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IF YOU THINK YOU’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE…
I’m going to pretend like we can all name the seven continents (Middle Earth is not one of them). In case you’re stumped, here’s an interesting article on how our mental maps of the world are probably wrong (for example, did you know that most of Africa is actually in the Northern Hemisphere?), and see if you can remember them. If you can list them out, here’s one you have to go to once in your lifetime: National Geographic shares what you can expect on your first visit to Antarctica. If you can’t list them out, there may be a few places you need to visit before you consider Antarctica, or Middle Earth.
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MAKING ENDS MEET
“Take a seven-hour, once-weekly flight from Johannesburg via a refueling stop in Windhoek, Namibia; or a five-and-a-half-day boat trip from Cape Town via the RMS St. Helena.” For those of you that thought South Africa was far, how about some lands where you have to go even further. Men’s journal put out a list of super remote places worth a visit. I must admit, I’ve only heard of a handful of them. My top pick? Well it’s a magical place I hope to visit when the war dies down: Dragon’s Blood Island (nope, I’m not making this up). Never heard of it? Keep reading.
Socotra, Yemen’s Dragon’s Blood Island: “Between Africa and Arabia lies an island of rare biological oddities—one that’s buffeted now by development, cyclones, and civil war.” They call it the Galapagos that no one has ever heard of. Remarkable.
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MORE OFF THE BEATEN PATH: PARIS. PARIS?
Ok, so you don’t have to travel in consistently way below freezing temperatures (Antarctica) or risk traveling to places you’ve never heard of through civil war ravaged countries (Socotra, Yemen) to get to this place. For those who want a little less daring (adventure), but, a little more time away from the thronging hordes of tourists with your loved one (romance), here are some good tips from our friends at Lonely Planet for places off the beaten path in one of the most visited places in the world: Paris.
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MOTHER OF ALL TRAVEL SITES
From Airbnb to Tripadvisor, from Hotels.com to Kayak, most of us think we have a good handle on the travel websites we need for our specific travel needs. Or, do we…? Apparently, I need to now expand my website resource list to include sites like Atlas Obscura, Wherecani.live, Hoodmaps, Rome.me, Sygic Travel, just to name a few. Here is the mother of all travel sites – two hundred and forty five sites to be exact – from Hackernoon. Not going to lie, never heard of this site either, but damn great list!
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TRUE STORY, PROMISED
You ever find when you’re looking for a book at the bookstore (presuming you’re old enough to remember what that is), you can never remember any good books from that book list you stored in your brain? Well, now, all you have to do is look up this post again, and find a list of the 50 essential non-fiction adventure books, if you’re into that sort of thing. At least on my end, I find that can never put these books down once I start (assuming I remember which ones they were).
Thanks,
Joe Naaman
Managing Editor, Waywinds
Keep Exploring!