Bermuda

Bermuda is an archipelago of 7 main islands and about 170 additional islets and rocks, situated about 650 miles east of Cape Hatteras (North Carolina, U.S.). The archipelago is about 24 miles long and averages less than 1 mile in width. Its area is 21 square miles.

The main islands are clustered together in the shape of a fishhook and are connected by bridges. The largest island is referred to as Main Island (14 miles long and 1 mile wide).

It is a self-governing British colony in the western North Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Hamilton.

Virtually all of Bermuda’s larger islands are inhabited, and Main Island has the largest concentration of people. Bermuda has one of the world’s highest population densities.

About three-fifths of the population is descended from African slaves brought to Bermuda before Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807. Whites include the British and descendants of Portuguese labourers from Madeira and the Azores who went to Bermuda in the mid-19th century.

English is the official language.

Christianity predominates, and more than one-fourth of the population is Anglican.

Bermuda is welcoming. Bermudians are friendly and the hotels offer hospitality as it used to be; from secluded, pastel-shaded cottage colonies to elegant guest-houses and exclusive hotels.

Bermuda is a sporting paradise, in and out of the water. There are a lot of golf courses. Almost 400 years of British heritage has given the country a host of museums and festivals.

Galapagos Islands

The Galapagos island group of the eastern Pacific Ocean, administratively part of Ecuador, consists of 13 major islands, 6 smaller islands, and scores of islets and rocks. Their total land area of 3,093 square miles is scattered over 23,000 square miles of ocean.

The existing Galapagos Islands were formed between 700,000 and 5000,000 years ago, making them geologically young. They are formed of lava piles and dotted with volcanoes, many of which are periodically active. The islands have thousands of plant and animal species, of which the vast majority are endemic. Its giant tortoises are thought to have some of the longest life spans (up to 150 years) of any creature on Earth.

The largest of islands, Isabella, is approximately 82 miles long and constitutes more then half of the total land area of the archipelago. The second largest island is Santa Cruz.

The islands’ human inhabitants, mostly Ecuadorians, live in settlements on San Cristobel, Santa Maria, Isabella, and Santa Cruz islands. Some of the islands are virtually untouched by humans, but many have been altered by the introduction of nonnative plants, the growth of the local human population, and tourist traffic. Tourism, fishing, and agriculture are the main economic activities.

In 1978 UNESCO added the islands to its World Heritage List.

The Philippines

The Philippines is located on the archipelago of some 7,000 islands stretching more than 1,000 miles along the south-eastern rim of Asia, with the northern islands about 330 miles from China and the south-western tip about 30 miles from Malaysia.

The Republic of the Philippines is an independent state. Its capital is Manila.

The dominant racial stock is Malay, with an admixture of Indonesian and Mongoloid strains. Chinese, Americans and Spaniards constitute the largest alien minorities. Filipinos speak more than 70 Philippine languages and dialects. The official language is Filipino, with English serving as a lingua franca.

The islands are rich in mineral resources. The chief agricultural products are manila hemp, copra, sugar, rice, corn, pine-apple, and tobacco.

Luzon is the largest island in the Philippines, and in its northern half the rice terraces sprawl over the vast Gran Cordillera. Creating level farmland out of hillsides is very demanding in itself but it is much more difficult to irrigate the hillsides from top to bottom creating payo, level pond-fields, that can retain water, soil and their integrity season after season. This is achieved by a phenomenal system of channeling river- and rainwater, and using dry-stone masonry on the slopes. Not that the payo are just for rice. In the pond-fields, local people catch fish, ducks, frogs, shellfish, snails and crickets, and also grow a variety of crops, including sweet potatoes and taro, on small mounds above the water-level.