A former journalist and business analyst that now works in the world of travel marketing. Based in Toronto, Red Hunt has travelled to more than 50 countries over the past 15 years. You can follow Red on Instagram or Twitter.
When it comes to wildlife photography, a long lens is your best friend, but then every so often you get surprised and find yourself almost too close!
That is what happened to me in Sri Lanka. I was looking for leopards in Ruhuna National Park. We had spotted one far away in the distance in a tree, but still only a speck with my longest zoom lens. Then only minutes later as our 4WD vehicle turned a corner, this mother Sri Lankan Sloth Bear appeared and crossed our path.
She was so close that with my long lens I only managed to snap a few quick photos before she meandered away, into some dense shrubs. I’ve seen Grizzly and Black bears in North America, but the Sloth bears I saw in Sri Lanka remain my favourite.
Watching giraffes walk is one of the simple pleasures I enjoyed on safari in Africa.
These great animals quickly became one of my favourite animals, especially the Maasai Giraffe. Also called the Masai or Kilimanjaro Giraffe, this is the tallest land animal and largest of all giraffe species.
Interestingly, giraffes can sleep standing up, or lying down and only sleep for 4-5 hours a day. They’re about 6 feet tall at birth and once fully grown they have no predators to fear as their speed and kicking power can either outrun or kill animals such as lions. Their only moment of weakness is when they are clumsily bent over trying to drink.
Maasai Giraffe - Distinguished by the colour and shape of their markings
I had been in Madagascar a couple of weeks already, doing plenty of Lemur-spotting, canoeing, hiking and sitting in a really hot, uncomfortable truck for hours at a time.
After exploring some of the more remote parks, it was time to head to one of the most accessible and most popular areas of Madagascar – Isalo National Park. The route there was mostly flat, dry grasslands with the occasional red dirt village here and there. Getting closer we reached Ilakaka, the Wild West town of Madagascar. Back in 1998 sapphires were first discovered here, causing somewhat of a mining rush for the Malagasy people.
View of Canyon des Makis and Canyon des Rats, Isalo National Park, Madagascar
With such possible rewards came plenty of risks, as violence in the area had also seen a sharp increase. That first sapphire discovery had been years earlier but the lure of sapphires remained in the area. I didn’t see any sapphires as we drove through Ilakaka to Isalo but there was a certain vibe of uneasy excitement to the area.
At dinner just outside of Isalo a few of us met our local guide for the next day. He’d be taking us on a morning hike then a afternoon hike to a natural swimming pool in Isalo. Sounded like great fun as he also guaranteed some Lemurs.
The next morning comes and the small group of us were enjoying breakfast. Typical fare in Madagascar – eggs, dry toast, bananas and tea. Oddly our driver / guide, Claude, was missing from the morning meal. We figure he slept in since the local guide would be picking us up soon for our hike. But after 20 minutes, half an hour, we began to wonder. The town seemed eerily quiet too, not a lot of commotion going on in the streets.
An Elephant Foot Plant at Isalo National Park
Finally after almost an hour of waiting Claude appeared but he seemed shaken up a bit. After a bit of back and forth we figure out that our local guide – Jacques – will be along shortly. When asked why he is late, the answer wasn’t clear, Claude didn’t want to tell us something. Finally we find out – one of Jacques’ brother had been beheaded by bandits the night before!
What the??
Out here, not far from the Wild West sapphire city of Madagascar, violence had reared it’s ugly head. As Jacques’ brother was on his way home the night before he was approached by two men. These men demanded he give them his Zebus (local humped cows). Since he used these Zebus for farming his fields, they were his only source of income. It is how he supported himself and his family. So he refused. They used a machete to chop off his head.
Jacques and many villagers had been at the funeral that morning. But he was adamant about taking us on our hikes that day, apologizing for being late. We wanted to give him time to himself, however it was also clear that the few dollars we’d provide him for his services were too valuable for him to give up.
It was a pretty sombre start to the day. One of those events that helps put everything into perspective and helps you realize how privileged ‘we’ are as travellers. We learned a lot from Jacques, who had a huge passion for the park and natural environment in which he lived. He was an enthusiastic guide even during such a time of grieving. We managed to get some smiles out of him and a few laughs. As hard as it was, it was nice to see that life goes on.
Sitting with Jacques - Taking a Rest after Hiking in Isalo
The next day, it was time to move on from Isalo. As we left, we found out that for some Malagasy tribes, in particular the Bara people, stealing Zebus is a rite of passage. For a young man to become an adult they must steal Zebus from someone else. It seemed more like a case of greed here, as such violent acts were not the norm. Perhaps it was an overflow of the nearby sapphire city and wild west atmosphere that had cost the life of an innocent farmer.
I never did find out if they had caught the people who beheaded Jacques’ brother or what would happen to them if they did.
For a long time I considered myself anti-bird. The only birds I enjoyed watching or photographing were ones that were flightless (penguins) or of immense size (ostriches).
Gradually my bird hatred has faded away. I blame those old feelings on the fact that amazingly bright coloured birds are rare at home in Canada. But the more I travelled, the more interesting birds I saw. Toucans, hornbills, flycatchers and all sorts of birds of prey – all different than what I was used to at home. As my interest and knowledge of photography has grown, so has my interest in birds, which often make for challenging photography subjects.
This one here is a simple purple swamphen in Sri Lanka. There were a few of these hanging out, and fighting, in a field on my way to the ancient fortress of Yapahuwa. I liked the contrast of the bright green background with the blue, purple and red colouring of the swamphen.
A Colourful Purple Swamphen near Yapahuwa Fortress in Sri Lanka
Back in early October I wrote a post criticizing the New Open World Corporation and their New 7 Wonders of Nature campaign. Now that the winners have been announced, there has been a fire storm of posts and articles popping up, questioning the intentions of that competition.
In case you missed it the provisional winners are the Amazon, Halong Bay, Iguazu Falls, Jeju Island, Komodo, Table Mountain and Puerto Princesa Underground River.
The Floriano and Diablo Viewing Platform at Iguazu Falls, Brazilian Side
Whether those winners are worthy or not doesn’t really matter, as it really is too bad that nobody seemed to pay attention months ago when countries were trying to pull the plug on their entries. Perhaps this is a better late than never situation.
Representatives from 11 of the 28 finalists went to a late-September event in Korea to support the competition. The event was held on Jeju Island. I wondered, in my last post, how many of those 11 representatives would become eventual winners of the competition, seeing as how multi-million dollar event and promotional tour requests had been coming from the New 7 Wonders organizers. It seemed to me that participants at this event may have had a better chance at winning, since they presumably had paid to attend the event, and may be looked upon favourably by Bernard Weber and his associates.
Well, of the seven winners, only the Philippines and Peru were not among those 11 representative countries on Jeju Island in September. Those are some pretty big odds that 6 of the 11 participants in that event would end up winning 5 of the 7 New Wonders of Nature.
To put it in numbers, each of the 28 finalists should have had a roughly 3.5% chance of winning. So, realistically, 39% of the winners should have come from those participants, yet they accounted for 71%. That is a huge discrepancy. Yes, those numbers may exaggerate things, but what it boils down to is that it would have been normal for those participants to win 3 of the 7 natural wonder spots, not 5 spots.
After writing my article I had media and interview requests come in from Israel, South Africa, Canada and Indonesia. Now that the winners have been announced, mainstream media is picking up on the controversy and a number of other posts have popped up echoing the sentiments I wrote about in October. Here are a few links to other posts from people in the travel writing and blogging world.
Gary Arndt wrote a post called “The Absurdity Which Is The New7Wonders of Nature“, in which he questions many of the winners and hails the voting process as a joke. I agree with pretty much all of what he says. Like me, he also skipped visiting Jeju Island when he was in South Korea, because it just wasn’t so interesting. One thing that came to mind reading his post was that ‘natural wonders’ seems too broad a label. It’s an odd mix of geological formations like Table Mountain and ecological anomalies like Komodo Island.
Matt Long took what is perhaps the most diplomatic approach at the competition, admitting that all the winners deserve the attention, but perhaps others were even more deserving. What I liked most about his post “Reaction to the New Seven Natural Wonders of the World” was that he pointed out that travellers are inherently biased. He thought the Dead Sea and Uluru should have been winners, because he’d visited both destinations. This brings out one of the major flaws of the competition, in that they are getting people to vote who’ve never been to, or seen, most of these Wonders.
Michael Hodson wrote the most entertaining post I’ve seen so far. His words literally echo what I wrote last month, bringing up the questionable financial demands and unethical business practices of the organization running the competition. He does make some pretty bold personal conclusions, but vows to dig deeper into the issues and uncover what the real story is with the New Open World Corporation. Be sure to read his post titled “New 7 Wonders of the World: The Scam behind the Sham” and watch for more updates from him.
My main issue with these competitions boils down to transparency. No third-party has verified the votes and nobody knows where the millions of dollars go that have been paid to the organizers. It would be great to hear from the winning Official Sponsor Committees themselves how much money they paid. It would also be great to know how much the winners might have to pay to use the official title of ‘New 7 Wonders of Nature’.
How Could this Competition have been Credible?
This all could have been avoided quite easily too.
Public voting is a necessary evil, to generate interest and word-of-mouth conversation. The power of social media undoubtedly helped boost the volume of votes for this competition and I fully support letting the public have their fun and narrow down the pool of candidates. But why not give the public three years, instead of four? Then turn it over to the experts.
The 28 finalists of this competition were announced in 2009. They were still slightly controversial, but with the likes of famous sights such as the Galapagos Islands, Great Barrier Reef, Angel Falls and the Grand Canyon you could argue it had more than enough worthwhile, and believable, natural wonder selections to choose from.
From here, the people at the New 7 Wonders campaign should have turned control of the competition over to the experts.
There is a reason that a large number of travel competitions have a public / expert split in their judging criteria. Companies often use public votes to create a pool of finalists from which experts choose winners. Or they weight public votes as a fixed percentage of the final outcome, with expert ratings weighing in the remainder. This is common for photo contests, writing contests and travel contests you’ll find online.
If they had given the list of 28 finalists to a global panel of naturalists and earth science experts (people who study nature, such as geologists) the results may have been different. Letting those experts decide on each finalist using a set of criteria, similar to how UNESCO decides on new World Heritage Site listings, to decide the eventual winners would have boosted credibility for the campaign and eliminated most of the controversy.
Even if the organization is making millions of dollars off of this competition, having reputable experts factor in on the final decision could have been enough to be viewed as a legitimate campaign.
I look forward to seeing how everything turns out, as right now there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
