Sorry, there is no quiz in this month’s e-newsletter. We will be back in next month’s e-news. you can however still enter last months quiz on Western Canada

If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world. Travel Sized Bites

Wilderness First Aid is different from the Red Cross or urban first aid. Focus is on initial and prolonged care for a patient in the back country. Participants will receive a two year certification with the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS (http://wmi.nols.edu).

WMI of NOLS courses are for folks who recognises the importance of having first aid skills if you spend time in the outdoors. We have climbers, trekkers, paddlers, blueberry-pickers, parents, teachers, outdoor guides, scout leaders, fishermen and hunters – all learning about how to care for an injured or sick friend.

Below is the schedule for the Wilderness Medicine Institute of NOLS courses that Crossing Latitudes is hosting in Europe 2005.

WILDERNESS FIRST AID COURSES & WILDERNESS FIRST RESPONDER RECERTIFICATION COURSES (16-24 hours)

London, The Castle Climbing Centre, UK January 17-18, 2005 Course fee: US $160.00 / GBP 90.00 per person. Course taught in English.

Malmö, Sweden, January 21-23, 2005 Course fee: SEK 2100:- per person. Course taught in Swedish. Start Friday evening. CPR included.

Bozeman, Montana, USA at Lindley Park Center April 30 – May 1st, 2005 Cost: $150.00 per person. Course taught in English.

Göteborg, Sweden, 13-15 of May, 2005 Course fee: SEK 2100:- per person. Course taught in Swedish. Start Friday evening. CPR included.

Stockholm, Sweden 20-22 of May, 2005 Course fee: SEK 2100:- per person. Course taught in Swedish. Start Friday evening. CPR included.

Narvik, Arctic Norway 17-19 of June 2005 Cost: SEK 2500:- per person. Course taught in English & Swedish. This course is part of Crossing Latitudes Sea Kayaking Guide course. The first aid course is open to all.

If you are interested in having a course just for your staff or organization please contact Lena Conlan at: info@crossinglatitudes.com or call our office in the USA +1-406-585-5356 or our office in Sweden +46-70-670 11 53.

For more info, please contact: info@crossinglatitudes.com www.crossinglatitudes.com USA: 1-800-572-8747 / Fax: +1-406-585-5356 Europe: +46-70-670 1153 Sweden: 070-670 1153

Here’s a little Beetle quiz based on capital cities. See how many you get right! Go on, have a guess!

What is the capital city of the following countries:

1. Congo
2. Madagascar
3. Oman
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bangladesh

For the answers, see at the end of the e-newsletter.

Carole from San Diego would like some help planning a trip to new Zealand. I am travelling to the south island of New Zealand in March and would love some suggestions from other members. We have our itinerary set-landing in Dunedin and going south and back up-crossing at Arthur's Pass to and leaving from Christchurch.

We are also planning to take a cruise into Milford Sound and from what we’ve read, the only company that has a cruise without a naturalist aboard is Fiordland Travel.

Are there others and if so, which is the best. Also, we are interested in doing some hiking in the area-but nothing strenuous.

The Kepler Track was recommended, but in reading about it, it appears that to go in for a few hours would only take us along the lake. Is there a walk w/more interesting/spectacular scenery?

Thank you in advance for your response.

Cmeredith1@aol.com

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website: Mutual Aid

Need to convert currency?

Take a look at The Globetrotters Currency Converter — get the exchange rates for 164 currencies The Globetrotters Currency Cheat Sheet — create and print a currency converter table for your next trip.

Travel industry researchers estimate that demand for independently booked travel is set to rise by 80% in the next five years. Both Yahoo! and AOL recently announced that they were improving their travel offerings and setting up as online travel agents. Both companies are developing specialised travel search engines (due to go live in early 2005) that will allow users to compare prices from a range of different travel agents, airlines, hotel groups, resorts and hire car companies. The difference between these offerings and sites such as Lastminute.com or Travelocity is that the Yahoo and AOL travel site will include fares offered by budget airlines. At the moment, other companies do not include listings of many of the budget airlines as most refuse to pay a commission to list their services.

Experts estimate that 100 million locusts swarmed over the Canary Islands in November. The locusts, nicknamed 'sky prawns' have invaded Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, the worst incidence in over 50 years. The desert locusts flew to the Canaries across the 60 miles of ocean from North Africa, where an infestation this summer wreaked havoc on crops. The insects, around 2.5 in long and two grams in weight, can travel twice that far in 24 hours. A 40 million swarm can eat 40,000 tons of vegetation a day.

Singapore's Changi Airport has introduced immigration kiosks that read fingerprints and facial features and double as automated check-in counters, in a bid to cut flight check-in times. The project, known as Fully Automated Seamless Travel or FAST, cuts the time needed for passengers to register for flights and check passports on arrival to from 15 minutes or longer, two minutes.

The system, which began trials in November 2004 at Changi, Asia's sixth-busiest airport, requires users to lodge facial details and thumb prints as biometric data on an identification card the size of a credit card. Passengers insert a card into a kiosk and then look into a camera and press their thumb onto a plate to check their details.

Recommended by Globetrotter Steve, a great web site that helps travellers with how to pack, pre trip preparations, where to go, pictures, recommended guide books – all sorts, a great resource! Take a look at: Travel Independent

Another website for package tour holiday makers as opposed to independent travellers is:

www.wherewillwego.com It contains 120 activities world-wide from over 2,500 tour operators.

The World Heritage Taj Mahal, built in the 1600's by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a shrine for his wife, is to open on moonlit evenings for the first time in twenty years. But before you get too excited, only 400 visitors will be allowed entrance each night, and there will be parking restrictions around the Taj Mahal.

A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?

Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?

Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we'll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!

This attractive CD gives by means of 10 videos, 700 original photographs with explanations and 60 stories a colourful and varied picture of the country and people of the atoll-state in the heart of the Pacific.

Please visit http://www.kiribati.nl for more information.

I was on the Lewis Pass in New Zealand and I saw a sign at a petrol station which stated, instead of petrol and diesel prices, ARM and LEG, gave me a chuckle

This 1091-page travel guide describes and maps Tahiti and French Polynesia, Pitcairn, Easter Island, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tonga, the Samoas, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, Tuvalu, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands.

The 119 town plans and island maps are carefully labelled, without the confusing numbered map keys found in other guidebooks. For ease of reference, all internet and email addresses are now embedded in the listings.

There are sections on scuba diving, snorkelling, surfing, windsurfing, kayaking, yachting, cruising, hiking, fishing, and golf. Beaches, sightseeing, transportation, and places to stay and eat are thoroughly covered, as are the histories, economies, environments, cultures, and peoples of the Pacific region.

Author David Stanley has been writing about the South Pacific for over 25 years. Paul Theroux called his handbook “the most user-friendly travel guide to the South Pacific,” and it remains the leading guidebook to the Pacific islands.

For more information, visit southpacific.org

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This website is excellent: a guide to low-cost flying in Europe that includes every budget airline route, with maps and associated information. It also has a news feed of low-cost airline news for European travellers – the only such feed to focus on budget news!

A group of training lifeguards swimming off New Zealand were protected from a great white shark by dolphins. The lifeguards were training at a beach near Whangarei on the North Island when they were menaced by a 3-metre shark, before the dolphins raced in to help. The dolphins surrounded the swimmers for 40 minutes before they were able to make it safely back to the beach.

Marine biologists say such altruistic behaviour is not uncommon in dolphins. One lifeguard said that it was an uncomfortable experience, as they were circled by a great white shark, which came within a couple of metres, but the dolphins suddenly appeared and herded the swimmers together. The dolphins then swam in tight circles to create a defensive barrier as the great white swam beneath the surface. The swimmers said the dolphins were extremely agitated and repeatedly slapped the water with their tails, presumably to try to deter the predator as it cruised nearby.

Paul writes in with another piece of advice about travelling in Spain.

Another word of warning to novice travellers in Spain; be careful at the big hypermarkets as thieves operate in the car parks targeting small hire cars (easily identified as they silly sods always put the hire company name on the vehicle registration plates).

We got caught this way on our first trip and my girlfriend lost most of her clothes and a new digital camera, clothes weren't too much of a problem as we were on a naturist holiday but the rigmarole involved in getting a police report is mind blowing. I also had my passport stolen and getting that replaced was even worse !!. Silly to hide our stuff in the car I guess but a lesson well learned and often mentioned to fellow travellers as a word of warning.

Couldn't rob our car or cheat us out of fuel last trip cos we rode all the way down on my motorcycle.

Be careful of a new online travel scam that involves bargain flights advertised on internet auction sites. The con-men advertise an amazing deal on an auction site, telling potential bidders that they do not need to pay until they have received their tickets. The winning bidder – and, usually, all the other bidders, are contacted under the pretence that the winner has dropped out for their names. The fraudster then buys the tickets from the airline in the names of each ‘winner’, but uses someone else's stolen credit card details. According to an internet fraud agency, these details are readily available and sold for as little as 30p a time. The winner also pays up once they’ve received the tickets. Most airlines are ok about issuing tickets to someone other than the cardholder, so the ‘winners’ receive their tickets, pay the fraudster and look forward to their holiday, sometimes even flying out and enjoying it. When the airline's bank tries to claim the money from the credit cardholder, however, the fraud is uncovered – and the airline will not let the ticket-holder travel.

India has decided to open Srinagar airport in disputed Kashmir to international flights to entice more tourists to the Himalayan region. Kashmir has been involved in a 15 year dispute involving soldiers and Muslim militants who don’t want Indian rule in the region. Estimates say that around 360,000 people visited Kashmir last year, most of the them Indians, up from 191,000 in the previous year, although the figure was small compared with the millions who travelled to the region before the revolt in 1989. Israelis topped the list of foreign tourists visiting the Muslim-majority region last year followed by Chinese.