emaehl

We rented a gite at the Chateau d’Auzines just outside this beautiful village and went on day trips to Carcassonne, Collioure, Leucate, and the Minervois vineyards.

This is a scary place.

We came here on our honeymoon back in 1996 and stayed in the little village at the foot of the volcano. As we approached by ferry we could see smoke and ash erupting from the cone. One side of of the island was basically burnt to a crisp and covered with ash and hardened lava.

It is beautiful and desolate and you have a sense that it could be wiped from the face of the earth at any moment.

We hired a guide who took us up to the edge of the caldera at sunset. Halfway up we came to a rope strung across the trail with a sign warning that to go any further was to risk death. Our guide lifted the rope and we all continued on. There were a few nervous chuckles.

We reached the top at nightfall and sat on a ridge a few hundred meters above the crater watching gouts of lava and flame shoot into the air, and feeling the ground rumble constantly under foot.

Our guide told us that a few months earlier a couple had brought sleeping bags and camped out at the top, only to be awakened by a shower of molten rock in the middle of the night. They fled in terror and one broke a leg stumbling down the side of the mountain and had to be rescued by helicopter.

For our part we made it down safely, trudging through thick fields of ash with wet towels wrapped around our faces for protection.

I lived in Fortaleza for a couple of years as a kid (1976-1978) while my father taught Geology at the local university.

We lived in a big house with two or three maids and an honest-to-god fountain in the front yard! We spent weekends at the country club (the Recreo) or the Beach, and during the week I ran wild in the streets with the local kids playing cops & robbers and setting fire to vacant lots.

I refused to wear a shirt or take a bath, so every once in a while the maids would corner me with a garden hose and scrub me down.

I visited Sumatra about 10 years ago – caught the ferry from Penang to Medan, found a guide there to take us trekking in the rain forest, saw no orangutans but only a handful of chickens one misty morning.

I was traveling with a couple of friends and we thought we were all Indiana Jones with our machetes and our Banana Republic outfits, but then every once in a while an old granny with 50 lbs of cargo on her shoulders would blow by us like we were standing still. It was pretty humiliating.

If you go trekking, do a long trek (3 days +) or it’s not worth it. And expect leeches.

We spent New Years eve recovering by shores of Lake Toba, drinking cheap gin and listening to the Austrian couple who owned our hostel screaming at each other.

We visited Tunisia on our honeymoon, staying with a friend who was working at the Canadian Embassy in Tunis.

When we heard about Matmata we decided we had to drive down and play Twister at the place where they filmed the desert scenes in Star Wars. It was every bit as warped as we had expected.

We also did an overnight camel trek into the Sahara with a horny little bedouin guide who kept trying to molest my wife. It was unimaginable hot and we had to drink water pretty much non-stop.

I lived in Costa Rica off and on for a few years when I was younger, and I go back every couple of years to visit my parents, who still live there.

The country is stunning and still a bit wild. It is also peaceful and stable, and Ticos are the nicest people in the world.

I lived in Paris for a couple of years (1994-1996) studying and doing odd jobs and working on a terrible novel that never went anywhere.

No other city takes literature, art and culture as seriously as Paris. Sure, it all feels stilted and pretentious at times, and the people can be rude and snobbish, but hey – Monday Night Football and a six pack of Coors Light isn’t everyone’s idea of a good time, either.

My favorite spot was a wine bar called the Baron Rouge (Red Baron!) next to the Place d’Aligre near Bastille.

I lived in Hiroshima for 3 years, working at the Mayor’s Office as a Coordinator for International Relations.

Great city to live in – easy to get around, amazing restaurants, friendly people.

There used to be a bar at one end of Hondori called Macs, where all the unsavory characters hung out. You could usually rely on a fight breaking out, being thrown up on, or achieving enlightenment there on any given night of of the week.

There was a restaurant across from the Peace Park called Marios that I still think is the best Italian Restaurant I’ve ever been to (and I’ve travelled extensively in Italy…).

I met my wife in Hiroshima, and we had our first kiss by the banks of one of the seven branches of the Otagawa River.

I spent a year (1989-1990) at Nanzan Daigaku studying Japanese. Nagoya is the Detroit of Japan – home to Toyota motors.

I give it a “not worth visiting” because there isn’t much to see from a touristic perspective, but I had a crazy time living here, partying with drunken college students, camping in nearby Mie Ken, hanging out in the discos in the center of town and the underground shopping mall beneath central park, browsing the CD collection at Tower Records in Parco.

When the school year was over, I lived for a couple of months in a seedy apartment in Imaike, the red-light district, while working nights as a bartender in a jazz bar called “Jungle Jap.”

Formative years!

Spent a few days in Ulan Bator and nearby Terelj yurt camp back in 1994. I remember eating lots of mutton, and I remember horseback riding on the steppe.

I remember that the ‘suburbs’ of Ulan Bator were basically a few yurts scattered about behind rickety wooden fences.

We bought snickers bars and hungarian fortified wine in one of the few shops we could find, then resumed our journey northward to Siberia.