Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Video: Surfing One of the Longest Waves in the World
by Jim Benning | 07.11.11 | 1:59 PM ET
Waterman extraordinaire Robby Naish, perhaps best known as one of the globe’s best windsurfers, surfs one of the longest waves in the world at Pavones, Costa Rica.
(Via Adventure Journal)
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Yahoo! BuzzR.I.P. Facundo Cabral, Argentine Folk Singer
by Jim Benning | 07.11.11 | 1:27 PM ET
Latin America lost one of its great folk singers over the weekend when Facundo Cabral was gunned down while on tour in Guatemala. He was 74.
The singer-songwriter in the nueva trova tradition railed against oppressive dictatorships in South America and wrote novels and non-fiction. He was riding in a car to the airport in Guetamala City when it was ambushed. Officials suspect a nightclub owner also in the car was the intended target of the attack.
From a New York Times story:
Many of Mr. Cabral’s songs mixed expressions of mystical spirituality with a desire for social justice, which gave him a reputation as a protest singer. That proved dangerous after the Argentine military seized power in a coup in March 1976, and he fled to Mexico, where he remained in exile until after the collapse of the Argentine dictatorship in 1982. On his return, in 1984, Mr. Cabral was more popular than ever.
His sold-out concerts were an unusual mixture of music and the spoken word, with songs preceded by long introductions in which he would muse on philosophy and religion and often quote from his favorite poets, including Borges and Walt Whitman, and spiritual masters like Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
Here’s Cabral performing one of his classics:
Dig This: ‘Man, Americans Love Big Stuff’
by Michael Yessis | 07.08.11 | 8:44 AM ET
Apparently there are people whose bucket lists include the phrase “operate heavy equipment.” Dig This is them. For a few hundred dollars, the Las Vegas “heavy equipment playground” allows people to operate Caterpillar bulldozers and other oversized construction equipment.
Owner Ed Mumm says the “good majority” of the customers are guys. However, he told NPR’s Ted Robbins, “he has been surprised at how many women are also interested, which is the reason Dig This offers a package called ‘Excavate and Exfoliate,’ a half-day at the park followed by a spa treatment at the Trump Las Vegas Hotel.”
‘Europe’s First Travel Guide’ Missing From Santiago de Compostela Cathedral
by Michael Yessis | 07.07.11 | 6:33 PM ET
The Codex Calixtinus was reported missing Wednesday by distraught staff at the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. The 12th century illustrated manuscript was “compiled as a guidebook for medieval pilgrims following the Way of Saint James,” according to the BBC.
This is the oldest copy of the manuscript and is unsaleable on the open market.
Only a handful of people had access to the room in which it was kept.
This edition of the Codex Calixtinus is thought to date from around 1150.
Its purpose was largely practical—to collect advice of use to pilgrims heading to the shrine there. It also included sermons and homilies to St James.
The Guardian adds:
The local Correo Gallego newspaper reported that distraught cathedral staff spent hours searching for the manuscript before contacting police late that night.
“Although security systems have been improved considerably it is true to say that they are not of the kind one might find in a bank or a well-protected jewellers,” the newspaper reported.
Only five security cameras were used to watch the archive area, according to the newspaper, and none were pointing directly at the safe where the priceless manuscript was stored.
NYT on Luca Spaghetti’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Spin-off Memoir: ‘Pasta, Pasta, Pasta!’
by Eva Holland | 07.07.11 | 5:27 PM ET
Who is Luca Spaghetti? In case you’ve forgotten, he’s one of the dreamy Italian men who shows Elizabeth Gilbert around town during the Roman section of her bestselling memoir. He’s also, now, an author—his own memoir, Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Rome, was released this spring, and the New York Times had a really funny gem of a review.
Here’s Sam Anderson:
It has a strange integrity: the purity of an actual, unremarkable guy telling his actual, (mostly) unremarkable story. Aside from a few Gilbertesque cutesy touches (“That Marlboro tasted a lot like life”), there’s no pretense of educating humanity or saving a soul or discovering a self. It’s just: Hey world, this crazy thing happened where someone put me in a book—so here’s my story! Pasta, pasta, pasta! Spaghetti’s only ulterior motive is right on the surface: he hopes the memoir will make James Taylor, the American folk musician he reveres above all other humans, notice him.
I count myself among the legions of EPL fans, but even as a cheerleader I can’t help thinking this is all getting a bit surreal.
Sedaris: ‘Around the Time my Lunch Tray was Taken Away, I Remembered I Needed to Learn Mandarin’
by Michael Yessis | 07.06.11 | 9:15 AM ET
Travel-related hilarity from David Sedaris in the latest issue of the New Yorker, as he mines his efforts to learn languages.
Thanks to Japanese I and II, I’m able to buy train tickets, count to nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, and say, whenever someone is giving me change, “Now you are giving me change.” I can manage in a restaurant, take a cab, and even make small talk with the driver. “Do you have children?” I ask. “Will you take a vacation this year?” “Where to?” When he turns it around, as Japanese cabdrivers are inclined to do, I tell him that I have three children, a big boy and two little girls. If Pimsleur included “I am a middle-aged homosexual and thus make do with a niece I never see and a very small godson,” I’d say that. In the meantime, I work with what I have.
Alas, only an abstract is online.
Long-Term Family Travel and the ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Effect
by Eva Holland | 07.05.11 | 2:17 PM ET
While we were quiet on the publishing front, the Christian Science Monitor ran a seven-part series on the boom in career breaks and families traveling long-term—a boom inspired, writer Eilene Zimmerman contends, by Elizabeth Gilbert’s omnipotent memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.
Whatever the inspiration behind the rush, one takeaway seems clear: Long-term travel is moving towards the mainstream. Cheers to that.
Think You Lead a Green Life? Your Travels Say Otherwise.
by Michael Yessis | 07.05.11 | 10:28 AM ET
A study out of Norway has some troubling results for travelers who take pride in living a green lifestyle at home. Melinda Burns breaks it down:
People living in dense cities with no backyards typically consume more energy on their time off than people in cities with a little more greenery because they undertake longer getaways by car and by plane. It’s called “compensatory travel.” Environmentalists who drive less during the week tend to fly more on holidays than the less environmentally active. And the Internet, while allowing people to work at home, is promoting cheap weekend getaways—by plane.
“Thus, while green individuals strive to act in an environmentally responsible manner in their everyday lives, they seem to have a conflicting need to cast aside their environmental concerns when traveling for leisure,” the study says.
Via The Dish.
Splitscreen: A Love Story
by Jim Benning | 06.30.11 | 1:48 PM ET
Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.
Mesmerizing travel video shot entirely on a Nokia mobile phone.
(Via Kottke)
Simon Winchester, U.S. Citizen
by Eva Holland | 06.29.11 | 4:29 PM ET
The bestselling travel writer will take the oath of citizenship on July 4. In an essay in Newsweek, he explains his longstanding love affair with the United States, and why he decided to go all the way.
Here’s Winchester on his earliest American travels:
I took a year off before Oxford, bought the cheapest ticket to Montreal, traveled to Vancouver, and then crossed the American frontier by way of the Peace Arch into the seaside town of Blaine, Wash.
I then spent the magical days of that spring and summer hitchhiking through every corner of the country…. All told, I hitched 38,000 American highway miles, and it cost me just $18. I had entered at Blaine with 200 crisp bills in my pocket; and when six months later I left for Canada by way of Houlton, Maine, I had 182 of them left. Such kindness I had never known.
The experience changed me, profoundly. That summer, somewhere inside me was germinated the vague idea that one day I might make common cause with these kindly, warm, open folk, and even eventually become (as I heard it was possible to do) one of them.
(Via Andrew Sullivan)
Listen to This: Aurelio Martinez and ‘Mayahuaba’
by Jim Benning | 06.28.11 | 10:49 AM ET
Aurelio is a Honduran musician and member of the Garifuna community. This song is from his new album, Laru Beya. It makes me happy.
Cross-posted from JimBenning.Net.
World Hum Contributors in the World: The ‘What Did We Miss?’ Edition
by Eva Holland | 06.27.11 | 4:28 PM ET
While we went quiet over the last few months, World Hum’s many fine contributors stayed busy. Books were published, accolades were awarded. In no particular order, here’s a taste of what they’ve been up to:
- Falcon Guides published Ben Keene‘s Best Hikes Near New York City.
- Tony Perrottet‘s latest, The Sinner’s Grand Tour, hit bookstores in May.
- Wanderlust, by Elisabeth Eaves, was published just two weeks ago—more on that coming soon.
- Bill Belleville‘s latest, Salvaging the Real Florida: Lost and Found in the State of Dreams, came out in April.
- Sophia Dembling got a deal for a book about introversion, to be published in fall 2012. She wrote our wildly popular Confessions of an Introverted Traveler.
- David Farley was named a contributing editor at AFAR in March.
- Abbie Kozolchyk‘s World Hum story, Jersey Girl, was featured in The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011, as was Nancy Kline’s Missing Paris.
- Alexander Basek launched Fortnighter.
- Joanna Kakissis received the Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion.
- Pam Mandel joined the faculty of the Book Passage Travel, Food, and Photography Conference.
- Rob Verger was hired as a reporter at Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
- Sarah Menkedick landed an internship at Harper’s. She’ll be there throughout the summer.
- Lola Akinmade was named a photoblogger for Sweden’s official site, Sweden.se.
- Catherine Watson‘s World Hum story A Pilgrimage to Vailima won best travel article appearing on a travel-specific website in the SATW Central States Writing and Photography Contest, as well as the contest’s grand prize, the Henry & Vera Bradshaw Memorial Award.
- Michael Shapiro, David Farley, Peter Delevett, Erin Byrne and Lola Akinmade were all among the Solas Awards winners.
- Michael Yessis completed a draft of a comic thriller about sports, love and the power of Buffalo wings. Revisions are underway.
What else did we miss? Send us an email or let us know in the comments and we’ll add it to the list. Congrats everyone!
The Partridge Family Meets Ken Kesey on the Grand Trunk Road
by Michael Yessis | 06.27.11 | 11:41 AM ET
James Parchman spent days on a Pakistani stretch of the fabled Grand Trunk Road, wowed by the ornate decorations he saw on so many passing vehicles. The “panorama of red, yellow and green, mixed with plastic whirligigs, polished mahogany doors and gleaming stainless steel cover plates,” he writes, is part pride of design, part advertising expense.
Durriya Kazi, an artist and teacher in Karachi, has long been a proponent of Pakistan’s folk art. She sees bus and truck decorating as an integral part of that tradition, noting the importance of distinguishing between sculpture as defined by the art gallery and the rich activity of actually making things that exists all over Pakistan.
In 2006, Ms. Kazi was instrumental in a program intended to spread Pakistan’s bus decoration skills to Melbourne, Australia, where a tram was transformed into a replica of a minibus used on Karachi’s W-11 route, resplendent in all its finery.
Another Pakistani with expertise in the subject is Prof. Jamal J. Elias of the University of Pennsylvania, the author of “On Wings of Diesel: Trucks, Identity and Culture in Pakistan” (Oneworld, 2011). His book explores the tradition of Pakistani truck decoration, and looks into the “nature of response to religious imagery in popular Islamic culture.”
A terrific slideshow accompanies Parchman’s piece.
For another look at the Grand Trunk Road, check out Jeffrey Tayler’s five-part series, Cycling India’s Wildest Highway.
A Must-Have ‘On the Road’ iPad Book App?
by Jim Benning | 06.23.11 | 2:18 PM ET
Sounds like it. Penguin published an iPad book app for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” this week, and it’s being hailed as somewhat groundbreaking, at least as far as classic literature apps go. It features a slew of exclusive additional material, including a map, commentary, a slideshow of cover art from international editions, and tributes from Bob Dylan and others.
The decision to bring out “On the Road” as an app has a lot to do with this iconic status, explains Stephen Morrison, editor in chief of Penguin Books, reached this week by phone at his Manhattan office. “We were looking for a book with enough resonance,” Morrison says, “as well as enough supplemental material from which we could learn how to curate a literary app.”
The key word there is “learn,” which is what all of us, publishers and writers and readers, must do now as the publishing industry increasingly comes to terms with the digital age. We need to learn how to use the digital space as a vessel, as a container, how to produce and interact with apps and electronic texts that feel like books, yet also reflect the possibilities of technology.
Travels With Byliner
by Michael Yessis | 06.22.11 | 12:10 PM ET
There’s been a lot of positive buzz around Byliner since it published Jon Krakauer’s takedown of Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Deceit. It got another wave of adulation this week as it debuted its first curated batch of nonfiction features and a Pandora-style story-recommendation engine. Jennifer 8. Lee called it a “a beautiful IMDB for writers.” Nieman Journalism Lab called it a “nonfiction nerd’s fantasy.”
I call it the lovely monster that just ate half my morning.
I just took a dip and, wow, it was tough to extract myself to get some work done. I found many compelling stories, including a section with links to more than 1,500 travel stories.
Happy to see World Hum represented. Two stories from the archives are among those included: Karl Taro Greenfeld’s Hope and Squalor at Chungking Mansion and Rolf Potts’ Where no Travel Writer has Gone Before.
