E Magazine travels to Bangaram, part of the Lakshadweep islands in the Arabian Sea some 200 miles west of Kerala in southern India. It’s a small place—less than a square mile—and it was virtually uninhabited until CGH Earth Hotels opened an (apparently impressive) eco-resort there. Writer Jenny Fowler says the resort “has drawn a green line in the sand” and has taken pains to be sustainable: constructing cottages made of local, biodegradable materials; saving water during monsoons; and forbidding motor vehicles.

Photo binux by via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Somehow, amid the din of media reports about Galveston, lipstick on pigs and the U.S. financial mess, I missed this. The Cuban government has declared that the damage caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike was “the worst ever” in the country’s history. Given that Cuba has been blasted by countless hurricanes over the years, the toll has to be massive. According to the BBC’s report, some 200,000 people lost their homes as a result of the storms.

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Disputed territories abound—there are hundreds of examples around the world—and they cause tempers to short circuit from time to time. In one, Cambodian and Thai troops nearly fired on one another yesterday. And not too far away, tensions between South Korea and Japan have been on the rise over the Dokdo Islands (known as Takeshima in Japan), a group of small volcanic islets nearly equidistant from the two countries. 

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Full title: “A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean: A Grump in Paradise Discovers that Anyplace it’s Legal to Carry a Machete is Comedy Just Waiting to Happen”

Author: Gary Buslik

Released: June 2008

Travel genre: Bad-natured travel, island travel

Territory covered: The Caribbean

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Seriously. Archaeologists and others are worried that surging tourism on Easter Island is bad news for the island’s iconic Moais. We noted that, in March, a Finnish tourist cut an earlobe off one head. It turns out that’s but one of many threats to the big stone heads. “More tourism, more deterioration. More visitors, more loss,” an archaeologist tells the AP.

Related on World Hum:
* Easter Island: Where the Roads Diverged

Photo by individuo via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

From Wired: “If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.”

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Remember that papier-mache volcano that some kid (or, more accurately, his parents) built every year for the junior high science fair? It never did manage to teach me how volcanoes work—later, I’d only recall the bubble and hiss of the Sprite mixture foaming out the top. But recently, while trying to get a handle on the local music scene in Barbados, I came across something similar: this educational volcano video, set to a hit soca track by Barbadian calypso legend Red Plastic Bag. Maybe something like this would have helped me pay closer attention in science class. Then again, maybe I would have only remembered the song. It’s plenty catchy.

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With three heads atop a single trunk, it’s a ”botanical curiosity,” an expert says. I bet it’d look great on a $350,000 private island.

I came downstairs the other morning and picked up the local paper, the Barbados Advocate. The top headline, in bold two-inch font, was: “Balance Needed.” Most places in the world, I’d expect the story that followed to be about deficit spending—but here in Barbados, the lead story was about striking the right balance between condo-style visitor accommodations and traditional hotels. Almost every morning, in fact, the latest pronouncements from the minister of tourism—whether on the growth of condo-style tourist digs or the need to seize a share of the “health and wellness” tourism market—take top billing.

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Fascinating story in National Geographic about how the Lapita managed to explore and colonize the Pacific Ocean beginning 3,000 years ago. Roff Smith writes: 

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Unsettling news out of the Galapagos Islands: The BBC reports on the mysterious killing of 53 sea lions in the islands’ nature reserve. While poachers have been known to target the animals for their skin and teeth—prized ingredients in Chinese medicine—that doesn’t seem to be the case here, and park officials are at a loss to explain the slaughter. The tragedy hits the Galapagos at an uncertain time, with green groups warning that the islands’ unique ecosystem is suffering under a sharp increase in tourism. 

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Tourist visits to Kauai reached record numbers last year: 1.27 million people made the trip to the Garden Island. A slew of construction projects—many around the resorts of Poipu—are in the works. Locals are worrying about the future. Writes Laura Bly in USA Today: “[O]ver the past few years, as tourism kicked into high gear and the island’s 63,000 residents wound down from rebuilding efforts following 1992’s devastating Category 4 Hurricane Iniki, frustration levels have swelled like north shore surf during a winter storm.”

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