THE LANDSCAPE OF THE WORLD, WITH ITS SOARING peaks, drop cliffs, tropical jungles, array of underwater animal life, and bumpy overland terrain is meant to be taken head-on and not just viewed from a fancy hotel balcony. Feed your adrenaline junkie some quality adventure by tossing yourself into the canyons of Interlaken, carving your way through Canada’s powdery terrain, and allowing Australia’s Great Barrier Reef prove its greatness by slapping on a wetsuit and going to town. Leave no stone unturned, no mountain unscaled, and find that next level of thrill by expanding your adventures worldwide. Everyone knows that adrenaline pumps hardest in unfamiliar territory.
THE LARGEST STRUCTURE ON the planet made entirely by living organisms, the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is a live seafood soup filled with crazy-looking and endangered animals swimming at you from all angles. A UNESCO World Heritage site, this reef is home to 1,500 species of fish. Throw some scuba gear on and discover what makes this reef so great.
The GBR stretches 1,600 miles along the Queensland coast in the Coral Sea, and the best way to experience it is to submerge yourself deep into its crevices.
Eighty-pound grouper cruise by, schools of barracuda eye you cautiously, reef shark silhouettes loom in the distance, sea turtles float by drunk on life, and Nemo feverishly defends his nest all around a reef of hard and soft coral that no box of Crayola could ever color-code. There are countless ways to see these billions of coral polyps. Here’s a short list to get you bright-eyed:
CAIRNS
This scuba capital of Australia has no shortage of tour agencies to get you to the reef. Shop around to avoid ripoffs or book at a recommended hostel. The GBR is a long boat ride from Cairns, so an overnight trip is the best way to see it. You can get two days with three dives each (including a night dive) with food and lodging on a live-aboard boat for about $350. Some of the bigger boats feel like a touristy assembly line, so check boat reviews online before paying.
SS YONGOLA WRECK DIVE
One hundred years ago, the SS Yongola passenger ship disappeared in a cyclone, along with all 122 people on board. This football field-size mass grave quickly became a cushy new underwater neighborhood, gentrified by the swankiest of fish. Local dive shops claim you see more species of fish on this one wreck dive than you do in ten dives anywhere else on the reef.
SHARK-FEEDING DIVE
If you do a weeklong live-aboard jaunt out to the Osprey Reef, you’ll see the best collections of the reef’s sharks, especially when the dive ops run a shark-feeding dive at North Horn. Dozens of gray sharks, silvertips, and sometimes hammerheads and tiger sharks circle overhead and bolt past you for giant chunks of the provided fish carcasses. Try not to crap your wetsuit.
TOO LEGIT, TOO LEGIT TO QUIT
While it’s not as cheap as Asia or Central America, you can get certified to dive anywhere along the reef. (Cairns cranks out more certifications than anywhere else in the world.) As a bonus, your four certification dives are actually at the GBR, as opposed to in some Midwest rock quarry. Snorkeling is a decent consolation if you can’t dive. But it’ll feel like a threesome gone wrong as you’ll just be looking at the reef rather than being a part of it.
The GBR is visible from space. Don’t take our word for it—head up that way and see for yourself. Instead of squinting through a tiny airplane window, jump out of that bad boy for a better view. As wind relentlessly pummels your face and howls past your ears, you’ll hit terminal velocity in a sixty-second free fall that’ll seem like a lifetime. Once you’re jolted to a stop with the release of your chute, you’ll feel suspended in midair, soaking up the views of this world wonder.
The Great Barrier Reef is almost the size of Texas. It’s not Bush country though—in fact the reef’s residents are pretty pissed that Dubya’s environmental policies shat all over their home. Already called the “So-So Barrier Reef,” the GBR is slowly dying. Get there before it’s gone.
THE AMAZON IS A PORTAL TO a mysteriously green world unlike anything you’ve ever imagined. Covering 2.3 million square miles across nine countries, here you can learn how to suck drinking water from vines and how to tell the difference between tree bark that kills and bark that’s rumored to cure cancer. You’ll cook over an open fire, spice up lunch with coconut-flavored grubs, and wash it down with mint-flavored ants.
The vast majority of the jungle is in Brazil, but digging through greenery there is fannypacker-heavy and, consequently, more expensive. Cheaper and farther off the gringo trail, the Bolivian Amazon is concentrated in the northeast of the country. There are forty-six indigenous tribes in and around the 7,320-square-mile Madidi National Park—most of which is closed off to tourism. To get there, hop a flight from La Paz to the small airport in Rurrenabaque, or risk a twenty-four-hour bus ride on the world’s most dangerous road.
Rurrenabaque is a little like the American Wild West, a tiny dusty town without an ATM where locals wear a jaguar tooth as a badge of pride. It’s also where intrepid travelers hook up with true jungle men to go in deep. It’s almost sure death—not to mention illegal—to go exploring alone. The state minimum for a trip is a cool Bs 300 (about $45) per person per day, a small price to play Tarzan. You can book a trip through one of the many agencies that line the streets of Rurrenabaque. Most offer packages that include sit-down meals and a hammock at one of the several ecolodges in Madidi. Lush mountains and rolling banana plantations surround the park, and you’ll get there by a two-hour boat ride from town.
FLYING DOWN THE SIDE OF an 11,800-foot mountain—the world’s most dangerous road, the Highway of Death or Camino de la Muerte—is part sightseeing, part adventure, part death wish, and all completely bad ass. Hop on a bike and try your hand at staying alive.
The road starts at an icy Andean summit and skids to a halt in the steamy Amazonian Yungas. The gravel will kick you in the face as you narrowly grab hairpin curves. The handlebars will shake, but tell fear to fuck itself. You’ll whiz past grazing llamas, jaw-dropping cliff sides, and a drug checkpoint. Better settle for a Huari beer on the bus back to La Paz, but you’ll have earned it. Barreling down a mountain at sixty miles per hour is as sweaty and exhilarating as it sounds.
For less than $100, agencies in La Paz can hook you up with wheels, gear, a guide, and perks like free lunch and a post-ride swim. When you’re choosing an agency, remember that the cheaper the tour, the cheaper your equipment, and the bigger your balls must be to make up for it. Over the years, about twenty cyclists never got to the swim. But thousands more have given risk the middle finger and now sport a “I’m a Death Road Survivor” T-shirt as a symbol of their rite of passage. With a little panache and good form, you can easily kick this road to the curb—and live to tell the story.
If you’re looking to head out with just a guide and the pack on your back, some agencies offer more rugged trips. A couple offer full-on survival courses where you brave it with nothing but a machete and iodine tablets.
You will learn how to feed yourself in the wild, sleep with one eye open, and stand your ground in jungle confrontations (since most anacondas aren’t familiar with dismissive phrases like “fuck off”). It’s important to figure out what type of experience you want to have and ask as many questions as it takes to find the right guide or tour company.
If you want to bushwhack your way through the muddy brush, pick up a machete at one of the many hardware stores in town. And the bugs are brutal—stock up on DEET to keep the bites at bay.
THE AMAZON IS LIKE A mystery grab bag of life, and when you reach in, sometimes you pull out a regular old toucan and other times, a fistful of fish with wings, floppyeyed frogs, and plants with feelings (if you are lucky enough to keep your hand while fiddling around in the Amazon bag, that is). Here are just a few animals that live in the world’s most cryptic jungle:
1. Emperor Tamarin—This guy would be tough competition come Mo-vember.
2. Wood-Eating Catfish—He may have been out of the office when all the other catfish got the “you’re not a beaver” memo.
3. T-Rex Leech—The dinosaur of bloodsuckers, this leech is very well endowed when it comes to teeth and unfortunately, very poorly endowed when it comes to the parts that matter.
4. Skydiving Ant—While ants can do all kinds of crazy things (kill you, for one), this species decided to up the ante by developing the ability to skydive using its ass for counterbalance. Now if it could film itself doing tandem jumps with ants too scared to take the plunge alone, we’d be pretty impressed.
5. Hoatzin—People call him the “stinkbird” because he smells like manure. As backpackers, we fully understand. We’d probably share a hostel dorm with him, go out for drinks a few times, and make him drunken pasta in the hostel kitchen before noticing any odor irregularities.
BUM A CUP OF KICKASS FROM our North American neighbor. Knock on Vancouver’s door on your way to Whistler Blackcomb, a monstrous snow resort that you can carve up until your lungs turn purple. Head down the street to Banff and load your ear canals with whitewater. And finally, get gluttonous in Quebec, the birthplace of the inevitable food coma, better known as “poutine.” This continental colossus spills adventure from every angle, with both winter and summer adrenalineloaded adventures, just waiting to be manhandled.
THE HOLY BEHEMOTH OF North American mountains, Whistler Blackcomb of British Columbia is often regarded as the greatest snow resort in the world and is the place to put your shred sled to the test. Clip in your boots and carve a deep trail down these twin mondo mountains.
With over 8,000 combined acres of boardable trails, the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains ensure that even the most serious of you snowbums will be happily bombing down the slopes all season long. Dozens of lifts lead to the 200-plus trails of fresh Vancouver snow canvases that await your craftsmanship. Carve your tightest S’s and master your jump turns down Blackcomb’s world-rated “Couloir Extreme”—a fifty-two degree test of how much hell you’re willing to put your thighs through. Get tricky on the mountain’s Olympic-size superpipe, or head over to Whistler and race through the “Peak-to-Creek” perimeter tour trail of over four miles! Can’t decide which mountain you want to tear up today? Get on the “Peak 2 Peak” gondola (ganjala, for you multitaskers), a record-breaking scenic ride of a lifetime that connects Blackcomb and Whistler together.
SOFTEN UP YOUR SHIRT-piercing nips with Canada’s trifecta of fat. Quite possibly Quebec’s greatest contribution to the planet in all of human history, poutine is a big ol’ ball of cholesterol that can kill lesser men ill-prepared for its addicting glory. With globs of fatty juices and dripping in sticky goo, somewhere beneath its artery-clogging exterior is a Canadian treat that warms you to the core.
It consists of three ingredients, piled on top of one another: (1) French fries, (2) gravy, and (3) cheese. The fries are piping hot, golden, and somehow still crispy despite the gravy that covers them. As thick and sweet as jelly, the gravy kicks KFC further into the tunnel of shame. And the cheese? Little nuggets of smooth dairy deliciousness melt into the pile and make little squeaky sounds with every bite. Since just reading the ingredients will make you fatter, it is truly a wonder how Canada’s morbid obesity rates are so low. What’s more, poutine is normally just a side dish to a main meal! You can essentially get the stuff anywhere across the country, short of Indian restaurants, from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. most days.
THE BANFF REGION OF ROCKY
Alberta, Canada, is notorious for its world-class whitewater and ferocious river rapids. A wise group of travelers (we) once said that the best way to know your mountainous surroundings is to raft right through them. Grab your oars and hold on tight— we’re gonna get you all Banff-ed and bothered.
Sometimes closed off to commercial rafting companies and always gushing with dangerously extreme levels of rapids, the Kicking Horse is the only river around here really worth paddling. The river carves right through Kicking Horse Canyon in three tiers: upper, middle, and lower. Naturally, the upper canyon (and the beginning of your trip) is friendly enough to find your groove. Miles downriver, the Portage and Shotgun rapids will quickly awaken the extremist in you. From here on, the fun and games morph into panic and survival; the bottom of the middle canyon and entire lower canyon are filled with challenging rapids that often arrive unannounced. Totaling over twenty miles, with a consistent water temperature just above freezing, Kicking Horse River will quickly put some commendable rafting experience under your belt.
As you progress downriver, you’ll start holding onto your oar for dear life (as you should) while smacking into Class III and IV+ Rapids. What do these numbers mean? Quite simply, an association of all things adventurous decided to make an internationally recognized scale of how badly the water will kick your ass—aptly named the “International Scale of River Difficulty.” The scale divides rapids into classes from I through VI; I being a leisurely bitch paddle over waves that wouldn’t disrupt a snorkeler’s breathing; VI being a green-conscious government’s alternative to the electric chair—almost certain death. Just so you know what you’re diving into, the lower part of the Kicking Horse, starting with Portage and Shotgun rapids, are rated a consistent III to IV and can rush to a V during unpredictable parts of the sport’s summer season. If you’ve got the rapids in a chokehold and your adventurous side needs more of a tickle, ask your guides to let you swim once the tour is over. Trying to backstroke down an icy-cold Class III rapid should sufficiently fire up your veins.
From mild to wild, the Kicking Horse River is easily the toughest route through the canyon. Take a one-day tour down or split the trip into a multiday excursion. However you plan to paddle, once you reach the bottom, we guarantee you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world.
INDIA’S 1.2-MILLION-SQUARE-mile landscape is jammed to the brim with people, color, sounds, ruins, pungent smells, and cows. To navigate through the randomly moving madness, India has chosen the almighty rickshaw as its national mode of transport. The screeching horns of these wobbly threewheeled, seven-horsepower mini covered wagons—decorated with enough kitsch to plaster the Taj Mahal—can be heard from Sikkim to Kerala. As common as curry, one of these bumpin’ taxis can be flagged down on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. The moment you set foot in a rickshaw and your stomach starts churning from the nerve shattering ride, you’ll fully understand that every injury-free ride is the collaborative work of Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Confucius, and at least a couple X-men. Okay, ready to race one of these janky things across India?
Since 2006, crazy motherfuckers known as “The Adventurists” have put on the “Rickshaw Run.” The idea is to sup-up one of these tricycles of death and race it from one side of India to the other, stopping only for local cricket matches, maintenance, and liters of Kingfisher. Your chances of capsizing, crashing, or sputtering out are pretty damn good, but there’s no doubt that your Indian odyssey will kick the shit out of any monkey-petting trip your friend did. You and up to three daredevil teammates can sign up and score a licensed rickshaw for about $2,000. The annual event is held over the course of two weeks, once in summer (our winter) and once in winter (our summer). Spots fill up a year in advance, so plan accordingly.
Participating in an event like this takes you where no bus, train, or plane can go. You’ll be pedal-to-the-metal through some of India’s grittiest, prettiest, and most surprising locales. It takes mad skills to fix a rick’, and you’ll learn them from the country’s greasiest badasses. Also, it’s not every day that locals see a foreigner barreling through town in a rickshaw. The novelty can be your ticket to anything from meals to wedding proposals.
While it’s sweet to ’shaw your way across the country, it’s not “The Rickshaw Run” if the vehicles aren’t tricked out in crazy-as-fuck designs. Participants send images or ideas to pimp their ’rick in advance, and when they show up to compete, they’re given the rickshaw of their dreams. It’s mandatory to go for a test drive three days before the event to learn how to handle the beast, and dummy crashing it to test out that helmet mom made you pack isn’t a bad idea. Once the race begins, you’re on your own to figure shit out.
The Adventurists put on a slew of insane events in addition to the Rickshaw Run, from Indonesia to Mongolia to Peru. Each one begins and ends with a party that would make Genghis Khan blush, and all participants are VIP.
The Rickshaw Run isn’t only fun and (deadly) games. As soon as you start your engine, you’re raking in the dough for charities across the world. In the past years, these events have raised nearly $6 million. Every team is responsible for raising money, and the funds will often be distributed directly to the villages you’ll pass through on the run. This means that the same kid who kicked your ass at cricket could learn to read this year because you were crazy enough to ride a rickshaw through his town.
WANT TO JUST KEEP DOING crazy things after you throw the rick-shaw-in park? While people in Pamplona are all about running away from the bulls, in India, running at the bulls is the name of the game. Jallikattu is a bull-taming game that dates back 3,500 years. In ancient Tamil Nadu, the sport was known as “hugging the bull,” though there’s nothing loving about it. “Be gored or be spared” is the mantra of many a brave/stupid Jallikattu participant at the Harvest Festival of Pongal, held every year in the middle of January. The goal of the main event is to chase down a pissed-off bull unarmed and grab the bundles of money tied to its horns. Back in the day, kings and chieftains determined the worthiness of their daughter’s prospective grooms by seeing if they could survive this blood sport. The event was made illegal a while ago, but the Tamil Nadu government has since lifted the ban in exchange for increased animal screenings and the promise of ambulances on site.
CANYONING IS ONE OF THE most extreme sports out there. The concept is simple: use all means necessary to reach the bottom of a canyon. The execution is difficult: you’ll have to rappel, slide, climb, jump, and dive to make it out alive. Once you’re in this bitch, there’s no pulling out. You can’t just roll down a canyon anywhere there’s a crack. The conditions must be just right, and in Interlaken, you’ll find the perfect balance of steep cliffs, big drops, and roaring waterfalls.
Jagged rocks, unimaginable heights, freezing-cold streams, and no sign of immediate escape are what Interlaken has to offer. So why would anybody voluntarily do this? Because it makes you feel alive, and you can only do it (and survive) in a few places around the globe. Canyoning (known in the United States as canyoneering) has been around for thousands of years but not always as a sport. Originally, Native Americans found refuge, shelter, and food in the deep granite and sandstone canyons of America’s west coast. It wasn’t until the 1960s that death-wish adventurers started exploring the ins and outs of Mother Nature’s deep, gushing crevices for sport.
In Interlaken, your adventures in the canyon begin at the top of a mountain. You’ll first change into protective gear and receive some brief safety guidelines (i.e., don’t jump off any fifty-foot cliffs without first telling a guide), then you’ll hike for a good half hour until you really feel alone in the canyon; that’s when the fun begins. The first dive into the freezing mountain water effectively evaporates whatever balls you have left from the provided nuthugging wetsuit. The next three hours consists of jumping, diving, rappelling, sliding, swimming, and shivering down the canyon with a small group of as-crazy-as-you comrades. It’s an adventure of a lifetime, so you better be prepared. Tuck in your elbows as you go down nature’s own paved slides; they’re gonna get bumpy. Keep your knees bent on the cliff jumps; the landing pools can be shallow (remember to canyonball). Don’t fuck with your carabiners; rappels are a long way down. Bring a towel; you’re gonna get soaked. And definitely buy the individually edited HD video; nobody’s ever gonna believe you did this.
Interlaken knows your time and budget are limited, so your choices are simplified thanks to three organizations—Interlaken Adventure, Outdoor Interlaken, and Alpin Center. All three offer similar rates of around $200 for the trip. Since each company specializes in one specific canyon, choosing your package depends on which canyon you decide to conquer. Some are smaller and shorter, others are terrifyingly large. If you want to go for the biggest and baddest, choose Chli Schliere. Enclosed in tight rock walls over 300 feet tall and defined by huge waterfalls, these are the tallest jumps and slides in the region. With extremely challenging 100-plus-foot rappels, this thing will quickly show you what real canyoning is all about.
NO ONE KNOWS EXACTLY why it’s there, how it was built, or what type of magic it can harness, but a trip to South America is incomplete without a climb to Machu Picchu. The world is full of over-hyped tourist spots; this isn’t one of them. This massive Incan complex solidly deserves its title as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Just sixty miles north of Cusco, Peru, the capital city is where the mind-blowing pilgrimage begins. Get there by flying into Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport, by bus, or big pimp it and float into Peru via the Amazon.
OTP TIP: Machu Picchu sits between two mountain peaks—Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu Montaña. Uncrust your eyes before dawn to see the clouds rising over the ancient complex from atop either peak. You can hire a guide at the park entrance should you need some early morning trekking assistance.
OTP TIP: An ISIC (International Student Identity Card) will get you 50 percent off park entrance admission. Tickets are only good for the day they were issued—if you puss out, consider your cash gone.
American explorer Hiram Bingham found more than 100 skeletons when a local boy led him to the complex in 1911.The Incans had mysteriously constructed 140 temples, mausoleums, vaults, and houses out of giant stones with their bare hands, right into steep Andean slopes.
No one knows why the city was abandoned thousands of years ago (nor can anyone determine what Bingham was doing following little boys around). Some people think aliens built it to bring civilization to man, and others believe its structures form a psychedelic astrological calendar.
While Machu’s downfall is shrouded in mystery, one thing is known for sure: The Incans didn’t fuck around when it came to stairs. Any real trip to Machu Picchu includes 100 or so flights of uneven stone stairs to get to the complex entrance. If that doesn’t set your ass on fire, you can also do a three-to-five-day trek along the Urubamba River to fully earn the insane view. The Incan Trail is tried and true, and a spot on an organized trek with any number of agencies in Cusco will run you about $500 to $600. Prices include park entrance, a tent, food, a Peruvian guide who knows his shit, and a donkey to carry yours.
IF YOU’VE HAD YOUR FILL OF MOUNTAINS IN PERU, CHANGE UP the scenery by hitching a ride to Brazil via the Amazon. Much more scenic than a cloudy plane ride, the Amazon is over 4,000 miles long, can be up to twenty-five miles wide, and is filled with plants and animals even Wikipedia has a hard time describing. The major artery of South America’s heart, the Amazon is sometimes the only road that connects points A and B. You can pay for a bus or a flight to get to the jungle, or milk it like a jaguar cub and get there for free. All it takes are some courage and sea legs.
Everyone has seen the played-out pictures of Machu Picchu by now. But no picture can capture the crispness of Peruvian mountain air, the size and scale of the complex, and the deserved soreness raging through your body the next day.
OTP TIP: Ditch the crowd all together and tame those mountains with a map and sheer willpower. You don’t need a permit to do the Salkanty or Choquequirao trails sin guia and the donkeys could use a breather.
The most-traveled route on the Amazon is from Iquitos, Peru, to Manaus, Brazil, with a connection in Leticia, Colombia. These rivers are technically tributaries of the Amazon, which begins for real in Manaus, but have plenty of piranhas, pink dolphins, tiny ports, and jungly shores to keep your senses occupied en route.
Prep your Spanish sailor lingo and stroll on up to the port in Iquitos, flex your guns and tell them how you “worked on your uncle’s sailboat that one summer.” Though some boats ferry up to 600 passengers, they’re primarily cargo ships that carry anything from TVs and sound systems to chickens and grains. You’ll probably sacrifice your back for several days hauling cargo, but if you know your rice and beans, weaseling your way into the kitchen may be an option.
Chillin’ on one of these boats is an experience that romantically sits somewhere between a no-holds-barred jungle safari and an eighteenth-century prison ship. Catch some gnarly bugs, learn a couple samba moves, and drink your way into a mariachi sunset. You will sleep in a hammock on the deck and love every moment of your successful labor-for-travel trade.
A NATION THAT NORMALLY lets it all hang out, Scotland has many best-kept secrets, one of which is the ninety-six-mile hike through Rob Roy country along the West Highland Way (WHW). The “Way” begins in Milngavie (pronounced Mul Guy) just north of Glasgow and ends in downtown Fort William at a statue of a man rubbing his tired Scottish feet. The trek will take you through Grimm’s fairy tale–like forests, around the banks of bonnie Loch Lomond, up steep and rocky hillsides, across farms with curious sheep, and deep into the eerie and isolated Rannoch Moor.
Most trekkers head out in May when the weather is best, the baby lambs are rambunctious, and the midges (small mosquito-y bugs that swarm and bite the bloody hell out of you) aren’t prevalent. For a more extreme trek, schedule your hike in the winter with gale-force winds and snowdrifts that obscure the path. An ice pick, instead of a hippie walking stick, is recommended during this time.
If hiking ninety-six miles isn’t enough, you can tack on another crazy seventy-nine miles along the Great Glen Way and cuddle with the Loch Ness Monster, who presumably hangs out in Inverness, the hike’s endpoint. There are also plenty of day trips along the way, such as climbing Ben Nevis and Ben Lomond, as well as several other munros (a Scottish mountain with a height over 3,000 feet).
An unspoken mandate of the West Highland Way is to stuff yourself stupid on hearty Scottish food while covering those daily half- (and sometimes full-) marathon distances. One of the iconic landmarks near Loch Lomond is the 300-year-old pub, The Drovers Inn.
This haunted, tumble-down establishment is where cattle drovers stopped for a pint and some haggis as they moved their cattle down from the Highlands for sale and export. Vegetarians wanting to try the local fare can order the neaps and tatties vegetarian haggis, or Scotch broth soup.
The Rowardennan Hotel, another stop along the Way, offers up a meal with a view overlooking the eastern shores of Loch Lomond. The food tastes like manna, and the beer is perfect for washing down your blister-numbing ibuprofen. If your feet call it quits, the hotel offers cheap bunk beds to hold you over until you feel Braveheart-good again.
While staying at bed-and-breakfasts is an option, it’s cheaper (and more fun) to pitch a tent and camp your way through the hike. Per Scottish law, wild camping is allowed except in places where it is posted otherwise, specifically Rannoch Moor, as long as you pick up after your grizzly self and use a civilized camp stove. If indoor plumbing sounds attractive every once in a while, there are designated campsites (with food options nearby) and hostels scattered along the trail, as well.
If you’re partial to pristine streams, mossy pine forests, views of Scottish lochs, and glimpses of feral goats and shaggy cows, coupled with giant blisters, missing toenails, and burning muscles, pull up your man-skirt and get trekking.
PEOPLE CONSUME SOME pretty nasty shit on planet earth. From black pudding in the U.K. (not chocolaty in the least) to baby mice wine in Korea, the gag factor is sky high. Always up for competition, the Scots throw their hat into the ring with haggis, a delightful national treasure you’ll soon learn to puke up with Scottish pride.
What the “Pluck”?
Haggis is made up of sheep’s “pluck,” or the heart, liver, and lungs of Mary’s little lamb. Chefs mash them up with onions, oatmeal, suet, and spices, and moisten the mash with stock before shoving it into the animal’s emptied stomach. At which point, it’s simmered in stock for about three hours before being dumped onto the plates of hungry, red-faced Scots. As Scotland’s national dish, declining an offering of haggis would be unpatriotic.
Hag-story
The first written haggis recipe was found in 1430 in Lancashire in Northwest England, so the nasty train to haggisville has been pulling in and out of the station for a long ass time. Haggis got so popular that in 1787, Robert Burns wrote a poem about it. His “Address to Haggis” points out that true connoisseurs will eat it with “neaps and tatties,” turnips or rutabagas and boiled and mashed potatoes. Today, people eat it with whatever they want and wash it down with Scotch, a pint of beer, or whatever alcohol is around to effectively neutralize the taste of sheep insides.
Hag on This
Scottish restaurants have interpreted haggis in all sorts of ways. In snooty restaurants, try the “Flying Scotsman,” a chicken breast hugging a lump of haggis. And since everything is better with bacon, when the “Flying Scotsman” puts on a bacon kilt, you have the dish known as “Chicken Balmoral.” Just when you vegetarians thought you were off the hook, since the ’60s, vegetarian haggis has been produced with vegetables and various other fillings. Step into a supermarket in Scotland, and you’ll have your pick of the haggis litter.
Haggis is as popular as Braveheart, and filling your stomach with other stomachs is almost mandatory.
MOST THRILL-SEEKING BACK-packers first experience Africa by way of South Africa, a country that mashes together some of the best extreme adventures available worldwide. Sure you can Jeep around on a safari, but here are three equally amazing ways to work at least one near-death experience into your trip.
Have yourself an adrenaline picnic atop Cape Town’s Table Mountain, a landmark you can either admire from the beach, take a cable car to ascend, or (if you’re done being a pussy) climb like a rabid beast. Tackle the tougher (adorably named) routes such as Double Jeopardy or Mary Poppins and Her Great Umbrella to prove your prowess. Once your feet are on the mountain’s defining plateau (the “table”), peek through the tablecloth of clouds to get tasty views of the Indian and Atlantic oceans, Robben Island (where Mandela was imprisoned), and of all of Cape Town. If your inner junkie hungers for more, have yourself an abseiling adventure and rappel off the side of the mountain. Ropes chaffing your baby-bottom? Diving into Kamikaze Canyon’s natural pools should fix you right up.
To nail down unique sleeping arrangements, rev your flaccid calves and take on the Hoerikwaggo Trail from Table Mountain to Cape Point, which includes a stop in the Orange Kloof Forest. While wild camping is forbidden on Table Mountain, you can spend the night in one of the designated camp areas at Orange Kloof Tented Camps on trail starting from the Silvermine Dam. These camps hook you up with everything you need so you can pass out under the Table, safari-style.
In South Africa, people don’t just catch waves, they hunt down massive, rolling aqua giants and shred them apart, savoring every bubbling bit. Show off your mad surfing skills by tearing through some of the best waves in the world. For surfing near Cape Town, grab the commuter rail out to Muizenberg, where you can rent wetsuits and boards (and instruction if you need it). Keep your head above water and your ears open for shark sirens.
To get deep into the local surf culture, head to Jeffreys Bay (JBay to the natives), near Port Elizabeth. You won’t find too many tourists (unless you go during the Billabong surf festival in July), but you will find enough waves to slap you silly until the sun goes down.
To tackle the biggest breed of wave around, head to Dungeons in Hout Bay. Thirty-foot swells are on the menu at Cape Hout, which is best reached by boat from nearby Cape Town. The Red Bull Big Wave Africa surf competition takes over some time between early May and mid-August, depending on the waves. Watch the pros wrestle these daemons for inspiration.
If the shark tunnel at the local aquarium is the closest you’ve been to a Great White, get ready to loosen your bowels with the terrifying fun of shark cage diving in the waters of South Africa, where the finned fishies swim. Most expeditions leave from Gansbaai, a fishing village near “Shark Alley.” The Alley is a narrow channel between two small islands where sharks love to chomp on the Cape Fur seals that congregate in the area. No need to be dive certified—just make sure you have an intense desire to piss in a wetsuit when a Great White slams up against the cage.
THESE PEAKS DON’T CARE IF you have the agility of a rhesus monkey, the sticky toes of a tree frog, or arms like Arnold; they will gloriously ravage you to the core regardless. Checking any one of these mountains off your climbing list will instantly elevate you to the status of climbing royalty.
K2—Border of China and Pakistan (8,612 meters)
Nickname: “The Savage”
Famous for: Second-highest peak in the world; second-highest fatality rate (one out of every four people die trying to reach the summit); has never been climbed in the winter.
KILIMANJARO—Tanzania (5,895 meters)
Nickname: “The Roof of Africa”
Famous for: Highest in Africa; comprised of three volcanoes; not that hard to climb, but a legendary trek.
BAINTHA BRAKK—Pakistan (7,285 meters)
Nickname: “The Ogre”
Famous for: Almost vertical ascent (its South Face rises 3,000 meters across only 2,000 meters); craggy as can be; most bear-infested camp areas.
MOUNT EVEREST—Nepal (8,850 meters)
Nickname: Listen, it’s like the Chuck Norris of mountains, so a nickname would be beneath it.
Famous for: Highest mountain peak in the world.
FITZROY—Border of Chile and Argentina, Andes (3,375 meters)
Nickname: “Frigid Fitzgerald”
Famous for: Not a grower or a shower, just icy as fuck, avalancheprone, and jagged; averages only one ascent per year.
