A TRINIDAD SANCTUARY The Caroni Bird Sanctuary comprises forty square miles, a depression in the terrain just south of Trinidad's northern range of mountains. We broach it in a soft-engine boat, along waterways bounded by mangrove trees sporting prodigious roots, some red, some white, all above the earth. The murky water, still and silty, bears oysters, and is inhabited by four-eyed fishes and miniature crabs. Barely a quarter mile in, two boa constrictor snakes catch our attention, intertwined among the leaves and low lying branches close overhead. Our escort calls them "tree boas"; [View Full Entry]

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A BARBADIAN GEMSTONE A lush and verdant niche of singular positioning on the Barbados east coast is where I spent a delightful evening, entranced by a precious piece of property and its people. Standing on a risen platform, gently graded upward, I was at one with the panorama that surrounded me and engaged with its sweep of nature. In quiet nascence, it spread a blanket of vegetal green over muted mounds of lightly sun-braised virgin land, touching, hesitantly, in all its innocence, the raging Atlantic, breeze-swept and strong, offering frantic, frothy embraces to the myriad shoreli [View Full Entry]

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We are home again, tonight, Yes, home again tonight, Home again to tell you That we truly love you; Home again to say: goodnight. Hello, goodnight, hello; We're home, just so you know, Our hearts are all aglow, Our lives reset to go. Our eyes have freely gazed, Our souls now sing with praise, We do not doubt our sage, We've turned another page. [View Full Entry]

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Punta Arenas is home to a robust contingent of the Chilean armed services; it is where rescue missions to and from Antarctica operate; the last such one was the retrieval, in early December, of passengers from the Canadian vessel Explorer that had tried conclusions with an iceberg in the Antarctic. It sits at the foot of Southern Patagonia, within a setting of scenic vistas: an expansive sky, bearing clouds as sketches gently drifting; endless grasslands adorned, with flowers in blossom everywhere; lupines at sway in deep mauve tones, glaring yellow brooms, sculpted as globes, spikes of re [View Full Entry]

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The time had come, it was December 19, to journey north and then west, all within the southern cone of the continent, Argentina to Chile, Atlantic to Pacific, Ushuaia to Punta Arenas, 800 miles, twelve hours, bus liner. The slowly burning southern sky was set at haunting brown, molten sun emerging from the Atlantic horizon, morning stillness pervading, as our road liner edged its way out of town, pausing to pick up an order of pastries, breakfast for the fifty-nine souls on board, bound for Rio Grande, first stop enroute. The gently rolling hills and valleys around us are rippled with [View Full Entry]

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SEA CREATURES AND HABERTON RANCH ENROUTE TO PENGUINS ISLAND We continue our excursion through the Fuegian countryside, over undulating terrain of low shrubbery, until we broach outbuildings of the historic Haberton Ranch. It comprises 50,000 acres, granted by the Argentine government in the late eighteen hundreds to Thomas Bridges, a missionary considered the pioneering settler of Tierra del Fuego. The Ranch is still operated by Thomas’ great grandson, Thomas, and his spouse, Natalie. Sharing this grand pasture in the wild are sheep, horses, cows, feathered folk and farm hands, many [View Full Entry]

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Our third Ushuaia day was spent on another excursion, covering part mainland, some more boating on the Channel and another island; this one, an avian treasure. The morning began with one of those magical vignettes of spontaneous conversation with people from around the world. This one transpired over our B&B breakfast table for eight, a few of us standing around, some of us sitting, others walking around, all eight engaging as the spirit moved: a rangy, informative Berliner, bound for Antarctica; a stocky, Toronto-based movie stuntman, on respite from a Buenos Aires gig, where he was las [View Full Entry]

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Ushuaia is the capital of Tierra del Fuega and sits on a bank of the Beagle channel, named after the ship of English flag that explored this part of the world in the eighteen thirties. We took a small craft ride along the Beagle Channel, Chile along one bank, the Argentine along the other, an opening to the Pacific on the one side, another to the Atlantic on the other. Islands of both countries are scattered about their side of the channel, establishing territory and scenic context. A passage down the middle of the channel is shared peacefully by both countries [View Full Entry]

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Tierra del Fuego Tierra del Fuego; its name sounded so mysterious in my impressionable teens that I took to dreaming I would some day visit this “Land of Fires”, where the first peoples kept themselves warm, 56 degrees south of the equator, by continuously burning the softwood from their forests, producing flames in the night that held the early European explorers, Magellan, Drake and others spellbound, on their trvels around the southern tip of South America. And now here I was, Penelope in tow, flying out of the tree-ringed Buenos Aires airport, cityscape dancing on th [View Full Entry]

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San Telmo, up from the Rio de la Plata, and Puerto Madero on it, were the Barrios we explored today. We left our neighbourhood by subway, then explored the underground, admiring its tastefully tiled walls, before re-boarding the cars for a diagonal virage and surfacing in a peaceful park of older people, adjacent to an elementary school. A trifle tattered and downscale on its perimeter, the presence of corner stores frequented by folk on ordinary missions of the day give the outskirts of San Telmo a warm community feel; our stroll brings us to the ecological centre of this historic Barrio, [View Full Entry]

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