It’s late afternoon at the Okonjima Game Reserve, home of the AfriCat Foundation, one of Namibia’s leading wildlife conservation organizations, and I’m in a jeep bouncing along a rutted track, scanning the bush as safari guide Previous Tsvigu follows the faint blips his tracking device has picked up from one of the reserve’s collared wild cats.
I first visited the Galápagos Islands in 1994 as part of a college semester studying ecology and environmental issues in Ecuador. We spent a week in the islands, cruising from one amazing spot to another aboard a 16-passenger yacht. To this day, I remember it as one of the best weeks of my life. Fourteen …
I was driving along a country road in central Scotland, approaching Stirling, with the city’s castle looming in the distance on top of a steep cliff. As I admired the dramatic view, a rainbow appeared directly ahead of me, bathing the castle in pastel hues. I immediately found a place to pull over so I …
It was the first day of my Namibian safari to Etosha National Park and Damaraland with Wilderness Safaris. We had checked into our first camp, Andersson’s Camp in the private Ongava Game Reserve adjacent to Etosha, a few hours earlier and were out for our first game drive. Ongava is known for its resident populations …
I just returned from leading a tour in Cuba, where my group had the opportunity to see the world’s smallest bird, the bee hummingbird. As its name suggests, this miniscule flier is scarcely bigger than a bumblebee. Its Spanish name, zunzuncito, captures something of the whirring of its tiny wings as it darts through the air …
I think it was the zebras that showed up first. But it may have been a giraffe, or possibly a kudu. In any case, it didn’t take long after we arrived at Andersson’s Camp in Namibia’s Ongava Game Reserve before various species made an appearance at the waterhole just beyond the lounge area. As we …
Last summer, I had the opportunity to visit Quebec’s beautiful Gaspé Peninsula, a lobster-claw-shaped piece of land that juts into the Gulf of St. Lawrence north of New Brunswick. The Gaspésie, as it is known in French, had long been on my travel wish list, although I didn’t really know a whole lot about it …
New Zealand is well known for having more sheep than people; the ratio currently stands at a little over seven sheep for every one of the country’s 4.42 million people. Although the sheep-to-humans ratio has declined dramatically in recent decades, the animals are still a common part of New Zealand’s pastoral landscapes. I took this …
In the far west of Mongolia, ethnic Kazakh nomads still follow a tradition of hunting with trained golden eagles. Although I haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit that part of the country, one of my two trips to Mongolia as expedition manager for National Geographic Expeditions did give me the chance to see one …
I recently returned from an exciting trip to Namibia for the Adventure Travel World Summit (ATWS), an event that I’ve been attending annually since 2009 and which has become a highlight of my year. This year was the first time the ATWS was held in Africa, and our Namibian hosts did themselves proud. As a …