I didn’t know that the Hollywood Walk of Fame concept extended to RockWalk of Fame at the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard.

Right there in front of the doors to the Guitar Center are the hand prints of rock legends, icons of the music industry who left an imprint on the world with their music and were asked to leave an imprint in the concrete to solidify their presence for the coming generations. And I never knew it existed.
When I passed through LA in June for a friend’s wedding …

I almost overlooked Guatemala’s sweetest little river; running through the south and emptying into the Caribbean Sea the Rio Dulce is actually incredibly beautiful and reminiscent of the swampy waters of the Everglades in Florida (my home-state for inquiring minds). Thankfully these rivers are void of the pesky American Alligator and instead perfectly tranquil to better ensure several days of relaxing dockside and canoeing myself around the narrow canals shooting off of the river like tree branches from a tree trunk.

I really resisted my first few days relaxing on …

One full hour after starting our project we finally had the first layer of concrete blocks nestled next to each other, absolutely perfectly level and arranged in a large rectangular shape. Mitul and Grace, also volunteers from the Pop Wuj language school in Guatemala, carefully scrapped at the wet red clay while I was nearby hefting up each and every concrete block into tubs of pond water, allowing each block to soak for 10 minutes before taking it to Mitul and Grace. These concrete blocks were the first step …

Mini pandemonium broke out as six of us teetered on a jaggedly tiny ledge of dried volcanic lava – although the top surface of the lava was hard and quite solid under our feet, the heat radiating from every single crevice of the charred gray rock had me feeling like a pot roast in a slow cooker.
Standing nearby was our guide – and though he had just ungracefully deposited six of us here, perching on a lookout spot that you pretty much need help to jump onto, he …

It’s really hard to believe that this week exactly a year ago I was well into my around the world trip and diving on the Great Barrier Reef – and right now, a year later the RTW trip is over. Instead, I’m plopped on my bed in my childhood home working hard to save up the cash I’ll need for Central America in February.
With a new travel plans in the works, for posterity’s sake let’s recap my RTW travel route and some of the more interesting adventures. We’ll do …

Huddled under one lone awning in the middle of the Outback, as the rain poured down around us, we all looked forlornly at the broken down tour bus while Jess presented us with a choice:

admit defeat and return to the previous night’s campground near Uluru
head a couple hours down the road toward Kings Canyon in hopes that the river hadn’t overflowed – if it hadn’t we could hike the Canyon in the morning.

At …

There’s been a little movement throughout the travel community – an attempt to unite travel bloggers and create a list of the most unique travel destinations and secretly amazing places to visit. Nellie over at Wild Junket nominated me to participate in Tripbase’s “3 Best Kept Travel Secrets,” and that’s a pretty hard task because there are some amazing places out there.
But there are a few places and experiences that particularly stood out in my mind as I backpacked around the world:
1) India’s Festival of Color, Holi
…

You know it’s about to be really good when a local tells you it’s his favorite drive in all of Ireland. I was cozied up to the bar at a little pub in Connemara, map spread awkwardly all over the bar top, attempting to plan a route from Galway to Clifden that would take quite a bit of time since getting there was really my only task for the day.
The bartender placed my steaming cup of soup in front of me, turned my map around to face him, and …