Field FAQs with Holly Morris Picking Bushpig Over Burger King...And Other Advice

Holly Morris is a TV host (Treks in a Wild World, Globe Trekker), and the author of Adventure Divas. Post your questions here and they could get answered in the magazine.

Some of my most vivid memories are of bad moments with good people around the world who I inadvertently managed to shock, confuse, or insult. And all the capsizings, camel snot, and intestinal parasites? I like to think I screwed things up so you wouldn’t have to—and you won’t, as long as you heed my golden rule of adventuring: Do as I say, not as I do.

Q: I’m taking my fast food–addicted sons down the Mekong River in Vietnam. What’s the best strategy for getting surly teens to experiment with the local cuisine?

A. Food is always one of the first things I mention if I’m speaking to young travelers. I’ve found it effective to describe in gory detail how, under the watchful eyes of my hosts, I once ate a barbecued rat—piece by piece—in the high mountains of Arunachal Pradesh (tasted like clam, by the way). I like to cap these lectures off with a recipe for reindeer penis I learned in Lapland.

Meals with a gruesome backstory are big hits in the schoolyard—and earn serious cred for those who have tasted and lived.
So rest assured that when the waiter sets down a bowl of nhong tam (a Vietnamese silkworm delicacy), or some equally outrageous comestible, you’ll have your sons’ rapt attention as you explain that the sharing of food is a vital social exchange the world over—and how this will make a great story to gross out their friends back home. And if all else fails, threaten to leave them at the next village unless they stop pushing those monkey brains around their plate and eat them.

I once took three suburban American teenagers to the hinterlands of Guyana, where they lived, worked, and ate like local Amerindian families. For the first two days, the kids twitched, whined, starved themselves, and begged abjectly and repeatedly for Skittles. By day four, there was less grousing as they participated in a hunt with the indigenous men. By day seven, they ate with a new appreciation, and the oldest told me, as he gnawed on a hunk of freshly slaughtered boar, that his time in Guyana had been “awesome.”

Full disclosure: In the course of researching my response, I called my mom, who in the 1970s loaded me, my three siblings, and our reluctant father into a van for a yearlong road trip behind the Iron Curtain. “In my travels,” she said, “I’ve found there are three things you can find anywhere: Snickers, Fanta, and Johnny Walker Red. It wouldn’t kill them to live on Snickers and Fanta for a few days. If that doesn’t work, try the Johnny Walker and let them sleep.”

I do not endorse her advice.

Illustration by Jessie Ford

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.

Hear Bjork and Sigur Ros Live From Iceland, Exclusively From Nat Geo Music

We can't help gushing over Iceland...the diverse landscapes (see Steve Casimiro's photos), the geothermal resources, and, of course, the innovative music we've come to associate with the Kentucky-size island just a four-hour flight away (plan your own trip).

Today, Nat Geo Music, the music division of National Geographic Entertainment, will Webcast an open-air Náttúra concert live from Reykjavik. Two of the world's most important and visionary musical entities, Björk and Sigur Rós, will headline the free concert.

The event will be available exclusively at worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET (begins at 8 p.m. BST/London or 7 p.m. GMT/Reykjavik).

All of the performances will be during daylight, with Iceland's capital city and dramatic rolling scenery providing a perfect backdrop to what is expected to be one of the biggest concerts the country has seen. The Náttúra concert looks to raise awareness of the impact of the growing aluminum smelting activity on Iceland's natural landscape.

Honeymoon SCUBA Murder? (And How to Find a Trustworthy Dive Buddy)

Text by Andrew Burmon

In 1911, the 150-passenger steamer Yongala sank for unknown reasons near the Great Barrier Reef. In 2003, an American honeymooner named Tina Watson inexplicably blacked out and drowned while diving the wreck. Now one of the shipwreck's mysteries may be solved.

On June 20, Queensland Police issued a warrant for the arrest of David "Gabe" Watson, a diver from Helene, Alabama, Watson stands accused of murdering his wife Tina while the pair dove the Yongala. (Read more about the investigation >>)

As Watson faces the possibility of free trip back to Australia courtesy of the 1974 U.S. Australian Extradition Treaty, the grim honeymoon story has served as a reminder to dive enthusiasts everywhere that dive buddies should be chosen carefully. To help you find a perfect—or at least non-homicidal—SCUBA partner, we've compiled a guide to the five best dive-buddy matchmaking websites.

1) Facebook.com
Of course Facebook has a dive buddy application! With the most thorough diver profiles, the easiest interface, and probably the largest number of users, the Facebook Dive Buddy Application is the online place for divers to see and be stalked by people they don't know.

2) DiveBuddy.com
A social networking site for the amphibiously inclined. Allows users to check out each other's experience levels, specialties, and, of course, relationship status.

3) ScubaMatch.com
While slightly less streamlined than DiveBuddy and a little bit (water)buggy, ScubaMatch does an excellent job of documenting its users' credentials and experience.

4) FindaDiveBuddy.net
A small but well-organized networking site that reads sort of like the neoprene personal pages.

5) ScubaYellowPages.com
Not so much a networking site as a list of divers from various areas, the ScubaYellowPages include the contact information for around 100 divers in England, the United States, and beyond.

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Nau: We’re Not Dead Yet

Tobias seems to be very happy wearing a Nau jacket and holding a pitcher of fresh juice.

Text and photo by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Call it Nau Two Point D’oh: The uber-hip, ultra-eco brand that closed its doors six weeks ago with much lamenting, wailing, and gnashing of teeth (including some by yours truly) is back on its feet—well, knees—thanks to a defibrillator called Horny Toad. The Santa Barbara clothing company and a handful of post-Nauers bought the brand name and are relaunching August 1.

Expect the same Boulder Gothic design sensibility and commitment to sustainability that marked the first Nau. Don’t expect the same business practices, though—Nau’s stores are gone and the clothes now will be sold through independent retailers, as well as its website.

Will it last? Heck if I know. Getting Nau into wider distribution will help, as will eliminating the well-intended but counterintuitive policy that encouraged customers to buy in the store but receive the clothes in the mail. As with Nau, Horny Toad has done an amazing job of creating its identity (in this case, all-American treehouses and swimmin’ holes); the difference is that the Toad’s stuff sells well. As a fan of both Nau’s designs and its eco-idealism, I hope that the Toadsters can provide the right amount of support—and grounding.

Lost Outward Bound Kids Found in California Backcounty

Text by Editor John Rasmus

Update:  The Associated Press just reported that the nine kids and two guides lost in the Sierra Nevada have been found! Details of what exactly happened are unknown at this point.

This case of the missing Outward Bound group in California is baffling. I can't remember an instance when such a large group—nearly a dozen teenage kids and their two guides—simply disappeared in the backcountry. By the time you read this they will probably be safe and sound, with some simple explanation along the lines of "we got really, really lost."  But in the meantime, there are a lot of kids wandering around somewhere in the Sierra Nevada backcountry. 

There are two ways of looking at the fact of such a large group being lost. On the one hand, whatever happened—bad falls, extreme conditions, etc.—they have each other to help, and they will be more visible to search parties. On the other hand, when things go bad in such large numbers, they can go really bad—the kind of "accident cascade" that our Deep Survival columnist, Laurence Gonzales, writes about: someone gets lost; others go out to find them, and they get lost. Before long, if good judgement doesn't prevail quickly, things are spiraling downward. If you add in things like hypothermia, dehydration, or other conditions that can affect the judgement of more than one person, it can be a huge challenge for the leaders in charge.

I'm not going to speculate—I have no idea what really happened. I may just feel a little jittery because 1) we ran a story, "A Death at Outward Bound," about what can go wrong in just such situations in Adventure last year. And 2) my 15-year-old daughter is about to embark on a backpacking trip with a dozen kids and fairly young leaders in the Colorado Rockies in a couple of weeks.

A Deeper Connection: Facebook for Fish

Text by Ryan Bradley
Photograph by Joshua Scott

Threatened by drift nets and habitat destruction, fish need all the friends they can get. A consortium of marine biologists has decided that to know the fiercest and fastest creatures in the sea is to love them. à la MySpace and Facebook, TOPP.org (Tagging of Pacific Predators) is an interactive website that posts personal pages—with names, stats, even blogs—for radio-tagged animals being tracked by TOPP’s field researchers.

Omoo, for example, is a great white shark currently swimming off Honolulu. Dislikes: aquariums. Mood: unfairly judged by his looks. The site’s most compelling feature is a satellite display that lets visitors pinpoint their finned friends’ locations around the globe. Can personifying pelagics make us rethink our next sushi dinner? The scientists at TOPP hope so. And somewhere off the coast of Hawaii, a misunderstood, doe-eyed killing machine named Omoo does too.

Jellyfish Invasions! Rip Tides! Shark Attacks! Six Beach Dangers (and How to Avoid Them)

Text by Christopher Percy Collier and Devon O’Neil

Illustration by Kate Miller

The lures of the beach are hard to resist come summer. But this season a raft of perils (Shark attacks! Riptides! Jellyfish invasions!) seems poised to storm the coast and shift the action from surfing and sea kayaking to chicken fights and Marco Polo at the community pool. Last year, in fact, saw more than 25,000 beach closings or swimming advisories—a 28 percent increase from 2006, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. What’s more alarming is that an estimated seven million people get sick every year after visiting the nation’s 3,500 beaches. But that’s no reason to forsake the sand. Here, what the experts say is lurking out there--and what you can do to maximize your time in the sun.

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Green Screen: Saving Your Skin—And The Reefs

Sunscreen may spare your skin, but when it inevitably rinses off in the waves, it’s an eco-nightmare. Up to 6,000 tons of the goop end up in oceans every year, according to a 2007 Italian university study, and the chemicals are bleaching coral reefs at an alarming rate. Two Mexican marine parks have banned traditional sunscreens, and more are sure to follow suit. Aubrey Organics Natural Sun is a bit pricey ($8.50 for four ounces) but delivers where it counts: It protects your skin from rays as well as other screens—and saves reefs from a total wipeout. Plus, using it will make you smell like a White Russian.

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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