The scene is of the 316-square kilometer volcanic island of Isla del Tigre, not far from the Honduran mainland in the Gulf of Fonseca. Amapala is its only town, known for great seafood and getting lost in time.
Gadling Flickr pool member Adalberto.H.Vega makes Honduras his home and has an extensive library of images captured using an Olympus D-500 that clearly validate that ‘lost in time’ reputation. Vega is Director of Marketing and Product Development at MC Tours, a major Central America tour operator that operates in Honduras.
Tips for getting featured: include the camera you used along with any other equipment or processing software that might help other photographers know more about your image.
Lots of things make me uncomfortable about this video (including the music) but the most gut-wrenching is probably the final approach that this pilot takes towards the air strip. It’s an acrobatic, if not risky way to land an airplane, but it sure does make for some sensational video. Skip up to 2:00 if you want to cut down on the superfluous music and footage.
Skiing. Budget. Two words that don’t generally go hand-in-hand. Fortunately, fans of fluffy Rockies pow have one more offbeat lodging option to choose from, with the re-opening of Crested Butte’s classic Nordic Inn today.
The 50-year-old property, which was recently purchased from longtime owners Allen and Judy Cox, is the longest operating lodge in Gunnison County. The new proprietors have renovated and upgraded half of the 28-room inn and separate chalet, utilizing sustainable materials like Colorado beetle kill pine, and adding ADA-approved, handicapped-accessible rooms.
There are also new, high-thread-count linens and down comforters, pet-friendly rooms, a hot tub, free Wi-Fi, heated walkways, in-room boot dryers, ski/snowboard storage, shuttle service, a meeting room and free continental breakfast. The property still retains its original exterior grooviness, however, and offers a variety of rooms ranging from loft or suite, to kitchenettes (see room photo after the jump). If you like the Spider Sabitch-era feel, opt to stay in one of the original rooms. High-season rates average $249 for a Signature King room.
For those on a nano-budget, there’s also the clean, pleasant, Crested Butte International Lodge & Hostel, which offers everything from small dorm to family rooms, at rock-bottom prices ($34/night average for a dorm bed, high season). Do note that the hostel is located within the historic town of Crested Butte proper, while the Nordic Inn is three miles away, at the base of the ski mountain, known as Mt. Crested Butte.
Need more incentive? Crested Butte is one of the few remaining authentic ski towns in Colorado. It consists of just a few blocks of what was once a 19th century coal-mining center: these days, the refurbished storefronts house top-notch dining, drinking, and shopping establishments.
Crested Butte also has a reputation for fantastically bizarre cultural and sports events ranging from costumed Nordic marathons and a nighttime “Big Air” comp on the main street, to Flauschink (the “flushing” of winter). The holidays are also notoriously festive, featuring torchlight parades and fireworks. In addition to skiing, the Crested Butte region also offers Nordic sports, dog-sledding, snowmobiling, Snowcat-driving, ice skating, and backcountry excursions.
There is nothing quite like the smell of a Christmas market. Step anywhere near Chicago’s Christkindlmarket and you’ll pick up the intoxicating scents of grilled meats, roasting nuts, glühwein, sizzling potato pancakes and incense. It’s enough to get even the biggest Scrooge into the holiday spirit.
Chicago’s Christkindlmarket is a mini version of the Nuremberg Christkindlmarket in Germany that is widely recognized as the biggest and best Christmas market in the world. Nuremberg’s Christmas market dates to at least 1628, or about 40 years before Potawatomi guides first took the French trader Nicolas Perrot to the site of present-day Chicago.
I’ve been going to Chicago’s Christkindlmarket since the year after it started in 1996 during my on and off stints living in the city and the place never fails to get me into the Christmas spirit. Santa is available for visits (on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Christmas Eve day), there are dozens of stalls selling everything from Christmas ornaments to cuckoo clocks, and there’s an indoor/outdoor beer garden where you can indulge in hot chocolate, glühwein served in a souvenir boot, or some Spaten lager or doppelbock.
The core of the market is filled with German shops and German treats: pretzels, bratwurst, potato pancakes, strudel and the like, but in the periphery of the market, it’s anything goes. This year I noticed booths selling trinkets from all over the world: Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Mexico, Ukraine, Ecuador, Peru and more. There was even a stand selling “Sherpa jackets” from Nepal.
But it is still essentially a German market and most of the major sponsors are German companies. I met Nicole Lorenz, a German woman who runs the Bavarian Workshop stand and also hires local people to help run some of the German stalls in the market. She told me that most of the German vendors come from Saxony, in eastern Germany.
The market is open until Christmas Eve but it takes the vendors a couple days to take down their operations, so they all spend Christmas away from their loved ones. Lorenz rents an apartment in Chicago each year for the five weeks the market is open and hasn’t been able to spend Christmas at home in the 11 years she’s worked at the Christkindlmarket. But she wasn’t complaining – she likes the market and it’s usually well worth the effort and disruption to her life in Germany.
We timed our visit to the market this year so we could take the Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) holiday train back to our home in Evanston. For the last 15 years, CTA has been running the holiday train on a rotating schedule across all the different lines in the month prior to Christmas day. (See the schedule here.) The train exterior is decorated with multicolored lights and there’s a ginormous Santa Claus in a flatbed sleigh filled with presents right in the middle part of the train.
We stepped into the car and were greeted by CTA elves offering candy canes and Christmas music. The car interiors are filled with Christmas decorations and even the seats themselves are upholstered with images of Santa lugging presents and other holiday scenes. In typical CTA fashion, our train arrived late and within a few stops was jam-packed, as it always is near the five o’clock bewitching hour. But the festive vibe kept all the commuters in relatively good spirits, even if many of them barely averted their eyes from their phones and other mobile devices.
Things got a little hairy though when we got off at the Howard stop. The platform is quite narrow right by where Santa’s sleigh was parked and hordes of us were all trying to snap his photo before the train pulled away. As people jockeyed for space, I decided that being tossed onto the platform wouldn’t be the most festive way to end an otherwise great day so I backed off.
The holiday trains generally run from 1-8 on weekends and 3-7 weeknights. I highly recommend you avoid rush hour, because it’s easier to stay in the holiday spirit when you have some breathing room.
[Photo and video credits: Dave Seminara, Christkindlmarket]
Yesterday the mountaineering community lost a legend when French climber Maurice Herzog passed away at the age of 93. Herzog is best remembered as the first man to summit an 8000-meter (26,600-foot) peak when he, along with climbing partner Louis Lachenal, successfully summited Annapurna back in 1950, an accomplishment that wouldn’t be replicated for another 20 years.
The ascent was not an easy one and the men struggled to climb without using supplemental oxygen. Near the summit, Herzog lost his gloves, which would later prove to be a costly mistake. On the descent, he, Lachenal and two other teammates were forced to camp over night without shelter and only one sleeping bag between them. Huddled in a crevasse, they managed to survive and complete their descent the following day. But severe frostbite in their fingers and toes forced the expedition doctor to perform emergency amputations, removing most of Herzog’s digits.
The following year, the Frenchman would publish a book about the climb entitled “Annapurna: The First Conquest of an 8000-Meter Peak,” which would go on to sell more than 11 million copies in 40 different languages, making it the best selling mountaineering book of all time. Some of Herzog’s account of events on the climb have proven to be controversial over the years, but his book has served to inspire generations of mountaineers that followed.All told, there are just 14 mountains that rise above 8000 meters on our planet and of those, Annapurna is the tenth tallest. It is probably the hardest of all of those peaks to climb, however, claiming more lives per successful summit than any other. It is well known for having terrible weather, tough technical challenges and a predisposition for avalanches, all of which can make it a nightmare to climb. For comparison sake, Mt. Everest, has seen around 5000 successful summits over the years, while Annapurna has been climbed less than 200 times.
In honor of the passing of Maurice Herzog, here is a video of a recent expedition to scale the mountain, which provides some context on its challenges. After watching the short film, consider what it must have been like for Herzog and his team more than 60 years ago.