Pan-American Transmissions Part Two “Pan-American Transmissions” is a travel series from Special Contributor Diego Cupolo as he travels south from Nicaragua to Argentina. He has few plans, a $10-a-day budget and one flute-playing gypsy companion. Check back as new dispatches are posted from the road. Don’t assume that you need [...]

Where is Nicaragua again? It may be a crashing generalization, but for many people, Nicaragua could just as well be the name of a new prescription to help you stop smoking (just in case you didn’t know, it’s a beautifully diverse Central American country just north of Costa Rica and [...]

What would Che say? Perspiring at a rate that suggests total disintegration is imminent, the police officer wiped another sweat globule from his a forehead. “Where are your papers?” he asks. With nostrils floating in a sea of rubbery flesh, shirt buttons straining against a bloated paunch, the overall impression [...]

Have you been following the exploits of the newly-installed Frugal Traveler, Seth Kugel, this summer as he’s been making his way from São Paulo to New York? This month alone he’s traipsed around Los Zorros, a seaside fishing village on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, with his parents; shacked up [...]

It’s classic travel writing fodder: choose famous author, research trips they took during their lifetime, emulate one such trip. In fact, Rolf Potts wrote about this “tidy narrative formula” in his recent book “Marco Polo Didn’t Go There,” where he pointed out how this classic format is a great angle [...]

You may or may not remember the landscape and the architecture, but you will never forget a face — even if they are only in pictures. Last month’s photo theme, “Faces in Places,” has left an impression. There is something fascinating about a picture of a face. It makes the [...]

Party. Destination. Wedding. What’s not to love? In my own search for the ultimate wedding (think– wedding piñata), I couldn’t help but continually envisioning my impending wedding as the destination type. That idea never came to fruition. Luckily for me, my piñata idea is a go. Luckily for my family, Montana is a destination. In the end [...]

So what does it mean exactly when the Wall Street Journal is talking up Nicaragua? Is it kind of like when you were a teenager and the second your parents had heard of your favorite band you instantly thought that band wasn’t cool anymore? (See, in this extended metaphor the [...]

I had some relatively unfamiliar free time the other day and found myself reading an article titled “Cheap but Chic Destinations.” I have to admit, “chic” is not included in my vocabulary, but it was “cheap” that reeled me in. I sifted through the mandatory sentences that you would expect to [...]

A night out on the town in Granada, Nicaragua, with a Canadian, a Rastafarian painter, and an ex-revolutionary. Does it get any better than this? By Luke Armstrong España was beautiful, young, Argentinean, and when she came up to talk to me on a bus heading towards the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan [...]