The world is my playground. I’ve always believed that. When I was a child, my parents would load us four kids into the brown Buick station wagon and take us on long-haul trips to places like the Black Hills, Yosemite National Park, the Great Salt Lake, Disneyland, and Knott’s Berry Farm. On a trip to California, I visited my first foreign country…a day trip to Tijuana, Mexico.
Two years ago, no one who lived on Isla Holbox felt much like celebrating Christmas. Wilma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, had spun across the island like an electric mixer just a few weeks before, crushing everything in its path.
I’ve crossed paths with the larger-than-life Barbara Bode many times in the past six years: in New Orleans, on a cruise of the Mexican Riviera, three times on the mainland of Mexico, and twice in Ecuador¾once during a volcano eruption. Like a jack-in-the-box, she just keeps popping up.
In 2002, Jeff Martin was busy running his successful law practice in Massachusetts. “I was having no fun at all,” he says. The only thing he did enjoy was scuba diving.
"A funny thing happened on the way to Panama." That's how Dan and Carol Neuschwanger explain how they ended up in Nicaragua. A detour on the road of life, you could say…
Have you ever wanted to say "To heck with it all" and walk away from everything that is familiar to you? Oh come on, who hasn't?
Deciding to make your craziest dreams come true is one thing. But having your children look up to you for it…that makes it all worthwhile.
In 1492, when Columbus spotted the coral-rimmed island he later named Hispaniola, he proclaimed, “This is the fairest land under Heaven.” I have to agree. Home to the highest mountain range in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic—which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti—offers some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Columbus’ journal is full of descriptions of how beautiful the island paradise was. But he wasn’t looking for verdant valleys or turquoise waters and palm-lined beaches. He was on a mission to find gold.
"What do you do all day?" This is a question often asked of those who have moved overseas…especially those who are retired.
The year 2000 was not a good one for Patrice Wynne. That spring, the Berkeley, California, bookstore she owned—and had poured her heart and soul into for years—was forced to close. Her income dropped precipitously. Shortly after that, her marriage ended, her beloved grandmother passed away, and a significant love affair came painfully to a halt. Even her cat died. That fall, it was more than the longtime political activist could take when the Supreme Court sent George Bush to the White House.