Note: This page is about Beth & Randy on a more personal level. To learn more about the site BeersandBeans – what it means, what it stands for and where the name came from please click here.

Hello and welcome to BeersandBeans – our happy, little travel blog!

In August 2010 we’ll be  headed around the world and we would love to have you wander with us!

If you like our blog, please take a moment to sign up for our RSS feed or have our updates emailed directly to you.

About Us

Beth & Randy are a free-wheeling, 30 something couple living in San Diego with a little dog named Chachy.  Beth is a professional photographer and Randy is a professional journalist and we’ll be taking those skills with us to interview people and cover stories we find interesting around the world. Not to toot our own horn but we make a great team! We’ve worked together on a lot of different newspaper assignments & travel assignments. We even photograph weddings together. On top of all of the work time we spend together, we also happen to live in small quarters – on a small 27′ boat in the San Diego bay. We haven’t killed each other yet and strangely we still miss each other!

We feel really lucky to have met because we get along great and our individual jobs work effortlessly with one another. We have been preparing for this trip for about 3 years and we have changed our lives around completely so that we can fully live a nomadic lifestyle.  We are very excited about heading out because it is the spark that is going to start the change for the rest of our lives. It is our plan to never truly stop traveling and BeersandBeans is a large part of that plan.

Our work has been featured in The San Diego Reader, The Coast News, Vagabondish.com, AlmostFearless,Whygo.com, CNN.com, Female Travel Underground & TravelOne.com. We have covered everything from travel to gang injunctions & from heroin addiction to an interview with Ziggy Marley. We have also been interviewed by TravelWithAMate.com.

You can see some stories we have work on together in our Published Work section.

However there are A LOT of articles that haven’t even made it into that section yet. It is involves a lot of scanning and organizing which we simply have not had time to do. We will be adding those articles in the near future though.

We are available for freelance assignments and we would love to cover more stories from around the world. We will do anything and go anywhere and if anyone reading this needs an article, a photo, or both of some far flung land or a commonly frequented location please contact & tempt us with your amazing idea. We will get back to you asap. We welcome anything from documentary/journalist style work to PR work for hotels to helping out international non-profits.

Dream assignments would include shooting & writing for National Geographic, Budget Travel and any assignment where we could give a voice to those less fortunate. We plan on doing a lot of volunteering along the way and we also hope to cover refuge camps for Doctors Without Borders on our travels as well. If you are a similar organization please give us a shout out because we would love to help you out.

Please visit our other sites for more information about our work:

www.NarikosNest.com – Beth’s professional photography site

www.IamRandy.com  – Randy’s professional writing site (currently under construction)

More info about Beth:

Bethany Salvon founded the Nariko’s Nest studio, which was named for her beloved rabbit, Nariko. She photographs under the studio name and lives in San Diego, CA. She and is available for assignments worldwide, even on short notice.

She has a B.F.A in Photography, has worked as a commercial photographer and has been photographing weddings for over 9 years. She also freelances for various publications and for The Coast News covering various assignments that range from shooting Ziggy Marley to gang injunctions, police checkpoints to heroin and opiate addiction in the North County.

Working around the world, Bethany can cover weddings, editorial assignments, travel, food and anything else you want to throw her way. She has worked hard over the years to create her own personal, journalistic style which evokes a feeling of emotion and movement in her photos. A photo reflects a moment in time and a great photo lets you feel a moment in time. Capturing and creating that feeling is the basis for all of her personal photography.

Her favorite food is the blueberry and she never wants to be eaten by an alligator.

More info about Randy:

Randy Kalp is not a mama’s boy but he is a really nice guy and he’s a darn good journalist and soon he might just write a little more about himself here. Today two people called him a hero because he broke a story about a teacher that was molesting students. By breaking the news he exposed the teacher, other children came forward and the teacher was jailed. Good job Randy!