The Tasmanian Tiger is an
elusive beast. The last one in
captivity died in the Hobart zoo in 1936, and the tiger is officially extinct. But in Australia, ranchers, hunters
and hikers claim every so often that they see one of the near-mythical beasts skulking in the tall grass. SF
Chronicle Editor John Flinn went in search of the Tasmanian Tiger and lived to tell about it. Read his story here.
Volunteer Vacations
No, this does not mean you are volunteering TO GO on vacation. It means you volunteer WHEN YOU GO on vacation. The
difference is fairly huge.
We’ve blogged about these trips before, even the
Earthwatch trips specifically. But
this peice that ran on CNN
was a nice summary of what you can expect when you head out on a “volunteer vacation”…that is, head out to work for
some scientific or NGO enterprise…for example digging up bones in the Gobi Desert. Or fixing water filtration systems
in India. It may seem strange that you would pay to go on vacation and work, but it’s big biz as people slough away
from their desk jobs to release their inner Indiana Jones.
Sadly, these tris aren’t cheap. Costs for one- to three-week Global Volunteers projects range from $650 to $2,595. In
2004, the average price for a one-to-three week Earthwatch project was $1,850, with projects ranging in price from $800
to $3,500. Travel expenses to the group meeting point are not included for either organization.
Top Places for 2005
This nice New York Times interactive narrated by Times’ Travel Editor Stuart Emmrich lists the top places to go this year. Bhutan is near the top of the list, and is recommended in part (aside from being amazingly beautiful) because the country restricts the number of people who can come into the country…something largely unheard of other places.
Los Cabos in Mexico is big, as are dude ranches in Montana. Virgin, of Richard Branson fame, has got safaris in South Africa where you can give your digital camera a workout. And for budget-minded folks who want to avoid the sticker shock of places like Paris, Slovenia is the new Prague. All the recs are pretty solid, I think, and I added a couple, particularly Slovenia to my personal list for the year.
Adventure Expo: Lots of Africa Trips
So maybe it’s just because I was walking “Africa Alley”, the corridor dedicated to African
trips, but I was amazed at the number of Africa game viewing trips there are being offered. Africa is BIG, I was told
numerous times today. The hot new place. And what’s so great are apparently private game reserves tours, the idea being
that it is better to watch animals than to shoot them. Hemingway would be so sad.
These game reserve trips are basically your standard safari, but on private land. You are awakened at the crack of
dawn by lion roars, sip coffee while watching the sun rise, and then set out by jeep to catch sight of the BIG 5
(lions, rhinos, buffalos, leopards and elephants…yes, I had to look it up). The fellow pictured here, John Moody, runs
one of the more popular private reserves called the Kwamadwala Reserve. He
showed me pictures and some video of the place and I have to say I’d go in a heartbeat. And the price didn’t seem to
bad, given what you get. It’s $350 a day for two safaris (morning and night), food and lodging.
Digging up the Dirt
It may not be your idea of a vacation to go somewhere and
dig around in the dirt for ancient artifacts, but for some folks, it’s bliss.
And if finding your bliss means sifting earth to find scraps of bine, the beauty of it is, you don’t need to be have
PhD to do it. No. You can just pay up and go to Peru.
In this expedition by Earthwatch, you will venture
to the Huaro Valley, Peru where the
infamous Wari (AD 540-900) once thrived. They lived off the land from the central highlands to the sierras and the
coast. They had no TV and only one word for snow: “cold”.
But seriously, give a look at some of these expeditions. The one I desribe here is led by
Dr. Mary Glowacki, whom you will get to know well.
What will you do? You will record mapping and excavation data. You will “rotate between mapping the structure and
excavating and processing the artifacts”. Fun!
And you will do all of this with the comfy confines of a Cuzco hotel to go back to.
Get busy, though. Spots are filling up and those bone shards don’t want to wait around for another 1100 years.