Hailuogou

In the Boston Review, a dispatch from winter.

Zigzag Ice Dragon

Porters in ratty green uniforms are standing by their bamboo-and-metal sedans, calling out to the busloads of Chinese tourists. The tourists are huddled in groups on the frozen parking lot, strapping mini crampons onto all sorts of inappropriate footwear, or zipping up their rented snow boots. It’s February, and the New Year holiday has given way to a period of frantic mass travel that has what seems like all of China on the move.

Hailuogou National Glacier Forest Park is shrouded in a cold whiteout. My brother and I, traveling in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, have paid a couple hundred yuan for matching entrance and transport tickets, which double as postcards. We churn past three thermal-bath resorts, tiered by price and comfort. The rolling green-tea fields of Sichuan province are miles downriver, on the other side of massive tunnel and hydroelectric projects reshaping Tibet’s eastern slope.

Read the rest at Boston Review

In China

I'm in China, reporting three stories, through early March. It's all here on Find China, http://chinable.org, so why don't you click it already? Come on back to OPP once that trip is over.

Marcos's Cocuy photos on PDN's Photo of the Day

Marcos's work in the Cocuy is featured on PDN's Photo of the Day. Take a look.

El Cocuy in the Times

On the Ritak U'Wa Blanco. photo: Marcos Roda

I report from El Cocuy National Park in this week's travel section.

Above the Clouds in a Secret Colombia

AS crampons crunched ice, our guide, Rubará, raised his traditional woven sisal-thread handbag by his face and asked me to snap a photo. We were climbing above 17,000 feet, just shy of the summit of the Ritacuba Blanco, a glaciated peak shaped like a soft-serve ice cream cone, at El Cocuy National Park in Colombia. Aquamarine-hued icicles hung from the maw of a crevasse and, far below, clouds blanketed the Orinoco Basin.

The landscape stretched across dozens of ice-capped peaks and deep cirque valleys. Moraine lakes, formed by the natural erosion from glaciers’ unhurried flow and retreat, shimmered in mineral hues. Nearly 30 miles away, we could just make out the telltale church spire of the town of Soatá. Save for a photographer friend and one other guide on the ice field, no other people were in view. The February day was bright. I’d finally caught my breath.

Read on here. And please check out Dennis Drenner's excellent photos in the slide show as well.


More photos, from Marcos Roda and myself, with the voice of Miguel Herrera; 2:08 in all:


Thanks to mucholoquito for creative commons use of his music, off Jamendo.
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All I Ever Wanted

Killing the Buddha has a second installment of work on my extended family, this time from the sucrose-beached confines of Club Med Punta Cana.

The downturn means I’m broke, not that I’m supposed to stop living. So when my Uncle Carl announced that he’d sign the bottom line for an all-inclusive in the Dominican Republic, in January, my self-employed, 37-year-old pride did not get in the way. In other words, I decided to take him up on it, even though I’m hardly a believer in things all-inclusive. List me as still single, still adventurous, you might even say a skeptical vacationer. But, in this economy, you take the holiday you can get.

Flying alone to Club Med–especially the family-friendly, circus-themed, sucrose-beach resort at Punta Cana–felt like being shipped off as a teenager to Jew Camp in the Poconos, only warmer. Somebody was going to try to get me on a dance floor. There’d be communal singing. I’d get cornered by a horsey, aggressive girl, and–why not?–kiss her. The lack of context invited abandon. Similarly, at Club Med, faith in a god (of leisure) and full devotion to it promised celestial dividends. Want to know what heaven’s like? sang the Mediterranean prophets. Then give yourself over to us.

Read on, here.

More on those wacky Jersey Jews here, and to come.

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A foul-tasting brown sludge...

Glad to see John Otis and Scott Dalton out in the jungle -- always something interesting they come back with. This time, it's yajé:


Read the story over at GlobalPost.

I'd say that the idea is ripe for South Park, except that they already did it:

With the first kidnapping, it all falls apart

Interesting argument from Elizabeth Dickinson over at FP on post-conflict tourism. I'm preparing a travel piece now about a remote region of Colombia and grappling with the problem of how to describe the risk. For years, a friend of mine talked about the suggestion of visiting Colombia in this way: "I'd go, but I'd never take responsibility for anyone else going." Has that changed now? Like I said about emeralds a long time ago, it all holds up until the first bad deal.

There's a big idea behind all this about "travel-warning lists" and the responsibilities of the tourist. But also about the politics of opening up a country that has remained largely isolated. Topics Naipaul exposed in The Middle Passage, but that remain unresolved in places like Colombia, and Iraq.


photo: Suba, Bogota, Colombia

Toros, Bogotá

Sound and photos are my own.

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There's ya problem right the-ah

New Jersey Turnpike. Going 65. Snowing. Someone cut me off. I took evasive action. Lost control. Rammed into the rail. Spun around. Hit a guy in the next lane. Sat trembling for a while, out of cold and out of fear. Cops came, wearing baby blue. Asked me if I'd fallen asleep. "No," I said. "I lost control." Got a summons for careless driving. Tow truck arrived. Hauled me and my car off the Turnpike. Said he'd had another dead guy just yesterday. Uncle came to pick me up. Took a bath. Popped a vicodin. Pled not guilty. Rode in to the city for the title. Rode back out. Signed the title over to the wrecker. Checked the box saying "has been wrecked." Took the plates and one last look. And walked away.

Q&A with Dean Karnazes

Seven Days in the Desert
DEAN KARNAZES talks about racing in the most extreme conditions on earth.

The Ultramarathon Man wants to be the first person to complete all four legs of the 4 Deserts race series in one year. He survived the Gobi March and the Atacama Crossing, which he won last March. Next up, the Sahara Race—scheduled to begin this Sunday in Bahariya, Egypt—and the Last Desert, at the end of November, in Antarctica.

"My intention is to not necessarily win any of the individual races (the Atacama win was a fluke), but to pace myself to successfully make it through all four," Karnazes said in an email. "I also threw in the Badwater Ultramarathon after Gobi because I wanted to run one of the great deserts in North America."

He took fourth there. Outside caught up with Karnazes just before his departure for Cairo and the 135-degree heat and grueling soft sand of the Sahara.

What's the format of the race?

The 4 Desert series is always the same. They start the race at 8 in the morning, so you do whatever you can to get the finish line. You're on the clock. It's like the Tour de France. You can wait and try to run at night, but the advantage is going to belong to someone who can handle the heat during the day.

How do you plan on tackling the Saharan heat?

Read the rest at Outside Online.


(photo courtesy Dean Karnazes)

Destination: Colombia

There's more than magical realism in the literature of this beautiful and still very dangerous country.

By Matthew Fishbane

Pedestrians in Colombia are warned to look both ways before crossing a one-way street. The advice encapsulates not just this fragile country's lawlessness and disorder, but the slapstick, deeply ironic and often resigned dark humor of a people both tormented and exceptionally resilient. A second saying in Colombia holds, "Como nacimos en cueros, todo lo demás es ganancia," which translates roughly to "Since we were born buck naked, everything else is the takings."

READ THE REST AT SALON.COM