Air Travel

I took the 15-day tour “Land of the Golden Fleece,” June 24-July 8, 2006, with Explore (booked through Adventure Center, 1311 63rd St., Ste. 200, Emeryville, CA 94608; 800/227-8747, www.adventurecenter.com).

I would highly recommend the 10-day “Irish Explorer” coach tour from CIE Tours International (Morristown, NJ). The overall tour, Sept. 1-10, 2007, was excellent and a good value for the money. It cost $1,568 per person plus $867 air from Los Angeles.

We had a direct flight to Dublin. Kudos to Aer Lingus, as the toilets were cleaned several times during the long flight and at each visit the facilities were as clean as at the start of the flight.

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 the winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is PEGGY PARKER of Milwaukie, Oregon:

In the letter titled “Economy Class Syndrome” (July ’07, pg. 16), the reader’s recounting of her husband’s pulmonary embolism demonstrates the dangers of the airline’s present policy of cramming more and more people into less and less space on their flights. One of my coworkers died of a pulmonary embolism last November immediately following a flight to the Philippines.

We were booked to take United Airlines flight No. 899 from Los Angeles to Narita, Japan, on Oct. 16, 2006. We checked our luggage, then checked in for boarding. Just before boarding, it was announced that the flight was overbooked and that anyone who would take Singapore Airlines flight SQ11 a few hours later would receive an incentive credit of $400. We volunteered for the offer and felt lucky to be among the few people to benefit from such an offer.

My wife and I took a great 2-week tour, “Guatemala: Land of Eternal Spring,” April 17-30, 2007, led by an exceptional director, the best we have had in our many years of travel. Sergio Garcia (not the Sergio Garcia), a full-blooded Maya, speaks excellent English and is well educated and extremely knowledgeable about his country and its extraordinary culture.

This tour was with Odysseys Unlimited (Watertown, MA), an agency that emphasizes in small-group travel. There were 14 in our group.

by Philip Wagenaar, M.D.

After arriving in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on an Oceania Cruises ship, departing from the nearby Ministro Pistarini International Airport (or EZE, in Ezeiza) for the U.S. in February ’07 was an eye-opener.

The queues, darling, the queues!

Let me count for you the ways you queue (line up) at EZE:

1) Pre check-in security check — tickets and documents, basically, and a luggage chain-of-evidence interrogation. Chugalug your water and toss the bottle.

2) Check-in — the usual boarding passes and baggage tags routine.

A coincidence — as the July 2007 edition of ITN arrived, I was completing a survey of comments on Grand Circle Travel’s (Boston, MA; 800/248-3737, www.gct.com) “Heart of Italy” trip, which we took May 20-July 7, 2007. I was, therefore, interested to read the reader’s letter “Add in Tour’s Extra Costs” (page 28) about virtually the same trip taken the year before. Both were Extended Vacations, the only differences being a few tweaks in schedule and visits.

My partner, Pamela, and I decided to support the work of Earthwatch (3 Clock Tower Place, Ste. 100, Box 75, Maynard, MA 01754; phone 800/776-0188 or 978/ 461-0081, www.earthwatch.org), a wonderful organization which allows laypeople to volunteer to work with scientists on expeditions all over the world. I had participated in prior expeditions in Nepal and South Africa, and we had decided to join a research project in Botswana.