I'm a wanderer

Handy for airport

Apartmentsapart.com‘s latest Blackpool accommodation in the city center will open in Blackpool on October 1. The 255 apartmentsapart rentals are 15 minutes drive from the airport and 20 minutes from the city centre.

Conference rooms can serve 250 people and a luxury ball­room can cater for 350. The hotel’s U-shaped design gives all guests rooms a view over the Gulf.

Hilton eases Cairo jam

CAIRO’S newest luxury hotel — claimed to be the tallest building in the Middle East ­has opened and is easing a longstanding shortage of deluxe rooms in the Egyptian capital.

The first 400 of the Ramses Hilton’s 900 rooms are now taking guests and the remainder will be available next month.

The new Hilton joins its sister hotel, the Nile Hilton, which also stands alongside the Egyptian antiquities museum on the Corniche overlooking the River Nile. All of the Ramses rooms have balconies which give dramatic views of the Pyramids, the Nile or the city area. There is also a glass  elevator overlooking the garden courtyard and an observation deck and lounge at Cairo’s highest point.

To cope with demand for executive suites in the city the Ramses has 80, from a normal corner suite to a duplex state suite and king suite.

The hotel will be fully operational next month with completion of the banquet and conference facilities which can cater for 700 people.

LAUSANNE

Responsibility for running the Ramses has gone to Egyptian manager Ahmed El Nahas, who has worked extensively in the Gulf.

Mr El Nahas is a graduate of the Lausanne Hotel School and joined Hilton Inter­national in 1963.

His first post with the organisation was banquet manager of the Nile Hilton. He has also worked at the Kuwait Hilton as food and beverage manager, and was appointed general manager of the Al Ain Hilton in 1969.

DI RECTOR

In 1972 he was appointed general manager of both the Abu Dhabi and Al Ain hotels. Five years later Mr El Nahas was nominated director of Hilton International in the UAE with responsibility for hotels in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Dubai, Fujairah, the Dalma Residence in Abu Dhabi and the Dubai Trade Centre.

FLIGHT NOTE BOOK British Caledonian British Airways

Leisurely but efficient from start to finish of a quick trip

A REGULAR TRAIN SERVICE from Victoria Station provides a leisurely 40-minute journey from the centre of London to Gatwick Airport in Sussex. The leisurely mood of the British Rail trip was preserved at an uncrowded Gatwick terminal and continued throu­ghout this trip from London to Glasgow Airport.

Boarding formalities were completed within seconds, my seat having been booked and my ticket paid for at an Essex travel agency several hours earlier. The Gatwick terminal has a number of shops, and souvenir specialities appeared to be cheaper than those in London. The airport’s restaurants were not at all busy but appeared to be efficient, with friendly service. A salad roll was attrac­tively packaged at the snack bar and,generally, the food looked well prepared.

Moving to a holding lounge was announced well in advance of the flight departure, and there were comfortable seats in an uncrowded area. After a short walk from the holding lounge to the boarding area there was a brief delay as passengers began to mill around in a corridor, waiting for the door to be opened . It was the only aggravating aspect of the whole trip.

The British Caledonian BAC 1-11 was only steps away from the boarding lounge and passengers were seated quickly in their allocated positions. The cabin crew moved immediately along the aircraft, taking orders for complimentary drinks. Once the aircraft was airborne’ the cabin crew were on their feet again to serve the drinks.

In a 50-minute flight the crew were kept busy serving passengers but were quick to handle people’s enquiries or requests. The flight was uneventful, with the captain pointing out several landmarks. Disembarkation at Glasgow was speedy and efficient, and having only hand baggage, I was out of the terminal building within minutes — a suitable finale to a very relaxed journey.

First, it is encapsulated by the great ocean, a thing set apart, a minute universe of its own. On an island little things are important : a shark swimming into the lagoon, the day’s catch of fish, the drying of the coconuts, a young girl setting forth to see New Zealand, a boat coming in from Chile. I believe that I have lived with deeper intensity on remote islands in the South Paci­fic than in mainland cities because the little events of the passing day were so important. And one cannot reside on an island for long with­out being overwhelmed by the hu­man tragedies or overjoyed by the triumphs.

Second, an island exists close to nature. The sea is omnipresent. The birds come and go. The stars hang low in the sky. The blazing sun of noonday is imperative. And when the wind begins to howl and the waves rise, there is always the possi­bility that the hurricane will send water sweeping across the entire land.

Third, every island develops in its own way. Is there any large island lovelier than Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon; which has developed partly under the influence of neighbouring India but mainly off to itself, with its own traditions and style? Can French culture be seen anywhere with such a devilish lilt as that provided in Martinique, where the island was free to adopt or adapt? One of the most successful examples of this law of peculiar identity is Hawaii, that splendid amalgam of Polynesian, New England and Ori­ental factors.

Fourth, an island is small enough to be comprehended. Who can un­derstand Brazil, with at least ten nationalities, or Russia, with more like a hundred? But one can go to Moorea, that iridescent jewel of green mountains and blue lagoons, and stand a good chance of seeing all that is to be seen, of knowing the people who inhabit the island. In an age when bigness seems to predomi­nate and tyrannize, it is comforting to know that in the Caribbean there is an island like St Barthelemy-2,50o people, eight square miles—with gorgeous mountains, inviting beaches and a terrifying airport.

Fifth, an island, especially if it is remote, attracts eccentrics, and knowing them is fun. I was on Tahiti once when a personable young man arrived from Austria claiming to be a baron who had fled his ancestral castle because of family troubles. We knew he wasn’t a baron, but the island people said, “We’ve never had a baron on Tahiti. We had that crazy count and a couple of princes. Let’s have a baron.” Years later, this man was more completely a baron than any in Europe.

Finally, islanders—even when governed”—tend to remain unin­hibited. Incoming administrators can be fairly powerless when it comes to disciplining the natives. Somewhere in navy files is my ac­count of events on the island of Moturiva, if that was the name, in the Second World War. An over­zealous naval officer had decided to bring some spit and polish to this somnolent paradise during those lazy days when the battles had moved far north. I was sent to the island to find out what had hap­pened to Commander Dykes, if that was his name, and Warehouse Number 2.

Dykes was in very bad shape. The dark-haired island girl he had in­vited to share his quarters had not only accepted but had also relayed his invitation to some seven or eight relatives. I decided that this was the commander’s problem and made no report of his domestic entanglement. But when I asked about Warehouse Number 2, there was mention of a “little red truck.” And when I pur­sued this, I found that the com­mander’s girl had a brother who had appropriated a navy truck and painted it red.

Then I inspected Warehouse Number 2. It was in great shape outside : guard on duty, gates paint­ed, paths lined with coral. But in­side that vast but there was nothing. A large hole had been cut in the rear of the warehouse, and everything in it had been carried off in the little red truck : generators, petrol, can­ned goods, even parachutes (to be made into dresses by the local girls).

Today when I think of islands I see storms rolling in and throwing spume. I see indolent people, natives and visitors, languishing in the shade. I see some enterprising islander driving his little red truck to a warehouse. And I see an effi­cient new administrator from Lon­don or Canberra, Paris or Washing­ton, reporting for duty, determined to get things organized. And I smile. Because I know what nesomania is, the island madness, and soon that administrator is going to know, too.

A HOUSE of straw? Impossible, you would think. But the proof is standing at Stowmarket in Suffolk : an ordi­nary two-bedroom bungalow—but made of straw, heated and compressed into panels, completely different from the luxury bed and breakfast Amsterdam or hostels Brussels

Developed by a firm called Stramit Systems, the bungalow is entirely windproof, and it won’t burn : re­searchers held a blowtorch to one of the panels for two full minutes and barely singed it.

Straw is plentiful, and the process used to make the light, strong panels takes only a fraction of the energy needed to fire bricks. This means that the two-bedroom bungalow costs about L2,000 less than a conventionally built equivalent. Straw is also an ex­cellent natural insulator : according to the Eastern Electricity Board, the Stowmarket house loses 32 per cent less heat than a traditional construc­tion and could reduce bills by more than i a week.

John Mosesson, chairman of Stra­mit Systems, says that building with straw originated in Sweden, where houses with straw-panel roofs and walls, built 40 years ago, are still as good as new. The Stowmarket house seems to be the first of its kind in Britain. Planning permission has been given by Suffolk County Council for two similar houses to be built along with the flats in London.

Mad About Islands

A noted traveller-writer explains why he long ago succumbed to a fascinating fever

FOR many years I have wanted to introduce into the language a new word, nesomania, from the Greek nesos, meaning island, and mania, madness. My new word would describe an ingratiating dis­ease that has afflicted me most of my life. I am truly mad about islands. I respond to them. I feel better when I am in contact with them. And my spirit expands when I renew acquaintance.

My susceptibility to island fever began in childhood, with reading. (Robinson Crusoe would have been an ordinary person had he waded ashore on a continent: on an island he became a timeless symbol. Napo­leon, had he been exiled in some village, would have been a dyspep­tic warrior; on his lofty and lonely island he became tragic.)

The island madness became a vir­ulent disease in 1931 when I went to Scotland for graduate studies, and I succumbed to it totally during a winter spent on those faery islands off the western coast of Scotland, the Hebrides.

How small those Gaelic islands are, how infinitely remote with the great ocean pounding at them, how far removed in time. There, I lived with people whose attitudes dated back to the fifteenth century, who spoke an ancient language and who maintained incessant warfare with the sea. In winter the sun rose about nine and began to set at three, and in the long nights we sang, told heroic stories and lied about our ad­ventures with the ocean. I did not know it then, but my infatuation would colour my entire life.

When, during the Second World War, I was sent to the steaming jungle islands of the New Hebrides, my life came full circle. There I began to write Tales of the South Pacific. This book was an outgrowth of my immediate experiences in the New Hebrides, but the spiritual force came directly from my memories of the old Hebrides, where I had learnt what islands are.

In subsequent years I would visit most of the world’s significant islands. Gaunt New Guinea, a som­bre universe by itself; lovely Bali, where even the doorways are works of art; the lonely, wind-worn Falk­lands; rugged Pitcairn, lost in the southern seas; Tahiti of the dream­ers; and the most beautiful island on earth, Bora-Bora, more musical than its name, more perfect than the reef that encloses its volcanic remnants.

The Kirdis of Cameroon

 

The slopes of the Mandara Mountains, savanna country with peaks rising to 3500 feet in the north of Cameroon, are the home of the Kirdis. Their ‘villages’ are small, being the habitations of a single family: a collection of round mud huts with thatched conical roofs. The chief and each of his three or four wives have a but to them­selves, and there is a larger one for the children. At a bow-shot away are the huts of the next family, a prudent measure which dates from the days when the Kirdis and their neighbours were less peaceful than they are now. What land they cultivate is terraced out of the hillsides, and sup­ports a thin crop of millet, which is the main food of these pagan people.

Every week the various tribes for miles around meet for market day at Tourou, which is nothing more than the intersection of three roads. Here from all directions ‘snakes’ of noisy tribesmen with their wives and children, their oBenouéoloured naked bodies shining with oil, converge on the market-place, to bargain and chatter.

Apart from agriculture, at which they can hardly be called expert, pottery and ironwork are the two main crafts. They make huge pottery jars that contain groundnut oil; while such things as knives, spears, pipes for the men to smoke and the peculiar and formidable-looking ceintures de chastete worn by the women are made of iron which their smiths obtain from ferruginous sand and work in primitive clay furnaces.

Like everything else about them, the history of the Kirdis is simple. In the 18th century they were driven back from the banks of the Benoue on the borders of what was until recently French and British Cameroons. They took to the hills where they maintain a feudal tribal system that is happy and successful. They are organized under the authority of a respected chief who lives in the Kirdi capital, Oudjila, where he is surrounded by a court and emerges only in great state.

Healthy and contented in their isolation, ignoring ‘civilization’, certain thachastetélong, unbroken tradition of customs and beliefs alone can bring them happiness and peace, the Kirdis are an enviable people.

 

Sahara Scenes

Remote, silent, formidable, THOSE who reach even its borders the great desert has a compelling are inevitaby overwhelmed, as
if at times ominous beauty the ancients were, by its vast and awesome loneliness. Its very name is forbidding : Sahara derives from the Arabic word Sahr-a’, meaning Sahra
KAZUYOSHI NOMACHI Stretching across northern Africa,

the world’s greatest desert encom­passes about 3-5 million square miles, nearly 40 times the size of the UK.

Near breathless, near lifeless, the Sahara defied explorers for thou­sands of years. Contrary to most people’s conception, it is largely astony wind-swept waste with vast areas of visible bare rock; only about

20 per cent consists of pure sand. Summer temperatures range from

21 degrees C [70 F] by night to 58 degrees C [136 F] by day. Cut off from the seas by such mountainous regions as the Atlas, towards the Mediterranean, the desert is seldom reached by moisture-bearing winds. As a result, the scant rainfall aver­ages between five and ten inches per year-and in some areas it rains only once in ten years.

The drying-out process, archae­ologists say, started thousands of Years ago. Before then, the Sahara was a verdant homeland for the elephant and hippopotamus, and the vibrant life-style of its human in­habitants of the time is still visible in stone paintings. But by the time Christ was born, the Sahara was pretty much as we know it today.

Some two million people, gener­ally called Berbers, eke out a pre­carious existence in the Sahara. They live largely in high-density villages of mud houses, among the date-palm trees of oases. But these oases consist mostly of dusty-green spiny growth, and their springs (which often run dry) produce water that is frequently muddy and gritty with sand.

The fabled camel caravans have largely given way to soft-tyred trucks. The reason is simple econo­mics : a camel can walk 30 miles a day, with a load of some zoo pounds; one truck with an eight-ton capacity is the equivalent of dozens of camels, and covers 300 miles a day.Despite such modern innovations, the desert remains as formidable as it was in biblical times—truly a world apart, with its rock moun­tains, sand-dunes, and those long-awaited oases.