Flying over the Maldives

The Maldives is a very special country. It's total land area is minute but it's spread over almost 100,000 square kilometres of ocean. The best way of appreciating the geography is by taking a flight over the islands. Fortunately we had two internal flights out of, and returning to, Malé where near perfect weather gave us a great view of islands and atolls to enjoy.

One thing that can be seen in the Maldives from the air is island building in action. If you want to open a resort and you aren't happy with the available islands, just build your own. Sort of Magrathea lite.

Not surprisingly the Maldives is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. When you also consider that tourism is by far their biggest industry, not surprisingly the country has a fairly strong environmental focus.

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Inca Trail day 4

This was the day we would arrive at Macchu Picchu so we awoke with a keen sense of anticipation. To celebrate the last day on the trail, somehow the chef had whipped up an enormous cake which was served after breakfast. After a discussion with Marco about the likely weather over the next two days we agreed that it would be best to tour Macchu Picchu as soon as we arrived in mid afternoon rather than wait until tomorrow. Marco assured us that this would mean less crowds and better weather (he was right). We could see the backside of the mountain above Macchu Picchu in front of us as we started out. Unlike the last two days, today was mainly downhill. We would have to descend about 1,000 meters and judging by the first part of the morning walk, most of this would be on steep and slippery rocky steps. After alternating descents and traversing along steep hillsides through cloud forest and bamboo groves we reached the ruins of Intipata. Intipata was a very...

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Santa Cruz

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EE & S Adventures

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