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.

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.

Budapest redux

So, I went to Budapest!

It was largely awesome, the only negative points being the fact that it was absolutely freezing, and the fact that almost everything shut down from xmas eve afternoon until the day after xmas. Still, despite all this, we managed to cram quite a lot in:

- The Dohany Street Synagogue, with its attached Jewish museum and Holocaust memorial. A really beauiful building on its own merits, and the museum had a lot of very interesting exhibits, as well as a rather disturbing room about the Budapest Ghetto and the local events during the Holocaust, including the massacre of staff and patients at the Jewish hospital. It put a different perspective on the streets nearby, which used to be the Ghetto.

Also, the Nelson Kavehaz, almost next door, does excellent hot chocolate and lovely scrambled eggs with sausage and onion. Mmm. The hot chocolate was so good that we went there once on our way into the synagogue, and then again on the way out.

- The Terrorhaza, the museum of the Terror. While I did get the frustrating feeling that I was missing quite a lot owing to my lack of Hungarian language ability, the way that the musum is set out - almost like an art installation - is effective and affecting enough to make an enormous impression, despite the limited information available in English (there were information sheets in English available in almost all the rooms, but many of the displays weren’t labelled in anything in Hungarian, and some of the rooms didn’t have information sheets, including one of the most interesting ones, which appeared to be built out of ubber replicas of bars of soap). The way it’s set out means that you start on the second floor and work your way down, and the bit that sticks in my mind most is getting the pitch dark and excruciatingly slow lift down to the basement, in which is screened an interview describing how the regime hanged people.

- The Hungarian National Museum, which we found almost by accident on Boxing Day, and which turned out, by some small miracle, to be a) open, b) free, and c) warm. Also, very interesting indeed. I have a bit of a thing for Hungarian history, obviously.

Other than that, we just did a lot of walking about, something that Budapest is perfect for, and our apartment was ideally placed (we were staying in the Harsfa apartment, which was largely awesome, aside from the leaky shower; very cunningly set out, and perfect size for two people) on the Pest side. We largely missed the Christmas Market (though thankfully we were in time to get some giant cheesy pretzels), and spent much of our time walking through eerily deserted snowy streets and squares, which was rather magic in itself.

All my hard work in finding vegetarian restaurants for the sake of my vegetarian boyfriend nearly came to naught, as most places were shut between xmas and new year; however, we did make it to Vegetarium on our first night, which had an extensive menu, excellent food and good beer, and we would have gone back if we could. The rest of the time we survived on indifferent sushi from a nearby Japanese restaurant, and frozen pizzas from our local supermarket over xmas when all restaurants were shut. Oh, and cake: Gerbeaud, of course, was excellent, if rather crowded; Central Kavehaz did a great Esterhazy cake; and the Gerloczy Cafe saved our arses by being open on xmas itself, when we’d just come back from a lengthy walk up to the Var in Buda, and my feet were numb with cold. The pub right next to our apartment was somewhat frightening, but fundamentally decent, serving cheap beer and allowing us to meet some of the more colourful locals (though I did lose my gloves there).

Pictures are slowly being uploaded on my flickr page, but aside from that, I am up against a novel-related deadline, so hypermobility is officially on hiatus until 2008. Happy new year, and all of that; see you on the other side! x

Close to home travel

I’ve spent the past two weekends training around the country, which has been nice. The weekend before last I went down to London with GNER, who…and OK, I just went to link to GNER, only to find that the east coast rail route (my preferred means of travelling between London and Glasgow) has now been taken over by National Express. I was going to complain about GNER’s ridiculous wifi pricing (it was something like £2.95 for half an hour and £9.95 for 24 hours, so I bought the latter, thinking I could use up the rest of the hours on my return journey, only to find that the 24 hours have to be used consecutively. Even though it is impossible to be on a train for 24 hours consecutively within the UK. And they booted me off after two hours anyway; my rage was palpable), but now it is irrelevant, even though I have still done it in those parentheses back there. Anyhow, hopefully National Express’s services will be better.

Anyhow, the reason that I mention it is because I keep taking the east coast line, even though it’s longer, because the views between Berwick and Durham (ish) are so lovely, and I don’t get to spend enough time looking at the sea, in general. I really should spend some time in that part of the world - I’ve only ever been to Newcastle to catch a ferry to Hamburg, and have never been to any of the coastal areas between there and Whitby (which is lovely), and I have a hankering to visit Lindisfarne and Durham. So, yes.

And then last weekend I was off to Aviemore and Grantown-on-Spey for a friend’s birthday celebrations. It is possible that December is not the best time to visit the Highlands, but the scenery in the area was very impressive, all snowy and frosted, and there was a nice xmas market in Aviemore, complete with Ubiquitous Samba Band. Tragically I missed the part of the weekend that involved visiting the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, but perhaps I will go back in the summer, possibly on my way to taking the ferry to Orkney, Shetland and the Faroes. (NB: this is not a trip that is more vaguely considered than planned, though it may happen if finances/timings make next summers’ travel extravaganza impossible.) We stayed in the Ben Mhor hotel, which was perfect for our needs, even down to its xmas disco on the Saturday night. Also, Grantown-on-Spey offers excellent Bangladeshi food. Who knew?

Comments redux

So often the comments of this blog end up as an endless travel-bore conversation between me and JEB, which suits me fine - since we met, way back in August 1998 in Fatima’s, Maputo, he has been the only person I have ever known to be as obsessed by travel as I am, which helps me to feel like less of a freak. He’s also a mine of interesting and useful travel information, especially as he’s been to a hell of a lot more places than I have. From recent comments, he’s pointed me in the direction of:

- Brussels Airlines, which used to be Sabena, but has now rebranded and offers a number of exciting destinations including Burundi, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone;

- Atlantic Airways: the Faroe Islands‘ very own airline! I am very excited about the routes from Aberdeen to the Faroes (via Billund, Denmark, I think), and also the fact that Narsarsuaq, Greenland, is one of their offered destinations.

- Ever heard of KD-Avia, Kaliningrad’s airline? I certainly hadn’t, but if you ever fancy a jaunt to Russia’s only exclave, it offers direct flights to London Gatwick, not to mention connecting flights to all sorts of Russian destinations.

Furthermore, for those wanting to ensure they don’t get stuck in the Maldives in the monsoon, or unable to land in the Faroes due to unceasing rain and fog:

- The somewhat idiosyncratic but comprehensive World Climate; or

- The BBC’s magical weather centre, on which I used to spend many a miserable hour desperately refreshing the Khartoum forecast in the hopes the temperature would drop below 40.

And finally, on the subject of tours:

- Plattie pointed me towards Explore, which offer a decent variety of Libya tours, which apparently straddle the divide between luxurious and unaffordable, and gap student drink-fests; and

- JEB linked to Undiscovered Destinations, which doesn’t cover Libya, but does cover Sao Tome and Principe, which remains one of my low-key, niggling travel obsessions.

Yotel

 I never got round to mentioning the Gatwick Yotel, did I? In short, it not only lived up to, but exceeded my rather wild expectations. Accessible from the Gatwick concourse, it’s staffed by friendly (and yes, I admit it, attractive) Spanish men; it’s clean and quiet and amazingly convenient, and the rooms are amazing: very comfortable (single) beds (they’re lofted up, so may not be great for those scared of heights), a television with seemingly unlimited DVD options (I didn’t switch this on, as I was there to sleep, but it was good to know it was there), and a wee bathroom with a gigantic shower and specially formulated shower gel. I checked in around nine, slept from ten until half past four and was checked in for my 6.10am flight by around five; I arrived in Glasgow bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and was able to do a full day’s work. All that for £45! Highly, highly recommended, and I’m very excited to see that they’ll be opening in Heathrow and Schiphol soon (not that I ever fly through Schiphol, but again, it’s nice to know it’s there). I’m slightly afraid that once word gets out they’re going to be swamped and it’ll be impossible to get a booking, but that doesn’t stop me from promoting it like crazy, as it’s awesome.

Here’s me in my pod:

More Yotel photos on my flickr account, here.

***

In other news, I thought they were just putting up early xmas lights, but it seems that I have in fact just missed Glasgow’s Radiance festival of light. Oops. I’ve got to say, though, that Glasgow does xmas lights better than any other city I’ve known: this weekend just gone is the one year anniversary of my first ever visit to Glasgow, and I fell in love with it as soon as I walked past the Gallery of Modern Art, looked up, and saw this:

(From infovore.org.)

St Petersburg

Oh, the rage - I just did a big huge update here and then IE crashed and it was lost, lost forever. So in short:

 - Admittedly I did not initially get the point of St Petersburg, which I blame on all those St Petersburg enthusiasts banging on about how amazing it is in comparison to Moscow, thereby inflating my expectations. By my second day, however, wandering about by the canals and along Nevsky Prospekt, I was definitely feeling the love, particularly given the sun had come out and my hands were defrosting.

- I stayed in the Azimut Hotel, which did the job: cheap, fairly central, and with a great view from its 18th-floor restaurant. While the staff were not exactly friendly, at least they didn’t act as if I’d deeply offended them and they’d never forgive me, which was novel.

- The Hermitage. Yes, yes, I know, everyone bangs on about the Hermitage in a deeply annoying way, but it really is that amazing, as much for its architecture as for its art (which frankly I found overwhelming to the point of my brain shutting down completely). Also, it has an internet cafe, and really, what more can one ask of a gallery?

- The Anthropology and Ethnography Museum, which likes to pretend it is all respectable and upstanding and its visitors are inspecting its exhibitions of Japanese costumes with fascination, whereas in reality everyone is dashing through the halls in search of the Kunstkamera, Peter the Great’s ghoulish collection of stuffed, deformed human foetuses and the like. Fascinating stuff, at least for sickos like me, comparable to the brilliant Medical History Musum in Riga, which has as its piece de resistance Dr Demihov’s two-headed dog (scroll down).