Spanish colonizers christened it Isla del Fuego (Island of Fire) for the glow given off by swarms of fireflies at night. In the past century however, the island province of Siquijor in the Philippines has gained a reputation for its folk healers. More notoriously, stories about sorcery, witchcraft and spirit beings have added to its mystique.

Since ancient times, new beginnings – that’s carnival. It’s our craving to shuck memories of the slings and arrows that paralyze us. New Year’s resolutions disappear in the first head wind, but carnival has been serious about new beginnings since the Greeks partied to praise Dionysus and the Romans thanked Bacchus for wine and flora, fertility heavy on their minds.

There was not a hint of litter on the street. Mexican children frolicked on the beach. Los Pacenos (La Paz natives) offered gentle smiles as they jogged past me along the Malecón – La Paz’s bay-front boardwalk that stretches along the historic downtown. It was hard to take it all in with the sun setting on the glimmering Sea of Cortez.

Someone described it as “hell on the outside and heaven on the inside.” Another compared eating one to “sitting on the toilet while eating your favorite ice cream.” Others weren’t as generous. Henri Mouhot, the French naturalist and explorer who popularized the ruins of Angkor to the West, didn’t mince words: “On first tasting it I thought it like the flesh of some animal in a state of putrefaction.”

The Philippines often lies in the path of typhoons in the western Pacific which means we’re often prepared for the worse. But a month ago three consecutive cyclones struck the country within a span of 18 days, one of them the strongest in the world this year and among the strongest in recorded history, a streak of calamities unparalleled in the country’s history.

Elsewhere I wrote about a more formal Monterosola red wine tasting but their whites simply lent themselves to an informal late summer brunch . . .

A speedboat departs the Iquitos slums, which hover over the water on stilts and rafts to accommodate mercurial high-water marks that vary 15 meters with the Andes snowmelt. Devouring Peru's Amazon for several hours, the boat slows as it enters the tributary Yanayacu that snakes through the jungle like an anaconda.

A few years ago, four intrepid explorers from Ontario Canada joined eleven others for a 500+ K cycle along the Camino de Santiago pilgrim trail in Northern Spain. Here are some of our experiences and impressions from this glorious trip.

Capri is a lovely little island that floats in the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Naples and where the air is scented with bougainvillea that tumbles in wild abandon over the garden walls of white-washed villas.

Ok, if my big brother, travel editor Ed Boitano, can do, then so can I. Though, I must confess this pilgrimage piece is also inspired by John Lennon. His passage in In My Life goes something like this...