Great Travel Writing Always Surprises

I'm always in the mood for a great travel read, and of course I have my favorite travel writers -- Rolf Potts and Bill Bryson are at the top of my list.

And I love it when really good travel pieces show up in places I don't expect. For example, I recently read a great travel essay in Golf Magazine.

Now, I'm not much of a golfer. In fact, I'm not a golfer by any stretch of the imagination. But I picked up the piece, called Adios Fidel Hello Tiger, because it featured a rather large photo of Che Guevara golfing.

I was alerted to the piece by a follower of my other blog, Che Spotting, which showcases pictures of Che from all over the globe submitted by travelers. It's a sort of Where's Waldo web site, except the travelers are looking for Che not Waldo.

Anyway, the Golf Magazine article was a very well written piece about the state of golf in Cuba. Currently, there are only two golf courses in the country. Foreign investors, however, would love to up that number.

But of course (as the author even said in the story) no article about Cuba can discuss the future without discussing the past, and so first he chronicles the history of the island's golf courses.

There actually used to be a whole bunch, and the PGA even held tournaments there, but then Fidel played a round against Che, lost and got so mad he bulldozed all the courses except one.

Anyway...if you're interested in golf, Cuba or travel writing and have got some time to check out the essay, I recommend it.

Afro Cuban All Stars in Minneapolis

Usually, Sunday nights are slow, calm and restful. Not so last night.

I hit the town and went to see the Afro-Cuban All Stars at Orchestra Hall in downtown Minneapolis.

Think Buena Vista Social Club. In fact, the Afro-Cuban All Stars is the band that the Buena Vista Social Club movie and subsequent albums are based on and around.

They put on a great show with lots of energy, plenty of dancing and pulsating rhythms.

There was also a healthy dose of impressive instrumental displays by trumpet players, a pianist, and a bongo drummer, lots of maraca shaking going on and a big mamacita wearing a dress layered in fringe who wasn't afraid to shake it on stage.

What a fun way to pass a Sunday night!

Speaking Frozen Daiquiri

My recent Louisiana daiquiri drive-thru experience has daiquiris on my mind.

They (daiquiris) make a strange subject -- perhaps -- for a blog entry, but it just so happens that I came home from my road trip through The South and got the bug to clean my office.

This bug doesn't come along very often, so when it makes an appearance, I've learned to heed it.

On this cleaning spree I decided to go through my book shelves. They are full and this is a problem as all the books I'm continuing to acquire are stacked in piles on the floor.

One of the books I pulled from my shelves during my cleaning is Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway.

I bought and read the book after traveling to Havana, for it is partially set in the city.

I also bought the book because I'd been told the main character spends a lot of time drinking daiquiris at El Floridita, the Havana bar where daiquiris are said to have originated and where Ernest Hemingway is said to have spent a lot of time.

Like many tourists in Havana, I spent an evening while I was there drinking daiquiris at El Floridita in homage to Hemingway.

It's been a few years now since I read the book. I remember a main character that struggled with being a good artist and a good dad. And - as I'd been told - I remember a main character that passed ample time drinking daiquiris.

Turns out, I underlined Hemingway's every mentioned of daiquiris while I was reading the book.

For example, I underlined this:

He was drinking another frozen daiquiri with no sugar in it and as he lifted it, heavy and the glass frost-rimmed, he looked at the clear part below the frapped top and it reminded him of the sea. The frapped part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.

And, among many other words, this:

All I know how to speak now is frozen daiquiri. Tu hablas frozen daiquiri tu?


Photos:

Big Easy Daiquiris in New Orleans.
Drinking an original daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana.

Going Greyhound to Mexico

Today, GoNomad posted a story I wrote about taking the Greyhound to Mexico.

Yes, that's right. I crossed the border on a bus.

Our end point was a pretty little town called Ensenada that is the heart of Mexico's wine country. It's just two hours south of San Diego on the Baja's Pacific coast.

While there, we toured a bodega, sipped some vino, downed a margarita, nibbled hot churros, and stumbled into a room where Al Capone was rumored to have played a hand of poker or two.

If you'd like to read all about it, go here:

Visiting Ensenada: A Bus Trip to Mexico's Wine Country

Also posted this week is an essay I wrote and published a few years back in the local paper. The link has been archived and hidden behind passwords, which means nobody is ever able to find it. So instead, I found it a new and approachable home.


Wanderlust and Lipstick is a web site that encourages women to get out there and travel. The site's author, Beth Whitman, actually posted two of my older travel tales.

First, What we Leave Behind, is about an encounter I had with a man on the streets of Havana.

The other, On Guard Against Giardia, is about getting sick in Guatemala.