Dave Fox may live in Greenwood but he travels the world for work. A freelance travel writer and 14-year tour guide for PBS travel guru Rick Steves, Fox is now launching his own specialty tour company called Globejotter Tours.
Globejotter Tours is unique in that while we are off exploring foreign countries, I teach travel journaling and creative writing classes along the way to help people write about their travel experiences. I’ve been a freelance travel and humor writer for many years, and have published two travel books. “Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad” is my collection of humorous tales about things that have gone wrong in my international travels. It won the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop Book Proposal Contest in 2004. My second book, “Globejotting: How to Write Extraordinary Travel Journals (and still have time to enjoy your trip!)” is based on travel journaling classes I’ve been teaching for many years…and both are available at Balderdash Books and Santoro’s.
My first Globejotter tour was a writing safari in Botswana this past January. In addition to seeing amazing wildlife and having writing sessions every couple of days, we also had an impromptu meeting with an elderly tribal chief in a village that had never seen tourists before, and taught Kalahari Bushmen how to play Frisbee.
Fox keeps the tour groups small, with a maximum of 12 people. His next planned trip is to southern Vietnam in October.
We’ll explore Saigon, the Mekong Delta, and a South China Sea fishing village. We’ll experience a wide range of big-city and small-town Vietnamese culture, visit historical sights, lavish religious temples, floating markets, and local industries. We’ll also have a half-day cooking school where we first go shopping at a village market, and then cook our own Vietnamese lunch with the guidance of a local chef. And… I’ll teach a series of writing classes as we travel. Writers of all skill levels are welcome; some people come just to journal for themselves, while others are hoping to publish more polished travel tales and break into freelance travel writing.
