Google Earth: Tour of Juan Fernandez Islands

Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine are not visiting the Juan Fernandez islands for the upcoming TV series, so I thought I'd take a quick tour of the area in Google Earth, and share it with you using their new "Record a Tour" feature.

First, make sure you have the latest version 5 of Google Earth, then download this Tour of Juan Fernandez KMZ file which should open automatically. Expand the new folder using the "+" icons, and click the "Tour" option to run the recorded sequence. The picture at the left shows you where you need to be clicking.

Google Earth should now "take control" and fly you around the world, down to the Juan Fernandez Islands, around "Alejandro Selkirk Island", then across the ocean to "Robinson Crusoe Island", around the airstrip, and finally down to a small town on the island. The sequence was all recorded in real-time using the the fabulous "3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator". Using this device it really is remarkably easy to explore the world, smoothly and intuitively, as you'll shortly see. The SpaceNavigator is also available at Amazon.co.uk.

The ARKive video of the Juan Fernandez Fur Seals we featured the other day came from the fabulous new "Google Ocean" layer under ARKive:Endangered Ocean Species and is located on Robinson Crusoe Island.

This is just a first experiment with the "Record a Tour" feature. I hope to do some more soon with a bit more content.