All in Eco Travel

My Furry Valentine

Judith Fein
Eco Travel, Nature, Wildlife

by Judith Fein

 

As the holiday of hearts approaches, you’re probably thinking long-stemmed roses served on a breakfast tray in a 5-star hotel. Then, hmmm….snuggling, doing the love thang, champagne, chocolate, doing the love thang again, bundling up for a hand-holding stroll, dinner, a show and home again.  The odds are slim that your amorous thoughts turn to things that creep and crawl and fly.  But what if Cupid inspired you to do just that—think of animals for Valentine’s Day? One equatorial word immediately leaps to the lips: Galapagos.

So how, you wonder, can blue-footed boobies compete with bubbly and sinking your fork into a one-pound crustacean swimming in garlic butter on your plate?

The great Galapagean secret is that it’s no longer an either-or proposition. The entire crew of a ship can pamper you and your honey while you float toward the remote islands that young Charles Darwin visited in 1835. It’s no wonder it took him five years to collect his thoughts and formulate his theory of Evolution and survival of the fittest.  Poor Charley had to recover from his years on board the Beagle, where he suffered continually from the agony of sea-sickness. Although your cruise may not result in a great scientific breakthrough, your ship will be stabilized, you will not be tossing your petit fours, and you will be in the mood for unusual forms of aquatic and terrestrial love.

My husband, who is a thoroughbred romantic, booked us in a deluxe room on the l00-passenger Explorer II.  I had visions of walking single-file down a dark, narrow, creaking corridor and ducking into a stateroom with a metal floor and a Murphy bed.  Ah, how little I trusted my Valentine. The corridors were broader than some state roads, and the doors all shone with mahogany finishes.  Our room was carpeted, had real drapery, a huge bed, a video console, chocolates on our pillows, and—was I dreaming?—the room steward made up the room at least three times a day.  Before bed, he twisted  our yellow beach towels into the shapes of different Galapagos animals.  I think my fave was the turtle with mints for eyes.

I’ll concede that it’s not love-inducing to get up at 6:45 a.m. every morning, but you have to take a ponga (a motorized skiff) to shore to greet the fauna before they go food-hunting.  The upside is that there are several breaks during the day when you can slip off into your stateroom for a quickie, and everyone is too busy talking about the animals they’ve just seen to notice.

Listening to My Inner Kid On A Pacific Northwest Walk

Roger A Ward
Eco Travel, Life Lessons, Personal essay, travel essay

words + photos by Roger A Ward

We were firmly into summer, which is a sweet time here in the Pacific Northwest.  I don't travel much outside the region during this short season because not too many places can call me away from the relaxing warmth of the sunny days and the stimulation of the cool evening breezes.  I love hiking and walking in summer, and the Pacific Northwest is scenic poetry.  Just a few blocks from my home there is a short trail through Titlow Park where I can escape for an hour or two when longer hikes are not practical. The walk leads down to the waterfront of Puget Sound through a small patch of old-growth forest and a larger area of secondary growth.  It ends up at a good fish and chips place with a great view of the waterfront, of the twin suspension bridges across the Tacoma Narrows, and of the hills and trees of the Kitsap Peninsula across the Sound. 

This is the only time of year when sun and shade have much temperature relevance. The shade of the forest provides relief from the bright sunlight and reflected heat of the surrounding neighborhood like a cool, wet cloth does in a dry sauna.  The meandering trail evolved from a gravel logging road, active from the late 1800's until the 1930's. The weathered foot hills and cliffs bordering this part of Puget Sound consist of huge deposits of gravel left by retreating glaciers. Loggers only had to scrape away the accumulated detritus of the forest cover to build a road.  The evolved path I walked is more spongy now than crisp and crunchy. Leaf litter, tree needles and tree bark from the better part of a century have reclaimed the top foot or so.  Incursions of shrubs and trees have narrowed the road into a trail that is only a little wider than one originally built for hiking. 

ALIENS IN PUERTO RICO

Sharon Spence Lieb
Eco Travel

by Sharon Spence Leib

So you know me: always the first landlubber to hop off the ship, soon as it docks. But there I am, your Lazy Highness, hangin’ off the balcony, watching three hundred Holland America passengers trudge into Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Me? I’m headin’ straight to the cool blue pool for a mojito and a nap. 

photo via flickr by FloodkOffThree mojitos later, Jennifer pinches my ankle. Even my best friend can be annoying sometimes.

 “Hey sloth,” she whines, plopping onto the chaise lounge next to me, “Wanna kayak with me tonight?”

“Kayak in the dark?” I mumble. “Why?

 “To see green glowy creatures. At Laguana Grande Bay, off the island’s east coast.”

“Do aliens drink mojitos?” I reply. “Ok, sign us up.”

At sunset, we take a bus with the other passengers, and then scramble into those cheapo orange sit-on-top kayaks. “Follow me,” calls Carlos. He’s one of those too good-looking guides you think about seducing, but not in a kayak, I guess.

Anyway, Carlos thinks we know what we’re doing, so he takes off and next thing we’re inside this claustrophobic tunnel of mangroves, bouncing our kayaks off monstrous tree roots. I’m thinking “If a snake falls off a tree onto my neck, I will kill myself and then Carlos, or vice versa.”

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Giant Slug?

Charmaine Coimbra
Eco Travel, Life Lessons, road trip, travel essay

by Charmaine Coimbra

Just south of Big Sur on California Highway 1, we hit the brakes when something akin to a 15-foot long slug caught our attention. Born and raised not far from the Pacific Ocean, I never saw such a creature on any California beach. It was 1997, my husband and I had been living in Santa Fe for nine years, and we were on vacation in California.

There were few legal places to pull our rental car off the highway, so we broke some likely vehicle code and parked as close as possible to this giant slug sunning on the beach. As we neared the beast we heard from the crashing shoreline something that sounded like a Harley Davidson revving its motor inside an empty warehouse.

“Did we just enter the twilight zone?” I asked my husband. We paced through the ranchland grasses west toward the beach. Eerie noises seeped between the fog and sand, and more slug-like creatures appeared.

“What are they?” we simultaneously questioned each other.

Dem Big Cats

Judith Fein
Eco Travel, adventure travel, exotic travel, travel, travel essay, travel writing
by Judith Fein

Achoo. Scratch scratch. That is my response to dogs, cats and anything that has more than two feet and is covered with hair. My eyes blow up. I wheeze. I get a je-ne-sais-quoi hairball thing in my throat. And how can I help offending friends who are in love with their Poopsies and KitKats? All I can think about is: get me home so I can throw my clothes and myself in a washing machine.

© Paul Ross.But it’s different when the hirsute ones are out of doors. I went on a safari in South Africa and got so close to the lions, zebra, tigers, elephants and giraffes that I could see the whites of their eyes. No wheezing, no sneezing. I actually bid on a baby camel at a livestock auction in Tunisia, but I couldn’t figure out how to build a camel pen in my bedroom that would filter out airborne (hair) allergens.

After a long hiatus from the animal kingdom, which corresponded to my running out of Benadryl, I happened to be in Northwest Arkansas, and heard there was the largest big cat reserve in the country at Turpentine Creek in Eureka Springs. Beloved by the NW Arkansas citizens, it inspired local giants Walmart and Tyson to donate about 300,000 pounds of chicken, turkey, beef, fish and pork every year to feed the beasts. And visitors can sponsor an animal and even choose its name. Hey, I’m a sucker for feel good things, so off I went.

Nature Nurtures In The Amazon

Dale V Atkins
Eco Travel, adventure travel, cultural immersion, exotic travel, travel, travel essay

by Dale V Atkins

I just returned to Manaus from the Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge in the Amazon (actually on the River Negro which is indeed a black river not due to dirt but due to tanens from leaves and organic matter and has NO mosquitoes at all on the water...unlike the "muddy river" which has apparently has PLENTY.) Did I really need those malaria pills?

It is unbelievably wet there....it is not called a rain forest for nothing..You cannot go out for 10 minutes without a rain jacket unless you don't mind consistently walking around looking as if you just lost the jungle wet tee shirt contest. I opted for the rain jacket (which doubled as my icebreaker a week ago when I was marching around in crampons on the Moreno glacier in Argentina but let's stick to one rain jacket adventure at a time.).

Just so you know, before I go any further, I am as happy as I can be. I look just like a hairdresser's nightmare (or dream depending on your point of view) as my roots are huge and my curls are wilder than in the '60s. It is good that HAIR has returned to Broadway because I may go directly from the plane to a casting call. Truth is, as soon as I land, I am going to the grandkids to give and get some great hugs and smooches followed immediately by an appointment with the hairdresser.