Tag: Beaches
A Beach Holiday in The Gambia?
by Eva Holland | 10.13.09 | 10:49 AM ET
I’ve always admired the Brits for their more adventurous winter sun-seeking. Every winter, it seems they’re as likely to be found lounging in Kenya or the Seychelles as in the usual Caribbean hot spots—and, once again, the U.K. travel media is going way beyond Cancun with this Times Online profile of a little-known (to North Americans, anyway) West African beach destination. Writer Alex Spence notes: “There are only six sets of traffic lights and a couple of ATMs in the entire country.” Take that, Puerto Plata.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Best British Beaches
by Eva Holland | 08.26.09 | 4:52 PM ET
I know, I know: Most folks don’t head to the U.K. for their sand ‘n’ surf fix—but this list of 50 great British beaches just might leave you tempted. I can vouch for several of the picks in Cornwall and Northumberland.
The Battle for Cancun’s Sand
by Eva Holland | 08.20.09 | 11:18 AM ET
And no, I don’t mean the resort-goers’ daily fight for the best tanning spot. In the New York Times, Mark Lacey takes a look at Cancun’s shrinking beaches—and the lengths to which some hotels are going in an effort to keep their share of what’s left.
Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Don’t Let the Goose Poop Fool You: Toronto’s Beaches are Squeaky Clean’
by Eva Holland | 08.18.09 | 5:04 PM ET
Forget Hawaii or Florida—after that ringing endorsement, I’m ready for a Toronto beach vacation. Who’s with me?
NPR Types Pick 100 Best Beach Books for NPR Types
by Michael Yessis | 07.30.09 | 1:04 PM ET
Almost 16,000 “book-loving NPR Types” have finished voting on the best beach books of all time. The top 5:
1) The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
2) To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
3) The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
4) Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding
5) Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
My suggestion from last week finished at No. 99.
Photo We Love: Surfing Huntington Beach
by Jim Benning | 07.24.09 | 2:33 PM ET
REUTERS/Gene Blevins
Australian Taj Burrow at the recent X-Games finals in Huntington Beach, California.
One of surfing’s biggest events culminates at the Huntington Beach Pier this weekend: The Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing concludes Sunday. Forecasters are predicting some big, tasty waves thanks to a swell from the Southern Hemisphere.
A Beach Book Bounty for Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 07.21.09 | 12:53 PM ET
Some consider this beach reading. Most people, though, want something a little fluffier. A little something, as NPR puts it, “enthralling enough to inoculate vacation-goers against the vagaries of missed flights and bad weather.” To find the best beach books ever, NPR has put it to a vote. They’ve narrowed down the list of nominees to 200. You can vote for 10 books.
You can’t go wrong, by the way, by casting one of your votes for Carl Hiaasen’s Florida romp, Sick Puppy.
Gadling, too, is in the mood for a beach read. Katie Hammel’s six great beach reads for travelers includes books from Bill Bryson, Rolf Potts and Eric Weiner.
Photo We Love: Beach Day in Karachi
by World Hum | 07.17.09 | 12:36 PM ET
REUTERS/Athar Hussain A man collects shells on Clifton Beach in Karachi, Pakistan.
65 Years Later: Robert Capa and D-Day on Film
by Eva Holland | 06.05.09 | 11:44 AM ET
Tomorrow marks the 65th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, an assault that is widely viewed as one of the key turning points in the Second World War. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Canadian and British Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and Gordon Brown will be converging on the area for an official ceremony this weekend, following in the footsteps of thousands of tourists who visit the beaches each year.
The event has me thinking about the enduring appeal of the D-Day beaches—after all, Europe has no shortage of battlefields and war monuments, but few are as well-known to Americans as Omaha Beach (or, for Canadians, Juno Beach). It seems to me that their historical significance alone doesn’t explain it. The beaches, I think, have such a powerful presence in the public consciousness thanks in part to a few iconic photographs by Robert Capa.
Hanalei Is America’s Best Beach: Really?
by Pam Mandel | 05.28.09 | 11:02 AM ET
OK, it’s a beautiful crescent of golden sand. It’s wide and clean and almost aggressively picturesque. There’s no denying that it’s an archetype of what a perfect beach should be. And it was recently selected as the “Number One Beach in the US” by Dr. Beach, a self-declared beach expert. He seems to have gained quite the cred; my Google alerts are crowded with mentions of Hanalei Beach’s new “honor.”
Budget Barbados: Five Free Island Activities
by Eva Holland | 05.27.09 | 3:48 PM ET
Photo by Eva Holland I’ll admit, Barbados is hardly known as a shoestringer’s paradise—this isn’t $5, $25 or even $100 per day territory.
But still, after a couple of extended visits here, I’ve learned that it’s not all pricey cocktails, rooms with a view and chartered yachts, either. There are affordable accommodation options and wallet-friendly meals to be found—and, best of all, some of the island’s most memorable spots are free, or close to it.
The New Sand: May Contain Plastic
by Pam Mandel | 05.19.09 | 10:29 AM ET
The May 2009 issue of Hana Hou!—Hawaiian Airlines’ in-flight mag—includes an article called The Voyage of the Junk. The story is about a journey from California to Honolulu via the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The ship itself was a trash heap, made out of plastic garbage and leftover bits of a Cessna. The goal of the journey was to raise awareness of the impact that all the plastic crap we create, buy and use is having on the oceans.
There’s a particularly sad and telling passage in the story. Upon arrival in Honolulu, one of the sailors decided to find out how long it would take to pull a piece of plastic out of the water. He hopped overboard, and: “Less than a minute later he was out, holding up an ‘ABC Stores’ bag. ‘Thirty seconds,’ he said, with both triumph and distaste.”
Eight Great Stories of Beaches, Islands, Travel and the Tropics
by World Hum | 04.30.09 | 10:31 AM ET
To mark our eighth anniversary, we've collected eight favorite stories from our archives that celebrate and explore travel at land's end
The Littered Beaches of Britain
by Joanna Kakissis | 04.13.09 | 10:13 AM ET
As depressing as I find many British beaches, I was appalled to read that visitors are practically treating them like landfills. Reuters reports that the Marine Conservation Society, who recruited 5,000 volunteers to help clean up the shores, discovered an average of 2,195 pieces of trash per kilometer of beach—an increase of 110 percent since 1994. Food wrappers and cigarette butts make up about a third of the litter, the group says. Trash dumping on British beaches has doubled in the last 15 years to reach the highest level in history.
Saving ‘Cleopatra’s Beach’ and a Jewel of the Aegean
by Joanna Kakissis | 04.03.09 | 11:15 AM ET
I’m not surprised that the beautiful Gulf of Gökova off the southwestern coast of Turkey has practically been loved to death. The Aegean blue water and soft beach sand (which Mark Antony allegedly imported to Gökova from Egypt for Cleopatra) is the stuff of sea-loving tourists’ dreams.
Over the years, yacht tours polluted the bay, illegal fishing depleted its marine life, and all those sunbathers started eroding that queenly beach sand. The European-funded Gökova Integrated Coastal Management program banned the sunbathers from the beach in 2007 and is now working to support sustainable fishing, protect the bay’s natural flora and fauna, and keep the Gökova waters clean. (Via Treehugger)
Waikiki Beach Boys
by Pam Mandel | 03.05.09 | 1:49 PM ET
If you want to hear about the golden days of Waikiki, your best bet is probably to head up to the Haleiwa to the Surf Museum. Since I’m no surfing aficionado, I wasn’t exactly roped in by the displays, but I sure enjoyed the time I spent talking with the museum’s proprietor, Hurricane Bob. Ask Hurricane Bob about what Waikiki used to be like, and he’s full of stories.
I couldn’t help but think of Hurricane Bob, the North Shore and Waikiki when I stumbled over this short documentary about the Waikiki Beach Boys. It crams a whole sensibility about Hawaii, surfing, Waikiki, and beach culture into just over six minutes. Six minutes well spent, I’d say.
I’m Dreaming of a Green Dubai (or at Least Some Clean Beaches)
by Joanna Kakissis | 03.02.09 | 11:16 AM ET
It’s been a rough few months of sewage-on-the-beach damage control for the city of excess and $25,000-a-night hotel suites on artificial islands shaped like palm trees. After raw sewage, chemical waste and toilet paper washed up on opulent, luxury hotel-lined Jumeirah Beach and made international headlines, an environmental group is trying to clean up the beach and others along the United Arab Emirates coastline. The Emirates Wildlife Association will encourage managers of the beaches to apply for a Blue Flag designation and meet international standards for water quality and cleanliness.
Where Kawelo Makes Fire
by Pam Mandel | 02.06.09 | 10:15 AM ET
Photo by Nerd's Eye View You need a four-wheel drive vehicle to get to Keahiakawelo, the Garden of the Gods, on Lana’i. The dusty rough track ends at Polihua Beach, an isolated stretch of white sand and unswimmable surf (the tides are dangerous; don’t even think about it).
If you take the boat from Maui, you’ll share the deck with locals carrying enormous ice chests, household appliances (we watched a guy load a washing machine) and piles of groceries. There are also a handful of rugged backpackers, motorcycle riders and well-heeled tourists in khakis and sunhats carrying golf clubs.
The carved stone marker towards the top of the road says “Garden of the Gods” but Keahiakawelo actually means “the place where Kawelo makes fire” or “the fire of Kawelo.” According to the Hawaiian legend, the landscape was transformed into bare, red rock slopes by Kawelo’s burning every single stick of vegetation in a competition against another kahuna to see who could keep the fire going the longest.
I learned this from Kepa Maly of the Lana’i Culture and Heritage Center—the center must be one of the most under-visited facilities in the islands. I also learned that there are artifacts that show human habitation of Lana’i from 1,000 years ago and had my brain short out on the idea that an entire island (it’s actually 98%) could be owned by a pineapple company and then a hotel company. The island still has a weird colonial vibe, and before I was taken down by seasickness in the Maui channel, I was glad to be moving on.
For a Beach Vacation, Should I Go All the Way to Bali or the Maldives When Hawaii Would Do?
by Rolf Potts | 02.15.08 | 11:13 AM ET
Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel
The (Full Moon) Party’s Over
by Peter Delevett | 01.16.08 | 11:12 AM ET
Photo by Peter Delevett. Peter Delevett visited Thailand's Koh Phangan with his girlfriend in 1994, discovering a boho backpacker Eden. He recently returned -- older, married and with a mortgage -- just in time for the island's signature bash.
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