Best places to travel in August

Every August, Las Vegas holds the mesmerizing social experiment turned annual cult gathering known as Burning Man. Each year, tens of thousands of resilient individuals take their bikes and Winnebagos out to Black Rock City, a temporary community raised out of the desert sand, to live out a week of artistic self-expression, self-reliance and camaraderie.

What was once a town in dire straits is now an incubator for development, welcoming sleek new hotels, a redesigned riverfront park, luxury retail outlets and over 100 new restaurants in just the last few years.

Travel to this European capital in August, and you’ll score its lowest hotel rates of the year. Berlin’s culture calendar saves its best for summer. In August, the city welcomes the International Beer Festival and Dance in August, one of Europe’s most important contemporary dance festivals.

August is high season in the Galapagos. The weather has cooled down, and summer’s undercurrents have brought nutrients to the water’s surface — spawning a feeding frenzy for local wildlife. Spot minke and sperm whales off Isabella Island, sea lions and their pups around San Cristobal and the Plazas, giant tortoises on Santa Cruz, Galapagos penguins on Fernandina, and waved albatross adolescents adjusting to life on their own on the island of Espanola.

August is consistently warm in Stumptown, and locals are in their element, taking advantage of the city’s indie coffee shops, eclectic festivals and storied outdoors culture. There are tons of free activities to take part in, from biking to browsing farmers markets to gallery hopping. Whatever you do, don’t miss Bite of Oregon on Waterfront Park, an annual August festival that celebrates local food, wine and craft beer with Iron Chef competitions, local music and more tastings than you’ll likely have time for.

Eyes remain locked on the Cidade Maravilhosa as it plays host to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, kicking off Aug. 5. Over 300,000 spectators are expected to flock to Rio for the spectacle, but they’ll find more than just sports to entertain. New hotels, museums and even entire districts have been built or rebuilt in preparation for the crowds, including the innovative Museum of Tomorrow, the modern Museo de Arte do Rio, and a Grand Hyatt in a coastal suburb.

During the summer, there are up to 20 hours of sunlight per day and routes to some of the island’s most spectacular settings — the Highlands, the Westfjords — reopen, their rolling green landscapes primed for mid-day hikes and horseback rides. Come August, bird-watching enthusiasts make a beeline for the Westman Islands, in the south, to watch adolescent puffins take flight from their cliffside nests for the first time. And in late summer, another local pastime resumes: berry picking, when the blueberrylike wild bilberry ripens to ideal sweetness.