A deep dive into unusual places around the world
The sport that pushing my boundaries and my buttons like no other
The cliffs of southern Europe are home to thousands of lizards: brown lizards with green backs, green lizards with iridescent blue backs, even a blue lizard that is only found on the most distant of the three monoliths off the shore of Capri Island. They are incredible creatures: able to jump across chasms many times their own length, and to[…]
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For the next month, we are staying in Sant’Agnello, a place famous in the 18th and 19th centuries as a place for Bourbon princes and Russian millionaires to escape the “crowds” of Sorrento. The region still attracts the rich and famous, and it’s easy to see why: a dramatic coastline rising high above clear, blue-green waters; richly coloured, ornate buildings; charming shops;[…]
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So, what’s it like to spend most of December and January in a little Sicilian seaside town? If you are someone who likes to soak up culture over cappuccinos and cornettos on sunny terraces in cute Italian towns, San Vito lo Capo is not the place to come. The town itself is not quaint or cute, or rich in history.[…]
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“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will[…]
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It’s New Year’s Day. We leave Penticton on New Year’s Eve, connect in Vancouver AND Toronto, and finally land in Barcelona the next day, minus one bag. In a haze of jetlag, we submit a lost bag claim, acquire a local SIM card, find our tiny rental car. Then, feeling like we are part of some experiment on the torturous[…]
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The sea spreads out before me, placid and blue, the wake of a solitary boat reflecting sparkles of sunlight. The very tops of the trees are barely stirring. The level of calm is incredible, considering that up until last night, there’d been strong maestrale winds for over a week, leaving us weary of the continual noise and violence. This rental[…]
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I reached into my pocket for the house keys and realized he was gone. I stopped dead in my tracks, my mind racing back over the past couple of hours. Up one street in the old town centre of Iglesias, a peek into a kitchen store, a tour through a book store, down another street, up and down the aisles[…]
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As we stood atop the high sea cliffs, the air was still crisp and damp. The morning dew made the orange-pink granite of Capo Pecora all the more vivid against the gently undulating, blue-green Mediterranean Sea. In the distance, a lone, stunted tree rose above the undergrowth, permanently bent to 90 degrees by the prevailing winds. The sea air carried[…]
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We left the house early to walk over to the Wednesday market. The sky was blue-blue, but the air was especially crisp and cold, perhaps only 5C. Based on the forecast, we’d been wondering if it would be too hot to climb at southwest-facing Quirra, but that morning it seemed unlikely to be a problem. We could see our breath[…]
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In case you are imagining that while you are shivering through winter, we are lounging on a Mediterranean beach, umbrella drinks in hand, think again. It is January, after all. On average, January is the coldest month in Sardinia (highs of 14C), with the fewest hours of sunshine per day (4), and a mediocre amount of rain. We’ve been able to[…]
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