Susan Joyce has contributed three great travel stories in this year's competition - you can catch up with these via the 2016 Travel Stories page.

It's a great pleasure to welcome Susan back with her travel highlight entry. 

La Tortuga Island, Venezuela 1998

We joined divers near an uninhabited island off the coast of Venezuela for a week of exploring. One evening the captain invited us to join his family for a spin around a mangrove swamp nearby. Honored, we climbed aboard his small motor boat.
 
A calm sea beckoned us into lush inlets.
Halfway around, the engine sputtered and stopped.
“Dirty gas” the captain said.
No toolbox on board. No oars. No life jackets.
Crazy, especially with a baby aboard.
 
We drifted and waited.
Swim ashore?
NO! Crocodiles!
 
We watched, listened, and shouted for joy when fishermen came to our rescue.
Whew!
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One of our most loyal contributors in the 2016 Travel Story Competition was Elizabeth Moore, who entered a story for each of the five monthly competitions, and was our March winner. You can catch up with all of her stories via the 2016 Travel Stories page. 

Read and enjoy Elizabeth's wonderful entry for our 2016 Travel Highlight Competition.

Apricot Sunshine
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An afternoon in the medieval town of Minerve, France. I walked cobbled streets and looked down from this cliff hugging hamlet to the dry gorge below.

A barrow of apricots announced – ‘fruits non arroses-producteur a Minerve’ – unsprayed, local fruit. I tasted the soft, yellowness of this beautiful region – mouth-melting sunshine; delicious, golden harvest.

Early Australian summer and my husband surprised me with a single apricot. He’d battled predators, fruit-fly and weather to bring me a sunbeam. One bite and I was back in the little village once more, as the juice dribbled slowly down my chin.
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Short bio
Elizabeth has lived in Australia all her life. She is happily married, a mother of two, grandmother of four and devoted assistant to one very bossy tortoiseshell cat named Lucy. Her working career began as a speech pathologist and later morphed into the totally unrelated field of retail manager in a university science centre and planetarium.

Travel has always been a focus and yes – there has always been a bucket list. This was brought into stark relief when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and following treatment, a travel timetable began to take shape. Guam was first, followed quickly by European and North American adventures. Illness nudged another long-held interest to the fore and Elizabeth began chronicling her trips with extensive photography, promising herself she would also write about her exploits. 
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It's great to welcome back our May Travel Story winner, Jill Dobbe, with her Travel Highlight entry:  Mmmmm……Chocolate! 

If you haven't read her travel story RIDING AROUND IN RICKSHAWS…REALLY? please check that out first, before reading her travel highlight entry.

Mmmmm……Chocolate!
 
Nervous and shy, I entered the hut made of flimsy grass walls. The dark-skinned Mayan woman handed me a thick white towel and told me to take off my clothes. I lay on the table stark naked while musical flutes crooned quietly in the background. The sweet, seductive smell of warm chocolate overwhelmed me as the masseuse spread globs of the heavenly confectionery over my entire body.

“Do you want to taste?” she asked.

I dipped my finger in and licked off the rich chocolatey goodness, sighing with undeniable pleasure. 

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Jill is an international educator and published author who writes about her experiences living and working in schools and countries around the world. The interesting sites she has seen and the unique places she lived prompted her to begin writing. Originally from Wisconsin, USA, she currently lives in her seventh country, Honduras, with her husband, Dan, and her Yorkie-Poo, Mickey. While working as an elementary principal, Jill travels, shops for cultural artifacts, works at scrapbooking, reads obsessively, photographs the beautiful people and countries of Latin America, and muddles her way through the Spanish language.

Jill loves her life as an international educator, and on the days when there is ample electricity and water, she feels like she is living the dream.

It's a real pleasure to feature our latest highlight Crosswind Pilot, from Mike Cavanagh.

If you haven't read Mike's travel story entries from earlier this year, then check out:
A Once Upon A Time True Story and Bog Cotton before you read this wonderful highlight.

​Crosswind Pilot

Forty knot crosswind. Last plane before the airport is closed. ‘Windy’ Wellington, New Zealand, rated by international pilots as one of the three worst places in the world to land a plane.

‘Yaw’ – twist horizontally.

‘Pitch’ – rock nose up and down.

‘Roll’ – twist on own forward axis.

All three with shuddering, stomach-churning force.

185 souls on board, seatbelts and bottoms clenched, travelling 140 miles per hour, thirty metres off the ground, and already a third along the runway.
One split second, plane aligned.

‘Thump!’ Instantly down, tyres squeal, hold.

Cabin pulsating with 185 souls spontaneously clapping and cheering.

Safe.

Home.
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​Brief bio:
  
Mike Cavanagh is now in his sixties and has no idea how that happened. He lives with his wife, Julie, and two black cats in Bateman’s Bay, New South Wales, Australia. Three adult children, mostly left home, complete the extended menagerie. The house Mike and Julie live in is quirky and in need of regular maintenance, as are its owners. Mike writes poetry, plays guitar and composes music, is doing a PhD in Zoology, and spends far too much time playing computer role playing games. None of these very well, necessarily, but he does them.

Our latest travel highlight entrant tells me 'here’s my first story ever sent to anybody'.
Thank you so much Louise Pierce for choosing this contest to do so. I'm sure everyone will enjoy your highlight Tour of Italy with my husband 1995. 

Tour of Italy with my husband 1995
 
To Rome from Florence, last days. To spend a night near the sea. Unbeknown to us, Ferragosto, every Italian in the country at coasts.  Every hotel, no vacancy.  Toll-taker tells us, “go to Fregenae.” Room $15. No A/C, no bathroom. Sweat pooling in the hollows of body and mosquitos.  Morning, to husband, “start the car, we’re out of here.”  Hotel’s daytime manager, grabs my wrist, “no American woman should sleep in a room like that.” Horrified by his servitude. Tour remodeled rooms of hotel, A/C so cold and bathroom.  Mile from the ocean. 3 more days, $15 a night. Yes.

Louise Pierce
Lives in Havertown, Pennsylvania, married to Mark 25 years, my son Stephen 20 years old, in college.  I’ve been teaching Art for 28 years at Lower Merion High School.  I make art and read a lot. Love to travel. I take care of people and have as much fun as possible.
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A big welcome back to Nancy McBride with her highlight entry Bewitched - this is the third entry in this year's competition and is another great read,
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​Bewitched

Dancing with pick-up partner, “Billie from Belfast”, to the throbbing, rhythmic blues of Wolfie Witcher and his Brew, in Camdentown, I was in full-blown, dirty-dancing heaven. Squeezed, like on a spawning salmon ladder, we flowed up onto chairs, then easily ONTO the table, never missing a beat, frenzied. The burly bouncer politely requested that we, “Please dance on the chairs, not on the tables.” My daughter’s partner, impressed, shouted, "Who's your chum?" She shouted, "It's my MUM!" Stopped him cold in his tracks! His “mum”, apparently, was home baking biscuits! I'd love to see the band again, and “Billie”. 

2016 TRAVEL BIO
Nancy’s travels are never heavily goal-centered, but always journeys to enjoy what may come to her along her meanderings. Yes, she has a vague itinerary and tickets to and fro, but her only purpose is to be just where she is, and to soak the beauty and remarkable in ordinary life. She doesn’t do packaged tours well, nor have energy in tromping hither and yon. She trusts her hosts will simply show her what they love about their homeland. She is happy to just sit in a café and people watch and dive into conversations with strangers, who often become friends. She is easily amused, and finds little stories discover her everywhere she goes. Keeping her senses attuned to the now, adds to her contentment with the extra-ordinary in the everyday. 
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Our second travel highlight entry this year is from Heather Hackett and is about a city close to my own heart. 
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India Dawning

Floating downstream past the ghats of Varanasi at sunrise is leisurely and mystical, the shoreline of the City of Light softened in the fine haze left behind by the day before. The rabble on the ghats fades into timeless echoes from another reality. The wailing of a sitar, real or imagined, pours out all the joys and sorrows of life in India across the cosmos. And I am just a privileged onlooker, stirred for a moment by passion for a people and a country where both the ancient and the infinite are mutually inclusive concepts. 

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​AUTHOR BIO
I have spent most of my life, over 40 years of it in fact, searching for meaning in our often insignificant and trivial lives. I’ve searched across three continents, mostly in Asia, and found various forms of spiritual fulfilment, some very powerful and life-changing. I’ve experienced some awesome highs and some wretched lows. I’ve known scarcity and prosperity in not-so-equal measure, and I’ve learned how precious life really is. My current work in progress is a memoir of all my experiences, hilarious and pitiful, gained while dragging my sorry ass and my two young kids up and down the Himalaya, through the monsoons of Asia and along the bike paths of Europe.
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What a pleasure it is to publish the first entry in this year's Travel Highlights Competition. It is from Tony James Slater, well-known travel memoir author.
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​Off the Rails

I sprinted down the platform, ignoring all sounds of pursuit.
The train was like something from 1970’s Britain, only daubed with indecipherable Chinese characters. The air was hot and spicy.
I swung into my carriage with one thought: Must Reach My Wife.
She was already aboard; if it left without me we’d be completely adrift, separated by a thousand miles of deepest China.
“Thank God!” she said, “I was so worried!”
“Yeah,” I panted, “but we have a problem…”
Her eyes widened as she saw the policemen forcing their way down the carriage towards me. All were carrying machine guns.

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Tony James Slater is a very, very strange man. He believes himself to be indestructible, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. He is often to be found making strange faces whilst pretending to be attacked by inanimate objects. And sometimes - not always, but often enough to be of concern - his testicles hang out of the holes in his trousers. It is for this reason (amongst others) that he chooses to spend his life far from mainstream civilization, tackling ridiculous challenges and subjecting himself to constant danger. He gets hurt quite a lot. For more information, or to complain about his shameless self promotion, please visit: www.TonyJamesSlater.com

The 2016 Travel Highlights Competition has now started and we will be accepting entries until November 14th (midnight UK).

Your travel highlight should be between 50 and 100 words (excluding title).

Please send your entry to fd81@assl.co.uk with a short bio and optional photo. The number of entries per author/writer will be limited to a maximum of three.

There will be prizes awarded for the Top 3 (£50/£30/£20 or equivalent) and these will be chosen by a public vote that will run for two weeks from November 15th - 30th (midnight UK).

In addition, each published author/writer will get a complimentary e-book of the new release of my father's memoirs: Exclusive Pedigree: My life in and out of the Brethren by John L. Fear.

After the success of our second Travel Stories Competition, I am pleased to announce that the 2016 Travel Highlights Competition will soon be open for entries.

We are looking for your memorable travel highlight, but this time it must be between 50-100 words (excluding title). Check out last year's entries at 2015 Travel Highlights to get some inspiration.

We will be accepting entries from September 15th and the Closing Date will be November 14th (midnight UK). So you have two months to get your entries in, The number of entries per author/writer will be limited to a maximum of three. Submissions should be e-mailed to fd81@assl.co.uk with a short bio and optional photo,

There will be prizes awarded for the Top 3 (£50/£30/£20 or equivalent) and these will be chosen by a public vote that will run for two weeks from November 15th - 30th (midnight UK).

In addition, each published author/writer will get a complimentary e-book of the new release of my father's memoirs: Exclusive Pedigree: My life in and out of the Brethren by John L. Fear. 

Get your thinking caps on and I look forward to seeing all your fantastic entries.

Fred