Larry Taylor, Fullerton, CA. Photos by Gail Taylor

Palau: my wife, Gail, and I had been there before and jumped at the chance to return. We were booked on a cruise from Papua New Guinea that ended in Palau, and we decided to stay over for three days, in May ’08.

Not a lot of American travelers know about this unspoiled travel destination, but just ask avid divers or snorkelers. If they haven’t already been there, they probably will tell you Palau is at the top of their list...

by Clyde Holt, Hinesburg, VT, photos by Clyde and Jane Holt

Tsuwano, in Japan’s Shimane Prefecture in western Honshu, is a small mountain town with the faint remains of a ruined castle, two Shinto shrines, a street of restored samurai houses, and a chapel memorializing Catholics martyred there in the last period of the persecution of Christians in Japan. It is a pretty, quiet little town, often visited by day-tripping Japanese tour groups from nearby Yamaguchi, the capital of the...

by Inga Aksamit, San Rafael, CA

“Are you going to go zip-lining?” everyone asked when told that my husband, Steve, and I were headed to Costa Rica for our next set of adventures.

It sounded like fun until so many people asked that I started envisioning the canopy of the jungle crisscrossed with zip-lines zinging tourists across the sky. We decided to head away from the popular tourist zones to find our adventures on the infamous roads of Costa Rica (infamous due to significant...