Eighth Annual Hotel Week in Manhattan January 4-14, 2019

Today, I’m pleased to introduce my first guest blogger on ActiveTravels, my brother Jim Jermanok. I hope it will be the first of many guest writers!
Five years ago, following graduation from Yale, Ariane Kirtley went to West Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. Her career seemed assured. Almost overnight her life changed. Friends encouraged her to visit the Florida-sized Azawak Valley, the most abandoned region of Niger, the poorest country on Earth. In the Azawak, half the children die before reaching five years old, often of thirst. Ariane thought she’d seen everything in Africa, but she was so devastated by the conditions she found that she decided to dedicate her life to the people of the Azawak, and bring them water from unlimited supplies 600-1000 feet underground, much too deep for conventional wells to reach.
Since 2006, Ariane has worked against harrowing odds to save lives in the Azawak, among some of the most defenseless minorities in Africa – a half million Tuareg and Wodaabe nomads who have no water most of the year due to unremitting drought. Ariane set aside career goals and founded her own organization, Amman Imman: Water Is Life, to build permanent borehole wells for these nomads. Working far from civilization in suffocating Saharan heat, facing persistent health risks, Ariane and her team do major infrastructure work normally carried out by governments. In early 2010, persevering under the threat of Al-Qaida terrorists, she finished building her second borehole, the Kijigari “Well of Love.” This follows completion of Tangarwashane borehole in 2007-08. Each borehole serves 25,000 people and animals.
Ariane’s dream is to build fifty such “Oases of Life” to eliminate water scarcity for the half million forsaken people of the Azawak. During this Holiday Season, please think about helping this brave woman save the lives of children and nomads who are on the brink, by donating generously to her 501c3 organization, Amman Imman: Water Is Life.
Aboard an historic schooner sailing the Penobscot Bay islands of Maine’s mid-coast, modernity slows to a more languid pace. Cruising amidst the anonymous pine-topped islands, stopping at the occasional seaside village, you can’t help but relax aboard these yachts of yesteryear. Dolphins, seals, bald eagles, lighthouses and lobstermen at work are all part of the scenery. Help hoist the sails, read a good thick book, or partake in your hobby of choice. Last summer, I wrote about the popular knitting cruises aboard the circa-1927 J. & E. Riggin for The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. Now I’d like to tell you about the Camden schooner Mary Day and its inaugural six-day Maine Craft Beers and Home Brewing Cruise set for June 16-22. Passengers will have complimentary samples of Maine beers, and local brews will be paired with each evening meal (baked haddock, ham dinner, chili, chowder, roast turkey etc.). The Mary Day will make a stop at Marshall Wharf Brewing Co. in Belfast for a tour and tasting. Captain Barry King will brew and bottle a batch of his own nut brown ale during the trip, and passengers will go home with a few bottles.
Thanks to a far too wet spring, New Englanders are blessed with more water in our backyard than we’ve had in years. Many of the whitewater rivers, like the Deerfield that Zoar Outdoor runs, gain their momentum from dam releases at power plants. The more water these plants have in their reservoirs from snow and rain, the more water you have to surge over rapids in a raft or kayak. Raft Zoar Outdoor’s most popular trip, the Zoar Gap. Minimum age is 7 and rates range from $60-$104 depending on age. Their highly regarded white-water kayaking school is also one of the best places to learn the sport in the northeast.
Two summers ago, Catamount Ski Area in South Egremont, Massachusetts opened the largest aerial adventure park in New England. This obstacle course in the trees features more than 150 different platforms and the chance to grab a trapeze swing and glide across a bridge or snag a rope swing a la Tarzan and fly into a web-like mesh. While the sport has been popular in Europe for decades, aerial adventure parks didn’t come to America until the Adirondack Extreme park was unveiled in upstate New York in 2007. Catamount is based on the Swiss design where you finish one course and return to the same starting platform to try another. Adirondack Extreme is based on the French design, with each course steadily becoming more challenging until you reach the end. After spending an afternoon at Catamount having a blast at this treetop playground, I have a feeling these aerial adventure parks will be popping up across the country like golf courses.
The best way to tackle the immensity of the 1,506,539-acre Everglades National Park is to take it in chunks. At Shark Valley Visitor Center at the northern tip of the Everglades, rent bikes from the rangers and get ready for one of the most exhilarating 15-mile loops of your life. More than likely, it will take you an hour to bike that first mile. That’s because you’ll want to stop every 20 yards to get another photograph of an alligator sleeping in the tall grass, large turtles sunbathing on rocks, and the extraordinary amount of birdlife that call the canal next to the bike trail home. Anhingas dry their wings on the branches of the gumbo limbo tree, wood storks, white whooping cranes, and the long-legged great blue heron stand tall in the shallow water, while pink roseate spoonbills fly over the royal palms. Or canoe a stretch of the 99-mile Wilderness Waterway from Everglades City to Flamingo as you paddle though mangrove swamps and creeks to the deserted white beaches of anonymous cays. If the canoe starts to rock, slap your paddle firmly against the water. This usually scares off alligators and those doe-eyed West Indian manatees.
If you’ve managed to book one of the six rooms at the Heceta Head Lighthouse Bed & Breakfast in Yachats, Oregon, you’re in for a visual and culinary treat. Just south of Cape Perpetua, where the 900-foot- high cliffs overlook the Pacific, this is arguably the most stunning locale on the entire Oregon coast. You’ll spend the night in a former assistant lightkeeper’s quarters, set on a grassy patch below the Heceta Head Lighthouse, a tall white edifice that stands atop a small spit of land. Below, breakers explode against the burgundy red cliffs that hem in a narrow beach filled with driftwood. In the darkness, grab a flashlight from the inn and hike up to the lighthouse to watch it flash beacon after beacon across the rugged shoreline and then out to sea. Come morning, dine on a seven-course breakfast with the other guests. Afterwards, a stretch on the wraparound verandah is in order, where you might spot crab boats coming into the harbor from their night catch.