National Geographic ADVENTURE

Expedition News: Exploring Gabon's Subterranean Caves

This summer, National Geographic Young Explorer grantee Trevor Frost will lead a six-week expedition to Gabon in search of undocumented caves, archaeological discoveries, amazing photographs, and underground kayaking. In addition to finding clues about life in the cradle of humankind, their efforts could help Gabon’s unexplored subterranean caves receive UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Follow the expedition here and at blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/gabon-caves.

Text and photograph by Trevor Frost

Seven years after National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Mike Fay walked across Gabon on the Megatransect, this small tropical country still has many secrets. Some of those secrets are locked in an area with hundreds of caves that few people have visited or even know about. Over the past 20 years, the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement's Dr. Richard Oslisly and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Dr. Lee White (Mike Fay’s partner in establishing Gabon’s National Park System) have been exploring the caves and have made some incredible discoveries.

In 1994, while deep inside one of the caves, Paouen 1, they found stone tools, stone arrows, and charcoal. Carbon dating placed the tools and arrows to roughly 7,000 BP. In analyzing the charcoal, Dr. Oslisly and Dr. White also found that two of the plant species harbor deadly toxins used to poison arrows, while the third plant species was used for intoxication. They concluded in a 1994 Nature article that these caves held elaborate weapon-making rituals. This discovery, and a host of others, has placed the caves under consideration for Gabon's second UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today, there are still many caves and archaeological sites to be found and explored. Our team will be trekking through dense rain forest, navigating 30-foot waterfalls, and documenting the secrets inside these mysterious caves. Stay tuned for updates.

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Belkin Phone, SkypeOut Keep Money In

Text and photo by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Twenty years ago, my photographer friend Larry Pierce called his wife from his hotel room on a remote island in Tahiti, talked for 15 minutes, and unknowingly racked up a $400 bill. Ouch. Last week in New Zealand, I chatted with my family until even the cat was tired of me and it didn’t cost us a dime. Well, barely a dime.

Like 300 million other people, I used Skype, the voice over internet phone system. But this wasn’t computer to computer—I was calling our home line on Belkin’s Skype handset and talking just as I would on a cell phone.

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The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Another Roadside Attraction: Montezuma Valley, California

Photo by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Molokai Wins Development Fight, But At High Cost

Text and photos by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The hand-painted signs are posted on trees, mail boxes, and front porches all across Molokai. “No to La’au Point”, they say, or simply, “No”. Living’s not so easy on the Friendly Isle, where jobs are scarce for the 7,500 residents, as I found out when the magazine sent me there last November to shoot a cover. But the people cling to their way of life, resisting the tourist pox of other islands, and have doggedly fought the proposed La’au development on the pristine southwest corner of the island.

Now the developer has fought back: The Singapore-based landowner closed its beautiful lodge at Molokai Ranch and fired all 120 employees.

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The Adventure Life with Steve CasimiroSurf and Ye Shall Be Asked: The Curiously Interrogative World of Gabe Sullivan

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro. Photographs by Sierra Sullivan, Tom Servais (top, bottom)

Flipping through Surfer Magazine goes something like this: blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, shocking lime green, blue, blue, blue.

There in each issue, jumping out from Surfer’s sea of epic waves and countless board short ads, is a rusty but glowing, chartreuse 1972 VW camper van, the icon and motorized doppleganger of Curious Gabe, Gabe Sullivan, who, every month, poses to ten complete strangers the kind of existential questions you’d expect to be asked in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly or in a dorm room at 1 a.m. Questions like, Does surfing improve with age? Would you rather be an East- or West-Coast surfer? And, a real brain scrambler, What’s worse—being a hoser or a poser?

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The Adventure Life With Steve Casimiro: Into the Wild Flowers

Text and photographs by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The desert in bloom is a terrestrial Milky Way, the bright blossoms standing in sharp contrast to the dry vacuum surrounding them. Across the Southwest, last winter’s consistent rains have created one of the best wild flower seasons in years. And while flower sniffing has always seemed a soft pursuit to me, it makes one heck of a good reason to throw on a backpack and get out there. So, last weekend, we did.

See more photos and discover seven great places to see springtime flowers in California and Arizona >>