New Meaning of Adventure Vacations by Stephen Hansen

Family vacations have taken a new meaning in this day and age. Hiking trails and tent camping have taken a completely new meaning with today's adventure vacations travel industry. Bike tours and kayaking are no longer a solo man's journey in the wilderness. Today families are setting out internationally to places that where only once frequented by the casual backpacker. A region that has seen more than its share of backpackers until recently is the Mayan world. This is the region that Duende Tours seeks to preserve through an alternative style of adventure vacations meant to educate, entertain, and culturally enrich the foreign traveler.

The Mayan world is comprised of five countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador. Within specific regions of these countries exist protected, some more than others, Mayan Jungle zones. Over the past decade, these zones have become one of the adventure travel industry's main attractions. Beyond the traditional jungle trips that include hiking trails, tent camping, and the occasional canoe, new businesses have sprouted within the jungle community either from foreign or domestic origin, and are beginning to offer more "alternative" trips. Take for example the traditional biking tours in Colorado: the tours are done on trails meant for off road biking. But this is not so much the case in the Mayan Jungle, where the trails are, at best, incipient. This doesn't stop tour companies from offering their product, and it certainly doesn't stop families from buying and enjoying it; this is just one of the wonders of third world red tape (it doesn't always exist).

tent camping If biking tours aren't quite appropriate for the family, then the next best, or sometimes vise-versa, is horseback riding. There's not much in the world that could ever compete with riding a horse or bicycle through the dense, lush, exotic jungles of the Mayan World, traveling on routes that the Maya used to take thousands of years ago to ancient Mayan pyramids and Mayan temples.

These are the type of tours that Duende Mayan Jungle Tours offers. In a globalized world Duende seeks to preserve the culture and environment that escapes the world's manufactured human problem. Adventure vacations, according to Duende Tours, should not be just about escaping from the world to which you belong, but also about learning, appreciating, enjoying, and experiencing a completely different way of living and traveling. The point is to take your newfound experiences and knowledge home and apply it you your way of living, one that will hopefully help preserve not only are vanishing jungles, but the earth's environment as a whole. Taking family oriented adventure vacations that include bike tours, tent camping, crocodile watching, local community interaction, and Mayan culture learning is something that every member of the traditional or untraditional family can enjoy, learn, and grow from in ways that were never imaginable only 20 years ago.