Snow and No-Snow Report

This post is aimed squarely at the snow-loving readers of this blog in Europe (WHERE THERE IS NO SNOW) and in New England (WHERE THERE IS VERY LITTLE SNOW). If you are contemplating a pre-Christmas (or even Christmas) ski trip, come to the Rockies, which are wallowing in white. I live 25 miles from Denver, at the (relatively) low elevation of 5,400 feet. On my deck are 15 inches of cloud-light snow. Colorado ski resorts have snared more than 100 inches of snowfall already, and it is still November. See the enticing photo from Steamboat (right), taken by Larry Pierce a few days ago. Utah, the northern Rockies and the Cascades are similarly buried. Even the southern Rockies, which limped through last winter with subpar snowfall, have benefited from major dumps already -- the first as early as September 22.

In Europe, as I said, THERE IS NO SNOW. In Austria, Italy and Switzerland, only a few lifts on high glaciers are running. The French Alps are marginally better, with a handful of lifts serving a handful of slopes at less than a handful of resorts. The valleys are bare. The villages are sad and empty -- in itself no surprise, since Europeans don't celebrate a holiday in late November that traditionally kicks off the ski season. Mountain cams show dustings on high Alpine peaks, but nothing appears skiable, and the lifts are not operating. Many resorts that try to have a decent number of lifts operating in early December have indefinitely postponed their openings. The International Ski Federation, which sanctions international ski races, has already canceled Alpine, cross-country and snowboarding competitions all over Europe at least through December 9 because THERE IS NO SNOW IN THE ALPS or Scandinavia. One of the resorts to loose its World Cup races this weekend is St. Moritz, Switzerland (photo left taken early today the Piz Nair summit). Meanwhile, yesterday's training for this weekend's men's downhill race at Beaver Creek, CO, was also canceled -- because there was too much snow. Racers need hard, icy courses. I'm going to guess that the teams took the day off and went powder skiing, a rare treat for these elite athletes.

Alas, I am leaving snowy Colorado on Saturday for Europe WHERE THERE IS NO SNOW. The tour operator arranging this trip won't cancel or postpone it. I'm planning to take some good books, my workout clothes, my hiking boots and sunscreen. Stay tuned. I'll report from the trip. And meanwhile, if you are planning your own ski trip for the near future, come to the Rockies.

Light-Hearted Presentation About Serious Matters

The more I travel, the more I feel both the interconnectedness and apartness of various parts of the world and its people. Cultures are so vastly different that people and their ways seem incredibly far apart -- sometimes exotic and appealing, sometimes unfamiliar and threatening. Yet with air travel and global communications, we are linked more tightly than ever before. I fervently hope that we can learn to treat our planet and each other more gently. Headlines are scary these days, but if we all could live our lives a little more like this cute wombat suggests at
http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml, the world would be a better, calmer place -- and we could revel in trying to understand each others' differences and not feel threatened by them. And the Earth itself would be cleaner and more beautiful.

An Annual Day of Skiing Firsts

First day of the 2006-07 ski season. First turns on my new skis -- Dynastar Exclusives, part of the company's women's ski collection designed by women's gear guru Jeannie Thoren. First time skiing Snowmass in several years. First babble of anticipation in the lift line. First tracks across submerged rocks that the grooming machines had churned up, often barely under the snow. First blemishes on the P-tex of my new skis. First time waiting in the lift line for 15 minutes or more due to some unexplained mechnical delay. First bump run of the season. First afternoon of ultra-aching thighs. First apres-ski smiles knowing that the P-tex can be repaired, the thighs will stop hurting after a few more days on the boards and the ski resorts will get more terrain open as snow falls. Today, Snowmass had was running just two chairlifts and a beginner J-bar out of about of about two dozen accessing nine runs out of about a gazillion. And the smiles will only get broader.

New Munich Flight to Land in Denver

Denver International Airport will soon become more international. Lufthansa, the national airline of Germany, will start Denver-Munich nonstop service on March 31, 2007, joining its existing Frankfurt-Denver nonstop. This is great news for travelers from Colorado and other states. To fly overseas, many of us in the middle of the country have to change planes -- and airports we are forced to use are incredibly delay-prone: Atlanta, #1 in delays; Chicago, #2; Dallas Fort/Worth #3; LAX, #4; Phoenix, #5; etc. These cities are are not only hubs for U.S. airlines with international service but also host foreign carriers. Denver actually ranks #7 on the FAA's list of airports with the most flight delays, but often the problem isn't home-grown but is caused largely by delays on the other end: either Denver-bound aircraft that can't take off or outbound aircraft asked to hold here.

Denver and Munich are a natural pairing. Both cities are not in the mountains but very close to the mountains. Both are vibrant cities with a young active population. Both, in the context of their respective countries, are beer capitals. And both have modern new airports out in the country, replacing older ones that were closer to the city but smaller and more congested. The one thing that Munich has that Denver does not have yet is a railroad station right at the airport.

A bit over two years ago, my husband and I flew to Munich to attend the wedding of a former exchange student at the University of Colorado. We planned to spend a few days in the city before the wedding, but arrived without reservations. We did the usual Europe: went to the information and reservations desk in the terminal to book a room. We requested a three-star hotel near the main railroad station (Hauptbahnhof). No problem. We had our Eurailpasses validated at the airport and boarded a train right there. Trains to the city depart every 20 minutes and reach the railroad station in 45 minutes and wheeled our bags around the corner to our hotel. That easy airport-city connection by rail remains something that we still look forward to here.

Seven New Wonders

The creative powers at ABC-TV's "Good Morning, America" and USA Today, mindful that all but one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have vanished, appointed a high-profile panel to come up with Seven New Wonders of the World that are relevant to travelers today. These have been broadcast and written about in print over the last week. I'm humbled by having experienced (or nearly experienced) all but one. The panelists' list:

• The Mayan pyramids of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. The first one I ever visited was Chichen-Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula more than 25 years ago. In searing heat, I climbed the steep steps to the top of the great pyramid and marveled at the excavated city round me and the jungle beyond. Since then, I have been to Tulum, also on the Yucatan but fabulously situated on the coast, and to Copan in Honduras, which was still only partially excavated when my husband and I visited.
• The great semi-annual migration of millions of animals across Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. After climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro a decade ago, my family and I took a private photo safari into four Tanzian national parks, including the Serengeti. It was not migration season, but our wildlife sightings were among the most awe-inspiring experiences we have ever had. We saw thousands of lions, cheetahs, giraffes, wildebeests, zebras, elephants, baboons, and ungulates, birds and wild canines of various sorts. We stood on the overlook above the the Olduvai Gorge, where anthropologists Richard and Mary Leakey had discovered footprints of ancient homonids. As we gazed down from the viewing platform far from the digsite, the gorge itself looked as if it could have been in the Southwest, but knowing what it was made it special. The panelists mentioned the Olduvai Gorge as an ancillary wonder in Tanzania.
• The recently designated Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument made the list. Until I saw a Jean-Michel Cousteau television documentary on this remote archipelago shortly before the act was signed to protect it, I wasn't even aware of the existence of this 1,200-mile-long string of islands northwest of Oahu. I've been to Hawaii a number of times and never thought much about what might be out there "beyond" Kauai. Now it is the world's largest marine sanctuary. One of the panelists is renowned marine biologist, Dr. Sylvia Earle, so it's little wonder that this pristine marine sanctuary made the list.
• The polar ice caps, rightly described by USA Today both as "inhospitable" and as "astonishingly beautiful and incomprehensibly vast." The panelists also noted that their melting is yet another alarm about global warming. I have been to the Antarctic Peninsula during the austral summer, which isn't the same as seeing the ice cap itseself -- but I experienced fringes of the frozen continent, saw glaciers and icebergs and was enchanted by the stark and lonely beauty of the place.
• Old City Jerusalem was selected for its "central place in religious history and struggles for tolerance." The first Society of American Travel Writers annual convention I attended was in Israel in 1983. The struggles were evident even then, but so were the phenomenal beauty of the Old City and the special feeling I got from walking along ancient cobblestoned streets and visiting holy places of the three major Western religions. How I wish that the peaceful principles of all three were in effect rather than the turf wars fought in the name of all of these faiths.
• Tibet's Potala Palace is a commanding physical presence over the capital city of Lhasa and remains a symbolic and spiritual presence for the Buddhist community, even though the present Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959 and remains separate from this holy place. I have been to China three times but never to Tibet. It's on the list.
• The Internet. The panelists said that the "Web redefines reality." By posting this, I am part of it, and by reading it, you are as well.

Of flights, flying and the TSA, Part Deux

On Nov. 5, I posted my thoughts about the Transportation Stupidity Agency on this blog. More recently, the far better-known and wa-a-a-ay more articulate Anna Quindlen wrote about the same thing in Newsweek. "Osama bin Laden could get through the line if the name on his license was the same as that on his ticket and he wasn't packing Oil of Olay," was the call-out subhead for her column.

She told of scooping half-an-ounce of face cream from a 3.5-ounce jar so that it wouldn't be confiscated. "Is this any way to run an airline?," she asked, articulating my complaints of just a few days ago. "Between constant delays and nonexistent services, flying has become the modern version of seafaring steerage accommodations. But nothing has made it seem worse than the long lines of bedraggled and beaten-down travelers at security checkpoints, pouring their change into plastic tubs, standing in stocking feet as their shoes are scanned, proffering zip-lock bags full of face creams and foundation."

And in a great leap to big-picture analysis that I never thought to post, she wrote: "This is not merely an inconvenience. The whole cockeyed system has become a symbol of the shortcomings of government programs and responses. It's expensive, arbitrary and infuriating; it turns low-wage line workers into petty despots. And instead of making Americans feel safer, its sheer silliness illuminates how impotent we are in the face of terrorism. The hustle and bustle at U.S. checkpoints is window dressing, another one of those rote, unthinking exercises that are the hallmark of bureaucracies, like 'Bleak House' with luggage."

Read her entire column at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15562940/site/newsweek/ -- and don't forget your one-quart zip-lock bag when you head for the airport.

Fare or Foul?

Money magazine is the latest purporting to let the travel public in on air fare secrets. Such articles are almost as ubiquitous as turkey recipes at this time of year. I don't know about you, but I certainly didn't learn anything new from that piece. It failed to mention www.priceline.com with its auction-style pricing and www.hotwire.com, which is ideal if you want a bargain fare, are willing to fly on their choice of carriers (sometimes with a change of planes), and aren't fussy about the time of day you fly (often meaning an early-morning departure). Also, I've often found the best deals on the airlines' own websites, which sometimes also give bonus miles -- not trivial if you are trying to stack up mileage on a particular airline for a business class ticket to that dream destination.

Perfect Places

The lead sentence of today's New York Times "36 Hours" Friday travel feature reads: "A boarding pass to Sydney should come with a warning label: Beware, this city will have you questioning the quality of life in your hometown. Sydney has managed to skim the best parts of other cities and swirl them into a perfect blend of urban bliss." The author goes on to extoll the beauty of the city, the cultural life, the nightlife, the gallery scene, the bars, the beaches and even the zoo.
I visited Sydney years ago, and while it wasn't as cool then as it has become, I had much of the same impression.

Ironically, just yesterday I cyber-stumbled upon a travel feature about Boulder, where I live, written by Kansas City Star travel editor Alan Holder. He hung out at the Pearl Street Mall, wrote about the city's natural beauty, sportiness, recreational opportunities and commitment to the environment. "Is Boulder too perfect?" he asked rhetorically.

It got me to re-appreciating the place that I live. When we host out-of-town guests, I see it through their eyes, but between guests, I enjoy Boulder's attributes but admittedly take them from granted. Holder quoted Richard Polk, city council member and owner of the Pedestrian Shop, as saying, “The thing about Boulder is, if you’re lucky enough to live here, you’re lucky enough to live here.” Travel remains both a passion and a profession for me, but sometimes, I can get the same rush of being someplace special just by walking out of my door and looking at my city as others see it.

Of flights, flying and the TSA

It may be a long way to Tipperary, but it's even longer from Colorado to Chile. We flew American Airlines via Los Angeles International Airport, with a five-hour layover in each direction, and then LAN Chile to Santiago, with a brief stop in Lima. Each LAX-SCL flight is overnight-plus. We also flew from Santiago to and from Punta Arenas on the southern tip of Chile and to and from Easter Island. I can hardly wait to see how many AAdvantage miles I accumulated!

Going through security at LAX for the LAN Chile flight provided a fine example of the Transportation Stupidity Agency at work. Assured that he could take it through security check, the fellow in line in front of us had bought a small (under 3 ounces) sealed jar of some moisturizing cream at one of the duty-free shops in the terminal. The TSA screener would not let him put that single item in the plastic bin with his belt, keys, coins and shoes. "It has to go into a one-quart zip-lock bag," the screener told the traveler guy. Traveler: "I don't have one. Where can get one?" TSA guy: "I don't know. We don't sell them. I don't care where you get it, but you have to have one." This back-and-forth went on a while. We interjected and asked if he could put his jar into our one-quart zip-lock bag to send it through X-ray. That evidently didn't violate any TSA regulations. The passenger was grateful, at that point the TSA guy no longer cared, and we were left shaking our heads.

Today's Denver Post features a front-page story about a new TSA policy that prohibits air-traffic controllers from leaving the tower during a meal break unless they use accumulated personal time. "They have to stay in the 327-foot tower...where their menu choices are a bit limited. Just like airline passengers, controllers can't bring liquids or semi-solid food items through security checkpoints," wrote reporter Jeffrey Lieb. He also quoted the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. as calling it "lockdown cafe." Now, don't you wonder how this policy will affect the morale of people holding stressful jobs?

In Chile (and in New Zealand, where I was in august), passengers are permitted to walk through metal detectors with their shoes and jackets on, to bring bottled water aboard and to have such items as any size of toothpaste, hand cream and cosmetics in their carry-ons. In fact, the airport in Santiago has kiosks where people can, for a fee, have individual pieces of luggage shrink-wrapped. Here, the TSA's no-locks policy sets checked baggage up for pilferage. I just heard from a travel writer colleague who had some $700 worth of items stolen from his luggage on a Continental flight from Trinidad to Denver via Houston. Not likely to happen in Chile or elsewhere, where bags may be locked and even wrapped in clear plastic.

Aside security issue and bizarre regulations is the disappearance of anything resembling pleasant travel. Long flights that board in or are destined for the US have become airborne tubes crammed full of crabby, hungry, thirsty, smelly travelers, to say nothing of the foot odor assaults at security checkpoints because of the TSA's shoes-off policy. None of this makes me feel any "safer." How about you?

Easter Island

Way out in the Pacific, 3,700 kilometers or about 2,300 miles from mainland Chile, lies Easter Island -- Isla de Pascua in Spanish and Rapa Nui in the increasingly accepted language of Polynesia. It it is the island to which Thor Heyerdahl sailed on the raft 'Kon-Tiki' and which was first reached by airplane from the mainland in 1951. Bottom line is that Rapa Nui remains remote and also mysterious.

It is, however, an increasingly popular tourist destination. Seasoned travelers who have been many other places and seen many other things are drawn to the island's moai, towering figures carved from volcanic stone, moved to the shoreline and erected, in great feats of engineering for pre-industrial people, on lava-rock platforms (ahu) to guard their respective villages. Rapa Nui National Park is unsurprisingly a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Of the 887 known moai, 288 were set upon platforms, 98 fell or were abandoned and 397 were unfinished and still stand or lie in the Rano Rotaku quarry. I don't know where the rest are or their condition -- and I'm not sure that archaeologists do either. Some moai feature topknots of a red stone called scoria from the smaller Puna Pau quarry. The moai are tall (average, about 13 feet) and heavy (12.5 tons). They faced inland rather than toward the sea, because inhabitants were each others' foes. They were meant to be seen from the carved front, and each one has a different face -- much like the terracotta army in Xi'an, China. The moais' backs are flat -- by necessity because they were carved while lying on the ground. Archaeologists have restored some sites. Others remain primitive.

On the island's northeast coast is "the navel of the world," a round, squat black rock with four smaller sit-upon rocks around it. People hunker there to meditate, contemplate, commune with spirits, admire the view or wonder why compasses swing around madly when near the rock.

The spectacular and mesmerizing south coast is worthwhile for watching and photographing the big South Pacific rollers roiling and boiling and crashing onto the black coastal cliffs. The island was once heavily treed, but now the vegetation is largely grass. Stands of introduced eucalyptus grow where once there were palm species.

An unpaved road climbs to the top of Maunga Pu A Tiki, a dormant volcano in whose water-filled crater rafts of vegetation float like little islands. Beyond, at the tip of Poike Peninsula is a curious seasonal colony where Easter Islanders, long after the days of the moai-carvers, lived while they selected their annual leader. The bizarre ritual involved deputizing someone to swim to a nearby rock and find the first egg laid that spring by a particular bird. The leader selected in this strange way lived like a hermit during his rule. Visit yourself and hear the whole strange tale, but also know that the missionaries put an end to it. Rapa Nui is now enthusiastically Catholic, and visitors are invited to the exuberant, music-heavy Mass at the church in Honga Roa. The church is packed every Sunday, beginning at 9:00 a.m.

Honga Roa is, in fact, the island's only town. Accommodations range from simple hostels to the luxurious Explora Lodge, currently located in a leased private vacation retreat but with plans to build a new property in the next couple of years. Numerous restaurants and abundant shops are scattered along the town's streets. Consider signs with posted opening hours to be guidelines.

Whether you are looking for fine crafts or mass-produced souvenirs, you'll find them in many small shops and in two multi-stall crafts markets, one on Tu'u Kohinu (one block to the left of the church) and one that is half crafts market and half produce market at the corner of Tu'u Maheke and Atamu Tekena. Prices vary, so shop around. Don't be afraid to bargain, especially if you are buying several items, but don't expect huge price breaks either.

The greatest variation was for what appears to be the only English guidebook to the island, Rapa Nui by Daniel Pardon . We found it at the archaeological museum for more than US$70. Gasp! That is high even for a glossy four-color job, but for that money, there should be an index. We bought it anyway because we were driving around and wanted it for the road. Later, a colleague reported that she had bought it for a few dollars more at a shop in town, but as we were leaving, we spotted it at an airport shop for about half the price. Moral: Try to pick it up on arrival -- unless, of course, the prices at various venues have changed.

In the souvenir realm, I found placemats (choice of colors, choice of moai or a still undeciphered writing called rororongo) for as little as ARG$2,000 (US$4) and as much as ARG$5,000 ($10), and small wooden rororongo reproductions in the ARG$25,000 to ARG$35,000 range in town, but for ARG$7,500 at the airport. You have several last chances to shop at the airport. There's a new brick building with several stalls across from the terminal, numerous stalls in the terminal outside of the security area or in one of several more stalls after the security checkpoint. Abundant, of course, are moai of stone, wood or molded plastic in various sizes and configurations.

The archaeological museum on the outskirts of town is more interpretive than anything else. Relatively few artifacts are on display, but 20,000 are in storage pending money to build a larger building and guard the artifacts. The town cemetery is worth a visit too. There is one ATM on a street called Tu'u Maheke. It currently dispenses cash only to MasterCard holders, but other businesses take other cards as well. The post office is one block over on Te Pito Te Henua. For ARG$1,000 (a little more than US$2), the clerk will stamp your passport with three Easter Island stamps. Scuba divers rave about the clarity of the water. Several dive shops located at the harbor use simple open fishing boats for their dive trips.

Easter Island is open range. Cattle and horses wander all over the countryside, depositing their droppings wherever. Similarly, dogs, cats and even chickens wander around town. They are uncollared but also unmenacing. In town, the streets have been paved but the sidewalks remain hazardous with cracks, gaping holes and some concrete slabs missing and storm drains exposed, so do look where you are stepping -- whether to skirt sidewalk obstacles or just to avoid the unpleasantness of animal droppings.

The moai deserve more time than most bus and van tours permit, so renting is recommended. Rentals for small 4WD cars are surprisingly reasonable, and gas isn't too expensive either. Roads from Hanga Roa directly to the most popular sites are paved, but others are not. Tourists on organized tours are never out and about during the fine dawn and dusk light, and the quarry where the majority of moai are found is not included in most tours but is quickly offered for $40 extra. If you take such a tour, cough up the 40, because the quarry should not be missed.