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Puerto Rico's Jungle: El Yunque, and Are There Venomous Snakes or Spiders?

Puerto Rico's Jungle: El Yunque, and Are There Venomous Snakes or Spiders?

Puerto Rico is not just beaches. The northeastern corner of the island is covered by El Yunque National Forest — the only tropical rainforest in the entire United States National Forest system. It receives up to 200 inches of rain per year, suppo...

Grand Canyon: 12 Things You Need to Know Before You Go

Grand Canyon: 12 Things You Need to Know Before You Go

The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and over a mile deep. More than six million people visit Arizona every year to see it — and a surprising number of them show up completely unprepared. Here's everything you need to know to ...

Japan Has 6,852 Islands: Here Are the Most Famous Ones — And the Ones Worth Actually Visiting

Japan Has 6,852 Islands: Here Are the Most Famous Ones — And the Ones Worth Actually Visiting

Japan consists of 6,852 islands, of which 421 are inhabited. The four main islands — Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and Shikoku — account for approximately 97% of the total land area. The remaining 6,800+ are an extraordinary archipelago of volcanic peaks...

Mount Elbert: Colorado's Highest Peak — Can You Really Climb It?

Mount Elbert: Colorado's Highest Peak — Can You Really Climb It?

Mount Elbert rises to 14,440 feet (4,401 metres) above sea level in the Colorado Sawatch Range, making it the highest point in Colorado, the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains, and the second highest summit in the contiguous United States after Cali...

American Samoa Travel Guide: The USA's Most Remote Territory and Most Pristine Island

American Samoa Travel Guide: The USA's Most Remote Territory and Most Pristine Island

American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States in the South Pacific Ocean, approximately 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii. Its approximately 55,000 residents are US nationals (not citizens by birth, in a legal distinction that co...

America's Most Mysterious Places: From Sedona Vortexes to Skinwalker Ranch

America's Most Mysterious Places: From Sedona Vortexes to Skinwalker Ranch

The United States is a young country built on ancient geology, indigenous spiritual traditions, frontier mythology, and a national character that has always been captivated by the unknown. The result is a remarkable inventory of places that generate ...

Dominica: The Caribbean Island That Refused to Be Ruined by Tourism

Dominica: The Caribbean Island That Refused to Be Ruined by Tourism

Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic) has made a deliberate bet against mass tourism: it has no large resorts, no cruise-ship promenade, and no pumped-up party beach. What it has instead is a volcanic island so geologically active...

Travelling Chad: Saharan Dunes, Camel Caravans, and the Ennedi Plateau

Travelling Chad: Saharan Dunes, Camel Caravans, and the Ennedi Plateau

Chad is not a destination for the casual traveller. It has limited infrastructure, a complex political history, and requires serious logistical planning to visit responsibly. It is also, for adventurous travellers willing to put in the work, among th...

Is It Hard to See Sloths in Panama When You Travel?

Is It Hard to See Sloths in Panama When You Travel?

Panama is one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth — a narrow land bridge between two continents where species from North and South America overlap. Among the most coveted wildlife sightings for visitors are sloths. Here's everything you need to...

The One Reason to Go to Madagascar You Won't Find Anywhere Else on Earth

The One Reason to Go to Madagascar You Won't Find Anywhere Else on Earth

There are special places on Earth. And then there is Madagascar — a world so biologically isolated that evolution took its own extraordinary path here for 88 million years. About 90% of the wildlife you'll encounter exists nowhere else on the planet....

Which Japanese City Has the Most Cherry Blossoms? The Sakura Capital Debate

Which Japanese City Has the Most Cherry Blossoms? The Sakura Capital Debate

The annual sakura season is arguably the most famous recurring natural spectacle in the world. For two to three weeks each spring, Japan's cities, rivers, roads, and temple grounds disappear beneath a soft canopy of pale pink and white flowers. The q...

Alligators and Adventures: The Complete Wildlife Travel Guide to Tampa

Alligators and Adventures: The Complete Wildlife Travel Guide to Tampa

Most visitors come to Tampa for Busch Gardens, the Riverwalk, or the beaches of St. Pete. What they often discover — sometimes with a jolt — is that Florida takes its wildlife seriously, and Tampa's surrounding landscape is one of the best places in ...