travel photography by Darrell Chaddock
I spent more than a month in Tunisia in January and February of 1997. I had originally intended to be in Tunisia for about 10 days.
According to the then current edition of the Lonely Planet guide to North Africa, Tunis was the best place to get a visa for visiting Libya. In actuality when I went to the Libyan embassy I was told in blunt terms that they would not issue me a visa. No explanation was offered. So that’s how I came to spend over a month in Tunisia.
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I visited Morocco for 3 weeks in January of 1997. As it turned out this was during the Muslim month of Ramadan during which business hours, train and bus schedules, and visiting times for tourist sites are reduced. Fortunately this meant that there were fewer tourists around. Unfortunately, it meant that I would not have time to visit every place I had hoped to.
During Ramadan Muslims are prohibited from allowing anything to pass between their lips from sunrise to sunset. So no eating, drinking, or smoking is allowed. This only applies to the local populace and no non-Muslim visitors are expected to adhere to these strictures. I was able to eat and drink in restaurants during daylight hours without attracting any notice.
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London served as a gateway for my journey to North Africa in 1997. I had to go there before flying to Tangier, Morocco. After my trip to Morocco I had to return to London before going on to Tunisia.
I had been to London a few times before but I had not produced any noteworthy photos from those visits so there’s no need to cover those visits here. Truth is I was more interested in hitting a plentiful number of pubs on those previous trips than I was in taking photos.
In a city as often photographed as London it’s more of a challenge to take photos with any visual appeal. How many pictures of Big Ben does the world need? I decided the best way to approach this was to concentrate on close-up photography for the most part.
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Guatemala may be a relatively small country but it has a lot to offer visitors. It is a lush, verdant tropical country with plenty of gorgeous natural beauty, ancient Mayan ruins, and excellent cuisine.
Aside from Bolivia, Guatemala is the only country in the Americas that still is mostly populated by native people. Many of these indigenous people still wear traditional clothing and live much as their ancestors did. Ancient Mayan religious rites are incorporated into the Roman Catholicism of the Spanish conquerors and the Mayan language is still very much in every day use by the majority of the inhabitants.
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Athens was the starting and end point for my 3 month-long trip through the Middle East in the winter of 1989. I flew here and then picked up a cheap one-way ticket to Cairo. The rest of my trip involved gradually making my way back to Athens.
I had been here once before on the summer of 1984. Then I just breezed through on my way to Crete. In ’89 I decided to spend a little time here.
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