See a slice of New York City many of its inhabitants, including the 4.3 million people who ride the rails each day, often overlook. Led by Bronx-born local Darryl Reilly, you’ll tackle the subway network by carriage and foot, unearthing underground art as you go. Thanks to the Arts For Transit program devised in 1985, almost 200 permanent public works grace the city’s stations, creating a gallery beneath the city that acts as a backdrop for its harried commuters.
Money, apparently, makes the world go round, and nowhere is filthy lucre more celebrated and chased than on New York’s famous Wall Street, where the world spins at a faster pace than anywhere else.
For an authentic taste of life in the financial district, hook up with real insiders like ‘Andrew’ – a trading-trapeze-artist-turned-tour-guide, who went from being a professional blackjack player good enough to be banned from Vegas casinos to vice president of Deutsche Bank – on a tour with the Wall Street Experience. According to the BBC, in a quote proudly emblazoned on the tour group’s website, Andrew “collateralised debt obligations until the market collapsed”. We don’t even know what that means, but we’re not going to lend him our lunch money just in case.
The tour takes you deep into the murky machine of Wall Street, and Andrew regales you with tales from the trenches, the goriest of which pertain to the times when the world stopped spinning and the sky fell in.
Don’t whinge about bad weather – go out and shadow box with it. Several operators in the US offer storm-chasing tours, but one in particular guarantees to put the wind right up you. Ride shotgun with Warren Faidley – the “world’s first full-time, storm-chasing journalist”, according to his business card, and star of the Discovery Channel’s Hurricane Chaser – as he drives his pimped-up mega ute in the general direction of tornados and other angry weather phenomena.
The tragedy in Oklahoma City – when a twister veered violently off its predicted course and killed 18 people, including a veteran storm chaser – underlined the power of Mother Nature’s wrath and cast a shadow over the twister-tracking industry (it attracts its share of red-neck amateurs), but Warren is considered a consummate professional in the field. Based out of Amarillo in Texas, Oklahoma City or Denver – depending on where the whirly action is – Warren’s company boasts a 100 per cent success rate with its stand-by tornado chases. Bring spare undies.
Forget Pamplona. When it comes to running with bulls, we’re heading to San Fermin in Nueva Orleans (that’s New Orleans for those of you with rusty Spanish). No cows are harmed in the making of this encierro (bull run). Instead 400 women from the city’s Big Easy Rollergirls, New Orleans’ flat-track derby team, dress in red, chase down the more than 18,000 runners over a 12-block French Quarter course and thump them with foam bats. Anyone taking on the roller bulls has to wear white and tie a piece of red cloth around their neck and waist. And this is New Orleans, so as well as the main event there’s a whole string of parties to round out the entire weekend, which takes place in July.
In a country that celebrates excess, the house of the King is a temple to intemperance. A tour of Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, provides a fascinating insight into the extravagant life of Elvis Presley. At the mansion you can walk in the footsteps of Elvis’s blue suede shoes, wobble your hips in the music room, see the TV room (where Elvis would apparently watch three television sets at once), check out the meditation garden and shooting range, be dazzled by the display of gold and platinum discs on the walls of the Trophy Room and take a peak in the infamous Jungle Room – the man cave where Elvis did whatever Elvis wanted to do, on shag-pile carpet surrounded by exotic African furniture.
The King died at the estate in 1977, while on the throne in the royal bathroom, possibly straining after one too many deep-fried banana, peanut butter and bacon sandwiches. If you don’t want to suffer the same fate, go for a brisk stroll through the grounds, and check out 30 vehicles from Elvis’s private collection, including a Lockheed Jetstar plane, Rolls Royce sedans, Mercedes Benz limos, a pink Cadillac and a John Deere tractor. Stay at the Elvis-themed Heartbreak Hotel, right across the street from the Graceland Mansion.
Park your backside, buckle your belt and bite into the Big Apple, without ever leaving your seat. Snag a front-row view and soak in the city as it flaunts its wares behind the panoramic window of The Ride, a unique moving-theatre motor coach. Surround sound pulls urban scenes into the bus but don’t forget it’s a two-way street – external speakers keep you ‘on air’ as you drive. Sidle up to Grand Central Station and roll through Central Park. Flat-screen TVs exhibit photos and facts about each location, but the street performers steal the show.
Flashing lights and pumping beats make the bus (and you) an attraction, so expect an audience of intrigued New Yorkers. Don’t forget to catch a glimpse of the world-famous skyline through the glass-lined roof. No New York journey is complete without a subway ride and the bus’s floor-shaking technology ensures you won’t be left longing.
Alaska is the largest and most sparsely populated state in the USA. On this 11-day tour, departing Anchorage, you’ll explore its vast remote wilderness and pristine coastal environment. Go looking for moose, wolves, caribous and black and grizzly bears on a trek through Denali National Park, before taking a scenic flight over glaciers to Anchorage.
There’s the chance to go on a hell-hike across the Juneau Ice Field, and go whale watching at Point Adolphus, one of the best spots to spy humpback whales in the world. Accommodation is in boutique inns and rustic cabins.
Some traditions are a little stranger than others, and that’s certainly the case come October in Colorado’s Manitou Springs. The Emma Crawford Coffin Races and Parade attract 10,000 people who come to watch teams of four pushing a ‘corpse’ (really just another perfectly alive member of the team) along the street in a coffin. Why? Well, Emma, who was suffering with tuberculosis, moved to Manitou Springs in the late 1800s to take advantage of the healing waters of the local mineral springs. It didn’t work and Emma died, but not before she’d made her fiancé promise to bury her at the top of Red Mountain. In the years that followed erosion caused Emma’s coffin to become exposed and eventually it slid down the mountain. People in the town say you can sometimes see a young woman in Victorian garb looking lonely atop Red Mountain.
As any gastronome worth their salt (and pepper) knows, the best bit about any fine dining experience is when you voluntarily eat something that sets your own arse on fire. The world’s most angry edible ingredient, according to New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute, is Trinidad and Tobago’s moruga scorpion pepper, used in napalm-esque condiments such as Dek’s pepper sauce. In 2012, the Trinidad moruga scorpion chilli was named the world’s hottest, with an average rating of more than 1.2 million units on the Scoville heat scale (by comparison, Tabasco original red sauce has a Scoville rating of 2,500–5,000 units).
Like any local delicacy, it’s best tasted in situ – in the restaurants in Port of Spain – but if you can’t get to Trinidad and Tobago, or you want to buy a gift basket of the sauce for someone you really don’t like, it’s available from igourmet.com. Don’t forget to put the toilet paper in the fridge before you go to bed.
Think of animal migration and the great beasts of Africa thunder to mind, but one of the world’s most curious journeys is that of the humble monarch butterfly. Fleeing the paralysing winters of Canada and the United States each January, these delicate bugs travel up to 4,500 kilometres, fluttering into the depths of Mexico’s forests in the state of Michoacan, where they cling to oyamel firs, forming a layer of moving colour that coats the branches and bristles.
Grab your camera and snap them in whirling clouds at El Rosario Sanctuary, ride horses and hike mountainous terrain to see them at Chincua Sanctuary and make a final butterfly stop in dense vegetation at Piedra Herrada Sanctuary. Thriving in the warmth, these butterflies surpass their usual six-week lifespan, surviving until spring, when they return north. The following year their distant relatives will migrate to Michoacan to smother the same trees chosen by their ancestors.
When you’re not marvelling at fluttering insects, visit waterfalls, ruins and vibrant markets and discover the local culture, which is rooted in the Aztec belief that the souls of the dead are reborn as butterflies. This migration may lack thundering hooves, but the pulse of billions of beating wings is equally captivating.
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