Haiti

Today I volunteered at the Red Cross Bay Area (redcrossbayarea.org) to answer phones and accept donations to help in the Haiti Relief Fund. I was glad to get a number of calls from people wanting to verify that the texting program to donate $10.00 was legitimate. It is. For those of you who might want to donate $10.00, here are the details:

You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti.

During our four hour shift our team of five people accepted and processed over $4000.00 in donations. The amounts varied between $10.00 to $1000.00. We also answered questions, gave suggestions and yes, verified that the Red Cross is behind the above texting program. Keep in mind the American Red Cross does not accept food, clothing, water, or medicine, as they purchase those immediate items they need. The International Red Cross has people on site in Haiti.

If you are interested in learning about ways to donate time and tangible goods other, I recommend http://www.interaction.org/ to learn about the more than 160 humanitarian organizations represented at the website.

Since I am a regular volunteer for the Red Cross Bay Area team, I will be back manning the phones next week.

Benefactor of random kindness - Christ Church, New Zealand

Thanksgiving 2006 - New Zealand and Tahiti

We loved New Zealand. I was (am) ready to move there. Any place that has more sheep than people is my kind of place. This was a trip with two major locations - first stop: New Zealand for 10 days and next, a stop over in Tahiti for a few days.

The New Zealand trip was driving through the North Island, crossing over via ferry to the South Island, and flying back from Christ Church to Auckland to catch our flight to Tahiti. About a week before we left for New Zealand, I booked our inter island flight to catch the Air Tahiti Nui flight to Papeete, Tahiti.

We arrived at the Christ Church Airport along with a large group of people. We were in plenty of time for our 9:00 flight, checked our luggage, got our boarding passes, and settled down to wait to board. When I checked the gate posting, I noticed there wasn't a flight for 9:10 AM. I checked and found our boarding passes were for PM and not AM. I rechecked my schedule and damn!!! I made a huge booking mistake. I booked us for a PM and not AM flight. This was bad, very bad. And it was going to get worse.

We needed to get to Auckland (domestic) to catch our international flight to Tahiti which departed at 2:30 PM.

I returned to the ticket counter and explained I needed to change my flights and found out that all of New Zealand was in a tissy because U2 was holding a weekend concert in Auckland. Every flight was booked, in fact overbooked. We were pretty much screwed. The entire journey to Tahiti depended on that connection - if we missed it, we would not be able to have our 4 days there.

I started to talk to every carrier that flew out of Christ Church to either Auckland or Tahiti. About one hour later we came up with one possible solution flying first class to Tahiti to the tune of $5000.00 PER TICKET. The trip to Tahiti was already paid for and it was either spend more money to enjoy it, or just kiss the trip off (along with all the prepaid arrangements). My plan was to ask for a discount on the first class tickets. I approached the Air New Zealand counter again to plead my case.

The Air New Zealand counter had a change of staff by this time and I approached the guy with my spiel. I humbly started, "This is not Air New Zealand's fault, it is entirely my own mistake, but..." I did not even get to the part about negotiating a discount for first class tickets. The staff member asked for my flight schedule and disappeared. After about 10 minutes he came back and that is when truly a miracle happened. He handed us two boarding passes for the next flight out of Christ Church to Auckland. I called Air Tahiti Nui and explained that we had a very tight connection (going from domestic to international terminals, which is a totally different building), get our boarding passes, get through security, pay airport tax, and get on the flight. We did not even expect that our luggage would be on the same flight - it was that crazy of a connection.

The flight to Auckland is a blur, we ran from the domestic to the international terminals and fortunately Air Tahiti Nui reopened the counter to give us our boarding passes and had an escort ready to speed us through the security, pay for the airport tax, etc. And of course the departing gate was the last one in the airport.

I collapsed in my seat (we were the last ones to board) and finally, finally started to breathe normally. My mistake nearly cost us, at most, $10,000.00 and at least we might have lost our $5000.00 we had paid in advance for the Tahiti trip. But the miracle was that some kind person figured out a way to get us past all those U2 fans and get on our 2:30 PM flight (which of course was on time that day). I like Bono and his lads, but I really LOVE that guy with Air New Zealand!

Oh, we had a great time in both countries. And our luggage did get on our plane to Tahiti. Amazing!

St. Maartin - the rest of the story

Before moving to other airports and travel experiences, we have to finish St. Maartin.

There is a very popular bar on the beach called "Sunset Beach Bar" - yes, the sunsets are lovely, but really the location is ideal for watching planes landing at the St. Maartin airport at sunset. The photo above may appear to have been photo-shopped, but it isn't (I did not take this photo and pulled it down from the web - it wasn't with a copyright, so I think I am OK. BTW - our photos were too dark to post here.) The beach and the runway are truly this close.

If you still think the photo is a mock up - please check out YouTube for videos of airplanes landing or just Google St. Maarten airport landings - many travelers have posted some great photos and videos.

The photo of the two Kir Royales (top photo) were taken at nearby (to the airplane landings) restaurant at sunset. What is and how to make Kir Royale? - one part creme de cassis and five parts champagne. I travel coach so I can drink wonderful concoctions like Kir Royale. Cheers!

Why am I blogging?

I kicked off this BLOG by jumping right into the Saba and St. Maarten island stories from our travels, but I did not explain why I am doing the BLOG. I have been fortunate to travel to many parts of the world. Most of it has been in association with business travel, but recently it has been personal travel.

Why do I travel? Because I agree with Benjamin Disraeli that Travel teaches tolerance. When I travel to new places I invest time to study the history, current events, cuisine, and language before we embark on our journey. I do not want to be a visitor of this world just ticking off the cool places to go. I want to experience and understand as best as possible the host country I am visiting. It is common for me to continue my research even when I return home through additional reading and cooking the cuisine.

To save money I book my own arrangements but have made some mistakes along the way. We have been really lucky to recover from these errors. In fact sometimes the oops situations have been the most positive and memorable parts of our journeys. I hope it might be valuable to other travelers to learn of our little surprises along the way. Traveling through various countries via airports, I have my favorites and some that have ahhh shocked me. Example: arriving at the New Delhi airport in India at 2:30 AM we learned that the luggage handlers might (and did) decide to go home without unloading all the luggage. Hmmm, that was annoying. After traveling from San Francisco via Dubai for about 24 hours we now had to deal with luggage issues in a smoke filled airport (more about the "smoke filled" issues in future postings about India).

Being aware of the negative carbon impact we make with air travel I do other things to try to compensate. I want to share ideas about recycling, free cycling, and repurposing items to prevent our landfills with perfectly usable items. An excellent URL to calculate your carbon footprint is at http://www.conservation.org/act/live_green/carboncalc/Pages/default.aspx?gclid=CJ3N3pKli58CFSgtawodhjs1Zw. Check it out and learn. I will share some of my actions to save our planet along with this BLOG and hope you, dear reader, will contribute to these ideas, too.

Saba Airport - Thrill of a life time

I love to travel.

I have traveled first class. And I have traveled business class, but usually a large multinational company has paid the fare. For my personal travel, I go coach. Not that I like the smaller seats, the awful meals, and smelly seats, I just would rather spend my money on things that I value more - such as opera tickets, champagne, and spontaneous side trips.

While vacationing in St. Maarten in the Caribbean last Thanksgiving (2008), my husband and I quickly tired of dodging pot holes and construction cranes on the island and opted to go off to the small island of Saba. Saba is known for having the highest point in the Netherlands Antilles (and The Kingdom of The Netherlands). Mount Scenery is 2,828 feet above sea level and we figured the view of the Caribbean from that vantage point would be incredible.

The quick flight to Saba was only about 10 minutes, but the real thrill was the landing strip (see above photo). We came to find out that the Saba airport has the shortest commercial runway in the world. Yikes!

Mount Scenery - Saba Island

Climbing 2,828 feet does not sound too tough. The ascending stairs are uneven and no rhythm could be set. It was walk, walk, step, step, walk, step, walk, walk, walk, walk, step --- I like rhythm and it unsettled me to climb these crazy steps. Oh, did I mention the foggy drizzle added to the challenge? But I was determined to see the Caribbean from Mount Scenery.

Typically it takes people about 2 hours to climb to the top, but it took us 3.5 hours because I am also wee bit chubby. I did not care. I made it. And the trip was worth it. The top view (top photo) is the reward of our efforts.

Returning to St. Maarten via the Saba Airport was equally thrilling (that short air strip) - albeit with a 4 hour delay. Next time we will stay on Saba and skip St. Maarten all together. St. Maarten is too commercial and crowded for our taste.