In Cuba, my family and I went on an excursion to the Bellamar Caves and to the city of Matanzas. This post will focus on the Bellamar Caves, while the following one will focus on the city of Matanzas. The Bellamar Caves are a set of underground caves in Cuba near the city of Matanzas. They are a group of caves that had no opening in them until people found them in the 18th century. The only way to access the cave is by going on a guided tour as this is a national monument and the government wants to protect it. For this tour, you descend a set of stairs until you reach the bottom of the cave from there you walk 800 or so metres until you have to turn around due to the size of the tunnel becoming too small. The caves are all lit up with motion sensor lights that show off the amazing crystals inside the caves. There is also a couple of pool of water inside the caves such as the fountain of youth and the fountain of love. This was a genuinely great experience as I would love to go back. This is also great for photos if you have the right camera as there is very few people on these tours. Part 3 will be coming soon.
The Algonquin backcountry is a wilderness treasured by many people, sometimes too many. Your quiet backcountry escape can sometimes feel more like a car camping site than a rough backcountry site. As a result of this, I wanted to know if it was just because I was bad at picking lakes to camp on or if there was something else behind it. To answer this question, I wanted to know which lakes were the busiest and which were the quietest in any given year. I filled a Freedom of Information request with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks to get the booking data for each “booking zone” for 2024 and 2025. A booking zone is what you see online when you make a reservation. This data provides a lot of information. Easy access lakes are the busiest, while hard to access lakes are often the most quiet ones in the park. The data also shows that lakes such as Burnt Island, which has 43 campsites, are more busy than lakes such as Frank, which only has 1 campsite on it. To try to u...