The Darien Times

Burma Part 3: Legendary Mandalay and Bagan: ancient city of kings

In the morning we are off early on a bike ride through mists rising off Lake Inle, through rice paddies, fields of garlic and sugarcane, past flowering tamarind trees to the nearest town, seven miles away. On the way, once again we are greeted by the resonant waves of chanting ...Read More

Burma Part 2: A world that time forgot

If you are a party animal, Burma is not for you. Because there's no nightlife, instead of staying up late to party, the population in the cities goes to bed early and gets up early — very early. Rangoon's city parks, for example, are filled before dawn with thousands of ghost-like ...Read More

Burma: Lost world on the cusp of change

Editor's note: This week's begins a lengthy series by Darienite Granville Toogood who has delighted many of our readers with his truth-in-travel pieces written exclusively for The Darien Times. Mr. Toogood recently returned from southeast Asia and we begin this week in Burma. This article along with his past travel ...Read More

Brazil Lesson No. 2: Never rent a car

In virtually every country we have ever visited, we have rented cars, even in Lebanon, where we drove through a war zone, and later 1,200 miles across the Atlas mountains and deserts of Morocco without seeing another car. But Brazil is out of the question. ...Read More

Searching for paradise down a long, bumpy and muddy road

Getting to Trancoso — touted as a rustic and charming fishing village where billionaires beach comb with the locals — is a pilgrimage. For us, the journey takes two days, first driving to the central city of Belo Horizonte, where we spend the night in an airport hotel, then flying ...Read More

Finding what we didn’t seek in Brazil

We are on a small plane heading north to Porto Seguro. From the air we can see the private beach estancias carefully hidden in all the green. Our second flight takes us farther north to Salvador, the Afro-centric cultural and historical capitol of Bahia state. At 9 that night we ...Read More

The Paris of South America

If Brazil is a coffee-colored confection of Afro, American Indian, and Portugese colonial history — complete with some of the world's wildest places (in every sense of the word) — Argentina is a crazy quilt of mostly Euro-Caucasian heritage, breathtaking Patagonia wilderness, haunting tango, and a deep DNA of gaucho ...Read More

The Panama Paradox: A wild ride through a contrary country

The moment we step off the plane in Panama City, we follow Alice right down the rabbit hole — and straight into what I have since come to call the Panama Paradox.   ...Read More

Centuries after Columbus, tourists discover an island paradise

On the five-hour drive through undulating foothills and savannas to the mountain town of Boquete, we pass through what must be the breadbasket of Panama — cattle ranches and vast plantations of rice, corn, bananas, sugarcane and pineapples that grow fast and furious in the rich black volcanic soil. Boquete is ...Read More