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For our 30th wedding anniversary, my wife, Janie, decided she wanted to tour the Galápagos Islands. After quite a bit of research on the Internet, we booked with Galápagos Travel (Aptos, CA; 800/969-9014). We could not have chosen a better organization.
Our 11-day trip, March 17-28, 2011, cost $5,200 each (not including international air to Ecuador) plus $418 each for the round-trip flight from Quito to the islands. We flew home from Quito on the 30th.
My friend Eileen Mine and I took the 13-day “Eastern Europe & the Black Sea” river cruise with Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/959-0405), May 1-13, 2010. Including round-trip air from Raleigh-Durham airport, it cost $3,564 apiece.
Aboard the River Concerto, we sailed over 1,100 miles on the Danube, with visits in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and, finally, Romania.
I took the 14-day cruise “God Created the Kornati Islands,” aboard the 350-passenger Aegean Odyssey, with Voyages to Antiquity (Ft. Lauderdale, FL; 877/398-1460).
The trip, Aug. 23-Sept. 7, 2010, was booked through TravLtips (Flushing, NY; 800/872-8584). (TravLtips, known for booking freighter cruises, has started booking cruise liners but only for cruises of two weeks or more.)
I have some observations about the security we experienced during our May 4-24, 2011, cruise from Dubai to Italy, including a transit of the Suez Canal and port calls in Oman, Jordan, Egypt and Israel. My husband and I were on the “Three Seas Adventure” aboard Seven Seas Voyager of Regent Seven Seas Cruises (Ft. Lauderdale, FL; 877/505-5370).
I have a heart condition and need to use a wheelchair in airports.
by Sondra Markman, Edison, NJ
The Department of State warns of the risk of travel to Côte d’Ivoire. Although Abidjan is considerably calmer since the arrest of former president Gbagbo, law and order have yet to return to all of the city’s neighborhoods and some parts of the countryside.
Crimes such as mugging, robbery, burglary and carjacking pose risks for visitors in Abidjan. Be careful when stopped in heavy traffic or at roadblocks, due to the threat of assault and/or robbery, and avoid travel outside of the city after dark.
Normally peaceful Senegal was rocked in June by several riots in the capital of Dakar and other towns. There have been demonstrations against government corruption and the constitutional changes proposed by President Wade, and when protesters attacked government buildings on June 29, military troops were sent in.
Another riot occurred on June 26 when hundreds of Muslim youth burned a Jehovah’s Witness temple and then a bar in an unusual act of religious extremism.
In January 2011 the people of southern Sudan voted in favor of separating from Sudan and forming an independent state; this was to take effect on July 9, 2011. Leading up to this, there were several armed clashes between forces loyal to the government of Sudan and forces loyal to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.
The capital of Nigeria, Abuja, had a curfew instituted in June after a series of bomb attacks by the Islamic sect Boko Haram. Bomb attacks at a police headquarters killed eight, another bombing of a beer garden killed 25 people and a car bomb killed 10. In the northeastern city of Maiduguri, 14 were killed in attacks on police stations and a church.
The militant sect Boko Haram aims for Islamic rule in Nigeria and targets “all political and social activity associated with the West.”