“Be Careful,” he shouted at me in clearly articulated Spanish as I began to walk towards the glowing green foliage of Cerro Cora National Park. “We’ve seen the jaguar out there three or four times already this month. It rained last night, so any prints you see will have been [...]

I remember when I first walked the streets of San Telmo — a neighborhood in Buenos Aires — and becoming hyper aware that I was no longer in North America. The people, the architecture, the steak, the all-night partying was all very grandiose. The young ladies talking loudly on their [...]

If I were superstitious, I might have seen the lion as a sign that in an hour-and-a-half I was going to be kidnapped or murdered. From the back of my motorcycle my roommate McKenzie pointed and exclaimed, “Dude, there is lion just sitting in a cage in that vacant lot. A [...]

“Come join us for yoga after work,” we would often ask them. We being gringos. They being Guatemalans. At the educational development organization I work for in Guatemala, we have both local Guatemalans and international volunteers on staff. Since one of our international volunteers was a yoga instructor in a [...]

The rain sounded different to Cusco rain. Fatter, wetter somehow, the decadent splatter of water on leaf. The drugs had me pinned between an exhausted indifference to whatever may have been crawling through the holes in walls and window screens, and a lurid imagining of too-many-legged tarantulas seeking escape from [...]

You can count on seeing an oversized men’s shoe, a life-sized photo of Walt Whitman, and windows shaped like those on a boat when you visit famed poet Pablo Neruda’s three houses, all within the Chilean capital of Santiago or a short trip from there, as detailed recently by the [...]

As safety becomes the norm and Colombia’s young begin to enjoy life around the city (and money) the way a generation ago never did, a burgeoning, dare we say it, hipster scene is emerging in Bogotá. (Full disclosure, I live in Brooklyn. I feel this is something necessary to disclose [...]

Guatemalans love ice cream. Well, at least in Antigua they do. At every turn, the historic city’s cobblestone streets seem to be crawling with people licking drippy cones of sugary frozen cream topped with a dollop of syrupy strawberry goodness. And it made me want it — like really want [...]

I have a knack for wandering around cities, losing my way for a few hours, but always finding my way to where I am headed. I think most travelers have this innate characteristic, but somehow I always forget to bring a map with me. It’s not intentional, I am just [...]

Brazil. The word alone conjures visions of dark-haired, curvy women, swaying to samba in the sultry heat of a mid-summer’s night, clinging to their equally gorgeous counterparts on the coarse sands of Copacabana beach. The country just sort of exudes this sexy, vibrant, beautiful vibe to the average pale-faced foreigner, [...]