When officials partially reopened Death Valley National Park on October 15, a rare spectacle was awaiting visitors: a brand-new lake in Badwater Basin.

Badwater Basin is a large salt flat that’s North America’s lowest point at 282 feet below sea level. Nearby Furnace Creek holds the record for being the on Earth after temperatures reached 134.1-degrees in 1913. (Though some scientists have cast doubt on that figure, almost all agree that Death Valley currently owns the heat record.)

Typically, Badwater Basin is extremely dry. But after Death Valley National Park in August, water inundated the area. The storm dropped about a year’s worth of precipitation in a single day, prompting the park’s closure and causing road and infrastructure damage across the region. The closure was in effect for two months—the longest that the park has been closed since the U.S. established it.

Rangers the depth of the lake, but estimates suggest there could be as many as two feet of water in the basin. The last time the basin accumulated such a significant amount of water was nearly 20 years ago, in 2005.��

“This is a really special time,” Death Valley National Park’s Superintendent, Mike Reynolds, . “It’s pretty rare to see a lake in Death Valley.”

In addition to hosting a new lake, Badwater Basin is also experiencing unseasonable flower blooms, surrounding the lake with yellow and orange pops of color. While the basin isn’t totally inhospitable to life—it even has its own species of endemic snail—it’s very uncommon for the basin to support flowers after spring ends due to rising temperatures and a shortage of water.��

Ranger Shelby McClintock told the that the park is particularly buggy, and the flowers “are really confused, and they’re in bloom.”

If you’re hoping to see the lake, however, you’ll need to hustle: In addition to being extremely hot, Badwater Basin has one of the highest evaporation rates in the world, which means that the lake will be short-lived. It could disappear in a matter of weeks.

Park officials remind visitors that Death Valley National Park is , and to expect delays and lowered speed limits until the damage can be fully addressed.��

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I first saw the Everglades more than 30 years ago, as a kid from Chicago dragged along by my parents. Buggy, hot, and flat, what I laid eyes on then was a sodden grassland, and I wasn’t much impressed. But there’s a reason the Glades remained wild well after the continent had been “conquered,” why the migrant Seminoles were able to hide so long in its redoubts from the U.S. Army. Even today, this national park is massive. Its 1.5 million mostly inaccessible acres make it the third-largest national park in the lower 48 after Death Valley and Yellowstone. Now, after living on its doorstep for 20 years, I’ve become enthralled with its untamed nature.

A catch-all term for many different ecosystems, the Everglades once stretched more than 200 miles, from the Kissimmee River in Orlando, south past Lake Okeechobee, to the state’s southernmost tip and the Gulf of Mexico. Today the national park preserves just 20 percent of that, and cities, suburbs, and agricultural land abut its very edges. But the preserved Glades are as wild as it gets. Crocodiles and alligators, the Florida panther, manatees, and a vast number of flora, fauna, and invasive species of all sorts call the place home. Fragile and always changing, this Unesco World Heritage site is under threat of real inundation as sea levels rise, as well as from red tide and blue-green algae blooms (possibly caused by agricultural runoff), which have been devastating in recent years. The Glades are also a premier dark-sky zone, a sanctuary for migratory birds and raptors, and a refuge to get absolutely lost and forget the modern world exists at all. Here’s our guide to the Everglades on how to do just that.

What You Need to Know Before Visiting Everglades National Park

There are two main seasons in the Everglades:��the wet and the dry. From April to October, it is so hot and humid that even short excursions can be draining, and some park facilities, such as the remote Flamingo Visitor��Center, are staffed only intermittently. I’ve found myself wiping masses of mosquitos off my bloody arms in summer, and the no-see-ums can be even worse, driving the stoutest of hearts bonkers. The upshot is that there are fewer crowds during these months. The dry season, which runs November through March, can be idyllic and mild. But whatever the season, pack bug repellent or netting, and be prepared for drenching rain.

Surrounding the park, especially its western parameters, are small, interesting towns��like Everglades City, which some of the fabled Gladesmen—non-native people who managed to decipher the mysteries of the swamp and carve out frontier lives for themselves—still call home. The Everglades City area was so lawless��in the recent past that bales of cocaine and marijuana were alleged to have regularly washed up on the shore. In 2017, Hurricane Irma tore through the area, and the people who live there are still recovering.

Finally, there’s no better way to prepare for a journey to the park than to pick up a copy of by the late journalist and conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas. A seminal work on South Florida’s unique ecology, the book was published in 1947, the same year the Glades were designated a national park. The ecosystem was not seen as something worth saving by the many developers who drained and ditched this region all through the 20th century. That a significant part of the Everglades remains is due in large part to Douglas’s activism.

How to Get There

The Glades are so expansive that seven airports serve as��access points. Though some require longer drives than others, none are more than four hours away (and most much less). So it’s best to pair your arrival city with other things you might like to do: Orlando has theme parks; Tampa and Miami, nightlife and museums; Sarasota, Fort Myers, and Naples, fine dining, golf, and charter fishing; and Key West, Hemingway kitsch, history, and endless margaritas.

Once you choose your airport, there are three main entrances and four visitor centers, as well as an information station in the park. The Shark Valley and Ernest F. Cole Visitor��Centers and the Royal Palm Information Station and Bookstore—all easily accessed from Miami—are close to civilization��on the park’s east side��and offer ranger-led programs. Shark Valley’s 45-foot-tall, 360-degree observation tower is a popular stop. On the park’s west side, in Everglades City, the Gulf Coast Visitor Center is easily accessed from Naples and is the best entry point for the coastal Ten Thousand��Islands region, a birding, fishing, and kayaking paradise. There’s also the Flamingo Visitor Center on Florida Bay, on the park’s far southern tip, accessible��by car from Miami��or by boat from the state’s��east and west coasts.

Road access is straightforward. On the west side, U.S. Route 41 is the only road in from Tampa, Sarasota, Fort��Myers, or��Naples. From Miami, U.S. Route 41 and Florida State Road 9336, which turns into Main Park Road, are��the main points of entry. From Orlando, either side is equally convenient. But no matter where you’re coming from, if you want to explore the west coast, where the river of grass meets the sea, it’s easiest to bring your own canoe or kayak or rent one in Everglades City at the . Beware: the waters are shallow, and the underwater environment is fragile. If you get stuck in the mud, you’ll have to get out of your boat and push, which tears up the underwater seagrass habitat. Depth finders should be used, and knowledge of tides and nautical maps and an awareness of vulnerable manatees are also essential.

Where to Stay In or Near the Everglades

Despite the park’s massive size, traditional front-country camping and RV services are limited to just two sites inside the park. Long Pine Key Campground, near the Royal Palm Information Station, is only open November through May ($30 per night, no electric hookups available), while Flamingo Campground is open all year ($30 per night, $45 for electric hookups) and offers watercraft rentals. Reservations are recommended during the dry season.

There’s plenty of Gulf of Mexico beach camping on the park’s west coast, and much of the park is only accessible by canoe, kayak, or flatboat, so backcountry campers will be rewarded with solitude like few other places left in the U.S. But you must take trip planning seriously and pack your canoe or kayak with enough food and water for the length of your excursion. You’ll also need to know how to orient yourself with GPS and nautical maps—it’s easy to get lost in this landscape of repetitive landmarks. Backcountry camping permits are only issued on a first-come, first-served basis in person at the Flamingo and Gulf Coast Visitor Centers ($21 fee, plus $2 per day).

If you like a bed and shower, Everglades City is a great base camp. The town has a museum, restaurants, and an eclectic assortment of hardy inhabitants. Places to stay include (from $129) and the cottages at the turn-of-the-century (from $125). Longer-stay self-catering options include the (from $109), great for large groups, and the waterfront one- and two-bedroom cabins at (from $130). You can also rent kayaks and gear at Ivey House, take swamp-buggy tours, and hire park-approved fishing charters and guides to lead you into the Glades.

The Best ���ϳԹ���s in Everglades National Park

Most of the park’s one million annual visitors don’t penetrate much farther than a visitor-center walking tour, but the Glades offer myriad activities for those willing to brave the maze-like waters, tall grasses, and mangrove isles. Whatever activities you choose, they’ll all have at least one thing in common: you’re probably going to get wet.

Bird-Watching ��

If you’re a birder, there is no better place in the country to check off your life list than the Everglades, which boasts more than 360 of the winged species. Just pick a bird on your list—for me it is always the skittish and pink-hued roseate spoonbill—and in the Glades you know you are going to see it. Snowy egrets and wood storks are everywhere, osprey—and the bald eagles that steal their fish—circle overhead, and if you find a lucky spot in the mangroves, flock after flock of curved-beaked ibis will zip over your head as they head home to roost in the evenings. Keep an eye out for black skimmers, a shorebird that is making a rebound; you’ll know them as the seagull-like birds with an incredible underbite that seem to have no eyes at all because of their black and white coloration. Reserve tickets online for the to see wading birds, like limpkins. Kayakers can turn a corner in the islands and mangroves and happen upon a rookery that’s filled shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of birds: ibis, herons, egrets, wood storks, anhingas, and cormorants galore, and the spring- and fall-migration periods will offer you dozens of species a day without any struggle. Even if you never leave your car, you’ll see birds. That’s the charm of the Glades.

Paddling

Launch your canoe or kayak at either the Flamingo or Gulf Coast Visitor Centers for a day trip or a two-week expedition. Between the two points are 100 miles of interconnected, watery wilderness, backcountry campsites, and a few marked canoe trails to help keep you from getting lost. The 5.2-mile loop through the grass marshes and mangrove islands around is a favorite for day-trippers. Still, those��who lose their way keep park rangers busy with regular rescues. If you want an expert to lead you, based in Everglades City, offers excellent, private ecotours.

The water is murky and full of creatures that will splash near your craft. Don’t worry, the usual cause of��commotion is not alligators��but mullet, a fish that schools here and is an important part of the food chain. For some reason that scientists��still don’t understand, the foot-long, thick-bodied fish loves to leap out of the water, and it happens all day long. You will see gators, but they’ll leave you alone. That said, I keep my distance from any reptile longer than I am tall. If you camp on the beach, don’t tread on sea turtle nests, and if you paddle or boat along the coast, you will at some point be accompanied by dolphins.

Fishing Trip

There are nearly 300 species of fish here, and the first step to landing them is to get a license online at the ��(the park itself has some special regulations��). Light tackle is fine for freshwater areas. I use crawlers and land plenty of panfish, catfish, and bass. Unfortunately, you’re also likely encounter the invasive Southeast Asian walking catfish, a creature that can “walk”��on its front fins overland to infest ever more bodies of water. If you catch one, you can release it. But if you decide to keep one, by law it must be killed.

In the brackish water of��the mangroves, anything can happen, and you never know what you’ll hook, from the delicious and gorgeous black-lined snook to equally delicious sheepshead and snapper. I use live shrimp for bait both here��as well as out in the saltwater. If you want to land a tarpon, one of the region’s premier saltwater game fish, heavier tackle and wire leaders are musts, and it’s better to go out with a guide. They have the local knowledge and all the expensive gear that will improve your��chance of tight lines.

One of the great joys��of my life was learning to throw a ten-foot, lead-skirted net for mullet. It isn’t easy, but all the local guides can offer lessons for the determined and interested. These fish will not take a hook, but if you have the shoulder and core strength to throw the net, it’s a true South Florida experience, and you can haul in a biblical bounty of these delicious silver beauties.

Everglades City remains a fishing paradise, as it was not hit by the red tide that ravaged the state in 2018. Fishing guides of note include�� and��, though��as Kathy Brock, publisher of Everglades City’s newspaper, The Mullet Rapper, notes, “All our guides here are good. They can’t survive if they’re not.”

Hiking Trails

Short, interpretive trails are offered at all of the park’s visitor��centers, but while wonderful and easy, they won’t satisfy those looking for a demanding, all-day trek. For that, head to the —accessed from Royal Palm—for a 20-mile round-trip trek in absolute solitude on what was once a paved road��but has long since fallen into wild decay. —accessed from Flamingo—is a 15-mile round-trip that offers backcountry camping at Clubhouse Beach. The campsite requires a permit obtained at the Flamingo Visitor Center.

Ecotours

If you’re��pressed for time or want a better understanding of the Glades’ ecosystem, sign up for a guided airboat tour. On the park’s northern edge, just off U.S. 41, three park-approved airboat companies—,��, and��—will take you into areas adjacent to the park��(airboats are not allowed in the park itself due to��the risk of damaging��fragile submerged flora), schooling you on the region’s unique environments as you go.

Where to Eat and Drink Near the Everglades

Shop around in Everglades City, and find a menu that offers smoked mullet. It tastes like a moist, jerky delicacy. Restaurants include the year-round and as well as the seasonal (closed in summer). Also look for any menu that offers wild hog. The first Spanish explorers to Florida brought domesticated Iberian pigs with them as walking meat lockers. Some escaped, and now more than half a million feral hogs call Florida home. In Spain, these animals were raised on acorns and are to this day considered the highest-quality meat in that country. Here on this peninsula, they roam free in the Everglades, tearing up the environment with their bulldozer-like snouts, which means their meat is both delicious and good for the environment.

Stone crab season runs October to May. After taking just one claw from these thick-shelled crustaceans, fishermen throw the living crabs back into the water, where they will regenerate the missing claw over three years. All the local restaurants feature them.

Speaking of crab, I prefer the blue variety, which you can catch in the mangroves. Don’t bother with a trap (though you can set up to five if you insist). Just cast out any hunk of meat on a hook, and as soon as your line goes tight, reel it in very slowly: the crabs are so greedy that they won’t let go. All you’ll need is a dip net. Sex them on capture, and release any females. Males have a thin, narrow “apron”��on their undersides, while females’ aprons are wide and triangular. There’s no special permit required��and no better backcountry meal.��They’re delicious boiled live in a pot.

If you can, plan your trip for early February when Everglades City hosts its annual Its post-Irma resilience was on full display in 2018 as more than 60,000 people descended��to show their support and eat local seafood of every variety while enjoying the live local music.

If You Have Time for a Detour

If you fly into Orlando, stop by Eatonville, a town founded by African Americans at the turn of the 19th century and now consumed by Orlando’s sprawl. It’s the site of the writer Zora Neale Hurston’s acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God,��which has many scenes set in the Everglades and chronicles the 1928 hurricane, during which the banks of��Lake Okeechobee overflowed��into the Glades,��killing��2,500 Floridians, including many poor African Americans. Like Stoneman’s The Everglades, Hurston’s novel should be read in advance of any visit to the Glades. Popular attractions include the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts and, in late January, the popular��, which has been celebrated for more than 30 years.

Those who find themselves in the Keys should be sure to hike the trails of the In ecological terms, a hammock is a type of habitat found in the region’s higher, drier elevations, and this park is home to one of the largest remaining West Indian tropical-hardwood hammocks in the world. In Key West, hop on the for a��ride over to Garden Key and Dry Tortugas National Park. Explore imposing Fort Jefferson before paddling a rental kayak to Loggerhead Key to camp on the island or dive the Windjammer, a 19th-century shipwreck. And��off the coast of Summerland Key is Looe Key Reef, my favorite place to dive in the Keys. Part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, this��is a special sanctuary preservation area. Corals are under threat all across the region due to climate change and ocean acidification, but Looe Key teems with corals and fish and reminds us of how things once were.

The Tamiami Trail, a��60-mile stretch of U.S. 41 that cuts right across Florida from east to west along the northern edge of the Everglades, offers campgrounds and RV parks. You’ll also find many federally recognized Miccosukee Indian villages, recognizable by their thatched homes and security gates. At Miccosukee Indian Village and��Airboats, you can watch demonstrations of wood carving, beadwork, basket weaving, and doll making as well as taste unique dishes like fry and pumpkin breads and frog legs or witness alligator demonstrations. During the last week of December, the Miccosukee also host the��Indian Arts and��Crafts Festival.

The trail is also home to��’s Big Cypress Gallery. Known as the Ansel Adams of the Everglades, the storied photographer—who is a friend of mine and many other South Florida environmentalists—struggled to support his family and make a living most of his life. But following the death of his 17-year-old son, in 1986, Butcher stepped into the Everglades to heal and produced his now iconic black and white photographs of the region’s wild places. Today��even Queen Elizabeth owns one of his prints. His gallery, located almost halfway between Naples and Miami, offers guest stays and walking tours. If you’re��lucky, Butcher will be there during your visit. In failing health, he’s still a library of information about the history of the conservation work that made the preservation of the Everglades possible.

Editor’s Note: We frequently update this National Parks guide, which was originally published on May 13, 2019.

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As recent have opined, our globe-trotting ways are killing the planet. The proof is in the numbers: tourism has the of any industry in terms of energy consumption. While air travel has been at the forefront of recent discussions, lodging also has a significant carbon footprint. Globally, tourist accommodations account for of CO2 emissions, and hotels rank among the most energy-consuming buildings in the service sector, behind structures like hospitals.

According to a 2019 by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), 70 percent of global travelers would be more inclined��to book eco-friendly accommodation. The industry seems to have taken the hint: are trending. But these days, it can be difficult to discern between environmentally friendly digs and those just trying to profit from��the craze. Globally, there are an estimated 250 to 300 entities that claim to certify tourist accommodations as sustainable. They vary in reputation and offer somewhere in the ballpark of 8,000—yes, 8,000—certifications, many of them meaningless.��

Take the , for example. To the uninitiated, its endorsement seems to be a legitimate seal of approval. But dig a little deeper and you’ll discover that the organization does not certify establishments or even require that members adhere to any standards—science backed or otherwise. Rather, it’s a marketing operation that lists accommodations on its website in exchange for an annual fee, starting at $201. The association distributes newsletters to its members featuring��ideas and advice that��ranges��from the rudimentary, such as enforcing smoke-free rooms, to the downright false: “live��potted plants keep air healthier,” its website reads, a claim which has been by scientists. The GHA then uses its member directory essentially as a distribution list to shill products, like , and sell merchandise (flags reading “A ‘Green Hotel’ Committed to Help Save Our Planet” go for $68 a pop).

So how can you tell if a hotel is just stamping a feel-good leaf on its literature or if it’s actually taking steps toward sustainability? We’ve consulted the experts on the questions you should be asking to make sure you’re putting your dollars in the right place.

Is it certified as sustainable by a reputable organization?

Gregory Miller, executive director of��the��, a research group based in Washington, D.C., tells travelers to look for the Global Sustainable Tourism Council��logo on hotel websites. The organization��publishes minimum for the travel industry that account not only for environmental aspects, such as energy and water conservation, but cultural considerations as well, including the protection of sensitive or meaningful sites. While the nonprofit does not certify hotels itself, it verifies that the standards used by third-party certification bodies, such as and , do evaluate whether��hotels comply with GSTC criteria. Its��icon, a�� fashioned out of an infinity symbol, seen on a hotel or certification agency’s website, is an easy way to identify businesses that have been through a rigorous vetting process.��

The website is another great resource for finding reputably certified hotels. It aggregates lodging options that have been verified by a variety of organizations, such as ��and����(which have good reputations but are not yet GSTC certified) and other GSTC-vetted organizations like and . Book Different that all certifying bodies listed on its website perform in-person audits. Then��Book Different applies its own labels to hotel listings, which it terms “staygreen checks.” The site’s “staygreen” indicators—kelly-green check-mark icons that show up next to each listing—are based on four tenets: long-term management plans, fair interaction with the local community and employees, cultural sensitivity, and, of course, environmental concerns. Hotels can be awarded checks for any or all of those categories.

What is its carbon footprint?

It’s not yet standard for eco-lodges to list their carbon footprint, so it’s a good sign when they do��and indicates a strong level of accountability. Alongside filters for basic amenities such as parking or breakfast, Book Different provides carbon-footprint scores using��a�� developed at Breda University of Applied Sciences’ ��in the Netherlands. It yields an estimated value based on��the amount of direct greenhouse-gas emissions—the CO2 released by any machines owned or controlled by the hotel.

As far as interpreting the score, Randy Durband, CEO of the GSTC, says that going carbon neutral—when there’s no net release of human-caused CO2—is what hotels should be striving to achieve. While hotels that fit the bill do exist, including the in Amsterdam and the in Aruba, the industry at large is playing catchup with the . Book Different employs an easy-to-spot green foot icon for businesses that emit less than��33 pounds of CO2 per guest per night, which it deems the average hotel output. It uses a gray foot icon for anything greater than that.��

Paul Peeters, a professor at Breda, stresses the urgent need to decarbonize the industry while starting with a more realistic baseline figure: for the current state of the industry, he suggests that 50 pounds of CO2 a night��per guest��is reasonable. But he thinks eco-lodges can—and should—strive for close to zero, using only renewable energy such as wind or solar.

How were locals consulted?��

The GSTC’s Miller recommends seeking hotels that have addressed social considerations as well as environmental ones. In addition to the obvious positive effects of enhancing cultural heritage and economically benefiting the area’s existing community, involving locals is a good way to mitigate immediate environmental problems. People who live and work in the surrounding areas are the experts in its history of land use and speak up about issues like water and noise pollution, the disruption of ecosystems, and potential stresses on the community from overtourism.��

It should go without saying that a hotel should never jeopardize local resources, and that its acquisition of land and water should comply with local rights. Some other signs to look for are whether a hotel has contributed to necessary infrastructure to handle additional tourists; whether its employees, including managers, are from the resident population;��and if it prioritizes local and fair-trade products. In short, lodges and their neighbors should be equally excited to talk about what the business is adding to the community.

How does it conserve resources on a daily basis?��

“Daily practices are essential,” Durband asserts. Despite all the resources that go into the construction phase, operational practices once a hotel is up and running—from cooking to housekeeping to overhead lighting in common areas— the vast majority of energy consumption during the property’s lifetime.��

Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are particularly important as they’re the greatest carbon emitters. Lighting and hot water also of wasted energy. Ask if efficient appliances have been installed and whether they’re regularly serviced for optimal performance.��

Likewise, protocol should be in place for both guests and staff to reduce energy consumption. For example, hotels can set up automated systems to turn off lights and HVAC systems when guest rooms are unoccupied. Alternatively, the housekeeping checklist can include a peek at the thermostat to ensure it’s set at a reasonable temperature while no one is there��and to turn off the lights when they’re through.��

It’s worth noting, though, that even when sustainable policies exist on paper, practices can vary across different green markers. “Hotels may operate very sustainably in certain aspects and do poorly on others,” Durband says. For example, they might use motion detectors and other energy-savings devices and processes��but make little effort to minimize the use of plastics. Others may make false claims, such as saying, “We won’t wash your towel if you hang it on the rack,” only to have��housekeeping staff put it through the laundry anyway despite the guest following the printed instructions.

Theoretically, hotels should be able to show you records of staff-education sessions and training materials. In practice, however, the easiest way to find out is to simply ask hotel staff. All of an organization’s employees should be able to tell you the last thing they did to meet the hotel’s sustainability goals—whether it’s waiting to run the dishwasher until it’s full or diverting food scraps to the compost—and why it matters.��

What is its long-term sustainability plan?��

According to Miller, a deliberate, demonstrated commitment to long-term sustainability is perhaps the most significant indication. While short-term practices, such as replacing small shampoo bottles with bulk containers, are important, look for more permanent investments,��like locally sourced, rapidly renewable building materials (such as cotton and bamboo)��that allow for passive heating and cooling. These design features may be more expensive for properties up front��but actually end up saving them money in the long run��and are less easily reversed according to the whims of management.��

Sustainability is an ever evolving project. If nothing else, hotels should have a thoughtful, written plan for enacting their environmental��goals. This document should lay out precisely when staff training sessions occur��and how they go,��as well as when and how regularly resource audits happen, including what benchmarks are used. As Miller notes, “Environmental sustainability is hard, committed work.”

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In the remote Soviet��mining village of , resident�� is driving a tourist economy. From filmmaker , in collaboration with , shares how he’s highlighting regional attributes by using social media.

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First, the DJ starts playing. Then the bats come out. It could be a coincidence, or it could be that bats like electronica. The graffiti artists definitely don’t like the music; they clear the dance floor pronto, leaving the bats to flutter to the rhythm. I’m using the term dance floor loosely here. It’s a slab of concrete in the center of an abandoned rum distillery in the middle of the Colombian jungle. Dictador, a premium Colombian rum brand, has invited a dozen of the world’s most renowned graffiti artists to paint the tanks and walls of its former distillery. For the past two days, I’ve been watching them create massive murals while enduring the country’s infamous heat. Dictador’s owners want to use this project to raise money for conservation in Colombia. The artists will produce bonus canvases for auction; the proceeds will go to , a nonprofit that’s helping Colombia establish policies to protect its mountains.

It’s a strange project, but Colombia is in a weird place right now. The country was devastated by a half-century-long civil war, which had the inadvertent effect of preserving vast landscapes that were once controlled by rebels. Since the 2016 peace treaty, the country is enjoying its first break from wide-scale violence in a generation and is now trying to figure out what to do with all that pristine land. Meanwhile, deforestation and development have ramped up significantly since the peace treaty was signed. Call it an identity crisis.��

And, oh yeah, the war is over, but while most of the country is trying to move on, there is still some lingering tension where bad guys don’t want to give up their bad-guy ways. Most of the violence is in remote rural areas that the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, used to control, particularly the regions that border Venezuela and Ecuador. Cocaine production has hit an all-time high, and 3,000 militants have decided to ignore the peace treaty and continue fighting. Some of them don’t take too well to the government creating parks and preserving land where they’re growing or transporting coca. Call it a postwar hangover. But cities like Bogotá and the coastal towns where tourists venture are generally considered safe for travelers.��(The U.S. State Department has softened its travel advisory for most of Colombia, labeling it a Level 2 risk, on par with Germany, Denmark, Burma, and Spain, but there are certain regions of the country that the government flags as being too violent for Americans to visit.)��

I’m in Colombia to watch artists��paint��but also to explore the mountains and coast. The adventure potential is off the charts down here—lush forests full of waterfalls and canyons, lonely beaches with cliffs and surf breaks, mountain biking on ancient footpaths that might comprise the world’s best adventure cycling. And then there’s the birding. Colombia is widely recognized as the single greatest birding destination in the world—and the world is starting to notice. According to Colombia’s trade ministry, tourism has increased 300 percent in the past decade, with more than 3 million foreign visitors in 2018. The increase in tourism is promising, and certain leaders insist ecotourism is the country’s future. But Colombia is still trying to figure out how to capitalize on its natural attributes. In other words, while it has tourism potential, the country��definitely does not feel like a tourist destination—yet.��So, if you’re looking for a place that offers raw adventure where you’ll sweat through police checks and sleep in working coffee farms and trail run through jungles, a place where abandoned distilleries are tagged by the best graffiti artists in the world, then go to Colombia. Now.��

But first, a brief, oversimplified recap of Colombia’s recent history. The South American country spent more than 50 years in a civil war, as the FARC��fought the government over inequality and land rights. In the midst of the unrest, the cocaine business boomed. Pablo Escobar. Narcos. Romancing the Stone. Colombia developed a reputation for violence over the years that caused most Americans to eschew the country for tamer destinations.

The FARC��occupied some of the most remote corners of the country, controlling hundreds of thousands of acres of mountains and jungle. People fled the land where the group established encampments, and development ceased. As a result, Colombia is one of the few countries in South America where more than half of its acreage is still forested. It’s considered the most biodiverse country in the world. It’s a phenomenon known as gunpoint conservation, and as wild as it sounds, it has��happened in other countries, like Myanmar, which suffered a 70-year civil war that left certain regions untouched by loggers. But Colombia stands as the quintessential example, where conflict limited access to vast stretches of the Andes mountain range and the Amazon.

Since the peace treaty was signed in 2016, Colombians have started exploring these previous no-go zones, experimenting with ecotourism and researching landscapes that had been lost to the scientific community. Scientists are discovering new species in the mountains (Colombia’s Humboldt Institute found six new species of frogs and beetles in a single forest near Medellín), and adventurers are finding��forgotten paths that are perfect for cycling, hiking, and trail running.

“We spend a lot of time exploring routes we find on Google maps,” says Julian Manrique, a Bogotá-based cyclist who recently founded , a tour company that specializes in providing support and logistics for people looking to pedal Colombia’s mountains. The country’s terrain goes from sea level to almost 20,000 feet, with two massive mountain ranges, the Andes and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, dominating most of the country. “There are so many narrow roads crossing the Andes, the potential for cycling is unlimited,” Manrique says. “You just have to be willing to put in the work, cross rivers, and ride where nobody has ridden before. It’s an open map ready to be discovered.”

Sometimes the roads are paved, sometimes they’re a mix of dirt and gravel, which means much of the riding is tailored to today’s adventure-hungry gravel bikers. The scenery can shift from busy city streets to dry, almost desert-like scrub flatlands to dense cloud forests on a single ride. I spent several days biking with Manrique in Colombia four years ago, just before the peace treaty was signed. We pedaled through the crowded streets of Bogotá��and climbed an impossibly steep grade to a café overlooking the city, where we drank agua de panela, a hot drink with melted cheese. Manrique calls it Colombian Gatorade. It tastes good, like sweet tea. Later, we pedaled forgotten, half-paved roads deep into coffee country, then set out for long climbs into the mountains near , known for its high-altitude, sponge-like forests and small alpine lakes. Colombia already has the longest road climb in the world—Alto de Letras, which rises at a 4 percent grade for almost 50 miles—but Manrique says that the famous climb is just a drop in the bucket.

“If you like riding through unknown terrain and love climbing, Colombia is it,” Manrique says. “We’ll do a day that starts at sea level, covers 125 miles, and climbs 10,000 feet back into the mountains. It’s mad.”

Cycling has had a foothold in Colombia for decades. Bogotá was the birthplace of the ���������DZ�í��—a weekly Sunday��event where��the city shuts down one of its main streets for bikers—and the country has a strong group of pro cyclists competing on the international circuit. Since the peace treaty was signed, several companies have started offering multiday cycling tours using relatively well-established routes in the mountains, most of which incorporate Alto de Letras at some point in their itinerary. But road cycling isn’t the only sport to catch a postwar bump. Trail running is also booming, with a burgeoning portfolio of races, most notably , a 50-mile��ultra sponsored by Merrell. The event drew a thousand runners from 15 countries last year. They tackled a course that starts on the beach and finishes on the side of the tallest coastal mountain in the world.

“The whole scene is growing quickly here,” says Emily Schmitz, a Minnesota-born trail runner who has lived in Bogotá��for the past decade��and works in the humanitarian rights field. “With each race, the prizes get better, the routes get better, the logistical support gets better, and there are so many trails to run here.”

Schmitz says she can leave her home in Bogotá��and within 15 minutes be running in the mountains on ancestral trails that were once used to connect the city to surrounding communities. “Even after ten years here, I’m still amazed at the beauty of the countryside,” Schmitz says. “So many areas have remained untouched in a manner that we do not see in the U.S., where so much of the land has become incredibly overdeveloped.”

But as Colombians rediscover their own country, development has kicked into high gear. Deforestation has reached epidemic levels, with almost a billion acres of forest lost since 2016��and new conflicts arising between conservationists and paramilitary groups and criminal gangs.��

“Anyone wearing a green uniform and carrying a gun is the same to us,” says Jaison Perez, a representative for the Arhuaco, an indigenous tribe that lives in the coastal mountains of Colombia. “The paramilitary are still active, and they’re still killing people. We don’t see as many deaths as before, so things are better from a social perspective��but worse from an environmental perspective. The peace treaty has accelerated people’s thirst for short-term gain.”

There’s a race to dictate the future of Colombia’s mountains—preservation or development—which brings us back to Dictador’s old distillery. It sits literally in the middle of the battle. The building is positioned between the coastal Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range, once controlled by paramilitary groups, and the Perijá��Mountains, a biodiverse range that was a hotbed of guerrilla activity. Six new bird species have been discovered in these mountains in as many years, and a new trail has been established to help throngs of tourists explore these bird-rich peaks.��

This is the second edition of the graffiti project. A handful of large murals were painted at the distillery last year, and the entrepreneurial rum owners are planning to do an event each year, bringing in new artists until they feel the distillery has become the world’s greatest graffiti exhibition. Then they might open the distillery as a museum of sorts to raise money for conservation efforts.

The list of painters involved is a who’s who of illegal art. Nychos, an Austrian. A Colombian named Toxicomano, who likes to paint jaguars. Daleast, from China. Faith, from South Africa. You’ll notice they all go by one-word pseudonyms. The distillery itself is a mix of concrete, brick, rusted steel, and tin roofs that are peeling back at the seams.��

The artists aren’t adjusting very well to the heat at the distillery. The temperature is in the mid-90s Fahrenheit, with humidity pushing 45 percent. They flew in from Cartagena on a small Cessna, landing on a dirt airstrip next to the distillery, and have spent most of their first day acclimating to the environment by napping and drinking tiny bottles of Costeñita, a cheap Colombian beer.��

While the art project seems disconnected from its surrounding landscape, it actually fits in with the unique style of conservation emerging in Colombia, where private companies, nonprofits, locals, and the government work together toward��goals. Fabio Arjona is Colombia’s former vice minister of the environment and current director of Colombia’s branch of Conservation International. He says working with various groups who claim control of an area is imperative specifically because of the country’s troubled past: “People have to collaborate here because of all of the conflict. A company could build a pipeline, but it would just be bombed over and over. If you don’t partner with all of these groups, you won’t get anything done.”

Ivan Duque, a conservative president, took office in 2018, and environmentalists are worried that he won’t preserve the country’s progressive approach to conservation and the peace agreement established by the previous administration, led by president Juan Manual Santos, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for signing the 2016 treaty. The left-leaning Santos made massive conservation gains, tripling the amount of public land, adding and expanding several parks, and passing a corporate carbon tax. Tourists took notice, some coming to bike in the mountains, others coming to��beach resorts popping up along the Caribbean coast. A lot of them are coming for the birds. A 2018 study shows birders from the U.S.��could contribute up to $46 million a year and create more than 7,000 jobs. With almost 2,000 species of birds, Colombia is the most bird-rich country in the world, t of destinations.

“The twitchers showed up first,” says John Myers, the social innovation specialist for Conservation International. He’s been involved with developing Colombia’s birding infrastructure for the past several years. He also helped bring Dictador and Conservation International together and has been watching the graffiti artists paint the tanks with me at the distillery. Twitchers are hardcore birders,��obsessed with ticking off elusive species. Myers says they started showing up before the peace treaty was signed, quietly bagging species. Birding was a clandestine operation then, with few guides or infrastructure��and heavy on risk, because the best sites were often in guerilla- or paramilitary-ruled mountains. But in 2015, Myers began designing the Northern Colombia Birding Trail, a collection of preserves and lodges serviced by trained local guides and designed to give the country’s ecotourism a boost. The centerpiece of the Northern Colombia Birding Trail is the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an imposing mountain that rises directly from the Caribbean��and is known worldwide for its abundance of endemic species.

According to Colombia’s four indigenous tribes that live on the mountain—the Arhuaco, Wiwa, Kogi, and Kankuamo—everything begins and ends with the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a beast of a mountain that starts as a cluster of coral in the Caribbean and rises to an 18,700-foot glaciated peak. The tribes consider it the heart of the world. As for its size, the mountain is the kind of thing you can appreciate only from a distance. I spent several days on and around the mountain and never once caught a glimpse of its white caps��because of a veil of dense clouds. It’s an isolated mountain, separated from the Andes by a gap on the Guajira Peninsula, an ecosystem unto itself.

“Santa Marta is like an island, with so many species evolving all on their own,” Myers says. “Imagine the Galapagos��but as a mountain.”

With 28 endemic species of birds living only on its slopes, Santa Marta Mountain is the exclamation point on the . It’s also ground zero for conservation, representing the largest remaining coastal forest in the Caribbean��and home to Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Natural Park, as well as a pilot program where indigenous tribes take part in a progressive carbon sequestration program. The ancient ruins of La Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City, is also tucked into the recesses of this mountain. Archeologists think it’s 650 years older than Machu Picchu and served as the political and spiritual epicenter of Colombia’s original tribes. Treasure hunters��“discovered” it in 1972, but the indigenous tribes of Santa Marta have visited the site for decades. You can visit it, too, if you’re up for a four-to-seven-day trek through Santa Marta’s steep slopes.

Myers and I decide to leave the distillery and head toward the mountain for some trail running and birding. Our driver and guide for the next few days is named Gabriel Utria, but the world knows him as Gabo. If birding in Colombia has a celebrity, it’s Gabo. He grew up on the side of Santa Marta and is arguably the most knowledgeable birding guide in the country. Gabo once went on a three-day hike along the spine of Santa Marta to see a hummingbird that lives only at a certain elevation on the mountain. Colombia sends him all over the world as a representative for the country’s burgeoning birding industry. A few years ago, a former U.S. state department diplomat—the most successful birder in the world, with more registered species sightings than anyone else—traveled to Colombia to add a couple endemics to his list, which had stalled as it grew toward��9,000. He called Gabo, who��delivered with five species the man had never seen before.

So, yeah, Gabo goes by one name, like the graffiti artists back at the distillery. And Prince.

We hit two private birding preserves as we make our way through the Guajira Peninsula, on the border of Venezuela. The first is a dry forest in the valley, full of scrubby-looking trees and cute, puffy owls that Gabo calls toward��us as we walk a dusty dirt road. The second is a 1,200-acre preserve at the base of the mountain as we get closer to the coast. Gabo helped a handful of locals establish the preserve, building a bathroom and training guides. A restaurant is coming that will focus entirely on local dishes, like sancocho, a vegetable stew with an ear of corn resting in it. Gabo says it’s exactly the sort of project the area needs.

“The local communities need money from legal things,” says Gabo, as we pull away from the new preserve. “The coast was full of coca plantations 15 years ago. It’s what most people know. But now, maybe ecotourism is the future.”

The Guajira Peninsula is one of the poorest regions in Colombia, full of families displaced by decades of conflict and refugees fresh from Venezuela. We see people selling cheap Venezuelan gas in old Coke bottles on the side of the road. There are occasional police checks. At one point, some middle school girls pull��a rope across the road and start��dancing in front of the car, charging a toll for the “carnival.”

Gabo helped Myers create the Northern Colombia Birding Trail, which stretches from on the coast along the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and into the Perijá Mountains, on the other side of Dictador’s abandoned distillery. Together, they trained 43 guides—former hunters, fishermen, and farmers—in the art of birding. Gabo’s been working to fill out the amenities on the trail, establishing new preserves and training coffee farmers to turn their homes into lodges.

Other lodges are also popping up along the trail. Near Tayrona National Park, the busiest in Colombia’s expanding system, we stop for lunch at Gitana del Mar, a posh new resort complete with a palm-thatched yoga studio, manicured landscaping��with private access to a pristine beach, and a high-end restaurant with a menu that focuses on local fish, veggies, and fruit. The resort is close to a legit surf break, as well as the beaches and cliffs of Tayrona and the waterfalls and trails of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Meyers says the resort is the first of its kind in this part of Colombia, but it’s a sign of things to come as the small towns that line the coast and mountains, which have been popular with international backpackers for a few years, get discovered by American travelers looking for finer digs.

But in the midst of this burgeoning tourism industry, violence has erupted. A park guard at Santa Marta National Park was killed, possibly by a paramilitary group, the week before I arrived, and the director of the same park has received death threats. His family left for Bogotá��while I was watching graffiti artists tag Dictador’s distillery. Myers took the director’s deposition before he and his family fled town. “Imagine if someone threatened to cut your family into pieces,” he tells me. “It sucks to have to talk about this stuff again. For the last few years, all we talked about was how great everything is.”

Myers says the murder and death threats are centered around Santa Marta National Park and the government’s conservation priorities, which expanded the park to include “the tongue,” an area stretching from the mountains to the coast that has traditionally been ruled by paramilitary groups who would use the deep bays to move shipments of drugs at night. The park director worked with indigenous groups to restore a sacred site in the area called Katanzama and to eliminate any further development. “These disputes are always about land,” says Myers, adding that the current violence around the park is targeted and hasn’t proved to be a threat to tourists. “If you’re a gringo on vacation, you’re safe. It’s a different story if you’re an environmentalist here.”��

Fabio Arjona tells me that the new rash of violence is an extension of the old problems that existed before the peace treaty was signed: “The threats are the same they’ve always been. Drug trafficking has lessened in recent years, but it’s still a big threat to conservation in general, and it contributes to deforestation. It’s hard to find a substitute for growing coca. It’s too lucrative.”

Colombia’s national parks aren’t like parks in the United States. The government can declare a certain landscape as a park, but people are still allowed to live inside the area. So, with Santa Marta National Park, you have the government trying to enforce Colombia’s conservation priorities, but also 100,000 indigenous people calling the park home��and countless other residents who fled their ancestral homes during the FARC rebellion. It has��also traditionally been a hotbed of drug trafficking, thanks to nearby coca plantations and the coastal access to move the drugs.

“There’s such an overlap of jurisdictions, both legal and illegal,” explains Myers as we drive up the side of the mountain on a road that quickly goes from pavement to a four-wheel-drive track. For the most part, the indigenous tribes are allowed to manage their land as they see fit. Conservation International is working with them on carbon offset programs, but most of the tribes are notoriously reclusive when it comes to the outside world. Tourists are typically not allowed to visit their villages, so while the national park is public land in theory, there are large swaths that people can’t access. The glaciated peaks, for instance, are rarely visited by anyone but the indigenous. Meyers, who works closely with the tribes, tells me he gets at least one request a year from a professional snowboarder or skier who wants to ski the snow.

According to Gabo, Santa Marta has always been a mess. His parents managed the biology station inside the park, and Gabo grew up on the side of the mountain. During the prolonged civil war, Santa Marta was controlled by paramilitary groups and drug traffickers, who were at odds with the FARC��and, often, the government.

“The paramilitary controlled everything around Santa Marta,” Gabo says. “They ran the town, the schools, the hospital. We were always afraid. Even just 15 years ago, it wasn’t safe here. But birding has gotten popular since the peace process, and you can go places you couldn’t go before.”

We stop for the night halfway up Santa Marta Mountain at a 12-acre coffee farm that does double duty as a birder’s hostel. The view from the farm is stellar, encompassing the dramatic ridgeline of Santa Marta as it drops steeply into the ocean. We sit on a patio and watch the sun set below the ridge while the family who owns the farm cooks chicken and rice for us at an outdoor kitchen. A young boy plays with a remote-control car at our feet. Gabo says this home, called Casa Café, is an example of how ecotourism can directly impact the people of Colombia.

“We’ve been working with this family for three years, and they just opened six months ago,” Gabo says. “It’s going well. They take in birders and backpackers, make them dinner and breakfast. It’s good income for them, which is important because the price of coffee is dropping.”��

We wake up the next morning at 3:30 for a predawn assault on San Lorenzo Ridge, a birding hotspot on the flank of Santa Marta Mountain. Myers and I plan to run from the coffee farm to the ridge, timing our ascent with sunrise. We begin with headlamps in the dark, tiptoeing our way through the small boulders and streams in the dirt road.��

It’s a beautiful nine-mile run through a jungle that turns into a dank cloud forest, the temperature dropping as we climb 3,000 feet. We pass the occasional hostel and café, but mostly it’s just a thick canopy of palms and succulents growing out of the limbs of trees. We hear howler monkeys in the distance and catch quick glimpses of tarantulas with our headlamps. When we reach the peak of the San Lorenzo Ridge, it’s covered in mist, the sun burning orange behind a thick layer of clouds. At first, the birding is shit. We drink rum and wait for the mist to burn off, but it never does. The clouds are soupy, and the forest is thick with dew. We hear one of Colombia’s signature birds, the white-tipped quetzal, but never catch a glimpse of it. But the clouds burn off as we make our way down the mountain, and we stop near Gabo’s childhood home and wander down a trail. Within a few minutes, we see a Santa Marta Blossomcrown, a tiny hummingbird that’s found only here. We eventually bag three endemic species. Myers is giddy as we head farther down the mountain, detouring on a dirt road to grab a beer at Nevada Cerveceria, a brewery that a German transplant opened a few years ago.

Birding is probably the brightest example of how Colombia has pivoted to capitalize on its natural beauty since signing the peace treaty. The Northern Colombia Birding Trail is used as a model for other ecotourism projects within the country, spawning a handful of other birding trails in other parts of the country. I get the sense that this is just the beginning, that the ecotourism potential in this country is huge—but also fragile because of the remaining instability.��

“This rise in ecotourism could force the current government not to mess up the peace agreement, because if they do, they’ll lose out on the tourism boom,” Myers says.��

There’s plenty to lose. Just ask Gabo.��

“Everything we’ve done the past couple of days, none of this would have been okay before the peace agreement,” he says��as we drink lagers on the brewery’s patio, which overlooks��a creek that tumbles down the mountain. He’s another best-case scenario for what ecotourism is doing for Colombians. His company, Birding Santa Marta, has grown so much in the past few years that he’s had to hire several of his family members. “In the beginning, my family didn’t believe people would come to Colombia to see birds,”��he says. “But now they understand.”

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When I moved to New Zealand six year ago, hot off the plane from Washington, D.C., I wasn’t quite sure what I’d gotten myself into. Jet-lagged and confused, I was struck by the enormous wall of tourism brochures as I checked into my hotel, a seemingly endless array of��sports and Lord of the Rings–themed attractions.

If one country dominates adventure tourism, it’s New Zealand, the tiny pacific wilderness at the bottom of the world. A sparsely populated destination full of volcanoes, glaciers, rainforests, alpine deserts, and rare birds that can’t fly, the country’s got it all. What do you expect from the place that invented bungee jumping and��calls itself the birthplace Sir Edmund Hillary?

It didn’t take long for me to learn that the national pastime is “doing bombs”—jumping off things. Here are my picks for eight of the best adventures you can have in New Zealand.

Get Down and Dirty on a “Right Proper Tramp”

Here’s a��tip for you to fit in like a local in New Zealand: instead of hiking,��we say tramping,��which, if I’m being honest here, is much more fitting of a��word. I feel like hiking implies nicely groomed trails, rest stops, and serviced huts. New Zealand tramping is often more hardcore.��In fact, I’m fairly sure the philosophy here to climb mountains is:��Why build a trail when you can just go straight up?��

Most backcountry tramping��involves climbing mountains using tree roots as a ladder or shimmying across precarious three-wire bridges (or just plain old river crossings) and wading through mud up to your chest. Personally, I think that makes things all the more exciting, but��check in with the�� for updates and the�� to plan��accordingly. Rescuing ill-prepared tourists in the mountains is starting to get old in our local news.

Test Your Nerves While Blackwater Rafting in a Glowworm Cave

The glowworm caves are one of New Zealand’s most unique features. As if huge, ancient subterranean caverns weren’t enough,��many of them are covered in twinkling blue glowworms that shine like stars above you. They are, in fact, bright shiny maggots attracting their dinner with dangling poo, but from a distance, they’re��beautiful. The best glowworm adventure you can find is in Waitomo, on the North Island, on . You’ll zip into a thick wetsuit before heading deep into the caves to��slide,��swim, float, rappel, zip line, and jump��along in an underground��canyoning adventure beneath a ceiling of blue stars with an inner tube.��

Hit Some Untouched Powder and Go Heli-Skiing in Wanaka

New Zealand’s winter is shorter and occurs at the opposite time of year than the Northern Hemisphere, running from mid-June to mid-September, give or take, and our ski culture is as tough and wild as you might expect from a place where rope tows reign supreme on the club fields (basically tiny ski areas). But perhaps the ultimate snow adventure��is to go heli-skiing in our endless backcountry. With terrain for intermediate riders and experts, last year I joined with my friends, led by ��and guided by Lydia Bradey, the first woman to ascend Mount Everest without oxygen (she’s made six��summits of the peak since). While it took a run to get the��hang of powder riding, after that it was an absolute dream ripping through waist-deep freshies and flying around the mountains overlooking my home area of Lake Wanaka.

Throw Yourself Off Something Big in Queenstown

The world’s first commercial bungee jump was invented near Queenstown, at the Kawarau River, by AJ Hackett, and the adventure capital of the world doesn’t disappoint. Thrills come easy in this stunning alpine town, you just have to pick your poison. Whether it’s a 439-foot plunge off the fearsome Nevis bungee jump��or getting kicked This is Sparta! style from��the frightening , adrenaline is always on offer in Queenstown. If you’re gonna do something crazy, this is the place to do it. Just be smart about it and tell your parents��after, not before.��

Take in the Epic Volcanic Landscape

Part of the infamous Pacific Ring of Fire, New Zealand is colloquially known as the Shaky Isles for a good reason. Earthquakes abound here, as the ground quite literally shifts and moves beneath our feet. This means there are plenty of geothermal hot spots that beckon visitors to visit. Rotorua, on the North Island, is the epicenter of many geothermal wonders, and you’re��acutely aware of this as soon as you arrive in the city. The sulfuric smell lingers, and steam rises��over parts��of the town. Nearby Tongariro National Park offers the most popular day hike, the Tongariro Crossing, a 19.4-mile alpine trek��that weaves its way among a volcanic landscape, including past Mount Doom from The Lord of the Rings.

Go Whitewater Rafting on the Remote Landsborough River

With plenty of mountain rivers in New Zealand, there’s no shortage of places to go whitewater rafting. But hands down, my pick for best adventure in this country is rafting the Landsborough River. Hidden away in the��heart of the Southern Alps between Wanaka and the west coast, it’s an area so far off the grid that the only access is on��multi-day tramps through some very dense and unforgiving landscapes or via��helicopter. A bucket-list item for many intrepid kiwis, flies you up into the mountains, where you begin a three-day journey rafting back out on the Landsborough River. You won’t see another soul, but you will get a real glimpse of what New Zealand used to look like before humans arrived (and trashed it), and more than once you’ll probably be hit with a notion that you’re in Jurassic Park.

Voyage Through the Roaring Forties��to the New Zealand��Subantarctic Islands

Most people know about the country’s three main islands—the North Island, South Island, and Stewart Island—all of which are relatively easy to access if you don’t mind flying for approximately one��million hours to get here from anywhere besides Australia. But very few people know or are aware of the incredible group of subantarctic islands located��between the main islands and Antarctica. Unpopulated but absolutely teeming with wildlife, you have to traverse the roughest seas in the world, the Southern Ocean, on an ship with if you wish to step foot on these lands, but let me tell you, every day you spend with your face in the toilet will be worth it as soon as you walk among��thousands of penguins or beneath enormous albatross.

Fly Up to Fox Glacier��for an Icy ���ϳԹ���

There are only two places in the world where glaciers drop down all the way to temperate rainforests instead of thriving only on remote mountain peaks, and New Zealand is one of them. Fox Glacier is eight miles long,��a veritable river of blue ice��winding��its way down from the back of Aoraki, New Zealand’s highest peak, toward��the Tasman Sea. Stunning to behold, normally glaciers like this are only accessible to elite and experienced climbers, but on Fox Glacier, there’s a booming business in :��you quickly fly up to the glacier, where you’re then guided through ice caves, down crevasses,��and more.��

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Our national park system is a highlight reel of the most dramatic landscapes and wild species in North America. Which explains why some of the parks can get a bit crowded during peak tourist season, not to mention pricey. At $30 per car for some of the bigger parks, if you’re planning an epic road trip to visit several of them, the entrance fees will add up. We asked David Lamfrom, director of the wildlife program for the National Parks Conservation Association, for his advice on how to do national parks right.

• Get the Parks Pass. It’s $80, but if you make a couple��trips to the bigger parks, it pays for itself. The covers everyone in your car, and it gets you into all federal lands, covering parking and day-use fees in national forests, national wildlife refuges, and BLM lands.
• For wildlife, Yellowstone National Park really is the best. Especially for big mammals. Yes, it’s crowded, but go to the less crowded northeast portion of the park in the Lamar Valley, and spend all day looking for wolves and bears. You’ll see antelope and elk, too. Everyone should also go to Everglades National Park. You might see the American alligator and American crocodile in the same day, not to mention a Florida manatee and dolphins.
• You can avoid the crowds, even at the most popular parks. What I’ve found in my years of travel is that people are incredibly predictable. They wake up at the same times, they eat at the same times. If you can wake up early, you’ll have the parks to yourself. If you can walk a couple of miles from the road, you’ll have the parks to yourself.
• Hit the desert parks for the best night skies. Nevada’s Great Basin National Park has the very best sky I’ve ever seen, because of its combination of low humidity and high elevation. There’s nothing to obscure the stars. And it has campsites at 10,000 feet.
• The best beach experience you’ll ever find is in a national park. Florida’s Canaveral National Seashore has 26 miles of wilderness coast, and nobody goes there. The Gulf Islands National Seashore in Mississippi and Florida, North Carolina’s Cape Lookout National Seashore, Georgia’s Cumberland Island… the list of wild, uncrowded beaches in our national park system is long.
• Visit our parks because they provide hope. Our parks show we still have incredibly wild places in our country. They show that we can protect species. They show that there’s still something to fight for.

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From the first paragraph of her new book�� ($25, University of Chicago Press), out April 1, Heather Hansman plops us right into the drink with her. She weaves journalistic research into the tale of her mostly solo 2016 pack-raft trip from the headwaters of the Green River, in Wyoming,��to its confluence in Utah. The book explains the history of the river and investigates its current threats, but it reads more like an adventure yarn than some of its cousins in the western-river canon.

As the greatest tributary of��the overworked Colorado River, supplies water to 33 million people, and it holds precious unallocated acre-feet of water, so it’s a lively illustration of the West’s battles over the resource��in an increasingly dry landscape. The river carries Hansman through Wyoming ranches, natural-gas fields, cities, and national parks, and she finds that seemingly everyone wants a piece of its pie. So she follows her curiosity, learning where the water goes—and who’s fighting over what.

From Hansman’s speeding boat, we feel the river rise with an unexpected dam release that also floods farmers’ fields and flushes valuable trout from eddies where fishing guides take high-paying clients. From her seat at a public meeting, we feel the heat from farmers angry that endangered fish seem to carry more weight than they do when it comes to river policy and water use. “I really thought the woman in the row in front of me was going to stand up and punch someone,” Hansman told ���ϳԹ���. And we visit��the boom-and-bust town of Vernal, Utah, where, Hansman writes,��“if you’re a liberal or a paddler passing through, you can expect to pay a buck extra for your drink at George Burnett’s I Love Drilling Juice and Smoothie Cafe.”

Sitting down with water users all along the river, Hansman learns what’s at stake both upstream—vast amounts of agricultural land��with water rights changing hands in the near future—and downstream—cities with increasing population and energy needs. She wades through the notoriously tangled weeds of western water law, explaining it in easy-to-understand terms, and she comes to grips with her own assumptions about what the western landscape should look like in the future, from flood irrigation on farmland to dam removal. Hansman, an environmental reporter and former raft guide, says her misconception going into the trip was that things would look more black and white. “I think it comes back to the idea that nobody’s the bad guy,” she says. The endangered-fish biologist, the engineer at the dam, the farmer upstream—each wants to do good. “They’re just trying to do a totally different type of good,” Hansman says.��And when opposing sides actually sit in the same room, she says, real work starts happening.

At a short-notice public meeting in Vernal, Hansman witnesses people’s anger simmering down when they feel heard—when they see the other side as people, when they all have a chance to apologize and explain��and maybe even break down a few entrenched stereotypes. “I think a lot of that comes from the face to face, getting everyone in the same room, which is really, really hard to do,” she says. “And I think part of the problem [in the West as a whole] is that’s not realistic to do on a seven-state basis.”

Hansman brings a sense of humility to both her reporting and the river trip itself, admitting to moments of fear and failures of confidence during her weeks of solitude in an inflatable kayak. “There were points where I was totally freaked out, especially the first couple weeks,” she says. “I was thinking, I’m not capable of this,��or What’s that noise in the night?��That was definitely there, but I didn’t want that to stop me. The fear factor felt reduced over time.”

By placing herself directly in the current of the river and taking us with her, Hansman gives us a more tangible understanding of what’s at stake. “I had to be gone, to be in it, to see the good and the bad,” she writes. “I learned that you can care about places��and want to protect them, but then you’re fighting for abstractions.” In Downriver, she makes the Green River—and with it, all the water of the West—just a little less abstract for the rest of us.

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If you’re (un)lucky enough to be alive 100 years from now and your grandchild asks you what the United States was like before global temperatures rose by 6 degrees, just tell them about the couple who landed a helicopter in the middle of the exploding poppy fields of Antelope Valley, California, on Monday, March 25, during the 2019 super bloom.

People aren’t content to see a beautiful thing; they feel the need to ruin a small part of it in the process.

We know nothing about these two chopper-bound sightseers, other than that they fled the scene before rangers could identify them. On another weekend, they might be driving up the coast with a “Live Simply, So Others Can Simply Live” bumper sticker on their Model X. Or maybe their 7,000-square-foot house in the hills has a living room full of safari trophies and a card on the fridge from their dear friends the Mercers.��

Whatever they��do when they’re not landing helicopters in poppy fields doesn’t matter. This couple, whoever they are, just dropped in to become the worst example of people bahaving badly in the middle of the Mojave bloom boom.��

Most��visitors abide by the rules, but others have ventured off the trail and destroyed part of what��they came to see. But even those scofflaws weren’t directly endangering the safety of others. ��

“We never thought it would be explicitly necessary to state that it is illegal to land a helicopter in the middle of the fields and begin hiking off trail in the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve,” officials from the reserve, which is part of the California State Park system, .

A super bloom usually occurs once a decade, but this is the second one in the last three years. The area was overwhelmed during the 2017 bloom, the first one of the social media era. Park staff were more prepared to direct the crowds this time around, but that hasn’t alleviated many of the problems that come with the massive influx of visitors.

Throngs of people—described on the Lake Elsinore, California, official Instagram account as ”—have swarmed super bloom sites in California��like Antelope Valley and Walker Canyon this month. Lake Elsinore�� and shut down access to Walker Canyon on March 17, after the town was inundated with 150,000 visitors in a single day. Traffic jams have turned area roads into something more akin to the 405 in Los Angeles. , and local officials have had to ask visitors not to park their cars on the interstate.

The most common offense has been leaving the trail. Someone steps off the path to get that perfect selfie and . Another person comes along and pushes off the trail just a little further at that spot, killing more flowers and threatening wildlife in the process. Then another, and another, and so on.

Others have skipped the trails altogether and and straight into the poppy fields.

Getting off the trail also��comes with its own��risks. At least one visitor and a dog have been . Another was hit by a falling rock after venturing off the path��in Walker Canyon.

A few of the overeager flower stompers this year��received an extra souvenir from rangers in the form of a citation. That’s a less effective deterrent than a snake bite or a boulder to head, but it is at least more punishment than what the helicopter couple received.����

Telling people to stay away from super blooms and packed national parks isn’t exactly realistic. But there are other ways to alleviate the problem, like creating more parks and monuments, increasing the number of park staff on hand, and being more thoughtful tourists.

Most of us aren’t rich or stupid enough to consider landing a helicopter in the middle in a field of poppies, but it shouldn't be��too much to ask anyone to bring just a little self-awareness when they visit these places.

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As Matt Mason listened to public debates in 2009 about whether a wilderness area should be established in the Organ Mountains��of��southern New Mexico, he got the sense that most people arguing about the land didn’t know it very well. For that matter, neither did he. So in the spring of 2010, he set out to learn about it the best way he knew how: on foot.

But Mason��quickly discovered that the brutal stretches between water sources made hiking long distances almost impossible. A bike offered a faster way to cover ground, so he strapped his camping kit to a frame and set out exploring.

“You find the story of where you live, back to however long geology goes back—some of the cinder cones out there are 30,000 years old,” Mason says of the area. “It’s just a remote, quiet place to sit and be a person, and I think people need that connection to wilderness.”

He’s lured other people to follow in his tracks by threading together roads and trails, including nearly 30 miles of singletrack,��to establish the Monumental Loop, a 320-mile bikepacking route in what’s now the Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument. The trail, which resembles��a figure eight that starts and ends in the southern New Mexican city of Las Cruces, passes rocky spires and red sandstone and��sometimes crosses��black lava rock��like��a shattered asphalt path.��Three-inch tires and a full seven days are recommended.

Mason, a stay-at-home dad who moved to New Mexico a decade ago, and other bikepackers around the state have gone on to establish��four additional routes across New Mexico. Combined, they cover almost 1,450 miles, weaving into one another and traversing from the northern to southern borders. It wasn’t��trail building as much as trail mapping. “That’s the best part about this—it’s already there,” Mason says. “We just need to promote it and breathe some life into it and get each community behind it.”

In Las Cruces, some neighborhoods are just a few minutes’ ride from the monument. Mason and Pablo Lopez, who runs the local bike shop , have fostered a community one overnight trip and Thursday gravel ride at a time. City councillors signaled their support, declaring a Monumental Loop Week to kick off the peak riding season in late October.

That effort has also reached the state capitol, where recently converted cyclist and state representative ��has ��the bikepacking trail network and the sport’s contributions to the state’s economy, where outdoor recreation already amounts to $9.9 billion in consumer spending.

Rubio slept outside for the first time this past summer—a year ahead of her fortieth birthday—on an overnight bikepacking trip with Lopez. To her surprise, she loved the sense of escape, even when camped near the glow of an Arby’s sign. “Especially because of the work that I do, it’s the place where I can find sanctuary and refuge,” Rubio says.

She’s now an avid bike commuter, which can��mean��pedaling 285 miles over��a week from Las Cruces to Santa Fe to raise awareness for her bikepacking��initiative. The memorial she��introduced, she says, is “sort of a footprint in the history of our work here as legislators.” It includes language that advocates for equitable access to the outdoors and to honor��the state’s tribes and their cultures. If passed, it’ll send a message to the secretaries of economic development and tourism to prioritize these outdoor-recreation dollars in one of the most rural parts of the state. The hope is to draw attention to a��pending Office of Outdoor Recreation, which could��expand the trail network.��(Rubio’s also cosponsoring a bill to create that office.) Says Lopez, “[The trail network] is a huge thing that already exists, that they could sink their teeth into��and not have to spend money on infrastructure because it already exists, and they don’t have to pay more to maintain it because they already maintain those roads.”

In the first committee meeting to consider the memorial, Rubio told her fellow lawmakers that the measure would enhance small businesses, bring tourism dollars to small communities, and help diversify the state’s economy. Support was unanimous.

Research backs up Rubio’s assertions. In 2013, a study for the Arizona��Department of Transportation found that 14,000 out-of-state visitors attended 250 cycling events that year—not big money for the state��but a big deal for the small communities they passed through. A University of Montana study found that cycling tourists spent an average of $76 per day and stayed eight days in the state. “Their expenditures were lower than your average snowmobiler, but they moved so darn slowly that they stayed in the state a long time, so their economic impact was greater than what you’d expect,” says Megan Lawson of��Headwaters Economics, an independent research firm that ran the study.��

Bikepackers��in particular��tend to pop out of singletrack or off dirt roads in rural places, where their spending on snacks or lodging can have an outsize��impact, Lawson��says. Already��the New Mexico towns of Vinton, Texas, and Hatch have welcomed Monumental Loop riders.

“Honestly, it’s all about beer and burritos, and every town in New Mexico has that,” says Lopez, who wrote much of the house-memorial text. He thinks��such an offering might be the first of its kind in the nation. Lawmakers have until March 16 to cast a final vote on the measure.

To date, the grassroots effort has grown slowly��and seems��to be gaining traction steadily. But if the memorial passes, Mason predicts support for the trails will explode. “I just can’t imagine what would happen if the whole state got behind it,” he says.

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