Archive for December 31, 2011

Travel Tips for Europe

Walking

If you are a typical American, your are a couch potato by any European standard.  Europeans walk a lot.  They also climb a lot of stairs.  On one trip to Europe, I had to endure the symptoms of a torn meniscus in a knee.  Stairs, uneven cobble stone streets, and long distances between trains and stations caused me a great deal of pain.  What I discovered was that Europe is designed to accommodate very healthy sturdy walkers who look upon stairs as a hardy way to get exercise.  Cripples, wheel chairs, and the weak are not invited. Get fit or pay the price.

Even modern, especially large, airports have multiple flights of stairs designed as if to say “we told you to pack light.”

How good a shape must an American be in to travel in Europe?  If you can walk about 5 miles a day over rough terrain with brief bursts of speed and climb ten flights of stairs, you meet the minimum requirements.  To really train for your trip, carry a ten pound bag of sugar or flour in a market bag or brief case.  An even more realistic training regimen would include about thirty pounds of extra weight.  This last method takes into account all of the books, souvenirs, maps, cameras, clothes, and other goodies that you will find yourself carrying by the end of each day.

If you belong to a health club, work out using a treadmill with it set to hill climbs that are variable and at a fairly steep angle.  If you don’t belong to a health club, do mall walks.  Mall walks are easier than anything you will do in in Europe, so do a couple a laps a couple of times a day.

Learn how to stretch.  Any book on running should provide you with information on stretching.  You will need to stretch at least once a day.

You will need very supportive ‘s (ugly) hiking or walking shoes.  These shoes must have good arches and be ruggedly constructed.  Cheap shoes sold by discount clothing stores will not be satisfactory.  They will fall apart after a few days, they won’t have adequate arch supports, and they will be made of mostly synthetic materials that will result in hot sweaty feet.

Have walking shoes professionally fitted to your feet.  Buy your socks before you buy your shoes and fit your shoes with while wearing your new socks.

You will need good socks to wear with your shoes.  They should be thick, padded, and not cost less than $6 a pair.  $12/pair is not too much to pay.  Clean socks are a daily requirement.  Buy enough for the whole trip.  Alternatively, buy as many as you can wear between washings.

Some of you may be thinking that sandals are preferable.  Forget about it.  I’ve tried wearing many types of sandals.  None of them, regardless of price, provides the support of walking shoes or hiking boots.  On hot sunny trips my feet have become so sunburned from wearing sandals that I could not change over to socks and shoes for several days.  On cooler trips, my feet got so dirty that I wouldn’t consider going into a restaurant.

Whatever shoes or hiking boots you decide to wear break them in at least a month before the start of your trip.  Why so far in advance.  You may have to return or replace the shoes or boots that you bought with another pair that will also need breaking in.

Hygiene

Bring a wash cloth and a re-closable freezer bag or two to store it in while you are between hotels.  Apparently, Europeans don’t fully bathe or they don’t think that foreigners need to.  You will rarely find a wash cloth in a European hotel.  Some luxury hotels and some rare tourist friendly hotels may have wash cloths.  If you see one, you are most likely mistaking a hand towel for a wash cloth.

European and many American hotels mistakenly believe that guests can adequately dry themselves with a piece of cloth about twice the size of notebook paper and about twice as thick.

If there is an evaluation card in your hotel room fill it out.  Request giant bath sheets, huge fluffy bath towels, large absorbent hand towels, and bath mats that cover the floor.  It won’t help you this time, but it may help you the next time you visit Europe.

Toilets may have any number of flushing handles, plungers, panels, or even chains.  They will most likely be located at the top of the water container, but may also be located on the floor.

Ever showered with a telephone receiver?  If you haven’t, you will in Europe.  Shower heads are usually portable in that they can be taken off of the wall and used to rinse hair or delicate parts of the body.  Consider that water that feels comfortably warm on the head can feel uncomfortably hot when sprayed elsewhere.  Spraying elsewhere is also a problem.  European and many American hotels don’t have adequate shower curtains.  It is very easy to flood the bathroom if you aren’t careful.  Remember that you will only have a couple of tiny little towels for mopping up the mess.

Sleep

Pillows will range from sacks of unknown content that feel like clay to fluffy feather pillows that collapse to thickness that barely exceeds the back and front layers of the pillow covering.  You may have request a fiber or foam pillow, but you may not get one unless you are staying at a better hotel.  I have often had to use my soft suitcase as a pillow even in expensive hotels.

European hotels seem to replace their mattresses about every quarter century whether they need it or not.  Unlike American hotels they buy better mattresses.  That assumes that better mattresses are so hard that they cannot be worn down to the deep valleys often found in American hotel beds.  If you like hard mattresses, you are in luck.  If not, try the floor if the carpet is padded, it may be softer.

While staying in a hotel in Europe (and some places in the U.S.) if you find yourself feeling hot and half awake in bed in the middle of the night, do not be disturbed about your health.   It is unlikely that you are experiencing malarial symptoms.  This assumes that you have not just come from a lengthy stay in some tropical country.  The tossing and turning, and feeling hot then cold is part of the hot mattress syndrome..

European hotels seem to universally use rubber mattress pads.  These pads are made of the same material as hospital bed coverings and serve the same function, the prevention of body fluids soaking the mattress.  If you want a good night’s sleep, peel back the cloth sheets and remove the rubber mattress pad.  Be cautious about looking at the mattress.  It may be stained to the point where you might decide to put the pad back on or sleep on the floor.

Food

Many European hotels and now some American hotels provide continental breakfasts.  The word breakfast is a misnomer.  What they really mean is pre-breakfast snacks.  Hotel breakfasts in Europe are interesting little treats if you are into bread, coffee or tea, maybe some meats and cheese.  A few hotels will make available a tasteless cereal or an all too flavorful muesli.  Depending where you are, cold cereal may come with hot boiled milk.  Still other places will provide a runny tart yogurt for your cereal.  Fruit for your cereal may be hard to come by.  Depending where you are, you might not want fruit for health reasons.

If you are used to an American breakfast of something like bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes, you are out of luck.  It is possible to adapt after a few days, but not easily.  If you drink coffee or tea, remember that you may be consuming more than the usual amount of caffeine on a nearly empty stomach.  This could make you jittery and irritable during meetings later in the morning.  Suggestion:  Eat as much of the bread or whatever is available that you can force down.  Lunch will be a long time off and you may not be any more impressed with it.

Lunches may consist of a smallish roll with a thin slice of meat, a thin slice of tomato, a tiny piece of lettuce and maybe a thin slice of cheese.  For many Americans, this would represent one tenth of a good deli sandwich.  If you find good ones, you might consider eating them by the dozen.  If you are lucky, your hosts will take you to a restaurant for a formal lunch.  This seems like great news until you gobble everything in sight and drink half a litter of wine.  Remember that light breakfast you had.  Your body will immediately interpret your feast as the ending of fasting and send most of your blood to your stomach and intestine to digest what you just ate and drank. Nap time.  Some Espresso or chocolate is your only hope for staying awake under these conditions.

The best way to eat your way through the day is to start the day is with a hardy breakfast, have a moderate lunch and an early light dinner.  Europeans do the exact opposite.  They eat nearly nothing for breakfast, have light lunch with alcohol, and a late large dinner.  This pace takes some getting used to.  Try cheating as much as you can while still being polite to your hosts.

Powerbars or some other energy bar may be just what you need to get you through the day.  Bring at least one for every day you are traveling, including time on planes.  Airline foods my not be edible if you have good taste in food.

Suitcases

You will be tempted to take a large checked suitcase and a smaller carry on suitcase along with a briefcase with you on your trip to Europe.  The more you take, the more pain you will feel.  You will also learn that stacking two or more wheeled suitcases creates instability.  Visit Venice, Italy and watch tourists attempt to pull multiple suitcases over the steep bridges that cross canals. When the bottom suitcase runs over an uneven surface, the top suitcase will start to sway from side to side and eventually fall off pulling the tourist to the ground.  Add a camera bag and the discomfort quickly escalates.  When you fall down, you will also take the camera with you to the pavement.

Even first class passengers have to transport their carry on luggage through airports which means they have to climb stairs with the luggage.  First class Venice visitors will have their luggage transported to their hotel for them.  All others will have to carry everything over bridges and along canals for distances that seem to increase with heat, rain, or just being tired.

Consider walking through an airport between flights.  Perhaps, you will become hungry and decide to get a bite at one of the airport restaurants.  Sounds simple enough.  Now consider going to the restaurant pulling a carry on bag and having a camera bag and/or a large purse hanging from your shoulder.  If you are traveling cheap, you will have to go through a food line to a counter where you will order your food, find your money, pay for it, and then transport a tray with your food and a drink to a table, if any are available.  You will have one hand busy pulling your carry on bag, which means that you will have to carry your tray with the other.  Meanwhile your camera bag or purse will be slipping off your shoulder.  This explains why the floors in food areas are often sticky from spilled food and drink.

Perhaps you are a higher class traveler who prefers to be served food by servers.  This seems like an ideal solution, but don’t think you are free from inconvenience. Restaurants in major hub airports are not designed for travelers towing checkable and carry on luggage.  These restaurants are often crowded with other passengers who also have at least two pieces of luggage, coats, purses, and briefcases.  The servers hate heavily laden travelers because they occupy tables for four or more for two or fewer tipping patrons.

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Top 5 Dive Destinations

There are many great reasons to scuba dive, but the one that most captures people’s imagination is marine wildlife. Red Sea Beach RestaurantFrom schools of tropical fish to sharks, tropical seas house an impressive chunk of Earth’s life that most people only ever see on the Discovery channel. Still, as a diver, I firmly believe that swimming with a school of fish or sharing a manta ray’s habitat for a few minutes is about more than recreation.

Seeing the ocean animals in their natural habitat makes them seem more real and worth protecting than any TV program could. At each of these five incredible destinations, divers can get up close and interact with some of the planet’s most powerful and beautiful animals. The action is just below the surface at many of these sites, so even novice divers can participate.

1. Palau – There are a whole host of good reasons to dive in Palau, a tiny island nation in the south Pacific. The islands have been famous as a wreck diving site since 1969, when Jacques Cousteau came to Palau’s Chuuk Lagoon in 1969 to film the wreckage of Japan’s Pacific fleet, most of which sunk there during World War II. The wrecks have since been colonized by a variety of marine life that includes corals, rays, turtles, and over 200 species of fish.

Above all, Palau is known for it’s sharks, with some 130 threatened species inhabiting the islands. To protect the islands’ ecosystem, Palau’s government in 2009 named the country’s waters a ‘shark sanctuary’, banning all commercial shark harvesting. Divers are likely to run into grey reef sharks, whitetips, and other species patrolling both wrecks and wall sites like Blue Corner.

2. The Great Barrier Reef – While most Americans would be hard-pressed to find Palau on a map, even non-divers know the Great Barrier Reef. Running nearly 1,500 miles down the eastern coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef in the world and is said to be visible from space. To go with its size, the Great Barrier Reef has an almost unfathomably large collection of sea life. Besides moray eels, wrasse, and other common coral-dwellers, rarer creatures like giant clams and sea snakes abound.

Great Barrier ReefVisiting the Great Barrier Reef by car is a good alternative for those who aren’t willing to commit to a liveaboard: the GBR is probably the world’s most road trip-friendly reef, and many people choose to town-hop down the coast, doing their diving by day boat. From Cairns on the reef’s northern end, divers can catch a boat out to Hamilton Reef, a favorite spot for marine mammals like dolphins and Minke whales. Moving south, Townsville is the base for trips to the SS Yongala, a 1911 wreck-turned-reef that now sports turtles, large sea snakes, and other super-sized animals. Gladstone, located further south, is the connection point for boats to Heron Island, said to have some of the best diving on the GBR.

3. Galapagos Islands – Known for inspiring Darwin’s theory of evolution, Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a reserve for one of the world’s largest populations of endemic wildlife. With the waters around the islands protected, the local fish have very little fear of humans, and many will even approach divers. Sea lions, turtles, and manta rays are everywhere, and starfish, sea cucumbers, and Galapagos crabs seem to cover the sand in some spots. Sharks, including hammerheads, are common but not dangerous. Diving in Galapagos is tricky, and really only for experienced divers.

The islands are unusual for the tropics in that most of the diving is on volcanic drop-offs instead of coral reefs, so dive sites are deep and very exposed to ocean currents. Thanks to the Antarctic Humboldt current, which passes by the islands, the water is unusually cold for the equator; a 7mm wetsuit is standard gear. If you’re planning on going to Galapagos, keep in mind that all visitors, whether Ecuadorian or foreign, need an INGALA transit card to visit the islands; the card costs $10 for foreigners and must be purchased before going to Galapagos. Visitors also have to pay a park fee ($100 for foreigners) upon arrival in the islands.

See more articles about Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands and photos of Ecuador

4. Cocos Island, Costa Rica – Costa Rica is famous as an eco-tourism destination, and few places in the country are better for it than Cocos Island, a rainforest-covered spot of land 340 miles off Costa Rica’s Pacific shore. Accessible only by liveaboard, Cocos is one of the largest uninhabited islands outside of the Arctic: the only residents are a group of about 30 park rangers. While visitors can land for day hikes and other activities, they have to be off the island by nightfall.

Cocos is an oceanic island, so visitors can expect to see an eclectic mix of animals, including octopuses, Booby in Galapagoshawksbill turtles, tuna, and hammerhead and whitetip sharks. The island is especially famous for whale sharks, most often sighted in deep, off-shore sites like Dirty Rock, a 100-yard-wide underwater channel northwest of the island. As in Galapagos, the diving in Cocos is generally on the deep side and in strong current, so it’s not for beginners. With sea kayaking and whale-watching nearby, divers shouldn’t have a hard time keeping themselves occupied during surface intervals.

5. The Red Sea – Europeans have been diving the Red Sea for decades, but it’s only been in the past few years that American divers have begun to join them. The 1,200-mile-long sliver of water has an impressive variety of habitats available for divers to visit, from coral reefs in the south to deep walls and wrecks in the north. The Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheik has become the base for Red Sea diving; from there, visitors can board a liveaboard or take day trips to coastal sites.

The extra-saline Red Sea’s marine life is much like that found in the Indian Ocean, with a few endemic species like the blue-cheek butterflyfish thrown in for good measure. There are loads of sponge and coral species, dolphins, sharks, and tropical fish like anthias and clownfish. At 1,200 miles long, there’s plenty of Red Sea to explore, and divers may even need multiple days to exhaust the possibilities at enormous offshore sites like Daedalus Reef.

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Endangered Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

As our engines sputtered to a stop, a group of blue and crimson Sally Lightfoot Crabs strolling across a nearby Heading Outrock froze in place and trained their eyestalks on us, skittering away when we drifted too close. From a grotto in the lava cliff high above our heads, a pair of Blue-Footed Boobies peered down at the Queen Mary as divers moved about the deck, donning scuba equipment and checking computers. Clearly, we were causing a bit of a stir.

Geared up, I leaned against the railing of the cabin cruiser as the dive master ran through his final briefing. He would lead us along the edge of the wall and signal us if he saw anything interesting. We should keep an eye on our pressure gauges and let him know when we were down to half a tank. And please, added the dive master, don’t touch anything.

In the protected seas of the Galapagos Marine Reserve, “Don’t touch anything” is more than an admonition: it’s a way of life. Even as cruise ships have replaced whaling vessels, runaway growth in the Galapagos’ tourism industry and the islands’ skyrocketing population have kept native fauna on the defensive. With the Ecuadorian government hesitant to turn away tourism dollars, the future of the islands’ ecosystem may well rest on visitors and residents’ ability to create a new culture of sustainability on Galapagos.

Much like the islands themselves, what makes the seas surrounding Galapagos so unique is their remarkable biodiversity. Located at the intersection of the warm Panama Current and the frigid Humboldt, Pelicanthe waters of the archipelago support a wide variety of sea life, including marine iguanas, dolphins and several species of shark. It’s a kind of aquatic Wonderland, where cold-water species like the Galapagos penguin swim among schools of gaudy tropical fish.

The localized temperatures and finicky currents that make these odd juxtapositions possible also made diving in the Galapagos a bit tricky. 50 feet below the surface, the water was clear but cold, chilling me even through my thick wetsuit as we swam along the ocean floor. Next to us, a pair of comically mismatched manta rays, one about five times the size of the other, shuffled along the sandy bottom. Underneath a spur of lava rock, a green sea turtle regarded us before gliding off with a lazy wave of its flippers.

The wilderness of the reserve finds its counterpoint in Puerto Ayora, a bustling bayside town on Santa Cruz Island’s southern shore. The dive shops and restaurants jockeying for space on Puerto Ayora’s streets are a testament to the eco-tourism industry that built this town, and most residents seem determined to preserve that livelihood. Restaurants’ landscaping doubles as marine iguana nesting ground, while hotels provide biodegradable soap and encourage guests not to kill spiders out of concern for the island’s food chain.

Unfortunately, as the population of Puerto Ayora continues its explosive growth, alarming signs of friction are beginning to crop up. Tires, plastic bags and other detritus wash up along the shore of Academy Bay with increasing frequency. Over the past 15 years, the number of introduced species has more than doubled.

According to the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF), a scientific organization based in Santa Cruz, current rates of growth in the tourism industry seems to be following a “boom-and-bust” pattern, putting both Galapagos’ ecosystem and economy in grave danger. To avert the crisis, CDF looks to get island residents involved in the tourism. In July 2007, after UNESCO placed Galapagos on its list of World Heritage Sites in Danger, CDF Executive Director Graham Watkins emphasized the role of local, family-owned businesses in promoting conservation.

“This island culture must prevail over the existing frontier culture that does not recognize such limits and the Sea Lionsneed for sustainability,” Watkins wrote on the group’s website. ” It is our fervent hope that we can create a truly sustainable society that cares for these islands .”

A two hour boat trip away, sleepy Floreana Island offers both a glimpse into Galapagos’ past and a showcase of what the islands still have to lose. The highlands of Floreana were once a hideout for pirates, who took advantage of the island’s supply of fresh water and convenient lookouts to keep watch for enemy vessels. Later, the island would become home to one of the first families to settle in Galapagos, the Wittmers.

When Heinrich, Margaret and Harry Wittmer arrived from Germany in 1932, they found themselves in a challenging new world. There were no stores, no post offices, no cruise ships puttering from island to island. Their chosen life was the garua rainy season, a wooden house in the shadow of the mountains and the impossibly vast, blue stretch of the sea. Their home, now a hotel, still has an aura of pioneer sturdiness around it. Above one door, a sign in German reminds passerby “God helps those that help themselves!”

Back on the boat, we followed Floreana’s coast to a small cove, where we donned snorkeling gear and slipped beneath the surface. Only a few minutes in, I did a double take when I spied a mountain of manta rays in the shallows. I counted 21 of the flat, heavy-lidded fish heaped one on top of another. A quick tally by the guide came up with 25. As I gaped, a pair of white-tipped sharks emerged from a grotto and swam a few circuits before retreating back into the darkness.

On the way back to the boat, the guide paused to dive down, resurfacing a moment later with a sea cucumber in his hand. Snorkelers immediately clustered around him, passing around the sea cucumber and stroking its nubby hide. When the guide noticed me treading water at the edge of the circle, he held out the spiny orange critter to me and asked if I wanted to touch it. I shook my head no.

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