Wye Valley

Oops, sorry about that week-long absence, there; I have a couple of big scary end of January deadlines and last week kind of got away from me. But the things that need to be done are nearly done; on Friday it becomes February, and everything starts to look a lot brighter. Hurrah!

I spent last weekend down in the Wye Valley, where my parents are currently living in a village known for nothing other than having, apparently, Wales’s “first and finest restaurant with rooms,” the Crown at Whitebrook. It was all pleasantly bucolic and relaxing, though as ever the vagaries of British rail transport threatened to spoil it; in accordance with my new year’s resolutions I resisted the temptation of Easyjet flights from Glasgow to Bristol and took the train, only to find a number of discrepancies between the tickets I’d booked at the Trainline and the trains that were actually running, and a twenty minute delay coming out of Glasgow ended up with me missing all my connections and being stuck for an hour in Crewe, only arriving into Abergavenny (not, in fact, where I was trying to go) at quarter to midnight, having been on trains and in train stations for upwards of eight hours. I am not sure how long this resolution is going to last, I’m afraid.

But anyhow! When I go down to see my parents (or aunt and uncle, who also live there) we generally spend our time eating, drinking and having desultory walks, but there is a lot to see and do around there, not least Offa’s Dyke path, Tintern Abbey, the Sculpture Trail near Coleford (which I am very ashamed that I have never done), and the Severn Bore (which I have also never seen; I do love the fact that the website linked there describes the Severn Bore as “one of Britain’s few truly spectacular natural phenomena”; way to accept our overwhelming mediocrity, there!) and it’s the sort of place that I’d probably be much more impressed by had I not visited it so often as I was growing up. Highly recommended for a within-UK holiday.

I am going to try and update more often, now that the immediate January crunch is (just about) over. You have been warned.

Notes from even smaller islands

When I was looking into Scottish Islands yesterday, I came across the Scottish Islands Federation, which represents and promotes the needs and interests of island communities in Scotland (I rather like the virtual island tours offered on the website). Anyhow, the Scottish Islands Federation is part of the European Small Islands Network, which of course immediately piqued my interest, and so I’ve been investigating the various members.

Unfortunately the website of the Swedish National Islands Association is blocked from my work for reasons of pornography (is it, in fact, porn?), and the Finnish Turku Islands Association doesn’t have a website (though there is some tourist information available here, and gosh, it looks rather lovely), but otherwise, look:

- The Irish Islands Federation. 32 islands off the coasts of Antrim, Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway and Cork (no east coast islands?); only a few of the individual islands have websites: Rathlin, Arainn Mhor, Bere Island, Inis Oirr (one of the Aran Islands), Inishbofin and Clare Island, which is fairly understandable given that the majority of the islands in the federation have a population of less than ten, bloody hell. Still, useful if you fancy remoteness and isolation…

- L’Association des Iles du Ponant, which represents islands off the north and west coasts of France (are there any islands off the south coast? I have a feeling there are - other than Corsica, of course - but they don’t seem to be included. Perhaps they have their own association): the Chausey archipelago, Brehat, Batz, Ouessant, Molene, Sein, the Glenan archipelago, Groix, Belle-Ile, Houat, Hoedic, Ile aux Moines, Arz, Yeu and Aix (Ouessant and Yeu are the most appealing destinations from my point of view). The islands vary from being just a few hundred metres from the mainland to a couple of hours’ out to sea, but all seem to be fairly easily reachable from ports on the mainland, and the main Iles du Ponant site has a lot of useful information for tourists, including details of how to access the islands.

- The Association of Danish Small Islands. Back when I was fifteen, I went on a three-month student exchange to Germany, which involves spending two weeks in the middle of winter in a holiday house on the north sea at Westerhever, which has given me a long-standing interest in the north sea and Baltic coasts; unfortunately for me, much of the Danish site is only in Danish, but it does have me rather longing to pay a visit to Anholt.

Islands closer to home: Mull and Iona

This is going to be a quick one because good lord, I am overworked this week; my boss is returning from Goa on Tuesday and everyone is dashing about to ensure that things are shipshape by the time he comes back.

But anyway: I am trying to figure out what to do for Easter; I initially had plans for a long weekend away with some friends, but it looks like that won’t be happening until later, and of course I hate to waste a couple of free days off work. I was thinking of jetting off to somewhere likely to have a bit of sun, but given the way that unscrupulous airlines hike their airfares at times people are most keen to travel, and given that I should really be saving my money for the Big Trips I am planning this year, I can’t really justify it.

So instead, I am thinking of indulging in some domestic tourism, and going and having a look at a Scottish island. There are a plethora to choose from, but given that I only have a few days, I’m discounting the more far-flung ones like Orkney and Shetland, and am instead concentrating on those closer to home - my most likely destination is Mull, with a sidetrip to Iona.

Will I freeze, or drown in a bog, given that Easter is in mid-March? Possibly. I will report back.

Island Month, Day Whatever: the San Blas Islands

As of 2008, I have officially been planning a trip to Central America for a decade. I am a little ashamed to admit that I am going to be 30 this year, and, despite my travel compulsion and my particularly obsessive interest in Latin America, I have never been there; initially the plan was to go in the summer of 1998, between my second and third years of university, but Central Asia ended up beckoning instead, and since then I have either been too broke to leave Europe, or too easily distracted from Latin America by my passionate interest in Africa, the Middle East and the Former Soviet Union. I’m clearly not going to make it there before I turn 30 (unless Cuba counts, which it doesn’t in my book; despite being Spanish-speaking, it’s firmly in the Caribbean), but I have decided: 2009 will be the year that I make it to Central America for at least a month, and to that end I have been reading up on the Lonely Planet Guide to Central America that I bought way, way back in the late 1990s, and which is still covered in the pencilled-scribbles of my 19-year-old self. 

Hence, the San Blas Islands, situated off Panama’s Atlantic coast. Central America’s Atlantic coast is studded with islands, like Belize’s Cayes or Honduras’s Bay Islands, but it’s the San Blas which have captured my interest the most, largely due to the Kuna Indians who live there, and who govern the islands as an autonomous province; according to this site (scroll down), they “maintain their own economic system, language, customs and culture with their distinctive dress, music, dance and legends”. For once, these islands aren’t a haven for scuba divers, as Kuna law forbids taking anything from the sea that a diver cannot reach with the air from their own lungs, though the snorkelling is said to be good. By the looks of it, the main thing to do on the islands is to learn about and experience Kuna culture, which sounds great to me. There are somewhere between 365 and 378 islands, depending on who you ask, stretching down towards the Colombian coast, though only 49 are inhabited; according to this site, the most interesting islands are Achutupu, Kagantupu and Coco Blanco.

In terms of getting there, while apparently it’s possible - if you have the time, and are starting from Colombia - to get there by boat from Colon, unfortunately (for those of us who hold that Flying Is Cheating) the most practical way of getting there is by air from Albrook Airport in Panama City; more details on Lonely Planet, here, but the main carriers are Aeroperlas and Air Panama; once there, it seems to be possible to island-hop by boat. Trip Advisor has some useful recommendations of accommodation here; there’s also a recommendation for a homestay (which would probably be my preferred option) here.

There’s an article about the San Blas on Lonely Planet, here, and one from the New York Times, here; Captain Bob (whoever he may be) has some photos of the San Blas Islands, and some pictures of the traditional molas (embroideries) made by the Kuna women here.

Un unusual weekend post…

…to say that, according to an email that’s just dropped into my inbox, Air Baltic are offering what appears to be an excellent deal on spa packages to Lithuania. The spa in question is the Vilnius Sana in Druskininkai, not far from Vilnius; the various packages mentioned in the email are:

- Relaxing spa, from 355 euro;

- Refreshing spa, from 379 euro;

- Romantic spa, from 391 euro; and

- Healthy spa from 726 euro.

Such is the nature of Air Baltic’s gnomic missives that there’s no information on what the different packages mean, but all of them apparently include direct Air Baltic flights, airport transfers, airport taxes, two nights accommodation in the spa resort, and the full spa package, which seems to be pretty good going.

More details here.

Blogroll, at long last.

Hey, check it out, over there on the sidebar: I’ve finally gone and got myself a blogroll!

I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that when my friend Marcia went and got herself a pop culture blog (yes, I am the same Jess who does Beverly Hills 90210 recaps over there; what can I say, my interests are diverse and, often, very shallow indeed), whereas it’s taken me a good four months to take the trouble to go and seek out other travel blogs that I should be reading. We backpackers and budget-travellers-by-choice are a snobbish lot, often adhering to strong views about the traveller/tourist divide, turning up our noses at destinations that have been “ruined” by mass tourism, liking nothing better than to turn up to a famous site and find no other foreigners there. (This is why travelling through Egypt, Jordan and Syria during the Lebanon war in 2006 was such a great idea.) While I try to rein in my own riskier-than-though, travel-snob tendencies as much as I can (which, erm, is probably not really that much), there is a large part of me that likes to believe I am the only person who has ever climbed a Meroe Pyramid, herded yaks on horseback, or, indeed, started a travel blog, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I am glad that I have finally got over myself a little, though, because there are some excellent travel blogs and travel sites out there. Vagabondish is possibly my favourite find so far; I may not agree with all of the articles posted there, it’s the sort of informative, interesting, varied and detailed travel-related ezine that I would have liked to create myself, were I not such a giant procrastinator. I’ve spent less time perusing Brave New Traveler (oh, how I long to add an extra ‘l’ in there; I am such an imperialist), but their feature on how to survive third world border crossings  is right up my alley, and so I have high hopes for the rest of the site. Start Backpacking has some interesting stories and good advice, as does Go Budget Travel, despite the slightly offputting design (though that may be the fault of my browser).

There are a couple of personal travel blogs included in my blogroll, though in general I’m avoiding trip-specific travel logs, unless they’re amazingly well-written, or written by someone I know; otherwise, they tend to spark off my travel-jealousy, much to my shame.

So: what else should I be reading? Where are the best travel stories, articles and tips to be found?

Island Month, Day 4: the Seychelles

After yesterday’s excursion to the windswept South Atlantic, I fancy fantasising about somewhere tropical again. Everyone already knows about the Seychelles, of course, but them I realised once I actually started thinking about it that I know very little of the country, other than as a place filled with 5* luxury resorts, generally frequented by honeymooners. SO what does the Seychelles have to offer, for those of us who can’t afford - or who aren’t interested in - being pampered at vast expense?

First things first, the Seychelles are a sovereign nation (with a very funky flag) in the Indian Ocean, north east of Madagascar; colonially, it was passed back and forth between France and Britain, leading to the official languages being French, English and Seychellois Creole. There are somewhere between 115 and 155 islands in the archipelago (depending on who you ask), with Mahe being the main island; 16 of the islands currently offer accommodation.

Seychelles Air flies there directly from London Heathrow, though according to cheapflights.co.uk, it’s possible to get there from Glasgow for under £500. Once you’re there, island-hopping is possible, by both ferry and air. In terms of actually being able to get information about the Seychelles, it’s pretty difficult to get away from the “luxury! Weddings! Honeymoons!” theme, but it is possible. Yes, we all know that the Seychelles are packed full of gorgeous beaches, but there are also two UNESCO World Heritage sites: Aldabra Atoll, which has 152,000 giant tortoises (!), and the Vallee de Mai Nature Reserve on Praslin Island, home of the coco de mer. The New Adventures website seems to offer some pretty good tips about the Seychelles, in terms of what’s available on various islands, and the best times of year to come, depending on what you’re looking for (predictably enough, featured activities include birdwatching, diving and other watersports; there’s also a Creole festival in October). Another suggested list of attractions is here, and the Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum has some interesting info (all to be taken with a pinch of salt, obviously; such is the nature of forums) from a backpacker pespective, here.

Accommodation’s obviously not hard to come by, and it does seem like there are non-luxury options available, which is nice. For keeping up with local news, the Seychelle Nation Newspaper’s available online, as is the official Seychelles website.

Island Month, Day 3: Tristan da Cunha

While it’s not quite in keeping with the stated point of Island Month - i.e. daydreaming about exotic and tropical locales, far far from windy, rainy Glasgow - you can’t really talk about islands without talking about one of the most remote inhabited islands there is, Tristan da Cunha. (There seems to be some debate over what exactly constitutes the most remote/isolated inhabited island in the world, though I’d say the fact that Tristan da Cunha only has a population of 250 - 300, and around 80 families counts for a lot.)

This’ll be a short blog entry, though, because, for such an interesting place, there’s remarkably little information available online. It was discovered by Portuguese explorer Tristao da Cunha in 1510, but he didn’t even land on the island; it’s now a British possession and has been since the 19th century. There are five islands in the group, but only one’s inhabited.

There’s some general historical and geographical information here, some more history here, and this seems to be a fairly comprehensive site (with info on other South Atlantic islands as well); there are also a series of Tristan-relevant links here, and the St Helena website has a Tristan da Cunha page here, with photos here. The Tristan Times also has a website, here.

But in terms of actual, practical information that would be of use to people wanting to travel there, there’s very little indeed. All the usual user-generated travel sites have indulged in their normal, irritating habit of having a page for Tristan da Cunha, which is utterly devoid of information (yes, I understand why they do this, but damn it’s annoying), with the exception of Virtual Tourist, which has a Tristan da Cunha page containing actual information.

By far the most useful site for the prospective visitor is the Tristan da Cunha Association’s website. The visits section offers information on:

- getting there. Which can be challenging, as there is no airport; you’re dependent on scheduled shipping and fishing boats from Cape Town, which don’t come by very often;

- accommodation, which is limited to homestays, basic guesthouses, and - if you’re lucky - huts owned by islanders; and

- things to see and do: volcanoes (including one that appeared out of nowhere in 1961, causing all residents to be evacuated to the UK), mountain hikes, boat trips to the uninhabited islands in the group, and rockhopper penguins.

Hmmm. Fascinating as it sounds, the fact that you’ve got to allow at least a month from Cape Town means that it’s not going to be on my immediate travel list for a while. Perhaps I shall wait until I am old and wealthy, and make sure I take along a lot of reading material.

Island Month, Day 2: the Dahlak Archipelago

I’ve had a long-standing interest in Eritrea (heh - where don’t I have a long-standing interest in?), owing largely to the pictures I’ve seen of Asmara (an architectural mix of traditional, Italian colonial, and art deco), and the existence of the Danakil Depression, the hottest place on earth, which I find fascinating and terrifying by turns. So, given my interest in random island groups, it makes sense that the Dahlak Archipelago would appeal.

In the Red Sea, off the Eritrean coast, reachable by boat charter from Massawa, if you’re looking for proper desert islands, the Dahlak Archipelago would certainly fit the bill. Only four of the islands are inhabited; the remaining 122 small islands are the preserve of sea birds, turtles and the occasional tourist (generally divers). According to this article, the islands were known in antiquity as sources of pearls and tortoiseshell, and were among the first parts of East Africa to convert to Islam - which would make sense, as the islands are a mere hop, skip and a jump from the Arabian Peninsula (and in fact used to belong to Yemen). 

The only place to stay appears to be the Luul Hotel on Dahlak Kabir, which also has a restaurant and seems to offer excursions to dive sites around the archipelago. There’s also information on diving itineraries around the archipelago here. I know it’s odd that I keep banging on about diving given that I don’t, in fact, dive, despite having been idly planning to take a PADI course since at least 1998, but having known friends to do a liveaboard diving holiday off the Sudanese coast, I’ve developed a mild obsession with diving the more untouched bits of the Red Sea, and the Dahlaks certainly fit the bill there.

A decent amount of information on the Dahlak Archipelago is available at Hans Mebrat’s page, here. Personal accounts seem to be the best way of getting information about the islands, as they - and Eritrea as a whole - don’t have much of a tourist industry or tourist infrastructure: Saagar writes about his experiences on Virtual Tourist, here; there’s another account on Travel Adventures, here; and there’s a diver’s perspective here (incidentally, a number of the other diving pages linked from that one are worth a look - I’m particularly impressed by anyone who’s dived Baikal, given how bloody freezing it was when I was there in early October).

Sadly, UK - Asmara flights seem to be quite pricy, around the £800-900 mark(though cheapflights.co.uk offers one fare from Glasgow to Asmara for £539, which is all right); it may be possible to get there cheaper via elsewhere in East Africa; it’s certainly possible to fly from the UK to Nairobi for under £400 (though not particularly advisable at present), and a few carriers, including Egyptair and the never-before-heard-of(-by-me) Nasair fly between Nairobi and Asmara. And ertra.com is the closest thing that I can find to an Eritrean tourism site.

Andaman Islands

January is properly starting to set in, and while the weather is not too bad, all things considered, I am becoming increasingly aware that I have no concrete plans to leave the country until May, and am starting to crave somewhere warm. To satisfy my continually itchy feet, I’m considering a brief weekend jaunt to France or Spain or Italy sometime in the next couple of months, but what I am really longing for is somewhere properly, uncomfortably hot, the like of which I haven’t experienced since I travelled through the Middle East in August/September 2006. So, since a great part of the purpose of this blog is to allow me to indulge my tendency to armchair travel, I am deeming January to be ISLAND MONTH at Hypermobility, hurrah.

Way way back when I was an undergraduate anthropology student, I remember thinking that it was perhaps not entirely random that many of the early social anthropologists chose to undertake their fieldwork in tropical paradises - Bronislaw Malinowski got to spend a couple of years kicking back on the Trobriand Islands, while Alfred Radcliffe-Brown chose to spend his time on the Andaman Islands instead. Trobriand Tourism has never really taken off, probably owing to the fact that they’re hard to get to, and the politically turbulent situation in Papua New Guinea (to which the islands belong) doesn’t help either - but the Andaman Islands have had a Guardian travel article written about them (with obligatory Bad Pun Title), so you know that they’ve arrived on the travel and tourism map.

Belonging to India, but physically and culturally closer to Burma, the Andaman Islands offer diving, colonial sites aplenty, gorgeous looking beaches, and, perhaps most interesting from my point of view, some really interesting tribes and cultures. And sea gypsies! Clearly, the Maldives are totally 2007; for 2008 the Andamans are where it’s at. Or something.

- You can fly directly (well, via India) from London Heathrow to Port Blair with Jet Airways. This site claims that it’s also possible to get there by ship, if you have the time.

- In terms of general information about things to see and do, this article on 4to40.com, and this one on smarttravelasia.com are both very informative indeed.

- For more Andaman-related information than you could possibly ever need (in terms of history, culture, etc.), go to www.andaman.org.

- And there are some general Andaman and Nicobar Island sites where you can stare at pretty photos with sad eyes here, here and here.

- Accommodation-wise, this place on Havelock Island looks both cheap(ish) and gorgeous, and is also vouched for my responsibletravel.com, so you can feel all smug and virtuous. It may or may not be the same place run by Barefoot India (who seem to offer various Andaman package options). There’s also the Wild Orchid and Silver Sand, both also on Havelock Island.

- This site seems to be pretty useful regarding island-hopping between the Thai islands in the Andaman Sea (i.e. not the Andaman Islands). There are various rumours that ferries or flights between Phuket and Bort Blair may exist (or may be going to exist in future), which would make a joint Thailand/Andaman Islands holiday an enticing prospect, but I can’t confirm or deny.

Edit: Another useful site is here.