Croc,
Swamps in a canoe are wonderful, especially if there is wildlife around. My first boat was a 10 foot aluminum rowboat, and I remember dragging that into all kinds of little passages. After that came a Grumman aluminum canoe, which I abused until it was one big floating dent. Your canoe sounds beautiful, and I wish I could get something like that out here. We still have a few places with extensive mangrove swamps, and those are great for paddling. And there's a huge inland marsh in central Mindanao which nobody has ever paddled in any sort of systematic way... so many adventures waiting, so little time to fit them all in.
Getting back into the trekking and ocean paddling season now, as we had a really lame rainy season and the rivers are all getting low. They won't fill up again until June, which irritates me, as I just took delivery of a new whitewater boat - shipped from TN via Kuala Lumpur (getting gear here can be a hassle) - and there's nowhere to try it out, except by travelling pretty far afield. Taking a hike out to an interesting dormant volcano tomorrow, original forest cover over most of it. Never been there before - actually haven't lived in the current location very long, so there is still exploration going on. Amazing how close some of these places are to fairly major tourist centers, but nobody ever goes to them. I went up to this one a couple of weeks ago, asked around in a village of Aetas, little dark-skinned kinky-haired tribal dudes who spend a lot of time in the forest. They said there were 7 waterfalls, plenty of jungle, and other nice stuff all within a days walk. It occurs to me to wonder how far they walk in a day, but I guess I'll find out. I'll let you know how it goes.
The travel guide is being produced by a magazine called Action Asia, which I sometimes write for. Pretty good magazine, actually, though a little weird on the business end. It is actually printed, in a limited edition, but not widely available. Next edition - minus a large number of errors - should be out end of January. The whole book was supposed to have been done 6 months ago, though, so it's hard to say. Looks good, though. Lots of good pictures. I don't know what kind of distribution they'll get outside of Asia.
Steve |
