Aruba has a problem: Visitors are loving it to death.
04.04.2024 - 14:45 / cntraveler.com
On a wet January morning at Somalisa Camp, in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, a tall, rangy paramedic named Elvis Tavengwa is instructing about three dozen bush guides on the finer points of first aid. “Come on,” he shouts at them, so animated he's almost hovering above the floor. “Your guest is in cardiac arrest. What are you going to do?” The guides, dressed in every imaginable shade of khaki and olive, look at one another, uncertain. “He's dying!” Elvis screams. “Chest compressions! I need chest compressions!” Several guides lurch forward to demonstrate on a dummy.
African Bush Camps founder Beks Ndlovu
Each January during the rainy season, African Bush Camps (ABC), perhaps the continent's premier Black-owned safari company, closes all of its lodges in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana, and convenes its guides for a two-week retraining program, the most rigorous in the business. In addition to first aid, this gathering of the Zimbabwe guides will include refresher courses in shooting, tracking, stargazing, photography, and more. During my visit, in addition to Elvis's frantic pedagogy, I witness a workshop on the ABC values (authenticity, empowerment, conservation, collaboration, and care), a candid discussion among leadership about how to encourage more junior “learner” guides to take the steps to earn pro certification, and a team-building exercise during which the guides are given 20 pieces of spaghetti, 10 Band-Aids, a piece of string, and a marshmallow and charged with building a free-standing structure in under 20 minutes.
It's really not so different from a Western corporate retreat. Only instead of taking place in a suburban convention center, it's held in a delightfully classic, very remote tented camp in an acacia grove overlooking a water hole with a resident hippo. And as Elvis demonstrates the proper application of a tourniquet, things are happening out there. A waterbuck bounds by, the white circle on its rump bouncing up and down like a toilet seat that got stuck. Beks Ndlovu, the 47-year-old entrepreneur and former guide who founded ABC 18 years ago, summons me over to point out two lionesses prowling the ridgeline above an ancient dry riverbank.
Lazy lionesses block the vehicle of guide Mariet Mashonganyika
Suddenly, a pack of wild dogs flashes by in hot pursuit of an impala. “You never know what's going to happen,” Beks says as we run off to commandeer a Land Cruiser. We can't find the dogs, only kudu and yellow-billed hornbills. But we do bump into Calvet Nkomo, a veteran guide who has worked at Somalisa since 2013 and is said to know more than anyone about the life histories of the lions in the area. He informs us that the lionesses have made their way into the neighboring Acacia
Aruba has a problem: Visitors are loving it to death.
Outdoor enthusiasts looking to save on their next trip national park trip need to look no further.A new report from flight price tracking service Going reveals that some parks are cheaper to fly to than others due to their location and surrounding airports. The cheapest National Park to fly to is Indiana Dunes National Park, which has four nearby airports that travelers can choose to fly into, including Chicago O'Hare, Chicago Midway, and Indianas' South Bend Regional Airport, and Gary/Chicago International Airport.
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Eclipse fever is running high as the U.S. gears up for a total solar eclipse that will pass across a huge swath of the country on April 8. Looking for last-minute eclipse travel tips? Demand is off the charts for flights, hotels and rental cars along the path of totality. But it’s not too late to book travel for the solar eclipse—if you know where to look.
This Saturday, April 8, a solar eclipse will be seen across North America. From inside a 115-mile-wide path stretching across Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, a total solar eclipse will see the sun’s corona glimpsed with the naked eye for a few minutes as a “supermoon” covers all of the sun.
Despite being hit with a 7.4 magnitude earthquake Wednesday morning, travel is largely operating normally throughout Taiwan at the time of publication.
If you want to participate in a pretty epic event, know that it's not too late to make a plan to see the rare, total solar eclipse that will cut a path across a good chunk of the U.S. on Monday.