wildmoonresort.com

Don’t get lost in the woods. Instead take the proper precautions with a trusty device that has been used for centuries. Soldiers have used them forever, and they have saved many a wayward life. In many ways military compasses are similar to any old Boy Scout compass that you’d bother to buy and your local five and dime. Now those kind are fairly commonplace nowadays. But do you really need the military version of the compass? Well that depends on you. Let me try to appeal to the warrior within you. Your out and about in the woods. Maybe trouble has happened. Maybe you are lost. Do you know how to use your compass?

The procedure is tricky, but it can be mastered. Hopefully you have a trail map and you’re able to find a smooth surface to lay it out in. Rotate the map so that the map’s north arrow is pointing in the same direction as the ‘true north’ as depicted on your compass. Now what is tricky at this point is trying to determine exactly where you are. More than likely, you probably have some idea. Take note of where you want to be, or where you started from. Also take note of how long you have been walking hence far, and in what general direction.

If you walk in the opposite direction from where you think you currently are, and you follow a consistent path, then you should reach one of the monuments that fall within a line perpindicular to your current position. Once you locate a monument on this perpindicular, pinpoint your position and, using the map’s scale, compute how many miles you will have to walk in order to get home.

The culture of Peru dictates who a woman becomes. How she was raised and where she was raised have much to do with how she will act in a relationship. Many women are taught to be ladylike early on in childhood and this carries on to adulthood as well. This is one reason so many men travel to the area to find a wife. It is not so much that there is no selection where they are from, but the women in Peru are not only exotic in appearance, but are very less demanding. These women do expect to be taken care of, but they will take care of you too.

Peruvian women do not take things for granted the way that some other cultures do. These women have experienced much through their education of history and their ancestors, as many are descendants of Incans. The culture teaches them to savor what they have and to work for what they don’t. In this aspect, they are taught more than some other cultures. On the other hand, some other cultures do not put as much into teaching their female children about how to work for themselves, but to expect things are going to be given to them because they are female. This is not the case in Peru.

Peruvian women do not have a sense of entitlement, and enjoy all things they receive. Although many will gladly work with you to make a living, there is nothing wrong with spoiling her either. The Peruvian woman will make a house a home, and will work hard to make your relationship with her one that you never want to end. With the never ending capacity for patience, beauty and the fact the women age so well, you never know what you will find. Many women from other areas yearn to age as Peruvian women age. With dark hair and lashes, long legs and tans year round it is no wonder there have been 12 beauty queens to hail from Peru. The Miss World for 2004 still lives in Peru and is single. There are many single women waiting to meet a foreign man to make happy. Whether it is a relationship you want for a month to travel back and forth to see her, or you want a marriage partner, there is a type of woman for every man in Peru.

Although you may be looking for a fling, these women are not into a fling for a night. Culture as well as morals prevents them from degrading themselves to that level. However, if you are interested in any kind of relationship under any premise, Peruvian women are more than willing to oblige. Simply asking around about singles dances may not get you any information, but going on tours and sight seeing may lead you to the woman of your dreams.

“When the morning sun clears the Amazon tree line in southeastern Peru and strikes a gray-pink clay bank on the upper Tambopata River, one of the world’s most dazzling wildlife spectacles is nearing its riotous peak.” — Franz Lanting, Macaws: Winged Rainbows, National Geographic, January, 1994

Tambopata National Reserve. A 3.7 million acre reserve in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon and the gateway to one of the world’s most remote and extraordinary Amazon rainforest environments, is home to over 1300 species of birds, including 32 kinds of parrots.

One of the most fascinating phenomena here is the daily flocking of birds, especially parrots and macaws, to clay licks. Clay licks, or “colpas”, as they are referred to locally, are special deposits of clay along the Tambopata riverbanks and deep in the Amazon rainforest interior where birds and other wildlife come to eat soil.

Why should hundreds of birds eat soil from these special sites? The birds, especially the parrots, have a curious habit – they dexterously pluck fruit off trees, tear it open, discard the fruit and eat the hard seeds at the center. By eating the seeds from hundreds of plants, they are exposing themselves to highly toxic substances. The birds come to the “colpas” to obtain hard-to-find minerals, present in high concentrations in the lick’s soil. They eat the clay to protect themselves and neutralize the effects of these toxins

The macaw clay lick, the largest “colpa”, is a huge 50-meter tall cliff of reddish clay that extends about 500 meters along the Tambopata River. Here, at dawn, a brilliant array of color descends upon the lick. One by one, the birds begin flocking to the clay. As the morning progresses, they arrive in colorful waves to eat thumb-sized lumps of the clay. The spectacle of colors during the feast is dazzling – Blue and Gold Macaws, Mealy Parrots, Scarlet Macaws, Dusky-headed Conures, Blue-headed Pionus are just a few of the kinds of birds streaming in from all directions. At first, the birds congregate in the crowns of trees surrounding the licks. They spend hours at a time screeching, squabbling and purring at each other before descending to eat the clay. Once they descend on to the lick, they concentrate on finding choice spots from which to feast on the clay. And whoosh – they are gone leaving a pageant of color and sound at the first sign of danger.

Clay Licks are not unique to the birds. So for example, a peccary clay lick is home to wild rainforest pigs that show up in herds to eat clay in the late mornings. Parakeet licks are found in the more remote areas of the rainforest, whereas monkeys lick tree trunks with sediments, and butterflies flutter about beaches where nutrient-rich liquids have evaporated. The macaw lick, however, with its proximity to the Tambopata Research Center, a rustic lodge established to protect the nearby lick and to accommodate travelers and researchers, makes it a superb outdoor adventure travel starting point for the intimate rainforest experience in this uninhabited frontier of the Refuge.

It’s 2010 and we still don’t have jet packs. I thought a shiny new jet pack would be waiting at my doorstep on the first day of the new millennium with a note that read: “Thanks for waiting patiently for the future to arrive. Here’s that jet pack we promised.”

Jet packs are a traveler’s dream. We could travel wherever we want, whenever we want. No more pat-downs from airport security guards who seem to enjoy their job too much. Free from the bondage of economy seating, crying babies and airline food. No more smelly old buses about to break apart, coughing people on crammed subways, or dangerous canoe rides down muddy rivers with jungle snakes large enough to swallow you whole.

But most importantly, jet packs are a passport to travel to mysterious destinations, hard-to-reach locations, even places seen by few – if any -humans. We could scour the globe in search of earth’s undiscovered treasures like a flying Indiana Jones. (Fact: jet packs will come with fedoras.)

We hold out hope that one day we’ll open the door and our jet packs (and fedoras) will be waiting for us. And when that day comes, we’ll be prepared. There are so many places we want to visit that can only be reached through long, arduous journeys many people (such as myself) can’t make. So here, in no particular order, are 12 places you should visit when you get a jet pack…

Apocalypse Island

Located 414 miles off the coast of Chile, the Juan Fernández Islands are sometimes a port of call for boats making the long trek to Easter Island (which is another place in the middle of nowhere that we’d like to visit). The largest island is called Robinson Crusoe Island, named after Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for the novel, who was marooned on the island for over four years and had to live off rats and anything else he could kill. But that’s not even the most interesting thing about the islands. Over a decade ago, anthropologist Jim Turner discovered what he believes is a long-lost Mayan monument that holds the secret to the end of days. Turner believes that a pillar of rock on “Apocalypse Island” that looks like a face is one of the only places on earth to see the last two celestial events – the transit of Venus and total solar eclipse – that herald the end of the world according to the Maya: December 21st, 2012.

Socotra Island

Travel 250 miles of the coast of Yemen to Socotra Island and you’ll think you traveled 250 light years to another planet. Called “the most alien-looking place on earth,” Socotra Island features somewhere around 240 kinds of flora and fauna that are found nowhere else on earth. The most famous attractions at this UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site are the Dragon’s Blood Tree, a tree that bleeds dark red sap, and the Desert Rose, which looks more like flowers growing out of an old person’s leathery leg.

Richat Structure

There are some places that look cooler from the sky than they do from the ground, and this is one of them. The Richat Structure, also known as The Eye Of The Sahara, is located in the Sahara Desert in West Africa. This 30-mile wide earth anomaly that looks like a bulls-eye has become a landmark for astronauts since it was first seen from space. Originally it was believed the structure formed after a meteorite impact, but scientists now think it’s just an unusual formation caused by erosion.

Penguin Island

In the Straight of Magellan at the southern tip of Chile is a small island called Magdalena Island that is only inhabited by one thing: penguins. Well, I shouldn’t say one thing; it’s actually inhabited by over 60,000 of them. The island apparently stinks from all the poop and pee and rotting fish carcasses, but we wouldn’t mind looking at the adorable Magellanic Penguins from above.

Tsingy de Bemaraha

Near the western coast of Madagascar is an unusual forest that has been cataloged as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The reason that this place is so unusual is that it is not a forest of trees… rather, a forest of stone. Tsingy, which means “where one cannot walk barefoot,” is made up of limestone peaks as sharp as knives. But visitors are willing to risk life and limb to catch a glimpse of a rare ghostly white lemur called Decken’s sifaka. Cute as it is, we’re not getting near this place unless it’s with a jet pack.

The North Pole

If you could only come up with one good reason to invent the jet pack, the North Pole would be it. Nobody wants to spend weeks traversing harsh terrain in sub-freezing temperatures just to get to the northernmost point on earth and find out there is no Santa. We just want to fly to the North Pole with a cup of hot chocolate in hand, say we’ve been there, and quickly make our way to Bora Bora to defrost.

Area 51

What is supposed to be one of the most secret places on earth is actually the most well-known. The conspiracy theories surrounding the military base at Groom Lake, Nevada range from reverse engineering alien spacecraft to time travel technology to transcontinental underground railway systems. We think extraterrestrial life is probably out there… just not at Area 51. But it would be cool to catch a glimpse of this little-seen base, even if we have to dodge tazers and ray-guns to get there.

The Door To Hell

When people tell me to go to hell, I say, “I want to, but it’s too far.” I’d have to travel all the way to Derweze, a small village in the desert of Turkmenistan, to find The Door To Hell. There you will see a 328-foot wide cavern of natural gas that’s been burning continuously for 39 years with no end in sight.

Mirny Diamond Mine

The diamond mind in Mirny, Russia, a small town in eastern Siberia, is the second largest man-made hole in the world (Bingham Canyon Copper Mine in Utah is the largest). At 1,722 meters deep, it takes one hour to drive to the bottom. We really want to see it for ourselves, but we couldn’t get too close… even with a jet pack. That’s because the airspace above the mine is closed due to helicopters being sucked into the hole by downward air flow.

Mount Everest

Thousands of people every year climb 29,029 feet all the way to the top of the tallest mountain on earth; but seeing as how we get winded climbing a flight of stairs, I don’t think we’ll ever have a chance to overlook the Himalayas from the summit of Mount Everest… unless it’s with a jet pack. From there you can play a game called “Eye Spy A Dead Body” where you try to find the corpses of climbers who perished in the aptly-titled “death zone” that were left on the mountain.

Angel Falls

In the movie “Up”, an old man with an adventurous spirit embarks on a journey to the wilds of South America in search of Paradise Falls. If only he had a jet pack instead of a house tied to balloons things would have been much easier. Angel Falls, located in Venezuela, was the inspiration for Paradise Falls. At 3,212 feet, it’s the largest waterfall in the world, and also a registered UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Antarctica

Captain Kirk had it wrong when he called Space the final frontier. The earth must be conquered before we head to the stars. That’s why the title of “final frontier” really belongs to Antarctica, one of the last unexplored lands on earth. Even though 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice, the continent is actually considered a desert because it only receives 8 inches of precipitation a year. In fact, one of the driest places on earth is on Antarctica: the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Antarctica is also home to the largest glacier in the world, Lambert Glacier, at 60 miles wide and 250 miles long. But perhaps Antarctica’s most interesting feature is Blood Falls. Here, a primordial ooze rich in iron bleeds out of Taylor Glacier. Inside the ooze scientists discovered something mysterious, something never before seen in nature: a microbe that has survived over 1.5 million years without heat, light or oxygen.