Category Archives: Travel

Bringing down fences: one year on.

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I started writing this post on a dark plane flying North over the African continent, visions of elephants and African wildlife swimming in my head. Now I’m home, back from another trip to Kariega with the BTEH team to do additional observations and work on an exciting elephant ID project that blossomed from that first trip.

How it started: I went down to South Africa last March sort of blindly. I had signed up for a volunteer program with an NGO called Bring The Elephant Home to help the researchers do behavioural studies on elephants at Kariega Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape. We spent 10 days there, in the field and in the classroom, learning about and studying these amazing creatures. Just a few months before that trip, they had removed the interior fences in the reserve, so one of the key questions we tried to answer was “what happens with the eles when you remove fences?” I wrote about that amazing experience here.

Fast-forward a year and a few months, and these elephants have been living in their expanded habitat for some time now.

5 observations after another 10 days in the field:

The herds seem to be thriving. There are new-ish calves and lots of mud wallowing. The eles really seemed jovial and happy.

  • individual elephant on lush background
  • baby elephants with adult in background
  • elephant in bush
  • picture of elephant and her calf
  • single elephant in the bush
  • close-up of elephant face

All the herds seem to be spending a lot of time in the Harvestvale section of the reserve. There are still 3 matriarchs with GPS collars (Half Moon, Beauty, and Bukela), and the BTEH team has tracked them over the past year in a sort of migration pattern with the seasons. Last year, Bukela’s herd was very cautious about crossing over into their new territory, so it could be that the Kariega West herd has benefitted most with the new habitat.

They’ve made new friends and acquaintances. One of the most beautiful things to observe was that all the herds seem to be affiliating, if not intermingling. Time will tell whether this leads to new mini-herds or one giant one.

elephant herd in lush bush

The bulls are roaming about in bands of 2s and 3s, and even these guys have crossed clans. We observed Matchstick hanging around with Holy Moly, and Sean (one delegate from each of the herds). Maybe Matchstick (from Harvestvale) is playing mentor – or host – to the other two (from KW).

Kambaku was in musth. He’s from the Kariega West side. It seemed probable that he mated with Mavis (from Harvestvale), so the bulls are probably enjoying the fact that they have more ladies to choose from.

large bull elephant with herd

Exciting news.

Last year, I left feeling like there had to be an easier way to ID individual elephants. So I organised a Hackathon team to work on an AI model that would help speed up and automate the identification process. While we didn’t fully solve the problem for Hackathon, we came close… and that led to a partnership of sorts between our Hackathon team, Bring The Elephant Home, Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, and WildMe, the internationally-known NGO that works to identify and track endangered species worldwide. To date, WildMe’s WildBook population monitoring doesn’t have elephants in their re-ID model because they didn’t have a large enough data set to train the AI. So through this collaboration we are going to first train their re-ID model to include elephants, and then work on a mobile app that can be used in the field.

To say that we are very excited is an understatement!

More exciting news.

All research points to the fact that habitat expansion leads to thriving herds, lower environmental impact, less human/elephant conflict, less human intervention needed for elephant population control, and a healthier ecosystem for many of the interdependent species in the area. Together with the Elephant Reintegration Trust, BTEH is working on creating the world’s first elephant rewilding reserve. BTEH also supports initiatives to create an “elephant corridor” in the Eastern Cape that aims to pull down more fences between private reserves and build a network of connected wild spaces up to Addo National Park.

This year’s program felt like both a summation of research as well as a lens into the future. Many thanks to Antoinette and Brooke at Bring The Elephant Home for creating these exciting programs to promote elephant wellbeing and more successful human-elephant coexistence.

More to follow, with photos and stories, from an amazing 10 days with the elephants and the BTEH volunteer team.

Costa Rica parte tres: The ocean redeems itself.

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They say the ideal holiday length is 10 days. You need 4 days to decompress from the real world, a few days to deep dive into the present, and a day or so to get ready to go back to reality. By dia cuatro, I felt a shift, whether it was the whales, a surrender to the humidity, or the fauna, I felt like I was on a proper escape from the real world.

My last day of diving was a Friday. The currents were shifting with the moon, bringing higher tides and more surge, which could mean lower visibility. But as we were getting ready for our first dive, a manta ray swam directly under the boat, chasing plankton on top of the reef at the el Diablo dive site.

I’ve dived in Thailand, Burma, Zanzibar…but I’ve never seen a manta underwater. These creatures are as graceful as they are massive (giant manta ray wingspans can be nearly 9 metres or almost 30ft!), yet they eat the tiny stuff: krill and plankton. This was going to be an interesting dive!

The ocean did not disappoint: we were graced by 3 giant mantas in total, an aloof pair travelling together and a solo one who seemed to really enjoy swimming over our bubbles. The sheer size of these animals is breathtaking; absolutely enormous, yet they fly overhead like chubby kites.

  • a giant manta swimming flanked by two yellow fish
  • a giant manta swims in the ocean
  • a giant manta comes up from the depths with the sun shining from above
  • a sole giant manta swims in the ocean with sun shining

This day made up for every other thus far!

And I had 2 days left for wandering, birdwatching, critter-finding, and hammock lolling before needing to wrap up and get back to reality.

The Bahìa Drake trail is a path that follows the line where the sea meets the jungle, and runs many kilometres from Drake Bay down the coast towards Corcovado National Park. It was brutally hot out, so I walked about 30 minutes, landing on a beach inhabited by a fleet of college spring breakers. I quickly retreated to another little beach, completely quiet save a few thousand hermit crabs skittering around the sand.

I spent my remaining time in Drake Bay trying to slow down time. I knew that when I got back, the pressures of an impending product launch would be all-consuming. So I sat and watched while a small company of scarlet macaws amassed in a mango tree to gorge on the unripe fruit. I watched as giant iguanas appeared out of nowhere to slowly yet lithely scamper up trees. I stalked hummingbirds and a handful of different kinds of tanagers.

And like that, the week was up. The trip back was without issue, though I felt more nervous travelling back into the US than I did leaving it. My passport has a somewhat chequered history, and the current news cycle didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. This too shall pass.

Awesome souvenirs.

I got a text message from one of the French guys on the dive boat a couple of days after I got home. “Awesome souvenirs,” he texted. I had sent some of the manta photos and videos to the group. And it made me smile. I think we have it all wrong here…the word souvenirs in French means memories.

And a picture is worth a thousand words.

Costa Rica parte dos: On land, in which I take a liking to some of the locals.

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After diving a few days, I joined a tour to the massive Corcovado National Park (42,000+ hectares of land area). They’ve somewhat commoditized and package-ized the outdoor experiences here, which ruffled some of my meander-leaning feathers. This was before the bad dive and the whales, so I was still uncertain of my feelings for the place overall. But I went in with an open mind, a camera, a lot of water, and a desire to see some cool critters.

Check-in at 5:45, load onto the boat at 6, disembark and check-in at the ranger station, bag check for illicit food and plastic (Corcovado is very strict), and we’re ready to go into the park. In my group of 10 was a very nice Italian couple, a trio of French women, and a few others. We walked the trails slowly, with the guide stopping every 50 metres or so to point something out. It felt like he was acting the “guide” part a bit, with a flourish of his scope each time we stopped. Despite the showmanship and the production value, the trails were nice and we managed to see some indigenous species: 2 sloths, 3 tapirs, a smattering of birds and reptiles, a coatimundi, an agouti, and a partridge in a pear tree. Actually, a partridge-type thing (a tinamou), a great curassow, a couple of crested guans, a chachalaca (which is a great sighting if for the name alone), and others.

All-in-all, it felt canned. Like walking through a ‘nature park experience’ rather than hiking through primary and secondary rainforest. And, while I’m not regretful that I went, I’d likely sign up for a different experience if I go again. When I got back to Drake Bay, I booked some time with a local guide to go birdwatching.

The highlight of the day: a couple of Imperials (the local beer) with the Italian couple, some very decent ceviche, and fun conversation, culminating in them urging me to reconsider my domicile in these very bizarre times.

I rode out the hottest heat of the afternoon on the balcony of my hotel room doing some napping and lazy birdwatching from the hammock. The cacophony begins at dusk, when the cicadas announce the exact moment of sunset. It’s amazing, really, the scissor-like crescendo of their song. Track 2 to the evening symphony is the squawking chorus of scarlet macaws as they make their way, 2-by-2 into the jungle to sleep.

I met up with the local birding guide the next day with honestly low expectations after my Corcovado experience. But the magic of the whales prevailed and it ended up being a lovely, if a tad wet bird walk (we got caught in a tropical downpour while looking for toucans), making the memory better, if soggy.

If you are in Drake Bay, I highly recommend William Mora Gomez as a guide. He knows the area like the back of his hand, and his passion for birds and local wildlife shines through.

We ended up going on 2 outings, each time seeing more and more local birds and wildlife. The 2nd walk we took, William had rescued a baby white-face capuchin earlier in the day. The little monkey had gotten zapped on an overhead wire, and William reunited him with his troop. We walked by the same area a couple of hours later and the monkeys were still there, maybe waiting to give some good photo ops in gratitude. I’m anthropomorphizing of course, but it’s nice to wonder if they remember the good humans.

This inspired me to take my own late afternoon walks in-between lazing and diving. Birdwatching is good for the spirit. Looking through a viewfinder focuses your attention and silences the ridiculous chatter in your mind. A nonsense self-conversation about what’s going to happen in 4 days when you’re back in the real world has no chance against a chance sighting of a red-lored Amazon parrot with mate sitting on a nest, close encounters with rufous-tailed hummingbirds, cartoon-ish sightings of fiery-billed aracaris and yellow-throated toucans. Lineated woodpeckers.

It was during these walks, despite the heat, despite the prices (I still have no idea how people without a hefty vacation budget can afford to live there), despite the touristic-centricity, that I came to really appreciate the Pura Vida, pure life, aspect of Costa Rica.

There is a concept in my yoga practice called Iccha: the willingness to allow something, or the opening up to what might be. It had been a long time since I’d really, purely tapped into this energy and it felt like my spirit was trying to come home.

The following day the ocean would redeem itself.

Read Part 1 here.

Costa Rica parte uno…Las ballenas salvan el dia (the whales save the day).

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Drake Bay, Osa Peninsula: land of scarlet macaws, Central American jungle critters like monkeys, tapirs, sloths, and more; this part of Costa Rica was rumored to be less touristy, less resort-y, a little wilder, a little quieter.

It started sort of precariously, if I’m honest. With a sideways state of affairs and sense of foreboding back home, a pent-up excess of fernweh in my bones, and a dashed-together escape plan to see a part of Central America I’d not been to before… add to that a fairly ominous start to la aventura.

Friday: a 3:00 alarm to make a 6am flight in order to connect in Miami in time to catch the last local flight from San José down to the Osa Peninsula… and even the best-laid plans sometimes have other things in store than what’s expected. So 40 minutes out from San José, the flight had to do a 180 and head back to Miami. Apparently, air traffic control was down across Central America, flights couldn’t land, and we didn’t have enough fuel to wait it out in the sky.

7 or so hours later, we’re on the ground, but of course too late to catch the little planes that spiderweb visitors to various points across the country. I heard buzzing amongst the passengers about hiring helicopters or cars or boats to get them to their end points sooner. Having neither means nor energy for that kind of rejiggering, I booked a new flight to Drake Bay for the following morning and a night in a simple hotel in San José. A clean bed and hot shower were all I really needed, but I had forgotten that here, “shower” does not necessarily imply “hot”.

I woke up the next morning clean but groggy, willing the massive headache to stay at bay until I got to my little hotel that would be my base for the next week. While the final leg to the simple but nice Corcovado and Drake Inn was painless, the migraine was not. I spent much of Day 1 sleeping off the entry.

Mermaid returns home but finds things amiss.

I looked for a PADI 5-star shop to dive with (you can’t be too careful), so the boxes checked with Costa Rica Adventure Divers. And Caño Island sounded like a nice spot to dive, boasting reefs, schooling fish, pinnacles, sharks and more… My mermaid tendencies needed attention and I signed up to dive for 5 days. 🐟🧜‍♀️

I’ve been diving for close to 30 years, and my heart aches every time I get in the water of late. While I was hoping for vibrant reefs teeming with schools of fish, I knew that the reality would be something different. That said, I wasn’t wholly prepared for the conditions.

These reefs were thriving a mere 5 or 6 years ago. But climate change, pineapple farms and other industries leaching chemicals into the rivers (which flow into the ocean), storms and mudslides, construction, and development (despite Costa Rica’s largely pro-environment stance), have cumulatively caused the corals to bleach and mostly die off here. And while there are some soft corals surviving and thriving, most seemed sad. The schools of fish were there, but from what I was told by the divemaster, it is a very small fraction of what it had been. We were 25km from the mainland, so the reefs closer to shore must be even worse.

a school of barracuda swimming above a dark reef

I love being underwater, so I tried to keep myself thinking positive: “all dives are good dives” and the like. There were lots of little white tip reef sharks, some amazing and massive green sea turtles, big schools of barracuda and jacks and snappers. But after 2 days of diving, it seemed like they were swimming on a gray canvas, and I felt sad for the sea.

A normal 2-tank dive consists of a first dive (“tank”), followed by a surface interval where you rest before the next dive, followed by the 2nd tank. On the 1st tank on this 3rd day of diving, we descended to about 20 metres in a grayish “garden”. After 10 minutes or so of fish-finding, an eerie, milky sediment cloud appeared out of nowhere. This decreased the visibility to about 1 metre, meaning you couldn’t see your buddy, the reef, or the divemaster. It was relatively shallow water, and we were in a fairly open area, so the dangers were limited, but it was stressful enough to find my buddy, stay with the group, and proceed to a level where the vis was better. Several minutes later, looking down from 5 or so metres was like observing a layer cake of blue and milky gray.

I spent that surface interval dodging a stress headache and questioning my vacation choices, then opted out of the 2nd dive. I chose to spend the time swimming in the big blue sea and contemplating my insignificance.

Cano Island looking out into the ocean

As I bobbed on the surface, looking out towards the horizon, I could see only shades of blue. If there is one thing diving has taught me is that we humans are mere crumbs in the universe.

That jolt and my self-imposed time out felt like a reset on a week that didn’t start out so great. So when, while we were making our way back to Drake Bay from Caño Island, we saw a mama and baby humpback whale not 10 metres from the boat, and then papa whale breached the surface with a punctuational tail slap, I got the feeling that things were going to be okay.

The whales saved the day.

Big shoutout to Costa Rica Adventure Divers for a team of professional and fun divemasters/instructors. If you’re in Drake Bay, I highly recommend them.

2025 Calendars are here!

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Big things are coming!

Every year, I create a photo calendar for my friends and family. This year, I’ve printed some extra in advance, and I have them for sale at my photography shop!

While supplies last (or until I can order more), I have 2025 “Big Things are Coming” elephant calendars available.

The calendars are 8-1/2×11, printed on the same heavy stock as my cards, and include photos, anecdotes and little moments of celebration throughout the year.

They are on sale for $28 each. For a limited time, use coupon code 20OFF2025CAL for 20% off!

To order: visit my photography shop, select SHOP, select SPECIALTY PRODUCTS, and scroll down to the calendar, pick a quantity, and ADD TO CART (I have yet to figure out how to do a direct link to the item or to have it appear on top of the list…).

Shop > Specialty products > scroll down > choose Calendar > Add to cart!

Thank you!