Cost of cruising
Long-time Vancouver residents will remember when cruise tourism was a major economic influence on the city’s waterfront. Once, more than 340 ships brought more than a million passengers to the city. Today, only 256 ships visited the port in 2009.
They don’t spend money like they used to. The cruise lines are keeping more and more of the excursion price in their own coffers.
The reduction in passenger spending ashore is compounded by cruise ships taking significant commissions for sales in stores they promote onboard as “preferred” (as much as 40 percent of gross sales) and their keeping 50 percent or more of what passengers spend for shore excursions – the tours passengers buy on board or through the cruise line for which the cruise line then hires a local tour provider. One problem is that the tour provider is being paid less than might be received from a customer walking in off the street. A more serious problem is that a passenger spending $50 for a tour expects a $50 product; but the tour provider is being paid $25 or less and can’t provide a $50 product. If a passenger is unhappy they will blame the tour provider and the greediness of Vancouver; they will not blame the cruise line. One cruise line reports that 30 percent of its net profit is derived from sale of shore excursions.
Nose dwelling leech
I couldn’t resist. Another danger for travelers who thought swimming with all sorts of creepy crawly things was finally safe. A new species of leech was just discovered that enters swimmers’ noses and sets up home there. Nothing more that these leeches like than mucous membrane.
The creature was first discovered in 2007 in Peru when a specimen was plucked from the nose of a girl who had been bathing in a river.
The creature lives in the remote parts of the Upper Amazon and has a “particularly unpleasant habit of infesting humans”, the scientists say.
Studies also revealed that it had “a preference for living up noses”. The research published their findings in the online scientific journal PLoS One.
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
After being banned for hundreds of years, Absinthe has been cleared of any halucenogens through scientific testing and can now be purchased in upscale bars here in the U.S.A. and across Europe. Here is an interview of the man who tested absinthe for illicit elements and discovered nothing out of order or against the law.
In 2000, I was the first person to ever take samples of vintage absinthe and to subject them to modern scientific analysis. I was looking for something in these vintage absinthes that was poisonous or deleterious or hallucinogenic, and I found nothing. That revelation told me that basically all these rumors about absinthe were grossly exaggerated or untrue altogether.
Then I began to realize that the smear campaign made against absinthe over a century ago was fueled by the wine industry. So it was economically motivated and politically motivated as well. The temperance league in Europe found themselves allied with the wine industry. In France, wine back then wasn’t viewed as alcohol; it was viewed as food. It was thought to be completely healthy, as was anything from grapes. They were unlikely bedfellows in the smear campaign against absinthe.
