Hey there, JFC-ers,

I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise to any of you that we at Jack’s Flight Club love to travel, and rarely a week goes by when one of the team isn’t off somewhere exciting. And most of the time, that’s down to one of our absurdly good finds proving too hard to ignore!

Our Marketing Guru Drew recently fell foul of a cheap non-stop flight from London to Los Angeles, and before you know it, he and his backpack were off for a week in the sunshine. Luckily for us, he shared a few of his insights and pics over on his personal blog when he returned.

“What struck me initially about Downtown was its stillness. The anticipated hustle and bustle seemed muted. Navigating its streets, often feeling like I had them all to myself, was both an adventure and a novelty.

But LA wasn’t just these raw, introspective moments. It had its lighter side too. The sunsets were beautiful, with colours just making everything pop. There was one hostel I stayed at, where a rooftop pool offered the perfect haven for a quiet reading session, and helped me forget about everything else.

Then, there was Venice Beach. I spent two mornings there, getting up early and taking a walk with a coffee down to the beach. Seeing the surfers there perform their seemingly daily ritual of catching waves before work, felt almost therapeutic.”

With Downtown LA’s Arts District recently being named Time Out’s 13th Coolest Neighbourhood in the World, we’re feeling doubly reminded to always look beyond the glitzy Hollywood depictions.

That said, it sounds like there’s a reason Venice Beach and its super cool surfer lifestyle are so popular, too. But there’s nothing to stop us experiencing both the underrated and over-hyped sides to a city, so I’ll be adding it all to my list!

Happy travels,

Katy Detour Editor

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We’re just going to lean into this for one week, okay? Halloween is around the corner, so it’s time to share some of the JFC team’s creepy travel experiences. A few of them, you might want to recreate for yourselves, others… not so much.

Lauren says… “I'm a sucker for anything remotely abandoned, I find it so fascinating to see how buildings are just left to decay. These are some of the most interesting and spooky that I've visited:

• A derelict sports complex in Havana, Cuba, still used by locals despite its decrepit condition.
• Tenerife’s abandoned leper village, built to control an outbreak but ultimately never populated thanks to revolutionary treatments.
• The now-famous holiday home of Pablo Escobar, a shell of what it once was after being blown apart by a bomb in 1993.

Wistman's Wood in Dartmoor National Park is also one of my faaaave spooky places. It's so quiet and eerie! The trees are so unusual and twisted, but just remember to keep your eyes peeled for the hellhounds…”

Akasha says… “I once went exploring around Coláiste Íosagáin, an abandoned Christian Brothers boarding school in County Cork, Ireland.

The school had a brutal reputation for abusing its students, and you could feel the sadness as you walked around it. The desperate messages scrawled on the walls only made it all the more eerie and depressing.

It was also known locally as a place where people would go to do seances and perform rituals. I’d thought those were just rumours, until I got there and saw the open books on the floor about exactly that.

It was also one of the filming locations for a film called Song for a Raggy Boy. The storyline had some uncomfortable parallels with the school’s own history, which only made the experience all the more grim.

Fran says… “We were doing a late night walk in the Peruvian Amazon, near the three-border point with Colombia and Brazil, it was super dark, and we only had a tiny torch on our head. It was two of us, plus the guide, and thousands of tiny spider eyes staring at us.

At some point we heard some noises coming from a bush close by and our guide froze, whispering, “it may be a jaguar, don't move.” I thought to myself, “bye mum, it's been fun.”

He got close to the bush, stomping on his old hiking boots and shook the leaves with his machete... it was a tapir mum with her baby! Our guide got SO excited and said it had been three years since the last time he saw a tapir. Took me a few seconds to start breathing again!”

You can read more about Fran's time in the Amazon here :-)

Robin says… “I fell asleep on a remote sand dune mountain in Nevada whilst star gazing.

I woke up in the middle of the night, no moon to light the sky, and panned my torch about. There was a quick, reflected flash from two forward-facing predator eyes away in the distance, on the crest of another dune.

My heart rate elevated. “They don't have cougars in Nevada, do they?” I wondered… ( they do).

I panned the torch around again. The eyes are closer than before. I start walking slowly away… Probably just desert fox. Probably.

I try the torch again. Four eyes now. Loping. Even closer, only another ridge away. Probably just curious. Probably.

Confident walking away quickly turns into a terrified, careering run down 400ft of sand dune in the dark back to the safety of the car. Foxes (probably) laughing.

Katy says… “After a late flight into Georgia earlier this year, our coach transfer to Tbilisi got held up by a landslide on the motorway around 50 minutes into a 3.5hr journey. There was no way around it, so the driver parked up in the main square of a small town in central Georgia for the night.

We were free to leave and find somewhere to stay for the night, but we quickly realised that accommodation in Zestafoni was few and far between—especially at 11pm. Plus, with snow up to our calves, none of us fancied abandoning the warmth and occasional Wi-Fi of the bus.

After a restless night aboard the coach with 40-odd others, it became clear that the driver had no idea when we’d be able to move again. Thankfully, the one passenger who spoke both Georgian and English knew that the first commuter train out of there would leave at 6am, headed to Khashuri, which would perfectly circumnavigate the closure. So off we went.

Tickets acquired, we made our way towards the beaten-up, single-carriage Soviet relic on the platform. It was still dark, there was no indication that this train would take us where we wanted to go, and we couldn’t speak the language. As I grabbed the handles by the door to pull myself up into the unlit train, my husband jokingly said the words, “Welcome to the abattoir.”

And that’s when the stench of raw meat hit me like a ton of bricks. As I moved through the first compartment, I was greeted by huge plastic containers full of mystery cuts of mystery animal, accompanied by grubby older guys in dusty work clothes. I quickly averted my eyes and made my way onwards through the darkened compartments.

Eventually, in the second-last of 8 compartments, I found a couple I recognised from our bus and joined them—this felt safe. Ish. We sat down on the solid bench seats, knowing we had a couple of hours of discomfort ahead of us, but at least there would be safety in numbers, right?

A few minutes later, the train started squeaking ominously along the platform, still in complete darkness. Sleep-deprived and basing our whole onward journey on the word of one seemingly kind man on the bus, we began to accept that we may be chugging along to our deaths.

My friend Mary, tired and suspicious of our surroundings

And then the light in our compartment came on. And then it went off. And then it flickered for the next two hours. All we could see out the windows was the occasional glowing neon cross on the hillside, which only added to the discomfort.

Then the darkness lifted somewhat, and the sky became navy blue, allowing us to make out the snowy, mountainous landscape of the Imereti region around us. It was breathtaking. The train meandered on for a couple of hours, squeezing in an unfathomable number of commuters along the way. But eventually we arrived in Khashuri, victorious.

Holding our breath, we manoeuvred our way off the train past containers of meat and into the snow. Then we remembered that we still had to get to Tbilisi.

If any of that has inspired you to go in search of a shiver down your spine, check out some of the world’s most nausea-inducing railway journeys. We can’t promise abattoir vibes and flickering lights, but we won’t rule them out, either…

The desert and the deserted are the name of the game in New Mexico. Oh, and the aliens, of course.

Starting way down south, so close to Mexico you can almost taste it, we’re hitting North America’s largest desert. Sticking within state boundaries, the Chihuahuan Desert is most famously home to White Sands National Park, where the sands really are, well, white. There are lots of ways to traverse the gypsum dunes, but our favourite way down has to be the fast route.

And then it’s time to get your caving shoes out for a 750ft descent into the Carlsbad Caverns. Once called ‘the Grand Canyon with a roof’, the cave system is truly massive—as in, the largest cave within the system stretches more than 140 miles alone. And then there’s the ‘The Big Room’ at an impressive 255ft high, which has 60ft stalactites that dangle perilously above your head. Maybe just don’t look up?

It’s onwards and upwards from here to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Over an hour from the nearest town, on steep winding roads, is the site of the abandoned cliff-face cave homes of the Mogollon people, dating back to the 13th century. You’ll be right in the Gila National Forest, so it’s a prime opportunity for a hike… or a detour to some hot springs!

New Mexico is also famed for its adobe. Not the IT software, rather the building material. All over the state, you’ll spot flat-roofed sand-coloured buildings made of mud and straw. Taos Pueblo is a prime example.

Home to the Red Willow people and continuously inhabited for over 1000 years, San Francisco De Asis Church is one of the area’s most impressive buildings. Artsy types might also recognize it from this piece by Georgia O’Keeffe, who took great inspiration from the area. Try to stop by in June for the church’s ritual "enjarre”, or “mudding”. Fair warning, though, things could get a little messy!

For one last out-of-this-world New Mexican experience, you’d better head to Roswell. The International UFO Museum is the best place to get your bearings and learn about “The Roswell Incident.” And then there’s the Alien Zone & Area 51 Museum, an interactive art exhibition at the UFO Spacewalk, even a UFO-shaped McDonald's…

But a photo op with the town’s welcome sign is probably enough for us.

All the important (or silly, or strange) travel news from across the web this week.

• Don’t feed the birds! While ‘love locks’ weigh down bridges and are considered as graffiti in some of the world’s most iconic destinations, at the Grand Canyon, they’re posing a threat to the critically endangered California Condor.
• Always dreamt of taking a hot air balloon over Cappadocia’s stunning fairy chimneys? Well, now you can hail one using your Uber app.
• An Alaska Airlines pilot has been charged with 83 counts of attempted murder after trying to shut down a plane’s engine mid-flight. The pilot claimed he had not slept for 40 hours and was suffering from a nervous breakdown.
• And finally, everyone’s favourite part of Halloween—no, not the pumpkins and sweets, we mean dogs in costumes, of course!
  NYC’s Halloween Dog Parade led the pack with early celebrations last weekend, which saw 15,000 New Yorkers take to the streets for the occasion. The 1st place prize for the most pawsome costume went to Pookah the Pomeranian, who dressed up as ‘Winnie the Pookah’.