About Green Global Trek

Green Global Trek is the online home for original artwork by Peta Kaplan, sold as canvases, framed prints and everyday goods.

Peta paints in oil. The Stray Dogs of Nicaragua series began during the years she and Ben lived in Nicaragua, where street dogs are part of the daily landscape of every town. She painted them one at a time, over several years. Each piece in the collection is a portrait of a particular dog, not a generic illustration, and the originals are large scale canvases.

Ben Sandzer-Bell runs the business side. His career has been spent in sustainable enterprise and climate finance across Central America, Asia and Mexico. Between them they have lived in Nicaragua, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and now Mexico, and they lived nomadically for over a decade. The travel photography collections on this site come from those years.

How the work is made and shipped: Every item is produced to order. When you place an order it is printed and assembled at the production facility nearest to your delivery address, then shipped directly to you. Nothing is held in inventory. This is why production takes two to five business days before your item ships, and it is why we do not accept returns for change of mind or incorrect size selection. If anything arrives damaged, defective or misprinted, we replace it or refund you in full within thirty days of delivery.

Shipping is free worldwide.

Who we are and where we are: Green Global Trek is a United States business at 1049 N Leavitt St, Apt 3, Chicago, Illinois 60622. Ben and Peta live and work in San Miguel de Allende. You can reach us by email at bsb.crisa@gmail.com or by phone at +1 773-698-5326.

Green Global Trek in the press

Green Global Trek has published travel and hospitality writing at greenglobaltrek.org since 2010, with photography by Peta. That journal is now an archive and we publish day to day on Instagram at @greenglobaltrek. This shop at greenglobaltrek.com is run by the same two people, Ben Sandzer-Bell and Peta Kaplan.

In 2021 Airbnb selected us as one of twelve participants in Live Anywhere on Airbnb, chosen from more than 314,000 applicants worldwide. The Chicago Sun-Times reported the selection on 4 August 2021, WGN News covered it on air, and Airbnb published a follow-up with the twelve participants a year later.

While Peta painted the Stray Dogs of Nicaragua series, she and Ben were living in Granada, Nicaragua, where they co-founded CO2 Bambu, a bamboo construction company that built housing after Hurricane Felix. Houzz Magazine profiled their Granada home and the company in May 2013, and Inhabitat covered CO2 Bambu’s Rosita housing programme in July 2012.

Peta’s paintings of Nicaraguan street dogs, the collection sold here, were profiled by Global Snapshots in April 2013 under the title Inspired in Granada: Peta Kaplan and The Dogs of Nicaragua.

Peta’s paintings are on Instagram at @petakaplanpainter and Green Global Trek is at @greenglobaltrek.

The exhibition catalogue for The Stray Dogs of Nicaragua carries an essay by the New York art critic Jonathan Goodman, who writes for Art in America, Art on Paper, Sculpture and Art Asia Pacific. He describes Peta as “a highly skilled painter who counters her subjects’ distress with the beauty of expressive drips, shadows of black and blue, and poses that emphasize the vulnerability of their circumstances.”

The catalogue, four newspaper articles about Peta’s work from 2005 to 2009, and links to everything that is online are on our Press page.

Where the 25 percent goes

We commit 25 percent of the profit from every sale in the Stray Dogs of Nicaragua collection to dog rescue work. Profit here means what remains after production, shipping and payment processing costs.

We are in discussions with rescue organisations working in Nicaragua and in Mexico and have not yet finalised a partnership. Until we do, the 25 percent is set aside and held for that purpose rather than spent elsewhere. Once an agreement is in place we will name the organisation on this page and publish what has been contributed.

If you want to know exactly where this stands before you buy, write to us at bsb.crisa@gmail.com and we will tell you.