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.
This is the first Grizzly Bear I encountered in the wild. It was a good-sized bear that was meandering through some meadows in Grand Teton National Park. If you look behind its front legs, you can see a lighter colour patch of fur associated with Grizzlies. You can also see a bit of the humped back Grizzlies have, one great way to tell apart Grizzlies and Black Bears from a distance.
I was on the wrong side of this bear to get any perfect pictures as I had to photograph it facing into the sun, but still managed to get some decent shots. Spotting this Grizzly is still one of the highlights from all of my travels to Montana and Wyoming.
The Grizzly Bear is sometimes called the North American Brown Bear and is one of many subspecies of Brown Bears around the world. At the top of my list for future bear adventures is to head to Alaska to see the largest of all brown bear subspecies – the Kodiak.
A Grizzly Bear in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
I’m not sure about you, but whenever I travel I tend to have an inability to just sit back and enjoy some free time. I tend to cram as many highlights and attractions into as little time as possible. There are so many new meals, exotic drinks and unfamiliar sites out there to experience.
This curiosity, or need to keep moving, came to the surface when planning a trip to New Zealand. I had a handful of free, unplanned days on the North Island that I wasn’t sure what to do with. I could have just bobbed around Auckland or taken some day trips, but then I made the mistake of looking at a map.
Hmm. What are all those islands near New Zealand? New Caledonia, Tonga, Norfolk Island, Samoa…Vanuatu! And so, one trip led to another. I had previously heard of Tanna Island in Vanuatu, with the world’s most accessible active volcano.
Getting to Tanna, let alone Yasur volcano, is definitely half the fun! That I will save that for another post though, as this post is all about the volcano.
You have to cross Lava Fields and Streams to get to Yasur Volcano
Volcano Post Office and Safety Viewing Sign
I visited when the volcano was being nice, as in the explosions were not excessively large, so I could get right up close to the crater – only 150m away from the vents! When the volcano gets mean, you can’t climb up to the edge of the vents and sometimes have to settle for viewing the show from down on the lava fields – safe, but far from the action.
Hiking to the Viewing Area at Yasur Volcano, Vanuatu
Edge of the Volcano. You could walk along there, if you dare.
Fiery red, spewing streaks of lava and balls of glowing rocks the size of cars are what I’ve come to see here on Tanna Island. You arrive just before dusk and hear the gurgling, hissing sound of the volcano. With clear skies you get a panoramic view of the island and surrounding ocean. Then, every 3-10 minutes a massive eruption and shockwave.
The Calm Before the Lava Storm, View of both Lava Vents on Yasur Volcano
Lava Splattered Around the Crater, After an Explosion
If you visit on a rainy day you may get a crazy mix of ash clouds and lava. Toxic, apocalyptic looking clouds that hopefully don’t blow your way!
A Lava Eruption and Toxic Cloud of Ash at Yasur Volcano, Vanuatu
As darkness falls, the lava glows brighter and the eruptions more vibrant…until finally you’re alone in the darkness, watching nature’s version of a crackling, roaring camp fire. In between eruptions it is almost pure darkness, which adds to the excitement.
Small Explosions in the Darkness at Both Lava Vents on Yasur Volcano
It’s better than watching TV, and more nerve-racking than a suspense movie. As you wait for the next explosion with camera ready (tripod mandatory!) In between explosions the released lava bombs spread across the crater and slowly cool, then fade to black. You’re left waiting…waiting…waiting for the next big explosion.
Cooling Lava after a medium sized explosion on Tanna Island
Then, suddenly you hear it, feel it, see it all at once. This hissing gives way to an echoing thunderous explosion, sending a wave of energy your way almost strong enough to knock you off your feet. With that shockwave, hot lava is thrown hundreds of feet into the air creating the most impressive fireworks display.
Lava Explosion in Vanuatu!
Closeup of a large Shockwave-producing Lava Explosion in Vanuatu
Within seconds, it’s over and the expelled lava is cooling, darkening once again – giving you enough time to check and see if you got ‘the shot’.
I don’t know if I captured any award-winning lava shots, but it was sure fun watching the show and was a perfect side-trip on my New Zealand adventure.
Surprising to many travellers is the fact that New Zealand is home to more penguin species than any other country in the world!
Most species are found in the hard to get to New Zealand Sub-Antarctic islands, however the Otago Peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand is home to a couple of species – the Blue Penguin and the Yellow-eyed Penguin.
Organized wildlife tours are popular from Dunedin, available during certain times of the year. There are also a number of public hides to visit and see them on your own. The Yellow-eyed Penguin is one of the rarest in the world and is listed as an endangered species with around 4000 left in the wild.
This photo was taken on some private land, near sunset, which made it tricky getting a crisp, clear image. The owners of the land often have to kill feral cats in the area to keep the defenceless penguins safe.
