The Caribbean is an amazing region of the world, I have vacationed there a couple different times. The ocean is super warm and very clear. If you hunt around, you can find great spots to snorkel, skin dive, relax on the beach, and also great scuba options as well.{@}

On one of those vacations, a group of friends and I went to Nassau in the Bahamas. We had an amazing time (except for the crazy blister-hives I developed), and had the luck of finding a sweet secluded snorkeling and skin diving spot right off the shore. It had the added bonus of having a completely secluded beach. For this particular trip, we had decided to rent a car to have the freedom of traveling all over the island. A scuba shop we stopped off at was kind enough to point us to the great spot we ended up finding.

When we first stopped off at the secret spot we weren’t sure exactly what we would find. We walked down to the shore and found a great beach, and best of all no one else around. My buddy and I headed out with our fins and masks and immediately started seeing all sorts of sea life, a ton of different tropical fish, all types of coral, and a bunch of barracuda.

The day prior we had also seen a ton of barracuda, and they had freaked us out quite a bit. They would circle around us like crazy and swim super close in a very aggressive manner, but when we stopped at the dive shop we also asked how dangerous the barracuda actually were and they had informed us they that the barracuda were are very territorial, but ultimately harmless, and that if you made any kind of motion towards them they would swim off. We tested out this information on this very excursion, and fortunately the dive shops wisdom proved correct.

When we got out even further, we started seeing even more cool things like huge STINGRAYS, an eagle ray, and even helped free a small REEF SHARK. To be able to see all of this cool stuff we were skin diving down around 40 feet, we knew the depth because of our underwater camera. It was quite a work out to hold our breath for all of those dives, but well worth it! We were able to see all sorts of amazing underwater life.

The only downside of the experience was my back got completely fried, distracted by the amazing experience I completely forgot about sunblock, and my back was facing the potent Caribbean sun-rays for 4 hours of straight skin diving, minus the time we were diving down. Even with the sunburn it still ended up being an incredible experience, and we went back to the same spot several times during the vacation seeing a ton of incredible sea life every time.

I have traveled to quite a few places in the world, but I can say without any doubt or hesitation that Lake Powell is my favorite place on Earth. Its raw beauty and abundant potential for fun and relaxing activities make it the most amazing place in the World, and a place I will visit every summer as long as I am physically capable (maybe even when I am not physically capable, I will just have someone wheel me down to the water in a wheelchair). I have had so many great experiences there, this is one of those stories.{@}

One particular Lake Powell vacation we were camping out at Lone Rock Beach. We had gone out for the day exploring around the lake and it was the late afternoon by the time we were heading back to camp. Our campsite was right on the edge of the lake so we could see it as we were getting closer. Something seemed a little off, just one of those feelings, and I remember looking at the distant shore and our camp as we approached.

We had left all of our non-perishable and non-melting food in a particular section of the camp, I think we had even covered it with a tarp or something. We were still pretty far away, but you could kind of make out a bunch of white dots all around the food storage location. As we got closer a sinking feeling started forming in our stomachs, we could just barely make out the forms that surrounded our food, the dreaded seagulls.

The seagull is the state bird of Utah, and even once the saviors of the Mormon pioneers, but in modern times they are mostly just hell-spawn let loose on Earth to torment man as he tries to enjoy any coastal area on the planet. As we got closer, we could only watch as these beasts devoured our food. Once we were close enough to the shore, we all jumped out and charged the pests of Satan yelling and I will admit, look away PETA and animal lovers, throwing a few rocks, you could even say a lot of rocks. But take heart seagull lovers, being spawns of Satan their unholy powers enabled them to avoid our thrown rocks and they escaped unscathed.

We were far too late at this point, the food had been completely sacked. The damn (or damned) gulls had eaten every last attainable morsel, the only thing untouched was a couple cans of food. They had gotten into everything else including sealed boxes of granola bars, cans of Pringles, loaves of bread, bags of chips, boxes of graham crackers, and more. Their devilish beaks had pierced everything but the metal cans, and given enough time I’m sure they would have gotten those as well.

We learned a valuable lesson that day, protect and guard all food when visiting Lake Powell. Even the stuff you think would be impossible for the devil spawn to penetrate. I still love Lake Powell, but I despise the seagulls that reside there.

Seagull header Image thanks to Steve Jurvetson.
Lake Powell header image thanks to Wolfgang Staudt

{@}One of my earliest vacation memories is when my family took a trip over to the Philippines, at the time we were living on the Air Force base in Guam. On our way to the Philippines we had a layover in the Tokyo airport. I think we were rushing to our connecting flight and at some point I became separated from my parents. I was only around 5 at the time so I don’t remember a ton, but it was a pretty traumatic experience.

Here I was this little 5 year old white kid, lost in a sea of Japanese people at the Tokyo airport. I am no racist, but if you haven’t experienced being lost in a completely foreign country, just take my word that as a kid it is a whole magnitude scarier being lost in a sea of a people of a completely different race and language, than just getting lost in your own hometown or country. I still remember hopelessly looking around and just seeing this overwhelming mass of Asians, with no parent in sight. To be honest I don’t even remember the conclusion of the story or even how long I was separated from my parents. Maybe some nice passerby helped reunite us, or maybe my parents were able to find me. I don’t really remember, but I do remember that fear of being in an unknown land and people with no clue what to do.

Things have changed dramatically for me, now I have grown to relish that feeling of being in an unknown land just waiting to be explored. It is such an awesome feeling to be in a foreign country not really knowing what you are doing, but ready to have an adventure and make stories for your kids and grandkids.

This happened on a weekend excursion while on a 3 week business trip to India. My job at the time involved working with a few different teams of developers in India. It was a great experience, and I will never forget my Indian friends there.{@}

We were on our way back from a weekend vacation taking a break from the hectic development release schedule, and we stopped at a random sight seeing spot. It was a lookout point, great for seeing the sunset.

They had a bunch of side tourist trap type things at the stop, and one of them was riding a horse and also getting to do some bucking bronco “giddy ups” on it. Horse riding is one thing I have never really done, (minus a random trail ride in the Philippines at the age of 5 that I can barely remember), so I figured, “Why not, I need to get this marked off my list of things to try…?” Especially considering my love of fantasy books and movies (yes, I am kind of a nerd in that regard), they are always riding horses in the fantasy genre.

They helped me up on the horse, and I had one of my Indian friends hand me up my GoPro. They didn’t give me any instructions, and the horse handler all the sudden just slaps the horses rear end and sends me off at a fast gallop. I am barely holding on trying to negotiate a little stick they gave me to spur the horse, not to drop my GoPro, and film the experience.

The horse is running along with Indian tourists all over the place, and definitely no white people anywhere in sight. In fact I think I had only seen maybe 1 other white person the whole day… Some of the Indian tourists are looking at me wondering what this guy is doing, and I am thinking the same thing…I would generally classify myself as more of a daredevil, but I have zero experience riding animals. Throw me on a motorized type vehicle and I will be fine, but an animal with its own agenda, I have no clue what to do.

The horse finally starts slowing down a bit, and I am feeling a little bit more in control. Then a new “helpful” Indian horse handler, asks something like, “Why you so slow?”, and he slaps the horses rear end sending me off on another gallop, I’m thinking “Thanks buddy…” and again holding on for dear life so I don’t fall flat on my face.

During this second gallop I realize that the horse is just running a loop, and we are just headed back to the starting point, so I am able to settle in a bit and enjoy the ride, and make it back with no injuries.

Now time for the bucking bronco “giddy ups”, or whatever you want to call them. Ok, so I cropped the picture to make it a bit more crazy than it actually was, but believe me for a first time horse rider, it was plenty. How it worked was the horse handler took the horse by its mouth harness and yelled some Indian phrase and the horse would buck back super far. I, of course, having seen at least a couple cowboy/rodeo movies knew that I could only hold on with one hand…yes, probably not the smartest move to attempt given the circumstances, but hey, “I had to get a good picture for Facebook right?”

My Indian colleagues and friends were all gathered around to witness the event, so I definitely had some pressure to at least attempt to look cool, so I attempted to recreate the cowboy move while at the same time not falling on my butt. It was definitely a crazy feeling rocking way way back while the horse bucked, and once I realized I would be able to hold on, a lot of fun. Luckily, I did manage to pull through the “giddy ups” without an incident. I know you were probably hoping for a nice fall, and even better a picture capturing the moment, but fortunately for me I was able to stay firmly planted in the saddle.

It was an adventure of a lifetime, we were set to make a loop through Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. We had come to explore and locate some lost American POW bones from the vietnam war (a story for another time). The group consisted of 3 of my buddies, myself, and two friends of one of my buddies a native Cambodian and a native Vietnamese.{@}

This particular event took place early on in the trip. We had been traveling a few days and had made it about a quarter of the way up Vietnam and found ourselves in Nha Trang with all the tickets on the sleeper train we needed sold out. The whole trip was on a pretty tight timetable so we really needed to make this train. We did have a nice ace in the hole, a native Vietnamese. He went over and started talking to the ticket counter rep and was over there for 15-20 minutes conducting some intensive haggling. We could see lots of hand gestures and all sorts of Vietnamese communication happening, of which we could understand absolutely zero.

He finally walks back over, and informs us of the deal he has brokered. We would be purchasing the bunk beds of some of the train employees directly. This definitely sounded a bit sketchy, but unfortunately it was our best option…

We still had another couple hours or so for the train to arrive, by this time it was around 11pm. Once it pulled in we were told to wait off to the side for all the other passengers to load. It was all very secretive, we were clearly operating outside the Vietnamese train rules. I must admit we were all pretty nervous, we had no idea if they were going take our money and leave us behind, or lead us off somewhere steal all of our stuff and then murder us. After all the other passengers were loaded, one of the train attendants came over and and lead us on this round about path to the other side of the train, and inside. We then followed them through all the backend parts of the train like the kitchen and maintenance cars, finally getting to the employee sleeper section.

They started dropping us off in different rooms pointing at different bunks, telling us that was our spot. My buddies and I were all looking at each other with pretty nervous looks not really know what the heck was going on. The new fear was that they would simply wait for us to fall asleep, murder us, dump us in the Vietnam countryside, and steal our stuff.

The employees that had sold their spots to us were just going to sleep in the hallway outside our rooms, this certainly did not help to calm our fears…knowing they would be just right outside our door. Apparently though, they were very happy with the exchange, I think we were paying them around $15 which was a great supplemental wage for them. We of course felt bad that we were taking their spots, but that was much further in the back of our minds. We were mostly just hoping to arrive at our destination alive and with all of our stuff. Luckily as I said, we did have the native Vietnamese guy with us that was able to help assuage our fears.

Let’s just say it was a rough night of sleep, on top of the fear of getting murdered in my sleep or just having all my stuff and money stolen, the bed was really just a metal plank with a very thin pad. I do want to note that we were grateful to the employees, they had even more uncomfortable accommodations sleeping in the hallway and helped us keep on our schedule, and we would be fully appreciative once we arrived safely. I had a super nice DSLR with me so I was definitely most worried about that, besides my life, and tied the case straps directly to my body to prevent and shady dealings in the night. In fact, I tied all my possessions to my body, if one of the employees had any nefarious ideas, I would be alerted immediately when they tried to pull it free.

Well…I am here to tell the tale, so you know I made it out alive. I am happy report that all my companions made it out safely as well. As an added bonus, we retained possession of all our belongings. It was a crazy night, with terrible sleep, but we were able to keep on schedule and enjoyed a terrific rest of our vacation.

Train header Image thanks to Rob Green.

{@}It was a guys trip, my dad, brother, and I. The first part of the trip was in the Cuzco area visiting Machu Picchu, an amazing place. If you ever make it to Peru, make sure to visit both Machu Picchu and the Amazon, both are equally incredible. Let me first get you oriented to our location, we arrived in Iquitos, Peru (where you can only get to via plane or boat), deep in the Amazon rain forest. From there we took a boat over 3 hours deep into the Amazon and were staying at this sweet lodge-on-stilts setup. This time of year the whole area was flooded, there was literally no land in sight, and we were on a man-made island of lodges connected by little swinging bridges, and ripe for adventure.

On one of the mornings, we journeyed out on one of the small side channels with our guide, Manuel, on a little skiff to explore the area. After we had been paddling for 15-20 minutes, Manuel pointed off in the distance and said, “I think I see a sloth in that tree over there…” then asked us if we saw it as well. All three of us were straining our eyes to their limit trying to see this sloth, but it was futile, everything looked exactly the same, and frankly I thought the guide was pulling our legs just trying to make things exciting.

Manuel was pretty adamant about seeing a sloth so he directed us directly into the Amazon forest. Remember everything, even the forest area, is covered in water, so we simply needed to start paddling into the rainforest. Manuel got out his machete and just starting swinging and carving us a path through the thick vegetation. We kept paddling at least 70-80 yards into the vegetation and we arrived at a tree, a tree that looked like any of the other hundreds of trees we had just passed, and Manuel said, “I think this is the tree, is this the tree guys?” I remember confusedly staring at my dad and brother, and they looked back at me with the same stare. I was thinking in my mind, “This is about 60 yards further into the rain forest than I had even considered looking…I have no clue if this is the tree Manuel had thought the sloth was in…”

Manuel decided this was indeed the tree, and had us paddle right up to it and he proceeded to shimmy up the tree climbing out of sight. Now we could speak freely and all of us were saying the same thing, “There is no freaking way there is a sloth up in that tree, this guy is just having fun with the gringoes…”.

A minute or two later and Manuel yells down to us, we can’t see him at all, but we can barely make out, “I found the sloth!”, then he cries out to me, “Nate grab your camera and get up here.” You see I had a nice DSLR camera with a super zoom lens and Manuel was excited for me to get some nice shots of it. I looked at my dad and brother with a look of, “Should I climb the tree?” we are also all still thinking, “Is this guy just pulling our legs…”, with Manuel continuing to yell down I only had a few moments to decide and figured, “What the hell, when am I ever going to have another chance to climb a tree in the Amazon rain forest to chase a sloth…”

I started up the tree trying both to brace my nice camera, and to not fall into the murky amazon water below. I went up about 20 feet, and all the sudden I hear Manuel cry out, “The sloth is coming down!” Now, as most of you, I have had no prior experience with sloths, and I know very little about them, expect of course that they are supposed to be incredibly slow. But even taking this into account, I must admit I was still freaked out. I was 20 feet up a tree in the middle of the Amazon rain forest with a sloth, that I still could not see, headed towards me.

I am peering up straining my eyes wondering where the heck this sloth is…all the sudden I see this brownish fur ball shape coming towards me not at an incredible speed, but definitely not at the slow speeds I had always heard about. As it gets closer I realize it is falling down the tree, and I am thinking “Crap, the poor sloth is falling and going to die.” I soon understand though, that it is actually a controlled fall, it is rolling down the branches, this is how it makes up for its slow speed, it uses gravity!

I was so freaked out by the wild sloth headed right for me that I barely even had time to get my camera up, luckily I was able to get one picture off. Then the sloth was past me and still heading down right towards the water, and “plop”, it rolled right into the water below. Again I started worrying about the poor sloth, I figured this thing is going to drown, but its head popped up and it started this slow methodical swim strokes. The best way I have always been able to describe it was kind of like how the Terminator moved, slow, methodical, but with a ton of strength. The sloth continues these calculated strokes over to the closest tree, and then proceeds with the same methodical movement to climb the tree. I am definitely relieved the poor sloth was able to make it out of this experience alive, albeit soaked to the bone.

But it doesn’t end there, all the sudden I hear Manuel flying down the tree with his own version of a controlled fall, he is very excited about something, and he says, “I want to hold the sloth!” He quickly gets past me, and jumps in the boat, they paddle over to the other tree, leaving me stranded in the original tree. Manuel paddles right up to the sloth, and he starts trying to pull him out of the tree. He is very adamant about wanting to hold the sloth, but try as he might there is no way he is getting that sloth out of that tree, sloths are slow, but they have freakish strength! Those large claws and inner sloth strength kept it glued to the tree. After a couple minutes Manuel gives up, and they swing back around to pick me up. Who would have thought Manuel really had seen that sloth so far off in the trees…

Sloth header Image thanks to Charles Peterson.

The Caribbean is an amazing region of the world, I have vacationed there a couple different times. The ocean is super warm and very clear. If you hunt around, you can find great spots to snorkel, skin dive, relax on the beach, and also great scuba options as well.{@}

On one of my trips, a group of friends and I went to the Bahamas. We were having a great time, when around day 3 my upper body started breaking out in this weird blister-rash that seriously itched liked crazy. It started out in just a few places, but throughout the day it started spreading all over my upper torso. I had know idea if I got stung by something in the ocean, came in contact with something strange in the sand, or maybe even a weird reaction to some of the vegetation. All I knew is that I was covered in this plague and itched like crazy.

By the evening I was miserable, just covered in this strange malady and itched all over. It got to the point where we had to make a quick run to the closest grocery mart and I loaded up on all sorts of anti-rash and anti-itch cremes and medications. I covered myself in those cremes. I needed relief from the itching and I needed it fast. It took a 30-40 minutes, but I did start feeling some measure of relief.

The crazy rash-hives lasted the rest of the vacation, but the assortment of cremes made everything much more bearable and I was able to enjoy my time, just with some itching and looking a little like a cross between the plague victims you see in movies and an aborigine. I still have no idea what caused that rash, I just hope to never have to experience that again. Like most crazy things that happen to us in life, and especially on vacations, this experience has just become one of so many funny vacation memories. My friends even joke about that time I was “covered in boils”, or suffering from the “plague”.