Beaches and Islands

Being the frugal person I am, I opted not to pay $145 for a tour of Kangaroo Island's wildlife park — off the coast of South Australia — to see some kangaroos in February 2017.

Fortunately, the gray-haired volunteer at the visitors' center told me that if I hiked up to Baudin Conservation Park, I might find wallabies and kangaroos sleeping under trees.

The hike was along the beach for the first half hour, then it turned into wild bush country with millions of trees. Kangaroos number in the tens of thousands there.

The Greek island of Santorini is planning to limit visitors arriving by cruise ship to 8,000 a day by 2019. The ring-shaped island, located in the southern Aegean Sea, is actually the caldera of a massive volcano. In 2018 it saw upward of 18,000 people arrive daily during the high season. The island's total population is about 15,000.

Part of a cliff wall at the popular Navagio Beach in Greece collapsed into a group of tourists on Sept. 13, injuring seven people. Navagio, on the Ionian island of Zakynthos, can be reached only by boat. It is commonly called "Shipwreck Beach," due to the prominent remains of a ship washed up on the beach.

In late August, at least 16 men armed with rifles entered the Tawali Resort, at Milne Bay in Milne Bay Province, southeastern Papua New Guinea, taking about 20 guests hostage and robbing them of all their money and luxury items. The guests were from North America, Europe and Asia. No one was injured during the robbery.

According to a statement from an anonymous former employee, it was the third time the resort had been robbed in this fashion in the last few years.

Participating accommodations in the Cayman Islands, in the Western Caribbean, offer a "hurricane guarantee" that allows guests to cancel bookings or rebook at a later date with no penalties if a hurricane warning occurs within 48 hours of their scheduled stay.

To see if your accommodation participates in the guarantee, visit www.visitcaymanislands.com/en-us/about-cayman/weather/hurricane-guarantee and click on the link provided.

In Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, in Spain's Canary Islands, the Poema del Mar aquarium (Sanapú Dock, Las Palmas; phone +34 928 010 350, www.poema-del-mar.com/index.php/en) opened in January 2018.

Its centerpiece is a tank with the world's largest curved window — 118 feet wide, 24 feet tall and more than a foot thick. The tank contains nearly 1,500,000 gallons of seawater and 3,000 specimens of 40 different species, such as rays and rarely exhibited bull sharks and sand tiger sharks.

Stretching a distance of nearly 500 feet across Georgia's Mtkvari (Kura) River, the bow-shaped pedestrian bridge shown in our July 2018 “mystery” photo is known as the Bridge of Peace, connecting Old Tbilisi with the capital's new district. Officially opened in May 2010, the bridge is reported to symbolize the country's transition from the past to a better future.