Americas

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Inside Americas

The Experts' Guide To The World: California

Sunday, 13 February 2011

It's a shame that Ansel Adams was never really sold on the virtues of colour photography, because I'm not entirely sure that his black-and-white landscapes ever quite managed to capture the full, breathtaking extent of the sensory bombardment that awaits a visitor to Yosemite during the months that locals call the Fall.

The Experts' Guide To The World: Mexico

Sunday, 13 February 2011

I am not sure if it was the cacophony of the zocalo (the main square), the colonial homes and inns along its stone streets or the glory of its churches that first spurred my romance with Oaxaca, a provincial capital squeezed between mountain ranges five hours south of Mexico City. Maybe it was the mole, the spicy chocolate sauce they put on their chicken? (It rhymes with Ol�!)

Canada: Seduced by a fragile sanctuary

Saturday, 12 February 2011

British Columbia's pretty Gulf Islands are protected by a passionate local community, says Anthony Lambert

On The Road: Eggs over easy in the Caribbean

Saturday, 12 February 2011

Sarah Cameron in Dominica

You won't dip your toe in the sea, but you'll still get a tan

Sunday, 6 February 2011

It's not an obvious choice, says Mark Steel, but Greenland has its attractions – friendly people, great views, and a polar bear nailed to every wall

Anne Tyler's Baltimore: Where Charm City meets 'The Wire'

Saturday, 5 February 2011

One way of describing Baltimore among the great cities of the north-eastern US seaboard is by making clear what the place isn't. It has none of New York's size and cultural flash. It doesn't have Boston's conceits, or Philadelphia's chip on the shoulder. It is mercifully free of the self-importance of Washington DC, 40 miles and half a universe away to the southwest. On the other hand, it has everything – including its own resident muse.

Ernest Hemingway's Cuba: Raise a daiquiri to the old man and the island

Saturday, 5 February 2011

So to Cuba then, at LAST, 45 years after I first got into Hemingway in Uganda after a teacher gave me his copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls. I was a melancholic teenager drawn to stories of extreme courage and stubborn idealism and weepy endings. My family life was wretched and crying over fiction provided relief. The author was in East Africa twice, in the Thirties and Fifties, when my uncle supplied him with guns. Mr Hemingway, said Uncle, had overcome near-death accidents and illnesses and was unafraid. Unafraid. I wanted to be unafraid, too. In the year he killed himself (1961), I read all his books. Some twice.

Don Winslow's San Diego: Hitting the waves with the dawn patrol

Saturday, 5 February 2011

The sun warms my neck as I paddle out to sea, though it doesn't quite blunt the sting of a cold Pacific which is being churned into four-to-six-foot waves (with occasional plus-size sets) by a midwinter swell. To my left is Crystal Pier, a prominent local attraction; to my right is Bird Rock, a peninsula that funnels the walls of breaking water into nicely rideable peaks.