photo locale of the month – GringoPotpourri

Photo Locale of the Month – April 2018

Are you a desert rat? I don’t ask that question to be rude; it’s a sort of compliment, actually. Desert rats – the two-legged, humanoid variety, anyway – are my kind of people. These are people who prefer sunshine over rain, and dry heat over humidity.

If you consider yourself a desert rat, you might find yourself at home in the western United States, where places like Monument Valley, Joshua Tree National Park, White Sands National Monument, and the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve punctuate the parched landscape, making the desert more than just a vast expanse of sand.

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Photo Locale of the Month – March 2018

Although this recent winter has been one of the stranger ones in memory, spring is right around the corner. While nights and early mornings are still quite cold, dogwood trees are in bloom and the rainfall has turned the rolling hills of East Tennessee into a verdant quilt of green. Meanwhile, summer is waning in the Southern Hemisphere, where January = July and June = December.

Some below-the-equator regions, however, such as Central Chile and Northern Argentina, enjoy a mild year-round climate, and you can visit cities like Santiago and Buenos Aires well into April and still enjoy what I call shorts-and-sandals weather. It was in March, 2011, in fact, when I found myself enjoying two warm, sunny days exploring downtown Buenos Aires.

This obelisk, with eight lanes of traffic on each side of Avenida 9 de Julio (the widest street in the world, and named after Argentina’s Independence Day), is the defining symbol of Buenos Aires.

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Photo Locale of the Month – February 2018

The Olympics are in full swing and the South Korean city of PyeongChang – certainly not to be confused with Pyongyang, in the North – is enjoying an influx of tourists, athletes, and advertising dollars. At press time, the medal count is Norway 17, Germany 15, and Canada 13. The U.S. is in fifth place, with 8. These standings will surely change.

Although I’ve never been to PyeongChang – nor to Pyongyang, for that matter – I have been to Seoul, the vibrant capital of South Korea and part of a greater metropolis that, all told, is home to almost 26 million people, according to worldpopulationreview.com. Seoul is a teeming city that never sleeps, but, like Tokyo, Beijing, and other East Asian mega-cities, its skyscrapers are punctuated by verdant green spaces. This month’s gallery pays homage to Seoul’s urban gardens and palaces.

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Photo Locale of the Month – January 2018

As a Northern Hemisphere denizen, I cannot help but mention the weather in any wintertime photo locale post in which the location is in a warmer clime. After all, with bomb cyclones and polar vortexes having placed much of the U.S. and Canada in a deep freeze for the first week of the new year (even Florida had snow for the first time in 30 years!), it only makes sense to write about some place warmer.

For this month’s entry, that place is Granada, Nicaragua. This jewel of Spanish colonial architecture in Central America, Nica’s one time capital and the country’s most conservative city is one of the most vibrant towns on the planet. I can hardly believe that it was exactly one year since my visit.

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Photo Locale of the Month – December 2017

It is going on the last day of the year as I write this. And what a year it’s been! Weather in East Tennessee has been unusually cold of late, even for December, and I know that states to my north have it worse. Put it this way: I’m glad I don’t live in Minnesota right now.

As such, I wanted to feature pics from a place with warm weather 24/7/365. I immediately thought of Cuba, where I was just nine months ago. The island nation, which suffered heavy rains and flooding this past September from Hurricanes Irma and Maria yet recovered quickly, will be forever in my heart. And the grand seaside boulevard of its enticing capital city, Havana’s malecón, is the locale in question for this month’s entry…my last post of 2017.

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Photo Locale of the Month – November 2017

Earlier this week, a devastating terror attack took place in Egypt’s North Sinai region. A bomb was detonated inside a Sufi mosque, and as worshippers fled from the building in fear of their lives, they were shot from afar by gun-wielding ISIS types. At press time, over 300 people have perished and no one has claimed responsibility. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has declared three days of national mourning while world leaders have shown solidarity with the beleaguered Arab nation.

I have never visited the Sinai Peninsula, but I have explored other regions of northern Egypt, where the world’s longest river and the principal water source for countless African nations, the Nile, empties into the Mediterranean Sea. Situated on a jewel of Mediterranean shoreline just east of the Nile Delta, Alexandria is my favorite big city in Africa, and its crescent-shaped Corniche is the focus of this month’s photo gallery.

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Photo Locale of the Month – October 2017

Last month’s photo gallery focused on the beauty of Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj, part of three weeks spent exploring pint-sized Slovenia, which, in terms of value per square mile, features perhaps the most bang for your buck than anywhere else in Europe.

That trip was tackled onto the end of a thrilling African adventure that included safaris in Kenya and Uganda, and my summit of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, arguably my finest travel moment. But after all of that, I still wasn’t sated. From Slovenia, I embarked by train to see one last place, the Old City of Bratislava, Slovakia.

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Photo Locale of the Month – September 2017

The European Alps, that tiny slice of Central Europe where Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Italy, and Slovenia meet up, is arguably the most picturesque landmass on the continent. Snow-capped peaks tower over rolling pastures that, in turn, back up to peaceful villages with thatched-roof houses and wooden bridges over mountain-fed streams that flow into green sub-alpine lakes. In the summer, mornings are cool, afternoons are sunny, and evenings are lazy. In the winter, lakes freeze over, snow drifts pile up against farm tractors, and ski runs open for business!

There are dozens of charming towns and villages competing for your hard-earned tourist dollars. If you can manage to leave busy Switzerland, Germany, and Austria for quieter, less expensive Slovenia, you may find that Lake Bled, a lake and town that you may have never heard of before reading this post, offers as much bang for your buck as Zermatt, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and Innsbruck.

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Photo Locale of the Month – August 2017

One of my friends and travel buddies commented to me earlier this week that it has been seven years this month since we trekked with mountain gorillas, experienced the Serengeti wildebeest migration, witnessed Lake Nakuru’s abundant bird life and tree-dwelling lions, and enjoyed tropical Indian Ocean breezes in Zanzibar. Where has the time gone?

Dollar-for-dollar, the heavy reservoirs of cash laid out for three weeks of adventure in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania arguably delivered more bang for the buck than any other travel expenditure. I knew upon arriving at our first safari park of the trip, Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, that we were in for something simply unforgettable.

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Photo Locale of the Month – July 2017

Russia has been in the news a lot lately, and for all of the wrong reasons. From allegations of influence in the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election to questionable political alliances (read: the supposed selling of arms to Syria and North Korea) to nauseous partisan bickering over which U.S. leader has a better grasp on U.S.-Russia relations, all media attention on Europe’s largest country portrays it as a political dinosaur still fighting the Cold War.

While the country’s visa hassles only serve to reinforce this negative image, patient travelers who actually make the long journey to Russia will find a surplus of absorbing experiences to behold. Visiting Red Square in Moscow, for five decades one of the most intimidating places in the world, is one such experience…and a photographer’s delight.

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