You might also be a fan of the late author Douglas Adams, who wrote Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and the genius dictionary of made-up words, the Meaning of Liff.  In 1992, he wrote a book called Last Chance to See, a travelogue about his journey to visit animals on the verge of extinction.  Although the book has dated (some rare creatures have now completely vanished), I’m struck at how ahead of his time Douglas Adams was.  Not only did he give us the meaning of life (the number 42, in case you forgot), but he foresaw the sad reality that a modern bucket list is not so much about doing something before you die, but before it disappears.  

I write these words in the midst of a second unprecedented heat wave in a normally mild British Columbia summer.  The first claimed over 500 lives in just three days, a staggering number that’s largely slipped under the flood of the 24-Covid news cycle.  Meanwhile hundreds of wildfires are burning in the interior, smoking our skies sepia, evacuating thousands of people and torching the entire town of Lytton, a popular destination for river rafting.  Scientists estimate over a billion marine animals cooked in the first heatwave, and more are undoubtably boiling in their shells this weekend as the temperature and humidex approach the mid 40°Cs.   Climate change has come home to roost, and techno-evangelism (technology will save us!) suddenly rings a little hollow for Pacific Island nations soon be underwater, communities going up in flames, loved ones burying their dead or biodiversity battered by urban encroachment, poaching and agriculture.   I know you come here for good news, but since I’m a pragmatic optimist, we have to accept that the near and far future will suffer increasingly extreme weather events, causing unparalleled environmental, financial and cultural devastation.  All I can hope is that this finds you in a safe and stable nation with enough progressive foresight and resources to prepare for this eventuality.  All I can hope is that my bucket list books do not become works of history – much like Last Chance to See -  a review of destinations that also no longer exist.  Unfortunately,  not much has been gained in thirty years since Douglas Adams sounded his convincing warning bell, and so much has been lost.   

My new ‘Bucket Listed’ column for Canadian Geographic Travel combines commentary with my travel recommendations.  Each column is short and punchy and well worth reading, especially my second column about Indigenous tourism.   My joyous and poignant Celebration of Canada column was sunk by the sombre nature of this year’s Canada Day, which coincided with horrific discoveries of residential school graves,  sparking outrage at the nation and Catholic church’s complicity in an obvious attempt at cultural genocide.  It’s a heavy topic for non-Indigenous Canadians to grasp, which is why I highly recommend reading Peace Pipe Dreams: The Truth about Lies about Indians which uses a lighter touch to help us understand the many challenges and injustices that Indigenous communities face today.  Next,  I explored risk tolerance with a column entitled:  Is it Safe to Travel Again?  before jumping into practical tips for planning bucket list road trips and revealing some of my favourite, less-known experiences in every province.  

Speaking of road-trips, I recently returned from a little adventure of Vancouver Island with the kids, ticking off some must-do experiences along the way.  The new Malahat Skywalk was spectacular, with a few unexpected offerings (like a slide, boardwalk and adventure net) to elevate the experience well above just another roadside attraction.  I’ve long heard about caving on Vancouver Island, so I’m a little shocked it took me so long to get to the Horne Lake Caves.  I just assumed they were typical show-caves, but it’s more aligned with my best spelunking adventures abroad:  hardhats, overalls, scrambling, twisting, ducking and climbing.   Letting the kids hammer away for fossils under the guidance of an enthusiastic and experienced dinosaur museum curator was a stroke of genius, and we finished off at a fun camping festival in a forest near Courtenay.  After 60 days of no rain, the heavens opened up and drowned us with the heaviest rainfall in years, soaking the thirsty fields and farms, and maintaining my 85% record of a mud-soaked fiesta whenever I camp at a festival.  The Canadian government should just drop me off with a tent, a band and a DJ in the country’s most drought-impacted regions:  statistical probability will take care of the rest.  You can read about my Vancouver Island road-trip in my latest post on the newly relaunched www.canadianbucketlist.com
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​Finally, I want to give a shout-out to the team at Great Canadian Trails, who are also passionate about remarkable Canadian outdoor adventures.   You don’t need to be a hardcore backcountry explorer, cyclist, hiker, or paddler to experience the joys of a true bucket list adventure.  GCT offer guided and self-guided tours that take care of all the logistics and make these kind of adventures far more achievable, accessible and enjoyable than you’d ever expect.   We’ve been working together for years, they’re great people, and I’m thrilled they’ve managed to endure the challenges of Covid to emerge even more determined to help me build your lifetime highlight reel.    

​A growing worldwide underground sub-culture, local Alley Cat races have their origin with bicycle messengers in North America.   In order to test local couriers’ streetwise knowledge, their speed and ability to navigate obstacles, Alley Cat races were set up in cities like Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago and Vancouver.  Legends were born as couriers, often seen racing around these urban centers in dangerous traffic, challenged each other for titles, prizes, but most often fun.    Races consist of checkpoints to be reached, and in some cases unusual tasks to be performed on arrival. Upping the thrill factor, most couriers ride fixed-gear bikes that have no brakes, no gears, and require an expert level of control and ability.   Fixed gears are popularly used in the courier messenger community because they’re easy to maintain, and for anyone with a job requiring them to run into buildings to deliver packages, the bikes are confusing and difficult for thieves.    Hong Kong has seen the emergence of an urban cyclist community, attracted to the lifestyle and challenges of riding on fixed-gears. Amidst the choking car and foot traffic beneath the late-night neon lights of the Central district, I went along for the city’s first unofficial Alley Cat race.  When it comes Alley Cat racing, it's important to note that nothing is official anyway. ​

About half a dozen riders meet at 10pm outside a coffee shop.   The manifesto is handed out, including a checklist of destinations and tasks that must be reached in order before reaching the finish line.   One of them requires racers to find two girls and tells them that they are “sooo... beautiful!”  Another requires us to find a bald man named 9-Ball and rub his head.   In each case, a third party must sign our manifesto to prove the task has been accomplished.   We count down to the start, and the race is on, each contestant racing off into the crowds.   I decide to shadow a more experienced veteran, since without him I’d be lost in the traffic and spaghetti streets within seconds.    We pedal frantically, every second counts.   A policeman shouts at me from the sidewalk, but I’ve already disappeared around a corner.  Alley Cat racing is a do-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of activity.   Biking in a light drizzle at night in Hong Kong traffic is not for the fainthearted, neither is racing on a bike that, perhaps I forgot to mention, doesn’t stop with squeeze on the handlebar.  But with the wind in my hair, the exhilarating speed and the quasi-legal thrill , I can certainly understand the attraction – it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about having fun, and hopefully surviving to trade stories at the finish line. ​

I compiled this definitive list with two very simple rules: 
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a) The items mentioned below should be available to members of the paying - and no doubt occasionally insane - public
b) To qualify, the thought of each dish should make my stomach swill over, my throat seize up, my nose twitch, and my eyes rattle.

This list demonstrates that we will devour whatever we are culturally conditioned to consume, and whatever creature with the distasteful misfortune to be around us if we are hungry.  Presenting my global menu for those of iron will and titanium gut: ​

Deep Fried Hairy Spiders
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Personally, I just didn’t have the stomach for arachnoids when I was travelling by bus through Cambodia.   A popular roadside snack, the large spiders are eaten in big bites, or pulled apart, leg by leg, and consumed like French fries.  Black bug juice dribbles down the chin as you reach the best part of meal, the pincers and the bulbous back.   All the poison is removed when the spiders are fried, and apparently the appeal lies in its crunchy-chewy texture.   Along came a spider, and sat down beside her, and so Muffin just ate the damn thing. ​

Honorary Mentions: Lutifisk is a fish Norwegian weapon of mass culinary destruction.  Laos Snake Whiskey is sold with farm-bred cobras at the bottom, some with scorpions for extra zing.   We should also leave room for cockroaches, haggis, and cuy (deep-fried guinea pig).  And how can I forget my delicious fruit bat stew in beautiful New Caledonia? ​

  have entered a cage four times to stare into the eyeballs of four famously dangerous creatures that one is strongly advised – and I cannot emphasize this enough - not to stare into the eyeballs of.     Psychologists could unpack a fascinating study behind the motivations behind the people who choose, willingly and with good money, to get close to animals like sharks, crocodiles and lions.   Not that such a study has ever been commissioned, since scientists of all ilk are currently laundering lab coats for more pressing concerns.  Since we live in an age of misinformation, I may as well just invent one.   According to global peer reviewed research study (*that was neither peer-reviewed, researched nor studied), thousands of people choose to cage-dive with dangerous animals because: ​

Curiously, 63% of these non-existent participants said they harboured a deep and unexplainable fear of the above-mentioned animals, and 12% said they only signed up having felt guilty for entering the booking office with the sole intention of using the toilet.   Whatever floats your boat, and that's where we'll begin, bobbing off the east coast of South Africa on the lookout for man-eating Great White Sharks. Since they are widely known for bearing progressive and egalitarian natures, the Great Whites eat women too. ​

When I entered the cage, I was still between the teeth of the shark phobia that had plagued me since watching Jaws on a hotel movie channel as a 6-year-old on his first beach holiday.   Fast forward a few decades, and I’d seen far better movies which highlighted the vital role sharks play in the eco-system, the horrific carnage behind their hunting for shark-fin soup, and their overall misunderstanding within popular culture.  Fact is (and this is a real fact): Sharks are amazing.  If they wanted to eat people, hundreds of us would be attacked every day, all around the world.   In reality, you have more chance of struck by lightning or drowning in a bathtub (this is also true).    I jumped into the cage, and had a life-changing experience with a rather large great white who could have attacked me from beneath (where the thick cage inexplicably and unnervingly morphed into a wire-hangar-thin mesh).  From that moment,  I resolved to learn how to scuba dive, and have since shared an underwater, cage-free space with sharks from Hawaii to the Papua New Guinea.  That first cage dive truly changed my life for the better.  If you insist and persist on eating shark-fin soup, please look at yourself in the mirror, then jump out a high window.  Millions of sharks needlessly massacred each year will thank you. ​

Crocodiles are an entirely different beast.  For starters, they simply want to eat you.  No curiosity here, no meeting of creatures or confusion because you look like a seal.  To a crocodile, we look like lunch, which is why they quickly surrounded me in the pool.  At Cango Wildlife Ranch in South Africa, I entered a steel cage and was lowered into a pool.  At Crocosaurus Cove in Darwin, northern Australia, I was inside a cylindrical Perspex tube with a few too many croc teeth scrapes for comfort.  The Nile and Saltwater dinosaurs that decided I looked too delicious to pass up bumped me around a bit, their large orange reptilian eyes gazing deep into my soul.  17% of our fictional survey participants mentioned they enjoyed the sensation of feeling like prey.  I, for one, did not.  While my shark cage encounter made me want to dive with (admittedly less fierce) sharks in the wild, the croc cages left me twitchy about the Crocodile Warning signs I later encountered at popular swimming holes outside of Darwin and in tropical north Queensland.   The mere thought of saltwater crocs patrolling the coast keeps locals off the beaches, and one taxi driver told me about a pet dog that ran to the beach, jumped into the water, and was promptly gobbled up by a lurking croc.   According to a BBC Report, the  best tip for surviving a crocodile attack is to avoid getting attacked.  That's one helpful report, I don't know what we'd do without it. ​

Somewhere in Bohol, Philippines. ​

Get over Jaws.  Sharks rarely attack humans, are vital to the marine eco-system, and as any diver will tell you, a thrill to meet in their natural habitat.   With rampant shark finning, the entire species is at risk.   Encounter them underwater, and you’ll quickly realize just how beautiful, and harmless sharks really are.  ​

Mossel Bay, South Africa, Great White
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The coast of South Africa’s Eastern Cape is full of Great White Sharks, the most feared predator in the ocean.  Cage diving is popular and while thrilling, is completely safe.   Years later, I can still see that Great White coming towards me, literally rattling my cage. ​

Malapascua Island, Philippines, Threshers
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A stunning tropical island, Malapascua is the only place where you can dive with thresher sharks every day, due to “cleaning stations” that attract the sharks in nearby Monad Shoal.  Shy around divers, threshers are known for their distinctive tail. ​

Shark Reef, Fiji
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For those looking for variety, Fiji’s Shark Reef Marine Reserve has a regular shark population of 8 different species: Whitetip Reef, Blacktip Reef,  Grey Reef, Tawny Nurse, Sicklefin Lemon, Silvertip, Bull and Tiger sharks are all found in the reserve. ​

Galapagos Islands,, Hammerheads
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During the December to May season, divers on live-aboards yachts around Darwin and Wolf Islands can find themselves in the water with thousands of hammerheads. Aggressive predators for marine life , hammerheads do not attack humans unless provoked. ​

Palau – Reef sharks
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With 50 metre plus visibility clear Palau is renowned as one of the best diving locations in the world. Since establishing the world’s first shark sanctuary in 2001, it’s also one of the best places to dive with sharks. ​

​In a tiny room, crammed with gadgets and monitors, sits a small button.  24 hours a day, an officer monitors the equipment, awaiting a single phone call.   On orders, he places a key into a slot, and turns clockwise.   Punching in an access code, he takes a breath, and pushes the small white knob.  In just over half an hour, a missile carrying a payload of ten thermonuclear warheads hits multiple targets in the United States.    In the ensuing carnage, each warhead vaporizes an area of 200 square kilometres, along with every living creature inside it.   Millions die instantly, millions more slowly from the release of deadly radiation.   Life as we know it ceases to exist, as thousands of similar missiles criss-cross the skies seeing their targets.  All it takes is one push of the button, located in a control room 33-metres below the Ukrainian countryside.   My finger draws near.   My hand starts to shake. ​

Before its independence in 1991, Ukraine had more nuclear missiles than any other country outside the United States and Russia.   Strategically and secretly distributed throughout the countryside, missile units were surrounded by armed guards, 3000-volt electric fences, and protected from attack in deep underground bunker silos built to survive a nuclear war.   With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly autonomous nation of Ukraine chose to become a nuclear-weapon free zone, and with US support, dismantled its missiles and bases.   Today, just three and half hours drive outside of Kiev near the town of Pervomaisk, the legacy of Armageddon is open to the public inside one of the world’s most bone-chilling tourist attractions. ​

Former Colonel Mikael Kamenskov had his finger on the button for over a decade.   If the orders had come down, as they nearly did on several occasions, he was responsible for pressing the button, launching the missiles, and annihilating entire cities.   Moustached and balding, he is serious man, explaining the detailed security measures and base design using scale models and a stick pointer.  He describes how a two-man combat crew would take six-hour shifts, capable of surviving in their subterranean silo for up to 48 days without surfacing.   The Colonel does not present the face of a cold-stone killer, and yet his actions would directly have resulted in the slaughter of millions.  ​

I remove my Ray Ban sunglasses as we leave the bright sunshine behind and enter the guts of the facility. The air is cool as we walk along a narrow tunnel, once reserved for top-secret military personnel only. Heating, air, plumbing and radiation filters line the walls, while above us, a 120-ton cap protects the giant test-tube shaped silo.  The 12-level underground command post silos were built on hydraulic suspensions, to function in the event of earthquake, or more likely, missile attacks.  In the eyes of many Soviet soldiers, explains the Colonel, mutually assured nuclear annihilation was not so much an “if”, but a “when”. ​

We cram into a tiny elevator and descend slowly towards Level 12.    A loud ringing accompanies the elevator, along with an old rotary dial telephone in case we get stuck.   I open the flap doors to find a small circular room with low ceilings, the air musky and dank.   Two bunks are fastened to the walls, a simple airplane-like toilet behind a door.  Bleak as a tomb, this was the living quarters for the two officers on duty.   An iron ladder takes us up to the next claustrophobic level, the command room.   All signs of life are removed.  Trees, animals, seas, clouds and cities only exist here in the imagination. I take my seat, and imagine myself on duty, the hotline ringing. ​

Perhaps one day all nuclear missile bases will be dismantled, and similar museums will demonstrate just how close we came to cleverly engineering our own destruction. Considering Ukraine voluntarily chose to dismantle its substantial nuclear arsenal, turning this tool of “mutually assured destruction” into a vital and chilling museum, there is always reason to hope. ​

The Museum of Strategic Missile Troops is located 3.5 hours drive from Kiev.   It is open daily from 10am to 5pm.  Tour operators in Kiev can arrange transport and entrance. ​

Luminous orange overalls flap in the strong wind, an egg-yolk sun cracks against the horizon.   It’s been a physically tough hike, stumbling over loose rocks, my face caked in black volcanic dust.   Atop the cone of Cerro Negro, one of the youngest active volcanoes in Central America, the countdown has begun.  All that’s left to do is sit down on my wooden board, lean back, grit my teeth, and hurl down the cone,  0 to 40 km/hr in eight, wild seconds. ​

A thin metal sheet is fixed to the bottom of the wood, along with a piece of plastic that increases speed.   As I begin the five hundred-metre slide, the grating sound of granite against metal sounds like an engine, revving fast.  Rocks and sand attack my goggles, stabbing my lips, sieging my shoes.  I’d scream, but it’s wiser to keep lips pursed and board straight (cone-burn awaits those who flip).  ​

Active volcanoes have intrigued many a Bucket Lister, but only in Nicaragua will you find one so creatively accessible.   Safely on the bottom, the group cracks celebratory cold beers and compares experiences.  “Now that’s something to do before you die!” says one backpacker.  I certainly agree. ​

Three hours drive from the Chilean capital of Santiago is a ski resort without any shops, malls, or promenades.   There are no restaurants, bars or hotels either.  There’s not even a ski lift.  Yet it still attracts clients from around the world, and for good reason.  Ski Arpa is the dream of a lifelong ski instructor who scrapped and saved over three decades to open a mountain for anyone in love with stunning views, and untracked snow.    Here, two Pisten Bully Snowcats shepherd up to 22 skiers to the top of the mountain, where they have mind-boggling access to 4000 acres of skiable terrain.  ​

As we slowly make our way up the switchbacks, the van abruptly stops and one of my fellow passengers throws up.   It’s a rough road, which Toni maintains himself, zig-zagging 600m up the valley.  I’m feeling a little queasy from the altitude, but the excitement seems to settle my stomach.  I only discovered the joy of snow when I moved to Canada in my twenties.  When I was 6 years old, a once-a-century freak snowstorm hit Johannesburg.   My schoolteacher, having never seen snow, made the class hide under our desks. She thought it was nuclear fall out.  ​

Mozambique
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​The African birds-eye chilli was spread around the world by Portuguese seafarers, and for good reason.  Known as peri peri, the small birds-eye releases a chemical that has been proven to trigger a sort of culinary buzz.   You can’t get addicted, but after years of craving a steady fix, I believe I’ve come pretty close.   You can also chase the peri-peri burn in Portugal, Brazil, and at a top notch South African franchise called Nandos Chicken worldwide. ​

Szechuan, China
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Chinese cuisine is not afraid to use chillies, but the region most famous for its culinary heat is the Szechuan Province.   Perhaps its most famous dish is the hot pot, whereby different ingredients are added to a pot until everything is just right.  A locally grown “flower” pepper adds the heat the region is famous for. ​

SIDE NOTE: The World’s Spiciest Dish
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Phaal curry is made from various peppers, but there’s only one you should worry about.   The bhut jolokia, aka the nala jokolia, aka the ghost pepper, aka you-have-to-be-out-of- your-mind-to-eat-this-pepper pepper.   It’s been certified by the Guinness Book of Records as being the strongest pepper known to man, with a Scoville rating of over 1,000,000!   The thick Phaal curry is served in India and Pakistan, to diners who will shortly lose all communication with their oral cavity. ​