Travel Trivia Challenge

Posted on 08. Apr, 2009 by Kerry Banks in International

1. In what African country can you stay at a lodge called the The Giraffe Manor, where guests are likely to see giraffes stretching their entire head and neck through the breakfast room windows?
A. Tanzania
B. South Africa
C. Kenya
D. Uganda

2. After John Lennon’s death in 1980, the graffiti-covered “John Lennon Peace Wall” became a shrine for the youth of which city?
A. Amsterdam
B. Prague
C. New York
D. Liverpool

3. You are having a meal in Honduras and the waiter brings you a dish of “bamboo chicken.” What are you eating?
A. Skunk
B. Ocelot
C. Parrot
D. Iguana

4. In which Asian country will you find the mysterious “Plain of Jars”?
A. Laos
B. Iran
C. Turkey
D. South Korea

5. Which American city dyes its river a bright shade of green every year for St. Patrick’s Day?
A. Boston
B. Chicago
C. Pittsburgh
D. Charleston

6. The icon of the Black Madonna is the most important shrine in which country?
A. Brazil
B. El Salvador
C. Poland
D. Portugal

7. Maxwell House Coffee was named after a hotel in which American city?
A. Detroit
B. Atlanta
C. St. Louis
D. Nashville

8. Ian Fleming, the British novelist who created James Bond, spent his winters writing the Bond novels at Goldeneye, a home that he designed and built on what island?
A. Jamaica
B. Sicily
C. Majorca
D. Bermuda

9. In which Muslim country can you observe a spectacular festival called Fantasia, where armed men on horseback perform acrobatic tricks and fire their muskets at a full gallop?
A. Egypt
B. Morocco
C. Yemen
D. Afghanistan

10. What famous American bridge has appeared in such movies as X-Men: The Last Stand, Vertigo, A View to a Kill and Interview with a Vampire?
A. The Brooklyn Bridge
B. The Golden Gate Bridge
C. The Verranzo Narrows Bridge
D. The Royal Gorge Bridge

11. Which Caribbean island group is the fifth-largest banking centre in the world and home to more registered businesses than people?
A. British Virgin Islands
B. Barbados
C. Cayman Islands
D. Bahamas

12. The 1982 movie The Year of Living Dangerously, starring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, was set in which Asian nation?
A. The Philippines
B. Burma
C. Indonesia
D. Singapore

Answers

1. C. Kenya
Quite possibly the only place in the world where you can feed and photograph the giraffe over your breakfast table, and at the front door, and even from a bedroom window. The Giraffe Manor is an elegant, personally hosted, small and exclusive hotel, famous for its resident herd of giraffe. Built in 1932 by Sir David Duncan, the lodge is situated on 140 acres of land just a few kilometres from Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city. In 1974, Jock Leslie-Melville, grandson of a Scottish earl, and his wife Betty, who also founded the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife (AFEW), bought the Manor. They then moved five babies of the highly endangered Rothschild giraffe to their property where they were successfully reared and now have their own babies. When Jock passed away, Betty decided to open her house, now called the Giraffe Manor, to visitors. As well as the giraffe, the property is home to many species of birds, large families of warthogs and the elusive Bush Buck.

2. B. Prague
John Lennon was a pacifist hero to young Czechs. After his death in 1980, the “John Lennon Peace Wall,” at the backside of a fourteenth century churchyard in Prague, became a place for the youth of Czechoslovakia to write their views. In 1988, the wall was a source of irritation for the then communist regime of Gustav Husak. Young Czechs would write grievances on the wall and this led to a clash between hundreds of students and security police on the nearby Charles Bridge. The movement these students followed was described ironically as “Lennonism,” while Czech authorities described these people variously as alcoholics, mentally deranged, sociopathic, and agents of Western capitalism. A running battle developed between the police whitewashers and dissident graffiti writers until November 1989, when Communism collapsed in the former Czechoslovakia’s non-violent “Velvet Revolution.” The Lennon Wall has since become a tourist attraction.

3. D. Iguana
Iguana meat is popular throughout much of Latin America, where consumers willingly pay more for it than for fish, poultry, pork, or beef. To fill the demand, several iguana species are hunted by rifle, slingshot, trap and noose; they are even run down by trained dogs. Villagers catch them for food for the family; professional hunters snare and sell them to vendors. The meat tastes somewhat like chicken, and iguanas are often referred to as gallina de palo, “bamboo chicken” or “chicken of the tree.” The lizard meat is typically cooked in a spicy stew.

4. A. Laos
The hundreds of huge carved rock jars that litter Laos’ mysterious Plain of Jars, date from the Neolithic period. They stand up to 3.25 metres high and weigh up to 13 tonnes. Historians still debate their origins and purpose. When French archaeologist Madelaine Colani excavated the jars in the 1930s, she discovered some contained bronze and iron tools and bracelets, along with glass beads, while the rest appeared to have been looted. These items led Colani to theorize that the jars were funerary urns, holding cremated remains. This theory has been strengthened by the more recent discovery of underground burial chambers.

5. B. Chicago
For over 40 years, the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers turn the Chicago River a bright emerald green for the annual St. Patricks Day Parade celebration. Bill King, the administrator of Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day committee, says that “the idea of dyeing the Chicago River green originally came about by accident when a group of plumbers were using fluorescein dye to trace illegal substances that were polluting the river.” According to the event organizer’s official site, it takes 40 pounds of vegetable dye to create a carpet of green that lasts four to five hours. Of course, they don’t dye the entire river with that–just one section a couple of blocks long. Interestingly, the vegetable-based dye replaced an oil-based dye. Environmentalists lobbied for the change, arguing that oil-based dye was hardly an eco-friendly substance to be shovelling into a river.

6. C. Poland
The Black Madonna in the Paulite Monastery of Jasna Gora (Czestochowa) is visited by millions of pilgrims annually. The painting came to Poland in 1384, probably from the east, perhaps even Jerusalem. Legend traces the icon’s origin back to St. Luke who, it is said, painted it on a cypress table top from the house of the Holy Family. Nobody knows when people began venerating the painting as an icon, but it was already thought miraculous when it was brought to Poland. When the sick or ill prayed to it for health, they often were healed. When Polish kings or monks prayed to it for military victories, they won. In 1655, 3,000 Swedish troops besieged the Jasna Gora monastery. Defending it were just 170 soldiers, 70 monks and 20 noblemen. The monks and their troops won. This inspired the rest of the nation to rebel and the Swedes were routed. This “Miracle at Jasna Gora” was attributed to the intervention of the Mother of God, and her painting. When the Russians were at Warsaw’s gates in 1920, thousands of people walked from Warsaw to Czestochowa to ask the Madonna for help. The Poles defeated the Russians at a battle along the Wisla (or Vistula) River. During World War II under German occupation, the faithful made pilgrimages as a show of defiance. That spirit deepened during the years of Soviet-enforced communism, when all government attempts to stop the pilgrimages failed.

7. D. Nashville
In the early 1900s, Nashville entrepreneur Joel Cheek perfected a special coffee blend, which became the house blend of the Maxwell House, a city hotel. When he began selling it to the general public, he adopted the hotel’s name as the brand. In 1917, Cheek began using a “Good to the Last Drop” slogan to advertise Maxwell House Coffee. In 1920, the Cheek family sold the brand to General Foods, which made wide use of the slogan. For several years, the ads made no mention of Theodore Roosevelt as the phrase’s originator. By the 1930s, however, the company was running ads that claimed that the former president had taken a sip of Maxwell House Coffee on a visit to Andrew Jackson’s estate, The Hermitage, near Nashville on October 21, 1907, and that when served coffee he had proclaimed it to be “Good to the Last Drop.” Today, Maxwell House claims that the slogan was actually written by Clifford Spiller, former president of General Foods Corporation and did not come from a Roosevelt remark. The phrase remains a registered trademark for the product and appears on its logo.

8. A. Jamaica
Ian Fleming, the British intelligence officer turned turned spy novelist, spent winters on Jamaica’s north shore at his Caribbean getaway for almost two decades and wrote 10 of his James Bond novels there. Fleming borrowed the name of his famous spy from James Bond, the author of A Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies. As for the name of his home, Fleming said in an 1964 interview: “I had happened to be reading Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers, and I’d been involved in an operation called Goldeneye during the war: the defense of Gibraltar, supposing that the Spaniards had decided to attack it; and I was deeply involved in the planning of countermeasures which would have been taken in that event. Anyway, I called my place Goldeneye.” The estate is now the centrepiece of an exclusive resort by the same name.

9. B. Morocco
Also referred to as the Aiin Aouda (Mock Horseback Battle), Fantasia is an annual equestrian performance and celebration of traditional folklore that takes place in Meknes each July. This horse-riding spectacle includes hundreds of charging horsemen (and women) wearing traditional clothing. The performance consists of a group of horse riders, wearing traditional clothes and charging along a straight path at the same speed so as to form a line, at the end of the ride (about 200 hundred metres) all riders fire in the sky using old gunpowder guns. The difficulty of the performance is synchronization during the acceleration especially during firing so that one single shot is heard. Each region in Morocco has one or several fantasia groups, called serba, totaling thousands of horse riders nationwide. Performances are usually during local seasonal, cultural or religious festivals.

10. B. The Golden Gate Bridge
This fabled, orange-hued San Francisco bridge has appeared in many movies since it opened on May 28, 1937, with the world’s longest suspension span. Why you may ask isn’t this city landmark painted gold? Because the term “Golden Gate” actually refers to the Golden Gate Strait which is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. The orange colour, called International Orange, was chosen in part because of its visibility factor. Advection fog, a low, ground-hugging fog, is prevalent in San Francisco Bay. The bright colour helps drivers as well as ships see their way. The colour was also chosen because of its natural blend to the warm landscape of the area.

11. C. Cayman Islands
Not only do these remote British-run islands comprise the fifth largest banking centre in the world, they also tout the highest standard of living in the Caribbean with the average annual income of approximately $42,000. The Caymans have more registered businesses than its 65,000 inhabitants, and are home to 279 banks with $1.5 trillion in banking liabilities. The Cayman Islands has become a successful offshore financial centre because of the high quality service providers, reputable law firms, as well as the Big Four accounting auditors that operate from the islands. Today, 45 of the world’s top 50 banks have subsidiary or branch operations in the Caymans.

12. C. Indonesia
The Year of Living Dangerously is about a love affair set in Indonesia during the overthrow of President Sukarno. The plot follows a group of foreign correspondents in Jakarta on the eve of an attempted coup by the so-called 30 September Movement on September 30, 1965, and during the beginning of the violent reprisals by military-led vigilante groups that killed hundreds of thousands. The film was banned from being shown in Indonesia until 1999. The title The Year of Living Dangerously refers to a famous Italian phrase used by Sukarno for the title of his National Day speech of August 17, 1964. The movie also starred Linda Hunt as the male dwarf Billy Kwan, Gibson’s local photographer contact, a role for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Photo Credits:

#1: travellingboard.net

#2: flickr.com

#3: flickr.com

#4: newsday.com

#5: flickr.com

Tags: Travel Trivia