Author Peter Mandel and his wife near the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls is in the background.

Peter Mandel, whose work appears in both Chance Encounters and Adventures of a Lifetime, lives in Providence, RI. He is an author of children’s books, including “Jackhammer Sam” Macmillan) and “Bun, Onion, Burger” (Simon & Schuster). A regular travel contributor to The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, he has written for Harper’s, Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune and Los Angeles Times. He has won several Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism awards from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. See more of his work at petermandel.net