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Raja Ampat, Indonesia’s Hidden Paradise

July 22, 2019
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Raja Ampat is a group of islands on the western tip of Papua in Indonesia, famous for its diving experience. Most of the world’s coral reefs biodiversity and rare species of marine life can easily be found in an archipelago.

There are 612 islands, but four are the major islands Waigeo, Misool, Salawati, and Batanta. Estimates by conservation groups show that the diversity of marine life in Raja Ampat is among the highest in the world, with over 1,300 species of fish, 700 species of mollusks, and 537 species of coral.


Marine life in Raja Ampat
Photo credit: Kozyndan / Flickr

Marine life in Raja Ampat

Raja Ampat is one of the few places on the planet where you will see such a wide range of marine life in their natural habitat.

With its location in the great Coral Triangle between the Indian and Pacific oceans, Raja Ampat offers a snorkeling experience you’ll never forget. While scuba diving, you will find wobbegong, dolphins, manta rays, turtles, whales, nudibranchs, lionfish, sea dragons, giant trevallies and so much more.

The reefs of Raja Ampat are in perfect condition, with many giant corals, purple corals, and sea squirts, hard coral tables, deer antler corals, green and brown moose antler corals.
Experience the joy and relax of sailing with a boat in the style of a traditional Melanesian outrigger.

One of the best diving spots around here is Batu Lima (Five Rocks). Check rates and availability: Raja Ampat Dive Resort

WHAT HIKING GEAR YOU CAN USE?

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Coral-Reefs Indonesia
Photo credit: Mikeyru2 / Flickr

Papua Explorers resort

Papua Explorers is an eco-friendly dive resort in a traditional Indonesian setting with quick access to some of the best dive sites in Raja Ampat. Papua Explorers is located near the Dampier Strait, where many of Raja Ampat’s best dive spots are located. You’ll enjoy beautiful views of the ocean and rainforest, while you tasty some of the most deliscious traditional Indonesian cuisine

Papua Explorers is one of Raja Ampat’s latest resorts but has already built a reputation for exceptional service, amazing natural experiences and a commitment to conservation and sustainable practices.

Raja Ampat relaxing view
Photo credit: Alexsaurel / Flickr

Piaynemo Lookout

Over-water bungalows in a unique location between a wide sandy bay and a mangrove fringed lagoon. The view from the tops is amazing, but first you have to climb lots of stairs.
You can see an iconic karst island seascape from the top. These mushroom-shaped rocks are towering from the unnaturally blue and crystal clear water.

This spot is great to watch stars and night sky.

Raja Ampat
Photo credit: Marcuspai / Flickr

Kri Eco Resort

Kri Eco Resort opened in 1994 with traditional houses built with local materials from the jungle and each contains two rooms and a sitting area.

Great food and a relaxed friendly atmosphere in a peaceful location. Kri Island is located on the northwest tip of West Papua in Indonesia, about 2 hours by boat from Sorong. If we have to describe it with a few words is golden sand surrounded by clear shallow waters.

Check this video in 4K from Wissberg

Star Lagoon

A formation of coral islands on the water forming a star. To see this fabulous lagoon, tourists must climb an approximately 30 meters coral hill.

If you take a trip to Pianemo, you will absolutely stop by this lagoon because it is only 10 minutes away from Pianemo Island by speedboat.

Raja Ampat paradise
Photo credit: Maesto / Flickr

Pianemo

Pianemo Island is one of the most epic spots in Indonesia and one of the most picturesque spots in Raja Ampat. You will witness a terrific landscape made up of turquoise waters underneath a blue sky, representing the raw beauty of this destination. It is also popular due to its karst hills and stunning underwater scenery.

Hiking is also very popular thing to do. There are several karst hills, on which tourists can climb.

Most of the Raja Ampat Diving Liveaboards include Pianemo viewpoint in their itinerary. You can compare liveaboards and to check the availability and pricing of the tours from their website.

Want to learn more about sustainable travel? Check our other posts about sustainable travel.

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New Zealand

12 Top-Rated Tourist Attractions in New Zealand

May 7, 2019
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New Zealand is a sovereign island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean consisting of 2 main islands, both marked by volcanoes and glaciation. These islands are one of Earth’s most peculiar bioregions, inhabited by flightless birds seen nowhere else such as a nocturnal, burrowing parrot called the kakapo and kiwi. New Zealand is one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to forecast the weather.

New Zealand has been called “God’s own country” and the “Paradise of the Pacific” since the early 1800s.


New Zealand is a long way from anywhere else in the world, so for most visitors, the only practical way to enter New Zealand is by air. Even the shortest flights between Australia and New Zealand take over 3 hours. The capital Queenstown is a resort town in Otago in the south-west of New Zealand’s South Island with a population of 15,850

Top 12 Things to do in New Zealand

Exploring New Zealand’s magnificent landscapes and coastline tops the list for many. We put together the top 12 most popular attractions.

Bungy Jump
Photo credit: CameliaTWU / Flickr

Bungy Jump

Queenstown is the home of the world’s first commercial bungy. In 1987 A. J. Hackett made a bungy jump from the Eiffel Tower and founded the first commercial bungy site in 1988. Today you can choose from either the original Kawarau bridge bungy where water touches are a must, the Ledge bungy located high above Queenstown, or the 134 metre Nevis Bungy, Queenstown’s highest bungy jump.

Milford Sound
Photo credit: Bernard Spragg / Flickr

Visit Milford Sound

It’s New Zealand’s “Most Popular Tourist Destination” and offen called the “8th Wonder of the World”. Milford Sound is a fiord in the southwest of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s known for towering Mitre Peak, plus rainforests and waterfalls like Stirling and Bowen falls.

It is a fusion of spectacular natural features with amazing visual cues around every corner.

Fox Glacier
Photo credit: Evan Fusco / Flickr

Fox Glacier

Fox Glacier is a 13-kilometre-long temperate maritime glacier located in Westland Tai Poutini National Park on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. It was named in 1872 after a visit by then Prime Minister of New Zealand Sir William Fox.
You can join some of the variety of tours, heli-hikes, ice climbing and glacier walks amidst the spectacular scenery of Fox Glacier.

Lake Matheson
Photo credit: Mariano Mantel / Flickr

Lake Matheson

Lake Matheson, one of the most photographed lakes in New Zealand. The lake, formed by glaciation 14,000 years ago, is located near the Fox Glacier in South Westland. It is famous for its reflected views of Aoraki/Mount Cook and Mount Tasman.

The waters of Lake Matheson are dark brown, so on a calm day, they create the ideal reflective surface. The only way to approach Lake Matheson on the south island of New Zealand is on foot.

Tai Poutini National Park
Photo credit: Tony Lin / Flickr

Tai Poutini National Park

Established in 1960, the park covers 1,320 km² and extends from the highest peaks of the Southern Alps to the rugged and remote beaches of the wild West Coast. It is home to magnificent primeval vistas – snow-capped mountains, glaciers, forests, tussock grasslands, rivers, wetlands, beaches, scenic lakes, and dense temperate rainforest, as well as remains of old gold mining towns along the coast.

Moeraki Boulders
Photo credit: Bernard Spragg / Flickr

Moeraki Boulders

The Moeraki Boulders are unusually large and spherical boulders lying along a stretch of Koekohe Beach, between Moeraki and Hampden. The boulders are grey-coloured septarian concretions, which have been eroded out by wave action from the cliffs of soft, black mudstone that back the beach.

They originally formed on the seafloor when the mudstone was accumulating during the early Tertiary period some 60 million years ago. The largest concretions are traversed by cracks, filled by yellow calcite.

Lake Tekapo
Photo credit: Krzysztof Golik / wikipedia

Lake Tekapo

Lake Tekapo is part of a UNESCO Dark Sky Reserve, making it the perfect spot for stargazing. Lake Tekapo is about three hours drive south-west of Christchurch in the Mackenzie Basin. Lake Tekapo is the second-largest of three roughly parallel lakes running north–south.

Finely ground rock in the glacial melted waters give Lake Tekapo a beautifully unique turquoise color. The highland location of the lake enjoy some of New Zealand’s highest sunshine hours, and the lowest average wind speeds.

Pancake Rocks
Photo credit: StarCitizen / Flickr

The Pancake Rocks

The pancake rocks in Punakaiki are the most visited natural attraction on the West Coast. The foundations of the Pancake Rocks were formed 30 million years ago when minute fragments of dead marine creatures and plants landed on the seabed about 2 km below the surface. Along the way, there are some impressive blowholes that are best viewed at high tide.

The Pancake Rocks are presently explorable by a number of walkways winding through the rock formations

Mount Cook
Photo credit: Tatters / Flickr

Mount Cook

Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand with 3,724 metres. The mountain is in the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. Some people regard the area to be the best climbing region in Australasia. The mountain walks lead to alpine tarns, herb fields and spectacular glacier views. Its level of difficulty is often underestimated and can change dramatically depending on weather, snow and ice conditions.

Wanaka
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Wanaka

Wanaka is a popular ski and summer resort town in the Otago region. Visitors from around the world are drawn to the Wanaka region by its outstanding natural beauty. Arts and music festivals, international sporting and aviation events are just a few of the activities, each as unique as the season it is staged.

Lord of the Rings tour
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Take a Lord of the Rings tour

Take a once-in-a-lifetime journey to Middle-earth, traveling from Auckland to Queenstown joining as group tours or self-drive tours to Lord of the Rings filming locations.
New Zealand’s stunning landscapes captivated movie fans around the world as the unbilled star of the hugely successful The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Over 150 real New Zealand locations were used from the rolling green hills of Matamata on the North Island.

Tongariro Crossing
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Tongariro Crossing

This is among the most popular day hikes in the country and often described as New Zealand’s greatest day walk, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing is a challenging journey across a remarkable volcanic landscape. The Tongariro National Park is a World Heritage site which has the distinction of dual status, as it has been acknowledged for both its natural and cultural significance.

Feature photo credit: HK.Colin / Flickr

Want to learn more about other sustainable destination? Check out section sustainable travel destinations.

Promote Sustainable Tourism

What is Sustainable Travel?

August 14, 2019
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Sustainable travel is becoming a popular venture where tourists get inspired to partake the eco-tours, which are fun and adventurous.
In the last few years, the term “sustainable” has been increasingly popular. Businesses want to be more sustainable: motels want to be “sustainable”, tour operators want to be “sustainable” and travelers are increasingly concerned with only spending their money on “sustainable” adventures.

Sustainable Travel should:

  • Maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.
  • Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities and conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values.
  • Providing socio-economic benefits, including stable employment and income opportunities, and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty relief.

The Three Pillars of Sustainability

The three pillars of sustainability are a powerful tool for defining the complete sustainability problem. This consists of at least the economic, social, and environmental pillars. If any pillar is weak then the system as a whole is unsustainable.

1. The Environment Pillar


The environmental pillar often gets the most attention. As sustainable travelers, we can have a simple positive impact just by carrying our own reusables. We can look for hotels and restaurants, which recycle and are built from sustainable materials.

Companies have found that a beneficial impact on the planet can also have a positive financial impact. Lessening the amount of material used in packaging usually reduces the overall spending on those materials
Tourism development can put enormous pressure on an area and lead to impacts such as soil erosion, increased pollution, discharges into the sea, natural habitat loss increased pressure on endangered species and heightened vulnerability to forest fires. It often puts a strain on water resources, and it can force local populations to compete for the use of critical resources.

Reducing the negative effects on the environment and wildlife includes keeping the Carbon footprint as low as possible, using water wisely, not leaving plastic waste, not harming the flora and fauna.

2. The Social Pillar

A sustainable business should have the support and approval of its employees, stakeholders and the community it operates in.
Responsible travelers can look for opportunities to be involved in community projects that tourists can take part in and support a non-profit organization that operates independently from government support.

Between 2016 and 2018, sustainable, responsible and impact investing grew at a more than 38 percent rate, rising from $8.7 trillion in 2016 to $12 trillion in 2018, according to the U.S. Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment.

3. The Economic Pillar

Green travel trend continues to gain momentum, according to the global Sustainable Travel Report by Booking.com, with a large majority of global travelers (87%) stating that they want to travel sustainably,

Sustainable Travel to reduce carbon footprint

Photo credit: Source: Lenzen et al. (2018) Total residence-based accounting (RBA) carbon footprint in CO2e for different countries in 2013 for international (blue) and domestic (yellow) holidays.
The chart above displays the total carbon footprint in 2013 for international (blue) and domestic (yellow) holidays taken by each country’s residents.

Sustainable tourism should also maintain a high level of tourist satisfaction and ensure a meaningful experience to the tourists, raising their awareness about sustainability issues and promoting sustainable tourism practices amongst them.

Except for the term sustainable tourism, there are two other types of tourism that are also focused on creating tourism in harmony with the environment and social-cultural aspects

  • Responsible tourism – sustainable tourism is often also referred as responsible tourism, which has been adopted as a term used by industry who feel that word sustainability is overused and not understood. Responsible tourism is any form of tourism that can be consumed in a more responsible way. Responsible tourism puts more emphasis on the responsibility of tourism industry through generating greater economic benefits for local people and enhancing the well-being of host communities, improving working conditions, involving local people in decisions that affect their lives and life chances, making positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage. It also strives to minimize negative social, economic and environmental impacts. According to its definition Responsible Tourism is about making “better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit”: in that order.
  • Ecotourism – According to the International Ecotourism Society (TIES), ecotourism is defined as: “Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education”
    Ecotourism should provide direct financial benefits for conservation and local people and is focused on the conservation of natural resources.

Why Sustainable Travel is important?

Tourism brings tremendous economic positive outcomes: it is one of the world’s most significant sources of economic outcomes and employment. But tourism can have very opposite effects according to the way activities are managed. Managed well, tourism can play a positive role in the socio, cultural, economical, environmental and political development of the destination and as such represents a significant development opportunity for many countries and communities. Unresponsible tourism development can lead to very damageable impacts on natural resources, consumption patterns, pollution, and social systems. The need for sustainable planning and management is imperative for the industry to survive as a whole.

Next time you’re traveling and trying to decide which attraction, destinations or hotels, ask yourself these questions:

  • Which one is more sustainable?
  • Which one is locally-owned?
  • Which one is more eco-friendly?
  • Which one employs local people?
  • Which one contributes to the local economy?

Read more about sustainable travel in our section.

If you are a traveler and are interested in eco-travels, you can find more inspirations from our posts or from the ideas in the MotherEarthLiving’s article.

Watch this short animated video about sustainable travel.

Photo credit: Booking.com

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“Travel in a respectful way. Don’t harm cultures or lands but seek ways to improve them. Stay in lodges and hotels that are ecologically sound, that use solar, recycle and employ locals. Purchase goods and services that benefit the local economy.”

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