A mesmerizing journey through a chain of tropical islands in a little known part of the Eastern Caribbean. The peaceful azure waters, lagoons, untouched rainforests and stunning white sand beaches will have you packing your bags to leave the world behind. There is a country of small islands in the West Indies, lost in time. Its mountainous terrain has helped in keeping its vast natural beauty intact. Thirty two islands with mystical names like Bequia and Mustique, St Vincent and the Grenadines is in the most blessed part of the Caribbean—dramatic mountains and beaches, fertile soil and plentiful rain. This idyllic setting has nurtured a gentle and simple way life yet one rich in adventure, social contact, and a dazzling variety of locally grown cuisine. Explore the rare flora, taste the fresh fruits, local fish and spices, and partake in Vincentian “liming” —sharing food, drink, jokes and anecdotes, with no other intent than enjoying life. This collection of breathtaking photographs will revitalize both body and soul.
A collection of stories about Lasqueti Island, one of the least populated of Canada's Gulf Islands, which attracted a flood of counter-culture seekers in the 1970s and early 80s.
The bold erotic masterpiece by #1 New York Times bestselling author Anne Rice writing as Anne Rampling. They call her the Perfectionist. A stunning, mysterious, and fearless sexual adventurer, Lisa is founder and supreme mistress of The Club—an exclusive island resort where forbidden fantasy meets willing flesh. Here eager participants who can afford life's most exquisite luxuries can experience the breathtaking pleasures of surrender and submission. Here nothing is taboo. A thrill-seeking photojournalist, Elliott risks his life daily in the most dangerous, war-torn regions on Earth. Now he has come to Paradise to explore his most savage and vulnerable sexual self, committed to the ultimate plunge into personal risk. Together, their journey to the limits of erotic pleasure will take them farther than they ever dreamed they'd go . . .
Like so many of us, Lucinda Fleeson wanted to escape what had become a routine life. So, she quit her big-city job, sold her suburban house, and moved halfway across the world to the island of Kauai to work at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Imagine a one-hundred-acre garden estate nestled amid ocean cliffs, rain forests, and secluded coves. Exotic and beautiful, yes, but as Fleeson awakens to this sensual world, exploring the island's food, beaches, and history, she encounters an endangered paradise—the Hawaii we don't see in the tourist brochures. Native plants are dying at an astonishing rate—Hawaii is called the Extinction Capital of the World—and invasive species (plants, animals, and humans) have imperiled this Garden of Eden. Fleeson accompanies a plant hunter into the rain forest to find the last of a dying species, descends into limestone caves with a paleontologist who deconstructs island history through fossil life, and shadows a botanical pioneer who propagates rare seeds, hoping to reclaim the landscape. Her grown-up adventure is a reminder of the value of choosing passion over security, individuality over convention, and the pressing need to protect the earth. And as she witnesses the island's plant renewal efforts, she sees her own life blossom again.
Pitcairn Island was a tiny uninhabited Eden when, in January 1790, Fletcher Christian and eight sailors, together with six Polynesian men, twelve Tahitian women and one baby, landed from HMS Bounty. There they burned their boat, thus eliminating any chance of a voluntary return to the known world. Their disappearance was to remain a mystery for twenty years. This book discusses the purposes of the Bounty’s voyage, the mutiny and its consequences, but goes further than any previous publications, to relate the gripping drama of subsequent events on Pitcairn - of the fifteen men who landed on the island, only one was alive when they were discovered, twelve had been brutally murdered by their companions and one had commited suicide. The role of the women in shaping events on the island, and their input into the unique identity of the community, is fully considered for the first time. Their support for the men as rival groups-Tahitians or Europeans-or their concern for individuals largely decided which men lived and died, while the women themselves commited some of the murders. Conflicts over property, race and gender brought this group close to total destruction. But out of the clashes of cultures and individual wills between European mutineers and Pacific islanders came, in a brief space of time, the new community of ’Pitcairn Islanders’: a thriving society based on progressive laws relating to sexual equality and the environment, with significant resonances for the reader some two centuries later.
“It was the first time I’d seen what the ocean may have looked like thousands of years ago.” That’s conservation scientist Gregory S. Stone talking about his initial dive among the corals and sea life surrounding the Phoenix Islands in the South Pacific. Worldwide, the oceans are suffering. Corals are dying off at an alarming rate, victims of ocean warming and acidification—and their loss threatens more than 25 percent of all fish species, who depend on the food and shelter found in coral habitats. Yet in the waters off the Phoenix Islands, the corals were healthy, the fish populations pristine and abundant—and Stone and his companion on the dive, coral expert David Obura, determined that they were going to try their best to keep it that way. Underwater Eden tells the story of how they succeeded, against great odds, in making that dream come true, with the establishment in 2008 of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA). It’s a story of cutting-edge science, fierce commitment, and innovative partnerships rooted in a determination to find common ground among conservationists, business interests, and governments—all backed up by hard-headed economic analysis. Creating the world’s largest (and deepest) UNESCO World Heritage Site was by no means easy or straightforward. Underwater Eden takes us from the initial dive, through four major scientific expeditions and planning meetings over the course of a decade, to high-level negotiations with the government of Kiribati—a small island nation dependent on the revenue from the surrounding fisheries. How could the people of Kiribati, and the fishing industry its waters supported, be compensated for the substantial income they would be giving up in favor of posterity? And how could this previously little-known wilderness be transformed into one of the highest-profile international conservation priorities? Step by step, conservation and its priorities won over the doubters, and Underwater Eden is the stunningly illustrated record of what was saved. Each chapter reveals—with eye-popping photographs—a different aspect of the science and conservation of the underwater and terrestrial life found in and around the Phoenix Islands’ coral reefs. Written by scientists, politicians, and journalists who have been involved in the conservation efforts since the beginning, the chapters brim with excitement, wonder, and confidence—tempered with realism and full of lessons that the success of PIPA offers for other ambitious conservation projects worldwide. Simultaneously a valentine to the diversity, resilience, and importance of the oceans and a riveting account of how conservation really can succeed against the toughest obstacles, Underwater Eden is sure to enchant any ocean lover, whether ecotourist or armchair scuba diver.
In 1842, when famed world explorer James Douglas first encountered the rugged natural paradise that would become Vancouver Island, he described it as "A perfect Eden." He was just one among many European explorers to experience the intense beauty of the Pacific Northwest, most of whom have left fascinating accounts of their encounters with the terrain and the peoples they found, their exploration and settlement of the land there. Interspersed with maps, illustrations, paintings, and photographs, these first-hand accounts create a captivating tale of discovery and exploration. Starting from before the first known European arrivals, the stories feature Spanish and British naval officers, traders seeking sea otter pelts, colonial surveyors, "Indian” chiefs, soldiers, settlers and adventurers, and end in 1858, when Douglas, by then Sir James, retired as governor of the two colonies -- Vancouver Island and British Columbia. The companion book to Michael Layland’s prizewinning The Land of Heart’s Delight: Early Maps and Charts of Vancouver Island, which traces the cartographic history of this remarkable region, A Perfect Eden paints a vivid picture of what the explorers saw, the people they met, the hazards they faced, and some mysteries, as yet unsolved.
