For the past two weeks I’ve alluded to bad news and trouble at home but didn’t go into detail as I held my breath with hope. But there’s no more room for being elusive. On Monday, one of my family’s dearest friends, a man who has been like an uncle to me throughout my life, passed…

Welcome to Earning Abroad! In this series I’ll introduce you to some inspiring and ambitious friends I’ve met on the road — friends who have found viable work away from their home countries.  Heather Holt is yet another Earning Abroad interviewee who will seem very familiar to many of you. A fellow Yes Girl, she’s one…

Though whale sharks and manta rays had eluded us, I would rate our first day in Coiba National Park with Scuba Coiba as a pretty solid awesome — we’d swum with a school of thousands of jacks, spotted four frogfish, frolicked on idyllic abandoned beaches, watched dozens of white tip reef sharks slink by, met a majestic…

I often equate diving to a form of aquatic yoga — relaxing, meditative, weightless. Isla de Coiba destroys that analogy. Diving there is no yoga — it’s a tough mudder. We’re talking low visibility, deep depths, thermoclines with 10°F  temperature drops, and currents so intense you have no choice but to cling to a rock until…

I’ve been back in New York for ten days now, and from Albany to Brooklyn it seems the awful weather is the topic of the hour. I mostly just stay quiet and nod in empathy, since no one wants to hear moaning from someone who’s so recently returned from sunnier settings. But the truth is I…

Ask a backpacker about the beaches in Panama, and it’s likely they’ll start waxing poetic about the Caribbean sands of Bocas del Toro. And for good reason — it’s a unmissable stop on the gringo trail of Central America. But for the hearty few that touch down on the golden sands of the Pacific side of…