Oceania

Travel through Oceania by country:

Australia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Travel through Oceania by popular city:

Auckland, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Wellington

Travel through Oceania by popular things to do:

Cook Islands, Sydney Opera House

Travel through Oceania with our writers:

In the Corner of the World, Work and Play in Queensland

Schmaps

by Erik Olsen on

OK, I pretty much hate anything that requires me to down load some new application to put on my machine. But this looks pretty cool. This site called Schmaps offers downloadable information for various cities around the world, specifically cities in the US, Canada Europe and Oceania (aka Australia and New Zealand).

As I say, you have to download the Schmap Player which, according to the site “is a small and easy-to-use piece of freeware. Install it on your Windows PC” (sorry Apple folks). But ti does seem to have promise, as once you download it you can gain access to tours, trip-planning help. photos and a library of extensive city-specific information including picks for restaurants and hotels.

All very nice, the kind of thing every guidebook should be. So I say up front I didn’t try it out because I am not on a PC right now, but anyone brave enough to give it a try ,please do and post a review .

Passport Rules Changing

by Erik Olsen on

Making my way to Canada this year to spend a week in the gloriously beautiful Canadian province of Newfoundland, I discovered a nasty little surprise. My wife and I got to the airport and discovered that Newfoundland requires Americans traveling there to bring a passport or birth certificate to enter by air from the United States. I had no idea. For years living in Seattle I came and went to Canada and needed only to show my drivers’ license. I was pretty damn upset because no one told us that the rules had changed, and so we had to go back and get our passports and needless to say, we missed our plane.

Well my hardies, the rules HAVE changed, although they have not taken effect Canada-wide quite yet, and when they do take effect, they will cover Mexico as well. Yes, visitors to the NAFTA states North and South will soon have to bring along passports to cross the country’s borders…well, the key is really getting back in. The rules take effect December 31 for air travelers to and from the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada.

A year later, on Dec. 31, 2007, the requirement will be extended to all land-based border crossings as well.

Now, this could be either a good thing or a bad thing.

It’s certainly a bad thing in that it makes going to Mexico and Canada a bigger pain in the buttocks. I keep my passport in a safe, locked place in my home, and I am just not sure that if I decide suddenly to take a road trip to Montreal that I’m going to remember it. I suppose I’ll have to. It may also be bad in that it might discourage Americans who want to travel “abroad” from going because they either a) don’t have passports or b) forgot them.

But perhaps we should look on the bright side. Maybe the new rules will inspire people who don’t yet have a passport to go out and get one. Given the rather awful statistics that say only 20 percent of Americans carry a passport (thus speaking loudly and clearly to our deficiencies as an internationally-aware, culturally sensitive nation) putting them in more Americans’ hands could very possibly help improve our awareness of those “others”, AKA foreigners, on the other side of the border.

By the way, Lonely Planet has been pushing this whole idea for a whle, and ,in fact, THIS is National Passport Month. So how’s that for good timing?

Peace Through People

by Adrienne Wilson on

This Sister Cities International site is one I’ve been meaning to get around to for a while as I saw this cool book Peace Through People and thought it might make for a nice gift. The book is a limited edition from what I can tell. Created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sister Cities International the inside holds stories and photos from sister city members on the movement and how it has helped create 50 years of global citizenship. Anything that says global citizenship always seems honkey-dory to me, but check it out for yourself. The book is priced at $39.95.

23 Years Old and on the Road

by Erik Olsen on

Oh, to be 23, free and on the road. To be able to travel around the world…AND, get this…to have a newspaper pay for it? Or at least, have them publish regular articles while you travel. Such is the life right now of 23-year old Haley Edwards, a world-weary gal, apparently fresh (or near so) from college and sharing her thoughts about the world with others.

Now, I could make all sorts of nasty quips here about how youth is wasted on the young, but that would certainly be an expression of envy. Those of us who also traveled in our youth for long periods know that being on the road is about as healthy an experience as exists for mind body and spirit. So good for young Haley.

Let’s see where young Haley went:

Haley’s stated purpose is to go to places that scare her. That places her first and foremost in Egypt with a camel named Michael Jackson <insert poor-taste hump joke here>, and then on to Israel, Jordan Kashmir andIndia.

And so it goes. The pieces here (though I confess I didn’t read them all, are thoughtful enough for a 23-year old. Needless to say, for most of us the joy of reading them comes from the vicarious remembrance of our own past travels. We are glad for Haley, but we read and hope and wonder if we, too, will be able to set out upon the world again someday so free and innocent and hopeful.

Naw, I doubt it.

Perceptive Travel New Issue

by Erik Olsen on

We’ve checked in a few times on Mr. Tim Leffel and his relatively new online magazine Perceptive Travel and we always come away satisfied. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Leffel is out with a new edition of the magazine and, once again, we express our satisfaction in it.

This time around, he’d corralled a stable of writers (oh, the metaphor abuse!) to opine on the travel life and to write about their own experiences on the road. This issue features some known names, too, including Jeff Greenwald, whose article Searching for Rare Primates in the Valley of the Langurs is about…well, I suppose the title says it all. Greenwald, you may know, is the author of Shopping for Buddhas and The Size of the World.

Also, there’s a giggle-inducing piece by guidebook writer Edward Readicker-Henderson who heads to New Zealand where is is supposed to write about places that cater to travelers who might spend $50,000 on a trip (yes, you read that correctly) but becomes rather entranced by both the water swirling down the drain (he like to report that it swirls down a different direction, but alas, he can’t remember which direction it swirls here), and expensive bras hanging in the wind.

Anyway, good stuff all.