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Tuesday, May 3, 2011
This just in: Era-Wear
Okay, we know Era Alaska as the state’s largest “regional” airline, flying a fleet of Dash-8 and Beechcraft 1900s from Barrow to Kodiak and almost 100 other Alaska communities. Well, the rest of the world knows Era from the vantage point of Unalakleet and the Tweto Family! Haven’t we all watched “Flying Wild Alaska”? It’s [...]
Tough Times for Debarking Cruise Passengers
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| Passengers waiting to board a cruiseship in Hilo |
How the port areas handle the sudden influx of thousands of visitors (and sometimes tens of thousands, when several ships arrive on the same day) has been shifting recently. In some areas, governmental officials have been trying to make a killing off the influx of business; in others attempts are being made to protect the quality of life of the locals. And then, of course, there are the port areas that are, in actuality, just a non-floating extension of the cruise line.
Whatever the situation, these shifts have been detrimental to the cruising experience. Let's take a closer look at them.
Bermuda to Tourists: Don't Hop on the Bus, Gus!
In what must be a first, the government of Bermuda has decided to openly discriminate against tourists when it comes to public transportation. The island's Royal Gazette is reporting that buses that stop at the ports will be given a limit of how many passengers they can carry, a limit that will be less than the number of actual seats on the bus. So when the buses arrive at the dockyards, drivers will no longer fill up the buses with all who are waiting. This new regulation has been imposed because locals have complained that the buses between the dockyards and the city of Hamilton are so jammed with cruisers that drivers haven't been stopping for locals along the route.
Surely there must have been a better solution. Bermuda derives considerable income from cruise passengers--tourism is the number one industry here, after all. Its surprising the government isn't trying to solve the problem by adding more buses on port days (and they know when those will be a year or so in advance). Yes, governmental budgets have been cut in Bermuda as they have elsewhere in the world. But additional income could likely be "found" with an uptick in fees to the cruiselines. With the number of ships that arrive in Bermuda yearly, its hard to imagine that a tax increase of this sort would raise cruise rates more than a dollar or two per passenger.
For now, tourists are going to have to get to the bus queue as quickly as possible to snag a seat (or head to the pricier high speed ferry). It will be interesting to see how the new measures play out.
Taxi-Free in Victoria
In Canada, tourists are stuck between two warring sides and not going anywhere fast. The city government of Victoria has tried to impose a yearly $200 fee per taxi per season for those that pick up cruise passengers. (The fee buys a special decal allowing the drivers into the port area). In retaliation, the city's drivers have, for the past two weeks, boycotted the port area, stranding dozens of cruise passengers.
Once again it seems odd that the government should intervene and try to control just who is using a mode of public transportation. I'm on the taxi drivers' side on this one. Apparently neither side is budging, so plan your transportation carefully if you're taking a cruise that docks in Victoria (and many do, especially during the Alaskan cruising season).
Don't Forget Phuket
And on April 6, for the second time in the last year, local taxi drivers in Phuket, angered by the fact that so many cruises use chartered buses rather than their services, blockaded the port. Cruise passengers were stuck on the ship until it departed later that afternoon.
In this case, however, it looks like a resolution has been arrived at. The taxi and tuk tuk drivers will be granted 50-50 access to the port and informed, in advance, when groups will be going out mostly by chartered mini-bus, so that they don't waste their day waiting around for non-existent fares.
Private Islands, "Historic" Ports
The ports mentioned above are all classic cruise ports. Increasingly passengers heading to the Caribbean and Mayan Riviera are finding that they're being let off in Neverlands of the cruiselines' creation. Less than eager to share profits with local entrepreneurs and unable to physically dock many of the behemoth new liners in the traditional ports, the cruiselines have created their own little port stops--Historic Falmouth in Jamaica, Labadee in Haiti, Costa Maya in Mexico (to name but a few). Utterly artificial, teeming with passengers, and outrageously pricey they simply rejigger the life onboard the ship rather than giving passengers a real taste of the area they'd come to see. And the prices! I had the misfortune to spend a day inside the barbed wire fences of Labadee, where a really lame go-cart ride cost $30 and a zipline that was over in less than a minute even more.
So that's the recent news from cruise stops. A bit disheartening, eh (with the exception of Phuket, of course)? Handling large crowds is never an easy matter, of course. But its one of the reasons that I, personally, tend to choose land-based vacations rather than cruises.
Source: http://paulinefrommerbriefing.blogspot.com/2011/04/tough-times-for-debarking-cruise.html
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Fire & Ice - from volcanic ash to a BAires hail storm
After watching coverage of the volcano in Iceland over the weekend, yesterday I was confronted with a miniature natural disaster of my own in the form of a hailstorm of epic proportions! After an overall beautiful, sunny, late-summers day in Buenos Aires, the sky all of a sudden darkened and lightning started flashing overhead with fast-increasing intensity. After a while it started to rain lightly, soon more and more water was falling from the sky - and then the hail began. For about 15 minutes our house was pummeled by rock-hard balls of ice the size of tennis balls.
I was working in our attic office/playroom, where my desk is located just under a large sky-window. Karin asked our daughters if they wanted to go downstairs with her to watch the garden as the rain was beginning to fall. After some minutes I decided to get a drink and so I followed them downstairs. That was a lucky decision.
I arrived downstairs at 8.15, just when the serious hail started to come down. We were standing on our back porch, under a tiled roof as the first icy bombs came down, hammering into the grass and turning the pool into a wild spectacle. Trees in our garden were rapidly ?shaven?, as thousands of ice balls bombarded them, ripping off leaves, branches and taking out the occasional bird on their way down. We quickly ran back into the safety of the house and I started to close the blinds on the most exposed windows.
Each room I ran into echoed with the thuds of ice slamming into the windows, and each time I feared that one would come straight through. By the time I was done most of the hail had subsided and was replaced by a torrential rain that seemed like a huge bucket of murky water was being poured out over our neighborhood. At some point we could hardly see our garden anymore, covered as it was in white icy rubble with massive curtains of water sweeping before our eyes. Then I remembered the attic?
I ran upstairs to find my desk covered in glass, ice and water. Somehow most of the window had managed to miss it and my laptop and auxiliary screens were still functioning. I stood there, frantically looking from left to right, not knowing exactly what to do first, it was as if a giant tap had been turned on directly above what used to be my work space - water was pouring everywhere. And then, all of a sudden, the rain stopped, and at the same moment the entire neighborhood went pitch black.
I managed to find a flashlight and went back down to Karin and the kids. They had had a great time watching the storm and had no clue what had happened. We put the children to bed and went upstairs where we cleared the area of glass and actually managed to salvage most of the equipment. We found some flattened cardboard boxes and a couple of planks and went about with hammer and nails.
Later Karin reminded me it might be a good idea to see if the ?vigilante? (the private security guys you see guarding street corners in cities across Latin America) had survived the storm. So I went outside and made my way through a thick carpet of leaves and tree-branches, looking at the cars as I passed; windows shattered and round dents in roofs, hoods and hatches. Our security guy was fine and did not need water or cigarettes, so after chatting to him and our neighbor about insurance policies and how both our dogs had taken this weird natural event, I went back inside. It remained dry for the rest of the night and this morning the sun came out and another sunny day started as if nothing had happened?
The garden, however, told another story, with branches lying all over the place like a jungle floor and the grass dotted with potholes. Power stayed out until midday and with it internet, phone lines and the comforts of working from home. We had enough to do however, especially when we saw what else had happened in those 15 minutes. Roughly 60% of the tiles on our roof had been shattered and our garden furniture was smashed to smithereens. Another window of hardened wire-glass in our garage was hit in three places and had opened up like paper. There were large holes where the ice went straight through and glass shattered all over the cars, which luckily otherwise remained intact. We spent most of the day collecting glass and rubble and it was then that I realized how extremely dependent on all those modern-day comforts I have become.
Still we have been lucky, very lucky in fact. Buenos Aires is not usually prone to serious natural upheavals, apart from a tropical rainstorm every now and then. Other parts of the world are not so well off. Natural disasters are happening more and more often and in many cases have tremendous effects on the world economy, as recently the Financial Times described in an article about the volcanic eruption in Iceland, of which I hereby copy the intro (reply to this post and ask me for an official forward and I will try to send you the entire article!):
?(April 16th 2010) Volcanic disruption
Pandemic flu, blizzards, volcanic eruptions: Mother Nature seems resolved to hurl grit (or fine ash) into the turbine blades of economic recovery. Disruption to international air traffic caused by a rather different Icelandic blow-up from the one 18 months ago is already the most serious since 9/11, and may outstrip it. A Sydney-based consultant, the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, forecasts that if the disturbance extends even three more days, it could affect 1m passengers, and cost airlines $1bn in lost revenues. Yet as with other recent natural phenomena, the overall economic impact may ultimately prove insignificant??
Of course then there is the human aspect of these occurrences, not only for the people directly involved in them, but also for those that know, are related to, or have simply met them at some point. As my formerly Asia-bound colleague Beth says:
??the tsunami that hit Sri-Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia was a disaster on a huge scale, but what struck me about it was the world response. It was the height of the Christmas season and most everyone I know knew someone who was there, heard first hand stories of the day, or had been there themselves in the past. News wasn?t just on the TV, it had happened to someone you knew, millions of first-hand stories were transmitted by word of mouth on a global scale.
I have many great memories of Thailand beach holidays, and essential to these memories are the people I met while I was there ? the guys who cracked open fresh coconuts for me on the beach, the father and son who took us out in their fishing boat, the girls making seashell necklaces and running along the beach to sell them ? all of these people?s faces came back to me when I heard the news, and I wondered how they were and what they lost. I think that this was the same for everyone, and that this is the reason why the world showed such solidarity. It wasn?t something just effecting international airlines and multi-national hotel chains, it was the guy who made you fresh mango juice on the beach in Ha Tien. Yes, it was all going on far away in a distant land, but it was something we could all relate to on a human scale.?
This is one of the positive effects of globalization and ever-increasing world travel, we have, and should have, an increased understanding, empathy and solidarity with our world neighbors. Tourism and travel bring great responsibility on many levels, be it related to preservation of natural habitats and heritage or simple material transactions that keep local economies moving. The way in which the world has developed means that many, many people in many countries rely almost entirely on tourism for their livelihood ? if this is suddenly cut off, for example by a natural disaster, what happens to them?
In our globalized world everyone is connected, and so in turn everything that happens and how we respond has repercussions all around the world. The big volcanic dust cloud recently grounding flights across Europe, has all sorts of myriad effects on people around the world, from the plantation worker in Jamaica to the hotel cleaner in Egypt. As soon as the dust settles the world will be up and flying again, but the effects will continue to be felt, if not by you, by someone else in some distant land that you may one day travel to. This volcano reminds me of all the other disasters in recent years, of Chile, Haiti, New Orleans, Thailand, Sri Lanka? the list goes on. And it reminds me that the privileges and pleasures of travel go hand in hand with a responsibility to the people and the places that we travel to.
Our 15 minute hailstorm was an ever so small taste of the destruction that nature can wreak, and it made me realize just how small we really are, and how futile and vulnerable most of the security-net is that we try to pull up around ourselves. Without that net, how long would we hold? Because without all the 21st century shields we reinforce ourselves and our lives with, we are pretty much useless when it comes to surviving in raw natural circumstances. I had to think about ?The Road? and wondered what would happen if we had a hailstorm like yesterday?s, but for, say 1 month. ?Note to self, must remember to buy batteries and enough freeze-dried food for at least 4 weeks tomorrow!
?signing off now, just got my internet, home computer network, flat screen TV and media PC working again; and it?s time for some channel surfing with a chilled beer, an ordered in pizza, the pleasant hum of the air conditioning and the already fading notion of a different reality, and how it almost bit me?
Source: http://bart-cat-travel.blogspot.com/2010/04/fire-ice-from-volcanic-ash-to-baires.html
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Win a Round-The-World Trip!
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"Win a Round-The-World Trip!" is a post from Two Go Round-The-World. Join Kathryn and Daniel as they plan, prepare and pack for a year-long RTW trip! Ready to dive in? Click here for a few easy ways to stay connected with us!
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Ask Tom ? your travel dilemmas answered
Lonely Planet's Tom Hall puts you on the right track to Italy by train, Iceland on a budget, island-hopping in the South Pacific and 'something a bit different' in Athens
My boyfriend and I are going to Iceland in June and we need to do it as cheaply as possible in two weeks. What would be the best way to travel through Iceland, and is it a good place to hitchhike? We've already looked into couchsurfing and are considering bringing a tent.
Anna Fenton
I trust you're trying to do your visit as cheaply as possible rather than genuinely travelling with hardly any funds to draw on, which would be difficult. Iceland remains one of Europe's more expensive countries to visit, though you may find that in June you escape the worst of the peak season.
You should be able to arrange a couchsurfing.com place to stay in Reykjavik, where the network has good coverage, but elsewhere in the country you'll often need to make more traditional accommodation arrangements, such as hostels, farms or campsites. Take a sleeping bag - using your own always costs less than made-up beds in hostels. You should also consider booking ahead.
Buses are the cheapest way to get around the country, unless there are enough of you to bring the cost of hiring a car down which will cost around 20,000 Icelandic Krona (�108) a day. For bus passes and timetables, see sterna.is/en/bus-passport and re.is/IcelandOnYourOwn/Passports.
A daily budget of under 5,000IKR (�27) is possible, but doesn't account for special trips like whale-watching, horse riding or a snowmobile tour. You could save, though, by giving the iconic Blue Lagoon a miss (�25); instead visit the much cheaper, but still thermally heated, municipal baths across Iceland. Laugardalslaug, an Olympic-sized swimming pool with hot tubs and a long water slide in Reykjavik, costs �2.50 to get into.
One significant expense that you can save on is food and drink. Supermarkets won't feel noticeably more expensive than at home ? as long as you don't buy alcohol ? and self-catering is possible. You could bring pasta and other camping-friendly food with you.
We (myself, my girlfriend and our seven-year-old son) are hoping to go to visit my Italian relatives, who live in Cuneo (in Piemonte, south of Turin), during my son's half-term holiday in early June. We were hoping to go by train and on the way also meet up with friends from Rome somewhere in northern Italy. What is the cheapest way of doing this? Is it Eurostar to Paris and then an Interrail pass, or are there more cost-effective alternatives? We took trains from Rome to Geneva during last year's Ash cloud fiasco and found it a very agreeable way to travel.
Mark
Agreeable is the right word for a journey like Rome to Geneva, and I'm sure your son will prefer the train to flying. The best resources for planning a rail journey in Europe remain Deutsche Bahn (bahn.co.uk) for time-tables, The Man in Seat 61 (seat61.com) for information and tips, and Rail Europe (raileurope.co.uk) when it comes to booking. There are plenty of other rail travel agencies around, including European Rail (europeanrail.com). The trick is not finding sites offering cheap fares ? fares are structured and fixed within the various available ticket types ? but booking at the right time. Most European tickets go on sale 90 days in advance, with Eurostar services on sale 120 days before travel. As you might expect, the cheaper tickets, especially at busier times, go fastest.
For this journey I'd get two tickets: a London-Paris Eurostar return, and a Paris-Cuneo return, via Turin. The Artesia (artesia.eu) daytime TGV from Paris to Turin, with onward connection for Cuneo, costs around �153 return for an adult and a child for various dates I tried in June, travelling via Lyon and Modane. Eurostar tickets cost from �69 return, �49 for children under 12, but you may need to be flexible with dates to find these fares ? �59 each way is more usual. A rail pass is worth it only if you're doing plenty of travelling, so put your energy into securing the best fare.
I've got six months off work and I'm really keen to travel around the Pacific Islands - but on as tight a budget as possible. What would you recommend as the best way to get around? Ideally I would like to fly into New Zealand/Australia and work across to Easter Island and South America. Is this a well rehearsed route or is it not really possible to do independently?
evansjig
The Pacific islands don't lend themselves well to an international island-hopping itinerary like you outline. Many popular destinations across the South Pacific tend to be connected to hubs and outlying settlements rather than to each Pacific nation or group of islands. The reason, rather boringly, is lack of demand. Not many people want to travel from Vanuatu to Samoa or Fiji, but considerably more people in all these places want to go to Sydney, Brisbane or Auckland. Easter Island, for example, is linked by air only to Santiago in Chile, which is a domestic flight, and then to Papeete in Tahiti and, as a recent addition, Lima in Peru. Flights between Pacific destinations, where they exist, tend to be expensive.
What is more than possible, and the way many people explore the region, is to see one or two south Pacific nations on the way between the US and New Zealand/Australia. This is how I visited Easter Island and French Polynesia, and a friend who I parted company with in Papeete, Tahiti, went on to Fiji and Rarotonga in the Cook Islands before we met again in Australia. Round the World Flights (roundtheworldflights.com) has a selection of popular routes which allow you to do this. Travellers usually visit Fiji, the Cook Islands or Tahiti this way. You can always venture to remoter areas once you're in a particular group of islands. Moorea is one of several islands that can be reached by ferry from Tahiti, and Fiji has several archipelagos that can and are travelled independently. Another economical option (given we're talking about travelling as far from the UK as is geographically possible) is to get as cheap a ticket as possible to Australia and have a look at budget flights offered by Pacific Blue (flypacificblue.com) to various Pacific destinations.
South Pacific Organizer (southpacific.org) and this Lonely Planet noticeboard are good resources for planning a trip.
We're off to Athens to visit my boyfriend's family in May. It is his birthday while we're out there and I'm after some advice on something special we can do on the day. I expect we'll be with the family in the evening, so if there's anything quirky, fun and not too formal you can recommend, I'd be really grateful. He's been to Athens many times, so something a bit different but special would be great.
KMayBe
Even for the Athens buff there are always fresh aspects of the city to discover. I'd recommend John Freely's Strolling through Athens as a great way to find new spots to visit on foot.
It's hard to know what you've yet to see, but the new Acropolis Museum (theacropolismuseum.gr) may have become fully operational since you were last here and is one of the city's must-sees. At night you may enjoy visiting the area of Gazi at Kerameiko metro: there is a big art centre called Technopolis housed in a former industrial complex. There are lots of bars and cafes for all tastes and budgets and it has a marvellous, car-free atmosphere long into the small hours.
Exploring neighbourhoods in detail that you may not know as well, such as the cafe culture and shopping in well-to-do Kolonaki or edgier Exarchia ? see here for a good profile ? is likely to be your best bet to finding a different side to the city.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/blog/2011/apr/06/tom-hall-travel-queries-questions
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The OTHER Side of the Coin
Hi there friends and fellow travelers,
It has been a while since we last met; I have been rather busy lately? (Yes, with the CRISIS.) Grrrr, what a gloomy word. There?s truth to it for sure and things are changing as we speak, but some of this ?crisis? is also inflated by the media to such a towering extent that sometimes I open the newspapers and feel the world has come to a full standstill and there is no way back or forth. There basically seems to be no other remedy than hide in our cellars and hope for a miracle to get us out of this mess. (Or that is what the media want us to believe because they are actually making money of this...)
I want to share with you two thoughts that I think are relevant in times like these. One is about the phenomena known as the ?self-fulfilling prophecy? and the other is about the real face of this crisis.
The Self-fulfilling Prophecy of the Argentine Economy
Here in Argentina the local economy has developed a pretty strange tendency; it crashes around every 7 years, like really hard, then rapidly recovers, returns to pre-crash levels in no-time, overheats in a blink and then falls flat on its face before anyone notices (well, most people at least), only to roll over and begin the same process again. It seems we are following a somewhat biblical routine here, which has now become commonplace in Argentine society. So much has this jittery economic movement taken place in the hearts and minds of most Argentines that pre-crash capital flights caused by those fearing the next hit basically cause it to happen. The circle has become complete and everyone?s worst fears come true over and over again because hardly anyone here still believes that things could go any differently. The idea of economic stability is simply not logged into people?s minds here and therefore nobody will give that thought and -thus that potential reality- a chance. I will not go into the theories about this actually being a controlled economic movement; anyone who has been here for more than a week can come to their own conclusions. What I want to say is this: if you allow yourself to give away control over your life to your biggest fears, they will eventually take over and that what you dread the most will become your reality. It is as simple as that.
The Real Face of the Crisis
As you can see on our sites, we are a proud ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents) member and yesterday I read an interesting article in ASTA?s Smartbrief, based on a lecture given by World Leisure Partners? Chairman and CEO Adam Aron that I want to share with you. To me his speech was:
� Inspiring, because it confirmed my belief that in times like these, when the going gets tough, it is positive, pro-activeness that will pull you through. These are challenging times, sure, but when did anyone decide that a good challenge should be backed away from? I mean, these are the times we can really prove ourselves, focus on doing our absolute best and showing ourselves and the outside world what we are; a company with vision, a team with heart, a continent with passion, a place to recharge your batteries.
� Relieving, because after having read so much negative, sad and sorry stories about banks sliding, companies going bankrupt, people being laid off by the thousands and international travel bookings going down (which is of course the only thing that really interests us here!), for a moment I almost believed them, the commercial journalists that will prey on anything that smells like ?crisis? these days, as that seems to be the only thing anyone wants to read about. To my great dismay, because even though I am reading about it as much as I can myself, I am constantly looking for positive signals, stuff I can use to help navigate our little company through the so-called storm. The mainstream media, however, seem to want us to wallow in distress for a little while longer. That is why it was a relief to read Mr. Aron?s take on things.
� Reassuring as it put me back in the driver?s seat of my reality, where I almost thought I had no control anymore, almost felt as if we were going to slide like everybody else and would need a miracle to be saved? BS my friends, really, and pardon my French, but we are in charge of our lives, or our work, of our reality and there are tons and tons of things we can do to take this situation and make it work for us.
Let me give you a short excerpt of what Mr. Aron said: (here goes the condensed version of the text I just sent you)
In this era of 24/7 news cycles, the current bad economic news gets magnified.
"Doom and gloom," said Aron, is what the media lives for -- so expect them to wallow in it as long as they can.
"The media will tell you that this recession will be the worst and the longest because things are different now and unlike other times, this time the doom and gloom is permanent."
He added: "In every recession that I have seen, that is always what the media says...but we always get out of it."
And they also say the boom times will never end, added Aron, recalling how a few years ago a Wall Street Journal article waxed optimistic that the business cycle had been eliminated because economists had figured it out.
There is a reason for business cycles, said Aron.
"Think about your own businesses. In the good times, we all get a little sloppy and take on more risk and don't watch pennies quite as closely as we are now."
Businesses hire more people than they really need, take risks they should not be taking and take on new costs that aren't justified.
"What happens is that fat, inefficiency, waste and risk creep into the system, because millions of businesses are doing this at the same time."
Eventually, the economy can't sustain the inefficiencies and outsized risks and "so it crashes," said Aron.
"Usually, there is a catalyst of some sort and clearly [in this cycle] the banks were lending money to people who should not have had such loans. Companies were leveraged way too much and individuals were taking on too much debt and the weight of all that crashed the system in a big way -- and quickly."
Aron recalled that last May and June everything was fine, but come September, "Armageddon was around the corner."
And just as in boom times, the actions of millions of businesses cutting costs to adjust to the downturn and consumers cutting back on spending all at the same time, threw the economy into recession.
Then at some "mystical point" after millions and millions of businesses and individuals have cut waste and costs, the economy "rises from the ashes."
The remarkable thing is that there is a simple explanation for the business cycle but you cannot predict how or when it will turn upward, said Aron.
But there have been benefits in the recent difficult times and a major one is the drop in the price of oil.
"Think of what a boon that is to the economy. Think how beneficial that is for consumers who were being stretched in July."
Aron did have a forecast: "As sure as we're sitting here, two years from now things will be rosy again" because downturns are usually six to 24 months long and good times three to six years.
Nice eh? A different and most definitely more realistic view, more pragmatic, more my way at least.
I hope I have managed to give you an idea of how I see this: we make our own reality and are capable to turn things in any direction we damn well please. Our brain is not much more than a (highly sophisticated; ok!) muscle which we train to send our body certain stimuli that make us walk, for example. Or sit behind a keyboard and write a piece of text and throw it online. Or read it. And when we read that piece of text (written by someone else for whatever reason) we have a free choice to take that information for granted or to reflect on it and make a proper decision on how it is we want to experience it, and what we want to do with it. And that in the end will greatly influence the way we live our lives? So my message to you today is this: Why don?t you put the paper aside today and get out there, play with your kids, score some goals, make some friends, have some fun, do some dancing in the rain (and look how the US Dollar is slowly gaining strength against the Argentine Peso and plan your next trip here! J). Two years from now this will all be behind us and things will be going boringly well again. For now let?s look at this crisis and make the best of it!
Thanks and may the force be with you?
Bart
Source: http://bart-cat-travel.blogspot.com/2008/11/other-side-of-coin_21.html
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