546 stories
At age 100, Elsa Bailey became one of Nat Hab’s most memorable guests when we invited her to join our Tundra Lodge and Town Adventure to Churchill, Manitoba in 2013, after learning that seeing polar bears in the wild was one of the remaining items on her bucket list.
Growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, you know about the Churchill polar bears. After all, they are a big part of the Canadian province’s unique identity. Every year, news reports would show the polar bears invading the small town of Churchill.
“Ethiopia? What’s in Ethiopia?” When I mention that I’ve spent the past ten months living and working in this mountainous country in the Horn of Africa, most people are a bit stumped. I’ve been working in the travel trade in Ethiopia, I explain. More quizzical looks. “People travel there?”
“Kura-kura!” yelled the little village boy as he came running out of the dark tropical night and into our jungle camp. Two of our Papuan boatmen from our mother ship, the James Bond II, grabbed their machetes and a couple of burlap sacks and followed after him with excitement.
Borneo. Greenland. Bhutan. These incredible assignments should be in any adventurer’s short list of amazing destinations. Having had the opportunity to travel to them all with the focus of evaluating them for future Natural Habitat Adventures destinations was literally a dream come true.
It was our first evening at EcoCamp Patagonia when we saw it—our first puma. Relaxing on a cool evening, a female puma lay at the bottom of a large hill directly below camp.
“Life takes on new meaning away from civilization.” When our naturalist guide Roberto Plaza spoke those words as we were walking down a quiet Galapagos island path on the first day of our Nat Hab/WWF trip, the full weight of his observation didn’t quite hit me.
As I settled into my room at the Evergreen Lodge near Costa Rica’s Tortuguero National Park, I soon discovered that it wasn’t just a room. Tucked away in the lush rain forest of Costa Rica and accessible only by air or water, my accommodations for the next few days were both rustic and luxurious.
Myanmar’s tropical sun laughed from a happy blue sky, but the mood of our travel group was introverted to the point of being somber. This was fair enough, since we had just survived the worst tropical cyclone to plough through the Andaman Sea in years.
The persistent nudge was annoying. A very large body was trying to push me off the camping mattress. Snugly wrapped in my sleeping bag, I drowsily realized that the firm pressure was not from a tent mate—I was in a single tent—but from something much bigger.
When expectations are high, I find it rare for a destination to so completely and entirely surpass anything I could have anticipated. Without a doubt, this was the case with my first visit to South Georgia island in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Biologically, it is part of the Antarctic ecosystem.
I’ve been to the Amazon before – several times, actually. I’ve led trips in the neo-tropics and been on more rain forest hikes than I could ever remember. So to say I thought I knew what to expect on our Great Amazon River Cruise is a bit of an understatement.
