Adventurous travellers find it's a great time to go

By SIMON CALDER

LONDON - For wise tourists, travelling life goes on as usual. While some sportsmen decide to stay at home, more courageous adventurers are discovering that, for all the wrong reasons, now is a wonderful time to see much of the world.

In particular, the countries of the Middle East are open for tourism and absurdly empty. Katharine Leck, who works for the guidebook publisher Lonely Planet, has just returned from a stay at a resort on the Red Sea. In these troubled times, she – like plenty of travellers – was keen to keep up with world events.

The local newspaper vendor, named Mohammed, proved to be a shrewd businessman. He realised few customers would be prepared to pay £3 for a two-day old British newspaper. So he upped the service level by sitting on the end of the sunbed and describing more recent goings on - a kind of verbal stop-press addendum to his time-depleted wares: "One day he came along bearing what he said was 'extremely important news for the English nation'. We bought in a panic only to discover that the 'big' news was that Tony Blair happened to be in Egypt that day."

With business down around 80 per cent compared with last October, the staff had plenty of time to dabble in creative tasks.

"The cleaner indulged in towel origami that became more extravagant through the week. On day one he built a swan. By day two it had become a swan reading a Lonely Planet Egypt guide. By the end of the week, I walked into the room to find a whole towel person, wearing my nightclothes with a fag hanging out of its mouth and a glass in hand. What do the locals think of us tourists?"

For decades, Latin America has been perceived by many as a dodgy destination. Countries such as Bolivia get through governments at a rate faster than one a year; some householders in Brazil reckon that a guard lion is more effective than any canine; and tragic, beautiful Colombia seems unable to shake off the communal madness that has haunted it for half a century.

But were you to drill a hole diametrically through the centre of the earth from the middle of Kabul (not something I would personally recommend), you will emerge just outside the Chilean capital, Santiago.

"Plenty of people feel it is the safest part of the world to visit right now, which is a welcome turn-round", says Andre de Mendonca of South American Experience.

Be warned, however, that the bandidos of Central America have lost nothing of their imaginative flair. The US Embassy in Guatemala sent out an alarm this week that the latest trick for "violent attacks" on foreigners in the city of Antigua is to stage a fake armed robbery or road accident and rob tourists in the ensuing mayhem.

- INDEPENDENT