Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I鈥檒l admit, I鈥檓 biased toward lush tropical landscapes, like Tahiti, and rugged stretches of coast, such as Vancouver Island, British Columbia. But there鈥檚 something magical about the endless expanse of badlands or a snowcapped mountain reflected in an azure alpine lake. So they made my list of the most beautiful places on earth.

I鈥檝e done a lot of globe-trotting in my decade as a travel journalist. When 国产吃瓜黑料 asked me to consider writing about the most beautiful wild places on earth, I immediately thought of Lagoa das Sete Cidades in the Azores, green-blue twin lakes within a crater, and the Na Pali Coast of Kauai, with emerald cliffs that tumble steeply to the sea.

But these places are already on most people鈥檚 radar, and the last thing I want is to contribute to overtourism. Instead, I came up with a list of stunning, lesser-known destinations that are also full of adventure potential. You鈥檙e going to be amazed.

I purposely highlighted more sites close to home to make this list accessible.听My biggest tip is to live in the moment when visiting these places鈥攐r any place that bowls you over. You can鈥檛 experience it fully if you鈥檙e glued behind your camera, shooting images to share. Here are my picks for the most beautiful places on earth.

1. Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah

Why It Wows: Utah has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to otherworldly rocky landscapes, but the geologic amphitheater that is steals the show (entrance fee from $15). Rich mineral deposits in the cliffs and hoodoos resemble a sweeping sunset of orange, yellow, red, and purple. During July and early August, some 250-plus species of wildflowers bloom, creating a Technicolor landscape.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: Tucked in the mountains 20 miles east of Cedar City, this three-mile-long cirque gets a sliver of the foot and vehicle traffic seen at nearby Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks but offers just as many options for outdoor lovers. Because it鈥檚 located at an elevation of 10,000 feet, summer temperatures are comfortable, with highs hovering around 70 degrees.

Hikes range from the ADA-compliant, two-mile round-trip , which skirts part of the rim overlooking the amphitheater, to the 12.8-mile Rattlesnake Creek Trail, a two- to three-day hike in the Ashdown Gorge Wilderness that drops into the amphitheater.

Five miles north, is a mountain biker鈥檚 dream, with more than 100 miles of downhill singletrack and 100 miles of cross-country trails.

Stargazers know Cedar Breaks as a designated International Dark Sky Park. Every Sunday and Saturday from late May through early October, the monument offers free four-hour astronomy tours at the North View Overlook.

2. Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, Alberta

Why It Wows: Often referred to as Banff National Park鈥檚 lesser-known sister, this 76,800-acre patch of wilderness in the Canadian Rockies is the epitome of postcard perfection, with its snow-crowned peaks, sparkling alpine lakes, glacial streams, and evergreen valleys. In autumn the park is most dazzling, when larches鈥� needles turn gold and the trees are reflected in the lakes.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: , 85 miles southwest of Calgary, is one of Canada鈥檚 most accessible parks, with multiple barrier-free trails wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs (entrance fee from $12).

Stay at , fresh off a $6 million renovation (from $21 for a campsite; from $31 for a cabin). It overlooks Lower Kananaskis Lake, prioritizes people with disabilities and seniors, and features 22 accessible cottages, plus 13 campsites, and 11 miles of accessible trails on-site.

The park is full of hiking and mountain-biking trails, as well as seven miles of paved biking paths. In fall, check out Elephant Rocks and Chester Lake via when it鈥檚 positively ablaze with yellow larches. In winter, bring along your cross-country-ski gear and spend a day on the park鈥檚 more than 50 miles of groomed trails.

In the area without your outdoor essentials? rents everything from canoes, kayaks, and paddleboards to e-bikes and full-suspension mountain bikes.

3. Lefkada Island, Greece

Why It Wows: Sea and sky meld together in an ombr茅 of blues on this under-the-radar Ionian isle. Chalky cliffs and white-sand and pebble beaches also woo those in the know, but the interior is just as wondrous, filled with a dense forest of ancient oak, dramatic gorges, and tumbling waterfalls.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: A five-hour drive west of Athens, Lefkada is one of the few Greek islands that doesn鈥檛 require a boat to reach鈥攊t鈥檚 connected to the mainland by a bridge. A playground for recreationists, you can spend days and biking its trails, or opt for guided or self-guided e-bike excursions with .

Windsurfers and kitesurfers head to Vasiliki, Ai Gianni, and Myli beaches. , in the village of Vasiliki, rents equipment and provides lessons. All of the beaches are stunners, but Egremni, on the southwest coast, is widely considered the prettiest in the country. Surrounded by limestone cliffs, you must hike a steep trail from the parking lot, then descend more than 300 stairs to reach the sand. Trust me, the effort is worth it.

4. Shariqiya Sands, Oman

Why It Wows: Stark and remote, this seemingly endless stretch of rippling, wind-sculpted dunes spans 5,000 square miles of Oman, a small sultunate on the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. The highest dunes鈥攕ome as tall as 330 feet鈥攁re found closest to the coast. But the big reason to see these ever-shifting sands is to witness the mesmerizing way they change color from pale gold in the afternoon to deep amber and copper as the blazing sun cuts across the sky.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: A three-hour drive south from the capital city of Muscat, this desert was recently renamed the Sharqiya Sands to reflect its geographic location more accurately (sharqiya comes from the Arabic word for 鈥渆astern鈥�), but everybody still refers to the area by its former name, Wahiba Sands, a nod to the region鈥檚 Bani Wahiba tribe.

, an Oman adventure specialist with 17 years of experience in the country, sets up mobile camps deep within the desert and can arrange activities like sandboarding, camel safaris, dune driving, and visits with local Bedouin families (from $6,234 per couple for two nights, all-inclusive). Bonus: the lack of light pollution means campers are treated to incredibly clear, diamond-studded night skies.

5. Las Coloradas Lagoon, Yucat谩n, Mexico

Why It Wows: These glimmering cotton-candy-colored lakes pop against a backdrop of powdery white-sand beaches and pastel blue skies within the protected reserve of the R铆a Lagartos Biosphere. The lagoons get their blush tint from the plankton, red algae, and brine shrimp that thrive in the super salty waters.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: The biosphere is off the beaten path鈥攁round three and a half hours from major tourist hubs like M茅rida, Canc煤n, and Playa del Carmen鈥攁nd area accommodations are limited. Your best bets for an overnight stay are , a four-room, family-run eco-lodge in the reserve that also offers tours (from $95), or the in the sleepy nearby fishing town of R铆o Lagartos (from $66).

The biosphere is a birding paradise, home to 380 species, including 30,000 flamingoes that match the water. It鈥檚 also possible to spot spider monkeys, coatis, and jaguars, and from April and October, hawksbill and green turtles lay their eggs on the shores. Book a tour at the reserve鈥檚 visitor center for a better understanding of this ecosystem, but 诲辞苍鈥檛 plan on swimming here; as tempting as it might be to dive into the pink waters, the activity is prohibited, due to the high salinity and because the salt is harvested there for consumption.

6. Rio Sucuri, Brazil

Why It Wows: Eleven miles outside Bonito, the self-declared ecotourism capital of Brazil, you’ll find Rio Sucuri, whose Avatar-blue waters are considered some of the clearest on the planet. Set against the lush jungle, its spring-fed waters glow a surreal electric blue.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: Bonito is located in the central-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul. It takes some effort to reach. After an approximate two-hour nonstop flight from S茫o Paulo to Campo Grande, it鈥檚 a three-and-a-half hour drive to Bonito; from there, the access point to Rio Sucuri is another 12 miles away.

and (from $160 and $160, respectively) are both great boutique stays around 50 minutes away, set on the banks of the Rio Formoso, another pristine, spring-fed waterway.

Rio Sucuri has been developed as an ecotourism project and can only be experienced with a guide. To reach the river鈥檚 headwaters, it鈥檚 a quarter-mile walk through the forest to a reception area at the S茫o Geraldo ranch, which outfits everyone with a wetsuit and snorkel gear. Then you鈥檒l board a boat for the quick ride upstream, where you鈥檒l jump in and allow the gentle current to drift you back, lazy-river style.

You鈥檒l no doubt spy pacu (a vegetarian piranha) and red-tailed pirapitanga darting between swaying emerald-green grasses. With exceptional visibility, you鈥檒l feel like you鈥檙e floating in an aquarium.

7. Pico Ruivo, Madeira, Portugal

Why It Wows: Topping out at nearly 6,110 feet, Pico Ruivo is the third-highest point in Portugal and the tallest peak in the archipelago of Madeira. From the top, you鈥檙e rewarded with panoramic vistas of the entire archipelago.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: Two trails lead to the summit. (PR 1.2) is the more direct route; it climbs 1.7 miles to the viewpoint. The more scenic path, however, is the 3.3-mile (one-way) (PR 1.1). Many consider this the most spectacular hike in all of Madeira. It crosses the island鈥檚 central massif, tunnels through volcanic tufts that once sheltered shepherds, and heads up steep slopes home to colossal urzes trees.

That said, it鈥檚 a test-your-mettle trek. Rise early to score parking at the trailhead at Pico Areeiro, the archipelago鈥檚 third-highest peak, and catch the sunrise before heading out.

8. Tarkine Rainforest, Tasmania, Australia

Why It Wows: The second-greatest expanse of cool temperate rainforest in the world could easily have been the inspiration for Fern Gully. Filtered light dances through the canopy of massive eucalyptus and leatherwoods, and velvety moss seems to cover everything. Hugging the island鈥檚 rugged northwest coast, the 900-plus-square-mile area boasts wild, remote beaches and sand dunes, waterfalls, and numerous sinkholes.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: The coastal village of Arthur River is a good jumping-off point for forest and beach adventures, or base yourself at , 67 miles south, for immediate access to river activities (from $176). The hotel has a fleet of 16 canoes and kayaks to rent, and from there it鈥檚 a three-hour paddle down Pieman River to 130-foot-tall Lover鈥檚 Falls.

Hikes through this 65-million-year-old rainforest are magical. Tackle the 5.5-mile, out-and-back Whyte River and Savage River Trail, keeping an eye out for wallabies, pademelons, and platypuses, which tend to be more active at dawn and dusk. Eco-outfitter runs four-, five-, and six-day hiking and camping expeditions to the region鈥檚 most incredible spots.

9. The Sermilik Fjord, Greenland

Why It Wows: This 50-mile-long fjord in eastern Greenland spans is a frozen wonderland of luminous blue crystal cliffs, calving glaciers, and a flotilla of colossal icebergs.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: Most visitors explore eastern Greenland by ship, but I like 鈥� new, climate-friendly, human-powered itinerary ($6,750 for eight days). You鈥檒l explore the region on foot or by kayak, and sleep in tents and cabins. Inuit hunter and guide Jokum Heimer Mikaelsen, along with a guide from the Greenland mountaineering company , lead hikes up small mountains, into ice caves, and across glaciers and offer insight on how Native people forage on the tundra.

Powderhounds can discover the slopes on a ski-tour trip with (from $4,910 for eight days). Dogsleds and local boats are used to access different terrain each day.

10. Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, New Mexico

Why It Wows: These sprawling badlands look like a high-desert fantasy world dreamt up by Salvador Dal铆. Shaped by wind and erosion, the hoodoos create a natural sculpture park, with rock formations resembling alien eggs and manta ray wings.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: Two trailheads access the area鈥檚 43,420 acres, both located less than an hour鈥檚 drive south of Farmington, New Mexico, or 90-minute drive south of Durango, Colorado. The Bisti Trail on the west side is the main portal and most popular, thanks to its moonscape-like terrain.

The De-Na-Zin Trail on the southeast side features less of the classic badlands topography but is still wildly beautiful. It starts out in sagebrush, transitions to juniper and eventually badlands studded with huge petrified logs and eroded cliffs and mesas.

Most visitors head to Instagram-sensation attractions like the Bisti Wings. But Stan Allison, an outdoor-recreation planner at the BLM Farmington Field Office, recommends a more exploratory approach. 鈥淢any of the unnamed areas have features that are just as interesting as the named ones,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 navigate by following the normally dry arroyos and then veering off or up side drainages when I see interesting features.鈥�

Wheeled vehicles are not allowed on BLM land, and there are no designated hiking trails, so be sure to download a topographic map of your route to a well-charged phone ahead of your visit, because cell signals can be spotty. This is an area where packing a paper map and compass is also a smart idea.

Or considered a guided visit. The wilderness boundaries overlap parcels of private Navajo land, and offers five-hour trips that delve into the history of the area and its cultural significance to Indigenous people.

11. Bazaruto Archipelago, Mozambique

Why It Wows: I visited this archipelago of five dune islands almost a decade ago, and from the plane, they looked听like a white-and-aquamarine swirl-art painting. A designated national park, the marine life in its protected waters is as incredible as the powder-fine beaches. The archipelago lays claim to the second most diverse coral reefs in the world and supports over 2,000 species of fish, and on dive and snorkel excursions I听saweverything from vivid corals and manta rays to reef sharks and even the endangered dugong.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: The large coastal town of Vilanculos is the gateway to this cluster of islands, which can be reached by air via or by boat (most hotels provide complimentary boat transfers).

Bazaruto and Benguerra islands offer next-level offshore snorkeling and diving opportunities, as well as hiking/biking to听 crocodile-filled inland lakes surrounded by towering sand dunes. It鈥檚 worth splurging on a stay at or , both barefoot-luxe eco-hotels on Benguerra Island (from $5,744 and $1,108, respectively). The resorts can organize sailing excursions on traditional dhow boats, kitesurfing lessons, kayak trips through mangroves, whale-watching excursions between July and October, and scuba-dive outings to famed sites like Two Mile Reef, accompanied by research scientists.

12. Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan

Why It Wows: Reminiscent of the wild beauty of Hawaii Island, this district in Japan鈥檚 southernmost island, Kyushu, has 250 miles of surf-blessed coast, active volcanic craters, and wild horses. More than 75 percent of the mountainous interior is covered with forests dotted with sacred shrines and cascading waterfalls.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: Located on the east coast of Kyushu, Miyazaki is about a 90-minute flight from Tokyo鈥檚 Haneda Airport or a 60-minute flight from Osaka鈥檚 Itami Airport. Legendary waterman Kelly Slater has pilgrimaged here to ride waves, a testament to the area鈥檚 surf cred. The guide company offers surf trips led by local pros, and if you鈥檙e experienced, they鈥檒l lead you to a secret big-wave spot that breaks from August to October.

A visit to Cape Toi, Miyazaki鈥檚 southernmost point, is a must. The scenery is straight out of a fairytale, with a seemingly endless panorama of sapphire ocean, a forest of rare, native sago palms, and 100 wild horses called Misaki-uma, considered a national treasure. Even cooler: you can camp here, at the (from $20).

13. Lake Willoughby, Vermont

Why It Wows: Nicknamed America鈥檚 Lucerne, this five-mile-long, glacier-carved lake is sandwiched between the fjord-like peaks of Mounts Pisgah and Hor. The water is remarkably clear, and come fall, it takes on the autumnal hues of the surrounding foliage鈥攁 gorgeous sight.

国产吃瓜黑料 Intel: Situated in the heart of Vermont鈥檚 rural Northeast Kingdom, Willoughby State Forest encircles the lake’s southern end and is webbed with 12 miles of hiking trails. is a 2.5-mile out-and-back route with fantastic lake views.

Summer is the most popular season for boating, paddleboarding, and kayaking, and public beaches on its north and south ends are popular with swimmers and sun seekers (note that the latter is clothing optional). Willoughby is also a haven for anglers who come to hook jumbo trout and salmon. (Willoughby Lake Store, near Westmore, sells bait.) Visibility is so good some people even scuba dive here.

On the south side of the lake, the family-run has tent sites, RV hookups, and waterfront cabins, plus an on-site caf茅 and country store, plus kayak, canoe, and SUP rentals (from $38).

Jen Murphy is 国产吃瓜黑料 Online鈥�s travel-advice columnist and a frequent contributor to the magazine. She dreams of returning to the Bazaruto Archipelago to dive its clear waters, and a camping trip in the desert of Oman is on her wish list.听

The post The 13 Most Beautiful Places on Earth You鈥檝e Never Heard Of appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Part One

On March 25, 2021, a week before his 41st birthday, Adrian Nel woke at dawn on the floor of his hotel room in Palma, northern Mozambique, and, seized by a sudden premonition, texted his wife, Janik Armstrong, at their home in Durban, South Africa.

Janik im still alive here but shit is
going wild. We have been under
attack since yesterday. We are
stuck for the moment at the
amarula. We have a small amount
of wifi that connects sometimes. I
will update you if anything changes
and we have a plan for evac.
My babes i love love love you and
the kids forever. Please let them
know that everyday if i dont make
it out here.听 05:32

When Janik checked her phone an hour later, she lost it.

Adi, 诲辞苍鈥檛 say that!!!听 06:47
You scaring me to death听 06:47
Please 诲辞苍鈥檛 talk like that听 06:48
Love you so so much 06:51

But Adi couldn鈥檛 stop. 鈥淚 love you to death,鈥� he replied. Then, later: 鈥淚 love you guys so much. Tell the kids I love them every day.鈥�

Janik wanted more information. She also wanted Adi to be there to love her in life, and to be able to tell the kids himself that he loved them every day. Calmly, evenly, she told her husband to 鈥渟top fucking talking like that鈥� or she would 鈥渇reak the fuck out.鈥� One of the things Janik loved about Adi was that he could always make a plan. He needed to figure this one out, too. 鈥淵ou have to promise me that you鈥檒l come home safely,鈥� she wrote.

Adi鈥檚 next messages indicated that he was trying to do as he was asked. At 8 A.M., he wrote that a few small helicopters were flying around the Amarula Lodge, where he was holed up with around 180 others, and 鈥渃learing some militants away.鈥� At 11 A.M., he reported talk of a rescue in armored troop carriers belonging to an army battalion stationed 30 minutes away. Around 1 P.M., Adi said that there was a new plan: 鈥淲e might receive some private security at some point today.鈥� Just after 2 P.M., he hinted that he might have good news soon. 鈥淭he choppers came and blew some shit up at 13:00. To clear a route for us to escape.鈥�

When Adi stopped texting shortly afterward, Janik wasn鈥檛 unduly worried. She knew that the insurgents had knocked out Palma鈥檚 single cell tower, Wi-Fi was patchy, and Adi鈥檚 phone battery was low. Plus, she was being forwarded messages from other contractors at the Amarula who had satellite phones, and they were saying that everyone was fine and busy working on a way out.

So Janik resigned herself to waiting. She kept her phone close that afternoon and into the evening, and by her bed that night. She checked it when she woke up, and at breakfast, and on the school run, and all day at work at a travel agency. Finally, on the way home, when she hadn鈥檛 heard from Adi in 27 hours, Janik found herself stuck in traffic, staring at a long line of cars trying to get home, and without really thinking, she pulled onto the shoulder and texted. 鈥淚 love you, I love you, I love you with all my heart ,鈥� she wrote. 鈥淵ou can do this.鈥�

It was 5:08 P.M. on March 26. The sun would set in Palma in another 17 minutes. When Janik checked her phone later, a double tick indicated that her message had been received.

The post 鈥淚’m Still Alive but Sh*t Is Getting Wild鈥�: Inside the Siege of the Amarula appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Many world-curious writers evoke one of two emotions in readers: either a yearning for parts unknown or a gratitude for the comforts of the familiar. When reading Bob Shacochis, it鈥檚 harder to say.

($26, Grove Press) compiles 20 years of magazine writing by longtime journalist, novelist, and听compulsive adventurer Bob Shacochis. He charges across the globe, from Mount Ararat in Turkey to Kamchatka, Russia, using experiences and physical terrain as tools for self-discovery and anthropological exploration. The resulting 13 essays included in the book are poignant, observant, and swashbuckling all at once.听

The collection opens with the titular novella 鈥淜ingdoms in the Air,鈥� a 140-page dispatch that sees Shacochis traveling to Nepal in 2001 with Thomas Laird, a photographer friend of his who lived there a decade earlier. They鈥檙e traveling through Upper Mustang, an area of the Himalayas formerly sealed off from foreigners. What unfolds is a calamitous haul on horseback, during which Shacochis mines the turbulent political landscape, challenging geography, and his friend鈥檚 inner turmoil as Laird observes how the country has changed in his ten-year absence.听

It鈥檚 Shacochis at his no-bullshit best, and it sets the tone for the subsequent essays, compiled and republished from their original forms in magazines such as Men鈥檚 Journal, 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚, and, yes,听国产吃瓜黑料.听

Shacochis, a National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, favors run-ons and fragments; he jumps from one scene to the next without coaxing us through a transition; he rarely uses dialogue. His writing is pared down and to the point, Hemingway-blunt, and yet it reverberates with meaning. 鈥淎ll human endeavor here is overshadowed by vast wilderness, the horseshoe of severe mountains above the cultivated plain that corral Upper Mustang鈥︹�� he writes. 鈥淪ometimes wolves prowl the fringe of the hamlets; in the higher pastures, sometimes villagers will kill a snow leopard for culling their herds. This is the home of the mythical yeti, the abominable snowman, and a bloodthirsty pantheon of local spirits; when night falls superstitious villagers bolt their doors.鈥�

These essays are about more than just place, and Shacochis has a听knack for distilling expansive, complicated situations down to their most important parts and plucking details that transport. Kamchatka, 鈥減erhaps Russia鈥檚 most famous nowhere,鈥� he introduces as a place to which children pretend-banish each other as penalty for losing a game. The rani (queen) of Kathmandu is 鈥減ale-faced and fine-boned and thin, elegant in her traditional gray bukkhoo and apron, her doe eyes beautiful but heavyhearted.鈥� The decline of Mozambique鈥檚 Gorongosa National Park is summarized in a sentence: 鈥�… its infrastructure blasted to rubble, its bountiful population of animals slaughtered, eaten, reduced to gnawed bones and wistful memory.鈥�

In a way, the essays in Kingdoms in the Air are templates for how to live. Shacochis is not advocating for reckless travel as a means for indulging restlessness. Rather, he鈥檚 showing by example that a big life can be lived in many ways: by learning about injustice and beauty, by cultivating openness and curiosity instead of fear or hesitancy, by seeking strange lands, and by observing, empathizing, and questioning.

The final essay, 鈥淟eave,鈥� is an appeal to Shacochis鈥� Florida State University graduate students to go out and consume the world. He writes, 鈥淟et the road end; stop at a crossroads where the light is surreal, nothing familiar, the air smells like a nameless spice, and the vibes are mesmerizing or just plain alien and stay, long enough to truly be there.鈥澨�

In Kingdoms, Shacochis beckons us along on his quest for these crossroads. More than a diary of days and locations, these essays are time stamps of an explorer鈥檚 long-spanning literary career, and they are not to be missed.听

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The cheetah’s unflinching stare bore into my seven-year-old son. It seemed to be assessing him as it would a baby gazelle, already salivating at the prospect of that succulent, white meat. I never knew how much my protective, mother lioness instincts would kick in. But then I’d never seen a cheetah draw a bead on my son.

Cheetahs can run 60 miles an hour, and听. But they can be out run by a man over time. I know all this because my son, Skyler, was infatuated with cheetahs. This is how we found ourselves at the . We were on spring break during our year living in Mozambique and knew we needed to design a trip around our seven- and ten-year-old kids. Otherwise, we might strangle each other.

The center’s staff had carefully embedded Skyler in the center of the open-sided safari bus saying it was possible, had he been sitting on the edge, that the free-roaming cheetahs could mistake him for a tasty morsel. I didn’t doubt they were right. As we left they instructed us, and Skyler in particular, not to make any sudden moves to prevent the cheetahs from springing and hitting their exceptionally light skulls on the chain link fence, and cracking them. We carefully crept away, newly in awe of their predatory power.

Driving our rented van (our claptrap jeep had broken down yet again), through the Karoo Desert to Capetown we found ourselves in Southern California, or that’s how it felt after Mozambique. Minimalist, white condos perched over sparkling water, against brilliant blue skies; bouncers manned the doors of neon-lit nightclubs; pizzerias opened onto sun-baked patios and potted palms. In other circumstances, Peter and I would probably have found a spot with a view and settled in, wiling away the morning over coffee, sliding into a tantalizing East Indian lunch, slipping into an evening of wine and tapas until we melted back into bed. And, given a few more days, we’d probably have started working.

Well that was not going to happen; not with kids in need of entertainment. Instead, we took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain and skidded down a vertiginous, 3,500-foot ravine via stone stairs and dirt trails; we waited in interminable lines to plummet down the Ratanga-Junction-amusement-park waterfall in a plastic log and dangle upside down in the open air from a hundred-foot high roller coaster (the previous group of riders had been stuck there for a full five minutes, but our daughter Molly was not about to bail); and we drove twenty-nine miles out the Cape Peninsula . This was only the beginning.

Two days later, we found ourselves dangling again, this time more than one hundred feet up in the air from a zip line in Tsitsikamma Park along the Garden Route.

“Mom, you should look down. It’s so cool!” Skyler eagerly urged me on. He looked ready to spill out of his oversized harness into the treetops below. But he probably would have thought that was fun!

He didn’t seem to realize that if I had looked down, I’d have frozen to my little tree platform, paralyzed, as the others continued zig-zagging trunk to trunk, 1,000 meters down to the coast, dragging a gloved hand for a brake on the cable above so as not to slam into the next tree. Skyler’s hands were so small they had to fasten the giant, adult-sized glove around his wrist with a rubber band.

Our next stop, Durban, boasts of an inordinate number of Great White sharks, so many that the city has sunk enormous nets so that people can swim off the beaches. But if that feels too tame, you can be dropped into shark-infested waters in a tiny cage for a heart-pumping, adrenaline-boosting, extra-close-up encounter; a prospect our kids found enchanting. We found it so sketchy we headed to instead. Luckily, they quickly forgot the allure of shark jaws as they defied gravity, flipping in pulley-rigged harnesses for a few rand a ride.

The choice of our next destination was driven by Peter and me, though still by children’s fantasy. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings had been one of our favorite childhood series. Hearing Tolkien had grown up near the Drakensberg Mountains, we went in search of the Shire. Sure enough the thatched Zulu huts became round, and the hills started rolling until they rose into the not-so-distant, plenty forbidding mountains of “Mordor.” Bedding down for a few nights at Didima Camp in our own thatched hobbit hut, we hiked up into goblin caves and found on their walls not the tracings of goblins but the remarkably clear San people paintings of running animals and spear-toting men from as long as 2,400 years ago.

Two weeks later, we picked up our jeep with its rebuilt engine and putted back over the border into Mozambique, tired but exhilarated. Although I might have liked more coffee houses and wine bars, nine years later that vacation still rates as one of the best. Our kids kept us moving, so that insidious magnet, work, didn’t have a chance to suck us back in. And they forced us to be enterprising, to find active things to do. By the end, we felt rejuvenated by the physical activity and had got a real mental break. Thanks kids鈥攆or your contagious energy, your eyes-wide wonder, your curiosity about everything. You can design a trip anytime.

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Not long after we began a year-long stint in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, our ten-year-old daughter, Molly, began pressuring us to visit the South African town of Nelspruit, just across the border. It was a three-and-a-half-hour drive. She wanted to go to the mall.

Mozambique.

My husband, Peter, adamantly refused.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 come to Africa to go to a mall!鈥�

But I caved. This upscale mall was a regular shopping stop for her classmates in her international school in Maputo. I knew it was important for her to fit in.

We鈥檇 quickly gotten the picture about ground travel from Maputo’s foreign community. In Mozambique, lock your doors when you鈥檙e听in听your car, so that when you stop at a city light, people 诲辞苍鈥檛 reach in and pull your purse鈥攐r you鈥攐ut. Out of town, travel in convoys. Travel in the daytime. And听诲辞苍鈥檛听break down, especially if you go to South Africa.

鈥淭here they 诲辞苍鈥檛 just rob you.鈥�

So I started asking around the school, looking for a convoy headed to Nelspruit. No one was going. Now what? How risky was it really? Well…. There听had听been that guy in the white Land Cruiser on the sand road to the beach resort at Ponto d’Oro, who’d flagged us down to tell us a man had randomly appeared out of the woods with an AK47 and shot out two of his tires and put holes in his passenger door. And sure enough鈥攁s our six-year-old son Skyler quickly verified鈥攖here were bullet holes in the door. But maybe that was an anomaly. Let鈥檚 get a grip on the statistics; confront this amorphous fear. How many people have really been hijacked on the road? I asked around the school community again. No one knew. Knowing how easily fear can take hold without much actual grounding, the fact that there were no statistics and few personal stories was enough for me to decide that perhaps this fear was overblown.听

The claptrap Suzuki jeep we鈥檇 bought from a Pakistani used-car salesman was already in the garage for repairs. (By the end of the year it would spend more time in the shop than out.) In the meantime, we鈥檇 been given a loaner. I decided to go for it.

Early on a Saturday morning, Molly and I backed through our gate in our borrowed white sedan, passports and a reservation for a recommended guesthouse in hand. We buzzed along, windows rolled down to dispel the heat, the countryside flat and brown. No random police popped out by the side of the road to shake us down for money. I was feeling lucky. The land began to roll and an hour later we were at the hilltop border crossing, an unassuming, clapboard building. Inside, passport control was its usual confusing jumble of people pressing forward to get the required stamps, but we made it through. So far, things were going smoothly.

We began the descent into South Africa. The countryside was bucolic鈥攔olling hills with orange orchards, rock outcroppings, and trout streams鈥攊mmediately more lush than dry, hardscrabble Mozambique. But I was on the alert.

And then it happened. The steering wheel jerked. The rubber slapped. I swerved to the side of the road. We had a flat tire.

I jumped out, realizing I’d never checked to see if there was a spare and a jack. Within a minute a white pickup truck with two black men pulled over in front of us.

鈥淢olly, get out of the car!鈥� I shouted as I raced around to the back. I wanted her to have a chance to run.

I was screened by the raised trunk. Should I pick up the crowbar lying in front of me and brandish it?

And then the man appeared next to me.

“May we help you?” he asked.

Before I could answer, they were fishing out tools. In less than five minutes they had the tire changed. It turned out one was an English-speaking South African. They were returning from a visit to the home and family of the other, a Mozambican man, and were headed back to their jobs in a South African toilet paper factory. Before I could offer to pay them for their help, they鈥檇 got back into their truck, where they waited for us to take off, then followed for a spell to be sure we were all right.

So much for getting killed by the side of the road.

I felt chagrined at my susceptibility to prejudice; and relieved to be reminded of the real goodness of most people. Constant distrust is exhausting, but it’s so easy to fall prey to fear especially if the safety of one’s children could be at stake.

We deal with this every day. Should we let our children walk home from school alone? Should we let them go out at night with older kids? There’s always that possibility that that statistically insignificant, unlikely, but terrible thing could happen. Then how could we forgive ourselves?

I wonder about this a lot. On the other hand, most of those really terrible things (kidnapping by total strangers, paralysis, murder)听are听statistically insignificant, especially compared to the number of times we have personally experienced incredible generosity and compassion and aid from people we don’t even know, especially when traveling. So rather than shape our lives around the worst-case scenario, we try to take those leaps of faith and remind ourselves to trust in the basic kindness of our family of man. After all, which world would we rather have our kids believe in?

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It鈥檚 time for a real vacation in your own shack by the sea, where the sun is hot, the waves are perfect, and checking your Twitter feed isn鈥檛 an option. When it comes to pure, hedonistic escapism, it鈥檚 tough to beat these ten places, whether you鈥檙e looking to walk long white sand beaches where elephants swim nearby or dive with eagle rays and recover with a dinner of recently spearfished red snapper. Go now, before reason takes hold.

Azura Quilalea, Mozambique

Go wild next to the Indian Ocean

Best For: An on-water, multi-sport marathon.

In the middle of an underexplored marine sanctuary in the Indian Ocean, this 86-acre island is thick with baobab trees and is a hot zone for wildlife鈥攆rom Olive Ridley and Green Hawksbill Turtles to humpback whales and dolphins. There鈥檚 a -certified dive center on site. Sign up and swim with 375 species of fish, including schools of potato bass and hunting jacks, or stay above it all by sailing in a traditional dhow or rowing a kayak. Deep-sea fishing is also an option. The ways to commune with the water are endless.听 After a $2.5 million renovation, the nine-bungalow resort is state-of-the-art, but still low energy鈥攖he owners designed the coral stone villas to have two options: Eco or Luxe. With the flip of a switch, you decide how much power you want to burn. Our suggestion: Go Eco, which provides only basic lighting and a fan. The alternative: Air conditioning and a minibar. Eight villas are spread out over two white sand beaches that are plenty long enough for privacy.

When to Go: April through October is hot and dry.

How To Get There: Fly to the closest major airport, Pemba, Mozambique, then take a puddle jumper to the Quirimba Island, followed by a 20-minute boat ride to Quirea Private Island; from $595 per person, per night;

Barefoot at Havelock, Andaman Islands, India

Explore the best beach in Asia

Barefoot at Havelock bar

The bar at Barefoot at Havelock

Best For: Dive fanatics who think they鈥檝e seen it all.

OK, so you鈥檝e crossed every shark in the ocean off your diving life list, but have you ever swum with a ? The coral reefs surrounding Havelock Island teems with sea turtles, barracuda, tuna, stingrays, and, yes, even an occasional endangered dugong. The trouble will be gathering enough motivation to leave the comfort of legendary Beach No. 7, a 1.5-mile stretch of sand so pristine that once rated it the best in Asia. The 18 bungalows, with hardwood floors and palm-thatch roofs, are nicely spaced on seven acres鈥攅ach within spitting distance of the sand. Go austere and book one of the eight Nicobari villas, which have no television, Internet, or telephone. Fill your days with snorkeling, diving, jungle walks through 100-foot-tall maruma trees and wild orchids, expeditions to distant volcanic islands, and Ayurvedic treatments.

When to Go: December to May is the best time for scuba diving.

How to Get There:听 Fly to Port Blair from Calcutta, Chennai, or New Delhi, then take a two-hour ferry to Havelock Island. The resort is a 30-minute drive from the ferry; from $91 per person, per night for a Nicobari villa;

Vatulele, Fiji

Take your pick of dive, sailing, and fishing options

Best For: Honeymooners with cash flow.

A splurge to this 12-square-mile island just off the south coast of Fiji鈥檚 largest island, Viti Levu, will cost you. But it鈥檚 the spot to indulge every tropical fantasy there is, from diving underwater fortresses to dining on fresh lobster in candlelight on the sand. With at least 14 offered, you can aim to see everything from rainbows of coral to barracuda. You could also wile away the day sailing, kayaking, fishing, or swimming. Go ahead, just save some time for the villas, all 19 of which are just a stone’s throw from the perfect white sand. Keep it basic with a beach bure, a two-tiered palace with a king-sized bed, AC, a wine cooler, and twelve doors that open on to a private terrace facing the South Pacific. For the quietest experience, rent a villa farther down the beach, which offer a freshwater plunge pool and an outdoor shower shrouded in the jungle.

When to Go: April to early October

How to Get There:听 Fly to Nadi, Fiji from Los Angeles, then take a 25-minute flight to Vatulele. Price: Doubles from $751;

Che Shale, Malindi, Kenya

Kite surf when the wind blows. SUP when it鈥檚 not around.

Best For: Kitesurfers who dream about consistent 18 to 25 knot winds that blow all day, almost every day, 300 days a year.

At Che Shale, a chic cluster of seven bures that sits on a 3.5-mile long deserted beach, there is nothing to get in the way of a kite. The owner, Justin Aniere, is a third-generation Kenyan who 12 years ago. When the wind dies around November some of the best deep-sea fishing spots in the world are off Malindi and Watamu and the glassy bay out front is perfect for SUP lessons. Sleeping quarters are open and breezy thatch-roof bures with designer furniture, comfy daybeds, and open-air showers. Out back, for the budget-conscious, there are solar-powered, basic bandas with a double bed, a covered verandah with table and chairs. Not convinced. They are built on stilts, and only 30 steps from the beach. On the unlikely days when the kiting conditions aren鈥檛 right, walk the beach, hike the dunes, or explore the bustling city of Malindi, with its Swahili food and African markets, 30 minutes away.
Note: Be sure to check before you book.

When to Go: July to April

How to Get There: From Nairobi, fly to Malindi. Che Shale is a 30-minute drive from Malindi; Che Shale bures from $105 per person, per night; Kajama rooms from $46 per person per night;

Song Saa Private Island, Cambodia

Become one with nature

Best For: Eco-minded travelers who like to be first.

This brand-new, beautifully designed, luxury resort with 27 strategically placed villas is the first of its kind in Cambodia. Built on two islands known as 鈥淭he Sweethearts,鈥� which are connected by a footbridge, the place is so in tune with its surroundings that it established its own marine sanctuary, a no-take zone covering 247 acres and extending more than 656 feet out from the farthest edge of the coral reefs. The seven ocean view villas, each with their own private beach, are decked out with a daybed, sundeck, swimming pool, and, for those who want to wax poetic, a writing desk. Don鈥檛 waste your time inside. Circumnavigate the islands with a mask and snorkel, explore the archipelago in a kayak, or take a nighttime boat cruise to swim in the ethereal phenomenon known as bioluminescence.

When to go: February-May; November-December

How to Get There: Fly from Siem Riep to the city of Sihanoukville, which is only a 30-minute boat ride from Song Saa. Ocean-view villa from $1,415 per person, per night, all-inclusive;

Niyama, Maldives

Find urban chic in the middle of nowhere

Best for: Hipsters who want to take cocktail hour underwater.

Niyama ups the ante of resort decadence with 鈥淪ubsix鈥� the first-ever underwater club where djs spin world music and you overlook swimming creatures through glass walls while dancing. With a nightclub vibe and 87 ultra-modern villas, you won鈥檛 exactly be stranding yourself alone on a desert island here. But you will have plenty of escapist diversions like guided snorkeling tours to coral reefs teeming with fish, a private sail around the atoll on a traditional wooden sailing dhoni, a spa open 24 hours a day, and dreamy stretches of palm-lined sand beaches. Reserve a studio with a pool, where you can lounge on a deep, elevated couch that sways in the breeze and overlooks a pool lit by fiber optics, just a few steps to the edge of the ocean.听

When to Go: December to April

How to get there: Fly to Mal茅, the capital of the Maldives, on nonstop flights from a number of cities, then take a 40-minute seaplane flight right to the resort. $1,300 per person, per night;

Jashita, Tulum, Mexico

Escape the hustle and rest easy in the Caribbean

Best For: Quick, luxurious escapes from the East Coast.

Technically, you won鈥檛 have your own cabana at this new boutique eco-hotel just north of Tulum. But the top two suites are still worlds away, each with a giant palapa roof and private terrace where sunbeds present a sweeping view of the Solimon Bay. It鈥檚 all in the Venetian family: Enrico, the father, designed the chic space, his wife Monika, decorated it, and Enrico鈥檚 son, Tommaso, not only manages the hotel, he spearfishes dinner. Just a few steps off the protected beach, the Mesoamerican reef runs all the way to Honduras. Dive and snorkel with eagle rays, turtles, and tropical fish or help Enrico catch dinner by deep-sea fishing for marlin, sailfish, dorado, wahoo, or kingfish. Lounge by the pool, take a yoga class, sign up for a kitesurfing lesson, or venture inland to snorkel in cenotes and explore the Mayan ruins of Tulum.听

When to Go: Year-Round

How to Get There:听 Fly into Cancun from any major U.S. City, rent a car and drive 1.5 hours south on Mexico 307; Doubles from $350 per night, three-night minimum;

Punta Teonoste, Nicaragua

Surf鈥檚 up and nobody else is around

Best For: Serious surfers who have time to explore.

Forty-five minutes down a dirt road from the town of Tola, no one just happens upon Punta Teonoste, a beautiful cluster of palapas on the 鈥淧acific Riviera鈥� near the fishing village of El Astillero and Popoya, one of the best surf breaks in Nicaragua. Sixteen freestanding, two-story palapas with hammocks out front and a private outdoor shower in a tropical garden out back are nicely spaced around a massive thatched-roof open-air dining room where the French chef uses only the freshest local ingredients like shrimp and lobster harvested by local fishermen. The half-mile-long deserted beach out front is not only gorgeous; it鈥檚 also the perfect spot to take a two-hour lesson from the on-site instructors. Serious surfers, however, will want to expand their horizons and take advantage of the boat tour that prowls the coastline, hitting some of the best breaks in Nicaragua. For the non-surfers, Punta Teonoste employs two local men to run an on-site to protect and nurture the hundreds of turtles born on the beach. There鈥檚 also lazing around the pool in a chaise or hiking a mile up a well-marked trail for a gorgeous sunset view of the beach and beyond.

When to Go: November to April

How to Get There: Fly into Managua, rent a car, drive to Rivas, then follow the directions found ; five-night surf package including all meals, transportation to and from Managua, three days of two-hour surf-lessons, and a massage, $1,450 per person.

Sal Salis Ningaloo Reef

Go on safari, Aussie-Style

Best For: Going beyond the back of beyond.

This solar-powered Northwest Cape tented outpost that sits on the World Heritage , is as far away as it gets. The digs may be tents, but they aren鈥檛 lacking in the essential amenities: cozy king beds, plush towels, a compostable toilet, and, beyond the flap, a veranda with forever views of the Indian Ocean. But you鈥檙e not going to be inside much. The coral reef just a few strokes off the beach supports 500 species of fish, 250 species of coral, and 600 species of mollusk. This is one of the best places in the world to dive with whale sharks, manta rays, and Hawksbill, Green, and Loggerhead turtles. Less than two miles behind camp is Mandu Mandu Gorge, a geographic wonder with fossil limestone formations, red kangaroos, rock wallabies, and a 30,000-year history of Aboriginal use. As if that鈥檚 not enough, there are also deep-sea fishing charters, kayaking excursions, and an unpolluted sky to gaze toward every night.

When to Go: Year round, but April through June is ideal.

How to Get There: Sal Salis is 838 miles north of Perth. From Perth, fly to Exmouth (flights on Qantas Airlines offered Friday, Sunday, Wednesday). From Exmouth Sal Salis is a 47-mile drive. Arrange for transfers in advance; doubles from $787 per person, per night;

Bosque del Cabo Rainforest Lodge

Earn your sand

Best for: Jungle lovers.

From Tucan, a beautifully intricate thatch-roof cabana with a private outdoor shower, there are stunning views of the Pacific. It just takes a few steps to get to the beach. This lofted aerie with a deck out front, sits on precipitous, Cabo Matapalo on the Osa Peninsula, where the Pacific meets the Golfo Dulce. It鈥檚 500 feet above the ocean, but the waves crashing on the beach below are omnipresent, the hike to the sand through the dense jungle is awe-inspiring, and the palm-backed Pacific beach that stretches for miles is worth the walk. That鈥檚 only the Pacific side. Backwash Beach and Pan Dulce Beach on the Golfo Dulce side, a 45-minute walk away, are idyllic for swimming. The surf breaks of Cabo Matapalo are some of the least visited in Costa Rica and the deep-sea fishing for marlin, sailfish, tuna, and dorado is the stuff of trophies. But Bosque del Cabo, with its 20 cabinas and casas scattered throughout the 750-plus acre property, is primarily a nature lodge. A labor of love started by expat Americans Phil and Kim Spier in 1990, the lodge sits among manicured gardens and every day a deluge of wildlife, from scarlet macaws to agoutis to pumas, visit. Over the past 20 years the Spiers have created a community in paradise, supporting everything from the to a bilingual school in nearby Puerto Jiminez to , a non-profit conservation group committed to preserving the region鈥檚 unbelievable biodiversity.

When to Go: Year-Round

How to Get There:听 From San Jose, Puerto Jimenez is an eight-hour drive or a 50-minute flight. From Puerto Jiminez it鈥檚 an hour drive over a dirt road. Bosque del Cabo can help arrange in-country transportation; deluxe cabinas from $190 per person, per night;

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ON A SUN-BROILED morning in central Mozambique, we headed 19 miles into the bush, our destination a shrinking stretch of soupy pool, one of the last remaining catchments in the withered river, where the hippos had hunkered down during the wasting days of a dry season that refused to end. Afterwards we would be choppering to other sites聴remote wonders, unique to the area聴although my attention had drifted when the itinerary was explained. The limestone gorge, perhaps, where Africa’s Great Rift Valley arrived at its southern terminus? The lacy cascade of waterfalls off the westward escarpment? The cathedral-size grottoes housing countless hordes of whispering bats? Not that it mattered聴bad luck, you could say, since we would never get farther than the hippos.

Greg Carr

Greg Carr in his hometown of Idaho Falls

Mozambique

Because of the heat, and I guess for the breezy fun of it, Segran, the young pilot up from South Africa, unhinged the front doors off the R44, a Robinson-manufactured helicopter aviators call a “little bird,” and we strapped in, the four of us, and ascended skyward from the small grass airstrip at Chitengo, the headquarters of Gorongosa National Park, considered among Africa’s premier game preserves until it was destroyed by decades of unimaginably brutal war and savage lawlessness, its infrastructure blasted to rubble, its bountiful population of animals slaughtered, eaten, reduced to gnawed bones and memory.

In the copilot seat, with the panoramic sweep of the continent expanding out my open door聴loaves of mountains rising like a time-lapse video of Creation Day, the veldt ironed out into a haze of plains spread east toward the Indian Ocean聴I adjusted the mike on my headset and joined the conversational squawk behind me: the park’s American co-director, Greg Carr, and his Portuguese director of communications, Vasco Galante, stuffed into the rear seats, already sweaty between doors that could not be removed, although they were dressed much more sensibly than me for the tropics, or what would have been sensible if the word malarial were not so lethally affixed to Mozambique’s ecology.

Carr and Galante, it was becoming clear, were fearless, a matching set of muzungos聴white guys聴with a true affinity for the bush. Like Carr, the Boston philanthropist who’s committed his time and considerable energy and $40 million of his foundation’s money to the restoration of Gorongosa, Galante too was a successful business entrepreneur, a former pro basketball player who’d slammed the brakes on the life he was living, thrown away his map of old assumptions, made a U-turn, and gone to Africa.

Many of their sentences began, “During the rainy season,” and I would be directed toward something that was not as it should be this deep into December聴the evaporated Lake Urema, shrunk from 77 square miles to four; a wilting Gorongosa massif and its deplenished watershed; the cracked and burning floodplains of the savanna. What now expressed itself as terra firma would require boating skills during the approaching summer, when the park’s bottomlands swelled with watery overabundance. Awed and exhilarated, I leaned out into the rush of air, watching the scatter of antelope below.

At Carr’s instruction, Segran dipped the helicopter down into the high-banked channel of the Urema River and we roared along its downstream course at treetop level, my companions remarking upon the bed’s sorry condition聴black patches of dampness embroidered with a fringe of hoofprints, scum puddles churned by expiring catfish, and weed-clogged runs where the absent flow had encouraged a vibrant bloom of flora, the greenest thing in sight.

A year earlier, when 60 Minutes came to Mozambique to produce a feature on the 49-year-old Carr and his turnaround of Gorongosa聴only three years into its 20-plus-year course and already the hottest conservation story in Africa聴they had filmed the river from the air as scores of Nile crocodiles flipped one after another off the banks into its robust current. Maybe there were some crocs down there now, nestled in the mucky overgrowth, but we couldn’t see them. Reedbuck and the occasional impala bolted across the golden sand into the cover of the jungle, but it was Africa’s flamboyant birds that owned the desiccated river. Egyptian geese, grotesque marabou storks showcasing the ass-bald head and plucked neck of carrion eaters, graceful herons and lanky crowned cranes, majestic fish eagles. Then we were hovering over the upstream edge of the pool, the squiggle of crocodiles visible in the khaki-colored water, and Carr pointed to a grassy bar about a thousand feet back where he wanted to put down.

ON THE GROUND, Segran announced that he would stay with the aircraft and keep the engine running, and we climbed out with the rotors thumping over our heads and began walking through the high grass at the base of a steep bank. This was my first time in Africa, but even before Galante’s warning I realized we were in elephant country, their rampant footprints postholed shin deep in the hardening cake of fertile soil, an ankle-twisting hazard. I’d also registered Galante’s sudden intensity of manner, the heightened alertness, his head rotating as he scrutinized our surroundings. “OK,” he said, trying to sound lighthearted, “this is a place where elephants come. If you see an elephant coming from the north, you go south. Turn and go.”

Although more people are killed by hippos than any other wild animal in Africa, the elephants聴the remaining elephants聴of Gorongosa are unforgiving. For generations now they have been engaged in a kill-or-be-killed war with humans, the once prolific herd decimated by rebel soldiers harvesting ivory to finance their insurgency or just gunning down the giants for the wicked hell of it. By the end of Mozambique’s civil war, in 1992, only 108 of an elephant population 20 times larger were left alive, and though their numbers had since grown to 300, they were “skittish and aggressive,” according to cinematographer Bob Poole, who’d been filming in the park on and off for a year for National Geographic Television. If you were on foot, as we were, walking into an elephant’s sight or range of smell could be justifiably categorized as suicidal.

But as we approached the pool, crocodiles underfoot in the soggy weeds or a land-foraging hippo spooked by the sudden appearance of humans between it and the water were more immediate concerns. Carr and Galante traversed the bankside, climbing higher for a better vantage and, I suspected, to be better positioned in case of a charge.

In the wild, the pittance of what’s left of it, the ancient primal verities still apply. (Extreme) caution and (mild) anxiety translate as ingrained virtues, rational responses to the perilous unknown, yet once Carr and Galante trained their binoculars on the water, I could feel the tension in the air undergo a euphoric collapse. Hippos! Exactly where they should be, according to their birthright, at peace in their own habitat after 3,000 of their kin were wiped out during the seemingly endless war.

As my companions dialed the aquatic spectacle into focus, I began to share the joy, unpuzzling the strange visual logic, a rippling logjam of glistening tubs of chocolate flesh, googly-eyed and agitated, clustering down below in the muddy water, choreographed by paranoid shifts and rearrangements that never really changed the tight composition of the jam until a bull slide-paddled forward to calculate the threat of our presence. Saucer-size nostrils flared and exhaled spray, a wet snort like the release of hydraulic brakes in the fragrant stillness, now absent the distant background thrum of rotor blades.

The pilot, for reasons known only to him, had shut down the engine. Occupied by the marvel of the half-submerged pod, we simply noticed an improvement in the depth of the silence around us and made no mention of it. There we stood, spellbound and revering, allowed by the moment to believe in an Edenic world so harmoniously, benevolently perfect one forgets to remember that the most readily available dish on the menu might very well be you.

The glory of the hippopotamus seems shaped by hallucinogenic juxtapositions聴the utility of its rounded amphibious design packaged in the exaggerated ugliness seen elsewhere only in cartoons; its blob-like massiveness adorned with undersize squirrel ears and stubby legs akin to a wiener dog’s; bullfrog eyes that are nevertheless beady; pinkish, peg-toothed jaws like a steam shovel’s attached to the compressed porcine features of its face. We were enthralled, flies on the wall of hippo heaven. Then we withdrew as gently as shadows, back to the helicopter, which maybe had a problem. But, dreamy and high with hippo love, we didn’t much care.

We climbed into the chopper, Segran muttered something about weak batteries, we climbed out. “I don’t think I’d let my mom ride in this helicopter,” said Carr. He and I walked upriver and sat cross-legged across from baboons collecting on the far bank, remarking on what we could figure out about the tribe’s hierarchy and habits, occasionally extrapolating our insights into opinions about the primates half a world away on Wall Street, the two of us content and carefree.

Then Galante walked down the bank to tell us what we already suspected: The helicopter, with a dead starter, wasn’t going to get us out of here.

HAD I COME TO GORONGOSA in the sixties, I would have experienced “the jewel of southern Africa,” a Rhode Island聳size safari expanse of 54 distinct ecosystems聴from the park’s predominant savanna to miombo forests, thickets, montane woodlands, and dry jungle聴with Lake Urema expanding and contracting at its center and 6,112-foot Mount Gorongosa guarding its northwestern flank, high enough to create its own weather system. Protected as a private hunting reserve since 1920 and designated a national park in 1960, Gorongosa was romantically known to hunters, photographers, and wildlife tourists as the place where Noah must have unloaded the ark. What other conclusion was there? The 1,540-square-mile park once hosted more predators than South Africa’s 7,523-square-mile Kruger National Park, denser herds of elephants and buffalo than the Serengeti, and thousands upon thousands of plains animals.

All of that, gone. In the three decades of war that began with Mozambique’s struggle for independence from Portugal in the sixties, the park was transformed from Eden to wasteland. The lions and hippos were extinguished; the elephants reduced from 2,200 to 108; 3,000 zebras nearly gone; 2,000 impala gone; rhinos, gone; buffalo, gone; a herd of 5,500 wildebeest reduced to zero; 129 waterbuck left from a herd of 3,500; the ubiquitous warthogs nowhere in sight. Cheetahs, wild dogs, hyenas, and jackals, apparently exterminated. Leopards, no one could say.

But to arrive in December 2008 was to see a place being reborn. Since 2005, when the nonprofit Carr Foundation first started working in Gorongosa, Carr and his biologists and consultants had rebuilt the park’s headquarters at Chitengo, constructing the open-air restaurant in soaring rondavel style and putting up new air-conditioned cabanas with hot showers. They’d trained local guides to take tourists on photo safaris and up Mount Gorongosa, and begun offering incentives to help the park’s 15,000 villagers, along with some 250,000 more living in the surrounding buffer zone, move from a livelihood of clear-cutting and poaching to one of planting trees and protecting wildlife. In 2006, park workers fenced off a 23-square-mile sanctuary and began reintroducing animals, brought in from other reserves around southern Africa. By the end of 2007, the numbers were modest but rising: 4,930 waterbuck, 3,830 warthogs, 580 impala, 200 blue wildebeest, 160 hippos, 300 elephants, 35 lions, and 1,300 of the world’s largest crocs. Similar efforts are happening elsewhere. “Public-private” and “multinational cooperation” are the buzzwords in conservation management today, and Gorongosa’s sister parks聴Limpopo, Banhine, and Zinave聴are getting outside help. But rarely has a country basically handed the job to a private citizen. In June 2008, Mozambique and Carr made their four-year relationship official, signing a $40 million agreement for the Carr Foundation to restore the park聴and then give it back, in 20 years.

How that marriage came about is one of the unlikeliest stories in Africa, and it begins with the two men who will administrate the park’s future together: Greg Carr and Lieutenant Colonel Bernardo Beca Jofrisse. It seems implausible that some lives might ever intersect, separated by every divide destiny can thrust between two people, yet should their story lines somehow twist together, they form a single braid of near mystical affirmation of unlimited possibility. Say, for example, an American tycoon and an African warrior. One a former Marxist-Leninist freedom fighter, the other a capitalist swashbuckler who made his fortune in information technology.

A genuine introduction to Jofrisse’s country begins with the unsettling sight of an AK-47 assault rifle emblazoned on its flag. And the story of modern Mozambique聴its tyrannies and bloody struggles, its transformation from the planet’s biggest nightmare into one of the very few nations in sub-Saharan Africa where hope and stability are not delusions聴can be found in the proud generation of woefully scarred and stoically victorious people like Jofrisse, a gentle, statuesque man whose frozen stare into the whirlwind of the past is regularly broken by embracing smiles.

In 1968, at 19, Jofrisse began his long walk north, across the length of Mozambique to the border with Tanzania, to join the luta rmada聴the armed struggle for independence from Portugal, which had inflicted a 500-year-long battering of the mainland’s indigenous populations since 1498, the year Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and landed at Ilha de Mo莽ambique. The white man’s ravenous enterprise had many appetites聴in the 17th century, gold; in the 18th, ivory; in the 19th, slaves聴and in the 1880s, during the European powers’ Scramble for Africa, Portugal established formal control over four colonies聴Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde聴each of which would erupt in rebellion 70 years later.

The battle here was waged by the Mozambican Liberation Front聴Frelimo聴from its headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. When Jofrisse enlisted in the revolutionary army, he could scarcely have imagined that more than 20 years later he would be fighting on, his country still a raging war zone, his enemies his own misguided people.

In Tanzania, the literate Jofrisse excelled as a student of military basics, which earned him a trip to the Soviet Union for more advanced training and an indoctrination into the tenets of Communism. Returning to Africa, he was deployed back into the fray and, in 1972, ordered to cross the Zambezi River; his unit battled their way south into the province of Sofala, the home of Gorongosa National Park, which was forced to close in 1973, engulfed in combat and the scorched-earth campaign of the colonial military.

By 1974, Portugal’s trifecta of wars in Africa had proven to be a losing ticket, and a new government in Lisbon quickly agreed to hand over Mozambique to Frelimo. The independent Republic of Mozambique was proclaimed the following year. The Portuguese聴250,000 of them聴pulled out in an orgy of sabotage and vandalism, leaving behind an infant nation with too little infrastructure and too many guns.

Out of this maelstrom of “peace,” another monster was born: the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo), a disorganized but homicidal insurgency assembled by its sponsors聴first white-ruled Rhodesia and then apartheid South Africa聴to ensure that black majority rule in Africa was synonymous with disaster. Renamo’s objective was to sow havoc, wreck everything, and paralyze the country, and the civil war that ignited in 1976 between Renamo and Frelimo would bathe Mozambique in blood for the next 16 years. Gorongosa itself became a shooting gallery, a shifting headquarters for both armies, the area swarmed by destitute refugees, the footpaths rigged with land mines, the animals serving as a type of ATM machine to fund and supply the combatants.

In 1992, Frelimo disavowed its Marxist ideology and signed a peace agreement with Renamo, forming the current multiparty democratic government. Mozambique was alive again, though not by any measure discharged from the intensive-care ward of the underdeveloped world. But for the first time in memory the country seemed to be sitting up and smiling. Its near-death experience had imbued Mozambicans with a laid-back joie de vivre balanced by a sustaining sense of civility, the correct antidote to fratricidal madness.

Like the soldiers on both sides, Jofrisse had lost scores of friends in a conflict that had left more than a million Mozambicans dead and millions more wounded or maimed. He retired from the army, pursued an engineering degree, and dedicated himself to the reconstruction of what had been lost. The war had left him with an unrequited love聴a passion for nature and the forests of central Mozambique, the beauty of the thousand-year-old baobabs, the surreal haunted groves of yellow fever trees in the provinces where he’d fought as a young warrior. Wildlife conservation was back聴Gorongosa itself had reopened for good in 1995, with a new staff of 50 former soldiers and aid from the African Development Bank, the European Union, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature聴and in 2007 Jofrisse’s friends in the Frelimo government sent him to study natural-resource protection at the Southern African Wildlife College, across the South African border.

A year later, Beca Jofrisse would become the ministry of tourism’s representative and oversee Gorongosa’s radical transformation, he and Greg Carr now partners in a pas de deux between a nation and an outsider, quite unlike any heretofore performed in the continent’s jungles.

WE WERE IN NO-MAN’S-LAND, the great bloodthirsty Darwinian free-for-all, probably 20 klicks beyond the Chitengo compound’s cell-phone range. The VHF radio on the little helicopter was of no use, and we had to assume that our chances of being rescued before tomorrow were zero.

There was a boyish brightness in Carr’s eyes when he suggested we go for the full unadulterated experience, seize the rare opportunity to traipse (illicitly) in the park, cross the river and hump all day through the forge-hot primordial jungle into the happy zone of cell-phone reception, and text-message the cavalry.

“So what do you guys think?” Carr asked as we stood on the wrong bank of the croc-infested river. “Wanna walk?” Galante and I looked at one another and shrugged. We were not bound to see much indecisiveness from Carr, a man whose permanent optimism is exceeded only by his irrepressible, well-aimed, and sometimes kooky enthusiasm. Anything could happen tramping around in the jungle, but we faced one certainty: It was not yet noon and we had to be safely back to civilization by sundown, the predatorial commencement of people-eating time.

When I’d arrived at Gorongosa the night before, Carr had told me, “I was hoping to show you a lion tonight”聴the first thing he ever said to me, yet I had arrived too late to enter the locked preserve. The lion Carr had in mind, however, had roared throughout the evening, and this morning we’d driven out looking for it but found only vultures convened at the skeleton of its kill. Less than 24 hours later, Carr’s desire to hook me up with a lion was quickly losing all of its appeal.

I asked Carr and Galante if either one of them had the foresight to bring along a sidearm聴you know, just in case. Carr said no, and Galante said, “Yes, this is my pistol,” showing me the miniature penknife he carried in his pocket. I was the only one with any gear, a shoulder bag crammed with nothing useful except our water bottles, and to lighten the load I removed a book, William Finnegan’s A Complicated War, a chronicle of Mozambique’s years of civil strife, and tried to give it to Segran, who had chosen to remain behind, but the pilot did not want it. “What else have you got to do?” I said, frowning. The book was staying.

For several miles, we hiked upstream along a game trail flattened through the grass, the riverbed still glazed with stagnant water beneath a lush carpet of weeds聴an ideal habitat for lurking crocodiles, as advertised by the warthog carcass we hurried past, its hind颅quarters shorn off as it had tried to flee. Farther on, the channel’s vegetation began to get mangy, exposing islands of muddy skin, their crusty appearance more to our liking as we walked ahead, the bed drying out until Carr had convinced himself conditions were favorable for a clean and effortless crossing. “Let’s try it,” he said, and I watched in horror as he and Galante took six steps out into what I assumed was quicksand, their legs disappearing in a steady downward suck.

I responded in the manner most typical of 21st-century Americans, grabbing my camera to record the flailing of their last astonished moments.

CARR’S PREDICAMENT WAS in some ways reminiscent of the scene that had first lured him to Mozambique.

High in a tree in Africa a desperate woman clutches a baby, her feet submerged in floodwaters. For Carr, like most people watching CNN’s footage of the devastation caused when Cyclone Eline slammed into Mozambique in 2000, this wretched image blipped the African nation onto the screen of their awareness, however momentarily. Even then, like Carr, many of those viewers would be hard-pressed to articulate a single fact about the country beyond a general announcement of its condition: hell on earth.

Two years later, in New York City, a friend introduced Carr to Mozambique’s ambassador to the United Nations, a congenial diplomat who asked, “Why don’t you think about helping us out?” It was a question Carr had come to expect. What else would you ask a philanthropist sitting atop a stack of money? In this case it was $200 million, an amount that for Carr served as the answer to the question “How much wealth is finally enough?”

By the mid-eighties, at age 27, Carr had already morphed into an 眉ber-capitalist. A history major at Utah State, he’d left his hometown, Idaho Falls, exchanging the mountains of the West for the manicured quads of Cambridge and enrolling in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he began an intensive study of the breakup of AT&T’s monopoly on telecommunications, smelling opportunity in its divestitures.

Carr convinced a friend, Scott Jones, a 25-year-old MIT scientist, to go into business with him, maxing out their credit cards for startup funds. In 1986, their new company, Boston Technology, started selling voice-mail services to the emerging Baby Bells. Four years later, Boston Tech was the nation’s top voice-mail provider, and by the mid-nineties Carr was chair of both that company and Prodigy, an Internet-service pioneer. In 1998, Carr聴by then a very rich man with, he says, “a pretty bad case of ADD”聴walked away from it all to create the Carr Foundation to focus on three philanthropic areas: human rights, the arts, and conservation.

Visionaries resist typecasting, but with a pince-nez and Rough Rider garb, Carr could pass, in stoutness of physique as well as spirit, for a young Teddy Roosevelt. To explain how he thinks or to illuminate his moral universe, he quotes Buddhist philosophers, Nelson Mandela, and David Foster Wallace, cites the authors he considers seminal to his swooning love of nature聴Darwin, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. Were Carr a more conventional businessman, when he took a powder from his fortune making at the age of 38, the temptation to describe his action as a midlife crisis would have been irresistible, yet for him it was a long-awaited chance to shift gears.

Behind the change was a lifelong conviction that the span of a career should contain a yin-yang of profit and nonprofit, an exuberance for making money married to a passion for giving it away. Passively giving back, just checking the do-gooder box, wasn’t the point. The point was unleashing happiness, animating your value system with injections of old-fashioned fun, which is precisely what he thinks rich guys without a sense of largesse are missing out on. Darting an elephant to replace the batteries in its radio collar ranks high on Carr’s list of neat things to do after breakfast.

On a deeper level, though, he saw capitalism without a conscience as a socioeconomic steroid, proving itself no more useful to humanity and its huddled masses than other abused ideologies. Rise alone, fall together. The selfish detachment of cowboy capitalism from the welfare of a community, he believed, created mayhem, a danger not only to itself but to the planet, plundering the resources of an ecology with the same rapacity as soldiers pillaging a national park.

Ideally, making a boatload of money allowed you to cut to the front of the line as an agent of meaningful change, and by 2002 Carr was inundated with projects: turning the former headquarters of the Aryan Nations, in Hayden Lake, Idaho, into a peace park; donating $18 million to establish Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy; starting a radio station in Afghanistan. He was conducting a marching band of altruism, on fire with intellectual stimulation yet yearning for something with “a little vision to it, some mystery, some romance, some difficult problems to solve,” something to satisfy his lust for immersion.

Intrigued by the Mozambican ambassador’s invitation, Carr began to research conservation projects in the country, visiting for the first time in 2002. Two years later, he climbed aboard a helicopter with government officials to tour six potential sites. The second was Gorongosa, the park in shambles, long forgotten as a destination, a lost cause. Nothing there anymore worth bothering with, Carr heard often, a sentiment that collided with his intolerance for cynicism. But when he first set foot in the park, “it was聴boom聴let’s go!” Returning home to pace around the house and think about it would have been antithetical to his tally-ho style.

What Carr saw at Gorongosa, with a historian’s perspective, was Yellowstone, which he’d grown up near, in eastern Idaho. “When Yellowstone was made a national park, in 1872,” says Carr, “the animals had been extirpated. It wasn’t this pristine thing and the government said, ‘Oh, we better protect it.’ No, no, no. It had been hunted out. The bison, the elk, the bears were gone or mostly gone. The point of Yellowstone park was to recover it, and a hundred years later it’s back. I look at Gorongosa that way. This was the first national park in the Portuguese-speaking world. Both parks are the flagships of their respective nations. Both of them have big charismatic fauna, including carnivores. Both are dangerous places.”

The first contract he signed with Mozambique, a 2004 memorandum of understanding, essentially stated, says Carr, “Look, this is one day at a time, toss me out whenever you want, and let’s just get to know each other.” He wasn’t buying Gorongosa or leasing it or taking it over as a concession but, instead, agreeing to manage the park on a provisional basis. It was by any measure an unusual arrangement聴an auspicious foreigner assuming control of an iconic sovereign asset聴and Carr hoped it would provide a template for saving stressed-out national parks throughout the developing world.

Gorongosa’s business manager, Joao Viseu, calls Carr’s approach “the new philanthropy聴not just giving but doing,” a paradigm splitting the difference between two more-recognizable models. One is the Paul Farmers or Greg Mortensons of the world, who start with nothing but a calling (providing health care to Haitians, educating Muslim girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan) and gradually accumulate resources because people believe in them. The other, says Viseu, is “the rich guy who has his billion dollars and then says, ‘There you go.’ “

At age 40, Carr rode the elevator to the ground floor, the place where everything looked and felt different聴where he looked and felt different. “I didn’t sit in Washington, D.C., and mail checks,” he says. “I came here and said, ‘I’m going to be here for 20 years, and I’m going to wear these silly cutoff shorts.’ To make things work in rural Africa, you’ve got to be hands-on, and you run a real risk of making things worse if you intervene from a distance.”

ONE NIGHT AT DINNER聴grilled prawns, gin-and-tonics聴I’d listened as Carr and Jofrisse, Gorongosa’s two lordly silverbacks, got to know each other better. In practice, the work will mostly be Carr’s: Jofrisse will remain 750 miles away in the capital, Maputo, work with Carr to perform quarterly reviews of park operations, and basically serve as the government’s representative. But partners they would be, and currently they were discussing an issue of vital importance: the forthcoming annual soccer game between management and staff. Carr suggested that, as co-administrators, he and Jofrisse should be the goalkeepers. Or, given their age, together they’d make one goalkeeper.

“Maybe,” said Jofrisse. “I’m not good.”

“Or maybe we should be somewhere else,” said Carr, who’d hardly ever played soccer, and the two of them leaned into each other like brothers, laughing.

“But we can,” insisted Jofrisse.

“Sim, podemos,” Carr agreed. Yes, we can. The game, with Carr and Jofrisse on the field against the youthful staff, would end in a crowd-cheering tie.

From where we sat in Chitengo’s new restaurant, Chikalango, gazing out into the beast-filled wilds just a minute’s walk away, I found it difficult to imagine the devastation Carr had encountered three and a half years earlier. When he first drove in with his multidisciplinary team (scientists, engineers, economic advisers, tourism developers), there was barely running water, and only a small generator for electricity. The few walls left standing in the rubble of what had been the park’s post office, banquet hall, shop, and first-aid clinic were riddled with bullet holes; bomb casings were lying around. Carr hired a labor force from local communities, former Frelimo soldiers and Renamo rebels who required occasional lectures on the rewards of playing nice. Slowly, Chitengo’s infrastructure聴reception center, mechanic shop, two new swimming pools聴began to rise from the ashes, its reincarnation adorned with Internet satellite dishes.

Until he moved into a spacious campaign tent, Carr slept in the back of a pickup truck, high enough off the ground to keep safe from snakes and (he hoped) lions, a stargazer’s preference that landed him in the hospital, semi-comatose with the first of three bouts of malaria.

An intrepid hiker back home in Idaho, he quickly became an obsessive explorer of the park, gleefully “discovering” thermal springs, waterfalls, caves, species. The animals were not entirely gone, as he’d been led to believe, but hiding, still harried by rampant poaching. A revitalized team of rangers聴their numbers are now up to 135, many of them former poachers themselves聴began to patrol Goron颅gosa, its dry season plagued by wildfires set by illegal hunters to drive game into snares. In 2006, with the completion of the new fenced sanctuary, the park reintroduced its first large number of grazers聴54 buffalo brought in from Kruger聴to the overgrown grasslands and began to supplement the antelope populations with blue wildebeest that hadn’t been seen in years. In 2008, more hippos and elephants were trucked in from South Africa, but the zebras remained unavailable, trapped behind the Zimbabwe border by political turmoil.

Tourists trickled back, 30 or so camping out the first year, fewer than 1,000 in 2005, 8,000 (a mix of tourists and other visitors) in 2008聴compared with 20,000 in Gorongosa’s golden years, in the sixties and early seventies, when big-game hunters swam in Chitengo’s two swimming pools and the restaurant often served 400 meals a day. From day one, Carr understood that the fate of Gorongosa depended on ecotourism, a tricky proposition for an unfamiliar destination so distant from the world’s centers of affluence. Still, in ten years, Carr’s team believes it will be able to easily accommodate 100,000 tourists a year聴an egalitarian mix of self-drive campers and luxury-addicted adventuristas聴and even at four times that capacity Gorongosa would still maintain the same “tourism density level” as the famous Kruger without damaging the character of its wilderness.

Yet before more tourists can be seduced back to Gorongosa, the project’s near- and long-term success depends on its ability to cultivate the support of the 250,000 villagers living in the buffer zone聴a 1,900-square-mile Sustainable Development Zone聴surrounding the park. The overwhelming majority are subsistence farmers, living in a sprawl of mud-and-thatch villages and scattered homesteads, vulnerable to disease and famine, too poor even to generate garbage, which explains the remarkable litter-free cleanliness of the countryside’s roads and footpaths.

Humans and the environment invariably compete with each other, yet without synergy between the two, Carr believes, both are doomed. The Gorongosa project lies at the center of a controversy in conservation science, positioned between a movement called Back to the Barriers聴basically, turning the resource into an off-limits fortress聴and a more porous, community-based management approach. Barricading Gorongosa from its swaddle of communities, Carr told me, was both infeasible and perhaps morally arrogant, an artificial separation between integrated eco颅systems and social patterns that would have minimal effect on the three practices that most endanger the park: slash-and-burn agriculture in the watershed, charcoal production, and hunting. The key to all this, of course, was to galvanize everyone with a financial stake in conservation.

One day, we waded hip deep across the Pungue River to visit Vinho, the community closest to park headquarters. As we scrambled out of the flow, I mentioned that Gorongosa’s head safari guide, Adolfo Macadona, had told me that a week earlier a villager had been eaten by a crocodile while fishing at this same spot on the bank. “I think about it as getting hit by a car in Harvard Square,” Carr said. “It happens.” Drying off as we toured Carr’s work in Vinho聴a brick-and-mortar school with a WiFi computer lab, a clinic and nurses’ residence, a bore well drawing potable water聴Carr told me he had promised to improve or construct dozens of schools and additional health clinics throughout the district. Gorongosa already employs 500 newly trained locals, and an additional 5,000 people benefit from those paychecks.

When Carr reached out to the villages dotted across the Gorongosa massif, many locals had rarely seen a muzungo, and certainly not one bearing swag聴cloth, wine, tobacco聴to appease the resident spirits. Near Nhatsoco, a settlement on the mountain where people were clear-cutting for charcoal, Carr was rebuffed by the area’s curandeiro (spiritual leader, witch doctor聴take your pick) when his team arrived in a flurry of bad juju: Their helicopter was a sinister color, a village chief wore inappropriate clothes, and an unhappy ancestor聴a snake聴chose to make an appearance. Carr apologized but persisted, eventually gaining the priest’s blessing. By 2006, locals were being paid to guide tourists up the sacred peak, build tree nurseries, and replant hardwoods across the slopes.

Everywhere Carr goes in the district these days, he’s treated like a rock star distributing goodwill and golden eggs. In return he asks the villagers to stop setting fires in the park, give up poaching, quit hacking down trees. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the bad habits carry on, though a shift in attitudes is palpable. Carr, with no illusions, says, “It starts somewhere”聴a more felicitous life, a less destructive way of doing things聴but by the time he hands Gorongosa back to the Mozambican government, no one doubts that its human and ecological landscapes will have undergone a mind-boggling transformation. The project’s staff, 98.5 percent Mozambican, already light up with the feeling that that future, with its attendant sense of triumph in their remaking of a war-torn country, has pulled into the station.

IT WASN’T QUICKSAND after all but a bog of liquefied silt. Carr and Galante bottomed out crotch deep and eventually extracted themselves from the goop, and we continued our march upriver, though in a matter of minutes Carr, undaunted, had plunged into another bog. This time as he struggled free he began to notice that wherever a plant with tiny yellow flowers grew, the bed would support his weight, and farther on we came to a place where the flowering zigzagged across the channel. Heedless to my admonitions, Carr race-walked toward the far shore as if he were trying to beat oncoming traffic. Perhaps he worried about crocodiles hidden in the weeds, though I had begun to learn that Carr’s momentum was an indomitable force, at times imprudent, and uninhibited by ambivalence. Certain now that what we were doing was a variation of crazy, I looked across the river at the opposite bank, the feral tangle of thicket, vine, and scrub palmetto roasting in the feeble shade of blanched trees and spiked ilala palms, and resigned myself to the crossing.

We scrambled up a natural drainage chute carved into the bank, found the seldom-used safari track we’d hoped was there, and followed it back downstream for two miles, a stretch where several days later Galante and I would find elephants coming up off the river and a hippo cow and calf napping in the bush not 30 feet away. Then the track turned away from the river into the windless, stifling heart of the jungle, and we were soon inhaling intense fumes, the unforgettable leathery piss odor of wild Africa.

For the first half-mile, the trees were stripped, toppled over, the smashed aftermath of leaf-eating pachyderms passing through like a tornado, and we became instant students of their mounded dung, studying the color and relative dryness to determine the herd’s proximity. “Just keep talking,” Carr said hopefully, and whenever our conversation flagged I would loudly announce to the jungle that we were, in fact, still talking.

We walked with relentless determination. With the sun overhead, there was little shade on the track, the sauna-like ferocity of the heat as threatening as the thought of lunging carnivores or slithering black mambas, and after an hour it was evident that we lacked sufficient water to stay hydrated. Magically, my shoulder bag filled with rocks, and we began to share the punishment of lugging it. Sweating profusely in jeans and leather boots, I envied my companions’ bwana shorts and minimalist footwear聴Jesus sandals for Galante, preppy sockless boat shoes for Carr, the current muzungo styles for a jaunt through the goddamn jungle.

The second hour, Galante and I began to drag our feet ever so slightly, the monotonous slog of the trek contradicting its urgency. Carr, on the other hand, was having a terrific time, supernaturally energized to be shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere, an opportunity flush with the thrill of rule-breaking, and by the third hour, as my need for two-minute breaks became more frequent, he would shuffle restlessly, unable to stand still as Galante and I squatted in the shade, parched and mindless. Our slowdown finally summoned Carr’s inner (antsy) child, and he suggested we stay put while he went on alone searching for the elusive cell-phone signal. No way, Galante and I protested. Our pride would not allow it, and we stuck together for another mile or so until, on the verge of heatstroke, it became painfully obvious that our pride wasn’t quite the virtue we had imagined.

We shook hands, wished Carr godspeed, and watched his blithe disappearance around a bend in the track, wondering which body parts he might be missing if we ever saw him again. The late-afternoon sun had begun to splinter into golden beams, planting shadows in the jungle. Unable to depend on the success of Carr’s mission, we began walking again, our pace marginally faster than zombies. After a ways, Galante snatched up a long stick. “What’s that for?” I asked a bit dubiously.

“Just in case,” he said. “For animals.” Minutes passed in silence and I kept thinking I should pocket one of the occasional rocks I saw in the track.

“Vasco,” I said, “what kind of animals are you going to hit with that stick?”

“You never know,” he said, and we both laughed at this absurdity. He told a safari joke that ends with a hapless fellow preventing an attack by throwing shit at a lion, which he scoops out of the deposit in his own pants.

BY FOUR O’CLOCK, we arrived at a landmark that Galante, for the past hour, had expected to see any minute now: an old concrete bridge spanning a dry wash. “This is it,” he said, removing his shirt and collapsing flat on his back. I pulled off my boots and socks, rolled up my pants, unbuttoned my shirt, and lay down as well, dazed and blistered and generally indifferent to what might happen next. We had walked ten miles from the near side of the river, plus another three or four trying to find a crossing. It was unlikely that Carr would be in phone range yet, four miles farther on, and so we were puzzled when we heard a search plane overhead, flying out toward the hippo pool, unaware that our failure to return had set off an alarm in Jofrisse that had now reached the highest levels of the federal government, or that a large herd of elephants was nosing around the disabled helicopter while Segran, engrossed in Finnegan’s book, read the first eight chapters.

Barking signaled the approach of baboons, challenging our right to recline on their bridge. The jungle dimmed toward twilight, its harshness replaced by a counterintuitive sense of abiding peace. I closed my eyes, remembering the quizzical eyes of the antelope we had seen throughout the day聴oribi, waterbuck, nyala聴poised to flee but not in any rush as we passed by in quiet admiration. What a shame, I dared to think, that we had not seen a pride of lions or trumpeting elephants. A sun-stricken fantasy, akin to a death wish. When Galante asked what time it was, I told him 4:30. They’ll come for us by five o’clock, he predicted, and, as night fell upon Gorongosa, they did.

We found Carr blissed out, up to his sunburned neck in the cool blue water of Chi tengo’s new swimming pool, eating a bowl of fresh fruit cocktail, a full moon rising behind the happiest philanthropist on earth. The safari guides would call us damn fools for our reckless misadventure. Fair enough, and we would have to live with the mischievous glow of that assessment, persuaded that our bad luck聴an outlandish privilege, a backhanded gift聴might never again play out with such serendipity, marching across Africa in league with just the sort of heaven-sent fool a better world could thrive on. A world, I would expect, where standing around waiting to be rescued is not an option.

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AZURA AT GABRIEL'S
BENGUERRA ISLAND, MOZAMBIQUE
For an eco-lodge, Azura at Gabriel's, a six-month-old, 15-villa resort in Mozambique's Bazaruto Archipelago National Park, seems a little sinful. The place looks like it's straight out of a Corona ad, complete with white-sand beaches and a private pool in front of every villa. Visitors fly-fish for king mackerel in the shallows of the Indian Ocean in the morning, scuba-dive with dugongs (they're similar to manatees) in the afternoon, and watch the sunset from the bows of traditional fishing dhows in the evening. Oh, and then get massaged with tamarind, aloe, and marula oil in Azura's spa before settling down for sushi made from tuna caught right offshore. A little extravagant, perhaps, but Azura is as green as it is luxurious. The resort, founded by a director of Banyan Tree Seychelles, uses its gray water for irrigation, composts on site, and plans to go carbon neutral by purchasing wind credits. By its fourth year, Azura will operate with a 90 percent Mozambican staff to benefit the local community.

GREEN-O-METER: 3.5
Azura has a guest-donated community-development fund that is financing a local school, a reforestation program, and a dugong-monitoring project. But just getting to the lodge will burn your quota of jet fuel for the next two years.

ACCESSIBILITY: 1
By the time you're done with the travel from Johannesburg to Benguerra Island's grass airstrip, you'll be ready to skip the fishing and head for the spa. From $450 per person, including meals;

Machaca Hill Lodge

Punta Gorda, Belize

Until about ten years ago, Belize's most noted environmental practices were gill-netting and reef destruction. Now, the same fishermen who once pillaged reefs work as guides in a sustainable-tourism industry, thanks to the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment, a local environmental NGO. Our favorite result of the sea change: fishing-resort-turned-eco-lodge Machaca Hill. Machaca, which opened in December 2006, sits on an 11,000-acre nature reserve. From one of 12 hilltop cabanas, hike to Belize's Rio Grande and take a panga ride down the river. Eleven miles later, you and your fly-fishing guide will be playing catch-and-release in the Port Honduras Marine Reserve, where the permit grow to 30 pounds.

GREEN-O-METER: 3.5
An on-site organic farm provides much of the lodge's food, and solar panels are being installed this summer.

ACCESSIBILITY: 3
It's a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Houston to Belize City, and then a puddle-jumper flight to Punta Gorda. Doubles, $210;

Pacuare Lodge

Pacuare, Costa Rica

Not content to rest on their green throne, the owners of the 13-year-old Pacuare Lodge built a new 6,450-square-foot, open-air main lodge last summer. Hidden in 25,000 acres of rainforest next to the Pacuare River, this place is the archetypal greener-than-thou eco-retreat, which kind of makes us want to hate it. But while Pacuare is off-grid, the accommodations are decidedlycomfortable. Guests relax in hammocks on pine decks overlooking the Pacuare, Costa Rica's premier rafting river. And the new lodge features an organic tea bar, a honeymoon suite made of native rainforest hardwood, and an extensive wine cellar. (Try the Navarro Correas Private Collection Malbec, shipped from Argentina.)

GREEN-O-METER: 4.5
The only sin is that 1,000-bottle wine cellar. They deserve it.

ACCESSIBILITY: 2
You can't drive there if you want to. Visitors arrive by raft from Linda Vista, 55 miles from San Jos茅. From $326 per person;

E鈥橳erra Inn

Georgian Bay, Ontario

Built with salvaged timber, Lake Huron's two-year-old, six-suite E'Terra Inn is almost as pristine as its Georgian Bay surroundings. The LEED Gold鈥揷ertified resort sits on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, in the Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve. The water in the bay is so clean that guests drink it regularly, and kayakers can see 20 feet to the lake floor.

GREEN-O-METER: 5
The resort is entirely free of electromagnetic fields (read: there's no Wi-Fi or cell service).

ACCESSIBILITY: 4
Three hours from Toronto. Doubles, $430;

Posada de Mike Rapu

Easter Island, Chile

Finally opened in December after five years of planning, much hype, and $15 million in building costs, Explora's newest hotel stamps an 18,000-square-foot, 35-room, LEED-certified mark on sparsely inhabited Easter Island. The hotel is staffed by indigenous Rapanui, who lead hikes and pass on the oral history of the vigilant moai, stone busts that encircle the island.

GREEN-O-METER: 3
The hotel is made of local rauli wood and volcanic rock, but 18,000 square feet is still 18,000 square feet.

ACCESSIBILITY: 1
LAN Chile flies from Los Angeles. $600 per person;

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Get ready for the new age of adventure on the world's wildest continent. Whether it's the Ugandan National Kayak Team leading raft trips on the raging White Nile or entrepreneurial young guides building stylish bush camps with an eye toward helping local communities, a fresh generation is redefining travel in Africa. Leave your pith helmet at home.

Mozambique: The New “It” Country

South Africa: The New Paradigm

Safari Camps: The New Aesthetic

国产吃瓜黑料 Guides: The New Adrenaline

Thrill Seekers: The New 国产吃瓜黑料s

The Isles Have It

After 16 years of civil war, Mozambique is back in the bliss business, with 1,500 miles of Indian Ocean coastline, thriving coral reefs . . . and peace at hand

“Tem for莽a,” said Abudo, in Portuguese. “O vento h谩-de soprar.”

Have strength. The wind will come.

The sail flapped listlessly as we drifted in the sun's growing heat. We'd hired the 70-year-old fisherman to sail us in his wooden dhow across a channel from Ilha de Mo莽ambique, a tiny speck off the northern coast, to a nearby isthmus of the mainland. Soon the wind did come, billowing the patched sails of nearby fishing dhows and winging them to sea. Beaching at a thatch village under coconut palms, we waded through tidal inlets to a spectacularly empty, several-mile-long curve of white beach. After snorkeling in the quiet shallows, avoiding enormous sea urchins, we hiked back to discover our dhow sprawled on its side on a sandy flat at least 500 yards from the water's edge.

“What do we do now?” I asked Abudo.

“Now we wait for the sea,” he replied.

听

Back in the fifties and early sixties, Mozambique then a Portuguese colony was on its way to becoming the Caribbean of Africa for white South Africans, landlocked Rhodesians, and others. After Portugal granted independence in 1975 commemorated in Bob Dylan's song “Mozambique” a new black socialist government came to power. Then came 16 brutal years of civil war.

Now, after more than a decade of peace, Mozambique is rebuilding, and tourism is one of its brightest spots. But you don't go there to zoom your crystalline lenses across the African savanna and zing off photos of the Big Five. During the war, bush fighters slaughtered many animals for food, and, as a result, there really isn't much big wildlife in the scrubby interior. Where you do find stunning wildlife is among Mozambique's palmy archipelagoes, coral reefs, and 1,500 miles of Indian Ocean coast that the civil war paradoxically kept pristine from development. Some 700,000 visitors arrive in the country annually (nearly double from 2001), many of them eco-tourists who've quickly spread the word.

During our year's stay in the capital city, Maputo, where my wife, Amy, was doing research on dance, we took advantage of the coastline most weekends. On our children's five-week Christmas school break, we flew deep into the subtropics, 12 degrees south of the equator. It was here, in 2002, that the World Wildlife Fund helped Mozambique establish Quirimbas National Park. This encompasses 11 of the 28 islands of the Quirimbas Archipelago, plus a large swath of the mainland's mangrove and miombo forests and the St. Lazarus Bank farther offshore, considered one of the world's premier diving and sportfishing locations.

The park is an experiment in eco-tourism, approved by the area's traditional fishing villages in order to preserve their way of life, manage marine resources, and develop basic services in a region with a life expectancy of less than 40 years. Rather than bringing in the masses, the park emphasizes limited, high-end tourism. Opened in 2002, the Quil谩lea Island resort offers elegant thatch-and-stone villas with access to empty beaches and some of the archipelago's best diving right offshore. The Medjumbe Island Resort, also on its own small island, gives easy access to bonefishing and scuba diving. At the Vamizi Island lodge, outside the park on a seven-mile-long island, you can luxuriate in a house-size villa. Backed by European investors, Vamizi collaborates with researchers from the Zoological Society of London to preserve the area's sea turtles and the mainland's elephant habitat.

In the clear waters of another island group, the Bazaruto Archipelago, off the southern coast and protected by a national park, you can swim (if you're lucky) with the threatened dugong a shy sea cow that supposedly inspired the mermaid myth. Upscale lodges here include the Benguerra and the Marlin.

My 51st birthday happened to find us on Ilha de Mo莽ambique, which lies partway between the Quirimbas and the Bazarutos. The Portuguese built their stronghold in East Africa on this tiny, 1.5-mile-long sliver of old coral and shipped out the interior's gold and ivory from here. Today there's still no place on earth like Ilha, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Tree roots sprout from the broken walls of old coral-and-stone villas in its narrow streets, rusted cannonballs lie about the massive fortress, the tiny chapel of the Southern Hemisphere's oldest church overlooks the sea, and the ornate St. Paul's Palace seems untouched dusty furniture and all since the time of the Portuguese.

European artists and architects are rehabilitating old villas into small hotels. We stayed at the Escondidinho, which had been renovated by an Italian doctor. Under its portico, looking onto a courtyard where it's rumored slaves were once sold, a French ballerina and her computer-engineer partner who chucked it all to move to Africa run a bistro featuring a delicious cuisine that, like the island itself, takes its accents from Africa and Europe, Arabia and India.

At the hour Abudo predicted, the ocean refloated our dhow. Soon we were broad-reaching amid flying spray. We would land just in time for me to join a fast-paced game with Ilha's men's soccer team near the fortress walls. Then I would meet my family in the bistro for kid-goat stew and birthday flan. But for now, it was just the wind and the sea.

Access & Resources
Getting听There:听Fly South African Airways () from New York to Johannesburg to Maputo for about $1,400 round-trip. From there, it's a two-hour flight on LAM () to Pemba, the launch point for charter flights to the Quirimbas. (For the Bazarutos, flights depart from Vilanculos.) Prime Time: April September, with crowds peaking in August. Where to Stay: The Quil谩lea Island resort has nine villas ($400 per person; 011-258-2-722-1808, ). There are 13 chalets at Medjumbe Island Resort (from $345 per person; closed for renovations until March; 011-27-11-465-6904, ). Vamizi Island lodge has ten beach houses ($560 per person; 011-27-11-884-8869, ). Escondidinho, on Ilha de Mo莽ambique, is a ten-room guesthouse (doubles, $50; 011-258-2-661-0078, ). Benguerra Lodge offers 11 chalets ($395 per person; 011-27-11-452-0641, ). There are 19 chalets at the Marlin Lodge (from $213 per person; 011-27-12-460-9410, ).

Peter Stark's book Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson鈥檚 Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival will be published in March 2014 by Ecco.

国产吃瓜黑料 Capital

More than just the darling of Bono and the Bills, South Africa is breaking down barriers鈥攆rom cosmopolitan Cape Town to the wild superparks of the future

IT'S THE DREAMLIKE, cinematic power of Africa unfolding yet again. This time, it's late afternoon when the leopard emerges from the bush, 20 feet away, crossing the sandy wash with a lazy stride, pelt rippling in the golden light. Then the radio crackles and we're fishtailing across the 54-square-mile Ngala Private Game Reserve, on Kruger National Park's western edge. Another cat's been spotted, and Jimmy Ndubane, our Shangaan tracker, leads us straight to it. This one is anything but lazy; seconds after we see the white tip of its tail twitching in the grass, the beast leaps forward and zigzags explosively through the meadow. We hear its prey, a mongoose, screaming and, finally, silence. It's awful, it's beautiful, it's what you came for: Africa forever.

However unforgettable, such classic safari epiphanies explain only part of South Africa's allure. You could come for the climbing or surfing, to dive with great white sharks, or to experience the spectacular two-ocean sailing. (The sleek black hull of Shosholoza, South Africa's 2007 America's Cup challenger and the race's first African entrant, was hauled out on the dock across the harbor from my hotel room in Cape Town.) You could come to beat the crowds flooding Johannesburg for the 2010 World Cup soccer finals聴though you'll probably miss Oprah's glittery 2006 New Year's Eve bash.

The best reason, however, is hope聴the dream that things can get better in Africa, that South Africa is leading the way, and that you can be part of it. A dozen years after the nightmare of apartheid, South Africa can still be a tough, bitter environment. But Mandela's vision of a democratic, multiracial African nation is alive and well, and tourism, once the target= of a global boycott, is the fastest-growing area of the economy, providing 1.2 million jobs for the country of 47 million.

On a wide-ranging journey through the nation's wild and urban landscapes, my goal was to max out on the abundant pleasures on offer while witnessing that transformed face. This meant obligatory visits to sprawling, hustling Jo'burg and laid-back, spectacular Cape Town, cities where the street life is set to a booming kwaito beat and revolutionary history is so fresh it's like 1776 was yesterday. South Africa, of course, remains happy to outfit you in khaki, mix you a gin-and-tonic, and make your Hemingway fantasies come true. But in the bush, too, big ideas are taking shape. The first is black empowerment, the integration of economic realms long dominated by whites. The second is South Africa's role in the global movement to create vast “transfrontier” parks that transcend borders while restoring wildlife routes.

Both ideas are being enthusiastically enacted at Tembe Elephant Park, a 190-square-mile preserve just south of Mozambique. The co-owner of Tembe's serene lodge compound, former Durban private detective Ernest Robbertse, manages the operation in partnership with the Tembe tribe. And walls will be coming down: In 1989, war in Mozambique led South Africa to erect an electric border fence, cutting off Tembe's massive 220-strong elephant herd from much of its range. The goal is to remove that barrier, reuniting Tembe's herd with their relatives in Mozambique's Maputo reserve.

An even grander expansion is planned at Kruger National Park, where I took a revelatory, weeklong game drive with naturalist Mike Stephens, experiencing close encounters with lions, rhinos, and a fantastic array of birds. Vast as Kruger may be (it's bigger than Israel), it's part of a pipe-dream-in-the-making called the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, which will one day unite Kruger, Mozambique's Limpopo, and Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou in a superpark the size of Maine. “Hopefully,” one official told me, “we'll get herds the size of the Serengeti.”

For now, nothing I saw matched the luxurious wildness of Ngala. The lodge's 20 cottages are unfenced, so you must summon an armed guard if you want to leave your room after dark. This frisson of danger, along with manic four-wheel sprints cross-country looking for game (not allowed in Kruger), adds a keen adrenaline edge. Yet here, too, Ngala quietly preaches the transfrontier vision and, via its support of the Africa Foundation, social justice. In nearby Welverdiend, I saw the foundation's work: new schoolrooms and families piloting “hippo rollers,” easy-to-roll barrels, to the well.

Small steps, small connections. Will South Africa's future include prosperity, huge parks stretching over the horizon, and all its people experiencing Africa's riches, traveling in the footsteps of the wild herds of long ago? All I know is that I'm going back.

Access & Resources
Getting There: Fly to Johannesburg from New York on South African Airways () for about $1,200 round-trip. From there, fly to Durban to see Tembe Elephant Park. Conservation Corporation Africa's Ngala Private Game Reserve () is a two-hour flight from Johannesburg on Federal Air (011-27-11-395-9000, ). Prime Time: 狈辞惫别尘产别谤耸惭补谤肠丑. Where to Stay: Tembe Elephant Lodge offers ten safari-tent suites for $162 per person (011-27-31-267-0144, ). Ngala's 20 thatched chalets start at $280, including an overnight walking safari (011-27-11-809-4300, ). In Cape Town, try the hip little Kensington Place Hotel (doubles from $190; 011-27-21-424-4744, ), on the slopes of Table Mountain.

Bed, Bush, and Beyond

The latest safari camps aren't only rediscovering the rugged glamour and extravagance of canvas; they're also letting the community in on the action

Africa

Apoka Lodge // Uganda Good-quality digs were in short supply in Uganda until locals Jonathan Wright and his wife, Pamela, opened the remote Semliki Safari Lodge and Kampala's Emin Pasha Hotel. Now comes their latest addition, Apoka, in the northeast's Kidepo Valley National Park聴the choice place to see cheetahs. Ten elegant tent-cottages outfitted with locally made furnishings look out on the savanna聴a landscape traversed by the Karimojong, seminomadic pastoralists who receive a percentage of the lodge revenue and sell their crafts in the lodge store. Doubles from $640; 011-256-41-251-182,

Naibor Camp // Kenya The Art of Ventures, the company that started the groundbreaking Zen-like lodge Shompole in partnership with a group of Masai in southern Kenya, created nearby Naibor in 2004. The camp has recently been moved to the banks of the Talek River in the heart of the Masai Mara Game Reserve, flush with rhinos, cheetahs, hippos, zebras, and tons of birds. Its eight opulent canvas tents with verandas sit in a riverine forest, close to a wildebeest migration route. Doubles from $860; 011-254-20-883-331,

Onguma Camp // Namibia Built just outside Etosha National Park on a 50,000-acre private reserve, the luxury camp at Onguma has seven spacious tents incorporating wood, steel, and stone, all under billowing canvas ceilings. The U-shaped layout of tents, lodge, and a pool allows 24/7 views of a central watering hole. As in Kruger National Park, plans are afoot to remove fences between private reserves alongside Etosha to create one greater park. Doubles from $500; 011-264-61-232-009,

Nkwichi Lodge // Mozambique So lavishly remote is Nkwichi, the only way to reach it is by boat. Hidden on the eastern shore of the vast white-sanded Lake Malawi聴one of the world's largest freshwater lakes聴Nkwichi's six chalets (each with secluded open-air baths) are surrounded by the 370,000-acre Manda wilderness reserve, the perfect setting for exploring, canoeing, sailing the cerulean waters, or hammock time. The owners have helped the community with everything from growing vegetables to creating the reserve and developing a sustainable environment for tourism. Doubles from $320;

Marataba // South Africa Opened in 2005 on a private concession in Marakele National Park, a few hours north of Johannesburg, this 15-suite camp is owned by the Hunter family, which also runs the excellent Gorah in Addo Elephant Park, in the Eastern Cape. Set in a malaria-free landscape that quickly changes from veldt to mountain, Marataba has stonework reminiscent of African ruins聴and huge windows to take in the expanse of Big Five habitat. Doubles from $1,000; 011-27-44-532-7818,

Edo's Camp // Botswana In a 300,000-acre private reserve in the western Kalahari Desert, the four twin-bed tents of Edo's Camp overlook a water hole frequented by antelope and are the latest offering from esteemed outfitter Ker & Downey. Resident guides or the indigenous San people can help you track the seven endangered white rhinos relocated to the reserve from South Africa. Doubles from $660 (closed December through February); 800-423-4236,

Mequat Mariam // Ethiopia A two-bedroom tukul聴a round thatch-roofed hut of stone and mud聴sits at the edge of a cliff at nearly 10,000 feet, overlooking endless canyonland. This small piece of nowhere is Mequat Mariam, some 400 miles north of Addis Ababa. Mequat and its sister property, Wajela聴a seven-hour trek away, with photo ops of baboons聴are the work of Tourism in Ethiopia for Sustainable Future Alternatives, which supports nearly 300 local families. From $35 per person; 011-251-11-122-5024,

Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge // Rwanda Virunga Lodge, with its gorgeous vistas of the lakes and volcanoes of Parc National des Volcans, set the standard for comfort in gorilla-watching country, and it will soon have company: the Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge, set to open this spring. The brainchild of the people behind Governors' Camp, in Kenya, Sabyinyo is owned by a trust that helps support 6,000 households in the area. Doubles from $600; 011-254-20-273-4000,

Lupita Island Resort and spa // Tanzania The 14 open-air suites, each with a plunge pool, are carved into a hillside on lush Lupita Island with views across Lake Tanganyika. For off-island awe, take a four-hour drive to Katavi, one of the mainland's most remote savanna parks, or try a two-day trip on a lake cruiser to chimp-filled Mahale Mountain National Park. Doubles from $1,300; 011-255-27-250-8773,

Shumba camp // Zambia Wilderness Safaris, winner of multiple conservation and community-involvement awards, never does things in small measures. So it's no surprise that it opened four camps at once in Kafue National Park, one of the biggest reserves in Africa. All are intimate; the best of the quartet is Shumba, in Kafue's remote northwestern corner. Its six immense safari tents on raised platforms have four-poster beds and inviting couches looking onto sweeping savanna and wetlands. Doubles from $1,480; 800-513-5222,

Additional reporting by Danielle Pergament

Access & Resources
Since these lodges are remote, it's usually wise to book them as part of a bigger, customized itinerary聴your best bet is to have a reputable outfitter plan the logistics for you. Lodges can direct you to favorite outfitters, or you can try these recommended companies (check out the Web sites to see what each specializes in): Abercrombie & Kent (800-554-7094, ), Bushtracks Expeditions (800-995-8689, ), Explore Africa (888-596-6377, ), Ker & Downey (800-423-4236, ), Mango African Safaris (888-698-9220, ), Maniago Safaris (800-923-7422, ), Micato Safaris (800-642-2861, ), Africa 国产吃瓜黑料 Company (800-882-9453, ), Uncharted Outposts (888-995-0909, ), Volcanoes Safaris (770-573-2274, ), Wildland 国产吃瓜黑料s (800-345-4453, ).

The Wild Bunch

Nine Stellar guides with new-school safari smarts鈥攁nd a commitment to conservation鈥攖ake adventure and altruism where they've never been before

Phil West
The Nairobi-based West, 31, who guided for Kenya's Lewa Wildlife Conservancy before striking out on his own, is as passionate about ethnobotany as he is about tracking leopards. His custom-designed East African safaris might include a six-day walk through the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and two Masai areas, Il Ngwesi and Lekurruki Masai, plus rafting down Kenya's Ewaso Ng'iro River. Like most outfitters, West has arrangements with local tribes and parks, so nights can as easily be spent in a tent or a lodge and days spent ambling or driving.

Grant and Brent Reed
The two South African brothers, Grant, 32, and Brent, 33, come from a family of naturalists聴which explains their safari savvy and bird and reptile expertise. (Grant has been collecting snakes since he was five.) Cofounders of Letaka Safaris, the brothers offer everything from walking safaris to birdwatching in Botswana. But for a triple shot of adventure, sign up for one of the nine-day Wildguides courses at their Okavango Guiding School. Participants of all skill levels learn how to handle rifles, track animals on foot, and find their way back to camp on their own, while becoming versed in geology, fauna, and conservation issues of the lush Okavango Delta. ,

Endale Teshome
Born in Ethiopia, Teshome, 31, herded goats in the remote Bale Mountains until his teens. After guiding on his own, he joined Ethiopian Rift Valley Safaris, studying his nation's ancient and cultural history along the way. If it's the vastly diverse flora and fauna of the south you want to see, that's his home turf. In the north, Teshome tours rock-hewn churches聴places few foreigners have seen.

Craig Doria
South African Doria, 44, guided for ten years in Zambia, where he helped create an anti-poaching unit in the national parks, a passion he's carried to Tanzania, his current base. He's written two books about snakes and also collects DNA for wildlife research. His deluxe tented-camp- and lodge-based safaris, tailored to clients' interests, include hikes, driving, sailing, and more.

Derek Shenton
The third generation of his Zambian family to go into guiding and conservation, Shenton, 41, has built two camps, Kaingo and Mwamba, deep in the game-rich South Luangwa National Park, the launchpad for his guided walks and drives. The stylish Kaingo offers big-game close-ups. (Shenton's forte is tracking cats.) Three hours away by foot is the simpler but equally wild Mwamba. Shenton is a founding member of the South Luangwa Conservation Society, which fights poaching, offers job training, and educates children about wildlife.

Peter and Tom Silvester
The Silvester brothers, from Kenya, merge hipness with high ideals. Peter, 42, runs Royal African Safaris, an ultra-luxe outfitter operating in East Africa, Botswana, and South Africa. Frequented by celebs, CEOs, and royalty, RAS specializes in custom itineraries. (Guides usually visit clients in their home country to iron out details.) Guests stay in tented camps or at lodges like Loisaba, a 60,000-acre community ranch run by Tom, 39, who works it in tandem with the local Laikipiak Masai and Samburu and offers clients everything from mountain biking and camel safaris to rafting. A portion of the profits goes to wildlife research and the community. ,

Corbett Bishop
Originally from Texas, Bishop, 35, moved to Tanzania in 1994 to lead trips up Mount Kilimanjaro and, two years later, started a safari company there, offering mobile luxury camping and camel- or donkey-assisted treks. Bishop's most recent project, the two-year-old Ol Tukai Conservancy, funds both community development and conservation projects; it's named for a village in a critical wildlife corridor between Tarangire and Lake Manyara national parks.

Beyond Kakhi

Two-story rapids, hot, spouting lava, a frenzy of sharks, lions in the dark鈥攊f it's thrills you're after, you'll find them in Africa

Rafting
White Nile, Uganda
There's a simple way the guides at Nile River Explorers measure waves on the White Nile: If a 16-foot raft disappears entirely, the wave is about the size of a two-story building. But while the river's 30,000-cubic-feet-per-second flow (roughly three times that of the Colorado) creates monster rapids, there are swimmer-friendly calm spots in between, and NRE's guides include charter members of the Ugandan national kayak team. The 18-mile day trip begins with five Class IV聳V rapids, each with placid, crocodile-free pools below. Day trips, $95; luxury tented accommodations at the Nile Porch from $54; 011-256-43-120-236,

Hiking
Ol Doinyo Lengai, Tanzania
Allan Mbaga, Tanzanian owner of African Outdoor Expeditions, has worked with David Breashears and Imax film crews on Kilimanjaro, and he'll take you up Ol Doinyo Lengai, a 9,235-foot peak north of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. You'll spend two days climbing steeply through volcanic ash and lava rock; near the top, hikers pitch camp in the inactive south crater before exploring the north crater's steaming vents and magma pools. The five-day trek includes a visit to Lake Natron, where flamingos flock by the thousands. $1,900, all-inclusive; 011-255-744-263-170,

Surfing
Southwest Madagascar
This May through October, African Surfaris will guide clients around the planet's fourth-largest island聴considered one of the last undiscovered surfing outposts. The trip starts in the Toilara Reef region near the southwestern town of Toilara, just 25 miles north of Flame Balls聴a hollow 200-yard-long left reef break two miles offshore. Ten-day trips from $1,600, including airfare from Johannesburg, lodging, meals, and boat trips; 011-27-82-836-7597,

Fly-fishing
Zambezi River, Namibia
Cast a fly on the Zambezi, where 15-pound dagger-toothed tiger fish prowl. The posh Impalila Island Lodge, at the confluence of the Chobe and Zambezi rivers, is not only the best place to find the ferocious fish; it's also within striking distance of Victoria Falls and beast-rich Chobe National Park. Seven-day trips with Aardvark McLeod from $4,000, all-inclusive, from Johannesburg; 011-44-1980-840-590,

Lion Tracking
Tsavo East National Park, Kenya
In 1898, two lions ate scores of railroad workers near what is now Tsavo East National Park. Today, area lions regularly kill livestock in nearby settlements, which is why in 2002 Earthwatch Institute launched its Lions of Tsavo program. Volunteers join American and Kenyan scientists to track and study the cats during night drives in order to help people and prides coexist. Thirteen-day trips from $3,249; 800-776-0188,

Horse Trekking
Malawi and Zambia
This fall, Malawi and Zambia are set to create the Nyika Transfrontier Conservation Area, a 13,500-square-mile international peace park. The best way to explore this remote region is by horseback on a mobile safari: two nights at the upscale Chelinda Lodge, followed by a week of galloping through montane grasslands and forested valleys, and hoofing it to the top of 8,553-foot Nganda Mountain. Ten-day trips from May through October, $3,090, including lodging, meals, and riding; 011-44-1-837-82544,

Diving
Port St. Johns, South Africa
Each winter, as the water temperature drops along South Africa's eastern coast, millions of sardines rocket the 300 miles from East London to Durban聴serving as the main course for sharks, seals, whales, and superpods of 5,000-plus common dolphins. June and July are the best months to catch the frenzy. Six-day dive trips from $1,800, including lodging, diving, and meals at iNtaba River Lodge; 011-27-21-782-2205,

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What do you want—a printed invitation? OK, here it is: We’ve scouted the year’s coolest travel offerings—from new classics like cruising the Arctic, exploring the wild Caribbean, and journeying across Russia’s heartland to bold new frontiers like trekking Libya and tracking wildlife (and luxury lodges) in Sri Lanka. Going somewhere? We thought so.

Best Trips of 2005

Smooth Landing: Getting started in California’s Sierra foothills

PLUS:

Mix travel with philanthropy on one of these meaningful adventures

The Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America

Belize

The other barrier reef: Snorkeling off Belize

Panama
Kayaking the San Blas Islands
Price: $3,190
Difficulty: Easy
In 2001, Olaf Malver, the founder of outfitter Explorers’ Corner, kayaked with his family to a remote part of the San Blas Islands, off Panama’s north coast, where he met with a chief of the indigenous Kuna Yala Indians and requested permission to explore. Not only did the sahila agree, but he invited Malver to return with like-minded friends. On this ten-day trip to the Cayos Holandes, accompanied by two Kuna Yala guides, you’ll paddle 60 to 80 miles, tracing the shorelines of mostly uninhabited Caribbean islands, camping on pristine beaches, visiting a Kuna Yala community known for its vivid molas, or tapestries, and tramping through orchid-filled jungles.
High Point: Reaching the uninhabited island of Esnatupile after a mellow, nine-mile paddle across two channels.
Low Point: Being outpaced by local fishermen in low-tech pangas.
Travel Advisory: Don’t touch the coconuts! Your permission to visit—seriously— is contingent upon a hands-off agreement.
Outfitter: Explorers’ Corner, 510-559-8099,
When to Go: December, January

Mexico
Mountain-Biking the Conquerors’ Route
Price: $1,395
Difficulty: Moderate
This two-week mountain-bike adventure traverses the same terrain as the route of the 16th-century Spanish army through the former Aztec empire, wheeling along 200 miles of desert, mountain, and coastal singletrack and jeep roads. You’ll ride about six hours each day, from the outskirts of Puebla to the Sierra Madre hills and valleys near the base of 18,700-foot Pico de Orizaba, overnighting in tents, 18th-century haciendas, and lodges as you make your way to a Gulf Coast beach.
Outfitter: 国产吃瓜黑料s SelvAzul, 011-52-222-237-48-87,
When to Go: November to July

Trinidad and Tobago
Caribbean Multisport
Price: $1,799—$2,000
Difficulty: Moderate
Trinidad’s rugged coastline is as wild as its calypso culture, and sleepy Tobago boasts some of the Caribbean’s less-trodden beaches. Explore the best of both islands on this hyperactive nine-day, inn-based tour that takes you mountain-biking through dense rainforests and farmland, hiking amid howler monkeys and macaws, river-kayaking beneath bamboo archways, snorkeling among hawksbill sea turtles and green moray eels, and caving in an intricate system swarming with bats.
Outfitter: REI 国产吃瓜黑料s, 800-622-2236,
When to Go: February, April, June, November

Belize
Belize 国产吃瓜黑料 Cruise
Price: $2,095—$2,395
Difficulty: Easy
Spend eight days aboard a sweet four-cabin luxury yacht, exploring intimate coves that full-size cruise ships can’t get anywhere near. An onboard naturalist will point out the sea turtle nesting sites and the manatees as you cruise along the Caribbean coastline from Belize City. You’ll take a nighttime walking safari up the Sittee River, past Garifuna villages, visit Maya caves and an excavation site, and paddle kayaks with see-through acrylic bottoms over the world’s second-largest barrier reef.
Outfitter: 国产吃瓜黑料Smith Explorations, 800-728-2875,
When to Go: Year-round

Asia

China

Dusk settles across China’s rice paddies

India
Rajasthan on Horseback
Price: $4,800
Difficulty: Strenuous
When film producer Alexander Souri’s first expedition of “Relief Riders” trotted into a remote Indian village last fall, the caravan of nine Marwari horses, four pack camels, 50 goats, and 15 people caused quite a stir. “Across India it became front-page news,” says Souri, 35, whose inaugural Rajasthan Relief Ride delivered supplies like antibiotics and eye drops by horseback to five villages in northwestern India, and had doctors on board for impromptu clinics. Hardy travelers can join the next cavalcade on a 15-day journey carrying goods deep into the Thar Desert. You’ll saddle up in Mukandgarh, about six hours from New Delhi, then ride about 20 miles per day, camping or staying in 400-year-old forts en route to Jaipur.
High Point: Seeing villagers receive knowledge—such as AIDS education—plus food and supplies that they desperately need.
Low Point: Watching people wait in line at the clinics for hours in the midday heat.
Travel Advisory: Three to five hours per day is a lot of time in the saddle. Be sure your skills (and your posterior) are up to the task.
Outfitter: Relief Riders International, 413-329-5876,
When to Go: February, October

Sri Lanka
Wildlife Expedition
Price: $1,099—$1,390
Difficulty: Easy
Sri Lanka is serious about protecting its endangered elephants—the penalty for killing one is death. On this eight-day loop around the island, starting and ending in Colombo, you’ll witness the slow recovery of the species—thousands of these mammoth mammals now roam the jungles of Yala National Park. En route to the two-day park safari, you’ll visit Kandy and Polonnaruwa, two of Sri Lanka’s oldest cities, and an elephant orphanage, and stay at an Edwardian manor house amid the tea fields of a former British hill station.
Outfitter: Big Five, 800-244-3483,
When to Go: October to March

Tibet
Photo Exploration
Price: $4,695
Difficulty: Challenging
Red limestone cliffs front the sapphire-blue surface of Lake Nam Tsho, where Tibetan pilgrims gather at a shoreline dotted with migratory cranes and geese. Any amateur could produce stunning images here, but you’ll have expert guidance from Bill Chapman, whose photographic book The Face of Tibet has a foreword by the Dalai Lama. Starting in Lhasa, the 15-day adventure takes you on a challenging trek over 16,900-foot Kong La Pass. You’ll bunk in nomad camps as you make your way to the riding competitions and colorful dance performances of the Nagchu Horse Festival.
Outfitter: Myths & Mountains, 800-670-6984,
When to Go: August

East Timor
Island Touring
Price: $1,380
Difficulty: Moderate
In the five years since East Timor won its bloody battle for independence from Indonesia, few travelers have ventured into the world’s newest nation, where the tourist-free villages, coffee plantations, and verdant rainforests rival any in Southeast Asia. On this 15-day trip, you’ll hike up the country’s tallest mountain (9,724 feet), sail to a nearby reef-ringed island, watch villagers weave their traditional tais (sarongs), and spend your nights in humble guesthouses and thatched-roof seaside bungalows.
Outfitter: Intrepid Travel, 866-847-8192,
When to Go: May to November

China
Minya Konka Trek
Price: $5,595
Difficulty: Strenuous
In the shadow of 24,790-foot Minya Konka, spend 19 days exploring Tibetan villages, Buddhist temples, and a high-alpine landscape where rhododendrons and wildflowers line paths leading to hot springs and crystalline lakes. The trip centers on a 12-day trek that tops out on a 15,150-foot mountain pass before dropping into the Yunongqi Valley, where you’ll sip butter tea in a village home, then set up camp nearby.
Outfitter: Geographic Expeditions, 800-777-8183,
When to Go: April, September

Africa

Kenya and Tanzania
Safari Through Masailand
Price: $3,750
Difficulty: Moderate
In partnership with the Masai Environmental Resource Coalition, a network of Masai organizations advocating for tribal rights and sustainable use of the great ecosystems of East Africa, this 12-day safari-with-a-conscience combines classic game drives and walks with daily visits to local schools and villages—well off the usual tourist path. The journey begins in the wide, lion-rich plains of the Masai Mara Game Reserve, then heads to the important elephant migratory ground of Amboseli National Park, at the foot of 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro. Tanzania’s rustic tented Sinya Camp, a private Masai concession in the acacia woodlands, is the final stop.
High Point: Searching for game on foot with a Masai warrior in the Sinya bushlands—littered by giant elephant dung.
Low Point: Realizing that for many years the Masai have not reaped equitable benefits from the tourism trade.
Travel Advisory: Don’t expect your guides to drive off-road to get a better look at wild animals. It damages habitat, harasses wildlife, and is strictly prohibited on this trip.
Outfitter: Wildland 国产吃瓜黑料s, 800-345-4453,
When to Go: February, March, June to October, December

Libya
Overland Exploration
Price: $4,750 and up
Difficulty: Moderate
On this 17-day expedition from Tripoli—one of the first outfitted trips to Libya since the travel ban for U.S. citizens was lifted last March—you’ll take in all five of Libya’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the ruins of the Roman-walled cities of Sabratah and Leptis Magna; the labyrinthine 2,000-year-old mud-brick western border town of Ghadames, a key stop on the great trans-Saharan caravan routes; and the haunting, desolate Greek temples and tombs of Apollonia and Cyrenaica, on a bluff overlooking the sea. Along the way, you’ll camp in the desert and sleep on beds carved out of rock in the below-ground troglodyte houses of Ruhaybat.
Outfitter: Geographic Expeditions, 800-777-8183,
When to Go: April, September

Botswana
Guiding 国产吃瓜黑料
Price: $2,700—$3,300
Difficulty: Moderate
Aspiring safari guides, take note. This nine-day educational foray into the wilds of the Okavango Delta—among antelopes, lions, giraffes, Cape buffalo, and zebras—will give participants a strong introduction to the finer points of African bushcraft and survival skills. You’ll be schooled by professional South African guiding instructors in four-wheel driving techniques, navigation, tracking, fire starting, canoe poling, food foraging, rifle handling, game spotting, and (optional) venomous-snake wrangling. Though your graduation certificate won’t qualify you as a professional guide, it will certainly look impressive on the wall of your den back home.
Outfitter: Explore Africa, 888-596-6377,
When to Go: Year-round

South Africa and Mozambique
Fishing and Diving 国产吃瓜黑料
Price: $4,395
Difficulty: Moderate
This two-week coastal foray starts in South Africa’s Maputaland Coastal Forest Reserve, where you’ll spend five nights in one of Rocktail Bay Lodge’s 11 stilted chalets, tucked behind forested dunes. Between surfcasting for kingfish and snorkeling amid a confetti swirl of subtropical fish, you’ll view freshwater lake hippos and crocs and hit the beach at night to track nesting leatherback and loggerhead turtles. After a quick flight to Mozambique, you’ll board a boat for Benguerra Island, just off the mainland in the Bazaruto Archipelago, and check in to the thatched bungalows of Benguerra Lodge. Here, scuba divers may encounter 50-foot whale sharks and endangered dugongs, and anglers will work some of the world’s best marlin-fishing grounds.
Outfitter: The Africa 国产吃瓜黑料 Company, 800-882-9453,
When to Go: Year-round

Eastern Europe and the Caucasus

Siberian Railroad

Back to Go: Start your trip along the Siberian rail at Moscow

Georgia
Trekking the Caucasus
Price: $3,390—$3,690
Difficulty: Strenuous
Rob Smurr, a seasoned expert on the former Soviet Union, is your guide on this 15-day trip, the heart of which is a nine-day trek through the south-central Caucasus, a largely untouristed area of high glaciers, waterfalls, and massive granite peaks. From your first campsite, at the base of 12,600-foot Mount Chauki, you’ll hike eight to 15 miles daily—along the Chanchakhi River and up some of the range’s highest passes, skirting 16,558-foot Mount Kazbek. Camp out or stay with locals in villages where medieval towers mirror the peaks.
High Point: Joining families for lamb and baklava, in their ninth-century villages.
Low Point: Occasional rerouting due to security issues.
Travel Advisory: Corruption can be common, so keep up your anti-scam guard.
Outfitter: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235,
When to Go: August

Croatia
Mountain-Biking Istria
Price: $1,325
Difficulty: Challenging
Istria, the sunny Adriatic peninsula in Croatia’s northwestern corner, bordered by Slovenia, is an undiscovered mountain-biking destination. Locally harvested olives, figs, and almonds provide fuel as you pedal 30 to 50 miles a day, through Pazin, the region’s elegant old capital, to the vineyards outside of Motovun and the historic west coast, staying at four-star inns and family farmhouses.
Outfitter: Saddle Skedaddle, 011-44-191-265-1110,
When to Go: June to September

Romania
Walking Romania’s Countryside
Price: $2,895
Difficulty: Moderate
This 14-day romp through Transylvania and the Caliman Mountains is a low-key way to explore Romania’s still intact natural beauty. After gathering in Bucharest, with its belle 茅poque architecture, hit the countryside for majestic views of giant white cliffs in Piatra Craiului National Park, Bran Castle, of Dracula legend, and the verdant Bucovina region, where valleys are dotted with painted monasteries. Bed down in small hotels, B&Bs, homestays, and, for one night—after a nip of plum brandy by the campfire—a kober, or shepherd’s hillside shelter. Trail tip: “Sa traiesti” (“Cheers”) is the common hiker’s greeting.
Outfitter: MIR Corporation, 800-424-7289,
When to Go: June to September

Russia
Siberian Rails
Price: $8,495—$12,865
Difficulty: Easy
The ultimate classic in Russian travel is the Trans-Siberian Express, a legendary 17-day luxe train journey from Moscow to Vladivostok that rumbles for nearly 6,000 miles. The onboard experts are a font of knowledge, especially during stops at the charming village of Irkutsk and mile-deep Lake Baikal.
Outfitter: American Museum of Natural History Discovery Tours, 800-462-8687,
When to Go: August

Western Europe

Matterhorn

The Middle Earth of the Northern Hemisphere: Switzerland’s Matterhorn

Switzerland
Cycling Camp
Price: $6,500
Difficulty: Strenuous
This first-of-its-kind European offering is the ultimate two-wheeled fantasy: On this nine-day trip, there’ll be seven days of personalized training in Aigle, at the International Cycling Union’s new ultramodern World Cycling Center (WCC), and in surrounding alpine terrain. With your coach, seven-time world track champion and Frenchman Frederic Magne, you’ll train on the WCC’s state-of-the-art 200-meter wooden track and on daily rides ranging from 25 to 75 miles. Base camp is a Victorian-style four-star hotel on Lake Geneva’s eastern shore. From there, ride along Rhone Valley roads and into the Vaud Alps, with views of the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc providing inspiration as you grind up legendary mountain passes. Out-of-the-saddle luxuries include thermal spas, private wine tastings, a trip masseur, and regional specialties like saucisson Vaudois (local sausage).
High Point: Cranking up the famous hairpin turns of the Grimsel and Furka passes before hopping the cable car to the top of 9,603-foot Eggishorn Mountain for a view of Europe’s largest glacier, the Aletsch.
Low Point: Trying to avoid too much pinot noir at the farewell dinner, knowing there’s a timed 91-mile race in Bulle鈥攖he Pascal Richard Cyclosportif鈥攕till to come.
Travel Advisory: High-altitude climbs combined with August heat can mean easy dehydration, so keep the fluids coming.
Outfitter: Velo Classic Tours, 212-779-9599,
When to Go: August

Portugal
Kayaking the Douro River
Price: $3,590
Difficulty: Easy
On this 11-day flatwater float on the Douro River from Quinta das Aveleiras to Peso da R茅gua, through northern Portugal’s fertile port-wine region, you’ll paddle three to five hours daily, stretching out with afternoon hikes across golden-terraced hillsides. In the fall, glide through the grape harvest, feasting on feijoada (bean-and-meat stew) and the ruby-hued regional wines (you can pick tinta amarela grapes off the vine from the seat of your kayak), staying at manor houses and 18th-century blue-tiled quintas (wine estates).
Outfitter: Explorers’ Corner, 510-559-8099,
When to Go: June, September

Italy
Sicily and the Aeolian Islands by Sea
Price: $8,950 and up
Difficulty: Moderate
The intimate 32-passenger Callisto is your luxurious floating hideaway on this nine-day sail through Italy’s southern islands. Begin with an architectural tour of Palermo’s 11th-century splendors, then set sail for the sun-blasted Aeolian Islands, seven volcanic spurs north of Sicily. When you’re not scuba-diving, snorkeling, and swimming in tucked-away coves or hiking up a live volcano, lounge at Lipari Island’s San Calogero, the oldest-known spa in the Mediterranean, or take a siesta deckside, grappa in hand.
Outfitter: Butterfield & Robinson, 888-596-6377,
When to Go: July

Britain
Hiking Hadrian’s Wall
Price: $3,495 and up
Difficulty: Moderate
Follow the winding route of Hadrian’s Wall on Britain’s newest long-distance trail. The Roman-era engineering feat stretches for 70 miles along the Scottish border, connecting two coasts. Start in Bowness-on-Solway, where the wall meets the sea on the west coast, and hike eight to ten miles a day through a magical landscape little changed in 2,000 years: lush hills, heather-covered moors, and rolling dales pocked with deep forests. En route, explore Roman forts, archaeological sites, and the bird-rich tidal estuary of Budle Bay. Your guide, Peter Goddard, has hiked the area for more than 30 years and is a local-history buff, as you’ll learn over family-style dinners at country B&Bs.
Outfitter: Wilderness Travel, 800-368-2794,
When to Go: July

Polar Regions

Antarctica

Ice, Ice, Baby: The mammoth icebergs of Antarctica

Sweden
Skiing the King’s Trail
Price: $2,295
Difficulty: Challenging
Ditch the wimpy groomers at American nordic centers and dig into a real cross-country challenge: The Kungsladen, or King’s Trail—which links Abisko and Sarek national parks, above the Arctic Circle—is Sweden’s cr猫me de la cr猫me strip of snow-covered track. For seven challenging days, you’ll slide your way along a 58-mile section of trail through the Kebnekaise Range, with plenty more payoff than pain. On day three, your dogsled support team will await at a rustic hut with a hefty platter of reindeer steaks and potatoes. After huffing up 3,773-foot Tjaktja Pass on day six, glide into the Tjaktjavagge Valley, stopping to bunk at the Salka Mountain Hut. If cross-country touring isn’t your thing, you can opt to explore the Kungsladen on foot during the summer and climb to the top of Sweden’s highest peak, 6,965-foot Mount Kebnekaise, for views of distant Norway.
High Point: Bringing your core temperature up with a sauna at the Abisko, Alesjaure, and Salka huts.
Low Point: Having your circadian rhythms thrown off by 24-hour twilight.
Travel Advisory: Beware snowmobiles—they are an essential part of life in Lapland but can shatter your hard-won solitude.
Outfitter: KE 国产吃瓜黑料 Travel, 800-497-9675,
When to Go: February to April

Norway
Svalbard Photo Expedition
Price: $5,290
Difficulty: Easy
The Svalbard Archipelago is one of the inhabited spits of land closest to the North Pole, just over 600 miles away, but it’s anything but barren—in summer the islands are blanketed with wildflowers, seabirds swirl en masse, and walruses, whales, seals, and bears gorge themselves during the 24-hour days. This expedition is all about capturing it on film—for 11 days, naturalists will help you spot the critters, and one of the world’s top nature photographers, Art Wolfe, will teach you how to take advantage of polar light, among other skills. Each day you’ll load into Zodiacs to shoot the glaciers, icebergs, fjords, and herds of reindeer that catch your interest from the bow of the ice-class ship Endeavor.
Outfitter: Lindblad Expeditions, 800-397-3348,
When to Go: July

Antarctica
Across the Circle for Climbers and Divers
Price: $4,490
Difficulty: Challenging
Why go to Antarctica if you get to stand on solid ground for only a few hours? This cruise gets you some real time on—and under—the great white continent and takes you south across the Antarctic Circle, a feat only true polar explorers can brag about. You and 53 other adventurers will stay aboard the Polar Pioneer, your floating base camp, where you’ll have input in planning the ship’s day-to-day itinerary. Experienced drysuit divers can explore the undersides of icebergs and get a krill’s-eye view of whales; hikers can summit unclimbed mountains on the western side of Antarctica and name them after their grandmothers. Other possibilities include visits to the defunct volcanic crater of Deception Island, the glaciers of Paradise Harbor, and the narrow 2,300-foot cliffs flanking Lemaire Channel.
Outfitter: World Expeditions, 888-464-8735,
When to Go: February

Oceania

French Polynesia
Surfing the Tuamotus
Price: $2,300—$4,717
Difficulty: Moderate
This is the ultimate surf safari in one of the world’s last great undiscovered wave frontiers—the mostly uninhabited, low-lying 78-island Tuamotu Archipelago, 200 miles northeast of Tahiti. Spend seven to 11 days riding clean, hollow three- to ten-foot barrels as you shuttle from one heartbreakingly flawless break to another aboard the 64-foot Cascade, a five-cabin power cruiser equipped with surf-forecasting technology. When surf’s down, fish for abundant black marlin and reef fish, kitesurf, sea-kayak, snorkel the jewel-like lagoons, and scuba-dive the deep “shark alley” passes, where hundreds of reef sharks ride the currents at feeding time. Evenings are reserved for surf videos, surf magazines, Hinano beer, and fresh sashimi and sushi.
High Point: You and your nine surf brahs will have these waves all to yourselves.
Low Point: If you hit it right, the waves can be so consistent you may actually start to get bored. Snap out of it!
Travel Advisory: No need to bring your own surfboard; the Cascade travels with a diverse quiver of more than 60 boards.
Outfitter: Wavehunters Surf Travel, 888-899-8823,
When to Go: Year-round

Australia
Training Ride
Price: $1,310
Difficulty: Strenuous
Join a peloton of serious cyclists for this tough ten-day, 780-mile loop from Hobart that hits both the east and west coasts of the rugged, cycling-mad Australian state of Tasmania. Be prepared for staggering scenery—desolate white beaches braced by sheer cliffs, emerald rolling farmland—and punishing ascents with names like Bust-Me-Gall and Break-Me-Neck. The final day includes a grind to the summit of 4,166-foot Mount Wellington—followed by a 13-mile cruise back to Hobart. On the lone day of rest, you’ll undergo flexibility, strength, and aerobic testing, administered by the Tasmanian Institute of Sport. If this sounds hardcore, take heart: Three sag wagons and two masseurs accompany the trip.
Outfitter: Island Cycle Tours, 011-61-36234-4951,
When to Go: March

Micronesia
Snorkeling Yap, Ulithi, and Palau
Price: $3,890 (airfare from Honolulu included)
Difficulty: Moderate
Twelve days of shallow-water bliss begin on the island of Yap, where you’ll see tide-driven manta rays passing beneath you in the channels. A short flight north takes you to rarely dived Ulithi, a former U.S. military base opened to tourism within the past few years, where a huge population of giant turtles can darken the water and coral walls plunge just 400 feet from shore. The final five days are spent among the green, tuffetlike isles of Palau, famous for landlocked saltwater Jellyfish Lake, where you’ll snorkel among thick, drifting clouds of harmless, if somewhat spooky, pale-pink Mastigias jellyfish.
Outfitter: Oceanic Society, 800-326-7491,
When to Go: April, June

Solomon Islands
Sea-Kayaking Journey
Price: $3,790
Difficulty: Moderate
Spend 18 days exploring the remote string of jungly, Eden-like islands of the nation’s Western Province. You’ll paddle translucent blue lagoons and cool, dark, vine-strung rivers, hike high volcanic ridges, snorkel a shallow-water WWII plane wreck, and discover shrines built partially of skulls—remnants of the headhunters who lived on these Ring of Fire islands about a century ago. Transfers between islands are by motorized canoes piloted by native guides; most nights are spent camping on empty sand beaches.
Outfitter: Mountain Travel Sobek, 888-687-6235,
When to Go: November to December

North America

Hells Canyon

Welcome to Hell…Hell’s Canyon, that is

Texas
Lance and the Texas Hill Country
Price: $10,000
Difficulty: Moderate
What could be better than a long road ride? Try a long road ride interspersed with a yuk-it-up session with Lance Armstrong himself. You’ll be treated to a 20-mile “morning spin” with the six-time Tour de France winner, just one of the highlights of this eight-day whirl through the Texas Hill Country from San Antonio to Austin. You’ll spend 30 to 45 miles a day in the saddle, overnighting at a dude ranch and the Hangar Hotel before settling in at Austin’s superluxe Driskill Hotel. There you’ll join 8,000 volunteers and survivors in the weekend-long Ride for the Roses, a 100-mile Lance Armstrong Foundation benefit for cancer research.
High Point: Spinning wheels with Lance.
Low Point: Parting with a whopping $10K, half of which goes to the Ride for the Roses.
Travel Advisory: You’re in Texas—don’t mess with it. Outfitter: Trek Travel, 866-464-8735,
When to Go: October

Alberta
Royal Canadian Rails Fly-Fishing Odyssey
Price: $5,450
Difficulty: Moderate
Board the Royal Canadian Pacific Railway luxury train for a six-day, 650-mile loop from Calgary to some of the Canadian Rockies’ most pristine rivers. Accompanied by local guides, you’ll float in driftboats down the Elk River and chug through the most scenic rail corridors in Banff and Yoho national parks. Spend nights exaggerating your catch over Scotch and bunking in vintage 1920s Pullman cars.
Outfitter: Off the Beaten Path, 800-445-2995,
When to Go: August

Idaho
River Soul Journey Through Hells Canyon
Price: $1,130
Difficulty: Easy
This five-day, 34-mile raft trip down the Snake River is a Class IV adventure—and an inward journey. Days begin with riverfront yoga, and shore time allows for journal writing, side trips to view Nez Perce rock art, and meditation. But cleansing your mind doesn’t mean you can’t indulge in the arsenal of lasagna, Idaho trout, and double-fudge brownies.
Outfitter: ROW (River Odysseys West), 800-451-6034,
When to Go: September

Oregon
Mountain-Biking the Umpqua River Trail
Price: $925
Difficulty: Challenging
The 79-mile Umpqua River Trail, completed in 1997, is a line of undulating singletrack from southern Oregon’s Maidu Lake to Swift Water Park, perfect for a five-day blast through Douglas firs, cedars, and ferny hillsides. You’ll chase the river along sheer drop-offs and to low points where you can cool your feet—as a chase van ferries your gear to camp.
Outfitter: Western Spirit, 800-845-2453,
When to Go: July to September

Labrador
Hiking the Torngat Mountains
Price: $3,200
Difficulty: Strenuous
Northern Labrador can be as hard to reach as parts of the Arctic, but after 12 years studying caribou herds there, these outfitters have the place dialed. Following a two-day boat ride from Maine to the Torngat Mountains, you’ll carry your own pack off-trail for eight of the trip’s 18 days, camping under the northern lights, crossing river valleys, and absorbing the solitude of this remote coast.
Outfitter: Nature Trek Canada, 250-653-4265,
When to Go: July to August

South America

Rocha On! Hoofing it on a Uruguayan playa.

Peru
Rafting the Lower Apur铆mac
Price: $2,500
Difficulty: Strenuous
To reach some hard-won whitewater, this ten-day trekking-and-rafting expedition starts with a six-hour hike down the western slope of Peru’s lush Cordillera Vilcabamba. Follow this the next day with a 5,900-foot ascent to Choquequirau, ruins of one of the most remarkable Incan cities discovered to date. Then make history of your own, on the rarely run, Class IV–V Lower Apur铆mac River, home to parrots, monkeys, cormorants, and countless waterfalls.
High Point: Peering into what guides call the Acobamba Abyss and realizing you’re headed for expert-kayaker territory.
Low Point: If water levels are low, portaging a particularly narrow section of the Abyss.
Travel Advisory: This is an exploratory trip, so be prepared for changes and delays.
Outfitter: Bio Bio Expeditions, 800-246-7238,
When to Go: October

Guyana
Wildlife Watching Price: $2,835 (airfare from U.S. included)
Difficulty: Easy
Picture Costa Rica pre–tourism boom—gorgeous, wild, and practically empty—and you’ve got Guyana, a new frontier in South American travel. For ten days you’ll head from lodge to lodge (some run by local Amerindian communities), exploring savannas and jungles and possibly adding jaguar and exotic-bird sightings to your life list. You can kayak lazy rivers to watch giant otters, venture out with flashlights to see black caimans hunting at night, and stand at the rim of Kaieteur Falls, which drops more than 740 feet, almost five times the height of Niagara.
Outfitter: Journeys International, 800-255-8735,
When to Go: April, August, November

Uruguay
Galloping the Deserted Coastline of Rocha
Price: $1,850
Difficulty: Easy
It’s hard to find a beach so deserted you can take a solitary stroll, let alone a weeklong horseback ride like this one, through eastern Uruguay’s Rocha region. On this 140-mile journey, you’ll visit fishing villages atop South American criollo horses, fuel up on lamb and steak, and gaze at capybaras (the world’s largest rodents). Worthy detours include a sea lion conservation area and a botanical garden filled with dozens of orchids.
Outfitter: Boojum Expeditions, 800-287-0125,
When to Go: March to April, October to December

Argentina and Chile
Backcountry-Skiing the Andean Cordillera
Price: $2,000
Difficulty: Challenging
On this ten-day trip, combine volcano climbs with lift-served skiing and snowboarding. In Chile, you’ll ascend the back side of 9,318-foot Volc谩n Villarrica, where you might see lava boiling below the caldera rim. In Argentina, you’ll ascend the flanks of Volc谩n Lan铆n (12,388 feet) and Volc谩n Domuyo (15,446 feet), recuperating in the area’s 丑辞蝉迟别谤铆补蝉 and abundant hot springs.
Outfitter: ATAC (国产吃瓜黑料 Tours Argentina Chile), 866-270-5186,
When to Go: July to October

The Trip of the Year

Machu Picchu

Fly By: Machu Picchu, one of the many stops in the trip of the year

Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador
Safari by Air
Price: $19,950
Difficulty: Moderate
Forget all that time-consuming land travel: Now you can knock off a slew of South America’s ecological hot spots—the Atacama Desert, Lake Titicaca, Colca Canyon, the Pantanal—in one 19-day extravaganza. The trick is a privately chartered airplane, a 46-passenger Fokker-50 that whisks you from flamingo-flecked salt flats to open savanna to Peru’s magnificent city of Cuzco (for a visit to the Manu Biosphere Reserve or a hike around archaeological wonder Machu Picchu). And thanks to a close partnership between the World Wildlife Fund and Zegrahm & Eco Expeditions, you’ll be introduced to some of these wild places by the people who are fighting to keep them wild—and who know them best. In Chile’s Atacama Desert, you’ll ascend to 14,800 feet in the Andes to walk among spouting geysers and fumaroles, see cool salt formations in the Valley of the Moon, and visit a pink flamingo colony on Chaxa Lagoon. In Brazil’s Pantanal, South America’s largest wetlands, you’ll stalk giant anteaters, armadillos, maned wolves, and jaguars—as well as meet with WWF field staff to learn about conservation projects in collaboration with local ranching communities. On Lake Titicaca, on the Peru-Bolivia border, keep an eye out for the rare Titicaca flightless grebe; in Peru’s Colca Valley, look for condors, Andean deer, and llama-like vicu帽as. The place to watch red and green macaws feasting on clay from behind biologist-developed viewing blinds is Peru’s Manu Biosphere Reserve, where you’ll also hike to see five kinds of monkeys—emperor tamarin, black spider, capuchin, squirrel, and red howler—perform acrobatics above your head in the forest canopy, and spy 550-pound tapirs, a.k.a. “jungle cows,” foraging about a mineral lick at dusk. End up in Quito, Ecuador, for a day trip to the famous Otavalo market.
High Point: Seeing the giant, cobalt-blue hyacinth macaw, which measures three feet from tail to beak, high in palm trees on the Pantanal’s savanna.
Low Point: Realizing that at least 10,000 hyacinth macaws were taken for the parrot trade in the 1980s, and that these exotic birds now number fewer than 10,000 worldwide.
Travel Advisory: You’ll be hitting five countries in 19 days: Because this trip is highly scheduled, leave your taste for a moseying, come-what-may pace behind. This is all about getting the most out of your time down south.
Outfitter: World Wildlife Fund, 888-993-8687, ; Zegrahm & Eco Expeditions, 800-628-8747,
When to Go: April

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