Four years ago, the town of Dessie decided it was no longer a town. Garbage piling on the streets signaled the transition. Previously Dessie the ‘Town’ had not been concerned about its waste, which seemed to be washed away with the rains, picked through by the poor, eaten by grazing goats or carried away in [...]
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Look Homeward, Bayele
When Bayele was ten years old his mother gave him 15 birr ($2 USD), wrapped a portion of bread in a towel and made her son promise not to eat it until he arrived. She tried to explain to Bayele that he was going to a bigger school where he would learn new things. He [...]
Life in the Hamster Tube
Numerology How long does a man really live? On average a man lives 28,000 days or 672,000 hours. But are those hours truly lived or just hours of life? Are we alive during sleep, which accounts for nearly half of our lives? And if we discount the time spent in the office, considered by some [...]
The Arabian Pursuit
I was already deep in a wadi with three Omani guys drinking Turkish tall cans. I knew alcohol was not totally banned in the Sultanate of Oman, but I didn’t expect to get wasted on (expensive) cheap beer on my first night [...]
Horizon Ethiopique
There comes a time when rock climbers start to think about what it means to climb walls that have never been climbed before. Climbers begin to wonder if they have the smarts, strength and guts to go to remote places, untested rock, and start climbing. Carrying a heavy rack and the possibility of failure, [...]
Cousin Kosovo, the Crown Prince & the Deaf Rapper
Para leer esta historia en español, hazle clic aqui Ilir is my cousin. He told me the first time we met. He’s from Kosovo which makes him Albanian, so he’s got a lot of cousins. He called me at 9am in morning and told me today was his birthday. I decided to forego the office [...]
Animal y los Mallos de Riglos
En mi primer día de escalada en Riglos, mi amigo David me dijo que yo iba a escalar con un tal “Animal”. Yo pensé que este nombre se lo habrían puesto porque escalaba como un animal, un bicho, o como dicen con frecuencia en España, como un mutante. Empecé a haceme la película en la cabeza: ¿Quién será este Animal? ¿Y, sobre todo, por qué diablos se llamará Animal?
The Farenji Pilgrim
My pilgrimage starts in a bus station in Gonder where a 16 year-old boy with one arm held my hand. He winked, he half-smiled, and he spoke broken English repeating “Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday for Jesus Christ!” He learned I was going to celebrate Ethiopian Christmas in Lalibela, and he wanted to help me get [...]
Mino’s Tails: Great Ethiopian Run
Yesterday Nico took me for the strangest walk I’ve ever been on. He usually takes me to the mountains, and I chase birds through the brush. Sometimes he leads me across glaciers, and sometimes we run over desert sandstone. Sometimes he takes me into the jungle and hairy, human-like monkeys try to pee on me. [...]
Mekele Rock Orphans
When I arrive somewhere new in Ethiopia, I step off the bus, turn and walk towards the highest mountain. This way, I can conquer a city or town in one fell swoop and from a bird’s eye view take in the width and length of the town. Many of the highland cities in Ethiopia are [...]
The Extreme Side: Ski Backcountry in the Andes
If you are willing to hike an extra 20-30 minutes through the snow along rocky ridges, you’ll probably be the only person on the mountain. If you’re willing to hike an extra one or two hours, you will definitely be alone.[...]
Atacama’s Sacred Pili
Trekking along the Rio Grande in Northern Chile’s Atacama Desert is akin to taking a peek at a cross section of the area’s history, serving up pre-Colombian rock art, volcanoes thought sacred by the Incans and Spanish colonial villages with adobe churches.
Patagonia’s Last Pioneer
The two pigs were aptly named “Douglas” and “Obama”. One was white and the other was black. Before I arrived to Lago Condor, located in Chile’s Aysén Region and the heart of the Patagonia, my friend Javier had already told me about these wild animals that had been living off the fat of a virgin [...]
Tayrona: The Freedom to Travel
Have you see the Lonely Planet guidebook for Colombia lately? For a country twice the size of Texas, the two hundred and something pages do not begin to represent the true tourist potential of this country. Still considered one of twenty most dangerous places in the world, the coverage given to Colombia by the ubiquitous [...]
‘Mex’treme Climbing
Imagine holding onto the side of a building fifteen floors up and knowing that any slip will send you plummeting to the sidewalk below. Now replace the sidewalk with deep canyon and the building with a limestone cliff and you will imagine exactly what Mexican climber Alejandro Fuentes faced at mid-morning on July 10, 2006 [...]
