Hot, sticky and aching from two hours of hiking steep jungle trails, it’s a relief to leap off the lava rock ledge and feel the massaging effect of the churning ocean as I enter the water below.
As I resurface, my hiking companions follow me in. Soon, there are five of us treading cool water, laughing from the adrenaline of the jump. Before long, we all scramble out onto the slick rocks and scale back up the 12ft, pock-marked cliff and repeat the leap.
I’m on a guided hike around Te Pari — the wild, uninhabited seven-mile-long coastline at Tahiti’s southeastern extremity. Te Pari simply means ‘The Cliffs’ in Tahitian, and from our vantage point its stark topography is laid out before us — a series of black, volcanic rock faces plunging vertically into the water, cut by a handful of lush, steep-sided valleys. Battered by wind and sea, the area is only accessible on foot or by boat when the swell is small enough, as it is today. When the ocean is more tempestuous, parts of the trail will be swallowed by legendary waves.
More than 250,000 international travellers make it to Tahiti each year. Most stay around the island capital of Pape’ete and its airport, before hopping over to French Polynesia’s popular island paradise of Bora Bora. The trickle of visitors who make it from Pape’ete to Tahiti Iti — the smaller part of this figure-of-eight-shaped island — tend to come for the surf at its southeastern corner.
Thanks to its fearsome reputation for 10ft-high barrelling waves, in July 2024, Teahupo’o will stage the summer Olympics’ four-day surf competition for France. A remote village where the paved road ends, it’s here that the Fenua Aihere (Bush Country) begins. Sparsely populated with a string of rustic fisher family homes set between the lagoon and mountains, it eventually leads to Te Pari. Though it’s only a 90-minute drive from Pape’ete to Teahupo’o, this area feels like another world.
After drying off with towels pulled from our backpacks, we continue our hike along the rising and falling folds of the cliff edge with our local guide, Hitinui Levy. Though he’s easily 6ft tall with a large build and is carrying a heavy canvas backpack, he springs along the rocky path like a sleek cat. Hitinui and some of his fellow guides from Teahupo’o maintain this trail themselves, and he knows it like the back of his hand.
Eventually the trail leads us uphill and into a pandanus forest, thick with the palm-like trees prized by Tahitians for their elongated leaves, which are used in weaving and to make local thatched roofs. Reaching a high clearing, we pause to watch a small aluminium boat bobbing in the deep sea on the horizon. We are just close enough to make out a plump man at the helm, grasping a fishing
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Although many give Bruce Brown's 1966 film, The Endless Summer, credit for introducing surfing to fishing communities in Ghana, Senegal, and Nigeria, the sport has been happening along the shores of Western Africa, including Ghana's 300-mile coastline, for centuries. West Africans independently developed surfing before outsiders arrived; since at least the 1640s, sea merchants knew surf patterns well and used wooden surf-canoes to fish and ride 10-foot tall waves. Yet in present-day Ghana, surfing is largely the domain of tourists.
It's one of the marvels of science that we forget about in our everyday lives but in 2024 it might be time to pay attention to just how much the sun, the moon and our planet Earth can put on a real show. It's an exciting time to become an astrotourist as it's the only chance to see a solar eclipse in the U.S. for the next 20 years.
The Super Bowl helped MGM Resorts post three of the top five days in revenue it has ever recorded at hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, executives said Tuesday.
More than 10,000 rooms will surround the lagoon powered by Crystal Lagoons® technology, recently inaugurated in the United States. It is located just steps from Disney World and Universal Studios in the heart of Orlando, the most visited destination in the US, with 75 million tourists annually. This city offers a wide range of entertainment options but lacks a beach, an issue remedied in this great development with a crystalline lagoon of the multinational innovation company founded by the scientist Fernando Fischmann. The lagoon forms part of the Evermore Orlando Resort, one of the largest tourism projects in Florida. The large 8-acre body of water with extensive beaches breaks the hotel paradigm by providing truly superior standards and consolidates the presence of Crystal Lagoons in the hospitality and entertainment industry.
A romantic escape is the best gift imaginable. Picture the most astounding beach you’ve ever stepped foot on and an impossibly idyllic island that makes for a dream getaway. The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands and The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort are pleased to present specially crafted experiences as part of the Marriott Bonvoy in the Maldives romantic programing, ‘Eternally Ours,’ which guests can take advantage of until the end of the year. For a limited time only, Marriott Bonvoy in the Maldives invites couples to experience a luxurious getaway to celebrate meaningful occasions, whether it’s birthdays, honeymoons, anniversaries, or babymoons. This package incorporates two carefully curated romantic experiences and culinary indulgence through breakfast and dinner. The booking period starts from February 1 to February 29, 2024, for stays from February 1 to December 21, 2024, ensuring that couples will have the opportunity to celebrate love throughout the year.
Volcanic activity in Iceland has been rumbling on for months, centred around the Reykjanes Peninsula near Reykjavík, in the southwest of the country. After multiple earthquakes, the most recent series of eruptions kicked off at the end of 2023, when an explosion along a 2.5-mile fissure sent lava into the air a couple of miles northeast of the fishing village of Grindavík; another followed shortly afterwards.
Life in Maastricht and our province of Limburg is sweet: our local specialities are proof. Two dishes stand out: limburgse vlaai is a delicious pastry with a sweet filling. There are lots of flavours, but the best is rijstevlaai, made with a rich rice-pudding centre. You won’t find that anywhere else in the Netherlands.
Hilton is continuing a more than three-decade tradition of running TV ads during the Grammy Awards: On Sunday, it released spots touting why music lovers and concert-goers should pick its brands when booking hotels.
It’s about to get «epic» at Universal Orlando Resort as the theme park has announced details and shared an official first look of its upcoming Universal Epic Universe. Universal first announced that the park will be home to it's east coast version of Super Nintendo World and revealed further details of its five immersive lands in a press release with Travel + Leisure on Tuesday.
There’s a lot of attractions competing for the attention of little ones in Orlando—from Walt Disney World to Universal Orlando—but Villatel Orlando Resort has created something that will make kids and adults alike want to spend all their time in the hotel room.