Burning Man: Sex on the Playa!

By Bradford Noble
Sex On The Beach is a cocktail with vodka, peach Schnapps and some fruity juices thrown in for color. It's sweet and refreshingly thirst quenching in your mouth.

Sex on the "Playa" (a dry lake bed in the Nevada desert) is a cocktail of dust, sweat and unwashed bodies, with some fruity costumes thrown in for color. It's salty and chalky, and there's no water to wash out your mouth, ears, eyes, nose, or any other hole in your body. For these reasons I tend to avoid sexual encounters when I go to Burning Man. But not always.
(Photo: Steve Cabrera)

London Set To Host WorldPride

For those of you who like to plan your travel years in advance, London is the place to be in 2012.

In addition to hosting The Queens Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games, London will be the site of WorldPride in 2012.

The home of Queen Elizabeth, Big Ben and Madonna (well, at least for now) was chosen as the host city for WorldPride by attendees of the 27th Annual World Conference of InterPride (The International Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Pride Coordinators).

The organizers, who will soon launch a WorldPride Web site with all the details, promise an event "on a truly mammoth scale." Hey, the bigger, the better in my book.

(Image courtesy of Getty)

Men! Zambia wants you

(Barbara Wilcox) Wild Rainbow African Safaris, which has been taking gay men and lesbians to Africa for five years, has just announced its first trip for men -- a safari and walking tour of Zambia, Aug. 18-29, 2009.   

Meet a gay warrior poet

When South Africa became a democracy in 1994, the framers of its constitution added historic sexual-orientation protections partly in tribute to the gay men and lesbians who fought to end apartheid. Get to know one such hero, the late poet/guerrilla Tatamkhulu Afrika, in an exhibit at Cape Town's Bo-Kaap Museum, near where he lived.

Braai with family in Pretoria; Why go to South Africa?

(Barbara Wilcox) Visitors to Gauteng province's marquee sights -- Soweto, the Apartheid Museum, the Lion Park and more -- might consider staging out of nearby Pretoria rather than Johannesburg itself. It's smaller, safer and more walkable. And because they're home to embassies and South Africa's Union Buildings, Pretoria's better neighborhoods are immune from the rolling outages that afflict the rest of the country as it struggles to extend electricity to all its 58 million residents.

Egypt unveiled

(Getty Images) You don't need stars or Zagat ratings to spot many of Cairo's more atmospheric restaurants. Just look for an autographed photo of lesbian icon Gabrielle in "Xena: Warrior Princess." The actress Renee O'Connor, who played Gaby, is an Egyptology buff.

Lions up close in South Africa

At the Lion Park outside Johannesburg, South Africa, you'll make friends like these rowdy girls, age 4 months and 2 1/2 months, and drive through wooded three-acre enclosures to watch lion families. I volunteered at the park for 10 days this spring (fall in South Africa), paying a substantial fee to a UK middleman to clean lion poop, pick up trash and struggle for sleep in tents full of bed-hopping heterosexual gap-year travelers. I did log plenty of cub time, cuddling them and doling out their carefully calibrated Royal Canin-and-horsemeat diet. (The cubs themselves are not so discerning: The big one in the photo ate the buttons off my pants, and the little one is about to run off with my hat.) The Lion Park itself is good value, humane and far less touristy than U.S. animal parks. You can stay all day for 90 rand a person (about $14) with multiple visits to the enclosures and Touch-a-Cub zone, buy food there or BYO picnic for free.

Going to see the penguins

(Barbara Wilcox) If you're a fan of "Tango Makes Three," one thing not to miss in Cape Town, South Africa, is a trip down the peninsula to Simons Town to see the penguins. Rent a car if you're OK with driving on the left, or take the Cape Town metro for about $2. This is a first-class car...