The Highest Cities in the World

by Kraig Becker on

The BootsnAll Travel site has a great article up listing the highest cities in the world. Amsterdam doesn’t make this list however, as we’re talking the cities that fall at the highest altitude. These mountain communities will have you gasping for air as soon as you step off the plane, both with their thin air and stunning mountain scenery.

Topping the list as the highest city in the world is La Rinoconada in Peru. This city of 30,000 is known as the highest permanent human habitiation” and rightly so. Located in the Andes, La Rinoconada sits at 16,728 feet, more than 3100 feet above the next highest city, El Alto, Bolivia at 13,615 feet.

The only city from the U.S. to make the list is Leadville, Colorado which, with 3000 permanent residents, is the highest incorporated city in the country. Leadville falls at 10,152 and is famous for the Leadville 100, a 100 mile long mountain bike race held annually that notoriously punishes endurance athletes.

A couple of the other cities on the list are famous amongst adventure travelers. Lhasa, Tibet at 12,002 feet and Namche Bazaar in Nepal, at 11,482 feet are both stops for trekkers and mountaineers on their way to Mt. Everest. And Cuzco, Peru, which sits at 10,800 feet is a popular starting point for backpackers hiking the Andes and visiting Machu Picchu.

There are some amazing cities on this list, and if you have the opportunity to visit any of them, be sure to bring your camera. And bottled oxygen.

The inaugural Competitours starts Monday and Team Gadling will be there!

by Kent Wien on

Ok, I think I’m man enough to admit it. My wife and I watch The Amazing Race religiously. Haven’t missed an episode, in fact. I think we both enjoy sitting on the couch while second guessing the strategic choices each team makes as we watch some of their relationships disintegrate while they work their way around the world.

After nearly every episode, I’ve realized two things:

1) I’m incredibly lucky to be married to a non-psychopathic, intelligent and sweet woman who has the ability to see both sides of any argument.

and,

2) I know we could get through the Amazing Race together without destroying our 16-year marriage.

It’s impossible NOT to watch The Amazing Race without imagining how you and your partner, whether it’s your wife, brother, friend, parent or child, would accomplish the tasks and handle the challenges associated with traveling around the world.

Unfortunately, my wife has zero interest in testing our travel skills and marriage on television, and as much as I’d like to do it, I’d never be able to get a month off to fly around the world with her. Not to mention the trouble with finding someone to look after our kids while we’re gallivanting around the globe.

But the day before my 40th birthday in January, the Gadling team received an e-mail from Grant Martin, our editor, telling us about Competitours, an “Amazing Race like” tour of Europe. Close to a dozen teams would be competing for 7 nights at any Starwood hotel (Sheraton, Westin or Le Meridian) worldwide and $700 cash.

Grant wondered if anyone would like to go on the inaugural Competitours trip and write about the experience? Whoever went would have to pay their way, of course – this was no freebie.

I decided to wait until the next day to spring it on my wife.

“Come on, honey! It’d be a blast. And it’s only for a week!”

In a moment of weakness, she caved, probably because it was, in fact my birthday after all. She also gave in to my incessant whining about how I needed the latest Canon digital SLR.

I ran the kiddy-care plan past my sister who lives in Seattle. Could she come to New Hampshire to take care of our girls?

Again, milking the birthday, I was able to convince her that this would be a fun thing to do. I mean, how often do you get to take care of a seven and three-year old, big sis? Shockingly, she agreed.

The event starts on March 15th, when we’ll meet up with ten other teams of two in Newark before heading to our first destination, which has just been revealed. We’re going to Frankfurt, Germany, but we still don’t know the two cities after that.

For us, not knowing the destinations is a big reason to take this trip. While Competitours is a tour operator, they’ve managed to put together a compelling reason to travel, key at a time when many are closely evaluating their expenses.

Each day teams will choose up to 6 of the 9 to 12 tasks in and around a city to accomplish. Bonus points will be given for teams that take on the risk/reward task portion of each challenge. Each task has to be documented with a Flip Mino camera. We’ve chosen the Mino HD version to use.

So my wife and I are excited to report on the launch of this innovative tour here at Gadling, and I’ll enjoy a break from my day job, and the first vacation my wife and I have taken in this decade that didn’t include the kids.

The other teams are coming from all over the country. Five of these teams have been sponsored by FlyerTalk, a forum for frequent flyers that take great pride in racking up miles in rather creative ways. They competed and won the honor of traveling on behalf of FlyerTalk, and some of them have already proven adept at finding out what the third city will be.

So we’ve written off in our minds any chance that we’ll beat these type-A travelers, but we hope to have a great time along the way.

Competitours offers much larger prizes after our inaugural, with one prize that includes 40 nights at a Starwood hotel and $5,000 cash along with a pair of airline tickets. I can’t think of too many travel packages where you can win something so significant.

Follow along with us each day starting on March 16th. We’ll be uploading video of some of the challenges without giving too much of the Competitour secrets away, and introducing you to the other teams.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, take a look at the 8, 10 and 14-day trips Competitours is offering for June, July and August of this year. If you go, please let us know, as we’d love to hear how Competitours evolves from our inaugural/trial/test run that starts this Sunday. Of course, I’ll be using updating everything as it happens via Twitter as well.

For more information, the Chicago Sun Times has written up a nice piece and GoNomad.com that details some examples of the tasks we’ll be given each day. And finally, each team has been encouraged to post about the race from their perspective at BoardingArea.com, so check out our competition. There are some amazing teams competing!

Be sure to follow all of Kent’s posts about the Competitours race.

Kent Wien is a regular here at Gadling with his Cockpit Chronicles and Plane Answers features.

Read what happened for the rest of the week: Pre-departure, departure, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 and day 5.

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Grytviken, South Georgia

by Jon Bowermaster on


In the whaling museum here the most fascinating thing to me – after the touch-me-feel-me penguin skin – are the trophies and sports uniforms worn by the different South Georgia whaling station teams which competed against each other in rugby, track and field, ski jumping and more during the heyday of whale killing here.

Grytviken was South Georgia’s first whaling station/factory, set up by Norwegian explorer C.A. Larsen in 1904. Initially only blubber was taken and the carcass discarded resulting in beaches of bones along the coastline which I can still see lying in the shallows off what remains of its main dock. By 1912, seven whaling stations had been established and South Georgia became known as the southern capital of whaling.

That heyday was during the early 1900s, when a variety of whales (blue, fin, sei, humpback and southern right whales) were abundant in South Georgia’s waters during the austral summers, feeding on the massive quantities of krill found on the edge of the island’s continental shelf.

By the late 1920s such shore-based whaling factories on the island declined due the scarcity of whales around the island, followed by a boom in whaling on the high seas. The stations on South Georgia then became home base for repair, maintenance and storage. It was the uncontrolled whaling on the high seas followed – up to two hundred miles off shore – and led to significant reductions in populations of exploited whale species.
Whales were harpooned with an explosive grenade, inflated with air and marked with a flag, radar reflectors, and latterly radios. A catcher would then tow them to a factory ship or shore station. The whale was hauled to the flensing plan. The blubber was removed and boiled under pressure to extract the oil. Meat and bone were separated and boiled. The results were dried and ground down for stock food and fertilizer. Baleen whale oil was the basis of edible, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and chemical products. It was also an important source of glycerol to manufacture explosives.

Between 1904 and 1965 some 175,250 whales were processed at South Georgia shore stations. In the whole of the Antarctica region a low estimate suggests one and a half million animals were taken between 1904 and 1978. Probably the largest whale ever recorded was processed here at Grytviken in 1912, more than one hundred feet long, weighing in at nearly two hundred tons. This intensive hunting reduced the Southern Ocean stock, once the largest in the world, to less than ten percent of their original numbers and some species to less than one percent.

It wasn’t until 1974 that the International Whaling Convention agreed to protect the few remaining species in the Southern Ocean, and whaling here was mostly stopped in 1978. Paul Watson and his Sea Shepard – now Animal Planet heroes apparently, though that has happened this season while I’ve been in Antarctica – are still attempting to dissuade the Japanese from their annual hunt. Today. On occasion, you can spy whales close to shore at South Georgia, as they make a slow recovery, in particular southern right whales and humpbacks.

THE BOSS IS BURIED HERE

On top of the sense of history left at this beach by its whaling history, Grytviken is famous in Southern Ocean lore too for being the burial site of Ernest Henry Shackleton.

In 1921 – six years after successfully rescuing his men off Elephant Island, thanks to the help of the Chilean naval vessel “Yelcho” – he sailed south for what was to be his third Antarctic expedition. Its vague intention was to survey the coastline and carry out somewhat ill-defined science. You get the sense he was just itching to get back down south.

This time out his sailing ship, “The Quest” barely made it to Grytviken and in the early hours of January 5, 1922, he suffered a fatal heart attack here. His body was on its way back to England when the ship carrying him home stopped off in Uruguay and learned that his widow wished her husband be buried on South Georgia. His grave is still the focus of the Whaler’s Cemetery at the end of the beach.

It is tradition to toast “the Boss” – no, not the bard of New Jersey! – with a shot of rum poured onto his grave, which I happily did. Unlike the rest of those buried in the small, white picket-lined cemetery, Shackelton is interned with his head pointing south, towards Antarctica.

Skiing in Maine offers bargains in March

by Jamie Rhein on

When I think of Maine, I think of leaping off barnacle covered rocks into the ocean and eating clams dipped in butter in Ogunquit like I did one summer when I went there to visit a high school friend. She was was working as a waitress at a hotel resort and I was a kitchen grunt and laundry girl at a kids camp–the only way I could afford making it to camp as a high schooler. Whenever else I’ve been to Maine, the theme has been the same–beach seafood,and leisurely strolls. Just recently I’ve thought of a different scene.

A friend of mine–a different one–just emailed me this week with news that he expected to be skiing in Maine until April. He lives near Portland. With the 70 degree weekend we’re having in Ohio, I’d say my one-day pass for tubing at Snow Trails will go unused. Maine is a different story. If I lived there, I’d go tubing and more. Perhaps, I’d dust off those cross-country skis of mine propped in a corner of our basement.

With the snow that socked in the northeast the beginning of this past week, the skiing in Maine has had an extra boost. The Ski Maine Association Web site offers links to each of the Alpine and Nordic ski areas and tells when it last snowed at each. Most places just got fresh snow.

The events page on the site offers a list of the myriad activities that are going on through the middle of April. I have to say the 22nd Annual Parrot Head/Bust N Burn Festival sounds intriguing. It’s taking place at Sunday River, April 3-5. Here’s an article in Boston.com from last year about the event. Key lime pie, Jimmy Buffet music and skiing are involved.

As a note, Sunday River is offering lodge and ski packages through March with an even greater price drop during the middle of the week. If you buy lift tickets ahead of time, you get a 10% discount. The Ski Maine Association also is offering discounts through the Maine Winter Activities Pass. Before you head somewhere, check out the deals.

The photo is of Sugar Loaf. College students who show ID can ski for $39 during mid-week days. That means Mon.-Thursday.

For those looking for skiing longer into the season, I’d seriously think about heading to Maine. Surely you can find steamed clams to dip in butter which could tide you over until summer.

Here’s an events page for what to do in Ogunquit in the winter. On Wednesday nights at Tapas and Tini’s there’s Divine and Dine–where you can have a choice of entrees that come with side dishes for $9.99. The deal ends the beginning of June.

The photo from Maine Coast Semester is of a winter trip to Holbrook Pond. Maine Coast Semester offers wilderness trips year round for adults and young people. Just another way to see Maine in the winter–or any season.

Costa Rican rooms have volcano view at a bargain

by Tom Johansmeyer on

How many hotels give you a great shot of one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world? Shoot down to Arenal, Costa Rica for a few days, and you’ll see it first hand from your room at the Lost Iguana Resort & Spa. This top-shelf property has only 42 rooms right in the rainforest. You’ll be surrounded by trees that have more than three centuries behind them, and the hiking trails through the jungle can’t be beat.

But, you want to see the lava, right?

The Lost Iguana Resort & Spa’s rooms face the lava-flowing side of the local volcano. Other sights include the Hanging Bridges (a short walk from the resort), La Fortuna Waterfall, and the Tabacon Hot Springs. Wildlife guides are available to help you understand the local scenery.

This unique experience is made more accessible by some steep price cuts. If you stay two nights, you get a 10 percent discount (to $166.50 a night). Three nights brings the price down to $157.25 per night, and a four-night stay brings the average down to $148 (a 20 percent discount).

Still on the fence? Don’t worry, you have until December 15, 2009 to make up your mind.