Posts Tagged ‘africa’

Roberto slammed on the brakes, pushing the Land Rover into a skid. I grabbed the safety bar and my thoughts drifted to the bright orange shoes I had begged my mother to buy me when I turned seven. My mother, so worried about my Africa trip, my mother, so clearly right about its dangers. “We’re lost,” the park ranger whispered, hysteria edging into…

I’m notorious for missing the sights. I’m the kind of traveler who manages to visit Niagara without seeing the Falls or Paris without climbing the Eiffel Tower. Sometimes it’s on purpose, because popular attractions can be excessively packaged, reduced to their lowest common denominator and devoid of discovery or excitement. At other times I simply get…

I couldn’t take my eyes off her fingers. They were draped in bands of metal, dirty, gritty and dull, with scratches and bumps, uneven on the sides, carved from discarded bullets gathered in a place of war. Some were thin bands, others majestic constructs jutting into the air, ready to poke out an eye with…