Tag: Islands
Honolulu Overheard
by Pico Iyer | 01.05.09 | 8:21 AM ET
iStockPhoto Pico Iyer takes in the Hawaiian city through its sounds
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Yahoo! BuzzAs Eco-Tourism Grows, Struggle for Cultural Identity Remains
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.30.08 | 1:08 PM ET
In places heavy with history and natural beauty, eco-tourism often comes deeply infused with nostalgia. Consider the 300-year-old Aspros Potamos cottages in eastern Crete, where goatherds once spent wintry nights as their flocks grazed along the mountain gorge. An Athenian journalist rescued the cottages from dilapidation in 1985 and turned them into simple, solar-powered lodges for those who want to commune with nature and a disappearing culture.
This time of year, you may find young Greeks on winter holiday there, gathered around a communal campfire and singing their grandparents’ favorite folk songs. It’s as much an appreciation of Crete’s fragile natural beauty as an exercise in identity.
How to Drink Kava in Fiji
by Laurie Pritchard | 12.16.08 | 4:35 AM ET
iStockphoto Laurie Pritchard explains how to properly imbibe with village chiefs, virgins and ancestral spirits
Steve Martin’s St. Barts Villa Open for Rent
by Michael Yessis | 10.31.08 | 10:58 AM ET
It’s only $28,000 a week. For that, he should really throw in some professional show business:
A Visit to India’s ‘Green’ Isle
by Joanna Kakissis | 09.22.08 | 10:41 AM ET
E Magazine travels to Bangaram, part of the Lakshadweep islands in the Arabian Sea some 200 miles west of Kerala in southern India. It’s a small place—less than a square mile—and it was virtually uninhabited until CGH Earth Hotels opened an (apparently impressive) eco-resort there. Writer Jenny Fowler says the resort “has drawn a green line in the sand” and has taken pains to be sustainable: constructing cottages made of local, biodegradable materials; saving water during monsoons; and forbidding motor vehicles.
Photo binux by via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Cuban Government: Gustav and Ike Damage ‘Worst Ever’
by Jim Benning | 09.16.08 | 5:29 PM ET
Somehow, amid the din of media reports about Galveston, lipstick on pigs and the U.S. financial mess, I missed this. The Cuban government has declared that the damage caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike was “the worst ever” in the country’s history. Given that Cuba has been blasted by countless hurricanes over the years, the toll has to be massive. According to the BBC’s report, some 200,000 people lost their homes as a result of the storms.
You Know Things Are Bad When They’re Taking Down Japanese Condom Ads
by Ben Keene | 07.18.08 | 12:15 PM ET
Disputed territories abound—there are hundreds of examples around the world—and they cause tempers to short circuit from time to time. In one, Cambodian and Thai troops nearly fired on one another yesterday. And not too far away, tensions between South Korea and Japan have been on the rise over the Dokdo Islands (known as Takeshima in Japan), a group of small volcanic islets nearly equidistant from the two countries.
New Travel Book: ‘A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean’
by Elyse Franko | 07.08.08 | 5:15 PM ET
Full title: “A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean: A Grump in Paradise Discovers that Anyplace it’s Legal to Carry a Machete is Comedy Just Waiting to Happen”
Author: Gary Buslik
Released: June 2008
Travel genre: Bad-natured travel, island travel
Territory covered: The Caribbean
Seasteading: The New Frontier
by Michael Yessis | 05.20.08 | 4:21 PM ET
From Wired: “If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.”
For Sale: Rare Coconut Palm, $1 Million
by Jim Benning | 04.30.08 | 11:43 AM ET
With three heads atop a single trunk, it’s a “botanical curiosity,” an expert says. I bet it’d look great on a $350,000 private island.
Where the Minister of Tourism is King
by Eva Holland | 04.21.08 | 2:00 PM ET
Photo by garybembridge via Flickr (Creative Commons)
I came downstairs the other morning and picked up the local paper, the Barbados Advocate. The top headline, in bold two-inch font, was: “Balance Needed.” Most places in the world, I’d expect the story that followed to be about deficit spending—but here in Barbados, the lead story was about striking the right balance between condo-style visitor accommodations and traditional hotels. Almost every morning, in fact, the latest pronouncements from the minister of tourism—whether on the growth of condo-style tourist digs or the need to seize a share of the “health and wellness” tourism market—take top billing.
Tracking the Lapita, ‘Pioneers of the Pacific’
by Michael Yessis | 02.26.08 | 12:31 PM ET
Fascinating story in National Geographic about how the Lapita managed to explore and colonize the Pacific Ocean beginning 3,000 years ago. Roff Smith writes:
Dark Days on Galapagos
by Julia Ross | 02.04.08 | 10:33 AM ET
Unsettling news out of the Galapagos Islands: The BBC reports on the mysterious killing of 53 sea lions in the islands’ nature reserve. While poachers have been known to target the animals for their skin and teeth—prized ingredients in Chinese medicine—that doesn’t seem to be the case here, and park officials are at a loss to explain the slaughter. The tragedy hits the Galapagos at an uncertain time, with green groups warning that the islands’ unique ecosystem is suffering under a sharp increase in tourism.
Is Kauai’s Aloha Spirit in Peril?
by Jim Benning | 02.01.08 | 11:42 AM ET
Tourist visits to Kauai reached record numbers last year: 1.27 million people made the trip to the Garden Island. A slew of construction projects—many around the resorts of Poipu—are in the works. Locals are worrying about the future. Writes Laura Bly in USA Today: “[O]ver the past few years, as tourism kicked into high gear and the island’s 63,000 residents wound down from rebuilding efforts following 1992’s devastating Category 4 Hurricane Iniki, frustration levels have swelled like north shore surf during a winter storm.”
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.
Stephen Colbert on His Sandals Resort Foreign Policy Experience
by Jim Benning | 01.15.08 | 9:21 AM ET
Stephen Colbert has generously promised Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that he’ll be his running mate, and on a recent episode of The Colbert Report, as Huckabee listened on, Colbert further explained his strengths: “There’s criticism of you that you do not have foreign policy experience. That’s how I can balance the ticket for you. Because I’ve been overseas. I’ve been to…Sandals resort in Jamaica. I’ve been to Sandals resort in the Bahamas. I’ve been to Sandals resort in Barbados. I’ve been to Epcot.” Huckabees’s response: “That ought to take care of it.” Last year, of course, we noted Colbert’s seven-day investigation into the Royal St. Barts Golf Club and Resort.
This American Life Goes to the Island of Nauru
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 1:45 PM ET
Public radio’s This American Life rebroadcast its 2003 Middle of Nowhere episode over the weekend. It features a 30-minute piece on Nauru, the world’s smallest and perhaps most obscure island nation, and “its involvement in the bankrupting of the Russian economy, global terrorism, North Korean defectors, the end of the world, and the late 1980s theatrical flop of a London musical based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci called ‘Leonardo, A Portrait of Love.’” The CIA makes a terrific cameo, too. For my money, it’s public radio at its best.
From Tonga to Texas, Doing the Haka
by Jim Benning | 11.14.07 | 11:31 AM ET
Photo of Maori dance by Gaetan Lee via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Texas is not a place where you’d expect to see the haka—the war dance that originated with New Zealand’s Maori and is performed on a number of Polynesian islands. But that’s changing. The CBS Evening News aired a terrific segment last night on how the migration of Tongans to Dallas Fort-Worth, largely to work in the airline industry, has led one high school football team in the nearby city of Euless to take up the dance as a pre-game ritual.
From Fiji to Kenya, Travel Hot Spots Brace for Global Warming
by Joanna Kakissis | 11.01.07 | 2:17 PM ET
A ski resort without snow. A scuba club whose coral reefs have succumbed to warmer and stormier seas. A water-guzzling golf resort in a desertifying area. Faced with global warming, the tourism industry must adapt to scenarios like these around the world or risk losing tourists, Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in The New York Times.
Environmentalists Protest Launch of Hawaii Superferry
by Jim Benning | 08.27.07 | 4:54 PM ET
Island-hopping Hawaii visitors now have a new way to get from Oahu to Maui or Kauai besides flying: the Hawaii Superferry Alakai, a giant catamaran that can haul 866 people and 282 cars. But not everyone is overjoyed with the new travel option. Hundreds protested the launch of the Superferry yesterday, including surfers who paddled out into the water, blocking the ferry from entering Lihue harbor in Kauai for more than an hour.