Dream Travel: If not now, when?
Experience pure happiness: camping in the Amazon
A region of superlatives: Amazon is said to have the most animal and plant species in the world. Photo: iStockphoto
"Ara, Ara" - blue-yellow parrots scream their name over the river landscape of the Amazon. Howler monkeys roar in the treetops, a giant toad sunning in the sand, a snake flitting into the undergrowth. People have probably never seen the animals here. Except for Moses, of course. He is a "Ranger" and knows all living things, every tree and shrub in "his jungle". With him and his son Katu we interrupt our cruise, which began in the Amazon capital Manaus. Near the village of Novo Airão we leave with the dinghy the Rio Negro, ready for an adventure: we paddle from one little sidearm to the next, the waterways are getting narrower. The 40-meter-high trees are now halfway underwater in the rainy season, so we can cross the forest by canoe - to our idyllic anchorage by a waterfall in the middle of the jungle. While Moses and Katu hang the hammocks for the night and bring them along Protecting tarpaulins from rain, my husband Hans and I are sitting in front of the campfire, drinking coffee and just happy.
We let the leaves rustling and water rushing on us and know: Amazonia will take a unique place in our lives. A dream came true for us. With our jungle trip also began a new period of life: Hans was retired and threw his fear of boredom overboard here in Brazil. And I realized that it was right to give up my permanent job in order to work freely in the future. Sausages smell over the fire. Actually nothing special, but for us it will be the most romantic candlelit dinner of our lives. The night is cool. We cuddle up in the hammocks and listen. Everything is peaceful. Moses keeps watch, the fire burns, no jaguar dares to approach. The next morning after a swim in the river, delicious drinking water from a liana and a freshly cut palm heart, we return to the ship, which has been waiting for us on the beach. Slowly we sail back to Manaus, accompanied by dolphins. The first evening, we swap the comfy bed in the cabin for a hammock with a starry sky on the deck.
Text: Iris Bader
Travel info
Tips on individual travel on the Amazon under www.amazonasreisen.de. To read and dream: "Amazonia", illustrated book about the beauty of this unique natural landscape (Bruckmann, 18 Euro).
Strength prove: By bike from Athens to Beijing
In solitude: gravel road on the plateau Forugat in Kyrgyzstan, near the Chinese border. Photo: laif
"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Cycling from Athens to Beijing, through ten countries, 14000 kilometers in 175 days - there were quite a few who thought I was crazy. And sometimes I belonged to it. For example, at this never-ending pass in Georgia. A single gravel and pothole track. 1200 meters altitude and 95 kilometers long. "You can not drive something like that," I thought. "That's an imposition!" The fact that I was not off the bike was just a sort of iron defiance reaction. The staying power of our group was very often put to the test. In Uzbekistan we had to sleep on the floor in a very dirty dump. In Turkmenistan, relentless sandstorms blew off our bikes, and in Kazakhstan we were hit by temperatures well over 40 degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, it went on every day. On average 100 kilometers a day, very often much more. Our path led along the historic Silk Road. She alone was the reason why I never thought of stopping, even for a moment. I wanted to experience this myth first-hand. I was fascinated by the fact that once before the birth of Christ caravans had been transporting caravans and spices from Central Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea once by bike.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN author Helga Struwe
The Radel virus had caught me 14 years ago, when I made a tour of Sweden with my then 14-year-old daughter. Since then, I'm traveling almost every holiday by bike. Alone or in a group. When I heard about the planned bicycle trip on the occasion of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, I was electrified. I was the second to register, out of 16 participants. Most over 60 years old, retired - and top shape! I myself had been in partial retirement only five months before the start in Athens. So I did not have much time to prepare. Every day I went to the gym from now on to build up my condition and strength.The fact that I kept pushing my limits as soon as it went uphill was frustrating, but it did not stop me from achieving my goal. I wanted to go to Beijing, and so I learned to listen to my body, and let it rest for a while, sometimes just getting on the bus that accompanied us. When I think back to the tour today, the hardships are forgotten. Remained are memories of warm, hospitable people. To the huge mountainous landscapes in Kyrgyzstan far away from any civilization. To the mighty Unesco-protected monasteries and cathedrals in Georgia with their frescoes and monotonous monastic songs, to the old town of Bukhara in Uzbekistan, which has preserved the charm of the ancient Silk Road like no other, or to the Mogao Caves, the Buddhist cave temples in the Gansu Province, where travelers used to pray for a healthy return home.
Text: Helga Struwe
Travel info
Cycling around the world in 175 days? was a joint project of six different organizers of the travel association? (Www.forumandersreisen.de). New dates, from Berlin to Beijing, from April 2011 on www.china-by-bike.de, also individual routes bookable. ? Helga Struwe meanwhile has the bike tour company? Op? N Drahtesel? founded, which offers tours in northern Germany (www.opndrahtesel.de). For reading and learning: The interesting picture book? Silk Road? shows locations of the old trade route (CM Medienverlag, 39,90 Euro).
Experience intoxication: Salsa in Mallorca
It was the third night in a row that I danced through and slowly it was enough for me. "Can that please stop?", It shot through my head. "I want to sleep for five minutes." But it did not stop. I lay in bed, wide-awake, and the rhythm of salsa raged in my brain. "Un, dos, tres. Un, dos tres" - head and feet tangled in endless steps, and out there the next morning was already in the starting blocks. Salsa, then. What a great idea! For weeks, I had considered what extraordinary experience might fit my current mood. I needed a vacation, I felt like an adventure all to myself, and I have a man who considers couple dancing a particularly exalted waste of time. That's why I had struck heartily when I came across this salsa course in Mallorca during a trip on the Internet. In contrast to my husband, I find couple dance to be absolutely beguiling, I love to move to music, I like to be held and filmed. "No problem at all, beginners are welcome," the German tour operator Alex Juschka had assured me on the phone and no, not just drinking and dancing teens on site. I was still scared when I got off the plane on a Sunday morning in October in Palma. First of all, this should be my first close contact with the spirited dance from Latin America. And secondly, I was no less inexperienced in group travel. The morning after my third sleepless night: While I'm staggering exhausted in our exercise room in the hotel "El Encinar" near Valldemossa, Daniela, our dance teacher from Palma, already moved into position between the women. "Hola chicas - arriba!" The first of the three class hours in the morning is always Daniela and us women, and we're with you. The men are training with Alex. "Un, dos, tres," she exclaims - as if I have not heard this before somewhere - and we practice steps and turns to intoxicating rhythms, studying arm and hip movements to bring us closer to the New York style.
Dream Travel: "Dancing is dreaming with your feet"
The New York style quickly turns out to be my natural enemy, this salsa variant is about being as sexy as possible as a woman. Nothing that would be in my blood in real life. Ralph, an excellent dancer from Berlin, is still happy when he receives me in the second hour. Ralph happened to be standing next to me when we were supposed to mate on the first day of the class, and in a fit of boldness I'd suggested he just take me. In the next few hours, I turn to the right every time I turn to the left and preferably land on his feet, he wears it with humor. After all, fate has brought him a grateful student, because of him I learn at least as much in these days as from the teachers. When I swing around in the late evening on the stone terrace in front of the hotel between noisy dance couples around Ralf, I can not believe my luck. I do not know what to look for in the best way: the insanely nice people around me. The concentration that makes me thoughtless and easy, or just the music that hits me right in the heart. Dancing is dreaming with my feet, my friend Steffi had said to me before the beginning of my journey. And this dream is really worth a few sleepless nights.
Text: Jule Baehr
Travel info
The trip is bookable at Salsa Exclusive Tanzreisen, Alexander Juschka, Tel. 01 73/358 37 95, www.salsa-exclusive.de. Next dates in Mallorca in June, July and October, from 720 Euro / single registration, including six nights, breakfast, lessons. To listen and dance: The Peruvian Cecilia Noël gets a good bang on the CD "A Gozar" (Compass, 13,99 Euro), and "A Son De Guerra" is from the earwig specialist Juan Luis Guerra (Emi, 15,98 Euro).
Show courage: In Kenya among wild animals
Showcase: Young bull elephants measuring their strength in Masai Mara National Park. Photo: Anna M. Löfken
Never before have I obeyed men as readily as my two companions in Kenya. They are called Patrick and Paul, and they lead me on foot out into the savannah, with rifle and spear. And me in between. 5.30 clock. The last stars fade in the sky, which spans watercolor-blue over the Masai Mara, a picture-book district for "wild-animal-Gucker" like me. Mist drifts across the stubbly grass, where cobwebs move from stalk to stalk. A sip of hot tea from green thermoses, a biscuit, before we go out to watch the wild animals wake up. But first there are three instructions from Patrick, the ranger with rifle: "Always go behind me, stop immediately if I stop, do not talk." Masai Paul smiles at me and knocks his spear on the floor. I nod and keep silent. We are in the wild. The previous days we roamed them in the SUV, watched lion eating (delicious zebra), three cheetahs sunbathing on a small hill, drove slowly behind a herd of elephants, which trotted to a water hole. I felt very safe there.
Traumreisen: Where the wild animals are at home
Not any longer longer. Nevertheless, I would like to experience it, to go through this country, where the wild animals are at home and determine the rules. And where people are allowed to experience a bit of nature up close, which is nice to howl. Patrick stops. Point to a wildebeest herd in the twilight, zebras grazing. They do not take any notice of us. A bird loudly wakes up its friends. Paul shows me a green plant that is good for a sore throat. He looks at trails in the dry sandy soil. Lions? No. Here were hyenas, recognizable by the pieces of bone and Gnuhaaren they spat out. Giraffes have left black Kötel, I would have rather typed on wild hares. Meanwhile, the sun has swept away the mist, exposing the seemingly endless savannah, monkey-bread trees, thorn bushes, behind which lions like to hide; on flute acacia, where ants have built their spherical nests. Thomson gazelles bounce past. A lone old elephant trudges on the horizon. Time is at the beginning.
Text: Anna M. Löfken
Travel info
Safari tours through Kenya offers z. For example, the TUI: four days (overnight in the gorgeous Governors Camp) with full board and three possible game drives per day in the Masai Mara. Busch Walks bookable here. Then return to the coast, transfer to the boutique hotel "Sands at Nomad" on the long Diani beach in Mombasa, where the first night after arrival is spent. Price from 2586 euros, including all flights www.tui.com or travel agency).
For paging and astonishment: Every picture, every scene is a great moment African wilderness. Lions, zebras, cheetahs, elephants, monkeys are the stars of the famous animal photographer Michael Poliza, sensationally photographed in the recently published illustrated book "Classic Africa" (teNeues, 98 Euro).
A Maldives island just for me
Like capricious divas, the Maldives hide their splendor under their gowns. If you want to see your talents, you have to get wet; must dive to gardens where corals grow instead of roses, fish fly instead of birds. Even the mountains are under water, wrong world.
But I stay up: In a few minutes I walk around my mini-island Baulaghela, barefoot in the hot sand, which is so fine that it squeaks. White crabs raise astonishing stare eyes invader. The rest is silence. There is not much more than a nap of coconut palms on my oval in the ocean. No odors, no chattering, no whistling.
Box seat in the ocean: Baulaghela is one of 1190 Maldives Islands
From the rage of India, barely 700 kilometers away, nothing is felt here. I fall out of time and space - and land wonderfully soft. Here ends the need and want, begins the leisure. My thoughts fly into the endlessness that stretches all around into the glistening turquoise blue. Thoughts that usually hit the walls of everyday life until they fall silent. In boundlessness, they speak again. I'm stuck in the ocean - and I'm free.
Text and photos: Susanne Arndt
Travel info
The "Robinson Club Maldives" on Funamadua in Gaaf Alif Atoll offers trips to the uninhabited island of Baulaghela. Including picnic boat transfer and barbecue (about 260 euros for two people). A Robinson week from about 1324 euros, including flight, www.robinson.com
To dive: Photojournalist Michael Friedel became famous through his Maldives photos - to be admired in the illustrated book "Maldives", with an essay, travel tips and a photo workshop by the master himself (MM Photoprints, 21.90 Euro).
