The Driver and I Spoke Italian

The pilot gave us notice that the approach to Lisbon would be circuitous. We were running late, but had made up some time, and now a few minutes would be sacrificed again. However, we were informed, the longer approach would take us out to the Atlantic and a view of the city below. And the […]

The Magical Thinking We Do

A trip left unfulfilled leaves an emptiness in its place: a vacuum. And an uncontrolled vacuum is a force of destruction. Look around you at the world today. Look at COVID, which has cost so many lives. Two years ago this week, I was supposed to be in Portugal but there was a great deal […]

Dive Trips are Another Thing Entirely

Dive trips are really special to me. They are my down time, just take it easy, don’t sweat the small stuff trips. I feel little pressure to do anything, and that’s a great place to be. I set a base itinerary, which mostly consists of “go diving,” and I leave most of the details to […]

Diving the Catalinas

Sometime in mid December I dropped off my regulator at the local dive shop for annual servicing. I had a long conversation with the person working there about my upcoming trip and specifically asked if it would be done in time. She said that yes, no problem, it would be done by the end of […]

What I Heard About Costa Rica

As we explored the seafloor at the first site of the day, Argentina, something struck me as being very different from my previous dives. The ocean isn’t silent, by any means, but there isn’t a lot of sound. This place sounded different. It sounded … like whale song: an eerie, haunting moan that resonates with […]

In Which I Didn’t Pay Much Attention

Miguel, my driver from the airport, hadn’t heard of my hotel. I looked at the reviews again, slightly worried – there weren’t as many as I remembered, and nothing recent. What had I been thinking? When I was booking this trip I had considered several resorts, but they felt constrained or out of the way. […]