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    The Austere Beauty of Egypt’s Long-Distance Hiking Trails

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    Ben Hoffler has heard one sound more than any other during the past dozen years: that of footsteps — crunch, crunch, crunch — pressing into the sandy gravel that carpets the desert valleys of South Sinai, a seemingly endless landscape of granite mountains, colorful canyons and verdant oases.While on a 2008 climb to the summit of Mount Sinai, Mr. Hoffler, an Oxford-educated Englishman, was so moved by the power of Egypt’s mountains — believed to be where Moses received the Ten Commandments — that he went on to traverse some 7,000 miles of this high desert wilderness with its Bedouin inhabitants.He wrote a trekking guide to South Sinai in 2013, and shortly after began working with the area’s Bedouin tribes to create one of Egypt’s most extraordinary tourism projects: the Sinai Trail, the country’s first long-distance hiking path.“There’s something very special about the desert — very harsh and austere and beautiful in a way that I don’t find in lush, easy-to-survive-in landscapes,” Mr. Hoffler, who’s 39 and resembles a young Elton John, told me during a walk on the trail just months before the Covid-19 pandemic upended global tourism.The first parts of the Sinai Trail opened in 2015. In 2018, it was extended into a 350-mile loop across the bottom half of the triangular Sinai Peninsula. Along with the Red Sea Mountain Trail, another long-distance path on Egypt’s mainland that Mr. Hoffler helped the Maaza tribe open in 2019, the trail has put Egypt firmly in the ranks of a booming hiking movement in North Africa and the Middle East.A safari truck navigates through the Red Sea Mountains.Sima Diab for The New York TimesNew trails throughout the regionOver the past 15 years, new long-distance trails, some inspired by America’s Appalachian Trail, have been developed in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and the occupied West Bank, ranging between 300 and 400 miles in length. Those routes joined lengthy trails already established in Israel and Turkey in the 1990s. Other long-distance trails are currently under development in Saudi Arabia, as part of futuristic megaprojects being created by the kingdom in its western deserts, and in the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq.And now, some of the key players in the hiking movement in the region are envisioning clusters or transnational trails that, for the first time, would physically or symbolically link these rediscovered ancient nomadic pathways and newly forged routes, traversing modern national borders.For the past three years, Mr. Hoffler has been working in southern Jordan with Bedouin tribes and Tony Howard, a hiking and climbing pioneer in the region, to create a sister trail to the Bedouin-governed routes in the Sinai and the Red Sea Mountains. There has long been talk, though nothing conclusive has come of it yet, of a route that would link the Nabatean archaeological sites at Petra, in Jordan, and the Al Ula sites in Saudi Arabia, some 300 miles to the southwest. And a new long-distance trail network is taking shape to unite the Jordan Trail, the Palestine Heritage Trail and the Lebanon Mountain Trail, in a partnership with European backers and a trail system in France. All of this echoes the efforts of the Abraham Path Initiative, an American nonprofit that has been promoting trail building and trail networks in the region since 2007, though its main focus now is funding and supporting work on the Kurdistan trail.Separately, what many of the trails have in common is a determination by their creators to bring tourists and jobs to distressed villages in the deserts and mountains. These creators are also intent on preserving — and introducing to visitors, and their own citizens — long-overlooked natural wonders, and on using the trails to dispel negative perceptions of the historically turbulent region.Mohammed Muteer, a Bedouin guide, and Ben Hoffler start a fire and prepare tea.Sima Diab for The New York TimesAs a cluster, the embryonic network that includes the Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon routes could share best practices for the marking of trails, the establishment of emergency services and the cross-promotion of hiking, according to the organizers. Trekking exchanges, however, run into the reality of geographic and political impediments. Physically linking the trails in Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon, for example, is impossible, since Lebanon shares no border with the West Bank or Jordan. And the political obstacles seem equally insurmountable, since Israeli and Palestinian passport holders are barred from entering Lebanon.To Mr. Howard, who spearheaded the popularization of climbing and hiking in Wadi Rum, a valley in Jordan, in the mid 1980s, the orchestration of what he calls super trails in the region makes too much sense not to bring to fruition.“In itself, it’s an exciting thing — it sounds good, and it’s easy to promote, and people will walk it,” Mr. Howard said. But trails also benefit the areas they pass through by increasing tourism and helping to preserve both nature and culture. Before the trails were blazed, “there was very little realization in Jordan that people wanted to visit villages and walk hills,” he explained. “It started the need to protect some of these areas.”Mohamad, a Bedouin guide, leads a camel as it carries hikers’ belongings through a wadi along the Sinai Trail.Sima Diab for The New York TimesBedouin influences and originsAmong all the long-distance routes in the region, Egypt’s trails are unique in that they are owned and managed by Bedouins, whose nomadic ancestors, centuries ago, forged many of the pathways on foot and camelback. Unlike the self-guided trails in Lebanon, Israel and Jordan, the Sinai and Red Sea Mountain trails require Bedouin guides. And in contrast to the planned Neom megaproject in northwest Saudi Arabia, whose website promises 750 miles of trails in the coming years, features renderings of luxury chalets and boasts of “immersive digital experiences,” Egypt’s trails try to replicate how the nomads’ forebears moved through the wilderness. Hikers drink from wells, sleep fireside, under the stars (or in tents) and dine on flatbread baked in acacia coals and seasoned with mountain salt. The Bedouins are relying more on camels to haul the cooking and camping supplies and colorful woven rugs.The Sinai Trail was founded by Mr. Hoffler and three Bedouin tribes, whose members serve as guides, cameleers and cooks. And when it was extended in 2018, five more tribes joined the group. The tribes saw the trail as a way to create sustainable tourism while preserving ancient pathways and traditions that were fading in this era of smartphones and pickup trucks.The Bedouin guides on the trail say they find peace in the desert wilderness, feeling a strong connection to their tribes and lands. They know the way over sprawling passes and through mazelike gorges, which plants can be used to make soap and poultices, which animals leave behind what kinds of droppings and tracks. They also maintain the legends tied to the most prominent places on the route, like the tale of the sisters who tied their long locks of hair together and jumped to their deaths from Jebel El Banat, a mountain peak along the route, to escape arranged marriages.Clockwise from top left: etchings on a rock in the Red Sea Mountains near Wadi Nagaata; a hermit cell, also near Wadi Nagaata; a trail marker used by Bedouins to navigate difficult terrain; and a collection of pottery shards.An initial end-to-end hikeWhen I first met Mr. Hoffler in the autumn of 2019, I was joining a handful of trekkers on the first end-to-end hike of the Sinai’s western side — a 125-mile section reaching from Saint Catherine, a town and tourist hub in the center of the trail, to Serabit el Khadem, near the Gulf of Suez. We crunched along a high winding path of pea-size granite strewn with jagged boulders. To the left was a mountainside of crumpled dark granite; to the right was a soaring granite curtain in beige. Nearly 5,000 feet up, at the crest of the pass, called Naqb el Hawa, or Pass of the Wind, I almost expected to hear the swell of an orchestra as a far-off vista of sandy flats and striated peaks came into view.We were stepping on rock that dated back some 600 million years, on a footpath trod by nomads thousands of years ago and, around the sixth century specifically, by Christian settlers journeying from Cairo to Mount Sinai.“The desert has always been a place of insight, a place of transformation for people,” Mr. Hoffler said as we made our way down the pass. “All of the prophets, they’ve come out with very deep insights that have changed the course of human history.”The landscape continuously changes: from craggy olive hills to bulbous beige outcroppings, from charcoal gray peaks to rose-colored cliffs. Constants are the black veins of granite running through the mountains like arrows on a fever chart. Where two lines intersect near the base, the Bedouins tell us, there is certain to be water and a stand of flat-topped acacia trees.The ghost town of Um Bogma, along the northwest corner of the Sinai Trail.Sima Diab for The New York TimesShorter segmentsOf course, many visitors simply hike for a day or two on shorter sections of the trails, which feature dozens of desert valleys (known as wadis), sites of historic interest and named mountains.Atop my list of recommendations are hikes around Um Bogma, a ghost town atop rugged tablelands in the northwest corner of the trail, near the Suez Canal. An abandoned manganese mining camp run by the British in the 1900s during their occupation of Egypt, with breathtaking views of mountain ranges unfurling into the horizon, the tiered settlement of Um Bogma is frozen in time. Rusted steel cables stretch like ski lifts for miles down to the sea. Pitched-roof barracks have been stripped bare, as has a manager’s house with a wraparound porch overlooking a massive cliff that divides the Sinai.Members of the Hamada tribe, which oversees this section of the trail, extracted the manganese when the British occupied Egypt, until the 1950s. Egypt took over the Um Bogma mines for a number of years, but they were shut down, and the site abandoned, during the Israeli occupation of Sinai from 1967 to 1982.To some hikers, the scarred landscape is a legacy of colonial exploitation. To the Hamada, though, it was a source of jobs. And to Mr. Hoffler, it’s a rich opportunity for tourism. “I think this is just a jewel for the Hamada,” he told me.Julie Paterson, a trip organizer, and Jacobus Nederpelt, a hiker, at the summit of a 650-foot ascent through a mountain pass.Sima Diab for The New York TimesOther standout segments can be found in the Red Sea Mountains, a two-hour drive from the seaside city of Hurghada. Unlike in the Sinai, where you’re surrounded by mountains soon after landing in Sharm el Sheikh, the mountains in this section of mainland Egypt seem more jagged and imposing, clustered into massifs with fanglike peaks. Here, the government has not yet allowed overnight camping on the 100-mile Red Sea Mountain Trail, so the Bedouins can run only day hikes.The trail is contained within the territory of the Khushmaan clan of the Maaza tribe, and features Roman ruins and the mainland’s highest peak, Jebel Shayib el Banat, which rises to about 7,200 feet. The clan’s 1,500 families trace their origins to Arabia a few centuries ago, and most still live in the desert mountains, according to its leader, Sheikh Merayi Abu Musallem.At Wadi Abul Hassan, the hike starts up a steep slope blanketed by boulders and turns down into a secret enclosed wilderness — a narrow canyon lined with pink granite on one side and charcoal-colored granite on the other. Few outsiders have entered the wadi since the American academic Joseph J. Hobbs visited while researching his book “Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness,” in the early 1980s. The depth of perspective in the canyon is astonishing, especially when cottony white clouds in a sapphire sky and pyramid-shaped peaks in the distance add an extra dimension to the tableau.Elsewhere, the trek through Jebel Gattar and Wadi Nagaata is a strenuous climb up a series of massive granite shelves that reveal the historical origins of Christian monasticism. Atop the barren ledges are several hermit cells made of stacked rocks where, as early as the 300s, ascetics lived in extreme deprivation. Hikers can enter the silence of one of the small, semicircular chambers and imagine a contemplative looking out from the same entrance — toward a wall of beige granite honeycombed with scoop-like craters. On a nearby plateau stands a roofless, three-room stone building that was likely once a worship space, and a forerunner to the earliest monasteries, like Saint Catherine’s Monastery, built in the sixth century at the foot of Mount Sinai.Safety concernsDeveloping these trails was less about clearing new paths than it was about recovering existing routes that highlighted the myriad landscapes and legends. It was also about challenging the notion that the Sinai is a hostile and dangerous place. Egypt has been battling Islamist militants in North Sinai much of the past decade. The U.S. government advises against travel in Sinai. For the rest of Egypt, including the seaside resort of Sharm el Sheikh in South Sinai, the State Department advises citizens to “reconsider travel to Egypt due to terrorism.”According to the Sinai Trail’s website, “There has never been an attack on tourists in the interior Bedouin parts of South Sinai, where the Sinai Trail is.” Mr. Hoffler maintains that, in addition to Egyptian security forces across the peninsula, hikers have a safety net in an extensive Bedouin network that keeps tabs by camel, pickup and foot and shares information about visitors.One of our fellow hikers on the Sinai Trail’s western side, Leena El Samra, a 33-year-old from Cairo who works at a development bank, told me that some of her friends were worried about her taking the hike.Camels accompany hikers in places where support trucks can’t reach.Sima Diab for The New York Times“It’s a part of Egypt that’s ignored and we know nothing about, to some extent,” Ms. El Samra said, motoring through the gravelly sand. “This is a part of Egypt where you feel very safe with the people. It’s very nice, it’s pristine, it’s undiscovered. It’s very different than most of what we do all over Egypt. And I like building some muscles.”Ms. El Samra was among a small but growing circle of Egyptian adventure travelers and endurance athletes who turned to hiking, running and competing in triathlons after the failed revolution and subsequent military takeover early last decade. Many saw the activities as a way to release frustrations and exert their independence, or simply to discover their country.Hiking is still a niche activity in Egypt. The Sinai Trail hosted a few hundred hikers before the pandemic, which forced the trails closed for most of 2020. Numbers dwindled to the dozens in 2021 because of travel restrictions. But more hikers returned this year, including 70 people from around the world who arrived for a weekend hike in October tied to the United Nations annual climate conference, known as COP27, held the following month in Sharm el Sheikh. If all goes as planned, the Sinai Trail will host its first end-to-end hike of the 350-mile route next October.Returning to traditionsFor the Bedouins, the trails are a way to return to their roots and make a living in the mountains.During a drought in the 1990s, many Sinai Bedouins moved to coastal cities or farms in the Nile Valley for work, said Youssuf Barakat of the Alegat tribe, who spent two years with Mr. Hoffler mapping out the trail’s South Sinai routes and served as a guide during the COP27-related hike in October. Modernity and the collapse of tourism early in the last decade also pulled Sinai Bedouins away. Mr. Barakat, 36, returned to the mountains to work on the trail after working as a cook in his family’s restaurant in Abu Zenima on the west coast, he said.The Bedouins have been forced to change, Mr. Barakat told us after a dinner of grilled sheep and vegetable soup, which was followed by Mr. Barakat singing a traditional love song while thwacking a tabla drum.“We have internet, we have phones,” he said. Very quickly, he and his people have “become like the Egyptians,” he said.With the Sinai Trail, though, Mr. Barakat and his fellow tribespeople have an opportunity to return to their time-honored way of life.“We start step by step,” he said. “We hope in five, 10 years, the Bedouin life will come again.”A Bedouin guide makes tea and coffee over a campfire along the Sinai Trail.Sima Diab for The New York TimesPatrick Scott is a writer based in Thailand. You can follow his work on Instagram.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places for a Changed World for 2022. More

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    How Finnair’s Huge Bet on Faster Flights to Asia Suddenly Came Undone

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    Nestled near Europe’s rooftop, Finland spent decades leveraging its location to become a popular gateway for Asian travelers. Its flagship airline, Finnair, offered flights from Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai to Helsinki that, by crossing over Russia, were hours shorter than flights to any other European capital. Airport chiefs invested nearly $1 billion in a new terminal with streamlined transfers. There were signs in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and hot water dispensers for the instant noodle packets favored by Chinese tourists.Then Russia sent troops across Ukraine’s border on Feb. 24, and overnight the carefully constructed game table was overturned.Russia closed its airspace to most European carriers in response to bans on Russian planes. What was once a nine-hour flight to Helsinki when routed over Russia’s 3,000-mile expanse would now take 13 hours and as much as 40 percent more fuel because it had to swoop around borders.Finnair’s competitive advantage as the fastest connection from Asia and a travel hub for Europe vanished in a wisp.The sudden disintegration of Finnair’s business model is part of the wide-ranging economic upheaval that the war in Ukraine is causing for businesses around the globe.Companies that invested or traded heavily with Russia were immediately affected, and more than 1,000 have withdrawn operations from Russia, according to a database compiled by the Yale School of Management.Juho Kuva for The New York TimesNearly $1 billion was spent to build a terminal in the Helsinki, Finland, airport to streamline transfers for passengers from outside Europe.When Russia closed its airspace, Finnair could no longer pitch itself as the fastest connection from Asia.“The Asia strategy had been 20 years in the making,” Topi Manner, Finnair’s chief executive, said.High energy prices have blitzed a wider range. The Hungarian Opera House’s Erkel Theater will temporarily close because it cannot pay its energy bill. Hakle, one of the largest manufacturers of toilet paper in Germany, declared insolvency because of soaring energy costs, while ceramic, glass, chemical, fertilizer and other factories across Europe have been forced to scale back or shut down.The snack food industry, unable to get sufficient supplies of sunflower oil from Ukraine, has had to scramble for substitutes like palm oil, forcing manufacturers to rejigger supply chains, production and labeling, since they could no longer boast that their products were “nonallergenic” and “non-G.M.O.”The closed airspace caused Japan Airlines and ANA to cancel flights to Europe. And this month Virgin Atlantic said it was ceasing all traffic to and from Hong Kong because of Russia’s ban. For Finnair, though, the fallout has been extreme.“The Asia strategy had been 20 years in the making,” Topi Manner, Finnair’s chief executive, said from the company’s headquarters, next to the Helsinki terminal in Vantaa. Services were tailored to meet the tastes of its Asian customers. Half of its in-flight movies are dubbed or subtitled in Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Meal offerings include crispy chicken in Chinese garlic and oyster sauce and Korean-style stir-fried pork in spicy sauce with bok choy and steamed rice. The airline’s ground staff in Helsinki are fluent in the region’s native languages.Market Square in central Helsinki.Before the coronavirus pandemic, half of the airline’s revenue was generated by travelers from Asia. Passengers that used Helsinki as a hub to transfer to other destinations accounted for 60 percent of the revenue.But with “no end in sight” to the war, Mr. Manner said, the airline’s management quickly concluded “that Russian airspace will remain closed to European carriers for a long time and we need to adapt to that reality.”This summer, Finnair operated 76 flights between Helsinki and Asia, compared to 198 in the summer of 2019. Overall, the airline is going at 68 percent of its capacity. Operating losses in the first half of this year amounted to 217 million euros.“We really have to regroup,” Mr. Manner said.In some respects, Finnair has been regrouping ever since the pandemic hit in early 2020 and virtually halted world travel. China’s “zero Covid” policy, which continued to lock down Shanghai and other major cities this year, sharply reduced East-West traffic, hampering Finnair’s recovery compared with airlines that have large domestic markets or operate in other regions. Finnair, half of which is owned by the government, fought to survive by furloughing employees, cutting costs and raising 3 billion euros in new financing.Juho Kuva for The New York TimesThe new terminal was expected to draw 30 million passengers by 2030, a projection that has been thrown out by the uncertainty now facing Finnair’s Asia strategy.The project aimed to improve services for the connecting passengers from Asia who would never leave the airport.A 2017 publicity campaign by the state-owned company that runs Finland’s terminals primarily targeted customers from China.“We created a path through the pandemic,” Mr. Manner said, but it always was intended to lead “back to the Asia strategy.”No longer. Last month, the company officially announced an about-face.“We started to pivot our network toward the West,” Mr. Manner said, expanding its partnership with American Airlines, British Airways and other carriers. In the spring, it launched four new weekly flights from Dallas-Fort Worth and three from Seattle. New routes from Helsinki to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Mumbai, India, and Doha, Qatar, have also been unveiled. As jet fuel prices skyrocket, the airline is also renting out planes and crews to other airlines, and it plans to shrink the size of its fleet and staff, and to slash costs.Finnair, which has lost 1.3 billion euros over the past three years, said it hoped to return to profitability in 2024.“It will take some time before the company gets to see if this is the right decision,” said Jaakko Tyrväinen, an airline analyst with SEB, a Nordic financial services group.For the new Helsinki terminal — which opened in June — a strategy shift was also needed.Central Helsinki.An estimated 30 million passengers were expected by 2030, up from the nearly 22 million that the existing terminals handled in 2019. Those projections are now irrelevant, and airport officials say the situation is too uncertain to make any meaningful update to that figure. Next year, 15 million travelers are expected to pass through.Perhaps more pointedly, the project, begun nearly a decade ago, was designed to improve services for transfer passengers from Asia — a majority of whom would never leave the airport.A multimedia publicity campaign that Finavia, the state-owned company that runs the country’s airline terminals, rolled out in 2017 for Helsinki airport — code letters HEL — primarily targeted customers from China. With a nod to the 2004 film “The Terminal,” the campaign, “Life in HEL,” featured Ryan Jhu, a popular Chinese actor and social media influencer, living for a month in the terminal.Now, Helsinki has an expansive new terminal dedicated to non-European transfer traffic but very few travelers.Juho Kuva for The New York TimesThe project to build the new terminal was begun nearly a decade ago.The spacious aukio, or meeting plaza, includes a wraparound video installation depicting Finnish landscapes.The upshot to the changes forced upon Finnair is vastly fewer connecting passengers in a terminal designed for them.On a recent weekday afternoon, the long, snaking lanes created to handle crowds at passport control were deserted. The spacious aukio, or meeting plaza, where passengers could sit and watch a wraparound video installation depicting Finnish landscapes, hosted a lone woman with a backpack. Moomin Shop, which sells merchandise related to the Finnish cartoon characters — particularly popular with Japanese visitors — had no customers. The Moomin cafe, farther down the main hallway, was mostly deserted.“Mornings are normally slow,” said Liccely Del Carpio, who works at the Moomin store, adding that business often picks up later in the afternoon. “All in all, it’s been OK.”The European terminal was bustling, but most of the shops and cafes that stretched along this terminal’s long hall were empty. Several other spaces were unleased or shuttered.Sami Kiiskinen, the vice president of airport development at Finavia, said that the hundreds of millions of euros in loans used to construct the airport would ultimately be repaid, but that “the schedule of paybacks must be reconsidered.” Negotiations are happening, he said.Yet, despite the likelihood that the war in Ukraine will drag on and Russian airspace will remain closed to European traffic, Mr. Kiiskinen is optimistic.“We still believe in our strategy,” he said. Major infrastructure developments like airports are designed on a 50-year horizon, he said. “Putin is not going to be there forever.”Juho Kuva for The New York TimesOn a recent weekday afternoon, a cafe branded for Moomin merchandise, cartoon characters popular with Japanese visitors, was mostly deserted.Sami Kiiskinen of Finavia, which runs the terminal, acknowledged the problems facing the project’s finances but remained optimistic over the long run: “Putin is not going to be there forever.”The new terminal at the Helsinki airport is just one of numerous commercial ventures across Europe that have been affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More

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    Airfares Tumbled as Jet Fuel Prices Fell

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    Airline ticket prices fell sharply in July after peaking in recent months, fueled by high costs, high demand and a limited number of flights.Fares fell 7.8 percent in July compared to June, helping to ease overall inflation. Aviation experts said they expect prices to continue to drop into the fall as jet fuel prices and demand ease.Fares peaked in May when many travelers began confirming summer travel plans. After more than two years of exercising caution, many people took longer trips this summer, which is typically the busiest season for air travel. At the same time, many airlines cut the number of flights on their summer schedules to reduce the risk of mass delays and cancellations because of weather and staffing problems especially around holidays and other peak travel days. Fares were also driven up by high labor and fuel costs.The drop in fares last month coincided with a decline in U.S. jet fuel prices, which were down about 25 percent at the end of last month, from their peak at the end of April, according to the Energy Information Administration.Flight prices typically drop from late August through mid-fall as summer travel eases, according to Hopper, a travel booking and price-tracking app. Fares are expected to average $286 this month, down as much as 25 percent from May, Hopper said. Fares are expected to stay below $300 through September, before rising again, to a peak of $373 in November, up 24 percent from the same month in 2019, Hopper said.Despite broader economic concerns, airline executives have said in recent weeks that they haven’t seen a substantial decline in bookings beyond usual seasonal trends. More

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    Gas Prices Force Many to Rethink Driving, and Spending

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    As summer trips beckon, some are traveling less, at least by car. And those candy bars at the convenience store may find fewer takers.KATY, Texas — Most Americans would gladly pay the $4.29 for a gallon of regular gas Buc-ee’s was charging this week on Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio, more than 50 cents below the national average.But with prices more than $1.50 a gallon higher than they were a year ago, even Texans are complaining, and changing their buying habits to make do.“It makes me so stressed out just thinking about buying gas,” said Nancy Oncken, a retired kindergarten teacher, as she filled up her station wagon on her way to join five cousins at a water park outside San Antonio for the long weekend. “It’s now always in the back of my mind to be conservative about what I buy.”When Ms. Oncken drives through Buc-ee’s, the well-known Texas-scale convenience store with enough gasoline pumps to fuel an army, she often buys a souvenir bumper sticker, tumbler or key chain adorned with the cartoonish bucktoothed beaver wearing a baseball cap. But this year, she said, she will keep a grip on her wallet.Drivers will get a bit of a break this Fourth of July weekend now that gasoline prices have eased about 15 cents a gallon over the last two weeks. But with the Russian invasion of Ukraine settling into a grinding war of attrition, constraining global energy supplies, gas prices are not likely to decline much more this summer.At $4.86 a gallon on Thursday, the national average price for regular gas was $1.67 above a year ago, according to the AAA motor club. The fuel prices are altering buying patterns, and there are early signs that people may be rethinking their driving.Economists report that travel spending remains strong this year because of pent-up demand after two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. But interviews with drivers at Buc-ee’s in Katy, Texas, suggest that consumer confidence is beginning to erode under the pressure of high prices for fuel, food and housing. Ms. Oncken and several others said the holiday weekend might be the only vacation they would take this summer, a sharp break from the past.A recent report by Mastercard SpendingPulse, which monitors national retail sales, showed that despite a roughly 60 percent increase in gasoline prices from last year, total spending at gas station convenience stores was up only 29 percent, suggesting that many like Ms. Oncken are compensating for gas prices by saving on little, whimsical indulgences.“Opting for a lower fuel grade, driving a bit less or skipping that slushy or candy bar in the store are part of a bigger picture of choices consumers are making every day in the face of higher prices,” said Michelle Meyer, U.S. chief economist at the Mastercard Economics Institute.The shock is particularly acute given that people grew accustomed to low gasoline prices during the pandemic, when oil prices collapsed from the decline in commuting and other economic activity.Understand Inflation and How It Impacts YouInflation 101: What’s driving inflation in the United States? What can slow the rapid price gains? Here’s what to know.Inflation Calculator: How you experience inflation can vary greatly depending on your spending habits. Answer these seven questions to estimate your personal inflation rate.Greedflation: Some experts say that big corporations are supercharging inflation by jacking up prices. We take a closer look at the issue. Changing Behaviors: From driving fewer miles to downgrading vacations, Americans are making changes to their spending because of inflation. Here’s how five households are coping.It will take several months, at least, to sort out all the effects of higher prices on consumer behavior. People are spending more at restaurants than a year ago, and sales of luxury goods remain high, according to Mastercard. But hotel industry executives say many who drive on vacation are choosing destinations closer to home to save on gas.That may be one reason for the modest drop in gasoline prices in recent weeks. Recent Energy Department data suggested that the volume of gasoline sold nationwide had dropped 2 percent or more from a year earlier. And auto dealers in Houston said customer interest in more fuel-efficient cars, as well as electric and hybrid vehicles, was growing, although shortages of parts have limited the supplies of new models.Some transportation and energy experts say the demand for gas has declined partly because more people are flying rather than driving on vacations this year than last, although rising ticket prices and airport delays may reverse that trend as the summer progresses. In some cities, more people are returning to mass transit as concerns over Covid ease.Inflation and a slowing in some areas of the economy may mean some businesses are cutting back on shipping or shortening their supply chains when possible to save fuel.Energy Department data suggested that gasoline sales had dropped 2 percent over the last year.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesGiovanni Circella, a transportation expert at the University of California, Davis, said that over the years, short periods of high gas prices had not fundamentally changed driving habits since people still needed to commute to work and carry on daily chores like shopping and driving their children to school and activities.“But what will change is if the gas prices stay high for an extended period of time, Americans will start changing the type of cars they drive,” he said.A report released this week by RBC Capital Markets found that over the last 30 years, retail gasoline prices in the United States increased more than 30 percent year over year during 39 individual months. Of those months, demand fell 2 percent or more from the previous year only 12 times. “In short, protracted demand destruction events have historically been rare,” the RBC report concluded.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More

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    North of Atlanta, a Trove of Wineries

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    Georgia actually has a long history with vineyards. About 90 miles from Atlanta, in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, there are more than 40 wineries and tasting rooms.La Tanya Eiland is from Compton, Calif. and has a passion for wine. So when she moved to Atlanta in 2013, she asked locals the question she always asks when she travels anywhere new: “Where is wine country?”In Atlanta, the most common answer was “north.”About 90 miles north of Atlanta, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the city of Dahlonega has a dozen wine tasting rooms and eight wineries. Nearby communities, including Helen, Cleveland and Sautee Nacoochee, are also home to several establishments that offer local, regional and international wines. In total, North Georgia has more than 40 wineries and tasting rooms in a region that is becoming an increasingly popular destination for day trips and weekends away. More

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    Fuel Prices Send Airfares Higher, but Travelers Seem Ready to Pay

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    Supplies are not keeping up with demand, and costs may go higher, experts say.A stunning rise in the cost of jet fuel has sent airfares soaring, and industry experts say they are likely to go higher. For now, though, travel-starved consumers seem more than willing to pay up.Jet fuel prices have settled somewhat since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent them skyrocketing last month, but the market remains extremely volatile. The problem is particularly severe in New York, where the cost of the fuel rose about fourfold to just over $7.50 a gallon before dipping back to $5.30 in recent days.Supply is broadly constrained and prices have spiked across the country. The Energy Department this week said that the inventory level for East Coast jet fuel stood at 6.5 million barrels, the lowest since the agency began keeping track in 1990.“Jet fuel has made the most parabolic move I’ve ever seen for any transportation fuel,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. “It’s just insane.”The surge in prices has implications not only for airfares but also for the already high costs of global shipping. On Wednesday, for example, Amazon announced plans to impose its first “fuel and inflation surcharge” for sellers whose goods it stores and delivers.Airlines have been able to pass on some of their added fuel expense to consumers, many of whom are more than eager to travel after being denied the opportunity for two years.At the start of this year, the average cost of a round-trip domestic flight was $235, according to Hopper, an airfare-tracking app. Since then, ticket prices have risen 40 percent, to $330. Adit Damodaran, an economist at Hopper, which tracks prices for flights and hotels, said the company expects another 10 percent rise, to $360, by the end of May, before prices drop again in the summer.“Not only are the current prices that travelers are paying extremely high compared to historic price data, but the rate of increase has also been particularly steep since January,” he said.In addition to the rising cost of jet fuel, Mr. Damodaran said, the surge in airfares can also be attributed to typical seasonal patterns and the fact that demand was suppressed at the start of the year as the Omicron coronavirus variant spread.Some airlines have also cut flights in response to persistent staff shortages, creating greater competition and driving up fares for the flights that remain.Carriers typically pass on to consumers as much as 60 percent of a volatile rise in the price of fuel, experts said, a process that usually takes months. This time, however, the industry has been able to pass along costs more quickly, in large part because of high demand and a shift in consumer behavior during the pandemic toward buying tickets closer to the date of travel.“We are successfully recapturing a significant portion of the run-up in fuel,” Ed Bastian, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, told investment analysts and reporters on a call on Wednesday. “This is occurring almost in real time, given the strong demand environment.”Mr. Bastian said that Delta, the first major carrier to report financial results for the first three months of this year, had seen a strong rebound so far and that it was preparing for a robust spring and summer.Delta paid an average price of $2.79 per gallon of jet fuel in the quarter, up 33 percent from the last quarter of last year. The price included a saving of 7 cents per gallon from the airline’s oil refinery outside Philadelphia. Delta said it expected the price of fuel to rise another 15 to 20 percent over the next three months, to between $3.20 and $3.35 per gallon, a range that includes an approximately 20-cent savings attributable to the refinery.Prices for jet fuel, like gasoline and diesel, generally go up and down with crude oil.In February, American Airlines reported that the price it paid per gallon of jet fuel had risen more than a third over the past year, from $1.48 in 2020 to $2.04 in 2021. At the time, it said that each sustained one-cent rise in the per-gallon price would increase its fuel expense for 2022 by about $40 million. This week, American estimated that it had paid $2.80 to $2.85 per gallon in the first quarter of the year.Rising fuel costs and fares seem to be doing little to dissuade consumers. Mr. Bastian said Wednesday that March was Delta’s best sales month ever, beating a record set in 2019, despite having 10 percent fewer seats available. That comes as fares for domestic flights were up about 20 percent across the board between March 2019 and March 2022, according to an analysis by the Adobe Digital Economy Index, which draws on online sales from six of the top 10 U.S. airlines.Refueling at San Francisco International Airport. Some jet fuel shipments were diverted from the East Coast to the West as California prices began to climb.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images“We’ve all been stuck at home for two years, and I think now that we have the opportunity to get out, there’s going to be a lot of willingness to pay,” said Joe Rohlena, lead airline analyst for Fitch Ratings. “If it remains expensive to travel further out, then you may see that kind of willingness to pay higher ticket prices back off.”The Russia-Ukraine War and the Global EconomyCard 1 of 6Rising concerns. More

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    The Best Time to Use Your Airline Points and Miles

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    If you’re thinking of traveling and you’ve got points or miles sitting in airline and credit card accounts, the time to cash in may have arrived. Here’s what you need to know.Frances Meredith of Raleigh, N.C. used a branded American Airlines credit card for everything from groceries to medical expenses during the pandemic, piling up points with nowhere to spend them. That meant she had plenty to redeem when her family of four decided it was time for a winter getaway to Miami. Although the seats were pricey at 50,000 points each, Dr. Meredith, an internist, was excited to save money by using her rewards balance. “It was easy. There were lots of seats,” she said.As travelers return to the skies, many, like Dr. Meredith, have amassed larger than usual totals in airline and credit card rewards programs. And they are starting to spend them. United Airlines’ Mileage Plus program has had multiple record-breaking days over the past few weeks as customers have flocked to redeem miles, said Michael Covey, the managing director of the United program. “The demand is hitting the books in ways we’ve never seen before,” he said.Several factors make now the time to cash in points.More flexibilityFlights booked with points on the major U.S. carriers are fully refundable. That means if you need to cancel the trip, all your points and any associated fees will be returned without any penalties. Tickets bought for cash, in contrast, typically offer a credit for a future flight rather than a refund and may charge fees, so your money is tied up with the airline. Refundable tickets can be purchased, but they are more expensive.This difference, between ending up with a credit or a refund, can loom large for expensive trips like a family vacation overseas. Some travelers are “still uncomfortable with international travel,” while conditions remain in flux because of the pandemic, so using points to book a flight to a foreign country can offer more peace of mind, said Jamie Larounis, who writes about loyalty programs on his travel website, the Forward Cabin. He is now also seeing some worry about flights near Eastern Europe because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Better now than laterMany travelers are sitting on larger than ever point balances, both because they haven’t been redeeming their points and because they’ve been adding to the pile over the last two years with credit card purchases tied to airline loyalty accounts. According to a study by ValuePenguin and OnPoint Loyalty, the five largest airline loyalty programs — Delta Air Lines’ SkyMiles, American Airlines’ AAdvantage, United Airlines’ MileagePlus, Southwest Airlines’ Rapid Rewards and JetBlue’s TrueBlue — ended 2020 with $27.5 billion in liabilities, up $2.9 billion from 2019. Customers earned about half as many points in 2020 as they did the previous year, and redeemed just 10 percent of their available points compared to 30 percent the previous year.The most important reason to use points now is that they may have less buying power over the coming years, Mr. Larounis said. Airline and hotel points are like currencies owned by companies, and those companies can value their currencies however they like by changing the cost of redemption. Helane Becker, an airline analyst at the investment bank, Cowen, said airlines have devalued points multiple times over the past few years and she expects that practice to continue.This is already evident in both the airline and hotel sectors. Alaska Airlines recently upped the cost to book some of its first class tickets. Hyatt Hotels recently increased the points necessary for some hotel stays when it implemented a new peak and off-peak pricing program.Companies know that “people are sitting on big piles of miles and have a lot of pent-up demand for travel,” said Mr. Larounis of the Forward Cabin website. “There is no downside to them raising the cost of award travel.” That is especially true of airplane seats in the premiere cabin, he said. Some leisure travelers, who may have been content in economy class seats, are now purchasing seats in the front of the plane where passengers are a little more spread out. “They see it as safer in regards to Covid,” Mr. Larounis said.Still, the airlines are mindful of those with fewer miles. “We have more seats available for less than 10,000 miles than ever,” said United’s Mr. Covey.Nudges from the airlinesAirlines are encouraging customers to use their points. Rewards tickets booked on Delta airlines through the end of this year will count toward elevating the customer’s loyalty program status. Previously, only flights paid with cash counted toward program status. United Airlines recently joined the list of airlines that allow customers to combine “money plus miles” to buy tickets, so “members can redeem miles sooner and not wait until they have a large total,” Mr. Covey said. United also had flash sales in February for tickets to London and Australia purchased with points, and now allows members to use points to buy food and beverages on flights.More places to goTravel itself is less daunting now with more countries eliminating Covid testing for vaccinated passengers. London, one of the most popular destinations for U.S. travelers, dropped its testing requirement on Feb. 11. Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, and other countries are opening up to tourists.Alison Carpentier, the director of guest loyalty at Alaska Airlines, which is part of the Oneworld alliance of 14 global airlines including Cathay Pacific and Qantas, said the availability of tickets purchased with points “has been good as international travel starts to open back up.”More seats availableAirlines want to fill as many seats as possible so many now make almost all of their seats available for purchase with points, instead of just a subset. The prices set by most airlines fluctuate, so it pays to check back periodically before the flight to see if the number of points needed has come down.Travel Trends That Will Define 2022Card 1 of 7Looking ahead. More