TRAVEL & LEISURE
VOICE OF ASIA 17
FRIDAY, June 14, 2019
US’s Grand Canyon offers awe-inspiring beauty but sometimes deadly risk by Sébastien Duval
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RAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK , United States | AFP | 6/6/2019 - Attention, Grand Canyon visitors -- watch your step before attempting a selfie from the edge of the vertiginously deep and perilously steep US landmark. The national park surrounding the enormous canyon -- the second-most visited US national park, after the Great Smoky Mountains in the country’s southeast -- has experienced a distressing surge in fatal accidents, with at least four visitors dying in as many weeks in March and April. The views that draw millions to the park in the high Arizona desert are stunning, to be sure, both in their rich earth hues and in the sheer immensity of the gap cleaved over eons by the unceasing Colorado River as it winds sinuously through the canyon bottom. But the views can also distract or disorient visitors -- some of whom take risks despite park rangers’ constant warnings -and the result can be fatal. The body of a Japanese tourist was the first one found this spring, located in a wooded area some distance from the rocky cliffs.
pants of a park ranger. “That’s sense.”
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But at the park’s Mather Point, which offers especially scenic views not far from the visitor center on the canyon’s South Rim, the message does not always get through. This natural vista point, the most heavily visited in the park, may be the spot in the US most often captured in visitors’ selfies. From here to the canyon’s North Rim is a distance of 10 miles (16 kilometers). There are protective barriers. But not far away, a young woman ventures to the very edge of the cliff. “We can see well enough from here,” British tourist Kathryn Kelly sniffs dismissively, looking at the risk-taking woman. “I don’t see the point stepping closer to the edge.” “I heard of a man who died trying to take a selfie, and I’m struggling to feel sorry for him,” Kelly said. “It’s a kind of natural selection.” - Heat, suicides, snakebites Of the dozen people who, on average, die each year in the
Then came three fatal falls, including that of a fifty-something tourist from Hong Kong who toppled over the edge while snapping photos. The park has placed protective barriers at some popular vista points, but “we don’t want to put barriers everywhere,” park spokeswoman Kris Fister told AFP. “The specialness about parks is not being enclosed.” “You don’t have a barrier between you and this amazing place,” she added, “but you have to pay attention.” “We tell people to stay on the designated trails and walkways and to keep a safe distance from the rim” -- and of course, to pay attention when taking pictures, said Fister, dressed in the gray military-style shirt and khaki
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canyon, relatively few fall to their deaths, according to park service statistics. Most deaths are linked to the dramatic change in altitude and to dehydration in the crushing summer heat faced by hikers -- despite the frequent warning signs that say things like “Don’t become a statistic” and “Down is optional, up is mandatory.” But for those who make it to the bottom of the canyon, near the turbulent, muddy waters of the Colorado, Phantom Ranch offers a welcome oasis, a place to rest and spend the night after long, draining hours of hiking. Among the books on a shelf in the ranch’s dining room is one that lists every death registered in the park: “Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon.” Falls, flash flooding, drowning, storms, snakes, suicides, even murders ... there are as many ways to die in the Grand Canyon as there are ways to photograph (and of course Instagram) it. Jim Stanley, a 71-year-old from Michigan, read the book before taking on this dangerous wonder of nature, where nearly seven million visitors are expected this year for the 100th anniversary of Grand Canyon’s
Posted signs warn tourists and hikers of the dangers of hiking in the Grand Canyon on May 14, 2019. The Grand Canyon experienced an unusual number of accidental deaths this spring. (AFP/Sébastien Duval) classification as a national park. “I haven’t been discouraged; I’m now aware of the risks,” he said, his hiking pants proudly held up by a pair of suspenders in the red, white and blue of the American flag. “Too many people take the Grand Canyon for granted,”
he added. “But it’s not Disneyland.”
a sort of earthbound Bermuda Triangle vibe.
There has always been an element of mystery, or mysticism, surrounding the park and its awe-inspiring landscape. The numerous accidental deaths in its vast territory through the years have even given rise to
Two airplanes once collided above the canyon, claiming 128 lives in what, at the time, was the worst commercial aviation accident in US history. That was in 1956, long before the advent of the selfie.
NASA to open International Space Station to tourists from 2020
EW YORK | AFP | Friday 6/7/2019 NASA said Friday it will open up the International Space Station to business ventures including space tourism as it seeks to financially disengage from the orbiting research lab. Price tag? Tens of millions of dollars for a round trip ticket and $35,000 a night. “NASA is opening the International Space Station to commercial opportunities and marketing these opportunities
as we’ve never done before,” NASA chief financial officer Jeff DeWit said in an announcement made at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York. There will be up to two short private astronaut missions per year, said Robyn Gatens, deputy director of the ISS. The missions will be for stays of up to 30 days. As many as a dozen private astronauts could visit the ISS per year, NASA said. These travelers would be fer-
Mystery surrounds American deaths in Dominican Republic
Private astronauts will be permitted up to 30 days’ travel to the ISS. ried to the orbiter exclusively by the two US companies currently developing transport vehicles for NASA: SpaceX, with its Crew Dragon capsule, and Boeing, which is building one called Starliner.
2009. Since 2011, Russian Soyuz rockets have been the only way to get to the space station. And they have transported only space agency astronauts, in addition to Russian cosmonauts.
space economy in the hope of seeing the private sector take over the ISS, which the United States hopes to stop financing in the late 2020s. “We want to be there as a tenant, not as the landlord,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said in April.
These companies would There are usually three to six choose the clients -- who will crew members on the ISS at not have to be US citizens -- and bill for the trip to the ISS, which will be the most expensive part of the adAn Aristocratic Party venture: around $58 million for a roundtrip ticket. Democratic Price That is the average rate the companies will bill NASA for taking the space adventurers up to the ISS.
Aerial view of Punta Cana, in the east of the Dominican Republic (AFP Photo/Erika Santelices)
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ASHINGTON | AFP | 6/11/2019 US authorities are scrambling to get to the bottom of a rash of deaths of US tourists in the Dominican Republic, with the number of reported fatalities over the past year now rising to six. Three people whose deaths have been confirmed all arrived on May 25 in San Pedro de Macoris, a seaside resort in the south of the Caribbean country, Dominican authorities said. Miranda Schaup-Werner, 41, booked a room with her husband at the Luxury Bahia Principe Bouganville hotel. She lost consciousness on the day of her arrival after going out on the balcony. She could not be revived by her husband or hotel medical staff. Cynthia Day, 49, and Edward Holmes, 63, stayed in an adjacent hotel, Grand Bahia Principe La Romana. The couple from Maryland was found dead on May 30 in their room by hotel staff. According to the Dominican Prosecutor’s Office, the three victims died of respiratory failure and pulmonary edema. Schaup-Werner also had a heart
attack. - A pattern? News of the deaths has drawn attention to earlier deaths of American tourists at island resorts that received no publicity at the time -- some now suspect -- may have been part of a pattern. The sister of Yvette Monique Short told a Philadelphia television station that the 51-year-old died last June at the Bahia Principe after having a drink from the minibar in her room. Two other deaths that have recently come to light occurred more than a year apart at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in the resort town of Punta Cana. Robert Wallace, a 67-yearold from California, died there April 14, after drinking a Scotch from his minibar and falling ill, his niece Chloe Arnold told Fox News. “He started feeling very sick, he had blood in his urine and stool right afterward,” she said. David Harrison, 45, had died at the same hotel in July 2018. His widow, Dawn McCoy, initially accepted that he succumbed to a heart attack, as she was told, but now questions it.
“When all these people started passing, I stopped and thought to myself, ‘How can all these people have the same cause of death as David?’ “ she told The Washington Post. Steven Bullock, a lawyer for Day’s family, said autopsies and tests will be performed on Day and Holmes in the US. Asked about contacts with Dominican police and authorities, Bullock said “it has been very, very difficult. We haven’t heard enough and that’s part of the problem. “We don’t seem to be getting anything (from police). We have some reporters on the ground that are assisting us in gathering information that might be available,” he told AFP. Meanwhile, Colorado couple Kaylynn Knull and Tom Schwander told CNN that they suffered from headaches, abdominal cramps and diarrhea after encountering a strong smell of chemicals in the La Romana hotel in June 2018. According to tests done on their return home, they could have been exposed to pesticides used against ants and cockroaches.
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Neither Dragon nor Starliner are ready. Their transport capsules are supposed to be ready in late 2019 but the timetable depends on the results of a series of tests. So the private missions will have to wait until 2020 at the earliest.
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The tourists will pay NASA for their use of the station, for food, water and use of the life support system.
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That will run about $35,000 per night per astronaut, said DeWit.
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That does not include internet, which will cost $50 per gigabyte. - ‘Tenant, not landlord’ The space station does not belong to NASA. It was built along with Russia starting in 1998, and other countries participate in the mission and send up astronauts. But the United States has paid for and controls most of the modules that make it up. The new space tourists to the ISS will not be the first: US businessman Dennis Tito had that honor in 2001. He paid Russia around $20 million for the trip. Others followed in his footsteps, the last being Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte in
525 Dulles Ave, Stafford, TX 77477 any given time. Right now it is home to three Americans, two Russians and a Canadian. Russia plans to resume tourist flights in late 2021. The policy change announced Friday includes the opening of parts of the ISS to private sector companies for commercial and marketing activity. This would include startups developing techiques for building materials in conditions of weightlessness. Fiber optic cables, for example, are of extraordinary quality when manufactured in microgravity. The idea is to develop the
The agency wants to free up funds for a return to the moon mission called Artemis in 2024 and for sending the first humans to Mars, perhaps in the 2030s. But it remains unclear if commercial activity in earth orbit is profitable because it is still so expensive to get up there in the first place. In the end, NASA appears to have changed its stance in order to meet its huge budget needs. When Russia announced it was taking Tito to the space station, NASA was at first opposed to such a mission. And it ended up sending the Russians a bill for his stay on the ISS.