Travel Archives - Bluedot Living

What’s the Buzz at Hotel Paradox?

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 17:22:25 +0000

In a California beach town surrounded by redwood forests, I’m staying, aptly enough, in a forest-themed hotel. Rustic benches crafted entirely from teak tree roots — typically considered waste material in the timber industry, but here trimmed, shaped, and hand-finished into one-of-a-kind seating — adorn the lobby of Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz, as do […]

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Stepping Into Rural Japan

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 01:39:13 +0000

When people think of Japan, images of crowded, high-tech Tokyo often spring to mind. But Walk Japan has been helping people discover Japan’s rural side since 1992.

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A Frontier Town Grins and Bears It

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 21:26:39 +0000

In Churchill, Manitoba — with an equal number of people and polar bears — everyone must play by the rules.

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One Cyclist’s Struggle Up Haleakala

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 21:44:30 +0000

“What’s the temperature,” I asked Nicki, as the rain pounding on the car roof got louder. I was starting to feel chilly, so I figured it had dipped into the fifties from about seventy a couple hours earlier. She glanced at the instrument panel: “Forty-one.” Okay then. She helped me on with my flimsy plastic […]

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Traveling Lightly on Maui

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 21:43:44 +0000

The images were horrifying: Raging wildfires, fed by climate change and invasive species. A historic town reduced to ashes. Hundreds dead. In the immediate aftermath, the message was clear: Maui needs time to recover. Fun seemed disrespectful to the immensity of the tragedy. But living in a place with a lot of tourism like San […]

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Northern Thailand Tribe Clings to Tradition While Adapting to a Changing Climate

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 14:41:37 +0000

On a scorching morning in late July, the temperature rose to upwards of 100°F in Northern Thailand. I was there with a tourism group, which escorted me to the glorious, remote hills of the Doi Inthanon district to witness the production of two of my favorite staples: coffee and rice. On today's agenda: learn about […]

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Seeing Portugal from the Seat of a Bicycle

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 16:39:54 +0000

This past April, I found myself bicycling down a quiet lane in Portugal’s agricultural Alentejo region, through a landscape of olive and cork trees and fields carpeted with poppies and golden wildflowers. A divine scent of orange blossoms washed over me, signaling an orange orchard down the road, and I thought: Yes, this is why […]

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Trekking in Argentina’s Aldea Luna Reserve in Las Yungas Forest

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 16:28:31 +0000

Wedged between famous neighbors — the Amazon and the Andes — Las Yungas rivals their beauty and biodiversity. This relatively small slice contains a whopping fifty percent of the country’s flora and fauna.

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This Luxury Ecolodge in Ecuador is Also a Science Research Station

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 16:15:42 +0000

One night while walking through the Ecuadorian cloud forest, biologist Carlos Morochz heard what sounded like a cricket. But because crickets aren’t typically out at midnight, Morochz suspected he was hearing the call of a new-to-science species. “He knew it was a frog,” Mateo Roldan, head of research and biology at Mashpi Lodge, tells our […]

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