A cruise ship that went missing back in January was spotted drifting toward the coast of Ireland late last week. The M/V Lyubov Orlova was on its way to the scrapyard when it broke away from a Canadian tug in international waters last month and hadn’t been seen since. It has been floating aimlessly across the Northern Atlantic and is now reportedly within 1200 nautical miles of the Irish coast.
The Russian-built cruise liner was seized in St. John’s, Newfoundland, back in 2010 because its owners were in debt to the tune of $250,000 and hadn’t paid the crew in over five months. In February of last year, the ship was bought by Neptune International Shipping and was scheduled to be scrapped in the Dominican Republic. That’s where it was headed when the ship broke free from the tug charged with delivering it to its final destination. When the crew of the tug failed to recapture it due to high winds and extremely choppy seas the Orlova was left to drift across the open ocean. Canadian authorities refused to mount a salvage operation because the vessel was adrift in international waters.
While in operation, the Orlova was designed to serve as an expedition ship, carrying passengers to both the Arctic and Antarctic. The past few years haven’t been kind to it, however, and while it sat empty in the St. John’s Harbor it has fallen into a state of disrepair. At the time of its departure it was also said to be overrun with rats.
The current owner of the vessel, Reza Shoeybi, is now scrambling to reclaim the ship. He says that he is working with salvage companies in Ireland to try to retrieve the vessel. Bad weather in the North Atlantic is hampering those efforts, however, and it may be some time before it can be captured and towed into shore.
In the meantime, the ship is open to rights of salvage as long as it remains in international waters. If you’ve ever dreamed of owning your own cruise ship, now is your chance.
Today’s Video of the Day comes from Vimeo user iVideoMaking, who captured some amazing time-lapse footage of greater Los Angeles. Besides several striking skyline views, there are also some artful captures of iconic Los Angeles landmarks, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Eastern Columbia Building. According to the photographer, more than 200 locations were scouted to make the film. The result is a video that shows many angles of Los Angeles – take a look and you might discover something new.
As our front line of airport security, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is charged with providing effective and efficient operation of America’s transportation systems. That’s a big job that involves a whole lot more than the highly visible airport security checkpoints travelers most often associate them with. But most often it is when those airport security checks go awry that the TSA makes the news and last week was no exception.
Three-year-old Lucy Forck suffers from Spina bifida, a developmental disorder, and was on her way to a magical Disney World dream vacation when selected for secondary screening at the Lambert- St. Louis’ International Airport. Targeted for the extra security measure because she was in a wheelchair, the scene did not turn out well. The TSA employees were caught on film taking the child’s stuffed animal, as parents objected all the way. The viral video prompted an apology.
“TSA regrets inaccurate guidance was provided to this family during screening and offers its apology,” TSA says on its website.
Understood – a tough situation indeed. TSA agents are charged with making judgment calls all day and with the sheer volume of people screened, things like this are bound to happen in the process of protecting us from harm. I think we all get that and surely want to fly safely.
What many travelers don’t get are situations where embarrassment, if not invasion of privacy issues, could have been avoided. Some, like Lucy’s parents, are more vocal than others too.
On just about the opposite end of the humanity scale from 3-year-old girls are professional skydivers.They’re a salty bunch that speak a language peppered with words little Lucy would get her mouth washed out with soap for uttering and I would probably not get published here for writing. Still, as a group, skydivers are also a very close-knit community of uber safety-conscious sportspeople who live life on the edge. That’s probably because what they do involves jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, over and over again, so safety is of premier importance.
The February issue of Blue Skies, a monthly print magazine about skydiving, BASE jumping, paragliding, wingsuiting and other forms of human-powered flying has a story detailing what pro skydiver and pilot Dean Ricci calls the “TSA Two-Step.”
Ricci describes what skydivers commonly experience every time they go through a TSA checkpoint with their “rig,” a container that carries their parachute, a backup parachute and what is called a CYPRES device. Technically an Automatic Activation Device (AAD), CYPRES is a brand name, an acronym for Cybernetic Parachute Release System and an important safety feature, which automatically deploys the parachute at a pre-set altitude should something go wrong in free fall.
Few skydivers turn their rig in to airlines as checked luggage, preferring to keep the $5000+ equipment, which fits in a commercial airliner’s overhead storage with them at all times, for a couple reasons. First, since humans don’t actually fly, this is the equipment that has a great deal to do with if they live or die. Understandably, they don’t want it tossed around like luggage. Also, the value of the equipment usually exceeds the maximum airlines will pay for lost items.
To make going through checkpoints a smooth process and to avoid panic among other air travelers (imagine if others in line saw TSA agents visually inspecting a parachute then allowing that passenger to board the plane) skydivers carry a CYPRES card, which explains what is inside the container:
To Airport Security Personnel:
On the reverse you see two X-rays (a=view from above, b=side view) of a complete parachute, containing a CYPRES parachute emergency opening system. CYPRES is a Life Saving Device for Skydivers. Depending on the parachute container the X-ray on your screen may vary. All its components (e.g. measuring technique, electronics, battery, loop cutter, control unit, plugs, cables, casing) as well as the complete system contain parts and materials that are approved by U.S. DOT and other agencies world-wide, and are not subject to any transport regulations.
Still, under x-ray inspection, the delicate AAD instrument looks quite suspicious – so suspicious that the TSA and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) have special rules allowing the container to pass through inspection if it looks somewhat like on the CYPRES card being carried by its owner.
Apparently though, not all TSA inspectors have been trained on how to handle such matters.
Because passing through security is almost always a problem, Ricci brings along a copy of TSA guidelines as they pertain to skydiving equipment to at least point TSA agents in the right direction when going through security.
Nonetheless, after a 20 minute discussion with TSA personnel about the matter, Ricci was allowed to leave his AAD and emergency parachute untouched but instructed to remove his main parachute from its container which totally covered the secondary screening area, well within sight of other air travelers.
“The crowd was mixed between being amused and nervous to see what was clearly a parachute lying on the ground as they prepared to fly away,” says Ricci, describing a situation that could have been avoided then adding, perhaps more importantly “and the TSA staff were at a complete loss.”
At a time when stories are flying around the Internet and through the news media of potential government cutbacks, causing there to be fewer TSA agents on hand, backing up lines and making their operation more difficult, Ricci believes TSA staff should be selected more carefully and have better training.
“Stop putting some pimple-faced kid who barely managed to get his GED in a blue shirt and letting him pretend he’s the boss,” suggests Ricci, defining a more effective option as “give me an intelligent soldier type. Healthy, well-kept and carrying a gun, who can show respect to me and everyone else.”
Ricci, a pilot and tandem skydiving instructor with over 8,000 jumps to his credit, is quite serious about his views on the TSA, safety and our security. He notes that his experience is not unique and has a lesson for little Lucy’s parents of what she might have in store for future travels, although they might wait until she is a bit older to fill in the details.
Ricci tells the story of Barry Williams, another professional skydiving instructor who had surgery as a child to repair a genetic abnormality. Today he is fine but still has a great deal of metal in his pelvic area.
“Barry carries with him not only a diagram of exactly what the screeners are detecting, but documentation from the surgeon detailing exactly what he had done, yet without fail TSA never listens.”
Ricci saw first-hand how Williams presented the documentation as he approached the screener, showed the agent that he had nothing in his pockets then stepped though the metal detector which, as he said it would, sounded an alarm.
A second time through, the alarm went off again, as it did when instructed to go through a third time as well. But Williams knew the drill and was more than ready for the one-on-one wand and pat down search in a bigger than normal way.
“As they escorted Barry into the secondary screening area, he signaled to me that I should pay attention,” says Ricci, noting a distinct jiggle in the basketball shorts that Williams wore that day. “First I noticed Barry’s face. It was beginning to look like the face Meg Ryan made in When Harry Met Sally when she started having the fake orgasm in the restaurant.”
Apparently able to salute TSA agents on command, Williams had been doing it for years because “no matter how hard he tried to explain to the TSA what the issue was, they always asked the same stupid questions, without any independent intelligent thought.”
That’s a long way from the ordeal Lucy and her parents went through but carries a similar lesson that the TSA sums up very nicely on its website, in its own words:
“We are committed to maintaining the security of the traveling public and strive to treat all passengers with dignity and respect. While no pat-down was performed, we will address specific concerns with our workforce.”
We hope so.
In case you missed it, here is video of Lucy’s experience. Video of William’s experience is not available.
For a country with only 1.3 million people, Estonia has a hell of an art scene. There are several good museums and galleries and a lively round of readings and exhibition openings.
One of the biggest names in the Estonian art scene is Raoul Kurvitz. He’s been big for a few decades now, producing a steady output of installation pieces, experimental films and paintings. Right now KUMU, the Art Museum of Estonia, has dedicated an entire floor to his work.
While I’m a hard sell with contemporary art (see my ambivalent response to Damien Hirst) I found Kurvitz’s work consistently challenging and innovative. He ranges from accessible videos like this cover of Jesse Colin Young’s “Darkness Darkness“ to weird art happenings that leave the viewers scratching their heads and feeling slightly disturbed.
This is an artist that takes risks for his art. In the 1989 experimental film “When Lord Zarathustra was Young and Polite,” he gets flogged by two female assistants and then washed into a Finnish river by an opening sluice gate. In another video he’s surrounded by fire. And I have to wonder what that blue paint tasted like when it came out of the fish’s belly.
KUMU is an ultramodern building chock full of Estonian art of all periods. What’s interesting is how they followed all the great Western traditions such as Impressionism, Cubism and the rest but put their own twist on it. And then there are the mavericks like Edvard Wiiralt who veered off into their own high strangeness.
The literature scene is doing well too. I was lucky enough to meet Piret Raud and Kätlin Kaldmaa, two Estonian authors who gave me the lowdown on writing in a language that only a little more than 900,000 of their countrymen speak. The rest of Estonia’s population are native Russian speakers and tend to look eastward for their reading material.
%Gallery-179740%Given such a small readership, you’d think publishing would be all but dead in Estonia, but nothing could be further from the truth. The fall of Communism led to an explosion of publishing houses. Where once there had only been a couple of official state-run publishers, now there’s more than a hundred indies. Many are micropresses with only one or two titles, while others are major houses with long lists.
That breath of freedom must have been a relief after decades of Soviet occupation. During those times many Western books and magazines were banned and sailors made a good side income smuggling them in. One of their best sellers, I’m told, was Playboy magazine. Pornography was banned in the Soviet Union. They saw it as Western decadence, I suppose. So admiring the Playmate of the Month became an act of political defiance. The world is a weird place.
Besides reading illegal imports, some Estonian writers bucked the system by participating in the Samizdat movement, writing subversive books and distributing them through a postal network to like-minded individuals. Since the Soviets didn’t exactly dole out printing presses with the ration cards, most of these books weren’t bound. They’d be typed out with a couple of carbon copies or simply handwritten. Kaldmaa told me some books were even photographed page by page and you’d get a stack of photos in the mail.
I would have loved to meet one of these writers. I write what I feel and all I have to risk is some anonymous coward giving me shit in the comments section. Say what you felt in the Soviet Union and you could end up in a KGB torture chamber. Writers back then had balls.
On my last night in the capital Tallinn I was invited to a poetry reading at Kinokohvik Sinilind, a rambling cafe/bar/arthouse cinema in Old Town. Several poets and a band took turns on the weirdly lit stage doing their stuff while a large crowd listened and chatted. The poetry was all in Estonian, of course, so I listened to the cadence of the words rather than their meaning. An odd experience but a rewarding one.
There were a lot of prominent writers there. Kaldmaa introduced me to a poet who specialized in translating poems from Japanese, Chinese and Korean into Estonian. He spoke French and English too. Scary. I met a whirlwind of others too, at the table or at the bar. Everyone seemed to have their latest book tucked under their arm, all cleverly designed by local talent.
I’m jealous of poets; they always get nicer covers.
It was 6 a.m. and I was hiking alone in the lush, tropical forest below the Hotel Parador near Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica when I heard a noise that stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a deep, throaty guttural call that almost sounded like an animal clearing its throat. I was on the so-called “Monkey Trail” on the hotel’s extensive grounds, so I was expecting to see howler monkeys. But I imagined the howler monkeys call to be more like a high-pitched shriek.
I picked up my pace in the enervating, early morning jungle humidity as my mind started running through the possibilities. Hadn’t I read that there were jaguars and leopards and pumas in Costa Rica? Was I about to become the first tourist to get mauled by a wild animal before he even left his hotel?
I knew that whatever it was, I had to avoid the impulse to run, but I hustled away as the animal continued to howl at a frightening volume. In a distracted state, I somehow managed to lose the trail and eventually found myself down at a rocky lookout over the Pacific.
I regained my bearings a few minutes later and on my way back to the hotel pool I saw more than a dozen howler monkeys jumping from tree to tree, but none of them made much noise. Back at the hotel pool, I sheepishly asked a young man who worked the Hotel Parador’s adventure desk about the terrifying howl I’d heard.
“It is possible that was a leopard or a puma?” I asked quietly, so that only he could hear me.
“Sir, we don’t have leopards and pumas on the hotel grounds,” he said. “You heard a howler monkey.”
An hour later, I was at Manuel Antonio National Park wondering why it was easier to see monkeys at my hotel than at one of the country’s premier tourist attractions, know for its wildlife. My wife and I hired Flander Sanchez to take us on a guided walk through the park and a half-hour into our tour we had yet to see a monkey. Still, Flander had an uncanny knack for seeing things we would have just walked past if he wasn’t with us.
Just steps after paying the $10 entry fee to the park, he stopped dead in his tracks and started to set up a telescope on a tripod. He noticed a huge golden web spider sitting in its web and then a green lizard we never would have seen. Flander picked some petals off of a plant and has us breathe in the delightful citronella scent, but I wasn’t as interested in eating the fistful of termites he picked up off a tree on the side of the path.
“Come on,” he said. “These things are delicious. Try them- it’s part of your tour, no extra charge!”
My wife gave them a try and said they tasted like dirt, so I declined. Flander seemed a little hurt.
“I can’t believe you don’t like them! I love termites.” (see video.)
Another 15 minutes or so up the park’s main path, Flander spotted a white-faced capuchin monkey sitting in a tree overhead.
“I feel like he’s going to climb up to the top of the tree and then jump across to the other side,” Flander said, as two other clusters of tourists gathered around to gawk.
And just as I started to think, how the hell does he know what the monkey is going to do next, the monkey did just as Flander predicted, making a huge leap over the trail to the other side of the jungle as the cluster of tourists gave him a small round of applause for the effort. It felt a bit like a well choreographed show.
A big crowd gathered to watch a three-toed sloth scratch himself high up in the trees and a woman from New Jersey seemed thrilled.
“Look at him!” she bellowed. “He just keeps scratching his ass!”
By the time we reached Playa Manuel Antonio, I had a small mutiny on my hands. Flander still had plenty more to show us, but my sons and wife wanted to hit the beach. It was sweltering and my 5-year-old son Leo was dripping with sweat.
“Why are we on a tour, dad?” he asked. “You said we were travelers, not tourists. Only tourists take tours.”
I prevailed on the group to press on and we were immediately rewarded. There were white-faced capuchin monkeys everywhere on the path towards Playa Espadilla Sur, most of them hovering on short trees, hoping to scavenge for food.
At the entrance to the park, there were gruesome photos of dead monkeys with a warning about the dangers of feeding them. One feisty little monkey tried to raid a nearby garbage can and bared his teeth at Flander when he shooed him away from it with a stick. It’s sad and dangerous that the monkeys in Manuel Antonio are conditioned to scavenge for human food but the fact that they flock to humans makes for a remarkable experience for visitors.
The monkeys stop to stare right into your eyes and they seem to find the paparazzi fascinating. They’re also pretty damn smart. One tourist held out his flip-flop and was trying to encourage a monkey to come grab it but the monkey just looked at him like he was a dumb ass, as if to say, dude, I know that’s not food, why would I want your smelly flip-flop?
We walked on with Flander toward Playa Espadilla Sur, which is a huge, stunning beach that’s flanked by lush tropical jungle that encroaches onto the beach. It was nearly deserted, partially because the guides were telling people that there were crocodiles in the water. Flander still had more to show us but we parked ourselves in the shade of a huge tree and told him we were done. I felt a bit like a castaway that had just found paradise and didn’t want to move a muscle.
“Are there always that many monkeys out prowling around?” I asked.
“Not always that many,” he said. “They like to come out on the weekends.”
“Come on man, the monkeys don’t know it’s Saturday,” I said.
“They don’t know it’s Saturday but more people come here on the weekends and they respond to all the noise because they know there’ll be more food,” he said.
My guidebook said to avoid Manuel Antonio on weekends in the high season but if you want to get up close and personal with the park’s white-faced capuchins, there’s actually no better time to be there.
IF YOU GO: it takes about three hours to get to Manuel Antonio from San Jose. We were surprised to discover that it was slightly cheaper for us to take a private taxi than any of the group shuttle services that go to the area. If you have less than four people in your party, the shuttles will probably be cheaper though. We used Mario Rosales Melendez (86-27-62-95, Mario_tour76@yahoo.com) who charged us $150 for the ride.
The town of Quepos and the area right outside Manuel Antonio isn’t very pedestrian friendly, so don’t think you’ll be able to walk many places from whatever hotel you choose. Some of the hotels have shuttles, but you might consider renting a car if you want to have the flexibility of exploring the area on your own.
We stayed at the Hotel Parador and I would highly recommend it. The rooms are very nice, with comfy beds and modern amenities; the food is excellent and they have free shuttles to Manuel Antonio. But the real pleasure of this place is the lush grounds, the hiking trails and the beautiful pools with views of the Pacific. Here’s a tip for you if you stay there, or even if you don’t: check out the Fragata Restaurant at the farthest corner of the resort. It’s only open for lunch, but it’s set high up, so there are great breezes and amazing views, not to mention very good food at reasonable prices.
I highly recommend hiring a guide at Manuel Antonio. They cluster in front of the entrance and usually charge $20 per person. You can book ahead if prefer at info@manuelantoniotours.com. Café Agua Azul is an American-owned restaurant that has excellent food and great views at reasonable prices.