HUMAN PLANET EXPLORER

By Carlota Pérez

There are people who make reports to discover amazing human stories from around the world and show them on television. Some of them work for BBC. They take you at the ends of our planet in each episode. They have filmed nearly in 80 locations around the world: the arctic, mountains, oceans, jungles, grasslands, artic oceans, deserts, rivers and even the urban jungle.

The main explorers of this team are:

*Elizabeth White: Elizabeth is the director of Frozen Planet.

*Matt Swarbrick: Matt lived in Antarctica studying penguins and seals.

*Dan Rees: He is the producer and director, he is specialized in stories about the relationship between people and nature.

*Charlotte Scott: She is a trained marine biologist/zoologist.

*Fredi Devas: He worked on polar series (Frozen Planet), and in Damibia desert.

*George Mcgavin: He is expert on tropical insects.

*Chandden Hunter: He has been the filmmaker for over 10 years. He is (currently) the director on Frozen Planet.

SLOW TRAVEL

By Berta Ros & Anna Sopena

Slow travel is a new way to travel. With Slow Travel you experience a different type of travel by staying in one place longer and seeing the things that are near you. It is an easier, simpler and slower way of traveling. There are two ways to travel in this way: •You can spend a week in a place, on a trip to whatever destination. •You can visit what is near you instead of taking long day trips. Planning your trip takes time and work. You have to read guidebooks before you go to a place. It is also better to book your hotel six months or a year before you go, so that your journey will be perfectly planned. You can use a travel agent but it is better to make the reservations yourself. You can organize tours when you arrive. Remember that if you go too far you have to spend a few days recovering from jetlag.

Traveling to the Moon

By Marson Mesa

In 2008 NASA invited citizens of Earth to add their name to a list of people destined to travel to the Moon on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

If you “Send your name to the Moon”, you will form part of the wave of lunar explorers. The LRO mission is the first step in NASA's plans to return humans to the moon by 2020, and your name has reached it first. How cool is that?

Bryan and I did it because we want to travel to the moon, it will be fantastic, and we won’t go alone, we will go with all our school class.

A birding trip

By Nico Ordax

My dream journey is a great bird-watching trip. I'd like to take a trip to Morocco, to see all the birds there. I would go with Adouin Birding Tous (http://www.audouinbirding.net/)

Cristian Jensen Marcet and Iben Hove Sørensen established the company in 2005 to offer their own tours and activities. Their bird-watching trips are great, they are very nice people, and they know a lot about their job. Their trips are really interesting and you learn a lot from them.

The trip I am referring to is 11 days long and goes through the whole of Morocco. It is designed to present all of the typical and best birds in Morocco.

The first days comprise the arrival and a trip to the Massa National Park, to see some waders and other coastal and dryland birds. There is an excursion scheduled to another region, where visitors can see one of the rarest birds in all the Western Paleartic (a region which includes Europe, North Africa and East Asia), the Northern Bald Ibis.

The fourth day is a transition day, but with good options for seeing migrant raptors, waders and passerines on the journey to Tinerhir.

The following three days are based in Tinerhir, looking for very interesting desert birds, such as sand grouses, warblers, larks and many others, on the Tagdilt-Track. One day, a Houbara-Bustard, an extremely rare bird, was seen just ten meters from a car.

Days eight and nine are transition days, but you can also see some interesting raptors, especially falcons like the Lesser-Kestrel and Lanner Falcon.

The last "real bird-watching ing day" is the tenth, when the travelers go to a ski resort at an altitude of 2,600 meters in the Atlas Mountains, where some really special birds, such as the Levaillants Woodpecker and Crimson-Winged Finch can be found. In the afternoon there is an optional visit to Marrakech.

On the last day there is not much time for bird-watching (only a little bit in the morning) before going back to the airport.

ALTERNATIVE TOURISM

By Xaviera Finestres and Marta Huertas

Alternative tourism is an alternative to conventional tourism. If you like travelling, knowing different cultures, enjoying ecology and landscape, alternative tourism is for you.

This tourism has become a new way of enjoying free time. The contact with nature, the peace of the landscape and rugged terrain make visitors understand the world around them in a different way and they also rediscover themselves.

It is a type of tourism that respects nature, it is based on a new attitude towards the environment. These tourists preserve it and they value things that seem unimportant in everyday life. Alternative tourism is a combination of nature tourism, adventure tourism, ethnological tourism, mystical tourism, etc.

Alternative tourism encourages tourists to participate in activities taking place in the local communities of exotic countries that have very different customs from ours. For example, they can participate in farm work. The important thing about this alternative way of tourism is that tourists come into contact with nature and have a good time with their family and friends, or on their own.

Our dreamed journey

By Xaviera Finestres and Marta Huertas

We want to go to Africa, to Sierra Leone. The Republic of Sierra Leone is a country in West Africa. It is bounded by Guinea to the North, by Liberia to the Southeast and by the Atlantic Ocean to the Southwest.

We want to help the poor people and children, and find more information about this poor country and their activities. We are interested in the mining of diamonds and coltan.

We will travel by plane on a scheduled flight from Madrid to Sierra Leone. The people there are very interested in tourism and they try to sell the objects they make. Tourists are a very important means of earning money. It is a country with a very diverse culture, a country where we can find different customs and traditions, mainly depending on the tribes. Local groups are very interesting culturally, because of their traditional dances and music. It is a country with a great tradition of masks. The people are quite nice to visitors, and English is a language that almost everyone knows.

The most important source of jobs is the hotel industry, and the mining of diamonds and coltan is the most important business. In this country, there are a lot of dealers and they have a lot of money. This money is used to buy weapons, because it is not necessary to pay workers, they are slaves in their own land. They can be children too, as they are the cheapest workers. Also, soldiers capture children and make them child-soldiers who work for their chief.

There are slaves working 24 hours per day in the mines. The extraction of the diamonds is very expensive, but when they are exported to other countries they earn a lot of money. It is a clever business, although it is very dangerous.

There are also coltan mines. This is the most important mineral in the world these days, because it is used in a lot of technological products, such as microchips, computers, mobile phones... It is very important.

This journey is very interesting because it makes it possible to see a lot of things that are different from other countries, but it is very sad to see the poor people and the ill people. Luckily, there are a lot of NGO and a lot of doctors and nurses who help them. 
We will see all kinds of things, and we want to write a book about illegal business in Sierra Leone. It will be a VERY EXCITING JOURNEY!!!

Parc de la Ciutadella

By Anastasia Macovei

My favourite place in Barcelona is the Parc de la Ciutadella, which for a long time was the only park in the city. It is a public park near the Estació de França, the Arc del Triomf, the Vila Olímpica, Pujades Avenue, Picasso Avenue and Wellington Street. This park has 17.42 hectares. Nowadays the Parc de la Ciutadella is one of the biggest parks in Barcelona. Barcelona’s zoo is inside it, and there are also some buildings constructed for the 1888 Exhibition, such as the Geology and Zoology museums.

The park has areas for walking, a lake and a waterfall. There are a lot of exotic plants and aquatic animals in the lake and you also can row in a boat. The Romantic Garden, with a big variety of vegetal species, is next to the waterfall.

In this park you can find famous sculptures too: “The Desconsol”, created by Josep Llimona in 1907, the Monument to General Prim, created by Lluís Puiggener in 1887 (it was broken during the Civil War and the sculpture was recreated by Frederic Marès in 1940), the Monument to Bonaventura Carles Aribau, created by Manel Fuxà in 1884, the Monument to Walt Disney, created by Núria Tortras in 1969 and “Mamut”, created by Miguel Dalmau in 1907.