Vacationing for the Birds

by Erik Olsen on

Bird-watchers are a curious lot. I can’t say I know a lot of
birders, but the one guy I do know, a professor at a well-known university, is so fanatical about birds that he would
pretty much drop everything and cross the globe to see a red-breasted Fartsnucker (or some such thing). Some people
plan entire vacations around their birding addictions, which I find a bit odd, but quaint in a way, too. At least they
are giving themselves purpose in life. How many people lack that?  

This series of articles inthe CSM takes on the birding
phenom with recommendations for trips that will tickle the gizzards of birders everywhere. One article
takes you to the land down under to look at
frogmouths and gibberbirds, while another will have
you exploring Magdalena Island’s Megellanic penguins in Chile. So if you’re tired of those boring old blue-jays out
your window and want to tie your avian fetish into a trip, by all means do so.

Guatemala’s Charms

by Erik Olsen on

It’s interesting to see how often Central America is now on the radar screen of the big newspaper travel sites. Is it just me, or is the region really beginning to take off as a tourist destination? I know that for years people have gone to Costa Rica to trek, dive and mountain bike, but other places like Nicaragua and Honduras are now getting lots of attention.

Here in this LA Times travel piece, Guatemala now gets notice. The piece is positively bullish on the little country, hailing it as the next great destination for adventure sports fans and the site of the next Survivor series. I guess the numbers tell the story. More than 1 million people visited Guatemala last year, about a quarter of them from the United States. According to the article, growth has been so strong that tourism officials cheerfully predict Guatemala will soon pass popular rival Costa Rica in visitor numbers. Apparently even Bill Clinton and Francis Ford Coppola have succumbed to Guatemala’s charms.

As someone who has traveled there, I will say that it is a great country. Very interesting and filled with things to do. There are areas that might still be considered dangerous or somewhat under-developed so that travel is not necessarily easy, but that can be a good thing. Some people, for example, find Costa Rica almost too developed. So if finding a place that has not quite yet become a tourist juggernaut is for you, this might be a place to visit.

Travel Guide Peru

by Erik Olsen on

Several years ago I slogged the Inca
Trail and took five days to do it. That is the way the trail should be done. Forget taking the bus to the ruins
like the old-timers. That’s for wusses. Besides, the walk is (mostly) beautiful as you get to pass numerous other,
lesser-known ruins and to see and breathe in the fragrant air of the Peruvian countryside. And then, on that brilliant
dawn when you arrive and pass through the gate of the sun at Machu Piccu, well, there is nothing like it, and you feel
all the better because you worked for it.

Well, if Peru is on your agenda, you could do worse than
check out this Peru guide from the
Independent. It covers MP, of course, but a whole lot else besides including info on places to hang out at the beach
and surf, and jungles to trek until the leeches are happy.

Ranger Shortage

by Erik Olsen on

My first job out of college (if you don’t count being a ski photographer at Squaw Valley for a winter), was working
for the Department of the Interior in DC. The crappy part of this job was that the DOI is an awful, lumbering
bureaucracy where it is very hard to get things done. The great part was that I often got to travel to the country’s
national parks which are the jewels in our crown, so to speak (the Park Service is part of
Interior). I saw Yellowstone, the Smokies,
Mount Rushmore (I even go to dance a jig on Lincoln’s head, something
very few people get to do), and more. One of the problems even back then was that the NPS staff always felt kind of
neglected. They were poorly paid and in some cases poorly treated.

Well, it seems things haven’t changed that much. According to
this piece in the LA Times, ranger
ranks are shrinking. We’ve added some new parks, but we’ve cut back on our rangers. So when the writer, for example,
head to Yosemite, she finds no one there to explain why Half Dome looks the way it does (it’s magic, lady! The mountain
elves did it with a really big saw!). Anyway, we need to think hard as a nation about how to protect our parks, and how
to make sure that the dedicated people who work for them (and for us) can get properly compensated and treated for
their fine work.

PolarHusky.com

by Erik Olsen on

It’s been a while since I last visited this
site about North Pole expeditions, so I thought I’d call it out again. It is very deserving of praise and
clicks. The site is filled with stunning imagery,
videos,
expedition details, and discussion of ANWR,
which is much in the news right now.  The site has been designed as a sort of online classroom to help kids
and adults better understand Arctic issues, including the matter of drilling at ANWR, global climate change and
indigenous cultures of the Arctic.