Why pay to travel when you have Google Earth?

by Jerry Guo on

A quirky media dust-up this week brought a lot of attention to one mom ‘n pop website: Google Sightseeing. Their motto is “why bother seeing the world for real?”. What they’ve done is managed to collect a huge database of sights that you can actually see from Google Earth.

But one sight you won’t be seeing (or at least in anything more than a super blurry blob) is the world’s largest palm tree, whose discovery was announced this week. The scientists had claimed it “can even be seen in Google Earth.” That turns out to be a bit of a stretch.

There are, however, plenty of things you can see from Google Earth. You can, for instance, be a virtual tourist and zip around Easter Island, the abandoned city of San Zhi, and the site of the world’s largest fingerprint.

Luxury travel to an unexpected place

by Jerry Guo on

I’m absolutely obsessed with Easter Island. I desperately tried to go earlier this year and pitched several story ideas, mostly about a particular researcher who is completing the most comprehensive mapping project of the statues and other archaeological sites to date (to be finished in summer 2008). He also has a radical new theory about how the place was destroyed: by rats, not humans, which is quite exciting if you’ve read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. Here’s the story I ended up writing for The Scientist.

Now I’m trying to make it to the island again. There’s been some pretty hot stuff — enough for a story? — going on as far as luxury travel to Easter (an unlikely destination for high-end travelers, you would think). A couple weekends ago, the first luxury hotel opened on the island, with 30 rooms in rustic-lodge style, a swimming pool, spa, and restaurant. A fancy French restaurant, La Taverne du Pecheur, also opened recently.

A few years ago, only hardy backpackers made their way to Easter Island. But now there’s a crop of luxury tours that cater to the sophisticated traveler. One tour, for instance, offers a week-long expedition led by Dr. Jo Tilburg, a UCLA professor who has spent the last 20 years excavating archaeological sites on the island. However, there’s more to do on the island than just gawking at the iconic statues. Scuba diving has recently gotten quite popular, as well as horsebacking (there’s a big population of wild horses; these, of course, are not to be ridden on!). Then there’s the miles of white beaches, even talks of a casino, though the locals are very much against that.

Someone take me there!

Most expensive flight in coach? You tell me

by Jerry Guo on

Grant just had some in-depth and helpful posts about the best times to buy airline tickets. That got me thinking about a couple recent near-purchases on my part. What’s confounded me when checking out ticket prices is how geographic distance often has little correlation with the cost of the flight. Yesterday I was checking on flights from Newark, USA to Port Moresby, Papa New Guinea. The cheapest economy ticket? $4,000.

Yet some other equally hard to get places are somehow cheaper. A while back, I was trying to book a ticket to Easter Island, which by the way is the place farthest away from another piece of land (2,000 miles). You would think tickets would be expensive, right? They were only $1,600! Flying to the Galapagos Islands, 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador, was even cheaper. Less than $1,000. And a Newark to Beijing flight for me in March was only $800.

What about you? Keeping other things constant, which means I’m not talking about booking a ticket for tomorrow, what is the most expensive place you’ve flown to in economy class?

Thirteen places in the world to creep you out

by Jamie Rhein on

Kelly’s post on haunted hotels reminded me of when I was a kid. There was an abandoned house on my grandparents’ street that was too hard to ignore. One Halloween my cousins and I dared each other to run across the front porch and knock on the front door after dark. Imagine my surprise when, instead of my fist meeting the glass of the door’s window as I expected, my fist kept going. There wasn’t any glass. Yep, I screamed and ran like hell. For years, each time I visited my grandparents and passed the house, even after a family moved in and fixed it up, I remembered the delicious feeling of being spooked.

That house was small potatoes compared to the list of 13 of the world’s most creepy places that Ralph Martin at Concierge.com has cooked up. I could almost feel that tickle of a breath on the back of my neck when I read about them. Just look at the photo of Bhangharh, India, a town where people haven’t lived since 1640 because, possibly, a bunch of people who lived there were massacred, and the rest fled never to return. Notice those monkeys? See how they are just sitting there watching the tourists who come by day and leave by night? Images of Hitchcock’s horror flick, “The Birds,” come to mind.

Here are more of the 13.

Then there’s Philadelphia’s Mütter museum, similar to Bangkok’s Museum of Forensic Medicine. There is a vast collection of gross out oddities such as removed tumors and models that show various maladies like just what gangrene does to a person. I’ve smelled it and it’s not pleasant–I can imagine the looks of it. *shudder* Willy wrote a detailed post on the museum with links to photos back in March. And for more forensic medicine gross outs, here’s another post from Willy on Thailand’s Siriraj Museum–there are 10 museums that make up this one to make sure you really lose your appetite.

In Mexico City’s Sonora Witch Craft Market, a happy Buddha sits in the midst of dressed up skeletons. Here you can get your fortune told and advice on how to turn your luck around. Before you leave you can pick up the ingredients for all your potion needs.

Easter Island off Chile’s coast is where huge heads carved from volcanic rock reside. You can wander among them and wonder how exactly they got where they are located and what happened to the people who made them centuries ago. No one really knows. Creatures from outer space, perhaps, came to help out with their UFOs? That’s one theory.

If you’re interested in traveling the path of a voodoo queen who put a curse on a place, head to the Manachc Swamp in Louisiana. Every once in awhile a dead body turns up here. There are torchlight night tours if the boat tour by day doesn’t give you enough chills.

Leif has also written about the Bran Castle in Romania. Bram Stoker modeled the castle in Dracula after this one. Look for the engraving of Vlad Dracula having dinner while surrounded by people he has impaled on stakes. Yum.

Gaad! was my impression when I saw the photo of the Catacombs in Paris. Walls of skulls and bones are hard to forget. Going here will make you feel like you’ve stepped into an Ann Rice novel. She’s used it as a setting for some of her stories.

To see the rest of the list, head to the article at Concierge.com. Here you’ll find the specifics about how to contact each place and lovely tidbits about what makes these spots unique. And, if you want 13 MORE places for Halloween, check out these. These aren’t the naturally creepy places, however, but ones created by humans to be perfect for Halloween frights and chills.

One for the Road (04/08/07)

by Kelly Amabile on

The remote island of Rapa Nui is known as Easter Island thanks to Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who christened the name when he came upon the secluded spot in the South Pacific on Easter Sunday in 1722.

Many travel guides simply include a section on the island (and its famous mysterious moai statues) in their books that cover Chile. One of the more recently updated guides containing information on Easter Island is the Moon Guide to Chile. The second edition of this book was released in January 2007 and is written by Wayne Bernhardson, who has been traveling to Chile since 1979.

Whatever resources you use to research a visit, be sure to thumb through several Chile guides to compare their Easter Island sections. A good starting point right on the web is the Easter Island Foundation, a handy and well-organized online guide to the history, culture and people of Easter Island. Their Ideal Easter Island Bookshelf is an excellent place to look for additional book resources.