Intelligent Travel

Our Favorite Local Haunts

Read other spooky posts at our new blog website: www.intelligenttravelblog.com

Today at Intelligent Travel, we're bringing you a slew of local haunts in celebration of Halloween. Ghosts, spirits, and other oddities can be found anywhere you're traveling, and these stories can often help to fill in the history of a place (all while giving you the willies).

For example, I'm from Long Island, New York, home of the famed Amityville Horror house. But I was surprised to find out that according to some local paranormal "experts," one of my favorite area attractions is apparently haunted as well. The iconic Fire Island Lighthouse is said to be haunted by the ghost of a former keeper who hung himself in the building. People have reported that "heavy doors open and close by themselves,     strange laughing and banging sounds seem to come from inside, and have experienced eerie     feelings, as well as the appearance of a shadowy figure in the caretaker's     house."

O.K., I'm officially creeped out.

What are your own local haunts? Share your favorite spooky travel tales in the comments, below.

Photo: Via Long Island Paranormal Investigators

Jenss Family Travels: Welcome to Bhutan

Check out this and other posts at our new blog website: www.intelligenttravelblog.com

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences here at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Land of the Thunder Dragon . . . Kingdom in the Clouds . . . Shangri La . . . Himalayas . . . Gross National Happiness.

Read anything about the Kingdom of Bhutan, and these will likely be among the buzzwords you'll come across. They're what piqued my curiosity a few years ago while researching possible adventure vacation options for a friend and I. Investigating a little further, I discovered that this remote country nestled between Tibet and India only allows about 20,000 foreign visitors a year, perfect for someone like me who was looking for something unspoiled and exotic. And after being exposed to Buddhism's basic principles through years of practicing yoga, I could further explore the religion in this remote part of the world.

When our family's around-the-world trip became a reality I had to inform my trusted travel companion that the "boys only" trek to Bhutan would have to wait. But as Carol and I started mapping out our route through Asia, I couldn't resist tossing up Bhutan as an option. Was it a risk to take Tyler and Stefan to such an isolated country in a region we knew little about? 

We noticed that National Geographic Expeditions offered tours there and asked if Bhutan was a good family-friendly destination. They responded with a resounding 'yes,' and with their enthusiastic endorsement, we made it work, anticipating that this might just be the highlight of the trip.

If there were any trepidations about how we would handle Bhutan's harsh terrain, spicy food, or unique culture, we figured the six weeks spent in Asia leading up to the trip would have us prepared. The kids seemed thrilled to be going on another tour because of the positive experience they had in China, so when we met up with the group in Bangkok, I wasn't surprised to see Tyler and Stefan immediately gravitate to the trip's expert, Richard Whitecross.

Buenos Aires Up All Night

See this post and others on our new blog at www.intelligenttravelblog.com

Senior Researcher Meg Weaver advises you to mark your calendars for an art-filled night in Argentina.

If you happen to be in Buenos Aires on Saturday, November 15th, basking in the spring sunshine, don't miss the city's fifth annual Noche de los Museos (Night of the Museums).

On this special night, state and national museums, universities, and private galleries open their doors for free from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. A city-wide artistic block party ensues, with films and performances of jazz, tango, folk, techno, choral, and rock music throughout the city's many artistic venues. Last year 102 institutions participated and 414,000 people attended. Many train and minibus lines operate free of charge, too, carting culture lovers from venue to venue.

Expat Irish blogger, Paddy in BA, says he felt a bit like Ben Stiller's security guard character in the 2006 film Night at the Museum while strolling through the museums after dark (without T. Rex skeletons chasing him, of course). And the event reminded me of one of my favorite books as a kid, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, in which a brother and sister run away to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and explore it at night.

Paddy in BA adds that Noche de los Museos is not all high-brow fun, as it ends with a smashing party down near Puerto Madero and runs into the wee hours. Last year's closing party featured Argentine-American rocker Kevin Johansen & The Nada playing in front of 30,000 people from midnight 'til dawn.

Have you been to BA's Noche de los Museos? Are there similar city-wide cultural festivals in cities closer to home? Fill us in on this awesome idea. Wonder if we can get something similar started here in DC. . . 

One Japanese Airport Has Very Chill Idea

See this post and others at our new website, www.intelligenttravelblog.com.

Snow and airports typically aren't friends. Delays, cranky customers, and even crankier ticket agents are in the forecast at the check-in line after Mother Nature dumps a load of the white stuff. But one airport in Japan is extending an eco-friendly hand to its usual nemesis. Beginning in 2010, the New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, Japan, will start collecting some of its 20-30 feet of annual snowfall and use it to help cool the building during summer months.

By using heat-insulating materials, an estimated 45 percent of the snow could be preserved. The remaining melted snow will be put to use to chill the airport's liquid cooling system. The island has been experimenting with such cooling techniques since 1998.

The northernmost and least-developed of Japan's islands, Hokkaido is known for its brutal winters and splendid skiing conditions. Capital city Sapporo holds an annual Snow Festival in February, one of the largest winter events in Japan. By taking advantage of one of the island's most abundant natural resource, the New Chitose airport will reduce its CO2 emissions by 2,100 tons per year.

Read More: IT rounded up a host of green airports worldwide last month, including Boston's Logan International Airport's wind energy initiative, which helped it earn the distinction of the first LEED-certified airport terminal in the U.S.

Photo: Winter scene in Hokkaido, via Kaz&Masae's Flickr

Saving Africa's Lions

Imagine for a moment that you are a Maasai tribesman in Kenya and your entire livelihood is invested in your livestock. One day, a lion attacks one of your cows, killing it. Enraged, you set about to seek justice and protect your cattle from further harm. But justice today is not the same as it once was. The Maasai once used spears alone to take down lions, but now, with the rise of poisonous insecticides, it's simple for you to spread some poison on the carcass while the lion has wandered away. When the lion returns with its cubs, it ingests the poison. But so does the rest of the pride. In the span of a few hours, an entire family of lions is wiped out. Your cattle are safe...for now. But there are side effects: The region's economy, dependent on tourism, becomes unstable, and the fragile ecosystem of East Africa is shattered.

This was the reality facing Tom Hill, who began his work on lion conservation efforts in the Kenyan bush 16 years ago. As a trustee of the Maasailand Preservation Trust (known as the Ol Donyo Wuas Trust in Kenya), Hill has worked on the Mbirikani Group Ranch; and he has watched the population of lions deteriorate in the Amboseli-Tsavo Ecosystem (Located at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro). The arrival of poison in the region has only hastened the problem. In 2003, he says, "We lost eight lions in one afternoon. It was the last great pride of the Chyulu Hills."

It was shortly after losing that pride that Hill and his co-founder, Richard Bonham, began speaking with the Maasai community about creating a better way to account for their losses. The MPT had long been established in the region and had relationships with tribal elders. But, Hill says, they needed to find a reason to make it worthwhile for the 10,000 people in the community to want to live alongside such beasts. "We realized that if we didn’t do something significant the lion population was going to go extinct," he says. "So we sat under trees with elders for months talking about life for the Maasai and the nature of conflict with wildlife. We tried to see how could we develop a solution that could stabilize the predator population, and save them from extinction, while saving the quality of life for the people." It was out of those meetings that they developed a novel system called the Mbirikani Predator Compensation Fund.

Taxis Go From Yellow to Green

Check out our new blog at: blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel!

Toyota Prius hybrids from Iowa City's Black and Gold Cab Company

Cities across the U.S. are making a fashion statement that seems to be catching on—green is the new yellow. Taxis in many major cities are becoming more environmentally friendly by switching to low-emission vehicles. By taking this leap, taxis, which are the ultimate offenders of continuous stop-and-go traffic, will vastly decrease their contribution of carbon emissions on the road.

After reading a post from our friends at Inhabitat about Boston taxis recently taking the initiative to go green, we decided to see what other cities were making the same effort to decrease their carbon tire track.  What we found was a spread of cities and individuals offering green transportation to those in need, including locals and travelers abroad. 

Arlington, VA - Introduced to the greater Washington area as  “the first carbon-neutral [taxi] fleet in the U.S.” earlier this year, EnviroCab offers only environmentally friendly vehicles to its customers. They even go the extra mile by offsetting their carbon emissions and then some in an effort to be the first carbon-negative taxi service in the world.

Boston - A major part of the overall plan to improve the city’s taxi system, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino calls for all taxis to be replaced by hybrids within seven years.  Along with these efforts to go green, the plan also requires drivers to install credit card machines and bars the wearing of sweatpants and T-shirts on the job (which isn't exactly green, but hey, it's something).

Chicago - Here, the transition to hybrids started with the help of a little green friend, Kermit the Frog. In an energy campaign launched by Ford Motor Company, a fleet of Ford Escape Hybrids, featuring the car's spokesfrog Kermit, are providing green taxi services in Chicago.

Denver - Metro Taxi, Denver’s largest taxi service, offers a number of Toyota Prius hybrids to its customers.  Taking the term quite literally, these taxis are identifiable by their green paint jobs. But you shouldn't take the green for granted, as more recently, the Yellow Cab Company of Denver also started to
offer hybrid cabs.

Our New Blog!

If you've noticed that we've been pretty quiet on this end, please forgive us, as we've been busy putting the finishing touches on our new blog site, which you can now find at, drumroll please....

blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel AND www.intelligenttravelblog.com

We're thrilled to be a part of the new National Geographic Traveler website, and are excited to show you around our new digs. So head on over and check it out!

Jenss Family Travels: Sayonara Japan

Rainer Jenss and his family are on an around-the-world trip, and they're blogging about their experiences for us here at Intelligent Travel. You can keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts and following the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Week Three of our immersion into the world of Japanese culture brought us to Tokyo, the city that fueled my longing to return to this country after my first visit there some fifteen years ago. Since we had gotten acclimatized to city life from our time in Kyoto (not to mention Beijing and Shanghai the previous month), dealing with crowded train stations, especially the subway platforms of Shinjuku, which are the city’s busiest, didn’t faze us. Besides, the boys were too fixated on the various types of trains that shuttled us around the country to even notice.

So besides zipping around on the Japan Railways, we aimed to find some activities that would strike a balance between kid-friendly and culturally enriching. Sorry guys, we didn’t come all this way to go to Tokyo Disney!  Fortunately, this proved to be far less challenging than I originally thought because Tyler and Stefan were becoming fond of Japan. Furthermore, they enjoyed learning the basic phrases and didn’t seem bothered at all by the language barrier. This proved quite helpful as we headed out on our first day trip in Tokyo.

But while seeking cultural experiences, we had to admit that there’s only so much that will hold the interest of an eight- and eleven-year-old. If Carol and I had been here by ourselves, we surely would have attended the Kabuki Theatre to take in one of the oldest and most traditional Japanese art forms. Instead, we found ourselves in a place called Kidzania, a child-sized replica of a real city that enables kids to learn about the adult world, and the value of money and work, by experiencing various professions. So what could possibly be so culturally relevant about that?  For starters, I must admit that I was growing rather fatigued from continuously asking the kids to mind their manners since we arrived in Japan. After all, this is a country that from early childhood emphasizes discipline and restraint, and nowhere was this more evident than in a children’s entertainment center. With all due respect to American families back home, Kidzania confirmed that the Japanese by-and-large have their children under control and very well behaved, which only added to my anxiety of scrutinizing our children's every move. Nevertheless, Carol and I were amazed at how well they adapted to the culture. Kids are certainly known for their resilience, but I never would have imagined that they both would be eating several varieties of raw fish, pickled vegetables, soups and noodle dishes by the time we left. Stefan has even gone so far as to say he’d rather eat a meal with chopsticks than a knife and fork.  And Tyler was completely serious when he requested a heated toilet seat for his next birthday.

Mmmm... Sustainable Sushi

A few weeks ago, we got all kinds of hungry when we posted about the new sustainable sushi restaurant, Tataki, in San Francisco. But for those of you who can't make it out to San Fran, there's now a set of guidebooks just released by the Blue Ocean Institute, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Environmental Defense Fund that will give you a lesson on which fish should, and shouldn't, make it into your maki roll. Each org has their own version of the guide (the Environmental Defense Fund's is slightly more focused on consumer health), but they decided to band together and present a united front to make the public more aware about the role that sushi plays in the sustainable seafood movement.

"There's a lot of awareness about seafood – but not about sushi," says Ken Peterson, the Communications Director at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. "Even though people know they’re eating raw fish," they often don't relate to it the way they would to, say, dolphin-safe tuna, he says, and speculates that's perhaps because many dishes are identified in Japanese. So these bilingual guides will instruct users to consider how the fish are farmed and caught, and whether they're being threatened by overfishing. According to the guide, bluefish is on the no-go list, as the species population has dropped 90 percent in the past 30 years because of overfishing. Also on the no list: monkfish ("ankoh"), red snapper ("tai") and freshwater eel ("unagi"). Instead, try U.S.-farmed abalone ("awabi"), albacore tuna from the U.S. and Canada ("maguro") and farmed arctic char ("iwana"), which are all are more sustainable choices.

These guides will be available as wallet-sized cards and are free to download, but I think that the digital versions, available on PDAs, are great for travelers. The Monterey Bay Aquarium's can be accessed by going to mobile.seafoodwatch.org, while the Environmental Defense Fund's Seafood Selector can be accessed through m.edf.org/seafood. And the Blue Ocean Institute just launched the FishPhone program this month, allowing patrons to text the name of the fish and get a text back with its environmental assessment.

As part of the launch, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is also launching a "virtual sushi party" on Facebook today, which encourages participants to go out into their communities, eat sushi, and report back with status updates on the fish they found. We'll be happy to oblige them.

Read More: Time Magazine reports on the sustainable sushi movement. And read more about the global fish crisis in last April's issue of National Geographic Magazine.

Image by Meomi for the Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Packing our Bags...

We know it's late in the day, but we wanted to let you know that as of tomorrow morning, the Intelligent Travel blog will begin, um, traveling...

Don't worry, this is a good thing – at long last, we're becoming a much bigger part of the National Geographic Traveler website, which will unveil its brilliant new design tomorrow as well. Our move will involve a new URL, and eventually, we'll bid this current one goodbye. But we're planning on transferring all of our content to the new site, and adding some additional features over time which will make it much easier to navigate, and more fun to use. So we ask that you be patient, give us feedback, and get ready to travel with us. We're excited to have you come along.