Outpost Travel Magazine Issue 93 Preview

I Saw a

From Byzantine to Ottoman to Modern Classic

The Most Mystic of Cities

SASQUATCH LEGENDS OF ’s Great Bear Rainforest

B.C.

 Learning to

Speak Local

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What UNDERWATER VOLCANOES Spew What Comes Up when the Ocean Erupts

Best Global Yoga Spots Life on the Mongol Rally Getting Down for that Great Shot

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IN THIS ISSUE

4 Mailstop 7 Tripping

You like us—you really like us

In Whose Gracious Company

ISSUE

93 26

8 On The Fringe

Local Knowledge 11 The Word Play of Travel

By Simon Vaughan

Our Amazon-River-crossing special correspondent braves both piranha-infested waters and the pitfalls of mispronunciation.

21

Up From the Bottom of the Deep Blue Sea Every so often our amazing little planet burps forth an astonishing but unanticipated surprise.

Shutter Stop

When the pros go low to get the shot.

24 New! MEC’s The Traveller’s Edge Spotlight Yoga: global hot spots to downward dog.

Buzz 70 Backpacker News from Hostelling International

My Experience on the Mongol Rally. In the 2nd installment of HI’s 2013 series, one gritty adventurer reflects on the unexpected obstacles of road trip racing

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Of Myths & Legends Story and Photos by John Zada

Up the Pacific coast of beautiful and bountiful British Columbia, ribbed by inlets and islands and windy waterways, lies the untamed Great Bear Rainforest, where the grizzly reigns, red cedars rise to reach for the sky and Sasquatch is thought to roam. Join journalist John Zada as he travels from village to town to community, exploring the places and meeting the people who call the coastal rainforest home.

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In From the

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The Moments We Travel For

2013

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Story and Photos by Dario De Santis On the Bosphorus Strait that slices Turkey’s most ancient and mystical city, culture and commerce collide, Europe and Asia come face to face, and life takes on a dream-like quality as masterpieces pepper the landscape.

Join one writer as he wanders the streets of Istanbul and reflects on its countless reincarnations—from Greek to Roman to Ottoman empire, Byzantium to Constantinople, Christian to Muslim to secular society— reminding us of this gem of a city that sits on the cusp of two continents.

More under-reported, quirky-human, natural-world stories: the party pee patrol, planes that fly on plastic, just let it rip and that’s just how the beetle rolls.

15 Field Notes

My Istanbul

©Cover photo: iStockphoto

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10/04/2013 11:30:04 AM

Contributor

Dario De Santis

Dario De Santis is a self-described citizen of the world, who was born and raised in Italy but lives to tour the planet.

During a semester break at university, Dario travelled to Dublin, Ireland, where he found a job and stayed for six months. hough returning to nish his education in his hometown of Bari on the Adriatic coast, after graduating he began his nomadic, world-wandering life, changing countries, he tells Outpost, “as fast as one changes a toothbrush” (which hopefully means semi-often). To date, he has travelled across Europe, the U.S., China, Kenya, Australia and now Turkey.

“In each place I have left many friends and a piece of my heart.” He speaks Italian, English and Greek—but can say cheers in many languages. For the past year he has lived in Istanbul, where he happily helps travellers explore a city he has come to adore as his own.

ISSUE•93 Publisher/Editorial Director MATT ROBINSON

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Editor DEBORAH SANBORN

deborah@outpostmagazine.com Creative/Art Director SERGIO DAVID SPADAVECCHIA

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Senior Editor & Special Travel Advisor SIMON VAUGHAN

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Editor-at-Large (Asia) JEFF FUCHS Editor-at-Large (Europe) RYAN MURDOCK Gear Editor PAUL AUERBACH Associate/Online Editor DANIEL PUIATTI

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Hostelling International Editor CERI JONES Editorial Interns MERCEDES MARKS, ISABELLE KHOO Contributing Editors

FINA SCROPPO, EVAN SOLOMON, IAN WRIGHT Contributors

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wants to show you how much we appreciate you, our readers, by giving you a chance to win a $50 Mountain Equipment Co-op Gift Card—perfect for any outdoor enthusiast! To enter our contest just follow the simple steps below

DARIO DE SANTIS, GEORGE KOUROUNIS, JOHN ZADA, MICHAEL DEFREITAS, JOE SANBORN, JENNIFER FODEN WILSON

 Step 1 Go to www.facebook.com/Outpostmagazine  Step 2 Click on the WIN button  Step 3 Like us if you don’t already!  Step 4 Fill in your contact info so we can get in touch

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with you, if you win Share the contest with all your friends who love travel and the outdoors

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Outpost [ISSN: 1203-7125] is published six times a year

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10/04/2013 11:32:16 AM

Story and Photos by

Dario De Santis

Straddled by two continents, stamped by East and West, shaped by conquering tribes and centuries of trade, Istanbul’s eclectic majesty stands alone

Facade of the iconic Blue Mosque, an Istanbul masterpiece.

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05/04/2013 5:43:07 PM

Q

uite often, the most beautiful things that happen to us are surprises in life. I ended up in Istanbul by chance—due to an unexpected air transfer—and almost without having decided it, I stayed here. Love at first sight? No, Istanbul seduced me slowly, like a charming woman who, little by little, shows you something different and more intriguing each time you meet her.

I have been living here for almost a year, yet this city does not cease to amaze and allure me. “It takes more than a lifetime to understand Istanbul,” says my friend Burak, who was born and grew up on the banks of the Bosphorus.

Two centuries ago, I would have arrived in Istanbul by ship. I would have sailed the Aegean Sea and crossed the straits of the Dardanelles—scene of the epic Trojan War—to reach the Sea of Marmara, and set my sights on a horizon dominated by the ravishing silhouette of the old city: a dim succession of domes, minarets, towers and palaces.

Now, like then, to the people approaching it from the sea, Istanbul appears as a mirage, a city of ethereal beauty floating on the water.

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05/04/2013 5:43:40 PM

Of

Myth&

Legends in the One’s first bird’s-eye view of the Great Bear Rainforest,

a resplendent and rugged landscape of mossy foliage and ocean, often comes during those rarified days of summer in which the world’s most mysterious and impenetrable wilderness is laid fleetingly bare for those lucky enough to see it.

An aerial view of South Bentinck Arm in Queen Charlotte Sound, near Bella Coola.

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10/04/2013 12:13:07 PM

Story and Photos by

John Zada

she Shadow of Giants

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For me, that moment came during an auspicious break in a weeklong chorus of rain. I was on a de Havilland Beaver float plane, heading from the irst Nations community of Bella Bella, British Columbia, to the nearby village of Klemtu on Swindle Island. My journey deep into the heart of B.C.’s remote Central Coast, already an epic in progress, reached a new crescendo as the plane went aloft, revealing a scene of nature’s grandiloquence below.

Stretched as far as the eye could see was a graceful but convoluted landscape of coastal islands, neatly arranged like connectable jigsaw puzzle pieces on the steely blue waters of the Paci c. In the foreground, a verdant musculature of low-lying mountains bristled like the fur on the back of a wild animal. Far off, inland ranges of high snowcapped peaks insinuated a neighbouring glacial majesty. It was an auspicious glimpse of a vast kingdom otherwise forbidden to the eye, concealed as it was by almost endless cloud cover, or brooding mist.

In under an hour, we reached the east coast of Swindle Island. As we descended, an elderly woman and resident of Klemtu seated beside me became trans xed by the view outside her window. After passing an oval-shaped lake in the mountains directly above the town, the plane dropped sharply and landed with a splash beside the village.

As I removed my earplugs, and the exhilaration of the flight and of our remoteness washed over me, she turned and looked at me with concerned, almost frightened eyes.

“Did you see the lake we passed?” she asked.

I nodded, intrigued.

“There’s caves up above the lake,” she added. “They say that’s where the creatures live—the ones who’ve been coming into town and bothering us at night.

One of them tried to steal Samson’s cat last week.”

The unsolicited and matter-of-fact nature of her comment caught me unawares. Overhearing her, a passenger in the front seat turned to face us. He looked at her then threw me a well-placed glance, which conveyed in its smirking, unabashed candidness a sobering message: welcome to the edge of the known world.

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