MEDIA NEWS BULLETIN

August 2004

BERRY-MUNCHING BEARS AND LAGER – COOL!

ROSS WEHNER is headed off to Bariloche, Argentina, in late August to write about what is fast becoming Latin America's newest adventure center. On separate assignments for Ski and Paddler magazines, he will ski down Lanin Volcano, rock climb at a stunning cluster of granite pillars known as Frey and kayak down the Manso River (anything but "tame", despite what its name in Spanish implies).

He is just back from another "reporting" assignment at the Columbia Icefield, in Canada's Alberta province. After a grueling hike-and-ski across 17 miles of boulder fields and ice, he and two friends crossed an infinite icefield to reach the base of the remote, and much fabled, Mt Columbia. Though avalanche conditions prevented them from further progress, the trio did climb to the top of the south summit of nearby Andromeda. Most importantly they evaded a berry-munching black bear and ravaged a stash of ice-cold Canadian lager, which they had hidden in a mountain stream for the hike out. These adventures will hopefully find their way into print, though a suitable magazine has not as of yet stepped forward.

Moon Handbooks: Peru, which Ross and his wife Renee del Gaudio completed a few months ago, will hit the stores in the US and UK in November. This will be the only book to include all of Peru's adventure possibilities--from high-altitude mountains and hidden mineral springs to surfing and sandboarding – and also reflect the latest events in Peru's fast-changing tourism market, including the likely closure of Aerocontinente airlines.

Contact: rosswehner@hotmail.com.

VIVA EL CHE

DAVID ATKINSON is spending the summer at home in London's exotic Islington after his return from a six-month stint in Latin America. During his time on the gringo trail he completed a major project, following Che Guevara's final footsteps to the place of his execution in Bolivia; explored alternative Inca trails to rival tourist-dominated Machu Picchu; and even ended up co-presenting (in Spanish!) a radio programme with La Familia Galan, Bolivia's leading troupe of drag queens. He is now exploring ideas for new projects for the autumn. More about his adventures in Latin America from www.intrepidtravel.com/atkinson.

Contact: atkinson.david@virgin.net.

SPLIT PERSONALITY

Spanish expert TONY KELLY is turning his thoughts to the Balkans, having just been commissioned by a major publisher to write a new guidebook to Croatia. The former Yugoslav republic is fast becoming one of the Mediterranean's must-see destinations and Tony will be making several visits over the next few months. First up is a family holiday on the Istrian Riviera, just across the water from Venice, with wife Kate and nine-year-old Adam in August. The Kelly family will be staying on an island not far from Europe's largest naturist resort, and tentative plans include a round of nude mini-golf (but where do you keep your scorecard and pencil?). After that it's back to Croatia in September to visit Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik, go walking in national parks and island-hopping along the Dalmatian coast. Features, anyone?

Contact: tony@tonykellytravelwriter.co.uk.

A LONG AND WINDING ROAD

RON AND VIV MOON have just returned home after a two-week self-drive trip in South Africa, followed by 20,000km (12,500 miles) and 14 weeks on the long and winding road, of varying standard, around the western half of Australia. We travelled cross-country for a few days with no tracks to guide us across some remote desert country, swam in pristine gorges and waterfalls, camped on deserted beaches, got bogged on more than one occasion and caught the occasional fish.

We had more than our share of flooded rivers, mud, and tall dense grass to contend with. At that time of the year up north (the end of the Wet season) the weather dictates what you can and can't do, so the travel itinerary has to be very flexible. You also have to make time for such contingencies as blown and shredded tyres, a cracked chassis and other mechanical mayhem that can and does occur.

Our latest 5th edition our guide book The Kimberley – an Adventurers Guide rolled off the press while we were away, as did a new print run of Viv Moon's Outdoor Cookbook. As well an updated edition of Discover Australia by 4WD is about to hit the streets.

Now all we need is some enthusiasm to be found for the computer and the office and for three other guidebooks that need updating and/or extensive revision as well as a host of articles demanded by impatient editors!

Contact: viv.moon@guidebooks.com.au.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE….

MONICA LARNER continues to write about wine and wine travel from a former wine cellar (the “cave”) in the south of France. She was recently asked to speak in Basilicata and Puglia on wine travel in Italy’s southern regions and attended the posh Sicilia en Primeur tasting event in Palermo – at which the 2003 vintage was tasted publicly for the first time. In April, Monica represented the US as a wine judge at Vinitaly in Verona and a few weeks later she sipped rosé wines professionally in Cannes (although this did not win her any favors with the people at the Cannes Film festival press accreditation office). Her Central Italy wine travel story (with photography) was published in the April edition of Wine Enthusiast (she is a contributing writer for the magazine) and Monica is currently negotiating a series of wine-tourism books with a UK publisher to include Italy, France and California (her home state).

More recently, Monica has spent the past few months drinking wine. And, yes, writing for Wine Enthusiast magazine. She spent most of June in Puglia and the Veneto (driving from Nice, France to the "heel" of the Italian boot in under 10 hours) for a wine-&-food pairing article and a profile of vintner Gianni Zonin. She then flew to Sicily for another assignment and is soon on her way to Chianti Classico. Her book "Working and Living in France" was published by Cadogan Guides in June.

Monica is now looking for a publisher for "Italy on Two, Three and Four Wheels" (www.italy234.com) and hopes to write a series of "Wine Travel" books for Cadogan to cover Italy, France, Spain and California. Speaking of California, Monica will spend September in her home state to join her family for the Larner Vineyard harvest.

Contact: monica@monicalarner.com.

LIVING IN FLORIDA

CHELLE KOSTER WALTON has been on the road and in the air around Florida and the Caribbean the past few months for Bridal Guide, Caribbean Travel & Life and others. Her latest trips include Curacao, Bonaire, Aruba, Costa Rica, Nevis, Central Florida and Florida's northeast coast. Her latest edition of the Sarasota, Sanibel Island & Naples Book is due out any minute, so you can stop holding your breath (he he). She'll be soon updating Fodor's chapters of the Florida and Bahamas books, which means she'll have all the latest information on Grand Bahama Island, Southwest Florida (where she lives, by the by), and the Everglades.

Contact: ChelleTrav@aol.com.

FROM HOWLING WOLVES TO BREACHING HUMPBACK WHALES

LEE FOSTER has devoted his summer to further nature travel coverages. Lee reports that the average traveler at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, now actually has a good chance of seeing wolves in the Lamar Valley from Rendezvous Hill in the early morning with a spotting scope. Lee’s Yellowstone coverage, with a gallery of 150 new photos, can be seen at www.fostertravel.com/temp-WYYELL.html.

From Wyoming Lee went on to Alaska, where he saw hundreds of endangered humpback whales from a small-ship cruise through the Alaska waterway wilderness of the Southeast. From a low of 1,000 animals in 1966, this North Pacific humpback herd has risen to 6,000-8,000 animals, and may be taken off the endangered list. Lee’s article on this Alaska nature cruise is at www.fostertravel.com/AKCRUW.html. His photos will be up soon.

Contact: lee@fostertravel.com.

MORE WANDERING IN WILD PLACES

When not out rambling in his mobile home office (aka a VW camper van), ANDREW DEAN NYSTROM has been busy blogging, doing interviews and collecting accolades.

Condé Naste Traveler proclaimed that his new Lonely Planet Bolivia guidebook is 'friendly, thoughtful, sympathetic...the best companion to the country.'

His Hidden Grand Teton National Park piece recently appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle Travel section, as part of a Undiscovered National Parks series.

Acclaimed Vagabonding author Rolf Potts recently posted an interview with Andrew. And Outside magazine founding editor Tim Cahill called Nystrom's Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks title 'the very best practical guide to the park' in his new book, Lost in My Own Backyard.

Andrew's anticipating publication of several new Lonely Planet titles - Mexico, The Career Break Book, USA & Canada on a Shoestring - and gearing up for return research trips to Las Vegas, Greater Yellowstone and Argentine and Chilean Patagonia before year's end.

Contact: adean@alum.berkeley.edu.

CANADA BOUND

BILL McRAE has a busy travel schedule in coming weeks. He heads first to Montana, where he will attend rodeos and visit guest ranches to update the fifth edition of Moon Publication’s Montana Handbook. Then he crosses the northern frontier and travels from Canada’s wine-growing Okanagan Valley to Whistler, a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and then explores new restaurants and resorts on Vancouver Island. The Canadian travels are research for his new title, 1000 Places To See in the US and Canada Before You Die, written in conjunction with Patricia Schultz for Workman Press. Or as Bill experiences it: 10,000 Places to research in Canada before your deadline.

Contact: billm@wagged.com.

GOING SOUTH

WAYNE BERNHARDSON has spent most of the summer checking queries and page proofs for his new Moon Handbooks Argentina, due off the presses in October, and pulling together the manuscript for Moon Handbooks Patagonia, which will be out next year. In addition, he has published magazine articles on short-term apartments rentals in Buenos Aires and on the cruise ship industry in the Falkland Islands for Latin Trade magazine. For the same magazine, a piece on developments in the cruise ship industry in Chilean Patagonia and a fly-cruise excursion from Punta Arenas, Chile, to Antarctica is in press.

Wayne will return to Buenos Aires in November to begin updating Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires and to Chile early next year to update his Chile title. He has several excursions planned, including Antarctica and a hard-riding horseback trip in northern Argentine Patagonia, across the Andes into Chile. He will also be available for assignments.

Contact: southerncone@mac.com.

CLASSIC STUFF

After reading about CHRISTOPHER P BAKER's latest coffee-table book, Cuba Classics: A Celebration of Vintage American Automobiles, published in July 2004 by Macmillan Caribbean (and in the USA by Interlink Publishing), Quicksilver magazine commissioned a photo feature. The Robb Report will feature one of his illustrated articles about classic cars in Cuba in the August/September edition. Christopher has also been hired by Holland American Cruise Lines to lecture on the theme aboard its Caribbean cruiseships.

Christopher will be in Puerto Rico most of October on a photography assignment for Macmillan Caribbean. He welcomes hearing from editors with an interest in travel features and/or photo stock needs for the island.

Christopher recently returned from Costa Rica, where he was researching the forthcoming "Eyewitness Travel Guide" for Dorling Kindersley. Chris is also the author of National Geographic Traveler Costa Rica and Moon Handbooks: Costa Rica. He has a large stock of images and story ideas for interested editors.

He has also begun work on a guidebook to Palm Springs and the desert communities. He writes that the Palm Springs region (eight contiguous communities in the Coachella Valley of southern California) is experiencing one of the fastest urban growth booms in the USA. Ritzy new spas, golf clubs, and casinos are going up; the gay community has blossomed, helping foster a renaissance in mid-century modern architecture and construction of new lofts; gourmet restaurants, Starbucks, etc. are multiplying; and the demographics of the region are shifting toward a younger, more permanent generation as 45 families a day move into the region to settle. Stories anyone?

Contact: cpbaker@earthlink.net.

WRITING IN THE HOME ZONE

Colorado-based CLAIRE WALTER jokes that she’s a travel writer who never leaves her time zone – witness her two most recent books, CULINARY COLORADO and SNOWSHOEING COLORADO (third edition to be published in November ’04). The time zone issue is just a slight exaggeration. She actually has traveled recently north and west – to Montana (same time zone), to Vancouver Island (one time zone earlier) and to Alaska (two time zones). In Alaska, she rode the 414-mile Dalton Highway, an unpaved road crosses the tundra and three mountain ranges to connect the Prudhoe Bay oilfields to Fairbanks. She wrote of the route, “The Dalton Highway, built for the construction and servicing of the northern half of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, provides arguably the most Alaskan of all touristic experiences. No other way can you grasp the North Slope’s vastness.”

Contact: cmwalter@claire-walter.com.

WRITE 'EM COWBOY!

When he's not busy composing his own deathless prose to hand over to ruthless magazine editors, MICHAEL McCOY is exacting revenge by butchering the writing of other writers, as editor of the new quarterly Greater Yellowstone: Inside and Out. He also served as editor of Classic Cowboy Stories, released by the Lyons Press in June. (" 'Compilation editor' more precisely," he says. "Fear not: I did not butcher the truly timeless prose of writers like Zane Grey and Owen Wister."). And, despite admitting equine-a-phobic tendencies, he says his reputation as a Western writer appears to be growing; for instance, he recently contributed travel pieces on Montana and Colorado to American Cowboy magazine.

Michael is currently working on a revision of Wyoming: Off the Beaten Path as well as writing edition six of Montana: Off the Beaten Path, slated for release by the Globe Pequot Press next spring. He'll be driving, cycling, and hiking around Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming for most of the rest of the summer and fall, although the second half of September will see him in the south of France. There he'll be on assignment for a U.S. bicycling magazine, photographing and writing about an out-of-the-ordinary cycling adventure. He says he would welcome a ride-along assignment, preferably one that will permit him to reveal to the world the wonders of Armagnac, France’s oldest variety of brandy – which he dreams of sipping while reclining amid Roman ruins.

Contact: mjmccoy@tetontel.com.

DIVIDING HIS TIME

MIKE GERRARD has recently finished researching and writing a 28-page Charity Challenge supplement for the travel magazine, Wanderlust, and in August is going on a gourmet tour of NE Derbyshire, which includes dining in a one-table restaurant and meeting a man who exports smoked salmon to Scotland. November is the start of a winter visit to their new part-time home in Arizona. Mike now regards himself as a real writer at last, because this enables him to say: 'He divides his time between his homes in Cambridgeshire and Arizona.' In the Spring he'll be researching and writing Spiral Corfu, with partner Donna Dailey. Oh yes, and they hope to get married sometime too, if they can find the time.

Contact: mail@mikegerrard.com.

APPALACHIA BOUND

Freelance photojournalist and Hemispheres Magazine editor RANDY JOHNSON will be covering the Appalachians from north to south this summer, and the coast of Maine as well. Johnson has been exploring trails and swank country inns in North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains (his best-selling guidebook, Hiking North Carolina is being revised for 2005 publication). July will find him traveling north by Amtrak's Acela train with stops at Dulles airport's new Air & Space Museum in DC and the USS Constitution in Boston. He'll be trekking through the huts of the Appalachian Mountain Club across New Hampshire's Mount Washington then going down to the sea in ships with a schooner cruise on the Maine Coast aboard the Heritage, a classic wooden ship built to historic specifications in Rockland, Maine. His camera will always be in reach, so contact him for stories or photos. He'll be traveling with his 12-year-old son so family adventure travel will be much on his mind.

Contact: RanJohns@aol.com.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

UK-based travel writer and photographer, and guidebookwriters.com administrator, TERRY MARSH is about to disappear into the nether regions of France again, taking on a nine-day walking holiday around the Country of the Cathars, following which he's heading directly for the Med, specifically Montpellier and the département of Hérault to do a regional feature. Home for only a few days, he's heading back to France for another regional feature assignment, this time on Charente Maritime – sounds like a lot of mussels, crab, lobster and miscellaneous mysterious fishy things to get through.

Back home briefly – yet again – he's off to Canada, flying to Vancouver for a little time cycling and hiking, before boarding ViaRail's The Canadian for the three-day rail journey across to Toronto.

Contact: terrymarsh@wpu.org.uk.

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