Another interesting concept in the Web 2.0 world of travel-related sites. Here is a site called Triptie that, as they put it seeks to create an “online community of travelers, all devoted to planning and sharing their trips.” The idea is that you become a member and go to the site and plan and upload your itinerary. Others have done the same, thus creating a kind of community of itineraries that, one assumes compiles a list of the best places to go, things to see, places to stay and eat etc. Sort of a take off on Amazon’s “people who bought XXX book also bought YYY book. That is, the presumption is that the brains and decisions of multiple travelers is better than those of a single traveler. Very Web 2.0, as i said. I have to say it looks intriguing. The site is in beta, but if you want to learn more, there is a nifty video that helps explain the concept further.
Friday Funny: Jack Black Conducts
A fine video for the conservation-inclined reader today. This comes from an organization called Siftingbaseline.org, whose purpose seems to be saving the oceans…always a good message, I think. The concept here seems to be that one would not want to listen to a symphony made up of untalented clowns (in this case several well and lesser-known stars) and so therefore, um ,well, we should take care of the oceans which are being polluted and depleted of fish. I think I got that right, but I could be wrong. No matter. The real point of the whole exercise is that Jack Black looks wonderfully ridiculous as the poorly-wigged conductor…and that Henry “The Fonz” Winkler plays a mean harp.
Costa Rica: Jungle for The Masses
Costa Rica has done a great job marketing itself as an eco-tourism country. It has been generally good to the rain forests. The country is beautiful, well-developed and super-easy to travel around.
The jungle of the Manuel Antonio park in Quepos, on the Pacific Coast, is breathtaking. It is, however, wide open to the tourists and therefore you are getting the clinically clean, safe, Disneyworld-version of the rain forest: sidewalks, safety signs, guides with telescopes and all that. No, I am not complaining. I guess that’s what you get when you want to prevent the rain forest from being cut down in order to grow coffee. So, once you can get past the Disney-quality of it, please do invest in a jungle guide (he will not come dressed in a Mickey Mouse costume, I swear). For an untrained eye, it is hard to see any animals, aside from the monkeys.
The park fee allows you to access the private beach within the park, which is small, clean and very romantic. Keep in mind that the Pacific beaches in Costa Rica are typically black, not like the white Caribbean beaches.
Speaking of coffee – make sure to stop by in Cafe Milagro in Quepos for a cup of freshly roasted, locally grown coffee. Yum.
Reverse Culture Shock: Teaching the Somalians about America
When traveling to poorer countries, one is often faced with culture shock over the wretched conditions, lack of sanitation, dismal food and extraordinarily poor quality of life.
But what happens when the opposite occurs? What happens when someone leaves their mud hut in Africa and travels to a place like America? Can you just imagine the culture shock one would experience under such circumstances?
Well, this is an everyday occurrence for many refugees who have been granted political asylum in the United States. Before arriving, however, they must first take a crash-course about their new home.
Edmund Sanders from the Los Angeles Times sat in on one of these three-day classes for Somalian refugees temporarily living in Kenya.
The “cultural orientation class” is taught by the International Organization for Migration thanks to funding from the U.S. State Department. It introduces students to the wonders and horrors they might expect to find in the United States.
The article is rather hilarious. So many things we take for granted have to be introduced for the very first time, such as flushing toilets, lighting a stove, buying bus tickets, flipping on light switches, and even working a door knob. And then there is snow. The concept of a white, very cold substance that falls from the sky is very difficult to grasp for those who have never felt temperatures drop below 50 degrees.
It so very strange to learn how much we take for granted here in the first world and how little of it is experienced in places like Africa. Reading the article is both fascinating and disheartening at the same time.
I do, however, have to point out the most hilarious quotes in the article. After learning about the 911 emergency hotline, one of the Somalian students responded, “So if anyone bothers me, I just call 911 and the police come and beat them?”
Oh yes indeed; America, the Promised Land.
Vanity Fair on the National Parks
It has taken me FOREVER to get to this post. I read the article a while back and have been meaning to write about it ever since. First a personal blurb: my first real job in the big, bad, plastic world (after working as a ski photographer in Tahoe and a junior rafting guide in Colorado) was with the Department of the Interior in Washington DC. Don’t ask me how I ended up there. It a rather long, convoluted tale filled with romantic notions of helping the world and crushed ideals about how one can do this inside a government agency. No matter. The point of al this is that within the Interior Department lies what is probably the best agency in the federal government: The National Park Service. The NPS takes care of all of our nations great parks, from Yosemite to the Smokies, as well as gobfulls of various monuments, recreation areas, etc. In general, they do a fine job. If you’ve ever spent time in a National Park, you know that the rangers are a dedicated bunch and the care given to interpretation and preservation is, in general, worthy of high praise. But there are problems, and the park service has typically had some difficulties with funding and upkeep, especially <slight reveal of political slant> during Republican administrations </slight reveal of political slant>.
One of the big debates this time around is whether to allow certain motorized vehicles like ATVs and snowmobiles into the parks. traditionally, most parks have been off-limits to these folks. For good reason, IMHO. They are noisy, pollution causing and, if I may throw in yet another potentially incendiary over-generalization, demographically unpleasing. I’ll not expand on that remark, but suffice it to say the parks are probably better off without motorized vehicles roaming around them.
According to this nicely done article from Vanity Fair a while back, it seems lots of people agree with me. Sadly, among them is NOT the head of the Park Service, Paul Hoffman. The article pays out the issues involved and some of the passionate characters who are fighting behind he scenes to keep the parks motor-free. Check it out and weigh in, should you feel compelled.