InkaFest – Huaraz

Every August, the Peruvian city of Huaraz hosts the Mountain Film Fest or InkaFest.  This year, the festival runs from the 18th-22nd of August. Films can be entered into one of six categories (not including Best Picture and Viewer’s Choice): Mountaneering, Mountain Culture, Adventure, Rock Climbing and Sports Adventure and Nature.  Besides films, the festival hosts workshops and speakers.  And of course – there are endless opportunities for adventures in Huayhuash and Cordillera Blanca, climbing, hiking, rafting or exploring nearby ruins. We wrote about Huaraz last year, click here to read. Off the Radar is the online magazine for adventure travelers featuring responsible adventure operators, news from adventure destinations, images and personal accounts from the field.  Sign up for our newsletter here  Read More →

Smith Fork Ranch: Luxury Dude Ranch

Something amazing is happening in the North Fork Valley of Colorado: local, sustainable, and organic farms are thriving. Smith Fork Ranch in Crawford, Colorado, uses local fruits and vegetables from their own garden and surrounding organic farms, as well as lamb, beef, pheasant, and elk raised locally and sustainably, to create a delicious feast with fresh ingredients every day. The words “luxury” and “dude ranch” don’t often fit together in a sentence, but that’s exactly what the Hodgson family has created at the Smith Fork Ranch.  In the dramatic mesas and mountains of Colorado’s Western Slope, the wine industry is growing and thriving in Tuscan-like summers, and this ranch reflects this refined culture amid lush rolling countryside, with the dramatic (and undiscovered!) San Juan mountains as a backdrop. This piece of Colorado also has the nation’s newest national monument, the incredible Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Visit the... Read More →

Sea Kayak the Brazilian Amazon with Rumo Norte

Rumo Norte Expeditions, out of Belem, Brazil, has a truly unusual way to experience the grandeur of the Amazon, with minimal impact: by sea kayak. Rumo Norte owner Gelderson Pinheiro’s favorite kayak trip begins in the town of Alter do Chão, “Altar of the Earth,” where a white sand island known as the Island of Love glows in the clear waters of the Tapajos River (which feeds into the Amazon River 30km to the northeast.) Paddling a sea kayak south along Green Lake, where the Borari Indians extract stones for auspicious frog amulets, Gelderson says, “The sky is more blue, the sunset is more expressive, the water is warm and has a special blue-green color, and the local communities come to you with friendship and great hospitality.” If the wind permits, add a sail to your boat to get you to Belterra for lunch, then Maguari, where you’ll have dinner with the local community. You’ll hike through the forest and experience the Sumaúma tree, the Amazon’s largest, and known... Read More →

Watching Bonobos Deep in Equateur Province of the Congo

At Off the Radar, we usually write about trips you can book immediately – but traveling deep into Equateur Province of the Congo to visit the Lomako-Yokokala Faunal Reserve to see Bonobos in their natural habitat is not something you can do…yet. In April 2009 primatologist Jef Dupain of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), in partnership with Jengai Tours out of Cameroon, led a group of 12 adventure tourists to test out a trip that AWF hopes to begin running four times a year. The Lomako reserve is the only place in the world tourists can visit to view Bonobos in their natural habitat. The endangered Bonobos are our closest living relative. They only live in the dense lowlands of the Congo Basin, and are rarely found in zoos, likely because of their sexual repertoire: they use sex for most types of communication, including greetings and conflict resolution. The group flew into Basankusu, where they climbed in pirogues – traditional dugout canoes carved from one tree, for... Read More →

Interview with Katie Brown – Girl on the Rocks

Professional rock climber Katie Brown has been stunning the world with her climbing prowess since she won her first international competition in France at age 14, then took the World Championships at age 18. After an intense youth in competition, Katie took time off to attend school, then found her love of climbing again as she entered her twenties. Since then, she’s been diligently working at design school, studying yoga, and traveling the world.  Katie’s life has always included a lot of travel. Growing up in rural Kentucky, Katie traveled around Europe starting in her early teens to compete in climbing events.  When we met Katie six years ago, she was still painfully shy and leary of the spotlight from her past, but she was on her own climbing program that involved climbing for the love of it, complete with a new focus and a desire to break out of her shell. Even though she had traveled on the pro climbing circuit, it was a climbing and bouldering trip to Hampi, India... Read More →

Pozos – An Abandoned Mining Town in Mexico

Three bus rides away from San Miguel De Allende in the central Mexican province of Guanajato, is Pozos, an old mining town.  Pozos is actively promoting an “Art Walk,” and the mysteries of its abandoned silver mines. Over five hundred barely noticeable circular cement markers are scattered around the outskirts of the town, indicating the presence of mine shafts, some over 150 feet deep.  You can walk through the faded red ruins of the mining industry – brick buildings where equipment was stored and accommodations for the workers.  The first ruin up the road from the main square is adjacent to a shaft equipped with a string of light bulbs, and frayed rope.  For twenty pesos, we paid an old woman perched at the entrance of the shaft, to let us climb about 100 feet down and gained vague sense of what it must have been like to be a Mexican mine worker in the 19th century. Wacky artists are trying to put Pozos on the tourist map with eclectic workshops making pre-hispanic... Read More →

Make Your Own Adventure Short

October 11th to 17th, join the Outside Serac Adventure Film School, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. During the course of the week you’ll explore the process of making an adventure short and have the opportunity to head into the field for a hiking and camping adventure. Michael Brown, winner of 50 film festival awards and 3 Emmys, who has also reached the Summit of Everest four times with a 25 pount Hi-def camera, is your mentor.  Ryan Ross and David D’Angelo, two accomplished adventure videographers, are your other instructors.  Check out the program here - and if you enroll, be sure to send Off the Radar your adventure short! - Off the Radar  Read More →

Kite the Costa Esmeralda in Veracruz

Off the Radar is the online magazine for adventure travelers featuring responsible adventure operators, news from adventure destinations, images and personal accounts from the field.  Sign up for our newsletter here Peppi Stunkel and Omid Kay recently founded Elemental Kite Club on the Costa Esmeralda, in Veracruz. We first met Peppi in 2007 when she was working with volunteer-adventure tour operator Protect the  Earth, Protect Yourself, in Cambodia. Now far from the rice fields, Peppi’s new project opens up her favorite bit of coast in Mexico to new and experienced kiters. What she loves about the new business: “miles of empty, hazardless beach, and the mango margarita at the palm-thatch Palapa Bar!” She and Omid have spent countless hours scouting the best areas for kiters of all levels, and also put together trips to the nearby El Tajin ruins and white sand beaches. Elemental guests can stay in their partner hotel, the Taboga, an eco-boutique facility catering specially... Read More →

Kiting the Kenyan Coast

Off the Radar is the online magazine for adventure travelers featuring responsible adventure operators, news from adventure destinations, images and personal accounts from the field.  Sign up for our newsletter here Spice up your classic Kenyan safari by following it up with a few days of kite surfing on Kenya’s coast. Glassy bays and the challenging waves of the Indian Ocean beckon kite surfers to Che Shale where lessons and rental equipment are available for newbies. On the days you’re not in the water, visit Malindi or head to Tsavo National Park, famous for being the real site of the 1996 thriller about Tsavo maneaters, The Ghost and the Darkness. The founders of Che Shale take their responsibility to the community seriously and eight years ago built a school which now serves 180 students. They also established the Che Shale Kasimani Community Program which offers incentives to local people to identify, develop and manage their own small business projects. The program is managed... Read More →

Off the Radar talks to Eagle Creeks Stasia Raines

Off the Radar is the online magazine for adventure travelers featuring responsible adventure operators, news from adventure destinations, images and personal accounts from the field.  Sign up for our newsletter here Ever wonder about the people making the great gear you use when you’re hiking the Annapurna Circuit or cycling through Moab’s Canyonlands? They’re people like Stasia Raines of Eagle Creek, who just returned from a mixed adventure-volunteering trip through Thailand and Cambodia. In addition to its efforts at creating more sustainable fabrics and equipment, Eagle Creek supports a number of philanthropic projects around the world, often discovered through the traveling adventures of their staff. Stasia visited a couple of projects when she mixed her recent dive holiday with a stint volunteering in a North Thailand orphanage and short visit to Cambodia. In Cambodia Stasia visited PEPY, a volunteer-adventure tour operator featured in past editions of Off the... Read More →

Next Page »