The sharper edge to traveling in Asia

Archive for the 'Nature & Wildlife' Category

WoWasis book back in time: ‘Kon-Tiki’ by Thor Heyerdahl

Veteran WoWasis readers are aware of our penchant for reviewing books on Asia and the Pacific, especially older classics. Why? For one thing, younger readers may have missed them. And Boomers and Gen Xers might not have read them either, although they’ve certainly heard of them. Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft is […]

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WoWasis book review: About Selkirk, the real Robinson Crusoe

Crusoe, of course, was a fictional character created by Daniel Defoe, who published his book in 1719. But his story was partly inspired by the true story of a man who was marooned on an uninhabited island. Diana Souhami’s Selkirk’s Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe (2001, ISBN 0-15-100526-5) tells […]

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WoWasis scuba review: The Top 4 dive spots in Roatan, Honduras

Today’s WoWasis guest blog was written by Michele “Mish” Akel, co-owner of Native Sons Dive Shop in Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras. She’s been diving there since 1996, but that’s not quite as long as her husband and co-owner Alvin Jackson has. His first dive there was 1973! Alvin is the President of the Roatan Marine […]

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Top 4 Scuba Diving Spots in Vietnam

Today’s guest blog was written by WoWasis correspondent Jeremy Stein, who’s been running Rainbow Divers in Vietnam for 17 years. Vietnam is a great place to dive and to get certified, with clear, warm waters and lots to see. Here are his choices for the best 4 dive spots in Vietnam. For more details, contact […]

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WoWasis Galapagos book review: The essential ‘Wildlife of the Galápagos’

Here at WoWasis, we recommend two nature guidebooks for travelers to the Galapagos. We’ve already reviewed Pierre Constant’s Marine Life of the Galapagos: The Diver’s Guide to Fishes, Whales, Dolphins, and Marine Invertebrates, which is the essential marine life guide. For land animals, plants and flowers, you won’t find a better one than Wildlife of […]

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WoWasis Galapagos book review: ‘Floreana: a Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Galapagos’

Like author Johanna Angermeyer, writer Margret Wittmer spent decades learning the intricacies and challenges of learning to live in the Galapagos islands. Unlike Angermeyer, though, Wittmer’s infrastructure was non-existent to the point that she and her small family had to create everything from scratch. As detailed in Floreana: A Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Galapagos (2013, […]

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WoWasis Galapagos book review: The best Marine Life guidebook on the Galápagos that we’ve seen

If you’re like us here at WoWasis, you’ll go scuba diving or snorkeling in the Galapágos Islands, then come back to your hotel wondering what you saw.  Then you’ll go looking in several of the tourist shops looking for a good marine life guidebook. But you won’t find one. Instead, you’ll find plastic fish charts […]

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WoWasis Galapagos book review: Johanna Angermeyer’s ‘My Father’s Island’

When we here at WoWasis toured the Galápagos Islands recently, we were frankly surprised at the relative modernity of the town or Puerto Ayora on Isla Santa Cruz. The island is replete with electricity, air conditioning, internet, and flush toilets (like the rest of Ecuador, though, used toilet paper is placed in a basket and […]

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Simplifying travel and costs in the Galapagos Islands: a WoWasis travel review

Veteran WoWasis readers know that when we travel, we try to make life simple. Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands aren’t that simple to plan  because there are so many of them, and so many ways to see them as well. There are some 125 islands and rocks, and by our count, seventeen of them are visitable either […]

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WoWasis’ visits Kyoto’s Tofuku-ji Hojo “Hasso” Garden

Tofuku-ji Temple with its well-known garden is southeast of Kyoto’s center, and is well worth the visit, both for its renowned garden, but also for the fact that there are relatively few visitors here, and the serenity can be welcome after braving crowds at Kyoto’s better known sites. It’s also close to the Fumisjhi Inari […]

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