Machu Pitcchu

Title – Machu Pitcchu
Date – October 2006
Location - Peru

Antipater of Sidon in the 2nd century BC made a list of the seven wonders in the world; none were far from the Greek capitol.

At Beyond The Blue we say “Antipater you missed a couple…”:

Angkor Wat, The Grand Canyon, The Great Barrier reef, Yogyakarta, Hagia Sophia, Mount Everest, The Serengeti, La Sagrada Familia, Angel Falls, Easter Island, Stonehenge, Rio Carnival, Victoria Falls, Glacier National Park, Heilala Festival, The Bay of Islands, Raffles Hotel, Table Mountain, The Skeleton Coast, The Northern Lights, Galapagos Islands, Sipidan Island, The Great Wall of China, The Haj, Uluru, Venice, The Taj Mahal, The Amazon River & Rainforest, Yap, Lake Titicaca, Necker Island, The Trans Siberian Express, St Petersburg, Mount Kilimanjaro, The Garden Route – South Africa, Halong Bay, The Pacific Coast Highway – USA, Lake Baikal, The Gobi Desert, Lhasa, Kodiak Island………

……….need I go on?

Oh….. and Machu Pitcchu

Our Gap Year and Independent Travel Safety & Awareness workshop allows those attending to draw up their own list with and with a little bit of help from us, to travel to their chosen destination with confidence and return home safely.

Please visit our website at www.safegapyear.com

Image – ©Heather Spalton

The Andes

Title – The Andes
Date – October 2006
Location - Peru

The Andes is one of the world’s great mountain ranges and runs the length of South America’s west coast, for some 4,500 miles and up to 300 miles wide, making it the longest mountain range in the world. With the highest peak rising to 22,841 feet (6,962m), Aconcagua is the highest mountain outside of Asia.

With the average height of the Andes being above 13,000 feet (4000m) altitude sickness should be a real concern to everyone travelling in this part of the world.

It is not thought that altitude sickness is related to age, gender or physical fitness, although fitness will certainly help you overcome it more quickly. With high altitude defined as above 8000 feet (2400m), very high altitude as above 12,000 feet (3650m) and extreme high altitude 18,000 feet (5,500m), much of the Andes would fall within the very high altitude bracket. There is no full proof rule to avoiding altitude sickness and it can affect anyone at any height. The symptoms include; headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, loss of appetite, fatigue, shortness of breath, disturbed sleep, general feeling of malaise, decreased co-ordination (ataxia), confusion, tightness in the chest, and a persistent cough bringing up white, watery, or frothy fluid, confusion, and irrational behaviour.

The best way to avoid altitude sickness is to slow your accent rate when hiking, to avoid reaching heights quickly and rest to acclimatise at regular intervals. To treat it, sever cases should seek medical attention, but the first thing to do is descend a minimum of 300m and at least 600m for more severe cases, but generally descend as much as you can. In the milder cases this descent alone will eventually lead to the symptoms slowly disappearing.

Beyond The Blue was created on the basis that prevention is better then a cure and through our Gap Year and Independent Travel Safety & Awareness workshop we help individuals planning trip to a new part of the world to prepare properly for both the exciting experiences as well as those that would be better avoided. We also examine the subject of Travel Health and what to do in the case of an emergency.

Please visit our website at www.safegapyear.com

Image – © Heather Spalton

Roast Guinea Pig

Title – Roast Guinea Pig
Date – October 2006
Location - Peru

Guinea Pigs in the UK are usually the cute furry little kid’s pets that spend all day running pointlessly round a wheel in a small cage.

In Peru the Guinea Pig is more likely to be seen roasting on a spit in one of the countries many restaurants serving this local speciality. It is by no means a side dish or curiosity, with over 65,000,000 Guinea Pigs being consumed every year it really is part of the stable diet; served in a variety of dishes the taste (as everything seems to) is much like rabbit / chicken.

Trying something new is very much part of the travel experience, for many the travel experience alone is a new experience and some of these other new experiences along the way, are a step too far. Beyond The Blue run workshops to help individuals to make the most of their planned journeys. With the help of our Gap Year and Independent Travel Safety & Awareness workshop you can embrace the new experiences and choose for yourself, exactly how far you want to take them.

Please visit our website at www.safegapyear.com

Image – © Heather Spalton

Peruvian Smile

Title – Peruvian Smile
Date – November 2005
Location - Peru

Peru has a colour and flair to it that brings the cities and people alive. These kids just epitomise the happiness and curiosity that pervades this country, with its rich cultural history and its magnificent archaeological sights. It sometimes seems that Peru has something for almost everyone, with high mountains and low rainforest, you can reach all the extremes that the world offers, but throughout there is one constant. That constant is the people of Peru, overwhelmingly friendly and always happy to see visitors from all over the world come to their country, to experience their culture.

Peru like so many countries, welcomes tourists and travellers from all over the world and Beyond The Blue helps to prepare you for the encounters you will face along the way. Our Gap Year and Independent Travel Safety & Awareness workshop is designed to help you to prepare and be aware of where you are going, how to act appropriately, sensitively and safely in the environment that awaits you.

Please visit our website at www.safegapyear.com

Image – ©Heather Spalton

Matcchu Pitcchu

Title – Matcchu Pitcchu
Date – October 2005
Location - Peru

A city built in the clouds, the last great city of the Inca civilisation and simply one of the mans greatest ever achievements, is quite rightly a draw for travellers from all over the world. Designed to be almost invisible, even more difficult to get to and almost impossible to attack, this city was home to the last great Inca King, Tupac Amaru and his high priests and temples.

This great city was lost to the world for hundreds of years until ‘re-discovered’, with the help of some local farmers, by Hiram Bingham a professor from Yale University as recently as 1911 (although this has recently been disputed with the German Augusto Berns believed to have ransacked it’s treasures 40 years earlier).

Matcchu Pitcchu is certainly one of those places that is difficult to describe without actually having been there to see it for yourself. Beyond The Blue is a training organisation whose aim it is to give people the skills, confidence and knowledge to travel to any location in the world, where they have dreamed about going. Our Gap Year and Independent Travel Safety & Awareness workshop will certainly help people make the right choices about their destination and help them to decide what destination and activities best suit them; but we also encourage people to realise that the world is a much smaller then most people realise and that many dreams that seem distant are actually readily achievable.

You can walk the Inca Trail to reach the majestic Matcchu Pitcchu or you can take the train what is important above all is that you reach your goal.

Please visit our website at www.safegapyear.com

Image – ©Heather Spalton