Columns

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 376th issue of your monthly overseas travel magazine.

• In 2006, the accident rate of airlines in Russia and the other countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was 13 times the worldwide average. At 8.6 accidents per million flights, it was even twice that of African countries. Western-built jets averaged 0.65 accidents per million flights. This was reported by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in April.

• The Indonesian government ran a safety audit of its airlines after a plane crashed in January...

by Julie Skurdenis

I’m not sure how surprised the monks who lived here 400 years ago would be to hear the soft sounds of bossa nova echoing in the cloisters where they once lived and prayed. No doubt, chanting and church music would have been more familiar to them, but I suspect that bossa nova would not have shocked them. After all, I was in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, where music is an integral part of everyday life. It was probably the same in 1586 when the first Carmelite friars arrived in Salvador 86 years after Brazil was discovered by the Portuguese.

Convento do Carmo...

by Julie Skurdenis

Its first inhabitants called it “Te Pito o Te Henua,” or “The Navel of the World.” Nowadays we call it Rapa Nui, Isla de Pascua or Easter Island. It’s one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth.

Situated in the Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is almost exactly equidistant from South America and Tahiti, each about 2,300 miles away. Although now part of Chile, Easter Island was most probably settled by Polynesians who migrated from the Marquesas sometime in the fourth or fifth centuries A.D. On this small island, they created a society in which...