Janelle Nanos: October 2008 Archives

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

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.

Welcome to our new home! We're thrilled to be a part of the new National Geographic Traveler website, and are excited to show you around our new digs. On the top, you'll notice our updated new logo, which incorporates an important element beyond just the authentic and sustainable aspects of travel: culture. Consider it our new trifecta.

On our right sidebar, you can see the most recent comments, our RSS feed and other sharing options, links to our social networking hubs, and a blogroll of other National Geographic sites. Our left sidebar has all of our many article categories, our monthly archives, and our blogroll of other great travel sites. We'll still be making some adjustments here and there (see something that needs fixing? Email us and let us know). But we're excited about being integrated into the NGT site, making it easier for you to find us.

Be sure to bookmark our new URL: blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel (or, if you're looking to type less words, you can also find us at www.intelligenttravelblog.com). And if you have ideas on how to make our site better, we'd love to hear them!

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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It has been a while since I last left town, but this weekend has me moving a bit around the country. So since I've loved having you steer me around this summer, I'm again taking suggestions on where I should visit while I'm on the road. I'm traveling to Minneapolis for a wedding on Friday, and I'm looking forward to following a few of Andrew Nelson's tips for the Twin Cities on Saturday. What other Minnesota highlights should make it on my list?

Come Sunday, I'll be heading to Santa Barbara, California for a conference. Our past articles have called the area sensuous and akin to the American Riviera, but I'm eager to hear your recommendations on what I shouldn't miss.

And remember, I'm always up for meeting our readers, so please let me know if you'd like to play host (as Pam did so well back in Seattle). Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Photo: A close up view of the Spoonbridge and Cherry, a local favorite in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. By GasBo79 via the Intelligent Travel Flickr pool.

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The Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina

A few months ago, we ran this fantastic video, produced by former researcher Alison Ogden and NG Channel Advanced Media Producer Chris Keener about the opening of the Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina. At the time, Alison interviewed hotel manager Dennis Quaintance about the steps he was taking to make the hotel achieve LEED platinum status for sustainable building design (recycled building materials, solar panels, and even waterless urinals were among the more inspired design elements). So we were pleased to hear that the U.S. Green Building Council recently awarded the platinum rating to the hotel, making it one of the greenest buildings in the country, and the first building in the hospitality industry to receive the platinum status.

This coincides well with a recent TripAdvisor survey, which found that Americans are increasingly interested in choosing green lodging options (and sustainable travel in general, in fact). So message to hotels: it's a smart idea to go green, let's see more of it soon.

Photo: courtesy of the Proximity Hotel

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It's nearing the end of the day, but before we leave we wanted to share this one item. We love the YourShot and MyShot features over at National Geographic Magazine's website, but we were just smitten with the new Urban Scenery video slideshow up on their site. So take a minute and revel in some beautiful city pictures, taken by the readers of NGM. 

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

Three important occasions marked our second week in Japan: a milestone, a birthday, and an anniversary.  It was also a time that brought to light the joys and unique challenges of spending a year traveling with your family. 

To celebrate Carol's birthday and our fifteen-year wedding anniversary two days later, we had made plans to be in Kyoto because I had been told, by the editor-in-chief of National Geographic Traveler no less, that it was one of the most magnificent places on Earth. Needless to say, expectations were high when we arrived via bullet train from Nagasaki after spending most of our first week in the rural areas of southern Japan (like the well known EuroRail pass, Japan Railways had two week unlimited travel passes available that are good throughout the country - a big plus).

Over the course of the first three months of this trip (a hint to what the milestone is), I repeatedly emphasized to the boys the importance of first impressions. "When you initially meet someone," I explained, "how you act towards them in the first few minutes will likely form their opinion about you forever."  I further clarified that this also applies to places and objects, and told them that judging something before getting to know it was foolhardy. In the case of Kyoto, I realized I needed to heed my own counseling. This was a big city. Not New York or Tokyo big, but big enough where 1.47 million people call it home and mass transit is the best way to get around. This was not the vision I had, however, from admiring so many photographs of its famous temples and gardens. It is also not the romanticized pre-WWII Memoirs of a Geisha Kyoto either.  Experiencing the tranquility of meticulously manicured rock gardens or seeing a genuine geisha was going to take some effort and experienced guidance. Or maybe a babysitter, for as the week progressed, I become obsessed with this quest for enchantment. But could it even be possible with two children and a host of other tourists to contend with? I was determined to at least give it a go.

Here at IT, we're always looking to offer you as many varied travel perspectives as possible. So who better to share their travel secrets than a bona fide rock star who is currently on tour? We asked Rob Myers, the sitar player with the group Thievery Corporation, to send us a few photos and stories from their current European and American tour.

Thievery Corporation recently released their fifth album, Radio Retaliation, in September. The group says it is both politically motivated and international in its scope. "This record is our most internationally oriented," frontman Rob Garza has said, and notes that music is influenced by the eclectic sounds of Jamaica, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. "We worked with artists from around the world. The roots of our inspiration have always come from what is happening globally, and at the moment there is so much happening, on every level." Here are a few glimpses from their travels.

Friday, 10 Oct, Early Morning – LONDON, ENGLAND
We descended into London at dawn. The rays of the sun tried to cut through a thick fog. These were our first steps on foreign soil, but it will be seven days before we get back here for the London gig. On the run to catch the connector to Athens I grabbed this shot of 747's asleep in the mist.

More pictures from the tour after the jump.

Perhaps there is a silver lining to the current crisis on Wall Street – the cost of travel is finally starting to go down. Our contributing editor Christopher Elliott just blogged about the recent drop in the price of jet fuel, which now hovers at about $75 a barrel. And Joe Sharkey of the New York Times recently reported that hotels and airlines are noticing a drop in bookings, and mentioned this interesting tidbit:

In September, the top seven airlines averaged a 9.47 drop in domestic passenger miles traveled compared with September 2007. Domestically and internationally, the major airlines carried 9.2 percent fewer passengers than in September 2007.

Fares are 15 to 25 percent higher on many routes than they were a year ago. But that portion of the strategy seems to have stalled.

“After 21 increases, almost one a week for the last year, we didn’t see any after July 4,” said Rick Seaney, whose booking site, Farecompare.com, closely tracks airfares. “There is a consensus in the industry that they pretty much have hit the end of the rope on fare increases.”

Sharkey notes that some luxury airlines are already beginning to drop prices - Singapore Airlines just chopped their ticket price from $8,500 to $5,999 for a roundtrip from L.A. to Singapore for example - and Gadling reports that British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are responding to the drop in gas prices by cutting back on fuel surcharges. Turns out, a few other airlines are following suit, as is Carnival Cruise line, which is cutting its fuel surcharges for 2010.  So if you can still afford to travel, and haven't yet scaled back your plans, keep your eyes peeled for some more deals on the horizon.

Image: via Tripso.com

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You know you missed him... so John Ur is back with a smattering of the best films which show the landscape of South Carolina.

I know I’ve been to South Carolina. I’ve driven through it any number of times going to Florida or Georgia. But for the life of me, I can’t describe how it looks outside of the ads I’ve seen for the golf courses or Myrtle Beach. And in some ways, I wonder (completely ignoring any important historical events), why is South Carolina even a state? I mean, why doesn’t it just unite with North Carolina and settle down, buy a house, have some kids? Is it really that different that it needs its own borders?

Here’s what I do know, at least from what the important tourism people tell me through their plethora of ads about that state: There are some of the best golf courses around in South Carolina, most notably Hilton Head. For many, this is more than enough reason to book a trip. For those in the audience to which this applies, you may want to check out The Legend of Bagger Vance, a deeply philosophical (sometimes nauseatingly so) film starring Matt Damon and Will Smith. The film shot in Beaufort, Charleston, and Hilton Head, and has some beautiful long sequences filmed on the Pete Dye Course at Colleton River Plantation in Bluffton and the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island.

Besides golf, on the Sea Islands along the coast you may find the descendants of African slaves, the Gullah or Geechee people. The Gullah worked on rice plantations on the coast, which tended to be swampy marshland. Because of the heat, isolation, and undesirable conditions, the slave owners hardly ever ventured out to oversee the work being done. Thanks to their relative separation from the rest of the state, the Gullah were able to retain many of their own traditions including language, song, and the trade for which they are famous: basketweaving. So strong are their skills and traditions that a Gullah woman, Mary Jackson, was recently named a MacArthur Genius.

"What other magazine has a navy?" asked Marilyn excitedly as we pulled up alongside the great blue hull of of the National Geographic Explorer, which was docked in the Alexandria, VA harbor last week. The recently refurbished expedition vessel, working in partnership with Lindblad Expeditions, is on its maiden voyage down to the Antarctic. Working together, Lindblad and National Geographic are aiming to inspire people to care about (and explore) the planet. But thankfully, doing so doesn't mean having to sacrifice your sense of style. 

The Explorer accomodates 148 guests in tastefully-designed cabins, but that's pretty much where the line gets drawn in terms of the cruise comparisons. Lindblad is committed to sustainable travel, and as you'd expect from National Geographic, the equipment on board is state of the art, meaning that you can hang out on the captain's bridge or watch video footage from the ocean's depths shot day-of from the Remote Operated Vehicle (a high-tech piece of equipment that our tour guide and marine mammal expert said make all of her colleagues insanely jealous). Food is sourced from local purveyors along the voyage, and the chef's presentation made us hungry. Marilyn and I considered becoming stowaways when we saw the observation lounge, a glass-enclosed library on the top deck that was perfect for both reading and stargazing. Take a peek at the photos we snapped while on the tour, and you may be thinking of stowing away yourself.*

*You can, of course, go on board as an upstanding member of society by booking at the Lindblad website.

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There's been some exciting news coming out of Barcelona this week, as over 8,000 of the world's leading environmental decision-makers, including heads of states, Nobel Prize winners, philanthropists, and business leaders, have gathered there for the ICUN World Conservation Congress. One big announcement yesterday came from Ted Turner, founder and chairman of the United Nations Foundation, who unveiled the world's first Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria program which outlines a bevy of best practices that will serve as "common framework to guide the emerging practice of sustainable tourism and to help businesses, consumers, governments, non-governmental organizations and education institutions to ensure that tourism helps, rather than harms, local communities and the environment."

The Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria stems from the work of 30 international organizations, including National Geographic's Center for Sustainable Destinations, and together, this group aims to address the four major areas of interest for sustainable tourism: effective planning; maximizing social and economic benefits to local communities; and the reduction of negative impacts to both cultural and environmental heritage sites. Enumerating key points like water conservation and energy efficiency, fair labor standards, and local sourcing of food items, the criteria will serve as a tool to instruct businesses, tour operators, NGOs, and, of course, travelers on how best to find and support sustainable practices.

For Erika Harms, the executive director of Sustainable Development at the United Nations Foundation, the creation of the guidelines was a natural process that stemmed from one question: What exactly is sustainable tourism? Reached by phone from Barcelona, she explained to me that up until now, everyone you asked that question might have a different answer. And many groups were working to respond to public demands for more responsible tourism by creating their own sustainable credentials.

"We looked at anywhere from 75 to 130 certifications around the world, some of which were regional – but none were global in nature," Harms says. She explains that the launch of these international guidelines are the first step in the process. In a few years, they hope to have a recognizable accreditation process (think of a Good Housekeeping seal) that the public will be able to easily identify. "This is all done under the U.N. umbrella – which gives it that global focus – and this is critical to us," she says. "Through the U.N. we access the governments, and through governments we access the people, and that's how we'll make it happen."

We're happy to hear about this important first step.

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Contributing Writer Jim Conaway gets the dirt, literally, on Napa Valley's organic wine business.

The barn is old, red, and lovely, topped by a droll weathervane – an elongated frog in mid-jump – and surrounded by a riot of blooming mustard and other chest-high nitrogen-fixers. This dense, nutritious jungle overruns the nearby vineyard and nearly hides the name, Frog’s Leap, painted on a fence rail. Despite sheets of black plastic stretched over a very large mound of aging manure, both the winery and grounds looked, the last time I visited, more nineteenth than twenty-first century.

Its owner is John Williams, a bearded, unassuming proponent of organic agriculture for two decades and co-founder of the Rutherford Dust Society - a collective which has as one of its primary concerns the health of the nearby Napa River - and he was talking sustainability. “We got the farming down,” he told me, “and then I realized that there are 35 cars parked here belonging to workers. You don’t want to come off holier than thou when half the things you do still contribute to pollution.”

He has hopes for a parking shed with a roof of solar panels to recharge the batteries of the hybrid cars he wants to one day make available to employees, and one for a tractor that runs on the sun. But that’s another story in the broader narrative of organics, in part an attempt to instill in farmer and consumer a greater appreciation of the taste of place. Inherent in that taste, they say, are healthier communities at both ends of the production cycle – growing, and imbibing.