I'm really glad I went on an intercontinental backpacking trip in the good old days, before everyone carried GSM Cell Phones. Most of you poor Americans don't even know what I'm talking about, but if you do, get your backpack on now and go before the party plane lands.

Among the adventures we had in Mexico was a successful visit to the exact confluence of 30 degrees north latitude and 111 west longitude, which happens to be in the middle of a mesquite bush.

Ever since stumbling upon "confluence.org" I have been fascinated by this project to locate and photograph the confluence of all the whole-number lines of latitude and longitude on earth using GPS devices. There's a game not only in finding them, but in being the first to do so, which we were!

[read all about it]

Just got back from a fabulous journey through the hinterlands of Sonora, Mexico... [links open smallish photos]

My quick impression was that Sonora is very big, very hot, and very sparsely populated, which made for some incredible landscapes of sun baked desert, impossibly rugged mountains, and dusty but friendly towns.

After crossing at Nogales, we sorted out car permits with surprising ease, and headed south into the dusty unknown. The landscape is wide open and very untouched by development.

Sonora is known for having excellent meat dishes, and our stop at the "Paradilla del Sur" in Hermosilo did not disapoint. In fact, i think it ranks as one of the best platters of meat I've ever dived into.

South of Hermosillo the landscape was even more dramatic, and hot as a frying pan, a place where people covet shade wherever they can. The day's drive culminated with some wild formations over the beach town of San Carlos, where we spent the night.

San Carlos was a bit of a gringo-land, but it was nice to be on the shell-strewn beach, and eat some ceviche while the sun went down. The next day, we wasted no time rising and motoring another 5 hours south to the town of Alamos, which was also a bit of a gringo land, but in a far more subdued way, where gringos come to appreciate old mexico among the lavender hills, and sit quietly in restored colonial mansions or in the palm studded square. We stayed at a fabulous old mansion called Los Amigos - which I have to recommend highly, if for no other reason than their fabulous rooftop palapa. We also managed to take over the municipal theatre for a little production.

Nonetheless, trying to pack it all in, we left the next day and hit the coast again to a camp known as Navopatia at the very end of Sonora. This was a very quiet, off the grid place, where we slept in palapas right were the baking desert meets an enormous estuary. Navopatia is sort of eco camp, vaguely hippyish, where locals are offered education in sustainable practices, and tired travellers can unwind. We had a great time canoeing through the mangroves [photo 1][photo 2] in a quest to find the open sea, which ultimately proved to feature sparkling waters and miles of untouched beach.

One of the lessons of the book Natural Capitalism is that current economic calculations fail to account for the value of leaving intact ecosystems in place - if a felled forest is worth some amount of dollars, what's the opportunity cost in terms of damage to fisheries, carbon storage capacity, tourism, etc... these literal dollar costs, if calculated and added up, are often far higher than the short term gain had by the company which does the logging.

Anyway, once looked at as offbeat, such principals are gaining more acceptance (perhaps because they're more accurate!). No greater authority than the Federal Reserve Bank has just published a report sugesting the value of a living tree, as opposed to a cut one. That's pretty impressive given the current administration.

Buy the book, it's good.

In terms of pure efficiency, the outdoor clothesline is probably the most effective solar-powered innovation of all time, especially in hot, dry climates.

There's an old joke about the marketing saavy of the man who can sell freezers to eskimos. In our discussion today, Mathis Wackernagel added the corrolary - how about selling clothes dryers to Arizonans? Think about that one.

Despite, or perhaps because of, its being possibly the dullest National Park in the system, Petrified Forest called ECOSA to redesign the entry station at the park. This is my idea. It's your basic tollbooth, streamlined for wind resistance covered by a translucent canopy the blocks most of the sun and wind. Plus it acts as an archway into the park.

The lifeblood of Phoenix and Tucson is the Central Arizona Project, a mighty canal dug from the Colorado river hundreds of miles away. Although urban Arizona is notoriously wasteful in water use, the canal itself supposedly only loses 3-4% of its water to evaporation. (I had previously thought it a lot worse)

That fact surprises me, though I won't dispute it. Nonetheless, it's an ominous sight straight out of Cadillac Desert, snaking among the impossibly green golf courses and exotic palms.

Granted, tap water can taste terrible in certain locations, but I've always though bottled water was a bit of a scam, not to mention an obsession among certain folks. Anyway, seems some of it nothing more than tap water to begin with. (via DG)