Overseas Adventure Travel

“Adventure” means a lot of different things to different people. There are options available for everyone from Walter Mitty to Indiana Jones.

Zip Through the Jungle on a Steel Cable

zipline“Eco-Tourist” destinations like Costa Rica offer an interesting way to travel through the jungle canopy. They strap you into a web harness and a safety helmet and then hook you up to a steel cable which is suspended far above the jungle floor. Then, they let you go and you slide at high speeds across the jungle. Think of it as a reverse ski-lift and try not to remember how poorly more equipment is maintained in the third world.

Swim with the Sharks

In the Bahamas you can go scuba diving with Caribbean Reef Sharks. These sharks can grow up to three meters in length, but most are under two meters. They are less aggressive than the average pet dog. Yes, people do get bitten occasionally — but there are no fatal bites on record.

If you are more adventurous, you can go to Mexico or South Africa and swim with Great White Sharks — but that should be done from inside the safety of a shark cage. The guides put you into a metal cage and then lower that cage into shark-infested waters. There are a couple of recorded instances of great whites attacking and destroying the shark cages, but in both instances the occupants escaped.

Attend a Party in Saudi Arabia

The authorities in Saudi Arabia are quite strict about what constitutes a “legal” party. Here are a few examples of what will get you into trouble in Saudi Arabia:

Twenty expats at the dance party linked above were sentenced to lashes and three to four months in Saudi prison. That’s overseas adventure Saudi style!

Climb Mount Everest

Sure, anyone can go hiking, but real adventurers want more out of life. About 500 people a year climb Mount Everest now. Of course, of every hundred people who begin the ascent, four do not return alive. For around $80,000, guide companies will now take even people with no climbing experience to the top of Mount Everest — or at least they will try.

Hunt a Terrorist

In 2010, Gary Faulkner of Greeley Colorado was arrested in Pakistan. He was carrying a full-size sword, a pistol and night-vision goggles. He was hunting Osama bin Laden along Pakistan’s wild border region with Afghanistan. Prior to that, Mr. Faulkner had traveled to central America where he used his professional carpentry skills to build homes for impoverished locals. It appears that he wanted to step his “adventure travel” up to the next level.