As technology increases and the world shrinks, we truly are becoming more and more of a global village. With our ability to reach previously inaccessible destinations, that village is not only virtual but physical, as well. Like good stewards, the challenge we face as developed nations is to assist and empower our less fortunate neighbors, without destroying their unique natural and cultural herit...
Tour Host Review
For over 30 years, Ker and Downey has been offering safaris in Botswana and today the company has expanded its operation to include other African destinations. Over the years and with the expansion, one thing has not changed: the company’s dedication to environmentally sensitive tourism.
In Botswana they operate a selection of small camps. These luxury tented camps preserve and protect th...
Host of the Month
Ever since 1953 when Irwin Allen released his classic nature film, The Sea Around Us, and Walt Disney followed suit a few months later with his The Living Desert, the public has come to see wildlife cinematographers as crucial connections to and interpreters of the natural world.
As filmmaking and film viewing technologies have improved and become cheaper and more widespread, people the world o...
Festival Pick
It might be Nature's laboratory, with stuff in various stages of liquefaction dripping, gurgling and steaming... like so many experiments on Bunsen burners.
Sometimes, it's difficult to believe that the wonders of Yellowstone National Park are natural, rather than Disney-made. Geysers spray steam into the air at regu...
World Heritage Site
In the days before he portrayed bumbling Frank Drebin, the clueless detective in the Naked Gun series of movie comedies, Hollywood had groomed actor Leslie Nielsen as a B movie leading man. He’s the one who eventually got the blonde (Anne Francis) in Forbidden Planet, where he portrayed a handsome starship cap...
In this month’s issue you’ll read about several examples of eco-tourism. The rise of this movement is one of those chicken-egg things. Is eco-tourism one of the causes of the slowly rising global consciousness about the need to preserve earth’s resources or is it one of the results? Either way, eco-tourism seems to promise a way to address the traditional imbalances in wealth and power...
Los Angeles County, now at 10 million people, has pushed its way over the past 20 years into the front rank of cities that boast world-class museums. The new Getty Center in West Los Angeles, construction of MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) downtown and the recent expansion of the Los Angeles County Art Museum all reaffirmed LA’s arrival as an important cultural center.
Tanzania is generally best known for Mount Kilimanjaro and large wildlife populations in Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater, but it has many other attractions seldom visited by tourists. Visiting these less well-known destinations not only provides a break from the routine of safari cars and Kilimanjaro hikers, it also offers the chance to experience the rich...
It might be Nature's laboratory, with stuff in various stages of liquefaction dripping, gurgling and steaming... like so many experiments on Bunsen burners.
Sometimes, it's difficult to believe that the wonders of Yellowstone National Park are natural, rather than Disney-made. Geysers spray steam into the air at regular intervals. Pools of rainbow hued mud bubble gently. Travertine...
Ever since 1953 when Irwin Allen released his classic nature film, The Sea Around Us, and Walt Disney followed suit a few months later with his The Living Desert, the public has come to see wildlife cinematographers as crucial connections to and interpreters of the natural world.
As filmmaking and film viewing technologies have improved and become cheaper and more widespread,...
Just as some of the largest countries on earth contain vast expanses of empty, barren land, some of the smallest countries on earth contain what could be considered an unfairly large and spectacular proportion of the world’s bio-diversity.
You could easily miss Costa Rica on a map – it’s hemmed in between North and South America and...
I love to escort small groups and customize independent learning adventures to cultural/historic destinations in Mexico. I have a passion for the Mexican people, culture and language. One of the most fascinating tours I offer is the yearly search for and encounter with the magical Monarch butterflies in Michoacan.
Mexico is filled with mysteries and surprises for the traveler...
For over 30 years, Ker and Downey has been offering safaris in Botswana and today the company has expanded its operation to include other African destinations. Over the years and with the expansion, one thing has not changed: the company’s dedication to environmentally sensitive tourism.
In Botswana they operate a selection of small camps. These luxury...
After delivering a lecture on the solar system, philosopher and psychologist William James was approached by an elderly lady who claimed she had a theory superior to the one described by him. “We don’t live on a ball rotating around the sun,” she said. “We live on a crust of earth on the back of a giant turtle.” Not wishing to demolish this absurd argument with the massive scientific evidence at his command, James decided to...
You’d think 300,000 caribou would be easy to spot, but we’d gone nearly a week without a glimpse of the herd. “I have a gut feeling today’s the day,” uttered Tom, a veteran of the tundra for 30 years. So we boarded two floatplanes and took off, flying on each side of the broad Thelon River for an hour. One-hundred-foot-high eskers...
It’s up there in the top 10 treks in the world, if not the top five. I knew I wanted to do it; knew I had to do it. And I knew that thousands had done it already.
And that was the catch. I wanted to feel as if I had done more than just “appear” for four days on Peru’s sacred Inca Trail, sweating, wheezing and blowing my way along the path like a birthing heifer,...
As I write this journal entry from the Maasai Mara Game Reserve in the heart of Maasailand in Kenya, an old Maasai woman sits before us. Our guide, Meitamei Olol Dapash, walks over, puts his arm around her and introduces our group to his mother. “She walked to our camp with my eldest brother a half-day across the savannah and forests of Loita to welcome all of you to our family.”...
Finally, after months of hard work, I was recently able to explore the Yucatan Peninsula with my family on a tour that would take us through that area’s most amazing spots. Four months ago, when I arrived at this warm and booming destination in the Mexican Caribbean and first laid my eyes on its turquoise and blue waters, I couldn’t believe that it would be my home for the next six...
I believe that travel is one of the greatest adventures of life and, having lived in Africa for over 30 years, I never fail to be amazed by the very special moments one can experience while traveling on this continent.
My “work” as a tour operator, designing itineraries to suit discerning travellers, never fails to uplift my spirits and urge me to travel more. Over the last few years particularly I have traveled a lot, as my company has a policy of not sending...
"Zra? Zra! Tu est la? ZRA!? Il y a un grumier qui vient, en vitesse! Zra!" ("Zra, there’s a big logging truck, coming fast! Zra!"). For seemingly the hundredth time, I heard our driver, Abubacar, give that urgent call on our little two-way radio, and for almost the hundredth time, Laurent Zra, our Cameroonian guide and logistician, didn’t answer.
As technology increases and the world shrinks, we truly are becoming more and more of a global village. With our ability to reach previously inaccessible destinations, that village is not only virtual but physical, as well. Like good stewards, the challenge we face as developed nations is to assist and empower our less fortunate neighbors, without destroying their unique natural and cultural herit...
For over 30 years, Ker and Downey has been offering safaris in Botswana and today the company has expanded its operation to include other African destinations. Over the years and with the expansion, one thing has not changed: the company’s dedication to environmentally sensitive tourism.
In Botswana they operate a selection of small camps. These luxury tented camps preserve and protect th...
Ever since 1953 when Irwin Allen released his classic nature film, The Sea Around Us, and Walt Disney followed suit a few months later with his The Living Desert, the public has come to see wildlife cinematographers as crucial connections to and interpreters of the natural world.
As filmmaking and film viewing technologies have improved and become cheaper and more widespread, people the world o...
Tanzania is generally best known for Mount Kilimanjaro and large wildlife populations in Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater, but it has many other attractions seldom visited by tourists. Visiting these less well-known destinations not only provides a break from the routine of safari cars and Kilimanjaro hikers, it also offers the chance to experience the rich...
Ever since 1953 when Irwin Allen released his classic nature film, The Sea Around Us, and Walt Disney followed suit a few months later with his The Living Desert, the public has come to see wildlife cinematographers as crucial connections to and interpreters of the natural world.
Just as some of the largest countries on earth contain vast expanses of empty, barren land, some of the smallest countries on earth contain what could be considered an unfairly large and spectacular proportion of the world’s bio-diversity.
I love to escort small groups and customize independent learning adventures to cultural/historic destinations in Mexico. I have a passion for the Mexican people, culture and language. One of the most fascinating tours I offer is the yearly search for and encounter with the magical Monarch butterflies in Michoacan.
In Botswana they operate a selection of small camps. These luxury...