By Danielle L. Krautmann My senses are heightened in the rainforest. Despite being legally blind in my right eye, I can see more clearly than ever before….maybe there’s just more to see.  Something as simple as sunlight illuminating a water droplet on a leaf is a vivid representation of the complexity of nature.  I look [...]

Dear GoMad Nomad: I’m low on cash but still want to travel, what should I do? Go into further debt and live life in the moment, or do the prudent thing and save up my money? -Broke In Brooklyn Dear Broke in Brooklyn: My first advice is to get the heck out of Brooklyn! You’ll [...]

By Stephen Bugno Enough from the nay-sayers! British food is good! It is time for the unfavorable reputation of English cuisine to end. In my 20 days in England, I didn’t have a bad meal. The most memorable were the home cooked meals I had in Yorkshire and pub food in the cities and across [...]

Festa de São João, One of Europe’s Biggest Street Festivals By Stephen Bugno To experience Portugal at its most uninhibited, untamed and inebriated, don’t miss Porto’s massive, traditional annual Feast of St. John’s Eve. For one night every year, the city of Porto, Portugal goes absolutely wild. The celebration—Festa de São João—or Feast of St. [...]

The sun rises slowly but the noises of morning come suddenly. I’m used to hearing roosters alarm sleepers that morning has risen, but here a large community (or so it sounds) is quacking and twittering “get up, get up.” As I stand in the yard a parade of animals make their debut, one at a time. A pig is scoffing his nose in the dirt and in seconds a chicken and her chicks come shuffling through in a line. They flip leaves over to see if a worm or bean lays underneath. A dog who has seen better days wanders through looking for any resemblance of breakfast. It dawns on me, poor dogs, that they don’t have it as easy as the other animals because they don’t eat grass or leaves.

“Amsterdam is the greatest city in the world.” With such a recommendation we knew we couldn’t go wrong. We felt we had to break up the trip from Paris to Berlin by stopping in Amsterdam for a couple nights. Our drivers on the way up all had great things to say about the city, they [...]

Meet the 73-year-old, mountain-trekking, pilgrimage-making, French-born, Swiss citizen, Lydie Carbou. She’s a retired traveler. Not retired from traveling. But retired. And can’t stop traveling. It’s hard for Lydie Carbou to stay in her 7th floor apartment in Geneva for very long without setting off on another adventure. I caught up with her for an e-mail interview after recently returning from a trip to Nepal.

By Jett Thomason I recently had my first month-long work trip to Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. The trip represented a number of firsts. First time to Africa. First time to be jetting around for quick site visits rather than long-term job assignments. And first time to be representing the US government in the field with [...]

Two Programs that Offer English-Speaking Volunteers Full Room and Board By Stephen Bugno I’m almost as exhausted as they are, but somehow they keep going. This is supposed to be easy for me, right? English is my native language. They sun is about to set in our small “English Village” but the Spaniards stay positive, [...]

Avery Sumner was raised on a small farm just over the Georgia state line in Jefferson County, Florida.  As a child she spent many solitary hours in the stillness of nature and credits these early experiences for directing her to the life she currently leads as a writer and yoga instructor. Avery presently lives in [...]