The Perfect Summer Rental

Renting a house in Maine is a summer thing, and sadly, summer is behind us. Still this story by Kent St. John provides some good lessons on renting the perfect place in 'Vacationland' or Maine. " I wasn’t asking for much when I looked into renting a place on the coast of Maine. Only that it be reasonably priced, on the water, full of charm, fully stocked, and near a town with activity; in other words a fantasy rental.

Determination and hours online paid off when I came across Cozy Cottage on Cozy Harbor. I went through the pictures several times until I realized that I better jump and quickly; the chance of an opening in July was tenuous at best.

The next morning I received an email from the cottage’s owner that my desired week was still open. Bingo! A chance to be a summer person near one of Maine’s prettiest costal villages, a carefree week by the ocean, so the check was in the mail. Not very long after, I was awaiting John and Ellen Blois at the Hannaford Store in Boothbay Harbor to get the keys to my home on the coast of Maine.

We trailed the Blois through Boothbay Harbor and then came to the swinging bridge that took us to Southport Island; the four short miles to the cottage took us far from Boothbay’s busy visitor packed streets.

As Lil and I followed to the small, heavily wooded peninsula the turn of the century cottage greeted us with the sun gleaming off its coat of fresh white paint. After a quick tour from John and Ellen we quickly did our own tour of the Cozy, followed by a stroll of the massive green lawn down to the waterfront.

Brazil's Cerrado Also in Danger

Today's NY Times travel section included a wonderful story by Connie White about Brazil's cerrado. It's just as threatened but not as well known as the Amazon.

"The cerrado in Piauí, he said, as he packed five of us into his four-wheel-drive car last summer, has not changed much since the first Portuguese settlers called it “Beyond Nowhere.” But this nowhere has some of Brazil’s most unusual wildlife, and is on the front line in the struggle to save perhaps the world’s biologically richest savanna.

A swath of forest up to twice the size of Connecticut is cleared annually in the Amazon, causing an international outcry every year. It isn’t generally noted that right next door, the cerrado, Brazil’s equivalent of Africa’s Serengeti, is being transformed at a far faster rate. With the equivalent of two and a half soccer fields worth of savanna disappearing every minute, Conservation International predicts the cerrado will be gone in 25 years.

Bordered by the Pantanal wetlands on the west and the Amazon River on the north, this 740,000-square-mile region — almost a third larger than Alaska— is just beginning to hit the radar screen as an eco-tourism destination. In 2002, a scenic area of dry forest and red rock escarpments was named a national park, Parque Nacional das Nascentes do Rio Parnaíba (National Park of the Parnaíba River Headwaters), the largest outside the Amazon. Inside this park straddling four states are three lodges called the Hyacinth Camps, our destination."

Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik

Marie Javins has come out with a new book. Below is a passage from Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik, about her 'misadventures' in Africa, traveling solo.

In the countries of East Africa, as in many countries all over the world, public transport is in shared minibus taxis—matatus in Swahili—that run “when full.” “Full” means fourteen passengers, one driver, one conductor, and countless babies and toddlers. In Uganda, passengers are legally required to wear seatbelts. In reality, this law is usually enforced only on long-distance routes and even then, often only the passengers in the front seat buckle up.

Kampala has two taxi parks. One—the new taxi park—serves destinations to the south and west. The other—the one I now looked at—serviced the north and east. Neither of them looked especially new. They might be more aptly titled “Old” and “Older.”

Hundreds of blue-and-white minivans lined the big, dirty city block in front of me, while conductors hollered out destinations. A thick smell of diesel permeated the air. Vendors carrying an assortment of items—socks, watches, bottled water, pens, flip-flops, keychains—plied their trades as they circled constantly through the maze of taxis, shoving products through any open window.

Dazed from both lack of sleep and the onslaught of diesel fumes, I turned right and aimed for “Tourist Hotel.” At $25 a night, it wasn’t cheap by my standards, but it featured standard-hotel quality in a central location. I was in Kampala for only a few days, just long enough to get the permit I needed to see the mountain gorillas in the southwest of the country.