October 2014

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Visitors to the Cebu Zoo (Woolbright Dr., Beverly Hills, Cebu City, Cebu 6000, Philippines; phone +63 32 414 7103) can each experience a massage from giant pythons. 

For only the price of admission — PHP25 per adult or PHP10 per child (near 60¢/23¢) — a brave volunteer can lie under four pythons, with a combined weight of 550 pounds, and let their writhing bodies rub the stress away. 

The annual Hogmanay Festival takes place in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dec. 30-Jan. 1. It is preceded by the Hogmanay Carnival, Dec. 27-Jan. 5, with rides on the 137-foot-tall Edinburgh Wheel and the nearly 200-foot-tall spinning Star Flyer in St. Andrew’s Square.

The festival begins with a torchlight procession through the city center led by Vikings from Shetland’s Up Helly Aa Festival. Accompanied by pipes and drums, visitors can join in, having reserved a torch for £10 (near $16.50) plus a £1 booking fee.

My Airport Guide, a new service available at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport (FRA), offers personal assistants to help departing and arriving travelers.

The “Welcome Service,” costing €30 (near $40) for two people, includes, for departing passengers, being met at a prearranged point in the airport, helped with bags and escorted to the check-in counter… or, for arriving passengers, welcome at baggage claim, help with baggage and escort to a prearranged location at the airport.

The original gravesite of English king Richard III (1452-1485) — discovered under a city parking lot on the former grounds of Greyfriars Church in Leicester, England, in 2012 — is now home to the Richard III Visitor Centre (4A St. Martin’s, Leicester, LE1 5DB, U.K.; phone +44 0300 300 0900, www.kriii.com).

The center includes exhibits on its excavation and the methods of proving the grave was that of the infamous king. A replica of his skeleton shows battle wounds.

In Moscow, Russia, until now, visitors could enter and exit the Kremlin only through the Kutafya Tower gate. On Aug. 4, for the first time since the time of the czars, the Spasskaya Tower gate was opened for visitors, allowing people to move directly from the Kremlin to Red Square.

As ITN went to press, the State Department had travel warnings on 37 destinations: Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, El Salvador, Eritrea, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Israel/West Bank/Gaza, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Republic of South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and Yemen.

Torrential rains in Japan caused landslides in Hiroshima Prefecture on Aug. 20, killing at least 70 people, including a rescue worker who had saved five people before the hill collapsed again. As of press time, 18 people were still missing.

The area received a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours. Continued rain and the risk of more landslides led to nearly 100,000 people being evacuated from the area.

(Part 3 of 3)

The final portion of my June 2014 journey to Central America began with a 6-hour transfer by bus from Copán, Honduras, to Guatemala City, Guatemala, followed by a connecting minibus transfer to the beautiful and highly popular colonial city of Antigua.