Deepwater climbing in Bermuda's Clarence Cove.

Credit: Andrew Burr

Bermuda's locals like to describe their island homeland with a joke: "It's 68,000 alcoholics clinging to a rock." But that description isn't at all accurate. Most of them are also clinging to their golf clubs. This outcropping of coral and sand of finely ground seashells 650 miles east of the Outer Banks certainly has a preoccupation with rum (which is tasty enough to warrant the attention), golf (there are more courses per square mile than anywhere else), and genteel pursuits like sailing. Its pink beaches are the site of countless romantic declarations; its crystal caves are a day trip for hordes of cruise ship passengers. As one Bermuda native describes the visitors, "It's the overfed, the newly wed, and the nearly dead."

RELATED: The Best Places to Live, 2016^[1]

But lately Bermuda has been set upon by a more adventurous people who exploit the natural riches sometimes overlooked between the marquee golf courses and the honeymoon coves. They're bounding along jungle trails by bike, rock climbing, and doing backflips off cliffs into the turquoise coves below. The real beauty of Bermuda is its manageability — not only is it a two-hour flight from New York, but you can see it all in three days' time.

Day One
The island is only 21 miles end to end, so a day of unstructured exploration on a rented moped (which are ubiquitous because of the country's one-car-per-household limit) or a mountain bike is an obvious and easy first step. Pick a point, east or west; no matter the route, you'll be awash in Bermuda's photogenic appeal: colorful stucco outcrops, amazing harbor views, and a string of postcard beaches (nearly all public) you can ramble through. Make your way from Horseshoe Bay up to Warwick Long Bay, one stunning beach after another, following a path in some spots and scrambling over rocks to get to others. And when you settle on your favorite, take a swim.

RELATED: Is Everything Better in Boulder?^[2]

You can be back at the hotel by midday for a nap or a gear change or lunch, which, if you're smart, will include some fish chowder. This deeply flavored, auburn-colored soup is everywhere on the island, and everyone has an opinion about who makes it best or which of its roughly 28 ingredients (from the head of a fresh grouper to three shots of Gosling's rum) are most essential. Billy Phillips, a former firefighter whose recipe won the Outerbridge Cup a few years ago, says the key to the soup's rich broth is "the slimy jelly that comes from boiling down the grouper's head. That's what gives it body." Never mind. It's delicious whether you get it at one of the larger hotels or at a backstreet gem called the Lobster Pot.

(The pristine sands of Warwick Beach. Photograph by Massimo Calmonte / Getty Images)

Day Two
No one will confuse Bermuda with a mountain-biking mecca like Moab: Space is limited, and the island's elevation tops out at about 350 feet. But that hasn't stopped Hans Hirschi and James Holloway. They channel Bermuda's growing sense of stoke into a 10-race bike series called the Fat Tire Massive, which stages mile-lap courses out of whatever terrain they find, including a creepy overgrown estate property that's lain dormant since the Thirties. Hirschi and Holloway take me across the island a slightly gentler way, on the Railway Trail^[3], which was once the site of the island's end-to-end railroad. Now it's mostly a wide fire road that cuts through thick vegetation and rock and winds past destination golf courses and through canopied jungle and residential areas. Hirschi assures me that it's the best way to cross the island. It's certainly the most fun. We take plenty of detours — to beaches and secret lobstering spots, as well as a tiny church that dates from the 1600s — and wind up at the Royal Naval Dockyard, at the island's tip. Nearby are a few rowdy bars, a boulangerie, and boathouses, like Oracle's, whose team is prepping for the America's Cup, which will take place here in 2017.

From there I take a 20-minute ferry ride back to the Hamilton Princess Hotel^[4], where New York chef Marcus Samuelsson recently opened a soul food–island mash-up called Marcus'^[5]. The place makes its own ginger beer, elevating the Dark 'n' Stormy to a slightly less sweet refresher well worth a stop. I still have time to cruise out to Clarence Cove (in Admiralty House Park) to meet Grant Farquhar, a Scottish psychiatrist who moved to the island eight years ago and almost instantly became the godfather of Bermuda rock climbing. "There was no recorded climbing when I got here," he explains. "They thought I was going to kill myself." As it turns out, Bermuda's low, accessible overhangs are ideally suited for deepwater solo climbing, which lets you act out your Alex Honnold fantasies by busting a few moves you'd never try if you weren't hanging 25 feet above a turquoise cove. "The worst that can happen," he tells me, "is you fall into 77-degree water and you have to try again." I suffer this fate time and again, and have to restart myself by climbing through a cave or swimming over to a humiliating rope ladder, while Farquhar remains dry. Neither of us is complaining.

RELATED: Flagstaff: The Four-Day Weekend^[6]

Day Three
Bermuda's low-key check-out process, combined with an afternoon departure, converts a travel day into an action-packed half-day. Mine starts with a scooter ride to the John Smith's Bay Beach. Within minutes of locking my bike, I am snorkeling along the reef. It's a healthy, decent-size wall of rock and coral with striking visibility and a kaleidoscopic array of native fish. After, I'd be content to spend an hour shopping for local rums or lounging in the hotel pool. But Mike Wilson, a former freestyle skier who came to Bermuda three years ago to get serious about jumping off cliffs, shows up with a couple of headlamps. "You have time to check out a cave?" he asks.

Soon we are scrambling through an expansive cave system of crystalline pools, massive columns, and delicate, hollow soda-straw stalactites that hang from the ceiling. Mike finds the glassy pool he sometimes dives into. The trick, he tells me, is jumping out far enough to clear the rock below without scraping your head on the stalactites above. "That would suck," he states. More crucial, it means I wouldn't be able to stop for a sandwich on the way to the airport. Every visitor here is steered to Art Mels Spicy Dicy^[7], an institution renowned for its sloppy fish sandwich, with coleslaw and tartar sauce, on raisin bread. Instead, skip the line and T-shirts and opt for the Flame^[8], which, unlike Mels, features only fresh local fish.

Then get to the airport. There's still time for a Dark 'n' Stormy before the flight.

Get the latest in gear, fitness, travel & more delivered directly to your inbox. Sign up now^[9] for the Men’s Journal newsletter.

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: The Best Places to Live, 2016 (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} RELATED: Is Everything Better in Boulder? (www.mensjournal.com)
3. ^{^} Railway Trail (www.bermudarailway.net)
4. ^{^} Hamilton Princess Hotel (thehamiltonprincess.com)
5. ^{^} Marcus' (www.fairmont.com)
6. ^{^} RELATED: Flagstaff: The Four-Day Weekend (www.mensjournal.com)
7. ^{^} Art Mels Spicy Dicy (www.facebook.com)
8. ^{^} Flame (www.facebook.com)
9. ^{^} Sign up now (www.mensjournal.com)

Credit: Buyenlarge / Getty Images

It's been gobbling up ships, downing planes, and stoking legends of lost adventurers for centuries, but a group of European scientists say they may finally know the secret behind the so-called "Bermuda Triangle": methane explosions.

The Bermuda Triangle traditionally extends from Bermuda to Miami and Puerto Rico, but the answers to its purported mysteries could lie further afield in the Barents Sea off the coast of natural gas-rich Norway. That's where scientists with the Arctic University of Norway recently discovered giant craters on the seabed that could mark spots where massive bubbles of methane exploded.

Details of the discovery are expected to be released next month at an annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union, but an early look in the U.K.'s Sunday Times^[1][2] suggests that these craters, which are up to a half-mile wide and 150 feet deep, were caused by deposits of oil and gas buried deep in the seafloor sediments that accumulated to a point where they burst through into the water above.

RELATED: A Mysterious Death at the South Pole
^[3]

"Multiple giant craters exist on the seafloor in an area in the west-central Barents Sea... and are probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas," researchers from the Arctic University of Norway told the Times.

So what does that have to do with the Bermuda Triangle? Scientists think there is a possibility that such bubbles of gas could threaten ships and may explain an abnormal number of disappearances in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean. Essentially, explosions like the ones they've discovered in the Barents Sea would send up a huge amount of water, potentially sucking up any vessels that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The theory that enormous blowouts of methane gas can sink ships isn't entirely new. The proposal from Norwegian scientists seems to add credence to an idea first floated in a 2003 study^[4] published in the American Journal of Physics, which found that loose methane bubbles could indeed sink a ship. Researchers from Monash University, in Australia, built a model ship and released a large bubble underneath it to see if the vessel would lose its buoyancy. It did, but only when it was on the edge or in the trough of the bubble.

Whether this theory merits further study within the North Atlantic depends a great deal on whether or not you believe that the Bermuda Triangle exists as a phenomenon, which many scientists do not.

Mentions of strange activities in the region date all the way back to Christopher Columbus, who recorded bizarre compass bearings during his 1492 voyage through the present-day Bahamas. The phrase "Bermuda Triangle" didn't exist until author Vincent Gaddis penned a sensational 1964 cover article^[5] on the region's "supernatural forces" for the pulp magazine Argosy. Gaddis went on to mythicize the unsolved mysteries we now associate with the region, many of which modern-day historians argue were the result of poor weather and human error in what is, after all, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names doesn't list the Bermuda Triangle as an official name, nor does the U.S. Coast Guard recognize its existence. 

"In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes," the service states on its website, adding, "no extraordinary factors have ever been identified."

Insurance market Lloyd's of London similarly determined that, proportionally, no more ships have sunk in the Bermuda Triangle than any other parts of the ocean. Skeptics of the latest findings argue that there is no proof that gas explosions are common — let alone exist — in the region. Bill Dillon, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, noted in a recent Q&A article^[6] on the Bermuda Triangle that there have been no large releases of gas hydrates in the region for the past 15,000 years.

"The Bermuda Triangle," he argues "is a fairy tale." 

Get the latest in gear, fitness, travel & more delivered directly to your inbox. Sign up now^[7] for the Men’s Journal newsletter.

References

1. ^{^} Sunday (www.thesundaytimes.co.uk)
2. ^{^} Times (www.thesundaytimes.co.uk)
3. ^{^} RELATED: A Mysterious Death at the South Pole (www.mensjournal.com)
4. ^{^} a 2003 study (www.researchgate.net)
5. ^{^} 1964 cover article (www.physics.smu.edu)
6. ^{^} a recent Q&A article (web.archive.org)
7. ^{^} Sign up now (www.mensjournal.com)

Credit: Mark Emery / Getty Images

The surest sign you’ve landed in the Alaska, the land of glaciered peaks and midnight sunsets, is the stream of empty Duct Taped coolers clogging up the luggage carousel — even tourist know its the cheapest method of bringing back salmon fillets. And yes, the primacy of fishing here is unquestioned. Come summer, all eyes turn towards the rivers, where the salmon, millions of single-minded torpedoes, begin their upstream migration. And while there are plenty of fisheries that support all five species of Pacific salmon — king, coho, pink, sockeye, and chum — there are only a select few where you can catch all of them, on a fly rod, in single day.

RELATED: How to Fillet a Fish
^[1]

In piscatory circles, the feat is called Salmon Grand Slam, and it’s only possible in late July or early August, when the kings, sockeyes, pinks, and chums overlap on their kamikaze spawning missions with the coho salmon, the last to hightail it upriver. In Alaska, the only single river where stand a chance of pulling off the Slam is the Kanektok, a 90-mile river that courses through the low plains and mud flats of Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, on its way to the Bering Sea. Locals call it the Fish Factory, and it doesn’t disappoint. "The Kanektok is not a real big river," says Bryan Burke, the camp manager at Alaska West, one of a half -dozen lodges on the river’s banks. "But it has everything: deep water, shallow water, a strong main channel, and braids. There’s more traffic here than across the sea in Russia, in Kamchatka, but it’s pretty damn close in terms of its remoteness and numbers of fish."

In July, most fisherman at the lodge are chasing chum and kings in the morning, near the mouth of the river, where the fish are freshest and fight hardest. In the afternoon or early evening, it’s tradition to downsize the rod to reel in a bunch of sockeye, the best-eating salmon, to haul back home. Occasionally you’ll catch a pink, and then all of sudden you’re only a coho away come dinnertime. "Completing the slam: That’s probably the only exception we may for taking clients out at the end of the day," says Burke, "We get just as excited, and someone will likely say ‘we gotta go do this.’" Of course, it’s fishing, which means no guarantees. But if you do miss out, there’s always tomorrow. And what the hell, you’ll still be going home with a cooler-full of fillets.

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: How to Fillet a Fish (www.mensjournal.com)

Credit: DEA / C. Rives / Getty Images

Unlike Saint Martin to the north, Anguilla does very little to entice tourists with deep pockets to spend their time and money on the island. There's hardly any nightlife, save for spots like Elvis’s, the bare-bones beach bar boat and the occasional roadside party (we recommend the informal tented bar at grocery Foods 95) you have to drive around to find. The white sand beaches and dazzling reefs are free from Jet Skis zooming through the water thanks to a government ban. The clear turquoise water is warm even in winter, and the view from any point on the island is breathtaking. Finding a reason not to relax when visiting Anguilla is difficult. 

RELATED: The Best Beaches in the World ^[1]

Besides turning your mind off, the best reason to go to Anguilla is the food. For an island that's barely 16 miles long and 3 miles wide, deciding on where to snag a great meal is difficult when there are dozens of spots to choose from. For such a small island that prides itself on being the most low-key destination in the region, you go to Anguilla to chill out in the sun, but you also go there to indulge. 

For first-timers, the unofficial cocktail of the island is a rum punch, usually made with some combination of local fruit juices and rum. Sure, you can order up a glass of it in Jamaica or any of the other tropical islands, but stop into Roy’s Bayside Grill^[2] on Sandy Ground and order one of Joan's truly exemplary rum punch cocktails, which boasts a float of nutmeg and white oak aged Myer's Rum on top. This old school English pub on the beach has been serving them up since 1981, and the drinks are just the beginning of a laid-back meal of what might be the best crock of French onion soup you'll ever have, red snapper so fresh it practically swam into the kitchen, and a traditional side of rice and peas. If you have room, order a slice (or two) of owner Mandy Bossons' delectable coconut cake. 

You can usually count on getting fresh mahi-mahi or red snapper most of the time, and the same goes for tuna. Straw Hat,^[3] located on the magnificent Meads Bay beach, serves it up at lunch in a banh mi sandwich, with pickled veggies and ponzu aioli. For dinner, start with their bigeye tuna flatbread, and follow with a grilled Caribbean lobster (they don't have the massive claws of their American cousins) caught by Anguillan fishermen in the very waters you can see from Straw Hat's beachfront patio. A meal like this, had just a few yards from the ocean, is pretty tough to beat. 

RELATED: Miami: The Four Day Weekend ^[4]

Scilly Cay — a small coral island only accessible by boat, consists of a bare-bones kitchen (Scillay Cay doesn't have electricity), some beach chairs, unforgettable curry BBQ chicken, fresh lobster, and a former tennis pro owner and host who will undoubtedly flirt with your wife — is a must. The same goes for the Neapolitan-style pizza at the recently opened roadside spot, Artisan,^[5] in the Island Harbour section of the island. While there’s no beach view there, the pies and ever-changing daily specials make it worth the trek. 

But if you absolutely must have the beach as the background to your meal, Nat's Place on the curiously named Junk's Hole Bay has to be on your list. This little shack at the end of a long and rocky path of tropical shrubs and cacti looks straight out of a Corona commercial. Besides the view, Nat's Place serves up spicy chicken, ribs, seafood, and the best johnnycakes on the entire island. Between Junk's Hole's clear shallow waters and colorful reefs and the food, it would be reasonable to want to revisit the spot more than once, but then you might miss out on discovering yet another fabulous spot on what could be the most relaxing island in the world. 

References

1. ^{^} RELATED: The Best Beaches in the World  (www.mensjournal.com)
2. ^{^} Roy’s Bayside Grill (www.roysbaysidegrill.com)
3. ^{^} Straw Hat, (www.strawhat.com)
4. ^{^} RELATED: Miami: The Four Day Weekend  (www.mensjournal.com)
5. ^{^} Artisan, (www.facebook.com)

Credit: Andrew Watson / Getty Images

Originally published in Yahoo! Travel^[1]

Peru is surging right now. Emerging from years of hyperinflation and the misdeeds of corrupt politicians, the country's upswing is reflected in stellar cuisine, a popping art scene, and unique overnighting options — all set against a stunning backdrop of natural beauty. From the rural outdoors to happening city-life, here are five attributes that make us love Peru.

The Cocktail Scene
At recently opened La Barra (the casual restaurant attached to tasting-menu hot spot Astrid & Gastón), Aaron Diaz commandeers the bar. He developed his drink-mixing style at chef Grant Achatz's fabulous, cutting-edge cocktail emporium Aviary in Chicago. Not surprisingly, the drinks program at La Barra is wildly ambitious. One cocktail redefines the notion of scotch on the rocks: Diaz brings out a shallow tumbler of scotch with a big, round ice cube peeking over the rim. Accompanying the drink is a good-sized rock. Diaz instructs that the ice cube be smashed with the rock. The cube cracks, peaty smoke rises, and the taste is as sensational as the presentation.

The River Dolphins
While cruising the Amazon River, you will be treated to sightings of pink dolphins, branch-hopping squirrel monkeys, and energy-preserving sloths (yes, they move that slowly). Parakeets and macaws (among the 1,300 species of birds here) hide out in trees, and giant anacondas can be spotted hunting along the riverbeds. Some high-end river cruise companies — such as Aqua Expeditions — are equipped with outdoor whirlpool spas. On the low end, you can rent a hammock and float aboard a ferry. Amazon River cruises, regardless of budget, operate out of Iquitos (the largest city in the world that remains inaccessible by road — you fly there from Lima); the best time to go is between November and April, when the river runs high.

Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas that remained undiscovered until 1911, should be on the itinerary of everyone who visits Peru. But there's no reason to get there via the conventional Inca Trail. Instead, hike the less commercial, lesser-known Salkatany Trail for stunning views of snowcapped mountain peaks and glaciers, muscle-soothing hot springs in Santa Theresa, limited regulations, and small crowds. Austin Adventures offers a wide range of tour packages there.

(Getty Images)

The Boutique Hotels
When Susana de la Puente decided to open Hotel B in Lima's bourgeois-bohemian neighborhood of Barranco, loading it with art seemed like a bit of a no-brainer. After all, she also happens to own Galeria Lucia de la Puente next door, one of the city's top purveyors of modern art. As it should, Hotel B brims with stunning work. It bursts with an eye-popping array of paintings, photos, and sculptures from Peru and beyond. The hotel itself is a 17-room boutique, housed in a gorgeous mansion that once served as a Peruvian presidential retreat. Smartly, the rooms have high ceilings and are elegant and spare. Those qualities bring out the beauty of the vintage fixtures and design touches, while giving your eyes a rest from all the stimulation in the rest of the hotel.

Dune Buggies
Everybody knows about the rain forests of Peru, but fewer people are aware of the desert. Huacachina, a five-hour drive south of Lima, is an amazing place for sandboarding and bouncing around on dune buggies. Be sure to wax your board for maximum velocity, and don't be embarrassed about sliding down the dunes on your belly, using the board like a sled. Schedule your dune buggy ride for the late afternoon so that you can catch one of the unparalleled sunsets over the desert vista.

RELATED:

References

1. ^{^} Yahoo! Travel (www.yahoo.com)