Hawaii Promotes the Obama Connection

Visitors are reminded of President-Elect Barack Obama's Hawaiian heritage

In June 2007, when Barack Obama was a fast-rising star on the US political landscape, I was in Hawaii and took a fabulous, fascinating Hole in the Wall Food Tour that led to the real, multi-cultural mosaic of Honolulu. You can read about the tour here. In that post, I didn't mention that as we were driving back to the the highrises of Waikiki, Matthew pointed to a Baskin-Robbins dipping store and said that Obama had worked there as a teenager. Then, we didn't stop to take a picture. Now, perhaps the Hole in the Wall tour includes a pilgrimage to that dipping store too.

Mainlanders have made much of of his African-American roots, but in Honolulu, he's still considered a local. Now, Hawaii Convention & Visitors Bureau, which promotes the state's tourist interests, is pointing out just how Hawaiian the former senator from Illinois and soon-to-be president of the United States is -- and the information the bureau is disseminating even references the Baskin-Robbins that Matthew pointed out. The CVB writes:

BARACK OBAMA’S HAWAII

“You can’t really understand Barack until you understand Hawaii.” ~
Michelle Obama

Hawaii will always be home for President-elect Barack Obama. There can
be no doubt that growing up in this idyllic, multicultural setting was a major
influence in shaping who Obama is today.

KAMAAINA: LOCAL AT HEART
The Hawaiian word kamaaina means someone
who is native born or who has lived in Hawaii for some time. When Barack Obama
returns to Hawaii with his family, he comes as a kamaaina, a local who knows
where to go, where to eat and what to do. Here are a few places Obama has
visited on his trips back to Oahu:

ACTIVITIES:
• Pearl Harbor - Chief historian Daniel A. Martinez gave the Obama family a tour of the USS Arizona Memorial.
• Hanauma Bay – Located on the southeast coast of Oahu, this is Oahu’s most popular snorkeling destination. This is also near Sandy Beach, one of Obama’s favorite beaches growing up, as well as the Halona Blowhole, near the area where his
mother’s ashes were scattered.
• Nuuanu Pali Lookout – This scenic spot atop Oahu’s Windward peaks was the site of a fierce battle lead by King Kamehameha I.
• Golf – Obama has played rounds at Olomana Golf Links and Luana Hills
Country Club.
• National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl – One of the country’s most prominent national cemeteries for the armed forces. Obama’s grandfather is buried here.

FOOD:
• Plate lunch - Like most locals, Obama frequents the restaurants of Kapahulu on the outskirts of Waikiki. He’s been known to get a local style plate lunch from the Rainbow Drive-In and the 24-hour Oahu mainstay, Zippy’s.
• Shave Ice – The Obama family likes to cool off with a shave ice, the local version
of a snow cone. Matsumoto Shave Ice on the North Shore is a famous shop and spots like Waiola Shave Ice in Kapahulu are popular with locals.

New York Times: The Hawaiian Plate Lunch
SF Gate: Where Would Obama eat?

OHANA: BARACK OBAMA’S FAMILY
Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961
at the Kapiolani Hospital for Women & Children in the city of Honolulu on
the island of Oahu. Honolulu is home to the majority of Hawaii’s diverse population and it was here at the University of Hawaii that Barack’s father and mother, Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham, met.

Raised in Hawaii until he was six, Obama spent four years in Indonesia
after his mother remarried. Obama returned to Hawaii at age ten to attend the
prestigious Punahou School, where Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, and golf phenom
Michelle Wie also attended. Far from a Presidential hopeful, Obama dreamed of
becoming a pro basketball player, playing on the state championship basketball
team.

Obama lived with his maternal grandfather and grandmother, Stanley and
Madelyn Dunham, a few blocks from school in the neighborhood of Makiki, just ten
minutes away from Waikiki. He spent his youth enjoying picnics at the scenic Puu Ualakaa State Park near his home and Kapiolani Park in Waikiki as well as body surfing at Sandy Beach on the eastern tip of Oahu. He even worked at a Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream on South King Street that still exists today.

Obama continued on to Columbia and Harvard Law but made frequent visits
back to see his ohana, or family, in Hawaii. His mother, who earned a Ph.D. in
anthropology at the University of Hawaii, died of cancer in 1995. More recently,
Obama’s grandmother “Toot,” short for tutu (Hawaiian for grandmother), passed
away in Hawaii just one day before Obama was elected the 44th President of the
United States.

Honolulu Advertiser: Barack Obama: The Making of a Presidential Candidate

ALOHA: THE SPIRIT OF OBAMA

Beyond Hawaii’s natural beauty, the islands are a place of incredible
diversity. Dating back to plantation days, Hawaii has been home to a multicultural mix of people. It is this culture of acceptance and aloha that has had a profound affect on Barack Obama and will continue to influence him in the future.

“What’s best in me, and what’s best in my message, is consistent with
the tradition of Hawaii.” ~ Barack Obama

Time: My Chance Encounter With Obama in Hawaii

JFK Airport is Constipation International

Airport's longest runway closed for repaving

New York's already congested John F. Kennedy International Airport has gotten that much worse with the shutdown of the longest of its four runways for repaving. The Bay Runway, which pilots know as 13R-31L, sticks out into Jamaica Bay. The repaving project started on March 1 and is expected to be out of service for four months. Color me skeptical, but I'd put my money on construction delays. Why should repaving be completed on time when hardly anything else at the airport ever seems to be?

According to reports, one-third of JFK's traffic, including something like half of the departures, are using the three smaller runways. If you've ever flown in or out of JFK, you have seen (and waited in) long conga lines, even under the best of circumstances, and I'm afraid that New York rarely enjoys the best of circumstances. When I fly to Europe, I already try to avoid Chicago's O'Hare, especially in winter. I was beginning to feel more tolerant of JFK since the installation of a monorail connecting terminals, making plane changes a more efficient and pleasant process. But now....

International carriers using JFK must endure the construction delays, but domestic carriers have more flexibility. JetBlue, American and Delta and perhaps others have cut their schedules while the main runway is being repaved. That means those of us who connect to international flights at JFK might now be forced to us LaGuardia, another miserable, delay-plagues airport, or if they do manage a domestic flight to JFK, the fares might well have increased.

Even before 14,572-foot Bay Runway was closed, the US Department of Transportation ranked JFK a pathetic 28th out of 31 major airports in terms of delays, which the Federal Aviation Administration expects to be the Federal Aviation Administration expects delays to be about 50 minutes during peak times and 29 minutes off-peak. Fifty minutes sounds better than an hour, and 29 minutes better than half-an hour, which is bad enough. In order to make the next numbers sound better, airlines have begun padding their schedules by adding expected waiting times into their flight times so that they won't go on record as "delayed" or "late." If you're flying via JFK, bring a good book.

Iberia Adds 10 US Code Shares

Connections via Chicago make travel to Madrid and beyond more seamless

Code shares between domestic and international flag carriers take some of the stress out of travel that requires changing planes to a US gateway. Code shares assure legal connections, especially important when checked baggage is involved. I just flew between Denver and Huatulco, Mexico, on code-shared flights between American and Mexicana, which netted mileage added to my American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flyer account for all flights.

Iberia, the airline of Spain, has just added 10 new US destinations to its network with the extension of its code-sharing arrangements with American Airlines. Iberia passengers can now fly from Albuquerque, Buffalo, Baltimore, Charlotte, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, Richmond, Rochester and San Antonio to Madrid connecting via Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

With these new destinations, Iberia now operates from 48 cities in the United States, with direct service from Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York and Washington D.C., to Madrid, and connecting flights via American Airlines from the rest. From Madrid, Iberia passengers can fly on to 34 airports in Spain, 42 European cities and 10 destinations in Africa and the Middle East.

Looking in on Huatulco

Quick trip to resort towns in southern Mexico yields favorable impression

You know those "36 Hours in...." pieces that are published in the New York Times and in Hemispheres. I experienced "36 Hours in Huatulco" -- about the time I spent in this resort development in the State of Oaxaca. Two days and three nights provided a tantalizing taste, and I'd love to return.

Officially called the Bahias de Huatulco, it is actually a string of resort developments and beaches tucked into a series of nine bays along a 35-mile-long stretch of south-facing coastline between the southern end of the Sierra Madre Range and the Pacific Ocean. Rather than one long beach, there are 36 small ones, which means there is no shoulder-to-shoulder, Cancun-style row of high-rise hotels. In fact, there are no high-rise hotels at all, because regulations prohibit anything higher than five stories, and nothing is built on the ridgetops either. (Below, Tangolunda Bay with Camino Real in foreground and Quinta Real, with its twin Moroccan-style domes, in the background.) Recycling, water purification and aggressive sewage treatment also have contributed to Huatulco's certification in 2006 as a Green Globe Community. In fact, it became the organization's first recognized tourist destination in the Americas.

Fonatour, the Mexican government development and tourism promotion agency, also designed Huatulco as the greenest of the country's five new resort areas and also transferred 30,000 acres to another agency for preservation as a national park. There is not yet any infrastructure, but the dense jungle, coral reefs, bays and beaches within park boundaries are protected. Biologists and wildlife experts have document 413 plant species, 130 species and subspecies of mammals, 291 species or birds, 72 species of reptiles and 15 amphibian species, as well as fish and shellfish that live in the sea. It is an astonishing accomplishment for a country that has had, at best, a checkered environmental and ecological record.

Located between the Coyula and Copalita Rivers that cascade down from the Sierra Madre, Huatulco offers river rafting as well as such more expected activities as sea kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, surfing and golf. In the town of La Cruceita are a shady plaza, a church, small shops, restaurants, bars and small, budget hotels. The waterfront center of Santa Cruz is smaller with a second plaza, more shops and a cruise ship pier accommodating two vessels. The Boulevard Santa Cruz/Boulevard Benito Juarez parallels the coastline and connects Santa Cruz with the zone of larger beach hotels with swimming pools, restaurants, bars and other facilities (one of Las Brisas' several pools, below left; beach in front of Camino Real, right).

West of Huatulco is the small village of Ventanilla with its stunning, undeveloped beach fronting a mangrove-fringed lagoon (below left) and a small, palm-studded island (right) on which a crocodile preserve is situated. A boat ride through the mangroves is a magical experience, with dappled light, sounds of birds and the occasional glimpse of orange of a male iguana.

The beach at Ventanilla is one of several where sea-turtle eggs are removed from the sand to a protected enclosure until they hatch and make their way to the water. Close to the nearby beach community of Port Angel is the Centro Mexicano de la Tortuga, a research and rehabilitation center that studies both sea and land turtles. It is also something of a turtle zoo, where visitors can see many species on land and in tanks (below).

Mexicana Airlines flies Mexico City-Huatulco several times a day year-round. Continental has nonstop service from Houston on a seasonally changing schedule. Hotels range from in-town bargains with rooms for as little as $25 a night to super-luxury resorts with room rates starting at more than $200 nightly. Several properties are all inclusive, meaning that all meals, entertainment (below) and on-site activities are included.

After a 36-hour taste of Huatulco, I look forward to returning for a whole feast.

Denver Sings "Happy Birth-DIA"

Denver International Airport at 15 -- looking back and looking ahead

Sometime at the end of February 1995, I flew out of Stapleton International Airport en route to, I think, Honduras. I returned to the new Denver International Airport, which had opened on February 28 while I was away. If an airport could have had a new-car smell, DIA would have had it. As I look at the original version photo below (which might or might not pop up on your screen in its entirety), I count 16 small masts or antennae atop the main terminal's distinctive Teflon tents -- one for each year and one for good luck.

After much ridicule and a hiccupy debut, DIA has matured into the fifth-busiest airport in the national and ninth-busiest in the world. Thirty thousand airport, airline and government workers and 140,000 passengers a day are under those Teflon tents and on the concourses. Many modifications have been made over the last 15 years: The central feature in the main terminal has been a dancing fountain and various kinds of gardens. The platforms on both sides of the terminal on the baggage-claim level have been widened (originally it was a challenge to wheel a SmartCart or a big piece of luggage around the concrete pillars,) and a roof now covers the platforms, because the original design didn't take into account summer's strong sun and random fall/winter/spring snows.

One thing that hasn't changed but continues to puzzle me one of the exits from the train level to the terminal, which has not been used for 15 years, always has a human security presence. Why on earth didn't they erect a gate? Other changes are obvious: a different mix of transportation entities with booths on the perimeter of the terminal, the post-9/11 addition of unsightly but mandatory security checkpoints complete with snaking lines of passengers cluttering the floor of the grand space and the great emptiness of the ticket counter areas, especially on the west side, since many passengers now print their own boarding passes and also checking as few bags as possible.

On the airside, there are now six runways taking up just a fraction of the airport's 54 square miles of land. That huge tract, annexed by the City and County of Denver for the airport, also boasts an enormous array of solar panels, a bison herd (a safe distance from the runways, of course) and 27 oil and natural gas wells.In contast to airports constructed decades ago and now hampered by congested metropolitan areas, DIA has lots of room under the big Western sky.

Back to the terminal, where increased passenger traffic and security needs not contemplated two decades ago, there's a proposal to move checpoints to the current ticketing areas. That would free up the main terminal space, which would them be restricted to passengers and also be more aesthetic with the TSA's hardware and mazes of passengers heading for the screening stations. There's a debate about whether new, upscale eating and retail in a repurposed main terminal would be a success or a fiasco. There's also a question as to whether an airport hotel that has been on the drawing board, at least conceptually, from the beginning is viable, and whether a lightrail extension to DIA is worth the cost of construction.

The Denver City Council, airport officials and consultants, who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to study the options, are charting DIA's course for the next 15 years and beyond. Stay tuned.

Mexico City Airport Connection Alert

Mexico City Airport - Avoid making connections here if you can. The airport is poorly signed and confusing, and with its vulnerability to fog/smog, flights can be delayed. Continental flies nonstop Houston-Huatulco, but only once or twice a week in the spring/fall shoulder seasons.

Note: For more details on specific connection issues at Mexico City's Benito Juarez Airport, see comments below. I will say that once a traveler has a concept of the layout (one very long terminal area with international gates at one end), it is easier than arriving clueless and depending on poor signage and misleading information. But I still believe that the first time around, it's good to have a little spare time.

Earthquake and Chilean Tourist Destinations

Reflections on Chile; broad-stroke news of current conditions

I created this blog in Santiago, Chile, during the 1996 Society of American Travel Writers convention there. The earliest posts are about the Santiago-Valparaiso area more or less in the center of this long skinny country, Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia in the far south and fascinating Easter Island (Isla de Pascua in Spanish) 2,300 miles out in the Pacific Ocean. Natural disasters (and man-made ones too) are heart-wrenching to begin with, but learning of tragendies in places I have visited adds a special poignancy.

It was with a mixture of sadness and relief that I read the following Chile Turismo summary sent to me by Gina Morgan who handles public relations and marketing for the Remota Lodges in the country.

Desert – The north of Chile was not affected by the quake and has not reported any damage.

Easter Island – Easter Island, which lies 2,300 miles off the cost of mainland Chile, a 5.5 hour flight from Santiago, was not affected by the quake. Initial tsunami warnings have been lifted and all operations are normal.

Santiago and Central Region - Santiago’s airport suffered structural damage to the passenger terminal, however no damage was reported to the runways and the airport is expected to reopen later this week. Electricity and phone lines have been restored in Santiago and the city’s public transportation including its metro is fully operational. Valparaiso and Viña del Mar have also reported damage. The annual Viña del Mar International Music festival which was underway has been suspended.

Lakes and Volcanoes – The northern part of the Lakes and Volcanoes region, around the city of Concepcion and the Bio Bio River, was most affected by the quake. Authorities are still working on assessing the full damage. Basic essential services including water, electricity and telecommunications are gradually being restored. The southern part of the Lakes and Volcanoes region was not affected by the quake. Operations in popular tourist towns including Pucon, Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt are normal.

Patagonia – The far south of the country was not affected by the quake and has not reported any damage.

Chile is a country with a history of seismic activity. The country’s preparedness, including its strict anti-seismic building codes, the rapid emergency response from the government as well as the help from a number of organizations can be credited for managing the situation and help minimize the damage. The country’s tourism infrastructure has, overall, fared well, reporting little damage.

Author Wayne Bernhardson, who has written Moon Guidebooks about Chile and Argentina and therefore has good contacts down there, has posted some more detailed news here and here on his blog, Southern Cone Travel.

When I visited briefly in 2006, Valparaiso, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, still showed evidence of a catastrophic earthquake a century earlier. The quake that struck in August 1906 killed nearly 3,000 people, and many buildings still bore cracks and scars. The fatalities appear to be far fewer, but I cannot imagine how an even more powerful quake might have affected the colorful buildings of this beauitfully located and very historic harbor city. I also wonder about the vineyards and whether the vines will be adequately watered and the wineries whose cellars are stacked with barrels and bottles of wine. I wonder whether the ski lifts at Portillo and Valle Nevado were affected. And of course, I am concerned about the Chileans who lost their homes and their livelihoods, for whom the effect on tourism is of relatively minot concern. The world reached out to Haiti with aid. The casualty toll was higher, CNN was there 24/7 for weeks and the country far more impoverished to begin with. I wonder what the world has in its reserves for Chile.

Give the Chileans a bit of time to take care of basic infrastructure needs and get aire service back to normal, and then put this beautiful country on your to-visit list. It's late summer in the Southern Hemisphere now. Harvest season is coming. And ski season will follow. Donate to relief efforts if you can, plan on visiting -- or at least buy some Chilean produce and order some Chilean wine to help the economy.