Man, if there was *ever* a study in colour and texture, this fabulous photograph is it. Shot and shared by Adal-Honduras, you can almost hear the sounds and smell the smells of this Guatemalan market. Beautiful capture!
If you’ve got some great travel shots you’d love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.
Do you have any photos from Copan you’d like to see featured on Gadling? Or maybe just from Columbus, Ohio? Why not add them to our Gadling group on Flickr? We might just pick one of yours as our Photo of the Day.
Outside Magazine has put together a great list of the top eco-lodges from around the world, with seven amazing escapes that not only offer plenty of luxury, but do so in an eco-friendly way. Each of the resorts is given a rating on the “Green-O-Meter” and for its accessibility, and the selection of locations spans the globe, offering a destination no matter which direction you’re headed.
For instance, if you’re traveling to Africa, Outside recommends Azura’s at Gabriel’s, on Benguerra Island, off Mozambique. The small resort has just 15 villas, but each has its own private pool, to compliment the amazing white sand beaches. World class SCUBA diving and deep-sea fishing are amongst the top activities, and Azura earns its green rating by using its gray water for irrigation and doing its own composting on site. The lodge is also moving forward with plans to buy wind credits to go completely carbon neutral and is contributing to the local economy by ensuring that 90% of the staff are Mozambican.
If Belize is more your style, then the Machaca Hill Lodge is the recommended place to stay. This lodge was once a fishing community that has been transformed into an eco-friendly resort that includes an 11,000-acre nature reserve that surrounds the 12 cabanas, and isolates them from the outside world. Machaca Hill is lauded for the fact that it generates most of its power via solar panels and has an organic farm on site that provides most of the lodge’s food.
There are five other great eco-lodges on the list as well, each with a unique setting and a unique approach to sustainable tourism. Any one of them will proved an amazing experience, and not make you feel guilty about your travels.
The New York TImes has the scoop on a new sport that can trace its origins back to the slopes of Cerro Negro, a 2388 foot tall volcano in western Nicaragua. The new extreme sport is called Volcano Boarding, and participants use a small piece of plywood to rocket down the side of a sometimes active volcano, reaching speeds of up to 50 mph.
The article credits Darryn Webb, an Australian tour guide working in Nicaragua, with coming up with the idea behind volcano boarding. Webb grew up in Queensland, where he learned to sandboard, which is a bit like snowboarding on sand dunes. Back in 2005, when he first set eyes on Cerro Negro, he immeditely began plotting a new way to go down its slopes.
Webb says they tried a variety of different concepts when looking for their “sled”, including boogie boards, mattresses, and even a minibar fridge (!), before eventually going with their current design, which is little more than reinforced plywood with formica on the underside to increase speed. Boarders don a jumpsuit and goggle designed to protect them should they become separated from their rides, and begin the arduous 45 minute climb to the summit, carrying their board.The ride down is, as you would expect, unlike anything else. The writer reports of high speeds, but also a very bumpy and noisy run, in which rocks, dust and ash flew everywhere. Controlling your speed is a challenge to say the least, and when using a technique for slowing down that was shown to her by an instructor, she ended up crashing out of control. But once the ride was over, she wanted to go again, which says a lot for the experience as well.
For extreme sports junkies, hurling down the side of a mountain isn’t nearly extreme enough of course, so the lure of an active volcano makes it all the more exciting. Cerro Negro is young, geologically speaking, and still very active. Since 1850, the volcano has erupted 20 times, and I suppose there are some who come to ride its slopes who have visions of outrunning lava flows as they go. So far, that hasn’t happened, but then again, this is a new sport.
As I write this, I’m finishing preparation and packing for a trip to the Peruvian Amazon. As I put together the last of my gear, I’ve been going over the equipment that I’m taking along to record my travels. Hear is some of the tech gear that will be exploring the Amazon River and Jungle with me.
Nikon D40 DSLR
My main camera. Coupled with a several great lenses, the D40 takes some excellent photos, and makes for a wonderful travel camera. There are a number of great choices when it comes to DSLR’s these days, but the thing I like best about the D40 is that it is smaller than any other camera in its class. It fits into a backpack much more easily than many other DSLR’s, which can be incredibly valuable when traveling light and extremely useful depending on where you’re going. I also love that the D40 uses SD cards to store photos. I’ll take two 2GB cards with me as well.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5K
My back-up camera. A small, wonderful little point-and-shoot, that is perfect to throw in your pocket for those times when you don’t want to take out the DSLR, or it’s buried in your backpack while you’re on the move and you don’t have time to dig it out. I love that the Lumix can take widescreen shots, and short videos, and its picture quality is excellent cmpared to other point-and-shoots in its price range. It uses SD cards as well, and I’ll keep it loaded with a 2GB card at all times.
Samsung SC-HMX20 Camcorder
A tiny, high-definition camcorder, roughly the size of a can of coke, this diminutive camera takes great video, and stores it on internal flash memory or, you guessed it, SD cards. (See a pattern forming here?) Becaue it uses flash memory, the camcorder is incredibly light and you don’t have to carry along bulkier video tapes, and since it’s not hard drive based, it won’t fail at higher altitudes, which can be a consideration depending on where you are traveling. I keep this one stocked with an 8GB card on top of the 8GB of interntal memory. Video takes a lot more space, but the 16GB combined is good for about 3 hours of HD video on the highest settings.
HP Mini 1000 Netbook
The newest addition to my arsenal. This 2.5 pound laptop is small but feature packed. It has a great keyboard as far as netbooks go, and its built in card reader will transfer files from those SD cards from all the cameras I mentioned above. I equipped my Mini, which runs Windows XP, with a Solid State Drive, which again functions better at altitude than a traditional HDD, but sacrifices storage capcity in the process. But I’ll use the netbook to backup photos and write daily journals while on my travels, and for that it makes a perfect travel companion. If I happent to also come across WiFi, which is becoming more common in all corners of the world, it’ll also serve as an e-mail and web surfing station as well.
A quick note on the SD cards that I use across these devices. I deliberately purchased all my cameras so that they would use the same cards. if one should fail, I can easily swap them out without worry. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened yet, but this makes for a good contingency plan if it does.
Armed with these great high tech gadgets, I hit the road, and hope to capture the best moments from this, or any other trip, and then share them with everyone upon my return. So far, it has worked wonderfully.