Stephanie says

  Travelling in Mexico US Hwy 18 Mex 15 - Copper Canyon Bound Tucson to Los Mochis via bus is a long ride.  Gone are the rickety busses so stuffed with passengers they’re hanging out the windows as live chickens squawk in the aisles portrayed in old western movies. This bus has air conditioning, comfortable seats, and drivers professional in crisply ironed white shirts and dark blue slacks.  A video screen plays American movies voiced-over in Spanish, the audio lingering a few beats after the lips stop.  Crossing the border proved easy.  Everybody got off the bus, lined up with their bags and punched a metal button on a pole hooked to a stop light.   We foreigners were directed to a Customs counter where we filled out a form, bought a tourist visa ($200p), then back on the bus.   Mexico Hwy 15 stretches narrowly across flat desert, oncoming traffic rushes by with a suction of wind shear.  My travelling companion ...

I had four hours to wait at Puerto Vallarta airport, 6000 pesos in my pocket, and some very nice leather goods shops to browse.  So I shopped for a purse. I ended up with this beautiful specimen to add to my collection.  For a whopping $400. Partly because foreign money doesn't seem quite real.  And also because I really, really wanted to avoid going through the currency exchange.

Two bone-jarring kilometers from Todas Santos over narrow beach road of washboard and sand are the final leg of the trip.  Finally here.  Here being Baja, a semi-tropical paradise of wind-capped ocean pounding up steep sandy beaches, where scrub trees and cacti dot the rising elevation from water’s edge.  Higher still and there’s the stuccoed house with deep, thatch-roofed courtyards, skirted by a green verge of banana and mango trees, asway palms at dance in the breeze, and bright bougainvillea flowers tumbling down walls in a riot of color. Now a passing whiff of plumeria.  I settle into my room: ground floor, ocean view and comfortably appointed.  The door does not have a lock.  Okay.   Ellen is at hand to meet us as we arrive.  This is the third year she’s held the writing retreat at Serendipity. Here comes Sheri: tall, blond, and thin, (they’re all thin.  Except me and Sharon, the only ones of any ...

Meandering through the busy streets of Orvietto, I admire the Italian custom of evening strolls.   It’s a small hill town dating from Etruscan times, built on tuff cliffs towering above fields and vineyards, those cliff walls an ideal defense.   Tuff is a porous stone and Orvietto is known for the caves carved out beneath the city; wine cellars sure, but also pigeon coteries in event of a siege. The pigeons provided communication, meat and eggs.   I so admire good planning.   We’d arrived mid-day by bus, delivered to the station at the bottom of the hill.   Rather than schlepping our bags, we splurged on a taxi for a thrilling ride up the cliffs, through narrow streets, the taxi whizzing along barely clearing the spaces between buildings, and certainly at the peril of any pedestrians.   A tossup between sheer terror or adrenaline – it was definitely a buzz. Orvietto was the Italy I’d come to see.   The rave is always about Sienna; I couldn...

West of Triangle Lake has a thrilling rock slide  and a deep pool with a rope swing  Massive rock ledges  Beautiful in every season.