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My Story on Cartagena in Global Traveler Magazine

Travel to Colombia has surged since the historic Peace Agreement was signed in November 2016, ending a half-century long conflict. 2018 saw a record 4.4 million visitors to the country, up a staggering 300 percent from a decade earlier, when reaching 1 million travelers was a lofty goal. This surge in demand has led to better international flight options, which should only continue to increase visitor numbers from abroad as long as the country remains stable. While Bogota remains the business and financial core of Colombia, it’s hard to resist the allure of Cartagena, a Spanish Colonial city that seems to be built with the traveler in mind. Behind the fortress walls are narrow streets, large plazas, 17th-century churches, and row after row of charming restaurants, boutique shops, and salsa dance clubs. Walking the pedestrian-only streets of the Old Walled City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is comparable to strolling the French Quarter of New Orleans. Bougainvillea flows from the terraces of the colorful homes, and under a historic clock tower, local merchants sell candy produced from tropical fruits such as guava, mango, papaya, and coconut. 

 
To read more of my story on Cartagena, please see the latest issue of Global Traveler. 
 

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Trustees Sites Not To Be Missed, Bartholomew’s Cobble, Sheffield

At the southernmost point of the Berkshires, near the Connecticut border, you’ll find Bartholomew’s Cobble. Walking on the Ledges Trail, the Housatonic River snakes through dairy farms on the left while eroding limestone and quartzite rocks form the cobble to your right. Take a slight detour at Corbin’s Neck to get a closer view of the river and the cows resting on its banks. Then continue on the Tulip Tree Trail to stroll uphill through a forest of tall hemlocks before reaching a clearing. At a short summit, take advantage of the bench to sit and take in the views of Mount Everett and Mount Race, part of the Appalachian Trail. 

 
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Hieronymus Bosch Turns 500

Seven years ago, the director of a small museum in the Netherlands set out on an impossible quest: he wanted to borrow every surviving work in the world by the wildest imagination in the history of art, Hieronymus Bosch, to celebrate his 500th anniversary in the city of his birth. In an exhibition opening in February (February 13-May 8), Charles de Mooij will unveil his haul at his Noordbrabants museum in Den Bosch, officially known as ‘s-Hertogenbosch. He has secured 20 of the 25 surviving panels, including several reunited triptychs, and 19 of the 25 drawings, a collection he believes will never be assembled again. Many of the paintings could only travel because money from the Getty Foundation paid for state-of-the-art conservation work to clean the surfaces of the oak panels. This small Dutch city is planning to go bonkers with Bosch fever. There will be moving projections of Bosch paintings in the marketplace, and 3D recreations of angels, demons, damned souls, mermaids riding on flying fish, drunken priests, lascivious women, and monsters with the legs of a giant chicken and the body of an egg. Sounds like one exhibition that should not be missed. 

 
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My 5 Favorite Fall Adventures in North America, Canoeing the Penobscot River, Maine

In October 2009, I had the good fortune to paddle down the West Branch of the Penobscot River following in the current of the great naturalist and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau. Our guide was Kevin Slater, a legendary Maine paddler and dogsledder who learned these rivers and how to carve his own canoes and paddles from his mentor who he simply called, “the Old Timer.” We spent four glorious days on the water, with few other paddlers, spotting moose, bear, loons, and osprey. In the backdrop was mighty Mount Katahdin, the ending point of the Appalachian Trail. The story appeared in Sierra Magazine, the publication of the Sierra Club. If you want to paddle with Slater on the Penobscot or the Allagash River, another dreamy paddle, you can contact him at Mahoosuc Guide Service. 

 
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VBT To Feature Culinary-Based Biking Trips in 2012

Call me nostalgic, but I’ve always been partial to VBT. In 1995, while researching my book, Outside Magazine’s Adventure Guide to New England, VBT took me on my first organized bike trip along the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont. They have since expanded to all four corners of the Globe. Just ask my mother-in-law, who’s traveled with VBT to South Africa, Germany, and the Netherlands and raves about all those trips. This year, VBT will feature four culinary tours that sound very tasty. In April, they’ll travel to Puglia to bike along Italy’s Adriatic Coast and explore olive groves, sample local wines, and dive into dinners of fresh seafood and locally grown vegetables. In September and October, VBT will visit Provence to bike backcountry roads through the French countryside, enjoy a home-cooked meal, and stop at fromageries and wine bars. Last but certainly not least is their trip to Vietnam in November to bike past the verdant rice terraces and sample the indigenous fare at markets, family-run food shops, and your own Vietnamese cooking class. Also take a peek at their new destinations in 2012 like a sweet ride along Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. 

 
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Adventure in Quebec’s Charlevoix Region

The train from Quebec City northeast to the Charlevoix region not only leaves day-trippers at the ski resort, Le Massif. You can continue on to Baie-Saint-Paul, where the outfitter, Katabatik, will take you on a 3-hour snowshoeing trek along the St. Lawrence Seaway in winter, and sea kayaking the calm Gouffre River in summer. Yet, if you arrive here in the warm weather months, it would be best if you can spend at least two nights in the region. That way, you can continue northeast along the St. Lawrence Seaway past La Malbaie to the magnificent Baie-des-Rochers municipal park. It is here in summer that you have the rare opportunity to sea kayak next to beluga and humpback whales. The playful belugas often swim right next to the kayaks offering a thrilling experience. Katabatik offers sea kayaking jaunts all along the St. Lawrence in Charlevoix, so ask about an outing that would suit your experience. 
 
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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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