Island in the Sun
by Ashley Cultra

(Family Fun Category winner in the 2009 WanderWomen Write Travel Writing Contest)

The view through the single paned window mimics a typical family meal, perhaps a small celebration or birthday party. Steaming, clay dishes and golden logs of crusty bread cluster the table’s center while wine bottles and decanters of chilled juice pass from hand to hand. Read more >>

Stinky Rotten Fish
by Victoria Allman

(Food & Drink Category winner in the 2009 WanderWomen Write Travel Writing Contest)

“You don’t want to go there,” Si told me with authority—as if we had known each other longer than the twenty seconds it took me to ask about the Kim Hoa fish sauce factory. Read more >>

Rudderless Bliss in Baja
by Ingrid Hart

“Quick, put the fish back in the water!” I yell to Bill. A Botox-lipped fish, called a Burrito Grunt, is flopping around at my feet, covered in sand, fighting for its life. A few minutes earlier, high in the horizon, I watched a cormorant pluck the unlucky fish from the Sea of Cortez. A large frigate bird with forked tail feathers then gave chase to the cormorant. It was like a Discovery Channel scene come alive. Read more >>

Just Step off the End of the World
by Tracey Zuliani

I took the advice of the baby-faced young man with the dentist’s dream smile standing nonchalantly behind the bookstore counter. “If you are going to do anything in this town, make sure it is the Canyon Swing. Read more >>

Shangri-La (winner of the Adventure Category in the Intrepid Travel Contest)
by Tom Czaban

Shangri-La isn’t just cold, it is bloody cold. I sit next to the fire, hoping that one day my hands will thaw out. My handwriting on the check-in slip looks like it has been written by a five-year old child who has fallen behind the others in his class. Read more >>

Anatomy of a Bribe (winner of the Solo Travel Category in the Intrepid Travel Contest)
by Antonio Sanchez

I stink and I’m tired. Even though the three months in Moscow passed quickly, I’m ready to return home. Moving up in line at Sheremetro’s outgoing customs line, I lament Moscow’s rotating water shutdown program. Read more >>

Breaking Frontiers
by Maliha Masood

Every detail you observe, every person you meet, every fact you learn, makes it that much more difficult to generalize, to presume, to stereotype, to say anything at all. For the more you know, the more you own that knowledge and the more its contradictions confound you. Read more >>

Not So Easy Riding Through Central America
by Beth Whitman

I could tell there was trouble brewing when I arrived at the Nicaraguan border. It wasn’t just the fact that I had to fill out (and pay for) paperwork in Spanish. For that, I had the help of a local teenager whom I couldn’t understand. Read more >>

Oh Just Sting Me Already, I Surrender
by Ewa Bednarczuk

I felt a prickly tickle scurry across my face. Instantaneously, I ripped myself from sleep and fumbled for my tiny flashlight all the way at the head of my bunk. Read more >>

A New Frame of Mind
by Meg Peterson

The thirty-seven foot raft dived over the edge into the center of a churning, boiling cauldron of white foam. Brad Newman, our boatman, muscles taut, tan arms straining as he gunned the motor and grasped the heavy tiller, bellowed… Read more >>

Don’t Let Your Generosity Kill You
by Betty Ann Boeving

I was once on-duty in Peru as a freelance tour manager. I had exchanged my high heels for knee-high irrigation boots that I  sported while I gingerly walked on extremely muddy trails deep in the Amazon rainforest. Read more >>

Vegetarianism Takes a Holiday
by Angela Dollar

In a loose sense, I like to call myself a flexible pescatarian. Not truly a vegetarian since I eat fish and seafood, and always willing to adapt to meaty situations that arise when traveling. Read more >>