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Raft the Snake River and Receive a $200 Discount

ROW Adventures, recently crowned the world’s #1 Tour Operator by Travel & Leisure magazine, just announced that they are offering a $200 discount to adults and $300 discount to kids 16 and under on their 5 and 6-day jaunts on the Snake River in 2013. So on a 5-day trip, you would now pay $1430 for adult, $1185 per child, including all food, beer, wine, and soda, guides, rafts, and full-service camping. Space is very limited, first come, first serve, and they must receive your deposit by Monday March 4th. What do you get in return? The chance to cruise through Hells Canyon on Class III and IV rapids on a rip-roaring ride through the deepest river gorge in North America. This is not the Colorado River, where you freeze your butt off in the water. Temps on the Snake average a perfect 70 degrees in summer. If interested, contact ActiveTravels at 617-614-9877. 
 

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Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Still a Classic Retreat in the Canadian Rockies

Staying at the classic Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge was like being placed in an advertisement for Canada. The rustic log cabins, adorned with the latest comforts and technology including an indoor kit to make s’mores in the fireplace, overlooked Lake Beauvert and the jagged snowtopped ridge of Mount Edith Covell, which reflected off the clear as gin water. For the two days that we spent here, all of our adventures took place on the grounds. My wife and daughter went horseback riding while Jake and I mountain biked through a forest of lodgepole pines, white spruce, trembling aspens, and Douglas firs, spotting osprey atop their sprawling nest, the lone loon gliding over a pristine lake, and more than our fair share of elk. We walked around the shoreline, staring in awe at the towering peaks, before paddling on the chilled water. Having had our full of adventure after a week of rock climbing, rafting, hiking, biking, canoeing, and horseback riding, we spent the last day simply lounging in the heated pool. A perfect way to end our week of active travels in the Canadian Rockies.
 

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Spending All Next Week with The Trustees of Reservations

While Crane Beach is still the best-known Trustees of Reservations site in Massachusetts, the group maintains more than 112 locales in the state, from Field Farm in Williamstown to the recently acquired Dunes Edge Campground in Provincetown. The William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington is a pastoral landscape of pastures and fields of wildflowers, largely unchanged for more than 150 years. Slocum’s River Reserve in Dartmouth is a 47-acre coastal farm on the shores of Buzzards Bay, an ideal place to view warblers during the spring and fall migration. All next week, I’ll be traveling around the state introducing readers to at least 20 Trustees sites—research for a story I’m writing for The Boston Globe on my personal favorites. So please check back! 

 
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Cape Town’s Rise to Culinary Prominence

It wasn’t so long ago that the signature dinner in Cape Town was a traditional braai, a barbecue featuring copious amounts of meat like boerewors sausages. If that didn’t satiate your carnivorous cravings, you could always stop at the local butcher for a bag of biltong, the popular South African snack of air-dried beef jerky. Then the Apartheid regime ended and the city started to embrace its diversity of cultures, especially when it came to expanding the palate at your nightly meal. The fusion of Dutch, French, Malaysian, Indian, and African cooking has melded to create an exciting new cuisine. 

The latest batch of talented chefs take full advantage of Cape Town’s melting pot and its envied locale, straddling the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as the largest city on the southernmost point of the continent. Everywhere you look is water and thankfully the fresh bounty of the sea now appears on the menu alongside the many types of meat, all washed down with South Africa’s world-class pinotage and sauvignon blanc vintages. You don’t have to step far from your hotel room to find a restaurant that scintillates the taste buds. Fine dining is sprouting up in all parts of the city like the blooming of king proteas, the national flower, at the city’s Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. So pick a neighborhood, any neighborhood. 

My entire story on the Cape Town dining scene can be found in the February/March 2017 issue of Virtuoso Traveler. 

 
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Our Night at Winemaker Alberto Longo’s Masseria Celentano Relais

After a tour of Pompeii with our guide Georgio (a guide is highly recommended to get a much greater context of the ruins), we drove 3 hours to northern Puglia, a very rural part of the Italian peninsula, dotted with rolling vineyards, olive trees, and fields of cabbage. Soon we arrived at the charming Masseria Celentano Relais, a 400-year old farmhouse and plaza that felt like something out of the Spanish countryside, with red-tiled roofs and whitewashed stucco buildings. The Masseria has five rooms for rent, including a former chapel with high ceilings that Lisa and I slept in. Another family, including a couple getting married the next day, rented the remaining rooms. 

We met Alberto Longo, an award-winning winemaker of Primitivo and Negroamaro, the red wines best known in the Puglia region, at dinner that evening. He was joined by his wonderful parents, including his 91-year-old dad, dressed impeccably in a 3-piece suit and fedora, and whom he learned winemaking from. We dined on prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella, fresh baked bread dipped in his own heavenly olive oil, sliced aubergine, orecchiette with escarole, and a tender rabbit skinned on premises. All washed down with his sparkling wine, rose’s, and reds from the vineyard his father started in 1968. Another homemade treat was an after-dinner liqueur called Nocino that Alberto’s mom makes from the walnuts found on property. Delicious! 
 
Staying at a Masseria or historic farmhouse is becoming more and more popular in Italy as travelers strive for an authentic Italian experience far away from the growing mass of tourists. It’s hard to top the experience of staying at Alberto’s home, one of the highlights of our trip. The next day, we got a chance to visit Alberto’s vineyard, a 10-minute drive from his home, and onward to the historic city of Lucera, where Alberto has his own wine store. Here, people were lining up to fill their own bottles from several large tanks, not unlike filling your growler at a microbrew. Very cool. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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On the Road to Ronda

We were picked up promptly at 9 am in Granada by Damir, a driver and guide for a company we’ve been working with more and more in Europe, Daytrip. We could have rented our own car and made the 3-hour trek from Granada to Seville, but it’s so much more relaxing to have someone else drive, especially when you want to stop and visit another town along the way. Two hours later, after sitting in the back of a comfortable Mercedes sedan and peering out at the rolling hills and mountains of this bucolic region of Spain, we arrived in Ronda. Damir guided us around the town, walking along the edge of the famous gorge, touring the oldest bullring in Spain, the one Hemingway wrote about when he lived here (it’s also the town where Orson Welles retired and died), and the historic Moorish settlement at the bottom of the hill. After a lunch of tapas, we arrived in Seville around 4 pm. One of the most relaxing days of the trip. 

 
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The Best of Cape Cod Birding

While the interior of Cape Cod is rich with cardinals, mockingbirds, goldfinches and woodpeckers, it’s the coastal variety that entice many a visitor here.  Shorebirds by the thousands, returning from their Arctic breeding grounds, stop along the Cape coast for much needed respite and food as they fatten up for their journey south. One of their favorite overnights is Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. The Massachusetts Audubon Society, who own and maintain the property, have claimed to have seen over 250 different species like oystercatchers, stilts, avocets, plovers, turnstones, and sandpipers.

The Goose Pond Trail is a leisurely ramble though marsh, forest, ponds, and fields. At low tide, continue on the Try Island Trail to a boardwalk that leads to Cape Cod Bay.  Green herons and large goose-like brants are prevalent in the surrounding salty marsh.  Retrace your steps back to the Goose Pond Trail to reach Goose Pond. A bench overlooking the water is one of the most serene spots on the Cape. Northern hummingbirds fly in and out of the branches overhead forming a choir whose voices will soothe any man’s soul.
 

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