Best Adventure Travel Vacations

These are the best adventure holidays I have taken!  I have visited all seven continents and over fifty countries, so it was super hard for me to narrow the list down my most favorite adventure vacations.  Below, in alphabetical order, are my most fun hiking, biking and paddling adventures!

If you decide to do one of these adventures, please consider going with one of my affiliates listed below.  They are my trusted ‘Go To’ partners for adventure.  Often they give ATA listeners an exclusive discount, too!  Plus, you’ll be helping to support the program and helping to keep it ad free – thanks!  Kit

You can download and/or listen to the podcast below

Bhutan in the Himalayan Mountains

No doubt the most unusual country I’ve ever visited!  Bhutan retains its unique Buddhist culture and kingdom because they are so isolated by rugged mountains.  So much so, that they’ve never been conquered!  Outsiders have only recently been allowed in to this safe and friendly country.

The king seeks “Gross National Happiness” over gross national product and his citizens rightly adore him!

Highlights include a hike up to Tiger’s Nest Monastery, a visit to some of the many elaborate temples, and trekking the Gangte Nature Trail in the Phobjikha Valley.

Active Adventures offers a well-balanced 9 day small group adventure tour that showcase the highlights of this exotic country.  Bhutan Gateway Travels offers not only the most common Bhutan experiences, but can also customize your visit.  I did my Druk Trek with them in 2018.    Email me for an exclusive Promo Code good for either company.

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Hike England’s Coast to Coast Path

I did the first half of this beautiful two week hiking trail from St. Bees on the west coast of the UK, across the stunning Lake District to Kirkby Stephen.

Each night, you stay in a charming inn (including one memorable night at a sheep farm!), and your luggage gets transported for you, so all you have to do is walk and enjoy the scenery and chat with the new friends you meet along the way!

I went with my affiliate, One Foot Abroad.  They offer some outstanding self-guided tours across Europe, so you are sure to find one that suits your desires.  They are a sister company to Follow The Camino, and also offer ATA listeners an exclusive discount with the One Foot Abroad Promo Code you can get if you EMAIL ME.

Podcast, pics and details

Get your FREE printer-friendly copy of the Best Adventure Travel Vacations.  Plus you’ll get access to ALL of the ATA Travel Planners for EVERY adventure covered on the show, AND all packing and training lists, and checklists.  You’ll also get the once a month ATA newsletter with any updates.  I don’t sell your name or spam you – promise!

The Cotswold Way in England

The Cotswold Way is definitely a favorite long distance walk I’ve done!  Think of quintessential England with thatched roofs and medieval villages and THAT is what you’ll see as you walk the Cotswolds!

You’ll not only meet villagers going about their day, but other international walkers.  When you are on a long distance hike, you get the chance to really get to know people, so it’s not uncommon to make new life-long friends.

I recommend booking your self-guided Cotswold Way tour with One Foot Abroad.  You can EMAIL ME to get a One Foot Abroad Promo Code!

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The Italian Dolomite Mountains

Hiking in the Dolomites of Italy generally makes my “Top Three” most beautiful places I’ve been!  These magnificent limestone mountains capture your heart and so does the food.  Does Italy even make bad food?  If so, I never experienced it!

Bucolic countryside with impressive mountain peaks, including the famous Tre Cime (shown), this adventure has it all.

Even the mountain huts are wonderful!  The food at these huts is divine – and a bowl of soup and cup of tea after a cold rain was much appreciated.

I went with Active Adventures, whom I generally book for the epic adventures.  EMAIL ME for an exclusive Promo Code.  Their 9 day tour is fairly challenging (3 out of 5) and includes not just hiking, but also a day of cycling for a special view of Tre Cime and a glacial lake, plus I did the optional via ferrata (climbing up a mountain side hooked to a guide wire).  It was an EPIC adventure that I highly recommend!

Get your FREE printer-friendly copy of the Best Adventure Travel Vacations.  Plus you’ll get access to ALL of the ATA Travel Planners for EVERY adventure covered on the show, AND all packing and training lists, and checklists.  You’ll also get the once a month ATA newsletter with any updates.  I don’t sell your name or spam you – promise!

Trek to Machu Picchu and Hike the Amazon Rainforest

A bucket list adventure for sure!  I did Active Adventures’s 4 day trek to Machu Picchu.  There are two routes available: the traditional Inca Trail and the Lara Trail (slightly easier plus you visit a small community, which is cool).  Uber strong porters carry your camping gear and food, so all you carry is a daypack.  Hiking into Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate is something not to be missed!

We also spent time in Cusco, and after our trek, flew to the Amazon where we canoed and fished for piranhas, and did night and day hikes through the rainforest, seeking cool wildlife.  One morning, we got up early and boated to a remote island where hundreds of macaws (those huge red, blue and yellow birds) visit a cliff to lick the salt.  Utterly incredible!

I went with Active Adventures.  They also offer a Machu Picchu AND Galapagos adventure.  EMAIL ME for an exclusive Promo Code .

South Island of New Zealand

I wanted to MOVE here!  I absolutely LOVED the fun-loving people, the diverse landscape (the wine) and how much this country just lives OUTDOORS!  They are always out having fun.

On New Zealand’s South Island, you can heli-hike on the Franz Josef glacier, kayak Milford Sound and hike on some of the world’s most beautiful trails along NZ’s ‘Great Walks‘ and hike to see Mount Cook/Aoraki.  We kayaked in a quiet inlet looking for wildlife.  One of my favorite trips ever!

I went with Active Adventures, of course, as they are based in the adventure town of Queenstown – where they invented bunge jumping and you can do anything ever invented that is adventurous and fun!  EMAIL ME for an exclusive Promo Code to save on any of their epic adventures.

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Get your FREE printer-friendly copy of the Best Adventure Travel Vacations.  Plus you’ll get access to ALL of the ATA Travel Planners for EVERY adventure covered on the show, AND all packing and training lists, and checklists.  You’ll also get the once a month ATA newsletter with any updates.  I don’t sell your name or spam you – promise!

Multi-Activity Slovenia Adventures

I call my adventure in Slovenia my ‘sleeper’ adventure, as I only decided to do it because it was located in between my Dolomites and Croatia (re-scheduled from covid) tours.  What a DELIGHTFUL surprise!!!

I hiked, biked and paddled with One Foot Abroad(OFA) from the ski town of Kranska Gora in the Julian alps to Bohinj Lake.  Along the way, we biked around Lake Bled, famous for the church on the little island.  I went on a self-guided tour with a fellow ATA listener, and OFA arranged all of our lovely accommodations and transported our luggage daily.  When it was time to bike, a van would be outside waiting to give us our bikes.  Helpful maps made it easy to navigate this wonderful country.  All very affordably!

Slovenia is a delightfully tidy and safe country on the Mediterranean Sea, easily accessible from Venice (we took a scenic bus ride).  The landscape is gorgeous, the locals are friendly and it is not overly touristed, so you’ll have a more authentic holiday.

EMAIL ME for a One Foot Abroad Promo Code good on ANY of their amazing European self-guided tours.

West Highland Way of Scotland

The West Highland Way, Scotland’s most popular long distance walk, was my introduction to walking holidays, so it will always have a special place in my heart.  This beautiful walk is mostly along the famous Loch Lomond (lake).  Each night, you end up in a charming medieval village where you can choose amongst the pubs for a hearty dinner.

This ten day walk of just under 100 miles can easily be done self-guided with One Foot Abroad.  They will arrange your cozy lodging and transport your luggage daily so all you have to do is walk!  You’ll get a map, an app and 24/7 service, should you need it.  It’s an affordable way to explore the UK!

I recommend booking your self-guided Cotswold Way tour with One Foot Abroad.  You can EMAIL ME to get a One Foot Abroad Promo Code!

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Best Adventure Travel Vacations: Top Bucket List Trips Around the World

Looking for the best adventure travel vacations to add to your bucket list? In this episode of Active Travel Adventures, host Kit Parks shares her favorite trips from around the world—based on firsthand experience across all seven continents.

From trekking to Machu Picchu and hiking the Dolomites, to kayaking in Antarctica and walking the Camino de Santiago, these are the trips that stand out as truly unforgettable.

Whether you’re planning your next big adventure or just dreaming about future travel, this guide will help you discover the top adventure destinations in the world.

🌍 Featured : My Most Favorite Adventure Travel Destinations

• Antarctica expedition cruise (wildlife, kayaking, remote landscapes)
• Bhutan Himalayan trek (culture + off-the-beaten-path travel)
• Camino de Santiago (Spain & Portugal walking pilgrimage)
• Costa Rica Camino (eco-travel + community impact)
• Croatia & Greece bike and boat tours
• Dolomites hiking adventure (Italy)
• Galápagos Islands wildlife experience
• Machu Picchu trek + Amazon rainforest (Peru)
• Mont Blanc circuit (France, Italy, Switzerland)
• New Zealand North & South Island adventures
• Patagonia hiking (Chile & Argentina)
• Slovenia active travel experience
• Utah National Parks hiking (USA)
• West Highland Way (Scotland)

🧳 Why Choose Adventure Travel?

Adventure travel offers a deeper, more meaningful way to explore the world:

• Stay active while traveling
• Connect with local cultures
• Experience nature up close
• Meet like-minded travelers
• Create unforgettable memories

Whether you prefer small group tours or self-guided walking holidays, these trips combine activity, culture, and adventure.

💡 Travel Tips from This Episode

• Book popular routes like the Camino in advance
• Consider e-bikes for hilly destinations like Greece
• Visit national parks in the off-season or with a guide
• Choose small group tours for safety and logistics
• Add extensions (like South Georgia for Antarctica) when possible

🎧 Resources & Links

• Full trip details and photos on the website
• Recommended tour companies and itineraries
• Printable travel planner for this episode

📌 Plan Your Next Adventure

If you’re searching for adventure travel ideas, this episode is packed with inspiration to help you choose your next destination—whether it’s hiking, biking, kayaking, or exploring remote corners of the world.

❤️ Enjoy the Show?

• Share with your adventure-loving friends
• Subscribe for more travel inspiration
• Join the monthly newsletter for travel guides and tips

Full Podcast Transcript: Best Adventure Travel Vacations

Below is the full transcript of this episode to help you explore specific destinations and travel tips in more detail (lightly edited):

[00:00:00] Where’s your favorite place you’ve ever been? If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me my favorite adventure, that is impossible to pick. It’s impossible for me to pick just one. Each adventure has its own flavor and specialness, whether it’s the people, the activities, and landscape, the culture and or the food.

There’s something about each adventure that gives it its little magical twist. So what I thought I’d do today, instead of trying to pick one, which for me is impossible or given you my top three, which is what I generally resort to as my answer for this question, I’m gonna instead tell you about my most favorite adventures since I discovered adventure travel eight years ago.

I can’t wait to share them with you. So let’s get started.

Welcome to the [00:01:00] Active Travel Adventures Podcast. I’m your host, kit Parks. I felt like I was trying to choose which child to save from a sinking ship when I was trying to put together my list of the top adventures I’ve taken since I discovered adventure travel back in 2017. The vast majority of my trips have been special as I’ve been actively seeking to do the very best adventures across the globe.

I also think that the more recent my trip, the higher that trip can skew towards being on my favorite list simply because it’s fresher my memory. So be sure to pay extra attention if I choose one of my older trips as to me, it sounds like it deserves extra kudos. This is the time of year when we tend to plan our adventures for the coming year.

So I thought this list could be helpful to you in deciding what your upcoming Avengers might be. And don’t forget, never hesitate to reach out to me at kit@activetraveladventures.com if I can answer any questions on any of these or anything I’ve covered on the show for the last going on eight years now.[00:02:00] 

Also since most of the adventures I go on today, because I tend to travel solo, I go on in a small group or in a self-guided tour, both for safety and for logistical reasons. It’s just very hard to go back and forth into different places. And sometimes I don’t wanna be in a remote area that I’m particularly when I’m not familiar with.

By myself in case of an accident or who knows what. So I tend to go with small groups. Oftentimes when I come back, if I was pleased with the company, I would reach out and ask them to affiliate with this podcast. And so that’s how I’ve come across some great companies, some of which we’ll go into today.

And because I have affiliated with them many times, we work together and they give my listeners an exclusive discount. I don’t publish these discounts anymore because an aggregator a little while ago, scraped the audio of my podcast and published some codes that I was not allowed to publish, so I had to delete a whole bunch of them.

So I’m sorry for the extra step, but if you want any of the promo codes, you do need to email me at kit@activetraveladventures.com, [00:03:00] and you will get whatever the current code is. And at the same time, you’ll be helping to support this program at no additional cost to you and helping to keep it ad free.

So with that, let’s get on with my list of the very best adventures I’ve taken since I discovered this fun thing called adventure travel. I put my list in alphabetical order since it was hard enough just to create the list. And for me to try to rank them, forget about it. So to me, alphabetical made it easier.

So then that way I didn’t try to say, is this one better than that one? And why that would make this whole episode too complicated. So let’s go in alphabetical order on my very favorite adventures. First up is Antarctica, which I took in December of 2022. I went with her to Gruin, a company that I had heard about for many years and had been on their email list for umpteen years.

And I had known that A, I wanted to go to Antarctica one day, and B, I wanted to go with them in particular, because [00:04:00] unlike virtually all the tour companies in the world, they know the iccs. They’re based in Norway. This is their home. Turf is the ice and the icebergs and all that. And if I was gonna go to the end of the earth, I wanted to go there with a ship and a captain that knew the ice, like the back of their hands.

So I went on. Truly, this is in the top three and, and I, if I had to really push one, I’d say this trip was probably the most exciting and all around, most perfect trip of my life, I went on an expedition trip. That because I was a little afraid of the Drake passage, which can be kind of rough. I wanted to avoid that by going to South Georgia Island and the Falkland Islands, which bypasses the Drake and then head down to Antarctica, and then on the way home the last couple days go through the Drake.

So if I was a little seasick, I wouldn’t care ’cause the, the bulk of the trip would be over. And little did I know that those two islands would be so cool in and of themselves. They’re, they’re worth a trip all on their own. So if you have the time and can [00:05:00] afford the extra money, I, I highly recommend doing that.

The thing that made Antarctica so special was. First of all, the, the wildlife is beyond compare. Uh, they call it the Serengeti of the south seas because you will see, I saw umpteen hundreds of thousands of fur seals. And this was a, a, a species that was almost extinct not that long ago, like, uh, maybe a hundred years ago.

They were killing them for the. Blubber to, to light, uh, the lanter to keep our homes lit at night. And then electricity saved their henie because we no longer needed that blubber and that fat to do so. And over time they became, they, they went forth and multiplied, and now there’s 5 million of them on South Georgia Island alone.

It’s unbelievable. Some beaches we couldn’t even land on because it was just covered at VER seals. They’re not there all year. So it depends on what time of year that you go to Antarctica and each of the seasons, which tends to [00:06:00] run like, uh, November-ish into March. And so that is the summertime on the southern hemisphere.

So the different months will offer different things that are special. I got to see the first yields. I went in the early to, uh, mid-December. So they were still there. They were breeding, and if I were to go, say in January and early February, the penguins that I saw that were just laying their eggs when I was there, those chicks would be hatched and starting to run around.

So I definitely wanna go back to see that. Particularly I wanna see the gen two penguins where for some reason that the scientists don’t understand, the kids have to chase mom and dad in order to get fed. And I’m not sure why that is, but that just sounds like a riot to see these little, little penguin chicks running after their parents trying to get some food.

Another reason Antarctica is so special is the, of course, the landscapes. You’ll see [00:07:00] icebergs and it’s just so remote and, and just the, the quiet, all you hear is the sea and the crackling of the icebergs and, um, it’s, it’s just something to behold. But also special on this trip were the people on my ship.

We were on a small ship of maybe 150 passengers. It is really hard to get to Antarctica. Must say, you gotta fly down to the very tip of South America. I flew out of pun in Chile. Some people go out of, um, a little bit further south, not too much further south. That’s if you’re going directly to through the Drake passage both ways.

My pun let me do my little detour around the Drake, but the people that make it down there tend to be really, really well. Traveled people. It’s because it’s so hard. It tends to be kinda the last on people’s list or near the last. So the people I met, the places they’ve been, the stories they told, it was just fascinating.

And then the ship itself, the, the fram, [00:08:00] the, the crew was outstanding. The food was amazing and abundant, and just everything about it was perfect. It was truly a perfect, perfect experience. We had great weather even come through the Drake. It was so calm that the captain said, I think it was out of all the times, he’d done that for 15 years, I believe.

I’ll have to listen to my own episode. I think it was like the third calmest he’d ever seen. So some people actually felt cheated because they couldn’t brag about the Drake shake as it’s so called. But anyway, so if at all you are able to make your way. Financially and time-wise to an Antarctica, please put that on your bucket list.

You will thank me later for it. And in our Antarctica, adventure wise, it’s not just looking at the animals in the landscape. I was able to kayak around penguins and icebergs, and how cool is that? Also, I was able to hike sometimes in the steps of Shackleford, the Great Explorer, so it. It’s not as active as, uh, some of these other Avengers we’ll talk about today.

But [00:09:00] by going on the expedition, I was able to make it more of an active trip. And of course they do have a gym on the ship as well, so I did use that. In fact, the only time a friend of mine’s going to Antarctica in a couple of months and he’s like, weren’t you cold? Is like, really the only time I was cold because you’re dressed properly, was when I was working out on the treadmill.

The captain said over the speakers that there was a whale sighting. So even though I’m all sweaty and I’m in shorts and a tank top, I ran out on deck when it’s freezing. So that was the only time I can really think of that. I was cold and that was because I was not dressed properly and I was sweaty. So other than that, I was perfectly cool and I did tons of, uh, a very extensive webpage on my trip as well as doing videos.

And I did an interview with the captain. He allowed me to go behind the scenes. So I went into the kitchen and to the, to the main cabin where they have all the articles. It was just an incredible trip. So I encourage you, if you’re at all interested, spend some time poking around the website. ’cause I really did an extensive deep dive into Antarctica [00:10:00] and my experience there.

Next up. On a completely different part of the world. We’re heading to the Himalayas, we’re going to Bhutan. Now, Bhutan, I tell people, is the most exotic and unusual country I’ve ever been to. And I think at this time I’m not quite at 50 countries. I’m probably somewhere around 45 countries, and I’d say it’s a good mix of developed and lesser developed countries.

So it’s a pretty broad spectrum, all seven continents. And Bhutan is the most unusual of them all. And the reason for that is they are, like I said, they’re in the Himalayan Mountains and because of the rugged mountains that border this country, they’ve never been conquered. And so they were isolated from the whole world actually until, I believe was the seventies or nineties when they first allowed outsiders into their kingdom.

And they still are very strict in how many tourists? I believe it’s currently 20 or 30,000 tourists per year, is all that. Is allowed into the kingdom. They’re trying to keep their [00:11:00] culture. Most of the people still dress in traditional dress. They follow their Buddhist traditions and it’s just a, an incredible country.

’cause how often do you see. A place anywhere in the world today that’s not multicultural, and Bhutan is not so, I mean, they welcome outsiders. You can marry Bhutanese, but if your spouse dies, your Bhutanese spouse dies. You gotta leave. You know, they, they’re truly trying to keep that whole Bhutanese culture and it’s a very cool culture, very lovely people.

And I’m fortunate enough that a bunch of active travel adventure listeners and Myselves will be heading there in October of 25. Sorry, the trip is full. It filled up right away, actually. And we’re gonna be doing some exciting things on that trip. So in Bhutan, you had the cultural experiences On my trip, I did the Druck Trek, which is a four day trek through the Himalayas.

That was, at the time, the highest I’d ever trekked, and it was just amazing. Amazing to be in the middle of nowhere near come up to this monk’s place. And, um. [00:12:00] See Wild Yaks and it was just incredible, incredible. And on my next trip, I’m gonna be doing some rafting and some biking. So we’re adding a little bit more adventure to this trip ’cause I was able to help design that.

But Bhutan is an amazing country that again, I would highly recommend you go to. It’s super safe. The people are cool. Uh, my affiliate Active Adventures has a, a really diverse trip that shows you all the highlights of this incredible country. So Bhutan definitely put that into consideration.

The next one is one that I did on my own, and it is one of probably the, the most covered, even though the different routes on my show because it’s so popular, so many people wanna do it. And that is doing an El Camino. The Camino is basically a series of multiple different paths. There’s um, at least a half a dozen main ones that spread across Europe.

Picture sun rays. And the, the [00:13:00] sun itself is Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and this is where the relics of St. James are, are, are said to be buried under the main cathedral there. And so over the course of time for centuries, pilgrims, as they’re called, would walk to Santiago as penance to ask for special forgiveness, special indulgences.

Cures, whatever the case may be. And over the centuries, they wore these paths across Spain and France and Portugal working their way to Santiago. And so I have covered the Camino routes or multiple of the Camino routes for the last seven years. I personally did the original way. And the king that started this was based in Oviedo in Spain, which is where I happened to be an exchange student in high school.

And I was like, well, cool, that’s the one I’m gonna do. So I walked that one over the course of I think a couple of weeks and it’s just a great experience. [00:14:00] Everybody you’re meeting along the path, we’re all walking the same direction ’cause we’re all walking to Santiago now. The thing about Caminos now is because it is so popular and this.

Became really popular with, um, uh, the movie The Way, which is a great movie to, to get a little inspiration to see what it’s like in that movie. Martin Sheen does the French Way after a son passes away trying to do the Camino, and that will give you a good idea of what this camino’s all about. If you wanna do the Camino.

However, because it is so crowded, particularly that last a hundred kilometers or 60 miles, because that’s what you gotta do in order to get the certificate. You’ve got to book in advance because there’s just not gonna be enough rooms at the end that if you try to wing it as I was trying to, because I didn’t really know what my schedule was gonna be, you’re racing to beat the clock to to beat the people, to get the B beds that are available.

And sometimes you’ll get to the town, there’s not enough room, so then you gotta walk another forest to five, six miles to the next town. So in [00:15:00] today’s environment. You really have to book in advance. And for that, I would recommend my affiliate follow the Camino. That’s all they do is the Camino. In fact, in this spring, I will be doing the Portuguese Coastal Way also with Active Travel Adventure listeners.

So a group of us are gonna be going solo together, so I’ll be doing my second Camino. And the thing that you’ll find about Caminos is they become addictive. In fact, uh, Patricia and Kevin, who will be joining me on this, and they did the Costa Rica Camino with me as well. They have done a handful of ’em.

It’s like every year they do a Camino. Same thing with Susan, uh, with Sue and Tony. They, they’re Camino addicts. They’ve done, uh, more than I can count right at this point. They’re also gonna be, um, they’ll be joining me in Bhut. The Caminos are great for just personal self-fulfillment. They’re great. If there’s things that, let’s say you’re going through transition life, whether it’s a retirement, sadly a divorce or a [00:16:00] death or um, child leaving the nest or it transitions, the Caminos are a great thing to do for a transition and you’ll see a lot of people doing that.

It what was once a spiritual route, it’s. Often now, today, not necessarily religious, but it can be mentally spiritual, but it’s a very friendly thing. You’ll meet gobs of people from all over the world on your Camino, but you can also be solo like in the spring. We’re going solo together, meaning we’ll all be staying at the same place each night.

But if somebody wants to walk by themselves, they’re free to do that. They could do their own timetable, and that’s the beauty of the Camino. You just need to get to your lodging that night. If you just follow the Camino, they’ll move your luggage. So all you have is a day pack and all you have to do is get up, walk, enjoy, stop for a coffee.

When you want to stop for lunch and have a picnic when you want to do whatever you wanna do. It’s great. So Caminos are amazing, and I would definitely put that in my top Adventures, something very [00:17:00] similar. But not quite as crowded is, uh, something called long distance holidays, long distance walks. And I’ve done three of these now and I love them.

So the next step on that list is the first long distance walk on the list. That’s not a camino, and this is the coast to coast in England. Europe has got tons of these traditional paths, and in a lot of places in Europe, the walkways are, you have a public right of way. Even if you’re going across somebody’s farm, and this is particularly true in the UK and in Scotland, you have the right to Rome, and so the coast to coast is.

From the, traditionally from the west coast over to the east coast. Now I did the half of it, which is supposedly the prettiest half. I wanted to go through the late district, which is lives up to the, all the accolades of how beautiful it is, and again, similar to the Camino. The sister company to follow the Camino one foot abroad.

They’re, they’re same two companies owned by the [00:18:00] same people. It’s the same thing. They moved my luggage every day, so I had a nice little inn. They always picked cute little places for you to stay in. I just had to carry a day pack. I had breakfast in the morning that was included with my room. I was on my own to either pack a picnic or stop for lunch somewhere.

And on my own for dinner, and they’re self-guided. They give you everything you need to do so you don’t get lost, and you have 24 7. Help, should you ever need it. I haven’t needed it, but it’s nice to know it’s there. If something happens and you need some help, they’re there for you and you get an app to make sure you don’t get lost.

So the coast to coast is one of many long distance walking holidays that you can do in Europe, and this was my most recent one. I did that in 1920, uh, excuse me, 2023. And it was amazing.

I’m in the walk and roll of this alphabetical. So next up is the Costa Rica. Camino, now [00:19:00] Conta and some of her friends, conta is a tko or a Costa Rican who loves doing Caminos. And she and her hiking buddies were like, how come they’re doing that? We ought do that for our country. So on their own, they. Fit together a path from the Caribbean to the Pacific Sea in Costa Rica.

As you’re going up and over the Continental divide, it’s about a, for most people, it’s a 16 day hike. And what they did that I think that was really special is instead of going to major tourist areas that are already getting plenty of tourism dollars. They wove the path and the route through small villages, many of which were dying because the kids wanted to go to the city to work.

And so now they’re bringing these cottage industries back by making this long distance path go right through these little villages. And another cool thing is. They are helping to build small bus businesses with the housewives. ’cause in Teco culture, the women [00:20:00] don’t often, it’s a kind of a machismo culture and they don’t often, uh, they often can’t work outside the house.

And if the man is picking coffee or whatever the case may be, that’s got a very limited season. So their income is very limited. Now with the Camino. The housewives can cook for us. They can arrange wherever we’re sleeping, they can do the cleaning and all that kind of thing to help us. And this has been a win-win ’cause it’s really helping these little communities and it’s starting to bring industry and jobs back.

So now the kids don’t have to go to San Jose to try to make a living. They can stay home and be near their families. So the Costa Rica Camino is not only a wonderful walking holiday, you’re, it’s a twofer because you’re also helping these small villages. It’s just an amazing experience. I did this with a group that I had put together after I interviewed Cheah.

’cause I found her on Facebook. I was like, what the heck is this? Costa Rica Comino? And so I reached out to her and she told me about it, got her on the show, and I was like, oh, I’m totally doing that. And I was like, who’s [00:21:00] up for it? And a handful of y’all said yes. So off we went and we did that in 2022.

And it’s amazing and it’s very bonding, like all these Caminos and I still keep up. With all of them from that group, and I’d say a good third, if not close to half of them, are coming to Battan with me next year. So I’m super excited to see everybody again. Still in the seas is yet another walkin holiday?

I promise we’re doing more than walking, so this is. The Cotswold Way and the Cotswold way goes through England in some of the most beautiful and scenic parts of England. Uh, if you close your eyes and you think of quintessential England with the thatched roofs on the houses and the cottage gardens and all the medieval churches and downtowns and all the little villages and pubs, that’s the Cotswolds.

And again, my affiliate, one foot abroad does this. And it can arrange everything for you. And you just walk [00:22:00] from one medieval village to the next I, I did it on, I believe, like a week long pace. I think if I were to do it again, particularly as I don’t believe I trained as much as I should have for this, and on all these long distance things, it’s, you know, everybody can do anything hard for a day, but if you’re walking, you know, eight, 10 miles, 12 miles, sometimes more.

That’s fine. Everybody can do that once, but if you gotta get up and do it again the next day, that’s the thing. On these long distances, you gotta get your feet used to doing that day after day after day. So you do need to train up to those miles so that way it’s a fun thing and you’re not just utterly exhausted.

I do remember in the Cotswold, as much as I loved it, I was really tired at the end of the day, whereas this other gal I met was doing it. Half the pace I was. And so we kept up for, for at least a year or so, and I think she did it the smarter way by slowing down the pace. So she had the whole afternoon to explore the town and the energy to do so.

But the Cotswold is an amazing, beautiful, beautiful walk and I would highly recommend [00:23:00] doing that for sure. Another good thing, uh, I always think about with the, with adventure travel in particular and on these walks because you have the time to really, when you meet somebody, to really get to know them ’cause you’re walking for hours and sometimes days with them and so on.

What will be the last listing of today’s show? The West Highland Way, which is my first long distance hike in Scotland. I met a gentleman by the name of Simon from England, whose girlfriend lives in the Cotswolds. So when I went. The following year to do the Cowa. My friend Simon picks me up at Heathrow. I spent the night at his house.

The next night I spent the night at his girlfriend’s house, which is right by where the start of the walk is. Off I go the next morning, midway through the walk, I go to the town that Simon’s parents live. I stop and have lunch with them, and then Simon meets up with me on the last day to walk in to bath with me.

So you, you make these friendships and I, I, I’ve found on most of these trips, I’ve made at least one or two lifelong friends. [00:24:00] And on some of them, when I’m walking, like the whole Camino, I mean, I make a bunch of lifelong friends. So it’s a really great way to travel. Not only are you doing something healthy, it’s a much more.

Intimate way of traveling because you’re actually part of the day of the people that you meet, the locals, you’re, you’re in the little villages, you’re not in the tour bus stepping out, getting a picture, getting back on the bus. You’re physical so you can eat whatever you want, drink whatever you want.

’cause you’re, you’re active all the time. And it’s just, I, to me, it’s just a much better way to travel. And usually it’s less expensive too, I must say too. Particularly when you’re doing the self-guided, like this COTS Hall was. All right. Now we’re gonna get off of our feet. The next one we’re doing is we are going to Croatia, and this was my first bike and boat trip and it was fun.

So you, the, the beauty of these is there’s several pluses to a bike and boat. Number one is you [00:25:00] only have to unpack once. I love that about bike of boat trips. Think of the time that you save. Not only you’re just moving all yourself. Your hotel is moving with you. So every day the ship would sail us to a beautiful little island.

We’d get off, sometimes we’d bike around the island, come back to the ship where it was waiting for us, or other times the ship would move to the other side of the island and meet us there. So whatever was the best thing for us. That’s where the ship was. That was really cool. And the time’s saved by not packing, unpacking all that transportation time and packing time, that disappears.

So that’s super great. And because you’re on a small ship, you can get into places that the tourists don’t generally go, so you’re not bombarded as so many countries and places now are just so crowded. We escaped the crowds. It was a wonderful way to travel. And Croatia itself. Is a beautiful country now split into broad neck.

I will tell you they’re crowded, but they’re crowded for a reason as most great tourist place are. [00:26:00] They got popular for a reason. They’re really cool, and Croatia is just beautiful Croatia’s on the opposite side of Italy. So it’s pretty much the, the same landscape except on the eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea.

So Croatia was great. It’s small ship. I think we had may not even two dozen people, and you’ve got a place that you can sit out on the deck in the sun. You could be in under the shade, and we still had plenty of time to do whatever you want. So you’re not doing the, the biking, batan death march. Every day you’re out, you’re biking for a few hours, you stop, you have lunch, you have coffee, you stay on the ship for a little bit.

You visit the villages and wander around there. Maybe you’ll do a little tour of. Whenever the island’s got something they’re noted for, you might go in and get a little demonstration of what the case may be. And it’s just a wonderful way to travel. And again, you’re, you’re with a very small group so you get to know everybody and have a lot of fun.

It’s a great, and I think a very economical way to see Europe. [00:27:00] We’re gonna get back on our feet for the next one. This is truly one of my favorites for beauty. And we are going to the Dolomites in Italy. Actually, it’s fairly close, uh, to Croatia. So we’re up in the, the, uh, northern part of Italy in the mountains, uh, and the Dolomites.

I think they’re limestone mountains, if I’m not mistaken, but just beautiful, beautiful landscape and the hiking was amazing. And so I did this trip with Active Adventures, Noma and Peg, you’ve heard them before. They came with me on this trip and we just had a blast. It’s spectacularly beautiful. This is a pretty challenging hike though.

I think they rated a four out of five. And if you train, which we all did, it was fine. And you also get a lot of history, the food. The food. The food. The food. Oh my gosh. I don’t think you can ever have a bad meal in Italy, period. I don’t care if we were in a mountain hut in the middle of nowhere. The food was exquisite.

The landscape was great. The people were [00:28:00] great. Yeah. The Dolomites, yeah. Put that on the list. That was a great place.

Next up, we’re heading to the other side of the world. We’re going to the equator and to the Galapagos Islands. Now the Galapagos is completely different than any other thing I’ve ever done before, and plus, I’m not really a water baby. I can swim, but I’m not a strong swimmer. But on the Galapagos, you’re, you’re in the water and that’s where the action is for the most part, because you’re there to see the sea life there.

You’ll see some on the land too, but most of the action’s in the water, so you’re in, you’re in snorkel gear. If you scuba, you can do some scuba dive in there too. That’s not something I do, but every day I would take a ship and go out and see something cool. Once we were out in the ship and we saw a. I dunno what you call ’em, a herd, whatever you call the flying stingrays.

Just these massive, um, stingrays jump out of the water. I’m not quite sure why they do it, but we were lucky enough to see that we would see the porpoises. Um, [00:29:00] if you go in the water, you see the colorful fish, you see the sea turtles, you see the sharks that don’t bite you. And the most fun thing you would see is the, um, sea lion.

I think they’re the sea lions. I think it is there. Not the first seal. Yeah, the first seals. You gotta be careful. The sea lions. And as long as you kept away from the bull, the, the man who was kind of in charge of his harem. The ladies were a riot. The kids were a riot. They would play with you. In fact, at one place, they grabbed our safety ring or the, the, one of the ladies grabbed the safety ring and she was swimming and diving and bobbing all around us, just having fun with us.

And it was all great. But then when she saw the the bull coming in the area, she dropped the thing and we all went back to normal and act as if we were all just not. Noticing each other at all. It was really kind of funny. And then at one beach I went to, uh, saw the, the sea turtles. I think it was green turtles, mating, and they’re huge.

And it’s the, the sea, I think there’s 50 of ’em. I could count just my feet on the [00:30:00] shore out there. It was incredible. And on the land. On one of the islands, they have the giant land tortoises where the shell of the turtle is 50 pounds. I was able in the museum to put my body in one of them and try to lift that sucker.

It’s hard. It’s hard, but just incredible. And the birds, you’ll see, these amazing birds. I think my favorite were the boobies, and the booby is a bird that depending on what their diet is, there’s the blue footed and the red footed and green footed boobies. They will the male to show off what a good catch he would be and why he should be the mate.

Be the choice for the mate is he will show off his big feet, his big winged feet and do this little dance and they call it little booby dance. And so he’s wanna show off his blue feet or his red feet or his green feet to the female and say, Hey, look at me. I can provide for us and the babies. And it’s a hoot.

Now the Galapagos [00:31:00] for Wildlife is unsurpassed amazing, amazing adventure, and you can go there with my affiliate Active Adventure and also Herta Gruin, depending on what kind of trip that you’d like to take.

We’re gonna go back in the water, but this time back in a boat to Greece. And this I went to with my sister, Ooh, it’s been like three years, I guess. Um, so about like 20, 21 ish maybe. We went to Greece and we went to some lesser Touristed islands. The Cycl Islands. I had to go there to Greece for a podcast event, for a travel podcast event, and I was like, well, shoot, I wanna do this, this boat and bike thing.

So that was the first time I ever tried that and my sister jumped on board and man, did we have a good time? I mean, and, and Greece like Italy. Good food. Really good food. The landscape is kind of like a high desert. You’ll see lots of olive trees and I think we saw some pomegranates, but [00:32:00] it’s, it’s very high.

It was very mountainous. Terry, my sister, got the manual bike greatly in all these bike things. I get the E-bike and I never regret it particularly on that one. I think Terry, even though she did the whole thing in the manual bike, she would’ve been happier, I think with the e-bike in the, if in the future as I think most of the people said they were sorry, they didn’t, ’cause Greece has got some mountains there and we had one day, it was like a 40 mile day, whether a really high mountain, and it was that one day in particular was the reason like, yep, I’m gonna cough up the extra for the E-bike and I’m glad I did.

Not an overly hard trip, particularly with the e-bike, but it’s, it’s great fun and great people and just a really wonderful trip. And then we did that with my affiliate boat bike tours, and I, I don’t think I mentioned that with Croatia. So boat bike tours. I did that with Croatia and Greece and they have boat and bike trips all throughout Europe.

I’ve covered lots of their adventures on the podcast and I’ll have links to all this in the show notes, so don’t worry about that. But yeah, that grease trip, that was, that was epic. That was fun. [00:33:00] We’re gonna head back to south of the Equator again and again with my sister Terry. And this time we went to Peru to trek to Machu Picchu and go to the Amazon Rainforest.

And we did this with, uh, my affiliate Active Adventures. This is incredible trip. And Machu Picchu limits, I believe the number of hikers per day to like 200. So you don’t really see other people on the trail, which is nice. We sometimes would see ’em at the campgrounds, but other than that, we didn’t pass anybody at Porter’s throughout the day.

And so it’s a four day trek. It’s, it’s pretty challenging. It’s, it’s a little bit up there, elevation, but not. Not overly high. It’s not something you need to worry about. Day two, as I recall, when you go up to dead women’s past, that was a little bit more challenging and, and some people did struggle a little bit, but we all did it.

No problem. It’s really beautiful when you get to the end to Machu Picchu itself, which is an amazing, oh gosh, I forget even how old it was that the, [00:34:00] um, the inks did. It’s an old temple that was rediscovered in the forest and it was not destroyed by the con conquistadors, which they had destroyed all of it, but the forest had covered it.

And so when they found it again, they’re like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. But you can drive to it. So the buses get there. So you know, we are here, we trek for four days, get to Sun Gate, and as far as I was concerned, I could have turned around then. ’cause you see Machu Picchu down below. And then when we got down there, it was kind of crowded.

I would like to have gotten there before the buses got there so that we could have some private time there. It was a little disconcerting, but other than that, that was pretty amazing. And then we headed to the Amazon Rainforest, which completely different landscape. Truly cool. We fish for piranhas. Uh, we didn’t catch any, Terry caught a dogfish that we ate for dinner that night and one day we took the boat out and we saw, you know, ika, those are those big, beautiful birds that are, uh, red and blue and yellow with the long [00:35:00] tail.

And so they need a mineral that’s found on the salt licks. And so we got there right before Dawn and then. When like it, there just hundreds of these macaws go to this cliff side and it’s just. Unbelievable. You can’t even believe it’s real. And so the law is that you can’t disturb them. So we had to get there before the birds and we had to wait till the, the birds finished eating, which was like an hour or two, and then we could head back and it was just cool.

And just, just the animals that you see in the, in the forest and the rainforest. So we did night tours and day tours and just a super cool trip. So that was Active Adventures, Machu Picchu and Amazon Rainforest Tour. Amazing.

Also with Active Adventures. I go with them a lot ’cause they are a, just every, every trip they do is first class. I mean, it may not be like first class Fru, but they just make sure they give you a heck of a great trip for your money. They’re a little expensive, you know, you can find [00:36:00] cheaper trips, but you get what you pay for and you get a great trip.

With Active, you’re going to eat amazing. You’re gonna see great sites. They have certain ins that other companies don’t, I’ve noticed in a lot of places. So they get you into places that just either people don’t know about or they’ve just been doing it so long, or bring so many people that they just have an edge.

I saw that New Zealand for sure, where they’re based. But, so anyway, so the next trip I also went with active to Mon Blanc, and I did this this past summer. Mont Blanc is on the, is the highest mountain in Western Europe. And so there’s a circuit that goes around this mountain, and so you’re going through three countries.

You’re going, you start off in France, then you go to it Italy, then Switzerland, and end up back in France again. This, the scenery is spectacular. There’s another, I mean, there’s another word for it. Unbelievably beautiful, no matter which way you look. It’s just incredibly beautiful to see these gorgeous alps.

And then [00:37:00] on our last day when we finally get back to Shaman, we take this gondola up to the top where we can look down on Mon Blanc, and we had this perf. Picture perfect day and on a cloud in the sky. And the sun just glisten on the glacier on top, and you could see these little baby ants that were people that were hiking on the actual glacier and going across crevasses, which no way Jose would ever catch me doing that.

But it was fun watching them do it. And it was just, just an amazing trip. And again, the food, but you’re in France and Italy. I mean, where you gonna go? Wrong? You can’t. It’s just an amazing trip. Highly recommend Mount Blanc. Let’s go again with act. We got a little roll with Act Up. Now we’re going down, far down under, we’re going to New Zealand.

This is the home of Active Adventures and here they actually, I’m gonna mention two, I did two of their tours. I started off in the south island, which is where most people go. That’s where you can go see Mount Cook, and that’s where. Um, just [00:38:00] most of the activity is most of the people. You got the whole big range of landscape.

You can see the glaciers and the, uh, the mountain sea region down there. It’s just beautiful. Some of the best hike, best hikes in the world are in New Zealand and just the people are fun and they got just, it’s. I would move there. They won’t take me anymore. I don’t have enough money to move there. Uh, according to their, their laws, man.

Oh man, it’s just a great country. Just absolutely beautiful with wonderful people. The, the landscape, the flowers, everything about, there’s nothing wrong about New Zealand. It’s just a great country. So I’m with this with my group and like I said, when you’re spending this much time with each other, you get to know each other and we just, were having so much fun.

Some days we’re hiking, some days we’re kayaking, some days we’re biking. It was just fun. That’s the one thing about active trips too. You’re not usually just hiking. They’re predominantly hiking, but they always throw in some other things, whether it’s a, a day on the bike or a day on the, on the water.

Somehow it was just a really well balanced, fun. [00:39:00] Introduction to New Zealand. And then I still had a couple weeks after that trip that I was gonna do some exploring on my own and I’d booked Airbnbs and we kind of had a journal idea what I wanted to do, but I had so much fun. And three of the people in my South Highland trip were going to the north island to take that tour, uh, the back end of their North Island tour, the five days up there.

And I was like, I wanna go. So I just, I ate. All the airfare of di Hadria, I ate all the stuff I said I, and I went with them instead. And man, oh man, is that North island? That is fun. So not only is it beautiful, it’s completely different too because you’re up near, um, it’s very temperate. You’re in the rainforest.

Um, and you also have all these, um, uh, in, I think it was called, were all the steam and the volcanic, uh. Pressure comes up from the ground, so you’re walking through town and then you just see steam pouring out by somebody’s fence, and they have all these hot springs and just a completely different environment.

I didn’t get to, uh, do the big dune thing. They have if you [00:40:00] do the full, uh, week or 10 day tour that they have. But we did, we did the Tamaro Crossing, which is one of the most beautiful and most unusual hikes I’ve ever done. Uh, one of the iconic world hikes, uh, going across this, these volcanoes and you see the volcanic pits and lakes and, uh, just incredible, incredible.

Trip we went into to, on a inner tube underground in a, on a, on a underground river, in a cave. They said, okay, I want everybody to hook onto the, the tube in front of you. So we all locked together. So it became like a little caterpillar going down the river and they said, okay, turn off your headlamps.

’cause we had headlamps on and we’re like 60 feet underground, turn off the headlamps. And then a couple seconds later I was, our bodies get used to the dark. We’re floating very quietly through this river and this cave, and they said, okay, open your eyes. And we open our eyes and above us, our one gazillion glowworms.

I mean, the [00:41:00] whole cave was just covered in Glowworms. It was incredible. One of the things, one of the most remarkable things I think I’ve ever seen in my whole life, we also went rafting. That was off. Off the tour. That was a little side thing ’cause we, we were pretty fast hiker so we had time to do, we rafted over the, the highest navigable waterfall in the world.

A 21 foot waterfall. You gotta see the photos of that on the website. That was pretty amazing. You, it’s not where you can kind of kill yourself. ’cause you just go in this big pool with no rocks. But that was a blast. That was. Fun. So we hiked, we, we biked in a world famous mountain biking training place where people come from all over the world to, to mountain bike.

And then they have so many paths that you can go on a tricycle all the way up to world class mountain biking. And so we had a guide take us on. Just, just a fun, just every day was fun. That’s all I can say is that North Island trip. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. South Island is fun and beautiful. The North Island’s beautiful too, [00:42:00] but there it is, like fun, like your little kid fun every day we’re doing like little kid fun things that it was just a bla a total blast.

So anyway, recommend North South Island. If you go out there, it’s a long way away. Try to go for at least three weeks, four weeks if you can. So worth it. Love New Zealand. We’re getting a little near the end of the list. We’re going back down under, except back to South America and once again with active adventures.

This I did, uh, a couple years ago. Uh, so back when I did the Antarctica trip in 2022 because it’s so far away, and this is still, when I was quote unquote homeless, living in the Canberra van, I’d put my house, uh, my stuff in storage and sold my house. So I was pretty bunch a free bird. So I went to South America, central America for about five months and makes it really easy to travel that way.

You don’t have to worry about stuff. But anyway, so, uh, that’s when I did Machu Picchu. I did Patagonia and I did Antarctica, the Galapagos, all that was during that trip. And so in Patagonia, [00:43:00] again, talk about beautiful this Patagonia. I usually put that in my top three as well because it’s just beautiful landscape and the hiking is amazing.

We did the W Trek, which is a famous hike down there. Um, we also went across, and that’s in Chile, and then we went to Argentina where we. Went to where the glaciers are and we kayaked around glaciers and we’d hiked. It’s just, just, that’s just a great trip. So it’s a long way away, but man, oh man, I would put that one on your list.

Patagonia is amazing. Now let’s head back to Europe and this time we’re gonna go to Slovenia. The, the, you know how I, I think as I recall, how I went to Vidia, okay? So, again, remember, I, I’m a little bit homeless at this time, so I’m able to travel for long periods of time because I don’t have to worry about anything back home.

So I had the, the Dolomites was originally scheduled for [00:44:00] 2020, I believe, and due to COVID that got canceled. And so when Europe opened up the following year, that following summer. I rescheduled the Dolomites and I said, well, I’m, I’m gonna go over there. It’s a great time to travel because nobody’s traveling.

And I also had booked, I had the rescheduled Croatia. Okay, so if you picture Italy, all right, and go up the, the inside of the boot. Okay? That’s where the Dolomites is up there. We flew into Venice and we got picked up in Venice to go to the Dolomites. Now Venice is up at that upper northeast corner of Italy on the boot.

If you go around the corner of the Mediterranean Sea. Go down the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, that’s where Croatia is. And guess what’s in the middle? Slovenia. Now, I don’t think I knew anything about Slovenia. I think I knew one person before that who’d ever been to Slovenia. And I was like, well, [00:45:00] I think I’ll just work my way from Venice to Croatia and so I’ll go to Slovenia.

And so I went on one foot Abroad’s Sia multi-activity trip. And Sharon, who. You met with the Costa Rica. Camino. I first met her in Slovenia. She was a listener. And I said, Hey, anybody wanna join me? And Sharon stepped up and said I would. And so, uh, Noma from the Dolomites went to Luana with me. We just took a bus over from Venice and met up with Sharon in Luana.

Hung out there for a few days and. Then we did our own trip. That was just a a, an incredible. Vidia is a sleeper country that put this one on the list for sure. A it’s a beautiful country. Super neat. I had not at the time, been to Switzerland before, but it was my impression what Switzerland. Just everything’s neat and tidy and orderly here.

We’re there in the summertime and everybody’s front yard gardens were all pictured neat and perfect in my neighborhood. [00:46:00] People already letting everything go to heck. By then because it’s hot, we don’t wanna worry about it. And just a great little country. The food was good, wine was delicious. Inexpensive, I must add too.

And the landscape is incredible. The history was incredible and they were part of the bulk, it’s part of the, the Yugoslavia, but unlike a lot of the places that I would see later in my trip further south, I think the war was only there, I think 10 days. And they stopped the, you know, then they solved their problem.

So they didn’t have a lot of the trauma that a lot of the Balkans did that I would see when I went further on the trip. ’cause I spent about five months in that region as well. So Slovenia, that, that one foot abroad trip, that’s an amazing trip. And Slovenia is a wonderful country to put for sure. But that sucker on your list, that’s a great country.

Once Sherra and I finished that, then I continued further south to Croatia and from there to the Balkans. And, uh, I covered all these in the, on [00:47:00] the show as well. So if you’re interested in the whole region, check out the, the podcast and the website, you’ll find more details about that. But that was a great trip and I also found out on that trip that five months seems to be as long as I can be on the road before I get antsy to be at a home place for a while.

So. Um, anyway, now let’s head back to the United States. And is this true, this is the only one in the United States on my list? It is indeed. And that is Utah. Utah is one of the few places I, you know, ’cause there’s so many places I wanna see in the world that I rarely repeat. Because I just, I know that I don’t have enough time or money to see all the places on my list, so I was like, I don’t wanna go back to the same place, you know, when there’s other places I haven’t seen yet, but Utah is the exception and I would go back yet again.

There’s something magical about that Red Rock in the canyons. That is amazing. Uh, the beauty of Utah too is they have five national parks. They’re all fairly close to each other, and the southern part. Active Adventure bought out Austin [00:48:00] Adventures a few years ago, and so now they offer, they call it the Mighty five.

I did cover this on the show. Um, I happen to do this on my own. You can do it on your own, but I, I say that with a pause. The National Parks have gotten so crowded that I think you’re better off coughing up the money and going on a guided trip, whether with active or somebody else because they have access.

That the regular person doesn’t have anymore where things are getting permitted. I’ll give you an example. Zion National Park in Utah. Beautiful park. Super popular park. I’m in my camper van Sophie. I don’t, you have to get a, they, they have um, uh, shuttle buses in the morning that will take you into the park.

You can’t drive in the park anymore. It’s too crowded, so you’ve got to get a shuttle pass or you can walk or take a bike, but you can’t take a motor vehicle unless you’re staying at the lodge, which is expensive. And I’m too cheap, so I won’t do that. If you can get a reservation at the lodge too, I should [00:49:00] add too, everything’s crowded so I.

I have my bike, and so my plan is, is I paid $75 to park my van at the Best Western overnight, which is right outside the park entrance. I get up super early and I’m riding my bike. The trailhead I wanna do is I wanna go up and up to Angel’s Landing. And, but it’s a seven mile bike ride. And so as I’m biking in there, all the shuttle bus is coming.

So now hundreds of people have beat me to the trailhead ’cause they got, they were able to get the ticket and the ticket’s only two bucks. But there’s limited amount. And what I also learned, I’ll tell you this trip tip in a minute, after I finished my story. So in the meantime, hundreds of people have beat me to the trail head.

So I get up to. Scouts Landing, which is like a right before you get on the chain to go on the, on, on that final stretch. And it’s like Disneyland. It was gross. I mean, it, it was beautiful, but there were so many people I was like, forget it. That doesn’t even look fun to me. And so I turned around and, and headed back down.

So I guess [00:50:00] my point is, is if you had gone with say, active or somebody else, they’re gonna get you up early enough. So you’re at that trailhead before the other people are there. ’cause they can get in there. They can, they can beat everybody and they know when to go where. They also know different places to go to that the tourists don’t necessarily know to go.

And in a lot of things, if it’s a one-way trail, you start hiking, they’re there with their van to pick you over at the back end. So you’re not having to do 20 miles when you go, you can only do 10 kind of a thing. So just with the national parks in the United States today, I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but certainly for the, the parks I’ve been to in the United States.

These days, you’re better off either going in the off season or going with a guided tour. If you wanna go in on season. Now, if you want to do it on your own and you wanna get the shuttle pass, um, I did learn a little trick from this guy Taylor I’d met out there because the wifi is terrible out there for everybody.

And, and they, they open up the [00:51:00] getting of the passes. They’re $2 at the time I was there. At five o’clock. So everybody in the whole area is trying to get on the wifi at five o’clock. And so everybody got the spinning ball from hell, and so I, I just couldn’t get one. Taylor was smart. He had his friend back home with high-speed internet buy it for him.

So all he had to do was just show that ticket. So that’s the way to get around that. But you still have just a lot of issues. So for me in the future, I’m just gonna cough up the money. Uh, but the national parks in Utah are amazing. So you’ve got arches, which is what it sounds like. These are massive, massive, like bigger than a building size arches made of, of just erosion that are really cool.

Bryce’s Canyon. Is, uh, remember when you go to the beach and you put sand in your hand and you kinda let it sprinkle out? Just picture spires and spires of spires of beautiful red, red spire rock Zion, or just majestic mountains capitol reef. That was not my favorite. I think I was a little [00:52:00] tired that day.

I should give that a different. Give that another shot. ’cause I, I kind of blazed through that park. I don’t think that I did that justice, so don’t listen to me on Capitol Reef. And then Canyon Lands, I learned, I took a mountain biking trip, uh, from a company in Moab. And I said, I’m getting sick of all these crowds.

I’m getting turned off. And so he said, he told me to go to the south part of Canyon Lands, and he told me about a trail there. That remains one of my favorite hikes of my life. And I’m out there four or five hours. I see nobody. I mean, I’m in the middle of this, uh, unbelievable landscape and I don’t see a soul until the very end, uh, maybe half a mile to the trailhead where I parked.

And I see this young man in his twenties, he’s going, this is the most beautiful place in the world. This is the most beautiful place in the world. Like he was in a trance. Little, little freaked out a little bit, but I was like, but it was one of the most beautiful places in the world. It was just so. So different looking.

That’s what I love about Utah. It’s so different looking, but it is a desert. So it gets super [00:53:00] hot in the summer. Don’t go there in the summer. You gotta go there in like, um, early spring, late fall into winter kind of a thing. But check out the website and look at the photos of Utah and definitely put that on your list.

And last but not least, was my very first walking holiday, and that was the West Highland Way in Scotland. This is a beautiful, roughly a hundred mile walk from Glasgow up to Fort William, which is considered the adventure capital of Scotland. It is beautiful. Most of the time you’re walking around Lale La Laman, which is a Lake.

Lake Lamont, la Lamont. And it’s just beautiful. You’re just going from one medieval village to the next. You have a, the pint at the end of the day at the pub. It’s just a, just an amazing way to see a country and I, I just had a blast and I got hooked on long distance walking on this trip. Yeah, it was life changing.

It was, that was a life-changing trip for me because I learned a new way to travel. So [00:54:00] I’d gotten into, I’ll, I’ll tell you about one more thing before I let you go. So I got into adventure travel earlier that year. That was in 2017. June of 2017. So in, I’m gonna say February of 2017, a hiking buddy of mine had suggested that I go to Nicaragua with him.

They were doing a backpacking trip, and I was like, you think I could do that? You know me. You know, I, it sounded like it was too hard for me. And he said, no, you’re fit enough. I think you could do it. So I went and I had the time of my life. Just, I was filthy. It was, but we just had a blast. I was like, I just didn’t know that you could travel like this.

And you know, I’ve never crossed my mind that other countries had national parks and places of natural beauty. ’cause I always just went to the cities, saw the museums and the tourist spots, and turn around and went home. I just didn’t know about this adventure travel and it was a life-changing event for me.

And at that Nicaragua backpacking trip, I met Jamie who was [00:55:00] Scottish, and his 40th birthday was coming up that June, and he was having a hiking birthday party in Fort William. He lived in Scotland. I couldn’t rationalize going to Scotland for the weekend, so I was like, surely that must be something I can do that’s fun.

And that’s when I discovered this path called the West Highland Way. And there was another path that went from Glasgow. To, what’s the name? I don’t remember the name of it. There’s like a 10 mile path that goes from Glasgow that meets to the trailhead of the West Highland Way. So I was able to walk from my Airbnb all the way to the birthday party a hundred miles away.

It was just the coolest thing in the world to me, and I fell in love with this kind of travel and it wasn’t even that expensive. It’s just a great way to travel and adventure travel has changed my life, and the more people that I’ve introduced to it, they’re saying the same thing. I mean, look at my sister Terry.

You know, I brought her to Costa Rica with the same group as the Nicaragua Group the next year. I don’t think she’s taken a trip that wasn’t [00:56:00] adventuresome since. It’s, it’s just, it’s life changing because you are having, it’s fun for one thing, and you’re still seeing the country, you’re meeting the locals, you’re meeting other people.

It’s, it’s not this bus vanny travel that I just, I don’t think I could ever do again, and I just love it. And you meet. I make friends on it. I don’t think I’ve made friends on the buses. ’cause you’re kind of sitting in a little booth kind of a thing. If you’re on the dumb bus. And I will, I don’t think I’ll go back as long as my body will hold up.

I am going to do adventure travel. Boy has it been fun for me to relive these adventures. I hope that you also got some great ideas of adventures and will cons that you’ll consider for the new year. Please let me know what you think of that, and if I miss some of your favorites, I’d love to hear ’em. You can always reach me at kit@activetraveladventures.com.

Now on the website for this episode, I will, I have pictures and a brief summary of each of these trips and links to the actual episode [00:57:00] page so you can see more details. And the travel planner for this episode will be a printer friendly list with links to all the individual webpage. Plus it’ll have the travel planner links on it for each of the adventures to make it really easy for you to plan your adventure.

I’ll also put a link to my recommended tour company and the tour that I went on or, or would recommend and tell you what the discount I can offer you. Again, I’m no longer publishing the promo codes, but I can save you as much as 200 bucks or 5% depending on the trips, and I’ve got a promo code I think for everything but the Herta Gruin that I can save you on everything we talked about today.

You’re gonna get this list automatically. If you are on the email list, it’ll come out in the January newsletter. But if you need it sooner than that, just email me and I’ll get it out to you sooner. Remember, if you get my once a month newsletter, I don’t sell your name, I don’t spam you. It’s only once a month and it’s our way to [00:58:00] have a two-way conversation.

Plus you get access to the, almost now, 200 travel planners. I’ve got some travel checklists, s some packing lists, uh, everything I’ve ever produced and download all the downloads. You get access to all that right away. And yeah, I think it’s pretty helpful. I think it’s some pretty helpful information. My newsletter, Jill goes out on the first Thursday of the month.

I would appreciate it if you would share this episode with your Adventure Loving friends and family. That is the number one way that people find the show. Many thanks for sharing it and for listening. Until next time, this is Kit Parks Adventure. On.

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