A Side Quest Like No Other & Flying Flashbacks

Hey there, Travellers,

For a long time, I thought I had a fear of heights, but when I really thought about it, that didn't make sense. I love views from the top of mountains and going up towers to look out over a city. I even like being in a plane. Those are all things that involve pretty great heights.

Eventually I realised that it is falling I am scared of; I won't get too close to the cliff edge on that mountain, and grated stairs that you can see through are my idea of a nauseating hell (thanks for that memory, Eiffel Tower). Glass floors? Absolutely not.

But there's one form of personal torture I seem to endure every time I visit a new city: the cable car. I love them and all the blurry photos I get through their windows. But each second I spend in a cable car is one in which I question if these are my last moments alive.

This is particularly long and drawn out in Tirana, where the Dajti Ekspres takes around 15 minutes to cover nearly 5 km. Tbilisi, on the other hand, is swift but kinda steep at first. Part of me is even sad that I missed my chance to ride in the now-retired Soviet cable cars in Chiatura, Georgia.

With this newly released list of the best cable cars in Europe, I'm left wondering what really makes one among "the best"? Is it indeed the epic alpine views? Or is it essential to have the added reward of knowing you survived when that didn't feel guaranteed?

I want to hear your thoughts on the best (and worst) cable cars in the world, and what it is that actually makes them great! Let me know in the comments, so I can add more questionable rides to my future travels.

Happy travels and safe landings,

Do you need ideas for your next big trip? Are you in need of a particular travel tip? Ask our team, and we'll try to cover it in The Detour soon!

I came to San Cristóbal de las Casas (aka San Cris), a town in the central highlands of Chiapas, with no real purpose. Seduced by its candy-colored murals, I was completely ignorant of their message and its soul—a ghost of the Zapatista uprising born from the battle in 1994. And like many tourists, I was equally blind to the living, breathing chokehold the cartel had under its red-tiled rooftops. But that’s another story.

Fast-forward a month, and the plan—if you could call it that—for my day off was hatched over a coffee and a sticky table in the hostel. What can I say? My bucket list was and still is heavily influenced by Atlas Obscura, Anthony Bourdain, and the Swedish “shaman” with a kuripe pipe in my hostel. 

His instructions were simple:

Wrong. But off I trotted, excited to add “Met the Zapatistas” to my weekly family check-in on WhatsApp. I had low expectations; the week before, I visited a sacrificial chicken church and still couldn’t look at Coca-Cola the same. 

I had hoped, at least, that the woman I met in the market would be happy I’d made the effort. Weeks earlier, I’d found myself at her stall, a riot of woven colors against the stone street. Among the textiles were black balaclavas, each bearing the letters EZLN. When my curious gaze lingered, she didn’t miss a beat. 

The scratchy wool was flung over my head, and, before I could even register the letters, her fingers yanked the mask down, poking and prodding at the hole near my eyes. I wasn’t going to just observe the symbol; nope, I was going to inhabit it. Stepping back, she gave a satisfied nod, grabbed my camera, and snapped a picture of my now-anonymous, flabbergasted face.

Then, with the swift practicality of any good merchant, she held out her hand.

“Cien pesos,” she said sternly, “for the mask… Y otro veinte,” she added, a glint in her eye. “For the photo.”

I fumbled in my purse briefly before handing over the cash.

The memory of that borrowed face flickered back to me now as I stood under the blazing sun of a dusty backroad. With my passport safely tucked in my bra and embarrassingly little Spanish, I mimed my way into a dinged-up taxi. Thirty minutes later, we were speeding into the Lacandón jungle.

The air was hot and wet. I gazed out my window past the whip of cornfields and banana plants, my mind lost in thought.

An hour into the journey, something shifted. My taxi driver’s eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror. His eyes darted back to the road, and by the time we had reached a sign in Spanish marking our arrival, he was sitting bolt upright.

“Estás en territorio zapatista en rebeldía. Aquí el pueblo manda y el gobierno obedece.”

Translation: “You are in Zapatista rebel territory: here, the people rule and the government obeys.”

The Zapatistas, in case you didn’t know, are an Indigenous-led political movement that rose up in 1994, the same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement came into force. They declared war not just on the Mexican state but on the greater system that had quietly erased them for centuries. 

Operating under the name EZLN, they carved out autonomous territories across the highlands of Chiapas, governing themselves through community assemblies, rotating councils, and a deliberate refusal of conventional power. No presidents. No campaigns. No promises. Just collective decision-making, an emphasis on holistic education, healthcare, and land organized from below, whether the Mexican government liked it or not.

We roll to a stop outside the checkpoint, not a soul in sight. The driver twists his shoulder over the tattered leather seats and gives me the universal look for “Pay me and get out.” 

And before it dawned on me that I had only arranged this cushy ride one-way, his tires were spitting gravel back in my face, the sound of his engine dissolving into the green. It was just me and the closed wooden gate.  

I muster up the courage to knock loudly. Seconds later, the gate opens, and two figures in black ski masks appear. One masked guard moves toward me, his eyes sharp and intense behind the mask. He jerks his chin and says, “identificación.” I reach for my ID and hand it over. We inspect each other. He flips through my passport, and I take stock of the rifles casually slung over their shoulders. 

My internal monologue pipes up: “This is where that famed intuition of yours led you, hardy har har!”

“A qué te dedicas?” the rebel grumbles. “Shit,” says the voice in my head, mentally flipping through the Practice Makes Perfect textbook that I bought last week. “What’s he saying?” I stare blankly back at him, searching for answers in the sluggish heat. 

"¿Cuál es tu trabajo?" He slows it down like I’m five. Or an idiot. Hard to tell which. But at least I know he's asking about what I do for work.

“Oh! Soy dentista!” 

Pause. Flash teeth. Smile. 

Working in exchange for cat cuddles and selling crystals on Etsy wasn’t on last week’s one-page vocabulary list. You know, the one with lawyer, policeman, politician. None of those felt wise to declare while maintaining eye contact with his gun. Dentist it was. 

“Mm,” he says. His mouth tightens, and his eyes slide sideways to the other guard. He takes my passport and turns on his heel. The other guard follows, and they disappear behind the gate, leaving me on the wrong side of silence with nothing but the echo of my own explanation hanging in the air. 

The next twenty minutes stretch themselves thin. Sitting on the curb, I take stock. No passport, no cell service, no ride back. Fantastic. At least the faux-shamanic Swede knew where I’d gone—if he wasn’t hitching his way to Tulum already. 

My gaze settles on the wooden shack opposite, its loose tin roof rattling in the gentle breeze. Not a lick of pine unmarked by revolutionary graffiti.

A thick, defiant, giant mustache dominates the wall, shrinking even the solemn Mexican flag. Emiliano Zapata’s unmistakably.

“Everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves. Autonomous Rebel Zapatista Municipality.

Good Government Council, the central heart of the Zapatistas before the world. Highlands Zone.”

Finally, the guards emerge once more, beckoning me over. “No preguntas,” he says, warning me not to ask any questions.

My “tour” was about to begin. 

Keep reading...

To much fanfare from airlines and aviation museums alike, January 2026 marked the 50th anniversary of Concorde's first commercial flight. Its lifespan was relatively short, with Concorde's final retirement taking place in 2003, but the hype and romance lived on. Ever since, conjecture has swirled about the next commercial supersonic jet, and right now, it's anyone's game. 

Boom Technology is currently leading the race with a slated 2029 launch for the Boom Overture. That said, the internet is, of course, full of skeptics doubting it'll ever come to fruition. Meanwhile, NASA is developing a smaller jet designed to break the sound barrier without that almighty BOOM, and Spike Aerospace is looking to make day trips to Dubai a reality for business passengers.

But until we see any passengers actually embarking on another barrier-breaking flight, we'll have to live vicariously through memories from Concorde's plush interiors. Here are some of the tales that the Jack's Flight Club community had to share:

Thanks so much for sharing your stories, Travellers. 

If anyone else has memories to share from the first age of supersonic travel, we'd love to hear them—stinking hangovers and all! Tell us all about it in the comments :-)

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

• The famous "Lover's Arch" in Puglia, Italy collapsed and fell into the sea on Valentine's Day. Couples who got engaged that day are welcome to pretend this is totally not a bad omen.
  
  
• Route 66 celebrates its 100th birthday this year! The iconic American highway stretches all the way from Chicago to Santa Monica, but Mental Floss picked a few highlights. 
  
  
• Here's a story that's begging for a pun on the word "high": British Airways has launched an investigation after three crew members (accidentally) took marijuana gummies between flights. 
  
  
• Tourism is growing again, just about matching pre-pandemic rates—but not where you might expect. The BBC broke down why spots like Bhutan and Ethiopia are driving the new surge.
  
  
• And finally, two passengers have been given a lifetime ban from Jet2 after getting into a drunken brawl on a flight back from Antalya. Now that's what we call "beating a Jet2 holiday!"