EST
Biggest, Highest, Furthest, Grandest… It is amazing to me the claims made everywhere about their local geography. Nasca has Cerro Blanco which they claim to be the world’s tallest sand dune at about 1400 meters. Namibia claims the same, too, with a dune in Sousevlei at 900 meters. I looked up tallest sand dune on Wikipedia and it just gets more confusing. Try determining the biggest or grandest canyon. We can all agree that Everest is the tallest mountain yet in Hawaii they will tell you that the Big Island is just that because they are counting from its base at the bottom of the ocean! It seems like a book is needed to chronicle the true ESTs of the world objectively and completely. National Geographic measured Cotahausi Canyon in Peru and named it as the deepest in world at about 160 meters deeper than the previous holder – the nearby Colca Canyon. But China and the Himalayas claim to have canyons that are deeper. Given our technology and coverage of this planet, can’t we come up with common definitions and agree on the true ESTs?
And then there are the subjective ESTs which make up a whole other can of worms. Vermont will tell you it has the grandest foliage on earth. It is absolutely spectacular yet I’m no longer convinced that Vermont knows anything about foliage in the rest of the world. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. These claims of superior whatevers never bothered me in the past, but now I am getting tired of everyplace claiming something most superior. It becomes nauseating. I’m sure the UN could create a huge bureaucracy to sort it all out, but that would be even more nauseating. This is another one of those “don’t believe everything you think” situations. If you think you have seen something that is the EST on the planet… maybe.
How about the claims somewhere between the subjective and objective? Lake Titicaca residents (more like marketeers) say theirs is the highest navigable lake in the world. What on earth does that mean? Navigable by what makes it “navigable”. An ocean liner or a kayak? I absolutely agree with them that they have a very large lake at a high altitude and there are boats on it. Beyond that the claim is a mighty slippery slope.
I have decided to go to the “most southern” town in the world – Ushuaia – because I can get there by airplane without going through Chile has I had previously thought and without taking a nasty ferry across the channel. Nasty because winter is approaching. So, I am looking at my map and I see two more towns further south – Puerto Harberton and Puerto Williams. They can’t even make a truthful claim about being the most southern when there are two towns just kilometers away which are further south! I will be sure to ask the people of Ushuaia about this when they bring it up. From Ushuaia I will start the long trek north by going to El Calafate near Glaciers National Park. I’m sure they will make some EST claims in El Calafate. I think I read that they are saying that their local glacier is growing or moving at the fastest rate. That already sounds iffy to me…
Tags: Travel, World
vagabondrick
Leave a Reply