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SOUTHERN ARIZONA: A TALE OF TWO MISSIONS

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Time hasn’t been kind to the Mission of Tumacacori that stands in partial ruin three miles south of the flourishing artist’s town of Tubac in southern Arizona. Dreary weather added to the melancholy atmosphere surrounding the abandoned church when my husband and I visited. Although it is part of a National Historic Monument managed by the Park Service, other than a group of hikers who briefly stopped to use the facilities before they headed out on a birdwatching expedition, the grounds were empty of visitors.

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SOUTHWESTERN FRANCE – Myths and Echoes

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A bookstore will never lead you astray if you’re looking for something to carry you to mysterious places. Our local bookshop in Rome (actually in my office building) had a delightful name, “Food for Thought.” It also had a bin of older paperbacks toward the back where I regularly rummaged to find something inexpensive to read. And, one day, there was Holy Blood, Holy Grail at the bottom of the bin. With a blurb that said it was “explosively controversial,” I bought it.
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GUEST POST: CUBA – Getting Around with Pens, Caps, Glasses and Maps

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           It is a hot afternoon in Santa Clara, Cuba, and perhaps that is why we are the only ones standing at the Tren Blindado park, listening to an engaging gentleman share his adoration of beloved rebel, Che Guevara. We are trying to picture the bold Guevara using a bulldozer to derail the train that ignited the Cuban Revolution.
            More vivid, however, is my memory of trying to give this older gentleman, a veteran who experienced the Revolution fifty years ago, a few coins.
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DUBLIN IN THE RAIN

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Whatever the weather, Dublin is a fine place to visit.
Of course it rained, but being from the Pacific Northwest, my husband and I felt right at home. The rain fell on the sad cluster of statues memorializing the Potato Famine and it fell in the city center. It stopped briefly for Molly Maguire before it began to fall on us. 
We were armed with an umbrella but a vending machine would have saved us if we’d forgotten ours. 
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ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – A study in scarlet

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Acadia –  the very name brings visions of a dream such as that painted by Nicholas Poussin in 1639.

It also brings to mind the Acadians, French settlers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, who were driven from their homes when the British pushed them out. Many settled in Maine, although some fled to Louisiana and transformed into the Cajuns, famous for good music and good food.

But the word also reminds me of a recent trip to Mount Desert Island and a day spent in Acadia National Park, one of the nation’s smallest, established in 1919, and the first  of our National Parks established East of the Mississippi.
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ACOMA: The Sky City

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My friends and I began our visit in the beautiful cultural center at the base of Acoma, about an hour’s drive west of Albuquerque. The ancient settlement itself is located on a mesa 365 feet above the desert floor, a broken land dotted with other rock formations. Settled around the year 1000 AD, it is one of the oldest continually-occupied areas in the country.
Where formerly there were only ladders and steps carved into the rock, a winding road now leads up the steep hill to the cluster of adobe buildings occupied by only 30 people due to the lack of water, sewerage, and electricity.
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IN THE KAROO

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A silent young man picked us up in front of our hotel in Cape Town near a post carved with animal heads depicting four of South Africa’s big game.

We climbed into an SUV for a three-hour trip to a game preserve north of the city in an area called the Karoo. As we passed the sad townships, some with small houses and others with tin shacks, we were reminded of the deep poverty that envelopes so much of South Africa.

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SOUNDSCAPE – BAMAKO, MALI

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A guest post from my fellow travel writer, Tori Peterson, writer and adventurer. She is currently working on a memoir about living in Mali and Rwanda. Her last travels including walking the Camino de Santiago and trekking in the high Andes.




When I left the United States for the first time, I was 30 years old.  Yes, I knew that I would be seeing new sights and new cultures, but I did not stop to think how my senses would be surprised, assaulted, and challenged. 

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ON HEARING FADO IN LISBON

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I’m pleased to have a guest post from travel writer Vivian Murray, a member of EPIC Group Writers based in Edmonds, Washington.
ON HEARING FADO IN LISBON 

The apartment was a short-term rental through VRBO and located on a hill in the Alfama, one of the oldest districts in Lisbon, Portugal. We were on the 3rd (or 4th depending on what country you were in) floor requiring careful negotiation of a narrow wooden stairway which seemed endless at the close of a long day.
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AGRIGENTO AND THE VALLEY OF THE TEMPLES

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The other day I read that the almond trees in Agrigento were in blossom and my thoughts returned to the marvelous archeological zone near the city called the Valley of the Temples. The name always struck me as odd because the famous Greek temples are high on a ridge overlooking the sea a few miles away. But there are temples galore.
The almond blossoms had fallen by the end of May last year when we were there and the trees were laden with green almonds.
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