Blogsherpa | Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel

Caving at Rio Secreto – One of the Most Exciting Adventures of My Life

Published October 7, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

The first time I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon I couldn’t stop thinking what it must have been like for the very first person who saw it. I imagined an American Indian emerging from the dense pine forest that surrounds the canyon and stopping in his tracks, overwhelmed by the vista that spread before him. His first reaction must have been astonishment. Once recovered from the shock, his second thought must have been about how he would get across.

That same scenario plays out in my mind each time I see another geological wonder of the world. What did indigenous Africans think when they first encountered the roar of Victoria Falls in present-day Zimbabwe? How did Australian Aborigines explain Uluru, a behemoth red rock protruding from a flat, featureless plain in the center of the Australian outback? So strong are these images and questions that I’ve often joked that I must have lived a previous life as an explorer. I’ve always yearned to feel the sense of wonderment that accompanies the discovery of a place so beautiful and spiritual that it takes the breath away. Last month my wish was granted.

One of many exquisite caverns we swam and walked through at Rio Secreto underground river

During my recent press trip to Iberostar Resorts in Mexico’s Riviera Maya, the resort arranged for our small group of travel bloggers to tour Rio Secreto, an underground river and cave complex deep beneath the surface of the Yucatan Peninsula. Following an extensive orientation and briefing to ensure we understood how important it was not to touch any surface within the cave, we descended through a cenote, a sinkhole whose roof had collapsed, revealing the maze of underground passages and caverns below the surface. Eons ago, the entire Yucatan was covered by a shallow sea. Year after year, sea creatures died and fell to the sea floor. Slowly, pressure and heat condensed these calcium sediments into a thick layer of limestone. As colliding plates of the earth’s mantle gradually forced the limestone plateau up the seas receded, exposing the limestone to weather and the elements. Over time, acidic rains percolated through the limestone, dissolving the sediments until they resembled one giant chunk of Swiss cheese. It was into this Swiss cheese, rife with tunnels, passages, stalactites, stalagmites, and an underground river, that we descended.

Our little group of travel bloggers, deep underground at Rio Secreto underground river

At first we walked on uneven dry ground, trying our best to keep our balance so as not to touch any of the formations, which stop growing the moment they are contaminated by oil from a human touch. At times we inched along in single file, each of us holding onto the life vest of the person in front of us. About half-way through, our path was blocked by water; we had no choice but to swim the rest of the distance. I crept into the chilly water, suddenly grateful for the cumbersome wetsuit that had me sweating just moments before. Soon, the water was so deep I couldn’t touch bottom. Continue reading →

Posted in Mexico travel |

Tagged blogsherpa, caves, cultural travel, culture, Mexico, nature, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Rio Secreto, Travel, underground river, yucatan peninsula |

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Living the Good Life on Mexico’s Riviera Maya

Published October 4, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

Faithful readers of Hole In The Donut Cultural Travel know that I am no fan of all-inclusive resorts, so when Iberostar Resorts invited me to be part of a press trip to Mexico’s Riviera Maya, I thought long and hard before accepting. My previous experiences with all-inclusives have left a bad taste in my mouth – literally. The food is generally horrible and little accommodation is made for vegetarians. Even worse, every all-inclusive property I’ve stayed at discouraged guests from leaving the property; in some cases I was even told that it is too dangerous to leave the grounds and that the hotel cannot ensure my safety if I do. This is anathema for a travel writer who specializes in culture. I want to interact with locals, eat what they eat, listen to their music, experience daily life for indigenous people, and I can’t do that if I’m barricaded behind the walls of an exclusive resort. However, I love Mexico and most especially the Yucatan. So after due consideration (about five seconds) I accepted the gracious invitation from Iberostar, hoping for the best.

View of beach from Grand Hotel Paraiso

By the end of my five day stay at Iberostar Paraíso Maya and Iberostar Grand Hotel Paraíso, my opinion had entirely changed. I could tell you about the fabulous buffets, filled with mouth-watering vegetarian selections or the spa where I spent an entire afternoon getting a massage and soaking in the Roman baths and salt water pool. I could wax lyrical about the stunning beach, with its powder-fine, white sand beach and other-worldly turquoise water. But let me just say that it’s now obvious to me that I just never chose the right all-inclusive resort. And I think this video postcard, kindly produced for me by Iberostar, says it better than any words:

Can’t view the above YouTube video postcard from Iberostar Resorts in Mexico? Click here.

Iberostar Resorts may be different because of their roots, which go all the way back to a simple shoemaker in Spain who worked hard and saved enough money to buy a travel agency in 1930. One travel agency became two, then three; then more. By 1986, the family decided bring hotels into the mix and the Iberostar brand was launched. Today there are 104 Iberostar Resorts in 16 countries in the Caribbean, South America, Europe and North Africa, all of which are top-notch, all-inclusive properties. In addition to including accommodations, cuisine, and amenities, the Iberostar all-inclusive experience includes tips and taxes, alcoholic beverages, non-motorized water sports, entertainment, and resort activities.

Can’t view the above slide show of Iberostar Resorts at Playa Paraiso, on Mexico’s Riviera Maya? Click here.

On the Riviera Maya, Iberostar’s resort is actually five different properties standing side-by-side on a glorious strip of beach. All guests have use of facilities in four of the properties: Iberostar Paraíso Lindo, Iberostar Paraíso Maya, Iberostar Paraíso Beach, and Iberostar Paraíso del Mar. The fifth property is the Grand Hotel Paraíso, one of Iberostar’s new category of luxury, adults-only resorts and hotels, based on a concept of upscale vacationing that is stylish and relaxed. Guests staying at the Grand Hotel have use of all five properties. Since I was staying at both the Paraíso Maya and the Grand Hotel, I was given a special plastic wristband that gave me full privileges. I didn’t truly grasp the power of my magic wristband, however, until the day I decided to spend the afternoon at the Grand Hotel’s exquisite pool. I swam up to the pool bar, clambered onto a submerged stool, and ordered a virgin Pina Colada, expecting to be asked for my room number. The bartender plunked the tall icy concoction in front of me and wandered away. I suddenly understood the concept of all-inclusive. For the next few hours I ordered every kind of virgin frozen drink I could think of. I was drunk with power. Continue reading →

Posted in Mexico travel |

Tagged all inclusive resorts, blogsherpa, cultural travel, culture, Grand Hotel Paraiso, Iberostar, Mexico, Paraiso Lindo, Paraiso Maya, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, riviera maya, Travel, yucatan peninsula |

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Niagara Falls on $26 a Day

Published October 2, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

I spend most of each year overseas in developing countries where the cost of living is a fraction what it is in the United States. Each return to the States requires a period of adjustment. This time, I almost choked when I had to pay $75 a night for a hotel room in Minneapolis. That same amount would buy me eight days of lodging in Nepal or Mexico. I’m used to spending about $5 a day for food, so $20 dinners send me into shock. It didn’t help that this trip took me to Washington, DC to cover the Dalai Lama at the Kalachakra for World Peace, one of the most expensive travel destinations in the country.

By the time I reached Niagara Falls my wallet was thin and I went on the search for budget accommodations. Overseas I stay in guest houses or hostels, where I usually opt for four or eight-bed dorms. I love the camaraderie in the dorms, which are filled with people of all ages and income levels, from every corner of the world. In the U.S., hostels are relatively rare because our travel industry developed around motels to serve a society that has a love affair with automobiles. Fortunately, this is starting to change; hostels are popping up in larger cities and popular tourist destinations all over the country.

In Niagara Falls I discovered the brand new Red Lounge Hostel, a wonderful three-floor petit-hotel located only five minutes walking distance from Niagara Falls State Park with free off-street parking. Their four and eight-bed dorms were sparkling clean and each had an en-suite shared bathroom and lockers to hold my valuables. A common area on the first floor had a large flat-screen TV and their spacious shared kitchen had two refrigerators to store guest food. Bliss! I found a grocery store and stocked up on breakfast food, happy to save the cost of at least one meal a day.

Red Lounge Hostel

Red Lounge Hostel dorm room

Red Lounge Hostel common/breakfast room

After settling in I set off on foot to see the U.S. side of Niagara Falls. I had visited the falls many years ago as a child on a family vacation and had vague memories of spray from the falls pummeling my yellow rubber raincoat as the Maid of the Mist cruised into the torrent of water thundering over Horseshoe Falls. But I really didn’t know what to expect. Having seen the spectacular Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, I wondered if Niagara would seem anti-climactic. I walked along the high cliffs bordering the Niagara River chasm and into Niagara State Park, the oldest in the nation. Across the river, high-rise hotels, an enormous Ferris wheel, casinos and all manner of kitschy development designed to lure the tourist dominated the skyline, but on the U.S. side the falls had been protected from such crass commercialism by the State Park.

American Falls, viewed from the Canadian side of the Niagara River

Continue reading →

Posted in Northeast US travel |

Tagged American Falls, blogsherpa, Bridalveil Falls, Canada, Cave of the Winds, cultural travel, culture, Horseshoe Falls, Maid of the Mist, New York, new york state, Niagara Falls, NY, ontario, Travel, USA, waterfalls |

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Living Close to the Land in the Adirondack Mountains

Published September 30, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Adirondack Park, NY

After two weeks in the Adirondacks of upstate New York I began to learn more about the culture of the area. Though the Adirondack Mountains are ancient, the human history within them is relatively young. It is unusual to meet second generation residents and third generation families are a rarity, so it was a privilege to meet Judy Damkoehler, a descendant of the men who built the Irondequoit Inn. “My great-grandfather and great-uncle Herbert first saw the Adirondacks in 1877. To celebrate Bert’s graduation from high school in New Jersey, they decided to walk to Montreal to visit my great-great-grandmother. Bert went on to college and married, but he never forgot this area.” When Bert finally convinced his buddies to visit the area they were so smitten that they immediately began buying up land. The present-day Lodge and Annex of Irondequoit Inn – originally old farmhouses in the village of Piseco Lake – were dragged up to the site on rollers by a team of oxen. Soon, the partners were welcoming guests and selling shares in the property. One hundred and twenty years later, many shares are still owned by descendants of the original investors.

Judy Damkoehlar, a descendant of the developers of Irondequoit Inn, began coming to the Inn in 1930

Damkoehler first came to the Inn in 1930 at the age of three. Piseco was an unincorporated rough and tumble lumbering town, full of bars and raucous men. “There was no electricity in those days and we ate fried sneaker soles for dinner – probably illegal venison,” she grinned. “By the time I was 10 or 11 I was allowed take the rowboat out on the lake alone.” During the Depression years she worked at the Inn. “We called ourselves ‘slaves’ and lived in the ‘slaves quarters’ (the annex). We waited tables, washed dishes, cleaned rooms…and met boys.” Damkoehler has traveled to South America, Iceland and Europe but her favorite place in the world is still Piseco Lake. “It gets in your blood,” she insists, adding that the next generation – her cousins – are now coming to the Inn every summer.

Can’t view the above YouTube video of the paddle making workshop at Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake? Click here.

Everywhere I went in the Adirondack Mountains I met people living close to the land. At the Adirondack Museum Caleb Davis was sponsoring a paddle-making workshop. Caleb made his first paddle by hand at the age of 11 and has run a paddle-making business each summer for the past 22 years. While it’s great fun, paddle making is also hard work; participants on the day I visited had sore arms and aching shoulders from working with wood planes and files. So why do they do it? “Making something themselves – I think that’s the thing people are missing more and more nowadays. It’s about being connected; working with your hands, your eyes…feeling things,” says Caleb. Certainly, that was motivation for Brian and Leia Johnson. “We’ve just gotten into paddling and we thought it would be kind of cool to have our own paddles. It’s a sense of pride to be able to say, ‘This is the one I made and I’m going to use it.’”

Can’t view the above YouTube video of the blacksmith shop at Great Camp Sagamore in the Adirondacks? Click here.

At Great Camp Sagamore, I found artisan David Woodward in the original blacksmith shop that served the Vanderbilt family back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. In his long leather apron and protective ear muffs, he stoked the furnace to a temperature of 3,000 degrees, pulled a red-hot metal wedge out of the fire, and pounded it with a ball peen hammer to demonstrate the rustic ornamental ironwork that the rich owners of the camps coveted. Woodward, who attended the Brotman Forge Blacksmith School in Vermont, has turned his fascination with the art of blacksmithing into a successful career. When he’s not demonstrating at Sagamore, he is in his studio, Train Brook Forge, where he creates intricately detailed metal implements ranging from fireplace screens to cooking utensils.

Back at Irondequoit Inn for dinner, I was mulling over the unique ways in which Adirondackers had carved out existences in this challenging corner of the world when I turned over the Inn’s dinner menu and read the following: Continue reading →

Posted in Northeast US travel |

Tagged Adirondack Park, blacksmith, blogsherpa, cultural travel, culture, farms, Great Camp Sagamore, Irondequoit Inn, museums, New York, new york state, NY, paddle making, the adirondacks, Travel, USA |

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Diamonds and Rubies, Oh My!

Published September 28, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

This entry is part 7 of 7 in the series Adirondack Park, NY

Nearly twenty years ago, I met another rockhound who traded crystals with me. I was living in Arizona at the time, so I gave him copper-bearing specimens like azurite, malachite, and turquoise; in turn he presented me with Herkimer Diamonds from upstate New York. Tucked into hollow cavities in the dense gray rock were tiny, perfectly clear quartz crystals with points at both ends – a condition known as double-termination. It was love at first sight. I promised myself that someday I would go to Herkimer and dig some out of the ground with my own two hands.

The first to know about the crystals may have been indigenous Mohawk Indians, who collected them from stream sediments and became known as ”People of the Crystals.” Early settlers also turned the crystals up in plowed fields, but their discovery is credited to workmen who were cutting into dolomite limestone near the town of Herkimer, New York. Inside the dense dolostone they found small solution cavities called vugs and larger pockets that measured up to several feet in diameter. Floating within the cavities were quartz crystals so pure they gained the nickname Herkimer Diamonds.

Ace of Diamonds Mine in Middleville, NY

As luck would have it, my visit to Adirondack Park put me within a few miles of of the precious crystals. I Googled Herkimer Diamonds and found two commercial mines on New York State Route 28 in Middleville, New York, the Ace of Diamonds Mine and Herkimer Diamond Mine, both of which allow collectors to prospect for a nominal fee. After talking to a few other collectors in the area, I chose the Ace of Diamonds mine because they regularly cut into the dolomite with endloaders, excavators and bulldozers and deposit the rock in giant heaps of stones ripe for the picking.

Some look for specimens atop huge pilkes of jumbled rock torn from surrounding cliffs

I paid my $9.50 day fee, rented a geologists hammer, grabbed a pair of safety goggles and set off on foot to tour the site. Some rockhounds were sorting through jagged stones at the top of rock piles, while others hammered metal wedges into cracks in the stone ledge surrounding the site, hoping to expose large pockets where hundreds of crystals await discovery. I squatted down in the no-man’s land between the ledge and piles and began turning over rocks, looking for ones that had evidence of cavities. Within minutes I had collected three medium size boulders and began banging away with my geologists hammer. A few hours later I had amassed a tidy pile of rocks with pure quartz crystals sparkling from hollow pockets in the matrix. Oblivious to the sweat rolling down my forehead into my eyes and shoulders that ached from swinging the hammer, I carried the best specimens to the car and lovingly packed my booty away.

My pile of specimens at the Ace of Diamonds Mine

Herkimer Diamonds exposed within the limestone matrix

The next day I flexed my hands and winced in pain, but not even blisters that had raised overnight could deter me from another day of rockhounding. This time I headed for Barton Garnet Mine, located in the south central part of Adirondack Park. Continue reading →

Posted in Northeast US travel |

Tagged ace of Diamonds mine, Adirondack Park, Barton Garnet mine, blogsherpa, cultural travel, culture, garnets, herkimer diamonds, New York, new york state, NY, rockhounding, the adirondacks |

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An Oasis of Serenity in Adirondack Park

Published September 26, 2011 | By Barbara Weibel

This entry is part 5 of 7 in the series Adirondack Park, NY

A cocoon of ethereal fog enveloped me as I walked to the end of the dock on Piseco Lake. The hush of dawn was interrupted by the gentle splish-splash of a solitary man walking languidly through calf-high water, far out into the lake. In the distance a white wolf-dog stood motionless in water up to his belly, staring intently at something on the shore. Beyond man and dog, all was swallowed up by the white curtain, beyond which echoed the lonely whoop and chuckle of an invisible loon, on the hunt for a mate.

Can’t view the above YouTube video about Piseco Lake and Irondequoit Inn? Click here.

I turned toward shore and let my gaze wander up the hillside, where even the Irondequoit Inn was obscured by the fog. Though my arrival at this rustic old inn had been unplanned, it had been no mistake. My press trip in Adirondack Park had drawn to a close the previous week but my inner voice told me I wasn’t yet done with the Adirondacks. Several years earlier I had visited Lake George during a leaf-peeping tour of the northeast and had written about the area with glowing words that rivaled the color of the fall foliage.

Relaxing on the porch at Irondequoit Inn

Irondequoit Inn in Adirondack Park near Speculator, NY

Dock on Piseco Lake at Irondequoit Inn

After reading my article, friends wrote to tell me about the Irondequoit Inn, their favorite place in upstate New York. Their coffee shop in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Front Porch Cafe, had been named in Continue reading →

Posted in Northeast US travel |