As Quiet as a Canary Island

WORTH A TRIP: Where is the "Quietest Place on Earth"? In September's National Geographic Traveler, Edward Readicker-Henderson nominates La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands. By "quiet," however, he doesn't mean merely the absence of sound -- that might drive you bonkers. Instead he wants "the world to sound like it did when it was all new and shiny."

La Gomera meets his criterion -- it's so quiet that for centuries its natives have communicated between hilltops with a language of whistles called silbo . On quiet La Gomera, silbo can be heard up to two miles away. But even here some places are better than others. The sounds of the beach are soothing but hypnotic, and he wants to stay awake. He finds his "new and shiny" place in a thick woods, listening merely to the wind in the trees and, once every 15 minutes, a single chirp of a bird. Or is that someone's new ring tone?

WORTH A FLIP: Adam Pearl is now 3 1/2 . Name doesn't ring a bell? As Condé Nast Traveler reminds us, his father was Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002. He never saw Adam. In a poignant essay, Pearl's wife, Mariane, describes raising Adam to be a citizen of the world, but free to act like a toddler. "Adam and I always jump on hotel beds together. It helps make a strange room feel like a familiar place" . . . According to the Iroquois, the Great Spirit created New York's Finger Lakes when he "spread his hand upon the land to bless it." Smithsonian shows us the gorgeous gorges, the historical parks and the remnants of what Mark Twain (who wrote much of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" here) called "the Gilded Age" . . . Jeez, Twain was everywhere. In 1867, he rode a paddlewheeler across Nicaragua. In National Geographic Adventure, Matthew Power describes his own replication of that voyage, only he uses a kayak. Paddling from west to east on the Rio San Juan, Power discovers the waters are no tamer now than they were then . . .

People on Yap just leave their money lying around. But there's probably little chance that it will be stolen, for, as Islands observes, a single coin can weigh thousands of pounds. They're made of limestone and have diameters of up to 10 feet. There are other attractions in this corner of Micronesia: centuries-old traditional dance; fishing, diving and relaxing with "the least boisterous people on earth." Still, Yap is not primitive, as cars and cell phones are common. American money is used in trade -- otherwise, could you imagine a Yapese parking meter? . . . The inappropriate wearing of khaki is not only a fashion faux pas -- in Colombia it might get you killed. As Eric Hansen explains in Outside , "military" is not always the best look for you. His travel goal is El Mirador, the world's most difficult-to-reach bar. "Bad dudes with guns" threaten his quest for a well-deserved beer, as do frequent mudslides. The ordeal almost makes him give up drink once he gets there. Almost.

WORTH A CLIP: To identify "25 Best Places You've Never Heard Of," Budget Travel turned to people whose business it is to know such places. Prepared with the help of a wine merchant, a coffee buyer, a Trader Joe's agent and others, its list will send you to your atlas: Suchitoto, El Salvador; Kas, Turkey; or Sal, an island in Cape Verde . . . Travel + Leisure celebrates its 35th birthday with "35+ Trips That Will Change Your Life." Rather than "Sleep in the Desert," "See an Ancient City" or "Ride Through Versailles," however, we'd opt to follow Roz Chast and Patricia Marx. Respectively cartoonist and writer for the New Yorker, they double-check Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the Galapagos Islands. Warning: Chast's Galapagos nautical chart is not for navigation -- but you might have figured that out, since it includes Rhode Island, Staten Island and a "rogue sponge cake."

WORTH A NOSH: In Saveur, Indrani Sen's description of lunch at her family's house near Calcutta reveals as much about Indian household dynamics as it does about food. Westernized, she is particularly uncomfortable about using servants -- "the spectacle of being waited on by increasingly elderly people." But when her demanding grandmother dies at 93, the servants grieve: "To them, she was also an exacting teacher, a trusted confidante, a friend."

-- Jerry V. Haines