Money, Money, Money

~ I’ve had one of those days where all I did was pay out my hard earned cash, and got very little in ‘return’ to show for it. Well, that’s how it feels, anyway.

You see, today I bought travel insurance for my upcoming trip ($757.00), and paid for a couple of nights accommodation in a Super 8 Hotel near Los Angeles international airport (US$132.56). In return for my $889.56 I got a couple of electronic receipts, and documents spelling out the numerous terms and conditions governing my purchases.

Quite frankly, it didn’t seem like a fair return to me.

That’s one of the problems with travel. You seem to spend weeks, if not months, paying out large sums of money before you see any actual return on your investment. So far I have paid out $5,427.00 towards my trip and I haven’t even left the house yet!

I’m trying valiantly to stem a rising tide of panic which in my worst case scenario sees me flying out of Australia without any money left in my account to enjoy my travels. Of course, I will have enough, but when you are constantly forking out for tickets, insurance, accommodation, and pre-booked tours and such, departure time can seem like a long way off, and your wallet begins to look very thin.

Add to this the constant worry of watching the world’s financial markets rise and fall like a kite caught in a hurricane, and endless calculations on just how much more (or less) the Australian dollar will buy each day, and I know exactly why I don’t feel anywhere near excited enough about my approaching departure.

I console myself with the thought that with a month still to go before I fly out, I have pretty much made all my major travel expenditures except for any day to day living expenses I will have to deal with.

Roll on June 29!

Click here to see The (Real) Cost of Travel...

Denmark Dolphin Killing Festival

~ I'm not big on boycotts. But today I became aware of a ‘festival’ so bizarre and disgraceful that I think the country that hosts it, deserves to be boycotted until the event is stopped.

The event in question is the annual pilot whale/dolphin killing festival which takes place in the Faroe Islands. The islands, sometimes Faeroe Islands, Faroe(s), or Faeroes are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland.

The atrocious slaughter you see depicted in the image illustrating this post, has been practiced since at least the 10th century, with around 1,000 creatures killed annually in the “grindadráp” (whale hunt) typically occurring during summer months.

Not surprisingly, the hunting of pilot whales/dolphins by residents of the Faroe Islands has long been a subject of controversy, and for good reason.

Although the International Whaling Commission enacted a ban on commercial whaling in 1986, pilot whales seem to be exempt because technically they are members of the dolphin family. To compound the problem, the Faroe Islands is one of the parts of the world where the IWC's rules still allow for subsistence hunting of such cetaceans.

As usual, supporters of the hunt maintain that the practise of killing pilot whales is "an age-old communal, non-commercial hunt aimed at meeting the community's need for whale meat and blubber." They also claim the animals are dealt with so quickly that their pain is brief, and that whale meat accounts for a quarter of the Faroe Islander's annual meat consumption.

Conservationists, on the other hand charge that the hunts, which take hundreds of whales at a time, are barbaric and pointless; that "the practice is outdated, cruel and unnecessary for a place with one of the highest standards of living in Europe." As if that is not enough, most of the whales go to waste - either being left on the beach to rot or thrown back to sea after they are killed.

While the Scandinavian countries have long been on my list of regions to visit, I for one will never visit Denmark, the Faroe Islands, or Greenland while this atrocious practice continues.

Visit this site for more images and links to videos which show this barbaric event in all its gruesome detail.

Training For Travel (Again)

~ Yesterday, I caught a train into the centre of Adelaide. Hardly a remarkable event given the everyday nature of the task. However it soon dawned on me that all transport systems are not created equal, and the transport system in dear little Adelaide is probably the least equal of all the major cities in Australia.

The reason for catching the train was so I could start getting used to the idea of not having my own motor vehicle to speed me from point A to point B, in a convenient and timely manner. You see, in ten days I fly to Melbourne for three weeks to house sit for the same people I house sat for in January. While in Melbourne I will be relying on that city’s extensive network of trams to get me from Fitzroy North into the city centre (and home again). And when I hit New York in July, I will be using the subway system there to navigate my way quickly from Washington Heights to downtown Manhattan.

Unfortunately, Adelaide is not Melbourne or Manhattan. As a result, the transport system here is nowhere near as frequent as the ones found in those two cities. Apart from the rush hour, here the trains run every half hour or so, and at night about once an hour. On weekends the trains again run about once an hour.

It stands to reason that if you are going to use the train system here, it helps to have a timetable for the line servicing your suburb, since if you miss one train you might have to wait up to an hour for the next one! In Melbourne and Manhattan, it doesn’t seem to matter that much if you miss your train/tram when you know another one will be along in 10-15 minutes. When the transport system is that frequent, you can pretty much dispense with timetables. Not so in Adelaide. Luckily I only had to wait for 20 minutes or so for the ride into town, but that was more than enough (and yes, I do now have a timetable for the Outer Harbor line which passes close to my home).

Still it’s good practise for world travel. It is easy to take modern transport systems for granted, even one as intermittent as Adelaide’s. But once you start travelling from country to country, using public transport becomes as much a part of the experience and adventure as anything else you might do. Especially when the signage and timetables (if they exist at all), are in a language you cannot speak – let alone read.

Come to think of it, this is as good a place to bear in mind this quote from Clifton Fadiman: "When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable."