Travel

The Journey We Are All Responsible For

/ Crist Inman / 1 Comment
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28 Millimeters, Women Are Heroes. Action in Phnom Penh, Open Eyes, Cambodge, 2009

A big part of what we do when we are not adding to these pages involves helping people all over the world plan journeys. We want them to stay in places that we have developed and/or that we manage because we have worked to reduce our contribution to negative anthropocentric travel impacts. There are positive impacts also, of course, including resources flowing to places where they are needed for human development, which in turn increases the likelihood of conservation efforts succeeding.

I was happy to see this newly revamped online publication back in these pages recently, and today as I went to their website I am even more happy to see this amazing article by a writer who was liberally linked to in our first couple of years on this platform. We have enormous respect for Mr. Revkin’s commitment to many of the same things we work on day in and day out. This is a long article, but worth the time and attention:

An Anthropocene Journey

The word “anthropocene” has become the closest thing there is to common shorthand for this turbulent, momentous, unpredictable, hopeless, hopeful time—duration and scope still unknown

By Andrew C. Revkin
October 2016

My reporting career has taken me from smoldering, fresh-cut roadsides in the Amazon rain forest to the thinning sea ice around the North Pole, from the White House and Vatican to Nairobi’s vast, still-unlit slums. Throughout most of it, I thought I was writing about environmental and social problems and solutions.

Lately I’ve come to realize that my lifelong beat, in essence, has been one species’ growing pains. After tens of thousands of years of scrabbling by, spreading around the planet, and developing tools of increasing sophistication, humans are in surge mode and have only just started to become aware that something profound is going on. The upside has been astounding. Child and maternal mortality rates have plunged. Access to education has soared. Deep poverty is in sharp retreat. Despite the 24/7 distilled drama online and on TV, violence on scales from war to homicide has been in a long decline.

Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Tongariro National Park, New Zealand

/ Jocelyn Toll / 1 Comment
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Source: nz-autraliatours.com

New Zealand’s oldest national park and the fourth national park to be created in the world, Tongariro National Park is internationally recognized for its outstanding volcanic features and is historically venerated by the Maori people. The park encircles three volcanoes, Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Raupahu and covers almost 80,000 hectares of contrasting terrain. The three volcanoes are active, Raupehu being one of the most active volcanoes in the world, but that does not deter visitors from hiking up to the top and gazing out into the exotic conic formations.

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Sharks & Jets

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Thursday morning someone among us posted this. I read it and cheered. Getting on a jet plane to escape to nature, which is problematic to begin with, is made ultra-problematic by landing in the vicinity of a biodiversity hotspot and swimming with trapped animals. We are opposed to it, putting it mildly. Get on a jet, immerse in nature, but let sharks be sharks.

Thursday evening Amie and I were dining with friends who we met in Costa Rica when they were on vacation. They have not been to Baja California Sur, and we were encouraging them to go to Villa del Faro with their kids, who love nature. The mom in the family said, half jokingly, that she had been thinking about going to get into one of those shark cages. We all said, polite-laughingly, that we would be there to support her from the shore. We did not feel the need to get serious and educate about why we would not really support her doing this. 12 hours later this video showed up in the Guardian, and I sent the clip to them, adding to the viral status it now has, to point out the coincidental extra humor. Two days later, not so funny:

Shark conservationists fear backlash after viral cage-smashing video

Experts emphasize that the incident, in which a great white broke through a cage holding a diver, was a ‘one in a million occurrence’

in New York

Shark enthusiasts are concerned about the impact of a viral video that showed a great white shark breaking into a cage occupied by a diver in Mexico.

The diver survived, but the harrowing video shed light on a decades-old tourism industry that allows people to be within an arm’s length of great white sharks, separated only by the sea and some metal bars. Continue reading →

Bravo, Trip Advisor!

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PHOTOGRAPH BY NORBERT WU, MINDEN PICTURES

In a world where economics often focus on the concept that “the customer is always right” it’s heartening to see even large companies re-evaluate policy, and make make changes in the face of facts.

Our work in India has often placed us face to face with the common practices of human-animal interaction written about below, and we don’t promote the  “elephant rides” that are often on travelers’ agenda. Change occurs along  with a shift in understanding, and our goal has always been to craft travel experiences that are both authentic and educational.

So “Bravo!” and a hearty welcome to any company willing to join us in achieving that goal!

TripAdvisor Halts Ticket Sales to Cruel Wildlife Attractions

By Rachael Bale

TripAdvisor, the popular travel review website, and its ticket sales company, Viator, said Tuesday they no longer will sell tickets to hundreds of tourist attractions that are widely accepted as cruel to wild animals, reversing a policy under which the companies had resisted considering the welfare of animals when promoting trips.

The move to stop selling tickets to elephant rides, swim-with-dolphin experiences, and attractions that allow visitors to pet tigers and other exotic animals comes after a one-and-a-half-year protest campaign by the London-based animal welfare group World Animal Protection and reporting by National Geographic’s Wildlife Watch, which drew attention to TripAdvisor’s continued promotion of such attractions at a time when dozens of other tour and travel companies were moving away from them.

Such attractions have been shown to cause animals psychological and physical trauma that can shorten their lives. They also result in more animals being taken from the wild for tourism.

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New Life For Paper Maps

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If you are old enough to remember regularly using postal services, as in letters printed on paper, placed in paper envelopes with stamp(s) affixed, then you can appreciate the assumption that paper maps are on their way out just like old fashioned letter-writing and sending. This article on the BBC website catches our attention for a counter-intuitive finding:

Why Paper Road Maps Won’t Die

In an age of Google Maps and GPS, paper maps sales are on the rebound

How did we manage to get from point A to B before GPS and navigation apps — especially when such journeys were long distances? Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Banff National Park, Canada

/ Jocelyn Toll / 2 Comments
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Peyto Lake, one of the many lakes in Banff. Image via authentikcanada.com

Established in 1883 by three railway workers who discovered a natural hot spring on the slopes of the Canadian Rockies, Banff National Park is Canada’s first national park and the birthplace of the world’s first national park service. Located in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, the park boasts more than a thousand picture-perfect glaciers and glacier-fed lakes, Castleground Caves (the country’s largest cave system), and several national historic sites. It also encompasses Banff, the highest town in Canada at an elevation of 4,540 ft, which makes it feasible and convenient to enjoy the sights over a period of days (which you will surely want to do).

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A Stay in History

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The Cooke House in Virginia Beach, Va., built in 1959. Credit Dave Chance Photography

Earlier this year when I wrote about the Art Institute of Chicago’s Airbnb listing of their reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous Arles bedroom I thought that was the pinnacle of Airbnb cool.

Staying at a home designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright seems equally as fun but far more expansive then the 19th century artist’s exuberantly painted bedroom – taking in the view for starters.

The Cooke House in Virginia Beach, Va., built in 1959, is one of Wright’s last commissioned works. It’s a hemicycle-shaped dwelling made of brick with a vast windowed living area overlooking a lake. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

/ Jocelyn Toll / 3 Comments
Plitvice Waterfalls

Source: holicoffee.com

Granted UNESCO World Heritage status in 1979, Plitvice Lakes National Park is Coratia’s largest and most popular park. Sixteen lakes, all inter-connected over a distance of 8 km by series of waterfalls and cascades, are set deep in the woodland and have a height difference of 135 meters (Veliki Slap, the largest waterfall, is 70 meters tall). Although the terraced lakes comprise only a small area of the total 300 sq km park, they offer a stunning sight with their changing hues throughout the seasons and garner practically all the attention from local and foreign tourists alike. Continue reading →

Extinction As Impetus For Travel?

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We are all used to looking at guidebooks to learn more about a country before we visit – but how often do we stop and think about the things we can’t see there anymore? We’ve created Unknown Tourism, a series of vintage-style travel posters to commemorate some of the wonderful creatures we’ve lost, and are in danger of forgetting.

We try to be glass half full, so we will wait and see where this campaign (click the banner above) is going. I am drawn to anything that raises awareness of the need for conservation. It helps that the illustrations are evocative. Bravo to Expedia UK for thinking outside the box and making it look good.

But a travel company highlighting extinction to encourage travel is certainly going to strike some as problematic. Even there, I say bravo to them for taking a step in an unusual direction, and I hope it leads somewhere meaningful (as opposed to just attractively intriguing). Continue reading →

An Unusual Travelogue

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Publishers’ blurbs are sometimes much better than the sound of the word blurb would imply, and anyway I always trust them more than I could possibly trust Amazon’s tricky sales methods. Reviews in trusted publications are best, but they take much longer to read; this blurb has my attention, especially after pondering two decades of life online:

For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, “like a country song with a happy ending.” And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world–or, more specifically, his country–could be better. He couldn’t ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol’ USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises–that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we–here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows–go wrong? Continue reading →

About The Roses

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It is difficult to resist a story like this when you have recently completed a multi-year restoration.

lueders-slide-vg4p-superjumboWhen it involves a former convent I have a particular reason to be interested. This article had me at the mention of Patmos, one of my favorite islands, but there is more. It is that cloister, with the rose garden seen in part in the photo to the right, that intrigues me. I have noticed that in European convents, the older the better, there are rose gardens that contain strains of rose that are difficult to find elsewhere. Presumably “antique” roses, they have a fragrance that is incomparable:

Restoring a Run-Down Convent in Tuscany

A mother-daughter duo brought back to life a centuries-old house in the countryside.

By MARELLA CARACCIOLO CHIA

For 60 years, a 16th-century Franciscan convent designed by the Florentine architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, a creator of both the Palazzo Farnese and the Villa Madama in Rome, had existed in a state of abandoned decrepitude. Situated on the edge of the town of Pitigliano, in southern Tuscany, with vegetation engulfing its cloisters, the house had no electricity, almost no running water and no windows. It was exactly what the mother-and-daughter duo Holly Lueders and Venetia Sacret Young had been looking for: “the perfect ruin.” Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

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Source: parquetorresdelpaine.cl

For the type of jaw-dropping  sights that Torres del Paine National Park in Chile has to offer, it is only fair to know a bit of geological history that formed these towering, sheer ridges and deep, mirrored lakes. Located in the southern tip of the Andes of South America, the landscape of the park is owed to earth movements which occurred 12 million years ago and the gradual glacial erosion thereafter, which formed the “torres” (towers) measuring more than 2,200 meters in altitude. The 2,422 square kilometer area was established as a park in 1959; since 1978 it has been part of UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserve system. Continue reading →

Biles On Belize

/ Organikos / 2 Comments
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Benedict Kim for The New York Times

As newly self-appointed Belizophiles, we love what this superstar of gymnastics says about the country:

Why Simone Biles Loves Belize

By SHIVANI VORA

…The world may beckon, but the athlete said that her favorite destination would always be Belize, a Central American nation, where she holds dual citizenship through her mother, Nellie Cayetano Biles.

The younger Ms. Biles spoke about her love for Belize while she was on her way to the airport in Los Angeles (she was in town to film the season premiere of “Ellen”) to head home to Houston for a few days before beginning her tour… Continue reading →

A Resort Of The Future

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We do not need to love everything everafter created by architects whose earlier work we have been in love with; but we at least take a look:

High Line architects create volcano-style resort

Diller Scofidio + Renfro beat Foster + Partners in a competition to design a new international resort in China

Could Hainan, China’s smallest and most southerly province, become a new international tourist destination? That’s certainly the Chinese government’s ambition, which hopes to draw in thousands of international leisure travellers to this island province, 800 miles southwest of Hong Kong, by 2020.

Hainan Airlines Group announced the winner of its competition to design a 250-hectare resort which will be built on an artificial island in Haikou Bay, just off the coast of Hainan’s capital, Haikou. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Ergaki National Park, Siberia

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Photos by Moscow based photographer, Alexander Ermolitsky

Colloquially referred to as the “Russian Yosemite,” Ergaki National Park is a mandatory stop for those who ever plan to travel to Russia, and more specifically, to Siberia. Located in the Western Sayan Mountains of Siberia, this 342,873 hectare park of steep mountain ranges and glacial streams and lakes will break your camera lens with its beauty – figuratively speaking.

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59 Parks in 59 Weeks

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All images from: Darius Nabors

We continuously incentivize our readers to go out and explore the nature that abounds in the great outdoors. Well, Darius Nabors (although not a follower of ours – that we know of) raises our proposition to a whole new level by visiting all fifty-nine National Parks in fifty-nine weeks. In order to begin the pursuit of his goal, Nabors quit his job when he realized that it would take him forty-two years to see the ones he had not yet visited if he only traveled to one park per year. Therefore, he set himself this challenge while he is still young and active and can explore everywhere without worrying about physical limitations.

So far, Nabors and his friend and travel companion Trevor Kemp, who recently finished his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, have visited 34 parks, including Glacier, Gates of the Arctic, Crater Lake, Haleakala and Joshua Tree.

Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Acadia National Park, Maine, U.S.A

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Source: ouracadia.com

I am happy to introduce Acadia National Park in Maine, U.S. as the first feature on our new weekly segment – shout out to Justin for the recommendation! This park is one of many firsts: it was founded as the first national park east of the Mississippi River by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 (so yes, it is celebrating its centennial along with the National Park Service). In addition, it is famed for being the first place to see the sunrise in the U.S. when standing at the top of Cadillac Mountain during certain times of the year (part of the fall and winter seasons). Continue reading →

Patrimonial Matrimonial Innovation

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A fort atop the Italian town of Montalcino. In October, residents there and in neighboring San Giovanni d’Asso will vote on whether to merge the two communities. Nadia Shira Cohen for The New York Times

Although we appreciate, even adore, the wines and the fungi referenced in this story, it is worth reading for a look at practical issues facing aging towns that possess world class patrimony:

A Merger of Brunello and Truffles? 2 Tuscan Towns May Be Better Together

By GAIA PIANIGIANI

SAN GIOVANNI D’ASSO, Italy — Two small towns in southeastern Tuscany, one famous for red wine, the other for truffles and organic grain, are considering a municipal marriage of convenience that could blur their cherished identities, separately formed over the centuries.

With a population of just 853, San Giovanni d’Asso can no longer deliver basic services to its citizens on a daily basis. Left with only three town officials to do the work, something as simple as getting an identity card drawn up and stamped requires making an appointment days in advance.

So the town’s mayor, Fabio Braconi, picked up the phone back in 2014 and sought help from a neighbor, Montalcino, 10 miles to the south across rolling wheat fields. Continue reading →

Going Bananas for a Good Cause

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Driving 10,000 miles in a miniature, beat-up car from London to Mongolia might not be everyone’s ideal method to travel around the world (or at least, about 1/3 of the world’s surface). However, this challenge, known as the Mongol Rally, is more than just an unconventional thrill for adventurers. The challenge also requires participants to raise a minimum £1000 for charity, the first half going to Cool Earth, an organization dedicated to protecting endangered rainforest in order to combat global warming, and the rest to the charity of the team’s choosing.

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Team Bananavan from gilmoresdrive.weebly.com

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USA National Park, Feisty Leadership Outlier

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Lake Superior Presque Isle Royale National Park Michigan in USA Great Lakes no not people nobody isolated low angle horizon

Lake Superior Presque Isle Royale National Park Michigan, USA, Great Lakes

We like the idea of a leader of a national park with a “feisty nature,” since sometimes that is exactly what it takes for conservation to succeed, either in the public or the private sector; so this profile from the BBC, in its ongoing appreciation of the National Parks Service’s 100th anniversary, is the kind of story we are especially happy to share:

…Isolated and iconoclastic, Isle Royale National Park is something of an anomaly among US National Parks, with its territory spread over 200 islands and outcroppings emerging from the frigid waters of Lake Superior, part-way between the US state of Michigan and Canada.

Isle Royale’s former Superintendent, Bill Fink (no relation to me), is an iconoclast himself, almost as if the qualities of the archipelago rubbed off on him during his four years running operations there from 1990 to 1993. Continue reading →