When L. Renee Blount joined an expedition to scale Tanzania���s Kilimanjaro at the end of 2021, her mission was to have fun and share her experience with others through photography. ���I wanted to capture the joy of the journey. It���s not only the summit that matters,��� says Blount, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was invited on the adventure by Andrew Alexander King, a mountaineer from Los Angeles who���s training to climb the Seven Summits. Blount trekked 45 miles over three and a half days through farmland, rainforest, bogs, an alpine desert, and arctic zones, and she suffered a bout of altitude sickness at 15,000 feet. ���I couldn���t keep anything down and just kind of soldiered through it,��� she says.

Blount and King reached the top of the 19,340-foot mountain on December 29, with the help of , a local travel company whose guides Blount describes as ���true heroes and elite athletes.��� But the highlight of their trip happened a couple of days later. After leading Blount and King on a safari���an opportunity to observe wildlife from the safety of a Toyota Land Cruiser���their guides took them to meet members of three tribes indigenous to East Africa���s Rift Valley: the Maasai, the Hadza, and the Datoga. For Blount, visiting with the Datoga felt like a homecoming. ���They kept looking at me, and then a guide said, ���The chief wants to welcome you home.��� They were sure I could be from their tribe,��� she says. ���I don���t think I am, but it was interesting to have someone feel like intrinsically I belonged to them.��� It was an honor, Blount says, to spend time with and take photographs of some of the world���s ���greatest explorers and survivalists,��� who she communicated with mostly through laughter and eye contact. ���We don���t speak the same language, but everyone knows how to laugh,��� she says. ���That���s what my photos are about.���

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Every year, the Lozi people flee the floodplains where they live泭for their sacred lands up in the mountains. The rains come and bring life, but also death if the people do not evacuate. Zambezi:泭Children of the River, from filmmaker , chronicles this 300-year-old pilgrimage.

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On a recent trip to Kenya with safari guide , filmmaker created The Wonder to document his sense of awe, restored by the country���s泭vast wildlife and landscapes.

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From filmmaker , Day Zero泭tells the chilling tale of Cape Town���s water crisis. After a record high rainfall in 2013 filled泭up the reservoirs, the city has been hit hard by drought and its residents are fleeing.泭泭

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In his latest film,泭South Africa, filmmaker begins his trip in the泭Gondwana Game Reserve, then makes泭his way to Cape Town���s Table Mountain泭for an incredible sunrise.
泭

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In泭Madagascar, filmmaker 泭captures imagery泭from remote villages to the wilds of Masoala National Park.

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It was the oldest play in the book, and I fell for it hard. I���d taken time off from college to travel in Europe and Africa, working my way from Paris to Morocco. Within two hours of getting off the ferry from Spain, I found myself in a rug shop, deep in the city of T矇touan. Apparently, I was there to nego簫tiate for a rug, whether I liked it or not.

I���ve always been horrible at bargaining, and by the time I stumbled out of the shop, I realized that I���d just spent more than half my remaining cash. I liked the rug I bought, a striking red and black kilim, but I didn���t actually possess it. Like a fool, I���d agreed to let them ship it home for me. Blowing that much money all at once was dumb, but this episode ended up changing my whole way of traveling.泭

At the time, I was a pensive undergraduate poet. Naturally, I���d been going solo, mostly avoiding locals and other travelers. But I couldn���t afford that luxury any longer, and I wound up connecting with a trio of Canadian farm boys I���d met on the ferry. They were fun, friendly, and hilarious.

Also, poor like me. This altered the economics radically: we could easily split a $12 hotel room and have a local woman cook us a tagine for a few bucks more.泭

The four of us roamed the country, drinking in (and sometimes smoking) everything it had to offer. We stayed with hashish merchants in the north, hiked the Atlas Mountains with shepherds, and crashed on a beachside rooftop in Essaouira. Together we braved a locals-only hammam in F癡s. We rode the cheapest buses on journeys up precipitous mountain roads, climbing onto the roof to help load bags (and the occasional goat). I struck up conversations in my bad French and got to know army officers, students, and families on holiday.泭

I filled my journal with observations about places that were so much more vivid and real than whatever was going on in my mopey adolescent mind. And when I finally returned home, there was a mysterious brown package waiting for me. It was the rug. I���ve kept it ever since, a reminder of the moment when I opened my eyes and became a writer.

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It was hard to miss the ������ map that popped on social media a few months ago, which juxtaposes the tiny cluster of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, where more than 8,000 people have died since December 6, 2013, against the rest of Africa, a continent larger than China, Europe, and the U.S. combined. Designed by a British chemist named Anthony England, the map was meant to curb an outbreak of fear that has caused an industry-crushing drop in travel to Africa. Many countries whose economies rely on tourism are suffering huge losses in foreign visitors, despite being completely free of Ebola and thousands of miles from the nearest affected areas. Kenya and Tanzania, two popular safari destinations in East Africa, are more than 3,000 miles from Liberia���farther away than Seattle from Miami.

But no statistic, it seems, is powerful enough to override the human psyche as it grapples with the thought of an extremely infectious and often fatal virus. In a September , the majority of the 500 companies surveyed had seen a 20 to 70 percent drop in business, compared with this time last year, for travel six months to a year out. According to Guy Ellis, CEO of , as of late November, tourism companies in Africa were losing an average $800 per day.

It���s not just the travel companies that are feeling the decline. ���Each safari guide traditionally supports seven to ten people in his family through tips and wages,��� says Rumit Mehta, founder of , whose Africa business has dropped 25 percent since last summer. ���If I can���t give any business to the guide, it goes down the food chain from there.���

The Ebola crisis has had an eerily similar effect to a cholera outbreak in Peru in 1991. When the acute intestinal bacterial disease killed 66 people in less than three weeks, travelers simply stopped going to South America. But once the disease was under control, recovery happened quickly. Cholera is no longer listed on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention���s health-information page for Peru, and the number of international tourists in South America has skyrocketed from 11.7 million in 1995 to 27.4 million in 2013. All of which is to say, there���s hope for Africa.

One promising sign that things have calmed down? President Obama announced last week that he would be withdrawing most of the U.S. troops sent to help fight the virus. But Ebola is still a volatile situation. After a period of decline, the last two weeks have seen an , though the numbers are less jarring than they were at the beginning of the crisis. According to the , Liberia reported only “a handful” of cases last week compared to nearly 300 a week during August and September.

Still, most travel companies that operate in Africa are optimistic that the industry will bounce back. ���The innate desire for travelers to experience Africa, especially a safari, is something that will never go away,��� says Justin Huff, ���s Africa program director. ���The only good news with Ebola,��� adds Cherri Briggs, founder of , ���is that it gives us a chance to begin to educate people and address a massive geographic ignorance.��� To that end, Briggs and her staff prepared a seven-page document that speaks to travelers��� fears about the virus. The education is doing the trick: not a single Explore Africa client has canceled a trip.

For astute travelers, booking a safari or another African adventure now may mean fewer tourists and added perks like upgrades and private vehicles. But don���t expect deep discounts���many of the best tour operators work closely with tribal groups and have a complicated business model that involves revenue sharing. Price cuts would erode the very things that conservancies are meant to protect: locals��� trust and income.

Many travelers polled informally by 窪蹋勛圖厙 have no plans to cancel or delay their adventures in Africa. ���It never crossed my mind not to go,��� says Barbara Hollweg, a 70-year-old Explore Africa client from Dallas, who is spending two weeks in the Tanzanian Serengeti followed by two weeks in Morocco in February. ���I do my homework and don���t take undue chances. There���s just so much to see in Africa that I have to go back. It can���t be soon enough.���

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Seeing a rhino in the wild is one of Africa���s quintessential safari experiences and a lump-in-your-throat moment for those lucky enough to realize the dream. This is what you came to the continent for, right?泭

Maybe you���ll zoom in with your SLR camera and snap some great shots that you���ll edit later and share online with friends. Or perhaps you���ll take quick pics on your cell phone and post on Facebook or Instagram within minutes.

Either way, what you might not realize is that the second you share that photo online, you could be helping a rhino poacher find his next victim.

Finding Rhinos

The Hospitality Association of Namibia recently on its Facebook page of a sign hanging in a safari vehicle that reads: “Please be careful when sharing photos on social media. They can lead poachers to our rhino. Turn off the geotag function and do not disclose where the photo was taken.”

Geotagging is the process of automatically including geographic information in cell phone pictures. When you share your photos with others, the information is embedded within the photograph, and anyone with access to the Internet can extract that data from your picture.

Plug the longitude and latitude into Google Maps, for example, and you could discover the exact spot where the photo was shot, give or take a few feet. Combine that with the fact that rhinos are very sedentary and often hang out in the same general area for days at a stretch, and you have a potentially serious situation.

“If you���ve got a fresh GPS coordinate for a rhino���or you know where it���s going to water every night���it���s very easy to quickly find and poach it,” explains Chris Weaver, director of the for World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Rhino poaching has dominated the news recently, as ���all in an effort to sell the horns of the prehistoric mammals. Some believers of traditional Asian medicine think pulverized rhino horn will cure strokes, convulsions and fevers, among other ailments.

Though there is no scientific proof of such medicinal value, rhino horn is nonetheless highly prized���so much so that a single rhino horn can fetch $250,000 on the black market.

Faux Tourists

As more and more of the endangered rhinos are killed, conservationists and government officials in some parts of Africa have become extremely protective. In fact, they try not to discuss the animals publicly anymore.

“While Namibia would love to boast about its success with relocation of protected species into private parks and the growth of its rhino population and rhino tracking activities, unfortunately such positive news may draw poachers to our area,” said Gitta Paetzold, CEO of the Hospitality Association of Namibia. To combat this, several organizations have started educating travelers about how poachers can pluck GPS coordinates off photos that tourists post on social media sites.

Poachers can also examine your photos and identify markers in the background, such as a particular grove of trees or a mountain peak. And some , going on guided expeditions on game farms or in national parks. The first time this happened, in South Africa���s Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park, two men killed a pair of white rhinos. The men were later arrested. It���s , where poachers killed a pair of one-horned rhinos in Kaziranga National Park.

Guides, of course, lead their visitors right to where the rhinos are, and the faux tourists may then snap photos without raising any suspicions. Would-be poachers or informants can then send a photo with a location tag to anyone or return to the spot later to seek out the rhino.

Weaver was recently exploring the Namibian desert with some guests when he came across a group of tourists who took an unusual interest in two white rhinos. They snapped more than the typical number of photos of the animals with their cell phones and spent more time with them than Weaver has observed during his 20 years working in Namibia.

“I���m thinking, how would a person know that they���re not just forwarding these photos on to China or Vietnam and saying ���How much will you pay for information on this rhino?���” Weaver said. “Pass that on, and five minutes later, you���ll have an answer back: ���I���ll give you X amount for that set of horns.”

It���s not a far-fetched proposition. In South Africa, for example, officials have become more vigilant about rhino tourism, documenting the names and visits of tourists. Weaver said he���s even heard of some spots where cell phones are forbidden on safari vehicles.

How You Can Help

Although visitor photos may inadvertently help poachers on occasion, there is a silver lining: travelers can actually be a huge aid to rhino conservation efforts, especially in Namibia where tour operators work with community members who value wildlife and work tirelessly to protect it.

“You as a tourist are actually making a difference,” WWF���s Weaver says, explaining that a portion of tour payments go toward community conservation efforts. “Your tourist dollars create long-term incentives for people to set aside habitat for wildlife and live with wildlife.”

To ensure you���re not aiding poachers with your travel photos:

• 泭in the settings section of any smartphone you use to take photos.
• 泭on photos previously shot.
• Be mindful of privacy settings on social media sites. if posting photos of rhinos, only share them with trusted contacts.
• Pay attention to fellow tourists. If you see someone acting out of the ordinary or hear a few too many questions about where rhinos are and how long they���ll stay there, alert national park staff or your guide. That person could be a poacher informant.
• Be wary of sharing too much information with overly interested people, such as taxi drivers or hotel staff. If a line of questioning gets too detailed about the location of an animal you saw that day, answer vaguely.

泭about what WWF is doing to stop rhino poaching.

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While camping along the wild coast of South Africa, I stumbled upon this boulder. After watching the storm surge against it for awhile, I spotted what looked like a somewhat dry climbing line���a series of salty knobs on the backside that looked worth a shot.

Setting up the camera on an interval timer, I wandered out to explore. Pulling up through the steepest section, I saw a giant wave crash against the rocks to my left.

This is all just a long way of saying: Selfie.

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