Blog

Where is it and why go? The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a
collection of small states about 7 hours away from London. They have
gained wealth from their oil reserves and are often associated with
ex-pat oil workers. The UAE often hosts world class sporting events,
such as the Desert Classic (golf), the Dubai Open (tennis), horse
racing and rugby, to name but a few.

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates or UAE. It is
the largest and richest state and widely known as the Garden City of
the Gulf. Abu Dhabi began as a fishing and pearl diving centre, but
is now one of the world's cleanest and most modern cities.

Dubai has always been known for its cheap duty free and the luxury
cars it raffles off in the pink marble lined foyer of the duty free.
It's now also a very popular holiday destination in its own
right, boasting the world's first 6 star hotel, many other top
notch hotels, golf courses, trips into the desert, a souk etc. You
can still the old, traditional style of dhow plying up and down the
creek that separates the city into two. Incidentally, Dubai's
annual shopping festival takes place between
1^st and 31^st
March when most stores offer significant discounts and savings!

Ras al Khaimah is on the northern tip of the UAE, only one hour
away from Dubai. Here you can escape the busy crowds and
commercialized shopping centres. Her you can find old forts and
watchtowers, old villages and mountains.

Ajman is the smallest of the states and is some 25 minutes north
of Dubai. It does not have any oil reserves, so it retains its
traditional fishing culture.

A good tour of the UAE and Muscat and Oman would be to initially
use Dubai as a base and explore: Day 1, spend time in Dubai, visit
the Jumeirah mosque, the Dubai museum, take a trip along the creek
and visit the souk. Day 2, take a day trip to Sharjah and wander
around the restored old town and the new souk. Continue to Ajman and
visit the museum that describes life in the UAE before the discovery
of oil. Day 3, take another day trip to the east coast and the state
of Fujeira. You can see mountains and gorges, oases and desert. Day
4, take another day trip to Abu Dhabi, see the skyscrapers and
palaces and visit the islands offshore. Day 5, take a trip into the
desert, climb up/roll down some sand dunes and visit the Haja
Mountains. You could stay over night in a camp and be entertained by
the inevitable belly dancer and cabaret – it's how it's done
over there!

To extend the trip, you should continue down the east coast from
Fujeirah to Sohar in Oman. Here you can see the pre-Islamic Nakhal
fort, the Sohar fort and various souks. Stay overnight and on Day 6,
continue south in Muscat and visit the fish souk, the Muttrah souk,
Al Alam Palace and the museums. Stay overnight in Muscat and on Day
7, head south west to Nizwa and see the fort and souk and various
(Jabel Shams Wadi Ghul, Al Hamra, Tanuf, Misfah, Bahla etc. Stay the
night in Nizwa and on Day 8, head for Sur and see Izki, Sinaw, Wahiba
Sands Wadi Bani Khalid. Stay overnight in Sur and on Day 9 return to
Muscat.

It was a marvelous meeting: Chris from Austin did a first
class slide show of the Greek Isles and provided a map for each of us
so we would know where we were for each slide. We exchanged travel
advice, ideas and materials. A bunch went to the Hoity Toit
afterwards for a great time. 21 people attended the February meeting,
5 of whom were new. Once again, thanks to Pauline and Frommer for
helping to publicise the Texas meetings – except, now Christina says
she really needs a secretary!

In the March Globies, Chris will give a slide show of
Turkey and tabletop discussion of 2/3 night great get-aways. After
the meeting, for anyone who'd like to continue the discussions,
we will adjourn to a local hostelry, to be advised at the
meeting.

Meetings are held at
3pm at the New Braunfels Public Library, 700 E. Common Street in New
Braunfels, Texas. The meeting ends at 5 p.m. If you would like to
continue travel talk on a more informal basis, we plan to adjourn to
the Hoity-Toit, a local New Braunfels establishment. If anybody would
like to enquire about meetings or help Christina, please contact her
on: texas@globetrotters.co.uk

The last meeting was on January 18th: Ann Dohler talked about her
recent trip to Peru, the Galapagos and the Amazon. The next meeting
is on Friday, March 15th at 8 p.m. Bruce Weber will be giving a
“SAMPLER OF YUCATAN”.

For information on Ontario meetings, please contact: Svatka
Hermanek: shermanek@schulich.yorku.ca or Bruce Weber: tel.
416-203-0911 or Paul Webb: tel. 416-694-8259.

Toronto GT Meetings are held on the third Friday of January,
March, May, September and November. Usually at the Woodsworth Co-op,
Penthouse, 133, Wilton Street in downtown Toronto at 8.00 p.m.
(Wilton St is a very short E-W street south of and parallel to
Esplanade, east of Jarvis – just around the corner from St.Lawrence
Market)

Hola from Laurie!

Our next meeting will be March 2, 2002. The usual: 4:00pm at the
Wings Theater, 154 Christopher Street.

The subject is MEXICO! I will be in Mexico myself at the end of
February but will be back in time for our March meeting… Matt
Link is back again! And along with Gretchen Kelly, they
will explain the interior of the Yucatan peninsula with an emphasis
of staying at small villages near archeological sites in lieu of
staying at the plastic, commercial areas like Cancun. They will delve
into the mysteries of the Maya, touching upon their spiritual
practices and history in the area, as well as present day problems
modern Maya face in Mexico. They will also be visiting the historic
town of Merida as well, one of the loveliest towns in the country. We
will have slides as well as some arts and crafts to pass around. Both
Matt and Gretchen have attended the Maya World Conference, a meeting
of all the countries that have Mayan populations. So this will
undoubtedly be a slide show and lecture not to miss!

Gretchen Kelly is the News Editor for Business Traveler
magazine and the travel editor for Design Times magazine. Recent
feature stories Gretchen has worked on include profiles of Buenos
Aires (where she interviewed Eva Peron's living relatives),
Aboriginal Australia and the story of porcelain from Dresden to
Chungking. She is currently at work on a feature article about
Jakarta, Indonesia. For those of you who did not meet Matt at
previous meetings, he has been traveling since the age of twelve,
when he boarded his family's boat for five years and sailed
around the Pacific including the Philippines, Papua New Guinea,
Micronesia, the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand, where he attended
high school. He hasn't stopped since, having visited dozens of
countries in Eurasia and living for a number of years in both Hong
Kong and Hawaii, where he ran kayak tours and published the guidebook
Rainbow Handbook Hawaii. He now lives in New York where he works with
Arthur Frommer as Associate Editor of the magazine Budget Travel. See
you all soon. Adios!

New York meetings
are held at The Wings Theater, 154 Christopher Street (btw Greenwich
Stand Washington St), to the right of Crunch Fitness, in the Archive
on the first Saturday of each month at 4 pm.

We had two excellent speakers in February! First was Alastair
Lee who gave us a multi-dimensional view of his travels in China
and his very close up views of climbing various horrifically vertical
mountains in Northern Yunnan. He spoke of the friendships he and his
girlfriend struck up with people who lived close by who were
fascinated by some of his climbing equipment, the weather which
looked like it was going to defeat them and entertained us with some
great poses and a dancing finale! Alastair has published a fabulous
climbing guide on New Zealand. Take a look at his web site: posingproductions.com

After the tea and coffee break, Ben Nimmo spoke of his
cathartic pilgrimage complete with trombone from Canterbury to
Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. He regaled us with hilarious
tales of some of the larger than life characters he met en route, the
amount of beer and wine he sampled, all out of a sense of duty and
through a spirit of comradeship, of course, and in particular the
story of how he became a god father to a little girl in France. Funny
stories, great pictures, wonderful trip, Ben! Ben has written a
highly moving and entertaining book called Pilgrim Snail documenting
his pilgrimage. Pilgrim Snail is available now in bookshops and
the following website fireandwater.co.uk and Ben's
next book 'In Forkbeard's Wake' is out in January
2003.

Coming next, on Saturday 2nd March, we have Philip Koniotes
talking about “The Antarctic Peninsular.” Philip has
regularly travelled to the Arctic dog-sledding and has travelled
extensively, including diving around the world and making five polar
trips – the Antarctic has been his most recent journey. He loves the
space and trying to capture it on film. After the break, Mark
Elliott will be talking on “Saving Kilum Forest” set in
NW Cameroon – about curious kingdoms and unique mountain forests.
Mark is standing in for Juliet Coombe who is unable to attend the
Globetrotter meeting due to a car accident in Australia. She is okay
but not yet fit to fly

London meetings are
held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune
Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month.
There is no London meeting in August, but we will be back on Saturday
1^st September. For more information, you
can contact the Globetrotter Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or
visit the website: www.globetrotters.co.uk

Meeting news from our branches around the world.