Meeting news from our branches around the world.

Our first speaker was Phil Koniotes , who showed us some stunning glimpses of Antarctica. Phil explained that on his trip he had the great fortune to enjoy 4 sunny days, which is extremely rare and meant he was able to take some fantastic photographs. His pictures of icebergs, many of which come in strange shapes and spectacular proportions were breathtaking, particularly those of the aptly named Paradise Bay. His photo’s also covered the inquisitive penguins that inhabit this region, which come up to investigate their human visitors. Photos of the penguins included their nest building antics, which involves the penguins stealing pebbles from each other’s nests to build their own. Phil also told us about the Post Office which handles 40,000 cards each year, which depart with the prized Antarctic postmark. This was a fascinating talk with some superb photographs.

Our second speaker Mark Elliott came to Globetrotters rescue after our original speaker Juliet Coombe was involved in an accident in Australia and was unable to return to the United Kingdom. Mark’s talk was about the Kilum Forest in what he described as the most corrupt country on the planet, Cameroon, in West Africa. Mark’s mission had been to photograph the elusive Bannerman’s Turaco bird, which only lives in this part of the world. His photos took us via a local tribal war and a photocall with a local Chief. He showed us a local festival where the people dress in costumes and actually become that person or spirit, Mark discovered how literally they take this when one character relieved him of his umbrella, his neighbour explaining that this character was called “The thief!” Once up into the forest Mark and his guide trekked for a day and for one fleeting minute espied the elusive bird. His guide was ecstatic, despite living there, it was the first time in seven years even he had seen one.

London meetings are held at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden at 2.30pm the first Saturday of each month. There is no London meeting in August, but we will be back on Saturday 1^st September. For more information, you can contact the Globetrotter Info line on +44 (0) 20 8674 6229, or visit the website:www.globetrotters.co.uk

Hello Globies! Our next meeting will be April 6th at The Wings Theater, 154 Christopher Street. 4:00pm sharp. We have yet, another exciting guest speaker. Mary Russell, an import coming over from Dublin to speak to us about her travel to the middle east, specificallyBaghdad and Damascus! Mary is a travel writer, whose latest book will be published by Simon and Schuster on June 1. Mary will be giving a slide talk to the London Globetrotters in June, and we get the sneak preview this April! Her books are “The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt”, “Please Don”t Call it Soviet Georgia”, “Amazonian” and, in June: “Journeys of a Lifetime”. Mary has travelled to the Sahara and the Finnish Arctic, the Eastern Caribbean, Southern Africa, Moscow, Tbilisi, Dublin and Donegal.

Last year, she spent three months travelling around Syria on foot, by bike and local transport. Last November, Mary returned to Damascus and from there travelled overland to Baghdad. These two cities have strong historical ties and her slides and talk will be about both places, with up-to-day descriptions of what it”s like to travel in an Arab country. (She was also in Israel last year, obviously she has a great interest in the middle east!) Mary always travels solo and by shoestring. The last two chapters of her next book “Journeys of a Lifetime”, are about Syria.

New York meetings are held at The Wings Theater, 154 Christopher Street (btw Greenwich St and Washington St), to the right of Crunch Fitness, in the Archive on the first Saturday of each month at 4 pm. As always, $8.00 for members, $10.00 for non-members.

The last Toronto GT meeting was on Friday, March 15 at 8 p.m. at the Woodsworth Co-op Penthouse, (PH) 133 Wilton Street, Toronto. (Wilton is a very short E-W street south of and parallel to Esplanade, east of Jarvis – just around the corner from St. Lawrence Market). Presenter: Bruce Weber

Topic: “SAMPLER OF YUCATAN”

For information on Ontario meetings, please contact: Svatka Hermanek:shermanek@schulich.yorku.ca or Bruce Weber: tel. 416-203-0911 or Paul Webb: tel. 416-694-8259.

Meetings are held on the third Friday of January, March, May, September and November. Usually at the Woodsworth Co-op, Penthouse, 133, Wilton Street in downtown Toronto at 8.00 p.m.

The April 13 meeting will be at Cypress Bend Park, which is 4 blocks from the library at the end of Peace Street. Peace St. is between the library and the river – it is the only street on the same side as the library. You will pass several cemeteries before you reach the park. Go to the end of Peace St. and you will find Cypress Bend Park on the left. Our travel time talk will be in a lovely outdoor covered pavilion instead of the library (AARP are dong taxes in “our room.”) Rest rooms are close by, and handicap accessible. The Texas branch of the Globetrotters Club will have a potluck picnic in the park. The city of N.B. charges $45.00 so we will have a Globie kitty at the March meeting to cover expenses. If you are busy travelling in March and miss the meeting, c”mon in April anyway. Committees are forming, so come and sign up if you are interested! If you only want to talk about travel, come! The Globetrotters Club sparks my life. I hope it sparks yours. Christina.

Meetings are held at 3pm at the New Braunfels Public Library, 700 E. Common Street in New Braunfels, Texas. The meeting ends at 5 p.m. If you would like to continue travel talk on a more informal basis, we plan to adjourn to the Hoity-Toit, a local New Braunfels establishment. If anybody would like to enquire about meetings or help Christina, please contact her on:texas@globetrotters.co.uk

This packed flower market is on one street and gets phenomenally busy. It starts at around 8am on Sundays only and closes up around 1pm, so get there early. Here you can buy everything from tiny cacti, bedding plants, garden gnomes, terracotta pots to shrubs and palm trees. Close by there are coffee shops, pubs, antiques shops, and restaurants so it is a great place to browse on a Sunday, maybe buy some herbs and have lunch.

The market is in Columbia Road (between Gosset Street & the Royal Oak pub), in Bethnal Green, E2. The nearest tube is Old Street tube/rail/ 26, 48, 55 bus. Open 8am-1pm Sun; closed Mon-Sat.

Next month: Leadenhall Market

Buenas dias de Buenos Aires, todo del mundi! Can’t believe how far I’ve travelled and where I have been in the last four weeks! It seems no time since I was sitting in Pucon, Chile and writing to you about all the things I had done in Bolivia and here I am in Buenos Aires. The time has flown and been full of highlights so I shall just have to be as concise as I can or this email will be a book in itself.

After leaving Pucon, we had the trip from hell to get started on the Carraterra Austral (Southern Highway) and the first really bad weather of the trip. It poured! And blew! and the ferry was so many hours late that we thought we would have to retrace out route and enter Argentina near Bariloche (they told me later that this area was famous for its cherry brandy chocolates – damn!) but at the last minute we caught the ferry. Then got the next ferry which was also running late and spent the whole night trying to find space to sleep in the truck, whilst on the ferry, and then while our intrepid drivers drove through the night to make to next planned camp at dawn. We put up our tents in the rain and crawled into them and didn’t come out til noon.

There was a spectacular glacier nearby (which probably explained why it was so cold!) and the rain continued. Next day was more of the same but the rain held off for short periods and that included when we stopped to set up camp beside a gorgeous lake, and the third day was a repeat too with no let up at camp time. I was cooking that night and had the privilege of sleeping on the truck but first I had to get everyone else off, as no one wanted to go out in the rain. Last day on the highway and the day was clear and bright and we could finally appreciate why our driver was so keen to come this way. Stunning! Amazing! Beautiful! No words can tell you how lovely it all was. Fields of lupins, wild llama, birds, cattle, not very many people and even less traffic, blue skies and sunshine. Well worth the three days of rain and perhaps appreciated even more because of them.

We crossed into Argentina for a few days to visit the Patagonian area of El Chalten and Calafate that are known for their mountains and proximity to the Perito Moreno Glacier and Lago Argentino respectively. I went hiking in El Chalten and managed a long days walking so my ankle must be all but healed as it still aches when I am tired. And we took a tour out to the glacier and it was thoroughly worth seeing. I took loads of pictures so – you have been warned!

After this wee sojourn, I went back to Chile for the best part of a week so that we could visit the National Park of Torres del Paine. It was spectacular, glorious and any other superlative you can think of. I tried to do a hike there that out leader claimed was ´not technically difficult´ but only got half way as he failed to qualify his statement with ´but it’s all uphill¨. Great day though and I had a great picnic view when I stopped to have my lunch.

After Torres, it was back in the truck and head further south for Tierra del Fuego. By this time the days were very long and even though it was cold at night, the days were sunlit and generally warm, so, eating at 10pm was not unusual. The mornings were cold and the early starts were not always welcome but the scenery changed every mile so it was always exciting to get further south. We took a ferry across the Magellan Straits and onto Tierra del Fuego, crossed into Argentina half way across the island and got to Ushaia with no trouble at all.

More camping and a boat trip around the harbour to see the wildlife and the shores of this remote place. It is a pretty place, with multicoloured houses and built around the bay at the foot of the mountains that ring it. The weather there changes by the minute and is never the same for long and the people I met were friendly and from all over Argentina. Because of the unstable nature of the peso here, things were much cheaper than a month ago so I did a bit of shopping. Great fun and not something I have done a lot of this trip. Honest!

After all this it was time to head north and we got to Buenos Aires in four days of very long drives with only a visit to a penguin colony as distraction. The country could not have been more different to the Chile Patagonia we were used to. The land was flat and no mountains or trees to break up the horizon. The roads were generally good but like outback Australian roads were long and straight and seemed to go on forever.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. BA was a welcome break and despite our concerns for the ongoing political problems there, we encountered no violence except what we saw on TV. A city tour, a group meal for two birthdays, a Tango show and it was time to move on. I could have spent longer and would liked to have visited Uruguay, but the need to move on and the lack of a visa made that impossible. We left BA in sunshine but the rains soon caught us. It cleared for the evening but at 5am the heavens opened and once again, my being on the truck saved me from the fate of my co-travellers. The tents fell over as the torrential downpour undermined the pegs and soaked everything: soggy people, sleeping bags and possessions straggled onto the truck. We skipped breakfast in an effort to out run the storm and finally did so at about 2pm that day.

We got to Puerta Iguazu and stayed in cabanas as everything was too wet to use. It took about a week before everything was thoroughly dry as we have well and truly hit the tropics now and evening and morning rain are the norm rather than the exception. The Iguazu Falls are spectacular from both sides of the Brazil/Argentine border and I feel privileged to have seen the big three: Niagara, Iguazu and Victoria. All amazing but I have to give the honours to Victoria Falls. After Iguazu, it was time to head for Rio. Another three long days driving to get to the town of Paraty, where we all got to chill out a little (and clean the truck, our clothes and repack and reorganise ready for the next leg of the journey). And now we are in Rio. It”s hot. It”s humid and it”s Carnival! Watch this space!

Thanks Jacqui and keep us posted! If anyone would like to contact Jacqui, her e-mail is: jacquitrotter@yahoo.com

What have you seen on your travels? Drop a line to the Beetle!

Atom Crater, a former work colleague of the Beetle has recently returned from a work trip to Bangladesh. This month and next, we include some of his observations.

Weather report: When we arrived it was very cool, below 20 during the day and nippy in the evening. I made the great mistake of going out one evening without a sweater and felt really cold. But it’s now warming up – winter’s over. It’s still comfortable (mid 20s) but a brisk walk during the day does make you sweat. But the evenings are now sweater-less. The dry season will last until May.

Rickshaws: You simply can’t begin to describe Dhaka without mentioning the rickshaws, which are everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I heard the other day that there are 800,000 in this city of 10-13 million. They occupy a large proportion of the city’s road space, moving like a swarm of brightly decorated yellow and red insects. They irritate motor vehicle drivers like hell, but are a very efficient, low cost, environmentally acceptable (except for the choking passengers! see air pollution below) mode of transport in a city that is absolutely flat. They manoeuvre with remarkable skill, squeezing into impossible spaces, and operate their own informal tidal flow system, riding when they choose against the traffic in order to avoid congestion. As well as passengers, you see them transporting vegetables, sacks of rice, bags of cement, building materials, timber, bamboo, filing cabinets, furniture, And they’re not confined to cities and towns, but are also the dominant form of transport in the rural areas.

Auto-rickshaws: And then there are the auto-rickshaws, which zip around emitting a fierce crackling sound and pungent grey exhaust. The World Bank has just published a report that blames them (along with buses and trucks) as the principal source of the appalling air pollution.

Wheel brushes: The Flying Pigeon bicycles (made in China) have a cunning feature: two small brushes are attached to the mudguard stays, front and back, which clean the dust off the rim of the wheels as they turn, thus keeping them sparkling clean. Is this a local adaptation or does it come from China? Would it catch on UK?

Hooters: Another traffic impression (traffic – and t-jams in particular – are a major fact of life here): drivers hoot continuously, their fingers twitching in quasi-Pavlovian response to the fact that there’s something in front of them, or approaching from the side, or coming too close behind, or ….what the hell, let’s hoot anyway! As with many things, it’s so reminiscent of Indonesia, where we had to teach Yayat, our driver, to stop this habit before it drove us crazy.

More about Dhaka in April’s e-newsletter. If you would like to contact Atom Crater, please e-mail the Beetle and she will pass on any e-mails: Beetle@globetrotters.co.uk