Mexico's Crystal Forest
Smith Journal - Adventure
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4y ago
No, this isn't Superman's Fortress of Solitude. But the Cave of Crystals beneath the Mexican desert is every bit as otherworldly. There's no denying it: the Cave of Crystals looks and sounds like a fictional location – somewhere Superman might go to get away from it all. So we were surprised to discover that underground crystal forests like this are actually real, and not just the product of a comic book writer's imagination. The giant crystals in these pictures were discovered by chance during excavation work in a lead and silver mine in the Mexican state of Chihuahua back in 1985. Their s ..read more
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The World’s Longest Hiking Trail
Smith Journal - Adventure
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4y ago
Covering a whopping 24,000 kilometres, it’s certainly not for the faint of heart (or foot).  Between the windswept and unforgiving coastlines of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, the Great Lakes region of Ontario, the majesty of the Rocky Mountains, and the icy regions beyond, there’s little doubt Canada offers up some incredible scenery. It’s easy to think of such varied and distant regions as distinct and separate, linked only by highways and flight routes, with a bit of leg work at the end of either. Twenty-four years ago, however, a scheme was hatched to change the perception that Canada’s ..read more
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Bunker Down
Smith Journal - Adventure
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4y ago
Did you know Switzerland’s mountain valleys are littered with between 10,000 and 15,000 heavily fortified and occasionally well-camouflaged bunkers? With a long history of political neutrality and an army knife that features (among its more deadly devices) a small nail file and dedicated fish scaler, Switzerland’s military probably doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Case in point: did you know Switzerland’s mountain valleys are littered with between 10,000 and 15,000 heavily fortified and occasionally well-camouflaged bunkers? Photographer Leo Fabrizio knows all too well. He spent four ye ..read more
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Milleninium Falcons
Smith Journal - Adventure
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4y ago
Pigeons beware: Adam Baz is bringing falconry out of the forest and into the city. This story appears in volume 33 of Smith Journal, on sale now. It’s Monday morning and the Los Angeles freeways are as snarled as ever. Adam Baz is driving his truckful of co-workers across town to the Burbank headquarters of Warner Bros Music. Then he’ll take the team up to the roof, where they’ll get on with the task at hand: scaring the bejesus out of pigeons. Baz’s falconry business, Hawk on Hand, grew out of his work in wildlife conservation. As a qualified avian biologist, he’d always had a fascination ..read more
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Meet the Low-Tide Fisherman of Sanur
Smith Journal - Adventure
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4y ago
Fishing 101: don’t forget your helmet and cigarettes. French photographer Laurent Laporte noticed something weird on his recent trip to Bali. Every morning at Sanur, on the southeast coast, dozens of strangely dressed fishermen would wade into the water during low tide. Turns out they were fishing for Baronang, a local delicacy that Laporte describes (with an inaudible Gallic sniff) as “nothing special”. The complicated, jerry-rigged clothing is just good sense: hats have little bait boxes attached (for easy storage), there’s a basket to keep your catch, and cotton face masks protect agains ..read more
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No Ropes: the Traditional, Fearless Art of Chinese Rock Climbing
Smith Journal - Adventure
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4y ago
In a small village in China, a group of “spider-men” and women free-climb massive cave walls for medicinal herbs. Just don’t look down. Ever had one of those nightmares where you’re clinging to something, dangling over a great height with nothing to catch you? Well it turns out one person’s nightmare can be another culture’s idea of a totally reasonable thing to do with your time: in Guizhou, China, a small group of people from the Miao tribe actually live their lives this way. Referred to as “spider men” by locals, they seem completely chill about their terrifying occupation – a style of ..read more
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The Company We Keep: G Adventures Founder Bruce Poon Tip on Travelling with a Conscience
Smith Journal - Adventure
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4y ago
How not to be a walking tourist stereotype in five easy steps. Though travelling the world in your early 20s is a right of passage for many, the gap year experience can conjure up unsavoury images of wild kids on raucous bus tours of Europe. After his own youthful sojourn through Asia, however, Canadian Bruce Poon Tip was inspired to start G Adventures, a small-group tour group company and social enterprise for more conscientious travellers. “I founded the company back in 1990 with nothing more than two credit cards and a burning desire to create an authentic, sustainable travel experienc ..read more
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Rare Aerial Snaps From the Coldest Place on Earth
Smith Journal - Adventure
by
5y ago
It’s pretty nippy in the Antarctic right now, so we’ll have to settle for tour guide Sam Edmonds' stunning overhead images of the frozen continent.  Sam Edmonds prefers to summer in the coldest place on earth. As a polar expedition guide, he escorts tourists braving the relatively balmy (but still borderline uninhabitable) Antarctic during the narrow window of time in which it’s safe(ish) to visit. That window is closed for now, but thankfully Edmonds is also an accomplished photographer who has managed to take some rare aerial photos of the frozen continent. He has kindly provided a compl ..read more
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The Basket Houses of Iraq
Smith Journal - Adventure
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5y ago
This water kingdom in southern Iraq was almost destroyed by Saddam Hussein – and its unique woven reed architecture along with it. But now they're both making a comeback.Once upon a time there was a water kingdom in southern Iraq called Maʻdān. Home to over half-a-million 'Marsh Arabs' who lived in houses on the water made from woven reeds, Maʻdānf was a thriving wetland community so fecund with life that locals referred to it as the ‘Garden of Eden’. Sadly Maʻdān was almost destroyed in 1991, when Saddam Hussein drained the marshes, forcing its inhabitants – who Hussein thought were being di ..read more
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The Abandoned Chinese Fishing Village
Smith Journal - Adventure
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5y ago
Back in the ’90s, this place was home to around 2,000 people. Now the Chinese ghost town of Houtouwan is blanketed by vines.  What was once a bustling fishing village, home to more than 2,000 people, is now a sea of verdant green. Houtouwan, located in the Shengsi Islands of China, has been abandoned since the early 1990s; the fishing community was struggling to compete with Shangai and so moved en masse to mainland China to seek out alternative employment. The story goes that a peek inside the deserted houses reveals furniture frozen in time, remaining just as it was placed when the inhabita ..read more
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