Columns

(Third of three parts on The Gambia and the Cape Verde Islands, jump to part 1, part 2, part 3)

Volcanoes, salt and slavery

When I opened the Bradt Travel Guide “Cape Verde Islands” (Globe Pequot Press; www.bradtguides. com), which I bought for an October ’07 trip, I was fascinated with one of the opening comments: “When we commissioned the first edition of this guide in 1997 it seemed an almost impossibly obscure destination.”

Even though 10 years had gone by since that comment was made, and although tourism there had probably grown, I expected that a trip to this...

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 Yvonne Horn

It has always bewildered me, the fascination people have with the Panama Canal. The water goes up, the ship goes through, the water goes down. Because “canal” and “Panama” seem hopelessly connected, a trip to Panama remained on my Z list. . . until I heard of Boquete.

In the cool highlands of Chiriquí province, an hour’s flight from Panama City, Boquete was described in a local paper as a Shangri-la of tumbling streams plus mountains clad in rainforest, abundant in orange groves and coffee plantations, with a picture-postcard town chockablock with flower...