Travel Maven Blog ... posts from The Travel Mavens.com

Renting cars in Florida, using a search engine for best price

Through the years of renting cars in Florida, I’ve been all over the Internet. My expeditions have yielded dozens of cars from websites and rental companies, with varying degrees of success.

Goal for my latest Florida car rental was hanging out with the pelicans in the Keys (Photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

The cost of a rental car can be a major expense, especially in Miami, where locals add on a brace of taxes and fees that seem to nearly double the original cost. Rent a car in Miami and you know you have contributed to the local economy.

Finding the best deal is getting easier, because of up-to-date Internet search engines that seek the lowest rates. Sometimes, prices vary substantially.

Cutting to the bone for a Vegas steak of Certified Angus Beef

Playing with words is what marketing people do. To consumers, marketing words often seem meant to mystify. This is the season for it. When I’m not traveling on the road or sailing on a cruise ship, I hang out in Ohio, where I heard enough obfuscating ad words and phrases in the 2012 presidential campaign to last me for a lifetime.

Marketing words in Wooster, Ohio, were more fun this fall, as I joined chefs slicing into a beef carcass in search of what marketing people are calling a Vegas steak.

 

Chef Rory Schepisi of Vega, Texas, slices into beef rib steak in the hunt for the hidden Vegas steak (Photo by David G. Molyneaux, TheTravelMavens.com)

Cruising Australia, New Zealand, hugging a Koala, planning an itinerary

With the huge influx of cruise ships this fall from North America to the land Down Under, vacationing in and around Australia is destined to be cruising’s next big thing. READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

Hugging a koala at the Cairns Tropical Zoo, Australia

Koalas have a soft and cuddly look. They make a nice souvenir picture to take home. But finding a huggable Koala is not that easy. I met mine at the Cairns Tropical Zoo. READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

Carnival Spirit is now based in Sydney, Australia, newly Aussified with coffee, beer, bacon, and snags on the barbie. READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

If you’re thinking about cruising Down Under, visiting Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, or other islands of the South Pacific, READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

 

Checking out the gannets of New Zealand

I’m not much of a birder. I love to watch the Great Lake Erie birds swoop by my porch on the north coast of Ohio, especially the eagles that have returned to the marsh near Old Woman Creek. They dive for fish in the waters outside my window.

But I am a dunce when it comes to remembering names and markings, so I can’t tell you all the species that I’ve seen in Ohio or in my frequent wanderings around the world.

I won’t forget the gannets, though, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, where they nest on the edge of a cliff at Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand.

My trip to see the gannets was a shore excursion off the Celebrity Century at Napier, New Zealand, where thousands of people flock every February for the Art Deco Weekend, a celebration of Napier’s Art Deco heritage and history.

If you want to see more about the birds, take a look at Nesting with the wild gannets, my post at Checking In Checking Out, a new website with a theme of amazing places to travel, eat, and play golf.

Cruising to mating penguins, a disappearing gun, a castle in New Zealand

Mating grounds for the Northern Royal Albatross are reason enough to visit New Zealand’s Otago Peninsula, but these grand birds are not the only attraction on a shore excursion from the cruise ship port of Dunedin.

Yellow Eyed Penguin (center) approaches a beach in New Zealand

Above a wide beach with rolling ocean surf, our tour group watched a single penguin (tiny, in the middle of the picture above) waddle to shore and cross the beach.

 

Then, as our group held its collective breaths, the penguin wavered in its decision about entering the mating grounds of the rare yellow eyed penguins. We could see a New Zealand fur seal hiding in the bush, hoping for a penguin lunch.

Cruising New Zealand, spotting the mating Northern Royal Albatross

Preparing to meet a colony of Northern Royal Albatrosses -- or are they albatri -- I remembered an image from high school when my English class was studying Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” A sailor wore a dead albatross around his neck as penance.

The poem is one of those prized pieces of literature that cause nothing but anguish to a high school kid looking for a correct answer among clashing symbols. Easier to understand is that the sailor was doing penance for killing the albatross, a symbol of good luck for seamen. You don’t want to destroy  anyone’s good luck charm, particularly when you are out in the elements, battling the forces of nature.

Besides, the albatross is a magnificent and awesome white bird, swooping and gliding with an amazing wing span of about nine feet.