Articles tagged “adventure travel”

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Ten reasons why you should visit New Zealand NOW

by Grant Martin on


With more and more people losing jobs and the economy shrinking, many people think that now is a terrible time to travel overseas. Fearing tremors in their jobs or their 401Ks, workers may often choose to stay at home this year, or maybe even work right through their time off.

But in one place, the timing is perfect for holiday travel. The combination of a favorable exchange rate, excellent plane tickets and lower demand has created the perfect storm of a budget traveler’s paradise, guarantying endless thrills, beautiful landscapes and wonderful food at a fraction of the cost.

That place? New Zealand. So why should you go in these troubled times? Here are ten great reasons:1. The Dollar: The thin silver lining around the recession is that the dollar is gaining ground against many foreign currencies. New Zealand is an excellent example, with the exchange rate at about 1.8:1 (at writing). That means that everything is half off. Skydiving, whitewater rafting, sailing, bungee jumping, tours of Hobbiton and even dinner is half off.

2. Delicious, cheap wine: Both New Zealand islands have recently been enjoying a boom in wine production. Helped partially by the drop in output from Australia (due to the recent brush fires,) Kiwi wine is widespread, inexpensive and quite delicious to boot.

You can take wine tours from Auckland (try the Mudbrick) or venture south into the Marlborough region to mix in some beautiful landscape as well.

3. Fare Wars: Ever since V Australia entered the transpacific market, fares between the United States and Australia/New Zealand have been outstanding. Several Gadling bloggers reached Sydney from Los Angeles for under $500 earlier this year, and even now, tickets are hovering around the $800 range. At about this time last year, these prices were around $2,000.

4. It’s an outdoor activity playground: New Zealand’s varied landscape includes lush, bucolic plains, rolling hills, sweeping glaciers and magnificent mountains, all within a span smaller than the state of Texas. You can bungee jump, swim through glowworm caves and white water raft all in the same day, and if that’s not enough, mountain biking, skydiving and sailing are a hop, skip and a jump away.

5. Because the economy needs us: With all of this belt tightening going around, the global economy is starting to stutter and contract. The only solution? Take some of that money out from under your bed and enjoy a healthy holiday. Just don’t put it on your credit card.

6. You’re going to sleep magnificently: At 5-8 hours behind the United States, You’re going to be struggling pretty hard to stay up until 10PM every day. And irrespective of whether you’re sleeping on a five star pillow top mattress or under the bar pool table, you’re going to collapse exhausted, sleep like a baby and wake up refreshed at 7AM the next day, with a full night’s sleep and ready to take on the Kiwi.

Furthermore, you don’t have to deal with any truncated redeye flights like those to the EU. With some fifteen hours to kill on your outbound journey, you’re bound to get your first night’s sleep in.

7. Because you’re leaving your job anyway: If you haven’t already been laid off, you’re terrified that you might get the ax any day now. Why not take a fraction of your savings and ride out the recession overseas?

8. They already speak English: No need to worry about asking for directions, negotiating prices or buying produce in another language, Kiwis are the friendliest people on the planet and are always willing to chat. As a bonus, some youngsters even find the American accent attractive.

9. Excellent Food: Its fertile soil and supple fishing waters make New Zealand a prime location for fresh produce, seafood, cattle and lamb. These strengths are reflected both in the grocery store, with plentiful, healthy selections and at restaurants, where chefs create exotic, delicious plates at very reasonable prices.

Coffee culture is outstanding as well, with a cafe on nearly every corner of the country, each with extremely high quality beans, standards and practices.

10. Because you may never get the same opportunity: This crazy combination of cheap tickets and a strong dollar may not come back for a while — perhaps in your lifetime. Don’t regret saving a few dollars now when the missed opportunity of a lifetime could haunt you for years.

Barneo Ice Station Opens

by Kraig Becker on

In another spring tradition, the Barneo Ice Station has opened for another season, providing the gateway for adventure travelers and explorers to make a “last degree” journey to the geographic North Pole from the Russian side of the ice.

The ice station sits roughly 60 miles from the Pole at 89º N. Latitude, and each year it has to be rebuilt thanks to the shifting ice flows at the top of the world. The process begins with two Russian built Hind helicopters scouting the region for relatively flat, smooth surfaces on the ice. Once the location is selected, the first supplies, along with a team of engineers, hits the area to go to work creating a runway. Once that runway is finished, large supply planes can land on the surface, and a full blown camp, including a Russian post office, is established.

Shortly after the camp is officially opened, visitors begin to arrive. Some are polar tourists who will make an expedition to the North Pole on skis, while others are scientists and environmentalist that come to study the area, and the effects of climate change on the health of the ice, as well as the creatures that live there.

Generally the station closes down at the end of April or early May at the latest. It is just there long enough to support the teams, and then everything is packed back on to the supply planes and shipped off for another year, when the process will begin again. But for a few short weeks each spring, it becomes a hub of arctic adventure.

Adventure Travel Blogging: Tools of the Trade

by Kraig Becker on

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.

Are We in a Golden Age of Green Travel?

by Kraig Becker on

Clearly the entire travel industry has been undergoing some dramatic changes over the past few years. There was a time when the thought of “green” travel was relegated to a relatively small, niche market that included some eco-conscious tour operators. But in the past few years there has been an inceased effort to be more green in all area of our lives thanks to an increased awareness of global climate change and a focus on limiting our impact on the environment in general.

This increased awareness and focus within the travel sector has resulted in more energy efficient modes of transportation, the rise of sustainable tourism efforts across the globe, and better environmental policies from many nations. All of this has prompted National Geographic Adventure to ask “Is This a Golden Age of Green Travel?”

Adventure cites an action plan from the World Tourism and Travel Council that offers ten ways to combat climate change and the fact that four major international airlines have begun testing jets that use bio-fuels. They also point to the fact that Marriott Hotels is leading the charge to protect a 1.4 million acre section of the Amazon Jungle.

As further examples of the green movement, the magazine offers up five great eco-lodges, on five different continents, that are all leading the way in sustainable tourism and caring for the Earth. Places like the Black Sheep Inn in Ecuador and the Odd-Balls Camp in Botswana, who are making it easier for us to visit exotic places, while leaving a minimal impact.

Competitours Race Day 5 – Paris “We won!” (with Video)

by Kent Wien on

As part of our Gadling on the Road series, Kent Wien and his wife Linda are participating as Team Gadling in the first run of Competitours, an Amazing Race like competition taking place in three different countries in Europe. Race along as Kent documents their progress.

All eleven teams gathered at the train station in Brussels for our journey to our next destination, which had just been revealed before dinner. Sure enough, we were going to Paris.

I made it to Paris a few times last year but I didn’t feel like Linda and I had any advantage over any of the other teams, since the challenges were rather varied. And I was more interested in the challenges that I wasn’t familiar with, avoiding the Pont Neuf and Catacombs challenges in favor of the more out of the way tasks.

We poured over the 6 pages of options for Paris and the surrounding area. We knew we’d have to come up with either two 30-point and one 15-point challenge or better yet, a 60-point plus one 15-point challenge to reach our maximum limit of 75 points for the day.

The 60-point challenge was risky. A day trip to the Loire Valley to tour the