The islands of the Caribbean offer travelers of every stripe the ideal getaway: family-friendly resorts, couples-only properties, rustic eco-retreats and design gems that equal anything the U.S., Europe or Asia has to offer. During the past month, I had a chance to experience two unique island destinations.
Long before Spanish conquistadors marched into northwest Mexico to establish the settlement of Guadalajara in 1532, indigenous Nahuatl Indians had discovered the bacchanal benefits of fermenting the sugary juice of the sweet heart of a ripe agave cactus. That milky, pungent drink known as pulque was the forerunner of tequila.
You've got to love a little Kickstarter-funded brewery such as Boise Brewing, with a mezzanine where you can sip an IPA and play foosball while beer is brewing in stainless-steel tanks below you.
The best time to visit is usually mid-October for fall color, but it depends on the weather and your altitude. (Leaves change earlier at higher elevations.).
In national parks throughout the West, rangers and traffic engineers work long hours to nudge travelers out of their cars and onto trails - or at least onto shuttle buses and other less polluting alternatives. But the dramatic roads that the National Park Service carved out in the early 20th century aren't going away.
Winter was still in charge when we spotted them, raggedy brown patches staining the snow at Snowmass Ski Resort, in central Colorado's Pritkin County. In any other year we might have been greeted by mounds of powder on the Cirque, with a generous swath under Sheer Bliss, our favorite chairlift. The basics, indeed, for a last-of-the-season caper.
Edison nestles into the watery-green Skagit County farmlands like a lazy bend in the slough. At 11 a.m. on a Friday, you could be the only person walking around the old-fashioned storefronts and tangled, art-filled gardens. But foodie journals and lifestyle blogs have been discovering Edison for years now: a tiny hamlet (it’s not officially a town) filled with more artists, artisans and chefs than you’d think possible, yet still keeping its offbeat, dusty-saddle charm.
Wearing a woven cedar headband that distinguished her from the other boots-and-backpack-clad hikers, Candace Campo guided a walk in Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, last fall, pointing out path-side huckleberries and blackberries. She stripped a soft piece of bark from a fraying cedar trunk to demonstrate how it can be used as fiber for clothing, and detailed how to extract vitamin C from western hemlock needles by steeping them in boiling water.
The dhow slowly makes its way south down Lake Tanganyika, the Mahale Mountains in the background. The captain keeps the boat moving extra slow, and his crew hands me sodas to combat my motion sickness. We are halfway through an adventure trip trough Tanzania — and I am focusing on the horizon to squelch the queasiness.
The Cessna Grand Caravan circled the dirt landing strip as I peeked out the window. Giraffes bound across the arid ground below. A herd of elephants picked up their pace as we came closer. As the bush plane touched down, it finally sank in — I was in East Africa.
Catching and stopping animal poaching is a top priority and passion project for Tom Lithgow and his partners at Bathawk Recon Limited. Based in Arusha, Tanzania, the partners saw a need for unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance that could get into Tanzania parks and stop ongoing illegal activities.
