Intelligent Travel

16 Percent "Bored More Than Usual"

Is the Writers Guild of America strike changing your leisure habits? Entertainment Weekly's recent poll says yes: 27 percent say they are going to bed earlier. 22 percent are cleaning the house more. 21 percent are reading more magazines. 20 percent thought the WGA was golf-related. And a whopping 40 percent are reading more books. Conan O'Brien says he tried reading a book but ended up burning it for warmth.

Looking for a good read? Check out our Ultimate Travel Library and Don George's monthly column, Trip Lit, featuring great new books with a sense of place. Or you could subscribe to Traveler magazine and get our great stories and photography (not available online) delivered effortlessly to your home. On the other hand, you can always watch Professional Bull Riders.  Pleasant dreams!

Photo: Hilary Galanoy

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Where in the World?

Our technologically-savvy friends at National Geographic Maps have been quite busy in the past few months. They've taken the 416-page, 12 1/2 x 18 1/2-inch Atlas of the World and created Atlas Explorer for the Web, without compromising the quality and depth of the maps. Check out the Geophysical, Geopolitical, or Human Footprint views and be sure to zoom in on your areas of interest using the + or - buttons on the side. They've also started publishing a fascinating Map of the Day with map-related news and historical events for each day of the year pulled from the Society's archives. You can follow the route that British explorers used on their doomed trek to the South Pole, or see what Georgetown looked like on the day the university was established.

And if you have a little extra time on your hands, be sure to check out the Atlas jigsaw puzzles. With 23 different puzzles and a satisfying "click" sound when you fit the pieces together, you'll be a geography whiz in no time.

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Belizean Musician Andy Palacio: A Remembrance

World music enthusiasts around the globe are mourning the unexpected death of Andy Palacio, Belizean musician and leader of the international movement to preserve Garifuna language and culture.  Palacio’s latest album Wátina (“I called out”), released in 2007, propelled him onto the international stage and sparked a cultural revival in his home nation of Belize. 

In November 2007, Traveler’s Susanne Hackett had the fortune to meet “Andy P,” as he is affectionately known in Belize, and travel the country’s Garifuna coast with him and his band, camcorder in hand.  The trip was a homecoming for Andy, who had just finished a whirlwind international tour, during which he won the prestigious world music WOMEX award and the UNESCO Artist for Peace award. His arrival also happened to coincide with the annual Garifuna Settlement Day celebrations, where Andy was the headliner and received a hometown hero’s welcome. 

The video below is a compilation of the footage gathered on this trip.

Strange Planet: Boulders of Maori Legend

 

Between the cities of Dunedin and Oamaru on New Zealand's South Island is Moeraki, a small coastal town home to famous rock formations. According to Maori legend, the Moeraki Boulders are gourds that washed ashore (on what is now Koekohe Beach) when the Araiteuru canoe was wrecked hundreds of years ago.

But every myth has a scientific explanation: The boulders are calcite concretions, formed over 60 million years ago in seafloor sediment. The spherical boulders formed in a pearl-like process that took as long as four million years (due to crystallization of calcium and carbonates), and the soft mud that contained the boulders surfaced due to wind and rain. The boulders vary in size—up to ten feet (three meters) in diameter—and can weigh several tons each.

Photos: Jeannette Kimmel

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Baby, You're Electric!

The next time you're shoulder-to-shoulder on the subway, in a bus terminal, or on an airplane, don't get too aggravated — that heat leaving your body (and your neighbors') may be the next source of renewable energy.

A Swedish state-owned company, Jernhuset, has found a way to harness the energy produced by the 250,000 bodies rushing through Stockholm's Central Station, the largest train station in Sweden, each day.

Jernhuset's Karl Sundholm explained that the body heat would be absorbed by the building's ventilation system. The heat would then be used to warm up water that will be pumped through pipes over to the new office building nearby. The building will also house a small hotel and a few shops when it opens in 2010.   

"All people produce heat, and that heat is in fact fairly difficult to get rid of. Instead of opening windows and letting all that heat go to waste we want to harness it through the ventilation system," Sundholm told the AFP.

"This is old technology, but used in a new way. It's just pipes, water and pumps, but we haven't heard of anyone else using this technology in this way before," he said, adding that Jernhuset expects the system to bring down heating costs in the building by up to 20 percent.

If you can light an office complex with 250,000 commuters, imagine what you could do with the New Years' party-goers in Times Square, or the 75,000 sweaty bodies (not to mention the tailgaters) at the Superbowl...

Photo: seadipper via Flickr

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Travels with the Mouse

Would you travel with Disney? More and more people are doing just that. Disney's tour-outfitter arm, Adventures by Disney, which began a mere three years ago with six tours, focused mostly in the American West, has expanded to 17 separate itineraries, including China and Australia. Senior editor Norie Quintos, the magazine's resident tour expert, recently returned from an Adventures by Disney trip to Italy with these thoughts.

"Authentic, immersive, and experiential," are how Ed Baklor, senior vice president of the Burbank-based company, describes the trips. These are all buzzwords I (and our magazine) love. And in truth, everyone on my tour—young and old—enjoyed themselves (including me and my kids, by the way). But it did get me thinking, can a Disney trip truly be authentic? And what is authenticity anyway?

Is it hitting the expected high spots (Colosseum, Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo's David, and a gondola ride) with minimum waits in line because Disney had pre-booked admission? Is it the appearance of no, not Mickey, but another costumed character playing Venetian Marco Polo edu-taining the kids with tales of his voyages? Is it the hands-on pasta making lesson at a Renaissance castle in Tuscany? Or the appointment to create your own Carnevale mask in Venice? What about the opportunities to stop and shop at The Disney Stores in Florence, Rome, and Venice? Or the liberal gifting of Disney-logo pins and baseball caps and canvas tote bags to the guests?

Cozumel's Cruise Ships Go Eco

We were heartened to hear last week that Cozumel had signed a groundbreaking partnership to help support eco-friendly practices in the popular cruise ship destination. Over the past year, Conservation International has worked with Mexico's tourism board, the city's local government, and 17 cruise ship industry leaders to hammer out the details of an initiative that will promote sustainable practices in the region. IT Editor Janelle Nanos spoke with Seleni Matus, Conservation International's advisor to the Mesoamerican Reef Tourism Initiative, just a few hours after she returned from Cozumel. Still a bit tired from her hectic week (and an overnight flight) she was kind enough to fill us in on what's in store for the initiative.

What are some of the big issues that you're looking to tackle with this initiative?

One issue in particular was to improve or enhance the awareness of cruise ship visitors about Cozumel's natural heritage. We also recognized that [tour providers] themselves needed to work more diligently to promote the importance of protecting their natural assets.

What are some of the ways that you plan to do this?

We've developed a 30-second video that we've negotiated to have shown on all the major cruise lines destination channels. It's a message from the Cozumel community to tourists showing the highlights of their natural heritage and inviting them to protect it by leaving a light footprint. It's already being aired on Royal Caribbean, Carnival and Celebrity cruise lines. We also plan to create "passeos"–interpretive corridors that will serve as a passageway to the cruise terminal and airports. They’re transforming open areas into passageways containing targeted conservation messages and powerful images. And all tour operators decided to tackle waste management issues, working with municipal government to create onboard recycling programs for tour boats and marine sites. That extends to training the staff, installing the bins, and incorporating the [recycling] message into the message they give visitors. Now that they have started these small projects, they're motivated to tackle the larger issues.

This is a big step for Mexico, as no initiative of its kind has ever been signed before now. Can you give us a sense of the feelings you saw down there?

I think at the event, when they saw the breadth of the work that they had all done...on a local level, they were all frozen. They could see people stunned and inspired at themselves when they took at step back and really understood what they had accomplished at the event itself. For the cruise industry in Cozumel, they feel they have broken down the barriers that have kept them working in their respective silos. The private sector and government tend to have very divergent views on what the problems are, it's hard to find a common ground. It was pretty inspiring actually.

Read More: Check out IT's coverage of Mexico, the Carribean, and Central America. Catch up on several recent posts which look at the cruise industry's best and worst practices.

Photo: courtesy Conservation International

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Global Eye: Northern Thailand

Woman of the Karen Hill Tribe

Photographer: Swoan Parker, Brooklyn, New York

Getting the shot:  The shot was taken in Chiang Dao, Northern Thailand, in November 2007. My camera is a Nikon D200 with a shutterspeed of 1/250 seconds and an aperature of f4.5.

The details: The Karen hill tribe, with a population of approximately 300,000 inhabitants living in northern Thailand, is the largest minority group in that region. The Karen occupy lowland areas engaging in agriculture and the cultivation of rice as well as being skilled at weaving. The Karen wear woven v-neck tunics of various natural colors and turbans.

While visiting a Karen village in the beautiful, peaceful, mountainous area of Chiang Dao, just north of Chiang Mai, I came across this woman sitting on the steps outside of her home. She was sharing conversation in her local tribal language with my guide, Boontan Kamla. There was such a warm spirit about her. She allowed me to “see her soul” and capture the warm nature of her people that was evident in my every interaction.

IT loves how positively genuine this woman appears. Check out those fantastic smile lines on her face!

Want your own photos featured on IT? Add them to our Flickr pool.

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Alaska's Guests Keep Warm with Recycled Oil

The 1.5-mile wide Mendenhall Glacier may be just around the corner, but you'll be plenty warm at Juneau's Westmark Baranof Hotel. The 196-room hotel, owned by Holland America, combines vegetable oil with fuel oil to heat the hotel.

The hotel is the only place in the city that collects used cooking oil. The ingenious process is good for the planet, saves thousands of dollars in fuel costs, and rids local companies of the headache of disposing of used oil, which they used to have to ship to the lower 48 states for removal, creating an added expense.

For nearly two years the hotel has collected about 200 gallons a week from McDonald's and other restaurants and hotels in town. That added up to 10,000 gallons last year, Andy Krone, chief engineer at the Baranof, told IT. "It's a good thing for the business community," said Krone. "It saves us money and its good for the environment." Most guests don't even know that they're being kept warm by the grease left in the fast food fryer.

Rethinking Shanty Towns

Generally speaking, travelers tend to eschew slums in their urban itineraries. But Robert Neuwirth—a journalist who spent two years living in four squatter communities in Brazil, Kenya, India, and Turkey—considers these shanty towns vibrant neighborhoods worthy of exploration. After all, one in six people on the planet are considered squatters (that’s one billion people), an astounding number expected to triple by the year 2050. His adventures led an influential book on the topic, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World, as well as a blog, Squatter City. IT's Katie Knorovsky caught up with him recently to get his take on the rise of “poorism”—so-called “reality tours” that offer excursions through urban slums.

What role, if any, should squatter communities play in a responsible traveler’s itinerary?

That’s a difficult question. There’s a phenomenon that goes on in Rio’s Rocinha—normally the [tours] come through the community I lived in. They come through as if on safari—they come in literally on Jeeps. The people in the community are OK with it, but to me as an outsider it was sort of weird. It smacked of "look at the wild animals in their habitat." There was kind of an element of unreality to it. But I do think it’s really important for travelers to understand that these communities exist and that the cities they go through are not just fancy bars and hotels. The desire [to learn about these communities] is really important.

So what would be a better way to learn about squatter communities?

You don’t really understand a community by driving through on a Jeep. If you go to Rio, you should be aware that in many cases the guy serving you breakfast at the hotel probably lives in a favela. If you start asking him questions, you might even get an invitation. That’s a more honest way to go into these areas, and the bulk of the money [for these types of tours] goes to the tour operator.

Or, just walk in, which takes a certain type of person. You have to be clear on where you’re going, and I guess you have to be a calm and confident person who knows what’s going on around them and doesn’t get fazed easily. I’m from New York, and I remember New York from the 70s and 80s. Crime was rampant. You developed this sixth sense—when I walk I can tell who’s walking behind me. But I don’t want to overplay the danger in these communities; 99.9 percent of the time they’re not dangerous at all.