Travel is Mary Jane’s personal passion. She has been able to combine that passion with employment.

She lived and worked in Papua New Guinea from 2001 to 2005. Her employer, Trans Niugini Tours, is Papua New Guinea's leading inbound tour operator. She worked at their remote wilderness eco-lodges and at their head office in a frontier style, provincial capital.

Before living in Papua New Guinea, Mary Jane spent seven years living and working in southern Belize. Those were the early days of tourism in Belize, a particularly exciting time. She was a partner in a small inland tour business and later managed a thatch roofed resort on the edge of the Caribbean. It sounds idyllic and Mary Jane reports that on some days it was.

Among her favorite travel experiences are: sharing a flat in Paris with two generations of longtime family friends, backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas with great nieces, relaxing on a Thai beach with her husband, traveling by train in Sri Lanka, living with a Guatemalan family while attending Spanish school. And, then there was that trip by public bus from Belize to Toronto…and back to Belize. She did that trip twice.

These days Mary Jane focuses on promoting Papua New Guinea as a travel destination. One of the highlights of her year is escorting a group of travelers through Papua New Guinea on a two week itinerary built around the Mount Hagen Cultural Show. She was surprised and pleased to learn that this itinerary includes four of the places mentioned in 1000 Places to See Before You Die.

Mary Jane blogs at: http://explorepapuanewguinea.blogspot.com/ and invites you to follow her on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/mjmtogo

Mary Jane’s Columns