şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřr Robert Young Pelton thinks he can do what no one else has so far been able to do: Find Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord hiding somewhere in Central Africa along with his Lord’s Resistance Army, a ragtag company of abductee child soldiers. 

Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, 2006.

The U.S. State Department has offered $5 million for information leading to Kony’s arrest, and he’s been wanted since 2005 by the International Criminal Court on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Most of the world learned of Kony’s atrocities last year via Invisible Children’s viral video . (More than 100 million people saw the video and about as many saw of Jason Russell, founder of the controversial group.)

Pelton, who claims to have located Osama bin Laden in 2003 (“I kept saying he was in Chitral then, which he was.”), is calling his manhunt and has teamed up with two filmmakers, Ross Fenter and Rob Swain, to document the experience. To pay for the media part, the trio has set up an .

Pelton says his use of crowdfunding offers an alternative to traditional charities whereby the donor is part of the mission—donors supposedly have front row seats to the action. According to Pelton, those who contribute to his campaign will have a say “in making real-time decisions” via direct participation or web feeds.

As of December 4, Expedition Kony had raised $9,231 of the requested $450,000. This doesn’t leave much time to fill the coffers if, as Pelton says, the expedition gets underway in January 2014. Pelton, however, is also funded by himself and private donors.

No matter how much money comes in, Pelton says he’s going to Africa to find Kony. We caught up with him in Washington, D.C. to ask him about his impending adventure.

Whose idea was this in the first place?
Ross, Rob, and I were sitting around and Ross said, “Why don’t you go find Kony?” And I said, “Why not?” In the late ’90s until 2003, I did this TV series The World’s Most Dangerous Places, and that was basically me showing people how to find people. I went into dangerous shitholes and found bad guys and terrorist groups. This is a more finely tuned version of that. I’ve been tracking Kony since 1993, and I know the area and how rebels bushwalk and the placement of their camps. So this is a pretty natural idea for me.

Who is Joseph Kony?
Kony is the leader of an ethnic group that’s mutated into a quasi-religious cult—similar to al Qaeda. He is not the leader of a functioning military group. His group is broken into small pieces scattered around Garamba National Park in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). We’re talking about 200 people, half of whom are abductees tagging along because they’ve been forced to live in the bush. He’s not representative of a political movement. It’s called the Lord’s Resistance Army, but he’s not really resisting anyone. He’s not even in the country where he started his fight, which is Uganda.

So I guess the question is, where is he?
My guess is that Kony is traveling with two bodyguards, and he’s moving quickly toward Sudan. Keep in mind that for years, Kony was supplied and coordinated by the government of Sudan. For many years he had safe harbor there. The funny thing about fugitives is that they can only stay away from their center of gravity for so long because it costs them so much. But there’s nothing stopping him from getting in a car or a plane and moving hundreds or thousands of miles away. He has a large group of supporters in major cities all the way from Nairobi to Kampala. God knows how many criminals are hiding in the slums of Nairobi right now.

Do you have a method for searching for him?
I use standard search and rescue concepts. I’ve spent a lot of time humping over mountains and know how rebel groups move and think. I know how much they have to eat and how much they have to carry. I’ll use that logic and my investigative journalism skills to contact friends and enemies and people who know Kony. I’ll reconstruct a probable path and thought process. You have to start out where you know he isn’t, then zoom in on where he could be and where he wants to be. This guy’s not dumb, he’s been in the bush for 20 years.

So will you be hacking through the jungle or in a hotel room working the phone?
Let’s talk about the Darwinian theory most people have about criminals. They always think they’re hiding in the bush. We thought bin Laden was hiding in a cave because we chose to think that way. We think Kony is hiding in the jungle. In reality commanders typically have a roof over their heads. They have communications, booze, minions, money, supplies, whatever. It’s silly to assume this is going to take on a cartoon-like structure where Kony’s running through the bushes and I’m chasing him.

Looks like the area he’s hiding in is pretty remote.
When I say Central Africa, you pull up your most stereotypical image and that’s it. Large areas of elephant grass, which you can get lost in three feet off the road. There’s areas of triple-canopy forest, there’s plantations where people have burned the bush and planted corps. There’s vast areas officially called national parks, which are actually poaching parks. There are crocodiles that want to eat you, there are mosquitoes that want to kill you, there are angry men with guns who want to shoot you. It’s not going to be easy.

Sounds like a nice place. You hiring security?
Of course. Depending on what we’re doing. Bushwalking you don’t want to have a huge group. The larger your footprint, the larger a target you are. Work with locals, move quickly, think small. But when we’re in the rebel areas, we’ll need a truckload of slack-jawed, stoned soldiers to guard us. But not two. If you have two, they’ll fight each other and start a civil war. 

Is there anything about the expedition that’s worrying you?
There are a lot of other people looking for Kony, and not all of them want us to look for him. But there are also people looking for Kony who want us to find him. There are some competing agendas that I hope I can iron out when we hit the ground and get 100 percent of the people rowing in the same direction.

I’ve been in Washington meeting with people who want to get Kony, and now that they know I’m not a lunatic with a samurai sword and a ponytail, I think they get it. Hopefully, we can have unified effort.

So why crowdfunding for this project?
Usually I would just do this, but this is an experiment to see if I can catch people’s imagination. People say they don’t like global warming or child slavery but all they do is throw money at organizations that they don’t have any interaction with. People feel let down. We’re talking about giving people a front-row seat, making sure your dollars go to the thing you want them to. Those who have a moral stake in this can be a part of it for five or ten bucks. We’ll be in constant communication with updates on our progress.

Do you think people feel let down by Invisible Children?
You can’t fault Invisible Children for what they did. They’re the biggest reason there’s so much focus on Joseph Kony, even if their methods are a bit bizarre. They’re responsible for drawing the political support of young voters who wouldn’t know where Africa was or what Kony was doing. They took that energy and translated it to political will, which then translated to tax money, which is why U.S. Special Forces are there now. Whoever gets Kony will have my support and admiration. It’s not a contest. But I do like a challenge.

As one State Department person said, “Well you’re both zero for zero, so we’ll see how it goes.” What that means is that there’s no shortcuts. The proof is in the delivery. 

Well I’d say you have your work cut out for you.
If it was easy it would already have been done. There’d be Catch Kony bus tours.

It’ll be a true adventure. I have to say, of all the things I’ve done, this ranks up there as a five-star.

The post Funding the Hunt for Warlord Joseph Kony appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

The Top 10 Films at Sundance

I hit up the last month to scope out ten of the most affecting adventure and environmental films, and found flicks that had the rare power to depress and inspire me at the same time. Chasing Ice, a documentary about James Balog’s climate change project, is 75 minutes of stunning cinematography—but it’s also a eulogy for the world’s disappearing glaciers. The Ambassador is an absorbing documentary about journalist Mads Brugger’s gutsy journey into the heart of the blood diamond business—but it’s also a sobering expose on a deeply corrupt industry. Then there’s the provocative yet infuriating Atomic States of America, which examines the history of nuclear energy, and the visually spectacular yet haunting Beasts of the Southern Wild, a fictional account of how climate change might play out in southern Louisiana. We also included a few films that you might not expect, including Detropia—a film about Detroit that speaks to the need to reassess our cities. Check out our coverage for all ten films, some of which will be coming to theaters and cable networks in the next year.

A Fierce Green Fire

A new documentary by Mark Kitchell tracks the history of environmental activism

Pick an environmental documentary at random and chances are it tackles some hot-button issue. is a gentler breed of environmental doc, in which director plays earnest chronicler of a movement that we’ve all come to take for granted.

Kitchell tracks the history of environmental activism by spotlighting five milestones: 1) the ’s crusade to keep the Grand Canyon free of dams, 2) the , where residents protested Hooker Chemical for dumping 20,000 tons of toxic waste in their backyard, 3) the creation of , 4) the to preserve the Amazon rain forest, and 5) ’s campaign for climate change education. The film is plodding at times, but what ultimately emerges is a retrospective of the movers and shakers who’ve paved the way for environmental activists of the future—and their collective conviction is inspiring.

The most illuminating insight arrives by way of Kitchell, who notes that the environmental renaissance began, in part, when humans observed the first images of Earth from space. That moment, Kitchell says, forever altered our perspectives of our role on the planet. It’s a stirring notion to keep in mind the next time you find yourself gazing at a photo of the big blue dot.

Detropia By the Numbers

Two filmmakers capture stories of survival in a decaying Detroit

Detropia

A scene from Detropia

The media fetishizes the Motor City’s decline with pictures of abandoned factories, dilapidated storefronts, and homes ablaze. It’s a creation that has led international tourists to stop in the city. In , which premiered at the over the weekend, directors and capture the urban decline without turning it into decay porn. Graffiti and overgrown lots abound, but the focus is on the citizens as they cope with the very-real consequences of a city in financial turmoil. For example, how will they respond to the mayor’s request to move into a centralized area? Here’s a look at the city as profiled in the movie, by the numbers.

1.86 million The population of Detroit in 1955.

713,000 The population in 2010—the lowest total in 130 years.

150,000,000 The amount of Detroit’s budget deficit.

10,000 The number of homes that have been demolished in the past four years.

50 The percentage of manufacturing jobs lost in the Motor City in the past decade.

40 The number of square miles that are inhabited in Detroit, filling less than one-third of the city’s 139 square miles.

25,000 The price for a loft apartment.

Two Number of Swiss tourists in the film who travel to the city to witness the decay.

The Atomic States of America

Directors Don Argott and Sheena Joyce trace the evolution of nuclear energy

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, casts a timely inquiry into the viability of nuclear energy, a technology with enticing advantages but horrific fallout consequences.

Directors Don Argott and Sheena Joyce trace the modern nuclear renaissance to the “peaceful atom” campaign, launched by the U.S. government soon after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ads and PSAs touted nuclear energy as a constructive technology—the way of the future—as Americans welcomed facilities into their backyards. An energy source that emits no greenhouse gases, infuses local economies with jobs and decreases dependence on foreign oil? Hell, yes.

Joyce and Argott carefully consider the flip side as they visit communities that have been rocked by nuclear leakage and hit with inordinately high rates of cancer. They point to a series of cover-ups at nuclear facilities where evidence of leakage and meltdowns have been found. They question whether the United States imposes strong enough safety standards on facilities such as in Buchanan, New York, which lies on two fault lines.

The testimony from victims is emotionally compelling, but Atomic States is ultimately driven by evidence—enough, surely, to urge nuclear proponents to consider whether the potential consequences outweigh the benefits. Or as one activist explains, “We haven’t reached the point where humans can responsibly split atoms.”

Lost On Vacation

Filmmaker Kieran Darcy-Smith talks about his new international travel thriller, Wish You Were Here, which premieres at Sundance 2012

Kieran Darcy-Smith filming in Cambodia

Director Kieran Darcy-Smith filming in Cambodia

Actor Joel Edgerton

Actor Joel Edgerton

In , the new psychological thriller from director , two couples from Australia go on vacation in Cambodia and return home with one less person. Secrets emerge as they try to figure out what happened. We spoke to Darcy-Smith about his grueling two-week film shoot in Cambodia.

The movie starts off almost as an ad for Cambodian tourism, showing off the beaches and the nightlife. But then it spirals into a traveler’s worst nightmare. Did the Cambodian government ever express concern about how the country would be portrayed?
That’s a really good question. I don’t think they ever read the script. I think they were more interested in how much we were gonna pay and whether or not we were gonna sign the documents and how official we were gonna make things. I don’t know. I’m a little concerned, I guess, how it might be perceived by some people, because it’s not a negative slight on the country or people at all. Again, trying not to give anything away, but there’s underground or underworld elements to every society. There’s a small underbelly of that particular country, but you find the same in Sydney. There’s movies shot in Sydney that show the same thing. I just hope there’s no sensitivity around it. I think people will get that it exists in every society.

What were some of the challenges unique to shooting in Cambodia?
I had a five-and-a-half-month-old girl and a two-and-a-half-year-old boy and my wife was in the lead role, so that was pretty challenging. Plus Felicity [Price, his wife] and I were really ill. I fell into a sewer up to my neck on day one, and then I got really, really ill. I had really bad dysentery, and a really bad flu. We were shooting 15-hour days.

So you have dysentery and the flu, but you’re on a tight shooting schedule. Did you take days off?
Oh no, no, but it’s funny, the adrenaline kicks in and you just do it. I was having the time of my life. It’s such a challenge. They don’t really have a big industry there, so the gear, with all due respect, was second-rate. We had a lot of issues with lights and technology. The crew we were working with, they didn’t speak English at all, so we had interpreters working for us and you get these lost in translation moments, so it slows things right down. Everything about it was difficult, but we certainly got what we wanted.

You shot part of the movie in Sihanoukville. Can you describe what it was like to film there?
It’s beautiful, and it’s crazy, too. I can’t give anything away, but all that stuff towards the end of the movie is shot in the real deal. At the back of the port is a brothel area and it’s all run by gangsters. It’s arguably one of the most dangerous parts of the country, but it’s a magnificent country. The first time I went there was 1996, when the war was still on. You couldn’t get anywhere because the was everywhere.

When you shot in Sihanoukville’s seedier streets, how did you go about clearing the area for a movie shoot?
The fixers did. It’s all really about money. As long as you sort of connect with the right people and pay the right amount of money, you’ll be safe and looked after. And we were really well-looked after. Everyone was on our side. We were working in an area that was sort of gangster-run, but they weren’t gonna let anything happen to us. I hope I’m not saying anything out of school. I just love everything about the people.

How did you go about picking locations?
We did an initial location scout, where we went to Vietnam and cast our actors, or some of them. Then we went to Cambodia and cast the Cambodian crew. Then we just went out for two weeks to all these different regions with a really great company that facilitated and all these other big movies [that were shot in Cambodia]. So they knew the lay of the land. Actually, one of the guys who writes for , he’s the Lonely Planet Cambodia dude, he was really helpful in connecting us. So we spent a couple weeks cruising the country. I had very specific locations in mind because I’d been there.

Did you run into any issues with shooting in locations that still have land mines?
No, not where we were. You’ve really gotta head to the border regions now. They’re doing a lot of great work with clearing the mines. In ’96 it was a different story. They’re still doing it. There are teams out there every day.

The House I Live In

Eugene Jarecki discusses his new film about the government’s war on drugs, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentaries

Movie screenshot

Screenshot from the movie The House I Live In.

In the past decade, Eugene Jarecki has directed documentaries on Henry Kissinger (), Ronald Reagan () and the military-industrial complex (). At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, he premiered his latest film, , an in-depth examination of the nation’s war on drugs. Jarecki traces the roots of the war to Richard Nixon’s famous declaration in 1971, and then illustrates how the battle has become an ineffective enterprise and an unexamined method of suppressing the poor. Jarecki sat down with şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř to discuss the film, which .

Why did you want to make this film?
There are people I knew, in particular African-Americans, who were suffering from what seemed a surprising kind of aftershock of the Civil Rights movement. There was one family I was particularly close to, the matriarch was Nannie Jeter. They, and I, all thought we were all on a post-Civil Rights path where we would kind of share in the same American promise. Instead, as I met privilege and possibilities, they met a lot of struggle. Over time this has stayed with me a lot. It’s been a theme in my life: What happened to the Jeter family? When I asked Nannie what she thought went wrong, she said she thought it was drugs, that the primary enemy that had attacked her loved ones was drugs. And then of course I wondered why had that happened to them and not my family, and why did it seem to be happening to a lot of African-American families? That led me to ask further questions of experts in the field of addiction, and also society and law. What’s going on here? They all looked at me like the inquiry about drugs was only half the story. Drugs were a problem for people, but as David Simon says in the film, whatever drugs hadn’t destroyed, the war against them has.

How hard was it to find critics of the war on drugs?
As I started to go around the country, I couldn’t find anyone who would defend this war. It has cost over a trillion dollars, there have been over 44 million arrests. It has made us the world’s largest jailer—2.3 million people in prison. That’s more in absolute numbers than any country in the world, including totalitarian countries. We incarcerate a far higher percentage of our own people—not just in absolute but in relative numbers—than any other country, including China. China has about 2.3 million people in jail but they have a population of about 1.5 billion people. We have 2.3 million of just 280 million, so about 1 percent of our population is in jail. This is China, which Americans sort of single out as the country of disregard for human dignity. So that’s startling. You look at all those figures, you can’t get anyone in their right mind to defend a system that has failed in every way to reduce demand, reduce supply. More Americans use drugs than before, so it’s failing on every level and costing a fortune.

You bring up the fact that Nixon initially approached the war on drugs by spending lots of money on treatment, not law enforcement.
Despite his war-like rhetoric, behind the scenes he was spending two-thirds of his money on treatment, not on law enforcement. So he knew, and yet he was willing to play the political game of using tough-on-crime rhetoric to get elected. His success in doing that formed a mold that politicians have followed ever since.

At one point you ask what originally made drugs such a perceived danger, and you trace it back to the illegalization of opium as a way to criminalize the Chinese in the 1800s.
I learned that from [historian] , who was in the film. What we did with the Chinese with opium was so very similar to what we did with crack cocaine. Because in America in the 1860s—the analogy is amazing—the number one user of opium was a middle-aged white woman. In this country, the number one user of crack is a white person. And yet the white woman didn’t go to jail and the white people don’t go to jail today. Instead we put the Chinese away, and we put the Chinese away in a very similar way to the way we put black Americans away. The Chinese got put away because we made one way of taking opium illegal. In the contemporary context, we did the same thing with crack. Crack is a form of cocaine and is actually the same chemically as cocaine—you’re just taking it in a different way because it’s cooked with baking soda and water. They made opium illegal but not all opium. They only made smoking opium illegal because that was what’s called the delivery mechanism that the Chinese used. So both with crack and opium, the laws that have been passed were laws passed against a particular delivery mechanism. The drug itself is of varying legality and illegality determined quite arbitrarily by those in power, and I find that parallel very haunting.

You make the point that many of the drug users and dealers, who tend to get the blame in the war on drugs, are actually acting rationally within a system that is irrational.
How many American wars can we describe that really are rational? And the drug war is simply our longest war, which represents our greatest and longest departure from reason. To have thought you could declare war on a chemical or series of chemicals and not know implicitly that you’re really declaring war on the users of those chemicals, now you have war against a large section of your own people.

Do you think “war on drugs” should be banned as a slogan?
The Obama administration has abandoned it. The director of , who’s also known as the drug czar, doesn’t call himself a drug czar and doesn’t call it a war on drugs. That’s commendable, but it’s kind of window dressing if the policies stay the same. And the Obama administration has not paired its abandonment of the term war on drugs with meaningful policy reform.

You shot this film in more than 20 states. Is that the most legwork you’ve put into producing a movie?
In terms of geography, I’ve never traveled as far and wide. I didn’t wanna leave any stone unturned. I didn’t want someone to watch the movie and say, you know, that’s true on the east coast, but it’s really different down here in Oklahoma. Or that’s true in Oklahoma, but in California we do things really differently. So I wanted to make sure that I had enough places that if you heard a cop in Providence share his reservation about the war on drugs, you could go down to New Mexico and find a cop there saying the same thing, and in Seattle. What you find is a tremendous amount of overlap. You get a judge in Sioux City, Iowa, saying precisely the same things that a perp sitting in a Vermont jail told me. They agree about the unfairness of the law. The judge feels bad that he’s giving a sentence that he doesn’t agree with because his hands are tied by what are called mandatory minimum sentences, and the perp is sitting there about to spend a tremendous amount of his life behind bars because of mandatory minimum sentencing laws. 

What are some of the reactions you’ve had to the film so far?
I think people are shocked. People feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the human cost that’s involved, and they wonder what they can do about it. The next time a politician comes around and says vote for me because I’m gonna put away all the bad guys, they’re gonna be able to say that person is simply pandering to me for my vote.

Bear 71

A new interactive movie documents the journey of a grizzly bear in Banff National Park

Bear 71, an interactive online documentary that premiered at the , opens with an ominous epigraph: “There aren’t a lot of ways for a grizzly bear to die. At least, that’s the way it was in the wild.” A second later, you’re watching close-up footage of a 3-year-old grizzly trapped in a snare at . As we learn from the female voiceover, told from the bear’s perspective, the snare snapped shut with the “breaking strength of two tons.” But she’s not dead. Instead, park rangers tranquilize her with a shot of Telazol, tag her with a VHF collar, and release her back into the wild—christened as Bear 71.

For the next 20 minutes, the poetic narration paints a portrait of Bear 71’s life over the course of a decade. The bruising narrative informs you that, for example, trains have in the last decade (bears roam the tracks in search of grain leaked from trains). Or that “bears and humans here live closer together than any other place on earth.” Or that there are 44 ways for animals to cross Banff’s highways—even though, as Bear 71 wryly points out, “There’s nothing natural about a grizzly bear using an overpass.”

Short grizzly videos accompany the narration, and when the videos aren’t playing, you can use your mouse to navigate over an interactive map of Banff. As your pointer glides across the terrain, you encounter wolverines, moose, wildcats, and other fauna—each represented by a thumbnail that enlarges into a video. Co-creators and collated the footage from a collection of one million images shot by motion-sensor cameras around the park.

There’s a technology theme at play here, but the more gutting message of Bear 71 is the way in which human presence—roads, trains, tourists—has affected Banff’s natural habitat. (It’s all heightened by a powerful soundtrack that includes , and .) Essentially, animals are being punished for acting naturally in an increasingly unnatural environment. In Bear 71’s words, as she frets about the future of her cubs, “They’ll have to learn not to do what comes naturally. And I wonder, maybe the lesson is too hard.”

To watch the full movie and interact with Bear 71, go to .

Skateboarding Canon

Stacy Peralta talks about his new documentary Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, which premiered at Sundance 2012

Stacy Peralta Filming

Back in the day

Stacy Peralta

Stacy Peralta

IN , Stacy Peralta returns to his skateboarding roots to chronicle the young skate team he created in the 1980s. Combining archival footage and present-day interviews, tells the stories of the teens he groomed into skating legends: Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero and Mike McGill. We sat down with Peralta in Park City to talk about the film, which premiered this week at .

You mentioned at the Sundance premiere that you were hesitant to do this film at first. Why?
Because I play a dual role, director and subject, and I did that in [and Z-Boys]. I was worried that I was going to be viewed as a narcissist. That’s why I put “autobiography” in the title, so if people have an issue they at least know I’m stating it from the top. It was my wife’s idea. She knew my worry. She said, “Look, people write autobiographies all the time, and they make films.”So you know what? It’s a good idea.

You found a wealth of archival footage. Was a lot of it yours?
A lot of it was ours. All these guys lived outside of Los Angeles, so whenever I would fly them in for a contest, I had to photograph them all the time—because I needed the photographs for ads. So they’d come in and shoot tons of stuff. They’d go to the contest, I’d put ’em on the plane, and they’d go home. So we had this archive of probably 1500 photos, 50 hours of footage, over a 10-year span. So I had to go through all this—sort through it—and try to make a story out of it.

Have you been in close touch with everyone in the original crew?
We see each other once in a while, but everyone’s very busy. Being up here [at Sundance], we’re staying in the same home. We’ve not been together like this in over 20 years. It’s so much fun. We stay up every night, drink wine, have the fire going, Tommy’s playing guitar. It’s been a blast.

When you do these movies that rely heavily on archival footage, are you itching to shoot action scenes?
You know, I’ve shot so much action in my life, what I’m interested in now is just telling stories. I just wanna tell a story. If the story requires me to go shoot action, I’ll do it, but so far it hasn’t required that because I’ve been telling stories from the past.

Some of the most suspenseful moments in the film are when the boys come up with never-before-seen moves. Are there as many new moves being invented today?
They are still being invented today, but from what I understand they’re more like variations. These guys came into the sport at a time when the canvas was still very blank. A lot of the maneuvers they developed became iconic, groundbreaking maneuvers that today every skateboarder incorporates. We were just talking about that. What if Rodney or Tony had been born now? They wouldn’t have had that opportunity because the groundwork has been laid. Not to get lofty, but I almost look at these guys as like Chopin. He wrote the etudes, which were the studies. They kind of laid down all the things for future musicians to study. Not to suggest that they’re on that level, but just to say that they had a chance to be architects.

You do get the sense that you’re watching history in the making.
Yeah, what’s interesting is that so much of that footage, when I was making the film, I couldn’t believe they were doing that at such young ages. And I was there. So that was a surprise.

It’s interesting to watch you produce the skate videos, because it’s sort of the equivalent of YouTube today. How do you think YouTube and viral videos have affected skate culture?
I think it’s made the action sport video moot, because from what I understand, kids now go out and shoot a few tricks, post them on YouTube and that’s it. They don’t even do videos because it’s instantaneous. It happens right now. Whereas videos we shoot over a six-month period then release it, and then they play for two years.

Do you ever watch YouTube videos?
I’ve spent so much of my life doing this that I don’t typically [watch YouTube videos]. Once in a while someone sends me a link and says you’ve really gotta see this skateboarder, he’s really doing something different. And I did see a kid this past year from Spain that was doing things like, “Okay, this guy’s on a whole different plain.” Another kid from Japan was doing something so different and unique. Nothing where you go, “Oh my God.” But you could tell this guy was interpreting a different language.

Your films are always set in California, specifically on the coast. Would you like to move elsewhere at some point? Maybe focus on snowboarding, for example?
I’ve never been interested in snowboarding. I don’t know why. There’s something about the white mountain, it doesn’t have enough urban to it. I’ve been asked a lot of times. I don’t know what’s next, either. The things I want to do just require getting money and financing.

What do people approach you for these days?
I don’t get approached too often. I’m kind of on my own little planet. I don’t have an agent or manager. If I wanna make a film, I have to go out and get financing on my own. I’ve been a skateboarder my whole life and we’re kind of outsiders. I find myself like that in the film world, and I finally realized this is just the way it is for me. I’m never gonna be let in the front door, it’s always gonna be in the back. I’m gonna continue to climb over fences. But I realized maybe that’s the way I want it.

You have a knack for getting surfing and skateboarding legends to open up and even cry. How do you generate such intimacy?
Well, you wouldn’t know it from this conversation, but I don’t typically say much. I’m a very quiet person, but since you’re asking all these questions and you seem actively engaged, I’ll talk. Typically I’m the one asking questions. Typically I listen more than I speak, and if I’m at a party I’m glued to the wall, usually by myself. I’m just not comfortable, so I typically just try to engage people by asking them questions.

As you interviewed these men who you’ve known for 30 years, did you come to see sides of them that you hadn’t seen before?
Yes, it’s been really, really incredible getting to know these guys as adults. Really incredible. We were together at a very tender time in their lives and my life as well, and we developed a bond. It is as strong today as it was then, but now I’m getting to know them as fathers and husbands, and we talk about our problems and issues. It’s really, really funny to hear them talk about problems with their own kids.

Do you hear echoes of what you dealt with when they were kids and you were the adult?
Yes. [Laughs.] And to hear what they’re going through with their kids is really funny. It’s good material to share laughs with.

Any specific examples?
Steve Caballero was talking about one of his daughters growing up. She’s 15 and she won’t listen to him anymore, and he’s having to re-figure out how to be a father. He’s gotta back off a little bit. I was just thinking, “Too funny!”

There’s a touching moment in the film when Rodney and Tony buckle under the stress of competition. What role did you play in helping them through this phase?
Well, Rodney was different because when he left, he wasn’t there for me to be there for him. So he had to deal with that on his own. Tony at least was in San Diego, and I dealt with him and his brother. What Tony didn’t talk about was I wrote him a letter saying, look, whatever you need, you do. Because he loves competition—he just needed a break. He had had so much success so fast. He’s not an emotional kid, but when that happened to him—all those kids that spat on him, all those things people said about his dad—he was hurt. So I think he needed time to [tears up]. God, I get… it’s really weird, when we did these interviews I got so involved I became a crybaby. I had to continue to stop because I got so emotional. Anyway, he needed a three-month period to just get perspective on where he was at. What he realized is how much he loves [competing] but needed to figure out a way to come back with a different tack, a different relationship with it.

When you interview Rodney in the present, he’s incredibly insightful. Did you know that about him?
I did not know that he was as articulate as he is. It blew my mind. Before we started shooting we all got together to get any reservations out of the way, and when Rodney spoke, I thought, “Oh my god, we’ve got a film here. This guy is gonna be sensational.” But he was even better than I thought. I had a whole interview prepared for him and he took it somewhere else. Lance did the same thing, as well. He really came and took me a place I wasn’t expecting.

Are you still skateboarding?
I am. I skateboard and stand up paddle surf like a maniac. I’m addicted to it.

Where do you go?
Central California. I ride a small board performance board. I have to do a sport. It’s important for my head, it’s important for my spirit and chemical balance. If I don’t do that, I’ll go to the gym, but I have to keep physically active.

The Ambassador

Satirist and filmmaker Mads BrĂĽgger talks about going undercover to infiltrate the African blood diamond business

Traveling by boat

Traveling by boat

In , a documentary which premiered at the last week, Danish journalist procures an ambassadorship in Liberia and uses his diplomatic freedoms to infiltrate the blood diamond business. He pays a diplomatic title brokerage $135,000 and, with his newly minted ambassador title, travels to the Central African Republic under the pretense of building a match factory. His real mission is to capture the murky dealings of the country’s diamond industry on camera. This is BrĂĽgger ’s second stunt documentary. In his first, , he traveled to North Korea as part of a phony theater troupe—affording a rare look at inner workings of the communist regime. The intrepid journalist spoke with şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř about his risky seven-week operation in Africa.

It’s astonishing that you pulled this off. Were you surprised that you got as far as you did?
Yes. What was surprising was that I used my father’s name, but if you really deliberately and methodically Googled [the name], you will eventually find out that I’m a filmmaker. I was really afraid that that would happen at one point or another, but nothing ever happened.

Why did you keep the name?
I had to, for these passports for the diplomatic title brokers. They want proof of your identity, so I had to give them a copy of my Danish passport and so on. But you know, it’s what says in , that whatever will make the most money will happen. And if you have a lot of money, anything can happen in Africa.

Why did you decide to make the film?
First of all, I thought in the genre of hybrid role-play films, it would be the next level. Instead of playing a diplomat, I would actually become a diplomat, which raises the stakes significantly and makes everything much more interesting. Also because by becoming a diplomat, I would gain access to a very closed world that you seldom hear anything about. I speculated it would be possible to document and describe the power circles and the kingpins in a failed African state and by doing so, making a very genre-shaking Africa documentary.

You were going undercover in a country where diamond businessmen get assassinated. Were you on edge the whole time?
Of course there were moments of great concern and paranoia, but once paranoia and great concern is a permanent state of mind, you start to relax in a strange kind of way. Also, when I involve myself in role-playing as extreme as this, I become what I’m portraying. Which is a way of surviving the ordeal, but that actually also makes it fun.

Did you break out of character when you were alone?
This sounds very schizophrenic, but I was in character all the time. That’s because the hotel where I had my consulate is like the [hot spot] of for powerful people. They all come to the hotel for meetings and drinks and affairs with their mistresses and so on, and because I was there all the time I had to be in character all the time.

Were there any moments where you were sure you’d be discovered?
A very interesting moment is when I had a reception at my consulate, and one of the guests was a military intelligencer officer from a detachment of South African soldiers who are stationed in the Central African Republic. This man deals directly with President Bozize and so was very influential. He was at the reception and I was trying to keep him at arm’s length, because it is his job finding out about characters such as me. And then he approaches me and says, “Mr. Ambassador, I need to have a confidential talk with you.” And I’m thinking, “This is the end.” We go to a suite next door and he says, “Ambassador, I know you cannot comment on this, but I will say so anyway. I believe that you have all the hallmark characteristics of a highly-seasoned leader of intelligence service, which I believe you are.” And I’m saying, well thank you, I cannot comment on it, but it takes one to know one. And then we laughed in this snobbish kind of way and went back to the reception. Even though it was a harrowing moment, it also made me very proud because it was the ultimate compliment.

In your last documentary, The Red Chapel, you went undercover in . Which documentary felt more dangerous to shoot?
It’s difficult to compare them. In a way, [The Ambassador] feels riskier because in a place such as this, it is so unpredictable what will happen next. You are having whisky sour cocktails with the son of the president. Ten minutes later you could find yourself in a torturer’s dungeon. Not because of something you have said or done, but because somebody told the president’s son something about you which may not even be true. There is no causality principle in the Central African Republic, which makes it quite a challenge to be there.

Did you have a game plan going in, or were you winging it?
I think in terms of situations. I knew I was going to make the matches factory [as a front for his diamond business], and that I had this Indian guy flying in. I knew that I was going to invest in a diamond mine with Monsieur Gilbert. These are the main anchors of the film, and everything else I more or less left to chance.

How much of this was shot on hidden cameras?
Most of the meetings I had in my consulate office is hidden cameras, but when dealing with the Africans, most of the Central Africans didn’t mind. We were filming on this . They look like still cameras. They shoot very high-grade HD. And for a Central African person, that does not in any way relate to film or television-making—they thought Johan [the interpreter] was kind of an amateur—I would tell them in the beginning that he was my press officer, because it sounds swanky, and that he was documenting my exploits and endeavors. But they didn’t care really, so I stopped explaining. And they totally ignored him. So we were able to film scenes where I was thinking, “How come they don’t say anything about the camera?” Even things where Monsieur Gilbert would say, “What’s going on here is very secret. If anyone finds out we’ll all go to jail.” While he’s saying so, the camera is right next to his face. They don’t care. They’re not that media-savvy. Or maybe they are—maybe they are at the next level.

You finally get your hands on some diamonds towards the end of the film, but you don’t reveal what happens to them. Were you worried about implicating yourself?
It’s because I don’t want to take the mystery out of the film. I had to take the diamonds when Monsieur Gilbert brought them to me, to keep up appearances. But I had to get rid of them as fast as possible, because if I were to be stopped by the mining police and they would find them, biblical punishment would rain down on me. So I took them and went alone to a diamond dealer outfit in Bangui, which is run by some Syrian-Armenians, and sold the diamonds to them. So I actually became a diamond dealer, and the money I made I gave to the pygmies to incorporate the match factory.

Can I ask how much money you sold them for?
It wasn’t a seller’s market because I didn’t have the papers — [the buyers] would also have a problem with these diamonds. So I might have made ten thousand dollars?

Some people have expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the film. They think it’s staged, or at least partly staged.
The only thing in the film which is fiction is me and Eva, my assistant, because she is also the production manager of the film. Everyone else is real. Nothing has been staged. Everybody is what they are. It is not a mockumentary, so apart from myself and Eva, it’s really as pure a documentary as you can make. But I understand why they think so, because a lot of the characters in the film are almost like comic book heroes and villains. Monsieur Gilbert and the head of the secret service, they are this close to cliché. If it was a feature film and you would show up with a person such as Monsieur Gilbert, with a machete scar and a gold tooth, you would say this is too much, you have to tone it down.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

A movie about climate change wins the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance

is a climate change doomsday tale like no other climate-change doomsday tale—think łľ±đ±đłŮ˛őĚý with an environmental twist. The terrifically unpredictable film evokes a visceral concern for what lies in wait when ecological disaster strikes. It then asks how one is supposed to come to grips with the notion of impending catastrophe. The answer is: celebrate the hell out of what you have right now.

The movie centers on an impoverished but wildly spirited community in a fictional Louisiana bayou called The Bathtub. Early on, a schoolteacher ominously instructs her kids that climate change is transforming the ecology of their community. “Y’all better learn how to survive now,” she warns. To ratchet up the looming threat, scenes of life in the bayou are interspersed with surreal cutaways to a pack of pre-historic aurochs that, once frozen in glaciers, have now been loosed from the melt. Throughout the film, the ferocious beasts stampede closer to the bayou, a metaphor for approaching disaster.

When the storm finally hits, it floods The Bathtub’s ramshackle homes, transforming lowlands into murky rivers and wiping out the animals and plants once relied on for food. Rather than despair, the Bathtub’s steely citizens drink and laugh and feast on the grub that remains. The two main characters—6-year-old Hushpuppy () and her mercurial father, Wink ()—will not be fazed. They troll the water for catfish, which they hunt by hand. Wink tries to drain the bayou by blowing a hole in the levee. “I got it under control,” he roars. Well, he doesn’t, exactly—he’s actually dying—but that doesn’t make his attitude moot.

In press notes for the film, director writes, “With the hurricanes, the oil spills, the land decaying out from under our feet, there’s a sense of inevitability that one day it’s all going to get wiped off the map. I wanted to make a movie exploring how we should respond to such a death sentence.” If you haven’t already gathered, this is not a pragmatic exploration of ways to avert said death sentence—for those answers, try a documentary. Instead, Beasts offers a much more esoteric take on climate change, and it’s well worth a watch when it comes to a theater near you.

Chasing Ice

Photographer James Balog and director Jeff Orlowski talk about the grunt work behind their new documentary project, a beautiful and frightening chronicle of so much melting ice

Chasing Ice

Trekking in

Checking the cameras

Checking the cameras

Chasing Ice

In the water

DOCUMENTS THE WORK of , The North Face sponsored photographer who launched the in 2007. The goal? Illustrate the effects of climate change. The method? Place 27 time-lapse cameras at receding glaciers around the world to record their history. The results are magnificent—and terrifying. We spoke with Balog and director about the nitty gritty detail that went into the making of the film.

What was the most remote camera location, and what was the journey like to get there?
Orlowski: Getting to Greenland alone you have to go through Copenhagen now, so we would have to fly from Colorado to the east coast to Copenhagen, back to Kangerlussuaq.

Balog: Kangerlussuaq is on the west coast of Greenland. It’s sometimes a couple of stops to get from Copenhagen to there.

Orlowski: Then another flight at least in Greenland, then helicopters.

Balog: Or boats or dog sleds to get out to the actual camera site. There’s one site where there’s two cameras currently up in northwestern Greenland, at Petermann Glacier. That is up in a place where there is probably no human being except maybe every second or third year. It’s really way, way out there. I can’t tell you what the latitude is. It might be about 78 or 79 degrees north up in the northwestern corner of the country. There’s no villages within hundreds of miles, no military bases or weather stations or anything. It’s just out there.

What are some of the more harrowing conditions you’ve had to endure when trekking out to the cameras?
Balog: I think temperature-wise it would be Greenland in the wintertime, and that was minus 30 degrees, basically. Wind-wise and storm-wise, it’s probably Iceland.

Orlowski: Adam and I had some bad winds in Greenland, the katabatic winds just coming off the glacier. It’s a temperature difference that creates these really high-powered winds. We were camping in 90-mile-per-hour winds. Our tents broke, the aluminum poles sheared in half. We lost a couple tents from heavy winds. The temperature in Greenland in the wintertime, those were minus 30 degree temperatures and we got frostnip touching cameras. I thought I was gonna die one night because our heater wasn’t working, and I woke up in the middle of the night because my teeth were chattering so much—that’s what woke me up. There were some cold, cold conditions.

Balog: And Iceland has incredibly violent storms. There’s a volcano right up above the glacier and the air masses tend to come from over that volcano and down to where the cameras are—and you get these violent bursts of wind and storm that come in these pulses. It’s kind of uncanny how it gets this rhythm going. It’ll be mildly unpleasant for 15 minutes, then for about five or 10 minutes you’re getting ripped every which way and eaten up by the snow and the wind. In the summertime it’s rain, but it’s almost as violent.

Orlowski: When we’re in Greenland, we are out in very, very remote locations. A helicopter drops us off. We’re there camping for a week with all of our provisions. There are some landscapes where there’s no wildlife at all. You’re just out on the ice. All you hear is water. And there was one time where, due to bad weather, a helicopter couldn’t come pick us up. James was stuck there for five days without any opportunity to get back. It was full-on, “Sorry we can’t get you, we’ll get you in a couple days.” Fortunately he had enough food to last.

How much does your gear weigh altogether on these trips?
Balog: It just depends on what the objective of the trip is. I don’t think we ever left the Denver airport without 800 pounds or 1,000 pounds of gear. In the beginning of the deployment, when all that stuff got shipped to Greenland especially, I don’t know. 1,500 pounds? 2,000 pounds? It goes up on U.S. Air Force flights that go from a National Guard base near Albany. It gets airlifted on a C1-30 up to a base on Greenland. Then we have to put it on the commercial flights to go further north. The logistics are crazy. It’s all you think about for a while.

Orlowski: The first time we went to Greenland, James made me and the whole team look at everything we were bringing. We laid everything out in James’s garage and he approved everything that was coming. I thought, “Why are we going through this level of scrutiny?” Then I learned the helicopters costs $4,000 an hour and we were paying thousands of dollars on excess baggage on every leg of these trips. Hundreds of dollars on some, thousands on others. We were paying per kilogram so every extra thing with us counted. You were bringing only the absolute necessities. We also get very good at hiding our excess weight from the airlines. When you go to check-in, they give you baggage tags on Air Greenland for how much weight you’re allowed to bring onto the plane. So we would each check in separately. We would hide all our extra gear that we were gonna carry onto our plane with somebody. We’d check in individually with a very small lightweight bag that they would approve, and then we would try to sneak onto the plane with all the extra camera gear, lenses, bodies, video cameras. And most of the time it was successful. But it became an art form of sneaking the camera gear onto the plane.

Tell us about your cameras. James, you had to build them yourself because they didn’t exist.
Balog: It was about four-and-a-half months worth of developing the technology for this thing, at least in the first wave of it. You have two basic problems: One is the electronics of telling the camera when to fire, and giving it power so that it can fire. And then the other problem is protecting the equipment against the weather. I was doing a lot of things by trial and error to see what would actually work. And it was really complicated.

How did you anchor and winterize the cameras to withstand harsh conditions year-round?
Orlowski: They had to withstand 200 mph winds and negative 40-degree temperatures. And James had to build a system that could endure huge variations in temperature. I think a lot of that was trial and error. And when we installed stuff, we learned as we were installing them what was working and what didn’t work, and we ended up creating a system that could be modified for almost any landscape. The first time we went to Iceland, we were installing a system we had designed for tripods. We were gonna use the tripods, secure them to the ground, and when we got there we realized the ground was too soft. The tripods would shift and they wouldn’t stay.

Balog: There wasn’t nearly as much bedrock to stand these things on as we’d thought.

Orlowski: So we ended up having to mount them into the mountainside, and we had to completely redesign the system. We kind of created two systems: one that could be mounted against a cliff face or a wall, and one that could be mounted directly into the ground. And those two systems allowed us to work in pretty much any environment.

Balog: We discovered the first problems in Iceland. That was March of 2007. It was the first field test of all these ideas. As soon as we got there it was like, “Oh shit.” All this thinking and all this work to build a support system, and all the boxes and boxes of gear that went with that idea. And it was already ordered and billed for 25 cameras. I had 25 cameras worth of gear that was suddenly junk. We ended up donating it to the University of Colorado’s engineering department. In any event, we were running down to the local hardware store 50 miles away, trying to cobble together pieces and parts in new tools and all kinds of stuff to build a new theory about how to put these up on the cliff faces along the volcano.

Orlowski: And a hardware store in Iceland is not exactly a well-provisioned hardware store. It was definitely jerry-rigging a system that would work, that we later improved as we went back and re-tested them. That very first camera we installed, it was on a cliff and got completely knocked off. This rock fell, cracked a hole in the top of the camera box and the whole thing sheared right off of its mount. We’ve had cameras buried under snow in Alaska, under 20 feet of snow. The cameras were mounted to bedrock using the bolts you would use to go rock-climbing with, that are designed to support thousands of pounds of weight as you pull on them. We had four of those in the base of the camera and another four cables securing this thing, but when we went back to one of these systems, we had to dig it out from under the snow. The entire system was shaking. It was completely loose. The weight of the snow had pulled the bolts out of the rocks.

You’ve experienced so many setbacks along the way. Were there moments where you felt you should scale down the project?
Balog: There were a lot of times when I really felt like I was over my head, because of the electronics. Not only did I not know about some really obscure questions of how electrical systems worked, I was kind of mentally resistant to learning about it. And when I tried to learn about it, I found the guys who were trying to explain it weren’t doing a very good job. They had been in an electronic world for so long, they couldn’t speak to laymen about it. So eventually I got aggravated with the electronics, as I so often do still today. It was like, “God, this is just driving me crazy that I have to do this.” But as with all the big projects that I’ve done, it pushed me into new creative and technical territory in pursuit of the aesthetic ideal I was after. So I kind of had to grit my teeth and bear it. But believe me, it was about 15 times a day I was thinking, “Geez, I’m over my head on this,” or “Dammit, I don’t like this,” or “How did I ever get involved with this craziness?”

How frequently do you check on the cameras and upload the photos?
Balog: It depends on where they are. If the site’s relatively accessible, like they are in Iceland, we can get there three or four times a year. Greenland it’s once a year, Montana it’s once a year.

How many photos do you take in one year?
Balog: It depends on latitude and how much daylight there is, but one year is equal to approximately 4,000 frames that we’re shooting once an hour. That’s 4,000 frames per camera.

Orlowski: How many frames totally have been collected so far?

Balog: We’re somewhere in excess of 800,000. We’ve kind of lost track, but now each camera is shooting every half-hour in most cases. Some are shooting every 20 minutes, but basically every half-hour it gives you about 8,000 frames.

Do you get excited when it’s time to visit a camera and retrieve new photos?
Balog: It’s like opening presents on Christmas morning. Every time you go to a camera, it’s like, “Wow, here we are, here’s the goodies, let’s see what we have.” And of course at the same time, you always have this sense of dread in your gut, like oh god, what if it didn’t work? That anxiety about the failure was much more acute in the beginning of the project, when we really needed to have the technical things working. We needed content. In the world of academic science, if you do the experiment, you get points in heaven. But in the world of picture-making, you don’t get points in heaven for experiments. You only get points in heaven for having a picture.

Which glaciers have shown the most alarming decay?
Balog: It’s hard to define that because are you dealing with volume of ice? Or are you dealing with percentage of change in relation to the size of that glacier? Because a little glacier can have a lot of retreat in relationship to its size. On a percentage basis it can be enormous, but it doesn’t deliver the volume of ice that a big glacier having a little bit of change is doing. So how do you describe it? I think one of the most dramatic examples certainly is Columbia Glacier in Alaska. That’s now had almost three miles of retreat since we’ve started the project. We actually just got an email from one of our partners in Anchorage over the weekend. There’s actually a beach that’s now formed where the ice used to be.

The post Best of Sundance 2012 appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Of course they do—they get to trek with camels. But you can, too! We’ve got the COOLEST TRIPS, TOP TEN TRENDS, EXPERT ADVICE, AND BEST NEW PLACES TO GET LOST IN 2003. So what are you waiting for? Giddyup!




Let the Pros Be Your Guides




Get Lost in the Back of Beyond




Say Hello to the Wild Life




The Next Best Thing to Actually Living There




Go the Extra Green Mile




Take the Multisport Approach




No Whining Allowed




Blazing New Trails by Mountain Bike




Water is the Best Element




Our Next Thrilling Episodes




Remote Trips Right Here at Home




Three Helicopter Epics




Six New Additions to the şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Travel Map




What’s Up in the World’s Danger Zones

Star Power

Let the pros be your guides

BIKING THE TOUR DE FRANCE [FRANCE]
What’s better than watching this year’s 100th anniversary of the Tour de France? Riding it, just hours ahead of the peloton. You’ll pave the way for a certain Texan vying for his fifth straight victory, pedaling 10- to 80-mile sections of the race route through villages packed with expectant fans, and over some of the toughest mountain stages in the Pyrenees and Alps. At day’s end, ditch your bike for luxury digs in villages like Taillores, on Lake Annecy, and the Basque hamlet of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port. OUTFITTER: Trek Travel, 866-464-8735, . WHEN TO GO: July. PRICE: $3,575. DIFFICULTY: moderate to strenuous.

MOUNT EVEREST ANNIVERSARY TREK [NEPAL]
This May, commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s historic climb to the summit of Everest by spending more than a month trekking and mountaineering in Nepal. Starting in Tumlingtar, you’ll hike beneath Himalayan giants like 27,824-foot Makalu, and strap on crampons to climb the 20,000-foot East and West Cols, and cross 19,008-foot Amphu Laptsa pass into the Everest region. At trek’s end in Thyangboche, Hillary’s son, Peter, will preside over a ceremonial banquet, while the man himself (now 83) will join in by sat phone from Kathmandu. OUTFITTER: World Expeditions, 888-464-8735, . WHEN TO GO: April-June. PRICE: $3,690. DIFFICULTY: strenuous. CRUISING THE SEA OF CORTEZ [MEXICO]
To celebrate 25 years in the adventure business, Wilderness Travel has called on Ÿber-mountaineer Reinhold Messner and Amazon explorer Joe Kane to headline a weeklong cruise in the Sea of Cortez. When you’re not on the shallow-draft, 70-passenger Sea Bird, you’ll snorkel with naturalists as they track sea lions off Isla Los Islotes and spot gray whales in Bah’a Magdalena. Sea-kayak around uninhabited islands and hike desert arroyos, then spend evenings swapping expedition tales with Messner and Kane. OUTFITTER: Wilderness Travel, 800-368-2794, . WHEN TO GO: March. PRICE: $4,595. DIFFICULTY: easy.

CYCLING THROUGH THE TUSCAN VINYARDS [ITALY]
Might want to add another front chainring to your bike before embarking on this hard-charging eight-day affair in Toscana, birthplace of cycle touring. Thanks to the expertise of former Giro d’Italia winner Andy Hampsten, this 400-mile route is designed for riders who are as serious about their Brunello as they are about their hills. From coastal Maremma, you’ll pedal little-trafficked backroads past farmhouses and monasteries, resting your climbing legs and dining like a Medici at wine estates and 12th-century hamlets. Four nights will be spent at a vineyard for a thorough indoctrination in winemaking (and tasting). OUTFITTER: Cinghiale Tours, 206-524-6010, . WHEN TO GO: September. PRICE: $3,000. DIFFICULTY: strenuous.

KAYAKING THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER [USA]
Drop into Craten’s Hole with freestyle-kayaking phenom Ben Selznick. Bozeman local and winner of the Gallatin Rodeo 2002, Selznick is your guide on a seven-day tour of Montana’s most famous whitewater. After warming up on the Gallatin River’s Class II-III waves, you’ll graduate to the steep creeks off the Yellowstone, ranging from Class II to V. At night, ease your sore shoulders poolside and fireside at the Chico Hot Springs and Rock Creek resorts. OUTFITTER: GowithaPro, 415-383-3907, . WHEN TO GO: July. PRICE: $4,500. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

Far Out

Get lost in the back of beyond

Big wig: a Papuan prepares for a tribal dance

SHAGGY RIDGE TREK [PAPUA NEW GUINEA]
If you were to drop off the face of the earth, you’d probably land in Papua New Guinea’s steamy Finisterre Mountains. Rising 13,000 feet out of the sweltering lowlands, the mountains’ flanks are choked in jungle thicket that few have ever fully explored—not even the locals. Be among the first. Hike and camp for seven days on tangled game trails and World War II supply routes to Shaggy Ridge, an airy fin of rock 4,900 feet above the Bismarck Sea. Be prepared to answer a barrage of questions from Papuan villagers who rarely, if ever, see outsiders. OUTFITTER: World Expeditions, 888-464-8735, . WHEN TO GO: August, September. PRICE: $2,150. DIFFICULTY: strenuous.

THE ULTIMATE FLY-FISING ADVENTURE [MONGOLIA]
You’ve got much more than a fish on when you’ve nabbed a taimen, a specimen that regularly grows to five feet long and dines on prairie dogs and ducks. If you’re not up for hunting the world’s largest salmonid for a full week on the Bator River, you can cast for lenok, the brown trout of Mongolia; ride horses or mountain bikes; or just enjoy the good life in your ger, a woodstove-heated yurt with two beds and electricity. Outfitter: Sweetwater Travel Company, 406-222-0624, . When to go: May-June, August-October. Price: $5,200. Difficulty: easy.

RAFTING THE FIRTH RIVER [CANADA]
Caribou know no boundaries. Every June, the 150,000-strong Porcupine herd leaves the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and migrates into the Yukon’s roadless Ivvavik National Park. And because the Class II-IV Firth bisects the park, you’ll be awestruck when thousands cross the river in plain view. Other big game are afoot, too—musk ox, barren land grizzlies, and wolves—and in such high concentrations that the region is often referred to as North America’s Serengeti. With long Arctic days and three- to four-hour river sessions daily, you’ll have plenty of time on this 12-day trip to hike the gently sloping 6,000-foot Brooks Range and fish for arctic char. Outfitter: Rivers, Oceans, and Mountains, 877-271-7626, . When to Go: June. Price: $3,995. Difficulty: moderate.

RIO NEGRO & AMAZON ADVENTURE [BRAZIL]
The upper Rio Negro is your portal back in time on this 11-day adventure that plumbs the deepest, darkest corners of the Amazon Basin. From the former Jesuit outpost of Santa Isabel, you’ll motorboat on the Negro’s blackened waters through virgin rainforest, camping alongside Tucanos Indian settlements stuck in a 19th-century time warp. Off the water, you’ll trek with native Brazilian guides into the rugged tepuis (3,000-foot plateaus), prowling for medicinal herbs used by local shamans. Resist the urge to swim: Football-size piranha call the Rio Negro home. OUTFITTER: Inti Travel and Tours, 403-760-3565, . WHEN TO GO: year-round. PRICE: $2,750. DIFFICULTY: easy.

RUNNING THE KATUN RIVER [RUSSIA]
If you’re looking for bragging rights to a truly remote river, consider the glacier-fed Katun. This 90-mile stretch of whitewater drains from the southern slopes of the 13,000-foot Altai Range, dropping fast through alpine tundra, 300-foot granite canyons, and continuous sets of Class III-IV pool-drop rapids. After a long river day, your evening entertainment at camp consists of traditional Russian dancing and a steamy riverfront bana (sauna). Outfitter: Bio Bio Expeditions, 800-246-7238, . When to Go: July. Price: $2,800. Difficulty: moderate.

COAST TO COAST IN BALBOA’S FOOTSTEPS [PANAMA]
Cross a continent in less than two weeks? Improbable but true when you retrace the route 16th-century conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa used to transport riches across the Isthmus of Panama. Five days of hiking, from the Caribbean village of Armila through the Darien Biosphere Reserve, take you to the Chucunaque River, where you’ll board dugout canoes and navigate a maze of flatwater channels past Ember‡ Indian settlements. Four days later, you’ll find yourself on the other side: a wide stretch of beach where Balboa “discovered” the Pacific in 1513. OUTFITTER: Destination by Design, 866-392-7865, . WHEN TO GO: May, December. PRICE: $3,290. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

Close Encounters

Say hello to the wild life

A scarlet macaw perched in the rainforests of Belize

EXPLORING REEF AND RAINFOREST [BELIZE]
Mingle with everything from crocs and tapirs to jabiru storks and hawksbill turtles on this eight-day whirl through Belize. After three days on the mainland, gawking at toucans and parrots at the Crooked Tree Bird Sanctuary and dodging howler monkeys at the Mayan ruins of Lamanai, you’ll be whisked 55 miles offshore to a tented base camp on undeveloped Lighthouse Reef. Spend your days snorkeling, kayaking, and scuba diving within more than 70 square miles of pristine reefs. OUTFITTER: Island Expeditions, 800-667-1630, . WHEN TO GO: December- May. PRICE: $1,929. DIFFICULTY: moderate. WALKING WITH BUSHMEN [BOTSWANA]
See the backcountry of Botswana and all its attendant wildlife—with a twist. On this nine-day safari, you’ll tag along with Bushmen on their daily hunting-and-gathering forays (while still bedding down in luxe lodges and camps). Following the lion-cheetah-leopard-elephant-giraffe-zebra spectacle in the Okavango Delta, you’ll head north for a night to stay in the River Bushmen’s new camp, where you’ll search for medicinal plants or hunt with bow and arrow. Farther south, in the arid Central Kalahari Game Reserve, San Bushmen will show you how they survive on roots and prickly pears. OUTFITTER: Africa şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Company, 800-882-9453, . WHEN TO GO: April-November. PRICE: $1,925-$2,595. DIFFICULTY: easy.

SWIMMING WITH HUMPBACK WHALES [TONGA]
It’s been said that life is never the same after you’ve looked into the eye of a whale. Here’s how to find out: Every year between June and October, hundreds of humpbacks congregate in and around the turquoise waters of Vava’u, a group of 40 islands in northern Tonga, in the South Pacific. For seven days, you’ll bunk down in Neiafu at night, and by day slide into the water and float quietly while mammals the size of semis check you out. OUTFITTER: Whale Swim şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 503-699-5869, . WHEN TO GO: August- October. PRICE: $1,180. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

Immersion Therapy

The next best thing to actually living there

REMOTE HILL TRIBE TREK [VIETNAM]
Despite the boom in adventure tourism in Vietnam, few travelers venture into the far-northern hill country, some 200 miles north of Hanoi. You should. Following overgrown buffalo paths and ancient Chinese trading trails, you’ll hike steep terrain for 120 miles over 11 days, traveling north from Cao Bang and staying with Nung villagers in huts on stilts. Save some film for Ban Gioc Falls, on the border with China, and Pac Bo Cave, Ho Chi Minh’s legendary hideout. Outfitter: World Expeditions, 888-464-8735, . When to go: October-March. Price: $1,490. Difficulty: moderate.

TREKKING THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS [MOROCCO]
The M’goun Gorge is so narrow in places, you can’t see the sky—let alone the craggy summits of the nearby 12,000-foot Atlas Mountains. But they’re never out of sight for long on this ten-day trip through small Berber burgs in Morocco’s most fabled range. Over four days of hiking, you’ll climb Tizi n’ AĂŻImi, a 9,528-foot pass, and sleep in Berber farmhouses en route to the Valley of AĂŻBou Guemez, a rare oasis where you’re welcomed as family. OUTFITTER: Living Morocco, 212-877-1417, WHEN TO GO: May. PRICE: $2,950-$3,050. DIFFICULTY: easy.

BARACOA-GUANT�NAMO CYCLE TOUR [CUBA]
Ride beneath the radar on this Canadian outfitter’s weeklong, 300-mile bike tour of Cuba’s northern coast, past black-sand beaches and nature reserves. The towns en route—Mayar’, a village immortalized by Cuban crooner Compay Segundo, and lush Baracoa—see few tourists and fewer cyclists, so you’ll have La Farola, a winding mountain pass known as “Cuba’s roller coaster,” all to yourself. Use caution when hydrating: Rum’s cheaper than water. OUTFITTER: MacQueen’s Island Tours, 800-969-2822, . WHEN TO GO: April, December. PRICE: $2,595, including round-trip airfare from Toronto. DIFFICULTY: moderate to strenuous.

SNOWSHOEING THE RHODOPE MOUNTAINS [BULGARIA]
Haven’t heard of the Rhodopes? No surprise. Obscurity has helped keep these 7,000-foot peaks in southern Bulgaria among the least visited in Europe. You’ll spend four to seven hours a day snowshoeing along ancient footpaths, through deep drifts and pine forests, to the slopes of Mount Cherni Vruh. Medieval monasteries and village guesthouses provide shelter on this eight-day trip, and Bulgarian perks include homemade sirine (a local feta cheese) and chance sightings of the Asiatic jackal. Outfitter: Exodus, 866-732-5885, . When to Go: February, December. Price: $775. Difficulty: moderate.

It’s Only Natural

Go the extra green mile

RAFTING THROUGH THE RÍO PL�TANO BIOSPHERE RESERVE [HONDURAS]
Hail the monkey god on this 12-day rafting expedition through the R’o Pl‡tano Biosphere Reserve in eastern Honduras, a primordial jungle where more than 100 archaeological sites are covered with petroglyphs of the primate deity. On the R’o Pl‡tano, you’ll run Class III-IV rapids and float through serene limestone grottos, encountering en route the full Animal Planet menagerie of macaws, tapirs, spider monkeys, anteaters, and, with any luck, jaguars. At trip’s end, you’ll “hot dance” in a Garifuna Indian village. OUTFITTER: La Moskitia Ecoaventuras, 011-504-441-0839, . WHEN TO GO: December-August. PRICE: $1,430-$1,765. DIFFICULTY: moderate. DOCUMENTING RARE RAINFOREST PLANTS [CAMEROON]
Thanks to 4,000 resident species of plants, Cameroon’s 6,500-foot Backossi Mountains are a horticulturalist’s dream. Join scientists from England’s Royal Botanic Gardens and Bantu guides for 13 days to help inventory rare forest flora such as endangered orchids, edible fruits, and a new species of bird’s-nest fern. You’ll camp in a nearby village or bunk in a community hall and learn to prepare local fare, including plantains, fu-fu corn, and cassava. OUTFITTER: Earthwatch Expeditions, 800-776-0188, . WHEN TO GO: March-May, October-November. PRICE: $1,295. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

EXPLORING NAM HA [LAOS]
The Lao equivalent of a national park, the 858-square-mile Nam Ha National Biodiversity and Conservation Area in northwestern Laos offers some of Southeast Asia’s wildest rafting and trekking. Spend ten days paddling Class III whitewater on both the Nam Ha and Nam Tha rivers, sleeping in villages and bamboo-and-thatch bungalows at the Boat Landing Ecolodge, and trekking with local guides deep into the jungle, on the lookout for tailless fruit bats and Asiatic black bears. OUTFITTER: AquaTerra Ventures, 011-61-8-9494-1616, . WHEN TO GO: June-January. PRICE: $1,150. DIFFICULTY: easy to moderate.

ECO-TRAIL SAFARI IN KRUGER NATIONAL PARK [SOUTH AFRICA]
Go trekking with rangers on the newly designated Lebombo Eco-Trail, which runs for more than 300 miles along the previously off-limits eastern border of South Africa’s Kruger National Park and Mozambique. You might encounter rhinos, zebras, and even the lowly dung beetle in Africa’s most biodiverse park. You’ll also trek into nearby 200-million-year-old Blyde River Canyon and stalk lions on a walking safari. OUTFITTER: Sierra Club, 415-977-5522, . WHEN TO GO: September-October. PRICE: $3,695-$3,995. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

Variety Packs

Take the multisport approach

Skiing the extra mile: Norway’s version of the Alps

CROSSING THE PATAGONIAN ANDES [CHILE AND ARGENTINA]
The Edenic RĂ­o Manso Valley, at the southern tip of South America, is pure Patagonia—high, open country surrounded by ancient alerce forests (think redwoods) and populated by gauchos and trout. How you choose to play on this nine-day camping trip—rafting the Manso’s Class IV-V rapids, casting for rainbows, or horseback riding along the riverfront trail—is up to you as you venture west from the altiplano of Bariloche toward the chiseled fjords of coastal Chile. OUTFITTER: şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Tours Argentina Chile, 866-270-5186, . WHEN TO GO: December-March. PRICE: $2,900. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

MUSHING WITH THE GREAT WHITE BEAR [NORWAY]
You take the reins on this 12-day dogsledding sojourn across the frozen island of Spitsbergen, Norway, 600 miles from the North Pole. When the huskies are resting, keep busy by snowshoeing amid gargantuan icebergs, cross-country skiing over glaciers, and spelunking blue-green ice caves. Defrost at night in a lodge made of sealskin and driftwood, expedition-style tents (you’ll be snug beneath reindeer-fur blankets), and a Russian ship intentionally frozen into the pack ice. Your only neighbors will be the island’s 4,000 polar bears (in case of emergency, your guide’s got the gun). OUTFITTER: Outer Edge Expeditions, 800-322-5235, . WHEN TO GO: March-April. PRICE: $3,990. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

POST ECO-CHALLENGE MULTISPORT [FIJI]
The professional adventure racers have gone home, so now you can spill your own sweat on the 2002 Eco-Challenge course. This new ten-day trip gives you access to some truly wild, made-for-TV terrain: mazy jungle trails, precipitous singletrack, and idyllic beaches. After sea-kayaking two days to the island of Malake, where spearfishermen bring up walu for dinner on a single breath of air, you’ll mountain-bike 25 miles over rugged terrain from the village of Ba to Navilawa. Next up is a two-day trek through lowland rainforests to the summit of 3,585-foot Mount Batilamu, followed by Class II-III rafting on the Navua River, from the coral coast to the interior village of Wainindiro. After all this, you’ve earned two days of beachfront R&R on the little-visited island of Kadavu. OUTFITTER: Outdoor Travel şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 877-682-5433, . WHEN TO GO: May-October. PRICE: $1,999. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

Take It to the Top

No whining allowed

The frozen zone: Argentina’s Perito Moreno Glacier

CONTINENTAL ICE CAP TRAVERSE [ARGENTINA]
Patagonia’s 8,400-square-mile slab of ice wasn’t even explored until the 1960s, when British explorer Eric Shipton crossed it first. Starting in El Calafate, on the shore of Lago Argentino, this arduous 16-day backpacking/ski-mountaineering trip cuts through Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, where you’ll cross rivers and crevasses, ascend 4,830 feet to Marconi Pass, do time on ropes, crampons, and skis, and set up glacial camps along the spine of the Fitz Roy Range. The payoff? A wilderness fix on the gnarliest mass of ice and granite this side of the South Pole. OUTFITTER: Southwind şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-377-9463, . WHEN TO GO: November-March. PRICE: $3,395. DIFFICULTY: strenuous. SURFING EPIC WAVES [THE MALDIVES]
Board where few have surfed before: off the Indian Ocean’s remote Huvadhoo Atoll, site of several world-class breaks. Huvadhoo is a two-day voyage on a dhoni, a 60-foot, five-cabin, live-aboard wooden yacht, from the capital, Male; along the way, cast off the deck for tuna, marlin, and bonito. Once at the Huvadhoo, be ready for eight-foot-plus waves, especially near the atoll’s largest island, Fiyori, where there’s a fast (and dangerous) right break. OUTFITTER: Voyages Maldives, 011-960-32-3617, . WHEN TO GO: April-September. PRICE: $85 per day (typically a 7-, 10-, or 14-day tour). DIFFICULTY: strenuous.

RAFTING THE BRAHMAPUTRA RIVER [INDIA]
With 112 miles of Class III-V+ Himalayan runoff, the Brahmaputra, the lower portion of the legendary Tsangpo in Tibet, is one of the planet’s ultimate whitewater challenges. And a relatively new one at that—the first commercial rafting expedition was launched late last year. You’ll spend nine days blasting down emerald-green hydraulics (the Class V Breakfast Rapid is famous for flipping rafts), camping on sandy beaches, and passing through Namdapha National Park, home to one of Asia’s most varied tropical forests. OUTFITTER: Mercury Himalayan Explorations, 011-91-112-334-0033, . WHEN TO GO: November-February. PRICE: $3,300, including internal airfare. DIFFICULTY: strenuous.

Get Wheel

Blazing new trails by mountain bike

Sandstone heaven: on the rocks in Cappadocia

RIDING THE RUGGED NORTHEAST [PORTUGAL]
A good set of knobbies and generous helpings of local beef and nightly port will help you tackle this eight-day inn-to-inn tour through Portugal’s wild northeast corner. Dodge cows on Roman pathways, follow craggy singletrack alongside the Douro River, and spin along trails once used by smugglers trafficking coffee beans to Spain. The grand finale is the wide-open wilderness of the remote Serra da Malcata—land of pine-topped peaks, wild boar, and little else. OUTFITTER: Saddle Skedaddle Tours, 011-44191-2651110, . WHEN TO GO: May-July. PRICE: $1,120. DIFFICULTY: strenuous. MOUNTAIN-BIKING CAPPADOCIA [TURKEY]
In our opinion, any trip that starts off with two nights in a traditional cave hotel has promise. See for yourself on this six-day, 180-mile ride through Cappadocia in central Turkey. Thank three-million-year-old volcanic eruptions for the otherworldly terrain: impossibly narrow sandstone spires (called fairy chimneys) and towns that plunge 20 floors underground. Happily, the riding is as varied as the views. You’ll pedal along dry riverbeds, slickrock, and narrow jeep tracks en route to each day’s destination—luxe campsites or charming village inns. OUTFITTER: KE şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Travel, 800-497-9675, . WHEN TO GO: May. PRICE: $1,695. Difficulty: strenuous.

SECRET SINGLETRACK [BOLIVIA]
It was only a matter of time before Bolivia’s ancient network of farm trails, winding from village to village high in the Andes, found a modern purpose: mountain biking. On this new 14-day singletrack tour through the Cordillera Real near La Paz, intermediate riders can rocket down 17,000-foot passes, contour around extinct volcanoes, and rack up an epic grand-total descent of 54,000 feet. Nights are spent camping at Lake Titicaca and in local pensions like the Hotel Gloria Urmiri, where natural hot springs await. OUTFITTER: Gravity Assisted Mountain Biking, 011-591-2-2313-849, . WHEN TO GO: May-September. PRICE: $1,750. DIFFICULTY: strenuous.

COPPER CANYON EXPEDITION [MEXICO]
There’s lots to love about the 6,000-foot descent into Mexico’s Copper Canyon by bike—and gravity is only part of it. Get down in one piece and you’ll have a week’s worth of technical riding ahead of you in a canyon four times the size of Arizona’s Grand. Cool your toes on fast, fun river crossings near the village of Cerro Colorado, visit the indigenous Tarahumara, and bunk down in a restored hacienda built into the canyon walls. OUTFITTER: Worldtrek Expeditions, 800-795-1142, . WHEN TO GO: September-April. PRICE: $1,599. DIFFICULTY: strenuous.

The Deep End

Water is the best element

SAILING ON THE ECLIPSE [PALAU]
Captain John McCready’s 48-foot Eclipse—outfitted with a compressor, dive tanks, sea kayaks, and rigs for trolling—is your one-stop adventure vessel for exploring this South Pacific archipelago. After picking up the sloop near the capital, Koror, give yourself at least six days to explore Palau’s protected lagoon in the Philippine Sea, dive along miles of coral walls, and kayak and hike some of the more than 200 limestone Rock Islands. By the time you reboard each evening, chef Charlie Wang will have your pan-seared wahoo waiting. OUTFITTER: Palau Sea Ventures, 011-680-488-1062, . WHEN TO GO: November-June. PRICE: $4,200 for the entire boat (which sleeps four passengers) for six days, including captain, dive master, and cook. DIFFICULTY: easy.

SEA-KAYAKING THE MASOALA PENINSULA [MADAGASCAR]
Once a refuge for pirates, Madagascar’s rugged northeast coast has been reborn as Parque Masoala, the country’s newest and largest national park. For nine days, you’ll explore the calm coastal waters by sea kayak, watching for humpback whales, snorkeling the coral reefs, spearfishing for barracuda, combing the shorelines of deserted islands, and sleeping in one of two rustic tented camps. Onshore, scout for lemurs in the rainforest with Malagasy guides. OUTFITTER: Kayak Africa, 011-27-21-783-1955, . WHEN TO GO: September-December. PRICE: $1,080. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

SNORKELING AND SEA-KAYAKING NINGALOO REEF [AUSTRALIA]
A virtually untouched alternative to the Great Barrier Reef, Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef is a 162-mile close-to-shore coral barrier protecting the white-sand beaches and high-plateau shrublands of Cape Range National Park from the Indian Ocean. Mellow two- to four-hour paddling days on this five-day romp up the coast are punctuated by snorkeling in 70- to 80-degree turquoise waters (never deeper than 13 feet), swimming with whale sharks just outside the reef, and hanging at the plush moving camp. OUTFITTER: Capricorn Kayak Tours, 011-618-9-433-3802, . WHEN TO GO: April-mid-October. PRICE: $450. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

KITESURFING SAFARI [BAHAMAS]
Steady winds, warm waters, and world-class instructors—essential ingredients for a perfect kitesurfing vacation—exist in plenitude among the numerous tiny islands off Abaco in the Bahamas. During this weeklong clinic, you’ll master board-off tricks and 360 jump turns, learn to sail upwind more proficiently, and critique videos of your kite moves over coconut-rum drinks at the seven-cottage Dolphin Beach Resort on Great Guana Cay. OUTFITTER: Kite Surf the Earth, 888-819-5483, . WHEN TO GO: mid-January-May. PRICE: $990, including airfare from Fort Lauderdale and all gear. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

Future Classics

Our next thrilling episodes

Everest’s seldom-scene cousin: Tibet’s Kawa Karpo

CLIMBING MUZTAGH ATA, “FATHER OF ICE MOUNTAINS” [CHINA]
Already been to Everest Base Camp? Next time, head to Muztagh Ata, a raggedy 24,754-foot summit in the Karakoram Range in China’s Xinjiang province. The five-day trek (instead of yaks, you’ve got camels!) starts at 12,369 feet, climbing through grasslands and river valleys to Camp One at 17,388 feet—where not one but ten glaciers converge in a vast expanse of ice and snow. Outfitter: Wild China, 011-86-10-6403-9737, . When to go: September- October. Price: $2,710. Difficulty: strenuous. PILGRIMAGE TO KAWA KARPO [TIBET]
Mount Kailash gets all the press—and all the Western trekkers. But this May, another sacred Buddhist route, the annual pilgrimage to Kawa Karpo, a 22,245-foot fang of snow and ice, will open to Western visitors. The 18-day camping trek climbs out of semitropical rainforest and Tibetan villages before circling the peak’s base. Snow leopards live here, too, but if you don’t catch a glimpse, at least you’ll leave with a lifetime’s supply of good karma. OUTFITTER: High Asia Exploratory Mountain Travel Company, 203-248-3003, . WHEN TO GO: May, July, October. PRICE: $3,800-$5,000. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

TREK THE VILCABAMBA [PERU]
Now that they’ve limited tourist permits on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, we’re left wondering, What else is there? How about a 17-day camping trek to Peru’s lost city of Victoria, a 600-year-old ruins discovered in 1999 and encircled by 19,000-foot peaks of the Cordillera Vilcabamba. You’ll log some 40 miles over ancient Incan walkways along the Tincochaca River, and then climb 15,000-foot Choquetecarpo Pass. Once at Victoria, you’ll have the excavated homes and ceremonial sites all to yourself. OUTFITTER: Wilderness Travel, 800-368-2794, . WHEN TO GO: May-June. PRICE: $3,895. DIFFICULTY: strenuous.

All-American

Remote trips right here at home

THE ALASKAN CLIMBER [ALASKA]
Many peaks in the Chugach Mountains of southeast Alaska remain unnamed and unclimbed. Your objectives are the 12,000-foot summits of Mount Valhalla and Mount Witherspoon, but even with a ski-plane flight into the range, you’ll still spend 20 days hauling, trekking, and climbing on this self-supported trip. Outfitter: KE şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Travel, 800-497-9675, . When to Go: April. Price: $2,895, including flights within Alaska. Difficulty: strenuous. DOGSLEDDING AND WINTER CAMPING [NORTHERN MINNESOTA]
Forget your leisurely visions of being whisked from campsite to campsite: Dogsledding is serious work. During four days in the wilderness bordering the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, you’ll learn how to handle your team of malamutes and brush up on winter camping techniques. Outfitter: The Northwest Passage, 800-732-7328, . When to Go: January-February. Price: $895. Difficulty: moderate.

RAFTING THE OWYHEE RIVER [NEVADA, IDAHO, AND OREGON]
This 17-day, 220-mile trip on the rarely rafted, Class II-IV Owyhee takes you down one of the longest and most remote stretches of runnable river in the Lower 48, through rugged canyon country. Need something shorter? Several sections can be run in four to seven days. Outfitter: River Odysseys West, 800-451-6034, . When to Go: May. Price: $3,735. Difficulty: moderate.

HALEAKALA CRATER SEA-TO-SUMMIT HIKING EXPEDITION [MAUI]
Go from sea level to 9,886 feet on this three-day trek from Maui’s sandy shores, through Hawaiian rainforests, to the moonlike floor of Haleakala Crater. You’ll climb 11 miles and 6,380 feet on the first day alone—good thing horses are hauling your gear. Outfitter: Summit Maui, 866-885-6064, . When to Go: year-round. Price: $1,190-$1,390. Difficulty: moderate.

GRAND GULCH TRAVERSE [UTAH]
What’s better than backpacking the 52-mile length of the Grand Gulch Primitive Area in southeastern Utah? Llama-trekking for much of the same seven-day route, past ancient Anasazi ruins and more recent historic landmarks—including Polly’s Island, where Butch Cassidy, some say, crossed the Gulch. Outfitter: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235, . When to Go: April. Price: $2,590. Difficulty: moderate.

Elevator, Going Up

Three helicopter epics

MOUNTAIN-BIKING THE CELESTIAL MOUNTAINS [KAZAKHSTAN]
Just as your quads begin rebelling during this two-week, 300-mile traverse of the Tien Shan—the fabled 21,000-foot mountain range that separates Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan from China—a midtrip bonanza brings relief: A Communist-era cargo helicopter will whisk you to the top of the 12,000-foot “hills” for two days of screaming singletrack and goat-trail descents. Outfitter: KE şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Travel, 800-497-9675, . When to Go: July-August. Price: $2,395. Difficulty: strenuous.

RAFTING IN THE HOOKER RANGE [NEW ZEALAND]
Rarely boated, the upper reaches of southwestern New Zealand’s Landsborough River and the nearby Waiatoto are so remote that the only way to the put-ins is by helicopter. You’ll spend seven days roaring down Class III and IV rapids on both rivers, fishing for brown trout, searching for keas (the world’s only alpine parrot), and camping under the gazes of 10,000-foot peaks Mount Deacon and Mount Aspiring. Outfitter: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235, . When to Go: March, December. Price: $3,190. Difficulty: moderate.

SHOOTING THE COLUMBIA MOUNTAINS [BRITISH COLUMBIA]
Spend four days coptering from Adamant Lodge in the Selkirks to remote 10,000-foot hiking trails in the Columbia Mountains for a photography workshop with widely published outdoor lensmen Chris Pinchbeck and Paul Lazarski. After pointers on lens selection and composition, shoot sunrise-lit alpine meadows till your film runs out. Outfitter: Canadian Mountain Holidays, 800-661-0252, . When to Go: July. Price: $2,360. Difficulty: easy.

Most Likely to Succeed

Six new additions to the adventure travel map

SURFING THE WILD EAST [EL SALVADOR]
Though the civil war ended 11 years ago, it’s been difficult to access El Salvador’s remote eastern point breaks on your own. Now you can hook up for eight days with Punta Mango’s local guides to surf Los Flores, La Ventana, and other perfecto Pacific peelers. OUTFITTER: Punta Mango Surf Trips, 011-503-270-8915, . WHEN TO GO: year-round. PRICE: $394-$818. DIFFICULTY: moderate. EXPLORING ISLANDS AND VOLCANOES [NICARAGUA]
Once a war-torn dictatorship, Nicaragua is now drawing scads of expatriates to its safer shores. Hike and mountain-bike around belching 5,000-foot volcanoes on the Pacific side, and kayak, fish, and loll in natural hot springs on islands in Lake Nicaragua. OUTFITTER: Nicaragua şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 011-505-883-7161, . WHEN TO GO: November-September. PRICE: weeklong trips start at $600. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

RAFTING THE SOCA RIVER [SLOVENIA]
Spilling from the Julian Alps, the roiling Soca has long been a backyard destination for Europe’s whitewater intelligentsia. With improved infrastructure and an exchange rate favorable to Americans, now’s the time to hit this Class II-IV river. OUTFITTER: Exodus Travel, 800-692-5495, . WHEN TO GO: June-September. PRICE: eight-day trips, $715. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

BIKING AND BOATING THE DALMATIAN COAST [CROATIA]
Sail from island to island in the Adriatic Sea, stopping to cycle the nature reserves and medieval villages, safe again after a decade of political strife. OUTFITTER: Eurocycle, 011-43-1-405-3873-0, . WHEN TO GO: April-October. PRICE: eight-day cruise, $690-$740. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

MOUNTAIN-BIKING IN THE JUNGLE [SRI LANKA]
While the northeast is still volatile, don’t discount a southerly traverse of the island by mountain bike, through lush jungles and over cool mountain passes. OUTFITTER: şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs Lanka Sports, 011-94-179-1584, . WHEN TO GO: year-round. PRICE: 15-day trip, $985. DIFFICULTY: moderate.

TRACKING GORILLAS [GABON]
Onetime host to warring guerrillas but permanent home to the peaceful lowland gorillas, Lopé-Okanda Wildlife Reserve is the jewel of Gabon, nearly 80 percent of which is unspoiled forest woodlands. OUTFITTER: Mountain Travel Sobek, 800-282-8747, . WHEN TO GO: February-March, August. PRICE: $6,490 (19 nights). DIFFICULTY: easy.

Cautionary Trails

What’s up in the danger zone

When it comes to foreign travel, how risky is too risky? It’s hard to know. But the best place to start researching is the U.S. State Department (). At press time,* these 25 countries were tagged with a Travel Warning advising against nonessential travel. Here’s the lowdown on what you’re missing—and just how dicey things really are.

RISK LEVEL:
1    GENERALLY SAFE
2    SIGNIFICANTLY RISKY
3    EXTREMELY RISKY

AFGHANISTAN
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Despite the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom, now in its 18th month, Taliban holdouts still lurk in a country once known for great hospitality (and hashish).
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Trekking in the Hindu Kush’s remote, red-cliffed Bamiyan Valley, where the Taliban destroyed two monumental fifth-century Buddhas carved into mountain rock
RISK: 3

ALGERIA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Terrorism in this oil-rich country has dropped off slightly in recent years, but there is still risk of sporadic attacks in rural areas and on roadways, especially at night.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Hiking in the El Kautara Gorges and the jagged Ahaggar Mountains, near the town of Tamanrasset
RISK: 2

ANGOLA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
An April 2002 cease-fire put a stop to the 25-year civil war, though millions of undetonated mines are still believed to litter the countryside.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Checking out Operation Noah’s Ark, an effort to relocate elephants and giraffes from Namibia and Botswana to the savannas of Quicama National Park in the northwest
RISK: 2

BOSNIA-HEREGOVINA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
The 1995 Dayton Accords ended the war between Muslim Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats, but UN troops remain to control localized outbursts of political violence, which are sometimes directed toward the international community.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Some of the best—and cheapest—alpine skiing in all of Europe at the Dinari Range’s 6,313-foot Mount Jahorina, site of the 1984 Winter Games
RISK: 1

BURUNDI
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Decades of ethnic strife between Hutus and Tutsis have killed hundreds of thousands. The resulting poverty and crime can make tourist travel dangerous in this small, mountainous nation.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Scuba diving in Lake Tanganyika, at 4,710 feet the world’s second-deepest lake (after Russia’s Baikal) and home to some 600 species of vertebrates and invertebrates
RISK: 2

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
After independence from France in 1960 and three decades under a military government, C.A.R. was turned over to civilian rule in 1993. Still, it remains beset with instability and unrest.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Bushwhacking and hiking with Pygmy guides through the rainforests of Dzanga-Ndoki, arguably the most pristine national park in Africa
RISK: 2

COLOMBIA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Dubbed “Locombia” (the mad country) by the South American press, Colombia is rife with cocaine cartels, guerrilla warfare, and more kidnappings than any other nation in the world.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Encounters with the pre-Columbian Kogi people while trekking through dense jungle and the isolated 19,000-foot Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountains
RISK: 3

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Though rich in diamonds, gold, and timber, this equatorial country is still in tatters—famine, millions of displaced refugees (since Mobutu’s despotic 32-year rule ended in 1997).
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Mountaineering in the Ruwenzori Mountains on 16,763-foot Mount Stanley, Africa’s third-highest peak
RISK: 3

INDONESIA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Anti-Western terrorist attacks in Bali and separatist violence in West Timor, the province of Aceh, central and west Kalimantan, and Sulawesi have destabilized the world’s largest archipelago.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Surfing Sumatra’s legendary breaks off the island of Nias and jungle trekking in Gunung Leuser National Park
RISK: 2

IRAN
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Despite inclusion in Bush’s “axis of evil” and the U.S.’s suspension of diplomatic relations, Iran is generally safe—though travel to the Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq borders is best avoided.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Skiing in the 12,000-foot-plus Elburz Mountains, where the resort in Dizin receives more than 23 feet of snow annually and lift tickets cost $4 a day
RISK: 1

IRAQ
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Even if you wanted to go to Iraq, no U.S. commercial flights enter the country that’s ruled by the world’s most infamous dictator.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Canoeing the Marshes, the historic ecosystem at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—birthplace over 10,000 years ago of the Mesopotamian civilization
RISK: 3

ISRAEL
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Israel has been a hotly contested geopolitical and religious crucible since 1948, but the two-and-a-half-year Palestinian intifada has produced more suicide bombings than any other period.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Scuba diving to the underwater ruins of Herod’s City at Caesarea, along the palm-fringed Mediterranean coast
RISK: 2

IVORY COAST
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE
Once the most stable West African country, this coffee-producing nation suffers from falling cocoa prices and clashes between Christians and Muslims.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING
Trekking through the virgin rainforests of TaĂŻ National Park, home to the threatened pygmy hippopotamus
RISK: 2

Be aware that the State Department also posts advisories about unstable regions in many other countries, like Kyrgyzstan and Nepal. Carefully check the Web site’s postings and consult with well-informed tour operators before finalizing any travel plans.
*This information is current as of January 14, 2003

Compiled by Misty Blakesley, Amy Marr, Dimity McDowell, Sam Moulton, Tim Neville, Katie Showalter, and Ted Stedman

Cautionary Trails, PT II

RISK LEVEL:
1 GENERALLY SAFE
2 SIGNIFICANTLY RISKY
3 EXTREMELY RISKY


JORDAN
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Jordan is considered the least dangerous Middle Eastern country; still, threats of random violence (witness the October 2002 killing of an American Embassy employee) remain high.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

World-renowned sport and trad climbing on the 1,500-foot sandstone walls in Wadi Rum, and camel-trekking with the Bedouin in the country’s southern desertscape
RISK: 1



LEBANON
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Home to the terrorist group Hezbollah, Lebanon has a history of anti-U.S. violence, and there have been recent protests, sometimes violent, in major cities.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Skiing the 8,000-foot-plus peaks and six resorts in the Anti-Lebanon mountain range, then heading to the coast to swim in the Mediterranean
RISK: 2



LIBERIA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Though a democratic government took power in 1997, ending an eight-year civil war, this developing West African nation is plagued by clashes between government forces and dissidents.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Safaris to Sapo National Park, Liberia’s only national park and one of the last rainforest refuges for bongo antelopes and forest elephants
RISK: 2



LIBYA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Seventeen years under U.S. sanctions, convictions in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, and rising crime make travel to Libya a tricky proposition.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Safaris to the Ubari Sand Sea, land of shifting, 300-foot dunes and salt lakes
RISK: 2



MACEDONIA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

A geopolitical hot spot, this mountainous Balkan country is still smoldering with ethnic tension, most recently between Albanian rebels and Macedonian forces.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Spelunking among the dripstone formations and stalagmites in the caves around 3,000-foot-plus Matka Canyon
RISK: 1



NIGERIA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Though nearly 16 years of military rule ended in 1999, this oil-rich West African country suffers from rampant street crime, ongoing religious and ethnic conflicts, and kidnappings.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Trekking through rolling grasslands and exploring the volcanic 3,500-foot Mandara Mountains along the border with Cameroon
RISK: 2



PAKISTAN
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

In 2002, members of the Taliban, who had crossed the vertiginous Hindu Kush from Afghanistan, are believed to have instigated a rash of anti-Western terrorism in Islamabad and Karachi.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Completing the classic three-week trek to the base camp of pyramidal K2 in northern Pakistan, leaving from Askole and crossing the Baltoro Glacier
RISK: 2



TAJIKISTAN
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

A mountainous and unstable “stan” in the heart of Central Asia, Tajikistan is thought to be home to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) terrorist group.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Climbing untouched glaciers and rock faces in the Pamir Mountains, where first ascents of 17,000-foot-plus summits abound
RISK: 2



SOMALIA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Ever since dictator Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, anarchy has ruled this drought-prone East African nation. Warring factions are still fighting for control of the the capital, Mogadishu.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Deep-sea tuna fishing in the waters off Somalia’s 1,876-mile coastline, the longest in Africa
RISK: 3



SUDAN
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Nearly 40 years of civil war, coupled with famine, have made Sudan extremely unstable, especially in the oil-producing Upper Nile region. Americans have been assaulted and taken hostage.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Scuba diving in the Red Sea to famous shipwrecks and coral atolls, first explored by Jacques Cousteau in the sixties
RISK: 3



VENEZUELA
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

Opposition to President Hugo Chávez and a nationwide strike have destabilized this tropical country, causing acute oil shortages and triggering violent protests in Caracas.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Trekking through humid jungles and the vast savannas of the Guiana Highlands to 3,212-foot Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world
RISK: 2



YEMEN
WHAT’S THE TROUBLE

This country on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula has been plagued by anti-American sentiment since long before the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Exploring the coral beaches of Socotra, the largest Arabian island, which abounds with flora, including frankincense, myrrh, and the dragon’s blood tree
RISK: 3



Be aware that the State Department also posts advisories about unstable regions in many other countries, like Kyrgyzstan and Nepal. Carefully check the Web site’s postings and consult with well-informed tour operators before finalizing any travel plans.

*This information is current as of January 14, 2003



Compiled by Misty Blakesley, Amy Marr, Dimity McDowell, Sam Moulton, Tim Neville, Katie Showalter, and Ted Stedman

The post Nomads Have More Fun appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

We’ve learned a lot in a quarter-century of roaming the planet. This month, to kick off şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř‘s silver anniversary, we’ve chosen 25 bold, epic, soul-nourishing experiences that every true adventurer must seek out—from the relatively plush and classic to the cutting-edge and hard-core. All that’s left for you is the easy part:

How do you put this thing in reverse? Heavy traffic in Kaokoveld, Namibia

GET OUT THERE





Our resident gadabout’s cri de coeur to get you off your duff and out chasing your dreams.
BY TIM CAHILL
Follow in the Footsteps of Greatness, Make a First Ascent, Get Lost in Your Own Backyard


Live a South Seas Fantasy, Track Big Game on Safari, Scare Yourself Witless on a Class V River


See the World from Behind Bars, Journey to the Ends of the Earth, Paddle with the Whales


Free Your Soul on a Pilgrimage, Explore Majestic Canyons, Help Save an Endangered Species


Master the Art of the F-Stop, Ski Infinite Backcountry, Take an Epic Trek


Get Culture Shocked, Go Polar, Stay Alive!


Swim with Sharks, Pursue Lost Horizons, Behold the Wonders of the Cosmos


Jump Down the Food Chain, Gallop Through the Surf, Cast Away in Paradise, Break On Through to the Other Side

Exotic Places Made Me Do It

Meteora Monestery, Greece

“A SUBMERSIBLE VOYAGE under the North Pole?” The radio host was leafing through a copy of şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř, reading off destinations and activities in tones of rising incredulity. “Trekking with pygmies in the Central African Republic? Backpacking in Tasmania? Swimming with sharks in Costa Rica?”


Talk-show hosts, I’ve discovered, often think confrontational interviews are audience builders. I said that the magazine strives to put together the ultimate traveler’s dream catalog. It wasn’t all about diving with sharks.


“A dogsled expedition in Greenland?”


“For instance,” I said.


“My idea of a vacation,” the guy declared, “is a nice oceanfront resort, a beach chair, and a pi-a colada.”


“Mine, too,” I said. “For a day or two. Then I’d go bug spit. I’d feel like I was in prison. I’d want to do something.”


Who, the host insisted, wants to, say, trek across Death Valley? His listeners wanted to lie on the beach and drink sweet rum concoctions.


The urge to grab the guy by the collar and slap him until his ears rang was nearly overwhelming.


But I didn’t. “I think that’s a serious misconception about who listens to this show,” I replied. It was, I thought, a serious misconception about human beings altogether.


So I did my best to defend all of us who aren’t in our right minds. These—I said of the destinations and adventures mentioned—are dreams. Everybody has them, though they often come in clusters when we’re younger. A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea. Adolescence is the time in our lives when we are the most open to new ideas, the most idealistic. Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we are not at all in our right minds. We are somewhere in a world of dream, and we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don’t go right now, we’re never going to do it. And we’ll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely.


Or something like that. Who knows? I was just sitting around talking with some doofus on drive-time radio.


Then it was time to take phone calls. It would be satisfying to report that each and every caller agreed with me, that they excoriated the host for blatant imbecility, and that the host, convinced of my superior perspicacity, apologized then and there.


It didn’t happen quite like that. But many of the listeners did, in fact, reject the pi-a-colada paradigm. Several seemed positively gung ho about the idea of travel under stressful conditions in remote areas. It gave me hope that somebody might even call in and ask The Question—the one that anyone who’s been writing about travel for any length of time gets asked. And then someone did:


“Can I carry your bags?”


THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE I meet and chat with have their own peculiar travel fantasy. The dream varies from individual to individual, but it almost never involves seven endless scorching days in a beach chair.


Sometimes, after public-speaking engagements, it is my pleasure to sit and sign books. I speak with people then, and often they tell me about these fantasies, sometimes in hushed voices, as if the information were embarrassing and someone might hear. I suspect they fear the scorn of people like the radio talk-show host. They imagine they will be thought immature. Adolescent.


That’s why the words “Let’s go!” are intrinsically courageous. It’s the decision to go that is, in itself, entirely intrepid. We know from the first step that travel is often a matter of confronting our fear of the unfamiliar and the unsettling—of the rooster’s head in the soup, of the raggedy edge of unfocused dread, of that cliff face that draws us willy-nilly to its lip and forces us to peer into the void.


I’m convinced that we all have the urge in some degree or another, even the least likely among us. And we’ve never needed to respect and reward that urge more than we do now. Consider the case of my literary agent, Barbara Lowenstein, a stylish New Yorker, a small woman, always perfectly coiffed, tough and straightforward in her business dealings, and a terror to any ma”tre d’ who would dare seat her at a less than optimal table. Still, every year for the last decade, she has taken a winter trip to this river in Patagonia, or that veld in Africa. She’s been in places where baboons pilfer your food and monkeys pee on your head.


This year, after the September 11 attacks, people were, initially, amazed that she was still going anywhere at all. “It’s Spain and Morocco,” Barbara told me in October. “Not my usual. But people still think I’m crazy to go.”


I spoke with her just before she left on her trip in late December. I asked if people still questioned her sanity.


“No,” she said. “New York seems to be getting back on track. People have stopped asking ‘Why?’ and have started asking ‘Where?'”


What follows is the best answer to the latter question we’ve ever compiled: a life list of destinations, of dreams that won’t die. Read it. Try to refrain from drooling.


Can I carry your bags?

It’s a Real, Real, Real, Real World

One advantage in this dicey new world: “şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř travel” is finally living up to its name. While it’s true that previously unimaginable roadblocks are now as common as Oldsmobiles outside a Lions Club luncheon, odds are you won’t run up against them. But in case you find yourself S.O.L. in Sulawesi, our quick fixes for your worst nightmares.


Dilemma: A Third World crossing guard won’t let you into the Fourth World nation through which your third-rate travel agent booked your flight home. Creative Solution: High time you learned the ancient art of bribery. Cash is good, but don’t bother if it’s less than a $50. Low on bills? Freak out so they’ll pay you just to leave. Eat a couple pages of your passport or develop a contagious itch.
Dilemma: You’re trying to look like everyone else buying yak butter at the market in Hostilistan, but your clothing, gear, and pearly-whites scream U-S-A! Creative Solution: Memorize “I am Canadian” in 20 languages. Here’s a start: Je suis canadien. Ich bin Kanadier. Soy candiense. Wo sher jianada ren. Ana Kanady…



Dilemma: Your guide seemed like such a stable fellow when he loaded the duffels into the Land Cruiser. But three days later, he’s foaming at the mouth and stealing your tent poles to build an altar to Zolac, the God of Dead Ecotourists. Creative Solution: Finally, all that Survivor tube time pays off. Size up your group for an impromptu insurrection: Identify anyone who’s a telemarketer or attorney. Offer him/her as a ritual sacrifice to Zolac. Run like hell.


Dilemma: All you needed to bring, your carefree island-hopping friends said, was a bikini bottom and a cash card. Two weeks later, one is full of sand, the other completely drained. Creative Solution: (1) Get to an Internet portal, auction the bikini bottom on eBay, invest proceeds in bargain-priced Enron stock, wait. (2) Using rusty Craftsman pliers you found on the beach, extract gold crowns from the teeth of your carefree island-hopping friends, sell to village black-market jeweler. (3) Bite the bullet and call Mom collect.


Dilemma: Revolutionaries are headed for your remote camp with less than neighborly intentions. Creative Solution: (1) Climb a cliff, spend night on portaledge (be sure to push suspected militants off the edge first), wait for Kyrgyz Army to save you. (2) Booby-trap your campsite. First, turn fire pit into flaming cauldron of hell by greasing surrounding uphill slope with copious amounts of Gu. Carve a figurine out of campfire log, leave it propped against tent with Leatherman blade stuck directly through its head. Finally, rig a tent-pole snare and trip wire to hurl your ultra-crusty SmartWools directly at encroachers.


Dilemma: The airport security guy is sizing you up with a leer that says only one thing: Strip search. Creative Solution: (1) Preempt the search and voluntarily get naked, then start humming “Dueling Banjos.” (2) Ask him if he understands the phrase “uncoverable oozing lesions.”(3) Snap your teeth, bark, and threaten to bite.


Dilemma: To all the other revelers, it’s just your average disco ball and smoke machine. But when it comes to public places, you’ve got pre-traumatic stress disorder. To you it’s a stun-grenade precursor to absolute mayhem. Creative Solution: Relax, already. Get your groove on. It’s likely all that screaming is a just an overzealous reaction to techno-punk. But if not, what better way to go out than in a sequined halter?

The Red Planet: California’s Death Valley

1. Follow in the Footsteps of Greatness
Tibet / Mallory and Irvine’s Everest
It’s everything but the disappearing act: Follow the route of doomed explorers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine from Lhasa to Rongbuk Monastery, the sacred gateway to Mount Everest. You’ll camp and hike in the spectacular Rongbuk Valley, with jaw-dropping views of the world’s highest peak, before trekking to 17,900-foot Advanced Base Camp, from which the intrepid mountaineers launched their fatal summit attempt in 1924. OUTFITTER: Geographic Expeditions, 800-777-8183, WHEN TO GO: May, June, October PRICE: $4,945 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

USA / Idaho / Biking the Lewis and Clark Trail
(NEW TRIP) Retrace a portion of Lewis and Clark’s historic route as you pedal 85 miles on the Forest Service roads of the Lolo Trail, which winds through Idaho’s remote Bitterroot Mountains. But what took the explorers eight days in 1805, and drove them to eat three of their horses, will take you only five: You’ll bike 20 miles per day, and you’ll dine on grilled salmon, chicken diablo, and chocolate fondue. At night around the campfire, your guides will double as history professors, discussing Lewis and Clark’s journey and their interactions with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce. OUTFITTER: Western Spirit Cycling, 800-845-2453, WHEN TO GO: July-September PRICE: $895 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

South Pacific / In the Wake of the Bounty
Your 22-day cruise won’t involve a reenactment of Fletcher Christian’s legendary 1789 mutiny, but you will meet his family. After three days exploring the mysterious stone ruins of Easter Island, you’ll board a 168-passenger expedition cruise ship and motor 1,200 miles west to the tiny Pitcairn Islands, to which Christian eventually piloted the Bounty and where the 48 residents boast mutineer DNA. Continue with visits to a dozen more exotic Pacific islands: You’ll snorkel in the Marquesas, look for crested terns with the onboard ornithologist in the Tuamotus, and follow a dolphin escort into Bora Bora’s lagoon. OUTFITTER: Wilderness Travel, 800-368-2794, WHEN TO GO: March, April, October, November PRICE: $7,665 DIFFICULTY: Easy

TRIP ENHANCER
Apple iPod MP3 Player
The sleekest, best-designed, and priciest MP3 player going. Apple’s iPod ($399; ) quickly stores up to three decades’ worth of greatest hits (1,000 tunes) and can play them for nearly ten hours straight. Sufficient entertainment even for the longest transpacific flight.

2. Make a First Ascent
China / Into the Kax Tax
(New Trip) Last year, Colorado mountaineer Jon Meisler used a century-old map to rediscover a hidden rift valley in western China’s Xinjiang province that provided access to some 30 nameless peaks in the Kax Tax range. Most of the mountains allow for four- or five-day assaults over nontechnical terrain to 20,000-foot summits. This year’s monthlong guided trips include an acclimatization hike into valleys inhabited by wild yaks, blue sheep, and Tibetan brown bears. OUTFITTER: High Asia Exploratory Mountain Travel Company, 800-809-0034, WHEN TO GO: June, August PRICE: from $5,000 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Greenland / Gunnbjørn Fjeld and Beyond
Pioneer a route up a 10,000-foot peak on your 14-day expedition to eastern Greenland’s Watson Range. A Twin Otter loaded with ropes, skis, and frozen chicken will fly you to base camp about 225 miles south of Ittoqqortoormiit, on the eastern fringes of Greenland’s icecap. After warming up on a four-day climb to the summit of 12,139-foot Mount Gunnbjørn Fjeld, your group will decide which of the 50-odd surrounding mountains to climb. OUTFITTER: Alpine Ascents International, 206-378-1927, WHEN TO GO: June PRICE: $9,500 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Bolivia / Exploring Apolobamba
Spend ten to 13 days in northern Bolivia’s Apolobamba range, tackling the unclimbed south face of 18,553-foot Cuchillo or a virgin peak in the Katantica group. You’ll trek on llama trails beneath glacier-cloaked peaks and watch condors soar over your base camp before you start the dirty work of picking a peak and route to fit your abilities. OUTFITTER: The şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Climbing and Trekking Company of South America, 719-530-9053, WHEN TO GO: June PRICE: $1,600-$2,575 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

3. Get Lost in Your Own Backyard
USA / Minnesota / Paddling the Voyageur International Route
In the 60 miles between your put-in and take-out in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, you’ll find little more than a chain of pine-fringed lakes connected by muddy portages—so stopping to buy Advil is not an option. But the untouched land-scape on this ten-day canoe trip, which follows an 18th-century fur-trading route on the Canada/Minnesota border, from Saganaga Lake to Crane Lake, will keep your mind off your aching shoulders. At nightly lakeshore camps, look for bald eagles and timber wolves, and listen for the call of the loon. OUTFITTER: Wilderness Outfitters, 800-777-8572, WHEN TO GO: May PRICE: $1,649 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

USA / Alaska / Rafting the Nigu River
(New Trip) Paddle a four-man raft for 70 miles and ten days down the lonely Nigu, and it’s likely you won’t see another two-legged soul. A plane will drop you in the middle of the Brooks Range, where you’ll paddle the Class II water through rolling carpets of rhododendrons and lupines. From your riverbank camps, watch vermilion skies as they illuminate bears, wolves, and herds of migrating caribou. OUTFITTER: Arctic Treks, 907-455-6502, WHEN TO GO: August PRICE: $3,150 (includes flights between the Brooks Range and Fairbanks) DIFFICULTY: Moderate

USA / California / Death Valley Hike
Step out of the daily grind and into the empty moonscape of Death Valley National Park. You’ll hike four to ten miles a day through serpentine slot canyons and over 100-foot-high sand dunes and white borax-crystal flats, camping out under surprisingly serene skies. Yellow panamint daisies, magenta beavertail cactus blossoms, soaring peregrine falcons, and red-tailed hawks will convince you that the area is far from dead. OUTFITTER: REI şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-622-2236, WHEN TO GO: March, April PRICE: $895 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Paradise on the rocks: Palau, South Pacific

4. Live a South Seas Fantasy
Micronesia / Chuuk, Palau, and Yap Snorkeling
Micronesia’s abundance of sea fans and staghorn corals makes for some of the world’s best snorkeling, never mind the manta rays floating between giant Napoleon wrasses and downed WWII Zeros. For 16 days you’ll stay at beachfront lodges on Chuuk, Palau, and Yap to explore the 82-degree seas in outrigger canoes and visit Jellyfish Lake, home to hundreds of the stingerless blobs. OUTFITTER: World Wildlife Fund, 888-993-8687, WHEN TO GO: March, April PRICE: $5,495 (includes round-trip airfare from Los Angeles) DIFFICULTY: Easy

Papua New Guinea / Exploratory Sea Kayaking
(New Trip) Volcanic walls and 100-foot waterfalls provide the backdrop for paddling inflatable kayaks 75 miles on this exploratory 13-day mission around the Tufi Peninsula and Trobriand Islands of southeastern New Guinea. Snorkel in 80-degree water teeming with leather sponges, sheets of table corals, and schools of Moorish idols. When the cicadas rattle, retire to a thatch-roofed guest house or pitch a tent right on the sand. OUTFITTER: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235, WHEN TO GO: March, April, November PRICE: $3,190 DIFFICULTY: Moderate
Fiji / şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Sailing
(New Trip) The Fijian high chiefs keep the Lau Islands closed to tourists to preserve their wild blue waters and secret coves. Lucky for you, your guides have family ties. Spend four days with 40 others aboard a 145-foot schooner, the Tui Tai, sailing north from Savusavu. You’ll anchor off islands with newly built singletrack (bike rentals included), 900-foot cliffs to rappel, and a maze of waterways to explore by sea kayak. Before the waves rock you to sleep in a specially prepared bed on deck, look overboard for glowing squid eyes. OUTFITTER: Tui Tai şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Cruises, 011-679-66-1-500, WHEN TO GO: Year-round PRICE: $300 (three nights); $375 (four nights) DIFFICULTY: Moderate

5. Track Big Game on Safari
Botswana / Okavango Delta by Horseback
Go lens-to-snout with the wildest creatures on the wildest continent. On this eight-day safari you’ll spend five days cantering with herds of zebras, milling among feeding elephants, and getting close to the lions, cheetahs, and leopards that roam the marshy plains of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Then it’s out of the saddle and into a Land Rover for three more game-packed days in nearby Moremi Reserve or Chobe National Park. Your digs are comfortable tented camps—which feature roomy canvas wall tents with beds and private viewing decks—and, in Chobe, a posh game lodge. OUTFITTER: International Ventures, 800-727-5475, WHEN TO GO: March—November PRICE: $1,975 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Tanzania / Ngorongoro Nonstop
(New Trip) Consider it a survival-of-the-fittest safari—the fittest traveler, that is. On this 12-day romp through the Tanzanian outback, you’ll paddle among the hippos in Lake Manyara, rappel down the Rift Valley’s western escarpment, and mountain bike through the rolling foothills—braking for giraffes, zebras, and tree-climbing lions—to watch the sun set over the Ngorongoro Highlands. Next, hike the wildlife-filled Ngorongoro Crater (watch for rare black rhinos) and trek with buffalo, hyenas, and gazelles in the rainforested Empakai Crater. Need a breather? No worries. Nights are spent in cush game lodges and luxurious tented camps. OUTFITTER: Abercrombie & Kent, 800-323-7308, WHEN TO GO: January-March, June-August, October, December PRICE: $4,395 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

TRIP ENHANCER
Grundig ETravelerVII Shortwave Receiver
Emerging from a 20-day trek through the rainforest to discover that a military junta has closed all airports and invalidated all visas is enough to make you long for the PDA-size eTravelerVII radio ($130; 800-872-2228). With its ability to pick up BBC Worldwide’s shortwave signals almost anywhere, it could’ve tipped you off before things turned ugly.

Kenya / Big Five Bonanza
Timed to coincide with the great Serengeti migration, when millions of zebras and wildebeests move from Tanzania into southern Kenya, this 15-day hiking-and-driving safari puts you directly in the path of the Big Five (lions, leopards, elephants, cape buffalo, and rhino) in Nairobi and Lake Nakuru National Parks. Finish with five days in the Masai Mara, where the sheer number of species is downright dizzying. OUTFITTER: Journeys International, 800-255-8735, PRICE: $4,250 WHEN TO GO: August, October DIFFICULTY: Easy

6. Scare Yourself Witless on a Class V River
China / The Great Bend of the Yangtze
What happens when five times the water of the Grand Canyon squeezes through a gorge only half as wide? Twenty-five-foot monster waves, a roaring Class V rapid three-quarters of a mile long, and whirlpools big enough to swallow a van. On this eight-day trip, you’ll raft more than 100 miles on the Great Bend section of the Yangtze River in China’s Yunnan Province and discover canyon walls stretching upward for a mile, with the 17,000-foot Snow Dragon mountains towering overhead. OUTFITTER: Earth River Expeditions, 800-643-2784, WHEN TO GO: November, December PRICE: $4,300 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Canada / The Mighty Ram
Wondering why this six-day Ram River run was attempted by commercial rafters for the first time just last year? Consider what navigating the 60-mile menace, which flows through Alberta’s Ram River Canyon just north of Banff, entails: You’ll rappel down 100-foot waterfalls, maneuver around massive boulders, and shoot through rapids hemmed in by steep vertical ledges (beware Powerslide, a narrow, 35-foot drop). And you’ll do it all with an audience: Bighorn sheep—the Ram’s namesake—watch from the riverbank, while cougars watch them. OUTFITTER: ROAM Expeditions, 877-271-7626, PRICE: $1,795 WHEN TO GO: June DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Chile / Rafting and Kayaking the FutaleufĂş
The FutaleufĂş is revered for its unforgiving hydraulics, which can suck paddlers under like a giant Hoover. But if you’re of questionable sanity and want an even wilder experience, try riding sections of the turquoise maelstrom in an inflatable kayak. Guides will make sure you’re up on wave patterns, ferrying, and how to swim the rapids in the very likely case you get dumped. Of course, you can always stick to the six-man raft, where you feel the joy (and see pine-covered banks, 300-foot-high white canyon walls, and granite spires) with relatively little terror. OUTFITTER: Orange Torpedo Trips, 800-635-2925, PRICE: $3,000 WHEN TO GO: December DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

South-coast solitude: Australia’s Tasmania

7. See the World from Behind Bars
Morocco / High Atlas Traverse
(New Trip) Pedal from the colorful markets of Marrakech to the loftiest peaks in North Africa, the High Atlas Range. This 15-day exploratory ride takes you over a 10,404-foot pass, between 13,000-foot peaks, and through mountains still inhabited by the Berber tribes that have lived here for centuries. OUTFITTER: KE şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Travel, 800-497-9675, WHEN TO GO: November PRICE: $1,945 DIFFICUTLY: Strenuous

New Zealand / Cycling on the South Island
Nowhere else in the world do velvety roads wind by such idyllic scenery. Sandwiched between ice-capped peaks and jagged coastlines, you’ll pump up to six hours a day from the Tasman Sea to Queenstown, through old-growth forests, over a 3,000-foot pass, and past geysers and glaciers. OUTFITTER: Backroads, 800-462-2848, WHEN TO GO: November-March PRICE: $3,398 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Canada / Coast Mountain Crossing
COAST MOUNTAIN CROSSING Ten days of wilderness singletrack—need we say more? Starting on smooth mining trails near Tyax Lake, you’ll crank up 6,500-foot ascents, into the heart of the Coast Range, before descending to the technical trails of British Columbia’s western rainforests. Thirty- to 40-mile days are punctuated by nights spent stargazing from wilderness camps or soaking in hot tubs at historic B&Bs. OUTFITTER: Rocky Mountain Cycle Tours, 800-661-2453, WHEN TO GO: September PRICE: $2,495 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

TRIP ENHANCER
Garmin eTrex Vista GPS
Soggy maps proving difficult to decipher? Break out the eTrex Vista GPS ($375; 800-800-1020). Better screen resolution (288X160), a more accurate WAAS signal, and downloadable maps from MapSource or Garmin (sold separately) let you use your paper version as emergency Wet-Naps. Just don’t forget batteries.

8. Journey to the Ends of the Earth
Mongolia / Riding with the Eagle Hunters
Riding with the Eagle Hunters When Aralbai, your guide, honors you with a sheep’s ear hors d’oeuvre, don’t gag. You’re in Mongolia for 11 days to learn traditions of the Kazakh eagle hunters, named for the hooded golden eagles they carry on their arms. Ride horses with the hunters by day; by night, sleep in a mud-brick cabin, dance to the sounds of the morin khuur (a two-stringed fiddle), and sip vodka, which will make that ear slide down nicely. OUTFITTER: Boojum Expeditions, 800-287-0125, WHEN TO GO: November-January PRICE: $1,950 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Australia / Tasmania Trek
(New Trip) It’s easy to become disoriented in Tasmania’s Southwest National Park. The nearest settlement can be a week’s walk away, trails often morph into muddy mangrove-covered slopes, and most of your companions are wallabies. So be sure to grab your map before the Cessna abandons your group and its 40-pound backpacks of food and gear near Melaleuca Lagoon. From there it’s a ten-day, 55-mile hike along the South Coast Track, where you’ll bask on deserted beaches, scramble up 3,000-foot passes, wade across tea-tree-stained lagoons, and weave through towering celery-top pines. OUTFITTER: Wilderness Travel, 800-368-2794, WHEN TO GO: February 2003 PRICE: $2,495 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Mozambique / First Descent of the Lugenda River
(New Trip) The Yao of northern Mozambique have seldom seen foreigners and have certainly never seen your fancy fiberglass boat. This summer be the first to paddle kayaks down the Lugenda River. For two weeks and 700 miles you’ll float the copper flatwater past the Yao’s thatch-roofed huts, dense woodlands, iselbergs—gnarled rock spires poking out of the flat land—and around pods of hippos. Camp on islands scattered in the quarter-mile-wide river or along its banks under skies framed by ebony trees near the Niassa Reserve, home to 14,000 elephants. OUTFITTER: Explore, 888-596-6377, WHEN TO GO: June PRICE: $5,000-$7,000 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

9. Paddle with the Whales
Argentina / On the Coast of Patagonia
Tourism is strictly regulated on the Argentine waters north of Patagonia’s ValdĂ©s Peninsula, where nearly a third of the world’s southern right whales breed. But you can skirt the rules and sea kayak with the 55-foot-long mammals by helping conduct a wildlife census. As you paddle between beach camps for ten days and a total of 60 miles, you’ll watch female whales care for their calves and surface within feet of your kayak, while the males slap their flukes to get their mates’ attention. You’ll help guides count giant petrels, black-browed albatrosses, and some 40 other bird species. OUTFITTER: Whitney & Smith Legendary Expeditions, 403-678-3052, WHEN TO GO: October, November PRICE: $3,250 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Mexico / Circumnavigating Isla Carmen
(New Trip) Endangered blue whales more than five times as long as your kayak love to cruise past Isla Carmen in the Gulf of California looking for tasty crustaceans. Get close to the world’s largest animals and be among the first to circumnavigate Carmen by sea kayak, paddling between six and eight miles per day for nine days. Along the way you’ll also watch fin whales, snorkel with angelfish in 72-degree water, and search for rare blue-footed boobies. Spend nights camping in sheltered coves where volcanic rock juts into the sea. OUTFITTER: Sea Kayak şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-616-1943, WHEN TO GO: April PRICE: $1,350 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Norway / Paddling the Svalbard Archipelago
In July and August, go where the whales go: the Svalbard Archipelago, 600 miles northwest of mainland Norway. Here you’ll find 90- to 190-ton blues, 40-foot-long humpbacks, square-headed sperm whales, hundreds of walruses, auks, and kittiwakes—and 24-hour daylight to take it all in. Paddle a sea kayak ten miles a day for eight days through frigid 32-degree water along Svalbard’s western coastline, returning each night to cozy cabins (polar bears make camping inadvisable) and spicy bacalau stew aboard a former Norwegian trawler. OUTFITTER: Tofino Expeditions, 800-677-0877, WHEN TO GO: July, August PRICE: $8,000 (includes airfare from Tromsø, Norway) DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Step inside: another inviting nook off the Grand Canyon

10. Free Your Soul on a Pilgrimage
Tibet / To the Center of the Universe
May 26—the date Buddha was born, reached enlightenment, and died—is the day to visit Mount Kailas, a peak sacred to Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus. And Tibetan Buddhism expert Robert Thurman (yes, he’s Uma’s dad) is the man to go with. On this 28-day journey, you’ll circumambulate 22,027-foot Kailas. For an authentic experience, prostrate yourself as you go. OUTFITTER: Geographic Expeditions, 800-777-8183, WHEN TO GO: May PRICE: $8,085 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Spain / Biking El Camino de Santiago
Devout Christians have been walking the roads from the city of Burgos to the shrine of St. James, in the city of Santiago de Compostela, for more than a thousand years. Modern pilgrims can save their soles by making the 326-mile journey on a bike. You’ll ride on dirt roads and trails up to 60 miles per day for nine days, stopping to sleep in small hotels and to explore Romanesque churches in villages along the way. Follow ancient tradition and pick up a rock (of a size proportionate to your sins) on day six, and carry it 1,200 feet before ditching it at the highest point on the Camino: 4,891-foot FoncebadĂłn Pass. What, after all, would a pilgrimage be without a little suffering? OUTFITTER: Easy Rider Tours, 800-488-8332, WHEN TO GO: May-July, September PRICE: $2,250 DIFFICULTY: Moderate
Peru / Sacred Sites of the Incas
In the tradition of their Incan ancestors, the Quechua people of southern Peru celebrate the June solstice at the foot of 21,067-foot Mount Ausungate, the spirit of animal fertility. Circumnavigate the holiest peak in the Cusco region on this 44-mile, high-altitude (12,000-foot-plus) trek, following ancient paths past grazing alpacas and Quechua villages. The 18-day trip also includes a four-day, 27-mile trek up the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. OUTFITTER: Southwind şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-377-9463, WHEN TO GO: May-September PRICE: $3,675-$4,525 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

TRIP ENHANCER
NEC Versa DayLite Notebook PC
Kayak, Tent, or African bus: The 3.3 pound Versa DayLite ($2,499; 888-632-8701) goes where you’d never dream of hauling heavier laptops, and goes for seven hours on its battery. But the screen is the star; its significantly heightened contrast means easy readability under the harsh glare of, say, the Saharan sun.

11. Explore Majestic Canyons
USA / Arizona / Padding and Hiking the Grand Canyon
Floating 235 miles through the 6,000-foot-deep Grand Canyon on its storied waters is a once-in-a-lifetime experience (unless you have an in with the permit office, which is doubtful). On this 13-day trip you’ll hit all the raging Class IV+ rapids and have ample time to hike and boulder in the side canyons, play under 125-foot waterfalls, explore Anasazi granaries, and swim in the calcium carbonate-tinted bright-blue pools at Havasu Creek. OUTFITTER: Outdoors Unlimited, 800-637-7238, WHEN TO GO: May, September PRICE: $2,795 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Peru / Whitewater Rafting Colca Canyon
The reward for threading through 40 miles of SUV-size boulders on southern Peru’s twisting Class V Colca River—beyond the rush of making it out alive—is the rare view of soaring black condors against the canyon’s 11,000-foot walls. But don’t look up too much. The run demands deft maneuvering in paddle rafts. An added boon on this eight-day trip are the abundant natural springs. Soak in the hot ones; drink from the cold ones. OUTFITTER: Earth River Expeditions, 800-643-2784, WHEN TO GO: July PRICE: $2,900 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Mexico / Trekking in Copper Canyon
Hike through four biotic zones while dropping 6,000 feet from rim to floor in Chihuahua’s Copper Canyon. This ten-day trek starts on a cool plateau of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. You’ll descend on paths used for centuries by the Tarahumara Indians, through piñon pine and juniper to reach arid slopes and agave cacti. Lower still, enter the subtropics, where parrots squawk in mango trees outside your tent. OUTFITTER: şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs Abroad, 800-665-3998, WHEN TO GO: February-March, October-December PRICE: $1,590 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

12. Save an Endangered Species
Mongolia / In Search of the Snow Leopard
Journey Mongolian-style across the golden steppes and 12-mile-long sand dunes of the Gobi Desert as you help biologists find the nearly mythical snow leopard in its native habitat. You’ll sleep in yurts as you travel by camel, horse, and four-wheeler south from Ulan Bator for 11 days. Drink fermented mare’s milk with nomadic tribesmen before scouring the wild southeastern fringe of the Gobi, searching for malodorous leopard markings: The elusive cats spray the same spots for generations. OUTFITTER: Asia Transpacific Journeys, 800-642-2742, WHEN TO GO: September PRICE: $5,895 DIFFICULTY: Easy to moderate

U.S. Virgin Islands / Tracking Leatherback Turtles
Heroic beachcombing? Absolutely, at least along the southwest shore of St. Croix, where the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge hosts a slew of endangered leatherback turtles and one very successful conservation team. For ten days, live in airy beachside cottages and walk the two-mile white-sand shores, helping resident biologists measure nests and count hatchlings as the newborns struggle toward the warm Caribbean. OUTFITTER: Earthwatch Institute, 800-776-0188, WHEN TO GO: April-July PRICE: $1,895 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Suriname / Paddling with Giant Otters
(New Trip) This former Dutch colony contains some of the most pristine tropical rainforest in the world and offers the best chance to see—and help save—some of the 3,000 or so endangered giant otters still left in the wild. For eight days, paddle in dugout canoes with biologists and natives in Kaburi Creek, a favored otter habitat in central Suriname (and home to kaleidoscopic macaws and parrots). Sleep in hammocks on the shore and canoe to “otter campsites” in this pilot project to count and study the friendly six-foot-long animals. OUTFITTER: Oceanic Society, 800-326-7491, WHEN TO GO: September PRICE: $2,390 (includes airfare from Miami) DIFFICULTY: Moderate

F-stop and go: fishing nets in Vietnam

13. Master the Art of the F-Stop
Cuba / Vision and Discover in Havana
Here’s your shot at playing globetrotting photojournalist. You’ll spend six mornings discussing theory, history, and technical concerns with your instructor, New York-based commercial and fine-art photographer Stacy Boge, at the Maine Photographic Workshops’ Cuba headquarters, formerly a 19th-century convent. In the afternoons she’ll set you loose to photograph historic forts, artisans at the craft market, and the wizened faces of Old Havana with a bilingual teaching assistant and guide. Lab crews develop your film nightly, so it’s ready for next-day critiques and slide shows. OUTFITTER: The Maine Photographic Workshops, 877-577-7700, WHEN TO GO: February, March PRICE: $1,495 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Vietnam and Laos / That Luang Festival
With photo opportunities that include sacred wats, limestone-spired islands, bustling markets, and numerous saffron-robed monks and nuns—plus acclaimed photographer Nevada Wier as your guide—you can’t help but take a few incredible shots. In Vietnam, you’ll sea kayak in Ha Long Bay and mingle with people of the Hmong and Dao hill tribes in the Tonkinese Alps; in Laos, you’ll cruise the Mekong River in a junk and watch a candlelight procession in Vientiane, the capital city, as thousands of Buddhists celebrate the annual That Luang Full Moon festival. OUTFITTER: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235, WHEN TO GO: November PRICE: $4,400 DIFFICULTY: Easy
USA / Midway Atoll / Avian Images
The bird-to-human ratio on this U.S. naval base turned wildlife refuge—which lies 1,320 miles northwest of Honolulu—is an astonishing 8,000 to 1. Spend seven days with photography instructor Darrell Gulin and you’ll shoot black-footed albatross in the island’s lush interior one day and backward-flying red-tailed tropic birds on a beach the next. Your base: a comfy (really!) suite in the renovated naval officers’ quarters—Midway’s only accommodations. OUTFITTER: International Wildlife şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-593-8881, WHEN TO GO: April-May PRICE: $3,295 DIFFICULTY: Easy

14. Ski Infinite Backcountry
USA / Wyoming / Teton Crest Traverse
It’s America’s Haute Route, cowboy style (no chalets). Hone your winter-camping skills after skinning 1,700 feet from Teton Pass to 9,100-foot Moose Creek Pass, with views into more than 400,000 acres of wilderness. Camp here for three nights, skiing the varied terrain of the Alaska Basin, before your 13-mile descent through Teton Canyon. OUTFITTER: Rendezvous Ski and Snowboard Tours, 877-754-4887, WHEN TO GO: April PRICE: $825 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Europe / The Continent’s Best Powder
Western Europe’s off-piste wonderland has a dirty little secret: unreliable snow. But Gary Ashurst—of La Grave, France, by way of Idaho—won’t tolerate it. Meet him and his Mercedes van in Geneva; he’ll take you to the best powder around—wherever that is at the moment. Staying in B&Bs or chalets, you’ll spend seven days carving the chutes of the Cerces, jump-turning down tight couloirs in the Dolomites, or reveling in another one of Gary’s always-snowy stashes. OUTFITTER: Global şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-754-1199, WHEN TO GO: January-April PRICE: $1,600 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

USA / Alaska / Peaks of the Chugach
(New Trip) Welcome to the middle of nowhere. After the plane lands, settle into your base-camp hut on Matanuska Glacier and take a lesson in glacier safety. Then spend ten days exploring every crevasse, serac, and untouched blanket of snow between you and your goal: the 10,000-foot summits of the Scandinavian Peaks. OUTFITTER: Colorado Mountain School, 888-267-7783, WHEN TO GO: April PRICE: $1,800 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

TRIP ENHANCER
Leica Trinovid BCA Binoculars
Leica’s nine-ounce glasses ($429; 800-877-0155) are compact enough to slip elegantly into a pocket, but they offer 10X magnification coupled with superior optics that sharpen contrast on objects 1,000 feet away, all in a package that doesn’t scream “tourist.”

15. Take an Epic Trek
Nepal / Jugal Himal Exploratory
Get off the teahouse circuit (and, let’s hope, the path of Maoist insurgents) on this 23-day exploratory trek through the Jugal Mountains of Langtang National Park, about 75 miles west of Mount Everest. Starting in the Balephi Khola Valley, trek up to eight hours a day among rhododendrons and banana trees, following shepherd trails to two delphinium-fringed lakes at 17,000 feet. OUTFITTER: World Expeditions, 888-464-8735, WHEN TO GO: October-November PRICE: $3,120 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

Bhutan / In the Shadow of the Goddess
Your ultimate destination is 23,997-foot Chomo Lhari, the “Mountain of the Goddess.” But, like life, this trek’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey: You’ll hike seven miles per day (average daily elevation gain: 2,000 feet) through western Bhutan’s Paro Valley on an ancient trading path that winds through thousand-year-old villages, fields of blue poppies, and pastures filled with grazing yaks. Camp in meadows and share the trail with caravans bringing salt, tea, and Chinese silk to Paro on this 70-mile, out-and-back route. OUTFITTER: Asia Transpacific Journeys, 800-642-2742, WHEN TO GO: March, September PRICE: $4,395 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Russia / Hgih-Altitude Altai
Storybook adventure at its finest: Be on the lookout for wolves, lynx, eagles, and the rare snow leopard by day; by night camp at the base of 10,000-foot peaks named Beauty, Fairy Tale, and Dream. On this challenging 65-mile trek in the Altai Mountains, in one of the most remote regions of Siberia, you’ll cover eight to 12 miles per day, hiking through cedar-forested valleys along the roaring Chuya River and ascending to glacier-fed lakes, before heading back to civilization—and we mean civilization. The Altai has been inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years.OUTFITTER: Mir Corporation, 800-424-7289, WHEN TO GO: July-August PRICE: $2,395 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

The dog days of Greenland

16. Get Culture Shocked
Central African Republic / Tracking with Pigmies
(New Trip) Put down your cell phone, pick up a spear, and spend five days in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park fully immersed in the Pygmy way of life. You’ll bushwhack through remote rainforests in the southwest Central African Republic, helping hunt for small antelope, track lowland gorillas and elephants, and collect medicinal herbs like Carcinia punctatam (it battles the runs). At night, retire to comfortable bungalows on stilts perched along the Sangha River, near the Pygmies’ village. OUTFITTER: Wilderness Travel, 800-368-2794, WHEN TO GO: November PRICE: $4,695 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Ecuador / The Magic of the Shamans
See your troubles revealed in the entrails of dissected guinea pigs and enjoy other, equally drastic healing measures (like being thwapped by twigs) on this ten-day visit with Ecuadoran shamans. You’ll sleep in locals’ huts and travel by car, canoe, and foot to three spiritually distinct regions. Before heading into the Andes, visit the Amazon, where shamans venture to the underworld on the wings of ayahuasca, a natural hallucinogen—sorry, audience participation is discouraged. OUTFITTER: Myths and Mountains, 800-670-6984, WHEN TO GO: March, July PRICE: $1,895 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Vietnam / Ethnic Explorer
Motorcycle into the hills of north Vietnam and meet the Flower Hmong in their rainbow head wraps or get lost in a chicken-filled market. Then park the bike for a three-day scramble up 10,312-foot Mount Fan Si Pan, with a local guide who smells his way up the route. OUTFITTER: Wild Card şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-590-3776, WHEN TO GO: Year-round PRICE: From $1,600 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

17. Go Polar
Greenland / Dogsledding Across Polar Tundra
Travel the Arctic with the in crowd. Join explorer Paul Schurke on his annual Polar Inuit spring trip, accompanied by Inuit hunters who happen to be descendants of Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, arguably the first men to reach the North Pole. You’ll snow camp in ten-degree temperatures for 14 days and dogsled the snowy alien landscape for 300 miles over sea ice on coastal fjords and Arctic tundra. OUTFITTER: Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge, 800-584-9425, WHEN TO GO: April PRICE: $6,000 (includes round-trip airfare from Resolute, Canada) DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Sweden and Norway / Reindeer Packing in the Arctic
Welcome to a slice of polar paradise: With domesticated reindeer to do the heavy lifting and carrying, indigenous Saami guides will lead you for four days and 35 miles through the alpine birch forests and tundra of Arctic Sweden until you reach the Tys Fjord at the Norwegian Sea. There you’ll swap hiking boots for sea kayaks and paddle 58 miles of Norway’s Salten Coast, exploring lush fjords, camping on beaches, and fishing for arctic trout. OUTFITTER: Crossing Latitudes, 800-572-8747, WHEN TO GO: August PRICE: $1,900 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Antarctica / Scuba Diving Under Ice
You may have explored the wrecks off Palau and swum with whale sharks off South Africa, but until you’ve submerged yourself under the Antarctic ice pack, you haven’t really scuba dived. Journey on a Russian icebreaker to the Antarctic Peninsula and for 13 days don a drysuit, hood, and a freezeproof regulator, and plunge into a frigid world of surreal rewards. The diffuse light and 32-degree water are home to spindly pink starfish, sea hedgehogs, and sea butterflies. Just don’t let the ice, in infinite shades of blue, distract you from the roving leopard seals. OUTFITTER: Forum International, 800-252-4475, WHEN TO GO: February, March PRICE: $4,890-$6,340 DIFFICULTY: Strenuous

TRIP ENHANCER
Fossil Wrist PDA Watch
Don’t tote your PDA around the world, wear it. Fossil’s wristwatch ($145; 800-969-0900) uses an operating system developed in collaboration with Palm to let you zap 1,100 contacts with addresses or 800 appointment memos from your PDA into its stylish little self. Added bonus: it also tells time.

18. Stay Alive!
Peru / Learn to Thrive in the Amazon
Failing economy got you feeling the need to sharpen your survival skills? Let Peruvian survivalists show you how to stun fish, start a fire in the waterlogged forest, repel mosquitoes (by smearing yourself with squished termites), and treat ailments like a venomous snakebite. Eating juicy beetle grubs is optional on this seven-day trip in northeast Peru’s Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo Reserve, but once you’ve tried them, stomaching a bear market seems easy. OUTFITTER: Amazonia Expeditions, 800-262-9669, WHEN TO GO: Year-round PRICE: $1,295 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Costa Rica / Survival Trekking in the Osa Peninsula
Get a taste of Special Ops action when you spend ten days in the Costa Rican rainforest with former Special Forces veterans, who teach you survival basics and throw in a little fun to boot. Lessons in shelter building, foraging, and wilderness first aid are mixed with beach trekking, diving, and wildlife watching on the biodiverse Osa Peninsula. OUTFITTER: Specops, 800-713-2135, WHEN TO GO: April, July PRICE: $3,495 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Namibia / Forage and Hunt with Nomads
The barren Namibian prairie may seem like a wasteland, but after six days with the nomadic Ju’hoansi bushmen, you’ll see it as a bountiful Eden. Learn to make arrow-tip tranquilizers used to stun and kill impala; help gather roots, wild fruits, and the sweet sap of the acacia tree. Back at your mobile camp, the tribesmen may treat you to an evening of music. OUTFITTER: Baobab Safari Co., 800-835-3692, WHEN TO GO: April-October PRICE: $3,100 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Silent as stone: Angkor ruins in Cambodia

19. Swim with Sharks
Costa Rica / Live-Aboard Off Cocos Island
Bring courage and an empty logbook. With ten days on the live-aboard Okeanos, you’ll need plenty of room to record all the scalloped hammerhead and reef sharks that swim by on nearly every dive. Dry out with an optional trekking excursion on lush, 18-square-mile Cocos. OUTFITTER: International şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs Unlimited, 800-990-9738, WHEN TO GO: Year-round PRICE: $2,995 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

South Africa / The Big Five Dive
Even if you feel safe on the three days you’re inside a steel cage watching great whites, your ten free dives could be a little nerve-racking, and this is one time you won’t want to chum the water. On this 12-day, hotel-based trip on South Africa’s northeast coast, you’ll see ragged-tooth, hammerhead, and bull sharks in their natural habitat—aka hunting grounds. OUTFITTER: EcoVentures Nature Tours and Travel, 800-743-8352, WHEN TO GO: July, September PRICE: $3,900 DIFFICULTY: Moderate
Galápagos Islands / Cruising on the Sky Dancer
(New Trip) The hardest part about your eight days on the Sky Dancer will be resurfacing—and not because the 24-person live-aboard is anything less than first-class. No, it’s that the white-tipped, whale, and Galápagos sharks will have you jonesing for your scuba tank all hours of the day, as will the gigantic manta rays that swarm here in Darwin’s playhouse. OUTFITTER: Ecoventura, 305-262-6264, WHEN TO GO: Year-round PRICE: $2,895 DIFFICULTY: Easy

20. Pursue Lost Horizons
USA / Utah / Rock Art and Archaeology in the Escalante Outback
Archaeologist Don Keller, who’s scoured Escalante National Monument’s backcountry for the past decade, has uncovered numerous ancient petroglyphs, but many of his finds remain undocumented. Join Keller this spring, hiking for nine days, three of which are spent photographing and mapping 4,000-year-old Anasazi and Fremont rock-art panels. OUTFITTER: Southwest Ed-Ventures, 800-525-4456, WHEN TO GO: April PRICE: $1,250 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

USA / Hawaii / Multi-Island Hike
There’s a lot more to Hawaii than Sex Wax and surf gods: Poke around the Pu’u Loa Petroglyphs on the Big Island, taro terraces on Oahu (both of which have been around since a.d. 500), and the ancient Hawaiian heiau (temples) on Kauai and you’ll feel like a hand fresh off Captain Cook’s Endeavor. But fear not, this custom seven-day camping and hiking trip is flush with the hedonistic pleasures for which Hawaii is famous: soaking under tropical waterfalls, sunning on secluded white sand beaches, and snorkeling with dolphins and sea turtles. OUTFITTER: Hawaiian Islands Eco-Tours, 866-445-3624, WHEN TO GO: Year-round PRICE: $895 DIFFICULTY: Easy to moderate

Cambodia and Vietnam / Discover Ancient Ruins
Spend hours exploring the 12th-century temples of Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, and Ta Prohm, the Hindu centerpieces of the Khmer kingdom, on this four-day trip to the Angkor ruins—the front end of an 11-day cycling tour through Vietnam. When the heat becomes unbearable, lounge by the pool at the Grand Hotel d’Angkor, a French colonial palace with all the touches of early-20th-century Indochina: wicker chairs, lazily swirling fans, and teak beds. OUTFITTER: Butterfield & Robinson, 800-678-1147, WHEN TO GO: October-April PRICE: $2,250 (Vietnam costs an additional $5,450) DIFFICULTY: Easy

TRIP ENHANCER
Olympus C-700 Digital Camera
This featherweight digicam ($699; 888-553-4448) has two megapixels’ resolution with a 10x optical zoom and a 27x digital zoom that outfocuses anything in its class. If you’re lost, use the images in the view screen as a visual breadcrumb trail.

21. Behold the Wonders of the Cosmos
Canada /Northern Lights
Nowhere else on the planet do the northern lights have more pizzazz than in Churchill, Manitoba, and this year, they’ll be at their best: Scientists are expecting great solar storms, meaning that for four nights you’ll likely see flaming oranges, streaks of deep blue, and patches of magenta over the early-spring subarctic skies. Days are spent dogsledding and watching for polar bears near your lodge in Churchill. OUTFITTER: Natural Habitat şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-543-8917, WHEN TO GO: February, March PRICE: $2,795 DIFFICULTY: Easy

USA / Colorado / Anasazi Sun Calendars
(New Trip) Eight hundred years ago, the Anasazi hailed the winter solstice using rocks and shadow tricks. You can still watch the shadows dance, but only on December 22 will the sun be perfectly positioned to cast the dagger-shaped shadows onto the heart of spiral petroglyphs. From your B&B base camp in Cortez, Colorado, you’ll spend a week day hiking in Ute Mountain Tribal Park—home to more than 20,000 protected archaeological sites. OUTFITTER: Southwest Ed-Ventures, 800-525-4456, WHEN TO GO: December PRICE: $1,395 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Australia / Total Eclipse şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř
The Australian outback is your front-row seat for the 2002 total solar eclipse. You’ll be awed by the shimmering lights that dance on the edge of the darkened sun—a phenomenon caused by sunlight shining through the moon’s valleys. But the events leading up to the big show are nearly as spectacular: six days diving from a live-aboard in the Great Barrier Reef and three days of hiking in the Cape York rainforest. OUTFITTER: Outer Edge Expeditions, 800-322-5235, WHEN TO GO: December PRICE: $3,500 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Grin and bear it: an Alaskan grizzly’s smile, frozen on film

22. Jump Down the Food Chain
USA / Alaska / Grizzlies of Coastal Katmai
Your expedition leader, naturalist and photographer Matthias Breiter, will tell you to bring your good camera, and for good reason. The first day, you’ll see puffins, sea lions, and bald eagles while kayaking Kodiak Island’s jagged shore. On day two you’ll meet your base camp: a research tugboat christened The Grizzly Ship. And for the next three days, you’ll cruise the Katmai coast, where thousand-pound grizzlies dig for clams. The brave can venture ashore in a Zodiac. The foolish can snap close-ups. OUTFITTER: Natural Habitat şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 800-543-8917, WHEN TO GO: June PRICE: $4,695 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Uganda / Primate Safari
You hear a wild mountain gorilla—the largest primate on earth—long before you see it: The territorial scream of the 500-pound beast is bone-chilling. After five days in plush safari camps while exploring chimp-thick Kibale and Queen Elizabeth National Parks, machete your way into the Impenetrable Forest of Bwindi National Park and spend two days tracking your huge, hairy distant cousins. OUTFITTER: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235, WHEN TO GO: January-September PRICE: $5,150 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Brazil / Pantanal Jaguars
Ride horseback, boat, and hike into the steamy Pantanal floodplain in southwest Brazil, home to the highest concentration of wildlife in South America, to find the largest jaguars in the world. For nine days, you’ll help count the stealthy cats with motion-triggered cameras and scat and paw-print surveys, and stay at a comfy research lodge. OUTFITTER: Earthwatch Institute, 800-776-0188, WHEN TO GO: February, March, July, August PRICE: $2,195 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

23. Gallop Through the Surf
USA / California / Redwood Coast Ride
Survey the Mendocino Coast from the back of a regal Arabian or Russian Orlov cross. You’ll gallop along windswept Ten Mile Beach, atop oceanside bluffs, and through dense redwood forests. Where else can you fill your canteen at a mineral spring by day and sip cabernet in hot tubs at an oceanfront hotel by night? Welcome to northern California. OUTFITTER: Equitours, 800-545-0019, WHEN TO GO: May-October PRICE: $1,995 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Greece / Aegean Sea Trail Ride
Trot from inn to inn and taverna to taverna for six days and 90 miles around the Pelion peninsula, 200 miles north of Athens. You’ll stuff yourself silly with feta and phyllo and sip your share of ouzo at every stop, so be happy the sure-footed horses are accustomed to the rugged landscape. From Katigiorgis on the Pagasetic Gulf, cross 3,000-foot mountains on old mule trails, then descend to the Aegean Sea, where you’ll canter on the beaches, and plunge—with your horse—into the warm surf. OUTFITTER: Cross Country International, 800-828-8768, WHEN TO GO: April-May, October PRICE: $1,430 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

Venezuela / Galloping the Beaches of Macanao Peninsula
Ride, siesta, ride. Repeat. This will be your blissed-out routine for three days as you explore the pocket beaches, rocky points, and cactus forests of Isla Margarita, off the northern coast of Venezuela. On the island’s undeveloped Macanao Peninsula, gallop into the waves, camp on the beach, and afterward part ways with your beloved steed. For the last four days, fly to famous 3,212-foot Angel Falls on the mainland, and then on to the island of Los Roques to snorkel among exotic corals and rainbow parrotfish in the national park. OUTFITTER: Boojum Expeditions, 800-287-0125, WHEN TO GO: January, November, December PRICE: $2,175 DIFFICULTY: Easy

24. Cast Away in Paradise
USA / Idaho / The Middle Fork of the Salmon
Few fishing spots nourish the ego like the Middle Fork of the Salmon, where even beginners can catch (and release) 30 fish a day. Raft on Class III water for five days and 60 miles in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, fishing with guides from your boat and camping on sandbars—many near hot springs—at night. OUTFITTER: Middle Fork Wilderness OUTFITTERs, 800-726-0575, WHEN TO GO: June-September PRICE: $1,790 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Canada / The Miramichi
While 80 percent of North America’s Atlantic salmon spawn in the 55-degree waters of New Brunswick’s Northwest Miramichi River, they’re persnickety bastards when it comes to biting on flies. Spend five days outsmarting them on water near your farmhouse post—the Smoker Brook Lodge—using flies you tie each evening under the tutelage of master Jerome Molloy. OUTFITTER: Smoker Brook Lodge, 866-772-5666, WHEN TO GO: May-October PRICE: $1,500 DIFFICULTY: Easy

New Zealand / The Rangitikei
Fly-fishing indeed: Access the North Island’s Class I-III Rangitikei River by helicoptering to its headwaters, then pile into a three-man raft and spend five days casting for gluttonous 16-pound rainbows. Camp on the river’s grassy banks and hike to rich side veins where the “flies” trout prefer are plump field mice. OUTFITTER: Best of New Zealand Flyfishing, 800-528-6129, WHEN TO GO: October-May PRICE: $2,500 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

25. Break On Through to the Other Side
North Pole / Journey to the Bottom of the Sea
(New Trip) Your mission: to be the first team to reach the ocean floor at 0 degrees latitude, 0 degrees longitude, in two 18-ton submersibles. For seven days, your nuclear icebreaker slices through the Arctic Circle. Once at the pole, you’ll spend eight hours descending 14,500 feet. OUTFITTER: Quark and Deep Ocean Expeditions, 800-356-5699, WHEN TO GO: September 2003 PRICE: $65,950 DIFFICULTY: Moderate

The World / Mysteries of the Earth by Private Jet
The Jules Verne experience! Only, swap the French sidekick for four world-renowned scientists, the balloon for a deluxe 757, and 80 days for 25. Taking off from Miami, touch down first in Manaus, Brazil, then fly westward for a dance with Upolu Islanders in Samoa, whisk across the International Date Line (crikey, we’ve lost a day!) to dive the Great Barrier Reef, go on safari in Nepal’s Royal Chitwan National Park, hoof it in the Serengeti, the Seychelles, the Canary Islands, and…isn’t it about time for cocktails? OUTFITTER: American Museum of Natural History Discovery Tours, 800-462-8687, WHEN TO GO: March PRICE: $36,950 DIFFICULTY: Easy

Space / Suborbital Space Flight
(New Trip) Train at a custom-built, U.S.-based spaceport for four days, reviewing the details of your reusable launch vehicle (RLV) and perfecting simulated-zero-gravity back flips in the hull of a cargo plane that’s nose-diving from 35,000 feet. Then it’s off to suborbital space (that’s 62 miles up) for ten minutes of weightlessness with a nice view of your native planet. OUTFITTER: Space şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs, 888-857-7223, WHEN TO GO: 2005, pending development of the RLV PRICE: $98,000 (includes leather flight jacket and space suit) DIFFICULTY: Moderate

The post Life’s a Wild Trip appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.