Perito Moreno, Patagonia

Seville has started its annual swelter for summer and it looks like the rest of Europe’s not far behind. So, for a quick chill out on this Friday afternoon, I thought I’d delve into the archives and bring you plenty of ice, ice baby, in the form of the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia.

It’s one of the few glaciers in the world that’s actually growing and, on a glacial celebrity scale, it’s right up there with George Clooney and Angelina Jolie.

Behemoths, never mind chunks, of ice thunder into the sea on a reasonably predictable basis, providing plenty of juicy images for all those global warming videos. So, the chances are that even if you’ve never travelled to this cobalt corner of Argentina, you already know Perito Moreno well.

Enjoy!

Perito Moreno Glacier: As Famous as George Clooney. Guy in the photo: Not so well known.

The Perito Moreno Glacier: Rather Large

Snow & Ice: A Refreshing Break From Summer

The Perito Moreno Glacier: So Cool, It’s…Cool first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Tlingit Culture in Alaska

It’s a narrow wooden bridge, so when a girl runs past, the reverberations affect us all. She’s a teenager, or maybe older, in classic blue jeans and US sneakers, with flowing blonde hair. A few minutes later I see her again, wrapped in a traditional Tlingit cloak and chanting with her ancestors.

We’ve crossed the bridge to the space outside Chief Shakes’ House, some 1000 miles north of Seattle. Totem poles teeter above our heads and the women close their eyes as they sing. In the fresh, wet grass, the girl’s sneakers peek out from beneath her robe.

That’s the paradox here in Wrangell: all-American freshness trying to revive a damaged past.

“When they took our language,” says a woman with hair the colour of the clouds on the harbour, “they took more than that. They took our history and they took our stories.”

She’s talking about the successive colonial powers who arrived here and who, through religion, industry, deliberate oppression or imported disease, decimated the Tlingit culture that had survived 5000 years. For once, with my British passport I’m not made to feel like the bad guy. Well, not entirely.

Wrangell, Alaska

The Russians arrived first in 1811 and set up an energetic fur trade. Then came the British, in the form of the Hudson’s Bay Company, before the US bought the land from them in 1867. Uncle Sam set up a military post here that somehow attracted a flurry of gold rushes with dance halls, bars and other, ahem, adventures, to suit.

A painted wooden street in the large port of Ketchikan relives the “good old days,” where candy-pink signs still advertise brothels and the hidden paths towards them still have street signs that read “Married Man’s Lane.”

Here in Wrangell, though, it’s all white Presbyterian churches and totem poles. Boats unload salmon in the harbour and a lone truck swings through wide streets flanked with sidewalks. People use “Liquor Stores” instead of off-licenses, and mail boxes perch on stilts instead of being letterboxes on doors.

It’s like walking through a living slideshow of my childhood, when I watched American kids cycle through suburbia in E.T. and studied Red Indians at school. Back in my time of innocence, before the term “Red Indian” developed racist undertones.

As a child, I read about totem poles and I practised sewing beads onto tribal capes. To stand here now, with my fingertips on sweet, soft cedarwood, thousands of miles from England, is a quietly thrilling experience. Inside the replica Chief Shakes’ building, the light levels are low, the glow from the canoe intense.

I run my hand along the imperfections in the wood.

It’s easy to get swept away by the romance of history, whichever way you look at it, when facing a culture that almost disappeared. What they didn’t teach me at school, and what is uncomfortable to point out, is that the Tlingit people also fought territorial wars, forbade democracy and encouraged ritual slavery. Seventeenth century Tlingit life would have been cold, harsh and cruel – a lifestyle that most 21^st century Americans would never choose to live.

Overall, it’s a difficult dance: reviving a culture, recognising oppression and judging how best to pay for the past.

I’m lucky. I know that I’ll get to speak to Tlingit Elders and others championing the cause about what they hope to achieve in the future and how we should weigh up the past.

Yet perhaps the next generation has already decided the future -  in the shape of white sneakers beneath a ceremonial gown.

The Tlingit Culture – To be continued…Disclosure: I visited Chief Shakes’ House as a guest of InnerSea Discoveries and American Safari Cruises.

Read more about Alaska

Whale Watching in Alaska

Flightseeing in Alaska

Kayaking in Alaska

Icebergs in Alaska

Aurora Borealis – Seeing the Northern Lights in Alaska

Gold Dust & Magic Mud – A Glacier Tour in Alaska

Beneath the Totem Pole first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

The Sahara, Morocco

The Sahara

The Sahara Desert has a name that lives up to its reputation. Not simply because it sounds rippled and mysterious, but because the very word Sahara derives from the Arabic for…wait for it…desert. My first encounter with the almighty sands came in the form of particles scattered across the windscreens of windswept Britain in the aftermath of the 1987 hurricane.

My second experience, however, took the more traditional route: along the dunes in Morocco.

The Sahara: My Second Encounter

Borne along by a scratchy, lurching, cantankerous camel, I rose and fell with a rhythm more suited to a choppy night on the ocean than a daylight trek across ever-so-dry land.

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world (with Antarctica qualifying, rather bizarrely, as the largest desert in the world with its lowest annual levels of precipitation.)

The Sahara spans 3.6 million square miles and scorches across North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east.

There was no way my camel was going to be able to manage that. Nor my pelvis and sandblasted face. Instead, we trekked for a few days, tried our luck at sand-boarding and took photographs that I hope you’ll enjoy.

Travel by Camel: Slow Progress

Travel by Camel: Uncomfortable Progress

Shadows in the Sand

Sandboarding - A Little More Speed Required

Shadows in the Sahara first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

As promised in The Sony NEX-5 Camera – The Travel Photography Dilemma Solved, here is a juicy, fruity post on how to make a travel videowith the same beast: the Sony NEX-5. Now, I know that a lot of you have been asking me about this (either on the site or in person) because of the NEX-5′s unique, mirrorless setup.

I also know that a lot of you couldn’t care less about this photography stuff and just came here to read some great travel articles. If that’s you, then why not check out A Cultural Awakening in Benidorm or The Safari Symphony in the Okavango Delta. 

If you’re here for video, then read on.

Video With the SONY-NEX5

It’s actually incredibly easy, to the point that it’s slightly embarrassing to write this post. Press the red record button to start recording – and then press it again to stop. Ta da!

Travel Video Tips

- Steady your hand as much as possible. Use a tripod if you can, otherwise rest your camera on a solid object or at the very least use two hands.

-Noise: Without a special microphone, wind and background chatter will probably drown out your subject. In quiet conditions, though, the SONY NEX5 does a decent job (Listen at around 1 minute 20 on the Alaska video below.)

-Before you start recording, press the photo shutter release half way down to focus the camera.

-Use the zoom smoothly and slowly.

-Film for a few seconds more than you think you need both before and after the crucial event you’re recording. It will make your life much easier at the editing stage.

The Verdict? An Independent Review

For adventure travel situations, when you don’t want to carry heavy, cumbersome equipment, the SONY NEX5 is ideal. It lets you produce high quality photographs and create travel videos with a single piece of lightweight kit. Could you find individual components elsewhere that would produce a better result? Yes and no.

Yes, there are certainly cameras (for both still and moving pictures) that will produce higher quality images than the SONY NEX5 IF (and this “if” is bigger than it sounds) you are able to carry them around without injuring yourself or damaging the lenses. On dry land, in a safe studio, the others win.

Hiking on ice in Alaska, the SONY NEX5 is perfect.

Here’s the video (a picture paints 1000 words, the proof is in the pudding and all that. On ice, the boot’s probably even on the other glove.)

Video Clip Using the SONY NEX5: Icebergs in Alaska

Video Clip Using a Flip Video: Sparkly Bras In Copenhagen

Video Clip Using a Panasonic SDR-S50: Zooming Around London

Video Clip Using an iPhone: Gondolas in Venice

Read the original review on the Sony NEX5 here.

Making a Travel Video with the SONY-NEX5 first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

A slightly sweet, slightly sour scent of apples lingers in the squares of Oviedo in northern Spain. Inside the sidrerias, it doesn’t so much linger as call up every one of its friends and invite them to a party. Sticky cider on the floor, scented cider in wooden barrels and cider, stunt cider, falling from tipped green bottles to fall straight into an outstretched glass.

Or at least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Asturian cider needs aeration and locals have found that the best, and the most fun way to do that is to pour it from a great height. They’ve also discovered that it’s even more fun to watch hapless foreigners have a go.

The Glass

The bottle...

@Wildjunket tries to pour cider...

Pouring cider the professional way...

Tortilla for sustenance...

Meat for sustenance

Drink cider inside a barrel...

No wonder there’s sticky cider on the floor…

Disclosure: I’m currently travelling through Asturias as a guest of Asturias.es Follow the trip on twitter at #turismoas

Splish, splash, splosh. The Art of Pouring Cider in Asturias first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Revolutionary mother and child in Cuba

In Cuba, I spent most of my time on the streets. It’s a Caribbean country with a laid-back vibe, whatever its international stereotype and ongoing political conflicts.

As you may know, I love street art. It captures my imagination because of its tendency to represent an undercurrent of rebellion. A symbol of authentic expression rather than corporate strategy or political manoeuvring.

That’s a naive point of view, of course, and I didn’t need to go to Cuba to find that out.

Yet I did go, years back in 2005, and these images have stayed with me ever since. Perhaps because I missed the chance to learn more about what they really meant. Perhaps because images of a mother, a baby and a weapon still surprise me.

Do they represent propaganda and state control? Or the passioned paintbrushes of someone who believed in their principles, with a fervent desire to share their vision with the world.

I never found out – and I regret that. But I still find them interesting – and I hope you do too.

Por la victoria - Cuba

Mentiras = Lies

Street Art in Cuba first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

The View from Miyajima Island, Japan

People often describe the view from Miyajima Island as one of the most beautiful in Japan. A softly curved Torii, a scarlet figure similar to the symbol pi, rises out of the water. Its calm background: layered mountains and the ferryboats that cross from Hiroshima.

A friend once invited me to write about a place I loved and how it inspired me, while this week’s #FriFotos chose “monuments” as its theme. Both invitations made me think of the same spot. This quiet corner of the world, the waterfront on Miyajima Island.

It’s tranquil now, with its rows of stony lanterns and gently lapping shore, but in 1945 it witnessed one of the worst events in history. The Enola Gay baptised the world into a new level of fear and horror when it dropped the world’s first atomic bomb, killing 80,000 in a single day and thousands more through injury and disease.

A Lone Building Preserved as a Monument in Hiroshima

This horror became synonymous with the word Hiroshima itself.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

How could such an act become inspiring?

Today’s Hiroshima reveals a clean city with efficient trams, schoolchildren in uniform, shopkeepers, parks and all the trappings of a healthy, happy place.

Rainbow Origami Cranes - Symbols of Hope & Peace

Today’s Hiroshima shows the power of healing.

The Peace Memorial Park uses monuments, rainbow origami and commemorative services not only to remember the dead but also to promote peace. The flame that burns doesn’t blaze for vengeance and it doesn’t seek retribution. It burns as a symbol of peace.

Across the water, on Miyajima Island, it’s easy to get swept up in the congested tourist port, weighed down with geisha shoes, rice scoops and calligraphy-licked trinkets.

Yet when the sunlight fades, these monuments provide quiet inspiration.

And even a glimpse of peace.

The soft silence of peace on Miyajima Island

Post Script

As you probably know, Japan is currently struggling to recover from another disaster: the earthquake that hit Sendai.

If you would like to help by providing a donation to local charities based in Japan, then please visit this page.

The Most Peaceful Place in the World: Hiroshima first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Travel around London in a classic Mini Cooper

Speed Around Italy in this Modified Vespa Racer

Kayak Through Alaska

Hop on a Buffalo Cart in Okinawa, Japan

Go nowhere fast in Solitaire in Namibia's Desert

Reach the Sky in the London Eye

Climb Along the Via Ferrata in the Dolomites

Use Two Wheels to Travel Around Copenhagen

How To Travel Around the World – In Photos first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Tuscany

Beneath the arches, a cloaked man walks through the shadows, his head bent, his hands supporting an open book. I can hear my footsteps, distorted through the darkness by the basement’s wet gravel, a hesitant chord to the beat of dripping water.

Upstairs, in the clouded daylight, it’s easier to see the wooden planks covering the windows and the words that scream “take my blood.” It’s also easier to see the table decked with homemade olive oil, bread and wine.

This is the Nicosia Monastery, a place that chalked up nearly 800 years of active service before the last few monks hung up their cassocks in the 1970s and the vandals moved in. Among the ripped plaster and violent graffiti, a neatened orange grove provides fragrance and a sense of peace.

It’s being painstakingly restored by the Nicosia Nostra, a volunteer organisation founded in 2004 from people in the neighbourhood who wanted to save the place. They host outdoor concerts in summer, construct nativities in winter, and spend the rest of the year lurking in basements to scare the bejesus out of visiting writers.

And they’re not the only ones.

Agustino Agustini greets me in the hallway of Villa di Corliano, a house, no make that a mansion, complete with a driveway that sweeps through the grounds like a flourish from a period drama. Florentine eagles flit across the vault, while whispers of ghosts hide behind chandeliers.

A chill follows us through the towering doors, while Roman statues stand guard.

“Teresa,” Agustini tells me, remembering the real-life ghostbusters who stayed here. “People come to see Teresa della Seta Bocca Gaetani.”

“Who?”

He smiles and slips his hands into his pockets. “The ghost who makes you laugh.”

Like the Nicosia Monastery, Villa di Corliano’s has 21st century problems. Upkeep is expensive and the high society who summered here have long since gone. Yet Agustini seems quietly optimistic. He’s opened his home to visitors, although he’s keen to emphasise the nature of the experience.

“There’s no swimming pool here,” he says, “and we won’t install air conditioning. The people who come here, who love our family home, want something more than the latest hotel. They want to see the real Tuscany.”

And Teresa, I suppose.

Later on, we find more ghosts from the past – but this time no-one’s laughing. In unmarked graves, the Charterhouse monks of Calci used death to extend their earthly vows of silence into eternity.

While the brothers ran the pharmacy, the fathers lived reclusive lives, speaking only once a year and passing food between walled tunnels to avoid the temptation for a chat.

Yet despite this severity, austerity never really caught on.

The Charterhouse notches up an impressive 1500 rooms, plus a view of the leaning tower of Pisa on that infamous clear day. Living quarters come with private orchards, while cloisters overlook fountains and a gated panorama of Tuscany at its best.

In fact, it’s this very richness that’s the real curse in this part of Tuscany. With the splendours of Florence and Pisa nearby, little attention remains for buildings that would otherwise be protected, promoted and thriving.

Like the others, the Charterhouse is struggling. The last monks left in the 1970s, leaving the cloisters crumbling behind them.
Part of me wonders whether this is how things need to be. That it’s impossible to restore and remember everything and that in trying to do so we risk losing today’s resources.

Yet I cannot deny the beauty of these places: not only in their frescoes and fragrance, but in the joy and enthusiasm of those so eager to save these ghosts – for the future.

Factbox
Nicosia MonasteryVolunteers run the tours and organise concerts here. Contact their organisation, Nicosia Nostra
Villa di Corliano Book a stay in this grand house or simply enjoy the restaurant. Ghost sightings not guaranteed.
The Charterhouse of Calci Guided tours available.
I visited these “off the beaten track” parts of Tuscany as a guest of Marco from Casa Gentili. Marco himself left his corporate position to run a bed and breakfast in the house that has been in his family for 100 years. Like the Villa di Corliano, it’s a place to visit for the atmosphere rather than the air conditioning.

The Ghosts of Tuscany – Should We Try to Save the Past? first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Zipping Around London in a Classic Mini Cooper: Cool, Sexy and  A Ridiculous Amount of Fun.

The Coolest Way to See London

Emerging from Clapham Junction’s grey and predictable train station, I saw him straight away. A scarlet Mini Cooper, unflappable sixties gear, a glamorous assistant and the promise to show me London in a whole new light.

London, Baby

It just so happens that I am a London baby. I was born here, I’ve studied here and I’ve worked here. I know the etiquette of the tube and where to find the shortcuts between its spaghetti network. I know how to get free theatre tickets and where all the funkiest markets live. I’ve sunbathed in its parks, cycled past its deer and seen the inside of its law courts, police stations and hospitals (in a profesional capacity, I hasten to add.)

Yet, after all my years of travel, I’ve never played tourist. I’ve never stepped back into the swinging sixties and swerved through the streets, gaping at Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.  I’d never snapped away at guards on horseback or at the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and I’d never gazed at St Paul’s from across the mighty Thames.

So when smallcarBIGCITY invited me to see London through their classic Mini Cooper tour, I thought it was about time I gave London the respect it deserves.

Enjoy the photos, enjoy the video and fasten your seatbelts for the coolest way to travel around London:

Classic Mini Cooper

London, Baby

Westminster Abbey, London

Peaceful Protests Outside the Houses of Parliament

St Paul's & the Wobbly Bridge, London

The Coolest Way to Travel in London

To arrange your own cool tour of London, contact smallcarBIGCITY.

London: The coolest way to travel… first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...