The Amazing Race 16, Episode 4

San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina) - Frankfurt (Germany) - Hamburg (Germany)

You wouldn't have known it from how it was edited for television, but more of this week's episode of The Amazing Race 16 took place in the air than on the ground in Germany, and even more of it took place on the ground before the racers even left Argentina. That's often how it is in real life: the more of a hurry you are in to see and do things in widely separated places, the larger the proportion of your time you'll spend getting there rather than at your destination. When I sent USA Today reporter Laura Bly around the world in 8 days a few years ago, I don't think she was able to spend more than 12 hours in any one place.

Even readers familiar with my advice that most people planning a trip around the world try to visit too many different places in too little time -- whether they have 8 days, 80, or 800 for the entire trip -- often don't think through, when filling in a calendar or spreadsheet of dates and places, how many of those entire days or nights will be spent in transit. Leave the USA on day 1, for example, and typically you won't get to Africa -- with connections via Europe to the majority of African capitals without direct flights from anywhere in the Americas -- until sometime on day 3. The international dateline creates the same effect for even direct flights from North America to Asia: leave on the evening of day 1, and arrive on the morning of day 3, local time.

Getting from Bariloche (BRC) to Frankfurt (FRA) took the racers roughly 36 hours. (A side note: After years of work with airline reservations, I automatically interpret three-letter abbreviations for places as airline city or airport codes. So I was mildly surprised the first time I saw an oval sticker like a country label, but with the letters "BRC", on a car in San Francisco. I "knew" that this meant Bariloche, of course, but I didn't think Bariloche had a contingent of civic boosters in San Francisco , and I couldn't figure out why someone was identifying it as a nation. Only as I began to see these stickers more frequently did I eventually realize that they were intended to show allegiance to Burning Man's "Black Rock City".)

As I mentioned last week, there are virtually no direct international flights from provincial Argentine airports, and domestic flights all go to the downtown airport, Aeroparque Jorge Newbery (AEP), on the riverfront in the Palermo district of central Buenos Aires. Starting out late at night, although not so late by Argentine standards -- some of them found a travel agency still open well after 22:00 (10 p.m.) local time -- the racers spent the night in the airport in Bariloche (unless perhaps they went to a hotel after figuring out the flight schedules).

The first flight isn't even that early in the day, since the planes are all based in Buenos Aires, two hours flying time away, and return from Bariloche or other provincial cities only as the return leg of morning departures from the capital. Arriving at the Aeroparque, they would have had to take a taxi or a "remise" (car service -- less expensive between downtown B.A. and EZE than a metered taxi) out to the international airport at Ezeiza (EZE).

There are several flights each day from Ezeiza to various European hubs, but for the usual sorts of operational reasons they mostly depart at around the same time in the evening. So the racers probably had plenty of time for a good dinner at the airport before boarding their flights to Europe. Just as well, since other than airplane food their next substantial food and drink was the next afternoon or evening in Hamburg at the sauerkraut-eating and beer-chugging challenges! EZE has one of the two best sit-down airport restaurants I know of, although it's outside the security checkpoints so you have to be careful, as this review in Travel + Leisure correctly notes, not to lose track of the time and miss your flight. My other favorite high-end airport meal is also outside security checkpoints, although slower ones, and three times as expensive: steamers (steamed clams) at Legal Seafoods at Logan Airport in Boston.

All told it would have been close to 24 hours after they left the dude ranch outside Bariloche before the racers' flights left Buenos Aires for Europe. And those flights are themselves among the longest trans-Atlantic nonstops. It's more than 14 hours flying time from Buenos Aires to anywhere in Europe, and almost 16 hours nonstop to Frankfurt. Rushing into the soccer penalty-kick challenge without warming up and stretching enough, Caite gets a cramp or muscle pull in her leg that she and her partner Brent attribute to having been cooped up on the plane for too long.

Moral: Don't plan anything too athletic after getting off a long flight and before you've had time to rest, rehydrate, and limber up again. Even an "orientation" bus tour of a city can involve substantial walking and stair-climbing at museums and sites. Take it easy at first. Arrive the day before you plan to start almost any planned activities, especially those requiring you to follow a fixed schedule or keep up with other people. Once when I was quite a bit younger I arrived in Europe in the morning from the USA, expecting to be able to sit in on meetings (not speak, just listen) that same day. It was a mistake I won't repeat. Now I know to expect myself to be useless the entire rest of the day I arrive, until I've gotten a full night's sleep.

In Frankfurt, the racers got intercity trains directly from the airport to Hamburg. As I mentioned a couple of seasons ago when The Amazing Race 14 was making its way through Europe by train, many Western European airline hubs including Amsterdam, Paris, and Frankfurt (but not London and Dublin, which have rail lines to the airports but where you have to go from the airport into the city center, in most cases, to change to trains back out to most other part of the respective countries) have mainline airport rail stations with direct trains that can get you to provincial destinations and even neighboring countries more quickly than connecting flights (especially when, as in Paris, most domestic flights leave from a different airport from the one at which most international flights arrive).

After all this, the racers had more difficulty finding their way the last 20km around Hamburg to the tasks they had to perform, and to the finish line, than the first 13,000km from Bariloche to Hamburg. At least one of the teams had trouble figuring out the subway (U-bahn) and streetcar/tram (S-bahn) system and got on either the wrong train or a train going in the wrong direction.

Another team took a taxi, but discovered -- as we've seen before -- that a GPS isn't a panacea, but is vulnerable to the "garbage in, garbage out" failure mode. The taxi driver entered the address wrong, then confidently followed the GPS directions miles out of town. The racers in the backseat thought the districts they were passing through looked unlike where they expected to find their destination, but that's a difficult call for a tourist to make. I've been picked up by plenty of taxi drivers who wouldn't lose a possible fare by admitting that they didn't know the place I said I wanted to go, and drove around randomly or kept asking other people for directions until they figured it out. But a taxi driver is unlikely to get on an expressway without any idea of where they are going. If they set off steadily down the highway, it usually means either that that's the right way to go, or that they've completely misunderstood where you wanted to go, and are taking you someplace else entirely.

In the end, no one was eliminated this week. so the same teams will resume racing in next week's episode -- after a night's sleep in a good hotel to begin to get over their jet lag and recover from the previous two nights in an airport and on a plane.

The grass is greener on the other side of the fence. But is the airfare lower?

USA Today has an interesting report today by Charisse Jones, Some Canadians cross border to fly in U.S.

The article is correct, as far as it goes: If you are travelling from somewhere in Canada near the US border to somewhere else in the US, it is often cheaper to drive (or take a bus, train, or ferry) to an airpport across the border in the US, and take a domestic flight from there to your final US destination, rather than to take trans-border flights from a Canadian airport.

But the article fails to note some impoortant corollaries and lessons for travellers in the USA and other countries:

• Exactly the same thing is often true in reverse. If you are travelling from somewhere in the USA to, say, Montréal, and you are going to be renting a car when you get there, it may be cheaper to fly to Burlington, Vermont, on JetBlue (or another airline that's matching their fares), rent a car in Burlington, and drive from there to Montréal. Montréal is often an especially expensive destination, with relatively few direct flights from the USA, but it can also sometimes (although less often) be cheaper to get to Toronto by flying to Buffalo (Southwest, JetBlue, and others that match their fares), or to Vancouver by flying to Seattle (with the advantage that there is better bus and train service between Seattle and Vancouver than between many USA-Canada city pairs).
  
  
• The differences between prices originating on either side of the USA-Canada border are often even greater for overseas flights to Europe or Asia. There's no consistent long-term pattern, and it's not exclusively or even primarily determined by fluctuations in relative value of the Canadian Dollar and US Dollar. It has more to do with airline pricing policies that consider the USA and Canada as distinct markets, separately priced. Unless it's a business trip and price isn't a factor, nobody living within driving distance of the USA-Canada border on either side should buy a ticket to Asia or Europe without checking prices to fly from airports on both sides of the border. Check for each trip, or at least every year, as the advantage fluctuates unpredictably. It's not unusual to see difference of 20-25% in favor of flights from one or the other country -- a big deal on a $1000 ticket, and an even bigger deal for a family or group of friends travelling together who can share the drive.
  
  
• There are plenty of cheap flights from the USA to tourist destinations in Mexico, such as Cancun or airports in Baja California. But if you are travelling from California (USA) to some other provincial city in Mexico, it may be cheaper to make your way by car, bus, or train (Amtrak has exceptionally cheap fares within California) to the border, and fly from Tijuana. To see if this will save you money, check fares from Tijuana on Mexican domestic low-cost airlines Volaris and Interjet . Some notes: Tijuana airport (TIJ) abuts the border fence, only about 3 miles by taxi from the parking lots and the terminus of the Tijuana Trolley from San Diego at the San Ysidro border crossing, or about the same distance from the Otay Mesa crossing. Both Volaris and Interjet primarily serve Toluca airport (TLC) rather than Mexico City (MEX). It doesn't matter if you are just changing planes, and it's in the same greater metropolitan area, but Toluca is an hour by car or bus further from the Zocalo in Mexico City than is MEX. The same general system may work, although it's likely to be less convenient. if you live near the border in Arizona or Texas. The dollar sign is routinely used within Mexico, and on the Interjet Spanish-language site for tickets originating in Mexico, as the symbol for Mexican Pesos. Look closely for any indicator to the contrary, such as "US$" rather than "$", to be sure of the currency before you click "Buy" or "Compre". Taxes are a much larger portion of the total price of most tickets to, from, or within Mexico than they are for flights within the USA, so don't rely on the initial displays of the "base" fare when you are comparing prices.
  
  
• All this is equally true, of course, in other parts of the world. It usually seems obvious where is likely to be cheapest to fly to within a particular country, but less obvious which country will be cheapest, or what alternatives might exist across a border. Among options to consider are Johore Bahru (or, further away, Kuala Lumpur), Malaysia, as an alternative to Singapore. JHB is just across the causeway from Singapore, and domestic flights from JHB or KUL to Malaysian Borneo are sometimes only half the price of international flights from SIN. In Europe, flights to and from London are often cheaper than flights to the continent, although the difference isn't always enough to cover the cost of the Eurostar (and a Eurailpass won't get you across the Channel). A better strategy may be to fly into a cheaper European gateway. For reasons too complicated to go into here, Brussels is often the airfare sinkhole of continental Europe, both for regional and trans-Atlantic flights. The difference isn't usually huge, but tickets between the USA and Brussels are often cheaper than those to or from Paris or Amsterdam by enough to cover the cost of the train to either of those cities. (Not that there's any reason not to stick around and enjoy Brussels once you are there. It's accessible, surprisingly affordable for Northwestern Europe, and one of my favorite European cities, with a large expatriate community but relatively few tourists.)

Bill introduced in U.S. Congress to end Cuba travel ban

New legislative proposals have been introduced in the U.S. Senate and, today, in the House of Representatives to end the restrictions on travel to Cuba by citizens and residents of the USA. Unlike some previous bills, these are not limited to Cuban-Americans visitng family members, but would all anyone from the USA to travel freely to and from Cuba.

Global Exchange and the Latin America Working Group have links to the full text of the latest bill and details on what you can do to help get this legislation passed this year.

"Edward Hasbrouck's World's Travel Worsts"

My nominations for the Titanic Awards ("celebrating the dubious achievements of travel") are posted today at TitanicAwards.com:

1. Worst Airline: Emirates. Consistently incompetent and unhelpful staff at ticket counters and sales offices on 4 continents.
2. Worst Toilet: A hole in the ground behind our “hotel” in Tashkurgan, Chinese-occupied East Turkestan, only partially screened from public view and blowing dust, and surrounded by an ankle-breaking mound of rubble and refuse.
3. Worst Airport: Dubai. I was predisposed to dislike DXB (see my choice for Worst Airline, above), but it was worse than I imagined. Changing planes in the middle of the night, I want a place I can rest — not the cacophony of a shopping mall where I have to fight my way through crowds buying raffle tickets for luxury cars, or trip over rows of transit passengers sleeping on the floor for want of chairs.
4. Worst Inflight Meal: (Domestic) Aeroflot: Bread and water. (International) PIA: Don’t ask, don’t tell.
5. Worst City for Driving: Sana'a, Yemen. Deadly recklessness and unpredictability. Underpowered, ill-maintained vehicles with bad brakes and bald tires, and not enough pedestrians, bicycles, or animals to slow them down to a safer speed. (Runner-up: Townships in South Africa, where there are urban areas with more than a million people with few street signs and no maps, and where a wrong turn can put you at risk of robbery or carjacking. Map Studio, the Rand McNally of South Africa, just published its first map to Soweto in time for the World Cup, and has none for any other township.)
6. Worst Car Rental: Fox Rent-A-Car, LAX. Tried to charge me US$200 in damages because my car got a flat tire (while with the valet parkers at my hotel!), and referred their claim to a collection agency when I didn't pay.

You can check out horror stories and nominations for infamy from many other travellers as well, famous and otherwise.

The Amazing Race 16, Episode 3 (Earthquake in Chile)

Puerto Varas (Chile) - San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina)

Watching The Amazing Race 16 make its way from Chile into Argentina in the episode broadcast this week, I couldn't help thinking about how what we've seen this season, which was filmed in November and December of 2009, might have changed as a result of the earthquake, tsunami, and continuing aftershocks in Chile. The show's host, Phil Keoghan, supposedly recorded an appeal for support for relief and reconstruction in Chile to be broadcast before this week's episode, but I didn't see it on my local CBS station in San Francisco.

Moon Handbooks Chile and Argentina author Wayne Bernardson has an initial report in his blog on the earthquake, and more importantly, the first roundup I've seen of conditions for travellers and travel infrastucture throughout Chile, and the prospects for rebuilding and recovery, after the earthquake.

I was relieved to learn that the Yellow House B&B in Valparaiso, where I stayed and which I mentioned last week, "survived without problems" -- although it's an indication of overall conditions in Valparaiso that residents consider their overall situation to be relatively "without problems" compared to many of their neighbors as long as their home is largely undamaged, even without electricity, running water, or transport links to the outside world.

Wayne Bernhardson has this to say about, "The Immediate Future, and Travel to Chile":

In the short run, Chile’s challenge is to get basic services running again. In the medium run, it’s to find housing for those displaced by the quake and, in this at least, the weather should cooperate. In central Chile’s Mediterranean climate, this is the dry season, and significant rain is unlikely for the next two months at least....

For those wondering whether or not they should travel to Chile, I personally would suggest postponing it, but not for too long -- the prime destinations of Torres del Paine [far to the south] and San Pedro de Atacama [far to the north], for instance, are well beyond the damage zone, and even Santiago is likely to be up and running pretty soon. As a guidebook author, I'd rather see Chile make headlines because of its geographical beauty and gracious people than for natural disasters, and staying away will not help its recovery.

Sightseers are typically unwelcome, and untrained would-be volunteers can be more hindrance than help, in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters. Unlike many other countries, Chile doesn't depend primarily on international tourism for foreign exchange. The main export remains copper, as it has been for decades. Remember the mine at Chuquicamata, near Calama, visited by "The Amazing Race 11"? It was nationalization of Chuqui which led ITT, wanting cheap copper for telephone wire, and the USA at its behest, to back the 1973 coup that killed Salvador Allende and brought in the military dictatorship.

Part of the pit at Chuquicamata (note the relative sizes of the pickup and the ore truck)

Site in the desert near Chuqui of a mass execution of prisoners by the Chilean army just after the coup

Some mines in central Chile have suspended operations temporarily, but only because the electricity is out. Operations at Chuqui, the world's largest copper mine, have been unaffected by the earthquake more than a thousand miles to the south. So it's not as though the economy will collapse if tourists stay away from the earthquake-affected portion of the country (central Chile) for a little while.

But tourists are typically scared away from a substantially larger area, for a substantially longer period of time, than conditions warrant and/or than local people -- who are eager to get their jobs serving tourists back, and to start recouping their investment in reconstruction of tourism capacity and infrastructure as soon as possible -- would prefer.

I regularly receive press releases and come-ons from hotels, tour operators, and destination marketing organizations struggling to persuade me, and to get me to tell my readers, that tourist facilities are open for business and able to offer tourists a good time in some place that suffered from a natural or political disaster, or whose reputation was tainted by such an event "nearby" (where "nearby" may have meant, as in the case of Chile, 2,000 km or 1,000 miles or more away). If you plan well but are flexible and realistic about what you will find, these destinations can be travel bargains: affordable, uncrowded, and with many new facilities.

Lately, for example, tourism to the Dominican Republic (where it is the largest source of foreign exchange) has been suffering from the proximity of the D.R. to Haiti, even though the earthquake in Haiti had little effect on the other side of the island. If you've been thinking about a visit to the D.R., prices and hotel occupancy are currently at a low point.

If you're thinking of traveling to Chile in the future, bookmark Wayne's Southern Cone Travel blog (most of which is also mirrored at Moon Over South America on Moon.com) for continuing coverage. For decades he has divided his time between Chile and Argentina (where he did the research for his Berkeley Ph.D. in geography), and the San Francisco Bay Area, spending several months every year on Chilean highways and byways and revisiting even obscure corners of the country and its offshore islands to update his guidebooks. Because of Wayne's detailed knowledge of conditions on the ground before the earthquake and his network of sources throughout the country, his blog is likely to remain the best source of practical information on post-earthquake tourism to Chile.

Unlike several other countries, notably Turkey and Mexico, where many poorly built "modern" structures collapsed in earthquakes while older wood frame structures were more likely to be left standing, Chile has relatively well-enforced construction codes, at least in cities. Most of the damage seems from initial reports to have been to older buildings (although earthquake effects even on similar buildings in the same neighborhood often vary greatly). More recent structures -- from high-rise office buildings and hotels to the recently purpose-built Hosteling International facility in Santiago -- were largely undamaged except for toppled interior furniture and some broken windows.

Much of Chile is desert or semi-desert, and almost every report I've seen has mentioned shortages of potable water in cities and towns since the earthquake. If urban water outages are due to widespread cracking of pipes rather than merely outages of power to pumping stations, block-by-block repair or replacement of water and sewage piping could be a considerable task.

Chile's geography has meant that its economic development depends on long-term commitment to investment and maintenance of transportation infrastructure -- by road, by water, and by air. But routes in and out of the country are limited, and most of them go through Santiago and the area of central Chile most affected by the earthquake.

On the road leaving Santiago towards the tunnel to Argentina

Chile's roads are generally well engineered and maintained, but most of the country is both mountainous and sparsely populated. It remains to be seen how long it will take to patch broken or buckled pavement and to make potentially slower and more costly repairs to damaged bridges, viaducts, revetments, and other structures.

Santiago's airport, one of the largest and busiest on the continent and essentially the sole hub for all domestic and international Chilean air service, was beginning to reopen today, but it's unclear how much traffic it will be able to handle, or how much of that limited capacity will be allocated to anything other than emergency flights.

In the meantime, many flights have been diverted to Mendoza (just across the Andes from Santiago) or Buenos Aires, Argentina, with travelers trying to make their way from there by land to Chile. Unfortunately, there are only a few roads over or through the Andes, even in the summer. The best of these is the 2-lane highway between Santiago and Mendoza that we saw in The Amazing Race 7. It switchbacks up to the Tunel del Cristo Redentor, 3 kilometers (2 miles) long with portals at well over 3000 meters (10000 feet) above sea level. The photo at the top of this article shows the Chilean end of the tunnel when I went through in springtime in late October.

I've seen no report of damage to the tunnel itself, but since the earthquake it's been closed to commercial vehicles or those over 3500 kg (a little less than 4 tons) due to rockfalls that narrow the approach roads. Even if the rocks can be cleared and none of the bridges or viaducts are damaged, all roads on the Chilean side between the tunnel and the epicenter of the earthquake pass though Santiago itself, where they are blocked by collapsed overpasses and other urban obstacles.

The next best road route in or out of Chile is the paved year-round highway to Bariloche, Argentina, followed by "The Amazing Race" in this week's episode. Unable to get to the epicenter of the earthquake from or via Santiago, NPR flew their correspondent Annie Murphy into Bariloche and sent her west and north from there by road, following the racers' route in the opposite direction. Her road trip report gives the best picture I've heard of road and other conditions in areas outside and to the south of Santiago and the epicenter of the quake.

Unless and until normal international and domestic air service is restored at Santiago's airport, most travellers to southern and south-central Chile are likely to follow this route through Bariloche or those by way of more southerly cities in Argentine Patagonia (Via Gallegos) and Tierro del Fuego (Ushuaia). There are almost no international flights into anywhere in Argentina or Chile except Buenos Aires or Santiago, respectively, so this is likely to require flying first into B.A. and then either a domestic flight or a long (if reasonably comfortable) bus ride south-west through Argentina -- like the bus trip the contestants on "The Amazing Race" took in the opposite direction the last time the race passed through Bariloche -- before crossing into Chile. Keep in mind in planning such a trip that domestic and international flights operates to and from different airports a considerable distance apart in Buenos Aires. There's been some talk about changing that for regional connections on Aerolineas Argentinas, but it hasn't happened yet. It's harder to get to northern Chile quickly or easily without going via Santiago, but there are scenic if slow routes by road or track from northwest Argentina, southwestern Bolivia, or southern Peru.

If you already have airline tickets for a trip to Chile, don't panic. If conditions are completely unsuitable for tourism when it's time for you to go, your flight(s) probably won't be operating as originally scheduled, if at all. And in that case, you have the right to a full and unconditional refund, even if your ticket was otherwise completely nonrefundable, as I discuss in my FAQ About Changes to Flights and Tickets. Airlines don't want you to claim a full refund in case of a schedule change, or even a flight cancellation , and are unlikely to tell you that you have that right. The magic words are, I do not accept that schedule change.

Some airlines are offering generous-sounding "waivers" of "penalties" or "change fee" for travellers whose flights are cancelled, rescheduled, or rerouted, especially while the airport in Santiago (SCL) remains wholly or partially closed to normally scheduled flights. But according to the rules in airlines' tariffs, there are no penalties to wave if a flight is no longer scheduled to operated as ticketed.

In some cases, it may be preferable to accept such an offer, rather than claim a refund: If your flight is still scheduled to operate exactly as ticketed, but you no longer want to take the trip, or if the airline is willing to exchange your original tickets, without fee, for tickets on a date or route for which tickets would otherwise be more expensive. But the purpose of such a "waiver" offer is not to help you but to persuade you to leave your money with the airline, rather than asking for it back. Don't get suckered into accepting "credit" for future travel that you aren't certain to use, rather than a full refund of the same amount in cash or by credit to your card.

This leg of the race was won (again, as was last week's) by the team of professional rodeo cowboys from Oklahoma, who exchange compliments on each others' hats with the Argentine "gaucho" greeter at the finish line at a dude-ranch "estancia". Hats can be wonderfully evocative wearable souvenirs: I have hats in my closet that I've picked up in Vietnam, Mexico, Australia, Bolivia, London, and New York, among other places. My favorite purple wool beret was probably made in China, but I bought it from an unlicensed West African street vendor on the "Avenue of the Americas". Sometimes, I love New York! (Never thought I'd say that, did you, Yankee fans?)

I've seen some other hats I regret not having bought. And some hats I bought cheaply, knowing that I would give or throw them away at the end of the trip, or before moving on to a different climate or culture. But before you spend real money on a hat, consider how it will look (Would you ever really wear that giant straw sombrero back home?) and how you will get it home. If you aren't carrying a hatbox in your steamer trunk, and buy a large new hat that doesn't fold or crush, you may have to wear it on every flight for the rest of your trip. (One pilot to another, disgustedly watching passengers -- many wearing souvenir sombreros -- arriving from Mexico: "Oh no! That one's wearing TWO hats.")

You can find "cowboy" style hats throughout Latin America, but the best value may be in Bolivia. The picture of me above was taken on a deserted stretch of the northern Chilean coast near Antofagasta, but the hat is from Sombreros Sucre in the Bolivian city of the same name. Including the cost of mailing it home to the USA, it cost me about US$20. A US-made Stetson of similar quality (although probably of lighter-weight felt) would have cost me five or ten times as much.

A tip of the hat to you all for your future travels!

USA raising fees for both inbound and outbound travellers

Under a series of new laws and regulatory proposals, almost everyone travelling internationally to or from the USA -- US passport holders, visa-free foreign visitors, and foreigners with visas -- would have to pay more in government fees for the required credentials and/or permissions.

Today the U.S. Senate passed the "Travel Promotion Act", a bill designed to encourage foreigners to visit the USA ... by making it more expensive for them to do so.

The money would go for advertising, presumably to try to persuade foreigners that the USA is worth the price and the hassle. This ignores the fact that people around the world already want to visit the USA, and don't need to be told that. What's standing in the way of more foreigners spending their money in the USA are the xenophobic rules and procedures that make it so difficult and expensive to get permission to travel to the USA -- not lack of desire to take the family on a vacation to Disney World or Las Vegas, or a shopping junket to New York or Miami.

The Travel Promotion Act, previously passed by the House and thus now headed to the White House to be signed into law, will add a US$10 fee (good for an unlimited number of visits in a 2-year period from the date it is paid) to the price of obtaining "pre-approval" to travel to the USA through the "Electronic System for Travel Authorization" (ESTA) .

ESTA pre-approval doesn't guarantee that you will be admitted to the USA, but is required as a de facto exit visa before the USA considers you authorized to depart from your home country for the USA. No, the USA has no authority to impose an exit permit requirement on departure from other countries, as I said in formal comments to the DHS from the Identity Project when the scheme was proposed, but the legality of the ESTA was never brought up in Congressional debate on the Travel Promotion Act.

ESTA pre-approval is required for all those "intending" to enter the USA without a visa under the "Visa Waiver Program" (VWP). Outside of the VWP, which is limited to a short list of mostly-wealthy most-favored nations, most of them populated mostly by white-skinned people, everyone else except US and Canadian citizens and US permanent residents (green-card holders) needs a visa even to change planes in the USA, which costs a minimum of about US$200 depending on the type of visa.

Those fees for US visas would increase substantially under a pending regulatory proposal from the State Department, which would also increase the fees for issuance or renewal of US passports.

The proposed rule published in the Federal Register earlier this month would increase the total price of a new or renewal US passport from US$100 to US$135. Part of that is an increase in the "Security Surcharge" for each passport to US$40, which presumably reflects the additional cost of including a remotely-readable uniquely-numbered RFID chip in each passport.

The State Department is accepting public comments through 10 March 2010 through the Regulations.gov Web site or by e-mail to fees@state.gov. (You must include the docket number, "RIN 1400-AC58" in the subject line of your e-mail message.) This would be a good chance to tell the Obama Administration that they wouldn't need the proposed passport fee increase if they reconsidered and rescinded the requirement for RFID chips in passports.

Frequent international travellers with US passports will also get socked. Adding pages to a passport that has filled up with visa and entry and exit stamps, previously free, will now cost US$82. Ouch! That's particularly unfair to those who requested a passport with extra pages, but didn't get one, since the passport application form still doesn't include any place to indicate that you want a thicker passport book (48 or 96 pages instead of the standard 24). If you are submitting comments to the State Department, please include a request that they put check-boxes on the application form to indicate a request for a 48 or 96-page passport.

Interestingly, despite the other ostensibly cost-based fee increases the State Department admits that they are deliberately keeping the cost of a passport card, which has a much longer-range RFID chip than a standard passport book, dramatically below cost, in effect giving travellers a large financial incentive to carry a credential with a longer-range tracking beacon.

And lest Canadians feel left out (they are essentially the only nationality that doesn't need either a US passport, a US visa, or ESTA pre-approval to travel to the USA, and thus escapes these US fee increases), yesterday Canada's Transport Minister announced increases in security fees that will be added to all air tickets for departures from Canadian airports, both domestic and international. Why the higher fees? To pay for more virtual strip-search machines ("body scanners").

Enjoy your trip, and come back and visit us again soon!

[Update: Draft comments from the Identity Project that you can use as a template; also in Open Office .odt and MS-Word .doc formats.]

Arguments for writers' rights at the Google Books settlement hearing

For those who don't want to wade through the full 167-page transcript of last week's hearing on the proposed settlement of the copyright infringement lawsuit against Google, here's what was said on behalf of the National Writers Union and other allied writers' organizations:

USA ends Syria travel "warning" but keeps financial sanctions

The USA has withdrawn its official "warning" regarding travel to Syria by US citizens, but has kept in place all of its economic sanctions against certain Syrian nationals, incluidng the Syrian government.

Unfortunately, neither the official announcement that the warning has been withdrawn, nor the updated country-specific information for Syria from the State Department makes clear the risks posed by those economic sanctions to US citizens or residents who travel (legally) to Syria, or the precautions you need to take if you want to visit Syria (as I hope you will -- it's a fascinating country where, in general, people go further out their way to welcome and assist foreign visitors, especially those from the USA, than almost any other country I've ever visited).

Everything I said in this blog entry a year ago remains true:

It's legal for citizens and residents of the USA to travel to Syria as tourists, and to spend money in Syria, but some banks and financial services providers in the USA have imposed their own private corporate sanctions, not disclosed to their customers, and not just against those entities designated by the government of the USA, but against anyone and everyone who travels to Syria, regardless of whether they do anything that violates the US government's sanctions.

The U.S. government cracks down hard on banks that, even inadvertently, violate the sanctions, but does nothing against banks that go overboard and block legitimate transactions or freeze customer funds. Whether or not that's government's intent, its lopsided enforcement practices give banks a strong incentive to choose to implement private sanctions.

Don't rely on your bank to disclose their practices. To avoid possible problems, get enough cash (US dollars or Euros) before you arrive in Syria to cover all the costs of your stay. Don't use credit or ATM cards (virtually all of which are affiliated with US-based financial networks) in Syria. Don't visit Web sites of US-based banks or other financial institutions or make phone calls to such institutions while you are in Syria.

None of this is required by law, but it might keep you away from serious problems such as those I had.

For what it's worth, Syria is a police sate, with the usual mix of implications for visitors. The Syrian government's national censorship firewall -- which also blocks most blogging Web sites and encrypted protocols -- is likely to make it difficult or impossible to access foreign financial Web sites, or to do so securely, even if those foreign sites don't restrict access from what they think are Syrian IP addresses, or retaliate silently against account holders.

Moral of the story: Visit Syria, but bring cash.

The Amazing Race 16, Episode 2

Valparaiso (Chile) - Puerto Varas (Chile)

Valparaíso narrowly missed my short list of a dozen favorite new destination discoveries from my last trip around the world: if I had let the list grow to a baker's dozen, it would have included Valpo. For what it's worth, the picture of me in an orange life jacket smiling at you from the sidebar of this blog was taken on a small-boat tour of Valparaíso harbor.

After five days on the road through small towns in the northern Chilean desert with sparse, overpriced accommodation options intended for mining-industry business travellers, followed by an all-night bus ride, we splurged on an ocean-view room at the impeccably-run Yellow House bed & breakfast, which was fleetingly visible on "The Amazing Race" at the top of the Ascensor Artilleria, one of the funiculars that signify Valparaíso the way that cable cars do San Francisco.

Our view over the harbor stretched from the naval academy over the container port, drydocks, and cruise ship berths to downtown business district and the surrounding hills. It's a compact city with a distinct neighborhood on each "cerro" (hill), and walkable if you pay close attention to the contour lines on the map and take advantage of the ascensors.

Despite the inevitable (and apt) comparisons to my adopted home town, Valparaíso's vibe reminds me more of Lisbon -- less pretentious than San Francisco -- and the continued domination of the local economy by the port makes it reminiscent of Vladivostok (which has its own hills and its own less widely-known funicular.

Valparaíso is one of the most important ports on the South American Pacific coast, where neither ship chandlers' shops nor marching formations of naval cadets attract a second glance in the central business district. It's a common staging base for Cape Horn and Southern Ocean cruises, and with little local market for luxury cruises -- it's a small, basically blue-collar city -- it can sometimes (but entirely unpredictably) be a great place for last-minute cruise-only deals on unsold cabins for as little as US$50 per person per day, especially at the beginning and end of the southern-hemisphere summer cruise season or for "repositioning" cruises. If your schedule and route is flexible, check the specials posted in the windows of local travel agencies.

And as anywhere we went on the Chilean coast, the seafood was extraordinary and, if you ate at stalls in the markets rather than white-tablecloth restaurants, extraordinarily affordable.

But the racers, as usual, didn't get to settle in or do justice to Valparaíso. After just one night (we weren't told where they stayed), they had to go back to Santiago and then on to Puerto Varas by bus.

As in neighboring Argentina , Chilean long-distance bus companies all have computerized but separate reservation systems. It's a challenge to figure out which bus companies go where, and from which of Santiago's four main long-distance bus stations .

The racers' task would have been much easier, however, had any of them consulted a guidebook or map. The best guidebook to Chile is Wayne Bernhardson's Moon Handbooks Chile and the best tourist map of the entire country is the waterprooof Chile map from Rough Guides. But any map or guidebook that showed Puerto Varas at all would have been sufficient to make clear that it's only twenty kilometers from the much, much larger city of Puerto Montt. Some Puerto Montt buses stop on request in Puerto Varas as they pass through -- but not all. Because they only asked about direct buses from Santiago to Puerto Varas, almost all the racers waited all day in Santiago for overnight buses that arrived in Puerto Varas the next morning, when they almost certainly could have gotten there the night before if they had made connections via Puerto Montt. The team that finished first was the one team that asked about possible connections (even without having a map or guidebook) , and found them via the smaller intermediate city of Temuco.

ICANN loses an arbitration but still stonewalls on compliance with its bylaws

Yesterday a panel of international arbitrators declared that ICANN -- the private non-profit California corporation to which the US government has effectively delegated important aspects of Internet governance -- had not acted in accordance with ICANN's own Bylaws in its consideration of a proposed ".XXX" top-level domain for erotica.

ICANN and ICM Registry, the corporation that had applied to ICANN for the franchise to run a ".XXX" domain-name registry, agreed to submit this question to these arbitrators.

Unfortunatety, nothing about the arbitration complies with ICANN's bylaws for transparency, independent review, policy development, or decision-making procedures . And ICANN continues to stonewall my request pending since 2005 for an independent review of the (non)transparency of ICANN's process in approving ".travel".

Tralliance Corp. applied for ".travel" at the same time that ICM Registry applied for ".XXX". ironically, ICANN approved ".travel" even though ICANN's designated review team found that the .travel application failed to meet its initial baseline criteria, but eventually rejected ".XXX" even after finding that it did meet those same criteria. I requested an indepndent review of whether ICANN's decision-making process in approving .travel complied with ICANN's bylaws. A few years later, ICM Registry requested an independent review of ICANN's decision-making process in rejecting .XXX.

ICANN's mutal agreement with ICM Registry to submit this particular question to a particular mutally-agreed arbitration body, under particular mutually-agreed procedural rules, is a significant step. The arbitration panels declaration that ICANN did not act in accordance with its own bylaws is a step further. But this does not constitute an independent review in accordance with ICANN's Bylaws. It does not fulfill ICANN's continuing obligation to implement its independent review Bylaws by designating an independent review provider and adopting procedures for independent review -- not on an ad hoc basis, not by mutual agreement after secret negotiations with a single party, and not by secret ex parte negotiations with a prospective arbitration provider while independent review requests are already pending, but through a policy development process conforming with the procedural rules for policy decisions in ICANN's bylaws.

ICM Registry is, understandably, more concerned with a favorable decision that would allow its business plans to move forward than with the procedures. They chose to accept ICANN's (procedurally improper) choice of arbitration provider, and chose to follow procedures not in accordance with ICANN's bylaws. But their willingness to follow those procedures does not legitimate those procedures, negate other pending requests, or require me or anyone else to follow these procedures rather than insisting that ICANN actually bring itself into compliance with its independent review bylaw by (1) conducting a proper policy development process to designate an independent review provider and approve independent review procedures, and (2) acting on the outstanding independent review requests -- including mine and those that are even older.

Fundamentally ICM Registry's objection was and is to the substantive outcome of ICANN's decision, not the process. Their arbitration request related to the process, but its main goal was and is to overturn the substantive decision. Ultimately, ICANN could accommodate yesterday's declaration by the arbitrators without any fundamental or procedural change.

In light of ICM's commercial goals, the cost of arbitration, even at US$1 million or more (the arbitrators charged about half a million dollars, which ICANN had to pay, but ICM Registry had to pay for its own lawyers), is small compared to the potential profits if ICM Registry is awarded the ".XXX" franchise. So ICM Registry had little reason to object to the establishment of procedures and fees unaffordable to individuals or public interest advocates.

Fundamentally, my objection is to the process, and my goal as a journalist is change in ICANN's process with respect to openness and transparency. This is much more threatening to ICANN, since a ruling in my favor by an independent review panel would require major change in how ICANN operates, not just reversal of a single substantive decision. And I cannot afford, and would not readily "agree" to, expensive procedures. My request is thus much more threatening to ICANN's established secrecy. Perhaps that is why ICANN has been unable to conduct the kind of discussions with me about my independent review request that it apparently was willing to have (behind closed doors) with ICM Registry.

ICANN has shown that it is sometimes willing, when it is dealing with a commercial issue rather than one of principle, and a commercial opponent with deep pockets, to agree to submit certain questions to arbitration.

Now it needs to move beyond that step to adopt policies for independent review in accordance with its bylaws, and to deal with the backlog of independent review requests -- including mine -- pre-dating ICM Registry's arbitration request.

[Update: More discussion in comments in the ICANN blog, Internet Governance Project blog, and a CircleID article.]