Road trips are great. Road trips in foreign countries are an adventure. In this time-lapse video, travelers make the drive from Quito, high in the Ecuadorian mountains, to the coast. It’s amazing to see the climate and topography change as the trip takes them from an elevation 9,350 feet down to sea level. The only things we’re still curious about are the snacks that they packed for the ride!
Video of the Day: Earth Hour 2012
The imagery is powerful: people from around the world, holding hands and candles in the dark, while iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Coliseum shut down their lights in recognition of Earth Hour 2012, one of the world’s largest voluntary actions for the environment. The evocative Sigur Rós soundtrack doesn’t hurt either.
Earth Hour calls upon individual citizens to switch off their lights for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Started in 2006 by WWF-Australia, the event quickly became a movement, spreading to hundreds of millions of people across 135 countries in just five years. Through an aggressive social media campaign, Earth Hour continues to send a strong message for environmental awareness, urging people to learn more about the global climate change crisis and take actions “beyond the hour” to lesson their impact.
This year’s Earth Hour is scheduled for Saturday, March 31, at 8:30 p.m. local time. If climate change is important to you, don’t miss the chance to join a movement for change.
Video of the Day: Two days in Zion National Park
Zion National Park in Utah is one of those places that exceeds expectations and defies explanation. I might just be partial to it because I’m getting married there in June, but it truly is an awe-inspiring place. Red rocks line steep canyons and wild flowers dot the horizon. It’s difficult to imagine what early settlers of the West must have thought when they came across Zion. This video shows two days in the life of Zion in January of this year. The whole video is gorgeous, but the trip through the Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel is a highlight for sure.
Video of the Day: Tilt-shift Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro
Carnaval (or, as we like to write it, Carnival) was last week, but we’re just not done celebrating here at Gadling HQ. This video is from Carnaval 2011 in Rio de Janeiro, but we can’t stop watching it. Of course, we love tilt-shift and this video uses the technique perfectly. Though, we’d like some explanation about why it opens with someone getting rescued from the ocean by a helicopter. Well, Carnaval is crazy like that.
Video of the Day: Vintage Hong Kong revealed
Want to take a slow boat to China? Get lost in vintage Hong Kong in this 1938 video of the gateway to China. The harbor city was still under British rule, and you can watch men in linen suits and pith helmets stroll alongside rickshaw drivers. Some of the narration is a bit, uh, politically incorrect by modern standards but the footage is priceless.
Have more time for nostalgic travel? The Travel Film Archive has hundreds of videos from around the world from 1900 to 1970. Find a cool travel video from this decade? Leave us a tip in the comments for a future Video of the Day.