Travel is more than my work; it's my passion. And though this is my last issue as travel editor -- I've been named business editor here at The Miami Herald -- don't think you've heard the last of my wanderings.

Today, you'll find a story from my final travel-reporting trip for The Miami Herald, to Cartagena, Colombia, my 100th country.

But just because I'm not traveling for work doesn't mean I'm cured of wanderlust. And if I'm traveling, I'm probably writing, photographing and blogging, too.

For me, that's only natural. Long before I had this job, I backpacked through Europe, trekked through northern Thailand, endured the swelter of August in India -- and wrote about them all. Now I'm plotting a vacation in Ethiopia.

It won't be your standard holiday. But diehard travel fanatics don't just sip grand cru wines in Burgundy or catch the latest star-studded Shakespeare production in London. They spend New Year's Eve on a jungle platform watching for lowland gorillas in Cameroon and Thanksgiving in a Czech pub dodging Prague's frigid wind.

All this and more I've done, often on my own. In a story published in March, I chronicled my 30 years of travel across more than 1.4 million air miles, 45 U.S. states, 99 countries, six continents, five camel rides, three bouts of food poisoning and the irresistible lure of lamp-shopping in eight international cities. (All save one arrived home intact.) You can catch that story, Jane's Almost 100, online at www.MiamiHerald.com/travel.

I leave unwritten a long-contemplated essay on souvenirs -- I have a penchant for bathtub duckies, like the ones at the Peabody Hotel and Ritz-Carlton -- and a treatise on the pros and cons of UNESCO World Heritage designation. Those and other stories may appear here eventually.

I'm going out on a high note: My story last fall on the Puglia region of Italy was just awarded first place in the regional travel writing awards of the Society of American Travel Writers, a group that honored me with its Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year award for 2006/2007.

As much as I've loved this job, I'm excited about the opportunity to work with an extraordinary team of business reporters and editors beginning Monday as we cover one of the stories most important in all of our lives today: the economy and how it affects South Florida.

My e-mail remains the same: jwooldridge@MiamiHerald.com. Come visit.

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