Ibn Ibn Battuta

The Long Road Northward Begins

The Abeba Tours manager and driver picked Jacqueline and I up at our guest house in Addis early Sunday morning for the start of our two-week northern road trip.

As the churches emptied out from their all-night services, white-veiled figures filled the otherwise deserted streets. We left the city's northern limits, cruising along a well-paved road that brought us abruptly from the metropolis to rolling farmland. Runners and pods of bikers chugged along the roadside; our driver, Yoseph, told us that Ethiopia's most famous athletes, including the internationally renowned marathoners, train along this stretch of road.

The Final Countdown: Surfing Mehdiya in Winter

 Morocco map

A year and a half ago, when I first began to tell friends that I was moving to Morocco with Jacqueline, they often asked what I planned to do here. Of course, I had no clue, no real answer. So I usually just smirked, and said, "Working on my surfing skills."

The few who knew there were waves in Morocco chuckled, while the rest called timeout: "Wait, do they even have surfing in Morocco?"

Yes, they do indeed, though finding an opportunity to try it certainly took me a while. When we moved to Rabat last spring, I was excited to visit the city's well

Tarifa: Envying the Other Side of the Strait

Spain map

Situated at the southernmost point in mainland Europe, Tarifa is a quaint little fishing and surfing town in many ways the opposite of Tangier, its bustling Moroccan neighbor across the Strait of Gibraltar.

From the ferry port, Jacqueline and I began our Andalusian weekend by strolling to Tarifa’s old medina. Its meandering main street led us past haut couture boutiques, shops offering pastries or tourist gear, and sunny open air cafés where Spaniards munched churros and browsed newspapers.

Every local, it seemed, was accompanied by a dog. Large and small, shaggy and

Moroccan Skiing, and Apes on Ice

Some reports online (which definitely don't merit a link) tout Mischliffen - a ski resort south of Ifrane - as "the Moroccan Aspen". To be fair, on our visit last Saturday we did find Mischliffen nestled in a natural alpine wonderland, but one of considerably less dramatic heights than its Rocky Mountain counterpart.

Mischliffen's two ski trails - one modest and the other more so - empty into a large bowl at the hill's base, where hundreds of Moroccan kids and teens spent the day sledding on wooden fruit crates nailed to sawed-off ski halves. Often several of them would join together in a train at the bowl's lip and slide

Moroccan Hoop Dreams

When I arrived in Fes in September, one of the first activities in which I got involved was a local pick-up basketball game. I looked forward to the afternoons spent running up and down that court among the friendly, ragtag bunch of Moroccan players. 

Since we moved to a new neighborhood and the temperatures dropped, my attendance trailed off. But I wrote an article about the game and some of its main characters, which was published yesterday in The B, The Baltimore Sun’s free daily. While it emphasizes the hometown angle of my experience, I hope readers everywhere will find the article enjoyable. It is currently in print around town and will remain available on the paper’s online blog, or you can read it below:

Thinking Globally, Adventuring Locally: Washington, DC

For all my stories on the far-flung destinations I've visited in recent years, I have yet to write about the city that has been my home all this time. But Washington, DC bears recognition as a distinct and enjoyable place to live and - though few realize it - as one with great access to worthy adventures all around the city:

• I just began to get into DC's outdoors scene at the end of my Georgetown days in 2006, when Jacqueline and I spent several weekend afternoons kayaking up the Potomac from Jack's Boathouse. Our favorite destination early on was a rope swing anchored high in a tree on the Virginia side of the river. The rush of that initial plummet, pendulum arc, and final leap into the river below were well worth the long paddle against the current.