Today is a bank and government holiday in the U.S., but here are some interesting tidbits from around the globe while I stop and smell the roses for the day.
– Zimbabwe’s inflation rate has become unfathomable. We have a great story in the current issue of Perceptive Travel, How the Last White Rhino in Zambia Wins at Strip Passport . It touches on the crazy inflation rate in the land of a struggling dictator clinging to power. But now inflation there has hit one million percent. One million! If my calculator is working right, that’s like…over 1,000 percent per hour! It’s too mind-boggling to even comprehend. “As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1 billion Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars.”
– Cheap travel godfather Arthur Frommer faces the conflicted feeling of promoting travel in a poor country like Nicaragua, where much of the population gets by on $2 a day. I would add to his thoughts, however, by saying that if you stay in hotels owned and run by locals, and eat in family places or the market, you will be helping the situation improve far more than those people baking on a beach at a huge vacation factory resort owned by a company in Spain or the U.S.
– I’m no fan of the U.S. State Department travel warning list, but it’s still nice to see the warning lifted on Indonesia . There are certainly more dangerous places you could be frequenting, like St. Louis, Detroit, or Camden for example .
– Wendy Perrin answers the question of the month, where are the cheap places to go this summer? No surprise, most of the true bargains have always been featured in The World’s Cheapest Destinations .
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