World Wild Adventures on the Leading Edge of Tourism.

A recent News Letter from the Adventure Travel Trade Association, has us all fired up in a very positive way, at WWA. With our new company beginning its growth with strong concepts of Indigenous inclusion and sustainable ethics, the news of shifts in the industry in that direction has us pumped.

Read the letter here.

As many of you know, we just completed our 9th Adventure Travel World Summit in Lucerne, Switzerland. At this event we had the privilege of welcoming UNWTO Secretary-General Mr. Taleb Rifai to our community.
While at the Summit Mr. Rifai stated, “Adventure tourism is what tourism should be today and definitely what tourism will be tomorrow.” I believe this is an indicator of a sea change in the world of tourism and directly impacts the future of all businesses working within the adventure sector.
Also during the event, two major ATTA initiatives were signed, a memorandum of understanding between the UNWTO and the ATTA, by which we have agreed to work together to promote advocacy, research, quality, and education/training within the adventure tourism sector. And secondly, the ATTA became the first United States-based association to sign the Tourism Child-Protection Code of Conduct, an internationally accepted industry-driven corporate responsibility initiative to protect children from sexual exploitation in travel and tourism.
By signing these two agreements, it is our hope that governments and policymakers begin to join hands with our adventure travel community -- to make a difference around the world now and shape a future for tourism that is both sustainable and ethical.
We hope that others within the industry will take up these initiatives as well, specifically by working toward their own agreement to protect children. Within the next 30 days, you’ll see the ATTA announce our values statement much of which is driven by our commitment to the above. In this statement we ask that ATTA members, and future members, share these same values in order to join our community.
Please take a moment to review the following press releases sent out to the media industry earlier today. These releases summarize the recent Summit news and initiatives mentioned above.

· UNWTO, WWF International and Google Hail Adventure Travel as the Future of Tourism at 2012 Adventure Travel World Summit

· Advocacy, Research, Quality, Education & Training Collaboration Central to New World Tourism Organization-Adventure Travel Trade Association Partnership.

· Adventure Travel Trade Association Joins ECPAT's Fight Against Sexual Exploitation of Children

Best regards,
Shannon Stowell
President, ATTA

World Wild Adventures Ltd is Born and the SKC Kayak Symposium

 

Here I am in the UK for Business; meeting with my Friend and new business partner Rhoda Mcgivern, to solidify the foundations of our new adventure travel company “World Wild Adventures”! Some of you may ask “New? ....But ‘World Wild Adventures’ is what you have always called your little project company!”

And in essence those people are right. My hobby concept business was Called World Wild Adventure and was started in my mind in 2006 and put into practice in 2008, though the official Birth of the full grown company (now known as World Wild Adventures Ltd or WWA) is a new birth of that business, as of this year. The funny thing is that Rhoda also had started a hobby business about the same time and called it “Worldwild-Adventures” and that is how we meet (I found Rhoda and her company while Google-ing what I thought was my Unique business name) and came to realise after talking for a while and meeting in the UK, we had a vision for the same business. Now here we are over two years later with a business loan and partnership, starting our UK based Company; one that will merge my passion for kayaking and water, with Rhoda’s passion for bush craft and tracking, with the want to help create and solidify sustainable cultural tourism with a reflective adventure educational twist.

Through “Discovery of Adventure” (challenging one’s self to risk in order to gain in-valuable unique experience and growth), “Clarity of Old Growth” (Exposure to old knowledge, Skills and cultural beliefs of ancient tribes), and “Freedom to Slow” (being able to be in the moment), we promise to give you Amazing trips that you will take your breath away. The world is full of amazing moments and Journeys and we wish to help facilitate those and share them with whoever wishes' to take the step onto a wild journey of discovery with us.

Rhoda and I took a step into a journey of discovery when setting up the business over the last couple of weeks, by taking the offer to work with a Shamanistic business mentor to help define and solidify the powerful intent and future for the company. “A bit Woo Woo!” you may say, and perhaps it is, though through this system we were encouraged to really be true to what we want to make the company and its potential, plus embracing the ancient cultural knowledge that we hope to discover with other cultures on our adventures. The process was very much structured like any business development plan would be, just with a more human touch and a fusion of ancient knowledge. This process also worked towards discovery our logo and colours, so stay tuned for more developments on that, but for now here are the significant Images that are playing into the formation of WWA Ltd.

In between weeks of working with Rhoda on the business nitty gritty (while she balanced being pregnant and having a great family to look after, and I slept on their fold out coach in the lounge), I found time to head to southern Cornwall to “The 6^th Sea Kayaking Cornwall Symposium 2012”. I had been here two years ago roughly when I had first meet with Rhoda, and now I was returning again, and again with the TRAK Folding Kayak. However this time round I had the whole week to do an Advanced training course and film some stuff with Jeff Allen and Simon Osborne for the TRAK Files series and another film project I am working on. Plus I even got integrated into the BCU system.

The week was good fun, catching up with old friends I meet last time I attended, meeting new ones, Learning loads, paddling some big water, Doing a talk about my New Zealand expedition of 2011 and the hard and amazing lessons that where learnt (www.kayakdownundernz.blogspot.com), and paddling for hours in the middle of the night practicing night emergency incidents and Navigation. One of the coolest things was pushing the TRAK Folding kayak to do the skill set required by BCU 5 star training, and it handling it.

We dragged the TRAK up rocks, did rough water rescues from it, and to it, Rolled it in surf and rock gardens, Rock hopped and Surfed, as well as towed people through surf and during the night with it. This boat is truly awesome and has very little down falls as a folding boat in comparison to the hard-shells. That being said as with any boat it is the paddlers comfort and skill that sets the stage for the boat to perform, but it is good to know she can take me where I want to go. That being said, I finally broke some things, during the surf sessions and rolling I cracked the seat a little (this didn’t affect me paddling on though it was a break), I loosened the modified thigh braces from all the prying against them (by tightening the screws the issue appears fixed) and the deck line pulled free form the deck mount during a hit from a wave while doing a tow rescue. The main thing with the deck line mount was my spare Northern Light Greenland Paddle was stored on the bow, and when the big wave hit (as I was trying to create counter pull against the surf for the boats being towed in), the force of the wave lifted the paddle so hard the deck line pulled free of it securing tab;“No biggie though” and it should be easily fixed.

 

The whole week was one of my funnies social paddling adventures I have ever had, and I can suggest to anyone who may be looking to learn advanced rough water paddling and incident management skills, that if you get a chance to train with Jeff Allen, do so, he is a huge resource of knowledge and ability.

Contact Jeff at Sea Kayaking Cornwall

And or look out for him at a Kayak Symposium somewhere in the world near you.

My time Sea kayaking ended with a blast, when we were pulled out of the surf by police with whistles in order for the Navy bomb squad to set off to old World War II air bombs, that where found in a near by Paddock. Quite interesting to watch and here the explosion.

 

 

 

Any way I have had 20 days here in the UK and It is time for me to head back to Canada, tonight I am on the Sleeper Train to London (very Luxurious really, and cheaper than a hotel, plus you get a bit of free food and hot drinks). I had to say good bye to Rhoda early and Rhoda’s dad dropped me at the Station, as Rhoda went into labour with her second child a couple of hours before I was due to leave, unfortunately I can’t stay to meet the newest member of the World Wild Adventure Team, though I am sure I will have much to do with him in the future. So as I leave Cornwall someone new arrives into this world of wonder and adventure, what a lucky boy he is!

J

America may not want Canada's Dirty Oil!

A very interesting Article I was made aware of. Interesting to Note the USA may not want Canada's Tar Sand Oil. So why the hell does Canada keep pushing to pull it out when we all know it is leading to "Game Over"? 

 J

 

The New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

Game Over for the Climate

By JAMES HANSEN

Published: May 9, 2012

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

 

Johnny Selman

 

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.
The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change. 

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control. 

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price. 

But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.
President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.
The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations. 

James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.”

Journey to Newfoundland

Since I was a kid my father had spoken of the fabled island of Newfoundland, the fishing villages, the music the people. My father wanted to visit and by osmosis so did I, now years later given the chance to road trip to Newfoundland in order to get cheaper flights back to Toronto, I jumped on the chance and so did the rest of the crew. Tom was looking to move to Newfoundland, Dan Came from and lived in St John’s Newfoundland (so it was a natural direction for him to go) and the other three of us would save big money by flying out of Deer Lake, rather than goose bay (e.g. for me to Toronto, $1400 from Goose Bay, or $500 from Deer lake); Plus we all liked adventure.

 

After an initial night back in Goose Bay at a cheap hotel to bath and resort, packed down the GMC Safari once again (this time with 5 people, a dog and all our personal gear) and headed off down the dusty lumpy “Trans Labrador Highway” to the ferry at “Blanc Sablon” which happened to be back in Quebec.. The drive was dusty and we all had to wear handkerchiefs, shirts or cloths about our faces to reduce the dust we breathed, even despite a well sealed car finally at the end of the dirt road three hours later, we opened the back to shake out the sand beach that had formed. It was a beautiful day though showers were forecasted to come soon. That first night we camped out on a point in Blanc su blanch by the water, and cooked pork chops and fish over the fire, and then enjoyed the second best northern lights show we had seen on the trip, we all eventually wondered of to bed late, needing to be up early in the morning to catch the first ferry to “The Rock” (Newfoundland - pronounced “new FINLAND”).

Now the crazy thing here is within two hours of being on the island of Newfoundland, we drove past a sign showing the silhouette of a Caribou (warning us that they may be present), we joked about how funny it would be to come across a Caribou on the side of the road, now that we have just spent 3 weeks looking for them in Northern Labrador.

“Caribou” exclaimed Adele... and so there was! Right there on the side of the road was a large stag wandering across the island Barrens. We got to stop and watch him wander off into the trees, though he never gave a chance to get a great photo, still it was lovely to see one finally. The rest of our day entailed driving out to L'Anse aux Meadows and the Viking settlement of the fabled Vinland. It was amazing to see the similarities of this historic Norse site in Canada to the one I visited a couple of years back in Borg Norway. These Vikings sure got around back then. I was also amazed at how much the entire coastline and the villages looked like the coast of Norway, I hope to return here (Newfoundland) too explore some more by Kayak, as I have done in Norway, Perhaps a circumnavigation?

That night we camped in the rain using a picnic area we were directed to by locals. It appears everyone here is very excepting of tourist camping out for free in the green spaces, though they all come and drive up to have a quick look at us and then drive off again. As we set up that night and again in the morning some 12 cars must have driven over from the nearby village to look at us briefly turn around and return. No one even spoke to us though. It was quite a funny situation, we almost felt like zoo animals, or the Caribou we had stopped to look at ourselves.

The rest of our Journey was a quick drive through various sea side villages for moose burger lunches and pints of local beer, the most memorable being “Ice Berg Lager by Quidi Vidi Brewers”, to make this beer the brewers use water from the icebergs that float down to Newfoundland from the arctic glaciers. Quite a fun idea and a very refreshing beer in a stunning blue glass bottle. Our last night was spent with another of Dan’s friends, Margaret, who was very generous in sharing her wonderful little house with all five of us and a dog in Corner Brooke.

Our time in Newfoundland was simply a teaser for me personally and has ignited a taste for seeing more; when I can I must return to explore some more.

I now fly onwards to Toronto and then to the UK for some Paddle training in the BCU (British Canoe Union) system, to do some filming and to finally set up the new WORLD WILD ADVENTURES Travel Company, with my business partner Rhoda Mcgivern. Big exciting things are a foot, and the adventures are only just starting.

Jaime

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