Two Travel Tips To Keep You Safe and Save You Money

By Laura Zera 12 Comments

This week’s post contains practical travel tips for two things commonly encountered on business and holiday trips: escalators and car rental agencies. It’s my husband Francis who has been traveling for work in the past couple of weeks, and he shared this information based on first-hand experience.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates more than 10,000 people are injured on escalators every year in America alone. The most prevalent cause is falls, which is why safety guidelines prohibit strollers on escalators. Go to an airport, however, and people are dragging all sorts of bags onto these moving staircases.

Soon after arriving at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport two weeks ago, Francis passed by an escalator accident scene where someone had fallen. To avoid such an incident, never pull your baggage on behind you when you’re stepping onto an escalator. If it tips, it can tip you. Push your luggage on ahead of you, or to your side. It’s also important to know that soft shoes – sandals, Crocs and flip flops – can get pulled into the space (and stuck) where the stair meets the side of the escalator more easily than regular shoes (especially child-sized soft shoes).

While in Texas, Francis made a last-minute decision to rent a car on his day off. In doing so, he learned that the walk-up rate at the rental agency was TWICE as much as the online reservation rate. It meant that once the agency employee made the reservation for him, he had to wait an hour before he could pick up the car, even though the car was just sitting there in the lot, but it saved him a load o’ dough.

I’ve also heard of the same thing happening at hotels. If you step up to the desk to make your reservation, sometimes the hotel won’t honor the online rate. This is when it’s handy to have a smart phone; settle into one of the hotel’s cushy lounge chairs, visit your favorite online booking site, and then return to the front desk. Of course, some of these sites require that you pay up front at the time of booking, and all of them take a cut of the room rate, so you’d think the hotels would bend over backwards to have you book directly through them. Nobody said it was logical…

If you have a practical travel tip, please share. And if you had to learn about it the hard way, we’re so sorry, but thanks for taking one for the team!

Travel: Lazy Days in Antigua, Part II

By Laura Zera 20 Comments

The goal for our December trip to Antigua was to do as little as possible, and Francis and I were exceptionally successful at achieving it (see Lazy Days in Antigua, Part I to read about how we sat around all day, mouths open, spittle running down our chins). Let me tell you, though, there were other forces at work.

Disastrously, we met a very fit and rather diabolical Antiguan American woman named Sara on the flight down. Insisting that we “go out and see the island” (???!!!), she picked us up at our apartment and drove us North to South, East to West, on several occasions. It was terrible. We barely survived it.

On Christmas Eve, Sara’s idea of fun was to join in the merriment in downtown St. John’s. There were lights and decorations, happy people everywhere, and to rub salt in the wound, a deceivingly scrumptious local dinner at Roti King.

Then, a couple of days later, she thought that perhaps we should see another beach besides our own. She first took us to Devil’s Bridge, a big, splashy-water place with a natural rock arch. We continued on to Half Moon Bay, and not long after we got there, Sara pulled fresh papaya from her mother’s yard and crunchy snacks out of her bag to share with us. So presumptuous! I know you’re shaking your heads with me.

Devil's Bridge, Antigua — Devil’s Bridge

We also went to Dickenson Bay, just down the road from our apartment, where Sara arranged for this rainbow.

For the eve of New Year’s Eve eve (that would be Dec.29, for you slow people), our tour took us to the south end of the island to Nelson’s Dockyard, a cultural heritage site and functioning marina. Here, we were able to view the boat used by a reckless man named James (Tiny) Little for his solo Atlantic crossing. I say reckless because it appears that he didn’t brush his teeth in the evening – for 116 days! Just check out the poster of his daily schedule.

I would be able to tell you more about this cannon if I could have read the signs.

Powder Magazine at Nelson's Dockyard — Powder Magazine at Nelson’s Dockyard

A Sunday night tradition on Antigua is live music at Shirley Heights. The steel drum band sizzles and the views are breathtaking, so we spent our evening letting the local music seep into our souls. What’s done is done, however. We can’t undo it now.

Who’s a pretty bird? Who’s a pretty bird? Not the English, apparently.

And that’s how it came to be that we mingled the time at our “home” beach at Runaway Bay with some of Antigua’s other charms. But take a lesson from this story, travelers. I have a feeling that there are more like Sara out there.

Have you encountered a Sara in your travels? How did you protect yourself? Share your stories!

Travel: Lazy Days in Antigua, Part One

By Laura Zera 26 Comments

There are beaches, and there are beaches. And then there’s Antigua, which has a beach for every day of the year. My husband Francis and I spent 11 days in Antigua at the end of December, so while we didn’t have enough time to see all 365 bits of coastline, we managed to make it to a few. Of course, that meant we had to first leave “our” beach, the one that was just steps away from our apartment at Runaway Bay. It practically took an act of God just to get us to put shoes on, so heavenly was our home base. Let’s start there.

We stayed at the Barrymore Apartments, seven nights in Unit 7A – upstairs, with a full Caribbean Sea view – and then the last three nights downstairs with a side view of the water. Many hours were intentionally frittered away just staring off into the horizon as the skies changed color and the water lapped against the shore. These deck-view shots will explain why.

When we weren’t staring off into the distance, our short-range view was on the birds and lizards that came to visit and eat the bread crumbs and Cheerios that we set out for them. Although a common species, I really like the boat-tailed grackles, because they’re shamelessly entertaining. Here’s a place to find a sampling of their many calls, if you’re interested. And here’s what they look like prancing around our deck and shaking their tail feathers.

Some of our other guests…

And wherever we go, there is ALWAYS a visiting kitty.

For food, a trip to the First Choice grocery store a couple of miles up the road kept us well stocked for the duration of our trip. I became a quick fan of Wadadli, the local beer and also the name given to Antigua by its original Indian inhabitants.

Then, just steps away from our apartment, one of the best Italian restaurants I’ve ever had the pleasure of dining at, La Bussola, served as our destination on our first and last evenings. These guys had both the food and the service dialed like nobody’s business. (Just a note on the dress I’m wearing in the photo below: my next-door neighbor bought the same one! Isn’t that funny/weird? I guess that’s what happens when you find your fashion at Fred Meyer.) And finally, the picture of our apartment’s microwave is for all of you industrial design fans out there. Observe their clever use of Comic Sans font.

Finally, I’ll wrap this week’s post with a shot of our apartment building, taken from the water. No tropical trip is complete without a waterproof camera, and Francis swears by this one: Nikon Coolpix AW100. It’s not expensive, either. Notice that there’s only one person on the beach (me) — it was like that quite a lot of the time we were there. Quiet spots can still be found! The beaches of the world are not all overrun.

Join me for my next post on Antigua, when we actually LEAVE THE APARTMENT.

Have you spent any time in the Caribbean? Tell us your favorite Caribbean scene. Or queen. Either works. Just remember, no more love on the run.

Travel Survey: The Results (and Winners) Are In!

By Laura Zera 15 Comments

First off, thank you to all who completed my travel survey. There were 61 respondents, and, quite frankly, some answers and trends that I did not expect. I guess that’s the whole point of doing surveys, though, hey?

The reason I asked this particular set of questions is that I’ve been playing around with the idea of designing unique tours to Africa—Ghana, Mali, maybe Malawi and Mozambique. There are plenty of safari companies and volunteer exchanges out there, and I didn’t intend to repeat that. My vision is what I call “progressively independent itineraries.” We’d start out as a group who does everything together, then branch off into increasingly individual excursions until everyone is able to experience solo travel like never before. Of course, the “like never before” part has a lot of details behind it, crafted by my own travel experiences.

And guess what I found out from your answers? A trip to Africa, where a plane ticket costs about $1000 USD from London and more than $2000 from Sydney, followed by pretty rough accommodation in an area fraught with disease, likely would *not* be a big draw for people. I’m not kidding.

See, I love Africa in all of its gritty glory. While I want to share it with everyone (and their dogs), the data shows that it’s not a top pick for people, especially when you have limited time and travel dollars, like many of us do. Here’s what your answers told me.

Basic data

Q1: Of 61 respondents, 64% were women and 36% men.
Q2: Generation X (born 1965-1981, like myself) made up 57% of the respondents, followed by 28% for baby boomers (born 1946-1964). The other age categories had single-digit percentages.
Q3: A full 57% categorized themselves as having traveled a lot, followed by 33% who traveled a little, and 8%, a shit ton. Only 1% was in the ‘untraveled’ category. As to why I didn’t assign “trips per year” or some such metric to the categories, I have no reason other than it was more fun to say things like “shit ton.”

More specific data

Q4: In response to “what’s the one place you most want to visit,” this requires a table view! Apparently, we’ve all got a different corner of the globe (or beyond) in mind, which is actually pretty cool.

Place	Picked by	Place	Picked by
Australia	5	Africa	1
New Zealand	1	Egypt	2
South Pacific Islands	2	South Africa	1
Hawaii, Fiji/Hawaii	2	Seychelles	1
Pitcairn Islands	1	Madagascar	1
Bora Bora	1	Caribbean	1
Europe	1	Trinidad	1
France	3	Accompong, Jamaica	1
Ireland/Scotland, or Scotland, or British Isles, or London, or Edinburgh, or England/Ireland	8	Key West	1
Barcelona	1	Alaska	1
Italy, or Italy’s Cinque Terra/Amalfi Coast, or Rome, or Italy/Greece/French Riviera	4	China	1
Trans-Siberian Railway	1	Vietnam	1
Norway	1	Himalayas or Cuba	1
Iceland	1	India	3
Israel	1	Mars, space or the moon	3
South America, or Central/South America	4
Peru, or Machu Picchu	2
Argentina	2

Q5: One person chose “tour group” as the ideal way they’d like to travel, 82% said they’d go with a friend or partner, and 17% said they’d go alone.
Q6: Suitcase or backpack ran at a near-even split, with 48% choosing the former and 52% the latter.
Q7: For accommodation type, the majority – 43% — chose two- or three-star minimum. Four- or five-star got 18% of the votes, one-star received 29%, and 10% chose dirt-bag cheap.
Q8: The thousand-dollar mark seemed to be the sensitive price point which most folks don’t want to exceed, as that’s what 39% said. The other price points — $500, $1500 and $2000 – garnered between 15% and 18% of the answers, while we had seven people who confessed to being travel hackers (a goal I’m working my way toward).
Q9: I thought it was interesting that the numbers were split when it came to planning – having everything booked vs. winging it. About 56% said they liked their trip to be planned and booked, while 44% preferred less structure.
Q10: My apologies for constructing a wonky question/answer format here. I was trying work within my 10-question limit for the free version of Survey Monkey, but the format confused enough people that I didn’t get a full 61 true/false responses. From what I heard, 25 people are scared by tropical diseases, and 21, not so much!

Now for the prize draw. There were 47 people who included their contact information, ranging from full addresses to “your friend in ____.” Using the nifty sequence generator on Random.org, the winners are as follows:

African mask – Larissa McCormack
Fijian brain fork – Miriam Drori
Boeing 787 Dreamliner* – Jo-Anne Teal

*not full size

Congratulations, you three! I’ll be sending you all emails soon. The person whose name landed dead last in the sequence, hence the farthest from winning a prize, was Arnesh Ramnarace. Sorry, Arnesh, hope your luck runs better for other things (and look both ways before you cross the street, okay?).

What do you think of the responses? Did anything surprise you?

Ten Whackadoo Travel Facts From Around the Globe

By Laura Zera 21 Comments

I love the weird, gross and obscure—finding it and then sharing it with you (like this post on how butter rum flavor comes from the scrapings inside a civet’s anus, for example). This week, let’s focus on travel, shall we?

Saba airport

A large cruise ship can generate 210,000 gallons of human sewage during a week-long cruise. What they do with it is largely up to the cruise line, and the options range from on-board waste treatment plants to burning the waste to dumping it in the ocean—as long as it’s 12 miles offshore, it’s legal! The “what do you do with the poop?” question might be a good one to start asking if you’re choosing between cruise lines.
An estimated 3,000 Euros (~4060 USD) are thrown into Rome’s Trevi fountain each day. The money is collected and donated to charity.
The average cab ride from Tokyo’s Narita airport into the city costs $300.
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport on the Caribbean island of Saba has the world’s smallest airport, with a runway length of just 396 meters (1300 feet). Better not tell the pilot of Boeing’s 747 Dreamlifter.
There are 60,000 stray dogs in Bucharest, Romania. In other words, one stray dog for every 31 residents. (Funny, I was there in 2011 and don’t remember seeing many strays. Unattractive footwear, yes. Dogs, no.)
Speaking of stray dogs, India has the highest number of human deaths from rabies per year. The number is estimated at 35,000.
Island of the Dolls

The kola nut, which comes from trees native to Africa and is the origin of the term “cola,” is still popular as gift currency for chiefs and guests in some African countries, such as Mali. (I handed them out myself while I was hiking through the Bandiagara region there.) Kola nuts are also an ingredient in the latest version of Virgil’s Real Cola (sold in the U.S.), proving once more, all that’s old becomes new again.
A great place to get creepy for cheapy is Mexico’s Isla de las Muñecas, or, Island of the Dolls. All shapes, all sizes, some decapitated, just hangin’ from the trees.
I was going to put in a little gem about some kind of disgusting food from somewhere, and in doing the research, got too completely grossed out myself to be able to include it. If you want to feel the bile rise from your belly to the back of your throat, fill your boots over here: “25 of the Strangest Foods from Around the World.”
At the Heladería Coromoto ice cream shop in Mérida, Venezuela you can get Viagra ice cream. At the time this post went to press, birth control ice cream was still unavailable.

What global kookiness have you encountered in print or real life? Please share with us!

Images shared under Creative Commons license. Saba airport image by Fyodor Borisov and Island of the Dolls image by Esparto Palma.

Travel: Village Farming in Suriname’s Amazon Jungle

By Laura Zera 4 Comments

You won’t find a lot of Big Ag in Suriname; in fact, you won’t find a lot of big anything there. With a population that barely eclipses the half-million mark—most living along the northern coastal area–the largest venture in South America’s smallest country is bauxite mining. And while there are some export food crops, primarily rice and bananas, start heading deeper into the Amazon Jungle and soon the scale of farming operations shrinks.

Approximately 30 percent of Suriname’s land area is protected by law. This leaves wiggle room for the village communities that line the rivers to clear plots for subsistence farming without doing extensive damage to the flora and, subsequently, fauna.

I took a trip down the Suriname River in March of this year and had the opportunity to visit one such village. Leaving from Atjoni, on the south end of Brokopondo Lake (and also the point where the road ends), the journey to the village of Penpe took four hours in a motorized dugout. I made the trip with a hired guide named Don, as it’s generally both unwise and somewhat impolite to navigate the river without the help of a local.

Once in Penpe, Don pointed out a variety of plants which were unique to the region and/or that I’d never seen before. One of my favorites was the Vigna unguiculata, subspecies sesquipedalis, or, the long bean. The pod grows to about 18 inches in length, and for cooking, tends to be chopped into sections and fried.

Staple crops, such as rice, cassava and peanuts, were plentiful, and for the things that can’t be grown, a village shop carries products that have been transported down the river. Inventory is limited, but then again, so is the size of the consumer base, as is highlighted by the little shopper in the photo.

Unsurprisingly, the three Guianas (Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana) have a jungle’s worth of medicinal plants (just check out this list!). Two different kinds were presented for my inspection. First, one that looks similar to the edible long bean, but opens up to show a much different, fleshy interior and a seed that isn’t edible, according to Don. It’s called Inga edulis, or ice cream bean, and its leaves and seeds are actually used medicinally, against arthritis, rheumatism and diarrhea. And then there’s the porcupine-quill-covered pod. It’s called the Kan-kan udu, Apeiba Glabra (fam. Malvaceae). I’d hate to step on one barefoot.

On the fruitier side of life, I was able to see what the bright orange Awara (Astrocaryum Vulgare) looked like before it was squished up into the tasty juice I’d consumed earlier that week in Paramaribo. Small in size, it packs a punch with regard to nutrients and uses. Awara fruit is an excellent source of carotenoids, as one might guess from its color, with a concentration of ß-carotene that is higher than carrots. It’s also an important source of vitamin B2 (riboflavin). Finally, the oil extracted from the pulp contains both saturated and unsaturated fatty acids and is used in skin moisturizers and hair products.

Don couldn’t shed much light on the regularity of pesticide and fertilizer use on a village farm plot like Penpe’s, but a United Nations (UN) story from 2011 alludes to organic farming as being relatively uncommon, and highlights a program that the UN had been funding for at least five years to promote organic farming in Suriname.

The community of Penpe was chosen for our visit because it’s the home village of Chapeau Siesa, owner of the nearby Pingpe lodge at which I stayed, and it has an interesting history. Penpe was created by the Saramacca people, one of six Maroon tribes in Suriname. They came to the jungle in the 17^th and 18^th centuries as escaped slaves of African descent and started from scratch (the name Maroon comes from the Latin-American Spanish word cimarrón, meaning “feral animal, fugitive, runaway”). While they now have mobile phone usage and generator-powered electricity for four hours a day in Penpe, my guess is that some of the food crops in their jungle garden were growing long before their arrival.

I’d like to give special thanks to Don Majokko for his guiding skills, and to Linda and Rein at Tropilab for helping me get the correct names for some of my funky flora finds.

Note: This article was originally published on GoodFoodWorld.com.

Travel: Do Disorderly Tourists Make You Lose Your Marbles?

By Laura Zera 20 Comments

Whether you live in a popular tourist town or are a frequent traveler yourself, there’s one thing that could test even Buddha’s patience: unruly tourists. There are a lot of tourists out there – 1.035 billion international tourist arrivals in 2012, to be exact. So when their cultural quirks tread on your tolerance, does your composure hold up?

A recent New York Times article singled out Chinese tourists as the new global pain in the neck. Deserved or not, the sheer number of Chinese who are on the move have made Cole’s line from the 01:34:09 mark of the movie The Sixth Sense the new reality: “They’re everywhere.” Last year, the adventures of 83 million Chinese nationals abroad made them the world’s biggest tourism spenders. Eighty-three million? That’s like the entire population of Australia leaving down under FOUR times in 12 months. These numbers are big, people, and they’re only going to grow.

Sometimes it’s the place that creates the swarm. Take Istanbul, for example, which had more than 11 million visitors in 2012. If you want to see the “cool stuff,” (as noted in guide books and, like, history) then you have to be prepared to stand in line. This happened to me and my travel companions when we visited in October of 2011. Even with it being low season, it took us three tries before we gathered the courage to brave the Topkapi Palace ticket line. I did my fave thing and started talking to the people in front of us (who happened to be from Bangladesh, and since I’d worked for the Grameen Foundation, we found a commonality to discuss in Muhammad Yunus, yay!). By the time we’d baby-stepped our way through the Imperial Treasury with all the rest of the looky-loos, though, my ambassadorial finesse had hopped a boat down the Bosphorus.

Are tourists avoidable? Well, if you like to travel to some of the kinds of places I like to go, maybe. Most people would rather go to Paris, and there, you will have to deal with the crowds. My advice is to work those patience skills hard. Harder than when you taught Grandpa how to use a computer mouse. Even harder than when you tried to change your telecommunications provider. REALLY, REALLY HARD.

I say this because inevitably, once you’ve reacted poorly to that egregious person who just stabbed you in the eye with an umbrella on Champs–Élysées, it will be you who feels worse for it. Martha Beck calls displaced aggression “stress rolling,” and while it may not be stress that causes you to misbehave on vacation, once you’ve done it, your conscience is still with you, every step of the way. I know this because I’ve been there (and if I could apologize to the taxi driver in Fethiye that I punched on my 1989 trip to Turkey, I would. For whatever reason, it’s not tourists, but taxi drivers who seem to be my trigger!).

When all the self-help speakers and motivational coaches say that you’re unique and there’s no one else like you in the world, they have a point, so don’t expect anyone else to act like you, especially if they’re from a place that has had a completely different cultural history than what you’ve experienced (there are some interesting observations about this and China in the NYT article). One thing we will always share, however, is the desire to feel good, and that feeling comes from being good. Dig around in that fanny pack for some extra fortitude, if you must. You don’t have to take the traveling offender(s) home for dinner or anything, so try not to let them get to you in that moment, and it will make for a more pleasant, and peaceful, day.

Have you ever lost your cool over a tourist’s (or taxi driver’s) behavior?

Travel Survey: A Short, Fun Questionnaire With Prizes!

By Laura Zera 12 Comments

Hello, all! This week, I’m getting scientific (my scientific friends are laughing at me right now, but they will suffer corns and bunions for that). I’ve created a silly and simple 10-question, multiple-choice travel survey.

Complete the survey, and your name could be drawn for one of three prizes, mailed to your house, anywhere in the world or outer space. (Note: you must include your name and email address as part of the last survey answer if you’d like to be included in the draw, otherwise you remain anonymous. Your information will not be shared, and survey results will be published anonymously.)

The survey will close on Nov.30th, 2013.

The prizes are a wooden mask from Cameroon, a brain fork from Fiji, or a replica (not real) Boeing 787-8.

Now for the survey! Thanks for participating and helping me with my little bit of market research.

Click here to take survey.

p.s. I’ve confused the heck out of some people because there’s no true/false box for question #10. See, I’m only allowed 10 questions with the free version of Survey Monkey and I didn’t want to use one up on contact information. So, for #10, just write in your true/false, and then include your contact info if you’d like to be part of the draw. Thanks!

Anything else you’d like to share about your travel preferences, quirks or otherwise? Leave a comment below!

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