Memoir Photo Gallery
The Mirror Cracked
1971 — Me less than a month old in my 20-year-old mother’s arms.
1976 — With my 25-year-old mother and 2-year-old brother Sherwin at Manila airport, about to board a flight to New York City to join my father at Cornell University in Ithaca.
Spring 1976 — Me at 5 years old in Ithaca, New York, newly arrived in the USA, the first country I ever visited.
Summer 1976 — With my dad, 26, on a boat in Cayuga Lake, New York. I was 5 years old.
Childhood — Me climbing a tree, always happiest outdoors and in motion.
1999 — With my mother at my PhD graduation at the University of Nottingham, UK.
1999 — With Aunt Fortune and Uncle Jim during my work trip to the USA, when they toured me around Washington, D.C.
Summer 2006 — In Tanzania during my honeymoon with Richard, wearing a Datoga tribe wedding outfit with two Datoga women. I was 35 years old on my first trip to Africa.
The American Dream — My mother in good spirits during her visit to Delaware in 2013. It was her last trip to the USA and our last time together, before she passed away on July 4, 2013.
2009 — The landscape at Fiordland National Park, South Island, New Zealand — my safe haven, visited with Richard.
Teaching Zumba at the downtown YMCA in Wilmington, DE, during a Breast Cancer Awareness event.
May 2024 — With my grandmother, Lola Betty, at our ancestral home in Lipa City, Batangas, celebrating her 94th birthday. She passed away on August 1, 2025, a few months after celebrating her 95th.
The Mirror Turned Outward
2016 — With neighborhood kids in Kumasi, Ghana, during my 9-month overland African expedition.
2016 — With the women of Swaziland (before the country changed its name to eSwatini) during my African expedition, when I left the truck to venture solo to a country outside our itinerary.
2016 — Tandem skydiving in Namibia over the golden dunes of the Namib Desert, with the Atlantic Ocean crashing against the Skeleton Coast and Walvis Bay below.
2016 — With Yvonne at The Crypt jazz club in Cape Town, South Africa, during my African expedition.
2017 — The cleft peak of Ilandag Mountain in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan, which legend says was clipped by Noah’s Ark as it navigated the floodwaters.
2018 — With Maya on our hike up to Everest Base Camp in the Himalayas, Nepal.
2019 — In Damascus, Syria, spending time with local women who became new friends. At the time, the country was under the authoritarian rule of President Bashar al-Assad, amid the ongoing civil war.
2019 — In Terekeka County, South Sudan, learning the daily activities of local Mundari women during my solo journey through Africa, following the overland expedition I had completed with a group in a truck.
2019 — In the bombed-out Al-Marina Souk of Aleppo, Syria, heavily damaged in 2012 during the Syrian civil war.
2020 — In Burundi, dancing with the Twa people who welcomed me with unforgettable energy and joy.
2020 — Swimming in full clothing (abaya) at Jazeera Beach, just outside Mogadishu, Somalia, where cultural and religious customs require women to swim modestly dressed.
March 2021 — In the village of Coqueza, Bolivia, with an Incan family that raises llamas. They chose a pregnant llama to sacrifice and offered its blood to Tunupa Volcano in a ritual honoring my 50th birthday.
2021 — With Tawai, one of the elder Matsés women, gathering resin from a copal tree in a remote part of the Amazon forest in Peru
2022 — In Tuvalu, my penultimate UN country, dancing the traditional fatele with schoolgirls and local performers.
2023 — With a group of centenarian women in the village of Ogimi, Okinawa, Japan, known as one of the world’s Blue Zones.
2023 — With Sam the chimpanzee in Ciudad de la Paz, Equatorial Guinea, as he pulled me out of the water during the Summit of the Most Traveled People.
Video My unexpected lifeguard in Equatorial Guinea — Sam the chimpanzee rushing in to save me during the 2023 Summit of the Most Traveled People!
The Mirror Reframed
With a community of women in Avepozo, Togo.
At the Djamdè Elephant Reserve in northern Togo, a sanctuary for the country’s last remaining wild elephant.
2016 — My portrait shot of Kodji.
2018 — In a workshop with Jeremies and his team, as part of Explore Africa for Impact, training Togolese women to become tour guides.
With the Togolese women we trained as tour guides through Explore Africa for Impact.
2019 — With Passi and Tomy in Togo during my work visit for Explore Africa for Impact.
May 2021 — At the Philippine Embassy in New York, signing the incorporation documents that would establish The Philippine Global Explorers as a non-profit organization.
With public school children in Avepozo, Togo, where we donated school supplies for three consecutive years from our earnings at Explore Africa for Impact.
At the sacred forest of Agome Sevah in Togo, standing before a Vodou shrine.
July 2019 — Serge (sacred wooden poles) of the Buryat people along the shore of Lake Baikal, Russia.
July 28, 2019 — With Atty. Dominador Buhain and Dr. Rambi Francisco at Breakfast at Antonio’s in Tagaytay City, where we held the meeting that founded the Philippine Global Explorers.
The ten children from Tondo sponsored by PGE on an educational trip to Baguio City.
2023 — Reaching Mavuli Island, the northernmost island of the Philippines, with the Philippine Global Explorers banner.
Celebration with members of the Philippine Global Explorers on the 5th anniversary of its foundation, July 28, 2024.
