I'm sitting on the sea bottom off the island of Roatan, in the Caribbean Sea. Even at one hundred and ten feet below the surface, the water is warm. Juergen, my Divemaster takes a banana from his sack and hands it to me. I shrug my shoulders as if to say I’m not hungry. Andy Jeff, the third of our trio, a U. S. military man stays back a little. On dry land Andy’s a fast and furious talker, hitting on a range of topics that interest no one. He cl...

 Medellin, with a population of 2.5 million, sits in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. Clay coloured high rise apartments and office buildings dominate the valley floor and climb up the hills toward the mountain peaks. When I first heard about Pablo Escobar getting shot on a rooftop while trying to escape his captors in Medellin, I'd envisioned him running across single storey colonial buildings, maybe tripping here and there along dilapidated broken ...

 It started to rain five days before we arrived in Capurgana and continued for the two days we spent there. I had wanted to dive but the seas were too rough. Ellen wanted to soak up the sun, but it was hidden by dark clouds.Capurgana is a fishing village long known as a stopover for northbound drug runners. It was considered a dangerous area to visit until the leftist kidnapping rebel group FARC was cleared out by the Colombian military. One afternoon while Elle...

 Nothing builds confidence in a fool faster than having him pilot a fifteen metre vessel into the darkness. Nine fools really, not just passengers, but crew as well, rolling along in two to three metre waves. My job just before taking a turn at the wheel was sandwich maker. Slicing tomatoes, cucumbers and onions with a great big bloody butcher knife. I was deathly afraid of the wave that might throw me against the stove, plunging the ten inch blade into my gut, ...