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Posted in Travel, USA

As I have discuss in earlier articles, green canyon is one of seven wonders in the world, included as the most exotic places on Earth. Today I’d like to be more specific onto it. A gap that is quite very high and steep cliffs, carved by the Colorado River, in northern Arizona. Grand Canyon is 3.5 hours (193 kilometers) from the famous gambling city of Las Vegas to Canyon County.

The process of forming a steep cliff in Grand Canyon through various periods of climate change, arising sinking continents, forming mountains, etc. Indirectly this allows us to examine what is happening on earth for 1.7 billion years ago, judging from the layers of the cliffs. So Green canyon does give us big contribution for history as well.
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Posted in Africa, Travel

Take the Zambezi, one of Southern Africa’s largest rivers. Let it loose across the floodplains of Angola and Zambia, tributaries swelling it until the river is as large as a racing track. Once the waterway is flowing with full force over the basalt plateau of southern Zambia, cut a 1700-meter wide gash in the valley and watch the entire width of the river come pouring down an 180-meter face of rock into a narrow gorge. That is Victoria Falls, one of the most monumental waterfalls in the world.

The falls’ indigenous name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, means “the smoke that thunders”. And indeed, it roars, it throws up spray, it crashes and it swirls – Victoria Falls is an overwhelming sight, twice the height of Niagara Falls. So spectacular, in fact, that it already was a popular tourist attraction in 1905, when the railway from then-Rhodesia to Cape Town was completed under British colonial rule. Now a World Heritage Site, Victoria Falls attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, some content to simply take in the natural wonder, others, like me, daring (or brainless) enough to bungee jump over the gorges, too. (more…)

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Posted in Asia, Travel

Time really does slow down on an island, which is hard to comprehend for those of us caught up in the fast paced pressure cooker of modern society, but it’s the single thing I enjoy most about the island life. The smaller the island, the slower the pace, and the first one I visited was also the tiniest I’ve been to, but it was just this smallness that made it such a special place. In the southern Caribbean Ocean, just north of the Central American nation of Honduras are the Bay Islands, a string of three small tropical islands, of which westernmost Utila is the smallest.

Known in backpacker circles as a great, cheap place to get your scuba diving certification, Utila offers little more to do, but plenty to enjoy. Like the other Bay Islands, Utila is reached by a short ferry ride from the mainland coastal city of La Ceiba. Unlike the rest of Honduras, English is more widely spoken than Spanish, and the native inhabitants are primarily Garifuna, descendants of Black Caribs, giving it a much different feel than the rest of the country. Tourism has become the primary source of income, and Honduras recently made Utila a tax-free zone to encourage its further development, as well as standardizing scuba diving rates (read this as get there now before it gets overdeveloped). (more…)

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Posted in Europe, Travel

Admittedly, it takes some will power to peel off your sleeping bag and get out of a car when mist still creeps across the fjells – the mountain plains in Norway – at 45°F on a chilly summer morning. However, traveling by car is the best option to explore this country, which would reach from the mouth of the Mackenzie River to Bristol Bay in the south-west of Alaska, if you transferred it from Europe to the American continent – or, in other words, it would stretch from Maine to Alabama.

The Norwegian Automobile Federation offers 268 camp sites and additionally there are about one thousand other camp and cabin sites as well as parking lots for caravans and recreation vehicles throughout the country and its fifteen national parks. Due to the Norwegian allemannsretten (everybody’s right), you may also park your car somewhere beside the road for just one night, which makes it easy to follow Norway’s national roads and enjoy the quiet lakes, dense woods, gentle hills, steep mountains, roaring waterfalls, sparkling glaciers and narrow fjords alongside. (more…)

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Posted in Asia, Travel

St. Valentine’s Day is noted for roses, but the holiday always reminds me that my wife’s favorite flower is actually the tulip, something that can be hard to come by in a snowy February in Vermont. Planted before the first frost of autumn, they’re quickly forgotten about until they emerge unexpectedly in the sunny warmth of spring. The red, yellow, purple, pink and white heads on single smooth green stalks begin to frame gardens and walkways around the country, reflecting our fascination with this simple and elegant flower from Holland. As a belated gift last spring, I took my wife to one of my favorite Canadian cities, Ottawa, which just happens to host an annual Tulip festival that showcases both the city and this wonderful flower. (more…)

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