FEATURED OUTFITTER:
ACTIVE ADVENTURES
The keyword is ACTIVE. Whether it’s New Zealand, Australia or South America you are yearning to visit, the ACTIVE team has an adventure waiting for you. If over-programmed whirlwind tours in a bus crammed with other tourists is not for you, but you like having the details taken care of so you can spend quality time exploring, ACTIVE ADVENTURES may be the answer. I was fortunate to see the South Island of the other land down under on a two-week multi-sport holiday with ACTIVE NEW ZEALAND, and to enjoy a ten-day romp with ACTIVE SOUTH AMERICA through Costa Rica.
Groups are typically small—no larger than fourteen. Normally there are two guides, one bilingual, experienced professional with medical training and one local to facilitate getting to more remote settings. ACTIVE takes great pride in offering trips that get guests off the beaten path to show them “scenery in the raw.” They provide all the gear you need for each outdoor opportunity, be it river rafting, kayaking, backpacking, cycling or snorkeling so you don’t waste time getting outfitted. Love of the outdoors is at the heart of all the activities, but creature comforts are not ignored. Lodging is always comfortable clean and the food great. This enables you to get up each morning refreshed and eager for a new breathtaking adventure.
Kyle, a quintessential Kiwi, picked me up in a van with panoramic windows that would be used to cart our party of six on a less-traveled circuit around the South Island. Born and bred in Christchurch his father is a Maori chief and his mother a native white New Zealander. Like many of ACTIVE guides, leading groups is a lifestyle that Kyle loves not a passing fancy. Andrew Fairfax, the owner of ACTIVE, is a corporate lawyer gone wild. His mission is to allow the average person to do extraordinary things. The highlight of the trip for me was a two-day hut-hut trek into the Nelson-Lake region. We did not encounter another human in this primordial forest until we reached Angelus hut where we bedded down with a gaggle of international travelers. I simply could not have had this fine experience without a helping hand from Kyle and the support of ACTIVE NEW ZEALAND.
In Costa Rica, I traveled with my partner. These trips are great for singles who want to mingle and couples with different interests and levels of fitness. Our guide Yannick, of Belgium descent, is fluent in five languages, has lead tours throughout South America for years and loves what he does. Our driver, a Tico named Carlos, spoke little English, but negotiated rivers, steep mountains roads and mud holes with aplomb.
Rafting the Pacaure River stands out as the most exhilarating of our escapades, but the two-day stay at our tent beach camp on Playa Coyote was the capper. Phil Boorman, Andrew’s South American counterpart, spent a decade leading expeditions through remote Andean mountain trails and the rainforests of the Amazon basin. He helped build the fisherman’s house on this deserted strip of sand whose seafood café served as our waterhole for two days. Being lulled to sleep by purling waves and waking to a swim in tepid seas is my kind of holiday.
In 2004, ACTIVE SOUTH AMERICA opened up multi-sport holidays in, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. They like to take their people to places not discovered by the masses. The trip through the Bellavista Cloud Forest and the river canyons of Banos with rafting and tubing on the Rio Napo River in Ecuador sounds especially good to me.
I have not had the pleasure of going to OZ, but when I do I want it to be in an ACTIVE way. Australia is as big as the U.S. I wouldn’t want to attempt to see it all in two weeks. Much better to hike some of the forests, ride some of the trails, snorkel the reefs and kayak a few rivers to get an up close and personal feel of the place. That is the philosophy of the ACTIVE team—one that I embrace.
