Adventure Travel News
Your Daily Dose of news from the adventure travel world and beyond.
Birdsville Races in Australia
Birdsville? What’s in a name? Where the heck is Birdsville? Is it anywhere near Plainsville? Boonesville? When you think of Birdsville, what comes to mind? A place where birds dwell?
This dot-of-a-town is considered a place to venture when one wants a place of pure isolation. It hugs the very edge of the Simpson Desert and is known to be Australia’s most remote area. However, the land has many inhabitants–a large variety of birds. Thus, the former town of Diamantina Crossing was renamed “Birdsville”. …
Date: July 10th, 2007 |
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Planet Ice: A Quest for the Disappearing
There’s a cool new blog starting up over at GreatOutdoors.com:
“Writer and photographer James Martin, author with Mark Twight of Extreme Alpinism, has turned his attention to the vanishing ice of planet Earth. Embarking on a new book, Planet Ice, Martin will blog exclulsively for GreatOutdoors.com over the next two years as he visits the polar regions, the last of the Equatorial glaciers, and the ice of more temperate mountains, to document how they show, all too clearly, the devestating results of global climate change.”
Check out the first entry from Antarctica here.
Date: March 25th, 2007 |
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Grand Silliness or Grand View at the Grand Canyon?
The Grand Canyon is now host to a truly cheap thrill.
Tribe leaders from the Hualapai Indian Reservation and Buzz “Hey Guys, remember me?” Aldrin formally opened a glass viewing platform perched on the edge of the canyon 1.2 km above the Colorado River below.
The horse-shoe shaped skywalk, a 30-million-dollar construction, is expected to double tourist traffic to the remote Reservation after it opens to the public on March 28.
…
Date: March 22nd, 2007 |
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Extreme Hotels: Anything But?
It’s not just a sports drink marketing scheme anymore: Slap the word “extreme” onto anything, and you’re automatically hip and cashing in on that coveted 24 - 38 demographic. At least that’s the logic behind the branding, it would seem, of Extreme Hotels, a London-based company, that purports to deliver “affordable, high value, entertaining, active, cutting edge sports based Hotels located in the finest extreme sports and urban destinations around the world.”
The first extreme hotel just opened in Cape Town, South Africa, and the reviews are already beginning to come in…
Date: March 19th, 2007 |
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Travel Insurance Vital at Any Age
I loved this story from the UK Times. Just another reminder about the importance of travel insurance. Never had to use mine yet, but always glad it’s been there:
“According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office more Britons over 50 are heading abroad to try activities like bungee jumping, skydiving, abseiling, and swimming with sharks, and getting themselves into sticky situations.
Date: March 10th, 2007 |
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Adventures in Carbon Reduction: StepItUp ‘07
If you’ve looked at just about any magazine or major newspaper that does any environmental coverage whatsoever over the past month, the odds are that you’ve probably heard about Bill McKibben’s StepItUp ‘07 campaign. McKibben was one of the first journalists to sound the alarm loudly about global warming, and now he and some students from Vermont are organizing StepItUp: A National Day of Climate Action.
Date: March 26th, 2007 |
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Ethiopia is safe for Adventure Travel
After a group of travelers were kidnapped near the disputed ethiopean/eritrean border earlier this year, Ethiopia has suffered a growing stigma among adventures as being unstable and unsafe.
Date: March 22nd, 2007 |
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Adventure Smog Alert: SE Asia Up in Smoke
Travel around southeast Asia long enough, and you’re bound to hear a tale or two of someone who got in serious trouble for “sparkin’ it up” in Thailand. But this spring, another kind of ‘blazin’ has gotten totally out of control. Thailand’s northern provinces of Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son have been declared environmental emergency areas seriously affected by forest smoke. Every spring farmers torch their fields to prepare for another round of crops. Inevitably, a number of these controlled fires become, well… uncontrolled and whole regions can go up in smoke. Even when most fires stay controlled, there’s a thick haze that seems to hang over most rural parts of Asia this time of year, but this season, a number of fires in Myanmar have made it a real doozy…
Click on the NASA photo to the right for a full-size satellite image showing the locations of the fires and the thick blanket of haze covering the entire Southeast Asian peninsula.
For travelers, the worst haze in at least 14 years has meant flight delays and other hassles.
Date: March 21st, 2007 |
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Rumors Are True - North Korea Preparing to Rock
Months ago, I Logued about this in Rockin’ Pyongyang: Woodstock 38 in North Korea? This almost spam-like press release came over the transom and I never heard anything about it again. But Forbes has this apparent confirmation of an international rock show planned for Pyongyang. Here’s a few of the details:
Date: March 14th, 2007 |
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Adventure Travel Forum Threads for the week of March 5, 2007
Check out the topics currently being discussed on the Adventure Travel forum on BootsnAll:
Galen is starting to plan a hike on the Appalachian Trail, and is looking for input from those who’ve done it. What are your words of wisdom?
Please add your two cents here! If you’re not already a member, sign-up here - it’s free!
Date: March 9th, 2007 |
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