The Adventurous Life of a Student Volunteer
Our time volunteering in Costa Rica during January 2012, allowed us to take part in animal welfare projects around the country. Here is a brief overview of our project as put together by filmmaker Keira Austin. The benefit of volunteering as an International Student Volunteer was that at the end of our two week conservation project we were treated to a two week adventure tour of the country!
Click here to watch a full 15 minute documentary of our time as environmental conservationists.
read moreSpotted: The Big Five Animals of Africa
An African Safari is generally quite high on the bucket list of any traveler, and between Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Zambia, there is no shortage of options or availability!
Each country is a popular safari destination in their own right, however when Mike and myself had the opportunity to spend two weeks traveling through one of these countries, we opted for Tanzania.
Figuring that we couldn’t go wrong on safari in the Serengeti National Park, we chose an absolute classic African Safari setting which pretty much guaranteed that we would spot the “Big Five!”
read moreTop 5 Reasons You Should Go on a Bike Tour!
This week’s guest post is from adventure couple Kathleen and Brock who run the travel blog “Our Favorite Adventure”. REASONS YOU SHOULD GO ON A BIKE TOUR So you want to go on a bike tour? Make it a reality and you will have the most fun you have ever had in your life…guaranteed! Don’t know what a bike tour is? It’s a two-wheeled, man-powered road trip that involves riding, camping, and slowly following whatever path you decide to lay out before you. Put simply, it’s a long-distance ride that lasts a while, usually a few...
read moreCanyoning in Switzerland
3 Irishmen, a South African and an Australian go Canyoning in the Swiss Alps…not the start to a joke, just my Thursday in Kandersteg. We caught a train to Interlaken to hit the canyons.
Instead of telling you about the adventure…why don’t you watch it?! We went through a canyon called Grimsel, which technically was the advanced canyoning experience…the fact that we were all beginners probably made the 65m abseiling and the 6m jumps off a cliff face into the water along with the 10m + slides and ziplining slightly more terrifying!!
read moreThe Day We Stood on the Tip of the Australian Continent
We reached the northernmost tip of the Australian continent after 2 hours of some highly entertaining 4wd-ing through varied terrain covered with an intriguing mosaic of eucalypt woodland and rainforest. A 15 minute walk then lead us through more rainforest and over a heap of rocks to the tip. The view was crazy amazing, looking down from virtually a cliff onto a white sand beach with turquoise waters surrounded by completely untouched rainforest. The time it took us to drive to the top from punsand bay was almost just as long as the time we...
read moreThe Day We Drove Through Gunshot Creek
The first thing we noticed when we got to gunshot creek…one of the many challenges of the telegraph track…were the large tree in the middle of the creek which had been turned into a shrine with car parts claimed by the passing. Number plates, signs, alternators, car door frames, you name it were nailed to the tree! The second thing we noticed were the vertical drops to get to and through the creek. (YouTube gunshot creek!!). There are 6 ways to get through gunshot, and after placing more value on our life than rock climbing in our cars we...
read moreMud, Dust & Smoke: What to Expect from the Drive to Cape York
We drove from Laura to bramwell junction, eating a lot of dust over the 140 k that we drove. So much dust that I actually felt physically ill from breathing…a function I normally enjoy being able to perform!! I also felt physically ill as a 4wd at one point came skidding around the corner, powersliding towards our vehicle. Starting to compile some road trip rules. #1: take gravel roads slowly!! Every 30 k we had 200 m of bitumen road for overtaking, but there’s not much traffic when you’re this far north!! When I wasn’t taking in the...
read moreKilimanjaro Day 2
The majority of the previous night had been spent continuously waking up after spending the night rolling up and down my tent…upon reflection probably wasn’t the best idea to have set up my sleeping bag horizontally in a tent which was on a slope!
After being served Milo and tea in my tent (almost as good as breakfast in bed!), I stumbled out to breakfast with extremely low expectations of what I was about to consume.
Previous to leaving for Kilimanjaro we had heard horror stories about the breakfast ‘gruel’, so you can imagine the pleasant surprise when our porters walked in bearing platters full of eggs, sausages, tomatoes, cucumber and toast! For some reason I decided the ants would appreciate the first real breakfast I’d had in weeks more than I would so proceeded to drop my food in the dirt…fantastic!…lucky there was gruel available!!…it tasted like an extremely watered down, grainy chocolate porridge with the tang of light and tangy potato chips.
read moreKilimanjaro Day 1
Ascended 1500 m on day one, or 18km in 4 hours, to reach an altitude of 3,000m. Climbed through rainforest and camped in the desert. Very grateful for climbing boots…should have done more physical fitness training before coming! That being said, made excellent time and even though exhausted was in good spirits at the end of day 1 from a challenging but not unbearable climb.
Have an excellent group of climbing buddies and we’re now all fantastic friends. Glad I don’t have to carry the port-a-loo!
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