Nature is something that most of us watch on television. It comes in one-hour
packages, with a voice-over by David Attenborough. When it’s finished, we
make a cup of tea and go to bed. Which, when we live on a planet that’s
crammed with such mystery, majesty and diversity, is nothing short of
tragic. If you really want to experience its natural wonders, you’ve got to
be there. We’ve picked 12 of the most compelling natural phenomena — some on
the other side of the world, some right under your feet — and found the best
way to witness each of them. You can make
a cup of tea and go to bed another time.
JANUARY
Icebergs in the Southern Ocean
The more you look, the stranger they are. The endless variety of surreal
shapes, the unexpected kaleidoscope of colour, from green to blue to white
and back: icebergs are nature’s own abstract sculptures, conceived on a
grand scale. The austral summer is the time to see them make their doomed
voyage, swirled by the current from the Antarctic Peninsula around the
Weddell Sea to South Georgia, the iceberg’s graveyard. If you’re happy with
sheer numbers, Iceberg Alley, at the northeast tip of the peninsula, is
where a vast army of bergs — calved from the Larsen ice shelf — covers the
freezing water as far as the eye can see. Diehards will want to travel all
the way to South Georgia, where waves have remodelled the melting bergs into
yet more unearthly shapes.
Wildlife Worldwide (0845 130 6982, www.wildlifeworldwide.com) still has places
for January’s 10-day voyage to Antarctica and February’s 18-day sailing
around Antarctica, South Georgia and the Falklands. Prices start at £3,795pp
and £5,525pp respectively, including flights from London, meals and expert
guides.
FEBRUARY
Gorillas in Rwanda
It’s their human quality that gets you. Stare into the eyes of a 30-stone
mountain gorilla and something with a soul is staring straight back at you.
By visiting, you’re helping to preserve them: the gorilla population in
Rwanda’s Volcano National Park is growing, largely because income from
tourism has given them an economic value for local people and paid for the
effective policing of the park.
February is a good time to go, before the rainy season sets in. Peregrine
Adventures (0844 736 0170, www.peregrineadventures.co.uk) has a four-day
Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda trip, departing daily from Kigali — and just two
people are needed to guarantee the trip. Prices start at £970pp, including a
gorilla permit, three breakfasts, three lunches, two dinners, domestic
transport and guides, but not international flights. Opodo (www.opodo.co.uk)
has flights from Heathrow to Kigali with KLM, via Nairobi, from £599.
MARCH
Aurora borealis in Norway
It’s not hard to see the northern lights, which may be why so few of us bother
— but anyone who’s witnessed a good display will know that they’re not just
accessible, they’re unmissable. To understand the science is one thing, but
seeing the sheets of light hanging in the sky, glowing red, yellow and
green, you appreciate why local tribes believed they were everything from
messages from the gods to shoals of celestial herring — with their constant
fluid movement, they look eerily alive.
Contrary to expectations, the longest winter nights aren’t the best for seeing
the show. Go in February or March to combine awesome skies with Nordic
favourites such as night-time dog-sledding trips, snowshoeing and
ice-fishing. Specialised Tours (01342 712785, www.specialisedtours.com) can
arrange all the above on a three-night break to Tromso, 200 miles above the
Arctic Circle, for £615pp, B&B, including flights from London.
APRIL
Turtles in Tobago
Hulking slowly out of the surf, they look like visitors from another age, and
they are: leatherback turtles have hardly evolved since the Cretaceous
period, when they shared the seas with dinosaurs. Between March and July,
hundreds of females — 8ft long and weighing up to 130 stone — continue that
long, long line as they lumber up Turtle Beach at night to dig deep pits in
the sand and lay about 100 eggs. It’s not a sight for thrill-seekers. The
whole process can take hours, but it’s seeing the painstaking, ponderous
effort they make for the sake of their young that makes it so moving.
Premier Holidays (0870 889 0845, www.premierholidays.co.uk) has a week at
Turtle Beach from £835pp, including flights from London.
MAY
Storm-chasing in Tornado Alley
Thunder, lightning, flash floods, hailstones... if that’s not your idea of
perfect holiday weather, America’s Great Plains aren’t the place to be in
May, when the biggest concentration of tornadoes on earth rips and roars its
way from the Dakotas to Texas. The swirling black funnels reaching into the
sky look hypnotic, but don’t get too close: severe examples produce 200mph
winds that can strip bark off trees, hurl cars 300ft and rip houses off
their foundations.
Given all that, it’s as well to have guides who know what they’re doing.
Tempest Tours (00 1 817 274 9313, www.tempesttours.com) is run by veteran
storm-chasers who use high-tech Doppler radar to chase down the twisters: a
six-day tour, departing from Oklahoma City on May 26, costs £1,020pp, not
including flights. Ebookers (0800 082 3000, www.ebookers.com) has flights
with Northwest Airlines from Gatwick to Oklahoma City from £420.
JUNE
Lava in Italy
Unreliable stuff, lava. Even vulcanologists don’t have much success predicting
when and where it’s going to surface. But Stromboli, a volcanic cone off the
coast of Sicily, has been erupting continuously for more than 2,000 years,
so it shouldn’t let you down. It’s a three-hour trek to the crater, where
explosions send incandescent lava “bombs” flying hundreds of yards into the
air.
It’s simple to get to Stromboli under your own steam: Ryanair (0871 246 0000,
www.ryanair.com) flies to Palermo, from where Ustica Lines
(www.usticalines.it) runs a summer ferry to the island; return fares from
£58. Or try Explore (0870 333 4001, www.explore.co.uk), which runs an
eight-day Sicilian volcano hike, taking in Stromboli, Etna, Lipari and
Vulcano; from £859pp, including flights from London.
JULY
Orcas in Vancouver
Pity the poor Pacific salmon. Every year, hundreds of thousands of them make
for the Fraser River, in western Canada, for a little harmless spawning,
only to find 200 ravenous orcas waiting for them at the Johnstone Strait.
The whales make a party of it, breaching, tail-flapping and generally
messing around.
Out of the Blue (01249 449533, www.wdcs.org) runs the best trip to see them,
including three days at a research station listening in to orca family
chitchat — this is the lab that discovered that each family group speaks a
different dialect of whale. To top it off, there’s a trip to Knight Inlet,
on the mainland, to watch grizzly bears feasting on — you guessed it — the
poor old salmon. The two-week trips, which depart on July 27 and August 9,
cost £1,699, excluding flights. Air Canada (0871 220 1111,
www.aircanada.com) flies to Vancouver from £800.
AUGUST
Bloodbath in the Serengeti
It’s been called the most spectacular migration on earth, but it’s really two
migrations in one. Every year, more than 1m wildebeest enter the Masai Mara,
in Kenya, from the south, only to meet tens of thousands of tourists from
the north. The result? Mayhem.
But there is a way to see the animals on the move that doesn’t mean being in a
tourist zoo. En route to the Mara, the migration passes through the Lamai
Wedge, in remote north Tanzania: it has just one safari camp, but, in
August, vast herds of wildebeest and zebra, along with the lions, hyenas and
cheetahs that come to feast on them. Sayari Camp is a few minutes from the
Mara River, where crocodiles wait for the (rightly) nervous herds. Result? A
far more satisfying experience for the humans... if not the ruminants.
Expert Africa (020 8232 9777, www.expertafrica.com) has a 10-day trip, with
six nights at Sayari, from £2,824pp, including flights from London.
SEPTEMBER
Raptors over the Med
We have basic physics to thank for the spectacular autumn bird migration over
the Strait of Gibraltar. Thermals form over land, but not water. For that
reason, soaring birds, which rely on thermals to gain height, can’t cross
large stretches of sea, so millions of birds migrating to Africa cross the
Med at Tarifa, Spain, where Morocco is just a nine-mile glide away. You
don’t have to be a twitcher to be bowled over by the vast flocks: tens of
thousands of buzzards, eagles, kestrels, storks and pelicans, all converging
over the town to make a mad dash for the safety of the opposite shore.
Naturetrek (01962 733051, www.naturetrek.co.uk) has a five-day guided
bird-watching break to Tarifa, departing on September 14, for £795pp, with
flights from London.
OCTOBER
Crabs on Christmas Island
It’s a bizarre sight: a moving red carpet woven from vast columns of land
crabs making for their coastal breeding grounds. Around this time every
year, 100m crabs on Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean, up sticks from
their burrows and start a determined but dangerous trek to the sea
to spawn, crossing roads, gardens and anything that gets in their way. You can
walk among them (tread carefully, please) and follow their routes down to
Flying Fish Cove, where a crustacean orgy of mating culminates in a mass
spawning by females at the predawn high tide.
Wildwings (0117 965 8333, www.wildwings.co.uk) has a week on Christmas Island
from £685pp, including flights from Singapore. Trailfinders (0845 058 5858,
www.trailfinders.com) has flights to Singapore from £609.
NOVEMBER
Squid in South Africa
It’s one of the great ocean spectacles, but few divers have it on their wish
list. Little wonder: the spring squid run was unknown to most of them until
2004. Tens of thousands of squid gather to spawn in St Francis Bay, on the
Eastern Cape coast of South Africa, the males performing flamboyant mating
dances to entice the females to the sandy bottom. Many don’t make it, being
snapped up by the rays, sharks, seals, dolphins and whales that swoop and
glide through the throng to take advantage of the annual buffet.
Dive Tours (01244 401177, www.divetours.co.uk) will take you to see it: expect
to pay about £2,300pp for two weeks, including flights from London and all
diving.
DECEMBER
Three million years BC in Wales
We’ve been all over the world for our natural wonders: this month, something
right under our feet. Britain has some of the finest cave systems in the
world, and now’s a good time to see them — it’ll probably be a few degrees
warmer below than it is up top.
Perhaps the most spectacular are Wookey Hole in Somerset (www.wookey.co.uk)
and Dan Yr Ogof in Powys (www.showcaves.co.uk): both have ’tites, ’mites and
a plethora of otherworldly limestone formations, but both are pretty
commercialised.
For a real appreciation of the challenge and beauty of the underground world,
go caving for real on a day-course with qualified instructors. The Brecon
Beacons are riddled with caverns that are ideal for beginners: Black
Mountain Activities (01497 847897, www.blackmountain.co.uk) offers day
courses from £69.
