6 Amazing Outdoor Adventures To Try This Year While Traveling

04.01.2024 - 22:21 / forbes.com / Bora Bora

While relaxing on a beach with a good book, a cold beverage, and ten toes in the sand can be a recuperative and peaceful way to spend a vacation, sometimes a bold itinerary full of thrilling experiences is needed. Adventure travel is a smart way to go beyond our comfort zones, learn new things, and immerse ourselves into new cultures and landscapes.

From horseback riding every day in France to riding camels in the UAE to dog sledding in Sweden, keep reading to discover incredible outdoor adventures worth trying this year. Even if you hesitate to consider yourself an intrepid traveler, there are exciting experiences embraced that don’t necessarily require huge amounts of physical strength or emotional fortitude. So, yank those hiking boots out of storage, dust off your resolve, and get ready for a trip of a lifetime.

If French Polynesia, five archipelagoes in the Pacific Ocean that include some 130 islands, has always been on your bucket list, then make this the year that you treat yourself to a big adventure. Dream Yacht Worldwide sails to the South Pacific islands of Tahiti and Bora Bora, as well as others, on a week-long trip around the Society Islands.

Choose from a variety of voyage options, depending on budget, sailing expertise, and interests, and thank your lucky stars that you’ll get to enjoy snorkeling and kayaking, swimming with manta rays and sharks, and gazing up at the night sky. You’ll also have the opportunity to indulge in onshore activities like visits to pearl and vanilla farms, where likely you’ll feel the strange phenomenon of standing on land, after days at sea, which extends the visceral sensation of still being in motion, unmoored and bobbling along like a wayward coconut.

The Appalachian Trial has tempted many intrepid hikers, especially on the section that includes the 100-Mile Wilderness, the last stretch of the 2,190-mile trail. Not everyone can take months off of work and life to hike from Georgia to Maine, passing through 14 states, but fortunately you can section hike part of it and join a group of new friends at the same time.

With Adventures in Good Company, an adventure travel company intended for women of all ages, you’ll have a guide lead the way on the Slackpacking Maine trip as you travel over miles of roots and boulders, in mud, across wooden planks, and through tiny creeks, learning about foraging and Maine-specific topography along the way. The trip’s biggest hike summits Katahdin, a 5,269-foot behemoth, which is Maine’s highest mountain and the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. It’s challenging and demanding, especially during the steep climb over three large rock buttresses above the tree line, but you’ll undoubtably feel super proud of yourself when