Travel Blog
Could Chile See a Tourism Bump Thanks to its Rescued Miners?
by Eva Holland | 10.18.10 | 11:52 AM ET
Arthur Frommer thinks so. CNN’s Business 360 blogger agrees:
It would be difficult to put a price on how much the good news exposure will be a boost to Chilean business abroad, tourism at home or even the numbers who will choose a Chilean red over an Australian or French vintage on their way home tonight.
USA Today’s Laura Bly notes that an underground museum may be in the works at the rescue site.
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Yahoo! BuzzWhat We Loved This Week: The Dead Sea, Diving the Azores and ‘I Want to be a Travel Writer’
by World Hum | 10.15.10 | 4:53 PM ET
Photo by Nuno Sá Terry Ward
Diving through lava formations under the shadow of Pico’s volcano in the central islands group of the Azores. On many a Transatlantic crossing, I’ve wondered what the Azores (about two hours’ flying time from Lisbon and just a five-hour flight from Boston) were like. “A mini New Zealand in the Atlantic,” a Portuguese friend had told me before my visit. From the rolling green hills, rocky windswept beaches and towering volcanoes to the fine local cheeses, shellfish and wine, I agree.
How Airplane Background Noise Affects our In-Flight Taste Buds
by Eva Holland | 10.15.10 | 2:42 PM ET
New research suggests that the white noise of airplane cabins could be contributing to the infamous blandness of in-flight meals. Here’s the Independent’s Steve Connor:
White noise consists of random collections of sounds at different frequencies - such as the muffled noise of aircraft engines - and scientists have demonstrated that it is capable of diminishing the taste of salt and sugar.
The findings could explain a phenomenon well known to airline companies: passengers tend to lose their sense of taste when they are in the air.
Interesting stuff—but I’m a little surprised to find researchers putting serious time into studying airplane food, considering the in-flight meal is nearly extinct.
The Milk Run to Mexico City
by Eva Holland | 10.15.10 | 1:51 PM ET
In The Smart Set, John Washington has a lovely dispatch from a bus ride between Nogales and the capital. Here’s Washington’s introduction to the vehicle where he’d spend almost two days:
The bus was set to leave Nogales at six in the evening. A few minutes past six a tall, skinny European delivery type van pulled into the wide, empty, dirt and gravel parking lot. A few of the migrants and I looked at each other, mumbling some concern that this would be the vehicle to take us all the way to DF, which is some 1,700 miles away, and, for a few of the migrants, all the way to Quintana Roo, another 600 miles. A rumor quickly circulated among those of us waiting that we would ride in this van to a full-sized bus, which was waiting for us downtown. In a few minutes, however, after some of the luggage was strapped to the roof, we were beckoned to present our thin paper tickets and enter. There were 17 of us, including two drivers. The bus had 15 seats, including a half-seat in the front, which straddled the radio and dashboard. One of the drivers unrolled a carpet scrap and one of the younger men volunteered to take the space on the floor, which, he was quick to recognize, would probably end up as the most comfortable and spacious seat in the van. I squeezed into the second to last row, in a window seat, and put my bag on my lap. It would sit there for the next 40 hours, though I didn’t know that at the time.
My U-Turn Over Greenland
by Jim Benning | 10.15.10 | 1:09 PM ET
I was flying home to Los Angeles from Germany this week when, mid-way, the pilot made an announcement: We would be turning around and flying more than an hour back to Iceland to drop off a sick passenger. We weren’t told much about the elderly passenger; I saw him stand before he was led off the plane, which I took to be a good sign. In any case, it made for what I imagine to be a rare sight on the seat-back flight tracker:
Mapped: America’s Cities, in Typeface
by Eva Holland | 10.14.10 | 2:24 PM ET
A Texan cartography firm is mapping urban America—using only varying sizes and colors of typeface. Co.Design has samples from the Boston and Chicago maps.
Blogger Suzanna LaBarre notes that they’re “a thoroughly intuitive way to visualize cities. People navigate a new place according to names, not symbols and grids.” New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are next on the firm’s to-do list.
(Via The Daily Dish)
‘Quick, Martha, Take a Picture!’
by Eva Holland | 10.14.10 | 1:30 PM ET
The folks at Gizmodo list seven things they never want to see photographed again. Sorry, travelers: “food” and “scenery” make the list. Don’t miss the accompanying cartoon dialogue—funny stuff.
Reading Charles Dickens in Nigeria
by Eva Holland | 10.13.10 | 9:25 AM ET
George Packer argues in Lapham’s Quarterly that the great novels of the late Victorian years resonate more powerfully in today’s Rangoon, or Lagos, or Mombasa, than in the Western countries that spawned them. Here’s Packer:
The concerns of that literature—the individual caught in an encompassing social web, the sensitive young mind trapped inside an indifferent world, the beguiling journey from countryside to metropolis, the dismal inventiveness with which people survive, the permanent gap between imagination and opportunity, the big families whose problems are lived out in the street, the tragic pregnancies, the ubiquity of corruption, the earnest efforts at self-education, the preciousness of books, the squalid factories and debtor’s prisons, the valuable garbage, the complex rules of patronage and extortion, the sudden turns of fortune, the sidewalk con men and legless beggars, the slum as theater of the grotesque: long after these things dropped out of Western literature, they became the stuff of ordinary life elsewhere, in places where modernity is arriving but hasn’t begun to solve the problems of people thrown together in the urban cauldron.
(Via The Book Bench)
2010 Lowell Thomas Award Winners Announced
by Eva Holland | 10.12.10 | 2:57 PM ET
This year’s Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards have been handed out. Freelancer (and former Brat Packer) Andrew McCarthy was named Travel Journalist of the Year, while Afar and BudgetTravel.com took the Gold awards for travel magazines and online travel journalism sites, respectively.
A few World Hum contributors were among the winners: Rick Steves received a couple of mentions, including a Gold award for his book, Travel as a Political Act, while David Farley’s An Irreverent Curiosity received the Bronze award for travel books. Tony Perrottet, Spud Hilton, Jeff Greenwald and Daisann McLane also received awards for individual articles. Congrats to all the winners.
The Titanic: ‘Stories Without Lessons’
by Eva Holland | 10.12.10 | 2:03 PM ET
The Smart Set’s Morgan Meis shares a few of the stories that continue to, er, surface from the Titanic nearly a century after its sinking, and contemplates the ship’s enduring ability to generate narrative:
It would seem that Titanic was more of a giant floating (and sinking) narrative-machine than a boat. Even today, the basic plotline is difficult to believe. Largest ship ever built, filled to the gills with notable names of the time, sinks on its maiden voyage. It takes a few hours for the boat to go under and about a third of the passengers are saved on the insufficient lifeboats, thereby guaranteeing that so much will have happened in the final hours, and so many will have witnessed it, that the world will talk about it for generations. We have.
The most compelling aspect of Titanic, to me, is the degree to which it multiplies stories without lessons. It is, of course, tempting to draw out a lesson about hubris from Titanic, and many have made the mistake of trying to do so. Here is man, challenging nature and the gods with a vessel that would tame the seas, and with beautiful carved mahogany interiors to boot. This behemoth proclaimed itself invincible, unsinkable, and then promptly went under at the hands of a silent and dumb chunk of ice. If frozen water could laugh, there’d have been some icy chuckling in the North Atlantic that night.
Meis goes on to debunk the hubris narrative. It’s a good read.
(Via The Daily Dish)
Mexico Sees Big Bump in International Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 10.12.10 | 11:40 AM ET
Turns out the drug-related violence along the border isn’t stopping travelers from visiting Mexico, particularly its beaches. The number of foreign visitors to Mexico has risen almost 20 percent over last year. From the Los Angeles Times:
The number of visitors to Cancun, the easternmost coastal city, jumped nearly 31% in August compared with a year earlier; tourism to Los Cabos, on the southern tip of Baja California, increased 30%, according to Mexico tourism officials.
Southern California travel agents say U.S. tourists don’t seem too concerned about drug violence because they know to stay far from the border. “As long as you stay in the resort areas, you’ll have no problem,” [Carol] McConnell, [founder of Around the Globe Travel,] said.
Several other reasons are suggested for the boost, including affordability and Mexico’s latest marketing campaign.
Travel Movie Watch Update: ‘127 Hours’
by Eva Holland | 10.11.10 | 1:54 PM ET
Just under a year ago we noted that “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle would soon be starting work on “127 Hours,” the true story of Aron Ralston‘s canyoneering accident and escape. The trailer is here, and—among other things—it makes me want to book a flight to Utah as soon as possible. The movie’s due out November 5.
(Via Gawker)
Are Air Traffic Control Errors on the Rise?
by Eva Holland | 10.11.10 | 11:44 AM ET
According to the Washington Post, the raw numbers suggest they are. The FAA’s response? The increase, they say, is due to improved reporting procedures. (Via Gawker)
Oktoberfest 2010: By the Numbers
by Eva Holland | 10.11.10 | 10:50 AM ET
Spiegel crunches some remarkable numbers from the 200th edition of the Munich festival: This year’s partiers consumed a record 7 million liters of beer, stole 130,000 of the famous glass mugs and consumed 117 roasted oxen. Impressive stuff. But the list of lost items is probably my favorite:
One hearing aid was also found, as were a leather whip, a live rabbit, a tuba, a ship in a bottle, 1,450 items of clothing, 770 identity cards, 420 wallets, 366 keys, 330 bags and 320 pairs of glasses, 90 cameras and 90 items of jewellery and watches.
(Via The Daily Dish)
The Sounds of Zion
by Michael Yessis | 10.11.10 | 9:16 AM ET
Interesting plans afoot at Zion National Park to protect the park’s natural soundscape. The “Soundscape Management Plan,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune, is the first of its kind.
Frank Turina, of Fort Collins, Colo., a planner with the natural sounds program for the National Park Service and project manager for the Zion document, said an area’s soundscape is as valuable as air quality and watershed although, unlike those resources, it is intangible.
“Sound has an inherent value to the park that we want to preserve and protect for the future,” Turina said in a telephone interview.
He said the new plan uses the science of acoustics to specify conditions under which park managers would need to act to protect and preserve the soundscape of Zion. That science gives the plan objectivity and credibility.
“It is a very interesting and new application of old science to protect natural areas in the park,” he said. “This (project) is on the cutting edge.”
