On a recent trip back to NYC, my mom dug out a pair of chiffon yellow Bermuda golf shorts with my grandma’s initials embroidered on them and gave them to me. Thanks Mom, maybe I can wear them in some hipster renaissance outfit somewhere in SF.

My mom pulls crazy things out of boxes and storage places in her small Greenwich Village apartment; like hordes of clowns coming out of a circus car, the treasures just keep coming. These were pristine and had probably been cloistered away for more than 30 years. Suffice to say I am NOT a golfer, save the mini golf experiences with my kids. I get the appeal though, and can perhaps imagine, that some day it might be of interest to me.

Golf, however, is a huge part of the travel market and I have written about golf courses and destinations for years. Two recent stories got me thinking about the symbolism of golf in today’s world. The New York Times story: Revolutionary Cuba Now Lays Sand Traps for the Bourgeoisie and the NPR story charting the golf course casualties of the recession, seem to encapsulate so many of the changes rocking our country, the global economy and the geopolitical shifts in the world.

Ironically, Cuba is now building greens, hoping to woo more tourists, while Florida and Georgia, two of the go-to golf states, are converting some courses to park lands, primarily because of a decline in traffic and revenue. Smaller, less glitzy courses are the first to suffer following the real estate boom and bust. Course construction was fast and furious in the Go-Go ’90s and now there is too much supply and not enough demand. Across the U.S., 600 golf courses have closed in the past five years. The National Golf Foundation, or NGF, expects another 500 more to close in the next three years.

In Cuba, fifty years after Castro closed all of his country’s courses calling golf the “epitome of bourgeois excess,” Cuba is rushing to green light at least four luxury course projects in an effort to attract the global golfing elite to the Caribbean nation. Even Castro’s old comrade, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, is still trying to do away with his country’s courses, to make room for housing for the poor. Cuba as a golfing mecca…the times they are a changin’.

Besides passion and the global sports stage, Brazilians have a lot to cheer about. As many Western developed countries still wallow in the mud of recession, Brazil’s economy is dynamic. Record soybean harvests show agricultural clout, a sugarcane/ethanol boom demonstrates forward thinking environmental strategies and a new female president highlight that Brazil is on the move. Strides are being made against poverty and crime, and Brazil’s role in the world order is shifting.

Brazil is a member of BRIC. In economic terms BRIC is an acronym, a term coined in 2001 that refers to the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, which are all seemingly at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development. In fact, these days the U.S. is considering changes to our visa system to woo tourists and facilitate the process for visitors from these countries. Disposable income for many is a new thing and certainly travel is on their mind.

For visitors to Brazil, there is so much to see in this, the largest country in South America. From the high tech worlds of Brasilia and Sao Paolo to Rio’s cultural Mecca and the Amazon rainforest, Brazil is a fascinating travel stew. The more relaxed city of Salvador in the northeast was my favorite area, but I wouldn’t miss a visit to Iguaçu Falls on the Argentina border. The beaches and the beach culture never fail to impress and amuse. It is the people who bring the country to life. I would travel back to Brazil in a heartbeat.

Brazil tourism is even cashing in on the new film RIO, the animated story about tropical birds. Interest in family trips to Rio de Janeiro are up according to Travel Weekly and this keeps Brazil in the cultural conversation and segues nicely to the upcoming big global sporting events.

Ziplines are all the rage at adventure resorts and ski areas, but sometimes we forget that they originally served a practical purpose to move people and materials across impassable chasms. And sometimes we need to be reminded that they still do.

In a report on Slate from Colombia, Joshua Foer takes a ride on a cable that’s been getting daily use for 60 years. Do you want to hitch a ride?

As a young student, I remember being so haunted by the pictures and stories. Later, when I moved to California and worked in TV, I met a few folks who had covered the story, a personal tragedy for many in the San Francisco Bay Area. So it was with shock and intrigue that I read a recent article in the New York Times discussing the possibility that the ghostly jungle compound, where 900 people lost their lives, could become a tourist attraction. Visions of Dollywood, souvenir kiosks and, gasp, People’s Temple T-shirts made me read on.

Guyana is lush and the only English speaking country in South America, in desperate need to diversify its economy. The sacred land that is now overgrown by jungle is remote, part of the original appeal for Reverend Jim Jones and his followers. Is it disrespectful?  Would a research center to study cults be more appropriate? Or, should the jungle just do its thing and continue to smother the memory of the horrors there?

The New York Times reported that many buildings in Santiago appeared unscathed from the outside, but inside, they were heavily damaged. Other reports suggest that rebuilding will take three to four years. And the quake created little curiosities, such as moving Concepcion 10 feet closer to the sea, and Buenos Aires an inch closer. The temblor could even spike the cost of paper 5 percent and take a huge bite out of the supply of Chilean wine.

Triporati’s Chile expert Wayne Bernhardson, in nearby Uruguay at the time, cited reports from friends that many of the coastal towns in central Chile will never be the same.

But Chile will recover, and vast areas in the north and south (San Pedro de Atacama, Patagonia) were unaffected and remain accessible. And this may be a time when Chile needs our support more than ever. That’s worth considering if thinking about changing your travel plans.

But that didn’t deter Nicole Zimmerman, a Brazilian-born American who danced her way into a samba school to experience Carnival from the inside out. She tells her story in the LA Times.

If you can’t get to Rio for tonight’s “special groups” parade (the second of the big competition) you haven’t missed out. The top six samba clubs march again Feb. 20 in the Champions Parade.

The list was compiled by Jeff Greenwald and Christy Hoover at EthicalTraveler.org, a nonprofit organization (part of the Earth Island Institute) that urges travelers to spend their travel dollars in ways that protect human rights and minimize impacts on the environment. They acknowledge that no country on the list is perfect (what country off the list is?) but they found lots of hope and inspiration in many places.

Some countries that made the top 10 may surprise you, others may make complete sense to you. Alphabetically they are:

Argentina
Belize
Chile
Ghana
Lithuania
Namibia
Poland
Seychelles
South Africa
Suriname

The Ethical Traveler report discusses the attributes and endeavors that allowed these countries to rise to the top. The next step for us is to see which of these places are on our travel wish lists and start planning.

Many observers have suggested, some with great hilarity, that to reach that coastline, the governor would first have had to drive at least four or five hours through hundreds of miles of pasturelands, on short mid-winter days, before reaching the scenic coast of southern Buenos Aires province. If not, his best alternative was the Avenida Costanera (pictured here), which runs past the Buenos Aires city airport Aeroparque before dead-ending a few miles north.

For more details please go to Southern Cone Travel.

Is a road from an airstrip to town such a transgression? Well, maybe if it’s through landscape Wayne describes as “one of the most scenic and solitary [walks] I’ve ever done.” Right now to go from the village to the airstrip requires a four-hour walk or a one-hour sail, but isn’t that what you’d expect on an island where castaway Alexander Selkirk lived alone for four years to become the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s famous novel, Robinson Crusoe?

Further, Wayne says the road would wipe out this trail, do incalculable damage to the flora and fauna on an island that has and needs few motorized vehicles, and wouldn’t produce a faster route into town. Who needs it?

It sure makes me want to get down there, maybe in the North American winter when the weather in the south should be milder.

Like many, I have tried to eat less meat, support legitimate ventures that protect the jungle environment and visit various rainforests to enjoy and learn more about them. Whether soaring above the canopy on a zip line, boating down the Amazon or hiking to an idyllic tropical waterfall in Fiji, rainforests are hot travel destinations. I nearly coughed up my granola this morning as I read a front page story in The New York Times entitled: New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Saving the Primeval Rainforests.

The key word is “debate” and controversy there will be about this article, I am sure, but it was a fascinating read. The premise of the article is that as fast as original rainforests are being decimated by farming, logging and industry (about 38 million acres a year), replacement forests are growing at a much faster rate. Spurred by urban migration and improved yield on farmlands, it is estimated that 2.1 billion acres return to wild habitat each year. If this is true it has tremendous potential environmental implications. Globally nearly one-fifth of the world’s carbon emissions come from the destruction of rainforests. We should all still be concerned about maintaining and managing the great jungles of the Amazon and Indonesia, but the question is, does this regeneration and re-growth really cancel out the destructive forces?