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Following on my first installment about Yosemite, here’s Part II. Chapter 3: Half Done When my alarm sounded at 4am, I looked at Half Dome and spotted two climbers several hundred feet up the Regular Northwest Face, each wearing headlamps. While they’d asked for permission to ascend the rope that Jeff and I had fixed the previous day, I still felt irritated that they’d gotten so far ahead of us thanks to our work. We had a lot of climbing to do. … Continue reading →

At 3 a.m. we tumbled into our bed in Squamish, after flying to Vancouver from New York City. The plan was to sleep in, but all I could dream about was the nearby Chief, a 2,200-foot-high granite dome in British Columbia with some of North America’s best climbing. By 9 a.m. I was drinking coffee in our hostel’s backyard while staring up at The Chief, drooling. View from the hostel in Squamish. “Let’s climb The Chief today?” I said to Jenna. It wa… Continue reading →

Following on my first and second write-ups about Yosemite, here is the finale. Chapter 6. Half Dome, Fully Done The same morning that superstar climbers Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell were lacing up their La Sportivas in preparation for an unthinkable new speed record on the 3,000-foot-tall Nose of El Capitan, I was embarking on my own personal challenge halfway across Yosemite Valley: a second attempt on climbing Half Dome. Jeff and I had faile… Continue reading →

At a secluded crag near my house, there’s a climbing route called Malevolent Eye. It’s 32 feet high, with a three-foot overhang and a difficulty rating of 5.10-. It’s tricky enough to challenge a good climber, with several blade-thin holds and a balancy crux move. A couple of decades ago, the prolific Connecticut climber Ken Nichols ascended Malevolent Eye 50 times in one day. His record stood unchallenged until earlier this year, when a mutual … Continue reading →

To climb the 8,839-foot-tall northwest face of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, you need a lot of gear. Aside from a rope, the leader’s harness is weighted with around 20lbs of quickdraws, alpine draws, wired nuts, and camalots (cams) used to create an artificial safety system as he or she climbs; a potential fall is caught by whatever gear the leader wedges into a crack. So when Jeff, standing some 700 feet above the ground, dropped our arm… Continue reading →

I’ve heard people say they want their ashes spread on Mt. Washington. My mother may have thought she’d unwittingly agreed to the same fate when I took her up New England’s tallest peak for her 60th birthday. As we reached the summit on Aug. 11, it was freezing with hurricane-force wind. The temperature dropped to 44-degrees F, the rain turned to hail, and the wind ramped up to 71 mph (the highest windspeed all month, according to Mt. Washington … Continue reading →

In southeast Connecticut, the car dealership Cardinal Honda is something of an institution. As a kid, I remember seeing the founder Stanley Cardinal on TV with his slicked-back hair imploring people to “Fly with a Cardinal at the wheel of a Honda!” — a jingle that still played in my head decades later when I visited Cardinal Honda for the first time. In late January, Cardinal Honda sold me a new Honda Fit after several days of wheeling and dealin… Continue reading →

It was an “alpine start.” On March 11, my alarm went off at 12:45 a.m. I was in my car by 1 a.m., driving three and 1/2 hours from my home in Connecticut to the White Mountains of New Hampshire in a bid for a one-day, 20-mile hike across the tallest peaks in the northeast. I’d been monitoring the weather for weeks, looking for a break in the notorious wind and cold atop Mt. Washington so I could attempt my first winter Presidential Traverse, con… Continue reading →

“Jenna!” I yelled, my voice echoing off the surrounding ring of 3,000-foot-tall walls soaring up to Katahdin, the tallest peak in Maine at 5,269 feet. No response. I was halfway up what Rock and Ice calls “the most remote alpine climbing arena east of the Rockies,” at least five hours from the nearest dirt road and 25 miles from the nearest town, and I’d lost my girlfriend. “Jenna!” I yelled again, straining my eyes to look down the gully that s… Continue reading →

Photo by Jeffrey Gereige Several hundred feet above the ground, I tip-toed across the smooth granite of Cannon Cliff, wedged my fingers into a narrow vertical crack, and inched up toward a triangular overhang that is considered the crux of Moby Grape, a climbing route near where New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain once perched. The rumble of cars driving on I-93 far below through Franconia Notch echoed up the cliff, which was growing increas… Continue reading →

“Dude, I’m this close to kicking you out,” Rich Palatino, the bearded caretaker of Harvard Cabin, warned. “I will, unless you stop acting like a douchebag. Well?” It was New Year’s Day, 2017. Given that we were standing in the New Hampshire snow, 3,000 feet up the southern slope of Mt. Washington, the answer was “no,” we didn’t want to be evicted from the cabin and sent into the freezing cold at 10pm and miles away from the nearest road. I looke… Continue reading →

When a legendary New England mountaineer who has led teams to the summit Mt Everest warns against attempting what he considers a “superman” trek across the White Mountains of New Hampshire, it’s prudent to listen. So I listened. I relayed the advice. I contemplated. And still, I continued the trek, starting on the northern side of Mt Adams and emerging four days later from the wilderness below Mt Lincoln in Franconia Notch after hiking 47 miles … Continue reading →

This is what summer looks like in British Columbia’s Garibaldi Provincial Park: In essence, it looks like winter. And it is spectacular. Located an hour north of Vancouver, between Squamish and Whistler, the park is rimmed by 8,000-foot mountains and centered around Mount Garibaldi (elevation 8,786 feet). The glaciated area gets something like 40 feet of snow every winter, with the alpine snowpack lingering well into summer despite temperatures … Continue reading →

TWO OF THE TALLEST MOUNTAINS in New England are Vermont’s Mt. Killington and New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington. I went to both this winter with my uncle and his 13-year-old son. To our surprise, climbing Killington (elev. 4,229 feet) would be way tougher than Washington (elev. 6,288 feet), despite the latter being 2,000 feet taller and famously having the world’s worst weather (which claimed another hiker’s life in February). How could that be? Rea… Continue reading →

These are my major takeaways from trekking the 100-kilometer-long MacLehose trail, which traverses Hong Kong’s New Territories from sea level to a peak elevation of 550 meters (1,800 feet): Do it between October and February (and not in the rainy season) Stay in the city at night (and not at trail “campsites”) Only do sections 2, 3, 4 and 8 (and not the more boring paved sections) Had I known as much, I might have avoided a four-day battle with … Continue reading →

It was a fun party. Perhaps the best I’ll ever go to. Me and hundred Brazilians were crammed inside a stuffy room of a triple-decker riverboat that was motoring slowly down the Amazon River. Everyone wore knock-off versions of the Brazilian national soccer team’s yellow and green jerseys. Faces were painted. A rainbow of streamers hung from the ceiling. And all eyes were fixed onto a large TV screen that was airing the July 4 World Cup quarterfi… Continue reading →

I’m standing atop Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine, pointing toward a small fishing village called Steuben, where my family lived for three chilly years from 1989 to 1992. This is where I attended kindergarten and elementary school through second grade, when we moved to Connecticut. I didn’t return to the Steuben-area for more than two decades, until this month, and it was eerie to stand in a place associated with so many strange… Continue reading →

The Estrada Real is one of the oldest roads in the Americas, built at the end of the 17th century. It stretches 1,500 km from the coast of Brazil to the interior mining town of Diamantina. A lot of roads were being built at that time, including the 190-km Boston Post Road in New England, which was once used to transport mail by horseback between Boston and New York City (also passing by my first apartment in New London, CT). The Estrada Real, how… Continue reading →

Photos by Jenna Cho Every time I hear about a new speed record for completing the Appalachian Trail, I feel a tinge of competition rise from somewhere in the crazier part of my brain. Could I run the entire Appalachian Trail, all 2,190 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine? This week I gave myself a taste of what that would be like, when I did the 52-mile Connecticut section of the Appalachian Trail in about 14 hours… Continue reading →

STOP means Go, right? Ummm, right? I got myself into quite a situation while winter hiking this month in the Northern Presidentials of New Hampshire, in part because I have a hard time knowing when to stop. Acting as something of a guide to my girlfriend and my uncle and his 12-year-old son, I unknowingly led them into a wind tunnel between Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Adams where 100 mph gusts knocked us sideways and to the ground. Whipping snow limit… Continue reading →

Photos by Jenna Cho (@TheDailyCho) “It has to be here!” I yelled to Jenna. She looked at me incredulously. “It could be anywhere under the snow,” she said. I kept scouring the ground. We’d been up since 6 a.m., wandering for hours through snow drifts of Vermont’s tallest mountain. “If we’re at the highest point,” I said, “shouldn’t we see it?” I was determined to find the true summit of Mt. Mansfield. With the wind howling and the clouds swirlin… Continue reading →

“What’s the temperature inside this frigid cabin?” “What’s the fastest time running up Mount Washington?”* “What’s the difference between a wet cup and a dry cup?”** This is what we talk about when we talk inside Doublehead Cabin, an uninsulated hut atop Doublehead Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When you’re huddled around a tiny woodstove, struggling to stay warm against a temperature ambient with the outdoors (so, in the singl… Continue reading →

Owning a cottage sounds fun. But at what point do you realize you’re in over your head in renovating up a run-down lake bungalow in northeastern Connecticut? When I peeled up layers of carpet, linoleum, and asbestos tile to find a mostly rotted subfloor? When my roofer failed to show up for weeks after I paid him $4,500? When I realized that upon tearing down every wall, ripping out every electrical chord, and removing every pice of piping down t… Continue reading →

After the first 28 miles of a 46-mile run across the Appalachian Trial in New Hampshire this summer, I was nearly dead. Aidan and I were both drenched with sweat, red in the face from the 90-degree heat and 99 percent humidity, and sprawled on the ground in an effort to let our legs stop rattling from the bone-jarring tromping over rocks and roots and dirt. We’d run from Hanover to Wentworth that July morning, crossing over several 3,000-foot-ta… Continue reading →

“A climber fell into the gorge earlier this week,” my uncle said as we stood at the edge of Flume Gorge in New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch. “He fell in?” I said. “The guide said that a kid was walking to the climbing area, slipped on the ice, and slid down into the water.” “He must have fallen 15 feet! That water is freezing. Surprised he didn’t drown.” “Broke his arm. They had to do an emergency rescue.” Ice climbing can be dangerous. Even more… Continue reading →

There is such a thing as being too cold to read, and I think it starts around freezing, which is often the temperature inside the mountain huts of New Hampshire in winter–or colder, if inside Doublehead Cabin. The cold usually doesn’t stop me from packing a book, as I did the last winter weekend of March. I always think I’ll be able to read. And this book seemed especially appropriate: Ty Gagne’s Where You’ll Find Me: Risk, Decisions, and the Las… Continue reading →

Barren rocks are great places for making friends. Several weeks ago during a work meeting, I segued the conversation to rock climbing and was put in touch with a Rio native named Aloisio Viana, who promptly invited me to climb with him. Of course I accepted, then I got worried. I hadn’t climbed in a month, how would I keep up with Aloisio? I made an 11th hour visit to an indoor bouldering gym called Evolução in the neighborhood of Botofogo. Prepp… Continue reading →

Perhaps the best-known ridge hike in the East is the Presidential Traverse, a 20- to 22-mile jaunt above treeline across the White Mountains. Summiting the tallest five peaks in the northeast, plus two or three more 4000-footers, the total elevation gain is 8,000 to 9,000 feet. The “average” hiker does this trek in 14 hours, not including rest stops. My posse did it in 12 hours total, including more than an hour of breaks for coffee, lunch, and … Continue reading →

In December 2014, while I was on a two-week mountaineering expedition in the Andes to climb Aconcagua on the border of Argentina and Chile, I met the Spanish skyrunner Kilian Jornet and witnessed him running up and down the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere. It was jaw-dropping. Kilian’s daily training consisted of sprinting between mountain camps, ascending and descending thousands of feet at a time while all at an oxygen-depleted eleva… Continue reading →

The thermometer hovered in the single digits as Jenna, I, and Orbit hiked along the Metacomet Trail into Ragged Mountain in central Connecticut. The snow had that rubbery texture and squeaky sound that only comes with very cold snow. Ice across the trail caused even four-legged Orbit to slip. A coyote, perhaps expecting no humans to be out on such a frigid morning, was trotting through the woods until it saw us and ran off. As we snaked along the… Continue reading →

  Who needs a guide? Getting lost is part of any hiking adventure! One of Brazil’s most beautiful and well-traveled hiking trails is said to be the Travessia Petrópolis-Teresópolis through Parque Nacional da Serra dos Órgãos in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It’s about 30 kilometers (20 miles) and includes some 1,300 meters (4,300 feet) of elevation gain, with a peak elevation of 2,263 meters (7,425 feet). It’s recommended to do the hike in 2-3 da… Continue reading →

At the spectacular cliffs of Seneca Rocks in West Virginia, a large sign warns rock climbers to call 911 in case of emergency. Thing is, there’s no cell service. Seneca sits deep within America’s National Radio Quiet Zone, where cell service is restricted because of some big and fancy government-owned radio telescopes nearby. The cellphone dead zone adds to the remote, alpine feel at Seneca, which is one of the taller multi-pitch cliffs on the E… Continue reading →

For years, I’ve had my eyes on these ski tours from the book Best Backcountry Skiing in the Northeast, considered the “bible” for regional off-piste: 1) In northern Vermont, the 9.4-mile tour from Bolton Valley to the Trapp Family Lodge — “one of the most popular backcountry adventures in Vermont” because of the reliable powder stash and “chance to traverse a wild landscape in the heart of ski country.” 2) In the Adirondacks, a 10.6-mile tour th… Continue reading →

If you like ice cream, then you want to be a Hillionaire, which is when you eat ice cream at all nine Ample Hills ice cream shops in New York and New Jersey in a single summer. Jenna and I really like ice cream, so we wanted to earn the titles of Hillionaires Extraordinaire, which is when you visit all nine ice cream shops in a single day. The feat is a logistical puzzle. In 12 hours, you must eat an ice cream at nine unique parlors spread over a… Continue reading →

I’m all about gorging at Thanksgiving. And one of the best gorges in the East is the 1,000-foot-deep New River Gorge in West Virginia, which is lined with miles and miles of vertical rock cliffs that beg to be climbed. It’s also in the middle of Appalachia, with its Deliverance stereotypes for lawlessness and renegade hunting. While the stereotypes are just that, I soon bumped into one of them. Photo by Jenna Cho Pulling my car in front of an old… Continue reading →

I was in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Really. If you watched the Opening Ceremony in August, you probably saw me. The internationally televised event began with a two-minute montage of Brazilians (or at least you thought they were all Brazilians) performing feats of athleticism around Rio: surfing, biking, paragliding… There were also these two guys rock climbing. I was one of them, in a red t-shirt, belaying my friend André as he scaled Cantagalo clif… Continue reading →

Now that I’ve explained how to safely eat a beignet, I can move on to describing other foods of New Orleans. This will not include the overrated po’ boy, which while ubiquitous is really nothing more than some sloppy meat stuffed into a French baguette. But this does include animal crackers, which, while not unique to the South, are currently served on Jet Blue flights to New Orleans. OYSTER: New Orleans boasts of its oyster offerings, and Acme O… Continue reading →

“Stephen!” a muffled voice yelled. I groggily looked up and saw two strange men staring at me as I lay in my underwear. “Stephen!” one of the men exclaimed again. I took out my earplugs and said, “Yeah?” They said they’d come to take me away. I pulled on pants and a t-shirt, wondering if the Brazilian government had finally decided to crack down on this foreign journalist working semi-illicitly without a journalist visa. I was sleeping on the li… Continue reading →

You could have a world-class modern art museum. Or you could have an amazing art museum spread over a huge outdoor maze of gardens and flowers from around the world, in which case you’d have The Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim. You could have an excellent cachaçeria. Or you could have an award-winning cachaçeria surrounded by hundreds of rare birds and scary reptiles and weird mammals, which would give you Vale Verde Alambique e Parque Ecoló… Continue reading →

As the World Cup kicks off tomorrow, security is kicking into high gear in Brazil’s 12 host cities. The country is spending $850 million to provide 24-hour security for the 32 national teams, fly drones over the stadiums, monitor airspace with helicopters and planes, and patrol the streets with military and riot police. I reported about security prep in host city Manaus – where England plays Italy this Saturday – in a long-form narrative publish… Continue reading →

Cheeeeeeese. It may be the best thing about the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, which is saying something. Because there’s a lot to like. Minas Gerais is also Brazil’s top-producer of premium cachaça and coffee. The state’s rich food is mimicked throughout the country. The hills and mountains are spectacular. The old colonial cities are enchanting. The rock climbing is the best in Brazil. But the cheese… Minas cheese is soft and wet. It’s juicy… Continue reading →

The bet was this, made by the Jamaican guide of my bicycle tour of the Brazilian island of Florianópolis: That I couldn’t traverse the island’s most steep and difficult trail, which normally takes four to five hours roundtrip, plus return by bicycle to our starting point 15 miles away, before 5pm. It was already 2pm. I had three hours to do what “normally” takes five to six hours, without getting lost on trails and roads that I’d never seen befo… Continue reading →

Oh, the irony. On the same day that the Washington Post called Vermont’s four-mile-long Colchester Causeway “one of the country’s most spectacular bike trails,” a May storm devastated this thin spit of land that dissects the waters of Lake Champlain, rendering it impassable… and throwing a wrench into plans for an upcoming bicycle tour through Vermont. “The damage is bad,” Jenna said. “The Causeway isn’t supposed to open at all this summer.” “It… Continue reading →

In Rio, life’s a beach. Literally, the city is lined by miles and miles of beautiful sandy shore, from Flamengo to Botofogo to Copacobana to Ipanema to Leblon, and much of that is lined by a very unique sidewalk of black and white stones. The pattern has come to represent Rio, and appears anywhere from t-shirts to designer purses. But life on the beach can also a bitch. Crime is high, even on the beaches, where there has been a recent resurgence… Continue reading →

The Shape of Water, a movie about a lady who falls in love with an aquatic beast, has been hailed as a movie promoting diversity. And I’m very confused. “‘The Shape of Water’ Wins Best Picture as Oscars Project Diversity,” said The New York Times after the flick won the Academy Award this month for Best Picture. The Guardian proclaimed: “A battle cry for inclusion: The Shape of Water triumphs in Oscars of seismic change.” According to the BBC, it… Continue reading →

Hop aboard! We’re taking a tour bus around Curitiba, the state capital of Paraná. This city arguably has the best public transportation in all Brazil so the ride should be moving fast as we see lots of public parks and cultural diversity, and taste some incredible craft beer. We’re starting in the historic center called O Largo da Ordem, where I’ve lived for the past month in the Curitiba Hostel (which occupies the second floor of the yellow buil… Continue reading →

Even from the top of Bear Mountain, 45 miles north of Manhattan along the Hudson River, New York City’s skyline looms on the horizon and lights up the southern sky. Still, the state park is far enough from Manhattan to easily offer a restive city dweller the chance to trek a few miles along the Appalachian Trail and pitch a tent in the woods in the middle of winter without a soul around. Mostly. Me and Jeff, Miles and Joe, all left New York City … Continue reading →

This week I interviewed the Chilean filmmaker Gabriel Osorio, who just won an Oscar at the 88th Academy Awards for his animated short film Historia de un Oso (“Bear Story”). It really is a bear of a story. On the surface it is a richly animated tale of an anthropomorphized bear, estranged from his wife and child, who makes his living by creating ornate mechanical dioramas that tell the story of a bear family ripped apart when the Papa Bear is cap… Continue reading →

A favorite memory of living in Cambodia for two years was a restaurant on my street called Chinese Noodle, which made fresh thick rice noodles woven daily by hand. Almost as good: My first bowl of noodles at Hong Kong’s Michelin-recommended Good Hope Noodle in Mong Kok district. Good Hope Noodle’s unassuming interior is endearing. Low stools force patrons to crouch around low tables. Several booths line the edges of the linoleum-floored restauran… Continue reading →

It’s the Ching Ming Festival in Hong Kong, a holiday when locals visit the graves of ancestors and place flowers or other token offerings at the headstones. It reminds me of All Souls Days in Europe, when tens of thousands of people flock to the cemeteries to pay their respects. Since I don’t have any dead relatives in Hong Kong, I used the holiday to explore the city. From downtown, I rode the metro to nearby Lantau Island, home to Hong Kong’s i… Continue reading →

“Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” So said Jesus, according to the Book of Matthew, Chapter 7. Was Jesus a rock climber? He could have been describing the climb in Rio de Janeiro that ascends Mt. Corcovado, atop which stands the famous Art Deco statue Cristo Redentor (“Christ the Redeemer”). I wanted to do this route back in December 2013 when I lived in Rio for three months and did a lot of rock climbing… Continue reading →

“You’ll die out there,” the locals warned. I was headed into the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains for a week of winter hiking and camping. Ideally, I wanted to summit all the highest peaks during the harshest conditions of the year. Nobody else liked the idea. Every time I mentioned my mission, a New Hampshire native would look up toward Mount Washington and respond in an ominous tone: “It’s not about the summit, bro, it’s a… Continue reading →

Tonight’s opening ceremony for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will feature, among many people and musicians, the supermodel Gisele Bündchen portraying “The Girl From Ipanama.” Bündchen, wife to quarterback Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, might be the most famous Brazilian alive. And “The Girl From Ipanema” is undoubtedly the most famous Brazilian song of all time. But as I wrote in a feature for Zócalo Public Square, “Even ‘The Girl F… Continue reading →

Since returning to Brazil last week, mosquitoes have bitten me at least a dozen times, and with each bite I wonder: Could this be the one with Zika, a fast-spreading virus that is strongly suspected of causing brain damage to unborn babies and has spurred some health experts to call for the cancellation of the 2016 Rio Olympics? It wouldn’t be so bad for me personally to catch Zika, which has been officially labeled as a pandemic since late Janua… Continue reading →

Photo by Jenna Cho You wouldn’t know a fire burns beneath your feet. The ground isn’t hot; it was snow-covered when I visited this past March. Trees grow. There’s no smoke, at least not immediately visible. A few people even live in the area, despite most homes having been razed or abandoned over the past five decades. But something immediately feels off about a central Pennsylvania town named — appropriately enough — Centralia, where for more t… Continue reading →

In Blackjack, it’s easy to lose money fast when the minimum bet is around $50 per hand. The MINIMUM. So it went for me in Macau, the world’s gambling capital, which sees such high demand from Chinese customers that it can raise its minimum table bets by 8-10 times what is charged in Las Vegas or Atlantic City (where table minimums are $5 – $10). There are only two ways into Macau: by train or by boat, which gives the Chinese government strong con… Continue reading →

One of Brazil’s best-kept secrets might be its craft beer. When I lived in Paraná’s capital city Curitiba in September/October 2014, I met a lot of good people, including many craft brewers making some very creative and tasty beers. Among those brewers are Mário Coppini of Bier Hoff Micro Cervejaria and Murilo Foltran of DUM Cervejaria, pictured below, funny guys who were generous in sharing their brews. After two months away, I got back to Curit… Continue reading →

I gave myself a mountain for my 31st birthday. And not any hill. At 5,344 feet, Mt. Marcy is the tallest peak in both New York State and the Adirondack Mountains. It’s just south of Lake Placid, where huge ski jumps testify to the town’s hosting the 1932 and 1980 Olympics. The temperature was negative 18 degrees F when I rolled up to Adirondack Loj the night of December 13, a tad concerned about what I gotten myself into with my buddies Jeff, Jo… Continue reading →

I dislike New Years Eve like I dislike Valentine’s Day. It’s contrived, sappy, pressured. It’s lonely and crowded at the same depressing time. After plenty of boozy New Years Eves in crowded cities and towns, this one was going to be perfect: ringing in January 1, 2014, in the White Mountains. We departed Brooklyn at 3:30am on December 30 and arrived to North Conway at 11am. After a pit stop to refuel and rent snowshoes, we drove the last stretch… Continue reading →

Hungover and on two hours sleep, Nate took his bar mitzvah today. He was about 17 years late to the ceremony, but he went to the right place for it in Crown Heights: the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, considered one of the world’s largest Hasidic movements and which was led until 1994 by the Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, believed by some followers to be the messiah. On a more earthly level, just as interesting to a goya like me was tha… Continue reading →

When Eva Perón died at age 32, her body was embalmed and put on display. Millions of Argentinians flocked to Buenos Aires to see the corpse, and they still come today to visit its grave in La Recoleta Cemetery. So I went, too. It was weird. In the otherwise empty cemetery, I was among a crowd waiting in line to snap a selfie in front of the former First Lady’s grave. It reminded me of visiting the mausoleums in Hanoi and Beijing of Ho Chi Minh a… Continue reading →

“Namaste My Friend Steve!” So says Phil, by email or by phone or in person, whenever he greets me. Melts my cold heart each time. And he said it to me again at 5:30am last Wednesday (April 29) when we met to drive four hours north to the White Mountains so we could ski Tuckerman Ravine on the southeast face of Mount Washington. Phil first introduced me to spring skiing at Tuckerman in May 2013. Since then we’ve had a few other adventures together… Continue reading →

I could have eaten chivitos every day in Uruguay. I only didn’t because of the cost of living on a travel budget. Still, in three weeks I enjoyed one chivito platter and two chivito sandwiches. Each time, I immediately wanted another chivito. So what is a chivito? I found a huge hardcover book dedicated to the sandwich. Inside was a detailed diagram of the anatomy of a chivito, below. You can see that the sandwich is enclosed in a simple bread bu… Continue reading →

I thought I loved acai after living in Rio, where every corner shop sells tall plastic cups overflowing with the deep purple sweet icy slush made from the juice of acai fruit (harvested from a variety of palm tree). It turns your mouth temporarily purple, making people all around Rio look like they’ve got rotten teeth. Then I came to the Amazon, where the acai palm trees actually grow, and I learned from the locals what the drink can really be: … Continue reading →

Despite the pouring rain, I was determined to climb this 400-foot-tall rock cliff in Squamish, British Columbia. Rich wasn’t so sure—after all, who really wants to climb slippery rock? But time was short, as my flight back east departed in two days. We had already driven an hour and hiked 20 minutes to reach the base of Star Chek, considered one of the area’s best climbs. We stood below a tree canopy staring at the downpour. “If it doesn’t stop … Continue reading →

Three degrees south of the equator and 900 miles up the Amazon River, in a run-down Brazilian port city stands one of the greatest opera houses in the world, built in 1896 and the inspiration for Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo. Who knew? Certainly not I, until I practically bumped into the thing this week when I arrived for a three-month stint as a news correspondent to cover the upcoming World Cup. My first impression of the city was that it … Continue reading →

It was Saturday afternoon and I’d just finished a walking tour through Montevideo’s old city, a peninsula of narrow streets and old colonial buildings with quaint shops, restaurants, book stores, museums, churches, and the delicious-smelling Mercado del Puerto with its chivitos. Then I remembered that a sold-out production of Hamlet, being performed by the Globe Theatre’s world-traveling troupe, began at 8pm, I quickly sent an email to the theate… Continue reading →

UFOs, killer polka dots, African presidents strolling Ipanema… Rio de Janeiro is unique for more than bikinis and beaches. ESCADARIA SELARON: So this was inspiring. In the 1990s, the Chile-born artist Jorge Selarón decided to fix up the steps in front of his Rio apartment by not only filling in the holes but by also covering the stairway with colorful tiles from around the world. He sold paintings to fund the work. Donations from neighbors and fr… Continue reading →

You can’t just enter Syria if you’re an American. God forbid, that’d be too easy. We took a taxi to the border customs office, where we were promptly told to wait in the corner. And wait. And wait. We needed Syrian visas, and the immigration officer said we could either return to Lebanon or wait in the office until they deemed we’d waited long enough to deserve the visas. Five hours later, an officer saw us sitting in a corner, hunched over in th… Continue reading →

What can’t you find in Central Park? The 840-acre space hides two ice skating rinks, an Olympic-size pool, a half-century old carousel, a free theater where the likes of Meryl Streep and Al Pacino perform Shakespeare every summer, and a Polar Bear who lives on the lower east edge. There’s always more to discover. This past weekend I found Rat Rock, a somewhat legendary climbing wall. Here’s how The New York Times describes it: Officially called … Continue reading →

While in Brazil’s interior state of Mato Grosso researching a story for the next issue of Americas Quarterly, I took the chance to visit the national park Chapada dos Guimarães. It’s about an hour outside state capital Cuiabá, not far from the international border with Bolivia. As my editor told to me, “everyone in Cuiabá talks about it as if it were the promised land.” Even back in Rio, friends told me to visit the famed chapada (plateau) and c… Continue reading →

When New England thaws out in springtime and the region’s ski resorts close shop, skiers head to a place where the snow never melts. On the southeast face of Mt. Washington, Tuckerman Ravine every winter accumulates an average 55 FEET of snow that lingers well into the summer. Along with snow and diehard skiers, the ravine also also attracts a few people who quite obviously should not be attempting to ski down the tallest mountain east of the Mi… Continue reading →

This is Sarah bouldering at Morro do Urca in October on a 30-foot-long horizontal called Travessia Rio Terê. I blogged about this bouldering area last month, with a video of my buddy Aloisio flashing the entire traverse. Sarah and I had a few more difficulties, to the entertainment of passers-by wondering why we appeared to be performing a strange religious ceremony with the rocks. We’d practiced a few days earlier at the small indoor climbing wa… Continue reading →

The waterbottle beside my bunkbed was frozen solid. The temperature in our unheated cabin — nestled between Wildcat Mountain and Carter Dome, two of the top 20 tallest peaks in the White Mountains of New Hampshire — was in the teens while outside it hovered around 0-degrees Celsius, and lower still with the wind chill. But I wanted to be the cold. For about six years I’d been trying to get up to Mount Washington in the wintertime with my former e… Continue reading →

Manaus, capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, has a unique cuisine influenced by its location on the Amazon River in the heart of the Amazon jungle. The city has colossal fresh water fish, mouth-numbing plants, communal street tables with bottomless bowls of powdered manioc, and a crazy variety of fruits that I’ve only begun to try. For an overwhelming introduction to all the foods available here, I went to the wonderful Mercado Municipal … Continue reading →