BCAA Travel Blog

There are places we never visit because of what we suspect we will find there. We hear accounts from friends, read stories in the media, or see a movie set in the locale, and close our minds to a destination. Sometimes it pays to confront your biases, or as Hunter S. Thompson once put it, “Buy the ticket. Take the ride.” A couple of years ago I was given an assignment to write a magazine article about playing poker in Las Vegas. The story angle was simple: What happens when a guy who has never been inside a casino goes to Sin City to play Texas Hold’em, a game that the guy knows little about? Until I got this gig I had always avoided Vegas. I figured it would represent the worst of America–an overdose of crass commercialism, bad taste and grasping greed–not to mention brain-broiling heat.  Well, as it turned out that Vegas had all those things, but that’s only part of the story. There was a lot about the city that I liked. In fact, I came to see how you could easily get hooked on the town. Continue reading…

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Hollywood star power created Puerto Vallarata as a tourist destination. The transformation of the sleepy fishing village of 2,000 souls began on November 11, 1954, when Mexicana de Aviación airline inaugurated its Guadalajara-Puerto Vallarta flight. One of the first visitors was American movie director John Huston, who built a home here in the small cove of Las Caletas where he lived until his death. In 1963, when Huston was hired to direct the film version of Tennessee Williams’ play, The Night of the Iguana, he changed the story’s setting from Acapaulco to his adopted home. The famous cast, headed by Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner, and the exotic locale soon attracted a swarm of international media, especially after Elizabeth Taylor arrived to join Burton. Both married, the two created a major scandal with their illicit romance. In addition to generating reams of gossip, the media, and later, Huston’s film, showcased the primeval beauty of the place. From then on, Puerto Vallarta ceased to be a secret hideaway waiting to be discovered. Today, the resort is one of the world’s most visited beach destinations, attracting 2.5 million tourists each year. Continue reading…

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Demi Moore loves getting her blood sucked. During a recent interview with David Letterman, the movie actress admitted that she had travelled to an Austrian spa to have her hemoglobin eaten by “highly trained medical leeches.” The hungry little creatures were first placed in her belly button. “You feel them bite down on you, and you want to go, ‘You bastard!’ and then you relax and and work on your lamaze breathing,” said Moore. “You watch it swell up and get fatter and fatter, and then when it’s super drunk on your blood it just kind of rolls over like it’s stumbling out of the bar. They have a little enzyme that they release when they are biting down in you, it gets into your blood and generally you bleed for quite a bit–and your health is optimized. It detoxifies your blood.” Continue reading…

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Another spectacular day; another mesmerizing drive. The more you travel in British Columbia, the more you come to appreciate the province’s stunning natural beauty. The last leg of our journey finds us motoring south on Duffy Lake Road from Lillooet to Whistler. The winding highway veers past cascading rivers, glacier-capped peaks and turquoise lakes. We make several stops to snap photos and breathe in the invigorating wilderness air. Leonard has put his Metis fiddle tunes back on and has the pedal to the medal. Every time we go over a bump in the road, Amy yells “Yee-haw!” It’s another new word taught to her by Dannielle. “A Chinese cowboy expression,” as she jokingly calls it. We “Yee-haw!” our way down to Mount Currie, where everyone gets out to buy junk food at a local store. While we are standing in the parking lot, Leonard asks Shilong, the jovial correspondent from China’s Xinhua News Agency, if he is a spy. Shilong laughs. “Everbody asks me that,” he says. Continue reading…

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We are retracing our route back down Highway 97, headed for Lillooet. The landscape of rolling hills, lakes, river valleys and grasslands is improbably studded with huge boulders. Called “erratics,” they were deposited by the melting glacial ice sheets. Erractic is a good adjective to describe the activity in our van. I think all this driving may be starting to get to Leonard. Ever since we passed Lac La Hache, he’s been repeating the word out loud at regular intervals, each time with a different pronunciation. “Lac La Haaache. Lac La Hiihhch. Lac Laaaache.” The road giddiness seems to be contagious. Alison launches into a story about her deathly fear of snakes. Meanwhile, Dannielle has taught young Amy the nursery rhyme “I’m a Little Teapot,” and now she has everyone in the vehicle singing it, complete with tipping gestures. Racelle suddenly declares that we are going to perform it for our hosts in Lillooet, the Tit’q’et, one of 11 communities that make up the St’at’mic First Nation. Continue reading…

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 Easter Island by Daniel Wood: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Westworld writer Daniel Wood travels to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.

In this episode he learns more about the civilization that created the monumental statues called moai and chats with local tour guide Josephina Malloy about the rise and fall of the Rapa Nui people.

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Tribal elder George Keener is about to demonstrate how to cook salmon in a fire pit. But before he does, we ask Rhonda Shackelly, the manager of Xats’ull Heritage Village, to pose with the sacrificial fish. Without hesitation, she gives the salmon a smooch. Keener then takes the fish and guts it with a knife, washes it and stuffs its innards with herbs and onions. Hot stones are taken from a fire and deposited in the bottom of an earthen pit. Then the salmon, wrapped in foil, is placed inside atop evergreen boughs. As the pit begins to fill with smoke, it is quickly covered with dirt. The salmon will cook in the pit for about four hours. We’ll eat it later tonight, after our hosts have given us a sampling of traditional Xats’ull culture. Continue reading…

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The metric police have not yet got their clutches on Highway 97. The towns along the route are denoted by miles: 70 Mile House, 93 Mile House, 100 Mile House. Each was originally a roadhouse on the Cariboo Gold Rush Trail. Located within a day’s ride of each other, the roadhouses were most often built where water and grasslands were plentiful. Prospectors bound for the gold fields stopped overnight for a meal, a bed and a place to water and feed their horses. Road contractors, or those who didn’t strike it rich in the gold fields, were often responsible for building the stopping houses. They in turn developed communities and local businesses. Although the main Cariboo Wagon Road extended from Yale through Lytton and Cache Creek to Barkerville, Mile 0 is actually measured from Lillooet, where one of the earliest trails to the Cariboo was established in 1858. Continue reading…

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Even though this is an aboriginal tourism trip and we are now deep in aboriginal territory, most everyone in our group has suddenly begun wearing cowboy hats. This morning, John Pierro gave a black one to Dannielle; Racelle is wearing a white one, which sets off her black hair; Leonard is sporting a straw model that looks about 10 years old, though he claims he bought it last month; and now young Amy had donned one too, transforming herself into a Chinese cowgirl. Maybe this mania has been inspired by the fact we are staying at Hat Creek Ranch. Whatever the cause, the Stetsons suit the surroundings as we explore the grounds and climb aboard the ranch’s beautifully restored BC Express stagecoach. Continue reading…

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The drive from Kamloops to Cache Creek along Highway 97 packs a visual wallop. You pass shimmering aquamarine lakes, snow-topped mountains, craggy canyons, sagebrush-covered hills and even a few hoodoos. A few years ago, the area served as the backdrop for the movie An Unfinished Place, featuring A-list actors Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez. But the mind-blowing scenery was the real star of the show. After viewing the film, talk-show host David Letterman commented on the area’s natural charms in an interview with Lopez, stating, “My God, the tremendous beauty of the surrounding countryside!” That remark prompted Kamloops’ officials to mount a campaign to convince Letterman to bring his show to the city. He never came, but we are here today, cruising down the highway in brilliant sunshine, headed for a rendezvous with history at Hat Creek Ranch. Continue reading…

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