The event kicked off with a presentation by the most prominent Namibian conservation hero, Garth Owen-Smith, whose vision of community conservancies transformed Namibia’s approach to wildlife and natural resource management.

Prior to Namibian independence in 1990, desert adapted elephants numbered less than 150 individuals, and black rhino fewer than 60. Garth and his colleagues, frustrated at the disenfranchisement of their communities and its toll on wildlife, founded Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC), with the goal of mobilizing and empowering communities to protect their wildlife and stop poaching. The community conservancies that Garth and his colleagues championed are the foundation of Namibia’s success in nearly wiping out poaching and restoring wildlife populations.

AfriCat Foundation, the world’s largest big cat rehabilitation and release center, was our first stop out of Windhoek, where we tracked the reserve’s leopard. Many of Okonjima’s leopard are radio collared, allowing researchers and guides to use telemetry to find them.

VHF tracking involves using a directional antenna to follow the signal given off by a transmitter affixed to a leopard. The guide rotates the antenna until the loudest signal is found, following the signal and checking it frequently until the leopard is hopefully located. Sitting quietly, honing your senses, and attuning them to the sounds of the bush and the radio signal is part of the thrill of tracking.

We awoke the next morning eager for another drive, this time to visit cheetah. AfriCat’s Cheetah Rehabilitation project aims to give rescued and orphaned cheetahs the opportunity to return to their natural environment as they lack experience hunting or are conditioned to captivity. Due to increased interspecific competition with leopard and hyena within the reserve, Okonjima’s cheetah are now in their own separate enclosure, and we were able to visit with two of them, Charlie and Chaplin.

In Etosha National Park we spent an afternoon with Simson Uri-Khob, CEO of Save the Rhino Trust. Today, there are fewer than 5,000 black rhinos left in the wild, and Northwest Namibia may be their last stand, as it is here that SRT Rhino Rangers work tirelessly to protect the last, free-roaming population of black rhinos left in the world. Wilderness Travel is proud to support the rangers, having provided a full mobile camp to keep the rhino guardians out close to the animals. Though Desert-adapted black rhino experienced exceptional population growth in 2018, there is still no time for complacency. If poaching continues at the current rate, rhinos could be extinct within the next decade. Click here to see what SRT is doing to combat this crisis.

We rose early the next morning to be at the gates of Etosha National Park before they opened. Since Namibia is so dry, Etosha’s wildlife congregate around watering holes, allowing for an incredible diversity of species in such close quarters—lions, elephants, giraffe, zebra, and jackal—oh my!

I was lucky to be riding with Jason Nott, the leader of our In the Realm of the Desert Lion. Jason comes from a well-known family of Namibian nature conservators so his unique perspective makes for an even more rich game driving experience.

After lunch and a brief siesta, we gathered for our last two lectures. First up was Dr. Julian Fennessy of Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF). Dr. Fennessy had been in the news a lot in the year leading up to the symposium, with the announcement that three subspecies of giraffe had been upgraded to either “endangered” or “critically endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

WT has offered a world-exclusive safari with Dr. Fennessy since 2017, where participants had the opportunity to assist in the satellite tagging of giraffe. This program alone has generated over $50,000 in donations to GCF, and we look forward to continuing our work with Dr. Fennessy in 2021 as a new phase of research begins. Click here to read the latest report from GCF and learn about the status of giraffe and the threats they face.

The final speaker of the symposium was Dr. Flip Stander, the world’s expert on desert lion, whose decades of work tracking and understanding these great predators has contributed immeasurably to the reduction of human-lion conflict. This was perhaps the most anticipated presentation of the symposium, and yet Flip almost couldn’t make it due to an emergency involving two of his lions. The six-year drought has put immense pressure not just on wildlife, but on the livestock and the people that shepherd them. As prey had moved out of the range of these two lions, they became desperate, moving into a neighboring village where they killed two cattle and came under threat of retaliation. Flip had to diffuse the situation, dart the lions, and transport them out of the area. We were hopeful that he would be able to join us, so needless to say, news of his arrival spread quickly.

Desert Lion Conservation, or the “Desert Lion Project”, is a small non-profit dedicated to the conservation of desert-adapted lions in the Northern Namib. By collecting baseline ecological data on the lion population, Flip can study their behavior, biology, and adaptations to the harsh desert environment. In close collaboration with other conservation groups and local communities, Flip works to find solutions to human-lion conflict, elevate the tourism value of lions, and contribute to their conservation. In another WT exclusive safari, participants join Dr. Stander in the field and witness firsthand his efforts to save this iconic population.

With the conclusion of Flip’s presentation, our symposium came to an end, but not after an official farewell dinner with all of our new friends. The energy was palpable as everyone shared stories of adventures coming to a close, or their excitement for trips just beginning—in addition to the symposium, there was a series of specially designed safaris for clients to join, stretching from the Skeleton Coast to Zimbabwe. Speaker and guides were equally enthusiastic and animated as they joined our guests for dinner, clearly riding high from the past few days and feeling humbled, hopeful, and more motivated than ever to defend the wildlife, landscapes, and people they hold dear.

—Text by one of WT’s Africa specialists Jenny Gowan; photos by Jenny Gowan, Tristan Crowley, Alan Bowker, Bill Byrne, and James Doughty; Namibia: A Vision for Wildlife. See all of our Special Events here.

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The first book, Jaguar Princess, follows a story about a young woman who can read Mayan glyphs and is destined to be a shaman. I was inspired to write it after watching a documentary about an eleven-year-old boy who accompanied his archaeologist father to Mayan ruins and discovered how to read Mayan glyphs. I had an “a-ha” moment—a girl could do that too! I was on my way with a story that had to be told.

To further my passion and research for Jaguar Princess, Frank and I joined WT’s symposium, World of the Maya: New Discoveries at Ancient Copán in January 2010. We visited ruins with archaeologists and attended seminars on the Maya, meeting experts as well as local people.

We joined Dr. Robert Sharer and Dr. Ricardo Fasquelle as they shared their years of research at Copán, and visited the tunnels beneath the royal acropolis. Dr. Marc Zender of Harvard University led our tour from Copán to Tikal to Caracol and Lamanai. He showed us how to read syllables in Mayan writing, described the significance of each building we visited, and answered my many questions tirelessly. Our guide, Antonio Cuxil, who spoke English, Spanish, French, and German in addition to his native Mayan language, shared his passion for Maya culture and introduced us to other descendants of the Kaqchiquel Maya.

In December 2012, we joined WT’s symposium, World of the Maya: Cycles of Time at Uxmal, an authentic Mayan city well away from the more crowded sites of the Yucatán Peninsula. To celebrate the monumental transition in the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012, the symposium focused on Mayan timekeeping, astronomy, and archaeology. I can’t describe how much it meant to me to meet the authors of the books on Mayan archaeology that line my bookshelves.

Among the guest speakers that year were: Dr. Anthony Aveni, Professor of Astronomy at Colgate University, pioneer in Mesoamerican archaeoastronomy, and author of The End of Time: The Maya Mysteries of 2012; Dr. Harvey Bricker and Dr. Victoria Bricker, Professors Emeritus of Anthropology at Tulane University, Research Associates at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and co-authors of Astronomy in the Maya Codices; Dr. Susan Milbrath, Curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History and author of Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars; and Dr. Karl Taube, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Riverside and author of numerous publications on ancient writing and religions including Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya.

My latest book, Lost Jade of the Maya, is the sequel to Jaguar Princess, and includes knowledge and insight I learned while on World of the Maya: Cycles of Time at Uxmal.

After the 2012 Symposium with WT, Frank and I attended the special tour program, “Uxmal to Palenque,” with Alfonso Morales, Principal Investigator of the Cross Group Project, responsible for exciting recent excavations at Palenque. Frank captured the photo of the funeral mask used on the cover of Lost Jade of the Maya

In December 2017, I will again join WT during their symposium, World of the Maya: New Discoveries in the New Millennium, as a team of experts sheds light on exploring recent discoveries that have changed our understanding of Maya culture.

-Text by 10-time WT adventurer Marjorie Bicknell Johnson, photos by Marjorie Bicknell Johnson and Frank Johnson. See here to view WT’s past and present Special Events.

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By 2010, the South Seas had been on our fantasy trip list for many years. When we found out WT offered a cruise to Tahiti that included an eclipse at sea (complete with astronomer guides), it was an offer we couldn’t refuse! We were so enchanted by the tropical paradise of French Polynesia that we extended our stay for three nights on Bora Bora, where we swam with the fish and sea turtles and toured the island. Certainly the trip of a lifetime!

-Photos and text by 12-time WT adventurer Rom Welborn

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“Perfect” total solar eclipses like those experienced from Earth are incredibly rare phenomena. No other planet in our Solar System has them, and there’s no good reason we should have them. It’s just a marvelous coincidence that the Sun is both 390 times larger than the Moon and 390 times farther away from Earth, causing the Sun and the Moon to have essentially the same apparent (angular) size in the sky. We got remarkably lucky! And in fact, the Moon is slowly receding from Earth, appearing progressively smaller in the sky—so total solar eclipses are becoming even more rare, and they won’t be possible at all in about half a billion years.

That we Earthlings get to see this amazing spectacle is indeed incredibly special! But even on Earth, at a given location, roughly 400 years go by between consecutive total solar eclipses, on average. This means that a total solar eclipse is unlikely to occur where you are by chance; instead, you must travel to the right location at the right time, and that’s part of the fun. You can explore the world while chasing total solar eclipses!

—Photos by Rick Fienberg (top) and Ethan Daniels (bottom)

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