The birding community is probably the oldest and largest in the world of people who travel to complete lists. There has been an intriguing event in that community recently, where two people claimed, on the same day, to have seen over 10,000 bird species – the first person(s) to do so. Even with no interest in birding, the debate that followed has produced interesting conclusions that are valid for all those who travel by lists.

Getting there

The recipe for reaching the high numbers seems to be quite similar. With a total number of identified birds between 10,906 and 11,189 (depending on which list you follow ) and the WHS total currently at 1199, for birders thousands are what hundreds are for WH travellers.

So how do you get as far as 8,000 or 9,000 birds (or 800 or 900 WHS)? Moving up the list slowly via the 400(0)s and 600(0)s can be achieved while working full time: ” Their differences are not time and money but dedication, effort, determination, longevity, obsession, etc. ”. But “ It is the marginal differences that produce 8,000+, 9,000+, etc. Those are big totals. The clean-up trips. The …

For some reason, #900 does not feel as much of an achievement as #800 – maybe because I am already planning toward #1000. It certainly never has been a goal in itself. Still, visiting 900 means having covered 75% of all WHS at the time of writing!

I did not ‘engineer’ #900 - my European to-do list is tiny, and my choices for a short getaway in April virtually were between St. Kilda (wrong season), Odesa (rocket attacks), or Rosia Montana. Roșia Montană Mining Landscape popped up as a WHS in 2021 after I had done the rest of Romania already in 2010. Two nearby TWHS also are up for nomination this year , so it was an easy choice. A direct WizzAir-flight between Eindhoven (NL) and Cluj-Napoca (the only international airport in NW Romania) was an added advantage.

Roșia Montană has grown into something of a ‘cult site’ in the WH Community, while it seems rarely visited by ‘normal’ tourists. Several sources had suggested that if I wanted to see the underground mines from Roman times (that’s where the OUV is), I should announce my visit beforehand. It was funny to read the many …

Plant WHS may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but since my blog post from a month ago Solivagant and I have deep-dived into the Centres of Plant Diversity (CPDs). We got access to the full list and mapped the WHS to CPDs, resulting in two new connections. And, as always with exercises like this, we also learned some other things about WHS and the WH process along the way.

The Books

After a short exploration of the topic on our Forum , it became clear quickly that we could not finish this without having access to at least one (and possibly all three) of the CPD books. These are generally sold new at high prices (60-100 EUR each), but cheaper copies can be bought from online second-hand bookstores. I got Volume 3 (Americas) and Solivagant acquired the whole set including the other continents. It turned out that we needed the full set, as each volume only lists the CPD in its geographical region.

If you’re into encyclopedic specialist works, you might like to have these CPD books in your collection. Each volume is a large hardcover of up to 600 pages, including …

Since its inscription, the Stoclet House in Brussels has been a thorn in the side of the WH community, whose members generally enjoy “the romantic idea that a “World Heritage” should be accessible to the world” (it's even #1 of our Commandments ). Its closure has been compared to that of very strict nature reserves, but there at least the buffer zone often supplies similar values (though a bit more degraded) and a visitor center. No other means of interpretation are available for the Stoclet House and what you can see now is the tip of the 'Gesamtkunstwerk' iceberg. Not only can you not visit its interior, but you can also not even see its garden (explicit part of the OUV) and its ‘best’ exterior architecture; any view now is limited to the austere back façade. When you stand on the pavement in front of the building at the Tervurenlaan this is often not understood. Look at this maquette for what the building fully involves:

It's like a small palace (the French name generally used is "Palais Stoclet"), with elaborately designed gardens and terraces and all of that within a city setting.

The exhibition and …

Since I ‘retired’ I have become more focused on budgeting my trips correctly, as the main difference between working a monthly waged job and living off a lumpsum is that your money doesn't get replenished as easily. I can only spend it once. On a macro level, I have implemented a few financial rules such as a yearly travel budget and an average budget per WHS (650 EUR). But also for each trip I manage my finances carefully without pushing myself into a frugal mode.

I just came back from a 5.5-week trip that took me to the US, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. This was complex enough to provide feedback on my trip budgeting routine due to the different currencies, variable costs of living and the Argentine inflation situation.

Setting the Trip Budget

This trip would – if all went well – bring me to 13 new WHS. So at 13x 650 EUR, a maximum budget of 8,450 EUR was appropriate. Corrected with the real costs in these countries and the costs of international flights, I set a range of 7,800 – 8,200 EUR. In the end I spent 8,173 EUR.

The Tentative Site description for San Pedro de Atacama tries to paint a picture of the history of the region from 10,000 BC til the 18th century AD. The focus of a future WHS may however lay in its Pre-Columbian sites, maybe even narrowed down to the Pre-Incan sites, as the Incan site of Catarpe is already part of the Qhapaq Nan WHS. The people who lived in this high desert region settled down to breed llamas and cultivate maize. They were also part of a wider trade route.

The main archaeological site of the area is Tulor, known in Spanish as Aldea de Tulor (meaning: Village of Tulor). I went there on a bicycle, which is easy to rent in the center of San Pedro. It’s a ride of 11km and the terrain is mostly flat, however at a temperature of 32 degrees Celsius and scorching sun it is exhausting. I stopped twice along the way (at a bus stop and a truck weighing station) to get some shade and drink water. When I finally arrived at the archaeological site, I found a cute bike parking but the entrance to the site was closed. Fortunately, …

In its evaluations, IUCN over the past years has shown a tendency to refer to a site’s inscription on another list or similar accolade to substantiate its importance. As they say in their 2023 update to the WHC : “systems such as WWF’s Global 200 Priority Ecoregions, Conservation International’s Biodiversity Hotspots and High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas, Birdlife International’s Endemic Bird Areas, and IUCN/WWF Centres of Plant Diversity, provide useful Guidance”. For floral sites, the go-to-list is ‘Centre of Plant Diversity’. As plants are underrepresented anyway among the connections, I created a new one around these Centres.

What are Centres of Plant Diversity?

Centres of Plant Diversity (CPD) are regions of the world that hold a significant number of plant species and/or have a high number of endemic species. The criteria used are: “Most mainland sites have in excess of 1000 vascular plant species, of which at least 10% are endemic, including some that are termed ‘strict endemics’- those endemic to the site. Island sites typically have fewer species, but a higher percentage of these are endemic.” ( source )

They were defined in collaboration between the WWF and IUCN and published in a three-volume …

As (T)WHS Travellers, we are blessed that we ‘have to’ visit several sites spread across the Argentinian and Chilean parts of Patagonia. In 11 days, I travelled the area from North to South, covering Los Alerces , Cueva de las Manos , Los Glaciares , and Torres del Paine . Along the way, the landscape changes from forests to glaciers to barren steppe. I finally ended up at Pali Aike NP, the southernmost of the Patagonian (T)WHS. Here windy and cold weather is said to be the norm, but I was lucky to get there on a slightly sunny day, with 11 degrees Celsius and no strong winds.

Pali Aike NP protects the Fell and Pali Aike Caves (the name of the TWHS), and a much larger volcanic landscape. The park lies some 190km from Punta Arenas right at the border with Argentina. I rented a car for the day, as I thought that it would be hard to find a tour going there (seeing the penguin colonies is a much more popular day tour choice). The drive there is easy, just the straight quiet roads that are common in Patagonia. And to top it off, …

It’s hard to get all that you want from Patagonia. There was too much demand for bus tickets so I couldn’t go all the way from North to South by public transport. There also was too little demand for a ‘ Safari Lacustre ’ so I could not get on a boat tour inside the Los Alerces National Park to see the Alerces in a forest setting (they seem to run only on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday but the schedule is highly variable). And then on January 25, a devastating bushfire broke out affecting 6,924 of the 188,379 ha of the park. Only a few days before my visit in late February, it was all under control . I did not see any smoke, firemen or scorched ground – the fires were much further north than the area usually accessed by tourists,

I brought a rental car from Bariloche airport to cover Los Alerces, which at least provided me with additional flexibility. Arriving from Esquel at the central park gate around 9am, I stopped to pay my entrance fee, but I did not need to pay anything. Maybe they temporarily suspended it because of the fires?

One of the oldest travel communities with an online presence is the Travelers Century Club (TCC). They started as a social club in 1954 for those who had visited 100 countries. They now have more than 1,500 worldwide members (2021). The club is private (no free sharing of information online) and a yearly membership costs 75/85 USD (depending on whether you’re a US resident or not) plus a 100 USD initiation fee.

The TCC never did appeal to me much, as their website seems to come straight from the 1990s, they display more of an appetite for social events than travelling and you can even ’get’ ('buy' of course!) a pin to display your status. But they must be admired for their stamina and consistency in maintaining the TCC List of Countries and Territories . At least there’s a committee that makes the decisions and they follow a certain logic in updating their list.

More than Dependent Territories

Currently, the list consists of 330 places. There’s a neat Excel spreadsheet available that divides those into UN countries and other territories. My main interest for this blog post and the new connection lies with the …