IT WAS THE BEST OF TRIPS : IT WAS THE WORST OF TRIPS : ONCE MORE AROUND THE WORLD IN 1995, OUR INTREPID TRAVEL WRITER RETURNS WITH HIS FAVOURITES--AND FLOPS--OF THE YEAR

A strange, spectacular, saddle-sore, altitude-woozy, melon-drunk year is just about done, and now I have a new favorite place--a few hundred miles from the southern tip of South America--and a new favorite bargain lodging on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Granted, it’s not so simple to sum up and file 1995 away. In fact, as I write, my passport remains a prisoner somewhere in Washington, having been inadvertently taken hostage as my government waged war with itself over how to spend my money. Also, my favorite new Baja California secret has been discovered by outlaws who remain at large, possibly with a large quantity of cocaine. But that can be explained.

It was a fine year. It was the year that I ventured into Death Valley for the first time (on a 118-degree summer day during a power outage); the year a Bolivian mystic predicted my future (mostly encouraging) by tossing dry leaves on a dirt floor; the year I ordered and demolished the same antipasto dish at eight consecutive lunches and dinners in Umbria, Italy. (Melon and prosciutto, melon and prosciutto, melon and prosciutto. . . Life doesn’t get any better.)

It was a mostly lucky year, too. In the course of my job (don’t laugh) exploring the planet and observing the world’s most common occupation--the care and feeding of tourists--I touched down on five continents, passed nights in 42 different lodgings, and survived it all, believe it or not, without a piece of lost luggage, a canceled flight or even a faulty pair of headphones. Through it all, I brought home no ailments worse than a cold (unless you count the pinkeye from the Holy Land).

Here, before we all wander off into the new year, is my stack of milestones from 1995.

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Favorite place in the world: Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile. It takes about 24 hours of flying, hanging around in airports and driving to get there from here. But when you do, the landscape is overwhelming. All of South America’s most eccentric natural extremes seem to come together within the 598,000 acres of the park: strangely serrated snowy mountain peaks, groaning glaciers, deep aquamarine lakes, roaming guanacos (cousins of the llama), wild flamingos. But because of its remote location, the park in 1994 registered a mere 36,000 visitors--as many as Yosemite sees in three typical days (that is, when congressional budget gridlock hasn’t shut down our national parks). With the right equipment, you can spend seven to 10 days hiking around a circuit of campsites within the park. Or you can stay more comfortably at one of the several guest ranches at the park’s edge. Or you can do what I did in January and spend more money (about $250 per person, per day and up, meals included) to stay at the only luxury lodging within the park, the 2-year-old, 30-room Explora lodge.

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Favorite foreign city: Rome. The landmarks never seem to end, nor do the public displays of the inimitable Italian character. Nor do the opportunities to eat well. And though the ever-thickening scooter traffic may be intimidating, central Rome remains among the world’s most pedestrian-friendly places: narrow streets, wonderfully crumbling buildings, cozy shops. For four days in September I wandered from piazza to piazza, looking for underappreciated public areas of the city. I finally came up with the Campo de’ Fiori (see the favorite public market entry below), the Piazza Borghese and the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. If The Times weren’t so fussy about deadlines and expense accounts, I might still be there, polishing up my research.

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Worst city: No winner this year. Also no trips to Las Vegas. Coincidence?

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Favorite U.S. city: New York. A year ago I named San Francisco in this category, for all of its obvious charms. But this year, my wife and I landed in New York in late spring and had the sort of peak Manhattan experience that no other American city--not even San Francisco--can match. We surveyed Central Park from Belvedere Castle, explored a new museum or two, tested a trendy new restaurant on a warm night in Greenwich Village, savored a pint of Harp beer served by a genuine Irish immigrant bartender in a genuine Irish immigrant bar, and attended a city wedding.

The wedding was what brought the classic Manhattan moment. The ceremony was in the Church of the Resurrection on 74th Street near Park Avenue. The reception was upstairs in an old mansion around 70th. To get from one venue to the other, the bride and groom led a procession of about 100 of us on a dusk stroll, creating a small flood of formal wear past the handsome old buildings of the Upper East Side. For that kind of thing, you can’t beat New York.

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Favorite affordable hotel find: The Beacon, Manhattan. For years, we’ve been looking for a reasonably priced, reasonably located, reasonably fit-to-sleep-in place to stay in New York City. It isn’t easy; in October, a study by PKF Consulting found, the average daily room rate was $171.82, and the occupancy rate was 91.9%. But last May we hit pay dirt: The Hotel Beacon at Broadway at 75th on the Upper West Side. The Beacon’s rates begin at $99 for singles, $115 for doubles ($85 and $99 for AAA cardholders). Its interiors are unremarkable, the phone system is quirky, the elevators can be slow and about 140 of its 320 rooms are occupied by long-term residents. But it’s clean, the location is great, the atmosphere is upbeat and every room has a kitchenette. (To supply those kitchenettes, the Fairview market, much beloved by many a Manhattanite, stands across the street.)

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Worst hotel experience: Furnace Creek Ranch Resort, Death Valley. Granted, we didn’t arrive on the best of weekends. It was Labor Day, the temperature was 118 and the power had just gone out. But our two nights at this resort, managed by Fred Harvey Co., were a festival of things gone wrong. (This place is not to be confused with the fancy stone-walled Furnace Creek Inn a few hundred yards up the hill, which is also managed by Harvey.)

Restaurant workers openly criticized front-desk staff. Front-office staff failed to deliver phone messages and gave misleading information to callers. Further, despite the unavailability of many of the hotel’s advertised amenities, the desk staff wouldn’t give any discount until I spoke forcefully with a supervisor--and even then, the hotel’s billing staff failed to follow through properly until I called to correct them. There is, however, this consolation: Since the staff usually changes seasonally at the park lodgings, there may already be an entirely new crew in place.

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Favorite Baja secret: In September, I finally followed advice that I should seek out a charming little Baja California town called Todos Santos, where the cacti march off into the distance, where violent waves break on empty beaches, where a frog can inch its way across the main street at 9 p.m., untroubled by traffic. It was hot, it was cheap and I loved it. Todos Santos, I told readers on Oct. 15, is a place where a visitor could count on peace, quiet and privacy.

Twenty-one days later, on a dry lake bed near the edge of that same, sleepy town, a mysterious jet swooped to a pre-dawn landing and was greeted by men in Mexican federal police uniforms. They unloaded its cargo, tried in vain to conceal the plane by dismantling, burning and bulldozing it, and ordered local authorities away. Mexican officials now concede that the plane held several tons of cocaine, worth about $200 million. The men and the cocaine remain unaccounted for. Another couple of quiet days like that, and the good people of Todos Santos will find themselves co-starring in a pastel-hued TV series with Don Johnson.

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Most memorable meal: Toward the end of my Italian melon-and-prosciutto binge in June, I settled in for a evening of serious eating at the high-toned Le Tre Vaselle restaurant and hotel in the tiny town of Torgiano in the middle of Umbrian hill country. Pasta with black truffle sauce, sliced beef in balsamic vinegar sauce and rosemary, roasted potatoes with orange rind, etc. (The restaurant’s owners, the Lungarotti family, also produce some of Italy’s best-regarded red wines, and have established a wine museum about a block from Le Tre Vaselle.) Runner-up in this category: Lotus, in Toronto, where chef and owner Sursur Lee assembles eclectic international menus, drawing on his Chinese background and the wide range of ingredients shipped to that city’s multiethnic markets.

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Most memorable non-meal: Italy again. Assisi may be famous for its favorite son, St. Francis. And St. Francis may be famous for his love of animals and his sermon to the birds. But in the town of his birth, grilled wild pigeon remains a specialty in many of the best restaurants. I passed.

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Most uncomfortable transportation: Five words--Egyptian camel with wooden saddle. Later, I heard that some shrewd Westerners bring sleeping bags and interpose them between bottom and saddle. But on my October visit to Mt. Sinai (to be covered in an upcoming story), I had no such protection. Walking, I would have sweated and grunted less.

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Favorite nightclub: The Bovine Sex Club. It’s in Toronto, and it houses no cows at all, just a low-key atmosphere of loud music and young people in black leotards and leather jackets. But you can’t beat that name.

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Favorite marketplace: Campo de’ Fiori, Rome, Italy. This neighborhood piazza’s forte is produce and atmosphere. Around three flower stands, dozens of merchants every morning peddle vegetables of all hues, textures and consistencies. During my June visit, I found one merchant offering 12 varieties of olive oil. Nearby stand sidewalk restaurants, a couple of ice cream shops, a wine shop and one of the snazziest butcher shops I’ve ever seen.

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Most unproductive day: Sept. 14. On that afternoon I was to fly home from an assignment in Mexico, but an impending hurricane forced the closure of the airport at Cabo San Lucas, marooning hundreds of us at the southern tip of Baja California. All day at the Melia Cabo Real hotel, I watched workers board up windows and toss patio furniture into the deep end of the pool (to protect the stuff from flying around in the wind), and commiserated over beers with hard-drinking American vacationers whose flights were scrubbed. Phone lines were jammed. Hours ebbed by. Then the hurricane veered away, the driving rain, strong winds and violent tides dwindled, and we were left on a dark, formerly stormy night to console ourselves with, well, more beer.

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Biggest headache: Not, as you might suspect, the day after my Baja grounding, but a pair of days several months before, in Bolivia. La Paz and Lake Titicaca lie at about 12,000 feet above sea level, a circumstance that goes quickly to work on the heads of those who have arrived by airplane. Stepping into the suddenly thinner air, I felt my balance falter and my cranium begin to pound. My balance returned, but the pain went on for more than a day, even as I gulped coca tea, popped aspirin, ate light and declined all alcohol. Finally a guide persuaded me to pop two mysterious red-and-white capsules and all was well. (Dr. Alan Spira of the Travel Medicine Center in Beverly Hills has since advised me that doctors can prescribe acetazolamide, nifedipine or other measures, depending on a traveler’s and various other circumstances, to reduce effects of altitude sickness.)

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When the earth moved, and management followed: In March, I lay down for a nap at the Best Western Inn by the Sea at La Jolla, and woke to a major tremor--not an earthquake but the daily dry cycle in the laundry one floor below. In April I described the experience in print. Less than a week later, I got a written apology from Gregory T. Rizzi, the general manager, acknowledging the problem. And then in late October came a second note: “We have purchased and installed vibration-free laundry equipment at a considerable expense and solved our problem. (Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah.)”.

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What I did on my vacation: Went rafting on the Tuolomne River, west of Yosemite. Didn’t scribble one note, didn’t take one picture, didn’t collect one business card, didn’t check one spelling. As I recall, however, it was a good time.

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Most agreeable change in plans: In late April, I boarded a VIA Rail train in Vancouver, expecting to get the standard three-day trans-Canada rail trip to Toronto. Instead, a derailment forced us off our normal route and onto one of the most spectacular stretches of railroad track in North America, crossing the Rockies via Banff and Lake Louise rather than Jasper. (Canadian rail officials, paring back their system to meet budget cuts, took this stretch off the usual transcontinental route in 1990.) We rode through spiraling tunnels, rolled past sleeping elk, rumbled along pine-thick valleys beneath snow-covered slopes. Arrival in Toronto was eight hours late, and among those who had begun in Vancouver, almost no one complained.

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Most obvious sign that a hotel opening was not going smoothly: Arriving at Oregon’s rebuilt Crater Lake Lodge on its third day of business, I found the marketing director standing at the entrance to the dining room. Holding menus. Turned out he was pinch-hitting as maitre d’ to help cover for a rash of last-minute resignations. The food and beverage manager, I soon was told, had quit in a huff the day before, and staff members in various departments had been reported AWOL. Also there had been power outages (there was 91 inches of snow outside), painfully slow dining room service, reports of rattling plumbing and so on. Reports from more recent visitors have been less dire, but still mixed. Great crater, though.

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Best bad weather: Rain atop Machu Picchu. After a few hours of morning hiking through a steady drizzle, I reached a resting spot on a high mountain trail and sunk into a nap beneath an umbrella. Waking, I found myself alone in the middle of an even dreamier reality, peering down from above as the ruins of Machu Picchu emerged through the mist.

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One last thing: If any travelers should get down in the near future to my new favorite place in Patagonia, and those travelers should notice any suspicious activity involving aircraft or large volumes of controlled substances--I don’t want to hear about it.