Wish List: Before They’re Gone

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I subscribe to several travel e-mail magazines, including Budget Travel. I enjoy their articles and I get the newsletter about twice a week. This past Thursday, I noticed a link in the newsletter, "10 Natural Wonders to See Before They Disappear," and read along in wonder. The article lists natural wonders which are threatened with non-existence within the century and includes suggestions for tour operator at each destination to take advantage of the amazing features of each destination.

Surprisingly, I have been to one of the locations on the list, the Dead Sea. When I was a freshman at Penn, I had the opportunity to travel to Israel in 1992. During my trip with the Penn Glee Club, we spent a day in Ein Gedi and played in the therapeutic waters of the Dead Sea. I never dreamed to get to the highest spot on earth, but I have made it to the lowest. The group took the prerequisite pictures of us floating, reading newspapers and magazines as if in a recliner. I was unfortunate and got the salt water in my eyes and it burned something awful. The water was salty that my vision clouded and I couldn’t see through the white haze. I carried on to get some of my peers to escort me to the public showers in order to rinse my eyes out. After ten minutes, I was able see and go back and enjoy myself. And none too soon, in last forty years, the Dead Sea has lost a third of its area and sunk about 80 feet. The water has been diverted from its only source – the Jordan River – to quench the thirsts of Israel, Jordan and Syria and this need will continue stress the endorheic lake.
The Dead Sea
Having visited the Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and been amazed with the multitude of marine life there, I want to go and see the world’s second largest reef system. The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System stretches about 600 miles from Mexico to Honduras and runs through Belize as the country’s famous marine ecosystem. In a addition to this amazing phenomenon, Belize is the only Central American country with English as the official language which makes travel simpler for someone living in the Anglosphere.
Great Blue Hole
The Belize Barrier Reef is endangered due to coral bleaching, the whitening of corals due to the stress-induced loss of their symbiotic organisms. The stressors are but not limited to pollution, global warming, storms or bacterial fluctuations. Once stressed, the organisms can take weeks to months to return to the coral during which time the coral remain susceptible to disease. In the last two decades, Belize Barrier Reef has been affected by two mass-bleaching events in 1995 and in 1997 to 1998.

According to scientists, over 40% of the coral reef has been damaged due to these two major traumatic events. While the ecosystem begins repairing the damage, the healing process is very slow and chances of recovery are already low. The major threat is continuous bleaching of the coral which means the reef will have little to no chance of recovery.
A beautiful islet in the "Carib Sea"
So before man and nature destroy some of God’s amazing works, I’ll have to myself to myself to the Land of the Gods.

Images courtesy of Budget Travel.

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