The Tradewind Journal

We have watched the Sahara turn from ink to copper from the basket of a balloon at first light. We have walked the souks of Marrakech until the smell of cardamom and dried rose clung to our coats. We have walked with lions on the African savannah, and bathed with elephants in the rivers of Thailand. We have sat in the ruins of Tulum while the wind off the Yucatán carried the sound of the surf up through the stone.

Once, at a sidewalk stall in Hanoi in the first hour after sunrise, the golden turtle of Hoàn Kiếm broke the water at the edge of the lake. We did not take another sip of our cà phê sữa đá until the ripples had gone.

This is the journal of those tables, and the journeys that brought us to them.