I’ve read National Geographic since I was about 10 years old. I always got excited when I saw some cool place I would want to go (these places often involved pyramids!).
This means I was extra-excited to see someplace I’d already been in the July 2009 issue. I headed straight to page 82 for “Between Fire & Ice” by Mel White. It was all about Tongariro National Park in New Zealand, one of my favorite places on the planet. I’d just been there in February 2009. And boy, was I disappointed in the story.
My only guess is that Mel White has never been there, and only interviewed a few hand-picked people. I’d also guess that the story had an agenda: To decry the effect of invasive species and the non-Maori people. I’ll address these two points separately.
First, the article conveys absolutely no sense of the park’s majesty. It’s a pretty flaccid description – no mention of steam oozing from the cracked floor of desert between Ngauruhoe and Mount Tongariro. No description of the Devil’s Staircase or the exhausting scree slope. What about the blasted, colorful mini-Mount St. Helens of Red Crater? And the striking lack of life? Near the volcanoes, you will see no form of life -flora or fauna- until you see a handful of birds at Blue Lake. That’s hours of hiking with no life but other hikers! It’s seriously lunar in its lava and gas-blasted devastation.
There’s also a pretty poor commitment to accuracy, as shown by this photo [...]
