Photo: Susan Hack

In yet another climate-related disaster, the Save the Elephants research facility and its sister Elephant Watch Safari Camp, both located in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, have been completely destroyed by unexpected flooding of the Ewaso Ng'iro River, along with seven other neighboring safari lodges.

On March 4, at approximately 5am, “a wall of water akin to a tsunami surged through Elephant Watch Camp, catching tourists and staff unawares and sweeping away tents and facilities,” STE said in a statement. “Camp owner Oria Douglas-Hamilton and guests managed to escape to safety by climbing to higher ground.” The same flood hit and decimated Save the Elephants’ research facility downriver. Researchers and staff there managed to drive to safety, salvaging some computers and cameras, but the flash flood washed away key research data, including more computers and GPS tracking collars, while beds, tents, and other camp infrastructure were submerged in water and mud.”

I happened to have spent a week in Samburu this past January on a reporting assignment, and I’m heartsick now to think of the setback, not just for STE and EWC staff but for elephants and tourism in Samburu.

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Photo: Reuters

Over one week after a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, destroying the capital of Port au Prince and leaving tens of thousands dead or homeless, rescue and recovery work remains spotty.  Here is Truth.Travel's coverage of post-earthquake Haiti as well as earlier features and blog posts from Condé Nast Traveler.

Miracle in Haiti: A Brother and Sister Rescued
Video: An 8 year old boy and his 10 year old sister are rescued by the Americans and brought to an Israeli Defense Force Field Hospital.
by Tim Peters

Haiti: Getting In, Getting Around
"I want to go. I want to show solidarity with my Haitian friends. I want to observe the extent of the damage and see how people are behaving, with my own eyes."
by Amy Wilentz
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 20, 010

Voices from the Hell of Haiti
Video: A family pleads for the rest of the world to not forget the Haitian people
by Marc Asnin
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010

Eat Out to Help Haiti
Restaurants nationwide are donating profits to organizations helping Haiti
by Mollie Chen
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010

A Tale of Two Hotels in Haiti
A writer recalls her stays in Port au Prince's Hotel Montana and Hotel Oloffson
by Amy Wilentz
Posted Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010

The Last People out Alive
"We have lost the moment when 'reading the wreck' could have had its maximum opportunity."
by Clive Irving
Posted Friday, Jan. 15, 2010

Where are the Americans?
"The Pentagon has already failed the President. And the people of Haiti."
by Clive Irving
Posted Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010

Population Services International in Haiti
What PSI is doing to help Haiti
by Dinda Elliott
Posted Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010

My Hope for Haiti
"Maybe now we’ll realize just how close to home Haiti really is, and how desperately it needs our help, and has for a very long time."
by Kevin Doyle
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 

Helping Haiti
A list of resources currently working on the ground in Haiti
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010

Cruise Haiti? and Fiddling While Haiti Burns
Two posts question Royal Caribbean's decision to make a port of call in Labadee, Haiti
by Kevin Doyle and Dinda Elliott
Posted Friday, Jan. 15, 2010

Earlier coverage on Condé Nast Traveler

Love and Haiti
"This is a love song. It's a Haitian love song, played on three drums and an electric slide guitar that never sounds quite on key. No question, you can dance to it."
by Amy Wilentz
Condé Nast Traveler, September 2009

Where to Stay, Eat, and Play in Haiti
by Amy Wilentz
Condé Nast Traveler, September 2009

Haiti's Crippling Poverty and What's Being Done
What the writer saw while visiting Haiti with representatives from Population Services International (PSI), a nonprofit group fighting malaria, HIV, and child mortality.
Posted on cntraveler.com, Feb. 27, 2009

Anna Kournikova in Haiti, Day One
The tennis star blogs about her outrearch work in Haiti
by Anna Kournikova
Posted on cntraveler.com, Feb. 27, 2009

Anna Kournikova goes Condom Shopping for a Cause
The tennis star (and Population Services International representative) visits Haiti
by Kevin Doyle
Posted on cntraveler.com, Feb. 25, 2009

We’re just putting the finishing touches on a story about the world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, for our March issue. The Oasis and several other Royal Caribbean ships call frequently at Labadee, a spit of land with pristine beaches on the north coast of Haiti that the cruise line has leased from the Haitian government since 1989.
 
I was initially appalled yesterday to read in the Miami Herald that Royal Caribbean is prepared to resume port calls at Labadee as early as next week. How, I wondered, could it possibly take its passengers on a sun and fun excursion to a country suffering such devastation and loss of life? But, like most things, on closer examination it’s not really that simple. In his blog post yesterday, Royal Caribbean president Adam Goldstein reported that he was in New York meeting with President Clinton to discuss disaster response. Today, Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas will call on Labadee carrying relief supplies from Puerto Rico and other Royal Caribbean ships will begin delivering relief supplies (primarily food) on Monday and Tuesday to its Haitian partner Food for the Poor.
 
There’s no question that Haiti has benefited financially from its lease agreement with Royal Caribbean—the cruise line pays the government $6 for every passenger who visits, and hundreds of thousands visit each year (though it’s unlikely, in a country run by one of the most corrupt governments in the world, that much of that money actually makes its way to the Haitian people).

The people of Haiti will surely benefit from the relief supplies that Royal Caribbean ships will be off-loading in the coming weeks. But here’s the tricky part: Those ships will also be off-loading thousands of tourists to eat, swim, and sun on Haitian shores.
 
Would you be comfortable drinking a beer and working on your tan on a Haitian beach next week, even if the ship you arrived on was delivering relief supplies? I’d love to know what you think.

Complete Haiti Coverage on Truth.Travel

See our list of organizations working to make a difference in Haiti

I spent only two days in Haiti last year, to see the important work Population Services International is doing on the ground there to combat HIV and malaria, promote birth control, and prevent child mortality. Having heard and read much about rampant crime (billboards along the road discourage kidnapping), I’m embarrassed to say I arrived in Haiti guarded and defensive. But before I had even left the airport, a young man approached me to welcome me to his country. “I hope that you see what is special here, that you go home and tell your friends, and that you come back to visit us again.”

 
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Graphic: Haisam Hussein

Here's how cabin air is circulated, filtered, and refreshed throughout most of today's aircraft:

1. Fresh air continuously enters both engines at -65 degrees. Temperature and pressure are increased, then air is passed through a control valve and cooled by additional outside air.
2. HEPA filters remove 99.7 percent of particles; new technology could destroy 100 percent of all bacteria and viruses.
3. Filtered, recirculated cabin air and fresh air are combined.
4. The aircraft is divided into ventilation segments of three to seven rows; you share air only with passengers in your segment.
5. Outflow valve continuously releases cabin air and helps maintain constant pressurization of aircraft.

More good news: Airplanes are healthier than you think.

From the January 2010 issue of Condé Nast Traveler

Every winter, legions of healthy travelers board airplanes wondering if they’ll still be well when they walk off, after spending hours packed shoulder to shoulder with dozens—or even hundreds—of other passengers, some of whom are likely to be suffering from a cold or the flu. This year, the prospect of contracting swine flu has of course heightened the anxiety. But there’s good reason to take heart (and take to the skies): Several scientific studies show that, in terms of the spread of contagious bugs, airplanes are healthier environments than is commonly believed.

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Skyscrapers rising in Abu Dhabi. The emirate is in the middle of a 208 billion dollar makeover funded by oil production expected to last another century. Dubai's oil, by contrast, will run out by 2015.

Susan Hack, Condé Nast Traveler's Cairo-based senior correspondent, guest blogs on Dubai's financial crisis 

By Susan Hack

The world may be focused on the financial troubles of Dubai, but the United Arab Emirates has something to celebrate: Abu Dhabi has mounted the first art exhibit at its new cultural district on the once-barren Saadiyat Island, whose upcoming projects include the world’s largest Guggenheim Museum and a 1.3 billion dollar outpost of the Louvre. While Abu Dhabi’s bouquet of grand museums will not be ready before 2013, the government has just opened a 165,000 square foot exhibition space called Manarat Al Saadiyat, or the Lighthouse of Happiness, where rotating loan exhibits from the Paris Louvre and New York Guggenheim will go on display starting next April.
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Minutes before you're to take off for [your favorite city] the gate attendant comes on the P.A. announcing that the flight is overbooked and the airline is offering vouchers, a seat on the next flight out, and a foot rub all the way to [your favorite city] if you voluntarily give up your assigned seat.

As airlines report their Q3 results, the data reinforce an important rule oft repeated by Condé Nast Traveler Consumer News Editor Wendy Perrin: If the airline offers vouchers or cash to give up a confirmed seat on an oversold flight, don't take it!

Even though fewer passengers are flying, planes are fuller than ever because flights have been slashed and fewer seats are available. As a result, load factor, or the percentage of seats filled by paying customers, is much higher this year than last, and is expected to remain so through the holiday season, reports The Houston Chronicle.

Load factor for select airlines, Q3 2009:

American Airlines: 83.9
Delta / Northwest: 85.8
Continental 85.8
United Airlines: 85.8
US Airways: 84.0
Southwest: 79.6
Source: The Houston Chronicle

Now, load factors have all sorts of implications for the airline industry—revenue, profits, ticket prices, and flight schedules—all of which we’ll leave to the financial folks to analyze. (And a high load factor certainly doesn't mean that an airline is in the black. Consider, that Southwest’s Q3 load factor was up 8 percentage points from that recorded in the same period 2008, but the airline still lost $16 million last quarter. Likewise, American Airlines load factor rose 1.8 percentage points to 83.9 percent from 82.2 percent in Q3 2008, but they still lost $359 million last quarter.)  

But when it comes to load factor’s bottom line for us consumers, the equation is simple: Fewer planes are flying and they're flying fuller than ever, so if your flight is overbooked, chances are the next flight out is too.

This post originally appeared in Truth.Travel's aviation blog, On the Fly.

Just as two flaked-out flyboys were getting their licenses yanked by the Federal Aviation Administration earlier this week, an unusual confab was taking place in a hangar at Newark Airport:  the chief executives of 25 of the world’s top airlines were lining up to welcome Continental Airlines into their fold, the Star Alliance.
These two seemingly disparate events have more in common than you might think.  

A weeklong mystery about why two pilots blew past their destination and ignored numerous attempts to raise them was apparently resolved when the pilots explained that they got distracted figuring out a new scheduling program from Delta Air Lines. Delta is their new employer by dint of a merger with Northwest, where both have worked for years...

Read the full post on Fly.Truth.Travel.

A new age for railroads?  Or just more pipe dreams?
Image: The White House blog

A new analysis of Amtrak’s books may spell the end of the great American cross-country train trip—like the one Jim Robbins took on Amtrak’s Empire Builder for our August 2008 story, “Back on Track?”

Despite its grand title—and grander scenery—Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle lost $97.38 per passenger in 2008, according to a new report by Subsidyscope, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts.  Read their report and find out how much your favorite train loses with their handy interactive map.

The biggest loser?  The New Orleans to Los Angeles Sunset Limited, which carried almost 72,000 passengers at a loss of $462.11 per passenger in 2008.

Amtrak haters have grabbed a hold of the mean, which shows an across the board $32 loss per passenger—four times more than Amtrak's own estimates of $8 lost per passenger. The Amtrak-less Las Vegas Review-Journal, for one, feels railroaded. "Runaway train", cries the New York Post.
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An amendment tacked on to crucial Congressional legislation threatens to shut down Amtrak service nation-wide if the company doesn’t accommodate passengers traveling with guns.

Is this sound Constitutional policy, or are we being stuck-up by the gun lobby?

The amendment to the $68.8 billion Senate transportation, housing and urban development spending bill will withhold $1.5 billion in Amtrak funding if the government-owned train company doesn’t let passengers check firearms with their baggage, reports The Hill.

That’s Amtrak’s entire funding request for 2010. Gone.  If they can’t figure out how to install a gun-check system akin to those available to domestic airline passengers by March.

If the legislation passes as-is and Amtrak fails to meet the deadline, we can expect a “cessation of train service nationwide,” Amtrak Chairman Thomas Carper told legislators last month, reports The Hill.

Amtrak stopped allowing guns on its trains after the September 11 terrorist attacks and tightened the policy after the 2004 Madrid train bombings, in part because they didn't have the infrastructure and procedures in place to keep tabs on checked firearms. Domestic airline passengers may still transport firearms and ammunition in secure, checked baggage when declared during the check-in process.

So look forward to loosely monitored guns on trains or the complete shutdown of the American rail system April 1, 2010.

The amendment comes courtesy of Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, who is worried hunters won't be able to travel on Amtrak. Anyway, he told Fox News, it's inappropriate for Amtrak to draw the line at this proposal since the system doesn't do much screening of passengers anyway.

"There is no screening now as there is at airports," he said. "Someone wishing to do ill could bring a firearm on a train right now."

Does the right to bear arms exist on Amtrak? Or are American rail riders innocent bystanders in a gun-lobby stick up? And are sneaky amendments to must-past legislation really the way we want to decide gun policy?

This post originally appeared in Truth.Travel's aviation blog, On the Fly.

The airline fee-for-all is getting stranger: Witness United Airlines' new “premier baggage plan” which, for an annual fee of $249, lets you check up to two bags free of charge every time you fly for a year. If this one sticks—so far, no one else has copied it—it could lead to whole new onslaught of creative fees upon fees...and if you think the current system is maddeningly complex, watch out.

Technically, the United plan is not a new fee as much as an attempt to convince you that you’re getting a deal on checking bags--something you didn’t even have to pay not too long ago.

But it’s gotten some more positive—or less scathing—reactions than usual, perhaps because of the rare use of the word “free” in connection with an airline service.

It’s not free, naturally, if you don’t travel that often or if you travel light enough to avoid checking bags. But United charges $20 for the first bag and $30 for the second, so it can add up. And this service isn’t aimed at business travelers, apparently: The most telling detail is that the ‘free bag’ deal covers up to eight people traveling together on one confirmation number. So, if you travel several times a year with your entire family, this could save you money.
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A new bill introduced in Congress today calls for stricter dumping restrictions for cruise ships sailing through U.S. waters. The Clean Cruise Ship Act, submitted by California congressman Sam Farr and Illinois Senator Durbin, is the latest attempt to ban cruise lines from dumping raw sewage within 12 nautical miles of the U.S. coastline (current laws only ban the practice within 3 miles). We reported on a similar cruise pollution bill back in 2004 (Cruise Ships Come Clean; August 2004) but it never made much headway.

But now that there's a new administration in Washington, cruise reform may finally be able to catch a wave. Add to that the fact that the cruise lines themselves are seeming more open to the idea of being federally regulated—according to the staff at the Friends of the Earth nonprofit in D.C., whom I met with earlier this week—and this bill may actually stand a chance.

In the meantime, environmental standards vary wildly from cruise line to cruise line. Just take a look at the Friends of the Earth's Cruise Ship Environmental Report Card, Published last month, it grades ten major lines on their green practices. The upshot? Several of the lines (including Holland America, Norwegian, and Princess) have gone to great lengths to minimize their environmental impact. But as Marcie Keever, FOE's Clean Vessels Campaign Director told me, many cruise lines still aren't doing enough. 

You can do it on Emirates. You can do it on British Air (well one plane, anyway). And as we learned this week you’ll be able to do it on all Lufthansa’s long-distance flights.  The ‘it’ is use your phone-and increasingly, the taboo against cell calls aloft is coming down-at least overseas.

Here in the U.S., though, it’s a different story. Even suggest that it might be nice to able to call home from the confines of an airplane, and you will you get tons of responses-mostly angry, if not unprintable. When the Federal Communications Commission called for comments on the idea a few years back they got 8,000 responses, virtually all of them negative.  Much of this was orchestrated by the flight attendants’ union fearing that that their members would have to mediate disputes between the pro and con camps aloft.

Having been trapped on many a Metro-North train in a car full of insensitive dolts shrieking into their mobiles,  I’m sympathetic to the naysayers-to a point.  But knowing the vitriol this will provoke, I still want to throw out a challenge:  would it be so terrible to give it a try here?

Photo: shanafin / CC BY-SA 2.0
Lengthy airline delays are twice as common now as in 1990 and will get worse as the economy recovers, according to a Brookings Institution report released Thursday. As the economy rebounds more people will travel by plane, further reducing on-time performance of the airlines.

The report, "Expect Delays: An Analysis of Air Travel Trends in the United States," goes on to list the percentage of flights arriving on time in the country’s 100 largest metro areas. Everybody loves a list, and this is the peg on which most news outlets hung their stories. USA Today has the full list, but as anybody who has had to sleep in JFK can tell you, it's not necessarily news that New York City leads the country in delays.

What’s more interesting, though, is not the on-time performance list, but the factors that are stressing the system and causing delays. In many ways, it’s us.

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The Al Hadba’ Minaret in Mosul, Iraq, is in danger
Photo courtesy of the World Monuments Fund

At the World Monuments Fund (WMF) press conference in New York yesterday, president Bonnie Burnham announced the 2010 Watch, a list of 93 endangered sites around the world. A few weren’t too surprising. Machu Picchu, for one, where the local government still hasn’t figured out a way to manage the stampede of visitors, and the twelfth-century Al Hadba’ Minaret in Mosul, Iraq, considered the most important landmark in the country but sorely neglected after six years of war. (The fact that only one site from Iraq landed on the list is actually a big improvement; in recent years, the entire country was on the Watch list).

But the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut?
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Condé Nast Traveler's Damian Vincent asked travel industry experts and other attendees of last Monday's World Savers Congress about what they deplore most about travel.

UPDATE 6:45 p.m. The Australians are the first on the scene in Samoa with emergency assistance, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A chartered plane carrying a team of medical experts from Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia just landed in the capital of Apia.

Meanwhile, the Australian Red Cross reports that the Samoan Red Cross has mobilized over 130 volunteers and is distributing relief supplies and aid where they can. We'll have more info on how Condé Nast Traveler readers can help Samoa as the events unfold on the ground there. In the meantime, the American Red Cross is accepting donations for the Samoan relief effort.

UPDATE 6:20 p.m. Four Australians travelers—including two children, a school teacher and a Tasmanian woman—were confirmed among the dead on Samoa's Upolu island in the popular Lalomanu region, reports Melbourne's The Age newspaper.

-- 

Condé Nast Traveler is following breaking tsunami news out of the South Pacific, including reports in The New York Times that waves 10 feet high flattened beachside resorts on Samoa’s Upolu island and that the tourist zone of Lalomanu had been crushed by a 33-foot wall of water.

While we wait to learn about the extent of the damage and what travelers can do to help, we were struck by the fact that Samoa has remained off the beaten path despite the allure of its pristine coast, soaring mountains and dense jungle.

The reason, Mark Jolly explained in his January 1999 feature for Condé Nast Traveler, “Samoa Comes of Age,” is that 85 percent of the land belongs wholly to the people, who prefer to keep their pristine home free of the unchecked development so common on other picturesque islands. ”There’s something almost shocking about the purity of the Samoan experience,” he writes of the land the people revere and manage.
 
Jolly found the Samoans remarkably open and welcoming, and discovered that the biggest fale (home) in any village is often reserved for guests. “Tourism under the rubric of the fa’a Samoa (“the Samoan way”) is a natural extension of the village welcome mat,” he writes, “a gathering place where families eat, talk, party, and pray with their guests.”

But as he also points out, “...Samoa has also battled the brute force of one disaster after another,” including famine and cyclones. And now tsunamis.

Watch Truth.Travel for Samoa updates from the wire and our correspondents. In the meantime, read Mark Jolly’s 1999 story on Samoa in its entirety.

Most hotel companies shy away from the topic of sex tourism, fearing that the mere mention of the issue will sully their brand. But not Accor. The French hotel giant that includes Sofitel, Novotel, and Motel 6, among a slew of other hotels, has a companywide campaign to keep child sex offenders out of its 4,000 properties. When Accor’s CEO Gilles Pélisson met with Deputy Editor Dorinda Elliott last week, he spoke openly about the “dark side” of his industry and the ongoing efforts to combat it, by among other measures, hanging anti-sex trafficking posters in the lobbies of his hotels throughout the developing world.

Last month, ECPAT, a Thailand-based network of organizations fighting child prostitution and trafficking, issued a call to action to the rest of the travel industry (Accor is already an active member), citing an estimated 1.2 million child victims worldwide. In the meantime, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements has joined forces with foreign officials to crack down on American sex tourists in Southeast Asia. 

On Monday, a few hours after Accor’s Director of Sustainable Development Hélène Roques accepted a Condé Nast Traveler World Savers Award in New York, three men faced a federal judge in Los Angeles, charged with engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors while traveling in Cambodia.  The men were the first to be charged under the new international initiative Operation Twisted Traveler, which targets U.S. citizens who sexually exploit children in Cambodia, a prime destination for child predators.