L6 SUNDAY, JANUARY 19, 2020 LATIMES.COM/TRAVEL

THE CONCIERGE

The Shan and theKaren are the twolargest ethnic minor-ities in which South-east Asian country?

* Laos

* Thailand

* MyanmarAnswer below. Source:National Geographic Bee

GEO QUIZ

MEXICO and

GUATEMALA

Experience southern Mexi-co on a 10-day jungle rivertrip on the Rio Usumacinta,which has ruins of the Mayacivilization tucked along itsbanks. Participants willfloat on the river, watch forwildlife and camp at theMaya cities of Yaxchilán,Mexico, and Piedras Negras,Guatemala, with a full dayof exploration at each. Thelast several days includeClass II and III whitewaterrapids navigating the narrow San José and SanJosecito canyons.

Dates: Feb. 19-28, March 6-15

Price: $2,100 per person,double occupancy; $200single supplement. Includeshotel accommodations inVillahermosa and Palenque,Mexico; tents; all meals onthe river; rafting and safetygear; and professionalguides. International airfarenot included.

Info: Far Flung Adventures,(800) 359-2627, farflung.com/rio-usumacinta

— Anne Harnagel

IDAHO

Backcountry fun

Add a little adventure toyour life with an off-the-gridsnowmobiling excursion inthe backcountry near McCall, Idaho, a resort townknown for its skiing andsnowmobile terrain. The guided tour, whichincludes a picnic and a soakin the mineral waters ofBurgdorf Hot Springs, ispart of a two-night mini-vacation at Shore LodgeResort in McCall, 100 milesnorth of Boise. Spa treat-ments and dinner are in-cluded.

Dates: Winter months

Price: From $2,750 for twofor a two-night stay. In-cludes snowmobile rentals,some meals, activities anddinner at the NarrowsSteakhouse.

Info: Shore Lodge Resort,(800) 657-6464 , shorelodge.com

— Rosemary McClure

PANAMA CANAL

From sea to sea

Spend a week exploring theregion on a new Pearl SeasCruises itinerary that trav-els the length of the PanamaCanal. The cruise makesport stops in Cartagena,Colombia, and Panama’sSan Blas Islands, GatúnLake, Panama City and LasPerlas Archipelago, knownfor the island of Contadora,a popular tourist destina-tion The cruise begins inCartagena or Panama City,where participants canexplore the Casco Viejo, theold city, built in the 1670s.

Dates: Cruises begin Dec. 1.

Prices: From $4,675 perperson, double occupancy.Includes accommodationsaboard the Pearl Mist, anall-balcony ship that holds210 passengers, as well asmeals and activities.

Info: Pearl Seas Cruises,(800) 981-9146, bit.ly/panamacanalcruise

— Rosemary McClure

TOURS &

CRUISES

Into theworld ofthe Maya

GEO QUIZ ANSWER:

Myanmar

My sister is 18 months old-er than I am, but I’m taller. Itused to drive her crazy as wewere growing up when peopleasked whether we were twinsor, worse, if I was older.

I thought it was obvious.She was friendly, confidentand funny. I was proud to fol-low her.

And follow her I did, fromkindergarten all throughhigh school. Our paths di-verged at college. She spenther junior year abroad in Syd-ney, Australia, and hadfriends all over Europe.

A family medical emer-gency brought her backhome after graduation, butshe later found a way back toEurope. She spent a year inLondon studying interna-tional business and hoppedto other countries on breaks;she picnicked at Versailles,France, and saw the north-ern lights in Norway.

I finished college andstayed put in Pasadena. Iloved hearing her stories andseeing her pictures.

After her stint in the U.K.,she settled in San Diego, buttravel was never far from herheart.

Early last year, she toldme about a deal on plane tick-ets to London. She hadn’tbeen back in five years. I toldher, half-jokingly, to book it,and she emailed me the flightconfirmations for a 10-daytrip — my 30th birthday pre-sent, she said.

Well, then.We had visited London as

children on a family summervacation two decades ago.There was a lot of art I didn’tfully appreciate at age 10, longbefore I majored in history.

I gave her a long list ofthings I had to see (Bucking-ham Palace; KensingtonPalace; and such staples asthe British Museum, the Na-tional Gallery and the Na-tional Portrait Gallery, andthe Tate).

Our biggest adventurewas Chatsworth House, theseat of the Duke of Dev-onshire and home to the Cav-endish family since 1549. (It’sbest recognized as Pember-ley in the Keira Knightley-starring “Pride and Preju-dice.”)

We stayed at an inn on theChatsworth property and,despite asking the front deskattendant for directionstwice, still managed to getlost.

A kind man helped us.Once we crossed the road, wewere on our way. Walkingthrough fields of sheep in theEnglish countryside felt like aJane Austen movie moment.

My sister planned every-thing, from train tickets tothe Airbnb where we stayedin Camden. She timed ourentrances to museums anddidn’t give me too much side-eye when, after touring a mu-seum for two hours, I spotteda postcard in the gift shopthat showed a piece I had tosee.

Strangely enough, I thinkmy favorites were the pieces Ididn’t expect. Turning thecorner at Hampton CourtPalace and coming face toface with “Self-Portrait as theAllegory of Painting (LaPittura),” by Artemisia Gen-tileschi, took my breath away.

It wasn’t all museums.She showed me where sheused to live and the pubs shefrequented. I met her friends,matching names to faces,and imagined them as youngadventurers, hungry to seethe world. I marveled at howthey hadn’t lost that sense ofwonder. I think it was themost beautiful thing I saw onour trip.

We also went to the exhib-it of Leonardo da Vinci’sdrawings at the Queen’sGallery in BuckinghamPalace. One of my favoritequotes of his: “It had longsince come to my attentionthat people of accomplish-ment rarely sat back and letthings happen to them. Theywent out and happened tothings.”

Thank you, my adventur-ous big sister, for exemplify-ing this, for saying yes when itwould have been easier to sayno.

All these years later, I’mstill proud to follow you.

I’ve already started an-other list of things I can’t waitto see with you.

DEPARTUREPOINTS

My big sisled the wayin traveling By Molly Underwood

Cost of a ticket, Part 1Let’s say I want to fly to Mel-

bourne, Fla., which is a smallerairport that’s much more conven-ient than Orlando for many resortareas on the eastern coast. I wouldleave Feb. 3, a Monday, and returnFeb. 10, also a Monday.

I held my breath and found a fareof $202.

I would have purchased it but fortwo things: It had flight times ofalmost 15 hours there and almost 21hours back, and it was a basic econ-omy ticket.

Only you can decide whetheryour money is worth the extra time,but a 15-hour trip that lands you inMelbourne, Fla., doesn’t promisethe same rewards as a lengthy tripthat lands you in Melbourne, Aus-tralia.

Let’s say you don’t want to spendmore time in an airport. The nextbest fare I found that would notconsume my trip with layovers was$94 more, but it was still basic econ-omy.

Basic economy has been theresponse by legacy airlines (such asUnited, Delta and American) toultra-low-cost carriers, includingFrontier, Allegiant and Spirit. Astempting as it is to believe thatthese low-cost carriers nickel anddime you to death, they also give youbetter fares in many cases if youunderstand the rules.

The legacy carriers don’t play asmuch hardball as the ultra-lows(they don’t charge you to print aboarding pass, for instance), buteven with a legacy basic fare, youdon’t get as many opportunities toensure your well-being. You don’tget to choose your seats in advance,and you’ll lose your fare if you can’tmake the trip.

On the other hand, said SethKaplan, a longtime transportationanalyst, you get the same seatbackentertainment, you get a carry-onbag for free (on American and Delta,not on United) and maybe even asnack. That’s why he and his familytook a basic economy flight from theWashington, D.C., area to Montana,saving them about $200. The factthat you can’t choose your seat inadvance? “As a family, we almostalways get seated together,” he said.

Would I pay $366 to fly to Mel-bourne, Fla., or I would I choose the

$296 with a better schedule but still abasic fare?

The question you need to ask your-self: What’s my pain point? Identifyit and choose accordingly.

Cost of a ticket, Part 2As the year began, fuel prices

were relatively stable and had beenfor some time. Then trouble eruptedin the Middle East and fuel pricesshot up overnight. Then they settledback down.

It’s important to keep a watch onthose prices. As Tom Spagnola,senior vice president of supplierrelations for fare website CheapOair,has told me more than once, about25% of the cost of a ticket is the costof jet fuel.

The International Air TransportAssn., an airline industry group,makes it easy for you to keep track.Check out its Jet Fuel Price Monitorat bit.ly/jetfuelmonitor.

If you begin to see a steady, con-sistent increase, it’s best to buy nowbecause it takes four to six monthsfor those prices to cycle into the costof a ticket, Kaplan and Spagnolasaid. “It’s not as though you can justintroduce a price change the nextday,” Kaplan said.

The question you need to ask your-self: How is my risk tolerance? Do Idare buy a ticket this far out? ShouldI buy travel insurance?

Cost to the environmentHere’s great news for the airlines,

courtesy of Spagnola: Nearly 4.75billion passenger trips are expectedworldwide this year. That would be arecord, and an increase of 137% since2004.

That’s not necessarily great newsfor the environment. Although theairline industry isn’t the leadingoffender, it’s the growth in emissionsfrom air travel that are at issue,William Wilkes wrote in a MarchBloomberg article.

“All of these forecasts are terrify-ing climate scientists and activistswho say increasing concentrationsof greenhouse gases are leading torising temperatures, more extremeweather and higher death tolls fromnatural disasters caused at least inpart by human activity,” Wilkeswrote.

He then quoted Paul Fennel, a

professor of clean energy at ImperialCollege in London, as saying, “We areall going to have to reduce the extentto which we fly.”

Enter flight shaming, whichmeans you are wringing your handsover your carbon footprint and de-ciding perhaps you won’t take thattrip.

The idea has been gaining mo-mentum since about 2017 and may behaving an effect, according to theBBC. Domestic travel dropped 4% inSweden in 2019, which the BBC citesas the country of origin for flygskam,or flight shaming.

In July, KLM asked people toreduce their air travel, suggestingtrain travel in its place.

That’s a concept that works in theNetherlands and most of Europe alittle better than it does in the UnitedStates. You can get to Paris fromLondon (about 300 miles) by Eu-roStar in a little more than twohours. If you took Amtrak’s CoastStarlight from L.A. to San Francisco(about 380 miles), you could leaveL.A. at 10:10 a.m. and get to SanFrancisco about 10:30 p.m., with thelast of the trip by bus.

It’s not just that we don’t havehigh-speed trains; it’s the distancesyou must cover in this country ifyou’re headed for points east.

If you fly, several airlines let youbuy carbon offsets, including Delta,United and JetBlue.

Or you could plant trees. In astudy, 1st Move International calcu-lated how many trees you wouldneed to plant to mitigate a trip fromthe United Kingdom to variousplaces, then recalculated for LAX: toNew York City (seven), to Tokyo (15),to London (16) and to Bangkok,Thailand (23).

Should you fly? Not fly? Kaplannotes that even if you’re not on thatflight, it will take off anyway — atleast for now.

Until we have clean-air jets, this isgoing to be an increasingly largeissue.

The question you need to ask your-self: Can I live with myself if I go? Asa traveler, can I live with myself if Idon’t?

Have a travel dilemma, question orconcern? Write [email protected]. We regret wecannot answer every inquiry.

Cat O’Neil For The Times

ON THE SPOT CATHARINE HAMM

3 questions to askbefore you fly againIf you sometimes feel as though the world is conspiring against you and your flight plans, wonder no more. It is — but

for different reasons, although all fall under the banner of the “state of the world.” ¶ First is the cost of a ticket.

Second is the cost to the environment. ¶ Here are the questions you must ask yourself before you decide whether

your trip is a no or a go in 2020.