For John Oberacker and Kasra Esteghamat, traveling takes precedence over virtually any other activity. The Long Beach couple has been to 28 countries and made the round-trip drive across the United States three times. They’ve hung out with the Achuar tribe in a remote Amazon jungle and explored an 800-year-old village in southern Japan.

For them, a place’s food, structures, and artifacts provide a path to the heart of a culture and its people.

“We work to be able to travel,” says Esteghamat, 34, who co-owns Eden For Your Home and Garden, a garden design and installation business, with Oberacker, 35. The two met in junior high school, attended Los Alamitos High, and became friends a few years later.

“We believe traveling is so important, a major part of life,” Esteghamat says. “We believe you have to experience traveling and not be stagnant. You immerse yourself in the people and their everyday routines.”

During five days in the Ecuadorian jungle in 2004, Oberacker and Esteghamat learned the medicinal qualities of plants, slept in huts where they could hear bats rustling in the walls, and shared a communal bowl of beer called chicha, which is started with saliva.

“I was hesitant,” admits Esteghamat. “I’m not that rustic. But within the first day, I fell in love with it.” Everything but the beer. Esteghamat says the beer was probably the worst food or drink he’s tried while traveling. But he says it would have been rude for them not to partake.

Of the best food, Esteghamat praised the steak and pommes frites (French fries) in Buenos Aires and wontons the size of tostadas found in a hole-in-the-wall cafe in Hoi An, Vietnam.

The two crave places that drip with history and often take cooking classes to help them immerse into the culture. In Mexico, Esteghamat and Oberacker spent three days in Cancun before taking two and a half weeks to explore the interior of the Yucatan Peninsula.

Oberacker handles the research for these trips. For three weeks, he’ll spend evenings on the computer, researching flights and hotels, booking rental cars, and/or reading material on future destinations. He enjoys the preparation.

“It’s like a puzzle,” says Oberacker, whose love of travel dates to his childhood. He remembers family road trips through the U.S. and Canada. He says his mother, father, brother, and grandparents all liked to travel. “Travel is in my genes,” says Oberacker, who enjoys Southeast Asia’s offerings. “Southeast Asia has everything: the spiritual aspect, beautiful scenery, beaches, food,” Oberacker says.

Ruins, old buildings, and devotional sites such as churches or mosques lure Oberacker and Esteghamat. Artifacts and decor, such as a fabric from France or pottery from Vietnam, also inspire Esteghamat. When they return home, they can pass certain knowledge to their clients.

Esteghamat and Oberacker both graduated from the University of Maryland. Oberacker has a degree in horticulture while Esteghamat’s is in art history/archaeology with a minor in architectural history.

They are going to Guatemala this fall and then visiting Laos. Esteghamat says it’s important to relax, but that’s not the main reason they travel.

“Travel expands your mind and horizons,” Esteghamat says. “It gets you out of your comfort zone to see things differently.”

It can also provide opportunities to touch an animal you might have only seen on television or in a painting.

Esteghamat and Oberacker flew on a private plane to Laguna San Ignacio, a bay of Baja California, to pet the newly born gray whales before the whales headed back to Alaska. Esteghamat recommends being flexible, staying positive, and acclimating to the culture. For example, pizza in Rome may not taste like what you’re used to in the U.S., he says, “so you have to be ready for that.” And be prepared for spit-laced beer in a communal bowl!





By the time you read this, Steve and Fran Conley will have completed a 41-day cruise around the world that started April 5 and ended May 15. The Long Beach couple flew from Los Angeles to Hong Kong and returned from Cairo, Egypt.

The Conleys met while students at Stanford University. In the last 10 years, they’ve visited more than 50 countries. “Every trip is memorable in its own way,” Steve Conley says. “It would be a mistake to try and rank them. We hope to take three trips a year until we run out of places to go.” The Conleys, both 70, expect to be traveling 75 days this year.

Steve’s passion is underwater photography, recording nearly every type of sea life. He’s touched baby gray whales and dived with great white sharks. A certified rescue diver, scientific diver, and volunteer diver at the Aquarium of the Pacific, he tries to take three international scuba trips a year. He was in the Galapagos Islands in January and is planning to go to Indonesia this fall.

Steve Conley is a Long Beach native while Fran grew up in Denver. They have three children and four grandchildren, who all live in the San Francisco Bay area.





One of Luke Tipple’s earliest memories is being thrown into the water by his father and coming up laughing, this began a life long love of the ocean and all of the wonders it holds.

The 28-year-old Australian has turned a love of the ocean into a Marine Biology degree from James Cook University and a life long career in diving, scientific research, and educating the world about his favorite Apex predators, sharks.

Having logged over 1,500 dives with many species of shark, Luke found his calling to educate drawing him from research stations and dive boats to an international stage. One of his recent posts on You Tube about a Great White attack he witnessed at Guadalupe Island has to date netted over 1.2 million viewers.

“I loved sharks and always wanted to work with them,” says Tipple, who is based out of his management companies offices, 689 Design of Long Beach, CA. “A shark is the perfect machine, evolved to the stage where it has a critical role in the environment.”

For five months a year, Tipple conducts offshore dive operations for sharkdiver.com. He brings clients into the underwater home of Great Whites off Isla Guadalupe, Mexico, and Tiger Sharks in the Bahamas. Tipple’s job is to ensure the clients’ safety. As he puts it, he makes “sure everyone comes home in one piece”

“I realize that a shark can have me for lunch any time they want to,” Tipple says. “To me, it’s a humbling experience every time I work with sharks. I’m privileged to be able to spend a large amount of time in their environment. Myself and my crew use our education and experience to control these experiences in such a way that it is safe for our clients and extremely non-invasive for the sharks.”

For Tipple, it’s an ideal lifestyle. He believes traveling is “inherent” to evolving as a person. Although he does admit the traveling lifestyle is not conducive to some of life’s more conventional goals like relationships, “I am sure I will either find a girl who keeps up with me, or some day maybe I will slow down a bit, but settling down has never been my top priority,” says Tipple.

He’s going to be featured on the Discovery Channel’s “MythBusters” Shark Week Special scheduled to air in late July or early August 2008. Tipple says the myths relate to attracting and repelling sharks, but will not reveal the specifics before the air date.

“Sharks don’t want to eat us,” Tipple says. “Humans have never been a major component of their diet.” He says many sharks need a tremendous amount of calories, more than a human could provide. “A shark attack is usually a case of mistaken identity,” says Tipple, who classifies sharks as opportunistic feeders.

Since the MythBusters shoot Luke has been filming a series with the French Documentary company Ushuaia , and has several projects in the works for Shark Week 2009. You can learn more about Luke, or follow his adventures on his online journal at LukeTipple.com.





For Debbie Whittaker, traveling is about lessons learned that she can pass on to her students. Whether it’s relaying insights such as “people are good” or “I’m capable of more than I thought,” the 50-year-old lifelong Long Beach resident is ready to share.

She could also tell of the unexpected surprises just waiting to be found with the next adventure. Whittaker, who teaches philosophy at Long Beach City College and California State Long Beach, has an affinity for Asia. She’s stood in awe of the “massiveness” of the Taj Mahal in India and met an English-speaking monk in a Buddhist temple in Cambodia who asked if Whittaker would be his godmother.

This month (from June 1 to June 20), she’s in Cambodia with a group of her students. She’ll help educate them on the country and its past, which includes the genocide under Pol Pot in the 1970s. Pot headed the Khmer Rouge regime, which combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life. Yale University’s Cambodia Genocide Program Web site reports that 1.7 million people lost their lives in the genocide.

Whittaker believes it’s important to educate people about what happened and hopes bringing them to Cambodia will make it more meaningful. “There are so many holocausts that aren’t talked about,” Whittaker says. She’s been to Cambodia before, by herself, in 2005. It was then she walked into the Buddhist temple and met the aforementioned monk. “It’s an honor to have been asked to be his godmother,” Whittaker says.

Whittaker has had many positive encounters in the places she’s visited. “So many are willing to help and welcome me to the country,” says Whittaker, who estimates she’s been to 10 nations.

At age 18, she saw a picture of the Portola Palace in Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s former residence. At the time, she thought, “I have to go there.” Opportunity came 22 years later. At age 40, she realized that dream and her travels began.

She’s also been to Thailand, Holland, and Japan. She stays in guest houses or hotels. She says guest houses in Thailand can go for as little as $5 per night. For the food, she says India tops them all thus far. This summer, she’ll travel to Canada with her two children and has her eyes set on Laos as a possible future destination.

She hopes traveling will help her relate to her students. “I try to tie in what I’ve experienced in travels to what I teach,” Whittaker says. “Travel helps me connect with students.There are so many groups of people (from different backgrounds) in Southern California, so when you travel to their homelands, you feel more connected.”

Her advice to those curious about exploring the world: Pack light and always be open to new adventures.