Always in search of the perfect martini.  To download the story of the Vesper martini, click here:  The Vesper Martini.pdf

Tracking down great <$25 wines.  Download a list of these wines  (updated every 6 months or so):  !Under $25 Great Wines SHORT LIST.pdf

To read a summary of the famous 1976 Paris wine tasting event that put California wines on the map Paris Tasting.pdf

Spelunking a wet cave, North Island,

New Zealand

Bedouin camels, Sahara Desert (Morocco)

Excavating ammonite fossils with the Bedouins;

Sahara Desert (Morocco)

Collecting beetles with Wendy Moore; Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Navigating canyons & rivers in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Bedouin village, Atlas Mountains, Morocco

R. Brusca & W. Moore, hiking through the Sahara Desert (someplace south of Erfoud, Morocco) ~1998

Research, exploration and fun in the Galapagos Islands (for a review of Galapagos Oceanography, click here Chavez & Brusca 1991 Galapagos Oceanography.PDF)

Carlene Brusca & Dad.  Tucson, 2011.

Carlene Brusca, Giovanni Ricardo Brusca, and the old man.  San Carlos, Sonora, 2013.

Searching for beetles, the world’s greatest kao soi, and ancient temples in northern Thailand 

Cruising in the Sea of Cortez

Mt. Etna, Sicily. At 11,000 ft, the tallest active volcano in Europe.

Nero d’Avola vineyards near Castellammare, Sicily

Wendy,

Taormina, Sicily

Palermo, Sicily (the motherland)

For a pdf of the Brusca family caponata recipe, click here RCB's Caponata Recipe.pdf

City Cathedral, Monreale, Sicily

Andrea DiGiulio & Wendy, Palermo, Sicily.  Heading  out for beetle country - “Put the pedal to the metal Andrea!”

Dining aboard a UFO during our 48 hour capture by Venusians

Marley, our new 8-week old Goldendoodle

(January 2016)

Swilling fine mezcales with three other fans of agave juice - Wendy Moore, Rodrigo Medellín & Janos Wilder

Mezcalaria la Clandestina, Mexico City, owned by actor Diego Luna.  Dozens of botique mezcales are kept in 5-gal. glass jugs, siphoned into pitchers for tables of thirsty mezcaladores.  Mezcal is legally made in 11 designated states in Mexico, from numerous species of agave.

Enjoying time with the lab of Rodrigo Medellín, UNAM, Mexico City.

The fabled Northern Gulf of California grunion run, April 2016

Don Thomson (our beloved DAT: RIP), receiving the NextGen Career Recognition Award for the second time (this time in the small fishing village of El Golfo de Santa Clara, Mexico).  Left, Sarah Mesnick; right, Julia Fonseca.

RCB and DAT.  2016 El Golfo grunion run (photo by Allan Morgan).

Traversing the Bolivian Altiplano in search of beetles, amphipods, and isopods.  Lake Titicaca and La Carretera de los Yungas (the “most dangerous road in the world” - a one lane, 3-meter-wide, cliffside dirt road connecting La Paz and Coroico in the western Amazon).  It is said that 200 to 300 people die annually on the Carretera Yungas.  It is not known how many beetles and crustaceans die annually on this road.

Collecting beetles and terrestrial isopods in the Peruvian Altiplano.  Machu Picchu, Inca walls, and some of the 3000 salt pools of the Salinas (Maras Salt Mines) in the Urubamba Valley (The Sacred Valley of the Incas).

FIELD WORK IN MADAGASCAR

Ring-Tail Lemur, Berenty.  The population of Ring-tailed Lemurs has crashed more than 90% in recent years.

Sifaka, Berenty.  Sometimes called “Dancing Sifaka’s, these lemurs rarely leave the trees, but when they do they appear to dance from one place to the next (click here for video).

Red-faced Brown Lemur, Berenty

Indri, Perinet (Madagascar’s largest lemur)

Organizing the porters, Tsimelahy

Wendy Moore, on 8-hour trek into wet forests of Andohahela

Wendy Moore, setting a Malaise Trap in Ranamafana

Wendy Moore, on a trail in Ranamafana wet forest

Wendy Moore, ripping apart dead wood in search of beetles in the Andohahela wet forest

Villagers greeting strange white people looking for bugs, Andohahela (a remote and pristine protected area of 760 sq km in SE Madagascar)

Cobra charmer, in main souk of Marrakesh, one of Morocco's four former imperial cities (cities that were built by Moroccan Berber Empires).

Doug Peacock’s contribution to a recent Cabernet Sauvignon tasting, the incredible 100-point 2007 Deguello.

A flawless Cab.

Exploring Puget Sound with Marley (18 mos. old), summer 2017.  On the Port Townsend ferry and dining at a burger joint.

Wendy hanging with the sphinx on the Neva River, St. Petersburg (Russia) and Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ (Sobor Voskreseniya Khristova).

One martini is just right, two is too many, three is not enough.  James Thurber

Oaxaca & Guanajuato

Día de los Muertos, 2017

Andy & the Beast

(Andrea Di Giulio & Marley)

Some Pinacates enthusiasts (left to right):  Rick Brusca, Jim Gutmann, Peggy Gutmann, Paul Dayton, Linnea Dayton, Bill Broyles (December 2018, Tucson)

Just for fun, left-to-right:  Carlene Anne Brusca, Ana Luisa Figueroa, Omar Vidal, mystery woman, Lloyd T. Findley.  Punta Cirio, Sonora ~1985.

If you enjoy old photos of naturalists, click here: Oldies.

To watch Omar Vidal’s music video of the monarch butterflies in Michoacán, click here.  The song is Dama de la Oscuridad, composed by O. Vidal in Bogotá (Colombia) in 1974.  Guitar Chucho Merchan, vocal Omar Vidal,  recorded at Studio Chucho, London, 1998.

Wendy gets a hug at the Maesa Elephant Camp, northern Thailand

RCB, Clementina Equihua, and Sergio Gomez.  Exploring newly-discovered rooms beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, Teotihuacán, Mexico