Results tagged “Norie Quintos” from Intelligent Travel Blog

You've helped plan my Kenya trip and been with me through the paperwork, vaccines, and packing. You were even with me as I blogged my way through the trip itself, sharing my thoughts on designing a trip with teens in mind, the conundrum of the Masai Mara, and the questions raised when visiting the slums.

Now, you can see an online gallery of photos, on National Geographic Traveler's website. Click through to see a couple of my favorite images. Click here to see the whole slideshow.

Senior editor Norie Quintos, just back from a weekend in Virginia's Northern Neck, filed this report.

Originally, I was supposed to go camping on the beach in Delaware with my friend Scott, but work piled up and we seriously needed Wi-Fi. Serendipitously, friends offered us their vacation home in Irvington, Virginia. Even better, we could bring the dog.

A few hours' drive southeast of Washington, D.C., Virginia's Northern Neck is the oft-overlooked sister of Maryland's more famous Eastern Shore. Many Washingtonians have no idea what or where it is (it's a peninsula and the surrounds between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers that spills into the Chesapeake Bay), though that has been changing as Eastern Shore properties have risen in price.

A few Northern Neck villages, such as Irvington, have been "discovered," and are developing rapidly. A longtime family-run resort, the Tides Inn, was purchased and overhauled in 2001 and turned into a member in good standing of Leading Hotels of the World. Plans are underway for a waterside condo development. Local entrepreneur/wheeler-dealer Bill Westbrook came on the scene and (with various partners) turned an old Victorian schoolhouse into the charming Hope and Glory Inn, and opened the hip restaurant Trick Dog Café, and a vineyard/winery called White Fences. These upgraded amenities have lured a different demographic, including the last-kid-in-college-now-I've-got-time-and-money set from Richmond (an hour away) and Washington, D.C. (three hours away).

Some urbanites have bought in to the weekend-in-the-country lifestyle through another of Westbrook's ventures, the Tents at Vineyard Grove, overlooking the White Fences winery. This is where our friends have their vacation home. The 19 tents are not of the Coleman variety but are deluxe painted wood versions of revival tents put up during 19th-century Pentecostalist preacher gatherings common in this area. The air-conditioned three-bedroom/two-bath Carpenter Gothic houses have covered decks, full kitchens, living/dining room with fireplace, and outdoor shower. Most are privately owned and some are rentable through Hope and Glory Inn or through vacation home rental websites.

Traveling with teens to London? Senior editor Norie Quintos shares some hard-earned lessons from a recent visit with her 13- and 15-year-olds. Check past blogs on traveling with teens to New York City and Kenya.

Give them a preview: Provide some context before your trip, not necessarily with history books but with novels (Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, Oliver Twist, Harry Potter), music (Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Kinks), and movies (Shakespeare in Love, The Queen, Bridget Jones' Diary, and of course, the James Bond flicks).

Make yourself at home: Consider booking an apartment with kitchenette rather than a hotel. No need to pay restaurant rates for ravenous teen appetites. Agencies such as Central London Apartments cater to travelers. Some hotels, such as the Athenaeum in Mayfair, also have townhouse apartments that combine hotel service with apartment convenience.

Get active: Teens typically like to go fast and court danger. We got a little of both on a Central London bike tour (there are several companies, including the one we went with, the London Bicycle Tour Company). Weaving in and out of traffic, crossing bridges, and avoiding double-decker buses driving on the "wrong" side of the road made for ecstatic teens and a nervous mom.  Another bonus: We saw the obligatory sights, including Trafalgar Square, Buckingham palace, and Westminster Abbey, in under three hours.

 

Go easy on the museums: My younger son recoils at anything with the word "museum" at the end of its name, so I chose places that were more experiential, such as the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. A walk through the concrete-fortified underground warren of bunkers used by the British during World War II put us right in wartime London under threat of a blitzkreig. If only all history lessons could be as compelling. I didn't have enough time to take the kids to another of my favorite non-museumlike museums--Shakespeare's recreated Globe Theatre.

Turn it into a game: Really. Teens are not too old for a scavenger hunt (though you may need to provide an incentive). It's a stealthy way to turn them into cultured people. On the list: Quote a line of Shakespeare, Find an Elgin Marble, Read the Rosetta Stone. Cross the Thames. Have a spot of tea. Stand on the Prime Meridian line. Ride the London Eye. Try to make a Palace Guard smile.

 

Senior editor Norie Quintos has been blogging about her recent trip to Kenya with her teen sons. Click here to see her previous posting.

Back in my college days, when I was young and idealistic, I spent two months with an NGO helping to build a school in Kilifi, on the Kenyan coast. We mixed cement by hand, laid bricks, and lived alongside Kenyan students. Twenty-some years later, I came back, this time with my children. Surprisingly, the structure I helped build still exists, as does my youthful scrawl in the cement on the side of the building. Unfortunately, the students still lack books and furniture and access to educational tools such as computers. I made a monetary donation and left, wishing I could do more. Back in the van, the kids and I talked about the disparities of education and opportunity.

On our first day in Nairobi, we visited the community center and school supported by our tour operator, Micato Safaris. The fancy Range Rover pitched and rolled over rutted dirt lanes lined with a random assortment of gummed-together wood, thatch, corrugated metal and cement dwellings that make up Mukuru, an unregulated district of 600,000 squatters about six miles outside the city. (For a bigger discussion on slum tours, check out a piece we ran on the subject.) My sons' eyes grew wide in the face of real poverty, so different was it from the kind they consider themselves victims of whenever I deny them a new pair of Nikes. On the other side of the car window, children's smiles--incomprehensively bright--greeted us. There was no denying the discomfort my sons and I felt. But perhaps comfort wasn't the point. The point was to feel, to question, to think, and then perhaps to act. At the Harambee House, visitors saw what previous safari clients have been moved to accomplish. Here, slum dwellers' children were offered food and education and training, young adults taught skills--a way out and up.

Parents think they should have the answer to everything, but I disagree. Sometimes it's enough to ask the questions.

What are your thoughts?

Photos by Norie Quintos

Senior editor Norie Quintos has been blogging about her recent family trip to Kenya. Her previous posts in this series include on traveling with teens, taking care of paperwork, staying healthy, and packing.

From Laikipia, we flew by prop plane (via Nairobi) to the Masai Mara, the fecund savanna immortalized by many a nature documentary. The area supports some of the greatest concentrations of wildlife, including the so-called Big Five (elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo, lion, leopard). Visitors can't help but have high expectations. Lodges are numerous and run the gamut from basic to luxe. We stayed at the recently overhauled tent suites at the Fairmont Mara Safari Club: lavishly adorned in Africana and boasting typical four-star-hotel accoutrements as bathrobe, slippers, hair dryer, sewing kit, etc. With several wheelchair-accessible rooms, a host of modern conveniences, a highly trained staff, and a prime location overlooking a hippo-filled river, it is one of a few lodges on the Mara suitable for families with very young children and guests with mobility issues. 

One problem with the celeb-status of the Mara is that it is in danger of being loved to extinction. The masses of grass-feeding animals attract predators that feed on them, which in turn lures hordes of tourists, many desirous of the type of close encounters seen on Animal Planet and BBC wildlife programs. Drivers and guides feel the pressure to deliver on unrealistic expectations, putting unsustainable forces on the fragile ecosystem. While off-road driving is not permitted within the Masai Mara reserve, many areas just outside are deeply rutted and pocked. In some cases, the old tracks have become impassable and parallel ones begun.

Senior editor Norie Quintos, just back from an African safari with her teenage sons, filed this report. Previous blogs in this series include taking care of paperwork, staying healthy, and packing.

Norie's teenage sons swim in the Ewaso N'giro River

Teenagers act as if they've seen it all, and in many ways they have--most have been subjected to a 24-hour, hundred-channel television loop; they have viewed every viral YouTube video that titillates, shocks, saddens, tickles, or pulls heartstrings; they've done everything from fly jets to race cars to shoot bad guys in hyper-real videogames; they've seen the wonders of nature in HD-clarity on Planet Earth DVDs.

And yet. Real life trumps virtual reality every single time. And our recent trip to Kenya blew them away like no Playstation, Xbox, Blu-Ray, Imax, surround sound, or new-tech substitute-reality invention ever could. Turns out the travel experience just can't be pixelated.

The trick to traveling with teens is to go beyond the visual and engage all their senses. (I worked with my outfitter, Micato Safaris, to plan such an itinerary.) Thus in the scrubland of Kenya's Laikipia Plateau, Sabuk Lodge was such a hit. Run by Kenyan Verity Williams (that Africans can be white was one preconception busted for the kids), the eight-room ecolodge offers every fun activity and more listed in the popular The Dangerous Book for Boys; in fact the book, as well as its counterpart volume for girls, is displayed prominently on the coffee table.

There's fishing with a stick, string, and bread-dough bait in the Ewaso N'giro River; jumping off boulders into same river; playing outdoor table-tennis with a red-robed Samburu; looking for game on foot and on camel; learning to read scat and animal tracks; and listening to Verity's fireside bush tales (she worked on movie sets, including Out of Africa and The Ghost and the Darkness). Who knows what more we could have done had we stayed for more than a night? While it's hard to say no to all the activity, the languorous lure of the lodge is strong, with its uniquely handcrafted local furniture, open-sided suites overlooking the river, hearty meals served family-style, and quiet library nook.

As National Geographic Traveler senior editor Norie Quintos readies for a family trip to Kenya (with a stopover in London), she shares her packing tips in this posting, the fourth in a series. Click to read posts one, two, and three.

I hate packing so much that I'm procrastinating by writing this post on packing. Putting the necessities of your trip in a suitcase is a tedious chore that at the same time requires Mensa-level mental discernment: Does the camera charger go into the carry-on or the checked bag? Do I pack a separate suitcase for London? Will I be hand-washing clothes during the trip? (which of course affects how much underwear I should bring). And, especially for women, what shoes do I bring? Tough, head-spinning stuff.

But good packing is vital to a good trip, allowing more time for exploration, engagement, discovery, and less time looking for a store that sells bathing suits, tracking down a pharmacy for allergy meds, calling home for a copy of your passport, or nursing blisters because you brought the wrong footwear.

It's less than a week until senior editor Norie Quintos's trip to Kenya with her teen sons. In this posting, the third in a series of blogs on her trip, she covers vaccinations/medicines. Find the first and second posts here.

The glossy catalogs filled with pages of majestic elephants, lions in mid-roar, or huggable baby cheetahs rarely, if ever, mention the vaccinations or medications you'll need for an African safari. The catalogs' job is to romance and seduce, and not until you have fallen hard for Africa do you receive the get-down-to-business, no-more-cute-animal-photos information packet with "optional, recommended" travel health precautions against the scary tropical diseases you could catch.

The list of vaccinations is daunting, and includes Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Meningitis, Typhoid, Rabies, and Yellow Fever. The vaccines are also eye-poppingly expensive and not generally covered by insurance. The good news is you may not need every single one; it depends on your specific itinerary, your length of stay, your planned activities, and your health. To suss this out, you'll need the help of an experienced travel clinician. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website details recommended vaccines and links to an external clearinghouse of travel clinics.

It's less than a month to senior editor Norie Quintos's trip to Kenya (her third) with her teenage sons (their first). Here's how she's been prepping. This is the second in a series of blogs on the trip. Click here to see the first.

Kenya currently remains under a U.S. State Department travel warning due to "threats of terrorism and the high rate of violent crime." (Many on-the-ground experts say this designation is unfair, undeserved, and politically motivated, but that's another story). I consulted the travel intelligence folks at iJet, who said that if I avoided the northwestern border areas, as all safari itineraries do, and practiced basic personal precautions, there was no reason to stay away. As with any trip to a developing country, or any trip really, I wanted a tour operator that would be able to respond effectively should the unexpected and unlikely happen. There are many established safari companies that fit the bill. The one I selected--New York-based Micato Safaris--maintains deep ties to Kenya; its Kenyan founders still reside in Nairobi. The company also uses the services of a group of aircraft-supported physicians if medical treatment is necessary.

Senior editor Norie Quintos, who edits the annual Tours of a Lifetime special issue currently out on newsstands, talks to Jim Sano, president of San Francisco-based Geographic Expeditions, one of the oldest and most trusted guided tour operators in the country (NOTE: not associated with National Geographic Expeditions), about where the industry is headed and the role travel plays in making the world a better place.

How are current economic conditions changing guided travel?

I don't have a crystal ball, but I can say we have weathered many storms. This one may be more significant than 9/11, SARS, and the Gulf War because it is so global and pervasive up and down the economic ladder, affecting the highest end travelers as well as value travelers.

Are you making changes in your programs?

Yes. We're moving towards shorter and shorter holidays. This has actually been a trend over last few years, but for many people in the current climate, the degree of comfort to which they feel they can be away from home, as well as finding the time, has been foreshortened.

Where are people traveling?

We've seen our South American offerings, including the Galapagos, go up from last year.

I know you are planning programs several years out. What are the new destinations of the future?

Cuba is one of the countries on our radar screen. We have done educational trips to Cuba in the past, but there is a pent-up demand and we're doing legwork on that now and will be ready when conditions change. We're also looking at the west coast of Africa as an area yet to be explored; it is very rich culturally.

Your company's roots are in long adventure treks in Asia. But I've noticed your catalog has diversified and is offering fewer hard-core treks.

Whereas before 80 percent of what we offered in the '70s and '80s was trekking, now it's just under 20 percent. That's true for many other companies that started at the same time. The degree to which people want to do the harder treks has lessened dramatically. The people who used to trek now want to do something softer. They may want to hike during the day, but then they want a hot shower and glass of wine. We've adapted by offering both. There's an upcoming trip we're doing with Peter Hillary (son of Everest climber Edmund Hillary), going to South Georgia Island to retrace Shackleton's trek across the island. Part of group will be crossing with Peter; it's difficult glacier travel. But a majority of the group will stay on the vessel. Of the 80 to 100 passengers, we may get 20 who want to do the crossing. But the others still want the opportunity to rub shoulders and learn from Peter Hillary and top-notch mountaineers.

Life's not always a beach when it comes to getting scammed. Get advice from the experts.


Though updated statistics are not yet available, state attorneys general are reporting that complaints about travel scams are up. I spoke with Marc Silver, who reported a piece on travel scams in the April issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine.

How do you tell the difference between a scam and a legitimate travel offer?

If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Whenever there's a 60-day time lag between the receipt of your credit card number and the date of the "free" trip, be wary--you may not be able to contest the charge on your credit card if things don't work out. Also, any legitimate company won't tell you that "if you don't sign up right now, you are out of luck."

Then there are the "giveaways" that ask for a $100 down payment for taxes and fees. It may seem like a small price to pay for what's billed as a three-day, two-night cruise or vacation. But what you may find is that a lot more money will change hands. Mike Weingard of the World Travel Agency in Houston has seen cases where people do send in the $100, and then are told that to get the dates they want or the level of service they want, they'll have to send in another check, and another. And of course there's no guarantee you'll ever get the free vacation. But you aren't likely to get back those so-called deposits.