However, after seeing "A Chocolate Tour of the Caribbean" from Sunday's New York Times, we may have to reconsider in the future. A chocolate-based vacation itinerary sounds pretty darn great, don't you think?

While unanticipated travel disruptions are certainly frustrating, there are several things to add to your travel checklist so that you can be better prepared for the unexpected. This is especially true for international travelers.

• Be sure to have at least three nights' hotel money in cash. When it turns out you didn't need it on your last night of travel, buy yourself (or others) some nice gifts.
• Pack a flashlight. The new LED flashlights are small, bright and have a very long battery life. Great for digging things out of your bag and purse, too.
• Carry some small snack items with you, such as a bag of nuts, a packet of nut butter, or dried fruit. Just don't eat them all while waiting in line at the museum!
• Inform your family or close friends of your planned itinerary. Bonus: It makes them a little jealous!
• Carry a sun hat and warm hat tucked away in your backpack or purse. Conditions change and you never know when you'll be caught out longer than expected.
• Relax and embrace the unexpected. One of the joys of travel is never knowing for certain how things will unfold. If you find your plans must change, make the most out of wherever you are.

Singapore Airlines recently announced that it was ending the longest commercial flights in the air when it stops direct service between New York and Singapore. As reported by USA Today on 10/24/2012:

Once those routes come down... the new world's new longest routes will be Qantas' nonstop from Sydney to Dallas/Fort Worth (about 8,576 miles or 7,452 nautical miles) and Delta's route from Atlanta to Johannesburg (8,434 miles/7,329 nautical miles).

Bold added to draw your attention to the J'Burg - Atlanta route. We recently returned on that flight after our amazing safari adventure in Zambia. Was it long? Yes! Was it too long?

Well, all I can say is that it is a small price to pay for a trip-of-a-lifetime like the one we had. If you haven't seen our pictures, check out our Zambia photo gallery. I'll bet my frequent flyer miles there and back that anyone who was with us feels it was well worth the 16-hour ride, too. 

Sometimes it is nice to be reminded that it is still a very big world, ours for the exploration.

• River cruising (this is a great way to travel through the heartland of a country without having to unpack!)
• London (the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is in June and the Olympics start in July, so London will be the place to be this summer)
• Literary tourism (everything from the Harry Potter theme park in Florida to the dark and snow-filled streets of Steig Larsson's Stockholm)
• Cuba (while the State Department guidelines are still strict, it's probably just a matter of time before Americans can get there more easily)
• Myanmar (since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit and Aung San Suu Kyi's call for responsible tourism, this remote country is attracting the interest of travelers)

We hope you'll join us on one of our small-group trips this year. And wherever your plans may take you, we wish you a healthy, happy, and travel-filled 2012.

Spring is just around the corner here in Portland, or at least I certainly hope so! It's the time of year when I take off my rain jacket, shield my eyes from that shining orb in the sky, blind myself and others with glimpses of my winter-white skin, and assess the damage from spending the winter eating frozen Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies and those skipped workouts in the rain.

"Travel, especially of the old laborious kind, has never seemed to me of greater importance, more essential, more enlightening."

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/travel/03Cover.html?src=dayp&pagewanted=all#

Initially, feeling somewhat taken aback, I assumed that there was something wrong with me. After a young man in Delhi asked if he could take my picture, I surreptitiously checked my teeth to make sure there was no remainder of my favorite lunch of dal tarka stuck among them. I felt the heat of embarrassment spread across my face, my apprehension assuming he asked so he could later ridicule my image with some derelict gang of his fellow high-school boys.

My tour through Delhi and Agra progressed, and my self-consciousness only grew as the question became more frequent. I felt hounded by people asking the question I wanted to use myself: “May I please take your picture?” It didn’t matter if I avoided eye contact, wore hats and sunglasses, or pretended not to understand. Two young men skulked around me at the Taj Mahal, pointing and laughing. At me, I assumed. A year earlier, I had a rather unpleasant episode of being groped in Egypt by two men who approached me in a similar manner. Now, I allowed my discomfort to lead me, quickly hopping across the bridge of the Taj’s reflecting pool to escape into the crowd.

Eventually, I realized I was being ridiculous. I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve been in uncomfortable situations, something that can be hard to avoid as a solo female abroad. If I didn’t want to interact with others, I should have stayed home. If people wanted to photograph me because I didn’t look like them, then so be it. So what if my photo was going to be the source of amusement across the Indian subcontinent? Who cares if my image went viral on Indian Facebook? Surely the desire to document things and people that are outside one’s daily experience spans the globe. Wasn’t it fair to assume that curiosity is universal? Didn’t I want to take pictures of them for the same reasons that they wanted to take pictures of me? Yes. And yes.

So, I relaxed. Later in my visit at the Taj Mahal, I again ran into the two snickering fellows. They renewed their request. I agreed, but only if they would be in the shot with me. We chatted for a while in the broken English and hand gestures of those who don’t share a common language. Now I’m not ashamed—I’m even proud—to know that somewhere in India, on someone’s cell phone, there’s a picture of me. Smiling.

• Put your name and contact information both on the luggage tag and inside the bag.
• Pack your valuables and important information (camera, laptop, prescription medication, passport, itinerary with contact names and numbers, etc.) in your carry-on.
• Make sure that your bag is checked to the correct destination (SJO and SJC are both San Jose, but in different countries!).
• Keep an inventory of the contents of your bag (may sound like overkill, but an inventory is very helpful if you need to file a claim).
• Make sure that you have a claim tag for each bag and that each person has his or her own claim tag.
• Leave plenty of time for connections if your itinerary has multiple legs.
• Pack a change of lightweight clothes and a toothbrush in your carry-on.

If Your Bags Don't Arrive

• File a missing bag report while you are still at the airport. The airline will give you a claim report with a file reference number that can be used to track the status of your bag online. The file reference number will contain five letters and five numbers -- the first three letters represent the airport, the second two letters represent the airline, and the last five numbers represent the unique claim number. So, for example, PDXDL12345 means that the bag was supposed to arrive in Portland (PDX) on a Delta (DL) flight. Enter the number on a site like My Lost Bag to track your bag's status.
• Also ask the airline representative for their customer service number so that you can call them.
• Keep the receipts from your additional expenses so that you can file your report with your travel insurance company.