Video of the Day – Mexican Holiday

by Stephen Greenwood on

Sometimes, choosing the right song to cut your travel videos to makes all the difference. Exhibit A – today’s Video of the Day, shot by Argentinian motion graphics designer Molokoso.

The footage was shot entirely on a pocket camera (Lumix TZ10) equipped with an underwater housing and edited to “Bombay” by Spanish musician El Guincho. The song lends it an irresistible upbeat tone which brings all of the fun & adventure that Mexico has to offer alive.

Did you capture any of your summer adventures on video? Edit them, pick a fun song, and share it with us – it could be our next Video of the Day!

Video of the Day: Attack of the Blob

by Mike Barish on

Blobs are awesome. They’re big inflatable masses that you can use to launch people dozens of feet into the air and back down into the water. And, according to this video, the Blob has taken its aquatic mayhem to France, where these people were using it in Cergy. As summer heats up and we all look for ways to cool off (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), you can’t go wrong with the Blob. Unless, of course, you land as awkwardly as the person in this video. I imagine they might have enjoyed cooling off with a cold beverage rather than face-planting into this lake.

Stay cool out there!

Boy drifts a mile out to sea in rubber ring

by Sean McLachlan on

A twelve-year-old boy was rescued a mile off the coast of Wales today when he drifted away from shore with only a child’s rubber ring to keep him afloat.

A lifeboat crew saved the boy as he suffered from hypothermia and was about to fall unconscious. If he had, the crew said, he would have slipped out of the floating ring and drowned.

The boy had been playing by the seaside and had been carried off by the current into the sea. He had been drifting about 45 minutes when the rescuers found him.

The UK’s National Health Service reports that lifeguards respond to more than 13,000 incidents a year on the UK’s beaches. Many of these incidents are due to rip tides, which are more common than most people think, the NHS says. Inflatables are easily pulled out to sea by currents and strong winds.

If you are going to the beach, follow these important beach safety tips. And parents, please watch your children. You don’t want them to become a news item.

[Photo courtesy Greg Yap]

The Springs in Costa Rica

by Elizabeth Seward on

The Springs in Costa Rica is a luxury resort. With a backyard view of the Arenal Volcano, this resort boasts both hot and cold springs one thousand feet above the Arenal Valley. Although the enchanting destination deserves some attention on its own, having some media-bewitching stars present on the grounds doesn’t hurt The Springs’ reputation.

If you watched the most recent episode of The Bachelor 2011, make no mistake: Bachelor Brad and his ladies were living it up at The Springs. With eighteen pools (eighteen, not eight), many of them fed by hot springs, these single ladies are certainly wishing he’d put a ring on it thanks to this luxurious resort vacation.

Find out more about The Springs by visiting their website. And if you’re into the idea of vacationing elsewhere in Costa Rica, just peruse the Costa Rica listings here at Gadling.

The source of all of that soft white beach sand

by Grant Martin on

Take a walk on the beaches of Nice and compare them to the beaches of Bali and the first thing that you’ll notice is a difference in sand. In Bali, the small Indonesian island in the South Pacific, the sand is soft like confectionary sugar and feels like smooth, whipped cream between your fingers. The beaches in Nice, France, by contrast, could best be characterized as a large piles of rocks.

Tourists obviously love the soft sort of sand that one can wallow around in all day, but not all beaches have that sort of fortune. So if they’re crafty enough, they ship it in. Our resident pilot, Kent Wien happened to fly over the place where some of that sand comes from, a lost little island in the nothingness of the Carribbean near the Bahamas. If you look closely at his photo you can see where the workers foraged deep into the sea and carved out slices of soft happiness.

Who knows where the sand finally ended up — you could be sitting on it right now.