Photo Of The Day: Standing On The Cliffs

Look out! It’s a long way down in today’s photo, brought to us by Flickr user Buck Forester. Similar to the shot Alex selected this past Friday, today’s photo was also taken along the gorgeous beaches of Kauai in Hawaii, just from an entirely different perspective. Instead of walking along this rugged island’s eye-popping shoreline, Buck takes us to another view high above the waves below, providing this colorful, vertigo-inducing look at the view from the top.

Taken any great Hawaii photos of your own recently? Or perhaps at a beach near you? Add them to our Gadling group on Flickr. We might just pick one of your shots as our Photo of the Day.

Long Way Down: Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman Complete Africa

The news came in over the weekend: Ewan and Charley have finished their motorcycle trek through Africa. It took them just 85 days to travel over 15,000 miles through 14 countries, from Scotland down to Cape Town, South Africa. And that’s including almost a week’s time spent at border crossings alone.

“We feel fantastic, and absolutely brilliant,” Charley told BBC Breakfast news. “It’s been a long, long ride, which has been the fun part, but getting here and arriving in Cape Town is just fantastic. And the thought of sitting on a motorbike in Scotland, and then arriving here is wonderful.”

I for one cannot wait for the television series to begin. Long Way ‘Round was — as Charley would say — absolutely brilliant. I’ve seen the entire thing at least a few times, and plan on watching it once more before I head off to Eastern Europe in October.

Thanks goes to Jaunted for the tip.

Long Way Down: Through Europe and Africa by Motorcycle

A few years back I happened to stumbled upon a book called Long Way Round, by movie star friends Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. It was the personal account of their east-bound trip around the world, from London to New York, by motorcycle. I bought the book to give as a gift to my brother who has a passion for both travel and motorcycles — it seemed like a perfect fit. Before his birthday rolled around, I sat down to read the book first (like any self-respecting cheapskate would do). Long Way Round started off solid: discussing their route, planning the trip, working out the visas, but then they decided to bring along a camera crew and document the trip.

Great, I thought. A couple more movie stars traveling the world with video cameras. The idea sounded lame, but I pressed on and finished the book. The story turned out to be pretty good, and definitely compelling, though I couldn’t escape the fact that Ewan and Charley’s “adventure” seem spoiled by a trailing camera crew. I wondered how much of an adventure it really could be with camera men, producers, directors, and whoever else following them around. And the fact they were movie stars made me think they used their money to make the trip a lot easier than it would be for the average Joe.

It didn’t occur to me until about a year later that — hey! — since there was a camera crew following them, I could probably watch the book. I did some research and found that Long Way Round (the show) aired on Britain’s Sky One in 2004, and went to DVD in 2005. I ordered the DVD from Amazon, and was blown away when I sat down to watch. This was easily the most interesting, compelling, funny, adventure-inspiring show I had ever watched. And you know what? Ewan and Charlie really did do all the hard work. They pot-marked roads didn’t treat them like celebrities; remote Mongolian farmers didn’t know who they were. They struggled, they endured the pain and homesickness, and traveled like the best of them. I was truly impressed.

This is why I was so excited yesterday to find out that Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are teaming up again for another adventure. This month the two will set out — camera crew in-tow once again — from John O’Groats, Scotland and ride their BMW R 1200 GS Adventure motorcycles to the southernmost tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas. The show, dubbed Long Way Down, will premiere on BBC in Autumn/Winter 2007, but those of us outside of Britain (or without fancy satellite television systems) might have to wait for the DVD release.

You can sign up for email alerts on LongWayDown.com, as well as view some video of Ewan and Charlie talking about the upcoming trip.

Related: Talking Travel with Lois Pryce (she roder her motorcycle from the northern tip of Alaska to the southern most point of Argentina — 20,000 miles in 10 months, passing through 14 different countries)