Our journey around Haiti is nearing its end. After our epic drive to and from Les Abricots, Saturday night is spent back at the Auberge Inn in Jérémie where our host Juliette Nicolas Tardieu produces a splendid meal. Again there’s rice, chicken, goat and plantain with plenty of the excellent Barbancourt rum (tonight we drink
Miscellaneous
Hand in Hand for Haiti – the rich fruit of Les Abricots
You know a place is isolated when it doesn’t even rank a mention in Lonely Planet. And our journey to the tiny, rural outpost of Les Abricots is about to show us why. A municipality in the Jérémie Arrondissement, in Haiti’s Grand’Anse Department, Les Abricots is home to one of the world’s great educational initiatives –
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Events
Hand in Hand for Haiti – Jérémie, City of Poets
We’re all emotionally moved and humbled by our visit to shanty town Cité Soleil as we make our way back to the domestic terminal at Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport. If ever there was a case of people crying out for help, it is those we met this morning. The humility we saw and the
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Events
Hand in Hand for Haiti – inside Cité Soleil
It’s a 5.45 a.m. start today, to allow us to visit Port-au-Prince’s infamous shanty town Cité Soleil, before we fly to Jérémie in the south west of Haiti. You don’t just walk into Cité Soleil – it’s a dangerous place on many levels, home to some 250,000 residents who live in acute poverty and amid
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Miscellaneous
Hand in Hand for Haiti – from Les Cayes to Camp Perrin
Next step on our whirlwind trip around Haiti is Les Cayes, the country’s fourth-biggest city. While not impacted directly by the January earthquake, it has seen a surge of refugees from the worst-hit areas, especially Port-au-Prince. We’re right next to the Caribbean here, on the site of an old rum port. Sister Marthe from the
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Events
Hand in Hand for Haiti – a touch of divine intervention
God moves in mysterious ways… After we return to Jacmel Airport for our onward journey to Les Cayes, we encounter a group of nuns from the famous Missionaries of Charity, founded by the legendary Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa died in 1997 but the Roman Catholic group has stayed true to her remarkable mission to help
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Events
Hand in Hand for Haiti – Journey to Jacmel
It’s a dank, misty morning as we drive down through Port-au-Prince on our way to the domestic airport terminal to catch an early flight to the town of Jacmel. Our route takes us past countless crushed buildings; sombre, grey heaps of rubble, some with undiscovered bodies still buried deep beneath. A simple white sheet hanging
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Miscellaneous
Hand in Hand for Haiti – a city of ruins
Driving through the downtown area of Port-au-Prince is like arriving in a city after an apocalypse. Whatever you’ve seen on CNN, this is a hundred times worse. An estimated 80% of buildings in the heart of the capital’s downtown area were destroyed by the January 12 earthquake. Piles and piles of rubble line the streets
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Miscellaneous
Saving lives with lipstick
There were paparazzi blocking the pavement hours before the event began. Inside there were buff boys in tight pink T-shirts serving drinks. There was supermodel Agyness Deyn, working combat chic, flanked by her designer sidekick Henry Holland. Hell, there was even Dancing On Ice judge Jason Gardiner. It could only be a MAC event… But
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Miscellaneous
Bound for Port-au-Prince
I’m on my way to Haiti, via an overnight stay at the Hilton Garden Inn Queens Hotel at New York JFK Airport before the early morning flight down to Port-au-Prince in the morning. I have to say that arriving at New York JFK Terminal 7 (the British Airways terminal) was one of the easiest and
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Airports
Sign of the times
It’s good to see first-hand evidence of our industry’s highly efficient lobby. Travelling through Orlando Airport last week en route to London, I visited the Alpha duty and tax free store, a nice, tidy, accessible outlet. The constraints that US airport retailers have to face, though, were plain to see. There’s the painful process of
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Miscellaneous
Scrum down, but Ireland finish on the up
Some of travel retail’s finest (their description) athletes were determined on Saturday that they would not be found wanting, should their countries ever come calling. In the build-up to the eagerly awaited Six Nations rugby clash between England and Ireland at Twickenham, Ireland’s Liam Flood and Dermot Davitt (left, representing the Aer Rianta International and
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Airports
A question of age
Sometimes life is stranger than fiction… Today, for the first time since I was a young student drinking at my local pub in Christchurch, New Zealand, I was asked for proof of age after ordering alcohol. I kid you not. This Blog comes to you from Orlando Airport, where, having arrived early to ensure I
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