Pack Your Bags and Your Pooch: A Travel Site With A Stellar Mission

Your Time Travels isn’t just an ordinary travel company. It’s a travel company founded by a woman with a great love and concern for animals!  If you stop to think, most travel destinations advertise and exploit animals for the sake of tourism.  Know anyone who has swam with dolphins, or taken an elephant ride?  I was particularly moved on two separate trips I took, one to India and Russia, where I saw bears chained up on the side of the road being made to stand so people could photograph with them. I can honestly say those experiences didn’t contribute to my having a good time, on the contrary.

Enter Liz Longacre the founder of YTT and our featured Indie Woman Model, a gal who describes herself as timid but adventurous. She was inspired to start her company after a visit to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, where the animals are considered sacred. Whether you are interested in volunteering to care for animals while abroad, go on a safari to observe wildlife, or want to take your Fluffy along on your dream vacation, this company does it all.  Everything is customized to the last details in the spirit of adventure with a clear mission.

As Liz states, “We’ll never promote any activity or hotel that exploits animals, cages them for display purposes, or forces them to provide entertainment…Our trips are for travelers who want to have exciting adventures without them being at the expense of other living creatures.” Liz’s blog is also a great read and resource, so get busy and plan your next vacation with Noah’s Arc in mind.  Go Liz!

Hope and Prayers Out of Louisiana – Our Follow-Up After The Oil Spill

Please watch the video profile on New Orleans and our featured Indie Model, the remarkable Captain Ginger, to get the full story prior to reading this article as a follow-up to our trip.

Upon embarking on our trip to shoot our travel video featuring the great multi-cultural city that is New Orleans and also spotlight “Captain Ginger,” a remarkable woman we chose for our Indie Model profile, we had no idea of the unraveling consequences of the oil spill and its dreadful impact on the environment and the people of Louisiana. We arrived a few days after the story broke, yet like most people we had no idea of the severity of the accident and the prolonged efforts in the aftermath, trying to clean up and contain the oil from spreading. There is almost a sense of guilt in not being aware sooner of the catastrophic proportion of this environmental disaster — in having too much trust in the media, the false reassurances, and the people in high ranking positions who tried to pacify those affected promising that all will be solved timely and efficiently. Now more than 60 days after the occurrence, the world is watching as a nation is struggling to come to terms with what has happened and where our leaders, federal government and regulations have fallen short of keeping the interests of ‘we the people’ in the forefront.

Captain Ginger of AttakapasAdventures.com

We decided to catch up with Ginger Rushing who took us on an eco-tour of her beloved swamp late in April, to see what effects the spill might have had on her personal life as well as her boat chartering business, which solely depends on tourism and the pristine beauty of the place she calls ‘home.’  In retrospect, it’s so uncanny how prior to the oil mess we somehow ended up choosing ‘Captain Ginger’ as our IndieWoman Model – a person who is so tightly linked to the waterways of Louisiana, and whose mission is to preserve her beloved land through education.  Truth be told, her business will never make her rich.  She invested far more than her returns to date.  But it’s never been about money.  As a single mother of three, she quit her job working in chemical factory that made her sick, and decided to get a degree in Geology, buy a small charter boat, and take a risk doing something that would always remain true and dear to her heart.  She raised her children as she was raised herself – teaching them to cherish and protect the land that enabled all of them to have a descent quality of life through providing a livelihood and a home all in one.

When we caught up with her just a few days ago mid June, Captain Ginger told us the spill hadn’t reached ‘her swamp’ yet. But she did say that a lot of ‘her birds’ migrate up from Mexico and South America for the summer and then back down for the winter.  Birds such as the Ruby Throated Hummingbird, which crosses the Gulf, the Yellow Crowned Night Heron, which is the Mexican National bird, and the Prothonatary Warbler which comes to the region to nest every April, and is considered endangered in some areas. “These birds and others will have to first get to the Gulf by crossing the marsh, eating and drinking along the way. Who knows how the oil spill will affect them.” Ginger tells us that the oil is in the middle of the Mississippi flyway area, which is a major migratory flight path for many birds. And this is not to mention all the shore birds that stay in the area, including the Brown Pelican that was just taken off the endangered species list and was nesting at the time the spill took place.

“Tourism was knocked to its knees for Katrina.  This sure isn’t going to help.  Beaches are closed all the way to Florida.  People have canceled bookings to the Gulf region.  The dispersant they have insisted on using is now in the Gulf waters, and you can’t see it or taste it.  What will this do to the fish and other seafood, or to people swimming in the waters or people eating the seafood?  I don’t know when I will feel it to be safe to eat seafood from the Gulf again.”  This is a place where seafood is a big part of most people’s dinner tables.  No more shrimp, oysters, crabs, and fish.  Many restaurants will have to close.  Ginger told us she just read an article about an oyster house in New Orleans that has been in business for almost 150years.  They have now had to close.

Lake Feliz, Napoleonville, Louisiana

We are told of parishes along the gulf and state agencies that are not being allowed to do anything to prevent oil from reaching the beaches, or to clean up.  As we’ve seen it on the news, there thousands of people wanting if desperate to help, yet BP has not allowing it.  The people who are responsible for this mess, and who were sadly entrusted to clean up, are not in any way capable of handling a disaster on such a scale. They can’t stop the leak and they can’t clean up the mess, because let’s face it: they don’t really know how!  The fear that Ginger has is that if there will be hurricane winds blowing from the south she could get oil into’ her swamp.’

She leaves us with these final thoughts, and we can’t help but listen.

“There are millions of gallons of oil sitting on the sea floor (thanks to the dispersants) just waiting to be pushed around and stirred up.  There is no way to stop it from coming in short of totally blocking waterways. It is a very sad thing to have to wake up to every day.  I’ve had to try and explain this to my 5-year-old granddaughter.  How the heck do I do that?  She asked why can’t they stop the oil leak, and why can’t they clean it all up.  What do I tell her?  It’s so sad to think that she may never get to taste fresh seafood or swim in the gulf again.  My son will never get to fish the gulf again.  Our way of life has been taken from us.  There is no fix now I am afraid.  The damage is done.  Now we just have to wait and see how bad it’s going to get and how long it’s going to take to get it back, which may be years and years.”

If you have been as touched as we are, and are looking for ways, or any way to get involved, here is the time. Take a trip to New Orleans!  Book an Attakapas Adventures Eco-Tour with Captain Ginger – and let her show you her ‘endangered’ home, as this may be the last chance to see an eco-system fully alive and thriving before it’s claimed by irreversible damage.  We can only hope and pray this won’t be the case.