QE2 Bound for South African Port?

Dubai's economic downtown causes the legendary ship to seek another permanent harbor

In "The Flying Dutchman," a ghost ship drops anchor in a port somewhere in Norway. It is revealed that the captain, the namesake "Flying Dutchman," once swore to the devil that he would sail around the Cape of Good Hope if it took him forever. Once every seven years, he was permitted to leave his ship in search of a woman to redeem him from his deathless wandering. If he failed, he would sail the oceans, when the fantasy opera was set, until Judgment Day.

I thought about "The Flying Dutchman" when I read "QE2 Might Sail Again Before Becoming a Hotel" in USA Today. Just last October, when it became known that the former flagship of the Cunard fleet was sold to a Dubai developer, the All About Cunard blog explained, "Cunard admits the QE2 could have carried on for several more years, but Cunard president Carol Marlow argues the offer from Dubai of £50 million was simply too good to turn down and in pure economic terms it was probably the right thing to do. It seems that prudence over passion has prevailed. Dubai has promised to look after the liner, the fastest in the world, and moor her on [artificial islands called] The Palm."

In November, the ship reached what was to be her "final home" in Dubai (above right), where she was to be converted into a luxury hotel. As recently as March, the owner, a Dubai developer, reaffirmed its "commitment" to turning the QE2 into a luxury hotel in the face of rumors that that she might be sold.

Now, USA Today reports, "The cash-strapped owner of QE2 ocean liner - thought to be permanently resting in Dubai - is considering moving the ship to South Africa or elsewhere...Owner Nakheel, a subsidiary of Dubai World, applied for permission to anchor the QE2 in Cape Town, South Africa, a Daily Mail story says. The company's also believed to be in talks with a local hotel management firm, Johannesburg's Business Day says."

Is the QE2 fated to be shuttled from port to port with the promise of a new life as a luxury hotel, or will it finally happen? I just hope the grande dame of the oceans will not end up dismantled for scrap.

A Taste of Eastern Europe in Denver

Upcoming food and cultural festival in Globeville spotlights 120 years of history

While researching the Orthodox Food Festival & Old Globeville Days for Mile High on the Cheap, I found out that the Globeville section of Denver is a 120-year-old community with deep roots in Eastern Europe. Located in the shadow of the elevated sections of Interstate 70, it is mainly known as the site of of the National Western Stock Show complex.

Globeville might not have gotten much respect in recent times, but its history is long by Western standards and represents a tapestry of the American experience. Immigrants from Russia, Poland, Romania, Serbia Ukraine and Greece settled there and found community through the shared Eastern Rite religion. Later, they were joined and often replaced by people from such different places Mexico and Eritrea, and African-Americans too. Workers lived in the neighborhood was an important part of Denver's industrial landscape, and when industry and commerce changed and when Interstates 70 and 25 were routed by it, Globeville suffered. But as happens so often, houses of worship that cannot easily be moved provided a bit of a counterweight through good times and bad times.

According to Father Joseph Hirsch of the Holy Transfiguration of Christ Orthodox Cathedral, "since Globeville's incorporation as a town and subsequent annexation into the City and County of Denver, there has been a Summer celebration of some kind or another. For most of that time, the main Homecoming event has been the annual Picnic held by the 109-year-old [now 110] Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Cathedral. In recent years, the District Attorney of Denver, Bill Ritter, now Governor of Colorado, promoted a Globeville Community Day which positively impacted the neighborhood but did not involve much participation from those outside of the neighborhood. In 2004, the Orthodox Community agreed to combine the Annual Orthodox Picnic with the Community Days celebration and to provide a free public celebration both for the residents and friends of Globeville as well as an opportunity to reach out to and inform the entire Front Range."

And that's what's coming up on Saturday, July 18, 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and Sunday, July 19, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. when the the sixth annual Orthodox Food Festival & Old Globeville. Admission is free to this event that will feature ethnic foods, music, folk dancing international crafts and for the first time, an art show. There will also be inside tours of the historic and elaborate cathedral, which from the outside looks like a modest church. "Boogie Under the Stars" takes place Saturday evening from 7:30 to 9:30.

9News' Susie Wargin, whose own Denver pioneer heritage is anchored in old Globeville, wrote, "Inside St. Joe's, beautiful stained glass windows align the east and west walls. However there is one window on the west side, featuring the mother Mary with her mother, that shows exactly where I came from. My great, great grandfather Jan Wargin's name adorns the bottom of the stained glass. The word in my family is Jan was a founding member of St. Joseph's and helped fund construction while working at the Globe Smelting and Refining Company. It's a church that has always been very special to our family even though we are all in different locations now."

In the classic American tradition, some stalwarts like Father Hirsch, members of the Globeville Civic Association and Margaret and Robert Escamilla, the successful plaintiffs in Escamilla vs. ASARCO that has been called a landmark victory for environmental justice never give up on their community and just when a neighborhood is thought to be down and out, it is "discovered" by artists and urban pioneers who appreciate history, diversity and low prices, and the process of renewal begins. Globeville is on the rise. New sidewalks, undergrounded utility lines, zoning changes that favor local businesses and other quality-of-life enhancements are in place. The first major sign of gentrification is the multi-use TAXI development, an ambitious project whose first phase includes 43 residential lofts with 130,000 square feet of commercial and office space on an 18-acre site. Globeville's new second identity is RiNo (RIver NOrth), and the incipient arts district.

The festival is in large part a tribute to those who held on and made a historic community better, and all are invited to help celebrate. The event appropriately will take place at the Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Cathedral and Globeville-Argo Park at 47th and North Logan, Denver. For more information, call 303-294-0938.

10th Mountain Huts are a Robert McNamara Legacy

McNamara and Margy's Huts established by the late Robert McNamara

Obituaries for Robert McNamara, who died today, in the national media understandably focus on his years as Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, as the "architect of the Vietnam War" (which he later admitted was a mistake) and as president of the World Bank -- as well as his previous big job as the first president of the Ford Motor Company whose last name was not Ford. These high-profile positions earned him a place on the international stage, but Colorado backcountry skiers also know of him as the benefactor of two early huts in the 10th Mountain Trail system.

Both the McNamara Hut and nearby Margy's Hut, a memorial to his first wife Margaret, were built above Aspen in 1982. They were the impetus for the creation of a larger system that now spiders across the high country in the non-wilderness whose rough periphery is Aspen, Leadville, Edwards and Vail. The McNamara Hut is set in an area between the Hunter Creek Valley and Lenado in a high valley called the Burnt Hole. The McNamara and Margy's huts, which are shown on the map near the lower left corner of the map above, are both owned by 10th Mountain and are only open during the winter season to protect the summer range of a nearby elk herd.

The high-country treasure provided by olorado's 10th Mountain Trail system and its backcountry huts is high in my consciousness these days because I am among a goup of a dozen women hiking up to Uncle Bud's Hut near Leadville, which is open in summer as well as in winter.

Addendum: "McNamara Had Strong Ties to Aspen" was a July 7 memorial feature in the Aspen Daily News with a lot more details than I had known about. I'm not the only writer who made the connection after hearing he news of his passing.

Travel Slogans: Good & Bad

Quest for bad slogans make me think the best one I've heard lately

I've long enjoyed Doug Lansky's irreverent views of travel, but until my colleague Christopher Elliott alerted me (and other readers) to it, I didn't realize that Lansky has a great, also-irreverent blog called The Titanic Awards, subtitled "Celebrating the Dubious Achievements of Travel." Today he posted "a few contenders" for the dubious honor of the worst slogans to promote tourism to countries, states, provinces, cities, travel companies and so on.

My favorite of his nominees is Wales. Lansky spotlighted the slogan, “Wales. The Big Country,” and commented, "No, Canada is a big country. So is China. And India, Brazil, Australia. If you’re going to start making shit up, why not say Wales is a tropical island with white sandy beaches and attractive, well-tanned natives who serve free beer around the clock."

Lansky is inviting readers to nominate other slogans that are lousy, misleading or both. I'm going to try to come up with something, but meanwhile, the first thing that popped into my mind was a long-ago, hopefully tongue-in-cheek proposal for this advertising slogan for Panasonic: "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor." It famously became the title of a book by Jerry Della Femina about the ad business in the days now dramatized on the TV series, "Mad Men."

Reading bad slogans brought to mind a clever, simple one that I recently encountered. The small city of Manhattan, Kansas, with a population of 51,000 +/- adopted the nickname, "The Little Apple."

Staycationing on Independence Day

We don't tend to go anywhere on Independence Day Weekend, but a lot of people come to Boulder, as well as Denver and the Colorado Mountains. Boulder celebrates its Sesquicentennial this year, with a ceremonies and patriotic music at Chautauqua Park. It is capped off with a great ground show and spectacular fireworks at the University of Colorado's Folsom Field. For a list of free or low-cost daytime events in the Denver/Boulder metro area, click here, and for local fireworks, click here.

Denver International Airport Expansion Projected

Reconfigured terminal, readiness for rail and new hotel are on DIA's wish list

Back in the winter of 1995, I departed for (I think) Honduras from Denver's Stapleton International Airport and returned home several days later flying into the newly opened Denver International Airport. That was more than 14 years ago, but people still sometimes call DIA "the new airport." Since then DIA has added a sixth runway, at 16,000 North America's longest commercial precision-instrument runway, which in allows fully loaded jumbo jet to take off at Denver's mile-high elevation even during the summer. With more than 52 million passengers, it is the world's 10th-busiest airport. It has only closed twice because of exceptionally heavy snows, once in March 2003 and again in December 2006.

There have, however, been some missing elements for a modern world-class airport, notably a hotel right at the terminal and a railroad station or lightrail station for intermodal connections. The Denver City Council has been presented with redesign plans that could include remaking the "Great Hall," as I just learned the main terminal under signature white Teflon tented roof is call, so that it is after rather than before TSA checkpoints. Designers recognize that snaking lines of passengers waiting to be screened is not the best use of this grandiose space. Also included would be a FasTracks train station at the airport, rail bridges for the route into the airport and a new Westin hotel adjacent to the terminal.

The price tag? It could be a billion buckaroos or so, some of which would theoretically be paid for from revenues and recaptured from increased business generated by shops and restaurants in the main terminal that connecting passengers could access without have to go through security again. The timetable? Who knows?

I don't know whether any or all of this will come to pass, but an exciting side note is that Santiago Calatrava, an award-winning Spanish architect, is on the "DIA makeover team." He is a European architectural superstar who has designed transportation projects around the world. I have seen two of them, one in Manchester, England, and the other in Barcelona, Spain (above right). I hope we'll have a chance to see his work at DIA.

Marinas or Mangroves?

Ambitious marina plan scaled back, and to those with environmental conserns, that's a good thing

My colleague, Jimm Budd, a Mexico City-based travel journalist who sends out daily reports about Mexican tourism, today reported that "Escalera Nautica today has 8 marinas open with seven more in planning stage according to Raul Lopez, manager at San Blas. Not exactly what had been dreamed of a decade ago, but still something. A decade ago, when the project was announced, goal was to open more than 30 marinas along both coasts of the Baja California peninsula as well as along the west coast of the mainland. The government would provide the basic infrastructure, and it was hoped that private investors would come in with the amenities. Lack of enthusiasm on the part of private investors had apparently almost killed the scheme, although Lopez said laws protecting mangroves on the coast were more to blame. Eventual idea is to attract boaters starved for marinas in their home states to come to Mexico."

A website called BajaQuest had other numbers but quoted an earlier report on the same concept:

"The plan calls for 22 full-service marinas, 10 of them new. Of the 12
existing, seven will be improved and five are judged as already adequate. The 10
new marinas will be located on sites with natural shelter, or bays, a feature
the peninsula has in abundance. Five of these are to be in Baja California,
three in Baja California Sur, and one each in Sonora and Sinaloa."

"Additionally, the plan calls for an 84-mile highway route for towing boats
from one side of the peninsula to the other. This feature will allow boat
travelers quick access to either body of water for those without time or
interest in sailing around the southernmost tip of Baja California Sur. Further,
the plan calls for improving the road between Mexicali and San Felipe to allow
bigger-boat towing rigs crossborder access to the Sea of Cortes."

The map (above right) was released in 2001, showing the ambitious scale of the project then. Some people probably still support it. Along the Sea of Cortes, tourism officials have been calling it "the mega-tourism project of the XXI century." That in itself is scary -- especially if you're a mangrove tree or a critter that lives in the mangroves. Environmental authorities call mangroves "the nursery of the seas." These miraculous trees survive and thrive in brackish coastal waters. Their complex root systems provide safe havens for hatchlings of all sorts, and birds nest in the dense foliage. Insects and everything above them in the food chain thrive in mangroves.

Miraculous Mangroves

Below is a mangrove swamp near Ventanilla in the state of Oaxaca. The top photo shows a shallow-draft boat taking tourists to an alligator sanctuary on an island amid the mangroves.

Below, a large turtle suns itself on a stump.


Below is a mangrove habitat, seemingly serene but full of life.


Researchers Speak

The early stages of the Escalara Nautica were not encouraging vis-a-vis environmental stewardship. Back in April 2003 (more than six years ago), the California-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation published its "Preliminary Coastal Analysis of Escalera Nautica at Bahia Santa Rosaliita." This first marina did not involve mangroves, but if the Mexican government and/or developers didn't begin pay more attention to what it was doing, it must be bad news for mangroves and everything else along the Escalera Nautica. According to the report,

"The new marina is located in the northwest somewhat sheltered corner of
Bahia Santa Rosaliita (also spelled Rosalillita, Rosalilita, Rosalia)....The new
marina is located in the northwest somewhat sheltered corner of Bahia Santa
Rosaliita (also spelled Rosalillita, Rosalilita, Rosalia)....

"A new concrete wall (less than one year old) was observed to be heavily
damaged, with extensive cracking, spalling, and exposed rebar. Likely reasons
for this rapid deterioration are poor materials and construction
methods.

"Due to the short jetty length and ample availability of sediment in the
area, it is expected to be difficult to maintain the entrance depth required for
a navigable entrance.... aves will likely break across the marina entrance
during high wave events. Continuous dredging will be required to maintain the
requisite entrance depth and sufficient basin depth.

"Currently, the east jetty extends landward to approximately 10 meters
landward of the vegetation line. It is reasonable to expect the beach east of
the marina to continue to recede landward, likely resulting in erosion behind
the landward end of the east jetty.

"Extensive downcoast erosion has been measured during the first year after
jetty construction. It is expected that some structures will be lost to the sea
within another year. The historic sandy beach that did exist on the east of the
marina has been replaced by a steep cobble and stone berm with some exposed
bedrock and vertical sandstone beach scarping. The downcoast erosion will likely
reach a dynamic equilibrium within a few years."

"The first marina of the Escalera Nautica system is deeply troubled.
The lack of planning and poor selection of location has resulted in a marina
that will be very expensive to maintain. If it is determined that the marina is
essential, we recommend some improvements that will make the marina useful some of the time....

Future Escalera Nautica projects should consult qualified consultants and
perform adequate studies prior to construction."

I sure hope the government and developers have been doing precisely that, but I'm not taking bets.