by Michael Shapiro | Aug 9, 2013 | Blog, Stories, Travel
Every June, I mark the anniversary of leaving my last full-time job, at CNET in SF. It’s been 15 years with lots of highs and lows, but I’ve never regretted the decision to walk away from the rigidity of full-time work and hang my virtual shingle. Here are...
by Michael Shapiro | May 17, 2013 | Blog, Interviews, Sports, Stories, Travel
In the fall of 2009, Mariner magazine asked if I’d go to Mazatlan to write about the cliff divers there. I’d watched cliff divers in Acapulco during the ’70s on ABC’s Wide World of Sports but didn’t know they were still plunging into the...
by Michael Shapiro | May 6, 2013 | Blog, Stories, Travel
One of the best ways to see a country is on a slow train. Perhaps the most enjoyable of these are the 19th-century railways of Wales. In 1996, I came across a site called The Great Little Trains of Wales as I was researching my first book on using the Net for travel....
by Michael Shapiro | Jun 6, 2012 | Blog, Stories, Travel
When an editor asks if you’d be “willing” to go to Kenya on a safari led by Micato, an outfitter known as among the best — if not the best — in Africa, it doesn’t take long to blurt out “Yes!” And that’s how I...
by Michael Shapiro | May 1, 2006 | Blog, Featured, Interviews, Stories, Travel
Michael Shapiro first met Jan Morris in 1992 at a travel writing seminar near San Francisco. “When I first met Jan she seemed like a visitor from another time,” Shapiro says. He interviewed Morris in Llanystumdwy for his book A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers...
by Michael Shapiro | Dec 7, 2019 | Literature, Stories, Travel
To spark the holiday season, Guatemalans roast an effigy of the devil. I wrote about the spectacle for American Way, the inflight magazine of American Airlines. Here’s how the story starts: The flames rise 30 feet into the air, casting a lurid glow on...
