Get me out of here! Tourists trapped

At yoga the other day our instructor, Anne, complimented the class on having attained a level of limberness that let us execute crunches on balance balls without rolling off and crashing onto the studio's wood floor. We students patted ourselves on the backs (a few of us literally, as further demonstration of our increased flexibility).

Over in the corner, Kathy commented that our workouts had also improved her lung capacity. "I went along on a field trip to the Bunker Hill Monument and climbed all the way to the top without getting winded. I was so excited!" She compared that visit with a previous Bunker Hill foray that had left her gasping for air on the narrow staircase that leads to the monument's observation deck and panoramic view of Charlestown and Boston's harbor and skyline. "The staircase keeps winding and turning, and people are coming down while you're going up. And there are no windows."

"Like the Statue of Liberty," said Lucia, unfolding herself from a perfect cat stretch. "I climbed up the Statue of Liberty once and got claustrophobia. Real claustrophobia. I had a panic attack. I was perspiring. I started crying. My son was five, and he didn't know what was happening." A fellow sightseer came to Lucia's aid and guided her to an open air platform where she was able to regroup and steel herself for the trek down.

I felt pangs of sympathy hyperventilation as Lucia recounted her clammy excursion into Lady Liberty's innards. I rolled around on my balance ball and thought about some of the weird, uncomfortable places around the world that I'd stood in lines and paid money to enter. Small, close places I'd have been better off viewing from the outside. High, dizzying places I'd have been better off contemplating from the ground.

The world offers the tourist many places to have a panic attack. Among them:

* Chichen Itza -- I had no problem with the steep climb to the top of the Pyramid of Kukulkan at this remarkable Mayan city in Mexico's Yucatan -- I even sat, smiling, in Chac the Rain God's lap for a rest and photo op when I reached the summit. But when Mike and I ventured inside the chamber behind a staircase at the structure's base for a look at the priceless jaguar statue it held, I freaked out. I imagined the entire pyramid collapsing on my head and pinning me inside the airless, unlit tunnel. A gringo sacrifice to the Mayan gods. I never reached the jaguar -- Mike tells me it was breathtaking -- but before I turned to grope my way back to the exit, I saw two luminescent green balls floating eerily in mid-air at the end of the pitch black passageway: the jaguar's jade eyes.

* St. Paul's Cathedral -- What could be cooler than a climb up into St. Paul's dome, one of the highest in the world? Imagine the sparkling views of merry old London I'd get from up there. I started up the stone staircase, following two 90-pound Japanese girls in stiletto heels, thinking, Piece of cake! London is my oyster! Then the cakewalk turned from broad, stone steps surrounded by reassuringly thick walls to an exposed metal catwalk with near-vomit-inducing gaps between the steps. I couldn't close my eyes, because I'd surely trip and go hurtling over the thin wrought iron armrails and splat unceremoniously onto the stone floor of the nave, a mile below. But I couldn't look, either. A see-through catwalk suspended a hundred feet in the air? Are you kidding me? I need an air sickness bag! I turned around, slowly, and picked my way, squinting, which was a compromise between keeping my eyes open and shutting them tight in terror, to ground level. And way, way up there, the two Japanese girls I'd earlier mentally dismissed as powder-puffy lightweights, pressed onward into the dome, bravely planting their toes and forefeet onto the metal grates and lifting their heels to keep their spikes from getting caught in the gaps.

* Sears Tower -- My architecture cruise on the Chicago River was a highlight of my visit to Chitown. I sat on the boat's top deck with my head tilted back, soaking in the amazing march of magnificent towers that lined both sides of the curving river. When we passed alongside and under the breathtaking endlessness of the black-glass Sears Tower, I couldn't see its top. So, of course, after the boat docked I decided I had to see -- no, stand in -- the top. I walked to the Sears, bought a Skydeck ticket and waited for my group to be called to board the elevator. As we shot up through the shaft at a speed I thought would surely launch us through the roof and into Indiana, the attendant told us about the gargantuan rollers in the 1,353-foot tower's basement that allow it to sway with the prevailing Windy City wind, that literal wiggle room essential to keeping the Sears from breaking in half and crumbling into Lake Michigan. The elevator opened at the Skydeck, and as I made my way toward the windows that faced Lake Michigan, one or more of those Great Lakes-spawned prevailings pummeled the tower. Which, in response, rolled on its gargantuan ball bearings. I was 1,400 feet above the earth in a moving building. I never even looked out the window. I turned tail and took the next elevator to terra firma.

(In July 2007 construction began on Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's Chicago Spire, an immensity that will dwarf the Sears. It will be a residential building. I assume it will have its own version of basement ball bearings that will enable the mega-skyscraper to roll with it and blow in the wind. Just the promo video on the Spire's website scares me to death. I can't imagine living in it. Or even going to a dinner party in it. Imagine the host announcing, "No worries, everyone. When the building quiets down and your wine's stopped sloshing up out of the glass, Jeeves will come around with refills.")

* Ming Tombs -- I should know by now that I do not have the fortitude to handle tourist attractions with the word "tomb" in their names. But when you've spent thousands of dollars and flown three-quarters of the way around the planet to get to a place, you sometimes tune out the voice of experience. In the name of adventure, into the tomb you plunge.

No doubt many Beijing Olympic-goers will take the day trip from the capital -- if only to escape the city's toxic smog for a few hours -- and head to the Ming Tombs, eternal resting place of 15th-century Chinese emperors. I enjoyed the clear air (Whoa! What's that? Blue sky?!) that surrounded the tombs' 40 hilly park-like acres and the 24 larger-than-life-sized animal sculptures

that line the Sacred Way leading to the crypt. When I got to the crypt itself, the fun was over.

I followed my guide and a herd of tourists down a ramp into a smotheringly horrific underground space. As I stared at the lineup of royal sarcophogi, the walls started closing in. The ceiling got lower and lower. My eyes rebelled at the strange, thick, gray-dark of the chamber. A fetid stink -- death rot mixed with a noxious-smelling air freshener -- snaked through my nasal passages and attacked my lungs. I told my guide I had to leave. His task was to keep his assigned foreigners in a group and keep his eye on them, so he was disinclined to let me go. "Few minute more. Few minute more." A few minutes more would have rendered me insane, so I apologized to the guide and fled, pushing up the ramp against a new incoming stream of mostly Chinese visitors. To be ebbing when everyone else was flowing defied the cosmic order, but people saw the panic in my eyes and let me pass.

I must not be the only one to have clawed my way, sheet-white and gasping, from the clutches of the Ming Tombs. One online guide to the crypts contains this caveat: "We feel it necessary to remind visitors with heart problems to consider carefully whether they should enter the underground chambers. The atmosphere and dull lighting can be a problem."

I'd add: "If you don't have heart problems when you arrive at the Ming Tombs, there's a better than even chance you'll have some when you leave."

www.LoriHein.com

Sun-addled in the Aegean

Seen hanging outside a shop on Crete:

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Chengdu's little stars

Many of the victims of this week's earthquake in China's Sichuan province were children. In Chengdu, the provincial capital, and in nearby cities, multi-story concrete school buildings filled with students collapsed and buried the small victims who, in most cases, were their parents' only children.

When Mike and I were in Chengdu, after she'd shown us obligatory tourist sites like the Chengdu Zoo's giant pandas and the cottage of Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu, our guide took us to visit her son's kindergarten class.

We walked three flights up a dark stairwell and came to the classroom, where a beaming group of kids dressed in bright reds, yellows and blues sat, hands clasped, at wide aqua-painted work tables. As we entered, the two teachers, dressed in smocks with big patch pockets, nodded to the children. They stood, faced us, and, through the biggest smiles I'd ever seen, bellowed, "Hello, hello, hello!"

Then they gathered in the middle of the room and sang: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, in English. They clasped their hands above their heads and spun on tiptoes in tiny circles. When they'd finished, they sat on a long bench that ran against the room's back wall and sang a clapping song in Mandarin.

When our too brief visit was over, we followed our guide back down the stairwell and into the school's front courtyard. "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye," shouted 30 voices from above our heads. The teachers and all the children were waving from the third-floor classroom's open windows. The guide laughed and waved up at her son, then led us back out into the street.

www.LoriHein.com

Free money for globetrotters: Get yours! May 30 deadline

I'm getting some free money.

If you're an American who traveled abroad between February 1, 1996 and November 8, 2006 and used Diners Club, MasterCard or Visa, debit or credit, you've got free money coming, too.

But claim it fast: the deadline is May 30.

A class-action suit -- the Currency Conversion Fee Antitrust Litigation to be exact -- claims credit card companies and a few big banks took more foreign transaction fees from travelers than they should have. The card issuers and banks deny the charge but settled anyway, so there's a potful of money waiting to be distributed to us plastic-packing globetrotters.

Find details and claim forms at http://www.ccfsettlement.com/ .

You can claim your refund in one of three ways:

1. Take a flat $25. This is the route that folks who spent a week or so abroad will likely choose.
2. Estimate the number of days you spent abroad between 1996 and 2006 and let the settlement administrator determine your refund, which will be based on 1% of the estimated transaction activity for the number of days you spent out of the country. I picked this option.
3. If you can produce actual financial records, get a 3% refund on your transactions.

When I travel, I keep a detailed journal, so I didn't have to estimate the number of days I spent abroad: I just pulled out all my journals and counted the length of each trip. Result: 206 days.

Here's where I went during the decade of alleged fee-gouging:

Germany: 11 days
Malta: 8 days
Alberta, Canada: 9 days
Portugal: 11 days
Cornwall, England and Brittany, France: 18 days
Scotland and Iceland: 11 days
Greece: 18 days
Belgium and Kenya: 16 days
Turkey: 11 days
Belize and Guatemala: 7 days
Jamaica: 8 days
Jordan: 10 days
China: 9 days
Italy and Switzerland: 19 days
France and Switzerland: 15 days
Argentina, Brazil and Chile: 17 days
Russia: 8 days

This could be bigger than Bush's economic stimulus check...

www.LoriHein.com

Losing your marbles: The Parthenon and beyond

Warning: Reading this post may make your brain explode. (If it doesn't, I guarantee you'll enjoy this post from 2005: "Has Charles Veley Been to the State of Chuuk?")

Athens' new Acropolis Museum, scheduled to fully open in September, has a rectangular, glass-walled gallery with a view of the nearby Parthenon. The old Acropolis museum, a narrow, cramped affair that managed, despite itself, to stun visitors with its rich collection of Greek antiquities, may, it's rumored, be turned into a coffee shop. The old museum's holdings, along with breathtaking artifacts from the Acropolis and other Greek sites, have been moved into the new venue.

Key among the new museum's exhibits will be the frieze that once adorned the Parthenon. A room was built to hold it. The rub, of course, is that Greece only owns a few pieces of the frieze.

Most of the pieces -- the marbles -- live in London in the British Museum, which bought them from the British government, which bought them from Thomas Bruce, the 7th earl of Elgin, who took them from the Acropolis in 1801 and shipped them off to England. Lord Elgin, serving as ambassador to Constantinople, had the sultan's permission to slice the frieze into pieces and remove it from then Ottoman-controlled Greece.

Greece would like the Elgin Marbles, which it calls the Parthenon Marbles, back, and the frieze gallery at the new museum is designed to be more than an artistic display; it's a plea for repatriation of priceless pieces of patrimony. The reconstructed frieze will consist of the few original pieces still in Greece's possession interspersed with reproductions of the pieces Elgin took. These lost marbles will be covered in netting, yielding, it's hoped, a powerful visual statement about the cultural crime Greece feels has been committed.

Should the British Museum give the Marbles back?

Loaded question leading to a web of loaded questions. Museums large and small, of all types, all over the world, have stuff that came from somewhere else. So...

If the British Museum gives the Marbles back, should other museums give stuff back, too?

Which museums should give stuff back? Some museums? All museums? Big museums? Small museums?

Which stuff should they give back? Big stuff? Small stuff? Some stuff? All stuff?

To whom should they give it back? To other museums? To countries? What if the countries aren't countries anymore? (Think Mesopotamia and Babylon.)

Should method of acquisition matter in the give-it-back-or-not determination? Museums acquire through purchase or donation, but how did whoever sold or donated get the piece in the first place? And what about absolute provenance -- how an object came to be removed from its true source? Removing outright theft, tomb-raiding, smuggling and other overtly illegal and illicit activity from the equation -- pieces thus acquired should clearly be returned -- what in a piece's bloodline -- from war, conquest and colonialism, to commerce and trade, to excavation and archaeology, both accidental and intentional, whether by amateur hacks or skilled scientists --should or might mark a piece for repatriation?

Should there be an international marble quid pro quo, a supervised global game of marble trading wherein museums -- or countries, universities, foundations, families...-- that get marbles back have to then return marbles they've held, sometimes for centuries, that came from somewhere else?

Imagine trucks and trains and ships and planes loaded with statues and stelae, paintings and pottery, sculpture and sarcophogi, crisscrossing the globe, the transported objects taking each others' places in cases and galleries and on shelves and pedestals. Eventually, if you imagine an endgame in which every item ever removed by any means from its original in situ state finds its way through this great marble trade back to where it was created, every museum in the world would end up being a homogeneous warehouse of stuff from just its own little corner of the world. To see gold and lapis Egyptian death masks, you'd have to go to Egypt. A peek at sublime Tang Dynasty terra cotta figurines would require a ticket to China. To ogle Aztec headdresses, you'd need to book a flight to Mexico. After returning pieces to the places they were born, institutions like the Louvre and the Met could consolidate their remaining holdings into a few rooms and rent out the rest of their space for other uses. Gaze at a Goya then head down the hall for a few strings at the Prado Bowladrome?

Who's got other people's marbles? Nearly everybody. (But not, it seems, the Egyptians or Greeks. Their marbles fit pretty justifiably into some aspect, phase, layer, race or period in their long, complex histories. They've got so many marbles of their own that they've never needed to take anyone else's.)

You can find other people's marbles all over the world.

One day a few years ago, Adam and I followed our guide to the summit of ancient Pergamum (Pergamom, Pergamon), a glorious citadel-ruin that rises above the modern city of Bergama, Turkey. We came to a large, pedestal-like structure shaded by a few hearty trees that grew in its empty center. "There's not much here now," said our guide of the stripped platform. "The great Altar of Zeus was here, but the Germans took it to Berlin." Indeed, the star attraction and raison d'etre of Berlin's Pergamom Museum is the massive Zeus Altar excavated by engineer Carl Humann during the building of a rail line and sent, in pieces, to Berlin, where it was reassembled.

If Germany gave the Zeus Altar back to Turkey, would Turkey consider giving some of the goodies it's been holding back to Egypt and other places? Istanbul's Archaeological Museum houses artifacts "discovered" in Cyprus, Palestine, the Arab world and ancient Mesopotamia. It has a collection of sarcophogi found at Sidon, in ancient Syria, and owns mosaic panels from Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar's Ishtar Gate. And, piercing the sky near the minarets of Istanbul's sublime Blue Mosque is a 16th-century BC Egyptian obelisk from the temple of Luxor that was appropriated and replanted by Byzantine emperor Theodosius in 390 AD. There are only 28 Egyptian obelisks left in the world -- only a few in Egypt. (New York has one, Italy has about a dozen...)

If the give-me-back-my-marbles game really took hold, Italy would be mighty busy. It would be on the receiving end of countless Roman, Etruscan and other treasures from museums and venues worldwide. And, it would have some items it might consider shipping back to their places of origin.

Even the Vatican has marbles. (I know, Vatican City is not politically Italy, but if you've ever stood in line in the hot sun to see the Sistine Chapel then, after contemplating the masterwork, sought relief at the gelato shop next door, which sits in Italy, the Vatican is in Rome.) The Vatican's Egyptian Museum holds items won by conquest: the Roman Empire was one heck of a far-reaching enterprise. But if conquest-gotten gains count in the you-should-really-return-this column, the Vatican might have to part with seals from Mesopotamia (we'd better shore up and secure the Baghdad Museum) and bas-reliefs from Assyria, which spans today's Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

And Venice has marbles. Those four bronze horses over the portal of the Basilica of San Marco? They once adorned an arch that the Romans built in Constantinople (today's Istanbul). And the Romans allegedly nabbed the equine arch decorations from Greece...

Should Greece get its frieze back from England?

I've lost more than a few marbles just thinking about it.

LoriHein.com

Madaba: Mosaics and Kleenex

Madaba, Jordan sits some 40 minutes south of Amman, the capital. I'd spent several hours sightseeing in and around Amman and found myself, at 2:30 in the afternoon, with hours of daylight and a half-tank of gas left, so I steered the rental car onto the King's Highway, a desert road that follows the meanders of a 5,000-year-old route mentioned in the book of Genesis, and headed for Madaba, "City of Mosaics."

I found the Madaba exit, drove uphill into the town and popped in on the small Church of the Apostles, where I took in its interesting mosaic floor. But I'd really come for Madaba's mosaical piece de resistance, the 6th-century tile floor map of the Holy Land that sits inside the Church of St. George. The mosaic map, which dates from the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, is the oldest map of the Holy Land in existence and was discovered during construction of the simple, plain-faced 19th-century church.

The Apostles attendant told me to head back downhill to King's Highway then to circle back uphill at the busy intersection where Madaba's main street met the larger road.

Down I went and found the intersection. As in nearly all the Jordanian villages I drove through, the roadside was a place of enterprise and industry, commerce and conversation. A drive through a village center yields a pageant of people shopping, working, walking, waiting for buses, swinging book bags, digging dirt, herding sheep, tending goats, selling fruit, slicing sheet metal, fixing mufflers, driving tractors. Everyone -- merchants, schoolkids, mothers with toddlers, old men in plastic chairs smoking and rubbing strands of prayer beads -- is in the street.

I wasn't surprised, then, when I stopped at the intersection's traffic light and a gorgeous boy with chocolate eyes and teeth like pearls stuck his head and a box of tissues into my open passenger-side window and said, "Kleenex, lady?" I laughed, said thanks but no, and turned the car uphill when the light turned green. The boy and I waved as I drove up into town.

The Church of St. George, so very easy to find according to both the Apostles attendant and my guidebook, eluded me.

In retrospect, considering the artistic and archaeological wonder it held inside, I know I was looking for a building considerably more elaborate than the unassuming little church turned out to be, so I drove right by it. Three times.

After each failed circuit through Madaba, I'd end up back at the intersection with the traffic light, and each time, the beautiful, laughing boy would see me coming, wave, then stick his head inside the car when I came to a stop. Each time he tried to sell me something.

For a few passes, he stuck to Kleenex: "Hello, lady! Tissue, lady?" On the third pass, sensing a market need that he could fill -- Why, this tourist lady is looking for the mosaic map, and she can't find it, so she needs a guide (a valid conclusion under the circumstances) -- he asked if he could get in the car and help me find Karak, the walled city crowned by a massive 12th-century Crusader fortress. Karak, which rises 1,000 feet above the desert floor, loomed outside my windshield, just down the road from my Madaba intersection. It was hard to miss, so I declined the offer.

After three attempts, I found the Church of St. George and the mosaic map, a masterpiece. I joined a German tour group that crowded around the 35- by 15-foot wonder. The thousands of 1,500-year-old, still-vivid tiles formed a breathtaking cartographic view of the lands of the Bible, stretching from Jerusalem and the Dead Sea to the Nile Delta. Jerusalem was the map's focal point, and features like the city walls and Damascus Gate were disarmingly detailed and recognizable.

I left the church and drove back downhill for the last time, thinking of the glorious bits of ocher and blue and white polished stone I'd just beheld. I came one last time to the intersection and the boy with the gleaming smile. "I found the map," I told him. "Beautiful. And now, I'll go to Karak."

My friend smiled a smile nearly as big as the mosaic map, shook his head in approval, and said, "Goodbye, lady!"


For current information about Jordan visit the U.S. State Department's travel site or the Jordanian embassy's U.S. office site.

www.LoriHein.com

Dow gotcha down? Go camping!

If the Dow's eaten your vacation fund and you've temporarily tabled plans for that pricey hotel-and-airplane trip, don't stay home: Go camping!

Scrambling eggs over an open fire and relaxing with family and friends under a canopy of stars is the perfect way to tell a recession that you're still going to have fun, thank you very much.

In one of my recent Fun Family Travel columns I give tips for planning and enjoying a trip to the great outdoors. Click here to read the article. It focuses on camping with kids but has useful information for anyone wanting to get in touch with their inner Boy Scout.

www.LoriHein.com

The race for Tibet: Saving Shangri-La

When a country bids to host the Olympic Games it says, de facto, that it wants the spotlight, that it welcomes the eyes, ears and attention of the world.

China got the Games -- and the spotlight. And the glare is harsh. As it should be.

On the roof of the world, a relative handful of Tibetan monks and nuns have succeeded, at a cost almost certainly to be paid with many of their lives, in sending out a global SOS. If the world's free people don't or can't use the upcoming Beijing games as leverage to force China into halting the gradual, systematic obliteration of Tibetan religion, culture and freedom that began with its 1949 invasion of Tibet, we may not hear from Tibet, the true Tibet, again. This may be the last call.

If you have the time, please visit the websites listed below for an overview of Tibet's 2,000 years of rich, independent culture centered on peaceful Buddhist principles; its last 59 years of repression under Chinese occupation and rule; its religious and political leader-in-exile and Nobel Peace Prize winner Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama; the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India; and organizations dedicated to helping free Tibet from Chinese oppression:

International Campaign for Tibet: http://www.savetibet.org/


Official site of the Tibetan government in exile: www.tibet.netTibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy: www.tchrd.org

The Beijing Olympics and The Race for Tibet: http://www.racefortibet.org/


Official site of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet: http://www.dalailama.com/



Spend some time on these sites, and you'll begin to feel the uniqueness of Tibet in our world. We can't lose it. For a more in-depth look at Tibet and Tibetans since the Chinese takeover, read John Avedon's 1997 book, In Exile from the Land of Snows.



The Dalai Lama no longer has hope that Tibet will again be a sovereign nation. He is a 72-year-old realist who knows that he is Tibet's -- and the world's -- last Dalai Lama. His goal now is to save his people's culture and restore their freedom. What he wants from China at this point, after a half-century of quiet struggle, is a peacefully negotiated agreement that will give Tibetans a measure of autonomy and self-rule within the Chinese state and essential human freedoms of religion, expression and movement.

The Dalai Lama has already laid out a roadmap for the governance of that freer Tibet, a society based on the Hindu/Buddhist/Jainist principle of ahimsa, a Sanskrit word that means no violence. The Dalai Lama has lived and led by ahimsa, non-injury toward all, and his vision for future Tibet calls for, in part and in his words (read his entire governance plan here):

"Nature of Polity


The Tibetan polity should be founded on spiritual values and must uphold the interests of Tibet, its neighbouring countries and the world at large. Based on the principles of Ahimsa, and aimed at making Tibet a zone of peace, it should uphold the ideals of freedom, social welfare, democracy, cooperation and environmental protection.

Fundamental Principles of the Government

The Tibetan Government will observe and adhere to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and promote the moral and material welfare of its citizens.

Renunciation of Violence and Military Force

Tibet will be a zone of peace, based on the principles of nonviolence, compassion and protection of the natural environment. Tibet will remain nonaligned in the international communities and will not resort to war for any reason. "


I took the photos displayed in this blog post when Mike and I visited Tibet in 1987. Even then, before the wholesale transfer and migration of Han Chinese into Tibet accelerated the eradication of nearly all things Tibetan, I knew I was documenting a way of life that was perched on a precipice and about to be pushed off into the void. Even then, the sense of fear and loss hung heavy.

I can only imagine how heavy it hangs today.

www.LoriHein.com

New York: Everyman's architecture

I'm off to New York, my favorite place. On Sunday I'm running the MORE Marathon, a Central Park 26-miler just for chicks over 40.

I love this race. It's five and half loops around Central Park's interior, car-free roads, and there's so much to look at. (My post, "Tour de Central Park," has details.) I also like it because I usually look decent in the overall results. Amazing what happens to your percentile performance when you remove the 32-year-old wonderboys from the field and run only against old ladies...

In the past, the pre-race expos, where you pick up your race bib and shoe timing chip, have been at hotel ballrooms in midtown, not far from the Central Park start line.

This year, they're sending us downtown to a place called the Altman Building. When I saw that I got a bit worried. Banished from midtown. Did this mean this race is in trouble? Holding a race expo way down on West 18th Street? What's with that?

Turns out the Altman Building is a historical gem. It was built in 1896 as the carriage house for the B. Altman Department Store, before Mr. Altman built a flagship store in midtown. Refurbished in 1998 as an elegant convention and functions venue, the Altman Building brims with 19th-century architectural detail. (And is, I discovered, the site of an annual New Year's Eve bash you might want to check out if your plans ever bring you to Manhattan on that night. It's a pricey party but looks interesting.)

New York's architecture can keep you busy forever. I've probably been to the city 40 times and always find something new to investigate and enjoy. For a marvelous guide to the treasures you pass on nearly every city street, pick up a copy of the AIA Guide to New York City, first published in 1967 by the Architectural Institute of America and a layman-friendly, block-by-block description of the history and detail of thousands of buildings.

I love New York's buildings --storied, iconic structures like the Empire State, Chrysler and Flatiron; soaring, new towers that are ushering in an age of green, eco-friendly construction; smaller, centuries-old brick, wooden and cast iron buildings that dot the city.

But I love, too, the prosaic, pedestrian things that sit atop and decorate the sides of New York's buildings. There is remarkable beauty in fire escapes and water towers.

www.LoriHein.com

Details, details: Lowdown on tracking Bwindi's Nkuringo band

One more Uganda post, then I'll take you to another piece of the planet. Tell me where you want to go.

Megan from New Zealand, who'll be tracking the Nkuringo gorilla band in July with her brother, sent an email asking for more details about the hike and trek itself. Happy to oblige with both trek details and other info that Uganda travelers might find useful or interesting. This post will be long, but I'd rather give Megan more than less:


-- First, Megan's going to Bwindi in July, which is good news. July should be dry. Bwindi's rainiest months are March through May and September through November, when hours-long downpours are common. Besides potentially finding some dirt roads impassable, sliding and sloshing around in wet boots on a Bwindi mountainside would, I think, detract mightily from the trek experience. If you have a choice, go to Bwindi in a dry season. You may still get rain -- we got hosed down by a rain shower at the end of our hike -- but it'll likely be short and not a complete buzz-killer.

-- The jumping off point for Nkuringo band treks is Kisoro, a town that sits near both the Congo and Rwanda borders. The drive across Uganda from Kampala to Kisoro takes about 11 hours. I don't know how you're traveling, Megan -- we hired a private driver from Churchill Safaris, an outstanding tour company that I highly recommend -- but whether you travel by safari vehicle/Land Cruiser as we did, or by bus, you're looking at a roughly 11-hour cross country road trip. The buses cut that time down a bit -- but only because they go way too fast.

If you travel by bus, the buses leave Kampala (a city that grows on you -- you'll like it better on Day Two than Day One, even better on Day Three, and so on) about two in the morning. In a country where road travel is dicey on its best day, you might want to avoid bus lines like Gateway, Horizon and Baby Coach, ubiquitous, but with sketchy safety records. Each time one of these buses tore by us our driver, Ronnie, would offer some variation on this theme: "The drivers take drugs. We know this. Not so much alcohol because it makes you weak at the end of the day. The drugs make them hyper all the time, and it makes them feel the bus is a very small car, like this one." The buses are seriously overloaded. We saw a few Gateway and Horizon bus drivers make moves that left me thanking God I wasn't one of their passengers. Ronnie would just shake his head and say, in disgust, "Look at this bus!"

I'd read or heard that the safest buses are the postal buses that leave from Kampala's main post office. I asked Ronnie about this and he said, "Not the big ones -- it's the same drivers as the other companies. Safest are the smaller, 29-seater buses."

The safest road travel option in Uganda is to hire an experienced driver from a reputable safari or tour company. Churchill is top-notch. I asked Ronnie (also top-notch) to name a few other good companies, and he recommended Matoke Tours, Access Uganda Tours and Acacia Safaris. There are, of course, others. (One company that has a spotty reputation among travelers I've encountered online is Volvo Tours. I asked Ronnie about them. His response: "I've never heard of them.")

Uganda's gorillas won't hurt you, but its drivers might. They're crazy. I felt safer in the jungle with its wild animals than I felt on the highway with its wild drivers. Hire somebody who knows what he's doing then relax, to the extent possible, in the back seat. (Self-drive? I wouldn't do it. And I'm no rental car weenie. I've rented and driven myself in lots of places, including the Jordanian desert, but I wouldn't try it here.)

-- They may be wild behind the wheel, but Ugandans are among the warmest, most gracious people I've ever met. Dana and I felt welcomed from the moment we landed to the moment we left. To a man, every Ugandan we encountered in our nearly two-week sojourn welcomed us in his or her fashion, either by ignoring us -- and I mean that in a good way; they let us just blend in -- or treating us as friends, guests and equals. I've experienced this totally benign, stress-free interpersonal vibe in only a handful of countries around the world, and it's a lovely treat for a traveler.

-- On your drive across Uganda, you'll pass through many villages and see stunning scenery as you near the mountains. You get an up close and personal look at Ugandan village life. If you've hired a driver, take advantage of the 22 roundtrip hours you'll spend with him and ask questions about everything you see. You'll learn much, and your driver will appreciate your interest in his country and its people.

The road is smooth and paved until Kabale, where it turns into a rough, rutted, red-dirt ribbon for the final 80-kilometer push to Kisoro. The road twists and winds up into the mountains and is in such tough shape that those last 80 kilometers take about two hours to cover. When our Land Cruiser's wheels rolled off Kabale's pavement and onto the Kisoro road's pocked dirt, Ronnie grinned at us in the rearview mirror and said, "We call this road 'the REAL African massage.' " The stunning mountain scenery, which gets better the nearer you get to Kisoro, and roadside life going on in the villages you drive through take your mind off the twists, turns, bumps and ruts. Gorgeous landscape.

-- Trek day: Unless you're staying in the new lodge near the Nkuringo trailhead, scheduled to open sometime in 2008, you'll wake up in Kisoro about 5:30 AM to prepare for a 6:15 departure from Kisoro town to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA)'s Nkuringo headquarters. (If you're staying at the Traveller's Rest Hotel, Kisoro's best and the place where Dian Fossey came to hang out when she needed human companionship and a break from her beloved gorillas, don't count on the "wake-up knock." Ours never came. Not that I needed it; anticipation woke me at 3 AM.)

The trailhead is about an hour's drive up a thin, twisting unpaved mountain road from Kisoro, and drivers leave Kisoro town by 6:30 to ensure your arrival at UWA's Nkuringo office by 8 AM, when you'll gather, with the other travelers lucky enough to have scored gorilla permits for that day, inside the office for a "briefing." A ranger will welcome you and go over the "gorilla rules" (see earlier Uganda posts). Bring your passports with you on trek day, as the UWA checks your gorilla permits against your passports to confirm your identity.

After the briefing, the ranger will ask if you'd like to hire a porter to carry your backpack (which, at a minimum, holds your camera, lunch and a few bottles of water). The cost is $15 per porter. I recommend engaging a porter for a few reasons.

First, the trail is extremely steep in places, and it's at those places if nowhere else that you'll be glad to have nothing bulky either pushing you downhill or impeding your uphill effort. Second, the 15 dollars you pay the men (and women) who work, usually part-time, as porters mean a great deal to the local mountaintop economy. There isn't much opportunity for people living near Nkuringo to earn income from the gorilla trekkers, because, once beyond Kisoro, there are really no tourist services or shops. Putting 15 bucks into the hands of a few locals felt good and was appreciated. Third, the porters are cool people. Ours, Enock and Jeffrey, were delightful, and we enjoyed their company.

Before you set off on your trek, the ranger will offer you long walking sticks. These came in handy, especially on the steep downhills and for what I call "poling and flinging" yourself across the small stream you'll encounter on your hike. (If you've hired a porter, he or she will help you over the stream, picking the best boulders to leap onto and holding you by the arm so you don't fall in.)

The Nkuringo office and trailhead sit in a stunning setting high atop the Nteko Ridge. The peaks of the Virunga Mountains (which you can see from Kisoro) rise on one side and the deep, blue-green, unviolated forest of Bwindi Impenetrable sits across the ridge on the other. You are five miles from the Congo border, and much of the Virunga-side landscape surrounding you sits in Congo.

Your trek starts with a downhill hike and, if you leave the ridgetop on the same trail that we did, you'll be driven from the UWA office about 10 minutes up the road, toward Congo, to the trailhead. Your porters will likely drive in your safari vehicle with you (with your backpacks on their laps -- they get right to work as soon as they're hired...), and a UWA vehicle will carry the ranger/men-with-guns (see previous posts) contingent that will accompany you into Bwindi.

Earlier in the morning, scouts with walkie-talkies will have left Nteko Ridge to head for the place where the gorillas were seen last the day before. The scouts look for clues -- broken branches and limbs, dung -- to the gorillas' present path and location. The head ranger traveling with you will have a walkie-talkie, and he'll communicate periodically with the scouts, who tell him where to guide your group. The scouts actually locate the gorillas for you, then your ranger leads you to the site.

This advance scouting means that most trek groups reach the gorillas' feeding site within 2-3 hours. We'd walked for about 2 1/4 hours when our chief ranger, Augustine, took his walkie-talkie from his ear and said, "They have found them. We are going to the place where you will get your cameras ready."

The hike itself is a physical challenge, but if you're reasonably fit with no significant mobility issues, you should be fine. The uphill climb at the end of the day is, for some, the most difficult part of the trek. Dana and I are runners and in excellent shape cardio-wise, and we both handled the hike with relative ease.

The four young Swedes we were traveling with also did well, but they were neither as nimble nor as quick as we were, and they tired more frequently. That was a price they paid for not having hired porters. (And their packs were massive -- definitely not daypacks, but backpacks holding all their travel gear; not a good idea -- bring a collapsible daypack with you to take on this hike, and stash your luggage/travel pack at your hotel or in your driver's vehicle on trek day.) The other two people in our group of eight were gents from Antwerp in the 60-70-year-old range, and they had an awful time. They were gasping for breath and sweating from every pore, had difficulty negotiating the hillsides and rocks and limbs of the trail, and had to stop every few minutes. Our entire group had to stop frequently and wait for them to catch up. We didn't much mind though, as the rests gave us a chance to revel in the incredible scenery.

The gorillas are often found at the bottom of the ridge in a forested valley, so your hike consists of 2-3 hours of serious downhill through jungle that's sometimes quite dense, then 2-3 hours of serious uphill when you leave the valley and hike back up to the top of Nteko Ridge. Again, if you're in reasonably good physical shape, you'll find the hike intermittently challenging but eminently manageable. (And always thrilling and gorgeous.) Not including the mountain drives between Kisoro and Nkuringo at the beginning and end of the day, our trek day was about seven hours long. We started down the trail toward Bwindi a bit before 8:30 AM and regained the top of Nteko Ridge about three o'clock in the afternoon.

You'll be climbing over rocks and boulders, pushing aside branches, avoiding stinging nettles and other burr-like plants, and stepping over thin lines of ants that march across the trail here and there. Keep your eye out for ants because if they get into your shoes or up your pant leg, they're hard to remove. The ranger in the lead will warn the hiker behind him when he sees a line of ants, and each hiker passes the message to the hiker behind.

We wore hiking boots and were glad to have them. But the Swedes all wore good quality sneakers/running shoes and did just fine. The key is to have good traction and ankle support. (The rangers, porters and UWA guys-with-guns all wore shin-high rubber galoshes. I don't know if they wore anything else under them.) Because your feet might get wet if it rains or if the stream in the valley is swollen and rushing, you might want to carry an extra pair of dry socks. Be sure to bring a foldable rain poncho, a hat to keep the sun off your head and ample sunscreen. You're in the forest much of the time, but there are plenty of places where you're exposed on a hillside to the blazing, equatorial sun. I brought gloves to grip branches and limbs, but we didn't use them. The Belgians wore gloves and never took them off. I'd stash a pair in my pack, just in case.

Much of the hike is through an area that is not technically part of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a national preserve. The UWA allows farmers to cultivate this contiguous land, and you'll pass through several farmsteads, stumble upon grazing cattle and pecking chickens, see patches of terraced fields, and find plantings of coffee and bananas.

You'll know the real Bwindi when you see it. It rises from the valley floor and faces Nteko Ridge, and it's a series of rich, utterly untouched mountain humps that host the thickest, lushest stand of forest you're likely to ever see. "That is the primary forest," said Augustine, as he gazed at it with what I interpreted as love. Bwindi is primal and deep. The world as it must have looked before man reshaped it.

When the scouts find the gorillas and radio the news to your ranger, he'll lead you to a spot close to where the gorillas are feeding and tell you to "leave your packs and get your cameras ready." If you've hired porters, they'll stay with your packs. You bring only your camera with you as you walk into the trees to meet your gorillas.

You'll spend an amazing hour, and it will pass too quickly. At some point during that hour you'll find yourself forgetting that these animals are wild. You'll see them as a family -- maybe even as family...

When the hour is up, your ranger will whisper, "It's time to go," and you'll leave the clump of trees and begin your hike up and and out of Bwindi, perhaps stopping, as we did, to eat lunch on a sunny hillside.

We ate the cheese sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs the Traveller's Rest had packed for us on a sunny knoll a few hundred feet above the patch of forest we'd just left and watched and listened as our gorillas ate their way through the trees, which rustled and swayed below as our friends lumbered loudly through the brush, climbed trunks, swung on branches and tore off satisfying fistfuls of fresh, green leaves.




This will be my last Uganda post for a while. Let me know where you'd like me to take you next.



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