• Packing to move from New York City to the Hudson Valley, dismantling your life which even with very frequent travel  has seems very fixed. Manifestly it is not — not when it is so easily swallowed into boxes and spirited to another place.
• Leave for a long-scheduled week-long trip to Canada in the middle of the move. Arrive airport for flight out already exhausted. Nap during taxiing. Awakened from nap by announcement that plane is returning to the gate to let off a passenger who has suddenly realized she cannot leave her two year old for vacation in Jackson Hole with friends due to the approach of Hurricane Irene. Suspect she really wanted to go shoe shopping.
• Delay causes missed connection. Add 5 hour layover in Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport. Struggle to stay awake until flight to Vancouver. The airport lights seem too bright, everyone speaks too loud, wonder which bathroom Larry Craig liked to frequent.
• Arrive at Shangri-La Hotel and it is lovely. Very hungry and too tired to wait for room service. Open bag to discover packing for a trip in the middle of the move generally went okay, except for restocking the emergency snack bag, which contains only: one ziplock baggie of Splenda packets, a few tubes of energy drink powder and three very old Dove chocolates that have gone chalky. Eat the chocolates. Press  many buttons from the control panel on the side of the bed, causing blinds and sheers to open and close madly and various lights to dim and brighten until figure out the right one to hit to make all the lights go out.
• Hurricane Irene arrives in Northeast the next day. Monitoring news and coverage from home while walking around Stanley Park on the sunniest, golden lit, most pleasant weather day imaginable.
• Visit The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art, the most comprehensive exhibition of Surrealist art ever to be shown in Canada, at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Consider what Dali’s lobster telephone would sound like if it rang.

The latest issue of Perceptive Travel webzine provides, yet again, great travel stories from around the world.

New Zealander Graham Reid takes The Track Less Traveled in Far North Queensland, Australia and along the way discovers an outback pub in the middle of nowhere.

In Tranquilandia Transformed in Colombia, Richard McColl heads well off the beaten path in Colombia and discovers that a region that once served as jungle prison camp and a center of coke production now makes a great adventure destination.

And in Voices & Choices When a Human Flies, Lisa TE Stone finds a hang gliding school in Chattanooga, Tennessee and overcomes fear to take to the skies.

This month’s World Music Reviews travels from Egypt to Ethiopia to Brooklyn barrio while the Travel Book Reviews focuses on Persian culture, historic travel, and dark tourism.

As for giveaways, this month it’s a multi-functional Timex WS4, a watch that clips onto your bag rather than your wrist.

It not only tells time – it also gives altitude readings, weather conditions and compass headings at a glance.

To win, you’ll have to watch your inbox for the PT newsletter or follow us on Facebook.

If you’re not on the Perceptive Travel monthly e-mail newsletter list, sign up by clicking here.

Story & photos by Richard McColl

A notorious region of Colombia that once served as both a jungle prison camp and center of coke production makes for a great adventure destination, well off the beaten path.

“Sometimes, you reach a place so beautiful and breathtaking that once you leave, such as returning to the city, you’ll find yourself as if sleep-walking, transported back to that unforgettable location,” says Toribio of the Huitoto tribe.

Father of 18 children and now one of our guides to navigate us through this impenetrable tangle of green, Toribio’s words may well ring true. Before he had spoken, I had remained solely focused on sticking to the path and my eyes had met mainly with the deep yet soft bed of fallen leaves that is so prevalent on the rainforest floor of the Amazon.

Just four days previously we had arrived in Araracuara to the airport with no name, following the one-time route of many prisoners as they came to be interned here in the country’s outer limits where the river Caquetá divides the department of the same name from the Amazon. Ours was to be an expedition of discovery, not a penal sojourn, and thus far it had delivered on every front. Almost from the word go, this area that used to be known as Tranquilandia, for the uninterrupted production of cocaine that was performed here in the jungles of Caquetá for the Medellin cartel, began to reveal its secrets.

We had been invited here by Marceliano Guerrero, an elder of the Huitoto tribe, and sitting here in his house perched neatly on stilts up on the hillside upon arrival we discussed what we could see and what we should do. Adventures to far off and barely visited places such as the National Park at Chiribiquete were mooted. Marceliano’s family pitched in too with their thoughts on the logistics of each excursion.

Key to everything here is finding the correct guide, procuring enough gasoline, which at 15,000 pesos per gallon was frighteningly expensive, negotiating hard and then probing various sources of information for clues about water levels, timescales, food and of course security.

Very Far, but Very Beautiful

Erroneously we believed that Marceliano and his wife Graciela and their sons and daughters might be able to furnish us with some ideas.

Each conversation was littered with “Esta lejos” in the chirpy accent employed when the Huitoto speak Castellano, thrusting an arm skywards as if indicating that far off point, and then as if allaying our fears would add: “pero muy lindo”. (But very beautiful.)

And with each affirmation of the untold natural beauty of the region we felt as if we were privy to unrivalled local knowledge straight from the bosom of a well-connected family. Finally the information for the journey to Chiribiquete ranged from 11 hours to several days depending on who you listened to. But this paucity of knowledge was not limited only to the Guerrero family as our boat driver Chayan and guide Adán were also way off. First we had to get to where they were.

From Puerto Santander, the municipality directly in front of Araracuara, motoring powerfully on the river Caquetá, we saw no further souls for the two days it took us to battle against the current along the Yari River and then the Pesai River and then for the full day return journey. This journey, that took us all the way up to the waterfall at Chiribiquete that measured some 430m across, was littered with conversation and comments about Tranquilandia, the airstrips that could still be found nearby for the illicit shipments and makeshift prisons that the rebels ran here. Ingrid Betancourt, a former senator and presidential candidate, was held in a camp near here for three days before being moved further away and up into Guaviare. She was held hostage for six and a half years before being rescued in a government operation.

Continue to Page 2 of Tranquilandia

After walking past the flaming torches which flank the main doors of Waxy O’Connor’s in city centre Glasgow, I had to pause for a few moments in the entry way. That is almost a requirement when I come to Waxy’s: the building has nine areas, several levels, and at any given moment any one of them will be hosting a family gathering, a wedding reception, folk cheering on a sporting match on television (usually several these going on at once), and several different sorts of music. The entry is not, as you might think from that, cacophonous: it is welcoming, rather, with a hum of conversation, the occasional sporting cheer, clink of glasses and rattle of crockery, and that day gradually my ear tuned to what I had come to Waxy’s for on that cold January afternoon: the sound of traditional music.

Following my ear up to the stairs to the left, I soon found the musicians seated around a long table. There wasn’t any room in the seating area of the small bar, and I was not acquainted with anyone there on that day, so I made a space for myself to lean against the wall next the to stack of guitar and flute and fiddle cases the players had built up. It was a great place to watch as well as to listen, actually, as I could see the nods and smiles and glances that passed between the players as they passed notes and tunes along around the table as naturally as, on other occasions, others would pass dishes for dinner.

As some were doing nearby me, in fact. My perch along the wall looked down onto one of the small dining areas, where several couples were enjoying meals in a location that put them just far away enough from the music session going on a above them, and what sounded like a football match on the television in the bar below so that they could enjoy their own conversations, and tune in and out of the music and the sport as they wished.

Waxy’s works like that: many different things going on, all at convivial pace side by side. There are many brews and malts and vintages available, but you’re equally welcome if, like me that day, what you want to drink is a good cup of tea. The food is varied too, most of it locally sourced and including such items as an all day full Scottish breakfast, mussels cooked in white wine, Irish Stew, vegetarian penne pasta, and haggis with the full kit of neeps and tatties to go along.

There are Waxy O’Connor’s pubs in other cities. I’ve not been to any of them, and while I suppose they may be part of a chain, the Waxy’s on George Street in Glasgow does not seem as though it is part of any chain. Rather, it feels like an integral and friendly and unique part of the city and the neighborhood, a place to wander and check out the atmosphere of the different bars, to chat with the kindly staff (who’ll cheerfully direct you should you lose your way), to have a good meal, to linger at a traditional music session on a winter afternoon. You know, too, there’s more welcome, more music, and more to explore should you return.

Consider subscribing to Perceptive Travel through email or
RSS feed. thanks!

Little had changed in my neighborhood between the time I left Bangkok in July ’09 and when I moved back in February ’11. The late-night chicken ‘n’ rice joint on the corner of Petchaburi and Rajadamri was still there, the pop-up restaurant just past Khlong Saen Saeb, near CentralWorld Plaza, was still there, and I recognized many familiar faces amongst the ranks of street vendors that camp out in Pratunam. My “squid guy”, however, wasn’t amongst them.

For weeks I held out hope that he’d return, and was perhaps just off visiting family in Nong Khai, but he never did. I was devastated, having dreamt about those chunks of squid for nearly two years. Perfectly crisped on thin wooden skewers over a charcoal grill, sliced into bite-sized cubes, and dumped into a pool of insanely hot green-chile sauce in a plastic bag–this was my quick snack or light lunch at least four or five times a week. It was somewhat out of convenience–his stand was on the same block as my condo–somewhat due to price (20 baht per skewer), but mostly because of the flavor and freshness.

I had to find a local replacement, and after some area taste-testing settled on one amidst the vendors hawking fresh orange juice, fried chicken, and banana roti just outside Pantip Plaza. She’s the only one with squid, and is usually located next to a woman selling fried shrimp poppers.

Bangkok locals may not see what the big deal is here–squid skewers are, admittedly, widely available in the city streets–but with so many warnings about street food floating around these days (“Don’t eat the ice! Don’t always trust the locals! Restaurants are usually better! You’ll get sick!), tourists eager to explore this vast culinary landscape can add this stall to the safe list. It’s fresh, it’s delicious, it’s healthy, and it’s cheap. If you’ve loaded up on bootleg DVDs inside and need to kill some time while the discs are ripped offsite, these squid skewers are a perfect snack to munch on while watching the insanity of Petchaburi roll by from a seat on Pantip’s steps.

Pick a few out, put ‘em on the grill, and make sure to get the spicy sauce. I still miss my old squid guy, but the new squid girl is just fine.

We could play the “Must-Eat Food in Bangkok” game every day for years and still have plenty of culinary fodder to feature. In that sense, the “BKK Must Eats” series will not be comprehensive, nor will it exclusively list dishes that are “the best” of anything (though it might, from time to time). The modest goal of this series is simply to spotlight, somewhat randomly, damned delicious dishes in Bangkok that I’ve indulged on many occasions, and that I recommend you indulge too.

More BKK Must Eats:
+ Early Evening Pad Thai on Soi Chidlom
+ Salmon Agemusubui at Sukishi
+ Spicy Tuna Roll at Yaki Ten

_{Photo credit and copyright Brian Spencer}