South America

Travel through South America by country:

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

Travel through South America by popular city:

Bogota, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro

Travel through South America by popular things to do:

Adventures in the Amazon, Falkland Islands, Iguazu Falls, Tierra del Fuego

Which country smokes the most?

by Anna Brones on

What would we do without The Economist and its great sidebars? This one shows just how much certain countries smoke. According to ERC, a market research company, the heaviest smokers come from Greece, with an average of 3,000 cigarettes per person in 2007. At 20 cigarettes per pack, that makes 150 packs in a year; a lot of puffing.

Despite recent smoking bans in many places, European countries still manage to hold 18 of the top 20 spots. The most surprising statistic? That France smokes less than the U.S. Whatever happened to the stereotypical image of the French, dressed in all black, a serious look on their face and a Gauloises glued to their fingers? It could have something to do with the price of cigarettes; a pack runs about 5 euros in France, equaling just a little under $8.

Click here to see how these results changed from 2006.

Which countries *cough* smoke the most?

Cash and Treasures: Digging for gems in Brazil

by Jamie Rhein on

The last two weeks of The Travel Channel’s Cash and Treasures on Wednesday night haven’t included kids at the dig sites, a quality I was impressed by early on. Still, I continue to be hooked into this show. This week, I stuck around for the back to back episodes because host Kristin Gum headed out of the United States for points south in what worked as a double feature. Normally, the first half hour show satisfies me. The episode right after the first usually has a totally different theme.

Episodes: Digging for aquamarines, morganites and more.

What are they? Gems that can be worth beau coups bucks. Aquamarines range from dark green to a light blue, like clear water. Morganites are light pinkish. Gum found an aquamarine worth $3,000 and a morganite worth $1,481, once they were cut and polished.

Location: In the mountains and hills of Southeastern Brazil before the jaunt to Rio de Janeiro for the cutting and polishing. The first episode was shot in Governardor Valadares in the state of Minas Gerais at the Jaco Mine. The second episode was at the Rio Doce Mine near Rio Doce.

Getting to the Jaco Mine involved first taking a train and then a jeep on an unpaved road with 32 switchbacks. The bonus of the effort, besides the gems, was the gorgeous scenery. Gum was given mining tips by the mine’s owner and his son. The snaking tunnel of the mines where the walls shimmered turned up nothing, but once Gum sifted through the tailings using a large screen, she found several aquamarines. One of them was large piece that was turned into the $3,000 beauty. The others were the type you’d put in a collection and were not considered valuable.

Even though finding an aquamarine most probably will happen at the Jaco Mine, as the son said about looking for gems, “It’s gotta be hard to be good.” You’re also not guaranteed to find a valuable one like Gum did. There’s a reason why quality gems are expensive.

The Rio Doce Mine is owned by Jerry Call, an American who has mining and gems in his blood. His sister owns a mine in North Carolina with the same name. [see Web site] Gum unearthed the morganite in Call’s mine.

Even if you don’t find terrific quality gems, the variety of what can be found in Brazil is astounding. Sixty-five percent of the worlds’ gems come from here. If I heard right, 100% of the different types of gems are here.

During her digs, Gum also found tourmaline and assorted other rocks and minerals like feldspar, mica and quartz.. If you want to go mining in Brazil, the Cash and Treasure’s Web site has a link to Chang Express, a travel agent that the show recommends.

Because the focus of the show is more on what you can mine than the culture of the country where the episodes take place, Brazil wasn’t presented much more than a miner’s delight. There was drinking juice out of a whole coconut, soccer playing and eating various meat dishes that Gum found divine.

Cost of mining: $100 per wheelbarrow

Cigar-rolling competition is fierce. Cuba keeps rolling.

by Iva Skoch on

It could have been the longest cigar ever rolled, but it probably won’t be.

Cuba’s stogie-rolling king Jose Castelar, 64, teamed up with five assistants, using nearly 93 pounds (42 kilograms) of top-quality tobacco to assemble a 98-foot (30-meter) cigar, AP reports. Castelar set Guinness Records for the world’s longest cigars in 2001, 2003 and April 2005, when he completed a stogie measuring 20.41 meters, just shy of 67 feet.

But Castelar, who learned the art of cigar-making from an uncle at age 5, is likely to fall short this time: Guinness says Puerto Rican cigar-maker Patricio Pena crafted a 41.2-meter (135-foot) stogie last year. Competition from cigar rollers in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico is “stiff but friendly,” driving Castelar to keep rolling.

Honestly, what makes Cuban cigars “so much better” than Puerto Rican or Dominican cigars? Is it the forbidden fruit factor?

[via contracostatimes.com]

Have food allergies, will travel

by Iva Skoch on

Traveling with food allergies must be hard.

Even in many countries in Europe, menus simply don’t list all the ingredients used in meals. My Canadian friend went into an allergic shock in Prague because of his nuts allergy. He figured eating a sandwich would be safe. Of course, they didn’t mention the sandwich had pesto in it. And pesto contains pine nuts…

And that’s Prague, which is now fairly Westernized. Imagine what it must be like to travel in Asia, where not only do they use peanuts a lot more but it is much harder to read the menus and find people who speak English well enough.

This ABC article talks about traveling with allergies. It is about the challenges of a traveler with serious food allergies, who presents a card to the waiter noting his allergies to peanuts and peas, written in the native tongue. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. Some waiters even say that they have “never heard of such allergies.”

I found it really interesting to read, although I don’t have any allergies. How do you deal with food allergies when traveling?

University student dies in the Amazon

by Abha Malpani on

23-year old Madrileño Pablo Barbadillo Maestre went to the Amazon in south eastern Peru to research for his thesis on the ethnoecology of big reptiles. He disappeared a few weeks ago and yesterday his body was found covered with bites from insects and animals. They identified him from the passport they found on him.

The cause of his death is still unknown but the guess is that he could have been attacked by tribes in the Amazon; however there is no evidence of violence.

This rings home because 1) he was a young student not afraid to travel alone in the wilderness of the Amazon 2) although he is said to be found in a remote area of the jungle, he had been there previously and was familiar with his surroundings. We can assume he was well prepared for the trip.

It could have been anyone. I wonder what he did wrong? I wonder if he could have avoided it? What protection items should he have taken with him that he didn’t have already? What lesson can we learn from this?