If you like the great outdoors then you simply must visit the Canadian Rockies. Stunning scenery and rugged landscape do not begin to describe this beautiful land.
If you do visit, then you may want to consider hiking as the best way to get up close and personal where it matters. Check out this trip with Travelwizard:
“Join us as we explore the rugged grandeur of Kananaskis Country and its crown jewels, Banff National Park and Lake Louise. We’ll immerse ourselves in its serene beauty and geologic splendor by foot, bike, raft, and canoe.
Our journey takes us onto blue glaciers, past glassy lakes, over meadows filled with wildflowers, through glacial basins, and along spruce-lined trails. We will end each day with excellent accommodations and the finest dining the region has to offer.”
It’s not cheap at $2,698 but you can guarantee that it won’t be an experience you’ll forget in a hurry!
This trip didn’t strike me as the most exciting adventure you could take. But taking a closer look, it becomes apparent that this is great opportunity to observe a real wonder of the natural world. Literally millions and millions of these remarkable little fish make an arduous journey of 1000 miles from Cape Agulhas (just south of Cape Town) due northeast to Durban.
Here’s some interesting foreword on this amazing trip from BigAnimals.com:
“Sardine Run Scuba TripNot one but millions of sardines make this trip through treacherous ocean currents along a rugged coastline while avoiding dodging flocks of birds numerous predators such as, game fish, Cape fur seals, thousands of Common and Bottlenose dolphins, sharks, fishing nets and underwater photographers as well.
Marine science does not have a clear answer to this phenomenon, nor have I any answers, despite the fact that I was “hunting” them, photographically speaking, for 23 days along the Wild Coast; the Eastern Shore of South Africa.
Sardine Run Scuba DivingEvery winter from the last week of May through early July (winter in the Southern Hemisphere), this parade of millions of sardine, named “Sardinops sagax” or Pilchards, is taking place along the KwaZulu Natal on the East Coast.
In South Africa, the main spawning grounds are on the Agulhas banks off the Southern Cape coast, where the adults gather for a prolonged breeding season through the spring and early summer. Their eggs are simply released into the water, fertilized and left to drift off in the open ocean. A benign ocean current carries most of the developing larvae westwards and northwards into the productive waters along the West Coast, Atlantic Ocean.
Sharks, such as the Bronze Whaler (copper), Dusky and Black Tip, join the game fish such as shad, garrick and geelback. Not be excluded, marine mammals like Humpback whales, Minke, the Cape fur seals, and thousands of Common and hundreds of Bottlenose dolphins are seen in hot pursuit of the reflective mass of pilchards. As the sardines are driven to the surface, Cape gannets, cormorants, terns and gulls, plummet out of the sky to pillage from above.”
If this is of interest you may want to also check out WetPixel. They seem to sell a similar trip for $4,225.
A dream of mine, right from my early childhood has been to see a Blue Whale in the wild. These beautiful mammals are utterly vast and regarded to be the largest creatures to have ever graced the planet. Their hearts alone are the size of a reasonably sized car!
It was my belief that there numbers had dwindled to such an extent that your chances of seeing one were very slim indeed. However, BigAnimals.com claim to offer potential Blue Whale encounters. Admittedly there can never be any guarantees with this sort of thing but even the possibility is tantalising.
BigAnimals.com say on their site:
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Zambia is rapidly becoming an adventure hot spot for adrenaline junkies and holiday makers alike. With stunning wildlife and vistas there really is no shortage of things to do or see.
Check out this extract from the excellent Expert Africa web site.
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Doing something truly original in your life, something that none of your friends have even considered can be a tremendously liberating experience. Forget Florida, forget Paris and start thinking about Great White Shark cage diving in South Africa.
Coming face to face with one of the worlds most fearsome predators can almost be a life changing experience - I can testify to that having almost been gobbled up by a grizzly bear! Now that there is the opportunity to pay a Great White a visit in it’s own habitat - I have to admit that it’s a tempting proposition. There seems to be a derth of operators offering an experience of this nature so I was quite pleased to drop onto a web site - appropriately called Big Animals.
They summarise some intriguing encounters as follows:
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