Born on the sandy shore of New York’s Atlantic coast, Randall Wood spent his childhood in various small sailboats, developing a mariner’s curiosity for what lies over the horizon. His first opportunity to find out was at age 11, when his family drove from New York to California in a ’68 Volkswagen Bus. He’s been exploring ever since, venturing from the salmon boats of Ketchikan to the Bolivian Andes; from the Seychelle Islands to the volcanoes of Java.

Randall first ventured to Nicaragua in 1998, and remained there for the next five years, working as an agronomist and engineer. When Hurricane Mitch swept away the only bridge that led to his mountain village, he found himself marooned for several days; his Nica friends still laugh that he was the first one to cross the storm-swollen river because he was the best swimmer and, at 6’2”, tall enough to touch the bottom. He stayed in the country to help manage the Hurricane Mitch reconstruction program. He fell in love with and married Nicaraguan Ericka Briceño, with whom he now has two children.

Randall has a masters degree in international relations and development economics, and spends his free time playing 12-string folk guitar, swimming and surfing, dancing salsa and merengue, backpacking, making maps, and fiddling around with Linux-based computers. He is an insufferable gearhead whose challenge to find the perfect backpack, and its contents, continues unabated. His work has appeared in the BC Journal of International Affairs, Between the Waves magazine, SAIS Review, Wooden Boat magazine, and National Geographic Explorer.

Randall and his family divide their time between Nicaragua and Benin, West Africa, where Randall is deputy resident country director for a major development program. You can see more of his work on his website, www.therandymon.com.

Joshua Berman was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia in the Year of the Ox. When he was 12, his family moved to Long Island, where, in his high school valedictorian speech, he implored his classmates to “get out”—out of their town, out of New York, and out of the country, if they could. He has since tried to follow his own advice as often as possible.

After earning a degree in environmental studies from Brown University in 1995, Joshua worked as a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, a firefighter with the National Park Service, and an instructor for Outward Bound. In 1998, the U.S. Peace Corps shipped him to Nicaragua, where he worked with the Ministry of Education and Hurricane Mitch relief efforts. There he teamed up with his future coauthor, Randall Wood, to co-edit the quarterly Peace Corps magazine, ¡Va Pué!”.

Joshua has led trips for American Jewish World Service (AJWS) in nearly every Central American nation, as well as in Mexico and Israel. In 2005 and 2006, Joshua and his new bride, Sutay, a registered nurse (and fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer), visited 16 countries in 16 months on an extended, round-the-world honeymoon; they spent half of their time abroad completing assignments for the AJWS Volunteer Corps.

Joshua is currently a freelance writer, editor, Spanish teacher, and father. He and his family divide their time between Central America and the Rocky Mountains. In addition to Moon Nicaragua, Joshua and Randall Wood are co-authors of Moon Living Abroad in Nicaragua; Joshua is also the author of Moon Belize, which won a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism award in the Guidebook category. His articles have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Yoga Journal, Outside, The Boston Globe, Denver Post, Sunset, 5280, Worldview, and Transitions Abroad. Joshua’s blog, “The Tranquilo Traveler,” is a celebration of slow travel, voluntourism, and all things Belize and Nicarag