Author Archives: chrisgarske

“If you’re going to learn to dive, you’ll have a lot more fun if your first experience is in clear, warm water. The best place is Bonaire,” my friend announced. He sounded quite sure. He’s a hard-core diver. “Never heard … Continue reading →

There are two kinds of travel writing – the glowing, and the honest.  You see the glowing stuff all the time, in the guidebooks, the Sunday travel section, and in gauzy memoirs like “Eat, Pray, Love,” “A Year in Provence,” and “Under the … Continue reading →

My first trip to Japan was a business trip in early 1988, with my boss, and his boss – our CEO. It was an exhausting ten-hour flight from California. At that time, Tokyo was the biggest, densest city on earth. … Continue reading →

Okay, this post isn’t to everyone’s… tastes. You’ll want to skip it if you’re squeamish. Or well-bred, or about to eat. If you’re like me, though, with the maturity of a twelve-year-old, this stuff is hilarious. We’ve all encountered some … Continue reading →

Hitchhiking in Nova Scotia, 4000 miles from my home in Walnut Creek, California, I was picked up by a man in a Volkswagen beetle. Turned out he was on his way to California, to attend the wedding of a girl … Continue reading →

I loved Botswana – I plan to go back and spend a month exploring it in depth, some day. It’s the size of Texas and only has about two million people, so it’s one of the least densely populated countries on … Continue reading →

My sweet little Kona condo is on the market. I calculate that if I get my price, I can travel for about 6000 days. Or maybe get a place with a guest room and a garage. Wanna visit? All are … Continue reading →

One afternoon in 1988 I took a wind-surfing lesson at Anini Beach, on Kauai’s north shore. Except for body-surfing, I’d never surfed before. I did okay – only ran over one swimmer. You should have heard the mouth on that … Continue reading →

At the end of our ten-month, seventeen-country trip around the world in June, 2008, Joy and I created this list to summarize our observations. We called it the Garske Awards. These awards only cover the countries we visited on that … Continue reading →