News from the North

Below is a travel piece I wrote after my trek to Ciudad Perdida last year. The Washington Post initially offered to publish it, but then stopped responding to my emails - I think they laid off their travel editor or something. I forgot all about it until it popped up in an unrelated mail search. So here ya go: In Search of the Lost City I blame Steven Spielberg. When I arrived on Colombia's Caribbean coast and learned that the remains of an ancient city lay hidden deep in the nearby jungle, visions of Indiana Jones began to dance in my head. A few days later I found myself trekking for six days along steep, muddy, snake- and insect-infested trails, fording whitewater rivers and crossing countless stepping-stone bridges, drinking the river water and sleeping in hammocks, all just to reach and return from the thousand-year-old ruins known as Ciudad Perdida. The lost city languished untouched for centuries until 1973, when it was rediscovered by treasure hunters. Two years later, af...

I have brooded, of late. I have lain awake and pondered. I have constructed lists of pros and cons. I have considered my past and my future. I have wondered what I stand for, what I believe, what it all means . And I have come to a momentous decision. The same decision that many of my friends have made, over the years. Again and again I chose not to follow them: but it seems clear to me now that the long-dreaded time has finally come. Some may see my choice as elitist, a clear signal that I am no longer one with the people 1 . Some may even take it as a personal betrayal. But that's a chance I have to take. I would like it to be known that I will understand if you choose to turn away from me in response to what I now must do. No hard feelings. I won't judge. Indeed, part of me will even sympathize. Some may wonder what I will do with my right middle finger, and the outer edge of my right thumb. I must admit that it is this which weighs most heavily on my mind. Once, when I foll...

Meanwhile, I've been noodling around with my Flickr account, and created a new and highly idiosyncratic Top 10 set. ('Cause really, I can't expect anyone to go through my 76 supercool shots, much less the 300+ prettycool ones.) Said ten being these (click to see larger versions):

I like New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof a lot, but I take some issue with today's column , which is largely about how to avoid theft, kidnapping battery and murder while travelling in the developing world. Not that his tips are invalid: but too many non-travellers already think that the developing world is a hive of lawless anarchy full of desperate starving people who will treat you as if your clothes were made of hundred-dollar bills, and that column will only reinforce that belief. But it ain't remotely so. OK, I've been mugged in Mexico City, pickpocketed in St. Petersburg, and had my bag stolen in Bolivia - but I've also spent more than a year of my life travelling in Africa and Asia, including a fair number of some theoretically very dubious places, mostly on my own and via local public transit, without once being robbed or feeling like I was in genuine danger. (I did witness a money-changing scam in Zambia once; not the same thing.) As for the risk sta...

I'm pleased to report that I've finished the third draft of my latest book, tentatively titled Swarm , and sent it off to my agents. It's a near-future technothriller about high-tech terrorists using unmanned aerial vehicles for smuggling and assassinations, honesty in relationships, extraordinary people, and the end of the world as we know it.

Here are a few of the highlight pictures from the month I just spent in Brazil and Argentina. Click to see larger versions: Ipanema beach. (Ipanema means "dangerous waters", incidentally.) Rio from the Corcovado (aka the famous Jesus statue.) Iguazu Falls. Yours truly in front of 700 megawatts at Itaipu Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric power plant. Caiman, Iguazu Falls. Lago Torres and Cerro Torres, Patagonia. Tiny human silhouettes before colossal wall of ice, Glacier Perito Moreno, Patagonia. Trekking across the glacier. Glacial blue. A bed of icy spikes. Sunset over Argentina. Full set here .

Well, whaddaya know: my pet-project squirrel novel Beasts of New York seems to be getting some online traction, a year after I released it into the wild. It tops the most recent most-downloaded list from Feedbooks , and site visits have more'n doubled this last month.

My scathing take on the One Laptop Per Child project at The Walrus seems to have kicked off a bit of a kerfuffle: OLPC News responded ; blogs at The Atlantic and the World Bank and The Daily Telegraph linked (with commentary), as did Michael Geist ; various others chimed in as well. ( eta: and then it went on , and on , and on , and on , and on , and on , and on .) Oh, the intoxicating attention! Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up! I do feel a bit guilty about it; it's a little like kicking a well-intentioned dead horse. But there are lessons to be learned from the carcass. (Or maybe I'm even completely wrong - which would be great ... but I really don't think so.)

Ooooo. Check out this preview of some gorgeous scenes from my (and artist Andrea Mutti's) upcoming graphic novel The Executor . Also, a nice shout-out from Quill & Quire .

Dear Ciudad de Mexico: Don't get me wrong. I think you're wonderful. A bewildering, bewitching, gargantuan kaleidoscope, almost incomprehensibly huge and diverse. Click! Cathedrals, plazas, and cobblestoned streets worthy of a European capital. Click! Grimy and teeming seas of concrete buildings from which bundles of rebar sprout waiting for new storeys that will never be built, full of hard-eyed men and women hustling beneath incredible spaghetti tangles of improvised electrical wiring. Click! A magnificent boulevard lined with statues, luxury shops, and gleaming skyscrapers is blocked by hundreds of indigenous protestors, some stark naked, most wearing placards adorned with the face of their oppressor as loincloths. Click! A 7-11 cheek by jowl with a pre-Aztec ruin. Click! A warehouse-sized building full of dozens of food stalls surrounding crowded cafeteria-style benches, redolent with meat and spices and chilis and cerveza, resounding with conversation and sizzling foo...

The efficient way: Embark at Airport A. Take off. Marvel at the earth from above. Land. Disembark at Airport B. The simple way, as exemplified by my border crossings into Nicaragua and Honduras: Go to busy bus terminal in seething city very early in the morning. Wait. Check in. Wait. Hand over checked luggage. Wait. Produce ticket. Wait. Board. Sit on comfy bus, high above the road, watching the verdant hills that surround the Interamericano highway. Hand your passport and US$8 to the bus conductor. Disembark at MIGRACION post. Run gauntlet of moneychangers. Change money. Stand around for awhile. Get your checked luggage out. Stand around for awhile. Queue. Wave luggage past customs guy. Stand around for awhile. Return luggage to under-bus compartment. Re-board. Listen to your iPod. (Reading is out of the question as the road is unstable and you'll get a headache within minutes.) Watch world go by, or the onboard movie. If you are unlucky, it will be VANTAGE POINT three times in a ...

It occurs to me that I haven't really mentioned that I'm now blogging irregularly and semi-regularly, respectively, for both tor.com and The Walrus . Click links to see indexes of my posts. There should be a new one on both sites sometime today, actually.

This is the wealthiest country I've ever been in where packs of feral dogs still prowl the downtown streets. Any symbolism is left as an exercise for the reader. I checked into tonight's hotel entirely in Spanish, which isn't that impressive, except that five days ago I would have been totally incapable of doing so. It's amazing how language immersion cues the brain; I think pretty much everything I picked up in Peru and Bolivia five years ago has returned. (Which, um, really isn't saying much, but still.) Spanish-speaking countries are frustrating. It's close enough to French and/or English that I can generally get most of the gist of signs, placards, museum writeups, etc, but when they go on for more than a paragraph the effort gets really mentally wearing - I actually got a headache figuring out a long historical explanation written on a wall in Cartagena's Palacio de la Inquisicion (sic?) yesterday. And in person, sheesh - until today, at least, they mig...

. Gring(o|a) Meets Chic(o|a) a play in five acts transcribed from Lonely Planet's Latin American Spanish , p. 112-118. Act I: A Party Gone Wrong Would you like a drink? What star sign are you? Shall we get some fresh air? Do you study or do you work? Do you have a light? I don't take drugs. I have...occasionally. Do you want to have a smoke? I'm high. You have a beautiful...body, eyes, hands, laugh, personality. No, thank you. I have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Excuse me, I have to go now. Your ego is out of control. I'm not interested. Hey, I'm not interested in talking to you. Leave me alone! Piss off! Act II: S/he Appears You're very nice. You're great. You're very attractive. I'm interested in you. I like you very much. Do you like me too? Can I kiss you? Will you take me home? Do you want to come inside for awhile? Act III: A Night Of Passion I want to make love to you. Do you have a condom? I won't do it without protection. I think we should st...

Prepping for my upcoming expedition has me thinking nostalgically about previous ones, and places I failed to see while in the neighbourhood. Not such a bad thing; when you depart a region you should always leave at least one (possible) gem behind you undiscovered, to have an reason to go back, and to cure the disease of feeling that you've "done" a place. (Besides, as I've long said, you can't go everywhere, and you probably shouldn't try.) Anyway, a few of those gems left buried in my wake: Asia 1997 : It'd be great to climb Mount Fuji in Japan, and to hike along Tiger Leaping Gorge in China. (And to go back to Yangshuo , but "places I'd like to go back to" is a different and probably longer post.) In Indonesia, didn't make it to Java to see Jakarta and Borobudur , nor to Komodo to see the dragons, though I had vague intentions to do both; and while I did make it to Lombok, I never got to chill out at the Gili Islands . Africa 1998 ...

I spent most of the last week in England, Belgium, and Holland, and let me just inflict some pictures on you before I get to the newsy part of this post. Click on any pic to see it bigger: As you can see, it was a fantasyland of mythical bicycles, buildings, and beasts. And I came back to discover that Page Six (how ironic!) of my alma mater's Engineering Alumni Newsletter is all about me. (breaks into song) Me, me, meeeee! I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Brunel! See for yourself . (Warning: that's a PDF link. Here's the HTMLized Google cache .) And whaddya know, some more pre-lettered pages from The Executor have snuck onto the Internet . Soon I will blog about some blogging news. How meta! See you then.

I consider myself an environmentalist. I'm in favour of spending large sums of money to maintain untouched wildernesses and biodiversity. I'm a fiscally conservative free-marketer, but I still believe clean air, clean water, and industrial pollution should be mandated and regulated. I think the evidence shows beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming is real, and increasing, and ultimately a very bad thing. (Though I have a lot of time for Bjorn Lomborg's argument that its costs are still outweighed by the benefits of a modern industrialized society; global warming is proven bad, but its alternatives, given current tech, are not proven better.) So why does so much of the modern environmental movement leave me cold and/or seething? Commenting on my friend Rob's blog some time ago, I compared modern environmentalism to the Original Sin meme, slightly mutated. He replied, trenchantly: Slightly mutated? Surely you jest, sir; I don’t see any mutation at all. In the beg...

So for years now I have managed to be away from Toronto while the film festival was on, and regretted this. This year I'm here, and it turns out I don't actually like film festivals: the crowds are oppressive, the tickets wildly overpriced, and you can neither buy popcorn nor bring coffee into the theatres. They do, however, offer tantalizing sneak peeks of future releases. So: if you get a chance to see JT Petty's The Burrowers , especially on the big screen, seize it. Set in the Old West's Dakota Territories, it's about a search party sent after the survivors of what seemed to be an Indian massacre ... but who, it turns out, were victims of something(s) entirely else. Taut, lyrical, riveting, gorgeous, subtly allegorical, and haunting, It's more a western with horror tropes than the converse, closer to The Searchers than The Slugs , and the scariest thing in it isn't the trackless wastes or the inhuman monsters, but man's inhumanity to man. Very highl...

The theme this year was "American Dream". As ever, click on any photo to see a larger version. welcome to the vacant heart of the wild west I spent my first day heavily sleep deprived, because it took me five hours to traverse the twenty miles from Gerlach to the Gate. Dawn at the Gate. As ever, the Man himself was something of an attention magnet. A triptych from the 11-story steel structure Babylon (aka "The Hilton"): One of the most difficult things about any attempt to describe Black Rock City is the total and utter transformation the city undergoes at dawn and dusk; day and night are like two different cities. You really have to be there to understand, but here are a few comparable shots: Day Man and Night Man. Day tree. Night tree. The Flaming Lotus Girls' Mutopia , easily the most awesome thing on the playa this year, by day. By night. I camped with Snack Food Glory Hole, aka Best. Camp. Ever. The glory hole. We snacked hundreds of hungry mouths. SFGH...