This weekend, the tiny town of Hokitika, New Zealand, population 4,500, will be flooded by 17,000 foodies, who are flying, driving and bussing in from all over sample the oddest delicacies they can get their mitts on.

Stowaway squirrels, Chinese environmentalism, and toxic LA.

A few months back, I blogged about Tribewanted.com’s Fijian island experiment. James Vlahos went along with the “first footers” who kicked off development on the island, and lived to tell the tale in National Geographic Adventure.

Abha Malpani of the Written Road spilled the beans today about a new online travel community that’s just emerged from private beta. Matador Travel is going for one-stop shopping for all your Web 2.0 travel-site needs.

Not content to simply smash records, scale imposing peaks, and cross the earth’s most forbidding terrain, a new breed of adventurer has emerged that’s determined to do it all without any mechanical help.

Paris has a new tram line connecting the outer edges of the 13th, 14th and 15th arrondissements, the first tram within city limits since 1937.

It’s called the Guyana Shield – and you might say it’s protecting us from climate disaster: roughly 10 million acres of the most undisturbed tropical forest in the world.

The NY Times has their end-of-year picks, while the LA Times and Washington Post finally get their snow-season specials on the lift.

Travel headlines for the weekend of 11/26/06.

UK-based writer Rachael Glazier decided to put her green beliefs into some extreme practice this month. Looking for an alternative to carbon-belching jumbo jets for a long-haul trip, she opted to travel from London to Hong Kong, by train.