Caribbean

St. Thomas and Virgin Islands National Park

Right before December concluded, we flew down to St. Thomas, exited the American Airlines 737, walked a few paces across the tarmac, showed some locals our negative Covid test results on my wife’s phone, and entered the Cyril E. King airport. We’d escaped the continental United States for the first […]

Finca Vigia: in the steps of Hemingway

There are lots of pretty islands in the Caribbean, so folks have been understandably puzzled by our going somewhere that requires as much planning as does traveling to Cuba, but ever since seeing his home in Key West last year and his grave in Idaho the year before, I’ve badly […]

Havana Vieja

Friday morning after breakfast, I wanted an internet card to check email on my phone, so we started walking toward the Hotel Nacional when a local named Reynoldo told us we could get half-priced cigars just down the street, because it was a cigar holiday today! But only until noon. […]

our first day in Havana

Get this. From Atlanta, you can fly 90 minutes and land in a parallel world. It has 2 currencies: the CUP for locals (featuring faces and colors); the CUC for tourists (featuring statues and shades of brown). Doctors, engineers, and teachers forgo their $60/month, $40/month, and $20/month salaries to buy […]

4 days in the Bahamas

When I read Bob Goff’s “Love Does” several years ago, I decided to steal his idea of letting each child choose an adventure to take anywhere in the world upon turning 10 years old, but we decided to modify it a bit and let the other 4 of us tag […]