Joshua Berman is a freelance writer and trip leader who divides his time between Central America, New York City, and small mountain towns without Wal-Marts. Raised by flower children in the wilds of West Virginia, Joshua moved to Long Island, New York at the age of 12. After playing a blues harmonica during his high school Valedictorian speech, Joshua made the first of many cross-country road trips, then spent four years at Brown University where he gained both a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies and appropriately creative facial hair.

Since then, his varied careers have included stints with Outward Bound in Maine and Manhattan, the Forest Service in Northern California, and Moe's Bagels in the People's Republic of Boulder (Only the Best Get Baked!). In 2003, he traveled the western United States on a Park Service firefighting crew. Joshua has served in AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and, when last seen, had his sights set on a stint in northern India with the Jewish Volunteer Corps.

Joshua—known in Nicaragua as Josué—writes an online travelogue called the Muy Tranquilo Traveler, which he began during his Peace Corps service, and which he continues to update from the road. In addition to Moon Handbooks Nicaragua, Joshua is co-author of Moon Handbooks Belize and contributed text and photos to the fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Honduras. His articles have appeared in EcoAmericas, Hooked On the Outdoors, Transitions Abroad, Gravity, Backcountry, and Emergency Medical Services magazines. His website is www.stonegrooves.net.

Born on the sandy shore of New York's Atlantic coast, Randy 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 the age of 11, when his family adventured from New York to California in a beat-up Volkswagen bus. He has explored ever since, venturing from the salmon boats of Ketchikan, Alaska, to the broad fields of Amish Country; Pennsylvania, the rocky promontories of Les Îles de la Madeleine to the volcanoes of Central America, and the turquoise Caribbean to the olive plantations of southern Italy. He's the happiest when he's exploring islands—the smaller and more remote, the better.

An engineer by training, Randy has put his Cornell education to the test while teaching refugees in Boston, building pump stations in the Everglades, lecturing for Muslim clerics in Yogyakarta, editing academic journals in Italy, mapping the badlands of Montauk point, and running the volunteer organization Amigos de Nicaragua.

He first ventured to Nicaragua in 1998, which he made his home for the next five years. There he worked as an agronomist and engineer, and fell in love with and married Nicaraguan Ericka Briceño. He completed a masters degree in development economics and international relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2005. He and Ericka live part-time in Nicaragua.
In his limited free time, Randy enjoys playing 12 string folk guitar, swimming and surfing, salsa, tango, and swing dancing, backpacking, making maps, and fiddling with Linux-based computers. He remains an insufferable gearhead whose challenge to find the perfect backpack and its contents continues unabated. His work has appeared in BC Journal of International Relations, Between the Waves Magazine, and SAIS Review. Randy's website is www.therandymon.com.