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Top 5 Travel Days of 2015, Sea Kayaking Lobster Bay, Nova Scotia
This past June, I took the Portland ferry to Nova Scotia with my sister, Fawn. This would be my fifth trip to the province and I wanted to focus on the southern half of Nova Scotia, south of Halifax. Over a week, we would stop in the charming seaside community of Lunenburg, one of only two cities in North America chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, go clamming on Digby Flats, oyster farming at Eel Lake, stand-up paddleboard at the White Point Beach Resort, and spend a night at a quintessential Canadian property deep in the woods, Trout Point Lodge. But as I wrote in my original blog, the last day in Nova Scotia was downright dreamy.
October Newsletter from ActiveTravels is Now Available
If you’re interested in a quick fall jaunt to Mystic, Connecticut, skiing at Park City, or feeling that Jamaican warmth some time this winter, check out our latest newsletter. We also talk about one of our favorite outfitters, Wilderness Travel, and delve into the reasons for buying travel insurance. Up top, you can join our email list to ensure that you’re receiving our newsletter each month. Also, feel free to share on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to help get the word out on ActiveTravels. Thanks!
Self-Guided Inn-to-Inn Bike Trips in New England
The rhododendrons are already in bloom and the yellow warblers just arrived at my birdfeeder in the Boston burbs. With temps hitting the mid-80s today, it’s time to break out the bike for a ride. For riders looking for a little inn-to-inn action this summer, it’s never been cheaper to bike in New England. Two outfitters, Bike the Whites in New Hampshire, and Country Inns Along the Trail in Vermont, are offering three days of riding for as low as $299 per person. What does that 300 bucks get you? Detailed maps depending on you ability, from 20 to 80 miles a day, emergency roadside assistance, two nights lodging, two dinners, two breakfasts, and transport of your luggage from one inn to the next. Country Inns has rides in several of my favorite spots in Vermont, including Addison along Lake Champlain, where you spend the night at the Barsen House Inn. See the story I wrote on biking in this part of Vermont for The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.
Peru Week with Abercrombie and Kent: Our Day in Machu Picchu
Few sights I’ve seen are as majestic as Machu Picchu. After a 2-hour train ride from Ollantaytambo, you arrive at the town of Aguas Calientes and switch to a bus for a 20-minute drive on a series of switchbacks up to the base of Machu Picchu. When you arrive, you better have one of the coveted timed tickets to enter these late 15th-century Incan ruins that miraculously the Spaniards never found. Row after row of stone walls lead up the steep hillsides creating a far more vast archaeological wonder than one can imagine on that quintessential photograph from above Machu Picchu. We arrived a little after 2:30 pm, when the crowds were already thinning, to feel the smooth rocks of the temple, see the maze of aqueducts, and find the sun dial that was used to predict summer solstice. The tightly knit stone structures are impressive, but to be honest pale in comparison to the surrounding landscape, a panorama of jagged peaks that lead to the snow-capped Andes in the distance. This includes Huayna Picchu, the striking peak you see behind every photo of Machu Picchu. We had the opportunity hike this peak the next morning at 7 am, but I chose to hike part of the Inca Trail rising above Machu Picchu to the Sun Gate. Every step you took on the 3-hour round-trip trek was another mesmerizing view of Machu Picchu and the surrounding mountains. Fantastic!
Amman Imman: Water is Life
Today, I’m pleased to introduce my first guest blogger on ActiveTravels, my brother Jim Jermanok. I hope it will be the first of many guest writers!
Five years ago, following graduation from Yale, Ariane Kirtley went to West Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. Her career seemed assured. Almost overnight her life changed. Friends encouraged her to visit the Florida-sized Azawak Valley, the most abandoned region of Niger, the poorest country on Earth. In the Azawak, half the children die before reaching five years old, often of thirst. Ariane thought she’d seen everything in Africa, but she was so devastated by the conditions she found that she decided to dedicate her life to the people of the Azawak, and bring them water from unlimited supplies 600-1000 feet underground, much too deep for conventional wells to reach.
Since 2006, Ariane has worked against harrowing odds to save lives in the Azawak, among some of the most defenseless minorities in Africa – a half million Tuareg and Wodaabe nomads who have no water most of the year due to unremitting drought. Ariane set aside career goals and founded her own organization, Amman Imman: Water Is Life, to build permanent borehole wells for these nomads. Working far from civilization in suffocating Saharan heat, facing persistent health risks, Ariane and her team do major infrastructure work normally carried out by governments. In early 2010, persevering under the threat of Al-Qaida terrorists, she finished building her second borehole, the Kijigari “Well of Love.” This follows completion of Tangarwashane borehole in 2007-08. Each borehole serves 25,000 people and animals.
Ariane’s dream is to build fifty such “Oases of Life” to eliminate water scarcity for the half million forsaken people of the Azawak. During this Holiday Season, please think about helping this brave woman save the lives of children and nomads who are on the brink, by donating generously to her 501c3 organization, Amman Imman: Water Is Life.
Sustainable Food at Craigie on Main
Last Wednesday, I was invited to a “Road Less Traveled” dinner at Craigie on Main, one of my favorite restaurants in the Boston area, just over the Charles River in Cambridge. Chef and owner Tony Maws was focusing on sustainability in food, using all parts of the animal so as not to make waste. While this is already being practiced around the globe, especially in countries that can’t afford to throw away precious meat, it’s only slowly gaining traction in America. We started with a tasty trio of crostini that included monkfish liver, lobster roe, and my personal favorite, the white cod milt, otherwise known as cod sperm. Maws, a James Beard-award finalist, could make a telephone book taste good. But as the night progressed, I found the texture of certain body parts to either be agreeable or disagreeable. The duck’s heart, placed on a skewer, was a tantalizing treat along with the pig’s head taco, where half a head was placed on a platter and you dug out the tender meat to roll into the soft tortillas. The duck’s testicle I found too chewy and the lamb’s brain had the consistency of hard string cheese. Then there was cock’s combs, the gelatinous top of a rooster that I feel no need to order again.
Maws is not only a master of using the whole animal, but makes a habit of using the best local and organic produce, fish, and meats that are available during that particular time of year, the reason why I find myself returning to his restaurant as often as possible. Local food and culture is an important part of sustainable travel and are topics I’m going to delve into further as ActiveTravels branches out this year to not only cater to Active Bodies, but Active Minds. This week, I’m going to focus on some of my favorite restaurants around the world.