La Palmeraie, Marrakech, Morocco
No trip to Marrakech is complete without a camel ride, right?
We took a short taxi ride from the medina to La Palmeraie, a palm grove about twenty minutes from the city center. Off the main road of La Palmeraie were guides here and there, waiting...
On the Run
A few hours north of Windhoek, the Cheetah Conservation Fund is a can't miss experience.
Cheetahs are an endangered species, with estimates of around 10,000 left in the world. Namibia is home to approximately 3,000-the largest population in the...
Be on the lookout for goats in trees!
When on the road in south or southwestern Morocco, you may notice a tourist bus that has pulled over and discharged a busload of passengers to run dashing through the trees with their cameras. What might be happening? The answer is simple:...
March of the Elephants
Each day, the 90 elephants living at the Pinnewala Orphanage are led from their feeding grounds to the nearby Maha Oya (Maha River) to bathe. The elephants are split in to two groups so half get to go to the river in the morning and the other half...
March of the Penguins
Visiting Antarctica is on many people's bucket list. I am fortunate to have traveled there to witness first hand the awesome beauty. My trip on a small expedition ship included stops in Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia Island....
Where to See the Greats
Ever since I was a child, I had a paralyzing, but certainly not uncommon, fear of sharks. I believed sharks were everywhere: the public pool, the lake, even down the bathtub's drain.
So you can imagine my husband's surprise when, in South Africa a...
An Elephant Never Forgets
They say the eyes are the "window to the soul." What kinds of stories do these eyes tell you? The Elephant Nature Park outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand is a truly wonderful place that takes in elephants that have been injured an abused. They are...
take a ride
the lovely Gao- was the most recent of elephant rides. She ferried us on a lovely short ride through the forest outside of Luang Prabang. Four other rides in Thailand, Cambodia, and India have taught us much about the lives of these gentle giants...
Chimp walk
Though most visitors to Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage (http://www.chimfunshi.org.za/) visit for a few weeks or more via an organized university group or long-term volunteer agreement, my renegade, four-night visit was a definite highlight of three...
The Present Day Residents Machu Picchu
In going to Machu Picchu, everyone talks about the beauty of the Andes, the spectacular trek they may have taken on the way there, and of course the magic in the ruins themselves. What often gets left out is the fact that Machu Picchu is currently...
Bath Time Anyone?
I don't know if there is a more amazing feeling than sitting on top of such a powerful animal. Bath time for the elephants in Chitwan was something I was looking forward to throughout my entire trip. You can simply watch the happy animals splash...
Beautiful Blonde
There were two things in particular I was most looking forward to seeing on my trip to Iceland in January: the Northern Lights and Icelandic ponies. Luckily, both far exceeded what I had envisioned.
Iceland is known for its beautiful ponies....
Up Close With Bears at Anan
We walked on boardwalks through dense woods to a platform surrounded by a low fence. The instructions were: Do not get off the walk!!
Along the way a female grizzly was asleep in our path. The ranger threw stones that landed with a racket on the...
Three Toed Sloth
He moved so slowly I was able to get a great shot of him just hanging around ...
The Sentinel
One of the things that surprised me when wandering through the amazing Machu Picchu was the alpacas grazing in the ruins. Naively, for some reason I hadn't expected to find them at 8,000 feet up on the Andean Plateau, much less munching grass at...
