Fantasizing off the beaten path

When it comes to Caribbean vacations, places like St. Thomas, Jamaica and the Bahamas have little appeal for me (even though my last visit to the region was to Grand Bahama). I prefer to venture off the beaten path, away from the glitz and homogeneity of tourist areas, to get a more genuine feel for a place and its people.

That part of me that sometimes thinks about ditching the rat race and moving to the Caribbean (some days pure fantasy, other days not) also thinks about places not already overrun and well-known to guidebooks. A place that's not yet "discovered" offers more opportunity in terms of low real estate prices and little competition for starting a business (such as a B&B, a dive shop, a bar/restaurant, a tour operation, and so on).

Roatan, an island off the north coast of Honduras, would be paradise for Cassie and me, but it has moved far beyond the "discovery" phase. It's well known to scuba divers and cruise ships, and real estate prices have already shot up in the five years since my first visit.

Two places that have been on the list for consideration (or, mostly, for fantasizing) are Bocas del Toro in Panama, and Nicaragua's Corn Islands. Cassie became acquainted with the former by way of a friend, whose mother lives there. I learned about the latter through a friend who always takes vacations to places I've never heard of. Both locations seem ideal: gorgeous settings lying underneath the radar, yet poised for discovery.

Alas, we may already be too late. My most recent issue of Sport Diver magazine profiled Bocas in depth, and the New York Times just published an online photo gallery of the Corn Islands. The current state of the economy may slow the discovery of these places by the tourist masses, but I fear the secret is already out. Maybe it's time for my fantasizing to venture even further off the beaten path....

RyanAir: Pay to pee

A few months back, I reported that RyanAir was considering the implementation of a fee that has long been a standing joke when it comes to airline fees: a charge to use the lavatory. Believe it or not, they are making good on their threat.

Starting sometime in the next year or two, Europe's budget airline will charge passengers to take a pee. Not only that, they're planning to reconfigure their planes to remove two of the three lavatories to make room for more seats.

As one reader opined in a comment to one of the news stories I read, someone should investigate whether it's legal to sell beverages without providing a free lavatory. While they're at it, they should investigate some of the airline's other new or proposed policies, such as doing away with airport check-in counters and forcing passengers to pay to check in online; firing their baggage handlers and making passengers load their own bags onto planes; and perhaps even charging for air sickness bags. (No, I am not making this up.)

One has to wonder when enough is enough....
 

Where I'd rather be: Costa Brava

I have wanted to visit Spain since I was a teenager. In fact, the reason I ended up in Honduras as a foreign student during high school is because I had indicated Spain as my first choice. (I suppose their logic was "Spain? They speak Spanish in Honduras also, we'll send him there.")

Today, as my mouse led me astray across the web, I found myself on Spain's Costa Brava, a gorgeous stretch along the Mediterranean. Take a look at this photo gallery and, like me, you'll find yourself thinking you'd rather be there.

Bonus: If you are serious about visiting, download this 16-page guide.


 

$9 nonstop fares - no, really

Do you need to fly between Newark, New Jersey; Melbourne, Florida; South Bend, Indiana; Toledo, Ohio; or Lansing, Michigan? For most of you, the answer is probably "No." But if so, news of America's newest low-fare airline might interest you. Jet America opened for business today, and takes to the skies beginning July 13.

The airline's introductory fares, clearly designed to grab headlines, are priced at $9 each way for the first nine seats on each flight. If you manage to get one of those seats, however, then of course you'll pay more. Based on a sample flight that I looked up, the minimum out-of-pocket cost will be $49 after all taxes and fees. Still, not bad for a nonstop round-trip flight on a 737—if you're traveling between any of the aforementioned cities (which, other than Newark, are not exactly high-in-demand destinations).

From what I've been able to find out, it seems Jet America will follow the RyanAir model of making money off miscellaneous fees, such as a $5 fee (each way) for booking online ($10 for phone reservations), and $10 for a reserved seat assignment.

We're getting closer and closer to that coin-operated lavatory....
 

Surf the friendly skies

The "World Wide Web" is expanding its reach skyward. This year, a number of airlines are launching GoGo's in-flight WiFi internet service, enabling those of us with WiFi-capable laptops and mobile devices the online access we've been dreaming about. The service is already available on many Virgin America flights, and is rolling out on select American, United, Delta and AirTran routes later this year. (United says the service will be available "in summer" on its JFK-LAX and JFK-SFO routes; I'll be flying the former next month, so I'm eager to see if GoGo is available then.)

Not surprisingly, there will be a fee for access; surprisingly, the fee sounds rather reasonable, at least when you remember how much those Airphone calls cost. For laptops, it costs $9.95 for flights of three hours or less ($12.95 for longer flights), and only $7.95 for those of us using iPhones or other mobile devices. That's a much better deal than $5 for a sandwich that tastes like the cardboard box it comes in. As of now, GoGo will only be available on U.S. domestic flights.

I'm sure this is not welcome news to everyone. But I don't see this changing anything (yet) about the in-flight experience. Laptops are already ubiquitous, and people are well-trained to wear headphones when using them. Browsing the Web is a mostly quiet activity, so I don't see it as any more disruptive as someone watching a DVD on their notebook.

What does worry me, however, is the "gateway drug" nature of offering internet in-flight. It seems inevitable for this to lead to cell phone service in the sky. If that ever happens, then I will suddenly become a Luddite. I would rather fly behind a crying baby or in front of a seat-kicking toddler than next to someone who talks on the phone through the entire flight. (The article I read claimed that Skype would not be available through GoGo.)

Yes, I know that, by my own logic, this won't necessarily change the current in-flight experience, when people are free to talk as much and as loudly as they want to each other. But we've all observed the people who talk loudly on their phones in restaurants, pay more attention to their phones than the road on which they're driving, and bump into you on the street because they're too focused on their phone call to watch where they're walking. Do we really want to fly with those people?

Until then, though, I will happily—and quietly—surf the friendly skies whenever possible.
 

A skyward glance

Like probably many people, I go through cycles in my life where at one extreme, I'm content and engaged in my daily life; and at the other extreme, I've had enough and can't stop fantasizing about an escape. I ebb and flow between the two, swayed by life events like the tide is influenced by the moon. Currently, I'm pegged pretty much at the edge of the "escape" side of the scale.

Daily life is quite taken with the logistics of my wedding a month from now, but that prospect is a welcome one; I'm excited to marry my sweetheart, and the event itself will satisfy my desire for escape (we're marrying in California, and honeymooning in St. Lucia). It's the daily work grind and my environment that have me stir crazy. Together, they both make me feel like a rat trapped in a corner, frantically and vainly scratching the walls to get away.

Lately, my view every day has been concrete, my gaze barely rising above the sidewalk on my way to and from work. Today, I happened to glance skyward, and the pinkish glow of dusk on the few clouds in the sky suddenly took me away. In a split-second, I found myself gazing up at past sunsets in other places, palpably feeling the relaxed contentment I have rarely felt outside of vacations.

And then, just as suddenly, reality crashed back in. I felt depressed contemplating that my life—many of our lives, the modern way of life—limits us to feeling this way only a few weeks per year (however much vacation time you get). We in the rat race work 48, 49, 50 weeks a year to earn those few weeks when we can live our lives at our own pace, on our own terms, looking up at the sky rather than studying the lines in the sidewalk.

Times like this, it's easy and seductive to pine for the life of the playboy or the vagabond. One clutches a silver spoon, one carries his life in a rucksack—but both live the life we all crave. Sure, the grass is always greener, a lesson I've learned the hard way. But at the end, when we look back one final time at the summation of our life, will we wish we didn't spend so many of our finest hours under fluorescent lights, at someone else's whim? With each passing day, I grow more afraid of such a prospect.
 

Diving like a pirate in the Bahamas

Last month, I walked the metaphorical plank and went diving for a long weekend in the Bahamas with my dive club. We boarded the Morning Star, one of three 60-foot sloops in Blackbeard's Cruises' scuba diving fleet, on Grand Bahama Island. The skies were partly cloudy and the air temperature warm, but unfortunately we were plagued with winds in excess of 20 knots for the entire trip—which would have been welcome, considering we were on a sailboat, but the conditions played havoc with our plans to relax and dive. The wind made for a rough three days at sea, and the diving conditions were less than perfect. Nevertheless, we made the best of it, like any good pirate, and had a fine time.