On an uneventful bus ride, after three weeks of travelling across Brazil, we come across our strangest sight yet: a bicycle lane.

  After descending nearly 400 steps into the 700-year-old Wieliczka Salt Mine just outside Krakow, I was staring out over a luminous underground lake and rubbing my aching thighs when a woman swung around and hit me in the stomach with her backpack.

  Many island resorts put too many extraneous luxuries in the way of the pure island experience. Plunge pools, octopus-like appendages of over-water bungalows, a 24-hour spa menu – you might as well be in a big city.

  The longest journey starts with a single step. The punishing Pukaskwa hiking trail starts with a boat ride.

  Nepal has the Yeti. Scotland has the Loch Ness Monster. North America has the Sasquatch.

  "We haven't lost anyone yet," says our guide Pavel as he leads us toward what will either be an exhilarating adventure or an exercise in acrophobia.

  If only he had buns of steel. Bruce Poon Tip could have used a heat-resistant tush when he and hisfriends were dropped in the middle of the Gobi Desert for an adventurevacation a few years ago.

  Any theatre impresario will tell you that every great show needs a bona fide diva.

  We take off like truant school kids, leaving the group of kayakers and canoeists far behind. My friend Mary and I are on a five-hour, 22-kilometre paddling stretch down the Grand River from Cambridge to Paris, one hour west of Toronto.

  There's a sign at the top that tells you the summit of Mount Washington has the "worst weather in the world."