A fellow traveler once told us a story of wetting herself on an Indian train for fear of losing her seat and all her belongings. Another traveler recounted a tale of two horrendous days on a bus, stopping the driver ever hour to relieve himself. He was later diagnosed with cholera.
This is that type of story, the type that takes time to be able to tell; to see the humor in what was both extremely dangerous and embarrassing all at the same time. This is the kind of thing that happens to all of us on the road, the memories we loathe and relish at the same time, but can almost never ever talk about. It has …

Africa was shockingly expensive. We expected that the touristy activities would be expensive but we underestimated the degree to this expense. True, eating in Africa can be cheap, lodging too, but that’s about where the cheapness ends.  We definitely could have spent less here, but we wanted to do the “big” Africa things: safari, Kilimanjaro, mountain gorillas.
A reminder of how all this works. Every dollar amount represents how much the two of us, combined, spent on the average day in a given country. Airfare to and from the continent (very expensive to get to Africa) is included in transportation in the totals line and aren’t applied to any specific country. As always, visa fees are …

Keeping this blog alive through Latin America took minimal effort beyond just writing up the posts. We might pay a few extra pesos for a hotel with wifi where we could upload photos overnight or need to spend a few hours here or there sitting in an internet cafe to make sure things were running smoothly, but all and all it was easy to find decent internet connections and the electricity was pretty regular. Africa however was a whole new ballgame.
Starting in South Africa we were shocked to find some of the worst connection speeds we’d experienced on this trip. Ecuador, Bolivia, and even Guatemala, all had better connections than what we generally found in South Africa. …

Although the Italians were pushed out of Ethiopia after only a few years, their influence remains in the cuisine and coffee crazed culture of Ethiopia. Nearly every local restaurant or cafe serves pasta, usually spaghetti bolognese or marinara, and certainly every bar has a true ‘Made in Italy’ espresso machine.
That’s not to say that Ethio-Italian is true Italian. Trust me, I lived in Florence, I know real Italian. This is not, it’s distinctly Ethio-Italian, which as you may have guess means berbere spice. Some places the pizza was so heavily ladened with berbere that we had to take breaks for water between bites. Other places had a delicious blend of berbere and tomato sauce that …