Getting completely turned around in an unfamiliar country is one of the most important travel experiences one can have, but it gets old quickly. The last thing we want to do after disembarking from a 15-hour-flight is: Immediately get shaken down by taxi drivers and hustlers.

The digital revolution has blessed our world with a flowering of creativity. But it's also created a content and product polluted marketplace, and travel journalism standards have largely shifted to pander to the lowest and most profitable common denominator: Clickbait and Listicles. Gross. 

The moonless night conceals all but the high beam illuminated, endlessly twisting road before us. We've just touched down in Antalya, and are now barreling along at warp speed through a night thicker than the bottom of a Turkish coffee fix.  Somewhere in the unknowable distance lies Kas, a seaside hamlet about as far removed from the culture and chaos of Istanbul as our driver is from traffic safety school. 

      Mexican’s don’t typically consider Baja California to be part of Mexico. It’s viewed as an outlier, a distant cousin — as much a part of the Mexican zeitgeist as the Aleutian Islands are to America. This sense of isolation from traditional Mexican mores has fermented into an intoxicating regional personality, and today our beloved Baja is “La Reina del Baile” ( Queen of the Dance, Spanish equivalent of “Belle of the Ball”).

A multitude of onlookers wait patiently along the terraced viewing platform, every eye transfixed upon the gently rocking sea below. No one speaks, save for the excited babbling of several disengaged toddlers. Below, the ebb of the crystalline tide reverses course, garnering enough momentum to crest into a slow, unmistakable wave — it’s headed for the point of no return, a craggy inlet upon which the mesmerized crowd has trained their attention.