Portillo

When my brothers and I were younger, my father used to always entertain the idea of spending a few summer weeks skiing in Chile. Though he never followed through on the idea, my desire to ski during the summer months has not wavered. The only problem with summer skiing is that there are very few places to ski and most of them are quite hard to get to. In the early summer months there are a handful of glacial ski areas that offer June skiing such as Whistler/Blackcomb and Mt. Hood but the amount of ski-able terrain is limited. That leaves me with the Andes in South America and New Zealand. In terms of convenience, Chile seems like the much more suitable destination.



When my dad used to talk about Chile, my brothers and I ended up researching a few places. The most famous of which is Portillo. Portillo is located nearest to Los Andes, about 100 miles from the Chilean capital city of Santiago. The Andes are the world's most rugged mountain range and have the most unpredictable weather of any mountainous region. Portillo is no different. With a top elevation of 4020 meters (well over 2 miles) the mountain is battered with over 25 feet of snow a season. In fact, a majority of Northern Hemisphere skiers use Portillo as a summer training mountain including the national ski teams of the United States, Italy and Austria.



Offering luxurious resort/spas, unbelievable terrain and a very modest 450 skier/day limit, Portillo is a prime location for shredding up the summer months.

Petra

The stone-cut city located on the slope of Mount Hor in Jordan has been something that has captivated me since I first saw it in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It lies in a basin among the mountains that form the large valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. Petra is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and was designated a World Heritage Site in 1985.

Archaeologists have determined that Petra was constructed by the Nabataeans, around 100 BC, as their capital city. The western world did not even know of its existence until 1812! While the history of the ancient city of Petra is amazing and worthy of it's own post, I can not move past the stunning beauty and the incomparable architectural feat. Considering the tools and technology available over 2100 years ago, the fact that this city was able to be completed is nothing short of miraculous.
Maybe I am enthralled with Petra because I always dreamed of being Indiana Jones, or at least his sidekick. Damn you Shia LaBeouf! I just can't imagine anything more epic than approaching Petra down this narrow canyon while riding on a camel and having my head wrapped up in a bedouin.

Seychelles

When I was in high school, my older brother asked for and received The Travel Book for Christmas one year. It was the most comprehensive traveling book I have ever seen in my entire life. It had a profile for every country and territory in the world along with travel tips and different sights and cultural activities that the authors recommend.

Anyways, the first place that truly captured my imagination was the island nation of Seychelles, located in the Indian Ocean equidistant from East Africa, the Arabian coast and India. The Seychelles are a popular vacation spot for Europeans because of the picturesque beaches and the world class resorts. Seychelles also used to be a British territory so the national language is English.

I spent years trying to convince my parents to let our family vacation to the Seychelles but the reality is that it is a very remote location and hard to get to...especially for Americans. Hopefully one day I will be able to say that I have been to the Seychelles because it is certainly a major goal of mine and currently the top of my list of places I want to see before I die.

Take the Road Less Traveled

As part of my Technology and Communication class, we are tasked with creating a blog. The content is completely open-ended, we just have to post at least five times throughout the quarter to get credit for completing the assignment. I took some time to think about what I would want to blog about considering I have no real prior blogging experience. Blogging about sports was what I had originally planned but I found it to be a bit cliche as well as too boring. I would not be breaking any news through my blog, neither are my opinions that important and mocking different players or teams would just make me an asshole. I decided to voice my opinion on traveling and different places I have desire to see. Do my opinions matter? Of course not. Do they have any reason to be taken at face value? Probably not, but if you are here you at least have a slight curiosity as to where I would place value in traveling too.