Articles tagged “adventure travel”

Filter the Adventure Travel category by popular activities:

Biking, Camping, Climbing, Hiking, Paddling, Scuba diving, Skiing, Surfing

Fit For Trips Gets You Ready For Adventure

by Kraig Becker on

Some people like to go on vacation to relax, sit on a beach and enjoy fine foods and sip fruity drinks. Others take a break from their regular life to go on an adventure. They climb mountains, they trek through the Himalaya, and they cycle through the south of France. Adventure travelers need to be in great shape before they leave on their vacations, and that’s where Fit For Trips comes in.

Fit For Trips offers 4, 8, and 12 week programs designed to get you ready for your adventure vacation. Each of them is easily adaptable to the activities that you will be participating in while traveling, and can be custom made to match your itinerary, and best of all, they can help someone who is just starting to get in shape or is already working out regularly.
There are programs designed for biking, both on and off road, trekking, paddling, walking, and multisports. Rates vary depending on the length of the program and the levels of customization. Typically a four week program starts at $169 while a twelve week program tops out around $339. For your money, you get video clips of exercise routines specific to your activities, reference charts and photos demonstrating your exercises, unlimited access to the Fit For Trips forums, and unlimited e-mail consultation from the FFT trainers. You’ll also have online tracking of your progress and the whole thing comes with a money back guarantee.

The idea is that you’ll enjoy your adventure travel more if you are in better condition and won’t suffer physically while taking part in all those activities. As a happy traveler your get more from your vacation and have more of an opportunity to soak up the culture and the adventure. To check out sample work out routines, click here, and to take a tour of what Fit For Trips has to offer, click here. Then start preparing for your next trip with the right routine as soon as possible.

National Geographic’s Best Adventure Travel Companies 2009

by Kraig Becker on

National Geographic has announced their list of the Best Adventure Travel Companies for 2009, ranking the top tour operators from around the globe that specialize in delivering the most adventurous trips to remote places on the planet.

In all, there are 248 companies on the list. Some of them are large, and conduct trips for thousands of travelers each year, while others are quite small, servicing only a couple of hundred. They offer a diverse mix of activities from trekking and climbing to paddling, diving and more, in all corners of the globe.

The rankings were determined through a strict methodology, which is described in the article. Essentially, the companies were sent a 30 question survey, and after they were returned, the answers were graded from 1-100 in the areas of “Education, Sustainability, Quality of Service, and Spirit of Adventure”. Clients of each of the companies were also contacted and asked about their experiences, with editors from National Geographic Adventure magazine finally ranking the companies based on the scores they generated from this process.

The results can be found here, where you’ll see a listing of the top companies in a variety of categories such as “Hiking & Trekking”, “River & Sea”, “Safari”, and a whole lot more. There is also a list of the best “Do It All” companies that covers the larger operators that offer something for everyone. The rankings are based on a score generated using the methodology described above. And if the rankings don’t work for you, you can use this handy search tool to find the company that best fits your needs.

Adventure travel is one of the fastest growing segments of the industry as more and more people have demonstrated that they are willing to pay for unique, adventurous activities. Who better to help guide us in this selection process than National Geographic?

Top Destinations for Independent Travelers in 2009

by Kraig Becker on

BootsnAll, a great online resource for independent travelers, has put together their list of top 10 destinations for 2009. The locations on the list are lauded for the options they offer the experienced traveler who is looking to explore on his or her own.

Last year’s list was compiled by the writers and staff from BootsnAll, but for the 2009 edition they opened it up for suggestions from their very well traveled community as well. The results are ten great suggesions for experinced, adventurous travelers hoping to go abroad this year.

Some of the places on the list are a bit more obvious than others. For instances, Tasmania comes in at number ten, as Australia has long been considered a great destination for independent travelers, and the remote island maintains helps to maintain that reputation. On the other hand, the number one spot is held down by Columbia, which has not always been a great destination for visitors, independent or otherwise. But in recent years, the country has undergone a bit of a resurgence, and has now become a favorite destination for savvy travelers everywhere.

The other eight locations on the list are quite ecclectic as well, and span the globe, offering a wide variety of experiences and settings. There is something for everyone, from the outdoor adventurer to the more relaxed traveler looking for a more quiet escape. If you’re an independent traveler looking for a destination this year, you could do worse than starting with this list.

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Grand Dider Channel, Antarctic Peninsula

by Jon Bowermaster on

I first came to Antarctica twenty years ago, as part of an international team intent on dog sledding across the continent. Since then, I’ve been back more than a dozen times; last season for nearly three months, much of that time traveling the length of the six hundred mile long Peninsula by sailboat and kayak, the rocky finger jutting into the Southern Ocean from the continent. Unlike many of the most veteran of Antarctic aficionados, I’ve had the good fortune to get to know both the stark, forbidding interior of the continent, as well as parts of its glacier-lined coastline.

What I’ve learned is that every summer season – roughly December through February – is vastly different here. And every day is vastly different too. What is not changing is that during the past fifty years, most noticeably during the past decade, air temperatures along the Peninsula have warmed more than anywhere on the planet. The impacts of warmer temperatures are evidenced everywhere, from loss of ice cover to changing wildlife habits. The ability to take a close-up look at that evolution is a great chance for me.

This morning I spent the morning among the Yalour Islands, near the northern end of the Grand Didier Channel, zipping by Zodiac around icebergs of a variety of shapes and sizes. Initially the skies were bright and blue, the first such we’ve seen in a few days. Actually, the last blue skies were accompanied by hurricane winds, which blew every cloud in the sky out of the way. But as is typical for Antarctica, things changed rapidly today as a fast-moving snow squall blotted the sun and turned the idyllic scene quickly more ominous, a whiteout, impossible to see the shoreline.

%Gallery-40580%

We passed through these islands eleven months ago by kayak and the difference today is dramatic. Because we were going to travel along the Peninsula by kayak last January, for many months I had started each morning checking out www.polarview.aq and its satellite images of Antarctica’s ice.

Each year more than seven millions square miles of sea ice freezes around the continent, growing the continent to twice the size of the U.S. And each year that pack ice breaks up and melts in different patterns and stages dependent on how warm the temperatures are, how big are the winds. Thanks to a colder-than-usual winter last year the continent was ringed by frozen sea ice until late in January, even the Peninsula, which is generally the first Antarctic region to lose its ice.

By comparison, this season the Peninsula is amazingly clear of pack ice, less than anyone can remember seeing.

Perhaps most telling: Yesterday at Cuverville Island, on a rocky, north-facing slope we spied something very new to Antarctica: Grass. About twenty feet off the sea, two small patches of just-greening herb sprouted, fed by summer sun and warming air temperatures, clear evidence the Peninsula is warming.

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!

Visiting Forbidden Places

by Kraig Becker on

Have you ever wanted a travel experience that was beyond exclusive? How about getting access to places that few, if any, have ever had the opportunity to visit before? If so, then you’re in luck, because Men’s Journal has the perfect article for you.

In the article, entitled Forbidden Places, we get the scoop on some great opportunities to visit some very interesting spots that are traditionally not widely accessible to the general public. For instance, the Havasupai Tribe live in a remote valley near Supai, Arizona. Last August, flash flooding destroyed the only trail in or out of that valley, effectively cutting the tribe off from the outside world. Soon however, Arizona Outback Adventures will begin guiding a select few back into the valley to help rebuild the trail and bring supplies to the Havasupai. Those first few visitors will be treated to a changed landscape, thanks to the massive flooding, including two new waterfalls, one more than 75 feet in height. They’ll be the first outsiders to lay eyes on this changed environment.

Other places that you’ll learn how to gain access to include a massive ship graveyard off the Bikini Atoll, a Costa Rican beach during the Olive Ridley sea turtle invasion, and more. In some cases, getting into these places is simply knowing who can guide you in, but sometimes there is more to it than that, and a little sneakiness may be involved. But in the end, you’ll have experienced something that few others have, and created a travel memory of a lifetime.