What it is all about...

-

"The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space."  Edward Abbey

I live on a portion of the planet that contains a lot more brown and green than blue.  But our planet's surface is about 71% water-covered, and most of that water is in our oceans.  Note my voyage begins at the place that was so inspiring to Edward Abbey, Arches National Park (Desert Solitaire: a season in the wilderness).  But even Abbey recognized that we live on a "little blue planet."

 Next week I begin a 5 month journey that has me exploring some parts of "waterworld," but even then I will spend most of my time on terra firma.  I should be within a few kilometers of the sea at all times, if not in it or under it.  This blog will document my Blue Planet Journey.

I'll start in Hawaii, then head off to Australia.  Before I return, I'll visit Australia on multiple occasions, as well as New Zealand, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Bora Bora, Tahiti, and more.  In Hawaii, I'll visit Kauai, Maui, Oahu, and the Big Island.

 Enjoy the voyage!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Voyager of The Seas: giving guests a reason never to cruise again

-
Image
  A "veggie burger" in the Windjammer buffet.  If I wanted mashed potatoes, I'd choose mashed potatoes. After spending a month on the Anthem of the Seas , I was looking forward to a trip on a different ship. And this trip was going to include the entire family, some of whom had never cruised before, so I was looking forward to them being impressed with a week on the Voyager of the Seas. Voyager is a smaller ship than Anthem , so I knew in advance there were some missing amenities. Still, they were all part of the Royal Caribbean corporate ecosystem, so the overlapping elements, like the quality of the food and service or the accuracy of the "Cruise Compass" (a digital or paper calendar detailing everything there is to see and do onboard, from dining times to the location of trivia contests to where all the many musicians are playing) should be similar. It wasn't. The week we returned home, we canceled our future transatlantic cruise on the  Voyager. We neve...
Read more

The one, the only... Chobe National Park, Botswana!

-
Image
We were on our way to the famous Chobe National Park, in northern Botswana.  This visit was somewhat troubling for me.  In May, Botswana's president had announced an  end  to a five year ban on elephant hunting.  Elephant hunting?  There were calls for a boycott against Botswana.  Botswana is a bright spot for African savannah elephants, with over 100,000 in the country.  The proposal was to permit around 400 elephants to be killed by trophy hunters, who presumably would pay $30-50 thousand dollars to kill each of these animals (at $40,000 each, that would come out to $16 million).  There's roughly an equal number of elephants being poached for their ivory each year in Botswana.   I'm going to editorialize on hunting elephants for a moment.  Just scroll down to the white rhino photo below to skip my ramblings. But the overall populations of both forest and savannah elephants in Africa are in steep decline (espe...
Read more

The Tale of the Maui Mystery Cat

-
Image
In 2003, a jaguar was suspected of terrorizing residents of the Olinda area, Maui. Photo of a jaguar attacking a cayman in the Pantanal, Brazil, by Frank Schoen. Copyright: https://www.123rf.com/profile_djambi1969 . Used with permission.      In 2003, I was sitting in a Starbucks across from the Honolulu Zoo in Waikiki, reading the Honolulu Advertiser , when I came across an article about the sighting of a large, cat-like creature on Maui. I don't have that initial article, but I did find an archived copy of an article from Hawaii News Now on the topic: Wildlife officials are planning to intensify efforts today to capture a large catlike animal spotted in the lower Olinda area of Upcountry Maui. A search team sent out yesterday found evidence the animal does exist. They discovered tree trunks with deep scratch marks and a number of doves that appeared to be killed by a catlike paw. Wildlife experts plan to bait an existing trap today and add four more traps. Officials s...
Read more