This Colorado-size country is home to more than four million people, nearly all of them rabid bikers, climbers, trekkers, paddlers … you get the idea. There are world-class opportunities for virtually every outdoor sport, and the unofficial national motto is “Get amongst it.”

Start by choosing the right island. The North Island has yacht racing, trout fishing, mountain biking, volcanoes, hot springs, crater lakes, and under-the-radar surfing, as well as the cities—Auckland (405,000) and Wellington (180,000)—and most of the native Maori culture. The sparsely populated South Island has long-distance trekking, mountaineering, backcountry skiing, cycling, mountain biking, whitewater kayaking, and adrenaline pursuits like bungee and BASE jumping. By habit, locals here tend to do many of these in the same day.

Go Mobile

Hands-down the best way to see the country is to rent a sweet RV, especially for longer trips. Unlike in the U.S., where RVs are often corralled into concrete “parks,” New Zealand has a “freedom camping” ethos. That means you can pull off the road almost anywhere, as long as your rig has a toilet on board and you’re not in a city or the restricted zone of a national park. RVs also make great rolling gear garages (kayaks, bikes, packs, raingear …), and having a refrigerator means you can cook green-lipped mussels at sunset. Two planning suggestions: prepare mentally to drive a large vehicle on the left side of the road, and budget for a pit stop or two at one of New Zealand’s legendary lodges.

If you have three or more weeks, it’s worth touring both islands. Most international flights land in Auckland, and if you head (mostly) south from there, it’s roughly 1,200 miles and a half-dozen climates—from subtropical coast to high-alpine glaciers—to Fiordland National Park. But a truly epic adventure might have you logging 2,500 miles or more. On the North Island, spend some days on the Pacific Coast Highway, lazing on the beaches of the Coromandel Peninsula or surfing the beach breaks in Tauranga. Turn inland on Highway 33 and hit Rotorua’s famous hot springs and mountain-bike trails. Eventually you’ll want to roll through the Hawke’s Bay wine country to Wellington, the antipodean San Francisco and port for the Interislander Ferry, which crosses Cook Strait in three hours (prices vary by vehicle; ).

The road tripper’s route on the South Island is Highway 6 along the wild west coast and the Tasman Sea. It’s oceanside car camping out there and an easy three days to the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers (guided glacier walks at both spots; and ). Inland over the Haast Pass is the adrenaline-sports capital of Queenstown, the birthplace of commercial bungee jumping and guided canyoneering adventures (see “Get Amped”). You could play here for a week, but it’s worth cruising farther down the island to Fiordland National Park, where the road dead-ends at Milford Sound and sheer rock faces plunge into an inlet full of whales, seals, penguins, and dolphins.

Your RV provider: United Campervan (), which has a wide selection of models (daily prices vary depending on the season and vehicle), or Christchurch-based Natural High, which offers RVs and any combination of kayak, bike, and camping-gear rental ().

Kick Back

The “wilderness lodge” here has been elevated to a high art form, with a price to match, though the cost is often offset somewhat by the inclusion of meals. The offerings range from classic genteel oases to slick 21st-century adventure hubs, with square-jawed guides, 500-bottle wine lists, and heli-everything.

The North Island’s Huka Lodge is the archetype of the former category. What started out as a fishing camp in 1924 has become so discreetly luxurious, with its private suites on the Waikato River, 17 perfectly manicured acres, and alfresco five-course dinners, that Queen Elizabeth II and Barbra Streisand have been known to relax here (suites from $590 per person, including breakfast and dinner; ).

Across the North Island and at the opposite end of the taste spectrum is Ahu Ahu Beach Villas, on the Taranaki Peninsula. This is actually a cluster of rustic villas set right on a black-sand beach with a killer view of 8,261-foot Mount Taranaki and immediate access to the local café scene and exhilarating wilderness walks. A handful of New Zealand’s best surf breaks are within a 20-minute drive (villas from $160 per night; ).

On the South Island, the adrenaline-sport scene in Queenstown has spurred a proliferation of lodges. One of the most consistently recommended is Blanket Bay, on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, 45 minutes north of Queenstown. Fly-fish, flight-see over Fiordland National Park, and dine in the wine cave while drinking local varietals (doubles from $750; ).

Or go ape on the South Island’s Pacific coast in the Hapuku Lodge & Tree Houses. The one-bedroom retreats, 30 feet off the ground in a manuka grove, are quintessentially Kiwi—chic, stark, and ecologically correct—and each features a wood-burning fireplace and a couples bath. The Tarzan & Jane Tree House Retreat includes a one-night stay, a bottle of champagne, dinner, and breakfast ($1,015 per couple; ).

Take a Hike

Tramping in New Zealand is like a national religion. The nine multi-day hut-to-hut Great Walks are exceptional and, thanks to Department of Conservation vigilance, often blissfully uncrowded. The Milford Track, a 33-mile route weaving through alpine terrain overlooking deep-walled fjords in the far south, gets the most buzz—and deserves it. The four-to-five-day trek starts with a boat journey across Milford Sound. Your first view: 5,551-foot Mitre Peak, jutting straight out of the water. The track climbs a 3,507-foot pass across ice fields, skirts 1,904-foot Sutherland Falls, and ends with another boat ride, across Lake Te Anau. You can reserve hut space, plus bus and boat tickets, for the November-to-April trekking season on the DOC Web site (roughly $340 for huts and transportation; ).

The 34-mile Abel Tasman Coast Track is tramping lite. It’s sunnier here on the north end of the South Island, the beech forests are interspersed with golden-sand beaches, the maximum elevation is less than 700 feet, and you’re more likely to find an impromptu campsite party with Danes and Germans than wilderness solitude. Beware: there are two low spots along the trek—Onetahuti and Awaroa—where high tides can cover the trail, so be sure to time it right. For your nights on the trail, choose from four huts ($27 per person) or 18 primitive campsites ($9 per person).

An alternate to the Great Walk circuit is Aspiring Guides’ () eight-day Gillespie Rabbit Pass Traverse, in Mount Aspiring National Park, about midway down the South Island. The longest guided trek in New Zealand, it cuts through everything from rainforests to hanging glaciers. Plus you can brag that you tagged the icy shoulder of Mount Awful (the treacherous summit is 7,201 feet). The guides double as camp cooks, and you stay in pre-pitched campsites and luxury mountain huts (from $1,830 per person).

Get Wet

New Zealand's Perth River

The Class V Perth River

New Zealand has 9,400 miles of coastline plus hundreds of freshwater lakes and more than 125 whitewater rivers. Sailors blow around Auckland. Surfers kick back in funky Raglan. Whitewater paddlers gather on the South Island’s west coast, where milky Class V (and lesser) rivers rush to the Tasman Sea. Sea kayakers cruise all over. Which is to say, there are options.

An aggressive way to start: crewing a three-hour head-to-head sailing race on the retired 80-foot America’s Cup yacht NZL 41 in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbor ($150; ). For longer cruising adventures, the Bay of Islands, the archipelago off the northeast coast of the North Island, has summer temps in the high sixties and seventies, steady breezes, and some 150 islands with safe harbors. Great Escape Yacht Charters rents Davidson 20’s ($90 per day) or Noelex 25’s ($120 per day; ).

Surfing in New Zealand means packing a 5/3 wetsuit and, if you’re after serious swell, coming in the winter (April to June). Bring your shortboard and drop in on Raglan (on the west coast of the North Island), home to “the longest left in the world,” which is actually a series of three left-hand point breaks that jut from the foot of a dormant volcano. Crash at Solscape (close to hot spots Manu Bay and Ngarunui Beach), a beach house made completely from recycled timbers and native bricks (studios from $105; ).

Starting a rafting trip in a helicopter generally leads to good things. Hidden Valleys offers two-day trips on the Class V Perth and Class III–IV Whataroa rivers. You’ll fly to a gentle stretch of the snow-fed Perth, then drop steep gorges through temperate rainforest before flying to the put-in of the Whataroa, which offers Southern Alps views on the descent to the west coast ($670 per person; ).

Sea-kayaking Milford Sound is a classic Kiwi adventure, but nearby Doubtful Sound, in Fiordland National Park, is more than twice as long and much less visited, because getting there requires a 19-mile ferry ride across Lake Manapouri, followed by a 14-mile bus ride. ���ϳԹ��� Kayak & Cruise leads day trips and overnight outings past 722-foot Helena Falls and Commander Peak, which stands almost 4,000 feet over the water (from $182; ).

Hook Up

Fly-fishing here is serious sport. So much so that New Zealand has a nationwide ban on felt-soled boots, which spread microorganisms that can disrupt freshwater ecosystems. The quintessential Kiwi fishing experience is sight-casting dry flies in small, crystal-clear rivers for football-size brown trout. But it’s not easy: only a handful of New Zealand rivers have more than 1,000 fish per square mile (as compared with western U.S. rivers, with counts as high as 20,000). A guide is essential, and most of the best are based out of high-end lodges.

Mike McClelland, owner of the Best of New Zealand Fly Fishing (), can customize any trip. Among his favorite spots is the North Island’s Poronui lodge, a high-country estate surrounded by 25 miles of the choicest fishing in New Zealand. You can walk spring creeks, float wilderness rivers, or helicopter to remote streams (from $670 per person per night, including guides and meals; ).

Take a Spin

Queensland, New Zealand, mountain biking

Queenstown

More than 350,000 tourists cycle in New Zealand every year. It’s no wonder: the country is safe, the scenery is stunning, and even the back roads are paved and well maintained. It’s also challenging: maritime winds blow year-round, and rain and traffic are common hazards. For the ideal combination of clear skies and empty roads, your odds are best in February.

Of all the great touring routes, the standout is the 550-mile South Island ride from Christchurch to Queenstown (plan for 12-plus days). Tip: when starting out, avoid busy Arthur’s Pass by pedaling farther north through Canterbury wine country to Lewis Pass. On the lush west coast along Highway 6, the formula is Tasman Sea views, natural wonders like Punakaiki’s pancake rocks (seaside rocks squashed flat), and quirky tourist attractions like Charleston’s famous glowworms (seriously, they glow). Camp in numerous Department of Conservation–designated sites—rocky beaches, leafy forests—or stay in a cozy inn like Birds Ferry Lodge, near Charleston (two-night package with massage, $610 per couple; ). When the road turns inland, crank up 1,847-foot Haast Pass to Wanaka, then bomb down the zigzaggy Crown Range Road, the highest in New Zealand—with views of the Remarkable Mountain Range and Lake Wakatipu—all the way to Queenstown.

Two Christchurch-based outfitters to consider: NZ Bicycle Tours (), which can customize and guide you on any itinerary, and Natural High, which rents bikes one-way to Queenstown (sample prices: Specialized Sirrus, $30 per day or $300 up to for eight weeks; ).

Rope Up

Reminder: this is where Sir Edmund Hillary learned to climb. And he’s not the only one. New Zealand’s mountains make for ideal training peaks because they require skill—glacier travel, crevasse rescue, and weather prediction—but no bottled oxygen. The South Island’s Mount Cook, at 12,316 feet, is the country’s tallest. But the best learning experiences for climbers with big ambitions are had on 9,951-foot Mount Aspiring, a highly technical peak in the Southern Alps with gorgeous views of the Tasman Sea. Aspiring Guides () offers a five-day (heli-assisted) trip or seven-day (walk-in, walk-out) climbs, with a guide-to-client ratio of 1:1. From $2,830 per person.

Get Amped

If an entire city could suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome, Queenstown might be the place. The “���ϳԹ��� Capital of the World,” situated between Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables, likely has the most thrill seekers per capita on the planet. AJ Hackett set up his first bungee jump here back in 1986. Today you can leap and boing-boing with his company at three Queenstown venues or pick from an ever-expanding list of outfits promising full-throttle fun rides: jet-boating through a river canyon, river surfing, canyon swinging (what it sounds like), canyoneering, or riding shotgun in a stunt plane (visit for most of these activities). Meanwhile, Queenstown has been Aspenized with a proliferation of world-class dining and five-star hotels. Why not mix and match? The Spire, a sleek ten-room downtown boutique hotel, offers a four-day Extreme Adrenalin Package that includes jet-boating, paragliding, bungee jumping, and a 15,000-foot skydive (doubles, $3,750; ).

Do It All

A number of veteran outfitters put together excellent taster’s-plate trips. Backroads’ eight-day North Island New Zealand Multisport (from $4,298 based on double occupancy; ) features cycling through the Hawke’s Bay wine country, hiking the Coromandel Peninsula, kayaking to a hot spring on Lake Rotoiti, and staying at Mangapapa Petit Hotel, a country estate surrounded by apple and peach orchards. Wilderness Travel’s 13-day South Island ���ϳԹ��� ($5,195; ) includes hiking hot spots like Abel Tasman National Park, swimming with dusky dolphins on the Kaikoura Peninsula, touring Marlborough wine country, hiking the Fox Glacier, and taking an overnight cruise in Milford Sound.

For the eco-minded: Active New Zea­land’s brand-new Pounamu “Deep Green” road trip. The 13-day Christchurch-to-Queenstown route has clients riding a biodiesel bus, planting trees to offset their carbon footprint, eating and drinking 100 percent organic or locally sourced food and wine, and staying in lodges that have made sustainability their mission. Hit all the South Island highlights: hiking in Mount Aspiring National Park and along the Queen Charlotte, Abel Tasman, and Routeburn tracks; kayaking Marlborough Sound; biking in Wanaka; and swimming with dusky dolphins ($5,500; ).

The Best of the Rest

THE METRO KIWI
For all their adventure genes, Kiwis are very metropolitan. Auckland gets a lot of attention as the “City of Sails,” but Lonely Planet just ranked Wellington, the capital, number four in its 2011 list of the world’s best cities. Built on a hillside and overlooking a bay, this is the Kiwi answer to San Francisco: cool, close to nature, and compact. From a downtown bursting with cafés and clubs, you can ride a bus 20 minutes to Makara Peak (), a 500-acre network of singletrack that overlooks the sailboats in the bay. The city of 410,000 is also packed with cultural creatives, like movie-industry icon Peter Jackson and outdoor-apparel entrepreneur Jeremy Moon, the founder of Icebreaker. The Ohtel, a new ten-room boutique inn, prides itself on its decadent bathrooms with oversize showers, two-person tubs, and views of the harbor (doubles from $175; ).

MAORI RISING
The indigenous Maori make up 15 percent of New Zealand’s population, but, like Native Americans in the U.S. and Aborigines in Australia, they have been marginalized—so severely that by 1995 their language was facing extinction. Fortunately, the past 15 years have seen a renaissance, with the Maori population growing 28 percent and tourism dollars beginning to support an economy of local pride. The most inspiring success story is Kai­koura, a village of 3,900 on the Pacific coast of the South Island. The Maori-owned Whale Watch offers a 95 percent chance of seeing a giant sperm whale and has become one of the hottest draws in the region (two-and-a-half-hour catamaran tour, $110; )

BUCK UP
The U.S. dollar doesn’t stretch as far as it used to here, but the exchange rate is still better than Canada’s or Australia’s (NZ$1.32 at press time). Three ways to get more for your money:
Airline Tickets: Round-trips to Auckland on most carriers cost around $1,000, but it can be cheaper to fly through Australia (as low as $800), thanks to 13 Aussie gateway cities. Consider doing a Down Under double.
Accommodations: Forget what you know about “hostels.” Kiwi hostels are clean, cut-rate hotels with TVs and bathrooms en suite (but bring a sleeping bag). At luxury hotels, try negotiating on the price: tourism numbers have plateaued since 2006.
Timing: Peak tourism season in New Zealand is generally late November to early March. But the weather can still be perfectly lovely in October and well into April, when deals are widely available.

Take Me Home

Seven years ago I became a New Zealand resident on a whim. Thank God.

THERE’S NO ONE ON THIS BEACH, a wide crescent a half-mile long. Headlands at one end, sacred ground. Maori land. Exposed dark South Pacific rock, lush growth, tree ferns. I’ve seen the mist spill down over gaps in the ridge on early mornings, but it’s later now, and all is bright and clear and blue.

Taupo Bay, Northland. My wife, Nancy, is in the waves, twisting for tuatuas. Small clams. You go for them by wading into the sea and digging fast with your heel or toe. She’s laughing, going after a digger, doing the twist, and dips down with her hand just as a wave hits. She can see it coming, but she reaches down anyway, turns her face at the last moment, and I can see her smile. The wave passes over, white foam, and she holds up the white shell triumphantly.

What I’m seeing is a gift, my wife returned, the way I first saw her a dozen years ago, that same simple delight. And I remember now that this is why I love her, because she’s ready to be delighted by the world. And I know that this is why we’re planning our future here in the far north of New Zealand, because here we can remember who we are.

I’ve become too caught up in work and deadlines, and I’ve had to live in places where I didn’t want to live, in suburbias, suckling on pavement. I’ve felt locked up as tight as one of those clams, grown past the age of any sudden joy. But New Zealand always brings me back.

Partly it’s the land we bought seven years ago, 17 acres of grassy knolls and native totaras like perfect bushy Christmas trees along a hillside not far from Taupo Bay. We came here on a whim, but now I can’t imagine our lives elsewhere. I’ve thought of that land every day, longed for it, longed for the life we imagine, kept from it by work in the U.S.

But it’s more than that. New Zealand is the entire U.S. West Coast flipped into the Southern Hemisphere. When I hiked a ridge on the Kepler Track, in the extreme south, I saw the Alaska of my childhood, with snowy peaks, alpine lakes, exposed rock above dense forest. I was traveling light because of the great hut system, which provides a bunk and stove and water, and yet the entire time my wife was a small speck far ahead, because I just kept stopping and looking around.

On another trip, near Ninety Mile Beach, in the far north, we surfed giant white sand dunes with no other human present. There were cattails along the river, and then just a 20-foot wall of sand, with far larger dunes rising beyond. It was so unexpected, we laughed. “Our own Sahara,” Nancy said.

In Rotorua, we soaked in hot springs and hiked along bubbling mud and sulfur pits, a vacation on Mars. In Abel Tasman National Park, we paddled endless bays and coves with dolphins all around. And when we lived for a year on Waiheke Island, off Auckland, we sailed our small catamaran close along banded rock. I had one foot on the tiller, lying back on the trampoline, looking at the pohutukawa trees with their red blossoms, growing right from the cliff faces.

When I go to New Zealand, I feel the world has been remade—or, more accurately, that I’ve found the original land from which others were formed. It’s a sense of peace that goes beyond the fact of no snakes and no poison oak. New Zealand is a place of very little population, of an earlier friendliness, where fences are only for sheep and cattle. The kids here walk around without shoes, even in the colder regions. Most families own their house, and despite the two-decade onslaught of tourists and expats like me, hardly anyone locks their door. When my wife cycled around the country for six months, she couldn’t take a rest break without every passing car stopping to see if she needed help.

The only fear we’ve felt was of Lappie the sheep. He’s a legend on Kahoe Farms, the hostel our friends run a few miles south of Whangaroa Bay. A wicked head butt to the knees and not afraid of people at all. Once, Lappie was brought to another farm to get a ewe pregnant, which he was happy to do, but unfortunately someone brought another male. Instant fight. They were separated, but in the night, Lappie broke through the fence and killed his rival. A few years ago, my wife and I were on a hike and Lappie was waiting for us on our return, right on the path. Like cowards, we crossed a stream to the other side and ran away. Since then, though, the Great Shepherd has come for Lappie, and we’ve been given his skull. It’s currently drying on our friend’s roof, and we plan to erect a shrine to him on our land.

There’s a nearly immutable law in the world that everything gets smaller as you step closer to it, but that law is suspended in New Zealand. When my wife and I first arrived, in 2003, we were already residents, our applications having been approved while we were still in the U.S. And we were a little anxious. We’d done some stupid and impulsive things before and paid a price. But when we stepped off the plane, the immigration agent said, “Welcome home.”

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CORSICA IS A RARITY, an oddity, its language as endangered as its Corsican red deer. It's been invaded and owned by nearly everyone, including Greeks, Arabs, Romans, Brits, Pisans, Genoese, and the French. It was independent for only 14 years, before being reclaimed by France in 1769, right before Napoleon was born there, which perhaps explains why the little tyrant was so pissed off. If you buy a house here now, the Corsicans may blow it up, as certain separatist groups have done in the past, just to show you how pleased they are about foreigners coming in. Their towns are in the mountains because they kept losing the ones by the sea.

But if you come only to hike, you've found the best-kept secret (from Americans anyway) in the Mediterranean, its most mountainous island, crisscrossed by trails that offer medieval stone villages set against pinnacles and chestnut groves. This is the Mediterranean I dream of, a summer island too fantastical to be real. How can that perfect white stone village exist right there, perched on that mountain?

People have been hiking here since the last ice age, almost 10,000 years ago. Today, the GR20 is the most famous trail, running the length of the island north to south for more than 100 miles. I opted for the 60-mile Mare a Mare Sud, a five- or six-day hike across the southern part of the island, and my thoughts were primarily on food.

My wife, Nancy, and I started in Porto-Vecchio, a medieval walled town on the southeast coast. It was the middle of June, perfect sunny skies. We'd bought new ultralight packs and felt very flashy, except, like a total rube, I'd weighed mine down with a laptop. On day one, this brought me almost to fisticuffs with a café owner because I focused more on my computer than on his food. We quickly made up and soon he poured us glasses of his own myrt, a local liqueur made from purple myrtle flowers gathered high on the mountain. It was the most intense histamine shock I've ever had, like breathing in all the pollen in the world, but I loved it. Nancy loved it, too, so the owner gave us a bottle for our hike, more glasses were poured, and it was a rollicking night. They may blow up your house, but Corsicans will also smother you in love.

We set off the next morning late and straight up a 3,000-foot mountain, carrying our bottle of myrt. So much for ultralight. Views of the sea going light blue into white sand, an open trail with white rock and evergreen forest. That odd Mediterranean feeling of remote physical beauty and the center of culture at the same time.

We stayed that night in our first gîte d'étape, a kind of bed-and-breakfast set up for backpackers (recommendations at /mare-mare-sud; from $50), in the mountain village of Cartala­vonu. We ordered Aubergines de Madame Monti, an eggplant recipe that's been in the owner's family for at least 130 years. We had brought our tent and bags, but this was an error. It's not legal to camp anywhere along the trail, and campsites for tents are few and far between. Who would want to miss the gîtes and the meals anyway? The Europeans we met already knew these secrets. We had the largest packs on the trail.

The next day was a long, tough hike to Carbini, a tiny town on a hilltop with spectacular views, but that was only the first leg. Our afternoon leg was to Levie, which would've been an easy traverse along the hillside if you followed the road. But our trail dove straight down into a ravine, then straight back up. I consoled myself with thoughts of the Giovannali brotherhood back in Carbini, who had it worse. Building a lovely white stone church and bell tower and calling themselves “the Johns,” they flipped the bird at the Pope, so he persecuted them. An early chapter in Corsican rebellion, the most recent being the design of these trails. You can almost hear the laughter from the towns.

The trail offered several more days of truly amazing calf burners, but we found consolation on day four at Le Ranch, in Sorbollano, a small bed-and-breakfast run by a French hottie who likes horses. Here we had our best meal of the vacation, prepared by her mother—duck, in the lightest gravy, with stuffed courgettes (zucchini) and a fancy local dessert of cheese and strong liqueur fixed like whipped cream, with several fruit sauces and a small chestnut torte. At the end, salad with a special ritual for the small radishes, dipping each in a bit of salt, then devouring it with buttered bread. Wine throughout, of course. My first backpacking trip in which I was getting tipsy every night and gaining weight every day. My first backpacking trip, also, in which every day I saw a new medieval village, finding Zonza on day five as we traversed above cliffs or St. Lucie later that afternoon, clustered in tight rings on a hilltop below. When we arrived again at the shore, we continued traveling north along the west coast to Porto, with its red-rock cliffs and castle perched at the harbor entrance. We swam in the ancient sea and wondered how any of this was possible.

Turkey

Chill on an Undiscovered Beach.

EVERY SO OFTEN, you stumble upon a place so beautiful you want to scream about it from rooftops and keep it a closely guarded secret. The Olympos Lodge, in the small village of Cirali, Turkey, which sits on one of the most gorgeous, uncrowded stretches of the Mediterranean, is such a place. Hop a flight south from Istanbul to Antalya, then take an hour-plus cab ride to Cirali and the Olympos Lodge (from $175; ) and its 13 simple guest bungalows. You won't be spending much time in your room—the lodge's lush garden, complete with resident ducks and peacocks, spills onto an expansive beach. Grab a sea-view garden chaise and spend your days swimming in the teal water and watching Turkish gulets sail by.

Want active culture? Stroll five minutes down the beach to the Olympus ruins, where the backpacking set crashes in nearby treehouses. Or hike the slopes of 8,343-foot Mount Olympus, where you can access the Lycian Way trail (), which hugs much of Turkey's coastline; on the hillside you'll find the Chimaera, a natural-gas flame that's guided sailors for thousands of years. But mostly just chill and savor outdoor meals of feta-stuffed peppers, manti (a ravioli-like dish packed with yogurt, lamb, mint, and lemon), and honey-drenched baklava. If you're lucky, your bungalow neighbors will be from Belgrade and share their homemade grappa.

Croatia

Road-Trip the Coastal Highway

WITH ITS 1,185 ISLANDS along the Balkans' western edge, Croatia calls itself “the Mediterranean as it once was.” Neither modernity nor tourism has drastically changed the place yet, so if you wish you'd seen Italy 50 years ago, rent some wheels in Zadar (from $40 per day; ) and motor down Dalmatia's Adriatic Coastal Road. The 200-mile, two-lane, cliff-hugging E65 to Dubrovnik is an embarrassment of gastro and adventure pit stops. You're immediately surrounded by five national parks, including Paklenica, where a scramble in canyons in the Velebit range is rewarded with smooth-pebble beachside campsites ($5; ). Further south on Peljesac Peninsula—wine country—visit the Milos Vineyard, in Ponikve village, where Frano, the owner, is as poetic as his wines are bold. You'll get a true taste of Croatia with salt-water-dripping-fresh oysters at Vila Koruna restaurant (Tito's fave), on a sheltered bay in Mali Ston. Cut the ignition at Dubrovnik's five-star Grand Villa Argentina (from $270; ) and get out on the water for a sunset kayak tour; Dalmatian wine, cheese, and olives on nearby Lokrum Island included ($47; ).

Crete

Multisport in Mountainous Valleys.

THE LARGEST of the Greek islands (at 3,200 square miles), Crete is in many ways the least “Greek isle” of all. Get yourself to the right parts and it's a vast and mountainous place echoing with history and demanding hardier travelers than those who hit the clubs on the coast. While the steep, deep, 11-mile-long Samaria Gorge—the Zion Narrows of the Med—remains the island's marquee adventure draw, it's the more serene, mountain-ringed Amári Valley, in the island's center, that hides a secret hiking gem.

In the Amári, stuccoed villages gleam in the spring sunshine. Crowds simply don't exist here, unless you count the sheep. Pilgrims and hikers share the thrill of scaling 8,058-foot Mount Psiloritis (a.k.a. Ida, the mythical home of Zeus), a nontechnical peak best descended, snowpack permitting, by glissade. Explore the Amári on your own, or check out KE ���ϳԹ��� Travel's eight-day Crete itinerary: a week-plus of sea kayaking, trekking, and plunging into the winding Samaria Gorge (from $1,165; ).

Sicily

Bike Italy's Spiciest Island.

Sicily

Sicily

IT'S ONLY DAY THREE of our 220-mile cycling trip through Sicily, but I already get Don Corleone's attachment to this island punted into the sea by mainland Italy.

No wonder the mythical Mafia boss was so protective of his turf: While honor killings and extortion are more than just legend in some parts of Sicily, today I'm living la dolce vita. The largest island in the Mediterranean sprouts wild oregano, smells of citrus, and harbors some of the world's most important Greek and Roman ruins.

The 75-degree autumn sun beats down on our 17-person Ciclismo Classico peloton—a crew of 35-to-65-year-old American cycling fanatics—as we head from the Baroque southeastern seaside city of Siracusa and eventually out to the Aeolian Islands (the La Bella Sicilia trip starts at $4,695; ). Our two Italian guides, Enrico Pizzorni and Paolo Nicolosi, have titanium lungs, a vast knowledge of Italian history and culture (e.g., never drink cappuccino after 10 A.M.), and a serious sense of humor.

“It's very hard to get in a fight with a Sicilian,” rants Pizzorni, who is from Piedmont, as he and Nicolosi, a native Sicilian, get into a wildly gesticulating standoff over trip logistics and bicker like brothers. “They're always trying to get around things.”

At the moment, Nicolosi, who's known throughout the island as “the King of Sicily,” is hammering up a steady climb in his sleek Acqua & Sapone riding kit, with no hands, while belting out Italian arias a cappella. We Americans, on the other hand, sport Arrogant Bastard Ale jerseys and bonk—at least I did—on the 60-mile ride to the hilltop city of Ragusa, the centuries-old hideout where crusaders rested on their way to conquering Jerusalem.

After we settle into the Locanda Don Serafino boutique hotel, the hippest (and only) rehabbed 19th-century mansion I've ever slept in, we step into the street, which is crowded with jugglers, fire eaters, clowns, and street musicians who've turned this World Heritage site into a five-night bacchanalia—the annual Ibla Busker, a raucous street fair where performance artists from all over Europe test their best conceptual work and everyone drinks too many Negronis.

At dinner, after we've sampled a few bottles of local Cerasuolo Avide-Barroco frappato, Pizzorni tells us how to catch an octopus. “My grandfather taught me,” he says. “The trick is to turn his head inside out and bite it on the brain.”

I'm skeptical but slightly preoccupied by the edible sculpture of eggplant ricotta that's just been placed in front of me.

We eventually eat and cycle our way to the seaside city of Taormina, where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor used to hide from the paparazzi, and hike to the sulfuric crater of active Mount Etna. Then we hydrofoil north to Lipari, the hub of the Aeolian Islands and the backdrop for the film Il Postino. We've cycled more than 200 miles, drunk too much Sicilian pinot, chardonnay, and Nero d'Avola, and eaten pizza with crust as thick as my skull. I haven't bitten an octopus on the brain. I'm saving that old fishing trick to make my living after I move to Lipari.

France

Trek the Alpes-Maritimes.

THE TOP REASON TO TREK the southeastern slice of France wedged between Provence and Italy? After a week or two of seven-hour hikes through cobblestone villages in the Alpes-Maritimes and across the Alps, you'll actually earn that Campari on ice when you reach the Côte d'Azur.

Set off in summer to ensure lodges are open and for the region's guaranteed sunshine. From Larche, the 120-mile route passes into Mercantour National Park and over the 8,763-foot Pas de la Cavale. By this time you'll have noticed the second reason to hike here: the abundance of chamois, marmots, and ibex prancing in the towering sandstone cliffs, and a dearth of fellow backpackers. No need for a tent or substantial food, because a gîte d'étape (about $40 per person; ) will be your home along the way. Ask back-slapping locals at dinners of mutton, handmade pasta, homegrown greens, fresh-fruit-filled pastries, and wine where all the tourists are and they'll tell you that most people only go to the Riviera.

Schedule a day for the Vallée des Merveilles, where 35,000 Bronze Age petroglyphs are strewn along the path and across red-rock monoliths guarded by glacial lakes. Two days later, when the Mediterranean finally comes into view, there's still the matter of a 3,400-foot descent separating you from Menton and the coast. Your tootsies will be moaning, but that's easily remedied by the bath-warm sea.

Sardinia

Climb Oceanside Crags.

ALONG WITH JAPAN'S Okinawans, the people of Sardinia boast one of the highest rates of centenarians in the world. The reason could be the scenery alone: The island's vivid sea is ringed with soft-sand beaches and pinnacles of pink and gray granite. Sport climbers flock to Cala Gonone, on the east coast, near the Gulf of Orosei, where some 800 ocean-view routes await (find more beta at ). Deeper in the interior, the Barbagia area (“Land of Barbarians”) offers 1,000-foot-deep gorges and soaring limestone walls. ���ϳԹ��� the town of Dorgali, monster routes like Hotel Supramonte—a 1,300-foot, 11-pitch 5.14a—draw some of the world's best big-wall experts. Bunk at the villa-like Su Gologone hotel (doubles from $250; ), ideally located for exploring Barbagia's prehistoric ruins. But this is Italy, so save some time for eating. The restaurant at Su Gologone is beloved for its porceddu—tender roast suckling pig—washed down with a glass of local red. With fare this good, life seems too short indeed.

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According to villagers, John Long's boat sailed itself all night before crashing onto the beach, a ghost ship with all its lights on. They were afraid to approach because of the giant waves rolling in off the Pacific, but in the morning, when the tide went out, they found gold rings and bracelets in the sand and American dollars everywhere, the beach littered with riches. They said they found keys made of pure gold ancient sailors' keys for opening chests.

Everyone gathered, until eventually there were nearly 100 people standing on the beach, worried that a family might still be trapped inside the hull. Perhaps it was not a ghost ship at all but a ship of death.

Local fishermen said they found the body near the mouth of the Río Cahoacán a white corpse as large as two men, with no clothes and a light beard, mouth open as if it might speak. Villagers went to find the judge, because he was the only one with a phone, and he called officials from larger towns to come take the body away. This village was only a few palapas made of sticks and bamboo, with palm-frond roofs.

It was like a story from Gabriel García Márquez: the carnivalesque scene on the beach. The sea that brings gifts of the First World, conquistadors, and death. This body floating naked and larger than life John Long, literally a big man, now become legend. But this tale is real. It happened in February in the village of La Cigüeña, on the west coast of Chiapas, seven miles from Mexico's border with Guatemala. Long, a 78-year-old Irishman who'd spent his adult life in California, had dreamed of this voyage for 16 years. He'd left San Francisco three months earlier on his 48-foot ketch, Cúlin, heading south to the Panama Canal and then home to his native Ireland.

Long's , or emergency position-indicating radio beacon, went off at 12:49 a.m. on February 2. And contrary to all the colorful stories from the villagers, with their invention of gold and claims of finding the body, the Mexican navy actually discovered Long's corpse around 11 a.m. the next morning, floating two miles offshore near the town of Puerto Madero, seven miles north of La Cigüeña. His body was naked and bruised, with cerebral hemor­rhaging, broken ribs, and a broken neck.

Long's story was disappearing even as it was happening, and soon legend would be all that was left. I know this because his story is a version of what could have been my own. Ten years ago, I ran into trouble in these same waters.

My sailboat was a 48-foot ketch, just like Long's, and in the late fall of 1997 I hired another captain to deliver it from San Francisco to Panama while I finished a semester of teaching at Stanford. My plan was to pick up the boat in Panama and continue to the British Virgin Islands, where I would run winter charters. This boat, Grendel, was my business and my home.

But the captain I'd hired, an accomplished sailor in her thirties, took on some bad diesel in Acapulco, diesel with water in it, and limped into the town of Puerto Madero on a bit of wind. For some reason, she waited a week before calling me. Then the cook took off on another boat for la pura vida in Costa Rica, and took my $2,000 in emergency cash with him.

None of this made any sense, of course, and it was the beginning of the most outrageous four months of my life. I arrived in Puerto Madero figuring I'd be on my way in about a week. But soon enough, I was the center of attention in the town's backwater shrimp port, a tiny village of its own, without a name. I'd fallen down the rabbit hole, into a place where, everywhere I turned, I heard newer and less believable stories, and they were all about me. 

My sailboat was large and broken, tied to the one crumbled chunk of concrete on the shoreline, visited by rats, snakes, begging children, prostitutes, the police, the navy, drunken fishermen, and the crooked port captain's men. At first I tried to have the engine fixed, but a mechanic with a disco shirt, gold chains, and a group of thugs at his shop held the high-pressure injection pump for ransom, demanding $900 instead of $100 for the repair. So I tried a new tack, spending $3,500 to buy a used engine and have it trucked down from California. This engine was stolen before it ever arrived, only to reappear mysteriously months later, a 500-pound hunk of metal dumped on the beach in the middle of the night.

The outboard engine for my dinghy was also stolen, a theft I came to believe was arranged by my one friend in port, a young Guatemalan named Santiago who was also my interpreter. When I alerted the port captain, a formal and evasive man in his sixties, he told me I could report my stolen engine officially or unofficially. Officially meant he'd have six agencies come strip-search me. Unofficially meant he'd do nothing, even though I could tell him who'd stolen the engine and where it was being kept.

As a week turned into a month, I started paying protection money to Gordo, a Buddha-like crime boss, but even then I was threatened by his own toughs, who beat a prostitute nearly to death right in front of me. I was harassed constantly by a Nicaraguan guy who had an imagined rivalry with me over a waitress at the port's only restaurant, a misunderstanding based on one nervous smile. Almost every day at dawn, a Mexican navy captain came aboard to search my boat and give me advice on how to do my hair, which was already so short it was almost military. One morning, his men bound my hands and beat me as he looked for drugs.

Ultimately I spent four months in Puerto Madero, out of options and out of money. I was referred to locally as “the ATM machine,” bleeding cash, on the edge of ruin. Even when I'd take a taxi from Tapachula, the larger city 15 miles inland, the drivers knew who I was and every detail of my story. They knew the mechanic and his men. They knew what I paid Gordo. They knew who had my outboard. They knew I had tried to escape once, putt-putting away at one knot on a broken diesel engine belching black grime into the water, and that pirates in pangas had rammed my boat and threatened to board it for drugs. They knew I had sailed straight to sea that night like a coward with my lights off, then limped back into port to go through it all again.In other words, I became familiar with Puerto Madero. By the time I finally left, I was enraged and terrified. Ten years later, when I heard about Long, I knew I had to go back, as much to resolve my own story as to find answers to his.

John Long was three months into the biggest adventure of his life. He'd loved boats and the sea since his childhood, on the coast of Ireland, and now he was on his way home, planning to finish his voyage at the oldest sailing club in the world, the , in Crosshaven, a few miles upriver from his native Myrtleville. “If you sail into Crosshaven, you'll die a happy man for having made it,” his brother, Michael, told him when he left San Francisco. “And if you die along the way, you'll die a happy man for having tried.”

Long and his wife, Julia, had come to America in 1965 on their honeymoon. They didn't intend to stay, but Long saw that he could make good money as a carpenter, so they decided to stick around long enough to earn the cash to buy a Volkswagen van back in Ireland.The momentum of a life is something few of us can control, however. The Longs ended up raising their three sons Aaron, Philip, and Jason in California, and John never missed a single day of work. His was a good life, a rich life, but in his retirement, the dream of this yacht, Cúlin, and the dream of this voyage took over.

“It became an obsession, almost an obligation,” says his youngest son, Jason, a 35-year-old English professor in Merced, California. In 1992, Long bought a bare hull made of Cor-Ten steel and used his skills as a master carpenter to finish out the interior in teak and other hardwoods. He and Julia were separating, though the family would still spend holidays together, and Cúlin was a labor of love after all those years of steaming and bending, carving and fitting.

Then there were his half-dozen attempts to make the voyage. Long was delayed over the years by family events, such as the birth of a granddaughter, but also by having to turn back many times. Though he'd served in the merchant marine as a young man, sailing around the world delivering bananas and coffee, he didn't know navigation or his boat's equipment very well. On his first attempt, he sailed north instead of south after he left San Francisco Bay. The next trip was the same; he ended up near Tomales Bay, more than 40 miles up the coast. The next time Long tried, he found himself out in the Farallon Islands, almost due west.

Each time, he'd say he was done. “I'm sick, I'm tired, my hand is hurt,” he said after the Farallones. “I'm done with this. This is it.”

Then, the next day, there would be another voice mail, saying he knew now what had gone wrong and how to fix it. “I think I can do this.”

When Long left on his final voyage, on October 14, 2007, there was no party. No one sawhim off. Sailors at the dock had ridiculed him for years, and his family had lost faith. For the early attempts, they gave going-away parties. After a while, though, they stopped believing he would ever really go more than a few miles outside the Golden Gate. Jason hoped he might just sell the Cúlin and get a condo and season tickets to the Oakland A's. “We felt OK,” he told me, “because we thought he would never go.”

But this voyage had become, to some extent, a grudge match against the naysayers. This time, Long had taken classes. He knew navigation and his equipment, and he surprised everyone by making it down to Santa Barbara to visit his oldest son, Aaron, a business student. He was on his way. He was anxious to continue on, sailing for Mazatlán within a week.

“I've got my sea legs back,” he said. “I'm feeling good. I'm going.”

I never thought I'd set foot in Puerto Madero again, and arriving back in town is disorienting. The small port area, where I was stranded, has been renamed Puerto Chiapas, and the government has put in a cruise-ship dock, which Holland America is using for its Panama Canal trips. On the surface, Puerto Chiapas is an innocent place of coffee and fruit and friendly people, with a tremendous fake pyramidal marketplace and a pool. But the pangas are still here, and the fishermen, and I suspect things haven't changed all that much.

I've got a letter from Jason Long giving me full authority to try to salvage or sell the Cúlin. Armed with this, I take a taxi to the harbor, to the small port captain's compound, and go inside. The old port captain has passed away, the secretary tells me. The new one, Captain Andres Ordaz, a good-looking man in his forties, is a bit slicker but seemingly up to the same games. He claims Long was sailing north from Central America, had never been in Mexico (he says he confirmed this with officials in Manzanillo and Mazatlán), and was cooking some fish on deck when he tripped overboard. He even claims that parts of the dinner were found.

I have only a few facts, provided by the Longs before I left: a photo of the Cúlin taken a few days after it hit the beach, showing all three sails up; the U.S. Coast Guard's report of when and where the EPIRB went off; directions to the spot where the Cúlin is beached; and a summary of the autopsy report provided to the Longs by the U.S. consulate in Mexico City.

Trying to match these facts with the port captain's account creates a fairly preposterous scene: It's 1 a.m. and Long is on deck, with his three sails up. The jib is back-winded, though, held out on the wrong side, which stops the boat dead in its tracks, like a giant air brake. Yet somehow the Cúlin has been able to defy the laws of physics, sailing hundreds or even thousands of miles north from Panama or Costa Rica or wherever Long teleported to after he left California. To celebrate this miracle, he is fixing a lovely fish dinner in the middle of the night, naked, but suddenly trips overboard, managing to hit his head so hard that his brain hemorrhages. Midair, the abrasions on his left cheek, described in the autopsy, have time to quickly scab. He breaks his neck and ribs and instantly stops breathing, so that when he hits the water none of it gets into his lungs.

I'm guessing the port captain's fable is a fair preview of what I'll find as I try to follow the local investigation, if there is one. So I decide to go directly to the boat.

The last few miles to La Cigüeña are down a narrow dirt road through low plantain trees, unspoiled and remote but also a little spooky, given what happened to Long. The village is beautiful, though, when it appears, a collection of bamboo-and-wood huts stretched along the slow Río Cahoacán. No garish paint, no abundance of concrete. The few attempts at that were wiped out in 2005 by Hurricane Stan. There are goats and pigs and dogs in the road, and when I get out of the car everyone stares. The first man to offer help is a drunken fisherman in a yellow shirt. His name is Israel, his eyes are marbled, and he's full of claims. He'll take me to the boat.

“Hay un problema?” he keeps asking. Do we have a problem? And then he answers himself in English, “No problem, my friend.”

We walk through the village to where the river turns north and divides the jungle from a long beach and the sea. Israel's two sons have a small wooden canoe they've built by hand. It's narrow and tippy, with yellowish bilge water and a blue crab huddled inside the bow. I board and squat low. The Cahoacán is known for its crocodiles, but one of the boys walks beside the boat in waist-deep water, pulling the bow.

It's late afternoon, the air warm and humid but not hot, not stifling. There's a light breeze coming from the ocean, and a few fishermen throw hand-nets into the water. Small, thin fish skip across the surface to escape us. There are trees overhanging to our right, driftwood like sculpture on the beach to our left. It's lovely here, like parts of Puerto Madero ten years ago, and it doesn't feel dangerous at all. We land on the beach side and walk 100 yards across sand to the Pacific, where slow rollers are coming in.

After a few minutes, I see the Cúlin ahead. The boat is only a hull, more than half buried, lying on its side. A group of men are standing on her cabin, bent over, perhaps removing something. They're several hundred yards away, and they remind me where I am, what this place is capable of. As we come closer, they see us and immediately leave, walking away fast. I can't tell whether they're carrying things or not.

Up close, the boat is heartbreaking. Waves washing over it, everything stripped and carted away. I had wanted to help Long's family salvage something, but there's nothing left.

From Acapulco south to the Guatemala border lie hundreds of miles of yellow-sand beaches, from the surf towns of Puerto Escondido and Puerto Ángel to the undeveloped coast of Chiapas, where you might see a few palm-frond-roofed palapas and then another 100 miles of nothing. Conventional sailing wisdom advises keeping close to land here as you pass through the enormous Gulf of Tehuantepec: They say the “Tehuantepeckers,” 60-knot winds that scream across the narrow, flat spit of land separating the Gulf of Mexico from the Pacific, can blow you 300 miles to sea. This is myth, in my experience, but the sailing world is full of myths, and this one puts every yacht in close to shore, where it becomes a target= for pirates.

The pirates of southern Mexico don't quite merit the name. Those off the coast of Somalia have .50-caliber machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. They operate out of a country that hasn't had a stable government in more than a decade, so they are in fact much like the 17th- and 18th-century pirates of the Caribbean, powerful enough to capture entire ports and operate out of them untouched. The pirates of most of the world, though, and certainly the Central American coast, would never think of themselves as pirates per se; they are merely opportunists, poor fishermen and petty thieves. A passing yacht can be worth a hundred times what a Mexican fisherman will make in his lifetime when I was here ten years ago, the average wage was $25 a month. 

Add in the fact that this coast sits right on an active smuggling route. Acapulco lies between the Colombian port of Buenaventura and California, and with crackdowns in the Caribbean, smugglers have moved out into the Pacific, its vastness hiding merchant ships towing submarines full of cocaine, cigarette boats running fast and invisible to radar in the dark, semisubmersibles riding low, only their periscopes sticking up. In October 2007, Mexican law enforcement seized 23.6 metric tons of cocaine from a ship docked in Manzanillo, a record seizure on land or at sea. It was just outside Manzanillo that Long had his first brush with pirates. He'd made it all the way down the 1,100-mile coast of Baja California and stopped for a few repairs in Mazatlán. But just north of Manzanillo, at sea, at night, his electrical system died. His alternator was out. He also had a recurring mechanical problem: The prop shaft would slip back and jam against the rudder and make him go in circles.

Long set off his EPIRB, which alerts rescue agencies by satellite. This is a serious piece of equipment, an international cry for help that should not be set off unless the boat is sinking or there's some other life-threatening emergency. Problems with an electrical system don't usually qualify. But Jason says his father was worried that without power, he wouldn't have lights or radar and was in danger of collision.

The Mexican coast guard came out immediately. They'd been watching Long, because sitting there in one place with his lights off, he looked as if he were on a drug rendezvous. The officers boarded with machine guns and made him leave his boat. Then they sped away, leaving the Cúlin drifting, and stopped and waited. Pirates were tracking the boat, apparently. “It was kind of left as bait for a while,” Aaron says. The coast guard watched on radar, but the pirates had radar too, and they could see the coast guard waiting, so they turned back. The officials returned Long to his boat and gave him a free tow into Manzanillo, and there he began an ordeal of repairs and scams and paperwork that lasted more than a month.

When Long finally left Manzanillo, in January, he planned to sail straight to Panama. He continued to have mechanical and electrical problems, though, so Aaron thinks he may have been looking for a port to pull into for repairs. He was hugging the shore, sailing no more than a few miles out, avoiding the Tehuantepeckers. This put him right in the drug route, not only for big loads to Acapulco but also for local traffic making quick trips over the Guatemala border. He presented an opportunity to everyone.

The ironic thing is that Long had built the Cúlin specifically to withstand pirate attacks. He'd placed his helm inside and could lock himself behind a massive sliding steel door and windows of thick bulletproof glass. All his lines to control the sails ran inside as well. I've never seen or heard of another sailboat quite like this. Most sailors just hope they won't run into pirates, but Long was prepared.

The truth may be elusive in other places, but here in Puerto Madero and La Cigüeña, I believe it never actually exists. Even as events occur, they immediately become something else. An outsider can never know anything for certain, and this is partly because we are mythological creatures, born of conquistadors and sitting on our mountain of gold in El Norte. We aren't believable ourselves, even our existence, so we're told stories, and every story is about one thing: money. It made perfect sense for everyone to try to take my boat. And it makes perfect sense now that Long's story should be buried.

I have to admit, I still feel a bit of the old fear as I walk through the palapas along Puerto Madero's waterfront to the fishing area, where the pangas line the beach. I never saw any fish brought into port ten years ago, but this time I actually see a few, and the man cleaning them suddenly calls my name and smiles. It's my old friend Santiago.

It's difficult to know the nature of this place. I like Santiago, and he still feels like a friend. He has the nicest house in town now, cement and tile, painted a light blue. He tells me what happened to all the people I knew from before. Gordo was killed a year after I left, he says, picking up drugs over the Guatemala border. At least four others were killed, too. Santiago shows me who he says the drug runners are now, a row of identical pangas with new 115-horse outboards. He says they run small loads along the coast, usually to Acapulco but sometimes all the way up to California.

Listening to Santiago very nearly got me killed ten years ago. I tried to recover my stolen outboard engine from his friend's house at night and found a Glock in my face, cocked. It was right here along the slough where these pangas are kept. But I decide to trust him now, because I have few other options.

Santiago says yes, he will go to La Cigüeña and ask around. I pay him generously for this, in advance, which is a mistake. The next day he tells me he's found someone there who will tell him the truth and even cross into Guatemala to find out what he can, since the pirates, Santiago says matter-of-factly, are Guatemalan. This extra day means more money, of course, and I feel all the old scams revving up. But Santiago does go to La Cigüeña the next day, and then, the day after that, I go with him.

It turns out his contact is Israel, the fisherman who originally took me to Long's boat. He isn't drunk this time, but his version of things keeps shifting. First he says he saw Long's boat at 4 a.m., sailing with the lights on, and that it crashed ashore around 5 a.m. The waves were huge, the winds high, and he had to wait several hours for the tide to go out before he could try heroically to get to the boat to rescue whoever might be trapped. Then, a few minutes later, his story is that the boat hit the beach at about 8:30 a.m., and the waves weren't very high at all. There was money on the beach, or no money, or just two dollar bills and a ten. He didn't take anything, of course. The guys who did this are from Guatemala, and then they're not. Drug traffic here is constant, he says, or maybe there's no drug traffic at all. The pangas only go out with gas to refuel larger drug boats.

Talking with Israel is like talking with the new port captain in Puerto Madero. But I'm hoping I'll learn more from the Mexican navy. They recovered the body, and they had divers in the Cúlin for an hour, looking for other victims. They must know something.

The navy base is in Puerto Chiapas, opposite the new cruise-ship port. They take my passport and misunderstand that I'm part of Long's family. Nobody can read my official letter, as it's in English, but the existence of a signed document in multiple copies means everything here. Half a dozen guards melt away.

I wait in an air-conditioned lobby, and Lieutenant Jorge Castillo Hurtado finally comes out. I ask where the body was found, and he refers me to the police. I ask what might have happened, and he refers me to the police. I ask about the EPIRB, but he says the navy has no information about an EPIRB.

Hurtado is a tall man, in a beautiful white uniform. He remains consummately polite, even when I push with questions. The funny thing is that I like him. The whole show works. And as he walks me out to the taxi, he actually opens up a bit. Their force is too small, he says. They're not a big base, like Manzanillo, and they're overwhelmed, unable to deal with all the local drug trafficking. Sure enough, several months later, the Mexican newspaper El Universal will report that the coast of Chiapas has become so dangerous the navy has “initiated a land, sea, and air operative,” mobilizing helicopters, airplanes, and blockade ships in search of boats running drugs up from Central America.

My own experience with pirates on this coast came a week or two after I'd arrived, when I left Puerto Madero in desperation on my broken engine. I knew it was stupid, but my friend Julie had come down as crew, and she'd be leaving if I didn't try. We made it 50 miles, going slowly along a beautiful and abandoned coastline, before we saw two pangas coming at us from the Puerto Madero direction.

“Great,” I said. “Visitors.”

Julie looked nervous. “I'm going below,” she said. “If anyone asks, I'm not here.”

“Ha,” I said. “Can you look around in the cabinets above the chart table and find the two flare pistols, please?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I'm not kidding. Please get them quickly. And cartridges.”

The pangas came right for us. Julie found the flare guns just in time to slide them to me and disappear again below. I put the pistols on deck, loaded, down low where the guys in the pangas wouldn't see them.

They came up fast, one on each side, 75-horse outboards roaring. They crossed behind my stern, circled back, and throttled down to my speed, which was no speed at all.

“Coca,” one of the men shouted, pushing a finger into a nostril, tilting his head back. He had no fish on board, no fishing gear. Just gasoline and cervezas. The man was drunk and possibly on drugs, weaving a bit as he stood braced against the throttle arm of the outboard.

On my other side, the driver of the second panga was making the same gesture, poking his finger into his nose.

“No tengo,” I said. “Lo siento.” I was trying to sound polite. I glanced down the companionway at Julie, who had one hand to her mouth and was hiding behind the stairs. She looked terrified. I felt the enormity of how stupid I'd been. I know it sounds crazy, but despite my experiences in Puerto Madero, I hadn't even thought about piracy.

“Cerveza,” the man on the starboard side said. He made a gesture of drinking. He was wearing a bandanna, his face beat up. I knew without a doubt that if he climbed onto my deck, I was going to shoot him.

I wanted to just toss him a beer, but I didn't have any beer, or cocaine. “No tengo,” I said. I tried to gaze ahead, hoping they'd leave us alone.

The guy on my right zoomed off a few hundred feet and circled around to come up fast behind me. He rammed into the stern, which luckily was rounded, so that his bow glanced off. The other driver saw this and circled around to do the same thing. Like sharks bumping.

“Get on the VHF,” I told Julie. “Try calling the coast guard.”

Julie opened the cabinets and grabbed the mike. She held it up and started gesturing wildly. She had no idea how to use a VHF radio.

The guy on my port side came up close. “Coca!” he yelled. I put my hand on the pistol on that side. He was climbing partway out of his boat to hook an arm on my rail.

I heard the other man behind me, so I turned around to look, and then I realized my back was to the first man, and they were going to get me.

But they didn't take the opportunity. In a high falsetto, pretending to be a woman, the leader sang out to me, “En la noche. I come back for you. Con armas,” which meant with guns. Then as quickly as they had arrived, they were gone, and Julie and I motored straight out to sea, sails down and lights off, and hid all night.

The police in Puerto Madero keep Long's case in a homicide folder, on a messy front desk littered with other homicide folders. Public-ministry lawyer Teofilo Esteban Perez Sala takes me over, then hands me the police report. I'm so shocked, I can't speak. I finally manage a “Gracias.”

Perez says Long's injuries were so extreme that his entire skull was basically “pushed over” to the side. I ask whether I can photocopy the file, and to my amazement he says yes. It turns out there's absolutely nothing useful except the full autopsy but I'm in the right place, finally.

The only problem is that there was never an investigation. We should know, for instance, whether there were any traces of blood on the boat. The injuries happened somewhere, and there must have been evidence before looters literally sawed it off the boat and carted it away. But even Perez, with his homicide folder, caves in to the official line and says he thinks it was an accidental death.

When I leave Puerto Madero after a week, I have little more than the facts I arrived with. But here's what I believe happened to John Long. He was sailing sometime before midnight, only a few miles from shore. Despite what his son Aaron says, I don't think he was planning to go into Puerto Madero for repairs. If that had been his plan, he would have been wearing clothing, and he would have furled his sails.

But Long was flying full sail, including main, mizzen, and his largest jib, in light air and small waves, making probably four or five knots. It was hot, so he may have been naked as he rested or tried to sleep below, and he had his pilothouse door all the way open for breeze.Close to Puerto Madero, he heard a panga roaring up, heard its outboard over the sound of water against the hull. And he most likely had already experienced this a dozen times, day and night, pangas coming up asking him for things all along the coast. So he turned on his deck lights and climbed out his side door to tell them to scram. The pirates could have come aboard quickly, easy to do from the bow of a panga.

According to Jason Long, his father was no longer very physically able; even climbing bleachers at ballgames had become difficult. And his guns, which were illegal in Mexico, were too far away, stored not in the pilothouse but in the lower section of the boat.

Long was hit hard on the left side of his head by a blunt object, perhaps a club used for killing fish. He had cerebral hemorrhaging, a broken neck, broken ribs, a bloody nose, and large bruises on his right thigh and stomach, one of them a foot and a half long. His skin wasn't cut, however, so it's possible he was stripped before being thrown overboard.

I think it's fair to say there's no chance that Long's was an accidental death. The boom swinging over on an accidental jibe could fracture a skull and break a neck, but all of Long's controls were below: During a tack or jibe, he would have been in his pilothouse. He also can't have fallen from a mast, because he had no mast steps. He can't have been deploying his dinghy, because all his sails were up. It's hard to imagine he simply fell, because he moved slowly and his injuries were so extreme.

The Cúlin's EPIRB went off briefly at 12:49 a.m. and again at 12:59 a.m., then went silent. Its position was where the boat lies now, on the beach. But the navy recovered Long's body two miles out to sea. I think it's most likely that looters set off the EPIRB while fiddling with the buttons.

Long's body would have drifted at about half a knot per hour south, so my guess is that he was killed around 10 p.m., within a few miles of Puerto Madero. After an hour or so, his boat must have turned toward land. Even if the malfunctioning autopilot had been turned on, the boat could have slipped off course, toward the beach. At that point, the Cúlin became a true ghost ship, sailing itself into La Cigüeña, its captain lost at sea.

At the end of my own saga, after finally installing that replacement engine and escaping north to Ixtapa, I had to change the propeller on my boat. I was in the water with mask and snorkel and wrench, the underside of the hull a hairy, green, shadowy thing in water that was murkier than I had expected.

I adjusted my mask and was about to dive down to try to loosen the old propeller when I happened to glance across the surface of the water behind the boat. I don't know why I took that glance, but I saw the bumpy end of a snout cruising toward me, just barely breaking the surface, creating only the smallest wake, and behind it two prehistoric eyes. It was a crocodile, a big one, nearly invisible, coming after me.

I somehow managed to leap vertically onto the dock. That's the way it seemed anyway. One moment I had been in the water, about to die, and the next moment I was safe. There was no transition that made any sense. The crocodile was in very close, only a few feet away, much larger and heavier than I would have dreamed, and then it was gone.

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