Yellowstone - Yellowstone River

In the northwest corner of Wyoming, United States is the famous Yellowstone National Park. Established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, this 3,468 sq mi (8,983km²) park is home to more than half of the world’s geysers and geothermal and hydrothermal features. Yellowstone is the first national park in the United States and is widely considered the oldest in the world. In 1978 it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

With its unspoiled forests, mountains, lakes, canyons and rivers, Yellowstone has the largest concentration of mammals in the contiguous United States and more than 1,700 native species of trees and plants.

Taking an anti-clockwise approach to my route, I began my journey at the Mud Volcano Thermal Area. Located near one of Yellowstone Volcano’s vents, the area is known for its muddy hot springs and fumaroles. The trail is a loop that’s less than a mile (1km) long beginning with the Mud Cauldron, a large, steaming muddy pool. Over a short hill to the left is the boiling pool, Mud Geyser, which used to erupt muddy water up to 50ft (15m) high during the 1800s.

The trail leads to the Churning Cauldron, tossing muddy water. This area used to be a cool pool filled with bacteria until earthquakes in the late 1970s greatly increased its temperature.

Slightly off the boardwalk is the large sizzling Black Dragon’s Cauldron. It exploded into existence in 1948 along a crack in the earth, coating the nearby trees in mud. Just beyond the cauldron is the extremely acidic Sour Lake with its milky-green colour. Sour Lake is a result of microbes and the high levels of sulphur found in the area.

Near the end of the trail is Dragon’s Mouth Spring, named by a park visitor in 1912. Boiling water rolls out of a cavern nowadays but pre-1994, the water used to spill out like a wave, often splashing water as far as the boardwalk. Steam and gases exploded through the water inside the cavern, emitting strange rumbling noises. Between the noises and spitting water one can imagine the flick of a dragon’s tongue, making the name quite fitting.

Many of the trees on this trail are cooked by steam. An earthquake swarm in 1978, that lasted seven months, increased the heat and caused the vegetation to die. This area is known for having the greatest uplift and sinking of Yellowstone’s Caldera floor and as such many faults gather here making earthquakes quite common and the hydrothermal features one of the most acidic in the park.

This was a great start. I look forward to discovering more geysers, fumaroles and hot springs. With more than 10,000 hydrothermal features, I suspect there’ll be no shortage of bubbling pools, spitting geysers or steamy vents on my trip.



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Angkor Wat - Angkor Thom

The medieval city of Angkor once served as the capital of the Khmer Empire, the indigenous people of Cambodia. Only 3mi (5km) east of Siem Reap Airport, it is very closely located and easily accessible. A thriving ancient megacity, at its peak it housed up to one million residents and contained several hundred temples with over 70 of them found inside the core of the city.

The temples were built over a period of 300 years, first dedicated to Hinduism and later to Buddhism. King Jayavarman II, the first king of the unified country circa 9th century, declared himself a Devaraja (God-King) and as such built himself temples for king-worship. Although very little remains of his structures, Jayavarman set the ground for succeeding kings to follow.

Believing that the mountain was the centre of the world and a link between heaven and earth, the temples were built to resemble mountain-like structures with tall, tapering towers. By the end of the building period in the 12th century Angkor was the largest city in the world.

After repeated invasions from the Thai in the west, in 1432 the Khmer moved the capital to Phnom Penh and Angkor was abandoned. Over the following centuries the city was swallowed by the jungle and disappeared until 1860 when naturalist Henry Mouhot, in search of exotic insects, was cutting his way through the depths of the jungle and came upon the city.

Teams of archaeologists descended upon Angkor to study it until the mid-20th century when decades of political unrest left the city neglected. In the 1990s preservation efforts resumed and in 1992 Angkor was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I am standing at the Victory Gate within Anghor Thom and I imagine, as lore tells it, the King sending his army through the gate into battle and upon victory welcoming their return. The elaborate arched gate is adorned with four large heads, each facing a cardinal direction, representing gods and demons. At the inner corners of the gate are sculptures of three-headed elephants. Through the gate is a path lined with statues of gods and demons holding onto a seven-headed serpent known as Naga. Just as the army departed into battle centuries ago, I too began my journey heading to the famed Ta Prohm temple that’s been enveloped by giant tree roots.


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Easter Island - Hanga Roa

The island of Rapa Nui, commonly known as Easter Island, is one of the most isolated places in the world, located 2,180mi (3,500km) west of continental Chile in the South Pacific Ocean. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995, Easter Island is famous for its collection of monolithic statues, known as Moai and the unusual Birdman Cult. 

The island’s beginning is a little sketchy with most of what is known obtained either from oral recordings or archaeological excavations. Settled by Polynesians, radiocarbon dating suggests arrival around 1200 AD, however, some scholars posit that colonisation may have occurred as early as 700 AD.

Oral history tells the story of Hotu Matu’a, a tribal chief from somewhere near the Marquesas Islands (about 2,000mi / 3,200km northeast of Easter Island), who had a dream about an island called Te Pito ‘o te Kāinga, meaning “the centre of the earth”. Gathering a scouting crew, Hotu sent them on a voyage to search for the island, eventually finding Rapa Nui. After a short rest they returned to tell the chief the news, who then left in a double-hulled canoe and landed at Anakena beach.

Over time the islanders split into two major clans who were often in conflict with one another, competing in who could build the bigger Moai and when that didn’t help resolve their issues, they would turn to war and toppling each other’s statues.

The first European contact was in 1722 when Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen landed on the island on Easter Sunday, which is how the island got its name.  He was followed by the Spaniards in 1770, Captain Cook in 1774 and the French in 1786. 

With the exception of a few passing ships, the next round of visitors were Peruvian slave-traders who in 1862 carried off 1,500 islanders, about half the population. Only a dozen of the islanders returned to Rapa Nui bringing smallpox with them, which decimated the remainder of the population including the bearers of the island’s culture, history and rongorongo script experts. 

Christian missionaries arrived in 1864 with the aim to stamp out the islanders’ culture by banning how they dressed, their tattoos and their body paint, essentially destroying their history, leaving little record of their past. By 1878 only 111 native people existed on the island. Annexation to Chile in 1888 all but sealed the islanders’ fate and their Rapa Nui culture had vanished.

The local natives continued to live under severe controls until the mid-20th century when the tourist trade and commercial interests from around the world began to turn things around for the population. Extensive archaeological studies on the island have been ongoing for over a century with special interest in the Moai statues. 

This journey begins in Hanga Roa, the capital of Easter Island. I will be travelling west to Orongo where the story of the birdman cult will unfold; then south to Ahu Tongariki with its 15 standing statues; swinging northwest to Anakena, the landing place of legendary tribal chief Hotu Matu’a; and finally, heading west through the centre of the island back to Hanga Roa. 

Time to head to Orongo.