Columns

It was raining when we left Amsterdam on our way to France in May 2003. I put the car on autopilot and drove south until the sun came out.

Is its prevention worse than the disease?

—by Chris Springer, Contributing Editor

“Crete” by Barry Unsworth (2004, National Geographic. ISBN 0792266439 — 170 pp., $20 hardcover).

Island paradise or hell on Earth? Three New Zealand judges apparently took the latter view as they sentenced six of Pitcairn island’s few male inhabitants to two to six years in prison for numerous rapes and assaults that took place over a 40-year period on the last remnant of the British empire in the South Pacific.

Dear Globetrotter:
Welcome to the 348th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

by Julie Skurdenis, part one of two

by Ed Kinney, part 4 of 6 on Spain

As reviewed previously, in April ’04 I traveled with six photographers on a 16-day tour with Close-Up Expeditions (800/457-9553 or www.cuephoto.com). Entitled “Spanish Explorer,” it began in Marseille, France, and ended in Granada, Spain.

In February a few years ago, a group of middle-aged novice travelers ventured to Costa Rica to tour Braulio Carrillo National Park, which rises and falls between cool, high mountains and low, torrid jungles, all of it washed by swift, curving rivers and waterfalls.

Unbeknown to them, this lovely, pristine region was a mosquito-infested area fraught with health perils. Eight of the group’s members contracted traveler’s diarrhea, four came down with typhoid fever and two were infected with malaria.

Recently, a sharp-eyed ITN reader booked a Holland America Line cruise to Alaska for 18 days, paying for herself and her roommate. Three weeks before the cruise, she received from the cruise line a puzzling document requiring her to sign and send back a preauthorization to hold $60 worth of credit per person per day for the cruise. For the two travelers, this added up to a substantial $2,160.

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 347th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.