Most people know Kenya for the Masai Mara and the famed river crossings of the Great Migration. Yet to me, that’s almost the least exciting part. I find Kenya to be utterly compelling in far  broader ways. It’s a place that remains in my imagination, a frontier, a place where an older type of less […]

Early afternoon , Bastille Day, 1989. I have been standing on the roundabout next to my house for nearly 3 hours. The moment I have been waiting for weeks is finally arriving. Le Tour de France, also known as La Grande Boucle, is passing my hometown, and on its way to Marseille, the finish of […]

In the midst of lockdown in the summer of 2020 there wasn’t a whole lot of trip related email flying around, but one rather hot afternoon in July the following missive landed in my inbox which I found intriguing: “To find the Azores, look on Google Maps on Portugal, turn towards the Atlantic Ocean, and […]

Whenever I’m asked when the best time to go on safari is, my enthusiastic –  if rather unhelpful – answer is “it’s always a good time to be on safari’. So, with a view to being slightly more helpful, I wanted to talk a little about Emerald Season. Conventional wisdom for years has been that […]

Over a decade ago, I first visited Greystoke Mahale. It left its mark on me then and has lived rent free in my head ever since. I went back again this year and immediately renewed its tenancy. Mahale is an interesting case study in the way that the experience of going on safari has evolved […]

Bold statement coming in: I’m declaring 2023 the year for Peru and, heck, why not 2024, too! The short and the sweet of it is as follows: the shadow cast by the pandemic, coupled with political unrest earlier this year, has resulted in a slower return to travel than many other countries have experienced over […]

Nature is fragile, let’s preserve it. This sentence is the introduction to my video as well as my conclusion after having spent most weekends in the past 5 month in Camargue. Patiently, I explored most areas the park: its lakes, channels, tracks, beaches and salt flats, in search of the best locations. And when the […]

Uruguay is of wood and marble, of grain and sheen; where rural charm sits at the table next to aristocracy and both happily have sand between their toes or dirt under the nail from the outdoor explorations of the day. Olive orchards, hillside wineries, cattle ranches and small fishing boats all populate this tiny pear-shaped […]

I’ve freshly returned from Havana where I spent time as an ordinary traveler. A trip on my own time, on my own dime, of my own curiosity. I boarded the plane wide-eyed, and with dance shoes and dusty Spanish in tow.  I’ve been fascinated by the dance/music of Rumba, Son, Salsa, Casino Rueda for some […]

The first stanza of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem ‘Romance Sonámbulo‘  (‘Sleepwalking Romance’) translates: Green, how I want you green Green wind, green branches The boat out on the sea The horse on the mountain Written by the 20th century Spanish poet, the poem was arguably inspired by a European landscape and context, an azure Mediterranean sea and […]

Namibia delivers wide open spaces in a way that few other places on earth can. Dominated by a massive and ancient desert, the dominant image in people’s mind seems to be landscapes of unchanging and endless sand. While it’s true that there is a lot of sand (and I do mean a lot – I […]

Ibitipoca. Tough to pronounce; hard to get to; but well worth the effort. Here goes: Ibitipoca is pronounced “ee-bitch-ee-pokah” (sounds like a palavrão I know). But it actually comes from the indigenous Tupi-guarani language in which “ybytyra” = mountain, and “pok” = burst, a combination of words the natives used to describe the intense roaring […]

Sometimes, when doing research you can kinda get lost in the prosaic, asking the same questions at each hotel you encounter on a site visit–how many rooms does the hotel have? Do you have interconnecting suites? Is there a 24hr gym? Is wifi included in the rate? It is important to shake free of these […]

As the world has been forced to slow down and the future still holds so much uncertainty, I find myself pouring over old photographs, dissecting memories of trips most dear to me, remembering places which I’m glad I’m took the time to visit. Prominent among them is Barichara in Colombia – a place I barely […]

The year is 1999, I’m a nerdy 7-year-old obsessed with dinosaurs, planet Earth, and sci-fi video games. I hear the TV talking about some grown-up commemoration on the other side of the ocean, in the United States… some vice-president with a strange name. They’re celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Nothing too […]

If I had to choose a word to describe Canada’s West Coast, it could easily be crinkly. Shaped and scoured by massive glaciers, raging rivers and wild Pacific weather for millennia, the BC coast is one of the more spectacular pieces of wilderness I have ever laid eyes on. This crinkliness has shaped a unique […]