Seven New Wonders

The creative powers at ABC-TV's "Good Morning, America" and USA Today, mindful that all but one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have vanished, appointed a high-profile panel to come up with Seven New Wonders of the World that are relevant to travelers today. These have been broadcast and written about in print over the last week. I'm humbled by having experienced (or nearly experienced) all but one. The panelists' list:

• The Mayan pyramids of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. The first one I ever visited was Chichen-Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula more than 25 years ago. In searing heat, I climbed the steep steps to the top of the great pyramid and marveled at the excavated city round me and the jungle beyond. Since then, I have been to Tulum, also on the Yucatan but fabulously situated on the coast, and to Copan in Honduras, which was still only partially excavated when my husband and I visited.
• The great semi-annual migration of millions of animals across Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. After climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro a decade ago, my family and I took a private photo safari into four Tanzian national parks, including the Serengeti. It was not migration season, but our wildlife sightings were among the most awe-inspiring experiences we have ever had. We saw thousands of lions, cheetahs, giraffes, wildebeests, zebras, elephants, baboons, and ungulates, birds and wild canines of various sorts. We stood on the overlook above the the Olduvai Gorge, where anthropologists Richard and Mary Leakey had discovered footprints of ancient homonids. As we gazed down from the viewing platform far from the digsite, the gorge itself looked as if it could have been in the Southwest, but knowing what it was made it special. The panelists mentioned the Olduvai Gorge as an ancillary wonder in Tanzania.
• The recently designated Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument made the list. Until I saw a Jean-Michel Cousteau television documentary on this remote archipelago shortly before the act was signed to protect it, I wasn't even aware of the existence of this 1,200-mile-long string of islands northwest of Oahu. I've been to Hawaii a number of times and never thought much about what might be out there "beyond" Kauai. Now it is the world's largest marine sanctuary. One of the panelists is renowned marine biologist, Dr. Sylvia Earle, so it's little wonder that this pristine marine sanctuary made the list.
• The polar ice caps, rightly described by USA Today both as "inhospitable" and as "astonishingly beautiful and incomprehensibly vast." The panelists also noted that their melting is yet another alarm about global warming. I have been to the Antarctic Peninsula during the austral summer, which isn't the same as seeing the ice cap itseself -- but I experienced fringes of the frozen continent, saw glaciers and icebergs and was enchanted by the stark and lonely beauty of the place.
• Old City Jerusalem was selected for its "central place in religious history and struggles for tolerance." The first Society of American Travel Writers annual convention I attended was in Israel in 1983. The struggles were evident even then, but so were the phenomenal beauty of the Old City and the special feeling I got from walking along ancient cobblestoned streets and visiting holy places of the three major Western religions. How I wish that the peaceful principles of all three were in effect rather than the turf wars fought in the name of all of these faiths.
• Tibet's Potala Palace is a commanding physical presence over the capital city of Lhasa and remains a symbolic and spiritual presence for the Buddhist community, even though the present Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959 and remains separate from this holy place. I have been to China three times but never to Tibet. It's on the list.
• The Internet. The panelists said that the "Web redefines reality." By posting this, I am part of it, and by reading it, you are as well.