Una vida – one life. The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Hi, I’m Steve Minegar. In my 35 years on this earth, I have been fortunate to have traveled to some pretty amazing places. My travel photos leave me speechless sometimes. Yeah, that’s me there on that beautiful day……in Havana, Cuba…….where Fidel Castro once stood. Wait, how did I get there?! L’il ole me?
Growing up in Florida, my mom made me turn off the television during the summer so that I would read. History always held my interest. See that sixth grader checking out books on Khrushchev and the Soviet Union? Yep, that was me. Majoring in history at the University of Florida, I would be disappointed if I was too tired to read about 16th century trade routes to Latin America and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The former interest inspired a love of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, both of which I speak fluently, and the latter a lifelong fascination with the former communist world and the Berlin Wall. Travel has made my books come alive, and I can verify that the embers of history were still warm in front of the Brandenburg Gate during my first trip to Berlin in 2019, 30 years after the wall fell.
When I visit these places, I can hear the whispers of history. These whispers may turn into bangs depending on the place – while the bombs that burned the La Moneda Palace in Santiago, Chile, have long since fallen, their ashen stain on Chile’s history is indelible. One can’t escape the feeling of despair that Salvador Allende and his followers felt as the military moved in on the day of the 1973 coup.
I hope through Una Vida you get to experience the same whispers I hear as I travel. History is the story of ordinary human decisions with extraordinary consequences. Look past the memorization of names and dates – what did those people feel confronted with the choices they had to make? How did the people affected by those decisions react?
I’m a simply guy with a simple goal – make history interesting for you. We live history every day – someday someone down the road will want to know your story. Make it as interesting a story as possible.
Una Vida Travel Blog 