Tag 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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 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.

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.

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!

A long weekend in the Maritimes

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Last 4th of July weekend, I went up to Vermont to ride the Cross-Vermont Trail, a 100-mile stretch of linked trails traversing the middle of the state. So, when looking at the calendar and the way the holiday fell in the week, it made sense to do another bike trip this year.

Work schedules have been madness, and so a few days prior to the blocked time off, there was no real plan… except to go North. Canada. We decided to wing it: spend a couple of days in Prince Edward Island (mussels, lighthouses, no idea what else) and then a couple days in Nova Scotia (ditto: no idea what to expect, except that I’d been there about 30 years ago and I remember the crazy tides in the Bay of Fundy). A couple of years ago I went up to Maine over 4th of July to see puffins… so I put in an order for sea parrots as well. You know, just in case.

With a Plan partially-baked, we set off. 6am departure and half a gazillion hours later, we arrive at our destination: a very sweet historic guest house in Charlottetown. I’ll admit that my expectations were lowering by the block as we drove there through strip malls and industrial areas that could have literally been anywhere else. But patience prevailed and the box stores and faceless motels gave way to tree-lined streets and lovely brick architecture in the historic downtown area.

We were zonked and starving, but found an Irish pub (we’ll come back to the Irish in a bit) and ate very respectable mussels and pub food and listened to some very respectable live music before crashing entirely. I’ll gloss over the part where we got back to the guest house and the key didn’t fit and we had to call the guy and get a new key. It was late but hard to be annoyed because the rumors are true: Canadians are really nice. Even when they screw up and you’re completely shattered and it’s lightly raining and midnight and all you want to do is go to bed.

Enter, bikes.

Even though clouds threatened the next morning, we set out to do a 30-mile loop in the PEI National Park. It turned out to be a really nice ride on gravel roads and jetties through the Robinsons Island section, and on the road for the rest. Lighthouses, check. Thriving dunes and red sandstone cliffs and pink-tinged beaches: also, check! The rain held off and we explored the rest of the national park by car and foot. A flat-calm Atlantic Ocean washed the fragments of work worries out to sea.

That evening we set out to wander the cobbled Charlottetown streets in search of dinner. An aside: I’ve recently adopted a new dog who is so different from my old one in many ways. One thing is that while walking, he will stop dead in his tracks to dramatically sniff the air in hopes of being magnetically guided towards wafting scents of backyard BBQ. I share this because, as we navigated down Great George Street looking for dinner, we walked past a waft of something good. So good, in fact, that as we arrived at the restaurant we were heading to, we stopped dead in our tracks, sniffed the air and were magnetically guided away from that and towards the spices emanating from Punjabi Bites, a local Indian joint. I have eaten a LOT of Indian food here and abroad (including in India), and so when I told the waitress at the end of the meal that it would be worth coming back to PEI just for their food I was not at all kidding. It was really some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had.

Bridge (droichead), not ferry.

The finger-like islands of the Canadian Maritime provinces are connected by a series of bridges and ferries. We decided to take the scenic route and drive across from PEI to Nova Scotia. There are plenty of French influences up here, but what I didn’t know or expect was the Scottish and Irish heritage still lingering as a result of descendants of refugees from the Irish Potato Famine. So as we made our way towards Cape Breton Island, at the top of the province, it was odd to see the road signs begin to change from French to (of all things) Gaelic subtitles. In addition to the First Nation place names and signage that abounds in the region, Gaelic is also widely spoken in these parts.

The Puffins, who thankfully don’t really care which dialect you speak as long as there is enough herring available, played not a small role in the destination choice (grateful for the Internet: a puffin boat trip magically booked from the car!). That and the Cabot Trail. Which I had no idea even existed just a few days earlier.

We rolled into the town of Baddeck (pronounced ‘buh-deck’) in time to drop off stuff at the inn, wander briefly, then get back into the car to traverse the bridges and windy roads flanking Big Bras d’Or, the ginormous lake or inland sea that feels like part Maine, part Vermont; the woods and sea and hills playing alternate roles in rolling out their finest scenery for all to share.

On-board the little birdwatching boat from Bird Island Boat Tours, Captain Ian put on a vaudeville-esque show while the puffins, eagles and other seabirds darted around us. It was nice to be out on the water, taking photos of these cartoonish cuties. I felt silly and light and very, very grateful to be right there as I was furiously chasing birds through my viewfinder.

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The skies opened up in the morning, dashing any thoughts of a nice bike ride. Instead, we headed up the Cabot Trail, so named for the Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), who sailed the ocean blue in 1497 and (re)discovered Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. He may or may not have been friends with or inspired by a certain other Genoese sailor who claims to have discovered America a little farther south 5 years earlier. And even more unclear is whether this Cabot has familial ties to the Boston Brahmin Cabots for whom the main street in my town is named.

The Cabot Trail is a stunning roadway that circumnavigates the uppermost portion of Cape Breton Island, wending its way along the coast and around the densely wooded forest in the middle, home (apparently) to moose-a-plenty and Cape Breton Highlands National Park. The (apparent) moose did not appear, so I’ll have my moose-radar tuned on high next month when I’m up in Northern Maine. Stay tuned.

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That first day on the Cabot Trail we began on the East side and went counter-clockwise, ducking in to hike a few of the little loops along the road, including the Franey loop (its stunning views might have been even more-so with clearer skies), a stop at a genuine general store for gas (replete with a 1950s-era pump attached to a large tank!), and a glimpse of the Lone Shieling, a replica of a Scottish shepherd’s hut along a path that also hosts a stand of 350-year-old sugar maples. Rain or non, the landscape was magnificent.

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When in, erm, Ireland (?), you go to a local pub to hear local music. Or something. So there is a section along the coast called Chéticamp, which is Acadian, Mi’kmaq, and a little Scottish. It’s a peculiar little enclave that looks like part fishing village and part sea-level summer camp. There are about 6 restaurants, a couple ice cream shops, and a string of seaside motels catering to summertime fun. It was about 8:30 and as the sleepy village was about to shut down, we grabbed a table at the local Irish-ish bar and stayed for the band. Fish and chips: fab; Band: well, meh!

The rain persisted, so our last day was spent doing The Cabot Trail the other way around: a surreal walk on the foggy, spooky Skyline Trail, fog-dodging along the road as we drove along the coast, and a visit to a quaint whale interpretive center in Pleasant Bay, plus kilometres upon kilometres of ridiculous views as the fog came and went. The Cabot Trail is nearly 300 kilometres long, each twist and turn of the road holds something to discover.

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Back in Baddeck, the last plan before the long slog home in the morning was to attend a local cèilidh (pronounced Kaylee), a traditional Gaelic musical gathering. What wholesome fun it was to spend a couple of hours after a really nice local seafood dinner listening to amazing local musicians play guitar and fiddle, tell stories, and share tea and biscuits with the audience.

Maybe next trip we’ll order a better forecast, but all in all, I think we crammed as much as possible into these few days up north. I’m sure there are moose up there… somewhere!

Print shop coupon alert!

I have puffin prints available and will soon have more cards up on my photography shop!

Use code TGM15-1 for 15% off your purchase of puffin prints and more.