Tragically, there has been a sequence of disasters in some of the southbound sun destinations that we Canadians are so fond of travelling to, especially in our colder weather.

Mexico has suffered not one, but two deadly earthquakes within two weeks of each other and of course the relentless succession of hurricanes across the Caribbean and the southern US States has been appalling. Some Caribbean destinations such as Dominica, St Marten, Barbuda and the Virgin Islands have been so devastated that their tourism infrastructure will take a long while to rebuild. For these destinations, all we can do as travellers is perhaps to donate what we can in terms of money and time to the relief efforts now underway. But for most of the other destinations, such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, Texas and Florida, the best support we can provide is our continued vacation travel to our favourite destinations down south. The clean-up and repairs will be completed and they will need our business this winter like never before.

We will be doing our bit by covering some of these destinations on the Travel Show in the next few months.