The Tranquilo Traveler
The Tranquilo Traveler is a celebration of voluntourism, slow travel, and other interesting ways to see the world. Travel writer and award- winning Moon Handbooks author Joshua Berman created The Tranquilo Travel as a resource for world trippers and international volunteers, a window to the author’s travels in Nicaragua, Belize, and beyond, and an update of his books and articles.
Burly in Boulder: Apartment Wanted

On your left: Annapurna Amber, after the mountain whose name, according to the Southern Sun beer menu, loosely translates from the Tibetan to “goddess rich in sustenance, chock full of malted barley with mild hop overtones.” Unlike the Sun’s lightest beer, on the other side of the picture: Quinn’s Golden Ale, “a shade of the hair of the dog for which it is named.” Now imagine the liquid hues swirling into a perfect ying-yang, the very dark and light forces that have been guiding us through the Boulder real-estate and rental scene. Perfect. Harmony. Riiiight.
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Good Hiking Redux: Why We Came to Colorado
The Odessa–Fern Lake circuit in Rocky Mountain National Park is a trail-lover’s trail. It links a half-dozen alpine trout ponds with 18 miles of well crafted paths and crazily diverse terrain: rocky ice ledges at 11,000 feet to soft elk meadows at under 9,000. I’m at a loss trying to take it all in: yellow aspen bling-bling peppers steep conifer carpets; greenback cutthroats flicker under glass; dawns, dusks, dawns; gold medallion leaves raining down and underfoot… You get the picture. A three-day solo walkabout, clockwise from the Bear Lake trailhead. Two-mile-high October-cusp air is crisp and cold and the weather is dry enough not to have to use a tent fly. Temperatures range from blustery sun and seventy to yak-wool cool in the mornings.
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Rocky Mountain Arrival: Howdy from the Hogback

Colorado greets us with winter, the first snow on the first day of fall which, apparently, has been cancelled this year. It is frosty on the Front Range, the sky as milk-white as my iPod, which means it is dumping in the mountains. Two feet of powder in Vail and Beaver Creek! The September 23 Denver Post shouts jubilation from the ski industry and frustration from aspen leaf lovers, their annual golden foliage show cut short by the cold.
Tay, my Colorado native wife, shrugs it off as not unusual. It has snowed on her birthday plenty of times, she says.
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Crested Butte, CO: Gone West, Looking East

The journey from Baltimore to Bollywood has begun, but not in any direct or linear fashion. That would be too easy and end too quickly. Rather, my vagabondage has started with a log-cabin Rocky Mountain tangent—a high-alpine, Colorado launching pad to the world, as it were.
At 9,000 feet above sea level, it is still quite brisk in Crested Butte, although much of the remaining snow is heavy and damp from so much wannabe spring sunshine. Generous familial ties of shared loved for the mountains have brought me to a veritable chateau on the hill outside town, a description of which would exhaust my superlative quota for the day and is thus beyond the scope of this report.
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Pages
BY JOSHUA BERMAN
Categories
- 0. Volunteering Abroad
- 1. Round-the-World Honeymoon
- Belize
- Colorado
- El Salvador
- Fun with Maps
- Guatemala
- Nicaragua
- Outward Bound Wilderness
- Spanish Language Schools
- Teaching
- Travel
- Travel Quotes
- Travel Writing: Guidebooks, News, & Resources
Travel links
- Cheap Air Tickets
- Travel Insurance
- Travel Blogs
- Globetrekker Videos
- Travel Gear Blog
- Park Sleep Fly
- Eurail Blog
- Campground Reservations
- Around the World Airfare
- Soccer Blog
My Links
- Best Travel Blogs
- Best Travel Rags
- Fellow Travelers
- Xeni
- Adam Katz
- Jon Brack
- Wandalust
- Erik Olsen
- Yoga Sutay
- Eric Gauger
- Mark Jenkins
- The Randymon
- Dancin' Matt
- Melody Moser
- Daniel Demole
- David Stanley
- Jon Rawlinson
- Kelly Amabile
- Jeff Greenwald
- Wandering Dave
- Thirteen Months
- Lee & Sachi
- Rob & Carley
- Our Man in Granada
- Exploring Colorado
- Susana & Brian
- Peace Corps Writers
- Ze Frank: Mind Trips
- Bart in Latin America
- Swiss Family Travelers
- Audio Snacks from Around the World
- Wayne Bernhardson: The Southern Cone