Entries Tagged as 'Top Stories - Travel'
“The land of little rain”: Eastern California’s Owens Valley is known for rugged country and history, longstanding water wars, and diverse rock climbing opportunities. Vanessa Gregory of The New York Times and her husband spend a few days camping, hiking, and climbing the Alabama Hills near Bishop.
“With a final, clumsy motion, I clipped the rope that was tied to my harness into two carabiners at the route’s end. Now totally safe, I was able to relax, lean back from the anchor and appreciate the surrounding Owens River Gorge. I looked south to the river, shaded by cottonwood trees, coursing down between 300-foot-high walls of volcanic tuff.”
Noted Croatian-American writer Josip Novakovich (April Fool’s Day, Salvation and Other Disasters, and Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust) explores his Hungarian lineage in the latest issue of Nowhere: Travel Stories.
“My great-grandfather died as a lumberjack near Pecs when my grandfather was only three years old. A tree crushed him. Should that count as Hungarian roots? And I was born during the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising. The thing that intrigued me about Hungary, though, was the Soviet enigmatic and anti-charismatic presence. “
Contributing editor McKenzie Funk of National Geographic Adventure and photographer Aaron Huey attempt to hitchhike from Vladivostok, Russia 6,000 miles west to Moscow along the newly opened Trans-Siberian Highway, “arguably the longest highway in the world.”
“Exploring Siberia was once synonymous with the Trans-Siberian Railroad, a form of travel as controlled and preprogrammed as the economy once was. Hitchhiking was the other extreme—as freewheeling and sometimes desperate as Russia’s new reality—and from the moment we hit shore, we’d have no idea how to find our next ride.”
Tom Gorman of the Los Angeles Times loads up the campervan and treks across Europe for 18 days, amounting to “10 countries, 2,982 miles, 8,766 photos, one traffic violation, one break-in, invitations to stay with new friends in Switzerland, Germany and South Africa, and one marriage proposal.”
“Our campsite alongside the beginning of the Danube River in the Black Forest, in the shadow of a towering granite bluff, is reminiscent of Yosemite, very tranquil. But the mobi is developing problems. The lock on the side door breaks. We can lock it from the outside but not inside. So from now on, at night, we secure the door shut with bungee cords. If someone breaks in, he’ll think someone is fighting him.”
In the newly launched travel magazine Nowhere: Travel Stories, noted nature and travel writer David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo, Monster of God, and The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, journals about Romania during September 2000, when he was researching brown bears:
“Just inside the entry, as you walk a concrete catwalk, you begin passing skulls, femurs and other bones of Ursus spelaeus (and 100 lei coins tossed down by visitors), the cave bear, littering the floor, left just where they’ve lain (so we’re told) for 17,000 years. Some are iced-over with calcium carbonate drippings & cemented to the floor. In all, our guide says, remnants of 141 bears were found.”
Chris Santella is, like Susan Cocking, a writer who can’t seem to shake the need to land a fly-caught permit. In The New York Times, he offers a brief history of the pursuit and describes his recent trip to the inner lagoons of the Turneffe islands.
“Until a few decades ago, the popular perception was that permit could not be caught on a fly with any regularity. In the early 1980s, several anglers in the Florida Keys — the guide Steve Huff and Del Brown among them — began building flies with epoxy to imitate the small crabs that are a staple of the permit’s diet.”
Bob Sherwood of The Financial Times writes about fly fishing Argentina’s Rio Gallegos River (roughly a three-hour flight south of Buenos Aires) for broad-shouldered sea run browns on the wind-blown landscapes of southern Patagonia.
“Sea trout are not native to Patagonia. Stocking of British brown trout early last century appeared to have been a failure until years later a large migratory influx revealed that a healthy population of sea-run fish had been established. Now this region of southern Argentina claims the best sea trout fishing on the planet.”
photo credit: Kirk Deeter
Celebrity antithesis: Joshua Hammer of The New York Times explores Italy’s coastal town of Calasetta (“lacking in glamour, but it is rich with history”) on the small island of Sant’Antioco–just off Sardinia, Italy’s southwestern coast.
“Sant’Antioco is a charming town of about 5,000 people, with a seafront promenade and warrens of pastel-shaded houses hugging cobblestone streets that slope upward toward the basilica. The stone church at the top of the village dates back to the fifth century.”
“…a tranquil backwater, with two quaint ports, a smattering of ruins dating back to pre-Roman times, sweeping Mediterranean savannah, the region’s most unspoiled beaches, and little else.”
“When we stepped outside to get ready for bed in the cottage’s bathroom, a stone’s throw from the tepee and shared with other guests, we realized what the canines’ fuss was about. It was the new moon and a milky fan of shockingly bright stars hung in the desert sky. The coyotes had been celebrating.” In the Los Angeles Times, Jessica Gelt writes about her tour of Death Valley desert towns, including a stay in a tepee on the grounds of China Ranch, a date farm in the tiny town of Tecopa just outside the Park.
Melanie Nayer lists five top treehouse lodges, ranging from the Parrot Nest Lodge on the Mopan River in Belize to the Tranquil Resort in Wayanad, Kerala, India, where you wake “up to the smells of vanilla wafting through the air and coffee beans roasting in the sun. The 500-square-foot treehouse at Tranquil Resort is set on a private 400-acre estate complete with a working coffee and vanilla plantation, meant to relax and rejuvenate.”
“The land of little rain”: Eastern California’s Owens Valley is known for rugged country and history, longstanding water wars, and diverse rock climbing opportunities. Vanessa Gregory of The New York Times and her husband spend a few days camping, hiking, and climbing the Alabama Hills near Bishop.
