Back home from England

After a long 20 hours of traveling we finally arrived back home in Colorado. We Had a great time in England and really appreciate all the hospitality we were shown, and would like to say a big thank you to everyone for giving us a place to stay while we were there. England is a very pretty country and we want to see more of it. We may be coming back next fall for the NEC show again…I sure hope so, it was a lot of fun! So when we got home it was time to rest up a bit and get over the time difference. It had also been snowing a lot in our absence, and there was snow piling up every where.


Gary had to put on the snowplow bracket on his old Toyota Landcruiser for the coming winter snow season. After some cursing, a couple of broken knuckles and a few hours we were ready to plow out the driveway and road to our house.

We get a lot of snow through the winter…normally I hibernate, but the silly human keeps me awake! We have a lot of fun so I really don't miss it. We play a lot of games outside, go sledding, skiing, snowball fights and king of the hill!

Then when the sun goes down and it gets really cold, we go back inside to get some hot Cocoa and play some video games

I do pretty good at some games, for a bear that is!

We also have more time to update my blog, and since the crazy human has more free time I can get him to do more typing for me. Well that's about all for now, check back soon, the silly human is going to post his touring schedule for the coming season.

Robert Reid Talks about the Future of Travel Guidebooks

Robert Reid is a Lonely Planet writer who publishes an amazing internet guide to Vietnam, and doesn't mince words in his recent interview with WorldHum. He laments the demise of experienced travel guidebook writers for novices who will work for peanuts under the illusion it will lead to fame and riches, and thinks internet travel guides will someday replace traditional published guides, when technology advances and handhelds can display the chief advantage printed guides continue to have over internet sources: maps.

Robert Reid: I used to think the most important thing we guidebook authors did for travelers was hotel reviews. People like to have some sense of security that the $5 or $300 place they’re staying in won’t be a brothel or rat-infested dump. But the Internet has already completely changed this. Previously if I had a new budget hotel in a town center, or a mid-ranger with pool, travelers would have to wait nine or 12 months from the time I “discovered” it until it appeared in a guide.

Now Internet booking sites often get them immediately. When I went to China a couple years ago, I stayed at a brand new hostel in Beijing that the Trans-Siberian author had just found, but that hadn’t yet appeared in the guide. It was already full! I was amazed at how nearly all the people there had found it online, and were booking their full China trip’s accommodations online.

At a Lonely Planet workshop a couple years ago, I asked a high-up at LP who they saw as their biggest competitor, and they immediately answered “Google.” I was impressed. So publishers like LP definitely see the Internet as a growing competitor, and have for a while. When the BBC bought LP a couple months ago, one of the key things they cited for future development was online content.

Another thing is that many sites with travel content online don’t have maps. And maps are HUGE. I sometimes think seasoned travelers need only a map, with barebones details of few places to stay, and barebones details of what to see and where to eat. If they trust the author—and that’s a big if, of course—not as much needs to be said as some people think. This, again, is for seasoned travelers only.

The only other thing I fear regarding online guidebooks is if they follow the “I stayed here and it was great” TripAdvisor or Amazon.com model. Those are useful, no doubt, but they’re only based on isolated experiences. If publishers turn things over at some point to reader-generated content, you won’t have the authoritative overviews that guidebook writers can offer, and it’ll end up with deeper beaten tracks, with more travelers doing the same thing.

But I do want to say David Stanley is right, it’s sad and reckless if an old author who did good work on several editions is cut for a new author. In my opinion, in-house editors don’t completely understand what goes into researching these guides—I was an editor for years, and only figured it out once I started writing full time. The best experience for writing a guidebook to X is not living in X but actually having written a guidebook to X. Sometimes publishers forget that a bit.

Sometimes I think we’re living a doomed profession, and that we’ll look back on the wacky wild period from the 1970s to the 2000s when scores of notebook-toting travelers went and sought out the mysteries of places that are no longer mysterious. People will look back on the era like reading Graham Greene books about far-flung places at wilder times.

Will guidebooks in book form die? Probably so. But to be honest, I think there will always be room for the perspective of the “guidebook author,” at least online. Once hand-held devices get even more sophisticated, so that maps and reviews are more easily referred to—or we old folks die out and the younger generations who are not so soft on books take over—things will probably go online completely.

But I sometimes think people like holding those books. So far, though, the TripAdvisor-type sites are excellent resources, but don’t account for perspective. One person goes to Y hotel and says “it’s super!” But they don’t realize A, B, C are similar and $40 less. Who goes to all 15 museums in Bucharest but a guidebook author? So only they can tell you that something like the Romanian National Museum of the Peasant is about the best museum in the world?

WorldHum Interview with Robert Reid

How to be a Travel Writer in Five Easy Pieces

Robert Haru Fisher is a New York based travel writer and author of the guidebook pictured above, available at Amazon at London Off-Season And On : A Guide To Special Pleasures, Better Rater And Shorter Lines. He also wrote the Crown Insiders Guide to Japan, which is from his own publishing company. Fisher also contributes to the Frommer website and has, over the last few months, published a series of "so you wanna be a travel writer" articles with enough positive spin to keep the dreamers happy, and enough reality to discourage all but the most brave. It comes in five parts.

I haven't mentioned money yet, so will say only that you should have resources of your own, or a spouse/partner with a regular job, so someone can pay the bills. The travel writers who have good incomes are either on the staff of some publication and drawing a salary, or have honed the art of freelancing well, usually after many years of hard practice. Newspapers pay chicken feed (e.g. $75 for a column of print), magazines maybe $1 a word at best for writers without a famous following, websites little, and books smallish advances (if any, maybe $5,000) or flat fees not much more than that for a small book.

Part One

Part Two is a short history of travel writing, with a well deserved plug for Arthur Frommer, a man I have great admiration for and was once interviewed by on The Travel Channel.

"You have a dream job!" Half the people I meet for the first time tell me that, and I agree. It's heaven for me because I am intensely curious, always wanting to know what's around the next corner. When you travel, there's always a new next corner, a new surprise. It's no way to get rich, and it can be hell on family and other relationships because you seem never to be home, from their point of view, anyhow. You can't be a new parent, for instance, or taking care of an ailing family member. The most prolific travel writers are away at least a quarter of the time, I believe, sometimes half the time.

Part Two

Part Three tries to define what is travel writing.

Anyone can be a travel writer. You can write your blog, your memoir, your diary of a trip, and the only difference between you and, say, Pico Iyer, is that he writes more beautifully than almost anyone, and he may publish in Harper's and The New York Times while you are just broadcasting your thoughts on your own website, perhaps.

Part Three

Fisher in Part Four espouses the advantages of having a travel blog, and claims he is not trying to sell anything to anyone these days, including his travel writing seminars in Key West as advertised at the bottom of each of these posts.

(Full disclosure here: I don't have a site or a blog myself, as I am not trying to sell anything to anybody these days.)

If you are freelancing, you should also be working on a book, as having a book under your belt makes you an expert, ipso facto.

Part Four

Fisher in Part Five finishes with his analysis of the history of travel writing to reveal a few facts about the income side of the average travel writer. Finally.

"Get paid to travel" reads one headline. "How to Make a Six-Figure Income Traveling the World" is another. In the last few years, several websites have popped up urging you to learn how to become rich while writing about travel. For fees of several hundred dollars, they promise to teach you how to lead the good life.

It's a life I don't recognize as being anywhere near the reality of those led by many friends of mine who are freelance travel writers. To me, the freelancer is a knight errant, the leaderless samurai, a solo gun-slinger, and my hero much of the time.

My first advice to aspiring freelance writers is to marry rich, or otherwise obtain a partner who has, at least, a steady income. Markets are hard to break into, payment is often laughably cheap. One young writer for a major series of guidebooks approached me on a press trip a few years ago and asked me if I had worked for the series and what they paid. I mentioned some figures, and he said, "Good, I'm working for nothing right now, but they told me if I did a good job, they would pay me next time." The figures I mentioned then were a range from $75 for updating a small chapter of a book through a few thousand to revise the entire book up to about $15,000 for the original writing of a new, fairly small title (under 300 pages of print).

Your writing in a newspaper can pay as little as $75, in a magazine $250, though there are higher and lower figures, depending on the publication. When you are successful, you can command a figure of $1 a word or even higher, however. Traditional print outlets (general purpose newspapers) are down, but niche print publications (birding, ballooning, kayaking, etc.) are up. The Internet is fraught with possibilities, very few of them paying much, if anything, though. You may have to self-publish, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Moreover, one site has its sample author writing "In fact, my own editor is crying out for correspondents to report on destinations throughout the world ... and she's not the only editor seeking fresh talent. To be honest, I have to turn work down -- there simply aren't' enough hours in the day to take up all the writing commissions I'm offered." Not bloody likely, as many of my freelancer friends would say.

Part Five

Cusco Dining – The Top Five Eateries in the Ancient Inca Capital

Well – I thought I’d follow up my last Lima Restaurant entry with a write up about my favourite Cusco Restaurants. Cusco, the capital of the ancient Inca Empire is a Mecca for any tourist traveling to Latin America. The old citadel – surrounded by numerous ruins that stand testament to the ingenuity and everlasting legacy of the Inca – has a number of very fine restaurants on offer. From traditional Andean cuisine to modern Spanish culinary delights, there is a never ending amount of cuisine available for the travelers looking for a good meal in the city. So here they are – my Desert-Island All Time Top Five Cusco eateries in no particular order (except perhaps for the first which is my favourite):

Cicciolina’s
Cicciolina’s is Cusco best known and highest rated restaurant. Both the food and service are excellent. With great views over the crisscrossing street so of Cusco, the restaurant has some fantastic decoration that creates a warm and welcoming ambiance. The menu is made up of mainly Mediterranean dishes, many made with traditional ingredients. The salads are simply delicious and the homemade pastas are superb.

Tikka
A small bistro nestled in a corner of San Blas; it is located directly next door to Boutique Hotel Casa San Blas, a warm dining room atmosphere. The cuisine you’ll find at Tika is unlike anything you have ever tasted, combining Thai and Vietnamese flavors and cooking techniques with traditional Peruvian ingredients. Prepare to be pleasantly surprised with new flavors and combinations. Chill out ambiance music gives a nice rest from the traditional panpipes so commonly hard all over the city.

Jack’s Cafe
Jack’s Café is a great place for vegetarians, as they order huge salads, and a wide variety of cooked dishes made only with vegetables. The restaurant has a special hot chocolate which is very worthwhile. They have a neat ginger tea, which has an interesting taste, and it’s very good to ward off any colds. The menu is extensive—with a variety of sandwiches, salads, soups, and main dishes. The restaurant uses homemade bread to make their sandwiches and this is especially delicious!

Baco
Baco has the best wine selection in town. The restaurant provides a warm, relaxed atmosphere, entirely decorated in wood and iron, where you can enjoy finger foods like their grilled seafood platter, gourmet pizzas or the finest Argentinean beef in red wine and mushroom sauce, all cooked with the restaurant’s own particular fusion style. Also available is a series of grilled veggies platter. Open Monday to Saturday from 6pm to 11pm

Incanto
This restaurant opened in June 2006 and was built within an old Inca palace, magnificently located only a few meters away from the main square. Contemporary and minimalist, Incanto offers over 80 dishes with an Italian influence and often involving the grill, creatively infused with typical Peruvian ingredients. Their aji de gallina ravioli and smoked trout fetuccini are great examples of their accomplishments in fusion cuisine. Also try their entrees and grilled dishes like the Alpaca loin. The glass-encased kitchen and live harp music give Incanto a unique, classic touch among Cusco’s finest restaurants. Open Monday to Sunday from 10.30am to 11pm .

I hope this information helps any travelers heading to Cusco who'd be looking to eat well. As always - please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about traveling in the area.

Bart

www.cat-travel.com

The Last couple of days…

Our last few days in England…

For our last few days in England we depart from London and make our way out East to Gillingham to see some more friends. After saying goodbye and thank you to our hosts Norm & Carol we get on a train and make our way to Gillingham. We rode for about an hour or so on the train looking at the nice scenery and just relaxing. When we arrive we give a call to our friend, who goes by the name "H" and he comes out to thew train station to give us a ride. We were soon at "H" and Kim's lovely house for an evening of good conversation and a few beers.

While we were there I had to go out to the garage to see both Kim's custom trike, and H's beautiful classic Triumph bikes. H is what we would call a "True Biker", he loves to ride AND do all his own work on his bike himself! No paying someone else to fix or improve his or Kim's bikes, he does all the work himself (and Gary says he's really good at it).

Of course I had to get my loony human to get a picture of me and Kim on her beautiful trike! One thing that makes her trike so special is it's a rolling tribute to her late daughter Lana.

Kim and H went to great trouble and expense to have a local art instructor do a beautiful paint job on her trike, putting Lana's image on the tank, along with Kim and H's too.

Here's what H looks like with his beard!


The pictures here don't do it any justice here, the artist who did this is first rate! In person it looks almost three-dimensional, one of the best paint jobs Gary said he's ever seen!

Here's Kim on the other side of the tank, a very good likeness! We looked at the bikes for a while, and then it was back into the house for a couple more beers while we waited for a couple more friends to come over from the Isle of Sheppy for dinner, Paul, Trish and my stuffed buddy, Kermit.

Here they are at the end of their Route 66 tour in 2006, when they first met Gary. My friend Kermit was trying to keep these two under control for the whole tour, but to no avail! They were on an extended holiday around the world, and Route 66 was just one of the many along the way.
It wasn't long before they found us and we were off to dinner at a nice local restaurant. H and Kim didn't know Paul and Trish before this evening, but Gary was sure they would all get along famously, which they did! Plus having the shared experience of riding down Route 66 helped too.

Here we are after a wonderful dinner and a few (hic!) drinks! A great evening all-round!

Since it was around Christmas I decided to bring a present for my froggy-friend Kermit. When he went down Route 66 he didn't have any proper riding gear (he rode in the top-box of the bike mostly), so I decided to bring him a Leather biker Jacket and a full set of Route 66 Badges. I figured that since he made it all the way down the road with these two nutters he should be rewarded for getting them through it alive! After dinner it was back to H and Kim's for the night for a good sleep. The next day we spent going over good times on the tour and just generally talking about riding before it was time for us to head off to the train station. We said thanks and goodbye to our good friends and got on the train to make our way back North.
We went back through London and changed trains to our next stop, Northampton. We had several friends in the area too that we wanted to see.
We got off the train in Northampton, and were met by our buddy from another tour, Steve.
It was late when we got into town and then drove to Steve's favorite Indian restaurant for dinner. So after a curry and a beer (or three) it was time for bed!
The next day Steve and Gary slept in and then had a good time lounging about the house chatting about good times on the road, truck (lorry) driving (something both Gary and Steve have in common), girls and more until we got hungry and decided to find a nice pub to have lunch at. We drove around the lovely countryside going from Pub to Pub until we found a very nice one having an early Christmas roast dinner. After a good meal it was back to Steve's place for some more conversation, and to watch some videos of Adrian Edmondson and Rick Mayall in "Bottom Live", very funny stuff. After the videos it was about time to go to the pub to meet some more friends for a few pints and a few laughs. So it was back in the car and we drove to a local "Workingman's Pub" to meet Robert (Bob) and John. They had some very good beer at this place, and Gary was very impressed by the quality, something which we never get at home! I gave it a try and was so impressed I tried to start drinking it from the tap, but before I could, my jacket got caught on the handle and I got stuck!

Here I am stuck on the tap trying to get some of this wonderful stuff for myself! I was just about to get unstuck until the landlords saw me and pried me off the tap handle.
They gave Gary a stern warning about me not getting any more silly ideas, and to keep me under control. It was a hard thing to do though, this bear doesn't get good beer very often so it was difficult to keep me (and Gary too…) away from it for long.

They were very nice about it though, and promised me that if I behaved myself they would give me a pint! That was all I needed to hear, so I was a good bear the rest of the night! So we had a good time chatting about good times and riding motorcycles, while enjoying the beer, eating pork scratchings and crisps and meeting more people.

After a couple of hours of behaving myself the barkeep was true to his word and gave me a pint all to myself, no more sharing with my loony human. Gary was enjoying the beer a little too much, and was quite silly by this time! So I had to finish the pint all by myself, that's a lot of beer for this little Bear! We had a great time until closing time and then it was back to Steve's place to sleep off all that good beer!

The humans sat around a bit watching more silly videos and chatting before bed, which gave me a chance to sneak off to the kitchen to find something more to drink! That's when I discovered Strongbow cider in the fridge. I never had it until now, and now I'm hooked! Who knew that you could get something so good from fruit? So while the humans were distracted watching the tele I finished off a whole can by myself (b…u…r…p)! I really don't remember much after that, but I must have had a good time!

This is where I woke up the next morning, apparently a couple of Steve's roommates saw I was a bit drunk and were nice enough to take care of me the previous evening. Today also was the day we had to go back to Birmingham to catch our flight back home. Steve had the day off and was nice enough to give us a lift to the airport in time to make our flight! Thanks Steve, we couldn't have done it without you! So after a drive it was time to say Thank you and goodbye to Steve and go get on the airplane. Our trip to England was over, but we had a great time and who knows…maybe we'll be back next year for the show again! Both Gary and myself were feeling a bit delicate after last night, so it was time to get on the plane, have a few Aspirin and go back to sleep for the nine hour flight back home.
Both Gary and myself would like to say a big "THANK YOU" to everyone in jolly ol' England for a great time and their extremely generous hospitality…we really had a brilliant time!
Cheers!