El Mogote, Baja California, Mexico

Thu, 8 Nov 2007 19:44:09 -0800

My Spanish dictionary says “mogote” means “wooded hill” or “antler,” and I can’t for the life of me figure out how this peninsula of rippling sand dunes and patchy desert scrub could have inspired that name. It’s one of many head-scratchers that has followed me home from El Mogote, a deserted sandbar just across the bay from sleepy La Paz.

My friend Shantel and I had gone to Baja with hopes of camping on an offshore isle in the aquamarine Sea of Cortez, but every outfitter in the region was either closed for the New Year’s holiday, or booked. So we made the best of it by renting a couple of kayaks, wheeling them to the stinky La Paz marina (diesel exhaust, rotting fish, mysterious sea sludge) and paddling through the harbor to El Mogote.

The tide was falling, so we hurried to explore the secluded nooks where naked mangrove roots dangled beneath the clumps of leaves, crackling and popping with the subtle motions of the water. A beautiful bird with a blue beak and a black mask (a cormorant?) waded in a narrow inlet, and herons, terns and egrets hovered nearby.

As the tide bottomed out, we returned to the shoreline, paddling around the bend past a crowd of brown pelicans that squawked at us from the beach. We pulled the kayaks onto the sand and climbed a coastal dune for what we thought would be a quiet hike across the empty peninsula.

From the top of the dune, we were surprised to look down on a massive construction zone where workers were busily erecting a 1,700-acre golf resort community. A sign in the sand said “Paraíso del Mar,” and on the attached map I counted 24 buildings. We paddled home with the sad realization that we had happened upon an imminently endangered place.

Back at home, I checked the developer’s website, which says the project is an Audubon International Signature Development. “The expansive mangrove ecosystem on the south shore remains intact,” the site promises. “A thousand acres have been set aside for wildlife sanctuaries and open space. A desalinization plant will provide ample fresh water.”

Though the Audubon program mandates wildlife conservation, waste management, energy and water efficiency and water quality management, I have a hard time believing that such a development won’t have a negative impact on the resident birds. It will certainly put an end to spontaneous walks amid the dunes by kayakers who wander over from the mainland.

My Spanish dictionary says “paraíso del mar” means “paradise of the sea.” Let’s hope that future visitors won’t wonder how it got that name.

Aysén, Patagonia, Chile

Tue, 6 Nov 2007 20:46:55 -0800

When our river rafting guide dipped his water bottle into the Río and took a big long swig, I shuddered out of habit. You just don’t drink untreated river water in most parts of the world. That’s backcountry lesson number one, right? But Aysén isn’t like most parts of the world. In this pristine part of Patagonia, the blue-green water streams directly from the Northern Ice Field, unpolluted by livestock or industry or any other waste-producing entity. And so, pushing aside the fears of microscopic critters invading my belly, I leaned toward the water, scooped up a handful, and slurped.

Few places on our planet remain as untouched as Aysén, where four immaculate rivers flow uninterrupted from source to sea. You couldn’t cross the region by car until 2000, when the gravel “highway” started by Pinochet in the 1970s finally made its way from Puerto Montt in the Lakes Region 770 miles south to Villa O’Higgins. The roadside scenery is still dominated by bushy lenga trees, calafate flowers, and an intricate network of rivers, lakes and streams, set against a backdrop of gleaming glacial peaks. Subsistence farming is the norm, and the population density is less than three per square mile.

Much will change if Spanish power company Endesa carries out its plan to build two dams along the Baker and two on the Río Pascua, in southern Aysén. Together the dams will produce 2,430 megawatts that will be connected to the national grid via more than 1,800 miles of new transmission lines, and shipped to power-thirsty central Chile. The project will provide some short-term construction jobs and a temporary boost to the local economy. It will also inundate up to 36 square miles of land, permanently altering the ecology and turning the upper Baker stagnant.

Regional and international environmentalists are working to halt the project, but the fact that Chile’s water rights are private limits their ability to intervene. Construction of the first dam is scheduled to begin in 2008. It will harness the hydropower of the Río Baker as it slams into the Río Chacabuco in a narrow, rocky canyon just downstream from the quiet cove where we pulled our river raft onto shore, rested on the rocky beach, then waded back into the icy water for one last drink.

West Caicos Island, British West Indies

Tue, 6 Nov 2007 20:24:45 -0800

The night I camped on the quiet leeward shore of West Caicos, the island had a population of five: two writers, an architect, a construction foreman, and an “organizer of island pursuits” who kept us up late drinking rum, playing dominoes and indulging in a midnight snorkel under a velvet sky splattered with stars. In the morning, sunbeams baked the silver thatch palms and sea oats that lined the toasted-sugar sand. We waded in motionless water the color of antifreeze, and declared ourselves willing castaways on a Caribbean isle that’s been deserted for 100 years.

it won’t be deserted for long. Our hosts were part of a group of developers whose vision for West Caicos is a sustainable tropical paradise that represents a new, greener era of island living. They invited us to experience a place in transition, an usual project that could take a beautiful, natural destination and actually make it better (for those who can afford it, anyway).

The westernmost link in the Turks and Caicos chain will soon house the 125-room Ritz-Carlton Molasses Reef hotel and a handful of 18th-century Caribbean style villas, all developed with preservation in mind—as they see it, it’s a minor sacrifice of 296 acres that will ensure the protection of a few thousand more.

The new, eco-friendly “settlement,” which will cover less than a tenth of the 11-square-mile island, is an attempt to use careful sustainability planning to thwart the overdevelopment that plagues nearby isles. Guests will get around on bicycles or golf carts; wooden boardwalks will protect the fragile silver thatch palm groves; and an environmental stewardship program will preserve archaeological relics, create and maintain public parks and beaches, reintroduce the once-endemic rock iguana, and establish an education center and interpretive trails.

Buying into this dream is not for the weak of wallet—overnight stays will start at $695. As for the villas, well, if you have to ask …

Galápagos archipelago, Ecuador

Sun, 4 Nov 2007 20:52:56 -0800

When we slid off of our rubber Zodiac into the cool Pacific, waves were slapping up against nearby Champion Islet, a rocky little thing among the grand Galápagos islands. But once the three of us, including myself, another North American and a native Galapagueño, dunked our dive masks below the tide, thoughts of current and conditions were washed away by awe.

A small, black-tipped reef shark circled below, followed by graceful spotted eagle rays, and a thick school of deep blue-and-yellow-striped Sargeant Majors. Few creatures seemed to notice us until we met a cadre of sleek brown sea lions, intent on goofing around. They darted toward, around and beneath us, often mimicking our acrobatics. When it seems they could spend the entire day at play, they finally hauled their massive hides awkwardly onto the beach. Some plopped down atop another brazenly while pups snuggled up to their mothers to nurse in the warm autumn sun.   On the Galápagos archipelago, 600 miles west of mainland Ecuador, time is measured by the rhythms of nature and the place is defined by the extremes of life and death, wet and dry (seasons), dormant and explosive, and native and alien. Yet traveling there is like wandering in a parallel universe.   Certain phenomenon like heat, wind and gravity are familiar, but other aspects are other-worldly. Sea lions are unperturbed, even inquisitive, of humans, normally land-fixed iguanas dive headfirst into the surf, birds with powder-blue foot are ubiquitous, and tortoises with shells the size of beach umbrellas roam through one century to the next.  While the islands, 97 percent of which are national park, retain a staggering 95 percent of their endemic species (a feat unparalleled on any other archipelago in the world) keeping Galápagos biologically pristine has been, and continues to be, a constant and hard-waged battle.   The introduction of foreign species to the isolated islands remains the single greatest threat to their biodiversity. And in the swirl and shove of globalization the conditions that the islands’ biota demand for survival (the ones toward which these species specifically evolved) are becoming difficult to sustain. While the Galápagos have many watchdogs and protectors, they suffer constant bombardment by illegal immigration and fishing, weak national park administration, corrupt mainland politics and an influx of bloated cruise ships.