Cape Verde

Lying 460 km off the West African coast, these volcanic islands are a beguiling cluster of extremes.
Each offers the traveller something different; you can visit Fogo's brooding, live volcano - and the people who live in it; hike the magnificent ribeiras of Santo Antão and windsurf on Ponta Preta's world famous break; laze on Boavista's endless white beaches and dive the shipwrecks off Sal; or just settle down with a cup of grogue and lose yourself in the melancholy sounds of the morna.

• Acommodations from hotels to homestays
• Frank advice on the islands'highlighys and lowlights
• How to journey smoothly around the islands
• Detailed hiking routes
• Vivid account of the nation's history and culture
• Newly expanded wildlife guide
• How to organise windsurfing and other watersports

Famous for their size and elegance in flight, albatrosses are familiar to anyone who has travelled through the southern oceans, and are a flagship family of conservation concern.
However, albatrosses are just one of several groups of 'pelagic' birds - those that visit land only to breed, and spend the rest of their lives far from the coast, soaring from ocean to ocean in a never-ending search for food.
Mysterious and graceful, these birds can present a formidable identification challenge to even the most experienced birder.
This book provides the answer - the first comprehensive guide to pelagic birds, the albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, storm-petrels and diving petrels.

• A comprehensive guide to 137 species of pelagic seabirds, with subspecies and phases fully illustrated.
• Concise information opposite plates is designed for use in the field, with tips for identification at sea, at close range and over distance.
• Confusion species included on plates to assist accurate identification.
• Detailed species accounts include colour distribution maps for every species.

This is the first comprehensive field guide dealing exclusively with the birds of this spectacular region.
Over 450 species are illustrated (By Chris Orgill and Tony Disley) with full details of all the plumages and major races likely to be encountered.
This is an absolute must-have for the birdwatcher planning a trip to any of the Atlantic Islands.

• The first comprehensive field guide to the birds of Macaronesian islands - the Canary Island, Madeira, Azores and Cape Verde Islands
• Covers all resident, migratory and vagrant species, including all subspecies that occur on the islands, many of which are endemic
• Stunning colour plates face concise, accurate text for rapid reference, allowing identification and ageing of all species in the region
• The ideal companion guide for visitors to these popular touris islands

This new field guide is a complete and convenient reference to every species of Cetacean, Pinniped and Sirenian in the world, along with the Marine and Sea Otters and the Polar Bear.
Every species is illustrated with colour paintings and photographs, chosen to illustrate the key field marks which can be used to separate each species in the field.
The author's unique depth of experience and knowledge, coupled with the artist's unrivalled skill, have come together to produce a neat, practical field guide that will enable any observer to quickly identify any mammals they may encounter at sea.

• All 129 species illustrated with over 500 beautiful new artworks
• Easily confused species are also shown together on comparison plates
• Over 475 stunning colour photographs
• Informative, up-to-date species distribution maps, including viewing hotspots
• includes a useful guide to some of the best marine mamal watching sites

Dutch translation:

De reis van de Beagle

ISBN: 90-254-1177-0

1993

When the Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27th December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime. The journal that he kept shows a naturalist making patient observations concerning geology and natural history as well as people, places and events.

H.M.S. Beagle arrived at the Cape Verde Islands on 16 January 1832 and anchored at Porto Praya, on the island of Santiago (spelled St. Jago, in Darwin's narrative). Darwin went ashore with two officers and rode to the village of Ribeira Grande, a few miles east of Porto Praya, to visit some Spanish ruins there, and returned to Porto Praya the next morning. On another day Darwin headed for St. Domingo, but became lost along the way and ended up at the village of Fuentes before heading back to the Beagle.

It was on Santiago that Darwin made his first curious discovery. He found a horizontal white band of shells within a cliff face along the shoreline of Porto Praya. The fact that this layer was forty-five feet above sea level raised some interesting questions for Darwin.

• It was obvious that this layer of shells was at one time under the ocean. How did it end up forty-five feet above sea level?
• Was it possible that small upward movements of the land raised the shell layer? More violent movements of the earth would have otherwise broken up the nearly horizontal line of shells.

The arrangement of the shell layer appeared to support Lyell's theory of a world slowly changing over great periods of time, a novel concept in Darwin's day. This observation, and many others like it, would later lead Darwin to develop his own theory of Raising Continents and Sinking Ocean Floors.

De reis van de Beagle is wel omschreven als de belangrijkste reis die ooit werd gemaakt. Charles Darwin deed tijdens die reis (1831-1836) zoveel kennis en inzicht op dat hij het beeld van het leven op aarde ingrijpend veranderde.
Met zijn boek "On the Origin of Species" maakte Darwin als eerste wetenschapper duidelijk dat de wereld niet in zes dagen is geschapen, maar dat er voortdurend evolutie plaatsvindt. Het leven op aarde blijkt in ontwikkeling.

In het Darwinjaar onderzocht de VPRO, in samenwerking met Teleac en het Vlaamse Canvas, de richting van die ontwikkeling. De VPRO voer opnieuw de route van de HMS Beagle met de clipper Stad Amsterdam.
Op Kaapverdië zette Darwin de eerste keer sinds zijn vertrek voet aan wal. Hier bleek zijn uitzonderlijk talent om met een onbevangen blik te kunnen observeren. Sarah Darwin observeert, in gezelschap van Redmond O'Hanlon, hetzelfde landschap.

Gedurende de reis van acht maanden kwamen er steeds nieuwe gasten aan boord van de clipper Stad Amsterdam. Om onderzoek te doen, te filosoferen, hun creativiteit te uiten, te schrijven, om kennis op te doen en om kennis te delen. Hun ervaringen waren iedere dag te volgen op de website via weblogs, foto's en video's, en natuurlijk te zien op televisie.

Een aantal gasten bleef vrijwel de gehele route aan boord.
De Britse biologe Sarah Darwin, achterachterkleindochter van Charles Darwin en moeder van twee jongens. Haar nieuwsgierigheid is vergelijkbaar met die van Charles Darwin en zij stapte door middel van deze avontuurlijke expeditie letterlijk in de voetsporen van haar voorvader.
Dirk Draulans, Vlaams bioloog, TV- presentator en schrijver. Hij probeert wetenschap toegankelijk en 'sexy' te maken en gaat daarbij uit van de meest recente wetenschappelijke inzichten.
De jonge talentvolle Britse Anthony Smith, de 'scheepskunstenaar'. Hij is gek van Darwin, wetenschap en kunst. De miniatuurversie van zijn beeld van Charles Darwin, reisde mee met de crew
De Britse reisboekenschrijver Redmond O' Hanlon: Een fervent reiziger en lezer. Hij nam zoveel mogelijk boeken mee aan boord, in de hoop dat hij niet meer aan wal zou worden gezet.