by Mike Stone

People have been taking Caribbean travel vacations since the colonial times. Today, millions of U.S. citizens visit the islands each year to experience the tropical extravaganza that a Caribbean travel usually has in store for all its visitors.

Below are some Caribbean travel tips to help you get the most out of your tropical excursion:

Get an early start.

If there's anything you absolutely must do when you go on a Caribbean vacation that is to start early. There are a lot of things you need to take care of. Trip planning can be a tough nut to crack. Often, a passport may be required before you can enter the country you are planning to travel. One Caribbean travel tip you ought to consider is to prepare all your travel documents as early as now.

Choose an island.

Culture-shock. That is bound to happen if you don't do your research beforehand. One thing you should remember about the Caribbean is that it has a culture that is as widely diverse as its people. So take this Caribbean travel tip: read up on the culture and people for the places you will travel.

by Brenda Nelson

The Aral sea sits between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and was once the fourth largest sea in the world. Most people today haven't even heard of it. What was a 68,000 square kilometer sea, and thriving fishing industry, is now a sea that is 10 % of its original size, too salty and polluted to support fish. This large sea is now considered to be three lakes.

The Aral Sea was once a popular resort destination for family vacations, and recreation. This used to be a sea thriving with fish. There used to be marshes teaming with wildlife along some shores, sandy beaches on others. The Aral Sea, and surrounding area was so teaming with life, it was often compared to many places in Africa for terms of biodiversity. When the sea began to die, people, no longer able to make their livelihood on the fisheries, lost their homes, and their ways of life, but that wasn't the worst of it.

The shoreline is now up to 150 kilometers from where it once was in some areas, the water depth has dropped by about 17 meters, and climate change has been reported. So What happened?