Tag Archives: African travel

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.17.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel


BEER AND THE POWER OF TRAVEL
If you’re ever visiting New York anytime soon and find yourself feeling thirsty, you’ll want to introduce yourself to the Brooklyn Brewery.

If you have any doubts about the difference that travel can make in a person’s life, you’ll want to get to know the man behind the beers from Brooklyn Brewery, one Garrett Oliver.

Garrett Oliver

Garrett Oliver

He spent a year in Britain in the 1980s and developed a taste for Europe’s fine brews. Then, he came home to the United States, where most beers — churned out in industrial quantities by a handful of giant corporations — had no taste.

I remember those days. In much of the world back then, the term “American beer” was a bad joke, the ultimate oxymoron. When Oliver referred to the US beers of the time as “this thin yellow liquid,” trust me, he was being kind.

Most flavors of Kool-Aid had more character — and for that matter, more flavor. Some of this limp-wristed refrigerated dishwater was so pitiful, it couldn’t even form a decent head when you poured it into a glass. You were better off drinking tap water.

So in true American spirit, Oliver took matters into his own kitchen and started making his own beer at home.

Over the next several years, the amateur brewer became a professional brewmaster. And a guy who had graduated with a college degree in broadcast and film morphed into the world’s pre-eminent scholar on the brewing art.

He also became a creator of some truly world-class beers. How world-class? These days, the Europeans are importing beers from him.

Garrett Oliver is one of the reasons you now can find some 2,000 craft breweries scattered across the United States, from Portland ME to Portland OR, Savannah GA to San Diego, each literally lending its own flavor to the city in which it sprang up.

Who knows how much of this, if any of it, would have happened had Oliver not spent that year overseas, having his eyes opened by something he never would have experienced had he played it safe and stayed home. Travel has the power to change lives.

Road trip, anyone?

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AIR NIGHTMARES
Halfway through the second month of 2013, Boeing seems no closer to getting its problematic 787 Dreamliner back into service after grounding all of them worldwide due to in-flight problems with its lithium-ion batteries.

Poland’s LOT went so far last week as to declare that no flights using Dreamliners will be scheduled until October — whether the bird is fixed by then or not.

In addition to grounding all the 787s already in service, Boeing has halted delivery of new ones until the battery issue is resolved. Either way, the airlines already committed to the Dreamliner are losing money daily while this drags on.

Meanwhile, Boeing’s principal rival, Europe’s Airbus Industrie, has dropped plans to use the same battery aboard its new A350 airliner, which is designed to compete with the Dreamliner but has yet to enter service.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from USA Today
Poland’s national airline, LOT, is the latest to ground the troubled Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and it says the plane will stay grounded into fall. Ouch.

from Travel Weekly
The American Airlines-US Airways merger may be official, but there’s still a long way to go before it becoes a physical reality on the ground and in the air.

LAND
from Budget Travel via Yahoo
Getting married? Planning on raising a family? Here are eight travel destinations you might want to see before you start having kids.

from the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Are reading and travel equally fundamental in your life? Five of the world’s most literary cities, all of them suitable for the literate traveler.

SEA
from USA Today
Multiple stories on the Carnival Triumph mess…and “mess” is indeed the operative word here, in more ways than one. And just when the cruise industry was still trying to put the Costa Concordia disaster fully behind it.

from AARP
Three classic cruise rip-offs and how to avoid getting stung.

FOOD & DRINK
from CCSD Tours
You’ve heard of pub crawls. Are you — and your bike — ready for a pub roll? These guys offer a cycling tour of pubs in Britain. They have other cycling tours in Europe, too, but this one’s for you beer drinkers out there.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Want a taste of fine French cuisine in a genteel English setting? Go north, young gastronome, to Montreal.

from the Washington Post
Welcome to Chicago, where the locals take their hot dogs seriously. Very seriously. These dogs “ain’t your average Huckleberry Hound.”

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AFRICA
from Africa.com
Want to start real discussion at your next party? Get three people together at random and ask them to name five livable cities in Africa. When they’re done, you hit them with this list of ten, and the reasons why. Watch their jaws drop.

from New Era (Namibia) via allAfrica.com
The Namibian government and the private sector lay down guidelines for tour guides.

from the Washngton Post
West Africa’s French-speaking Cameroon is a microcosm of Africa, in ways good and not-so-good.

from the Tanzania Daily News via allAfrica.com
Authorities in the Mara region are turning to a new weapon in the battle against poaching — education.

from The Namibian (Namibia) via allAfrica.com
A generation before the Nazis, Germans were waging genocide in East Africa. It’s a story little known in this country and largely forgotten elsewhere — except perhaps Namibia.

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
When it comes to the lush jungles of Costa Rica’s incredible Caribbean coast, the local indigenous peoples make the best guides.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Agence France Presse via France 24
Gamers in Hong Kong are creating their own great escape. All you have to do is figure out how to get out of a locked room while blindfolded and handcuffed, with a ticking clock prodding you on. In high-pressure HK, they call this fun.

from The Guardian (London UK)
What you’ll find in a walk across Shanghai, where 21st-century China coexists, barely, with the 14th.

from The Guardian (London UK)
In the largely unvisited northern Indian hill country of Meghalaya, the wild scenery is but the first of its surprises. For one thing, in this male-dominated nation historically torn between Hindus and Muslims, Christianity is the major religion and women rule the roost.

EUROPE
from France 24
Formerly down and dirty Marseilles is trying to remake itself this year as the official 2013 capital of European culture.

from CN Traveller
Berlin — rooms with a…zoo?

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.10.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

Hong Kong fireworks

Hong Kong fireworks — © Farang | Dreamstime.com

Wishing peace, health and prosperity to our IBIT friends in China and Chinatowns around the world as they ring in the Year of the Snake on this Lunar New Year.

EAT, DRINK AND GO TRAVEL
Every so often, I go back through old digests of mine to look for recurring themes — and if you’re a regular reader of the IBIT Travel Digest, there’s at least one you’ve spotted already. Nearly every digest, it seems, features at least one mention of food or drink.

So starting today, FOOD & DRINK gets its own section in the digest — and it kicks off with two subjects equally dear to my heart and my tastebuds.

New Orleans was a foodie town long before someone invented the term “foodie.” The word itself is out of favor these days among the blogerati (not that I give a damn), but the NOLA’S flare for flavor will never die.

From its beginnings, New Orleans cuisine has blended a mélange of influences — French, Spanish, Native American, African, Italian, Irish. Starting with the 1980s, though, a new taste fell into the city’s gumbo pot — the flavors of Vietnam.

San Diego was the first American city to receive South Vietnamese refugees en masse following the 1975 fall of Saigon, which made it the first to be exposed to Vietnamese dishes in a big way.It didn’t take long for pho and banh mi, with their fresh ingredients and vibrant mix of flavors, to become staples here.

And for you gumbo purists out there (and you know who you are): Yes, they do put in okra on request.

But while the Vietnamese cuisine tsunami was washing over San Diego, other refugees gravitated to the Gulf of Mexico to resume their lives as fishermen. Inevitably, many settled in New Orleans.

A city that already treated po’boys and gumbo as basic food groups had little trouble embracing pho soups and banh mi sandwiches. And among the Vietnamese and their descendants who grew up in the NOLA, the feeling seems to be mutual, as the New York Times recently discovered.

Today, within an easy drive from my house in San Diego are at least two Vietnamese restaurants whose menu is a mix of Vietnamese and New Orleans Creole dishes, run together by people from both locales. The nearest one features a daily special that includes half a banh mi and a bowl of gumbo.

But the best place to see the result of this marriage of cultures is in the Crescent City itself and you’ll see it below in the inaugural FOOD & DRINK section of the IBIT Travel Digest.

IBIT says: Bon appétit…or perhaps, chúc ngon miệng!

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WILL TRAVEL FOR JAZZ
Back at the turn of the 20th century, as Europe was plunging into the first of its two disastrous world wars, Paris witnessed the arrival of blacks from America, mostly soldiers, who brought with them a style of music Parisians had never heard before.

The Americans called it jazz, and Paris promptly fell in love with it. And as Jonathan Lorie discovered when he went roaming Ernest Hemingway’s old Parisian haunts for London’s The Guardian newspaper, the love still burns.

Jazz may be an American invention — perhaps the best of all American inventions — but there may be no better place to enjoy it than Paris. And as you’ll see in Lorie’s article, there are a lot of venues in the City of Light where you can enjoy it.

Lorie’s piece also links four other famed Jazz Age authors — F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Christopher Isherwood and Somerset Maugham — and their jazz hangouts from New York to Germany and even Sri Lanka.

But if all these folks were still around today, they all might leave their hearts in San Francisco. The reason is SFJAZZ, which opened late last month in the city’s Hayes Valley neighborhood.

It is the first concert hall in the United States — and maybe the world — built expressly for jazz. It features an auditorium, an ensemble room, rehearsal areas, a digital learning lab, and even a sidewalk cafe.

IBIT says: Hemingway would’ve dug it…once he got used to the no-smoking rule.

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AND FINALLY…
USA Today reports that Kate Hanni, head of the airline consumer organization FlyersRights.org, is stepping down as the group’s executive director, walking away from the outfit she founded in 2006.

You can read the entire USA Today story here.

She formed Flyers Rights after being stuck on the tarmac aboard an American Airlines flight in Austin, TX — for nearly nine hours — and getting little more than lip service from the airline. Her outspoken efforts since then led to federal regulations governing how the airlines handle flight delays.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Hanni didn’t make a lot of friends in the airline industry during her time with Flyers Rights, but she did prove that consumers who organize at the grassroots and speak truth to power can make a difference.

IBIT says: Thanks for all you did, Kate, and all you tried to do.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from the Los Angeles Times
In the eternal hunt for airfare bargains, booking too early can be as costly as booking too late.

from Travel Weekly
You may soon be able to watch in-flight shows and movies on-demand on Southwest Airlines flights, streamed to your own personal electronic devices. That’s the good news. The bad news? You’ll be paying extra for it.

from Budget Travel
A survey of travel agents says that when it comes to booking their clients on connecting flights, Atlanta-Hartsfield is one of their most favorite airports. It’s also one of their least favorite airports. Am I confused? No. I’m just booking non-stops.

from Travel Weekly
Frequent-flier miles…from an airport? Starting in June, the parking, food, merchandise or airport hotel stay you buy at Dallas-Ft. Worth International (DFW) will count toward airline miles.

from FareCompare
When is a “free” airline ticket not really free at all? FareCompare’s Rick Seaney counts the ways, and there are five of them.

LAND
from Condé Nast Traveler
The world’s ten most beautiful train stations, according to CN Traveler, right on time as New York’s Grand Central Terminal marks its 100th anniversary. Some are classic, others ultra-modern, and some brilliantly mix old and new. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
For the third time since it first opened in 1981, San Francisco is set to expand its Moscone convention center.

SEA
from the New York Times
Lust and luxury aboard the Queen Mary 2. Just don’t call it a “cruise.” It’s just not done, you know…

from Travel Weekly
Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s old airport, where almost every landing seemed like an adventure, is returning to the travel business — this time as a gleaming $1 billion cruise ship terminal that can handle the largest vessels in the business, even Royal Caribbean’s behemoth Oasis-class ships.

FOOD & DRINK
from the New York Times
In New Orleans, they know their pho — and their yaka mein. If you don’t know either, read up. WARNING: Your mouth may involuntarily water while reading.

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AFRICA
from Travel Weekly
The Radisson hotel chain opens its first Radisson Blu hotel in Mozambique.

from TechZim (Zimbabwe)
New travel startup, Zimbabwe Bookers, aims to make finding hotel rooms easier for travelers in one of Africa’s growing tourist markets.

from Tanzania Daily News (Tanzania) via allAfrica.com
Tanzania draws up plans to aggressively promote tourism in overseas markets. Its top four markets — Britain, the United States, Germany and Italy.

from Angola Press via allAfrica.com
Angola’s environmental agency building bungalows, other facilities in the country’s national parks in a bid to boost ecotourism.

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
When your mother takes you on a sailing excursion to Central America at the age of six, just the two of you — and it lasts for four years — school field trips may have a hard time holding your attention after that.

from the New York Times
A look at San Juan, Puerto Rico, starting with one of my favorite spots — Condado Lagoon. SLIDESHOW

from The Guardian (London UK)
Are you into “Girls?” I’m referring here to the HBO hit TV series, set in Brooklyn. A look at the neighborhoods that give the show its inspiration.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Washington Post
Singapore spent so many decades living with the reputation of being the straight-laced capital of Asia, that it’s hard to imagine this city-state having a quirky side. But it does have one. Yes, it does.

EUROPE
from France 24
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of…graffiti? The city’s Shoreditch neighborhood is becoming a mecca for lovers of street art.

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT Travel Digest 1.20.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

American Airlines' new livery on their new Boeing 777-300ER airliners.

American Airlines’ new livery on their flagship Boeing 777s. What do you think? | Image courtesy of American Airlines

A NATION AFLOAT
Bangladesh — poor, low-lying and frequently flooded — is not on many people’s travel wish list. And maybe that’s our loss.

Because if we went, we’d see people using their own ingenuity to deal with the floodwaters threatening to gradually drown nearly 20 percent of their country…permanently.

In Bangladesh, climate change is not a theory. Melting Himalayan glaciers combine with annual monsoon rains and cyclones (what we call hurricanes) to inundate a country built on marshy delta. But the Bangladeshi people are finding ingenious ways to cope.

When major floods hit, the kids don’t go to school. It comes to them, on hand-built wooden boats — about the size of the vaporetti water buses that you’ll on the Grand Canal in Venice. Floating schools, floating health clinics, even floating libraries. There also are waterborne shelters for families displaced by floods.

But as you’ll see on the Fast Co.Design site, they’re going beyond adapting boats. They’re actually creating floating solar-powered farms producing vegetables, ducks and fish.

I would love to see all this in action. The Bangladeshis just might be more adapted to living with floodwaters than any other people on Earth.

On the other hand, that old “the monsoon ate my homework” excuse just won’t fly anymore. Sorry, kids.

BOEING’S BAD DAYS
To say it’s been a rough week for Boeing and its new 787 Dreamliner is an understatement.

By now, you know the story. A series of problems with the new jet, especially problems related to its Japanese-made lithium-ion batteries, led one airline after another to ground their 787s for safety inspections until the inevitable finally happened.

Not only have Dreamliners been grounded worldwide, but Boeing has halted deliveries of new ones until the problems can be tracked down and fixed.

Lots of writers, including IBIT, have pointed out that all new airplanes go through a certain amount of technical hiccups when they first come on-line. But when you’ve got batteries that leak enough corrosive fluid to burn holes through the floor and start taking out avionics, that’s no minor glitch.

Can/will the Dreamliner’s problems be fixed? Yes, and for the simple reason that London’s The Guardian newspaper points out: They have to be.

Both Boeing and the world’s airlines are all-in on this airplane. A Dreamliner demise would hit them like a financial tsunami.

All, perhaps, except Boeing’s European nemesis, Airbus, which has a rival to the Dreamliner, the A350 XWB, months away from its first flight.

IBIT will be introducing you to the A350 XWB in the coming days.

Meanwhile, should we be concerned that the same Japanese firm that makes the Dreamliner batteries also provides lithium-ion batteries aboard the International Space Station?

Oh dear…

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OLD SHIPS, NEW ROLES
The crew at CNN Travel have come across a pair of venerable vessels destined for new duties in travel. One invokes a famous legacy and a tragic past. The other, you just won’t believe.

The first involves the Queen Elizabeth 2 of Britain’s Cunard line. Known simply as “the QE2,” she spent some 40 years as an ocean liner in the grand Cunard style, making the trans-Atlantic crossing between Southampton, England and New York City.

In 2008, she was sold to an investment firm in Dubai and has been floating in limbo ever since. The word now is that she’s to be set up somewhere in Asia as a floating luxury hotel, like the old Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA.

The exact destination hasn’t been disclosed, but the betting so far is on Hong Kong. That would be supremely ironic, because that’s where the QE2′s predecessor met her end.

When Cunard retired the original Queen Elizabeth in 1969 after 30 years of service, she was brought to Hong Kong to be turned into a floating university. Cool idea, right? But while being converted, she caught fire under suspicious circumstances and had to be scrapped.

If indeed QE2 is bound for Hong Kong, let’s hope she meets with better luck.

Meanwhile, China already has a floating hotel in Tianjin. But they aren’t using an old ocean liner or retired cruise ship.

No, their floating hotel is the Kiev, a retired Soviet aircraft carrier from the equally defunct Soviet Navy. She’s now known as the Binhai Aircraft Hotel, which her owners describe as “high-end.”

And in this CNN Travel slideshow, she certainly looks the part.

No gym. No swimming pool. But does boast three presidential suites among her 148 rooms, and is probably the only upscale hotel in the world with gun turrets, missile launchers and a flight deck big enough to launch and land jump jets.

The Chinese have another Kiev-class carrier in Shenzen. They turned that one into a theme park.

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RANT: AFRICA’S SELF-INFLICTED TRAVEL WOUNDS
I have a friend whom we’ll call Lisa, an American expat living in a West African country. She was looking forward to attending a major social media event next month in nearby Nigeria. But Lisa won’t be there.

Why? Because the country in which she now resides won’t give her visa to travel directly to Nigeria and back. the immigration office insists that she first fly all the way to the United States, obtain a visa there, and then come all the way back.

This is but one example of the inexplicable bureaucracy that has hamstrung regional African travel since the end of colonial days, and it’s not reserved for expats. Africans trying to travel within the Mother Continent have had to deal with nonsense like this — and worse than this — for decades.

It’s a simple equation, really. The harder and more expensive you make it for travelers to visit your country, the more likely they are to go elsewhere — and take their money with them. That’s what makes the United Nations’ recent warning on immigration rules so timely.

You’ll see that in the AFRICA section below.

Africa is poised to explode as an international travel destination, with billions of needed dollars pouring into national economies up and down the continent. But it won’t happen until its governments stop shooting themselves in the foot.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from the from the Washington Post
Why you shouldn’t fly within a month after having surgery. Two words: blood clots.

from NBC News
American Airlines is changing its look (see above). What do you think of this new livery?

LAND
from Forbes
A rare bit of good news from your friends at the TSA: Those overly revealing full-body scanners installed a few years ago at US airports are going bye-bye.

Budget Travel via Yahoo
Top ten budget travel destinations for 2013.

from the Washington Post
The must-have items for your travel health kit.

from the New York Times
Amtrak adding awards incentives for frequent riders of their best trains. (The kid in the pic could’ve been me on my first cross-country train trip.)

SEA
from Cruise Critic
How to pick the right cruise ship for your at-sea vacation.
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AFRICA
from CNN
The violence in Mali has placed the historic treasures of Timbuktu under threat.

from the Zimbabwe Independent via allAfrica.com
The UN’s global tourism body has a blunt message for Zimbabwe (and by extension, the rest of Africa): Ease up on your visa restrictions or lose out on tourism.

from the Tanzania Daily News via allAfrica.com
How the Seattle Sounders of Major League Soccer are putting American eyes on Tanzania, and boosting that country’s tourism in the process.

from This Day (Nigeria) via allAfrica.com
A feature film meant to raise the international profile of Nigeria’s prolific film is also raising awareness of one of its biggest tourist attractions — Cross River state.

from Associated Press via Yahoo
In South Africa, veterinarians are joining the struggle to save endangered animals from the poaching epidemic.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
If all you know of Medellin, Colombia is the memory of the late and largely unlamented Pablo Escobar, then you really don’t know Medellin. And it might be worth your while to get acquainted.

from CNN
Costa Rica. It’s not just for backpackers anymore. Livin’ large in the rainforest. SLIDESHOW

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNN Travel
Officially, Beijing smog is not the worst in the world. But your eyes, throat and lungs all may have a very different opinion. Is a major world capital and travel destination on the verge of becoming unlivable? SLIDESHOW

from CNN
A local’s guide to Singapore. The operative word is “change.”

EUROPE
from BBC Travel
Meetups at the movies in Paris. Want some popcorn to go with that wine?

from The Guardian (London UK)
You can travel from London to Paris by air, by train, by barge and even bus. Now, if you’re up for a few days of challenging, lovely riding, you can do it by bike.

from the New York Times
Reykjavik. Capital of Iceland. Hard to spell, hard to pronounce. But easy to love during its spectacular winters.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Hiking the Scottish Highlands. Cycling in Malta. Healthy vacations don’t have to be about suffering for the sake of exercise.

the IBIT Travel Digest 1.6.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

Bay Bridge bike path

Welcome to the first IBIT Travel Digest of 2013. Let’s get going.

SAN FRANCISCO: BAY HEATING UP?
The folks at Smarter Travel have listed San Francisco as one of the travel destinations to watch in 2013.

That might sound a bit like saying the sky is blue and water is wet, since San Francisco has always been a hot travel destination. But the city that calls itself “The City” has some new attractions going on line this year, and it’s all about the bay that gives the city its name.

This year, the Aquarium of the Bay is putting in an exhibit devoted to the rare river otter — one of which recently turned up, almost as if on cue, in the ruins of the old Sutro Baths, to the delight of sightseers and the puzzlement of scientists.

The Exploratorium, which has delighted generations of visitors with its science exhibits, also is getting a new and greatly expanded headquarters this year along the city’s waterfront.

But the main event will be the opening of the sleek new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, replacing the old span damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Not only is the new bridge gorgeous and designed to hold up better in an earthquake, but it incorporates something that cyclists have dreamed about for decades — a separate bike/pedestrian path. The illustration above shows you how it will look once it’s in service.

People will be able to ride or walk from Oakland to Treasure Island, the halfway point of the bridge, something that was never possible before.

Plans/discussions/arguments are underway to add a similar deck to the original west span of the bridge.

I can’t wait for the chance to take my bike up to the Bay Area and join my cycling friends, old and new, for a spin over the bay — even if it’s only to Treasure Island. Half a bay is better than none.

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GO SMALL, LEAVE HOME
You already know about the cruise ship industry’s building boom, but it’s not just the big lines building big ships. Less well-known outfits also are turning out new, smaller vessels. One example is Alaskan Dream Cruises, which currently operates three small ships for Alaskan cruises.

How small is small? ADC’s three vessels hold a combined total of 162 passengers. Your typical Carnival or Royal Caribbean cruise ship may hold close to ten times that many — on one deck.

When you board a typical cruise ship, holding anywhere from 2,000 to 5,400 passengers, you may feel as if you brought half of your hometown with you. Not so on a small cruiser. It’s a completely different experience. Faster. Smoother. More intimate.

The super-small cruise ships can easily get into scenic inlets and bays, even explore small rivers, where the floating behemoths would surely run aground. Once ashore, you get more time to sightsee, because your small cruise vessel can dock at much smaller harbors. The mega-ships have to shuttle you back and forth on tenders, which really eats into your limited time in port.

Being smaller, such cruises are seldom cheap. But the experience can more than make up for the price.

AMERICAN + USAIR = ?
With each passing day, a merger between American Airlines and US Airways looks like a done deal.

Even before American filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, industry analysts have been expecting the airline to be snapped up by one of its financially healthier rivals. When Delta dropped out of the fray and United opted to buy Continental instead, that pretty much left the field open to USAir.

And as we move into the new year, the wheels are already turning.

Last month, American’s pilots approved a new contract, the last of the airline’s three labor unions to get on board. Having all three unions signed means that American can now come out from under Chapter 11.

The other shoe dropped just last week, when USAir pilots gave their blessing to a proposal by their American Airlines counterparts on how the two groups would handle a merger.

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DRAMA BUILDING ON THE BLUE NILE
Ethiopia kept its plans for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam so quiet that they first were labelled “Project X.” But when you’re planning the largest dam in Africa on one of the world’s most disputed rivers, that’s a hard elephant to hide.

When finished in 2015, the reservoir it creates on the Blue Nile River will be double the size of Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia — and the source of the Blue Nile itself.

Issat Falls, Lake Tana, Ethiopia

Issat Falls on Ethiopia’s Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile. © Cdkeyser | Dreamstime.com


Simply put, the GERD is Hoover Dam on steroids. It will surely become an enormous tourist attraction, and the electricity it generates could transform Ethiopia.

But mega-dams often do major, unforeseen damage to the environment, and Ethiopia shares the Blue Nile with Egypt and Sudan. Both countries already are unhappy about this dam.

Make that very unhappy.

People a lot smarter than me have been saying the next great global conflict will be over water, and observers in East Africa are already sounding alarms over this project.

IBIT says: Expect drama.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
Could this be the Next Big Thing in airline add-on fees? Bundled fares.

from the New York Times
New screening procedures from the TSA are letting some travelers actually leave their shoes on when going through security. The key word there, of course, is some.

from the Los Angeles Times
Save on airfares to Europe? Think off-season and outside the proverbial box.

from NBC News
Forget the Six Million-Dollar Man. Tom Stuker is the One Million Frequent-Flier Mile Man. And that’s how you get a jumbo jet named after you.

LAND
from the New York Times
How to get the most out of TripAdvisor.

from National Geographic
Ice hotels. If you’re not “cool” after spending a night in one of these places, see your doctor.

from Smarter Travel
For a lot of women, wearing stiletto heels while traveling may be impractical. In Greece, it’s also illegal. One of 11 weird laws around the world that can trip up the unwary traveler. SLIDESHOW

from CNN Travel
Ten cars for every type of traveler.

SEA
from Gadling
Ways to save on your next cruise.

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AFRICA
from Mashable
Take a good look, world. Here they come: A smartphone and a tablet computer, designed by an African, built by Africans. Hitting the market now. This could be IBIT’s future travel gear…and maybe yours, too?

from informAfrica
Forget “The Lion King.” The leopard — not the lion — is the real “king of the jungle.”

from the Washington Post
Not all of Africa’s fascinating sights are of wilderness and wildlife. A look at urban Tanzania and Ethiopia. SLIDESHOW

from Africa Review
Mali’s Islamic extremist insurgency threatens the country’s deep musical traditions.

from The New Vision (Uganda) via allAfrica.com
Bill Gates loves Uganda?

AMERICAS
from the Wall Street Journal
New York City is still America’s biggest tourist draw. Who says so? A crowing Mayor Bloomberg — and a record 52 million visitors in 2012.

from the Los Angeles Times
The many and varied joys of a stay in Santa Barbara. A guide to its sights, sounds and tastes.

from NBC News
The US State Department issues a new travel advisory on Haiti: “No one is safe.”

ASIA/PACIFIC
from the Washington Post
Would you build an entire city around an airport? The place is called Songdo, and if this experiment works, it could change the way the world travels.

from France 24
Not content with making knockoff purses, pirated movies and even fake Apple stores, the Chinese may be counterfeiting a set of skyscrapers.

from CNN Travel
China prepares to open the doors to the world’s largest building.

EUROPE
from The Guardian (London UK)
Twenty bargain vacation options across Europe.

from Associated Press via USA Today
If you’re planning to visit Vatican City anytime soon, bring your prayers but leave your plastic. The Vatican has gone cash-only.

from the New York Times
Berlin. It’s not just about currywurst and beer anymore. The city’s better restaurants are racking up Michelin stars. Ich bin ein foodie?

from CNN Travel
QUESTION: How do you get the world’s largest airliner through a small French village? ANSWER: Very carefully.

Edited by P.A.Rice

the IBIT Travel Digest 12.23.12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

Tongli, China's ancient Venice | ©IBIT/G. Gross

Tongli, China’s ancient Venice | ©IBIT/G. Gross

UP A LAZY ASIAN RIVER
River cruising has long been a travel staple in Europe and shows little sign of slowing down. But cruise lines and tour companies increasingly are looking to Asia as the Next Big Thing in cruising.

According to USA Today, Viking River Cruises, one of the biggest names in European river cruising, has already announced plans to offer river cruises in Myanmar and Thailand, starting in 2014.

Others aren’t waiting that long. Travel Daily News.Asia is reporting that Travel Indochina is already adding Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and Laos to a river cruise itinerary that already includes Vietnam, Cambodia and Yangtze River cruises in China.

With increasing world interest in Asia and growing middle classes in Asian countries with money to spend and a desire to see more of their own homelands, Asian river cruising could be a hot market for years to come.

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PUTTING A STOP TO MOTION SICKNESS
So far, this is one of life’s ailments that has mercifully passed me by. But there are plenty of people who suffer with this — and “suffer” is the operative term.

At the least, it can seriously interfere with your ability to enjoy travel. At its worst, it may prevent you from traveling altogether.

We’ve all had our share of laughs about motion sickness. Even Hollywood films and cartoons have gotten in on the levity. But every time I see the airsickness bag on the airplane or see folks on cruise ships with that little scopolamine patch on their necks, I’m reminded that motion sickness is no joke.

It’s a physical misunderstanding. Your inner ear tells your brain, “We’re moving!” Your eyes are saying, “No, we’re not!” Your stomach wishes they’d both shut the hell up.

There’s no real cure for motion sickness, but there are ways you can deal with this, and the New York Times breaks it all down at length in this article.

Their suggestions may not rid you of this curse, but they might make life a little easier for you, or your kids.

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CHARGED UP
A lot of us travel with a lot of electronic gear — smartphones, iPods, tablets. They make us productive during those long flights, or at least keep us from dying of boredom.

But even if they’re fully charged when we leave for the airport, their batteries may be no match for that 10-hour or 12-hour transcontinental flight. And finding an available electrical outlet in a crowded terminal during an unexpected delay can be…well…challenging.

Which is why the Summit 3000 battery pack caught my attention. As Smarter Travel points out, it’s neither very light or really cheap, but if you need to keep your devices running in places where a plug isn’t handy, you may be glad you have this.

One especially cool feature is that it’s dual-voltage, which means you can use it overseas with no hassle; all you need is a plug adaptor for the country you’re in. And if you travel with electronic gear, odds are you already have some of those.

Still, it isn’t powerful enough to charge a laptop, which leaves my black MacBook feeling neglected and resentful.

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FLYING YOUR FELINE
Traveling with pets is always tricky, especially if the pet is a cat. It’s tough enough on the sensitive little critters, even without having to deal with the TSA — which actually lost one traveler’s cat in New York JFK airport.

There’s nothing we can do about the TSA, but there are things cat owners can do to make travel easier on their beloved felines, and the folks at Smarter Traveler lay out their suggestions in this slideshow.

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AND FINALLY…
If your Boeing and you want to test how well in-flight wifi works aboard your aircraft, what sort of exotic, sophisticated, state-of-the-art testing equipment do you use?

Why, potatoes, of course — 20,000 pounds of potatoes, right on the passenger seats.

And as proof that I’m neither crazy nor making this stuff up, check out this CNN story on Boeing’s wifi tests.

And please, no mashup jokes.

And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
Don’t look now, but your already miserable experience getting through airport security could get a lot worse two weeks into 2013. It’s all about your driver’s license and an eight-year-old federal law that gone unenforced — until now. IBIT will be exploring this in depth shortly.

from the Washington Post
Spas. Yoga. Luxury food. Fine dining. An international resort? You’ll increasingly find these high-end amenities in the last place you’d look for them — American airports.

from Christopher Elliot
Is the TSA doomed? A respected consumer writer says the powers that be have heard the traveling public’s gripes — and they’re paying attention.

from Smarter Travel
Seven ways to avoid airline baggage fees. SLIDESHOW

LAND
from the New York Times
Have you ever longed to explore ancient historic sites, without having to contend with mobs of tourists? Here are five spots around the world where your wish may come true…for now, anyway.

SEA
from Gadling
Cruise travel is rebounding from a rough year.

from Travel Weekly
Are the Viking River Cruises people building a navy or what? Already with ten new cruise ships on order for next year, they’ve already committed to eight more in 2014. That makes 24 new river cruisers in three years. But given Viking’s interest in Asia (see above), it makes perfect sense.

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AFRICA
from The New Times (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
The national airlines of Kenya and Rwanda hook up in a strategic partnership that eventually could stremaline regional air travel between eastern and central Africa.

from The Point (Gambia) via allAfrica.com
A village on a pristine coastal stretch of the Gambia becomes the anchor point of an ambitious experiment in ecotourism.

from Vanguard (Nigeria) via allAfrica.com
A state government in Nigeria wants to turn the site of the country’s first recorded plane crash into a tourist attraction. Uhhh…

AMERICAS
from The Guardian (London UK)
We think of New Orleans mostly as a grown-ups’ playground, but come Christmastime, it becomes a magical place for kids.

from SFGate.com
Good news from Mexico: There’s a hotel building boom underway in Cancun.

from the Washington Post
A foodie’s tour of Peru. SLIDESHOW

from the Sacramento Bee
Hollywood has its stars, but in California’s Anza-Borrego Desert, you’ll get an unrestricted view of the real ones.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNNgo
Riding waves of modernization, gentrification and newly made Chinese money, there’s never been a better time to visit Hong Kong. An insider’s look at one of the world’s perpetually energized destinations.

from CCTV (China)
China and Nepal sign a commitment to promote tourism between the two countries.

from the Jakarta Post (Indonesia)
Have you ever poured Thousand Island dressing on your salad and wondered if such a place actually exists? It does. It’s in Indonesia, and the governor of the nation’s capital, Jakarta, would love to see the Thousand Islands region become a tourist attraction.

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Walk through history in the ancient city of Toledo, a city holy to Catholics in Spain. Its religious importance saw it escape multiple wars almost untouched.

from The Guardian (London UK)
How Vienna waltzes through Christmas.

from The Guardian (London UK)
The world’s oldest monument was discovered only about a decade ago. It’s 11,000 years old. And it’s in Turkey.

from the Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette (IL)
For most travelers interested in Europe, Slovenia doesn’t register as a worthwhile destination. And that’s kind of a shame.

the IBIT Travel Digest 12.16.12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

©IBIT/G. Gross

©IBIT/G. Gross

DOWN AND (NOT) DIRTY EATS, WORLDWIDE
I’m not a foodie; I just like food. And I love checking out the hidden, under-sized, under-rated places. The incredible street vendor. The lovingly run Mom-and-Pop storefront.

It’s great when you do that in your hometown. When you can do it on the other side of the world, it’s magic.

So I could hardly restrain the joy when London’s The Guardian newspaper introduced me to a blog after my own heart, or at least my own palate: Culinary Backstreets.

This blog focuses on five cities — Istanbul, Athens, Barcelona, Mexico City and Shanghai. If their content is any indication, you could lose your mind — and gain some weight — in any of them.

It’s a reminder that you don’t need a fistful of Michelin stars to find a galaxy of wonderful flavors.

The specific blog post that The Guardian locked in on was one about a street food paradise in an old Shanghai neighborhood that was almost lost to redevelopment.

A story like that speaks not only to my love of urban street food, but my taste for preserving and enhancing an old community instead of tearing everything down and replacing it with the new, the shiny, the sterile.

Real people, in a real community, making and selling real food. How does “urban renewal” improve on that?

ANSWER: It usually doesn’t.

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AFTER-CHRISTMAS (TRAVEL) SALES
One nice way to beat the post-holiday blues would be to score yourself some after-Christmas travel bargains, and the period between the day after NEw Year’s and Martin Luther King Jr. days is one of the best ties of year to do it.

The folks at The Motley Fool call this period “dead time” for the travel industry. I prefer to think of it as hunting season for the smart travel consumer.

To that end, the Motley Fool folks have some tips on how to snag some killer travel deals during that period.

Happy bargaining hunting.

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LUGGAGE TAGS? TRY LUGGAGE APPS
Believe it or not — and I know some of you won’t — the airlines are getting better at not losing your checked bags. Statistics from the US Department of Transportation say so. Considering that they make you pay nowadays for the “privilege” of checking them, I’d say that’s only fair.

Still, air passengers do sometimes find themselves left waiting vainly at the luggage carousel, something we’d all love to avoid. And yes, there’s an app for that.

Delta Airlines started the ball rolling with its Fly Delta app that, among other things, allows you to track your checked baggage.

The makers of Bag-Claim say their iPhone app sends a signal to your phone and your Bluetooth headset to let you know when your bag is nearby, and it continues until your bag is literally in your hand.

Another possible option, depending on whether the Federal Aviation Administration decides to loosen up its rules on the use of personal electronic devices in flight, would be to toss your own GPS tracking device into your bag.

One example would be the Pocketfinder GPS Locator. Like Fly Delta, it works with iPhones, Android phones, Windows Mobile devices…and for us digital troglodytes out there, even Blackberrys.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Business Week
Eastern Europe’s state-owned airlines are struggling in the post-Cold War era, with some cutting services and one, Malev of Hungary, shutting down altogether. Hopes that their Western European counterparts might buy them — and thus save them — so far seem in vain.

from Associated Press via Yahoo
Can you put your smile on strike? Flight attendants for Cathay Pacific sas they intend to do just that. And no, this is not a satirical piece from The Onion. The’re serious.

from USA Today
Is South Korea’s Incheon International Airport now the world’s greatest air terminal? The Airports Council International says yes. See why, and see how the world’s other major airports fared.

LAND
from the UN News Service via allAfrica.com
The number of tourists worldwide hit the 1 billion mark in 2012, a record. And as ominously huge as that number might sound, the UN World Tourist Organization thinks that could be a good thing. Maybe even a very good thing.

from Smarter Travel
Is duty-free shopping really the bargain it’s cracked up to be? ST’s Ed Perkins says don’t believe the hype.

from Independent Traveler
If you’re traveling in Britain, better keep it down in the hotel. The hotel noise police are looking — and listening — for you.

from Travel Weekly
Washington fires a warning shot at 22 hotel operators over their hidden fees.

from Travel Weekly
Hertz competes its purchase of Dollar Thrifty rent-a-car. What was three car rental agencies not that long ago is now one. Hertz now controls 26 percent of the rental car market. The company that owns Enterprise, National and Alamo controls 50 percent. So much for competition.

from Travel Weekly
OFFICIALLY COOL: Need some exercise? Need to charge your smartphone or your laptop? The Starwood Element Hotels chain is installing exercise cycles in its hotel gyms that simultaneously let you do both. Charge your devices by burning calories? Genius.

SEA
from Friends of the Earth
The cruise industry has sent the last decade or so trying to clean up its image as an environmentally unfriendly industry. If this report card from Friends of the Earth is any indication, it’s still a work in progress.

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AFRICA
from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
Kenya launches a campaign to promote cultural tourism abroad.

from East African Business Week (Uganda) via allAfrica.com
Turkish Airlines begins flights between Istanbul and Mombasa, Kenya. Flight time, about six hours. Turkey could make a nice stopover enroute to East Africa. Hmmmm…

from The Herald (Zimbabwe) via allAfrica.com
Poaching in Africa is taking a frightening turn. Park rangers in Zimbabwe kill two elephant poachers in a shootout. The rest flee, leaving behind…mortar bombs? If poachers are using mortars, against animals or people, this is no longer a police matter. This is war.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Manhattan is for lovers. Book lovers, that is.

from BBC Travel
Think of Idaho and a lot of words may come to mind. “Cultural mecca” probably won’t be among them. Think again, says the BBC.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from The Guardian (London UK)
In Japan, the best skiing is found at small-scale local spots. No crowds and lots of perfect powder. Are you packing yet?

from GrindTV via Yahoo
This is how you get around China’s Mount Hua. When they say the view is to die for, they mean it. If you slip, you’ll be falling for awhile. Actually, you’ll be falling for a mile.

from Travel Weekly
Myanmar, the country most of us grew up knowing as Burma, may or may not have fully abandoned its dictatorial government and fully embraced reform — but that’s not stopping US and other Western travelers from bum-rushing this country. Good idea, or bad idea?

EUROPE
from the New York Times
There’s more to anchovies than those super-salty strips of fish most people want “held” off their pizzas — and anchovy season on the Black Sea in Turkey may be just the time and place to find out why. Ask for the hamsi.

from Reuters
Well, this is not jolly good. A TripAdvisor survey of travelers finds London not only dirty and expensive, but the second most unfriendly city in the world. Only Moscow was worse. Bloody hell, eh what!

from the Los Angeles Times
An early peek at Sochi, Russia, the Black Sea venue for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

AFRICA: A different kind of Visa

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With a little imagination, a new Visa card being sponsored by an East African bank and Kenya’s national airline could serve as a model for promoting black American travel to Africa.

Kenya Airways Boeing 767

Kenya Airways Boeing 767

In Sunday’s IBIT Travel Digest, I mentioned the new Visa card from Kenya Airways, backed by Barclay’s Bank of Kenya.

That raises some intriguing possibilities.

On this side of the Atlantic, many black Americans would love to visit Africa if only they could afford it, and black-owned banks that could use an infusion of capital to invest in Black America.

On the other side, many of Africa’s 54 nations are eager to welcome black American visitors. There are credible African airlines that would love to bring us there. There also are some African banks that could benefit from building business relationships in North America.

What would happen if all these folks started talking to one another?

Maybe something wonderful.

Suppose those African airlines were to offer a credit card in this country, through a cooperative agreement between black-owned US banks and an African bank. The cardholder could choose between building mileage credit toward free flights on the sponsoring African airline, or a cash rebate.

But why stop there?

The airline could work with hoteliers and tour operators in the host country to put together an all-inclusive tour — lodging, meals, transport, tours, transfers to/from airports, everything.

Tours could be designed around different themes, keyed to a visitor’s interests:

  • EDUCATION — language, African history, Diaspora history and heritage, science, conservation
  • CULTURE — art, music, fashion, food, nightlife, religion
  • RECREATION — hiking, bicycling, boating, surfing, diving
  • BUSINESS — investment opportunities
  • NATURE — conservation, safaris

The possibilities are as varied as Africa itself.

But the card simply would be part of the bank’s package to its new customers. The principal feature of that package would be a savings account, to which you commit to making monthly deposits.

No minimum starting balance. Deposit as much or as little monthly as you want, as long as you deposit something. In effect, it would be a monthly bill, with one critical difference: You’re paying yourself.

Once you build up enough cash, you log onto the bank’s Web site and select your Africa tour package. Within seconds, your trip is paid for, your flights and hotels booked. Travel insurance would be included automatically as part of your credit card account &mdash just as it is with the Kenya Airways card.

The remaining money in your account becomes your spending money in Africa, cash you can withdraw from the ATM machines of the US bank’s partner in Africa.

Next stop: The Mother Continent.

Upon your trip, start saving for your next trip to Africa. Or South America. Or Europe. Or any other purpose. It’s your money.

Putting all this together definitely would be a challenge, and not just on the banking side.

Currently, only six Africa-based airlines make direct flights to the United States — Nigeria’s Arik Air, Ethiopian Airlines, South African Airways, Cape Verde Airlines, Egyptair and Morocco’s Royal Air Maroc. But all either have or are capable of making codeshare agreements with US or European airlines that fly between the US and Africa daily.

Ethiopian Airlines already is a member of Star Alliance, the world’s largest alliance of codesharing airlines.

This could work. The key to making this work is saving.

Consider the amount of money annually estimated to be floating around in Black America, — currently about $1.1 trillion. How do financial experts describe all this money we collectively have? “Black wealth?…”Black economic strength?”

No and no. It’s invariably referred to as “black purchasing power.”

And brother, do we ever purchase. We spend money as if it were about to evaporate, caught up in a society that pushes us 24/7 to BUY! BUY! BUY! The word “bling” used to represent the sound of a bicycle bell — until we got hold of it.

Now look at China. The country pays some of the world’s lowest wages, and yet Chinese tourists are fanning out across the globe. The Chinese are known as the world’s most ferocious savers.

Coincidence? I think not.

Some, like this long-winded financial wonk, say it’s a matter of government policy. The Chinese themselves say it’s a cultural thing. Either way, they put their money away.

Imagine what we could achieve if we did the same with just 1 percent — one penny on every dollar — of that $1.1 trillion. That would put $11 billion into banks that we own, money to invest on homes, on creating businesses and jobs, paying for education. Paying for travel.

You can do a lot with $11 billion.

Am I dreaming? Sure, but why not? Small dreams are a waste of sleep.

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 11.18.12

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Sahara Desert caravan

The Sahara Desert. Think you could survive here? | ©Simone Matteo Giuseppe Manzoni — Dreamstime.com

The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

THE WORLD’S DRY PLACES
This edition of the IBIT Travel Digest is dedicated to my editor, P.A. Rice, whose name you’ll often see at the bottom of my blog posts. In addition to being a fine writer in her own right and a good friend of many years, she loves — I mean LOVES! — the desert.

Having been born in Louisiana and spent most of my life in coastal California, I’ve never been a desert person. Too much sand, too little shade, too many things that stick or bite you.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s usually hotter than all Hell? Unless, of course, it’s freezing cold.

But when she’s in the desert, she sees — or more accurately, feels — something different. Something profound. Something wondrous. And if you try looking at it through her eyes, you may start to see the desert in the same way.

It’s a land that makes you accept it on its own terms. But if you can do that, it will treat you to breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, night skies overflowing with stars and enough solitude to let you have meaningful conversations with your own soul.

I’ve seen sunlight and clouds combine over the Imperial Valley of California in ways that that I’ve seen nowhere else on Earth.

And as evidenced by this story in the London newspaper, The Guardian, she’s not alone in her appreciation of the world’s driest places.

The article lists incredible deserts all over the world — and tours to let you explore them. Deserts in Arizona, North Africa, Mongolia, and countries you may not even think of in terms of deserts.

Like Spain.

Don’t worry…it’s a DRY heat.

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LOW-FARE AIR TO AFRICA
easyJet is Britain’s largest airline and one of the principal low-fare airlines in Europe. It’s orange-and-white Airbus A319s and A320s are a common slight all over the continent.

Now, according to The Guardian, easyJet’s Greek founder is bringing the low-fare airline concept to the Mother Continent.

Fastjet has taken off, literally, in Tanzania.

The implications of this are huge. Africa is one of the largest and most populous of all the world’s continents — and also by far the one most under-served by the world’s airlines.

If Fastjet succeeds, spreads and inspires the rise of competitors, it could revolutionize African air travel.

Stay tuned.

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HIGH-STYLE HIGHWAY STOPS
If it’s been awhile since you took a cross-country road trip — and at today’s gasoline prices, who could blame you? — you will be forgiven if you go slack-jawed when you see what’s happening to highway rest stops these days.

I got my own inkling of that a couple of weeks ago on Interstate 5 in Southern California, heading back to San Diego.

There’s long been a rest stop overlooking the coast within the boundaries of the Camp Pendleton Marine Base, but I hadn’t stopped there in years. Small, nondescript, nothing special.

My, how things have changed. Two buildings are now three. Multiple large, clean restrooms, snack and soft-drink vending machines that actually work. And I didn’t check, but it might even have wifi now.

But as you’ll see in this Washington Post travel story, that’s nothing.

America’s rest stops are going upscale, so much so that some are on the verge of becoming destinations themselves. Check it out.

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AND FINALLY…
And as long as we’re toying with the idea of hitting the road again, the financial magazine Kiplinger offers up this list of its 10 cheapest American cities for a good vacation.

The first thing you’ll notice about this list is that only two of its top 10 cities are anywhere west of the Mississippi River. One of them is Phoenix, AZ.

Desert. It figures.

But that’s not as amazing as the city that appears at the top of the Kiplinger list, the Number 1 destination for a cheap American vacation.

Drum roll, please…Riverside, CA.

When I first saw this, my initial reaction was “really?” Then I recalled my several drives through Riverside with my family enroute to and from family visits in Texas and Louisiana, not to mention my stops there on the train.

After thinking it all over, my reconsidered thought was…REALLY???

If you think you can make a compelling case that the Kiplinger folks are right, drop me a comment here on the blog or send an email to greg@imblacknitravel.com. I’m willing to be persuaded.

Just be prepared to work at it.

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And now, here’s the Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
American Airlines adds service to Europe, Asia and Latin America from its hubs in Dallas and Chicago. The flights themselves don’t begin til next year, but you can start booking them now.

from the Huffington Post
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what about the skies of the beholder? Would you fly in airplanes as ugly as these? SLIDESHOW

from CNN
The A350-AXWB is the lightweight, long-range airline that Airbus intends to compete with Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner. Will it catch on with the world’s airlines…and more importantly, their passengers?

LAND
from The Daily Beast
Where to find some of the world’s tastiest cheap eats. No surprise, most of them are in Asia.

from AARP
Airline etiquette — how to deal with rude passengers in-flight.

from USA Today
Is a steady regimen of business travel hazardous to your health?

SEA
from USA Today
NCL joins rival Carnival in selling all-you-can-drink packages aboard its cruise ships.

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AFRICA
from allAfrica.com
British travelers vote their favorite city in the world. New York? Toronto? Paris? Surprise…it’s Capetown, South Africa.

from the Daily Observer (Gambia) via allAfrica.com
For foreign tourists, visiting the Gambia often means getting bum-rushed by “bumsters.” Mostly, they’re just a nuisance, but they can be a BIG nuisance.

from allAfrica.com
An unlikely alliance of US environmentalists, herdsmen from Somalia and financiers from China is joining forces in Kenya to save the rarest antelope in Africa. The hirola is closer to extinction than giant pandas, mountain gorillas or rhinos…and cannot survive in zoos.

from CNN
How to survive in the Sahara with the world’s original desert survival experts, the Tuareg.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Atlantic City refuses to bow down to Superstorm Sandy.

from Travel Weekly
And speaking of Sandy, resorts in the Caribbean are still reeling from its impact, these days in the form of widespread cancellations from US travelers. Good time to swoop in and negotiate a bargain, perhaps?

from the New York Times
Seth Kugel loves São Paulo. He wants you to love it, too. WARNING: You may have to work at it.

from the Washington Post
Have a thing for ghost towns? Then check out a pair of abandoned mining towns in Chile. SLIDESHOW

from the Huffington Post
For all the gloom-and-doom talk in the mainstream media about the demise of American manufacturing, there are a lot of local factories still making their own products — and making money doing it. Some of them will let you come in and watch. SLIDESHOW

ASIA/PACIFIC
from The Guardian (London UK)
Want to see where The Hobbit lives…at least on film? Head for New Zealand. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hits theaters next month. Check out the incredibly beautiful land where it was shot.

from CNN
The Hello Kitty restaurant in Beijing. The pink ambiance will make you smile. The food will not.

EUROPE
from Travel Weekly
Greece is pining for more US tourists.

from The Guardian (London UK)
Some of the lesser known but no less worthy attractions of St. Petersburg, Russia.

from the New York Times
The Prague that hides in plain sight.

from the Washington Post
Here in the States, writers joke about tree-hugging hippies who think they can sing their way to revolution and freeom. In the scenic Baltic republic of Estonia, the people there actually did.

Going to Africa, not leaving home

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Ethiopian sampler

Sampler plate of Ethiopian dishes — © James Camp | Dreamstime.com

Cultural events in African communities around the United States can introduce you to the Mother Continent right here at home.

With Africa lying on the other side of the Atlantic and being the world’s most under-served continent by the global airline industry, direct flights to the Mother Continent from the United States are both very few and very pricey, which puts the dream of connecting with Africa completely out of reach of most of us.

Or is it?

There are communities of African expats all over the country. What’s more, they hold festivals and other special events during the year that can serve as your gateway into a range of African cultures — without ever having to pack a bag and for a lot less money than you’d spend on a trip to Accra or Nairobi or Capetown.

I’m going to checking out one of them myself: the first annual African Restaurant Week in San Diego. It’s the first year that the event has been held in San Diego, home of the the largest East African community on the West Coast and the second largest in America.

For two decades, newcomers from Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea have made their way to San Diego to restart their lives. This week, they will be putting their cultures of their homeland on offer through food, drink, song and teaching.

Today through Oct. 28, six East African restaurants (and one Jamaican) in the City Heights neighborhood will be offering special $15 prix fixe meals, including an appetizer, main course and dessert. In addition, the various restaurants will be offering free cooking classes in Kenyan, Ethiopian and Somali cuisine, traditional music and dance, and formal tea and coffee ceremonies of East Africa.

The seven restaurant taking part in African Restaurant Week are:

  • Awash Ethiopian
  • Fatuma
  • Flavors of East Africa
  • Island Spice
  • Asmara
  • Leyla’s Patties & Jerk
  • Red Sea

You won’t find City Heights in many San Diego travel guides. It has no beach. It’s nowhere near the Pacific Ocean or San Diego Bay. It has no purpose-built tourist venues like the San Diego Zoo or Sea World. Nor is it a pre-planned foodie hub/nightspot like the Gaslamp Quarter.

You come to City Heights to see a living, rainbow-colored slice of the world, growing, striving and thriving before your eyes. A dynamic mix of family-oriented, self-starting entrepreneurs from Africa, Asia and the Americas. At times, you may not be sure if you’re in Mexico City, Mombasa, Mogadishu or Macau — and it’s all good.

But you don’t have to come all the way to San Diego to get a taste of Africa — although the sponsors of African Restaurant Week wouldn’t mind a bit if you did.

There currently are roughly 1.5 million African immigrants in this country, with most having settled here only since 1990. Roughly half live in seven US states — New York, California, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts — but you can find them almost everywhere now, if you look.

The ten largest African communities in the US are in:

  1. Washington DC
  2. New York City
  3. Atlanta
  4. Greater Los Angeles (defined as the city of Los Angeles and five surrounding counties)
  5. Detroit
  6. Houston
  7. Chicago
  8. Dallas
  9. Boston


As you can tell from that list, communities of African expats have sprung up more or less across the country. So unless you live in Alaska or Hawaii, odds are you’re no more than a day’s drive from one.

These newcomers come from nearly all of Africa’s 54 countries, but five countries account for nearly half of them — Nigeria, *Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya.

(*A lot of Egyptians take exception to being called Africans, despite the undeniable fact that Egypt is in Africa. The way I see it, that’s their problem.)

Both New York and Atlanta are home to large numbers of expats from Senegal. If you’re ever in Brooklyn’s “Bed-Stuy” neighborhood, check out the Yolele African Bistro, run by friend, Senegalese expat and super-chef Pierre Thiam. It’s pulling consistently high praise from diners.

A visit to one of these African communities during their special events can serve as your introduction to individual cultures of Afican nations and peoples. Sample the food and drink. Check out the music. Strike up conversations. Ask questions. You can learn a lot, and have a great time doing it.

And if you express some interest in traveling to Africa, you may find your new acquaintances sharing insights with you about their homelands that no travel guide can offer.

So check out the event calendar in your area for events being planned in the African expat communities near you. You just might find that Africa is a lot closer than you think.

Africa’s airlines — going UP, going DOWN

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Boeing 787 Dreamliner of Ethiopian Airlines

Imagine courtesy of Boeing

While some African air carriers are rising in class and reaching across the oceans, others are struggling to serve their own domestic markets.

There are sad and wonderful things happening these days with African airlines.

We’ll start with the wonderful.

Ethiopian Airlines, which earlier this summer took delivery of the first Boeing 787 Dreamliner to serve Africa, has announced it will begin regular flights between Washington–Dulles and Addis Ababa,the Ethiopian capital, in October.

That’s one week away, folks.

As the first African airline to fly the 787, Ethiopian, as you might expect, is mightily proud of this, but the implications of this announcement extend far beyond any one airline.

With their ability to fly passengers much farther on a single load of fuel, Boeing’s state–of–the–art Dreamliner — as well as the competing Airbus A350 now in development — are going to change the game for travel to and across the Mother Continent.

Longer range means less need for intermediate refueling stops. That means shorter, more comfortable flights for long–distance passengers and lower fuel costs for the airlines.

And Ethiopian is stealing a march on the rest of the airline industry by being the first to put the 787 in trans-Atlantic service to Africa.

To fly to Africa on an African airliner crewed by Africans is a feeling every black American should experience at least once in their lifetime, and the arrival of longer-range airliners in Africa is going to make that prospect a lot easier in the years to come.

Once more African air carriers certified by our FAA start buying their own Dreamliners, Americans who dream of Africa may may more flight options — and with that competition, one hopes lower fares — to the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

It’s once they get there that they may well start running into problems — and that’s the sad part. The kindest word with which to describe the state of Africa’s regional air travel network may be “problematic.”

The most recent examples of that have been in Nigeria.

First came the June crash of a twin-jet Dana Air MD-83 that killed 169 people — six on the ground and all 163 on board. After a brief government-ordered stand-down, the airline is being allowed to fly again — despite the fact that the cause of the crash is still unknown.

Then came word last week that Arik Air, Nigeria’s largest airline, was canceling all of its domestic flights after the government raided its operations in Lagos, the country’s largest city.

The airline blamed government corruption. The government blamed the airline for failing to pay its employees. Caught in the middle, anyone holding an Arik Air domestic ticket.

Arik Air has since announced it’s resuming domestic flights today, but that’s cold comfort to anyone who needed to fly on Friday — or for that matter, to anyone accustomed to Africa’s erratic domestic air service.

Because none of this is unique to Nigeria.

Talk to veteran African travelers, especially those on international business on the continent, and you’ll hear more than once that they simply refuse to fly directly from point to point within Africa.

It’s actually common for such travelers to fly north instead to Europe — usually on a European airline — and then south again to their African destination city.

You don’t have to be a professional industry analyst to know that when people feel more comfortable flying from Abuja to Accra by way of London or Paris, something is seriously wrong.

There’s a great deal of prestige to be won — and money to be made — flying international routes. It probably is not by chance that, for all the pulling and hauling between Arik Air the Nigerian governmebt, Arik’s international flights went on unaffected.

But for Africa’s airlines, the real market is within the Mother Continent itself, for Africa has the potential to easily become the largest and most lucrative regional air travel market in the world.

It won’t happen, however, until the continent’s 54 countries, and the airlines serving them, start to take that market seriously and treat it with the respect it deserves.

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