World Tourism Blog

Cape Town Has Much to Offer, Even If You Are Not a Soccer Fan

CAPE TOWN - Overshadowed by Table Mountain and teeming with soccer fans here to watch the World Cup, Cape Town is a vibrant city at the tip of Africa where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet.

Reuters correspondents with local knowledge help visitors to get the most out of a 48-hour visit to a city in the feverish grip of Africa’s first World Cup.

FRIDAY

6 p.m. - Kick off your stay with sundowners or hot chocolate at Wakame Asian sushi restaurant in Beach Road , Mouille Point, enjoying an uninterrupted vista of the ocean as the waves break meters away. Even in winter, the sun pokes out its brilliant head periodically and this is an ideal spot to relax as the fading light becomes one with the ocean darkness. Call them on +27 21 433 2377. If raw fish isn’t quite your fancy, then try the sophisticated Aubergine restaurant where diners enjoy their meals as a fireplace provides warmth and ambience during the cold winter nights. Situated in the former 19th century home of the Cape’s first chief justice, the restaurant offers innovative twists to culinary classics, with wild boar and geranium scented sauce among the favorites. The restaurant is found at 39 Barnet Street, Gardens or could be contacted on +27 21 465 4909.

7:30 p.m. - It’s soccer World Cup time and the inner-city undergoes a regular metamorphosis as streets are blocked or opened to assist thousands of fans attending matches at Green Point Stadium. The stadium, within walking distance of the city’s central business district, is adjacent to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, a mega-mall that offers something for everyone. Having whet your appetite earlier, why not grab a succulent Ostrich (the world’s largest flightless bird) fillet with red wine sauce at Belthazar Restaurant (Shop 153, +27 21 421 3753) or for those with a wilder palate, a game kebab typically featuring meat cuts from Kudu, Springbok, Gemsbok and Impala buck. Also situated at the V&A is Nelson Mandela Gateway (+27 21 413 4217), where you can buy tickets (200 rand p/p return) to visit Robben Island Museum and see the cell which held South Africa’s first black state leader for 26 years. There are usually four tours a day during winter ending 3 p.m. daily, (including Sundays and holidays). To cater for increased demand during the World Cup tournament, there are an extra two boat trips at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The island is a World Heritage site and a former leper colony. All trips are weather dependent.

By Wendell Roelf

The new 70,000 seat capacity Green Point Stadium (bottom L) for the FIFA Soccer World Cup in Cape Town, on April 25, 2010. Overshadowed by Table Mountain and teeming with soccer fans here to watch the World Cup, Cape Town is a vibrant city at the tip of Africa where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet.

IT was love at first sight. Henry James was 26 when he crossed the border from Switzerland and made his way, on foot, down into Italy — “warm & living & palpable,” as he wrote ecstatically to his sister on Aug. 31, 1869. The romance kindled that day lasted nearly 40 years, and played a significant part in his career; he set some of his greatest works in Italy, including “Daisy Miller,” “The Aspern Papers” and “The Wings of the Dove.”

All three are excellent traveling companions, particularly if you’re en route to Rome and Venice — but a more direct (though of course inescapably Jamesian, and therefore at times convoluted) expression of his contagious passion for what he declared to be the “most beautiful country in the world” can be found in his travel writing.

Henry James as tour guide? He won’t lead you step by step, waving a pennant so you don’t get lost, but he does show the way. His fine, reverberating consciousness sets off a corresponding reverberation in the sympathetic reader, who can’t help but admire the way Italy liberates an appetite for sensual experience in this most cerebral of authors.

If you’re thinking of visiting Umbria and Tuscany, James has even thoughtfully planned out your route: in 1874, when his Italian romance was in its infancy (and the Kingdom of Italy was a newborn nation, having achieved unification only in 1861), James wrote for The Atlantic Monthly a travel essay called “A Chain of Cities,” in which he describes his springtime wanderings in Assisi, Perugia, Cortona and Arezzo, ancient hill towns well stocked with artistic treasures and expansive views — all neatly arranged within easy distance of one another. James, traveling by train, lounges and loafs along the way, examining and judging an artist’s work, or sitting on a sunny bench beneath the ramparts of a ruined fortress, or strolling aimlessly, merely savoring the flavor of “adorable Italy.” A 21st-century traveler whose schedule is fixed by the tyranny of airline reservations may be tempted to pick up the pace (certainly a possibility if you’ve rented a car), but accident and adventure, the kind of chance encounter that loitering invites, are just as important, in the search for the essence of a place, as methodical contemplation.

James’s principal interests are scenery and art, though he occasionally casts his eye — while holding his nose — on the unwashed populace (the Puritan in him was shocked by the Italian peasant’s indifference to soap). All four towns are perched high and blessed with stunning views, but of course the views were even more gorgeous in the 19th century, before the valleys were streaked with highways, dotted with factories and warehouses and veiled by smog.

In Assisi, James looks out over “the teeming softness of the great vale of Umbria,” and watches “the beautiful plain mellow into the tones of twilight.” Today the plain is still “teeming” (though with human activity rather than nature’s bounty), and the mellow haze in the distance looks suspiciously chemical. But if the views are less pristine, the art and the architectural monuments are far more accessible, preserved and curated with care and intelligence. Each of these towns is home to more masterpieces than you can comfortably absorb in one visit; this is an itinerary overflowing with artistic riches.

If James insists on a measured tempo (in Perugia he warns that a visitor’s “first care must be to ignore the very dream of haste, walking everywhere very slowly and very much at random”), at least part of the reason is that in these towns there’s little choice. Most of the streets, especially in Assisi, Perugia and Cortona, are steep, narrow and crooked; haste would soon leave you panting. Arezzo is gentler, but there, too, James is right: even if you’re fit enough to race along, a leisurely stroll is infinitely more rewarding when nearly every building has half a millennium of history attached to it.

In Assisi, James counsels, the visitor’s “first errand” is with the 13th-century basilica dedicated to St. Francis. The church, which houses the saint’s tomb — “one of the very sacred places of Italy” — is a magnet for religious pilgrims. James hits on a suggestive metaphor for the basilica’s astonishing structure: it consists of two churches, one piled on top of the other, and he imagines that they were perhaps intended as “an architectural image of the relation between heart and head.” The lower church, built in the Romanesque style, is somber, cave-like and complex, whereas the upper church, a fine example of Italian Gothic, is bright, spacious, rational. (Though he often favored head over heart, reason over emotion, James was a master at turning the tables.) Both churches are famously decorated with frescoes hugely important to the history of art, most of them traditionally ascribed to Giotto (c. 1267-1337). Studying them closely, James pays tribute to the artist’s expressive power: “Meager, primitive, undeveloped, he is yet immeasurably strong” — a judgment still valid today.

By ADAM BEGLEY

The 13th-century basilica dedicated to St. Francis as seen from the fortress above Assisi.

Local watering holes, from New York to California.

Standing in the sunshine on the rocky bank, with rivulets of cool water dripping from your hair and swimsuit, you wait your turn at the base of the old oak. You’re up. You grip the fraying rope, get a running start, swing out over the pool of clear water, and release. Cannonball!

In summertime, when the mercury taunts the tip of the thermometer like an angry red fist, the best place to cool down is an old-fashioned swimming hole.

These often-secluded natural pools are the perfect antidote to crowded pools with zinc-covered teenage lifeguards or water parks with $8 hot dogs. And they offer a dose of not-yet-forgotten Americana, where sunny days are measured by best friends and belly flops.

Swimming holes are where we shrug off responsibilities and play with the enthusiastic zeal of a child. They’re also places where we come of age. In “The Man in the Moon,” 14-year-old Dani (Reese Witherspoon) has her first kiss with the gorgeous 17-year-old neighbor (Jason London) — and subsequently learns her first lessons in love — down at the swimming hole.

Pancho Doll, a former writer for the Los Angeles Times, is something of an aficionado. For his first book, “Day Trips with a Splash: Swimming Holes of California,” Doll logged 25,000 miles in his truck searching the state for the best, from the Oregon state line to San Diego County. He has since penned a whole series that chronicles the best freshwater spots across the country.

This is a man who knows a thing or two about taking a dip. “The Holy Trinity of swimming-hole quality is height, depth, and privacy,” says Doll. “Surrounding rock provides a sense of enclosure, often a nice slab inclined for summer repose, even a ledge to jump from.”

And what says “swimming hole” more than an old-fashioned rope swing? At the cypress-studded Blue Hole in Wimberley, Texas, three such swings hang from burly tree limbs. Drop in with the Austinites who come to float on inner tubes and picnic on the grassy banks.

While these natural oases might seem most at home in the South, you’ll find swimming holes across the country. At Peekamoose Blue Hole in New York State’s Catskill Mountains, dappled light bounces off leafy canopies and swimmers submerge themselves in the cool waters like an invigorating summer baptism.

So grab your swimsuit, a towel, and a pair of water shoes, and jump in at some of our favorite swimming holes. Last one in’s a rotten egg!

By Alice Bruneau

Sliding Rock in North Carolina is where young swimmers slither down a flat waterfall into a deep pool at the bottom.

Until now, Harry Potter fans could merely imagine the sensation of quaffing a butterbeer, finding a magic wand at Ollivander’s or escaping the steam from a snarling dragon’s snout.

But finally, 13 years after the first of seven books began chronicling the boy wizard’s adventures, imagination has become reality at Universal Orlando.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a mini-park inside Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park, opens for general admission June 18, but The Associated Press got a sneak peek at what has become the most highly anticipated theme-park attraction in years.

Past a stone archway and the steam-belching Hogwarts Express, the fictitious city of Hogsmeade unfolds amid snowcapped, dingy rooftops and storefronts packed like row houses with shops straight from the books and movies. Zonko’s joke shop offers Sneakoscopes and extendable ears. The confectionary Honeydukes has chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans (literally ranging from pear to fish). At the Owl Post, guests can stamp mail with a genuine Hogsmeade postmark.

Towering over it all is Hogwarts, a perfect reproduction of the imposing, many-spired castle where Harry and his magician friends are students.

“Once we locked in and knew what we were doing — what we thought would be the most iconographic moments of the fiction to bring to life — it became a matter of executing at a level of authenticity and detail that was going to be unquestionable,” said Mark Woodbury, head of Universal Creative.

Park construction was overseen by the production manager from the Potter movies, and as Warner Bros. filmed the series’ sixth movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” scenes were shot for the park’s crown jewel, a ride called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.

The cutting-edge ride seamlessly combines the sensation of flight with tactile experiences like smoke and drops of water as it takes guests through a hodgepodge of encounters in Potter’s chaotic life, from the Quidditch field to the mouths of giant spiders and dragons. The ride queue stars lifelike projections of film characters like Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

By TRAVIS REED

Visitors on Flight of the Hippogriff at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida.

Santa CATALINA ISLAND, Calif.
ASK Southern Californians if they have been to Santa Catalina Island, an hourlong ferry ride from Long Beach, and the answer will most likely be, “I went there when I was a kid, but haven’t been back in years.”

The Santa Catalina Island Company would like to change that. It’s spending $11 million to entice a more globetrotting generation of visitors, with new attractions like a zip line that carries riders from 600 feet above sea level through a canyon down to the beach.

“What we’re trying to do is create a little bit of a renaissance for Catalina,” said Brad Wilson, chief marketing officer for the company. “We want to offer activities that would better suit the current traveler.”

Despite its proximity to the wealthy California coast, the 22-mile-long rocky island has never become the American equivalent of Capri in Italy. Once a destination for big bands and ballroom dancing at the famous Casino — which is not actually a gambling spot — Catalina evolved into a quaint, family-friendly destination, better known for waffle cones and glass-bottom boat rides than for fine dining or hotels with fancy sheets.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. For many people, Catalina’s slow pace and the sense you get of stepping back in time are crucial to its appeal. Its main town, Avalon, is only one square mile, a picturesque scene as you approach the harbor by ferry, and golf carts are the primary form of transportation. (The number of cars on the island has been restricted since the 1970s.)

“If you were to stand out on the pier,” Mr. Wilson said, “and take a photo looking back at the town and compare it to one taken 60 years ago, you’d be hard pressed to see a change.”

The challenge for the Santa Catalina Island Company, which owns 10 percent of the island, is preserving that picture while at the same time bolstering tourism — the lifeblood of the local economy.

Most of the remaining land is owned by the Catalina Island Conservancy, a nonprofit created in 1972 to preserve the island in its natural state. Members of the Wrigley family — the chewing gum Wrigleys, who owned the island — deeded 88 percent of the land to the Conservancy, guaranteeing that it would remain largely undeveloped.

That has set up an odd situation on the island, which resembles a less tropical version of the landscape on the television show “Lost.” Catalina residents (there are about 4,000) refer to the Conservancy land as the interior, and most tourists — and many who live on the island — never venture beyond the gates dividing the Conservancy property from Avalon’s gift shops and piers (other than on packaged tram tours).

The zip line represents a tentative effort to bridge that divide. It starts in the hills near the Conservancy gate and descends in five separate zips between platforms, where educational signs highlight facts about the wildlife and scenery. Riders harnessed to overhead cables with pulleys get to experience the island’s natural side as they whiz by, with views of the ocean along the way.

“There’s an opt-out if it freaks you out after the first zip,” Mr. Wilson said. “You’re pretty committed after that.”

During a visit in mid-April, the zip line was just one of the projects construction workers were rushing to finish before the island’s peak summer season begins in late May.

The Descanso Beach Club, a short walk from Avalon, was getting a face-lift, with private cabanas and a fresh look for the outdoor restaurant and bars. The Descanso will be a hub for waterfront activities like kayaking and snorkeling, as well as a new Sea Trek Undersea Adventure, a tour that will outfit guests in special diving helmets for a walk along an underwater trail.

No diving experience is required for that tour, but Catalina is also a popular scuba diving destination, known for its kelp forests and shipwrecks.

What the island is not known for is great dining, though that is starting to change. When I was in town, I had sushi for dinner at C. C. Gallagher, a cafe that is also a gallery and wine store and feels refreshingly like a neighborhood hangout.

For lunch, I bypassed the kid-pleasing pizza shops and hamburger joints along the waterfront and found healthier sandwiches and salads at Cafe Metropole, a true traveler’s oasis, with patio seating. It’s the kind of place anyone who eats vegetables is thrilled to find in a town that mostly caters to tourists, especially boardwalk or seaside destinations that lean heavily toward fried things.

This month the Santa Catalina Island Company is adding another new restaurant to the mix: the Avalon Grille, which overlooks the harbor and aims to become an upscale watering hole, with a horseshoe bar as its centerpiece and doors that open to sidewalk tables. The menu I saw seemed to balance seafood and American grill fare with a few creative twists, like ahi tuna tostadas — trying to appeal to a more sophisticated palate without alienating parents traveling with kids.

By SUSAN STELLIN

A view of Avalon harbor, where the ferry drops off visitors.

Thousands of Years Old, the Sport of Falconry Involves Top Birds Competing With Each Other

Falconry is easily thousands of years old, originally a method of hunting food believed to have originated in the Middle East and brought back to Europe after the crusades. Today it’s a million-dollar enterprise, with top birds competing for speed, that are trained and traded among Arabia’s elite.

The sport plays on a bird of prey’s innate skills and habits, flying overhead until it spots a target, then swooping down and attacking with its talons. The peregrine falcon, one of the most prized varieties, can fly up to 217 miles per hour and drop 300 feet in one second, killing a rabbit or pheasant.

They fly high and fast enough to catch other birds; in some cities falcons have been used to control an overgrowth of pigeons.

“The peregrine is the fastest creature on the planet, three times faster than the cheetah,” said Jannes Kruger of Shaheen Xtreme Falconry in Dubai.

The birds are possessive, and won’t naturally give up their catch, which is where the owner has to deftly practice the skill of trading with the bird, making it give up its win for another, smaller source of food.

Traditionally, this is how a desert tribe would add meat and game to its diet.

The sport of falconry is now mainly for show, with trainers using a lure to attract the bird. It has an active following in the U.S., and despite some concerns from animal rights activists all but a handful of states permit the practice of falconry.

American Falconry Magazine cautions beginners they’ll need to spend roughly $1,000 on their equipment and housing facility, and hunt with the bird a minimum of three times a week, three hours per day. April to September is the off season, when the bird molts a new set of feathers.

By LARA SETRAKIAN

With 4,000-year history, sport of falconry lives on in Arabian culture.

The cold depths of the Adriatic Sea have yielded yet another bonanza — and it’s not fishing. Scuba divers are now able to plunge into the sea’s clear, astonishingly blue waters and see ancient treasures protected by a giant underwater safe.

An ancient Greek shipwreck containing treasure with an estimated value of about $8 million is accessible to divers just off the coast of the off the coast of the Croatian town of Cavtat. Included in the wreck are hundreds of clay amphoras, the storage jars of antiquity, probably once filled with wine and oil, lie just 96 feet below the water’s surface.

“Although the shipwreck is destroyed, the cargo of the wreck appears to be pristine,” Boris Obradovic, the head of “Epidaurum” Scuba Diving Center, who found the shipwreck in 1999, and now guides experienced scuba divers down to the wreckage, told ABC News.com.

A striking video made by Obradovic and his team shows “a mixture of gray, brown and reddish amphoras much like they were placed shortly after the ship settled into the ooze.” Some amphoras are encrusted with purplish sponges, others with algae and feathery hydroids.

After studying the videos with nautical archaeologists, Marijan Orlic, an underwater archaeologist and retired director of operations for Croatian Conservation Department, tentatively identified the jars as typical of the African origin, near modern day Tunis, around the third century AD.

A steel mesh cage the size of a volleyball field shields the wreck, which is about 67 feet long and 35 feet wide. At least 700 amphoras are visible above the seabed.

“It’s an incredible find,” Orlic said in an interview from Zagreb. ”It’s the biggest shipwreck we ever found. We were very excited, but had to protect it from the looters, so we chose to physically protect it with a metal cage.”

By DRAGANA JOVANOVIC

The cold depths of the Adriatic Sea have yielded yet another bonanza -- and it?s not fishing. Now, scuba divers will be able to plunge into the clear, astonishingly blue water of the Adriatic Sea, heading straight to the bottom -- and back a bit less than two millenniums ? to see ancient treasures protected by the giant underwater safe.

Has the Kentucky Derby Whet Your Appetite for More?

Horse-racing season hoofed it into high gear with Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. If it left you hankering for a horseback ride, Darley Newman, host/producer of PBS’ Equitrekking, shares top spots to saddle up with USA TODAY’s Rebecca Heslin.

Totsonii Ranch:Canyon de Chelly, Ariz. Channel your inner John Wayne and trek through the wild West with Navajos as your guide. “On a longer ride into the canyon through small forests of Russian olive trees and across streams, you reach Spider Rock, an 800-foot sandstone spire,” Newman says. “You might feel dwarfed by the high cliff walls, some of which reach 1,000 feet, as you ride inside one of the largest sandstone canyons in the United States.” 928-266-5789

Vermont Icelandic Horse Farm:Waitsfield, Vt. Explore the country lanes of the Mad River Valley on an Icelandic horse. This breed is good for beginners because its “smaller stature makes them less intimidating to many riders,” Newman says. “Icelandic horses have been bred over the centuries to conquer the elements and terrain in Iceland, so riding year-round in Vermont is not a problem for the horses.” 802-496-7141; icelandichorses.com

Marriott Ranch:Hume, Va. This working ranch in Northern Virginia, owned by the Marriotts of hotel fame, is about an hour from Washington, D.C. Newman recommends this riding experience to East Coast families craving a Western-style ranch without the cross-country travel. “The ride to Paradise Valley, a favorite spot for the ranch’s exotic longhorn cattle to graze, passes quiet country streams and rolling hills in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains,” Newman says. 877-278-4574; marriottranch.com

Bardy’s Trail Rides:Seward, Alaska Scope the serene sights of this Alaskan harbor town by horseback with a local guide. “View wildlife like bald eagles and arctic tern as you ride through forests, across rivers and even on an Alaskan beach with snowcapped peaks in the distance,” Newman says. “On this trail ride, your guide will recount stories of what happened during the devastating 1964 earthquake.” 907-224-7863; sewardhorses.com

Horseback riders are seen near Spider Rock, in Canyon De Chelly, Ariz. Horse-racing season hoofs it into high gear after Saturday's Kentucky Derby.

 Lima, Peru’s Export and Tourism Promotion Board (PromPeru) said Sunday that its representatives will travel to Argentina and Italy to participate in events with tour operators of these countries to provide them information on the main tourist attractions in Peru.According to a supreme decree of Peru’s Foreign Trade and Tourism Ministry (Mincetur), PromPeru official Lizbeth Corrales will travel from May 17 to 22 to the city of Cordoba in Argentina.

 She will carry out different tourism promotion activities during the “Door to Door Argentina” event which will be held in Cordoba from May 18 to 21.

 Corrales will contact the most important tour operators from Argentina to provide them with specialized and up-to-date information on tourist destinations in Peru.Other supreme decree of the Mincetur authorizes the trip of PromPeru’s Tourism Promotion director Jacqueline Saettone and also Rocio Florian Ventura to the cities of Rome and Bologna in Italy, from May 16 to 21. 

Both officials will also perform different tourism promotion activities representing PromPeru, during the event called “Workshop Italy,” which will take place in the cities of Rome and Bologna from May 18 to 20.

Foreign tourists and local people. Photo: ANDINA / Percy Hurtado.

Tourism is rebounding so quickly in Sri Lanka after the end of the island’s civil war that in one or two years the country will lack the hotel capacity to meet visitor arrivals, according to the head of the country’s biggest listed company.

Ajit Gunawardene, chief executive of John Keells, said Sri Lanka’s tourist infrastructure could handle a maximum of 800,000 visitors a year, comfortably meeting expected demand this year of 500,000.

But in the next one or two years, visitors arrivals are expected to double and then double again two years later to 2m, suggesting that unless the country embarks on a hotel construction boom it will fail to meet demand.

“This gives you an indication of the type of momentum we want to maintain,” Mr Gunawardene said.

Investors in Sri Lanka are betting that the island’s violent past is behind it following the defeat of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam last May in their battle for an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east.

Hopes of political stability have been fuelled by landslide victories in the presidential and parliamentary elections this year by the incumbent leader, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his ruling coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance.

Sri Lanka’s market is up 22 per cent so far this year.

The rally has been led by John Keells, which accounts for about 10 per cent of market capitalisation and is expected to be one of the main beneficiaries of the economic recovery given its interests in hotels, ports and retail.

“The UPFA’s win bodes well for policy continuity and investment-led growth,” said Anushka Shah, an economist at Citigroup.

Tourist arrivals have risen for 10 consecutive months and were up 29.3 per cent in the nine months to March 31 compared with a year earlier.

Mr Gunawardene said John Keells had begun renovating hotels and building more to meet the tourism boom.

It is upgrading its large hotel in Colombo, overhauling one in Trincomalee in the war-torn east and building tourist accommodation in the popular south.

John Keells also plans to participate in the expansion of Colombo’s port, which is strategically placed on shipping lanes between Europe, the Middle East and China.

The group is expected to bid with its partner Denmark’s Maersk for an additional terminal when the port’s capacity is increased to 16m 20ft equivalent units a year for the next decade. That would make Colombo south Asia’s biggest port.

Tenders for the three terminals in phase one are expected to be valued at about $500m.

By Joe Leahy in Colombo