Spotted Hyena (Crocuta crocuta) 

(Etosha National Park, Namibia)

The Spotted Hyena.

Misunderstood and maligned. Criticized and reviled.

An apex predator that many see only as a filthy scavenger.

My chosen spirit animal.

Yup. I always go for the underdog.

It was raining h...

After the otherworldly charm and tranquility of the Simien Mountains, the maniacal city-base of Gonder held little interest for me, so I did a quickie tour of the prerequisite castles, before flying off for an even quicker look-see of the famous rock-hewn churches of L...

I went to Ethiopia for three-weeks in the summer of 2018 with several definitive goals in mind. The first goal was to go to the Simien Mountains to see the endemic Gelada Monkeys.

The second goal was to visit the city of Harar to meet the Hyena man and a...

I've been fascinated with different cultures for as long as I can remember - from my first meeting with a Native American medicine man at Mesa Verde in my home state of Colorado, to my time hiking through the Dogon villages on the Bandiagara Escarpment of Mali, West Af...

On July 17th, I had the great honor of meeting an amazing, but endangered group of people who rightfully lay claim to being one of the oldest lineages on the planet - the Ju/'Hoansi-San, better known as Bushmen. The last of the hunter/gatherers, it is said th...

We were driving home to Al Ain from Dubai in mid-December, when an exuberant voice on the radio announced an amazing upcoming event - The Al Dhafra Camel Festival - a world reknowned exhibition complete with camel beauty pageant, cultural heritage displays, camel and s...

My husband and I went on a wonderful trip to Bali and Java a few years back and I'd like to share a little of it with you. We had the very great fortune and honor to be invited to a small Odalan at the temple complex of our hotel, Taman Harum, as well as to a very mass...

Wings and other treats on Jalon Alor, KL

We travel for the sensory experiences. 
We travel to SEE, TOUCH, HEAR, SMELL,

and more than anything, we travel to TASTE. 
We journey to sink our teeth into juicy new cultures, and in turn, we enrich our SOULS.

A street food menu...

Hill of Poisonous Trees and The Fields of Death.

(3 years, 8 months, 20 days)

I spent a couple of days recently contemplating the subject of hate in the beautiful country of Cambodia. It was a sobering experience, exploring the wretched landscape of evil, but surely ther...

So here I am looking through my Bali and Java pics, marveling over the spectacular hues of the verdant rice fields, contemplating the hard labor that I witnessed, taking in the overall importance of that oh-so-precious seed called Oryza Sativa. As a cereal grain, rice...