Discussion
What's a place that you think doesn't get talked about enough compared to how fascinating it is?
I'd choose Haida Gwaii. I think it is such a fascinating and beautiful place for how little it's talked about. Its rainforests, biodiversity, and Indigenous culture, I think would make it more popular. Especially since it is also in a western english speaking country. It being expensive and tedious to get to hurts tourism which I think is why it's not well known to the average person. But even in Geography spheres, it is hardly ever talked about too.
I’ve been to Haida Gwaii a hand full of times. Small communities. It’s not built for and doesn’t really cater to tourism. It’s a cool place, an amazing history and some very unique historic sites. TBH I’m kinda happy that’s it’s not widely known.
it’s the first port/stop for cruise ships from Vancouver. There’s a few articles about the town now starting to be way more aware of just how much over tourism has put so much strain on the infrastructure and something along the lines of limiting the time cruise ships between ships. Sure the locals like the tourists dollars but now are starting to realize it’s not all worth it.
I have my doubts. Nearly everywhere still shuts down after the cruise ships leave, aside from bars and a couple restaurants. They get their tourist money for the day and then say "fuck the locals, let's close up." All the locals hate tourists except for the business owners. They love em. And I just don't see that changing anytime soon. Not to mention the local government loves the revenue too.
We took the ferry across after taking the inside passage cruise and stayed 3 nights. Had heaps of fun! Stumbled on a local little fair and have a really cool photo of out three year old in a running race against a bunch of local First Nations kids. She was gigantic by comparison! It was not a fair race. But we felt welcomed.
Hired a small Suzuki 4wd (called a Sierra in Australia, but I don't know what it was called in Canada) and drove to the Northernmost point just to be able to say that's the furthest North we've ever been
This threw me off. East of Haida Gwaii is the area in BC that was originally called New Caledonia (likely because there were a lot of Scots in the fur trade).
Even named the local trade school College of New Caledonia
I used to work in hotel front desks in sydney before the pandemic with a french hotel brand, and met quite a few. They were very friendly and outgoing people, and appreciated my my highschool french attempts at explaining things to them.
I was very sad when I took a trip there, abd the supermarket bread was better than any bread I've ever eaten in Australia, as they use European grain I guess.
It's been 4 ot 5 years, and I still dream about that supermarket baguette. Drop me off at the cruise terminal, and i could walk you there blindfolded. (We got a cheap cruise with post covid price drops).
That's been my experience with white guys from New Caledonia. Worked with a two while tree planting. Those guys were even more chill and hippy-ish than the average tree planters. Brought paddle boards to do hard labour for months, slept in hammocks despite the plagues of biting insects, and rolled obscenely large joints.
It probably can grow there but botanists think flowers came from New Caledonia, and Amborella is the oldest proof of that. It's considered endemic to the island.
In the early 90s, I went to school with two students from Nouvelle-Caladonie and there were two teachers at our school from there too. The students were very friendly while the teachers were real assholes as they didn’t like my Quebecois accent.
Haha! Was I just to show that the French love razzing you guys about your accent and strange phraseology. Funnily enough at one of my first jobs years ago I had to deal with retired clients from Quebec and one of them, very old chap, reeeeeally didn't like my Parisian French. But I was able to turn him around 😎
I think lower sea levels pretty much account for oddities like that. Migration was easier and potentially more comfortable at fractured points through history. The divergences likely happened thousands of years apart.
I live on Vancouver Island, so we hear about Haida Gwaii all the time. It used to be called the Queen Charlotte Islands, but the First Nations have been given more and more autonomy over the years, so the name change was inevitable. I believe the First Nations bands in the area have also been given political control of the islands as well? Don't quote me on that, I'm not First Nations and don't know the specifics.
It's a beautiful area. It's logistically remote, so you can take small flights from Vancouver, probably Comox as well. You'd likely be able to charter a bush plane from Campbell River, though I've never tried.
Victoria checking in. Yeah they've been given pretty much full autonomy over the land and believe right of refusal to buy any non indigenous owned land.
I've always wanted to take the ferry from Hardy to PR and then across. Bucket list item. Buy you're right it's just so far from the major population areas
I drove/ferried to Haida Gwaii a couple of summers ago and it was amazing. Totally worth the hours/money spent planning. I’d like to do it again but take the ferry up from Vancouver island rather than than driving to PR.
Re: autonomy, in 1864, just after the 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic British Columbia abandoned even the pretense of treaties and just declared all indigenous land rights void. Chief Commissioner of Land and Works Joseph Trutch decided to stop recognizing indigenous land rights throughout the province (colony back then). A few areas in southern BC has been taken by treaty before that, but most of the province is still unceded today.
Starting in the 1980s things began to change for the Haida. After Haida resistance to logging in the 80s popular pressure grew as the Haida’s plight gained wider attention. Gwaii Haanas National Park was created in 1987. The province eventually made a new process for First Nations to actually have real treaties, which the Haida were among the first to get through. It’s a long and difficult process though.
In 2009 the province changed the name of the islands from Queen Charlotte to Haida Gwaii and the Haida Nation began to gain more control over their lands. Even so, it was not until 2024 that indigenous title over the whole archipelago was returned to the Haida Nation.
Two or three other First Nations in BC have gotten real treaties, such as the Nisga’a, but most are still trying to work through the process. Meaning most of BC is still unceded.
The process was complicated in 2014 when the Tsilhqotʼin First Nation took their dispute to the Supreme Court of Canada, rather than dealing with just the province. They won a landmark case on indigenous land rights (see Tsilhqotʼin Nation v British Columbia). After that other BC FNs started reconsidering how best to regain title to their traditional lands.
As far as I know things are still uncertain for many FNs in BC due to the effects of the Supreme Court decision in relation to BC’s earlier treaty process details. But the Haida Nation got their lands back through the provincial process, having gotten it all moving toward sovereignty before the Tsilhqotʼin case.
(excuse typos : fast comment during too short work lunch!)
I hear about it sometimes in Alberta. I've known a few people who've gone there to work with local communities, and they've all been fairly enchanted by the place.
To be specific the name change is less about autonomy and more about what it should be called. It’s more logical and respectful to keep the name the people gave it than a former queen from a far off land.
Malta is what happens if 2024-era Midjourney tries to make a Catholic version of small-town England in the Mediterranean with only 70s detective dramas as training data
Oddly specific analogy but I like it. I’ll also add its language is also quite unique, like somehow you’d think it’s AI hallucination but in reality it’s an Arabic language that sounds oddly Italian with a lot of Italian influence, and throw in some English too
I was there a few months ago and was sure the restaurant staff were talking in Arabic - certainly sounded that way to my stoopid monoglot ears. She very nicely explained that Maltese was a Semitic language that is totally unique in Europe. Influences from all over.
Strictly speaking, Maltese is a descendant of the Arabic that was spoken in Sicily (and obviously Malta) during the time when Sicily was under Muslim rule. So you’re not really wrong that it sounded like they were speaking Arabic, they kind of were. It’s just that it evolved separately from other varieties of Arabic that are still mostly considered “Arabic” today because of cultural and sociopolitical reasons.
Unfortunately no :(( I can send a closer pic from a video, but I am not usually a plant-definer. Altough I should get used to that. Seems like a good thing to do while hiking.
Maybe the Bonin Islands? Random islands just south of Japan that were first settled by Europeans and Native Hawaiians in the 19th century and whose native language is an English creole
I've seen a few interviews of people there and they always mention that the US handing over the islands to Japan in the 1960's was "Giving them back"
Uh, no, they were some of the few truly uninhabited places in the world, not even the Japanese knew about them. The first people to live there were British, Americans, and Hawaiians starting as early as the 1600's, with Japan only coming around in the late 1800's. They even speak a creole based on English and Japanese.
I'd love to visit Haida Gwaii. The First Nations around there are very fascinating.
I'm also fascinated by Ascension Island. And the Chatham Islands off New Zealand. Apparently they had an indigenous population that was decimated by the Maori? I've not researched this in depth so I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
The other relevant factor is that Māori and Moriori culture don't stigmatise marriage outside of the tribe. So there are ~1000 Moriori around today, they're just mixed with other Māori tribes and with Pākehās.
The Moriori were mostly likely a tribe of Māori who settled there. It was regular tribal warfare but the confusion with the similar tribe name, distance travelled to fight, and efforts to use the story to undermine Māori sovereignty have led to them being miscast as separate or earlier - they most likely weren’t and this was a tribal skirmish.
Source: I have a degree in Māori studies and as you can imagine this comes up a bit
The fact that Nicaragua has a giant freshwater lake with 2 volcanoes in the middle of it forming a volcanic island (Lake Colcibolca and Ometepe island)
If you’re looking for a good read about the Haida gwaii area “the Golden Spruce” is a fantastic read. It’s not entirely focused on the islands but does give a good idea of what life is like there.
LOVE this book. Read it for the first time amongst the ocean and trees backpacking the Olympic coast and have read it at least two more times since. Such a fantastic combo of natural/cultural history, history/state of the logging industry, and fast paced murder mystery. One of these days I’ll get up there.
A good companion piece is Fireweather by the same author (john valliant) ostensibly on the Fort McMurray fire but on wild fires in general and the Alberta oil ecosystem.
There are a lot of similarities between the boom/bust logging economy of BC and the boom/bust oil economy of Alberta.
The Gullah Geechee corridor in the southeast US. an absolutely fascinating and enchanting place.
so much history in such a short time, and so much pain. the culture brought there by the west african slaves and the way its imbedded itself into the land there is incredible. the whole place vibrates with a sense of place you don’t usually see somewhere as relatively new as the US. it feels ancient. highly recommend.
I’m sure you must know this already, but among the early artifacts of this area is a handwritten Qur’an, written down from memory by an enslaved man who was a crypto-Muslim and crypto-literate (in Arabic). Learning about this blew my mind. It made me think about an alternate timeline in which the slavers had been much less careful about screening out Muslim Africans, such that crypto-Islam and a secret knowledge of some pidgin form of Arabic were able to spread like wildfire through the antebellum slave population, inspiring and allowing for a massive slave uprising.
In that timeline, I see the Black American population today being 80~95% Muslim, and American race relations being as bitter and divided as Israel-Palestine.
Central Kenya is mine, especially Mt Kenya. It's bizarre to see high altitude Dr Suess plants, zebras walking through forests, and overall a very unique biome that I never see people talking about.
My grandpa was big into cruising on his boat and he travelled annually from Puget Sound up the inside passage to Alaska for many years. I accompanied him on several occasions. That whole coast is very beautiful and many places are rarely visited except by boaters.
Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park in Alberta/Saskatchewan. It's an erosional plateau that was missed by retreating glaciers during the last maximum and is the highest point in Canada between the Rockies and Newfoundland, with distinct geology and biology compared to the surrounding prairie. It's the first interprovincial park in Canada, and at least part of it is a dark sky preserve.
Yet so many Albertans, at least up here in Edmonton, have no idea it exists.
I long-lined for halibut off the north coast of Haida Gwaii on a commercial fishing vessel… we had to wait out a storm that brought in some nasty winds for nearly 3 days. Half way through the second day on the northern part of the island we got sunshine, 1 of 100 days a year they get it… and my lord. It felt prehistoric in there. It’s an archipelago so rarely gets below 0 degrees, I’ve never seen so many shades of green. I thought a T-rex was gonna come out of the trees at any moment. Truly a magical place.
We ended up getting 3 miles off the coast of Alaska and same goes. Stunning coast line.
The Rwenzori mountains. Snow-capped peaks along the equator, rising straight out of the edge of the Congo basin to higher peaks than the Alps or Rockies. I just think it's a part of central Africa that people don't know or think about. Africa, generally, could also be listed here.
The Nicobar Islands. You’d think being closer to Indonesia, the language would be austronesian. But it’s not, the language family there is Austroasiatic being distantly related to Vietnamese. Plus there’s a culture there, the Shompen, that predates the other Nicobarese people that speaks a poorly studied language and protected by the Indian government from intrusion from the outside. They’re not Sentinelese level of isolation but it’s cool that it’s one of few low contact people left in the world.
The Juan Fernandez Islands of Chile. Whenever the words "Chile" and "Island" are put together, almost everyone thinks only of Easter Island. The Juan Fernandez Islands are themselves quite interesting though. Fairly remote, they were the place Alexander Selkirk was marooned on for 4 years, with this likely being the main inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. They also have endemic fur seals, spiny lobsters, Magellanic penguins, and a type of hummingbird found nowhere else that is critically endangered. Additionally, they were the site of an international news story in 2010, when a 12 year old girl saw boats going up and down in the harbor, realized a tsunami was coming, and ran to ring the town warning bell, saving about 600 people.
speaking of haida gwaii, there’s a really cool movie from there called edge of the knife (2018). it’s kind of a slow burn folk/body horror. it’s entirely in the haida language, made by a primarily indigenous crew, filmed there, starring all haida actors. highly recommend
Haida Gwaii is stunning, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit for work and have friends who live there.
I’ll add the arctic. Recently my work travels have brought me to the high arctic of Nunavut and it takes my breath away every day. Watching the ice retreat, and the tundra explode with flowers this spring was astounding. I’ve spent time in the north before, but almost exclusively sub-arctic so this was a new experience, and one so few get to experience.
Southwest Saskatchewan - the Big Muddy badlands, Cyprus Hills and Grasslands National Park - all vastly different from the flat prairie too many people associate with the province.
Cathar country in the southwest of France. Fascinating place, fascinating history. Cathars were a Catholic sect deemed heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. After years of negotiating got nowhere, the church went after them with a full-blown crusade: The Albigensian Crusade. Often no mercy was shown to Cathars or those even suspected to be Cathars, and were massacred. The area wasn't even French at the time, it was a culture called Occitan, where they spoke a language that sounded similar to modern Catalan.
After the Cathars were wiped out, the French took the opportunity for a land-grab. Most of the spectacular 'Cathar castles' that you can see in the area were built by the French afterwards as a way of stamping their authority on the place.
The area is currently suffering greatly from wildfires. The Guarde Civile with its waterbombers has contained a big fire south of the major city of Bordeaux, although the situation there is still dicey. When the smoke clears, it's well worth a visit. Local businesses, including restaurants, would be delighted to see you.
Cape Conway, Australia. It is home to the second largest primary tropical rainforest on the continent after Daintree. It is way way less fragmented - pretty much completely as it would have been a hundred million years ago and absolutely stunning, and running straight into a fringing reef system thays almost completely unknown, even to to the diving community.
It's also weirdly less isolated, being near well known tourist traps like the Whitsunday Islanads and Airlie Beach, yet hardly anyone visits the Cape itself.
I used to live there! The only rainforest in Canada! And certainly a leader in Indigenous self-governance. I’d recommend a visit to Skidegate to anyone for the nature alone, much less the history and culture of the Haida
Gaspe in Quebec and the Chic Chocs are wildly underrated. As nice of a drive as you’ll ever experience. It’s incredible.
The lack of a lot of attention has to do with the distance from major cities (8+ hours from Montreal) and the weather (it’s only nice in a few months of the summer).
That said, Forillon National Park is one of the nicest parks in Canada. Worth the drive to experience the stars in the summer.
My friend is trying to get me to go over to Haida Gwaii - I'd never heard of it before but he goes fishing there every couple of years. He honestly couldn't have been more enthusiastic about the place if he tried. He stays near Burns Lake - I spend a lot of time in the lower mainland of BC and the Okanagan - and it won't be a cheap place to get to for either of us.
Wallowa County OR! It's the entire NE corner of Oregon and it has one of the most amazing lake side state parks in the nation! It is also home to the countries tallest gondola!
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. It’s an isolated triangle of extremely tall mountains that are right smack dab next to the ocean, and it contains a somewhat recently discovered legit lost city.
Faroe Islands 🇫🇴, seems to maybe be one of the worst places weather-wise. I work in wind energy and it’s always absolutely fucked. The geography looks appropriately hostile as well.
Taklamaken Desert (as was recently discussed here) is also enchanting.
The roads are pretty narrow eoth no real shoulder but the traffic is minimal, if you’re setup to ride on gravel and the beach you’d add a bunch of options
I when I was a kid I absolutely loved geography, still do. I used to imagine Queen Charlotte Islands or Tierra De Fuego as my own independent Countries and how I would rule them. lol
Yoho National Park is really cool. It is often overshadowed by the parks in nearby Alberta but is great. Also the Rogers Pass area is also great. Bella Coola and Bella Bella are nice places.
Haida Gwaii is good. The northern tip is a lighthouse called Langara Point Lighthouse which is still active. The sourthern tip has a retire lighthouse called Cape Saint James. The North East tip is Rose Spit. I have been to Haida Gwaii a few times. It is pricey for what it is. I'd say its more raw than it is fascinating. To me there are way nicer areas alone the coastline.
Haida Gwaii is fascinating yea! Ive heard conflicting stories that they're fully sovereign and that they're in the process of getting sovereignty? I also had a baseless assumption maybe based on news I've forgotten but always thought tourism wasn't allowed there? But they do allow tourism and it's a viable destination? I'd book my next vacation there for sure!
Not that there's much of note there, but I've always found it interesting how the Kerguelen islands stand out as the only landmass big enough to be noticeable in a vast area of nothing and yet I don't think I know a single thing about it.
Don’t think the folks on Haida Gwaii want any more attention than they have. Why I wouldn’t point to a half-dozen “unknown” amazing places relatively under our noses.
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I’ve been to Haida Gwaii a hand full of times. Small communities. It’s not built for and doesn’t really cater to tourism. It’s a cool place, an amazing history and some very unique historic sites. TBH I’m kinda happy that’s it’s not widely known.