Happy New Year 2010 from GoMad Nomad Travel Mag

There is no better way to experience Palestinian culture and get an inside look at life under the Israeli occupation then to go to the West Bank as a volunteer. I was in the midst of a six-month Istanbul to Cairo overland trip when I got an invitation to stay for a month. I couldn’t say no. The warmth and hospitality of the Palestinian people made it an easy choice for me.

West Bank Photo Slide Show

I met Noel Lau back in 2005 in Leon, Spain while walking the Camino de Santiago. Since then I’ve traveled through the Middle East with him and joined him in Spain to teach English. In 2008 he left for South America. He’s currently in Columbia.

My mother crossed the border of the United States for the first time in her life two years ago. It was to visit me during one of my off-season excursions. When I owned the cafe on Chokoloskee Island in Florida, I often traveled in the summer months

Stephen Bugno has been writing about travel ever since his mother made him keep a travel journal at the age of 9 on a family vacation to the southwestern United States. Since then his travels have taken him to four continents and his writing has been published in more than ten online and print publications [...]

Emolyn Liden has been volunteering, working, and traveling her way around the globe for almost a decade. When she’s not traveling she’s at home in the mountains of western North Carolina. She’s a writer, knitwear designer and avid fiddler. Read her knitting blog at Emolyn Knits She blogs for GoMad Nomad at Emolyn’s Travel Snapshots Emolyn’s recent posts [...]

“I tried to buy a ticket too, but they’ve run out of seats,” says the only other Gringo on the bus. There has to be 200 of us packed into this former American school bus. And without a ticket, this means we’ll be standing for the two-hour haul over the mountains to Matagalpa. This is our first time on an “express” bus, opposed to the “ordinario” or “chicken” buses which do not require an advance purchase or have seat numbers.

It’s been one week since we were robbed at knife-point in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. Since then I’ve had a multitude of emotions and feelings: anger, frustration, forgiveness, vengefulness, regret. As a traveler or tourist you expect to get your pocket picked on a crowded bus, you expect to get your purse jacked in

Emolyn´s Travel Snapshots   We got a fresh start on December 1 out of San Juan del Sur, juiced up at Margarita’s restaurant and hopped on the chicken bus, like in the movies, right as it pulled out of town. We slumped into a sticky plastic seat and low and behold, our Japanese surfing friend [...]

Blog of a Modern Nomad The border crossing at Peñas Blancas is the typical chaos: money changes with huge wads of cordobas, dollars, and colones, a mother and son beggar team, long lines of tired Nicaraguan laborers, and a nun asking for offerings.  Before and after the 200-meter Noman’s Land one tractor trailer after another [...]

Travel Snapshots We have been lucky in many ways so far in Central America, the first being that my Costa Rican friend, Jorge, picked us up from the airport.  I guess because I was raised in a small town, I noticed quickly how houses had fences around the properties securing them from the street and [...]

Photos submitted by Gilbert Carlson