Seriously. Archaeologists and others are worried that surging tourism on Easter Island is bad news for the island’s iconic Moais. We noted that, in March, a Finnish tourist cut an earlobe off one head. It turns out that’s but one of many threats to the big stone heads. “More tourism, more deterioration. More visitors, more loss,” an archaeologist tells the AP.

Related on World Hum:
* Easter Island: Where the Roads Diverged

Photo by individuo via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

In March, we heard about the Finnish tourist who chipped an earlobe off one of Easter Island’s moai. Then, two weeks ago, mystery vandals took a hammer and screwdriver to Stonehenge. Vandalism at major cultural sites is nothing new, but with these recent incidents, it’s had a higher profile lately. In this Globe and Mail story, Arthur Frommer offers a possible solution:

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As a result of post-election violence, visitors to Kenya are getting police escorts from Mombasa’s airport and facing fuel shortages in the Rift Valley. In southern Chile, 54 travelers were rescued in Conguillio National Park after the Llaima volcano erupted (a ”violenta erupción,” declared El Mercurio). But it’s not all lava and chaos in travel news: Members of the Nuestros Ángeles de El Salvador marching band made it to southern California just in time for yesterday’s Rose Parade after their funding for flights fell through and they had to make a last-minute road trip—from Central America.

Anyone else got an issue with Chile’s borders? Last year we noted that Argentina produced a tourist map claiming a disputed area with Chile. Now Peru has published a map in its official newspaper, El Peruano, that encroaches on what Chile believes is its “fishing-rich portion of the Pacific Ocean,” reports the AP. The dispute, according to the story, stems “from a war fought more than 120 years ago.” That would be the War of the Pacific, in which Chile captured, among other things, Bolivia’s former coastline. It’s becoming a big issue. Chile has already summoned its ambassador from Peru, and Peru has plans to bring the issue to The Hague’s International Court of Justice.

Related on World Hum:
* World Borders Redefined
* Peru: It’s No Nepal

Related on TravelChannel.com
* Samantha Brown’s Passport to Latin America: Santiago, Chile

This week, we interviewed James Teitelbaum, author of “Tiki Road Trip: A Guide to Tiki Culture in North America.” We asked Teitelbaum to recommend a few tiki-related books (guides, narratives, anything). Here’s what he suggested:

Aku-Aku by Thor Heyerdahl
Teitelbaum says: “That’s really the book that made me want to visit Easter Island. It’s very readable, with suspense, humor. It’s a good all-around read.”

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The pilot of a Lan airline jet reported seeing flaming debris fall past his plane as he prepared for a landing in Auckland. NASA officials suspect it was meteors. You want space tourism? Lan’s got your space tourism.

There may be cutbacks in content coming to the Los Angeles Times Travel section (at least according to LA Observed), and a couple of readers have complained recently that the section isn’t as compelling as it once was, but Sunday’s section did have one terrific story, particularly for those who, like me, love Latin music: Augustin Gurza’s The New Song of Santiago about Chile’s rock en español and folksy New Song troubador scenes.

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Observes Marc Cooper in today’s Los Angeles Times: “Not with little irony did the gods choose to reclaim former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet on Sunday, which was International Human Rights Day.”

It’s an icy chunk of land at the bottom of the continent, and Argentina and Chile both want it. Or at least some of it. But which country actually gets it has been in dispute since 1998, when the governments of Argentina and Chile stated that a disputed border area in the Andes Southern Ice Field would be depicted as blank until the two countries reached an agreement about where the boundaries should be drawn. All remained calm—and blank—until Argentina recently produced a tourist map with the disputed area within its borders. Chile didn’t like that, so it registered an official complaint with Argentina. According to a MercoPress piece, the countries are trying to minimize the episode. However, a Reuters story says that the incident has inflamed already tense relations between the countries.

Just how macho and socially conservative is Chile? According to the Los Angeles Times, “It was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to legalize divorce, little more than a year ago. Abortion remains illegal.” And according some, rates of domestic violence are high. But Chile’s culture appears to be changing. On Saturday, Michelle Bachelet officially takes office as Chile’s first female head of state. Some citizens, including hopeful women, see Bachelet’s election as a sign that the nation is slowly becoming more democratic, post-Pinochet, and more open to women taking a prominent role in all walks of life, from business to government. The Los Angeles Times’ Reed Johnson, who has been filing terrific culture-related stories from throughout Latin America, reported on the phenomenon in yesterday’s paper.

The Sunday travel sections feature a couple of fun road trip stories. In the Washington Post, Ben Brazil chronicles a drive through three music-obsessed college towns in the Southeastern U.S.: Athens, Georgia; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

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The Online News Association and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism recently announced the Online Journalism Awards for 2000-01. Travel-related winners include: 

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