Italy, A Nation of Islands

By Patricia Winton

Italian weather forecasters divide their predictions into four parts: north, central, south, and the islands. Everybody knows that last doesn’t mean all the 450 islands scattered across Italy, but to Sicily and Sardinia, the two largest, and their neighbors.

Making up about one-sixth of Italy’s land mass, individual islands and 13 archipelagos ring the peninsula. There are about 40 islands in and around the Venetian lagoon. In addition, major lakes, and even a couple of rivers, boast islands as well. Three islands are privately owned. Many Italian islands, such as Capri or Elba, are well-known to tourists, but there are lots of fascinating islands not on the beaten track, including the world's best beach for 2013 from TripAdvisor.

Isola di San Michele: San Michele Island is Venice’s cemetery. Once described as a “cruise ship for the departed,” the island rises from the lagoon surrounded by a yellow wall. For funerals, the undertaker can arrange an aquatic hearse (or even a gondola) for a procession to the island. 

Vaporettos to San Michele on November 1

During All Soul’s commemoration on November 1, vaporettos (Venetian water busses) ply between Venice and the island throughout the week to allow mourners to visits family graves. And like cemeteries in most parts of Italy, interment here is temporary—12 years. After that, people with funds can have their bones transferred to an ossuary in a wall. (I wrote about this practice here.) The gate to San Michele opens at 7:30 AM, closing at 4 PM winter and 6 PM summer.

Isola di Stromboli: Stromboli Island (pronounced STROM bow lee) is a volcano that has been in active eruption for about 2,000 years. It usually erupts about three times an hour, but more vigorous than usual activity began last week, prompting coastguard boats to be deployed as a precaution. By February 19, the volcano had calmed again.

Located northeast of Sicily, Stromboli, an almost perfect triangle, has two villages with a year-round population of about 750. It’s one of the few volcanoes in the world where it’s possible to have a really close look at the eruptions. Dubbed the “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean” because the light show is visible from arriving ships, the island boasts a summer tourist trade with hikes to the volcano, scuba diving, and visits to other islands.

The only way to get to Stromboli is by boat, and because the villages are so small, there are no cars or busses. You get around by on small cycles, by apecars (small, three-wheeled trucks), or on foot. There are no large hotels on the island, but a number of B&Bs and small restaurants provide services to tourists.

Lampedusa: This island is the southernmost point of Italy, located just 70 miles (113 kilometers) from Tunisia and has a very African feel with its arid climate. The sea between Lampedusa and North Africa is only about 370 feet deep (113 meters), so the water remains warm enough for swimming about eight months a year. Part of the island is a nature preserve, so there are good opportunities for hiking. TripAdvisor named Rabbit Beach on Lampedusa the best beach in the world for 2013. While tourism, in addition to fishing and agriculture, is a major industry on the island, the beaches are usually not crowded except during July and August. The island has no fresh water source, except for rainfall.

Rabbit Beach in Lampedusa, called world's best beach by Tripadvisor

For the past ten years or so, Lampedusa has been a preferred destination for illegal immigrants from Africa, and during the Arab Spring about 200,000 people rowed across the sea to the island.

Isola Tiberina: Located in the Tiber River in the heart of Rome, this island is connected to one river bank by Rome’s oldest bridge, Ponte Fabricio (62 BC). Another bridge, Ponte Cestio with parts almost as old as Fabricio, connects Tiberina to the other.

Legend has it that the island emerged above an ancient ship, which its shape mirrors. Romans have perpetuated the legend by building a prow and stern at either end of the island and erecting an obelisk in the center to replicate a ship’s mast.

The ancient Romans built a temple to Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing, on the site. The portico of the temple was used as an incubatio, a place where sick people were left out in the cold to purify them and restore them to health. In the Middle Ages, Tiberina hosted pilgrims to the Holy See, and priests cared for the poor and sick there. A hospital, erected on the island in 1584, still operates.

Weather forecasters are calling for very cold weather from north to south over the next seven days. Even the usually mild islands should have frigid temperatures. Strangely, Stromboli may see snow on that eruption.

Visit me on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues where I write about all things Italian.

Five Months on The Rock

By Beth Green

After 12 hours of travel, we sat on yet another bus, watching through the dirty windows as Bangkok traffic chittered and lurched in the golden afternoon sunlight.

We’d been on this public bus for 45 minutes. We were nowhere in the city we could pinpoint on a map and didn’t really know if this bus would take us somewhere we wanted to go, anyhow.

The bus was old, but going strong. It stopped every few feet, and another crowd of school kids, or office workers, or ladies coming home from the vegetable market would get on and squeeze past my sweaty legs and big backpack, politely smiling and looking away as I apologized for being in the way.

The bus stopped at yet another intersection clogged with taxis, three-wheeled trucks, and motorbikes. I watched the shadows outside lengthen. I felt bone tired, but also, suddenly inspired.

“Let’s keep going,” I said to Dan.

He craned his neck to see over the top of the backpack he was cradling on his bent knees, crammed in the plastic seat across the aisle from me.

“Where?” he asked.

“Let’s find an island,” I said.

And so, we went to Koh Tao.

As sometimes happens when you make a spur-of-the moment choice to abandon a plan, we found that road blocks were lifted, obstacles decimated, red carpets rolled out.

We’d been sweating on the bus for close to an hour, stuck in traffic as gnarled as the noodles in a plate of pad Thai. But as soon as we decided to take Bangkok off our itinerary, it all came right. We alerted the conductor, shouldered the bags, leapt off the bus, hailed a taxi, shot through the streets, snapped up a ticket and were sitting on the night train to Chumphorn in quick succession.  At Chumphorn we transferred to a bus, which took us to the ferry. By morning, we were whizzing across the Gulf of Thailand on a high-speed catamaran watching British honeymooners drink beer for breakfast and subsequently puke it up.

We did our dive training at Master Divers, in Mae Haad.

Koh Tao is a tiny speck in the blue ocean, at eight square miles a fraction the size of its famous neighbors, Koh Samui and Koh Phangan. It has three villages, a surprising number of hide-away resorts, and the largest concentration of dive shops I’ve ever seen.

I was there for the diving, and Dan, an indifferent swimmer at this point, was there for cheap beer. Or so we thought.

The three days we’d initially decided to stay on Koh Tao stretched to seven once my divemaster convinced Dan to sign on for a scuba course. We spent the mornings underwater, checking out clownfish and coral and avoiding the island’s strangely aggressive triggerfish. Afternoons we read or walked the sandy lanes that counted as “roads.” Evenings, we met new friends and, yes, drank cheap beer.

By the end of six days, the seed of a radical idea was blossoming. We left, but Koh Tao stayed with us: Palm trees. Tropical reefs. Friendly people. We continued on our Southeast Asia backpacker’s circuit. Cambodia. Malaysia. Australia for the holidays. India. Vietnam. Months passed, and we saw amazing, incredible, life-changing things. And we still kept talking about how we could get back to tiny Koh Tao.

So we did.

We signed up for divemaster courses, found a bungalow with a pet monkey living in a tree outside, and spent five months admiring the way the water shone in Thai sunlight—both above and below the surface.

Image courtesy pelkaphoto

The diving industry on Koh Tao sprang up in the 1990s. Before then, it was mostly uninhabited, with just a few houses where fishermen would overnight. In that relatively short amount of time since then, it’s grown and developed and yet still retained that “deserted island” feel. The inhabitants of the island are castaways themselves. Foreign dive professionals from a hundred countries staff the technical side of the resorts and dive shops while Burmese and Nepalese migrants mind the shops and cook and clean in the restaurants and hotels. Tourists arrive from everywhere. Even the Thai population is adrift here—it’s no-one’s home, and because of that it’s as free and easy a place to be as I have ever been.

Living on a small island is not for everyone, however. Water shortages, power outages. Cash shortages if weather keeps the ferry from running and the banks from bringing more change. Jokes about “island time” are not really jokes, just a reflection of how perceptions of urgency are diluted by the sea that surrounds us.  Bad weather is the bogeyman.  If the ferry isn’t running, you might not make your flight in Bangkok next week. Emergencies are dealt with as swiftly as possible—but may require help from another island, or the mainland, an hour or more away.

And, like in many enclaves of expatriates and long-term travelers, there are some who come and never leave—but say they’d like to. Anyone who’s spent some time on “The Rock”—as Koh Tao is affectionately called—can name-drop two, three or a dozen people who have stayed over the time they should have. People who sit in perfect paradise and only notice the mosquitoes. Some of these became inspiration for characters I’d write into a mystery novel manuscript some months later.

Scuba self-portrait.
Water gets in my mask when I laugh.

Dan and I discussed staying on Koh Tao through the low season and on into the new year. We could have dipped farther into savings—travel budget gone now—and pulled out enough to pay the tuition for dive instructor courses. We’d need updated equipment. A higher rate of insurance. Maybe a larger apartment—a one room bungalow is fine for a few months, but indefinitely?  Outside practicalities had invaded our island life.

So we left. And chased money. And closeted up our dive gear.

But every so often, at an airport, we say, “Hey, let’s keep going. Let’s go back to Koh Tao.”

And one day, we might.

The Land of Fire

Waiting at the Strait of Magellan

By Alli Sinclair

I come from one of the world’s largest islands, so it’s only natural I’m a sucker for land poking out of vast oceans. Fortunately, near Australia, we have a fabulous selection of islands with palm trees, pristine beaches, and turquoise waters -- Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Vanuatu... the list goes on! But one of my favourite islands in the world doesn’t have a palm tree in sight but it does have penguins and is known as the Land of Fire – it’s Tierra del Fuego in southern Argentina.

My first visit to Tierra del Fuego was after I’d cycled and ridden buses for thousands of kilometres through Patagonia. I’d been on a roll, enjoying the life of a traveller, only to end up stranded at the southern tip of Argentina, staring across the Strait of Magellen. Due to unpredictable wind and ever-changing currents, ferry crossings are commonly stopped until weather improves and my ferry was no different. Six hours later we crossed by boat, where humpback whales swam in the channel that flows between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Once on the other side, I jumped on a bus and travelled through windswept plains where crops of mountains jutted skyward. Arriving at Ushuaia, the stepping off point for ships sailing to Antarctica, I found a hostel on the hillside with views across the Beagle Channel. Not bad for US$10 a night.

The western region of Tierra del Fuego and most surrounding islands are owned by Chile while the remainder of the island is owned by Argentina. Now, depending on who you’re speaking to, you’ll get different stories about the most southern city in the world. Argentines will swear it’s Ushuaia, and Chileans will argue it’s Puerto Williams.

Tierra del Fuego National Park lies only 11 kilometres from Ushuaia, is the first shoreline national park established in Argentina, and it is the world’s most southern national park. It’s easy to access by bike, car, or, probably the most popular option, by train.

The Train to the End of the World is a narrow gauge railway that was originally established in 1910 after the prison in Ushuaia began operating. The steam train travelled along along the waterfront in Ushuaia, then across the eastern slope of Mount Susana and into what we now call Tierra de Fuego National Park. The railway originally connected the prison to the forestry camp within the park, and was known as the Prison Train until the prison closed in 1947. (The original railway closed in 1952 after an earthquake damaged the tracks. Luckily, some train lovers reconstructed and renovated the tracks in 1994. After purchasing a steam locomotive from England, building one in Argentina, and assembling three diesel locomotives, they opened the line to tourism). Now it’s possible to take the train from the outskirts of Ushuaia and travel for 50 minutes along the heritage railway to the Tierra del Fuego National Park.

Once there, you can visit waterfalls, thick forests, pristine lakes, and towering mountains that all combine to make a visit to this park an unforgettable experience. For those who love to hike, it’s easy to spend a few days traipsing the trails, enjoying the wildlife both on and above the ground. If you have a keen eye, you’re likely to spot an Andean Fox, North American Beaver, European Rabbit, muskrat, and guanacos. Looking above, you may spot an Austral Parakeet, Magellanic and Blackish Oystercatchers, as well as the elusive Andean Condor.

As for time of year, from personal experience, I’d say Autumn (Fall) is the most spectacular season to go. Crisp, sunny days, bright blue skies, and fewer tourists means you almost have the park to yourself. And as for scenery, nothing can beat the magnificent orange, red, and yellow leaves of trees clinging to the rolling hills and jutting mountains.

Enjoying champagne and Oreos at the end of the world

And if visiting the southernmost national park in the world then you can add standing at the end of the Pan-American Highway, an impressive roads that stretches for 29,800 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina.

Tierra del Fuego is shrouded in mystery, has a colourful history, and breathtaking scenery and nature. It’s easy to spend a week, even two, exploring the surrounds and if you’ve been saving your pennies, sail to Antarctica. For me, the Land of Fire burns brightly in my heart and I can’t wait to take my young family there and share the wonderful experiences waiting for us to embrace.

If you want to learn more about Ushuaia, you can visit another post I wrote here.

Pearl of the Persian Gulf

Kish Island
Photo by Panoramia

By Heidi Noroozy

It’s really rather strange. As an American with an Iranian passport, I get to travel to lots of places that see few Westerners these days, from teahouses among the snowy peaks of the Alborz Mountains to the ancient ruins of Persepolis. And let’s not forget that legendary Persian hospitality. But the one part of the Islamic Republic that is most accessible to my compatriots is a place I’ve yet to visit: Kish Island. This desert paradise is the most unlikely of high-brow playgrounds and the closest thing most Iranians will get these days to a Caribbean holiday—shimmering coral beaches, crystal-clear waters, and even the world’s first all-solar hotel. All reasons why Kish is dubbed The Pearl of the Persian Gulf.

Just a 30-minute flight across the Persian Gulf from Dubai, Kish holds out a welcome mat to visitors who would otherwise have to jump through hoops to get a visa. A stamp in your passport at the airport of departure (Dubai, Istanbul, and a few other cities) gives you permission to stay for up to 14 days. The island is a trade-free zone, and along with the lower prices comes a more relaxed attitude toward all things Islamic, including the strict dress code. You’re not likely to see sun-bathers in bikinis and speedos, but you may notice a lot more bare skin here than you could expect in any other part of the country. The laws aren’t different, I’m told—they’re just less rigorously enforced.

But not all the time. Swimming, though actively encouraged, still remains gender-segregated, as in the rest of Iran, with a Ladies’ Beach and a Gentlemen’s Beach. There once was a co-ed area, but I’ve heard that it’s been closed.

Sandy beach on Kish Island
Photo by Ivan Minaric

The island has an interesting history. In ancient times, it was a crossroads for traders throughout the region. Marco Polo visited Kish and noted the quality of its pearls. The Greek admiral, Nearchus, who scouted the Gulf on the orders of Alexander the Great, stopped on Kish and described the island’s lovely palm groves.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, turned Kish into a resort and built a casino—now the Shayan International Hotel—as well as an airport equipped to handle the Concorde. The island’s free trade zone was established after the Islamic Revolution.

I’m not one for resorts, so Kish Island may seem an unlikely destination for me. But the island has a lot more to offer. If I ever go there, and I’m sure I will, I’ll give the shopping malls, theme parks, and golf courses a miss and head for the really interesting spots:

Harireh: This archeological site holds the ruins of a 13th-century city that once was a thriving port with three natural harbors for access to trade routes. The excavated sections of Harireh include a hamam (public bath), private houses, and workshops, enough to give me a glimpse of what life might have been like on Kish 800 years ago. Archeologists believe that Harireh was destroyed in a massive earthquake.

Payab
Photo by Mardetanha

Payab (traditional reservoir): Kish does not have an abundance of fresh water, but its ancient inhabitants worked out a clever way to ensure a regular supply of water for drinking and irrigation. They built domed structures over natural basins and collected rain in deep, underground chambers. One payab has been restored today and even accommodates that ubiquitous institution of Iranian hospitality: a tea house.

Natural wonders: There are too many of these to list, but once I’m tired of wandering around ancient ruins and drinking tea at the payab, I can sit on the beach and look at the underwater coral reefs, watch fish swim by, or gaze at the flamingos wading in shallow waters. Maybe I’ll even find a palm grove like the ones Nearchus mentioned in his report to Alexander.

Off the Beaten Track: A Mekong Mystery

Photo by Lili Chambers

Our guest this week is Diana Chambers, the author of Stinger, a romantic spy thriller with a twist set in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the sequel, The Company She Keeps, CIA officer Nick Daley recruits a new agent—“E” Walker—and sends her on a twisting trail that ends in Iran. In the third of the series, Into The Fire, the characters will reunite on a dangerous mission to rescue her kidnapped daughter from a powerful adversary in southern China. Diana has traveled widely and recently returned from a research trip to the Mekong region of Southeast Asia, visiting new and familiar places. Her connections to the area run deep. Way back when, an importing business here led to a Hollywood design career, which led inevitably to writing. She loves spicy food and her bag is always packed.

Available from Amazon

Sometimes in the dark of night I wonder if I became a writer as cover for my secret passion: travel. Not that I don’t love sleeping in my own bed and hanging out with my dog, but there is a world out there that draws me. I may have spent another life on the Silk Road, for I am hard-wired to explore and often find my stories emerge from these settings.

While researching my first Nick Daley spy thriller, Stinger, I followed Marco Polo’s old route south from Kashgar in China’s Far West through the Karakoram Mountains to modern Pakistan and Afghanistan. The sequel, The Company She Keeps, took me and my characters on a twisting—and twisted—path that ends in a part of the great Persian Empire that is now Iran.

Available from Amazon

Another branch of the Silk Road led to India through remote, semi-tropical regions of southern China: an area I’d never visited! So why should I be surprised that my third Nick Daley thriller would be focused here?

In Into the Fire, Nick joins up with his former agent, Eve Walker, to rescue her kidnapped daughter in a distant corner of China’s Yunnan Province. The reason she is being held in this jungly Mekong locale is the mystery at the heart of the story. And thus the heart of my research.

A wild river with parts still unnavigable, the Mekong is its own mystery, descending from the mountains of Tibet through Yunnan and southeast Asia. My scenes will take place in the upper Mekong, where the river defines her people more than a passport. Where the Yunnan peoples are related linguistically and culturally to those in Laos, Myanmar, and northern Thailand. In conducting their rescue operation, Nick and Eve will encounter mixed loyalties and mixed motives.

Mekong view from Luang Prabang,
Laos

After finding her daughter, they will flee down the Mekong, known as Lancang in China. Our journey will trace a reverse course, taking us upriver to a small Lao port from which we will ferry west to Thailand. Nick has a history here, with links to the “secret war” conducted during the Vietnam conflict—which the Laos call the Second Indochina War, following their earlier anti-French struggle. Thailand had its own communist insurgency at the time and the US military and CIA were involved. In my story, a former Air America pilot based in Thailand will provide covert support for Nick and Eve and drop them in southern Yunnan.

Ready to explore, we meet our trim mahogany boat in Luang Prabang, Laos, on the Mekong’s eastern shore. The river can be treacherous, especially when high waters hide its jagged rocks and boulders. The waters are low now and we can see the dangers our captain must navigate as he slips through a narrow channel or hugs a bank to avoid sand bars or rushing currents. And maybe even a rare Siamese crocodile.

Mekong river boat: Captain's
wife and (great) cook

Our hip young guide, Phang, navigates his own course, straddling the traditional Lao and online worlds. Born to a rural family, he has leaped generations already in his short lifetime and I sense he feels a bit dislocated. Despite radical change, Laos remains a totalitarian state, like Vietnam and China. However, Phang views the government as a fairly benevolent force, tripling salaries of village teachers, opening the land to private ownership, the Internet—and tourism. In an attempt to protect the culture, relationships between Lao citizens and foreigners are forbidden, but people are free to get rich. 

On our “slow boat” we have entered what Phang calls Lao time. What is the rush, anyway? Pitying the speedboat passengers in such haste, I sink into a rare luxury: quiet relaxation with nothing to accomplish. Nothing but watch the world go by. And chat. Phang tells us of whiskey villages where people ferment alcohol from sticky rice and yeast, later seasoning the brew with scorpions, snakes, or centipedes. The blend is 65 proof: “Cheap and strong.”

Samples from "Whiskey Village,"
Laos

The more I look, the more I see. Lives are lived on this river, in every kind of vessel from rusty buckets to cargo barges. I look for my characters’ escape boat, as well as others for their pursuers and various bad guys. I see great boulders and hidden coves that may offer shelter—or danger. As the story unfolds in summer, I think of the rain that will overflow these banks of rice and corn, melons and peanuts. But there will still be the gold miners sifting through muddy sediment, the fishing poles and nets, maybe even the banned dynamite. The hillsides will be ever thick with bamboo, banana, mango, and teak trees…a verdant, electric green that can turn almost black as steep cliffs of impenetrable jungle press in upon us. Mysterious. Forbidding.

Mekong village, Laos

The day ends abruptly at dusk as the captain can no longer navigate without radar. We pass the first night in Pakbend, Laos. After climbing steep steps up the mountain, we are shown just how high the mighty Mekong can rise! Across the dusty road from our guesthouse, the restaurant owner greets us in easy American English. We learn he spent ten years as a monk in the capital, Vientiane, before marriage. As with Islamic madrassahs, Buddhist monasteries provide education to boys with limited options. I think of my young monk friend, Boun, in Luang Prabang. So hungry to learn.

Laos border post

A river cruise is such a gentle way to travel and we are almost disappointed at the end of the second day to reach Huay Xai, Laos just across from Chiang Khong, Thailand. Here the Mekong becomes the international border, as it does later with Laos, Myanmar, and China. We had wanted to continue up to the Yunnan port of Jinghong, but following the murder of some Chinese sailors last year—by Burmese and Thai drug dealers—China has closed its part of the river to foreign traffic.

Refusing to concede defeat, we will spend a few days in north Thailand, and then, like Nick and Eve, proceed with our mission to Jinghong. By air.

But that’s another story.