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    The Perilous Hunt for Coconut Crabs on a Remote Polynesian Island

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    We meet Adams Maihota outside his house in the dead of night. A crab hunter, he wears white plastic sandals, board shorts, a tank top and a cummerbund to hold lengths of twine. He picks a sprig of wild mint and tucks it behind his ear for good luck.The photographer Eric Guth and I follow Mr. Maihota’s blazing headlamp into the forest in search of coconut crabs, known locally as kaveu. They are the largest land invertebrate in the world, and, boiled or stir-fried with coconut milk, they are delicious. Since the cessation of phosphate mining here in 1966, they have become one of Makatea’s largest exports.Coconut crabs (Birgus latro) are the largest land invertebrate in the world and seem perfectly adapted to an island full of holes. (They can climb just about anything.)It’s ankle-breaking terrain. We negotiate the roots of pandanus trees and never-ending feo, a Polynesian term for the old reef rocks that stick up everywhere. Vegetation slaps our faces and legs, and our skin becomes slick with sweat.The traps, which Mr. Maihota laid earlier that week, consist of notched coconuts tied to trees with fibers from their own husks. When we reach one, we turn off our lights to approach quietly. Then, Mr. Maihota pounces.A moment later, he stands up with a sky-blue crab pedaling its ten legs in broad circles. Even with its fleshy abdomen curled under the rest of its body, the animal is much longer than the hunter’s hand.A crab’s pincers can easily break fingers, so before placing them in his pack, Mr. Maihota grabs some twine from his cummerbund and wraps the animal to immobilize it.Each one is like a little escape artist. “He knows how to undo it all,” says Mr. Maihota, “and after that, he will pinch you in the back.”Makatea, part of the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia, sits in the South Pacific about 150 miles northeast of Tahiti. It’s a small uplifted coral atoll, barely four and a half miles across at its widest point, with steep limestone cliffs that rise as high as 250 feet straight out of the sea.About two-thirds of Makatea is still primary forest, an ecosystem that is increasingly rare in the Tuamotu Archipelago.From 1908 until 1966, Makatea was home to the largest industrial project in French Polynesia: Eleven million tons of phosphate-rich sand were dug out and exported for agriculture, pharmaceuticals and munitions. When the mining ceased, the population fell from around 3,000 to less than 100. Today, there are about 80 full-time residents. Most of them live in the central part of the island, close to the ruins of the old mining town, which is now rotting into the jungle.Makatea’s old mining town has fallen into disrepair.One-third of Makatea consists of a maze of more than a million deep, circular holes, known as the extraction zone — a legacy of the mining operations. Crossing into that area, especially at night, when coconut crabs are active, can be deadly. Many of the holes are over 100 feet deep, and the rock ledges between them are narrow. Still, some hunters do it anyway, intent on reaching the rich crab habitat on the other side.The extraction zone, viewed from above. During the mining era, laborers dug phosphate rich sand out of these naturally occurring limestone cylinders. Now they stand empty and pose a great risk to anyone trying to cross through the area.One evening before sunset, a hunter named Teiki Ah-scha meets us in a notoriously dangerous area called Le Bureau, so named for the mining buildings that used to be there. Wearing flip-flops, Mr. Ah-scha trots around the holes and balances on their edges. When he goes hunting across the extraction zone, he comes home in the dark with a sack full of crabs on his back.Teiki Ah-scha is comfortable enough in the dangerous environment to walk around in flip-flops.A set of cavernous holes.Teiki Ah-scha skirts the edge of the once-active phosphate extraction zone.Mr. Maihota, too, used to hunt this way — and he tells me that he misses it. But ever since his wife fell into a shallow hole a few months before our visit in 2019, she has forbidden him to cross the extraction zone. Instead, he sets traps around the village.Coconut crabs are adventurous omnivores. They eat fruits, nuts, vegetation and carrion, as well as the occasional bird or rat.Coconut crabs inhabit a broad range, from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean to the Pitcairn Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. They were part of local diets long before the mining era. The largest specimens, “les monstres,” can be the length of your arm and live for a century.There hasn’t been a population study on Makatea, so the crab’s conservation status is unclear — though at night, rattling across the rocks, they seem to be everywhere.The pastel hues of a coconut crab belie its terrific power; these pincers are stronger than the biting force of most land predators.Crabs are sold at the local grocery store, but they can also be used as currency. Five average-size crabs earn about $50 in store credit.When we catch crabs that aren’t legal — either females or those less than six centimeters across the carapace — Mr. Maihota lets them go.If the islanders are not careful, he says, the crabs might not be around for future generations. In many places across the Indo-Pacific, the animals have been hunted to the point of extirpation, or local extinction.Reretini Viritua wanders through the forest near her home to set coconut crab traps.Crab traps are made from fallen coconuts.Makatea is at a crossroads. Half a century after the first mining era, there is a pending proposal for more phosphate extraction. Though the island’s mayor and other supporters cite the economic benefits of work and revenue, opponents say that new industrial activity would destroy the island, including its fledgling tourism industry.“We cannot make her suffer again,” one woman tells me, invoking the island as a living being.Makatea’s only port, called Temao, was built during the mining era. Remnants of the crane and loading docks still stand.Still, it’s hard to make a living here. “There is no work,” Mr. Maihota says, as we stand under the stars and drip sweat onto the forest floor. He doesn’t want to talk about the mine. The previous month, he shipped out 70 coconut crabs for $10 each to his buyers in Tahiti.In popular hunting spots, hunters say the crabs are smaller or fewer, but hunters rely on the income and nobody has the full picture of how the population is doing overall.Coconut crabs must be carefully bound and gently packed in moist leaves to ensure their survival on their voyage to Tahiti.We visit Mr. Maihota’s garden the next morning where the crabs are sequestered in individual boxes to keep them from attacking each other. He’ll feed them coconut and water to purge their systems, since, in the wild, they eat all manner of food, including carrion.Captive crabs are kept separate to protect them from each other. Hunters feed them coconut and water to purge their systems before sending them to their buyers.By daylight, their shells are rainbows of purple, white, orange, along with many shades of blue. For now at least — without mining, and while harvests are still sustainable — they seem perfectly adapted to Makatea, holes and all.The extraction zone at sunset.The color of some crabs matches that of the sky, though they turn red when they are cooked.Eric Guth is a documentary photographer based in the Pacific Northwest. You can follow his work on Instagram.Jennifer Kingsley is a Canadian writer and journalist. You can follow her work on Twitter and Instagram.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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    Covid and Travel: Why an Estimated 100,000 Americans Abroad Face Passport Problems

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    Consular appointments for U.S. citizens overseas are nearly impossible to come by as many embassies, plagued by Covid restrictions and staff reductions, remain all but closed. Yona Shemesh, 24, was born in Los Angeles, but he moved to Israel with his family at age 9. In July 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, he booked a ticket to Los Angeles to visit his grandparents in June 2021, knowing that he would have nearly an entire year to renew his American passport, which had long since expired.Eight months later, he was still trying to get an appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to do just that.About 9 million U.S. citizens currently live abroad, and as the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel finally appears, immigration lawyers estimate more than 100,000 can’t get travel documents to return to the United States.Despite the State Department making headway on a massive backlog of passport applications in the early months of the pandemic, many consulates and embassies abroad, plagued by Covid-19 restrictions and staffing reductions, remain closed for all but emergency services. Travel is restarting, but for American expats who had a baby abroad in the past year or saw their passport expire during the pandemic, elusive appointments for documents are keeping them grounded.“It’s a real mess,” said Jennifer Minear, an immigration attorney and the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It’s a giant, multilayered onion of a problem and the reduction of staff as a result of Covid at the consular posts has really thrown the State Department for a loop.”Michael Wildes, the managing partner of the law firm Wildes & Weinberg, P.C., which specializes in immigration law, estimates that the number of stranded Americans abroad is in the hundreds of thousands.“Our offices have been inundated,” he said. “We’ve been getting at least 1,200 calls a week on this, which is about 50 percent more than last year. The problem is more robust than people realize, and this isn’t how a 21st-century society should work.”Ballooning backlog, endless delaysIn Israel alone, the U.S. Embassy has a passport backlog of 15,000 applications, according to The Jerusalem Post. American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy organization for U.S. expats, sent an official request to the State Department in October 2020 to prioritize Americans’ access to consular services abroad, “but people are still experiencing delays,” said the organization’s executive director, Marylouise Serrato.In Mexico, which is believed to have more American expats than any other country, a recent search on the appointment database for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City showed zero available appointments for passport services, even with emergency circumstances (appointments from July onward have not yet been released).At the U.S. Embassy in London, the availability of appointments for both in-person passport renewals and obtaining an official record of a child’s claim to U.S. citizenship, known as a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, plummeted when Britain went back into lockdown last fall. Amanda Brill, a London-based U.S. immigration attorney, said that since November, appointments have been nonexistent for both. “You can imagine that if you’re a U.S. citizen and you’ve had a baby in the past six months, it is frustrating at best and incredibly stressful for citizens returning to America,” she said.And as of early April, 75 percent of U.S. consulates abroad remained at least partially closed. The State Department will not release numbers on how many Americans are awaiting passport appointments around the world, but the size of the backlog for interviews for approved U.S. immigration visas — which are also handled by the State Department and have been affected by the same slowdown — gives a sense of the challenge. In January 2020, there was a backlog of 75,000 immigrant visas for those wishing to come to the United States; as of February 2021, the backlog had ballooned to 473,000.Vicious mix of politics and the pandemicState Department officials would not offer specifics on wait times for appointments and passport services at their embassies, but they said in a statement that Americans should expect delays when applying for nonemergency passport or citizenship services, and that operating hours vary significantly between embassies, as each is facing different Covid-19 restrictions.Stateside, adult U.S. citizens can renew an expired passport by mail, a process which is currently taking 10 to 12 weeks, according to State Department officials. But in many countries abroad, citizens must apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate for the same service. Even in the countries where U.S. passport renewals are available by mail, travel documents for minors or for those whose passports expired before the age of 18 still need to be requested in person.The situation, said the immigration attorney Jessica Smith Bobadilla, was created by a vicious mix of politics and the pandemic. “The combination of Trump-era travel bans and the Covid-19 restrictions still in place seriously impacted the visa and passport-processing time frames and procedures by the Department of State like never before in recent history,” Ms. Bobadilla said.Appointments for saleMr. Shemesh, the dual citizen living in Israel, spent months logging onto the U.S. Embassy’s website daily at 10 a.m., which he heard on Facebook was the moment that appointments were released each day, to try to grab one. He repeatedly walked the two blocks from his Jerusalem apartment to the U.S. Embassy to ask the guards if they knew of any openings, and he sent multiple emails to consular officials. Everyone told him he simply needed to wait. Finally, with the deadline for his trip looming, he heard about a third-party broker in Israel who promised he could book him an appointment within weeks in exchange for $450.The State Department prohibits such practices, but the issue of bootleggers selling access to U.S. embassies is widespread enough that on Jan. 14, the Bureau of Consular Affairs issued a notice to registered passport courier companies warning them of consequences for pay-to-play offerings for appointments. David Alwadish, the founder of ItsEasy Passport & Visa, a passport-and-visa-expediting service, said that many of them are so small that they’re nearly impossible to track.“Since there is an online appointment system, anybody can log on, stockpile these appointments and resell them,” he said. “In the United States, they can be sold for $200 or $250, but out of the country they can charge much more.”Mr. Shemesh got the broker’s phone number and transferred the money, and in one day, he had a confirmed appointment.“I tried for eight months to get an appointment, and it was really a bummer because my money is something I have to work hard for. I paid more to renew my passport than I did on the ticket to Los Angeles. It felt like blackmail.”Desperate Americans in other countries have considered paying for other services, as well.Conner Gorry, an American journalist who lives in Cuba, tried for weeks to renew her expiring U.S. passport and considered chartering a plane from Havana to Miami where she could renew her passport by mail.Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesConner Gorry, 51, an American journalist who lives in Cuba, spent several frantic weeks trying to renew her expiring passport earlier this year. The U.S. Embassy in Havana is closed for all but emergency services. For six weeks, she tried to book an appointment, and received no response. Ms. Gorry grew so stressed that she developed gastritis, and at one point, she contemplated spending more than $13,000 to charter a plane from Havana to Miami, where she knew she would be able to renew her passport by mail.She eventually found a flight out of Havana, and flew to the U.S. with one week left on her passport. She is unsure of when she will return to Cuba. The situation, she said, made her furious.“The Covid thing is one thing. But the U.S. has citizens all over the world, and a diplomatic corps all over the world. What are they doing to protect and attend to us?”Dayna and Brian Lee, originally from Toronto, turned to an immigration lawyer when they could not book U.S. passport appointments for their infant twins born in New York City.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesDocuments for American citizens within the United States are also getting stuck in the backlog. When Dayna and Brian Lee, who are Tony Award-winning producers of “Angels in America,” had twin baby girls in early April, the bureaucratic headaches started before they even brought their newborn daughters from the hospital to their home in New York City, where they have lived for several years.The couple is originally from Toronto and their daughters, Emmy and Ella, are eligible for dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship but are currently without passports from either country. The infants must have American passports first so their parents can travel with them to Canada, where the girls will be able to also receive their Canadian passports. But for weeks after the girls were born, Mr. and Mrs. Lee were unable to book appointments at any U.S. passport office within a three-hour drive of New York City. They ended up turning to an immigration lawyer for help.“It’s so inexplicably stressful, mixed up with the overwhelming joy of having these two beautiful lives in front of you,” Mr. Lee said. “But we’ve made the decision that come hell or high water, we will be with our families this summer.”Elizabeth Goss, an immigration attorney based in Boston, said she expects delays and scheduling headaches for both visas and U.S. passports to last another year.“It’s like a cruise ship that needs to readjust,” she said. “It’s not a speedboat.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2021. More

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    The Dream: International Travel. The Reality: Chaos and Confusion.

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    The world beckons, especially for those who have been vaccinated, but would-be travelers face a difficult moment when travel possibilities are at odds with the facts of a still reeling world.In recent days, a steady stream of promising news has painted a rosy picture of the return of international leisure travel.More than 105 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated. Greece, Iceland and Croatia, among a growing list of countries, are now open to American tourists. Airlines are resuming overseas flights. And perhaps the biggest development of all: Come summer, fully vaccinated Americans will once again be welcome across Europe.But the optimism may be premature. At the moment, the broader reality is more chaotic, and more sobering.A set of swirling crosscurrents — including a surge in global coronavirus cases, lagging vaccine rollouts in tourist hot spots and the lack of a reliable system to verify vaccinations — may be setting the stage for a slow and tortured return to high-volume international travel, despite ambitious pronouncements and the pressures of a tourism industry hoping to avoid another period of economic strain.Reopening areas to vaccinated tourists is a calculated risk, said Dr. Sarah Fortune, the chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “My doomsday scenario,” she said, “is a mixing of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations in a setting where there is high viral load and high viral transmission.”At the same time, countries dependent on tourism revenue are pressing to admit more visitors. Most Caribbean countries are open to Americans, pending negative coronavirus tests — and some European countries are not far behind. Travel restrictions in Greece, where tourism accounts for around 25 percent of the country’s work force, were eased in mid-April, allowing for fully vaccinated travelers from the United States, Britain, Israel and European Union member states, among other places, to visit without quarantining or providing negative coronavirus tests. (A broader reopening is planned for later this month.)For now, it’s hard to know whether the travel industry is in the throes of a temporary transition or staring at the long-term complexities of a clash involving wishful thinking, the hard truths of a relentless pandemic and the possibility of responsible tourism.Whatever the case, there’s a churning array of forces affecting the prospects for overseas travel.Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which is normally crowded with tourists, was empty during a coronavirus lockdown in November. Germany is now in another lockdown. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesA dire global realityWould-be international travelers, particularly vaccinated Americans, are entering an increasingly chaotic moment when dreams of travel — fueled by more than a year of confinement — are at odds with the facts of a largely shuttered and still reeling outside world.Globally, more new coronavirus cases were reported in recent weeks than at any point since the onset of the pandemic. The numbers are being driven by an uncontrolled outbreak in India, but they also account for troubling trends among European destinations popular with Americans, from France and Germany to Italy and Spain, some of which are now undergoing extended lockdowns and curfews.In Germany, for example, a new round of lockdowns, aimed at combating a third wave of infections, is expected to last until June.Such developments might be hard for Americans to fully appreciate from afar, given the promising trends at home. But government agencies have taken note.In April, the U.S. State Department vastly expanded the list of countries in its “Level 4: Do Not Travel” category, adding, among dozens of destinations, Mexico, Canada and Britain, three of the most popular destinations for Americans. Many Caribbean countries, including the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, are also at Level 4.In India, which is facing a cataclysmic surge, the presence of a potentially more menacing variant — possibly more dangerous to children, and against which vaccines may be less effective — is complicating the crisis. For the prospective traveler, it hints at the threat that emerging variants could play in the months and years to come.Inequality and lagging vaccine rolloutsOutside the United States, vaccination numbers remain comparatively low — in some cases, alarmingly so.In Italy, around 11 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. The number in Mexico, historically the country most visited by American tourists, stands at around 6 percent. In Canada, it’s at 3 percent — though that number is partly explained by the long interval between first and second doses there. By comparison, the United States just passed the 32 percent mark.While many of these percentages have been rising more quickly in recent weeks, there is also reason to believe that progress in some countries may stall.Global vaccine supplies have been disrupted by the surge of coronavirus cases in India, which has curtailed exports in order to meet growing domestic demands. Like most countries, Canada, for example, is entirely dependent on foreign sources for its vaccine supply; as a measure of the share of its population that is fully vaccinated, Canada now lags behind more than 50 other nations.Meanwhile, the push for a return to leisure travel raises questions about the ethics of vaccinated travelers demanding services among largely unvaccinated hosts. Such questions are especially complicated within communities that are economically dependent on tourism revenue.Dr. Mami Taniuchi, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Virginia, said that while the risk of breakthrough infections among vaccinated travelers is low, there is nevertheless an increased risk among unvaccinated workers who would not otherwise be coming together in such large numbers, or in such close quarters, to accommodate tourists.“The risks among vaccinated travelers are significantly reduced, but I worry about the risk of transmission among the people who are working around them,” Dr. Taniuchi said. It would help, she added, if travel workers were part of priority vaccination plans.“In a situation where there’s a mixing of people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated, most of the transmission events are going to be among those who are not vaccinated,” she said.The trouble with ‘vaccine passports’Health certificates that prove one’s immunization status — commonly referred to as “vaccine passports” — have been touted as keys to unlocking international travel. But so far the prospect of developing an easy-to-use and widely accepted digital certificate has been tripped up by a web of bureaucratic, logistical and technical snags.The Biden administration has ruled out the possibility of a centralized federal vaccination database. Instead, individual states (and some cities and territories) have been maintaining a patchwork of records. Any company or organization hoping to develop a digital vaccine certificate in the United States would therefore need to track down immunization data from a range of registries.At present, the most viable option for Americans to prove their immunization status while traveling internationally is to present the Covid-19 vaccination record cards they received when they got their shots. But the cards are easily forged. Several states have offered downloadable PDFs of the cards freely on their websites; fakes have even been offered for sale on TikTok, eBay and Craigslist.The development of digital health certificates is a multidimensional challenge, involving public policy, public health, customer experience and international cooperation, said Eric Piscini, who has overseen the development of IBM’s health passport app, Digital Health Pass.“I’m very optimistic about the long term,” Mr. Piscini said, “but the road is not easy.” He estimated that the European Commission’s Digital Green Certificate won’t be fully operational until late June or July. Integration with platforms beyond Europe will take time.Until then, he said, countries like Greece — which, for now, is verifying visitors’ immunization statuses with easily forged paper certificates — may face both a lack of trust from travelers and pushback from locals who fear that the policies are putting them at risk.Chairs were piled up in front of a restaurant that was closed because of lockdowns in Paris in March.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAltered destinationsEven if international tourists could travel safely and securely, and without risking the well-being of their hosts, visitors may face yet another impediment: Their destinations may lack many of their usual draws.Throughout the world, the pandemic has shuttered museums, forced restaurants to close and curtailed countless other cultural offerings. Many regions in Europe are subject to local curfews that come and go as case numbers fluctuate. Last month in Spain, confusion reigned over whether socially distanced beachgoers and sunbathers were required to wear masks, though the rule was eventually clarified. (They aren’t.)All of which suggests that, in the near future, there may be a gap between tourists’ expectations and their destinations’ restricted realities.In Paris, for example, bars and restaurants have been closed since the end of October. So, too, are museums — including the Louvre, normally one of the most visited museums in the world. Nighttime curfews, from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., have emptied the city’s streets.In late April, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced plans to relax certain restrictions beginning on May 19, but he left open the possibility of regional delays. The country, he said, will be able to pull an “emergency brake” in certain places, if need be.“I really don’t know what’s going to be attractive to tourists in Paris, now or in the near future,” said Yumi Kayayan, a travel writer who lives near the Louvre, citing a dearth of cultural offerings. The rules governing curfews and regional restrictions, she added, would be difficult for foreigners to make sense of. “To be honest, the rules are very confusing right now even for Parisians,” she said.The big picture, and the costsIn 2019, the number of international tourist arrivals reached 1.5 billion globally — a staggering figure. But grasping the scale of international travel, and the industries that have grown to support and encourage it, is central to understanding the forces pressing now for its return.Governments, tourism boards, airlines, hotel companies, travel agencies and cruise operators, along with tour bus drivers, housekeepers, local guides, pilots, restaurateurs, museum operators, bed-and-breakfast hosts, entertainers, caterers, fishermen, shopkeepers and bar owners — in short, all the people standing to profit from tourism dollars — are facing extreme economic pressure not to lose out on another tourism season. The past year without travel, when international arrivals dropped from 1.5 billion to 381 million, was devastating. For many, another similar year would be unthinkable.And so an already stressed system has been forced to confront an existential quandary: Do countries opt for continuing international lockdowns, or do they increase the risk of disease and court much-needed tourism revenue? New Zealand, which, through a combination of stringent lockdowns, border closures and strict quarantines, has all but eliminated the coronavirus from its shores, has staked its claim at one end of the spectrum. Greece appears to be claiming the other.There are no easy answers, no universal solutions. In many cases, the onus will fall on individual tourists — the fortunate and vaccinated few, plied with incentives and feverish for travel — to thoughtfully navigate the ethical considerations.Of all the variables, only one thing seems inevitable: The choices we make, whether to venture out or huddle close to home, are unlikely to bode well for the individual workers — the unfortunate and unvaccinated many — who, by dint of circumstance, are vulnerable to both the virus and the teetering fortunes of a hard-hit industry.“I do think we’ve learned important lessons over the course of the year about how to engage more safely in public spaces,” said Dr. Fortune, who emphasized that it’s important for vaccinated travelers to continue testing, wearing masks and practicing social distancing.“I think the real danger,” she added, “is that the most vulnerable people are the ones who have the least ability to mitigate risk.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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    Mozambique Mints a New National Park — and Surveys Its Riches

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    When you stand in the Chimanimani Mountains, it’s difficult to reconcile their present serenity with their beleaguered past. From the valleys below, enormous walls of gray stone rise above dense deciduous forests. Hidden among various crevices are ancient rock paintings, made in the late Stone Age by the San people, also known as Bushmen; they depict dancing men and women, and hunting parties chasing after elephants. There’s even a painting of a crocodile so enormous that it may forever deter you from the riverbank.As you climb higher, toward Mount Binga, Mozambique’s highest peak, the forests flatten into expanses of montane grasslands. Wild, isolated, lost in time, it’s a place where rich local traditions live on, where people still talk about ancestral spirits and sacred rituals. A local guide there once told me about a sacred mountain, Nhamabombe, where rainmakers still go to make rain.A local guide crosses the Rio Mussapa at dusk.Ancient rock art made by the San people, or Bushmen.It’s not everyday that a country with a past rife with war and environmental destruction fulfills an ambitious conservation goal. But that’s exactly what happened last year in Mozambique when, after overhauling its environmental code, the country officially designated Chimanimani as a new national park.Rain clouds move in as the sun sets, casting the valley in an otherworldly glow.Mozambique has seen its share of heartache, and Chimanimani is no exception. After the country gained independence from Portuguese colonizers in 1975, it was plunged into civil war. As many as one million Mozambicans died. So, too, did untold numbers of wild animals, which were hunted for their meat or whose parts were traded for weapons.The Chimanimani Mountains became a frontline, and their mountain passes became transits for guerrilla soldiers during both the Rhodesian Bush War, which lasted from 1964 until 1979, and the Mozambican Civil War, which stretched from 1977 until 1992.Victor Américo, a student in the master’s program in conservation biology for Mozambican students at Gorongosa National Park, sets a mist net to capture bats.Callie Gesmundo and Zak Pohlen, two ornithologists, pull mites from the feathers of a red-capped robin-chat. The mites were sent to a specialist for further study. (The pair has already contributed to the discovery of a new mite species.)Located on the Zimbabwe border about 90 miles southwest of Gorongosa, Mozambique’s most famous national park, Chimanimani National Park marks the latest triumph in an environmental renaissance for a country where, just 30 years ago, armies were still funding wars with the blood of poached wildlife.Jorge Manuel Machinga, a ranger, leads two botanists, Bart Wursten and Petra Ballings, back to camp. Mr. Wursten has done nearly a dozen field expeditions in the area — and “I still keep finding new species of plants; new to me, new to the region and even occasionally new to science,” he said.Across the country, Mozambique’s national parks authority, the National Administration of Conservation Areas, is working with private partners to bolster wildlife numbers and restore ecosystem function. The most prominent projects are in Gorongosa National Park. More

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    On the Water in Alaska, Where Salmon Fishing Dreams Live On

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    My camera lens is pressed against the window of the small floatplane as it flies below a thick ceiling of clouds. The mist clings to the hillsides of a temperate rainforest that descend steeply to the rocky coastline of southeast Alaska.The plane banks, and a tiny village comes into view. A scattering of houses are built on stilts on the water’s edge. We circle and I see fishing boats tied up next to a large dock and a floating post office. The pilot throttles down and the pontoons skim across the glassy water inside the bay. We taxi to the public dock and I step out in front of the Point Baker general store.The fishing village of Point Baker, home to about 20 Alaskans.A floatplane on its weekly route between villages in southeast Alaska.Life along the Alaska coast is economically and culturally dependent on fishing. Each summer, millions of salmon — after maturing in the ocean — begin their journey back to the rivers in which they were spawned. Fishermen, along with whales, eagles and bears, share in the abundance.For many in Alaska, salmon represent the wild, untamed landscape that makes their home so special.A pink salmon — or “humpy,” as they’re called locally — spawns in a small creek. Alaska has over 6,000 miles of coastline, more than four times that of any other state. There are a multitude of tiny fishing villages scattered along the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and many are only accessible by boat or plane. A number of these remote communities are Indigenous villages, where fishing has been a cornerstone of life for thousands of years.Klawock, an Alaska Native community, has been home to the Tlingit people for thousands of years.A fisherman in Lynn Canal, an inlet into southeast Alaska.I grew up fishing in the rivers and lakes of Vermont. My fascination with fish led me to study the history of early industrialization in New England and to gain an understanding of the toll that pollution, dams and overfishing had on East Coast waterways.Atlantic salmon were once abundant in the Northeast, but their numbers have significantly decreased.Bristol Bay is home to the largest sockeye salmon run on earth.A fisherman prepares his boat for the Bristol Bay sockeye season in Dillingham, Alaska.My hunger grew to witness a river teeming with wild salmon and a culture still interdependent with the bounty of the ocean. After college, I began traveling to Alaska annually to fly fish and pursue work as a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker.A tributary of the Chilkat River in Haines, Alaska, runs blue with glacial meltwater.On the dock in Point Baker, I load my bag onto the boat of my friend Joe Sebastian, a local fisherman. Joe fires up the diesel engine and we pull out of the harbor.Joe, originally from the Midwest, moved to Point Baker in 1978 with the hopes of becoming an independent fisherman. When he arrived, he bought a commercial fishing permit for $20 and a small wooden skiff with a six-horsepower outboard motor for about $1,000.“The world was a lot less complicated back then,” he says.Joe began to fish, learning the ins and outs of salmon trolling from the old-timers who had called Alaska home since before it became a state. Trolling is a highly selective, low-impact method of fishing that involves dragging lines through the water and catching individual salmon that choose to bite the hooks. Not to be confused with trawling, which entails the use of giant drag nets, trolling is slower and lower volume than other methods of salmon fishing. It also maintains the highest quality of fish.Joe admires an ocean-bright coho salmon caught near his home in Point Baker.Freshly caught coho salmon.After a decade of fishing in Alaska, Joe and his wife, Joan, bought a 42-foot wooden fishing boat. They raised their children in Point Baker in the winter, and on their boat, the Alta E, in the summer.“Honestly, it wasn’t always a great time — seasickness, cramped quarters and clothes that smelled like fish,” their daughter Elsa, now 30, says, reflecting on her childhood. Still, she became a fisherman anyway. “Spending summers on the ocean becomes who you are,” she says. “I love the way that fishing makes me fundamentally part of an ecosystem.”Elsa Sebastian aboard her parents’ boat, the Alta E.Elsa fillets some of the day’s catch for the family smokehouse.Alaska is home to five species of Pacific salmon. These fish are anadromous; they begin their lives in freshwater rivers and lakes and eventually make their way down rivers and into the ocean. Depending on the species, salmon may spend between about one and seven years in the ocean before beginning their journey home to the freshwater where they were born.The ability of salmon to find their way home is one of nature’s greatest miracles. Among other navigational aids, salmon can detect a single drop of water from its home stream mixed in 250 gallons of saltwater.Once salmon enter their native watershed, some spawn immediately and others travel a thousand miles or more upriver. Soon after reproducing, they die and decompose.Processing a salmon by the light of a headlamp.Over the last 50 years, anadromous fish populations have declined significantly in California, Oregon and Washington. Alaska remains the United State’s last great salmon stronghold.Salmon are extremely sensitive to water quality and depend on cold, clean, oxygenated water to survive — and Alaska is not immune to the same threats that have decimated salmon farther south. Logging and mining degrade some salmon habitat in Alaska, and climate change is compounding these impacts.Jenny Bennis, a local Yup’ik fisherwoman, picks salmon from a beach net in Bristol Bay. Katherine Carscallen, a fisherwoman and activist in Dillingham, Alaska, navigates her boat while fishing at the mouth of the Nushagak River.Many Alaskans are still concerned about the threat of the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, the permit for which was denied by the Army Corps of Engineers in November. This region of southwestern Alaska supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon run. Since the 1960s, more than half of the sockeye salmon returning to Bristol Bay have been caught each year, without an effect on their overall abundance, according to Daniel Schindler, a biologist at the University of Washington, in Seattle.Dillingham, its population around 2,300, is the largest community in Bristol Bay, despite the fact that there are no roads connecting the community to the outside world.Each summer, thousands of seasonal workers fly into Dillingham to work on boats or in processing plants.Lured by this legendary fishery, a few friends fly in to Dillingham to join me on a 10-day fly-fishing excursion deep in the backcountry, on the fringes of the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge. We load a floatplane with food, an inflatable raft, fishing rods and camping gear. We fly low over the tundra, crossing river after river full of salmon. From a few hundred feet above, we can see the red sockeye in dense schools in the slow eddies of the rivers.We land on an alpine lake at the headwaters of the Goodnews River, inflate our raft and float downstream. We begin casting, and the action is nonstop. Oliver Sutro, a fisherman, displays a Chinook salmon.For three friends who grew up in New England, the trip is the manifestation of a dream we’ve held our whole lives. As children we stared into deep pools of rivers in New England, imagining them pulsing with monster fish.Here in Alaska, that dream is still alive.Oliver Sutro casts into the current on the Goodnews River.A campsite on the bank of the Goodnews River in southwestern Alaska.Colin Arisman is a nonfiction filmmaker, photographer and writer. You can follow his work on Vimeo and Instagram.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. 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    Signs of Economic Hope Are Growing, Some With Superlatives

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    Soaring retail sales and a sharp drop in jobless claims are the latest reflection of a quickening recovery and suggest a year of remarkable growth.The American economic recovery is gathering steam, renewing confidence that a vibrant revival awaits as the pandemic recedes.After months of false starts, evidence is mounting that the economy has definitively turned a corner, with more growth on the horizon. Job gains last month were the strongest since August. There are signs that the snarled global supply chain may be untangling.And in dual reports on Thursday, the government reported more good news: Retail sales in March blew past expectations, rising nearly 10 percent, and jobless claims last week fell to their lowest level of the pandemic.Even as the country is still straining to contain the virus, as millions of people remain unemployed and as a large portion of the population remains unvaccinated, the data suggests that the long-heralded economic rebound is within reach.“I’m feeling quite optimistic,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “I think what we’re seeing is evidence of this booming economy that we’re going to be seeing over the coming months.”In the year since the coronavirus smothered the economy, economists have held out hope for a significant turnaround defined by plentiful job opportunities, higher wages and supercharged spending after months of pent-up demand. But the tantalizing promise at times appeared unlikely at best: After a period of growth over the summer, job gains largely stalled heading into the new year. New state unemployment claims spiked to over a million in one week in January. Retail sales, bolstered by stimulus payments, jumped in January only to slide the next month.Monthly Retail Sales

    Seasonally adjusted advance monthly sales for retail and food services.Source: Commerce DepartmentThe New York TimesYet recent weeks have delivered increasing reason for hope. With a fresh round of federal payments in their pockets and vaccines in their arms, many Americans have begun shopping and dining out with renewed alacrity, driving retail sales. A 9.8 percent increase last month was a strong comeback from the nearly 3 percent drop in February, when previous stimulus money had dissipated and a series of winter storms made travel difficult across much of the United States.The increase was broad-based, including big-ticket purchases like cars and discretionary spending on sporting goods, which economists interpreted as a sign of strong household income and growing optimism. Sales of clothing and accessories rose 18 percent, while restaurants and bars recorded a 13 percent increase — demonstrating how many areas of consumption are bouncing back.“I found it very encouraging that there are signs that people are waking up from hibernation, buying new clothes and going out to restaurants,” said Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. chief economist at S&P Global. “I think people are feeling optimistic that the United States will win the war on the virus. And they have good reason to be hopeful.”Many economists said the strong retail sales were likely to continue through the spring, even after the new stimulus payments are used up.The gradual return to normal activities as business restrictions ease has in turn prompted employers to recall workers — and this time, to hold on to them.The Labor Department reported on Thursday that the number of first-time claims for state unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, to about 613,000, the lowest level since the start of the pandemic. That was a decline of 153,000, the largest week-over-week decrease since the summer.In addition, 132,000 new claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program that covers freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits. That was a decline of 20,000 from the previous week.“We’re gaining momentum here, which is just unquestionable,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton.There are also broader signs of a comeback.After a devastating year, airlines are growing increasingly hopeful as travelers return. Over the past month, more than one million people were screened each day at federal airport checkpoints, according to the Transportation Security Administration, a signal that a sustained travel recovery is underway.As a result, American Airlines said this week that it expected to sell more than 90 percent as many tickets within the United States this summer as it did in the summer of 2019. Delta Air Lines said Thursday that it had recovered about 85 percent of its domestic leisure sales. If trends hold, the airline said, it could be profitable again by the summer.“A year after the onset of the pandemic, travelers are gaining confidence and beginning to reclaim their lives,” Ed Bastian, the company’s chief executive, said in announcing the airline’s first-quarter financial results. “Delta is accelerating into the recovery.”Moreover, the nation’s ports are handling record cargo volumes as consumers stock up. March was the busiest month on record for the Port of Oakland, while the Port of Los Angeles, the main point of entry for goods from Asia, said the first three months of the year were the busiest first quarter in its 114-year history.“As more Americans get vaccinated, businesses reopen and the economy strengthens, consumers continue to purchase goods at a dizzying pace,” Gene Seroka, the port’s executive director, said in a statement.For months, the port, like others around the world, has been overwhelmed by an influx of cargo, forcing container ships to wait days offshore to unload their goods. In many cases, the containers are unloaded and immediately sent back so they can be filled for another eastbound trip. While the backlog remains, Mr. Seroka said, it is expected to be eliminated in the coming months.The Port of Los Angeles, the main point of entry for goods from Asia, said the first three months of this year were the busiest first quarter in its 114-year history.Coley Brown for The New York TimesThe improving signs on so many fronts are being reflected in brightening forecasts for the months ahead. Morgan Stanley said Thursday that it expected the economy to grow 7.5 percent in 2021, after shrinking 3.5 percent in 2020. That would be the strongest growth rate for a calendar year since the 1950s.But if the economy appears to be on the upswing, the recovery is still fragile. Weekly applications for unemployment claims have remained stubbornly high for months, causing frustration even as businesses reopen and vaccination rates increase. They have also been a volatile economic indicator, temporarily dipping to their lowest level of the pandemic in mid-March before rising again in recent weeks.“You’re still not popping champagne corks,” Ms. Swonk said. “I will breathe again — and breathe easy again — once we get these numbers back down in the 200,000 range.”What’s more, concerns about workplace safety persist, especially for younger workers who have just become eligible for vaccinations. Many children are still attending schools remotely, complicating the full-time work prospects for their caregivers.Jobless claims for the next few months could remain significantly elevated as the labor market adjusts to a new normal.“The job market conditions for job seekers have really improved extremely quickly between January and now,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the job site ZipRecruiter. “But there are still huge barriers to returning to work.”The rebound in March sales also shows how consumer spending — and the economic rebound as a whole — remains highly dependent on government support.President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was signed into law last month, provides $1,400-a-person payments to most households. The payments began arriving around March 17, and by the end of the month, economists saw signs that spending was ramping up again, such as increased hotel occupancy and travel through airports.Economists at Morgan Stanley had predicted that core retail sales would jump 6.5 percent in March, driven by the payments. The investment bank said only 30 percent of consumers tended to spend their payments within 10 days, suggesting that many have money on hand that could strengthen April sales as well.Other factors are contributing to the brightening recovery prospects. Mr. Biden moved up the deadline for states to make all adults eligible for vaccination to April 19, and every state has complied, laying the groundwork for more people to rejoin the work force. Students who have been learning remotely are increasingly returning to the classroom, a shift that will especially benefit women, who have been disproportionately sidelined during the pandemic by caregiving duties.Echoing the general perception that post-pandemic life is beckoning, American consumers are feeling increasingly upbeat. One measure of sentiment, tabulated by the Conference Board, showed that consumer confidence in March recorded its biggest one-month gain in nearly a decade, fueled by increased income and stronger business and employment expectations.“This was the deepest, swiftest recession ever,” said Ms. Pollak, the ZipRecruiter economist. “But it’s also turning into the fastest recovery.”Ben Casselman contributed reporting. More

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    Glimpses of Sudan’s Forgotten Pyramids

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    The site was nearly deserted. A few locals were tidying up after recent restoration work, and young camel drivers were out looking for clients. In the midday heat, the bright glow of the desert helped focus my attention on the pyramids themselves.Situated on the east bank of the Nile, some 150 miles by car northeast of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, the Meroe pyramids — around 200 in total, many of them in ruins — seemed to be in perfect harmony with the surrounding landscape, as if the wind had smoothed their edges to accommodate them among the dunes.Camel drivers look for clients near the pyramids at Meroe.A local worker helps clean the site and manage the ever-drifting sand.Throughout the 30-year dictatorship of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who led Sudan through a long series of wars and famines, the pyramids of Meroe saw few international visitors and remained relatively unknown.But among the many consequences of the revolution that led to Mr. al-Bashir’s ouster in 2019 — along with the removal of Sudan in 2020 from the United States’ list of state sponsors of terrorism — was the hope that the country’s archaeological sites might receive broader attention and protections, not simply from researchers and international visitors but also from Sudanese citizens themselves.Tourists at Musawwarat es-Sufra, one of three archaeological sites — alongside Meroe and Naqa — known collectively as the Island of Meroe.I traveled to Sudan in February and March of 2020, just a few days before pandemic lockdowns fell into place in my home country of Italy.I was attracted to a nation that had managed — through the strength, creativity and determination of its people — to free itself from a dictatorship. And I was keen to meet and photograph the protagonists and young actors of this historic moment.A truck transports local workers near Meroe.One of the pyramids at Meroe. Many of the structures were destroyed by plunderers in search of artifacts — most notably by Giuseppe Ferlini, an Italian treasure hunter.Late in 2018, Mr. al-Bashir, the former dictator, had ended subsidies on fuel and wheat, leading to a surge in prices. The reaction of the people, exhausted by economic crises, was not long in coming.A wave of demonstrations filled the streets of several towns, far beyond the capital Khartoum. These were Sudanese of all ethnicities, classes and generations — but above all students and young professionals.Inscriptions and graffiti on a column outside one of the temples at Musawwarat es-Sufra.During my visit, Amr Abdallah and Tawdia Abdalaziz, two young Sudanese doctors in their 20s, led me through the streets of Khartoum to see the symbolic sites of the revolution, showing me mile after mile of public art — graffiti, murals, verses — that marked the sites of the protests.When they told me about Meroe and Ancient Nubia, the name of the region that stretches between Egypt and northern Sudan, I discovered that the majority of Sudanese had never had the opportunity to visit these sites — including the doctors themselves.For me, as an Italian, it equated to never having had the chance to visit the Colosseum in Rome.Structures at Meroe.Local tourists riding camels near the pyramids.The ancient city of Meroe — part of a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2011 — is a four-hour drive from Khartoum, northeast along the Nile River. The pyramids here, built between 2,700 and 2,300 years ago, stand as a testament to the grandeur of the Kingdom of Kush, a major power from the eighth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D.Compared to the monumental pyramids in Giza, Egypt, the structures at Meroe are significantly smaller — from around 30 to 100 feet tall, against the 455-foot-tall Great Pyramid — and their slopes steeper. As in Egypt, though, the pyramids serve as royal burial sites.The pyramids at Meroe are significantly smaller than their Egyptian counterparts — from around 30 to 100 feet tall, compared to the 455-foot-tall Great Pyramid of Giza.In recent years, the pyramids at Meroe — as well as other Sudanese archaeological sites up and down the Nile, including the pyramids at Nuri, farther north — have been threatened by rising floodwaters, as well as the continuing effects of wind and sand erosion.Plans for new hydroelectric dams also threaten certain archaeological sites in Sudan — as they have in the past, when the construction of the Merowe Dam displaced tens of thousands of residents and led to a frenzied archaeological hunt for artifacts before they were submerged by the dam’s reservoir.Perhaps the most infamous act of destruction at Meroe, however, is attributed to the Italian treasure hunter Giuseppe Ferlini, who in the 1830s destroyed several of the pyramids in a ruthless search for ancient artifacts.Local workers at Meroe.A structure known as the Roman Kiosk at the archaeological site of Naqa.With one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding his phone, Nour, our driver, was accustomed to bringing visitors to Meroe. Still, in his four-wheel-drive Toyota, we sometimes lost our way as we moved from one site to another, through vast stretches of deserts.Local tour guides at the entrance to Meroe invited us to take camel rides, eager to remind us that this is a time-tested, if often neglected, tourist site.Inscriptions inside the temple of Apedemak, or the Lion Temple, at Naqa.At the Naqa archaeological site, some 50 miles southwest of Meroe, the atmosphere was very different.We walked alone among the buildings, including a temple devoted to Apedemak, a lion-headed warrior god worshiped in Nubia. On the opposite side of the site, ram-shaped sculptures accompanied us to the entrance of the Amun temple, built around the first century A.D. and considered one the most important archaeological structures and tourist attractions in Sudan.The exterior of the temple of Apedemak, at Naqa.A colonnade of rams leading to Naqa’s Amun temple.Visitors, along with a local guide, outside the Amun temple.A stone’s throw from the temple of Amun, a golden sunset illuminated a small flock of sheep, which were followed by a young shepherd. Dusk would soon settle in. The drive back to Khartoum was a long one, and our driver warned me to speed up.A shepherd with his flock near the archaeological site of Naqa.Back in Khartoum, where the Nile River’s two main tributaries — the White Nile and the Blue Nile — meet, Dr. Amr and Dr. Tawdia, along with their friends, gathered to celebrate a birthday.Amid the songs and dances, Dr. Tawdia approached me to ask what I thought of her country’s archaeological beauties — and to discuss Sudan’s future.“The Sudanese people have the right to reclaim their country,” she said, adding that she and her friends long for a democratic society that can be open and accessible to everyone.And, she added, they want a country that can showcase its treasures to its visitors and its people.Alessio Mamo is an Italian photojournalist based in Catania, Sicily, who focuses on refugee displacement and humanitarian crises in the Middle East and the Balkans. You can follow his work on Instagram and Twitter.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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    Photos: How Covid Changed New York’s Economy

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    Aug. 23, 2020 Times Square Oct. 1, 2020 Inside the Astoria, Queens, home of a couple while they worked alongside their two small children As the virus marched across the United States last year,over 20 million jobs vanished in just one month, the worst toll since the Great Depression. In New York, where cases peaked […] More