Scarlet Macaws at Home with Marriott Los Suenos

by Elizabeth Seward on

It’s not every day you find a major hotel chain engaged in environmental initiatives that extend beyond good press. Sure, lots of hotels are actually saving on energy and water, for instance, because of their green policies, but how many are… saving animals? Los Suenos Marriott Ocean and Golf Resort in Puntarenas, Costa Rica has launched a project with animal-saving in mind.

The Scarlet Macaw is currently listed as an endangered species and the hotel has set out to repopulate them. Los Suenos’ Scarlet Macaw project consists of acquiring and planting Tonka Bean (Dipteryx odorata) trees on the hotel premises. These trees are used by the beautiful birds for nesting as well as food.

The objective is clear: bring the Scarlet Macaws back to Pacific Costa Rica by first bringing back their homes. At this time, there are roughly 450 Scarlet Macaws in the Puntarenas area and I was lucky enough to see a couple of them during a recent visit to Costa Rica.

I hopped on a quick American Airlines flight from NYC to San Jose and drove over to this luxurious resort back in June. I spent a few days there relaxing and taking in the serene environment. I was enchanted by these birds, which weren’t at all difficult to spot. Known for their colorful feathers, two Scarlet Macaws in a nearby tree caught my wandering eye and I quietly approached them, clutching my camera.

Lying in an oceanside hammock later that day, I swayed side to side, grateful for the sighting. With any luck, Los Suenos will help revive the Scarlet Macaw population and in doing so, give other hotel guests experiences like mine.

Cruise line give-away promotes creativity, green awareness…in kids

by Chris Owen on

While cruise lines offering the really cool prize of a free cruise to non-profits for raffles, give-aways and contests is nothing new, one caught our attention as something special.

In their “Treasures of the Texas Coast” Children’s Art Contest, kids are encouraged to learn more about the Texas coast and express what they have learned through their art in the 15Th annual Adopt-A-Beach competition.

“Trashing Texas Beaches isn’t cool” is the official Adopt-A-Beach slogan that must be incorporated into artwork, entries can not be computer-generated but with few exceptions, children are free to creatively use just about any medium.

The grand prize winner and their teacher receive two round-trip coach-class tickets from Continental Airlines to any Continental destination in the 48 contiguous United States, one 7-night Caribbean cruise from Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines departing out of Galveston, Miami, or Ft. Lauderdale and a class party.

We hope the New Year brings more stories of cruise lines involved with environmental awareness with programs and contests just like this one.

For information and contest guidelines, call 877-892-6278 or visit www.texasadoptabeach.org.

Flickr photo by Corey Leopold

Gadling’s 2011 New Year’s travel resolutions

by Laurel Miller on

It’s that time of year again. A time when we all make certain promises to ourselves, in an attempt to make our lives more organized, our bodies stronger or leaner. We vow to spend more time with loved ones, give back to others, or ditch that cubicle job. And some of us…well, we just want to keep on traveling, any way we can manage to finagle it.

In the spirit of New Year’s, I asked my fellow Gadling contributors about their travel resolutions for the coming year, and came up with some of my own. Our goals are all over the map (no pun intended), but a common theme emerged. Despite our love of exotic adventures, most of us want to spend more time exploring in our own backyard (that would be the United States). That, and invent musical underwear.

Leigh Caldwell

  • Go on my first cruise.
  • Spend a weekend somewhere without Internet access, and, if I survive that…
  • Celebrate the Fourth of July with my family in Banner Elk, North Carolina, home of the quintessential small-town Independence Day. There’s a three-legged race, a rubber ducky race down a mountain stream, and a parade filled with crepe paper, balloons, and every kid and dog in town.

McLean Robbins

  • Quit my “day job” so I can do this full-time.

[Photo credit: Flickr user nlmAdestiny]Laurel Miller

  • Get back in shape after a two-year battle with Oroya Fever (contracted in Ecuador), and climb a volcano in Bolivia.
  • Finally start exploring my adopted state of Washington, especially the Olympic Peninsula.
  • Visit India for the first time; see if it’s possible to subsist on street food without getting dysentery.
  • Learn to wear DEET at all times when traveling in countries that harbor nearly-impossible-to-diagnose diseases like Oroya Fever.

Sean MacLachlan

  • Get back to Ethiopia.
  • Explore Green Spain (the north part of the country).
  • Show my son a non-Western culture.
  • Invent an underwear stereo that plays cheap jazz music when subjected to a TSA patdown.


Mike Barish

  • Drive cross country.
  • See the Grand Canyon (finally).
  • Finally learn how not to overpack.
  • And, for the fifth year in a row, I resolve to learn how to play the keytar (2011 has got to be the year!).

Darren Murph

  • Bound and determined to visit my 50th state, Alaska.
  • Dead-set on relocating a childhood friend of mine back to North Carolina, and then taking him on a road trip of some sort.

Meg Nesterov

  • Visit more places where I know people.
  • Be in more travel pictures and get my husband out from behind the
  • camera occasionally.
  • Take at least one guidebook-free and paperless trip. Okay, maybe one map.
  • Take better notes. I might think I’ll always remember the name of that fun-looking restaurant or weird sign I want to translate, but it’s easy to forget when you’re taking in so many new things.
  • See more of Turkey while I still live here. I spend so much time traveling to nearby countries, I have to be sure to see the landscape of Cappadocia and eat the food in Gaziantep before I go back to the U.S..

Grant Martin, Editor-in-Chief

  • Travel a bit less and work a bit more [Sure, Grant!].

Annie Scott Riley

  • Travel less alone, and more with my husband.

Alex Robertson Textor

  • More open-jaw travel, flying into one destination and traveling by land to another before returning home. It’s my favorite way to see a new or familiar territory–gradually and without any backtracking. I need to do it more often.
  • More thematic consistency in my travels. Instead of scrambling to meet whatever assignment comes my way, I want my travels in the next year to be focused on a region or two, and on a number of overarching questions or issues. I’m still collecting ideas: Remote European mountain villages? Neglected second-tier cities? The Caucasus?
  • Northern Cyprus. Have been wanting to visit since I was a kid. 2011’s the year.

David Farley

  • To take back the name “Globetrotters” from the Harlem basketball team.
  • To introduce eggnog and lutefisk to southeast Asia.
  • To eat fewer vegetables.

[Photo credits: volcano, Laurel Miller; Grand Canyon, Flickr user Joe Y Jiang; Cappadocia, Flickr user Curious Expeditions; lutefisk, Flickr user Divine Harvester]

British team sets new speed record for Antarctic crossing

by Kraig Becker on

In late November, a group of British adventurers and scientists set off on a mission to the interior of the Antarctic continent in specially designed research vehicles. Their plan was to undertake several environmental research experiments while journeying through one of the most in hospitable environments on the planet, but they also managed to set a new speed record for an Antarctic crossing at the same time.

Dubbed the Moon-Regan Transantarctic Expedition in favor of its two organizers, Andrew Moon and Andrew Regan, the plan was for the team to conduct research along the way. For example, they collected samples of the Antarctic snow in order to test the impact of pollutants in the atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere on the frozen continent itself. They also drove a specially designed snow buggy, powered by biofuels, in order to see how those experimental fuels performed in extreme conditions.

By all accounts, those research elements came off very well, but the real success of the mission was the speed crossing. It took the team just 13 days to drive from the Union Glacier Base to the Ross Ice Shelf, by way of the South Pole, on the far side of the continent. The expedition covered 1209 miles in 303 hours, using specially designed ground penetrating radar to help them avoid crevasses and other obstacles.

The expediton actually reached their destination back on December 9th, but then turned around and made the return trip so that the 10-man team, along with all their research vehicles and gear, could be plucked from the ice by Antarctic-Logistics and Expeditions, a company that specializes in delivering explorers to Antarctica. That happened last week, when the team was returned to Punta Arenas, Chile before making their way back home in time for the holidays.

Taking just 13 days to cross Antarctica is quite an impressive feat. While the team did indeed use motorized vehicles to do it, the terrain that they crossed is quite brutal on any kind of machine and the cold weather played havoc with their engines at times. Throw in the very real danger of driving into a crevasse, and you can start to appreciate the challenges of such a drive. This just might have been the most challenging road trip ever.

[Photo credit: Moon-Regan Transantarctic Expedition]

A December hike along the Lost Coast Trail

by Kraig Becker on

The Lost Coast Trail is a spectacular hike along northern California‘s Pacific Coast. The trail is roughtly 25 miles in length, running from Shelter Cove to Mattole Beach, and is only accessible by a few narrow, twisty roads. It is a rugged, lightly traveled route that alternates from Pacific beaches to mountain passes, with more than 8000 feet of elevation gain over the course of its length.

For many trekkers, the Lost Coast Trail is one of the top hikes in all of North America, and it was with that in mind that filmmaker Ryan Commons and three of his friends, set out to trek the challenging route over a seven day period earlier this month. The result is the great video below that captures the essense of the Lost Coast from it’s chilly beaches to its sprawling mountain ridges.

For remote hikes it is difficult to beat the Lost Coast Trail. As you can see from the video, it is aptly named and a worthy hike for any backpacker looking for solitude on their next adventure.

[Photo credit: Rick McCharles via Flickr]


The Lost Coast Trail from Ryan Commons on Vimeo.