“A dreaded summer day, so let’s go where we’re happy and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates” — The Smiths A trip to the cemetery on holiday is something of a hard sell, I’ll admit. But whether it’s due to my angsty teenage years as a goth or my love of 19th century literature, […]
When Madagascar broke free from the continental landmass of Africa 90 million years ago, all of its wildlife was marooned on board, passengers on a boat floating out in the Indian Ocean. As a result about 90% of its wildlife evolved nowhere else on earth. It’s most famous inhabitants – the lemurs – proliferated and […]
I don’t really speak fluent ‘art’. I can hold my own, don’t get me wrong. I can walk into a gallery, spend time with a piece, and know if it does something for me. I just draw the line at confidently talking about references and market trajectories. But what I do know is Mexico City. […]
In these times of uncertainty, of information overload, of constant connectivity and shrinking attention span, many speak of the need for a digital detox, a cleanse. Some may find relief in putting away the mobile phone, or forest bathing, or yoga. For me, it’s clear that when you need to empty the cache on your […]
We drove to the top of a dusty ridge, golden and red from oxidized mineral deposits in the ground, crumbling walls of sand and stone that looked like cheap stale cake, and in the walls of the cliffs you could see bones. Here, there are no roads, no parking lots, just suggested routes in the […]
I think what I like about a desert is the contrast. On the one hand there’s the fundamental hostility of the environment, never more apparent than at midday when the heat of day hits like an anvil. On the other, there is the supreme stillness and spectacular beauty at the day’s margins. Nowhere have I […]
My latest research trip to Chile’s Atacama Desert was a return journey so I was planning to dig deeper into previously visited places and explore some new spots. Instead I found myself gazing upwards, and my understanding of this unique landscape became informed by its unique relationship to the skies. After a short flight from […]
Some of the sand piles reached upwards of 300 metres high. They say the name of this desert means “you can get in, but you can’t get out,” like some Central Asian Hotel California. The Taklamakan, the world’s second largest shifting sands desert, the backdoor of the Tibetan plateau. Just north of the desert is […]
My parents are African but I grew up in Canada, at times dreaming of far away places but mostly just grateful for summers spent paddling lakes, winters skiing ice, and weekends in hockey arenas all over Ontario. The travel bug bit me hard in my late teens, and by 20 I was working in the […]
I landed in Dubrovnik under the most Dalmatian atmospheric conditions, with the warm Scirocco wind from the South, locally lovingly called Jugo, coming to greet me, setting the tone with a low, gray hanging sky and damp air. Like in every coastal culture, winds do not just dictate the route of boats: they’re also believed […]
I don’t know what came first: my affection for France, or my fascination for rusty old Citroëns. Either way, each emotion feeds the other. But one of them, over the years, has become what my close friends call a little problematic. It started young. As a kid I befriended the owner of the Citroën garage […]
‘Paris est minérale‘. Could there be a more poetic way to describe a bustling metropolis? As a Brazilian, I sure load my speeches and descriptions with hyperboles and words that defeat the rules of grammar. But mineral! Oh, I would never have thought of that, yet it remains as one of my favourite souvenirs from […]
On a cool November night at the end of last year, people nearing Beaune’s famous hospital – the 15th-century Hôtel-Dieu, also known as the Hospices, are right to wonder exactly what I and about a hundred other runners with headlamps are doing, gathered in the Place des Halles. On the weekend in question (always the […]
High above the wild gorges of Chassezac between Provence and the Massif Central, a medieval village remains quietly untouched, even in the middle of summer. On my first visit to the area, back in 2017, I almost drove past it without noticing it. The road across the plateau felt endless that day. Quiet and empty, […]
In most of my earliest childhood photos, my face is covered in chocolate. And while my table manners have somewhat improved, my love of chocolate remains unspoiled. My favourite dessert out there is my French grandmother’s chocolate mousse. Chocolate mousse is rarely the best in restaurants. It’s kind of a pain to make in large […]
France is a small but richly varied country, so we often combine two or more regions in a single trip: for example, Burgundy and Provence, Lyon and the Riviera, or the Alps and the countryside further south. But since there’s so much to see in these regions packed with history and character, there are always […]