Traveller's Guide to Planet Earth | eco-travel

The Traveller's Guide to Planet Earth, based on the BBC documentary series, was just published by Lonely Planet. This is a useful resource for travelers wanting to explore the natural features of our planet. The book contains ten chapters, each based on one episode of the series:

1. Mountains
2. Fresh Water
3. Caves
4. Deserts
5. Ice Worlds
6. Great Plains
7. Jungles
8. Shallow Seas
9. Seasonal Forests
10. Ocean Deep

Each chapter contains from three to nine travelogues; for instance, three mountain ranges are described: the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia, the Rocky Mountains of North America, and the Torres del Paine mountains of Chile. These are brief rather than encyclopedic descriptions, each six pages in length, providing a map, some notes on the best times of the year to visit, and a description of the natural experience awaiting you there. Perhaps the highlight of the book is the stunning natural photography.

The book is a useful resource to plan eco-travel. I see it as a source of ideas for places to explore. Pick up a copy, leaf through the pages, and see what grabs your imagination. The book describes 51 experiences, each of which could inspire a trip to explore the natural beauty of planet earth.

eco-travel (search here on Google)




copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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luxury hotels in Paris | my recommendations

He was planning a five-day visit to Paris in November and sent me a very brief email: any hotel recommendations? I usually recommend one of three luxury hotels in Paris.

In the 300€ range — InterContinental Paris Le Grand. The hotel is very well located, right next to the Paris Opera House, steps from the main store of the Galleries Lafayette, and right over a Metro station. It's one of the largest hotels in Paris. Napoleon wanted his capital to have a Grand Hotel, just like the other great European cities, and this hotel was built to fulfill that ambition. Lead-in rooms are a bit on the small side, but if you're looking for a good value on the Right Bank, Le Grand is a good choice. Virtuoso guests receive discounted rates, an automatic upgrade from the lead-in Classic Room to a Superior, and free access to the hotel's private Club Lounge where you can have a daily breakfast buffet for up to three guests and enjoy full "grazing rights" during the day - snacks, hors d'oeuvres, and cocktails in the evening (access normally costs 120€ daily).

In the 500€ range — Le Meurice. This is my personal favorite hotel in Paris. It has the perfect location right on the Jardin des Tuileries. You can walk straight across the park to the Musée d'Orsay, turn right and get to the Place de la Concorde, or turn left for a short walk to the Louvre and Notre Dame. One of the "palace hotels" of the city, Le Meurice has a very Parisian feel. Virtuoso guests enjoy discounted rates, a Full American breakfast daily (by room service, if you wish), and are upgraded if available.

In the 800€ range — Four Seasons George V. The George V is one of the great hotels of the world, totally renovated by Four Seasons and imbued with the warm service for which Four Seasons hotels are so well known. Possibly the most luxurious and elegant hotel in the city, everyone who enjoys luxury hotels should have the opportunity to experience Le George. Because I am with a Four Seasons Preferred Partner agency, my clients receive a full American breakfast daily (served through in-room dining, if you wish), a $100 spa credit, and will be upgraded if available upon check-in.

To get a quote for specific dates, as well as full list of amenities, just drop me an email.


luxury hotels in Paris (search here on Google)

copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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Hawaii on sale

United Airlines has just announced a fare sale to Hawaii with one way fares as low as $190*, and Alaska Airlines is advertising one-way fares as low as $169*. Explore the possibilities at united.com and alaskaair.com.

If you're planning a trip to Hawaii, this is the time to book with Hawaii on sale. 2011 occupancy levels are significant higher than 2010, and there are dates for which the lowest-priced rooms are already sold out at Four Seasons Maui and Four Seasons Hualalai. Avoid disappointment by booking your rooms now. Then go online and book your air once you have your space secured. Deposits at all Four Seasons in Hawaii are completely refundable up to 21 days before arrival.

Four Seasons features four Hawaiian resorts at which to enjoy a luxurious tropical vacation. FS Maui, Four Seasons very first resort, is renowned for its service and a brand-new, adults-only Serenity Pool. FS Hualalai is my idea of what every tropical resort should be - spread out and casual. FS Manele Bay (on Lana'i) offers seclusion and one of the best beaches in the world, while FS Lodge at Koele (also on Lana'i) creates the ambiance of a traditional Hawaiian pineapple plantation with a very fun and challenging 18-hole putting course!

You receive great value at Four Seasons resorts with complimentary Kids Programs and no annoying resort fees. As a Four Seasons Preferred Partner, my clients enjoy value-added amenities - complimentary daily breakfasts, one free lunch for two, and room upgrades on arrival if available.


*Additional taxes and fees will apply; see the airlines' websites for complete disclosure of fees and taxes. I do not sell air.


Hawaii on sale (search here on Google)

copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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The Kahala Resort | 7 Day Sale

The Kahala Resort on the island of Oahu is one of my favorite beach resorts in Hawaii. In fact, the banner picture across the top of this blog was taken from its beach one morning at sunrise.

What do I like about the Kahala? It's not on Waikiki Beach, for starters. While Waikiki is perhaps the most famous beach in the world, it's in the busy downtown of Honolulu (population about one million) on a busy street lined with shops, bars, restaurants, and the ubiquitous ABC Stores. If you want nightlife and non-stop action, Waikiki is your destination. But if you want a beach vacation in a secluded tropical paradise... I recommend the Kahala.

For a limited time, the Kahala is on sale (through Sunday, Oct. 24, 2010). Guests staying a minimum of 4 nights receive:

• A $200 Air Credit
• Every 4th night free
• Full buffet breakfast for two daily in the Plumeria Beach House
• Alamo full size car rental per day.

Rates begin at just $339.50 per room per night including tax. Book from Oct. 18 - Oct. 24 and travel from Jan. 3, 2011 through Dec. 23, 2011. Blackout dates are Jan. 9-12. There is a minimum 4 night stay. Contact me for a quote - or for other vacation ideas in Hawaii.


Kahala Resort (search here on Google)

copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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Visit Napa Valley | iPhone app

A free Visit Napa Valley iPhone app has been announced. According to the publisher's description, the app uses an interactive GPS map to help you visit Napa Valley - with directions to the top vineyards, updates on culinary and wine tasting events, exclusive offers, and over 100 places to stay. You can download the app here.

Where to stay in Napa Valley? Let me shorten the list from 100 to three Virtuoso properties in the wine country north of San Francisco.

Meadowood Napa Valley is a beautiful resort with 85 cottages, suites, and lodges set on a wooded hillside just outside of St. Helena, a small town with great wine shops and restaurants. Virtuoso guests receive a $50 daily breakfast credit, $100 spa credit, bottle of Napa cabernet sauvignon, and an upgrade if available on arrival.

The Carneros Inn is a contemporary resort intended to create the impression of living in a working vineyard. The 83 guest cottages resemble the simple wooden buildings provided to vineyard workers (on the outside), but you'll step inside to your own supremely private and luxurious suite. Virtuoso guests receive a $40 daily breakfast credit, $50 spa credit, VIP wine tasting passes, and an upgrade if available on arrival.

Calistoga Ranch has 47 cedar-shingled guest lodges located on a 157-acre site outside the town of Calistoga. The resort features a great Spa and a private restaurant, the Lakehouse, open exclusively to owners and resort guests. 2011 amenities include Daily full breakfast, bottle of wine and seasonal gift, sparking wine served with dinner (or on second night in room), and upgrade if available on arrival.

If you've never heard of Virtuoso, it's the best way to get outstanding values at nearly 900 five-star hotels and resorts in the Napa Valley and around the world — free daily breakfasts, room upgrades, and more. You pay the same and just get more when you make your reservation through a Virtuoso travel consultant.


Napa Valley (search here on Google)

copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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third night free at the Peninsula

The Peninsula Hotels in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai have introduced a special "Spend The Night On Us" promotion that is "like" a third night free. Guests pay for all three room nights but receive the value of one's night's room rate towards any hotel expense including airport transfers, meals, cocktails, or spa experiences during their stay. In addition, guests will also enjoy the Virtuoso amenities (if they book their stay through a Virtuoso travel consultant):

Peninsula Hong Kong

• Daily buffet breakfast for two
  
• One set dinner for two in The Lobby
  
• Upgrade on arrival and 4 p.m. late check-out subject to availability

Peninsula Beijing

• Upgrade at the time of booking
  
• Daily buffet breakfast for two
  
• 4 p.m. late check-out

Peninsula Shanghai

• Daily American Breakfast for two
  
• One set luncheon for two
  
• Upgrade on arrival and 4 p.m. late-check-out subject to availability

To take advantage of this promotion and the Virtuoso amenities on top of it, just contact a Virtuoso luxury travel consultant.


third night free (search here on Google)

copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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interview with Alastair Vere Nicoll

I published a review of Riding the Ice Wind: By Kite and Sledge across Antarctica in my post on September 28. The book tells a compelling story of extreme adventure travel. I was privileged to have the opportunity to conduct an email interview with Alastair. Here is the text of our correspondence. (You can order the book here).


(1) One of the conflicts in your narrative concerned your worry about frostbite on your face and toe — but then you never resolved that conflict at the end of the book. How did everything work out?

The frostbite on my ears, cheeks and nose was in the end relatively superficial, and although I didn't look my best — a combination of a very dodgy beard and the healing frostbite — it left nothing more permanent than a little bit of lighter skin on my nose which seems a bit more susceptible to sunburn! All in all not very dramatic. My toe, too, very suprisingly, healed as I was convinced it would be lost. The blood flow and feeling are impaired, but it is absolutely no inconvenience. I wish I could tell you that I had to hack it off with a handsaw, but I can't!


(2) Becoming a father was obviously a very moving experience for you — congratulations! I'm wondering how that new responsibility is shaping plans for your future adventure travel? (There are much less extreme forms of adventure travel!)

Fatherhood has been wonderful, and I also now have a little boy! But I can't deny that I get restless; I'm not made for pushing swings (although do try to do my fair share!). I have a very loose agreement with my wife that I can disappear for a week or so a year to try something a little off the beaten track. So far that has been climbing/trekking in Georgia in the Caucasas (just before the Russian invasion), trekking/climbing in Uganda - Mount Stanley, followed by Gorilla tracking on the Rwanda/Congo border (my wife flew out to join me for the Gorilla part which was magical, meeting me at the bottom of the mountain), and going trekking in the Alps. So I agree, it is possible to do some fun things for a week or two, although I still think that you don't properly get away (mentally more than anything else) unless the trip is longer than a couple of weeks.


(3) What are your present and future travel plans. I know you're now in Asia — presumably doing something more adventurous than sitting by the pool at the Peninsula Bangkok or getting massages!

Hilarious question as I'm now sitting in the Peninsula in Hong Kong — perhaps I will go to the spa! Nice idea. Actually my life is not that adventurous in the 'extreme' sense, but I consider what I'm currently up to as more adventurous in a more layered way than anything I've done before. I started my own business (with three others) in 2007 with the aim of building renewable energy generating capacity in developing countries. In many ways it is a parallel journey to the Antarctic expedition — fund raising, financial risk, asking people to believe in you, having a vision, trying to make it happen, taking on uncertainty, and asking your family to accept that...

The business has started with an Asian focus. The massive growth here means the power demand is huge, and we want to supply it — green and clean (small hydro, wind, solar, waste to energy). We raised around $100m during the financial crisis — which I'm really proud of — and are starting to put it to work in India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines initially. This means travel to the financial centres (Delhi, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Manila) but also regularly to the sites of our projects which are way off the beaten track in the mountains, up rivers, in deserts and plains. I love it! Last month I was up in the Himalayas checking out a little river valley in the middle of nowhere. In these countries, even trips to the cities can also be adventurous, and only last night I was in Delhi sipping tea with a man who claimed to be 110 (ok, I know, he saw me coming...) outside the Nizamuddin in Delhi listening to Muslim prayer time. It was surreal and beautiful and another world — yet only half an hour previously I had been discussing debt finance with a bank! Funny, wonderful world that this is!

So — current plans are devoted almost entirely to my business. I need and want this to be a success and am trying to blend a more adventurous mix into my real life rather than periodic escapes, which was one of my learnings from my book. The risk and stress in entrepreneurial ventures is truly analagous to adventure...

Future big picture plans: Ultimate aim is a Haj across the North Africa from Mauritania to Arabia over a year, on foot, camel and river. I want to learn Arabic, and that is the ten year plan. Ambitious, may never pull it off or put in motion, but you have to dream and I do aim to try... Perhaps that will be another book — the mid-life crisis to follow the quarter-life one!


(4) Knowing what you know now about traversing Antarctica, what would you do differently?

This is an amazing question. And so, so hard. I would spend more time working out kit solutions that worked for me in advance. Success is in the details. I hated my boots and had not worn them before setting foot in Antarctica, and I would opt for an entirely different system. On my face, I started with suggestions from others, but they just didn't work for me and luckily had brought other options but none perfect. Everyone is unique, and small differences in kit can make big differences in comfort. It may surprise people, but there is no kit that is designed for Antarctica that is readily available. It is all mountaineering and skiing gear engineered for distinct environments, so previous experience of your needs can make a big difference to what you select — although ultimately all of it is a compromise.

It's easy to say, now that I've seen it, but I wouldn't, in the future, go via the South Pole. It's a monstrosity, and being obsessed with going through or via it can lead you to miss out on more virgin ground. Paul, from my expedition, went a year or two afterwards to the Pole of Inaccessibility - the point most distant from any coastline - wow. And you know what he found there, a huge golden bust of Lenin put there by the Russians years ago. The station had been covered by snow leaving only a golden figurine sitting serenely, like a Buddha, on the ice, about to be engulfed itself by snow like the edifice it rested on (a wonderful metaphor for the steady disappearance of Communism as an ideology).


(5) Do you have any advice for "extreme adventurer travelers."

Extreme travellers embrace risk and love discovery (even if it's been done before, it hasn't by them) and so generally hate to receive advice. Besides, many travellers have been to places and done things, under the radar, that make my achievements look puny, and I should be taking advice from them!


(6) If you had it to do all over again, would you? Was the journey worth the financial cost, the pain, and the risk to life and limb?

I wouldn't do it again (i.e. a second time). There's just too much out there, and not knowing what was in store made it all more bearable. But would I do it again (a first time) knowing what I know now — yes. Although parts were awful, parts were incredible, and I really believe that the up is always worth the down — otherwise life is just flatlining. And hindsight makes almost every experience worthwhile; after all our bodies have no lasting memory for pain — memory that you experienced it, but no way of feeling it again in the same way that you can relive emotion.



adventure travel (search here on Google)

copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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a Mendocino weekend

Mendocino, slightly more than three hours north of San Francisco, is a picturesque little town on the northern California coast. Originally settled by lumbermen from New England during the Gold Rush, it was abandoned during the Great Depression but rediscovered decades later by artists. Mendocino has become a popular weekend tourist destination with something to offer visitors year-round: boutique galleries, wine tasting, gourmet food, hiking, biking, and canoeing, as well as whale-watching and storm-watching during the winter months.

We spent two nights at the Stanford Inn by the Sea which describes itself as a pet-friendly eco resort by the ocean. Stanford Inn Mendocino is a rustic four star property with gourmet vegetarian cuisine and excellent service. The resort is indeed pet-friendly, and Lacey, our Australian Shepherd/Border Collie, enjoyed the hospitality as much as we. We stayed in the Bishop Pine Suite which is a true Deluxe 1 BR Suite. The Master Bedroom has a King bed, the large living room has a queen-size sofa bed, table in one corner, and wood burning fireplace in the other. The bathroom is large (albeit with only a single sink in the large counter top and shower in the tub). Don't come if you're expecting Four Seasons — there's no marble in the bathroom — but the knotty pine paneling on the walls is totally appropriate for a country inn. Lead-in guest rooms are comparable in size to Superior rooms, and larger Executive guest rooms in the new building are comparable to Deluxe rooms.

Stanford Inn has a beautiful organic vegetable farm; the vegetables are grown for meals at the property's vegetarian restaurant, the Ravens. Stanford Inn also offers a heated indoor pool, jacuzzi, and sauna, as well as a Spa which offers "Massage in the Forest" and Yoga classes. The room rate includes a gourmet breakfast for two daily, as well as complimentary afternoon tea (and dessert) every day at 3:30 p.m. The Stanford Inn is truly something special on the Mendocino coast.

A must-do: the Mendocino Historical District Walking Tour offered Saturday mornings at 11 a.m. Meeting up at the Kelley house, we enjoyed a two-hour walking tour of the village, learning about the history of the community, saw some of the historical buildings (including the oldest Protestant church building in California), and heard some fascinating stories about some of the colorful individuals of Mendocino's 150 year history. Among the sites to see is the carved wooden statue atop Mendocino's Masonic Temple. The tour is well worth the $10 per person which goes toward the support of the Kelley House.


Stanford Inn Mendocino (search here on Google)

copyright (c) 2010 by David J. Ourisman. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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