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We travel frequently and always use the local SuperShuttle for travel to the airport. SuperShuttle always tries to get us to make a reservation for our return home. For a December ’02 trip, we did make a return reservation since we were flying back to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California; that regional airport closes at night, so we wanted to insure a trip home.
We took a trip to Machu Picchu, Peru, arranged through Analie Tours. The trip was delightful, but we felt Analie Tours was frightful.
Orient-Express Hotels is offering the “Orient-Express Private Jet Experience.” Flying out of the U.S. by private jet, travelers can design their own itinerary to any destination or choose from a portfolio of scheduled one-week itineraries to Europe and South America with fine hotels, ground transfers and guided tours.
The aircraft are not restricted to conventional routes or commercial airports and can fly at higher altitudes.
by Mairlyn Lutzker, Sunnyside, NY
Time does not change the ocean currents, and since its discovery, the Drake Passage, a turbulent body of water connecting the tip of Argentina to the waters off Antarctica, has been giving ships and their passengers a hard time.
As ITN went to press, the State Department had travel warnings on 26 destinations: Central African Republic, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Iraq, Israel/West Bank/Gaza, Indonesia, Haiti, Algeria, Libya, Colombia, Afghanistan, Côte d’Ivoire, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Nigeria, Lebanon, Sudan, Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, Kenya, Yemen, Burundi and Iran.
For details, call the State Department at 202/647-5225 or visit http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html.
According to the World Health Organization, 30 cases, including 18 deaths, of Nipah virus encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) were reported in the Faridpur district of Bangladesh from mid-March to the end of April. As a precaution, travelers should consider avoiding areas affected by the outbreak as well as symptomatic individuals living in those areas. Contact with wild or domestic animals should also be avoided.
Meningococcal disease has been reported this year in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Central African Republic and Chad. These and several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa form the “meningitis belt,” an area that extends from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal in the west and experiences frequent epidemics of meningococcal meningitis.
Peaks of serogroup A meningococcal disease occur regularly in the region during the dry season (December through June), with large-scale epidemics every eight to 12 years.
On Feb. 25, an emergency mass immunization campaign was announced in response to reports of confirmed cases of yellow fever in Liberia. As of March 9, a total of 39 suspect cases, including eight deaths, were reported from eight counties.
According to the World Health Organization, the potential for an epidemic exists because Liberia has recently emerged from 14 years of civil war, during which thousands of civilians have been displaced and the health-care infrastructure has been destroyed.
Beginning in January 2004, outbreaks of avian influenza A (H5N1), a serious viral infection, were reported among poultry in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Thailand and Viet-Nam. The virus was responsible for 34 reported human illnesses and 23 deaths in Viet-Nam and Thailand.
As of April 26, the Chinese Ministry of Health had reported a recent eight possible cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), with six in Bejing and two in Anhui Province in east-central China. Nearly 1,000 contacts of these patients were under medical observation, and some had been placed in medical isolation after they developed fever.
To date, all diagnosed cases and cases under investigation have been linked to chains of transmission involving close personal contact with an identified case. There is no evidence of wider transmission in the community.