Approaching Genius public page

Until 2005 when I became widowed at the age of 42 after 21 years of marriage, I had never been anywhere outside the Contenental United States and Canada.

But one fateful evening my interests were stretched far beyond the borders of North America when I met a real jungle girl from the Amazon Rainforest as she was visiting family in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After a couple of trips to South America, I moved to Tarapoto, Peru where I now hang out in the jungle with my Peruana beauties, my wife and her 16-year-old daughter.

Having never before seen a third world country -- oh, wait, I think we are supposed to use "developing country" these days -- traveling around Peru has given me some new perspective.

Just to mention a few highlights of my adventures in South America -- I have lost a wallet (with U.S. dollars in it) to pick-pockets in the Pacific Coast city of Trujillo; vomited twice on the tires-squealing-on-pavement roller-coaster bus ride over the Andes Mountains; and bounced off the bottom of the ice-cold pool below a waterfall in the Amazon Rainforest after jumping off the side of the cliff above.

The best way to become a more interesting person is to do more interesting things. So here I am sitting in a world completely different from anything that all my friends back in Oklahoma know, and I have figured out one thing -- the only way to gain perspective is to change it. That is something no one could have told me a few years ago. La vida es una aventura!

Approaching Genius, also known as Jeffrey Maxwell in his photo credits, was March 2007 World 66 Member of the Month.

create your own personalized map of the USA or write about it on the open travel guide