Travelers' Intercom | International Travel News

July 2006 issue

Mali and Burkina Faso with ElderTreks

I’m home again, unbitten and unbowed, after 22 days in West Africa with ElderTreks (597 Markham St., Toronto, Ont. M6G 2L7, Canada; 800/741-7956 or www.eldertreks.com). Just getting there was arduous, with long flights and long layovers. There were only 12 in our group. Everything except tips and airfare was included in the price of $4,295. The tour took place Feb. 7-28, ’06.

We began in Bamako, the capital of Mali, a country twice the size of Texas, whose heart and soul is the mysterious 2,500-mile-long Niger River. In Bamako, we visited the world’s greatest recycling market,...

December 2005 issue

Flying around the world

Nancy Stott of Walnutport, Pennsylvania, wrote, “I would like to see readers write on the topic of ‘around-the-world itineraries’ such as those featured by airline alliances and some consolidators. It would be great to have a few first-person accounts of experiences plus suggestions.”

We printed Nancy’s request in our June ’05 issue and received a number of responses. Several are printed below, and one reader’s very informative and comprehensive letter will follow next month.

If you have anything to add, write to Flying Around the World, c/o ITN, 2116 28th St., Sacramento, CA...

April 2005 issue

Lockstep

I used the special Transportation Security Administration locks on my luggage for flights from Seattle to Dulles to Vilnius, Lithuania, and then home from St. Petersburg, Russia, through Dulles to Seattle in June ’04. The locks were not cut, but the red symbol came off. The store would not exchange them.

I used them again in June ’04, three weeks later, to travel from Seattle to John Wayne Airport in California and again they were not cut.

On both trips, at check-in I was told I would have to remove the locks. I pointed out that they were TSA locks. “Oh, yes,” they said, and...

May 2006 issue

Pink dolphins in Brazil

My wife, Dona, and I traveled to Brazil, Jan. 10-22, ’06, to search for the pink dolphins that inhabit the Rio Negro where it joins the Amazon near Manaus, Brazil. Yes, there really are pink dolphins! We saw two that were solid pink (about the color of bubble gum) and several that had pink underbellies and light-gray backs.

A few can be seen at the Ariaú Amazon Towers, a resort built in the rainforest on stilts to accommodate the changing river level. There are four miles of elevated walkways between the buildings.

For those really serious about seeing pink dolphins, I...

February 2006 issue

Confounded by Coptic community of Cairo

Having made several past visits to tourist areas of Egypt and the Sinai, on our March ’05 trip my husband and I decided to explore the Coptic aspect of Cairo.

The Copts are the only Egyptian Christians. They believe that St. Mark established their church at Alexandria. The official “birth” of the Coptic church was in A.D. 286. Their worship is still conducted in “Coptic,” now considered a dead language. St. Anthony (A.D. 250-350), the originator of Christian monarchism, was a Copt. Egypt has the largest Christian population in the Middle East.

The oldest part of Cairo is...

September 2005 issue

Packaged Africa

I have often read articles on Africa. Having taken, in 1999, a 7-day trip to Tanzania and a 7-day trip in Kenya in which we visited several reserves, I know that it is a complete waste of time to visit the Giraffe Manor in Nairobi as well as The Ark (famously written up) in Kenya and the Mt. Kenya Safari Club (also written up often). My friend and I agreed. If one is going to Kenya or Tanzania, there are many other places to view the animals than those mentioned above.

The Mt. Kenya Safari Club was the biggest joke, I felt. More of a resort, it’s a nice place to eat at and to walk...

August 2006 issue

Swiss cities

My wife, JoAnn, and I wanted to go to Switzerland to celebrate our 10th anniversary, so I said, “Okay, probably in the spring.” While surfing the net for fares, however, I found a round-trip nonstop Miami-Zürich flight on Swiss International on March 15, ’06, for $485 round trip. That was less than $1,000 for both of us, so I grabbed it. We spent 12 days there.

As for hotels, we wanted to spoil ourselves, so in ZÜRICH we picked the Zum Storchen (Weinplatz 2, CH-8001, Zürich; info@storchen.ch), first mentioned in the city’s tax rolls in 1367 and located in Old Town with its quaint...

November 2005 issue

Schliemann and Troy

Several years ago on a trip to Greece, we visited Mycenae and became interested in the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann and the Trojan Wars.

The Numismatic Museum of Athens in the Schliemann mansion was very nice — and not anything close to being all numismatics. Apparently, Schliemann donated his personal collections. (I think, by that time, it was illegal to exit the country with artifacts as Lord Elgin had done with the Parthenon Marbles.)

We later found that “Priam’s Treasure” (Priam was a king of Troy and the father of Paris), stolen by Russia after WWII, was in...