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.
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.
Recently, the Beetle was asked about Guidebooks – what is out
there and can she make any recommendations? Below is a commentary on a
selection of some of the guidebooks available:
Eyewitness guides, published by Dorling Kindersley produce glossy
guidebooks with lots of pictures on cities and also countries. The city
guides are especially good although a little heavy and longer than most
of the others. The Beetle particularly recommends these for short city
breaks as they provide lots of background detail about certain sites or
attractions and exploded diagrams of the insides of churches or palaces
etc. They are not so great about telling you how to get to and from some
of the attractions, although the Istanbul guide was excellent and rated
better in a recent trip there than the corresponding LP on Istanbul. See
www.dk.com
Fodor’s used more by the North American market and for
slightly more wealthy travellers than backpackers, although they do have
shoestring guides too. They tend to be fairly slim volumes and are particularly
strong on North America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Take a look at www.fodors.com/
Footprint guides have very good guides on South American countries.
They also do Canada, (not the US), selected European and African countries,
Middle East and a good range of SE Asia. At the time the Beetle was backpacking
around South America, the Footprint individual country guides were a lot
better than the LP guides, in particular that awful huge tome LP produces
on all S American countries! For more info, see footprinttravelguides.com
Frommer’s – used more by the North American travel market
and appear to be aimed at a slightly more affluent market than backpackers
– unless anyone would like to write in and disagree! The maps are
generally good, and a lot of emphasis is placed on reviewing pubs, restaurants,
hotels, bed and breakfasts etc. A quick look at a guide on Ireland, Jury’s
Court Inn in Cork is described as inexpensive at $61 and up for a room.
Otherwise they offer slightly pared down info on LP and RG. Frommer’s
also do portable guides that you can download onto your palm pilot or
similar not to mention a magazine and an e-newsletter. They are strong
on the number of Caribbean titles. For more info on Frommer’s guides,
see www.frommers.com
Insight Guides publish over 200 titles, again quite glossy, good
photos – more of a coffee table book than a guidebook to take with you
on a trip. This kind of book may be useful for planning a trip as it has
the glossy pictures, but I would not take it on a trip to use as a guidebook.
For more info, see http://www.insightguides.com
Lonely Planet – see also the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree
website for sources of travel information. Lonely Planet, or LP is the
granddaddy of modern guidebooks. People tend to either love LP or they
hate it, and if the latter, their usual choice is Rough Guide (RG). The
Beetle prefers the LP because it usually has good maps, (some colour pictures!)
and she likes to know about every single restaurant and hostel available
at the time of writing and feels quite aggrieved when only a selection
are given (as in the RG)! Whilst prices change, you can always work out
the ratio of increase so that you still have a rough idea of potential
prices. See www.lonelyplanet.com
Moon has been going 25 years and produce guides covering Americas,
Asia, and the Pacific. They are slightly biased to the US market but do
nevertheless produce good guidebooks with good maps and lots of detailed
information. The Beetle finds that Moon Guide distinguish themselves on
regions, particularly US states rather than entire countries, for example
excellent guides on New Mexico, Kauai, Mexico City etc. If I were to visit
a US state, then this is the book I would take with me – lots of
good maps, and local info. They also have city guides called Moon Metro
and include San Francisco, New York, Paris. For more info, see www.moon.com
Rother guidebooks are about walking. They are a very handy size,
good for slipping into a pocket, they usually have around 50 walking routes
per guidebook, with fabulously detailed maps, giving you all the info
you need such as grade of walk, approximate time to take, refreshments
available en route, how to get there and return. The Beetle likes these
books very much – if you are a walker, then these are for you! Destinations
covered include many different parts of the Mediterranean, and Norway
and Iceland. For more info, see www.cordee.co.uk
Rough Guides – as discussed above, we tend to find that
people either love these or hate them. They have just as good a range
in titles as LP, and they are very popular. They are just as comprehensive
in terms of information as the LP, but in a very different format. Both
LP and RG publish language guidebooks and a newsletter. Rough Guide tends
to place hotels, hostels, restaurants etc in price brackets, but nonetheless
give you enough info to make a decision re restaurant or hotel. For more
info, see www.roughguides.com/
Trailblazers a small UK based company that do excellent guides
particularly on walking and trekking, so if this is your thing, then these
books will give you very details routes with distance, estimated times,
danger points, and a whole load of walking or hiking – even climbing
activities. For more info, see: www.trailblazerbooks.co.uk
Ulysses publish two series of travel guides and are strong on
Canada, the US and Central America. The Beetle bought Ulysses guides on
Panama, Honduras and El Salvador when there was nothing else available,
and they were really very good. They also do language guides. For more
info, see www.ulyssesguides.com
Do you have a favourite guidebook, or one that was just terrible? E-mail
the Beetle
and let us know about it!
24 more sites of “outstanding universal value” have been
designated world heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). These include the ancient Iraqi city
of Ashur and Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, where towering statues
of Buddha (see picture right) were destroyed by the former Taleban regime.
The first eight of the new UNESCO heritage sites are as follows:
· Purnululu National Park, Australia: Located in the state
of Western Australia, it covers an expanse of nearly 250,000 hectares.
The park's Bungle Bungle Range contains sandstone eroded into the
shape of beehives over 20 million years.
· Three parallel rivers of Yunnan protected areas, China:
A 1.7 million hectare site in Yunnan province, containing parts of three
of the great rivers of Asia: the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween. The rivers
run parallel through steep gorges, from 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) to
6,000 metres high.
· Monte San Giorgio, Switzerland: A wooded mountain shaped
like a pyramid. Contains some of the best fossil records of marine life
from about 250 million years ago.
· Uvs Nuur Basin, Russian Federation/Mongolia: About a
million hectares. Contains a rich diversity of birds and is home to the
gerbil, jerboas, the marbled polecat, snow leopard, mountain sheep and
the Asiatic Ibex.
· Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park, Vietnam: A dramatic,
forested highland which includes underground caves and rivers and is mainly
covered by tropical rainforest.
· Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan: Previously home to two
colossal statues of Buddha, which were blown up by the Taleban in February
2001, provoking worldwide condemnation. UNESCO says the choice “symbolises
the hope of the international community that extreme acts of intolerance,
such as the deliberate destruction of the Buddhas, are never repeated
again”.
· Quebrada de Humahuaca, Argentina: A major trade route
over the past 10,000 years. Shows traces of the Inca Empire (15th to 16th
Century) and of the fight for independence in the 19th and 20th Centuries.
· Historic Quarter of the Seaport City of Valparaiso, Chile:
An interesting example of late 19th Century urban and architectural development
in Latin America.
Source: BBC News
Gary, from the US is planning to cycle 1,500 miles around the UK. He
started his journey on the 16th of May 2003.
Since that date he has travelled over 1,100 miles on a recumbent bike.
At the time of writing, he has approximately 400 mile to go to complete
the trip. Gary says: “The trip has been a real adventure. It's
been absolutely fantastic!”
I had an interesting day today. I left Banff this morning around 9 am,
and was heading for Elgin. It was raining, but not hard. Fifteen miles
into my ride my rear tyre went flat. It was a good spot on the side of
the road and the rain had stopped. I managed to get a new tube installed,
but, evidently, I damaged the tube and the tyre immediately went flat
– again. Well, I was on the edge of a village so I pushed the bike to
town for help. There wasn't a bike shop or garage in town. The first
person I met was a chap taking pictures of the bay. We started driving
around in his car looking for help.
We came up to some workers working on the water mains. The boss wound
up taking me to the next town five miles up the road to a bike shop. He
wouldn’t hear of me compensating him for his troubles. He said he
needed to do his part in increasing tourism. Luckily the bike shop was
open. They are closed on Wednesday's. The fellow that owns the bike
shop had his wife make me up a cup of tea. She also invited me in her
home so that I could clean the grease off my hands. By this time it's
three o'clock in the afternoon, so I decided to call it a day, and
found a lovely four star B&B. People here are so friendly and generous
here it's unbelievable.
One thing I've learned, it doesn't take much to survive. I'm
on a seven week trip with roughly two of everything. I have to keep clothes
in three groups – clean, only used one or two days, and definitely need
to be washed. If I can't find anybody to wash them or too embarrassed
to ask, I wash out a set in the sink with hand soap and hope they dry
by morning. More than once, I had to put on wet clothes. I'm sure
this isn't the kind of news you were waiting to hear, but that's
the reality of the trip.
I've tried almost everything on the menu, but one of the things
I haven't tried is black pudding. They tell me it's very good,
but someone said it's fried pigs’ blood. I haven't been
able to bring myself to trying it. Maybe it's something I'll never
have the opportunity of experiencing.
I'm still slugging along. Today I was feeling so smug. I was ready
to bestow expert map reader after my name till this afternoon. There were
conflicting signals on the trail and I went left instead of right. The
outcome was too bizarre to go into much detail. The upshot was I was lost
and in the middle of a field that a farmer was cutting hay. The hill was
steep and slippery. When I tried to apply the brakes, my feet snagged
the cut grass and I was catapulted headfirst. Luckily, I had a soft landing.
Well, I finally made it to my destination of Falkland at 6 pm. It's
a real small town with a castle and huge cathedral. Yesterday I was talking
to the sheep all day.
I was in Inverness. I don't know how everybody keeps putting up
with me. I'm constantly asking for directions to somewhere- bike shop,
streets, B&Bs', you name it. Everybody is so patient and willing
to help in any way they can. I'm not shy when it comes to asking for
directions. When you're on a bike you can kill a half hour real quickly
going in circles. I met a couple of hikers around my age (nearing retirement)
over breakfast at the last b&b I stayed at in Buckie called the Rosemount
who are from the Orkney Islands. They looked at my map and it so happens
I'll be passing within a half mile of their house. They asked me to
stop by for a cup of tea. What a small world!
When I was eating dinner last night I noticed on the menu they were
featuring lamb imported from New Zealand. Now, of all the things the Scotts
need to import you would think the last thing would be sheep. Somebody
said in a grocery store a couple of days ago, “You've seen more
of the UK in the last four weeks than I've seen in my whole life”.
I suspect that's true!
European no-frills airline Ryanair says it is to stop accepting American
Express charge cards. They say Amex makes higher charges than most other
companies and that they will refuse to take bookings on the cards from
the end of June 2003. Ryanair emphasized that it would continue to accept
other credit cards.
Ryanair reported a big rise in net profits in its last financial year.
Net profits of EUR239.4 million (USD$281.4 million) were 59 percent up
on the previous year and the carrier says it expects to see passenger
numbers in 2003/04 to soar to 24 million from the present 15.7 million.
They are predicting that they will overtake both British Airways and Germany's
Lufthansa within three years.
And finally here is a very sad website, for all those who would like
to “virtually” fly a Ryanair plane.
http://members.lycos.co.uk/virtualryanair/AboutVirtualRyanair.htm