Taroko Gorge, Taiwan is an enormous cavernous gorge (over 2000 feet long and 200 feet tall) carved out of the mountains on Taiwan’s East Coast over several millennia by the Liwu River. A highway follows the gorge, which is also criss-crossed with some of the country’s most spectacular hiking trails. The best way to see … Read more
Not everyone uses Textedit on Mac, but I know a blog of bloggers that do. The problem is changing Textedit to HTML by pasting it into the WordPress visual editor doesn’t work very well. So, one day I sat down and figured out a super fast way to convert Textedit into clean HTML for WordPress, and, at the same time, to make some fast formatting changes, such as changing all links to open in a new window, and changing bold text into header (h2 or h3).
I got started travel blogging differently than most other bloggers I know. Most of the travel bloggers I know loved travel so much that they wanted to find a way to earn a living while traveling.
I arrived in this occupation from a completely different direction. I always wanted to be a writer (you can read more about my writing adventures in my Timeline of My Life As A Writer on this page) and I studied journalism in university.
I was teaching English in Taiwan then I first started pitching magazines, but I wasn’t getting assignments as consistently as I wanted to. I thought that choosing a niche to focus on would help. Since there were few people writing about Taiwan at the time, I decided to become a travel writer.
Images and text by Mark Whitman
Climbing Kilimanjaro is definitely an adventure, but I’ve never personally looked at it that way.
Thousands flock to Tanzania every year with the sole purpose of attempting to reach what many colloquially call the Roof of Africa. Standing at 19,341 feet (5,895 meters), Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain on the African continent and the tallest non-massif (free-standing) mountain in the world.
The mountain’s popularity among hikers can be attributed to its Seven Summit status and the fact that it’s a non-technical climb. This means that anyone at (nearly) any age can climb Kilimanjaro. Fitness and physical ability are also more flexible than on many other climbs. Canadian couple Esther and Martin Kafer reached the summit at the ripe old ages of 84 and 85, while armless and legless Kyle Maynard crawled to the top of Kilimanjaro unassisted in 2012.
Compared to these extraordinary feats, I’ve never felt that my young, able-bodied experiences on Kilimanjaro were very adventurous.
It then dawned on me, recently, that I had indeed been part of a Kilimanjaro experience similar to those described above.
My first experience on Kilimanjaro was with a childhood mate who had suffered from partial sightedness for most of his life.
A few weeks ago, after reading a Buzzfeed article about people’s bad roommate experiences of all things, I decided that I wanted to compile an article of peoples’ most poignant travel experiences, whether they were funny, scary, or sentimental.
The results were way better than I expected, so now I think I may do a series (if you’d like to contribute a story, there’s info at the end of the post).
In June, 2014 I went on an Puerto Vallarta adventure tour run by Vallarta Adventures. I’m always wary of ‘adventure tours’ because they’re usually too tame for my taste. This tour, called the Sea Safari, wasn’t exactly adrenaline-inducing, but is was probably the most fun I had on the entire trip.
A tour guide always plays a big role in making a good experience, and ours was fantastic. I was also very impressed by how socially and environmentally responsible the trip was.
Summer is the busiest air travel time in Canada. Whether you’re packing for a family vacation, visiting relatives or exploring new corners of the world, an easy and stress-free travel experience starts by preparing for the security checkpoint. These tips from the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) can help.