Paying Money to Murder: Russian Luxury Yachts Offer Pirate Hunting Cruises

In a brilliant–if deeply disturbing–stroke of entrepreneurial genius, Russian luxury yachts have begun to advertise adventure cruises where passengers pony up almost $6,000 USD per day to cruise from Djibouti to Mombasa in search of pirates.

The yachts trawl at a deliberately slow speed, hoping to attract pirates. If attacked, the cruise passengers are ready to respond with heavy machinery: machine guns and grenade and rocket launchers. And if they want to tack on an extra $8.00 a day, passengers can hoist their very own AK-47. Ammo, though, costs an extra $11.50.

And the best thing about getting services from ex-cons is that it will only cost you a pack of cigarettes. (OK I made that part up).

City’s ex-cons to help Naples tourist

Tourists in Naples are being welcomed by ex-convicts who help them cross the streets in the hair-raising traffic, offer information and even escort them through the city’s more dangerous alleyways under a initiative by the Campania region.

Wearing yellow jackets, caps and ID cards, around 70 former prisoners have been posted at points around the city including the port and the station.

Score one for the math nerds (yes I was one as a kid). Researchers think they know how to resync your body clock.

A Mathematics Cure For Jet Lag

Plagued by jet lag? If we can send a rocket to the moon why can’t we figure out how to fly to different time zones and still be fresh? Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the University of Michigan say they have developed a software program that prescribes a light exposure regimen for avoiding jet lag.

Sometimes truth is just much funnier than fiction.

New airline Pet Airways’ only passengers to be four-legged

Soon, pet owners who live in a handful of large U.S. cities will have the ability to do that. Pet Airways plans to begin service on July 14 as the USA’s first pets-only carrier — no human passengers allowed. The introductory fare: $149 each way. For that, pets will be flown in individual crates in lighted and pressurized plane cabins, with a human attendant checking them every 15 minutes. They’ll board, just like people, from their own airport lounges and get overnight lodging accommodations on long-haul flights. Their owners can track their whereabouts at all times online. They can even earn “pet points” as frequent fliers.

The only thing clear about the Clear program is that it is clearly over.

Clear Registered Travel Program Shuts Down

Clear, the biggest private-sector “registered traveler” program in the nation, shut down suddenly last night, and a quarter of a million customers are waiting to find out whether their cards will ever get them out of security-line hell again. (It’s not looking too good right now.) The biggest mystery is not why it failed, but why it hung on as long as it did given the open hostility to the venture displayed by both the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the airlines.

I am not sure if being associated with the criminal justice system is the legacy that Jackson wanted but…

Tourists flock to see 1,500 Philippine inmates perform Jackson tribute

More than 1,500 Philippine inmates at a maximum security prison on Saturday performed a Michael Jackson tribute for the public with a dance routine that has become a global Internet hit.

Hundreds of spectators arrived at the jail to see the convicts, including murderers and drug-traffickers, put on the show two days after the music icon collapsed and died.

Other stories that I thought were interesting:

• Royal Caribbean plans 11-night Arctic Circle cruise from Copenhagen
• First hybrid RV to hit the road this summer
• 2009 Airline In-Flight Entertainment Status Update

On a trip to Sydney, Australia we saw this sign with arrows pointing to famous world cities with the various distances. My kids loved it so they posed for this picture. I used this picture in both my daughter’s and son’s ad in their senior yearbook. It seemed like a pretty good way to describe them at the crossroads of their life.

Air New Zealand is trying a unique approach to get people to watch that safety video. In a video titled “Bare essentials of safety from Air New Zealand” they have Air New Zealand staff wearing only body paint and shot from strategic angles or behind props. The video thanks the crew for “going all out”. It will be interesting to see how other airlines will respond.

I shot this photo from the Royal Park resort on my recent travel blogger trip there. Cozumel has some very nice sunsets.

• Regular width (1280 x 1024)
• Widescreen (1920 × 1200)
• MacBook Pro (1440 x 900)

To use:
1. Click the link above to open wallpaper in your browser.
2. Right click and select “Use image as desktop picture” or similar

I enjoyed both my trip to Mexico City and Cozumel though to be sure two trips had little in common besides the passport stamp.

Crime

Mexico City can be an intimidating city with regard to safety and crime. The U.S. state department actually has language in their recommendations on Mexico City travel to avoid hailing a taxi on the street unless you want to die or some frightening words to that effect. On the plane into Cozumel I met an American who works as a security consultant who was flying down to close on a house. Before purchasing the house he has done a lot of research and said that Cozumel has almost no crime. Sandra, who works for Park Royal, told the story of a woman who was picking up a rental jeep. She was told it was a blue jeep, was on such and such a street downtown and the keys were in the car. As it turns out there were two blue jeeps on that street with the keys in them and she took the wrong one, but no one bothered to tell her until she checked in the wrong jeep. They assumed correctly that her mistake was accidental.

Infrastructure

Mexico City is a massive city that some predict will someday succumb to its own demand for resources and to its own pollution (underestimating the Mexico City inhabitants according to many). Cozumel also has limited resources as an isolated island. For this reason hotels when they were rebuilt, after the near total devastation caused by hurricane WIlma in 2005, were required to build:

• desalination plants capable of meeting most of their water needs
• water treatment systems that could render such water potable
• sewage treatment systems
• systems for composting organic waste

Cultural Distance

While Mexico City can certainly be intimidating there is no doubt that it supports a vibrant culture. The distance between Mexico City and the US was heightened by avoiding the Zona Rosa district which has become somewhat of a tourist gheto.

Cozumel has an economy centered around tourism and thus often seems to have less distance between it and the United States which is one of its major customers. Cozumel seems to be a gateway to Mexico for those who are not ready to jump into Mexico with both feet. Cozumel is a place that will be very comfortable to Americans. It is a place where you do not need to speak Spanish and at times it seemed to me to be more like an extension of Florida rather than a foreign country. This will of course recommend it to some travelers and take it off the list for others.

Urban Jungle / Tropical Jungle

There is no mistaking from the moment that you fly over Mexico City the vastness of that city. Nor is there mistaking that you are on a tropical island as you fly in to Cozumel. The color of the water is strikingly beautiful in a way that I have only seen in the Caribbean. The landscape of the island seems only partly to be settled at all with much of the island still jungle. Almost all of the hotels are on the side of the island facing the other resort cities of the Mayan riviera. The far side of the island is more windswept, rugged and uninhabited. The Mayans believed that a woman should make a pilgrimage to Cozumel (to what we now know as San Gervasio) at least once as it was associated with fertility. I have no doubt that more than one honeymoon couple has found Cozumel to still have some claim on fertility.

So I find that I enjoyed both trips but in very different ways. Mexico City is a way to dive in deep into Mexico. It is challenging, exciting and bustling. Cozumel is welcoming, beautiful and relaxing. It is still Mexico, but not the one you have been seeing on the evening news. And speaking of the evening news, no so far as I have been able to learn there have not been cases of swine flu on Cozumel.

The Comfy Chair

There is no question that a 1st class airline seat has more space for anyone who say… has legs. It is a treat to be able to cross my legs or to lean back and get some sleep after getting on a flight at 6AM. The seat is also wide with extra space between you and your seat mate. First class travelers, on American Airlines at least, still get blankets.

Power to the People

As someone who always travels with a laptop it is a joy to get a power outlet (you need a DC adapter) at the seat so that on a long flight I could catch up on email, edit an episode of the Amateur Traveler, etc. With most airports making it way too difficult to find a power outlet I am usually low on power by the time I even get on the plane.

Coffee, Tea or…

It is strangely civilized to be offered a juice or a glass of water while we wait for the riff-raff in the back to settle in. Getting a meal on a plane is a wonderful throwback. Having to choose between the red and white wine they were pouring was a terrific dilemma. Fresh baked cookies was a treat. The biggest difference seems to be that with a lot fewer people in first class the flight attendants seem a lot less rushed.

So… will I be purchasing first class tickets only from now on? Not likely. While I can certainly enjoy the experience of traveling with the mucky mucks, I can’t imagine deciding that those benefits are worth doubling the ticket price.

I have always liked this picture of Piazza San Marco taken looking down on it from the campanile on the square. I loved the black and white nature of the scene offset by the brightly color umbrella of a vendor selling food for the pigeons.

Except on the one occasion where I saw Piazza San Marco in the light of pre-dawn the piazza seems always filled with both pigeons and with tourists content to be pigeon perches. In the pre-dawn the square is so completely empty as to unrecognizable.

• Travel to The Netherlands and Belgium - Episode 98 Show Notes
• More blogs posts about Europe
• More podcasts about Europe

Welcome to the Amateur Traveler. I’m your host Chris Christensen. Normally at this portion of the show I’d give you news but obviously I have no idea what the news is, even world news, because I’m still on vacation. I’m recording this while sitting on the balcony of the International Youth Hostel in Grindelwald, Switzerland looking out at the rain so I’ll catch you up more on that story in a few weeks after I get back when I put together at least three episodes, I believe, on the current European trip as well as several video episodes.

Chris: I’d like to welcome to the show Daniel Perez who’s come to talk to us about a recent trip to Belgium and the Netherlands. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel: Thanks a lot Chris.

Chris: And Daniel is another member of a new organization that he and I have been working on which is the Travel Podcasters Network. And Daniel has probably one of the more unusual travel podcasts. You have the Gamer Traveler.

Daniel: Yeah.

Chris: I’m going to let you explain it.

Daniel: Basically, it’s a show about gaming and travel both rolled into one. I’m a role player and a gamer of, you know, many, many years. And when I was trying to figure out a podcast that I wanted to do mostly for my gaming interest, I didn’t want to rehash what other people were doing so I went for the weirdest angle that I could find and I decided to combine it with my love of travel. It was originally a segment in another podcast, like a feature segment, and I would talk about a small location and then you’d tell ways of using it in a role-playing game or setting or anything like that. And eventually I decided to go ahead and take it solo and it’s been doing very well.

Chris: So you recently were on a, I think you said, a 10-day trip to the Netherlands and Belgium.

• Travel to the Yucatan Penninsula of Mexico - Episode 163 Show Notes
• More blogs posts about Mexico
• More podcasts about Mexico

Chris: I’d like to welcome back to the show Zora O’Neill, who has come to talk to us about the Yucatan, in Mexico. Zora, welcome back to the show.
Zora: Thanks so much, happy to be here.
Chris: I say welcome back to the show because Zora talked to us before about New Mexico, and has just written, or just published, I guess is true – you probably wrote some time ago – ‘The Rough Guide to the Yucatan’.
Zora: Yes. There’s a time lapse in travel guide writing – this was actually the second edition of ‘The Rough Guide to the Yucatan’ that just came out, so, I’m co-author on it, actually, with John Fisher, and he and I worked on the first edition about three years ago, and had a chance to really spruce it up again this time around.
Chris: Now, as a travel writer, when you are doing something like this, are you writing a guide because you get the opportunity to, and then, therefore, you go and learn the location, or was this a location you were already in love with?
Zora: Well, it’s funny. It’s been so long, I’ve been working on the Yucatan – I’ve been visiting the Yucatan for travel guide work for about five years, so it’s sort of hard to remember when I wasn’t familiar with the place. My original assignment from ‘Rough Guides’ was to update the Yucatan chapter of their Mexico book, and, at that point, I didn’t really know all that much about the place. I’d fantasized about taking a big car trip around the Yucatan and I had some contacts there, and they said “That’s great! Go!”, So that first trip was really a crash course, but now I’ve been going down there at least once a year, sometimes two and three times a year, ever since then.
Chris: Now, with Mexico driving, combining the words ‘car trip’ and ‘crash course’ sounds a little scary to me.
Zora: No, not at all, it’s actually really funny. I still remember when I left for my first trip. I had booked six weeks and I was going alone. I was a little bit scared, and, once I was down there, I really had to laugh. You hear so many, sort of, horror stories about Mexico, and driving especially, and terrible conditions of the roads, and bandits and policemen who try and give you tickets for nothing, and I encountered absolutely none of that, and, actually, the roads in the Yucatan are all stellar, there are no bandits as far as I have ever encountered, or even heard of, and the policemen are exceedingly polite, and it’s actually been great. And no crashes, so none at all.
Chris: Well, a while back, and this has been a little while since they’ve changed, I understood that, especially in Mexico City area, that people, when driving at night, found that they could see better if they left their lights off. They could see the lights of the other guy. Of course, that doesn’t translate very well to large groups of people! I haven’t seen that recently, so I think they’ve…

Man Overboard: Carnival Inspiration

According to reports, Larry Miller, 46, fell overboard from the cruise ship as it was returning to the Port of Tampa at 4 a.m. this morning. Fortunately for Miller, the crew of a pilot boat spotted him in the shipping channel near the Sunshine Skyway shortly before 7 a.m.

A spokesperson for Carnival Cruise Lines told Bay News 9 that, “Miller fell overboard when he climbed on a railing to get a better view of a boat as it passed by. He slipped, then fell overboard.”

Planes land safely everyday without making the news. What does make the news is when this happens after the pilot has died.

Pilot dies flying plane to the US

Nearly 250 airline passengers landed safely at their destination after the captain of the plane died mid-flight.

Losing your luggage is not uncommon these days with the airline industry. Losing your children should be.

2 girls put on wrong Continental Express flights

Continental Airlines said Tuesday it has taken steps to ensure that proper procedures are followed after two unaccompanied girls were placed on wrong Continental Express flights over the weekend.

An 8-year-old College Station girl erroneously ended up in Fayetteville, Ark., and a 10-year-old Massachusetts girl was mistakenly sent to Newark, N.J., after boarding planes operated by ExpressJet, which is under contract with Continental.

How much do you love your job and your employer. Do you love it enough to work there for free? If not, let’s hope you don’t work for British Airlines.

BA staff may be working for free

According to Bloomberg, British Airways recently asked its 40,000 employees to consider laboring for nothing for up to one month. “Colleagues are being urged to help the airline’s cash-saving drive by signing up for unpaid leave or unpaid work,” read an article in BA News, the carrier’s in-house newspaper. Chief executive Willie Walsh, who has pledged to forgo his $100,000 monthly salary in July, said the airline was caught in a “fight for survival”.

Other stories that caught my eye:

• Woman who missed Flight 447 is killed in car crash
• WHO declares swine flu pandemic
• Pilots and control towers, some real life exchanges