Travel Calendar

NEW YORK — Michael Wigge left Berlin without a penny and traveled 25,000 miles to Antarctica, hitchhiking, bartering and working his way by ship, plane, car and foot, from Europe to Canada and the U.S. and then through Latin America.

A series about his project, “How to Travel the World for Free,” is airing on some PBS channels throughout May and June, using video Wigge shot of his adventures. Here are some details on how he did the project and how it went.

The trip: Wigge, a travel journalist and videographer who speaks German, English and Spanish, left Berlin in June 2010 and traveled for 150 days through 11 countries, arriving in Antarctica in November 2010. More than 100 people helped, providing transportation, food and places to sleep. He planned the journey for a year before starting out, collecting contacts for those who might provide accommodations or odd jobs, but he also relied on the kindness of strangers.

Food: At first, Wigge scrounged for food from garbage bins behind supermarkets, but he soon realized that “Dumpster diving wasn’t necessary. I could walk in and do a barter. I offered to clean the floor or the shelf or wash the dishes in the restaurant in exchange for an old sandwich. And most of the people I approached in shops, supermarkets and restaurants gave me something.”

Accommodations and attitudes: In Latin America, he found that “people were very helpful if I went to their door and said,’I have no idea where I will sleep tonight, can I sleep here?’ There was this helpfulness, this hospitality, maybe because many people there are poor and they know how it feels. They didn’t care about my story. But in the U.S., it was more about the story. They would say,’This is cool, we want to help you reach your goal.’ Americans really go for this.”

Work: He crossed the Atlantic working on a container ship from Belgium to Canada in exchange for his passage, doing everything from paint jobs to changing the oil in the engine room. In Las Vegas, he engaged in pillow fights for $1 on the street and offered his back as a “human sofa” for tired visitors. In San Francisco, he collected tips for “pushing heavy tourists up the hills.” Eventually he had 300 $1 bills, which he used to buy plane fare to Costa Rica. From there he hitchhiked to Panama, where he worked as a butler for the German ambassador.

To cross from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Antarctica, he worked on a luxury cruise ship as an assistant to the expedition leader. “You clean the boots of the tourists, you help them on the ice, you put red flags around the penguin field, you help refill the boats with gasoline,” he said.

Worst job: Wigge’s stint as a porter carrying tourists’ luggage in exchange for a trip to Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca city in the Peruvian Andes, ended “in a bit of a mess. I was the worst porter the Andes had ever seen,” he said.

The other workers were accustomed to handling tents and meals for tourists along the 50-mile, five-day route, then running ahead carrying 60 pounds of luggage on their backs in time to set up the next campsite before the tourists arrived, all at 14,000-feet elevations. But Wigge did not have the stamina to keep up.

“They said,’This is not funny, you cannot do this, we do not want to lose our clients,”‘ he recalled. “I apologized.” After two days, they put his luggage on horses and allowed him to walk at a regular pace rather than staying behind and running ahead to help with campsites.

Video diary: Wigge kept a “video diary” with the goal of eventually producing a TV series. To film himself and collect footage that was high-enough quality for TV, Wigge carried a Canon HDV 1080i camera with a good wide-angle lens and microphone. He ended up with dozens of tapes, which were edited down to five 30-minute segments.

He nearly lost the precious tapes while staying with a German expat in Cuzco, Peru. “The whole apartment burned down before we went to sleep,” Wigge said. But he was able to get his travel bag — including the videos and camera — out, and looks back on the incident philosophically: “We are still alive.”

Return trip: Once he’d achieved his goal of starting out with no money and completing a one-way trip to Antarctica, he had no qualms about accessing a bank account for return fare to Germany.

Advice: “I would like to motivate people, inspire people,” he said. “If you’re not too vain to do something like pillow fighting or being a human sofa, you can barter your way from something very small to something very big. Why not travel and be a bit silly?”

For more inspiration, take a look at Wigge’s website — www.howtotraveltheworldforfree.com — and self-published book, “How to Travel the World for Free: I Did It, and You Can Do It, Too!”

Summer travel season is about to kick off and with it comes deals aplenty from hotels and resorts trying to fill rooms.

The Breakers Palm Beach has announced a summer travel deal with rates up to 45 percent off.

This means you can stay at the famed luxury resort this summer from $289 per night Sunday – Thursdays and $369 per night on Fridays and Saturdays.

The five diamond oceanfront resort also offers a few freebies to sweeten the deal. Complimentary continental breakfast, kids’ meals, a kids’ camp  (half and full-day sessions) and unlimited tennis (10 courts) and fitness classes.

Reduced golf fees are also offered. The 36 holes include the Ocean Course and The Breakers Rees Jones Course. The resort sits on a half-mile of private beach and has five pools.

The summer deal is available June 1 – Sept. 30, 2012. After that, rates start to climb as temperatures fall around the nation.

Traveling in the off season has its perks: Fewer crowds and often, significantly reduced rates. But it also has its downsides, and in this case, it’s the heat.

According to weather.com, the average high / low temperatures in Palm Beach are June 89/74; July 90/76; August 90/76 and September 88/75.

Hey, better to be hot in Palm Beach than sweaty in a city, right?

“Economic necessity has separated our family,” she said. “I want to put it back together.”

But making the 30-minute hop to Florida will not be easy for Niurka, a 45-year-old doctor, whose brother left Cuba a decade ago, followed by her father and then, five years ago, her 24-year-old son. Like all Cubans, she needs permission to leave, but as a member of the country’s medical corps, she may be forced to wait years for an exit permit — if she gets one at all.

So Niurka, who asked that her full name be withheld lest she spoil her chance of traveling, anxiously awaits a promised reform of Cuba’s migration rules that, for half a century, have controlled who can leave the island, who can return and how long they can be gone.

Any loosening of controls would be a step toward eliminating one of the most deeply resented restrictions on Cubans’ liberty and a milestone on President Raúl Castro’s gradual march toward economic and social reform. Cuban officials have hinted for years that a change might be coming, but the bureaucratic system limiting travel remains in place.

If it does become easier for Cubans to legally leave the island, the reform could spur economic migration and deepen ties between the island and the two million members of the diaspora, whose money and business experience may be vital to the government’s plans to drastically enlarge the private sector.

“If you have a significant change to the migratory law, it will be a watershed,” said Arturo López-Levy, a Cuban-born academic who left the island 10 years ago and lectures at the University of Denver.

“It could unleash the potential of the whole reform program and it could empower the actors who favor reconciliation between the Cubans on the island and the diaspora,” he said. “This is a critical juncture.”

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have gone into exile or migrated over the past five decades, and thousands are believed to have died trying to cross the Straits of Florida in small boats — partly because American policy promises residency to Cubans who make it ashore. Though many Cubans now pay smugglers to take them to the United States via Mexico, the United States Coast Guard continues to find would-be migrants at sea.

There was a swell of hope for new travel rules last August, when Mr. Castro told Parliament that the government was working on “updating” the law.

Then in an interview published this spring, Ricardo Alarcón, president of Parliament, said the government was planning a “radical and profound” reform in the coming months. Deputy Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodríguez said during a video conference with Cubans overseas in April that progress on the issue was “advanced.”

In lines at the migration office, on blogs and in conversations among islanders and members of the diaspora, Cubans question whether the government will part with such a lucrative bureaucracy or risk letting go health workers whose overseas missions earn Cuba billions of dollars each year.

“It’s one thing for a foreign country not to let you in and another for your own country not to let you out,” said Amparo García, a jewelry seller whose daughter, 23, is in the process of getting a permit to visit her father in Angola. “If you have the money and you want to travel, you should be able to buy a ticket and go to the airport. That simple.”

Jorge Martínez, who charges $1 to type up migration papers in the front seat of his 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, said more people than usual were applying for passports because they believe the government will scrap the exit permit and increase passport fees to make up for lost revenue.

“People have been talking about this for years, but right now there’s a lot of expectation,” he said.

Potala Travel, a Tibetan-run tour organization, announces a 12-day trek between two of Tibet’s most important monasteries. Crossing over two 5000-meter mountain passes, this demanding trek is also the most popular route in Central Tibet.

Lhasa, Tibet (PRWEB) May 19, 2012

Potala Travel, a Tibetan-run tour organization, announces a 12-day trek between two of Tibet’s most important monasteries. Crossing over two 5000-meter mountain passes, this demanding trek is also the most popular route in Central Tibet.

Ganden monastery, located about 45km east of Lhasa, is a monastery of the Geluk order. It was founded in 1409 by Tsongkhapa on the Gokpori ridge of Mount Wangkur. After later additions, the monastery came to support more than 5,000 monks.

During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the monastery was destroyed. In the 1990s, the buildings of the monastery were rebuilt and renovated, and 1,660 square meters of murals have been restored over the last four years.

The Samye monastery is the most popular destination for travelers in Central Tibet. Surrounded by barren mountains and dramatic sand dunes and approached via a river crossing, the beauty of the monastery and its location tempts many visitors to stay longer than they intended.

Samye was Tibet’s first monastery and has a history that spans more than 1200 years. It was founded during the reign of King Trisong Detsen, sometime between 756 and 780. Shortly after founding the monastery, Tibet’s first seven monks were ordained at Samye by the monastery’s Indian abbot, Shantarakshita (Kende Shewa) and Indian and Chinese scholars were invited to assist in the translation of Buddhist texts into Tibetan.

Samye has been damaged and restored many times throughout its long history. The most recent assault on its antiquity was by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution. Extensive renovation work has been going on since the mid-1980s and there are now 190 monks at the monastery.

The best time for the trek is from mid-May to mid-October. Summer can be wet but the mountains are at their greenest and wildflowers color the alpine meadows. Barring heavy snow, it’s also possible for those with a lot of trekking experience and the right gear to do this trek in the colder months.

Potala Travel is a Tibetan-run travel service based in the heart of Lhasa that is committed to supporting local Tibetan businesses and fostering responsible and sustainable tourism. The team members are knowledgeable program directors, experienced English speaking tour guides and trained cooks and drivers.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/5/prweb9522380.htm

5/19/2012 6:44 AM ET
(RTTNews) – The United nations Security Council (UNSC) has imposed a travel ban on five military officers who seized power from the civilian government in Guinea-Bissau last month, and urged member states to ensure that the sanctioned individuals do not enter or transit through their territories.

The travel ban imposed by the UNSC resolution adopted Friday affects coup leaders General Antonio Injai, Major-General Mamadu Ture, General Estevao Na Mena, Brigadier-General Ibraima Camara, and Lieutenant-Colonel Daba Naualna.

In the resolution, the Council also demanded that the Guinea-Bissau military leadership take immediate steps to restore and respect constitutional order by holding democratic elections as well as ensuring that all soldiers returned to their barracks and members of the “military command” relinquished their positions of authority to a civilian government.

The Army seized power in Guinea-Bissau on April 12, arresting interim President Raimundo Pereira as well as Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, dissolving the parliament and establishing a National Transitional Council. The coup, which came during elections in which Gomes was widely expected to be re-elected, was apparently prompted by a plan by Gomes to reduce the size of the Army.

The Army, led by Chief of Staff Gen. Antonio Injai, has so far refused to heed to international calls for returning the country to civilian rule and restoring constitutional order. Incidentally, Guinea-Bissau is a West African country with a history of coups, misrule and political instability since it gained independence from Portugal in 1974.

The UNSC members indicated Friday that they may review the measures contained in the adopted resolution, including strengthening it through additional measures like an embargo on arms and financial measures, if the Army fails to relinquish power in the West African nation as demanded.

They stressed the need for all national stakeholders and Guinea-Bissau’s international and bilateral partners to remain committed to the restoration of constitutional order. The Council members also encouraged the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to continue its mediation efforts, in coordination with the United Nations, the African Union and the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (known by the Portuguese acronym CPLP).

The UNSC also expressed concerns over reports of looting of state assets as well as human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions, ill treatment of detainees, repression of peaceful demonstrations and restrictions on the freedom of movement, and stressed that those responsible for such actions must be held accountable.

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Editor’s note: Meg Urry is the Israel Munson professor of physics and astronomy and chairwoman of the department of physics at Yale University, where she is the director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. This article was written in association with The Op-Ed Project.

(CNN) — On Saturday, a company called SpaceX is scheduled to launch the first private mission to the International Space Station, demonstrating a freight-carrying capability NASA gave up when it retired its fleet of space shuttles in July.

Some NASA supporters are mourning what they see as the decline of U.S. leadership in space. But they should really be celebrating the dawn of a new era.

After all, we’ve been stuck in low Earth orbit for several decades now, at considerable cost. Visionary plans for genuine space exploration have gathered dust at NASA, the National Research Council and other space-savvy places. They advocate relearning how to land on the moon or figuring out how to travel to Mars, an asteroid or the special orbital location where the James Webb Space Telescope will eventually operate. But after more than two decades of talking that talk, the U.S. has yet to walk that walk.

Turning over routine space trucking to private industry has important benefits. It frees NASA to innovate and to develop a new heavy-lift capability commensurate with real space exploration. At the same time, it empowers private industry to play a significant role in the nation’s space future.

Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket, its Dragon capsule filled with food, supplies and science experiments, is scheduled for 4:55 a.m. ET from the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Three days later, astronauts will use a robotic arm to attach the Dragon capsule to the station. Cargo will be unloaded, return cargo loaded in, and the capsule will return to splash down in the Pacific.

Light Years: SpaceX Dragon to launch Saturday

This is to be the third launch of the Falcon 9 rocket; the second launch of the Dragon capsule, the first with components needed for space station docking; and one of 12 planned SpaceX flights to the International Space Station.

SpaceX admits the riskiness of its endeavor. The current flight has been delayed several times because of problems with the flight software. Space-flight veterans in the company are well aware of the trial-and-error nature of technology development, but they also know risk is an essential part of innovation.

NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program is funding a handful of private companies — including SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation); Orbital Sciences Corporation, which built the Pegasus rocket launch system 20 years ago; Blue Origin; Boeing; and Sierra Nevada — to carry cargo to the International Space Station.

ATK (Alliant Techsystems Inc.) plans to use its Liberty rocket to launch humans into orbit by 2015.

CNN Explains: Commercial space flight

Many of these private companies have goals far beyond servicing the space station. Taking over space trucking from NASA allows them to pay the bills as they develop increasingly capable space vehicle systems. Then, providing they can reduce space launch costs by a large factor, they may be able to exploit new business opportunities, including passenger traffic to outer space.

Still, they are not motivated by purely commercial concerns.

The financial backers of these companies — Elon Musk of SpaceX or Blue Origin’s (and Amazon’s) Jeff Bezos — have invested hundreds of millions of dollars of their own fortunes. They doubtless would like their space adventures to turn a profit, but at heart they are modern-day pioneers who want to do something profoundly important for the future of humankind.

Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter and Facebook.com/cnnopinion.

Take the example of Planetary Resources, a company that recently announced plans to investigate and eventually mine rare metals from asteroids.

The news stories emphasized PR’s business plan, but their goals are far broader. They will first build small space telescopes to observe asteroids, so they can understand these building blocks from which Earth formed. Asteroids larger than about 100 meters (328 feet) in diameter are a potential hazard for the Earth, and understanding their composition will allow better prediction of their impact on the planet.

Should we ever need to deflect an asteroid, we’ll need to travel to it. So, while Planetary Resources might have a plan to make money down the road, they will first contribute critical knowledge to humankind, perhaps helping save the planet from destruction.

Furthermore, with an asteroid visit and perhaps even a sample return, Planetary Resources will discover whether materials essential for human sustenance (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, water) can be recovered from these deep space objects. If so, they could set up interplanetary supply depots to enable human colonization of space. So there is a lot more to space commerce than mining asteroids for rare metals.

Private space companies describe a vision that sounds like the original NASA: big goals, with small but steady steps toward those goals, and much support but little interference from the nation.

People who have visited SpaceX say its employees are among the best and brightest and that they mean to change the world. This is just what NASA did in the 1960s when humans moved out of low Earth orbit and ventured to the moon.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Meg Urry.

The latest in a string of bizarre events involving air travel — and in some cases, flight crews — comes in the form of a loaded gun. At the center of this incident, which involved a .357 Magnum, was a pilot for Piedmont Airlines.

The pilot was detained and charged Friday for allegedly trying to board a flight in Buffalo for New York City with a loaded revolver in his bag, the Associated Press reported.

Brett Dieter, 52, of Virginia was charged with the possession of a concealed firearm when a Transportation Security Administration agent noticed a .357 Magnum loaded with five rounds of ammunition in his bag at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, according to the Buffalo News.

A spokesman for US Airways, which contracts with Piedmont for its US Airways Express fleet, told the Los Angeles Times that the company would conduct an internal investigation and referred all other questions to Buffalo law enforcement.

Investigators believe Dieter had made seven flights with the gun since Wednesday, when he flew from Charlottesville, Va., to New York City without running the bag through X-rays, the AP reported.

The year has been off to a rough start for airline employees and travelers alike.

On April 19, a Delta Air Lines jet bound for Los Angeles made an emergency landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport shortly after taking off when birds were sucked into one of its engines.

Five days later, a JetBlue flight bound for Florida returned to Westchester Airport north of New York City minutes after it hit two Canada geese upon takeoff.

On March 9, an American Airlines jet returned to the gate in Dallas after an attendant let out a blood-curdling scream and began ranting about a crash as the plane prepared to take off.

On March 28, Jet Blue pilot Clayton Osbon began ranting and acting erratically as his flight headed from New York to Las Vegas, forcing the copilot to lock him out of the cockpit and make an emergency landing. Osbon was removed from the flight after having been tackled by passengers and strapped down with their belts.

As for this week’s case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Dieter could face a maximum 10 years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

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BY DANIEL GILBERT AND JOANN S. LUBLIN

Chesapeake Energy Corp. said Friday its board members will take a 20% pay cut and no longer have personal use of company aircraft, the latest move by the embattled natural-gas company to placate critics of its compensation and board oversight practices.

Meanwhile, Chesapeake directors are actively recruiting several prospects to become the company’s independent chairman, a person familiar with the situation said Friday.

“They have a couple people in mind” who the board members are approaching without using a search firm, the person said. “They will know in the next week or so if that is going to pan out.” …

Editor’s note: Meg Urry is the Israel Munson professor of physics and astronomy and chairwoman of the department of physics at Yale University, where she is the director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. This article was written in association with The Op-Ed Project.

(CNN) — On Saturday, a company called SpaceX is scheduled to launch the first private mission to the International Space Station, demonstrating a freight-carrying capability NASA gave up when it retired its fleet of space shuttles in July.

Some NASA supporters are mourning what they see as the decline of U.S. leadership in space. But they should really be celebrating the dawn of a new era.

After all, we’ve been stuck in low Earth orbit for several decades now, at considerable cost. Visionary plans for genuine space exploration have gathered dust at NASA, the National Research Council and other space-savvy places. They advocate relearning how to land on the moon or figuring out how to travel to Mars, an asteroid or the special orbital location where the James Webb Space Telescope will eventually operate. But after more than two decades of talking that talk, the U.S. has yet to walk that walk.

Turning over routine space trucking to private industry has important benefits. It frees NASA to innovate and to develop a new heavy-lift capability commensurate with real space exploration. At the same time, it empowers private industry to play a significant role in the nation’s space future.

Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket, its Dragon capsule filled with food, supplies and science experiments, is scheduled for 4:55 a.m. ET from the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Three days later, astronauts will use a robotic arm to attach the Dragon capsule to the station. Cargo will be unloaded, return cargo loaded in, and the capsule will return to splash down in the Pacific.

Light Years: SpaceX Dragon to launch Saturday

This is to be the third launch of the Falcon 9 rocket; the second launch of the Dragon capsule, the first with components needed for space station docking; and one of 12 planned SpaceX flights to the International Space Station.

SpaceX admits the riskiness of its endeavor. The current flight has been delayed several times because of problems with the flight software. Space-flight veterans in the company are well aware of the trial-and-error nature of technology development, but they also know risk is an essential part of innovation.

NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program is funding a handful of private companies — including SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation); Orbital Sciences Corporation, which built the Pegasus rocket launch system 20 years ago; Blue Origin; Boeing; and Sierra Nevada — to carry cargo to the International Space Station.

ATK (Alliant Techsystems Inc.) plans to use its Liberty rocket to launch humans into orbit by 2015.

CNN Explains: Commercial space flight

Many of these private companies have goals far beyond servicing the space station. Taking over space trucking from NASA allows them to pay the bills as they develop increasingly capable space vehicle systems. Then, providing they can reduce space launch costs by a large factor, they may be able to exploit new business opportunities, including passenger traffic to outer space.

Still, they are not motivated by purely commercial concerns.

The financial backers of these companies — Elon Musk of SpaceX or Blue Origin’s (and Amazon’s) Jeff Bezos — have invested hundreds of millions of dollars of their own fortunes. They doubtless would like their space adventures to turn a profit, but at heart they are modern-day pioneers who want to do something profoundly important for the future of humankind.

Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter and Facebook.com/cnnopinion.

Take the example of Planetary Resources, a company that recently announced plans to investigate and eventually mine rare metals from asteroids.

The news stories emphasized PR’s business plan, but their goals are far broader. They will first build small space telescopes to observe asteroids, so they can understand these building blocks from which Earth formed. Asteroids larger than about 100 meters (328 feet) in diameter are a potential hazard for the Earth, and understanding their composition will allow better prediction of their impact on the planet.

Should we ever need to deflect an asteroid, we’ll need to travel to it. So, while Planetary Resources might have a plan to make money down the road, they will first contribute critical knowledge to humankind, perhaps helping save the planet from destruction.

Furthermore, with an asteroid visit and perhaps even a sample return, Planetary Resources will discover whether materials essential for human sustenance (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, water) can be recovered from these deep space objects. If so, they could set up interplanetary supply depots to enable human colonization of space. So there is a lot more to space commerce than mining asteroids for rare metals.

Private space companies describe a vision that sounds like the original NASA: big goals, with small but steady steps toward those goals, and much support but little interference from the nation.

People who have visited SpaceX say its employees are among the best and brightest and that they mean to change the world. This is just what NASA did in the 1960s when humans moved out of low Earth orbit and ventured to the moon.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Meg Urry.