Who doesn’t love Peeps? You know, those overly sweet sugary-marshmallow concoctions that have just made their annual return to stores in time for Easter? Well, apparently someone over at National Geographic Traveler sure enjoys them, as they have launched their 2010 Peeps in Places photo contest, inviting us to snap photos of our favorite peeps in our favorite places, and submit them to the Intelligent Travel Blog.
The rules of the contest are quite simple. Take the best photos you can of the your Peeps out and about on some crazy adventures. Try to capture the essence of the place, while having fun with the experience. A sense of humor and a healthy dose of creativit go a long way as well.
Once you have your photos, head over to the Your Shot Page at NationalGeographic.com and either log in with your account info or create a new account. After you’re signed in, select your photos and upload them to the site, making sure to tag them as Peeps so the contest officials can find them. Over the course of the next few weeks, they’ll be sorting through the images to find the very best ones, with the winners receiving some prizes and having their photos shared on the website. Last year, some of the very best photos even made it on national television when they appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America.
For a little inspiration, check out this gallery of the top photos from the 2009 Peeps in Places contest. Many of them are as sweet as the candy itself.
Really good airline news is pretty rare, so when I read about a baby being born on a plane, and being named after the airline that carried her, I just had to share it.
During the final moments of her Valentine’s day flight, Lourdes Mamani cried out in pain. Even though she was not due for another two weeks, it was obvious that she was in labor. The flight crew were able to track down a doctor and nurse on her flight and her baby was delivered before the plane touched down.
The girl has been named Tami Fabiola, named after TAM, the Bolivian airline she was born on, and FAB, the Bolivian air force (the owners of TAM).
Tami will receive free air travel anywhere in the country till her 21st birthday, and a scholarship at the educational unit of the FAB. To make a good story even better, she’ll be baptized on the plane where she was born, and the chief of the air force will be her godfather.
Airports are unusual places. Every city of decent size has one, but they are rarely all that interesting. Each day, thousands of people move through these places, on their way too and from all manner of destinations, spending time browsing crappy little bookstores and consuming lousy food that would cost half as much elsewhere.
But sometimes, airports can be unusual for different reasons. Perhaps they’re located in odd places, or maybe they have some unusual feature or monument that makes them stand out. Popular Mechanics has compiled a list of the 18 strangest airports in the world, each of which meet those criteria and more.
The list includes airports large and small from all over the world and in a wide variety of settings. Some of the very unique airports that make the cut include Kansai International in Osaka Japan, which is famous for having been built on a man-made island and Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which sits just five miles from the very heart of that large and busy city. Other unusual places to take off and land include a runway made of ice in Antarctica and several that have you actually landing on a beach, proving that if we are determined to reach a destination, we’ll find a way to get there.
With 18 airports on the list, Popular Mechanics has done a fine job of highlighting some of the most unusual airports in the world. But did they miss any? What is the most unusual airport that you’ve ever been? As for myself, I’m looking forward to experiencing the airport in Lukla, Nepal in April. That airport is famous for it’s location, high in the Himalaya, with the landing strip running up the side of a mountain. Arriving and departing there is said to be scary and exhilarating all at the same time.
Be sure to check out the gallery below for some of the coolest airports in the world…
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…or watch the videos that demonstrate why these airports are soooo strange.
Courchevel International Airport
Courchevel, France
Princess Juliana International Airport
Simpson Bay, Saint Maarten
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport
Saba, Netherlands Antilles
Scotsman Mark Beaumont completed his Cycling The America’s expedition yesterday, reaching Ushuaia, Argentina 268 days after he set out from Anchorage, Alaska. Mark crossed through 12 countries on his journey, racking up 13,080 miles, and climbing two major mountains, in the process.
While this would seem like an incredibly long ride for just about anyone else, for Mark it’s only his second longest ride. Back in 2008, almost two years ago to the day, he finished circumnavigating the globe on his bike, a journey that took him just 195 days to complete, which was a record at that time.
To spice things up on his latest adventure, the Scotsman decided to throw a couple of new challenges into the mix. Not only did he climb the 20,320 foot tall Mt. McKinley, in Alaska, he also reached the summit of Aconcagua, which stands at 22,841 feet and is located in the Andes mountains of Argentina. The two peaks are the tallest in North and South America respectively.
While he peddled away the past eight months, Mark has also been blogging his experiences extensively, and it has made for an interesting travelogue. He clearly enjoys spending his time on the road, exploring the countries he passes through, and getting fully immersed in the local cultures. For their part, many of locals that he met along the trail thought that he was a little crazy for making such an epic journey on just his bicycle, but Mark was often touched by the kindness of strangers, who were usually curious about his expedition.
For certain sections of the ride, Beaumont was accompanied by a camera crew, but he also carried his own camera, and filmed much of it himself as well. All of the footage will be edited together to make a BBC documentary that will air in the U.K. later this year. No doubt it will be a fascinating adventure to watch unfold.
One of the world’s biggest and best-known celebrations wrapped up this week in Rio with record temperatures (soaring to 106 Fahrenheit on Tuesday!) as the mayhem of Carnival slowly came to an end. Over 700,000 visitors came to the city (including a few celebrities like Madonna, Beyonce and Paris Hilton) to join in the five nights of street parties, open-air concerts, costume balls and brilliant parades taking place in the custom-built Sambadrome.
Local officials estimate some 2.5 million feted Carnival in Rio, and this year the city made efforts to bring more orderliness to the often chaotic celebration, adopting the motto “choque de ordem” (the shock of order). Only licensed vendors were allowed to sell beer and other drinks at street parties, and the city installed some 4000 portable toilets around Rio in an effort — largely successful — to combat the rivers of urine that sometimes accompany the 20,000-strong block parties (the city also took a tough stance on revelers who chose to relieve themselves outside of these chemical bathrooms, arresting over 300 this year). It was Rio’s first Carnival since winning the bid to host the 2016 Olympics, and the city seemed determined to prove that it could properly manage such massive gatherings.
On Friday, as I spoke with longtime residents of Rio, Cariocas seemed torn over the best way to celebrate Carnival. Some adored the celebrations, the pageantry of the samba school parades, the gathering of friends old and new at democratic street parties and the donning of costumes for a bit of fun around town. Others detested the crowds and packed beaches, the noise and drunkenness on the streets, and preferred to flee town for more peaceful getaways, like the idyllic coastline near Angra dos Reis to Rio’s west or to the beaches of Buzios to the east.
One family I visited was evenly divided over Carnival. The father and his 12-year-old son were using the holiday to travel north to the cooler mountainous retreat around Teresopolis. As the two packed for an early morning departure, the mom and her teenage daughter, plus a few other family friends, were giddily making costumes for the Banda de Ipanema block party the next day, one of many fests they planned to attend over the next four days. The whole group of them would soon transform themselves into members of French King Louis the Sixteenth’s court, complete with ‘corsets’ (air-brushed form-fitting t-shirts) and ‘powdered wigs’ (sanitary pads pasted onto a foam base that was made of strips of insulation staple-gunned together).
For many Cariocas, the Sambadrome, where the magnificent all-night parades take place, is the focal point of Carnival. Here, Rio’s best escolas de samba(not ‘schools’ per se, but competitive groups of 3000 to 5000, with enormous drum sections, fantastical costumes and huge mechanized floats) would parade before a crowd of 70,000, with millions more watching on TV. Having attended the parade in years past, I decided to take part this year, joining the ranks of Caprichosos de Pilares, a former top school that fell into the second division in 2006 following a lackluster performance. (Anyone who wants can join a samba school and take part in the parade. You simply have to learn the school’s theme song for the year and buy a costume, which runs anywhere from US$150 to US$500.)
This year, Caprichosos pulled out all the stops and revived one of their favorite samba-enredos, the 1985 “E por falar em Saudade,” which took a nostalgic look at the past when days were better in Brazil. The song also challenged the military dictatorship of the time, calling for direct elections and an end to inflation. Like most schools, the costumes were a mix of over-the-top designs–including lunging foam dragons, brightly plumed tropical birds and giant bowls of bean soup. Ten of us gathered at a friend’s place before the parade and we had in our group several cowboys, a gypsy, two pirates, a nurse, a jester, a pair of 1920s flapper girls and even a floral-print-wearing tourist. We joined umbrella-toting clowns, soccer players wearing the colors from Rio’s four soccer clubs, gas station attendants (with fabric gas nozzles attached to their hips) and pink-suited samba stars in our shimmy down “the avenue” (as the 700-meter-long stretch through the Sambadrome is sometimes called).
We danced and did our best with the song lyrics as we paraded through the stadium behind a float packed with bikini-clad samba dancers (the “bunda,” or “bottom,” is something of an icon in Rio’s Carnival, and figured in many floats and even some theme songs, our school notwithstanding). It was an adrenaline rush dancing through an arena of cheering crowds — some of whom waved Caprichosos flags and knew the words to our samba-enredo better than us (indeed, among true escola de samba aficionados, Caprichosos’ 1985 samba-enredo was famous).
Depending on where you sit (and tickets cost anywhere from US$20 to over US$500), watching the parade can be an exhilarating experience, particularly if you get a chance to see some of the top schools perform. This year’s winner (announced on Wednesday) was Unidos da Tijuca, which pulled its first grand prize ever in the school’s 74-year history. The school’s theme was “It’s a Secret,” which conjured images from the great mysteries, myths and legends of history, including Greek temples, Egyptian pyramids and a lush “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” packed with 5000 plants. Just for fun, there was also a heel-kicking Michael Jackson look-alike and a mini ski slope which “Batman” skied down to roaring crowds.
Those that missed seeing Unidos da Tijuca during Carnival still have one last chance to see them again — along with the five runners-up — this Saturday in the parade of champions. Meanwhile, most street parties have come to an end, though there is one last big Carnival gathering this Sunday. In the center of town, Monobloco will bring tens of thousands of revelers back out on the streets for one last adieu to the party that won’t return until 2011.
