Vacation Dreams

Tag: December 2001

  • The Congo – Lightening Can Strike Twice!

    NASA has recently published a map of the world showing
    the frequency of lightening around the world. They found that The Congo
    has 50 lightening strikes a year for each square kilometre of land, compared
    to two per square km in the UK. Antarctica and Egypt hardly have any lightening
    strikes at all.

  • Hyenas Have Good Reason To Laugh!

    Researchers studying the spotted hyena in Tanzania have
    discovered that they are the only wild animal to be able to carry the
    rabies virus but not display any of the symptoms. So stop worrying about
    those hyenas biting!

  • Globetrotter Travel Award

    Under 24? A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested
    in a £1,000 travel award?

    Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each
    year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?

    Then see our legacy page
    on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent
    travel trip and we’ll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!

  • Travel Tips

    When the Beetle wants to say thank you and money is
    not appropriate, she gives postcards from her hometown, London, to people
    as small gifts. Take some with you!

    Got a travel tip you would like to share
    with the Beetle? Then e-mail them to: the Beetle

  • Strange but True!

    Both the Paris and Hong Kong metro systems regularly
    use air freshener. Apparently studies reveal that if the system smells
    good, customers feel more positive about the travelling experience. London
    Underground, with over 3 million passengers a day, has started to trial
    a fragrance called Madeleine to see if fragrance will make a positive
    difference. If customers like it, it will become a permanent item. Sound
    like the sweet smell of success?

  • Have you got a tale to tell??

    If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell.
    Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and
    share it with the world. Travel
    Sized Bites

  • London:

    This report of the last London meeting on the 1st December is written
    by Padmassana.

    John Hornbuckle’s wonderful slides took us around Chile. He showed
    us the wildlife and landscape of the country. Though John began with a
    slide of an owl, this was a topical Harry Potter joke, he went on to show
    us photos of birds that can only be found in the Andes and animals like
    the Vicuna. He went on to tell us about Arica, which until recently was
    the driest place on earth, Lauca National Park in northern Chile. We saw
    photos of snow-capped mountains and volcano’s. John’s slides then showed
    us the salt area of Salar de Uyuni and down to the far south via the hot
    springs of El Tatio.

    After the break, Denise Heywood showed us Vietnam, without too
    many references to the war. She explained that over 60% of the population
    were born after 1975 and showed us photo’s of the children, who are Vietnams
    future. Denise showed us colonial French architecture, such as the Opera
    House, which is a copy of the one in Paris and towns like Hoi An and Na
    Trang. She also showed us the Cu chi tunnels left over from the war, which
    are difficult for westerners to enter. These tunnels led into underground
    schools, hospitals that the Vietnamese operated in during the war, there
    are hundreds of miles of tunnels going as far as the Cambodian border.

    Coming on 5th January: Four Mini-Talk Presentations
    and New Year Party –     a programme of four twenty minute talks, offering
    a format that aims to offer the opportunity for different, specialist
    and off beat subjects and first time speakers.

    After the meeting we will be having our annual New Year Party, please
    bring a contribution of food and non-alcoholic drink

    London meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court,
    behind the Fortune Theatre in     Covent Gardenat
    2.30pm the first Saturday of each month. For more information, you
    can contact the Globetrotters Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or visit
    the website: www.globetrotters.co.uk

  • Meeting News

    Meeting news from our branches around the world.

  • Ontario:

    The next meeting will be on January 18th at the the Woodsworth Co-op
    : Ann Dohler will talk about her recent trip to Peru, the Galapagos and
    the Amazon.

    For further 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.

  • New York: A message from Laurie, the New York chair:

    Hello Globies! Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. Due to holiday
    parties, travel and cheer, we will not be holding a December Globies meeting.
    We WILL resume on 5th January with a treat!
    Matt Link, an Associate Editor from Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel will
    be our guest speaker.

    Matt will be giving a slide show and discussing the sites and culture
    of Ghana (the most popular country for American tourists in West Africa),
    with notes on spending time with the Muslims who live and work there,
    as well as important sites i.e., visiting a mud mosque and much more.
    He plans to make us feel a part of the Ghanaian culture and will be bringing
    some special props to help with our immersion! Matt has been travelling
    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. Keep an eye out of this
    Sunday’s (12/16) travel section of the LA Times and Miami Herald and a
    few other regional papers – Matt’s account of his trip to Ghana will appear
    in Frommer’s column! On January 4th, he’s a guest on The Early Today show
    (and they mean early – 4:30-5:30 AM!) on NBC.

    I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday. See you all soon!

    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.