Simon Calder: Origami is the latest holiday sport

The Man Who Pays His Way

For wise tourists, travelling life goes on as usual. While some sportsmen opt to stay at home, more courageous adventurers are discovering that, for all the wrong reasons, now is a fine time to see the world. In particular, the countries of the Middle East are open for tourism and are absurdly empty. Katharine Leck, of the guidebook publisher Lonely Planet, has just returned from 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, Mohammed, proved to be a shrewd operator. 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 world events – a 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'," says Katharine. "We bought in a panic only to discover that the 'earth-shattering' event was that Tony Blair happened to be in Egypt."

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 cotton 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 sunglasses, with a fag hanging out of its mouth and a bottle of Jack Daniels. What do the locals think of us tourists?"

For decades, Latin America has been perceived by many travellers as a dodgy destination. Countries such as Bolivia get through governments at a rate faster than one a year; some householders in Brazil employ a guard lion as a more effective deterrent than a dog; and beautiful, benighted Colombia cannot shake off the madness that has haunted it for 50 years.

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

Andre de Mendonca of South American Experience was delighted when I told him. "Plenty of people feel it is the safest part of the world to visit right now, which is a welcome turn-round," he said. "It's also spring in Chile and Argentina, and approaching the best time of year to go for the glaciers."

Brazil, he added, "needs bums on beaches – it has a 5,000-mile shoreline to fill." The national airline, Varig, is trying to get bottoms on seats. It has cut the fare to Rio to £422 return. The extra cost to Santiago is just £53, but beware of people drilling through the centre of the earth.

Be warned, also, that the bandidos of Central America are continuing to dream up novel ways of fleecing foreigners. The US Embassy in Guatemala warns that the latest trick in the fine city of Antigua is to stage a fake bank raid and rob tourists in the ensuing mayhem.

Worrying: That's what I do most of the time. And a fair amount of fretting is expended on rival publications, checking how The Independent's travel ideas, writing and images shape up. In newspapers, as in travel, competition is a grand thing. It keeps us honest and sharp. But right now I'm anxious about some competitors' grasp on reality.

Earlier this month, a Sunday newspaper trumpeted as an "exclusive" a story about easyValue's airfare search engine that drills into airlines' and agents' databases to find the lowest fare for any trip. If that sounds familiar, it could be because you read about it here in July. As soon as the system is up and running (which it wasn't yesterday), I will let you know.

More puzzling was last Saturday's tranche of travel awards in a different newspaper, in which readers were asked to nominate the best and worst in the world of travel. Some of their responses hint at the existence of a parallel travel universe.

The "worst cross-Channel operator" was Swansea Cork Ferries, whose very name indicates it is not usually to be found shuttling between Dover and Calais. Also named and shamed was Red Funnel, which never attempts anything more ambitious than the Solent between Southampton and the Isle of Wight. And third worst was Sally Line, which vanished from the British traveller's radar early in 1998. The buoyancy of its lingering infamy suggests that Sally Line was truly awful.

Airtours picked up a hat-trick of "worst in the world" awards: as tour operator, cruise operator and ski company. The company will have to console itself with the knowledge that it sells more holidays than anyone else.

I make geographical blunders, having unwittingly shifted the Canadian city of Winnipeg from Manitoba to Alberta only a fortnight ago. But most of us can distinguish between a city and an entire country. So it was a surprise to learn that the third-worst city for food is.... Spain.

"Sixty-six per cent of people said they would pay more for more legroom on planes" was another conclusion. Why the use of the conditional "would"? It suggests that two out of three people are unaware that they can already pay for more legroom, by the cunning ruse of buying a business or first-class seat.

The readers are subjecting themselves to unnecessary pain. Stop flying Aeroflot ("the world's worst airline"), stop eating in Spain, and stop trying to reach Calais via Cowes.

Meanwhile, this column's travel awards go to anyone prepared to venture to Africa, Arabia, Asia or America.

Bronwyn Gold Blyth died this week, tragically young. She was a brilliant campaigner for the travel clients of her public relations company, BGB – and also a highly respected member of the travel industry, who cared passionately about the impact that tourism has on the world. Bronwyn will be sadly missed.

Simon.Calder@independent.co.uk