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Five Favorite Adventures in the Caribbean, Sailing an America’s Cup Yacht in St. Martin

One of the most unique opportunities in the Caribbean is the chance to race aboard authentic America’s Cup yachts used in the actual competition. In the three-hour sailing fantasy camp called the Sint Maarten 12 Metre Challenge, you have the rare opportunity to step into Dennis Conner’s soft-soled shoes. After an introductory talk about the history of the America’s Cup, four captains choose teams and off you go to your respective boats. The boats include the winning Stars & Stripes yacht which Connor used in the 1987 America’s Cup in Fremantle, Australia; his back-up, Stars & Stripes ’86; and two Canadian yachts, Canada II and True North IV. Once aboard your boat, the captain designates crew assignments. You could be chosen to be a primary grinder (grinding a winch as fast as possible so that the foresail can change direction), timekeeper, or handler of the mainsheet or rope. Simulating the America’s Cup, you sail against one other yacht around a triangular course, about one-tenth the size of the actual race. Afterwards, you’ve earned your rum punch. 

 

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Botswana A&K Guide, Kebby Arabang, Debuts Ilanga Tours

Lisa and I were fortunate to travel with Kebby Arabang on a magical 10-day trip with Abercrombie & Kent to Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia in September 2016. Kebby’s knowledge of the outdoor world was encyclopedic. He knew every mammal, every bird, every tree, even the planets in the sky above. But it was his genuine passion of the subject, seamless communication skills, infectious smile and sense of humor that made him one of the best guides I’ve ever met. I loved mimicking his Botswana accent, especially when he emphasized the letter r when naming the next exquisite bird like the lilac-breasted roller or southern carmine bee-eater. He took it in stride and laughed along with me, even when the joke lasted far too long. 

Kebby emailed me last week and told me that when he’s not leading A&K tours in 2018, he’ll be guiding Botswana trips through his new company, Ilanga Tours. Based on your budget, he’ll take groups through the Okavango Delta and up to Chobe National Park to visit the largest herd of elephants in Africa and cruise the Chobe River on the Namibian border. If you have time, he’ll add on the spellbinding Victoria Falls. If interested in traveling with Kebby, either with A&K or Ilanga Tours, please contact ActiveTravels and we’ll look into availability. 
 
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Top 5 Bike Rides in America During Fall Foliage, Asheville, North Carolina

If you think fall foliage is only relegated to the northeast, you haven’t been to Asheville, North Carolina in late October and early November. Leaves on the dogwoods, sweetgums, mountain ash, red maples, poplars, and birches all change color. Locals avoid biking on the famed Blue Ridge Parkway this time of year, unless you like weaving in and out of the leaf peeper congestion. The folks at Liberty Bicycles will provide bikes and steer you away from the traffic, leading you to nearby Burnsville for a favorite local ride. Park your car at an old gas station on Highway 19 just past the turn off to Highway 19E. Then head west on 19 and get ready for a great rural ride, North Carolina-style. On this 37-mile loop, you’ll bike alongside the Cane and North Toe Rivers and over suspension bridges past old tobacco farms, country stores, and small churches. Except for one steep hill in the beginning, the ride is relatively flat. Be on the lookout for deer, and if you do the loop on Sunday, make sure to bag a lunch in Asheville, because most stores are closed.  

 
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Saving the Sharks of Palau

Palau is one of those locales, like Fiji and the Red Sea, discussed only in clandestine conversations between avid scuba divers. To reach it, you have to travel five hours from the West Coast to Hawaii, another seven hours to Guam and yet another 90 minutes to this cluster of 200 sparsely populated islands, which Jacques Cousteau called the best scuba diving site in the world. From your home base on the capital isle of Koror, head to the Big Drop-Off, considered the best wall dive on Earth. It starts in knee-deep water and then abruptly plummets almost 1,500 feet into an abyss. Nearly as mind-boggling is Blue Corner, a large coral cavity where three ocean currents meet. Hunker down and watch schools of tuna, white-tip sharks and 3-foot-tall giant clams (where’s the melted butter when you need it?). Those white-tip sharks are protected, along with hammerheads, leopard sharks, and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean now that Palau has created the world’s first shark sanctuary. The country has banned shark fishing on more than 237,000 square miles of ocean, so divers can expect more up close views of those pearly whites. 
 
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Lawren Harris Finally Goes Solo

When the actor Steve Martin first viewed a painting by Lawren Harris, he mistook it for a work by Rockwell Kent. 

         
“I thought it was the best Rockwell Kent I’ve ever seen,” says Martin, punctuated by his legendary laugh. “It was breathtaking.”
 
That was over 20 years ago and soon Martin was in the home of longtime Harris collector, Ken Thomson, purchasing several of his canvases. When Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, saw these paintings at Martin’s house during dinner one evening, she came up with a “wild and crazy” idea. Showcase the mid-career paintings of Lawren Harris and allow America’s version of a modern-day Renaissance Man, Steve Martin, the opportunity to curate the show. The result is “The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris,” on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston though June 12 after a successful run at the Hammer Museum. The exhibition will next travel to Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario in July and afterwards return the majority of these works back to the their respective Canadian institutions in time for the country’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2017.
 
To read my review of the Lawren Harris show at the MFA, please see the latest issue of Everett Potter’s Travel Report.  
 
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Travels to Iran

Talk to any travel writer or avid traveler and they’ll no doubt tell you that Iran is one of the most beautiful and fascinating countries in the world. Americans, of course, have had a painful recent relationship with the country, fed a steady diet of anti-American flag burning. But don’t confuse politics with the people. The current population in Iran is over 77 million and if you talk to any traveler who has recently visited the country, they’ll tell you that the Iranian people are incredibly welcoming. Plus the best form of education is to go to a country and get behind the wall of fear-inducing media to actually see for yourself. After all, Americans who travel overseas are the best diplomats for America.  
 
So I was delighted to hear last week that British nationals were told by their Foreign Office that they were no longer being advised to avoid all but essential travel to Iran. I’m hoping Americans will soon follow suit. I’m already working with a highly reputable ground operator in Iran, Darwan Shiraz, whose founder, Abolfazl Moghadam, has been designing tours around his country the past 16 years. On his 2-week Persian Nightingale Tour, you’ll visit the ancient city of Yazd, which UNESCO has declared to be the 2nd most important historic city in the world after Jerusalem. Winding narrow streets lead to exquisite mosques. Tabriz is home to the largest covered bazaar in the world. From a distance, the Kandovan rocky village looks like a termite colony built in the volcanic ash of Mount Sahand. You’ll also spend 3 nights in Tehran to check out Niyavaran and Saad Abad Palaces and to visit the contemporary art museum. The trip is guided and includes all transfers, hotels, and most meals.
 
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VBT Offering New Walking Vacations in America’s National Parks

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the people who run all of America’s national park lodges acquired Austin-Lehman Adventures, now called Austin Adventures. A year prior, Xanterra purchased VBT Walking and Bicycling Vacations. Now we’re beginning to see the results of that acquisition. VBT has just announced that they will be offering walking tours at 5 American national parks in 2014, the first time they have offered walking vacations in the States. Travelers can explore the Grand Canyon, Zion, Grand Teton and Yellowstone while staying in lodges right in the heart of the parks. Vermont-based VBT is also launching a walking vacation closer to their headquarters in Acadia National Park. Walks include one of my personal favorites, Zion’s Narrows, where you walk in the Virgin River through a 1,000-foot-high slot canyon that’s a mere 20 feet wide at times. If you can’t wait until next summer, VBT will offer a 6-day cross-country skiing jaunt in Yellowstone this coming January and February, the most serene time of year to visit the park. Add several nights after the trip to ski downhill at nearby Big Sky. 

 

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