COATEPEQUE LAKE, El Salvador – The palms are swaying restlessly in the electric darkness, waiting for the storm to arrive. Lightning flashes over Santa Ana Volcano on the far side of the lake; just a few minutes ago I was walking along the shore with Elmer, catching the last bits of sunset over the lake.

He sensed the storm coming before I did. “Ya viene el agua,” he said. Literally, “Now the water is coming.” The timing couldn’t have been more perfect; rainy season notwithstanding, El Salvador gifted me with a blue sky my first full day in the country, perfect for visiting the pyramids of Tazumal and Casa Blanca, then catching a bus to this sparkling expanse of blue amid the volcanoes.

Yesterday, my first afternoon, the shower passed quickly to a glorious sunset over the gothic cathedral in Santa Ana’s central plaza, and I enjoyed the national symphony in Santa Ana’s spectacular theater before a short walk back to my hotel, La Libertad.

I left Guatemala City around 10 a.m. yesterday and arrived in Santa Ana, El Salvador’s second city, at around 2. The terminal was in the southwest part of the city and as I tried to get my bearings, a genial Salvadoran Archie Bunker type approached. “Taxi?”

It was hot and my pack was heavy. “Sure,” I said.

“Just a minute,” he rushed off and shortly pulled up with a yellow car, meticulously hand-painted with the word “Taxi” in black and red. The inside was just as quirky, with every square inch of the dashboard decorated with something – a Tasmanian devil, a leopard-skin cloth and coins from around the world.

Ismael was his name, and he was friendly and engaging, but not cheap. Our roundabout search for a hotel set me back $15. Getting used to the dollar again wasn’t going to be easy, I realized.

Ismael offered to take me to Lake Coatepeque for $75 – which he insisted was the going rate. Later I checked with another driver and it seemed to be true. So I decided to stick with public transport, and for less than a dollar, the ruins of Chalchuapa and this spectacular crater lake were mine.

Granted, the accommodations weren’t the most luxe – the hikes to the bus stops and the waits with my 40-pound pack being the biggest deterrent – but they weren’t nearly as bad as I’d feared. The routes were long and winding, but there were no chickens this time, and the buses here were not as cram-packed with humanity as the ones in Guatemala had been. In fact, after the Guatemalan chicken buses, they were downright comfortable.
The food service was excellent, with locals coming aboard to vend everything from fresh fruit to “yuquitas” – corn-wrapped yucca balls. And the stern-looking young man driving the bus down into Coatepeque, the same one that had wired his bus for maximum sound and was blasting Central American rap music when I boarded, surprised me by switching to a gentler tune as we approached the lake and stopping the bus every time I stood to shoot a photo.

At first I thought it was just because of the tumulos, the monstrous tubes of concrete that are used as speed bumps here. But after the fourth or fifth time, I glanced up into the rearview mirror and saw him looking at me. This serious young man was proud of his beautiful country, I realized, and he wanted me to capture it well.
The bus was full when I boarded, and most eyes were averted to avoid having to deal with me and my monster backpack. A young man with a friendly face smiled at me, and that was all I needed. “Here, let me help,” he said, and held my pack on his lap.

Manuel was his name, and he was 26. He was trying to figure out how to get back home to Honduras after being deported from Mexico. He’d been trying to make his way north, but his luck had been bad. He’d nearly drowned crossing the Rio Grande, and had been deported from Las Vegas and San Antonio. Now he had been deported to the border of El Salvador, penniless, a five-day walk from the Honduras border. His pantomime of the terrifying river crossing was comical, and he smiled through most of his story, as if he were talking about a movie with a happy ending.

Why didn’t he just stay home? I asked him.

“What will I do there? There are no jobs,” he said, and smiled his charming, little boy smile. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday, I discovered, so I fished out my emergency stash of nuts from my backpack and handed them over. I paid his bus fare and found a $10 bill I could spare, and tucked it in his hand before he left.

The driver dropped me off right in front of Torre Molinos, the hotel I’d read about in the guidebook, and I was overjoyed at the prospect of a few hours of relaxation with a swimming pool and a lakeside view. The hotel has a decadent charm, and after a long run of backpacker-style hotels at $12 a night, I decided it was ok to splurge.

I ordered mojarra a la plancha, grilled tilapia, and was savoring the meal along with the sunset out on the balcony overlooking the lake, when Elmer, one of the employees, dropped by to make conversation.
America is the land of opportunity, he told me – that’s why an estimated 4 million Salvadorans live there, more than half the 7 million who live here. There’s just no opportunity here, he said.

“But you have a good job here at Torre Molina, no?” I asked, naively.

Elmer laughed and shook his head. “Six dollars a day,” he said. “For that I can rent a room. I can’t have a house. I can’t get married or have kids. Why would I want to bring children into the world when I can’t support them? Why would I want to marry a woman and make her miserable?”

“Oh, that’s so sad, Elmer,” I said.

“Oh, but it’s not so bad. Here at least I meet interesting people – and in the restaurant, they give me food,” he said.

“Oh! That’s good…. Like, mojarra?”

“No,” he smiled. “Never! Like, tortillas and beans.”

I looked down at my flaky white tilapia, my salad with slices of avocado and lime, my hand-made tortillas and fresh pineapple licuado. It had been a splurge at $12 – two days’ salary for Elmer.

“That’s why we keep coming to your country, no matter how many times you throw us out,” he was telling me, laughing. “I’m one of the lucky ones – at least I have a job. Those who work at the fincas have it much worse; they earn $50 every 15 days.”

The sunset was vanishing rapidly, as was my appetite. Fortunately, I had enjoyed most of my meal before Elmer arrived.

“Speaking of work, I have to do mine,” I said, changing the subject. “Where can I get the best photos of the sunset?”

So Elmer shifted into tour guide mode, showing me the path along the lake, the national flower – izote – and the presidential quinta. The shore of the lake was lighting up now that the sun was gone, and Elmer explained to me that most of the lights belonged to quintas, or private vacation homes of the wealthy. Lake Coatepeque, unlike Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, is mainly the preserve of the rich. Which, in this context, I am, despite my meager earnings as a freelance writer.

Elmer promised to wake at 5:30 to shoot the sunrise with me, and he says goodnight. Relieved, I order a coffee and a sorbet. Another $1.80. The coffee is Nescafe, but the sorbet is exquisite. The rain patters satisfyingly around me, an occasional bolt lighting up the volcano beyond this quinta’s arched window. I sigh.
It would all be so much more enjoyable, I think, if the world were just a bit more fair.

Photos from Santa Ana, El Salvador’s second-largest city and the capital of the department of Santa Ana:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From Tazumal, Casa Blanca and the town where they are found, Chalchuapa:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

From the spectacular Lago Coatepeque and Parque Nacional Los Volcanes, including a climb of Cerro Verde and then Volcan Santa Ana, with views of Volcan Izalco:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Truth be told, I have never been to Los Cabos, so I’m not in a position to judge. I wrote that story as part of a series for The Buzz Magazines, in which I interview local travelers about their experiences. I do, however, trust Melissa’s judgment; she’s an excellent Texas author and journalist (here’s her blog and profile), and one whose environmental sensibilities match my own. So I did the only sensible thing: I invited her to write her own piece about Baja California as a guest post, and she kindly obliged.

Here’s Melissa’s story about a voluntourism expedition into the wilds of Baja California, a program aimed at saving the endangered sea turtles there, and the spectacular slide show that accompanies it. Enjoy!

A tent on the sand with a solar-powered light, solar shower hanging nearby, composting toilet behind a gnarled palo blanco tree. Travel doesn’t get much more eco than this.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Organized by Baja Expeditions, one of the oldest outfitters on the Mexican peninsula, and SEE Turtles, a non-profit promoting conservation tourism, this trip includes three days in the Gulf of California and three on Baja’s Pacific coast with a night in La Paz in between. We also take part in a local sea turtle monitoring project that, once a month, puts out nets to catch sea turtles, measuring, tagging and then releasing them. The data helps determine the success of efforts to help these endangered animals.

The first day, the group gathers in the hotel lobby for a quick van ride to Baja Expedition’s office for breakfast, wetsuits, masks and snorkels. Then we load onto a panga, one of the blue-and-white fiberglass boats common along both coasts of Baja. Our route crosses La Paz Bay to Isla Espiritu Santo, an uninhabited mountainous island. A line of white tents along a fingernail of matching sand overlook a gem-blue bay where pelicans, cormorants, and brown and blue-footed boobies crash into the water on a dawn-to-dusk pursuit of fish. Two cooks prepare our meals on a gas stove inside the kitchen tent, using fish straight from the nearby waters, peppers grown north of La Paz, hand-made tortillas, and other fresh, local ingredients.

After settling in, we motor to the island’s north end to snorkel around Los Islotes, a collection of craggy rocks populated by sea lions and birds above the water, a massive school of sardines and riot of tropical fish below it. The young sea lions hanging out at one end of the rocks came ready to play; when I follow them under the water, they dart in close, swoop away, and dive deeper than I can go. The day ends with a brilliant sunset over the peninsula followed by stars spilled across a black sky, then the full moon rising from behind the island’s mountainous spine.

Next day, we kayak along red and cream-colored cliffs weathered in intricate patterns, dipping into each cove. Some hold tiny beaches, others rocky shores or swaths of green mangroves. A panga brings lunch, then takes us farther down the island to the ruins of a pearl-collecting village and a healthy reef only about 20 feet below the surface for another snorkel. The following morning, we hike up the rugged slope behind camp, spotting huge blue lizards and colorful hummingbirds, before heading back to La Paz for the night.
For the three-hour drive to Puerto San Carlos, we pile into one van, giving the trip less of a carbon footprint than it might have had. From there, another panga ride ends at a mangrove and shell spit in Bahia Magdalena, a mangrove-lined bay on the Pacific side of the peninsula. Our camp here is eco-friendly, too; we sleep in tents on the narrow shell beach, eat clams and shrimp caught with sustainable methods in this very bay, and compost our waste.
By participating in the sea turtle monitoring program, we tourists provide direct financial support for the monitoring. We also support and encourage this kind of alternative to typical tourism development (i.e. high-rise resorts, desert golf courses, and other eco-unfriendly options), and help create meaningful, dignified work for people in the local community. Our camp crew, members of a local cooperative, trained by working with established cooks and guides on Baja Expeditions outings before striking out on their own here.
Our group of ten, plus two guides and four members of the monitoring project, heads out in two pangas to place nets in the bay where turtles come and go with the ebb and flow of tide. Starting at 6 PM today through 4 PM tomorrow, two crew members and two guests check the nets every two hours. We can also help with measuring and tagging, and get to name untagged turtles.
In between shifts, we take a panga ride through lush mangroves, where we see a variety of herons and egrets as well as kingfishers, jays, pelicans, and osprey. After lunch, we cross the bay and hike over dunes towering more than four stories high and about a half-mile wide, forming a barrier between the bay and the Pacific Ocean. The beach there is broad and disappears into the distance in either direction, with no signs of civilization. The clear water is a perfect temperature for swimming, and sand dollars the size of my hand litter the sand.
Next morning, we observe local fishing methods, including handlining, crab traps, and a specially designed shrimp trawl that doesn’t drag bottom and moves slowly enough for fish and other potential bycatch to get away.
Returning to the San Jose del Cabo airport the following day, I’m struck by the contrast between the sprawling, gated hotels, bright green of golf courses, and cruise ships bobbing in the distance and the cozy camp that, by now, has completely disappeared from that tiny island. I can truly call this an eco-adventure.

“This is my office,” he says with a broad smile and a sweep of his arm toward the mirror-like pool in front of him, the basalt formations all around and the forest beyond. We’re in a place he’s dubbed “Naturaleza Mistica” or “Mystical Nature,” where water has carved these crystalline pools into the rocks all around.

It’s a place that invites contemplation, inspiration and renewal. Birdsong ricochets from tree to tree in the stillness of the afternoon; the water drips from pool to pool, and a cricket chirps from a nearby crevice. I can’t imagine a better place for an office. Luis is the founder of Eco-Tours Guadalajara, the area’s first tour company dedicated to outdoor adventure. Now he and his 10-member crew lead adventures in rockclimbing, rappelling, ziplining, mountain biking, scuba diving and canyoneering.  Today he leads a group of travel writers, in Guadalajara for the SATW convention, through various degrees of terror and exhilaration on the first three, beginning with a rappel down a 50-foot sheer wall and a clamber up another one, followed by a leap from a cliff on a zipline.

Now we’re following him through a grassy field to a rocky forest as he interprets the geological and biological wonders of this place.

It was a leap of faith that brought Luis to this place in his life. He was an excellent secondary school teacher – so good that he was promoted to school principal. He enjoyed education, and his wife Lucinda taught there, too. But something in Luis kept calling him to the great outdoors, to the wilds of the mountains that encircle Guadalajara.

“Finally I couldn’t take it anymore,” he said. “I needed to be outside, in nature.”

So after 11 years in public education, he and Lucinda left their jobs and founded Eco-Tours, taking their teaching skills to a new audience. Now their pupils learn to overcome their fears and bond with the natural world around them.

It wasn’t easy in the beginning. Luis approached local tourism officials for support, but they were skeptical.

“Ecotourism in Jalisco? There’s no demand for it,” he was told. But he persevered, and now business is booming. His is one of four ecotourism companies in the Guadalajara area.

“We have one of the most spectacular sites in the country for ecotourism – excellent walls for climbing, beautiful landscapes, amazing canyons, and all just 45 minutes from Guadalajara,” he says. “This place is a natural for ecotourism.”

Click here to take the photo tour

Contact Luis and his crew at promociones@eco-toursguadalajara.com or call (011) (52-33) 13 68 93 11. The Spanish-only website is at www.eco-toursguadalajara.com but Luis is conversant in English.

Dahlias were first cultivated here by the Aztecs.

This could be any other forest on the outskirts of any other city, I think to myself as the path curves through a grassy field, past a burst of orange sunflowers and into the shade of a mossy oak grove. Then Guadalupe stops and gestures for us to take a seat on the cool boulders in the clearing.

“Close your eyes,” she says. “Breathe deeply. Feel the peace that is in this place.”

Far in the distance, the murmur of traffic dissolves into the timeless rustle of the wind in the trees.

I do feel the peace; but my mind is straying back to what Guadalupe has just told me about this place, and it defies imagining.

Just two decades ago, this ferny hillside was virtually indistinguishable from the city below. And had it not been for Ajusco’s position as one of the most important aquifer recharge zones in Central Mexico, and a political drama that is still playing out to this day, it would have remained that way.

(click here for photo tour)

I’ve come to visit one of the projects of Pronatura, a nonprofit group with offices all over the country from the Yucatan in the Southeast to Enseñada in the Northwest. In Mexico City, the organization administers the Mexico City Ecological Park and runs an environmental education center, a native plant nursery program de ecological restoration……. and a butterfly breeding program, among other projects. Guadalupe Nuñez, who coordinates the environmental education program at the site, is my guide.

She has just led us to the first “station,” a series of stops on the trail that she uses to illustrate her curriculum.

“This is where I tell people to turn around and look,” she says.

The leafy canopy opens here onto a startling view: a yellow-grey cloud smothers the landscape, a clutter of urban sprawl stretching for miles below, barely visible through the smog that envelopes it.

“We use this station to explain to people why the lungs of the forest are so important to protect,” Guadalupe said. “If the government had not stepped in to reclaim this land, all of Ajusco would have looked like that.”

After the devastating earthquake of 1985, thousands fled to the outskirts of the city to rebuild and start new lives, many of them building on land they claimed for themselves. This unauthorized activity occurred everywhere and for the most part was unchallenged.

In Ajusco, however, the government took a stand. The area is not only an important recharge zone, but also is situated along the Chichinautzin Biological Corridor, a conservation initiative stretching from the northern Sierra Madre to Morelos in the south.

Here in the forests of Ajusco, “the place where water is born” in ancient Nahuatl, it’s easy to forget the proximity of what is, by some estimates, the world’s second-largest metropolis. It was here that the flower now known as the dahlia was first cultivated by the Aztecs and used for its medicinal properties; today they sprinkle the verdant hills, turning their delicate orange and purple faces toward the sun. “Mirasol,” the locals call them: Look at the sun.

I have not been able to find any reports to corroborate Guadalupe’s version of events, but a collection of dramatic photos hanging in the Pronatura Environmental Education Center in Ajusco Medio (once a private home like many others in this area) seem to verify it.

In 1989, the government evicted the families who had taken over the land in Ajusco, bulldozing hundreds, perhaps thousands of homes. An aerial photo shows a virtually treeless area crisscrossed with dusty streets and nondescript houses – Ajusco in 1989, after it had been scalped and settled.

Another photo shows the area as it is today, a lush green forest. The most dramatic, however, shows what seems to be anguished families carrying their belongings out of the area.

Most families simply left and began anew somewhere else. A few, however, continue to battle in court to reclaim their homes. A winding path through the forest took us past several of them, overgrown with weeds and in various states of deconstruction. One, however, was a grand estate frozen in time, untouched by the bulldozers. Obviously not everyone who settled here was a penniless squatter.

As one wanders on through the Ajusco trails, Mexico City’s volcanic origins become vividly clear. The black volcanic stone that showered down from the volcano Xixtle some 2,000 years ago is the backdrop for the vivid green of this unusually verdant pine and scrub oak forest. Here, too, one is surrounded by the work of Forest Restoration Program coordinator Saul Arruel and his team: an abundance of native species chosen for their ability to feed and shelter wildlife and regenerate the soil.

Here at the Environmental Education Center, the Pronatura staff is working to win the hearts and minds of a new generation of city kids.  An opossum named Chencho, a house full of butterflies and a bodega full of art supplies are the tools of their trade. And judging from the smiles on the faces of the Garcia family during their recent visit, it may just be working.

Other programs at the center include a food pyramid, experimenting with the ancient Mesoamerican architecture to produce a compact, terraced garden.

I’ve just come from the mariposario – the butterfly breeding program – where Pronatura staff and volunteers collect the eggs of butterflies in the surrounding forests, bring them here to let them hatch, grow and metamorphose in the safety of the laboratory. When the butterflies emerge from their cocoons, half of them are released into the wild, and the other half are reserved for the butterfly house.

It is here that visitors – most of them children – are allowed to “liberate” the butterflies into the flowery haven that is the butterfly house.

“It’s one of the most effective ways to help the children bond with nature,” says Saul Saldaña, coordinator of the butterfly program. “As the butterfly takes flight, the child experiences a sensation of profound joy. It’s something they never forget.”

The Parque Ecologico de la Ciudad de Mexico is open to visitors during the week and on Saturdays, but if you want a guided tour, you’ll need to make an appointment in advance at ajuscomedio@pronatura.org.mx or by calling (52) (55) 54 46 71 08. English interpreters are not available at this time.

One of the menu of outings offered by the Society of American Travel Writers in its pre-conference lineup was “Eco-Adventure in El Diente,” and with a name like that, how could I resist? Especially with the excellent training provided by Jamie, who nearly killed me in my first exposure to rock climbing this spring. It wasn’t until I went online today and googled it that I realized that where he failed in May, he may have succeeded in October.

El Diente (The Tooth) is about to bite me…

My account of my May adventure will appear in the Dallas Morning News this fall (posthumously, perhaps) so I asked Jamie to provide a few tips for beginners as I prepare to punish myself on the cliffs of El Diente. (El Diente pic compliments of Marc and Kristi, who climbed there a year ago and made it sound like a piece of cake in their excellent blog… Thanks, guys!)

OK, so after reading Marc and Kristi, and after going through Jamie’s tips (below, for the very brave), I’m feeling better about the climb. Honestly, it’s the mountain biking that I’m kind of freaked out about. I’ll keep you posted – if I’m not in traction.

Read on for Jamie’s excellent tips. And if the climbing bug bites you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Climbing tips for beginners

From veteran climber Jamie McNally of Austin

1.  It’s all about the feet.  Most people think you have to have loads of upper body strength to be a good climber. Not so. Footwork is much more important than often realized, even on steep or overhanging terrain. Think of using your legs to propel you up the rock rather than using your hands and arms to pull.

2.  It’s also about balance. Your first inclination when climbing is to cling to the rock. Resist the urge. You want your weight distributed over your feet. This means that your center of gravity, especially on slabs, is often further away from the rock than is initially comfortable. But if you press too close against the rock, your weight will shift and your feet will often slip.

3.  Use your bone structure to your advantage. Climbing is often a race against muscle fatigue. One way to avoid flaming forearms is to climb with straight limbs as much as possible. You can hang from a chin-up bar a lot longer with straight arms than you can with arms bent at the elbow. Try it. Think of straightening your limbs and using your skeleton to rest on each hold while only using your muscles to move between holds.

4.  Trust your shoes. The sticky rubber on the bottom of even cheap climbing shoes is otherworldly. Dime-sized edges, rounded nubbins, and near-microscopic rock crystals are all stellar footholds. You can even stand on near vertical slabs.

5.  Don’t be afraid of cracks. Today in Texas (and in a lot of other places) most people start out climbing in gyms and learn pretty quickly how to grab different types of holds. This type of climbing is intuitive and feels natural. Climbing cracks requires a totally different technique that seems unnatural and is often painful at first. As a result, in some places, crack climbing has become a lost art. But learning to jam hands, fists and feet into different-sized cracks will improve your climbing and open up a world of rock that would otherwise be unavailable to you.

Here are some of Jamie’s photos from a recent climb at ERock.

Giraffe, Crescent Island, Lake Naivasha, Kenya (Fred Tooley)

Good nature photography takes years of painstaking study and practice, first-rate equipment and a great deal of patience. But as Houston architect Fred Tooley discovered, spectacular shots are there for the taking on safari, and you don’t have to be a professional photographer to get them.

I asked him to share his top ten photo tips, and he was generous – he even gave us an extra. For a more extensive collection of his photos, and other Houston safari travelers, see African Adventures, and keep an eye out for their story in Buzz Magazines.

Cheetah Family, Masai Mara National Park, Kenya (Fred Tooley)

1. If this is the trip of a lifetime (like it was for us) it is not the time to get by with a point-and-shoot camera. Use a good quality SLR with interchangeable lenses, You can rent them online or from a camera shop if you do not want to buy. You wouldn’t take a cheap gun on an African hunt, so why take a cheap camera for this other kind of shooting?

2. Today the zoom lens rules, and this is perfect for an Africa trip. The animals are not going to wait for you to change to the right focal length lens.Probably 75% of  my photos were taken with an 18-200 mm vibration reduction zoom. The remainder were taken with a second camera (highly recommended) using a 70-300 mm zoom.

3. I bought a used backup camera and lens (the 70-300) in case my “go-to” camera malfunctioned. But they both functioned perfectly througout the trip, and having a second camera is a real plus. Sharon decided to become a photographer on the trip, and today’s modern digitals make it easy to learn the basics on the fly. When one of us was not in good position for a photo, then the other usually was.

4. Leave the tripod and monopod at home. You can’t use them in the vehicle, and if you get out, you get eaten. A window-clamp type mount was very handy however.

5. If I made a mistake it was taking the 500mm lens for those long shots. The window-mount is not stable enough for such a lens, it is cumbersome, and it weighs about 1800 lbs. (I think).

6. Before you leave, test your lens and be sure it is sharp, sharp, SHARP. Every lens you purchase will be advertised as sharp, but many are not. Try zooming in on a small sign a couple of blocks away, and then blow it up on the computer. A sharp lens can make a huge difference, unless you are only going to send low-res shots to friends on the Internet. Thishttp://www.kenrockwell.com/ is an excellent site for an expert opinion on various lenses.

7. Take a dust-proof camera bag that you can access quickly. The 4×4 is not going to be air-conditioned, and the dust kicked up by another vehicle can be daunting. The “dry season” would have been much much worse.

8. Sit in the front passenger seat if you are the chief photographer. A good driver will always position the vehicle for you to get a good shot, and you don’t have to stand up (dropping your lens cap off your lap) to shoot through the open roof. This is more important than you might imagine.

9. Take many many many) photos. It costs you nothing, and you never know when the animal may make a subtle change in position or expression that you did not even notice. Once in a while you will accidently catch a bird in flight in the background, or a butterfly flies into your frame and you did not even notice till you got home.

10. Most important: As tempting as it may be, don’t make the mistake of seeing your entire trip through a camera lens only. Experience it fully.

11. One of the smartest things I did was to purchase (online) a small reasonably priced “inverter”. This is a small “black box” that converts 12 volts (from the vehicle’s lighter plug-in) to 120 volts (for battery charging or whatever) with a standard American 3-prong outlet. The vehicle was set up with a convenience outlet, but since Africa uses 220 volts, these outlets could not be used without a converter and plug adaptor. Since we were in the vehicles most of each day, charging the spare batteries was a snap with the inverter. And imagine the gratitude of our guide when I left it with him as a gift for use by his American clients.

The 1,200 acres of high-plains wetlands were saved from development to create the Swaner EcoCenter, explains Annette Herman, Executive Director.

Images featured the elegantly woodsy Swaner Ecocenter surrounded with waving grasses, long-necked waterfowl, blue skies and the dramatic Wasatch Range. So it was no small surprise that Nora, our guide, pulled into a shopping center right across from WalMart and dropped us off. “It’s right over there,” she said. “I’ll park the car and then come join you.”

I contemplated getting a gelato first, or maybe window-shopping at the little boutique. Then I remembered why I was there.

It turns out the the pictures didn’t lie. This is no ordinary shopping center, and the Swaner family is a big reason why. The ecocenter sits at the heart of 1,200 acres this family bought and saved from development and, land which has been restored into a surprisingly wild habitat right off I-80. It’s tucked into the Newpark Town Center, which is striving for LEEDS environmental design certification (the ecocenter has already set the standard with a platinum LEEDS designation, the highest ranking). Located as it is on the edge of this mixed-use condo community and resort area, it’s ideally located to reach out to shoppers and residents who might otherwise not give a thought to visiting an educational center dedicated to nurturing and raising awareness about the environment.

Here’s a sneak preview:

[slideshow id=3314649325774748134&w=426&h=320]

Historic downtown comes alive for the Park Silly Sunday Market.

Park City is now marketing itself as an eco-destination, and notwithstanding its reputation as a getaway for the rich and famous, the city government as well as private citizens have worked hard to preserve the natural beauty of the place while lowering its carbon footprint, and some interesting initiatives have emerged. A vibrant arts community gives the city a colorful, quirky edge. All of this, combined with hundreds of miles of hiking trails and a landscape that begs for human interaction, give the green traveler multiple reasons to be here.

Our tour began with a trip to Olympic Park just in time to see the Flying Aces, an amazing troupe of Olympic skiers who wowed the crowds with a series of gravity-defying acts like triple-triple flips and twists before landing in a pool of water before our eyes.

Our next stop was just as amazing, but in a different way: The Swaner Ecocenter, an environmental study center and nature preserve located on the edge of a shopping mall. This was my personal favorite, and I’ll write more on this later.

But every Park City day must include a bit of decadence, so we paid a visit to David Perkings at High West Distillery. This turn-of-the-century livery building on historic Main Street is being converted into a high-class restaurant and whiskey and vodka tasting room that will be the first of its kind.

A favorite Park City pastime in the summer is mountain biking, so I signed us up for a class with Mike Broome, an expert mountain biker with Deer Valley Resort. Asked my biking level, I pondered a bit and responded intermediate; let me just emphasize, for the record, that a lifetime of road biking, even participating in a marathon, does not render one an intermediate mountain biker.  Mike outdid himself trying, but after my hour-long lesson, I’ve reclassified myself as a mountain biker wannabe. More on this later, too.

Suffice it to say, we earned our apres-biking activities. Lucky for us, Sunday brunch at the Stein Eriksen is a sumptuous event in itself – consistently voted the Best Brunch in the State, and with everything from seafood to petit fours to accompany traditional favorites like eggs benedict with salmon and maple-smoked bacon, it was plain to see why.

Our final surprise was the Park Silly Sunday Market, an open-air market peopled with artisans and performers as well as farmers and foodies. Amazingly, the founders set out to make this a zero-waste event, and they’ve largely succeeded. But this one, too, is worth a story of its own. So stay tuned, and I’ll fill you in on that later.

Meanwhile, some images my camera found along the way:

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This only made me more curious. So one day I picked up the phone and started calling around. And before I knew it, I was packing my bags and headed for the coast.

What I found surprised me: spectacular beaches, abundant wildlife, great food, a fascinating history, fishing to die for and friendly folks who will make you feel right at home.

What I didn’t find was an overabundance of tourists. A couple from Fort Worth, a father and daughter from Houston, a family from Pearland and a handful of locals — but mostly, miles of white sand pounded by surf and backed by graceful dunes.

Take a look for yourself; I think you’ll see what I mean. And read the story in the Aug. 9 Travel Section of the Houston Chronicle or the San Antonio Express-News – or click here for the online version.