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 Travel Industry Association of America (TIAS) recently warned that several new security measures intended to deter terrorists from entering the United States will also quite likely put off foreign tourists. The rules, which will take effect over coming months, means that all tourists who require a visa to enter the US will be interviewed by immigration officials. The TIAS notes that by January, the government will expand its tracking system for foreign visitors, which will include fingerprints and photographs. Officials say the changes are necessary for protection against terrorism. Travel executives, representing the largest airlines, hotels, cruise lines and car rental companies were critical, saying that the measures could further weaken the tourism industry. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there has been a 20% drop on the number of international visitors to the US.

What does this mean for foreign visitors? US visa staff in embassies and consulates around the world will begin to interview almost all tourists who apply for visas, and this will create significant delays. In the past, consular officials had the option of allowing tourists who did not present security risks or did not seem likely to overstay their visas to apply by mail. In countries assessed likely to be sources of terrorists or illegal aliens, consular officials already routinely conduct interviews of visa applicants. For visitors from the 27 or so countries, mostly in Europe, who are not required to obtain visas, they will be required to produce computer-readable passports. Most British and Japanese visitors already have such passports, but travellers coming from France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland do not routinely carry computer-readable passports.

Globetrotters meeting on August 9th

The Texas Branch of the Globetrotters Club will meet August 9th 2003 at the New Braunfels Public Library – note back to old location.

If you like independent, adventuresome, fun, daring, exciting, “off the beaten path” travel, this club is for you. Our meeting begins at 2 P.M. Come early so you won't be late! Enjoy handouts, travel talk time, and door prizes!

Dates of future meetings: September 13

For more information about the Texas Branch or if you would like to help Christina, please contact texas@globetrotters.co.uk or register for email updates at our website (click here) or call Christina at 830-620-5482.

This is the second of three descriptions of the 24 sites of “outstanding universal value”, that have been designated world heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

These are as follows:

· The Jewish Quarter and St Procopius' Basilica in Trebic, Czech Republic: A reminder of the co-existence of Jewish and Christian cultures in the Middle Ages to the 20th Century. The Jewish Quarter provides an insight into a community of a bygone era, while the St Procopius' Basilica, built in the 13th Century, is an example of the influence of Western European architecture on the region.

· James Island and related sites, Gambia: Significant for its relation to the beginning and abolition of the slave trade. An early gateway to the interior of Africa.

· Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, India: Located in the foothills of the Vindhyan Mountains on the southern edge of the central Indian plateau. Contains five clusters of natural rock shelters, displaying paintings that appear to date from the Mesolithic period right through to the Historical period.

· Takht-e Soleyman, Iran: The archaeological site in north-western Iran includes the principal Zoroastrian sanctuary partly rebuilt in the Ilkhanid (Mongol) period (13th Century) as well as a temple of the Sasanian period (6th and 7th Centuries AD) dedicated to Anahita.

· Ashur (Qala'at at Sherqat), Iraq: The ancient city of Ashur dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. From the 14th to the 9th Centuries BC, it was the first capital of the Assyrian Empire. The city was destroyed by the Babylonians, but revived during the Parthian period in the 1st and 2nd century AD.

· The White City of Tel-Aviv – the Modern Movement, Israel: The White City was constructed from the early 1930s until 1948. The buildings were designed by European-trained architects, who created an outstanding architectural ensemble of the modern movement in a new cultural context.

· Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, Italy: The nine Sacri Monti (Sacred Mountains) of northern Italy are groups of chapels and other architectural features created in the late 16th and 17th Centuries and dedicated to different aspects of the Christian faith.

· The Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, Kazakhstan: The mausoleum, in the town of Yasi, now Turkestan, was built from 1389 to 1405. It is one of the largest and best-preserved constructions of the Timurid period (1370-1507 AD).

Source: BBC News

If you enjoy writing, enjoy travelling, why not write for the free monthly Globetrotters e-newsletter! The Beetle would love to hear from you: your travel stories, anecdotes, jokes, questions, hints and tips, or your hometown or somewhere of special interest to you. Over 7,500 people subscribe to the Globetrotters e-news.

To see your story in cyber print, e-mail the Beetle with your travel experiences, hints and tips or questions up to 750 words, together with a couple of sentences about yourself and a contact e-mail address to Beetle@globetrotters.co.uk

Oh dear, oh dear, the airline we love to hate, Ryanair has just got itself into trouble in Germany, for saying that it flies to Dussledorf.

A court in Cologne said that it was deceptive advertising to use the description Niederheim (Dussledorf) as the airport is over 40 miles away from the city. (Is that all? Beetle). Ryanair accused Lufthansa and Dussledorf Airport of supporting the action brought against it by an Unfair Competition organisation. Lufthansa has denied the claim.

And still on the subject of court action, a French court has upheld complaints against low-fare carrier Ryanair and stopped the airline from accepting local subsidies (EUR560,000 (USD$644,000) a year from the local Chamber of Commerce) to publicise flights and build up passenger numbers on the London Stansted – Strasbourg route.

It is the first time a ruling has been made barring the airline from making financial deals with local tourist authorities or airports to boost its passenger traffic. Ryanair says it will appeal against the decision.

The Beetle recently visited Munich for shell repairing and discovered that it is a really nice, friendly, pretty and interesting city, easy to get around with some surprising touches – beautiful architecture, outdoor markets, fountains and sculptures.

How to get there: the airport at Munich is vast and well served. From London you can take Lufthansa and British Airways. It’s a short hop – around 1 ¾ hours. To get into the city centre, there are two S-Bahns – the slow one, the S1 and the faster S8. Either journey takes less than an hour. Tickets costs 9 euros and can be used on your next journey to complete your destination, e.g. the bus. You can buy tickets on the platform or from the airport information counter. The S-Bahns are excellent, cheap, clean, completely safe and frequent. Both go directly from the airport via many stations around the city to the central train station where you can make your connection with one of the other many S and U-Bahns.

When to go: well, the Octoberfest jumps out as a good time to visit Munich, which takes place over four weekends in September/October. Otherwise, any time, although July is very, very hot! There are good Christmas markets in November and December. There is almost always a large festival taking place in Munich during any given month.

What is there to see and do: lots and lots. You can stay in the city centre and easily spend a weekend prowling around the baroque churches, museums, art galleries, the town hall, theatres, outdoor fresh produce market, the Residenz, botanical gardens, the Olympic stadium and the English Gardens. One of the oddest sights was muscle-bound tanned men surfing on an artificially made wave of the Eisbach, about 5m wide in the English Garden. For major label shopping, all of the posh shops are rather conveniently concentrated on one street, Maximillian Strasse, otherwise, there’s plenty of high street shopping to do around Marienplaz and some wonderful off beat shops in Munich’s back streets.

Is there more to do than just a weekend? If you want! You can take self guided walking tours around the city, or join one of many walking tours, run in many different languages, or alternatively, there are a variety of day trips that you can do, solo or in an organised group, including one to Dachau, one of many Bavarian palaces, or even the Alps.

Food and Drink? Large portions seem to be the norm. If you like pork, you’ll be very happy here. There is a wide range of restaurants from the usual fast food outlets to upmarket French, Italian, Thai and local Bavarian speciality restaurants. The Hofbrauhaus may be a little touristy, but it’s well worth a visit for a beer and some local food if you are strolling around the English Garden.

Prices? Eating out is generally very reasonably priced, but hotels can be a little pricey. Search on the internet first and contact the tourism agency.

Language: don’t worry if you don’t speak German, a few basic words go a long way, but most people you will encounter speak some English, and menus written in English are widely available.

OK, don’t look – can you name the five largest lakes in the world? A quick clue, one of them is a sea.

The UK Foreign Office has asked British tour operators to stop arranging holidays to Burma because of the ruling regime's record on human rights.

In a letter to ABTA, the Association of British Tour Agents, the UK’s Foreign Office minister, said that there were “compelling reasons” not to holiday in Burma.

He cited the use of forced labour by the Burmese Junta, who have been used to help build some of Burma’s tourism infrastructure and that some communities have been forcibly relocated to make way for tourism-related developments.

Recently, the military regime stepped up its actions against democracy groups in a campaign of violence and intimidation and has arrested the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy.

ABTA in its turn said that it left commercial and moral decisions on holiday destinations to its members: “It's up to our members to make that decision,” said an ABTA official. “It would be different if the Foreign Office were advising people not to go to Burma because it was dangerous.”

The Globetrotters e-news recently reported that award winning Kuoni, has withdrawn from Burma following the lobbying of Burma Campaign UK.

Do you have a view? Would you travel to Burma, or would boycott it? Write in and tell the Beetle your views: beetle@globetrotters.co.uk

Iris, a British lady of considerable character and pluck, is on a 23 week overland expedition from Quito in Ecuador to Caracas in Venezuela. After this, she plans to do a 3-month voluntary placement in Ecuador, and then visit Central America for another overland trip between Panama City and Mexico City, ending up with perhaps another 2-month voluntary placement somewhere in South America again. This amazing journey will take Iris one year. Here is an extract from Iris’ journey notebook.

15 of our overland gang left us in Ushaia – not because they had come to the end of their trip but because they wanted to spend more time in Ushaia and so, at their own expense opted to stay on in hotels longer and to fly up to Buenos Aires (BA) in order to spend more time there as well. They would then join up with us in BA when we arrived there after spending five days travelling overland.

The remainder of us, 8 including our drivers/tour leaders, then travelled up to BA in a marathon 3,000 km plus journey, so that most of our time was spend on the road, with only two short visits to a petrified forest and a penguin colony to break the monotony and to give us a bit of extra comfort, we opted to drive further on one particular day so that we could spend a night in a hotel! The rest of the time was spent in rough camps along the way!

The petrified forest was in the middle of nowhere. It was very low key, just a park warden looking after a solitary outpost, guarding relics from some 5 million years ago and which they considered were the remains of an enormous forest full of gigantic trees which had suddenly and catastrophically been buried after several natural disasters and which had miraculously been uncovered again in subsequent earth movements. It comprised some enormous trunks lying on the surface of the ground over an extensive area and looked to this lay person’s eye like the remains from some ancient logging ground where the chain saws had been removed and the trunks just left fragmented where they lay. But they were of course now turned to stone. We arrived in the evening at about 1800 and had about an hour to walk round and look at these relics, but unfortunately none of us could really appreciate them because we had such little information as to why they were considered so significant. There was a museum housing fauna and flora of the region and depicting the course of events over several 100 million years but as everything was in Spanish and only one sparse leaflet in English, it was rather disappointing that we did not have a suitable guide to explain it all to us.

We stayed that night in a really rough camp site, again, in the middle of nowhere, which seemed frequented more by roaming labourers from local roadworks rather than the normal tourist place. We lit up a barbecue and ate good steaks that night, all the food having been purchased in bulk before leaving Ushaia.

The next day we pressed on, without pause to a place called Rio Gallegos, eating our lunch on the truck. We prepared it too in the truck on the move. Because the truck was so empty with just 6 instead of the usual 22 people in the back, it bumped and rattled and lurched over the rough roads perhaps more than it would have done if it had been fully laden, and so some accidents did occur with chopped salad etc, as we attempted to fill baguettes for the lunch-time snack!) But Rio Gallegos, gave us a welcome respite from camping as we stayed in a hotel that night and so had the luxury of beds and en suite showers! We went for a meal soon after booking in, and chose the restaurant on the other side of the road to the hotel, where family groups were eating three course meals at midnight! This is the norm in Argentina, as people tend to go out to eat in the late evening, but not before 2130 and even later!

Our next excursion was to a penguin colony that was situated near a place called Camarones, where we camped for the night close to the beach. We spent just an hour and a half at the colony. Penguins breed there and apparently stay for three years, growing up, before making any sea journeys. The whole area was full of young penguins, some already moulted, others younger and still covered in baby fur and all sorts of others in the in-between state looking as if they had all rescued their coats from moth infested wardrobes! However, although it was great to walk among them (along a designated footpath from which we were not allowed to stray) the penguins ignored this. They were allowed to stray on to the footpath and so we had a few very interesting encounters, as they are inquisitive birds, totally unfazed by humans walking around, and so they would pause and swivel their heads almost through a full 180 degrees to try and focus on us and work out who we were!

These two visits were the sum total of sightseeing on the 5 days it took to travel in our overland truck from Ushaia to BA and so we arrived in that capital city ready for a rest and some comfortable beds!

Next Month, Buenos Aires and Uruguay.

If you’d like to contact Iris, whether to wish her luck with her trip or to ask questions about her itinerary and places visited, I am sure she would like to hear from you. She can be contacted on: irisej2002@yahoo.co.uk