05
My friend, Patricia, and I traveled to Peru’s Amazon Basin during the high-water season one March. We found the surroundings so foreign that adjectives don’t suffice. It’s easier to use comparisons: tarantulas the size of cantaloupes, a rodent the size of a sheepdog, a termite nest the size of a beer keg, a monkey the size of a teacup, piranhas with teeth as sharp as, well, piranha teeth. . .
I traveled to Belize in December of 2006 for an exciting 8-night “Jungle Safari Package” booked through Belize Jungle Dome (Mile 47, Western Highway, Banana Bank, Belmopan, Cayo District, Belize; phone +501 822-2124, fax +501 822-2155 or visit www.belizejungledome.com).
When making inquiries several months earlier, I received immediate e-mail responses from Karen Turner, the manager, whereas most other jungle lodges did not bother ever e-mailing me back.
I was looking for an international cell phone to rent for my summer 2006 trip to Romania and the prices were outrageous. After a lot of research to find the best buy, I discovered Mobal Communications’ GSM world phone (New York, NY; 888/888-9162 or www.mobal.com).
There’s one flat fee of just $49, there are no monthly charges and you OWN the cell phone. You can keep it in your desk drawer until your next international trip, and you pay only for the actual time you spend on the phone.
I purchased a Mobal Communications phone to use on a trip to the Middle East, March 11-April 17, 2006. We started in Jordan and went on a ship through the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean.
When I got my bill, I noticed that some of the calls from the middle of the trip, around Egypt and the Mediterranean, cost over $5 a minute — the price we normally complain about when we call from hotel rooms overseas.
With quality tour guides, land arrangements and itineraries plus value pricing and intensive mail solicitation, it comes as no surprise that Vantage Deluxe World Travel is enjoying popularity.
An impossible situation occurred in September ’06 while I was booking a February ’07 air trip. My wife, Tina, and I would fly Delta from New York to Amsterdam, then take KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to Hong Kong, take a cruise, then fly out of Bangkok to Amsterdam and back to New York.
After much difficulty, we were able to hold two business-class tickets through Delta’s SkyMile program using KLM. However, we were short 78,000 frequent-flyer miles, so we wished to transfer 78,000 Starpoints from our Starwood American Express program.
by Harlan Hague, Stockton, CA (first of two parts, continue to part 2)
Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.
This month’s winner is DON WRIGHT of Newberg, Oregon:
One of my favorite London museums is the Guildhall Art Gallery (Gresham St., Guildhall Yard, London, EC2P 2EJ, U.K.; phone 020 7332 3700 or fax 020 7332 3342). This gallery is one of the best-kept secrets in London. I discovered the Guildhall while reading a newspaper article on the tube!
My wife and I have traveled to much of the world, but what stumped us was how to go by air from Georgetown, Guyana, to Paramaribo, Suriname. When we plugged the flight into the usual search engines, no answers appeared. Somehow we knew that an airline called META existed and flew, or once did fly, to that destination, but we couldn’t find it online.
We purchased BWIA tickets for a January ’07 round-trip flight, Miami-Trinidad-Georgetown, at a cost of $522 each. (On Jan. 1, 2007, BWIA became Caribbean Airlines.)