Hostels are traditional backpacker accommodation, providing cheap beds in a communal atmosphere. Most have rooms with four to ten bunks each, kitchen facilities for individual use, showers, a common room with television, and clothes washers. Some have swimming pools, gardens, camping areas, game rooms, and other amenities.
Hostels belonging to Hostelling International usually enforce certain rules and standards. These include a midnight curfew and a mid-morning until late-afternoon lockout when all guests are required to leave the premises, although you can leave your stuffthere. (Many urban HI hostels now offer 24-hour access.) Simple chores such as emptying wastebaskets may be assigned. Non-HI hostels generally do not have a lockout period, and curfews are non-existent or flexible. Most hostels segregate guests by sex, but not all all the time.
Backpacker hotels are such a force in Australia and New Zealand that they are simply referred to as 'backpackers'. There are about thirty in Sydney, a dozen in Auckland, and every other city and town of size has at least one or two. While similar to hostels, they have no or looser lockout and curfew rules. Some guests really enjoy the atmosphere and stay for months while working, or looking for work. Some are large, older homes, while others are former regular hotels adapted to meet the new backpacker market.
Traditional bed-and-breakfast accommodation is common in Britain and Ireland. In Scarborough, England, I recall walking several streets where almost every house had a sign proclaiming vacancy. In seaside and other vacation towns bed-and-breakfast hotels are often clustered like this, so it can be relatively easy to find an available room.
Pensions are the rough equivalent to bed-and-breakfast hotels on the European continent. These small hotels have two to ten rooms, with usually shared bath facilities. Breakfast is provided, which is something of a social event as guests chat away. Many English patrons go to the same bed and breakfast at the same time every year, creating a family atmosphere.
Accommodation in private homes is also common in Eastern Europe and developing countries, where enterprising families trying to make ends meet take in guests on an informal basis. You maybe met at train stations by groups of older women holding signs declaring 'room' or 'zimmer' (German for room).
For every hostel in Europe there are four or five legal places to erect a tent, ranging from delightful municipal campgrounds in city parks, to gigantic caravan (RV) parks. Many small towns and villages, and nearly all medium-sized and larger towns, have a campground, usually within the city limits.
Norway, Sweden, and Finland have an 'Everyman's Right' law. This means campers are allowed one or two nights on private lands outside city limits as long as they stay out of sight and leave without a trace. Ireland, with its long tradition of tinkers (traveling menders), has many accommodating farmers if you ask permission. Many hostels have a lawn area where campers are allowed to set up at half-price, but with full use of all facilities.
So you want to get away for a while. I've combed the brochures for glamorous getaways at reasonable prices... and not a theme park in sight!
France
You'll feel like royalty in one of these marvellous apartments in the Chateau de Grezan, in the south of France. Surrounded by vineyards, with the beach only a short trip away, this is just the place if you're desperate to escape from city life. The Chateau consists of only four luxury apartments (so hurry before they're all snapped up!), an excellent restaurant and a swimming pool. If you can't resist the urge to go and mix with the extremely rich, St Tropez is just a few hours' drive away. Prices are based on seven nights self-catering with five people sharing an apartment and include return scheduled flights and car hire for the week. Cost is £325 per person departing mid-June with Crystal Holidays.
Egypt
If you're the type of tourist who enjoys a bit of sightseeing, Egypt is fascinating with its vast cultural attractions and the legendary River Nile. Luxor, the ancient city of Thebes, and the centre of Egyptian power for over 1,400 years, is not as busy as the more popular resorts. Luxor itself is extremely relaxing and, from there, you can take some fascinating excursions, which even include a Sound and Light Show. Seven nights at the New Emilio in Luxor cost £279 per person, departing in May and June, including return flights, airport transfers and bed and breakfast (B&B).
Kenya
The magnificent wildlife of Mombasa's famous game reserves undoubtedly attracts most tourists to this more exotic area, but the beaches and coconut trees swaying in the wind are also a welcome addition. With busy street markets, historic monuments and over 20 miles of white sand, Mombasa is a paradise. However, if you're after an alternative to sunbathing and swimming in the clear blue sea, there's lots to do – including a tour of Mombasa or a safari in Tsavo National Park. Seven nights at Mombasa's Jadini Beach Hotel cost from £399 per person. Departures in April. Price includes return flights, airport transfers and B&B.
Mexico
With its tropical scenery, Spanish churches and markets full of Indian delights, Mexico is becoming an increasingly popular place to visit. The West Coast is a diver's paradise, but even if you aren't into water sports, the beaches around Cancun offer silver sands with a taste of the Caribbean. If you're up to it, the nightlife is pretty wild, too. A 14-night stay with half board at the Sona Hotel in Cacun, in early May, costs from £449. Flights are also available on request.
Italy
For real peace and tranquillity, whisk yourself away to Selva in the Italian Gardena Valley, amidst the breathtaking Dolomites and just a short trip away from the pine National Forest. Take a chair-lift up above the tree tops and enjoy the beautiful scenery – pure escapism and the ideal location if you're the type who is keen on keeping fit and into walking. Selva is also the perfect base for excursions to Venice and border-hopping trips to Austria and Switzerland. Go for 10 nights B&B in June, including flights, from £408 per person.
The Australian population today is a mix of European, Asian and Aboriginal. Since the nineteenth century, millions of people have emigrated to Australia from other countries. Although Aborigines have lived in Australia for over 40,000 years, only one per cent of the population today is Aboriginal. After the first European settlers arrived in the eighteenth century, many Aborigines died of disease and hunger. Today only about 100,000 Aborigines survive.
Eighty per cent of the population live in cities. Nearly all the large Australian cities are on the coast and the distances between them are vast. Perth, in Western Australia, is over 2700 kilometres from its closest neighbour, Adelaide.
Sydney is Australia's largest city. It has a spectacular harbour, harbour bridge and modern opera house.
The landscape of the south and south-east is green and fertile.
Central Australia is called 'the Outback'. It is a huge area of desert, small trees and bushes, where very few people live. In the centre of the Outback is Uluru or Ayer's Rock, a giant red sandstone rock.
The Great Barrier Reef, a chain of coral reefs and islands, runs for over 2000 kilometres along the east coast.
Australia is separate from other continents and has its own unique species of wildlife. These include 'marsupials' - the kangaroo, wallaby and koala bear - which keep their young in a pouch. In the northern territories, you can also find crocodiles and aligators.
You can go to Australia flying low cost.
Strange things have been happening recently in Robertsbridge in the south of England. Last week a lady saw two polar bears outside a railway station and yesterday a jogger bumped into a team of husky dogs with a sled on wheels in a nearby forest. It seems that the dogs and the sled were real but the two polar bears were two students in disguise. They came from a local secondary school and were raising money for their field trip: a visit to the North Pole.
At the end of March, eight students from Robertsbridge School in Sussex will go on Polarwatch, a ten-day expedition to Resolute Bay, which is a small Inuit settlement of 200 people in the Canadian Arctic. The purpose of the trip is to study weather conditions in the Arctic and look at the effects of global warming. The climax of the trip will be a flight to the magnetic North Pole. They will be the first British school party to go there.
Anybody in Years 9 and 10 at the school was allowed to apply but only eight students were chosen. It made no difference if the students were rich or poor. They had to be strong and fit. In the end the teachers leading the group chose the ones who were the most sociable and had the most common sense.
Obviously, the expedition is going to cost quite a lot, so for the past year the students have been working hard to raise the money. That is what the students were doing in the forest with a team of husky dogs and a sled – they were on a sponsored sled run.
Alice Fletcher, one of the chosen eight students says, 'I've I ve always dreamt of going to the North Pole. It's the chance of a lifetime, isn't it? I can't believe how lucky I am.'
Andrew Martin has been living totally alone on a desert island off the coast of Australia for over thirty years. It wasn't easy to set up a meeting with someone who has no telephone and only gets letters every three months, but we finally got in touch and he invited me to visit.
As the helicopter approached, I found myself looking down on the kind of place that people dream of. Percy Island, which is covered in tropical jungle, has golden beaches lined with coconut trees and is set in clear blue sea. When we landed, Andrew Martin was there to greet me, wearing only an old pair of swimming trunks and flip-flops.
As we walked to the house, I found out more about him. After visiting his sister in Japan thirty years ago, he travelled to Australia, where he bought a boat. While a friend was teaching him to sail, they stopped by chance at Percy Island, which was for sale for £16,000. Andrew, whose boat was worth the same amount, immediately decided to buy it. Originally he planned to stay for a few months and sell it at a profit, but he found that he wanted to stay. Now, even though he could probably sell the island for £20 million, he is not interested. 'It's too good to sell to a developer who is going to treat it as some kind of toy. To me it's like the most precious jewel in the world.'
After a forty-five minute walk through the dense jungle, we got to the house, where we were surrounded at once by dogs, chickens, geese and peacocks. The building was not much more than an old wooden hut with a tin roof. He showed me round, and gave me time to unpack. The room which he gave me had a marvellous view, but the first thing I noticed was the largest spider I had ever seen. I tried to stay calm, but I got really nervous when I also learned that the whole island was full of poisonous snakes. Andrew told me not to worry. He said that the only ones I was likely to meet were the boa constrictors that hung in the trees near the outside toilet.
Over the next few days, I began to see what it was really like to live on a desert island. Percy Island is as beautiful as any exotic holiday advertisement, but Andrew does not spend his time sunbathing and swimming; it is much too dangerous to go in the sea, which is full of sharks and stonefish. He has to work more than most people to provide the things he needs, and makes a little money by selling fruit to boats that come to visit from time to time.
He says he never planned to live alone, but 'it just happened that way'. Now he is used to it, and does not miss other people at all. What he enjoys is the feeling of being completely free. Nobody can tell him what to do, and if he does not like anyone who comes to the island, he asks them to leave.
On my last day, as I sat on the beach waiting for the flight back to the mainland, I was desperately looking forward to getting back to the comforts of modern life. It was a great relief when the helicopter landed and took me away. Soon Percy Island was just another green dot in the deep blue sea. To me, it did not feel at all as if I was leaving paradise; it was like being rescued from hell.
The Pirahã are an isolated Amazonian tribe of hunter-gatherers who live deep in the Brazilian rainforest. The tribe has survived, their culture intact, for centuries, although there are now only around 200 left. The Piraha, who communicate mainly through hums and whistles, have fascinated ethnologists for years, mainly because they have almost no words for numbers. They use only three words to count: one, two, and many.
We know about the Pirahã thanks to an ex-hippy and former missionary, Dan Everett, now a Professor of Phonetics, who spent seven years with the tribe in the 70s and 80s. Everett discovered a world without numbers, without time, without words for colours, without subordinate clauses and without a past tense. Their language, he found, was not just simple grammatically; it was restricted in its range of sounds and differed between the sexes. For the men, it has just eight consonants and three vowels; for the women, who have the smallest number of speech sounds in the world, to seven consonants and three vowels. To the untutored ear , the language sounds more like humming than speech. The Pirahã can also whistle their language, which is how men communicate when hunting.
Their culture is similarly constrained . The Pirahã can't write, have little collective memory, and no concept of decorative art. In 1980 Everett tried to teach them to count: he explained basic arithmetic to an enthusiastic group keen to learn the skills needed to trade with other tribes. After eight months, not one could count to ten; even one plus one was beyond them . The experiment seemed to confirm Everett's theory: the tribe just couldn't conceive the concept of number.
The Pirahã's inability to count is important because it seems to disprove Noam Chomsky's influential Theory of Universal Grammar, which holds that the human mind has a natural capacity for language, and that all languages share a basic rule structure, which enables children to understand abstract concepts such as number. One of Chomsky's collaborators has recently gone on an expedition with Everett to study the tribe. We do not yet know if the Piraha have persuaded him to change his theory.