I was sitting on a chicken bus this afternoon and had one of those moments where things just sort of clicked. One of the reasons that I travel, and let me assure you it’s certainly not so that I can ride chicken buses, but rather for the faces of the locals surrounding me.

The bumps and potholes on the roads here in Guatemala ensure that I’m going to arrive at my destination just a touch on the ill side – plus the chicken buses are probably one …

Ok Central America, you win. I lay prostrate at your feet and am willing to surrender to your charm, your eccentricities, and even the downright annoyingly ridiculous phrase mas o menos which, in translation means “more or less,” but in Mexico (and Cuba) actually means “I-can-tell-you-whatever-I-want-even-if-I-know-I’m-wrong-as-long-as-I-slap-on-a-mas-o-menos.
I fought Central America for the longest time…and that’s just not like me. I’m an “experienced” traveler right? I love new cultures, I know not to judge new places solely through the eyes of my Western upbringing, but yet, sometimes, there’s just something in …

An internal debate wages on for the brief seconds it takes me to decide to ignore my dad’s chirping voice of caution in my head. Instead, I hoist my backpack over the tailgate of the truck and then hoist myself over said tailgate. The truck engine rumbles to a start and the 15 other backpackers and I, standing, white-knuckle grip the faded gray metal bars threaded through the bed of the truck as we jostle along to our hostel.
At this point in my travels, I approach transportation all …

This week wraps up our three part series on how to travel around the world completely via land and sea travel. Michael is a full year into his RTW trip (he thinks it will last about 16 months total) and has shared valuable tips and information over the past three weeks about ways other travelers can plan a flightless trip around the world…from giving yourself a lot of time to travel overland (1), to coping with the extra cost of flightless travel (2).
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Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: Skip …

Michael Hodson from The Mobile Lawyer continues this week sharing first-hand tips about how to travel around the world without taking a single airplane. He has spent the last year on a ground-level RTW trip taking buses, trains, and ships in a desire to feel every step of his trip around the globe. This three part series covers all of the tips and information he has picked up on a year of flightless travel. Don’t forget to check out the first installment, traveling around the world without flying tips …

Our guest traveler for the next three weeks gets mad props from me for making the commitment to travel around the world without taking a single flight. Michael, from The Mobile Lawyer, has traveled around the world over the past year without a single plane ride. I really respect his commitment to feel every footstep of his journey and the his choice to take reduce the carbon footprint of his RTW trip. His year of land and sea travel makes him the perfect person to share key tips over …

We’re flashing back to Australia today – to Uluru most specifically. Fret not my friends, the stories of Ireland are not over, but there were a handful of neat experiences in Australia that I never got a chance to cover.
I’ll preface this entire post by saying that although I was on an organized tour and saw all of the major sites…the fact that it was raining made this one of the biggest (and wettest) of my Australia adventures. It’s not incredibly typical for it to rain for days on …

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 …