Nature & Wildlife
The whole family was already out of their berths at the rapid rise of the equatorial sun, and their six-year-old daughter was on the aft deck, dutifully continuing her outdoor physics experiment.
Travel Tales
Olaf Malver, Chief Exploratory Officer of Natural Habitat Adventures, has traveled with some incredible characters while pioneering paddling routes in remote East Greenland, but Boas Madsen was particularly special. Read on to find out why Olaf nicknamed Boas the “Inuit Ice Master.”
Travel Tips
You might wonder why our Natural Habitat Expeditions guides have led trips for years, breaking trails in new hiking destinations, paddling unknown shores, and scaling unclimbed peaks in crazy locations. Well – I think it is all about people – not necessarily about place or task.
Travel Tales
Twenty-five years ago, long before he became Chief Exploratory Officer of Natural Habitat Adventures, Olaf Malver pioneered a new sea kayaking route along the wild northwest coast of Irian Jaya, the most remote province of eastern Indonesia. Read Olaf’s firsthand account of why it was one of the craziest expeditions of his life. “Sorry, Mister!”
Travel Tales
I had a client called Yuko. Tough in action, sweet in demeanor. Big on doing, little on small talk. Those are my favorite kind of clients on expeditions.
Travel Tales
Croc ahead! Our front boatman named C-Company signaled by pointing to the left riverbank – and a few of the paddlers up front noticed a long, black form slither quickly into the Okavango River. We immediately formed a single tight row of yellow kayaks behind our guide and sped past the beast’s entry site.
Travel Tales
Our lanky teenage-looking pilot closed his eyes and prayed quietly before takeoff into the immense, emerald-green void of the Ecuadorian Amazon. His murmurs were indecipherable through the roar of the old rattling Cessna operated by Aerotsentsak, the airline owned by the Achuar indigenous nation.
News & More
It was with a mixture of mild excitement and deep trepidation that I packed my guide bags for the Mongolia expedition this summer.
Travel Tales
It’s not unusual, when I’m off on an adventure in some far-flung corner of the world, to be eating some unfamiliar fare… But this gritty feeling inside my mouth was something else entirely. How did I get these minute lava particles between my teeth? Oh yes, it must be that huge volcano erupting some 9,000 feet above my head! I spit out the grit, and grin — I’ve just had a taste – literally – of the enormous eruption of Mt. Karymsky on the Kamchatka Peninsula in far-eastern Russia…
Conservation
A shiny red bauble that hangs on Olaf Malver’s Christmas tree — found in a most unlikely spot — is a reminder of what ecotourism can bring to communities and the guests that explore the natural environs around them.
News & More
Last August, Olaf Malver led the first-ever exploratory commercial kayaking expedition into the Skjoldungen Fjords of southeast Greenland, in pursuit of legendary Arctic explorer Fritjof Nansen’s route 125 years earlier. Here is his first-hand account!
Travel Tips
We humans seem to have a great need to anthropomorphize; that is, we tend to want to ascribe human characteristics to inanimate objects, nonhuman animals and natural phenomena, such as the wind, rain or sun.
