World Tourism Blog

I’m not sure if it was the water’s otherworldly milky blue or the enormous plumes of cumulous-cloud steam that made me hesitant to take a dip in Iceland’s Blue Lagoon. Something about the scene—swimsuited bodies of all shapes, sizes, and ages bobbing blissfully while sipping blue liquid from plastic martini glasses—screamed Cocoon. And yet, as I lowered myself into the seductive brine, which is actually runoff from a geothermal power plant, I felt stress melt away.

From the icy tundra of Alaska to the arid desert of the Atacama, our molten-to-the-core planet is laced with underground plumbing that regularly springs a surface leak. And visiting these hot springs can be a therapeutic addition to any vacation.

Earth’s mineral-rich tonic begins as rain that seeps miles underground, gathering concentrations of everything from sulphate (which is why many springs smell like rotten eggs) to magnesium. The water is heated for hundreds or even thousands of years before percolating to the surface via rock fissures at temperatures ranging from 90°F to 212°F (that’s boiling, folks).

But be warned: since our bodies can withstand only about 108°F without scalding, the vast majority of unsupervised hot springs are not suitable for swimming (20 people have died and dozens more have been injured in mishaps in Yellowstone National Park alone).

World’s coolest hot springs

Lucky for us, wellness enthusiasts and entrepreneurs have spent years taming many of our planet’s hot-water faucets and turning them into destination spas with thermal pools regulated at the ideal temperature—generally from 98°F to 104°F.

Popular spots include Banff Upper Hot Springs in Canada’s Alberta province and Calistoga Hot Springs in California’s Napa Valley; others have tongue-twister names such as Pamukkale in Turkey, where you can soak atop millennia-old Greek and Roman ruins.

There is even an official name, balneology, to describe the therapeutic use of thermal baths. While the medicinal magic of “taking the waters”—touted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a cure-all—no longer holds water, a hot springs dip is often advised for people with sore muscles, rheumatism, and arthritis, says Melissa Taylor, assistant marketing coordinator for Canadian Rockies Hot Springs, which include Banff Upper Hot Springs. “Naturopaths also suggest that soaking in hot mineral water is a good way to detoxify the body,” she adds.

Bottom line: an hour or two in a thermal pool—especially one surrounded by natural beauty and clean air—is just about the greenest way to relax and recharge, courtesy of our blue planet. Commercial Loan Workout.

Just past Dracula’s castle, deep within Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, the Transfagarasan Highway is a 55-mile stretch of roadway so scenic and wickedly winding that it rendered Jeremy Clarkson  glib host of the BBC’s popular automotive show “Top Gear” practically speechless. That ‘s no small feat, since for more than 20 years, Clarkson has made it his business to bomb around the world’s most breathtaking roads.

Surveying the twisted tarmac zigzagging below its summit from the cockpit of his Aston Martin DBS, he chuckled with pure delight, exclaiming to the camera, “That’s the most amazing road I’ve ever seen!” If he’d had a tail, it surely would have been wagging.

This serpentine motorway is just one of many mind-bogglingly crazy roads around the globe. And these exciting — albeit potentially perilous — paths offer travelers a refreshing diversion in an era of monotonous interstates and traffic-controlling roundabouts.

From the seemingly insurmountable Alps to the craggy coastline of the Amalfi, the steep hills of New Zealand to the arctic expanses of northern Canada, dramatic geography has left us with some of the world’s more brilliantly engineered pieces of pavement.

Or not so brilliantly engineered. Take, for instance, Bolivia’s ill-conceived Yungas Road, a rickety route connecting the high-altitude capital of La Paz with the low-elevation rainforest town of Coroico. This dangerous pass poses such a harrowing journey (largely unpaved, single lane, no guardrails, 2,000-foot drops) that it claims an estimated 200 drivers  lives annually, rightfully earning it the nickname El Camino de la Muerte (“The Road of Death”).

Back in Romania, the  Transfagarasan ’s own bloody history began with its creation. Built in the 1970s under President Nicolae Ceauescu as a means to mobilize armed forces in the event of a Soviet invasion, this roadway —connecting the remote regions of Transylvania and Wallachia in an endless series of bends, tunnels, and viaducts  exists at the cost of six thousand tons of dynamite and 40 road workers’ lives. Dracula might have approved, but to this day locals bitterly refer to the highway as Ceauşescu’s Folly.

Given those figures, Bolivian bus tours and Transylvanian road trips might not top your to-do list. But the next time you’re zoning out in cruise control or find yourself verbally engaging the Garmin GPS’s female navigator just to stay awake, think of the demanding, dangerous, and downright crazy roads ahead. Then thank your lucky stars for the carpool lane. Commercial Loan Workout.

Images of actresses and models in fashion’s finest clothing, many of them looking straight into the camera under dramatic lighting: This is the Edward Steichen of the early 20th century.

Steichen, one of the world’s most influential photographers, is the subject of an exhibit that has come to the U.S. after starting out in Europe. “Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Conde Nast years, 1923-1937,” started last week at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale and runs through April 11.

More than 200 of Steichen’s celebrity and fashion photos from his years as chief photographer for “Vogue” and “Vanity Fair” magazines are on display. The magazines were published by Conde Nast.

“One of the great things about Steichen when you go through the show, it’s as if all the women in those images were all born in those clothes,” said one of the curators, William Ewing, director of the Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland. “Today nobody looks at a Kate Moss picture and believes she lives in those clothes. There is no credibility to the contemporary fashion photograph. Perhaps that’s the aim.”

Steichen’s goal was to make clothes appear appropriate and attainable, Ewing said.

“The other thing that was amazing about him is that he never repeated himself,” Ewing said. “His signature is that he suppressed his signature … Steichen was much more modern in the sense that he effaced himself.”

Many of the black-and-white photographs are of celebrities of the day including Gary Cooper, Adele and Fred Astaire, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo and Amelia Earhart. There were politicians, like Winston Churchill, and even poets, like William Butler Yeats, who posed with his hair askew. French writer Colette is included. Gloria Swanson is depicted with a black veil over her face and actress Joan Crawford is in dress by Elsa Schiaparelli. The photographs are categorized by years.

All the photographs in the fashion exhibit are original vintage prints, meaning they were made when the negatives were made. Most came from the Conde Nast archives.

The show originally accompanied a Steichen retrospective that toured Europe from 2007 to 2008. The fashion exhibit has since traveled throughout Europe and will go to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., in May.

Ewing, along with museum colleague Nathalie Herschdorfer, Todd Brandow at the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, and Carol Squiers, a curator at the International Center for Photography in New York, put together the fashion exhibit.

Steichen, who was born in Luxembourg and came to the U.S. with his parents when he was an infant, had become a successful painter and photographer by the time he was offered the position as chief photographer for Conde Nast’s two magazines. He worked there 15 years, until 1937.

At age 66, he became director of photography for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he put on the famous “The Family of Man,” show in 1955 and more than 40 other exhibitions. He died in 1973.

“He is one the most important figures in fashion photography,” Squiers said. “He really starts to work with the models in terms of trying to portray the modern woman, someone who is forthright.” That approach, she said, has influenced contemporary photographers as well.

Squiers said Steichen’s work shows aspects of others artists of his time.

“There is a soft monumentality of Rodin that he brings into his pictures but also the great understanding of abstract form that Brancusi brings,” she said.

Ewing said he sees the exhibit as two separate archives: fashion and celebrity portraiture.

For the Fort Lauderdale exhibit, designer Ivonne de la Vega has created a gown valued at $20,000, which will be raffled off.

“He revolutionized fashion photography and pioneered a new visual language of glamour, profoundly shaping the look of celebrity and fashion to this day,” said Irvin Lippman, executive director at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Commercial Loan Workout.

Los Angeles has a stunning and recognizable skyline and is a great spot to see Hollywood’s A-listers, but is also known for sprawl and smog. L.A. is home to nearly 10 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2008 figures).

Plenty of dreamers head to Los Angeles to make it big. If you go, the trick is not to get lost in the sprawl.

The East Pavilion at the Getty Center is pictured in L.A. “The J. Paul Getty Museum seeks to further knowledge of the visual arts and to nurture critical seeing by collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting works of art of the highest quality,” according to The Getty’s Web site.

Venice Beach has the boardwalk, Muscle Beach, volleyball courts, a bike trail and many other attractions that have been luring people for decades. “Venice has always been known as a hangout for the creative and the artistic,” boasts.

If you’re a nut about pumping iron, you’ll want to one very specific part of Venice Beach. “Muscle Beach is a special area where fanatic bodybuilders pump iron in a public show of strength,” according to L.A.’s Department of Recreation & Parks. This photo shows Larry Pollock striking a pose in the finals of the annual Venice Classic bodybuilding competition at Venice Beach back in 2003.

Two women walk past businesses that cater to high-end luxury item consumers along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. “The famed shopping street is known throughout the world as the epicenter of luxury fashion,” claims Rodeo Drive’s official Web site.

Looking for stars in L.A.? You need not look beyond The Griffith Observatory. OK, maybe these aren’t the stars you had in mind, but the observatory overlooks Los Angeles from atop the Hollywood Hills.

Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland is the centerpiece of Fantasyland, and one of the most recognizable structures in the world.

Disneyland has delivered smiles and thrills since it opened in 1955, and its success has spawned parks across the globe.

Visitors raft through realistic looking hot springs and geysers on the ”Grizzly River Rapids” ride at Disney’s California Adventure theme park in Anaheim, Calif. The 55-acre park next to Disneyland is based on California themes, and opened to the public in 2001.

A Cownose Ray glides past as divers feed tropical fish in the Tropical Pacific Gallery at the Aquarium of the Pacific. The Aquarium features a shark lagoon and three main viewing galleries where visitors can learn about ocean issues and conservation.

A simulated “Jaws” shark attack is just one of the attractions that draws in visitors to Universal Studios Hollywood. Park rides include Revenge of the Mummy, Shrek 4-D, Jurassic Park, The Blues Brother, The Simpsons, and more.

The Hollywood Sign was refurbished in 2005. The sign is one of the better-known landmarks in America, and sits atop Mount Lee in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is best known for the Oscars, an annual telecast set to run for the 82nd time. “More than 6,000 of the most accomplished men and women working in cinema” make up the Academy’s membership, according to oscars.

The Galleria Studio Hollywood sells merchandise along the Walk of Fame, where Hollywood’s icons are immortalized.

Stars have left their hand and foot prints in concrete for more than eight decades at the original Graumans Chinese Theatre forecourt.

Dodger Stadium, opened in 1962, has seen more than 125 million fans come through its gates. Baseball fans can purchase a famed Dodger Dog and a beer, soak up some sun, take in a breathtaking view of downtown L.A., look for celebrities — oh, and watch America’s favorite pasttime.

The Museum of Contemporary Art houses more than 500 pieces of art created by more than 200 artists. MOCA was founded in 1979 and “is the only museum in Los Angeles devoted exclusively to contemporary art,” its Web site says. Commercial Loan Workout.

The Mediterranean was heaving as the 68-year-old Italian stood in the cruise ship lounge. A moment later a monstrous wave shattered the windows and sent shards into her head, leaving her bleeding on the floor and calling out for her husband.

Torrents of water gushed into the Louis Majesty, pouring through several floors of the ship.

“I thought I would end up in the sea, drowned,” said Anna Lita, who had a black eye and bandages on her head and hand Thursday.

The three waves that struck the Cypriot-owned ship Wednesday claimed two lives off the coast of northeast Spain. The vessel was carrying 1,350 passengers and 580 crew members, from a total of 27 countries.

Lita’s husband Carlo, 69, who had been beside her on a sofa, was thrown in the air and ended up with five stitches in the head and a leg injury.

Another Italian, Giovanni Zanoni, said that after the waves blew out the windows of the lounge, the ceiling caved in and pandemonium broke out.

“People were screaming, panicking. They were grabbing life vests,” Zanoni said. He said he saw one huge shard of glass hit a man in the face, killing him. It took a while to find the body because he was under the wreckage of the ceiling, Zanoni said.

The ship’s owner and operator, Louis Cruise Lines, said the vessel was struck Wednesday by three “abnormally high” waves more than 33 feet (10 meters) high that broke glass windshields in the forward section on deck five, which is one of 10 used by passengers. Two people died and 14 were slightly hurt, the company said.

Large waves are not rare in the Mediterranean, but ones that size occur only once or twice a year, said Marta de Alfonso, an oceanographer with the Spanish government.

This accident happened in an area of the Mediterranean called the Gulf of Leon, which is known for big waves when storms hit.

The ship was on a 12-day cruise from the ports of Genoa and Marseilles in the western Mediterranean, calling at Tangiers, Casablanca, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Cadiz, Cartagena, Barcelona and had been due to return to Genoa on Thursday.

Passengers said the weather was terrible as they left Cartagena in eastern Spain Wednesday, and the captain announced he was skipping a planned stop in Barcelona and heading straight for Italy.

“I remember when the wave hit,” Lita said. “It broke all the windows and I was rolling and rolling and did not stop calling out for my husband.”

Amateur video footage taken by a passenger and aired on Spanish television showed a huge, foamy wave hitting what appeared to be the lounge area, sending water gushing in and people scurrying for safety.

“Suddenly we saw a wave that went up above our level, and I said to my husband, ‘tonight we will not have to wash the windows,’” said Claudine Armand of France, who was in her cabin at that point. “Right then we heard we heard a loud noise, and it was the wave that hit us.”

“When we came out of the room we saw the wave had flooded everything,” she told Associated Press Television News.

Pierre Languillon, also of France, said damage was extensive and he saw many people with superficial injuries.

“They called for doctors, as many doctors as there were. Luckily nothing happened to us, but I think we averted a catastrophe.”

Louis Cruise Lines spokesman Michael Maratheftis said 14 passengers who suffered only minor injuries were taken to hospital as a precaution.

Arrangements have been made to fly all passengers home Thursday and the ship will carry on with its normal schedule later this month after repairs are completed, he told the AP from Cyprus. By the end of the day most will have left the ship.

Maratheftis said the two dead passengers — a German and an Italian — suffered fatal injuries from the glass shards and ripped-out window frames and furniture.

“It was three waves, one after the other. The damage was done by the second and the third waves. We are talking about waves that exceeded 10 meters in height. This was unforeseen and unpredicted because the weather was not really that bad,” Maratheftis said.

De Alfonso said there was in fact a big storm in the area at the time and the waves might have been stirred up by fierce winds. Waves often come in threes, she said.

Another passenger, Jean Claude Fery, of Marseille, said he was in his cabin looking out the porthole at tremendously turbulent seas. “I have never seen waves so big. It was unbelievable.”

A Louis Cruise Lines statement said the waves smashed windows in a public area on deck 5 on the forward part of the vessel.

Louis Cruise Lines’ Web site says the ship is 680 feet (207 meters) long, and features 10 passenger decks and 732 staterooms along with various bars, pools, restaurants and shops. Commercial Loan Workout.

Mexico’s spring break king — Cancun — is rebounding quickly from last year’s triple blow to its tourism industry caused by the country’s swine flu epidemic, drug violence and a global economic crisis.

Those worries couldn’t compete this year against Mexico’s cheap airfare from the United States and phenomenal package deals that include the popular all-you-can-drink enticements.

February saw 85 percent of its 28,000 rooms filled, a sign of Cancun’s speedy recovery from 2009, when 1 million fewer visitors came than in a typical year. The relatively high occupancy seen in February is expected to go even higher in March when more universities are on spring break.

“We’re back to normal levels after having seen tourism practically paralyzed last year,” said Quintana Roo state assistant tourism secretary Dario Flota.

At the sprawling, palm-tree packed Oasis Hotel, a popular spot with spring breakers, visitors from the U.S. Midwest and Canada looking to shake the chill from a usually brutal winter dotted the beach where some took photos with monkeys while others danced to music pumped out from gigantic speakers.

Emma Duranti, a 20-year-old science major at Queens University in Kingston, Canada, decided to come to Cancun after comparing it to Jamaica and finding a better deal. Duranti said she paid $1,040 for a seven-day, all-inclusive trip.

“I was expecting a good party but it went above and beyond,” said Duranti while sunbathing with two other friends on the beach of the Oasis Hotel. “There is always a party on the beach and you can party all day and party all night!”

Tourism officials say they expect about 25,000 spring breakers to descend this season on Cancun’s newly rebuilt beaches and turquoise blue ocean, compared to the 20,000 spring breakers who visited last year. That’s in addition to tourists of all ages who visit throughout the year. And not only is Cancun drawing them back. Destinations across the country are seeing tourists return, despite a U.S. travel alert warning Americans to stay away from some parts, mostly in the northern border states, because of drug violence.

Lonely Planet’s U.S. staff’s top-10 list for 2010 put Mexico as the No. 4 destination for the new year, declaring that “H1N1 is so 2009″ and that Mexico is “still a good bargain, easy to get to for most Americans” — giving a much-needed endorsement for Mexico’s third largest source of foreign income.

Tourism all but came to a halt in April 2009 when fear over the swine flu epidemic virtually paralyzed Mexico, forcing the closure of schools, restaurants and archaeological sites and restricted air travel to Mexico from some countries. Mexico’s revenue from foreign tourism dropped 15 percent to $11.3 billion from $13.3 billion in 2008, according to the Tourism Department.

The world has since learned that swine flu is treatable if detected in time, vaccines are available, and death rates have dropped in Mexico and elsewhere.

Mexico has had a tougher time fighting off its bad image from drug violence, which has left more than 15,000 people dead since President Felipe Calderon declared his war on cartels in 2006.

To counter the bad news, the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco in drug-plagued Guerrero state paid MTV $200,000 for the network to host its spring party there this year. The city expects to draw between 7,000 to 10,000 spring breakers despite the resort’s sporadic drug killings and gun battles, one of which took place near an historic tourist hotel last year.

Some U.S. universities last year warned students headed for Mexico of a surge in drug-related violence south of the border prompting some to cancel already paid for spring break trips.

Mexican government officials have gone on the offensive and made clear every chance they get that the violence is concentrated in a handful of states, most along the Mexico-U.S. border, like Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua, and in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan — all far from the country’s popular beach resorts.

That message appears to be working: Travelocity’s senior editor Genevieve Shaw Brown said bookings on Travelocity.com for spring travel to Mexico have shot up 25 percent compared to last year. Cancun is No. 5 on Travelocity’s top 10 spring break bookings list for this year, up from the No. 10 spot last year.

She said the swine flu epidemic, violence and an unhealthy economy forced Mexico to lower its prices.

“Now Mexico is reaping the benefits of cheap travel costs with the return of spring breakers who are looking for deals,” Shaw Brown said. “It’s been communicated very well that Mexico is an outstanding value.”

Those who risk it are also reaping the benefits for doing so: The federal, state and local governments have invested $80 million to rebuild Cancun’s world-renowned powdery white beaches that have been suffering from erosion.

Calderon on Tuesday was scheduled to inaugurate the recently completed project along Cancun’s 8-mile (13-kilometer) long strip that extends the beach to 85 meters (280 feet) wide. The rebuilding, which took a year to complete, is the second attempt to rebuild the sandy playground since Hurricane Wilma devastated the area in 2005. An artificial reef off was also built off the coast to help contain the sand.

Elysee Burgess, a 21-year-old nursing major from Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., had only one complaint: She has to get up from the beach every time she wants to get another drink from her hotel bar.

“The beach is great, there are some awesome parties,” Burgess said, while her friend Kristen Fleming took a picture with a monkey. “The only thing that sucks is that you can only get one drink at a time.” Home Security Systems.

When Joel Simon was a kid, he and his brother began snorkeling around the pilings in murky Alamitos Bay near Long Beach, Calif. “It was one of the most intriguing places I’d ever been,” he says rapturously, nearly 50 years later. “These old rusty cans lying in the muck underneath the dock were actually like treasure chests containing barnacles and octopus and all kinds of wonderful encrusting organisms.”

He’s never lost his love of snorkeling. Today he runs Sea for Yourself, leading trips that combine snorkeling with marine ecology in places far and away from Long Beach, from Florida to Fiji.

Snorkeling can be one of the best ways to see a tropical vacation spot and gain an appreciation of its wild side — the kind that doesn’t do karaoke at the hotel bar until all hours of the night. It’s an activity that’s easy to do, there are myriad colorful, memorable sights to see and it’s a solid way to stay in shape when the daily routine’s been put on hold.

As a way to see the ocean, snorkeling has plenty of advantages over scuba. For one, it’s easy. If you can swim, you can snorkel with very little training. Second, it’s cheap, with no need for heavy, expensive gear purchased, rented or — worse — lugged onto the airplane.

“It’s not equipment-intensive — just mask, fins and a snorkel and off you go,” says Debbie Manos, co-owner of Salt Cay Divers in the Turks and Caicos. The minimum amount of gear can be liberating. And in some cases — diving with whales, for example — the lack of bubbles allows you to get closer to your quarry than you can with scuba gear. “It’s so peaceful. You can float on top of all the sea creatures swimming below and not disturb them in their natural environment.”

For casual snorkelers it’s possible to pick up a $20 mask and snorkel at a local dive shop, ask around for good spots — and jump right in. On the laid-back Puerto Rican island of Culebra, for example, world-class snorkeling is a short hike away via public transport. From the mainland, hop a ferry to Dewey, then take a bus to Playa Flamenco; Carlos Rosario Beach is just 20 more minutes away — on foot. Swim just a few yards offshore, and you’re snorkeling among a wild selection of coral, sea fans and reef fish.

Similarly, Makaha Beach Park on the Hawaiian island of Oahu  is located just off the main highway. Park the car and jump into fantastic snorkeling. Of course, at nearly every popular Caribbean and Pacific vacation spot, plenty of resorts and outfitters are ready to arrange half-day or full-day outings to the offshore reefs.

Then there are the snorkeling spots for real diehards who plan entire vacations around their dives and seek out some of the world’s most pristine coral reefs, often in remote places. Just getting to Rurutu in French Polynesia is a bit of an adventure (it’s 350 miles south of Tahiti); but then you still have to take a boat to find migrating humpback whales. Likewise, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s great snorkeling spots, lies 12 to 50 miles offshore. In some places it’s possible to snorkel from an island resort; in other cases you’ll have to travel by boat for your day’s swim.

But what’s perhaps most satisfying about recreational snorkeling is that its joys are the same for those who do it on vacation once every few years as for those who live in tropical locales year round.

When Tori Cullins, co-owner of Wild Side Specialty Tours on Oahu, moved to Hawaii, she missed the “warm furry critters” from the mainland. “We don’t even have squirrels,” says the. “I took to the water to satisfy the nature disconnect I was feeling. Reefs are more diverse than rainforests, and what land animal can compete with the beauty, intelligence and evolutionary success of dolphins and whales?”

And on top of all that, snorkeling is a great way to get exercise on an otherwise sedentary vacation. “You are preoccupied with all the beauty of the underwater world and don’t realize how much swimming you are doing,” says Manos.

Whatever your level of commitment, a good snorkeling trip requires just four things: clear water, gentle currents, abundant aquatic life and the chance to get away from the crowds. Home Security Systems.

Despite calls to free or destroy the animal, SeaWorld said Thursday it will keep the killer whale that drowned its trainer, but will suspend all orca shows while it decides whether to change the way handlers work with the behemoths.

Also, VIP visitors who occasionally were invited to pet the killer whales will no longer be allowed to do so.

“We’re going to make any changes we have to to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Chuck Tompkins, chief of animal training at SeaWorld parks, said a day after a 12,000-pound killer whale named Tilikum dragged a trainer into its pool and thrashed the woman to death as audience members watched in horror.

Talk-radio callers, bloggers and animal activists said Tilikum — which was involved in the deaths of two other people over the past two decades — should be released into the ocean or put to death like a dangerous dog.

Tompkins said that Tilikum would not survive in the wild because it has been captive for so long, and that destroying the animal is not an option either, because it is an important part of the breeding program at SeaWorld and a companion to the seven other whales there.

Dawn Brancheau, a 40-year-old veteran trainer who adored whales, was rubbing Tilikum from a poolside platform when the 22-foot creature grabbed the woman’s ponytail in its jaws and pulled her in. Witnesses said the whale played with Brancheau like a toy.

“He kept pushing her and poking her with his nose,” said Paula Gillespie of Delaware, who saw the attack from an underwater observation point. “It looked like she was just totally caught off guard and looked like she was struggling.”

She added: “I just felt horrible because she’s someone’s daughter, mother. I couldn’t stop crying.”

The killer whale shows have been put on hold at SeaWorld’s three parks in Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego. Tompkins said they will not resume until trainers understand what happened to Brancheau. He also said trainers will review safety procedures and change them as needed.

He would not give details on what might be changed, but he said he does not expect visitors to the theme park to see much difference in the killer whale shows, in which trainers swim with the animals, ride on their backs and jump off of them.

There is virtually no contact between visitors and the orcas at SeaWorld shows, said Fred Jacobs, a spokesman for the SeaWorld parks. But in the past, VIP guests occasionally were allowed to come down to the edge of the pool and touch the whales. That will no longer be permitted, Jacobs said.

Because of Tilikum’s size and history of aggressive behavior, visitors were not allowed to get close to the whale, and trainers were not permitted to climb into the water with the animal. They were only allowed to work with him from a partially submerged deck.

Tompkins defended SeaWorld’s use a whale that had already been blamed in the deaths of two other people.

“We didn’t ignore those incidents,” Tompkins said. “We work with him very, very carefully. We did not get in the water with this animal like we do with other killer whales because we recognized his potential.”

Brancheau’s older sister, Diane Gross, said the trainer would not have wanted anything done to the whale. “She loved the whales like her children. She loved all of them,” said Gross, of Schererville, Ind. “They all had personalities, good days and bad days.”

In a profile in the Orlando Sentinel in 2006, Brancheau acknowledged the dangers, saying: “You can’t put yourself in the water unless you trust them and they trust you.”

One of SeaWorld’s most popular shows — about a child who wants to grow up to be a killer whale trainer — could have been inspired by Brancheau herself.

A trip to SeaWorld at age 9 instilled a desire in her to work with marine animals. She attended the University of South Carolina and majored in psychology, but got a job at a New Jersey park after graduation, working with dolphins and sea lions. She was hired at SeaWorld in Orlando in 1994.

Tilikum was one of three orcas blamed for killing a trainer in 1991 after the woman lost her balance and fell into a pool at a Sealand theme park near Victoria, British Columbia.

In 1999, the body of a naked man was found draped over Tilikum at SeaWorld in Orlando. Officials said the man had stayed in the park after closing and apparently fell into the whale tank. An autopsy found he died of hypothermia. Officials also said it appeared Tilikum bit the man.

A few months after the 1991 death in Canada, SeaWorld asked the National Marine Fisheries Service for permission to “import and temporarily house” Tilikum in Orlando, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

In a 1992 letter, the federal agency said SeaWorld wanted to move Tilikum to Orlando “for the purpose of providing medical treatment and care that is otherwise unavailable in Canada at this time.”

The letter did not mention the whale’s role in the deadly attack. But the agency criticized the theme parks, saying “prudent and precautionary steps necessary for the health and welfare of Tilikum were not taken by Sealand or SeaWorld.”

Animals parks are inspected at least once a year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make sure the animals are being treated humanely and getting proper nutrition and veterinary care. Online records for the three SeaWorld parks going back to 2007 show only minor violations, such as paper feeding trays accidentally dropped into an exhibit.

None of the violations had anything to do with the park’s whales.

“For the most part, they run a top-notch facility, and they take very good care of their animals,” USDA spokesman Dave Sacks said.

Howard Garrett, co-founder and director of the Washington-based nonprofit Orca Network, has studied killer whales for nearly 30 years and said the creatures are not considered dangerous to humans, even though they are highly efficient predators in the wild.

“In their natural habitat, there is no record of any harm to a human anywhere,” Garrett said.

He said Tilikum was probably agitated before Wednesday’s attack, possibly from some kind of clash with the other whales.

Gary Wilson, a professor at Moorpark College’s exotic animal training program, said it can be difficult to detect when an animal is about to turn on its trainer.

“One of the challenges working with any animal is learning to read its body language and getting a feel for what’s going on in its mind,” he said. Home Security Systems.

Ten million more people visited national parks last year than in 2008, but the numbers fell short of the all-time record for park visitation from 1987.

More than 285 million people visited national parks and other units of the National Park Service during 2009, up from nearly 275 million in 2008, according to statistics the agency released Tuesday.

The record for visitation to national parks was set in 1987 at 287.2 million.

Still, the 3.9 percent increase in 2009 visitation compared to 2008 was a triumph for the park system in a year when many sectors of the travel industry suffered a downturn due to the weak economy.

“People both here and abroad know that our national parks are America’s best idea, even during an economic downturn,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in a statement. “Our national parks are treasures that tell the story of our country and celebrate its beauty and culture, and they provide vacation bargains for families living on a tight budget.”

Factors that may have contributed to the increase in numbers in 2009, according to the park service, include three weekends last summer when park entrance fees were waived; visits by President Obama and his family to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon; publicity from Ken Burns’ televised series about the national parks; lower gas prices; and the strong value of the euro against the dollar, which encourages European tourism to the U.S.

Although the system overall did not set an attendance record, some individual parks had their best years ever in 2009, including Yellowstone, which saw 3.3 million people.

Overall, Yellowstone was fourth on the list of most-visited national parks in 2009. The National Park Service said Great Smoky Mountains National Park “continued its reign” as the most popular park, with 9.5 million visitors last year. Grand Canyon was No. 2 on the list, followed by Yosemite, Yellowstone, Olympic, Rocky Mountain, Zion, Cuyahoga Valley, Grand Teton and Acadia.

The Blue Ridge Parkway was the most-visited unit of the park system with nearly 16 million visitors. Home Security Systems.

About 350 people who got sick a week into a Caribbean cruise were responding well to medicine, the cruise line  said Tuesday.

Celebrity Cruise spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said 326 of the more than 1,800 passengers on the Celebrity Mercury began complaining Sunday of upset stomachs, vomiting and diarrhea. Martinez says 27 of the nearly 850 crew members also reported symptoms.

The ship left Charleston on Feb. 15. State officials said there has been an outbreak in norovirus cases across South Carolina but that it is not possible to say if that’s what led to the ship’s illnesses.

Martinez says the crew is conducting “enhanced cleaning” of the ship to prevent the spread of the illness.

An extra doctor and two nurses came aboard in St. Kitts, in the Leeward Islands, and will sail to Charleston, arriving early Friday.

It’s not clear what caused the outbreak. Norovirus is often to blame for similar symptoms sweeping closed quarters like those on cruise ships, but a determination will have to until samples are tested.

Samples from ill passengers and crew are being sent to the Centers for Disease Control, said CDC spokesman Jay Dempsey. He said workers from the agency’s Vessel Sanitation Program will meet the ship when it arrives in Charleston.

The workers will conduct an environmental assessment of the ship to determine the cause of the illness, he added.

According to the CDC Web site, there were two outbreaks of norovirus, which causes stomach flu, last winter on the Celebrity Mercury. In all, the agency investigated 15 outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses on cruise ships calling at American ports.

This year an estimated 14.3 million passengers are expected to take cruises, according to the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group.

The Mercury embarked from a state where health officials have reported twice as many cases of norovirus as normal this winter.

“We have been taken aback at how many people are getting sick with this virus,” said Adam Myrick, a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.

If it turns out to be the virus, it’s no surprise it spread quickly aboard ship because the virus stays on surfaces like doorknobs, handrails and sink fixtures for a long time, he said.

“Any time you have tight spaces and shared surfaces, this virus can spread fast,” Myrick said.

The South Carolina cruise industry is growing and the Mercury sailing earlier this month began Charleston’s first year-round cruising season. There will be 67 cruise calls in the city this year.

The Celebrity Mercury has six more departures set from Charleston during the coming months, including a 16-night trip through the Panama Canal ending in Los Angeles.

Later this spring, Carnival Cruise Lines will permanently base its 2,056-passenger Carnival Fantasy in Charleston.

As the industry grows, the South Carolina State Ports Authority is pursuing plans to open a new cruise terminal and open another half-mile of Charleston’s historic waterfront to the public.

A recent study commissioned by the authority shows cruises will mean $37 million to the South Carolina economy this year. Home Security Systems.