CITY LIFE HOUSTON

With its flourishing urban parks, cultural spaces and rooftop bars, this cosmopolitan city built on oil is on a mission to invest and evolve. Drill down into eclectic neighbourhoods to discover the real Texan treasure

- Jonathan Thompson

Paddling slowly west into the blazing bayou sunset, it doesn’t feel like I’m anywhere near the concrete heart of a US city. Indeed, it doesn’t feel like I’m anywhere near the US at all.

“I like to pretend I’m on the Amazon when I’m down here,” says canoeing guide Matt Sandel, who’s expertly navigating our twoman vessel. “The wildlife down here, from the turtles to the baby alligators, is insane. As soon as you get onto the bayou, you feel like you’re a thousand miles away from the real world.”

The real world in this case is Houston, Texas — and we’re a lot less than a thousand miles from its oil-powered skyscrapers. In fact, the glass gave way to grass just a few yards behind us, around the last river bend.

On a late spring afternoon, we’re exploring Buffalo Bayou Park — a sinuous green arm with a watery main artery, reaching west from Downtown as it grasps for the suburbs. The bayou twists and curls in on itself like a Texas rat snake, but Matt, president of the local Hokulele Paddling club, knows these old waterways like the back of his paddle. As we glide into the twilight, runners and rollerbladers high on the banks above seem to flow along with us.

Houston has a reputation as a gargantuan city brimming with oil and cowboy boots, eternally associated with the iconic NASA ‘we have a problem’ quote. But beneath the lazy cliches, it has an entirely different face.