Fake gems and minerals sold to tourists in Namibia


More and more adventure travelers are discovering Namibia, a nation in southwest Africa that offers deserts, beaches, safaris, and hikes. Unfortunately this rise in tourism has led to a rise in tourist scams. Namibia’s Mines and Energy Minister, Isak Katali, has warned miners to stop selling fake gems and minerals to tourists. Mining is big in the country, and many miners are independent prospectors who scratch out a difficult and hazardous living from the rock.

One way to make extra money is to sell their finds to tourists. This has proved too tempting for some, and they’re using their specialized knowledge, and the average tourist’s cluelessness, to fob off colored glass as precious stone. While most miners are honest, buying minerals and gems in Namibia has become a tricky game. Mr. Katali says this has already hurt tourism and the country’s reputation.

Namibia is certainly not the only country where cheap imitations are fobbed off to unsuspecting visitors. People will fake pretty much anything if they think it will sell. When visiting the ancient oasis city of Palmyra in Syria, I was offered a “genuine Roman coin” made of aluminum! Back in 2008, Italian police broke up a gang selling fake Ferraris.

Have you ever bought something overseas only to discover later it was a fake? Share your tale of woe in the comments section!

[Image courtesy Arpingstone]

Postcrossing celebrates five years of postcard revolution

There’s something very special about sending or receiving a postcard. It’s one of the simple joys of travel, yet in the age of email, Skype, and social networking, you’d think the old-fashioned postcard would have become a thing of the past.

It hasn’t. Thanks to Postcrossing, a postcard trading organization, postcards are undergoing a revival. Postcrossing turns five years old this week and in that short time it has racked up some staggering statistics–more than 4.7 million postcards have been sent by more than 190,000 members to about 200 countries. Those postcards have logged 25,771,990,953 km. That’s 643,093 laps around the world!

One odd aspect of Postcrossing is that most correspondents are complete strangers. Postcrossing wants to start a “postcard revolution” by getting people to start sending more postcards, not just to their friends and family, but to random fans around the world.

Postcrossing is free to join. Members put their address into a secure database. When you request to send a card, another member’s address is sent to you. Once your card is received and registered, you’re next in line to get a card from another stranger! It’s a lot of fun and a good way to spread international friendship and teach geography to your kids. I and at least one other Gadling blogger are Postcrossing members. So if you’re tired of only receiving junk mail in your mailbox, give Postcrossing a try.

In case you’re wondering, this is the mailbox just outside the post office in Harar, Ethiopia. That’s the left arm of yours truly sending some cards to my son and some fellow Postcrossing members.

The naughty postcard museum

The British have always been famous for their humor, both dry wit and the naughtier brand. One man who combined the two is being celebrated in a new museum that opened in Ryde in the Isle if Wight yesterday.

Donald McGill, Britain’s “king of vulgarity”, illustrated thousands of postcards over an almost sixty-year career. He was best known for simple double-entedres like the one pictured to the right. He also has the distinction of making it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most sales of an individual postcard–one featuring a bookish man and an attractive young woman sitting under a tree. The guy peers over a volume and asks the girl, “Do you like Kipling?” to which she replies, “I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled!” That sold more than six million copies.

One of his most popular, and most controversial, shows two men admiring an attractive woman as one says to the other, “She’s a nice girl. Doesn’t drink or smoke, and only swears when it slips out!”

In the age of Internet pornography these barely qualify for a PG rating, but in Britain before the Sixties they shocked stogy traditional sensibilities. In 1953 many local jurisdictions raided the shops selling his postcards and burned any they found. The next year at the age of 79, McGill had to face what the museum’s curator called a “show trial” for obscenity. He got off with a fine, but the ruling almost killed the saucy postcard industry.

The Donald McGill Museum website is still under construction but shows some more examples of McGill’s work.


Photo courtesy Donald McGill via Wikimedia Commons.

Santander: a beautiful port in northern Spain

Yesterday we talked about some of the things to do while visiting Cantabria, Spain’s often-overlooked northern province. The best place to use as a base while touring Cantabria is the provincial capital Santander.

Santander is a port and owes its life to the sea. It has a northern bay and a southern bay divided by a thin peninsula. The southern bay is home to downtown, the port, and the popular ferry coming from Plymouth, England. The northern bay is more touristy along the shore, and more residential inland. Beaches stretch both to the north and south of town and if you don’t want to share the sand with bikini-clad Spanish women (or speedo-wearing Spanish guys) you can always walk for a bit and find an isolated cove to claim as your own. Be careful of the riptides, though. Inexperienced swimmers should stick to the main beaches in the two bays.

The water is pretty chilly but there’s steady surf that attracts surfers from all over Spain. It’s also quite clean considering that it’s so near a major port. If you’re not up to braving the water (which would be no challenge to the Alaska Polar Bear Club) you can sit in one of the many seaside cafes and sip some wine while watching the boats go by.

When asked what to do around town, every local told us to walk to the lighthouse at Cabo Mayor. It’s less than an hour’s easy stroll to the north of the northern bay. The rocky coastline is picturesque with strange geological formations, little beaches nestled between towering rocks, and windswept promontories with wide views of the sea and shoreline. The lighthouse is home to an art gallery dedicated to, you guessed it, lighthouses in art, plus a massive and somewhat obsessive collection of lighthouses on lighters, ashtrays, matchboxes, book covers, etc. Someone spent way too much time rummaging through junk shops for lighthouse ephemera!

%Gallery-96013%If you get a rainy day (and you will get a rainy day) your first stop should probably be the Museo Marítimo del Cantábrico, a fun and informative museum about the ocean. There are hundreds of ship models and a big display of fish, including a pickled squid, a sardine with two heads, and some weird deep sea beastie with glowing teeth that looks like it’s from an H.P. Lovecraft story. In the basement is a large aquarium teeming with sharks, manta rays, and other aquatic life. The terrace cafe offers a fine view of the port where you can watch the freighters go in and out.

Of course, the town offers the usual Spanish sights such as a medieval cathedral, a nice art museum, an archaeological museum, and a variety of bars and cafes. You won’t get the nightlife here that you would in Madrid or Barcelona, but you’ll get it a lot cheaper. A night out with five pinchos (appetizers), two rum and cokes, and a glass of wine came out to €19.50 ($24). The pinchos were delicious and large enough that they served as our dinner.

Local hotels are used to hooking visitors up with tour groups that can take you around the sights of Cantabria. You might want to get in touch with one of the many hiking groups too. Spanish trails aren’t always well marked, and with the unpredictable weather and high altitudes of some of the mountains, it’s best to go with a group.

Postcards from strangers

One of the coolest things about having lots of friends who travel is getting postcards from around the world. Sadly, letter and postcard writing don’t seem to be as common as they used to be. Much of the stuff coming through the mailbox these days is either bills or junk mail. Going to the mailbox has gotten to be a drag.

An organization called Postcrossing is trying to change that. This free group allows members to trade cards with strangers. You log in and request to send a card, and someone’s address is sent to you, along with a unique country-coded number. You pick a card, write a nice message with the code included, and pop it in the mail. Once the recipient gets the card and registers it on the site by using the number, you’re put next in line to get a card from a different stranger. There’s also a forum where people can arrange “private swaps” for particular countries or images.

With more than 100,000 members in 196 countries, the idea is catching on. I’m a member, as is former Gadling blogger Abha Malpani. Earlier this year Postcrossing reached the milestone of two million postcards received and one active member has racked up a thousand just by himself.

Various Postcrossers have created interesting spinoff blogs about their obsession, such as Wild Postcards and A Postcard a Day. Warning: Wild Postcards is occasionally not work safe, as the blogger likes old pin-up cards. Nude women with mom hair. Yipe!

Postcrossing is a great way to get cards from around the world and set up trading exchanges with people you may never meet. Consider it a form of staycation. It’s fun for kids too. My three-year-old son is learning a lot about the world. He specifically wants postcards of cars and trains and about half the cards I get are meant for him!