Rattlesnake Musings and Manta Ray Moments

After I bent over and lifted a dusty rock, a fat coiled rattlesnake glared and hissed within easy striking distance of my face. The day could've easily been my last. I was a two-mile desert walk from the highway, then a thirty-minute hitched ride from a Mexican doctor, whose Spanish questions I could barely comprehend and answer on a good day without venom surging thru my veins. I froze in terror. Then I backed my head and torso away at the speed of tree growth, over the longest meter I've ever crossed, while the slit eyes and forked tongue bobbed menacingly.

Primate Professor Returns to the Jungle

After a year of wilderness homesteading on my Mexican desert ranch and a month of wild pollenating on my Mexican desert flower, I have planted my white gringo ass on the jungle beaches of Huatulco, Oaxaca. Another chapter in my life. The rainforest-encircled Universidad del Mar has invited this primitive American ape to thump his chest and swing on a tire in a professor's office. I must now write more books too.

Road Babe Dispatch From Rainstorm Hell

While I was trekking across Ghana's northwest corner to Wa, the sky opened up in a most tremendous way and even the larger-than-a-cat mosquitoes took cover. I was thankful for a tin roof and a lack of windows as water beat down like fists over my head. Afterwards, the road to Kumasi (which normally has potholes the size of coffee tables) had fresh mud pits leaving me and my pack an unrecognizable mess of reddish-brown.