11 essays tagged “wildlife”.
Ushuaia, Antarctica
Antarctica is the most genuinely empty continent on earth. The only realistic access is by ship across the Drake Passage from Ushuaia, Argentina. The 10-day cruise — penguins, ice, the Drake itself, the cold ocean — is one of the most distinctive trips available in modern travel.
December 30, 2024
Longyearbyen, Norway
Svalbard is the High Arctic — a Norwegian archipelago at 78° north, with more polar bears than people, a small settlement at Longyearbyen, and a coastline accessible only by sea. The Arctic in its more genuine form, with the difficulties that implies.
July 12, 2024
Tórshavn, Faroe Islands (Denmark)
The Faroe Islands are eighteen volcanic rocks rising sharply from the North Atlantic between Scotland, Iceland, and Norway. The total population is 54,000; the puffin colonies number in the hundreds of thousands. The light is unbelievable. The weather is unbelievable in a different sense.
July 4, 2024
Santa Elena, Costa Rica
Monteverde's cloud forest hangs in the mist along the Costa Rican Continental Divide. The air is wet. The trees are draped in mosses and bromeliads. The biodiversity, per hectare, is among the highest on earth. The cloud forest is the reason to come.
January 8, 2024
Cairns, Australia
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on earth. It is also one of the most visibly distressed marine ecosystems on the planet, with successive bleaching events over the past decade. The visit is worth making, more carefully than the brochures suggest.
September 20, 2023
Sesriem, Namibia
The Sossusvlei dunes of the Namib Desert are some of the oldest and tallest in the world. Climbing one at dawn, with the orange sand turning red against the indigo of the not-yet-lit sky, is one of the iconic experiences of African travel.
October 15, 2022
Antananarivo, Madagascar
Madagascar is the most biologically distinct landmass after Australia — 90% of its plants and animals are endemic — and one of the most logistically demanding countries I have travelled in. The reward, for the patient, is a country unlike anywhere else.
September 26, 2022
Banff, Canada
Banff, Jasper, and the Icefields Parkway form one of the great mountain landscapes of North America. In July and August, the parking lots fill at 6 a.m. In May or late September, the crowds thin to a manageable level and the mountains are themselves.
September 12, 2022
Livingstone, Zambia
Victoria Falls (Mosi-oa-Tunya, 'the smoke that thunders' in Lozi) is 1.7 km wide and drops 108 m, with a peak-season volume that throws spray a kilometre into the sky. A guide to seeing it without rushing, and to combining it with the upper Zambezi.
August 10, 2022
Seronera, Tanzania
The wildebeest migration through the Serengeti and Maasai Mara — 1.5 million wildebeest, 200,000 zebra, 500,000 gazelle moving in an annual circuit — is the largest movement of land mammals on earth. The trick to seeing it is matching your visit to the herds, which is harder than the brochures suggest.
July 4, 2022
Puerto Ayora, Ecuador
The Galápagos Islands are the closest thing left on earth to an undisturbed wildlife laboratory — animals that have no significant fear of humans because, for most of their evolutionary history, they had no humans to fear. The experience is genuinely irreplaceable.
May 15, 2021