Landscape photographer Ole C. Salomonsen’s main area of focus is capturing the arctic lights. Lucky for him, he lives in the right place: the Norwegian artist admits his home country is a “photographers dream.”
“[Tromsø] is one of the best places in the world to experience the northern lights as we are perfectly located under the aurora oval, even during low activity,” says Salomonsen on his website.
Most sequences in the video above were shot in Tromsø, including the city sequence toward the end of the video. Give it a watch and you’ll understand why Tromsø is nicknamed “The Northern Lights City” – and you may be inspired to add Norway to your travel bucket list.
When it comes to being environmentally responsible, travelers often find themselves in confusing situations. Air travel, hotel stays and eating out are intrinsically bad for the Earth, yet these things are hard to avoid when on the road. So in honor of Earth Day, here are a few quick and easy ways to reduce your footprint while traveling. These tips will not only help you go green, but many of them will save you some green, too.
Ditch The Plastic Bottles
On the road, it’s easy to quench our thirst by reaching for drinks in plastic bottles. But the environmental impact of using these “disposable” containers comes with a far bigger price. Consider taking a reusable water bottle with you wherever you go, or at the very least ensure your plastic bottles get put into a recycling bin.
Plan to Go Green
Seek out hotels and tours that carry environmental friendly certifications or memberships. Although the level of “greening” can vary, these companies may participate in water conservation programs, may reduce energy consumption through fluorescent lighting, and may only use local foods and more. Besides selecting accommodations at these types of hotels, travelers can reduce their impact by booking hotels close to public transportation.
Pack Light
There’s some simple math involved here: the lighter the plane, the less gas is used. Take any nonessential items out of your suitcase, which might include guidebooks (especially if you can download a travel guide), and remember to pack layerable clothing instead of separate outfits for each day. Sure, it might not seem like just a few articles of clothing can make a difference, but every little bit counts.
Walk More
Walking isn’t only good for your body, it’s also good for the environment. This mode of exploration is also the best way to discover things you might not have noticed, especially in new cities where you might want to take in your surroundings at a slower pace. If walking isn’t an option, public transportation produces less carbon emissions.
Purchase Eco-Friendlier Souvenirs
The things we bring home have an impact, too. Put money into the local economy by seeking out souvenirs from local artists and craftspeople instead of purchasing magnets and postcards that are likely imported from another country. Never purchase anything made out of a scarce natural resource, and if you think a flower or seashell is beautiful, take a picture of it. For example, in the picture above I was tempted to take home some black sand from a beach in Ecuador, but instead I’ll always have this picture. By focusing on memories instead of physical objects, you’ll leave feeling much better.
Do Your Homework
Before you go, do a little research about the environmental concerns of the location you’re visiting. In many places, water is a scarce environmental resource, and should be used sparingly (and we don’t just mean not always requesting clean towels in your hotel room). In other locations, recycling programs and even trash disposal are unavailable. If you do your homework before setting off, you’ll land with a greater understanding of the place you’re visiting, and hopefully that outlook will rub off on other travelers and locals.
Last year, in celebration of National Park Week, Chimani Apps gave away their suite of National Park apps. Normally, the apps sell for between $4.99-$9.99 each with an average rating of 4 1/2 stars, but the company gave away one million downloads. Now, Chimani is back with five new national park apps that feature an augmented reality viewer, crowd-sourced maps and a social sharing tool enabled with Near Field Communications (NFC) technology. Better yet, they are all free.
“Chimani users are now able to actively contribute to the national park community and help build better geo-spatial data for each of the parks,” said Kerry Gallivan CEO/Co-Founder in a NationalParksOnline article.
The company is releasing a new app on each of the five days of National Park Week. New parks added are Grand Teton National Park, Glacier National Park, Olympic National Park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Bryce Canyon National Park. These, and all other Chimani apps, will be available for free starting Monday, April 22.
The apps have constantly updated maps, event schedules, points of interest, hiking details, as well as sunset and sunrise times for scenic overlooks. Users can access tide schedules along the coast, review lodging options and more on the apps, all designed to work without a cellphone signal.
We like that Chimani does not just throw their apps out there and hope for the best. Their users actively contribute to the national park community by helping build better geo-spatial data for each of the parks.
“A great example of this is Openstreetmaps.org’s user Tomthepom who spent the winter meticulously editing the park data within Grand Canyon. Thanks to Tom, the data found within the Chimani maps is the most detailed and up-to-date available anywhere – digital or print,” said Gallivan.
The Chimani apps are available for the iPhone, iPad, Amazon Kindle and Android devices. They can be downloaded directly from Apple’s iTunes App Store, Google Play and Amazon AppStore.
Sure, no one likes to pay luggage fees. But $800 for an oversize bag? That’s the international air fee from Lufthansa for a checked bag that weighs in between 73 and 100 pounds. Over 62 inches? Those jumbo bags are $800 too. Lufthansa ranks at the top of the list for fees on international flights, but they are in no way the only airline standing by with sky-high fees.
“The flying experience has definitely changed over the last few years,” says Alicia Jao, Vice President of TravelNerd, a website dedicated to saving us money. Taking another look at fees charged by airlines, TraveNerd came up with some surprising numbers.
How about €70 ($91) for printing a boarding pass at the airport? That’s the fee at RyanAir, the discount airline that allows just one small carry-on bag. Want to bring a cello, guitar, violin or viola? RyanAir travelers can do that, if a seat for it has been reserved and the appropriate fare paid.”While some international carriers are still known for great customer service, there are numerous regional budget carriers that have strongly adopted the fee model,” says Jao.
A recent TravelNerd study found that international carriers commonly have baggage fees on international flights that are even higher than those on domestic flights. While individual airline fees vary, the study found that booking online is almost always less expensive than calling an airline to make a reservation.
Here are some other fees being charged right now by airlines for international flights from the TravelNerd study.
The idea of space travel for all of us has been the stuff of dreams for centuries. Long before we had electricity or telephones, we looked to the stars, hoping to travel there some day. Science fiction writers fueled the fire and instilled in many of us a solid belief that some day we would travel beyond our earthly bounds. In the last half-century we have walked on the moon, built a permanent orbiting space station, shuttled space workers back and forth from Earth and more. Now, the ground floor opportunities for a space travel industry are being built, the foundation is being laid and ideas are being hatched to make a profit out of it.
Bechtel is an engineering, project management and construction company respected around the world. Founded in 1898, Bechtel has worked on over 22,000 projects in 140 countries on all seven continents of the planet. They provide infrastructure, power generation, communications and more with a work force of 53,000 people. In a “there’s no place left to go” sort of way, Bectel looks to the sky.
Planetary Resources is a new group of world leaders committed to expanding the world’s resource base so that humanity can continue to grow and prosper. The group is not comprised of world leaders like presidents, kings and dictators, but people that make things happen like Google’s CEO Larry Page, film maker James Cameron, United States Air Force General T. Michael Moseley (Ret.) and Sara Seager, Ph.D., Professor of Planetary Science and Physics at MIT. To these people, exploring the unknown and making a living off of it is familiar ground.
We first met Planetary Resources in May of last year in the article “Space Travel: Hurry Up, We Have Mining To Do” when Gadling reported Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Engineer, stating, “Our mission is not only to expand the world’s resource base, but we want to increase people’s access to, and understanding of, our planet and solar system by developing capable and cost-efficient systems.”
Now, it appears that the moon, stars and planets have aligned and something is about to happen.
In a move that has an undeniable flavor of entrepreneurship, the start-up mechanism that enables forward-thinking ideas to blossom, Bechtel and Planetary Resources are collaborating to mine near-Earth asteroids for raw materials.To do that, they will have to develop innovative and cost-effective robotic exploration technologies.
“As we pursue our vision to expand the resource base beyond Earth; we’re extremely excited to announce this partnership with Bechtel. They are a world leader in the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) industry,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources on the organization’s website.
It’s that “expand the resource base beyond Earth” part that should be of interest to us and shore up dreams of space travel for all some day. Venturing into space has always been an investment in the future at best, more commonly known as a space program that is a government budget item that can and has been cut.
Here, we have respected leaders of today’s world looking to the stars in a way not thought of since the gold rush period of the 1800s. Back then, because of that burning desire for gold, San Francisco grew by leaps and bounds. Roads, churches, schools and railroads were built and along the way agriculture and ranching expanded.
Mining asteroids? Could very well be the profit-centered technology enabler that ends up putting us in space.
If the whole idea sounds a little bit familiar, it might be due to 1998’s Hollywood blockbuster “Armageddon,” which had normally deep-sea oil drillers frantically trying to destroy an asteroid before it collided with Earth and wiped out civilization.
Let’s pause a moment to re-live that historic event via this video:
Armageddon had a budget of $140 million and was in international box-office success, grossing over a half $billion. Also on this hot space travel topic, our friends at Huffington Post tell us “Studies have found that around 7,500 near-Earth asteroids exist, most of which are worth between $1 billion and $25 billion each if their resources were sold on Earth.”
So there you have it: Science Fiction fuels real-world ideas and everybody makes money.