For Americans, getting power for your stuff in SE Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar) is very easy. Everywhere we went, we found electrical outlets in which you can also stick standard U.S. two-prong electrical plugs. Easy.…
We were just one hour into our hike along the famed Abel Tasman Coastal Track, one of the nine great walks of New Zealand. And it was tea time. We were familiar with many of…
If I can't take my coffee break, My coffee break, my coffee break . . . If I can't take my coffee break, Gone is the sense of enterprise, All gone, and something within me…
It’s a Kiwi smorgasbord: a display of Maori cloaks woven over a two hundred year span, an exhibit of European fine arts collected by the wealthy here, a “colossal” squid from the Pacific depths splayed…
Hiking in New Zealand is often made possible by the cooperative effort between landowners and the hikers. This is a similar relationship to the one we found in Europe. Without this cooperation we would be…
It looks like the end of life, not the beginning: dark, hairy, oily-looking stalks sticking out of the fern tree’s base, with black clusters on their ends. It seems that the fern has suffered some…
Rain lashed us, swept sideways, as even the cattle collectively turned their backs to the violent gusts that threatened to heave them into another pasture. And there we were, bravely rolling along in a 6400…
The view was just what we wanted on our trip to the west coast of New Zealand's South Island: a sweeping panorama of the shoreline with a craggy rock formation to our right. We had…
It seemed like such a nice birthday present for Nancy: three tins of specialty teas ordered by phone from Teavana at Northpark Mall right near where she was staying to help her parents in their…
Two sunny days in a row. Temperatures climbing to 60 F (about 15 C). Trees budding out. It’s starting to feel like spring down here.Crowds enjoying the vivid tulip display at Botanic Garden In the…