Travel

87 posts

A Hike Down to Molokai’s Leper Colony

Preface: In the 1860s, a leper colony was set up on a spit of land on the north side of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Though the settlement has officially closed, about a dozen former patients still live there.

I wake up an hour before sunrise. This is quite an unusual wake-up time for someone on vacation. But I booked a mule ride down to the Molokai leper colony. And the mules leave early.

I grab a double espresso in Kaunakakai, the largest town on this island of 7,400 residents. I head out to the stables; and it’s still dark outside. Of course, the paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) behind the counter tells me he does not see my name on the reservation roster. All the mules have been spoken for. I’m SOL. Continue reading →

How to Get to Guatemala In Five Days Without Flying

Preface: This is an adventure from three years ago. Although I majored in Latin American Studies and wrote my honors thesis about Guatemala, I had never been there. To right that wrong, 13 years later, I visited the Central American country. I coupled it with an overland trip as a part of my quest to cover the entire Western Hemisphere by public land transportation.

I land in San Diego. I neglected to do any research about the nascent drug war in Mexico. When I ask the nice old lady at the airport information desk about buses to the Mexican border, she informs me that 40 to 50 people are shot everyday in Tijuana, the town on the other side of the border from San Diego. I later learn that while I was in Tijuana, the undertakers had run out of coffins. Continue reading →

Happy Canada Day!

Tell us where in our glorious country you’ve been. Was it great? Sorry, silly me, of course it was great. How great? And where exactly do you go that was great?

Lots of Americans have been on family trips to the Maritime provinces. A drive around the shores of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island is a festival of small towns and lobster-binges.

Quebec City (the skiing! winter carnival!), Montreal (omg the shopping), Toronto (a shoe museum right across the street from the hallowed halls of the Royal Ontario Museum!) and Vancouver (Stanley Park, wow) are wonderful cities to vacation in, and the countryside in between is beautiful. So green! (Mostly.) Continue reading →

Sweden’s Twitter Shitshow

The government of Sweden has a Twitter account and every week they hand the keys over to a new citizen curator. On paper it sounds like a fantastic way to show the world the diversity of its society and to start conversations with people a government official wouldn’t appeal to. Unfortunately, this week’s ambassador has used Twitter to display a level of ignorance and anti-semitism that has shocked the international community and, in a much more difficult feat, the internet population at-large. Continue reading →

A Detroit Skyscraper Costs Less than a Condo

The Penobscot building in downtown Detroit just sold for $5M to a Toronto based company. The selling price was $5.00 per square foot for the 1M square foot building. Detroit office space vacancy rates are currently around 25%. But for the same amount of money you can get 173 Perry Street, Unit 4N in Manhattan. Assuming you live there or can rent it out the vacancy rate should be zero. Continue reading →