It’s time again for another edition of the Perceptive Travel webzine and it’s one you won’t want to miss.

This month’s edition marks the debut of all new writers to Perceptive Travel Magazine. But while they are new writers to the magazine, they are definitely not new to the craft of travel writing. Between them, the three ‘new’ writers have published a number of travel books and articles.

But I’m thinking that they have saved their best for Perceptive Travel.

In Fashon in Kabul, Kristin Ohlson, co–author of the New York Times bestselling Kabul Beauty School, takes us behind the scenes of underground fashion shows in this Afghanistan capital city and introduces readers to Afghan designers who are aiming to polish up Afghanistan’s image by putting a modern twist on traditional Afghan motifs.

In Luck, Llamas, and a Peruvian Shaman, Sharon Spence Lieb, a self-proclaimed city girl, finds herself making an arduous 3,000 feet climb up Mt Waccratanka in the Peruvian Andes to meet with a 100-year old Shaman.

And in The Ride of a Lifetime: Mountain Biking Down the World’s Most Dangerous Road, Carla Seidl shares her fear and exhilaration in tackling the hairpin turns of Bolivia’s El Camino de Muerte (Road of Death) on two wheels.

This month’s book reviews -  David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries, The Darwin Experience coffee table book, and The Ethical Travel Guide – by editor Tim Leffel round out this great new edition of Perceptive Travel magazine. The

Subscribe to the Perceptive Travel newsletter and you’ll not only get early notice of each new edition the Perceptive Travel magazine but you’ll also be in with a chance to win monthly prizes. This month’s giveaway is a set of Motorola MJ270 Talkabout Radios, great for your backcountry hiking trip or keeping track of the your kid on a ski slope. They have a range of 27 miles and even come with a flashlight plus NOAA weather channels and alerts for emergencies.

Plus don’t forget the  Remarkable Photo Contest

Perceptive Travel’s 3rd annual Remarkable Photo Contest is open through to the end of the December. Enter your  travel photographs and be in with a chance for some really great prizes to win, such as a compact super-zoom Ex-10 camera from Casio and your choice of great shades from Tifosi Optics. See how to enter here.

Air New Zealand loves to take risks but only with it‘s advertising strategy. And as a result, when it comes to social media networking, Air New Zealand rocks.

In fact, in the last year, this airline has become certifiably geeky, creating a strong twitter presence (@flyAirNZ)  and using facebook, you tube, flickr, and websites to promote it’s edgy marketing strategies that are putting not only the airline but also New Zealand on the map.

After all, who could forget their innovative flight safety video featuring naked staff members, covered only in body paint. It raised more than few eyebrows when it was posted on You Tube – more than 4.1 million according to the stats.

Then there was Air New Zealand’ Matchmaking Flight, a social media exercise testing whether the “opposites attract” concept applied to transcontinental travellers. One hundred single Americans and one hundred and fifty single Kiwis connected first online and then onboard for this world-first inter-hemisphere mingle than culminated with a Great Matchmaking Party in Auckland.

Air New Zealand’s two latest social media forays – Jump Seat and Airpoints Fairy -  keep up this innovative and entertaining way of connecting and engaging with clients and potential clients.

Jump Seat, an Air New Zealand facebook game, offers players the change to be in charge of their own flight and head off to exotic locations while completing various missions and adventures along the way.

Meanwhile, the Airpoints Fairy is a website and twitter based ( @AirpointsFairy) application where, once a day, the  @AirpointsFairy sprinkles some fairy dust and grants customers’ wishes. So far, this Airpoints Fairy has provided Air New Zealand frequent flyers everything from Koru Lounge access to extra air and status points. All you have to do is make a wish (mine as @kiwiwriter was  ”keeping fingers crossed @AirpointsFairy will grant me wish to turn silver or even gold”)  and pray that some fairy dust will come your way. It’s a brilliant spot-on campaign that brings the child out in all of us.

Of course, none of this social media networking would be worth a cent if Air New Zealand wasn’t able to also deliver on it’s promise to provide an excellent in-flight experience as well. Because just as the social media can work as a marketing tool for airlines, it can also work as a word-of-mouth tool for travellers who are dissatisfied with an airline’s service or actions.  After all, who can forget how quickly the ‘United Breaks Guitars’ video made by a disgruntled passenger went viral causing United Airlines some strife.

But it turns out that not only does Air New Zealand rock as a social media networker. I can, having taken numerous long haul Air New Zealand flights, honestly state that it  rocks for it’s excellent in-flight service.

For more on airlines and social media, check out Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation’s article “Airlines and Social Media: Carriers turn to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and online blogs” . It not only discusses efforts by various airlines in social media networking but also lists the twitter accounts of airline carriers around the world.

September 11, 2001. On the way to my gym in Boston, I stopped at a travel agent’s to look into booking a hiking and camping safari during our upcoming trip to Australia. In 3 days we were leaving to attend a friend’s wedding where we used to live in Sydney, and then spending 10 days in the Outback. We’d had the flights books for over 6 months.

While I was there, one of the other agents remarked that she’d just received an email saying a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. We imagined a small private plane and little damage. It wasn’t until I was at the gym, and saw the second plane’s impact on the television, that the impact of the event started to become real. I went back to the travel agent, in a bit of hesitant confusion, and said, “Maybe we should hold off on booking that safari.”

We were meant to be flying out in 3 days, September 14th, our anniversary. But we were living in Boston, where the airport would, it transpired, not be open for another 2 weeks. The city was as bewildered and stricken as the rest of the country. My husband Ian and I watched tears fall in public, the “how could this happen to us?” response replaced by the “let’s get the bastards” reaction. We considered that our two weeks off of work were already booked.

“I would really,” I said, trying not to be too pushy, “really like to get out of this country right now.” There was something going on here I did not want to be a part of, some combination of ignorance and real pain, of naiveté and insularity, of pride and shock, that worried me. It felt combustible.

We rented a car and drove north, spending our anniversary in silent contemplation of the fact that “scenic routes” marked on a map held an exasperating number of traffic lights on the actual road.

First destination: Bar Harbor, Maine, and neighboring Acadia National Park. Then, to Canada. We didn’t care where—just out, and up.

It was a September hinting at fiery autumn leaves, with crisp skies and calm seas. We’d hurriedly bought a propane camping stove and bickered as we tried to cook lunches under the fierce winds that only seemed to come up when we were hungry.

Bar Harbor and especially Acadia, despite the crowds searching out lobster tails and fishing expeditions, offered balms to remind me that, no matter how oddly or hurtful humanity might act, Nature went on unheeding. Nothing is more easily destroyed than natural beauty, but neither is anything more precious, and Acadia offered hikes, walks, and views to soothe the most troubled soul. Zipping up rocky hillsides, I tasted my first wild blueberries, slightly withered but hanging onto the tail end of the season.

Reoriented, soul-wise, we fled the States. Ian mentioned an interest in Prince Edward Island, which I had visited before but he hadn’t. It seemed a reasonable goal to begin with so we aimed for New Brunswick and the Canadian Maritimes.

“God Bless America” signs blinked at us all the way up through New England and continued thick and heartfelt into Canada. So many years later, I am still amazed at how quickly the U.S. squandered so much good will.

It was when we landed in a New Brunswick tourist information center that I found the true meaning of spontaneity. A magazine cover featured a man standing on a cliff top, arms stretched high as if in greeting or benediction of the miraculous, dizzying view before him. An elongated lake sparkled out from the bottoms of the cliffs and trees and bushes rioted all around the hillsides. I pointed at it.

“I want to go there.”

“Where’s that?” asked Ian.

“I don’t know, but we need to go there.” We asked an assistant.

“Oh, that’s …” she flipped it open, “that’s Newfoundland. Gros Morne National Park,” she specified helpfully.

“Newfoundland.” I love it when the name of a place you’ve never been just tastes good to say. “How do we get there?”

Its remoteness was tantalizing, almost as alluring as the wild beauty depicted on the magazine cover. We had to get to the island of Nova Scotia first, cross to its far side, and then take a ferry for several hours, and from there drive a couple more hours up Newfoundland’s western coast, halfway to Labrador.

It was tempting to push for Labrador, but Ian did want to see Prince Edward Island, and two weeks seemed like ages until you realized you had to drive back home, too.

So Newfoundland it was. We followed increasingly gray, drizzly weather up through the soft sands and mellow sweep of Prince Edward Island, then back down to Nova Scotia’s northern tip, which, in its uncanny likeness to parts of Scotland, more than lives up to its namesake. And from there to a rather ugly, dreary industrial fishing town to catch the ferry to Newfoundland.

When we set foot on the island’s rocky coast I don’t think I’d read so much as a badly penned travel article about Newfoundland. It would be five years before I met the native author Wayne Johnston and become smitten with his memoir, Baltimore’s Mansion, of growing up in St. John’s on the island’s eastern coast.

But in 2001, St. John’s was only a name on a road sign tagging the other end of the highway on which we were only going partway.

The weather continued bleak, and seemed to fit the landscape and the architecture. The towns reminded me of fishing villages in Scotland, with unpredictable opening times and unsure welcome for a stranger. Despite the area’s possession of a National Park, it seemed to make no nods toward tourism. It wasn’t until we were at the rim of Gros Morne itself that we found a surprisingly welcoming B&B with excellent food, and a likely café for grilled cheese sandwiches.

Like all nature lovers, I find every brand of natural beauty thrilling, no matter how different from what I’ve grown to love. I set out for Gros Morne guided by an enthralling photograph and a desire to stand where that man had stood, welcoming the existence of this place with joyful arms.

Reality turned out quite different but not less enjoyable. Our days on Newfoundland were socked in with fog and pelted with rain. The gorgeous vista I’d been aiming for turned out to be midway through a 5-day backcountry hike that was ill-advised in September due to the bogginess of the swamps, not to mention giant biting blackflies and mosquitoes that were starving for human flesh.

Instead, we stuck to a squishy boardwalk and a two-hour hike up an imposing granite hill. On a wet, foggy day we took an open boat ride up Western Brook Pond, the prosaically named lake featured at the bottom of the cliffs I was so attracted to.

The rain and fogged-in mountains felt like a tease—or maybe an invitation to return, someday, with a mind full on Newfoundland and a heart set on another adventure.

I wanted to stay, for a long time, to let the island’s marshy windswept interior wipe out the bad taste America and human kind had been leaving in my mouth. But we had to return, if only to give back the rental car.

As we were leaving, we stopped to look at a moose nibbling by the side of the road. Gros Morne was full of the ungainly-looking animals, inspiring a hilarious road sign, picturing simply a moose sniffing a crumpled car front. We watched until she began ambling over to us, looking much larger than our rental car. Her gangly legs and knobby knees turned into an oddly graceful walk, like a self-assured supermodel. Stop, sniff, live, survive, she seemed to imply. Whatever is going on out there, nothing lasts forever.

Blog Carnival

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Welcome to the December 2, 2009 edition of the Carnival of Cities, where we find out about goings-on in cities and towns across the world, all in a single blog post.

The Family Travel Guide hosted the previous edition;  I’m happy to consider hosts for upcoming Carnival editions in December, January and February.

If you’d like to host the Carnival on your blog, please email me at Sheila “at” sheilascarborough “dot” com.

Off we go….

Cities in the Americas

Jordy Clements presents The Cornhuskers Did Battle, But I Won the War posted at Omaha.net – Local Writing from the Heartland.

TheWordWire presents What Happens [When You Live] In Vegas… posted at TheWordWire.

Madeleine Begun Kane presents The Vibrator Play on Broadway (Review and Limerick) posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.

Jon presents These Ultimate Fighting Guys are Tough posted at The PlanetEye Traveler – Washington DC, saying, “Modern day gladiators of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) come to Washington, DC. Makes the healthcare fight on Capitol Hill look like nothing!!”

Jack Norell presents Osaka Garden, Jackson Park, Chicago posted at Eyeflare – Travel Articles and Tips, saying, “Did you know that in Chicago there is a hidden Japanese garden? Right behind the Museum of Science and Industry in Jackson Park, a wonderful Japanese garden on a wooded island awaits you in the middle of a lagoon.”

(more…)

Writers of place. It’s a neverending debate in the travel writing world, no matter how you phrase it: what makes good travel writing? Who is a better travel writer? My own contention that novelists are often better at creating a sense of place than travel writers is well established. But it was the comment by Caitlin Fitzsimmons of the Roaming Tales blog last week that reminded me of one of the most powerful writers of “place” in the history of popular fiction: L.M. Montgomery. Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the wildly famous Anne of Green Gables series (of which there are no less than 8 books), as well as several other series and stand-alone novels, including the Emily of New Moon books, which Fitzsimmons and I both agreed were our favorites.

These books, the Anne series in particular, spend a lot of quality word coinage on their setting: the sandy, small, achingly beautiful Prince Edward Island off the eastern seaboard of Canada. Long passages detail its beauties, its flora, its villages and peace, its seasons. At the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, as Anne gets her first sight of the blossoming beauty of PEI, she gets right to the heart of what we mean by a “sense of place:”

“‘Pretty? Oh, pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful either. They don’t go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful — wonderful. It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfied me here’ — she put one hand on her breast — ‘it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache.’”

How well I know that feeling.

Perhaps even more swaying than Montgomery’s descriptive talent is the love the characters hold for their island. To these independent-minded, creative, and often ambitious women, almost no man can take the place of the Island in their hearts. Yes, the stories are about human love and the trials of growing up, but the reader senses that, as long as the heroine can live and be nurtured on her beloved PEI, she might just be able to live without the man who is right for her. Consider this passage from Emily Climbs, in which the heroine Emily Starr turns down the chance of a lifetime, to leave her provincial home and her struggling ambition to be a writer, and work at a New York magazine:

“I know life is rather cramped here in some ways – but the sky is as much mine as anybody’s. I may not succeed here – but, if not, I wouldn’t succeed in New York either. Some fountain of living water would dry up in my soul if I left the land I love.”

I’ve been to this island twice, and never doubted it was the books that brought me there. The second time was with my husband, when after the September 11th events of 2001 we had to hurriedly cancel a trip to Australia and were left with two weeks of vacation and a desire to leave the country. We rented a car and roamed all over the eastern provinces of Canada, looping through PEI and ending up halfway up Newfoundland before turning around for Boston and home.

It was the first trip, however, that solidified the love for this island that the books had already created. My first summer after college, my father was working in Russia, and my impractical, spontaneous mother wanted to get out of the house and do something fun. She settled on Prince Edward Island, both of us having loved the Anne books well and long, and having fallen in love with PEI from a distance. It’s a long way from the rugged Rockies of Montana to the gentled coastline of Prince Edward Island, and we’re not just talking flying time.

Exiting a freak June snowstorm, we flew to Montreal, and from there took a train further east, followed by a ferry to PEI and finally a car rental. To preserve the Green Gables and PEI experience, we would have happily gone by horse-drawn buggy, but none were available. In fact, our first landfall in Charlottetown — which in Montgomery’s books is the elegant “city” that Anne visits from her village of Avonlea — with its traffic and big shopping mall, was a bit of a disappointment. But on this tiny island we didn’t have to go far to reach the atmosphere of Montgomery’s world. We stayed, in fact, in a B&B run by a loyal Montgomery fan, in the actual house L.M. Montgomery had grown up in. It was, of course, Green Gables.

We roamed all over the island, which sounds more adventurous than it was, as it takes about half an hour to drive from one end to the other. On foggy roads and sunny days, we walked among the dunes, looking for the sense of place that comes across so vividly in the books, and, more to the point, hoping deep down to capture something for ourselves of that unquestioning sense of home that L.M. Montgomery’s characters feel there. In her books, it is the homebodies you sympathize with, never the wanderers. They are the dissatisfied, the ill-at-ease.

But the modern island itself felt ill at ease, even then, and more so when I visited with my husband in 2001. The books are so popular that PEI’s tourist industry never seems to stop growing. Hotels and “Green Gables Theme Parks,” tawdry and tacky and horrid, pop up all over the place. While the island was still beautiful, it was cashing in on its literary ancestors in a manner that L.M. Montgomery, with her lyrical old-fashioned way with words, could never have described. She wouldn’t have known how to reconcile the “enchantment in the curve of the dark-red, dew-wet road beyond – remote, spiritual allurement” with roadside blow-up Anne dolls advertising mini-golf.

And neither could I. It was hard to see how a love of beautiful stories, and love of the place they describe, could birth such ugliness. Hard to see how the busloads of Japanese tourists (Anne of Green Gables is a common book used in Japan to teach English, we were told) could be happy with cheap lobster dinners at a plastic hotel after reading of rolling farmland and limpid, shimmering ponds, and proud apple trees growing wild in hidden places.

Still, the air of Montgomery’s books lives, no matter how many wretched attractions are built. Because her words did not create the Island – it was the other way around. The Island created her, and through her, the books that have created such love for generations.

It is interesting, all the same, that stories based essentially on a heroine’s love for her home and desire to stay there inspire travelers from all over the world. What is it, exactly, that we’re looking for in visiting Anne of Green Gables’s Prince Edward Island? Its beauty, sure, and the timeless characters, but I can tell you right now what really makes us fall in love with the place is Montgomery’s sure knowledge that love is only meaningful if it starts with the soil beneath your feet.