Antigua's Hermitage Bay All-Inclusive Resort Offers Weekly Cooking Lessons

 

Antigua's Hermitage Bay Offers Caribbean Cooking Lessons

Antigua’s Hermitage Bay’s Executive Chef, and Jamaican native, Dezi Banham will offer culinary classes to demonstrate how Caribbean cooking techniques can be implemented back home. Following in the footsteps of the Italian “Slow Food Movement,” where emphasis is placed on farm to table practices, Banham combines the island’s local resources with Caribbean flare. “When cooking for our guests, I strive to capture the essence of family dinners prepared by my mother and grandmother,” said Banham.

Each week Banham will educate guests on how to prepare a range of refined Caribbean classics found on Hermitage Bay’s menus. The recipes chosen are prepared with ingredients mainly found on-island including fruits from the nearby fruit farm, mussels hand-picked just off-shore and herbs and vegetables from the resort’s new organic garden. Recently cultivated, Hermitage Bay’s organic garden was developed to minimize the harmful effects of importation and maximize the many natural resources available on island. For further culinary education, tours of the garden -- where native Caribbean vegetables like okra, calalloo and dasheen are grown in addition to essential ingredients like rosemary, thyme, mint and onions -- are available to guests complimentary. Culinary classes are offered complimentary when booking an all-inclusive stay at Hermitage Bay. Contact wecare@freedumbtravels.com for booking information.

Christ the Redeemer Statue Closed to Public

Brazil Christ the Redeemer statue cut off by mudslides

The iconic Christ the Redeemer statue has towered over Rio de Janeiro for the past eight decades

Rio de Janeiro's towering Christ the Redeemer statue has been closed to the public after landslides that hit Brazil, killing some 250 people.

     Access to the statue was cut off for the first time in its 80-year history as roads were blocked by debris.
More bodies have been uncovered as rescue workers search through the wreckage of shanty towns buried after torrential rain caused the mudslides.
     The death toll may rise as 200 people are still missing, officials say.
     They have also warned that further landslides are possible, given the saturated soil.
Analysts say ramshackle shanty towns built on steep hills are most at risk. Most of the landslide victims were residents of shanty towns, where about a fifth of Rio de Janeiro's population live.
On Tuesday, search crews found more bodies buried in homes by a massive landslide that hit a shanty town outside Rio de Janeiro city.
Indefinite closure
     Towering over Rio de Janeiro, the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue was named one of the new wonders of the world in 2007, and is visited by two million tourists a year.
It was cut off when Tijuca National Park's Corcovado mountain on which it sits was hit by severe mudslides, park officials said.
     Park director Bernard Issa said he hoped it would reopen "within one or two months".
     The landslides in and around Brazil's second biggest city were set off by downpours that began last Monday - the area's heaviest rainfall for decades.
     Work is under way to clear the debris and mend roads, and Rio de Janeiro state's governor said as many as 150 bodies could still be underneath the mud in the Morro do Bumba shanty town.
Set in the municipality of Niteroi, across the bay from the city of Rio, Morro do Bumba was built on top of a disused landfill, making it prone to landslides.
     Rio de Janeiro's Mayor, Eduardo Paes, said families were being evacuated from high-risk areas.
He said 4,000 families had been made homeless and 10,000 houses remained at risk.
     Mr Paes estimated the total cost of repair work would be at least $113m (£73m).

Courtesy of BBC News

Kentucky Court Dismisses Suit Against Online Travel Companies

A Kentucky court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the city of Bowling Green against Hotels.com, Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity claiming that the companies owed back occupancy taxes to the city. Warren County Circuit Court Judge Steve Alan Wilson agreed with the online travel companies (OTCs) contention that the taxes can be levied only on the physical establishment that provides sleeping accommodations. The judge said in his opinion that if governments want to levy this kind of tax, they must do so through their legislatures, not through the courts. Including this case, the online travel companies have now won nine of the 10 court decisions on these issues.

"We are pleased and gratified that the court recognized that online travel companies neither own nor operate hotels and thus should not be liable for hotel occupancy taxes. We hope that other municipalities will recognize the growing body of legal decisions in favor of the industry on this issue and work through cooperation, rather than litigation, to increase local tourism,” said Andrew Weinstein, spokesman for the Interactive Travel Services Association.