Last year China’s first person in space disappointed the nation when he said he could not see the Great Wall of China from space. However, photographs taken from space appear to confirm that China’s Great Wall can be spotted by the naked eye after all. So China’s schoolchildren who are taught that the Great Wall is one of the only man-made structures you can see can breathe easy again.

So You Think You’re Well Travelled?

Here’s a little Beetle quiz based on capital cities. See how many you get right! Go on, have a guess!

What is the capital city of the following countries:

1. Chile
2. Finland
3. Kiribati
4. Israel
5. Comoros

For the answers, see at the end of the eNewsletter.

We’ve all heard horror stories about the deadly Australian funnel-web spiders. A new report in the Lancet shows that deaths from spider bites are extremely rare. Only 26 deaths from spiders have been recorded in Australia in the past century. In comparison, there were 1,183 motor vehicle deaths in 2001 in Australia.

Funnel webs are only found in eastern Australia and there are at least 40 species. They are medium to large spiders, varying from 1-5 cm body length. They like to burrow in moist, cool, sheltered habitats – under rocks, in and under rotting logs, crevices, rot and borer holes in rough-barked trees. In gardens, they prefer rockeries and dense shrubberies, and are rarely found in more open situations like lawns.

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website: Mutual Aid

The villagers of Ngarambe, bordering the Selous game reserve in Tanzanian had been allowed to sell hunting licences and shoot animals for meat so they would no wild animals would not destroy crops or menace the villagers. The area is rich in wildlife of all types – elephants, lions, giraffes, buffaloes and more. The government has said that the community can no longer hunt on this land or sell hunting licences to residents – instead a five-year hunting licence has been sold to a private company. According to BBC news, selling hunting permits is big business – trophy fees in the 2004 season ranged cost $4,000 for an elephant, $2,000 for a lion to $600 for a buffalo.

I am writing a book about a little known but stunning town in Australia called Airlie Beach. I am desperately seeking globetrotters who have visited this region. I am seeking submissions from them based on their time and experiences in the region.

Did Airlie Beach make an impact on your life? It’s the kind of place that is, ‘Once seen, never forgotten.’ I am looking for submissions from people, of all walks of life, on their favourite Airlie Beach experience. Everybody who has been there has one.

As a long time local, I have countless priceless memories, and nobodies amazing memories should be forgotten. Whether it is a funny anecdote, a poem you were inspired to write, a crazy story you heard, a picture of paradise you just can’t forget.

I am publishing a book and will consider: stories, poems, e-mails, snatches of conversation, diary entries, day in the life of, family history, dreams, artwork, photos, drawings etc.

Please contact me on: airliebeachkatie@yahoo.com.au

A review in the medical Lancet found the commonest diseases linked to air travel have been spread via contaminated food rather than from the cabin’s recycled air. The US researchers found a total of 41 in-flight outbreaks of food poisoning resulting in 11 deaths had been documented between 1947 and 1999. Salmonella was the most commonly reported infection spread by a commercial airline, with 15 recorded outbreaks between 1947 and 1999, affecting nearly 4,000 passengers and killing seven. The US authors stressed that no food- or water-borne outbreaks had been reported in the past five years probably because of greater use of pre-packaged frozen meals, and improved food handling and inspection.

When: Saturday 18th June, 10.30am-4.00pm

Where: The Newsroom, The Guardian

60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA

Cost: £85.00

A day of two intensive workshops:

Travel Writing – How to do it and how not to with Dea Birkett, the Guardian’s Travelling with Kids columnist and author of Serpent in Paradise and Off the Beaten Track

Fact, Fiction and Creating a Traveller’s Tale with Rory Maclean, author of Falling for Icarus and Stalin’s Nose

The workshops are followed by practical writing sessions. Participants should bring pen and paper – they will be expected to write! The emphasis is – whether you are a beginner or already have some writing experience – on developing skills which can be applied to both articles and books. Our aim is that, by the end of the day, each of you will have the tools to produce a publishable piece of travel writing.

For further details and application form contact: travelworkshops@deabirkett.com

For further information:

• www.deabirkett.com
• www.rorymaclean.com
• www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom

The Health Protection Agency say that tourists need more advice about how to protect their health while they are away. They say, while many companies do tell travellers to get health advice about their destination, others do not. But a spokesman for the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) said members did offer advice if people were travelling to more exotic destinations. Up to 2,000 Britons die abroad each year, most of them from natural causes, according to figures from the HPA.

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

Google, the search engine can help you access satellite photos of North America’s most significant landmarks and locations, including the Grand Canyon, Alcatraz and Mount Rushmore. You need to enter in a zip code and a photo from space of that location – if available – is then shown. At the moment Google only offers satellite images of locations in the US and Canada but Keyhole Corporation, which Google bought last year has data for the whole globe so the service could be rolled out for other countries. The detail in some of the Google photos is impressive – putting zoom at the highest level lets you pick out individual houses and even cars. The catch? There’s a fee to use the service though a free 7 day trial is available. See:

The Beetle has bad memories about sharing a room with what seemed like a thousand cockroaches in Gilgit in Pakistan a few years ago and was afraid that they would fly on to her bed. (Before you ask, no, Beetles are not friends with cockroaches, they are sworn enemies, but we try and live and let live.)

Did you know that most cockroaches have wings, but they can only fly when temperatures are quite high. And what’s more, cockroaches are omnivorous, i.e. they will eat anything, including each other if there is nothing else available.

One internet source, maybe urban myth, states that a cockroach can live up to nine days without its head before it starves to death. They have amazing scuttling abilities: one US study showed that cockroaches are capable of running at 50 body lengths per second on a treadmill – the equivalent of Carl Lewis doing the 100-meter in 1.09 seconds!

Unesco has warned Peru that the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu might lose its world heritage status if they do not act to protect it. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Machu Picchu. Experts say unrestricted tourism and landslides have damaged the 15th Century citadel and the nearby Inca trail that leads to it. In response, the Peruvian authorities have submitted a 400-page report $130m plan to the UN’s cultural arm which is believed to include satellite monitoring to measure earth movements and a daily limit of 2,500 tourists, to preserve the site.

Whilst we are talking about insects: spotted by webmaster Paul, US Entomologists Quentin Wheeler and Kelly B. Miller recently had the task of naming 65 newly discovered species of slime-mold beetles and named three species after the US president George W Bush, vice president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald H Rumsfeld. The newly found beetles are respectively called: Agathidium bushi Miller and Wheeler, Agathidium cheneyi Miller and Wheeler, and Agathidium rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler. Naming the beetles after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld was intended to pay homage to them, said Wheeler, who taught at Cornell University for 24 years and now is with the Natural History Museum in London.