Go Green Travel Green

Rotorua, New Zealand is the place to be for geothermal activity. There are more hot springs, thermal pools, sulphur spas, mud pools, and volcanic valleys than you can count. Determine whether Te Puia, Wai-o-Tapu, Waimangu, or Hells Gate is best for your trip.

Hells Gate Rotorua Wai Ora Spa is one of New Zealand’s best geothermal parks. This post provides a review of the park, spa, and mud bath experience.

When backpacking in South America these are some of the best 5 activities to participate in. Be it hiking, surfing, or extreme mountain biking this post describes it all.

Review of Rainbow Springs plus pictures and information about the Kiwi bird in Roturoa, New Zealand. See photos of this noctural animal plus lots of other native birds.

Best of our New Zealand Trip. Our favorite foods, sites, and more.

Tomorrow we travel to New Zealand.
We head from Minneapolis to Los Angeles (where we have a 3.5 hour layover) then switch airlines and board an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland. The flight from LAX to Auckland is 12 or 13 hours long and leaves LA at 10pm. I share this because numerous people [...]

This is a guest post by Brooke Lusk, who finds a great deal of joy in meeting new people and animals, enjoying good music, and traveling in her new home state of Oregon. Some of her favorite ways to stay environmentally friendly are testing homemade/natural beauty recipes, composting, and supporting local farmers and small businesses [...]

Falling icicles kill people all of the time — especially in Chicago and Russia. In fact, death by icicle goes back to at least 1776. Here are 10 chilling tales of people killed and injured by falling icicles, ice dams, and roof snow.

We spent a lovely weekend in Tallinn, although we don’t have pictures to prove it because, along with our backpacks and travel guide, our cameras were on the desk in our dorm room — packed for our planned Saturday departure…. After all, when you look back on your life, are you more likely to remember what you did during those 7 days in the office, or what you saw during that week as you delved deeper into the culture of a new country?

I’m still not quite sure what to make of the world’s first religious theme park, but it was worth the trip for me. Where else can you pose with a life-size statue of a prostitute, dine on falafel, watch a dance show, and see a gigantic Jesus rise out of a mountain to the soundtrack of the Hallelujah Chorus?

I was browsing the internet recently in search of an article for my Spanish class assignment when I came across this article (it’s in Spanish) from Clarin.com, an Argentine news agency, about the “ingenious” plan hatched by Chinese supermarket owners…. It turns out there’s a huge black market for coins in Argentina, which I was blissfully unaware of during my travels, that store owners are currently forced to turn to in order to have adequate change.

Unlike in Argentina, where we encountered very few signs about trash, pollution, and recycling, in Belize we saw quite a few. Perhaps this is because Belizeans are much more dependent on the sea for their well-being than Argentineans are.

“What are you doing here?” a local teenager asked us after he learned we were from the United States.
Trelew isn’t exactly the top spot on most “Places to Visit in Argentina” lists. But perhaps it should be.
Situated between Puerto Madryn, Punta Tombo, and Gaiman (a Welsh village with teahouses), Trelew is a great stop for [...]

While I loved the opportunity to take lots of cute photos of penguins at Punta Tombo, I was struck with the dilemmas of being an environmentally conscious traveler…. Whether it’s bringing a reusable water bottle to the airport, parking further away rather than driving in circles looking for a parking spot at the mall, or wrapping presents in the Sunday comics, every little bit helps.

The wine route turned out to be a run-down major road, with cement trucks whizzing by at 70 mph, barely swerving to avoid us and kicking up dust and spewing exhaust in our faces…. We tagged along for 15 minutes during which I learned 1) you should always store wine on the first floor of your house and the bottle should be kept horizontal and 2) when you buy wine at the store, take a bottle from the back of the shelf because it’s been exposed to less light.

Transient Nature In part because of the changing politics and to high cost of living, moving is the only constant in D.C. If you’re not from D.C. and/or you don’t have family there, chances are you arrive in D.C., stay for maybe 3 or 4 years, and move out of the city…. Safety Issues Most parts of D.C. are safe — despite the tourists who clutch their purses and backpacks to their chest like anyone of the fellow metro passengers will rip it from them — but you know the city isn’t totally safe when USPS/UPS/FedEx refuses to leave packages on stoops in the city as they may get stolen.

I’m determined not to let that happen to me, and I’m a bit nervous because I need to pass a “knowledge test” about Minnesota driving laws in order to get a new license…. I even correctly answer the question about how to pass a snow plow (hint: you don’t flash your brights and honk to let the snow plow know you’re coming, nor do you floor it and speed blindly through the snow cloud).

After exploring the extensive beer section at the local grocery store in search a local bottle of wine and turning up only an aqua blue bottle of Boone’s Farm, we gave up and decided to seek assistance…. She was slightly less puzzled by our request for wine than Bud had been, and pointed out a huge bottle of $9.99 Sweedish Hill “Doobie Blues” and another of “Jack Ass Red, local wines named after the vineyard’s pet donkey.

Elizabeth and I had arrived in Hurghada, Egypt after a nightmarish plane ride from Moscow on which 1) I got sick from the fumes, and 2) a drunk Russian man in the seat next to mine repeatedly passed out, resting his head on my shoulder, while his friends across the aisle looked on a laughed…. Our “three star” hotel — where the shower, on full force, dribbled water like a leaky pipe — was staffed by young Egyptian men who were practically fluent in Russian, though they’d never formally studied it, and their English was good.

I couldn’t help but notice a display for Coca-Cola’s new Drink 2 Wear “sustainable” apparel Stuart Kronauge, vice president of marketing at Coca-Cola North America said , “If the 200 million Wal-Mart shoppers in the U.S. purchase these shirts, they will help us reuse and divert more than 700 million bottles from the waste stream.”… And maybe I’m wrong here, but my best guess is that it takes a lot more resources to produce these plastic shirts than it does regular cotton shirts.

Just glad we got a spot inside (though I imagine the porch is wonderful on a sunny summer day) because it was chilly out next to the lake…. The Lake Agnes tea house is a great stop and if you feel up for it (we did after some tea) the Little Beehive Trail provides a stunning view overlooking the the valley below.

As much as I love the shock and awe of a coyote running across my path while hiking or the tingle in my tastebuds upon sampling some (locally raised) bison carpaccio, there is nothing like returning to the comforts of home after a trip. Here are 10 of my favorites:

The feel of my [...]

Until this week, the closest I’d come to the inside of a cruise ship is the Titanic via a movie theater screen - which isn’t exactly what you want to associate with your cruising experience. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I boarded Holland America’s ms Ryndam.
Now that I’ve been aboard for nearly [...]

We’re traveling around Alaska and Western Canada, so our posts for the next few weeks will focus on environmentally-friendly travel, food, and activities in those areas.
I had high expectations for Vancouver. I’d never been to British Columbia, but I had heard great things about it; it’s green (literally - tons of trees), the people are [...]

Two weeks ago, we flew to West Palm Beach to visit Elizabeth’s grandfather. It wasn’t the greenest trip, but we’re of the mindset that little things make a big difference.
Here are five simple things we did to reduce our environmental impact.

Getting there: Took a direct flight to the closest airport. We’re frugal travelers so we [...]

Have you ever been so spontaneous that you literally just left? No planning, no packing. Just leaving. Have you ever done that?
I have. By accident. We were in Russia and wanted to take a weekend trip to Estonia, but upon arriving at the bus station learned that there was [...]