this happen?

One of the biggest obstacles in the magazine production was setting up partnerships with online magazine stores. We had to learn a lot of technicalities in a very short time period and that was rather stressful. We’ve also had to pull all-nighters for several months and work through the holiday season, but looking at the final product, it was well worth it.

What are your hopes and expectations? Where do you want to go with this?

When we first started the magazine, we made sure our priority was to create a quality publication – we didn’t want to think about generating a profit or anything else until that was accomplished. For now, we’re happy with the huge amount of positive feedback we’ve received but we know that it’s a permanent process and we need to constantly improve to reach our goal. As a small startup, we want to take things slow and go step by step, we don’t want to be overly ambitious. In the future, we might hire staff to join our team or publish the magazine in print – who knows?

What do you want the reader to take away from WildJunket Magazine?

Everytime I read my favorite travel magazines, they make me dream, drool, and head straight to my computer to plan my next jaunt. That’s what I want our readers to take away from WildJunket Magazine – to have the urge to get off their sofas and head out to explore the world! We also want to encourage our readers to go beyond the conventional trail and seek out extraordinary experiences – because life’s too short!

Copies of WildJunket are available to be viewed as a flipbook online and downloaded as a PDF (one purchase gets you both). Along with single copy purchases you can also subscribe for 6 annual issues.

TRAVEL PHOTOS OF THE WEEK 2012: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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My first safari ever was in Kenya. The national parks there and wildlife reserves – both public and private – are amazing. My wife and I were quite camera crazy ever minute of the trip shooting way more photos of elephants than we will ever look at, closeups of lions, a variety of African birds, even dung beetles. (You can see all those in blog posts and safari photo galleries on the website and here on the blog)

So this week, rather than another shot of Nature, red in tooth and claw, I thought I’d post a people picture. As we traveled along the Nairobi-Mobasa highway on our way to Amboseli National Park, the skies opened up for some rain and turned the half-beaten highway into a mud bath and obstacle course. Along the road we saw people on their way to who knows where — many people have no vehicles and walk great distances in a day — and these people were the only color in the mud and gray of the day. The light was poor, the van was bouncing, and the rain was blurring. But something about this shot just appealed to me anyway.

And in the background are the first animals we saw. “Oh my god! Look! It’s… Oh. Cattle.” Later on, however, it was the reverse. “Meh, just another herd of… wait. Are those zebras??? And a giraffe just wandering the countryside far from any sort of preserve.” Very cool.

On the blog: Several more Kenya photo galleries, and stories of being charged by an elephant and dancing with the Maasai.

On the main site: even more photos out of Africa

TRAVEL PHOTOS OF THE WEEK 2012: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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Recently Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay made some joker’s list of the new seven natural wonders of the world, based on internet voting or some such thing. Of the listings, a number of which are patently silly, however, this is arguably a fair selection. The expansive bay covers almost 600 square miles (1553 km²) and is filled with rising thrusts of limestone, many partly covered with foliage. There are almost 2000 of these karst islands, and some of them, like the one I’m shooting from here in the photo, have deep caverns inside. The geological story is long, starting 500 million years ago, and the results are some serious eye candy.

I cruised aboard the Emeraude, a replica of an old steamer of the same name that once cruised these waters. A nice overnight tour and I recommend it. On the boat tour they showed us the movie Indochine at night on the top deck. It was fun to be surrounded by the very same terrain depicted in the latter half of the movie.

Pictured here is the view from the entrance to Sung Sot Grotto (aka Surprise Cave) on Bo Hòn Island. (A similar photo of mine from this batch ended up as a two-page image in Porthole Magazine in 2011, my first full two-pager!)

I’ve got a number of blog posts about Vietnam plus a full article about the great beaches and colored dunes around Mui Ne

One down, 51 to go!

TRAVEL PHOTOS OF THE WEEK 2012: Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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Here are what I consider the best 6 books I read last year. But you can also see the complete 2011 reading list as well as 2010′s reading recommendations.

A Couple History Books

Top of my list for fascinating history stories is Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life. (You can see a more in-depth review here) A trip to Milwaukee’s temporary Cleopatra exhibit and a National Geographic magazine article got me thinking about Cleopatra, and then a neighbor happened to tell me she was currently reading this great new book. And that recommendation led me to this biography of Egypt’s remarkable queen based on what sources, best guesses, and competing theories we have available.

It’s way more interesting than the rather simplistic view of the seductress of Hollywood. It’s a history book with a good plot and a dramatic ending. A worthy read before a trip to Egypt (or even Rome since so much of the story also involves Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and an expanding Roman Empire). Forget what you remember about dozing off in history classes, Schiff won the Pulitzer Prize and tells a great story. At some points I cringed and rooted for characters like I was watching a movie, the outcome of which I didn’t know.

Another history book that is both a great armchair read and a super travel background resource is The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal. That period of Spain’s history that is often just referred to as the Moor Invasion is given a much richer and more just review.

I have not been to Spain but Andalusia moves way up my list after reading this book. The cultural and architectural developments that were going on during that time create a high point in human history, and much of that was fostered by the general tolerance of the three cultures that make up the “people of the Book.” I’d call it an important read, especially when there are still so many people who argue that peace, tolerance, and cooperation among these folks are impossible. So not true. And here you have an examination of the proof of that.

A Couple Novels

I have my former professor and college advisor to thank for steering me to David Mitchell. I picked up Cloud Atlas and read it on my trip to Tokyo. It was one of the more extraordinary reads that I’ve had in several years. Mitchell nests several seemingly unrelated stories together, starting with one in the 19th century then moving forward through a few to a distant post-apocalyptic future… and then back through them again to end where he began — like one of those Russian matryoshka dolls. It’s a page turner, his language is rich, the voices varied, the background knowledge required for each story (19th century sailing, classical music composition, etc.) is stunning. I will read him again for sure. A movie version is coming out… starring Tom Hanks. I expect the worst.

I’ve had several trips into Vietnam in the last couple years, and I love the place. For better or for worse (certainly the latter), many Americans think of Vietnam as a War History. Sometimes I am guilty of that as well. But a good story has to have conflict, vibrant characters. A tragedy should force you to think about bigger things than the particulars; it provides a spectator’s view of human nature, of the disasters we create, the solutions we find, the humanity that lies somewhere in the chaos or even the savagery. The great story brings you face to face with it, makes you feel it. What setting is more demanding on our souls than life and death?

The Lotus Eaters is a novel by Tatjana Soli set in the American War (that’s what many Vietnamese call it) and the protagonist is Helen Adams a young woman who heads to Vietnam with her camera to join the photojournalists there. (There were a very few female photogs allowed into the battle zones and the author has drawn a bit on some research in that). The story starts at the fall of Saigon with a friend dead, another severely wounded, and the chaos of everyone trying to get out. Then it goes back to her uncertain mission when she arrived, the relationships she formed, the broadening view of the war and her purpose and the purpose of the photojournalism.

During the Red Shirt troubles in Bangkok, I felt the urge to run out with the camera and capture some dangerous moments (and excepting a couple, I resisted, especially at the behest of Peung and her family when my own sense failed me). But I felt that adrenaline surge for it and saw the handful of photogs who were really passionate about getting in there with a flak jacket and helmet. In the novel, while we are admiring this urge to bear witness we also see how the photo becomes more important than the human victims. It’s both thought-provoking and compelling.

A Couple… Farming Books???

I had quite a food-related year last year. I did a homestay at a hill-tribe village in Northern Thailand where coffee is produced. I was blown away by the efforts of a brilliant young man who was doing his best to lead his people to an organic method and create a business model that would give greater economic rewards and power to the people producing the coffee. He can talk for hours about matters of agriculture and the coffee business and he gave me a book recommendation that I was fortunate to find back in Madison when I got home: The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. I can’t recommend it enough. A Japanese farmer back in the 1970s wrote this chronicle about what he learned from over 20 years of defying the big agriculture trends, the ones that eventually became our current model that stresses soils and involves heaps of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. His methods are so simple he calls it “do-nothing” farming (a slightly tongue-in-cheek misnomer as there is still much work to be done, but minimal interference with the land) outdoes the methods of his time. But what makes me recommend this so highly is the philosophy aspect of it. It’s a subtle statement about life and living as well, a rather Buddhist sort of approach to things.

Finally, I have to give a plug to another work also on the subject of agriculture. While this one is not quite so philosophical and does mostly just talk about some crop experiments, it is a short read, simple, and yet rather revolutionary. Can you imagine not plowing the fields?? The Plowman’s Folly by Edward Faulkner argues that there is absolutely no scientific basis for the need or even the wisdom of turning over a field. The inability of his professors at the university to answer his question Why do we plow? lead him to this experiment, and he gets some impressive results. I’ve been told someone near my home is giving this a try with success. I hope to meet him and find out more in 2012. This book dates to the 1940s, by the way, and with a few exceptions was ignored. We have to sell big farm machinery after all. This book has been out of print for a long time — you can see old battered copies for sale on Amazon and I got mine from interlibrary loan, one of two copies at the U of Wisconsin-Madison. But good news: it is being reissued in February 2012 as you can see on the image link here.

Got some book recommendations of your own? Please share them below in comments. I’m always looking for more reads!

See my book recommendations from 2010

The New Year was almost upon us and I needed someplace close. I checked some flights and brought back prices and the owner gave me the nod: Malta! I’d be on my own for expenses there, but they’d even pay for my significant other at the time to fly with me. “You can’t be alone during the holidays!” Very generous of them I thought.

While one might often think of the Mediterranean as sunny days at the beach, winter there can be a bone-chilling cold and damp under slate skies and facing choppy waves like even the seawater doesn’t want to be there. It rained most of the time in Malta as we ducked in and out of old churches, traipsed through the mud among Neolithic ruins, and pooled together coins for cross-island buses or just simply thumbed a ride in a couple cases. We got the flight there, but were nevertheless short on cash, and the Maltese pound was surprisingly snooty toward our Euro.

We stayed in a guesthouse in Valletta, nothing very special in a big drafty room with a poorly functioning heater. We ate whatever cheap foods we could find. Honestly, I don’t even remember what we ate, so it clearly wasn’t memorable. I do recall one of those Can’t-Find-a-Place-to-Eat Death Marches that the longer you continue, the hungrier and less patient and logical you get. It is a downward spiral into primal urges that nearly always ends badly — either a fight, a couple days of continual concern for where the next toilet is, or both. I only remember that rabbit was on the menu and I could only afford fries and broth or something similarly indulgent.

We enjoyed what we could during those several days, defying the weather to even get as far as Gozo, the next island over, for its dramatic views (made more dramatic by stormy seas and a rough ferry crossing). But at a time when we needed a relaxing vacation, we wore ourselves out with racing, running… and frowning.

That's me over there on the left. No. No, the other guy. The FAR left. Red hat. Do I look a little pale?

Finally, it was New Year’s Eve. I bought the second cheapest bottle of wine I could find, had the clerk open it and replace the cork, and brought it back to the guesthouse. We were the only guests and the owner wasn’t around. We climbed up to the rooftop and stepped out into a cold drizzling rain. In one hand I held an umbrella, the other the wine. She held out the plastic cup and I topped it off. But she had reached her limits. Things hadn’t been ideal. She was exasperated with what was an anticlimactic end to the holiday and the year. There was no countdown. No parties we knew about (or likely could have afforded anyway). Our shoes were soaked going on three days already, and the damp ache had settled into our feet and calves. Scowling, she lost it a bit, grumbled about it all, and made a case for what a disappointment this all had been. And the whole moment felt like finding a gift under a Christmas tree when you thought you had none and opening it to find an empty box.

But all I could think is: Holy crap! I’m in Malta! I’m standing in the rain, drinking wine, and looking out over the rooftops at the city lights of Valletta, at the harbor beyond. We saw the enormous original painting The Beheading of John the Baptist by Caravaggio days before. We saw megalithic temples over 5000 years old. We got free flights to get us here. That guy joyriding his wife’s Mini Cooper while his crappy car was in the garage stopped to pick us up and take us all the way to the Arch of Gozo when we resorted to hitchhiking because the buses weren’t running. And the tour-bus driver took a couple coins and let us take two empty seats for the return. This was nothing short of awesome! And the rain, the umbrella, the wine in a plastic cup is a romantic moment that should never be forgotten.

We waited until midnight, and a few dim fireworks popped out over the dark waters, their sounds nearly absorbed by the heavy skies. And we just shuffled back inside and took turns for the hot shower.

Never lose your perspective on things, and always appreciate how good you have it even when you think you don’t. May you find the positive in 2012, and plenty of it!

K

From the restroom at the guesthouse. A reaffirming reminder to most people: 1. You have both your hands. 2. You only need to wash ONE of them. Bonus!

Look for Late deals on travel

Johnny's the one next to the buffoon in the paint can hat (me)

This coming Sunday, January 1st, he’s taking his travels to another medium. Johnny Jet will be appearing in his first Travel Channel show at 9pm and Midnight EST, showing us Hot Spots 2012. It is an excellent opportunity for him and we wish him the best. He took a moment to answer a few questions about the show…

How did you get this wonderful opportunity to do something for The Travel Channel?

I’m guessing a lot of hard work and luck. I signed a deal a couple years ago with MPH Productions (they created The Dog Whisperer) to do a travel show. The Travel Channel nixed our first two pilots but they liked me so they asked if we would be interested in creating a Hot Spots 2012 show. I was like, um, yeah!

When you got your start, did you ever imagine it would or even could evolve into where you are now?

No. It was a dream in the back of my head but I didn’t think it would’ve ever happened. This is a one-off show that I’m hoping will turn into a series so we’ll see what happens. But a regular successful show would be the ultimate achievement of my goals.

What are the challenges of making a travel segment?

I don’t think I realized how much hard work went into a television show – but I do now! There are long hours and take after take after take to get things just right. It was a lot of work but when you’re doing something you love, it doesn’t feel like work at all. I enjoyed every step of the process and I know there’s a lot more to learn – and I can’t wait!

How much planning went into this single episode? How much time work-wise goes into just an hour of viewing time?

Tons of planning went into this show – and most of it was done by the amazing producers I worked with. There were so many details to co-ordinate and logistics to figure out but they made it all seem effortless. Between the planning, traveling, shooting, editing and post-production work, hours and hours of time go into producing just an hour of television (really 44 minutes). We left on our first trip September 30 and did most of it in October. I flew 35,000 miles that month. In November we shot Necker Island and Toronto (for the second time).

Funniest thing that happened during filming?

We had a lot of laughs but the funniest is when my camera crew got the guide in Belize to tell me when we did the Crocodile night “hunt” that I had to jump in the dark, knee-high waters and help wrestle them into the boat to tag. They ended up cutting most of it since I had the look of complete terror on my face and in reality you can’t leave the boat and the crocs are babies (1 foot long).

Without giving away what we’ll see in the episode, how did you settle on these particular hotspots?

There’s so much happening in 2012 travel-wise but we selected events and destinations that we thought would be most interesting to viewers. Whether you’re looking for someplace to visit next year or are interested in places around the world that will be hot news topics, this show will touch on both.

We look forward to seeing it all on Sunday. Good luck, Johnny!